by Monica Ali
It would be a little awkward to tell Charlie. I’ve got this girl staying at my flat. But he could fudge it, blur the timeline and once Charlie knew what Lena had been through that would be all she was interested in.
‘My brother is in London,’ Lena had said. ‘Please. Help me find.’
‘Of course I’ll do that for you.’ Why did he promise that? Where would he begin?
This morning she had put on his shirt to cover herself and left him on the sofa while she curled up on a corner of the chaise longue. She told him all that had happened without looking at him, her unseeing gaze directed to the centre of the room. The gypsy woman in Mazyr, she said, that bitch. Probably she was still doing it, may she burn in hell. Boris was the man, yes, the tall and dark and handsome man, with the mark here, on his neck. He came for her, just like the tea leaves said, and he was the one. She was supposed to go to Italy, to look after old people, that’s where he said he was taking her, but he took her to a different place. It was a new life, OK, the gypsy bitch did not lie about that.
He watched her knot her fingers together. Her knees were gathered to her chest. When he only imagined her she seemed so real. But when he was with her she seemed to fade. She was so pale it compromised her existence, as if you could put out a hand and sweep it clean through her body, as if she were merely a trick of the light.
Lena, thought Gabriel, the word running through him like a shiver.
‘Getting on all right?’ Ted was at his shoulder.
‘Just taking these out for a bit, then I’ll put them back in to crisp up.’
‘I’ll set the table,’ said Ted, opening the cutlery drawer. His clothes, dark brown trousers, beige V-neck and checked shirt, were the same off-duty uniform that he’d worn for as long as Gabe could remember, a kind of standing protest against change that had continued down the decades.
Gabe found a frying pan. He took the eggs from the fridge. He wished he could be himself with his father, talk to him naturally, the two of them shooting the breeze. Whatever had gone before, though they had never been close, though the common ground on which they could stand was small and parched, he wanted to speak to his father before the time was gone. He wanted to set aside the irritation that arose so easily in Ted’s presence, but it seemed to exist in a part of him that was impossible to reach, like an itch in a phantom limb.
‘Nana and Granddad never had a cross word,’ said Gabe. ‘Is that right?’
‘That’s right,’ said Ted. ‘And I’m the Queen of Sheba. No, they got on all right but they’d their share of troubles, just like the next couple.’
‘Dad, do you think Nana’s going a bit, you know …’
‘Oh aye, she is a bit. Tells anyone who’ll listen to her Albert was an accountant. Well, you know, he did a bit of bookkeeping, and he wore a tie to work.’ Ted laughed and then started coughing. He stood breathless for a while and Gabriel saw that he was leaning on the chairback for support. ‘Mind you,’ he went on, ‘she said that before. And she believes it now, of course.’
‘I used to think Nana was posh,’ said Gabe. ‘She had me fooled.’
‘Had herself fooled n’all,’ said Ted. He went to the sink and filled the water jug. He set it down. ‘Used to bug me. But now I think … I don’t know. What’s the truth of anything, anyway? Nana says she’d never a cross word with Albert. Seems like that to her and it makes her happy. Makes sense to her. You follow? What really happened, it don’t make a whole lot of difference, not to Nana. The way she remembers it – now, that makes all t’difference in the world. You know? You know what I mean?’
‘Yeah,’ said Gabriel. ‘Sort of.’ His father looked him in the eye. This was, Gabe sensed, an opportunity. This speech, with its hesitations and uncertainties, its vague and – frankly – shaky idea, its appeal, finally, for understanding, was an opening. It was not the kind of speech his father usually made. The spotlight shone on Ted’s bald head, the scalp tight and red. A small band of hair, fully white, remained above the ears. When he was a boy – Gabe had seen the photos – he wore it long enough on top to let it curl, but by the time Gabe was born he had it short and under the strictest control.
‘Them chips going back in?’ said Ted.
‘I was trying to remember,’ said Gabriel, ‘how you lost the top of your finger. I know it was at the mill.’
‘Before you come along,’ said Ted. ‘Little mishap in the weaving shed.’
