Balance Carried Forward
In total, while in London for five days, Birdie took two buses and one tube ride. That is a total of £5.40. Had she not worried she could have spent at least three or four times this amount, which would still not have been enough to worry about but which would have depressed her on her return to Manchester. In the end her expenses come to £41.24 and Birdie is thrilled to arrive back home with £21.37 still in her account when she had expected to be deep into her overdraft.
Aftermath
The friend changes her profile picture to one Birdie took of her on their first night in London: the friend is smiling, red double-deckers blurring behind her. Birdie neither likes nor comments on the photograph. She thinks about the fact that she and Laura took no photographs together. Two years later, Birdie receives a message from the friend out of the blue: ‘David has decided to put an end to our relationship.’ Birdie turns off her phone.
ANGEL OF THE NORTH
KIT FAN
‘Do you have any questions for us?’ the Chair asked.
Tenshi was fixated on the idea that everyone was staring at his sweat patches. To wear an undershirt or not wear an undershirt was the question he had asked the misted mirror in the morning.
The fact he had over-prepared for the interview didn’t help him recall the questions he’d rehearsed the night before. He wrote a whole page of them and thought each one was a key to open doors he’d never dreamed of touching. Now the job interview was ending with the awkward silence that comes when the interviewee is invited to ask questions. No one would believe the last thirty-five minutes had been a jolly conversation between friends, rather than an official inquiry into his competence, character and dedication to taking up a new role he felt completely incompetent for. It was too responsible for someone like him.
His mind went blank, then somewhere else.
Somewhere above the left shoulder of the Panel Chair, through the sash window, under a copper beech tree, there was a pigeon sitting on the wing of an angel whose chipped nose had been weathered by Islington rain and lichen.
Quite a sizeable angel even at a distance. Why did people put angels on their tombs?
The pigeon fastidiously groomed her wings. Since childhood, Tenshi had been frightened of pigeons. Everything about the bird – the mad swarm, the constant pecking, the coo-cooing noise, the grey-green poo, the way they nosed around stealing food, their shamelessness among humans, their matter-of-factness in cities. The most maddening thing about them was their yellow-black eyes – lidless like scandals, naked like nipples. He had always been fascinated by the unique character of nipples – other people’s and his own – but while nipples stiffened, those bottomless pigeon irises widened and deepened, drowning Tenshi’s confidence.
She was eyeing him now and he had nowhere to hide.
His stomach rumbled. One of the interviewers in the assertive blouse with Sicilian lemon-prints smiled.
The growling got louder the second time. He took a deep breath to stop the noise of emptiness. He didn’t know if he should smile back to the lemons which were acidifying in his mouth.
‘I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t manage to have lunch …’
‘It is absolutely fine if you don’t have a question for us.’
A sportier pigeon crash-landed on the angel’s wing, pushing the weaker one away.
‘Actually, I do have a question. What do the children think about the cemetery?’
The headteacher arched her already peaky eyebrows and put down her ball-pen.
‘Sorry, I mean … isn’t it a bit unusual for a school to be right next to a cemetery? Are the students curious about who’s buried here?’
He remembered the heavy silences in classrooms when a teacher asked a question and the whole world stopped until a pupil was stupid enough to raise their hand.
The interviewers all looked puzzled. He needed an exit strategy: a joke, the fire alarm, an earthquake. It would have helped if he could make his stomach gurgle on cue.
‘Non est ad astra mollis e terris via,’ the lemony teacher on the panel said and smiled warmly at Tenshi.
‘Sorry, I don’t have Latin.’
‘We’re not interviewing you for a Latin post,’ the lemon assured him. ‘It’s Seneca. It means there is no easy way from the earth to the stars.’
The words sent shivers up Tenshi’s spine. He wanted to grow a pair of wings to flee from the high-ceilinged, ornately corniced interview room that smelt of beeswax and antiques.
*
By the time the interview was over, he had completely lost his appetite.
