One Day in May

by Catherine Alliott

  More hilarity. Oh, splendid.

  Later that evening, after coffee and much more drinking, and when Maggie and I turned in for bed, she stopped outside my bedroom door, cheeks flushed.

  ‘Your family are great,’ she observed. ‘I’d forgotten. You’re so lucky.’

  That had never really occurred to me, and I was surprised. My family were loud, opinionated, quarrelsome, easily offended, sparky and often intensely irritating, but great fun on the whole, and I supposed I was lucky. We got together very regularly to bicker and snap and roar, and couldn’t really go a couple of weeks without seeking one another out. Mum, Laura and I certainly spoke most days. It struck me I knew very little about Maggie’s family. A widowed mother in Hendon, no brothers or sisters. She had lots of lovely girlfriends, though, many more than me: the phone was always going in the shop and it would be Hannah, or Sally, or Alex, but when I’d commented on this she’d say, ‘That’s because you don’t need them. People from big families never do.’ I knew she lapped up my family’s affairs, regarding it as a never ending soap opera, particularly here at the Abbey.

  As we said good night, though, I thought how it made a change to feel blessed. Most people, apart from Maggie, regarded me with a hint of pity: late thirties, no husband, a single mother, and when they pressed me on what I did now that Seffy was at boarding school and I said, ‘Oh, work, mostly,’ I could tell they were thinking: poor Hattie. It was competitive, life, wasn’t it? I shut my bedroom door and crossed to the window. Like in that Two Ronnies sketch with John Cleese, I felt slightly sorry for Maggie with no happy extended family and no child, but looked up to Laura, with a husband, three children, and a huge house; yet Laura looked up to friends who could live in their houses for perpetuity. Where did it end? When did we ever stop wanting more?

  I didn’t ask myself that in all seriousness, though, because I knew, with gut-wrenching surety, that if I could have had what I wanted, what I’d always desired, years ago, the only man I’d ever loved, I’d never want for more. Never. I reached up to pull the curtain across and saw a curtain draw simultaneously in a house in the valley, in Little Crandon. It affected me like a few thousand volts. I stepped back from the window. It was The Pink House, where Dominic and Letty had lived, but I knew it would only be Letty doing the pulling now. On her own, like me.

  11

  Dominic was killed in a terrorist attack in London in the summer of ’95, two years after I’d left the House of Commons, one year after I’d come back from Croatia. I say an attack, but they hadn’t actually been targeting him per se as an MP, not like the Brighton bombings, nor the bomb in the Commons car park that killed Airey Neave. No, this was the usual, random, cowardly, bomb-on-abus routine, designed to kill and maim ordinary civilians and cause general unspecific terror. Imagine their delight, then, when one ordinary civilian on the number 14 bus turned out to be the Foreign Secretary, the honourable member for North Oxfordshire. One Dominic Forbes MP, who, not as a matter of course, and not on any regular daily basis, had caught the bus into Westminster one Tuesday morning, purely because his driver had failed to turn up, purely as a matter of expediency. Imagine the jubilation in the terraced house in Kilburn, which the police eventually raided and found deadly incendiary equipment within. Imagine the revelry in the house of the Brothers of Jihad.

  I’d been in France at the time, a country I’d achieved via a circuitous route. When Seffy and I came back from Croatia my parents had insisted I live with them for a bit in order for them to help with the baby, which I gladly did, having not a clue which end of an infant was which. Mum and Dad by then were in their sixteenth house in their twenty-seven-year marriage, which remarkably they’re still in today, and which, thanks to no school fees, they own outright. Thanks also to Dad finally being recognized as a voice of sanity rattling in the broadsheets of a morning, culminating in a regular and prestigious weekly column, which rendered them comfortable. Sod’s law, as he said, having been uncomfortable all those years when he’d really needed the money, when he’d had a young family to support. Nevertheless a small terraced house at the wrong end of Elsworthy Road – which put it in Primrose Hill as far as my father was concerned, and in St John’s Wood if you asked my mother – became home to us all. And it was perfect. Particularly for Seffy and me. The park was on our doorstep, that great, green, glorious slope to trudge up every day, arriving at the summit panting and glowing, my baby on my chest in a papoose, the whole of London spread before me.

  Mum was brilliant, and made me hand Seffy over for an entire day once a week, so I could ‘get out there’, as she put it: get back to the real world, keep my hand in.

