‘Dinner ready?’ John said.
‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘You were lost in thought. Penny for them?’ He picked up the tray she had prepared and carried it into the sitting room.
When they were comfortable, she said: ‘I was thinking how times have changed. I mean, in our day the only things that were “switched on” were lights. Do you realise that whole breeds are dead or dying – maternity nurses, maiden aunts, sewing ladies, companions – and au pairs, babysitters, home helps, and flatmates have been born?’
‘Coal was delivered by horse and cart,’ John said, warmingto the game, ‘and chicken was for Sundays.’
‘We had trams, silk stockings, and lace mats under glass.’
‘Milkmen had horses, tobacconists sold tobacco, and when you went to the barber you knew you were going to get short back and sides.’
‘It is beyond their comprehension,’ Helen said, ‘the children’s, I mean, that we had no boutiques, heated rollers, tights, astronauts, supermarkets, or disposable nappies and dishcloths. That we existed without washing machines, and waste grinders. That “engagements” meant just that and that “diamonds were for ever”.’
‘Can you imagine me,’ John said, ‘having my hair set?’
‘Or me wearing patched blue jeans and plimsolls?’
‘Pets were fed on household scraps, nothing drip-dried …’
‘One had neither ballpoint pens and aerosols, nor polythene bags …’
‘… Parking meters, Sellotape, fish fingers …’
‘… Launderettes, instant puddings, the Pill …’
‘They do not realise,’ Helen said, finishing up the last of the peaches in brandy, ‘quite how fortunate they are.’ She listened. ‘Was that the bell?’
‘I don’t think so.’ John stood up. ‘Yes, it was. Who the devil could it be?’
‘If you answer it you’ll find out,’ Helen said, as she had been doing for the past twenty-six years. He was the same with letters, never opening one until he’d turned it this way and that, examined the stamp, held it to the light and speculated who it could be from. She heard voices in the hall and piled the remains of supper on to the tray.
‘Guess who?’ a familiar voice said from the door, before she had time to make it to the kitchen with the tray.
‘Jane!’
She sat down, overcome with weakness. What was the trouble? Surely they hadn’t decided on divorce after two hours! Had Nick walked out? Jane changed her mind? In the blink of an eye she saw herself pushing her grandchildren triumphantly down the high street, nodding patronisingly to Iris on the other side of the road; in the stores at Christmas time buying dolls with interchangeable wardrobes.
‘It’s all right, Mother,’ Jane said.
‘Is Nick with you?’ Helen asked suspiciously.
‘Of course. He’s talking to Dad.’
‘Then I don’t understand.’
‘It’s quite simple,’ Jane said. ‘We guessed the two of you would be sitting here in this huge house, supper on a tray …’
Helen pulled it towards her defensively.
‘… playing games.’
‘Games!’ Helen said incredulously, wondering what had come over her daughter. ‘When did you last see your dad and me playing games? Any sort of games. He can’t play bridge, never did have a head for cards of any description …’
‘I didn’t mean that kind of game.’
‘What on earth did you mean, then?’ Helen asked.
‘“Do You Remember?”’ Jane said gently. ‘I bet – well, Nick and I both bet, actually – that you’d be sitting here, the two of you, recalling how it cost a penny on the tram from Gran’s to the Town Hall …’
‘Tuppence!’ Helen said.
‘… hair was permanently waved, and the only sort of wedding was white, usually floral, and preferably choral.’
‘What utter rubbish!’ Helen said. ‘We weren’t doing any such thing.’
‘So we decided, Nick and I,’ Jane said, ignoring her, ‘that since it might be an awfully long while before we see you again, and since we don’t have to be at the airport until five in the morning, which means leaving at three, that we’d like to take you out. We’ve got tickets and it’s a good play, so get your skates on, there’s a darling.’
Helen said dazedly: ‘A theatre! But don’t you want to … I mean you and Nick … the wedding …?’
‘Mother!’ Jane was laughing.
