by Polly Samson
Her last day flickers behind my eyelids like something on cine. The tints are off, light flares, the frames jump and stall. She woke as Bobby came into the room. He hadn’t made it for ages and sailed in on a sea of excuses. I buttoned my lip, plumped and rearranged pillows, helped her to a more upright position, tidied what remained of her hair. Her voice was effortful because of the medication and her arm tremored as she pointed to her rolltop desk: ‘Today I need you two to help me straighten out my things.’
In a locked drawer were two small rectangular packages, addressed one to me and one to my brother.
‘They’re for later. Please don’t look now,’ she said. She pressed my package into my hands. ‘Have some adventures,’ she said. ‘Dare to dream.’
It happened that night. A sleeping angel, her hands crossed at her chest. Somehow an inquest was avoided though I’ll never not suspect that she and her good doctor hastened the end.
In Bobby’s package were the keys to a car, porcelain green, a convertible, parked in the square behind Palace Court. And here’s the thing: no one had known she owned a car until she died, though we knew she could drive because Father would occasionally allow her to take control of his Austin while he sat in the passenger seat not once allowing her to decide for herself when to change gear or indicate.
It was always better if Father wasn’t reminded of the car. Bobby was careful never to enter the flat jangling his keys or mentioning the price of petrol.
There was a biblical downpour the day that Charmian Clift’s book arrived – as I’ve said, it was always raining in the London I remember from that time. Bobby came in shaking water from his hair. He looked almost indecently healthy, more front of scrum than starving artist, his cheeks reddened from running through the rain and his hair a wet haystack. He started sorting through the post on the hall table, pocketing a letter that had come for him and leaving to one side a package addressed to Mum.
‘We should’ve sent out something to let people know …’ He tailed off with a heavy sigh. ‘Oh, well.’
Since my dad couldn’t cope with even the mention of her name, Mum’s post stayed in the hall until I took it away and wrote the sad tidings again and again.
‘You know he never deals with any of it,’ I said and Bobby shot me a look to be quiet because at that moment Father emerged from the bathroom, drying his hands and handing me the towel, as he might to a cloakroom attendant. ‘This hasn’t been changed in weeks,’ he said and shooed us. ‘What are you two up to loitering by the front door anyway?’
He made a grab for Bobby’s chin and forcibly turned his face to the light.
‘For pity’s sake, Robert. Did I not teach you to shave properly? What’s this with the bum-fluff? Are they supposed to be sideburns?’
‘Leave off,’ Bobby said, but Father only tightened his grip.
‘I hope young Robert is not thinking of becoming a Teddy boy next,’ he said while half-slapping, half-patting Bobby’s cheek.
Please, please, not a row. I put my hands to my ears. Father might make me stay home on a whim. Jimmy Jones, who I knew to be waiting back at Bobby’s digs, was very much on my mind. My new primrose-yellow jumper had a zip.
At last he let us be and it always felt like we were escaping even if it was only to go to the pub. Sprinting through the mizzle, we couldn’t help but hold hands, and whoop as we reached Mum’s little green car.
‘Has it been bad all week?’ Bobby asked as we settled into our seats and, not waiting for my answer, ‘We’ll get away soon, doll, I promise.’ The doggy smell of his wet reefer jacket filled the car. It no longer smelt of Mum’s perfume. Still, I liked that he called me ‘doll’.
I came tiptoeing back at dawn, sneaky as a cat. I was what my father, had he ever caught me, would’ve referred to as a ‘dirty stopout’, ‘a trollop’. Mum’s brown-paper parcel still waited in the hall. It was tied with tarry string and the stamps were beautiful: a large olive tree, an owl, a primitive saint. I wondered who was writing to her from Greece, and snuck to my room taking it with me. It was a risky routine, this five a.m. return, with a father like mine. My heart was pumping as I sponged myself down at the basin. Still damp, I sat at my dressing table and cut the string of the parcel that had been addressed in firmly inked capitals to Constance Hart, and not, as would have been correct in those patrician days, to Mrs Ronald Hart.
