‘I bet you heard that a lot, eh, George? Remember that mattress under the stage at the old Balham Duchess? Remember Giulini’s?’
‘I do. How could I forget?’ He stares at me, and I suddenly realize I’ve spoken in my old voice. ‘I have a legal mind, Jenny, a logical mind; I’m not much given to fantasy. I love plays and novels and films, but I’ve always been able to distinguish between the possible and the impossible. I mean, people don’t make contracts with devils, do they? Not in London restaurants.’ He looks perplexed, and I say nothing.
I meet George for lunch at his club in Pall Mall, which still has wooden panelling, leather armchairs, Turkish carpets and open fires. An Edwardian interior to stir the embers of our shared memories.
‘I feel I’ve known you for years,’ George says over the potted shrimps, aware that this lunchtime girl isn’t the same as his demure house guest.
‘Do you remember that night at Gower Street when – my grandmother – was in bed with you and four of her admirers came and sang under her window and you poured a jug of water over their heads?’
George roars with laughter and then looks shocked. ‘But surely she didn’t tell you things like that – a young girl …’
‘She told me everything, George. And that time Leo made her practise a dance routine until her feet bled and you came to the rehearsal and wouldn’t let her dance any more, you took her out to lunch.’
‘Good God, yes, I vaguely remember. That was her Little Dutch Girl act, wasn’t it?’
‘No, it was the Houri’s Dance of the Seven Veils.’
‘So it was! You know everything.’
‘Everything!’ I repeat triumphantly.
We laugh so much that by the treacle pudding George feels dizzy. I want him to ask me about that evening at Giulini’s; I long to tell him who I really am. Suddenly I realize George knows that the girl sitting opposite him is his Jenny, that the impossible bargain I struck with you that night was real. He clutches his heart as it lurches with fear and hope.
But I can’t quite walk across this bridge between the real and the unreal. What if he tells Molly? What if I’m regarded as a kind of freak? I might be locked up or used for psychological experiments in some laboratory.
So I resist the urge to confide, look at my watch over my second Cognac and exclaim, ‘Shit! I’ve missed Flower Arranging.’ I still put in an appearance at Julia’s college once or twice a week.
‘How quickly you’ve learnt to sound like other girls,’ George says rather sadly. ‘For a moment …’ But we both know that moment has passed.
‘Well, that’s how they all talk nowadays.’
‘Nowadays! You sound like one of the old fogies at the other tables.’
‘How about you? Are you an old fogy, George? George? Are you OK? You look awfully red and you’re panting.’
‘I’m fine. A rejuvenated old fool. Why, I almost feel like a swim downstairs. Have you brought your costume?’
‘Of course not! We could swim in the nude, like that night in Brighton with Leo –’
‘Now that’s quite enough!’ George stands up shakily and clutches the table, staring out of the window as if to reassure himself that he knows where and when and who he is. ‘It’s a lovely spring day out there, my dear. Why don’t we go for a walk in the park?’
We set off to Green Park arm in arm, roaring with laughter. ‘If you’re not my grandfather you ought to be,’ I say affectionately.
London is at her best. A frosty March sun energizes the stones of the elegant buildings. There’s a rich smell of wine, leather, tobacco, perfume and wood smoke. St James’s is perhaps the only part of the city where someone born in the nineteenth century needn’t feel out of place. The prosperous streets are full of men of George’s generation, formally dressed.
‘Grandma used to miss London so much. I can see why.’
‘Did she? Why on earth didn’t she come back here then?’
‘I think she was afraid to. She was very embarrassed by my mother. She said she made an awful fool of herself here during the war.’
‘Afraid? Never knew a more fearless woman in my life. Anyway, Virginia’s follies were hardly her mother’s fault.’
‘Of course not. But I think she felt responsible just the same. Was it true then? Was my mother really, you know …’
‘Well, the war was a rather debauched time for a lot of people. Gather ye rosebuds and all that. Your mother got very involved with some young pilot, rather an unpleasant chap I thought. And, er, quite a few other men.’
‘So was he my father? This pilot?’
