Should We Fall Behind, page 13
Three weeks later Kostas handed Nikos an airmail letter with a Larnaca postmark. It said,
Dear Nikos Makrides,
Thank you for your very informative letter. I know very little about music and even less about England but I am glad to be informed on both counts.
I remember the egg competition but not you. It was the first time I ever won at anything.
You may write to me again and I permit you to call me Ourania.
From
Ourania Dimitriou
Nikos read the short letter again and again, running his fingertips over the pale blue paper and raising it to his face in the hope of detecting some lingering aroma of Ourania on it. He searched for words between lines of ink, imagining wistful sentences drifting through her mind only to be curtailed before reaching paper. For the whole of the day he walked with a skip in his step, smiling at strangers between Shifnal Road and the store on Grand Parade and, at lunchtime, he ate a hearty lunch of Turkish gozleme and rice-stuffed vine leaves. When Kostas returned from the wholesalers later in the afternoon, he said to Nikos,
‘One little note from a girl over two thousand miles away and you’re behaving like you’ve won gold at the Olympic Games.’
Nikos replied jokingly, ‘Uncle, shall I ask her if she has a friend for you? Maybe a spinster aunt or some other old maid in Anafotia?’
‘No thank you, I can sort out my own love-life,’ Kostas said with good grace, but when Nikos began whistling along to some jangly pop-song on the radio, he snapped. ‘Shut up, Nikos! For goodness sake, all this cheerfulness is giving me a headache.’
‘Maybe you should marry one of these ‘loves’ of your life, Uncle and then I can have a little nephew or niece to run around after, to take my mind off Ourania.’
‘Be quiet, Nikos. Don’t behave like a donkey. I don’t need you to take on the role of some interfering hag back home. I came to this country to escape this kind of talk and to keep my private life private. It has nothing to do with you who I see or spend time with. We don’t all want to marry village girls who know nothing of the wider world.’
Kostas was generally a genial man and Nikos was taken aback by his outburst. He stopped whistling and didn’t mention Ourania or the letter for the rest of the day. Instead, he spent the time daydreaming about the girl, imagining her going about her village in her pale yellow cotton dress. Later, over supper, Kostas said, ‘I’m sorry, Nikos. I am tired. It’s been a busy time. You be happy, my boy. Love is a strange and unexpected thing. Sometimes it happens in places we least want it to and other times, like you, right on our doorstep. You have such a strong feeling for this girl so you must act on it, and if you can find a way to make her love you back then you are a lucky man. Good luck, nephew.’
Nikos wrote to Ourania almost every day after this. He started a new letter each Sunday and by the time Friday came the letters were five or six pages long and ready to post. He’d spent less than twenty minutes talking face to face with her but somehow this didn’t matter. He told her everything in the letters: names of songs he discovered for the first time; articles or books he read (often as recommendations from Kostas) and how they made him feel: sad, amused, angry, perplexed or just plain bored. He told her about Indian food which made his mouth erupt like a volcano and about football hooligans who threw bricks through the windows of restaurants where they served such food; he told of the stern woman everyone disliked but who was certain to become the next Prime Minister of the country. He described the wide pathways and huge trees in the park at the end of Grand Parade, and his walks to the big glass palace on the hill where television was first broadcast. He told her about streets teeming with rubbish and jostling crowds of scowling people at bus stops and stations, and how he longed to sit quietly under an olive tree and listen to goat bells in the distance instead of the wailing sirens and the growl of traffic which swamped him in the city. He told her about fish-fingers and cotton wool bread which tasted of nothing but air, and salads with no oregano, lemon juice or even olive oil. He told her how people were poorer here than he could have imagined and how they all looked under their seats on buses and in bars in case there were bombs beneath them. He told her that even in the middle of this dirty brown smokey city there were beautiful gardens as green as the flat leaf parsley which grew in abundance back home.
