Now, he simply nodded slowly and gave a gentle sigh.
‘It’s times like this when I sorely regret taking on the kind of profession that has made me travel so much,’ he said soberly. ‘I sincerely hope that this is not the start of the slippery road to…’
Moral decadence, Faye finished off silently in her head having heard the same sentence more times than she could remember. She studiously avoided William’s eyes, only too aware that he was probably silently mouthing the words as her father spoke. This was not exactly the best time to burst out laughing.
With a final sorrowful shake of his head, the doctor rose from the breakfast table and very firmly plucked his magazine from his son’s grip. After reminding them about their promise to attend evening mass, he excused himself and shut himself off in his study to finish reading his papers in peace.
Once the door had closed behind him, Faye aimed again and this time made contact with her brother’s shin.
‘Ouch! Bloody hell, Faye. That hurt!’ Glaring at his unrepentant sister, William rubbed his leg hard.
‘Serves you right for landing me in it.’ She poured another cup of coffee and was glad to see that her hand had stopped shaking, at least for now. Notoriously unable to hold her drink, Faye usually stuck to wine when she went out and hardly ever touched spirits, making the impact of the powerful dark Jamaican rum from the previous evening particularly devastating.
‘Hey, I didn’t say anything he couldn’t figure out for himself,’ William muttered defensively. ‘He is a doctor, you know, and I’m sure he’s seen more than his fair share of alcoholically challenged people over the years.’
Rising quickly to avoid another attack on his shins, he grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl on the dining table and, keeping well out of reach, grinned at her cheerfully, his good humour restored.
‘So, little sister, what did you and your cultural guru get up to last night?’
Her face dropped as she remembered the hideous turn the evening had taken.
‘I don’t think Michael will ever speak to me again! I got more than a bit drunk and ended up collapsing at his friend’s house – and I think I was a bit rude to one of them,’ she sighed deeply. Frowning slightly, she went on. ‘I don’t remember too much after that except being practically carried out. Michael just dumped me at home and drove off – in my car!’ she added indignantly.
William chewed thoughtfully on his apple. ‘That doesn’t sound like you – being rude to your beloved’s friends, I mean.’
Ignoring the implication that being drunk, however, did sound like her, Faye shrugged. ‘Oh, it was just this one guy there who really got on my nerves. He basically accused me of being a slave to the colonialist mentality and cut off from my cultural roots. I know Michael can be a bit much sometimes, but you should have heard this one going on. You know, the usual “you don’t know where you come from” rubbish.’
‘Well, sounds like he had it coming then,’ was the swift response. Gesturing with his half-eaten apple, William added with a grin, ‘You know, this is what comes of hanging around with Michael Duncan. That man’s got enough chips on his shoulder to feed an entire army. Ever since he got into this whole “I’m black and I’m proud” thing, he’s become even more of a prat than he was when we were in school.’
Deciding this was not the moment to tell William that her boyfriend considered him to be culturally extinct, Faye bit her lip and drank her coffee without comment.
She put the empty cup down and stared thoughtfully across at him. In his fitted jeans and with his lean muscular torso covered with a grey polo shirt, William looked fit and, as usual, extremely self-confident.
‘Will, don’t you ever think that maybe we don’t have enough of a connection to Ghana? I mean, you even have a white girlfriend. Don’t you ever worry about people thinking that you’ve sold out culturally?’
William gave a snort of pure contempt. He wolfed down the rest of the apple, grabbed his plate and stood up. ‘Faye, the moment you start worrying about what other people think, you really will be lost!’
He headed for the door, almost bumping into Lottie who was coming in. Turning back to his sister, he added more gently, ‘Look, just be yourself. You know where you come from, so what do you care if someone else has a problem? I’m going over to Lucinda’s now but I’ll be back by six, in time for mass. If you don’t want another lecture from Dad, don’t be late!’
Winking cheekily at Lottie, he strode out of the room, leaving her staring after him in bewilderment.
