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The Microcosm

Page 18

by Maureen Duffy


  Here, here it is, the Bayswater Road and on the other side Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. Which way shall I go? Over into the park and walk about among those trees? No, I’ll save that, just knowing it’s there is enough for now. What happens at the end of this road? Marble Arch and Oxford Street. That’s the way then. Shall I walk or take a bus. There seem to be long queues. Must be nearly the rush hour. They have that in Bradford too. Walk then, you’re warm enough. Catch sight of yourself in one of those windows. Don’t look so bad either the jacket and jeans. Glad I bought them now though it was a bit of a wrench at the time parting with five whole weeks savings in half an hour. And nobody turns to look. Have you noticed that? At home I wouldn’t have got twenty yards up the high street without all the wives and the lads turning, screwing their necks for a good eyeful. And how much more sensible they are on a windy day like this, hint of rain up there too. Look at those clouds and the blue bits between just a bit overbright. Those girls in their full skirts and long thin legs in nylons and a couple of straps for shoes must be fair starved. Funny to be walking past buses looking in at all those faces and not one I know or who knows me. Not many bikes either, all cars with one person in taking up half the road and moving at a snail’s pace. There goes a lad on a scooter passing them all. Good lad, that’s the way to do it. No sense in hanging back with that lot.

  It’s farther than it looks on the map; still I must be getting along now, uphill too. All those squares and streets with trees on the left must have been very fashionable once. It must have been easier living in those days, easier to disguise yourself and go away where nobody knew you. Heathcliff for instance, went away and made his fortune in America and came back to claim his Cathy, only she’d given him up, never really believed he’d do it, and now he had all the girls after him. What was it they called it in that book: wish fulfilment and so I suppose not really true. But it’s a nice thought all the same when you’ve been starved of … of what? What was it they didn’t give me? Affection? No, not really, at least no less than a lot of children. Appreciation, that’s it, appreciation of myself, of my individuality, what I am and can do rather than what they want of me or think I ought to be.

  What’s this now, the whole road opening out into a square with traffic tearing round at a tremendous rate. How do I get past this lot? That must be Marble Arch itself over there. I see: if you can’t go over you go under, down the subway with all the other ants and up the other side into Oxford Street. And then what? Another cup of coffee I think and then the pictures and an early night. Enough for one day. I’ve got plenty of others.

  The picture was foreign, the seat pneumatically comfortable and expensive. When she came out a little dazed from trying to follow the colloquial French and the erratic sub-titles at the same time, the street seemed just as full of people and cars, light fell in great washes over the pavement from the plate glass windows of the big stores. Cathy ate an egg on toast in a snack bar and then walked slowly back the way she’d come, surprised to see that the sky above the park wasn’t black or even blue but glowed a sombre red as if the whole city were on fire. Hell some people would call it, she thought, but I like it. It gives you a feeling of warmth and excitement, and all these people walking about as if it was a summer’s holiday whereas at home at this time its as dead as wakes week with everyone glued to the little box, shut up in their own living rooms like they were boxed up already and waiting for the hearse to cart them away. That’s what they’ll be doing now. They’ll have worked out what to tell the neighbours and relations about me to save face and now they’ll be sitting there able to watch what they like without feeling my silent criticism seeping over the edges of my book and gathering in a corrosive pool on the best carpet. Oh it’s best for all of us I’m sure of that at this moment when it’s done and if anything I should be beginning to feel lonely and that it’s all a terrible mistake.

  As she turned the handle and stepped into the hall the smell of cooking was even stronger than before and climbing the second flight she saw that one of the other residents was busy at the stove alternately stirring the contents of two saucepans with a wooden spoon. He turned towards her as she reached his level, bowed with his spoon and held out a thin brown hand.

  ‘Good evening. You are new here. I am Nala. So pleased to meet you. How do you do. You are staying long? You are English? Do you like curry? I make very good curry. You must come and have supper in my room.’

  Cathy shook hands with him, mesmerised by the flutter of questions and wondering which, if any, it would be wise to answer.

  ‘You are hungry? You like some curry?’

  ‘Thanks very much but I’ve just eaten and I’m rather tired. Another time perhaps.’

  ‘Next time I shall insist. Tomorrow. Good night. Sleep well. I am very pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Most agreeable mannered,’ she thought as she closed and bolted the door behind her, but I wonder how you say no.

  Finding a job turned out to be easy. It even suggested itself. At breakfast there were only two of them, herself and what looked like a middle-aged business man who’d made a dreadful mistake in coming there and was leaving at once. The cornflakes were stale and took on a tough rubbery consistency as she poured the milk on. The egg too had been left to keep hot and lose all flavour in the oven while the meagre slice of bacon shrivelled beside it. The girl who served them swore at the hot plates, plonked down a plateful of hewn hunks of stale brown bread and slopped the tea on the cloth. She seemed barely awake, hair uncombed, red feet in soiled mules. There was no sign of Nala or any other of the gentlemen, perhaps being students they didn’t get up too early.

