The Queen of the Tambourine (10 page)

“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.

Round the edge of the world something looked at me. A very distant, scarce-remembered relation—happiness. Like frightened, struggling Anne, happiness had slipped my mind since I had been persuaded that the world is composed entirely of super-women now, like you, Joan, in your brave defection. More anon, anon, anon—

 

Your admiring, searching, separate friend, E. P.

 

March marches on

 

Dear old J.,

 

Continuum, continuum.

I dressed carefully for the Creative Writing Class and stood in the window, waiting. When Anne's car drew up I could see the bulk of another person beside her and Anne's head turned towards it, nodding up and down in earnest conversation. She began to leave the car with firm tread but then put her head back in the car again and continued to talk, one arm conducting music in the air. She turned and looked up at the house like a general squaring up to a hard campaign.

“Just ready.” I was all smiles and she looked relieved, I suppose because I was in a dress and not the usual dressing-gown or zip jacket. “Eliza, lovely! I keep meaning to say—what amazing earrings. This is Pixie, Pixie Leak.”

The substantial form in the passenger seat—I'd sat myself in the back—did not show by a tremor any awareness of me, but stared ahead. “Pixie—Eliza Peabody.” Maybe there was a sound, though it might have been only the creaking of clothes. I could not see her face at all, nor yet her hair for it was covered by a yachting cap. Shoulders were encased in army-surplus, painted with camouflage, and a leather jerkin. We proceeded down Common Side and turned in at a beautifully painted Victorian house facing the Common and otherwise surrounded by vast gardens. Steel mesh covered all the windows and the eaves held the usual alarms. A bell beside the oaken door was held steady by a vertical bar of barley-sugar wrought-iron fit for the entrance to some castle keep.

It reminded me of the sinister Chinese houses in Penang where everyone's afraid of the chop. “Are they Chinese?” I asked and was rewarded by blankness.

“She's married to a very successful QC,” said Anne. “He could have done very well if he hadn't gone into Building Contracts.”

“He doesn't seem to have done too badly.”

“I mean,” said Anne, “he will never be exactly the
crème de la
. It rather shows in the light fittings. I mean, he makes a frightful lot of money but they know none of the right people. He's very musical and she's a bit highbrow. But
awfully
nice.”

A wisp of Philippino answered the bell's clang and the three of us trooped into a drawing room which could easily have doubled for a ballroom or the site of a mid-term investiture at Buckingham Palace. Twenty or so very well-dressed women were sitting easily about in cheerful communion. Rather apart, behind a coffee table sat a small, despondent man. It was exactly like a meeting of the ‘Wives' Fell. in which another Eliza once had ta'en delight.

“But I thought it was going to be something to do with a college?”

“Oh no,” said Anne, “I never said that. It's pretty high-powered all the same. The seated man is Lancaster.”

“It sounds like one of Shakespeare's
Histories
.”

“Hush Eliza. He's very shy—and terribly sensitive as a result of being abused as a child.”

“How awful. But can he bear to talk about it?”

“Talking about it and writing about it have saved his sanity. He feels he has a mission to prepare people for the Thatcher World.”

“I'd have thought most people here subscribe to the Thatcher World.”

“Oh, not when it comes to child-abuse, Eliza. Nobody here could countenance child-abuse. Please give us that.”

“But does Mrs. Thatcher? I shouldn't think she'd ever have had the time. Aren't her children rather loyal and well set-up?”

“Of
course
Mrs. Thatcher didn't practise child—really, Eliza. You know exactly what I mean. But child-abuse must be brought right into the open. All over the world. Children must learn where danger is likely to strike and in the present political climate where could they learn better than in children's books.”

This seemed to me a mystifying statement and made Pixie Leak produce a sudden and enormous clearing of the throat. I felt her eyes on me. I said, “Yes. Well. I suppose
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
. . .”

“Well exactly. Precisely. You have hit it. The Attachment Dynamic and the Concept of Ego Strength. It is all a question of perceiving and recognising reality and dealing with unpleasure. The child must become aware of the sin of others.”

“
Snow White
was C. S. Lewis's favourite film,” I said, rather to fill a silence. “He and his brother used to go on Saturday afternoons.”

