Tea & Antipathy (6 page)

“Yes, he's very brave; he—”

“And Bill,” Liz said, referring to Bill Dworkin. “Bill Dorking. He's such a gentleman. He even
sounds
like a gentleman. He sounds English.”

“That's the way they talk in New Jersey,” I said.

“Do they? Well, he sounds English to me. I think he speaks beautifully.”

We strolled a little farther, in silence. The London Hilton came into view.

“There's the London Hilton,” Liz said. “Don't you think it's horrible?”

“Well,” I said.

“Everybody feels it spoils the park. American structure spoiling the park. You can see it, right from here.”

“Oh, you can see it all right,” I said.

“I'm so fond of Bill,” Liz said. “Jordan is lucky to have him. He's so gentle. English people understand that, being quiet, you know, and a gentleman. Sometimes I would like to tell Jordan that one really needs to be a restrained sort of person to succeed here in business. One needs to be quiet to be accepted. More like Bill.”

“Oh, you really should tell Jordan that,” I said. “He'd be so grateful.”

“A lot of push doesn't go here, you know,” Liz said gently. “You'll find it's different here from America.” I said that I had noticed that it was different. “Of course,” Liz went on, “that's all right. You shouldn't mind. We're five hundred years ahead of you, you see. We've had more time to become civilized.”

I looked at her, speechless.

“You can't catch up with us, you know,” Liz said. “But don't worry, in five hundred years things will be different in America.” After the ensuing pause, she asked, “What do people think about us in America? What do American people think about the English?”

I said that everybody thought I was very fortunate to be able to come for the summer.

At this point the active members of our group signaled defeat in the face of the rising wind, and we went home, walking close to brick walls whenever we could, for shelter. We descended to the basement again, opened the drawers to get the little sandwiches out of the cookie tins and the aluminum foil, and brewed more tea. Everybody was animated, except me. I was thinking about what Liz had said, and wondering why she had said it. Finally our visitors departed, much to my relief.

We turned on the television, to relax for a few minutes. There was a thing on called
Mystery Theatre
. The camera circled constantly, up and down staircases, and people poured whiskey out of decanters while the camera crew kept clearing their throats and occasionally there was a loud crash; otherwise nothing much happened. We noticed it was over when credits began to travel down the screen.

At about ten-thirty, a clergyman appeared, in a very close close-up, and told a little story about an old lady who wrote to the bishop for groceries and then sat in the living room near
the window and waited for him until she fell asleep. In the meantime, the bishop had come in through the back door and left the groceries on the kitchen table. The point of this story seemed to be that a lot of us sit in the front room when we should really be in the kitchen. Or something like that. We discussed the point of this parable until “God Save the Queen” was played while the screen showed us a portrait of the Queen in evening dress before it went blank and silent. We hauled ourselves up, feeling very tired indeed, and suddenly a jolly voice came out of the dead set. “You won't forget to turn it off, will you?” it asked kindly. So we turned it off.

O
N MONDAY
we were awakened very early by another telephone man; this one brought several hundred yards of cable into the kitchen and left it there.

“The tenant was only supposed to come one afternoon,” I said to Mrs. Grail, when she arrived at ten.

“Well, they'll do you, you know,” she said. “Every time.” Her voice dropped. “I saw her this morning,” she said. “In Knightsbridge.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Stackpole. I saw her this morning. In the Knightsbridge Road.”

“But she's in Scotland.”

“Ah, she never is. I saw her this morning, the same blue skirt and that sweater. I'd know her anywhere.” She gave a rather creepy glance at the windows. “She's staying somewhere here, close by.”

The phone rang and Jordan answered it upstairs. I excused myself and joined him; I could hear Mr. MacAllister's boiled voice shrieking through the receiver. It didn't sound good.

“No sheets,” I said, when he hung up.

“He says he's been on to her. And she was very upset, about the sheets and the frying pan and all that. She said no linens
and I said what about human decency, but he didn't seem to know what I meant. He said we could leave if we didn't like it.”

“Well, what did she say about sheets when you rented the place?”

