The Lido

by Libby Page

  They start on Electric Avenue, weaving their way through the market stalls.

  “Rosemary!” says a man in his late forties with a touch of stubble and a dusting of gray in his black hair. His shoulders are broad and his arms strong from years of carrying crates of fruit and vegetables. He wears a green fleece, jeans, and heavy leather boots, even in spring and summer, a black money bag tied around his waist. He smiles broadly.

  Ellis owns one of the many fruit and vegetable stands in the market, the stand that Rosemary visits each week to pick up her food. He moved to Brixton from St. Lucia when he was a little boy. He and George knew each other—it was Ellis’s father, Ken, who introduced George to okra and cassavas. Over the years Ellis helped out more and more, until he finally took over Ken’s stand when it became too hard for him to manage. Ken and his wife, Joyce, have since returned to the Caribbean, and when trade is particularly hard Ellis sometimes talks about doing the same. But Rosemary is not sure he ever will—Brixton is his home. And then there is Jake—Ellis’s teenage son who often helps him with the stand, just like Ellis used to help his own father. Ellis and Jake are alike in both appearance and temperament, and Rosemary has always had a soft spot for both of them.

  “Ellis, how are you? How’s the family?”

  “Can’t complain, can’t complain. And how are you Mrs. P?”

  “Still standing!”

  “Who is this then, Rosemary? You didn’t tell me you had a sister.”

  Rosemary turns to look at Kate who is still standing at her side, smiling at Ellis and the piles of brightly colored produce.

  “This is Kate,” Rosemary says. “She’s my journalist.”

  Kate smiles and introduces herself, shaking Ellis’s hand across the fruit and veg stand.

  “Rosemary is campaigning to stop the closure of the local lido,” she says. “Here, take one of her leaflets.”

  Ellis catches Rosemary’s eye and raises an eyebrow, smiling warmly.

  “Well, well. I always thought you had a rebellious streak, Mrs. P,” he says, winking. She smiles back at him as he takes the leaflet and looks closely at the diver on the front.

  “I heard about that,” says Ellis after a moment’s pause. “I remember when I was a lad watching your George swimming at the lido; he always used to splash us kids by jumping in right next to us. He did these handstands, too, that I couldn’t believe.”

  Rosemary smiles. “He certainly could do a handstand.” They both laugh.

  Kate tells Ellis about the meeting at the town hall.

  “I’ll be there,” he says. The three of them say their goodbyes and Rosemary turns to leave.

  “Wait, before you go,” says Ellis.

  He hands Rosemary a bag of cherries and Kate a bag full of tomatoes that smell like sunshine.

  “My favorite—you are too good to me, Ellis,” says Rosemary, bending to put the bag of cherries in her shopping trolley. When she stands up Kate is blushing fiercely, her arms cradling the bag of tomatoes as though she is holding a baby for the first time and doesn’t know quite what to do with it.

  “Are you sure?” she says.

  “Yes, of course, on me,” replies Ellis.

  Rosemary watches Kate’s blush reaching her ears and her hands carefully protecting the tomatoes as they turn and walk away. It looks to Rosemary as though she is not used to handling fresh fruit and vegetables and a wave of worry rocks through her. But Kate is smiling so she smiles too.

  For the rest of the afternoon they walk slowly down the main street and the roads that flow off it like tributaries. The pavements are full of people queuing for buses or walking quickly down the street, and it is with difficulty that they maneuver Rosemary’s shopping trolley through the crowds.

  They go to the charity shop, where Rosemary is offered a chair to sit down and something from the shop of her choosing. She doesn’t take anything and instead leaves them with a small pile of leaflets.

  “I filled their shop a while back,” Rosemary says. “It’s nice that they remember it though.”

  After George died, there were lots of things she’d had to get rid of. Without anyone to give them to, she donated it all to the shop.

  “This jacket is as good as new,” she’d said to the manager. “I even kept the spare buttons, I have them somewhere in my purse if you’ll just wait a minute.”

