by Zoe Heller
It’s always a disappointing business confronting my own reflection. My body isn’t bad. It’s a perfectly nice, serviceable body. It’s just that the external me—the sturdy, lightly wrinkled, handbagged me—does so little credit to the stuff that’s inside. Sometimes, when I lie in bed at night, I can lose all sense of my body, my age. In the darkness, I could be twenty years old. I could be ten. It’s a lovely sensation to slough off one’s battered old casing for a moment or two. But then, I always wonder, what must it be to have a beautiful body? A body that you don’t want to escape? Several years ago, when Jennifer and I went to Paris together for a weekend break, we saw a woman dancing on the bar at a little bistro in Montmartre. She was very pretty and very, very young. All the men in the place were dribbling slightly. It was a silly thing really, but just for a moment, as I watched them watch her, I remember feeling that I would give anything—be stupid, be poor, be fatally ill—to have a little of her sort of power.
I must have made quite a bit of noise during my personal appearance crisis, because at some point the woman who lives above me began banging on her floor. I stopped crying then, got down from the chair, and made a cup of tea. While I sat, sipping and sniffling, Portia, my cat, who had been watching my ravings with great, feline contempt, relented and came over to rub herself against my legs.
Slowly, I grew calm. The sandals were all right. I was getting myself in a state over nothing. The skirt was a bother, but it could be safety-pinned. If not, my black one with an elasticated waist would suffice. I would not wear tights.
I left the house with enough time to buy some flowers for Sheba. The flower stall outside the underground station had a rather depleted selection, and I agonised over having left it so late. I ended up opting for a mixed bunch of carnations and sweetheart roses and then, more or less the minute I got into the car, I remembered reading somewhere that multicoloured flower arrangements were in poor taste. Miraculously, I managed to restrain myself from going back to exchange them.
Sheba lived in a large Victorian house in Boise Lane: three storeys, a stoop, a big bay window, and a front garden with a cherry tree. I got a little bit lost on the way and then could only find a parking space two streets away. By the time I arrived on the doorstep, I was rather tense and pink, and the straps of my sandals had begun to chafe.
“Barbara!” Sheba cried when she opened the door. “How lovely you look!” She hugged me. “And what lovely flowers!” She took the bouquet that I held out. “Come in. Come in. Let’s get you a drink.”
We walked down a long, bright hallway into a living room that occupied roughly the same square footage as my entire flat. Everything in it was very large—the carpets covering the wooden floorboards, the slabs of worn furniture, the cavernous fireplace. I sat down, at Sheba’s urging, in a leather armchair, but the seat was so deep that, as I leaned back, my feet lost contact with the floor and I found myself semirecumbent. When I attempted to haul myself up into a less ridiculous position, my hand grasped a child’s sock that was stuck down the side of the chair cushion.
“Oh God, what slobs we are!” Sheba said, clutching her forehead.
She was only playing at being embarrassed, though. When I handed the sock to her, she threw it in a wooden bowl on the coffee table. “Hang on,” she said, “let me go and put your flowers in some water. Richard and the children should be down any minute …”
The first time Jennifer came to my flat, I cleaned the place scrupulously in preparation for her arrival; I even groomed Portia, for God’s sake. And still, I had the most terrible feeling of exposure when she walked in. It was as if my dirty linen basket, rather than my unexceptionable sitting room, were on display. But the awkwardness of having a professional colleague observe her living arrangements had not occurred to Sheba. She wasn’t thinking about what I was thinking. She had that absolute, bourgeois confidence in the rightness of her living room, her tatty, gigantic furniture, her children’s stray underwear.
