“Oh, didn’t I tell you? I thought I told you. He’s living with some other woman in a neighboring town. It’s been going on for a couple of weeks. Rose Emily is awfully upset.”
“What are we going there for?” I said, agitated. “How can we inflict ourselves on her at a time like this?”
“What do you mean?” Jordan said. “She’s fine.”
Rose Emily was waiting at the station, a tall handsome woman in a wrinkled skirt and bare legs. “We’ll have to walk home,” she said. “Pat’s got the car, of course.” Two children were with her. “This is Judith and this is Charles,” she said. Judith was about ten and had long black hair and piercing eyes. Charles, about Eric’s age, was small and wiry; he peered at us through a heavy thatch of hair. “Run along,” Rose Emily said to the children.
She grasped Jordan’s arm and drew him ahead, talking to him animatedly. Some of her sentences drifted back to Mark, Bruce and me on the quiet air. “Simply don’t understand …” she said, and “ … told him repeatedly …” We climbed through hedges and across fields. Weeds waved about our knees. “They’re trying to put council housing in this field,” Rose Emily called back to me. “We’re fighting it tooth and nail. Wreck the field and the dreadful people…. Dropped in this morning and took them for ice cream,” she said to Jordan.
All the houses in Cramley were built of the same brownish brick; they had small-paned windows and a weathered look, although they seemed to be relatively new. Rose Emily’s house had a large garden with flower beds and vines. The living room had sliding doors opening onto the garden, and a little 1930ish moderne fireplace with a painting of cows hanging over it. There was a sagging sofa covered with a vaguely Spanish throw.
“I’ll show you the kitchen,” Rose Emily said, “and we’ll carry the tea things out. We’ll be much nicer outside today.”
The kitchen was extremely small, and festooned with washing. We fought our way through damp sheets and towels and emerged with trays of chipped crockery. I had brought a cake.
“Perhaps you don’t like tea?” Rose Emily said to me. “Many Americans don’t. Would you like milk or lime juice?”
Tortured by thirst, I chose lime juice, forgetting that it would come from a bottle straight from the warm cupboard. Sweet and sticky, it clung to my dry throat as it went down. We all crouched around a low table. The air was very damp and warm, and quiet. Very quiet.
“I just love cake,” Judith said, staring at me with her piercing black eyes. “I love most things. I love to eat. Mummy says I have a wonderful appetite. Don’t I, Mummy?”
“Yes, you do, dear,” her mother said.
“There’s almost nothing I don’t like to eat,” Judith said. “I love everything. Charles is picky. Isn’t he, Mummy?”
“Yes, he is, dear.”
“Let’s go play,” Charles said to Eric. His accent was distinctly different from his mother’s and sister’s.
“Yes, go play,” Rose Emily said dreamily. “But mind the flowers. Mind the bushes. Mind the currants.”
“Perhaps they oughtn’t to play,’’ I said. “They might step on something.”
“Oh, ducky,” Rose Emily said, “don’t fuss so. Not to worry. They’re fine.”
“It’s lovely for us to get out of the city,” I said. “The children have nowhere to play there.”
“I used to dislike tomatoes,” Judith said. “But I like them now. Mummy and I could never decide why I disliked tomatoes. We thought perhaps it was because of the pips.”
“I disliked tomatoes when I was a child,” Rose Emily said. “But I’m not sure now why.”
“I think it was the pips, Mummy,’’ Judith said.
“Yes, perhaps it was because of the pips. Charles! Mind the currants! Mind the blackberries!”
“I’m sure it’s the pips,” Judith said. “They get in your teeth and slide all over your tongue. It’s horrible having tomato pips in your teeth. Look, Mummy, they’re stepping on those vines.” She stood up; her face turned crimson.
“Get out of those vines, you horrid, horrid boys!” she shrieked.
Eric stood still and stared at us, startled. Charles seized the opportunity to dump a bucket of grass clippings over his head.
“Stop that, Charles, you fool,” Rose Emily said mildly. “He picks up disgusting habits,” she said to us, “from his hideous little pals at the state school.” She smiled brightly at me. “Jordan tells me you just got your degree.”