“Well, exactly.”

“Yes, but they were both about fifty.”

“Eliza,” said Anne, “do be careful. There are some very bright people here.”

“C. S. Lewis was very bright.”

“Be quiet at once, Eliza.”

Pixie Leak was being whisperingly introduced now to the women nearest her in the semi-circle of comfortable chairs. They all nodded and smiled widely as she glowered about for something with a straighter back, then climbed out of her jerkin and the army-surplus to reveal a gigantic T-shirt with “Hard Rock Café” inscribed across the front. Her face above, as she settled with forward-thrusting brows, was grim. Below the T-shirt were knickerbockers, yellow socks and bright brown brogues. I was amazed to find that the brogues sent through me a pang of pure love and I found myself thinking of my beloved Girl-Guide Captain long ago. I said, “Anne—do you think—have you ever thought I might be queer?”

“Oh Eliza—
please
.”

Cups of tea were being passed round (Royal Worcester, Lapsang Souchong) and the little table was moved nearer to the waiting speaker who then placed his notebook more centrally upon it. Then he picked the book up again and, foolishly, the tea-cup and saucer, too. He found that if he held the notebook in the same hand as the saucer he could drink from the cup. We watched with respect, while all kinds of bits of paper began to fall out of the notebook and a number of women began to crawl about the floor picking them up. A retarded child who had been sitting quietly on the floor near her mother suddenly burst out laughing and blew some raspberries at everyone and Lady Gant, sitting behind me, said, “She ought to leave that child at home. It's very upsetting for everybody to have to see it.” Pixie Leak gave a sigh and the woman whose house it seemed to be, whose husband didn't know the right people, and who was dressed in rich brown silk jersey for which you should really be very thin indeed, went and stood beside Lancaster Forbes and smiled, brilliant-eyed, for silence. For silence at once.

Oh Joan. What good women. So concerned about children. So experienced. How efficient they all are, every one of their children at this moment safely at school or with its nanny, beautifully managed, secure. Each child in a little while will be gathered up from school, taken home to a prosperous shining house, tea ready on the table, supper in the mike. Oh, all these women with their well-washed hair, hand-made sweaters, sun-tans from second homes in Corfu or Unknown Tuscany. And good, you know. Not decadent, jealous, spiteful, cruel; few of them drunks, hopped up on amphetamines, or damped down by tranquillisers. All of them obediently divorced from nicotine, all keeping their appointments for cancer scans, dental check-ups, cholesterol counts and their diaries in sensible order for Ascot, Hurlingham, Covent Garden, tickets for Glyndebourne and the Tennis. Rich they are, rich fawn and dull, like marrons glacés. But good. Serious about Bridge, a bit heavy on the gin—but otherwise blameless, blameless. How odd that, when the story goes that women now are dragged down often to suicide by full-time marriage and parenthood, here are these survivors sitting well-groomed, good-looking, confident, articulate (how well brown-silk-jersey is talking) and having the time of their lives. They are the organisers of complex social lives, several houses and maybe a central-London apartment belonging to the company; blind-eyed when necessary to the other woman who may use it, too; and linchpins of their husbands' careers, as their children get themselves about the world to foreign friends in Mexico and Peru at an age when their grandparents were still being taken for short walks in the park.

I looked at the women, at the speaker designate, at Pixie. Leak pulsating from her throne and thought, It's no good, this is not my tribe. My trouble is that I never knew my tribe. I've always been on the edge, just hanging about. Nowhere. And I've never faced it.

I could not understand one word of the talk that now followed. Lancaster Forbes spoke in a weary little voice as if at any moment he might burst into tears and in a vocabulary that was new to me; but this may have been because I found it hard to concentrate after the first few moments when he dropped his half-full tea-cup on the floor and brown-jersey crept forward on hands and knees with a damp cloth, rubbing vigorously first the carpet and then the speaker's feet, then the legs of his little table and now and again, at her whim, making dabs at his trouser-legs and even lap. When she had crept back, the retarded child crept forward and flung her arms round Mr. Forbes's knees and made some high-pitched hooting noises. Everybody smiled affectionately at this except for Lady Gant, who made a noise like a demented horse, and Mr. Lancaster who gave the child a nasty shove and made her cry. Most of the audience however were polite and very disciplined, and as the talk drew to a close and Mr. Forbes took out a handkerchief and scrubbed at his face and hands—the room boiled with central-heating—there was a flutter of clapping and exclamations of pleasure.