  Cathy was glad to get out of the house and into the air which was colder this morning and a little stale as if it had been up all night. It needs a shower to give it a good wash, she thought, still it’s better than in there. I don’t think I care for curry with all my meals but if I’ve paid for them I feel I ought to eat them just to make my money go farther. Shall I take a bus or walk? The eternal question here when you don’t know how far you might be going. I wonder where the public library is. I doubt if it’d be much good asking Madame What’s-her-name. I shouldn’t think she spends the long evenings with a book. Here’s the station again and there’s a bus. What’s that on the side of it? Join London Transport as a driver or conductor. Why not? Hey it’s off. Where do I go to join?

  ‘So you start your training tomorrow,’ the man in the peaked cap said. She nodded. ‘Subject to your being satisfactory of course you’ll be running up and down stairs like nobody’s business in a couple of weeks. Do you think you’ll stand it?’

  ‘Oh I’m used to being on my feet all day.’

  ‘Good girl. We’ll see you in the morning then.’

  And now all I need is a room and I’d better be quick about it for I shan’t have much time for looking once I start work. I wonder how you go about that here. I think I’d like to be somewhere not too far from here. It’s such a big place this London you could go on looking for miles til you were dropping in your tracks and your shoes walked through to your socks but I’ve fallen here and I’d like to stay here. Funny that they always said I was rootless, would never settle to anything but I want to settle here where I suppose there must be one of the most shifting collections of people in the world, people like Babs and Nala. I wonder if she found them agreeable-mannered. That’s something she won’t have told them at home, and then coming back and marrying that little wisp of a chap that’ll live and die a moulder in Bilthorpe’s.

  He must have been waiting for her, she decided, waiting for her to come in. There was a soft scratching at the door, and when she drew back the bolt as silently as possible and opened it Nala was standing there smiling.

  ‘Have you eaten yet? I do hope not because if you remember we have a date. You have promised to eat curry in my room this evening and it will be ready in a very short time.’

  She didn’t remember promising but she nodded her head and asked him
the number of his room. Perhaps he could tell her where to find somewhere to stay or at least how to begin looking and he seemed very friendly. She remembered something about the Colonel’s lady and Susie O’Grady being all the same under the skin but wasn’t sure how it fitted this particular moment.

  ‘Come in please,’ he called to her as she reached the open door. She stood just inside for a moment, not sure what to do next, watching him flit about the room with light quick movements. Darting at the bed he plumped a couple of bright scatter cushions which didn’t wince or give in their tight jackets and waved her into position on what had become an eastern divan with one graceful gesture of his hand. ‘Please sit down and make yourself comfortable. Here is a magazine. If you excuse me I go and finish my cooking.’ He laughed, bowed and was gone.

  She sat down obediently on the bed and opened the magazine. It seemed to be full of people talking in groups and turning to smile at the camera, attending garden parties, reviewing troops, opening huge modern buildings that looked like hospitals or colleges, and everywhere the sun shone, hands were raised in gestures of benediction, faces smiled while keeping their repose and dignity, and the shadows were steep and black. Then came a series of pictures showing a lot of obviously poor men sitting in a rough circle on the ground listening to a very serious address from a man in a very light western suit; old men talking together gravely, a little girl with wild straggling hair and thin twig-like limbs barely supporting the potbelly of malnutrition, her eyes showing only the apathy of hunger, and finally a group of doctors preparing for an operation. After this there was a splendid shot in colour of an elaborately carved temple in red stone and then another garden party. The women, she thought, looked particularly beautiful with their calm faces and sad eyes above the bright painting of their saris.

  ‘That one is my father,’ Nala had come silently into the room bearing two heaped platefuls of rice and sauce. Would he shut the door? Cathy wasn’t sure whether she wanted him to or not. With it open anyone going up or down stairs would see her sitting on the bed eating but once it was shut she had a feeling that the situation would develop too rapidly in the close intimacy of the small bedroom. He put the two plates on the dressing table and closed the door. ‘You see, that one there. He is a very important man in our country. My father sends me this paper always when he is in it. You have not eaten curry before?’ She shook her head. ‘You will find it very hot therefor I am giving you a glass of water to take with it. Also I have a bottle of wine for us to drink.’

  ‘But I thought you didn’t drink anything intoxicating.’

  ‘Oh that is only the religious people and the Moslems. I am not religious. It is very terrible for my father because he is a very religious man. He fasts and he does not live with my mother but searches for his true self. But it is not too bad for him after all because his religion teaches him that the wheel spins and I too will be old and religious one day.’

  ‘So he’s just like all the fathers then.’

  ‘Oh exactly, the old men are all the same. They land us in a pretty mess and then they say, one day you will be like us and you will understand all the difficulties we have had. I have written all these things to my father and he has answered me that I am very young and too much influenced by the ideas I learn from my western teachers at college. You like the curry? It is very good. Because it is your first time of eating I do not make it too hot. Also the wine is good with it. Let me fill you up. It is good for you. I see you are rather pale and it will give you a good colour in the face.’

  ‘It’s strange to think of you disagreeing with your father all those miles away.’

