lost in the Bar­bi­can, found at the Savoy

Whew. Michael­mas Fair over, and may I just say that our class moth­er says we set a record: we sold every last skanky toy. It turns out that if you remove, say, a well-loved Spiro­graph set from its tired old box, wipe it up with a dia­per wipe, wrap it in shiny cel­lo­phane and tie the top with raf­fia, you can charge a pound for it and it flies off the table. Just before the big rush, a hilar­i­ous ex-New York­er moth­er that I had just met asked if I want­ed to grab a sand­wich at Vil­landry, so we head­ed out, exchang­ing sto­ries mad­ly along the way. Wendy said, “You real­ize that our school is rare in that they have estab­lished a no-scans admis­sions pol­i­cy.” “No scans?” I said. “OK, I’ll bite. What do you mean, no scans?” “Well,” Wendy said, “in order to make sure their chil­dren will have a place at some of the oth­er girls’ schools in the city, preg­nant women are going in with their ultra­sound scans, and an esti­mat­ed due date, and putting them down.” “Oh, stop, Wendy,” I said, “you mean unborn chil­dren are being signed up for prepara­to­ry schools?” “Yep,” she said, “only not our school. Absolute­ly no in-vit­ro admissions.”

The feel­ing in the air by 2 o’clock was an exact repli­ca of the atmos­phere at PS 234 for Win­ter Fair, or the Spring Auc­tion. Kids out of their minds with excite­ment, damp mon­ey clutched in their hands, filled with sug­ar and des­per­ate to buy some­thing, any­thing. I tried to remem­ber the feel­ing, not just imag­ine how they felt but real­ly remem­ber it, that Fri­day-after­noon, autum­nal, spe­cial-occa­sion, no-wor­ries mood, run­ning around with my friends, my moth­er behind a table look­ing help­ful and wel­com­ing (lord knows I came by my school-moth­er mar­tyr­dom hon­est­ly), but I could­n’t, real­ly, recap­ture the sense of utter bliss and cel­e­bra­tion. What hap­pens to that feel­ing when you grow up? Maybe some peo­ple are bet­ter at hold­ing onto it than I am, but at least I could enjoy look­ing in on my child feel­ing that way. There were all the tra­di­tion­al Eng­lish fair things I had always read about (except no teas! darn): the Toy Tombo­la, the Lucky Dip (oh, the excite­ment of not know­ing what might come up!), the sweets stall, Father Christ­mas in his grot­to! My favorite moment of the day: Annabelle comes run­ning up to her moth­er to show her what she bought and her mum wails, “But Annabelle: we DONAT­ED that!” The impos­si­bil­i­ty of bring­ing some­thing you have been want­i­ng to get out of the house for ages, because your child will find it and buy it back.

Oh, and also a won­der­ful sto­ry about a vis­it to a pop­u­lar choice of senior schools among our set. One of class moth­ers reports that she was led around by a charm­ing young teenag­er, full of enthu­si­asm, and when she asked about the food, the girl said firm­ly, “It’s real­ly quite good. My mum absolute­ly put her foot down about it. She’s quite keen on food.” Some­thing prompt­ed the moth­er to look at the child’s name tag. Mimi Law­son-Dia­mond. Yes, well, with the Domes­tic God­dess Nigel­la Law­son as your mum, it might hold more weight than my opin­ion does at our school.

Final­ly all was gone, with Amy’s exu­ber­ant mum Kel­ly shout­ing at the end, “Fine! Fifty p will do! Just take it!” then, aside, “Can you tell I’m in retail?”

We emerged into the late-after­noon sun­shine to find a taxi and high­tailed it to the sta­ble, where Avery had the enor­mous respon­si­bil­i­ty of grab­bing the bri­dle of a small­er gul­l’s pony and lead­ing her all the way across the Bayswa­ter Road (Alexa fol­low­ing at a safe dis­tance, of course), to the ring where Avery’s own pony was already wait­ing. My mind’s eye saw her crushed in the road when the pony balked and a lor­ry ran over her, but no, all was fine. I sim­ply froze as I watched, sus­pend­ed in that lim­bo of bore­dom that is the les­son time. Around and around, Alexa scream­ing cease­less­ly at the chil­dren: “change your lead at ‘haitch’ [the tacked-up let­ters around the ring to help guide the chil­dren] and go large, Avery, and Rosie, you’re on the wrong diag­o­nal, sit two beats…” On and on. The uni­ver­sal expe­ri­ence of a rid­ing les­son, plus freez­ing cold. I find it amus­ing that Avery com­plete­ly believes that I love her lessons. What I do love is get­ting to see her improve at some­thing, and be so deter­mined. But the les­son? Please. Back at the sta­ble, Mr Ross Nye was in atten­dance, drop­ping a gnarled hand on a small head and ask­ing, “How was that can­ter today, young Emma?” I wished him Hap­py Anniver­sary, he and his wife hav­ing cel­e­brat­ed 50 years this week. “Thank you, my dear, and what’s more, they have been hap­py years.”

