As Time Goes By

by Hilary Bailey

  ‘At least I haven’t got too many oughts in my life,’ said Polly. ‘It’s more have-tos, but I’m beginning to doubt if I’m fit enough to face it. It’s awful when you start feeling like an animal – you’ve had too many kittens, you can’t look after them and half are going to starve or stray into the road and get knocked over.’

  ‘We’re not so used to it here,’ said Kate, seeing in her mind’s eye African children playing in the dust.

  It snowed every day for ten days in January. The gardens were a winter wonderland, snow on every bough, bushes covered with thick white blossom, children ran on coloured wellingtons through foot-deep snow, kicking it up, making tracks, small dogs disappeared in it, surfaced through it, leaping, shedding snow. Polly saw Kate and Dermot, hand in hand, walking under the white trees at night.

  Out in the streets the old crawled along with wheeled shoppers, children shivered to school in anoraks and thin trainers, people stamped at bus stops. Polly at her window, sighing as Kate and Dermot, soon to be parted, walked together, thought of the decline in trade at her stall. Dealers were fed up and freezing, customers in short supply and not inclined to linger, the van usually needed pushing by everybody before it would start. If the scenes at the back of the house, dog leaping, children playing in the snow, looked like a Christmas card, the scenes at the front, in the street, spoke of long queues at the doctor’s and heavy fuel bills.

  Inside No. 1, with everyone waiting for the new term to start, she felt they were all locked into a Russian novel, trying to keep warm in layers of matted garments, huddling round the fires, clustering round the gas stove, source of hot drinks. But Rufus, out of his high-rise, was delighted that someone, often everyone, was always available to take him out to fall over in the snow; forget him and start snowballing each other.

  Now Polly sat limply in the old basket chair in the kitchen while Max prepared a huge mound of vegetables on the kitchen table. She looked at the cat, which came in, covered in snowflakes, gave her an outraged stare, glanced up at the kitchen table, saw no meat, smelt no meat and sat down on the rug, discontentedly, to pick little bits of ice out of its tender paws. Polly felt placid, grey all over, with her skin flaking off, her hair going grey, her house falling to pieces and her finances undergoing their final collapse. In the garden Rufus was standing open-mouthed, with his tongue out to catch the snowflakes; Margaret, Pam and Sue, Val and Dennis, Pam’s boyfriend, were throwing snowballs at each other. The general whiteness seemed to distance the little group of figures. Polly turned round, in a dream, and went upstairs. She sat down in the unbroken peace of a house surrounded by snow, where the telephone had been cut off after only a brief return of the service: one of her calculations had misfired – the bounced cheque had been detected before proper payment could be made, Polly had been obliged to rob the stall’s float to pay in cash at the Post Office and, until the reconnection took place, was lying to her children about a fault on the line. They could accept any privation but that one. She sat quietly, thinking, and the cat arrived and lay beside her. There was a slight clattering noise, as the bare branches of the cherry tree hit the line of three estate agents’ boards on a post outside the house; it reminded her that it’s not the best idea to try and sell your house while phoneless in blizzard conditions. However, she reflected, the weather mattered little, since, out of perversity, she had put the house up for sale at such a huge figure that only the heir to a brewing family, whose family were even then trying to certify him, or a potentate from the Gulf or a Hong Kong millionaire or the legendary American banker, would buy it. Her neighbours were scandalised but delighted: if she pulled it off she would be setting a precedent for further price rises in the neighbourhood. So far, her only clients had been a man accompanied by a pregnant woman. Polly was convinced they were both property speculators pretending to be a married couple in search of a family home.

  But in the meanwhile, there was no old script to renovate and no old stall to run, just snow and silence.

  Sue came in, shivering. ‘This room’s cold,’ she said.

  ‘Nip down and get the electric fire out of the rubbish room, would you?’ Polly asked. ‘And try to tidy up a bit in the hall – your granny’s coming – your father’s mother,’ she explained. Sue was surprised. As she went out her mother said, ‘Don’t do any more to your hair before she comes. I don’t want her to start thinking you’re on drugs.’ Thinking her children were on drugs herself was something she had learned to bear, but there was no point in spreading anxiety round the family.