A book with a scene of white houses around a little harbour on the cover, Peel Me a Lotus its title and its author Charmian Clift. I looked at her picture and saw nothing of the chic upstairs neighbour I’d once known to be my mother’s friend. I summoned her up, this other Charmian Clift: elegant, tall in a tightly belted camel coat, crocodile handbag hanging from the crook of her arm, bright lipstick, an enormous smile. I’d encountered her only occasionally, and years ago, though I often thought about the first time we met, wondering what it was that had made her cry. She’d come across me outside in the entrance hall, where Mum had put me for safety while our father gave Bobby a hiding. I was cowering, tears and snot streaming, when I heard the rattle of the street door, felt a gust of air. I shrank into the shadows, ashamed at the sounds that were coming from inside our flat. Charmian led me upstairs by the hand, asking my name and what school I went to, what books I liked to read. We ended up sitting together on the top step. Her arms were around me, and though I was usually cautious of strangers, with Charmian it felt perfectly natural. She asked me my age: eight, I said and was surprised by her sudden silence and a tear that slid down her cheek. She got my name wrong after that, called me Jennifer, but I didn’t mind because I thought it prettier than my own.
The picture on the book showed her beauty grown wilder, almost in disarray. Between jutting cheekbone and brow, her eyes deep and soulful, bruised almost.
The blurb spoke of an island in Greece, the expatriate life, but now here was my father throwing his shadow across any possibility of sunshine. He was thumbing his braces and, since I was in my dressing gown, completely incapable of looking at me.
‘You’re up early,’ he said, as he stretched his braces back and forth. ‘I thought I’d better check as I didn’t hear you come in last night.’
‘I’ll have your shirt ironed in a jiff. That’s why I set the alarm,’ I lied, yawning and indicating my artfully rumpled bed. He cleared his throat but I got in first. ‘Oh, by the way, I opened this. It came for Mum. It’s from Greece. Do you remember Charmian Clift with the two little children from upstairs? She sent it. It’s her book …’ I prattled on, successfully changing the subject. As devious, it would appear, as my mother.
He gave a sour sniff. ‘Oh, she’s written another book, has she, Lady Airs and Graces, and oh, do have another cocktail. They were Australian, you know, the pair of them …’ The word ‘Australian’ might have been gristle the way he spat it out, and with a final snap of his braces he stalked from my room so that I might finish getting myself ‘decent for work’.
I read Charmian’s book on the bus. I read it in my booth while the yards of punched tapes clicked and clattered through the telex machine. I read of a life of risk and adventure, of a family swimming from rocks in crystal waters, of mountain flowers, of artists admired and poseurs quietly ridiculed, of her husband George (who sounded very witty and clever though I had no memory of ever meeting him at all), of poverty and making-do and local oddballs and saints and the race to prepare a house for the birth of her third child, of an invasion of tourists and jellyfish, an earthquake, of lives spent flying close to the sun. It was little wonder I found myself still lost in its pages well beyond lunchtime and had to be ticked off by Betty, the typing-pool queen. Slipped inside the book was Charmian’s folded card, quite plain.
‘Darling Connie, I wrote this book about our family’s first year here on the island and it’s at last being published in Great Britain. Spread the word in any way you can and most importantly don’t let what I’ve written put you off coming. There’s always a warm welcome for you here from one who firmly beli
eves you still have a chance, Charmian.’
I felt a fluttering of desire as I read her words and an intense craving for that warm welcome and a chance for myself. I couldn’t wait to press Charmian’s book on Jimmy.
Jimmy Jones had long broken his family’s bindings by dropping out of law school and emerging as something brighter and more colourful, more drawn to Jack Kerouac, Sartre and Rilke than to the laws of tort. Jimmy’s wings carried him to a wooden studio at the bottom of Mrs Singh’s garden where a few odd jobs freed him to paint and write poetry and stay in bed until lunchtime.
My thoughts of the island were too exciting for the telephone and Father’s acutely tuned ear. He remained in a foul mood and came up with plenty for me to do around the flat. I wasn’t even allowed to throw out a pair of socks of his where the entire heel had gone. It’s one of my abiding memories of those grey months after Mum died. Being bid to sit in what had been her chair, a pretty one, button-backed and covered in pea-green velvet, her sewing box at my feet, while he sat slurping tea, slumped in his wing chair watching Dixon of Dock Green.
I returned to the subject of Charmian Clift and her book. It was a Tuesday, toad-in-the-hole, his favourite. I’d made gravy and mash so there was a chance he’d be in a better mood.
I was wrong; by the look on his face you’d think something was rancid: ‘Erica, do we really have to talk about your mother’s friends while we’re eating.’
