The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches Read online

  All those years he had been trying to get into bed with me. Particularly when we went on trips. I never would. Partly because I didn’t go for him much, and partly because it was a question of self-respect. It was more, it was survival. I couldn’t let him take me over entirely. He owned my working self, but as for the rest … you are still wondering why I stayed with him? I remember you asked me, why stay with him, when you could earn four times the salary? The point is-I fitted that job of his like a … I and the job had grown up together … I had made that job, made him. He knew I wouldn’t be able to give it up. He knew that in some funny way we stood and fell together … we matched, his talents and mine, we were a team. But he got rich, did you know? He was a millionaire. Typically he used to say, what’s a million these days? And I wasn’t going to say, If it’s nothing, then give me a little of it. Pride. Okay, okay, sometimes I do wonder about that … but I think what I felt was, if I can stand this I can stand anything. I felt strong … I felt indestructible.

  You did think I slept with him, didn’t you? Everyone did. He made sure everyone did. He’d speak of me in a certain way, he’d put on that smile … if there was a big do, a first night or something, he’d take me in on his arm, and make sure everyone noticed. Caesar and his mistress. I went along with it, but I’d give him a look-and he understood all right. It was a battle, a fight to the death. I was saying. All right, but you and I know the truth. I’m not your woman and never shall be.

  That went on for years. And then they offered me the job I have now and that coincided with Caesar deciding he’d had enough, time to put his feet up.

  And all these years I’ve been thinking, you old goat, you little gauleiter, but I never slept with you.

  And there I was sitting opposite old Marie and suddenly I realized she had forgotten all about it and didn’t care. And that made me feel … I felt that I was collapsing inside, somewhere. It had been so important to me.

  But at least during the lunch I understood what had happened … his kids were still small when I finished working for Caesar. But as they grew up they would hear him talking about me, in that proprietary way of his. Robert would have got the idea. Meanwhile I was going from strength to strength. I’m very visible, you know. When I was working for him it was one thing-everyone had to think his Girl Friday slept with him. But for a long time now he’d have good reason to boast about me. If you are wondering, But where did Robert get the idea about little walks in the park and tea at the Ritz, well, God knows. But he’s a dear sweet lovely boy, he’s nice, I mean nice in himself, he’s a romantic, and so he would think that little strolls in the park and tea at the Ritz are part of the perfect love affair.

  He wrote me love letters. He obviously copied them from some pattern letters. Or perhaps he got them out of a novel. I was absolutely wowed by them, they were like something from the eighteenth century, well perhaps they were. I’d wait a few days and then send him a couple of tickets to a play or a first night. I’d see him there with a girl, and then it was with my daughter Sonia. Do you remember her? She’s beautiful. Yes, all right I can say it now … she’s like me when I was young. And that is the point.

  Robert started taking her out regularly. I thought nothing of it. I was busy. I’ve only just realized how hard I’ve worked. Why did I have to, what is it all about, okay, I had to work myself silly when I had to support the children, but even when they are off my hands … if you can call it that, none of them are ever off our hands these days, but at least they wouldn’t starve if you said, enough, that’s it, I’ve had it, don’t expect any more from me-do you know one reason I would never say that? Because I wouldn’t want to be as mean as Caesar, that’s why.

  Then, about a year ago, Marie rings me, worldly-wise, you know, and she says, ‘What do you think about our Robert and your Sonia? They’re getting married. We told him, you are too young, but of course none of them listen.’

  I’m sure you’ve already worked it all out. Robert has always wanted to be Caesar the Second. But. He’s not ambitious, you see. He doesn’t know what ambition is. He works nicely in that advertising office, and dreams about being Caesar, but he doesn’t make the connection somewhere … you need to kill yourself working, or get someone else to kill themselves working for you … he’s too nice to be successful, do you see? But if he can get his father’s mistress then he’s half-way there.

  Are you wondering how much of this my Sonia sees? Not much. She thinks I was Caesar’s mistress and hates me for it. Once I said to her, Sonia, you two children and I were stuck together in two rooms until you were twenty. You know I didn’t have men-where would I have put them? What about those trips, she says, catching me out. I said Sonia, I was so tired every night often enough I used to fall into bed with all my clothes on … well, actually I did have the occasional little fling, when I had the energy, which wasn’t often. But that has nothing to do with her. I understood something … she’s never worked hard in her life. She doesn’t know what working hard means. She doesn’t know what it means being so tired you’re scared to even let go half an inch, because if you did everything would fall to pieces. And she will never know because Robert looks after her like a precious kitten that will never grow up. He must think that is how his father looked after me. He’s so decent that it would never enter his head to think otherwise. Caesar was a sweet kind father-figure, and so that’s what he’s going to be too.

  To cut it short …

  The wedding was last Saturday. We had six hundred guests. All of show business, television, radio, theatre, everything, on Caesar’s side a bit reminiscent, because he’s been retired for so long.

