The Seven Sisters (7 page)

It is not surprising that Martha is as thick as thieves with her stepmother, Anthea, for Martha was a friend of Anthea’s dead daughter, and indeed it was Martha who found her floating in the Lady Pond. I felt sorry for Martha at the time, for this was a horrible experience for a girl of her age – well, for anyone of any age – but my sympathy was rapidly eroded by her hysterical enjoyment of the whole melodrama. Martha is an hysteric. She exaggerates everything. She is as demonstrative and as emotional and as verbose as Ellen is cold and hesitant and Finnish, but she is also,
au fond
, unconvincing. She took so much relish in that drowning, and in her own role as confidante and witness. I found her histrionics unpleasant, and I suppose I was not able to conceal my revulsion. So it is not surprising that Martha and Anthea fell into one another’s arms over that dead body. And that Andrew also was willingly entrapped in the amorous blackmail of grief.

At least, that is how I interpreted the fateful course of events, though I may have been deceived. I may have misunderstood the time sequence. Possibly Andrew and Anthea had been carrying on with one another for some time before the ‘accidental death’, and
simply used it as a pretext for making their entanglement public, hoping that a wash of sympathy would carry them along on top of the tide of public opinion. As it would indeed have done, had they so calculated. As,
en effet
, it did. For Andrew and Anthea did not drown, and neither did Martha. They flourished and their loves grew fat on that poor girl’s death. Ellen has vanished to the Arctic Circle, and Isobel has turned into a self-regarding county queen, married now to the dull owner of many flat acres. Martha still lives with Andrew and Anthea, in a warm flushed emotional fusion of mutual condonement. It is all Darling This and Darling That and Dear Heart The Other. I don’t like it. Andrew and I were never effusive with one another. We did not indulge in displays of endearments. I find such manners false. I am surprised by Andrew. But maybe this was what Andrew always wanted. Maybe he always wanted what I never gave, and could never have given. Maybe it is from my shortcomings that all these rank weeds grew.

I did not think to blame Andrew for my shortcomings. I do not blame him now. But it is hard to live in the cold light.

There is no profit in such self-doubt. It is too late for regret and remorse.

She remembers the crossing of the threshold

When I moved to London, I was frightened by the choice I had made. I can admit that. I remember my first night here very clearly. In my adult years I had not had much experience of sleeping alone. I had moved from a dormitory in a girls’ boarding school to a small bedsitter off a busy corridor in a women’s college and then, after a short interlude teaching French in another girls’ boarding school, I had moved into the marriage bed. When I travelled, I travelled with Andrew and I shared his bed. Andrew’s work was home-based and he was rarely away. In the interregnum between myself and Anthea I had moved out of the Big House and lived in a spinsterly teacher’s flat in the main school building, where I was surrounded by people who knew me and were intent upon being nice to me and sorry for me. I was eager to leave, but there were decencies to be observed, practical negotiations to be made, and Andrew’s pride to be considered. As Andrew was,
technically, the guilty party, I felt I had to be calm and gracious. It took some time to extricate myself from Suffolk.

So I was both nervous and exhilarated to find myself finally climbing this dingy ill-carpeted communal staircase with my suitcase, and crossing the threshold into my own life.

The furniture had already been installed. I’d sent on some of my own things, including a little desk dating back to my student days, but the place was so small that I didn’t need much. I’d bought a new single bed. A brand-new single bed. Nobody had ever slept on my new bed. Nobody but me would ever sleep in it. I liked that idea very much. The removal men had picked up my sparse belongings from Farlingham a few days earlier, and driven off with them and a set of keys. They were respectable, Suffolk removal men, from a reputable local firm. I trusted them with the keys. They’d offered to drive me to London with them but I couldn’t face that. I didn’t want to sit in their cab with them. It was not seemly. I felt too raw for company. I couldn’t have taken either the banter or the deferential silence to which they would have treated me. Either would have been intolerable to me. So I’d gone alone, on the train, and met them at the other end of the journey, and watched them unload, and told them where to put the things. It was horrible. There are few things more distressing than the unpacking of old furniture into a new space. Then I went back to Suffolk for a night or two, to tie up the last loose ends. Then I came to London, again on the train, with my little suitcase and my sponge bag and my pills. Alone. I took the Tube from Liverpool Street to Ladbroke Grove. It’s a direct line, though not a very good one. Hammersmith and City. It’s a purple-pink colour on the map. I know it well now.

