Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart Read online

  Feeling remarkably business-like, she got up. She drew the curtains, competently, as Jeremy had shown her. Then she began to rummage in her suitcase for her costume and rubber flip-flops which she never travelled without. Of course, they were buried right at the bottom; she had not foreseen that she would want to go swimming her first cold evening in London. But she did urgently, knowing that as soon as she pushed away from the side and began to propel herself slowly and steadily through the water, everything would immediately seem a lot less dreadful.

  The hotel corridors and the lift were empty. She supposed that everyone was having dinner. She hadn’t thought yet what she would do about dinner; she certainly wasn’t going to sit alone in the restaurant. But first she would have her swim; she would think about dinner afterwards. There was a small plaque next to the ground floor button in the lift which said “Leisure Complex” and Sylvia headed there.

  She supposed she had expected a Dubai-style pool, vast and lavish and she was rather shocked by what she found. A somnolent Polish teenager in a less than fresh tracksuit was lounging at the reception desk of the “leisure complex”. He greeted her by reciting sleepily a welcome obviously memorized from a training manual and handed her a towel and a token to use a locker. She descended a narrow flight of stairs into a basement region which stank of chlorine and rubber. She changed in a distinctly disagreeable changing room, reproaching herself for not having thought of getting changed upstairs in her room. Then she plodded back up the basement stairs and pushed open the door to the pool.

  Why, it was minuscule and made even smaller by a sloping shelf at the shallow end so that the first few feet were not even deep enough to swim in. For a moment, Sylvia wondered whether it was worth getting in at all. But she longed for the buoyancy of the water, the release which swimming always granted her and so she waded in down the sloping tiled shelf holding firmly onto the handrail. Jeremy and Smita would never forgive her a broken limb at this stage.

  As soon as the water was deep enough, she kicked her legs out behind her and she was off. The water was warm but not too warm and chlorinated but not excessively so. Once she adjusted to the short lanes – twelve strokes and back, twelve strokes and back – the swimming gave her the same pleasure which it always did. She was no longer Sylvia Garland, newly widowed and alone in a city which she had not lived in for thirty-five years. Her mind emptied of all her preoccupations and focused narrowly, repetitively on twelve strokes and back, twelve strokes and back, her fingers held together, scooping the water, her shoulders obedient and synchronised, her hips and knees flexing, no longer perfectly these days but in unison.

  She was an aged sea turtle, swimming steadily to and fro in her tank at the aquarium. Like Sylvia, the turtle had memories of former lives in other oceans which streamed behind her as she swam: the Pacific Ocean and islands, cherished eggs laid on remote beaches, other turtles. Sylvia might be swimming in a laughable little pool in a London hotel but she had swum in her time off Lantau Island, at Kovalam Beach, in the turquoise waters of the Gulf. Now, like the turtle in her tank, she ploughed to and fro, her face set in an expressionless mask, her neck saggy and wrinkled, her flippers scaly and scarred. But, like the turtle, she swam trailing memories of distant seas.

  Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes passed as a turtle and then Sylvia was tired and wanted to get out. She had had the pool to herself the whole time but as she emerged from the water, two small Indian boys in bright trunks which were too baggy for their scrawny legs burst noisily into the room followed by their small slight father whose spectacles immediately steamed up in the heat. Both excited, maybe new to London, just released after a long flight from somewhere, the little boys scampered and screamed alongside the pool. One of them skidded and nearly fell and was reprimanded by his father. Just as Sylvia, wrapped in a towel, withdrew to the sauna, the little boys plunged into the water splashing and shouting. Their thin brown limbs flailed, their glossy black heads bobbed in the water. The scene reminded Sylvia of so many swimming scenes in the East: swarms of little brown boys cavorting for tourists, diving for pennies. It occurred to her with a shock that her grandson might well look like one of those little boys. It depended, of course, whose looks would predominate, Jeremy’s or Smita’s, and it had to be said, so far in that marriage, it was Smita who had predominated at every turn.

