She ate in silence for a while. Burt, next to her, was also silent and that was a relief. Around her there was some talk of Arsenal, and Claire listened to some argument about it. At her table there seemed to be some good-natured teasing between three men, one of whom they called ‘Badger’. Claire wasn’t sure if that was the man’s first name, last name, an abbreviation for ‘bachelor’ or – probably unlikely – a reference to The Wind in the Willows. He was getting married – or had just been. Or perhaps had never been. She found it was difficult to understand their speech.
‘Another tea?’ the waitress asked, showing up at Claire’s shoulder. Claire nodded then tried to work out how she could get it black. ‘With or without?’ the waitress asked again and Claire had the courage to ask.
‘Without what?’
‘Without sugar,’ the woman said, as if only a simpleton would ask the question.
Claire picked up the cup. The china was as thick as her finger. ‘I’d like it without sugar and without milk.’
‘Without milk? Daft.’ The waitress shrugged. ‘Is that the way you all drink it?’ Claire nodded. The waitress shook her head. ‘No wonder you’ve picked such arses for presidents. You drink your tea all wrong.’
‘Well, I have always wondered why we have fifty candidates for Miss America and only two for president,’ Claire said. Most of the men as well as the waitress laughed.
She looked at Claire. ‘You are from the States, then? You’re not a Canadian or an Aussie?’
‘No. I’m from New York.’
This started an entire flood of conversation. People’s brothers, children, mothers, or friends had been to New York and to Orlando. Burt, who had cleaned the plate beside hers, smiled at her with his store-bought teeth. ‘Me wife’s been to Orlando. Went with her sister. Do you like it?’
‘I’ve never been,’ Claire told him. ‘I live in New York.’
‘Haven’t been to Orlando? And you live right there?’ He shook his head. ‘How do you get to Disney World, then?’
‘I’ve never been,’ Claire repeated and decided that it was best not to add that she’d never wanted to go. But because Burt was eyeing her she smiled apologetically. ‘I don’t like Mickey.’
‘She doesn’t like Mickey Mouse!’ he said aloud.
‘I thought that was illegal in the States,’ a younger man with red whiskers commented. There was some laughter, which made Claire’s face flush.
‘It is,’ she said. ‘I did a term in prison, but escaped. That’s why I’m here. I’m wanted.’
This raised a lot of good-natured laughter. After that Claire kept her eye on her plate and was left alone, though a few men went on to chafe the ginger-haired man about something else she didn’t comprehend. While they were clearly working men, Claire was surprised to hear that none of them used profanity. No one called anyone else a ‘dumb mother-fucker’, the way Jerry and his pals would have at the drop of a bean. And there were no fart jokes, which beans would have automatically introduced in Jerry’s world back home. She wondered if the English knew ‘beans, beans, the musical fruit’, a favorite poem of Jerry’s.
Claire finished as much of everything (but the musical beans) as she could. When the waitress came by asking if she wanted yet another cup she shook her head and was presented with a tiny piece of paper with some numbers scribbled on it. Her meal was surprisingly cheap. Less than five dollars, as close as Claire could figure it. She put down some money, including a big tip, and when the waitress came back to collect it Claire screwed up her courage and asked if the woman ‘might know about an inexpensive guest house or hotel nearby’.
‘Well, this isn’t much of a tourist zone,’ the waitress said. ‘Not where people stay, anyway – they mostly just come to the market at the weekends.’ She turned and faced the back. ‘Hey, Jacko, do you know a good B & B nearby?’
There were several shouted suggestions but the waitress condemned whatever incomprehensible things were said. Then, when a deep voice issued out of the door to the back everyone stopped talking. ‘Me brother’s sister-in-law Madge has a place,’ the voice – possibly Jacko’s – said. ‘She’s cheese-paring. She don’t do breakfasts, and I know she stews her tea, but she isn’t a slut so things would be tidy enough.’
