by Isla Dewar
Her mother, Judith, a gentle socialist soul who marched to ban the bomb, looked up from her knitting, smiled and said, ‘Ignore them, dear.’ She looked back at the cardigan she was making and added, ‘It’s perfectly normal to hate your mother at your age.’
The dismissive words, the nonchalant attitude, enraged George further. ‘How could you? You’re nasty. You don’t care about me. You called me George. You have no idea the pain this has brought me.’ She thumped a dramatic hand on her heart. ‘People say “George? You mean Georgina?”. And I say I mean George. And they look at me as if I’m insane.’
Judith smiled. ‘We thought you’d love it. We thought we’d named you after a character in a book you’d love.’
‘I don’t. I hate it and I hate you.’
Recognising a teenage tantrum when she saw one, Judith said, ‘I know you do. But I don’t hate you. And you can always change your name.’
‘What to?’ George’s voice was raw with rage. Her throat burned. Wild tears blurred her vision. Snot oozed from her nose. She was not at her best.
‘Fred,’ said Judith. She grinned and popped the ball of green wool on the end of her needles. Stood up. ‘Time for tea.’
She probably hadn’t meant to be flippant. She was used to her daughter’s tantrums and thought this one would pass like the others before it. George knew her mother understood her, in a way.
‘The girl has appetites beyond the understanding of mankind,’ she’d heard her say to her father once. ‘She can watch a soap on TV while eating several chocolate bars and at the same time listening to her music at full volume. How does she do that? God help us when she discovers sex.’
‘What makes you think she hasn’t already?’ her father replied.
‘Don’t say that.’
‘She’s sixteen thundering towards seventeen. Do you really think she’s still innocent? You weren’t at that age.’
But now George was packing. In her bedroom she shoved five pairs of knickers, five pairs of socks, a packet of digestive biscuits, two bars of chocolate, her favourite Frank Zappa T-shirt, jeans and her battered copy of On the Road into her school bag. She couldn’t think of anything else she might need. Besides her school bag, a tattered haversack bought from the Army and Navy Store was full. She was ready to strike out into the world, change her name to Karen Nightingale and shine.
At eleven o’clock she slipped out of the house, strode down the garden path and headed for the heart of the city. She hadn’t a clue where she was going or what she would do when she got there, wherever it was.
*
‘I just stepped out,’ she said to Matthew. ‘The night air was so cold on my face. It smelled of coal fires. A dog was barking and it was very dark. I don’t remember being afraid, though. I just thought I’d show my mother and father how I didn’t need them and they’d be sorry they called me George.’ She reached over and touched his arm. ‘How stupid was that? I can’t bear to think what might have happened to me.’
‘Very stupid,’ he agreed. He’d heard this story many times and yet never seemed to tire of it. George suspected he’d stopped really listening and was just watching the expressions that flitted across her face as she related her tale of teenage rebellion. Even she could feel her eyes light up as she enthusiastically moved from one stupid thing she’d done to another even more stupid. ‘When I think about it, I could have been murdered and raped. Well, raped and murdered, other way round. If I’d been raped after I was murdered, I wouldn’t have known about it. I’d have been dead.’ At that, she covered her face with her hands and cursed herself. ‘Such a silly idiotic little madam, me.’
‘No, you’re not.’ He touched her arm. ‘I love you.’ He always said that.
She made a face, flapped a dismissive hand at him. ‘Don’t be daft.’ She always said that. She took a breath and continued with her story.
‘Anyway, I got to the High Street. By now it was about midnight. Me alone in the city at midnight, can you imagine? I was so excited and so scared. It was getting quieter now. Less traffic, fewer people; everybody had gone home probably. But there were all-night cafés. Can you think of anything more alluring for a teenage girl running away from home? I went to one down a narrow wynd. You had to climb rickety stairs. There were pine tables. Not polished pine you get now. Sort of like newly cut wood. And they served Coke with actual ice cubes – sophisticated or what? Also frothy coffee. Out of this world. It was more froth than coffee but when you were as young as I was froth is what you wanted.’
