My taxi was
cutting through the back streets of Bloomsbury, past the house where my father
lived after his second marriage, and past the basement flat where I lived and
worked all through the fifties. Beyond a certain age, a journey across the city
becomes uncomfortably reflective. The addresses of the dead pile up. We crossed
the square where Leon heroically nursed his wife, and then raised his
boisterous children with a devotion that amazed us all. One day I too will
prompt a moment’s reflection in the passenger of a passing cab.
It’s a popular shortcut, the Inner Circle of Regent’s Park.
We crossed
the river at Waterloo Bridge. I sat forward on the edge of my seat to take in
my favorite view of the city, and as I turned my neck, downstream to St.
Paul’s, upstream to Big Ben, the full panoply of tourist London in
between, I felt myself to be physically well and mentally intact, give or take
the headaches and a little tiredness. However withered, I still feel myself to
be exactly the same person I’ve always been. Hard to explain that to the
young. We may look truly reptilian, but we’re not a separate tribe. In
the next year or two, however, I will be losing my claim to this familiar
protestation. The seriously ill, the deranged, are another race, an inferior
race. I won’t let anyone persuade me otherwise.
My cabbie was
cursing. Over the river, roadworks were forcing us on a detour toward the old
County Hall. As we swung off the roundabout there, toward Lambeth, I had a
glimpse of St. Thomas’s Hospital. It took a clobbering in the
Blitz—I wasn’t there, thank God—and the replacement buildings
and the tower block are a national disgrace. I worked in three hospitals in the
duration—Alder Hey and the Royal East Sussex as well as St. Thomas’s—and
I merged them in my description to concentrate all my experiences into one
place. A convenient distortion, and the least of my offenses against veracity.
It was
raining less heavily as the driver made a neat U-turn in the middle of the road
to bring us outside the main gates of the museum. With the business of
gathering up my bag, finding a twenty-pound note and unfolding my umbrella, I
did not notice the car parked immediately in front until my cab pulled away. It
was a black Rolls. For a moment I thought it was unattended. In fact, the
chauffeur was a diminutive fellow almost lost behind the front wheel. I’m
not sure that what I am about to describe really rates as a startling
coincidence. I occasionally think of the Marshalls whenever I see a parked
Rolls without a driver. It’s become a habit over the years. They often
pass through my mind, usually without generating any particular feeling.
I’ve grown used to the idea of them. They still appear in the newspapers
occasionally, in connection with their Foundation and all its good work for
medical research, or the collection they’ve donated to the Tate, or their
generous funding of agricultural projects in sub-Saharan Africa. And her
parties, and their vigorous libel actions against national newspapers. It was
not remarkable that Lord and Lady Marshall passed through my thoughts as I
approached those massive twin guns in front of the museum, but it was a shock
to see them coming down the steps toward me.
A posse of
officials—I recognized the museum’s director—and a single
photographer made up a farewell party. Two young men held umbrellas over the
Marshalls’ heads as they descended the steps by the columns. I held back,
slowing my pace rather than stopping and drawing attention to myself. There was
a round of handshakes, and a chorus of genial laughter at something Lord
Marshall said. He leaned on a walking stick, the lacquered cane that I think
has become something of a trademark. He and his wife and the director posed for
the camera, then the Marshalls came away, accompanied by the suited young men
with the umbrellas. The museum officials remained on the steps. My concern was
to see which way the Marshalls would go so that I could avoid a head-on
encounter. They chose to pass the guns on their left, so I did the same.
Concealed
partly by the raised barrels and their concrete emplacements, partly by my
tilted umbrella, I kept hidden, but still managed a good look. They went by in
silence. He was familiar from his photographs. Despite the liver spots and the
purplish swags under his eyes, he at last appeared the cruelly handsome
plutocrat, though somewhat reduced. Age had shrunk his face and delivered the
look he had always fallen short of by a fraction. It was his jaw that had
scaled itself down—bone loss had been kind. He was a little doddery and
flat-footed, but he walked reasonably well for a man of eighty-eight. One
becomes a judge of these things. But his hand was firmly on her arm and the
stick was not just for show. It has often been remarked upon, how much good he
did in the world. Perhaps he’s spent a lifetime making amends. Or perhaps
he just swept onward without a thought, to live the life that was always his.
