by Mike Gayle
“That’s fantastic news,” said Rose. “Tell me all about them.”
“Well,” said Hubert without missing a beat. “Them called Dotty, Dennis, and Harvey and them all a real hoot!”
In retrospect this should have been the first and last mention of Dotty, Dennis, and Harvey. After all, Hubert had brought up both his children not to lie. But Rose had been so pleased that he had some new friends, and sounded so relieved that she no longer had to worry about him, that he felt he had no choice but to keep the lie going. And before he knew it, he was creating long and involved histories for his fictional friends, giving them sons and daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and the whole thing became so complicated that he had to make a record in a notepad to help him keep track.
“Puss Bird?”
Hubert lifted his gaze to acknowledge the receptionist and noted once again with annoyance how the vet’s policy of calling out a pet’s name rather than that of their owner caused its usual flurry of sniggers. Ignoring them, Hubert rose to his feet and, clutching the box with Puss inside, made his way into the consulting room.
“So what exactly is the problem today?” asked the vet, Mr. Andrews, a tall, gray-haired man with a bushy beard and a lilting Irish accent.
Hubert opened the box and gently placed Puss on the examination table.
“She not eating.”
“When was the last time she ate?”
“Three days ago,” replied Hubert. “She had breakfast on Sunday morning but nothing since.”
As Mr. Andrews began to scrutinize Puss, placing a hand on either side of her body, carefully feeling with his fingertips, paying special attention to her stomach, Hubert thought about how the animal had come into his life.
Hubert was by no means a fan of cat-kind and would chase any feline intruder from his garden with whatever weapon happened to be closest to hand. But one day three summers ago he had been cleaning his kitchen floor when he’d heard a mewling at his back door and had discovered a plump black-and-white cat sitting on his doorstep. Enraged, Hubert had made a swing for the cat with the dripping mop in his hand, shooing it all the way down to the bottom of the garden. The following day at the same time, however, the cat returned while Hubert was doing the washing-up and mewled even louder. This time armed with a soapy spatula, Hubert had chased it until it disappeared over the fence and into his neighbor’s property.
This pattern continued every day for an entire fortnight until finally Hubert decided enough was enough. Determined to rid himself of this menace once and for all, he purchased a spray gun from Poundland, filled it with dirty dishwater, and then sat waiting at the kitchen table for the cat to appear. The moment he heard it, Hubert leaped to his feet, threw open the door, and pointed the spray directly at his target like a Jamaican Dirty Harry. But this time, instead of running away the cat remained where it was, staring up at him with its big copper-colored eyes and mewling louder than ever before. Confused, Hubert stood with the spray gun poised ready to dispatch the cat, but as he went to pull the trigger he realized he just couldn’t do it. Lowering his weapon, he let out a deep heartfelt sigh, stood to one side, and, addressing the cat directly, said wearily, “Well then, Puss, if you’re so determined, me suppose you’d better come in.”
Concluding his examination, Mr. Andrews suggested that Puss was likely getting over some sort of virus. “I think we should try one of those convalescing cat food brands. I could prescribe one for her, but to be honest it would be cheaper if you just popped to a pet store and got some yourself. I’ll give her an antibiotic just to be on the safe side and if she’s still not eating by tomorrow morning, bring her back in and I’ll take another look at her.”
Hubert exchanged glances with the vet and sighed. Seventy pounds plus tax for one measly injection and a quick examination. What was the world coming to?
Returning Puss to the cardboard box, Hubert left the consulting room muttering about “rip-off Britain” under his breath. Back in reception he rested Puss’s box on the counter and as he slipped on his reading glasses to deal with the bill he heard someone say, “Oh, hello again.”
He turned to see a young woman with short dyed-blond hair. She was looking at him as if she knew him, but while she seemed sort of familiar, he just couldn’t place her.
“Ashleigh,” she prompted.
Hubert said nothing.
“Layla and I knocked on your door the other day to introduce ourselves. We live at the flats next door to you.”
