Tea & Antipathy (25 page)

“Ah, I thought I heard her in the house,” she said. “Her creeping about and me downstairs. I couldn't stick it, so I left.”

We could hardly blame her for feeling like that. No one wanted to stay in that house alone. Or even in part of the house alone.

“Of course she complained to Mr. Snell about the door not being properly locked,” I said crossly.

“Ah, Mr. Snell,” Mrs. Grail cried. “Ah, the look of him. A great fat thing with a moon face, and them dead blue eyes.”

“I know the type,” I said, thinking of Mr. MacAllister.

“Ah, God,” Mrs. Grail said, “thick as thieves, the two of them. ‘You can go home, Mrs. Grail,' he says to me, and I says, ‘No, the lady told me to stay until two and I'm staying.'”

“He got on well with Mrs. Stackpole, I guess,” I said.

“Got on?” Mrs. Grail said. “Thick as thieves, the two of them. Well, you're a foreigner, aren't you, and they both English? Look out for them, they'll do you every time. And another woman was here. Yes, she brought in another woman, as a witness, I suppose. A great fat thing came running, in an apron.”

“He didn't mention that,” I said.

“No, he wouldn't tell you that, would he? And them smiling and nodding, cozy as could be, and ‘Mrs. Grail, you can go now.' It's the English; they'll do you every time.”

The phone rang. “Is this the Stackpole residence?” a voice inquired. “We are calling to make an appointment for the carpet cleaning.”

“What carpet cleaning?”

“Is this the tenant? Mrs. Stackpole called us on Friday and told us to make arrangements with you for the carpet cleaning. She said you would see to it.”

“She was wrong,” I said grimly, and hung up.

“Ah, God,” Mrs. Grail said softly.

It was clear that Eric needed a doctor. I made an appointment with Mrs. Bilkington's Dr Killman. We took a cab in the rain to a street very near the bus depot, the scene of another one of our fiascos, and the cab double-parked across from the doctor's office building. I got out to pay the driver, saying “Don't move,” to Eric, who immediately darted into the middle of the road. A small car screeched to a halt a foot away from him; the driver sat paralyzed behind the wheel. Eric, who had executed a sort of tribal dance when he saw the car bearing down on him, appeared rather subdued. I was shaking too much to yell at him as we wended our way into the office.

“Eric Miller, for his appointment,” I announced to the receptionist. She nodded and made a note. I sank onto a sofa. “I feel quite weak,” I said. “I just had an awful experience.”

“I know,” the receptionist said with a smile. She gestured toward the window. “I saw it.”

I had in fact glimpsed several heads protruding from an upstairs window as I had trembled my way toward Eric. She resumed her work, and in a little while the doctor admitted us. He was a bluff but pleasant sort who seemed to know his business.

“Are you going to give me a throat culture?” Eric asked.

“No,” Dr. Killman said. “I only give throat cultures when they're necessary. I'm an English doctor, not an American one.” It developed that Eric had an infection and needed an antibiotic. I had a cold, so the doctor prescribed an antihistamine for me that could be filled at Harrods, but not at Boots. It seemed that pharmacies had their own lists and used their own judgment.

While Eric recovered, the boys stayed in and played checkers. I walked to Harrods in the rain and bought other games. Our desire to see the sun became an obsession; it was clear that Eric and Bruce and I could never last in London until the first week of September. It was finally decided that the three of us would leave in eight days, on the twenty-first of August. Mrs. Grail had announced her husband's vacation or holiday; it was only for four days. They were going to Ireland, but she would be back Monday.

“But give me your address in America,” she said. “For a Christmas card.”

“But I'll see you when you get back,” I said.

“Just give me your address,” she said ominously.

She did not return on the following Monday, and we never heard from her again. I couldn't find the dustpan, and things fell into disrepair. I gave up all pretense of trying to shop and cook; every night we went for dinner to Peter Evans where the portions were small but good. There was the sense of an ending.

During all this, Basil Goldbrick actually bought into the business. About time too: I received an agitated phone call from Bill Dworkin, whom the Pressclips employees referred to as Mr. Dorking. “Do you know where Jordan is?” Bill asked, in a throaty whisper.

