In the Falling Snow

by Caryl Phillips

  ‘The next day I ask the foreman if I can leave early because of what happen to Ralph. The foreman assume that I going to the hospital and so he say, “yes, of course you can go and see your friend,” but instead of going to the hospital I decide to go to the train station and I get there just as the Manchester train is pulling in. It’s two or three years since I last see Shirley, but she don’t change much. Even the heavy coat can’t disguise her sweet figure. She smile when she see me, but on the bus to the hospital she don’t say a word. Once we reach the hospital I find a seat in the visitors’ room while Shirley alone go in to see her brother, but at least other people waiting in the room. After twenty minutes the same doctor come out to speak with a man who is sitting across from me, but when the doctor sight me he just nod then continue with his quiet quiet conversation. Once he finish talking to the man he come over and drop a hand on my shoulder and tell me they doing all they can for Ralph. I remember the doctor smiling as he say this, but before I can ask him what he mean by “doing all they can” the doctor turn and leave. Maybe an hour later, Shirley come out through the double doors but the woman looking sad as if she been crying. I tell her if she not planning on going back to Manchester tonight then she must stay in Ralph’s room and I will sleep on the landing. Shirley don’t say anything in return and so I ask her if she hungry, but the woman shake her head without looking up at me. Once we get on the bus, I ask Shirley if she want to go straight back to the room or if she want to do something else. The truth is I prefer not to take Shirley to the pub, because I know the pub is no place for a woman like this, and I looking at the brightly lit streets and thinking it will be a shame to go straight back to the miserable room, so when Shirley say she would like to go to the pictures I glad. I’m trying hard to think of where I can find a film place, but Shirley tell me she notice a cinema across the square outside the train station. “A big place that is named Majestic,” she say. When the film done, and the name of the people begin to come up on the screen, it’s then that I realise I going have to move myself. For the past two hours my leg been accidentally resting against her own leg, and I can’t concentrate on the film but at the same time I don’t want to move. Now the film is over and I not too sure about what I must do. Then the national anthem start to play and this solve the problem because now I must stand up, and then after the music finish we leave the cinema. Shirley don’t say a thing as we walk to the bus stop, and I thinking that she must still be upset about Ralph and the film don’t make no difference to her mood. Back at the room I bring a cup of tea from the kitchen and I set it down on the small table beside Ralph’s bed. I tell her, “I put in three sugars, but if you need more I can go and get more.” I also tell her that everything is straighten out with Mrs Jones, the landlady, so the woman is not going get a shock if she run into Shirley in the bathroom or in the kitchen. It’s then that I notice Shirley still not taken off her coat. “I sorry if you cold,” I say, “but the paraffin heater take time to warm up.” I pick up some clothes and a blanket and pillow from the mattress on the floor, and I balance everything in my arms. I tell Shirley that if she need me then I going be outside, and I mention that in the morning I will take her back to the hospital before I go off to work. She look at me and ask me why it is that tonight I don’t go to college. Before I can answer Shirley tell me that this is the first time she ever see me without a book in my hand. “I surprise you don’t already come a lawyer.” For a moment I not sure if the woman is making a joke, and then she smile and say that she not tired yet and maybe I want to talk. I look at her and decide to set the bundle of clothes, and the blanket and the pillow, back down upon the mattress. I sit on the floor with my back to the wall and stretch out my legs in front of me.

  ‘Maybe a week after the attack on Ralph, Mrs Jones make it clear that I have to find a next room. The English man who own the house, and advertise the room, just throw open the door but he don’t bother to turn on the light bulb. He gesture with an arm but I find myself watching the ash on the end of the man’s cigarette. “Well? It’s a double room like I said, with a small gas stove. You got your privacy in here, pal. You share a lav in the basement, but no hot water though. However, it doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Two pounds ten shillings a week for the room, no questions asked, just be sensible with the visitors and respectable girls only. I don’t want the house going down. A shilling for a shower at the local baths, which is three streets away, and that’s a coal fire, but you’ll have to get a guard. Well, you want it or not because it’ll go? I wouldn’t hang about because there’s plenty of people looking for a roof for the night, you do know that don’t you?” The man take a deep draw on his cigarette, then he stub it out on the wall and I watch the ashes flake down on to the nasty carpet. Back on the street I can see that these houses had once carried some style, but these days they broke down and paint peeling from them and the tiny front garden just pile up with rubbish. My head is hurt bad, and I push the scrap of paper with the addresses of the rooms to rent back into my pocket and I keep walking. Me, I done look at my last room for the day. Mrs Jones tell me I must leave because after what happen with Ralph her husband say he don’t want no more coloureds in his house. It’s not that he’s prejudiced, she say, it’s just that he can’t take any bother with coppers. And so I walking in London town, and the night smog starting to itch my eyes, and I can’t see more than ten yards ahead of me. The streetlights don’t help with the fog, because they just make everything look like ghosts everyplace. In my head I can hear people talking to me, but I try not to listen and I keep my eyes down and walk quickly until I find myself outside a restaurant. I go into the empty place, but as soon as I sit down the two men who work there look hard at me and start to talk to each other in their language. The scruffy, younger, man come over and hand me a dirty piece of paper with the menu printed on it, and I say thank you very much but I already know what I want. I just need a plate of rice. “Just rice?” Yes, I say, just plain white rice. The man take back the paper and I watch as he go into the kitchen with the older man. A few minutes pass and I stare out of the window into the black night, but I find nothing to see and nobody is walking by. These days, it dark going out to work and dark coming in again, and I try to think about this but it no use for the people in my head still talking. For a week now I been hearing these blasted people in my head, but nothing they say make any sense and I can’t seem to make them stop. Tomorrow I going look at some more rooms, because Mrs Jones don’t have to ask me twice. I’m not a dog or a cat. Nobody going put me out at night. The younger man come back through from the kitchen with a plate of rice which he put down in front of me and the man move off to one side and wait by the door. It’s then that I reach down in my pocket and take out the tin of sardines and start to open it with the metal key, carefully curling back the tin lid, then I tip the sardines on to the rice and stir them in good. I pick up the salt and pepper and flavour the food. By now the older man come out from the kitchen and the two of them staring at me. They come to my table and the older man start to wave his hands and shout. “Oh no, sir, this is not possible. You cannot do this. It is our food that you must eat.” I just keep eating and I ignore the both of them.

  ‘Three months later I follow Shirley into a Wimpy Bar and find a seat by the window. Shirley barely speak a word since she see me waiting by the factory gate as she come out from work. She stop and say something to the woman she is with, and the woman look up at me before saying goodnight to Shirley and walking off. Only when the woman pass out of sight does Shirley start to drag herself toward me, and it’s she who suggest that we go somewhere and talk. I can’t see why Shirley is treating me like this, because once she telephone my workplace I agree to do the right thing and come over to Manchester to meet up. We sitting in the crowded Wimpy Bar and I drop a lump of sugar into my tea before picking up the spoon and stirring it in. I tell her that after Ralph die I move out of Mrs Jones’s house and I now have my own room. I tell her I need the privacy if I g
oing to study properly. I’m still working at the factory casting iron, but I want the woman to understand that at night I have some serious college work that I must do. I watch Shirley spread butter on her toast with two long passes of the knife, then she bite into the toast and look me in the eye and ask me if I need my privacy more than I need a wife and child because I better make up my mind as to my priorities. I swallow deeply and turn from the woman and stare at the back of a stranger’s head. The last time I see Shirley is at Ralph’s funeral, but I trying hard not to look anybody in the eye because I too upset. The wind start to blow the pages of the vicar’s bible, and for some reason the man clamp down his hand on the pages instead of just shutting the book for he already finish with it. Then I hear Shirley crying, and I mean real powerful crying not womanish sobbing, and I feel for the woman. The coffin-bearers start to ease down Ralph’s casket at an awkward angle, and soon after everybody step forward and begin to toss dirt on the box so it sound like rain falling hard. I’m thinking, Jesus Christ, Ralph must be frighten by all this noise. Why people can’t throw dirt quieter? I know that Baron and some of the boys soon heading off to the Red Lion, but I don’t know if I should go with them or stay and look out for Shirley. I know she won’t want to come with the fellars to the pub, but as people move off I find myself standing by the grave not able to make up my mind as to what I must do. It’s then that I see Shirley walking away without so much as a “so long” to me and now everything come clear. Me, I’m going to the pub. I reach and everybody in the lounge talking loud and carrying on with plenty drinking, but my spirit can’t take it and so I go in the public bar. It’s then that I notice Dr Davies from the college and I see the man is carrying some leaflets and moving up and down the place giving them out to people. The young woman behind the bar staring at me and waiting for me to say what I want to drink. The woman smiles, first with her lips and then with her eyes. “Well, what’s happening, love? You waiting for your premium bonds to come up? Concentrate dear, you look like you’re in Cloud-cuckoo-land.” I am concentrating and I trying to make myself small and hoping that Dr Davies don’t see me because I never been anywhere near the blasted college since the time I go to see the man with his feet up on the desk. Luckily he pass out of the bar without noticing me and so I order a pint of bitter from the woman who ask me if I belong to the wake in the lounge. I say “yes,” and then she tell me they call it a wake because nobody can sleep through the damn noise. The woman laugh and point at the door through which Dr Davies just leave and she ask me if I trying to avoid the chap from the college. Before I know how to answer she tell me that she don’t blame me for the man is always acting like a bloody nuisance with all this research into immigrants. Then the young woman just move off to serve somebody else. When I reach my room that night I find myself wondering about what happen to Shirley, but I realise she must have decide to go back to Manchester and that is good because I don’t want no repeat of the confusion of the night when Ralph is in the hospital, and especially not on the day that my best friend from home is going into the ground. But here I am sitting in a Manchester Wimpy Bar and the woman telling me that she is pregnant with my child and eating toast and drinking tea like it’s me alone who create this situation. I’m trying to be decent, I trying hard, but her behaviour simply don’t impress me. The woman finish with the toast and wipe her hands on a paper napkin, then she screw the napkin into a ball and push it under the rim of the saucer, and then she look across the table at me. “Well?”

  ‘It take me nearly a year before I find the courage to ask out Brenda. I used to go into the public bar after work and sit and talk with her, but I’m trying to do so in a way that people won’t think that something is going on with the two of us. But, of course, I know that some people beginning to wonder if I don’t have any other friends. I do, but these fellars are in the lounge. Baron is a good man, but he’s not a man to say much, and the other people remind me of Ralph too much and I don’t want no reminder of my friend because the police still don’t prosecute anybody and every time I think of Ralph my head hurt like hell and the voices start up again. So, three or four nights a week I find myself in the public bar and I talk with Brenda who tell me how she is from Bradford, and how she meet her husband there, and when he join the army they station them near some place called Ripon. Brenda tell me that at first things is fine, but when the doctor say she can’t have babies the husband change and start to get mean, and then he begin to raise his hand to her which is when she say she decide to run off and find a job. She can’t go back to Bradford for the husband have family there who will tell the man where she is, and so she renting a bedsit near the city centre and she take a job in a hairdresser, and in the evening she work in the pub, and according to the woman she just about getting by. I listen to her, but I don’t have no story to offer in return, and it never occur to me to make one up, so I just listen and when this Brenda done with the conversation I try to get her to tell me a next story, and then a next one, but the woman just keep asking about me, and the situation getting uncomfortable and so I start to drop by the pub only two or three times a week and then she begin to ask me where I been and so I ask her if she ever take any time off from the bar work and if she does then maybe one night we can go to a restaurant together. She look at me and start to laugh. “I was wondering when you were going to ask me out. I’d nearly given up on you.” The place I take her to is the same Indian restaurant that I was foolish enough to think might treat a coloured man good, but for some reason I think maybe things will be different if I walk in with an English woman. But it don’t turn out so. From the moment we enter the place I feel everybody looking down on me and I can tell that the Indian people are talking about Brenda. I know that Brenda can sense it too, but the woman just keep behaving as though nothing is the matter, and she never take her eyes from me, but I can’t concentrate, and I’m looking at the curry and rice in front of us, and Brenda is still talking, and I can hear the voices in my head making all kind of loud noise and so I just lean over and push the rice bowl on to the floor and watch it break into pieces and Brenda stop talking, but everybody else in my head still talking, including Ralph, who is talking the loudest, and I just wait for the people to come and clean up the mess, but the Indian people slow to come so I shout, “Hey you people, you can hear me? Clean it up, clean up the fucking mess now!”