The Real Thing (16 page)

‘Well,’ I said, ‘they might be off to the theatre, or coming home after having supper in town.’

They’d do better to eat in their own homes, what are they going to get in a restaurant better than they get at home? Gadding about and spending money, never staying quiet and thinking their own thoughts.’ His voice was full of hurt.

When I suggested a short cut round the back streets he took it, and we went along faster, through streets still full of litter and blown leaves. Here and there a tree was down, or slanting, and branches had been ripped off. Along the strip of scrubby ground that drops to the railway lines the storm had not done much damage. I commented on this, saying I was pleased for the sake of the animals and birds who live there, and he said it was a poor state of affairs when animals have to take refuge in towns because the countryside is so hard on them.

Outside my house he had to double park. Having put my case down on the pavement he came forward to me and stood close. His head was on a level with mine. In the half dark of the street I saw he was a gingery whiskery little man, with warm brown eyes full of need. He gripped my hand urgently and said, ‘You see, driving like this all day, it numbs your mind, it dulls you, and you can’t think the thoughts you ought to have in your mind.’ Gripping my hand he turned me around so that the light from the street lamp fell on to my face and he could see it, and his hand was strong, and warm, a kind hand, with nothing of the wild dislocation that was in his voice, matching torn trees and flying skies. ‘I’m not a cab driver by rights,’ he said.
‘I was a musician. I had my own group-you’d know the name if I told you, that is, if you know music. But then … you see, it was a woman, that’s what happened, a woman. All my troubles began with her. Her father and her brothers were taxi drivers and she wanted me to be one and so for her sake that’s what I did. I spent months cycling all over London learning The Knowledge-do you know what that is?’

‘Of course I do. Everyone knows London taxi drivers have to pass an examination before they get a licence.’

‘Yes, and it’s a real exam, I can tell you, you have to know your streets, and that’s The Knowledge … well, months I was on it, months … that was a long time ago and I have another wife now.’ He gripped my hand even tighter and leaned forward to look into my face to make sure I was going to accept what he said, ‘I don’t like people,’ he said. I like animals. They are better than we are. They are kind, not cruel, like us.’ Meanwhile, a car was waiting to pass, and had given us enough time to say whatever it was we had to say. It began to hoot, persistently, like the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth. He let my hand go. ‘People are ugly and stupid,’ I heard, as he got into his seat. ‘If you don’t agree with me now, you will, you’ll see, we’re no good!’ He gave me a wave, more like a formal but comradely salute. He drove off, a small, squashed-looking figure behind the wheel, peering over it. He had told me he was going straight back to Heathrow to pick up another fare.

What makes a salon? A potent hostess, or host? A house or room with sympathetic qualities? The guests?
Easy
to say that the recipe must be a combination of all these, until exceptions start knocking at your memory. But surely it would be generally agreed that these days we do not have salons, the paradigmatic At Homes were in the past. Everyone knows the names of the resplendent hostesses who were centres of politics and literature, in London and in Paris, and they certainly knew that their drawing-rooms were salons. Now it is possible to find out, long after the event, that a house visited innocently was really a salon, and similarly writers may find out they were part of a Movement. Did all the Bloomsburies know what they were?

To be a molecule in a literary group is expected of a writer, but not in this country. Writers often get this letter: ‘What literary group do you belong to, and what does it stand for?’ The reply: ‘We do not have literary groups in this country, writers tend to leave London and find solitude in the countryside, dipping back into London for special occasions or in a rare fit of gregariousness.’ There is no guarantee that they, too, will not find that they were
part of some Movement or other, perhaps on the basis of a visit to a restaurant or an acquaintance. Certainly houses or living rooms, which do not know they are, will turn out to have been salons. Not long ago in London a couple on the fringes of diplomacy ‘received’ on a certain evening in every week. Invitations were not sent out, welcome guests were told, almost as an aside, that they would find food and drink, and a mix of people. These were mostly politicians and journalists, some of them attracted because of the other. To know how often titbits of information, ‘leaked’ secrets, careless talk, made paragraphs and even Leaders, or inspired television programmes, one would have to have been a regular. But this Salon was worth visiting, once, twice, out of curiosity about what goes on up there, in the high lands of influence, particularly when ‘the country’ was in a seethe about something: we tend to use this corporate word at such times.