“Why, no. Don't you?”

“He and Basil Goldbrick went to the bank,” Bill said, “to get the money for the payroll. Basil has to sign something or the bank won't give us any more money. It's almost four, and … and …” he laughed nervously. “I'm all alone here now, and they're beginning to look at me kind of funny. I think they're all moving toward me. It's payday.”

“My God,” I said reassuringly. “I hope for your sake Jordan comes back soon.”

“Some of these ladies are rather peculiar,” Bill whispered. “I wish he'd hurry.”

It turned out that it was too late to get the money from the bank, but Basil Goldbrick, whose source of income was obscure and who wore colorless nail polish, happened to have the amount of the payroll in his pocket. Since, as I have said, English workers wouldn't take checks because they were only pieces of paper and didn't jingle, it was a lucky thing for Bill, at least, that Basil happened to turn up loaded.

In any case, the business was saved, Mrs. Grail was gone, and Eric and Bruce and I had exhausted most possibilities.

It was time to think of moseying on.

A
S A SORT OF FAREWELL GESTURE
, Basil and Daisy Goldbrick invited us to dinner at Crockford's, the private gambling club where Cynthia had hoped to glimpse titled people. The club, unlighted on the outside, was in a large old white house on a dead end street. Daisy was a vision of loveliness in white wool, and Basil was wearing his nail polish, his cufflinks, his moustache and his floppy collar. We were introduced to Mr. Phenix, a small, very dark man who looked like a Turkish double agent from an Eric Ambler novel, and to Daisy's niece and nephew from Liverpool who greeted us in rich Yorkshire accents. Daisy herself spoke carefully, with great precision.

“Mr. Phenix, you know,” she said to me, “is a descendant of the Duke of Phoenix, a Spanish aristocrat.”

“Yes, that's quite right,” Basil said. We all looked at Mr. Phenix, who smiled enigmatically.

Basil asked me what I would like for a first course. I said I didn't know.

“What would you have if you were in America?” Mr. Phenix asked me.

“I'd have a shrimp cocktail,” I said.

“Well, you can have that here,” Mr. Phenix said, nodding briskly to the waiter, who wrote it down at once. When they
came, they were not of course American shrimp, but rubbery little English prawns. I told Mr. Phenix they were delicious.

“You don't get quite the portions here that you do in America,” Basil observed. “I know you won't mind my saying this,” he went on, “but when Daisy and I were in Chicago, we used to go to the beach, and I must say we were appalled at the appearance of the people. They were all so hideously fat.”

“My goodness, yes,” Daisy said. “One noticed that they were all so dreadfully fat.”

“I expect that's because they eat too much,” the niece remarked.

“Oh, the portions in the restaurants,” Basil said. “Oh, they're over-facing.”

“I don't think of Jordan as a typical American,” the niece observed.

“Oh, heavens,” Daisy responded. “Oh, heavens, no. Jordan? Not typical at all.”

“There are so many things about the United States we don't understand,” the niece said, in lilting Liverpool. “Bigotry, for one thing. We don't understand bigotry at all here. It frightens me.”

I looked at the niece for a long moment, and she looked back at me, batting her big vacant blue eyes in fear. “We're frightened of bigotry,” she said, “because we don't understand it.”

“One is always frightened of what one doesn't understand, Giselle,” Daisy said graciously.

“I certainly agree,” Mr. Phenix said. “One is, isn't one?”

“I've been so anxious to speak with you, Anita,” Daisy said. “I said to Basil just the other day that I was so anxious to speak with you.”

I was eating with some relish, because the food did not taste English. It was heavy with wild rice and full of cream sauce, but it tasted familiar, like the food served on airplanes.

“I was in Chicago for some months at one time,” Daisy said. She sounded as though she was in an elocution class, reading from a paper entitled “My Summer Vacation.” “I was feeling most downhearted at the time, and I thought, well, I will go away. I will go somewhere far away. So I went to Chicago, because I had a friend there in a place called Des Plaines. She was an old friend of mine, from quite a nice English family, who had moved to America, so I assumed that Des Plaines would be quite pleasant.” She paused to take a drink of water. “However,” she resumed, “I found to my sorrow that such was not the case.”