She crossed the kitchen, filled the kettle and put it on to boil. Back at the table she smiled and said, ‘Right, where was I? Oh yes, in the all-night café. I was at the end of my frothy coffee, scraping the sugary bits from the bottom of the cup and licking them off my fingers. This man came up to me and asked my name. I told him Karen because this was the start of me being Karen Nightingale. He told me he’d drive me home because I couldn’t sit in the café all night. I could tell he wasn’t safe. He was creepy. Big huge paunch, shaggy eyebrows, his suit was a bit greasy. He wasn’t someone you’d go home with. I didn’t know what to do. I shrank away from him and he took me by the shoulder and said, “Come on.” And then from nowhere my rescuer – Alistair. Who’d have thought it, a knight in shining armour called Alistair? He picked up my school bag, took my hand and said, “Thanks for waiting for me. Let’s go.” I knew he was safe. I went. I’d never seen him before.’
The kettle boiled. She made tea and jokingly asked Matthew if he wanted a cup. He shook his head. She made dreadful tea. She didn’t know how she did it. Boiling water, tea bag, leave for a small while and add milk. Easy. But then she made dreadful coffee, dreadful everything. She was a terrible cook. Odd that, because she loved chefs – three husbands and two of them professional cooks.
She sat back at the table, sipped her tea, looked surprised at how awful it was and continued her tale. ‘He had a ponytail. He smelled lovely. He was the cleanest man I ever met. His flat was filthy, though. He hustled me through the streets to get to it. He was furious with me. “What the hell were you doing in a place like that? Some very nasty people hang out there. Don’t ever go there again. And why are you out alone at this time of night?”’ she imitated him.
‘He was a bit of a hero,’ said Matthew.
George nodded. ‘I told him I’d run away from home and he told me he’d see about that.’
Matthew asked, ‘What did you make of that?’
‘Not a lot really. He said it softly, like he was intending to sort it all out. I was a kid. I’d run away, I wasn’t thinking straight. Actually, I didn’t start thinking straight till I was thirty-five.’
He leaned back, looked at her. ‘Oh really? I thought it was later than that. Last week.’
She shrugged. ‘His flat wasn’t far, one floor up in a crumbling building. He shoved me into the living room, brought me sheets and a couple of blankets and told me to sleep on the sofa. I could tell the place wasn’t hygienic. But I was so tired I just zonked out. I worried a bit and thought about Mum and Dad. But sleep took me. Maybe six o’clock I woke. I needed a pee, as you do. So I got up to look for the loo. I found it, peed, and lost my way going back to the living room. Of course, by now it was light. I could see my surroundings. The filth, the filth, oh my God, the filth. It was a teenage rebel’s dream, that filth. I thought it proved you didn’t need to wipe and polish like my mum. You could survive in filth.’
She leaned toward him. He leaned toward her. She knew he loved this part of her story. ‘I opened the wrong door and suddenly I’d come to a magical place. The living room was a muckheap – thick dust, sticky floor, spills and stains – but this room was amazing. The kitchen of kitchens. Gleaming. Rows of copper pans hanging up. A huge range to cook on. It smelled of coffee and mystical things I’d never tasted. There were herbs and jars. I stood there, wide-eyed and astonished. I felt as if I’d entered a fairy king’s secret palace. It was so amazing I could hardly breathe.’
&
nbsp; Matthew nodded. ‘I love thinking of you, so young, standing with your mouth open in a magical place and forgetting to breathe.’
‘Of course,’ said George, ‘I’d woken him up and he found me standing looking frozen and amazed. He brought me a big woolly jumper and told me to stop poking about his flat. I said I’d opened the wrong door and that this kitchen was the most beautiful room I’d ever been in. Shiny copper pots and gleamy jars and so forth. So he made me a cup of hot chocolate and a warm croissant. I’d never had a croissant. It was all melty and buttery. I couldn’t believe it. All the time we’d been eating sliced bread people had been eating croissants. It just wasn’t fair. It was the start of my love affair with food. What are you making tonight?’
