London Observed

‘She’s all right, Len,’ said Anne, Julie’s mother. She let go of her daughter and sat upright in her chair, knees together, feet together, dabbing her cheeks under her eyes, and stared at Len with a look that said, There, I told you so.

‘Get her a cup of tea, Anne,’ said Len. And then, to Julie, but without looking at her, looking at his wife in a heavy awful way that told Julie how full of calamity had been their discussions about her, ‘Sit down, we aren’t going to eat you.’

Julie sat on the edge of a chair, but gingerly, because it hurt. It was as if she had been anaesthetized by urgency, but now she was safe, pains and soreness could make themselves felt. She watched her parents weep, their bitter faces full of loss. She saw how they sat, each in a chair well apart from the other, not comforting each other, or holding her, or wanting to hold each other, or to hold her.

‘Oh, Julie,’ said her mother, ‘oh, Julie.’

‘Mum, can I have a sandwich?’

‘Of course you can. We’ve had our supper. I’ll just …’

Julie smiled, she could not help it, and it was a sour little smile. She knew that what had been on those plates was exactly calculated, not a pea or a bit of potato left over. The next proper meal (lunch, tomorrow) would already be on a plate ready to cook, with a plastic film over it, in the fridge. Her mother went off to the kitchen, to work out how to feed Julie, and now Julie was alone with her father, and that wasn’t good.

‘You mustn’t think we are going to ask you awkward questions,’ said her father, still not looking at her, and Julie knew that her mother had said, ‘We mustn’t ask her any awkward questions. We must wait for her to tell us.’

You bloody well ought to ask some questions, Julie was thinking, noting that already the raucous angry irritation her parents always made her feel was back, and strong. And, at the moment, dangerous.

But they had expected her to come back, then? For she had been making things easier for herself by saying, They won’t care I’m not there! They probably won’t even notice! Now she could see how much they had been grieving for her. How was she going to get herself out of here up to the bathroom? If she could just have a bath! At this point her mother came back with a cup of tea. Julie took it, drank it down at once, though it was too hot, and handed the cup back. She saw her mother had realized she meant it: she needed to eat, was hungry, could drink six cups of tea one after another. ‘Would you mind if I had a bath, Mum? I won’t take a minute. I fell and the street was all slippery. It was sleeting.’

She had already got herself to the door, clutching the carrier in front of her.

‘You didn’t hurt yourself?’ enquired her father.

‘No, I only slipped, I got all muddy.’

‘You run along and have a bath, girl,’ said her mother. ‘It’ll give me time to boil an egg for sandwiches.’

Julie ran upstairs. Quick, quick, she mustn’t make a big thing of this bath, mustn’t stay in it. Her bedroom was just so, all pretty and pink, and her big panda sat on her pillow. She flung off her clothes and waves of a nasty sour smell came up at her. She stuffed them all into the carrier and grabbed from the cupboard her pink-flowered dressing gown. What would Debbie have to say about that? she wondered, and wanted to laugh, thinking of Debbie here, sprawling on her bed with the panda. She found childish pyjamas stuffed into the back of a drawer. What was she going to do for padding? Her knickers showed patches of blood and that meant the pads hadn’t been enough. She found some old panties and went into the bathroom with them. The bath filled quickly and there were waves of steam. Careful, she didn’t want to faint, and her head was light. She got in and submerged her head. Quick, quick … She soaped and rubbed, getting rid of the birth, the dirty shed, the damp dog smell, the blood, all that blood. It was still welling gently out of her, not much but enough to make her careful when she dried herself on the fluffy pink towels her mother changed three times a week. She put on her knickers and packed them with old panties. On went the pyjamas, the pink dressing gown. She combed her hair.

There. It was all gone. Her breasts, she knew from the book, would have milk, but she would put on a tight bra and fill it with cotton wool. She would manage. In this house, her home, they did not see each other naked. Her mother hadn’t come in for years when she was having a bath, and she always knocked on the bedroom door. In Debbie’s flat people ran about naked or half dressed and Debbie might answer the door in her satin camiknickers, those great breasts of hers lolling about. Debbie often came in when Julie was in the bath to sit on the loo and chat … Tears filled Julie’s eyes. Oh, no, she certainly must not cry.

