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On the morning of the christening I took the Sickert in a Sainsbury's carrier to a man off Bond Street. We stood facing each other while I muttered something formal and incoherent. We were in a darkish Italian café, three quarters empty. Twelve shiny lozenge-shaped rosewood-effect tables, not much wider than ironing boards and Elvis droning on and on about missed opportunities.
I was nervous; I felt shipwrecked almost, ship-racked. He took the brown paper from the painting, narrowed his mouth, dipped his shoulders. He was organising himself for disappointment, I could see. I stored it up, his little insincere routine, thought it might come in useful later. the man was wiry and weak-chested with a stale Dickensian pallor. Nicotine stains on all ten of his fingers. Wild of hair.
I sat roughly, bashing my elbow on the side of the chair and they brought us small coffees, one black, one white. there was grease on the saucers, the smell of burnt toast, and a large waitress in her pink overall was preparing for lunchtime, slicing beefsteak tomatoes with a serrated knife, undoing a yellow lettuce leaf by leaf.
'It's not a great picture,' he said. 'A sketch.' the ancient-looking painting of a sparrow-like figure on stage in white organdie, flanked by red curtains, one arm raised in the direction of the gallery, was the best thing I had.
'Oh?' I heard a certain sharp thinness in my voice. I gulped down some coffee. I was so exhausted, I very nearly didn't care. the way it had been given to me had been a bit terrible– one of those things you have to try to forget even as it is happening.
'It is what it is,' the man answered.
What happened next was that he took a small padded envelope from a black holdall at his feet and I carried it to the café toilets, unzipped it and counted the money into the little hand basin. Four hundred brand-new ten-pound notes in four bundles, strong-smelling, crisp-edged: the Queen on one side, Florence Nightingale on the other, doing their thing. I thought of the three of us sitting on a park bench together, Her Majesty clasping a glossy sceptre and a little yapping corgi, Florence benign and powerful, a black ribbon at her throat, me lulling the baby in her christening robe. Or her little footed babygro or whatever they wore for christenings now, those with no religious faith to speak of who were undergoing hard times and could not or would not cope.
I stuffed the notes back into the envelope, shoved it inside my jumper, buttoned my coat, rinsed the smell of money from my hands. My face in the mirror looked weary, suspicious. My imagination had had so much to do lately, apart from anything else.
I emerged from the ladies', barked, 'All right then' at the man's unappetising smile and walked briskly away from everything. It was early November on Oxford Street, the air mildish with a light wind, the shops threatening Christmas. My state of mind was pretty good.
The bus was crowded and I had to stand until Euston, the money lodged next to my skin, warming my ribs. I had looked up the church in a book of London churches in the school library. I did two and a half days a week now, twenty hours. 'You only want to teach the clever girls,' Mrs Hadley said. 'Well I'm afraid one can't insist on roast beef every day.' Such an odd thing to say.
The triple-arched entrance contains mosaic decoration in the arches, and opens onto a broad passage through the body of the building that emerges under a deep west gallery into the aisleless nave.
Outside the church there wasn't anyone about, and when I poked my head round the carved wooden doors there were only three or four straggling worshippers. A schoolgirl on her knees in green-and-white-checked uniform, twin French plaits snaking down her back, that was poignant.
And then I heard them, a little throng of merry revellers, led by Eleanor and Ben, wandering up the other side of the street. hey had been wetting the baby's head evidently and had a rogue processional Pied Piper air. Ben was carrying Lily, who was smiling. He wore suit trousers, but they were ancient, miles too big, and he billowed round his edges, mad and comic, Chaplinesque. Eleanor wheeled the pram behind them. She had on a straggly black skirt and an enormous holey charcoal V-neck, long sleeves breaking into thick crinkled strands. Her fair hair was scraped back severely like a dancer, thin hoop earrings, her wide and generous mouth from a distance like a mirage. One or two of their party were clutching bottles of beer. One had a guitar. there were three cans in the navy pram with the silver trim I had bought them.
Excerpted from Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt. Copyright © 2023 by Susie Boyt. Excerpted by permission of New York Review Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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