‘Chicken Milanese with a slightly spicy tomato sauce and little bit of pasta.’
‘Wine?’
‘We’ve got a nice Chablis.’
‘Why are you not cooking it now?’
‘I want to hear the rest of the story.’
He knew she didn’t want to tell this bit. That she’d race through it.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well, you know. I stayed with him. I cleaned the flat. It took days and days to get it right. He only cared about the kitchen. The other rooms meant nothing to him. I went back to school. Nobody said anything there. Years later I found he’d got in touch with Mum and Dad and told them where I was. They told the school I was staying with an aunt for a while. And that was that. I stayed. I cleaned. He cooked. My folks sometimes walked by the building and looked up at the flat.’ She sniffed. Wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I got pregnant. Of course I did. Contraception never occurred to me.’ She spoke quickly, almost slurring her words. She hated this bit of her past. ‘I had Lola. We were a little family. Cosy. He got himself killed in a car crash. I couldn’t pay the rent. I got chucked out of the flat. I went home. That was that.’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Matthew.
Once again, she’d made no mention of what she’d gone through. She and Alistair had gone clubbing. He’d hung out at the bar, she’d danced till her feet bled. They’d married when she was twenty-one. Matthew had been told George’s mother and father had watched the pair emerge from the Registry Office giggling. He’d love to know how she’d been evicted from the flat. Had she been locked out? She wouldn’t talk about it. She kept all details of this part of her life a painful secret.
‘My mother answered the door,’ she said. ‘She just looked at me and smiled. And she took the baby. “There you are,” she said. “At last.” She had all the stuff. All the baby things waiting for me. Just like that. So kind. So forgiving.’ George wiped her nose again. ‘I didn’t deserve it. She was wonderful. I hate myself for what I did. The worry I caused. I was a horrible selfish brat. Arrogant little madam.’
‘No, you weren’t. You were a kid. You came through. You became a nurse. They loved you. Lola loves you. I love you.’
George, lacking a hankie, blew her nose on her sleeve and said, ‘Don’t be daft.’
She never told him of the shame and guilt she suffered and how she’d spent her life atoning for the pain she caused. As always, she hadn’t told him everything. She and Alistair had lived a free and easy life. Though they didn’t know it, they’d become faces about town. The days and nights she was moving through thrilled her. She’d step out in her six-inch silver stilettos, breathing in air filled with petrol fumes, coal fires and restaurant food, anticipating the time ahead – and the city was hers.
They drank late in locked-in bars, underground cellar clubs, and she’d help him home, limping on her boogied-out feet. He’d roam the city on his days off. They laughed too much, drank too much, loved too much. It ended badly as all exquisitely naughty things do. They married when she was twenty-one and they had Lola. Everything changed. Babies do that.
5
What’s the Point of You?
It’s enough to make a Jesus cry
That pickled people could pass by
A couple of lines Anna had written once, years ago, when she’d given her bus fare to a homeless man begging in the street. She’d been upset at being the only person who’d noticed him and the two lines had come to her on the plod home. It had been cold but she’d felt content. She’d done a good thing. She’d enjoyed the air and watched the pavement pass under her feet. Moving is good, she’d thought. When she was home she’d write about how helping someone had helped her.
She always wondered if she’d been punished for her smugness. A woman who gave away her bus fare was not expected to congratulate herself on her good deed every step of the half-hour walk home. She was punished. She lost her writing way. Words were not gone from her. They arrived in her head, but when she wrote them down they seemed shallow, clichéd, obvious. There was no point to them, no sting, no beauty. After writing those two lines, she wrote no more.
She had flashes of poems. Moments when a couple of lines would spring into her mind unannounced. These lines always seemed unconnected with anything she was doing or thinking at the time. She might be writing a shopping list – marmalade, cheese, potatoes, beans – then from nowhere: I’m a diamond lady, hard and bright/Put my lipstick on at night. She’d stare at it, rummage through her brain for more, try to alter it or at least make sense of it. When nothing came she’d continue: milk, tea bags, digestive biscuits.
She was in hell. This was a nightmare. She confided in George, her only friend.
