Babycakes Read online

  He observed her idly for a moment, then sprang to his feet, his mind ablaze with conflicting images.

  “Mona!” he shouted.

  The woman’s head jerked around to find the source of his voice.

  “It’s me, Mona! Mouse!”

  The woman froze, then spun on her heel and climbed back into the sedan.

  It sped out of sight into the trees.

  Off the Record

  THE DELUGE OF PUBLICITY THAT HIT SIMON AFTER THE broadcast made Mary Ann begin to wonder if it had been too much for him. He seemed to be all right, but he was a funny bird in many ways, and she could rarely tell what was really on his mind. The last thing she wanted was to alienate him.

  When the weekend came, she waited until the time was right (Brian had gone to the laundromat) and invited the Englishman to join her on her shopping rounds in North Beach. Half an hour later, all she had to show for it was a pint carton of Molinari’s pickled mushrooms.

  “This is your weekly shopping?” Simon asked. They were walking up Columbus toward Washington Square.

  She laughed, abandoning the pretense altogether. “I just needed an excuse to get out of the house. I’ve been feeling … cooped up lately.”

  “Shall we walk somewhere?” he asked.

  “I’d love to,” she replied.

  “Where? You’re the local, madam.”

  She smiled. She liked it when he called her madam. “I know just the place,” she said.

  She walked him up Union Street to the top of Telegraph Hill, then down Montgomery to its junction with the Filbert Steps. “The penthouse directly above us,” she explained, “is the one that Lauren Bacali had in Dark Passage. ”

  He craned his muscular, patrician neck. “Really?”

  “The one where Bogart has the plastic surgery that makes him look like Bogart. Remember?”

  “Of course,” he replied.

  “My friend DeDe used to live there.”

  “Ah. Do I know about her?”

  “The one who escaped from Guyana.”

  “Right.”

  She led him halfway down the wooden stairway, then brushed off a plank and sat down.

  “This is not unlike Barbary Lane,” he remarked, joining her.

  She nodded. “There are places like this all over the city. This is technically a city street.”

  “The garden is magnificent.”

  “The city doesn’t do that,” she told him. “A precious old lady did that—this used to be a garbage dump. She was a stunt woman in Hollywood years ago, and then she moved up here and started planting this. Everybody just calls it Grace’s Garden. She died just before Christmas. Her ashes are under that statue down there.”

  He looked faintly amused. “You’re a veritable font of local color.”

  “I did a story on her,” she explained.

  “I see.” He was teasing her ever so subtly. “Do you do stories on everyone you know?”

  She hesitated, wondering about his motives again. “Has it been too much?” she finally asked him.

  The smile he offered seemed genuine enough. “Not at all.”

  “I hope not.”

  “I’m astounded there’s been such a reaction. But it hasn’t been unpleasant.”

  “Good.”

  “As long as you don’t let any other journalists know where I am.”

  “Don’t worry,” she replied. “I want you all to myself.”

  He smiled again and bent a branch so that a large blossom touched the tip of his nose.

  “They don’t smell,” she said.

  He released the branch, catapulting the blossom toward the sky.

  “It’s called a fried egg plant,” she added, “because it looks like …”

  “Don’t tell me, now. Let me guess.”

  She laughed.

  “A bowling ball? No? A loaf of bread, perhaps?”

  She shook his knee. “Stop teasing.”

  A silence followed. She felt awkward about her hand on his knee, so she removed it.

  “Who lives in these houses?” Simon asked.

  She was glad to take refuge in her role as tour guide. “Well … they’re squatter shacks …”

  “Really? I thought that was peculiar to England.”

  “Oh, no,” she answered. “Are you kidding? During the gold rush …”

  He cut her off with a brittle laugh. “We’re in different centuries, I think. I meant now.”

  Thoroughly confused, she retraced her steps. “You … have squatters now?”

  He nodded. “London is crawling with them.”

  “You mean … people just claim land?”

