Cockfosters Page 4

  ‘What – capitalism?’ said Rashmi. ‘But you do know, Nancy, don’t you? Capitalism has won. It’s the best – well, the least bad system.’

  ‘I thought that was democracy,’ said Estella. ‘The least bad system.’

  ‘Well, neither of them seems to be working very well at the moment,’ said Nancy.

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ said Rashmi.

  ‘It is that simple,’ said Nancy.

  ‘It is and it isn’t,’ said Dora.

  ‘Glad we’ve got that sorted out,’ said Estella.

  ‘In fact, it’s all gone berserk,’ continued Nancy. ‘I’ve never been on strike before, but I did join in recently. Because it’s not fair. It’s not fair.’

  ‘Can we get back to The Chimes?’ said Rashmi. ‘I was hoping to work up a bit of Christmas spirit this evening.’

  ‘And as for the riots, well, riots aren’t logical, are they,’ said Nancy. ‘They’re emotional.’

  ‘Nancy,’ said Estella. ‘Have a mince pie.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rashmi. ‘Shush.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Nancy. ‘Steam coming out of my ears.’

  ‘Completely understandable,’ said Dora. ‘I sympathise.’

  ‘Let’s get back to Trotty Veck and his daughter Meg,’ said Estella. ‘Meg. Oh dear, oh dear, Meg. It’s true what they say, Dickens couldn’t do women. Not women between fifteen and thirty, anyway. They’re nothing but passive characterless stooges, his young female characters. And in fact it’s only just coming out now, what he was like with the real women in his life.’

  ‘What was he like?’ said Dora.

  ‘Total nightmare,’ said Estella. ‘I read all about it for that menopause feature I was telling you about. When he married Catherine what’s-her-name she was twenty, he wasn’t much older, and he made it clear from the start that he wanted a wife who would never contradict or question him and who would always do what he said. OK, he was a genius, they’re allowed to be control freaks. But then, when she’d had ten children not counting the miscarriages he decided she was boring – which she probably was after all that – plus, he was seeing an eighteen-year-old actress.’

  ‘Not an unusual story,’ said Rashmi. ‘What we call it now is trading in the wife for a younger model, surely.’

  ‘Yes, but it was worse than that,’ said Estella. ‘Because he wanted the moral high ground as well as to be shot of his boring wife. So he exiled her, he sent her away. He bad-mouthed her to all his friends and even to the press – he was a famous man by then – saying she was a bad mother who didn’t love her children, and her children didn’t love her, and that she was generally mad and jealous and unhinged. The law meant the children were his property of course, and he discouraged them from seeing or speaking to her. It was the cruellest thing you can think of.’

  ‘How could he do that?’ cried Dora.

  ‘It was deeply hysterical behaviour,’ said Estella. ‘Doesn’t mean he wasn’t a genius; but still. Can you imagine what that first Christmas without her must have been like, with their children not daring to mention her name? He must have somehow convinced himself that he was the injured party.’

  ‘It sounds very like Leo,’ said Rashmi. ‘Five years ago this Christmas. You remember?’

  The rest of them nodded and looked solemn. Several years ago, Rashmi had made them party to the unfolding bitterness of her divorce and subsequent custody battle. The quasi-formal monthly appointment system of the book group meant that it had become a serial narrative to them, with increasingly melodramatic instalments. Her eyes glittered now with unshed tears as she poured herself some more wine.

  ‘And yet, and yet,’ said Nancy, tactfully diverting attention from her. ‘It’s not so simple. It never is, is it. Dickens could also be a friend to women, capable of deep sympathy and understanding. I was reading about it, and for several years, very discreetly, he helped Miss Coutts, a philanthropic heiress, to run a home in Shepherd’s Bush for girls who’d gone wrong, providing them with a way to make new lives.’

  ‘Miss Coutts as in …?’ said Rashmi.

  ‘Yes! Banking again!’ said Nancy. ‘No, don’t look like that, I won’t start ranting; but I must just read you this bit from The Chimes – Sir Joseph Bowley’s thoughts on the New Year and bankers. Let me see; ah, here it is: “… at this season of the year we should think of – of – ourselves. We should look into our – our accounts. We should feel that every return of so eventful a period in human transactions, involves a matter of deep moment between a man and his – and his banker.”’

