Philip Hensher - The Friendly Ones

Dr Mario, like LaLa, heard everything but, unlike LaLa, evolved plots and possessed ambitions of his own. Sometimes these requests were granted, like waiting for Dr Mario to put his best shoes on and join them in the car while they were setting off for a day in the country, a visit to Granny Spinster, even a trip to the fishmonger and greengrocer. Sometimes they were negotiated over and reduced; Dr Mario wanted to sleep in the same bed as his friend Lavinia, and it was with a queer feeling of criminal indecency confidently averted, Celia admitted years later, that Celia suggested their seven-foot pale green guest would be just as happy sleeping in the sitting room, and promised to help him put a comfy cushion on the floor for his long head to rest on. Sometimes they were bluntly denied. They knew that the story must have happened some time in 1968 or 1969 because it was then that Lavinia went to school for the first time, a place where Dr Mario was utterly forbidden to follow her. In a year or two, Lavinia would return from school to hear the mild observation, greeted with storms of tearful protests but soon to be fulfilled permanently, that Dr Mario didn’t seem to be around the place so much. Perhaps he had moved away altogether.

But before that there was a day in 1968 or 1969 when Dr Mario decided that the time had come to run away from home. Didn’t Leo remember any of this? Lavinia had gone in a matter-of-fact way to Mummy, who was sitting in an armchair reading a book, and had told her about Dr Mario’s decision. ‘I see,’ Mummy had said. ‘That seems awfully permanent. Couldn’t you and he go away for the afternoon, see if you like it once you’ve moved away? And then if you think it’s nicer here, you could come back.’ But Lavinia was determined – well, Dr Mario had made his mind up, Lavinia thought it was just best to go along with it. ‘When will you be leaving?’ Mummy had asked, but Lavinia was surprised. She was leaving with Dr Mario straight away.

Dr Mario had decided to leave the Spinsters’ home with his friend Lavinia and get a job. She had talked the subject over with Dr Mario and they had decided that, of the possible jobs grown-up people did – they could be hospital consultants, or GPs, or radiologists like Tim, or nurses, or train drivers, or paediatricians, or receptionists, or professors, or oboists, or teachers, or policemen, or headmasters, or dinner ladies, or oncologists, or ambulance drivers – of all these jobs the best was train driver. Dr Mario wanted to get a job as a train driver. Lavinia did not know exactly where the train drivers went, but she knew that the main station was in the middle of the city, and the middle of the city was down the hill. So she and Dr Mario left the house, walking briskly next to each other, and Mummy waved them goodbye from the doorstep with baby Hugh waving goodbye too, or being made to wave goodbye by Mummy holding his little wrist and shaking it. It was a good job that Lavinia was with Dr Mario. If she had been on her own she might have been scared.

They walked downhill from their house, underneath the quiet trees. The sun was shining above, she could tell, but the leaves were so thick that only the shadow of green fell upon her. At the end of the road, you could turn left, and that went up to Crosspool and the shops and the school with its black wall and the word GIRLS over the gate, though anyone, girls or boys, could go in. It wasn’t like the old-fashioned times. Or you could turn right, and that went downhill and, Lavinia thought, if you turned left when you got to the Fulwood road, you would reach Broomhill and after that carry on and reach the centre of the city. They turned right.

There were two old people coming up the hill towards her: a lady in a hat and a strange fluffy yellow coat, and a person that at first Lavinia thought was a man. In this sunshine you could see the whole shape of the second person’s head through their hair. It was as if they were bald but with a thin little cloud clinging to their scalp and anyone could see through it. Lavinia did not know either of these people, and she felt very nervous that she had now got to a place where people did not know who she was or where she lived. One of them looked at her: the one who was definitely a woman. Lavinia thought she was going to say something to her, and she swung her arms and carried on as if they weren’t there at all. In five minutes, striding briskly and bravely, Dr Mario and Lavinia reached the bottom of the road, and were facing a busy flow of traffic. Lavinia was almost sure that here you were supposed to turn left and walk down the hill, and then you would reach Broomhill. But the road first went down and then went uphill again. She was not certain, and turned to Dr Mario to see what he thought. But Dr Mario was not there. He had gone. All at once Lavinia felt that she had been playing a game, a stupid game, that none of it was real, that Dr Mario was just something she had made up that could not help her against the smell of petrol and the flash of shining metal and the incurious, unhelpful gaze of the women passengers driving past. She had made a terrible mistake.

But then all at once there was Mummy, just standing alongside her as if she were waiting for a moment to cross the road. She looked right, and looked left, and looked right again, just as the Tufty Club said you should, and then, with great surprise, said, ‘Lavinia! How lovely to see you! I was just thinking – I would love a cup of tea or a glass of squash on a day like today. I know just the right person who would really like to have us round, and her house is just over there. Would you like to come with me and have a glass of squash with Pauline?’

Pauline taught music – she taught the piano, which Lavinia might learn when she was a little bit older, but also the flute and recorder. Her husband was a musician; he had once played the violin in the Hallé Orchestra but he had suffered from nerves. Now he played in the Edward Carpenter Quartet and taught, but only older, special people. Their house was wonderful. There were musical instruments lying around to try out, and two whole pianos, and wonderful pictures on the wall that you could look at, and afterwards you found you were making up stories about the pictures, and best of all, there was a piece of paper that Beethoven had signed with his own name. That was in a special frame. You had to know who Beethoven was or you wouldn’t think it mattered at all. Pauline was so happy to see Lavinia, and she made Lavinia exactly the sort of squash that grown-ups didn’t know how to make – how Lavinia liked it, with so much squash, almost a quarter of the glass, that Daddy, if he saw it, would normally say something like ‘Do you have enough water in your squash?’ Pauline asked her to say when , and she only stopped when Lavinia said when , and she poured the water into it from a special clay bottle that sat on the piano, a grey china pot with the face of a wicked dwarf, all bulging eyes and warty nose. Lavinia completely forgot that she didn’t like meeting new people, and perhaps Pauline wasn’t a new person, really. And afterwards Pauline let Lavinia try to play the flute. You blew across it as if you were blowing across the top of a milk bottle. It was hard, and for a long time Lavinia couldn’t get a noise at all, and then suddenly it rang out, just like a flute on a record. ‘Well, there you are,’ Mummy said.

Quite soon it was time to go home, and Lavinia took Mummy’s hand. They walked together up the hill, and all the time Lavinia was telling Mummy about the adventure she’d had. Mummy was laughing and once she lifted Lavinia up and gave her a kiss – Mummy smelt so nice, and her clothes were always so clean, her hands warm and dry. Just as they were turning into the house, and before Blossom and Leo, holding baby Hugh in the crook of his arm, could get up from where they were sitting on the lawn in front of the house, underneath the cherry tree, Mummy said something to Lavinia that she would never forget: she said, ‘Well, Lavinia, you’ll always remember today, won’t you, all your life?’ It was true. She knew that. She would. It must have been 1968 or 1969, the day that Dr Mario went and she knew that Mummy, after all, would always be there.