The weekend was blue and crisp in so many parts, and the warmth on our necks, and when there were sun showers we quick-stepped forward while the afternoon sparkled through the raindrops.
There were flat whites on Marylebone High Street with Marc and Emily Saturday, and it’s funny that I can't say “flat white” in any accent but Australian, because that’s how I learnt to say it. There were the flat whites, downstairs at Providores, at the high wooden table, the flat whites, the banana-pecan French toasts, the blueberry-corn fritters, the veggie fry-ups, the chorizo mash, and then we looked at the menu again. Then there were the banana-orange smoothies and the Medjool date scone, and the melted butter, and, unexpectedly, the tamarillo. “I was going to eat this now, with a spoon,” Emily said, “but now I think I’ll just put it in my pocket and have it later.” Lucky for the girl, then, that she has a cropped green tweed jacket with green flower lining, and pocket enough for a shiny red tamarillo.
The day was calling, its clear blue was, so we headed out, just ’round the corner, to the fromagerie called La Fromagerie, just to look, not even to touch, sadly not to touch the golden melty cheeses and the glass-pot yoghurts, but really not to touch the peas going for thirty pounds a kilo, and especially not to touch the prosciutto-to-be, a great gnarly piggy leg, trotter and all, fixed on a meat slicer. We definitely did not touch the moulin à poivre, which would normally be a pepper grinder except that for £47.50 worth of pepper grinder you expect to have a little je ne sais quoi thrown in too. This reminds me that when Sherene heard the boy is from Paris, she said: “And do you speak French together?” “Yes?” I said. “Wah!” she said, because she is Singaporean, “you can practice your French! Buy one get one free!”
The day kept calling, its clean blue did, so we kept walking, Emily and me and Olive, and Marc had left us by then to bow and exchange gifts with a Japanese woman; we kept walking, down to Oxford, elbows out through the Saturday mess, and then through Soho, skirting Chinatown, and to the
Photographers’ Gallery, where
Alec Soth’s laundry line was hanging in the Minnesota snow, and the sheep in Yto Barrada’s Tangiers mulled in front of the decaying concrete block. We had coffees and juices on benches at the wide table, and then Emily collected her bags about her and said her farewells. “I’ll say good-bye to you lovebirds,” she said. “Cheep cheep,” I said.
The day was still there, blue still, calling still, a miracle, this spring thing, so I said to the boy, “Maybe we can go to the park and I can show you the ducks.” “Okay,” he said in the tone of one who knows someone
else wants to see the ducks, “you can show me the ducks.” Well, well, then, Mr Clever, so who was it who got to the park and was all “Quack quack” and “I want to be an ornithologist”? Well, okay, fine, that first one was me. But the thing is, one foot into Saint James’s Park, everybody wants to see the ducks, you can’t help it: there are daffodils yellow everywhere; and swans black and white; squirrels helter-skelter; and the coots with their funny, leafy feet; and the ducks in feathery brown, or yellow beak, or green neck. “That sign reads ‘Please do not feed the pelicans’,” the boy said. “I know!” I said. “That means—”
“I know!!” “—there are pelicans!” “YAAAAAA!!!” Everybody likes a pelican, mostly because if you had one about it would mean that if you thought you’d lost your glasses or your keys or something, you could turn to your pelican and say, “Have you seen my—”, and then the pelican would open wide—“AAAA”—and there you’d be, no worries.
The scenic route home took us through the Horse Guards Parade, past Trafalgar Square, down the Strand, and by the Savoy Pier along the water. The wind was picking up again, by then, and the sun was closing up shop too, and there was the big Saturday paper to be read, indoors, where it’d be warm. “On reste chez nous ce soir ?” I said, and picked up two large oranges in the local Tesco’s for an orange cake. Chez nous is nice, is the thing, with the floor lamp lit up, and—some two hours later—the house scented sweet oranges and almonds.
Sunday morning, there was sun and rain and sun again, and at first we were up and lounging, then we were up and reading, then we were up and breakfasting, and then finally—and I think it was no longer morning by then—we were up and ready to go; and the boy, because he knows things, he grabbed the big stripey umbrella just before we went out the door. “Si tu veux l’apporter, c’est toi qui vas la porter,” I said, “parce que moi chuis flemmarde.” “Je sais,” he said. “Alors,” I said, “c’est comme ça.” Three minutes up the road, on Old Oxford Street, the rain started falling again, wet-like.
We thought we were going to go to the zoo, but the zoo was going to cost twelve pounds each, so for eighty p a pop we caught the number 242 up Cheapside and Poultry to Brick Lane and the Old Spitalfields Market, where the hustle bustled like the best of Sunday markets. There were T-shirts galore; and stripey scarves with Mini Cooper screenprints; vintage steel lamps; Elvis doormats; colour-your-own Adidas; a mountain of cream scones; and
an apple-shaped button hanging on a silver chain.
Outside by the Old Truman Brewery, while we waited for burgers under the arch, the rain started coming at us horizontally, mixing with the steam rising off the grill; but we held our ground, for we were so close to the head of the queue by then, close enough to see the tubs of pickles, of purple onions, of cucumber slices, of marinated red peppers, close enough to tell the burger dude holding open the yellow Styrofoam box: “Two, please, with everything.” A lanky Japanese guy hawked T-shirts on the street out of a blue polka-dot bag. He was straight lines up and down save for the bug-eyed sunglasses and the explosion of Afro up top. He weaved in and out of the crowd at (Up)Market later, joshing with the deejays and hanging out with the hippie girls.
I remember a time when I was out and about in London, with my
A to Z and a bottle of water knocking about in my bag. And then one day the hose and the high-heeled shoes, and smiling and talking smart, and the job was mine. Now I ride the Northern Line with the drunk guy and his tattoos, and sometimes I sit in front of the computer so long my head starts to swim. Laureen said to me once, when she was here: “You know the twenty-twenty rule? After every twenty minutes of working at the computer—” “You take a twenty-minute break?” I said. “Ha-ha,” she said, and then she said: “No.” “You focus on something twenty feet away,” she said, “to give your eyes a rest.” Or maybe it was something-something-twenty-seconds? I don’t know now, I only remember the part about the twenty-minute break.
I was talking to Marc the other night when I got home from work—this was closing in on nine o’clock, and I was emergency panfrying a bunch of seafood jiao zi for dinner—and he said, “So but how are you?” “Tired and grumpy,” I said, “and I’ve just come in from work.” “You are not meant for work,” he said, and I said, “I think so too, I just didn’t want to be the one to say it.” Still, you do what you can—’cause you can’t do anything but. Some mornings, I apply a spot of Cucumber Baie perfume on my wrists because the foil on the Fresh sample reads: “a diaphanous memory of a summer by the Red Sea”. This is no summer I’ve had, but a quarter to eight in the morning is as good a time as any to play make-believe.
Oh, I’m not complaining about work. ...Okay, I am, but just a little. Because mostly work is fine, and when we are not muttering about the boss under our breath we laugh and eat cake. London is still here, and me too; and tonight after dinner at the HK Diner with Nora—Nora who knows about coots, and who knows how to clap like deaf people—after dinner at the HK Diner—where we had bubble milk teas and salt-and-pepper seafood—we stood in the doorway while a tranny in a pencil skirt tugged at her panty line before crossing Wardour Street and disappearing into the twinkling night.