Ourania wrote back occasionally; once or twice a month a new letter arrived at the house on Shifnal Road and he savoured it as if he were sipping some fine wine or eating the most exquisite kataifi. Her letters were short and to the point: about the workings of the watermelon farm, the tasks lined up for the week, whether she’d been to the beach near Mazotos or shopping in Larnaca. As his letters became even longer and less inhibited, eventually hers did too. He began to address her as Nia and then, on his twenty-fifth birthday he wrote her a letter in a drunken haze whilst listening to Kostas’ cassette of sensual songs by a woman called Summer.
‘This will get you in the mood for dancing,’ Kostas said in English. ‘Everyone should dance on their birthday.’
But Nikos wanted to write to Ourania instead so he slipped out of the room leaving Uncle Kostas to pour more ouzo into the glasses of his Indian friends from next door. Their laughter trickled through the house, seeping into the coldest corners and the warmth this generated, together with the red wine consumed over his special birthday dinner, helped to loosen his pen and propel him to express things he may otherwise never have written. The letter was short, just two pages. At the end of it he said,
‘I think of you all the time. I know I shouldn’t be saying these things. I know it isn’t right or decent but when I think of you I imagine holding you close to me, feeling your skin next to mine, your lips on mine, our bodies entwined. I need you here beside me, next to me. I dream about you in the day but it is the dreams under the cover of night which make me yearn for you the most.
He sealed and posted the letter whilst it was still his birthday, before he had a change of heart, and then he slept deeply without dreaming. The following week, he received a typically succinct reply, in which Ourania said she would like to see him and maybe he should find a way to come to Cyprus so they could talk about the future. He wrote a rushed scrawl to his mother.
Dear Mama
I want to make the girl from Anafotia my wife. Please tell me what I should do to make this happen.
Your loving son, Nikos.
Ten days later there was a phone call.
‘Nikolaki mou, come home,’ Mama said. ‘See her father, ask him for permission and we will make the arrangement.’
By the time Nikos made it back to Cyprus, his twenty-sixth birthday had been and gone.
In the living room, surrounded by Ourania’s clothes, he picked up a photo album which sat on a nearby shelf and allowed memories to transport him back to those times. The shrill ringtone of his mobile startled him from his reverie. He aborted the call without checking the number. It rang again a moment later and dragged him firmly back to a stark present. This time he looked at the contact, It was the shop-girl, Ebele Mangaroo, on the other end.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘Don’t you know it’s Sunday?.’
‘Yes, but it makes no difference,’ she said. Her words were garbled and he found it hard to keep up. ‘You need to do something about the man on your land. It’s dangerous having someone like that around children. It’s your fault for not removing the car. If anything happens to my daughter, you’ll be to blame,’
‘What the bloody hell are you talking about, Mangaroo? This will have to wait – it’s early and I’m busy. Tell me tomorrow, whatever this nonsense is.’
He silenced the phone and pushed it into his pocket. The photo album lay on his lap, open at a page which captured the last visit he made to Cyprus with his wife by his side. It was a year before she died in his arms in the same hospital where she’d given birth to both their sons. Let me go, agape mou were her last words before she closed her eyes for the final time. A quiet nurse put her hand on his shoulder and told him Ourania had gone, but then his wife’s body jerked in a spasm which startled them both.
‘No,’ he insisted, ‘she is moving. She is trying to stay alive. Can’t you see this, you silly woman?’
A dreadful moan emanated from Ourania’s limp body which, had he not been holding her at the time, he would have sworn was not of this earth. Nikos fell to his knees muttering, zoe mou, zoe mou, until the nurse got down beside him and allowed him to rest his head on her bony shoulder.
Ourania’s deathly wail haunted Nikos deep at night when he was alone in their bed. At first he tried to block out the noise, burying his head under the covers, imagining she was still on the other side of the sheets. He tried to conjure up some remnant of her clinging to the duvet: a smell, a crease, a trace of her make-up but as fear subsided he gave in, embracing the terrors, reassuring himself – It is just my Ourania letting me know she is waiting for me.
In the photographs, Ourania’s hair was speckled grey and she wore the dowdy beige of an old woman but her eyes sparkled out from the page, as bright as the first day Nikos saw her, across the sombre graveyard. He welled up, just as the phone in his pocket began to vibrate.
