One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [49]
I’d been in France at the time, a country I’d achieved via a circuitous route. When Seffy and I came back from Croatia my parents had insisted I live with them for a bit in order for them to help with the baby, which I gladly did, having not a clue which end of an infant was which. Mum and Dad by then were in their sixteenth house in their twenty-seven-year marriage, which remarkably they’re still in today, and which, thanks to no school fees, they own outright. Thanks also to Dad finally being recognized as a voice of sanity rattling in the broadsheets of a morning, culminating in a regular and prestigious weekly column, which rendered them comfortable. Sod’s law, as he said, having been uncomfortable all those years when he’d really needed the money, when he’d had a young family to support. Nevertheless a small terraced house at the wrong end of Elsworthy Road – which put it in Primrose Hill as far as my father was concerned, and in St John’s Wood if you asked my mother – became home to us all. And it was perfect. Particularly for Seffy and me. The park was on our doorstep, that great, green, glorious slope to trudge up every day, arriving at the summit panting and glowing, my baby on my chest in a papoose, the whole of London spread before me.
Mum was brilliant, and made me hand Seffy over for an entire day once a week, so I could ‘get out there’, as she put it: get back to the real world, keep my hand in.
‘In what?’ I’d wail as she shooed me out of the front door.
‘Whatever you want,’ she’d say firmly, jiggling Seffy in her arms. ‘Go and think, go and walk the streets. See what appeals.’
Yeah, right, I’d think as I trudged up Avenue Road to the underground. Whatever appeals: as if the world were my flaming oyster. But Mum, for all her glamour, was a hustler. It was she who’d rung up newspapers demanding they see her husband’s work when Dad was too reticent to harangue them, it was she who’d marched Laura into Storm, the model agency. I couldn’t help thinking she was dreaming here, though. I could hardly get a job as a secretary for one day a week – which I’d loathe anyway; the only reason I’d tapped a keyboard was its proximity to Dominic – and I’d equally be laughed at if I enquired about working in a shop or a café for just a day. What did she expect me to do?
But my mother’s not only a hustler, she’s also brighter than she looks and the time alone did me good. I’d invariably come back fresher and more energized than I went out, probably with a few bits of faded old porcelain, or a French goblet from Portobello for Mum and Dad, who wouldn’t take rent, but loved old pieces almost as much as I did.
Often I’d track further west, taking the District Line and alighting at Sloane Square. One stall I used to frequent at Antiquarius in Chelsea was run by a corpulent Frenchman, his face the colour of the glass of claret he kept under his counter and sipped surreptitiously from time to time. Breathing appeared to be a problem and he’d wheeze and splutter over his wares, hovering protectively as I fingered the Gustavian tureens, the old French bistro glasses, the beautifully turned Sèvres candlesticks.
‘You can ’ave that for fifteen queed,’ he wheezed, unplugging a cigarette from the corner of his mouth as I fondled an ancient milk jug lovingly.
‘It’s got a crack in it,’ I told him, turning it over.
‘Which ees why you can ’ave it for fifteen queed.’
Exchanges like this between the two of us