‘Now, what was that all about?’ She asked, completely perplexed. She turned back to Faye who had moved over to the French windows and was looking thoughtfully out into the garden. The apple trees that yielded so much fruit during the summer now looked barren. A few pale rays of sunlight had managed to struggle through the clouds and succeeded in casting a gentle glow over the impeccable green lawn. Although it was a chilly September morning, the picture through the glass doors was altogether one of warmth and serenity.
‘Faye?’ Lottie’s voice was sharp with concern as she watched her staring forlornly out of the window.
Faye turned back to her with a wan smile. ‘It’s okay, Lottie. I’m fine, really.’
Lottie poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot on the dining table and grimaced as she tasted the now lukewarm drink.
‘Ugh! I don’t know why I torture myself trying to drink this stuff – I hate coffee!’ she said in disgust. ‘Now listen, my lass, I know you about as well as I know myself and I know when something’s not right.’ She sat down and gestured to the chair next to her. ‘I’ve got a few minutes to spare and you look like you have plenty on your mind.’
Faye sighed and, after a moment’s hesitation, took the chair on offer. ‘I was just thinking about last night and having to deal with Michael. His friends really matter to him – what if I’ve pushed him too far?’
Lottie’s nostrils flared with outrage. ‘Are you saying you don’t matter to him? Because if he doesn’t think you’re more important than his friends, why on earth are you wasting your time with him?’
‘I’m not saying I don’t matter. It’s just… oh, I don’t know!’ Anxiety and frustration mingled as she struggled to voice her feelings. Her head ached and she forced herself to calm her rising panic. ‘Lottie, I don’t want to lose him. I know you hate him but he can be really sweet when he wants to be, and I don’t see anyone else chasing after me, do you?’
‘Maybe if you spent less time worrying about that man and more time with some of your other friends, that would change,’ Lottie muttered under her breath. She took in Faye’s miserable expression and her voice softened. ‘You’ve had your ups and downs with Michael before, but I’ve never seen you this upset. There’s something else, isn’t there?’
Faye hesitated for a moment, almost afraid to give voice to her own suspicions. ‘Yes, there is. I am worried about Michael; this isn’t another silly argument, he’s finally let me meet his friends and I know he’s going to be furious at me for getting drunk and showing him up. But I can’t shake off the feeling that something else was going on last night. One of his friends really seemed to have it in for me from the start. We were talking about culture and I started explaining about Ghana – I’m not sure what happened, but it all seemed to go downhill from there.’
‘What were you saying about Ghana?’ Lottie leaned forward with interest.
‘I was trying to show them that I knew something about my culture which, as it turned out, wasn’t the smartest idea. Because then they all piled in and started asking me questions that I couldn’t answer. And this one guy, Wesley, for some reason was practically interrogating me the whole evening. Then, as if I didn’t already feel like a prize idiot, he starts having a go at me and basically accusing me of being clueless about black culture. The funny thing was, he’s white and he had the nerve to start lecturing me about not keeping in touch with my black identity!’ As she thought back to Wesley’s conde
scending remarks, she felt her temper starting to rise.
‘Well, maybe he’s right,’ Lottie said mildly.
‘What do you mean, maybe he’s right? Lottie!’ Faye stared at her in disbelief, completely outraged by this unexpected betrayal.
Unperturbed, Lottie took another sip of her coffee and grimaced again before putting the cup down firmly and pushing it away.
‘Calm down, Faye’, she said evenly. ‘Look, what I mean is that maybe he has a point. You have lived in England almost all your life. You know more about English history than African, you barely speak any of your Ghanaian language and you’ve not been in Ghana since you were a wee lass. Not that I agree with him being rude, I can assure you – although, what else can you expect from a man, for pity’s sake! – but from his point of view, you probably are cut off from your African identity.’
