by Helen Walsh
‘Just nipping out for . . .’ elicited knowing smirks from Dad and I – and signalled the start of another round of Me and Dad time. I would stand by and pass him sandpaper, turpentine, paint brushes – I loved the smell of turpentine – while Dad waxed lyrical about his adoptive city.
God, but I loved those times together. I felt special. Dad and I were mates, comrades, conspirators. He told me things he’d never even told Mum. Tales of the city; tales of Liverpool 8. How he played backgammon at the Somali Club; how the sky had flamed red for a week after the riots; how the cadavers of his beloved clubs and speakeasies had crumbled to dust in front of his very eyes.
‘Your mother would never come to any of those places with me, you know?’ he’d sigh, as though it were one of life’s great mysteries how a daughter of the city remained immune to its charms. His eyes seemed to get dewy when he got wistful like that.
‘Are any of them still there?’
‘Not really, darling. Well, I mean, The Somali is there in spirit. There’s still a Somali Centre just by the roundabout up by Princes Park.’
‘Do you still play backgammon there?’
‘I should do, shouldn’t I? Tell you what – I’ll take you one day.’
But one day never came. Somehow it was fine for Dad to romance about his days as a student boulevardier yet he’d always toe the line when Mum came down heavy with yet more rules and realism.
‘You do not go one yard past school, you hear me?’ she said when they got me my first grown-up bike. ‘And you do not set foot in that Princes Park. Hear me?’
Dad would drop his head and bite his lip; I came to understand that what he said was often different to how things really were.
These last few months, since the Bean’s imminent arrival has focused my every thought, I’m surprised by my growing sympathy for Mum’s take on things. It’s brand new to me, this – thinking for someone other than myself. For sure, I have loved my flat – duplex, if we’re being smug about it – from the moment I first clapped eyes on it. Top floor of a classic Belvidere Road mansion block, split-level with a narrow flight of steps to its atelier and a huge great window out on to the roof, a view of the stars and the park and the river way beyond. This was the garret I’d fantasised about since my teens. I said yes there and then, offered the asking price and moved in. At last, after everything, I’d found home. But do I want to raise my baby here? Not sure.
For now, this is where we are, and this is where we start. This is where we started, all those years ago.
2
It was the hottest day of summer and Dad had finally ground down Mum over taking me to Carnival.
‘She’s fourteen, for God’s sake, Rich!’
‘And what? Fourteen’s too young to take my little girl to the fair?’
‘It is NOT a fair!’ she snapped.
‘Oh? And what is it, then?’ The self-righteous gleam behind his specs, goading her to say something inappropriate; something he could seize upon.
‘You know exactly what I mean, Richard.’
‘Do not. I’m serious. Articulate your fears.’
I sighed and intervened.
‘Look. If you’re worried I’ll come home a ganja freak, I’ve already tried it and it made me sick.’ I winked at Dad, just in case he thought I was being serious. ‘It’s all part of my education, Mum,’ I said. ‘Remember?’
That was the in-joke between Mum and I, how everything vaguely edgy Dad tried to foist upon me was a ‘part of my education’. Along with our regular trips to Manchester, where some dense Polish art flick at the Cornerhouse would be followed by a lacerating curry in Rusholme, Dad had tried gamely to inculcate me in the ways of the broad left intelligentsia. Ballet, experimental theatre at the Unity (Mum dismissed this as ‘shouting’), afternoons spent browsing the imports at Probe Records. This outing to Liverpool 8 for Carnival – just up the road, yet a world away – was just another crack at broadening my horizons. Yet he got it wrong, Dad – as dads do. While he was salivating over the seismic curries of Rusholme, I was gazing out of the window at the flotsam and jetsam of Saturday night in Banglatown; the more he pushed King Tubby at me, the more I fell for Blur. The thrill of the thing for any teenager is the thrill of stumbling upon it yourself. And that’s how it was when I met Ruben.
