Do the photograph or I’ll tell your secret
He feels his lower intestine liquefy. He needs to sit down, or lie down. He leans against the fridge and slides to the floor, puts his head between his knees. He finds he can’t think in any way that’s useful. It’s the betrayal, after everything, all these years and his own loyalty: Colette.
And then he goes over it again, the envelope, his name, the threat inside, re-reading it all in case it was quite different, and his panic had blinded him to what it was really saying. It’s such an extreme response, such a baffling thing to do. And if she was capable of writing this note, this terrible and unbalanced thing, then she might do everything else, too. She might tell them. He needs his dose.
There’s a quiet knock at the door and he springs up, shoving the letter into his back pocket. A dark head appears.
‘Papa?’
It’s Mehul.
‘What are you doing? Why are you still up?’
‘Not still. I woke up,’ he slurs. ‘I’m thirsty. Mummy said you’d give me some water.’
‘Oh, well …’ Satish lifts the briefcase onto its shelf and has a quick look round. ‘Well … all right. Come to the kitchen.’
Mehul walks beside him, slumped forward in tiredness. His hair lies every which way, his pyjama top skewed to one side. Satish hugs his son to him, a hand round his thin shoulder, then half-fills his Spiderman bottle with water.
‘Go to bed,’ he says and Mehul turns away, somnambulating, and retraces his steps.
Satish watches him go, impossibly fragile, right foot treading down the cuff of his pyjama trousers, left hand clutching the water. In his sleepiness, Mehul bumps up against the banister. He takes the stairs slowly, both feet on a step before he’ll rise to the next one. Satish waits it out, this slow ascent, and it’s like the countdown to his decision: what to do about the letter, the sleepy tread – bump-bump, bump-bump – a heartbeat, a ticking clock. When Mehul reaches the landing, Satish’s time is up.
He switches off the kitchen light and goes back to the garage for his dose.
Chapter 13
Satish isn’t ready to deal with the note yet. He can’t find a way to think about what Colette has done. He approaches it from the margins, imagining the new photograph as a reality, imagining what the others would look like thirty years on. He tries to envisage them ageing, speeding them through the years like time-lapse photography. He knows a bit about Cai already. Colette has told him some things about her brother: he went bald early, she said. Other than that, he doesn’t look much different: a bit more solid round the waist. He has a long-term partner. They can’t have children. He’s a lion keeper in a zoo. Satish roared when he first heard this; it’s a child’s fantasy of a job, or else the first line of a joke. But no, Cai really is a lion keeper. Not too far away, either, just a journey round the M25. You should go, she’d told him mischievously. Take the kids. Satish doesn’t know what future he had envisaged for Cai. International spy, for a while. Rock star, politician, criminal. Cartographer, he might have said, remembering their early years of friendship.
It was Cai who’d mapped out the territory for him when he first arrived in the street, who had helped him achieve a kind of belonging. They didn’t play together at school; there, Satish was a lone explorer, and Cai was with his own tribe. Satish had had to learn for himself the subtleties that marked you out as a native: which bits of the school were no-go; you avoided the far end of the field because that was where the Years Fives always went, and you wouldn’t be caught dead on your own in the adventure playground, not at eight, it was for the littlest kids. But groups were different. He watched gangs of bigger boys storm the climbing net, hollering their way to the top, reminding the Infants who was boss. If you ever needed to hide at lunchtimes you could try the first aid room, a prefab near the swimming pool, which was left unlocked and unmonitored. It wasn’t meant to be empty, but the volunteer fifth-years who manned it nearly always deserted their post. You could usually stay for as long as you needed, breathing the comforting scent of TCP, smirking at the Kiss Of Life poster while you went undetected by your enemies.
Home was a different matter. Cai transformed the landscape of Cherry Gardens for Satish, making it familiar, knowable. He can’t remember when they first met. There was no special moment, just a few nods on the way to school, a grunt of recognition when they found they were in the same class. Their parents met each other more formally, at Neeta’s insistence. He recalls the preparation of the sitting room, and the hours his mum spent making food for their visitors. In the event, Mr and Mrs Brecon had hardly touched the delicacies, a cause of great rejoicing for Satish: all the more for him. The adults had chatted with restrained politeness, but the boys had the best of it, slipping upstairs to play early on without too much of a preamble.
