Meeting the English (6 page)

‘Do you have a toasted-sandwich maker?' he asked.

‘No,' said Myfanwy, ‘but you may use the grill if you wipe it.'

‘Who's the lady who answered the door?' asked Struan.

Myfanwy smiled horribly.

‘Mrs Prys,' she said.

‘Oh,' said Struan. ‘I'm sorry. I thought you were Mrs Prys. Are you the housekeeper, then?'

And Myfanwy smiled that lipsticked smile again. Her wee pointy face and pop eyes looked odd, Struan thought, over her huge bosom: like a hand-puppet, Mrs Punch, talking over the curtained stage of her chest. The clacking pink mouth was saying all sorts, stuff that Struan had never heard in his life before: apparently the young Mrs Prys, Shirin, was the latest and last of a long line, a very long line, of mistresses (she used that word) superseding a girl called Linda who really, said Myfanwy smiling martyrishly, she had got quite fond of. Shirin had insisted on marriage, she said for the immigration status, though really, in Myfanwy's personal view, she should have gone back to Iran, there was no genuine problem there, she had family there.

Struan said he saw all that, and Myfanwy mustered herself and said, yes it might strike some people as odd, how generous Myfanwy was with her care and time, the way she insisted on caring for the house, and caring for Phillip and allowing the children to keep rooms here, but really when the chips were down and backs to the wall it was down to one to pitch in and do one's best and she and Phillip had been married for twenty-five years—

‘My heron-winged, grey/My blue true wife,' quoted Struan, suddenly, in his impossible accent. Myfanwy was quite touched.

‘Yes,' she said, ‘that's about me.'

‘It's set on the Higher,' said Struan. ‘
Supplementary Material
to
The Pit and Its Men.
I was awful keen on my English you see, even though I'm going to be a dentist.'

Struan was thinking: he had found London now, right enough. The kitchen was painted a shade of pink he'd never seen on a wall, a sort of sticking-plaster colour. The sink was round and steel, hi-tech looking, but the dresser had had its paint stripped off it and not put back. On it was a plethora of
Alice in Wonderland
equipment: thick, wibbly glasses, plates too large for anyone to use, cups that were as much too small. There were steel knives stuck to the wall on a magnet, and sausages and something like pine needles hanging from the ceiling, and a huge cheese grater, and a wee brass colander. None of this would have done, in Cuik: but then, in Cuik, it would not do to make arrangements for your ex-husband, or to sit in the kitchen of your ex-husband while the new wife was in the room next door. Struan thought it was terrible, and it was grand, both at once. He asked:

‘Who was the wee girl on the stair?'

‘That's Juliet,' said Myfanwy, ‘Juliet Prys. Mr Prys's daughter. My daughter. My daughter with Mr Prys.'

‘My tight-green bulb in rich black earth?' asked Struan, returning to the
Supplementary Material.

‘Actually, that's Jake,' said Myfanwy, ‘Juliet's older brother. By the time Juliet was born Phillip Prys was, how shall we put this? Through with the muse.'

‘Oh,' said Struan. ‘Does Juliet stay here?'

‘No,' said Myfanwy. ‘Sometimes. It is possible in fact that she may be staying for a short time just now. She may be here for a week or two this summer but you shouldn't leave Mr Prys with her. She doesn't count as an adult.' Myfanwy smiled tightly. ‘In fact, she often acts much younger than her years. Anything else?'

‘Could I meet him now?' said Struan. ‘Mr Prys? See the set up and so forth.'

So they went into the study. The room was as large as the Cuik School Library, and held more books. There was a hospital bed in one corner, and French windows to the garden on the other wall. In the middle, in a shaft of sun, lay a bald old man in a wheelchair, his body slack in a way familiar to Struan from the Home. The young Mrs Prys was sitting beside him, drawing with the same slim hand she had rested in Struan's when he arrived. She was the first foreigner Struan had ever knowingly touched, and he would have stared at her contentedly for some time, but—

‘The sun's in Mr Prys' eyes,' said Struan, ‘that cannae be comfortable. Excuse me,' and he strode over to the wheelchair, unclicked its sticky brake, and moved it into the shade. Shirin stopped drawing, and gazed at him. Struan knelt down in front of the old man. ‘Mr Prys,' he said.

