The Seven Sisters (14 page)

‘I’m so glad you enjoyed it,’ she said. ‘Do you remember that I tried to find you all that Third Programme recording of Cecil Day Lewis’s 1951 Festival of Britain translation of the
Aeneid
? I never managed to get hold of it. I think one of you had his text – was it you, or was it Mrs Barclay? No, you had the Penguin Jackson Knight, it must have been Mrs Barclay. I used to have the tapes, but somebody must have borrowed them and never brought them back. I rang up the National Sound Archives, but they didn’t seem to know what they’d got. I even went into the British Library to look but I couldn’t make head or tail of the electronic catalogue. It wasn’t very well organized and the person who was helping me didn’t seem to understand it very well either. He could only find a reference to the Funeral Games in Book Five. That wasn’t really what I wanted. I’d have liked to hear Book Six again …’

Her sentence seemed incomplete, and I thought she was going to add ‘before I die’, but she didn’t. To fill the pause, I said that I could well remember some of Eugene Jerrold’s celebrated broadcasts – his Shakespeare productions, with Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft and Jill Balcon, and those rare pieces by Beaumont and Fletcher, and early Ibsen, and Christopher Fry, and T. S. Eliot, and Giraudoux, and Anouilh. We’d been allowed to listen at school, on Sunday evenings. Poetic drama was considered semi-religious. (I hadn’t known about Eugene Jerrold then, of course, but I’d checked on him later, after joining Mrs Jerrold’s class. I don’t think this was sycophantic
teacher’s-pet behaviour: I was just interested.) I said that I’d like to hear some of them again, and she seemed pleased by this, though she said she suspected most of them hadn’t survived.

‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘we could have privatized our Virgil class. You and Anaïs and Mrs Barclay and one or two of the others could have come round here for Thursday evenings, instead of going to the College. We could have finished off Books Ten to Twelve. We could have squeezed in.’

She looked around, doubtfully. It would have been a squash. But I had had the same idea myself, though I hadn’t liked to suggest it. We could have paid our term’s fees direct to her. They weren’t very high, but she would have got something.

I had timed my departure badly. As I started to take my leave, there was a crash of thunder followed by a sudden outburst of very heavy rain. I had a coat, but I didn’t have an umbrella. I hesitated, in the narrow hallway, and peered into the cobbled mews through the thick glass pane in the door. Rain was descending in torrents. Mrs Jerrold said I couldn’t go out in that, why didn’t I sit down for five minutes and wait for it to pass over? I was embarrassed, and we got into a bit of an unseemly muddle as I tried to go and she told me I ought to stay. She knew perfectly well that I couldn’t be in a hurry to go anywhere. So we went back into her little living room and I agreed to sit down again for a moment. The rain was drumming down and I could hear it sluicing down the gutter. It’s a very ancient sound, rain. When I insisted I really would have to leave, she said she’d lend me an umbrella. I didn’t want to accept this offer, but then she suddenly said such a charming thing. She said, ‘If I lend you an umbrella, you’ll have to come back. You won’t be able to run away for another year. And I’d
like
to see you again.’ Or words to that effect.

She said this in such a robust, no-nonsense way that I really couldn’t refuse. There was a small drama over the umbrellas, but we were both relaxed again by now, and we were able to find it amusing. She offered me a choice between two umbrellas, both of which she displayed with panache. One was one of those stumpy, battered little objects, the sort you can shove in your handbag, and this one had clearly been stuffed into hers on many occasions, for its ribs
stuck out awkwardly, and it would never fold up neatly again. It was a bright red, ill-kempt, scruffy, honourable little brolly, a brolly that had done good service. The other was a much more elegant piece of work, a finely scrolled and gold-tipped beige umbrella, with an ivory-coloured handle, a lady’s umbrella, a fashion accessory, designed for display and for pointing at interesting objects as well as for sheltering from the rain. This, she said, was an end-of-term leaving present from her City Institute Tacitus class, and look, it had her initials engraved upon its stem. Of course I chose the scruffy one, but I was able to admire the treasured gift. I asked her if she’d ever used it, and she said only twice. She was afraid of losing it, she said.

