London Folk Tales (23 page)

To the astonishment of everyone who knew anything about the affair, Lionel did eventually more or less recover. But he was never like his former self. He seemed to have taken up the most unaccountable aversions. Particularly, God only knows why, he would never again use the telephone.

If you’re lucky enough to find true love once, you wouldn’t expect to find it again. But Gertie did. Her second marriage was more of a companionship partnership to start with, she always said. But then it did grow into love. A different kind of love, perhaps, but just as strong.

Both he and she had been married before, and suffered the pain of loss; perhaps that was what had brought them together at first. But he had lost his first wife quite a long time before. Gertie had never known her. Apparently they had been childhood sweethearts. She had been buried nearby, at Streatham cemetery, and he still liked to go regularly and take flowers, or just visit her grave – really devoted.

But you can’t always dwell on the past, and now they both had something to look forward to. After they got married, Gertie’s new husband took her to Jersey. They liked it so much, it became their special place. But that first time, well it was a real honeymoon. And he bought her a lovely gold bracelet – a beautiful present.

When they came back, she let her flat go, and moved into his. It was a nice block, friendly and clean. He’d been living there for years. That’s where he’d been with his first wife, too.

Anyway, by and by he wanted to go to the cemetery, and naturally this time Gertie went with him. But when she got back home, she realised she had lost her gold bracelet. She looked everywhere, checked her handbag and everything, but when she couldn’t find it, she had to admit to him that it was lost.

‘Ah,’ he said. He had a bit of a funny look on his face. ‘I think I know where it will be,’ he said.

So he went out, back to the cemetery, and when he came home again he had the bracelet. He’d found it on his first wife’s grave.

Well, Gertie didn’t think much about it, because she wasn’t a superstitious ‘spooky’ kind of person. And so she put it to the back of her mind and just got on with enjoying her new life.

But sadly that didn’t last as long as they’d hoped, because after only a few years together he died. Well he had been a fair bit older than her; it was bound to happen, she said to herself. At least they had been happy for the time they did have together. She’d just have to get on with it.

So, as soon as she could face it, she decided to clear out the house for his sons. There were still a lot of things that had belonged to his first wife, too. Mostly Gertie had just left them in the cupboards while her husband was alive, but now she thought perhaps his sons would want them as well. So she started trying to sort everything out, and put it all into boxes.

But then things began to go wrong. It’s a hard thing to do anyway, when you’ve lost someone, to have to go through all their possessions. But it was more than just that. It was odd. First one thing and then another seemed to crack as soon as she touched it. Then a cup slipped out of her hands altogether, and broke into smithereens on the floor. She couldn’t think what was happening to her. As she always said, she wasn’t a ‘dropping things kind of person’. A soup dish, too – she knew it had been quite a special one for her husband – but as she was packing that into a box it shattered into shards.

Eventually she stopped – well she was getting a bit upset, naturally. So she decided to have a cup of tea. But as soon as she sat down with it, in an ordinary little chair, a solid enough piece of furniture, the legs slid out from under her and the tea went all over everything. Then even a spoon, a long spoon, she got hold of it and it snapped just like that.

Well, by now Gertie was really worried about what was the matter with her. She went outside to get a breath of air, and met a neighbour out in the courtyard. So they started chatting and before she knew it, Gertie had told her what was going on.

This other woman, she had lived there a long time. She listened, and then she asked straight away. ‘All those things you dropped, did they belong to her, his first wife?’

‘Come to think of it,’ said Gertie, ‘I suppose they did. Especially that soup dish; I think that might have been a wedding gift.’

‘Ah well,’ said the neighbour, ‘that’s it then. She just didn’t want you to have her things. That’s what. I suppose you knew they were childhood sweethearts? She was a bit of a jealous type. Everything had to be for her. I don’t suppose she would have been pleased that he married again.’

‘Well, there was no preventing that,’ said Gertie. ‘She was gone, and we met up. That’s life.’ But she couldn’t help remembering what had happened to her bracelet.

‘Good for you,’ said her new friend. ‘You made him happy. Do you want a hand packing up the rest of those things?’

The funny thing was, after Gertie had got rid of everything, it never happened again, there was no more bother. The first wife seemed to have gone. But though she had, Gertie always felt that her husband stayed on. And she wasn’t the only one. For the vicar himself, when he came to visit after the funeral, told her that he was sure the spirit of her husband would always be in the flat while she was there.

And, as she said to me: ‘I’ve lived there for a long time and I’ve never ever felt afraid there. I’ve had opportunity to move, but I like to be there. It just shows there are spirits. There’s nothing more to say about it.’

My friend D came to England when she was ten from Ceylon, as it was then, now Sri Lanka. Her family were living in London, Borough Market. It was bustling with business, but that wasn’t such a shock because she was used to crowded colourful Columbo markets. Mangoes instead of apples, rice more likely than potatoes, but the same noisy selling spirit, goods piled in heaps, or laid out displayed, fingered by hawk-eyed customers, destined for the same end. The real difference was probably the weather, the wind whistling down the river, blasting up short skirts, instead of wafts of warmth stroking sarongs and silk saris.