  She yawned, enjoyably scanning the vista of her modest future, seeing herself tired, dutiful, a reasonably substantial parent, honest dealer in the lower reaches of the antiques trade, respectable, respected, looking forward to a decent funeral at Kensal Rise cemetery, plenty of wreaths forgetting the erratic behaviour, prejudices and injustices, saying ‘To the best Mum in the World’, even something discreet but expensive from Alexander Kops reading cautiously, ‘In loving memory, Alexander’.

  The phone, suddenly reconnected, rang, giving her a nasty shock. ‘Congratulations, Polly,’ came Arnold’s voice. ‘Fantastic news. You must be over the moon.’

  ‘What news?’ asked Polly.

  ‘Well – don’t tell me – oh, your phone. It’s been out of order – you haven’t heard?’

  ‘No,’ Polly said.

  He couldn’t really believe she hadn’t heard. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said.

  ‘Come on, Arnold,’ she said. ‘Don’t keep me in suspense.’ Actually she was enjoying the imaginary moments before the event at Kensal Rise – the small, not-very-antique antiques business, her trips to physiotherapy, odd drink at the pub, holiday in Australia, fare paid, to visit an emigrated child – she knew somehow that Arnold was going to put a bomb under the lot.

  ‘Jay rang to thank me for finding you – he’s very excited by the script – coming over in a few weeks to discuss changes to be made by you – let’s all sing “The Eyes of Texas are upon You” –’

  ‘Good,’ Polly said weakly. She was stuck between believing it and not believing it; she had to believe it, and be delighted, for Arnold’s sake. ‘Good,’ she said again. ‘That’s terrific’.

  ‘I think Jay has the money more or less lined up,’ Arnold told her. ‘I’ve been talking to his chief assistant – the project’s already more than half off the ground.’

  This didn’t convey much to Polly, a fact she disguised by saying, ‘To be honest, Arnold, I don’t care. I just want a bit of money.’

  The limp statement triggered Arnold. ‘I think I ought to be there when you see him,’ he told her. And that was the first point at which Polly saw some easing of her financial problems. If Arnold wanted to be in on the situation, she was the girl with the bag of sweets in the playground. ‘Fine,’ she said.

  Then Sue came in with the electric fire. ‘Careful where you plug it in,’ said Polly. The flex was frayed. She had up to now kept it hidden under a pile of clothing in the room where she kept things for the stall, in case some chilly villain threw morals to the wind and began to run it day and night in her bedroom, creating a fire or a huge, unexpected rise in the electricity bill.

  ‘Can I have it in my room, after?’ Sue asked. ‘I’m freezing there.’

  ‘When I was a child I used to find frost inside my bedroom window when I woke up in the mornings, everybody did – we took it for granted,’ Polly remarked.

  ‘That was before they sent you out to find the dinosaurs’ eggs for breakfast,’ Sue said. ‘I’ve heard that story millions of times from everybody’s parents. If it was so horrible why do they want other people to have to put up with it?’

  ‘They want to save on their bills,’ said Polly.

  ‘Well, why don’t they say so, instead of acting as if freezing cold was good for you?’

