The Backward Shadow

by Lynne Reid Banks

  ‘Are they in the band—those two?’

  ‘Naaa—they’re just fellows, they got no music, no nothin’, they just work anyplace. They’re big black bodies with heads on ’em but nothin’ inside the heads, you know what I mean? I hate ’em,’ he said dispassionately, ‘and they hate me because I ain’t like them.’

  ‘But John, then why do you live with them?’

  ‘Jane, you can’t understand. It’s hard to find a place where to live in this white man’s city. Oh, there’s places, there’s houses, but they’re mostly like this—broken down, nobody carin’ for nothin’ except the rent. I told you I wasn’t doin’ so bad for money, but I couldn’t rent this room for my lone self. You know what each of us is shellin’ out for our third share? Four pound. And for what? Well, look around and you’ll see. One bathroom downstairs which the bath is always full of dirty water cause the drain’s blocked, no cooking allowed for the bachelors, no privacy, no nothin’. Four pound a week.’

  ‘God!’ I said, appalled. ‘Wasn’t it better at Doris’s?’

  ‘Better?’ he cried. ‘I tell you, I look back on that bug-run like you’d look back to paradise. Them days, Jane—last year, with you and Toby and old Doris, and Charlie, and that funny woman, what was her name, the nosy one—’

  ‘Mavis—’

  ‘Yes, her. She died, did you know that?’

  ‘Mavis? Died?’

  ‘Yeh. Fell down them damn stairs, poor old woman. I was real sorry, even though she wouldn’t have no dealin’s with me on account of me bein’ a spade. She was kind to you though, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I was very shocked.

  ‘That happened before I left. We all went to her funeral—Doris cried just like a baby. I cried too, but I was cryin’ mostly because she reminded me of them good times with you and Toby.’ He gazed at me through sad yellow eyes. ‘They was the best times I ever had. And you two was my best friends. I won’t never have no friends again like you two.’

  I took hold of his huge hand and played with the fingers, dark brown on top, sort of beigy-pink underneath, with a brick-like callous on the side of the thumb from strumming. ‘Why did you leave Doris’s?’

  ‘Lonely. I tried to be friendly with a girl who came to live in your old room, but she didn’t want no truck with me, she was scared stiff of me, used to run if I spoke to her. She pretty soon married a young fellow who had Toby’s room after Toby left. Then they went and some awful people came, I think they were gangsters or something. I was never so sure they didn’t have somethin’ to do with that poor old woman fallin’. Maybe they bust in on her and scared her or—well, I can’t be sure, but they were real ugly people, the two of them. I used to hear funny conversations through the wall. Whispers—you know; like plannin’ somethin’, with just a few words comin’ plain when they didn’t agree ’bout somethin’. One night I was practisin’ some music real soft, and suddenly that little window—you remember, high up between the rooms—that got smashed right to bits and this fellow put his fist in with a whole lot of bits of razor blades stuck between his knuckles. He shook it at me and said, real quiet and threatening, from behind the partition, “If you don’t stop that row you black animal I’m going to kick that door open and flay the skin right off your face.” Well, I’m no hero. I believed him, so I stopped. And couple of days later I moved out. Doris was sorry in the end. She was scared of these white boys, and I guess she’d found out I was harmless. Funny how she’d come round to me. But with you and Toby and Mavis and me gone, I could see what she was thinkin’. The house’d fill up somehow with the real bad types and there’d be her and Charlie, never knowin’ when they was goin’ to get done up in the night.’ He shook his head again, really concerned for Doris. ‘That poor old cow, she never had no judgement. It was just her good luck she got people like us.’

  ‘She probably looks back on that time as her golden age, too. After all, it was when she married Charlie.’

