I stood my ground. The moment passed. Or more precisely, I passed the moment.
“Ah, yes, one of our most popular items,” she said, unlocking the case to remove a bag similar to the one in the window. “It comes in a variety of leathers and colors. But I must warn you, there is a waiting list for some of the bags.”
I asked the price. She told me they ranged anywhere from £1,200 pounds to £5,000. I made a mental effort to convert £1,200 pounds into dollars. Eight hundred dollars? Eighteen hundred dollars? Either way, I wasn’t walking out of the shop with any bag other than the one I came in with. After telling the saleswoman I needed the bag immediately so a waiting list would not suit, I thanked her and left. Outside I headed for a store where I planned to do some real shopping: the Safeway supermarket on the King’s Road.
I had taken a flat in nearby Chelsea, a few blocks from the King’s Road and Sloane Square. Although I’d been told of a charming “villagelike” shopping area just minutes from the flat, I knew there were cheaper supermarkets dotting the King’s Road. I even had a specific market in mind.
Actually, I knew the neighborhood around my flat quite well. Twenty-five years earlier, along with my husband and our two-year-old son, I had lived in an apartment on the other side of Sloane Square. My mother had joined us for a time, renting a separate apartment in the same house, making it very much a family affair.
By the time I neared the square at the bottom of Sloane Street, a light rain was falling. All along the street umbrellas began unfurling, their bright colors dotting the gray day like flowers in an urban meadow. At the corner I spotted a familiar sign: THE GENERAL TRADING COMPANY, EST. 1920. I remembered this shop well. It was filled with sumptuous English-country-house furniture and floors brimming with fancy culinary equipment and antique silver. When we lived nearby I had spent many rainy afternoons there poking through rooms of antique tables and expensive bed linens. I also remembered it had a delightful café. On a whim I decided to go in, look around, and have lunch.
After a quick tour through the gift department, I headed downstairs to the small café on the ground floor. At the café entrance a line had formed; about a dozen women stood waiting to be seated by the hostess. This could take a long time, I thought, trying to decide whether or not to wait.
Suddenly the hostess’s voice called out: “Anyone single?”
Caught off guard, the question puzzled me: I was uncertain whether this meant single as in not being married, or single as in dining alone. However, since I fit into both categories, I raised my hand with confidence. “Would you mind sharing a table?” the hostess asked. “Not at all,” I said, following her into the café.
She led me to a table where three women were seated. Two of them seemed to be together; they were engrossed in conversation and barely looked up. The third woman, seemingly a “single” like me, was sitting with a book, waiting to be served her lunch. I looked at the menu, ordered lasagna and salad, and, feeling uncertain about the proper etiquette in such a setting, turned my attention to a map of London.
Within minutes the waitress reappeared to ask if I’d ordered hot tea or iced tea. “Iced, please,” I said, looking up from my map and, in the process, locking eyes with my “single” lunch-mate.
She smiled. “You’re on holiday?” she asked, nodding in the direction of my map. Her voice, in just three words, conveyed a confident, lively attitude. Her accent was resonant with British history.
“Yes, I am.”
“So am I.” She hesitated. “In a manner of speaking.” She told me she had come down from Scotland, her home for the last twenty years, to visit her daughter. “She’s thirty. Just received her degree in economics. But now she’s decided to go into publishing.” She laughed. “But then that’s the way nowadays, isn’t it? Young people spend most of their lives gathering up degrees in one field only to end up doing something entirely different.” Her son had done the same thing, she said: “Started mathematics, then went into veterinary medicine.” He was twenty-eight and now lived in Australia.
I told her about my sons, adding that the one in Japan, who was now a translator, had just decided to go to law school. “It seems to me we didn’t have so many choices at that age, especially as women,” I said, launching into a bit of a lecture about women and choices and the kind of work that was hospitable to us then.
She nodded, seeming to agree. “It’s the same with marriage and motherhood. It was simply what was supposed to happen in a woman’s life. Quite likely though, it was that way for men, too. Something expected of them.”
