The Real Thing (8 page)

When she stood up and looked down at the sleeping woman. Miss Cook’s face was, if possible, even more of a study. She went to her bed, removed her flowery gown and her slippers and lay carefully down.

The women communicated without words.

It was necessary for someone to say something. It was she, Miss Cook, who had to say it. ‘Well,’ she remarked. ‘You live and learn.’

Soon they were all in their own worlds, fast asleep.

I was driving up one of the roads in Hampstead which, as we all know, were never designed for cars, were not long ago lanes that accommodated horses and people walking. In front of me a knot in the traffic. Hardly unusual. I stopped. I had to. In front of me was a Golf, and in front of that a blue Escort was blocked by a red van, nose to nose. If the red van reversed no more than a couple of yards, then the Escort could drive past. But the red van wasn’t going to budge, although for the Escort to let him through meant that the woman-yes, yes, a woman driver-would have to reverse past a parked car and then abruptly at an angle into an empty space too small for it, so it would stick out anyway. If the Escort did this, yes, there would be room for the red van to go past, but only just. The sensible thing was for the red van to reverse.

It was evident that this was a question of Principle. Principle was what we were up against. The red van was faced with a woman driver who wouldn’t give way. The Escort was faced with an unreasonable bully of a man. The woman driver was damned if she was going to go through this ridiculous business of reversing and then going sharply back into a silly space that wouldn’t even
hold the Escort, when for the van to reverse would be the work of seconds.

There were cars on the other side of the red van, a line stretching all the way up the hill.

They hooted. The Golf in front of me hooted to keep them company. Then the man in the Golf got out and walked to where he could stand by the window of the Escort and talk to the woman, and after that he went to the window of the red van.

He turned and slowly came back. He had decided to find it entertaining. His face was all resigned, amused philosophy. He was waggling his hands, palms down, on either side of his thighs in the way that says, ‘Here we have a pretty kettle of fish! However, let’s keep calm.’ He shrugged and got into his car. Then he stuck out his head and signalled to me to reverse. Just behind me on my left was a street going off up a hill, but a girl in a Toyota blocked the way. She was in trouble with a lorry, behind her. The man in the lorry was shouting that everything was the fault of the woman driver up in front, but the Toyota girl wasn’t going to have that. She said nothing, but sat smiling, a tight angry little smile. The man in the lorry jumped down, shook his fist at the Toyota, then-for good measure-at me, and strode smartly up past us both and past the Golf, and reached the two vehicles standing nose to nose. He had not been able to see from the cab of the lorry that the red van-male-was more in the wrong than the Escort. He shouted a little at the woman in the Escort, just for the look of the thing. She was now smoking so energetically that it seemed the driver’s seat was on fire. He did not bother to speak to the driver of the red van, from which one could deduce that he could see it would do no good. He came back, not looking at the man in the Golf who-he could now see-was not going to be an ally, but probably regarded him as at fault, then
past me, then past the girl in the Toyota. He climbed back into his cab and looked to see how he could reverse to let the Toyota go out left. But behind him now were several cars. He shouted at them to reverse, and while we couldn’t see them it was evident they were furious too, because they were hooting. At last he was able to reverse a short way. Then the woman in the Toyota began complicated to-ings and fro-ings to get herself out into the leftwards street. Then she had gone, and I wanted to reverse, but the lorry had already come forward. This made the Golf in front of me start a frenzied hooting. He shouted at the lorry to go out left. But the lorry wasn’t going to leave the scene, because one or other of the two contenders for being proved in the right of it ought to give way, and he was going to wait until he, or she, did. Now this man tried to reverse again, to let me and the Golf out, but meanwhile other hooting cars had pressed up behind him. It took time for him to slowly press back and back so that I could reverse, and go off into the side street. The man in the Golf reversed the very second he could, which meant he was going slowly back towards the lorry that was coming slowly forwards. As I left the scene the two were shouting at each other.

