Tea & Antipathy (9 page)

It was an odd thing about Jordan's London business. It was the same kind of business he ran in Chicago, but it didn't behave at all in the same way. In London, people came to work in the morning and stayed eight hours, but since nothing seemed to get done, Jordan decided he didn't have enough people. So he kept adding people, more and more people, which cost more and more money, and still nothing got done. Whenever I went to the office I met the people, streaming through the halls on their way to the lavatory, carrying plants and handbags, or on their way to visit each other, carrying plates of cake and steaming mugs, or bringing each other sugar or extra milk. They were all very pleasant, and nodded and smiled at me. It was as
though everybody were getting ready for something exciting to happen but it never happened. Bill and Jordan sat in their tiny windowless office staving off creditors; people came in all the time and brought them things to eat. Their office was littered with empty tea mugs and crocks of moldy cheese.

“That's very depressing that you have to go to Birmingham,” I said. “And we have to be alone all night.”

“Don't you think I'm depressed? Don't you think I find it depressing?” His voice rose.

“I suppose,” I said.

There was a short pause.

“It's also depressing for the children,” I said.

“Listen, why don't you call Rose Emily Foyle? I think she'll invite us out to Cramley for the afternoon on Sunday. She and Pat have two kids, you know.”

“Well, if she wouldn't mind. The children need other children. Do you know her well enough to ask?”

“Of course I do. Rose Emily is very nice.”

“Oh, good.”

“I have to go now,” Jordan said. “My tea is getting cold.”

T
HE NEXT DAY
Jordan left for Birmingham. He wasn't coming back until the following evening. “What fun we'll have on our own,” I said brightly. “We'll go to Wimpy's for dinner.”

“It's spooky without Daddy,” Eric said, looking around.

“It's not spooky yet,” Bruce said. “It's still daylight.”

The telephone rang, a fairly unusual occurrence. It was Cynthia.

“Oh, Cynthia,” I said, pleased. “How good to hear from you. Jordan has just left for Birmingham and we feel sort of lonesome. Could you and Sydney come here for lunch? We could spend the afternoon together.”

“I actually called to ask if you were free tomorrow night,” Cynthia said.

“Well, Jordan is coming back from Birmingham fairly early …”

“Oh, good,” Cynthia said. “My friend Althea wants to meet you. You'll love her. We'll drop by about seven-thirty.”

“But what about today? I mean, the children would love to see Sydney and I haven't seen you for a while—”

“Oh,” Cynthia said, in a feeble voice, “I have such a headache. My legs feel queer. I'm sort of sick.”

“Maybe it would cheer you up to get out? Change of pace.”

“I went out yesterday to a seaside restaurant,” Cynthia said. “The day before that I shopped in the West End with friends. The day before that I went to a lovely tea and fashion show with other friends.”

“The children would love to see Sydney,” I said. “They're awfully lonely.”

“Sydney has a headache,” she responded promptly. “Her eyes look funny. I think she's sort of sick.”

“How about tomorrow? We haven't got much to do.”

“We really have to stay with my parents. You know they're getting old and I can't be here to take care of them. I have to go home soon. It's very depressing.” I wondered whether the peanut eating had gotten to Cynthia. She certainly seemed changed. She had always been eager to go to lunch with me at home; of course here I didn't have a car. At any rate we arranged that she and her friend Althea would come to visit the following night.

Now we had not only an empty day ahead of us, but an empty evening as well. We decided to go to the Science Museum, which was within walking distance, across the street from the Victoria and Albert.

We had some difficulty finding the Children's Exhibits because two guides told us there weren't any, but we finally located them in the basement, in a section that was very dark, grimy and Victorian. But there were things you could work by pressing buttons and pulling levers. Bruce and Eric, happy and excited, lined up as they had always done at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and awaited their turns. There were a lot of schoolboys there, in very dirty woolen uniforms, who apparently never took turns, because they stayed endlessly at the machines. A few times Bruce and Eric got
through: while they were turning knobs and looking through holes, boys came up and casually knocked them out of the way. “Hey!” I kept saying indignantly. “Stop that!” They didn't pay any attention to me. Some of the scuffling among the schoolboys themselves got very rough indeed. There didn't seem to be any supervision.

