Tea & Antipathy (22 page)

“I couldn't stay in there,” he said. “It was odd.”

When we got home, he elaborated. “I keep thinking that one night when I'm reading in bed, somebody will knock on my door, and it will open, and a servant will be standing there, holding a candle. Some kind of servant, you know, dressed for the night, with a braid hanging down her back, and holding this candle. She'll just stand there and look at me.”

At night we left the sconce in the upper hall burning, and before I went to bed I would stand in the doorway of our bedroom and stare, against my will, at the curving staircase covered with red carpeting, and think that at any moment I would see Mark's servant coming down slowly in the dim light.

None of us cared for 16 Baldridge Place, and it was with happy hearts that we began to pack for five days in Devon, the English Riviera. The night before we were to leave, we sat in the small sitting room wondering if there was any point in turning on the TV, when the telephone rang. The last time it had rung in the evening, it had been a business acquaintance of Jordan's, a lady, who had informed him that she was dying of an asthma attack, and who had croaked, “Come quickly.” He had rushed off to Kensington to find that she had croaked the same thing over the phone to ten or twelve other acquaintances, a few of whom had come, bringing doctors. The sound of the telephone ringing did not fill me with pleased anticipation.

“It's Stephanie,” he said, muffling the receiver with his hand.

“Who's that?”

“It's that daughter of that friend of my sister's, don't you remember? She's staying at Jane's, she's just arrived. Shall we take her to dinner?”

“Uh,” I said.

“How about dinner?” Jordan said into the phone.

“It's after seven now,” I said. None of us had wanted dinner because of another five o'clock tea.

“Fine,” Jordan said. “We'll pick you up in half an hour.” He hung up. “She's leaving for Ireland in the morning. We could hardly not take her to dinner.”

“We have to pack,” I said, whining.

“You can pack tomorrow. The train doesn't leave until one.” I went upstairs, grumbling, and put on a black dress and stockings. I already felt disassociated from London.

“We'll go to the Pickwick Club,” Jordan said.

“Ah, God,” I said, like Mrs. Grail. “What's that? Another Dickens Room with omelets and minute steaks?”

“It's very nice. Celebrities go there.”

We hailed a cab and picked up Stephanie at Jane's place. She was wearing sandals and an upswept hairdo and appeared to be about seventeen years old. She was delighted with herself for coming to Europe alone. I was wearing my dangling earrings and my hair in a bun. Since I was an old habitué of London, I found myself behaving toward Stephanie in a condescending manner. She expressed little curiosity about our situation, and it was shortly apparent that she was laboring under the delusion that we were English.

“My mother knows your relatives,” she said to Jordan, “or something. I'm from San Francisco myself, but my mother grew up in a place called Boston. It's in the eastern United States.”

“Yes, I know,” Jordan said politely.

“Jordan grew up in Boston too,” I said.

“Your customs were really quite sticky,” Stephanie went on. “I had to wait for ages.”

“How do you mean, our customs?” Jordan asked.

“I mean your customs,” Stephanie said. “The English customs.”

“We're not English,” I said, with more emphasis than I would have used two months earlier.

“I loved Copenhagen,” Stephanie said. “I'm going to Ireland tomorrow.”

“We've been here two months,” I said.

“My mother's so worried about me,” she said, laughing. “Actually she thinks I'm a baby or something.”

“Here we are,” Jordan said. “The Pickwick Club.”

“Actually, I've never been here before,” I told Stephanie. “I don't know what it's like.” We went into a bar, and then down some stairs into a cellar-like dining room, empty except for us. We sat in a red velvet banquette against the wall, facing the room.

“It's nice that on her only night in London, we take Stephanie to a place where she can't see anyone,” I said.

“It fills up later,” Jordan said.

“What a crazy place this is,” Stephanie said, referring to England. “Have you noticed the boys' hair?”

“Certainly,” I said, in jaded tones. “I've been here two months.”

“I can't stand the boys' hair.” Stephanie said. ‘They look like girls. Do you like it?''

“I like the Beatles,” I said.

“Oh, the Beatles,” Stephanie said. “They're all right, I guess. For little kids.”

