We had only one wedding left on our books then it'd be Labor Day weekend and after that nothing much would be going on, even when the good times were rolling.
Grice said to me, ‘Can we talk?’ He had been with me eight years and never a cross word.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we can't continue like this, now, can we? And you're too young to retire.’
I said, ‘Honey, I'm too poor to retire.’
‘That too,’ he said. ‘So here's an idea. I'll buy you out. Then you can come and work for me.’
I said, ‘I don't have anything to sell you.’
He said there was my address book, my contacts. As I pointed out to him, my address book was hardly worth a cent any more. Besides which, he knew the contents of it as well as I did. He could just take it.
‘Well, I could,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn't. Also, I'd be buying your wisdom and experience.’
I said, ‘There's something else. I'm sick of weddings.’
‘Me too,’ he said. ‘I'm thinking bigger. I'm ranging wider. I'm thinking sparkle and glitz and fun, fun, fun.’
So that was the start of Swell Parties, the complete party-planning service. Crystal turned up and the three of us went out for Chinese, by way of a celebration. Time was when we'd have gone to the Black Diamond Grill or the Cotillion Room, but we were tightening our belts.
Crystal said, ‘How come he can afford to buy you out? You been paying him too much?’
I said, ‘No. He has a friend willing to inyest.’
‘Oh yeah?’ she said. ‘Would that be a long-time companion kinda friend?’
‘Enough of your impertinence, child,’ he said. ’Just show a little respect to your mother's new employer. Now tell us, how are things in the pet eternalisation business?’
‘Why?’ she said. ‘You got your eye on my assets too?’
‘Never,’ he said. ‘I cannot abide the smell of acetone.’
Truth was, Crystal was struggling. Most of the enquiries she got was for game heads and fish, and as soon as the customers realised they were dealing with a female they tended to go elsewhere. Then she'd discovered what a cranky bunch pet-owners could be, especially in the throes of grief. If they didn't feel she had exactly captured the personality of their loved one, she had a hard time of it getting them to settle their account. There was a woman claimed her curly-haired retriever had been returned to her looking sly and evil. She never paid a cent.
I said, ‘Grice, what will be my vacation entitlement in my new position?’
‘I'll need to check with personnel,’ he said. ‘Okay, I just checked. It'll be the same as before. When we're busy I won't be able to spare you and when we're not I won't be able to pay you. My advice is, take your vacation now, while the going is good.’
And that was how I ended up in Norfolk, England, in the fall of ‘76.
77
Crystal drove me to the airport.
I said, ‘I wish you were coming with me.’
She said, ‘Bad enough I'm a thirty year old and outta work. I don't have to go on vacation with my mom to feel like a failure.’
She had finally closed the door of Perpetual Pets, end of September, and she was reconsidering her situation.
I said, ‘It was your business failed, not you. Calf it a set-back. The only people don't suffer those are the ones who never do anything. And, by the way, you're only twenty-nine.’
I knew what she meant, though, about the vacation. Me and Kath were gonna be sitting around like a pair of old’ dodos, talking about way back when. Truth was, I was nervous about the trip. Only times I had ever flown international I had had the US Air Force holding my hand.
I said, ‘Can you remember Drampton?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I remember the school. Miss Boyle's classroom. Smelled of wax crayons. And I remember having to get my dinner there, and white stuff we had to eat, like glop, and you could have a spoon of red jam to stir into it, help it down.’
I said, ‘You remember the base?’
‘I think so,’ she said. ‘Did we live next door to Gayle?’
I said, ‘No, that was Wichita. At Drampton we lived opposite Lois and Betty. Me and Betty'd take turns to run y'all to school.’
She said, ‘What kinda job did you have over there?’
I said, ‘Are you kidding! I was a DW. My duty was to stay home and make pie.’
She laughed. ‘You never made pie!’ she said.
‘I did too make pie. Make pie, wash floors, iron shirts. Defrost the Kelvinator.’
‘I can't imagine you,’ she said. ‘You're too smart for all that.’