She stuffed the bag with the bloody pads and her dirty clothes in it under her bed, well to the back. She would get rid of it all very early in the morning before her parents woke, which they would, at seven o’clock.

She went down the stairs, a good little girl washed and brushed, ready for the night.

In the living room her parents were silent and apart in their two well separated chairs. They had been crying again. Her father was relieved at what he saw when he cautiously took a look at her (as if it had been too painful to see her before), and he said, ‘It’s good to have you home, Julie.’ His voice broke.

Her mother said, ‘I’ve made you some nice sandwiches.’

Four thin slices of white bread had been made into two sandwiches and cut diagonally across, the yellow of the egg prettily showing, with sprigs of parsley disposed here and there. Hunger sprang in Julie like a tiger, and she ate ravenously, watching her mother’s pitying, embarrassed face. Why, she thinks I’ve been short of food! Well, that’s a good thing, it’ll put her off the scent.

Her mother went off to make more food. Would she boil another egg, perhaps?

‘Anything’ll do, Mum. Jam … I’d love some jam on some toast.’

She had finished the sandwiches and drunk down the tea long before her mother had returned with a tray, half a loaf of bread, butter, strawberry jam, more tea.

‘I don’t like to think of you going without food,’ she said.

‘But I didn’t, not really,’ said Julie, remembering all the feasts she had had with Debbie, the pizzas that arrived all hours of the day and the night from almost next door, the Kentucky chicken, the special steak feeds when Debbie got hungry, which was often. In the little kitchen was a bowl from Morocco kept piled with fruit. ‘You must get enough vitamins,’ Debbie kept saying, and brought in more grapes, more apples and pears, let alone fruit Julie had never heard of, like pomegranates and pawpaws, which Debbie had learned to like on one of her trips somewhere.

‘We aren’t going to pester you with questions,’ said her mother.

‘I’ve been with a girl. Her name is Debbie. She was good to me. I’ve been all right,’ said Julie, looking at her mother, and then at her father. There, don’t ask any more questions.

‘A girl?’ said her father heavily. He still kept his eyes away from Julie, because when he looked at her the tears started up again.

‘Well, I haven’t been with a boyfriend,’ said Julie and could not stop herself laughing at this ridiculous idea.

They were all laughing with relief, with disbelief … they think I’ve been off with a boy! What were they imagining? Julie contemplated the incident in the school cloakroom with Billy Jayson that so improbably had led to the scene in the shed with the dog. She had joked with Debbie that it would be a virgin birth. ‘He hardly got it in,’ she had said. ‘I didn’t think anything had really happened.’

Probably Billy had forgotten all about it. Unless he connected her leaving school and running away from home with that scene in the cloakroom? But why should he? It was four months after they had tussled and shoved and giggled, she saying, No no, and he saying, Oh come on, then.

‘Are you going back to school?’ asked her mother carefully. ‘The officer came round last week and said you still could. There are two terms left. And you’ve always been a good girl before this.’

‘Yes, I’ll go back,’ said Julie. Seven months – she could manage that. She’d be bored, but never mind. And then … This was the moment she should say something more, explain, make up some lies, for they both sat staring at her, their faces full of what they had been feeling for the long five months she had been gone. She knew she was treating them badly, refusing to say anything. Well, she would, but not now, she was suddenly absolutely exhausted. Full of hot tea and food, she felt herself letting go, letting herself slide … She began to yawn and could not stop. But they did not suggest she should go to bed, and this was because they simply could not believe they wouldn’t get anything more from her.

But there was nothing she could say. She looked at her father, that cautious, greyish, elderly man, sitting heavily in his chair. At her mother, who seemed almost girlish as she sat upright there in her pretty pale blue dress with its nice little collar and the little pearl buttons down the front. Her grey curls were sprightly, and her blue eyes full of wounded and uncomprehending innocence. Julie thought, I wish I could just snuggle up to Mum and she could hold me and I could go to sleep. Surely this must have happened when she was small, but she could not remember it. In this family, they simply did not touch each other.

Full of the clarity of her exhaustion, and because of what she had learned in the last months, she saw her parents and knew that – they cancelled each other out. Debbie would say there was something wrong with their chemistry. They did not disagree. They never raised their voices, or argued. Each day was a pattern of cups of tea, meals, cups of coffee and biscuits, always at exactly the same times, with bedtime as the goal. They seldom went out. They saw very few people, only each other. It was as if they had switched themselves off.