From the moment we set foot through the park’s ornate green gates, I was beguiled. The smells: ackee, calf’s foot curry and, yes, the sweet, sensual herb, soft and mellow here, weirdly pungent there, every step taking me deeper and deeper into a new and wondrous place. The sounds, too: throbbing bass, gospel choir, steel drums. The atmosphere made my head spin. And the faces: all those varying shades of brown and black and yellow. I had never known so many gorgeous skin tones could exist; burnt copper, blue-black, clay brown and aubergine purple all in the first minute of arrival, all thronging the food stalls. Above all, I was spellbound by the boys. To me, they were otherworldly, fantastical. These were kids that lived a bus ride from our riverside home, yet they were alien to me. Even their language was new, different to the Scouse dialects I knew from school; this was lyrical, a lilting cadence to their back-slang that made them sound a million miles from here, from home.
And the swagger of them! Their raw self-confidence sparked a frisson in my loins. I squeezed my bum clamtight as three teenage boys jostled past, to stop the heat between my legs finding me out. Dad noticed nothing of this; I doubt the young bucks even registered with him as he walked and stopped, walked and stopped, pushing up on to the balls of his brogue-clad feet as he scanned the crowd for comrades. Had he paid more attention he might have recorded the scene, as I did – and as I recall it now – in meticulous slow motion as the last of the boys passed by and turned and smiled; a generous and promising and beautiful smile. A shockingly beautiful boy. Ruben.
He made some wisecrack as he joined a group of lads smoking outside one of the food trailers. He was wearing the standard check chef’s trousers with a t-shirt emblazoned with the Big Mamma’s cauldron logo in red, gold and green. I knew the café well, of course, Dad having had a phase of taking us there every week before the university crowd cottoned on and began colonising the place.
Juddering bass and echo clattered out as we got nearer to the lads and, to my horror, Dad started a cringe-making skank routine, ducking his head into his shoulders, popping it out again, yard-stepping and clicking his fingers. The lads started smirking and nudging each other, but Ruben seemed lost to it all. Ruben was staring at me.
I was a gauche kid with pale skin and wild hair, too dark to be ginger but nowhere near rich enough to be auburn. I was a plain, gawky redhead. Yet, in spite of my ordinariness, I was aware of what power I did have; the power that came just from being female, from having tits and long legs and being so young. I knew it, without quite yet owning it. Since sprouting breasts, since starting my periods, I had sensed that adolescence, for all its attendant pains and yearnings, was a potent force. And even though Ruben’s eyes were cool and appraising, I knew that they were not poking fun at me; rather, he was parting my lips, snapping the buttons off my tight cotton shirt, fingering the outline of my bra, gently tugging it down over the taut hummocks of flesh. We stood there, eyeing each other, and the moment detached itself and hung above us, backlit and made elegiac by a pale Mersey sun, the waft of sensimilla and the sexual charge of a distant sub-bass.
And then he broke it, brought us back to real time with another smile, more direct, and I knew then that I wanted what he wanted. I had to have him.
We spent the afternoon fencing around each other, me awaiting an opportunity to flee my father, him the chance to slip away from work and the snag of his freeloading mates. And then the sky stretched up high and started to fade, hazy purple-pink as the sun slipped away, and then deep blue and silver as it rolled itself out across the city like a Moroccan rug. The mood darkened with it – more urgent now, a nastiness in the air, jostling and parrying, gangs of boys and girls haphazard as they lurched this way
and that, some laughing, others with faces set, ready for action. I was tingling, wild with excitement, yet I sensed a change in Dad, too. With the twilight went his levity, his constant glancing around ruled now by misgivings more than a surfeit of choice. My heart sank as I realised he was steering us not to the food shack, for the goat curry he’d been rhapsodising about, but towards the gates.
Suddenly salvation; a voice called out to him.
‘Richard. Richard!’
We stopped, spun round and peered through the flitting silhouettes. A woman was waving him over – a big, hugely fleshed, bob-haired lady, absurdly garbed in a traditional Masai gown, her face flushed and merry. As we got closer I recognised her from Dad’s extended circle of colleagues – Maxine Da Souza from the School of Cultures. Spectacular and vast in the company of four or five diminutive Indian men, she waved again to make sure Dad had seen her.
‘Shit,’ he said through gritted teeth. He forced a smile and put a hand on my shoulder, whispered down to me. ‘Wait here, Rache, otherwise we’ll never bloody get away. Don’t go wandering. You’re my get-out! Hear me? Stay right here.’
