Angel Cake

by Helen Harris

  They sat in an awkward silence on their bench. They were at Shepherd’s Bush Green this week, amid the red fried chicken boxes and the yellow hamburger cartons, because Alison had come early again and said that a walk would do Alicia good. Alicia couldn’t imagine that sitting on this grubby bit of green amid the car exhausts and the bustling crowds of every nation was doing her much good, but by the time they got there, she had been too worn out from the walk to insist on turning straight for home. She watched a young but quite exhausted-looking black girl pushing a pram that seemed twice her size across the green and she remembered that Pearl’s second eldest daughter, the one with two children, called Pauline, was getting married next weekend and she wondered what she had that might make a suitable wedding present for her. This thought went on for quite a long time through several of her drawers until she noticed that Alison, sitting beside her, hadn’t said a word for a while. She was looking as miserable as sin.

  Alicia tapped Alison’s temple with her forefinger. ‘Penny for your thoughts.’

  Alison grinned ruefully. ‘Guess who?’

  ‘Oh, him,’ said Alicia. ‘That good-for-nothing.’ She folded her hands on her lap and said lightly, ‘Still leading you a merry dance, is he?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Alison. ‘Quite the contrary. He came back from Scotland on Thursday night and he was so happy to be back and so pleased to see me, but I don’t know what’s got into me, I just couldn’t make myself feel pleased at all.’

  ‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ said Alicia. ‘Why should you feel pleased to have a fellow back who goes gallivanting off on his own for weeks at a time and leaves you to stew?’

  She was put out that Alison should giggle.

  ‘But it’s not like that,’ Alison objected. ‘A research trip to Glasgow is hardly gallivanting.’

  ‘Have it your own way,’ said Alicia sulkily. ‘But, mark my words, the scales will fall from your eyes one day. My Leonard never left me for a single night.’

  ‘But that’s not true!’ protested Alison. ‘You told me yourself; he used to go off on business trips sometimes, to book theatres and that kind of thing.’

  ‘Oh well, the odd night maybe,’ Alicia conceded grudgingly. ‘If you insist. But not as a regular thing, not just because it took his fancy.’

  ‘But Rob –’ Alison interrupted.

  ‘Let me finish,’ Alicia said strictly. ‘Leonard believed a marriage was for ever. Once you had entered into it, there was no messing about, no forgiveness for straying from the straight and narrow. You were chained together till the day you died.’ As soon as she had said this, she realized something sounded wrong, but before she had a chance to improve on her wording, Alison asked slyly, ‘He was a bit of a tyrant though, wasn’t he?’

  Alicia jumped. ‘Whatever put that idea into your head???’

  Alison giggled. ‘You did, of course. How else would I have thought of it?’

  Alicia fidgeted with vexation on the bench. She looked into the distance, where the girl with the enormous pram was coming out of ‘Dunkin’ Donuts’ and giving her child something sizeable and apparently pink out of a paper bag. ‘Well, he was nothing of the sort,’ she snapped.

  A trifle huffily, Alison said, ‘Oh, all right.’ She clearly wasn’t satisfied though, because a short time afterwards she declared petulantly, ‘It’s all very well your keeping on painting this picture of perfection. I don’t know what you expect me to do about it. Things aren’t like that any more, you know.’

  Alicia said, ‘Ah, but they could be.’

  ‘Oh no, they couldn’t. No one behaves that way nowadays.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alicia. ‘It’s only because you girls put up with it that the men get away with it. If you put your foot down, you’d soon see the wind change.’

  ‘But, Mrs Queripel,’ Alison protested angrily, ‘I do wish you’d believe me. There just aren’t any such men any more.’

  Alicia looked into the distance through knowingly half-closed eyes. ‘How can you be so sure?’ she asked.

  The child in the pram and its mother munched on their bright pink cakes. The mother made her weary way back across the green towards Alicia and Alison. The brilliant cakes seemed the only bright spots of colour in their depressed world.

  Alicia shuddered. It was only mid-May and it wasn’t yet warm enough to sit out, really. They left their bench because Alicia was worried her legs might seize up, and they turned for home. Alicia hung heavily on Alison’s arm and stabbed her stick vindictively into the mucky grass.