There were some differences in livestock too. Chickens, dogs, cats and rats of all sorts on both islands, but the dazzling sweet salt fish of the Indian nation were a million miles away from a nice bit of pale plaice. D knew about that, because her father had come to England to bring tropical sea creatures and reptiles for display. His speciality was snakes, although he had problems flying them over after they escaped in the hold. So, occasionally he slipped some into his hand luggage, although that almost caused him trouble too. It was all because he was offered a meal, and thinking of his hungry pets he chose steak tartar, ‘as rare as can be’.

‘Ooh,’ said the lady sitting next to him, ‘I love really rare steaks, too.’

‘Like my snake?’ he said, assuming she was a kindred spirit, and opened up his bag.

It turned out she didn’t like it at all, but fortunately by the time the air hostess responded to the loud screams, the snake was safely stowed away in the luggage racks, the lady too incoherent to explain, and D’s father all baffled innocence.

He simply didn’t understand why there should be any difference perceived between reptiles and other lovely creatures. ‘I’m just an exporter of Sri Lankan natural beauty,’ he’d explain. This included, presumably, his daughter. Although D probably found the move smoother, and her charms were certainly more immediately appreciated in the new world and lifestyle of London. Especially when she went to college. But though her parents might have seemed unusual in some ways, there were other things that were the same as most Asian families in England then. An embargo on certain kinds of fun. For the daughters of the house at least, particularly if you were, like D, the only one. She couldn’t go out with boys, like other girls did, or go to parties, and to make it worse she had to find excuses to save face.

Oddly enough the snakes helped her out in the end. For she met someone she liked, and he thought it was great that her dad kept snakes, because he had one himself! So D brought him home, and he and her dad looked in all the tanks and oohed and aahed about reptiles, and the boyfriend was established as the perfect young man. Even having a car now counted as a plus! He could drive her home much quicker than waiting for a bus.

And take them both on outings too. So what he and she used to do then, mainly at weekends, was to get together with some friends, and drive around, especially South London, discovering new pubs and clubs and out of the way venues to go to. He lived in Forest Hill, so quite often they’d start by heading out that direction, along the main road, Bromley or Eltham way maybe. It was all very leafy then, spacious too, and quiet after the city mayhem.

On this particular evening only one friend could come, a girlfriend of D’s, and they were going roughly the Bromley route, although they’d turned off somewhere different from usual. They had been driving for a fair while, and both D and her friend needed to go to the loo, so they were watching out for somewhere they could stop. It was getting a bit dark, so they were looking quite hard, beginning to get a bit desperate, you know how it is. Finally they got to a Y junction, and then the boyfriend spotted a pub, so of course he pulled over, and they all piled out.

It was quite a grand place they’d found, one of those really old pubs, whitewashed, with big black beams. And they’d obviously gone to town on the old-style theme because they had lamps as well – great atmosphere. So the three of them went in and found what seemed to be the main bar. It was only then that they realised they must have walked into somebody’s party, because everyone in there was wearing fancy dress.

Anyway, D’s boyfriend went up to get some drinks and the two girls headed off to the toilet. There weren’t any signs saying ‘Ladies’, but that wasn’t as common then as it is now. So they just headed towards the back, looking for a likely door. They soon saw one, but when they went through they found themselves in a long back room. And it was absolutely full of hats! They were all along the walls, rows of them – hats of all sorts. There was a fur one with a tail hanging down that D rather fancied, and a lovely big one with a feather.

D and her friend went straight on through, because they were in a hurry to get to the loo. And by now they were beginning to feel rather embarrassed, because everyone here was also dressed up to the nines. One woman had a floor-length gown with all her hair done in ringlets. And two men were in total cavalier style, with flowing sleeves and high boots and everything. It was really glorious to see, but poor D and her friend were just in jeans and t-shirts. They wished they’d known in advance!

At least they’d spotted another door which had to be the toilet because it was very small, so they pushed that open with a sigh of relief and hurried in. Only it wasn’t what they were expecting at all. It was more a sort of corridor which seemed to be running in both directions but it was hard to see because it was so dark. There were two of the lantern-type lamps, one on either side, but they obviously had faulty bulbs or something because they were flickering really badly.

At this point D and her friend looked at each other, and agreed they’d had enough, and maybe they didn’t need the toilet all that much! It was just too dark and odd to go on – almost spooky. So they backtracked quickly.

D was ahead, and just as she got to the door a gentleman appeared – and he really was a gentleman, because he opened the door for her with a real flourish and a bow! She noticed the lace flutter at his wrist as he moved. He was obviously well practised at it. And he was very good looking too. So, while she was taking all this in, and enjoying being back into the light again, she forgot all about her poor friend. And so did the dashing gentleman, apparently, because far from giving her the same treatment too, he slammed the door right in her face! She was shut out in the dark and naturally felt most put out. ‘It’s bad enough that you are prettier than I am,’ she said when she caught up with D again, ‘but honestly, he treated me as if I was completely invisible! I don’t think I like this place at all!’