As for
Lola—my high-living, chain-smoking cousin—here she was, still as
lean and fit as a racing dog, and still faithful. Who would have dreamed it?
This, as they used to say, was the side on which her bread was buttered. That
may sound sour, but it went through my mind as I glanced across at her. She
wore a sable coat and a scarlet wide-brimmed fedora. Bold rather than vulgar.
Near on eighty years old, and still wearing high heels. They clicked on the
pavement with the sound of a younger woman’s stride. There was no sign of
a cigarette. In fact, there was an air of the health farm about her, and an
indoor tan. She was taller than her husband now, and there was no doubting her
vigor. But there was also something comic about her—or was I clutching at
straws? She was heavy on the makeup, quite garish around the mouth and liberal
with the smoothing cream and powder. I’ve always been a puritan in this,
so I count myself an unreliable witness. I thought there was a touch of the
stage villain here—the gaunt figure, the black coat, the lurid lips. A
cigarette holder, a lapdog tucked under one arm and she could have been Cruella
De Vil.
We passed by
each other in a matter of seconds. I went on up the steps, then stopped under
the pediment, out of the rain, to watch the group make its way to the car. He
was helped in first, and I saw then how frail he was. He couldn’t bend at
the waist, nor could he take his own weight on one foot. They had to lift him
into his seat. The far door was held open for Lady Lola who folded herself in
with a terrible agility. I watched the Rolls pull away into the traffic, then I
went in. Seeing them laid something heavy on my heart, and I was trying not to
think about it, or feel it now. I already had enough to deal with today. But
Lola’s health was on my mind as I gave my bag in at the cloakroom, and
exchanged cheery good mornings with the porters. The rule here is that one must
be escorted up to the reading room in a lift, whose cramped space makes small
talk compulsory as far as I’m concerned. As I made it—shocking
weather, but improvements were due by the weekend—I couldn’t resist
thinking about my encounter outside in the fundamental terms of health: I might
outlive Paul Marshall, but Lola would certainly outlive me. The consequences of
this are clear. The issue has been with us for years. As my editor put it once,
publication equals litigation. But I could hardly face that now. There was
already enough that I didn’t want to be thinking about. I had come here
to be busy.
I spent a
while chatting with the Keeper of Documents. I handed over the bundle of
letters Mr. Nettle wrote me about Dunkirk—most gratefully received.
They’ll be stored with all the others I’ve given. The Keeper had
found me an obliging old colonel of the Buffs, something of an amateur
historian himself, who had read the relevant pages of my typescript and faxed
through his suggestions. His notes were handed to me now—irascible,
helpful. I was completely absorbed by them, thank God.
“Absolutely
no [underlined twice] soldier serving with the British army would say ‘On
the double.’ Only an American would give such an order. The correct term
is ‘At the double.’”
I love these
little things, this pointillist approach to verisimilitude, the correction of
detail that cumulatively gives such satisfaction.
“No one
would ever think of saying ‘twenty-five-pound guns.’ The term was
either ‘twenty-five pounders’ or ‘twenty-five-pounder
guns.’ Your usage would sound distinctly bizarre, even to a man who was
not with the Royal Artillery.”
Like
policemen in a search team, we go on hands and knees and crawl our way toward
the truth.
“You
have your RAF chappie wearing a beret. I really don’t think so. Outside
the Tank Corps, even the army didn’t have them in 1940. I think
you’d better give the man a forage cap.”
Finally, the
colonel, who began his letter by addressing me as “Miss Tallis,”
allowed some impatience with my sex to show through. What was our kind doing
anyway, meddling in these affairs?