Phillip could open his eyes, now the glare had gone, and he did. A bony boyish face and long neck came into the circle of his vision, monochrome, like a plaster bas-relief of an early emperor. Augustus, probably, with that pale, curly, close-cropped hair. Eyes grey as river-pebbles locked with Phillip's.

‘Meestahpreese,' said the face. ‘Avecomtayelp. Ah'm Strewn.'

The language was mostly foreign, but the last word was very clear. Strewn. He was Strewn. Indeed he was. Phillip was strewn to the winds, and a new Phillip must be gathered. And how marvellous, simply marvellous, to have found someone who understood.

‘Blink,' said the head, shutting its own eyes. ‘Canny blink?'

Blink? Well, why not? Mustering all his resources, Phillip did.

6

Here are the reasons why, despite sleeping virtually next to him in the hot attic rooms and sharing the Jack and Jill bathroom, that Juliet doesn't fancy Struan, not at all:

Number 1) Struan's clothes: Struan owns one pair of high-waisted Lee jeans, and one pair of BHS pleated trousers. Both skim his ankle bones. The pleated trousers, in particular, give him a strange sexless blank fold round the crotch. Whoever Celia's lover is, Juliet is sure, even if he is a grown-up, he has 501s. Struan also owns, for hot weather, one T-shirt, plain white, and one checked shirt with short sleeves (C&A). He is currently washing one of these garments each night and leaving it to drip over the tiny bath in the attic, thus allowing Juliet to inspect their labels and their cheap stitching. She has never seen anything like either of them, and both are out of the question.

Number 2) Struan's hair. This is mouse-coloured, coarse, and not so much styled as chewed off close to the scalp. In a world where hair mousse has just been invented, and there are pop-bands called Haircut 100, this is tantamount to a tonsure.

Number 3) Struan's toiletries. Struan uses cheap razors which he wipes and leaves on the windowsill, prissily on a piece of toilet paper. Struan uses unscented Men's Deodorant from Boots, Juliet hears it schooming from the can every morning. It smells of something crude and anti-freeze-y, and the smell clings to the drip-drying shirts. Struan uses the word ‘toilet' freely, instead of ‘loo'. All these things give Juliet a creepy little feeling she is unwilling to name.

This is a disappointment. Nevertheless, Juliet has little to do in the week she and Struan move in, because Celia is more or less not speaking to her and nor is her mother, so she takes it on herself, in between afternoon reruns of
Dallas
on the tiny front-room telly, to take Struan about a bit, and explain things. He's never been to London.

And so it is that on Struan's fourth afternoon, which is demonically hot, and humid, as Juliet remarks, as having a whole live Labrador on your head, that she leads Struan to Hamptons Estate Agents in Flask Walk – Phillip Prys, disappointingly inert, between them in the wheelchair – and attempts to explain the London property market, which after five seasons of freakish growth, during which graveyards in Westminster and council estates in Clapham have been converted into luxury flats, and carriage lamps and tie-back curtains have frothed like algae over Fulham, is currently enduring a little local difficulty.

‘The prices,' Juliet says, ‘are coming down now, because of the economy, so we should look for a bargain, especially if it's got original features and it's in an edgy area, and then we can buy it and do it up and make lots of money when the prices go back up.'

Struan peers, and says there do not appear to be many bargains on offer.

He also thinks the agent should change the bottle-glass window. It sags. He peers harder, and wonders if the people in the agents have misplaced the decimal point in the prices, or if mebbe, for some London reason, dollar signs are being displayed as pounds.

‘Like that wee house,' says Struan, putting a large spade-shaped finger on the curved bottle-glass, ‘that one is four hundred thousand pounds, and that cannae be right. What does mews mean?'

‘Small,' says Juliet. ‘But look, you see, it says reduced. It's a bargain.' We should remember at this point that Juliet is predicted to get E in GCSE Maths. She is preoccupied, moreover, with her reflection in the window, tastefully obfuscated by the curving glass, floating over the bijou interior in her white frock, like a double negative on an album cover. She doesn't look too fat.

‘My gran's house has three bedrooms,' says Struan, still staring at the window, ‘and when she bought it from the council it cost two thousand pounds.'

‘Really?' says Juliet. ‘You're really lucky, Struan. Is it an edgy area of Cuik? Does it have original features? Could you strip the floors?'