They had been old when she was born, was that the trouble?

At Debbie’s people shouted, kissed, hugged, argued, fought, threatened, wept, and screamed.

There were two bedrooms in that flat. Debbie had given her the little one to herself. She was supposed to make herself scarce when Debbie came in with a man, a new one, but not when Derek was there, Debbie’s real boyfriend. Derek joked a lot and ordered Julie about. How about making me a cup of tea, getting me a drink, making me some bacon and eggs, what have you been doing with yourself, why don’t you get yourself a new hairdo, a new dress? He liked Julie, though she did not like him much. She knew he was not good enough for Debbie.

Soon Debbie would get rid of him. As she had the man who once owned the flat and took a percentage of what she earned. But Debbie had found out something bad about him, had put the screws on, got the flat for herself, worked for herself. Julie had seen this man just once, and he had given her the creeps. ‘My first love,’ Debbie joked, and laughed loudly when Julie grimaced. Derek did not give her the creeps, he was just nothing! Ordinary. Boring. But the man Debbie had gone to New York with was a TV producer. He was making a series no one had heard about in England, not good enough to sell here, he said. This man was more like it, but Julie thought Debbie would get rid of him too, when something better came up.

All these thoughts, these judgments, so unlike anything ever said or thought in her own home, went on in Julie’s mind quite comfortably, though they wouldn’t do for herself. Debbie had to be like this, because of her hard life. This included something bad that Debbie had never talked about, but it was why she had been so good to Julie. Probably, just like Julie, Debbie had stood very late in a railway station, pregnant, her head full of rubbish about how she would get a job, have the baby, bring it up, find a man who would love her and the baby. Or perhaps it had been something else to do with being pregnant and alone. It was not she, Julie, who had earned five months of Debbie’s love and protection, it was pregnant Julie, helpless and alone.

Oh, yes, Debbie was fond of her.

Sometimes she spent the night in Debbie’s big bed because Debbie could not bear to sleep alone. She got scared, she said. She could not believe that Julie wasn’t frightened of the dark. Debbie always crashed straight off to sleep, even when she hadn’t been drinking. Then Julie cautiously got up on her elbow and bent over sleeping Debbie, to examine her, try and find out … Debbie was a big handsome girl. Her skin was very white, and she had black shiny straight hair, and she made up her lips to be thin and scarlet and curving, just right for the lashing, slashing tongue behind them. When she was asleep her face was smooth and closed, and her lips were ordinary, quite pathetic Julie thought, and there was wear under her eyes. That face showed nothing of why Debbie said to people coming into the flat who might notice Julie the wrong way, ‘Lay off, do you hear? Lay off, or I’ll …’ And her scarlet lips and her black eyes were nasty, frightening.

But if Debbie woke in the night, she might turn to Julie and draw her into an embrace that told Julie how little she knew about love, about tenderness. Then Julie lay awake, astounded at the revelations this big hot smooth body made, and went on making, even though Debbie was off to sleep again. She never actually ‘did anything’. Julie even waited for ‘something’ to happen. Nothing ever did. Just once Debbie put her hand down to touch the mound of Julie’s stomach, but took it quickly away. Julie lay entangled with Debbie, and they were like two cats that have finished washing each other and gone to sleep, and Julie knew how terribly she had been deprived at home, and how empty and sad her parents were. Suppose she said to her mother now, Mum, let me come into your bed tonight, I’m scared, I’ve missed you … She could just see her mother’s embarrassed, timid face. ‘But Julie, you’re a big girl now.’

Anne and Len slept in twin beds stretched out parallel to each other, the night table between them.

There were tears in Julie’s eyes, and she did not know it, but then she did and looked quickly at her mother, then her father, for they must not know she would give anything to cry and cry, and be comforted and held … But they weren’t looking at her, only at the television. They had switched it on, without her noticing. Now all three of them sat staring at it.

On the screen a woman announcer smiled the special smile that goes with royalty, animals, and children and said, ‘At eight o’clock this evening a newly born baby girl was found in a telephone box in Islington. She was warmly wrapped and healthy. She weighed seven pounds and three ounces. The nurses have called her Rosie.’ Hot waves of jealousy went through Julie when she saw how the nurse smiled down at the little face seen briefly by Julie in torchlight, and then again through the sleet outside the shed. ‘The mother is urged to come forward as she might be in need of urgent medical attention.’