13. TULI
On Sunday morning before Mummy woke up, Tuli drew a picture of Real Daddy and Jamal Daddy holding hands with Storyman in front of the broken car, but she didn’t know what colour to make Real Daddy’s hair so she screwed up the paper and threw it under her bed.
She couldn’t remember Real Daddy. Mostly he was a smell of beer and stinky cigarettes. Sometimes he was a tiptoe across her bedroom late at night when he came to kiss the top of her head, or he was a noise of shouting across the landing when she was half-asleep in her cot. He left two days after she toddled across the room and into his arms for the first time without falling over. At least this was what she’d heard Mummy tell Grace when she wasn’t supposed to be listening. Real Daddy was just a made-up picture in her head, like the ones she drew with crayons or felt tips of stick people in bright triangular clothes. Mummy didn’t show her photographs; she said there weren’t any but she was always looking at people on her phone so Real Daddy must have been in there somewhere. The only thing she remembered properly was sometimes there would be singing and the guitar would play, when the day was disappearing and she was falling into dreams. Mummy’s singing wasn’t good but Real Daddy’s was soft like warm blankets; it made her fly through clouds. One day she asked Jamal Daddy to play the guitar and do the soft singing which gave her wings but he didn’t know what she meant and Mummy said, ‘Jamal isn’t a musician, Tuli. You must have imagined something.’
When Jamal Daddy left the room, her mother said,
‘Don’t talk about the guitar and singing. It’s just a dream from a different time, Tuli. That Daddy doesn’t exist anymore.’
‘Jamal Daddy isn’t the music daddy?’ Tuli asked, just to be sure.
‘No,’ Mummy said. ‘The music daddy has gone.’ And it was the last they spoke of him. Like ice-cream melted away. It didn’t matter much. She liked Jamal Daddy: his growly voice was like the bear on CBeebies and the way he tickled her made laughter shake through her body. On her birthday, he baked chocolate cake with a number five made of Smarties across the top. As a present he gave her a Buckaroo game like the one he had when he was a little boy.
Mummy asked if she wanted to invite some of the other children from school to watch her blow out the candles and play with the Buckaroo but Tuli knew they wouldn’t come. Jamal Daddy was her friend and he would play the game with her. Mostly now, she remembered she was sad on her birthday because Jamal Daddy and Mummy shouted at each other when they thought she couldn’t hear.
‘It’s not right for a child to have no friends. It’s strange. She’s too quiet – it’s no wonder the other kids don’t play with her.’
I am strange, Tuli knew this already, it was what the other children told her.
‘She’s not strange, Jamal! Don’t call Tuli strange,’ her mother said.
‘I didn’t say she was strange; I said it is strange. It’s not normal to always be locked in your own head like she is. She should be across the road in the park running about with other kids, skipping and stuff. You talk to her like she’s an adult. She’s your child, Ebele, not your emotional prop.’
Tuli put her hands over her ears but it didn’t block the shouting.
‘You’re a construction worker, Jamal, not a fucking psychologist. You’re not even a parent so don’t tell me about my own child. She’s normal.’
‘Well there you go! You never really let me in do you? I love that kid but you never let anybody in. What are you scared of? That you might actually begin to give a shit about someone?’
‘You’re not her dad, Jamal. She’s mine. I choose what’s right or wrong for her. I’m all she needs. Other people just let you down anyway.’
‘Jesus, Ebele. You just block them out. Don’t teach her to do it too. It’s not healthy. We all need other people, even you.’
‘Fuck off with your sermon, Jamal. Children can be cruel. Really cruel. I’m just protecting her. Life is cruel enough already.’
Tuli didn’t know what it meant when Mummy told Jamal Daddy he wasn’t her father. She hated this kind of grown-up talking where nothing made sense and people said mean things to each other. She didn’t want them to be angry with each other because of her. Mummy would cry later, as soon as Jamal Daddy went out the door with a loud slam. It was what always happened after this kind of shouting. It wasn’t a happy birthday.
