The Queen of the Tambourine Read online

  And then I screamed.

  In the saucepan something moved. It scrabbled at the pan sides and lifted a fleshy head. The rest looked soft and purplish and old as time.

  “It’s only the terrapin,” called Lucien. “It has to be kept warm till the weather’s hot enough for it. Isn’t it awful? Eliza? Eliza—are you all right?”

  He came to the door, “It was the size of a lop when we got it. It’s growing and growing. We don’t know what to do with it. Oh Lord—sorry. It does get to some people—but it’s only an animal, you know. Poor thing—think of being it. Look I’ll get you some tea. It’s just the noise its claws make, you know.”

  “I promised Amanda a story.”

  “Stop shaking. Don’t worry. She’ll be out cold.”

  “But it was only a few minutes ago. I promised.”

  “Well, just you go and see, Eliza,” and I ran quickly away and up the stairs.

  He was right. Amanda of the scowl and flounce had cleared a space for herself on the divan and lay thumb in mouth clutching a small lion. She was wearing a garment of a hideousness similar to the baby’s and was twisted in an uncomfortable-looking knot. But nothing could detract from the serenity of her face, the two arcs of black lashes lying on her cheeks. The baby watched me watching her and sent me a further Episcopal salute, and sucked his cloth.

  “All right?” said Lucien downstairs beside the tea-pot. He had laid out yellow cups and saucers on a space at the sitting-room table end. Around them were many used ones. He had black eyebrows, silver gold hair, dark blue eyes. I thought, Oh, what a man you are going to be, then remembered that women shouldn’t think like this anymore. But perhaps I’m old enough to admit to taking unquenchable pleasure in men.

  “There’s some muesli,” said the future heart-stopper, “if you’re hungry. And a bit of marmalade. We don’t eat much in the week.”

  “Really?”

  “No. Vanessa says we don’t need breakfast and we get a good dinner at school. The baby’s still partly breast-fed of course. We do eat a bit of supper.”

  “What about—er—your father?”

  “He gets stuff all round the parish. Vanessa gets a good meal at work—she’s a child psychologist. But I expect you knew that.”

  “You’re an unusual family.”

  “Are we? Indian or China?”

  “Well, China. Lovely. No—no marmalade.”

  “I’d think we were pretty usual. There’s crowds like us around here. Nick wants us to move somewhere poor. He’s a very good man, my father, you know. The trouble is my grandmother’s paid for all our private education and it’s supposed to be hard for us to break away once it’s started. We’re irreparably brainwashed, Vanessa says. If you were hungry we could get some fish and chips.”

  “I think someone should be back soon.”

  “They won’t be. Shall I nip out?”

  “Lucien, no. I really think not. I can’t go for them and leave the baby alone and I certainly can’t let you go. It’s getting dark.”

  “You talk just like my grandmother. Yet you look so young.”

  I glowed.

  “And terrific. You look very terrific indeed actually. I could ring a friend with a bike.”

  “And what would you do for money? Fish and chips are expensive.”

  “My friend might have some and there’s plenty here. There’s The Society of the Risen Christ.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “In the blue cardboard box in the hall.”

  “Do you regularly steal from the poor box?”

  “Yes. I put in an IOU, signed. It comes out of my bank account at the end of the month.”

  “Lucien—let me see your homework. Isn’t it about time you went to bed, too?”

  I picked up the exercise book and read the pages of flawless handwriting. Everything looked perfect.

  “It was a push-over. It’s grott, though, having to use ink. I’d give a bit for a word-processor.”

  “You’d have to.”

  “I keep on at my grandmother about one. I’ve the Latin next. Can you do gerunds?”

  “Are you on gerunds already? I’ve rather forgotten.”

  “No prob. I’ll manage. D’you want the News?”

  He switched on the television set and I watched the antics of the hysteric world as he set to work. Northern Ireland, the Lebanon, South Africa, Bangladesh. Bangladesh underwater again. Bangladesh! Good heavens! There in a crowd of faces, backcloth to horror, I suddenly saw you, Joan. I saw you.

  “It’s Joan!”

  “Joan who?”

  “It’s my friend, Joan. On the News. In Bangladesh.”