This morn­ing found me on the tube try­ing to get to The City of Lon­don School for Girls, and since I did­n’t know how long it would take me, I allowed a whole hour. Well, typ­i­cal me, the tube ride took all of 15 min­utes, but I man­aged to take advan­tage of the full 45 min­utes that were left to get utter­ly lost. Well, not lost exact­ly, just stuck inside the hideous com­plex that is the Bar­bi­can the­atre and music mec­ca, walk­ing in cir­cles look­ing for the school. Just hope­less. Final­ly I called the school in shame and cha­grin, and end­ed up expe­ri­enc­ing the lost-per­son­’s equiv­a­lent of deliv­er­ing a baby while on the phone to 911: I kept that lady who answered on that *&^% phone until I was at the bloody door of the school. “Now, sweet­heart, if you see the music shop on your left you’re going the wrong direc­tion. Pass the pub on your right…” So embar­rass­ing. I slunk inside the school in case she was behind the front desk and I had a big red L for “los­er” on my fore­head. Any­way, I went on the tour with two slight­ly lame lit­tle 12-year-olds who kept look­ing at each oth­er and gig­gling at every ques­tion they were asked, and hav­ing pre­cious lit­tle to say to enlight­en us. And the phys­i­cal plant? Let me put it this way: the school and I were both built in 1965 and we both could do with a lit­tle lick of fresh paint and some new car­pet. And actu­al­ly, I think 1965 was a bet­ter year for humans than for insti­tu­tion­al archi­tec­ture, so I may be ahead in the race. Any­way, UGLY, can I tell you. Poured con­crete and tired bricks.

How­ev­er, the class­rooms looked exact­ly like class­rooms every­where, the gulls in gen­er­al looked hap­py and ener­getic (and since school was actu­al­ly run­ning, unlike at St Paul’s and Godol­phin’s night­time tours, they can’t just have locked up the odd chil­dren, unless they put them all in the lock­er rooms). The head­mistress was very impres­sive, but just about the sec­ond sen­tence of her speech was, “I am retir­ing in the sum­mer.” So much for that bea­con of guid­ance. I don’t know. I wish John had been there too. It’s very com­pet­i­tive, though, and very hardy and edgy, I’d say. A lot of ener­gy. We stopped in a sci­ence class­room and watched 20 gulls in red jumpers and red skirts, eyes trained on their teacher, who was attempt­ing to explain elec­tri­cal cir­cuits to them. I’m afraid we hap­pened in at an inaus­pi­cious moment, how­ev­er, because he had just asked, “And what is the force called that push­es the elec­trons along?” and about ten girls called out “Dura­cell!” He just sighed.

I raced home in a com­bi­na­tion of tube and long walk down the Edg­ware Road, hav­ing to buy a sin­gle tick­et since my Oys­ter card seemed to have been pinched by one of the 600 peo­ple I asked for direc­tions at the Bar­bi­can, or else I dropped it at the school when get­ting my Chap­stick out. Who knows. So I was on foot. Home, gave a pat to my posh going-out clothes and was off again. Oh, posh clothes: you will chuck­le. The skin­ny black sort of faille pants were pur­chased at the San Fran­cis­co Cloth­ing Com­pa­ny on Lex­ing­ton Avenue in 1992, to cel­e­brate my first job at Hunter Col­lege (got­ta wear black when you’re an art his­to­ry pro­fes­sor in New York), and the Rod­ney Telford jack­et was bought the week after Avery was born, to reas­sure myself that I would once again, some­day, be a size 6. And the boots? Black ankle length high-heeled Var­da, my absolute favorite last, pur­chased at least three apart­ments before we left the city. Proves one of my most trea­sured adages: if it’s black and you save it long enough, it will come back in style.