  There was no answer to that. Sue turned on the TV and they sat watching at heat crept towards them from the fire. They had caught a man and a woman they thought might h
ave been involved with a bomb in a store before Christmas, killing three people. Police and pickets battled in a London street. The Home Secretary was promoting a bill to give the police more powers to stem the tidal wave of ruthless muggers and rapists infesting our streets. Prince Charles opened a sports centre in a riot area, accompanied by Princess Diana in a tailored blue coat, blue-spotted scarf at her throat, hat with band in the same spotted material. She took a bouquet from a small black girl with her hair in ethnic plaits across her head. Two people had been burned to death in a hotel for the homeless supported by Kensington and Chelsea Council and the matter was being investigated as a priority. The aftermath of a night of rioting in Belfast was featured and later Mavis Nicholson would be discussing infertility with sufferers and experts in the field. However, they were soon lost in a programme on restorative and reconstructive dentistry. ‘You can easily get a Dallas smile these days,’ Sue brooded. ‘Why didn’t I have these cramped teeth extracted when I was ten or eleven? Can I get it done now?’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Polly, immersed in the details.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  ‘That can’t be your grandmother,’ said Polly. ‘It’s too early. She’s always exactly on time.’ Then they heard Max shout ‘Clancy, what are you doing?’ and feet charging upstairs. Clancy had evidently dashed in past Max, who had answered the door. He was down to the kitchen and finding it empty, back upstairs again in a flash shouting, ‘I’ve come for some things.’ Then he came through the sitting-room door, out of breath and in new clothes. Pam, Sue, Margaret and Polly all stared at him, then back at the set. Polly, lighting a cigarette said, ‘OK, Clancy. Collect up what you want.’

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ he said.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I wonder if they do it on the National Health, or would you have to pay?’ Margaret wondered.

  ‘You must be joking,’ said Pam.

  ‘Look, do you mind,’ Clancy said, turning off the TV.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Polly said, as Pam turned it on again, ‘you know, I sometimes think I’ve been living with dinosaurs all my life. I take it for granted. Even Joe Coverdale thinks he owns the place, because he’s a man. You’re a thousand years out of date, all of you. As for you, switching off the TV whenever you feel like it – we’re thinking about our teeth here, even if you aren’t.’

  ‘And you don’t live here any more,’ Sue said, finding Polly’s approach weak.

  Clancy was soon sitting down watching Mavis Nicholson asking the dentist what he would suggest for her own teeth. He was feeling his own with his forefinger. ‘I wish we could have taped this,’ muttered Pam as Clancy took his finger out of his mouth and said, ‘Polly – we’ve got things to talk about.’

  ‘It’s no good, Clancy,’ Polly said, knowing he was not aiming for a discussion but an admission that he was right, her apology, and an invitation to return with his suitcase. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘Lady Kops is due here any moment and you’re the last person she wants to see.’

  ‘How come she’s started dictating who’s here and who isn’t?’ demanded Clancy.

  ‘She’s been very kind recently – she wants to see her grandchildren, I suppose,’ Polly told him. ‘Shut up, Clancy. I’m looking at this.’ She was missing whole sections on periodontal disease. Perfectly healthy teeth could fall out of affected gums. There was a picture of it – horrible. Polly wondered if Jay Honeycutt would pay her enough to get a private dentist to save her teeth from death. Pam, Sue and Margaret were worried, too, and she could see Mavis Nicholson was.

  ‘I suppose I’m allowed to go and get my stuff,’ Clancy said.

  The dentist was gone, replaced by someone who had known the Beatles. ‘It’s all downstairs in the back room,’ Polly told him and, rising reluctantly, ‘I’ll show you.’ On the way downstairs she said to Clancy’s back, ‘I mean what I say – Lady Kops is due in an hour and I don’t want you here. In fact, I thought we’d already established you weren’t going to be here again, ever.’

  He turned round on the stairs. ‘Polly,’ he said, ‘I need you. Margaret needs me.’

  It would have been easy to step down a step and fall into his arms. It would have been unlike Clancy not to have made sure this was so. Polly said, ‘I can’t think about that now. It doesn’t seem to be important.’

  ‘I’m back in the band,’ he said. ‘They’ve got a recording contract. I’m going straight.’

  ‘It wouldn’t last long if you were back with me,’ she said. ‘It never has in the past – one look at me and you go into moral collapse. You know that. It’s happened over and over again. You need someone to keep you in order. Like a nurse or your mum.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Don’t give me this women’s liberation shit. We need each other.’

  She realised he was blocking the stairs and that they were talking about him, not her. She got past him with difficulty, conscious he could give her a push and send her down to a broken leg at the bottom. In the small dark room off the hall she pushed past a standard lamp, knocked it over, searched out the black rubbish bag into which Sue had flung Clancy’s clothes, books, a banjo in a black case, a set of drumsticks. She hustled the bag to the door just as he was about to come in.