“I can't remember,” Jordan said sheepishly. “I remember thinking it was all right.”

I looked moodily out the window. “Mrs. Grail said she saw her today, in the Knightsbridge Road. She says she's staying here somewhere, spying on us.”

“That's ridiculous,” he said briskly. “What would she want to do that for?”

I shrugged.

“Well, have a good day,” he said hastily, and set off with Mark for the bus. We had decided to spend the afternoon enjoying the local sights. Jordan had suggested we walk through Knightsbridge to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

“You're going out?” Mrs. Grail asked. She looked around nervously. “It's so quiet here without the boys,” she said. “And that damn clock ticking.”

“Well, we want to see a few things,” I said brightly. It was a relatively mild day; we were comfortable with sweaters under our raincoats. The sky was gray and threatening, but it was not raining. We walked along for several blocks. Bruce kept saying that we were lost. “It's too far,” he said. “There isn't any museum. It's the wrong way. My feet hurt.”

Finally we found it, huge and gray, dark gray. I went boldly up to the desk. The lady sitting there looked alarmed. “You ought to go to the Children's Museum at Bethnal Green,” she said. “We haven't anything for children here.”

I had no idea how to get to Bethnal Green. “Haven't you
anything?”
I asked.

“Well, there's the armor.''

“Oh, armor!” I cried, beaming at my charges, “Oh, good! You'll love the armor. Where is it?”

“Well, you walk through the Church Plate …”

We walked through the Church Plate, cheerfully discussing it, and eventually found the armor.

“Oh, look!” I called gaily. “Oh, my goodness, Bruce, look at this big shield!”

“Oh!” Bruce cried. “Isn't it big? My goodness, you mean they really carried that?”

“Indeed they did,” I said. “Doesn't it look heavy? My goodness…”

“Oh, look!” Eric cried. “Look at this big sword!”

“Oh, goodness!” I cried back. “Look, Bruce!”

After about ten minutes of this, I was going on about a large iron gauntlet, when Eric spoke in a low, despairing voice.

“Let's get out of here,” he said.

Silently, we slunk past the Church Plate and out into the street. A light rain was falling, and it was cold. We went to a little restaurant and ordered hamburgers. They came, gray slabs of meat in a square metal dish, covered with greasy gravy. No bread. And the milk was warm.

“We'll go to Harrods,” I said cheerfully, “and I'll buy something delicious for dinner. And we'll look around Harrods.”

So we trudged to Harrods, and we looked around. Everything seemed very expensive; prices seemed to have doubled since Jordan and I had come to London as tourists, two years before. Finally we went down into the food halls. I gathered up my courage and approached the meat counter. A woman in a white coat was sitting on a high stool behind the roasts, chewing on something.

Using my tentative polite approach, I edged in a few feet to the left of her, eyeing her with my right eye, and clearing my throat hopefully. She chewed on, staring straight before her. I edged a few inches closer to her line of vision and said, “Uh …”

She glanced at me irritably and said, “Oh, move along, madam, move along. Get down to the end of the counter. Get away!”

“Well!” I said, gasping.

“Oh, get away,” she responded.

I moved down to the end of the counter, still gasping, and a meek butcher cut a roast for me. The woman in the white coat sat glaring at me during the entire transaction. “What a rude woman!” I said to the butcher. He smiled at me meekly. Apparently, I had blundered into her tea break.

Gathering up my roast, I sailed with my little tykes toward the exit in the drug department. Near Drugs was Hairbrushes. Bruce and I each needed a hairbrush. Surprised to discover that English hairbrushes cost more in London than in Chicago, I weighed two in my hand while I thought about it. “If you can't decide, it's better to leave it,” the saleswoman said coldly. “We close in ten minutes.”

I put the hairbrushes down and we exited through Drugs.

T
HE NEXT DAY
two telephone men came, hollering to each other as they dragged rubbery coils around. Mrs. Grail complained to me bitterly. I responded that I really couldn't see why all this should go on. “It was only supposed to take an afternoon for her to move in.”

