THE STORY OF A BLOOMSBURY GIRL — an extract from novel Someone Else

I
Soho

Cycling down Gower Street on an old town bike with a basket laden with fruit and dairy produce from a farmer’s market, in some ways I envied the lycra clad cyclists streaming beyond, reckless through the red lights as if part of a lawless club, but at the same time felt fearful enough not to emulate their behaviour.  At the junction  my mind meandered over the events of the day so far. At The Families of Every Kind Centre in Camden most of the parents appeared to be on the edge of some crisis or another. Whilst finding work as a translator on the Parenting Adolescents Successfully Scheme, (PASS), was surely quite fortunate, how ironic, I reflected, that my own abilities as a parent did not seem to be improving as a result of working for the scheme. 

After the bus ride, I called home briefly to remind Delphine, our French au pair girl barely older than my adolescent boys, that Heidi had an invitation for a birthday party on Marlborough Street and I would be collecting her from school. Sophie had also been invited. Perhaps she could hang out with Leo? I wondered, still optimistic about the afternoon. At least she’ll be supervised instead of tempted to light matches at home again. Why does she have to scare me like that? 

We had arranged to meet Sophie at Cambridge Circus, after a school trip she had attended at the Charles Dickens museum, hovering for a while as passersby meandered,or queued at the ice-cream van, and earnest mothers carried infants. Remembering the small being at my side, I asked Heidi if she wanted ice-cream. She requested a ‘screwball’, and I  recoiled at the thought of that sugar-fix ball of blue bubble gum in the base of the cone, but not the kind of parent to fuss about sugar on occasion, I handed over the coins. And then my phone rang and I hurried to answer it, guessing this could be an update from Sophie.

‘Mama, I’m sorry but I’ve gone to a friend’s,’ she said, an air of assumed formality that made me feel sometimes like a mother from a Victorian novel although the use of mobile technology did not permit this self-delusion to go far.  Barely leaving time for a reply, Sophie hung up. That same inscrutability again, as if shutters had closed on the mysterious, unknown interior of a house whose facade said nothing. house. Damn. This wouldn’t happen if I was good at this, I laughed to myself. If for a brief moment I’d been feeling like the CEO of the family, everything under control, the next minute even setting up a meeting with my child seemed impossible.

What am I actually good at? I wondered, as we passed the gleam of chrome tables and the gaudy shop windows on Old Compton Street adorned with lacy garments and mannequins in sultry poses. Good at dating, I half smiled. At making men laugh. And more to the point, laughing at their attempts at humour, however bad. This mix of positive attention and endorphins perhaps misread as being in love (I reasoned at the time as if I had just broken the code to some secret new knowledge), which could perhaps lead to genuinely falling for someone even me at my age, over forty now. Why it takes us until forty to understand the art of seduction I don’t know. Or is that disingenuous manipulation? Whatever, either we are young and naive, or experienced and not young. Life is just complicated,’ I continued to reflect without consequence and perhaps without useful intellectual progress of any kind as if somehow just passing time whilst numbed on these escapist reveries. But what about Florian? At least he is a focus. Something that stops the compass point as if just spinning round. So fragile, so malleable, beneath that masculine carapace, I almost feel bad about playing with his affections and and yet at the same time feel so deep in. Much as I loved the children, at that minute I longed for a conversation, shared laughter or the chink of glasses and a shared look over glasses of wine. And I wonder what he is doing at this minute? I thought, but then I noticed the clock on St Anne’s Church, realising that I’d ignored my child for almost five minutes.

‘I hope Shanti will like her gift,’ I said, glad, sometimes, to feel anchored by a task at hand, by the birthday mission, that day, ahead of us. 

‘I wish I could keep it!’ she said. 

‘We’ll get you exactly the same as you wrapped up so nicely for Shanti another time,’ I replied, sensing she would be unwilling to part with it, adding, ‘I wonder what games there will be?’ to change the focus off the much coveted parcel.

*

‘Honey, darling hi!’ said Mimosa, all effusive greetings. Mimosa, glamorous in a cheesecloth dress, shades of wine red and gold, ruby drop earrings catching the light as she led us to the spacious third floor living room. In the room, two sash windows looked over Marlborough Street, the opposite wall lined with framed photographs of Caribbean islands. Drinks on beach terraces. Laughter, waves and sunlight on hair.

‘Hi Shanti. happy birthday to you,’ sang Heidi, handing her a wrapped and bowed gift that Shanti mounted on a teetering heap. My children would surely rip it open with immediate effect, I mused to myself, noticing the child’s self-restraint, but perhaps she has everything anyway. I wondered if the Science Museum kit we had chosen including crystals to dig out of chunks of rock would be appreciated at all. What a mission through the weekend crowds to get it!

‘Beautiful dress,’ I said to Mimosa.

‘My mother brought me it from India, and dyed it with natural dyes,’ she said, her face as if illuminated with interior light. 

‘How wonderful and how ethical,’ I replied, genuinely impressed by how industrious and creative this seemed.

