The Queen of the Tambourine Read online

  As the years passed, the fallen girls had grown noisier and the Chaplain’s flat quieter and towards the end of the establishment’s life, when the girls were getting hard to find and rebellious about carrying up the Garsingtons’ trays of lunch and supper, the Chaplain and his wife became like two old owls living almost invisibly in the rafters. Father Garsington, a gentle man, carried up the food-trays uncomplainingly, prayed often, walked each afternoon on the Common, but was seldom otherwise seen. On a board in the hall was a time-scarred notice saying that the Chaplain was available for counselling, but few girls availed themselves of this opportunity.

  Once, a Jamaican beauty, six feet high with teeth like a Bechstein, who could have eaten six Father Garsingtons every day for snacks, gave him a bottle of rum for Christmas. “And a kiss,” she said, and put her arms around him, her cheek against his, and rocked him in his chair. She laughed and laughed and danced and clapped and he said, brick red, “Now then, now then Rosie.”

  “Rosie has given us some rum,” he told his wife, “and a new scarf for you.” Mrs. Garsington took the scarf and smoothed it on the counterpane, saying that it was rather bright. The rum, she said, would do him no good whatsoever, with his breathing, and would come in nicely for the bottle-stall at the next fête. Father Garsington, however, put the bottle in one of his Wellington boots in The Shires’ coal shed and had a good tot every night when he was seeing to the cat.

  When Rosie left The Shires with her curly-headed prune—who had his mother’s eyes of liquid black light—Father Garsington stood about at the gates. Rosie was not going off to Belgravia in a car. She was keeping her baby and had gone striding off with him, breast-feeding as she went, to the bus-stop on Common Side.

  When she’d disappeared, the Chaplain didn’t hurry in but watched the trees on the Common—a rainy day with the wind blowing cold drops at him. Mrs. Garsington stood in her high window, looking down. One of the girls told me this, when I was waiting to give Gant a lift home. The girl thought I was a new inmate. I felt so proud.

  My turn to drive the Belgravia trail—I took the job of course; did I say that? no need: you remember Gant—my turn did not come for several months. I attended the monthly Progress Meetings, tried to do the Home’s accounts, and attacked the secretarial work without the least knowledge of it. There was a Government Social Worker co-opted on to the committee now, “by Law, unfortunately,” said Gant. She was an Englishwoman called Mrs. Djinn. “One of the Old School,” said Gant, “nothing feminist or aggressive. We insisted. We’ve managed perfectly well for nearly a century without interference by the State.”

  Mrs. Djinn was indeed no feminist. She was old and tired and cynical and on the point of retirement. She wore hand-knitted mustard-coloured cardigans with sleeves made huge by handkerchieves as she was subject to a perpetual cold. Her eyes had seen everything and expected nothing and the reports she wrote on the girls drained them of all life. The act that had brought them to her notice held for her neither mystery nor the slightest interest. The sex-act for Mrs. Djinn was after the nature of a viral infection that might result in nasty flu, something not yet eradicated from the human species. The urges of the body were but fallow, stony fields for Mrs. Djinn, and her face was that of a desolate wooden idol. Yet, one day after one of the Monthly Meetings, there called for her at Gant’s house a lean brown dreamy-eyed Indian son.

  And another surprise—I hope you’re enjoying this little perambulation, Joanissima carissima—another surprise. One night, during the five months when I was working for The Shires, I walked miles and miles from home. Henry was abroad. He was in Washington, now I come to think of it. It was a damp evening, rainy and blowy, and I walked fast down the hill, over the railway and into the little streets. I passed the black stump of the paper-works, the tin block of the motor-tyre company, the greyhound track walls like the sides of a ship-white light and a sea roaring within. I got to Mitcham—miles and miles from home. It is our horizon, up in the Road. I walked the deadly Mitcham pavements in the rain thinking of the miles of lavender fields that would once have been under my feet. When The Shires was built the Chaplain’s wife in the top windows would have been able to see the blue fields far away.