“Do you think you’d make a different choice today?”
The woman smiled. “No. But that’s beside the point, isn’t it?”
I laughed. I liked her directness, the way she said what she meant. I also liked the look of her, her expressive face and mischievous eyes.
Her name was Victoria and she was in town alone, staying for the month at a nearby residential hotel. She explained that her husband was away on business and she preferred a hotel to staying in her daughter’s small apartment. “We like each other better with some distance between us,” she said, smiling.
Victoria was an interesting woman with interesting opinions and we stayed, talking about our lives and politics and the differences between British and American newspapers, until the café was almost empty. After paying the bill we walked outside together, where we stood talking about what was going on in the London theater. Finally, we said our good-byes. Then, just before she turned to leave, Victoria asked if I’d like to join her for lunch later that week. “I’m meeting an old friend. I think you’d like her. She’s a writer, too. Does pieces on gardening for magazines, mostly.”
“That sounds like fun,” I said. We agreed to meet back at the café on Friday, and, finally, I headed for the supermarket.
It was a short walk from the supermarket back to my flat. Still, the two bags filled with bottled water, All-Bran cereal, skim milk, tea bags, coffee, yogurt, packaged biscuits, and paper goods seemed quite heavy. It had been a long time since I’d walked home from a supermarket carrying all my groceries. It reminded me of the daily treks I made as a child to the neighborhood store, Mother’s handwritten list tucked away in a purse along with a two-dollar bill.
I was eager to settle into my flat. Although I’d spent only one night there, I liked everything about it—the tree-lined neighborhood, the gracefully proportioned white limestone building, the pleasantly decorated living room and bedroom, and, most of all, the tiny balcony overlooking Cadogan Street and Sloane Avenue.
I’d found this gem of a place quite by chance, while reading the classified ads in The New York Review of Books. A call was put in to the telephone number listed, a quite reasonable rent was quoted, photos were sent. And although I’d learned the hard way that photos of real estate often bear little resemblance to the actual property—I’d once taken an apartment in Paris owned by a Harvard professor who sent me glorious pictures and glowing descriptions of what turned out to be two tiny rooms in an attic overlooking a hotel service area—I immediately engaged the London flat.
Finally, I thought as I approached my new digs, all those years of reading The New York Review of Books has paid off.
When I entered my building a porter inside greeted me, then took my shopping bags and placed them in the elevator. “Seventh floor, is it?” he said, pushing the button before I could answer. The elevator was one of those old, slow numbers that took forever to get from one floor to the next. But who cared? I had nothing but time. When it finally lurched to a stop, I stepped off, turned the corner, and unlocked the door to my flat.
The late afternoon light was coming in through the kitchen- and living-room windows. Instantly I put down the groceries, walked to the balcony, opened the door, and stepped outside. Below me was Cadogan Street and to my left, tree-lined Sloane Avenue. I hung out as far as I could over the railing, looking first in one direction, then the other. After a few minutes of this I returned to th
e living room and turned on the lamps. The room was as pleasant as I remembered: the furniture stylish and comfortable, the white walls softened with framed prints and drawings.
I put away the groceries and fixed myself a drink. A special-occasion drink: Cutty Sark, with ice. I carried the glass with me into the bedroom, where I set out the family photographs I’d brought along on the trip. Then back to the living room, where I kicked off my shoes and sat down to watch the evening news.
How nice, I thought, sipping my drink, to hear the news in a language I fully understood.
When I arrived at the café on Friday, Victoria was already there, queued up. With her was a tall, attractive woman whose face, tanned and mapped with fine wrinkles, suggested a life spent outdoors. Victoria spotted me and waved me into the line next to her.
“So nice to see you again,” she said, holding out her hand. She then introduced me to the woman next to her. “I’d like you to meet Sarah Davies. Sarah and I went to boarding school together. Met there when we were eleven and have been friends ever since. Which means we’ve been friends for about a hundred years.”
