Long Time No See

by Hannah Lowe

  ♥

  My father was happy on these holidays. Each day we went to the beach, where he would tuck himself behind the windbreaker to read the paper. It was a long, wild beach below the campsite. You had to scramble down. No beach huts, no café, just the high dunes of pale sand and the waves crashing on the shore. My father didn’t like the sun and rarely took his jeans and shirt off, but he would get into the spirit of the beach, making sandcastles and burying us. There’s a photograph of Sam and me and the cousins sunk into the sand with just our heads visible, my father stood behind us in his anorak, smiling at his handiwork. And he and Auntie Lyn enjoyed each other’s company. They would roll their jeans up and walk along the shore together, talking, sometimes gone for hours. They had an affinity, I suppose you’d say, my mother said, because neither felt they fitted in.

  The next year there was no holiday with the cousins because Lyn had gone, and a rupture in our family had started, one that never really healed itself. She’d had affairs with women before, my mother told me, so that part was no surprise. Lyn had left Uncle Terry and the children, moving out to live with a woman she’d met at work. Where exactly she had gone was kept a secret from us all that year, but I was old enough to understand.

  I listened to snatches of my parents’ conversation. My father was incensed about Lyn leaving. ‘How could she be so stupid? How could she leave the children?’ he said to my mother, over and over, an attitude I found odd, another veer in his moral consciousness, since he’d left two marriages and two children himself. Maybe his outrage was because Lyn was a woman. I’d never heard of a mother leaving her children before, but plenty of my school friends’ dads were absent. More likely, I suspect, my father, older now, regretted his own behaviour.

  I knew very little about his previous lives, only that he had married very young in America and had a daughter, Gloria, whom he’d left when she was a baby. The second marriage was in England, to Elsie, a nurse. They’d had a son, Tom, but my father had left again when Tom was nine, and hadn’t seen him much in the years after. They saw each other more when Tom had two children. My father enjoyed his new role as grandfather, but even as a child I could sense his regret that he hadn’t been a better father to Tom, a kind, bookish man. I liked Tom when I met him but it was hard to regard him as a brother. We hadn’t grown up together. He was twenty-three years older than me – nearer my mother’s age than mine.

  ♣

  Instead of Weymouth, we went to Newquay, just the four of us, staying in a run-down B&B that smelt of fried eggs. The week before, my mother had told us there was no money for a holiday this year, and I remember money was a problem all the time around then. My father wasn’t winning much. They talked about selling the house and moving somewhere smaller. But money had appeared from somewhere – my father had had a win of sorts, no doubt – and last minute, there was just enough for us to take the coach for seven hours from Victoria to Cornwall, where it rained all week. My father disappeared most afternoons into one of Newquay’s betting shops, while my mother remained stoic, taking Sam and me to the Lighthouse Cinema and the Japanese Bonsai Garden, where we yawned and complained. One afternoon she led us through the drizzle on the seafront with promises of ice cream. The sea was dark and stormy, ominous. Sam hung behind as she marched on. He pulled a marker pen from his coat and ‘tagged’ a bench and the side of a beach hut in his thick black scrawl. I tried to read what he’d written, but it was indecipherable. I trailed behind him, hoping for the best.

  ♦

  It was soon after we came back that my father was taken into hospital with chest pains. My mother didn’t drive, and we didn’t have the money for a taxi, so each evening we walked the two miles to St George’s Hospital. It was autumn, growing colder, copper leaves piled on the pavements. Our route took us down Glencoe Avenue, where my mother had been born and raised in the Newbury Park house owned by Walter Hart. He came home one evening to find his first wife Stella, Nan’s predecessor, had left him, taking every stick of furniture they owned. Stella was a socialite who liked tennis clubs and drinks parties, while my grandfather was more content to walk alone for hours through Epping Forest. He knew all the forest wardens and they left him to himself to sit cross-legged beneath the trees and meditate.