  “Houses, actually. Flats. The hippies started it, back when the city allowed empty council flats to fall into disrepair. They moved in, fixed them up a bit … claimed them for their own.”

  “Well,” she commented, “that sounds fair enough.”

  “Mmm,” he replied, “unless you’re the chap who goes on holiday and comes home to a family of Pakistanis … or what-have-you.”

  “Has that happened?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “They just move in? Take over the furniture and everything?”

  He nodded. “To evict them, one must prove forceable entry. That’s bloody difficult sometimes. There can be months of mucking about before they’re booted out. It’s a complicated issue, mind you.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “There are squatters in my building,” he added. “They took over the vacant flat above me.”

  “You didn’t see them do this?”

  He shook his head. “I was on the royal honeymoon at the time.”

  “What are they like?”

  “The Prince and Princess?”

  She smiled. “The squatters.”

  “Oh … a middle-aged chap and his son. The father drinks too much. They’re aboriginals. Half-castes, actually.”

  She had vague visions of grass-skirted natives with bones through their noses dancing around in circles, but she dismissed the subject in deference to a far more fascinating one.

  “O.K. Now you can tell me about the royal honeymoon.”

  The smile he sent back was tinged with diplomacy. “I thought we covered that in the interview.”

  “That was the official stuff,” she said. “Now I want the dirt.”

  He pulled the blossom into sniffing range again. “Off the record?”

  “Of course.”

  “Off the record, there is no dirt.”

  “C’mon.”

  “My job was working with the radios. I saw very little of the honeymooners.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “Very.”

  “Beautiful?”

  “You’re on the right track.” He smiled.

  “Would she know you if she saw you on the street?”

  He nodded. “I took her out once.”

  “You … dated her?”

  “I escorted her to a David Bowie concert. Her flatmate knew a friend of mine. The four of us went. It was years ago … when she was only a lady.”

  She giggled. “You double-dated with Lady Di.”

  “So far”—he grinned—”there have been no medals for that.”

  “Was she really a virgin when she married him?”

  He shrugged. “Insofar as I had anything to do with it.”

  She looked him in the eye. “Did you try?”

  His lip flickered. “You don’t give up easily, do you?”

  “Well,” she replied, “it’s not like it’s a big deal or anything. People do these things. Times have changed. Everybody does everything and nobody cares.”

  “And discretion,” he added with a gentle smile, “is the last act of gallantry.”

  It was all she could do to keep from showing her relief. He had passed with flying colors. She conceded her defeat with a demure smile. “Never kiss and tell, huh?”

  He shook his head. “I like kissing too much.”

  The screechi
ng which prevented her next remark was so sudden and shrill that it took her a moment to realize what it was.

  “Good Lord!” murmured Simon. That beautiful neck was once again arched toward the heavens.

  “They’re parrots,” she said. “Wild ones.”

  “They’re remarkable! I had no idea they were indigenous.”

  “They aren’t. Not exactly. Some of them were in cages originally. The others are descended from ones that were in cages. They just sort of … found each other.”

  He turned and smiled at her. “That’s a nice story.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Isn’t it?”

  English Leather

  FIVE HOURS AFTER HIS HALLUCINATION ON THE HEATH, Michael languished in a shallow tub back at Colville Crescent. It had been that dream, he decided at last—that Death Valley dream in which Mona had ignored his cries from the bluff. Something about that hillside on the heath, something about the blond woman’s stance or the angle from which he had watched her, had conjured up that dream again and caused him to lose touch with reality.

  The woman hadn’t looked like Mona, certainly. Not with that hair. And those clothes. Or even the way she carried herself. If anything, he had reacted to her aura—a concept so embarrassingly Californian that he vowed never to express it to anyone. This elegant stranger had simply touched a nerve somewhere, triggering his anxiety about a friendship which had all but collapsed.

  He was determined not to think about that. He put on his black Levi’s and his white button-down shirt and headed into Notting Hill Gate, where he ate a curry dinner at a cramped Indian restaurant. Afterwards, he cashed a traveler’s check at the local Bureau de Change, picked up a Privale Eye at his newsstand, and returned to the house. Miss Treves, all three feet whatever of her, was crossing the front yard as he arrived.