Sarah and I laughed as we shook hands.
“Sarah’s in town for a few months doing a piece on Mrs. Some-body-or-other’s gardens,” Victoria continued. “She’s left her husband behind in Kent. Where, I suspect, he is busy with his roses and his dogs.”
Sarah laughed again. She didn’t seem to mind at all Victoria’s running commentary on her life. “But, Victoria,” she said, “the two of us being here without our husbands will make it just like the old days.”
Victoria was about to answer when the hostess beckoned us to a table. We sat down and after ordering salad and iced tea, Sarah asked about my stay in London. “Victoria said you wrote for a newspaper but were taking several months off. It sounds quite exciting.” She turned to Victoria. “Do you remember our plans to travel around the world when we turned eighteen?”
Victoria nodded. “Yes. But it never happened, did it? As I recall, you fell quite madly in love with Stephen and had to have him. And that was the end of it.”
A skeptical look crossed Sarah’s face. “Funny that, because I remember it the other way round. You fell in love with a stuffy old professor and had to have him. And that was the end of it.”
The two women exchanged private glances, then burst out laughing.
I liked the easy rapport between Victoria and Sarah. At home I had friends like this, women with whom I could exchange in bold shorthand strokes whole parts of our shared history. It was what I missed most on this trip: my women friends. I could always count on them to boost me up or take me down a peg when I needed it.
Sarah began asking questions about my trip. Where I was going. Where I had been. How I chose my flat in London. She seemed genuinely interested. Then Victoria joined in, asking me what had prompted me to do what I was doing.
“I needed an adventure while I still had the legs for it,” I said, only half-joking.
“Yes, well, they say the legs go last,” Victoria replied.
“And what do your children think about all this?” Sarah asked.
“They’re all for it.” I laughed. “Actually, I think they were pretty impressed that I, their mother, would do such a risky, spontaneous thing.”
“Quite the thrill, isn’t it, having your children give you a pat on the back instead of the other way round?” Sarah said, lifting her iced tea in a small salute.
I asked Sarah how she came to write about gardening.
“My family was quite keen on gardening. And from very early on I had my own corner to plant. It grew into a passion.” She said she’d kept a gardening diary since she was eight or nine and, after marrying, began sending in columns to various garden publications. “I do quite a bit of freelance now. It’s a wonderful way to snoop around strangers’ houses.”
“Yes, but it has its dangers,” Victoria said. “Remember, Sarah, how we got locked in that potting shed down in Sussex?” She turned to me. “Alas, we had to break a window to get out.”
In my mind I suddenly saw the two of them as Nancy Drew characters: smart, fearless young women, traveling about England in a snappy blue roadster, trying to solve The Secret at Larkspur Lane. Naturally I said nothing of this, saying instead, “It must be exciting to explore such wonderful gardens.” I mentioned that every time I visited England I promised myself a trip to the famous gardens created by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent. “I’ve never managed to get there. But I’m determined to do it on this trip.”
“Oh, you absolutely must,” Sarah said. “The White Garden alone is worth the trip. Although the whole place is pretty much a paradise as far as I’m concerned. How do you plan on getting there?”
“Well, I don’t …”
Before I could finish, Victoria interrupted. “I’ve a lovely idea. Why don’t we arrange an outing? Sarah here can beguile us with her arcane knowledge of plants, and I’ll bore you with all the gossip about Vita and Harold.” She turned to her friend. “What do you say we ring up Angela? She’s a great one for impromptu affairs. And besides, she’s got that big old car. The one that looks like a cab.”
“A Bentley, I think,” Sarah said.
Victoria explained that Angela was also an old friend, although not from boarding-school days. “We met her when we were all young marrieds, before Sarah and I moved away from the city,” Victoria said, launching into a chronology of their friendship that I couldn’t quite follow. But I gathered that Angela was considered the “sophisticate” of the group. Widowed twice—the second time after only two years of marriage to an Italian actor—her only son married and living in Wales, Angela remained single, devoting much of her time to fund-raising for the arts, particularly theater and dance. When not doing this, they said, she traveled.
