London Transports

by Maeve Binchy

  Rita sat half listening as she had been doing all along. I started to say about three different things and got a coughing fit. Finally it dawned on the world’s most confident bad writer that she was losing her audience so she excused herself on the grounds that she wanted to go and get herself smartened up at the hairdresser, just in case this beautiful man by some lovely chance wasn’t in love with his mother or the man who directed the series.

  “Do people usually talk about him like that?” I asked Rita.

  “About who?” she said.

  “About Andy Sparks,” I said relentlessly.

  “Oh, I suppose they do,” she said uncaringly. “I mean he’s quite famous really, isn’t he? In everyone’s homes every night—as they say.”

  “Did you know him before he was a star?” I asked.

  “No, I only got to know him a couple of years ago,” she said.

  “Are you fond of each other?” I asked, again amazed at my bravery.

  “Why?” she said.

  “Well, I thought that he seemed very dependent on you the other night.”

  “Oh, he was just pissed the other night,” she said.

  There was a silence.

  “Look,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about him if you don’t. I just thought it was interesting, there you are knowing him very well while we just had to do bits and pieces about him to make up that feature. I suppose I wonder why you didn’t say anything.”

  “And have my picture in the paper you mean? Like Andy Sparks and the girl he can’t have…that sort of thing.”

  “No, of course we wouldn’t have done anything like…”

  “Of course you would,” she said flatly. “You work on a newspaper.”

  “There might have been a bit of pressure, yes, but in the end it would have been up to you. Come on, Rita, you work with us, you’re part of our team, we wouldn’t rat on you that way.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “But why can’t he have you…?” I went on. “You said Andy Sparks and the girl he can’t have.”

  “Oh well, I’m married to someone else,” she said.

  “I see,” I said, though I didn’t.

  Another silence.

  “And does he want to marry you, Andy, I mean?”

  “Oh yes, I think Andrew would like to, but I don’t think he really knows what he wants.”

  “Do you not want to leave your husband?” I asked, remembering suddenly that there had been no sign of a man around that little flat.

  “He’s inside, served four years of fifteen, he’ll probably have to do two more anyway.”

  “Oh God, I’m sorry I asked.”

  “No you’re not, if you hadn’t asked you wouldn’t know. You want to know, it’s partly you yourself, it’s partly your job. You all like to know things.”

  It was the longest speech I’d heard her make. I didn’t know what to say.

  She went on.

  “Listen, I’m not coming back to the office. I don’t want to go back now, because everyone already knows I know him. Oh yes they do, you told them, but you told them not to mention it, I’m not a fool. I can’t bear offices where everyone knows everything about everyone else, that’s why I stayed so long with you lot…you didn’t talk too much about your own lives, and you didn’t pry into mine. I thought you’d like me being fairly buttoned up…but no, it’s all of you who’ve been doing the prying….”

  “I understand what you mean, Rita, honestly I do. The girls who did your job before were always so boring about their boyfriends and their life’s history…but seriously I understand if…”

  She looked at me.

  “You understand nothing if I may say so. You don’t understand the first little thing. And because it isn’t clear to you at once, you turn it all into a little mystery and have to solve it. You don’t understand why Andrew fancies me, you don’t understand why I wait for a husband to come out of prison, you don’t understand whether those kids Martie and Anna are mine or not.”

  “It’s none of my business,” I said, distressed and unable to cope with the articulate and very, very angry Rita. “I can’t say anything right now.”

  Rita calmed down. Her eyes didn’t flash, but they were not back to the dead dull look they normally held.

  “Well, I could tell you a few things which would give you information, but you still wouldn’t understand. Martie and Anna aren’t my girls, they’re Nat’s. Nat is my husband. Nat is in gaol because he beat Myrtle to death. Myrtle was my best friend. Myrtle always loved Nat. Nat never loved Myrtle but he had two children by her. Even after he married me, he would see Myrtle. I knew, I didn’t mind, that’s the way Nat was. I knew it at the time, I know it now. Myrtle found this other fella, he wanted to marry her, take the kids and all he would. Myrtle told Nat, Nat said no, he didn’t want another man raising his kids. Myrtle asked me what she should do. I said I thought she should marry the other fella, but then my advice was prejudiced.

  “Myrtle said I was right, and she told Nat. They had a great row. Nat he lost his temper and he beat Myrtle and he beat her, and she died. I telephoned the police and they came, and they took him, and he got fifteen years and I look after Anna and Martie.”

  She paused and took a drink of her wine, and though I didn’t understand I could approach an understanding of how strong she must have been, must still be.

  “And you won’t understand either why Andrew wants me to go away with him. He just needs me. I don’t know whether he loves me or not, or whether he knows what love is, but he needs me, because I…well I’m what he needs. And he doesn’t understand either, he can’t understand that Nat don’t mind me seeing him. He knows that Nat has a lot of friends who tell him or his friends what’s going on. But Nat doesn’t mind me going about with a white man, a white actor from the television. Nat thinks that’s just company for me. Now can you understand any of that at all?”

