Read Online Repeat It Today With Tears by Anne Peile - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anne Peile
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indicative of despair as though I had given him an answer that disappointed him. I knew, in fact, that it was quite the opposite. I looked at his battered brown shoes and his trousers of fine cord and the way in which one hand held the coffee cup on his knee.
‘Can I give you a lift somewhere, drive you home or something?’
‘No, it’s okay, I’ll get a taxi.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Certain sure.’ I smiled at him and he smiled back at me.
All the way down the stairs and along the hall he held my hand. I felt that I could draw him into me by the arm, as though on a string of coloured yarn.
We stood on the doorstep. You could tell that the sea was in the air from the river. The pillars on the porticoes of the houses in Oakley Street are fairly grand. Beside them even my tall father seemed on a more human scale. It was incredible to me that nearby, in Kings Road, people continued to do ordinary evening things.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘listen, if, you know… in the cold light of day… if you really feel that you would like to come again, then I, then I would, of course, be very glad to see you… after all, how could I not be… ’ He touched my cheek with two of his fingers. I had to press my feet hard on to the stone step beneath me so that I should not gasp out loud.
‘Good night, little one,’ Jack said.
For some way I did not even try to find a taxi. At Cheyne Walk I turned left and crossed to the embankment side, I wished to walk slowly and more than once I know that I smiled at the night. I wanted also to be close beside the river. At that date, if you grew up and went to school in South London, you seemed, somehow, to be related to the Thames. It was a constant and familiar presence in your consciousness; you crossed it for excursions and railway termini and the Christmas lights, you knew it from the avuncular narratives of history textbooks.
Over Chelsea Bridge I walked tall when the bikers at the teastall whistled and gestured obscenities. At the bank corner in Queenstown Road stood the Irish boys; Alison had told me fearful tales of their gang and what they did and yet they caused me no alarm. I felt that I was protected by some radiance from any insult. Eventually I found a taxi and it drove me swiftly home across the avenue on Clapham Common. Then I could lie down and make believe that the pillow against my cheek was the fingers of my father’s hand.
The next day was the beginning of that time when I saw the world in a different way. It was not a very long time, in terms of life spans, but while it lasted it was very good and very vivid. I remember that I noticed, especially, the colour of things. In old post-war guidebooks for Paris there are photographs of the flower markets, the blooms are exquisitely bright against the grey and wearied city. That is how I saw London in 1972. Details and people mattered; all of their stories counted because each of them was a component part in the days when I would see my father or of the days when I was waiting to see him and counting and crossing off hours on the end page of a book or the edgeof a paper bag. Every feature of a scene was clear and true, as though my eyes depicted the world for me in
plein air
.
In the morning the tall Austrian manageress was unlocking the metal shutter blind of the American Dream, trying to keep her head straight and level as she bent towards the pavement. ‘Thank God. Thank God you’re here, my hangover is the end.’
She sat in the window at the table where the varnish always looked sticky and asked me to put the coffee machine on without bothering to clean it. She smoked a number of cigarettes which she stood up on their filter end when she had finished, letting them burn out rather than looking for an ashtray.
‘It’s my boyfriend,’ she explained when I brought her black coffee, ‘We are finished but we can’t leave each other alone.’
Renata winced when Ali the chef banged through the door, his immense
‘Can I give you a lift somewhere, drive you home or something?’
‘No, it’s okay, I’ll get a taxi.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Certain sure.’ I smiled at him and he smiled back at me.
All the way down the stairs and along the hall he held my hand. I felt that I could draw him into me by the arm, as though on a string of coloured yarn.
We stood on the doorstep. You could tell that the sea was in the air from the river. The pillars on the porticoes of the houses in Oakley Street are fairly grand. Beside them even my tall father seemed on a more human scale. It was incredible to me that nearby, in Kings Road, people continued to do ordinary evening things.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘listen, if, you know… in the cold light of day… if you really feel that you would like to come again, then I, then I would, of course, be very glad to see you… after all, how could I not be… ’ He touched my cheek with two of his fingers. I had to press my feet hard on to the stone step beneath me so that I should not gasp out loud.
‘Good night, little one,’ Jack said.
For some way I did not even try to find a taxi. At Cheyne Walk I turned left and crossed to the embankment side, I wished to walk slowly and more than once I know that I smiled at the night. I wanted also to be close beside the river. At that date, if you grew up and went to school in South London, you seemed, somehow, to be related to the Thames. It was a constant and familiar presence in your consciousness; you crossed it for excursions and railway termini and the Christmas lights, you knew it from the avuncular narratives of history textbooks.
Over Chelsea Bridge I walked tall when the bikers at the teastall whistled and gestured obscenities. At the bank corner in Queenstown Road stood the Irish boys; Alison had told me fearful tales of their gang and what they did and yet they caused me no alarm. I felt that I was protected by some radiance from any insult. Eventually I found a taxi and it drove me swiftly home across the avenue on Clapham Common. Then I could lie down and make believe that the pillow against my cheek was the fingers of my father’s hand.
The next day was the beginning of that time when I saw the world in a different way. It was not a very long time, in terms of life spans, but while it lasted it was very good and very vivid. I remember that I noticed, especially, the colour of things. In old post-war guidebooks for Paris there are photographs of the flower markets, the blooms are exquisitely bright against the grey and wearied city. That is how I saw London in 1972. Details and people mattered; all of their stories counted because each of them was a component part in the days when I would see my father or of the days when I was waiting to see him and counting and crossing off hours on the end page of a book or the edgeof a paper bag. Every feature of a scene was clear and true, as though my eyes depicted the world for me in
plein air
.
In the morning the tall Austrian manageress was unlocking the metal shutter blind of the American Dream, trying to keep her head straight and level as she bent towards the pavement. ‘Thank God. Thank God you’re here, my hangover is the end.’
She sat in the window at the table where the varnish always looked sticky and asked me to put the coffee machine on without bothering to clean it. She smoked a number of cigarettes which she stood up on their filter end when she had finished, letting them burn out rather than looking for an ashtray.
‘It’s my boyfriend,’ she explained when I brought her black coffee, ‘We are finished but we can’t leave each other alone.’
Renata winced when Ali the chef banged through the door, his immense
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