The house was ten minutes by taxi from the House of Commons, and politicians would drop in for a few minutes, or an hour, between appointments with Duty in the House. They tended to arrive in groups. One could imagine a Member saying to another, ‘Let’s drop over to Mix and Match for a bite.’ No one knew who made this joke first.

The reception room extended over the first floor, overlooking a small formal garden at the back, and at the front a street with a name that was a guarantee of worth. Along one wall was a buffet, and trays of drinks circled through the guests, borne by smiling girls. When the politicians came in they brought with them the excitement familiar to anyone who has taken part in the organization of public events, the elation that goes with the conviction that one has power.

Their entry was like the checked rush you see at the moment the gates are swung back to admit a bull into
a ring: an impetuousness halted by a stare all around to find out what Fate provided, and then on he comes, they come, to reach at once for a drink off a hovering tray. If this tray was held forward by a pretty girl, then the action of taking the glass might be accompanied by a bold or a furtive stare, even a smile that hinted at advantageous intimacies.

Innocents may imagine that Left and Right, Tories and Labour, would arrive separately, and even make exclusive groups, but no, they might arrive together and stand matily about with a look that said they felt out of bounds, off a leash: they could do as they liked, being unsupervised. There was a general effect of mix and movement, but there were more men than women, though there were some wives of diplomats, and a female journalist or two.

The two times I was there ‘the country’ was in an uproar, it was an issue that caused Tory and Labour confrontations in the House, every newspaper headline emphasized left-right conflict, and some of the people there, but not regular guests, were watching the politicians in case some words of enlightenment were on offer. But politics was not what they talked about. No, they gossiped, all the talk was of how Bertie had said that, or Norman let fall this, and that
she
had announced-something or other. ‘He is going to see
her
, he told me, but Bernard …’

Journalists stood about, trying to overhear, or to catch an eye which was usually not anxious to be caught, but one might observe how a journalist slowly edged nearer to a politician, with the concentration of a sheepdog, and a moment later the politician would be neatly cut out from the group, and held isolated as the two stood glass to glass. The politician might be bestowing a few words, or his body announced that he had been trapped, but in either case, he was the giver of favours.

Then he was back in the group and a dozen glasses
made a fraternal convocation, rising as they went to the mouths, descending between gulps, moving in gleaming circles or ellipses with the emphases of the talk, sometimes approaching each other, with an effect of intimacy, or indiscretion, or even clashing … ‘I’m so sorry’, ‘Sorry’… and, as the trays went past, globules of glass were replaced, and others taken in to this little separate dance which was like a commentary on the unheard conversation.

Women politicians seldom came. There aren’t many in the House. One evening a slim dark woman entered in the kind of dress females choose to define not themselves but a function, a sober dark red: if it were made in white or blue it could be a nurse’s uniform, or a shop or airport supervisor’s. She seemed concerned to give the impression that she took up less space than she did. She did not appear to see the bunch of male politicians who stood in the centre of the room, but preserved an all-purpose smile, and circumvented the group until she reached a sofa where sat a young woman journalist whom she had expected-it was obvious-to see there. Perhaps they had even made an arrangement to meet. At once they began an exchange in low voices, and the journalist made some notes, but unobtrusively. When that was done, after perhaps ten minutes, the woman politician turned to look over the room, which seemed full of men. The woman journalist did the same. Both were wary, with a little look of humour.

‘They seem quite tame tonight,’ commented the representative of the
Mentor
-a right-wing paper, while she, in fact, was rather to the left, and known for her articles on women’s affairs.

‘They were pretty rowdy in the House earlier,’ said the politician, it’s all the late nights. They get over-excited. You can watch them getting more wrought up as the term goes on.’

