London Observed

The waiter who was from somewhere around the Mediterranean, a dark, lithe, handsome youth, surveyed this repast with admiring incredulity. ‘Japanese? Good appetite!’ He lingered, raised his brows in private exclamation, and went off. The sparrows, having exhausted the amenities of the two pensioners, arrived in a flock to examine new possibilities. The Japanese mother let out cries of angry indignation, stuffing her highly made-up face ugly with bad temper and greed, with one hand, while she swatted ineffectively with the other at the sparrows as if they were flies.

The teenagers clearly felt they were being forced to examine all this from much too close so they gracefully rose and removed themselves to several tables away. They did not bother to take all their food and left crisps and peanuts all over their deserted table. The sparrows fell on this bounty, arriving from trees, roof – everywhere. The Japanese matron loudly commented on this, but her children ignored her, eating as if they had been deprived of food for weeks.

The two elderly ladies watched this scene. They did not seem able to take their eyes off it. Their disapproval of the teenagers had been ritual, even indulgent, but this – their expressions said – was something else! One of them put down a hand that trembled, and stroked the big dog’s head.

‘There you are, good dog,’ she said in an unhappy voice. A sparrow arrived too close to the Japanese matron and she let out a shout. Still another waiter arrived at the kitchen door and examined the scene like a general. A short, stocky, competent youth, his hair brushed straight up, everything about him neat and clean, he was obviously destined to be running his own firm or at least a department within, at the most, five years. He strode forcefully about, scattering clouds of sparrows by flinging out his arms energetically as if he were doing exercises. He smiled with a nod at the Japanese and went back into the kitchen. The sparrows returned.

A middle-aged couple shining with health and suntan lotion arrived, each holding one austere cup of coffee. They had evidently just come back from a holiday in the blissful sun, and could afford to smile now at where it hid behind a bank of black that covered half the sky. They put their cups on either side of a small lake of rainwater on their table, and sat on the edge of their chairs in a way that told everybody they were about to demolish the distances of the Heath at a dedicated trot.

The middle-aged couple that arrived now couldn’t be more unlike them. They walked cautiously up the steps and came forward, watching how they set down their well-cleaned shoes. Each carried a tray with tea and a single scone and butter. They chose a table at the back, near the little grassy strip.

Behind them was the tall brick wall with its mysterious, always-closed door, like the Secret Garden. The woman sat stirring her tea, while she smiled at the Labrador, then at the banks of bushes and trees on the right, all shades of heavy, lush green, then at the tops of the trees that showed over the palisade on the left, finally looking straight ahead with approval at the long shapely building, a wing of Kenwood House, once a coach house and servants’ quarters, that was now rapidly filling with people having breakfast, tea and lunch. The open upper windows hinted at the satisfactorily interesting lives going on inside, and on the long, low, roof, birds of all kinds, but mostly sparrows and pigeons, carried on their no less interesting affairs. She regarded with particular appreciation the sparrows who crowded a tree just behind them, watching for what might befall them next. Her husband was already leaning forward to consume his scone in the fussy, urgent way of a man who would always attend to whatever was in front of him, finish it, and then wonder why he had been in such a hurry.

A sparrow dropped from the tree and sat on the back of the tilted-forward chair next to the woman. She carefully pushed some crumbs towards it.

‘Hilda, what are you doing!’ expostulated her husband in a low, urgent, peevish voice. ‘It’s not allowed, is it?’ And he craned his neck around to assure himself the Public Health Notice was still safely there.

‘Oh well, but that’s just silly,’ said she serenely, smiling at the sparrow. He glared at her, a piece of scone halfway to his mouth, with the frustrated look of one who did not feel in control of anything. Then, as the sparrow fluttered cheekily towards his hand and the scone, he stuffed it in, swallowed it, and said, ‘They’d steal the food out of your mouth.’

Hilda gently set the tilted chair upright, and then the one next to it. At once sparrows descended to sit on their backs. She put a crumb quite close to her and sat waiting. A seasoned sparrow, one of many summers, a lean hunting bird, grey blotched with chocolate and black, darted in, snatched it, and flew off to the roof of the coach house, with two others in pursuit.

On the back of the chair nearest to her three sparrows sat watching, side by side.