Left on my own, I swivelled about at the edge of my chair, taking the opportunity to inspect my surroundings with a less inhibited curiosity. Hanging on the wall were several paintings—the sort of gimmicky modern abstracts that aren’t my cup of tea—and a primitive wooden instrument, possibly African, which looked as if it might be rather smelly if one got too close to it. The bookshelves housed a decent but not very inspired collection of fiction, suggesting the strong influence of newspaper “Books of the Year” lists. You could tell there weren’t any real literature lovers in the family. The mantelpiece was a gathering point for household flotsam. A child’s drawing. A hunk of pink Play-Doh. A passport. One elderly-looking banana.
There was a level of disorder in the place that I doubt I could ever tolerate. And yet, there was something in the disarray that was enviable. When you live alone, your furnishings, your possessions, are always confronting you with the thinness of your existence. You know with painful accuracy the provenance of everything you touch and the last time you touched it. The five little cushions on your sofa stay plumped and leaning at their jaunty angle for months at a time unless you theatrically muss them. The level of the salt in your shaker decreases at the same excruciating rate, day after day. Sitting in Sheba’s house—studying the mingled detritus of its several inhabitants—I could see what a relief it might be to let your own meagre effects be joined with other people’s.
“You’re Barbara,” a voice said. I looked up and saw a tall man with a lot of crazy grey hair standing in the doorway, peering at me through thick spectacles. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Richard.” Sheba had mentioned that her husband was older than her; I was taken aback to discover by how much. Richard was not yet what you could call elderly, but middle age was no longer a plausible category for him either. His shoulders had begun to slope in the manner of overburdened coat hangers. The backs of his hands had a shiny, yellowish look.
“Sheba has spoken so fondly of you,” he said, coming over to shake my hand. His belt was cinched a little too tightly beneath his potbelly and there was art, I saw now, in the tousling of his hair. He was not going unprotestingly into his dotage. “I gather you’re one of the few civilised people at St. George’s.”
“Oh, I don’t know … ,” I began.
“Now!” he said, ignoring my demurral. “I see my wife has abandoned you without even giving you a drink. Monstrous woman! What can I get you?” He rubbed his hands and grinned. His eyes, behind the spectacles, had a bulbous, insectoid look. A rogue image swam into my head, of his pruney old mouth pursed at Sheba’s breast.
“Whatever you … What do you have?” I said.
Richard waved his arms expansively. “Everything! We’re very dedicated boozers in this house.”
“Well then … a sherry would be lovely.”
“Sherry?” The ghost of a smirk passed across his face. “Really? Goodness, I think you may have hit upon the one thing we don’t have.”
He went over to the drinks cupboard and began rootling around. Sheba came back, carrying my flowers in a vase. “Oh, you’ve met!” she said. She looked anxiously at Richard and then back at me. “The children will be down any minute.” She spoke with a strange, ersatz cheerfulness. She had probably had to do some wheedling to get her husband to agree to my visit, I thought. This would explain the self-conscious saintliness with which Richard was attending to me. In the little economy of the marriage, my invitation to dinner had posted a substantial credit in his column.
“Darling,” Richard said, removing his head from the interior of the drinks cupboard, “do we have any sherry that you know of? Barbara wants sherry.”
“No, honestly,” I protested. “I’ll be perfectly happy with something else. White wine …”
“I know!” Sheba said. “I’ve got some Marsala in the kitchen. I use it for cooking. Would Marsala do, Barbara?”
“Absolutely. But please, don’t go to any trouble …”
“Oh!” Sheba cried, pointing at my feet. “You’ve hurt yourself.”
I looked down, and sure enough, blood was trickling down my left ankle; the strap of my stupid shoe had bitten into the skin.
“Poor you,” Sheba said. “Are they new shoes? Let me go and get you a plaster …”
“No, no, don’t worry …”
“Don’t be silly. I won’t be a sec.” She disappeared.
Richard smiled at me, embarrassed. “You ladies and your stilettoes,” he said.
“They’re hardly stilettoes … ,” I protested.
“Bash used to insist on wearing high heels,” he went on. “And then, one time, she fractured her ankle running for a bus. After that I put my foot down … Ha! As it were. I made her buy a pair of clogs.”