We went upstairs for tea. The top floors of the Museum were new, beautiful and airy, and devoted to ships and airplanes. The cafeteria offered a good view of the city. The tables were sticky and so were the trays; I noticed that the attendants took the trays off the tables and put them back on the racks to be used again without washing them. But the sandwiches, which were wrapped in waxed paper, were tasty and the Coca Cola was cold. We liked the cafeteria.

After tea, we admired the airplane exhibits: you could go up a sort of catwalk and look closely at the early planes, which hung from the ceiling. Then we descended to the Children's Exhibits again; a good many of the kiddies had been collected and taken away, so it was possible to walk about without being knocked down. We stayed there a long time, and then went out and wandered about Knightsbridge, looking at the shops.

It was finally dinnertime, and Mark met us at Wimpy's, as we had arranged. He looked morose.

“I don't like the office so much anymore,” he said.

“What happened?” I asked, surprised. “You loved it.”

“I'll go,” Bruce said.

“I'll go,” Eric said.

“They keep laughing at my shoes,” Mark said.

“What's wrong with your shoes?” I said. “I like your shoes.”

“They've got laces. The toes aren't pointed.”

“You've got flat feet.”

“They don't like my jacket either,” he said.

“My God, is it an office or Christian Dior?”

“Jane keeps calling me a twit,” Mark said.

“She called
me
an old cow,” I said. “Your father says it's just her way.” She had recently handed me some kind of liquid medicine for a headache, and when I said I would prefer aspirin, she had given me a friendly shove and said, “Go on, you old cow, drink it.” “She's very informal,” I added, through gritted teeth.

“Today she called me a fathead,” Mark said.

“She expects everyone to love her,” I remarked.

“I
love her,” Eric said.

“The others laugh at me too,” Mark said. “They say awful things about America.”

I tried to think of something positive to say. In the newspapers and on television, in book reviews, television reviews, film reviews, editorials; on panel shows, in musical reviews, in dramas, one encountered an unmistakable hostility toward Americans. To be fair, foreigners in general were derided. But one sensed an obsession with America.

“They say our shoes are ugly and our clothes are ugly,” Mark said mournfully.

“They should talk,” I said, deteriorating into a rage that surprised me, “with those crazy clodhoppers of theirs.”

“I feel sorry for them,” Mark said, suddenly switching attitudes and leaving me with my hostilities hanging out, as usual. “Today Jane was wearing this terrible dress, like cardboard, with holes in the sleeves. I mean it had holey sleeves. She just bought it, and she was so proud of it. It made me feel sad.”

“I suppose she
could
be pretty,” I said.

“She's beautiful,” Eric said.

“I feel sorry for all of them,” Mark said. “They're so poor and miserable.”

“Then don't complain,” I snapped.

“I like it here,” Mark said. “You're ruining it for me. You hate it. I can tell.”

“I don't hate it,” I said. “All my life I've loved England. I'm an English major, aren't I?”

Eric began to cry. “I'm afraid of Hamlet's uncle,” he said. “I'm afraid of King Claudius. I want to go home.”

T
HE CHILDREN WERE SETTLED
in front of the TV set watching some terrible programs the next evening, when Cynthia arrived with her friend Althea Bradgood. Althea was in her early forties, wearing a pre-war hairdo, no makeup and no-nonsense clothes. In order not to disturb the children, I suggested we go upstairs to the master bedroom, which had a stiff little eighteenth-century sofa. Cynthia had brought me some mints.

“I'm afraid Jordan isn't back yet,” I said, shoveling several pounds of clean laundry off the sofa onto the floor.

“This place is just like home, isn't it?” Cynthia said, eyeing the mess.

“I'm afraid Jordan hasn't returned from Birmingham yet,” I said to Althea.

“Birmingham!” Cynthia cried. “Why would anyone want to go to Birmingham? It's terribly vulgar.”

