Homesickness (7 page)

No one else quite knew what to say. As they walked to the final room, their feeling of bafflement and annoyance increased. It showed in Mrs Cathcart: fuming, looking grim. All along she hadn't wanted to come. On one side a series of windows revealed the jungle, the vines and teeming density, less than an arm's length away. Some slowly flapping butterflies resembled tropical fish. Sheila who'd glanced, looked again. She thought she had seen a dark face.

At the end of this room a group of silent African school children looked up at the wall, moved their heads left and right, and filed out.

‘I say, isn't he that man from the hotel?' Sasha whispered.

A man looking up at the wall turned.

‘Howdy!' Doug ambled over; you could always go up to a fellow Australian. ‘What d'you make of this?' he nodded, putting knowledge into his disgust.

The others were reading the message on the wall. It was neatly hand-lettered.

THE LANGUAGE HAS BEEN TWISTED TO DESCRIBE THESE TYPES. TO ACCOMODATE THEM? PERHAPS WE HAVE BEEN TOO LAVISH
.

Large neat lettering, no spelling errors, followed:

Your psychopaths and aristocrats, knights, pretenders and upstarts, padishah, sahib, arch-dukes, their genitures, governor-general, king and queen, consorts, generalissimo and admirals, plutocrats, British prime minister,

It ran in upper and lower, apparently jumbled. The words were not listed alphabetically, but to the rhythm of drums, calypsocane. This became increasingly apparent as Gwen read out the words to her husband. All together now:

ministers, The President, rhetorical reverends, Pope, demagogues, chancellors, ordinary members, hamstrung burghers, whip, hospodars and sycophants, obeisant encomiast, the High Commissioner, duce, orators of note, monomaniacs, viceroy, vicar viscounts, legal tenders, governor and Colonial Secretaries with plenipotentiaries, panders, the chinless wonders, deputies, the Speaker, rigid premier

It soon became choked in general terms and abuse. Most of them stopped reading the rest.

you lymphatic despots, lick-boots, dictator and cunctators, head prefects, idiot pierrots,
banya
, cryptoneurous imperialists, usurpers and backstabbers, bandogs, buggers, swine, yellow pettifoggers, major-domo, pink mad prince charming, old boy, smiling margrave, cacique, placebo, man, Jack the Ripper, Frer, bloody parvenu, mutillids, silver Order of Thistles, that ridiculous, mamamouchi, the lackeys, all griffins, halichrondroids, koobsburners, satrap, mawworms, cadaveric committees, colonialists, blue-eyed boys, seignior, pilgarlics, fanakalo, all acrita, heresiarch, pygmies!

‘It was only words. I wouldn't get too steamed up,' said Atlas outside.

‘Why,' Sasha's friend complained, ‘do they always have to bring politics into it? We came for a holiday.'

‘I thought it was a pretty poor show,' nodded Doug gravely.

They were relieved to be outside, standing and looking around, but they remained close to the building, the jungle pressing in on all sides. The clearing was small, a square of lawn. Birds could be heard chattering which didn't help. It felt like standing on a new postage stamp of a strange alien country: one that is proud of its silent white architecture. When Phillip North went out along one serrated edge and tugged at a few leaves and kicked at a vine Sheila wished he wouldn't. The slightest pull could bring the whole forest forward and over them.

To photograph the building Kaddok had fitted a special wide-angle lens and even then had to lean back and half disappear into the jungle, his elbows supported by his loyal wife. While Atlas remained with the rest Borelli moved out onto the lawn and leaning on his walking stick surveyed the architecture.

‘It's not as bad as you think, Gerald. In fact, I'd say it's quite a radical design. Straight lines are anathema to these people, remember. Their experience is mainly coned and rounded.'

Gerald shrugged. ‘You'll probably find it's designed by an American.'

Hofmann looked at his watch as Louisa wiped her forehead.

‘This is ridiculous,' Mrs Cathcart hissed. ‘All the way—'

Sasha called out. ‘Come on. This is giving us the creeps. Where's our driver?'

North was talking to him in the corner. He turned:

‘For an extra few shillings he says he'll take us back a different way. Agreed?'

Achchha
, seated in the bush again it was good to take the weight off the feet, to sit back; and there was the prospect of further scenes unfolding, and at the end at dusk the hotel with its now-familiar entrance foyer, its chairs and mustard carpet upstairs, a hot shower.