‘I’m sure an early night wouldn’t do any of them any harm,’ said the journalist. ‘I was in the House last week, for the War Dependents Allowances Debate. They struck me as being really above themselves.’

They discussed the ebullient males, boys will be boys, for some time, and then the female politician lowered her voice and talked about the difficulties of being a female politician, of whatever party. By now several women sat on the sofa and in chairs near it: a little nest of females.

The male politicians were planning to crowd off together down the stairs, putting their glasses carelessly back on the trays held out to them, and giving a last assessing look around, in case they had missed some opportunity.

One remarked, raising his voice to be heard, ‘I’m proud to be serving under her, I’d say that anywhere-but…’ and his circling glance was both roguish and aggressive, ‘she must watch her step.’

‘Exactly,’ said another, ‘if she steps out of line, don’t imagine we wouldn’t give her the push.’

At the time these remarks seemed like the mere froth of male conviviality, but now they tend to isolate themselves in memory: this was
her
second term of office, and she was at the height of her success.

The woman politician remarked, ‘I’ll give them a minute to get clear …’ and went on to tell how any woman Member of Parliament, entering the Chamber or leaving it, no matter how they effaced themselves, could expect sexual heckling of the kind you’d expect from-‘well, schoolboys’.

‘Louts on a street corner,’ suggested the journalist.

‘Groups of workmen on a site shouting sexual epithets after a pretty girl,’ said another woman.

We all had our eyes on the men, now off down the stairs with shouts and cries of ‘See you again …’ ‘Must go …’ The Whip’ll have our heads …’

‘Every morning when I wake up,’ said the woman politician, I tell myself that I’ve got to take it, I’ve got to keep cool, because you have to smile, no matter what they throw at you. You might want to hit them, but if you don’t smile they go from bad to worse. It’s hard, sometimes.’ She spoke quietly but her smile did not come easily.

She got up, went to the window overlooking the street, came back. ‘I’ll give them another minute, they’re waiting for taxis.

That’s one of the things I admire
her
for. She doesn’t let it get to her. Well, it must get to her, but she never lets it show. She’s always been attractive, she’s always been a target… they are afraid of her now she’s boss but they’re so malicious about her behind her back-sometimes I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Well, I’m not as tough as she is, nothing like. Sometimes I know I show what I’m feeling … she never does. Never.’

‘At the Party Conference,’ said the journalist, ‘the chambermaids at the hotel told me they try never to be alone, they stick in pairs, because when
they
are drunk, anything goes.’

‘Yes, I am afraid it is all a bit like a
Carry On
film.’

As the two women went out, another group of men came in, laughing, high on their success, their achievement.

The women went quickly, quietly, past them, like shadows along the wall, and the men really did not seem to see them.

A final sprig of flowering cherry among white lilac and yellow jonquils, in a fat white jug … she stuck this in judiciously, filling in a pattern that needed just so much attention. Shouting ‘Spring!’ the jug sat on a small table in the middle of the room.

Spring sang in the plane trees that crammed two windows along one wall. The windows of the other wall showed a sprightly blue sky. The trees, full of young leaves, were reflected in the two round mirrors set to match the windows, like portholes in the white wall. Opposite the end wall with its square of blue sky she had hung a large seascape bought for a few pounds in a street market: in it blue sea, blue sky, white spray, white clouds eternally tumbled over each other. It had been painted with a fresh and probably youthful zest by someone called Samantha.

You could think this a large room, extended into infinite variety by the weather outside, but it was small, and so was her bedroom next door. The flat comprised two adequate rooms, and here she had lived for a time.

Having completed preparations for the visit from James, the man to whom she had been married for ten years, she
did not sit down, but remained standing by the little table whose surface reflected the flowers. She was giving her room a slow, hooded, prowling look, an inspection not from her viewpoint, but from his. She could not remember his ever actually having criticized her arrangements, but going off with a woman whose taste in every way was the opposite to hers surely must be considered a criticism?