  She’d pulled out a small pouch filled with buttons from her handbag, then slipped it inside the jacket pocket.

  “And this shaver,” she’d said. “I promise you it still works.”

  Rosemary had looked around the shop until she spotted an electrical socket by the counter. There was a click in her knees as she crouched then unpacked the shaver from its box and plugged it in. A whirring noise filled the shop. A baby in a pram by the door started to cry.

  She kept the books, his swimming cap, and a few of his clothes. But she gave away seven bin bags filled with shirts, ties, trousers, and shoes. The next day she had headed back to the shop to look for the jacket. She’d forgotten that George would need something smart for the funeral.

  “I’m sorry, but the jacket was sold yesterday afternoon,” said the shopkeeper.

  “I suppose it was a very good jacket,” said Rosemary. “Good as new.”

  In the end George was dressed in a shirt and sweater and was buried without a jacket.

  It is still hard to be in the shop, but Rosemary is thankful for the chair and the conversation.

  After the charity shop they visit Frank and Jermaine’s bookshop.

  Rosemary breathes in the smell of the paper as they push open the door and strokes Sprout who is in her usual spot in the window. Her tail wags heavily as she spots Kate—a new friend. Kate bends to rub the dog’s ears and pat her back.

  “What a lovely dog,” she says, and as she stands up and looks around. “What a lovely shop! How have I never been here before?”

  Rosemary looks around the familiar space and tries to imagine it as if seen for the first time: the comfortably messy stacks of books, the community noticeboard spilling over with flyers and business cards, and the stools scattered around the shop in corners that are perfect for reading.

  “How indeed?” says Frank, hearing Kate from his spot behind the counter. He is dressed casually, wearing faded jeans and a checked shirt open over a T-shirt. His smile is wide and bright, his cheeks reaching right up to his green eyes when he grins. Jermaine, who is standing next to him, is taller and slimmer than Frank and more smartly dressed in black jeans and a pale blue mandarin-collared shirt. He has a well-kept beard that is the same color as his short dark, gray-flecked hair.

  They both nod at Rosemary as she and Kate head toward them.

  “So, this is Kate then?” says Jermaine.

  Rosemary blushes, not wanting to admit how much she has talked about Kate since they met.

  “We feel like we know you already,” says Frank, reaching his hand across the counter to Kate. She shakes it and then takes Jermaine’s hand too.

  “This is Frank, and this is Jermaine,” says Rosemary, and the couple nod.

  “I know we’re on a mission, Rosemary,” says Kate. “But do you mind if I look around for a bit? This place is the best.”

  Rosemary is secretly glad of the pause. She pulls up a stool opposite the counter and sits down heavily.

  “You can come back!” shouts Jermaine, as Kate disappears down one of the warrenlike rows of books.

  Frank turns to Rosemary, leaning forward over the counter.

  “So we heard about the lido,” he says. “Ahmed was in earlier this week and told us. It’s just awful.”

  Jermaine shakes his head, his usual composure breaking away as he says angrily, “Paradise Living! As if Brixton needs more million-pound apartments—and an exclusive gym for their tenants only? Oh yes, that’s really what a community needs. But lidos, libraries, bookshops . . .”

  He trails off and Frank wraps an arm around him. Jermaine looks blankly around the shop. Ro
semary watches him, noticing how tired he looks.

  “How are things here?” she says. “Has business picked up at all?”

  Jermaine sighs. “Not much. Who convinced me to open a bookshop? Oh, that was you, Frank.”

  He turns to Frank, shakes his head, and kisses him gently on the cheek. Frank smiles.

  “There’s still hope yet,” Frank says brightly. “Just like there’s hope for the lido. We’ll help you, Rosemary. Won’t we, Jermaine?”

  Rosemary watches the pair smiling at each other. Her knees hurt and she feels tired suddenly. Jermaine nods and they both turn to face Rosemary.

  “Yes, of course we will,” Jermaine says. “We’ll do everything we can.”

