by Nick Hornby
“Can I help you?” the man said.
He was in his late thirties, probably, shirtsleeves and tie, jacket slung over his arm. A City boy, or a lawyer, back late after a drink.
“I’m fine,” said Joseph.
“Can I ask what you’re doing there?”
“She can’t hear me knocking. She’s in the shower.”
“Is she expecting you?”
“Yeah.”
“Quite a late visit.”
“I wouldn’t have thought that’s much of your business.”
“I wouldn’t get lippy, mate.”
“I’m not being lippy. I’m just pointing out that it’s a weird question.”
“It was an observation, more than a question.”
Joseph’s heart was thumping in his chest. He wanted to knock the guy out, but it was an old feeling, and he knew he had to swallow it. Nothing had ever gone wrong in this street, or in this house, and now the world had caught him up.
“I think I’d feel a bit more comfortable if you came out of there.”
“Where do I go?”
“Just go for a walk until she’s downstairs again. If she’s coming downstairs. You’ve presumably got her phone number?”
“Fucking hell.”
Joseph walked down the little path and out into the street.
“That’s better.”
Joseph shook his head in disbelief and the guy let himself in. Joseph walked back to the door and rang the bell again. Five minutes later, a police car turned up. Joseph had the presence of mind to send another text to Lucy saying, outside please come, no punctuation or capital letters.
Two policemen got out, both white. One was very small, with red hair, and Joseph was momentarily distracted by his height. Wasn’t there a minimum? If there was, he had to be under it.
“Hello, sir,” said the taller one.
“Sir.” That was their race-awareness training, or whatever they called it.
“Good evening,” said Joseph cheerfully.
“Would you mind telling me what you’re doing?”
“I will tell you exactly what I’m doing. My friend is in the shower, her kids are asleep, and I don’t want to knock too loud in case I wake them up.”
“I see. You often visit her this late?”
“It’s ten o’clock.”
“Quite late for a visit, though,” said the short guy.
If Joseph had to guess, he’d say he was five feet four or five. He looked like this was the defining battle of his life, and he was seeking any opportunity to prove that being small was no disadvantage at all, when it came to arresting violent offenders. He was straining on an invisible leash.
“What is it you think I’m doing wrong?”
“I think the gentleman next door was more worried about what you might do wrong in the future.”
“You wouldn’t mind if we just had a quick search?”
He’d been searched before, four or five times, when he was a teenager. Nobody ever found anything. He’d never carried a knife, and he never walked around with any weed on him. But the first time, he’d gone on about his rights, like kids do, and it turned out he didn’t have any.
The search wasn’t voluntary. He was wearing his favorite item of clothing, a green Baracuta jacket, and he took it off and handed it to the taller guy.
“Nice jacket, that,” said the short one. “I had a look at one of those, but it was out of my price range.”
This was the real stuff, now. This wasn’t about whether Lucy was or wasn’t saying that black people made good singers. He suddenly felt the need to apologize to her. Perhaps he needed reminding that policemen quite often made pleasant-seeming conversation that was actually suggesting criminal activity.
The short guy stepped forward and patted his trouser pockets. It didn’t take long. Joseph was wearing Nike track pants, and he never kept anything in them because it all fell out. Meanwhile, the tall one examined the contents of his jacket—phone, keys, wallet. The phone started to buzz in his hand. It was Lucy, Joseph could see.
“Can I take that?” said Joseph. “Because that’s my friend who lives in there.”
“When we’re done, you can call her back,” said the short one.
Joseph looked up at the sky. He didn’t swear under his breath, he didn’t roll his eyes.
“Is that a problem, sir?” said the little red-haired bull.
“Not a problem. Just that she could have backed up my story, and that would be the end of it. But for some reason you want to keep it going.”
“We just want to make sure you’re not about to get yourself in any trouble.”
Lucy’s front door opened, and she marched down the path.
“What’s going on?”
“This young man says he’s a friend of yours,” said the taller one.
“He is.”
“And your friends often come round to visit you at this time of night? Or just this one?”
“What business is it of yours?”
“Unfortunately, other people’s private arrangements quite often become our business.”
“What are you insinuating?”
The little one made a big-word face, which involved a widening of the eyes and a purse of the lips.
“I’m not sure we’re insinuating anything.”
“Are you searching him?”
“One of your neighbors was worried about his behavior.”
“What was he doing?”
“We’re trying to find out.”
“But it can’t be what he said he was doing?”
Lucy thought she could make this go away with a bit of moral outrage, Joseph could tell. She was a teacher, a head of department, and if these bobbies weren’t careful, she would give them a piece of her mind. It didn’t work like that, though. It was like multiplying a positive number by a minus number: the answer was always minus. Multiply a young black man by a white woman and the answer was a young black man, as far as the police were concerned. It would go away, but only because they’d get bored.
