by Monica Ali
Nana turned to him in agitation. She seemed to sense something amiss, half fearful, half embarrassed, and at a total loss. ‘Sally Anne,’ she said, ‘Sally Anne.’
‘We’ll see her later,’ said Gabriel. ‘After we’ve got the shopping done.’
They trundled slowly over the flagstones, between the stalls selling halal meat, pork pies, discount electronics and undergarments in stupendously large sizes. Christmas lights dangled between the girders. They were unlit, which suited the atmosphere of scrimp and save. The shoppers were elderly and white or young Asian families pushing prams, the more mobile having fled long since. Gabe and Nana were overtaken by a motorized wheelchair, its occupant mountainous and old. ‘Mind where you’re going,’ shouted Nana. ‘The size of her,’ she grumbled. ‘Stop a minute,’ she said as they came to the next stall. ‘We’ll get some cold meats for lunch.’
Gabe surveyed the slabs and rolls slapped down on the metal trays. There was black pudding, lunch tongue, jellied veal, corned beef, luncheon meat, pressed beef, boiled ham, potted meat and ox heart; all slightly grey at the edges. Nana wanted ox tongue and jellied brisket and Gabe said ‘lovely’ and hoped she’d forget about them by the time lunch came around.
They sat at Granny Bun’s for a cup of tea. ‘It’s grand to be out,’ said Nana, lifting her shoulders the way she did when performing her most dazzling smile.
‘What would you like for Christmas, Nana?’
‘We used to hang our stockings up,’ said Nana, ‘and in the morning there’d be a tangerine and some nuts inside, maybe a toffee as well, and maybe a ball and maybe a peg doll and hair ribbons and, oh, we were overjoyed. All the things they get given these days.’
‘I think I could stretch to a peg doll,’ said Gabe. He’d call Lena when they got home, just to check everything was OK.
‘We’d not get new clothes for Christmas, though. We’d new clothes for Whitsun, you see, and then they’d be Sunday best. D’you know, those Whitsun Walks …’ Nana trailed away, her eyes closed and her chin drifted down to her chest. Gabe was wondering whether to wake her or push her home still asleep when she lifted her head. ‘Maytime, they were, and everyone turned out just so, whole town dressed to the nines, and we’d more processions in June. I’ve walked in many a procession, girl and woman, we’d walk with our churches, well, you’d a chapel on every corner, I’m going back of course. The Catholics had theirs too, you see, they’d march for Our Lady, first Sunday in May. The Sacred Heart’s been pulled down. But they were lovely days for families, all these marches. You know, many’s the time I walked in my wedding dress under a banner, Mothers’ Union, and I was proud to do it. Yes, oh yes, we took pride.’
Gabe said, ‘Did you march with your mother? Did she wear her wedding dress too?’ The distant past, it seemed, grew brighter as the recent past began to dim. It was a place of safety now.
‘She were a weaver,’ said Nana, ‘on a shoddy loom, making plain cloth, it’s all it’d make – you just threw the shuttle across. But she stopped work when she had her children, because Father said that’s the most important job a woman could do.’
Gabriel thought, soon I will have a wife. He could scarcely believe it so he said, ‘I’m getting married. You’re the first to know.’
But Nana didn’t hear him. She cocked her head to one side and seemed to be listening to something far away or long ago. ‘We’d go to New Brighton for our holidays. Sometimes Blackpool, but Mother preferred New Brighton because Blackpool could be a bit coarse. Wakes Week, you see …’ The very words seemed to put her into a trance. ‘The whole town shut down, all the mills, and we’d that week for enjoyment and we knew how to enjoy ourselves.’ She smiled and looked at Gabriel and then all around, seeming increasingly doubtful and concerned. ‘Gabe,’ she hissed. ‘Gabe! What time’s the appointment? Here we are chatting on in the canteen.’
‘What appointment?’ he said, stupidly. He should have got the hang of her by now.
‘We’re at the hospital, aren’t we?’ said Nana in her best voice, all proper and strangled. ‘For my check-up with Dr Patel.’
At twilight a red sun sank behind Rileys and a paper moon floated over the shell of Harwoods, that once-mighty rival, the few remaining shards of window glass glittering like tears. A flock of starlings fretted and swooped in the distance, a black kaleidoscope constantly shaken against the blood-tinged sky. It was just past four and Gabe and Ted were going to Rileys because there was nothing else to do.