The sun re-emerged after a long spell of low clouds. He had time on his hands before his train to Darlington and took a detour to walk along the canal towards Angel. The last time he had followed this beautiful path was nearly two years ago when he’d first moved to London. He watched the wind stealing a few leaves from the trees, the algae blanketed around some houseboats, the cyclists zooming past. He brushed a fly from his forehead. The surface of the rippling water caught him off-guard and he saw himself looking at himself.
‘Coward,’ the reflection stared back.
The sun was fierce, and water was a super-absorbent of thoughts.
He popped by his favourite Japanese cake shop on Islington High Street, picked up an order for a special cake he had made the week before and asked for an extra ice pack for the journey north.
King’s Cross on Friday afternoon was far from heaven. All the destinations on the departure screen were place names north of London, mapping out a major eastern artery linking two nations. But where was the heart pumping the blood?
‘Twenty-four-hour CCTV recording is in operation at this station for the purposes of security and safety management.’
‘Please do not leave your luggage unattended on the station. Luggage left unattended may be removed with-out warning, or destroyed or damaged by the security services.’
‘The next train to depart from Platform Two will be the 16.00 LNER service to Edinburgh. Calling at Peterborough, York, Darlington, Newcastle and Edinburgh …’
The dense crowds on the concourse moved like a murmuration of starlings – forming, dispersing, and then re-forming abstract patterns. It reminded Tenshi of the famous Shibuya crossing in Tokyo. He wished he had access to the CCTV footage of the concourse, could immerse himself in the dance and observe the hidden beauty of hundreds of people making fluid, split-second decisions to keep their distance – not having any eye contact, not bumping into each other, not stepping on someone’s toes. There was freedom in the art of prohibition. He would put a monochrome filter on the film, juxtapose it with early nature documentaries about bird flight and punctuate the narrative flow with abrupt blackouts. He would call the short film The Starlings of King’s Cross.
A loud gang of middle-aged women, seasonably blonde, with fake tans and plastic tiaras, were blocking his way to the platform. One with turquoise acrylic nails put her hand over Tenshi’s shoulders and wrapped her baby-pink and gold TEAM BRIDE sash around his neck. He was attacked by a heady dose of perfume and lager.
He sneezed.
‘Oi, our Charlene like salmon sushi,’ one of the many bridesmaids shouted in a fake Japanese accent.
The woman with acrylic claws now had her tongue out, pretending to lick him.
‘Com’ on, lassie, I’m clamming. Leave the gent alone.’ The bride disentangled the sash from Tenshi and smiled with a hint of self-knowledge.
The train was hellishly packed. The customer service manager with his charming Geordie voice apologised for the disabled toilets being out of order and the catering carriage unable to serve hot food. Just when some of the passengers were rolling their eyes, a further announcement was made: ‘We’re so sorry that gremlins have hacked into the systems and stolen the seat reservations in coach C and D – C for Christian and D for Dior. But not to worry, we’ve laid on a brand new coach P – P for Prada – with loads of unreserved seats. Oh, I forgot, the
re is a hidden Prada bag in that coach too. Welcome and enjoy!’
The humour seemed to soften the blow for many, except for a tall, delicately tanned man in a summer linen suit who stiffened his lips and kept mumbling ‘ridiculous’ in an accent people would recognise in Harrods. Many passengers gave way to him, and Tenshi too made room.
The Dior coach was a real mess. An argument had broken out between two men about overhead luggage, while a group of teenagers refused to turn their music down. A Chinese couple struggled to understand the ticket restrictions of the different train operators. Somewhere a baby was screaming his heart out. The air filled with the sweet pungency of soiled nappies.
Tenshi couldn’t find his reserved seat. At the last minute, he jumped off the train and ran along the platform to find the Prada coach. He grabbed the last table seat and tried to secure the cake on the overhead luggage rack.
‘Is it a birthday cake?’ the young mother opposite asked. ‘You can put it on the table. Plenty of room here. We like a birthday cake, don’t we, Daisy?’ Her daughter stopped colouring in a butterfly, gave Tenshi a quick glance and nodded.
He put the cake down and the condensation from the ice pack made a small pool on the table. The train engine started and the water spilled over his trousers. Tenshi thanked the man sitting next to him for handing him a tissue, and through the black hat, bushy beard and curly side-locks, he found a handsome young man with no facial expression, moving his eyes back to the iPad and mouthing verses from the Hebrew Bible.
