If only Mother had been here to defend her domain and the ideals it embodied, wielding her umbrella alongside Mrs Crazy! But what would she have made of the long-haired tent-dwellers messily encamped in her cherry orchard? Would she have admired them as free spirits and adventurers, or abjured them as lazy ne’er-do-wells? You could never tell with Mother. She was vehemently critical of idleness, drunkenness and bad language. On the other hand, since her retirement, she had seldom been out of her dressing gown before noon, her sherry habit was legendary, and she had tried to teach Flossie to swear at the television. She deplored promiscuity, but she adored babies, whatever their parentage. Women are soft that way. Even bloody Inna – damn her, where the hell had she got to with that key? – never missed a chance to gawp into a stranger’s pram.
On the wall in my room I have a photo of Stephanie and Meredith in that same pose, taken in our old flat in Clapham: Stephanie is smiling, not at me, not at the camera, but at her own inner pleasure; Meredith is a fat greedy blob of sensuality with a wisp of dark hair on her crown. If she had lived, she would be twenty-three now. If she had lived, perhaps Stephanie and I would still be together, and I would have a string of acting credits and an almost-paid-off mortgage.
Chained as I was, unable to move, my mind was wandering off down the hazardous trails of the past. I pictured Meredith as she might be now, and the image that skipped into my mind was Violet with her swept-up hair and her dimpling smile, so beautiful and so vulnerable, though at the time of the accident she had seemed as sturdy as a pony on her little legs. Here she was at long last, trotting through the dappled shade of the cherry grove, holding a cup with a lid, and Inna overtaking her in her characteristic high-speed hobble, bringing two slices of toast on a plate, which she thrust into my hands.
‘It, it.’
‘But where’s the key?’ I asked.
Inna looked shifty. Her diamanté glasses had slipped to the bottom of her nose. ‘Oy! Lost it!’
She turned to consult Violet over her shoulder; they exchanged a few muttered words.
‘I’m afraid Inna’s lost the key.’ Violet smiled and surreptitiously tapped her temple.
‘For God’s sake, woman! You only had it for two minutes! How can you have lost it?’
Inna did her confused act, flapping her hands and rolling her eyes the way I had taught her. I wanted to slap her. The twig dug deeper under my left shoulder blade. Above me in the cherry tree there was a sudden rustling of leaves and a large gob of something warm and moist landed on my head.
‘Naughty Pidgie!’ Violet chided, and leaned forward with a tissue to wipe it away.
For a moment I felt the pressure of her firm young breast on my naked chest. Confusion overcame me.
‘Have you looked down the side of the sofa, Inna? Have you looked in the rubbish bin? This is getting bloody uncomfortable,’ I shouted.
Not only was it uncomfortable, it was also embarrassing. The eleven occupants of the three tents, including the Y-fronts man, the lady with the baby, a couple of colourfully dressed oldies and assorted children, had all gathered in a semicircle around my tree, and were whispering among themselves.
‘Go away! Piss off! Bloody foreigners!’ I shouted at them, which I know was wrong, but I was annoyed because the glory of the day – i.e. the saving of the cherry trees – which should have been mine alone, had to be shared with this scruffy-looking crew and the smarmy businessman-type, who seemed to be on far too friendly terms with Violet. After all, it was I who had raced down here half naked at seven o’clock and suffered the discomfort of quasi-martyrdom, while he swanned off to his office and they hung around smoking and gibbering.
They fell silent when I shouted, then an old guy in an embroidered shirt and baggy trousers stepped forward, grabbed my hand, pumped it up and down, and made an incomprehensible speech that went on for several minutes. The semicircle of onlookers clapped politely. Next, the young woman with the magnificent tits, the one who had been breastfeeding her baby, stepped forward and handed me a long, stiff pinkish object, partly wrapped in a white cloth. To my horror, it looked like a wizened dead baby, but on closer inspection turned out to be a large salami. The woman handed it over with a little bow and said a few words. The audience clapped.
Inna, who was still standing beside me, whispered in my ear, ‘She say thank you for save our home and baby.’
The young woman then embraced me, pressing her magnificent tits against my bare chest, which was quite nice, though unfortunately she was now fully clothed. Having become accustomed to these female gestures of affection, I was beginning to realise what George Clooney has to put up with.
