All the Lonely People

by Mike Gayle

  “Is your mother a good cook?” asked Hubert.

  “The best,” said Emils proudly. “One day I will cook her recipes in my own bakery. It will be called Emils’s and will sell the best Latvian and English cakes.”

  Hubert tapped his stomach playfully.

  “Well, as you can see, me like a good cake so if you ever need anyone to sample your wares you know where to—”

  Hubert was cut off by a shrill electronic staccato coming from the phone poking out of Emils’s top pocket.

  “That will be base wanting to know where I am. I will have to go.”

  Dodging past Puss as she emerged from the living room to see what all the fuss was about, Hubert led Emils to the front door, where he shook his hand.

  “Well, it was lovely to meet you.”

  “You too, Mr. Hubert.”

  “And any time you’re passing and you need the loo or a quick drink you jus’ knock the door, okay?”

  As Hubert watched Emils’s van screech off from the other side of the road he couldn’t help thinking that if only the young man had been fifty years older, and in possession of a Freedom Pass, with a few more interactions like that, he might possibly have made himself a new friend.

  16

  THEN

  April 1959

  Joyce slipped on her overcoat, paused to look around the room to see if there was anything she’d forgotten, and then, scooping up baby Rose from her makeshift bed constructed from the bottom of a chest of drawers, closed the door behind her and carefully descended the stairs.

  As she bent to lower Rose into the battered pram that Gus had managed to find for them from a friend of a friend, she felt a twinge in her back that made her wince. Hubert would be cross if he knew she was going out today, especially as he’d made her promise that she would rest until her back was better, but he’d looked so tired this morning, so utterly exhausted, that she knew she couldn’t wait another day. After he’d left for work she’d gotten herself and Rose ready, and then, taking the slip of paper she’d hidden under clean nappies in the wardrobe, on which she’d scribbled down the address of a local childminder, she’d made up her mind that this was the day she would set the wheels in motion for going back to work.

  “Going anywhere nice?”

  Joyce turned around to see Mrs. Cohen, their landlady, dressed in a pale blue housecoat and carrying a dustpan and brush.

  “Morning, Mrs. Cohen. Just taking Rose out for a quick stroll.”

  “Oh, how lovely,” said Mrs. Cohen. She put down the things in her hands, came over to the pram, and beamed down adoringly at Rose. “She’s such a beautiful little character, isn’t she? Always got a smile on her face, just like her father.”

  They chatted for a short while, mostly about Rose but a little about the health of Mrs. Cohen’s elderly bedridden husband, Isaac. He wasn’t well, she said, he was coughing constantly, and every morning when she awoke, the very first thing she did after opening her eyes was check to see if he was still breathing.

  “And when I find he is,” she said, “I thank God for another day with him and then I get on with my chores.” She smiled, leaned down, and kissed Rose on the cheek. “Have a good time both, and come and tell me all about it over a cup of tea when you get back.”

  “We will,” said Joyce, and then, opening the front door, she came back around to the pram and began the mammoth task of maneuvering it outside.

  Following the wedding, Joyce and Hubert had decided they needed to move before the baby was born, but finding a new place had proved difficult for a couple like them. Some landlords made their feelings plain with signs posted in their front windows, but others were more subtle, showing Joyce a room that became mysteriously unavailable the moment Hubert made an appearance. And of those landlords that remained, most were put off by the prospect of a new baby being in the house. Finally, they had come across the place they were in now, which was as run-down as they came, especially as Mr. Cohen wasn’t able to maintain it as he once had. But what it lacked in finesse was more than made up for by the presence of the kindly Mrs. Cohen, who, though getting on in years herself, worked tirelessly to keep it as clean and as tidy as she could manage.