Anne Robin then moved the vote of thanks. She had not introduced the speaker, she said, because everybody in the room knew him (the retarded child cried “Whoops”) and respected him so well (Pixie Leak cleared her throat again at this and flung the knee of one knickerbocker over the other) and there could be no family in the land that did not know and love him, too. There were many autograph-albums in the room, she knew, waiting to be presented to testify to this, and a number of paperbacks everyone hoped that he would sign. She knew that Mr. Forbes would not mind (he gave a skimmed-milk smile) and now it was her pleasure to thank him for his very interesting talk, assure him that we would all now be brushing up our ideas on the ego and the id, sibling politics and psychological proximity, and to say that he had kindly agreed to answer questions. There was the customary, English, thoughtful silence then, and Pixie did another fling of the legs.

“Our speaker will of course understand,” said Anne, stoutly, “that this talk has been a very
rare
treat, for we seldom, as full-time wives and mothers, hear much about the
theory
of children's literature.” She looked rather desperately round at Pixie who closed her eyes. “Usually children's writers—and I'm afraid I am one of them—start writing without giving thought to the
theory
. I myself came late to this group which was formed by those so interested in child-psychology that they had decided to write books themselves. We are a group who meet largely to discuss the work that has emerged from our findings—little stories that support our views—and also of course just to talk about whatever comes into our heads, which is when the nitty-gritty really takes place.

“But,” she went doggedly on, “there is someone here today we are glad to say
well
-qualified to take up some of the speaker's points and even perhaps” (she looked glaringly and commandingly in P. Leak's direction) “query some of them?”

But P. Leak was smoking a very loose-looking cigarette with tobacco hanging out of it like hairs from a nose. Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed. At the mention of her, Lancaster Bumblebee had sunk down into himself in order to consider his teaspoon.

“I was wondering,” I said, and everybody jumped. Some of them looked round and several whispered together and nodded and smiled encouragingly. “I have been
wondering
why it is that we are really here.”

Lancaster looked quickly up, then down.

“I mean, is there a theory of children's literature? I thought it was just books children liked.” My voice faded before their stares. These women after all lived (Joan) with children every day. “I've always thought that children do the teaching really. That's why I'm a bit scared of them.”

“You'll see what we mean in a minute, Eliza,” somebody called, kindly. “We're going to have a chance to stretch our minds. Soon we are going to
perform
.”

“Let's see,” said Anne. “Yes, four of us I think. We are going to read aloud from our works and then Mr. Forbes and Pixie Leak
whom I am proud to say we have inveigled here today
” (glare) “are to comment. Pixie, as most of us know, is the winner of the Elfin Goblet, the Cow and Calf Ewer and the Queen Mab Shield and in her private capacity is a dear friend of many of us and lives in East Molesey. Pixie.”

Then Lancaster Forbes stood up knocked over his table for the last time, muttered that he was sorry but he had to go and catch his bus and made for the door in leaps, with brown-jersey rushing after him, flapping a cheque.

There was understanding, kindly laughter.

“
Terribly
shy,” someone was saying. “We were so lucky to get him. He's so busy. You know he thinks every morning, writes every afternoon and in the evening thinks again. It's the basis of his canon.”

“I wonder who does his shirts?” I asked, but nobody listened.

“And only ten pounds and expenses. And so
frightfully
good. You'd never think anyone so small could have written
The Video-Nasty Man
and
The Sex Machine
.”

“Grizel adores
The Sex Machine
,” said a limpid girl in apple green. “It's cathartic, isn't it? The girl's initiation in the ceremonial killing of the mother of the tribe. Pre-Communist. Well, pretty well pre-everything.”

They all began to speak at once about politics and the inevitability of the oligarch but I kept my mouth shut because of what Charles had once said. A Philippino with sad eyes came in with a tea-trolley stacked with wonderful lemon and orange shortcakes and home-made chocolate brownies. Fresh hot tea.