Being five seemed to bring more sadness into her world. Jamal Daddy and Mummy weren’t very good friends anymore, except when they were cuddling in the middle of the night. Sometimes she needed a cuddle at night too, when bad dreams came to scare her but they shouted at her in one voice if she disturbed them. She kept Froggy close in case she was frightened at night: she didn’t want to make her parents more grumpy with each other than they already were. She’d noticed they’d stopped laughing together too since her birthday. She wondered why five made everything different. Even the tickling stopped and she missed rolling like a ball on the carpet while Jamal Daddy giggled until his shoulders shook. By the time her sixth birthday arrived he wasn’t there at all.
She remembered the night before she saw Jamal Daddy for the last time. He read the final chapter of her Sophie book. Sophie and she were the same age, they even looked a bit like each other except Sophie’s skin was white and freckled, but Sophie had a pony and that wasn’t very fair; Tuli didn’t even have a dog or a cat. Jamal Daddy was a good reader; he never yawned in the middle of a chapter and his reading voice made her sleepy in the way she remembered Real Daddy’s singing did. Jamal Daddy didn’t say goodnight that last evening, just see you later, little Tuls. In the morning, Mummy’s eyes were as red as Froggy’s scarf but she wouldn’t tell where Jamal Daddy was or when he was coming back. It was the first day they watched grown-up telly all day in pyjamas, even though it wasn’t a weekend. On her sixth birthday it was just her and Mummy, and the cake was from Tesco and looked just like the ones Grandy gave her on days which weren’t even birthdays. She wondered if Jamal was making a chocolate cake with Smarties for a different little girl now. Mummy bought her another Sophie book as a present but when she opened it, it said To Rosa on the inside. Mummy got red eyes again when Tuli said she didn’t want it. She didn’t say it was because it was really Rosa’s book. She left it on the floor next to the torn up rainbow wrapping paper.
When it was properly light, Tuli stopped drawing and looked for Storyman through the window. She couldn’t see him but the door to the car was open so she knew he must be still there. She wanted to talk to him again. She wanted to ask him which book he was from but Mummy was home all morning, lying on the sofa bed in pyjamas.
Usually Sundays were Tuli’s favourite time, when they woke up late and ate breakfast and lunch in one go and Mummy read stories without looking at the clock. Sometimes, they walked to the big park for fresh air and ate doughnuts on the way home. Today Mummy didn’t want fresh air: she said all she wanted to do was stay in, but if Tuli really wanted to go out she’d put her coat over her pyjamas and they could go to Hazelwood across the road for a short while. Tuli said no thank you because really she just wanted to be in Grandy’s garden, but Grandy were out with their friends and they didn’t leave keys because Mandy was still angry about the books on the chair and the way Mummy spoke to her.
Tuli didn’t speak to her mother about Storyman again; Mummy hardly ever read books these days so she wouldn’t know he was a story thing and not a stranger or the dirty tramp she’d heard her talking about. Sometimes, Grandy gave Mummy books as presents but she threw them under her bed, preferring to look at pictures of people on her phone. She couldn’t understand why Mummy wanted to look inside other people’s houses or their dogs and dinners all the time instead of reading stories. Even at six, she knew books were more interesting; they let you go to places without having to get on a bus or an aeroplane. Phone pictures just made Mummy grumpy. After breakfast, Tuli saw Storyman standing next to the car-house and she jumped up and down to try and make him notice her in the window. Once or twice he looked up at the house next door but he didn’t seem to see her and she wondered if she’d become invisible. She got the blue stool from under the bathroom sink, stood on it and waved at him until her arm hurt. Froggy waved too but Storyman still didn’t wave back. When she heard Mummy in the kitchen, she quickly climbed down and pretended to read her book to Froggy. It was about a strong girl called Pippi who lived in a big house without grown-ups. Tuli couldn’t read all the big words but she liked Pippi and she liked the pictures too. She wondered if Storyman knew Pippi, whether all the story people from books had assemblies like at school so they could get claps and gold stars for being the best.