  Sylvia relaxed in the sauna for ten minutes, relishing the heat. Then she showered and went back downstairs to change. As she walked past the pool, she noticed, which she had not seen while she was swimming, the night-time street scene outside, only partly screened by the foliage in the hotel garden. Buses and taxis were lumbering past, lit up inside and offering glimpses of a hectic city life from which she was excluded. She stood for a few moments, observing the nocturnal cavalcade until one of the little boys jumped in right behind her and splashed her. She gave him a generously indulgent smile and she retreated from the poolside, thinking that she was perfectly happy not to be part of the whirl of the city and, as far as she was concerned, things could stay like that for a good while yet.

  She ordered tomato soup and a toasted sandwich on room service and settled to eat them in front of a documentary about Emperor penguins in the Antarctic. The soup was Heinz, which gave her no end of pleasure, although she supposed that a four-star hotel might have done better. The documentary was marvellous and without Roger’s withering running commentary – he hated wildlife programmes – she could really enjoy it. She had no idea that penguins led such an orderly, civilised life or tended their young with such selfless devotion. She wondered how the young penguins took care of their parents when they grew old. Nothing to take comfort from there, she supposed; there were no granny flats, no carers in Nature. She imagined the elderly penguins abandoned amid the screaming blizzards, stiffly, stoically freezing to death. She ticked herself off; by no stretch of the imagination had Jeremy and Smita abandoned her. Jeremy had met her at the airport, Smita had made her lunch. But then they had dumped her. They had their own lives to lead, of course, they were both busy, working, expecting. Still it was Sylvia’s first evening back in England, newly widowed and she was sitting alone in a hotel room, drinking tinned soup. She had every right to feel sorry for herself.

  Crossly, she reminded herself that she didn’t want to be Jeremy and Smita’s house guest. Perish the thought; Smita’s house beautiful would suffocate her within the week. Why, earlier on today, hadn’t she been on the verge of turning round and leaving at the prospect of having lunch with them, let alone living with them? It was only the howling of the icy blizzards in Antarctica and a predator circling over the penguin colony with outstretched wings which had made her briefly backtrack. She thought about ringing her sister Cynthia – if she could master the hotel phone – but quickly thought better of it. Sylvia knew she was not yet up to speaking to Cynthia. The penguin programme finished in a crescendo of uplifting orchestral music – as if the penguins might miraculously take celestial flight – and was followed by the evening news. No longer so baby-faced Tony Blair was holding forth against a backdrop of more bloodshed in Iraq. Sylvia turned the television off smartly. Things were bad enough without watching the bloody news.

  In the morning, Jeremy phoned her, as promised, on the dot of nine, as if she were a business call. His manner was business-like too. He told her he had drawn up a list of local estate agents who let service apartments and he proposed driving her round a selection of them so she could choose where she was going to stay until she had made up her mind what to do next.

  Sylvia said, “But I like it here.”

  She heard Jeremy exhale.

  “You can’t possibly stay there for a month,” he said reprovingly. “The cost would be astronomical.”

  “Who’s talking about a month?” Sylvia exclaimed. “I meant just for a few days until – until –”

  “Until what?” Jeremy asked. “I’m sure, judging by the state of you, you’ll need much more than a few days to decide where you’re going
to live, what you’re going to do. Smi and I have talked it over and a service apartment is definitely the best option. It’ll have everything provided, you can pay for it a week at a time and meanwhile you can look around and make up your mind what you want to do longer term.”

  It was no good telling herself he meant well; his tone made her immediately contrary.

  She asked, “Will it have a pool?”

  “A pool?” Jeremy repeated wonderingly.

  “Yes.” Sylvia answered briskly. “A pool. I need one nowadays for my health. In fact, I went for a swim here in the hotel just last night.”

  Jeremy retorted, “You’ve spent too long in Dubai, you know.”

  Then he relented. “I’m sure Smi can get you into her gym on a guest membership. You can swim there.”