‘Oh dear – didn’t she – really, my dear, I wouldn’t know. Molly and I were married by then with very young children and I was organizing shows for ENSA. I do remember Virginia phoned a few times late at night when I was on leave. I think she drank rather heavily. Molly wasn’t very happy about my seeing her, so of course I didn’t.’
‘It would be nice to know who my father was even if I haven’t got a proper grandfather.’ I give him my most waif-like look, the expression I nearly managed to seduce him with when I was Virginia. Now, while his resistance is low, is the moment to persuade him to leave me some money. Molly will probably make a scene when the will is read, but by then George will be well insulated against all forms of emotional blackmail.
George enjoys showing me London, watching my face as I try to look as if I’m seeing it all for the first time. ‘That’s the Ritz, I’ll take you to tea there one day. Your mother once caused a sensation there by stripping as she danced a tango. Then the air-raid siren went off and she had to go down to the shelter half naked.’
‘How do you know? Were you there?’
‘No, of course not. A friend –’
‘Oh, it was a friend, was it? I bet Molly wouldn’t have liked it if it had been you.’
‘Of course it wasn’t me. Now, over there you can see my favourite view of Westminster, with the spires and towers sprouting through the trees as if it were still a little medieval city …’ George thinks he knows his city like the back of his hand, and part of me wants to accept his vision of London, with all its cosiness and limitations. He’s just about aware of a newer, brasher culture but arranges his life so that it runs through the most traditional corridors. In this public space there are reminders of change he finds deeply offensive and tries to ignore. One such personification of an alien world is loping towards us now across the grass. George glares apoplectically at a very tall, skinny young man wearing a white suit with flared trousers over purple suede shoes. He has greasy dark-brown hair tied back in a pony-tail, high cheekbones and wolfish dark-blue eyes fixed on me. ‘Can’t tell if they’re men or women half the time. Dressed like something out of a circus. Can’t be bothered to cut or wash their hair …’
But I’m not listening any more. I stand and stare at the young man, who has now turned and is loping backwards, still drawing me towards him with those dark-blue eyes, which swirl with energy and seem to be expanding like shooting stars all over the park.
‘Why is that fellow gawping at you in that insolent way?’ The wide park shrinks to an intense black tunnel where two eyes burn, blue and ruthless and terribly familiar. ‘Can’t even enjoy a postprandial walk …’
I hardly hear him, I’m staring after you in surprise and terror. I knew we’d meet sooner or later. Suddenly London is dangerous.
Something horrible has happened to George. He has staggered over to a bench where he’s collapsed and sits with his eyes shut, gasping. I run over to him. ‘Didn’t you recognize him?’
‘Who?’ George can hardly speak. I hug him, rubbing my nose against his sparse white hair, inhaling cognac and sandalwood cologne, feeling his heavy yet feeble body in my arms. Inarticulate sounds come from his mouth, slurred as if he is drunk. As he tosses and struggles I stare down at my smooth pale-olive fingers with dark-pink almond-shaped nails clasping the square freckled ruin of his. George’s nails are yellow and shrivelled like old parchment, spe
ckled with drops of water that I recognize with surprise as my own tears. I bend to kiss his hand.
A stranger calls an ambulance. George dies on the way to the hospital.
Lizzie
Never did like funerals. It was Marie Lloyd’s that drove me to that crazy bargain with you. After George’s I flee, leaving Molly to face the barrage of sympathy. Sweet, gentle George who loved women and beauty and laughter. I wonder why he didn’t strike his own bargain with Leo that night. Then we could really have been an eternal triangle – I would have enjoyed that. He’ll live as long as I’m here to remember him, and that’s for ever. Can’t get Maria Callas’s voice out of my head, singing George’s favourite aria from Tosca. Her voice swooped like an eagle, carrying us all far above the grey scene. When I was young I found opera silly and exaggerated, but, as I get older, love and death really do seem to be the only things worth bothering about. Yes, George should go out on a love duet, he always said great music was the closest he could get to religion.
Where am I now? King’s Road. They’ve knocked down the old Chelsea Palace. Can’t remember how I got here. There was a bus, I think, and a lot of walking.