  ‘In what?’ I’d wail as she shooed me out of the front door.

  ‘Whatever you want,’ she’d say firmly, jiggling Seffy in her arms. ‘Go and think, go and walk the streets. See what appeals.’

  Yeah, right, I’d think as I trudged up Avenue Road to the underground. Whatever appeals: as if the world were my flaming oyster. But Mum, for all her glamour, was a hustler. It was she who’d rung up newspapers demanding they see her husband’s work when Dad was too reticent to harangue them, it was she who’d marched Laura into Storm, the model agency. I couldn’t help thinking she was dreaming here, though. I could hardly get a job as a secretary for one day a week – which I’d loathe anyway; the only reason I’d tapped a keyboard was its proximity to Dominic – and I’d equally be laughed at if I enquired about working in a shop or a café for just a day. What did she expect me to do?

  But my mother’s not only a hustler, she’s also brighter than she looks and the time alone did me good. I’d invariably come back fresher and more energized than I went out, probably with a few bits of faded old porcelain, or a French goblet from Portobello for Mum and Dad, who wouldn’t take rent, but loved old pieces almost as much as I did.

  Often I’d track further west, taking the District Line and alighting at Sloane Square. One stall I used to frequent at Antiquarius in Chelsea was run by a corpulent Frenchman, his face the colour of the glass of claret he kept under his counter and sipped surreptitiously from time to time. Breathing appeared to be a problem and he’d wheeze and splutter over his wares, hovering protectively as I fingered the Gustavian tureens, the old French bistro glasses, the beautifully turned Sèvres candlesticks.

  ‘You can ’ave that for fifteen queed,’ he wheezed, unplugging a cigarette from the corner of his mouth as I fondled an ancient milk jug lovingly.

  ‘It’s got a crack in it,’ I told him, turning it over.

  ‘Which ees why you can ’ave it for fifteen queed.’

  Exchanges like this between the two of us were commonplace. He had the best – and cheapest – stock of continental china and glass of the type I liked in London, and the best and cheapest lace too. With the exception, perhaps, of an elegant po-faced French girl three stalls down. Her prices were monstrous, though, and she wouldn’t haggle, or even speak to me as Christian would, but kept her nose firmly in her Paris Match, crossing her slim jeaned legs tapering to beaded pumps as she perched on her stool.

  ‘I’ll give you ten,’ I told him.

  He laughed. ‘No way. I buy it for ten, in Boulogne! How much my petrol there and back, hm? Fark off.’

  I shrugged. ‘OK, I’ll offer you ten next week. See if you take it then.’

  It was a ruse that often worked with Christian. If he still had it a week later, he might give in.

  ‘I won’t be here next week, or any other week after that. My doctor say it’s too much for me, working here every day weeth emphysema and every month back to France for stock. And so cold in this buggering marketplace in winter.’ He rearranged his wares gloomily. ‘So I pack eet in.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Oh. What will you do?’ I’d grown accustomed to his wheeze. And his foul mouth.

  Everything went up Gallically: shoulders, hands, eye brows. ‘Who knows? Go back to Nantes, normalement, but my wife, she like it here. So I don’t knows. Work part time in a shop, maybe
. You want the jug?’

  ‘Um, yes. I’ll give you twelve.’

  ‘Done.’

  The following day, having walked around Primrose Hill a good deal, Seffy having migrated to my back now he was older, and feeling ridiculously nervous despite having survived nearly a year in Croatia, and worked in the House of Commons – amazing what being at home with a baby does to your confidence – I rang him. I had his card from aeons ago, had picked it up from a little stack at the front of his stall. ‘Reeng me if you change your mind, I save it for you,’ he’d say as I walked away. ‘Christian Belliose,’ I read now, ‘Dealer in Fine French Antiques’. He answered in his breathy, guttural way, and listened as I outlined my plan, bullet points before me at the kitchen table, Seffy on my lap biting a rattle, my parents out.

  There was incredulity at first, and a great deal of spluttering of ‘Merde!’ and other more scorching profanities, but he didn’t put down the phone. He let me get to the end of my spiel. A pause. Then guarded questions: who the devil was I, anyway? What did I know? But I’d done my homework. We’d talked, over the months, and I knew he favoured the southern markets down in Provence: knew he considered the Paris flea markets expensive. Knew his preference was for Limoges over Sèvres in porcelain, and fluted glass over crystal, as was mine. I knew what made him tick. And he was tempted. I felt him dangle on the end of my line. Felt him hesitate.