  As they talk Rosemary is half aware of Kate, bending down to pull a book off a bottom shelf, tilting her head to read the titles or simply casting her eyes around the shop, a look of wonder on her face. Eventually she returns to the counter, a pile of three books in her hands.

  “It really is a lovely shop,” she says.

  “I’m glad you think so,” says Frank, looking pointedly at Jermaine. “See? There is hope. We have a new customer!”

  As Kate pays, Jermaine takes a “Save our lido” flyer from her stack and pins it right in the middle of the community board.

  “There,” he says, stepping back. “Hopefully that will do the trick.” Rosemary wants to hug him.

  “Well, we’d better be off then,” she says, rising slowly from the stool, her knees shouting at her. “Ready, Kate?”

  Kate nods and turns. “I’ll be back soon,” she says as they both leave the shop, Sprout watching them from the window.

  They visit Morleys, the independent department store, where a security guard helps Rosemary with her trolley up the steps. They go to the pharmacy and the shop that sells everything from colanders and clothes dryers to fancy dress outfits. On the way they pass several people Rosemary knows and greets, either by name or simply with a nod of recognition after a life lived alongside them.

  They stop for a moment in the post office to speak to Betty, one of Rosemary’s childhood friends, who is posting a pile of letters to her many family members.

  “How’s the brood?” Rosemary asks. Betty has two children, a son and a daughter, three grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter. Unlike Rosemary, Betty was evacuated during the war, to Wales. She came back with a slight Welsh accent, but it disappeared quickly once she started working in Bon Marché, the upscale department store by Brixton Station, and hanging out with her friends at the lido every weekend. Several years after she returned to Brixton, a Welsh boy called Tom arrived in the neighborhood. It turned out they had met during the war (he was the next-door neighbor of the family she stayed with) and he had promised to marry her. She didn’t believe him, but they kept writing to each other and when they were both nineteen he’d come to Brixton and gotten work on the building sites in South London. Two years later, they were married, and have been ever since.

  “I told you that you must have plenty of friends here,” says Kate as they say goodbye to Betty.

  Rosemary thinks about the people she knows in Brixton, placing them like colorful pins on the map she has in her mind of all her favorite places.

  “I suppose I do have a few,” she says.

  Before too long they are out of flyers.

  “Don’t worry, I can always print some more at work,” says Kate.

  Rosemary is leaning heavily on her shopping trolley. Kate offers to walk her home but she refuses, even when Kate tells her it’s not out of her way.

  “It is, you live on the other side of Brixton, you already told me that. Just because I’m eighty-six it doesn’t mean I’m senile.”

  “Okay then,” replies Kate. “Thank you for today. I think it will help with the meeting. But I just really enjoyed it too.” Her cheeks are flushed and she is smiling. She looks completely different when she smiles—less mouse and more woman.

  They say goodbye and Rosemary turns for home, walking slowly down the streets she has known all her life.

  CHAPTER 21

  Kate has been to Electric Avenue many times but has never bought anything. Shopkeepers don’t sell frozen microwave meals and wine there. As she unpacks the paper bag of tomatoes into a bowl, she thinks about Ellis’s stall—how she took deep breaths through her nose and how the smell reminded her of her mum’s spaghetti Bolognese. Her mum always made spaghetti Bolognese and a tomato sauce from scratch. When Kate was still at home she would help her sometimes. She loved peeling the skins off the warm tomatoes and feeling their plump flesh in her hands. It has been a long time since she’s had the energy to peel tomatoes.

  She opens cupboards and drawers, thinking about all the people that Rosemary knows in Brixton. In the Bristol suburbs Kate was used to knowing the staff in the shops and saying hello to people in the street. Since coming to London she has met people mainly through interviewing them. Today she had immediately liked all Rosemary’s friends—Ellis, and Betty, and Frank and Jermaine—they made her notice something about the place where she lives that she hasn’t seen before. Perhaps it really wasn’t so different from her home after all.

  As she takes out a pan and places it on the cooktop she remembers the secondhand bookshop and wonders why it has taken her so long to find this place. She supposes she wasn’t looking before: it is hard to notice much when you have your eyes on the ground.