  At the end of the week when the birdbrain’s story appeared it was pretty tame stuff. She did have an angle that Andy Sparks had some mystery woman in his life, someone he leaned on, someone he needed, but was not prepared to discuss.

  Rita came around that day to collect some things she’d left in the drawer of her desk, and to pick up her salary. She came at lunchtime when there was nobody there, except her replacement, who was full of chat and said that she had told Rita all about her fiancé being mean with money. She asked Rita if she thought that was a bad omen. Rita had said that she couldn’t care less.

  “Odd sort of woman, I thought,” said the replacement. “Very untidy, sort of trampishly dressed really. Funny that she wasn’t more pleasant. Black people are usually happy-looking, I always think.”

  Queensway

  * * *

  Pat wished that she didn’t have such a lively imagination when she was reading the advertisements. When she saw something like “Third girl wanted for quiet flat. Own room, with central heating” she had dark fears that it might be a witches’ coven looking for new recruits. Why mention that the flat was quiet? Could central heating be some code for bonfires? But she couldn’t afford a flat of her own, and she didn’t know anyone who wanted to share, so it was either this or stay forever in the small hotel which was eating into her savings.

  She dreaded going for the interview, which was why she kept putting off answering any of the offers. What would they ask her? Would they give her a test to see whether she was an interesting conversationalist? Might they want to know all about her family background? Did they ask things like her attitude towards promiscuity, or spiritualism, or the monarchy? Or would it be a very factual grilling, like could she prove that she wouldn’t leave a ring around the bath or use the phone without paying for her calls?

  There were about twenty women working in the bank, why did none of them want to share? she complained to herself. At least she knew something about them, that they were normal during the daytime anyway. But no, they were all well established in London, married to men who wou
ldn’t do the shopping, or living with blokes who wouldn’t wash their own socks, or sharing flats with girls who wouldn’t clean up the kitchen after them. There was no place in any of their lives for Pat.

  Three months was all she was going to allow herself in the hotel, three months to get over the breakup of her home, to calm herself down about Auntie Delia being taken away to hospital and not recognizing anyone ever again. It was better, the doctors said, that Pat should go right away, because Auntie Delia really didn’t know who she was anymore, and would never know. She wasn’t unhappy, she was just, well there were many technical terms for it, but she was in a world of her own.

  If you have worked in a bank in Leicester, you can usually get a job working in a bank in London. But if you’ve lived with Auntie Delia, funny, eccentric, fanciful, generous, undemanding, for years and years, it’s not so easy to find a new home.

  “What should I ask them?” she begged the small, tough Terry who knew everything, and who had no fears about anything in this life. “I’ll feel so stupid not knowing the kind of questions that they’ll expect me to ask.”

  Terry thought it was so simple that it hardly needed to be stated.

  “Money, housework, and privacy are the only things girls fight about in flats,” she said knowledgeably.

  “Find out exactly what your rent covers, make sure there aren’t any hidden rates to be paid later, ask how they work the food—does everyone have their own shelf in the fridge, or do they take it in turns buying basics? If you are all going to have a week each in charge of the food, get a list of what people buy and how much they spend. Stupid to have you buying gorgeous fresh-ground coffee or expensive tea, when they only get instant and tea bags.”

  “And what should I ask about housework?” Pat wondered.

  “Do they have a Hoover, if so who uses it and when? It would be awful if they were all manic house cleaners, washing down paintwork every day. And examine the place carefully, they might be so careless that the place is full of mice and rats.”

  Privacy meant that Pat was to inquire what arrangements they had about the sitting room: Did people book it if they were going to ask anyone in, or did everyone eat, play, watch telly together, or did people entertain in their own bedrooms?

  So, armed with all this intelligence, she dialled the “Third Girl wanted, lovely flat, near park, own room, friendly atmosphere” advertisement. Auntie Delia would have snorted at the ad, and said that they sounded like a bunch of dikes to her. Pat still couldn’t believe that Auntie Delia didn’t snort and say outrageous things anymore.

  The girl who answered the phone sounded a little breathless.

  “I can’t really talk now, the boss is like a devil today, he says I shouldn’t have given this number. Can I have your number and I’ll phone you back later when he leaves the office? It’s a super flat, we wouldn’t want to leave it in a million years, it’s just that Nadia went off to Washington and we can’t afford it just for two.”

  Pat didn’t like the sound of it. It seemed a bit fast and trendy. She didn’t like people who said “super” in that upward inflection, she didn’t like the thought of people suddenly dashing off to Washington, it was too racy. And she thought the name Nadia was affected. Still, she might use them as a rehearsal. There was no law saying you had to take the first flat you saw.

  The breathless girl rang back ten minutes later. “He’s gone out for an hour,” she confided. “So I’m going to make use of it, ringing all the people back. I thought I’d start with you because you work in a bank, you might get us all an overdraft.”

  Pat took this little pleasantry poorly, but still you had to practise flat-getting somewhere, and she arranged to call at eight o’clock. She made a list of questions, and she promised herself that she would take everything in, so that she would go better equipped to the next and more serious interview.