  Belatedly, Sylvia thought to ask, “How is she feeling this morning?”

  Evidently recognizing a red herring, Jeremy answered briefly, “Much the same. If I come to pick you up at ten, will you be ready?”

  “I seem to recall it gets better after the first three months,” Sylvia went on. “So she should start to feel a bit more cheerful in a couple of weeks in fact.”

  “I’ll see you at ten then,” Jeremy replied and he rang off.

  Sylvia made a point of being ready in the lobby at the right time; she knew she was on thin ice where those two were concerned. While she waited for Jeremy because he was, typically, late, she sensed a resolve taking shape. It was too early to call it a decision but it was a dimly outlined resolve.

  When Jeremy drove onto the forecourt, she didn’t recognize him because of course she was watching out for the old black car, rather than the new silver one. Jeremy had to get out and gesticulate foolishly to attract her attention. She leapt to her feet, having wisely avoided the deep leather armchairs and waited perched on a little gilt chair instead. She hurried out, pursued ignominiously by an off-duty Japanese air hostess waving her handbag, which she had in her haste left behind on the floor. Jeremy settled her into the front passenger seat, unsuccessfully trying to conceal his impatience. Sylvia noticed that his posture was no better than the day before but she refrained from comment. It was obvious from the way he slammed his door and twisted the key in the ignition that he was finding this morning a strain.

  Sylvia considered asking after Smita some more but thought better of it. Smita would no doubt be using her pregnancy to lead Jeremy a merry dance and really she ought not to get any more attention than she deserved. In silence, Sylvia looked out of the window and wondered how on earth she would ever live here again.

  An unimaginably long time ago, a well-intentioned young woman called Sylvia had got married, amid great hilarity, to a fun-loving young man called Roger. 1964. They had bought the most minute house off the King’s Road in Chelsea and moved in there to live happily ever after. Of course they hadn’t lived there happily ever after because a few years later they had gone off to Hong Kong. Their married life had been far from plain sailing anyway. But it was the certainty that she could never again return to that cosy little house which had made her turn against London. Even though the house had been incredibly inconvenient in a number of ways; so tiny that some days Roger seemed to fill it up entirely and its internal walls so paper thin that you could hear absolutely everything. Still, after forty years of marriage, how on earth was she supposed to choose somewhere to live on her own?

  Jeremy drove a short distance to the office of an estate agent with a silly name something like “Dullard and Square” where they were joined by a swarthy young man who climbed into the back of the car, mid-sentence on his mobile, bringing with him an overwhelming scent of cheap cologne and, when he had finished his phone call, he introduced himself, implausibly, as Gid.

  Sylvia recoiled from his brashness. With Gid in the car, forget the choking cologne, it felt as if the volume had suddenly been turned up far too high.

  “Got some ace properties for yer,” he yelled at Sylvia from the back, as if she were deaf, she thought irritably. “Nothin’ like what yer used to in Dubai, er-hah, er-hah, but really nice places yer’ll see.”

  His phone rang again, his ringtone a raucous blast of rock music and he promptly launched into a furious, expletive-laden argument with someone, apparently a colleague who had failed to arrange their first appointment. He rang off, having ended the exchange by calling his colleague a “fucking tosser”, shouted jokily at Sylvia, “’Scuse my French” and told Jeremy to “throw a U-ey” and to set off again in the opposite direction.

  Sylvia cast an indignant sideways look at Jeremy; what on earth was he thinking of, inflicting Gid on her? But either Jeremy was too preoccupied with the perils of trying to do a U-turn in a rather busy road or he did not find Gid’s behaviour nearly as outrageous as she did. Sylvia looked balefully at her son. She resolved there and then that, however suitable they might be, she would not move into any apartment provided by Gid.

  Of course Jeremy knew that his mother would be difficult; how could it be otherwise? But to describe all six flats which the agent showed them in the course of a very long morning as “uniformly ghastly” seemed to him unfair.