  And there we were, Marie, mother of the bridegroom, Caesar, father of the bridegroom, Sonia’s daddy-but he’s always been a bit noises-off, not that it’s his fault, and me, mother of the bride.

  And when it came to photographs … no, wait, here’s the nitty-gritty. Robert suddenly came forward and took charge. Suddenly I saw him as Caesar. Do you remember that deadly quiet bloody-mindedness, that determination, smiling all the time but no one was going to get in his way? That was Robert, all of last Saturday afternoon. It was absolutely essential he get a photograph of himself and Sonia, with me and Caesar standing on either side, and then a picture of us standing behind them, and then sitting in front-and so on, over and over. It was embarrassing. Daddy and his famous mistress, and Daddy’s son and the mistress as she used to be. All afternoon people were saying to me. God darling, but your daughter’s exactly as you used to look.

  Well, I kept giving Caesar looks, the way I used to, but he didn’t know what was going on. I swear when some men retire they just give up all their nous-I swear, in the old days, he would have seen it all, even if he wouldn’t admit it. What he did not see was that all of his awful ruthless single-mindedness, I came, I saw, I conquered, was there in his son, but focused on just one pathetic thing, that he should marry daddy’s mistress.

  And I felt more and more … that I didn’t exist. Do you understand?

  Well. It was ever such a gemütlich ceremony, it was a wonderful party, a good time was had by all, and when the happy couple went off to Venice, my treat, my daughter gave me a look of pure triumph, though God knows what she thinks she’s triumphing about. And he, that sweet boy, he kissed me, the sort of kiss a lover gives you, goodbye for ever

  And the point is, this is the point, this is the absolutely bloody point… there is no way I could ever say to anyone, and I hardly dare think it, in case I come out with it by mistake, no, I was not Caesar’s mistress, never, I never so much as kissed him, because that would be the whole basis of that sweet boy’s life gone. The whole thing-focusing on Sonia, cutting out all her other suitors, marrying her publicly in front of his father’s world and mine, treating the girl like a prize puppy-all nothing, based on nothing at all.

  Nada.

  And there’s no one I can talk to about it, no one I can tell … except you. Well, darling, do the same for you some time.

/>   Among the Roses

  Regent’s Park on a warm Saturday afternoon. With the crowds of people strolling among the roses went Myra, a middle-aged lady from Harrow, who had an expert’s book on roses in her bag. Two years ago, inspired by these gardens, she had bought a rose called ‘Just Joey’. This charmer had done well, and she meant to choose another. There was no greater pleasure than this, wandering through roses and deciding, I’ll have you … no, you … no, perhaps … She had already made the circuit from the main gates with their flourishes of gold on ornamental black iron, portals to pleasure, to the right past the bird-loaded lake with the willows on one side and rose beds on the other, across Queen Mary’s Rose Garden itself, and around to the left through lawns and shrubs where you crossed the long path going up to the fountain, then to the left again and by the cafe, and then between the beds full of tempters to where she had started. Now she was about to make another round.

  As she set off, she stopped again, staring. About twenty paces in front of her, her back to her, walked a tall young woman who was striking not only because of the strident scarlet and yellow dress she wore. The dress was too tight, and emphasized a body that managed to be thin and lumpy at the same time, because of big buttocks and prominent shoulders. Myra at once felt a much too familiar anguish, which she chose to ascribe to the tactlessness that permitted that dress on that body. With a bit of luck she wouldn’t turn around … Myra knew exactly the discontented look she would see if this woman were to turn and show her bold, highly coloured face. This was her daughter, Shirley, whom she hadn’t seen for three years.

  What was she doing here? The last place! Flower gardens were not her style at all, let alone being by herself. Shirley was never alone, she hated it.

  Myra set herself in motion again, adjusting her pace to her daughter’s. Shirley was going slow, and looking at the roses. Wonders would never cease! And then Myra saw something that made her exclaim softly at the expectedness, the aptness, of it. Shirley had slipped a little pair of scissors from a pocket and was cutting off a rose on a long stem. She did not even glance around to see who had noticed her-and others besides Myra had; but her buttocks and back had a characteristic sullen defiance about them. Well, you haven’t changed, Myra silently addressed Shirley. Then she thought, but perhaps she has, she must have!-for she was sure that rose had been cut to put in a pot and make roots. She did not know why she was sure. Shirley into gardening! Was it likely?

  Three years before there had been a quarrel, in Myra’s garden. Shirley had come especially to quarrel with her mother. She chose the moment Myra was standing in her boots and waterproof hat in her rainy garden, doing her April pruning, to stand with her hands on her hips and tell her mother she was a boring old frump who didn’t care about anybody, but only her roses. If she, Shirley, thought she was going to end up like her mother, then … It went on and on, while Myra stood listening to Shirley standing there with her hands on her round hips, her big knees showing under a short ugly dress, her face scarlet with rage-and thought she looked like the common little bitch she was. The rain splashed all around Myra while she tried to think of something to say, but then Shirley went squelching back out of the garden, and slammed out of the house.