“I know some grown women who like them,” Jordan remarked.

“Oh, I'm not interested in that sort of thing anymore,” she said. “I've outgrown it.”

“Indeed,” I said.

“I've just been to Copenhagen,” she went on. “Have you ever been there?”

We were forced to admit that we had never been to Copenhagen.

“It's awfully interesting,” Stephanie said. “They have this park called the Tivoli. And in Paris I saw this cathedral.”

“Did you,” I said, patting my bun.

Suddenly Stephanie shrieked. “Look at that boy's hair,” she said. Some people had come down the stairs, two women and three men.

“Yes,” I said. “When one has been in London a while, one hardly notices it.”

Stephanie gave a small scream.”Look at that hair,” she said.

The party was being seated at a long table about five feet from us in the middle of the room. The man at the head of the table began to order, in a pronounced Liverpudlian accent. I stared closely at the boy with the long hair. He floated before my eyes, approaching and receding.

“That's George Harrison,” I said with Olympian calm.

“Oh, my God, it's the Beatles,” Stephanie said. “Oh, my God, it's John Lennon. And his wife.”

It was John Lennon and George Harrison and Mrs. Lennon and Patty Boyd, George Harrison's girlfriend, and Neil Aspinall, the Beatles' road manager. Stephanie sat beside me, moaning.

“Oh, it's the Beatles,” she kept saying. “Oh, the Beatles, the Beatles.” She rose slightly from her seat. “I'm going over,” she said.

“You can't,” we said. “Sit down.”

“But it's them,” she said. “It's them, it's them.” She began to rock back and forth.

“Well, you can't go over to them,” Jordan said.

Stephanie turned to me. Her eyes were out of focus, and her upswept hairdo had collapsed over one ear. “I have to have their signatures,” she said. “Nobody will believe me.”

“Calm down,” Jordan said.

“You don't understand,” she said. “It's them, it's them.”

“I'm going to call the kids,” Jordan said.

“It's late,” I said.

“I don't care. I'm going to call them. This will make up to them for the whole summer.”

He checked first with the management, who said the boys could come if they promised to behave quietly, and then he went out to telephone. The phone gave a few of its double bleeps, and Bruce answered. “Hello?” he said.

“Bruce?

“Yes.”

“Listen, Bruce,” Jordan said tensely. “Listen carefully. I want you to get dressed and give Eric some clothes and tell him to get dressed too. And Mark. Wear something presentable. Get dressed quickly, and go outside and go down to Knightsbridge Road and take a cab, and tell the man you want to go to the Pickwick Club on Great Newport Street off the Charing Cross Road, just above Leicester Square. Remember, the Pickwick Club. Have you got all that?”

There was a long silence. Then Bruce spoke. “Who
is
this?” he said.

“This is your father,” Jordan said, exasperated. “Who else could it be?”

“Well, I didn't know,” Bruce said.”You sounded so funny. You sounded so polite.”

“Did you get what I said?”

“No, I didn't,” Bruce said. “Here's Mark.”

“Yeh?” Mark said, his customary telephone greeting.

“Listen, Mark,” Jordan said tensely, “Everybody get dressed, wear something presentable. Go down to the Knightsbridge Road and take a cab, and come to the Pickwick Club on Great Newport Street, off Charing Cross Road, just above Leicester Square. Tell the driver. We're in the restaurant. I'll be waiting for you.” He paused. “The Beatles are here. Have you got that?”

“Okay,” Mark said. “Goodbye.”

Jordan hung up, wondering whether he would ever see them again, and returned to our banquette, where our food had come and Stephanie was still moaning. “They'll be here in five minutes,” he said to me.

“I'm going to sit here until they go,” I said, referring to the Beatles. “I don't care if I have twelve desserts.”

“Oh, please, please,” Stephanie said. “Oh, don't you see.”

She kept sort of levitating, and we had to hold her down.