Stay right here? No chance. I watched with amusement as the exuberant Maxine engulfed Dad in her bosom, immediately swaying her hips to the music, and implicating him in her lascivious dance. I kept them in sight as I began, inch by inch, to back away. Then, certain I was out of range, I turned and ran as fast as I could, back in the direction of Big Mamma’s mobile canteen. I was intoxicated. Ruben was my mission and the very act of tracking him was magical in itself. I could have stayed all night, chasing the promise of this enchanted other-world, walking round and round the park, drinking it all in; the noise and laughter and the constant sub-bass rumble. And the crowds, the boys, all those knots and sways of beautiful, dangerous lads; their dapper dads and uncles, all drinking from yard-long cans of Red Stripe; and the girls walking five abreast, linking arms and twitching their bums as they giggled and acted coy, although their eyes were a dead giveaway. Their eyes were alive with the same life-force that was coursing my veins.
I slowed my speed once I was in the thick of the throng, tried to walk loose and sure, but the twinkling makeshift lamplight in the trees tailed out as the path shrank down to nothing and suddenly all ahead was darkness. I narrowed my eyes to follow a vague flit of movement in the trees; money changing hands. Ahead, a small group of men and the intermittent amber glow of cig and spliff, bobbing up and down in the dark. Angry, frightened dogs growling; I’d wandered far enough. I turned with all the nonchalance I could muster but, anxious now, kicked purpose into my stride as I headed back up the pathway to the main festival site, and the big iron gates beyond.
I could see Dad again now. He was laughing, his head thrown right back. He was fine. He’d forgotten about me. And I was a moment away from calling out to him when suddenly Ruben was at my side.
I felt the carnival rush away from me, the music fade down to a distant thrum. All I could hear was the boom-boom-boom of blood in my ears, taste the metallic panic in my throat.
‘Not leaving already, are you?’ he said. ‘It’s only just kicking off.’
He’d changed into jeans and a fresh t-shirt, but his skin gave off the faint scent of slightly rendered sweat; oil, spice and sweetness. I turned my head slightly as I struggled to come back with something clever.
‘I’ve got to get the old man home,’ I said and nodded over to Dad, now dancing gamely with Maxine. ‘He’s on curfew.’ Ruben stared at Dad then back at me, unsure. My face flamed up. ‘I know,’ I laughed, torn right through with the love of my father yet humiliated at the sight of him; his suit, his dancing, his too-shiny, fussy shoes.
Ruben watched Dad dance a second longer then shook his head, amused. He turned to me, looked directly into my eyes.
‘Fancy getting off somewhere?’
‘What? Right now?’
‘Yeah. Now.’
My silence said Yes. Yes. Take me somewhere – now. And then he was leading me away from the gates, away from the lilting peal of the steel drums. We ducked through hedges and holly bushes, away from the crash and clamour of the carnival, down towards the lake.
‘Here. Just hold my hand.’ And, God! Just touching his flesh, the lightning bolt struck me from nowhere, my tiny hand swallowed up by his big, soft palm.
Ahead of us was the bank of the lake and beyond it, the tiny little island with its hillock, jutting from the tangle of nettles and vine.
He went first, balancing precariously on struts of wood, a jetty submerged just below the surface of the water.
‘Watch my feet, yeah? Don’t look forward, just follow my feet.’
‘Is it safe?’
He laughed to himself as though he’d never given this, or safety, much thought.
‘You just have to know where you’re going, is all.’
As nimble as a goat he stepped, without hesitation, and with one final, protracted jump, we were on the islet, facing the sound and light of the carnival – and facing each other. I was anxious now. Would this be it? Would we do it? Would he have me here on the floor, just like that? Sensing my hesitation, he took me gently by the hand and pulled me down. We sat in silence for ages, staring out over the water. We barely breathed. I clenched myself tight, desperate to give nothing away – yet how I was dying for him to just dip down and kiss me.
And then it happened, out of nowhere; he kissed me, full and deep, and my head span with the suck and probe of his lips and the strange sepia shadows that danced around us. We stayed necking, on and on, deeper and deeper into each other as the cowl of night laid down low across our fevered groping. It came easily to me, what to do. I felt him through his clothes, made him gasp. I wanted to see it and feel it, but couldn’t jam my hand down the front of his jeans, couldn’t prise it out. I let his hands go everywhere, his big fingers on my thighs, working under the hem of my shorts. The sensation of giving in, of letting him, was strong and shameful, and I knew that we should stop, and that I would never stop.
