Once Upon a Time There Was a Traveller
Page 11
– And you know the thing about Gloria? Never in fifty-six years has she done a single annoying thing. She can’t say the same in return, I know that, but there we are.
– She says that, but she’s never, she’s never been in a rehabilitation centre, she’s had no issues with alcohol or, or with anything worse, there’s been not one breakdown, she has stolen no other woman’s husband. There have been no suicide attempts. No neglected children to pen revenge memoirs. No shoplifting incidents. No dicey investments. Nothing that could be called anything approaching an episode. She’s never even worn a bad dress. There is absolutely nothing on her. Not one thing. Tell me, who else, who on earth, of her calibre, of who else on this insane planet can one, in truth, say that? You tell me, young man!
– I do apologise about Gloria. She really is the end!
– Sorry, dear. I am too much sometimes. Anyhow… Time is ticking on. A man’s coming to do stretches with us in half an hour – he’s eighty and wonderfully fit. There’s literally a symphony of creaking bones in the rehearsal room but it stops us from seizing up. Luigi, he’s called, an Italian.
– Both my hips are aliens now. Bionic or what have you. And one of my knees. The choreographers I could sue if I could only remember their names!
– And those of us who can no longer stretch do chairobics to the music.
– I wish I could still dance! You know, these days I can’t even bear to look in the mirror.
– Marigold!
– I am afraid I won’t stop weeping when I see what’s gone. I can’t even sing in tune any more. Why did we have to get old? It goes against my pride so. [Begins sobbing uncontrollably.]
– Darling! Here, let me just… Turn your head away, dear. Put your back to the thing, then they won’t use it. Turn the camera off now, young man. Is that all right? Right now! Oh, good. Oh, thank you, dear. Thank you. Can you leave the room for a moment? Just so I can… Pull the door behind, could you? Oh, that is kind. [Lowers voice.] It’s all right, darling. I know. I know. You’re tremendously brave about everything. And the wonderful thing is, everybody loves you. Just as they have always done and always will. You are a shining meteor who merely by existing has brought pleasure to millions and millions of people. How many people can say that? Please don’t cry! Marigold, Marigold! Listen to me. Listen. You know, everything you’ve ever been, everything marvellous that’s happened to you, every extravagant sunset, every beam of brilliant moonshine, every pearl, every duet, every sable, every dewy close-up, it’s all still there, every last bit of it. All of it shines out of you like the most dazzling ray of starlight, lifting up the hearts of the world.
– Say it again, darling. Oh, oh, oh, oh, do please say it again.
Where Life Takes You – Dolores Pinto
The light here is brutal. It seeks out the smallest fingerprint on the surface of a mirror, the smudge on polished wood. It finds me and I turn my head away, cowed by its radiance. I take the tea Spence hands me. He sits on the side of the bed cradling his mug close to his chest and we watch streamers of cloud race past the window. Gulls surf the air, their heads angled downwards like arrows.
‘Come on, Rita,’ Spence says, ‘it’s a grand day.’
I manage a smile but then falter; too muddled by sleep and resentment to talk.
He stands. ‘I’ll go and open up then,’ he says, and there’s a dying fall in his voice as he turns away. He goes downstairs and unlocks the café door. A neighbour calls to him and they talk about the weather, their voices loud in the quiet street. Everyone in Whitby talks about the weather; they listen to the forecast and study the clouds and the flight of birds, and discuss its vagaries endlessly.
I wash and dress, choosing my clothes with care. Flat shoes and black slacks, and a plain white shirt. Practical working clothes. Then I tie a red-polka-dot cotton square around my neck gypsy fashion, and encircle my waist with a broad leather belt. Now I’m a pirate, a film star, a tomboy. But no; too bold, too flamboyant. I take off the scarf and undo the belt.
Spence is clattering dishes in the kitchen, so I slip outside and lean against the harbour wall. The town is waking. A milk float hums and rattles over the cobbles, and the clash of machinery and the shouts of the men in the fish market reverberate in the stillness. Behind the quay tiers of houses, row upon crooked row climb up towards the dark silhouette of the abbey. Dracula’s castle, the locals call it, a story for the tourists. At sunset when the ruined arches and spires show jagged against the horizon, you might think you see a cloaked man creep like a lizard down the walls.
A lone boat is coming in to harbour. It bobs and dips and the gulls follow. They wheel and dive and wheel again, as if to bring it safe home. Their raucous cries scrape the air. ‘Why do they scream so?’ I’d asked Spence.
‘You’ll get used to them after a while,’ he said. ‘You won’t even hear them.’
I should have told him then that I don’t belong here. That I want to walk unnoticed between tall buildings. To wake in my bedroom in Pimlico with its sloping ceiling and dark corners, and watch Louie dress in the light seeping through the curtains. Hear him scoop his keys and loose change from the bedside table. ‘I’m off then, love,’ he’d say, ‘see you later,’ and bend to kiss me.
This place is too stark, too unforgiving. The women in the town lower their eyes and the men nudge each other when I pass them in the narrow lanes, or on the stone steps leading to the church.
‘The people here don’t like me,’ I told Spence.