  It was an old building, and there were a lot of stairs but no lift. Perhaps they all became permanently breathless from climbing those stairs. Feeling foolish to be feeling nervous, Pat rang the bell. It had a strange echoing chime, not a buzz. It would have, thought Pat. Nadias, and Washingtons, and Supers, naturally they’d have to have a bell that pealed rather than one which buzzed.

  Joy wasn’t at all breathless now that she was home. She wore a long housecoat, and she smelled of some very, very expensive perfume. She was welcoming, she remembered Pat’s name, she apologized for the stairs but said that you got used to them after a month or so. There were eighty-three steps, counting the flat bits between floors, and they did encourage you not to be forgetful about things like keys.

  Pat stared around the hall. It was literally covered in pictures and ornaments, and there were rugs on the walls as well. At one end there were a couple of flower baskets hanging and at the other a carved hall stand full of dried flowers.

  “It’s far too nice to sit inside,” said Joy, and for a wild moment Pat thought that they would have to go down all the stairs again before she had even seen the flat.

  “Come into Marigold’s room, and we’ll have a drink on the balcony.”

  Marigold! thought Pat. Yes, it would have to be Marigold.

  A big room, like one of those film sets for an Anna Neagle movie, with little writing desks, and a piano with photographs on top. There were flowers here, too, and looped lacey curtains leading out to a balcony. There in a wheelchair sat Marigold. The most beautiful woman that Pat had ever seen. She had eyes so blue that they didn’t really seem to be part of a human body. She could have played any number of parts as a ravishing visitor from Mars. She had so much curly hair, long, shiny, and curly, that it looked like a wig for a heroine, but you knew it wasn’t a wig. She smiled at Pat as if all her life she had been waiting to meet her.

  “I wish Joy would tell people I live in a wheelchair,” she said, waving at Pat to get her to sit down. She poured some white wine into a beautiful cut-crystal glass and handed it to her. “I honestly think it’s so unfair to let people climb all those stairs and then face them with what they think will be a nursing job instead of a home.”

  “Well I don’t, I never, you mustn’t…” stammered Pat.

  “Rubbish,” said Joy casually. “If I said you were in a wheelchair nobody would ever come at all. Anyone who has come wants to move in, so I’m right and you’re wrong.”

  “Have you had many applicants?” asked Pat.

  “Five, no six, including the lady with the cats,” said Joy.

  Pat’s list had gone out of her head, and she had no intention of taking it from her handbag. They sat and talked about flowers, and how wonderful that in a city the size of London people still had a respect for their parks, and rarely stole plants or cut blooms for themselves from the common display. They talked on about the patchwork quilt that Marigold had made, how difficult it was to spot woodworm in some furniture, and how a dishonest dealer could treat it with something temporary and then it all came out only when you had the thing bought and installed. They had more wine, and said how nice it was to have an oasis like a balcony in a city of ten million or whatever it was, and wondered how did people live who didn’t have a view over a park.

  “We must have a little supper,” Marigold said. “Pat must be starving.”

  No protests were heeded, a quick move of her wrist, and the wheelchair was moving through the pots and shrubs of the balcony, the flowers and little writing bureaux of the bedroom, the bric-a-brac of the hall, and they were in a big pine kitchen. Barely had Joy laid the table for three before Marigold had made and cooked a cheese soufflé, a salad had already been prepared, and there was garlic bread, baking slowly in the oven. Pat felt guilty but hungry, and strangely happy. It was the first evening meal anywhere that seemed like home since they had taken Auntie Delia away.

  She felt it would be crass to ask how much did people pay and who bought the groceries, and what kind of cleaning would the third girl be expected to do. Neither Marigold nor Joy seemed to think such things should be dis
cussed, so they talked about plays they had seen, or in Marigold’s case books she had read, and it was all as if they were just three friends having a nice dinner at home instead of people trying to organize a business deal.

  At eleven o’clock Pat realized by the deep chiming of a clock that she had been there three hours. She would have to make a move. Never had she felt socially so ill at ease. She wondered what she should say to bring the visit to an end and the subject of why she was there at all into the open. She knew quite a lot about them. Marigold had polio and never left the flat. Joy worked in a solicitor’s office as a clerk, but next year was going to go into apprenticeship there and become a solicitor too. Marigold seemed to have some money of her own, and did the housework and the cooking. They had met some years ago when Marigold had put an ad in the paper. Marigold had found the flat.

  Nadia was mentioned, a little. There were references to Nadia’s room and Nadia’s clock, which was the big one that chimed, and some chat about the time they had made the curry for Nadia’s dinner party and everyone had gone on fire from it.

  Resolutely Pat stood up and said that her little hotel closed at midnight and she had better get back, as they didn’t have a night porter.

  “Well, when shall we expect you?” asked Marigold.

  Pat, who hadn’t even been shown her room, hadn’t been informed about how much rent, what kind of life-style was to be expected, was stunned.

  “What about the five other people, and the lady with the cats?” she asked desperately.

  “Oh no,” said Marigold.

  “No indeed,” said Joy.

  “Well, can I think about it?” Pat asked, trying to buy time. “I don’t know whether I could afford to live here, and you mightn’t like my friends, and we haven’t really sorted anything out.”