Authors: Sylvia Smith
Mr and Mrs Porter were the parents of my ex-boyfriend Neil who died after a long illness at the age of thirty-two. We became friendly and I called them
â
Mr and Mrs P'.
O
ne Sunday morning I joined them on their weekly excursion to Club Row market, travelling there and back in Mr P's car.
Mr P was a lousy driver, not being able to see too clearly, but apart from going through a set of red traffic lights and successfully avoiding a collision with the three cars travelling towards us, our journey was uneventful. We reached our destination and he parked in one of the side streets. Mrs P and I left him in the car and set off on our shopping trip.
As we neared the market we saw a traffic warden writing out a ticket for a vehicle illegally parked. A man from the group ahead of us called out to him 'Shouldn't you be in church?'
Mr P was Canadian. In later years he was crippled with arthritis â wearing leg irons and using crutches to help him walk. He had been a soldier based in London during the last war, where he met Mrs P. They began married life in Canada but Mrs P could not tolerate the isolation of the countryside and returned home with one-year-old Neil Her husband quickly followed her and they settled in London, having a daughter, Lorraine, some years later. Lorraine emigrated to Canada at the age of nineteen. I was twenty-seven when I first met Neil and his family.
S
hortly after Neil's death I fell out with my parents and moved into Mr and Mrs P's home as a paying lodger, an arrangement that suited all three of us,
Mrs P worked part-time in a factory and spent the remainder of her life in her kitchen watching a black and white TV set. At this time Mr P was crippled and sat in an armchair in the lounge
during the day watching a coloured television and eating the meals his wife served him on a tray. At night he slept in the second reception room downstairs as the upstairs bedrooms were too difficult for him to reach.
I found Mrs P to be a very unpleasant woman. After living in her home for a few months we ceased to be the good friends we had been and would simply acknowledge one another. Every Friday I gave her my rent I expected her to give me notice to leave but that didn't happen.
Mr P and I had tremendous fun. I shared his lounge most evenings and we would make jokes and have two pence bets on whether a certain celebrity had died or who they had married. He usually lost his money. The day before I left for a skiing holiday he said, âI hate to tell you this Sylvia, but it's been on the news that there are terrible avalanches in Austria and some people are stranded out there for possibly another week until they can clear the snow.' I realised he was joking and laughed, but he continued, âIf I were you Sylvia I'd contact your travel agent.'
It was a Tuesday morning shortly before Christmas. I was about to leave for the office when there was a knock at the street door. As Mrs P was still asleep and Mr P had difficulty walking, I opened it to see a middle-aged man holding out a cap. He asked, âWould you like to donate?' Thinking he was some type of charity
worker I replied, âNo thank you,' and closed the door. I hastened around, picking up my handbag and car keys, and left the house, saying âGoodbye' to Mr P. As soon as I returned in the evening he called out to me, âSylvia, that feller knocking on the door this morning was one of the dustmen and he was asking you to give them some money for their Christmas box. As you turned him away, when he emptied the dustbin in the cart instead of putting it down gently in the front garden he threw it all the way up the path until it hit the street door.'Â
All three of us became aware we had a problem. The electric light bulb in the lounge wore out and it was decided I was our only hope, despite the fact that I had no experience of looking after a house and was unable to do the most simple of tasks. Mrs P brought the ladders in â she was far too fat to climb them and Mr P couldn't. I clambered up them whilst they held on to me as tightly as possible. Unfortunately I don't like heights. The ladders were old and very rickety and the higher I ascended the more they wobbled. I managed to take the bulb out of its socket as the ladders swayed but I couldn't fit the new one in. After several failed attempts we realised we would have to find another solution. As the days passed by all the light bulbs in the house slowly burnt out. Luckily, Mrs P had a
great variety of bedside lamps and she placed one in every room.
Our next hurdle was the washing line in the back garden. The wooden pole shattered and the line fell on to the grass. Neither Mrs P nor I knew how to repair it.
The three of us had a meeting and it was decided we should wait until we had a visitor.