‘Give them time, they don’t know you. They’ll forget about you when the tourists come in the summer.’
‘When they have someone else to gawk at?’
‘They’ll be too busy to gawk at anyone. They’re curious about you, Rita. Give them a chance. Some of them have never been out of Whitby.’
‘They resent me.’
‘Don’t start that again, Rita, please,’ he’d said.
He’s working at the stove when I go inside. I watch the play of the muscles in his forearms as he lifts the heavy pans and the slow methodical way he moves around the kitchen. I think of Louie’s deft hands and quick movements as he set up his barrow in the market. See him stand back and throw out an arm like an impresario, waiting for me to admire the pyramids of oranges and heaped apples, and the purple grapes arranged so artfully on plastic grass.
I leave Spence standing over his grill and push through the swing doors into the café. It’s six thirty, time for the news, and I turn the dials of the wireless until I find the Light Programme. The plummy voice of the newsreader is familiar and reassuring. The Conservatives have got back in; Churchill is forgotten and Eden is the new man. It makes no difference to me. I hardly listen anyway. The men from the fish market will be here soon. I tie on my apron and wait.
The sound of their boots striking the stones and shouts of laughter herald their coming and they troop through the door. The fishermen come first, then the men who weigh the catch. The lads who swill away the stringy purple guts and gun-metal scales come last. They stamp their feet and rub their hands, and look at me from under lowered brows, as gauche and awkward as schoolboys.
‘You’re looking good this morning, Rita,’ Donnie says. He makes it sound like an insult. He’s Spence’s best friend; they’ve known each other since school. The other men look at each other or at their shoes. But their eyes follow me as I trot between the tables to take their orders. I bring them their food, and they forget me and tuck into bacon, eggs, and thick slices of buttered toast.
Spence comes out of the kitchen, his tea towel over his shoulder. He leans his elbows on the counter.
‘Keeping an eye on the missus?’ a young lad says, looking at me sideways and winking.
Spence ignores him. He joins in the argument about the game on Saturday.
‘He should have played two up front,’ he says.
‘He hasn’t got one decent striker, let alone two,’ someone answers.
I stop listening and start to fil
l the big metal teapots, one for each table. They like their tea strong, these men, and plenty of it. Spence clears the dishes. He pushes the kitchen door open with his hip and smiles at me over the laden tray. His smile is hopeful. Last night we’d slept with our backs to each other for the first time.
We’d met through an introduction agency. Spence had arranged for us to have dinner in a restaurant in Chelsea. I was late and he was already seated and studying the menu, his eyes straying towards the door. Not anxious, just alert. He’s a big man. Craggy faced and broad across the shoulders. I liked the look of him and strode up to the table as bold and brassy as you like. He stood up, and his eyes never left my face, even as he clutched and caught at the napkin falling from his lap.
‘It’s not much, the café, but you’ll love Whitby. What do you think?’ he said a month later. We liked each other. Why waste time? His wife had died two years ago and Louie had been gone for over a year.
We’d been together for eleven years, Louie and me. I was twenty when I caught his eye; not long down from Sheffield, but long enough to learn that an eye for style, a lithe body and skin the colour of burnished copper wasn’t going to get me far in London. He was standing outside Lyons Corner House in Piccadilly. My feet hurt from standing around, and I hadn’t eaten all day. There was a ladder in my stocking, which I’d tried to mend with a dab of nail varnish, and my jacket let in the cold. He looked smart in a black overcoat and leather gloves. I smiled up at him from under the brim of my pert little hat and he tipped his trilby, as suave as any film star, and asked if he could buy me supper.
I was young and needy, and he was old, old enough to be my father. He wooed me with stories; threw a net of words over me and drew me in. He’d seen men dressed as women dancing in the squares of Marrakech, ‘… and they wear the veil, as if they really were women,’ and watched pelicans fly past the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Drank green sugarcane juice on the streets of Singapore, and ate chocolate-covered ants in Mexico.
‘Paris,’ he said, and reached for my hands on the table, ‘you’d love Paris, with the shops and the jazz in the bars, the girls so trim and the men so slick. And you should see the women of Amsterdam, darling, posing in the windows, the light behind them.’
I imagined drinking cocktails with him on the veranda of a hotel somewhere warm. I would wear a pale silk dress, and he would wear a linen suit and carry a cane. By the time I found out he’d been a merchant seaman and all he really knew of foreign cities were sailors’ bars and whores’ bedrooms, it didn’t matter. He was a good man and his flat in Pimlico was warm and safe. He understood that we all have secrets and never once asked me about my past.
‘Tea up yet, Rita?’ one of the men calls.
‘Come and get it,’ I reply, and they swagger up to the counter, bold now with their bellies full. The odour of fish clings to their fingertips. I wonder if they leave the briny scent on their women’s flesh, if their children smell of the sea.
The wireless is playing an old song, ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’. It reminds me of the Yanks strutting around in fancy uniforms during the war. Pimlico took a beating in the Blitz. Thirty houses in Sutherland Terrace obliterated, hundreds killed. The worst of the bombing was over by the time I moved there to be with Louie, but there were still raids. Later there were the doodle-bugs. I stood in doorways and watched the search-lights crisscrossing the night sky, and listened to the buzz overhead. I held my breath in the silence before they fell.