‘He say you big hero, chain yourself on tree, stop workmen knocking down tent,’ whispered Inna.
‘Oh, tell them it was worth the suffering,’ I said nobly, gulping down the now-tepid coffee which Violet had brought.
‘Is it okay?’ she asked.
‘Perfect,’ I said, though it was weak and too sweet, and I had to stop myself from saying ‘like you’. But here was the puzzle – even when she brushed against me with her breast, when she stood so close to me that I could smell the soap on her skin, even when she touched me with her ethereal hands and wiped the bird shit from my brow, even when my love blazed up through all my being, the beast below did not stir.
Inna had approached the semicircle of campers and was talking very fast, with fulsome hand gestures; they responded in kind.
‘What language are they talking, Inna?’
‘Romanian,’ she replied. ‘They from Turda. But they come to London for fruit picking.’
‘Turda?’ I couldn’t resist a snigger, though I know it’s infantile. ‘Not much fruit around here.’
‘Aha! I tell them this cherry is only for nice flower, not for ittit.’
‘Tell them the best place for fruit picking is Kent. Apples, pears, strawberries, the lot. But how come you speak Romanian, Inna? I thought you came from Odessa, in Ukraine.’
‘I born in Moldova.’ She coughed and crossed herself. ‘In between Ukraina and Romania, one time belong Russia, another time Hungary, another time Romania. After war Soviet Republic. Everything mixit up.’
Two bright pink spots of emotion coloured her cheeks. She looked uncannily different from the withered crone I had met at my mother’s deathbed.
‘Moldovan language speak like Romanian language, but write in Russian-type writing,’ she rattled on. ‘In my school, people speaking Romanian, Russian, Ukrainian, Moldovan. Four languages plenty for one brain, English too much for me.’
‘You’ve been at the feast of languages, Inna.’ And she had indeed stolen the scraps.
‘Aha! One day, I will tell you my story! But now we must break chain!’
Even as she spoke, the Y-fronts guy, now fully clothed, came up to me and grinned. His teeth flashed gold. His gone-to-fat muscles bulged under his T-shirt. Then he gripped the bicycle chain in two places and pulled. Pthatt! In one tug I was free.
Violet: Len
While Violet is standing in the semicircle of onlookers in the cherry grove watching Berthold’s liberation, she feels a tug at her sleeve. It’s Arthur; he’s wearing his school uniform but he’s not going to school. He seems agitated.
‘Len’s gone all funny. Come and see!’
She’s already late for work, but she follows the kid to Len’s ground-floor flat where the front door is wedged open with a chair. The flat is untidy, with stuff scattered everywhere, and a bad smell. There are the posters of football players in dynamic goal-scoring poses pinned on the walls, but Len is slumped in his wheelchair in a starkly different pose in front of the switched-off television. His crutches are on the floor, his cap is askew, his eyes are glazed, and his breathing is coming in quick gasps like a drowning man.
‘Len, what’s the matter? Shall I call an ambulance?’
‘Nah. I’ll be all right. No fuss.’ His voice is faint and slurred, so that she has to bend right down to make out what he is saying; as
she puts her ear to his lips she notices a strange smell on his breath, sweet and synthetic, like pear drops.
‘I think there’s a bottle of Diet Coke in the back of the fridge. That should do it. I just couldn’t find it,’ he says.
She opens the fridge. There is nothing in there but an opened tin of baked beans, green with mould, a half-empty plastic bottle of gone-off milk and a white carton with a chemist’s label on. The fridge’s power is off.
‘There’s nothing in here. Only some mouldy beans.’
‘No Coke?’
‘I can’t find any. Shall I make you a cup of tea?’ She hands Arthur the key to her flat. ‘Quick, nip up and get some milk from my fridge.’
Arthur disappears, half running half skipping.
‘How long has your fridge been off?’ she asks Len.
He looks confused. ‘My leccy got cut off last week. I should be all right when I start my job.’
The flat is hot and stuffy, with the sun beating in through the south-facing windows.
‘Are you sure?’
‘They cut my benefit because of my spare bedroom. But I’ve got an appeal lodged. And I’m registered with an agency for tele-sales, so I should be all right soon. Just pass me my crutches, love.’
She helps him lever himself out of the wheelchair with his crutches, and he flops into an armchair.
‘Will you just check on the budgies, love? They’re in the next room.’ He nods his head towards an open door, from where there’s a chorus of chirping and a disgusting smell a bit like the parrot cage next door where Berthold and the mad old lady live.
There are three cages in the little room, with four brightly coloured birds in each, all hopping about and twittering. It’s enough to drive anybody mad. Their water bottles are dry and the seed dispensers are almost empty. She takes them over to the kitchen to fill them up.
Just then the door opens and the boy comes back with a bottle of milk. He’s not alone. A young woman is with him – she recognises the girl who cleaned her flat the day she moved in, but she’s not wearing her Homeshine uniform or carrying her brushes. She feels a rush of annoyance. Why is this slum girl following her around? She doesn’t want to be reminded about poverty in Kenya right now. She’s done her bit by refusing to work for HN Holdings. Isn’t that enough? Now she just wants to get on with her life.
‘She was waiting for you outside your flat,’ says the boy. ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’
‘Yes. Find out where Len keeps his tea bags.’ She turns to the girl, whose name she remembers is Mary Atiemo, and says in a firm voice, ‘Look, Mary, in England you can’t just turn up on somebody’s doorstep. You have to ring and make an appointment first. As John Lennon said, an Englishman’s home is his castle.’ John Lennon? That doesn’t sound right. Maybe it was Oscar Wilde. Or Shakespeare. Or one of those guys who go around making up quotations.
‘Please, ma’am, I need your help.’ The girl lowers her eyes and places her hands together in an imploring gesture, which, for some reason, Violet finds intensely irritating. Len and Arthur are staring at her open-mouthed, so she softens her tone a bit. ‘Anyway, I can’t afford a cleaner right now.’
‘I will clean for you for nothing,’ says Mary. ‘I just need somewhere to stay.’
The kettle boils and she makes four cups of tea. Len adds a saccharine tablet and sips slowly, which seems to perk him up a bit, though he still looks pale. She doesn’t know whether it’s safe to leave him, but she promised Berthold she’d join him for a coffee, and she has an appointment with Gillian Chalmers in an hour.
‘Look, you’ve chosen a very inconvenient time,’ she tells the girl. ‘Besides, I’m moving out soon.’
‘I will not stay for long.’
‘I’m sorry. Whatever sort of trouble you’ve got yourself into, it’s not my responsibility. You’ve got to learn to stand on your own two feet. Look, Len here stands on his own two feet, and he hasn’t even got any feet!’ Nobody smiles at her joke.
‘I will do so, ma’am. My feet are good. But I can no longer stay in my room. I will not work for Homeshine Sanitary.’
‘Have you got fed up with cleaning?’ Her Grandma Njoki had told her that slum people were usually lazy, as well as dishonest.
‘Cleaning okay. But now he wants I do other things for clients. Things I will not do. Even though I am poor, I still have my life.’ She lowers her eyes and stares stubbornly at the floor.
Violet doesn’t ask what things, because it suddenly seems horribly clear. ‘Tell me, who is this “he” who tells you this?’
‘Mr Nzangu. The boss.’
So that’s where she heard the name before. Her head spins.
‘Mr Horace Nzangu? But he’s a businessman in Nairobi.’
‘Mr Lionel Nzangu. It is his son. They run a business to help people come to London. But I thought it was for cleaning work. He didn’t say …’
Violet’s heart thuds and she sees now that she has no choice, she has to let the slum girl stay in her flat. But before she can get the words out of her mouth, Arthur pipes up, ‘You can come and stay with us. We’ve got a spare room.’
The girl beams, flashing her chipped tooth. ‘That is very kind. I will clean your flat. God will reward you.’
Violet is left with the guilty feeling that she has not been kind. She wonders how Mary Atiemo will get on with Greg. Should she warn her? But what could she say?
‘I’ve got to go. I’m supposed to be at work.’
She hates being late – punctuality, her Grandma Njoki used to tell her, was among the benefits brought by Britain to backward people. But now she’ll be leaving soon it doesn’t seem to matter so much.