  I turned in at the fish and chip shop and stood waiting for the fryer to finish the next shoal of cod. I leaned my arms on the warm silver counter and saw, between the sauce bottles and the Box for the Blind and the old jumbo glass-and-chrome pepper pots, Bella, unsmiling, talking earnestly over a table to Father Garsington. She held his hand across the table. They each had a couple of rock fish in front of them and a mountainous heap of chips. Father Garsington’s plate was splattered in blood-red ketchup and he had taken off his mittens.

  So—is the picture in place, Joan?

  Five months or so after my initiation to the inner workings of The Shires, the call came to Belgravia. Two babies. Mrs. Djinn arrived on her worn soles at my door and together we picked up Bella when she stepped off her bus from beyond the tracks. At The Shires Mrs. Djinn got out of the car in a business-like way and disappeared inside the house and Bella got out hesitantly and hung about at the gates, smiling. There was a long pause.

  Father Garsington appeared. “Hullo, my dear, hullo, hullo,” very hearty to Bella. He strode past her. “Good day, good day, good day,” to me. He stamped with cold feet, puffed white mist like a dragon. Pink fingertips thrust out of his mittens grew as purple as his mouth. “Just the first touch. The first touch of autumn. Ha.”

  Two children came quickly down the path, each carrying a soft white bundle, and Matron followed behind to arrange them all in the back of the car. Mrs. Djinn came down the path next, almost languid with good sense. She carried a file and some brown envelopes and got in beside me. Bella went round to sit in the back of the car but one of the girls was fat and it was clear that someone must be left behind. “There’s no room for Bella,” said Mrs. Djinn.

  “No room,” said the Chaplain. “Oh dear.”

  “You’re not essential, Bella,” said Mrs. Djinn, “I’ve never known so many auxiliaries as here. There’s none of this in the Public Sector.”

  “Oh, I’m not a bit essential,” said Bella, smiling.

  “Walk on the Common?” asked Father Garsington. “I’m just off there. Goodbye, my dears. Good luck. God bless.”

  But the two girls were leaning towards each other lighting up cigarettes and dropping ash in the shawls. Inside the shawls the babies’ heads were like hazelnuts.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” said Mrs. Djinn. “We can’t have smoking in the car, it’s not safe.”

  There was muttering.

  “Come on now. Put them out. You’ll set fire to something. There’s the ashtray. Come on. Give the baby your whole attention.”

  A baby gave a little sound.

  “You see? She doesn’t like the smoke, dear, put them out. You can have a good smoke when we get there. Turn here, Mrs. Peabody, it’s round this crescent. Yes. Just stop here a minute. I have to do a little recce.”

  The babes and the girls and I sat in silence. The sweet warm smell of the babies was like baking bread. It mingled with the remains of the cigarette smoke and then with alcohol. In the mirror, I saw one girl take a swig from a mini bottle of something and pass it over to the other. The first one then put the bottle back in her bag and they each looked out of the windows. The thin girl said, “It’s a lovely area.” The babies slept on without a dream.

  “Fine,” said Mrs. Djinn. “Just drive up to the front door, Mrs. Peabody, and then go off and park—there’s a place in the mews and follow us in.”

  When I joined them on the top floor of the house, up three flights of quiet, deep-carpeted stairs, the girls were sitting side by side on upright chairs. They held the babies like professionals. Djinn sat alongside, examining her notes. When I came through the door the fat one looked up, frightened, but the thin one looked out towards the window and the sky. We waited, none of us looking at the babies, and then the woman in blue with
the white cuffs came in and said, “Thank you, dear, Dianne first. One at a time. We don’t want any mix ups,” and she took the baby in a scooping movement like the executioner swooping to tie the condemned man’s hands. In the doorway she passed another, tweedy woman who came forward with a glorious smile saying: “Kimberley? Isn’t she lovely. That’s right. Last look. Give her a kiss, dear,” and was gone.

  The babies were gone and the young girls sat like naked ones, their hands loose. They looked at each other rather slyly and the thin one grimaced. The fat one looked about her, very cool, pursing up her mouth.