Eventually Mrs P's sister and her husband called. As soon as her brother-in-law stepped into the house Mrs P persuaded him to replace all the light bulbs and repair the washing line.
We occasionally had a dinner guest. He was a young Indian Mrs P had befriended in the factory where she worked. At our request he would wander around the house carrying out minor repairs.
My relationship with Mrs P went from bad to worse and came to a head one Friday evening. I was frying sausages in the kitchen when she came in from work. She yelled at me, âYou always rush home so you can get to the cooker before me and you always sit watching the TV in the lounge when Cliff goes to bed so I can't get in there. Get out of my kitchen.' I argued, âNo, I'm cooking my dinner and I don't rush home to get here before you and as far as the front room is concerned I don't see why you don't go in there.' This upset Mrs P further. She screamed, âGet out of my kitchen and get out of my house this instant!'
She took two steps forward and lightly punched my shoulders. As I took this to be an invitation to have a fight and I didn't relish rolling in the mud with her in the back garden, I vacated the kitchen and went upstairs to pack. As I passed the lounge Mr P said, âI'm sorry about this, Sylvia. If it was up to me you could live here forever.' I packed my things and put them into my car parked outside, then I returned to the kitchen. Mrs P shouted, âAnd don't send your father round here either.' I picked up my frying pan with my uncooked sausages in it, placed it on the passenger seat in my car, and drove home to my parents as I had nowhere else to go at such short notice.
Despite leaving his house, I telephoned Mr P at regular intervals until he died a few years later.
Michelle was twenty-six. I was thirty-five, I had a
two-week booking as a temporary secretary with
her employers. I worked in the office she shared
with two girls who were both in their twenties.
M
ichelle and the other girls made me welcome. We were soon in conversation and I settled down quite quickly. Michelle talked as she worked throughout the day and appeared to be very relaxed and at ease. I was surprised when she told me her live-in boyfriend had found himself another girlfriend and they were separating. I asked, âSurely you must be very upset?' She replied, âYes, I am but there's no point moaning about it.' She continued, âWe bought a house together seven years ago and were planning to marry when we wanted children. I thought we loved each other and he liked to go out with his friends occasionally. It didn't occur to me he was with another woman. Then last week he announced
he'd found somebody else and wanted to sell the house and set up home with her. It was the most terrible shock. Ever since then I get myself drunk every night and I usually have a few drinks before I come to work and some more in my lunch hour. Right at this moment I can just about see what I'm typing, but I can't crack up. I've got to get through this and drinking helps me.'
At the end of the week nothing had altered for Michelle, who was still hiding her unhappiness with alcohol and idle chatter.
I took my time sheet into the agency on the Friday evening. My supervisor said, âYou can't go back there next week Sylvia because you are in your thirties and the girls you're working with are all in their twenties. Their Personnel think it would be nicer if they had a younger temp.'
He was short and middle-aged. I was thirty-six
I
saw a beautiful green handbag in the window of an east London leatherware shop, but without its price tag. I entered the shop and asked the Indian shopkeeper how much it cost. He reached for the bag and passed it to me, saying, âThis is an excellent handbag in a very soft leather that I imported from France and I want seventy-five pounds for it.' It was much more than I had expected and I told him so. He showed me various cheaper bags but I didn't like any and left the shop.
I walked along the High Road and the Indian shopkeeper caught up with me. He fell into step beside me and we strode along the main road together. He asked, âCan I take you for a coffee?' I replied, âNo thank you.' Undaunted he asked, âCan I take you for a drink?' Again I replied, âNo thank you.' He then asked, âWould you like to be my wife?' I was very surprised but once again I
replied, âNo thank you.' He returned to his shop as I continued on my way.
My aunt Milly was a prim and proper old lady of
seventy-four, despite having been married twice
and the mother of two adult sons. My mother was
seventy. I was thirty-eight. The three of us had a
night out together.