“Madame
[underlined three times]—a Stuka does not carry ‘a single
thousand-ton bomb.’ Are you aware that a navy frigate hardly weighs that
much? I suggest you look into the matter further.”
Merely a
typo. I meant to type “pound.” I made a note of these corrections,
and wrote a letter of thanks to the colonel. I paid for some photocopies of
documents which I arranged into orderly piles for my own archives. I returned
the books I had been using to the front desk, and threw away various scraps of
paper. The work space was cleared of all traces of me. As I said my goodbyes to
the Keeper, I learned that the Marshall Foundation was about to make a grant to
the museum. After a round of handshaking with the other librarians, and my
promise to acknowledge the department’s help, a porter was called to see
me down. Very kindly, the girl in the cloakroom called a taxi, and one of the
younger members of the door staff carried my bag all the way out to the
pavement.
During the
ride back north, I thought about the colonel’s letter, or rather, about
my own pleasure in these trivial alterations. If I really cared so much about
facts, I should have written a different kind of book. But my work was done.
There would be no further drafts. These were the thoughts I had as we entered
the old tram tunnel under the Aldwych, just before I fell asleep. When I was
woken by the driver, the cab was outside my flat in Regent’s Park.
I filed away
the papers I had brought from the library, made a sandwich, then packed an
overnight case. I was conscious as I moved about my flat, from one familiar
room to another, that the years of my independence could soon be over. On my desk
was a framed photograph of my husband, Thierry, taken in Marseille two years
before he died. One day I would be asking who he was. I soothed myself by
spending time choosing a dress to wear for my birthday dinner. The process was
actually rejuvenating. I’m thinner than I was a year ago. As I trailed my
fingers along the racks I forgot about the diagnosis for minutes on end. I
decided on a shirtwaisted cashmere dress in dove gray. Everything followed
easily then: a white satin scarf held by Emily’s cameo brooch, patent
court shoes—low-heeled, of course—a black dévoré
shawl. I closed the case and was surprised by how light it seemed as I carried
it into the hallway.
My secretary
would be coming in tomorrow, before I returned. I left her a note, setting out the
work I wanted her to do, then I took a book and a cup of tea and sat in an
armchair at a window with a view over the park. I’ve always been good at
not thinking about the things that are really troubling me. But I was not able
to read. I felt excited. A journey into the country, a dinner in my honor, a
renewal of family bonds. And yet I’d had one of those classic
conversations with a doctor. I should have been depressed. Was it possible that
I was, in the modern term, in denial? Thinking this changed nothing. The car
was not due for another half hour and I was restless. I got out of the chair,
and went up and down the room a few times. My knees hurt if I sit too long. I
was haunted by the thought of Lola, the severity of that gaunt old painted
face, her boldness of stride in the perilous high heels, her vitality, ducking
into the Rolls. Was I competing with her as I trod the carpet between the
fireplace and the Chesterfield? I always thought the high life, the cigarettes,
would see her off. Even in our fifties I thought that. But at eighty she has a
voracious, knowing look. She was always the superior older girl, one step ahead
of me. But in that final important matter, I will be ahead of her, while
she’ll live on to be a hundred. I will not be able to publish in my
lifetime.
The Rolls
must have turned my head, because the car when it came—fifteen minutes
late—was a disappointment. Such things do not usually trouble me. It was
a dusty minicab, whose rear seat was covered in nylon fur with a zebra pattern.
But the driver, Michael, was a cheerful West Indian lad who took my case and
made a fuss of sliding the front passenger seat forward for me. Once it was
established that I would not tolerate the thumping music at any volume from the
speakers on the ledge behind my head, and he had recovered from a little
sulkiness, we got along well and talked about families. He had never known his
father, and his mother was a doctor at the Middlesex Hospital. He himself
graduated in law from Leicester University, and now he was going to the LSE to
write a doctoral thesis on law and poverty in the third world. As we headed out
of London by the dismal Westway, he gave me his condensed version: no property
law, therefore no capital, therefore no wealth.