‘Still loves to travel to India.  Did you know my parents met at an ashram in the ‘70s? Such beatniks,’ she said. ‘Between Kingston and Cambridge, she had a gap year and travelled on what she calls The Magic Bus. Beatnik to diplomat!’ she laughed.

‘She’s amazing,’ I said as she turned to arrange the gifts. 

‘How can I follow that?’ she said, and then, ’Excuse me, I just need to…’ 

And suddenly I was left to my self, and sometimes, dare I admit it, I envied her. How lovely to be named Mimosa. Named after a plant used in shamanic medicine. A daughter named Shanti, meaning ‘peace.’ How perfect the framed holiday photographs of sun-drenched beaches. And how insignificant my life by comparison sometimes seems. A childhood in Rosedale, the North East of England, the cold, drizzly North… Holidays in converted outhouses in South Wales, if we can even run to that… 

The door bell rang. ‘Darling can you fix up a drink for Lucy?’ Mimosa called to Shanti’s father. ‘I am up to my eyes answering the door. Lucy, let’s catch up later,’ she said, making for the stairs, trailing an exotic, neroli scent. ‘Hang around and we’ll have a chat.’

*

The drink was a mocktail that Shanti and her friends had made, tropical fruits and the occasional Haribo floating in coconut milk. ‘Here’s your magic potion,’ said the girl. So far so good, I thought, as I sipped it, hoping that nothing accidentally or deliberately toxic had gone into that sweet mix. Quite honestly I could have done with something alcoholic to blur the strange sense I suddenly felt, that I was looking down upon myself, like I was simultaneously a moth upon the ceiling, and a rather serious looking person seated a few metres on a piano stool, reserved, like someone in an Edward Hopper painting, outside of everything. At the same time the party seemed to shift rapidly into one of those parallel universe kinds of experience: the garish colours of the decorations like the visions of a bad trip or a children’s television programme, the noise quite difficult to rationalise, although, to be fair, Mimosa had really ‘gone to town’ on the place and from a child’s perspective perhaps it all looked rather magical.  But how can twelve children generate so much noise? I wondered, my mind swinging from my best attempt at equanimity to sheer distress, and nothing in between. Surely some random feral creatures must have gatecrashed to make this escalating chaos of sound? And whose child is it shrieking in that mosh pit of mini-humans? Is it mine? 

Whilst trying to figure this out, Heidi and the other party guests started balancing party hats upon the birthday girl’s animals - a blue Persian, a fluffy ginger kitten, a tortoise and a lizard; Viridian, the lizard, soon disappearing beneath a sparkly cone.  Exempt at least from more traumatic torment, I reflected, but if the menagerie is subjected to every whim, we’ll be here all day… Mimosa then produced a series of polaroids for the children, perhaps to make up for the lack of games and prizes. This event was clearly about unstructured play.

‘An actual game would be a godsend,’ said a child’s mother seated on the piano stool.

‘Quite,’ I replied, but at the same time I admired the way Mimosa threw herself into it, dancing to Pink’s ‘Let’s get this party started…’ and getting all the children into the party spirit. And then the inevitable piñata, bigger and brighter at every party Heidi attended, this one a glittery dragon suspended from a metal hook. And they struck it without mercy as if all they ever really wanted was to hit things, a glittering fall-out of wrapped candies cascading on the rugby scrum of competing forms, wanting nothing more than a taste of a sugar-free sweet. 

*

The clamour escalated into a blur of white-noise, as half-dizzy, I went to the bathroom staring at my reflection, whilst washing hands, thinking, God, you look older than ever… Placing the slab of petal studded handmade soap back in the holder, I peered closer. But you are older! I rationalised. Don’t even think about trying to stop time. You’re like one of those worn away fragments of glass you find on the beach, of the same substance, but a different version of the person you were. Accept it. If you can’t then stay miserable but whatever, you cannot stop time. 

Outside, a cat meowed in the courtyard as I passed an open window. A runaway perhaps from the party activities? An image of Florian floated then into the void, the void that would appear in any momentary gap of time.

And suppose I just get on a train, I thought, staring out of the window. Go somewhere. Suppose just… once all this is done.  If Sophie’s taken off to Belsize Park then why not? If you don’t get some time out you could lose your mind. And isn’t that the mandate for mothers now? Get out and have your own time. Indulge on clothes and gym memberships, before you lose it. Lose your looks. Or lose your mind. 

As I descended the stairs, I pictured a brain going missing in a park or town, never to be seen again. And I entered the kitchen and ran a drink of water, Vijay trying to explain the theory of psycho-plasticity whilst the children dipped spoons into a huge shared bowl of trifle.