“Yes,” I said, “in English literature.”
“Milton lived near here,” she said. “He wrote most of Paradise Lost near here. His house is just over the way.”
“My goodness, “I said. “I’d love to see it.”
“Oh, it’s so exciting that you got your degree,” Rose Emily said. “It’s marveys really. Did you write a thesis?”
“No, I took an exam. From Chaucer to the present….”
“Oh, Chaucer!” Rose Emily said. “I’ve always wanted to read Chaucer, but they wouldn’t let us read it unexpurgated at school. They didn’t let you read it all, did they?”
“Well, yes,” I murmured. “Graduate school …”
“Really? They let women? Charles! Mind the bushes! Charles!”
“Oh, look what they’re doing, Mummy,” Judith said. She leaped to her feet. “They’re stepping all over the flowers. They’re naughty, horrid boys!”
She rushed at Charles, who ducked lithely away.
“Oh, children,” Rose Emily said, giving me a big smile. “I really am awfully glad to meet you at last,” she said. “We’re all so fond of Jordan.” She gave him a big smile too. “We just think Jordan’s so much fun. We really enjoy him.”
I murmured gratitude.
“He’s not the least bit American,” Rose Emily said.
“Do you mean,” I said, trying to make a joke, “he’s un-American?”
“I mean he’s not American. You know. One meets Americans, one really feels pushed to the wall. They push, you know.” She gave all of us a big smile. “But Jordan’s different. He’s not pushy.” At this point Bruce, who had been sitting next to me in a frozen stupor similar to Mark’s, rose uncertainly to his feet. His face was beet red and his cheeks were swollen; his eyes were filled with tears, and in an agony of shyness and outrage, he kept them on the ground. “Lots of English people are pushy too,” he said, in a strangled voice.
“Oh, yeah,” Rose Emily said.
“Bruce,” I said weakly, “we don’t speak … We …”
Jordan put his arm around Bruce, and Judith, from the bottom of the garden, gave a piercing scream. We all turned; she was writhing on the ground, crying and screaming and clutching her leg.
Rose Emily flew to her. “My baby!” she cried, “What is it?”
“Charles,” Judith shrieked, “Charles.”
“What has he done, Judith?”
Charles appeared to have climbed a tree. Rose Emily half carried Judith to the tea table.
“Oh, that dreadful wretch Charles,” Judith said. “It’s his fault.”
“Oh, Charles,” Rose Emily cried, “what have you done?”
“I kicked his bicycle and hurt my leg,” Judith sobbed. “It’s all his fault.”
Mark made a sort of choking sound.
“Oh, Charles, do be careful,” Rose Emily said.
Charles climbed down from the tree, and began to pry up the sewer lid that was under our feet.
“Look,” he said, in a rich Cockney, ‘”ere’s the sewer, I’ll show you.” It was the sewer all right.
“I think,” Jordan said, “if we’re going to get the six o’clock train, we really ought to help you clear away now. We can have a leisurely walk to the station. We don’t mind waiting there.”
“No, that’s right,” I said. “I mean I hate to rush.”
“Yeah,” Mark said, his first word of the afternoon.
We fought our way through the wet laundry again and deposited the crockery.
“You m
ust take your cake back with you,” Rose Emily said to me. “There’s some left.”
“No, that’s for you,” I said grandly.
“Oh, thanks awfully,” Rose Emily said. “It’s super cake.”
“You’re not all that tall when you stand up,” Judith said, staring at me. “You’re short.”
“Charles!” Rose Emily shouted, “Put down that sewer lid! Look out for the bushes! Julia goes to France in August,” she said to me, “and then perhaps I’ll ring you. I may come in town with Charles.”
“Oh, that would be nice,” I said. Eric was standing next to me, trying to scratch the grass clippings out of his collar.
We began our trek back across the fields and over the hedges. Charles climbed trees and jumped over walls and threw pebbles at Eric, who was sucking his thumb. Rose Emily walked on ahead with Jordan and snatches of her conversation floated back to us. “Taking my money,” she said, “and not a cent … Definitely starting proceedings, and yet I feel….”
