A Visit to the Nit Lady by Dave Wakely
In early 1980s London, a couple take a break from refurbishing their new home go on an important visit.
London, August 1982
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| Image generated with OpenAI |
He’s always been meticulous, this one. Spotlessly clean and immaculately groomed. Runs in the family, he says. “We’ve always been a careful lot.” Right now, I can feel the bony fingers of his right hand delve through my hair, picking attentively at my scalp, occasionally alighting on something and tugging it free.
“Hey apeman, are you grooming me?”
In the dark uncarpeted room, my voice sounds too loud. The echo from the bare walls stretches the vowels, makes my accent seem stronger. Turns my joke into indignation.
“Just drops of paint from yesterday. No need to have you fumigated, but a spot of shampoo wouldn’t hurt. Have we got any left? We need milk anyway – I’ll get some.”
His left arm is still round me, fingertips stroking circles in the hairs around my navel. Gentle as a mother’s hand on a baby’s wispy curls, aware of the frailty of the skull beneath. In Devon, he always slept foetal and tidy in my arms, curled tight against the dawn. But since the move, he’s slept behind me, upright and unfurled, one hand on my belly pulling me into his lap. There’s a new energy to him, racing into the mornings like a whippet chasing sticks.
The fingers in my hair become a palm, smoothing the tangles. Smoothing me. He moves to kiss my neck, the mattress undulating beneath us as his weight shifts and settles afresh. I rub my eyes, not ready to open them and see how far the room has come, how far it still has to go.
“Don’t worry, sleepyhead, I’ll check on the way out. Tea? Coffee?”
“Tea. And toast?”
“Room service coming up.”
The mattress buckles again as he kneels to kiss my cheek, straightens up and climbs out of bed. I hear denim whisper up a thigh, the buzz of a zip. The faint slap of plimsolls on floorboards as he slaloms round the cardboard boxes and tea-chests. Then the door handle’s slow metallic squeak. One eye half-open, I see his slim shape against the grey light of the corridor as he pauses.
“And how about a surprise for lunch?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Great – I have an idea. Somewhere to show you. Oh, and mind the brushes if you get out of bed.”
Half-blind, I inch to the mattress edge before the closing door snuffs the light and shutters a momentary glimpse of a splayed bouquet of paintbrushes, soaking in a jam-jar of white spirit by the doorway.
In the stillness, I listen to the urban dawn chorus, the strange noises of my first Saturday morning in London. A city I’ve only seen years before from a plane window at night, in a striplight-bright arrivals hall, and at a rainy coach stop at 2am. Or later, through the crush of a demo in Hyde Park, too focused on the moment to see the bigger picture. Next door, children are playing in the garden and ignoring their father’s calls. “Amos? Miryam? Synagogue. Five minutes.”
A week of cleaning and painting, hardware stores and second-hand shops, and we’ve seen so little else. We’ve been a pair of eager beavers, building a lodge in his cousin’s basement and letting the river of life run over our heads. After all the headlines and radio bulletins of bombs and riots, all I’ve seen are shabby streets brimful of ordinary lives, drifting on the tide or gathered at junctions like twigs in a weir. “Toto, you’re not in Exeter anymore,” I’ve told myself, sitting in our basement yard in the evening drizzle, breathing in paint fumes and cigarettes, scratching flecks of emulsion from the stubble on my chin. Six thousand miles from my first home, two hundred from my second and I’ve no idea if I’m getting closer or further away.
I ferret in his pillow for his scent, tell myself home has nothing to do with geography. I wait for the rattle of the front door, the boom of the water heater, the radio’s sudden burst of song, wondering what he wants me to see.
Our second bus of the day – or maybe the third, I’m not really concentrating – lurches as it turns onto the bridge and the street below yaws and pitches, knocking me from my daydreaming. I’ve been half-watching the city, half-trying to read his reflected face in the window. Is he treating me or testing me? Right now, all I know is to wear old clothes, be hungry, and don’t let him forget the sweets. Those are the only instructions he’ll grant me for now. There’s no point teasing it out: this book only opens when it chooses. I just read the snippets and try to piece the story together.
He’s listing the things we still need in a notebook, sketching where to put the record-player and the typewriter, where to stack books and hang coats. Meticulous, as ever. But wherever we’re going, he’s not shaved and he’s ironed nothing. He’s wearing yesterday’s t-shirt and old holey-kneed jeans I’ve not seen before. When did he get so carefree?
Turning back to the window, I don’t want to be the uncool tourist but I’m too excited not to ask.
“Is that the Thames?”
I try to say it quietly, but the woman across the aisle turns and looks at me. Amusement maybe, or scorn. Perhaps my accent. The morning itches on me like rough wool on bare skin.