  “Oh, there you are, love.”

  “Hi!” It was pleasant to notice how much she felt like a friend. “I was just out having dinner.”

  “Having a marvelous time, are you?”

  “Of course,” he lied.

  “Good. I brought my case. You don’t mind, do you?” She held up a green leather satchel, roughly the size and shape of a shoe box.

  He didn’t get it. “I’m sorry … mind what?”

  Her free hand, tiny and pudgy as a baby’s, grabbed one of his. “These horrors. Something must be done about them. We can’t have a friend of Simon’s looking such a fright.” She cocked her head and winked at him. “It won’t take long.”

  He was both embarrassed and touched. “That’s really nice, but …”

  “I shan’t charge you. You haven’t plans for the evening, have you?”

  He had toyed with the idea of exploring the gay bars in Earl’s Court, but that hardly seemed an appropriate answer under the circumstances. “No,” he replied, “not for the next few hours.”

  “Lovely,” she chirped, turning smartly to lead the way into the house. Once inside, she opened her manicure kit and removed a newspaper clipping, tattered from many unfold-ings. “This is a load of rubbish, but I thought you might like to see it.” The headline said: ROYAL RADIOMAN ON FRISCO PLEASURE BINGE.

  He scanned the piece quickly. Simon came off sounding like a thorough hedonist, a bratty aristocrat squandering the family fortune on nameless excesses in the “fruit-and-nut capital” of the western hemisphere. He returned the document with a discrediting smile. “You’re right. It’s a load of rubbish.”

  Miss Treves grunted as she poured a soapy liquid into a little bowl. He immediately thought of Madge the Manicurist on TV and wondered if he’d be soaking in dishwashing liquid. The whole scenario struck him as supremely funny.

  She took one of his hands and plated it in the bowl. “Did you notice they printed this address?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  She said nothing.

  “Should that be … a problem?”

  “I don’t know, love.” She poked through her kit, searching for something. “You haven’t noticed anyone snooping about, have you?”

  What on earth was she getting at? “Uh … no. Not that I’ve noticed. You mean like … burglars or something?”

  “No. Just … general snooping about.”

  “No. Not a thing.”

  “Good.”

  “Look, I’d appreciate it if …”

  “It’s nothing, love. I’m sure it’s nothing.” She began jabbing away at his cuticles. “When they print your bally address, it makes me nervous, that’s all.”

  The manicure proved to be a reassuringly intimate experience. To sit there passively while this vinegary little woman repaired his nails gave him a sense of being noticed for the first time since his arrival in London. “Have you done this long?” he asked eventually.

  “Oh … about fifteen years, I suppose.”

  “And before that you were Simon’s nanny?”

  “Mmm.”

  “Did you do nanny work for other families?”

  “No. Just the Bardills. Let’s have the other hand, love.”

  He obeyed as she repositioned the stool. “Did you always want to be a nanny?” he asked. As soon as he had spoken, he wondered if the question was too personal. He had never stopped to think about what career opportunities were open to a midget.

  “Oh, no!” she answered immediately. “I wanted to be in show business. I was in show business.”

  “You mean like a …?” A circus was what came to mind, but he knew better than to finish the sentence.

  “A musical revue,” she said. “A traveling show. A bit of song and dance. Readings from Shakespeare. That sort of thing.”

  “How fascinating,” he exclaimed, captivated by the thought of a miniature Lady Macbeth. “Why did you give it up?”

  She heaved a sigh. “They gave us up, love. The audience. The telly killed us, I always said. Who wanted Bunny Benbow when they could have Coronation Street for nothing?”

  “Bunny Benbow? That was the name?”

  “The Bunny Benbow Revue.” She giggled like one of the mice in Cinderella. “Silly, isn’t it? It sounds so old-fashioned now.”