  ‘You do three days and I do two, but we split the profits sixty-forty my way?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes, and I do all the trips to France so you don’t have to travel any more.’

  ‘Why? What make you do it? Work for nothing?’

  I took a deep breath and raised my eyes to the ceiling. Oh, a myriad of things, I wanted to say. To be out in the real world again, to be working. Not to feel invisible at twenty-five, too young to fade into the background. I could have told him about fear too. Of course I loved Seffy, but I was lonely, isolated: no friend of mine was even married, let alone had a child. Did I even have secret doubts I’d done the wrong thing? No, never. Not even in my darkest moments. But still…

  Instead I told him of my love of antiques, too strong to let this opportunity slip by. I told him of my passion for all things French, quite true, and I told him how he’d done the groundwork, built up the business, whilst I’d just be bombing in. How it was only fair.

  ‘OK,’ he said slowly. ‘And what’s the catch?’

  ‘Well, the catch is you have to trust my judgement, obviously, in the markets. But I know what you like, what you’d buy—’

  ‘And the real catch?’

  I caught my breath. No flies on this monsieur, emphysema or not.

  ‘The real catch is I have a baby.’

  There was a pause. Then he laughed. I felt my heart drop like a brick. Out of the question, of course. A baby in an antique market – what, under the counter? Screaming at the customers? Although I had seen one or two older children running around. He was wheezing now, coughing.

  ‘I’m wasting your time,’ I said flatly.

  ‘No, I laugh because I know. You smell.’

  ‘What?’ I flushed.

  ‘Of babies. Sick. Eets fine. You juggle le bébé, and I’ll talk to the management. We’ll manage.’

  We did. Christian, having been a stall holder for twenty-odd years and part of the fabric, let alone the antique furniture, had considerable sway in Antiquarius. In the day when the King’s Road treasured its eccentrics, he was regarded as something of a character. The people there were kind too. They didn’t want to see him go, forced out by illness; knew it was his life, his passion, and if his partner – his partner! – could enable him to stay, they were delighted.

  ‘And the baby?’ I breathed down the phone to Christian when he rang to report back. ‘What did they say about Seffy?’

  ‘They say he be fine, but bound and gagged.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No, no, I tease.’

  I was beginning to see why Christian’s reputation went before him.

  ‘No gag,’ he wheezed, ‘just doped. Drugged, and they say he be fine.’

  They were an eclectic bunch at Antiquarius: shabby, but faintly glamorous, in a bohemian sort of way, and I soon realized everyone was juggling something. Pamela, next door (oriental china), had her incontinent mother, whom she couldn’t bear to put in a home. Paddy, opposite (clocks and watches), had his wealthy gay partner who wanted him beside him at the bar of the Chelsea Arts Club, and came in to drag him out in a strop. Sally-Anne (ancient garden implements) had teenage children who constantly called to say, ‘What’s for lunch?’ Everyone seemed to have a dependant of some kind. And they loved Seffy. He was a good baby and was passed around with much indulgent clucking. Even one or two sniffy old-school types who’d muttered about having ‘a screamer’ in their midst, softened when they crouched down to his pushchair and he instantly beamed. He smiled at everyone. Customers, tourists, and particularly the two little girls who belonged to Marie-Therese (maps and military prints), and who had a lovely time wheeling him around when they came home from school, flying up and down the aisles to make him chuckle. The market spawned a little community, and Seffy and I became part of it, although without Christian’s sheltering wing, I dare say it would have taken a lot longer.

  Françoise du Bose, or ‘French Living’, as she called herself – or ‘feelthy copy cat’, as Christian referred to her – was the only one who kept her distance. She hardly even deigned to look up from her stunning collection of wooden bowls full of dried herbs, fabulous old church lanterns, plaster busts, statues and huge garden urns as I walked past her stall every morning. I always gave her a cheery hello, but never got anything more than a tight little smile back. I gathered she was new too, which surprised me. Her savoir-faire suggested she’d been here for ever.

  ‘She won’t last, either,’ Christian told me. ‘Stuck-up beech. What her problem? She no speak to no one.’

  ‘Needs a good seeing-to,’ observed Toby (antique books), opposite. His answer to most things. He sniffed and blew some dust off one of his books.

  ‘Her stuff’s good, though,’ I said. ‘Lovely and rustic.’

