Tea & Antipathy (5 page)

“I've already bought the frying pan,” I said. “It cost eight shillings.”

“Well, we'll take it off the rent,” Jordan said. “He's a reasonable person. He can't help it if Mrs. Stackpole is a little eccentric.” I went downstairs to report to Mrs. Grail. “Well, I certainly should buy them sheets,” she said, “and new ones for the boys too. I never heard of such a thing. Sleeping on them
rags. So he's the boyfriend, is he? And little children in the house.”

“He's a reasonable person,” I said. “He can't help it if Mrs. Stackpole is eccentric.”

“Eccentric is it? I'm telling you it's the English, they'll do you every time. You run out and get them sheets, before she tells him off.”

“How much do sheets cost?”

“They cost a lot,” Mrs. Grail responded promptly. “Everything costs a lot in this benighted place. Oh, I've been here twenty-five years and I'll never get used to it, never. This Hoover is broken,” she added, in a more conversational tone.

“Oh, what shall we do?” The thought of attempting to get anything repaired was almost too much for me. I had tried to buy a can opener and no one would sell it to me. They all said that you could get them free in pubs, but the pub people wouldn't give us one.

“Don't worry about it,” Mrs. Grail said. “Blow it. Let her worry about it. I'll use a broom. This old thing,” she said, kicking the vacuum cleaner. “It dates from the Ark. She hasn't a penny. Oh, I'll never get used to it, never.”

“If the phone book had yellow pages,” I said.

“Standing looking in a store window,” Mrs. Grail said, bending over to puff up the sofa cushions in their chintz slip-cover, “and a woman edges up and bumps into me, ‘Pardon me,' I says. ‘Ah, go back,' she says, ‘go back where you come from.' ‘Yes,' I says, ‘if the English will give us back our six counties,' I says, ‘I'll go back where I come from.”'

“That woman was probably an eccentric,” I said.

‘”Go back where you come from,”' Mrs. Grail said, punching the cushion vigorously. “That's what they keep saying. My
husband's from the North, from Yorkshire, and the men he works with, they tell him to go back where he come from.”

“My goodness,” I said.

“My Pat, those girls she works with, they mimic the way she talks.” She straightened up and brushed some lint off the back of the sofa. “They hate Americans too,” she said. “They hate everybody. You'll find out.” She paused dramatically in the doorway, clutching the defunct Hoover. “Go get them sheets,” she said. “I should hurry up if I was you.”

Feeling rather shaken, I went down to the kitchen to calm myself with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. Jordan had originally ordered the
London Times
for me, but I found it less than interesting, so he switched to the
Daily Telegraph.
I sipped my instant coffee and read a review of the television play that Mark and I had seen the night before.

“I do not know where these elegant kitchens come from that one sees on these television dramas,” the reviewer wrote irascibly. “I certainly do not have one. I should like to make it very clear that I would under no circumstances have such a kitchen even if it were offered to me. We are being pervaded by a pernicious materialism, most probably from across the sea.”

O
N SATURDAY MORNING
we were awakened about eight o'clock by a pounding on the door. I hurried down and, mindful of Mrs. Stackpole's warnings, called, “Who is it?”

“Telephone,” a voice said.

I opened the door a crack and peered out into a sunny Baldridge Place.

“We have a telephone,” I said.

“This is for the attic,” the man said. “To be installed. I have to leave this cable here.”

“What for?”

“I have to leave this cable here, to be installed at a later date.”

I stood aside reluctantly, and he clomped down to the kitchen, dragging dirt and bits of fluff over Mrs. Stackpole's impractical red hall carpeting.

“Waking us up,” I said to Jordan. “Mrs. Stackpole never mentioned it. She said her lodger was going to bring some things to the attic one afternoon. Do you suppose that was a burglar?”

“He wouldn't have all that cable with him if he was a burglar,” Jordan said reasonably. He looked out the window. “The sun's out,” he remarked, in an awed voice.

After lunch Jane came with a friend named Tom and took Eric and Bruce to Hyde Park. Feeling quiet and peaceful, Jordan and Mark and I went to sit on folding chairs in Mrs. Stackpole's small but charming back garden. Paved in red brick and edged with flowers, it was surrounded with a ten-foot-high fence of wooden palings fastened together tightly and sharpened to murderous fangs all along the top.