I end­ed up tak­ing a ruinous taxi to the Savoy to have lunch with my friend Susan, since I was fresh from my humil­i­at­ing direc­tions defeat at the Bar­bi­can. Final­ly I unbur­dened myself to the dri­ver, and he was all sym­pa­thy. “Why, love, we taxi dri­vers do the Knowl­edge to learn our routes, and we all dread the days when it’s the Bar­bi­can!” We had a nice dis­cus­sion of why the leaves are still on the trees, com­ing to the con­clu­sion that like every­thing else, it’s glob­al warm­ing. Except that it was freez­ing cold! John had report­ed last night that every sin­gle leaf has fall­en from the Red Gate Farm trees, and… had been swept up, raked, blown, hoovered or oth­er­wise waft­ed from our prop­er­ty by forces unknown. Those lawn guys! Hon­est­ly, why do they keep com­ing and work­ing for us with no mon­ey com­ing in? Still, why com­plain. One year with­out rak­ing will not kill us. I remem­ber last year we wait­ed so long that we were shov­el­ing leaves. Under SNOW.

To the per­fect, icon­ic entrance of the Savoy, where I gath­ered up Avery’s overnight bag and skate bag for her sleep­over with Jamie (always arrive at one of the world’s posh­est hotels in style, is my mot­to) and went into the lob­by, look­ing for the Savoy Grill where I had booked us. Before I went in, I looked at the menu propped up on a mar­ble table out­side the door. Eeek, a 55-pound three course lunch. On top of the taxi! I just could­n’t do it. I swal­lowed my pride and the awk­ward­ness of hav­ing to change things around, and went up to the desk and arranged to have our reser­va­tions switched to the much low­er-key menu and atmos­phere of the Ban­quette, still run by Mar­cus Ware­ing and so, promis­ing an excel­lent lunch. That ordeal over, I sank down with all my clob­ber in a plush vel­vet chair, and a nice dap­per lit­tle wait­er-ish man caught my eye and glid­ed over. Just then I noticed a sign say­ing, “Reserved” sit­ting on the table beside me. Posh places always make me feel so awk­ward! “I’m so ter­ri­bly sor­ry,” I said. “Who is the table reserved for?” And that lit­tle man bowed deeply and said, “For you, madam.” Now that is just sweet. So I ordered a glass of cham­pagne and sat back to wait for Susan. She came in, her usu­al ele­gant self in a gor­geous autum­nal sweater with fringey cuffs. She is the sort of per­son who keeps her read­ing glass­es in a lit­tle pouch hand-knit­ted for her by her daugh­ter Sophia. I would like to be that sort of person.

We had a love­ly lunch. Susan had a pear and stil­ton sal­ad with crispy bacon, and “gou­jons” of plaice (a gou­jon being the Eng­lish word for what we’d call “fin­gers,” you know all those foods that don’t have fin­gers except when they’re fried, like chick­ens and fish­es) with home­made tartare sauce. I real­ly could not say where the word “gou­jon” comes from. I know it is a real kind of fish, a sort of cat­fishy fish, but then it could­n’t be made of plaice. And he was a 16th cen­tu­ry French sculp­tor, but that’s a stretch. Could some­one in France five hun­dreds years ago have inspired a term for Eng­lish junk food? Prob­a­bly not.

I prob­a­bly ordered wrong because both dish­es were so heavy and rich, but they were so good that I’m not sor­ry. I start­ed with duck spring rolls and a sweet chili dip­ping sauce, and then braised pork bel­ly with black pud­ding mashed pota­toes, parsnips and grain mus­tard sauce. To die for. The only flaw? No left­over con­tain­ers. So I watched sad­ly as the por­tion of pork bel­ly and pota­toes went away not near­ly deplet­ed enough. To have John there! He can always fin­ish any­thing. We had enor­mous fun gos­sip­ing, talk­ing school choic­es, catch­ing up on each oth­er’s lives the way you do when you have both the present and the past to talk about. She has had a fas­ci­nat­ing life filled with friend­ships whose glam­our and crazi­ness make excel­lent lunch con­ver­sa­tion. How lucky I am to be in a town that con­tains Becky and Susan, the Savoy, King’s Col­lege. I could do with­out the Bar­bi­can, though.

Rush­ing off to meet Avery, Jamie and her moth­er at the skat­ing rink, where we trad­ed off belong­ings: I gave away skates and overnight bag, and got back­pack and gym bag in return. A kiss and good­bye. What shall I do with myself this evening, all by myself? I know, I know, just don’t get lost.