Mark walked beside me, his arm protectively around Bruce. “Oh, boy,” he said softly.
18
Day Camp
WE ROSE VERY EARLY on Monday, our first day at day camp. Jordan took us in a cab to the South Kensington—he and Mark kept calling it South Ken—underground station. He made inquiries, handed me a little colored map and he and Mark rushed off. The children and I waited on a platform with several large bearded men in turbans who looked like extras in an old Ronald Colman movie, and a knobby Buddhist priest carrying prayer beads. It was a long ride to West Ruyslip, but we all felt cheerful because at least we were going somewhere and not just wandering around looking for happiness.
West Ruyslip was the end of the line. We disembarked, surprised to smell trees and flowers, and walked half a block down a hill to the American Air Force base. There large people in uniforms blocked our way, looking at us suspiciously. Some of them wanted us to go away, but I stood my ground and finally an officer told them that the day camp was open to civilians, and it was all right. A uniformed person took us across the camp to a wooden building. The ground was brown and bare; it had started to rain, and an icy wind was blowing.
I signed the boys into the camp for one week and hung around in a large auditorium while the lady from Texas sorted all the children into groups. Bruce and Eric were in the same group. She gave them all paper Indian headdresses and told them to run around in a circle. At this point I went out into the hall because I could feel Bruce trying to catch my eye. I sat down on a bench in the hall and started to read. The rain beat on the tin roof of the building and the winds swirled about it. I was reading a British reprint of an American novel about a sensitive man who lived in New Jersey and felt stifled. His wife joined the PTA and he was booed at meetings.
I visited the lavatory and was shocked to find lewd things written all over the walls; severe notes from the authorities were posted threatening to shut the ladies off from a lavatory entirely if they did not mend their ways. Finally, suffering from cold, headache and general malaise, I went to the base cafeteria for lunch, to find that they would not take my English money. A young American girl gave me some American change, and we sat together to eat.
“I’ve been here three years,” she said. “I hate it. They call us Yanks, we call them Blokes. The children beat up my little sister. I have to stay here because I’m getting married and my fiancé hasn’t finished here. Everybody makes fun of my accent. I do telephone ordering for the base; yesterday a man said he couldn’t understand a word I said. He said he didn’t know what language I was speaking.”
She went off moodily and I went back to my draughty hallway and my book. After an hour or so I wandered into the office to thaw out. The girls there were chatting. “I’m getting out,” one said. “I’m going to college in the States. I feel awfully sorry for my mother, though; she’s got another year here. She wants to come with me and settle me in college, but my father won’t let her because he’s afraid she won’t come back.”
“I just got back from Manchester,” another one said. “We had a ball.”
“You liked Manchester?” I said.
“Oh, it was great. The people are friendly up there. Not like London. They’re almost like Americans up there.”
I huddled in the office until four o’clock when I collected Eric, who said he had had a good time, and Bruce, who was too miserable even to complain, and we walked back to the underground where we changed trains once, traveling on a monumental escalator, and then reached South Ken where we took a cab home. The house was dark and very cold. Eric went into the little lavatory on the ground floor.
“Hey, it’s all wet back there,” he said.
I went back. Water was running down the wall between the lavatory and the small study.
“Oh, dear,” I said, “I’ll call Mr. MacAllister.”
“ … and there’s quite a lot of water coming down the wall,” I said to him on the phone.
For some incomprehensible reason, Mr. MacAllister laughed.
“How awful for you,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Well, do you know a plumber?”
Mr. MacAllister’s voice became rather frigid. “I don’t know any plumbers,” he said. “I do know of a builder.”
“Well, do you think you could call him? Someone is here every day until two o’clock.”
“Well, I could try to call him, yes.”
“Because you see,” I said slowly and distinctly, “there’s quite a lot of water coming down the wall.”
Mr. MacAllister laughed, and we rang off.