“I don't think anyone could get in here,” I said. “Why do we have to use all those burglar locks on the garden door?”

“I think Mrs. Stackpole is odd on the subject of locks,” Jordan said.

We sat in the sun. I never sat in the sun at home; here I felt starved for sunlight. It had been gray and raining all week. The ground was very wet; the heat brought out huge black flies, and bees which hovered over the brilliant flowers. Steam rose around us.

“It's like a jungle out here,” Mark said. He listened a moment as we sat stiffly on our folding chairs, our knees touching. A stillness pervaded everything. “Where
is
everybody?” he asked, nervously.

“It's quiet on Saturday afternoon in Knightsbridge,” Jordan said. “All the shops are closed.”

“Quiet!” Mark said. “I'll say it's quiet. Aren't there even any little kids?”

A ghostly sound of childish laughter floated through the air. Jordan rose and tried to peer through the fence palings, standing on tiptoe.

“How … old … are … you?” he called, in a high, lingering, eerie voice.

“I was ten …” Mark called back, “in eighteen fifty-six …”

We discovered that we were becoming rather depressed.

“I'm supposed to go to Battersea with Vincent,” Mark said. Vincent was one of Jordan's employees: he was fifteen, the same age as Mark and vaguely Asian in appearance.

“That's nice, dear,” I said, pleased that my boy had made a friend. Mark went off in the general direction of the Knightsbridge Underground station.

“Let's take a walk,” Jordan said brightly.

I don't normally drink, except at parties, but I said that I really thought I could use a drink.

“You can't be served for an hour or two,” Jordan said apologetically.

We went into the house, which was cold and damp, and locked all the windows and the French door with the little black and gold keys that Mrs. Stackpole had left us for this purpose. There were four locks on the French door alone. Luckily the sun was still shining when we emerged into the street. We walked slowly toward the square. Children were playing in the little gated private park.

We paused and stared over the iron fence. “Listen, our kids could play with those children there,” Jordan said, becoming excited.

I felt an odd doubt. “We haven't got a key,” I said.

“Dr. Bott will have one,” Jordan said. “He lives right over there, across the square—didn't I tell you about Dr. Bott? He's awfully nice. I went to him with my knee, and when I burnt my hand…”

“But …” I said.

“Good old Dr. Bott,” Jordan said fondly. He began to move toward the row of houses on the opposite side of the square.

I hung back. “Let's not,” I said. “I don't want to ask him.”

“Don't be silly,” Jordan said testily. “You don't know him.” He mounted the steep stairs. “He'll be delighted to help,” he said, and rang, or pulled, the bell.

“Nobody's home,” I said hastily, and began to back down the steps.

“Someone's coming,” Jordan said. “What's wrong with you?” The red door opened, and a man with fair hair stood before us. He stared blankly at Jordan through protuberant blue eyes.

“Yes?” he said coldly.

“Dr. Bott!” Jordan cried jovially. I turned and went hastily down the stairs. “Are you busy?” Jordan said. A note of hesitation crept into his voice.

“Yes,” Dr. Bott said, lifting his upper lip in what could only be described as a snarl. “I'm afraid I am.” By this time I had reached the pavement and was heading for the Brompton Road. “Wife,” Jordan was babbling, “family … here … visit….” I glanced over my shoulder and saw Dr. Bott smiling at me.

“What!” he called, “All the way from America?”

“Yes,” I called back, using his favorite word, and hotfooted it down the empty street. I waited for Jordan at the corner. He appeared shortly, with a peculiar expression on his face. “Good old Dr. Bott,” I said.

“He said he wanted some time with his family,” Jordan said. “‘I'd like
some
time with my family, you know,' was the way he put it.”

“How did he know we didn't want medical help?”

“He didn't. He didn't ask me what we wanted.”