In Cai’s company, Satish learned who was OK and who to avoid. He met Mandy and Sarah, from the year below. Like him, they got to play with Cai after school hours. The Brecons’ next-door neighbours, the Chandler boys, were older, and objects of veneration for Cai. The Chandlers were ‘brilliant’, he told Satish, and he watched them for clues about his coming maturity, much as Satish watched his new friend for ways of navigating his environment.
The Chandlers were an anomaly in Cherry Gardens: loose cannons, lads who edged just the wrong side of all the indulgent terms which make bearable the behaviour of children. They were not mischievous, or quite a handful, they even surpassed that merry catch-all, boys will be boys. These boys showed clearly what they would be; one school legend had them chasing a younger kid up the climbing frame until he reached the top and, with nowhere else to go, dropped from it onto the tarmac below. Their quarry broke his leg, and when Satish had tried to discover what this boy had done to prompt the attack, no one could tell him. He wondered if it had mattered. Of Satish himself, they were contemptuous, not because of the things he did – there was nothing he could learn here, nothing he could modify which would change their attitude – but because of what he was. He tried not to be around much when they were present. Yet Cai adored the Chandlers, braving their quixotic moods, thrilled just to be in their presence. He didn’t seem overly concerned about their attitude to Satish, either. ‘They’re just having a laugh,’ Cai would tell him. ‘Don’t take it so seriously.’
When he first came to Cherry Gardens Satish would see Paul and Stephen ahead of him most mornings, bigger boys making erratic progress towards school. Stephen wore his uniform carelessly, his body a skinny presence inside, his slender neck ring-fenced by his shirt collar. In the winter, however cold it was, his coat slouched off one shoulder. Big brother Paul inhabited his clothing more conventionally, neater tie, buttoned-up shirt, and there was more of him to do so anyway: he was not muscled, not fat exactly either, but dense somehow. Despite this, Stephen was often the one who took charge, and when they’d left primary school for Bassetsbury Boys’ it was him, though younger and scrawnier, who was said to get the High School girls, impressing them at the bus stop and on the brief twenty-minute journey before they were segregated again.
In those later years Satish was near the top of the primary school himself. The Chandlers would now go the other way in the mornings, slouching grim-faced past his house, or jostling up against each other, Paul lazily aggressive, Stephen twitchy, like a ferret. That was the thing about Stephen, the thing that made him instantly recognisable, even at a distance, those quick movements of his. Sometimes Satish would hear them, the occasional shout or laugh in the quiet street, and he would go to the window to catch sight of them. Theirs was a different way of being from the one he knew with Sima, or saw between Cai and Colette. They seemed incapable of leaving each other alone, nor could they ever be quite comfortable close. It was a relationship of attraction and repulsion, as if their fraternity could be found in the tension itself. Satish had opportunities to observe this himself sometimes, at weekends or after school, when the brothers deigned to hang around with Cai, and Satish didn’t kno
w how to get out of it.
When the weather was decent the Cherry Gardens kids would gather outside, not in their street which, though quiet, was still a through-road, but in the next one along. A dead end, this street butted heads with the close their school was on. There was a tree and some fencing, with a sizeable gap between them that you could squeeze through as a shortcut to school. It was a good place to meet and talk. Someone usually brought a football, so there were kick-arounds in between the chat. With Cai, Satish would play self-consciously; learning footie had been crucial to his first months in England, and his skills were still rudimentary. But once the Chandlers arrived, things became more serious, and he’d play on the fringes. The talk shortened, till there was just the bump and scuff of the ball on tarmac and the boys shouting each other’s names in accents they’d learned from The Sweeney.
‘Cai! Caiseeyy …’
‘Paul! Over ’ere!’
‘To me, Steve-ay!’
The Chandler boys were bigger, faster, more skilled. If they wanted to, they could tackle the younger boys and take the ball off them, moving the game down the street. Then they would come at each other, half-laughing, grimacing, tackling hard, the ball between them just an excuse. When they were finished they’d chip it over a hedge and leave, or boot it as far as they could, sometimes out of the road and into Chapman Lane, where it would languish until one of the younger ones rescued it.