I said, ‘Smart didn't come into it in those days. Homemaking was what we were raised to do. You kept your home nice. Kept yourself nice. Uncle Sam took care of everything else.’
‘Tell you what else I remember,’ she said. ‘My rabbit-fur mitts from Gramma Dewey. And the high fence. And selling little cups of Kool-Aid with Joey Kurlich, and Sherry's foot dripping blood on the sidewalk.’
She helped me lug my valise on to a trolley.
I said, ‘Now I wish I'd never said I'd go. For two pins I'd turn around and come home with you.’
‘Well I'm not driving you,’ she said. ‘So you may as well get yourself on that plane and start acting like a person on vacation.’
I said, ‘Did I give you Kath's number?’
‘About a hundred times,’ she said.
Peggy's Pie
Empty a can of carrots and a can of stewed beef into a pie dish. Cover it with a lid of Jus-Rol and bake it in a hot oven in time for friend husband coming from Beer Call. After three beers he'll think he married Betty Crocker.
78
I flew into Newark, then onward by red-eye to Heathrow, London, England. Kath was waiting for me at the barrier. She was wearing a beige trenchcoat, same as everyone else standing there. She claimed me while I was still looking for her.
‘Peggy,’ she said, ‘aren't these airyplanes marvellous? Look here, at all these places you can fly to. I've been studying these boards while I was waiting.’
The sky was grey. I was so tired, I just let Kath talk. ‘You won't know the old place,’ she said. ‘We've got supermarkets now and self-service petrol. We've even got different money. That's called decimal. I still think in shillings but I suppose I shall catch on to the new way eventually. And I can't wait for you to see my bungalow. I've got fitted carpet all through, even in the littlest room.’
We'd been on the road about an hour and it commenced to rain. She said, ‘That's a welcome sight, Peg. We've had such a dry summer. We've the water rationed, can you believe? Queuing up in the street with a bucket. So I'm not going to complain if we get a bit of rain. And I've got plenty of macs you can borrow. I thought I'd give you a quiet day tomorrow. I've got a lady at nine o'clock, very nervy, so I don't want her going a week without a lesson, else she'll be back to square one. So you can sleep in. Then I'm clear ‘the rest of the week, so we can go on trips out. We can take the train to London one of the days, see all the sights. Go to Marks.’
The Marks and Spencer stores were one of Kath's favourite things. ‘They have very reliable knickers,’ she said. She was talking about panties.
I said, ‘I can remember a time when you laughed at May Gotobed for wearing them. Told me you never bothered with them yourself.’
‘That's right,’ she said. ‘Fancy you remembering that. Well, I feel the cold more than I did. That's what happens when you get heating you can switch on any time you like. It turns you soft. Then I thought, another day we could drive to Ely and Cambridge. You'd like that. All old universities, that go back centuries. And Audrey wants you Friday and Saturday, only you'll have to get a hire car because there's no buses. She said I should go too, but I told her I had lessons booked. I don't like to be unsociable, Peg, but I couldn't take to her new gentleman friend when I met him.’
Audrey had been coaxed back to England by a man she had met. Kath said, ‘See, I think that's too soon a
fter Lance. When she was staying with me, she wasn't hardly in her right mind. Going for long walks. Wandering out in the wilds, looking for birds. She could have stumbled and lain there for days. Anil then she meets this Arthur. Well, it's none of my business, I suppose. I don't know him. I don't think she does properly, neither. You take a long hard look at him, Peggy, when you meet him. See what you think.’
79
I got a rental car and the first thing I did was drive out to Drampton, take a look around the old neighbourhood. Our old base had been turned over to their Royal Air Force in ‘62. Later on there had been some talk of it being a NATO stand-by base, but nothing ever came of it and it just stood empty. I found a stretch of fence where you could see across to the old facility. Nothing but jack-rabbits and weeds. It was like we never had been there. Then I drove on, past Crystal's old school, which had new buildings and a new name too, Smeeth Combined First and Middle School, then past the railroad crossing where we met Kath the first time, and across to Blackdyke Drove.
