Lore said. ‘But I’m beginning to see why Teza said I could stay for no rent, just pay the electricity. Teza’s daughter – Mari – she’s developed an obsession about Ford. I’m supposed to remember everything I can about him. But it’s so hazy. Mari ought to be sent away to school or something. God knows, Teza has money enough. But I knew this would happen to me, Holly. I’m the surrogate mother while Teza camps out on Greenham Common. Mari’s a nice girl. A sharp London girl. You know. But she ought to be gotaway from this mania about her father, it just isn’t healthy at all.’
Roots, roots, roots, I thought, as I read Lore’s letter, when she said there was lots of people coming round to the house now and Mari was excited, she imagined she was on the trail. That’s all people want nowadays. You can even find out who your real parents are if you’ve been adopted, these days, when you’re eighteen. And Mari must be about sixteen I suppose – no wonder she’s desperate to find out what she can. For Teza had done that incredibly stupid thing, she’d refused to talk about Ford with Mari at all.
‘It’s not that Mari feels particularly keenly towards Teza,’ Lore said as we sat sipping our rum punches, waiting for the rain – for Lore came in off-peak season, it’s cheaper then. (It’s a time of waiting – for a hurricane, for rain and the stink of fresh greenery before it all rots in the sun at midday.) Teza was a bit – well, brisk with the girl, it seems. She was militantly independent – so Mari must be too. ‘There weren’t many men to be seen in that house near the Portobello Road,’ Lore said with a laugh. She had to ask any man who came to visit her to creep down the basement quiet-like, if it was late at night. Teza never said anything if she came down and saw you with a bloke in the mornings, but you felt uneasy, like it was time to move out and go somewhere else. Mari, for a fact, had been sent up to the clinic for the Pill when she was fourteen, but Lore could have sworn blind she’d never had it off with a soul. It was too much of a responsibility, somehow, with Teza standing there in the background preparing to be a single grandparent and indoctrinate the child with her beliefs. Moreover, it would be born despite the Pill (for Teza didn’t believe there was such a thing as real protection against Nature’s intentions, vile always as far as women are concerned). Maybe she’s right too, I think sometimes when I look at the lives we’ve all led. But to hell with it. Whose is better, anyway? Who would have wanted to be DuchessDora, with all the money in the world and plenty of time to read the books Sanjay brought out that rotted with damp in the old library down by the lagoon?
‘The trouble was that Mari wanted me to come with her on the quest for her father – and I had to help her,’ Lore said, ‘with Teza away and risking arrest daily. Where does what-you -do-for-your-flesh-and-blood and what-you-do-for- the-world begin? I’ve had to ask myself.’
‘I wonder that too,’ I said, and Ferdie brought us more of the gold rum and mango and papaya juices and a sweet peppering of fresh nutmeg from the tree. ‘That’s what we’ve always wanted to know,’ I said. ‘At least Teza is trying to stop us all being blown up by the bomb.’
‘While her daughter suffers alone,’ Lore said.
And now here’s Mari, ready to blow up the whole world by the looks of her, that’s the irony of it all.
It was a question at first, apparently, of Mari finding a photo of Ford in the writing desk of the sitting room that Teza did up, surprisingly good-taste and stripped-pine for a woman of such revolutionary and uncompromising views. She found it in the old rosewood desk, against a wall stippled pale orange – on a floor of polished boards with the odd kelim dotted here and there (Lore said it was agony when Teza had meetings, with the thumping on the floor above). It was classic
Roots, roots, roots, I thought, as I read Lore’s letter, when she said there was lots of people coming round to the house now and Mari was excited, she imagined she was on the trail. That’s all people want nowadays. You can even find out who your real parents are if you’ve been adopted, these days, when you’re eighteen. And Mari must be about sixteen I suppose – no wonder she’s desperate to find out what she can. For Teza had done that incredibly stupid thing, she’d refused to talk about Ford with Mari at all.
‘It’s not that Mari feels particularly keenly towards Teza,’ Lore said as we sat sipping our rum punches, waiting for the rain – for Lore came in off-peak season, it’s cheaper then. (It’s a time of waiting – for a hurricane, for rain and the stink of fresh greenery before it all rots in the sun at midday.) Teza was a bit – well, brisk with the girl, it seems. She was militantly independent – so Mari must be too. ‘There weren’t many men to be seen in that house near the Portobello Road,’ Lore said with a laugh. She had to ask any man who came to visit her to creep down the basement quiet-like, if it was late at night. Teza never said anything if she came down and saw you with a bloke in the mornings, but you felt uneasy, like it was time to move out and go somewhere else. Mari, for a fact, had been sent up to the clinic for the Pill when she was fourteen, but Lore could have sworn blind she’d never had it off with a soul. It was too much of a responsibility, somehow, with Teza standing there in the background preparing to be a single grandparent and indoctrinate the child with her beliefs. Moreover, it would be born despite the Pill (for Teza didn’t believe there was such a thing as real protection against Nature’s intentions, vile always as far as women are concerned). Maybe she’s right too, I think sometimes when I look at the lives we’ve all led. But to hell with it. Whose is better, anyway? Who would have wanted to be DuchessDora, with all the money in the world and plenty of time to read the books Sanjay brought out that rotted with damp in the old library down by the lagoon?
‘The trouble was that Mari wanted me to come with her on the quest for her father – and I had to help her,’ Lore said, ‘with Teza away and risking arrest daily. Where does what-you -do-for-your-flesh-and-blood and what-you-do-for- the-world begin? I’ve had to ask myself.’
‘I wonder that too,’ I said, and Ferdie brought us more of the gold rum and mango and papaya juices and a sweet peppering of fresh nutmeg from the tree. ‘That’s what we’ve always wanted to know,’ I said. ‘At least Teza is trying to stop us all being blown up by the bomb.’
‘While her daughter suffers alone,’ Lore said.
And now here’s Mari, ready to blow up the whole world by the looks of her, that’s the irony of it all.
It was a question at first, apparently, of Mari finding a photo of Ford in the writing desk of the sitting room that Teza did up, surprisingly good-taste and stripped-pine for a woman of such revolutionary and uncompromising views. She found it in the old rosewood desk, against a wall stippled pale orange – on a floor of polished boards with the odd kelim dotted here and there (Lore said it was agony when Teza had meetings, with the thumping on the floor above). It was classic
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