  It was true, the first two, in big 1930s blocks in St John’s Wood, were a bit grim: labyrinthine corridors, stale cooking smells. But to call them “tombs”, to refer to the blocks afterwards as the “Valley of the Dead” seemed to Jeremy pure provocation. Did his mother not realise he had taken time off work at his own initiative to do this for her? Did she not understand the extra stress she was causing him?

  She claimed to have seen a very old lady creeping along one of the corridors, stooping, dressed in a black coat, a black hat and black shoes, clutching a black handbag as if it might at any moment be torn from her clutches. The old lady had thrown his mother a warning look, she claimed; abandon hope all ye who enter here. Well, Jeremy had been walking along right next to her and he had not seen any such thing.

  She was a little less harsh about the next two places, in a flashy, horrifically expensive block next to Regent’s Park. The agent was just trying it on; they were way over budget. She also infuriated Jeremy by sharing a nasty little racist exchange with the agent about the furnishings.

  “What kind of people live here?” she asked fastidiously as they viewed the third flat.

  Jeremy already suspected that his mother had no intention of living in any of these apartments; she was simply on the lookout for reasons to reject them.

  The agent laughed nastily and answered, “Yer would feel right at home here, Mrs Garland, coming from Dubai. It’s full of Arabs, this block.” He added gleefully, “Can’t yer tell from the taps?”

  His mother laughed heartily for the first time since she had arrived.

  Afterwards, while Gid was returning the keys to the porter, Jeremy told her that it was not acceptable nowadays to make that kind of casual racist comment and she should be more careful. But she retorted, “Oh don’t be such a prig, Jeremy. Everyone knows that Arabs like showy bathrooms.” Oh, she was insufferable.

  Jeremy had high hopes of the last two flats because they were just around the corner in Belsize Park; it would be so convenient. As a temporary measure, they both seemed perfectly acceptable to him but, in the first one, his mother objected to the repeating mauve pattern on the bathroom tiles, saying it was enough to give you a migraine. The final one, which was decorated a bit frostily throughout in pale blue, she said would be like living in an igloo.

  In the car afterwards, she raised the subject of the baby and managed to get on Jeremy’s nerves even more. She raised the subject in such a way that instead of feeling straight away cheered, as he usually did, Jeremy felt furious. She told him patronisingly why none of the flats which they had seen were the least bit suitable for a visiting grandchild. She was surprised he couldn’t see it. While she was about it, she added that their penthouse – on which they had just spent everything they had – was utterly unsuitable for a small child too.

  Feeling rancorous and
headachey, Jeremy drove his mother back to the hotel. He had intended to take her to lunch in a Japanese restaurant he liked to toast her new apartment. But there was nothing to celebrate and he couldn’t wait to get rid of her.

  In the hotel car park, he asked sullenly, “D’you want me to join you for lunch?”

  His mother stared bleakly ahead. “I don’t have anyone else to have lunch with.”

  Of course Jeremy felt guilty then; he ought to make allowances. He went round to the passenger side and helped his mother out. She did look a sorry sight crossing the hotel forecourt with her jacket buttoned up wrong and her make up smudged. He should be more understanding.

  As soon as they sat down in the hotel coffee shop, Jeremy regretted the Japanese restaurant. The coffee shop was awful – full of piped music and off duty aircrew – and his mother would probably have found the Japanese restaurant soothing with its paper lanterns and swooping calligraphy. Although she might have annoyed him there too with one of her put-downs: “Oh, I can see this is just your sort of place, Jeremy,” something like that.

  They both looked morosely at the laminated menu: tuna burger, BLT. His mother ordered a cappuccino and a piece of cake and Jeremy a reproachful small salad and a mineral water. Smita was very keen that he watched what he ate and didn’t put on weight in sympathy with her like some men did.

  His mother leant forward and said, “Listen dear, I expect you mean well but you really must understand that I can’t be rushed. I’m sorry if I’m inconveniencing you and Smita. But I need to do this at my own pace.” She sat back and sighed demonstratively.