I drove up the street. You can, if you want, turn so as to rejoin the street I had just extricated myself from. Why did I decide to do this? The spirit of obstinacy had entered me too. Besides, I didn’t
see
why I had to drive half a mile out of my way. In short, no, there’s no excuse. I rejoined the street about twenty yards past where the red van stood obstinately in front of the Escort. Now I could see the face, or rather, the profile of the driver of the red van. He was elderly, overweight, and his cheek looked as if it had been washed in the water beetroot had been boiled in. A candidate for a stroke. Out of the window of the Escort billowed smoke. I could just see her face: the
strong features of a woman who would stand to the death for common sense and her rights.

Behind the red van the long line of blocked cars was trying to dissolve itself by backing up the hill and then turning off right into the street parallel to the one I had come from. That meant that I and the cars behind me, including the Golf, had to wait while all these cars reversed and manoeuvred. All the time cars were adding themselves to this line, and hooting, and people were shouting at each other, because they had not understood the seriousness of the situation with the red van and the Escort. The man in the Golf, the one who had waggled his hands in a gesture of world-weary tolerance, could not see what was holding me up now. He leant out and shouted at me and I leant out and shouted that there were about fifteen cars ahead sorting themselves out. He finally cracked. He yelled, ‘Oh Christ, would you believe it!’ and gestured to the cars behind him that he was going to reverse. There was just room, and he went forward into the drive of a man who came out of the house to shout that his drive was not a public roadway.

A woman from the manoeuvring cars behind the red van held them all up to walk down to the red van and the Escort, where she surveyed the scene, and then said to the puce-faced driver and the smoke-shrouded woman, ‘Well, I suppose you two are getting something out of all this.’

And went back to her car.

At last I was able to go fast enough ahead to get a place going up the hill before yet another car turned in front of me. At the top of the hill I slowed to look around and there was the red van, there was the Escort, and neither had conceded an inch.

The young woman on the pavement’s edge was facing in, not out to the street and she moved about there indecisively, but with a stubborn look. Several times she seemed about to approach somebody who had just come out of the Underground to walk up the street, but then she stopped and retreated. At last she moved in to block the advance of a smartly dressed matron with a toy dog on a leash that came to sniff around her legs as she said hurriedly, ‘Please give me some money. I’ve got to have it. The Social Security’s on strike and I’ve got to feed my kids.’ Resentment made her stumble over her words. The woman examined her, nodded, took a £5 note from her handbag, then put it back and chose a £10 note. She handed it over. The young woman stood with it in her hand, looking at it disbelievingly. She muttered a reluctant Thanks’, and at once turned and crossed the street in a blind, determined way, holding up one hand to halt the traffic. She was going to the supermarket opposite the Underground station, but at the entrance stopped to glance back at the woman who had given her the money. She was standing there watching her, the little dog yapping and bouncing at the end of its leash. ‘Fucking
cheek. Checking to see if I was lying,’ muttered the young woman. But she was a girl, really. ‘I’ll kill her. I’ll kill them …’ And she went in, took a basket, and began selecting bread, margarine, peanut butter, cans of soup.

This incident had been observed by a man sitting in a shabby blue Datsun at the pavement’s edge. He had got out of the car and crossed the street just behind her, holding up his hand against the traffic to support her. He followed her in to the supermarket. He was a few paces behind her during her progress through the shop. At the check-out desk, when she took out the £10 note, her face tense with the anxiety of wondering if it would be enough, he interposed his own £10 note, forcing it into the check-out girl’s hand. By the time the girl he had been following understood what he was doing it was too late. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘let’s fight outside.’ She looked angrily at him, and at the check-out girl, who was already busy with the next customer. Then she followed him to the pavement. She was not looking at him to find what he was like, but how to quarrel with him. In fact he was a man of perhaps forty, with nothing particular about him, and dressed as casually as she was. But he had all the carelessness of confidence. Her clothes were ordinary, that is to say jeans and a sweater, but she had a drab appearance, not so much dirty as stale. Her hands were nicotine-stained.

‘Look,’ he said, taking all this in, ‘I know what you want to say, but why don’t we have a cup of coffee?’

