Tea & Antipathy (7 page)

I cleared my throat.

“Are you going to Boopsie's on Saturday?” the waitress asked wistfully. The youth said he was thinking of it. “I wish I could go,” she said. “I'm so exhausted all the time. It's so difficult here, and the other girls …”

“How about some scrambled eggs?” I asked Eric, who sat droopily beside me, his chin resting on the counter.

“I'm not hungry,” he said faintly.

“You haven't had anything to eat all day,” I said, puzzled. “See? It says here, ‘Scrambled Eggs, Prawns, on Toast with Green Salad'… You don't like prawns or salad, so we'll just have the eggs and toast. Doesn't that sound good?”

“All right,” he said.

“I want the stuffed Canadian bacon with cheese sauce,” Bruce said. He fell off his stool, which collapsed on top of him. Eric continued staring moodily into space. I climbed down and helped Bruce up, righting his chair.

“I want to go home,” Bruce said.

“If I
am
able to go to Boopsie's on Saturday…” the waitress was saying.

“Miss,” the woman sitting next to Eric said apologetically, “I'm afraid my lobster's full of sand.”

“I'll be back in a minute,” the waitress said reluctantly to her friend. She turned to the woman next to me, inspected her lobster, and agreed that it was full of sand.

“Could you take our order?” I asked.

“One moment,” she replied frostily, and went off with the sandy lobster.

“I never had sandy lobster before,” the woman said to me. She was a compatriot of ours, and very embarrassed about making a fuss. Another waitress came up to us. “Yes?” she asked.

“He wants the Canadian bacon with cheese sauce,” I said. “And he wants the scrambled eggs. Can he have it without prawns, please?”

“We don't have scrambled eggs,” the waitress said.

“Yes, you do,” I replied. Eric sat drearily next to me, his chin still on the counter. “Here,” I said, pointing to the menu. “Scrambled eggs and Prawns on Toast, with Green Salad.”

“Oh, scrambled eggs with
prawns,”
the waitress said. “Yes, we have that.”

“Can he have it without prawns, please?”

There was a pause.

“All you have to do is take the prawns off,” I said encouragingly.

She hesitated. Finally she made a decision.

“I can take the prawns off,” she said firmly, “but you'll have to have the green salad.” “All right,” I said. “We can push it aside,” I whispered to Eric, who was still staring moodily into space.

When the eggs came, on toast, with the green salad, I was relieved to see him tuck it in with good appetite. Bruce was enjoying the Canadian bacon. Eric dug the toast out from under the eggs, ate it, and asked for another piece.

The waitress hesitated again.

“We do
do
toast,” she said. “But I don't know if you can
have
toast. With that,” she added. “I'll go and check.” Eric sighed. In less than twenty minutes, she was back, triumphant, bearing a plate of sliced, buttered tea toast. Eric consumed it, still moodily.

But that night, he didn't touch his dinner. “What's wrong?” Mark asked him.

“I want to go home!” Eric said, and before our horrified eyes, he dropped his head on the table and began to sob. “I'm afraid of King Claudius! I want to go home!”

A dull cloud of gloom descended over the kitchen.

“Let's all go upstairs and watch television,” Jordan said heartily. “We'll see what's on.”

Puppets appeared on the screen. One was lying on a stretcher, moaning and sobbing as he was being pushed through swinging doors. “Oh, oh, oh!” he shrieked. “Don't take me to the hospital, don't, don't! I'm afraid, I'm afraid of the hospital!” Another door opened and another puppet, decidedly African in appearance, swathed in a long white medical gown, approached the screaming sufferer. He was holding a huge hypodermic needle, nearly as long as his leg. The camera shot him from below, so that he appeared to be very tall. “Ho ho ho!” he said. “I am the doctor. I am going to stick you with this needle.”

“Oh no!” howled the sufferer, who had great goggly eyes and resembled a frog. “Oh don't! Oh, I'm frightened of the hospital! I'm frightened of the doctor! Oh, please, please don't! Oh—!”