Borelli put his chin between the Hofmanns and cleared his throat, ‘Didn't you feel, well, I mean, a bit small in there?'

Louisa looked at him and laughed.

Hofmann didn't turn from the window. ‘It was almost as bad as the place yesterday, whatever it was called.'

Across the aisle Garry was telling Violet, ‘I'm sorry, but Africa just isn't my scene.'

‘The Museum of Handicrafts yesterday? I liked that.' Borelli stared at Louisa. ‘But didn't you?'

‘I certainly did not!' she laughed again.

‘If they want foreign exchange,' Ken Hofmann said (another long sentence for him), ‘they're sure going about it the wrong way.'

‘Today's, you'd have to admit, was extremely well done. And it's had its effect. We are a shade different from when we arrived. The damage is done. There's a little worm inside our heads.' He laughed. ‘And there's nothing we can do about it.'

But here Hofmann swung around with the rest to see the galloping giraffes and Borelli looked closely at her. ‘Then what is it you're interested in?' he asked. Louisa looked out the other side and frowned. ‘You're making our holiday sound very complicated,' she smiled.

Borelli nodded and leaned back in his own seat.

They were speeding across a dun-coloured plain, across the afternoon. The mimosa trees and piles of boulders broke the horizon. Spasmodic cultivation at mid-distance: sweet potatoes chiefly, some maize. Such right-angled patches here were distinctly unnatural, man-made. Over to the right a distant village, ‘Leon,' Mrs Kaddok suddenly pointed, ‘would like to take his photographs. Do you mind?'

Garry Atlas immediately gave two loud sharp claps to the driver. He slowed down and turned. ‘Ah!' Sheila cried. Stock pigeons flew up from the verge and one hit the windscreen. The bus went on to the village.

‘But they're beau-tiful!' Sasha whispered as they stepped out. ‘Look at her.'

The village women had remained squatting around their cooking fires: smooth dark bodies, their shaved heads. A young girl was pregnant. Violet Hopper and Louisa Hofmann both had their sunglasses resting up on their hair and didn't say anything but gave them an interested smile. Bold as brass then Mrs Cathcart went up and casually stood beside a group. Pale-skinned and holding the handbag she suddenly appeared to be burdened with superfluous weights—the extra pale-blue cardigan, sunglasses, gold watch—and by her flesh which spread out and fell beyond her basic skull, camouflage. It was further aggravated or even symbolised by her hair: uplifted, distinctly caliological. It tilted like a frail tower. By comparison, the shaven heads of the village women were close to the original: sculptural, flowing into their bodies. Yet Mrs Cathcart stood around unaware. Some of the others became awkward. They found their shoes clattered on the white ground.

Louisa watched Borelli gazing at a young girl. She had a brightly coloured greegree high on one arm, and wide solemn lips. Seeing Borelli she cupped her hand over her mouth.

‘I could stay here a few years,' Garry Atlas told North. Nudge, nudge. ‘What d'you reckon?'

North suddenly cleared his throat loudly. Cathcart was peering inside the nearest round hut: travel broadens the mind. And Mrs Cathcart began pulling faces. There must have been a smell nearby. Or was it the dirt? Cross-eyed goats watched; dogs with sores trotted in and out among shards. Holding up money and pointing, Hofmann tried to buy a woman's necklace, but she kept laughing and glancing at her friends. ‘Good, good, that's it, good,' Kaddok kept saying, shooting close up: women, balloon-bellied children, goats, their cooking pots and huts. Rapidly reloading in the shade he fumbled, such was his eagerness.

On the ground lay large squashed insects. A dry wind rolled brittle carcasses among the huts. Bending down North smoothed the dust and inspected like a geomancer:
Locusta migratoria
. Wide pronotum, or dorsal selerite, yellow and black (gregarious phase). Characterised by short horns. Locust, originally from
lobster
? Could be. A plague here: been? gone? In many countries used for food. Balance; revenge.

‘Take it off, someone! Quickly!' Sasha screamed, both hands over her ears.

‘Who did that?' Violet demanded. Garry lifted a long locust from Sasha's shoulder and stamped on it. The old women of the village were all laughing: toothless, with jewellery jingling. Their dogs began barking and ran around in circles. It seemed to the group they were liked, or had been accepted, and at such short notice.