  The hospital corridors were jaundiced in the fluorescent strip lights, with a cloying antiseptic smell. My father lay in the ward bed in his paisley pyjamas, his glasses on as he read the newspaper. Illness had made him serious, but then it seemed to be a serious illness – a collapsed lung. They’d pumped it up but he had haemorrhaged, losing lots of blood. ‘I was getting colder and colder,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t speak. I thought they hadn’t noticed.’ He’d needed a transfusion. Tubes ran beneath the blankets and I couldn’t see where they plugged into him. ‘There’s blood in my wee,’ he said. ‘They say my blood pressure is up.’ His face was fixed and grim. He’d come into hospital with one problem but now it seemed that there were others – with his prostate, and the doctor thought the stomach pains he’d had for weeks might be an ulcer. ‘I’m not well,’ he said, unsmiling.

  He came home from the hospital looking grey and weak with a paper bag of pill bottles he carefully stacked in the bathroom cabinet. He always was a hypochondriac, my mother said, but now his fears were named. They were conditions to be managed. Tablets for blood pressure, antacids for the stomach ulcer. He worried that the lung problems might be linked to cancer, and tried to give up smoking, but never lasted more than a few days. Cigarettes were swapped for roll-ups, as though they were a healthier choice, but he just smoked more of them, and before too long the black and gold packs of John Player Specials were back on the kitchen window sill where he always kept them.

  That was the first time he was very ill, but it was a marker of things to come. It was a shame for my mother – she was much younger, still full of energy. She must have known that a man my father’s age, and with his lifestyle, would suffer bad health eventually. She might have known she would end up alone. But of course she looked after him – the hospital visits, trips to the doctor. She listened to his worries, organised his medicine and pills. Other families weren’t like ours. My friends had dads who chased them up and down the garden, did ridiculous dad dances in the living room, swung their mothers round. We weren’t like other families. My dad was a liability, my mother stoic and reliable. I felt sorry for my father, but I felt more sorry for her.

  ♠

  We’d had Chloe since I was three or four, since Penny, the dog next door, had a litter of puppies – four mongrels that my cousins and I had marvelled at with their little wrinkled faces and tiny paws. I was allowed to choose a puppy and Chloe had come to live with us. She was a small dog, long-haired, with a dopey face and watery eyes, and she was nervous about everything – the doorbell, strangers, being left alone. My father decided after his illness that for exercise he would walk her every day – the five-minute trot to the newsagent and back – and after years of ignoring each other, my father and Chloe became good friends. When he read the paper in his armchair, she would curl up by his feet or scramble up into his lap.

  Much later than my friends, I got a bicycle. It was a birthday present. My father took it upon himself to teach me how to ride. On Saturday afternoons we manoeuvred the bike into the car. I sat in the front seat with Chloe on my lap as he drove us to Goodmayes Park, where I wobbled along on the bike, his hand behind the seat to steady me and Chloe running out in front. As I got better and picked up speed, he’d try to jog behind me, making sure I didn’t fall, but often this would end with him bent double in the shadow of a tree, his lungs too tight to breathe or even cough to clear them. He’d recover on the park bench while I whizzed along the path, Chloe behind me, sprinting with her ears pinned back. Yes, I thought, I can ride the bike! When I grew bored, I’d cycle back to him. ‘Had enough, Han?’ he’d ask as I dismounted, and we’d put on Chloe’s lead, wheel the bike back to the car and head for home. Sat beside him, I could hear his laboured
breathing, as though he couldn’t get enough air. I glanced over. His face was sad and worried.

  6

  1940

  The boy dealt five cards to each of the men. His movements were quick and precise, making a tidy pile for each player to sweep up and fan in their hands. Outside, the streets jangled with noise – food wagons clattering past and vendors calling, the bark of dogs, calypso lifting from the yard into the night. But the noises were distant in the humid room – only the sound of breathing was loud, and one man tapping his anxious fingers on the table’s rim. A bare bulb hung above them, illuminating the cracked wood, the ashtray and glasses, the copper flask of liquor.