A
ll three of us decided to have an evening out and we chose to go to the cinema. As neither my mother nor my aunt had much idea of what film to see the selection was left to me. I picked a Monty Python film thinking it would make us all laugh. It certainly made my mother and me laugh but not my aunt, who sat in her seat in quiet disgust with a stony expression on her face all the way through the film.
One particular tract of the film I guessed was a little too much for my aunt. Two men appeared on the screen and climbed into a cloth suit of a cow and hobbled around a field which, unfortunately for the man in the rear end of the cow, had a live bull in it. The bull didn't realise
the cow was not real and galloped across the field and had sex with it. Immediately the bull had finished, the cloth cow made its escape and staggered out of the field. The man in the rear end stepped out of the suit and, after the violent thumping he had received from the bull, he was unable to walk properly. The lower half of his body appeared to be twisted and he winced as he walked with a pronounced limp. My mother and I thought the entire scene extremely funny and laughed our heads off. I turned to see my aunt's reaction. She was sitting motionless in her seat, her eyes glued to the screen without even a flicker of a smile.
After the film had ended we left the cinema and I drove all three of us home. My mother and I were still laughing about the man in the cloth suit but my aunt sat quietly in the car without making any comment.
That was the last time I took aunt Milly to the cinema.
Ghalib was an Iraqi who had lived in London
for twenty years. We met at badminton classes
and became friends. He was forty-three. I was
thirty-eight.
G
halib decided to emigrate to England from Iraq and he chose London as his home town. Unfortunately on his arrival in the UK he did not speak any English. He enrolled immediately in English lessons. He told me it was one year before he was fairly fluent and able to stop asking people to repeat themselves. He also told me of his first trip on the London Underground. He said, âI went down the tube to go on a fairly short journey and I got totally lost. It took me four hours to find my way out again.'
Some time later Ghalib entered into a disastrous three-year marriage with an English woman. He described the relationship to me saying, âShe
stepped into my life, ruined it and then stepped out again.'
Ghalib also told me of a recent relationship he'd had with an older woman. He said, âShe was fifty-six, divorced, and had a thirty-year-old son. Our sex life was usually good but one evening we were in bed having sex together when she suddenly “blew off” and I found it so off-putting I was unable to perform and that was the end of our sex that evening.'
I used to play badminton at the sports centre every Monday evening until I sold my car and the journey became too lengthy. Ghalib very nicely offered to take me in his car every week so my badminton evenings continued. He was always asking me for a date despite my continuous, âNo thank you, Ghalib, I don't want to be anything other than friends.'
One Monday evening as Ghalib was driving me to the sports centre I noticed how crestfallen he appeared and I asked him what was wrong. He said, âI have just fallen in love with the most wonderful woman, Sylvia, but I am almost ill with worry because she has run away from me and I can't find her. I've tried phoning her lodgings but she's not there any more. I feel so bad I've been to see my doctor and he's given me tranquillisers. I just cannot bear this.' I looked at his ashen face and said, âI'm very sorry, Ghalib, but instead of
having her on your mind all the time why don't you try forgetting her?' âI just can't,' he replied. Our evening continued but he played badminton in a very subdued fashion and he drove me home making only brief replies to my conversation.
As I was worried about him I phoned him later in the week and asked, âHow are you, Ghalib?' He replied, âOh, I'm feeling better now but the situation has not resolved itself. I managed to find my lady but she refuses to see me. When I finally managed to speak to her on the telephone I told her how overwhelmed I had been by my feelings for her and she said the reason why she'd run away from me was because she'd been overwhelmed as well and had been unable to cope with her feelings for me.' I asked, âHow are things now?' He replied, âI'm afraid it's over, Sylvia. She just won't see me any more because it's all too much for her. But, oh, I remember how we hugged each other in the moonlight. It's so very sad.'
To a certain degree this put my nose out of joint as I had always thought Ghalib was mad about me. It was a slight shock to find he had amorous thoughts in another direction and I was no longer on his mind. Curious, I asked, âHow long did your relationship last, Ghalib?' âIt was only one date,' he replied.