Gabriel looked down at his own hands, the old burn marks and scars, the calluses, the blackened nail, the lump on the index finger of his knife hand, the duck’s-foot webbing between the first and second finger of his left where a third-degree burn had fissured the skin and healed all wrong. When he was a kid he used to look at his father’s hands. Ted’s hands held an entire world, of work, of manliness, and now Gabe wanted to hold his own aloft for inspection because Dad had never realized that his son had worker’s hands.
‘How many eggs?’ said Gabriel. ‘Two each?’
‘I’ve not much of an appetite, truth be known.’
‘You have to eat.’ He’d missed the opening, he knew, and now they would struggle on in the usual way.
‘I’ll just sit down a minute before I fetch Nana.’
‘Dad,’ said Gabriel, ‘how will you manage?’
‘I’m all right. Just having a moment here, son.’
‘But, I mean, you and Nana, how do you … how will you …’
‘A right pair. I know.’ Ted swept some imaginary crumbs from the table. ‘We’ve a home help comes in the mornings. Jenny does what she can. Nana’s on medication now she’s been diagnosed. And the nurse comes to see to me from the … what’s-it-called.’
‘Hospital.’
‘Hospice.’
‘Right,’ said Gabe. He wanted to put on his coat and walk out of the door. This business of dying was not his business. It could continue just as well without him. ‘What’s Nana been diagnosed with?’
‘Dementia,’ said Ted. ‘They used to say so-and-so’s gone senile, but they say so-and-so’s got dementia now.’
‘Can they treat it? What can they do?’
Ted shook his head. ‘Not much really. She’s on some tablets, might slow it down a bit. There’s good days and bad. Got her on a good day today.’
‘That story she told,’ said Gabriel, ‘about the Pakistanis in the loft. Funny how you can lose your memory but not your prejudices.’
‘She misses the old days, is all.’
Gabe emptied the chips into a bowl he had lined with paper towel. He wasn’t going to argue with Ted, but he couldn’t let this simply go by. ‘The old days when you could start a joke with “an Englishman, an Irishman and a Paki walked into a pub”. That what you mean?’
‘Don’t,’ said Ted, ‘be so bloody daft.’
‘The days when we had the good old National Front and swastikas sprayed on every railway bridge and underpass?’
‘That’s not what we’re talking about,’ said Ted. ‘We’re talking about how it was, when people round here cared about each other. When you knew everyone in the street and they knew you. Not that that means anything to you.’
‘You’re changing the subject.’
‘This is the subject, but you don’t want to know. You dismiss all that. But there was a community – aye, turn yer nose up, that’s right – a community here and that’s been lost.’
‘It’s not even the subject.’ Gabe slammed the frying pan on to the flame.
‘It is the subject,’ said Ted, ‘because this town is dying, Gabriel. There’s no cure for it now.’
‘What’s the disease, Dad? Foreigners? Progress? What?’ Gabriel was close to shouting. He ripped back the curtains. ‘And, anyway, look – look out there, the new estate,’ he looked himself but saw only his own image peering menacingly from the dark, ‘doesn’t look like death to me.’
‘You understand nothing, son.’ Ted lifted his hand, as though to knock Gabriel’s words away. ‘Houses are only houses.
Them houses could be anywhere, they could be on bloody Mars. But this town’s had the heart ripped out of it, I tell you that for free.’
‘For God’s sake.’ Gabriel began cracking eggs into the pan. ‘A lot of old people are racist, I wasn’t blaming Nana …’
He was interrupted by the unmistakable squeal and rattle of the drinks trolley that heralded Nana’s arrival. It had long served as her Zimmer frame and long ago been cleared of booze but Nana had brought her precious bottle of Harvey’s amontillado with her to the kitchen and when she came to a stop by the table the bottle slid forward and Gabriel dived to catch it, landing badly on his shoulder as the green glass shattered and the amber liquid rolled down the linoleum to form a puddle at his ear.
The eggs were burnt underneath. Gabriel put down his knife and fork and picked up a chip with his fingers. He dipped it in the ketchup.