The strange next-door neighbor! That was it. Hubert cast his gaze down toward the floor and sure enough, there was the same little girl standing next to her. Once again she’d covered her eyes with her hands and was peeking back at him through her fingers.
“I’m just here dropping in my CV and seeing if there’s any work going,” continued Ashleigh. “I love animals, me; I love all the different sorts. Cats, dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, rats, gerbils, cockatoos, snakes, tropical fish… even tortoises!”
Hubert blinked several times but said nothing.
“Is that your pet in there?” she asked, considering Puss’s cardboard box. “What is it? No, don’t tell me, I’ll guess. A rabbit?”
Hubert said nothing.
“A hamster?”
Hubert remained silent.
Ashleigh laughed. “A small dog maybe… No, what am I thinking, it’s got to be a cat, hasn’t it?”
Hubert didn’t respond but instead turned his attention to the receptionist, who he paid in cash.
“Thank you,” he said, taking the receipt, which he tucked inside his wallet. He picked up the box with Puss inside. “Good day to you,” he said in a manner so general it was impossible to tell if he was addressing the receptionist, his neighbors, or indeed all three, and without another word he left.
Following Mr. Andrews’s advice, Hubert went in search of the special cat food Puss needed and found exactly what he was looking for in the rear aisle of the large pet store in the center of Bromley. He gave Puss a pouch of it as soon as he reached home but all she did was sniff it disdainfully. Disgruntled by his lack of success, annoyed by Puss’s seeming ingratitude, and exhausted by the day’s activities, Hubert made himself lunch, after which he took an unscheduled nap in front of the TV. An hour later, when he woke up, he discovered that not only had Puss polished off the whole dish of food but she was now mewling loudly for more.
That evening, in the back room, with a full-bellied Puss lying contentedly on the sofa beside him and a fresh mug of tea cooling on the table next to him, Hubert settled down in front of the eleven o’clock film on cable. He watched films most evenings, his favorites being Westerns, Hollywood gangster films from the forties, and war films, preferably ones starring Robert Mitchum or Anthony Quinn. That said, he would watch almost anything, which explained why in recent weeks he had seen not only classics like The Maltese Falcon, The Sons of Katie Elder, and The French Connection but also Mamma Mia!, Bridesmaids, and Brokeback Mountain, which although a cowboy film hadn’t been exactly the kind he had been expecting.
Tonight’s offering was a horror film called Saw III that he didn’t hold out much hope for. Hubert didn’t really enjoy horror films, as he found all the blood, guts, and gore too ridiculous to entertain seriously. Still, he was here now, and having checked to see if there was anything good on the other channels, he told himself he would give it half an hour to prove itself.
As the film began, Hubert, for reasons he couldn’t quite fathom, found his mind drifting to the young woman with the small child from next door. He’d never met anyone quite like her in his life. Talk the hind legs off a donkey? That one could do the same to a whole herd! And that accent too—Welsh, Scottish, whatever it was—it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard! And the way she’d chatted to him at the vet’s as if they were old friends, when he didn’t know her from Adam—strange behavior indeed!
Of course, it wouldn’t have been strange back in the good old days, he reasoned.
Back in the eighties when the kids were young and Joyce was alive, neighbors would talk to each other all the time. He used to know everyone on the street and they knew him too. There would be parties and get-togethers, people minding your property whenever you went on holiday—it was a proper community. Not like now. These days people kept themselves to themselves and so did Hubert. He didn’t know the names of his neighbors, and what’s more he didn’t want to. So quite why this young woman was being so friendly toward him he had no idea.
Returning to the film, Hubert attempted to get back into the action, but he couldn’t make any sense of it and after a few minutes reached across for the remote to switch it off. And that’s when something odd happened.
The phone rang.