“Don't tell me,” Althea said to me. “Let me guess. You're a Pisces.”

“Althea is very interested in astrology,” Cynthia said.

“Oh, Pisces,” I said. “No, actually. Jordan is a Pisces. I'm a Virgo.”

“You can't be,” Althea said.

I insisted I was.

“But you can't be. You walk like a Pisces. You gesture like a Pisces. Your whole personality is Pisces.” She thought about it. “Two stars must have crossed. Something is wrong. You're a Pisces. I never make a mistake.”

“Have a mint,” I said.

“Oh, you're very kind,” Althea said, taking one.

“What have
you
been doing?” Cynthia asked me. “We went to the beach for two days. It was a lovely house, very lush. And last evening we went to a place called Crockford's. Percival Epstein took us. It was very impressive. I believe many titled people go there. I saw many women with jewels all over them. Percival gave me twenty pounds and I gambled with it.”

“Did you win?”

She smiled. “It's a very exclusive place, Crockford's,” she said. “We had a delicious dinner. For lunch I went to a charming little place in Soho. My friends have been simply wonderful. They're so loyal.”

“You'll be sorry to leave,” I said.

“There's nothing like getting home,” Cynthia said severely. “I'm always glad to get home.”

“That gesture you just made was pure Pisces,” Althea said to me.

“Oh, here's Jordan now,” I said, peering out the window. “He just got out of a cab.”

Joyous noises drifted up the stairs, followed by Jordan, looking tired.

“I loved Birmingham,” he said, after greeting me and Cynthia, and being introduced to Althea. “It's very alive. I mean there's a real feeling of activity there, commercial activity. They're rebuilding some of it. It's very exciting.”

“I'm happy to say that I've never been to Birmingham,” Cynthia said merrily.

“Is your wife really Virgo?” Althea asked Jordan. “I feel she's Pisces.”

“
I'm
Pisces,” Jordan said.

“Why don't we all go over to the pub?” I said. “You must be hungry, Jordan. I'm afraid there's nothing to eat here.”

“There's nothing to eat here?” Cynthia asked.

“I'm afraid not,” I said. “I sort of planned on going to the pub.”

“Oh, that's a good idea,” Jordan said. “I'll have a sandwich there.”

“It's only across the street,” I said to Cynthia, who looked rather downcast.

In the cozy pub, just on the comer of Baldridge Place across the street from Number Sixteen, a fat man, surrounded by admirers, was saying loudly, “ … and we had this delightful little mews flat. But when we came home from the theater one evening, there they all were, outside in deck chairs. Well, one needs to be rather frigid with people like that, doesn't one?”

We slipped into chairs; several dogs looked at us suspiciously. “What a charming place,” Cynthia said. “I'd like a Scotch and soda. I'm not hungry.”

“I'll have a gin anything,” I said, looking at the fat man and his admirers. “I'm not hungry either.”

“Just pineapple juice for me,” Althea said. “You're so kind.”

“Nothing alcoholic?”

“Oh, dear, I don't drink.”

Jordan went to the bar to get the drinks.

“You used to drink,” Cynthia said to Althea.

“Oh, I used to drink a great deal,” Althea said. “I drank and drank. But it wasn't right and I knew it wasn't right. Not just for religious reasons, although religious reasons count. But I gave it up at the same time that I gave up meat. We all drink too much,” Althea said to me. “British people drink too much.”

Cynthia stirred indignantly.

“I became disgusted,” Althea went on. “Seeing people being sick on the underground on Saturday night.”

“Who?” Cynthia asked.

“Lots of people. Many British people. I saw them being sick on the underground on Saturday night; it was most upsetting. I was sick myself; not on the underground of course. I waited until I got home.”

“I never saw anyone being sick on the underground,” Cynthia said.

“Oh, I did. Many times,” Althea responded firmly.

“I never heard anyone else say it,” Cynthia said.

“It's one of the things which decided me to give up drink,” Althea replied.

Jordan returned with a tray of glasses and a sandwich for himself.