She had already told me she had no wish to see what was left of her old place. ‘Looking back don't interest me, Peg,’ she said. ‘Today's what matters. And tomorrow, if we're lucky.’
There wasn't much left to see. The house was just a shell, one end-wall gone completely. And the inside and that terrible outdoors John were all overgrown with nettles. Looking across to Brakey there were new row-houses as far as the eye could see, and the other side there was a tractor at work where me and Audrey had walked across that day, searching for Lois. I blushed, just remembering it.
I drove back by the place Gayle and Aud had been billeted. Their two houses had been renovated, turned into one home with a new tile roof. I never would have recognised it except for that waterway running behind it, higher than the back yard. Someone had made a cute little country home of it, called it ‘Willows’, and cleared the front yard for parking, but I still wouldn't have spent a night there.
‘Well?’ she said, when I walked in. ‘You see what an eyesore your old base is? I should love to get my hands on it. I'd have it all laid out for driving. You could take the nervy ones on there, first time they get behind the wheel, just let them get the feel of things without traffic tooting at them, getting them flustered. And you could do make-believe tests, you know? Instead of annoying them people up on the Brewer Farm estate, forever reversing round their corners, turning round in their roads, you could do it all up at Drampton. But that just lies there going to waste.’
She made us steak and fries and red wine. ‘This is my tipple now,’ she said, ‘since we've been going to Spain.’
I said, ‘There's not much left to see of your old house.’
‘So I've heard,’ she said. ‘Far as I'm concerned they should have knocked down what the sea didn't take. They could have built something new. There's plenty waiting for decent housing.’
I said, ‘You think you'd still be there? If the flood hadn't come?’
‘I could have been,’ she said. ‘Our mam lived, all her life there. Born there, died there. I could have done. But, of course, other things come along for me. Learning to drive a motor. I don't think you'll ever know what a difference that made to me.’
I said, ‘You were a fast study. Left-hand drive an’ all.’
‘And then John Pharaoh got so poorly ‘ she said. ‘I don't know as we could have stayed up there, not once I needed help with him. Anyway, that great flood did come along and then everything changed.’
There was something I was dying to know. I said, ‘Did you and John still share a bed? Right to the end?’
‘Course we didn't,’ she said. ‘We got lovely new divans when we moved to the maisonette. Well, they were old stock. Some bed shop gave them, help people out after the flood. But they were beautiful to sleep on, after that old bed we were used to.’
The red wine had loosened my tongue. I said, ‘You know, it's the weirdest thing I ever heard, brother and sister sharing a bed.’
‘There was plenty doing the same,’ she said. ‘May and her sisters were four to a bed, till she went into service. May Gotobed. Gotobed if you can find room, that's what we always said.’
I said, ‘Well, sisters maybe. But male and female … I mean, there could be consequences …’
‘Oh, I know what you're getting at,’ she said, ‘but me and John Pharaoh never had consequences. He had his adventures, and maybe he shouldn't have done, but he only had a short life and a man needs that. You only have to look at a dog to see. He smells a bitch, he'll do anything to get to her. Can't stop himself until he's had his consequences.’
I said, ‘Neither of you ever think of getting married?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘He had his lady friends. There was one in Brakey. There was one in Kennyhill. Village bikes they used to call them. There was probably others, specially with the war on and men away. But that's as far as it went. He knew not to bring any trouble home. He had enough sense for that.’
I topped up her glass. Topped up mine too. I said, ‘What about you?’
But before she could answer, the phone rang. It was Audrey, calling with directions. ‘After Witham, watch out for a right turn,’ she said. ‘It's just a single-track road, so it's easily missed. If you see a general store, with a red mailbox, you've gone too far.’
When I got off the phone, Kath was curled up on her couch, just gazing at her gas-fire flames.