Faye leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, casting her mind back to what she recalled of her country of birth. Although the details of life in Ghana were now mostly a distant blur with occasional windows of clarity, her memories remained rich in texture: the noise of raised voices speaking in different languages, the pungent smells of spicy food, the intense heat of the afternoon sun, the dust so thick that it would swirl around and coat every surface, exhilarating music throbbing with rhythm, and colours made even more vivid by the blazing sun were all the things that came to mind whenever she tried to remember her time in Ghana. If she pushed it – which she rarely did – she could remember laughing with her brother as they played outside in the sun and even feel again the warmth of their mother’s soft embrace. When she forced herself to do so, she could still remember how her mother had seemed to just disappear and how she had cried for days after overhearing her father’s older brother saying, ‘Poor, poor Annie! Dying so young and leaving those children alone.’
She could also remember the early days after their arrival in England and how she and William had clung together, seeing each other as allies in a world that had suddenly changed into a literally cold and very alien place, at least until Lottie had come into their lives.
Faye remembered how Lottie had forced them to go for picnics on Hampstead Heath and encouraged them to run and play and shout again as they used to back in Ghana. She smiled, remembering how Lottie had dragged home a young Kenyan nanny she had met in the park and begged her to show her how to braid Faye’s unruly curls properly. It was also Lottie who had comforted her when she sobbed because the white girls at her exclusive Hampstead primary school wouldn’t play with her and called her dark skin ‘dirty’.
While William had commanded respect at his private school, at first with his fists and later with his outstanding brainpower, Faye, with far fewer academic talents, had just desperately wanted to be accepted. When she moved on to secondary school, it was to yet another institution for the elite of Hampstead. Despite Lottie’s pleas to let Faye go to a more culturally mixed school, Dr Bonsu had refused to listen.
‘I’m sorry, Lottie,’ he’d said firmly. ‘But I cannot sacrifice a good education for my daughter on the grounds of what, quite frankly, I consider to be quite spurious ethnic considerations.’
At her new school, Faye was one of only a handful of black pupils in her year. Wanting to fit in with everyone around them, the dark-skinned girls had not formed a group. Instead, they had sought out friends among the white students and were soon accepted by the others girls as being ‘just like us’.
It was at school that Faye had met her best friend, Caroline Duffy, a cheery redhead whose Irish father, a working class builder, had made a fortune during the property boom. Brendan Duffy was determined that his children would have the best of everything life and his wealth could offer and, although he was initially taken aback by his daughter’s choice of best friend, he and his wife had quickly grown fond of Faye, who over the years spent almost as much time in Caroline’s house as in her own.
It was when she was fifteen that Faye first began to realise that her assimilation had, in some ways, been a little too successful. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon and she and Caroline were listening to music in her friend’s huge bedroom. Mrs Duffy’s sister, Eileen, who had been visiting from Australia where she’d emigrated with her husband, had walked into the room as Faye was teaching Caroline a new dance move that she had picked up from a music video.
Watching the leggy teenager move gracefully around the room, Auntie Eileen remarked admiringly, ‘My word, Faye, you dance well. Mind you, they do say you people all have marvellous rhythm!’
Faye came to an abrupt stop, embarrassed by the woman’s careless remark. Even more confusing, however, was Caroline’s response. ‘Which people?’ she asked her aunt curiously. ‘What, you mean the girls from my school?’
Later that evening, after telling Lottie about the incident, Faye had struggled to explain her feelings.
‘I know I’m black, Lottie,’ she said. ‘But, it’s like Caroline and the other girls see me as white because we’ve all been friends for so long. You know, it’s like it’s a compliment that they don’t see me as any different from them, but why can’t they just like me and see me as black?’
It was a question that neither Lottie nor anyone else had ever been able to answer for her over the years.
Now, at almost twenty-six, despite having found herself a black boyfriend, she stood accused of being racially rootless and, to add insult to injury, she thought indignantly, by a man even paler than Caroline.
‘And where was Michael in all this? Didn’t he stand up for you?’ Lottie’s expression showed that she already knew the answer.