Claire wasn’t warmed by the mention of the woman as a slut, but the waitress looked down at Claire and patted her shoulder. ‘Interested?’ she asked. ‘I’ll get you the address if you like.’ Claire had no other choice so she nodded.
While the waitress was gone Claire surreptitiously added another coin to the stack for payment. Maybe she had found not only a place to eat but a place to sleep for the night. The waitress returned with another tiny piece of paper. An address, almost indecipherable, was scrawled there. 238A Chamberley Terrace. Claire read it out loud to make sure she had it right.
‘That’s it, luv. See here. Her name is Mrs Watson.’ Then the waitress – along with several of the customers – gave her directions, all of which seemed contradictory. Claire took out her A to Z, and Burt located Chamberley Terrace, which didn’t seem to be too distant.
Claire thanked them all and set off again, this time with a full stomach and even more optimism. Who had told her that the British were reserved?
TWENTY-THREE
The farther Claire walked away from Camden Lock the less picturesque the surroundings became. Though the name sounded elegant, there were no window boxes or front yard plantings along Chamberley Terrace. There weren’t even front gardens. Just a row of small houses with doors opening right on the street and an ugly, long new building on the other side. The houses were small brick ones, almost all of them with paint flaking off the window frames. Here and there, like a snaggle tooth in a row of dull smaller teeth was a larger but not necessarily better-kept house. When she found her destination, it wasn’t very appealing.
Mrs Watson, Claire was relieved to see, was far too old to be a slut. Skinny and dry she looked more like a witch with permed hair. She answered Claire’s knock, opened the door and hustled her into the dim foyer. Claire was amazed to find the house so much bigger than it had looked from the outside. The woman led her up three dim floors which Claire noticed had at least six rooms each, and finally they reached the tiny dark available room. Mrs Watson said she charged eighteen pounds a night, and that it was an enormous bargain, but ‘Mind you, there are no accounts. Tea and toast are all in but not a cooked breakfast.’ This confused Claire but she was suddenly so tired she nodded her head and handed Mrs Watson a twenty-pound note.
‘Here you go.’ Her new landlady fished into the pocket of her apron (Claire hadn’t seen an apron in New York in fifteen years and today she’d already seen two) and handed Claire one of those strange, gold-centered two-pound coins. Claire nodded her thanks and was left alone.
Claire unzipped her suitcase and then looked around the room. She was both thrilled and apprehensive. It certainly wasn’t the Berkeley but it wasn’t just a room, it was her room. The first place she’d ever rented on her own in her whole life. The room was tiny – with just enough space for the bed under the window and a wardrobe on the opposite wall. There wasn’t even a bedside table. Instead, a kitchen chair with a small lamp stood beside the head of the bed. There was a small chipped sink, and a bathroom down the hall, apparently to be shared with three strangers from the other rooms. The view was rather dismal – a wall of ugly, new windows in an ugly glazed brick building.
She opened the wardrobe, empty except for a sad mixed flock of hangers. There were a couple of bent wire ones, a plastic one that seemed to be a child’s, and three wooden ones, one of which had the name of a real hotel printed on it. There were two thin towels on the shelf above the hangers. Claire took them down, put them on the bed and began to unpack. She found the act very soothing. Her shoes went on the floor of the wardrobe. Above it her trousers, her single dress and her blouses hung in a little huddle together. She folded her sweaters and put them on the shelf above, along with her underwear, since
there was no bureau or drawer to put them in. Her nightgown and robe she hung on the hook on the back of the door. Her bag was now empty, except for her cosmetics and toiletries, which she placed on the sink.
Then, before she stowed her case under the bed she saw the little package wrapped in newspaper. It was the enameled box from Michael. Slowly, almost reluctantly, she took it out and unwrapped it. The lovely colors and the two-hundred-year-old craftsmanship glowed in her hand, a spot of perfect beauty in the dingy room. When this you see, remember me. As if she could forget. How could she have thought, even for a moment, that Michael would think of her? By now he would be in the departure lounge, deeply involved in his workload for Monday, and she was most likely the farthest thing from his mind. Perhaps by now he already had a date lined up with Katherine or one of the half-dozen other women he had available to him. Claire’s lips trembled.