She runs up the stairs two at a time and knocks on Berthold’s door.
Berthold: My Crappy Jokes
I didn’t have the means to take Violet out to Luigi’s to celebrate the temporary reprieve of the cherry trees, so I invited her to come up to the flat for a coffee instead. Not coffee from the Clooney coffee machine, not even Gold Blend, but Lidl own-brand. That’s what we were reduced to.
‘I can’t stay long,’ she said. ‘I’m supposed to be at work.’
‘Work?’
‘I work in International Wealth Preservation.’
‘Blimey, I could do with a bit of that.’
She giggled as if I’d said something hilarious, and I thought, if Meredith had still been alive, she would have been roughly the same age as Violet, giggling at my crappy jokes.
‘I think the cherry trees’ll be all right for the time being. Thanks to you, Berthold. But you need to keep an eye on Len. He’s had a funny turn.’ She flashed a smile, finished her coffee quickly and was gone.
A few minutes later, I saw her crossing the grove wearing a rather fetching little lilac outfit, stopping briefly to chat with the colourfully dressed elders from the tent, who were sitting out on the bench in the sunshine.
‘Nice girl, but skinny.’ Inna was putting Flossie’s cage out on to the balcony so she could enjoy the sunshine. ‘Too young. Need more fat. Other one, fatty council lady, look better for you.’ She fixed me with a shrewd eye. ‘You still homosexy, Mister Bertie?’
I shrugged, not dignifying her absurd obsession with a reply. To me Violet seemed not skinny but perfectly formed. However, Inna had identified something that was puzzling me too. Although Violet had seized my heart, strangely my lust had been stirred not by her but by plump, ageing Mrs Penny. There was something urgent in her desire that roused a response in me. Likewise the Immortal Bard’s passion was torn between the dark lady of his lust and the blond angel of his spirit. Sometimes the male beast is a mystery, even to men. I sighed.
‘It’s time for lunch. Let’s open a tin of tuna.’ I buttered some bread, and chopped up a lettuce. ‘You were going to tell me about your murky past in Moldova, Inna.’
Violet: Print
‘So you’re going to tell me why you’re looking for a new job, Violet?’ Gillian Chalmers perches like a tiny blonde
bird behind her vast polished desk on which are two porcelain cups, both empty, and a pile of slip cases in different colours. The monitor shows a picture of the Lloyd’s Building at night, the windows blazing with light. ‘It seems like a very sudden decision. Why didn’t you come and talk to me first?’
Gillian’s eyes are sharp like pencil leads. A mesh of fine wrinkles is etched on her skin and deeper lines around her mouth. She read somewhere that women who spend too long in front of a computer develop wrinkles.
‘I just …’ she starts apologetically. Gillian’s grey gaze confuses her. ‘I know I should have …’
From across the desk, she can smell Gillian’s subtle perfume and a faint horsey whiff of ashwagandha. The light slanting through the blinds throws a criss-cross of shadows across her face like a cage. This remote, trapped, ageing woman seems a million miles away from the tigerish go-getter she saw in action in the Lloyd’s Building.
‘The thing is, Violet, you should have asked me first, before putting my name down for a reference. It puts me in a difficult position.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. You were away in Bucharest, and I didn’t want to miss the deadline.’
‘Mmm. Well, I wish you every success finding a new job, Violet. But I need to know why you want to leave GRM.’
‘It’s hard to explain,’ Violet mumbles. ‘It’s a matter of principle.’
‘Oh? Principle? That sounds interesting. Tell me more.’ Gillian leans forward on her elbows. She looks tired and irritable. Her mascara has run into the creases of skin under her eyes. The office is cold but she has the air con on full blast, and is warming herself up with a cup of ashwagandha that looks like faintly tinted hot water.
‘So. Wealth Preservation turned out to be … not what I expected. I didn’t agree with the practice of setting up shell companies in tax havens. In poor countries like Kenya, you see, when rich people take money out, there’s less to go around for schools and hospitals, and … it just didn’t seem right.’
‘Ah. It didn’t seem right.’ Gillian’s expression is blank, apart from the pencil-point eyes, fixed on her face. ‘And what about Marc Bonnier? Did you have a disagreement with him?’
The Lubetkin Legacy Page 20