‘I’d forgotten,’ Helen said, picking up the tray once more, primly, ‘times have changed.’
At Jane’s insistence she left the supper plates and the chaos in the kitchen, which she protested half-heartedly would not clear itself away, and put on her rose silk coat again.
The play, a comedy from Broadway, had Helen laughing until the new mascara she had invested in for her ‘mother-of-the-bride’ role was running down her face.
After the theatre, dismissing the tinned chicken and peaches in brandy, which Helen had to admit to herself had been some time ago, Nick insisted on taking them to dinner at a cellar restaurant, open all night, where the food was super and Helen felt frightfully old. By the end of dinner, however, the dolly birds did not seem quite so young, or the music quite so loud, and John was laughing as she hadn’t seen him do in months, and before they realised it was one in the morning.
‘We must take you home now,’ Nick said, ‘or we shall miss our plane.’
At home, the curled-up sandwiches in the kitchen did not seem so sad.
‘We will go out more,’ John said in the bedroom.
‘There are loads of new places to eat we don’t even know about,’ Helen said, reaching for a hanger.
‘We will sell this house!’ John said decisively.
Helen stared at him. They had lived in it since they were married and John had always declared that there he would die.
Now he was saying: ‘We’ll buy a flat, a small flat …’
‘But the garden?’ She always teased that he loved her less than his roses.
‘We shall go abroad, travel …’
‘The business?’
‘There are younger men.’
‘Where would we go?’
‘Does it matter?’ John said. ‘Do you realise that after twenty-six years of hard labour we are free? Free!’
Helen pitied Iris with the heavy brood of grandchildren she pushed daily down the high street, and Geraldine ploughing hotly round the shops. She saw vividly the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal, the Leaning Tower of Pisa … they might pop in to New Zealand on the way.
In bed, John said: ‘In our day, when you waved people off on their honeymoon that was that!’
‘Yes,’ said Helen contentedly, making herself comfortable. ‘Do you remember?’
The Pink Case
1975
I travel for my magazine – one of the better-known fashion glossies. I suppose you would call it a job in a million: Kenya, Canada, Finland, Lapland, Argentina, Japan … you never know from one moment to the next where the Fashion Editor’s fancy will take her, and you have to be ready to pack your bags and go at a moment’s notice; footloose and fancy-free.
You must know the sort of thing. A black wrap-around (cotton for coolness) against the wide blue yonder of the Persian Gulf. Click. White ankle-length in Waikiki. Click. Sables on the Ponte Vecchio. Click.
We might spend days in Bahrain and finally get one picture so that all the chicks would rush like lemmings to the classy boutiques for the cheesecloth shift or the espadrilles, or whatever it was we were plugging.
No matter that our model was covered with bites and had been up all night with the trots and that the espadrilles fitted nowhere. It was my job to get it together so that she looked suitably happy, that the photographer was sober enough to do his stuff, the hairdresser and the make-up girl in the right place at the right time and not scuba diving or chatting up the locals with a view to business, amorous or otherwise.
It isn’t e
asy, believe me. I earn my money. You could arrive in Bangkok without one vital piece of a two-piece ensemble; in Detroit, on a hair-fine schedule, the thousands of cars all nicely aligned, and the cameraman still arguing with Narcotics over what they swore was dope but which in actual fact were pills prescribed by his doctor for hay fever.
I was good, you see, about dealing with people. I could wheedle my way round obstreperous Customs Officials; produce rooms in hotels that were fully booked; think ahead, so that the whole team with all its paraphernalia remained together in good health and with their wits about them, to all intents and purposes at any rate.
It was one of fate’s odder quirks that the first time in over twelve years I slipped up seriously was in regard to myself.
Of course, it had to be Jamaica! The land of ‘soon come’ and tropical torpor. In Paris or New York the action might have been somewhat faster.