To be fair, the little box was honest. What it said was that she should remember him, not that he would remember her. And, she firmly reminded herself, she never expected that he would remember her. She could choose to be bitter and miserable or she could choose to be glad for the spot of beauty and days of pleasure that she had received. She thought of Abigail then and Abigail’s sound advice. She reminded herself that the only thing she had to be bitter about was that she was not a Katherine Rensselaer or anybody remotely like her. In good conscience she couldn’t even be bitter that Michael had lied to her and made a ‘business date’ when it was clearly with a woman. For all she knew they might have talked business. Even if he had slept with her it was no business of Claire’s. Michael hadn’t indicated that he loved her or acted as if she was anything special to him. All he had done was invite her on a trip. He had only done so after his other possibilities had been tapped out. Claire reminded herself that she had absolutely nothing to be angry about.
Fact was that she was not, and would never be, in the same class as Katherine Rensselaer. Her dad had been a failure, her mother had never even read a novel, her brother was a private in the Army and she herself had not even finished college. Her clothes were inferior, her body inferior and her education inferior. If some of that wasn’t her fault, some of it was. To think of herself with Michael was ridiculous.
She looked down at the little box. She would keep it. And, no doubt, whenever she did see it she would think of him. The fact that she was nowhere on his radar didn’t change anything. But she wouldn’t let herself be sentimental. It was a pretty box, she would enjoy looking at it and she would never confuse it with a love-token. She wrapped it up, put it in her suitcase and forced herself to smile.
Once the box was out of sight and she was settled in, Claire experienced a feeling of great accomplishment, almost as if she had built the room, not just rented it. She took her knitting and her book and placed them on the bed near the very flat pillow. Then she sat down, took off her shoes and considered her options.
She’d never done anything as mad as this, but somehow she no longer felt nervous or concerned. Instead of worrying, she just reached into her purse, took out her little notebook and began to do some arithmetic. If the room were eighteen pounds a night, and a good breakfast with tip was four pounds fifty, and she took a bus or the tube some place one way for a few pounds and later walked all the way back that would cost her almost twenty-four pounds per day. And that didn’t include any other meals, laundry, admission fees to sights, and certainly no tea and scones on the House of Commons terrace. Claire smiled at the memory. But didn’t allow herself to dwell on it. Not on the sex, not on the world of luxury and not on the humiliation. Right now Mr Wonderful was about to get on a plane, moving ever further away from her until, by this evening, they would be separated by more than three thousand miles. That was just fine. Because they were separated by more than that in social terms when they worked on the same floor at Crayden Smithers. Claire wouldn’t allow herself to feel separated from Michael. They had never been together.
She looked back down at the pad and continued to work at the math. If she gave herself another four pounds a day for groceries and incidentals, that brought the total up to twenty-eight pounds. She took out her wallet and carefully counted her money. She had about nineteen days in which to find a job. The thought didn’t daunt her. She wasn’t afraid of working and she had always been able to work hard. She smiled to herself. Somehow, effortlessly, she had managed to do this thing and she felt more adventurous, more intrepid, than any Cortez could ever have felt. Because explorers were, by nature, brave while she, by her nature, was not. And yet she was doing this.
She thought for a moment about her mother. She had told her she was taking ‘a few days off’. She said Atlantic City. After all, she still had her open return ticket tucked beside her passport in the pocket of her suitcase. With that thought, panic struck and she had to scrabble under the bed, pull out her wheelie bag and check to be sure the passport and ticket were there. Of course they were, and her heart stopped pumping at the ridiculous rate it had assumed. In twenty days, if everything went wrong, she could always go back. But, she told herself, things would not go wrong. Claire promised herself she was never going back to Crayden Smithers or Staten Island.