  But John was pursuing his own thoughts. ‘Maybe you ain’t noticed it so much, living in the country,’ he said. ‘But this bad world is gettin’ worse and worse all the time. The people’s gettin’ worse. Better at hatin’, better at grabbin’. I tell you somethin’, I’m real scared to go out alone some nights.’ He sat back on his bed and looked at the two recumbent figures behind him. ‘You ask me why do I live with these two randy spades and I tell you, money. But that ain’t the only thing. I wish I could find somebody nice to live with, but I can’t seem to find nobody real nice that ain’t fixed up with a wife or somehow, and I sure ain’t aimin’ to live on my own no more. These two ain’t much, but they better than nothin’.’

  ‘Even though they say they’re going to slice you?’

  ‘Ah, that’s just talkin’. Ain’t like that white boy—he meant it. We been livin’ here now, the three of us, for near six months, and ain’t hardly been one day we haven’t said we’ll slice each other. Ain’t nobody so much as brought a knife out yet, ’cept to cut his bread. And sometimes when they had their fill of women and they feelin’ good they get me to play and they dance and sing and this whole old house starts jumpin’, and we have a good time together. Sort of. But it ain’t real, like with you and Toby, because them and me, we ain’t alike in our hearts, and under the music and drink we looks down at each other, we’re on the hate-kick same as the rest.’

  We’d been talking non-stop for nearly an hour; it was 3 a.m. and he hadn’t asked me a word about myself or why I’d come so late or anything. Sitting there in that sleazy room, half-frozen, too tired to feel like sleeping, I felt the most tremendous love for John and cursed myself for not having written to him or come to see him before. I wondered if Toby had been any better.

  ‘Do you see anything of Toby?’

  John brightened. ‘I see him, time to time. Couple times he’s invited me to his place for a meal. Them’s the times I look forward to! Toby’s a good friend. But afterwards I got to come back here to these two pails of slops which got no conversation ’cept women and cursing the whites and somehow I feel more worse than I did before. Still, it’s worth it to see Toby in that big nice studio-room of his and talk about you and old times.’

  ‘You talk about me?’ I couldn’t help asking.

  ‘Sure we do,’ he said, surprised. ‘I always ask about you.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Dunno. Couple months, maybe.’

  ‘Not since Christmas?’

  His face changed a little and he said, ‘Let’s don’t talk about Christmas. That was my worst, most loneliest time I ever had.’

  ‘Oh John! We thought of you!’

  He looked at me curiously. ‘You was together—you and Toby—Christmastime?’ I nodded. ‘Where?’ I told him. ‘You had a tree?’ I nodded again, unable to speak for remorse. He stood up and walked to the door, opened and closed it aimlessly, wandered around a bit among all the clutter littering the floor and slowly came back to me. He sat down without looking at me. He sat with his knees wide apart and his head hanging down looking at the floor. ‘You want to drink somethin’?’ he asked me after a long time.

  ‘No thanks John,’ I muttered, almost crying.

  ‘I could make tea.’ He looked up at me and said more cheerfully, ‘That’s a good idea, you know? Tea? It’s cold in here. I’ll make some, like I used to when you was pregnant in the mornin’s.’ His mood had changed. He was as volatile as a child. Now with something to do—the begrimed electric kettle to plug in on a table several layers thick with food and kitchen crocks, mugs to find and wash in a bucket of water under the table, a lot of business with tea and sugar and condensed milk in a tube—he seemed quite happy again and chattered away about debutantes and clubs and the café where he usually ate, where dope was peddled as a sideline: I asked him if he ‘smoked’ and he said yes of course, with an air of surprise, and explained that when he said dope he meant the hard stuff which he never touched. The two bodies slept on, impervious to light and voices,
and I asked if they touched the hard stuff and John said one of them did and was in fact sleeping off a fix right now. The other had a shot now and again but wasn’t hooked. Their names were Frank and Leroy and they were both West Indian … I listened to their whole histories while we drank our tea, which smelt faintly of dirty dish-cloth but which, being very hot, strong and sweet, was comforting. I hadn’t realised how really cold and empty I was; I had sort of gone numb.

  I had to bring up Toby again.

  ‘So you haven’t seen anything of Toby since—for two months?’