It was hard to believe Mum’s stories of Dad before the war, his handsome smile and dancing feet. His famed quick wit had taken a direct hit at Dunkirk; his get-up-and-go had departed. He used to climb mountains for fun, proposed to her up in the clouds on the peak of the Brecon Beacons. When he was stationed in Cairo he arranged for flowers to be delivered to her every week he was gone. He didn’t stint on paying her dressmaker’s bills, nor for her shampoos and sets. She still dressed every night for his return from the office, though I have no memory of him ever sweeping her out the door to a restaurant or the theatre. Routine was the only thing that kept him sane: his whisky on the tray, ice and silver tongs and the folded newspaper, dinner, then his chair and television while she fluttered in and out with tea and mending.
When we were old enough to be left, she’d escape for the occasional weekend – Great-Aunt Vera’s in Hampshire, Cousin Penny with ‘the problem’ in Wales – but not without punishment on her return. One time he threw a casserole across the kitchen floor and made us leave it until she got back two nights later. He stood over her, soundlessly watching, while she was down on her knees scrubbing the congealed mess with brush and pail. I preferred not to think of her on the floor, flinching at his feet. I decided to punish him, persevered with talking about Charmian.
‘They’d had enough of the rat race. Apparently they went to a different Greek island for a year and Charmian wrote a book about that too. I wonder if Mum ever read it …?’ but now he was pulling off his napkin and scraping back his chair.
‘Don’t bother checking the bookcase, you won’t find it here. No shame at all, these decadents, dragging their children from pillar to post, despising ordinary people, staying up drinking all night with their lah-di-dah artists and poofter friends.’ He wiped his mouth savagely and threw the napkin beside his empty plate.
I went to my room and added a PS to my letter to Charmian Clift. Could she find me a house to rent? And how much would it cost?
And here, at last, is Jimmy, in a slice of light as though straight off the screen, and to my mind more handsome than any film star. He’s opening the door to me with a sly grin. To this day I’ve never known a face so transformed by its smile. Jimmy in repose was rather haunted. But when he smiled it was like the sun coming out and, just as I’d imagined, he was reaching for the zip of my fluffy new primrose jumper.
‘Will you come with me to an island in Greece?’ He was behind me as I climbed the ladder to his bed and answered by sinking his teeth into my bottom.
We did the maths. By the time we joined Bobby and the others at the Gatehouse, we’d given ourselves a year. The band was winding down. I was pleased to see the old sax player was there, a lugubrious veteran in his worn mackintosh with the most soul-rending tone to his playing. Paper moon. A cardboard sea. I thought of Jimmy Jones and me on Charmian’s island, of the seasons turning, extra blankets for our bed, charcoal burning in a brazier. The double bass plinked; the saxophone’s song dwindled to a horizon borne on a few mournful breaths. I took a cigarette from a friend of Bobby’s and perched at the edge of their table, pregnant with plans. Jimmy went to queue at the bar.
Bobby’s new girl was from the art school: his usual type, lean and bird-boned, dressed like an off-duty ballet dancer in cable-knit sweater and tight black Capri pants. She was studiedly monochrome, her face too small for such extravagantly black-fringed eyes, raven hair cut to a delicate nape, the neck of a swan. She sat on a stool in the middle of the group twining and untwining her long legs, saying ‘cool’ and ‘super hep’ without appearing self-conscious.
‘Edie Carson, this is my sister Erica, prisoner of Palace Court, Bayswater; Erica, this is Edie, Queen of Wood Green.’ Bobby was gesturing with a pint mug brimming with beer. It slopped on the table between Edie and me and, as we both reached to mop it, our heads met with a bump and Bobby said, ‘Glad to see you two hitting it off,’ and we both groaned.
Soon we were back to Jimmy’s studio and, though it was cold enough to see your own breath, we kept each other warm. Jimmy’s bed was on a ledge high up inside the skylight, Bobby’s a divan behind stacked easels and a curtain of purple velvet. Edie was not shy about crying out.
A few nights later Bobby told Edie Carson about our plans to travel, because as soon as Jimmy and me got serious Bobby knew he didn’t want to get left behind. Edie had plans of her own; she and her best friend Janey weren’t hanging around waiting for spring. We made a date to meet Edie and Janey at the port of Piraeus the week before Easter.