“Particularly to Scotland to fish salmon,” Victoria said. “Although I can’t think why anybody would want to do that, can you?”
Angela sounded quite fascinating and, frankly, I was dying to meet her. However, throughout Victoria’s soliloquy, Sarah remained noticeably silent. Was this a polite way of indicating she had no interest in the Sissinghurst trip? Clearly Victoria was a person who liked to bring people together, to mix and match them. But Sarah, perhaps, had not counted on a lunch date with a stranger turning into a moveable feast. I noticed Sarah looking at her watch. Not a good sign, I thought; she’s figuring out how to leave gracefully, without having to turn down Victoria’s plan.
Then Sarah looked up and said, “I don’t think Angela would be home right now. But I could ring her tonight. It sounds like something she might fancy doing.”
When we parted outside the café an hour or so later, Sarah and Victoria took my phone number with the understanding that one of them would call me about the trip.
I decided to walk over to Chelsea Green, the “village square” that had been recommended to me as a great place to market. Only two blocks from my flat, Chelsea Green did indeed prove to be both charming and useful.
There, clustered together around a small square, were vegetable markets, delicatessens, gourmet food and wine shops, florists and dressmakers, restaurants and carry-out shops. At The Pie Man, which offered everything from homemade carrot-and-orange soup to Thai beef salad, I selected my dinner: roasted redleaf salad with pancetta and tarragon, and a chicken breast cooked in lemon and ginger sauce with broccoli florets. A few doors down I stopped at the greengrocer and bought fresh fruit and a bunch of flowers—clear yellow irises mixed with spikes of pale green foliage.
I didn’t mind eating alone in London, whether in a restaurant or in my cozy flat. In Paris it had bothered me, but by now I’d grown less sensitive to dining solo. In fact, I rather liked it. If I ate out, it gave me a chance to observe the scene around me; if I ate in, it gave me a chance to brush up on my cooking skills. Once I’d been an accomplished cook, but long working hours and living alone had eroded both the desire and the ability to turn out a pr
oper meal.
Lately, though, I’d seen flashes in my small London kitchen of the woman who used to enjoy cooking so much that she’d taken classes in everything from bread-making to classic French cuisine. I remembered how much this woman had liked suprême de volaille farcies, duxelles—or, in plain English, chicken breasts stuffed with mushrooms minced and sautéed in butter. I recalled liking it, too. To my surprise, I knew the recipe by heart and one night decided to give it a try. After serving myself dinner on the balcony of my flat, I decided the chicken was even better than I remembered.
As I walked back from Chelsea Green with my groceries, I noticed a little girl wearing a flower-sprigged blue-and-white dress furiously pedaling her three-wheel bike along the sidewalk of a quiet neighborhood street. Pausing to watch her, I saw a pattern emerge: every few minutes, after a burst of high-energy pedaling, the girl would lift both hands from the handlebars, put her arms out to either side, and allow the bike to steer itself. As she did this, she made whooping noises of unleashed exhilaration.
Aha! I thought, a fearless woman in the making. But then the bike suddenly swerved into a large pot of red geraniums and the girl tumbled off. Immediately, however, she picked herself up, righted the bike, and somewhat more cautiously pedaled on.
Life’s like that, I thought, as I turned the corner to my building. Freedom has its dangers as well as its joys. And the sooner we learn to get up after a fall, the better off we’ll be.
That night I went to a play at the nearby Royal Court Theatre on Sloane Square. It was a long-winded, lecturing piece written by an American. I left at the intermission, a luxury I would never allow myself if I weren’t alone. On the way home I celebrated my newfound independence, theatrically speaking, by having a beer in a nearby pub. Here’s to you, old girl, I toasted myself, lifting the heavy glass to my lips, and to the Queen Mum. I wasn’t sure why I threw in that last bit until, on the walk home, I remembered how much my grandmother had adored her.
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