  “That’s where my grandmother is. We’re always seeing people we know on the telly. We know more on than off. Hundreds of bishops. They used to come and stay here once at Conferences, the Third World ones, but they’re not so keen now we’re so crowded. They’re not into fish, tortoises and so on. You’d think they’d be keen on wild-life wouldn’t you?”

  “No—but I did! I saw my old friend. I haven’t heard of her for a year and a half, nearly.”

  “Did she look well?” he asked politely.

  “She looked,” I said and wondered what it could possibly mean to this precocious and most rational child. “She looked very usual.”

  “Some of my friends are very usual. I wouldn’t mind not seeing them for a bit.”

  “Have you finished the gerunds?”

  “Yep. Well—” he folded away his books, replaced the top of the pen, carefully arranged everything in his briefcase and set it in the hall with cap and blazer beside it, “—I’ll just clean my shoes,” and he carried them into the room, set newspaper on the table, smeared on polish and seriously, unhurriedly, brushed and polished it away. He created an island of order in the room. He was a trim craft in a tattered ocean.

  “That’s it.” He eased back the lid on the polish tin. “I think it all went very well, don’t you—the evening?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  I had the notion that I had been married to Lucien for many years; a good marriage but to a very much older man.

  “I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Oh—someone’s back.”

  In flew Fish. He seemed amazed to see me. “Oh, ah—Eliza. Very nice. Yes? All well, Lucien?”

  “Going to bed. Fine.”

  “I’ve brought some fish and chips. Want some?”

  “Great.”

  Lucien disappeared to the kitchen with his greasy packet and came out again with it plus a length of kitchen roll and a bottle of vinegar. He started up the stairs, “’Bye Eliza. Come again.”

  “I suppose he always says that,” I said to Nick at the door, eye on the second package in his hands. It is odd that nobody ever thinks I eat, even though they all go on about how thin I am.

  “Says what? Oh yes. Yes, he’s quite polite. Should I—”

  “Of course not. I can easily walk home, I’ve been walking home all my life. I hope I’ve made the grade?”

  “Grade? What grade is that, Eliza? I hope they didn’t do you in?”

  “No.”

  I could see through his heavy eyes a memory struggling: Eliza Peabody? The one they say’s gone off her nut. God knows what Vanessa will say. Well, her own fault, she didn’t arrange anyone else. And nothing’s gone wrong.

  “It’s really very good of you,” he said. He was confused. I was behaving so normally and looking at him, I dare say, lovingly as he shifted his oily fish-and-chip package from hand to hand. It looked nice and hot. He looked hungry and cold.

  May 14th

  Two weeks, m.d.J., since that evening.

  I have spent much of them at the window. Nearly June. What a summer coming this year. The lilacs and the syringas and the roses already some of them full out, the grass long and silky and full of daisies—I don’t know where the gardener went but it’s all the better without him.

  But I haven’t been looking only at the Month of May, Joan, I have been watching f
or the family of Fishes. Every car that zips by, I wonder whether it is taking Amanda to the high school after dropping off the baby at the minder’s. Every black and red cap I see on any boy, I think must certainly be Lucien’s. Every pram has Timmy in it, every pram-pusher is the Fishes’ au pair. I have conversations with them all. I ask them all to tea. I bake a cake and get ready to walk round with it. I stop myself. I won’t go back to that. The cake-making of the Church of England woman, the running between each other with pots of jam. I’ve tried it. It has failed.

  But I went to Church again on Sunday, hoping to see at least one of them. I was trembling as I went in, like an old virgin in love with the priest. I fell to my knees and tried to pray but could not get away from the shouts and conversation going on at the clergy house. “Come on, Amanda, we’re late.” “Well you don’t have to go. You don’t believe in it.” “We have to—for Dad’s sake.” “What about Ma’s sake?” “What’s Ma doing?” “Feeding Timmy and reading an essay.” “Who’s doing lunch?”

  On and on it went, the life of the Fishes in my head. Not one of them turned up at Church, not even Nick—it was an unknown priest with an ambling grin who kept getting lost in the service and gave a sermon about the place of the United Nations in the future of Europe, which seemed a pretty small one. Instead of listening I thought about Lucien and Amanda, sitting beside me in the pew, and Timmy beatifically good in my arms, stroking my face.