“Ah, that's the way of them,” Mrs. Grail said. “That's the British for you. She'll have it nice and easy when she comes in September and you've had all the mess and all the aggravation. And I've swept down them stairs three times already and they've tracked in all the mud. And now you can't get the sheets, and them twisty rags on the boys' beds. I wouldn't put them in a kennel. And you paying all that rent.”

“A woman yelled at me in Harrods yesterday,” I said moodily. “At the meat counter.”

“Oh, I've been here twenty-five years,” Mrs. Grail said. “And I'll never get used to it. Never.”

“The children are holding up very well, though,” I said. “My husband and I were discussing it yesterday. Well, Bruce's stomach is upset—maybe the milk is too rich—but Eric is doing well. He's such a good traveler. We've taken him to Wisconsin and Boston and Maine and never a bit of trouble with him. He loves to travel.”

“Ah, the dear little tyke,” Mrs. Grail said.

“He's kind of fresh, though,” I said.

“Ah, they're all awful,” Mrs. Grail said. “I had four of them and I love them dearly, but if l had it to do over again, I wouldn't have any. I'm a Catholic but you've got to use common sense. They're all a great trial.”

“Well,” I said. “Anyway, Eric seems to take it all in his stride.”

“The dear little thing,” Mrs. Grail said. “But why do they like the Beatles so much? I can't stand them, but Elvis Presley is lovely, isn't he?”

“Yes, he is,” I said, measuring out drops for Bruce's stomach. “I think I'll take them to Madame Tussaud's today. The Victoria and Albert wasn't good.”

“Oh, they'll love Madame Tussaud's. You go out here to Knightsbridge and take a Number Nine bus…” We gathered ourselves together and straggled off in the rain, leaving Mrs. Grail wrapped around the doorpost, her eyes begging us not to leave her alone in the house.

Madame Tussaud's seemed to be a success; the children waited quietly in the long lines before every exhibit. Eric looked nervously at the image of the Queen Mother; its eyes were glittering strangely under the lights.

“Who's
that?”
he cried, pointing.

“It's the Queen Mother, dear,” I said loudly. “She's an awfully nice lady.”

They wanted to go to the Chamber of Horrors, and on the way we stopped in the Diorama Room before the diorama of Hamlet. Hamlet was standing on a stony platform, and the Ghost loomed in the background. “Do you see that?” I said, showing off. “That's Hamlet, and that's the ghost of Hamlet's father, and he's telling Hamlet that Hamlet's uncle Claudius murdered him by dropping poison in his ear and…”

After I finished giving a summary of the play, we went on down to the Chamber of Horrors which the boys seemed to like. When we got home, I cooked hamburgers in an electric frying pan that I had found hidden in a cupboard in the laundry room. It was rather greasy, but I washed it thoroughly, plugged it in, and it worked.

The next morning we received a letter from Mrs. Stackpole. She seemed angry because of the Great Sheet Controversy and repeated the point of view delivered to us by Mr. MacAllister. “As for the frying pan,” she wrote, “I am terribly sorry not to have provided one, but I am afraid that is an object I
never
use!” There was a good deal more in the same vein. Shortly after we finished reading the letter, the telephone rang. Jordan spoke genially for a few minutes, and then hung up. “It's Miss Pip,” he said. “The lodger. She wants to bring a few things in. I told her someone would be here until two o'clock, so don't forget to tell Mrs. Grail.”

“They've already driven us crazy with the telephone,” I said, “dragging dust and fluff all over the stairs, and them twisty bits of rag …”

“Well, we said she could move a few things in,” Jordan said reasonably.

I took the children to see a Jerry Lewis movie in Piccadilly. It was in color: we watched the California sun beat down on everyone, and it was an adjustment emerging into the gray London streets.

“Let's go and have a nice lunch,” I said enthusiastically. “We'll go to Fortnum's Fountain Bar.” This had been recommended to me as one of the best places in the city for lunch.

We established ourselves at the bar and tried to attract the attention of the waitress, who was lounging against the counter,
chatting with a blond chinless youth. “I really hate it here,” she was saying. “The kitchen is filthy.”