He stretched out his hands, palms up, to the water and the Leeds skyline as if in unconscious supplication. Or atonement. An overblown gesture. And I noticed the palm of his right hand had a large, raised red scar across it, like a starfish. It ran from his wrist to the base of his fingers, and from his thumb to the outside edge of his hand. Not new, it must have been a terrible wound. Now it was a huge, bumpy callous. He would be hard put to make a fist with that hand. Or hold a pen.
‘What’s that?’ I said, social worker’s antennae alert. He brought his palm up to his chest as if interrogating the scar for a moment. Then he looked at me, holding his hand out to show me. Asking me to share. As if he were five and had got grit in the flesh of his hand. Or a splinter.
‘It was when I was in a children’s home. The third or fourth one, can’t remember which. My gran had just died, my dad’s mother, and I kicked off in the kitchen. Went a bit wild, throwing stuff and yelling. I was supposed to be helping serving up one of the meals. One of the care-workers grabbed me and pressed my hand down onto a hot gas ring. Afterwards he swore it was an accident. I suppose I’m lucky it wasn’t lit at the time.’
Something in these statements did not ring quite true. Alerted me. I had heard many such stories. Was it the amount of information I was being given? Or the sense that what he had said had been edited for public consumption? I looked at his face for more clues. It was hard to imagine damage below the charming surface. His eyes met mine guilelessly. More green than the blue that my sons and I had shared, along with our uncompromisingly red hair. He nodded his head a few times as if to confirm the horror of it all.
After that there was not much to say. I hefted my briefcase and the carrier bag from hand to hand. We said some awkward goodbyes. Me hoping he would not ask for a telephone number, because for some reason which I had not yet examined, I would have had to refuse. But all he said was, ‘Perhaps I can come and visit the Chinese figures in your house, sometime?’
I shook his hand silently and smiled non-committally. He set off back across the bridge to town, and I started walking over to Hunslet, where my car was parked. I turned just once and watched him. And it was like seeing Simon walking off. And for a few seconds, blinded with unshed tears, I relived the loss of him. All my sorrow was as fresh as when I had first experienced it. And I said aloud to the city skyline he had never seen, ‘If only I could see you again.’
***
I suppose I was not surprised to come across Brendan some months later. I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant on Vicar Lane with my youngest son Oliver. It was Sunday lunch. One of the fixed parts of my week, when Oliver and I spent an hour or so together. His mother usually devoted Sunday afternoon to marking and preparation as an English teacher at a local high school.
Oliver shovelled huge portions of vegetables into his mouth, head low down over his plate, like a police helicopter, not wanting to miss anything. He was talking with brutal frankness about one of his teachers and was describing both his inability to keep order and the size of his backside, as if both characteristics were contingent on each other. I was laughing. Suddenly he paused in mid-shovel, ‘Hey Dad, there’s a bloke waving at you from over there.’
I turned and there was Brendan sitting with a middle-aged man on a table opposite us. He waved cheerily at me and grinned over at us. The man he was with smiled politely. He was not having a good time; he just stirred food on his plate with a fork. It was as if my being there, and recognised so cheerily by Brendan, had added to his unease. He said something to Brendan which made him jerk his head like a horse resisting a rider’s direction. And at this response the man looked cross and defeated. And out of his depth.
Oliver and I chatted, as I tried to stifle my discomfort. Nevertheless as before I found myself unable to stop looking at Brendan. He had lost weight since I had seen him last and appeared less boy-like. His hair was gelled and was darker than before. An adult was emerging from the roundness of youth. I could see him attempting to soothe his companion down with a great deal of skill. Patting his hand and talking low and fast. The man laughed reluctantly, and looked over at me. There was a look of scorn, or was it pity on his face. What had Brendan said about me? And why did I think it was probably derogatory? Oliver listened intently as I explained where I had met Brendan. How together we’d looked at the Chinese figures now sitting on a window sill in my house. Somewhere near the end of my tale, Oliver could contain himself no longer and burst out, mouth lamentably full, ‘But Dad, he looks just like…’
I didn’t let him finish, just got up and mumbling something, went off to wash my hands of grease from the spare ribs. Knowing what Oliver had been going to say made the similarities between Brendan and Simon more real and more painful to me. I wanted to run away, taking Oliver with me. Protect ourselves from more hurt, from more reminders.