We walked through the empty streets, holding hands, and staring with unseeing eyes into shop windows. Finally we had
some coffee and then we went home, and Jordan began writing letters, all beginning “My dear Dr. Bott …”

Bruce and Eric came home. They said all they had done in the park was lie on the grass while Jane rubbed Tom's back. Then they went on lying in the grass and Tom rubbed Jane's back.

We turned on the television set, but the only thing on both stations (there were only two) was Harold Wilson going in and out of Ten Downing Street. A Commonwealth Conference had started. The children played checkers; Mrs. Stackpole's glass curtains stirred in the breeze. It occurred to me that it was the middle of June, and that if we were home the children would be out riding their bicycles or swimming at the beach, but I pushed that thought away.

After a while, Mark returned, looking annoyed. He said Vincent didn't have any money, so he shared all his money with Vincent, and then when all his money was gone except his carfare, Vincent called him selfish. He said that since Mark was the son of an American millionaire, he had to be lying when he said that all he had left was carfare.

“Vincent's an idiot,” Jordan said.

Our Saturday ended with a trip in a cab to a delicatessen in South Kensington where we purchased goodies for dinner and for the next day, when Jane and her mother and brothers were coming to tea.

T
HE NEXT DAY
being Sunday, we all had a leisurely breakfast together, consisting of eggs from the Woolworth frying pan, and toast made under the broiler, one piece lifted by fork every three minutes. I piled the chipped mismatched dishes and glasses in the dish drainer to dry cloudily, and thought about my old electric dishwasher at home. For years I had complained about machine civilization and life in the wasteland of materialism: now I felt a subtle change taking place in me. Henry James was being replaced by Buckminster Fuller.

I shoved twelve or thirteen of Mrs. Stackpole's blanket and linen layers into place on our oversized bed and got dressed shortly before the doorbell rang. Descending, I found the eight-by-ten-foot sitting room bulging with people in t-shirts and blue jeans.

Jane was there with her friend Tom and several of her brothers, all with long bangs or fringes, and her mother Liz, a rather paunchy lady with orange hair and fingernails, who was wearing a green silk print blouse, a tight red wool skirt, and blue high-heeled shoes. After effusive greetings, we went down to the kitchen where we ate little sandwiches I had prepared, and drank tea. Mrs. Stackpole, incredibly, had left only a small teapot, and Jordan had had to buy a larger one. Jane stopped me when I was about to put the leftovers into the refrigerator.
“Silly old cow,” she said to me affectionately. Liz wrapped them all carefully in aluminum foil, put them into two large tin cookie boxes and put the boxes in a drawer in the dresser. I had noticed this aversion to the refrigerator in Mrs. Grail, who unfailingly placed milk and butter on the hutch shelves and asked me whether I wanted to put unopened cans of soup in
there,
pointing with distaste to the refrigerator. This distrust of refrigeration probably explained the rich aroma of sour milk I had frequently encountered. Anyway, after Liz had disposed of the little sandwiches, we decided to walk to Hyde Park, because it was a lovely sunny day.

Liz and I sat primly on a bench while Jordan and the young things leapt gaily over the grass. Jane at one point dashed for a ball and fell heavily to the ground, where she remained, rubbing her leg.

“Oh, dear,” I said, “she's hurt herself.”

“Yes,” Liz said. “She does try to do too much.”

Jane continued to sit rubbing her leg, while Jordan and Tom hung over her, looking concerned.

“We can't all be athletes,” I said.

“Everybody loves Jane,” Liz said, responding instantly to something in my tone. “Everybody that knows her is just wild about her.”

“Eric loves her,” I said, after a moment.

“Everybody does,” Liz said firmly. “And Jane expects that. She expects that everyone will love her.”

I began to feel that I had failed Jane.

“She and Jordan are very close,” Liz said. “She wants to take care of Jordan.” An icy wind blew across the grassy plain of the park. I was wearing a coat over my sweater, but my ears began
to tingle, and I noticed that Liz's lips matched her shoes. “Shall we take a walk?” I asked. “It's getting chilly.”

“It does get cold sometimes in the summer,” Liz said defensively.

We began to stroll slowly toward the sidewalk, or pavement.

“Jordan is so brave,” Liz said, “and so likeable. Coming all the way over here alone, to start a business the way he did.”