The Cathcarts came back to the bus, satisfied. Doug beamed a bit to show their approval. These people were all right. Some of the women stood up, breasts swinging, and children crowded around the metal door, staring. The driver started the engine.

Mrs Cathcart bent down before getting in.

‘And what's this little tacker's name?'

The boy pointed to himself:

‘Oxford University Press.'

‘She means your name,' Doug put in, encouraging.

The boy nodded.

‘Oxford University Press.'

‘That's nice. Doug, give him a coin. What would you like to be, dear, when you grow up?'

The boy looked up at Mrs Cathcart. The driver began revving the four-cylinder engine.

‘A tourist.'

2

Heavy stone: bevelled edges. If not bevelled, the edges blended into the cement-coloured (overcast) sky. The downpipes of houses, the edges of elms and the poles, the outline of a man's nose and forehead blur with the air, a type of barnacle or optical protoplasm—opposite to the startling clarity of the Southern Hemisphere, There was a heavy steadiness. Untidy stateliness. Even the air seemed old.

Permanence (stone), ancient power of seats and establishments, stone fingertips and pigeon shit: grey, all weighed down and rained upon.

Order, order! Time had worn channels in the city, but smoothed the faces of the English. In a bus which suffered from respiratory problems the group gradually approached the centre, channelled by the houses and bevelled hedges which immediately closed in behind (the jungle in Africa, the maze at Hampton Court); yet once at the centre there was no ‘centre'. It was somewhere else. Rolls/Bentleys blurred past all aglitter, tall cabs knocked on diesel—immensely practical; and Jaguars, dark Daimlers with the gold line hand-painted along the side (patience: handed down), and small Triumphs, labouring Hillmans, Morgans and many Morrises—miles of Oxfords and Minors, like those rows of trimmed houses. Yet at the same time London offered to them an instant gaiety. Not only with its little window boxes and the double-deckers the colour of geraniums, but in the language; theirs again. Messages were everywhere. And there was gaiety, subtle and yet explicit, in the acceptance of civic channels, resulting in a pedestrian smoothness. Such helpful hand signals and zebra crossings painted without Africa's wild undulations, the Bobby's nylon sleeves of special iridescent dye; immensely practical. Possibilities and maybes, perhaps, actually: almost a gaiety.

Let us stick to the facts. The hotel was a converted wing of the British Museum, in the WC2 district of public lavatories and map shops. Pedestrian pairs consulted maps, many wearing the nylon parka and glasses, looking up like stunned mullets at street signs. Americans sat on steps. Outside the hotel a Cockney sold dying flowers.

Like the rest of the museum their wing was well known for the quality of its echo, its long avenues of linoleum. Fitted with coiled heaters and the cream iron bed the rooms resembled more a hospital, the Platonic idea of a hospital, and evidently to dispel such a ridiculous impression, each room had been given a colourful Mughal miniature from the Museum's reserve collection—though somehow the one over Sheila's bed was an erotic gouache (Nepalese?) showing a Tantric couple locked in intercourse, the man leaning back on an elbow pulling on a brass hookah. The bathroom furniture was all-white, hair-cracked, vitreous. The coil heaters must have been old too, for they were prone to a kind of throat-clearing, without any warning. In certain rooms it verged on the obscene. At first Sheila stood back alarmed, for her radiator had vibrated and complained as she spread a towel on it to dry. Sasha and Violet, sharing a room, couldn't help sitting down and laughing at theirs. The Cathcarts were a bit peeved. This hotel had baths, but no showers. Already Gerald had left in high spirits, setting out for the National Gallery; in London his face and walk were transformed.

There existed a pleasant feeling of freedom, of this vast city offering itself. It was all there, waiting. They could go where they liked, where they chose. While the rest of London was working they could stand and watch, and it felt luxurious. A shoal of Japanese had also assembled in the foyer, their leader holding up a metal flag. Doug who was going to Australia House nudged his wife. Those little Japs: you had to laugh. Their leader adjusted a tiny TV set fixed to his lapel which instantly showed, out of the corner of his eye, when one in the group strayed.