There was a short silence.
“I’ve never seen the point of high heels myself,” Richard continued. “It’s all about creating a sexually provocative posture, isn’t it? Bending the spine, forcing the bottom out. Like those marvellous, purple-arsed orangutans …” He paused. “I think I’ll make myself a drink while we’re waiting for your sherry.”
Sheba came back now with the Marsala and the plasters and her daughter, Polly—a sulky, rather beautiful seventeen-year-old, with her father’s curly hair and her mother’s long, thin body. “Polly, this is Barbara, my friend from school,” Sheba said.
“Hello,” Polly said curtly, casting a quick glance in my direction. She gestured at the box of plasters in her mother’s hand. “What are they for?”
“Barbara cut her foot,” Sheba said.
Polly turned to look at my bleeding heel. “Oh, gross,” she said.
“Polly!” Richard murmured in a tone of vague reproof.
Sheba came over and handed me a plaster with a bundle of toilet paper to clean my wound.
Polly slumped on the sofa with a gusty sigh. “Can I have a vodka with a twist, Dad?” she asked.
“Oh, all right,” her father said, all twinkly indulgence. He smiled at me and shook his head. “My daughter the alcoholic.”
“So, Polly,” I said, as I tended to my ankle. “You must be doing your A levels now. How are your courses going?” The blood soaked through the first toilet paper tourniquet with no sign of staunching.
“Fine,” Polly said in a bored voice, pulling at the hairs on her arm.
“Polly!” Sheba said.
“What?” Polly said. “What was I meant to say?”
This riposte evidently stumped Sheba, or perhaps she was trying to avoid a scene. In any case, she didn’t pursue it. I chuckled, to indicate that I had not taken offence. Although of course I had. It sounds mad for a woman who has spent her life in the teaching profession to say so, but the truth is, I am not very good with young people. I am perfectly confident in a classroom, where the rules—regardless of whether or not they are respected—are clearly defined. But in other contexts I find myself at a loss. I cannot affect the casual, knockabout style of conversing with the younger generation that seems to be de rigueur these days. I am not a casual person. Horseplay and nonsense jokes do not sit well on me. I tend to become stiff and awkward in young company—and then, when I see that my companions are bored by me, I grow preemptively cold and forbidding.
Richard brought me my drink. “There you go, my dear,” he said, in a jocular imitation of a north country accent.
“Is there somewhere I can put this?” I asked, holding the plaster wrapping and the tissue in my fist.
“Give it here,” Sheba said, taking the little bloodied bundle from me. “I’m just going to check on dinner.”
Just then, there was the noise of someone running very heavily down the stairs, and a chubby, fair-haired boy burst into the room.
“Hoola! Hoola!” Richard shouted, crouching down and opening his arms wide. “Ben’s here! Hoola Hoola!” The child rushed at him, giggling. Richard grasped him and held him upside down. “What’s it like down there, Benno?” he asked playfully.
Sheba stood smiling at the tomfoolery. Polly, who was sipping at the vodka that her father had given her, did not look up.
“Hmm, have you got any pocket money for me, Benno?” Richard said, swinging the upside-down child from side to side.
Ben squealed with excitement as coins fell from his pockets.
“Okay,” Sheba said. “Let’s not get too manic right before dinner.”
Richard put the child down. “Okay, Benno McBenjaboo, time to behave now. This lady here is called Barbara. She’s come for dinner with us.”
“Hallo,” Ben said, stepping forward and shaking my hand. “My name is Ben.” I had been dreading this moment in case I said something silly, or failed to understand what he was saying. But it went off okay. He had that slightly strangled, adenoidal voice of the handicapped, but he was perfectly comprehensible. “Did you know I have a girlfriend already?” he went on. “I’m only eleven.”
“No, I didn’t,” I said.
“Her name is Sarah. She’s going to come to tea next week.”
“Goodness,” I said.