  So yesterday, when it had been very bad all day and it had come to evening and grown quite dark, I left the dogs and with a secret smile and a dark coat set out walking to the Common and towards the clergy-house. It was quiet along the almost empty road and I slid in through the wide gates, one off its hinges, kept to the rhododendrons along the scruffy drive, made a quick dash past the glass front door and stood concealed behind the ceanothus outside the living-room window where shone the only light in the house. I stood very still, back from the window, flat to the wall.

  Discovered, and where should I be?

  Soon I leaned sideways, turned my head and looked in to see Nick writing at the table among the chaos and Timmy asleep and very large upon his knee. Nick was writing peacefully. A cat was sitting on the window-ledge looking out at the night. It looked at me with distaste, jumped down and stared hard at the study door in silent command. Nick got up, holding the baby and the pen, let out the cat and stood brooding in the middle of the room. I thought, Oh lonely and sad. I saw him sigh, hitch up the baby on his shoulder, wonder whether to take him upstairs and risk him waking as he was put in his cot, saw him look longingly back at his work. The room about him was unkempt and dismal, colourless and scruffy. The twentieth-century setting for the tormented Anglican priest.

  He looked up all at once and listened. Then Timmy woke and pointed at the window, and I thought, Oh Lord they’ve heard me.

  What shall I say I’m doing? Just calling? It’s nearly ten o’clock at night. I must run away. But before I could think about how and where, round the corner swooped Vanessa’s car and parked right beside me at the other side of the ceanothus. Both car doors flew open as the light went on over the porch and Vanessa, eating something large, half-wrapped in paper, and Lucien, doing likewise and carrying a big cardboard box, ran forward to the glass door, laughing. Nick appeared with the baby.

  Nick said “You’re late. Was it good?”

  “Wonderful,” said Vanessa, putting her arms round him and the baby together. “Superlative. Big Macs. We’ve got the programme. Here—in the box.”

  “Is Amanda up?” asked Lucien. “Wake her up—there’s a Big Mac for her.”

  “Did you like it too, Luce?”

  “Great. Great third act. Ma cried.”

  Nick looked down at Vanessa smiling and put his arm tight round her shoulders and kissed her hair. “Watch out for Timmy,” she said. “Don’t let him eat burger.” They all went laughing indoors. A moment later Nick crossed to the window and drew the curtains across and somebody turned on some loud music.

  So then I stepped quite noisily out of the flower bed, Joan, and walked right up the middle of the clergy-house drive, crunching the gravel, jaunty and light. The Common when I reached it looked very black, the road along it much longer than when I had walked it less than half an hour ago and very ill-lit—a lamp-post only every quarter mile or so. I passed the old Pound where the stray sheep used to be gathered and then I took myself diagonally across the grass to the pond where a glitter of light spread in a long extending triangle behind a nocturnal duck. No sound but the traffic’s far-off roar.

  There were dimmish lights from some of the great houses on the perimeter of this part of the Common. I watched for the coach and horses at the wrought-iron gates but it was past eight o’clock so I’d missed them. A warm summery wind was blowing and shaggy clouds swam over the London-lit red sky. I walked down Hill Street into Rathbone Road and stood by the fridge eating the cake I’d made. It had icing on it and a cherry. The dogs watched me, desperate.

  “All right,” and I found the leads. “All right.” I sang and hummed about. I set off down Rathbone Road again, my nightly patrol around the block.

  Each paving-stone I know. Each lighted window I know. Evening after evening I walk thus—pausing and calling, stopping and waiting. First I stand before Deborah’s house and salute the magnificent rocking-horse that stands in the window. No lights there tonight, but I know the flare of the nostril, the blaze of the eye, the ear pricked to the distant drum. I stand and stare from dark into dark until I can make out its prancing shape. Not long to the Fair. Not long to the Fair.

  At my feet on the pavement is one of the children’s toys made out of Vera’s knitting, left out of doors. The dogs sniff at it. I sit it on the balustrade of the steps where it leans its flat head.