  ‘Yes, that bit made me laugh too,’ said Estella, smiling broadly.

  ‘I look around me at work and I see some very average people who’ve made a great deal of money over the last twenty years,’ said Rashmi, blowing her nose. ‘Second homes are the norm; I’ve got a flat in Mumbai so I shouldn’t talk. But there are people with third homes, strings of rental properties, and they’re nothing special in the way of ability or talent. We’ve lived through a time when it was perfectly possible to go from mediocre to millionaire as long as you had some energy and luck and an eye to the main chance.’

  ‘At least this lot today didn’t inherit it,’ said Estella. ‘Not all of them, anyway.’

  ‘True,’ said Rashmi. ‘My boss’s mother was a dinner lady.’

  ‘And that ought to make it better,’ said Nancy, ‘but somehow it doesn’t. Once someone gets rich, it seems they immediately forget what it was like to be not rich. They just morph into money without a backward glance.’

  ‘Of course, the City always did do itself well,’ said Rashmi. ‘But over the last couple of decades it’s quite obvious that it massively over-rewarded itself.’

  ‘Not’ arf, you haven’t,’ said Estella. ‘You artful dodgers, you.’

  ‘But then since the turn of the century millions and millions of people have grown richer all over the world,’ said Rashmi, ‘particularly in India and China. The world’s wealth has almost doubled.’

  ‘How?’ said Dora. ‘How can the money in the world increase itself? Surely there’s a finite amount? Doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It must be to do with the dicing and splicing and sub-priming we keep hearing about,’ said Nancy.

  ‘I know,’ said Dora. ‘I try and follow it on the news, but honestly, it’s beyond me.’

  ‘What I think,’ fumed Nancy, ‘is that never again can we afford to be so ignorant. We’ve allowed a pack of shameless greed-merchants and a few brainiacs with maths PhDs to rig the entire system over the last twenty years so that nobody can understand it. We must lobby for basic economics to be a compulsory part of the national curriculum from now on.’

  ‘I’m not sure how much good that would do,’ said Estella. ‘Even if we get the hang of what a hedge fund is, what securitisation means, so what? It’s all got so complicated apparently that nobody in banking really understands it either. The only thing that’s clear is, they’re protected from their own mistakes.’

  ‘And Muggins pays,’ says Dora. ‘That’s us.’

  ‘What would Dickens say?’ said Nancy.

  ‘If he had any sense,’ said Rashmi, ‘he would point out that the average Brit may be feeling the pinch just now but they’re still ten times richer than the average Chinese. And he would probably set his next Christmas story in Shenzhen or Dongguan, in a toy factory. He’d tell the story of a factory worker who lives twelve hours from where her small children are cared for by her parents while she works for a pittance and sleeps in a comfortless dormitory and only sees them once a year.’

  ‘Once a year!’ said Dora. ‘That’s not true, is it?’

  ‘At Chinese New Year,’ said Rashmi. ‘Imagine those few days.’

  ‘Would it help if we didn’t buy the toys?’ asked Nancy.

  ‘Not really,’ said Rashmi. ‘It’s hard to beat a global system. There are people a lot worse off than our factory worker, and anyway she’d probably rather have the life she’s got now than the one h
er mother’s had. She’s already richer than her parents ever were.’

  ‘We’ve all been part of our generation,’ said Nancy abruptly, ‘whether or not we’ve made any money. And I for one am ashamed of it. It’s all of us that have done this. The lack of principle.’

  ‘What principle?’ asked Rashmi. ‘Debt is bad?’

  ‘Partly that, yes. At a very basic, Mr Micawber level. But more, we haven’t kept in mind what’s fair, what’s right. The governments we’ve elected have been shallow and greedy and now, it emerges, incompetent too.’

  ‘Harsh words,’ said Rashmi.

  ‘Harsh facts,’ said Nancy. ‘Anyway, it looks like it’s over now. We’ve had our turn.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘OK. Setting the world to rights,’ said Nancy. ‘What have we come up with?’

  ‘Pay people properly,’ said Estella.

  ‘Don’t switch off,’ said Dora. ‘Dickens was right – have sympathy for those with hard lives.’

  ‘Force through global financial regulation and make sure the rich pay their taxes,’ said Rashmi. ‘Impose stringent global climate-control measures.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nancy. ‘That should do it.’

