SIX
Ani Patel looked out of the shop window and saw Miss Phoebe Glen weaving her way along the road. A little later than usual. And very flushed. A bad sign. She went back to the counter and put the Daily Telegraph out in readiness, and waited. These people, this country, they never looked after their own.
Miss Phoebe Glen’s suspicions were correct. The letter announced an increase in rent, approved by the powers that be, in line with government guidelines. It meant that her own small income, from home coaching the dim children of the rich, would be further diminished. It was pretty diminished, anyway, after she rapped that Benson boy’s knuckles. She might even fall, finally, into this Poverty Trap she kept reading about and always imagined had sharp, steel teeth. She held the letter up against the bars of the fire and burnt it. Then she took another little tot of sherry, just to brace herself, before leaving the house.
She shivered a little as she walked, hesitantly, up the road towards the newsagent’s. September mornings might be sunny, but there was still a distinct chill in the air. Life could, she mused sorrowfully, be very cruel. If she did fall into the Trap, they would investigate her, wouldn’t they? They would unearth all that stuff about her little difficulties in the past, the schools, the embarrassments, her little problem. She must not allow that to happen.
She paused for breath, leaning on the shop window, reading Ani Patel’s notice. She shook her head with vexation. The times were all out of joint nowadays, if you asked her. She pushed on into the shop and in front of the counter her back straightened. She might be down but she still had standards.
‘Mrs Patel,’ she said severely, pushing her ragged white fringe out of her eyes, ‘Mrs Patel –’ she pointed dramatically to the front display – ‘this is not a widow. . .’
Mrs Patel, who had temporarily forgotten the product of Ari’s waggishness, had long thought that the English were nuts. She sold newspapers to men who ogled bare thighs and breasts and then beat up their daughters for revealing the same. She sold tubs of ice-cream to women who every day, every day, stood in the shop bemoaning their weight, squeezing themselves into ugly, too-tight clothes. She longed, sometimes, to say no. She longed sometimes to say that a sari, in both instances, could help. Instead she smiled, nodded, ignored the teenagers’ bruises, sighed with sympathy for the rolling midriffs. A little plumpness in a lady, she would offer if asked, was a sign of wealth and a properly conducted life, at which the doughbags would titter. Hardly surprisingly.
Now Mrs Patel followed the direction of her customer’s pointing finger, shrugged and gave a cautious smile. ‘Yes?’ she said.
Miss Phoebe Glen arched an eyebrow.
‘No?’ she tried.
It had to be one or the other.
Miss Phoebe Glen arched both eyebrows. She went on pointing and seemed, though her mouth worked at it, to be temporarily devoid of speech.
Perhaps, thought Ani Patel, peering through the window and seeing no one – and certainly not a woman in black – coming along the street, perhaps it was something to do with the weather? It often was. Maybe what she spoke of as a widow was some kind of reference to the season? It was a reasonable assumption with the English.
Mrs Patel would have a stab.
‘It might hold off,’ she said, pleased to have found the right vernacular. She handed the customer her Daily Telegraph and added the jokey conversational makeweight, ‘I hope so, or I shall have to take in the washing.’
Miss Phoebe Glen’s eyebrows returned to normal. She clung to the counter. Memories of her mother saying the same thing when her father disappeared returned. And now it seemed the same fate loomed for her. Taking in washing. Oh, the ignominy.
She nodded sadly. ‘Yes, yes – it might come to that. Taking in washing. Although there are, of course, launderettes.’
Both women stared at each other.
‘I have a washing machine, actually,’ said Mrs Patel. And she added, so as not to appear prideful, ‘Only an old one.’
‘Tragic,’ said Miss Phoebe Glen, who had lost the thread.
Both women stared anew. Ani Patel did not think that having a twin tub could be considered that bad.
The British usually had a way forward in sticky conversational moments, but Ani Patel could find none in her extensive, useful stock. And Miss Phoebe Glen was puzzled at the turn. She had merely sought to correct an error, not to discuss personal hygiene and she knew nothing whatsoever about launderettes or washing machines, managing everything with Persil and a bucket at home.
While they continued confounded, a woman came in, a woman with the air of one who is slightly deranged, and asked, in the guttural accents of Mitteleuropa, whether Mrs Patel had any current diaries available. It being September, this went down considerably better than launderettes.
