The Seven Sisters by Margaret Drabble Page A

and I pretended I’d made it myself, or rather I didn’t say I hadn’t. This wasn’t wholly cheating, as I did improve it – I added some mushrooms and parsley and cream. I don’t know if she was fooled or not. I wasn’t going to let on. Then we had our macaroni cheese. She ate that up all right, too, and I had made that from scratch. I hesitated over wine, but decided I’d better offer her some. I didn’t want her thinking I couldn’t afford it. But I didn’t want her thinking I spent all my life drinking either. So I made a bit of a fuss about opening the bottle and not being able to find a corkscrew and told her I never usually drink at lunchtime. And that’s true. I don’t drink at lunchtime. I don’t know if my performance was convincing or not. It wasn’t a performance, as I was telling the truth, but she made me feel as though it was a performance.
    Sally drank three-quarters of the bottle.
    Sally had come by Tube, from Liverpool Street, and she’d had a good introduction to my neighbourhood. It reminded me of my own first impressions and made me feel, in comparison, a seasoned Londoner. First of all, she had witnessed an unpleasant incident on Ladbroke Grove. There are many unpleasant incidents on Ladbroke Grove, though they take place more often in the dark than in the light of morning or the noonday sun. This one involved an elderly white man vomiting into the gutter by the bus stop. She didn’t describe it very well, as vivid narration is not her forte, but I got the picture. Then she had had the added benediction of witnessing the man with the crucifix. I know that man well, by sight, and I watch him often. He is black, of short to medium height and of indeterminate age, with wisps of grey-black hair wandering over his balding
scalp, and he walks the streets carrying a vast plain white wooden crucifix. It is hinged, so presumably he folds it away at night. His cross is taller than himself, and he carries it on his shoulder, as though he were climbing Calvary. He looks neither to right nor to left and he speaks to nobody. He does not rant, nor pray, nor proselytize. He simply walks the streets in silent dignity. He is a figure of penance. I think maybe he is saying penance for us all, for I cannot believe that he himself can have done anything bad enough to warrant so long an expiation. Anyway, Sally saw him, and reported her sighting, and I was able to lay claim to my long knowledge of him.
    I think she was suitably impressed by my colourful neighbourhood.
    She was certainly impressed by the unexpected apparition of Anaïs Al-Sayyab. I hadn’t arranged for Anaïs to drop by in order to impress her, but that’s how it turned out. I’d just wrested the cork out of the bottle when Anaïs rang to ask if she could pop round to borrow my radiator bleed key as she couldn’t find hers and her central heating was full of airlocks. (She lives very near.) Of course I said of course. I think we’d had some kind of discussion about plumbing and radiators a week or two ago, which had included a reference to airlocks. We don’t always talk about such dull things but on this occasion it was lucky that we had. Anaïs didn’t know I had company for lunch, and I didn’t warn her over the phone. I wasn’t quite sure how to put it. I could hardly say, ‘For some reason I’ve got this embarrassingly enormous woman from Suffolk here in my flat’, could I?
    I hadn’t seen Anaïs for a week or two. I know her from my Virgil class, and I sometimes bump into her at the Health Club. Not very often, for we keep different hours and she goes to classes, whereas I prefer to go alone. I do not like to impose on Anaïs Al-Sayyab, for she is a busy woman with a large circle of acquaintances, but I am always pleased to see her, and I am pleased that she bothers to keep up with me. I seem to play some role in her life. I am not sure what it is, but I am happy to play it.
    We are not very close friends, but Sally Hepburn