It was the late news.

Surely they were going to guess? But why should they? It was hard enough for her to believe that she could sit here in her pretty little dressing gown smelling of bath powder, when she had given birth by herself in a dirty shed with only a dog for company. Four hours ago, that was all!

‘Why don’t we have a dog, Mum?’ asked Julie, knowing what she was going to hear.

‘But they are such a nuisance, Julie. And who’s going to take it for walks?’

‘I will, Mum.’

‘But you’ll have finished school in July, and I don’t want the bother of a dog, and I’m sure Len doesn’t.’

Her father didn’t say anything. He leaned forward and turned off the set. The screen went blank.

‘I often wonder what Jessie thinks,’ he remarked, ‘when she sees something like this on the telly, I mean.’

‘Oh, leave it, Len,’ said Anne warningly.

Julie did not really hear this, but then she did: her ears sprang to life, and she knew something extraordinary was about to happen.

‘That’s why we were so worried about you,’ said Julie’s father, heavy, grief-ridden, reproachful. ‘It’s easy enough to happen, how were we to know you weren’t –’

‘Len, we agreed we wouldn’t ever – ’

‘What about Auntie Jessie?’ asked Julie, trying to take it in. A silence. ‘Well, what about her, Dad? You can’t just leave it like that.’

‘Len,’ said Anne wildly.

‘Your Auntie Jessie got herself into the family way,’ said her father, determined to say it, ignoring his wife’s face, her distress. His face was saying, Why should she be spared when she’s given us such a bad time? ‘She wasn’t much older than you are now.’ At last he was looking straight at Julie, full of reproach, and his eyes dripped tears all down his face and on to his tie. ‘It can happen easy enough, can’t it?’

‘You mean … but what happened to the baby? Was it born?’

‘Your cousin Freda,’ said Len, still bitter and obstinate, his accusing eyes on his daughter.

‘You mean, Freda is … you mean. Auntie Jessie’s mum and dad didn’t mind?’

‘They minded, all right,’ said Anne. ‘I remember all that well enough. They wanted the baby adopted, but Jessie stuck it out and had it, and in the end they came around. I still think they were right and Jessie was wrong. She was only seventeen. She never would say who the father was. She was stuck at home with the baby when she should have been out enjoying herself and learning things. She got married when she was a baby herself.’

By now Julie was more or less herself again, though she felt as if she’d been on a roller coaster. Above all, what she was thinking was, I’ve got to get it all out of them now, because I know them, they’ll clam up and never talk of it again.

‘Didn’t Uncle Bob mind?’ she asked.

‘Not so that he wouldn’t marry her, he married her, didn’t he, and she had a love child he had to take on,’ said her father, full of anger and accusations.

‘A love child,’ said Julie derisively, unable to stop herself. But her parents didn’t notice.

‘That’s what they call it, I believe,’ said her father, all heavy and sarcastic. ‘Well, that’s what can happen, Julie, and you’ve always been such a sensible girl and that made it worse.’ And now, unbelievably, this father of hers, whom she had so feared she ran away from home, sat sobbing, covering his face with his hands.

Her mother was weeping, her eyes bright, her cheeks red.

In a moment Julie would be bawling too.

‘I’m going to bed,’ she said, getting up. ‘Oh, I’m sorry Mum, I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry …’

‘It’s all right, Julie,’ said her mother.

Julie went out of the room and up the stairs and into her room, walking carefully now, because she was so sore. And she felt numbed and confused, because of Aunt Jessica and her cousin Freda. Why, she, Julie, could have … she could be sitting here now, with her baby Rosie, they wouldn’t have thrown her out.

She didn’t know what to think, or to feel … She felt … she wanted … ‘Oh, Debbie,’ she cried, but silently, tucked into her little bed, her arms around the panda. ‘Oh, Debbie, what am I to do?’

She thought, In July, when I’ve finished school, I am going back, I’m going to run away, I’ll go to London and get a job, and I can have my baby. For a few minutes she persuaded herself it was not the silly little girl who had run away who said this, but the Debbie-taught girl who knew what things cost. Then she said to herself, Stop it, stop it, you know better.