After she’d restored the precious gift umbrella to its hallway hook, she suddenly darted back into the living room and came back bearing a small plastic bag. She’d suddenly remembered, she said. She’d got this tape that she knew I would enjoy. She wasn’t going to tell me what it was, it could be a surprise. A secret, a surprise. I could play it to myself one evening. She just knew I would like it. And then I could bring it back when I returned the old umbrella.

You must come to me next time, I said, politely. We’ll see, we’ll see, she said, finally sounding just slightly impatient, though it wasn’t my fault I was still there, was it? And out I went, into the downpour.

I haven’t played the tape yet. I wonder what it is. It isn’t labelled – well, it just says
I. J.
on it. Her first name is Ida. She published under the name of Ida Kemp. But we all called her Mrs Jerrold.

The sand sticks in the hourglass and she thinks herself dead

I wonder what Mrs Jerrold would have made of my near-death sauna experience. I wanted to tell her about it, but I didn’t. This is how it was.

There is a very pleasant sauna in the Health Club – the usual kind of thing, I imagine, though I don’t have a very wide experience of saunas. It is a rectangular wooden room, with three tiers of slatted benching at right angles along two of its walls, and little movable wooden headrests, and lamps shaped like Olympic torches with shades of frosted glass. A wooden bucket of water, a wooden ladle, and two large quarter-hour glasses of sand and wood, which remarkably resemble the
old-fashioned five-minute wooden egg-timer which my mother used throughout my childhood, until she replaced it with a series of much less delightful electric clocks and timers and pingers. People in the sauna time themselves on the quarter-hour glasses. I never stay in there for as long as a quarter of an hour – in fact the most I can take is four minutes. Some people lie naked on their towels, others keep their bathing suits on. I usually pull the top of my costume down, but I don’t take it right off. I don’t mind displaying my breasts, but I don’t like people to see my pubic hair.

I like the quarter-hour glass because it is old-fashioned and silent and natural. I like the colours in that hot little room, the soft sweet shades of pinkish yellow and of brown. I like the resinous smell of the wood. I like the hiss of the steam in the pipes. Lying in there is peaceful. It’s rather like lying in a large overheated airing cupboard. I did like the airing cupboards at Holling House, I’m afraid. I liked the orderly piles of towels and sheets and pillowcases. In my flat, I spin things in the machine or hang them to drip over the bath. It’s not so satisfactory. I haven’t got room here for a tumble-dryer.

I usually turn the glass in the sauna over, if I am alone, or follow its progress if someone else has turned it. I like the idea of dividing up time by numbers and the sand is soothingly numerate. Its dry grains sift and fall, as we lie there and peacefully exude drops of sweat. And on this occasion – last week, this was, just after Julia’s visit – I was lying there calmly, as usual, on my back. I told myself I would wait until the glass emptied, for it had only three minutes to run. I shut my eyes, and perspired, and waited. I was alone in there. When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to see that only two minutes had passed, for I had guessed it had been longer. I shut my eyes again, and counted numbers to myself, for a timing of two more minutes, but when I opened them the sand had not moved. The sand stood still. And I thought, for a moment, that I had died. I thought I had passed from life to death and into eternal time. I thought this for only a second or two, but I
thought
it. Death was peaceful, and easy, and painless. I had died, and all was over. It was a relief to me, to know it was like that. And then my brain began to tick again, tick
tock
, tick
tock
, thump
thump
of the heart, drum
drum
of the pulse,
one
two three
four
five
, and I realized what must have happened. The sand had not stopped, it had stuck, in the narrow glass artery. The hourglass had suffered a stroke, not me.

When I got up, I tapped it, and the sand began to drain away again. If only it were that easy.

So that was my Near-Death Experience. Not very dramatic, but revealing. And not, in itself, unpleasant.

Mrs Jerrold is in her mid-eighties, but she is sharp as a needle. She looks as though she is looking into the hereafter. This isn’t fanciful. She really does look at times as though she can see across to the further shore. Perhaps, if one spends much time with the long-dead, one can see them clearly.

I wonder what happened to that girl with the lipoma. I haven’t seen her for weeks. I can’t ask after her, because I don’t know her name. Moreover, it would be interfering and intrusive to inquire. And anyway, I don’t care. I’m curious, but curiosity has nothing to do with caring.

