The Apple (14 page)

‘Don’t worry about him,’ she said as she strode ahead. ‘He’s in his element – surrounded by women. He’s the hero of the march.’

‘What about Auntie Primrose?’

‘She has your father with her.’

‘Everyone will think she’s Mrs Papa.’

‘That’s not the end of the world.’

Mama was walking awfully fast. I had to run to keep up with her. I’d expected to get footsore from marching, not breathless from sprinting. We barged through the exit, emerged onto a busy street which I suppose must have been Bayswater Road.

Almost instantaneously, my mother hailed a taxicab. Only decades later did I appreciate how miraculous that was. Mama seemed to summon it out of nowhere; or rather, it arrived as if in response to her distress, as if the driver – or his horse – had sensed her longing for rescue and hurried to oblige. But when my Mama told the cabbie that she wanted to go to Calthorpe Street, Bloomsbury, he winced as though she’d pricked him in the shoulder with a pin. Bloomsbury lay on the other side of the protesting legions. There were a third of a million bodies to be traversed.

‘Ma’am, ain’t there somewhere else you’d rather go?’ the cabbie said, trying out his charm on this woman who so often relied on charm herself. ‘America might be easier. Or North Kensington.’

My mother hesitated. She tilted her head back, and closed her eyes tight, and I could tell she was every bit as tired as I was. Then she said:

‘Take me to Notting Hill Gate.’

‘A doddle, ma’am. Any particular address?’

‘I’m … I’m not completely sure,’ she said. ‘One of the houses in Chepstow Villas.’

‘Right you are, ma’am.’

There are so many things a child doesn’t ask – even a child who is uncommonly close to his mother. During our lives together I must have asked my Mama a hundred thousand questions: where does the moon go when the sun shines; do spiders dream; what happens to music once it’s gone inside your ears; what is water made of; do cameras remember what they’ve seen; how does the tide decide when to come in; why is money worth money; what are souls for if there is no God. But I never asked why she chose to go to Chepstow Villas on that Sunday afternoon, with me in tow, when she could have gone alone, unobserved, on a day when she wasn’t footsore and overwrought. At the time, I assumed she was hoping to visit a friend.

As we trotted out of Kensington and into Notting Hill, my mother became increasingly agitated. She peered out of the window, swinging her head abruptly to the left or right as though fast-moving objects were speeding by, even though the vehicles and pedestrians around us were proceeding at a sedate pace.

‘Where’s this?’ she called to the driver.

‘Pembridge Road, madam,’ he replied.

‘Pembridge Villas?’ she called.

‘It’s called Pembridge Road these days, madam.’

For some reason this seemed to make my mother feel better.

‘I suppose everything has changed so much in the last thirty years that it’s unrecognisable!’ she remarked.

‘Oh no, madam,’ replied the cabman. ‘It’s much the same, I’d say. There’s more houses near the potteries, but these streets here, they never change.’

This put the frown back on my mother’s face. She resumed staring out the window, jerking her head back and forth. Her hands clutched at her knees through the fabric of her dress. To my eye, the houses we were passing were staid, respectable edifices, larger and paler than the ones in Bloomsbury, but typical of the solemn solidity of buildings in the Old Country. To my mother they must have appeared to be more like playful phantoms, ducking behind one another, running round and round our cab.

‘Chepstow Villas, madam,’ announced the cabman.

‘Already?’ said Mama. She blinked stupidly, like Freddy Harris whenever the masters asked him to do a simple sum. I was becoming annoyed with her. The journey had been quite long enough for me. I wanted to collapse into a sofa and be fed warm cocoa and a biscuit.

The two of us were offloaded onto the street. My mother dismissed the cabman with a dignified nod but as soon as she turned her face away from him, the look of anxiety returned. She clearly had no idea where she was.

‘I’m tired, Mama,’ I said.

She didn’t reply, even though I knew she’d heard me. We began walking along the footpath. There was hardly anyone about. It was Sunday afternoon, after all. Ultra-respectable people were indoors reading the Bible, or attending afternoon church services, or secretly gardening. The rest were in the centre of town, probably, rubbernecking to catch a glimpse of the suffragettes on their carnival floats.

Mama was examining the wrought-iron gates of each of the properties in Chepstow Villas. She reached the end of the street without having found what she was looking for, and walked back, more slowly, the other way, this time actually touching some of the gates with the tips of her fingers.