Faye sighed. ‘You must be kidding. He just kept rolling his eyes and glaring at me like I was the problem.’
‘So, if he won’t stand up for you, Faye, when are you going to stand up for yourself?’ Although her tone was mild, her flushed face showed that Lottie was trying hard to keep her emotions in check.
Faye looked at her curiously. ‘What do you mean?’
Lottie sighed. ‘Faye, you are twenty-five and sometimes you act like you are still a teenager. You let Michael get away with murder and I don’t know when you are going to realise that you don’t have to put up with him. I know you’ve had a sheltered life—’ She raised her hand to stop Faye’s protest. ‘No, hear me out. You weren’t brought up on the streets of Glasgow like I was – you’ve gone from a private school in Hampstead to working in the same quiet little company for years. You’ve had your father, William and me looking out for you and coming to your rescue all your life. Look, I understand better than anyone that you’ve not had to deal with the real world in many respects, but Faye, it’s time for you to grow up!’
Faye’s eyes reflected her shock and hurt at Lottie’s words. ‘But it’s not my fault that I don’t have a clue about their culture,’ she burst out. ‘You should have heard him, Lottie! “It is our responsibility to stay close to home – you don’ do that, you jus’ a slave to the white man!”’ She tried – and failed – to mimic the strong lilt of Wesley’s accent.
She sucked her teeth in complete exasperation with a loud and authentically ethnic ‘tchhh’, and stood up, smoothing back her hair.
‘Anyway, I still think he was rude,’ she said huffily. ‘I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do, for goodness sake. Just get up and go to Ghana?’
Once again, Lottie’s reply was unexpected.
‘Well, why not?’
3
Working Cultures
Faye stared moodily out of her office window at the grey October weather. It had been raining for three days in a row and, with no word from Michael since Saturday evening, she was getting steadily more depressed. She had tried his mobile a hundred times and was ready to scream if she heard his voicemail message again.
Knowing Michael’s talent for sulking, she was convinced that he was deliberately refusing to take her calls, making her even more frantic in her attempts to get through to him. Surreptitiously checking to see if her boss, the junio
r Mr Fiske, was anywhere around, she pressed the redial button on her office phone. Once again, after the sixth ring, it went to his voicemail. Deciding against leaving yet another message, she hung up the phone and turned back with a sigh to the legal agreement she was supposed to have prepared for her boss’s meeting that morning.
Resisting the impulse to check Facebook, both to relieve her boredom and to see if she could find any clues about what Michael was up to, she forced herself to continue with her work. She had just finished the last page and saved the document when her mobile buzzed. Praying it was Michael she grabbed the phone, fighting back her intense disappointment when Caroline’s name flashed up.
‘Faye?’
Swallowing hard, Faye forced herself to try and sound normal. ‘Hi, Caroline. How are you?’
Her best friend knew her too well to be taken in by the perky sales tone.
‘Well, I’m fine, but you certainly don’t sound it,’ she replied bluntly. ‘Have you still not heard from him?’
Faye gave up any pretence at indifference and dropping the cheery tone, she let her voice sink in misery.
‘No. I’ve tried his phone a million times and he’s not answering. I know he can be a bit sulky, but it’s been four days now!’ She tapped moodily on her keyboard and resisted the urge to bite her nails, a childhood habit she had broken until she met Michael.
Caroline, whose opinion of Faye’s boyfriend was far closer to Lottie’s point of view than to Faye’s, swallowed her misgivings and concentrated on trying to soothe her distraught friend.
‘Don’t worry, he’ll call soon,’ she said gently. ‘He’s probably just trying to make you feel really bad before he decides to forgive you.’
She changed the subject quickly before Faye could make any further comment. ‘Anyway, the reason I called is that Dermot’s band is playing again tonight at that Irish pub in Kilburn and Marcus and I have promised to go and watch them. Why don’t you come with us and forget about Michael for a few hours?’
From Pasta to Pigfoot Page 5