Hubert checked the clock on the wall above the fireplace. It was twenty minutes past eleven. Who would call him at this time of night? As he reached for the phone his gut told him the most likely culprit was that damn Virgin Media, if only because they hadn’t replied to his last angry missive about unsolicited sales calls. Well, if it really was them calling at this hour he would give them the telling off of a lifetime!
“Hi, Dad, it’s me.”
At the sound of Rose’s voice Hubert’s anger immediately turned from annoyance to delight before ending up in fear.
“Rose! Is everything okay? Why you call so late?”
“Everything’s fine, Pop,” said Rose. “In fact, it’s better than fine. I know it’s late in the UK and everything but I honestly couldn’t wait to tell you my good news: I’m coming home, Pops! After all this time, I’m finally coming home!”
4
THEN
March 22, 1958
As soon as the bell rang for dinner Hubert left the lorry he was unloading and made his way to the locker room. It had been a long and difficult morning. After one too many nights scrunched up on the edge of Gus’s uncomfortable bed, his back was aching. He was coming down with a cold, no doubt due to the constant rain of the past few weeks, and right now in the gloom of the drafty delivery bay at Hamilton’s he was missing the warmth of the Jamaican sun against his skin so much that his heart ached. The only thing that had kept him going through the hard slog of unloading the morning’s deliveries—boxes of clothing, pallets of cooking oil, bolts of expensive fabric from the Far East—was the thought of the meal that was waiting for him.
The food—a rich and spicy pork and pea soup—was a gift from the Antiguan family downstairs. He and Gus had helped them move in over the weekend and as a thank-you the wife had left them with a tray of wonderfully fragrant food. Hubert and Gus had guzzled down half the delicious soup and all the dumplings that accompanied it and both agreed it was the best they had tasted since leaving home.
English food had been something Hubert had particularly struggled with. While he accepted that beggars couldn’t be choosers, he’d found the offerings in Hamilton’s staff canteen so bland as to be almost inedible. Some days it was so awful he preferred to go hungry, rather than wrestle with another piece of tasteless gristle that back home his mother would’ve been ashamed to feed to the dog. So when Gus suggested that rather than polishing off the soup for breakfast they should save what was left for dinner at their respective places of work, Hubert readily agreed. Even though it would be cold and a day old, he didn’t doubt for a moment that it would still be tastier than the canteen alternative.
The moment Hubert opened the locker-room door he sensed that something wasn’t quite right. Although normally buzzing with the chitchat of his fellow workers at this time of day, the place was deserted. Stranger still, there was a faint but unpleasant smell in the air, as if someone had brought something in on their shoe.
As Hubert walked toward his locker the odor grew in intensity and alarm bells began to ring in his head, getting louder and louder with each step. He spied his locker, the door ajar and the lock he’d placed on it lying broken on the floor. Flinging it wide open, Hubert was hit by an overpowering stench. His dinner flask was open, the lid resting by its side.
While the work at Hamilton’s had proved strenuous, it was straightforward. Hubert’s colleagues, however, were anything but. They consisted of half a dozen or so young Englishmen, and their unofficial leader, Vince, had taken an instant dislike to Hubert. This was a fact he had made plain to all around when he’d protested to Mr. Coulthard about the perils of letting “monkeys” loose in the warehouse. “I don’t see why we need to be hiring coloreds,” he’d opined. “Not when there are plenty of decent Englishmen in need of work.”
Hubert had ignored these comments, reasoning that this was simply the way people were with strangers: wary and suspicious to begin with, relaxing once they got to know you. There were, after all, Hubert considered, very few people in the world who he didn’t get along with, and in spite of their initial reaction he didn’t see why Vince and his friends should be any different.
Despite his best efforts, however, all of Hubert’s friendly overtures were rebuffed. His attempts to make conversation were met initially with silence, then later with mocking mimicry of his accent. During his second week Hubert discovered that he’d spent half the day with the words “Jungle monkey” chalked on the back of his warehouse jacket.
