by Mike Gayle
“Don’t start with me,” said Hubert, trying to avoid her gaze.
Puss continued to stare.
“You know it’s not like me enjoy doing this.”
Still Puss stared.
“It’s not like me got a choice in the matter, is it?”
Puss gave Hubert one last disdainful glower before jumping down to the floor and stalking out of the room as if to say she didn’t tolerate liars. Because the truth was Hubert Bird was a liar. And a practiced one at that. Not a single word he’d said to his daughter was true. It was lies, all lies. And he felt absolutely wretched about it.
2
THEN
June 1957
It was early evening and Hubert Hezekiah Bird was enjoying a glass of rum with his friend Gus at Karl’s, which was the closest thing their village had to a bar. Karl’s consisted of a shack made entirely of sheets of corrugated metal painted in a patchwork of bright colors, with a few mismatched tables and chairs outside. A stray dog lay on the ground nearby, soaking up the last rays of the setting sun.
Draining his glass, Hubert asked Gus if he wanted another and his oldest friend gestured for him to wait.
“Let me tell you my news first,” he said.
Gus reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and produced a piece of paper, which he waved in the air with an exaggerated flourish.
Hubert’s eyes widened.
“Is that what me think it is?”
Grinning, Gus handed the one-way ticket from Kingston to Southampton to his friend. Hubert couldn’t quite believe what he was looking at.
“You’re going to England?”
Gus laughed that deep laugh of his.
“Yes, man! I’ve been saving like crazy these past few months. Didn’t you wonder why I haven’t been able to stand you any drinks lately?”
Hubert laughed. “Me just thought you were being tight with your dough!”
“I been wanting this really badly, Smiler,” said Gus. “There’s nothing for me here. You know Cousin Charlie left just last month and he wrote to Auntie that he’s already got a job and he’s even managing to send a bit of money home too. He must be rolling in it!”
Gus sighed and gazed over Hubert’s head dreamily.
“I can’t wait to have some money, get myself some nice clothes and maybe even an English girl too!”
He picked up the glass of rum he’d been drinking, downed it in one, and put his arm around his friend’s shoulder.
“Come with me, Smiler. You and me in England! We’ll have a wild time! What do you say?”
For the rest of the evening and long into the night the two friends spoke of nothing but life in England: all the things they’d heard about and all the things Gus would see and do. It seemed unreal, like they were talking about a fantasy, but within just a few short weeks Hubert found himself standing at the Kingston docks, waving his old friend off on the journey of a lifetime. As he watched the boat disappear over the horizon, Hubert made the decision that he too would make this same journey.
Over the weeks that followed, Hubert took on all the extra work he could handle to supplement his income, and within a few months he’d scraped together the money for his passage. The day he bought his ticket, the very first thing he did was tuck it safely in the back pocket of his trousers, and the second was head home and break the news to his mother.
Hubert was dreading telling his mother about his plans. The year before, when his sister Vivian had moved to Kingston to train as a teacher, his mother had been inconsolable for weeks, so he dreaded to think how she’d feel losing her eldest son. This was why he had picked a date to leave that was a little way off in the future. It would give her time to get used to the idea, for his siblings to learn the ropes around the house, and, if need be, for them to find someone to employ to help around the farm.
As he approached the home that he shared with his mother and younger siblings, Fulton and Cora, he sniffed the air. Woodsmoke and the unmistakable aroma of one of his favorite meals: pork, stewed peas, and rice. He tracked his mother down to the cooking shack at the rear of their one-story wooden house, which had been built by his grandfather. She was wearing a clean white apron over an old faded blue floral dress with a yellow silk headscarf tied over her hair.
Stepping out of the shack, its walls and roof made of sheets of corrugated iron, she greeted him with a kiss on the cheek. Before speaking, Hubert studied her for a moment, suddenly keenly aware that there were now a finite number of times he would see her before he left.
Lillian was tall and elegant but at the same time formidable, a force to be reckoned with. She had no time for fools or small talk but would show the greatest kindness to anyone in need. People often told Hubert that he was the spitting image of his mother, with her high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes, but Lillian always claimed that he had a greater likeness to his late father than any of his siblings.
“How are you, son?”
“Me good, thanks, Mother. And me have some good news. Me… me… going to England.”
His mother raised an eyebrow, but he could see that she wasn’t angry or upset.
“Are you now?” she said. “And there was me thinking all this extra work you’ve been taking on was to buy me a fancy birthday present!”
She took his hand and held it tightly.
“It’s the greatest shame your country has nothing to offer you. But that’s the thing about Jamaica at the present time: there are more dogs than bones, but in England all the bones a dog could eat.”
She took his face in her hands and kissed his cheek fiercely.
“You go full your belly up, Hubert Bird! Go full your belly and make me proud!”
The journey to England in January 1958 had been rough, not least because an hour into his three-week voyage Hubert discovered that despite several uneventful trips on his uncle Leonard’s fishing boat in his youth, it turned out that he was somewhat susceptible to seasickness. By the time the ship arrived in Southampton, however, not only had he learned the best way to combat it, which was to eat as little as possible, but he had also vowed that he was never getting on a boat again. When the time came, he decided, his return journey home would have to be by plane.
