He shook his hands and yelped with joy on the train, until he thought he’d been on it too long. He likes the bus: he tries to hold the yellow handrails, as he sees the big people doing. I let him, while squidging my nose and thinking of germs.
We get to the new town, and the air feels different. Its not like East Croydon (which I did not fancy today) – it tastes cleaner. We go down the high street, walk about the the streets nearby. I watch the leaves falling. They have little colour this year, which is odd.
Just when we get to a coffee shop, and I think I will spend housekeeping money I don’t have on coffee and a sandwich for us – as they have those excellent high chairs in there, dark and wooden, with little footrests – I notice Fluffhead has just gone off to sleep. I feel a proper frisson. Free in a coffeeshop.
Downstairs, its sort of noisy. There are 3 mothers with their very much awake pre-schoolers. The predominance of orange, green and corduroy in the children’s clothes tells me they are middle class. I’m not Sherlock Holmes though; so do their voices, the fact one of their husbands is a broker (I hear), and 2 of them are pregnant again and going to a very expensive pregnancy yoga teacher I had the DVDs of, when I was pregnant. Apparently she’s a bit snotty in person if you don’t pay on time (wouldn’t you be?!). One of them is holidaying in the Canary Islands next week, while the nanny looks after the children. I seethe with class jealousy; or is it economic jealousy – it gets difficult to tell. The children are reading the ‘Just William’ stories to each other, which I used to love in pre-school. (I’m a great listener.) I make my order as quickly as I can, and move on.
I bump the pushchair upstairs as quietly and as un-bumpily as I can. No one helps, but I sort of didn’t expect anyone to. Upstairs goes round a curve of very lurid golden and purple wall, and is light at one end and shadowy at the other. There is no one. I love this – all alone, coffee coming, warmed sandwich coming…no one but me and sleeping Fluffhead. Though it reminds me of coffees I had with Alias Morrie, endlessly, when Son Number One was a baby. Then I was mostly with her; we took the children all over the place, we lived so close to each other. It wasn’t just me, as it is now. I sit down near the window and pull one of the curtains slightly closed – so I am in light, and Fluffhead is in shade. I put up his sun roof too – it acts like a little baffler to any noise. Downstairs is muted now. Up here, soft soul from the early 70’s plays. I feel peace. This is rare.
Directly outside and looking down, I see a red brick school. Its roof is a work of art. Turrets on top of the windows, which are triangular, and make the roof look as though someone stuck a castle keep on its front, in bas relief. Little skylight windows, on the greyness behind, confuse the impression. Framing the roof on both sides are two towers with little round windows, laid out and made grammatical with markers of black brick at intervals (black sun radiating). On top of each is a weathervane. The one to the left, a golden cockerel with Victorian style wrought ironwork; on the right, a simpler Victorian black iron Catherine Wheel design. Though it’s really windy today, neither of them move. My hands are still freezing from the drizzling rain and the wind. I don’t take my gloves off yet.
The playground is flooded with light and colour, with bright hanging flower baskets, and blue notice boards, collages with a big straw hair covered head grinning. Just now it’s emptying, though screaming and heaving with hot sweatered children on my way in. There’s a black door off to the left, caretakers office I think. People stroll back and forth outside, in the bars of lunchtime sun that come and go, highlighted by the outer walls of the school having a thick band of white wainscoting. That is as close as I like to come to schools, usually. I hated all mine, and feel horribly child like (in a bad way, not a young at heart way) when near any. I am not looking forward to all the parent-teacher stuff with Fluffhead, later on. (Was bad enough with Son Number One. Who has requested a name change, and wants henceforth to be also referred to as Fry. Which I considered, and I see where he’s coming from, so have agreed.)
A pink taxi with yellow lettering on its roof glides past; two young office suits, one with hands nonchalant-like in his pocket (do you think you are Prince William?). Slim girl with shiny brown long hair, upright carriage, thin pencil grey skirt and black boots, powers her way along the front wall of the school and is gone in a second.
Off to the horizon on my left, another street is laid out into the distance, fluffy scrubby trees, violently verdant green despite autumn being here, stuffing up the far end of the street. Those trees look like they’re moving, like they’re coming down this way to join us.
A white building on the corner shines brightly in some sudden sunlight. At its base, the Belgravia Coffee Bar (that’s nostalgia from someone there – far from Belgravia we are), presently just two customers. Builders, jerky, shaking legs on one – he can’t keep still; total stillness and possession from the other. They sit facing outward and observing the foot traffic. Despite the drizzle, they have the bearing of people sitting in full summer sun. I’m always amazed the way some people seem to not feel the cold.
A little black girl wearing a warm brown top and coral skirt (bright and happy), skids down the street. Elegant. On a scooter. She owns the pavement in the way she holds herself. She looks much happier than I suspect she might be were she in school. Her mother follows, bundled in a dark brown coat. She keeps calling to her to slow down; I can see it from the gestures. The happy girl swans on, she loves motion, you can tell.
Sunlight on the floppy hair of a young, less sharply dressed suit going down the road in the opposite direction, towards the station, and the large old Victorian hotel. Once he crosses the road he’ll be in shade, where its really chill. Brown buildings stretch off, cramped and orderly despite their squashedness, into the distant tree clump of a far away square and beyond.
I feel dozy. I could curl up here, on the floor under the coffeehouse table, and sleep. But then Fluffhead abruptly wakes up: instant alertness, fumbling, wriggling, wants to get out of the pushchair. My coffee arrives; my sandwich comes (it’s the wrong one, doesn’t matter, its better than the one I paid for; fortunate). In all the sudden thanking, re-arranging the table and getting Fluffhead into the highchair with the footrests, and fetching out things needful, the moment is gone. Just cast away; like the sun that went away behind a cloud and wasn’t seen again at all today. But I saw it.
Time moves on. There’s only moments, ever.