Two
Mum’s money kept us in fuel and food so the trip from London and on through France and Italy went without danger or hunger. The boys recovered quite quickly from the putrid horrors of our first squatting lavatories. I’m not sure I ever have.
We made it almost as far as Paris by night one, stopping only for fuel and baguettes, pâté and fizzy orange. At a hostel in Chantilly we fell exhausted into an enormous and very creaky bed with surprisingly crisp linen sheets. Breakfast was a memorable highlight: yellow sunshine at a window, a chequered cloth, a large bowl of milky coffee and my first croissant, which was flakier and more buttery than any croissant since. Mum’s car was beautifully behaved and didn’t break down once. I wish the same could be said of Bobby.
We’d left London a whole three weeks late – my fault entirely as Bobby never tired of telling me. There hadn’t been a right time to broach the subject with Father, who had reached a stage of grief that involved tearing Mum’s books from the shelves and making me clear her wardrobe. Her smell wafted from the folds of her clothes. He caught me with her rose silk petticoat to my face. ‘No use for you, any of this stuff,’ he said. ‘You don’t have her figure.’
As we drove from the hostel and skirted Paris, Bobby’s irritation cast a black spell. ‘Might have been nice to visit the Louvre, but no …’ he said, turning to Jimmy, who was still holding out some hope that he would relent on this mad dash to meet Edie in Piraeus. ‘And you can forget the Crazy Horse, mate. I hope you think waiting for the kid was worth it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you: we’ve got nothing ahead of us but the N7.’
I hated being called ‘the kid’ but ached to hug my brother all the same. When one of us needed to cry about our mother we did it in the arms of the other. Maybe I was a cowardly little girl, as he said, but was there to be no let-up in my punishment, no forgiveness? Bobby had been schooled in the seething house of our father, so it seemed not.
All his life Bobby had been scared of Father. We all were. I’ll never forget Mum’s face the first time she saw the m
arks his belt left on him. Boiled eggs for tea and me in the high chair so Bobby could only have been about five or six. ‘Why won’t you sit down?’ Mum was exasperated with the pair of us grizzling, until finally, he gingerly lowered himself to the seat and winced. Bobby was twisting and screaming as she pulled down his shorts to find his bum, which was normally as white as her pinny, lividly striped and shocking as a burn.
Father had no shame, the way he came striding in, swirling ice in his drink. ‘Now, young fellow, you’ll know in future to do as you’re told.’
I saw Bobby cowering, then and other times too, until he learnt to stay in his room. And Mum curled over sobbing into a tea towel and me trying not to flinch as Father’s big face comes towards me. I’d like to get away and hide but I’m strapped in my chair. To this day it makes me panicky to think of it. The mess of crushed egg and shell as Mum opened her fist.
Bobby was tense the whole trip but I didn’t expect so quickly to fill the space of the common enemy we’d left behind. Nothing I said could raise a smile and then, in Grenoble, I drank the local water and was so doubled up by the morning that Jimmy insisted we pull over and pitch the tent long before we reached Bobby’s goal of the coast. We lost another day because of my guts and, as I sat shivering and unwell, I thought I’d lost my brother’s love forever.
I came across him outside the service station near San Remo. I thought he was crying. He scowled, said it was exhausting driving for fourteen hours to the border without stopping.
His tears had left tracks, his face dusty from the road. I persevered, trying to talk to him about Mum, about Dad, but Bobby shoved me, hard, said he was through with even thinking about the pair of them.
‘Believe me, family’s an over-rated concept; the sooner you realise, the better,’ he said.
We drove on, ignoring Pisa and a distant view of the Leaning Tower as we turned inland. I sounded whiny to my own ears each time I begged that we stop somewhere to take in the sights, or even to stretch. My first trip abroad was not turning out to be a dream. Domes and towers whizzed by, cypress trees lengthened their shadows, Roman ruins beckoned and proffered the shade of umbrella pines, but not for us. I was beginning to hate Edie Carson. Not for Edie Carson this ever-unwinding road of resentment. Bobby said he should’ve sold the car in England and gone on the train instead of waiting for Jimmy and me. I said I wished he had. Edie had a Spanish friend in a French circus, some dodgy-sounding gig with a sculptor in Rome, Janey’s aunt had invited them to her castello near Siena. I wondered aloud if a Greek island and Bobby would prove such a vital part of her itinerary.