The stipple effect blurring London increased the minute they stepped out and walked. They immediately proceeded to lose themselves among the columns and grey type of a vast newspaper, interrupted by half-remembered photographs (Piccadilly Circus!). A foot occasionally slipped into the gutter, tilting their vision; and as in a newspaper they glanced ahead, anticipating, while still ‘reading' something close at hand. They skipped most advertisements. They came upon the solid facades of places usually found on the front page, the source of editorials and powerful headlines: Number 10 and 11, the old Foreign Office, House of Commons, grubby Buckingham Palace (to Borelli, ‘eyesaw Buckingham Palace')…

Further along were the bronze doors of the city, the old bowler hat and awfully discreet countenance of the waiting chauffeurs (board meetings take place alongside the footpath), which gradually suggested the apparent tranquil sea and attendant tidal actions of stock market quotations, produced daily, and big deals (floats), announcements across tables. The theatre section: linguistic electroliers, sentences of critics! And some when they went on further turned into new areas and noticed how the layout and language altered sharply. Fonts switched to sans bold: small traders dropping their aitches. Page numbers were sometimes written in chalk. They entered the Classified Section, small types flogging trusses and stockings, uniforms, exploded armchairs, tangled coat-hangers, and shop-soiled blankets where you have to read between the lines. Sex shops; mail order only. And leaves rustled like loose pages. Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park. A Wolseley accelerated out of Scotland Yard. Gee, it was good. The sun came out. The Kaddoks stopped and checked the directory,
London A-to-Z
—doesn't it resemble a proofreader's handbook? Of course, some turned back to the retail advertisements for there was Boots,
Aquascutum
(in italics) for raincoats and elastic-sided boots, look, Libertys, Simpsons of Piccadilly; Sasha had pointed to Selfridges and steered Violet in. The others simply drifted like lost sheep, stopping at random. They became tired—blinking their eyes. A grey sludge underfoot felt like pulped newsprint and words, discarded sentences, shades of opinion and history. To them it was a further blurring of distinctions. London was the home of the semicolon; also a grand depository of facts. The Cathcarts found their way to Australia House where it was easy. They could sit down beneath the chandeliers and Brangwyns, and leaf through their own newspapers, amid the sounds and brown appearances of their own people.

In St James that afternoon several world records were shattered. Arriving early the Hofmanns sat in seats which had apparently been reserved for Arabs. Nothing was said of course but the adroit auctioneer with the carrot-coloured shoes and the Etonian's tie clearly accepted Hofmann's occasional nodding with disdain. Before long they were surrounded by silent white-robed Arabs who had filed in, and Louisa put her sunglasses back on. The musk-perfumed playboy seated beside her kept losing his chappal and looking at her sideways as he bent forward, brushing her ankle, her knee, sending her mind back to other places: filmy odalisque? Hofmann meanwhile looked around at the oils hanging one above the other, some falling out of their frames, and parallel sunbeams from the skylight bathed the cool chinless wonder at the lectern in a nimbus much favoured by the Dutch Old Masters.

First to go was an early cornucopia, oil in canvas, about three yards long, and so darkly varnished or neglected it was almost monochrome. Bidding began slowly. The auctioneer murmured the platitude: ‘Really, the gilt frame alone is worth
that
…' It then passed the previous record as Louisa's neighbour kept idly raising his finger, but he remained gazing at her for too long and it went to a Bangladeshi businessman seated in front.

Hofmann wanted a major stripe painting, long and horizontal, American, c. 1964. This too would have been a good three yards long, though it was barely eighteen inches high. Again it was almost monochrome: grey strips stained into duck. So it seemed to blur like a sentence or London's traffic which could be heard faintly outside. Hofmann wanted it and Louisa watched as he joined in: his face now a petulant boy's. He frowned as he kept nodding—short, stubborn nods. Transparent bulbs of perspiration popped out above his lip. All his attention concentrated on the Old Boy but when the five figures passed the world record set by a similar work he seemed to falter. His eyes slid off the lectern, down, and to the right. He seemed hurt. Louisa turned to see her neighbour raise his jewelled finger again. She placed her hand on him, restraining him—and flushed.
What was that?
The Arab grinned. Louisa moved her leg from his.

There was a teeming stillness. They remained at its centre.

‘Hon,' Ken was whispering, ‘it's ours. I got it. Isn't she a beauty? It's for you. I bought it almost for you.'

A dealer with superbly combed hair swung around.