“Sarah is a friend from Ben’s school,” Sheba explained.
“Not just a friend, Mum,” Ben objected. “She’s my girlfriend. We’re going to do slow dancing together.”
“Well, we’ll see about that.” Sheba raised her eyebrows at me. “Hormones seem to be kicking in earlier and earlier these days.”
Ben watched her carefully as she spoke. “What do you mean, Mum?” he said. “What are hormones, Mum?”
We ate dinner all together at a round table in the large ground-floor kitchen. Sheba had made shepherd’s pie and salad. Richard opened a bottle of Rioja. “Bash is the chef in this house,” he said as he poured wine for me, “and I am the sommelier.”
The dinner conversation was lively. Ben talked about a recent visit he had made with his school to the London Zoo, and we all marvelled at his renderings of various animal noises. Sheba got me to describe for Richard the recent St. Albans debacle, and Richard roared with laughter. He raised his eyebrows when I described Pabblem as a North London version of Turgenev’s Matthew Ilich.
“Turgenev, eh? Very good, very good,” he said, as if he were putting a little tick in the margin of my essay. Then, by way of rewarding me for not being a completely ignorant person, he went on to talk for quite a long while about the book he was writing. It seemed to be about right-wing bias in the media but, when I suggested as much, he yelped and said that he hoped it was “slightly more subtle” than that. He spent ages trying to get me to understand this one particular point about the insidious way in which newsreaders use verbs. It sounded pretty silly to me. But, for the sake of harmony, I feigned credulity.
There was only one sticky moment during dinner, and that had nothing to do with me. It arose when Sheba tried to get Polly to eat a little more and Polly shrieked at her mother to leave her alone.
“Polly, your manners are appalling. I will not have you speak to me that way,” Sheba said, quietly.
“Well then, don’t go on at me about what I eat,” Polly replied in a defiantly loud voice.
“I was not going on at you,” Sheba objected. “I was trying to make sure you don’t starve yourself.”
“Oh, please leave it, Bash,” Richard said.
There was a tense silence for a moment or so, which was broken by Richard saying, “It’s difficult isn’t it, Barbara? One pretends that manners are the formalisation of basic kindness and consideration, but a great deal of the time they’re simply aesthetics dressed up as moral principles, aren’t they?”
“Oh, Richard … ,” Sheba said.
“No, I’m serious. I mean, it’s clear that politeness to one’s elders can’t always be justified on the basis of the elder’s superior wisdom. It’s just that it’s not attractive to see a young person answering an older person back. Isn’t that it? What do you think, Barbara?”
I rather thought that he was a pretentious fool, but I kept that to myself. “Well, I’m not sure … ,” I began, but Richard’s attention had wandered already. “Pudding time!�
�� he shouted now, in his jokey baritone. “Come on, Bash, what’s for pud?”
Pudding was vanilla ice cream and shop-bought chocolate cake. “We’re immediate gratification people, I’m afraid, Barbara,” Richard said, sounding not at all afraid, as he cut wedges of cake for the table. I resented his constant explications of family culture. In the guise of welcoming me in, they seemed only to push me further out. You couldn’t be expected to understand our colourful, posh ways.
After pudding, Sheba took me to see her pottery studio in the basement. “Richard’s terribly impressed with you,” she said, as she led me down the stairs. “He never talks to anyone about his book.” I struggled to look honoured.
We were standing now in a large, slightly damp-smelling room. It was painted primrose yellow and outfitted with a kiln and a pottery wheel. Along one wall there were shelves displaying Sheba’s work. I had never seen anything that she had produced before. For some reason, whenever she had mentioned her work to me, I had always envisaged earthenware—those clumpy, grey-beige objects that they sell in gift shops. But the pieces on the shelves were not like that at all. They were delicate, romantic things—bowls with lacy, latticework rims; urns with handles in the shape of animals and birds. Rows and rows of rainbow-coloured plates.