  ‘I don’t know if I shall make it,’ she gasped.

  ‘Come on, you’ve got to get into practice for our excursion,’ said Alison. ‘I don’t want to have to carry you all the way to Eastbourne.’

  Alicia seemed to sleep so little these days, as if she was scared of what she might come upon in her dreams. She put off lying down on the settee as late as possible, staying in her armchair at the window until her eyes closed. In fact, one night she thought she had fallen asleep there; what she saw outside was so extraordinary. It took her a minute to realize that she wasn’t dreaming and to react accordingly.

  Mr Patel and his frail old mother were walking towards her house. They were stately and solemn in the moonlight and, even in her dream, Alicia noted what very good posture they had. They might have been on stage, the pair of them; they were walking with such dignified bearing. And, as if they were on stage and this were a thriller, a terrifying figure leapt out at them from nowhere and stood in front of them, brandishing a knife. He was an all-too-familiar figure in Alicia’s nightmares; a big brutal boy with a shaven head and a studded jacket. She watched spellbound. He made threatening theatrical gestures with his knife at both of them, first at Mr Patel who stood frozen, and then to her horror at the shrivelled old lady in white. The knife-blade wiggled silver under the street-light. Mr Patel was just reaching into his trouser pocket, slow motion, to take out his wallet when Alicia came to. This was no nightmare. With a strength and presence of mind she would have thought were beyond her a few months back, she flung open her front-room window and screeched. ‘Get away, you bastard!’ she screeched. ‘Leave them be. Clear off this instant, do you hear me?’ And, as if it were a dream after all, the shaven youth spun round and gaped, staring wildly to see where the ghastly voice had come from, and when he saw Alicia’s contorted made-up face, he took to his heels and fled, kicking up the metal-tipped soles of his boots, into the night. Mr Patel and his mother stood outside Alicia’s house, still shivering. Too shocked to speak, Mr Patel stretched out his arms towards her in silent gratitude. Still under the spell of the moment, and only aware that this was how things would end in a dream or in a play, Alicia invited them in and sat them down in her front room and made them tea.

  *

  When the phone rang at seven o’clock yesterday morning, Rob tumbled out of bed, swearing, to answer it. Resentfully, I pulled the covers closer round my head. At that time of the morning, we both assumed it could only be one of his friends, Andy or possibly Jean and Eddy in some sort of emergency. But Rob came back almost immediately, looking put out. He always likes to rise to an emergency.

  ‘It’s for you. I believe I’ve had the honour at last –’

  ‘Mrs Queripel?’ I exclaimed. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’

  Rob yawned. ‘I’ve no idea. She said she had to speak to you “right away”. She didn’t have any time to spare on swapping social niceties with me.’

  I heard him murmur as he rolled back under the duvet, ‘I hope she’s not going to make a habit of ringing at this hour.’

  ‘Alison?’ Mrs Q said to me. ‘There’s been an attack!’

  Rob did offer to come along with me when I came back into the bedroom and started getting dressed straight away instead of climbing back into bed with him, even though it was still a full hour before I would normally have got up. I explained to him that Mrs Q had witnessed a mugging – only she didn’t call it that – outside her house t
he night before. In the circumstances, I thought it was best if I went on my own. ‘A new face might upset her,’ I said.

  ‘I suppose we should just be thankful,’ Rob sighed, ‘that she didn’t phone us with the glad tidings at three a.m.’

  I wondered what he would have said if I had told him he shouldn’t come along because Mrs Q couldn’t abide him.

  ‘But she’s never set eyes on me,’ he might have protested, and watched me reproachfully over the edge of the duvet as I buttoned my jacket. Or he might have reacted angrily: ‘I do wish you two witches would stop ganging up on me.’

  He said, ‘You’ll be incredibly late for the office.’

  ‘Please ring and explain,’ I said crisply, as I collected my bag and my keys. ‘Mr Charles will understand.’

  I expected to find Mrs Q in a great state. I had rehearsed comforting speeches all the way. But rather than being shaken by the sight of the mugging, she seemed funnily enough, if anything elated. It must have required unusual energy to take the extraordinary step of ringing me. Even though I had come prepared to offer comfort, an audience was all she wanted. The mugging had pepped her up. She acted it out for me in her front room with superb cries and gestures, playing all the parts. She was full of get-up and go.