‘Look, Alfred,’ she said, ‘they are babies: look, they’ve still got a bit of their gape left.’

The corners of their beaks were yellow. All three were neat and fresh. New-minted. Their greyish-brown feathers glistened. The man was staring at them with a look of apprehension too strong for the occasion.

From a distance this man seemed younger than he was, a sprightly middle age, being cleaned and brushed and tidy, but from close you could see fresh crumbs on his cardigan, and a new tea stain on his tie. He had a greyish, drained look. His wife was a large full-fleshed woman who sat up straight there beside him, everything about her showing she was in command, her hands kept and capable, hair neatly waved, clothes just so. If she was not much younger than he was, then that was what she seemed.

She laid some crumbs close to the three birds and the boldest hesitated, darted in, and flew off with one. The second fought with himself, took off from the chair-back, but halfway to the crumb, his goal, panic overtook him, and with a swirl and a flutter of wings he turned in mid-air and returned to the chair-back.

‘Go on, be a brave bird,’ she admonished it. Again the hesitant take-off, the mid-air swerve and whirl of wings when for a few seconds it hovered, then retreated. At last this sparrow managed to overcome its fear and resist the need to turn back halfway, and he reached the crumb and showed he would have a successful future because he picked up several, very fast, and flew off somewhere with a full beak to enjoy them.

The remaining sparrow sat on there, alone. He was very new, this little one, with remnants of baby fluff showing here and there. The yellow corners of his beak were bright. He had been sitting watching his fellow ex-fledglings with the calm, round-eyed, detached look of a baby in a pram.

‘Come on, you do it too,’ she said. But the little bird sat on there, watching, not involved at all.

Then a new bird arrived on the table among the crumbs, and pecked as fast as it could. It was an older bird, its feathers no longer fresh and young. And now the little sparrow hopped on to the table, crouched, fluffed out its feathers so that it became a soft ball, and opened its beak.

‘What’s the matter with it?’ demanded the man, as if in a panic. ‘It’s sick.’

‘No, no,’ soothed his wife. ‘Watch.’

The older bird at once responded to the smaller bird’s crouching and fluffing by stuffing crumbs into its gape. This went on, the baby demanding, as if still in its nest, and the parent pushing in crumbs. But then a brigand sparrow came swooping in. The parent sparrow pecked it and the two quarrelling birds flew off together to the roof. The little sparrow, abandoned, stopped cowering and spreading its feathers. It closed its beak, returned to the chair-back and resumed its bland baby pose.

‘But it’s grown-up,’ said the man, full of resentment. ‘It’s grown-up and it expects its parents to feed it.’

‘It was probably still a baby in its nest yesterday,’ she said. ‘This is probably its first day out in the wicked world.’

‘Why isn’t it feeding itself, then? If the parents have pushed it out, then it should be supporting itself.’

She turned her head to give him a wary glance, removed this diagnostic inspection as if she feared his reaction to it, and sat with a bit of scone in her hand, watching the throng of sparrows who were looting the now empty plates and platters of the Japanese trio. The Japanese matron was grumbling loudly about the birds. Her children pacified her, and waved to the indolent waiter with the shock of straw hair, who came across at his leisure, piled up trays, and went off with them, depriving the sparrows of their buffet. They whirled up into the air and the baby sparrow went with them.

The little garden café was filling with people. The sun was again close to the edge of the clouds, and one half of the sky was bright blue. The athletic couple went striding efficiently away. The young male Japanese went back into the building. Surely he wasn’t prepared to tackle even more food? The two elderly ladies sat on, though a waiter had removed their coffeepot and the two empty plates.

The dog lay with its chin on the grass and watched a sparrow hopping about within inches of him.

The baby sparrow returned by itself to sit on the chair-back.

‘Look, it’s back,’ she said, full of tenderness. ‘It’s the baby.’

‘How do you know it’s the same one?’

‘Can’t you see it is?’

‘They all look alike to me.’

She said nothing, but began her game of carefully pushing crumbs nearer and nearer to it, so that it would be tempted but not frightened.

‘I suppose it’s waiting for its father to come and feed it,’ came the grumble which her alert but cautious pose said she had expected.

