Dottie

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  The third house they saw was in Horatio Street in Brixton. Dottie felt good about it as soon as they began to walk down the street. It was a sunny day and there were several people standing outside their houses, chatting. They were mostly black women, and they smiled at the two sisters as they strolled past. The person who lived next door to the house they had come to see smiled and spoke to them. She was a short, plump, light-skinned woman who leaned unconcernedly over her gate when she saw them and hailed them over. ‘You’ve come to see the house? It’s a good house, and a good price. I live next door . . . my name’s Laura. You better give the door there a good hard knock. The old boy in there, his hearing not so sharp these days. You’re not Jamaican? Small island people, no? I’m from St Ann’s Bay, and God helping me I’ll go back and die there anyhow. Go on, I’ll catch you later on and we have a good talk about the place.’

  Dottie glanced at Sophie and they shared a smile. The gentle Irish man who showed them round was politely gallant despite his undisguisable old age. He was full of information about the house. It was a two-bedroomed terrace, two-up two-down with a back extension, but the old man’s stories gave it an unexpected dimension, endowing it with mythology and history. He told them when it was built, and who had lived in it through its age. He was forthcoming about its problems and shortcomings, and all the various things it needed doing to it before it could be said to be an appropriate abode for such charming young ladies as them. He showed them the garden, which was nothing grand, but large enough to put a swing in, one of Dottie’s secret ambitions for Hudson. Patterson was not with them that time, so they could indulge the old man without feeling that they were wasting time.

  ‘You like the house, Hudson boy?’ Sophie asked, and claimed that she could tell from his enthusiastic gabbling that he was delighted with it. The old man seemed pleased too. He wanted to get a smaller place, he told them. It was too big for him on his own, although they had had a high old time when the family was all together. ‘I’m a grandfather now,’ he said. ‘I want to live peaceful and quiet. A lot of you coloured folk are moving round here. No offence to you, my dears, but I’m too old for that sort of thing. It isn’t your fault, I’m not saying that. They treat your people like dirt and you want to get them back for it. Only some of you darkies can’t tell the difference between an Irish republican and a Tory Englishman. It’s scary to be a white man in this part of the world now. I don’t mean no offence, my dears.’

  They walked to the office of the estate agent and made the offer immediately after viewing it. Dottie felt a fraud as she agreed the price with the man in the estate agent’s office, as if she could even dream of ever having that kind of money, but a part of her was bursting with pride anyhow. She wondered, as she listened to the young man talk, whether he had a house of his own. He did not look it, did not look as if he was the kind of person who would have the strength to eat spinach and cassava for a house. That Sunday they celebrated. Patterson brought a couple of bottles round, one of schnaps and one of rum, and joined in their joy and their plans. He insisted on throwing a glassful of schnaps out of the window, into the back-garden. ‘It may not look like it,’ he said, ‘but there may well be some ancestors under that earth there, and we should never neglect them when good fortune comes our way.’ He was not a bit put out that they had made their decision without his assistance, as Dottie had feared. She thought how close he had become to them since coming out of prison. He was no longer the watchful, stiff man always on the verge of leaving, and always with that undercurrent of bitterness and violence.

  Sophie began to feel sick after her fourth rum. Patterson insisted she should go to bed, and would hear nothing of her pleas for him to stay. He looked at Dottie for a long moment before he left, unsmiling, as if considering and testing a thought. After he had gone, she stood trembling with the confusion and the pain that the look caused her. He was wooing her! If that was not too grand a name to give to what he was doing . . . He was not sure how she would take his approaches, and he was waiting for guidance from her. She thought he meant her to understand that it would all be discreet. They would be careful, and Sophie would never know. There was no point in upsetting her.

  She lay in the dark that Sunday night, thinking about him and the way he made her feel. She thought of his lean strong body in hers, of the smell of his flesh in her nostrils, the feel of his breath on her neck and her ears. She would have him. She would have him lie with her even if it made her feel disgusting and dirty. She wanted him, but she was afraid to concede as much as he seemed to be asking. She had feared all along that this was how he would want things to be, so he could come to them when he wanted and use them. Patterson and his pen of Balfour sisters. The thought was painful, degrading. Just as it degraded her sometimes to think that Sophie had so completely abandoned Jimmy and taken up with his brother.

  Perhaps she would have him, just once. It had been such a long time, and always she had baulked at the thought of being used, of being degraded and abandoned. Perhaps there was no other way for men and women to be together, and she would have to grit her teeth and steel herself to the indignity that lay ahead whatever she did. Unless she wanted to live without a man. She had seen Sophie run through a string of them, and had seen that to these men, like Andy the landlord and Jimmy, and Patterson too, she was something they took pleasure in. Something that filled their mouths and made their eyes light up with excitement. Dottie knew, on the other hand, that they laughed at her and her awkwardness with them.