  ‘Oh that is why I came here. One day I said I am going away to learn what they do in other countries about all these problems and so I came here to be a student at the London School of Economics.’

  ‘And he didn’t try to stop you?’

  ‘Oh no. Really he is very proud of me and it is good for him to be able to say my son is studying economics because that is what we need more than anything else. You see this picture? That is a most terrible thing that it should have to be. Because there are so many people in my country and every year more children, too many mouths to feed and everywhere hunger in the streets now they have a big campaign for sterilisation. Here you see they are talking to the poor people telling how much the government will pay them to have no more children. And all this is because they have not thought of all this a long time ago. Here is a picture of a temple.’

  ‘It’s very beautiful. All those carvings; every square inch of it covered.’

  ‘Yes they are very fine but it is a good job that you can’t see them very well too close because they are very frank carvings of the old ways of the religious legends.’

  ‘I’ve seen some of them. The Karma Sutra we had it in the library on the closed shelf of course, not for the general public except on request but I thought a lot of the pictures were very good.’

  ‘Ex-actly. They are very good for those who understand them but when there is no understanding … Now it is the fashion in my country to say among the educated and the middle class that they are very bad and we are becoming as narrow minded as the old lady Queen Victoria. Now they say we must be like my father and not sleep with my mother and we must all practise the karma yoga which will liberate us from the tyranny of the body like Christian monks and nuns. But of what use is it to say this to a man who must work very hard all the days for a little rice and only have holiday on a feast day of the gods when he will remember the old stories of the loves of Krishna and sleep with his wife because that is the only happy moment in his life. For too long the rich, old religious men have despised the body and its vital life and it has grown unchecked until now it will swallow them and all their prayers all together in one great hungry mouth. So I write my father.’

  ‘And he was angry?’

  ‘No because it is a terrible thing to be angry. You must not be concerned with such trivial matters for it would only be your pride that makes you angry and that is bad for you. And so you see nothing is done. Then one day all the poor men who have any strength left in their weak bodies will become communists and kill them all and take over the country and they will die with very surprised looks on their faces. Oh yes I see it all ex-actly how it will be.’

  ‘Are you a communist then?’

  ‘Good gracious that too would be a terrible thing, very terrible. I would not dream of such a thing. Excuse me, I talk too much about these things and I will bore you.’

  ‘Oh no I think it’s all very interesting. It all seems very obvious to me the way you put it.’

  ‘That is most kind of you to be interested in my problems. But that is another thing; the women of my country are still not altogether emancipated. Some of them yes but not many to whom I could talk as I am talking to you. It is so pleasant to sit like this and have intelligent conversation with a charming young lady. In my country this is not possible. Oh you can’t imagine how good it is for me to have someone to talk to like this. Mrs. Hardcombe is always most willing of course but she is a little too old and she frightens us.’

  ‘Frightens you?’

  ‘She is like the man-eating tiger. She would devour us until there are only our shoes left. I have been so lonely but now you have come and everything will be alright. I am such a Romantic. It is because of my name. Nala was the name of a great king in one of the stories who suffered much for love. He fell in love before he had even seen the most beautiful Dalmayanti. Have you enjoyed the curry? Now we shall finish the bottle of wine and you shall talk to me. I am longing to hear all about you. Excuse me one moment while I wash the plates.’

  She wondered whether she should offer to help him but there seemed so little to do and the wash-basin was so small that she decided it would be safer to stay where she was or even to get up and walk around the room, look at the magazine again, the few books and pictures while watching Nala at the same time, the light graceful movements that fascinated her wit
h their subtleness and femininity. Yet although he was slight and no taller than herself, his hands as slender as a dancer’s, his eyes large and fringed with long fine lashes, she realised that he was not at all girlish and would have been very surprised to think that she had ever considered him so for a moment. The other men in the magazine all looked the same yet they were so potent that mass sterilisation had to be initiated to stop the population devouring itself. She remembered an old book they’d had in the library called Mother India which was all about the miseries and pains of Indian women, and the sad calm faces at the garden parties, the harems and the child marriages. There had been periods in English society too when the men had seemed almost effeminate. They’d read the School for Scandal as a set book for ‘O’ level but, she thought, they’d been periods of great sexual excitement with woman as the quarry and a double standard for the sexes since it was always the worst rake who married the chaste though witty heroine while the women who’d been his prey and comfort throughout were thrown on the scrap heap. Behind the façade of the fop lurked the same self confidence in masculine superiority enjoyed by the Garsley lads as they roared through the town on Saturday night, greasy hair whipped into rats’ tails, plastic leather jerkins shining black as a stormtrooper’s jackboots or slashed against the wall beside the British Legion at closing time. Not even Babs who had nothing to lose would pass there without an escort after half past seven. It would take her a long time to get over this feeling of freedom, Cathy thought, walking the streets of the city at night without the continual fear of being emotionally molested, set upon by catcalls, shouted invitations with the terror that one day she wouldn’t be able to hurry past fast enough looking straight ahead, and an arm would shoot out, catch her, bring her close to the grinning face, the breath stained with nicotine and beer.

 

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