When I first got the job – the promotion, I mean – and the travelling started, my father bought me a Louis Vuitton travelling kit, brown canvas with the squiggles which were actually the designer’s initials interwoven into the dark-brown leather trim. I know it set him back quite a bit. I was thrilled at the time; jetting round the world with my classy luggage. It took me a while to realise that about two-thirds of the travelling population seemed to have identical suitcases.
Whether imitation, plastic trim instead of leather, and not quite the right initials, it didn’t matter. I’d stand next to the porter in Sydney where it all got shunted round and round on a playground merry-go-round, yelling, ‘That’s it! No, hang on, it looks like it but it isn’t … That one! No, mine has a strap …’
It was a sudden decision. The week before I had walked into the travel department of a well-known store and bought one large, roomy, lightweight case in what I can call hideous, shrieking pink. All I had to do was learn the word for pink in a million different languages and – bingo! I’d be away while the others were still searching for the word for porter.
We left Sydney in 12 degrees, raining. I had my fur coat over the blue jeans in which I always travelled – I liked to be comfortable – and a T-shirt topped by various sweaters that I could peel off to suit the climate.
We travelled on a 747; our little team of six with enough temperament between us for a football side, a lot of China-men making a lot of Chinese noise, and a random selection of others. Roughly seventy of us on a plane capable of carrying almost four hundred. Not bad! It mitigated the tedium of the film, the plastic food, the baby, belonging to an American couple, who didn’t stop crying all the way to JFK.
We had five hours to spend at Kennedy. Being in transit, there was nothing we could do but eat and sleep and cuss out the first-class passengers who until then had been segregated from us mere mortals in another part of the plane; splendid isolation from the proles, with their own little upstairs bar.
I was halfway through my pastrami on rye – two inches thick with pickles and French fries on the side – when I caught sight of him. He was the sole only likely-looking man in the whole crowd.
Although I was pushing thirty next birthday, you see, I hadn’t given up, the only trouble being that the older you got the narrower the field seemed to become. I had no intention, however, of spending the rest of my life either alone or embroiled in the trauma of some impermanent liaison.
He was tall and dark and as impeccable, even after eight hours, as only an Italian can be: biscuit suit, black shoes, crisp white shirt, dark tie with a pearl pin. Boy, oh boy! I looked around for a companion but he seemed to be alone.
Sara, our model, interrupted my daydreams to say she had a headache and a sore throat and thought she was sickening for something; she threatened chickenpox, as it was around in her kid sister’s school. By the time I had calmed her down and dosed her up it was time to transfer to the DC9 and the last leg of the flight to Montego Bay.
At Montego the heat hit you like the steam from a kettle. The natives, standing around in bright coloured shirts and pants, chewing indolently on toothpicks, watched us in silence. There was no trouble with Customs and a taxi driver had been sent to meet us. He carried my new pink case.
The manager of the hotel, a harassed fellow Australian, escorted us to our various bungalows. I helped myself to iced water from the vacuum flask on the bureau, took my nightie from my holdall, switched on the air conditioning, flung myself into one of the trim beds and fell fast asleep.
I slept like the dead, as I always do after travelling, and woke at seven to hear the maid pottering around in the kitchen.
The table was laid on the terrace. Orange juice and butter and coffee and jam and hot toast and hot buns and a wooden bowl of pineapple, bananas and hazeberries artistically arranged.
I lingered as long as I could over breakfast, knowing that as soon as I made a move all hell would be let loose. We did not have too long for each assignment and most of the time it was all go. My first job would be to rouse the others, who would be full of complaints and not at all anxious to get to work.
I decided to give them another half hour, while I bathed and dressed, before I woke them.
The towel was large, white and fluffy, just as I, sybarite that I am, liked them. I swathed myself in it and rummaged in my handbag for the keys of the new case. A swimsuit and a cover-up were all that would be necessary.
The zipper worked smoothly. I turned back the lid and – wow! Where were my cotton shifts, my voile shirts, my cute little numbers for the evening?
