The Power of a Lie Shahireh Sharif
Amongst the familiar and anonymous faces of work colleagues and acquaintances saying their last goodbyes to my father, he was the only one that I recall. That said, if it weren’t for his tight embrace and the genuine-looking tear in his eye as he offered his condolences, I might not have remembered him three days later when I was waiting for a taxi. He pulled over and offered me a lift. I told him I was going to Baharestan which apparently was on his way. His car, a white Peykan Javanan overtaken by the stench of lingered tobacco, had miniature prayer beads dangling from its rearview mirror. He had a tattoo on his upper arm, mostly covered by the short sleeve of his off-white T-shirt. He didn’t seem the type that my father would associate with. I asked him how he knew my father and his response added to the aura of mystery that surrounded him.
“We must talk about that, but not now.” He suggested we met up after the seventh day of my father’s departure ceremony. His response to such a simple and basic question didn’t make sense. I don’t normally care for people who make everything more complex than necessary. Any other time I would have made an excuse and walked away. But how could I miss the opportunity of knowing something about one of my late father’s unusual acquaintances. I agreed to meet up. The only information that he offered on that occasion was his name, Majid.
Four days later, as I joined the men in the close family and friends circle in the local barber to have our beard – the sign of mourning – shaved, I was still thinking about Majid. I wondered if he should have been included.
Next day, I arrived at the coffee shop a few minutes before our appointment. Majid was already there. He was sitting at a table in the corner, staring into an empty space in front of him. I followed his gaze and got to an exposed white wire that covered the short distance between the electricity socket and a fluorescent, wall-mounted light. Majid startled as I said hello. I asked for coffee. Majid ordered tea. He sat back in his
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chair, his left hand stroking his stubble; he was looking at the menu card on the table, a deliberate attempt to avoid eye contact? I took a tissue from the semi-circle napkin holder on the table and wiped clean the sweat beads on my forehead. The row of tissues was packed vertically. Even the cinnamon scent in the air appeared forced and synthetic as if from an aerosol. I wished I hadn’t agreed to meet with Majid. Neither of us said anything for a while. I looked at the couple sitting at a table next to us. The man kept talking nonstop and the murmur of his voice echoing back from the woman’s wide shoulder pads was beginning to get painful. The young waiter reappearing at out table was a blessing. Now we had our drinks to divert our attention to.
It is ridiculous, we are here to talk. Finally, with a shaky voice, I asked, “so Majid agha how did you know my father?”
He put a sugar cube in his mouth before drinking a sip of his tea. “I didn’t know him” was all he said before getting back to drinking his tea. As he spoke, in my mind I was going over terrifying scenarios that he might have told me in response to my question. So, I heard his actual response with a delay, or maybe it was the echo of his voice that I heard. I glanced at the woman at the next table. How I hated this fashion trend.
Majid slurped his tea and continued, “No! I didn’t know him, but I knew of him and I became aware of his death by reading the obituary column in the paper.” He took another sip from his tea. “I knew then the time had come for you to know the truth.”
“And what truth would that be, Sir?” I swallowed, waiting to be hit with some nasty news.
“The fact that I am your uncle, your mother’s brother.”
I sighed. What he was saying was a lot more digestible than the nightmares that I had imagined. A lost uncle I could dealt with. “How come I have never met you, then?”
He finished the rest of his tea, and only as he was putting the empty glass beaker back on the table did he resume.
“Because of the man who was buried seven days ago. He was also the reason that you never knew your real mother.”
I stood up, I was fully aware that the couple in the coffee shop were staring at us but it didn’t make me lower my tone of
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voice. This time though, my words did not echo back from the woman’s shoulder pads, instead they were absorbed by them. “Now, Sir, I came here in good faith, but what gives you the right? I don’t know what your game is but have some respect for the deceased.” I took out a note of currency that would more than cover our bill, and put it on the table then walked out.
Majid followed me outside the coffee shop and held my arm. “Please ask your relatives about your real mother. We talk when you are ready to talk.” He handed me a piece of paper with a number written on it. “I can be contacted on this number; let me know when you want to talk.”
I walked aimlessly through the streets trying to make sense of what Majid was saying. In the end I decided he was talking nonsense. I ripped the paper with his phone number in two and put the pieces in my pocket to drop them in a bin later. After a couple of hours, I got into a taxi and went home.
Despite telling myself that I did not believe Majid, I found myself taking the old family photo album from one of the boxes in the storage room and looking through the photos. The earliest photo I found of my childhood was a faded Polaroid photo of my mother holding me in her arms. I took the two pieces of paper from my pocket and Sellotaped them together. I read Majid’s number aloud.
It was almost nine o’clock but I scooped up the photo album and went to my aunt. She was surprised to see me but as always received me with a big hug. I apologised for appearing on her doorstep that late. We went to the kitchen. She was clearly half way through her meal. She added another plate for me and sliced two tomatoes, putting he pieces in an oval serving dish next to a couple of Kotlets. “We have vegetable Kotlets and I have made plenty,” she said, filling my plate.
“Was I adopted?” I asked without any introduction. She nearly dropped the serving dish. I stood up and took the dish off her, pulled a chair out and help her to seat down. There was a short silence before she broke into tears.
“Why are you asking this?”
“There is no photo of my mother being pregnant or of me when I was smaller than a toddler.” I held the album in front
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of her face.
“For God sake! The day that my poor sister took you home was the happiest day of her life.” She pushed the photo album away. “You know how strict your father was. God bless his soul! He didn’t like his wife posing for photos and she respected his wish.” Tears started to roll down her face. “They were good to you; they loved you, didn’t they? What is this questioning? Has anyone said something?”
I passed her a tissue. She continued. “They have never short-changed you; you were like a real son to them.”
“Like a real son!”
She started sobbing, “No, no, I didn’t mean that.”
“Please don’t cry.”
“Your father, God bless his soul, hasn’t been buried for long. Why are you making him turn in his grave? What should they have done for you that they haven’t already?”
“Please aunt, I am not denying that they loved me ... and I love them, but I need to know.” I sat on a chair next to her, held her hand in mine. Gently, I said, “don’t I deserve to know the truth? Please auntie tell me the truth.”
“Who have you been taking to?”
“So, it is true then?”
“No, I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to say it aloud. I was adopted, wasn’t I?”
“You were loved. Your mother became a different person with you, almost an angel.
“Why didn’t they tell me that I was adopted?”
She wiped her eyes. It took a while before she responded. “Your father was adamant. No one was to talk about your past.”
“My past! What past? I was only a baby. How could I have had a past?”
She got up and walked to the sink and splashed her face with water. She looked much paler when finally she sat and stayed motionless at the table.
“Please eat something,” she said finally. I looked at her and remained quiet. “Yes, let’s forget all this nonsense and eat.” She pushed my plate nearer to me and held up the basket of bread.
“I’m sorry but I can’t leave things alone.”
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“Your father’s spirit isn’t happy when you dig up the past. You are my caring, sweet, loving nephew. Can we focus on that, please – for me?”
“Auntie, I love you and you’ll always be my dear aunt, no matter what. But I must find out who I am. Since a few hours ago, I’ve been in limbo. The person that I thought I was, never existed and suddenly a person with a completely new identity has replaced that being. Can you imagine how confusing this is for me?”
“I know dear, I know. But what brought this on?”
“I was contacted by someone who said he was my real uncle.”
“Real uncle? Where was he all this time? Who is he?”
“I don’t know. Until a few hours ago, I didn’t even know I was adopted. I don’t know my real mother’s name, never mind knowing where her brother has been all this time.”
“Biological mother dear. Your real mother was my sister, who looked after you and loved you, remember?”
I picked up the jug of water on the worktop. “May I?”
“Of course.” She passed me a glass and went and got the ice cube tray out of the freezer.
“Not for me, thanks.”
She put the tray back in the freezer.
“Please, Auntie, I beg of you. Tell me all you know.” I drank a full glass of water. I hadn’t known how thirsty I was.
She sat back at the table. “There is not much that I know. One day I was told that I am an aunt.” She thought for a short while. “I don’t know, I don’t know anything.” She started to sob again. “No one talked about it when they took you home. And afterwards, when we saw you, we all fell in love. It didn’t matter how you ended up in my sister’s arms. Your mother, God bless her soul, used to say that you were a gift from God, and we all went along with that.” She dried the corners of her eyes.
I poured her some water. She took a sip and continued. “Have you ever been treated badly by anyone in the family?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“So, let’s forget this and eat.” She seemed calmer and was smiling at me “Let’s get some food in you.”
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When I got home the first thing that I did was take down the framed picture of me and my parents from the back wall. It was taken at my graduation ceremony. I took a long look at my mother’s proud smile then left the picture on the coffee table with the back of the frame facing up.
Lying in bed, I tried visualizing my biological parents. I stared at the artex pattern on the white ceiling until it resembled an eye. What colour eyes does she have? Light brown just like her brother Majid? I didn’t know if my parents were still around and, if they were, if they were even interested in me. Why hadn’t they approached me themselves? Why did they put me up for adoption in the first place?
Despite the unusually mild weather for autumn, I felt a chill. I got up and went back to the sitting room. I put the framed photo back on the wall, then went to my father’s bedroom and took my mother’s aubergine scarf blanket. Her scarf wrap was always kept on my father’s bed ever since her departure. I wrapped myself in her shawl and rolled around in bed. The bedside clock read 5am.
When next I awoke, I was still facing the bedside table. It took a while for my eyes to function normally and be able to read the time. 11am. 11! I dressed in a hurry and rushed out.
I didn’t have to explain my late arrival at work. I had only recently returned to work after the funeral and I wasn’t officially classed as a fully functioning member of the team yet. Colleagues were still popping in and out of my office offering their condolences. Some older colleagues had stories to tell about the bravery of my father. His dedication to the tasks in hand came up many times. I couldn’t concentrate on my work at all. I took the piece of paper with Majid’s phone number, stretched my fingers across the Sellotaped part to make it easier to read the number. I dialled.
“I was expecting you, I knew you’d call.”
How could he – particularly as my decision was not even certain to myself until a moment ago?
In response to my silence he continued, “Where are you now?”
“At work.”
“I’m not very far and can pick you up in about 30 minutes.
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By the rear entrance of the building.”
“Do you want to ask for the address first?”
“I know the address. You work at the same office as your late father.”
I remained silent.
“I know more about you than yourself.”
I put the phone down.
“OK, I’m here now and you have my full attention,” I said the moment I got into his car.
He parked a block away from my office and twisted towards me. “I can tell you about your mother.”
The tightness of the space and the lingering tobacco smell was getting to me. “Do you mind if we get out of the car and talk?”
“A fantastic idea!” He locked the doors and we walked away from the main road. The noise of the traffic reduced, making talking easier.”
“Do you know how long I wished for an opportunity like this … you know, to walk with you, talk with you? Get to know you?”
He had his hands in his pocket and was taking small steps. I smirked. “Get to know me? You seem to know more about me than myself. I have to rely on you to tell me who I am.”
I slowed down to his pace.
“It isn’t easy to hear that the past is different to what you were told, I know.”
I wished he’d get straight to the point. “What is this past that you are talking about?” I said.
“It’s not that easy for me to talk about the past, you know.” He took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and held it in front of me.
“No thanks, I don’t smoke.” At least he didn’t know that I was a non-smoker.
He lit one for himself, put his lighter in his pocket. We walked down a pathway. “I never knew who my sister – your mother, that is – was married to.” He looked in my eyes as he continued. “Their marriage was arranged within the organization. She married one of her kind.”
“Her kind?” The sun came out of the greyish clouds for a
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brief moment.
“Our father was a builder who died after an accident at work. He had no insurance cover. Our mother had to work in people’s houses to make ends meet – you know cooking, cleaning, anything that needed doing. Three years after my father, mother died of heart disease, too. My sister and I ended up at the state orphanage. Your mother, Mina was two years older than me.”
So, her name was Mina. I repeated her name. “Mina.”
“Mina was still a teenager when she became involved with a political group. After a few years, she changed.” Majid took a long sigh before continuing. “She began attending secret meetings, and demonstrations. I tried to stop her. I told her off many times, but it had no effect. Those people, I think they brainwashed her. She was no longer the sister that I knew.” He stopped in his trail. I stopped, too.
“She was once arrested, caught distributing leaflets encouraging people to join a demonstration.” He drew in a lungful of smoke and coughed. “She spent two years in prison. I visited her, every week I would go to prison, but I was not always permitted to see her. We grow apart.”
He diverted his focus from the point ahead towards me. “I saw her once after she was released. It was about a year later. She contacted me through a third person to arrange a meeting. I begged her to leave the organization, move away with me to a faraway city where neither the state nor the party could find us. She said she couldn’t. She was marrying someone inside the group. Things were complex, and she was too involved, she said. She couldn’t move away.”
Majid lit another cigarette and I wondered how he could have finished the previous one so quickly. He went on. “She told me that she couldn’t stay in touch with me anymore.” Majid turned his face away. “I begged her to walk away.” I remained quiet. There was a green space with a few benches on the other side of the road. I put my hand on Majid’s shoulder and suggested we cross.
He chose a bench facing the road, looking at the cars passing by he continued. “After a while, she arranged for us to meet up again. She was holding you in her arms when she
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came to see me. Your arrival changed everything. She was ready for a new life. She asked me to help her. The plan was that she would take you away from all the chaos around and the three of us would make a new life together, you, me and her.” He suddenly paused.
It was like a movie. I was watching a movie that I had to catch up with. I was just an observer.
He took a long sigh before turning to yet another cigarette. “That was the last time I saw her. She hoped to build a new life round you. But soon after, their hiding place was discovered. There was an armed fight with the state force and four people living there were shot death. You were the only person who came out alive from that house.” He tossed his lit cigarette on the pavement and held my hands. “The plan was that I look after Mina and her baby, so I applied for a cleaner job in the same orphanage that you ended up. I couldn’t do anything for Mina, I couldn’t save my sister, but I wanted to save you.” He let go of my hands and stood up. “One of the special guard members involved in killing Mina came to adopt you. I heard this from others working in the orphanage. Once they came for you, I followed them. I thought at some point I would steal you and take you away. My sister’s murderer was now looking after her baby. I couldn’t let them win again. But once, when your adopted mum took you out, I saw you together. She was looking at you and making you laugh. It was as if you made her as happy as you made my sister. And when she held you in her arms, I knew that, despite everything, you would be happy with her. I had no right to take that happiness away from you or your adopted mother; even though her husband killed my Mina.” He took his wallet out of his pocket and passed me a headshot of a young girl with my eyes. “For you, this is Mina, your mother.”