  The game went on all night. A boy named Felix served drinks, bringing them to the table from behind the bar. The players might change – one man pushing back his chair to leave as another stepped through the door. A man might simply fold his hand and head home with empty pockets, or he might go out into the passageway and climb the stairs to another room where a girl in an orange dress sat waiting on the bed, a bottle of rum beside her. Her name was Zephyr and she was fifteen. He might come down after, to take back his place at the table, or go silently into the alley, quieter inside himself, moving past the stray cats and dogs, his shadow cast on the yard walls.

  The boy dealt here two or three nights a week. He took the old yellow bus from Yallahs to Kingston at dusk, swerving on the dim-lit roads into the city, then rode the delivery trucks home at dawn, half asleep, perched on the truck’s back step as the red sun rose over the hills.

  That first time, he’d jumped off the bus at Half Way Tree, jumped onto another bus downtown and then followed the scrawled map Mr Ho Choy had drawn him, through the grid of roads that led to Barry Street, where the betting shops and card clubs nestled between the bright shop fronts of hardware stores and hairdressers and bakeries. This was Kingston, then, he thought. More people than the boy had ever seen in one place. More dirt, more noise. But these streets had an energy that rose through him. So this was the city his father could not keep away from. It was here that the old shops had been lost.

  He walked the length of the street for an hour, the air warm, the sky dark above him and half-bent on a storm. He noted the Chiney shops with their red awnings and slats stacked high with yams and bananas, and the pavement vendors who unrolled their mats to sell all manner of goods – matches, saucepans, clothes, shoes. He was observing what went on here – the mood and movements of the streets, the chatter, how things went and who knew whom. Then, as darkness fell, he went back to the building he’d seen earlier, marked with an X on the crumpled map – two red-brick floors on the corner of King Street in Chinatown. It had dark windows and a blue door he pushed open to find Mr Manny sat alone on a stool at the wooden bar with a cup of coffee, just as Mr Ho Choy said he would be. The boy said his name and why he had come. ‘Yes, man,’ Mr Manny’s voice was deep and hoarse. He stood. ‘Charlie tell me to expect you.’

  Charlie was Mr Ho Choy’s other name but no one in Yallahs used it. The boy took Mr Manny in. He was a tall man with a dark, shiny face, thick creases in the forehead and puckered above his nose, a short deep scar across his cheek. He wore a white shirt, grimy at the cuffs and collar. He was fifty maybe. Some grey in the close cut of his hair. ‘So, you want to show me what you can do?’ Mr Manny asked.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the boy said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a deck of cards.

  They stood at the round table in the centre of the room, and the boy began to shuffle – simple cuts at first, overlaying the cards in one hand. Tap, tap. Then with both hands, a dovetail, flicking two piles of cards into one. Then a riffle, the cards whispering themselves into place. He flexed their backs into a high arched bridge. Another cut. Tap tap. Every move he made was small and defined. No mistakes. Then he dealt the cards to four imaginary players around the table, and the whole time, Mr Manny stood and watched him, didn’t move his eyes from the boy’s quick hands. He dealt swiftly, a clear pile for each player, then looked up.

  ‘Go once more,’ the older man said, ‘with my cards,’ reaching behind the bar for another deck and handing it to the boy. ‘Six for six hands.’ The boy dealt as quickly and tidily as he had before. Then he dealt again, and again. Outside, the rain came down, thrashing the street, sweetening the air.

  ‘You can work tonight?’ Mr Manny finally asked. The boy nodded. Mr Manny rubbed his head. ‘That Charlie. He say you good.’

  ♥

  Back in Yallahs, his father owned a new shop. The boy still served there, but someone new had come. Her name was Rhona and she stepped from behind his father’s back one day. James Lowe had come home from Kingston, appearing silent as a shadow in the shop’s doorway as the boy stood behind the counter. Behind him was a young girl, thirteen or so. From the boy’s position, he could just see her feet. His father walked straight through the shop into the back room without a word to the boy, but the girl came right in, her eyes moving across the chaotic shelves and landing on the boy. She was small and pretty, with wide eyes in a brown face, the same colouring as the boy, her plaited hair was just visible below her little straw hat. She didn’t look like the village girls although her clothes were just as raggedly and poor, and she was as thin as a stick, her elbow joints wider than the rest of her arms. She held a bulging satchel. Her eyes dropped down to the boy’s feet. ‘Wha’, you have no shoes?’ she said, looking up at his face. She had a sing-song voice, strong and sweet. He looked down at his bare toes, dusty and yellow from the yard.