But then came the sound of shouting, a mad, jittery calling from the other side of the lake.
‘Ray-chul! Rache!’
Dad. Dad and his friends, all calling out my name – politely. I could hear it from here – he didn’t want to cave in to his worst fears. He wanted to trust all was well in this best of all possible worlds. I turned to Ruben.
‘Shit. Sorry.’
‘Nah.’
‘Yes!’
I needed him to see that I would have done anything; whatever he asked. He got up, adjusted his dick through the denim. I hung my head, let out a long sigh.
‘Want me to hang back and that?’
I jumped up, horrified.
‘No!’ I stared right into his eyes, trying to find the right thing to say – the thing that would please him most. ‘Please don’t say that.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes!’
‘Your aul’ man won’t like it.’
I took his hand. Me, the fourteen-year-old veteran.
‘We walk out together. Okay?’
And there was something teasing, something superior in Ruben’s eyes. It wasn’t nasty, nothing malicious; but he knew better. And he was right. We hopped back across the stilts of the rotten jetty, through the undergrowth and back round towards the gates. As the bright lights of the park entrance illuminated us, Dad could not disguise his horror, his fear. As we got closer he looked relieved for one brief moment, then horribly, desperately betrayed.
‘Rachel!’ Confused, he was addressing me but trying to smile at Ruben, knowing he should not be leaping to conclusions; any conclusions. ‘Where on earth? I distinctly told you . . .’
Ruben was on it straight away. He smiled to himself, but he was hurt.
‘Well. There you go.’ He pecked me on the cheek, gave Dad a look. ‘Safe and sound.’
And with that he was gone. Dad and I walked home, saying nothing till we reached the bottom of our road. Dad caved first, his need to know dev
ouring him.
‘That boy . . .’
‘What about him?’
‘Did you . . .?’ He couldn’t say it. I knew full well what he wanted to ask. Dad exhaled, tetchy, and tried again. ‘Did you just meet him this evening?’
I jabbed my finger at him, furious.
‘You of all people, Dad! How dare you?’
Dad took me by the shoulders, tried to joke my fury away.
‘Rachel. You can’t just go wandering off like that.’ But it was eating him up. He had to say it; he had to get it said. ‘You can’t do that with just anyone.’
I smiled. My dad the reggae fan, the tropical medicine man, the traveller through Africa who lived and breathed this culture – he loved it at arm’s length.
‘Let’s say what we mean here, Dad. Articulate your fears.’
And he was angry, then.
‘You’ll understand, one day. When you’ve got kids yourself.’
All I could think was that I would never, never forgive him for this.
3
The Somali team scrambles an equaliser. I smile and touch my belly. The sky blackens so I make my way home. It’s teeming gently now – late September rainfall. As I turn on to Belvidere I spot Vicky from the National Childbirth Trust group. She was the first to have her baby; I shall be the last. She’s stooped over one of those ultra-padded buggies, struggling with the rain shield. I shout to her, raise a hand but she doesn’t notice me. I can’t go any faster. I shout again to warn her but it’s too late – a lorry blares past, soaking her completely. As she splutters and wipes herself down, a car full of young lads deliberately swerves into the gutter, spraying a jet of rainwater all over her. Suddenly I feel uneasy and step back behind a tree. Vicky snaps up the brake and drags the buggy away from the kerb, cursing at the boy racers.
I know I should go over, invite her up to dry off, feed the baby. Equally I know what’s preventing me. It’s stupid, it’s selfish, but it’s important too – to me it is. Vicky will do that thing of asking if I want to hold her baby; she’ll think she’s being nice. I’ll have no choice but to feign delight and offer up my arms. And it’s not that I don’t want to hold her baby, I just don’t want to hold a baby. Not yet. The truth is I’ve never held a newborn before; I changed a nappy for one of my teenage mums once – although honestly the toddler should have long been toilet trained – but I have never been intimate with a newborn. Towards the end of our NCT classes, they brought a new mum in from a former group and we were invited to hold her baby. I made my excuses and left. At the back of my mind, ever since I saw that kidney bean on the screen, I’ve always had it that the moment should be special, the moment they heft my child on to my chest. I’m saving myself, as fluffy and girly as it sounds. For my baby. For him. I want it to be brand new, I want it to be perfect. I’ve got this far.