The enormous puppet approached, raising the needle. The toad on the stretcher went into a frenzy of screams. Mark broke the frozen spell in which we sat, crawled over to the set and turned it off. “My God!” he said. Eric turned to me with a weak smile. “That was Sammy Snake,” he said. My flat American voice rose in the cold, chintzy, mildewed air of 16 Baldrige Place. “Doctors are our friends,” I said. Jordan did not meet my eyes.

T
HE NEXT DAY
Mrs. Grail bustled in, full of news and indignation. ‘That creature turned up,” she said. “You never told me she was coming.” I had already realized that I had forgotten to tell Mrs. Grail about Miss Pip, who had phoned Jordan, full of complaints about Mrs. Grail.

“Here the doorbell rings,” Mrs. Grail said, “And me all alone in the house, and here is a dreadful creature on the stoop, a man. Ah, the face on him.” She shuddered. “And the coat! So I wouldn't let them in. You never told me. And here she comes. Ah, the creature! And they wouldn't go away. So I slammed the door in their faces. But they rang and rang. So I let them in, but I followed them all about. Tracking dirt and fluff, up and down the stairs, carting bits and pieces.”

“They're coming back today,” I told her.

“I know,” Mrs. Grail said grimly. “The creatures. And they're never married, are they?”

“I doubt it,” I said primly. “She's taken the rooms alone, I think. I'm sure that's what Mrs. Stackpole said.”

“Oh, yes. Alone. And then the monkeyshines start! Probably asked to leave her other rooms, I shouldn't wonder.”

“My husband told them you'd only be here until two. So just let them in today.”

We had grown weary of rushing our two sheets off the big bed to the launderette where Jordan went in a cab and spent the evening, invariably missing the only good TV programs that were ever on. “I'm going to call a laundry,” I announced to Mrs. Grail. “While the sheets are out, we'll use that funny-looking embroidered thing and that other funny thin blanket instead.”

“Ah, that's right,” she said. “I should force them to give you sheets but if they won't, just use them bits and pieces off the bed. More bits and pieces on this bed. Look at that,” she said, kicking a drooping ruffle.

I examined Mrs. Stackpole's list. “Here's a laundry,” I said.

“Don't call
her
laundry. Call the Sunlight Laundry. Ah, they're lovely.”

I called the Sunlight Laundry off and on all morning and got a busy signal each time. I decided to call the general operator. “It must be out of order,” I told her. “It's a place of business. A laundry.”

“Just a minute, dear,” the operator said. She called another operator. There were a lot of clickings and buzzings.

“It's engaged,” the second operator said.

“She says it's a laundry, dear,” the first operator remarked.

“Oh, a laundry?” the second operator asked.

“It's been engaged all morning,” the first operator told her.

“Well, just a minute, dear,” the second operator said. “I'll look into it.”

“Oh, thank you, dear,” the first operator said. “She's just looking into it,” she assured me.

“Okay,” I said. I didn't mind waiting; I was reading a book. After a while the second operator returned. “It's out of order, dear,” she said, apparently to the first operator.

“Oh, is it? Thank you so much, dear.”

“Well, not at all, dear. That's all right.”

“Goodbye, dear.”

“Goodbye.”

The first operator came back to me. “It's out of order, dear,” she said, unnecessarily.

“How long will it take to fix it?”

Her voice lost some of its good humor. “Well, I don't know, dear. A day or two. Maybe three. It's hard to say. It depends what's wrong with it. It's out of order, you see. It's not working.”

By this time it was a quarter of two and time for us to be on our way, wandering aimlessly about London, looking for toilets for Bruce and Eric, whose stomachs were upset, possibly from the rich milk.

“I'm all through now,” Mrs. Grail said. “What about them creatures?”

“It's ten minutes of two. If they were coming, they wouldn't come this late. They know you leave at two.”

We all bundled into raincoats and gloves and scarves and opened the front door. On the stoop stood what were unquestionably the two creatures: a very tall, very thin girl with long red hair and a horrified expression, and a shorter, thicker male, wearing a cardboard-looking checked jacket and wild curls.

“Yes?” I said.

“Mrs. Miller?” the girl said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Are you going out?” the girl asked, her look of horror deepening.

“Yes,” I said, adding, so as not to sound like Dr. Bott, “I am.”

“But it's not two o'clock yet. Your husband said there would be someone here until two.”

