Should We Fall Behind, page 18
‘We all cooked in my gaff,’ he said, aware he was disrupting some sort of daydream. ‘We had to or we’d have no dinner.’ He didn’t know what else to say.
‘Yes, this was the way it was for us too,’ the woman said distractedly.
‘Well tell your fella he’s a lucky man and I said so, for what it’s worth.’
The woman breathed in and when she exhaled it was carried on a deep sigh.
‘Have you found your friend?’ she said. He shook his head. ‘Will you stay until you do?’
He hadn’t thought that far ahead. ‘I suppose I’ll stay as long as it takes or until the big bloke shifts me off his land.’
‘Nikos Makrides?’
‘Maybe, the Greek fella. He came around today. He said there’d been complaints.’
‘Some people like to complain about everything. He did not kick you again I hope.’
The incident in the doorway of Makrides’ shop was just days earlier but already seemed a lifetime ago. The woman lingered. She didn’t seem to want to leave but she didn’t seem to want to stay either.
‘Well, you’ve been very kind,’ Jimmy said. ‘They must be proud of you, your family. Your husband and kids.’ He placed the container on the seat and stuck his hand through the window. ‘My name’s Jimmy, by the way.’
She took a small step backwards. Jimmy looked at his hand: dirt embedded into the skin like ink, thick in the spaces around his fingernails. He retracted it quickly.
The woman said, ‘Jimmy, you should go to your family. Someone will be missing you. Children, even grown up ones, are precious. You should go home.’
He wiped his hands on his trousers but the dirt remained unshifted.
‘If you need money for train fare, I can help you. Just ask me.’
The woman walked away. When she neared the entrance, he shouted after her.
‘My mum died. My dad’s a waste of space. There’s no family waiting for me.’
She stopped in her tracks, She didn’t turn to face him but instead looked up to the sky and he watched from the shelter of the car as the spray of rain reverted to great splotches which belted down on her.
Before Jimmy met Betwa, he hadn’t spoken about his family to anyone for a very long time. At first he found it hard to listen to her talking about her own mother without mentioning his; he felt the anguish written across her face. But she wasn’t like him really. She was running away and he knew she’d find her way back. When he finally spoke of his mother, he said,
‘She was too young to go and we were too young to be left.’
‘Sorry,’ was all Betwa could say. There were no other words and besides, he knew she meant it. She was sorry for the things he’d lost but she couldn’t know that by speaking of them he was handing over something broken, in hope of some kind of salvation. Really it was respite he wanted, not repair: if she could carry his pain for just a moment it would be made lighter, and when it was delivered back to him, with another person’s touch upon it, he’d know it was okay not to be completely fixed. Being broken didn’t mean he couldn’t be pulled up if he’d somehow fallen behind.
In the car, after the old woman left, he ate the biriyani from the Tupperware and thought about all of this as best he could. The car was the first space he’d had to himself in a long time and the thick mist in his brain cleared a little as he spent time there. When the tub was empty, he leaned back in the driver’s seat and thought about what he’d told Betwa on the walk up to the festival all those days ago.
One minute Mam was there, the next she was gone and we had Jenny instead. No one ever spoke about it. I didn’t know what’d happened to her ‘til years later. I just missed her. I used to call out for her in the night and Ant would climb in my bed and hold me. He was only a little kid himself. Nan stayed for a few weeks and came whenever she could but it must’ve been hard for her; it was her daughter after all. Sometimes she’d take Jenny away for a night or two but Frank always wanted her back by the weekend. He said she belonged to him even though he didn’t really know what to do with her.
By the time they’d reached the river, he’d told Betwa the bulk of it. He wanted to tell her more. He needed someone to know he didn’t blame Ant for what happened later. At the time, he’d made his brother feel bad about going and now there was no way to make it better.
‘Don’t go, Ant. Don’t leave us behind,’ he’d said when Ant told him he was moving out.
