Cross My Heart and Hope to Die (24 page)

The room seemed very quiet after she had gone. There was no one about on the top landing, though I could hear a Beatles record playing behind one of the closed doors. I found the bathroom but it was a grotty place, with flaking plaster, stained plastic window curtains, a ferocious-looking geyser, grey high and low tidemarks round the bath and permanent brown drools below the taps. The seat-cover of the loo was badly cracked. It was the only room where I was likely to find much privacy, but it wasn't the sort of place you'd want to linger in.

There was no point in going out to buy food when I still had the remains of Mum's sandwiches. This time I was hungry enough to eat them. I experimented with the gas rings, made myself a small mug of Libby's Nescafé, and then set about finishing my unpacking.

In the bottom of my suitcase I found a mysterious wodge of old newspapers. I tore them apart, and discovered that Mum had gone and packed me an unasked-for couple of pots of her blackberry and apple jam.

It's a fiddling jam to make but she does it well and she knows that it's my favourite. I don't know whether the sharpness of the apple sets off the sweetness of the blackberries, or the tartness of the blackberries offsets the sweetness of the apples, but either way the combination is delicious. You can taste the autumn sun in it, and see the blackberries glistening on the bushes at the edge of Spirkett's Wood.

Mum seals each pot with a transparent disc and a cover held down by an elastic band, and she writes a careful label and the date. I lifted the pots out. This year's, made in the middle of September when my dear Dad was alive and we were happy … I felt suddenly overwhelmed by a rush of longing, not only for him but for home.

And then I realized that one of the pots was only partly filled. The cover had split and the jam had oozed out through the newspapers, spreading itself over the sleeve of the new oatmeal sweater that Mum had knitted for me.

I had to laugh. If once I'd started crying I wouldn't have known where to stop.

I disliked college from the start. When I first saw it, in the spring, I'd been delighted by its parkland setting because I knew how much I would miss the countryside. Now, the falling leaves and the sharp, earthy smells of autumn induced nothing but melancholy.

Difficult to say whether I'd have enjoyed college in other circumstances, if I hadn't been weighed down by my load of misery and guilt. As it was, everything seemed pointless. I combined my new-girl-up-from-the-country awkwardness with a depressing sense of oldness and experience.

I'd been fed up with school, where you had to be all day whether you wanted to or not, and where they chivvied you into doing something the whole time. What I'd most looked forward to at university was freedom from supervision. But now that I'd got it I didn't want it. There was too much time for thinking.

I didn't like my course, either. I'd chosen Sociology because I thought it would be full of human interest, but all it was full of were statistics. I found it difficult, and the books I needed were always out of the library.

College was crowded with people, but I knew no one outside my fortnightly tutorial group. There were ten of us – including two men, one bumptious, one who sat picking his pimples – and we usually gravitated towards each other at lectures. But as soon as lectures were over we drifted apart again, scattering to our habitations in distant parts of London.

There were plenty of clubs and societies I could have joined, of course, but I didn't feel like joining anything, not that first term. Next term, perhaps, when I'd had time to come to some kind of arrangement with myself, it would be different. Until then, I preferred to be on my own.

Finding my way about London, with an A-Z guide, had to be a priority. It was supposed to be a swinging place, but I found it just crowded and confusing. Everywhere was rush and push, and it didn't take me long to discover that country good manners were out of place. There was no need to stand back to let old ladies on to buses or tubes first, because they were experienced shovers with very sharp elbows who knew all about city survival.

What really dismayed me, in all the noise and hustle, was that London was such a very
foreign
city. The streets were packed with people of every conceivable nationality and colour, and I began to wonder whether any genuine native Londoners existed or whether they had all fled to the country, as Mrs Marks had to Byland, leaving the foreigners in occupation.

I longed for some escape from the traffic and the strangeness, but my shared room was no haven. I knew I'd have to find somewhere else. It was essentially Libby's room, overflowing with her things and her personality even though she was rarely in it. When she had gone out that first evening, apologizing for the mess, I'd assumed that she simply hadn't had time to put her clothes and books away. Then I discovered that she lived in a permanent muddle, and presumably liked it.