During his third, his clocking-in card mysteriously vanished, turning up at the end of the day with the words “Go home Darkie!” scrawled across it in red ink. Then a few days later while on his morning break Hubert took a sip of his tea, only to discover that someone had heaped salt in it while his back was turned. These were all childish pranks that he might have overlooked had indeed the perpetrators been children. But they were men his own age and there was a level of malevolence behind the tricks that spoke of something much more sinister.
Throughout these trials Hubert tried to remain stoically optimistic. After all, he thought, he’d heard of much worse treatment than this. A workmate of Gus’s had stones thrown at him by a gang of children while on his way to work. A Barbadian neighbor had been spat at and refused service by a local greengrocer just because of the color of his skin. And recently Hubert had read in the papers of a West Indian man who had been beaten unconscious by a group of teddy boys late one Saturday night. The mischief Hubert’s fellow workers had been up to, while annoying, hadn’t harmed him physically, and until now he had hoped that they would either tire of their games or come to their senses. But as he stood staring at his flask he felt a rage of an intensity he had never felt before.
They had gone too far this time. Too far by a very long way.
Hubert found Vince and his cronies chatting and smoking on the crates in the loading bay, and as he approached them, Vince rose to his feet to face Hubert.
“You look like someone who’s lost his appetite.”
Hubert squared up to Vince, an action that caused his opponent’s friends to rise to their feet too.
“You lot are filthy pigs! Putting dog dirt in my dinner flask! How could you do something so disgusting?”
Vince pushed his face so close to Hubert’s that he could smell the tobacco on his breath.
“You accusing me of something, gorilla man?”
“You know damn well what you did. Don’t you dare try and deny it!”
Vince laughed and his friends chimed in.
“I don’t explain myself to the likes of you,” he said, without breaking eye contact with Hubert. “Last time I checked, this was still England.” He dipped his head toward the floor and spat, only narrowly missing Hubert’s shoes. “You’re not even a proper human, are you? You’re just a monkey! A monkey from the jungle.”
As if he hadn’t made his point clear, he started making monkey noises, and was quickly joined by his friends. Soon the whole of the loading bay echoed with their hatefulness. Without thinking, Hubert threw a punch so fast that it was impossible for Vince to intercept and it connected squarely with his nose, sending him sprawling backward into his friends.
Within seconds the men were all over him, punching, scratching, kicking,
and biting. Hubert was determined to give as good as he got but he was just one man against half a dozen and in no time at all he was overpowered. As he lay on the ground enduring his beating, he couldn’t help wondering if this was it, the moment his short life would come to an end, here on the cold, oily floor of a warehouse thousands of miles away from his country of birth.
A commanding shout that could only have come from Mr. Coulthard brought both Hubert and those attacking him to their senses. His aggressors stood back, allowing Hubert to uncurl, and he attempted to open his eyes, only to discover that the right one was swollen shut. With his one good eye he could see that Mr. Coulthard was now standing over him. Next to him was a young woman wearing a look of horror and concern on her face.
Mr. Coulthard jabbed a finger in the direction of two of Vince’s cronies.
“You pair get him to his feet now!”
He turned to the young woman.
“Take him to the break room and get him cleaned up! The last thing I want is to have to explain to them upstairs why there’s a dead West Indian on my warehouse floor.”
Finally he turned and addressed Vince and his remaining associates.
“You lot, my office, now!”
As instructed, the young woman attended to Hubert’s wounds in the break room while Hubert seethed with fury, desperate to return to the loading bay for a second round.
“The only thing… stopping me is that me… me… need the work,” he railed between winces as the young woman dabbed iodine-soaked cotton wool onto his cuts. “Otherwise… me would dash them right into next week… you see if me wouldn’t.”
“They’re not worth it,” said the young woman. “Like you said, you’ll end up losing your job and why should you have to suffer when it’s them at fault?”
“It no matter anyhow,” said Hubert. “It’ll be their word against mine and who’s Mr. Coulthard going to believe, eh? Them who he’s worked with day in, day out for years, or me who just arrived here on a boat?”