Occasionally Mandy or Sarah joined in, kicking straight-on with the front of their feet so that the ball pinged off at uncontrollable angles, or rode up onto the toes of their shoes. The lads would look at each other knowingly, or take over and keep the rest of the game to themselves, or sometimes just retire from play. Sarah was always swift to notice, moving to the sidelines and offering inexpert support (‘Brilliant kick, Stephen!’). Mandy was usually the last to stop, her final pass uncollected, before she’d realise she was suddenly playing alone.
Often, the kids would just talk. ‘I’ve got toad-in-the-hole tonight,’ Cai might offer, an opening gambit. ‘We’ve had sausages three times this week. It’s been rubbish.’
‘We’re having chops,’ Sarah would tell them. ‘I hate chops.’
‘I like lamb chops. Not pork. I think it’s chips tonight though,’ from Mandy.
A murmur of approval. Satish thought about chips, and the advert that was on telly now for a cooking oil which ‘locked in’ flavour. On the advert, the woman had a little key to unlock each piece of food. It made you think about the specialness of each mouthful, how crunchy and clean it might taste.
‘Chops are shit.’ Paul and Stephen had finished their kick-around and Paul’s swearword felt like a slap. Satish saw Mandy look round: no adults to hear. ‘And toad-in-the-hole’s shit, too,’ Paul went on. ‘What you having tonight, Splatish?’ The brothers headed for the kerb where he was perched, and stood over him.
‘I don’t know. I think my mum’s making some paneer – some cheese. Maybe that.’ The moment he’d said it, he cursed himself.
Stephen laughed, and stepped a bit closer so that the toes of his shoes were almost on top of Satish’s. ‘She’s making cheese? Has she got a cow? A sacred cow? Does she milk it?’ He mimed it in that jerky way of his, wiggling his shoulders up and down, opening and closing his fists.
Sarah was giggling. ‘A sacred cow!’ she echoed.
Satish pulled his feet out of the way, scrunched his legs up under him. He looked at Stephen’s plimsolls and tried to imagine Stephen being whacked with them. His dad did it, Colette had said. She’d heard him do it and told Satish. He tried to think about that, while Stephen hopped up and down and the others laughed. Satish hoped it made a mark on Stephen’s bum and that he cried. He hoped that he, Satish, would be granted the pleasure of hearing this himself one day.
When Satish looked up again he saw Mandy: jaw set, eyes fierce, staring at Stephen. She wasn’t laughing.
It was hard to know what to do. Sincerity could be fatal. But he couldn’t say anything. Next to Stephen, Paul was looking down at him, his face expressionless.
‘She just boils milk. I don’t know – she does it with my sister.’
‘Vith your sister?’ echoed Paul, wobbling his head from side to side.
‘Do you just eat cheese, then?’ enquired Stephen. ‘On its own?’
‘Ve do!’ Paul wobbled at his brother.
‘No.’ Satish risked an upwards glance at him, then looked away. Mandy was standing up, taking a step towards the Chandlers.
‘We have spinach with it,’ he said quickly. ‘We love spinach.’ He stood up, his legs shaking, and found himself looking at Stephen’s chest. ‘We really love spinach,’ he said again.
‘Eeergh!’ Stephen exploded. ‘Spinach! God, yuk!’ He stuck out his tongue and made gagging noises. Paul put two fingers into his mouth. Out of the corner of his eye, Satish could see Mandy, frozen. Sarah laughed with the brothers, screwing up her face, and Cai guffawed.
‘God! That’s disgusting! Spinach!’ Stephen hawked a couple of times, leaning in close to Satish. Saliva boiled at the back of his throat. Then he spat, twisting his head and sending a stringy gob onto Satish’s trousers. Satish made his throat go hard so he wouldn’t gag and waited for the next thing – the punch. But suddenly Stephen turned, and Paul turned with him, both understanding that they’d spent enough time with the kids now. They moved away, still giggling and grimacing, then Stephen nipped back, slapping his hands onto Satish’s cheeks: the old joke. He chafed at them, making Satish’s lips slap against his gums with a wet noise, then withdrew his hands and stared at them, exaggerated puzzlement on his face.