I held the photo with both hands to be able to control my shaking hands enough to see my mother’s picture.
Majid continued. “I followed you around for a long time. I have even taken you to your job once. It was reassuring to see you grown up and happy even If I could only look at you from the rearview mirror of my car.”
There was a long silence. He broke it finally. “Attending the
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funeral, I realised that his wife had died a year ago. I wanted to tell you who you really were. I wanted you to know Mina. My Mina, a brave, loving girl, wanting to escape from the web of politics woven around her. She wanted to break free, just for you.” He lit another cigarette. “She would have been so proud of you, the young man who you have become.”
He put his head down and started to walk back towards his car. I remained seated on the bench gazing at an old picture of a young girl who had my eyes.
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Weevil (Kòkòrò n’ti’n je’fò) Abi Idowu
As the truth entered his mind calmly, his knees hit the floor and Olusegun looked up at Derinola with abject grief on his face, reaching out to her with one arm outstretched while his daughter, who was by his side, was trying to haul him back to his feet - but he knew that he had to stay on his knees and beg with all of his soul. “Derinola, please I beg you! You know my children are my life, please take care of them for me.”
Derinola looked down at the man she called husband, scorn painted plainly on her face but she knew to hide it from her daughter. That one adored her father like he was a god to her and her mind worked quickly. “Get up!” She yelled, managing to put a twinge of panic in her voice. “Don’t say that, they are our children, we’ll take care of them together.”
Hope died in Olusegun when he looked into her eyes as he heard her words, for he could see the truth behind her words and he knew she had no love in her soul and he wondered how he could have been so blind.
His daughter managed to pull him to his feet and Derinola came to his side and grabbed him roughly and started to drag him out of the bedroom door. He knew with certainty that he was never coming back to that room and he started to tremble. With a few steps they got to the living room and he sought to beg for his children again. He stopped moving and turned to Derinola, who was struggling to keep her irritation hidden.
“Derinola, I beg you with everything we shared, please, you know my children are my life, please take care of them for me.” He was trying to remain calm for his daughter’s sake but she had started to whimper with fear. “Baba, please don’t talk like this! You will come back home and take care of us”.
Derinola looked over at her child and she didn’t know whether to laugh or shout. This child who never looked at her with affection, who could barely tolerate to be in the same room as her. This reflection child was the reason all of this was happening. She did this for her but her child barely gave her a glance. All her eyes and heart were concentrated on her father. Well, her salvation would also be her pain, her everlasting
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pain. For Derinola knew her child would never recover from that which was to come. Shaking off the thought, she jerked Olusegun upwards again. “You heard your daughter! Stop your babbling and let’s get you to the hospital!” She winched him up and pulled him again, her daughter following her lead and they led him out, stumbling out of the living room he knew he would never live in again.
Olusegun started to panic because he could see there would be no mercy from she who he had loved blindly all these years. He had fought family and friends for her, poured his soul out for her, everything he owned, she owned too, her word was law to him, and her wish, his command and her desires, his commitment to fulfil and yet here she was, dragging him to certain death and like a living collage, he could see that she had plans over everything he had worked so hard for, and he wasn’t sure the children he worked for were included in them.
In his naïveté, he had thought they would work together to turn the little they had into a great amount. Derinola had a certain knack with increasing the value of things and he had imagined a small empire, a rising from the ashes, where he could return his family back to the life of plenty they had had and deserved. However, he could clearly see now that that was not her plan.
It had hit him like a blow in his chest with such ferocity that he had stumbled and fallen backwards as he prayed. Stunned, he saw concerned faces surround him as his brethren hovered over him and he could faintly hear, as if from afar, people running for water, both to splash on his face and for him to drink. There was a great gust of wind buffeting him and as he focused, he realised that it was the lady he had been standing near to. She had taken off her scarf, which was a rather wide sheet of cloth, her woven hair glistening in the sun, sprinkled generously with white hair, and was flapping it in front of him generating a big gust of wind to cool him down with each flap. They managed to get him seated, faces crinkled with worry, while he had another burst of clarity, hitting him hard and making him breathless. His life force was being attacked and he needed to get home. “Home” he whispered and this was echoed until he was carried out to a fellow brother’s car and
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driven home.
After the panic of seeing him in such an unfamiliar, uncharacteristic weakened state had subsided, falling in and out of sleep with his head on his daughter’s lap, she had refused to budge from his side after he was brought home. And as he drifted in and out of sleep, the revelation became clearer and he discovered that the woman he had loved with all of his heart had sacrificed him, hoping that he was the one she loved most completely.
The revelation was clear that she didn’t, it was his daughter, the one who couldn’t stand her, she loved.
Olusegun pushed with all of his will and made his blood insist on being enough covering for her and her siblings. For he was unsure for how long Derinola ‘s love could withstand her daughter’s rejection. He had already witnessed many cruel moments between them and, to his shame, he didn’t stop them. He barely even said a word in protest. All because he trusted her. He loved her completely, even to the detriment of his beloved children’s lives. They were angry, the womenkind because they wanted she whom Derinola loved the most, but he insisted through his mind and his blood which was already dripping from their mouths and they had no choice but to accept and he prepared to die.
The only thing left was to beg for his children’s comfort, especially his beloved child.
They had pulled him to the door that led outside the house and his daughter, unwitting in her part in leading him to his death said “Baba, the sooner we can get you to the hospital, the faster you can return home”. He looked at her with tears glistening in his eyes. Seeing the bewildered fear on her face, Olusegun turned to Derinola again and clasped her hand, forcing her to stop and look at him. He gently pushed his daughter aside and went on his knees before Derinola, determined to beg one last time for his children. “Derinola, I am begging you with my soul and being, begging you with your creator, your Eleda, please, you know how much my children mean to me. I beg you, please take care of them for me Don’t let them suffer.”
Derinola had had enough at this point and just wanted
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him out of the house and her way. She yanked him roughly to his feet, yelling as she did so. “Enough of this nonsense, stop begging me! Enough and let’s go! “ His daughter, angry in his defence as always, snapped at her mother, “Be careful! You can see that he’s weak and distressed, don’t shout at him.”
Turning to him and going back to his side, her voice returning to gentle and coaxing “Baba, don’t worry, you’ll be fine and you’ll come home and take care of us. You’ll tell us your jokes and stories and we’ll laugh till we fall on the floor. We have so many things we’re going to do together. Don’t worry, you’ll come back.” And as her voice started to crack with the deep sense of impending doom, she whispered to him “I promise you.”
Olusegun’s shoulders slumped and he surrendered himself to his beloved child. He could never deny her anything. He knew he had lost this particular battle all round but the only one fight he won was for their lives. His children would live but he wasn’t too sure what kind of life it would be. He could only hope that Derinola would show her own children, birthed from her own womb, mercy.
He stepped over the threshold of the door, knowing he would never step over it again and he let himself be led away and to the car.
For a week his child fought for his life, calling every doctor she knew, talking to him constantly and reminding him of all the wonderful things they had done and planned to do. She told him how much she loved him and how much he meant to her over and over until it grieved him beyond his soul and he retreated into himself, willing the pain to end. Her anguish was too great for him and he knew that of everything that had broken his child, his death would cause the greatest rift. She would never recover from it. She would never heal.
Derinola came to stay on the one night she got their daughter to leave his side and go home to her siblings. She said to her “After all, he’s my husband. You can’t love him more than me! I will take care of him tonight. Go home, your siblings miss you.” Her daughter was going to refuse but Derinola saw the almost imperceptible squeeze Olusegun gave her hand and she looked down at him in the bed, gave a tiny
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nod and sighed. Her daughter bent down and said the words she had never heard uttered towards her to her father before kissing his forehead: “I love you.” And with a warning look to Derinola, she said, “take care of him. I’ve arranged all his medication and make sure you remind the nurses to come turn him.” Derinola nodded and waved her away. Then she settled in for the night.
“Good that you made her leave because you don’t have long for this world. It’s almost seven days, then you will breathe your last.” Olusegun could hear the glee in her voice and when his eyes grew too heavy, she forcefully pushed his eyelids open, just so he could see the contemptuous sneer on her face. She told him the plans the womenkind had made. Since his blood had insisted, the children’s lives would be spared, however, they would be denied. Denied every form of happiness anyone could desire. They wouldn’t find love and, if they did, they wouldn’t keep it. They wouldn’t have children, every child conceived would be miscarried and every child born would die. Ambition would be crushed. Will taken and they would live and die, empty.
She told him all; of the grandchild already denied, her body wrapped in plastic, buried in some fetid form as he whimpered in his bed, wondering if he should have just let them be killed than live such futile lives.
Derinola laughed softly as she watched him whimper, then she leaned in, looking steadily into his own horrified face and smiled. She told him his beloved child would be spared death but her life would be a series of little deaths, plagued with pain and misery, her glorious life stunted.
The children would live like they were dead and she would bask in it all, stripping his name and legacy layer by layer while she would multiply his wealth, build her name and live in comfort.
She shrugged her shoulders as she told him that whatever came to her mind to help the children with, she would give them.... or not. The light of the dawning morning broke gently into the room and Derinola smiled again, rubbed a corner of his face and placed a cold gentle kiss there, then stood up. “You were a very good husband, fantastic in fact. Taking care of me,
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letting me do whatever I wanted, building so much money for me to take away from your children.”
As he whimpered louder, she shushed him like a little child. “Tuttuttuttuttut! Your only fault was you were incredibly naive and so stupidly gullible!” She turned around abruptly and walked out of the private hospital room with a parting retort. “Just die already, you’re costing me money!”
His beloved child returned but his heart was crushed, and he couldn’t bear to look at her anymore, knowing he had failed her. All he knew he could do was to commit her and her siblings to their Creator. Warn her through dreams and fight for her through his presence in intercession with their Maker. The calm presence of Spirit in the corner of his room affirmed this belief to him.
The next day she came back, the seventh day. His daughter wrapped her arms around him and rocked him as she sang songs to him, pausing to kiss his face and her voice wobbled with worry. She tried to keep it strong and Olusegun sighed with pain for his poor strong child. She would have to dig deep soon to find more strength. For soon, that morning, her very soul would rend. In the midst of all the little papercuts of pain she had received in life, many through the hands of Derinola, he, Olusegun was going to cause the most intense tear in the fabric of her soul, the one she would never recover from even if she survived the rest.
Tears started to seep from his eyes. Sensing a change in the air, his child looked at his face with growing panic and called out for help, her face pressed close to his. “Olusegun, don’t do this to me! This is not how we planned it! You’re supposed to give me away in marriage, play with my kids!”
He wanted to tell her how sorry he was but he couldn’t speak so he looked at her hoping his eyes would say what his lips couldn’t. The nurses came in and tried to prise him from her hands but she clung on, realising that these was their last moments together.
One of the nurses said, “it’s time to let him go” and then she signalled to the others and they left them alone, Olusegun still cradled in her arms. He looked at her again and tried to smile. She gave him a wobbly smile in return. Looking at his face as
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he was fading out, she kissed his forehead and whispered into his ear “I love you so much daddy. I don’t know how I’m going to live without you but I will try to make you proud.”
With a very quick nod and sharp sigh as the full realisation of the moment hit them both, she sat still cradling him to herself, stunned as Olusegun ‘s last breath left his body and touched his daughter’s face like a gentle kiss as life left his body and dissolved into the air.
Years later, Derinola came back from Womenkind and met her daughter at the edge. They had not spoken in a while but her reflection child’s words loomed large in the universe. Her daughter looked at her without fear, with a strength she had never seen, a strength she didn’t think possible. “How did you know?” Derinola asked her who was her child. “I work with words and words are prophetic. They can make one a seer. The words were revealed to me, to begin the end of your reign.”
Her daughter turned away from the edge of Womenkind, the only place where there was a sliver of light, her reflection foggier to Derinola with each receding step. As she walked away, never looking back, her final words bounced solemnly in the void in which Derinola still stood.
“It’s started.”
31
An Extended Pause
Koushik Banerjea
Snout to tail feather is a moment of surprise. Leaves, yes, in a clustered mulch, but nothing else to properly suggest that here once stood a flier, worm in beak, preparing to head back to his home with the wriggling spoils before he was ambushed in those final moments. Somewhere in that finely calibrated store of memories, an image flutters. Beak and claw, then shrieks and the floor, in a dance as old as the mud. A mortal carousel of feathers and fur. Transmitted through mother’s milk, or birdsong, their respective folklores of weightlessness and stealth. Both know how this dance must end, in the death rattle of a spiteful embrace. But it still comes as a shock each time, the flapping quickly losing its intensity, the squawks just as efficiently subdued. This time it truly is misfortune which befalls the bird as his assailant really shouldn’t have been there. Wouldn’t have been but for his own overriding need for safety. Just moments before he himself had nearly come under fire from an unpredictable human hand. The two-legs whose home the cat shared was becoming increasingly erratic in his moods and actions. This time he had launched a spherical object, which the cat was yet to recognize as an ashtray, and it had narrowly avoided the ginger’s head. Observing two-legs with the sublime concentration of his own tigerish forebears, the ginger now recognized a pattern. When two-legs put the firewater to his lips and lit the firesticks which he also placed in his mouth, his behaviour would often change. It was mostly when he drank the firewater, though. That was when the shouting would usually begin, ending with one or another object being launched into space. When the cat had been a kitten, the two-legs hadn’t been this way. Actually there had been another two-legs living there as well, and she was much nicer. They were all far happier then, and he remembered the sounds, of laughter and the musical sing-song of the lady twolegs’ voice announcing that he should ‘come get it, Mr Tibbs’, the longed for rattle of the hard, bird-scented dry treats as they cascaded into his bowl. But the sounds changed once the lady two-legs left, a sullen void opening up in a space evacuated by
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warmth. The stale smell of firesticks, the raised pitch brought on by the firewater. Few strokes, no treats, the only sanctuary this garden, its wildness, the tree bark to pheromone, the trunk, nature’s ready made scratching post. The branches, a post-prandial hideaway. The wilderness once again supplying everything that the two-legs can’t, or won’t. Some peace and a perch. And a lazy flier, so engrossed in his own wriggling spoils that those eyes will never see the low haunched compact of flame that is about to engulf him. Some time later ginger is still out there, luxuriating in the weeds, in their tickle on his snout, his breath. But he is sharper than the airborne, his senses are not dulled by the kill, and he hears the two-legs before it is too late.