‘I had my chances,’ she said. ‘I did get offers. Specially after my Premium Bond come up. I had offers'd make your hair curl. But what would I want a man for at my time of life? I come home at night, I don't want to have to start peeling spuds. Missing my programmes because there's football on the other side. You know what it's like? You're on your own and you seem happy enough.’
I said, ‘Yes, I am. But I wouldn't have missed having Crystal.’
‘Course you wouldn't,’ she said. ‘But that was different for me. I made my mind up a long time ago I wouldn't be having any babies.’
The second bottle was nearly empty. She looked right at me, eyes kinda bright and shining, could have been tears. ‘Because of the nerve thing that's in the family. Like our mam had, and then John. That's why he knew to be careful with his consequences. It's in the blood, you see. Only it won't be going any further. I've made sure of that.’
We sat quiet for a minute. ‘You ever had a drink called Fundador?’ she said. ‘It's from Spain. I'll give you a little taster, as a nightcap.’
80
Audrey was right about missing the turn. But I found the general store and the mailbox. I needed to buy Kleenex and throat lozenges anyway. One thing about the English weather. You were guaranteed to get a head cold.
The store-keeper said, ‘That'll be the American lady you're visiting. About a mile back they way you come, then sharp left where they leave the milk churns.’
I found it, second time of trying. The track narrowed and dropped, and then I seen the sign, and an old yellow station-wagon, rusty round the wheel arches. Lower Ness.
Now that was what I call a house. It had a kinda saltbox look to it, and lots of outbuildings, stables and stuff and the cutest front yard, with ducks running wild on the lawns. And then out came Audrey, with two big red dogs bounding ahead of her.
She looked great, in a natural, English kinda way, just dressed for gardening. I'd have worn pants myself if I had known I was going so deep into the backwoods. If I had known I was gonna have shoulder-high dogs wanting to be my best friends.
I said, ‘What's this? You gone native?’
She had allowed her grey hair to grow in. She said, ‘Correct. You just drove here. How many hair salons did you pass?’
A man came out of the house. Tall, fair but greying, big droopy moustache.
‘Peggy,’ she said. ‘This is Arthur. We're engaged to be married.’
I guess a good-looking woman like Audrey didn't need to stay a widow for long if she didn't choose.
Arthur was a very polite person. He was very particul
ar about ladies first through doorways and pulling out your chair and all that. I really can't say why I didn't take to him.
We sat straight down to some kinda vegetable soup, then Arthur went off in the station-wagon. Dearest, he called her. ‘Back about six, dearest. Leave you girls to chew the fat.’
‘Okay,’ she said, soon as he was gone. ‘Tell me what you think.’
I said, ‘He's nice.’
‘Nice?’ she said. ‘Nice! He's a genuine English gentleman. His family goes back hundreds of years.’
I said, ‘Honey, every family goes back. Question is, where are they headed?’
There was good silver on the table. Not ‘a pattern I knew, but it was quality. The house was shabby, though. Rugs were all faded.
I said, ‘Hey, I'm sure he's wonderful. Where'd you find him?’
‘I came back from Chicago,’ she said, ‘couldn't stand the memories. I rented a cottage at Hythe, right by the water here, and started painting. All those years I talked about it. All those paint-boxes Lance gave me for birthdays. I finally got round to it. ‘Painted from breakfast till the cocktail hour. I tell you, Peggy, the day just flies. Then I made a real fool of myself. I took my best efforts into Arthur's little gallery, see if they were good enough to sell. They weren't. One thing there's no shortage of around here is amateur watercolours. He offered me lunch, though. Lunch. Then dinner. Then a job, helping out in his gallery.’
I said, ‘And then a wedding band?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I'm a foreigner. I can't just come over here and take a job. Getting married kinda regularises things.’
I said, ‘You didn't mention falling in love. I suppose that happened, somewhere along the way?’
She laughed. ‘Of course!’ she said. ‘We're just a little long in the tooth for all that romantic stuff.’
Her ring had been in Arthur's family for four generations. When I told Lois, later, back Stateside, she said, ‘My God, how cheap can a man get? Was it a big rock?’
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