I’ve just been down with the rubbish because the binmen are coming in the morning. One of the inconveniences of living on the third floor is the disposing of the rubbish. When I first moved in here it worried me a lot. At the Big House, it was all so well taken care of – the van would arrive on Thursdays, and Mrs Kay would have made sure that everything was ready and waiting for it. I didn’t go near this operation, after that abusive interchange with the binman, but Mrs Kay was very efficient. The recycling would be placed in one sort of bag, the household waste in another, all neat and tidy and colour-coded. We used to produce a lot of waste. But here in London I don’t produce much. One person doesn’t. There’s something pitiable about my leavings. I feel sorry for them. I can’t even generate much rubbish these days. Small one-person-size low-fat yoghurt cartons, the peelings from two potatoes and a carrot, some onion skin, coffee grounds, tea bags, baked-bean tins, cheese rind, bacon rind, margarine pots, dead flowers, banana peel. Husks and crumbs and scraps. (I take bottles and jars down to the bottle bank under the bridge, where the man with dreadlocks has set up his camp.)

While I was down there, looking for the dustbin lid (either people don’t put them back on properly, or children play with them, or neighbours steal them, or the wind dislodges them) while I was down there, I saw the man with the crucifix. He looks dreadful tonight, even more dreadful than usual. His hair is now that curious greyish-black colour that the hair of old black men becomes, and it is even sparser than it was when I first saw him. It is reduced now to one thick wadded clump which grows from low down on one side of his head only. The top of his head is bald, but this lump of hair wanders and spreads upwards over it, like a matted growth. It is like the wool of a sheep with scrapie. His lower lip and his jaw jut forward yet more terribly and tragically than they used to do. What would happen if I were to speak to him? I could ask his blessing. I have thought at times that I might be reduced to that. But I don’t want to embarrass him.

Self-pity is a seductive emotion. One day soon I’m going to read through this diary and weed out all the passages contaminated by self-pity. If I recognize it for what it is. Which, of course, I may not. It deludes as well as seduces.

When I go down with my black bag of rubbish, I’m always afraid I’m going to lock myself out. I check for the key ten times before I go and as I go. I don’t know the other people in this building. I wouldn’t know what to do if I locked myself out. There is a police station, on Ladbroke Grove, but when my bag was stolen the police weren’t very helpful. They seemed to suggest that I ought not to have had a bag at all, and that I certainly should not have been carrying it while travelling on the Underground. I don’t think the other people in this building would be much help in a crisis. I sometimes say good morning or good evening to a solid elderly woman who lives on the first floor at the back, but a lot of the other inhabitants are foreigners. We don’t even look at one another as we pass on the stairs or in the communal hallway. We avoid eye contact, as though we were all criminals.

There is something liberating about this total indifference. I think it must be intended to set me free. But free for what?

I think I might give my spare front-door key and my spare flat key
to Anaïs, in case I do lock myself out. She’ll trust me not to be bothering her every five minutes. I think she’s still got my radiator bleed key. I must remember to ask for it back one day.

While I’m into the subject of food and self-pity, I might as well admit to a very shaming episode. I think I’ve made it clear that the shops in my immediate neighbourhood are fairly unattractive. I often go to Sainsbury’s just for the walk, and because I like the canal. And it’s nice to see so many people who don’t know me. There is one very friendly little Asian Minimarket round the corner, where a dark-skinned and gentle man with a smile of great sweetness always calls me ‘dear’, but the choice isn’t great. (I’m not sure if that word ‘dear’ depresses me, or comforts me. It is intended to comfort, I know.) Most of the other shops are dreadful. But if you walk south from here, up Ladbroke Grove to Holland Park, the situation changes. On Holland Park, about half an hour’s walk from here, there is the most expensive butcher’s in London. It is a famous shop. ‘Free-Range and Organic Meat and Poultry’, it boasts, and I have no doubt its products are all they claim to be.

I don’t eat much meat, but I must confess that the aura of this smart shop fascinates me, and one bright September morning a few months ago, I decided to go and treat myself to some small delicacy. A pot of rillettes, a lamb noisette, maybe even a quail.