  ‘About that. It was winter, I know that, cause he’d just got himself a new kind of heater that blew hot air along the floor, and he gave me his old oil-stove. There it is,’ he pointed to it standing in a corner under a pile of old Daily Mirrors, ‘only it run out of oil just after I brought it back and I ain’t never got round to buying any. Still, I like havin’ it, somethin’ of Toby’s.’ He took a long drink of tea, looking slowly at me over the rim. ‘What’s with you two people? Ain’t you never goin’ to get married?’

  I looked at him and wondered how wise he was. Of course he wasn’t at all clever, but he had a certain basic wisdom about some things.

  ‘Do you think Toby’s strong enough to marry?’

  The golden whites of his eyes didn’t flicker or change. ‘Oh yes,’ he said without hesitating. ‘Toby strong enough. Question is, if you strong enough.’

  My first reaction, after the first stunned moment, was: He’s crazy! He doesn’t know the first thing about either of us! Even so, I was oddly hurt—almost insulted. Too much so to ask what he meant or for any further elaboration. I just went on staring at him until he said, quite gently, ‘You been thinking it was the other way round?’ I didn’t answer, and he went on: ‘Who run away? Who all the time don’t want? Toby wanted. He’d married you after the baby, before the baby, any time you was willing. But you run.’

  ‘I wanted him to be free!’

  John laughed, a soft, kind chuckle, and ran his finger round the rim of the cup. ‘You can make music like this,’ he said, ‘with glasses.’

  ‘I didn’t want to hang onto him! I didn’t want to tie him with my need!’ But even as I cried the words, they sounded false. Completely.

  John didn’t look up at me, just shook his head and finished his chuckle. After a moment he said, ‘You know what they say about me?’ He indicated the sleepers with his head. ‘They call me a fag. That’s a fellow only wants it with other fellows.’ I gasped, but covered it with a deep, shaken breath. ‘It’s true I don’t go after women much, but I ain’t a fag, not what they mean. I never wanted Toby that way, and I loved Toby like I never loved anybody—’cept maybe you. And another thing. I know how a man feels. Not men like them—they ain’t real men, they’re just a pair of walking John Thomases. I mean real men, like Toby. You say you didn’t want him to know you needed him. Well, I’ll ask you. What you think men want from women? That’s why I say you the weak one. You too weak to let him know how weak you are. He been waitin’ all this time for you to come to him and need him. I tell you something Jane, I don’t know how much longer he goin’ to wait. He’s strong, but he ain’t that strong. No man ain’t that strong, to go on forever without nobody that needs him.’ He lay back on the bed and looked straight up at the ceiling. ‘I thought about it a lot. I mean if I was a fag or not. And I found the answer in one thing. Why was them months at Doris’s the happiest I ever was? This’ll sound real silly. It was because you was sick and you felt better when I brought you cups of tea. And because Toby was sick a different way and used to talk to me a lot. Half he said I couldn’t understand, that’s the half I just had to feel. But just the talking did him good, he said so. You both needed me, and I felt good. And that was a man’s kind of feelin’ good. Which is what you ain’t givin’ Toby, cause you’re afraid to.’

  Chapter 15

  I SLEPT in John’s bed for the rest of the night, while he lay on the floor beside me on a mattress of newspapers and blankets and periodically made me jump by putting up his hand to feel if I was still there. His bed smelt very strongly of male sweat, and the near proximity of John’s randy room-mates made it quite difficult to sleep soundly; besides, I had too much on my mind.

  Anyway, after three hours or so it was morning—Sunday morning, so the sleepers slept on while John and I, both feeling befuddled but laughing hysterically a good deal, staggered up and prepared a breakfast of sorts from the unappetising assortment on the table. I had some stale sliced loaf and marge with condensed milk on it, and more tea, and John partook of cold sausage and the remains of a tin of Mulligatawny soup, most of which had solidified round the tin to a sort of black paste. We had the radio on and we did some P.T. to try and get warm, and then I had to pay a visit to the communal lavatory on the floor below—a very sobering experience. Then we drank more tea, and still the sleepers slept, and still John had asked me nothing; but it was getting on for 9 o’clock and I was sitting on nails, half longing to go over to Toby’s at once and half dreading it, no longer sure even of my own most basic feelings, let alone my moral justification which had already been on shaky ground.

