Tea & Antipathy (24 page)

“She's still staring at me,” I complained, “and what's more I think she's revolting.”

“Change places with Mark,” Jordan said. So I sat in Mark's place with my back to the revolting starer.

“She's saying something to her husband and pointing at us,” Mark announced.

“Rhubarb and apple tart for dessert,” the waiter said, “or Windsor jellies, of course.”

Jordan asked if coffee could be served with dessert.

“Coffee is served in the lounge, sir,” the waiter said, “after dinner.”

“But we'd like it with dessert.”

“I'll see what can be arranged,” the waiter said.

Nothing could be arranged, because dessert was served without coffee. We went into the lounge, sat in the fat chairs and watched the rain streaking the tall windows. There were several fireplaces in the lounge, but they were cold and empty. An icy wind whistled about our ears. The children went off to explore, and came back excited.

“Hey, there are slot machines back there,” Bruce said. “Can I have a shilling?”

We gave them money, and they went away. There were slot machines in “arcades” all over Torquay. In a little while Mark came rushing in to announce that he had won the jackpot.
We trailed after him to the sun porch. In addition to dusty wicker furniture, it housed a collection of slot machines made in Chicago, and one of those machines with a claw that fishes out plastic combs and thimbles, and avoids the cameras and binoculars that enticed you in the first place. There were a lot of children and adults in the porch; no one reached out the hand of friendship to the traveler. Our children had always made friends in the many hotels we had stayed at in America. Here they were regarded with a decidedly fishy eye. I thought about the reception an English family would have at an American resort. Maud Tweak had touched on this topic with me at our party.

“We are not quick to make friends,” she said, “but when we do make friends, I'm afraid our friendships last longer than yours do.”

After the money was gone, we went upstairs and I put the drops in Bruce's eye, which was much improved. Eric was complaining about a gumboil. We watched some clergymen on television and then turned in.

The next morning, after our hot cereal and eggs, we repaired once again to the beach; this time Jordan and the boys went out in a motor boat until the rain drove them to shore again. For lunch we ate our soup, our toast, our fish, a very small lamb chop tasting faintly lamby, boiled potatoes, creamed potatoes and buttered runner beans. Eric refused everything and looked out the window at the steady rain on the dark trees.

“Are you sick?” I asked.

“I hate this food,” he said. “My gumboil hurts.”

I noticed that he had dark smudges under his eyes and his face was the size and color of a slice of lemon. “He's starving,”
I said to Jordan, alarmed. “He must have a gumboil because of vitamin deficiency.”

“Don't you want your potatoes?” Jordan asked Eric.

“No,” Eric said, and sighed.

After lunch we all went into Torquay on the bus. The town was packed; it was difficult to make our way down the street. We bought ice cream and passed a movie:
Help.

“We'll see that tomorrow,” Jordan said.

We took a taxi back to the hotel and hung around till dinner. Eric ate a little, helping himself to boiled potatoes from the waiter's serving dish.

“Say ‘thank you,'” Jordan said to Eric.

“Oh, it's all right,” the waiter said. “He hasn't been in England long enough to learn ‘please' and ‘thank you'.” He went off with his dish.

“Did you hear that?” I asked, seething.

“He didn't mean it that way,” Mark said.

“'What do you mean? What other way could he mean it?''

“Oh, Ma,” Mark said.

“Did you hear that?” I asked Bruce.

“No, I didn't catch it,” Bruce said.

“Eat up,” Jordan said. “It isn't every day you have braised Wilshire ham with noodles.”

“No, thank God,” I said.

“That woman is glaring at us,” Mark observed.

Harry Evans and the Orchestra were in fine fettle.

“That noise is driving me crazy,” Jordan said.

We took our coffee in the lounge and the children went off to play table tennis. I sat and read. After a while the boys went back to the wicker room to try and win the jackpot again, and then we went up to bed.

The next morning we had two hours on the boardwalk before the rain started, and then we went into town to see
Help
, starring the Beatles. We walked in line, realized we would have to miss lunch, and bought candy bars instead.
Help
was on a double bill with a terrible American picture. We ate a lot of candy bars and watched
Help
; we found it less appealing than
A Hard Day's Night
. We were in fact bewildered by it. That may have been due to our situation at the time, because when we saw it again months later, we enjoyed it. We returned to the hotel for tea: bread and butter and mashed sardines. After that the children gambled until dinner.

The next day was our last in Devon. There were specialties for sale in Torquay, like Devonshire cream and apple cider, but they were not available in the hotel, and the shops were literally too crowded to enter. “Where do all the people come from?” we asked the waiter at lunch, as he removed our soup plates and before he brought the fish course.

“The factories close in the Midlands in August,” he said. “Most of the people come down here for their holiday.”

I had read in a pamphlet that the English Riviera had come into being as a result of the Napoleonic wars. Nobody could go to the Continent, so they came to Devon and Cornwall instead. I could certainly sympathize with them: the same thing had happened to us. We hadn't been able to get to the Continent either.

Lunch ended, and the sun was still shining. This was unprecedented, so we decided to do some sightseeing. Not far away was a little village called Cockington Forge; it was supposed to be preserved in an ancient state. We all piled into a taxi and off we went.

Cockington Forge consisted mainly of souvenir shops. We strolled along a path leading through a grassy park, dotted here and there with large signs saying “Toilets.” There was an old church on a hill: it was very old, dating from Norman times. We read all about it, and examined the restorations; they looked very convincing to us. There was a café near the church, but we didn't go in. We had just had lunch, and, too, something about the look of it reminded us of the café in London where you couldn't sit at the table unless you ordered a meal, even if you were the only one in a large party who wasn't hungry, and where all the crockery and silver was chipped and/or greasy.