None of his fellow passengers at the table spoke a word. Tenshi felt the train trembling and dragging the air in and out of the many tunnels north of London. At British Rail speed, England gradually blurred into a hedgeless, wheat-yellow horizon dotted with cattle and sheep. Here a golf course, there a town defined by its out-of-town shopping centres. Semi-detached redbrick houses, tennis-ball-coloured rectangular lawns sanitised from weeds. A Ford Mondeo and a Mercedes A-Class waiting at a level crossing. A woman walking her dog on a country lane. The Union Jacks and the occasional Saint George flags punctuating the flat skyline. This was the country he knew, and truth be told, the England he thought he’d known since birth. Until everything changed that night. He felt severed, though not sure from what.
‘Mum, the train’s stopping.’ Daisy pointed at the outside world with her purple pen.
‘No, sweetie. It isn’t.’ Her mother kept her eye and finger on her Candy Crush Saga.
‘Yes, it is!’
An uneasy calm descended on the Prada coach when the brakes were pressed increasingly hard until the train came to a full stop.
Tenshi was undisturbed by the loudness and stillness. His face was glued to the screen, swiping his photos at that familiar speed you see zoned-out people doing on their phones in a mindless bubble.
The young Jewish man glanced at Tenshi’s mobile, and when Daisy’s mother noticed, he turned back immediately to the sacred text.
‘Is that your daughter? She’s beautiful.’ The mother put her game on hold. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have intruded on you like that.’ She smiled at the Jewish man before looking at Tenshi, who found her eagerness slightly disingenuous.
‘Yes, that’s my angel.’ Tenshi was reluctant to establish proper eye contact, but he did eventually out of politeness. The mother sensed this, though she pretended she hadn’t.
‘Can I have a look? Oh, she’s gorgeous. I like her red bikini.’
‘Mum, let me see.’ Daisy had already latched on to her mother, blocking her view. ‘I want one of those. Mum, can you buy it for me? Please, I really like it.’
‘You’re too young.’
‘Charlotte got a bikini from Zara. Please, Mummy, I really need it.’ Daisy was all over her mother, touching her cheeks, stroking her hair, hiding in her cleavage.
‘The sea looks beautiful. Is it Costa del Sol?’ She ignored her daughter.
‘No, it’s actually the coast near Staithes.’ Tenshi realised she hadn’t heard of Staithes.
‘Sorry, I’ve no sense of geography. I’ve lived in London all my life. Just visiting my nan in Glasgow.’
‘I hate you, Mum!’ Daisy pouted and dropped her head on her half-coloured butterfly.
‘How old is your daughter?’ She was stroking Daisy’s head to cheer her up.
‘She’s nine in the photo.’
‘Mum, I need to go to the toilet.’
Daisy gave Tenshi a naughty smile when her mother picked her up and carried her across the table to a safe landing as if she were on a roller coaster.
Not far from Peterborough now, Tenshi thought, and returned to the beach near Staithes. It had been an unseasonably hot May bank holiday but the North Sea was perishing cold. The tide must have been low and there was a boy on his own, building a sandcastle with a red bucket, the same colour as his daughter’s swimsuit. She insisted on a swim and ran straight into the blue-grey sea. She screamed like a baby and in less than a minute jumped out of the water. Her skin was flamingo-pink.
‘I am sorry I looked at your photos. I shouldn’t have done that.’ The young man sitting next to him put his iPad down.
‘Oh, it’s okay. I didn’t even notice.’ Tenshi waited for a reply and couldn’t stand the awkwardness. ‘Where’re you travelling?’
‘Back to Gateshead.’
‘What are you reading? I mean … which chapter is it? Sorry, I don’t have Hebrew and I reckon you must be reading the Bible.’
‘Yes. I have been rereading this passage all week. Moses sees the burning bush and asks what Yahweh is to his people. Yahweh replies, “Ehyeh asher ehyeh,” which is often translated as, “I am who I am.” But the English translation is problematic.’