‘Or perhaps even its mother,’ she said, dry, ironic – but regretted this note as soon as the words were out, for he erupted loudly, ‘Sitting there, just waiting for us to …’

She said carefully, ‘Look, Father, I said this morning, if you don’t want to do it, then you don’t have to.’

‘You’d never let me forget it then, would you!’

She said nothing, but leaned gently to push a crumb closer to the bird.

‘And then if I didn’t I suppose she’d be back home, expecting us to wait on her, buying her food …’

She was counting ten before she spoke. ‘That’s why she wants to leave and get a place of her own.’

‘At our expense.’

‘The money’s only sitting in the bank.’

‘But suppose we wanted it for something. Repairs to the house … the car’s getting old …’

She sighed, not meaning to. ‘I said, if you feel like that about it, then don’t. But it’s only £10,000. That’s not much to put down to begin on getting independent. It’s a very good deal, you said that yourself. She’ll own a bit of something, even if it is only a share of the place.’

‘I don’t see we’ve any choice. Either we have her at home feeding her and all her friends and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all, or we have to pay to get her out.’

‘She’s twenty-one,’ said the mother, suddenly exhausted with anger, her voice low and tight. ‘It’s time we did something for her.’

He heard, and was going to retreat, but said first, ‘It’s the legal age, isn’t it? She’s an adult, not a baby.’

She did not reply.

Out came the Japanese young man with yet another tray. More cakes piled with cream and jam, more coffee. As soon as he had set these down before his wife (girlfriend? sister?) and his (her?) mother, the three of them bent over and began eating as if in an eating contest.

‘They aren’t short of what it needs,’ he grumbled.

That peevish old voice: it was the edge of senility. Soon she would be his nurse. She was probably thinking something like this while she smiled, smiled, at the bird.

‘Come on,’ she whispered, ‘it’s not difficult.’

And then … the baby hopped down on to the table with its round eyes fixed on her, clumsily took up a crumb, swallowed it.

‘Very likely that’s the first time it has ever done that for itself,’ she whispered, and her eyes were full of tears. ‘The little thing …’

The small sparrow was pecking in an experimental way. Then it got the hang of it, and soon became as voracious as its elders as she pushed crumbs towards it. Then it had cleaned up the table top and was off – an adult.

‘Marvellous,’ she said. ‘Wonderful. Probably even this morning it was still in its nest and now …’ And she laughed, with tears in her eyes.

He was looking at her. For the first time since they had sat down there he was outside his selfish prison and really seeing her.

But he was seeing her not as she was now, but at some time in the past. A memory …

‘It’s a nice little bird,’ he said, and when she heard that voice from the past, not a semi-senile whine, she turned and smiled full at him.

‘Oh it’s so wonderful,’ she said, vibrating with pleasure. I love this place. I love …’ And indeed the sun had come out, filling the green garden with summer, making people’s faces shine and smile.

The Mother of the Child in Question

High on a walkway connecting two tower blocks Stephen Bentley, social worker, stopped to survey the view. Cement, everywhere he looked. Stained grey piles went up into the sky, and down below lay grey acres where only one person moved among puddles, soft drink cans and bits of damp paper. This was an old man with a stick and a shopping bag. In front of Stephen, horizontally dividing the heavy building from pavement to low cloud, were rows of many-coloured curtains where people kept out of sight. They were probably watching him, but he had his credentials, the file under his arm. The end of this walkway was on the fourth floor. The lift smelled bad: someone had been sick in it. He walked up grey urine-smelling stairs to the eighth floor, Number 15. The very moment he rang, the door was opened by a smiling brown boy. This must be Hassan, the twelve-year-old. His white teeth, his bright blue jersey, the white collar of his shirt, all dazzled, and behind him the small room crammed with furniture was too tidy for a family room, everything just so, polished, shining. Thorough preparations had been made for this visit. In front of a red plush sofa was the oblong of a low table, and on it waited cups, saucers and a sugar bowl full to the brim. A glinting spoon stood upright in it. Hassan sat down on the sofa, smiling hard. Apart from the sofa, there were three chairs, full of shiny cushions. In one of them sat Mrs Khan, a plump pretty lady wearing the outfit Stephen thought of as ‘pyjamas’ – trousers and tunic in flowered pink silk. They looked like best clothes, and the ten-year-old girl in the other chair wore a blue tunic and trousers, with earrings, bangles and rings. Mother wore a pink gauzy scarf, the child a blue one. These, in Pakistan, would be there ready to be pulled modestly up at the sight of a man, but here they added to the festive atmosphere. Stephen sat down in the empty chair at Mrs Khan’s (Stephen particularly noted) peremptory gesture. But she smiled. Hassan smiled and smiled. The little girl had not, it seemed, noticed the visitor, but she smiled too. She was pretty, like a kitten.