After a while Jordan went out to meet the children, and they all came down the stairs. Jordan had told them not to stare, so they came down looking very solemn; their eyes swiveling occasionally to the right. They lined up on the banquette next to me, facing the Beatles, and ordered chocolate cake and milk. John Lennon and George Harrison were wearing black turtlenecks and wheat-colored Levis with wide belts. The
women, in long-sleeved shirts, had a great deal of teased blonde hair and black eye makeup.

“This is the unbelievables,” Eric whispered to me. “When I get home I'm going to vomit.”

“Oh, let me go over there,” Stephanie kept saying. “Oh, my only night in London. Oh, oh, oh.”

When the Beatles left, we followed them out, and watched them go off in a big black car.

“Oh, why didn't I get their cigarette butts,” Mark said. “I wasn't thinking.” He went back inside to see if he could remedy the situation.

“When Dad called, Mark screamed and took his sweater off,” Bruce said. “I couldn't imagine.”

Mark came back disappointed. The ashtrays had already been emptied.

We climbed into a cab which started off well and then smashed into a lamp post. Stephanie, sitting limply at my side with her hair hanging down, refused to notice this.

“I saw Piccadilly at night,” Eric said.

“Ah, my God,” Stephanie murmured. “My God, my God.”

T
HE NEXT DAY
we were to leave for Devon. Bruce awoke with a large paunchy red eye.

“I'll take him to the doctor,” I said to Mrs. Grail, “and then we'll leave for the station. Mrs. Stackpole will be here at one to meet our lawyer, Mr. Snell. He'll show her over the house. All you have to do is let them in, and then remember, you lock the front door and go out the back—”

“Ah God,” Mrs. Grail said, “if you take the little fellow to the doctor, you'll sit there for hours, it's very hard on such short notice. Why don't you go to the chemist, he'll give you something.”

“But… buying something in a drug store … ?”

“Ah, they have wonderful things in the chemist for that sort of eye. I bought something from the chemist for that sort of eye myself once and it worked perfect. If you go to the doctor, you'll sit all day and you'll miss your train.”

I bundled Bruce off down the Brompton Road; Jordan was to come home in an hour and then we were leaving. It was too wonderful to be true. The English Riviera. Even Bruce's eye could not dampen my spirits.

We went into a little chemist's shop.

“And how long has his eye been like this?” the chemist asked.

I tried to think. “It was sort of getting red a day or two ago,” I said.

“A day or two ago!” the chemist said. “We are only given one pair of eyes, Madam, has that occurred to you? Why haven't you taken this child to a physician?”

I took a deep breath. “We are leaving for the country this afternoon,” I replied haughtily. “I intend to consult a physician when we arrive. Since we are travelling, I came in here for a stopgap remedy.”

I had apparently employed the correct tone; the shopkeeper began to fawn and cringe. “Oh, dear me, Madam, quite right. Oh, please do wait; I shan't be a moment.” He returned with a small box. “Just pop this into his eye two or three times a day. It should do the trick. You'll need an eye dropper,” he added.

“I shall have to purchase one,” I said, still talking funny.

“I'm afraid I'm fresh out.”

“We have to get an eye dropper,” I said to Bruce, as we left the shop. “I suppose we can get one at Boots.” This was a large chemist chain; the nearest one was about five blocks, or fifteen minutes walk, away.

“What a rude man,” Bruce said automatically.

“Oh, well,” I said

We made our way in a fine drizzle. Ahead of us a young woman, walking fast, was pulling a two-year-old child roughly after her by the hand. The child, trying to keep up, tripped and fell, and the young woman gave her an impatient slap. “Watch out,” she said. Before she could haul her tearful offspring on, a very tall majestic woman wearing a turban emerged from the crowd. “You must not pull your child that way, my good woman,” the lady said. “The poor little thing cannot keep u
p. Don't walk so fast. Poor little thing,” she said to the child. She nodded at the mother and went on her way.

The mother stood rooted for a moment, shamefaced, and then moved on, much more slowly. “Come
on,”
she said irritably to the child.

“Did you hear what that man behind me said to the other man?” Bruce asked. “He said, ‘We made them,' and the other man said, ‘You mean you actually, physically, made them?' and the first man said, ‘No, of course not.' What do you suppose he meant?”

“I can't imagine,'' I said.