She just stood there. She was frozen … it was with suspicion. She looked trapped. A few yards away a couple of tables with chairs around them stood outside a cafe.

‘Come on,’ said he, with a jerk of his head towards the tables. He sat down at one, and she did too, in a helpless, lethargic way, but as if she was about to leap up again. At once she started peering into the carrier bags for
just-bought cigarettes. She lit a cigarette and sat with her eyes closed, and smoked as if trying to drown in smoke, pulling breaths of it deep into her lungs. He said, ‘I’m going to order. Coffee?’ No movement from her. ‘I’ll get coffee then. And I know you are hungry. What do you want to eat?’ No response. She went on drawing in smoke from the cigarette held to her lips in a childish grubby hand.

He went into the cafe. His quick glance back showed he was afraid she would be off. But when he came back with two cups of coffee she had not moved. He sat down, putting the cups on the table, and she at once pulled one towards her, piled in sugar and drank it in big gulps. Before she had finished it, he went back in and returned with another cup which he put down before her.

‘Don’t think you’re going to get something out of this because you won’t,’ she said angrily.

‘I know that,’ he said, in a voice kept reasonable. He was sorry for her and could not keep this out of his face and eyes. But she had not once looked at him properly.

There arrived before them a large plate of sandwiches.

‘Go on, eat,’ he said.

She took up a sandwich without enthusiasm, sat with it in her hand, and at last did look at him. A rapid once-over, expecting the worst: her face seemed forever set in sarcastic rage.

‘Well, then, what’s all this for?’ she asked, cold.

‘I used to work in a D.H.S.S. office,’ he said, as if it were an explanation. Her face-if this was possible-got even harder and angrier. Her eyes narrowed and shot out beams of hate. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘I know what you want to say.’

‘No you don’t. You don’t know anything about me.’

‘I’m making a fair old guess,’ he said, with deliberate humour, but she wasn’t going to have that.

‘You don’t know a bloody thing about me and you’re not going to.’

‘I know you haven’t got the money to feed your kids.’

‘How do you know I’ve got kids?’

He smiled, mildly impatient. ‘I wouldn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes. And I’m sure you wouldn’t be begging if you didn’t need it for your kids.’

This froze her up. She had not known, it seemed, that she had been observed begging. Then she decided not to care. She crammed in a big bite of the sandwich, holding her cigarette at the ready in the other hand. ‘I suppose you’re full of remorse about being on strike,’ she jeered, as soon as her mouth was empty.

‘I told you, I used to work there. I don’t now. I left a year ago. I left because I couldn’t stand it.’

It was evident he needed to go on telling her, but she shook her head to say she wasn’t interested.

‘I’d like to kill them,’ she said, meaning it. ‘I would if I could. What do they think … they
don’t
think. I haven’t been able to collect any money for three weeks and it was their mistake in the first place, not mine. And now they’re on strike. They owe me a full month. I haven’t paid my rent. I borrowed money from someone who doesn’t have any either. Then they go on strike for a rise … they don’t care about us, they never think about what is happening to us. I could kill them.’

He said uncomfortably, his eyes bright with sympathy for her, ‘Look at it from their point of view …’

‘What point of view?’ she cut in. ‘I’m only interested in my point of view. I had a friend downstairs, she killed herself last time they decided to treat themselves to going on strike. She had two kids. They’re in care now. I got myself a job a couple of months ago. It wasn’t much of a job but it was a job. But hanging around Social Security day after day to try and get my money out of them, I lost it. Now I haven’t even got that. I’m not going to try for another job, what’s the point? If I did get one, the shitting
D.H.S.S. would decide to go on strike again.’ She delivered all this in a cold level tone, her eyes-the vulnerable eyes of a girl-staring off at nothing. She was probably seeing visions of herself killing enemies.

He said, sounding discouraged, ‘Not everyone in the Social Security agrees with the strike. I’m sure of that.’

‘I don’t care. Well, I’ve come to begging. I did it last time they went on strike. I shoplifted too. If I hadn’t, the kids’d’ve starved.’