“Yeah, that’s her. Sorry, I keep forgetting all this is new for you. There’s St Pauls ahead” – he points out the dome that even I can recognise – “and beyond that the City. And look out the other side…”
I swivel my head before the bus clears the bridge, and the view is both brand new and already familiar.
“…Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Apparently” – he pauses, offers a pantomime wink – “that’s what democracy looks like.”
“Hey – don’t knock it till you’ve tried the alternatives. There’s worse in this world than Gothic architecture.”
The woman shakes her newspaper and glowers at the way my hand has casually settled on his leg. We’re being inappropriate, perhaps in more ways than one.
“Anyway, almost there, I promise. One last change of bus.”
And he’s off, the muscles of his skinny buttocks scissoring under their faded cloth to the stairwell before he scampers down ahead. As we step out into sunshine, he turns to me.
“Aren’t you going to be too hot in that jumper? You gardening topless would really make Leni’s day.”
The first clue drops and I try not to pounce too eagerly.
“And why should I reveal myself to this mysterious Leni? It’s you I’m meant to tempt with this fabulous torso, right?”
He laughs. I’m on the wrong track.
“Well, the shock might kill her. She’s eighty-one.”
“Eighty-one? That’s old enough to be your…”
“Grandmother, yes.” His hand momentarily brushes again mine as we walk side by side. “Steve, it was meant to be a surprise. I thought you should see some real London character. And trust me, you can’t do better than Leni.”
I climb the stairs onto the next bus behind him, settle into my seat and turn back to the window, my eyes flicking between the streets and his reflection. He looks happy, confident. Well, one of us needs to be, I tell myself. I feel his leg pressing softly, deliberately against mine, let him ask me about curtains and bookcases. Anything to stop me feeling like a landed fish flapping on a riverbank.
A hasty scramble off the bus and we’re walking now, into the side roads. Victorian and Edwardian terraces, a mixture of the glorious and the sad. Here and there, a bay window wears corrugated iron curtains or a pair of houses are missing, a sudden gap like lost teeth in an old man’s smile. Mark reaches into his duffle bag, hands me a bag of sweets and I peer inside. Liquorice in round black coins.
“She hates cut flowers, but those will break the ice. First impressions count, even if she’ll know I’ve tipped you off.”
All I can do is grin and shrug.
“There we are, across the road – through the blue doors.”
There’s a three-story block of maisonettes where four or five of the townhouses must once have stood, cornflower blue ground-floor double-doors in their centre just ajar, and I follow him into the darkened corridor behind them like a reluctant boy on his first day at school. As we approach the frosted glass doors at the far end, he suddenly proclaims like a fairground barker. “Welcome to the garden of earthly delights!”
In the suntrap gardens hidden between stories of dark, sooty brick, everywhere is suddenly vibrant. There are vegetable plots in neat rows – courgettes, tomatoes, and peppers; soft-fruits on canes under nets; a vine snaking across old walls; trees hung with apples, plums, and pears, and everywhere is bordered with neatly clipped banks of lavender.
Blinking into the sun, I see an old man step out of a big shed in one corner, his clothes as black and dapper as his hair. He leans his spade on the step, waves cheerfully at Mark and points beyond a fence of runner beans.
“Magdalena? The gardeners are here, my love. I’ll get the kettle back on.”
Seconds later, a tiny figure appears. A Van Gogh painting of a farm woman in thick knee-length stockings and old skirt, her white hair in a bun and her apron-hem held up with one weathered hand as it sags with the weight of fresh pickings.
“So, you’re here, then? Took yer bloomin’ time. Still won’t use the Tube, I take it? Here, let me put these down a second.” Broad bean pods safely poured into an old enamelled colander, she comes to greet us. “My favourite grandson, back again. Give us a kiss, you handsome devil.” Under the London vowels, there is a hint of somewhere further afield, somewhere I can’t quite place.
She throws her arms round Mark, her head barely reaching his chest. As she turns to me, she’s more formal, quizzical.
“Magdalena? Hello, I’m Steven. I, er… I brought you these. Your favourite?”
It sounds too much like a question, and she almost hesitates before she takes the bag, feeling the shapes inside through the paper.
“Liquorice?” she says, peering into the bag. The skin round her eyes crinkles as she smiles.
I nod, relieved to escape her gaze momentarily. I can feel a blush rising.
“He chose well? The sweets?” I sound about fourteen: an anxious boy wondering if his homework was up to the expected mark, and admitting in a blurt that it was copied from his friend.
“He usually does – don’t you, my boy?” she nods in his direction. “And please, call me Leni. The whole world does.”
She turns toward the shed and calls out: “Harry, four cups of tea. And a chair or two. Best be posh for guests, eh?”
Mark motions me to follow, picking his way along the paths to where an old card-table and four enamel mugs have appeared from inside the shed. He gestures through the door.