“We find in our line of work it quite often isn’t. You didn’t answer the question about whether he often comes round at this time of night.”
“Why is it you’re so interested?”
“It’s happened before, madam. A well-meaning person such as yourself thinking they’re doing the best thing by providing a helpful story.”
The little redhead had taken over now. He had worked out how to push Lucy’s buttons, and he was enjoying it.
“So you thought . . . what? That Joseph was going to break into my house, and I’d help him out by saying he was coming round for a cup of tea? In what world does that make any sense?”
“How do you two know each other, then?”
“I really think I should report this.”
“You’re welcome to.”
“Come in, Joseph.”
Joseph walked back down the path with her. Just before they reached the house, they heard the little one say something, and the other one laugh. It could have been about anything, but it probably wasn’t. Lucy turned around to go back to them, but Joseph pushed her gently toward the door.
* * *
—
“Do you want a whisky or a brandy or something?” she said. She was pouring herself a glass of white wine from the bottle that seemed to be permanently open in the fridge.
“It’s May,” said Joseph. “And I wasn’t out there that long.”
“It was for the trauma, not the cold.”
Joseph laughed, and then realized she wasn’t joking.
“Fucking bastards.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not angry?”
“About that? Not especially.”
“Well, I am. I’m furious
.”
He wanted to say sorry to her for suggesting that she was a racist, but if she got whipped up into a frenzy over something like that, she’d make it harder. And he didn’t want her telling him how he should feel.
“I know you mean well,” he said. “But forget it.”
“Why?”
“Honestly? That wasn’t such a big deal.”
“That’s terrible, then. Because it should be.”
“You don’t want the police turning up when there’s a guy skulking around outside your window at night? I would.”
“You’re being flippant.”
“Don’t tell me what to feel.”
“I’m telling you not to write it off as nothing.”
“Fucking hell, Lucy. If I don’t write things like that off as nothing, I’d drive myself mad.”
He suddenly felt exhausted by the complication of it all.
“I’m so sorry I made that comment about the singing,” she said. “It was thoughtless.”
“I wanted to apologize to you about that. My reaction.”
“You shouldn’t. I wasn’t thinking about how it must have sounded to you.”
“It didn’t sound like anything. I was pissed off about the track not being right, and I hit out with the first thing I could grab.”
“Are you OK? About this evening, I mean . . .”
“The police? It pisses me off but then I think of what it’s like in America. Most of the time, the feds here are just arseholes who get bored and wander off. Over there, they kill you. Well. Not you.”
Lucy went quiet, but you could always see everything on her face.
“Do you ever . . .”
He spoke over her straight away.
“Listen, I can only say what I feel. I can’t talk about anyone else.”
“It was just horrible, seeing them on the doorstep.”
“Try to forget it. They aren’t worth bothering with. Especially the little ginger fucker.”
She smiled and kissed him, a quick, sweet peck on the cheek.
Joseph looked at her and kissed her back properly then.
“See?” he said when they stopped. “We’ve got them to thank for this.”
“Who?”
“The fucking police. It would have taken us a lot longer to get here without them.”
She laughed, and took his hand, and led him upstairs.
8
But upstairs—and the boys, and The Sopranos—was their answer to everything, and Lucy was beginning to wonder what would happen when the questions got more complicated. She still loved their bubble, but there wasn’t an awful lot of room in there, nor a lot of air to breathe, and they were both behaving in ways that their friends found odd or frustrating: they never wanted to see them, do anything, accept invitations out. They watched an episode and made love, watched an episode and made love, watched two episodes and didn’t make love. They always watched an episode, and they nearly always made love.
“Do you play chess?” said Joseph one night. It was a Paul night, and they had made love and then watched an episode, in that order. They came to the end of Season 2, but decided not to start Season 3 immediately.
“No. I mean, I know the rules. And we’ve got a set. Do you want to play?”
“Ah, not if . . .”
“Not if I’m no good?”
Joseph laughed. “That would be the rude way of putting it.”
“What about backgammon?”
“My dad taught me once, but I haven’t played for years.”
She went over to the cupboard where they kept the games.
“I’m sure we’ve got it.”
She started to pull things out.
“Oh. Yes. Here we are.”
She handed it to Joseph and he started to set it up.
“No dice.”
“Oh, I’m sure we’ve got dice. There’s a Monopoly here. And a Snakes and Ladders.”
“Not enough pieces, either.”
“Oh. Well, we could use counters or something.”
“Seriously?” said Joseph.
Lucy laughed.
“We could go out one evening.”
“Like the movies or something?”
“Or to eat.”
“I’ll bet we couldn’t decide on a movie. What do you want to see at the moment?”
“There’s that one with Meryl Streep about the woman who couldn’t sing. I quite fancy that.”
“Mmmm,” said Joseph.
They didn’t see it. And they never got around to going out.