‘No,' says Struan. ‘It's got contour carpets.'

Struan's family house besides is harled, small, and perched on a landscaped slag heap. Already the good neighbours are dying off, mostly of emphysema, already the house three doors down has been empty a year. In fifteen years' time, Gran's will be the only net curtains in a street of boarded-up windows, and it will be all that Struan can do to move her out to a wee flat—

‘My mum,' says Juliet, ‘does up houses for a job. That's how I know all this. She's done four now. She started with this vicarage in the Gower Dad threw in with the divorce settlement, then she did a garden flat in West Hampstead, and Grandma Davies' cottage in Cardigan, and now she's got these railway cottages in Cricklewood. They're really cute, actually.'

The cottages, Myfanwy would say, were
rather a romance:
an irresistible bargain at auction, a matching, adjoining pair with simple smiling faces, low roofs, and clapboard doors. Myfanwy has restored them gently, treating them to Laura Ashley feature walls and expensive retro taps, polishing up the original, matching iron stoves. They are so petite, so dainty: each a perfect honeymoon nest for a young (very short, very tidy, without need of storage) couple.

‘Soon,' says Juliet, ‘she'll sell them for loads more money. Then she'll do another one. That's why I'm looking out. She says the secret's all in the paint. You've got to use pale paint, magnolia, and neutral carpet, beige. She has all these little men that work for her, Irish, they're all brothers actually, one's a bricklayer, one's an electrician. Super.'

‘My uncle,' says Struan, ‘is an electrician.'

And there, in a nutshell, is the reason Struan doesn't fancy Juliet. She is strange to him as a Martian. She might say anything at all in her rushing, husky, posh English voice, things like, ‘Come and watch
Dallas
with me, Struan, this one's got Dwarfish Lucy in it, she's my all-time fave,' or ‘little men' for a whole category of adult, and not be at all ashamed of herself. She regularly slings out questions such as ‘Don't all teenagers have homosexual phases?', and other statements which would have silenced and divided Cuik, casually as yo-yos, leaving Struan open-mouthed in her wake. Though he has resolved to do better to keep up.

‘If the prices are going down,' says Struan, now – and he will take an A in Higher Maths – ‘will they no go down on the railway cottages too?'

‘Maybe,' says Juliet, ‘but they were still very cheap, so we'll still make loads of money. You see, Cricklewood is very edgy area.'

About this Juliet is entirely wrong. Myfanwy has put all her profits into the cottages, and borrowed on top. And now interest rates are rising and the wisteria Myfanwy planted in the cottages' gravelly little garden has withered and died, and the young couples who do come round to look remark on the railway (still there, still noisy) and have no deposits. The cottages are lingering on the market, and only this morning, the newly dug pond has turned an unpromising shade of purple. This is very much on Myfanwy's mind as she meets Giles in the Hungarian Tea Rooms at the top of Hampstead High Street.

*   *   *

Giles, of course, always seems embarrassed. His diffident, unworldly manner, so agreeable to artists, is partly what has kept him at the top of the literary game for so many years. But he also, generally, thinks Myfanwy, gets over the arty bit and stabs in there with a ray of strong commercial sense. A figure. A bottom bloody line. Where is it today? He has been moseying his way round a tray of flaky pastries for nearly twenty minutes, fussy as an Arctic yak nibbling linden berries. He's been on and on about the piece in the
Los Angeles Times;
how he faxed over a correction soon as he heard of it; but what with the time delay; shades of Mark Twain, and now he was bleating on about Phil's state; wouldn't he be better in a nursing home—

‘Well,' said Myfanwy, ‘possibly, but the royalties from
The Pit
would keep him there for about a fortnight, and after that it's the children's trust, and I'm not having that. Unless you've got any brilliant ideas, Giles?' Now Giles sits up in a way she recognizes.

‘Actually, Myfanwy,' he says, and he beckons her to his whiskers, and flakily whispers the name of a Literary Giant, a proper one, a Great Dane to Phillip Prys's dachshund – did Myfanwy remember?

‘Of course,' says Myfanwy, dusting pastry from her cheek, ‘he visited Yewtree in '79.' She'd worn a blue silk catsuit, poured the Giant bourbons on the rocks, and Phil had slipped away, screwed horsey Linda in the larder.

‘He's put in an offer,' whispers Giles.