  After the wedding, Hubert had left Hamilton’s in search of a better wage and had found work at a small car parts factory in Vauxhall. On the weekends he and Gus picked up extra money working for a painting and decorating firm and twice a week he went to night school to train as a plumber, as he’d heard the money was good with all the new houses being built. Joyce had hung on at Hamilton’s for as long as she could, ignoring the whispers and gossip she overheard, until one day Miss Critchlow pulled her aside and gave Joyce her marching orders, commenting spitefully that “Hamilton’s isn’t the sort of place for someone like you.” Desperate to put by as much money as she could, Joyce had picked up work here and there doing everything from cleaning to clothing repairs, but the closer she got to her due date, the less inclined people were to employ her, and now with rent to find, food to buy, bills to pay, and only one wage to cover it all, money was tighter than ever.

  The childminder’s was a fifteen-minute walk away on the other side of Brixton. Joyce didn’t really like the area; it was dirty, down-at-heel, and could at times be dangerous, especially for people like her and Hubert. Since all that nasty business in Notting Hill at the end of last summer, Joyce had felt uneasy and when she was out with Hubert she was alert for signs of trouble. She hated teddy boys and everything they stood for and would cross the road to avoid them whenever she could. This wasn’t Bromley, that was certain, and despite having spent the first twenty-one years of her life desperately wishing she could leave it behind and see more of the world, right now all she wanted was to go back.

  She missed her family, her mum especially. The labor had been difficult and at its worst she had called out for her mother several times, and in the delirium that followed had even imagined she was there in the room with her and the midwife. They’d named the baby Rose after Joyce’s mum and given her the middle name Lillian after Hubert’s, and although it had been a joy to finally hold her daughter, she couldn’t help thinking about the difficulties that lay ahead.

  The hardest time during her ten-day hospital stay hadn’t been the late-night feeds, the nappy changes, or the seemingly constant crying, but rather the empty seats around her bed at visiting time as she watched other women being fussed over, surrounded by family and friends. Gus and Lois had visited a few times and of course Hubert came whenever he could between jobs and night school, but it had been hard those first few days and not a single night went by without Joyce crying herself to sleep. At times she had almost wished she’d never met Hubert, that she had carried on with her life as it was before, working at Hamilton’s, seeing friends on the weekend, having nothing more pressing to worry about than what to wear on a trip to the pictures or to a dance at the local swimming baths. Whenever she had these thoughts, however, she would look down at Rose sleeping in her arms or over at Hubert, so tired from his day at work that he was almost asleep in the chair, and she would think to herself: “This is what love is. It’s a husband willing to work himself to death to provide for his family; it’s a child that is part me, part Hubert, and all wonderful.” They were a unit, a single entity bound together forever. “It won’t always be tough like this,” she would tell herself. Better days lay ahead, she was sure of it.

  Reaching her destination, Joyce took out her slip of paper and double-checked the address before knocking on the door. It was a tall, honey-colored three-story terrace that had seen better days. The top-floor windows were boarded up, and the windows of the second-floor bay were barely covered by a ragged set of graying net curtains. The lower bay was better kept but only marginally so, and it was this that Joyce assumed was the location of the childminder’s, an assumption confirmed by the sound of children’s voices coming from within.

  A stocky middle-aged woman came to the door.

  “Hello,” said Joyc
e. “I’m looking for Mrs. Travis?”

  The woman studied Joyce critically.

  “You’ve found her, love.”

  Joyce’s heart sank. At the prices this woman was charging, Joyce hadn’t exactly been expecting a Norland nanny, but this was too much. With her dour expression, greasy hair, and cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, Mrs. Travis wasn’t someone she would naturally leave her daughter with. But beggars couldn’t be choosers. Anyway, perhaps the stained overalls she was wearing concealed a heart of gold.

  “I’m Mrs. Bird,” said Joyce brightly. “We spoke on the telephone. I’m in need of a childminder.”

  She held out her hand but the woman just ignored it, and said, “It’s two and six a week, food not included.”

  “Oh,” said Joyce, taken aback. “Is it not possible to see your premises?”

  The woman shrugged.

  “You can do what you like, love.”

  Parking the pram and taking out Rose, who was fast asleep, Joyce followed Mrs. Travis into the gloomy hallway, where they turned left into a ground-floor flat. The light wasn’t much better here, but resisting the urge to turn around and leave, Joyce continued to the front room. Here there were half a dozen children in various states of undress. Some were playing on a tatty rag rug; others stood staring at Joyce, their dirty faces regarding her inquisitively, while in a corner, a child no older than Rose lay fast asleep in an old washing basket.

