Free Meeting the English by Kate Clanchy

thinking: maybe the Royal Bank of Scotland on Hampstead High Street would be air-conditioned, and no one would mind if he went in there and lay on the floor. He worried that he hadn’t seen any ordinary shops on the High Street yet, anywhere you could get a loaf of bread or a malt loaf. A tin of pilchards maybe. He liked mashed pilchards and tomatoes, on a piece of hot toast. There was a van parked on the verge by Jack Straw’s Castle. But the chips cost £1, twice what they would at home, and he didn’t have enough money to treat Juliet, and last night, she’d eaten more than half of his. Struan had £60 in his bank account, but that was his emergency money and if he spent it on chips every night, he’d save nothing at all.
    Juliet was thinking: Struan did have a nice way with the wheelchair. Gentlemanly. And another good thing was that no one, seeing him with the wheelchair, could mistake him for anything other than a wheelchair-pusher. Anyone watching, anyone from School, would know that he was the carer and she, the slim, dark-haired figure in white, was the Daughter, care-worn but lovely. She was pleased with her new hair-clips, and it was nice walking along in the hot swollen evening, the sky a yellow colour, like abroad.
    *   *   *
    Over her gin, Myfanwy Prys surveyed the kitchen. Her kitchen, still: a succulent little place with its country accoutrements. Linda had made some inroads, added the fancy hand-built cupboard, painted the walls that sticky pink, but Shirin had done nothing to the place other than leave some odd seeds in the larder and let a pestle and mortar camp prettily on the dresser. Rubbish, just left about, the way Shirin herself was always lounging on tables, cross-legged, pointlessly, ostentatiously, young.
    The dresser was Myfanwy’s, spotted by Myfanwy in Portobello market and stripped and polished up by Myfanwy on the very cusp of the trend for stripping and polishing – but it had been too heavy to move, at the divorce. She wondered, once again, if it could be sawed down and brought to Finchley Road, and concluded, as usual, that it could not.
    What she could do, though, was insist that it was cleaned up and brought to the fore when the agents came round for the valuing – for Myfanwy had already determined that the American Literary Giant was not going to get away with a paltry first offer. It would probably be worth hinting that the dresser was an Original Feature, made for the house, circa 1710.
    *   *   *
    â€˜My friend Celia went into that hospital just down there,’ said, Juliet, chummily, as she and Struan effort-fully arrived at Jack Straw’s Castle. ‘The Royal Free. For her anorexia, but in the end she ate enough to do all her exams. It’s pioneering for anorexia, though, that hospital. Pioneering is a funny word, isn’t it? Like covered wagons, setting out over the yellow desert of Seal? Because she went such a colour you know, when she was ill? Like you know, that marzipan layer when you do the rat in biology? Did you do the rat? I thought that was really weird because you know, that subcutaneous stuff was fat and Seal didn’t have any, but she still went yellow.’
    â€˜I never knew England was so hot,’ said Struan, contemplating the bouncing strips of grey road and green heat haze, ‘I really didnae.’
    â€˜You keep saying that,’ said Juliet.
    â€˜I keep thinking it,’ said Struan, testily, ‘and you keep talking about your pal.’
    â€˜Yes, of course I do,’ said Juliet. ‘She’s my friend. Don’t you talk about your pals?’
    â€˜No,’ said Struan, ‘I don’t, actually.’
    â€˜Why’s that?’ said Juliet. ‘Don’t you have any?’
    Struan gazed out at the amazing amount of traffic. They had to cross the road and there was no gap. He thought about Archie, his best friend in primary school.