‘Do you mind? We happen to be working. Or some of us are trying to.' But then seeing the Arabs he suddenly smiled, ‘Excuse me…'

Outside on the footpath Hofmann kept thudding his gloved hands and shaking his head at the barely legible name in brass of the venerable auction house. He could visualise how the recently won picture would fit into his collection. It was Louisa's turn to be silent. Almost to himself Hofmann nodded, ‘Very good. Yes, very good. I'd say it's easily the best one in Australia. There'll be nothing like it. Hey, listen, come with me.'

He took her arm.

Even on Old Bond Street they stood out as a fine-looking pair. Both were trim and radiated that good health and well-earned time on their hands. Both had woollen coats, buttoned to their chins.

Although Louisa didn't want another Cartier bag he walked in and bought her a new one of special grey lizard skin. It was quite out of the ordinary. At a certain angle in daylight it had been noticed that the tessellated skin reproduced—quite by chance—the pattern of a ten pound note. It was like a poor but distinct photograph. The late Charles Darwin, coughed the manager, would undoubtedly have been pleased. Quite unusual, what? Hence, its premium price. The Natural History Museum had expressed an interest…

Hofmann asked for the contents of Louisa's old bag to be tipped into the new one, and to Louisa he proposed they return to the hotel and have a drink. ‘Would you like that? Are you quite positive?'

Louisa turned her head.

‘Or what would you like to do?'

She stood on the footpath wondering. Feeling as vague as London's outlines she went along with him.

Sheila Standish had gone out to Wimbledon, the first to reach the Sports Pages, and was on her way back, the black cab slicing through the houses. An aunt lived at Wimbledon and whenever in London Sheila always liked to go there first. How many centre-court finals had they seen together? Throughout the nineteen-sixties the longest sighs and woman-shrieks heard on the tennis broadcasts came from those two in the best seats. A good men's singles would leave them exhausted but chattering. Her aunt had skinny legs and a brown neck. Lately she had grown abruptly old, and for two seasons running Sheila had missed Wimbledon, though she always looked forward to seeing her aunt. This time when the driver found the street she suddenly directed him on to ‘Wimbledon', the courts just around the corner.

There was no tennis but lines of tourist buses were queued outside. Outside the Players' Entrance a Cockney entrepreneur gave tanned Americans a yellow racket with broken strings to hold, and ran back and—‘Hold it, luv. Gotcha'—took their photographs. Nearby a partner had set up a small tent displaying Famous Tennis Balls plus other artifacts of the game: chlorophyll-stained canvas shoes, a Czech sunvisor, early athletic supports and some frilled knickers all worn at some time by the Great. It was the smallest museum Sheila was ever likely to see. The holiday crowd waited patiently in line, and Sheila walked a little around the stadium walls. In the wet grass she noticed several lost balls, resting like cannon shot, and was startled to see the stadium's concrete marred by graffiti, most of it obscene—
BALLS TO TENNIS
—in a variety of chalks and sprayed colours. Among the limericks, the lonely confessions and phone numbers, one message stood out. It had been sprayed through a template, repeated all over, professionally.

AUSTRALIANS ACE

That wasn't dirty. It was often true. Sheila smiled a little at the recognition. ‘Australia' otherwise tended to disappear in such a vast place as London.

Behind her, a man's voice broke in.

‘What d'you know…?'

Sheila's eyes and forehead went haywire. She turned.

‘Africa, right? Just the day before yesterday. Well isn't this something? What was our crummy hotel?'

‘The Safari International…' Sheila frowned, confused.

‘Bugger me,' the tall man went on, ‘this is something to write home about.'

His wide hairy wrists and a man's knuckle bone.

Thank goodness: they were walking back to the crowd. Around forty, he was tall with worn straight features. He asked her name.

‘And where do you come from, Sheila?'

‘In Sydney.'

‘Sydney or the bush,' he roared. ‘Aye, Sheila?'

Sheila smiled.

‘Listen, what are you doing now? Could you do with a cup of tea or something? There'd have to be a place around here.'

Glancing, Sheila thought he might be a country man originally, or even now; and so perhaps they could have talked. But she consulted her watch more out of habit.

‘I can't. I'm afraid I can't.'

‘All righty. No problems.'

Keeping his cigarette in his mouth he squinted exaggeratedly through the smoke as he wrote down her hotel. ‘Good on you. I'll be in touch, Sheila. Be good.'