* * *
—
Lucy still looked back with embarrassment on her conversation with Joseph about the recession and its effects on the building trade, but it turned out that everyone was talking about things that she was pretty sure they couldn’t possibly understand, and that made her feel better. A few days before the referendum, there was a ferocious argument in the staffroom between an art teacher (remain) and a geography teacher (leave) about future trading arrangements with the E.U., an argument that Lucy suspected was built on very marshy ground indeed. Eventually, even they could see that they’d passed the limits of their understanding, but they didn’t stop.
“So when you listen to all these clever economists telling you it will be a disaster, what do you think?” said Polly, the art teacher. “Do you think, oh, they don’t know what they’re talking about?”
“No,” said Sam, the geography teacher. “I think, well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?”
“Why would they?”
“Because it’s all going very nicely for them, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know how it’s going for economists,” said Polly. “But they’re probably worried about their house prices, like everyone else.”
“House prices,” said Sam. “Jesus. It’s only you lot who give a shit.”
“What’s my lot?” said Polly. “Art teachers? We don’t own many houses.”
“I come from Stoke, right?” said Sam. “And you can buy a house there for a pound.”
“A pound!” But Polly was scoffing, not expressing disbelief.
“Yes. A pound. Ex-council.”
“So it’s a scheme.”
“Yes. It’s a scheme. But they don’t have many schemes in London, do they? They don’t need to sell houses for a quid.”
“I’d need to know more about the scheme.”
“You know where else they had a scheme like this? Detroit. Fucking Detroit. Which is like a war zone. Stoke is less than two hours from here!”
“But what’s it got to do with Brexit?”
“For a start, everyone I know at home is voting for it. And just think what’s going through their minds when David Cameron says it will take thirty grand off the price of their house. I’ll tell you: ‘Not mine, pal. Mine’s only worth a quid to begin with.’”
“Well, they’ll be even worse off than they were before.”
“What, their houses will be worth seventy-five p? Or fifty p? And how do you know about what will happen to house prices? You’re an art teacher. You know about how to draw a nose.”
“Don’t be patronizing.”
“You think you haven’t been patronizing all the way through this conversation? Patronizing is all I ever get from southerners.”
Lucy understood it now. The referendum was giving groups of people who didn’t like each other, or at least failed to comprehend each other, an opportunity to fight. The government might just as well be asking a yes/no question about public nudity, or vegetarianism, or religion, or modern art, some other question that divided people into two groups, each suspicious of the other. There had to be something riding on it, otherwise people wouldn’t get so upset. But if the government promised to flog every piece of art the country owned that
was created after 1970 and give the money to schools . . . Well, there would be fistfights. Lucy didn’t know many people she wanted to fight with, and she suspected Polly, with her Doc Martens and her large earrings, was the same, and now she was discovering that she could fight with the person sitting right next to her at work. (Although why did she think that the boots and the flamboyant jewelry were an indication that Polly kept to her own kind? Why didn’t Sam’s Nike bottoms and blue hoodie convey the same message? Perhaps they did, but Lucy couldn’t read the signs in the same way.) What would happen after the vote? Polly and Sam had just called each other names, or adjectives, anyway. Would they be able to forget it and find something else to talk about? From the looks on their faces when the bell went for the end of break, it didn’t seem likely. They probably hadn’t talked before, and they certainly wouldn’t talk again.
Lucy liked Sam. At the school fair the previous year, he’d worn a red-and-white-striped football shirt (Stoke?) with the name of a player on the back. Lucy couldn’t remember the player, but there was a q in it, and her boys had gone up to him to talk about both the shirt and the q, and Sam had asked the boys, to their enormous delight, to name five other players with a q in their names. They answered the question, Sam told them they were a credit to their mother, and they immediately started pestering her about attending Park Road when they were old enough, as if the whole of secondary education was going to consist of naming footballers with a q in their names, or a z when they got to the sixth form. But she still wasn’t on Sam’s side. She was on Polly’s side. She’d hardly exchanged a single word with Polly since she’d arrived a year ago, and whenever Lucy thought about her, which wasn’t often, it was with a little irritation. Polly seemed affected, and managed to wordlessly convey that teaching was beneath her.
In the few days leading up to the vote, Lucy tried to make sure once and for all that she was on Polly’s side, and not Sam’s. She watched Question Time, and read the papers, and listened to the Today Programme in the morning, but there was no doubt about it: the people she loathed were all on the other team. Sam wasn’t a bad guy, and nor, she guessed, was Joseph’s dad, or Joseph’s mum. But all the people telling them to vote leave were hypocrites, bullies, and racists. Then Nigel Farage unveiled his poster, the one that showed a lot of desperate brown people queuing up to get into a country that wasn’t Britain but might be one day, according to him, and Jo Cox was murdered, and any remaining doubts vanished.