I am stumped, thought Ani Patel privately.
Even Miss Phoebe Glen recognized the absurdity.
‘Current?’ said Mrs Patel eventually. Verily, if the English were nuts, the Poles were cracked shells with knobs on.
The Polish woman nodded.
Ani Patel remembered that she never threw anything away. ‘I have one somewhere upstairs,’ she said. ‘A present which I did not use this year. You can have that. I will ask Ari to drop it through your letter-box when he comes home from school.’
Mrs Patel looked pleased. She liked to be on top of her customers in a serving capacity.
The Polish woman said, gutturally and with no outward show of fulfilment, ‘How big is it?’
Mrs Patel kept smiling. She made a gesture. ‘Handbag size,’ she said.
The Polish woman pulled a face. ‘Probably not big enough,’ she said. ‘But you can send it anyway.’
She went out again without looking up.
‘No probs,’ said Mrs Patel. ‘No worries.’
Miss Phoebe Glen flew to the door and called after the woman’s back, ‘In my country we say thank you . . .’
Not very often, thought Mrs Patel, but she went on smiling all the same.
A fat man with slightly soiled frontage and stertorous breath came in. He stood behind Miss Phoebe Glen waiting, pointedly. Miss Phoebe Glen ignored him in an effort to make sense of the launderette and the widow with Mrs Patel. He sniffed the air of fruity sweetness about the flushed woman ahead of him, found the way she pulled at her startling white fringe fascinating, and decided to wait with patience. He picked up a lottery form and began to enter his crosses. He had plenty of time and nothing better to do.
Eventually Mrs Patel explained that she wanted people to advertise on cards in her window. She thanked Miss Phoebe Glen for pointing out the mistake and said that were Ari not her only son, and she devoid of husband, she would throw him down a well and leave him there.
‘You don’t get many of those to the pound in Chiswick,’ said the fat man wheezily. He was flapping his lottery form and in need of some conversation and he thought humour was best.
‘What?’ said Mrs Patel.
‘Wells,’ said the man. He looked pleased at the incontestability of the statement. Mrs Patel continued to look blank so he made a bucket-dipping gesture. ‘You know. Wells.’ He made another dipping gesture. ‘Ding, dong bell. . .’
‘Ding, dong, bells. In wells,’ said Mrs Patel humouringly.
‘Nice cathedral and a wonderful peal,’ said Miss Phoebe Glen mistily. She took against the man and decided to loiter. ‘Hot springs,’ she added chattily. ‘Once.’
‘You know so much,’ said Mrs Patel, thinking Clear As Mud, which phrase, she was confident, covered a multitude.
‘I do,’ said Miss Phoebe Glen. ‘More than you will ever know.’
The fat man hung his head respectfully. He liked to hear women talk. He used to listen to his mother and her friends for hours. Unknown to them.
Mrs Patel looked at Miss Phoebe Glen and her clutching hands and tried to say something pleasantly dismissive to get rid of her – the British had taught her many such phrases – ‘Take care now,’ she said.
Miss Phoebe Glen stayed.
‘Mind how you go.’
Still she stayed.
The fat man waited patiently but Mrs Patel did not really see why he should have to.
She had one final stab at valediction: ‘Well, then.’
Which she was relieved to see worked.
Miss Phoebe Glen held her head high and left the shop, tutting over the sign as she went out and pointing and mouthing silently through the window.
‘Our Lady Wordsmith,’ said Ani Patel, in a mixture of pity and compunction.
The fat man became animated. He fumbled with his hands, made a little bowing motion in the direction of the closed door, and lowered his eyes floorwards.
He said to Ani Patel, ‘I had no idea she was a ladyship.’
He paid for his lottery ticket and backed out of the shop, deeply impressed.
Mrs Patel reminded herself, as she did every day, that she was here to serve. To see Ari through school. To see Ari graduate. To see Ari married. And then to care for his children. If she did not remind herself of this, she, too, would go nuts. She smiled at the Polish woman who popped her head back around the door and pointed at the rows of sweet jars.
‘And half a pound of strong mints,’ she said in her cracked voice, ‘if you’re doing deliveries.’
Mrs Patel nodded obligingly. She could only take heart from reasoning that if they kept the Poles out, then the English would also have kept her out. She tried to look on the bright side if possible.