My friend Sally Hepburn had offered to come with me. My friend Henrietta Parks had offered to come with me. I had declined them both. My daughters had not offered. My daughters were treating me, at this stage, as a guilty fugitive. They were ashamed of me.

It was important to me to walk into that building and up those stairs and through my own front door by myself. This was to be the rest of my life, and I didn’t want anyone watching me as I braced myself to greet it.

The door opens into an awkwardly shaped little landing space, on to which two more doors open, one into the kitchen–living room, the other into the bedroom which has a tiny bathroom
en suite
. It’s a cheap but not ill-designed modern conversion. There are fitted cupboards throughout, fronted with a cold ivory-grey grained substance which might or might not be wood.

I went into the bedroom first, and put down my suitcase, and took a deep breath. (Well, I think I may have taken a deep breath, but as I write that phrase down on this remorseless laptop, I realize that I move from cliché to cliché. The machine hasn’t got a cliché-spotter, but its cool objective format throws them into high relief.)

There was my single bed, and the cardboard boxes full of sheets and duvets and pillows and towels. There were my cases full of clothes and shoes. And that was about it. This was my little empire.

I took my sponge bag into the bathroom and tested the water. It was hot. So everything was connected. That was good. I opened a box or two, and hung up some garments. Then I went back into the other room, my living space. This looked less satisfactory than the bedroom – bleak, temporary, at once cluttered and empty. My student desk, an armchair, a bookcase. A small dining table, with four wooden chairs. I wondered if I would ever know four people, in London.

She remembers the unpacking of her household goods

It’s interesting, what I’d chosen to salvage from the wreckage. I’d brought some books, of course, and my old wooden-cased bedside Roberts radio, and my digital clock. I sleep so badly now that I watch that clock for half the night.
Exsomnis noctesque diesque
, as Virgil put it. I’d brought a few old wedding presents that I’m sure Andrew won’t miss, partly to compliment them for having survived better than our marriage – a Georgian silver soup ladle, a milk jug, an antique wooden coffee grinder which I have never used, an enamelled tray, a blue glass vase, a metal bird. The only framed photograph I’ve brought with me is a postcard-sized portrait of my long-dead father. I don’t display it. I keep it in a drawer.

As I unpacked these objects, I found myself, for some reason,
thinking about my childhood schoolgirl mascot. We all had mascots. We pretended to be very superstitious. For years I cherished a not very attractive glossy green plastic horse, about five inches long, which I called Emerald. She would stand on my desk, or by my bed. I couldn’t go into a test or an examination without Emerald. It’s interesting that I chose such a hard-edged and uncuddly object. I think I rather despised girls who favoured soft or fluffy toys, or ragged old comforters. Emerald, I thought, was more stylish and inspiring. She lasted until I was well into my teens, albeit with a broken leg. I glued the leg on again with a matchstick splint. I don’t remember the moment at which I became bored with her, or lost her, or simply forgot about her. Where is she now? Has she degraded, or does some of her survive?

Julia had a more sophisticated mascot. It was a Turkish bracelet, designed to ward off the Evil Eye. I wonder if she has it still. We used to admire it greatly. We weren’t allowed to wear jewellery at school, so she kept it in her sock drawer in a little white cloth bag. The bag had a drawstring, and was embroidered in white cotton with a white butterfly. White on white. She would get the bracelet out to show it to us and sometimes she would let us try it on. It consisted of twelve flat round clear turquoise glass beads, each thinly hooped with a slim band of silver, and linked together with a slender silver chain; in the middle of each bead was a little white glass circle with a black dot in it, like the pupil of an eye. I don’t suppose it was of any value, but it had a magic to it, and was very different from any of the English trinkets which we had but weren’t supposed to wear. She said she’d been given it by an uncle in the Navy who bought it for her in the Bazaar in Istanbul. It was delicate and fragile, and as I write of it I can see it on her wrist, and the way she turned her wrist to the light, to show off the beads. In later years, she was to acquire quite a collection of more serious jewellery, donated, as I supposed, by boyfriends, lovers, fiancés, husbands. All I’ve ever had is the Victorian sapphire and diamond engagement ring with which I was betrothed to Andrew, and which we bought in an antiques shop in Harrogate. Julia had knuckles full of diamonds. I wonder why I still wear Andrew’s engagement ring. To ward off the Evil
Eye, perhaps, though nobody would pursue me now. People would be more likely to snatch my ring than my person. There is no need for me to declare my marital status now.