Ant said, ‘I’ve got to, Jimmy. I can’t be around here any longer. I’ve done my stint. Besides, there’s some space in a squat near the blue bridge, close to the garage so I’ll always be on time for work. I’m a grown man and I’ve got to start living for myself.’
‘You’re abandoning us.’
‘I’m not, Jimbo. I promise. I’m just abandoning this place. It’s suffocating me. If I don’t get out now, I never will. I need to start living a little. Anyway, when I’ve got some money saved I’ll search for our house in the Lakes and you and me and Jenny will be together again. And Nan if she wants.’
Then, just a couple of months later, Jimmy’s mobile rang in the middle of the night as he slept next to Ant’s empty bed and he knew before he answered that his brother was gone for good too. Jenny wouldn’t listen when he crept into her bedroom to tell her; she put her hands over her ears and screamed. Frank came in to see what all the wailing was about and when Jimmy told him, he watched his father leave the room without uttering a sound. Soon after, Jen moved in with Nan and refused to see both Frank and him.
‘Give her time, son,’ Nan said. ‘We all grieve in different ways. She’ll come round. You’re all she’s got now. ‘
‘She’s got you, Nan,’ he said.
‘Oh Jimmy, you’ve both got me. I wish I could take you in too but you know I don’t have the room.’
He did know; the flat was Council and as tiny as a shoebox.
‘Anyway, your father needs you more than ever. One day you’ll understand. It’s one thing to lose your wife, but losing a child is something else altogether. As for Jenny, don’t give up on her, Jimmy lad. You’re going to need each other one day. I’m not going to be around forever.’
He really wished he’d had a chance to tell all those things to Betwa that day on the way to the festival, but the small boy appeared sobbing by the tree and she’d run ahead towards him.
20. NIKOS
Ourania had never thrown a pot. She’d never even sat at a potter’s wheel until Stella, one of the regular congregation at St Barnabas, invited her to a taster class at the school around the corner from the Orthodox church. The woman’s husband suggested it, Ourania told Nikos one morning as he sipped bitter coffee on the patio while she pruned the lilac buddleia which lined the edge of the lawn.
‘What does an ugly old goat need a chaperone for?’ he replied. ‘You are too easily fooled. It’s so she can park in our driveway and pretend she associates with us.’
‘Really, Nikos, sometimes you are unnecessarily hard. Stella is ten years younger than me, at least. She is not at all like a goat. Anyway, it was her husband, Yannis’ idea for her to ask me. Perhaps he thinks she needs friends. Perhaps they both do. Their youngest child has recently gone to live in Athens.’
‘Pah! Exactly. Her husband is a buzzard. These people are nobody.’
‘We should be kind to them. Their children, like ours, have flown away. We know more than most how heartbreaking this is. Perhaps Stella is missing them and the pottery class is her way of trying to fill her life with new things, new people. So many her age still have their children with them. She is lonely. So what if they want to park for free? We are lucky to live in such a street. They are not so fortunate. Perhaps I too need something more to fill the gap. Why don’t we invite them to eat with us one Sunday after church? Perhaps you and Yannis can also become friends?’
‘These mainland people look down on us. We don’t need them. You are my life, and I yours, and Dimitri and George. They will come to visit soon and then there’ll be no gap inside you. Besides, it’s not so long since they last left; you’ll get used to it. And we can visit in the summer again, as soon as I find a good manager for the shop. Anyway, we don’t need friends. Friends become a burden.’
‘Perhaps,’ Ourania said but he knew she was a long way from being convinced. He would prove it to her.
‘Only you, my sweet, never let me down.’ he said.
Ourania stroked the side of his hair just above his ear. ‘Sometimes you are a funny man, Nikos. I love you but you know better than many that no-one should be lonely. I will go to the class with Stella and I will allow her to park on our drive and, if she wants to be friends, I will invite her and her buzzard husband for coffee and baklava.’