‘Nope,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Still not coming off.’ He wiped his hands down his jeans.
Paul sniggered and the two of them headed off towards Cherry Gardens. Cai called after them – ‘See ya!’ – but his shout was not returned and the pair disappeared, leaving the dregs of the joke behind.
Without the Chandlers, Satish could breathe easier. The four of them would often meet at their tree, or in a garden, or in Mandy’s sitting room, Cai lying on the floor with Mandy’s cat Hendrix on his chest, its front paws squeezed between his fingers. As Cai talked – about the Damned, about their teachers, about what Sarah’s sister Diane might have done in her Mini in the Sports Centre car park – Hendrix would gesticulate for him, expressing shock, or disappointment, or fury on Cai’s behalf. After Diane returned from a holiday to Lloret de Mar, her travel stories occupied the group for days.
‘She drank sangria all the time,’ Sarah told them. ‘It’s this punch stuff. She drank tons of it, and one night she threw up and she passed out and when she woke up there was sick all over her bed.’
There was a mutter of disgust. Mandy, stretched across the settee, added, ‘My uncle went to Ibiza and he ate donkey. Or was it dog? Anyway, that made him sick, too.’
‘Donkey!’
‘People are always sick in Spain,’ Cai said. ‘Sick or the squits. It’s well known. You can’t drink the water, and if you swim in the sea there are bugs that get inside you.’ Hendrix covered his eyes with his paws.
‘Yeah,’ said Sarah. ‘Diane said that. She said there were all these bugs.’
‘There’s this one that’s really disgusting,’ Cai went on. ‘Do you want to know?’ They did. ‘You swim in the sea, and if you’re a boy there’s this worm that swims up into your donger.’
‘Eurrghh!’
‘Yes. It swims up into your donger, and your donger swells up and goes purple and if they can’t get you the right medicine in time, they have to cut it off.’
Satish’s hands moved to his crotch. ‘No!’
‘Yes!’ Sarah put in. ‘It is true, because I’ve heard it from other people. You lose your willy completely.’
Cai nodded. ‘You’re just left with a hole to pee out of. And every time you pee, it hurts so much you have to bite on something.’ Hendrix clasped his paws to his ears and shook his head from side to side. Behind Cai, Mandy g
rinned at Satish and circled her finger at her temple.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Sarah. ‘It wasn’t just drinking. Loads and loads of people were Doing It all the time. Basically, if you didn’t want to Do It you locked your door at night, but if you did, you’d just leave it unlocked, and people would come in, and you’d just Do It with them.’
Mandy narrowed her eyes. ‘No!’
‘Oh, yes, I promise you.’
‘Just went in?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And Did It?’
‘Honestly.’ The room was briefly quiet. Cai must have relaxed his hold on the cat for a moment, because suddenly Hendrix scrabbled with his back paws and was out of the room. Mandy began chiding Cai – ‘Were you being gentle with him?’ – and Sarah frowned, her moment gone.
‘Well—’ she tried, sitting forward in her chair. Then, ‘Well!’ a little louder. ‘I’ll tell you what, I know it’s true, because one night Diane left her door open, to see what would happen.’
Cai looked up. ‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah. And what happened was, she Did It, too. It was one of the Spanish waiters who came.’
As one, Satish and Mandy turned towards Cai. A revelation like this required his stamp of authority.
Cai waited for a moment, then beamed. ‘Oh, José!’ he shouted, scraping the word against the back of his throat, bending it to his atrocious Spanish accent. ‘I hope you are wearing a Rubberrr Chonny!’
Cai made Cherry Gardens familiar, but never predictable. Where was the fun in that? He was the purveyor of the new and the risky, a genius at creating danger and then tempting you with it. One afternoon at his place, there was something waiting on the kitchen counter. It had been left to cool, its glaze dulling as the heat evaporated from it. Satish eyed the dish with interest: wormy strands of pasta, stained red where the edges of a dark sauce had oozed. Satish could make out carrots and onions, maybe bits of celery. Cai came in trailing Sarah.
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