‘Where is Mr Khan?’ asked Stephen of Mrs Khan, who nodded commandingly at her son. Hassan at once said, ‘No, he cannot come, he is at work.’

‘But he told me he would be here. I spoke to him on the telephone yesterday.’

Again the mother gave Hassan an order with her eyes, and he said, smiling with all his white teeth, ‘No, he is not here.’

In the file that had the name Shireen Khan on the front, the last note, dated nine months before, said, ‘Father did not keep appointment. His presence essential.’

Mrs Khan said something in a low voice to her son, who allowed the smile to have a rest just as long as it took to fetch a tray with a pot of tea on it, and biscuits, from the sideboard. They must have been watching from the windows and made the tea when they saw him down there, file under his arm. Hassan put the smile back on his face when he sat down again. Mrs Khan poured strong tea. The boy handed Stephen a cup, and the plate of biscuits. Mrs Khan set a cup before her daughter, and counted five biscuits on to a separate plate and put this near the cup. The little girl was smiling at – it seemed – attractive private fancies. Mrs Khan clicked her tongue with annoyance and said something to her in Urdu. But Shireen took no notice. She was bursting with internal merriment, and the result of her mother’s prompting was that she tried to share this with her brother, reaching out to poke him mischievously, and laughing. Hassan could not prevent a real smile at her, tender, warm, charmed. He instantly removed this smile and put back the polite false one.

‘Five,’ said Mrs Khan in English. ‘She can count. Say five, Shireen.’ It was poor English, and she repeated the command in Urdu.

The little girl smiled delightfully and began breaking up the biscuits and eating them.

‘If your husband would agree to it, Shireen could go to the school we discussed – my colleague William Smith discussed with you – when he came last year. It is a good school. It would cost a little but not much. It is Government-funded but there is a small charge this year. Unfortunately.’

Mrs Khan said something sharp and the boy translated. His English was fluent. ‘It is not money. My father has the money.’

‘Then I am sorry but I don’t understand. The school would be good for Shireen.’

Well, within limits. In the file was a medical report, part of which read, ‘The child in question would possibly benefit to a limited extent from special tuition.’

Mrs Khan said something loud and angry. Her amiable face was twisted with anger. Anxiety and anger had become the air in this small overfilled overclean room, and now the little girl’s face was woeful and her lips quivered. Hassan at once put out his hand to her and made soothing noises. Mrs Khan tried simultaneously to smile at the child and show a formal cold face to the intrusive visitor.

Hassan said, ‘My mother says Shireen must go to the big school, Beavertree School.’

‘Is that where you go, Hassan?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘My name is Stephen, Stephen Bentley.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Your father should be here,’ said Stephen, trying not to sound peevish. There was something going on, but he could not make out what. If it wasn’t that two daughters were doing well at school Stephen would have thought perhaps Mr Khan was old-fashioned and didn’t want Shireen educated. (The two girls were both older than Hassan, but being girls did not count. It was the oldest son who had to be here representing the father.) Not that there was any question of ‘educating’ Shireen. So what was it? Certainly he had sounded perfunctory yesterday on the telephone, agreeing to be here today.

Mrs Khan now took out a child’s picture book she had put down the side of the armchair for this very moment, and held it in front of Shireen. It was a brightly coloured book, for a three-year-old, perhaps. Shireen smiled at it in a vacant willing way. Mrs Khan turned the big pages, frowning and nodding encouragingly at Shireen. Then she made herself smile. The boy was smiling away like anything. Shireen was happy and smiling.