She knew it with as much certainty as she knew the passport and ticket were safely in her possession. But once she’d formed that thought she was compelled, despite the ridiculousness of it, to check once again to be sure she had both. She told herself that would be the last time she did it and, feeling delighted with and sure of herself, she decided to plan the rest of her day. On the way out the door she ran into – almost literally – a woman younger, paler and slimmer than she.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ the woman apologized, though it was clearly Claire’s fault. ‘Do you live here?’ she asked. Claire nodded and introduced herself. ‘Yer from the States, then?’ the woman asked. Claire nodded again. ‘I’m Maudie O’Connor. I’d love to go to the States.’ Just then two children ran up the stairs and grabbed Maudie’s slender legs.
‘Do you baby-sit them?’ Claire asked. Maudie O’Connor looked at her, clearly confused. Maybe they didn’t say ‘babysit’ in London. ‘Are you their nanny?’
‘I’m their mammy,’ Maudie said. Claire could hardly believe that a girl that young had two children. She smiled at both.
‘Do you live here?’
Maudie nodded. ‘Until we get thrown out, which is a bit of a snag,’ she said. ‘Shhh. Hush up, you scamps. Don’t get up to any of your jiggery-pokery. Do you want that Watson witch down on us again?’ She hustled the tow-haired boys down the hall. ‘Nice to meet yer,’ she called back. Claire nodded and went out to the street.
It had felt like a long walk to Chamberley Terrace but she had been pulling her wheelie bag, her stuffed purse and her canvas sack. She decided she would take the walk back to the market and look around. It seemed such a wild mix of people, goods, and foods and the setting looked like some abandoned Dickensian workhouse. She took her A to Z, consulted the streets she’d already walked, put the little book of maps in her canvas bag, just in case, and added her change purse and a lip gloss. That was all she needed to carry. She changed her shoes to the more comfortable pair and regretted, for a moment, that she hadn’t brought her sneakers. But these would do fine and she was pleased to see that when she looked in the mirror built into the wardrobe she didn’t quite look like a tourist. She didn’t quite look like a native either. Well perhaps she could be a bit mysterious for the first time in her life.
Traveling light, she thought, must be the secret to happiness. Looking into the wardrobe with her few but more than adequate clothes was deeply satisfying. She didn’t have one thing more than she needed and it felt liberating. She took her toiletries to the bathroom, which was rather grim and was literally what it was called – there was no shower – and then almost skipped down the short flight of steps and out the door.
She was very proud when she managed to get back to the bridge on Camden High Street without even looking at her A to Z. She�
��d gotten confused once where a bendy street had tempted her to go in the wrong direction but she had recognized a small grocery store and made the right choice by walking past it.
If anything now, at half-past two, the market was busier than ever. Claire felt a little tug in her stomach at the thought that Michael Wainwright would probably be boarding his flight and sitting down in First Class at this very moment, but she cheerfully reflected (in a phrase Tina frequently used) that she’d been there and done that and had never been here and done this.
From the bridge she could see a stairway from the street down to the lock and the willowed path that ran along it. Claire followed that first. The canal seemed to go on and on, a brick-bordered river that wound along between steep-sided warehouses. It seemed romantic and industrial at the same time – a cross between Venice and Pittsburgh (though Claire had been to neither one).
But as the path became deserted she became nervous. Anything could happen in this empty spot. How many bodies had turned up in the canal? Before she got morbid she turned back to the overabundant noise and crowds of the market. From the canal there were a dozen entrances into the courtyard and warehouse, each more inviting than the last. Some were up iron stairs, others through brick archways, and a couple of large ones led through gates that at one time must have enclosed the manufacturing yard. She went through an arched door in the wall and came out on a cobblestone ground where dozens – perhaps hundreds – of tables were set up with every conceivable kind of goods, and quite a few that seemed inconceivable to Claire. Tibetan jewelry covered a table beside another one where South American wooden bowls were stacked. A step further led her past African masks and sculpture to a table of T-shirts and next there was modern silver jewelry being sold by the designer.
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