Coming back, I was jolted to see Oliver in conversation with a young man. They were sitting next to each other. While I was washing my hands, Brendan had left his table and come over to ours. Oliver was laughing delightedly, again mouth open and full of food. Then he seemed to ask a question because Brendan paused momentarily and held his right hand, palm upwards, for Oliver to look at it.
Neither heard my soundless approach over the thick pile of the carpet. I was in time to hear Brendan say, ‘Yes, it was a lucky escape. I was in a car accident, and I cut my hand breaking the glass to get out.’
Oliver’s eyes went big and round with the answer. I could see him processing this information, and relating it to the death of his elder brother. Brendan didn’t miss a beat as he felt my presence behind him.
‘Hi,’ he said, extending his left hand, ‘How are you doing? I just introduced myself to Oliver.’
I found anger and fear welling up inside me. His eyes looked at me innocently. Close to, skin fresh and pink, he looked little older than Oliver. Anybody seeing them together would have no doubt that they shared the same genes. Oliver cried out with enthusiasm, ‘Hey Dad, Brendan’s been telling me a great story.’
I forced some control into my voice. It came out more or less normally when I said, ‘Hello Brendan, nice to see you again. What’s happened to your friend?’
Brendan looked momentarily confused. The table where the middle-aged man had been sitting with him was now empty. He gathered himself a little. It was as if he had already forgotten him. With an effort of memory he said, ‘Oh him. I’ve only known him a month. One of those things. What a lucky chance to see you two.’
And he beamed at Oliver, who beamed back with unaffected liking. With a pang I realised that he was responding to Brendan in the same way that I had on our first meeting. Oliver had missed Simon too. And I had never really acknowledged that.
Somehow I eased my son out of the restaurant and into the car, speedily, yet with a controlled politeness.
Brendan knew what I was doing, and why. He stood in the entrance and looked at me, hurrying away and trying not to show my panic. And loss moved slowly down his features emptying them out. Expressionless finally, he had somehow become seven years old. His face was pinched and he was without charm. The face from an old sepia photograph of orphanage children. Only his eyes said anything. The eyes of someone who had been rejected many times before, they had no shine. They said ‘Again’.
He raised one hand, when Oliver waved madly at him.
‘He’s great,’ said Oliver. ‘Will we see him sometime soon?’
‘I’m sure we will,’ I replied.
But actually it wasn’t until quite a few years later that I saw Brendan next. I was in Leeds City Station, at the end of the university term, waiting for Oliver to appear off the Newcastle train. Through the windows I could see the skyline of a newer, bigger Leeds. Everything had changed so much.
Then I spotted Brendan, coming down an escalator. He was with a man in his late forties. They were standing close to each other, almost touching. It seemed likely they had just met, for Brendan was looking at his new friend speculatively,
almost hungrily. As if the man might hold the final pieces of a puzzle for him.
I braced myself unconsciously, although I knew that I was probably immune to him now.
He must have felt my stare because he glanced down and saw me, his eyes meeting and holding mine momentarily. Confusion and remembering fought in his expression briefly. Then from just behind, Oliver’s bright head suddenly towered above the throng, and bore past them. He waved at me cheerily, shoving down through the people on the escalator without a second glance around him. My eye contact with Brendan was broken, just as the sun reached through the transparent roof sidings and high windows of the station. I was dazzled. My eyes filled with protective tears. Brendan was in a shimmer of illumination. And for one second, before I was completely blinded, it seemed that the sun shone through him in a shattered network of light. Just like the Chinese boy. Smooth externally, but quite broken inside.