“Have a look inside.”
Beyond Harry’s back as he bends over a portable stove, I can see a camp-bed under a hanging paraffin lamp. There’s a shelf where a violin case rests on a neat row of book-spines, a fold-down table below the window, and stack of wicker hampers. Over the stove, there’s a faded photo of a young girl on an allotment, her arms full of sunflowers. It must be Leni, decades ago, before time crumpled her skin like old leather.
“My old hideaway, but it’s all Harry’s work, isn’t it?” Mark tells me as he reaches for the violin case. “Grandad? Is your flute down here or shall I fetch it?”
Harry taps a small black case on top of the cupboard by his side, then the side of his nose.
Over tea, Mark tells them about the flat and our plans – his plans – for it. Leni probes me about my post-grad Law course and how hard it is for Mark to find a job, angry for us that we’re young and clever and struggling. Harry mostly just nods while she lets her opinions flow free about “that bloody woman”, how Thatcher’s stirring everyone up about reds under beds while she has her face turned away from the real trouble.
Harry jokes that he’s had to stop her going on marches now as she’s getting slow on her feet. By the time she gets home nowadays, he says, he’s had to make his own supper. “And as for bailing ‘er aht and walking ‘er ‘ome from dahn the nick…” I try to catch Mark’s eye but he’s too quick, looking away to share a gentle chuckle with his grandfather.
As Harry drains the last of the tea in his mug, he leans across to me. “So, ‘Er Indoors tells me you two are staying for lunch? Young Steven, I think Leni has some jobs for you first so you can earn your keep. How about Mark and I serenade you both?”
As I help Leni to her feet, she asks me if I’m good at stringing beans. If I look helpless, she’s not daunted. “Follow me then, young feller. Time for your first lesson.”
Over by the bean trellises, she finds me a wobbly three-legged stool, passes me the colander, and pulls a folding knife from her apron pocket. Her fingers may be old, but their demonstration’s so quick and nimble that I fumble when it’s my turn. She stands beside me watching, so short that we’re at eye-level with each other. Behind us, I can hear Mark and Harry playing London Pride Has Been Handed Down to Me, nonchalant and unrehearsed.
“So, Steven. Tell me…”
I stop my slicing and turn.
“Hou je van hem?”
Do I love him? Of course… of course, I do. But why is she asking?
“Leni, Mrs… That’s Dutch, not Afrikaans. I…”
“Oh Steven, I know there’s a difference. Just like I know you two are more than friends. I’m old but I can still see – I don’t need to be told. So, do you love him? And why’s my grandson suddenly living with a white South African boy?”
There’s cold sweat inside my jumper, and the knife-handle feels suddenly slippery. If I’ve learned anything in England, it’s that my accent and my skin get me judged as quickly here as they did at home, and that it’s harder here to predict what the jury’s verdict will be. And as for what my skin responds to…
Leni may be slow on her feet, but she’s one step ahead of me.
“Oh kid, please… I care about him, but I don’t care about that. My brother – God rest him – was gay. Isn’t that the word they’re using now?”
I want to answer but I can’t speak.
“My parents were Dutch, Steven. We came over here when I was little. Tom went back to Amsterdam. It was easier for him there, legal. He had a flower stall in the railway station, and a man that he saw for years. A lovely man, kindly and gentle. Jewish. His family grew tulips commercially. Very happy, they were.”
There’s the kind of pause that people take to give themselves the strength to start their next paragraph.
“And then the war came. Everyone who knew Tom kept quiet to protect him, but one day a German in plain clothes comes to the stall, asks Tom if he has “any of his boyfriend’s tulips” and then just shoots him dead. Broad daylight. Just like that. We never knew if it was for liking Jews or liking men.”
I’m expecting tears but she’s resolute, waiting for my story.
“My father was shot too. It’s why I’m here. Partly.”
It sounds so blunt. Not even a pause for breath after the first sentence. Whether it’s sympathy or she just needs to support herself, her hand reaches my shoulder.
“He was a lecturer. In Durban. A liberal who spoke out. Lent a hand in needy places, even when it wasn’t wise. So they shot him. Left him dead on our lawn. I was seventeen.”
I’m not as tough as Leni and my past is closer. I can feel my tears start but I keep talking.
“My mother teaches law. She put me on a plane to London, pulled some strings. Helped me get asylum, get into university. Told me the country needs good lawyers, on the inside and the out. I don’t know what else she wants to tell me – she’s being watched, and I don’t think all her letters arrive. My sister thinks she’s having an affair with a black guy, living more dangerously than Dad did, but I don’t really know.”
I sniff back my tears.
“And she’d love Mark, but I can’t tell her.”