  “Cigarette, dear? That’s right. You’ve done very well.”

  “Can we go now?”

  “In just a minute.”

  We waited about twenty. One of the girls got up and walked towards the window. “Don’t look out, dear, just a minute more.”

  A door opened and shut, somewhere in the house. Another door opened and shut. Soon the tweedy woman put her head round the door. “Overjoyed!” she said to the girls. “Quite overcome.”

  We all got up to go. As we got to the door the thin girl turned and looked back into the room.

  On the pavement they asked for their luggage at once and would not let us take them on anywhere. The fat one said, “We’re going for a drink in a pub.” The thin one said, “Look. Here. Here’s the box of presents. It’s her box of presents. These is the presents she got sent by everyone. We forgot them. She’s got to have them. There’s dolls and teddies and that.”

  Mrs. Djinn said that she would see to it.

  “It’s only right,” said the thin one. “I’ll go back with them.”

  “No—leave it to us.”

  “I’ll take them in now,” I said, “I promise.”

  Mrs. Djinn turned away.

  “O.K. then. It’s only right.”

  Both girls looked up at the windows of the house with their expensive silky curtains. They lit second cigarettes and went over to the pub while I went up the steps with the box of presents. “Yes, I suppose so. Come in,” said the uniformed woman who was also smoking now. “Maddening. It’s far too late. Put them there. It’ll have to be Oxfam.”

  “The first thing the new parents do apparently,” said Mrs. Djinn when we were alone in the car together, “every single time, is to take all the baby’s clothes off and dress it in new ones they’ve brought with them. It’s interesting, isn’t it? A symbolic act of some kind—nobody suggests it. They leave all the things it came with behind them. New nappies. Everything. They often just drop the old clothes on the floor. A terrible waste.”

  “Are the babies—those babies—still in there?”

  “Oh no. They went off half an hour ago. We make sure they go first just in case the mothers hang about to get a look. Mrs. Peabody, it’s a wonderful thing we do, you know. There’s an awful lot of nonsense talked. You’re looking a bit white. Let me tell you I go through this now without a qualm and I’ve discovered it is the best way to help the girls. I know that what we do is right and my experience gets through to them. In every case we are giving three people—at least three people—the chance of a better life: the baby, its mother and some poor barren family. These girls haven’t a clue, you know. The cruellest thing you can do for them is get emotional. We had a Matron once and the night before the babies went off it was like a funeral parlour at The Shires. Head up, Mrs. Peabody! They’re children, far from home—if they have a home and they can make a new start if they’re bright enough. Half of them are too silly to take the pill. Those two will have another next year, you know.”

  “I wonder why?”

  “Very poor memories, Mrs. Peabody.”

  “Yet it seems hard.”

  “Life is hard,” she inevitably said, and took a big piece of what looked like duster from her sleeve, blew her nose and polished her glasses. “Drop me off at Harrods, would you? I always get a pound of bacon afterwards. It’s beautiful bacon and no more expensive than the supermarket.”

  After I’d dropped her I turned the car and bashed its wing and then set off for home. Along the Fulham Road I saw the fat girl walking with her suitcase and some plastic bags. She walked with a bit of a roll, as if she was still pregnant. She looked watchful. When she reached a bus-stop she stopped and stood reading the list of numbers of the buses. I drew up alongside and said, “Look hullo. Can I really not take you home? Or somewhere?” and she said, “No you fucking can’t.”

  That was the end of me at The Shires.

  “Eliza, dear,” said Anne again. “Eliza—don’t go into a trance. All we have been saying is that we do so wish you would get yourself something to do.”

  “Anne, I have something to do. I have The Hospice.”

  “But only in a menial capacity, Eliza. You’re not professionally qualified to be with the Dying. You’re not medical or psychological or anything—and why should you be? You’ve been a very senior Diplomatic Wife for years and years and no chance of having your own profession. We thought—well I thought—that you need something quite different. Something light-hearted and creative. And you know you’d feel so much more self-respect if you earned money. Honestly—it’s so much fun.”

