say. You’re the one who’s likely to get an exciting new man in your life, not me. Jasmine and I just go for a good laugh.
Now there were two things there that gave Anna the pip – and anyone but Muriel could have seen what they were. One was, of course, the implication that Muriel’s life was boring. It makes the young feel guilty, I think, to believe their parents are washed up. Well, it was boring; and so was mine (for a living I typed up manuscripts for technical or scientific authors, and it was lonely, tedious work).
And Muriel’s days in the offices of New Image weren’t much better. She used to tell me – with that rueful laugh of hers, again – that she’d had another invisible day at the office, and at this rate, they could give away her desk altogether . Not one single soul – with the exception of the gays from the art department, Greg and Sammy Chen – had so much as looked at her or said hello all day.
– Once you get to a certain age, Muriel would say, you simply cease to exist.
The other implication in Muriel’s guileless remark about visiting astrologers was that Anna was on the look-out for a man. It went, I suppose, against everything Anna believed in so fervently – along with the rest of the collective, of course – that women must show they didn’t live only forlove, and having children (and here Jasmine looks away from me, as if she’s suddenly embarrassed to find me there, to remember who I am). It suggested that Anna’s new vantage point in life was nothing more than filling in time before a new man came along.
Yet the irony is, Jasmine goes on, after a pause, and a long sigh, the irony is that a new man did come along. Not, she now adds hurriedly, for she must see the conflicting emotions in my face, not that Anna let that stand in the way of the Press – not for long, anyway.
And Jasmine’s voice trails off. What do I show her, in my features; and what lies behind the very thin skin, the paper that lies in folds, like a badly wrapped package, round the bones of her face? Could she still blush? She seems too bloodless for that. Yet she must have seen that I knew nothing of any new man – not consciously, at least – in my mother’s life. She has opened a wound. Has she done it on purpose? And if so, why?
That evening, the evening of Bert’s arrival, Jasmine says, the night of the dinner party. First, I had a work crisis at the last moment and I had to tell Muriel I couldn’t pick you up from the all-day nursery. Your mother was busy, of course.
*
Of course, I say to myself. Anna was always busy. It’s the hardest word for children to bear, this ‘busy’ that means they must wait another age for food/love/care.
*
So Muriel had to pick you up and you went to buy the food together. Now that’s all I know, with any certainty, for I couldn’t think what the matter could be when I came to the flat in Chelsea at seven o’clock and there was no one there to let me in.
It was one of those intercoms that’s high up on the wall– the whole building looked as if it had been built for giants, Victorian giants with big demands on space, at that – and one had to stand on tiptoe and shout into the damned thing in order to get heard at all.
After I’d rung about ten times the buzzer went and I was let into the hall.
I did notice that Anna’s bike was there. The freeholder, a Major Heathcote, was fairly kind about that sort of thing, and it saved having to lug it up three flights of lino-covered stairs and through a narrow door – and that followed by a flight covered in a haircord stair-carpeting that Muriel had tried to lay herself and was all bunched at the sides.
My first thought was that Muriel might have mixed feelings about Anna being there so early. I knew she rather dreaded a lot of members of Anna’s all-female group turning up as well – not because Bert would mind it, I can assure you, but because he might make a fool of himself by liking it just a
Now there were two things there that gave Anna the pip – and anyone but Muriel could have seen what they were. One was, of course, the implication that Muriel’s life was boring. It makes the young feel guilty, I think, to believe their parents are washed up. Well, it was boring; and so was mine (for a living I typed up manuscripts for technical or scientific authors, and it was lonely, tedious work).
And Muriel’s days in the offices of New Image weren’t much better. She used to tell me – with that rueful laugh of hers, again – that she’d had another invisible day at the office, and at this rate, they could give away her desk altogether . Not one single soul – with the exception of the gays from the art department, Greg and Sammy Chen – had so much as looked at her or said hello all day.
– Once you get to a certain age, Muriel would say, you simply cease to exist.
The other implication in Muriel’s guileless remark about visiting astrologers was that Anna was on the look-out for a man. It went, I suppose, against everything Anna believed in so fervently – along with the rest of the collective, of course – that women must show they didn’t live only forlove, and having children (and here Jasmine looks away from me, as if she’s suddenly embarrassed to find me there, to remember who I am). It suggested that Anna’s new vantage point in life was nothing more than filling in time before a new man came along.
Yet the irony is, Jasmine goes on, after a pause, and a long sigh, the irony is that a new man did come along. Not, she now adds hurriedly, for she must see the conflicting emotions in my face, not that Anna let that stand in the way of the Press – not for long, anyway.
And Jasmine’s voice trails off. What do I show her, in my features; and what lies behind the very thin skin, the paper that lies in folds, like a badly wrapped package, round the bones of her face? Could she still blush? She seems too bloodless for that. Yet she must have seen that I knew nothing of any new man – not consciously, at least – in my mother’s life. She has opened a wound. Has she done it on purpose? And if so, why?
That evening, the evening of Bert’s arrival, Jasmine says, the night of the dinner party. First, I had a work crisis at the last moment and I had to tell Muriel I couldn’t pick you up from the all-day nursery. Your mother was busy, of course.
*
Of course, I say to myself. Anna was always busy. It’s the hardest word for children to bear, this ‘busy’ that means they must wait another age for food/love/care.
*
So Muriel had to pick you up and you went to buy the food together. Now that’s all I know, with any certainty, for I couldn’t think what the matter could be when I came to the flat in Chelsea at seven o’clock and there was no one there to let me in.
It was one of those intercoms that’s high up on the wall– the whole building looked as if it had been built for giants, Victorian giants with big demands on space, at that – and one had to stand on tiptoe and shout into the damned thing in order to get heard at all.
After I’d rung about ten times the buzzer went and I was let into the hall.
I did notice that Anna’s bike was there. The freeholder, a Major Heathcote, was fairly kind about that sort of thing, and it saved having to lug it up three flights of lino-covered stairs and through a narrow door – and that followed by a flight covered in a haircord stair-carpeting that Muriel had tried to lay herself and was all bunched at the sides.
My first thought was that Muriel might have mixed feelings about Anna being there so early. I knew she rather dreaded a lot of members of Anna’s all-female group turning up as well – not because Bert would mind it, I can assure you, but because he might make a fool of himself by liking it just a
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