19
Shopping
THE NEXT MORNING I phoned the day camp, as I had been instructed to do, to find out what their field trip plans were, and whether, if they were coming to London, we could meet them somewhere. Bruce was barely speaking to me, because he had spent his entire day running around in circles wearing a paper hat. Eric had been more vocal on the subject. “No, I didn’t like it,” he said, “but at least it was something to do.”
The people at the day camp informed me that they were going to be at Madame Tussaud’s in an hour. This was not good news. Eric was still afraid of Hamlet’s uncle. He wouldn’t go upstairs alone and every time we went out, he asked whether we were going near Madame Tussaud’s.
Now I had to announce that the day camp was going there.
“I want to go to Madame Tussaud’s again,” Bruce said instantly.
“So do I,” Eric said. He looked doubtful.
“But it frightened you,” I said.
“I want to go,” Bruce said. “Eric doesn’t have to go, but I want to.”
“I want to, too,” Eric said. He still looked doubtful.
I began to rationalize. “Maybe,” I said, “maybe if you go again, you’ll see how you built the whole thing up in your mind, and you’ll realize how silly it is to be frightened. Do you think so?”
“Yes,” Eric said.
“I mean,” I went on, gaining confidence, “that was the only time you went, and we had just arrived, and everything seemed so strange to you. But if you go again, with a lot of other children, you’ll see it in a different sort of light.”
“Yes, I will,” Eric said.
“No, he won’t,” Bruce said. “He’ll be scared out of his wits.”
“Maybe he won’t, Bruce,” I said. “Why don’t we give it a try?”
“There’s a lot of water coming down the wall of the lavatory,” Mrs. Grail said, coming into the room. “The carpet’s getting soaked.” I told her that I had called Mr. MacAllister.
“I think someone will come in today and fix it.”
“Ah, that awful thing,” Mrs. Grail said automatically.
“Yes, but he knows of a builder,” I said. “He doesn’t know any plumbers.”
“Ah, the snobs,” Mrs. Grail said.
Half an hour later we found the Air Force children bunched up in a disorganized un-English way in front of Madame Tussaud’s. The distracted Texas
lady was waiting for us.
“I couldn’t decide whether Eric should go,” I said, “but we all decided it would take the curse off it for him if he went again, especially with a lot of other children.”
“Why, it surely would,” the Texas lady said.
“I mean,” I said, “we are assuming that he was frightened the first time only because it was a strange sort of day and we were all three alone here. We think that with a lot of children he will feel different, and anyway—”
“Why, surely,” the lady said, counting heads. “Don’t worry about a thing.”
She herded them away while I was still saying, “It’s possible that….”
Eric waved gaily to me as he went in.
I was free at last.
I could go shopping. I could wander around looking in shop windows. I knew already that everything was expensive. I returned to Knightsbridge and stopped at a shoe store. There were black patent leather sandals in the window. The very thing. The man who greeted me at the door was friendly to the point of being obsequious; he handed me and the shoe in question to a young saleslady, or shop assistant, who eyed me with distaste.
“Yes?” she said.
I told her that I wanted the shoe in question in my size.
“I don’t know what sizes we have left,” she said.
“Perhaps you could measure my foot,” I said, adding apologetically, “If I could sit down….”
She hesitated and then led me down some stairs to another shoe salon. She measured my foot, vanished, and reappeared with a rather large sandal, which she placed on my foot and then whisked off, just as I was about to stand.
“It doesn’t fit you,” she said. “We don’t have it in your size.”
“Do you have anything else that would fit me?”
“Not an open shoe like that,” she said, and rose briskly.
“How about a closed one?” I asked.
She went away, looking annoyed, and came back almost immediately to say firmly, “We don’t have anything for you in black.” Unwilling to annoy her further by requesting a color, I went out into the street again, and decided to buy some glasses for an evening party that Jordan wanted to give. There was an enormous crush in the shop. I ruined a young man’s day by asking him if he were free, or if he could get me a salesperson. He was wearing a suit so I thought he was a manager. His hand flew to his throat. “I’m not …” he murmured, “shop … assistant….”
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