“It's six minutes of.”

There was a silence. They stood on the stoop, staring at us with aversion and terror, and we crowded sloppily in the doorway, a welter of scarves and coats, caps and umbrellas, un-English and undisciplined.

“Don't you want to come in?” I asked.

“We did want to bring in a few things, yes,” Miss Pip said, for I had to assume this was she.

“Well, we'll wait for you.” We all, including Mrs. Grail, went into the sitting room and sat down, in our coats. Miss Pip and her nameless friend rushed up and down the stairs, carrying small shabby objects. They rushed frantically, silently, poker-faced. Mrs. Grail perched on the edge of Mrs. Stackpole's fat-armed sofa and murmured to me insidiously. “This is the second trip. And the telephone men. Ah, you're too soft with them. I shouldn't allow it.”

“Mrs. Stackpole told me—one afternoon to bring in a few things,” I replied, working myself into a rage. “She didn't say anything about the telephone men. And
two
afternoons.”

“And all the money,” Mrs. Grail said. “And the washing machine. And them twisty rags. And no sheets to your bed. Ah God, it's the English, they'll do you every time.”

Miss Pip and her friend came downstairs, still looking upset, and stood facing us near the tiny entrance hall. We all rose. “Thank you very much,” Miss Pip said, staring into my eyes with an expression of disbelief. “We've finished.”

“Fine,” I said. She continued to stand before the hall entrance, not moving.

‘The decorator,” she said, “the man who is making my curtains for the windows in the apartment upstairs … He is supposed to meet us here.”

There was a long pause.

“I told him to be here at two,” Miss Pip said.

“It's a quarter after now,” I said.

“I know,” she responded. “He's late.”

“We have to go out,” I said.

“He has to measure the windows,” she said.

I felt Mrs. Grail's eyes boring into the back of my neck.

“Look,” I said. “This is really ridiculous. Mrs. Stackpole told me you would come in one afternoon to bring in a few things, but the telephone men have been here about four times, waking us up and tracking dirt, and now you've come
twice
and you make appointments with people … I know it's not your fault.” I added, “Mrs. Stackpole misled me, but we are paying quite a lot of rent, and it's our home for the summer, and I do think this is ridiculous.”

“I can see you're very angry,” Miss Pip said.

“I really think we all ought to go now,” I said.

“I promised to meet the man here.”

“Well, he isn't here,” I said, feeling like a rat, “and we really have to go out now. Mrs. Grail leaves at two, anyway. My husband told you that. And if I wasn't here, you would have delayed her.” Miss Pip continued to stand in the hall doorway and stare at me with wide shocked eyes. “I think we ought to go,” I said, enunciating distinctly. Mrs. Grail and Bruce and Eric crowded up behind me and began to move forward. “I expect the man at any moment,” Miss Pip said, not moving. “I can see you're very angry.”

I could feel Mrs. Grail's eyes.

“We'll just stay here and wait for him,” Miss Pip said. “You can go.”

“I don't know if Mrs. Stackpole would like me to do that,” I said, remembering all the locks and keys….

“We'll just stand in the hall,” Miss Pip said. “We won't touch the wall. We won't touch anything.” This was such an outrageous remark that I capitulated.

“Oh, you can't stand in the hall,” I said. “Come in, sit down. Wait for him.”

We edged past them, Indian file, and went out in silence. On the way to the bus I kept trying to justify my behavior to Mrs. Grail. I knew I had failed; I didn't know whether I had been too unkind or not unkind enough. Later I was to think about Miss Pip's persistence. It was a quality she shared with Mrs. Stackpole and Mr. MacAllister. These people were not to be put off. The Fuzzy Wuzzies, the East Indians, and Mrs. Grail's ancestors, among others, had found it very difficult to put them off. By nature less positive than they, what chance had I?

A
FTER SEVERAL
cold and rainy days spent trying to find something for Bruce and Eric to do, I decided to phone the American Embassy. Everybody who spoke to me there sounded English.

“I have these three children,” I said, when I was connected with the apparently appropriate voice. “Three, but only the two younger ones present a problem. I have to find something for them to do. Can you suggest something for them to do during the day? Anything.”