‘Get in, you little monster! I know you’re out here. How long do you expect me to just wait, with the window open? It’s bloody freezing, Mr Tibbs. We ain’t all got a nice fur coat to keep us warm, and in case you hadn’t noticed, this ain’t a hotel.’
The sound of the two-legs’ voice is not friendly, or kind, unlike the lady two-legs who used to live here. And ginger’s snout, that marvellous piece of equipment, picks up the airborne current of irritation, whiskery antennae settling on the undertow of threat. All there in a sound, a pickled breath, a clumsiness in the weeds. ‘Mr Tibbs’, the sound of it, just doesn’t appeal when growled by this two-legs. Later, ginger will make off with the bird in his mouth, wings broken, spirit already combining with the mulch. He will not be coming back to this place.
Just two doors across from where Mr Tibbs relinquishes that moniker, Ravi Haldar is sat quietly at his kitchen table nursing that day’s umpteenth cup of tea. It is chai, black tea, flavoured with cardamom, and it is need as much as habit which guides the metronomic ritual. Whenever he makes a brew, he makes a second cup, this time not leaving the bag in but rather squeezing it the way his son preferred. Vilayet. Everything here, from logic to the weather, to tastebuds, was ulta palta.
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But so what? His son liked it and it gave them something to talk about. Besides, there was comfort in the ritual.
‘That’s it, dad, squeeze every last drop,’ his son laughed.
‘Til the pips come,’ said Ravi, expression unchanged as he drip fed the remains of the bag against the side of the mug. At least it was the builder’s tea, rather than the chai. That would have felt like sacrilege.
‘I’m not making you late, am I?’ his son asked between mouthfuls of porridge, eaten the way they both favoured, without sugar but with dried fruit. They might live simply, but let nobody accuse them of lacking aspiration. Ravi was proud that his blood swore by the Quaker staple, built the proper way, from scratch, on the stove. It was he who had introduced the boy’s mother to the joys of porridge oats when they had first started living together, before their son was born. She must have really loved him to endure his nonsense with such good humour. All that bakwas about the oats keeping her strong during the pregnancy. A good woman, he thought, though he tried not to dwell. It seemed so unfair. A lump, and by the time it was detected, the poison had already spread. That word he couldn’t bear any more. Metastasized. Taken away from him, from them, though he often prayed that his son was too young to remember.
Those were some of the toughest times. One moment a loving family, the next its heart ripped out, eaten away more like by the cancer. He didn’t know how he’d have survived without Nila. Ravi’s didi, his older sister, a godsend more or less ever since. Her daughters, his nieces, incredibly protective around his son, their cousin-brother. They went to the same school, though they were a few years older than his boy, and he only heard the story later about how they had beaten the piss out of another boy in their year who had apparently been taunting their cousin and had given him a ‘bogwash’, holding his head down the toilet before pulling the flush in the time honoured fashion.
‘Best days of your life,’ said his son, ‘when you’re not meeting Mr Armitage and Mr Shanks, that is.’ And they all had a good laugh about it later, once it became clear that bogwashing was also potentially hazardous for the perp, especially in the
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neighbourhood of angry girl cousins and a vengeful compass.
‘Of course you’re not delaying me,’ Ravi replied. ‘The most important meal of the day, and tea, it’s the only way to wash it down.’ They both laughed and observed the ritual, yet every now and then, if only fleetingly, Ravi had the sense that they were both clinging on to the ritual as a last vestige of his long departed wife, his son’s mother in absentiae. In between the quips, and the consumption, a quiet desperation that barely needed a name. All the same he was going to call it ‘Yvonne’. That’s who the extra cup should have been for. The love of his life, who’d crossed the Irish Sea to become a nurse, but perhaps hadn’t bargained on marrying a man who’d crossed several oceans just to be in that same London smoke. He remembered flashing his dark eyes at her, the nervy, coy atmosphere of that first conversation, sandwiched together on the Routemaster, getting off at the same stop. Seeing her again on the same bus on his way back from another humdrum shift, working up the courage to ask her out. The murmurs back then, even before their son was born. Paki-lover. It’s the kids I feel sorry for. They’re not going to know who they are. Half-caste. The strength of this feeling caught him off guard, left him forlorn and panicky, hoping against hope that his son was unaware of just how wobbly his father’s tread had become.
‘Who are you talking to, Ravi?’
He looked up. It was his didi, Nila.
‘How long have you been standing there?’ he asked, rubbing something from his eye.
‘Not long,’ she replied, starting to unpack the carrier bag she was holding. She took out several plastic containers and placed them on the table. ‘There’s tarka dal, ruti, paneer, channa, and homemade rasagulla,’ she said, tapping each container as she listed its contents. She worried about her brother a lot more nowadays. She could see that distant look in his eyes which hadn’t really been on show since the shock of losing Yvonne all those years ago. But it was back now, and his face seemed worn down with all the grief. She had asked
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him over and over to come and stay with her, and the girls, at least until he got back on his feet. But she knew he was too proud to take her up on her offer. He had also never got on with his brother-in-law, whom he thought of as pompous and smug, a little too fond of the creature comforts afforded by his successful dental practice. Called himself ‘Sid’, even though it was Siddhartha, and had a receptionist called ‘Sandy’, (from Chandrika). Sid and Sandy, sounded like a puppet show, or a two-bob version of those already two-bob punks, Sid and Nancy. Char chobish. 4/20. But mostly he’d never forgiven Sid for the way he’d treated Yvonne when she was still alive. The snide comments about drink, even though she never touched a drop, or the IRA, any time there was an incident. It beggared belief, frankly, given where their own family came from, but he had to remind himself that there were plenty of others, like his brother-in-law, who had never been caught up in the sectarian madness, and whose coddled minds always viewed it as someone else’s problem, or at best as ancient history. Yvonne herself never said anything about it to Ravi, but he’d wanted to give Sid a personal reason to fix his own teeth more than once. Would almost certainly have done so but for the fact that this man was married to his sister, and for all his faults actually seemed to be a decent husband and a loving father. So Ravi contented himself with the Larry Olivier ‘Marathon Man’, Nazi dentist, ‘is it safe?’ routine at any family gathering which also included the man who was licensed to drill.
‘Who were you talking to just now, Ravi?’ his sister asked again, seeing how distracted her brother appeared. He didn’t answer.
Nila looked around. It was a mess, clothes strewn on the kitchen floor all around the washing machine. The sink was backed up with yesterday’s plates, or perhaps the day before’s, and several heavily tea-stained mugs lined the counter. She thought better of saying anything and instead made a start on the dishes, relieved at least that her brother hadn’t yet spurned the benefits of washing up liquid.
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Before too long the kitchen was looking almost habitable, Ravi himself spurred into action with a dustpan and brush by the sight of his sister, gloved almost to the elbow, fishing the detritus of these past days out of the plug hole. If it wasn’t quite shame he felt, then it was certainly embarrassment at letting things drift this far. Nila shouldn’t have to see him like this. It wasn’t right. He was her brother, he should be the one looking out for her. Though when he considered it some more, perhaps things had always been this way. When they were kids, back in the days of ‘knock knock, Enoch’ and ‘Pakis Out’, Nila had always been the first to stand up for herself, in front of the teachers, the other girls, even the boys. The first to wear a Fred Perry over her salwar kameez, the first to tell a boy to ‘fuck off’, and then make him. When the police tried to arrest their dad for fighting with the neighbour, it had been Nila who had made sure the whole neighbourhood heard what the provocation had been, and the cops had seemed as surprised by the sounds of Harry J All Stars’ ‘Liquidator’ emerging from the narrow Asian terrace as by the mouthy Asian girl with the feather cut and the Perry. Even as a young boy, Ravi could see it made no sense to them. Bengali immigrants, skinhead reggae, of the instrumental variety, and belligerence. People didn’t live in boxes. Why was that so hard for a certain type of person to accept?
Yvonne wasn’t like that though. One of the first things he’d noticed about her, how she actually listened to him on their dates, asked him questions about India, his family, south London, and what it was like for him, as a young boy, being uprooted thousands of miles and pitched into the heart of a very different culture. No one had ever shown that level of interest in him before, and he was flattered. The girls he’d known up to then were perfectly happy so long as he didn’t stray too far from a mildly quirky script. A Bengali skinhead, replete with Brutus shirt, oxbloods and his sister’s castoff Trojan records. But they often left him feeling a little annoyed whenever they mentioned other Asian people, the ones in the ‘Paki shop’, as if his Brutus, or those mutton chop sideburns somehow meant that he wasn’t also part of that tribe. Or that he should be anything other than grateful for the fact. Yvonne got him to
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open up about all the tribal markings, including the ones long before Trojan. So for the first time in his life he found himself talking about how his family had lost everything in what was now Bangladesh, but remained unsettled even after they’d made the dangerous crossing into India. He told her about his dad, and the other men he worked with in the factories, who’d used the braziers to heat up tea and make chapattis in their adaptable English workplaces. She heard how he’d got his own job at an engineering works through one of his dad’s original workmates. How they’d all clubbed together to give him a good sendoff at his funeral, sharing old stories at the podium, relegating the priest to the undercard. How his big heart had just packed up without warning one day, even though he was no kind of age really. And when she’d asked him about his mum, he’d stumbled at first, not knowing what to say. But when she told him it was ok, whatever he needed to say, the words had just spilled out. Unhappy here. Lost her mind. Never really right after Partition. Bit like Ireland, I suppose, all messed up. Same way they split the earth up, she cracked up, right down the middle. Never said anything though, just quietly faded away. By the end, we barely even knew she was there. Ah, bloody hell, Yvonne, you got me all pensive now. Didn’t I say I’d show you a good time? But she’d listened, hadn’t laughed or made light of what he was trying to tell her, and he’d never forgotten what she’d said to him then, taking his hand in hers and looking right into his depthless eyes.
‘Well it’s just us here now, Rav, and it’s up to us to make all the bad stuff right again.’
He’d known right then that they would. She was always the best of him, and as much as Nila, she was the reason he’d never properly confronted his brother-in-law.
‘Look, he’s just being daft the way some people are. But it’s nothing really, Rav. Besides, do you really know me so little? You honestly believe that if it truly bothered me, I’d say nothing? Come on, Rav, we know each other better than that.’
And he never could argue with that little smile playing at the corners of her mouth, or the tendril of auburn hair drooped over her temple. She was right, of course. In the wider scheme,
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Sid was not the problem. He was good around his own family, and he’d never been anything but loving around their son. So whatever the perceived slight, Ravi would let it go, balling then unclenching his fists under the table, drifting instead into silent, cinematic reverie, inspired by Warner Brothers. Top of the world, Ma! Whaddya know, whaddya say? He never forgot the instrumental cut, though. Liquidator.
‘What the bloody hell’s that?’ asked Nila, pausing for a moment from her ongoing battle with a scouring brush and saucepan.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Ravi, leaning on the handle of the mop which he’d been using to clean the kitchen floor.
‘That,’ said Nila, jerking her chin towards the wall. ‘You need your ears syringed if you can’t hear that.’
Sadly his hearing was still intact as the relentless sounds of doof doof pounded through the wall. Just another reminder of how the landscape was changing, and possibly not for the better. Barely a couple of months since Clarence, the old neighbour, had passed, and already this racket had become the norm. How different it had been when Clarence was still there, smiling at Ravi’s perennially doomed row with the weeds, green-fingered ambition snarled up in a Stalingrad of nettles. But the old Jamaican would smile good-naturedly at the younger man’s efforts, from time to time offering gardening tips across the fence. And then when he couldn’t bear it any longer, passing him a machete, which he’d spent the morning sharpening himself.
‘Careful wi’the blade, young man. Mek sure fi pay attention. Ole style cutlass. It tek yuh finger clean off otherwise.’
Later, all ten digits still intact, he’d invited Clarence over for tea and a slice. Darjeeling, of course, leaves from the old country sprinkling a whisper of the Himalayas into the less pinched air of their afternoon. The slice, on this, and subsequent afternoons, turning out to be the homemade Indian sweets his sister would sometimes bring over and which Ravi had, only now as a middle aged man, developed a taste for. Rasagulla,
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gulab jamun, rassomalai, even the shop-bought barfi or the deliciously flaky soan papdi. And soon enough it became a weekly ritual, cutlass raking weeds and then the neighbours trading sweetmeats, war stories – in Clarence’s case, a real one, WW2, in Ravi’s the localised mythology of ‘The Battle of Lewisham’ – and the usual litany of complaints, in truth barely-concealed affection, when it came to their children. They also argued about music all the time, Clarence no fan of the skinhead reggae tunes he found on Ravi’s shelves.
‘Blasted ‘ooligan music. All that gunman, rudeboy nonsense. Ratchet in your waist, indeed. Let them try that foolishness around Clarence Braithwaite an’ ‘im cutlass!’
Ravi laughed, making sure to leave any Symarip, Slickers or Derrick Morgan records he had in plain view on those days when Clarence would turn up. The older man was even less partial to the later, heavier, dubbed out sounds of the midSeventies. Ironically enough, Ravi’s son, who’d been at school with one of Clarence’s grandsons, had been introduced to this slower, more politically ‘conscious’ sound by his neighbour’s flesh and blood. At first, Ravi had rather uncharitably attributed his son’s taste for the blackest, most dread sound to some youthful unease with his own freckly light skin. He saw it as something compensatory, maybe not that different to how he himself and his sister had once identified with skinhead reggae, and fashion, at a time when ‘Pakis’ were supposedly running scared of everyone, and everything. But when he thought about it some more, it didn’t really make sense. No one listened to that dread sound any more apart from old men and posh white people. The tough kids, the ones always going on about ‘ends’, tricked themselves out in a different style, if trousers halfway down your arse could be called that, and their ears pricked up to very different noises.
‘It’s called ‘grime’, dad. It’s pure London,’ his boy would tell him, open-hearted just like his mother, and just like her, the best of him.
But it sounded like nonsense to him, just angry noise punctuated by boredom. All the same, he had an inkling during those moments when the quickfire patter of the MC pierced the aptly named ‘Party’ wall, of how Clarence must
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have felt whenever the sounds had been travelling in the opposite direction, organ breaks and insistent ska rhythms interrupting the more sedate pleasures of the jazz, calypso and country records Clarence favoured.
