Greenwich Park(4)
I have always loved the streets around the market: little crooked lanes, handsome Georgian windows, the musty scent of books and antiques. The dusty lamplit gloom of the pubs, with their worn leather and low ceilings. The brackish smell, carried on the breeze from the river. The mysterious names, left over from an age where Greenwich was the centre of the world: Straightsmouth, Gipsy Moth, Turnpin, Cutty Sark.
Daniel and I often come here on a Saturday, even though the whole experience is usually a let-down. You can never get a table at the coffee place, and the queue to take away stretches round the block. The aisles between the stalls are so packed that I am left constantly apologising, my bump pushed up against people’s backs as I squeeze past. We end up wandering aimlessly, looking again and again at the same handmade children’s clothes, quirky hats, worn-out furniture. Squabbling with tourists over tiny samples of expensive cheeses, then feeling obliged to buy some.
I had to get out of the house, though. I’d made my way downstairs this morning – still in my pyjamas, clinging to the filthy banister, attempting to dodge the gauntlet of tools, insulation, dust sheets – to be greeted by a host of embarrassed-looking builders. I mumbled a good morning, but the only one I really know is Vilmos, the boss, and he wasn’t there. I don’t think any of these men spoke English. They just nodded and smiled, clutching their cans of Relentless, cigarettes perched behind their ears. I could already see what the day would have in store. Drilling, dust, smashing plaster. Strange men urinating in my bathroom, dirt being traipsed to and from the kettle. Anything had to be better than staying at home.
I still haven’t completely forgiven Daniel for missing the antenatal class. When I woke the next morning, he was already up and showered, perched on the sofa with his laptop on his knee.
He looked up when he saw me. ‘Hey, how was it?’
I shrugged, fiddling with my dressing-gown cord. ‘Embarrassing.’
‘I’m so sorry, Helen.’
‘I know. It’s just, you know I hate stuff like that. On my own.’
He closed his laptop, rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. Tried to explain. The new development he’s working on had got another dreadful write-up in the Evening Standard. It had come out late afternoon, and the client had gone mad, demanded to know why they hadn’t been warned, why the press seemed to have it in for the project. It had been up to Daniel to race up to Edinburgh to meet with the client, try and calm everything down.
‘Couldn’t Rory have dealt with it?’
Even as I said it, though, I knew what the answer would be. Daniel rolled his eyes. ‘Nowhere to be found,’ he said. ‘As usual.’
Daniel had joined my brother Rory at his architecture firm a few years ago. It was my suggestion, and so I can’t help but feel responsible for the fact that my brother has proven a less than ideal business partner. It always seems to be left to Daniel to keep everything going.
Daniel hauled himself up, wrapped his arms around me.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured into my hair. ‘I promise I’ll make it up to you. Let’s go into town this weekend, have a proper look at things for the nursery.’
I pulled away to look at his face. It felt like a significant concession: he finds things like that hard, I know, after what has happened before. He still can’t bear to hope, to put his trust in the idea that this time things really are going to be different.
‘Really? And you won’t spend the whole day complaining?’
He laughed. ‘Promise. We can look at as many tiny pairs of socks as you like. I won’t say a word.’
Today, the market is wonderfully sleepy. Most of the stallholders are sitting back, eating lunch from brown takeaway boxes, chatting. There are no queues, so I take my time choosing serrano ham, hard cheeses, a glistening apricot tart. In the bakery, I pick up a flour-dusted loaf of sourdough. In the stalls outside, I gather handfuls of red and yellow tomatoes in crinkling brown paper, smooth and round as gemstones.
Maybe it won’t be so bad after all. Having nothing to do. I was advised to start my maternity leave early. This isn’t my first pregnancy – the others didn’t end well. I am a high-risk case, scanned every two weeks, my baby checked and checked again. I have been told I need to take it easy. Spend time at home. Do nothing.
I decide to take my time, do a full loop around the market, gulping in the smells of fresh bread and newly cut flowers, the faded melody of the busker on the steps outside. I linger over the stalls I never buy anything from – the ones that sell silver jewellery, old-fashioned children’s toys, home-made candles, rustling skirts, silk dresses, tie-dyed tunics. Things that Mummy liked to look at, when we came here together. I pretend to be interested so that I can touch things. Feel the silver, the velour, the crushed silk. Things that remind me of her.
The lady on the clothes stall – an ageing hippy with a nose piercing and a leathery face – doesn’t seem to mind me lingering. She is eating what smells like a lentil curry from one of the hot-food places, stabbing at chunks of paneer and butternut squash with a fork, a bluebottle batting at the canvas behind her. I sift through her tunics and skirts, moving the hangers one by one with my fingertips. I imagine which ones Mummy might have chosen.
Once, she bought a blue velvet dress here. She held it up against herself, her head cocked to one side, looking in the chipped mirror in the lady’s makeshift changing room. That mirror is still here, with its rainbow rim. I have the dress at home, although I don’t like to look at it much. I keep it in a drawer, hidden away. I can’t understand, sometimes, how things like that are still the same. Things that she touched, things that she wore, that were once warm against her skin, mirrors that held her reflection. They are all still here, in the world, with me. But she is gone, and never coming back.