  ‘I’m selling up, Clancy,’ she said, thrusting the bag into his arms. ‘I’ve got to get things straight. I don’t want you around selling heroin to teenagers. Margaret doesn’t need you – no one needs a father like that. She doesn’t need a raid and you bundled into a police car. Nobody needs it. You play the drums, Alexander can go on playing with money. I’ve got other things on my mind.’

  She heard the phone ring.

  ‘I can make it easier for you, Polly,’ he said.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said with certainty. ‘You wouldn’t.’ She opened the front door. Joe Coverdale was there. She shook her head. He said, ‘I was just going to put this through,’ and handed her a square envelope. She took it. Max, Pam, Sue and Margaret appeared on the stairs in a descending row.

  ‘Well,’ said Clancy sadly, picking up his rubbish bag. ‘I suppose I’d better get going.’

  ‘We respect your decision,’ said Pam. ‘Bye, Dad,’ said Margaret miserably. ‘Bye, Dad,’ said Max.

  ‘All right – come round Sunday,’ said Polly trying to make things better. She had the idea that a social worker might say this scene was not being constructively handled.

  The door closed, with Joe Coverdale still on the step, trying to communicate something about a break-in, and Pam saying, ‘What did you want to do that for?’

  Polly sighed, went upstairs to her bedroom, wanting no arguments about Clancy. She thought about her antiques business. For the short time she had had it, she had become attached to her dream of a quiet respectable life. But it seemed mysteriously threatened by Arnold’s telephone call and Clancy’s return and re-eviction. It was hard to be mature about life when life kept on playing silly buggers with you. It was like trying to discuss Marcus Aurelius with somebody who suddenly turned out to be a circus clown. As if to prove her point the phone rang just as the cat forced the door open carrying in a faintly struggling sparrow for her delectation and delight. It began to finish it off on the carpet. There was no point in interrupting the murder, the sparrow was too far gone. So she got up and chased it out. The phone stopped ringing.

  She was tidying up when the children’s grandmother arrived. The former embittered, middle-aged woman, furious about the loss of her only son to a slut and a tart and ready to do or say anything to destroy her, had changed into a kind old woman. The loss of her powerful husband, and the coming to power of her respectless son, who imparted no power to her, had evidently been sobering. With God the Husband dead and God the Son covering his face, she had been forced to change. Polly was grateful. Nevertheless she guessed that the least sign of kindness from Alexander might send his mother back to attacking his wife, ex-wife, daughters or any other female competing for his attention. But while Alexander remained r
emote and distant and his present wife unfriendly – and he was, moreover, showing an inclination to turn his mother’s house into flats on a profit-sharing basis – Lady Kops would go on being human.

  ‘I suppose it’s the wisest thing to do,’ she said later of Alexander’s plan for the flats. ‘After all, it’s far too much space for just one person.’

  ‘Well, it’s your house,’ said Polly, stung by the fact that Alexander seemed to be evicting his mother and daughters at the same time. ‘And the building work would be noisy and dirty. It’d disturb you and take ages.’

  ‘Mm,’ said Lady Kops, yet, Polly felt, she thought that because Alexander had suggested the idea, it must be a good one, and ultimately to her benefit.

  She didn’t mention Alexander’s claim on her own house in case Lady Kops supported him, on the general principle that he was allowed to boot the females of the family about to keep the property together, for the benefit of the males, even though the property didn’t belong to him and there were no males in the family at present but himself. There would be no point in arguing with her. It was sad enough that from her point of view the family had fallen to pieces. Polly blamed herself.

  ‘I was impulsive, to say the least.’

  ‘Alexander didn’t help very much,’ said Lady Kops.

  ‘Nobody’s fault,’ said Polly.

  ‘Or everybody’s,’ said her former mother-in-law.

  She left with Pam and Sue, offering to give them a lift to the club they were going to. The old lady and her two black-clad granddaughters went off together happily.