  “My dear Anne, I couldn’t possibly write books. There are far too many already. Why should I spend hours all by myself in a room writing books just to amuse some people I’ve never met for a few hours on an aeroplane before they get pulped? I mean the books get pulped. They have a shelf-life of six weeks most of them and a good thing, too. They’re like package puddings. It was in the Guardian. There are dozens of novels spewed forth, most of them tripe and all the poor authors thinking they’ve started out on an immortal career. Might as well masturbate. I don’t mean yours, of course.”

  “Eliza! Well, but you could write something Sociological. Or about all your travels with Henry. Or good children’s books, as I do.”

  “I couldn’t write books for good children.”

  “Eliza! I want you to do something. I want you to come to my Creative Writing Class. There’s a writer above the norm coming to address us. Well, as a matter of fact it’s Lancaster Forbes, and you can’t say that he gets pulped.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t . . .”

  “Oh please,” she said. “I know you’d love it. You like people so much and it would do you so much good. Those little notes you used to write were all so vivid, somehow, and we miss them. Lancaster Forbes would bring you to life again.”

  I thought, Poor little lamb. That’s what I thought, Joan. All the boys at Harrow and that blowsy girl at Cranborne Chase and the dinner cooked by the Philippino and George only at home when there’s been a row with the girlfriend in Hong Kong.

  “How’s George?”

  “Oh, I told you. He’s away. He’s always away. I’m used to it.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  “Well, actually” (very bright) “actually you know, Eliza, I don’t. I don’t miss him at all. Since I began my own career I’m not emotionally dependent anymore, nor entirely financially dependent, and I do think, belonging to a Feminist Group.”

  “Do you belong to a Feminist Group?”

  “Well, of course I do. How could I not? You don’t think I’m like the rest of the Road, do you, Eliza? How could a woman writer feel alive at all otherwise, in today’s world? Professional women have to stick together. If we are ever to take over.”

  “Do you—do you think you may some day take over from George?”

  “Oh, George is super. He’s a superb husband, Eliza. No infidelity or anything like that. And personally I don’t think sex is any the worse for being infrequent, do you? Rather better, really.”

  She turned quite purple during this speech. It had been drawn from her by torture and brainwash. I remembered what Dulcie Baxter once told me, Joan, about the last-but-one Philippino coming banging on her door at two in the morning because George had been on the creep towards her attic apartment. Lonely, good Anne.

  “I’ll come to your class,�
� I said. “When is it? Next Tuesday?”

  “No, today. Could you come today?”

  “Life is precipitate. Yes, all right.”

  “Oh super. Oh, I do feel glad about that, Eliza. And today’s a super-duper day because Pixie Leak will be there.”

  “Pixie Leak?”

  “Pixie Leak. She won the Queen Mab award in ’82 and the Tulsa Golden Golly. She wrote in America first—Your First Bra and You Don’t Have To. Terribly good and outspoken. Not imaginative fiction, of course. She’s not poetically cast. But a definite authorial voice. I wanted to have them on the bookstall at St. Saviour’s but the Vicar was against it and even Nick said that some of the old ladies might get upset. The organist was adamant he belongs to The William Temple Society—and there was some shouting. I do think Nick’s a bit of a fossil, don’t you? I mean, for his age. And he has tiny children who are going to need to meet issues like this before long.”

  When she had been gone for some time I came to myself and wondered whatever I was up to, for I had taken a bucket of water and Fairy Liquid to the Aga. I had gathered up all the marigold plates, and they were standing in the plate-rack, shining clean, and I was swilling over the floor with a cloth. This in turn seemed to be leading to the working surfaces, window-ledges, windows, curtains. I took the curtains down, washed and hung them on the line. The steps to the garden weren’t looking too good so I poured a bucket of hot water down them and attacked them with a hard brush, tripping backwards and falling down with what I realised was exhaustion. Pleasant exhaustion.