  The four of them clinked glasses and sipped the last of the wine.

  ‘So how does it finish, The Chimes?’ asked Dora.

  ‘It’s a bit of a cop-out, really,’ said Nancy. ‘Trotty wakes up and finds it was all just a dream.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Estella. ‘It gets rather huddled on to the last couple of pages, the ending. Meg gets married, someone else called Mrs Chickenstalker who runs the corner shop discovers a long-lost something-or-other. They all wish each other happy New Year. And that’s about it. Even so, as I said, I’m glad I read it.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Nancy. ‘Though I must say, I still prefer it read aloud. Now, diaries. How’s January looking? Next time we meet we’ll have left the old year behind. Any New Year’s resolutions here?’

  ‘Take less exercise,’ said Estella. ‘Put on half a stone.’

  ‘Well, actually, I thought I might try walking like Dickens,’ said Dora. ‘Fast, four miles an hour, at night, after work, for the two miles home. A very good way to let off steam.’

  ‘I’m going to read more about the way the world works,’ said Nancy.

  ‘And I’m going to read more fiction,’ said Rashmi.

  Kythera

  Eggs, butter, sugar, flour; a lemon. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. And because as you know it’s the one I always make, darling girl, I have the Lemon Drizzle recipe pretty much by heart. I wonder how many it is I’ve made for you and your brother over the years. If I tot up your joint ages and then throw in another twenty-odd for your father, that comes to, oh, more than sixty cakes between you. Yes.

  Measure out four ounces of butter and four ounces of caster sugar from the jar with the black vanilla pod. Do you remember when my cousin Hilary got me to help her make memory boxes for the children? Three of them, all under ten at the point when she heard it was terminal. Anyway, I shopped for three little bottles of her favourite scent, helped her choose photos of various high points in her life, that sort of thing. Poor Hilary. She was memorialising herself for them.

  But when I told you and your brother about it – you weren’t very old then either, just tiddlers – I was very struck by what you said. You both said you’d rather have the mum’s memories of you as babies and funny things you said and did and things like that, with photos of her holding you or beaming at you, than a box just about her. And I thought, of course. Yes. Of course you would.

  Sift six ounces of flour with a teaspoon of baking powder. When I was expecting you I imagined you might be born on Midsummer’s Eve because the ETA we’d been given was the fifteenth of June, which is near enough. But as it turned out that beautiful hot flower-filled summer you were late, weren’t you; you didn’t arrive until the first of July.

  You were a perfect, calm, alert baby girl. I was amazed, after the protracted drama and violence of your two-day journey, broken collarbone and all, at how composed you were. Seven and a half pounds. They laid you in the glass hospital cot on your side and when I met your blue eyes – that dark newborn blue like Delft china – I was amazed. You knew me!

  When we got home there was a bank of flowers, more than I’ve seen in my life before or since – roses and lilies and larkspur from all our friends, every jug and mug full of carnations and white daisies. That’s why I still fill the kitchen with flowers in your birthday week – they’re all in season, and I bake your cake surrounded by them.

  At first you lay quietly in your Moses basket. Asleep, you played a silent flute, graceful long curling fingers up near your sweet face, eyes closed, lips parted to pout out a little purse of air. Oh you smelt delicious, I couldn’t resist stroking your forehead with my nose, sniffing up your fabulous innocent smell. It was like clean washing and fresh gardens. Once you were here I couldn’t bear synthetic smells. I switched to unscented soap; I wanted you to know my smell too.

  Cream the butter and sugar together with a fork. And you fed like a dream, you even let me read a book while you were feeding. Your dad used to call you little milksop. I sampled a few drops of my own milk at one point, I remember, through curiosity, and it tasted fresh and slightly sweet with a faint vanilla scent like this sugar.

  Stir in the eggs and beat until light and fluffy. It was you who decided when you were ready to move on from a diet of milk and puréed baby mush. How funny, I can date it exactly, like Juliet’s nurse – it was your dad’s birthday, six months and three weeks on from yours, and we’d taken you out for lunch with us to a French-style brasserie for the first time. You were sitting beside me in a high chair. When I looked up from the menu of moules frites and onglet à l’échalote, I was just in time to see you grab a piece of baguette from the basket on the table. You went at it like a ravenous meerkat. I almost fell off my chair. We couldn’t stop laughing, your dad and me. You always made us laugh even when you were little and you still do, with your showers of talk and mad-cat flights of fancy.