‘It’s like a train too full of steam,’ Clarence would say, evidently unimpressed by the sounds of young Jamaica which had somehow fetched up on his Indian neighbour’s turntable. He’d make a show of shaking his head, as mystified by his neighbour’s musical tastes as by his lack of gardening nous. But it was a little game, one they both enjoyed, the older man increasingly fond of their afternoon chats, quickly developing a taste for the sweets which were regularly served up with the tea. One time he’d brought around some of the Jamaican Fruit cake that his daughter had left with him after a recent visit, and he was pleased when Ravi, his neighbour, had taken more than one slice. The Skatalites, though, what a racket.
‘Wha’ di rass is this, seh? Where is this ‘Skaville’, and wha’ is Confucius doin’ there?’
‘If I knew that, Clarence, I’d be a rich man. At any rate a lot richer than I am. More tea?’
And with that they’d settle back into the panto, Ravi getting up every so often to turn over a record, and Clarence granting his approval instead to the sweet, moist gulab jamun, liberally drenched in a rose flavoured syrup.
Nila looked past her brother to the long narrow stretch of green behind the kitchen. It was a bit of push to call it a garden, weeds and thorns the strongest presence after the dilapidated shed. Had the overgrown tangle been pared back to a lawn, at that moment trees might have speared long shadows across it. As it was the whole misshapen oblong positively screamed neglect. She felt for her brother. He’d been through a lot. Those closest to him ripped away by chance, and then by callousness. First mum, then dad, then Yvonne and now this. No one should have to go through that, no parent should have to outlive their child. And for what? So that the police could botch the investigation, ‘misplace’ key evidence, and then blame it on a ‘conspiracy of
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silence’? Everyone knew, the same name kept coming up in those crucial first hours after her nephew, Ravi’s son, had been cut down, first by the moped and then by what they’d described as a ‘zombie’ blade. She remembered getting the call, how her brother’s voice made a noise which was not really human. Having to identify the body, that sweet, open hearted boy waxy and remote on the mortuary slab. Ravi a loose confection of clothes, held up by grief and a tightly cinched belt. His eyes, all their eyes, tile dark and just as flat. Thinking then that the one blessing was that theirs were the only eyes which had to see this. The wearying descent into typecast nightmare. Gangs and drugs and postcode ‘beefs’. We’re very sorry but we have to ask…
Following up all leads, exhausting all possible lines of enquiry. Wouldn’t be doing our job properly otherwise. And we’re very sorry but we have to ask…
Tangled in the weeds, cast off with the pollen, so many words, spent like cartridges, like dole cheques, like flesh. They didn’t listen, they didn’t want to know. Not the story they wanted to hear. A sweet boy, the best of this place, cut down by a vicious thug, its baleful worst. A boy who was loved and had friends and was at least forty years too early, or too late, for here. Forever caught up in the echo and reverb of his beloved Lee Perry records, and yes, officer, that was the hot treacle that poured out of his belly when that wicked youth cut him down. And why aren’t you writing any of this down, officer? Don’t you want to know?
A sweet boy, officer, with Bengali Symarip running through his veins, but Big Youth too, and Michael Campbell and Fabian. A conscious soul with his daddy’s staunch and his mother’s generosity, and a touch, just a touch, of her auburn, her red, on his beautiful, made-in-Lewisham face.’
When Clarence passed, his grandson had come to see Ravi with a large toolbag, containing shears, secateurs and an old gardening manual, dating back to the 1950s. Also, wrapped separately in several yards of cloth, was the much vaunted
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cutlass.
‘Granddad wanted you to have these,’ said Herol, the grandson. ‘He said you might find them useful in the years ahead.’
‘What did he actually say though, Herol? That doesn’t exactly sound like your granddad,’ said Ravi, still standing on his doorstep.
Herol paused a moment, sizing up the question. Then his expression changed, and just for a second, Ravi felt as though he was back in the presence of his old Jamaican neighbour.
‘Listen, Herol. Mek sure fi give these to that wotless Hindian nex’ door. An’ mek sure fi’ tell ‘im, weed will not conquer itself. An’ while yuh at it, give ‘im these too.’
Herol handed Ravi a large brand supermarket ‘bag for life’ which held several Lena Horne records and a classic old seven inch single recording of Elvis’ ‘Suspicious Minds’. His eyes welled up even before Herol gave him a hug and told him how sorry he was about what had happened to Red, which was what everyone used to call Ravi’s son.
Nila watched the cat stroll in through the open back door. She watched as he rubbed against her brother’s legs and purred. Ravi bent down to stroke the cat, and the ginger tilted his head up approvingly.
‘You’re such a handsome little fella,’ said Ravi, giving the cat a tickle just under his chin. Nila hadn’t heard her brother use that tone of voice since her nephew was a baby. It was also the doting uncle voice her own girls used to love when they were little. Her brother, the great, big suedehead softy.
‘And such a clever little one. Bless you, I’m so glad you managed to find me. Poor little thing, you must have been desperate. God only knows what’s out there.’
The cat jumped up onto Ravi’s lap, and Nila watched, fascinated, as her brother continued with his unselfconscious oration.
‘I love you, little ginger. How I love you. You came to me from the depths, with that beautiful tigerish smile, and those
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blinking almond eyes. And you never tried to hide the bird, or the feathers, that first one like a broken umbrella, or the next, or the countless others. Some days I think of you as a tiger, and others I see you on the great plains, a lion at his watering hole.’
Nila watched, and listened, amazed. This was the most animated she’d seen her brother in weeks. Whole days could go by without a word passing his lips, yet here he was, alive, talking and so full of feeling.
‘What’s its name?’ she asked.
‘It’s a he,’ replied Ravi, ‘and I’m not entirely sure yet. But I’m thinking, ‘Ray’.’
‘Ray?’
‘Yeah, as in, ray of light, ray of sunshine. But also ‘voodoo Ray’.’
‘A Guy called Gerald. That ‘Voodoo Ray’?’ asked Nila, settling on a vague memory of one last clubbing hurrah before the kids, and the implied social respectability.
‘Yeah, why not? Always loved that tune too. Besides, there’s something a little darker, more nighttime, more voodoo, about all of us, I reckon.’
The cat had jumped down off Ravi’s lap and was back out near the shed, from where scurrying noises could be heard. A tiny squeak alerted Ravi and his sister to the presence of another creature, and before either had had time to react, a fieldmouse appeared on the linoleum kitchen floor, frantically attempting to zigzag between the attentions of ginger Ray’s paws. The music had temporarily abated next door, so Ravi took the opportunity to make a selection of his own. Striding purposefully into the front room where he kept his records, he picked out the early-nineties’ Garage classic, ‘Deliver Me’, featuring the soaring vocals of Michael Proctor. It felt appropriate. Yvonne had loved this soulful sound. She used to tease him when they were at those Club Zoo garage nights at the Soho Theatre, about what his old mates would make of this, Mr Skinhead Reggae now shaking a leg as Mr Spiritual House. And those were wonderful times, losing all that balled up, hemmed in neurosis of being a ‘proper’ bloke to the more fluid, contented soul he wished he’d always been. The moonstomp absorbed by four to the floor, and life as happy as
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he’d ever remembered it.
Heading back to the kitchen, he thought he heard another noise, some snare or hi-hat not on the record. Then he remembered the cat, and whatever fever pitch the linoleum shuffle had reached.
Nila had made them some tea. She was also transfixed by the last dance. The ginger continued to torment his petrified toy, but on his face there was no hatred, just a sense that these whiskers knew something of the world. Sipping his brew, Ravi thought how the sands of time were coagulating in that spatulate paw. In it he saw all knowledge, experience, tribulation absorbed into elemental rubber. A bewhiskered seer, extravagantly marked, so beautifully poised whatever the circumstance. From Siberian wastelands to the Sunderbans, he sensed the preternatural ability to land on those paws, however deep the insult.
The cupboard door under the stairs opened to reveal a foetal figure, bound and gagged. The bloodshot eyes bulged in a face whose earlier ebony was now a moon cratered purple. Under the duct tape, the upper lip was beaded with sweat and blood seeped from a chest wound into the young man’s formerly white T shirt.
‘What are you doing out there?’
It was his sister’s voice, coming from the kitchen. Ravi had gone to the corridor, claiming to have seen the mouse and telling Nila he’d be right back, once he’d located the mouse and chaperoned him to safety.
‘Nothing. I’m just coming,’ he said, closing the cupboard door again before returning to the kitchen.
For the time being the mouse was nowhere to be seen. Ginger was licking himself, effortlessly readjusting back to the supple, solitary pose. He appeared relaxed, as if he knew things. There was no rush.
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Long Way Down
Mei Yuk Wong
92 days ago
“Can you give me a bit more money this month, please?” Ai asked me when I arrived at the flat. I said, “I don’t have much money left. I always give two thirds of my salary to my wife.”
“Your wife is a big spender, you should reduce her allowance! You don’t even have sex with her!” she said. I asked, “Why you need more money? I just gave you $1000 last week.” Ai started to cry and I tried to comfort her. “Don’t cry, my dear. I’ll get some cash from the bank tomorrow.”
Ai smiled, “Thank you darling. Come and see what I’ve cooked for you tonight.” She showed me a dish of stir-fried crabs with ginger and spring onions. “Wow, looks delicious and smells wonderful! I wish my wife can cook like you do.” “Well, that’s one of the differences between me and your ugly wife! You know I can offer you much more.” Ai started to kiss my forehead. My heart melted and felt warm. This is the thing that I never get at home. I must save some more money for Ai and reduce the allowance for Fong.
“Darling, I have good news to tell you.” Ai said to me while I was munching the crabs. “Good news? Yes, tell me what it is.”
“You’ll be a father soon.” I didn’t expect that. “Oh, my dear… what shall we do?” Ai kissed me again and said, “Divorce your stupid wife and marry me!” I wasn’t sure what to do and put the down the crabs. “Let me think out a proper plan.”
That’s the only thing that I can promise Ai for the time being. To be a father again…… should I be excited? How am I going to tell Fong and get her to agree to a divorce? How can I afford to support two families with my little salary? Suddenly, I’ve lost my appetite for my favourite dish. Have I got myself into a crap situation, again?
18 years ago
One day, after playing mahjong with Fong’s family, Fong said to me, “My sister is going to get married in December. What should we do?” “Attend their wedding I suppose.” I said. “Not just this, stupid man! I mean us.” She almost screamed. I
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didn’t get it, “Us? What about us?” Then she said, “We should get married too.” “OK, if you like. I need to ask my parents,” I replied.
“Yes, ask your parents to prepare the money for our wedding. You know my parents passed away already. Don’t expect me to have any dowry,” Fong said to me.
“Sure, my parents will be pleased and pay for everything,” I said without much thought.
“In fact, we better get married before the child is born. It’s better.” Fong reminded me that our child is going to be born next January.
“We don’t have much time. We need to plan our wedding now!” Fong looked a bit more excited. Should I be excited too?
I don’t mind. As long as my parents pay for it and Fong organises it. I’ll just listen to them. Do whatever they like. Everything will be fine. We can see how Fong’s sister prepares their wedding and we can just copy it. Easy, peasy!
“What are you thinking about?” Fong hit my shoulder and I came back from my thoughts, and I said, “I’m just wondering if we can just follow your sister’s wedding plan.” Fong gave me a look. “Lazy bones! We should have our own style! Let me look for a wedding dress tomorrow. You should start looking for a wedding ring for me too. Something that’s not too cheap, ok?”
I replied, “Sure, whatever you like. What about me? What should I wear?”
“Just hire something cheap but look decent. Anyway, you’ll never wear a suit again. Don’t bother too much.”
That was the plan. Eighteen years ago. Why would we get married? I shouldn’t sleep with Fong… It was a mistake. I never feel I’m a proper husband or a father, not even a proper son. Everybody looks down upon me. I was an unwanted child. My mother wanted to get rid of me by taking a lot of Chinese herbs. I was born with all sorts of problems, not as clever as my younger brother. Am I a nuisance to everyone? The world doesn’t need me, does it?
Now
13 13 seconds. Faster than any roller coaster. I’m falling
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down the lift shaft. All 34 floors…
12 Am I dreaming…? Is this really happening…? Time rewinds…
11 There is a sign, OUT OF ORDER, next to the lift.
10 Fong, Dan, Ai and I are there. Did they push me down the lift shaft, or did I just fall? Why would any one of them do that?
9 My life flicks by. Floor after floor tumbles by. Fong and I get married, Dan is born soon after. Ai, my new lover tells me she’s pregnant… Then, the fight… outside the lift…
8 Was it Fong? She tried to kill herself. I saved her from the harbour. It couldn’t be her! But she was paranoid and threatened to kill me, Ai and herself. Yes, Fong was holding a knife and chased us out of the flat to the lift…
7 Was it Dan? He always hated me. He never spoke to me, only asked for money to get gadgets, drugs or whatever. He was a grown man now, absolutely capable of killing me if he wanted. But he was my son! Was he?
6 Was it even Ai? She asked me to leave Fong and marry her, so that she could have proper status in Hong Kong and start a family. Was she just like any other woman from mainland China? I was only her stepping stone. Was she really pregnant?
5 I’ve signed life insurance papers. Who will benefit? Fong, Dan or Ai? All three!
4 First, we were in the flat, then we were outside the lift. Shouting, lots of shouting, swearing and screaming. A knife. Running, chasing, rushing, all four of us skidding to the lift. The doors flick open. Being pushed. Sweat sliding down the palms of my hands.
3 Was I trying to escape from the knife? Or to protect Ai from Fong?
2 13 seconds… I’m only 39.
1 Is it just an accident? Whatever, whoever, I know I was never wanted in this world.
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Holy Island
Dipali Das 1
The tide was washing onto the causeway. Veena accelerated and the front tyres scattered sea water. Not trusting the car mirrors, she turned and stared through the back window. Nothing. Only the rising sea and the rapidly submerging road. Then Holy Island neared, and she saw the outline of the castle and its ragged ramparts on the hill.
She found a car park, threw some coins at the machine and retrieved a ticket. Hers was the only car there. She grabbed her flask and blanket from the boot and huddled into the back seat of the car, sipping tea and trying to keep warm.
The car began to sway. A wind started up. She pulled the blanket tightly around her shoulders then lay down and patted her hand around the seat. Where’d it gone? She stretched to reach deep under the driver’s seat. The package was still there. Exhausted, she slid into a fitful sleep.
Three short sharp blows. The blood pouring in a lick of wolf. Red hairs clotted at the mouth. The smack on the temple. Smack.
Hello Miss! Miss! Hey!
She turned and saw him. It was still dark but the outline of a man was visible outside her car. Police. How did they know she was here?
He signalled for the window to be opened. She hauled herself up and did so.
Morning Miss.
Morning.
He was glancing around the inside of the car. Here for the sunrise?
Veena reached under the driver’s seat and pushed the package further back. She nodded.
He followed her arm.
Are you looking for something?
She nodded again, lifting the flask from the floor.
I’m gasping for a brew.
Enjoy.
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She watched as the police officer slowly returned to his car then she slumped again but couldn’t find a comfortable position.
More footsteps. Yes Officer?
The café across there, they do a great breakfast. It’ll be open soon.
Great. I’ll head over. After the sunrise. He was looking around the footwell again. She waited, volunteering nothing. He left.
An hour later, Veena ventured over to the café. Warm steam from the coffee machine caressed her frostchilled face. She was sitting at a corner table where she could see the door. A man wearing orange waterproofs and a red lifejacket entered and gave a small shrug to the woman behind the counter.
Hi Sal. Six bacon rolls to take away, please. You okay, Carl?
We just hauled two bodies off the causeway. Can’t they read the bloody signs?! I said…
Sal nodded stiffly in Veena’s direction. He glanced at Veena then picked up the morning paper, mute. Sal came over to take her order.
The card in the window? Do you still need someone? Got any experience?
Some. I’ve no paperwork though, just moved here. That’s fine. Let’s do a trial period for a week. Really?
Why not? You’ve got an honest face.
Veena watched enviously as the dunlins teetered around the North Sea’s edge. Whenever the sun was out, Veena loved to join the wildlife and paddle in the crisp water. But in her rush to get to work today she had forgotten her towel and she hated damp feet. She had watched people at the beach put their socks and shoes on over wet feet and walk around like that for the rest of the day. The thought made her queasy.
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2
The man in the phone box was now bellowing down the line. She made a point of moving away slightly, though not too far that another person turning up could assume to be next in the queue. She stared out at the causeway. It was twenty days since she had driven over to Holy Island. It had maintained her secret so far, but for how much longer? The weather had been unforgiving that night…
Slow down.
If they catch me, I’m dead.
You’ll be dead anyway, driving like this.
Let’s just stop. You’re tired. You’re running low on petrol. If you broke down and they caught up…
The thought made her shudder.
Need to keep going. There’s a place. There has to be a place…
The door creaked open. Veena turned around to see the man force a smile and both of them ignored his puffy eyes and blotchy face as he held the door.
Here you go, love.
Veena smiled, took the handle and entered the phone box. The box for dysfunctional relationships, she thought wryly, waiting for the door to close. In slow motion.
She took a deep breath and dialled the number, pushing each digit slowly and methodically. The phone rang out. She hung up. Coins clanked back into the Returns box. She pushed to open the door but it barely moved. Why were these telephone box doors so heavy? She decided to give it one more try.
This time there was an instant response.
Hello?
From the background noise, Pebble Mill at One had ended and now the mice from Bagpuss were singing, ‘We will fix it, we will fix it…’.
Daddy! Look at the mouse. Look!
Veena’s stomach lurched at the sound of her daughter’s voice.
Mousey. Squeak. Squeak.
Hello? Hello! Veena? Is that you? Say something, please!
How’s Nil?
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I knew it was you. Why didn’t you call sooner? You know why.
We’ve been so worried. I nearly contacted the police. A breath.
Well, I was considering it… if you hadn’t called… in the next day or two… maybe.
How is she?
Asking for you all the time. Is she eating properly?
She’s fine…
What did she have today?
…but she needs you to come home. Fish fingers. It’s too soon.
Just tell me where you are. I’ll come and get you. I want to, but more time needs to pass.
It’s been three weeks.
Enough so people forget.
What’s to remember? Three guys drowned in a car. It was two.
That’s what I meant. Anyway, they ignored all the warning signs about the causeway. I was reading about it in the library Hold on, you went to the library?
I take Nil every Saturday.
Oh, why three?
Nil’s confused me. She’s counting those mice. But…
Look, I know how many friends I lost that night. Sorry.
It’s fine. Look, speak to Nilly…
No, Ravi!
Veena! Sorry.
Veena pushed all her weight against the door to get out. If she’d spoken to Nil, her resolve would weaken and returning home was not an option. She slumped onto a nearby tree stump, gulping down the Northumbrian air in a bid to suppress the rising nausea. Her focus shifted to the telephone box. She recognised it from a design project she researched at high school. It was the K8, one of the first telephone boxes
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with large glass panes and a brighter interior. They contrasted with the glass grids on the older boxes, which let in much less light. Her teacher gave her permission to have the afternoon out of school to take photographs of different phone boxes in the town centre, an hour which she used to bunk off to the cinema. No one ever knew. Happier times.
Veena pulled herself off the makeshift seat and walked back to the café. She’d been longer than intended. Everyone was entitled to a cig break, even if they didn’t smoke. But she didn’t want to annoy Sal unnecessarily. She liked working there, and you could have your fill of bacon rolls or sausage buns at closing time. 3
What took you so long?
Sorry Sal, there was someone in before me and they talked for ages.
You can use this one.
Sal pointed to her payphone on the wall next to the hat stand. It was a kind offer but the acoustics within the café were reminiscent of the Whispering Gallery in St Paul’s Cathedral and even the quietest conversations would travel around the tables and chairs. Also, Veena enjoyed getting out to watch the sea. It had a calming influence on her agitated thoughts. The only body of water she had grown up with was the Rochdale Canal.
One of their regulars was waving at her. Veena swapped her coat for the apron on the hook by the till and as usual hitched the material up around the waist, as it was clearly not designed for the smaller frame. She had only ever worn an apron for Home Economics at school. Her mother would change into her cooking sari, which could get splattered and marked but you still had the freedom of movement. Even the loop around the neck had to be reduced in size and it often cut into the nape. Since starting at the café, Veena had bought several turtlenecks from the charity shop. Pulling out her notepad and pen from her apron she walked over with a beaming smile.
Hello Mrs. Abbot. What can I get for you, your usual?
Yes please, Veena love.
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Toasted teacake and a milky coffee coming up. Ooh, your face brightens up the whole place with your white teeth dazzling against your black skin. Erm, okay. Thanks.
Veena suddenly had a strong sense she was being watched again. She looked up and chewed her pencil as if she was deep in thought while glancing around the café and through the windows. Mrs Abbot shouted her order.
Teacake and a coffee, love! Mind you, maybe I want chai instead. You know it?
I know chai. But we don’t have it. You’ll enjoy your coffee.
My Auntie Doreen made the most delicious chai. She was taught by an Indian soldier friend who stayed with us after the war, you see. They went down to Newcastle every few months to stock up on the spices. If we visited on a Saturday afternoon, Doreen would brew up some chai for a treat, with some iced buns and we’d watch World of Sport. What was his name again?
Dickie Davies?
No, the Indian soldier. You might have known each other.
Veena wondered if she should go outside and have a proper look around to make sure she wasn’t going mad. She let the thought go. She didn’t want to risk annoying Sal further.
The afternoon went by in a whirl. Veena was ready to collapse when Sal finally turned the sign to ‘Closed’. She offered Veena the last couple of spare bacon butties. Veena nodded a thanks. Now she didn’t have to worry about her tea that evening.
Veena lived in a small room above the local bakers. It was her first unshared space. Access was by the side of the building and on entering you were greeted by an ornate, spindly staircase. Unsure of its history, Veena imagined it was built hundreds of years ago by a monk who had taken a vow of silence but had probably sworn a few times when accidentally hitting his thumb with a hammer. Each morning the sound of lapping waves and the smell of freshly baked bread and cakes would wake her. It was a contrast to her morning commute into the
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4
city centre and all those back streets that men often mistook for an oversized urinal.
That evening when Veena stepped out from the café, the quiet and stillness was eerie. Everything closed down at 5pm on Holy Island. The wind whistled through the leaves, or was it someone’s footstep scraping on the pavement? Turning around slowly, she saw the chestnut tree swaying gently. She exhaled and walked on, increasing her pace slightly. The few shops that existed on the Holy Island had large glass panes, rather than the metal roller shutters she was used to back home. Prints draped in the haberdashery, the white trays scattered with fake green plastic parsley in the fishmongers and old barrels housing autumn apples at the greengrocers. Her favourite window was the hardware store. Stan would change the display every few weeks. It was a waste of artistic talent, since his day job was to sell sandpaper, wire wool and washers. This week Stan had suspended tools with invisible wire at jaunty angles including a hacksaw, planer and hammer, just like the ones in the Pink Floyd music video, with nails casually sprinkled below. She instantly recognised the box from which the nails belonged: she last time she had seen that yellow and black box was when her father had decided to build a small table for her. Sometimes she could hear his voice, a faint version, as if he was in the next room. Then it came to her, this memory. She was young, in pig-tails. Her father was discussing wood and nail requirements with someone at great length in a DIY store. While he did this, she ran up and down the aisles. A wall of paint tins stopped her. Copying a woman nearby, she took some cards from a Perspex stand. They were imprinted with small rectangles of colours that had glamorous names: Midnight Blossom. Aurora Orange. Chilli Crush. She heard her name echo through the store. She rammed the card into a pocket and ran back to her father. He gave her the box of nails in a bag to carry home.
Be careful with them.
Baba, can we paint the table as well?
Acha. Okay beti.
Veena pulled out the card from her pocket. Can we buy some… Cornflower Blue?
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There is eggshell and magnolia left over from last year. This will be fine and no waste. Okay?
Yes, Baba.
A sudden wind rose up. Veena buttoned up her coat and turned up her collar. A tin can flew out of the yellow bin attached to the lamp post and clattered onto the road. She missed the crowds of Manchester. People bumping into her. Elbows at dawn when getting on the bus. Even the snaking queues for the toilets in dance clubs. The only place to dance on Holy Island was the Shipwreck Inn. Once a month Eileen would dust off her best cassettes to treat the locals to classics from Wings, Jethro Tull and Bony M. On her first and only visit, Veena was made to stand in the middle of a circle, orchestrated by Mrs Abbott, as she and her friends disco clapped to the tune of Brown Girl in the Ring. Veena went along with it and even threw out some dance shapes in an attempt at irony. The old dears began to copy her moves. They were surprisingly good at it.
The bakery hove into view. A wedding cake was in its window, ready for yet another happy couple. She rummaged in her bag for her door keys. At the precise moment she fished them out to open the door, two cats began screeching and she dropped her keys. She fumbled around for them on the pavement. Creeping footsteps. She was convinced she’d heard the same footsteps earlier.
Hello? Hello? I can hear you! You don’t scare me!
The two cats paused. Quickly, Veena scooped up her keys and entered the house. She turned the lock and slotted the chain in place then leant back on the door for a moment. The letterbox rattled. She screamed. The wind. Only the wind. She sighed, berating herself. She unlocked the door and opened it slightly to check. As she’d thought. There was nothing and no one there. She locked the door, tiptoed up the stairs and switched the boiler on, then turned both lights on. She went down and hung her coat up on a hook. The letterbox clattered again. This time Veena was bolder. She flung open the door, expecting the same as before – nothing.
Hello, Vee.
Veena slammed the door as fast as she could. It refused to
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close. A boot was blocking it. She pushed again, but there was no give.
That’s not a friendly welcome.
Please, Kam. Please go.
After coming all this way.
I’m just keeping my head down.
You’ve managed that. Even in Whitesville, it took a while to find you.
Why’re you here?
To see you sweetheart.
Three? Oh fuck! Three...
See Ravi couldn’t keep his mouth shut, again. So, you gonna let me in?
Kam slowly pulled out a knife. Veena sighed with relief, knowing he could have produced any number of weapons out of his pocket. As he entered the hallway soon became crowded.
I’ll put the kettle on.
Don’t I get a hug first? I’ve missed you.
Veena reluctantly stood underneath the coat pegs as Kam enveloped her. He pushed their torsos tightly together whilst rubbing her up and down.
Let me go. I can’t breathe.
Oh God. You smell good. What is that?
L’eau de spam fritters.
Your sense of humour. Missed that. But you know what I’ve really missed? We both have. Come on.
He took her hand and led her up the staircase. Veena did not appreciate him taking control of her space and his presumptuousness. Above all, she was annoyed by the lack of disrespect for the delicate stairs, clomping up in his huge boots… his back looked smoother and broader than it usually did, Maybe she agreed with him.
Kam sat on the bed and looked around slowly and almost robotically scanning her belongings. Veena held her breath while following his line of sight.
Where is it?
What?
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5
You know very well what.
Kam. Listen…
Where the fuck is it?!
After three weeks of independence, Veena didn’t like being spoken to like that but Kam was not someone to antagonise. Before she could respond, Kam spoke again.
Sorry sweetheart, it’s been a long few weeks. Come, sit down.
Veena perched on the edge of the bed and stared ahead. Look at me Vee. God I’ve missed that face. I didn’t know if I’d ever see it again. I love that I was always the one to get close. Even close enough to see your irises.
Kam kissed her tenderly on her forehead and then on her cheeks. Veena looked away again. It was unavoidable but as he pulled her towards her and kissed her lightly. Her lips tingled. He kissed her again, slightly harder. Veena had never fully forgiven and forgotten but soon enough they were under the covers. She threw out the various hot water bottles from the previous night. Being kept warm by another body, rather than vulcanised rubber felt good. Unbelievably good. But now, as she dressed quietly in the faint light, she felt ashamed. She was leaving him again and knew she would never feel the same towards him. She picked up her rucksack and the green shoe box and walked towards the door.
Getting some breakfast?
Veena looked over to Kam. His peaceful expression had become pained.
Taking some stuff to the Priory. There’s a Jumble Sale on. Now?
God’s always open for business.
You’re going all the way down there to dump a pair of shoes.
Veena looked around the small room and decided to take an old painting from the wall.
And this. Some one’ll pay a few quid for that.
The landlord doesn’t mind if you help yourself?
Landlady. She said I could take whatever I wanted. It’s all for a good cause.