Coming towards them up the hill an old man in an army surplus coat, left over perhaps from the Crimean War, bent his back to the incline at a remarkable angle, snailing forwards with the top of his head on show. To keep moving seemed like something of an achievement, given the shopping he was carrying, the deep stoop that he suffered, and his broke-back shoes which were only loosely appended to his feet.
When they reached each other Ted stopped and the man, to Gabe’s surprise, instantly straightened up. Greetings were exchanged. ‘You remember my son,’ said Ted. ‘Gabriel, you remember Mr Nazir?’
‘Ah,’ said Gabe, who didn’t, ‘good to see you.’
‘Fine boy,’ said Mr Nazir. ‘Strong like an ox.’ He giggled and set down his bags.
‘Rileys,’ said Ted to Gabriel, seeing he hadn’t a clue, ‘twenty year or more.’
Mr Nazir giggled again and if Gabe had closed his eyes he would have heard a young girl rather than this old and bearded man. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘twenty-two.’
‘Wind’s picking up,’ said Ted, folding his arms behind his back.
‘Chilly,’ said Mr Nazir. ‘How is your grandson? And your granddaughter too?’
‘Bailey’s all right, she’s a Saturday job at Rileys, settling down, you know. Harley, well, Harley’s out o’ work … he’s a good kid, but sometimes I think …’
‘Right in the heart,’ said Mr Nazir, grooming his beard, ‘but wrong in the head, isn’t it?’
‘Aye,’ said Ted, gravely. ‘Aye.’
‘They don’t want to listen to us old ones,’ continued Mr Nazir. ‘They think they will never be old.’
‘How’re your grandsons? All right?’
‘Asif is difficult. Very difficult. Always telling me what is written in the Qur’an. The Qur’an says this, the Qur’an says that. I say, Asif, you are not the keeper of the light. This is my religion too.’ He shook his head. ‘These young people. Thinking they know it all. No humility and no respect, this is the problem. It’s the western values they pick up, wanting everything their way.’
‘This is it,’ said Ted. ‘Yer not wrong there.’
‘What is the point in blaming?’ said Mr Nazir. ‘I was the one to come here. For everything there is a price.’
‘What about Amir?’
‘Amir was in the newspaper. His case has gone to court. Charge is vandalism – spray painting, breaking window, damaging a car. Even in crime he lacks ambition. His mother cries for him.’
‘The devil makes work,’ said Ted. ‘The lad needs a job.’
Mr Nazir involved his fingers in his beard. ‘He needs a job,’ said Mr Nazir, ‘but where is the job for him? I myself am taking him for job at that distribution place, at the warehouse, everywhere, but nowhere has job for him. Always they are taking the Poles.’
‘I’ve heard it often enough,’ said Ted.
‘They say these Polish are good workers, and they don’t care what they do, undercut the wages, sleeping fifteen, twenty, to one house.’
‘This is it.’
‘This is it.’
‘Well, you’ll freeze stood ’ere.’
‘Catch our deaths,’ said Mr Nazir, giggling. He grabbed Gabriel’s hand and shook it with startling vigour. ‘But tomorrow will be fine, isn’t it? Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight.’ He released Gabe’s hand and picked up his bags. Gabe watched him tackle the hill, his back angled against the slope.
‘Decent,’ said Ted, turning up his coat collar. ‘A decent sort.’
; * * *
Gabriel pretended he wanted to look in a shop window to give Ted a chance to catch his breath. They dawdled along the parade. Outside a jeweller’s Gabe blurted out, ‘Dad, I’m engaged.’
Ted laughed. ‘Don’t sound so terrified, son.’
Gabe said, ‘God, I think I am.’
‘It’s wonderful news,’ said Ted. ‘Perhaps we’ll meet her now. Set a date?’
‘Haven’t even got a ring yet,’ said Gabe. ‘But it’ll be soon, definitely.’
‘Got you tearing yer hair out already, has it?’
‘What?’
Ted gestured vaguely towards him.
Gabriel lowered his arm. He hadn’t realized he was doing it. He hadn’t felt it. ‘The thing is …’
‘Let’s keep walking,’ said Ted.
‘There’s this other girl. I slept with her. More than once.’
Ted lengthened his stride, hoping perhaps to leave this news behind.