  ‘I have shoes,’ he said, slowly, carefully. ‘But mostly I go barefoot indoors – no need for shoes here.’ Then, ‘You come from Kingston?’

  ‘If you have shoes, you should wear them!’ The girl sang back. ‘He tell me you’re my brother, half-brother. But looking at you, I can’t believe it. Can’t believe I’m related to a boy so backwater!’ She laughed and her pink tongue popped from between her lips. ‘Is you I’m talking about,’ she added, widening her eyes at him, tipping her head to one side.

  The boy said nothing, taken aback by this girl he had never seen. His sister, he thought. Another child of his father, who liked to go with girls who were only children themselves. He wondered where the girl’s mother was, how old she was.

  ‘What’s your name, sister?’ he asked, in an attempt at friendship. But just as she was about to answer his father appeared in the doorway, beckoning to her, and the girl went towards him. Where would she sleep, the boy thought. How long was she staying? There were so many questions – where she was from and why here, why now, and how well did she know her father? How little he knew of his father’s life. This was his father’s power. The boy was a slave at worst, a servant at best, and why should any master account for himself to a servant?

  ♣

  That was a month ago. It seemed Rhona was here to stay. The boy now slept on sacking below the shop counter, Rhona in his bed. She was around the shop as though she’d always been there, serving the customers in her sweet voice but shirking the hard work – the early-morning scrubbing, the lifting and unpacking of goods. She wanted to know everything about the shop and repeated the same questions again and again about credit, who owed the most, who was the best customer. She made a mess of the ledger book, filling in the wrong columns, doodling in the margins. When the boy saw this he thought his father would explode with anger at her. But James Lowe said nothing, just answered Rhona’s questions in his poor English, more words at a time than the boy had ever heard him use. He was surprised by how his father’s voice softened when he spoke at length, by the light rhythm of his sentences.

  And Rhona was not afraid of their father. When the shop was quiet, she took a book and made herself a nest in the shaded places of the yard, below the orange trees or in the orchid grove. James Lowe, who hated idleness, who had no time for books, said nothing. Or other times, Rhona simply wandered off on her own to the river, where the boy followed her once or twice. He’d been surprised by the quiet plaintiveness with whic
h she sat on the rocks, ducking her feet in the flowing water.

  His father didn’t care where the boy went in the evenings now, only that he was there in the mornings to open the shop. Rhona served the men at night and the boy saw how she attracted their looks, how she knew her own beauty and met their stares full-on, unblinking. His father stood behind the counter with a paper cigarette between his lips, and watched her.

  ♦

  It was a Thursday when the boy saw his mother from the window of the bus stopping downtown on Darling Street. He knew her face. Hermione. She was standing on the kerb, waiting to cross, one hand on her hat to stop the wind from lifting it. Six years had passed, but the boy hadn’t forgotten. He dreamt about her more now, not less, and thoughts of her swam through his head as he lay sleepless on the floor of the shop. He thought about why she’d never tried to find him. Even though she’d sold him, the boy believed she had loved him. He would forgive her. He wondered why he had never tried to find her too. He had travelled all over St Thomas, delivering orders and stock, but never thought to ask for her in the different villages. He knew she had left Hearts Ease, but never thought he would find her in Kingston.

  Without thinking, he jumped from the bus and followed her along the street. She walked with a little basket over her arm. Not the poor girl he remembered. She wore a pretty floral dress, neat white shoes with a heel, a small hat perched on her head. He kept close behind as she crossed onto Barry Street, walking to the corner of Gold Street, where she entered the Chiney shop on the corner. The boy followed her in. The shop was like all Chinese grocers, but larger than the one they had in Yallahs, smaller than Mr Ho Choy’s. There were aisles of high shelves packed with goods, the salt-fish barrels on one side of the room. The blinds were half drawn, the only light coming from the red paper lanterns hung from the ceiling.