  There was that time one summer I remember so clearly, when you and me and your brother were playing in the sea, jumping in the waves and shouting.

  ‘Picasso!’ you declared during a lull, floating on your back. ‘He’s the one that cut off his ear.’

  ‘No he’s not,’ I said.

  ‘That was Matisse,’ said your brother, doggy-paddling away, looking to me for confirmation. ‘No, it was Van Gogh. Wasn’t it, Mum. Why did he?’

  ‘He was sad and mad,’ I replied.

  ‘No, he did it to impress his girlfriend,’ you insisted, bobbing up and down. ‘“See how much I love you, how I’ve suffered for you, I’ve sent you my ear.” Then she ate it.’

  ‘She did not!’ I said, outraged.

  ‘She did,’ you sparkled, nodding your head, dancing in the waves. ‘She cooked it in a frying pan, then she ate it.’

  We couldn’t stop laughing, the three of us; we were spluttering and choking and falling about in the sea. Do you remember?

  Fold the flour into the mixture a little at a time. I’ve got my grandmother’s old cake tin ready by the scales, lined as she showed me with greaseproof paper snipped and fitted to size. That’s where you got your lovely green eyes from, your great-grandmother. She used to make seed cake in this tin, a very plain cake flavoured with half a teaspoon of caraway seeds. It was good and wholesome but more austere than we’re used to now. When the cake was almost cooked she’d hold it up to her ear and listen to it – if it was singing away to itself inside, it needed longer. Whereas my mother’s cakes – your grandma’s – were altogether quicker and sweeter: a chocolate refrigerator cake packed with glacé cherries, or a Victoria sandwich with butter icing for our birthdays.

  Then there was the time on that holiday in Kythera when all the younger children fell in love with you. You were eleven or maybe twelve. In the warm black evenings when there was mu
sic outside you became the Pied Piper – you had the adults clapping in time as you organised a miniature conga of children and got them dancing between the tables. You led them in triumph, the little girls gazing at you in a glory of adoration, and your brother and the other boys bouncing along in your wake with smiling spring-heeled obedience. And one-and-a-two-and-a-three-and-a-four, you all chanted as the music segued into the song that was so popular that summer, making rhythmic criss-cross patterns with your arms: HEY! Macarena.

  Zest the lemon using the fine side of the grater, and stir into the mixture with two or three tablespoons of milk until it reaches a dropping consistency. At your thirteenth birthday party you were luminously beautiful, as if lit from inside by candles, in a white dress with silver sparkles. We stood together at the front door to ward off gatecrashers. Almost all the still-almost-children arriving were nervous – the little flush high on their cheeks, the gabbled or absent greeting and a roll of the eyes like a startled horse. Then, half an hour in, they had acquired a cockiness, strutting round like pirates or arrogant nobles, high on the cushion of air lifting them off the ground in the generalised terror and desperation to be accepted and if possible to rule the roost, to dominate – to be a star. It was a night of high emotion – little trios and quartets of girls storming across rooms together or knotted into furious tête-à-têtes. The wordless boys got uppish and stroppy, jostling each other, showing off. Some of them tried to set fire to the garden shed; they were the ones who’d arrived together and presented you with three goldfish in a glass bowl. You were trembling with shock and excitement at the unavoidable immediacy of it, and your eyes met mine imploringly for a second as you took hold of their unwieldy offering.

  Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and level off with a palette knife. When your next birthday loomed you said, ‘I can’t believe I’m going to be fourteen next week. I’m going to post leaflets everywhere saying I’m available for light gardening.’ Then the fifteenth brought a slew of cards bursting with braggadocio about Bacardi Breezers, and Almost Legal scrawled naughtily across them. Chloë, Zoë, Lulu, Hannah, Scarlett – they all came back after school and sang heartily to you in the back garden over the candle-decked Lemon Drizzle; then the six of you scoffed several pounds of strawberries dipped in sugar. You wrote each other long birthday letters, rammed with the detail of shared lives and protestations of undying loyalty. ‘You’re nothing to do with me,’ you told your mothers. ‘I only need you for lifts.’