  It puzzled her what they saw in Sophie, although it made her feel unkind to think that. She was quite big now, cheeks bulging with grease and a body layered with rolls of fat. What could they be attracted to in that? Not that she was anything wonderful herself, all scrawny and on edge, but that was not the point. No one was slavering at the mouth for her. When she was feeling more generous, or more critical of herself, she thought she understood. Sophie was like Sharon. She had a kind of happiness when she was with men that was almost innocent, child-like. She was like Sharon in that way, except that Sharon had been full of bitterness and pain the rest of the time, when the drink had worn off. Sophie took pleasure in everything her men did, and laughed with an abandoned submission at all the affectionate deeds they performed. Dottie could not imagine being able to deny herself that much. But perhaps she would have him once, just to feel that raw joy again.

  3

  Their affairs with the house purchase proceeded at such a pace that the day of moving was approaching fast enough to inconvenience and fluster them. Andy was flabbergasted when they told him. He was suspicious at first, but when he could no longer refuse to believe, he looked comically tragic. Dottie saw his eyes watering, and understood how Andy’s world had slowly been turned upside down over the years. Before he left, he asked Dottie to come out for a drink with him. For old times’ sake, he said. When Dottie refused, he took her hand and pleaded. ‘I won’t do anything, I promise,’ he said. ‘Just to talk about old times . . . and if I can help. If you need anything.’

  ‘No, Andy,’ Dottie said. ‘We don’t need anything.’

  ‘Your address. Give me your address in Brixton. I’ll come and visit you and we go to the cinema. Or if you need anything or something like that, please.’

  Dottie gave him the address in the end, because she could not bear his pleading. He took the paper she gave him and sniffed it, then he smiled in his old, cock-sure way. He ran meaningful eyes over her body and whistled tunelessly to himself. ‘Just remember, darling, if you need anything . . .’ he said, making Dottie laugh.

  Various of the women at the factory had promised bits of furniture or utensils to Dottie: tables and chairs that were being discarded for the new-fangled wipe-clean veneered suites, an old bed, a Belling electric cooker that was going for free, although they would have preferred gas. She had to arrange for someone to collect all these bits and pieces in a van and deliver them to the house in Brixton on the appointed day. Small items like old curtains and
bedding she collected herself and stored in the room, ready for the move. She found some clean boxes at the market and took them home for packing their belongings. There was not a great deal to put in them: clothes, crockery, some ornaments and four boxfuls of books. Dottie was proud of her boxes of books, and heard Sophie’s exclamations about them with contentment.

  In one of the book-boxes she put the old biscuit tin in which she kept their papers. She looked through it before she packed it away. The last time had been when they had to find Hudson’s birth certificate for his passport application. She knew everything the tin contained as if she had learned it by heart. There had been times, between Ken’s departure and Sophie’s return for example, when she had leafed through the yellowed papers and faded pictures as if she was turning the pages of her history. There was the photo of Hudson on the cliffs in Dover, pretending to be David Copperfield. The sun was still shining on his delighted grin, leaping off the stick that he had jokingly raised over the animal’s flanks. Behind him and over the edge of the cliff, the sea still glimmered in the distance, bouncing up sharp splinters of light. The boy who was his friend, his brother Frank, was laughing with him, filled with the joy of the beautiful afternoon. Even after all this time, they were still happy. Especially after all this time and everything that had happened. She should have left him there, instead of harrying him to his death. They could not have done much worse with him than she had done, and she could not recall seeing Hudson with such a happy face in all the time she had known him. What had happened to the other boy, she wondered? Like Hudson, he would be twenty now, just about to be a man.

  There was another picture in the tin, creased and dog-eared with handling. It showed a woman and a girl standing beside each other in a garden, their backs to the house. The door was open, and in its gloomy and grainy shadows another shape was visible. The woman was smiling shyly, as if reluctant to be photographed. Even in the faded old print, her beauty shone out. The features on her face, her eyes and her lips, were like shadows on the moon. Her right hand rested on the shoulder of the girl who stood beside her. She could not have been more than twelve or so. Her face was contorted with the effort of keeping an unwanted grin from breaking out across her face. The girl was wearing a blouse that was decorated with narrow silver braid across the front. In her right hand she held a lollipop, partially shielded by her palm but none the less visible enough. Although the picture was so pale and creased, she knew that the little girl was Sharon. There was no mistaking her.

  On the back, a flowing hand had written the names of the woman and the girl in the picture. It was not Sharon’s writing, and Dottie wondered, with an avidity that made her desperate with frustration when she allowed it to, who could have written those two names with such a sure hand. Behind the woman was written the name Hawa, and behind the girl was the name Bilkisu. And underneath them was the date 1933. While Hitler was stepping into the Chancellory in Berlin, about to embark on the historic task of making Germany count in the congress of nations again, mother and daughter were standing shyly in the back-garden having their photograph taken. Hawa and Bilkisu, 1933. Those were their names. Where would they have got names like that? She had known them for years, but had kept Sharon’s name to herself, like something that embarrassed her. What good would it do them, anyway? Sharon herself had told her not to submit to the tyranny of times that had passed.

  The shadow at the door gave her a feeling of foreboding. She thought she could see from the outline that it was a man, but there was nothing to make her certain of that. Perhaps it was perversity, or a stubborn romanticism, that convinced her that the shadow was Sharon’s father. She was not sure why that should trouble her. He was nothing to do with them, and it probably was not him, anyway. Why shouldn’t he be the one who was taking the photograph? The shadow could be a neighbour or a friend. And was the house behind them the home that Sharon had told her about? Was that Cardiff? She wished she had listened to the ramblings of her dying mother. On the other hand, perhaps they were better buried. That way they knew nothing of what they were, and there was no one to feel shame for the way they had turned out.

  So often, as she pored over the picture, she wished there was more. Sharon’s anger with her father had been so complete that she had not even bothered to mention her parents until she was almost overwhelmed by squalor and despair. Then her stories had been full of guilt and agonised regrets. Dottie had had no time for all that, ashamed beyond utterance by their lives, her every feeling and emotion turned to revulsion and self-loathing that they had been found worthy of such punishment. She had only listened to Sharon out of duty, seeing out the unhappy woman who was suffering such torments in her last years.

  Could she not have left her something of the man in Leeds who had almost become their father? Not that it really mattered that much! Dottie Badoura Fatma Balfour, what could she do with all that? A hundred pounds or so would have been much more useful to them than that baggage. None the less she wept as she thought that she would never know what those names meant or why he had chosen them for her. For years she had seen an image of him walking a dog, and herself beside him. She had been so sure that there must be a picture somewhere but for all her searches she had not been able to find anything. There must have been a picture, for the image always contained her in it, looking up at him with a smile. It must have been thrown away with all the other bits of junk that Sharon had left behind. All Dottie had kept were trousers embroidered with tiny silver caps, so that at a glance the material looked like sequin or mail. She did not remember ever having seen them before Sharon’s death. They were the size of a teenager and she had kept them because she thought that Hudson could have them one day, an idea that seemed more and more ridiculous every time she saw them. Over the years they had grown grubbier and more crumpled at the bottom of the box of old blankets and rags where sometimes she found cockroach eggs and little black droppings. She could not quite bring herself to throw them away.

  She packed the biscuit tin in one of the book boxes. There was nothing much in it, really. Bits of paper that attested to their existence, and round which she could weave half-made stories that gave their lives substance and significance. There was more to them than met the eye, after all. Papers and photographs and tokens of abandoned times. The defeated lives they owned did not tell the whole story, did not specify the full extent of who they were.

  Expectations

  1

  Hudson dramatically bloomed once they had moved to their new house. He had learnt to crawl while they were still living in the room in Segovia Street, but he had only been able to crawl into corners and under beds, playing elaborate games with the few sticks of furniture, round which he peered and hid. Within moments of being released in the new house, he was out of sight. Within days of moving to Horatio Street, he was walking without any support, fearlessly exploring the abounding acres of his new home. He had been a demanding baby despite his good nature, always hanging on to somebody, refusing to be left alone, complaining for company, reluctant to go to sleep. Now he played for hours in the room he shared with his mother, singing and calling out when the mood took him, in transports of joy.

  The games he played became more detailed and more subtle, requiring imaginative uses of the huge spaces at his disposal. He used his voice with greater variety too, trying out new tones and listening for the old combinations, teaching himself to sing. His cradle no longer restrained him, and he had learnt how to climb in and out of it with ease. For a long time he had been restrained by the cradle’s rocking motion. When he clung to the sides, to try and climb in, the cradle followed him and deposited him back on the floor each time. When he tried to climb out, it tipped him unceremoniously on the floor. In the new dispensation he climbed over the ends, crawling hand over foot on the sheer grid, resting between moves like a species of Amazonian sloth.

  Joyce came to their house some days now, to save Dottie the journey, but she was not happy about the new arrangement. Very little
pleased her, and it was easy to see that times had become harder for her too. She still dressed as if she was on her way to a party, shiny dresses that were too tight and too short, but the costumes had lost their lustre. Her face was always heavily made up. Often the make-up was old, dull and patchy where sweat or hands had rubbed it off. On some mornings, the more bizarre aspects of her face-paint turned grotesque in their half-effacement, and her silver eye-shadow and green lipstick would be running like exhalations from a corpse. Her body smelled of bitter, burnt nuts and sometimes her breath smelled bad, but more with staleness and exhaustion than corruption. Where her appearance before had promised exuberance and happiness, now it only suggested vice. She had a frighteningly tragic air about her, as if she was already resigned to being a victim despite her aggressive manner.

  Dottie thought that if she could detect that, so would the men whose fantasies Joyce lived off. They would smell her out without thought, and one of them would fulfil her secret fate. The thought shocked Dottie, and made her see Joyce with new eyes. After that she could not fail to see that behind the pouts and the complaints there lurked trills of fear and dependence, and that for all her foul mouth and fierce looks she was frightened.