Nothing to do with me, except that she used my bed and dressing-table as additional dumping-grounds. It made me furious to come in and find that there wasn't a square inch I could call my own. I remembered Mrs Dooley's remark that I'd have to stand up for myself, but there was no point in having a row with Libby until I'd found somewhere else to live. Certainly no point in sending to Mum for my trunk until I had a room of my own to unpack it in.

And that was clearly going to be difficult to find. I bought the
Evening Standard
and searched the small ads, but single rooms were wildly expensive, their rents geared to the £1,000-a-year secretary market. But at least the search gave me an occupation and a purpose. I set about seeing how little I could live on and how far I could stretch my grant.

I hadn't smoked since I arrived. I didn't much enjoy it anyway. I lived on Nescafé and brown bread and eggs – though I hated paying good money for such small pale objects – and canned soup and baked beans. Fruit was fantastically expensive, eating-apples two-and-something a pound in the street markets, when at home we tripped over them in the grass … But apples no longer appealed to me.

Fares for my journeys to and from college were another expense that could be pared. There were several possible routes and I walked for long distances, taking public transport only between the most economical fare stages.

The underground, with its hot stale wind, depressed me. I preferred to walk or ride on buses because there was always something to see and, looking and listening, I could sometimes forget about Dad for a few minutes. And then the desolating facts would come crowding in on me again, worse than ever.

I hadn't realized how physically painful grief would be. It gave me a terrible, persistent ache inside. Once, when I was waiting on an underground platform at Leicester Square, I heard myself cry out loud with the pain: ‘Dad, Dad!' But no one took any notice; that sort of thing goes on in London all the time.

Finding a boy-friend, which I'd originally thought of as priority number one, didn't matter any more. Just as well, because there didn't seem much prospect of making friends with anyone, male or female. The Canadian couple who lived in the room opposite were very pleasant and we smiled and said ‘Hi,' if we met, and I exchanged a few ‘Hallo's with the journalist, and said a polite ‘Good evening'to the Indians, but that was all.

I received several letters, redirected from home. The announcement of Dad's death had appeared in the local paper, and the news had evidently circulated. My school friends, Caroline and Sue, wrote to say that they were sorry, and to tell me what great times they were having at York and Essex, and to say they hoped I was having a great time in London. I wrote back to thank them and assured them that I was.

Miss Dunlop used the official school writing-paper to send me a formal letter of sympathy, which I had no reason to keep. Mrs Bloomfield wrote me a sympathetic letter which I would have liked to keep, but I couldn't read it without crying so I tore that up too. I was sorry afterwards, particularly as she'd finished it ‘Yours affectionately'. I was deeply in need of whatever affection anyone could spare.

Except from Mum. I simply couldn't fancy it from her. She wrote to me twice a week, first class, her letters overflowing with maternal love. It wasn't what she said, exactly, because she wasn't much of a letter-writer, but I knew what she meant. And she
would
keep sending me things. The regular food parcels were an embarrassment, except that I was very glad of the contents. Having to thank her for them made it difficult to tell her I was never going back, so I postponed the telling and wrote short stiff letters in reply, irregularly, second class.

Dear Mum,
Thank you very much for the cakes. They are very nice. I am
still enjoying the jam.

I hope you are getting on well at the shop. I expect the journey is a nuisance in this wet weather.

I am glad the hens are laying well, but please don't try to send me any eggs, they will only get broken in the post.

I have settled down nicely, my room is comfortable and I am sharing it with a very pleasant girl.

I was writing the letter in my usual place in the library at college. The main reading-rooms were always full but I'd discovered the periodicals room in the basement, where a few tables and chairs were jammed in among the racks of back numbers. Very few people ever read down there because it was gloomy, but it suited me. It was the only reasonably private place I'd found since I'd been in London. That was where I spent most of my time in college, reading and writing and thinking about Dad, staying there until the library closed so that by the time I got back to our room Libby would have gone out.

That evening, as I was writing to Mum, the swing-doors swung and a girl from my tutorial group walked to the far end of the room and back. I looked up as she passed. We smiled and nodded, but we had nothing to say. And then I heard her reporting to someone else just outside the door.