The case was packed beautifully and pristinely with trousers and shirts, some of them embroidered, but all of them utterly and unequivocally male. I sat there on the floor, utterly and completely stunned. It was shrieking pink, it appeared to be new but, quite simply, it was not my case. I had a vision of myself swimming, dining, dancing, in my pale-blue nightie which was, to say the least, transparent.
Stupidly, I suppose because I thought it unique, I had not thought to transfer the leather label bearing my name and address from my old case of blessed memory. All that there was, both on my own and on the one before me, was the flight number – to Montego Bay!
And then I thought, he must be somewhere on the island, in the area really if not actually in the hotel, or he would have made straight for Kingston.
Feeling like a criminal I looked vaguely through the garments for clues and felt a surge of embarrassment as I imagined someone searching my own carelessly packed bag in similar fashion. There was no form of identification that I could see, only that the owner was meticulous in his dress and had someone absolutely super to iron his shirts. The only lead I got was that his initials were FC.
Stirring myself to action, I decided that there was nothing for it but to put on the crumpled jeans and the none-too-clean T-shirt I had worn on the flight and call the manager.
Shock number two: before going to bed I had slung my travel-weary garments in the corner by the second of the twin beds. They were no longer there. I closed my eyes and remembered with horror that this was Jamaica.
In the tiny kitchen the maid, whose name I later discovered was Mercedes, was singing to herself.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ she said with a wide smile, ‘I don taken yo clo’s and washed him. Reckon you don’ need dem blue jeans no mo’. Look, de sun shinin’.’
‘When will they be back?’ I asked.
‘Don’t you worry ’bout nothin’, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Soon come!’
It was a phrase to cover hours, days, weeks, years. This was the land where the Caribbean tongued the silver sand to reach the coconut palms and the red-leaved almonds; the land of corato, hibiscus, frangipani, oleander, jasmine and jacaranda, whose fragrance was unforgettable at night; the land where no one ever hurried.
The manager was sympathetic, concerned. He came at once. Mike and the others were horrified at my plight. Sara, who had recovered from her indisposition, offered me her clothes. Would that I had been 32–22–33 and ten years younger; I might have been modelling swimsuits too!
Mike, who was the nearest in size, lent me his jeans, which were rough and hard, and Sara a peasant top which did nothing for me except to make me look pregnant.
The manager said to leave it to him. He would contact the airport, instigate enquiries, track down the missing case. Of one thing he was sure. No one had arrived at our hotel with the wrong suitcase in screaming pink. I had to leave it to him. Our schedule was too tight and it was too hot to go tearing round the countryside arguing with officials for whom time had no meaning.
We took off for the first session on the beach at Negril. It was breathtaking and for a while I forgot my dilemma.
Sara did her stuff against the background of mile after mile of deserted white sands fringed by almonds, oranges and coconuts whose leaves fell to the ground like dead sighs. Mike was in terrific form and Sara had never looked better. She wore the blue bikini, which was little more than two pieces of string and matched the sky, the black one-piece and shook her raven hair in the breeze, the brilliant orange kaftan into the back of which I had to stick a clothes-peg to hide the fact that it was not really her size, and the demure white smock, her hair like a schoolgirl’s in pigtails.
After two hours we were all pretty flaked out. We packed our things into the jeep and everyone except me flung himself into the water. I felt like I took my harp to a party and nobody asked me to play.
Back on our own beach we sat at the straw-thatched bar, lapping up banana daiquiris and Planter’s Punch, which did little to improve my mood.
Before lunch, I excused myself, leaving the others to their curried goat and kebabs, and shut myself in my bungalow with a club sandwich.
On my bed Mercedes had laid my own jeans and shirt, clean and dry; it helped a little. I would give it one day, I decided, before collapsing again on the bed, then equip myself at the hotel boutique at the expense of the magazine. I could not work up any enthusiasm for the idea. I liked my own wardrobe.
The Man Who Understood Women Page 16