“Not the case?” Mr. Phenix asked.

“No,” Daisy replied, “not at all the case.” She cleared her throat. “I entered the plane, feeling most downhearted. I was wearing a very attractive hat, however. The hat was tall, you see, with taffeta stripes. I sat next to a most unattractive woman, heavy, you know, and far from young. She proceeded to tell me that her fiancé—her fiancé, mind you was meeting her in Chicago.” She paused and smiled. “Here was this woman … old, unattractive, badly dressed … with a fiancé, and here was
I
… quite alone.”

She paused again, to let the shock seep through us.

“Gracious,” I said, through the cream sauce.

Daisy smiled again. “I thought, ‘My, I must indeed be unattractive, if I … have no one.' I sat there, feeling most down. And then the co-pilot came to fetch me. The pilot had sent him, to invite me to the cabin, because of my hat!” She laughed merrily,
showing even white teeth. “Oh, what a time we had,” she said, “in the pilot's cabin.”

I missed several chapters of her story because of chewing a hard roll, which caused a sort of roaring in my ears. “And imagine my surprise,” she was saying, “when my dear friend in Des Plaines seemed quite indifferent on the phone!”

“How rude of her,” Mr. Phenix commented. “Is she an American?”

Even I remembered that the dear friend in Des Plaines was English.

“No, my dear,” Daisy said. “But how changed! I went to stay with her. She was married to an Italian, an Italian truck driver….”

“An Italian?” Jordan said.

“Well, an American of Italian descent. He was a truck driver.” Daisy closed her eyes. “It's painful to me,” she whispered, “even now.”

“What did he do?” I asked, all agog. I visualized the Italian chasing Daisy around Des Plaines.

“I can't … even now …” she drew a deep breath and looked at us. “You can imagine my feelings,” she said, in a low voice, “when I discovered that this man … that he had never heard of Dickens.”

“Fancy that,” Mr. Phenix said.

“You
can understand,” Daisy said to me. “My dear friend had married this man… he had never heard of …”

After dinner, we went upstairs and watched a lot of well-dressed people gamble. Daisy's nephew, who was a physical education teacher, explained to us about chemin-de-fer. I stood next to an American lady who didn't seem typical, and she and I chatted.

“You spoke to Daisy at the table,” Basil said to me, twitching his moustache. “Marvelous raconteur, isn't she?”

“Oh, oh,” I said.

“Tell them the story about the dog, Daisy,” Basil said.

“Oh, I am feeling quite tired, Basil,” Daisy said, pressing the back of her hand against her fluffy bangs. Or fringe.

We put the Liverpool couple into a taxi and got into Basil's car. After we were settled in, Daisy told us the story about the dog. It seemed she had this poodle, which was hardly a surprise, and it climbed on Basil's bed, and he kept shouting at it to get out of his room and of course the landlady, who lived upstairs, thought he was shouting at
Daisy
.”

“Oh, a marvelous story,” Basil said, wiping his eyes. He gave me a healthy nudge.

“Did you ever hear anyone tell stories the way Daisy does?” he asked.

“No, I never did,” I said truthfully.

“I must explain that our young couple came down unexpectedly,” Daisy said, turning her head gracefully on her swanlike neck. “I really am quite exhausted, but one must cope with everyone. Oh, they're quite sweet, really.”

That took care of the physical education teacher and his frightened wife.

“Tell them the story about the painting,” Basil said. “You know Daisy paints,” he informed us.

“I see she does,” I replied, and received a poke from Jordan, but it didn't matter because they weren't listening to me anyway.

O
N AUGUST 21ST
, I flew home with Eric and Bruce, leaving Jordan and Mark to join us in time for Mark to start school. Jordan had to return to London to oversee the transfer of management of Pressclips U.K. from himself and Bill Dworkin to Basil Goldbrick's people. Jordan took a small flat at 45 Ennismore Gardens in Kensington, and there he received notice from our Percy Snell, of the large prestigious firm of Bartram & Goldfleet, that one F.E.H. Mantrap of Fulger & Gammon had contacted him on behalf of Mrs. Stackpole with the following claims: