In the Falling Snow

by Caryl Phillips

  He begins the email for a second time. The use of the phrase, ‘waiting for the other shoe to fall’, seemed a little too colloquial and clumsy, but having deleted it, and read back over everything that remained, he decided to start afresh. After dropping Laurie off at home, he managed to work on the book for a couple of hours until he finally confessed to himself that he did, in fact, need a total break from it, for he was beginning to lose sight of the book’s purpose. He breaks off from the email and pours a glass of wine. He returns his attention to the computer screen, and then he begins to write anew to Lesley, but this time in a manner that he hopes will strike a better balance between the formal and the informal. He doesn’t want to insinuate any real friendship with her, but at the same time he doesn’t want to come over as being cold and detached given the nature of their last meeting at Starbucks. He simply explains that he will be going away for a few days and he would appreciate it if she could keep him in the loop if there are any developments. He thought hard about this last phrase, and although it’s not perfect it somehow makes more sense than referring to shoes falling. He is asking her to help him get ready for any move that Clive Wilson might try to pull, including pressing formal charges, although he has no idea what he will do should it come to this. However, a little advance warning can’t hurt. He suggests to Lesley that she might contact him if she hears anything, but he tries to make it clear that email is his preferred mode of communication for he worries that requesting a telephone call might be misinterpreted as a sign of collaborative intimacy.

  He gets up from the computer and crosses to the coffee table where he pours himself a glass of Perrier water. He returns to his desk and for a second time he deletes the entire email, unsure of the phrasing and whether this is even a good idea. But there is nobody else he can ask to look out for his interests. He wonders, if things were to go really wrong, who would be there for him? Laurie? Maybe at some point in the future, but certainly not at the present time. A daughter would probably have been better suited to the role of looking after dad, but there is not much that he can do about this. He opens a new email document and begins to type, having decided that it is best to do so quickly and without too much thought. He is simply asking Lesley to follow through on what she has basically suggested herself. He is asking for her help, but not in a way that should make her feel obligated, nor in a manner that should make it appear that he is desperate. He signs it, ‘Best wishes,’ and sends the email off without reviewing it. He gets up and takes both his glass of wine and the glass of water and sits on the sofa. He should have done this before, instead of hanging about London and becoming frustrated with the book, and then almost getting into trouble with Danuta. A break will do him good, and by the time he is ready to return to London he will hopefully be able to deal with things in a more decisive fashion. Maybe he should call Annabelle and let her know that he is going away? Or perhaps call Laurie and let him know? Not that he can be certain that either of them will care. It’s just information, right?

  In the morning he stuffs a Nike sports bag with a few shirts, a pair of jeans, socks and underwear, and some softcover non-fiction, but nothing about music. He decides to pack as though he will be gone for only a few days, knowing that if he decides to stay longer then he can always buy additional things. He double-locks the door behind him, and then tumbles down the stairs and out on to the street. He takes a tube that is crammed with semi-comatose commuters who squeeze up next to each other and idly scan the back of other people’s newspapers, while those lucky enough to find a seat simply slump and allow their heads to bounce gently in all directions. Once he reaches King’s Cross, he realises that if he hurries he can catch a train that leaves in ten minutes. Unlike the tube, the train is relatively empty and he imagines that most of the commuting is in the other direction, into London. The view out of the window is not particularly interesting as they lumber past the back of endless rows of houses, but eventually it begins to rain lightly, and the drizzle spatters the window of the now speeding train so that a hundred rivers soon run in all directions on this map of an unnamed country. He closes his eyes and tries not to worry about the fact that Lesley has chosen not to reply to him. Maybe she hasn’t yet looked at her emails or, despite all his efforts, perhaps she has taken offence at some perceived impropriety in his tone or phrasing.

  The ticket inspector wakes him up by pushing his shoulder with the palm of his hand.

  ‘Look, mate, you better get off unless you’re ready to go back to London.’

  He looks around at the empty carriage, then climbs quickly to his feet and retrieves his holdall from the rack above his head. The station is an old Victorian edifice, with huge vaulted ceilings where the birds are constantly disturbed by the roar of train engines and fly in crazy circles. Once he passes out on to the concourse he joins the long line for a taxi and pulls his jacket tight around himself, for the rain is bucketing down. The taxi driver listens quietly to the local BBC news station, while he sits upright and alert in the back seat and looks at what should be familiar streets. However, with each passing year the streets are becoming increasingly difficult to recognise for there seems to be a vogue for replacing the old brick buildings with tall structures of steel and glass. These days his city appears to be trying hard to reinvent itself as a modern hub of commerce and opportunity, but the evidence before his eyes leaves him unconvinced for the people pounding the streets seem to be the same folks as before and, as far as he can see, all that has changed is the scenery. However, he doesn’t live here any more and so he feels no necessity to debate the issue, even with himself.

  He knocks a second time, but he knows that his father probably can’t hear him above the noise of the television set. He takes two steps to his left and taps on the living room window, but it is impossible to see anything through the discoloured net curtain. His father’s hand pulls back the yellowing material, and his unshaven face is now visible in the window. He can immediately see that the older man has aged. His father is clearly baffled to see his son standing before him but, furrowing his brow, the bemused man points towards the door.

  ‘All right, Dad.’

  His father is not yet dressed, but he holds the door wide open. His pyjamas hang loosely from his thin body, and the socks on his feet are full of holes. He stares at his son as though unsure of what to say.

  ‘Well, you’re not going to leave me standing outside in the rain all morning, are you?’

  ‘You can’t call and tell me you’re coming?’

  ‘I wanted to surprise you.’

  ‘Well you managed that all right.’

  He pours the water on to the teabag and waits for it to steep. There’s no getting around it: the house smells as though it hasn’t been cleaned or aired in a long while. From the kitchen, he can hear the studio-based morning chat show on the television, and he imagines that his father has settled down to resume watching. The topic for the day is teenage pregnancies in schools. Apparently there is an epidemic of them, particularly in the so-called immigrant communities. He removes the teabag and stirs three spoonfuls of sugar into his father’s tea, before carrying the mug through into the living room. He places the tea on an old wooden stool that is clearly a substitute for a table, and then he collapses down into the shapeless armchair to the side of the sofa. It is nearly two years since he last visited, and that was only because he was in the north of England for a conference and it seemed somehow wrong not to at least stop by and say ‘hello’. The greeting back then had been equally unenthusiastic, but at least his father and the house had appeared somewhat presentable. As his father continues to watch television, he looks around and is alarmed to see the decline in both his father and his living conditions.

  ‘What happened to your helper?’ He tries to ask the question without it coming across as accusatory.

  ‘She says she wants some time off, and so I say fine, then go. The council don’t send anybody else yet, but I’m doing just fine for now.’

&
nbsp; ‘Well I can give you a hand, if you like. Let me just put my stuff upstairs then I’ll start to give things a going over.’

  ‘Why don’t you just relax yourself and things can fix later on? No big rush. Anyhow, the less I have to do with those people from the council, the better. They think that I don’t know what is going on. First, they send some stupid little man around saying that he is part of the “befriending scheme”. You know, they pay them five pounds an hour to come and talk with you, or take you to the pictures or to some park, like you is too stupid to think for yourself. Then the next thing you know the damn council want to take what little money you have and push you into some place like the Mandela Centre.’

  ‘You mean supported living?’

  ‘I don’t care what fancy name they give it, it’s a home and they jail you up in a little flat. The place is full of crazy people wandering the corridors looking for relatives who abandoned them years ago. What the council don’t take from you the other residents thief from you when your back is turned.’

  ‘But there are people there to look after you and give you medical care. Anyhow, I don’t see what your problem is with the Mandela Centre. Half of your friends are in the place and you go down there, don’t you?’

  ‘I go down there to pass the time, but I don’t reach the stage yet where I need to be locked up and looked after. I already had enough of that in my life as it is.’

  His father looks directly at him and he can see in his eyes that he is fiercely resolute.

  ‘Listen, Dad, nobody is locked up, right. Everybody has the keys to their own place and you’re free to come and go as you please. You know that. I see a lot of Associations for the Elders in my line of work, and the Mandela is one of the best. There’s no stigma attached.’

  His father continues to glare unblinkingly.

  ‘Look, I know I mentioned it as a possibility when I was last here, but did you at least think about it?’

  ‘Yes, I think about it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You know, for a man with such a big education you can sometimes act stupid. I think about it, and two years later you come back and find me still living at home. You really need to ask me what conclusion I did reach?’

  He takes the few clothes from his sports bag and lays them out on the bed. He realises that, despite his father’s stubbornness, he will have to sit him down and raise the subject of the condition of the house and once again tentatively explore the possibility of his father moving into the Mandela Centre. As he was doing the washing-up he noticed mouse droppings on the kitchen counter top. He cleaned them up with a paper towel and then rinsed and dried his hands before yanking open the fridge door, where he was greeted by half-eaten plates of food that had long been abandoned, and rancid packets of cheese and butter that had passed their sell-by dates. It isn’t just that things are disorganised and untidy: his father is living in conditions that represent a health hazard. Having emptied the few clothes from his bag, he opens a double wardrobe and tosses the holdall into the bottom of it. On the top shelf of the wardrobe, where one might expect to find a pile of folded sheets or neatly balled up socks and loosely stacked underwear, he is surprised to discover a cardboard box that he lifts clear of the shelf. The box is full of photographs, but they are mainly black and white shots of people that he doesn’t recognise. There are some of Brenda, and a few of his father as a younger man, presumably shortly after his arrival in England. The fashions seem to suggest the sixties, and although in every photograph his father and his friends appear to be cold, they also seem surprisingly content. He wonders if he should take the pictures downstairs for this would, of course, be a legitimate way to encourage his father finally to talk about the past. He holds the box out in front of himself, as though making an offering, and then he decides to replace it in the wardrobe having realised that it might be more politic to raise this subject later, after his father has had time to adjust to his presence. He hoists the box up and on to the shelf and then pushes it to the back and out of sight.