  At half-past nine, as I sat holding her hand after her performance and thinking I really must go to work soon, the door-bell rang and we both jumped. I said bravely, ‘I’ll go.’ An Indian man stood on the doorstep, holding a huge brown cardboard box. It was the man from the corner shop, the mugging victim himself. He looked surprised to see me there. I said I’d heard all about his frightful experience. ‘Are you all right?’ I exclaimed.

  He dismissed the mugging with a little nod from side to side. ‘What can’t be cured must be endured,’ he said. He pointed at the big box with his chin. ‘May I bring this in, please?’

  I showed him into the front room where Mrs Q, still flushed from her performance, received him. Delicately, he put his box down at her feet. ‘Just a little nothing,’ he said. He wouldn’t stay, he wouldn’t even sit down. He said he had left his wife alone in charge of the shop. But he had wanted to offer Mrs Q this small token of their thanks. She positively glowed and, when he had gone, she fell on the box and started unpacking her goodies. He had ransacked his shelves. There were tins of salmon and corned beef, chicken in jelly and gammon ham, there were packets of jelly, blancmange and Instant Whip, and at least half the box was devoted to cakes and biscuits of every kind.

  Mrs Q sat back. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘it’s not true at all what they say about Indian people being penny-pinching.’

  I stayed on with her a little longer, since I was now so late for work anyway. Mrs Q prepared a festive breakfast from the box. She was so transformed that I took advantage of her high spirits to raise the subject of our excursion.

  ‘When is it to be then?’ I asked.

  She scarcely paused, cutting up her gammon ham into polite pieces and forking it at a great rate into her mouth. ‘You name the day, dear,’ she cackled. ‘I’m yours for the asking.’

  I said, what about the first weekend in July, provided the weather was fine?

  Mrs Q helped herself to a second slice of ham. ‘Lovely, dear,’ she agreed. ‘We’ll make it a day to remember, you’ll see.’

  ‘You’ve got so much get-up and go these days,’ I teased her. ‘That’s still over a month away. Will you be able to wait that long?’

  As I had expected, Mr Charles was most understanding about my arriving at work in mid-morning. He didn’t enquire, but I volunteered the explanation. He was frightfully concerned.

  ‘Good heavens!’ he exclaimed. ‘Have you told the police?’

  I explained that Mr Patel had been adamant that he didn’t want the police to become involved. He was worried, I explained, about reprisals.

  Mr Charles shook his head dismally. ‘What is this country coming to?’ he commented.

  He came to the door of my room at half-past twelve and asked me out to lunch. We went to The Sovereign Grill in South Kensington again. He had the lamb and I had the steak-and-kidney. He didn’t press me for details, but I ended up telling him the whole story of my friendship with Mrs Queripel. It was extending in such unpredictable directions, I finished, that I was worried where it might end up.

  Mr Charles dabbed his lips with his starched serviette. ‘It is a tricky one,’ he agreed thoughtfully. ‘Like you, I feel one does have a duty to try and preserve these dear old dinosaurs.’

  I had to ring Rob when we got back from lunch in mid-afternoon, and tell him I would be pretty late home that night since, after all the interruptions, I had so much to catch up on.

  *

  It was getting warmer and warmer all the time. Yet she remembered Junes which had been bitter. Sometimes, of an evening, she even sat for a bit with her window ajar. It meant that, as well as watching the street, she could listen to it and smell it too. It smelt of other people’s dinners.

  She relished this season which she had so surprisingly lived to see, and instead of cursing the chimes of the first ice-cream van she grinned as though they were a signal: ‘Well done, dearie, you’ve made it!’

  She thought a great deal about what she would wear for the outing. With her new-found energy, she had even been upstairs twice to look through her summer wardrobe, which she hadn’t bothered to bring down with her, to see what would be suitable. You opened the wardrobe and there were all your memories, sweet and sour, hanging in a row: the green mock satin dress coat, worn at the Winter Garden, at the Ideal Home exhibition and at the races. The sun had shone and she had backed a winner. The blue and white polka-dot; two weddings and Harry’s farewell send-off. The sun had not shone and the singing had rasped in her ears. She rejected the polka-dot and the stripey two-piece and settled provisionally on the dignified blue day dress, with a cardigan at the ready.

