She was the type, though, to give it thought. She had an interest in damages, you might say: damages and gaps. They could both be educational.
Other places were more peaceable. She could pick out church spires and the cream-coloured Battersea chimneys of what had been the power station. Further off, thin trains pushed themselves to unseen destinations and details blurred. The far distance raised up shapes, or hints, or dreams of impossible coasts, lagoons and mountains. Mirages crept out from under the horizon. And somewhere, the crumpled shape of the Thames hunched along invisibly towards the coast.
It wasn’t a bad morning. She wasn’t a morning person, but she could still like it. The parakeets were lively already and sleeking about, flaring to a halt and alighting, an alien green that never was here before, bouncing and head cocking in dull trees. They were something from the mirage country beyond the rooftops. Initially, there’d only been a pair of them on the Hill, but two was all it ever took — think of Noah. One plus one equals more. They were teaching the magpies bad words.
By this point — almost seven o’clock on an April Friday — the standard architectural landmarks were on offer: the complicated metallic cylinder rising up near Vauxhall, the vast stab of glass at London Bridge, the turbines rearing uneasily over Elephant and Castle, the shape of a well-turned banister marking Fitzrovia … each of the aids to navigation. And then there was the toy-box clutter of the City, a slapdash collection of unlikely forms, or the vaguely art deco confections at Canary Wharf and, dotted about, the distant filaments of cranes that would lift more empty peculiarities into the undefended sky.
These were the self-conscious monuments of confident organisations and prominent men — everyone of less significance was forced to look at them and reflect. Insignificant people gave them nicknames purposely comparing this or that noble edifice to a pocket-sized object, a domestic item: mobile phone, cheese grater, gherkin. If you couldn’t make them go away, or prevent new ones appearing — these proofs of concentrated power, silliness, silly wealth — then you could declare them ridiculous. You could be pleased to hear of their design flaws, their structural defects, their expensively unoccupied floor space. It did no good, but it could make you smile.
You could try the same with other sections of reality. Sometimes.
Sometimes the art of naming could subdue hostile territory for a while. She’d once visited a friend — more a friend of friends — in hospital. The room he’d shared with two others had been high enough to peer across Chelsea. Some former inmate had left a meticulous drawing of the landscape, every roof in silhouette, marked across an elongated strip of card. The detail was obsessive. Each building was identified and given historical, or scurrilous, footnotes.
As she’d had very little she could talk about to her friend’s friend, she’d drifted into remarks about the unknown artist. She’d said that someone must have spent week after week here being very ill, or very bored, or dying and trying to keep useful by leaving a present behind. Her friend’s friend had, at that time, been in the process of dying, although he was taking it well.
It had been one of those days when her tact had failed her.
Now she wondered if the Hill could find somebody who would make them all a similar long, thin chart to explain their outlook and keep them right. It would be both useful and appropriate. In summer, when residents loitered outside in the early hours to smoke, paced on front paths and in gardens, leaned against doorways, sat on steps, then the place did have a hospital atmosphere: slippers and nightgowns, quiet nods in passing, half-awake stares and faces still pillow-creased, soft. They all needed a therapeutic map they could walk up and learn from, alter, perfect, garnish with added footnotes as they wished. It would be a thing of power.
Or they could go on as they were — half knowing, recognising, deducing.
Or they could make things up. She could do that. She was good at invention, often unhelpfully so. She could quickly feel definitive and point to Over There and then announce, That is the listening post that records our affections, there is the confectioner’s workshop devoted to making models of our souls — they do it with spun sugar, souls never purchased, only taken as gifts, or eaten — and that’s the Depository of Regret and there is the doorway to the Furnace, guarded by a clever dog. She could reel off all sorts of nonsense like this — no worries over whether you wanted it or not.
In bleak moods, she just would prefer that all the signature constructions, the grand gestures, were rechristened factually: the Shinywank, the Spinywank, the Fatwank, the Flatwank, the Weirdwank, the Overlooked, the Understrength, the Pretty, the Petty, the Squint, and the Sadwank.
Why not be straightforward?
But she wasn’t in a bleak mood today. In conversation, she might — it was true — have said, ‘I will meet you under the Spinywank — right beside the station.’ But she’d only have meant it in fun. She might even have thought it, but kept quiet. She would have been able to remember that some people don’t appreciate terms like wank and so she would have waited and had a thinkthinkthink, checked to discover if she ought to skip the cheap laugh and be more standard-issue instead. That way you wouldn’t cause offence. Although you might discover later that non-habitual swearers were up for it on some occasions and pleased by bad words from others when the time was right. Hard to tell by looking. You had to test the waters without drowning, slip in gently for a bit of a dip. To be cautious, then, she might have said, ‘I will meet you on Friday, right next to the tower — at London Bridge Station.’ And added no flourishes.
She’d have been happy, though, however she phrased it. She’d have been happy in any case.
I will meet you.
It’s a happy statement.
It’s a good promise.
And it had joined her birthday as a pleasant thing to bear in mind.
It’s my birthday.
This is her first birthday.
She is forty-five years old and having her first birthday.
This has been her first birthday for quite a while, in fact, longer than average, to be honest.
I’m spinning it out. Just try and stop me. You can’t. Bet you can’t. This birthday is all mine.
She’s made it as far as her continuing first birthday and is trotting further on. This is an excellent thought.
She has a collection of premium-quality thoughts which she likes to count through. She has scenes and moments she remembers deliberately. This is her equivalent of maybe passing warm pebbles from hand to hand, smooth and reliable, or her version of the rosary, her misbaha, her mala, her komboloi, her worry beads — everyone worries and why not have beads? She counted out invisible fragments and wished they were more obvious, better at saying to other people, Just leave me alone for a minute, because I am busy with wanting to feel all right.
There’s no fault in wanting that.
There’s no harm in milking your birthday. Even if it did happen more than a week ago — so what?
My name is Meg. It’s my fucking birthday.
She feels that she’s justified.
How often, after all, do you have your first birthday? Usually not more than once.
Fine, OK — it wasn’t a birthday, it was an anniversary.
My name is Margaret Williams, Meg Williams. My name is Meg and it is my anniversary. One year.