Polly Samson - A Theatre for Dreamers

We bring in the plums and she slides a long-player from its sleeve, ‘Brahms, I hope you don’t mind,’ and takes it to the gramophone. ‘Might as well be uplifted by tremendous beauty as we work.’

Brahms’s Fourth swells, and I’m swept along, knowing that I will forever be transported by this piece of music and will always think of her when I hear it. She shows me how to lay out the green vine leaves with their veins facing up. We mince a great slab of mutton and fry and chop onions and herbs. The smell makes my stomach rumble as the mixture cools on the sill while from our fingertips we tumble flour with sheep’s butter. ‘Keep it light, keep it cool,’ Charmian says. ‘Use water from the ice tray when you’re ready to turn it into dough.’

I’m useless with the rolling pin.

‘Did Connie never show you how?’ she says, ungluing my pastry from the table. ‘Sorry, that was thoughtless.’ She bites her lip and gestures for me to hold out my hands for a dusting of flour.

I tell her about Mrs Dabbs who always made our pies and dinners.

‘Because she preferred cooking to cleaning.’

‘Oh dear yes, I remember Mrs Dabbs…’ Charmian retrieves the tea towel she keeps draped over her shoulder and wipes her hands. ‘She was my char too. She had the most appalling rheumatism. I always felt I should clear up before she came…’ For a moment I think she might hug me but she turns to the window. ‘It must have been wretchedly dull for you in gloomy old Bayswater. Mrs Dabbs and you stuck there taking care of your dad. I know he was a difficult sod.’

I concentrate extra hard on rolling the pastry. ‘He was in and out of hospital when we were little. His routines had to be kept the same, day in and day out. She was never off duty, always careful not to set him off. Sometimes it was a relief to go back to school. But after she died, I wasn’t going away to school any more and it was me trapped there walking on eggshells.’

‘I certainly don’t blame you for running away.’

I nod, not able to meet her eyes. ‘The only good thing that happened to me after Mum died was Jimmy and it all came to a head with Dad when he tried to stop me seeing him. And then your book came through the post and, well, here we all are.’

I can tell she’s pleased when I bring her book into it. We talk a while of Jimmy and I don’t imagine she winces several times as I tell her our plans. She’s quite outspoken on account of my age but says, ‘It’s not my place to tell you what you should do in the big bad world.’ And her words bring on a wave of longing so intense that for a moment I think I might cry. She shakes me out of it with a few brisk anecdotes; is good with practical advice. Apparently families like Angela and David’s can live on Hydra for five hundred a year. ‘It all sounds very romantic, very audacious, but do try to have something for yourself. Whatever you want to do, try to get it bloody well done before the babies come along…’

I like being taken in hand and I enjoy the flush that flattery brings to her. ‘But, Charmian, you seem to manage it. Having books published, and children and George and all of this.’ We talk about the new book she has coming out and she says that goodness she hopes it will be well received because it’s the first novel she’s written which will have only her own name on the cover.

‘When Faber published our collaborative novels no one once asked my opinion about editorial changes or anything like that. I was always too tired to make a fuss’

She lights a cigarette, squints into its smoke. ‘Did I tell you about the time we met T. S. Eliot at his office in Russell Square? No?’ I hunger for her stories, even those she’s told me before. ‘… So there he was on his hands and knees, muttering about his Nobel citation which he swore was somewhere in the papers and manuscripts scattered across the floor.’ Apparently Eliot liked to write the dust-jacket copy at Faber. ‘… And there was I with J. Alfred Prufrock himself, something I had never dared to dream, and do you know what I was doing? I was worrying about my hair, and whether I had a speck of soot on my white gloves as I poured the tea that his secretary brought in. As you might imagine, I was terribly cross with myself afterwards. I don’t suppose George was thinking excessively of his hair pomade or pocket handkerchief as he talked to our idol.’

She thinks that girls of my generation might make a better fist of fighting the status quo. ‘Just look at the island women here: it’s the Middle Ages, all cooped up in their houses and servile to their men. I suppose we should be thankful we’re further along than that.’

I think about Mum and the post-office savings she left me. Had she bought me my freedom by cheating a little bit every week on her housekeeping? I can almost see the tic beneath her right eye as Dad checked over her receipts.

‘I would still be dependent on Dad if Mum hadn’t saved all that money for me. I’d like to think that being here and all this isn’t squandering it. I’ve still no idea what she really meant when she told me to live by my dreams.’

Charmian shrugs, hands me a knife and we start on the plums. Brahms has been replaced by the small hiss of the needle stuck in a groove.

‘When I was your age I dreamt of a silver lamé gown and a white sports car with red leather upholstery. But I reckon that you’re not as silly as I was. What I can tell you is that Connie was my most encouraging pal when I first mooted throwing everything up in London. I remember she drove me in her little car to Stanfords and she bought me a map of the Greek islands.’

I almost leap at her. ‘The car! You knew about it?’

Charmian flaps her hands at me to be quiet. We can hear people moving about upstairs. ‘You can’t expect me to know what Connie dreamt for you. I remember she was proud of how well you were doing at that posh boarding school. She became rather boastful when you won a prize for something you’d written; maybe there’s a clue in that… As for the car, it was a nice green convertible that she had for nipping around town. There was nothing mysterious about it to me.’

I can’t help thinking she’s relieved to be interrupted as George staggers in, coughing. A folded letter protrudes from the breast pocket of his shirt. Silently Charmian goes about the routine for his injection while he fidgets, his hand drawn to the pocket.

Martin appears the moment food hits the table. Lunch is the miraculous globe artichokes, their great pulpy leaves dabbed in olive oil and lemon. George doesn’t have much of an appetite; he nibbles sesame seeds from the bread, lighting and relighting cigarettes while Martin chats about an octopus at Vlychos that old man Stavros claims can play Nine Men’s Morris. Martin plans to borrow a rubber mask and hike over to take a look. Once I reach the choke, he leans over and with surgical precision instructs me in dissecting the heart.

Charmian has not spoken a word to George and he’s avoiding her eyes. The silence stretches and trembles like a membrane between them. Martin senses it too and slinks away with a couple of cold chops. Charmian sits drinking her wine as though neither George nor I exist. George never stops fidgeting, rolling small pill-shapes from a piece of bread which he lines up on the table, touching the letter, occasionally stealing a sidewards glance at her.

‘Who is the girl in the photograph?’ I cut in when I can no longer bear it. ‘I haven’t been able to get her face out of my mind. Is she in your book?’

George leans into the broken silence and stares at me. He tears miserably at a fingernail. ‘I was there when our man took that photograph,’ he says. ‘Heartless bastard. Kweilin 1945, thousands fleeing from the Japs straight into famine… That little girl was alive while he was focusing but dead when he hit the shutter. He might as well have been holding a Luger in the kid’s face. But he was hardened, didn’t care. We’d gone through it, mile upon mile of dead and dying rotting by the roadside, and we’d arrived at this place where the troops were foraging on their hands and knees, digging with their teeth through the bare earth for roots. The girl’s mother was already being pecked at by the bloody birds…’