  She tried to imagine what the excursion would be like, most of the time, in fact. But she just couldn’t imagine Eastbourne without Leonard or any of the rest of them and, whichever bit of it came to mind, she always saw it with Leonard striking a pose in front of it. Like the silly time she had got it into her head that he was sitting waiting for her up in their bedroom, she began to imagine that when she and Alison stepped off the train, somehow Leonard would miraculously be there. She felt she was getting ready for a reunion.

  She didn’t think about it all the time of course. She told herself that she simply mustn’t. She tried to concentrate on less gripping day-to-day matters. She struggled regularly up to Mr Patel’s. He always greeted her with rapturous enthusiasm. Then there was Pearl and, every so often, there was Miss Midgley. But it was no good; at the slightest provocation her thoughts would skitter back to the outing. Pearl said, ‘I’ve been feeling all washed up just lately.’ Miss Midgley said, ‘I know you turn your nose up at the meals on wheels, Mrs Queripel, but it’s a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.’ And Alicia’s mind was straight away on the sea-front.

  It goes without saying that she dreamt about it nightly: fretful, broken dreams from which she woke frequently, not certain straight away where she was and not in the least rested. She would wake in these early summer mornings and hear the birds, Lord knows where, holding forth in their dawn chorus. Aware of some unidentified pain deep in her sleepy workings which had prodded like a splinter at her dreams, she would worry that she was not going to make it after all. She twisted Alison’s well-meant words to torment herself: ‘That’s still over a month away. Will you be able to wait that long? Will you be able to wait?’

  *

  Rob called me into his study. ‘Listen to this,’ he said. ‘For me, this sums up what’s wrong with England today,’ and he started to play me his new interview tapes of unemployed young people in the North-West telling the visiting writer about their empty days. He pulled me on to his lap and sat with his arms close around me as though there were a cold wind blowing out of the tape recorder. The voices were c
hilling, numbly devoid of any rises or falls of emotion, a statement of flat despair. But I was annoyed when the first tape came to an end and, after a severe silence Rob said, ‘Christ yes, some people have real problems.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked sharply. ‘And, ow, let me get down! I’ve got pins and needles.’

  ‘You know perfectly well what I mean,’ said Rob, turning the cassette. ‘All those invented problems some people dream up in their cushy comfortable lives. Ferreting out some far-fetched neurosis just to add a bit of spice to the daily round. These kids have a real problem. This is what we should all be worrying about.’

  ‘I’m not quite sure I do know what you mean,’ I said furiously, which was of course a lie.

  ‘You bloody do,’ Rob answered, and I saw the whole scene had been stage-managed. ‘And I wish you’d do me the favour of letting me know what’s going on. You could barely raise a smile when I came back from Scotland, you looked positively relieved to see the back of me when I went to Teeside and now, the day after tomorrow I’m off again and, before I go, I think it’s time you told me what’s up.’

  I said, ‘Nothing.’

  Rob, who had begun the scene with his back to me, fiddling over the tape recorder, turned round and I saw he was quite white. ‘I’ve never lied to you,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not lying to you,’ I cried shrilly. ‘There’s nothing “going on”. I don’t know what you imagine –’

  ‘You must think I’m a moron,’ Rob said slowly. ‘Or ridiculously possessive or something. I thought I’d always made that clear.’

  ‘Made what clear?’ I demanded. ‘What?’

  Rob said tightly, ‘All I ask is a degree of openness. I genuinely don’t mind about … the rest. But if you are seeing someone, I would have thought the least you could do was let me know about it.’

  ‘Seeing someone?’ I repeated stupidly.

  ‘Oh, cut it out!’ Rob said disagreeably. ‘You know perfectly well I’m not going to play the possessive husband with you. I hope I’ve always made it clear that in that domain you’re … we’re both free agents. All I ask is a bit of basic honesty.’ He gave a hard laugh. ‘I can’t pretend I’m pleased. But if it’s in the context of mutual honesty and respect, because you feel you want to experiment with some aspect of yourself which I can’t cater for, I can handle it. You know bloody well this is nothing of the sort.’