When I blinked and rubbed my eyes, he had gone and Oliver was striding towards me.
I looked at my son with a mixture of relief and love. This was enough.
Statue
Tajinder Singh Hayer
The statue first appeared in the square during May. He set himself beneath the council offices on an upturned milk crate, and laid a cardboard sign at his feet (‘Pygmalion’s statue’ it said), and then waited. That was almost all that he did.
And, for that month, significant interest arose in the shoppers and office-dwellers. His intrusion into the neat (and not so neat) space of the city centre fascinated them; his presence was seen as a pleasing sign of metropolitan growth, and, as though to appease the gods of economic and cultural prosperity, they would drop coins into the tray by his feet, expecting a shift in his posture. Then they would wait. And wait. And the change would come, but at such a rate and at such a time that the paying client had invariably returned to shopping or working.
So it was that the attraction of the statue dulled as the weeks passed, as summer began to screw slowly tighter. It became harder to stop and stare as the buses pushed heat through the city centre; harder to stand and wait as the crowds of others urged movement, as feet began to throb. So the statue was forgotten; his presence smoothed out of difference and into familiarity. He became a true ornament like the ignored reliefs of the city hall.
But Jasvir did not forget. There was something that would not let her, something that impelled her to look out over the square and to the man on the crate; that directed her eyes to the window during meetings, seminars and training exercises. She wondered if it was his clothing, which, although always the same pair of blue shirt and blue trousers, was never unclean or worn. Or perhaps she watched for the changes that came long after the paying viewers had gone; the gentle shift of his limbs as he became an ancient hero struggling with a Gorgon, became David, became an older and more dignified Cupid. Whichever image he adopted, it would be held for hours (sometimes a whole day would pass without him moving). And Jasvir was always there, watching his slow semaphore from above.
Today there was little difference. The only new thing was a group of builders, stripped to the waist, laying out concrete in the square. Jasvir avoided looking at them and focused instead on her statue. He was standing directly beneath the office window, spearing at imaginary fish. He hadn’t caught anything since the morning. She willed someone, even those joking, jostling builders, to drop a coin in the tray and free him from his shape. But no-one did. A few tourists idly clicked their cameras and walked away. That was all.
All and the heat. The hottest day of the summer so far, with everything that wasn’t metal or concrete wilting in the sun. People hurried to air-conditioned offices and stores. They beaked at their cold drinks and melting ice creams, hoping that the remaining hours would coolly slip away. Even the drunks had moved out of the square (the sun working with more efficiency and severity than the police force). Yet the statue remained as he always was – sure and calm in his immobility. Frozen. Even his sweat obeyed him.
‘I hate that scrounger. Do-nothing – that’s all he is. Someone should move him. Someone from the Council.’
Jasvir looked across at Ryan, newly arrived from a too-short break, and contemplated a response. He – despite the suit, despite the desk, despite the blond highlights – was not her superior. He was officially an equal in another department, which just happened to be based in the same room as hers. This did not make him superior. She was entitled to her response.
‘We are from the Council.’
‘What?’ A film of bafflement slid over his face; he tried to wipe it away with a handkerchief – failed – then looked for water, but the cooler was empty. He moved back to the window, then to his chair and hid, discreetly, behind his desk. The sweat from the run had permeated his suit, turning it into an ill-fitting second skin that embarrassed his skeleton. Jasvir looked at him and thought how much more natural perspiration appeared on the builders, how it seemed to glide from their bodies whilst it hung grimly to this officeman’s shape. She watched, but then saw that it was all the same. Sweat – the work of bodies just trying to stay alive on a hot day.
And Jasvir was no different; a realisation she found more shocking than it should have been. It made her aware of the embarrassing moisture that lined her armpits; the sweat that gathered on her lip, accentuating her light hair into a dewy moustache. And that other part. She hid it from Ryan, who sat opposite and ready for the cruel joke. Hid from Ryan and his kind. She shrank from the small green room they shared.