I’m a good cause. Come over here and give me a hand.
Fuck off, Kam. I haven’t got time for this.
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Neither have I. Get over here now!
Reluctantly, Veena put her rucksack down by the door. She unzipped the bag and carefully placed the shoebox on top and re-zipped it. She even tightened the security straps for good measure and made a point of placing Mary’s painting next to it. Then she returned to the bed.
Take your coat off, sweetheart, otherwise you won’t feel the benefit.
It’s freezing in here and I’m not going to need long.
Kam groaned with enthusiasm and excitement as Veena began stroking and rubbing. As predicted, it was over quickly. Veena crept out while he slept.
She headed to the car. She would miss seeing the sunrise. It was her first memory after arriving in Holy Island and spending the night in the car. She looked up to the beautiful pinks and oranges forming in the vast sky. The rucksack and shoe box were placed on the back seat. She had a compulsion to see Stan’s display one more time. She ran across the street to the window. Bye, Baba. I miss you. She returned to the car, got in and composed herself. She had barely used the car in her time on Holy Island and had forgotten the vehicle required a gentle start to its day, not an abrupt rude awakening, similar to Kam. She smiled at the thought of Kam still sleeping. Using her trusted technique, she jiggled the key and tried the engine again. This time it started up and began to pull away from the kerb before choking and spluttering to a halt again.
Why are you doing this to me?!
She tried a few more times, feeling herself close to tears. She kept glancing at the bakery door. Kam didn’t appear. She was thankful she’d tired him out. She took a deep breath and spoke gentle encouraging words to her car. Come on, you can do it, you know you can. She closed her eyes and slowly turned the ignition. It sparked to life. Then deflated within seconds. Fuck. Why don’t you fucking start?! You stupid lump of metal! Do you want us to end up at the bottom of the sea like the other two? For fuck’s sake come on. Please!
With one last effort, Veena turned the ignition with such force and held it for the longest time and although the engine didn’t fully kick in, the car began to creep forward. As it picked
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up pace, she heard the most wonderful noise. She released the clutch, gave it gas. The engine fired. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Sorry, sorry, you’re not stupid at all. You absolute beauty.
She glanced in her mirror and she was seeing things. Kam smiling at her through the rearview mirror. Then a flash of three white stripes against a bright green background. Suddenly, it was no longer imaginary. Kam opened the passenger door of the slowly moving car and clambered in.
Oh, my fucking god Kam!
Oh, my fucking god. You’re fucking welcome. If I hadn’t pushed the car for the last 100 yards, you’d have still been head-butting the steering wheel and crying into your diamonds and emeralds.
Veena ignored him. As she drove away, she took one last look at all the sights and monuments of the Island. The tide was rising but the causeway was still exposed enough to cross. She was leaving her home of nearly a month. What a home it had been. It felt quite emotional, but, with Kam there, she refused to become visibly upset. She focused on the skeletons of trees. The glinting water. Anything but the presence beside her in the car.
So where are we heading, Vee? Scotland maybe? Could try some haggis.?
I’m not going anywhere with you…
Don’t be like that. We finally start again.
…and haggis is offal and blood.
That’s grim. Come on. You want another adventure and this time there’s no money problems.
No. Especially not with you.
After everything we’ve been through…
It’s because of what we’ve been through.
What happened to the old Vee?
She had a baby! I need to get back to Nil. Thank god for Ravi.
Oh yeah, him! Ravi - you’re so wonderful. So handsome. So sensible. So boring!
And you? So mature. And he’s not boring.
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6
Weren’t thinking about him much last night. Really? Why’d you think I came so quickly?
Shut up.
Don’t bring him up then.
I didn’t. You started it…
No, no, no!
Veena, you said…
No! Not again. Don’t do this!
The car shuddered to a standstill halfway across the causeway. Veena got out of the car and grabbed her rucksack. She began walking towards the mainland. Kam ran before her and blocked her path.
No problem. I can push-start it again.
It’s not gonna work.
You haven’t even tried. Or I can just push it all the way.
Don’t be stupid. It’s half a mile and the tide’s coming in.
I want to be with you. I love you.
I don’t love you.
Veena turned away and walked on. This time she was unable to stop the tears from falling. She started to run. A pain stung the back of her calf. She looked down. Kam’s swiss army knife was stuck in her leg. Blood was pouring down her leg. She fell down onto the road. The faint yet close voice of Kam. She felt herself being lifted up. She was aware she was being carried. Then she was back in the car, on the back seat. She felt a jolt in her leg. The knife being pulled out. Now he was applying pressure to the wound.
There’s a first aid kit in the glove compartment. Sorry, Vee, I’m so sorry. You walked away. I had to stop you.
You could have just called after me, like most people. Would you have stopped? The thought of not being with you…
We can’t. Cos you’re like this! I refuse to let Nil experience this madness. It’s over, Kam.
Veena closed her eyes. She felt Kam clean up the wound and bandage her leg. In the quiet, both could hear the water lapping nearer to the car. Veena opened her eyes, slowly sat up and picked up the shoebox. She offered it to Kam.
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Take this and make that new start. And it better be good. Don’t we go halves?
I only needed something small to help me get out of my situation.
Did you tell Ravi about it?
Not everything, but he doesn’t care. Seems to care about you and Nil. He does.
Veena watched Kam open up the box. She saw him taken aback by the gleaming splendour of the jewels. He stepped out of the car and threw the knife into the sea. The sea levels were as high as three weeks ago when Veena had crossed the causeway. Kam ducked back into the car. He placed a small kiss on her forehead. Then he scrambled into the driver’s seat and cracked his knuckles. He pulled the key out of the ignition, gave it a couple of blows, then re-inserted it. The car chugged to life.
It was an old train with windows you could shift. At Berwick Upon Tweed, Veena pulled the window down and hugged Kam. The train guard blew his whistle. Kam put his hand in his jacket and pulled out something. He held it above her head, playfully. Veena bent forward and Kam placed it around her neck even though he was now walking alongside the moving train. A necklace. Of deep, rich gold. Like that of the bride at an Indian wedding. She waved to him as the train gathered pace then pulled her arm in fast. The train shot through a tunnel. She went to find a seat.
She fell asleep dreaming of Nilu playing with the Bagpuss mice while they both ate a picnic of baath, dhal, aloo baza, and shinghara.
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***
Empty Chair Deborah Chatterjee
I was born on the last day of summer. 21st September to be precise. I’ll refrain from telling you the year, though at some point you’ll work out how old I am. My mother decided to call me Autumn – originality was never her forte – and like Autumn prepares us for Winter, my birth led the way into a vast, cold darkness.
I don’t remember much about my early childhood because it was about other people. Me as the passive spectator watching from the sidelines of a sheltered life; my early, (un) formative years and a blur of family crises. But then something happened that plays in my mind like a film on repeat. I know the nuance of how each line is delivered and all the intricacies of the unfolding plot. It was an incident so insignificant on many levels but one that changed the course of my life forever and made me who I am right at this very moment…
“Okoh Kemi?”
“Good morning, Sir”
“Tenman Claire?”
“Good morning, Sir.”
“Singer Robin?”
“Singer…Robin?”
And so arose the question that I’ve been asking myself most of my life – who is Robin Singer? Or dare I ask who was Robin Singer? I imagined quite vividly that the person behind the name was a girl and so Robin became Robyn. I’d be quite disappointed if after all this time Robyn did turn out to be a boy.
Why hadn’t Robyn Singer turned up for the first day and indeed any other day of her first year and then subsequent years at Secondary school? Could it have been an administrative error in the register? Perhaps her parents had had a last-minute stroke of luck and were able to pay for private schooling? I figured that it couldn’t have been too tragic a reason, otherwise it would have surely made the news headlines: “Girl Missing on First Day At Secondary School”; or “Girl Dies In Road Accident On First Day At Secondary School.” So one possibility was that
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she had been moved at the eleventh hour to another class. My sly detective work, with random questions such as “So…has Robyn Singer made the netball team?” …“Who?!”, confirmed my weirdness to one and all. Even when I resorted to asking the teachers directly, they looked at me blankly. And what’s more, my form teacher couldn’t recollect her name ever being in the register. It was as if I had completely imagined that morning, when those significant and omnipotent words had come bellowing out of his mouth. Had I imagined it? I take pride in the fact that as an Anatomical Pathology Technologist I spend hours in a public morgue piecing together people’s last days, hours and minutes. A baggy heart is the sign of unfit person. Cyanosis tells me I have the remnants of an alcoholic. But when it came to Robyn Singer I had no body dead or alive and no clues. Just questions. Endless questions.
Twenty years after the incident, when my cousin was pregnant with her first child, she asked me what names I liked. I declared with childish enthusiasm that Robin/Robyn was indeed the perfect unisex name. She laughed in mock disgust: “It makes me a think of a bird on a Christmas card and a diminutive man in red tights.” Six months later she called her newborn son Paris. He had been conceived while she and her partner had been holidaying in the capital. Like I said, originality doesn’t run in the family.
My inability to sympathise with family members and society at large was the main reason for entering a profession with a fancy title for dissecting other human beings. I liked the fact that I worked mainly on my own and that even if I did talk it was essentially to myself. But one day I was showing a trainee around the public mortuary where I worked and as I pulled out the storage drawers and enthused about our wonderful, new, body fluid drainage system, I couldn’t quite mask my excitement that this trainee was called Dave Singer. Could this slightly churlish-looking, young man be some relation to Robyn Singer? I didn’t want to beat around the bush and so I asked him outright whether he was related to her. This you’ll understand, put me in a somewhat vulnerable position – how often do we ridicule people who ask us whether we happen to know their friend, just because they live in the same city?
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I was overcome with joy when he nonchalantly replied, “Yes” as if I’d asked him whether he wanted a cup of tea. My elation and invisible tears of relief were prematurely cut short when he said in the same breath: “He’s just celebrated his 92nd Birthday.” This may have been a Robin Singer, but it wasn’t my Robyn, though I felt a shiver of thrill that it was the closest that I’d got, in what had now been a 25-year search.
Although not a bearer of good news, Dave’s presence did seem to bring about a change in circumstances (such a shame he’s no longer around) let me call them near misses with Robyn. The most exciting one was when I was showing Dave the basic routine of a top-to-toe check of the body – to make sure there are no cuts or bruising or outward signs of injury. It was a female in her 30s that we were looking at - sudden death with no obvious explanation. We turned her over on her front, and there, right in the small of her back, was the letter R in a fancy font. The body still needed to be identified. Could the R stand for Robyn? On first analysis of the corpse, the face looked like that of a woman in her 30s (as well as a woman in her 30s can possibly look when she’s suffering from rigor mortis) but on closer inspection, the rest of the body soon gave it away that when she had been alive and kicking, she had succumbed to the pressures of Botox to make up for the cruelty that gravity had imposed. The only fact I knew for sure was that Robyn had to be my age – give or take a few years. This woman was at least in her early 50s.
Now you may presume that all I thought about was Robyn. Of course not! On the contrary, I can assure you that most of my thinking was spent fretting about the usual things women fret about – whether I was going to spend the rest of my life on my own; whether I should get a dog as I obviously wasn’t going to have a child; whether I should become vegetarian or even a vegan. During these times I never really thought about Robyn until someone would mention school or ornithology and then of course Robyn would eventually come back to say “Hullo.” But after years of searching Missing Persons lists and asking people silly questions, there were only 3 possible conclusions: she had either been a figment of my imagination; was dead; or she, and let’s also say he (just in case), had changed their
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name by Deed Poll. I’d finally started coming to the realization that I probably would never find the real Robyn but the idea of her was most certainly lodged in my brain. Indeed, it felt like Robyn had become my alter ego. She had started off her existence looking like a young Jodie Foster, and then over the years, had slowly morphed and re-morphed into whoever captured my own personal Zeitgeist at the time. Now it felt she looked like…me.
Things might have turned out so differently had Robyn been a real person, who had actually turned up on the first day at school - and been my desk partner. You see, it meant that I spent the rest of my first year at secondary school, sitting on my own. The rationale was that our class had an odd number but the reality was that I was more like the class leper, which unfortunately became everybody’s rationale. If Robyn had turned up that day we might have been the Bonnie & Clyde of Year 7. I would have been one of the cool kids through association. I would have come to school and been greeted with high-fives and smiles, not eye-rolling and flared nostrils. I did have desk partners in subsequent years, but by then I had already solidified my reputation as someone to steer clear of.
I was relieved when I left school and went to college, where I could start afresh and be judged for who I really was. But somehow during my time at school, I too had come to think of myself as a leper, finding the task of making friends a bit like trying to impress at a job interview – hard work. Like I said, it was a no-brainer for me to work in a mortuary because who do you have to impress when you’re surrounded by dead people? Loved ones only think of their dead ones and the Coroners and Police only need to know the cause. They don’t care about you. They’d never suspect you.
People are oblivious to the actions of an invisible woman. Yes, I have become the invisible woman – doors slam in my face, I get bumped into all the time and whoever happens to be serving me in a cafe, looks straight beyond me, at something or someone obviously far more interesting. Even the cadavers I used to work with looked at me with more intrigue. Fed up, aware that I haven’t made the most of my small existence on this planet and with the words Carpe Diem ringing through
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my head, I decide to travel to the other side of the world –Australia. Apparently one of my ancestors had been amongst the 736 convicts on the first fleet of ships to this new world on 13th May 1787, and how funny that 220 years later to this day I too was making the journey – albeit in a much quicker fashion. Excited and petrified at the same time – for how many women of my age go on adventures? – I settle into my seat number 36A. I watch as the seats around me get filled with hopeful travellers; people escaping from god-knows-what; adventurous families and weary, hard-nosed businessmen. Hand luggage is stuffed in the over-head lockers and entertainment is at the ready, as everyone resigns themselves to the long airborne hours that lie ahead. Only nobody is sitting next to me – on either side. Perhaps people are still boarding? Actually, they can’t be because the plane is slowly making its way to the runway. I ignore the butterflies in my stomach. I’ve never flown before. I hope the plane doesn’t crash. I start to feel sick with anxiety, scratching the ‘R’ in the small of my back. Scratching until I know that I have drawn blood.