Nana said, ‘Honest British food. Nothing to beat it, is there?’
‘Careful,’ said Ted, ‘you’ll have our Gabe accusing you of racism in a minute.’
Gabriel felt his face contort even as Nana smiled up at him. He was furious with his father and he was furious with himself for being so angry, and he was furious most of all that his father was not the raging giant of Gabriel’s childhood but this gaunt and sick old man at whom it was implausible to direct all this rage.
‘I have never,’ said Nana, waving her fork perilously close to Gabriel’s cheek, ‘been a racialist.’
Gabe kept quiet.
‘What I don’t understand is,’ said Nana, ‘why do they make such a fuss? The Pakistans, the Asians, or what have you – always on about something, aren’t they, complaining about this and that. There was this lass in the paper, Gabriel, only t’other day, she wants to wear the veil to school. Well, I mean. This is England. If they want things exactly like home they can bloomin’ well go there, can’t they? There’s no use trying to make it like home, is there, because they didn’t like it at home and that’s why they’ve left and come here.’
‘They came for the work, Nana,’ said Ted.
‘That’s right,’ said Nana, ‘I tell you what disgusts me. When people say it’s all about colour, well that’s just nonsense, because I’ve nothing against any colour, black, white or brown. It’s what you do that’s important. You do right by me and I do right by you, isn’t that the way?’
Gabriel scraped and stacked the plates. Ted and Nana were what they were. What did he expect from them? ‘Glad we’ve got that straight, Nana,’ he said.
Nana beamed at him. ‘It’s lovely to see you, Gabriel,’ she said. ‘It’s such a treat.’
After tea they continued to sit at the table and Mr Howarth came round and sat with them.
‘Gabe’s opening a new restaurant,’ said Ted.
‘Are yer, Gabe?’ said Mr Howarth, blowing on his mug of Ovaltine. ‘Something fancy is it, down south?’
‘Now,’ said Nana, ‘I’ve to go and get changed else I’ll be late. And I’m expected at … oh, where is it again?’
‘That’s tomorrow night, Nana,’ said Ted. ‘You sit yourself back down.’
‘He says that every night,’ said Nana. ‘Don’t know what kind of fool he takes me for.’
‘What kind of restaurant is it, Gabe?’ said Ted. ‘Has it got a name?’
‘I might just call it Lightfoot’s. What do you think of that?’
‘I think,’ said Ted slowly, ‘that’s not such a bad idea.’
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Nana, ‘is why they always make such a fuss.’
‘Who?’ said Mr Howarth. ‘These chefs?’
‘The Pakistans, the whatyercallums, Muslims, is it now?’
‘I don’t bother with the horses any more,’ said Mr Howarth. ‘I take bets on your nana now, Gabe. Never know which way she’s going to go.’
‘There’s this girl in the paper, only t’other day, she wants to wear the veil to school. Well, I mean. She’s forgot what country she’s in.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr Howarth. ‘But it’s not their fault, the way I see it. Can’t blame them for asking. Human nature to ask for what you want. It’s the council, that’s what it is. Bunch of right rollickin’ idiots, and I only put it that way due to the lady present. So far up their own backsides with this – what’s that word? – “multiculturalism”, they’ve got no common sense.
‘I give you an example. I was down Tesco’s yesterday, and you know Sally Whittaker, she was on the till and she’s a right lovely girl, and I says to her, how’s your mum? And she says to me, me mum’s all right, Mr Howarth, but she’s a bit upset at the moment because they’re stopping the library van and she can’t get out, you know, the way she is. Spending cuts is it, Sally, I says. She says, do you know what they spend their money on, Mr Howarth, I went in there meself and talked to the librarian and she wasn’t happy about it at all. Every leaflet they do they’ve got to translate it into fourteen different languages. That’s a hell of a lot of money is that. And they buy these books by Muslim preachers what are in prison some of them, what say you should take up arms against the infidel, that’s meaning you and me, and they make a nice little display with them. It’s a multicultural society, says Sally, I don’t disagree with that. But what about me mum, she says, who’s paid her taxes all her life and she can’t get her historical romances what don’t do no one any harm. Who’s going to stand up for her?’