  “Is this everything?”

  Mrs. Travis was confused.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean is this the only room? Is there a garden at least, so that they can get some fresh air when it’s fine?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “What you see is what you get.”

  Rose began to grizzle and so Joyce shifted her in her arms and loosened the blanket covering her. As if suddenly conscious of her need to make a bit of an effort, Mrs. Travis took a step forward and started to arrange her expression into something resembling a smile. But then Rose wriggled, the blanket fell away from her head, and the woman recoiled, her face twisted in disgust.

  “You didn’t say nothing about having one of them!”

  Joyce felt herself rile.

  “Having one of what exactly?”

  “One of them Black babies,” she spat. “I don’t have none of that in my place. Go on, get out of here before I get my husband on you.”

  Joyce stood her ground.

  “You make me sick. And I wouldn’t leave my child here if you paid me!”

  “Well, you make me sick an’ all,” snarled Mrs. Travis. “Having a baby with one of those darkies. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

  It was only after the fact that Joyce realized she had raised her hand and struck the woman, and it was only the resultant cry the other woman let out as they stood looking at one another that brought her to her senses. Turning on her heels, Joyce left the flat, bundled Rose back into the pram, and hurried away as the woman stood shrieking all manner of abuse after her from the doorstep.

  That evening, Joyce was so pleased to see Hubert when he came home from work that she flung her arms around him the moment he walked through the door. Hubert made a joke about wishing he could always have a welcome like this but Joyce couldn’t even raise a smile. Instead she began to cry as she told him what had happened.

  “I just don’t understand how people can say such cruel things about an innocent baby,” she concluded. “It’s just so wrong!”

  With fists clenched, Hubert stood up and demanded the woman’s address but instead Joyce placed a calming hand gently on his shoulder.

  “Don’t, it’ll only make things worse. You can’t reason with people like that and it’ll be you that ends up getting into trouble.”

  “So what do you want me to do, Joyce? Just stand back and let them say what they want about our precious daughter?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So what, then?”

  “Trust me, it’s already been dealt with.”

  Hubert cocked his head on one side.

  “How you mean?”

  Joyce sighed and felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment.

  “I chinned her. Right on her stupid face. No one talks about my baby like that!”

  The look of surprise on her husband’s face was so comical that Joyce began to laugh, and soon the two of them were doubled over in mirth.

  “Joyce Bird,” said Hubert between fits of laughter, “featherweight champion of the world!”

  Later that night as they lay in bed, Hubert shattered from an evening at night school, he turned to her.

  “Joyce, you know you can’t pick a fight with everyone who has something to say about us, don’t you?”

  “I know,” she whispered in the darkness. “There’s too many of them, and not enough hours in the day.”

  “It’s funny,” said Hubert. “Until me came to this country me went my whole life thinking me was just plain old Hubert Bird and then me come and find that actually me the devil himself.”

  Joyce bit her lip. Sometimes she was so ashamed of this country she called home, she could cry.

  “I bet you wish you’d never come sometimes.”

  Hubert fell silent, clearly struggling with his answer.

  “If me being honest, me do sometimes,” he said eventually. “But then me think about you and Rose, and the wonderful life we’re going to have together, and me say to meself, ‘Hubert Bird, what are you talking about? You is the luckiest man alive.’”

  17

  NOW

  It was midafternoon and Hubert was in the park pushing Layla on the swings while her mother watched.

  “Just three more pushes now from Granddad Hubert,” said Ashleigh, “and that’s your lot, okay, darling? We’ve got to get home.”

  Layla jutted out her bottom lip at the prospect of having her fun curtailed.

  “Don’t be sad, little girl,” said Hubert. “You might only have three more pushes left but me promise you they’ll be good ones!”