‘It’s over, anyway. With this Lena. I won’t even see her again.’
Ted remained silent.
‘I don’t know why I told you that.’ He could think of no reason, other than the thrill of speaking her name out loud.
‘I remember,’ said Ted, ‘when I decided to marry yer mother. Blackpool it were. She’s there with her folks and I’m there with mine. I’d seen her before, course I had, seen her around, but I didn’t know her then. Anyhow, I’m walking down the pier and there she is, having her portrait done, penny portrait on the end of the pier. I says, “Hello, Sally Anne,” but she ignores me. Aye, that’s right. Bit later, reckon around tea time, I’m on the beach and summat hits me on the head. So I look up and she’s there, up on the promenade, throwin’ chips. I says, “Sally Anne,” call out to her, you know, and she smiles at me and then she’s off and running. And I know. She’s the girl I’ll marry. I see it – clear as the back of my hand.’
Gabe said, ‘She was really something, I bet.’
Ted blew his nose. ‘I’d to hang on to her, Gabe. From that day on. I’d to hang on for dear life, sometimes.’
‘I didn’t really know,’ said Gabe. ‘I knew she had her ups and downs … but … I was talking to Jen last night and she said …’
‘We’ve a hard time remembering now, the way we didn’t talk about things then. And she didn’t want it. Didn’t want you bothered with all that.’
‘There were a few dramas, weren’t there?’ said Gabe. It was easier to talk like this, not facing each other, but walking side by side.
‘We’d a temper on us, both of us. Can’t have been easy for you and Jen.’
‘Oh, we were all right.’
‘Always the one for me,’ said Ted, speaking quietly, as if to himself. ‘And she knew it, because I always brought her home again. That’s how I knew it meself, truth be told.’
‘Your feelings didn’t change, not in all those years?’ His parents’ marriage, which had seemed – at best – like mutually indentured labour, began to seem like something of an achievement.
‘Feelings?’ said Ted, chewing it like a foreign word, the way he said ‘vol-au-vents’. ‘I felt angry, a lot of the time. People are always on about how they feel. I tell you one thing I’ve learned in old age. You don’t always know how you feel, not at the time, anyway. And it’s easy to mix up feelings, muddle up anger with fear. Maybe what’s important – it’s not what you feel, it’s what you do.’
Rileys Shopping Village was, according to the sign that hung over the entrance, A LEGENDARY EXPERIENCE. It had begun, after the last of the jacquards and looms had been shipped to Egypt, as a small retail outlet selling remnants and seconds that had been discovered when the warehouse was cleared out. Over the years it had grown into a sizeable emporium with a coffee shop and restaurant, landscaped gardens, an indoor children’s play area and free parking for the coaches that brought the visitors to experience shopping the Rileys Way.
Ted and Gabe followed the signs to the Hungry Tackler Café. It was hot inside the old shed but the customers, mostly middle-aged and old, wore their coats and anoraks as they worked diligently through the concession stands. The ‘Victorian Arcade’ was filled with ‘ladies’ fashions’, ceramics, bakeware, handbags and accessories, crystal vases and ‘personalized’ coffee mugs. Gabe saw signs to Candleland, Gnomeland and Bubbleland, and more pointing the way to FlowerWorld, Cat’n’dogWorld and GadgetWorld. In the ‘Weaver’s Court’, they brushed by the fake bow window (complete with bubbled glass) of Thow’d Calico Shop and witnessed an exhibition of toffee being pulled by hand.
At a stand selling tea towels three old ladies, their hair freshly ‘set’ for their day out, picked through the offerings with great deliberation as if selecting for their trousseaux.
‘Look at this,’ said Gabe. He picked up a towel from the ‘novelty’ shelf and read aloud to Ted. ‘“Rules to be Observed by the Hands Employed in this Mill”. It’s got the date on, 1878.’
‘Oh aye,’ said Ted. ‘I’ve seen that one before.’
‘“For single drawing, slubbing, or roving, 2d for each single end. For any bobbins found on the floor, 1d for each bobbin. For every oath or insolent language, 3d for the first time, and if repeated they shall be dismissed. The Grinders, Drovers, Slubbers and Rovers shall sweep at least eight times a day.” ’
‘Hard times,’ said Ted. He chuckled. ‘But at least they got paid for being here. Now look, it’s t’other way around.’