  “I wish I’d seen it,” he said.

  “Simon’s mum and dad took me in after we folded. Their friends thought they were daft, but it well and truly saved my life. I owe them a great deal, a great deal.” She finished filing a jagged nail and looked up at him. “What about you, love? How do you put bread on the table?”

  “I’m a nurseryman,” he told her.

  “How lovely.” She stopped her work for a moment and stared misty-eyed into space. “Simon’s mum had a splendid garden at our country place in Sussex. Hollyhocks. Roses. The dearest little violets …”

  He noticed that her lip was trembling slightly.

  She sighed finally. “Time marches on.”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  When she had gone, half an hour later, his spirits had improved considerably, so he decided to follow through with his original plan and check out the gay bars in Earl’s Court. The tube brought him within a block of Harpoon Louie’s, a windowless bar which flew a Union Jack in an apparent effort to show that poofters could be patriots too.

  Inside, the place was self-consciously American: blond wood, industrial shades on the lights, Warhol prints. Perhaps in deference to the current occupant of Kensington Palace, the tape machine was playing Paul Anka’s “Diana.” The barmaid, in fact, looked like a chubbier version of the Princess of Wales.

  The crowd was decidedly clonish—tank-topped, Adidas-shod, every bit as inclined toward altitude as a standard Saturday night mob on Castro Street. They smoked more, it seemed, and their teeth and bodies weren’t as pretty, but Disco Madness (circa 1978) was alive and well in Earl’s Court.

  Finding a seat at a banquette against the wall, he nursed a gin and tonic and observed the scene for several minutes. Then he read a story about Sylvester in a newspaper called Capital Gay (“The Free One”) and wandered into the back garden, where the smoke and no
ise were less oppressive.

  He left as a clock was striking ten somewhere and walked several blocks past high-windowed brick buildings to a gay pub called the Coleherne. These were the leather boys, apparently. He ordered another gin and tonic and stood at the bulletin board reading announcements about Gay Tory meetings and “jumble sales” to benefit deaf lesbians.

  When he returned to the horseshoe-shaped bar, the man across from him smiled broadly. He was a kid really, not more than eighteen or nineteen, and his skin was the same shade as the dark ale he was drinking. His hair was the startling part—soft brown ringlets that glinted with gold under the light, floating above his mischievous eyes like … well, like the froth on his ale. In his white shirt and bow tie and sleeveless argyle sweater he came as welcome relief from the white men in black leather who surrounded him.

  Michael smiled back. His admirer kissed the tip of his forefinger and wagged it at him. Michael lifted his glass as a thank you. The kid hopped off his barstool and made his way through the sullen throng to Michael’s side of the bar.

  “I fancy your jeans,” he said. “I noticed them when you came in.”

  Michael glanced down at the black Levi’s. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m breaking them in.”

  “You dye them yourself?”

  “No … no, they come that way.”

  “Really?”

  The upward lilt of his voice was almost Dickensian, and Michael enjoyed being reminded that a man who sounded like that could look like this. Up close, his full lips and broad nose seemed distinctly African, but his unlikely hair (lighter than Michael’s own, he noted) remained a mystery.

  “Mine’s just the regular sort.” The kid hooked his thumbs proudly in the pockets of his 501’s. They seemed somewhat out of sync with the rest of his getup, but he looked pretty good in them just the same.

  “You don’t see many of those,” Michael remarked. “Not around here.”

  “Twenty pounds in Fulham Road. Worth every penny, if you ask me. You fancy this place, do you?”

  “It’s … fine,” was all he could manage. The room looked like a pub, at least. Just the same, there was something almost poignant about pasty-faced Britishers trying to pull off a butch biker routine. They were simply the wrong breed for it. He was reminded of an English tourist who had all but lived in the back room at The Boot Camp, but had never uttered a single word. That man had come to grips with the truth: Phrases like “Suck that big, fat cock” and “Yeah, you want it, don’t you?” sounded just plain asinine when muttered with an Oxonian accent.