  ‘Ah yes, she ’as good taste,’ Christian conceded. ‘But she should learn to smile a beet more, she ’as a mouth like a cat’s arse. Now, Provence…’ He turned to me anxiously as Toby wandered off in search of a Pot Noodle. ‘I worry about this trip, Hattie. Ees not like Caen, just across the channel. Ees a fuck of long way down.’

  ‘I know, Christian, I’ve looked at the map, and don’t worry, we’ll be fine.’

  My last – and inaugural – trip to France, I felt had been an unqualified success. Just me and Seffy across on a night boat, then rumbling on in Christian’s Transit van to Caen. We’d found the market easily and parked without difficulty, and although the sun had burned through an early mist and Seffy had got slightly uncomfortable – quite a bit of squawking, and I’d had to run off and find him a hat, fast – we’d managed. I’d given him a bottle and a feed under a shady café awning, my eyes trawling the emerging stalls, then flicked out the pushchair and rocked him to sleep. Moments later I’d raced around those stalls with my buggy like someone who’s won a free ten minutes with a supermarket trolley. I knew I didn’t have much time, had to buy and haggle while he was asleep, and actually, the pressure worked. I bought instinctively, instead of dithering too much and losing something, and once I’d got my eye in, knew instantly what was worth having.

  I’d seen the French girl, Françoise, at a distance, but knew she’d arrived later than me. Knew the night boat had given me the edge. Once I’d secured my booty I’d race back to the van to dump it, bags hanging from pushchair handles. And then it dawned. The pram. With crucial shopping basket underneath, which I’d brought in case Seffy needed a flat-out sleep – perfect. I assembled it quickly, lifted my sleeping child in, and hurtled back. Here and there I collected treasures stall holders had kindly held for me when I’d explained, in faltering Fre
nch, I’d be back, their Mediterranean faces melting at un bébé. When the basket below was full I’d squirrel my finds carefully around Seffy’s head, his feet, calling out my mercies, hurrying on.

  When I’d returned to England, Christian had been surprised. He’d shuffled out of Antiquarius in his baggy fawn trousers, cardigan and cravat, cigarette dangling from his fingers, and helped me unload in the King’s Road.

  ‘You’ve done well,’ he observed as he admired a beautiful Haviland Limoges bowl, translucent in its whiteness and with a magenta and gold rim. He turned it upside down to look at the mark. ‘I thought you come back weeth crap, but is OK.’

  I felt faint with relief. In my heart I was sure I’d done pretty well, but this was high praise from Christian.

  ‘All the more reason then,’ I told him now, a month later, ‘to let me go to Provence.’

  He made his outraged face: mouth down, everything else up – eyebrows, shoulders, hands – and I knew I’d won. I beamed and gave him a hug.

  Crazy of me not to have allowed Mum and Dad to have Seffy as they insisted they should. Crazy of me to take him with me. But the pilgrim soul in me wanted to prove something: wanted to prove Seffy and I against the world could do this, that we could cope.

  Unfortunately, Seffy was teething, and the dreaded autoroute went on and on in a horrific shimmering mirage of heat, all the way down to the South. However much I stopped in service stations and tried to pacify him, rub his gums, give him a bottle, a dummy, he didn’t stop crying. Under a blazing sun, no airconditioning, poor Seffy wailing beside me, I coaxed the van on, which seemed to be ailing – oh, please God, don’t break down – willing us to make it.

  Finally, eyes gritty with tiredness and concentration, I found myself sitting outside a café in a square surrounded by high medieval walls. Even in my strung-out state I could see it was astonishingly beautiful. My sleeping babe was beside me in his pram, face still pink from crying, and a large glass of rosé was before me. I sipped it gratefully. A formidable madame dressed in black, whose chin ran into her not inconsiderable chest, put a plate of juicy figs and the thinnest ham in front of me, together with a basket of crusty bread, none of which I’d ordered. I explained. She flashed me a toothless smile. ‘C’est normal.’ As the church clock chimed nine, fairy lights, strung amongst the plane tree branches, sprang into light to proclaim the town was en fête, and bunting fluttered in the breeze. In that moment, I felt something unclench and relax within me. Although my head felt like a thousand bees had hived in it and my tongue was like leather, under those twinkling lights, with Seffy beside me, the Provençal sun setting in a rosy hue, I knew why I wanted to do this. Why it made sense.