Leni glances across at Mark and Harry, still absorbed in their music as I lift my jumper to dry my eyes. She puts a finger to her lips, tells me to wait. She comes back with a roll of Elastoplast, a flannel, and an old chamber pot full of water.
“You wipe your face with that,” she says, passing me the flannel. “And we’ll stick a plaster on you, tell ’em it was a nasty thorn on them brambles as gave you a spot of gyp. Can’t have ‘arry thinking I’ve been making a young lad blub, now can we? Nor Mark neither, eh?”
She dresses my finger as deftly as she sliced the beans, smiling encouragingly as she works.
“In 1936, I emptied that chamber pot out of my aunt’s top window over a blackshirt’s head. Battle of Cable Street, they called it. You’ve heard of Oswald Moseley, I hope?” I nod my confirmation. “Those bloomin’ Fascists needed stopping and there was I, thinking well I know where we’ve got a pint of piss going spare. If Queenie hadn’t hidden me in her wardrobe, they’d have arrested me – not that they haven’t tried since.”
The plaster’s in place now, but she keeps hold of my hand as she talks. As her words are sinking in, I’m thinking about some of the graffiti and the fly-posted handbills on the walls and hoardings I’ve seen in London, about the discontent that’s seething under its surfaces.
“Almost forty-six years ago, that was, but I’d do it again tomorrow. Might have to, the way things is going. But I’m a good girl if you’re on my right side, ok?”
She’s coaxed a laugh out of me, the off-register snort of someone who’s just put their tears away. Given me a moment to collect myself before it’s my turn to speak again.
“Leni? Your question? Yes, I do love him. Not as much as you maybe, but I do. I really do.”
“Then you two keep yourselves out of trouble, you hear me? I know Mark knows right from wrong, but if you wind up running from things then you need to watch where you’re running to. And he frightens off easy, that one.”
She lets go of my hand now and straightens up till we’re face to face, inches apart. I can feel her breath on my cheek as she speaks.
“You spent hours on the buses today, right? His Dad was in a Tube crash years back – he weren’t ‘urt, just trapped for hours. Gets the Tube every day now, but Mark won’t set foot on one. Can’t forget the hours waiting for news. And he never shouts, that one, but no definitely means no. Determined, he is.”
She’s looking me straight in the eye.
“He won’t move back home, you know that? Oh, I know she’s my daughter. And she’s a good girl at heart, but she’s no mother – can’t ever let him be good enough. He used to tell ‘er how he was staying with friends and then sleep in our shed just to get away. Now we was glad to give him somewhere, know he was alright… but whether he’s running to you or with you, he’s running from her. So don’t you lead him places he doesn’t want to go. These are dark days, and this ain’t Devon. There’s plenty of bad places to be.”
She turns her face away a few degrees.
“Harry wasn’t joking. He won’t let me march anymore. Told me I’m too old to run if I need to, that I should find safer ways to do the right thing. Donate spare fruit and veg for the ‘omeless, make soup for the hostels. Help the ones who’s still got the energy.”
I’m nodding, learning my lessons, reading the pages he won’t show me. I look across at him, happy in the sanctuary of the garden, and she sees me looking.
“Not a word, eh Steven? Ignorance is bliss. Well, for the ignorant anyway. Now spare an old girl’s knees and pick us some carrots so I can get your lunch on the table. You look alright, but Mark needs feeding up.”
“You reckon? I like him just the way he is.”
She’s already off down the path, colander in hand and a mound of spinach stems under her arm.
“Bloody good motto that, Steven. You stick to it.”
Riding home on the top deck of the bus as the sun sets, bags of fruit and vegetables and his violin case at our feet, Mark sits next to me with his arms folded across his chest, discreetly brushing my sleeve with his fingertips under his own narrow bicep. I eat the last of Harry’s peaches from a paper bag, the sticky juice running down my chin and hands. I lick the sweetness from my fingers, occasionally pressing down the plaster to keep Leni’s little deception concealed. He’s looking out at the streets and humming London Pride under his breath, and all the while I’m lost in thought.
That he’ll be out tomorrow, signing on and going for an interview for a job he could have done as easily at 16. That I’ll have time while the next coat of paint is drying to go out and buy some flowers, find a spare bottle or jar to put them in. That I could ask in the flower shop if they know what vegetables I might manage to grow in our little courtyard. That I could sell off some of my old law books, buy all the ingredients and make bobotje and begrafnisrys, and a tray of soetkoekies and a melktart for afters. All the things I can make that he’s said he likes.
When we get in, he’ll be busy unpacking the bags. I’ll go to the bathroom to wipe my face and hands, tiptoe through to the bedroom and put up his music stand by the window, slide the bed to where he’s sketched it. Hoping I’ve remembered rightly. Hoping it will start to feel like home.