‘Oh,’ said George, ‘writer’s block. It goes away in time. I’ve read about it. You should relax. Worrying will only make it worse.’
‘I’m not blocked. I know I’m not. I think I’ve finished. Like I’ve emptied the well. It’s over.’
‘Don’t be silly. You’re a poet. It’s what you are. Who you are. It’s all of you.’
‘No longer.’
‘Get drunk. Let go. Let your thoughts flow. Don’t care. Just write.’
‘Tried that. I drank a bottle of Chianti then several gin and tonics. I was sick and passed out. Didn’t write a thing. Stinker of a headache in the morning.’
‘It’ll come back. You just need to wait for it.’
But it didn’t come back. Anna took a job editing a small poetry magazine. She earned a pittance and gained a reputation for being exacting. She never forgave a cliché. She nurtured talent but kept a distance from her writers. She didn’t want them to know she’d longed to be one of them in the distant days before words left her.
She came and she went. She stamped out of her tiny flat, red beret wedged on her head on cold days. When it was warm her long hair flapped and flew round her. She wore boots. She’d walked everywhere till one day she bought an old black bike. Apart from George and conversations with printers and contributors, she hardly spoke to anyone. She certainly didn’t know any of her neighbours, though she suspected they thought her weird anyway. That hurt. If she caught any of them looking at her in a way that suggested they considered her odd, she’d look away and stride past acting as if she didn’t care. She’d told George, ‘I am joining squirrels, rabbits, weasels and other wildlife. I am avoiding human beings. Scuttling away from them. They are too complicated. I can’t cope.’
George said, ‘Good plan.’
*
Today they were sitting on a bench in the Botanical Gardens. Lunch was on Anna. It was cheese and onion sandwiches and a thermos of tea made in her kitchen. She still lived frugally; food had never been important to her. It was a necessity, she supposed. George brought chocolates, which she considered another necessity. Anna was on about her neighbours again. ‘They call me Mrs Stomper or Old Red Hat. They know nothing about me.’
‘True. But there is something in the nicknames. You do stomp and you wear a red hat. It could be worse. You could be Granny Smelly or Greasy Fizzface.’
‘What a lovely picture of me you paint.’
‘The people who dish out nicknames don’t care if they’re true or not. They just like to smirk.’
Anna said, ‘I
was married to a beautiful man who became very famous.’ She chewed her sandwich. ‘This is surprisingly good, considering I made it with old cheese and a soft onion I found at the bottom of my vegetable basket.’
‘You can cook. I can’t. I always admire people who can make food taste good. Alistair was a master cook. He could do fabulous things with an egg. Other men looked up to him. He was an alpha male.’
Anna said, ‘Colin became an alpha male of our times. He was the cool beautiful guy in the amazingly expensive jacket who had perfect hair. He didn’t strut. Didn’t have to. Every step he took he said, “Look at me. I can’t beat the shit out of you but I’ve got a lot more money than you.
‘He left me and went on to spectacular things. He became a businessman, a face in the media. I stayed behind with my dreams and my ordinary clothes. He never mentions me in any of his interviews. If I told my neighbours I’d been married to him they’d laugh. “Mrs Stomper married to Colin Saunders, ha ha ha.” They don’t speak to me. I don’t speak to them. But they watch me go in my stomping boots and think me weird.’ She lifted her feet and gazed at her boots. They’d been bought from a charity shop and were pink.
‘They are flamboyant,’ said George. ‘Just what you need at your age. They stop you from disappearing.’
‘Oh, I won’t do that.’ Anna was positive. ‘In fact, there’s a woman across the road from me who stares every time I see her. I fear one day she may strike up a conversation. She has purple hair and a snake tattoo slithering up her arm.’
‘Goodness,’ said George. ‘You live among interesting people. Here – now we’ve managed to finish the sandwich, have a Belgian chocolate truffle. I thought we might need them to cheer us after your austerity food.’
Anna took one, then another, and continued staring at her boots. ‘I feel I have old feet in young footwear. I am too old for my boots.’