And then just as the words “Here I am again” seep their way through my mind, a gentleman who has perhaps boarded the plane at the eleventh hour, or been unhappy with his original allocated seat, takes his place next to me. This disconcerts me just a little bit but pleases me even more. I feel a frisson of pleasure when he starts talking to me – you know, asks me questions and stuff like that. Had I been down-under before? Was it business or pleasure? It soon feels like an interrogation. Perhaps he’s a policeman hot on my heals? I would ordinarily panic, but I am so taken aback that someone is talking to me that I actually don’t care about his motives. And when I am proffered a handshake and “Amit Singh”, I can only say what has always come naturally to me: “Robyn. Robyn Singer.”
I’ve been thinking. History does repeat itself but as a famous author once said, it’s not just the story of bad people doing bad things. It’s quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong. As Amit Singh looks deep into my eyes and the plane finally takes off, I pray (and I’ve never prayed before) that things will not go wrong. Not this time. Please, never again.
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Chameleon
Saundra Daniel
A slow and steady clicking of fingers emerges out of the void. Click click click.
‘Hello, Carlo? There you are.’ I press my palm down into scattered gravel, feel its cool temperature against my skin. Instinct brings it to my head to dissipate the heat there. ‘Don’t move. Relax.’ The smooth cadence of a female voice comes through a vapour. ‘Take in a deep breath and let go.’
I breathe in and the pounding in my head evaporates, replaced by an weightless ebb, floating, I am a dot of simple insignificance. A delicate warmth infuses my body. I think of when I first arrived in England. Before meeting Ruby and having the twins, I would sleep in affordable hotels. Against the creeping winter, even the most modest establishments provided fifteen-tog duvets and after long days of walking high streets in search of employment, I looked forward to drifting off into a dream of freedom, airborne above the Pacific Ocean. The young woman’s voice arrives again. Her accent is familiar yet has a hint of something else. She must travel widely. She doesn’t sound like the loud drunk customers that I overhear from the restaurant’s kitchen. How peculiar. I have lived in confusion for the last seven years, questioning why I’ve never connected with the locals - the English don’t speak the language in the way I was taught back home.
I often listen to them while I cook with the back doors open, occasionally glancing out at the empty carpark and the grey, derelict buildings opposite the Golden Palace. Broken windows serve as entry points for pigeons that had moved into the abandoned offices when government aspirations for business regeneration was overrun by wildlife.
My heart races with excitement. I can easily start a business here, but it would attract the wrong type of customer. Prices in Manchester are expensive too and I can’t have a repeat of what I left behind.
Click click click.
‘Hello?’
The intrusive clicking of fingers again.
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‘As I was saying, do you realise how much we deny ourselves a beautiful breath of fresh air? The percentages of people taking shallow breaths from the chest are staggering. You want to go deep into the diaphragm.’ She breathes in to make her point. But the humidity this evening reminds me of home. Her voice goes fuzzy, then returns super clear, like a lingering drop of brandy awakening my taste buds.
‘…Allow external sounds to bring you closer to the sound of my voice. Good. I’m by your side. You have no place to go. So, relax.’
My shoulders drop and I float backwards.
‘You can talk to me, if you like? Go on, ask me a question.’
‘Where am I?’
‘You can be wherever you want to be. For instance, I myself have made a big journey from Cebu to Cheetham Hill for a special occasion.’ She sits beside me. ‘It took a whole day, I mean who knew that this place, Manchester, was so far!’ Her voice softens. ‘That’s enough about me… Let’s take an excursion. Tell me about your past.’
A warmth infuses my being.
‘Why are you smiling?’
She was right to ask. Why was I so open in front of this stranger?
I think of mother’s papaya trees and the fresh jasmine that she would pick from the garden. I spoke with her last week and she was asking again, when I would return home. With the large picture of Christ hanging in her living room, how could I go back and lie to her? Things were better this way.
‘Are you a priest?’ I ask the voice.
‘Does this feel like a confession, Carlo?’ Her voice wanders deep into my ear dilating the chambers into my heart. ‘Do you have something to confess?’
I try avoiding what I want to say but I’m behaving like Benjie, from school days. Gossiping was a disease he couldn’t shake off. No matter how hard he tried he would spill his guts about some drama: Kumusta ka Carlo, you know that Imelda is pregnant? I heard Kiko is the father. Carlo my brother, did you hear that Mr Guzman has been fired? Carlo you’re a really smart guy you can go places my man. Carlo, Carlo,
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Carlo... Benjie didn’t fit in with any groups and his bullies would use him as a punch bag teasing him for talking so much, like a girl.
‘Please don’t move, relax… Do you like hurting people, Carlo?’
‘No.’
My heart sounds like someone banging an angry fist at a door.
‘Keep still. Take a deep breath. Relax, go deeper into your memory. Tell me, what was life like back in the Philippines, before you left? Something significant happened before your departure?’
I find myself confirming: ‘I don’t like hurting people.’ I breathe deeply. It was evening not long ago. I was taking the bags of rubbish to the bins. I touch my clothes. They’re sticky and wet.
‘See Carlo, that wasn’t so difficult was it? Now, tell me more. Venture deeper and further into your memory, as if you were there now.’
My body collapses once more giving way to something that is not sleep. ‘Every morning the roosters from each neighbouring house crow just before dawn. I am already awake, I can’t sleep so I get ready for work. I add water to the vase with flowers by my mother’s bedside. She is asleep and I kiss her cheek before leaving. The sky is unusually dark, and landscape shades of malachite. I ease the dining room window closed.’
Fatigue slows my breathing but I continue. ‘After breakfast I take the thirty-minute ride by motorcycle to my boxing gym. I like getting there before the town becomes crowded with motorcycles, people selling wares and loud music from nearby shops.
‘Foreigners pay well for the Filipino experience, so I prepare and light joss sticks. My CD player fills the hall with traditional drum instrumentals. The large fans are whirring, it will reach forty degrees in a few hours. I hope that one of the grandmasters passes through. It’s good for business and amusing to watch attentive wide-eyed foreigners hanging on the instructor’s every word.
‘I unlock the wooden gates onto the outdoor area, and stack
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the car tyres, rattan sticks, bolo and other training weapons. I am cleaning the boxing ring whilst I wait for the police. They will be expecting their weekly payment.’
‘What is the payment for, Carlo?’ Her question is slow and deliberate.
‘To keep my business safe, of course.’
Any hint of my sarcasm fades along with the hum of distant carriageway traffic.
‘You’re doing well Carlo. You’re remembering.’
‘Seven of the police arrive as I finish setting up. They’re looking for my friend Erique who has defected. They say that he can cause them a lot of trouble, and that if they get trouble, I get trouble. They are not happy. They surround me when they talk. One of them draw out a training Kampilan sword from its sheath, running his eyes and finger along its dull blade. His index finger rests on the tip, and he twists the sword with his other hand at the handle. They do not need to go into detail for me to understand.
‘They tell me to keep either Erique or his children at the gym when he arrives, especially his girl, she might be useful to them, they know of local gangs that will look after her very well. The laughter, deep in their throats, makes me sick to my stomach, but there’s nothing I can do.’
This was long ago but I feel a descending shroud of sadness.
‘Maria is special, she visits with her little brother after school each day. She fights better than many of the young boys in the gym. Her kali fighting, panantukan and secret dark elements of Filipino Martial Arts, is mesmerising and unsettling. She can be ruthless. She once broke the finger of an older boy for playfully putting his arms around her waist. She fights with everything: hands, feet, elbows, or anything she can hold.’
I move to straighten my stiff back.
‘Carlo, remain as you are with your eyes closed. Breathe, and begin to count backward from one hundred.’ She sighs, irritated.
I lose track of counting but I’m aware that her voice has lost its warmth.
‘Good, you’re doing well. Now go back to that time. What
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did you do?’
‘After school, Rodrigo the younger child arrives. I ring the police as instructed. The Chief Superintendent is a family friend.’
My chest is tight and I sigh before carrying on.
‘He asks Rodrigo if he would like to go into the police car and see what they do with people that disobey the law. Of course, Rodrigo is excited and asks if he will get to carry a gun. The Chief Superintendent takes the boy without a fuss. It was that easy. I run into the bathroom to be sick. I don’t know what happened after they left.’
‘Because you are a coward. You sold up and fled to where you thought nobody could find you.’
My silence leads me along a corridor of clarity. The emotion in her throat betrays her refinement and her native accent now appears prominent. I need a moment to think. The voice continues and eventually I focus on it:
‘…travelling to different continents to find my Rodrigo, but luckily for you he is now safe, away from danger, although not unscathed, a stranger to my father and me.’ She pauses. ‘You are the only loose end now, Carlo.’
She emits a quiet curse.
A weighted silence leaves me suspended as I search until I hear her again.
‘Carlo, we’re going to go through these instructions quickly.’
‘Maria.’ My voice is faint. If it’s truly her I’m done. How do I undo the workings of deep trance, what about Ruby, the children, and mother?
‘Carlo, I want you to pay close attention. I am going to count from one to three. At the count of three and not before I want you to open your eyes. All physical sensations will be amplified. I want those strong sensations returned to your body, magnified by one hundred. Do you understand!’
‘Yes.’ I can feel my breath, shallow, rapid.
I try nodding but can’t lift my thumping head.
Footsteps are advancing from somewhere, like mother’s used to whenever she had urgent news.
‘One. Reorient yourself to your surroundings.’ Maria’s voice retreats into hollow inkiness.
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‘Two. Take in a deep breath of air.’
Feet, two pairs, are running now towards us, soft thumps across a grass verge and then hard concrete, accompanied by shouting voices.
‘Three -’
My breath is taken away but returns in stronger and laboured rasps, bringing tears out of the squeezed eyes which I refuse to open.
Whichever way I position myself amplifies agony. I tentatively touch two sharp points protruding from above my waist and the paste of warm stickiness glued along my chest, arms and legs. My throbbing nose is bent at an angle and I don’t have to touch the hot bruising at my cheek to know that it is growing, filling with blood.
New voices. They gasp. I know that the muffled retch from one of them is a reaction to how I look.
Maria’s voice has stripped away my weightlessness and driven out the light.
‘What a sicko.’
Mother would say be grateful for small mercies.
‘She was too quick, I only managed to get a blurred shot.’
‘How… What the hell did she use?’ A woman’s voice, distorted as she covers her mouth, speaking behind her hand.
‘An iron bar and her fists. She was taunting him too, probably about to mug him or something. Poor bastard.’
‘Do you think he can hear us?’ the woman asks.
I wonder how far away Maria is now, an apparition, leaving as she came, blending into the night.
I dare to look. My eyes roll in their orbit, settling into a blurred sideways view of the back of the restaurant and car park. There is a misunderstanding between my nervous system and neck. My head doesn’t move on command to see the people by my side. Instead my mind shows a burst of bloodied visual shots of how I must look: blood, bones, ripped skin, bruises, broken. I return to the peace found within and close my eyes.
My cry echoes further than necessary, too loud in this derelict business complex, disturbing movement in the foliage. There is the sound of ringing through a mobile’s speaker.
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‘Police. Please hurry.’ Shoes crunch softly against the gritted ground.
‘Christ, look at the state of him.’
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Girl in a Suitcase
Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen
27th December 1977.
I said good-bye to my friends by the café doors at 12.57am. They skipped off, tumbling onto the number 88-night bus. A quintet of sad faces began banging on the bus window as it drove past:
“Yangyu! Yangyu! Come back to ours. You can crash on the sofa!”
But I wanted to sleep in my own bed. I didn’t want to wake next day with a mouth like desiccated coconut. So I waved my friends away and watched the bus taillights diminish. I turned and walked down the imaginatively named High Street and slipped into Gauden Lane. The flat I shared with three, mostly absentee room-mates, nestled at the bottom of the lane, adjacent to the clattering insomnia of railway arches. I rummaged as I walked, fingers searching for keys. I could hear my mother’s voice in my head: “Always have your keys ready. Be prepared. Not only do they open your door, you can use them as a weapon. Stop it! Don’t slouch!” I continued walking and rummaging, casting my fingers wide, fishing in the dark interior sea of my bag. Annoyance started percolating, like morning coffee. When I get annoyed, I frown. Up popped my mother’s voice, again.
“How do ever expect to get married with a brow like that!”
Just as my hand was about to cradle my keys, I rounded the end of the lane and passed beneath the last streetlight and into the night. That was the moment something curled around my mouth. It formed a barrier, cutting off air and imposing an uncontrollable drowsiness.
I was dragged along the street to a place I didn’t belong. A house that every community has. The one that all the school children are terrified of. The one everyone says is haunted. The one that stands alone. A crumbling, shattered husk that should have collapsed yet defies its decaying masonry.
I fell asleep.
I woke.
My hands and feet were bound. My brain crackled, as it
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attempted to put the world the right way up. I reached fortyfive degrees and the world started to swim. As if I was inside a snow globe. I saw him. Smoke curled about his torso, writhing and weaving its threaded wisps into a halo which settled above his mass of blond hair. Even as he smoked one, he was rolling another cigarette. A perfect cylinder rocked between his thumb and forefinger. I had one of those small inconsequential thoughts, like puffs of hot air. ‘I wonder if he usually uses one of those cigarette machines?’
He lit the freshly rolled smoke, inhaled and then balanced the roll-up on his lower lip. There was a hacksaw now in his left hand. It was a strong, handsome hand. Long artistic fingers, hugging the handle of the saw. He hacks with it. The metallic teeth of the saw part my flesh. His cigarette undulates to the back and forth rhythm, as the hacksaw prises open skin and sinew. Some resistance. The blade splinters my neck bone. He smiles, admiring his work. I was looking directly into the face of a white male. Eighteen or slightly older? This is the face of the person who has ended my life. An angel of death, with a tiny upside down crescent shaped scar, just above his right eyebrow. I’d never thought that an angel would have scars. But this one did. He also had a tattoo around his neck. It felt at odds, given the rest of him and how he was dressed. The tattoo said:
‘tear here…’
Ironic, as he had torn my head from my body. I can’t keep calling him, him. I’ll name him Apollyon. After all, wasn’t Apollyon a fallen angel of death?