She thought of Aunt Jessie’s house. She had always enjoyed that house. It occurred to her now that Debbie’s place and Aunt Jessie’s had a lot in common – noisy, disturbing, exciting. Which was why her parents did not much like going there. But here, a baby here, Rosie with her long wrinkled cunt here … Julie was laughing her raucous, derisive laugh, but it was unhappy because she had understood that Rosie her daughter could not come here, because she, Julie, could not stand it.

I’ll take Rosie to Debbie’s in London, said Julie, in a final futile attempt.

But Debbie had taken in pregnant Julie. That was what had been paid.

If Julie brought baby Rosie here, then she would have to stay here. Until she got married. Like Auntie Jessie. Julie thought of Uncle Bob. Now she realized she had always seen him as Auntie Jessie’s shadow, not up to much. She had wondered why Auntie Jessie married him. Now she knew.

I’ve got to get out of here, she thought, I’ve got to. In July I’ll leave. I’ll have my O levels. I can get them easily. I’ll work hard and get my five O levels. I’ll go to London. I know how things are, now. Look, I’ve lived in Debbie’s flat, and I didn’t let myself get hurt by them. I was clever, no one knew I was pregnant, only Debbie. I had Rosie by myself in that shed with only a dog to help me, and then I put Rosie in a safe place and now she’s all right, and I’ve come home, and I’ve managed it all so well they never even guessed. I’m all right.

With her arms around the panda Julie thought, I can do anything I want to do, I’ve proved that.

And she drifted off to sleep.

Sparrows

Twenty minutes after the rain stopped, the first visitors came into the café garden. They were two elderly women and a smiling Labrador, very much at home, for they went straight to a certain table at the back, and the dog took his place on the grassy strip there without a command. The women tipped upright the chairs that had been slanted forward on to the table because of the rain. One hooked an umbrella on a chair-back and sat, bringing out packages of food from a holdall. The other went into the café building and emerged with one little coffeepot and two cups. Assuring each other that one pot was plenty for two, they ate sandwiches with a contemplative detached air that disdained guilt.

All over the northern reaches of London people were saying, ‘The rain’s stopped: let’s go up to the Heath.’ Already they wandered along the path where you can look down at the Kenwood lake, settled themselves on benches in case the sun did come out, and descended the stairs on the way to the café indoors. But where was the sun? It was sulking behind banks of black cloud, sliding for minutes at a time to their edges from where it stained trees and grass a promising sultry yellow, but then withdrew.

Some teenagers emerged from the building balancing trays loaded with fizzy drinks, coffee, cake. They pushed two tables together and sat sprawling. Elegant, dramatic clothes, profuse and many coloured hair, created a festive occasion. Their discontented indolence – their style – caused the two frugal observers to raise eyebrows and murmur, ‘Some people don’t know when they’re lucky, do they, dear?’

A tall, pale, straw-haired youth like a ballet dancer appeared at the kitchen door. He was all yawns and sleep, but he was adjusting a blue and white striped apron, and this transformed him into the picture of a willing waiter. He surveyed his scene of operations, pondering whether to straighten the chairs around tables that had pools of rainwater on them, or even to wipe the tables. But he cocked an eye at the ominous sky and decided not to bother.

The two ladies were throwing bits of sandwich to sparrows that gathered around their feet, crowded the backs of chairs and even ventured on their table. At the end of the garden, not too emphatically displayed, a board said, PUBLIC HEALTH NOTICE. IN THE INTERESTS OF HYGIENE PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS. The waiter shrugged and disappeared.

Three people appeared from inside, almost obscured by the heaped trays they bore, but when these were set down, three Japanese were revealed, a young couple in smart black silk jumpsuits, and the mother of one of them. She too was overdressed for this place in black ‘designer’ clothes, jewellery, the lot. They pulled a table near the one they had chosen to sit at in the middle of the scene, to hold all that they carried and what was on the tray brought to them by another waiter. This buffet not being enough, a second table was brought close and covered with food. They were about to eat full English breakfasts, wedges of cream cake, scones and butter and jam, several other kinds of cake, plates of salad and chicken, and, as well, coffee, Coca-Cola, fruit juice.