‘In what way?’
‘There is no present tense of the verb “to be” in Hebrew, so strictly speaking it should mean, “I will be what I will be.”’
‘That sounds strange but also straightforward.’ Tenshi glanced at the iPad densely packed with Hebrew words, which looked worlds apart from English and Japanese ones. ‘Why does this phrase bother you so much?’
‘God is speaking but it’s a conundrum, isn’t it? The state of being is full of familiarities, and yet we know almost nothing about it.’
‘Hello!’ Daisy put her hand on the cake box, licking her lips and rubbing her tummy.
Her mother looked flustered and embarrassed. The young man tilted his iPad back up.
‘Dear passengers, I am so sorry for the delay,’ the charming Geordie man announced. ‘We have been informed there’s been a fatality near St Neots and British Transport Police are involved. Our thoughts are with their family. We managed to change track and will soon be on our way to Peterborough.’
‘Mummy, what’s a fatality?’ Daisy put the purple crayon in her mouth.
‘Don’t worry, sweetheart. Everything is all right. It’s just a short delay.’
‘But he said police are e-volved.’
Tenshi and the young man smiled. The mother picked up a black crayon and started colouring in the butterfly’s body for Daisy, who took the darkness out of her mother’s hand and cheekily replaced it with orange.
The train started moving and no one spoke again until Tenshi said goodbye to everyone at the table, just before he got off at Darlington.
*
Tenshi pressed the doorbell once. No answer. He could smell fried garlic and possibly roast chicken. The two climbing roses he had insisted on planting at the front of the house – Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Madame Alfred Carrière – looked healthy. He tried the bell again and finally knocked on the door.
Footsteps drew nearer. Then paused. He heard a voice whispering inside. After what seemed a lifetime, the door was half-opened.
‘Hi, Tenshi. What’re you doing here?’
‘Hi, James. How are you?’
‘We’re having dinner.’ James had a new haircut. The familiar parting had been replaced by a closer shave around the sideburns. He looked as stylish as a hedge-fund manager in the C
ity.
‘Why are you whispering? I didn’t know you were eating. I’m sorry.’
‘It is dinnertime, though.’ James thought he might have been unjustly harsh. ‘Do you want to come in and join us?’
‘Thanks for inviting me. I don’t want to disturb you and Michael.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ James turned around and shouted through an immaculately painted vestibule in subtle greys and off-whites, decorated with a mahogany hall table on which some blue hydrangeas were floating in a large crystal bowl. ‘Mike, it’s Tenshi!’
‘Hi, Tenshi!’ It took at least ten seconds for Mike’s sturdy voice to reach the front door. James bit his lower lip, a nervous twitch Tenshi still found adorable.
‘We were just finishing dinner, so he must be busy or something. Come on in. I’ve made roast chicken.’
A faint buzz of electricity warmed the glass above. Suddenly the sodium street light was switched on.
‘These are antiques, you know.’ Tenshi’s face was painted ochre. ‘They’ve changed all the street lights to LED in London. It’s better for the planet but I prefer the softer yellow.’
Fifteen years ago, when they were walking hand-in-hand on the quayside in Newcastle, all the street lamps came on unexpectedly, and Tenshi had said it was a good omen and kissed James for the first time.
‘Sodium street lights are one of the perks of living in Darlington.’ James smiled and saw his shadow overlapping Tenshi’s. Just when he didn’t quite know what he felt, he noticed Tenshi was carrying a box. ‘No, no, no. I can’t fucking believe you’ve done this again. I told you not to last year.’
‘I’m sorry, James. I didn’t know what I was doing. I …’
James sniggered. ‘Don’t play dumb. You knew exactly what you were doing. You went into the shop, ordered the cake, travelled over two hundred miles and delivered this fucking birthday cake that nobody fucking wants. You know what? You’re a master of self-deception.’
James was grinding at a patch of gravel with his house slippers. Tenshi buried his head in the shadow of the house he’d once lived in.
‘What’s wrong with you, Tenshi? What’s in your head? Tell me. You do know she’s gone. She’s never coming back.’
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