They installed themselves at the café where, despite it not yet being five o’clock or even quite December, a coach-party Christmas dinner was in full swing. They were, the piped music informed them, simply having a wonderful Christmas time. Plastic holly and fir branches, studded with glittery red ribbons and baubles, decorated the walls.
Ted and Gabe sipped their tea in congenial silence. Gabe stared at the pillar to his right. It bore the scratches and knocks of a hundred years and more and the letters that he thought he’d made out were small and barely visible: he’d struggled with his penknife to leave any mark at all. But, no, there they were, a G and an L, underscored with a wobbly line. He’d worked at it, quickly, feverishly, when Ted had been called away to deal with a mash on one of the machines.
It was in the summer holidays and Dad had brought him to Rileys for the day but they were shorthanded and he kept leaving Gabe on his own. When Dad came back Gabe had slipped the penknife up his sleeve.
‘Right,’ Ted had said, ‘I’ll start from the beginning. This here’s a knotting machine. Everyone calls it the Topmatic, that’s how it’s known.’
‘Can I have a go with that blower thing, Dad? Can I? Can I have a go?’
‘’Old yer ’orses,’ said Ted. ‘OK. The Topmatic goes on top right here, on the warp-tying frame. Remember what we’re about? What’s the job we’ve to get done?’
‘Easy,’ said Gabriel. ‘I know. The loom’s run out of warp. It needs a new beam on. Dad, can I have a new bike?’
Ted started up the machine. It looked like something Gabe could build with his Meccano set. Ted operated it with loving precision, breathing hard down his nose. He checked the first few knots individually then speeded everything up. The Topmatic trundled along.
Ted was speaking and Gabe stared at him closely to tune out the background noise. ‘Go on, you can use it.’ Dad handed him the blower, a simple nozzle and rubber pump. ‘That’s it, you get rid of the fluff so the knots don’t get stuck in the healds and break. Know what a heald is?’ Gabe pointed to the flat steel strips with eyes in the centre through which the yarn had to run. ‘Champion,’ said Dad.
After Gabe had finished, Dad worked along the knots with a little brush to make sure they all lay down nice and smooth.
‘Dad,’ said Gabe, ‘when did you decide you wanted to work at Rileys? How old were you?’
Ted snorted. ‘Decide? That’s just what you did. Them days, they said, “Put a mirror under their nose. If they’re breathing, get ’em in.” ’
Gabe put his hands in
his pockets and wiggled his penknife into his hand. He worked it open and managed to cut his finger on the blade. It didn’t seem right, what Dad said, as though any idiot could do his job. ‘But you could have been, like, a train driver? If you wanted, Dad?’
‘Aye,’ said Ted. ‘I suppose.’ He wound the handle again and showed Gabe how the threads went through the pins to the reed. ‘Right, the knotter has to call the tackler at this stage. But,’ said Ted, ‘guess what?’
‘I know,’ said Gabe, bursting with the answer, ‘you are the tackler, Dad.’
‘The tackler tightens what’s known, in this town, any road, as the temples, have a look, these spiky rings what hold the cloth in place. It’s an important job, is tackler. Not anyone can do that.
‘Then I tighten up the warp, come with me round the back. And now we’re ready to weave a few inches, then I put a docket on the board says the loom’s been gaited. The weaver’s help checks the cloth over for faults and – if it’s all OK – the weaver starts the loom.’
‘Dad,’ said Gabe. He could feel the blood draining rapidly out of his finger. He was surprised there wasn’t a pool of it on the floor. If he took his hand out of his pocket and showed Dad what had happened he’d get a bollocking. If he didn’t he would bleed to death. He couldn’t decide which of these options he preferred.
As he dithered he noticed a crazy woman running towards them, flapping her arms.
‘Take a breath, now, Rita,’ said Ted. ‘You’ll set yerself on fire.’
‘It’s Jimmy,’ said Rita. ‘Jimmy. A beam’s fell on him.’
‘Go and find Maureen, stop with her,’ Ted told Gabe. ‘You know where she is. Go on.’
‘But, Dad,’ said Gabriel. Ted was already striding away. ‘Dad.’
Gabe ran through the sheds with one bloody finger aloft. Dad didn’t even care. He didn’t even look round when Gabe was shouting out. Gabe ran smack into Maureen, straight into her pillowy bosom, and she said, ‘Oh, there you are,’ as if she had been expecting him.