We walked back down the hill to the shops to see what we could buy. There were a lot of brass ashtrays and little bells, and china ducks and cuckoo clocks. We called a cab and went outside to sit in the sun and wait for it. It was actually warm, although rather damp and stuffy. Eventually the cab came and took us back to Torquay.

The boys went outside for a while. When it started to rain, they came back in; we gave them each half a crown and they went off to gamble. Then we got dressed for our final dinner at the Castle Hotel. I put on my dangly earrings and my Mary Quant dress and we went downstairs. In the hall near the elevator, or lift, was a smallish room for the maids. An overpowering smell of fish emanated from it, mixed with something like cocoa. I held my breath and hurried down the stairs; the lift never seemed to be in operation.

For dinner we had Creamed Vegetable Soup, which tasted like Creamed Asparagus Soup. Then we had Grilled Lamb Chop, one small chop apiece. It tasted faintly lamby.

Eric ate a boiled potato; his face looked more like a slice of lemon than ever. The vegetable was buttered Brussels sprouts.

“I'll be glad to get back to London again,” Jordan said, “to get something to eat, and I never thought I'd say
that.
”

Harry Evans and the Orchestra were playing something with violins in it. A very fat blonde lady with an upswept hairdo and a flowered décolletage kept time with her fork against a water glass.

“I don't believe this place,” Mark said. “I don't, I can't.”

“Tapioca Milk Pudding,” the waiter said, “Normandy Pudding, or of course the cold sweets from the trolley.” He gestured toward them, and they winked at us, shimmering in five colors.

“Does anyone ever complain about Harry Evans and the Orchestra?” Jordan asked him, emboldened by the approach of our departure.

“Oh,” the waiter replied, “he's been here so long I expect everyone has forgotten why he ever started in the first place. Nobody ever thinks about him one way or the other.”

We took the puddings. “That woman is still staring at us,” Mark said. “Now she's saying something to her husband. Wait a minute, she's choking.”

A ragged noise of coughing rose in the air behind my back.

“I think she's choking to death,” Mark reported. “He's getting up. He's pounding her on the back. She looks like a hippopotamus with a bird caught in its throat.”

“That's hardly kind,” I said, because I thought I should.

“She's all right now,” Mark said, in a disappointed voice.

“This pudding is full of lumps,” Bruce said.

We decided to pack it in, and rose as a family. As I passed the Staring Woman, she turned to her husband and said loudly, “Funny looking creature, isn't she?”

While we sipped our coffee in the lounge, Mark fumed and fretted. “Did you hear it?” he kept saying. “Did you hear what she said?”

“Actually,” Bruce said to me, “she's funnier looking than you are.”

We went into the large and echoey table tennis room and played table tennis. After a while footsteps pounded outside the door and two fat little girls whom we had seen in the wicker room, dashed in. “Where's Bruce?” they screamed. We were all, including Bruce, surprised that they knew his name.

“The jackpot's been won!” one of the little girls announced, and the other called loudly, “British luck wins again!” They paused for a moment of triumph and darted out again.

“None of them said a word to me when
I
won,” Mark said. I pointed out that he wasn't British.

We all felt lighthearted while we waited in the station for the train to carry us back to London, even though Mrs. Stackpole's gloomy little house awaited us. It was still a relief to get away from the cold curled toast and faint lamb, to say nothing of the xenophobia in close quarters. Eric, although looking far from well, donned his French Harlequin red-framed sunglasses, his corduroy Beatles cap, and, holding an unlighted cigarette that he had mooched from Jordan, climbed up onto a varnished station bench in his sneakers, and put his hand inside his coat.

“My name is Nelson,” he said. “I got a gumboil.”

A lady in a flowered hat, sitting on another bench some distance from us, began to twitch with annoyance. She turned to a young man sitting next to her, and discussed us audibly.

“My name is Nelson,” Eric said in clipped tones. “My gumboil hurts.”

“Don't stand on the furniture, dear,” the woman called. She twitched again, and her glassy-eyed, chinless companion nodded at her in dim approval.

Eric took a drag of his unlighted cigarette and climbed down from the bench.

A
ND SO WE TOOK OUR LEAVE
of rainy Devon, famous for cream and cider, neither of which was served in the hotel, and returned to London on a bleak cold Sunday afternoon in August. Awaiting us was a letter from Percy Snell.

“Oh, goody,” I said. “It's probably about his going over the house with Mrs. Stackpole. I bet she never expected a lawyer to meet her.”

“It's the only way to handle people like her,” Jordan said, and read the letter.

“ … accompanied Mrs. Stackpole about the house as you requested. We discovered a great deal of damage had been done as a result of a tap being carelessly left running. Do you know anything about this?

“In addition, Mrs. Stackpole was terribly upset because the front door had not been locked. As she pointed out to me, there have been several robberies in the neighborhood recently, and she is understandably alarmed. I have told her that I would tell you this, since neither of us could understand why the front door had been left in this condition.”

“What kind of letter is this from a lawyer?” I asked. “Whose lawyer is he anyway?”

“I told that half-wit about the tub,” Jordan said irritably.

“I know he knew about it,” I said, “because I talked to him about Mr. MacAllister harassing me. He laughed.”

“He's an idiot,” Jordan said.

I was also annoyed that Mrs. Grail had apparently charged out in a panic, not locking our bedroom door, not bolting the front door, and not taking the basement key.