George trumpeted our joy in each other too loudly as we walked in the park that day, and you couldn’t bear it. I’m afraid of you, Leo, of the power you still have over me. His death is the victory of reality and I can’t accept that, can I? Keep hoping it might be one your conjuring tricks, my preposterous prestidigiatore. The gentleman vanishes. I want George to pop out of a hat or slide backwards from the discreet wooden gates of hell, jump out of his casket and bow with a flourish. But he was never much of a showman. Too honest.
You’d say I can’t really have loved George because it’s not in my contract. How horrible marvellous it was to see you again in the park that day, how sexy vile, handsome repulsive, tender heartless. Who else, in those few seconds, could have electrified me and bumped George off? When I die the last image I see will be your eyes that afternoon. Ah, but I’m not going to. And neither are you. The city George offered me that day was so comforting, warm and old and safe; a father city, that’s what I need. As I walk down these half-remembered streets I imagine you waiting for me on the next corner. Suddenly the city is full of you. You darken the sky and play football with my heart. My breasts and the hole at the centre of my being that has been empty for too long quiver at the thought of you.
How bright London is now. It used to be a dark city, dirty bricks and chocolate-brown walls – even the fog needed a wash – but now there’s colour everywhere. People look cleaner, richer, younger. Down there is that flat in Tite Street where I lived before I left England in the early twenties. Didn’t like Chelsea then because it was so dark and quiet, but it seems to have been painted white and populated with thousands of toy people in tiny skirts and tassels and beads. Boys and girls alike with long hair and huge blank eyes march up and down, displaying their suede and velvet clothes.
Chelsea Antiques Market: I’m a Chelsea antique, so I go in to sell my black coat – vintage Chanel – to a woman who has an old-clothes stall. She’s delighted by the authentic mouldy look, as a gardener might be by some curious moss. Gives me fifteen quid. I buy an off-white coat, a jacket really, just long enough to cover a very short skirt. The only fashion rule at the moment seems to be to display as much of your legs and arse as possible to potential lovers. They don’t exactly dance, these decadent children, but twitch to barbarous music. I’d love to try it. In my new clothes I feel lighter.
England used to be a place where people took their pleasures sadly, ate and drank badly. Yet what marvellous lives these children lead, sitting in cafés and restaurants in the middle of the afternoon. We were all sent out to work long before their age – which is my age. Pubs look different now, too. Women walk in and out by themselves. A little bit of the you-know-what that does the we-know-how. That sad, dark, mean interior of the Derby, the door with its thick leather strap that bashed me on the back as I went in, silent, gloomy men standing at the zinc-topped bar to drink, all staring at me. Only went in when I was desperate for a drink, which I frequently was. Now pubs have tables and chairs, people laughing and talking. No fun drinking on my own. I could pick up one of these sexy androgynous youths, but I need to talk, and who else is left of my generation? Only my sister Lizzie.
After the war George traced her and sent me her address. I’ve still got her reply to the note I sent her just before I left Rapallo in my bag – crocodile, bought in Florence in the late twenties, I could see the antique-clothes lady eyeing it, but I’d better hang on to something to sell later. Inside is the gold powder-compact that charming opera singer Arturo gave me, a plastic comb, a pigskin wallet with my last ten-bob note in it, a packet of tissues and this scrawl from Lizzie on paper torn from an exercise book:
Dear Jenny,
Funny how your Jenny too. There wasent the money to get to my sisters’ foonral it would have to be in Italy she always did have to be diffrent. I dear say she wouldent of come to mine if itd been first. My backs cronik now cant get about mussent grumble. Hoping this finds you better than wot I am wonder if you speak english maybe some day youll come and well have a natter about the old days.
Yr affecshenut Auntie Lizzie
Lizzie had exactly the same education as me at the Bath Street School, and her writing was mine until I decided to do something about it. If she’s dead I want to know, and if she’s still alive I might as well tell her the truth. She won’t believe me anyway, never did have any imagination. When I was in Italy I used to get horrible Woolworth’s Christmas cards from her, schmaltzy rhymes and sour badly spelt messages from an address in Hoxton not far from where we lived as children. When I still had dividends coming in I sometimes used to send her fifty quid.