  In the evening they sit together in the pub, his father nursing a pint of Guinness and still sporting the pork-pie hat that he always wears on stepping outside his house. His father has made it clear that he knows that there are some photographs in a box somewhere, but he is unsure of their exact location, and he doesn’t understand why his son wants to look at them with him. He decides to say nothing further, but tomorrow, or the next day, he will just hand the box to his father and see if the evidence of the photographs provokes a response.

  ‘So what about the book that you was telling me that you want to write. A book about music, right?’

  ‘I’m surprised you remember.’

  ‘You think I don’t have no memory? Two years ago, when you was last here, you couldn’t shut up talking about it, so I imagine it’s this that you’ve been doing all this time.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got a job so there’s only so much that I can do. You know how it is.’

  ‘Me, I don’t have no job, so I don’t know how it is any more.’

  His father sips at his Guinness and then returns the glass to the watery circle on his stained beer mat. He watches the old man reach into his pocket for a pack of unfiltered cigarettes and then, with slightly shaking hands, he takes one out, lights up, and then drops the book of matches on to the table.

  ‘I know you don’t like me to smoke, but what am I supposed to do at my age? It don’t make no sense to give up now, and the landlord turn a blind eye. I better off going straight ahead and finishing off what I started.’

  He pushes back his chair from the table and picks up his own empty pint glass. He waits for his father to drain his pint, and then he takes up the second glass.

  ‘Same again?’ He speaks more to himself than to his father.

  When he returns to the table his father is concentrating deeply on his cigarette, the ash of which is hanging precariously from its end. He places the pint in front of him, and then pulls two packets of crisps from his trouser pockets.

  ‘Cheese and onion or Bovril? Whichever one you want is fine by me.’

  ‘I don’t want no crisps. At least not yet.’ His father gestures to the two packets with his cigarette, and the ash falls off. ‘I maybe take a crisp later so you can leave me one packet right there on the table.’

  This cheerless pub has been his father’s haunt for more years than he can remember, and he suspects that a large percentage of the money that his father has earned in England has flowed across this bar. Although he has never enjoyed coming into this grimy place, for his father it obviously feels like an extension of home. These days the pub appears to have been abandoned by all but a few dedicated drinkers, who seemingly come here in search of company. He is shocked to realise that his father is one of these drinkers. Five years ago, the local university had pensioned off his father, and all the other blue collar janitorial staff, as they decided to outsource their labour needs to private companies, but he had hoped that his father might find part-time work back at the university, or in some other organisation that needed cleaners. Either that, or find a hobby to occupy himself and provide him with a new lease of life. However, during his last visit, he could clearly see that his father had made no effort to re-engage with the world of work in the wake of his redundancy, and it now appeared to him that his father was in danger of embracing a premature inertia that was laced with a hint of reclusive bitterness. He realises that he is both worried and sad to think that this is what his father’s life has become: mornings spent watching television at home, and afternoons and evenings given over to the pub. Because the television in the pub appears to be permanently tuned in to a quiz show of some description, he imagines that the only thing that might cause his father to vary his routine would be cricket. No doubt a Test Match, or a one-day international would convince his father that he should remain at home and spend the day staring at his own television set instead of venturing into this dispiriting place.

  ‘So how
is everything with the social work then?’

  ‘Well, these days I’m mainly tied up with policy-making, but I can’t say I’m too interested in it.’

  ‘Making policies about what?’

  ‘About race and inequality and those kind of things, but the truth is it’s boring. However, it’s what I do, so that’s that.’

  ‘Well, I never did understand why a man of your qualifications would go into this line of work. Just because you’re black don’t mean that you have to work with black people.’

  ‘I don’t just work with black people.’

  ‘I think you know what I’m saying.’

  His father stubs out his cigarette and then takes a sip of his pint of Guinness.

  ‘So tell me,’ he says, ‘if you’re so busy doing all this policy-making, then how it is that you’re here with me? And how long it is that you’re planning on staying here?’

  This is the second time that his father has asked him how long he intends to stay, and it irritates him that his father doesn’t seem to be able to relax and adjust to his presence. He can’t admit to the situation at work with Yvette, but obviously his father senses that something is the matter. He looks at the creased lines on his father’s face, and his surprisingly soft eyes, and he watches as the older man slowly shakes his head and then lowers his gaze and takes another sip of his Guinness. He decides that it is probably best if they finish their drinks in silence and then go back to the house.

  He lies in the single bed that he used to occupy as a child, and he stares at the black sky through the uncurtained window. In the street he can hear the late night noises of people wandering back from the pub, their voices raised in excitement, and their loud peals of laughter that are occasionally punctuated by the sound of a broken bottle. When he was a child, Brenda used to come upstairs and tuck him in, and she would always tell him a story, usually one that involved castles and princes, but he never seemed to hear the end of it, for her soothing voice always encouraged him to drift quickly off to sleep. He imagined that after he had nodded off, she would noiselessly get up from the edge of his bed, turn off the light in the hallway, and then tiptoe back downstairs and wait for his father to return from whatever pub or club he had been to that night.