Perhaps I’ll sell it. It doesn’t seem quite right, to sell it, but I don’t really want it now. Do I?

I don’t have jewellery. And when I arrived here, I didn’t have much of anything. I hadn’t brought much kitchen equipment. A couple of pans, a few place settings of stainless-steel cutlery, a mug, some plates, a kettle, some kitchen scissors, a pepper mill. I intended to buy myself some new crockery, when I settled down and found out what I needed. If ever I were to need anything more. I felt a relief in being so reduced. We accumulate too many objects, as we grow older. I had some hope that by stripping most of mine away, I might enter a new dimension. As a nun enters a convent in search of her god, so I entered my solitude. I felt fear, and I felt hope.

She takes her first walk around her new estate

I entered my domain in the early afternoon, and by five I had unpacked and made myself at home. It was February, well known as the dullest and dirtiest month of the year, but the weather was kind to me on that first day, and it was a clear, dry evening. I thought I would go out to buy some provisions. I had seen a grocery store of sorts near the Tube station, under the motorway. I would buy myself a little supper, and then I would watch my television. Yes, I have a television set. I am not a masochist, though it may appear otherwise. I would buy myself a bottle of wine, and some eggs, and some pasta, and some coffee, and some milk. Basic provisions for myself I would buy. A celebratory, solitary supper. I would never have to consult the taste of others again.

Walking along the pavement around here is a hazard and an adventure. You don’t know what you’ll see or what will happen. Then, on that first evening, I was an innocent. I am wiser now. But, even then, I knew to clutch my bag tightly and knot its strap around my arm.

I don’t think I can recapture that first sense of disbelieving amazement I used to feel in these streets. I was an Alice in Wonderland.

The surface of the pavements is shocking. I recognize it now for
what it is and will continue to be, but I still can’t get used to it. It’s filthy. It’s particularly disgusting under the motorway, where the pigeons roost, and where strange large items of rubbish collect – they are too large to blow there on the high winds, so they must be deliberately dumped. Mattresses, abandoned pushchairs, old rugs, bicycle parts, motorcar parts. Car exhausts, broken wing mirrors, bumpers, sawn-off planks of wood. A sad and browning Christmas tree, which has been there since I first arrived. I saw it on that first evening, and it is there still. It has weathered two winters. Will it outlast my own sojourn? There are a lot of garages and mechanics and carpenters in the sheds under the arches of the motorway, and the emblems of their trade seem to spew out into the public pathways all around us. You have to pick your way carefully. There are always pools of standing water, even when it has not rained for days. Then there is the sputum, and the gum. The pavement, irregular enough in itself – it is always being dug up by an endless and unbroken cycle of water men and telephone men and television men and gas men – is marked with thick incrustations of expectorations and sediments of unidentifiable substances. Pigeon dirt, dog dirt, cat dirt, human dirt. City dirt.

I have made friends with a pet rat which lives up on Ladbroke Grove Tube station. I must remember to record the story of my rat.

Some of the garden walls of the more regular houses that front the pavement are broken down. Slabs lie around. Then there are prefab huts cordoned off by barbed wire. God knows what is in them, or who would want to break in to steal any of it.

That first evening, I walked past the tall six-storey red-brick penitentiary of the college which is now my Health Club, and noted that it was offering Adult Evening Classes. I was surprised to find this archaic educational survival and thought I might perhaps join one of its offerings – and indeed, as I have already noted, a week or two later, I did. The advertisements for the college were easier to decipher than the casual and plentiful flyposters that were stuck all the way along walls and garage doors – I couldn’t tell if these were announcing restaurants, or pop groups, or clubs, or services. I couldn’t decode any of the messages. What were they, these things called
SEA
FOOD: SURVIVING THE QUEUE
and
EAT STATIC
and
DAY ONE
? One trade sign seemed at first glance to read
SHOCKS
and
EXHAUSTION
, as though these were marketable commodities, but the objects on sale were,
en effet
, exhausts and shock absorbers.