Here I am at Sloane Square tube station, working out how to get to Old Street. I look up her street in my A to Z. Hoxton was darker than Africa when I was growing up there; don’t think we had any maps. But I recognize some of the place names like unloved friends. Years since I’ve travelled by tube. Buses are cheery; they belong to the smiling mouth of the city whereas the tube burrows deep down into its subconscious. These names – Charing Cross, Circle Line, Northern Line, Old Street – drag me back and down like incantations from the underworld.
Already I’m thinking of aggressive things to say to my sister. We never could stop fighting. From Old Street station my feet trace the map while my eyes search for landmarks. Either it’s changed or I’ve forgotten. I pass buildings as old as me but don’t recognize them. Poverty has a different face now, wears more clothes, eats more and drives cars.
I want to take Lizzie a present, so I go into a shop run by one of the new immigrants and wonder what to buy for this woman I haven’t seen for fifty years. Behind the counter a tiny woman in a brilliant-orange sari is shivering and looks as if Hoxton is a poor exchange for home. I want to ask where that is, but she doesn’t speak any English. I choose a present from her stock, any one of which would have been a Sunday treat when we were children: chocolate bars, cakes, nuts and raisins. I choose a chocolate cake, then realize I have only a few shillings which I need for my fare home. Embarrassed, I nod and smile and shuffle backwards out of her shop.
Lizzie lives in a new block of flats ten minutes away from where we grew up. Street names and shapes have changed so that I have a sense of being on familiar territory and at the same time in an ugly foreign country. The old Falstaff, where Auntie Flo sometimes worked as a barmaid, has gone. My childhood has been bulldozed and bombed. All that remains of it is waiting for me upstairs on the ninth floor. The tower block is new, but already the piss-smelling lift in the piss-smelling hall is broken, so I walk up nine flights of graffiti’d concrete stairs, grateful for legs which are as agile as if I really am my own granddaughter.
I bang the knocker on the scabby door. A small woman in a grey coat sidles out and looks at me doubtfully. ‘You the home help?’
‘No.’
‘Where you
from?’
‘Italy. I’ve come to see Miss Mankowitz.’
She isn’t happy with this but looks at her watch and rushes past me and down the stairs.
I’m reminded of Crime and Punishment, when Raskolnikov enters the flat of the old money-lender and is horrified by the ugliness and squalor of old age. Lizzie’s flat smells of urine and sour milk. The tiny living-room is dirty, bare and sad. Not a single object that’s interesting or attractive – no heirlooms in our family. I walk over to the door that leads to a balcony that is swaying ominously. Up here on the ninth floor I’m assaulted by wind and rain as I look out over the charmless view. Strange that while I’ve travelled so far my sister has ended up just a few streets away from where she was born, has only levitated a few storeys upwards.
‘You the meals on wheels?’ The croak comes from the small bedroom.
When I see what time has done to Lizzie my own life seems so deeply fraudulent that tears of guilt come to my eyes. I’m looking at an alternative version of myself. Her face is like a cracked, grimy pot, her features grotesquely altered. Lizzie can’t see my tears or me. She has the red, rheumy eyes of the almost blind.
‘Who is it?’
‘Jenny.’
‘Jenny who?’
‘Your sister.’
‘She’s dead.’
‘It’s really me, Lizzie.’ I hug her, suddenly happy to touch and hold the decay I’ve evaded. The texture of her skin is like ancient paper, her skinny, chicken shoulders protrude through her dirty yellow bed-jacket. I’m suddenly flooded with a sense of my good fortune and fear that she will hate me for it. But Lizzie sounds amused rather than frightened. ‘Go on! You’re too young.’
‘Luck.’
‘Yes, you always was lucky. All right then. If it is you, Jenny, what you done wiv my pink camisole?’
‘Took it with me when I moved to Gower Street. Sorry.’
‘Looked everywhere for it. Auntie Flo said you’d come to a bad end. But you didn’t and I did. I was desperate to go out with you that night, do you remember?’
Loving Mephistopeles Page 9