by Tony Parsons
Maybe she feels it too. Maybe she also believes that we are stealing something sacred. Or perhaps she is just sick of the sight of me. That’s another possibility. I know we have to do this thing because our fragile little relationship was already collapsing by the time we made the baby. I can see that. I don’t for a moment think Olga wants to spend her life with me. To be honest, I don’t think she wants to spend an evening with me. I think she would be happy to never see my face again.
It would never have worked out between us.
The baby should thank us.
Yeah, sure.
Josh once told me, ‘No relationship can survive an abortion.’ The line was delivered with such world-weary certainty, such manly conviction, that I thought it must surely be true. He had got a girl into trouble—on this subject, I always find myself reverting to my mother’s vocabulary—in Singapore on some drunken rugby tour.
She was a lawyer, BBC—British-born Chinese—expensively educated, very well spoken, which always got his attention, and Josh was keen. But when he told me about it over Tsingtao at the top of the Mandarin Hotel, he said that there was no real future for them after the termination. ‘Something about this thing messes with nature,’ he said, ‘just messes it all up forever,’ and I thought how much older and wiser he seemed than me.
Yet when I pick Olga up at the clinic, I find that I like her more than I ever did.
She looks so young and so pale and so drained, as though she has been through something that will stay with her for the rest of her life, something that will change the way she looks at the world, and I don’t want to split up with her. I really want to make a go of it. To try. This feeling lasts until the moment I put my arm around her and she gives me a flat, dead look.
‘I’m okay.’
‘Come back to my place.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t go back to your flat. Come back to mine. You can have your own room. I’ll sleep on the sofa. Just until you—you know.’ What are the words? ‘Feel better.’
I can tell she doesn’t like the idea much. But the idea of returning to the damp south London apartment she shares with three other Russians appeals to her even less. So we get a taxi and—silently, not touching me, huddled inside her cheap black coat—she comes back to my flat, where she moves very slowly, as if in great pain or afraid of breaking something, and she spends a long time in the bathroom before going to bed.
I look in on her after a while and see her sleeping, her face almost as pale as the pillow she rests on. Later she gets up and asks me if she can make a phone call, and I say of course you can, you don’t even have to ask me, and she spends a long time talking in Russian to someone I guess is her boyfriend, the glottal stops of the language made even harsher by her crying.
I have no idea how much she tells him. But she politely thanks me for the use of the phone, as if we have just been introduced and I have just passed the salt, and then she shuffles off to bed, soon falling asleep as the winter day quickly dies and darkness creeps into my flat. I don’t turn the lights on.
What makes me laugh—no, what makes me sit with my face in my hands in the living room, sit alone in the gathering darkness with Olga sleeping in my bed, sometimes muttering in her sleep, sometimes crying out what could be a name—is that Rose and I wanted a baby so much.
It would have been the best thing in the world. For us.
My wife and I. We tried. We had been trying since our wedding day. She even had all the equipment. By her bedside there was this little white and pink box the size of a glasses case with a thermometer to take her temperature when she woke up. She also had this stick thing that she took into the bathroom every morning to tell her when her ovulation was on the way and we should think about getting started. Pencil the date into our diaries.
Trying tonight.
Oh, she had all the kit.
After almost a year of disappointment, we were about to take the tests. Me making love to a little plastic jar, Rose having her plumbing checked out—whatever it is you have to do. We tried to make a joke of it, the way we tried to make a joke of everything.
‘And how would you like your eggs, madam?’
‘Fertilised!’
We ran out of time. It never happened for us. Our baby never came. And then Rose was gone.
She really wanted a child with me. You might find that hard to believe. It’s true. She thought I would be a good father. That’s not a joke. ‘You’ll be such a wonderful dad, Alfie,’ she said to me. Rose really wanted to have a baby with me, although of course that was back in the years when I was really alive and, I realise, a far better man than I am today.
The next morning I leave Olga asleep and go to my local book shop to buy a gift for Plum.
‘I’m looking for a book,’ I tell the young man behind the counter. ‘It’s called, ah…’
‘Title? Author?’
‘It’s…ah…Smell the Fear…something-something.’
‘Smell the Fear, He-bitch? Yeah, it’s the new one by The Slab. The wrestling person. You’ll find it by the door.’