The great thing about London, thought Gabe, was that everyone was just a Londoner. The city bound everyone together or kept them all equally apart. Or maybe it didn’t but at least everyone was too busy to give much thought to it. ‘That does sound unfair,’ he said.
Nana was nodding like a puppet with a broken spring. ‘Yes, oh yes,’ she said, ‘I’ve had a wonderful life. Wonderful, wonderful, it’s been a wonderful life.’ Both her eyes were leaking and her chest began to heave.
Ted scraped his chair back. He went to stand behind Nana and patted her shoulder. ‘You’re all right, Phyllis. You’re all right. Good night’s sleep and you’ll be right as rain.’
He helped her to her feet and guided her to the trolley, a tender shuffling dance across the kitchen floor.
The moment seemed to Gabriel unbearably intimate and he had to look away. He stared at the table. The pale pine looked soft as sawdust but it had proved itself tough enough over the years to bear the weight of this family, absorb all that activity, history, into the grain. The kitchen was where they ate, the dining room being a mausoleum of china, glass and candlesticks. They used to mix scones at this table, Mum laid out her dress patterns here, they cleared a corner for homework, spilled glue and glitter and Tizer and argued about who should clear up. He used to kick Jenny’s shins under this table and she couldn’t quite reach across to pinch his arm. This table had heard all the arguments, seen all the fights, given loyal service, and would one day, not too far from now, end up being tossed in a skip.
The back door opened and a fat, beaming blonde woman stepped inside and threw up her arms as if she were at the top of a roller-coaster ride. ‘You’re here,’ she shrieked.
‘Jenny?’ said Gabriel.
‘All right, Jen,’ said Mr Howarth. ‘Good job you’ve arrived. Think your brother’s had enough of us old folk by now.’
Jenny sat down. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘what do you think?’ She touched her hair.
‘Very … um, nice,’ said Gabe. He had thought it was a wig, a platinum bob that licked up the sides of her face.
‘And I’ve lost a few pounds. Not that you’d ever notice, right.’
‘I was just thinking you had,’ said Gabe.
‘Get away,’ said Jenny happily. ‘I’ll go and pop my head round the door to Nana. And then I’m taking you out for a drink.’
The night sky above the moors was the colour of an old bruise. The land trailed from light-refracted milkiness away to folds of black. Jenny dipped the headlights as they passed another car. They used to walk this way sometimes, the best part of an hour, up to t
he Last Drop Inn when they were sufficiently hungover to want the fresh air and not so hungover they couldn’t face a pint at the other end.
‘I’m sorry about Harley and Bailey,’ said Jenny. ‘If I’ve told them once, I’ve told them a thousand times it was today but do they listen …’
Jenny had overhauled her entire look and ditched the velour tracksuits. Gabe glanced at the way her boots cut into the top of her calves, the broad, round knees that emerged from the hem of her skirt. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘what’s that?’
‘They’ll come round and see you tomorrow,’ said Jenny. ‘They’ve only the one uncle after all and mind you you’ve only the one niece and nephew and oh, but Bailey’s a one, she is … But I need a drink in front of me first and then I’ll tell you, a drink and a fag and a good natter, that’s me, well that’s all of us really I suppose.’
The car smelt of cigarettes and the Magic Tree air freshener that dangled from the rear-view mirror. Gabe cracked the window a little.
‘Well, if we’re having the windows down I’ll have a quick one now,’ said Jenny, reaching for the Silk Cuts on the dash. When she pulled on the cigarette it was with such measured intensity that she was transformed, as if the nervous chatter would never return.
Every time he saw her he knew her less. The years didn’t add up, they only took away. He watched as she blew streams of smoke out of the window that sailed back, sure enough, as clouds. Her hair was truly extraordinary. There was something violent in it, though whether turned in or outwards was difficult to say.
She saw him looking and said, ‘I’ve wanted to try it this way for ages but Den always said he hated bottle blondes. So now I’ve got my freedom …’ She touched her hair. ‘Again!’