Soon pottery became a part of Ourania’s life. Every Tuesday, Stella pulled up on the drive and the two women walked around the corner to the little school where the classes took place. Whenever Nikos was at home, Ourania always waved as she and Stella were about to disappear out of sight and he was always ready to wave back, standing at the window or the front door, watching her walk away with her friend, to pursue a hobby she was coming to love. At the end of her first term, she brought home an ashtray painted in the copper colour of the island flag and decorated in a pattern of deep green olive leaves which snaked the rim like a wreath.
Well into the fifth year of classes, Nikos returned late from work expecting to see Stella’s red Polo parked badly on the driveway, leaving him little room to manoeuvre in his own car. But there was no Polo on the drive and when he entered the house, Ourania was alone in their living room, sitting on the settee with her head resting on the palms of her hands staring into space. The muted television was switched on to an old episode of Escape To The Sun.
‘What’s wrong? Why aren’t you in your class?’ he said. She didn’t answer. He sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. She laid her head on his chest and started to cry, silently at first but then loud like a baby, sobbing into his shirt and vest.
‘What is it, my love?’ he repeated gently.
‘She is leaving. There will be no more pottery class.’
‘Oh, is that all?’ Nikos said with a sigh of relief. In his mind all sorts of disasters had befallen them. He wanted to say, thank God nothing has happened to Dimitri or George. Instead he said, more flippantly than intended, ‘The teacher? That’s no big thing, they will easily find a replacement.’
‘No, it is Stella who is leaving.’ Ourania replied and he sighed with relief yet again.
‘Ah, then you can still go to your class. It’s not so bad if you can still make your pots.’ And in that exact moment he decided he would build her a place to do her pottery whenever she wished.
It was Kostas who’d suggested they buy the few square metres of land when it first came up for sale. Let’s make a motorbike park, Nikos. Or a music studio he’d said. Or perhaps we can plant trees and make the space a secret garden with a back gate leading to it for all those children you will have as soon as your little Ourania comes to stay, eh godson!’ We have the money. Let’s use it to make something of beauty in this ugly world. Nikos never forgot the conversation and vowed to hold on to the land, fulfilling Kostas’ dream of a space to do something creative, liberated, unexpected. Now he’d decided, it would be a special place where Ourania could find freedom and peace.
‘You don’t understand, Nikos,’ she said. ‘Stella is leaving. My friend is leaving. Yannis too. Our friends. Their youngest daughter is having a child, in Athens. They are going home, to support their child, to be near their grandchildren, to be part of their lives as they grow up. She won’t be coming back here with so much to look forward to. She says it will just be for a year but who ever comes back? Why would they? There is nothing so attractive here.’
He listened quietly, all the time wondering how he would build the surprise without her finding out so he could present her with the key on their anniversary. He thought about what a pottery shed might contain and how he would get hold of such equipment. After a short pause he said, ‘Okay, my love, I understand.’
Stella and Yannis left one icy February morning with four bulky suitcases stuffed with teddy bears, blankets and romper suits from Mothercare, jars of Marmite in bubble-wrap and a small bowl decorated with yellow sunflowers, made by Ourania in their last term of pottery class together. Nikos began working on the pottery shed as soon as the weather was more clement. In snatched hours over the summer months, he dug the foundations and built up the first few layers of brick but by autumn Ourania was dead, all of a sudden after just a week of illness, no warning, no chance to prepare, no chance to ask her how he should live the rest of his life without her by his side. She was gone in a cruel instant and the shed remained as a reminder of their curtailed life, as a pile of bricks and rubble hidden behind a path of weeds.
21. EBELE
Ebele knocked on Grace and Mandy’s door. There was no answer. Piano music seeped from within the flat; it was epic, rising in volume. She knocked again, this time hammering loudly. She held a scrawled note in her hand; block capitals, child-like handwriting. When the door swung open, she flipped over the note so the words were visible and she held it across her chest. It said, GO AWAY. WE DON’T WANT YOU HERE
‘What the fuck?’