At such times, work became a welcome distraction. She would immerse herself in figures and projections: litter collection rotas, correspondence, funding applications, charity events – the miscellany of local governance. And the place names – Bingley, Saltaire, Manningham – that reassured her so with their familiarity. Or, if she couldn’t work, she would take an apple from her bag and cut it neatly in half, then admire the two perfect hearts she had made.
But all this today had to contend with the heat, in which words melted before her eyes, in which apples became unpleasantly sticky, and places became absurdly local and prosaic.
‘We could do with air-conditioning in here don’t you think?’ said Ryan. He was playing with a carton of sour milk at his desk; sniffing it then pulling a face, and then sniffing again. Eventually he would put it down.
‘It’s not environmentally friendly.’
‘So?’
‘We’re supposed to be an eco-friendly council.’
‘Fuck eco, what about us?’
‘Yes, but what goes around comes around. You have to appreciate that.’
Nothing. No response at all. An almost utter blankness, and another sniff of the carton. Jasvir wanted to shake him.
‘Look. I’ll try to explain. We use air-conditioning and we add to global warming; we add to global warming and it gets hotter. That’s the way it goes. So better just grin and bear it.’
She said this and thought of how Ryan would be holidaying in the Mediterranean later that summer, of how he would be lapping up the sun without complaint. Browning up and getting drunk. The only place she had ever been to was India; three times to that same village in the north-west. And the pang of jealousy disturbed her. She blinked and saw again the blankness on Ryan; his sheer disregard for anything other than himself, his senses, his…
Jasvir’s mobile phone danced across the tabletop. It brought her back.
‘That from lover boy?’ Ryan smirked. ‘You’ll be getting fixed up soon.’
Nobody was supposed to know about Pavan. Ryan’s awareness was the result of a chance meeting; unfortunate and embarrassing. He used his knowledge to make her squirm occasionally; dance to his little tunes (he knew the differences between them and how they could be exploited – the rumours, the whiff of scandal, anything). Jasvir wished she had a weapon to fight back with – something to spike him as he spiked her – but she didn’t. She was facing his opaqueness again. So she hid the phone in her bag with the message unchecked.
&n
bsp; Lover boy. Neither word was exactly accurate. Pavan was not a boy he was a man, and he was Jasvir’s friend (her mind rejected the word ‘boy-friend’ or ‘man-friend’). Yet, they had been going out together. Specifically, they were dating in that nineteenth-century way that young Punjabi couples have: with secret meetings that feed a self-reciprocating illicitness to their relationship; with public shows of affection either rationed or encrypted; with an awareness of the vast net of social and familial responsibility. ‘Boy-friend’, ‘dating’ and ‘going out’ did not seem apt definitions for the situation.
And lover. Love presented other difficulties. It was an emotional state that Jasvir found difficult to categorise. She had expected it to pierce her like an arrow and transform her small, green world. It would be a finding of her other half that would make even the garish spectacles of Bollywood - the lame campness of the men, actresses barely containing their hearts in their chests – seem plausible. All those legends too: Romeo and Juliet; Rama and Sita; Hero and Leander. That was love.
But Jasvir’s relationship with Pavan held none of these great passions. Instead, what sometimes struck her was the convenience of it; how fitting it seemed. Pavan was a Sikh, young, the right caste, a successful businessman – nothing that her family might object to. In fact, he was a candidate they might have selected themselves. It only seemed that, by hiding their affair, the two of them were simply creating the illusion of a free choice being made. And this thought would have disturbed her (had she allowed it to grow), but she willed it back just as she willed her love forward. She was sure there was something growing there; a budding romance taking its first stiff steps. It was not numbness. It was not numbness…
Jasvir fidgeted in her seat, trying to rub the pins and needles from her legs. It had been three hours now, and three more remained until the end of the working day. Her leather chair was uncomfortable in the warmth and streaky with moisture; the work on her table was being looked over rather than done; and Ryan was prowling the office. Both their tempers were stretched.
Naked City Page 4