‘Look,’ said Stephen, smiling but desperate, ‘I’m not saying that Shireen will learn to read well, or anything like that, but …’

At this Mrs Khan slammed the book shut and faced him. No smiles. A proud, cold, stubborn woman, eyes flashing, she demolished him in Urdu.

Hassan translated the long tirade thus. ‘My mother says Shireen must go to the big school with the rest of us.’

‘But, Mrs Khan, she can’t go to the big school. How can she?’ As Mrs Khan did not seem to have taken this in, he addressed the question again to Hassan. ‘How can she go to the big school? It’s not possible!’

Hassan’s smile was wan, and Stephen could swear there were tears in his eyes. But he turned his face away.

Another angry flood from Mrs Khan, but Hassan did not interpret. He sat silent and looked sombrely at the chuckling and delighted little girl who was stirring biscuit crumbs around her plate with her finger. Mrs Khan got up, full of imperious anger, pulled Shireen up from her chair, and went stormily out of the room, tugging the child after her by the hand. Stephen could hear her exclaiming and sighing and moving around the next room, and addressing alternately admonishing and tender remarks to the child. Then she wept loudly.

Hassan said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but I must go to my school. I asked permission to be here, and my teacher said yes, but I must go back quickly.’

‘Did your father tell you to be here?’

Hassan hesitated. ‘No, sir. My mother said I must be here.’

For the first time Hassan was really looking at him. It even seemed that he might say something, explain … His eyes were full of a plea. For understanding? There was pride there, hurt.

‘Thank you for staying to interpret, Hassan,’ said the social worker. I wish I could talk to your father …’

‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ said Hassan, and went running out. Stephen called, ‘Goodbye, Mrs Khan,’ got no reply, and followed the boy. Along the dismal, stained and smelly corridors. Down the grey cement stairs. On to the walkway. A wind was blowing, fresh and strong. He looked down and saw Hassan four storeys below, a small urgent figure racing across the cement, leaping puddles, kicking bits of paper. He reached the street and vanished. He was running from a situation he hated: his whole body shouted it. What on earth … Just what was all that about?

And then Stephen understood. Suddenly. Just like that. But he couldn’t believe it. But yes, he had to believe it. No, it wasn’t possible …

Not impossible. It was true.

Mrs Khan did not know that Shireen was ‘subnormal’ as the medical record put it. She was not going to admit it. Although she had two normal sons and two normal daughters, all doing well at school, and she knew what normal bright children were like, she was not going to make the comparison. For her, Shireen was normal. No good saying this was impossible. For Stephen was muttering, ‘No, it simply isn’t on, it’s crazy.’ Anyway, he found these ‘impossibilities’ in his work every day. A rich and various lunacy inspired the human race and you could almost say the greater part of his work was dealing with this lunacy.

Stephen stood clutching the balustrade and gripping the file, because the wind was swirling noisily around the high walkway. His eyes were shut because he was examining in his mind’s eye the picture of Mrs Khan’s face, that proud, cold, refusing look. So would a woman look while her husband shouted at her, ‘You stupid woman, she can’t go to the big school with the others, why are you so stubborn? Do I have to explain it to you again?’ She must have confronted her husband with this look and her silence a hundred times! And so he had not turned up for the appointment, or for the other appointment, because he knew it was no good. He didn’t want to have to say to some social worker, ‘My wife’s a fine woman, but she has this little peculiarity!’ And Hassan wasn’t going to say, ‘You see, sir, there’s a little problem with my mother.’

Stephen, eyes still shut, went on replaying what he had seen in that room: the tenderness on Mrs Khan’s face for her afflicted child, the smile on the boy’s face, the real, warm, affectionate smile, at his sister. The little girl was swaddled in their tenderness, the family adored her, what was she going to learn at the special school better than she was getting from her family?

Stephen found he was filling with emotions that threatened to lift him off the walkway with the wind and float him off into the sky like a balloon. He wanted to laugh, or clap his hands, or sing with exhilaration. That woman, that mother, would not admit her little girl was simple. She just wouldn’t agree to it! Why, it was a wonderful thing, a miracle! Good for you, Mrs Khan, said Stephen Bentley opening his eyes, looking at the curtained windows four floors above him where he had no doubt Mrs Khan was watching him, proud she had won yet another victory against those busybodies who would class her Shireen as stupid.