‘It’s not actually for you, Mandy, although you can take it if you want.’ Ebele looked at the glass of wine in Mandy’s hand. She longed for a drink; the vodka was almost gone and payday was still days away. ‘Disturbing you, am I?’ she said.
‘Jeez, Ebele, you get crazier by the day. And yes, we were watching a movie.’
Grace appeared. ‘What is it, Ebele?’ she asked gently.
‘The man you thought it was okay to ignore is still lurking there, looking up at Tuli’s room; watching her window.’
‘What?’
‘The tramp in the car at the back of your garden. He’s there. Looking at us. Watching us.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Mandy said. Grace nudged her aside.
‘I didn’t say to ignore him, Ebele. I said we’d deal with it in the morning. You know, on a work day when the right services are open.’
‘The police are open all the time.’
Grace and Mandy glanced at each other.
‘What exactly are you worried about?’ Mandy said.
‘Are you serious, Mandy? There’s a strange bloke watching our houses at night. Aren’t you worried? Also, I think there may be more than one person in the car. Two, possibly three. Is that okay too? I’ve seen another person going to and fro – a woman. It’s like they’ve set up home.’
She knew she was being over-dramatic but she didn’t care. Her chest was tight but she did her best to keep her voice steady.
Mandy looked at her incredulously.
‘What are you talking about? It’s just a bloke sleeping rough. He’ll be gone tomorrow.’
‘What if tomorrow is too late, Mandy? I’ve looked online and half of these so-called homeless people aren’t homeless at all – they just do it to get money, you know, making people feel sorry for them because they’re too damn lazy to do anything else. Sometimes they even have nice houses to go back to.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Mandy repeated.
‘Actually, Mandy, it’s not ridiculous; it says on one website that most of them have been to prison. He could be a murderer for all we know. And some people do anything to get to children. They’re everywhere, these people.’
‘Jesus!’
‘What if he hurts someone in the night?’
‘She’s off her fucking rocker, Grace. I told you she was. She spends too much time in her virtual reality and not enough time in the real world. Maybe actually, Ebele, the poor bugger has just found himself in the shit without a paddle.’
‘Mandy, ssh. Go inside, I’ll deal with it.’ Grace said.
‘I don’t need dealing with, and I’m not off my fucking rocker, Mandy. And I’ve hit rock bottom before but I’ve not ended up living in a broken up old car, staring at little kids through their bedroom windows.‘
‘Bloody hell, Ebele, you don’t think much of your fellow man, do you?’
‘That bloke is nothing to me,’ Ebele said.
When Mandy stomped back into their flat, Grace said, ‘Calm yourself down, Ebele, you are being a bit over the top. It’s probably nothing like you imagine. We’ve left a message for Mr Makrides already and I’m sure he’ll evict the fella if he’s even still there tomorrow.’
‘I’ve told Makrides too; he’s been round to mine already today but he’s too cowardly to do anything about it so I’ll have to deal with it myself. Anyway, I’m just here to ask you to keep an ear out for Tuli. She’s flat out asleep upstairs.’
‘Why? Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to tell him to sling his hook, of course. I can’t sleep knowing he is out there.’
‘Why don’t you ask your new boyfriend to sort it out?’ Mandy shouted from inside the flat. ‘He looks like he can handle himself if things get messy.’
‘I don’t need a man to look after me, or my child, thanks Mandy. And, he’s not my boyfriend, just someone I work with, that’s all.’
Asking Daban to evict the tramp wasn’t such a bad idea though; he was a bouncer in another job after all. She tucked the thought away.
‘Keep a listen out for Tuli, will you please, Grace?’ she said in a softer voice.
‘Don’t be silly, Ebele. Just leave it until the morning can’t you? What are you going to achieve by going out now in the rain?’
‘Tuli will be fine if you can’t be bothered though, Grace. She’s fast asleep and I’ll only be a few minutes. Go on, get back to your cosy film night and your fancy wine.’