  Some of the houses are flats now. Young people in sexy clothes stand about in basements. Expensive tiny television sets glare. Pine cupboards, stainless steel, sheaves of dried flowers. The broad back of a pregnant girl. She touches glittering taps with yellow plastic gloves. Farewell the sixties drama of the kitchen sink, for the Kitchen Sink is now Art. The floors are made of pale or bronzy cork. The girl turns to crush garlic in a pestle and mortar. Light falls on a bottle of Italian oil. Her boyfriend, man or husband is ironing his pink shirt.

  Higher up the street, and here are the Gargerys, one on each side of a plastic-topped fifties kitchen table talking seriously over mugs. About the walls hang posters, peg-boards, certificates of merit; a piano, well-used, its keys concave with practice. It was her mother’s, and the tune goes on and on. The darkened windows on the floors above conceal each a sleeping Gargery child stuffed with knowledge. As I watch, the windows all burst open and the children fly out of them and away, five Chagallic embryos. One clutches its little blanket, another a suitcase labelled “Anywhere,” one is baying at the moon. Take comfort in the cocoa, beloved Gargerys, while you can.

  Not far along the road and we’re at Anne Robin’s mansion. It’s an older house and she’s grander than any of us. The light is still burning in her study. She’s hard at it, creating rabbits. Above is the lighted window of the new Philippino au pair. Eastern music twangs. Solitary Anne blocks up her ears as she seeks for childhood again in the empty nest.

  Up behind me now comes the little black jogger, light on his feet. He never speaks. He knows it’s me. He passes each evening, but he never speaks. He’s somebody’s lodger.

  Here, opposite my house, the house of the childless and admirable Baxters, Dulcie Baxter in full view at her desk, marking examination papers. Her beautiful white hair springs up from her head enraged by what it sees on the page. I cannot see her face for the lamp shines down, but I seem to see her firm, judicial stance. Tick, tick, cross, she goes. She doesn’t look up, perhaps to avoid the sight of Anne’s light. She despises Anne with almost Johnsonian thunder, hardly keeping her voice down even when they are in the same room drinking the same hostess’s sherry. “Why are we all so proud of Anne Robin? Any of u
s could write that stuff.” The pen is the extension of Dulcie Baxter’s school-ma’am fingers, her dedicated critical mind. She is reliable, over-worked, Girton, proudly uncreative. She wishes there were only dead authors. Living ones are beneath her attention. Even dead ones shuffle naked and anxious before her. Shakespeare trembles. Once, somewhere, long ago, surely some little thread of poetry touched a nerve of Dulcie Baxter? One wonders. Tick, tick, cross.

  And up behind her tiptoes old Richard with a cup of tea. He sets it reverently beside her, and she nods.

  I turn along the High Street and all the little shop-windows. There’s an end shop that has a flattering old mirror set in the wall that has brought comfort to me over the years. But tonight I have a mazy look. I turn left. Down the line of little cottages I go, the servants’ cottages of the big houses a hundred years back. A woman with a grim pony-tail is playing a violin through double-glazing so that there’s no way of knowing if the music matches the passion of her widow’s face. She’s alone. I watch for a bit to see if she’ll explode into little bits—stars and comets that stick to the ceiling like wet confetti. She did this for me last week. Then on, and round the corner I go towards home, towards the retentive darkness of the Church.

  But the Church is blazing with light, and as I look, amazed, I am filled all at once with thoughts of Henry. His Church alight so late and quite without his authority—however could he bear it? He, the good Church-warden? I know all at once, too, that there is some mystery about Henry’s departure to Dolphin Square with its pellucid pool, its face shut to the river, its sinister underground car-park, some mystery that I ought to be able to solve. It is perhaps something that everyone knows but I.

  Now it is getting towards midnight. The little block of expensive flatlets to the west of the Church’s west door is all in darkness. Across the road the artless-looking woman who is always being burgled and sits up late with a cudgel in her lap, even she is in darkness. Nearby is the house of the woman who gives little fork-lunches with her friends, to talk of their salad days, and at night pads off clink, clink with a bag to the Leather Bottle—she is in darkness, too. Glaring in on all of them in their beds are the six long windows of the north transept. The wide window of the south wall blazes down on the block of flats.