‘No one there except that Thacker woman. You know.'

‘Oh, her. Don't let's go in, then. She's so dull, never stops working.'

‘Perhaps someone will give her a medal.'

The door swung behind them. I finished my letter:

College is very interesting and I have made a lot of friends.

I hope you are keeping well, from Janet.

I walked almost to Oxford Street, limping a bit in my boots, then caught a bus for Notting Hill Gate. I'd bought an
Evening Standard
(PRINCESS ANNE – SHOCK! the placard had screamed, but I'd already been in London long enough to know that it probably meant she'd got a cold) and skimmed through the To Let columns. Plenty of choice, but nothing I could afford unless I shared, so I might as well stay with the Libby I knew.

I turned to the Sits Vac. I was seriously wondering whether to try to get a job rather than stay at university. It was an uncongenial half-life and I didn't think I could stick it for three long years. Better to give up my place to some eager schoolkid …

I was sitting on the sideways seat just inside the bus. A girl got on at Marble Arch and sat opposite. I looked at her without seeing her, and was surprised when she gave me a friendly smile.

‘We do know each other,' she said when I didn't respond. ‘Kate Bristow – we share a kitchen and bathroom, remember?'

I started, blushing because I hadn't recognized her as the journalist from the single room. ‘Sorry,' I said.

‘That's all right. You were miles away.'

‘Yes.' I looked at her properly for the first time. She was several years older than me, fashion-aware but casual, with a fringe of brown hair that flopped into her eyes, lashes that were definitely her own, a nicotine stain on her thin fingers, and one of her coat buttons hanging from a thread. She looked human and approachable, so I said, ‘You're about to lose a button.'

‘Oh, Lord – typical …' she said ruefully, pulling it off and putting it in her pocket. ‘Thanks very much.'

‘That's all right,' I said, and we both laughed, radiating goodwill across the bus. I knew that it was stupid of me to sit there with a grin on my face but I'd suddenly realized how lonely I was, how much I needed company.

The bus charged the Bayswater Road traffic and eased into Notting Hill Gate. I stood up reluctantly, not wanting to cut our acquaintance short, but Kate got up as well. ‘I always use the delicatessen here,' she said. ‘Are you shopping too?'

‘No – I walk from here because it's cheaper.'

We paced along together, much of a height though she was thinner than me. The shop fronts we passed were brilliantly lighted, their multi-coloured neon signs reflected on the greasy wet pavements.

‘How are things?' she said. ‘Are you enjoying being in London?'

I'd have liked to tell her the truth, but we had reached the Italian delicatessen. Half-past eight in the evening and the shop was full. I wondered what Dad would have thought of that.

‘Oh yes,' I said. ‘It's super.'

‘Even sharing a room with Libby?' She laughed. ‘Better not answer that. Look, you must come and have a cup of coffee with me some time. Only not tonight I'm afraid – deadline tomorrow.' She hitched a document case under her arm. ‘See you.'

‘See you,' I said, and we parted.

When I got back to the room, I found that I was humming. Feeling cheerful for the first time since I'd come to London, I stuffed my accumulated dirty clothes into my grip and took them to the coin-op. There was the usual mix of customers: two children in charge of the family washing, a young white woman with a baby in a sling, a black couple folding their sheets, a seedy-looking man reading a paper while he waited, a group of hippies making use of the warmth, an old woman ditto. Unusually, I felt quite benevolent towards them all.

I fed my clothes into a machine and sat watching them churn past the porthole. I could see my life revolving in the suds. There was the big bath towel, colour-fast cotton, that Dad had ordered specially from the drapery traveller; the fun pyjamas I'd made out of some jazzy material, slightly imperfect, that I'd bought from a stall in Breckham Market; the striped hand towel, a mothball-smelling contribution from Mum's bottom drawer; the Snoopy tea-towel that Caroline had given me for my birthday; and my Marks and Spencer underclothes. Almost as good as the telly. I hummed as I sat watching, irrationally pleased because I'd been given an unspecific invitation to drink a cup of coffee with someone.