  At last I said to John, ‘Let’s go and visit Toby,’ and it was out before I knew it, the ‘let’s’. His face came alive like a child’s and he jumped to his feet at once. ‘I get dressed!’ he announced, though so far as one could see he was dressed already, and presumably went to bed every night in the same attire—a sweat-shirt, long underwear, a pair of jeans, and thick socks. But he dug some cleaner clothes out of an overcrowded cupboard and danced into them while I, keeping my back discreetly turned, made his bed and tidied his small section of the room perfunctorily. When he looked round and saw what I’d been doing he laughed loudly and pointed with his thumb to the other two beds.

  ‘Now they know for sure I’m a fag!’ he said. ‘Ain’t nobody here made his bed in six months!’

  ‘On the contrary, they’ll see you’ve had a woman here and they’ll be completely confused.’

  We left the house quietly and were lucky to meet none of the other inhabitants except a small clot of children playing jacks on the front porch. They stared at us and did not move an inch to let us pass, so we had to pick our way between their thin little arms and legs. As we went down the steps one boy whispered, ‘Whitey, whitey, took off her nighty—’ John whipped round with an angry movement, but confronting only five closed mouths and innocent pairs of eyes, allowed me to tug him away.

  ‘Wasn’t never like this couple years ago,’ he muttered. ‘Where they learn things like that?’

  ‘From their elders,’ I said. ‘Where else?’

  ‘Nearly ain’t no white people left in this street,’ said John. ‘Couple old landladies won’t move out or sell, but even they only got black tenants. Can’t get no white ones now. We people just ruined the neighbourhood.’ I glanced at him expecting to see that he was joking, but he wasn’t; he looked serious and regretful. ‘Ain’t our fault though,’ he added. ‘We got to go somewhere.’

  We got a series of buses back to Earl’s Court and then walked up the Sunday-silent street to Toby’s. I was even more than Sunday-silent; I was terribly scared, actually quaking. I had the feeling that this was a vital turning-point in my life and I was absolutely unprepared to meet it. John, who had no way of knowing what was in my mind, sensed my inner turmoil as we neared the house and quietly took my hand. This was too much for me and I pulled him to a stop.

  ‘John, he—he may have a girl there.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, and stood still for a moment. ‘Well, if so, then we don’t stay long.’ And with that he drew me forward again.

  Toby’s flat was at the top of an ugly two-storied Victorian house. The attic had been reconstructed to make a studio room. He had his own bell outside his door with his name on it, T. Cohen. I hung back from the door, absolutely shivering with apprehension, while John, still holding me in case I fled, boldly rang the bell. While we waited, he said, ‘If Toby got
himself another girl—’ But I never knew what he was going to say because just then Toby opened the door.

  My relief that it was not Whistler was so great that for a moment I felt as if all doubt and uncertainty was at an end. But I watched his face with care and saw a strange, unreadable series of emotions play quickly over it, and when none of them could be interpreted as unalloyed joy every drop of the spurious relief vanished in a moment and I saw his face as if it were looking at me from an old photograph already fading. In those few seconds before anyone spoke I thought: it’s over, I’ve lost him. And a desolation greater than any loneliness I’ve ever experienced swept into me like a heavy wind and made me shut my eyes and hold my breath.

  But it was not to prove so simple and absolute. Toby grasped a grinning John by his free hand and exploded into a welcome which sounded to my frightened, over-sensitive ears a shade too hearty. He passed John into the room and that left him facing me, and I summoned all my courage to look at him. His face was sober and there was no pretence in it. His eyes told me directly that something had happened, was happening, but now, looking at him, I felt a glimmer of hope. I don’t know what it came from, but something in his expression must have shown that he retained some strong feeling for me which could be worked on.