Louie was too old to fight, and he was exempt anyway. He was cagey about that. Medical, was all he’d say. I know he had a dickey heart. He didn’t let it slow him down; he forgot about it most of the time. He did his bit as a warden. Sometimes he couldn’t talk when he got home. He’d sit and stare at the wall, his clothes covered in dust. They had a hard time, the wardens.
Then it ended. No more blackouts, no more sirens. Kids played on bomb-sites and fire-weed pushed up through the rubble where homes used to be. Demobbed soldiers roamed the streets, blank-eyed and jittery.
The café is quiet; the men have gone, tramping down to the boats with their clumsy, rolling gait. They’ll pull on their rubber boots and fishing gear, sail out to sea, and leave all they know of the land behind them. Their wives will brush silver scales from their beds and wait for them to return.
Spence brings in our breakfast and we sit together to eat. We share the newspaper and listen to the wireless. Last night is still between us, and we’re too careful with each other, too polite. He clears the dishes and looks at me expectantly.
‘Just going to have a ciggie, then I’ll be in to help you,’ I tell him. He goes back to his kitchen reassured. He doesn’t talk much, and I wonder if what I know about him is all there is. I know he’s a hard worker and a good lover, and I know he likes to read and take photos of the harbour with a camera that his father left him. I know he won’t speak about his war or his dead wife. I know he cares for me. It’s not enough.
‘Talk to me,’ I’d asked him last night.
‘What do you want me to say?’ he’d replied.
My words then were vicious and childish. ‘You’re a coward,’ I said, and ‘you’re ashamed of me,’ and ‘you let Donnie and the other men sneer at me.’
He smiled and threw words like ‘disappointment’ and ‘paranoia’ back at me. He said: ‘You’re too sensitive; you’ve got a chip on your shoulder.’ We turned our backs on each other then.
Louie would never let anyone look at me the way Donnie does. He’d stare back with that dead-eyed, hardman’s stare he practised in front of the mirror. It made me laugh, but if you didn’t know him, it was frightening. We were mates, Louie and me, partners. No one else mattered. We’d hurt and forgiven each other, survived the war and hardship together and now we were enjoying the peace. Weekends were special; we looked forward to them. Friday night we’d go to the pictures, see whatever film was showing. Romances, comedies, war films even, it didn’t matter to us. On Sundays we’d go for a walk up on Box Hill if the weather was nice.
‘Come on, slow coach,’ he’d say, scampering up the hill, as fleet as a gypsy’s dog. I’d pant after him carrying the bag with our lunch: egg sandwiches, crisps, and a bottle of stout for him, Tizer for me. We hiccupped and giggled on the bus going home, holding hands like kids.
Then he died. Just when things were getting interesting. Money in our pockets, colour coming back into our life. It was his heart. I found him in his chair when I got back from work one evening. I thought he was having a nap. His newspaper had fallen on to the floor, and I picked it up and went to put the kettle on. I dropped the teapot when I realised.
I couldn’t get used to being alone. To coming home to an empty flat. To sleeping alone, waking alone. Having no one to talk to. I saw him in all our places for months afterwards. Walking in front of me on Turpentine Lane, his newspaper under his arm. Leaning over Ebury Bridge to watch the trains on their way to Victoria Station, or outside the cinema, lighting a cigarette. Then I stopped seeing him, he’d gone. I set out to find someone else and found Spence. But it was too soon. Grief returned just when I thought I had done with it.
I lay the tables then go to help Spence in the kitchen. ‘How could you think I was ashamed of you, Rita?’ he asks me. I turn off the flame under the pans on the stove. He locks the café door and follows me upstairs. We match our rhythms to that of the sea, steady and enduring, our naked bodies stark and marked by our years in the bright light.
Later that evening we walk along the cliffs. Spence points out the sites of wrecks, and tells me stories about vampires, and of Vikings and poets and bold explorers, and the men from the town that followed the whales. And the polar bear that swam in the harbour.
I lean against him and feel the ebb and flow of his breath. I want to tell him that I’ll get used to the light and the shriek of the gulls and the taste of salt on my lips. That this is my home now. But I say nothing; just lay my hand against his chest to feel his heart beat against my palm.
‘Stop fidgeting, Anna,’ said her mother, ‘can’t you stand still for once?’
They were waiting at the bus stop outside the Waldorf Dining Rooms where Yvette van Niekerk had her ninth birthday party the Saturday before last and Anna threw up in the lav over her black, patent-leather T-bars. Never again in her whole life would she order a lime cream soda even if Yvette drank three of them in a row, she was such a show-off.
‘The bus will be here in a minute,’ said her mother and took Anna’s hand. ‘It’s not far, only Sea Point.’
Anna wiggled her fingers around so that she could feel the shape of the wedding and engagement rings through her mother’s cotton glove. She once asked if she could have her rings when she died, and her shoes except for the plastic overshoes, and her mother had laughed and said she could, but that Anna’s feet would be bigger than hers.