Apollyon removed my head. It meant I watched as he ripped me apart. Apollyon’s excitement grew as he removed my arms, legs, hands and feet. With each severance he seemed to draw more energy and pleasure. When the tearing and hacking had finished, he stood still, licking the blood that drizzled down his fingers. Savouring, cherishing, eyeing me. I understood why Apollyon had removed my head and my hands. But my feet? It’s a weird sensation being separated from yourself. Apollyon stored my head in a large tin. It smelt of sugar and lemons, sherbet lemons? Or maybe it was preserved lemons. Whichever, it had been an industrial-sized quantity. Not that
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my head is over-sized. Apollyon regularly opened the tin. He had positioned my head in such a way that, every time he opened the lid, I saw him peering down at me. Occasionally, he’d apply lipstick and mascara. When he was done, he’d hold a small mirror in front of my face. Ridiculous, right? Looking at my dead reflection reminded me of my grandmother’s weeping ghost stories. My love of my grandmother’s tales superseded my fear of them.
“Tell me a story, grandma,” I’d plead, as only a six-year-old could. “One that’s not too scary.” I sat on the floor in front of my grandma already hugging a cushion, waiting.
Grandma loved to scare me. She would lean back into her rocking chair and sway. “Don’t knows there’s any such thing as a not-too-scary ghost story. Long ago, there was a young woman who drowned in a well . . .”
And so, on those dark winter nights, she would start her tale as we sat next to the roaring fire. I miss her. I was hoping I’d see her. But Apollyon had trapped me. I was neither here nor there.
Sometimes Apollyon would rant for days and nights. He’d open my tin and shout alcohol-infused obscenities at me, his words sliding and colliding together. “Gohome! You’re kind’snot wanted here!”
What did that mean, “my kind?” There is only one ‘kind’ isn’t there? That’s mankind.
I couldn’t see Apollyon looking at the other parts of me, yet I sensed him. The roll of his eyes peeling away my skin. His cold, clammy hands pawing at my torso. The dead have no need for time, so I had no idea what day, month or year it was, or how long I had been kept. But Apollyon aged. His face began to show the movement of time. His once supple, elegant and mobile hands hardened. His skin became thin. Silver sprouted from his head. His hair-line slowly retreated like outgoing sea waves. His clothing changed styles. He grew old, but I did not. One night, Apollyon pulled my head right out of the tin and placed it on a chair.
I saw the moon through a hole in the ceiling. The last time I’d seen the sky was the night Apollyon had taken me. I felt the fingers of the night, dabbling across my forehead. I could smell
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life! I longed to be part of it again, to see my friends, to be sat in a greasy spoon nursing a cup of builder’s tea. My mother’s voice was suddenly there in the back of my head.
“What kind of food is that? Didn’t I teach you how to cook a good, nutritious meal?”
I suppressed the pain and the memory, instead focusing on that night. All I had wanted to do was to get home, kick off my shoes, curl up on the saggy sofa and eat a bowl of dandan noodles. But Apollyon had moved my life in a different direction. Dragging me into this unloved house. Where he pulled me apart like a roasted Peking duck.
Apollyon lays me out on the floor like a macabre Mary Shelly monster sewing pattern. Ready to be stitched back together. He dresses me, a short plaid skirt, frilly blouse and white knee-high socks. It’s perverted. He moves onto my head, brushing my hair. Fashioning it into two bunches. I wouldn’t have been seen dead like this. But then I am dead, aren’t I?
Then I was back in the tin, among the suitcase and the black bags. The swirling mist of my snow-globe world settled into the gloom of never having been. I remained there sleeping, for an uninterrupted, undetermined purgatory of time.
At last, my solitary torment ended.
Light, air and sound rushed in as the suitcase was prised open, my head released from its tin. I was looking up directly into soft brown, female eyes. They were set in a face similar to mine: an East Asian face: same, but different. I liked the way her body occupied the space. I liked the way she dressed. Comfortable, well-tailored clothes. A V-neck jumper, trousers covered by a three-quarter length overcoat. On her feet, soft suede Chelsea boots.
I remember those. How I’d lusted after a pair. I’d never had the wherewithal to buy a pair. Her clothes were all black, save the red poppy, pinned to the right lapel off her coat. The English she spoke was flawless. The woman squinted, forcing her brow to scrunch. In the back of her head a dead woman spoke to her.
“Don’t do that! No one will ever want to marry you with a brow like that!”
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I couldn’t help but laugh. The woman frowned even more. Did she see me smiling?
So, I wasn’t the only one with a mother living on in the back of my head. Maybe it’s an East Asian thing?
Suddenly people flood into the room. I look up as far as I can. I can only see the sky. The entire roof has fallen in. Once again, I feel the air on my skin. Definitely winter. That fresh bite to the wind. A bright, weak, watery sun that had no real heat. My dead eyes turned back to the woman. She continued to examine me. In another life might we have been friends?
A voice to my right called out, “DC Amber Chau?”
I couldn’t see who the male voice was attached to. He sounded relatively young. The woman’s attention is momentarily drawn away from me. She replied, “Here!”
A pair of large black shoes paced into view. The woman’s name is D.C. I rummage around in my memory bank to decode, D.C. Detective Constable Amber Chau! Amber refocuses on my head. Was it because of our close proximity that I could see the thoughts inside her head? The conversation with her mother, resumes.
“I swear the devil made you to be my life’s burden. Why did you become a policeman!”
Her mother obviously had not approved of Amber’s career choice. This was an old conversation replaying constantly in Amber’s head. Her mother no longer lives. I wonder, is my mum still alive? The conversation continues.
“It’s policewoman, Ma. And why not? Loads of women join the force,” Amber lies. Why? “It’s a good career, the pay’s not bad either.”
Her attempt at humour falls on stony ground. Amber corrects her mother’s English. So do I, always, when we argue. I can’t stop my mouth, then I hate myself for doing it, wishing I could take it back, but you can’t, can you?
DC Amber Chau stared into my bulging eyes, barely set in my decapitated head. She speaks. “Who in their right mind ..?”
I know, right? Who on earth decides to become a copper?
I mean a ‘Chinese’ policeman? Ironic, when I was alive the Chinese Detective had just started airing on the BBC. I loved that show. Finally, people who looked and spoke like me. And
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here now, for real, Amber Chau, a Chinese Detective. Thank God it is Amber and not Apollyon who is looking at me.
The city wakes. I hear, see, feel it all. Traffic, English breakfast cooking, croissants and coffee. It’s all so bright. New and intriguing sounds. This is Future World. Reality was holding me under its surface. I was looking up through the water. Through the water’s refracted light, to an unfamiliar world. The water distorting my sight and sound. People rippling, floating across my eyes. Voices zoning in and out. Their bodies wobbling like thin cardboard cut-outs in the breeze. Faces drifting, dissipating like paint being washed from a brush. The only thing that stays in focus is Amber. Amber talks.
“Anyone found ID? And where the f**k is the rest of this poor woman’s body?”
Suddenly Amber’s face is gone. Where is she? I can see her Chelsea boots, standing a little way off to my left. But I can’t see her. The face now staring into mine is male, white and old. His head, unlike mine, is attached to a body. He is dressed in tweed. I can smell pipe tobacco and peppermints. Ha! Reminds me of my history professor, Dr. Peter Carpenter. Very paternal, full of knowledge and anecdotes. Most of the students thought he was a joke but I liked him, he made me feel at home. Amber’s very comfortable in this man’s company. Work colleagues. Close friends, perhaps?
I see people all holding small oblong boxes. They talk into them. Amber has two. So does the old man, who reminds me of Dr Carpenter. Maybe it denotes seniority? The higher up the chain, the more of these boxes you have?
So much noise! Voices, wind, pigeons playing with the telephone lines, swinging wire to wire. I screen out the babble, concentrating on the conversation between Amber and the older man.
“Doc, what you got for me?”
So, he’s a doctor!
“Dr. Julian Cudlow, M.E., B.M., F.R.C.S., if you don’t mind, Amber.”
Amber smirks.
“D.C. Amber Chau, Dr. Julian Cudlow if you don’t mind.”
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Both break into smiles, laughing as they hug each other. It’s nice when friends are reunited. They both turn their attention to me, well, my head. This quiet moment is suddenly shattered by a crash. Falling masonry. It sends the pigeons into a scattered frenzy through the open roof.
The Dr. and Amber turn in the direction of the kerfuffle. I am left alone. At least I was out of my tin and no longer Apollyon’s plaything. I mustn’t think about that. Think about friends, flat mates, my mum. The local pub where I drank on Saturdays. The Golden Egg café, with its wonderful mix of English and Chinese food. The Sunday post-party brunches with friends –hanging after an epic night out. For me it was always Dimsum and ho-fun. I can hear the laughter… but I can’t see their faces anymore. My mind keeps circling back to Apollyon. All I think about is this slice of fractured time. I’ve forgotten so many things. The taste of fruit and preserved ginger.
Suddenly Dr. Cudlow is talking about moving my head. I can’t leave without the rest of my body. I refuse to go!
I’m moved. Well, there wasn’t much of me to move, just my decapitated head. What could I have done to stop them?
The kerfuffle was the police finding the rest of my body. Apollyon had stuffed my torso, hands, legs arms and feet up a chimney.
The Doc’s laid me out on a metal slab. It isn’t as cold as I thought it would be. He’s managed to put me back together again. More or less. I’m missing a couple of ribs, my big toe, both of my little fingers and a few teeth. The latter were apparently removed by Apollyon for reasons the Doc’s not sure about.
More time has passed. How much? As I said, I have no use for time, so I don’t know. The doctor is retrieving my fingerprints. The miracles of science. And my mum’s back in my head.
“Science! What do you need science for? Science will not find you a good husband!”
Grandma chastised mum, telling her to leave me be. “The world’s changing. There’s more to life than marriage!” she told her. Grandma was a progressive.
The newspaper on the edge of a table catches my eye. I can’t
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quite make out the full date. But the year is clear, 2019. Thirty years!
Dismembered corpse found in derelict Eastend house. Gruesome find was made on Friday. The unknown female, of East Asian heritage was discovered by builders carrying out demolition work.
I wanted to amount to something, at least more than a oneeighty, by one-fifty rectangle of news. Unknown female. Nothing’s changed. I wonder, have they told Mum yet? That’s assuming she’s still alive. Duh! How can they tell a mother that her daughter’s been found, if they don’t know who the daughter is? I want to go home . . .
A familiar scent travels through my nostrils. I look around, as much as a decapitated head on a mortuary slab, can look around. I hear two female voices: Amber’s voice and that of a younger female. I smell pipe tobacco and peppermints, the doctor. He’s speaking to an unknown male. I can’t place the new male’s voice, but there’s that smell, again! The doctor enters with Amber, the younger woman and the unknown, bent old man. I’m to be moved, again. Why won’t you let me be?
My bones are wrapped and carefully packed. There it is again. That smell. Instructions are given to the lean old man. The doctor, Amber and the young woman leave. My head is picked up. As soon as the lean old man’s fingers touch my skin, I know. He turns my head. I see his face.
Apollyon!
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Contributors
Koushik Banerjea
Koushik Banerjea is a London based writer and novelist. Just too young for ‘Crackers’, and certainly too old for ‘grime’, the bits in between suited him just fine. The other side of this nocturne, he is a purveyor of tall tales, and some shorter ones too, which have appeared in ‘The Good Journal’, ‘Minor Literatures’, ‘Verbal’, ‘Writers Resist’ and ‘Shots in the Dark’. His debut novel, ‘Another kind of Concrete’is out now with Jacaranda books.
www.koushikbanerjea.co.uk
insta: @hark.athim
Yvonne Battle-Felton
Yvonne is an American writer living in the UK. A writer of fiction and Creative Nonfiction, her writing has been published in literary journals and anthologies. Her debut novel, Remembered, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (2019), The Not the Booker Prize (2019), and The Jhalak Prize (2020). Remembered is available online and off in bookstores and libraries. Yvonne infrequently updates her website and is likely to be found (online) on Twitter @YBattleFelton
Deborah Chatterjee
In 2007 I won a BBC Writersroom competition (The Royal Tapes) and my 5 min radio play Test The Nation was broadcast on BBC Five Live. The following year, I was part of the Critical Mass Writers Group at the Royal Court and I continued to write plays, a couple of which were performed in fringe theatre. I also volunteered for the charity Write to Life that helps victims of torture through writing. Then, in 2016 I was selected to be part of Commonword’s Women In The Spotlight and feel very proud that Commonword continues to publish my short stories.
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Saundra Daniel
From my earliest memory, I have been surrounded by books, and since primary school, story – regardless of format –has been one my biggest writing influencers. I’m indebted to my parents who constantly encouraged creativity, open mindedness, and perseverance.
Highly Commended City of Stories 2017
Dipali Das
Bengal. Burnley. Dundee. Chesham. Staveley. Walthamstow. Ipswich. Burnley. Perth. Manchester. Engineer. Teacher. Mother of two children. Writer of plays, short stories and poems. Currently completing an MA in Film and Media.
Abi Idowu
Abi Idowu is an existential poet and short story writer. Her works have been published since she was 16 in local, national and international bodies of work. Prolific till she was 35, ill health has made her writing sporadic, however, she writes with a deep understanding of loss, pain, loneliness and courage. She draws from the sometimes strange as fiction events in life that she’s experienced but it always makes for interesting reading. Her works can be seen online.
Shahireh Sharif
Shahireh Sharif graduated with a PhD in Pharmacy from the University of Manchester and after teaching at the same university for three years she turned to writing. She uses writing, photography, and film-making media to explore contemporary issues such as identity, race and gender; and Persian cultural heritage. She has two novels and a few short fictions published, she also had a photo exhibition in Manchester Art Gallery and performed in Whitworth Art Gallery and HOME.
For further information please visit: https://www.instagram.com/sangrezeh
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Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen
Lucy Chau Lai-Tuen: A HK foundling, exported to the UK, late ‘50s early 60s as a transracial adoptee. Graduated from drama school in ’84 been on telly, stage, film and radio (BBC, ITV, Netflix RSC, Manchester Royal Exchange, Soho, The Park). Still acting, now a published writer, poet and playwright (The Royal Court, Komola Collective, ArtsEd, OberonB ooks, AuroraMetro Books)
You can find her on social media:
Twitter @LucySheen
FB www.facebook.com/ActorLucySheen Insta www.instagram.com/lucysheen
Mei Yuk Wong
Mei Yuk is a writer and visual artist. Since 1998 she has lived in England and is based in Manchester. She was born in Hong Kong, studying theology, women and development, art and visual culture in different countries. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally. Walking in the Clouds was published in the UK. She has collaborated with Commonword, Yellow Earth Theatre and Octagon Theatre. www.meiyukwong.co.uk
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