  As they left the park, Ashleigh regaled Hubert with yet more anecdotes about her job at the vet’s. She told him about a tortoise with an injured foot, her shock at the huge markup on all the medicines, and her difficulty with the office printer. In the middle of a tale about a very posh lady who’d brought in her labradoodle with a case of chronic flatulence, Ashleigh stopped and pointed.

  “I think that bloke over there is trying to get your attention.”

  Ahead of them, a blue-and-white transit van was pulled up in the bus lane, and the driver was leaning out of the passenger window waving frantically.

  “That’ll be Emils,” explained Hubert as they walked toward the van. “Him a Latvian parcel courier.”

  As is often the way with these things, since their first meeting Hubert had bumped into Emils everywhere he went. One time while on his way to the supermarket he had spotted him collecting parcels from the newsagent’s. Another, he’d been coming out of the dentist’s and had nearly jumped out of his skin when Emils’s van had pulled over suddenly so that he could show Hubert a photo on his phone of a birthday cake he’d been paid to make. And just yesterday on his way home from the pet shop, Hubert had almost walked into him coming out of the front gate of number sixty-five. Each time, no matter how busy Emils was, he always seemed keen to chat and pass some time with Hubert.

  The two men exchanged greetings.

  “I have important question to ask,” said Emils. “What are you doing Saturday night? Latvian friends of my uncle who are living in England are getting married on Saturday. And I make the wedding cake for their reception at…” He paused, consulting his phone. “Bromley Working Men’s Club. It is a beautiful cake. Tastes wonderful. I want you to come to wedding as my guest, and taste my beautiful cake, and meet Latvian people.” The young man beamed a huge smile at Hubert. “It will be my way of saying thank you to you, Mr. Hubert, for your kindness with the pineapple juice.”

&nbs
p; Hubert felt suddenly uncomfortable at the prospect of spending an evening in the company of an entire roomful of strangers. It was all very well trying to be more open on a one-to-one basis but a stranger’s wedding? He wasn’t at all sure he was ready for that.

  “Really, Emils, there’s no need to thank me,” said Hubert. “No need at all.”

  “I disagree,” said Emils. “You do nice thing for me, so I do nice thing for you.” He glanced at Ashleigh and Layla and smiled. “You can bring friends too. The more the merrier.”

  “I’ve never been to a Latvian wedding before,” said Ashleigh. She self-consciously ran a hand over her hair. “And you know me, Hubert, I love cake.”

  He really didn’t want to offend Emils or disappoint Ashleigh but this whole thing was making him feel very uncomfortable indeed.

  “What about the bride and groom? Are you sure them won’t mind?”

  “I save them hundreds of pounds by only charging them cost price for cake,” said Emils. “The least they can do is let me bring my own guests.” He shrugged and added, “Anyway, is Latvian wedding, everyone is welcome at Latvian wedding!”

  When Hubert answered the door to Ashleigh the following Saturday afternoon he barely recognized her. She was wearing a glittery purple dress with matching shoes and her hair was done all fancy, as if she’d just walked out of an upmarket salon. Layla wore a sparkly silver dress accessorized with a sequined hair bow and silver ballet shoes. They both looked delightful.

  “Yeah, I know,” said Ashleigh, seeing the surprise on Hubert’s face. “We do scrub up well, don’t we? And I’m not going to lie, Hubert, so do you.”

  Hubert felt himself blush but he wasn’t about to correct her out of some sort of misplaced humility. It had been a long time since he’d had anywhere special to go and even longer since he’d been to a wedding reception, so in spite of his reservations about the event he’d been determined to look his best. Two hours he’d spent in front of a full-length mirror trying on different permutations of the contents of his wardrobe, asking Puss for her opinion as she lay watching him from the comfort of a pillow. In the end they’d mutually decided on the navy-blue suit he’d bought for his and Joyce’s fortieth wedding anniversary. It had been altered several times over the years to accommodate his burgeoning waistline but even so looked good as ever. He finished off the outfit with an expensive floral silk tie that Rose had bought for his seventieth birthday, a pair of patent-leather dress shoes, and a light gray trilby, set at his usual jaunty angle.