‘Yes, yes,’ she murmured as she loitered forwards. ‘I can see now …’

She stopped, turned on her heel, and bowed slightly, like a dancer executing a formal manoeuvre in a ballroom.

‘This house,’ she said. ‘Come with me.’

We approached a façade that was indistinguishable from its neighbours, swung open a small, new-looking gate with spikes on top, and presented ourselves at the front door. My mother rang the bell. After a long while, a middle-aged, well-dressed woman – most definitely not a servant – opened the door, looked my mother up and down.

‘I have nothing to discuss with you or your kind,’ she said. ‘You are unnatural.’

And she shut the door in Mama’s face. Mama turned around, looking rather stunned.

‘It’s all right,’ she muttered, principally to herself. ‘It wasn’t the place anyway. I could see behind her, the shape of the staircase … It was all wrong.’

She stood, lost in thought for a few moments. She chewed her bottom lip. She was wondering, I imagine, why the woman had so confidently called her
unnatural
. The answer came to her abruptly. She fumbled to remove her VOTES FOR WOMEN sash, which was ostentatiously draped across her torso. She rolled it up and handed it to me.

‘Take care of this for a minute,’ she said.

We moved on to the next house. My mother rang the bell. There was no response. She rang the bell again. Again, no response.

‘Perhaps the people are at the march,’ I suggested.

‘Perhaps,’ said my mother. She leaned her face close to a stained-glass inlay in the door and tried to peer through, embarrassing me keenly. Anyone might think she was a criminal.

‘I don’t think this is the place either,’ she mumbled. ‘It’s too small.’

We moved on to the next house. My mother stood and examined it from the footpath for a long time before approaching. She turned her back on it, stepped towards the kerb, eyes half-closed, then turned again, as if freshly arriving. She tilted her head first to the left, until her ear was almost touching her coat-collar, then tilted it just as far to the right. She wiggled her fingers in the air between us and, because she was behaving so oddly, it was some moments before I realised she was motioning for me to take her hand.

‘This is the one,’ she said. ‘I think. I’m almost sure of it. They’ve replaced the door, that’s all. Always replacing things.’

We walked up to the door and Mama rang the bell. A bald man with brilliant blue eyes opened it almost at once. He had a kindly face. It was not the face my mother hoped to see, evidently. She craned her head to look around the man’s body, to see farther into the house. I blushed, wishing I were strong enough to grab Mama by the wrist and march her away.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Is this the house of …’ (and she lowered her voice to murmur a name).

‘I beg your pardon, madam?’

She leaned closer to him and repeated herself. Anyone might have thought she was kissing him.

He smiled and shook his head. ‘No one by that name lives here, madam.’

My mother peered longingly over the bald man’s shoulder. I swear she made me nervous she would seize hold of his necktie and attempt to climb over his body. Without being able to help it, I craned my neck too, and caught a glimpse of a chandelier, and large paintings of rural scenes hung in the hallway.

‘But I know this place,’ my mother said.

The bald man shook his head. ‘Mr De La Salle lives here now.’

‘That’s not possible,’ said my mother.

‘I assure you it’s perfectly possible,’ said the bald man. ‘I am Mr De La Salle.’

‘But before you …?’

‘Before me, madam, there was a Mrs St John, if memory serves.’

‘That’s not possible. I can see the door to your sitting room. I
know
that door.’

‘With all due respect, madam, it’s not our sitting room. It’s our dining room.’

‘I don’t care what you use it for!’ blurted my mother.

The bald man opened his mouth to speak, but managed only an exasperated sound half-way between a cough and a sigh. Mama raised her hand, a little too suddenly perhaps, and the man took fright. He stepped nimbly backwards and shut the door. It wasn’t a slam exactly, but the click was decisive.

My mother walked wonkily back to the footpath. She seemed to be having trouble balancing on the high heels of her boots. She sat down near the kerb, right there in full view of the passing vehicles. I could have sunk through the paving-stones and disappeared into the underworld.

‘Mama,’ I ventured. ‘When are we going home?’