From Southampton Hubert caught the train to Waterloo and was met by Gus straight from a long shift at a telephone factory on the outskirts of the city. It had been good to see Gus after so long apart, but Hubert couldn’t help but be taken aback by the change in his friend’s appearance. The Gus that Hubert remembered was tall, broad-shouldered, and brimming with confidence, but the man standing in front of him looked thin, drawn, and tired, all of which made him seem smaller somehow. Hubert wanted to ask what was wrong but thought better of it. Instead, as they made their way back to Gus’s rented room in Brixton, he allowed his friend to grill him on the news from back home, or as Gus put it: “Smiler, man, tell me who dead, who born, and which of the girls miss me most?”
After a night spent in Gus’s digs, sleeping top to tail in a tiny lumpy bed in a sparsely furnished, freezing-cold room, Hubert made his first visit to the Labor Exchange. It was a daunting prospect made all the more uncomfortable when, despite informing the clerk that he had experience in bookkeeping and carpentry, he was handed a piece of paper marked “General laborer” and told he would be starting work that very afternoon at a building site in Stockwell.
Hubert hadn’t liked the work at all—it was hard, dirty, and cold—but he was so determined to stick it out that it took a week and a half before Gus finally persuaded him to return to the Labor Exchange in search of something better. “That’s the beauty of this country, Smiler,” his friend had explained that evening as they sat smoking cigarettes on the steps in front of the boardinghouse. “You can walk out of one job at midday and have another by two!”
This time Hubert was firm with the clerk at the Labor Exchange, a portly middle-aged man who spoke with a trace of a lisp. He was open to any work as long as it wasn’t on a building
site.
“Here you go,” the man had said after a short while looking through his file. “How does warehouse man at Hamilton’s department store sound?”
Hubert had never worked in a warehouse before but he liked the idea of a department store. At least it would be indoors, he reasoned, which in this country was a definite plus.
“Very suitable,” Hubert replied gratefully.
The clerk wrote out some details on a scrap of paper and handed them to Hubert. “Go to this address at six thirty a.m.—you can’t miss it, it’s just off Oxford Circus—and at the service entrance ask for the foreman, Mr. Coulthard. And whatever you do,” he added ominously, “don’t be late. It’s not unheard of for Mr. Coulthard to sack people on the spot just for being a minute behind.”
And so, clutching the piece of paper tightly, Hubert had returned to Gus’s digs. After a meal of tinned soup heated up on the tiny range and some sad-looking ham sandwiches, he went to bed early, rising and dressing in darkness on the rainiest day of the year to board the 56 from Brixton Hill to Oxford Circus.
Taking a seat on the sparsely populated top deck, Hubert paid the conductor his fare and then slipped his ticket into his wallet. Determined to make the most of this respite from the rain, he turned up the collar on his now sodden overcoat, adjusted his trilby, its felt so saturated that he doubted it would ever return to its original shape, and rested his head against the cold, hard glass of the window next to him. Closing his eyes, he allowed himself the luxury of a half doze for the duration of his journey, but within seconds, despite the savage beating of the rain against the side of the bus, Hubert was fast asleep and snoring loudly as he dreamed of the Jamaican sunshine he had left far, far behind.
Waking with a start at the sound of the bus’s bell, Hubert wiped at the condensation on the window to discover that he had missed his stop. Leaping to his feet, he raced downstairs and jumped off the bus at the first opportunity. It was now raining even harder than it had been before. Such was the extent of the downpour that even those with umbrellas were sheltering in doorways for protection, but it only took one glance at the watch his mother had given him on his eighteenth birthday for Hubert to realize that he could afford no such luxury.
With one hand holding his hat in place, he ran full pelt through the pouring rain, dodging past men and women scurrying through the deluge to work, and didn’t stop until he reached the service entrance of Hamilton’s. He was sure he looked a mess. He was so drenched that even the suit he wore under his overcoat was clinging to his every contour, and in spite of the biting February chill he was pouring with sweat, thanks to his dash across London.
Reaching up, he pressed the bell next to a door marked DELIVERIES: RING FOR ATTENTION and took off his hat in preparation to greet Mr. Coulthard, only to funnel rivulets of freezing-cold water from its brim down his back.
Hubert rang the bell several times more but could hear nothing in the way of response on the other side of the door. He pressed again even harder, wondering if the bell was working, and then stepped back several feet to examine the side of the building to make sure he was in the right location. Just as he was about to try walking farther up the street to see if there was another entrance, he jumped with surprise at the sound of a bolt snapping back, followed by the rattle of keys. The door swung open to reveal a tall, thin man with gray hair cut short at the sides, the longer hair on top neatly combed and Brylcreemed into place. Aside from a studiously maintained pencil-thin mustache, the man was clean-shaven. Under a navy-blue warehouse coat he wore a crisp white shirt and dark brown tie. His black oxford shoes were so polished that even in this dim light they seemed to shine.
The man stood for a moment, back held straight, unsmiling, eyes fixed on Hubert, regarding him with a mixture of curiosity and disdain.
“Can I help you?”
“Me looking for Mr. Coulthard.”
