Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

Was it sex, or love, that mysterious thing they seemed to have more of than anyone else?

And why should it bother me so much? The charge in the air, or in me, when I saw him pass close to her, as if accidentally, but really to rub against her back and run his hands across her shoulder-blades.

Stroking my daughter’s silk shirt last week before I sent it to the jumble sale, it began to purr and crackle faintly as if the universe were coming alive. And I thought of Christopher and Alexandra. Alexandra and Christopher…

I don’t look at other people very much, unless they’re beautiful or interesting. But yesterday, as I waited for the money, I looked at the other people queueing in the bank. They were neither beautiful nor interesting, a dozen or so of the shadowy strangers who pass down the margins of life every day.

They were worried, preoccupied, impatient, grey with London air and ordinary ill health, with too many bags or too many papers. The queue was stalled, as usual. They were standing still, of course. But they seemed to trudge uphill as I looked. They were going uphill into the darkness.

The men looked back at me, hard, which is only to be expected; men have always looked at me, all my life — I suppose they always will.

And I thought, every one of you would like to be me. Every single one of you would ditch your life if you could do what I’m about to do.

I’m flying away with my darling.

From the chores and the queues and the dirty light.

We’re going on holiday and never coming back, and life will be a fairy-tale.

The last few days have been made of lists, lists on every scrap of paper. I tried to get Chris to draw up lists, but he said my lists would do for six. I started to get tired and cross. We started to dislike each other, Chris and I, Chris and I who adore each other.

It’s the tension, of course. We’re a little afraid, of other people’s sorrow and too much happiness. We’re afraid we are trying to be too lucky.

I haven’t slept well these last few nights. I’ve nothing on my conscience but I haven’t slept well. Chris has decided to block everything out; he’s slept too well, and snored.

Last night — the very last night at home — was the longest night I have ever spent. The Newsons’ dog howled like a wolf, three gardens away, and a small child sobbed…

On this final morning I woke feeling frightful and lay for a moment with my eyes half-closed, trying to grapple with a horrible dream. I had to recall it or I’d never escape it. When dragged to the surface it was about a little girl with a pretty smile and an empty suitcase.

She wants me to buy her a Japanese doll. She holds up the doll she wants me to buy, which is puggish, with slanted eyes, not pretty. I say so, and she explains it’s a dog. I tell her the dog has to be put down. She cries, and folds herself into the suitcase. She promises they will follow us.

It’s perfectly meaningless. The morning is beautiful, I smell my bacon cooking downstairs, the dream is no longer frightening.

Things start to seem more promising.

The suitcases, packed but not yet locked, stand in a line along the wall. Joy of the place-names that will fill those labels. The lists have all gone into the waste-paper basket, each with its long smug line of ticks. I’ve had my injections, collected the money, ordered the cab for the airport. I make one final triumphant list. Apple, paperbacks, flask full of brandy, in case we get stuck at Budapest airport and the barman has no Rémy Martin…

And I start to feel it, a foretaste of fun, a shiver of ecstatic anticipation, the first of a thousand unknown bars, just the two of us alone together…

This morning I’m avoiding the children — postponing the children, shall we say — until I have enough caffeine inside me.

Yesterday evening they both became suddenly (strategically?) sad, though they weren’t a bit troubled when we’d told them we were going.

— They are just being sad to upset me. Isaac’s nineteen years old, after all, and studying art at St Martin’s. You’d think he’d be glad we are going away, you’d think he’d be glad of a bit more freedom…

Isaac doesn’t talk a lot, or not to us, but he has a way of hanging about that I find intensely irritating, partly because he’s a clumsy boy; there are always little thuds and crashes and sulky muttered apologies, and the carpet is covered in coffee stains, and I haven’t the energy to replace it. He sighs a lot as well. You can’t see his face with those gigantic blue glasses. I’ve tried encouraging him to buy lenses but he thinks the glasses are fashionable, which they probably are, but he looks a fright. He sits there reading his art books, which he could perfectly well do upstairs… or he watches James Dean on the downstairs video, he has an obsession with James Dean which is probably an art student’s thing about style; we gave him a VCR of his own for his eighteenth birthday, but he didn’t take the hint, he likes ours better. Well now he can do whatever he likes, now he can have the run of the house, so why must he give us a hard time for leaving?

I suppose the children are secretly green with envy, just like everyone else… It’s nothing to worry about. They’ll be celebrating the minute we’re gone, inviting people for an all-night party…

— A moment’s qualm, which I dismiss. Mary Brown will keep an eye on things — dear Mary, she’s a good friend to us. Though I hope she’s not going to fuss too much and bother us with every little detail. She said she would write, I hope not too often… The daily will come in three times a week, the best china is stored in the attic…

They’re sensible children, in any case.

I’m quoting my own bland statements to friends. No one could call Susy sensible. Limited yes, sensible no. She’s nearly seventeen but she seems much younger. Thank God for the unconditional place she’s been given at the Poly of Central London by a tutor who said sotto voce that she looked like a Rubens woman.

It was Isaac who assured her this was complimentary and meant she was certain to be offered a place. ‘They’re gormless things with enormous bottoms. Rubens women are quite disgusting. But most people seem to think they’re beautiful.’

Yes, the children are certainly fond of each other, we know they’ll look after the house and each other, they’ll thrive on independence, it will be good for us and good for them… All quotes from my public statements. Not that I don’t believe it. Oh yes, and we’ll be back in September, in any case, in time for the beginning of Susy’s first term — Chris has more or less promised the children as much, and I haven’t the heart to contradict him.

Nothing too much can go wrong by then.

Ah, here’s Chris with juice and coffee and a plate of over-cooked eggs and bacon. That wonderful cock-eyed smile. I still find him devastatingly handsome, tall and thickset with thick dark hair and a great bear’s chest I can rest upon. He kisses me slowly, tenderly, as always, forgiving me for all the lists, the timetables, the worry, the temper. He must feel just like me; ready to be free and happy. No breakfast to cook for a very long time. We’ll lie in state and be waited on and make love twenty times a week.