My mother didn’t get up. Instead, she started to wail like a toddler. She howled and bawled. Her cheeks went red and puffy, tears ran down her face and dripped from her jawline, and a wetness that looked alarmingly like snot glimmered on her lips. She was awfully loud. I stood by, helpless, clutching her VOTES FOR WOMEN sash in my hands. Picking my mama up off the footpath was a task quite beyond my muscle-power; just lifting the clothes would have been difficult enough, without the person inside. I looked around, half-hoping there wouldn’t be a soul to witness my mother’s fit of anguish, and half-hoping that sympathetic Londoners would be speeding to her aid. I saw one old lady with a sausage dog, quite some way off, hurrying in the opposite direction. I saw a curtain being drawn across one of the windows of Chepstow Villas. My mother howled on.

Rescue came, once more, miraculously. A cab drove up. Not a horse-drawn cab, a motorised one. A car, in other words. There were already quite a few of them about in those days (indeed, Felicity Brown had arrived at our house in one), but they tended to be owned by people who considered breakdowns all part of the fun and who were in no particular hurry to get anywhere. For serious transportation, horse-drawn cabs were still the norm. But here was a shiny new pea-green motor-cab, emblazoned ‘Taxi DeLuxe Company of Kensington’, pulling up right next to my mother’s convulsing body.

‘May I be of assistance, madam?’ called the driver.

‘Go away,’ cried my mother.

‘An excellent idea, madam,’ rejoined the driver, quick as a flash. ‘Where do you fancy going?’

‘Nowhere,’ cried my mother.

‘Mama,’ I interjected, ‘we need to get home. Papa will be worried. And Auntie Primrose too.’

‘Quite right, quite right,’ said the cab driver breezily. ‘Think of poor old Auntie Primrose. Worried sick, she’ll be.’

My mother laughed despite herself. She pulled a handkerchief from her jacket pocket and blew her nose.

‘Bloomsbury,’ she said.

‘
Ooo
-er,’ winced the driver. ‘Now there’s a challenge.’

Mama’s face was suddenly composed.

‘Why? Isn’t your motor up to it?’

The driver patted his steering wheel proudly. ‘Fifteen horse-power engine, madam. It could take you to the ends of the earth, with enough fuel.’

‘Bloomsbury will do.’

‘You know there’s been some sort of procession today, I suppose, madam? Thousands of people in the streets. Terrible disruptions.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said my mother, picking herself up. She dusted off the horrid feedbag coat. Its black fabric showed the dust without mercy. The cab driver leapt off his perch, ushered us into the plushly upholstered cabin. The motor purred, sending a sensuous buzz through the floor, the seats, everything. The mingled smell of leather, newness and engine-oil was like an exotic perfume.

‘We shall have to take the long way round,’ the cabman said, when he was settled back behind his steering-wheel. My eyes were agog. There were buttons and knobs on his control panel. There was a gauge that looked like a watch, embedded in the panelling. Sensational.

‘I appreciate that,’ said Mama. She appeared to be wholly recovered. Her eyes were red-rimmed but otherwise she was the woman I needed her to be.

‘What I have in mind is straight up to Paddington,’ said the cabbie, ‘then Marylebone, Euston, then scoot back down to Bloomsbury.’

‘Whatever you think,’ sighed Mama, leaning her head back on the seat.

A couple of minutes later, the cabbie added, ‘Where are you, exactly?’

There was no reply from Mama. She was breathing gently and regularly, her fleecy blonde hair hanging over her closed eyes.

‘What street in Bloomsbury, madam?’ the cabbie persisted, a little louder this time.

I cleared my throat, hoping it would wake Mama. Then I said, ‘Calthorpe Street.’

‘Right you are, sir,’ said the cabbie. I had never been called ‘sir’ before. It made me prouder than I could have imagined. From now on I would hold my head high in Torrington Infants, come what may.

That’s about as much as I have to tell, really. The remainder of that day is a blur. I think that on the long drive back to Bloomsbury, I may have conducted some sort of conversation with the driver, about three-cylinder engines or some such topic. Or maybe I’m imagining this. Suddenly 1908 seems a very long time ago, and of course it
is
. There are nurses working here who regard the moon landing as ancient history.

I suppose Mama and I got home all right. Yes, I’m sure we did. I can’t remember any tearful reunion with Papa and Aunt Primrose. They were probably still in Hyde Park. Political speeches take a long time, longer than a child can conceive of. I suppose my mother and I had something to eat. Maybe we went straight to bed and had a nap. Really, I’m speculating here. I must have been terribly weary. As I am now, in fact.