  Kate boils water in the kettle and pours it over the tomatoes. Then she reaches for the shopping bag on the table—the bag she had filled in the supermarket after saying goodbye to Rosemary. For the first time in months—or if she is being honest, years—she had properly looked while she shopped, not just heading to the frozen-food aisle but picking up onions, mushrooms, ground beef, and garlic.

  She wipes the grease and stains from the kitchen surface, piles her housemates’ dirty dishes in the sink, and sets out the ingredients for spaghetti Bolognese on the table. Then slowly and tentatively she tries to remember her mum’s recipe.

  She forgets the garlic and adds too much salt, to the point that by the time she is finished, it is barely edible. The kitchen is even more of a mess than it was when she started and the plate of food looks much less appealing than the home-cooked dinner she remembers. She still sits down to eat it, though, drinking three glasses of water to combat the too-salty taste. It is certainly not her mum’s spaghetti Bolognese made from scratch. But it’s a start.

  She suddenly wants to text Erin a photo of the meal, but admitting its significance to her would also admit how badly she’s been eating recently. So instead she sends her a photo of the lido that she took the other day and asks her how her running is going. Then she puts her phone back on the table and continues her meal.

  As Kate eats she feels tired from the day, but calmer than she has been in a while. She thinks about the lido. Hopefully the flyers will mean a good turnout at the council meeting in two weeks’ time. She has written an article for the Chronicle about the meeting, too, calling residents to come and have their say about the future of the lido. She hopes it goes well, and as she thinks that, she realizes how much she is starting to care about the campaign. Like trying to cook for herself and learning to swim again, this is something she needs to do.

  CHAPTER 22

  Rosemary and George decided to marry in the registry office at the town hall. It would just be a small group: their parents, a few old school friends, and some colleagues of hers from the library. Her mother made her wedding dress. It fell just above her ankles, revealing white shoes with a low heel and small bows. The day before the wedding Rosemary and her mother spent all day covering the wedding cake in paper and decorations—there wasn’t enough sugar for icing but from a distance it looked perfect.

  Their parents tried to persuade them to hire a car to take them to the town hall but they didn’t see the point when it was such a short walk from their homes. They wanted to arrive together, holding hands.

  Rosemary dressed in
her childhood bedroom. It was piled with boxes: George had found a flat in one of the new buildings sprouting up in Brixton, just opposite the lido, and they were moving there the day after the wedding. After unpacking and a honeymoon at home they would start their lives—George running his family’s greengrocer and Rosemary continuing to work at the library. It was never a question for Rosemary that she would work—her mother had, George’s parents had, and so would she. She had friends who were moving to Canada or who were engaged to rich men. None of them had jobs but a few of them had refrigerators. Rosemary thought she would prefer a job to a refrigerator but she didn’t tell them that. A small life was more than big enough for her if it had George in it, and if they could live in a flat by themselves where no one would bother them and they would be in each other’s arms if they got woken by rain or dreams in the night.

  “Do you feel nervous?” asked her mother as she adjusted her daughter’s hair, lifting the veil over her face. Her father leaned on a pile of boxes watching them, holding his daughter’s bouquet while she adjusted her veil.

  But she didn’t feel nervous.

  In front of the small group that sat on foldout wooden chairs in the registry office they promised to love each other for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. George needed no prompting to kiss his bride.

  They stepped out of the doors of the town hall into a cloud of pink and white confetti and into the rest of their lives.

  CHAPTER 23

  This cinema only sells posh popcorn with flavors like sweet chili and sea salt, but the smell still permeates the walls, the carpet, the air. Popcorn dust gets into all the corners. The young staff members behind the ticket counter wear tattoos and peaked caps, smiling as they sell tickets and bars of chocolate. They encourage customers to sign up for loyalty cards or to upgrade their seats to VIP ones.

  A film has just ended and the crowd starts spilling out of the double doors, some heading straight through the foyer and outside, others veering into the bar. The foyer is suddenly noisy.