  Myra had not bothered to get in touch after that. The truth was, she was glad of the excuse not to see her. She liked Lynda, her other (her real!) daughter. Since she was born, Shirley had been nothing but trouble. Nothing done for her was ever right, nothing she did succeeded. At school she was clever but lazy and did not like her teachers. She left, without exams. She got one job after another but nothing was good enough. At nineteen she married a man Myra liked, a kindly soul Myra knew her daughter would eat up. (‘She’ll have him for supper the first night!’ she told her husband.) But Shirley left this man and married again, a real toughie who prided himself on giving as good as he got. He was a builder’s merchant, made money, took Shirley for holidays to Spain, bought her clothes. Myra believed her daughter well-matched and well-satisfied. Then, one day, on a remorseful impulse, she drove across London to visit her. No answer from the front door, so she went to the back and there, through the window of the kitchen, saw Shirley having it off on the kitchen table with some man certainly not her husband, who lifted his face, saw her and let out a yell. Up came Shirley’s face, red and sweaty, and then the two let out shouts of laughter, and Shirley jumped naked off the table and screamed that her mother was spying on her. Myra had gone off home, told no one, not even her husband. Then Shirley arrived in her garden a few days later to quarrel.

  She did not want to see Shirley now, but she continued to follow her, making sure there were people between them on the path. Curiosity. Shirley not only hated plants and gardens, but the country as well, where she sulked till she could get back into town. She claimed she loathed Nature except (wink, wink) for a little of what you fancy, said she thought people who gardened were stupid and boring, and that went for her sister too. Yet here she was.

  Just before the round rose garden that was framed in its garlands, Shirley turned off left and stood brooding in front of a rose Myra herself rather fancied. It was called ‘L’Oreal Trophy’. A tall rose and ‘luxurious in habit’ as the growers would certainly describe it, the blooms were all shades of creamy pink to apricot-rose pink, and pink flame and dusky pink-no end to the sunset colours you could see there, and the buds were perfect, apricot, tightly furled. The flowers had a luminous shimmer, as if they made their own light. By this time next year the plant would be in Myra’s garden. And in Shirley’s?

  Myra went on up into the round garden and sat on a bench where she could see the entrance. Soon Shirley came in, and Myra’s heart hurt at the sight of that face, every bit as discontented as she had expected. But now it was sad, too … For the thousandth time she wondered, as parents do, at the difference in children. Born different! Different from the first breath. Lynda, the elder daughter, was always, from the moment she emerged, a pleasant soul, who had grown up giving no one any trouble, had gone easily to school, doing neither well nor badly, had had likeable boyfriends and married the best of them, and now lived the same kind of life her mother did, with two children, a boy and a girl. When the two women were together, Myra and Lynda, ample, slow, calm-eyed, people knew at once they were mother and daughter, but no one had ever at once thought Shirley was Myra’s daughter or Lynda’s sister. Where had Shirley come from then? She didn’t look like her father either, and wasn’t like him in nature.

  If Shirley turned her head she could see her mother. She stood just inside the garden on the path, extravagant loops of roses behind her, looking alone and lonely, her big shoulders hunched forward, her shining black hair making licks down her red cheeks, her short gaudy skirts showing big knees. This ugly woman was attractive to men, always had been, even as a small girl. Men were looking at her now.

  Shirley went to the round central bed, which was like a gigantic posy crammed tight with another pinky creamy orangey rose, this time called ‘Troika’. Myra was not going to buy that, it lacked subtlety, did not have the unearthly shimmer to it. And now, incredibly, Shirley did it again. She slid the scissors from her pocket and snipped off a rose on a long sturdy stem. This found its way to the other in her bag. Had anyone seen? Shirley wouldn’t care! She’d bluff it out. You imagined it, she’d say with her sulky affronted air. Call the police then! Challenged with: Suppose everyone did it?-she’d reply, triumphant, with: But they don’t, do they?

  Myra decided for the hundredth time she didn’t want any more of Shirley. She got up from her bench, not bothering about being noticed, and walked past ‘Troika’ on the other side of the bed to her daughter, and out of the garden to where the miniature roses were.

  Suddenly it occurred to her: perhaps she came here hoping she’d run into me? She knows I come here a lot.

  And indeed, as she turned away left, away from the roses, she heard noisy feet running.

  ‘Hello, Mum,’ said Shirley. ‘Fancy seeing you.’


  ‘How are you?’ Myra cautiously inquired.

  ‘Oh, mustn’t complain.’

  ‘You’ve taken to gardening, then?’

  ‘It’s beginning to get to me, believe it or not. We moved, did you know? It’s got a big garden. I suppose you don’t know. Well, let bygones be, what do you say?’

  ‘You and Brian?’ inquired Myra carefully. Brian was the builder’s merchant.

  ‘Oh not him, we split up. And good riddance. He beat me. Mum!’ said Shirley, and laughed. Full of resentment, full of admiration. That meant he had left her, Myra decided.

  ‘Are you divorced then?’