‘I like your necklace,’ said a parent at my side, but immediately adding, ‘Just seen a friend of mine, sorry. Honestly, we go back years,’ before disappearing in a gush of greetings. And the voice of persuasion started up again. Just get through the party without a breakdown. Go out. Get a train. Do you want to lose your mind on a treadmill of domestic activity, school meetings and stress. Do you want to be one of those anxious helicopter parents watching every move to the cost of their freedom? Or the kind of mother merging with their child’s existence to the point where you hang on every success as if it is your own? No, I thought not. And then I checked my inbox for work offers… cue Mimosa appearing as if from nowhere. 

‘We prefer not to have phones out at parties, sorry to be a killjoy darling,’ she said all at once. Don’t worry. There’s no joy that you’re killing, I thought to myself.

‘Sure, I’ll switch off,’ I said.

‘Just that we’re trying not to set that example,’ she explained, ‘but no need to be so melancholy at a party. Have some of this sautéed plantain or pineapple.’ I wondered about the ‘catching up’ she’d suggested. And then the noise surged again as she opened up a huge school trunk (monogramed with her initials), to reveal a tangle of dressing up clothes in which the children began to rummage, whooping and emerging with head-dresses or Harry Potter cloaks, wands, fake samurai swords and face paints pulled from the depths. 

‘Seriously, though, how are you?’ asked Mimosa, finally, once the children were occupied, a question that seemed to enter me like a periscope.

‘Just the usual routines. School. Work. You?’ I replied. And she said she was entering a competition, her design proposal for a seafront hotel in Margate recently shortlisted. If accepted, she said, this could really put Miller, Sims and Company on the map. But then she looked at me, head tilted to the side, and said, ‘You don’t look too well, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘Oh birthday parties will always flay our senses,’ I half-laughed, perhaps the one remark approaching an honest depiction of my thoughts I had uttered all day. And I wondered if I had gone through a portal into another world. 

‘Perhaps I’ll take a walk around Soho,’ I said. ‘I heard they do a fantastic Columbian at that new place on Beak Street.’

‘But time’s ticking on,’ she said, checking her watch. ‘It will be over soon. And you realise that your little one can be volatile or that anyone of they could be injured and although Emanuel and I are quite good with children, we really appreciate it when parents stay the course. Just in case… there’s any disaster, although of course that is very unlikely.’

I felt like saying that I felt I was already in a disaster zone, but stayed calm and just said, ‘Fine. No problem, I’ll hang around,’ thinking, captive and yet purposeless because nothing is likely to happen that requires my attention and the chance of sustaining an uninterrupted conversation of any kind beyond the most banal seems minimal. But let’s not be negative, I decided. This phase is fairly short term, and she’s right, sometimes they need their parents at five or six years old. This just comes with the territory.

And then the doorbell rang again, Mercy emerging in the hall, handing a gift to Mimosa. ‘For Shanti,’ she said, heading straight upstairs and through a briefly open door, music playing - sounded like a South London grime track. And I wondered if Sophie had avoided the party if Mercy wanted the boy all to herself.

‘Emanuel’s study is free, if you need a rest,’ said Mimosa.

*

The study offered the perfect retreat, a space of my own, at least for a while, the chaise-longue floating in a shadowy space in the window draped in exotic brocades like a gondola on a canal, whilst a rhombus of light brightened the floor. I had never entered the study before that and I felt quite intrigued to be venturing as if into the inner sanctum. Scanning the framed certificates, I figured that Mimosa had studied for her Masters degree at the Caribbean University of Architecture, whilst Emanuel had qualified as a psychiatrist, before taking a PhD in neuroscience and training as a chartered psychoanalyst.  How qualified can you get? I thought, momentarily enthralled by the letter sequences after names, before examining the titles of the densely packed volumes on the wall of shelves above the desk, words such as ‘self-harm’ and ‘suicide’ or ‘adolescents and suicidal ideation,’ appearing in the titles. Then the images I’d constructed of K’s suicide flitted into mind like birds trapped in a room that would not go away, even as I tried my best to banish them.  K. the only name I will give to the girl from my daughter’s school who jumped under a train.

And I wanted to comprehend this premature, unexpected death, or render the events at least more comprehensible, or just get the measure of how it was impacting on us. Perhaps because K. had been at the same drama club at school, and because each day felt like standing on the edge of a cliff edge. And hadn’t we been through enough? A cloud of death hovering over our house, over London. A boy from Bentham Independent overdosing on vodka and Xanax. Another boy slashed with a knife whilst cycling, his assailant soon making off with his racing bike. B.’s suicide. Why these bereavements so young? I wondered. Can there be a reason? A higher, inscrutable logic I just cannot understand? Anything that could come from this? A cloud of grief for lives I had not even known, continued to overshadow my life. Why? Because the children’s sense of unspoken loss was a burden I carried with them perhaps to lighten it. And maybe because it could have been them? Why K. instead of Sophie? Mason not Kurt? This - the kind of thought I found difficult to erase. For next time what would stop it from being them? What invisible or psychological barrier stands between us and a leap off a cliff? I had no answer to that question, and found then that Florian fluttered back into my mind. Sometimes I felt haunted as if by the memory of a living man, as if I was a room which a tenant wouldn’t leave.