The man grimaced. This was clearly the wrong answer.
“You are, are you? And who might you be, then?”
Hubert reached into his pocket and took out the sodden, barely-hanging-together piece of paper the clerk at the Labor Exchange had given him and handed it over. The man’s lips, already pursed, narrowed grimly as he alternated between studying the note and Hubert. Finally he squeezed the drenched missive into a tight ball and said, partly to Hubert, but mostly to himself: “That lot are bloody useless.”
Hubert didn’t know how to react to this. He assumed the man was talking about the Labor Exchange but couldn’t be sure. The one thing he was positive about, however, was that if this fellow didn’t let him inside soon, he was sure to die of hypothermia.
The man stroked his mustache pensively.
“The lads are not going to like this. They are not going to like this at all.”
He regarded Hubert carefully.
“You done this line of work before?”
Hubert nodded, even though he wasn’t entirely sure what the job entailed.
“And anything new me can pick up real quick. Me is a fast learner.”
The man pulled a face. “I think I’ll be the judge of that. You’re West Indian, I take it?”
“Yes, sir, from Jamaica.”
“And you’re a hard worker?”
“Yes, sir, my mother brought me up to always give my best.”
There was a long pause and then finally the man sighed heavily, shrugged, removed a packet of cigarettes from his coat pocket, and pulled one out. Once again more to himself than to Hubert, he said: “What do I care? We’re already three men down as it is and I’m sick and tired of management breathing down my neck.”
He lit his cigarette, inhaled deeply, then stepped aside.
“Come on, then, you can’t be standing around here all day. You’re late enough as it is. Come in, get yourself a warehouse coat, and we’ll get you started.”
3
NOW
It had been six days since Hubert’s call with Rose and in that time he had spoken to precisely one other person: the receptionist at the vet’s in whose waiting room he was currently sitting. Regardless of his lack of interaction with other people, however, it occurred to Hubert, as Puss padded about in the cardboard box on his lap, that a good use of his waiting time might be to prepare for his upcoming call with his daughter. What sort of things might he, Dotty, Dennis, and Harvey have been up to this week? Could they have been to watch a play or see a musical? Perhaps something in the West End that he could claim to have fallen asleep at, lest Rose ask him what it had been about? Or maybe it had been more of a quiet week, the kind that might see the four friends take in a pub lunch before enjoying a game of dominoes.
It had never been Hubert’s intention to lie to Rose. And certainly not for so long or so elaborately. It was, Hubert thought, one of those things that just sort of happened while you weren’t looking. Much like catching sight of a long hair sprouting out of your own nostril and wondering, “How could I have missed that?” Hubert felt as if one moment he’d been going about his life as honest as the day was long and the next he’d concocted a trio of fictional friends with extensive backstories for the sole purpose of convincing his daughter that she didn’t need to worry about him.
It all began because one day five years ago something happened. It was the sort of thing that meant Hubert didn’t want to go out anymore. The sort of thing that meant he stopped returning friends’ phone calls or even answering the door if he could help it. In fact, it was the sort of thing that meant all Hubert wanted was to be left alone.
Gradually his once-full life had emptied. One by one his friends, even Gus, who he’d known since they were children, stopped calling, and soon Hubert Bird was alone, without a single friend in the world.
Rose had been furious when she’d found out how things were.
“So you’re telling me you don’t see anyone at all anymore?”
“No.”
“Not even that lot from the Red Lion?”
“Me not see them in ages.�
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“Even Uncle Gus?”
“Same for him too.”
“But you always used to love going out and being around people.”
Hubert sighed. “Look, sweetie, me just lost touch with them, okay? It happens when you get old like me. You go your way, they go theirs—it’s just how it is.”
Proving to Hubert, if he had been in any doubt, that she was her mother’s daughter, Rose called the following week with a solution.
“I’ve been doing some research on the Internet,” she said, “and I think I’ve got an answer to your problem: It’s called the O-60 Club. It’s for people just like you, Dad. People over sixty looking for a spot of company or to make new friends. They meet every Wednesday at the community center next to the library. It costs one pound per session and for that you get unlimited tea and coffee and even biscuits too! Now doesn’t that sound amazing?”
Hubert didn’t think it sounded amazing. He thought it sounded about as enjoyable as a prostate examination.
“So what do you think?” Rose prompted. “Will you give it a try?”
Hubert had his reservations but Rose was someone he simply couldn’t say no to. So when Wednesday came around he got up early, put on his best clothes, and even trimmed his mustache, but as he’d checked his reflection in the mirror he’d gotten cold feet.
He told himself that no one would talk to him. He told himself that even if they did, he probably wouldn’t like them anyway. He told himself that he would be better off staying at home. And so that’s exactly what he did.
But when Rose called to find out how he’d gotten on he’d felt so guilty, so mortified by his failure, so eager not to disappoint her, that the first words that sprang to his lips were: “Me had the best time ever! The people them were chatty, me enjoyed a nice cup of tea and even made a couple of friends.”
While it was a lie, Hubert reasoned it was a small one, not said purely to deceive but rather to prevent his lovely daughter from wasting energy worrying about him. It was harmless.