Right by the double doors at the front of the store, I find a huge display of Smell the Fear, He-bitch. I pick up a copy and look at a massive, semi-naked bald man grinding his teeth on the cover. He looks like a body builder modelling underpants.
I flip through the picture-packed pages. Most of the images are of The Slab beating up other big men in skin-tight Lycra—or at least pretending to. But there’s one section towards the back of the book where The Slab is seen posing with small children of every race and colour. In the large print surrounding the photos, The Slab speaks of his philosophy. The importance of charity work, the need to combat racism, the moral imperative of being good to each other when the day’s bloody mayhem is done.
He calls it doing the human thing.
And I find that, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t raise a sneer today.
‘The Slab says do the human thing—or I will whip your candy ass all the way to the Tree of Woe.’
Do the human thing?
It feels like the best advice I have heard for years.
When I get back home I discover that Olga has gone. No note, no goodbye, just a few stray red hairs in the bathroom sink. I decide we can’t end it this way and call her flat. I am anxious to do the human thing. One of her room mates answers and goes to get her. Then she comes back to tell me that Olga doesn’t want to talk to me.
Sometimes you can leave it too late to do the human thing.
And I think about Chinese New Year, Spring Festival, and how much I love what I think of as the symmetry of the Changs.
George and Joyce, Harold and Doris, little Diana and William—there is a balance and harmony about their family that makes me ache with envy.
My own family feels like all broken bits and jagged edges and half-forgotten leftovers compared to the Changs.
My nan with her husband long dead, my mum with her husband run away, and me and Olga, who must have looked like something approaching a normal couple on Chinese New Year, but who, out of all my shattered family tree, have turned out to be the most defective branch of all.
But I had a family once, and we had a plan. We were going to have children and everything.
That’s what we wanted, Rose and I, that was what we wished hard for, that was our plan. Children and everything.
twenty-eight
I know that Hiroko will talk to me. I know that Hiroko still gets the soft look in her eyes when she sees me. Hiroko will do the human thing. Especially if she can sneak me past her landlady. Then we will do the human thing from midnight to dawn. Well, at least until about five past twelve.
I meet her at the little fake French cafe’ where we used to have our full English breakfasts and cappuccino-flavoured kisses. I wonder why I let that time end and feel a huge wave of relief when she walks into the place, her shiny hair swinging just as it always did, her eyes still shy and gleaming behind her black-framed glasse
s. She is such a wonderful young woman. Why did I ever let her get away? Was it something to do with her liking me more than I like myself?
It’s early evening and the place is full of couples. We have come to the right place. I put my arm around her and try to place my mouth on top of her mouth.
‘No,’ she says, laughing and turning her face away.
I find myself pecking the side of her head, tasting a cocktail of hair, ear and spectacles.
‘No?’
She holds my hands by my side. It seems partly an act of affection and partly a self-defence technique.
‘I still care about you,’ she says.
‘That’s great. Because I still care about you too.’
‘But differently.’
‘That doesn’t sound so great.’
‘You said I would meet someone else.’
‘Yes, but there’s no need to rush things.’
‘I’ve been spending a lot of time with Gen.’
‘Gen?’ I see the quiet, funky Japanese boy in the front row of my Advanced Beginners, peering up at me through a haystack of dyed brown hair. ‘But Gen’s just a kid.’
‘He’s the same age as me.’
‘Is he? Wow. I thought he was younger.’
‘We’re going travelling. After the exam. Maybe Spain. Maybe Thailand. Up north. Chiang Mai. Neither of us have really seen Asia.’ She laughs, reaching out to squeeze my hand. ‘And it’s true what you say. There are a lot of nice people in the world. What’s the idiom? So many fish in the sea.’
And all of them so slippery.
It was always simple with Vanessa.
Fun and easy. The way it should be. Never a pain, never a strain. Never a what are you thinking? Or why are you crying? As I recall, there were no arguments, no recriminations. That’s a French woman for you. Sophisticated enough to keep it uncomplicated. Suddenly I miss Vanessa like crazy.
When I call her flat, a man answers. I guess I imagined that the man would have faded from the scene by now, the way people so casually and quickly fade from my own life. What did I expect? I expected him to go back to his wife. To go back to his life.
‘Hello?’
‘Is Vanessa there?’
A pause on his end. ‘Who’s calling?’
A pause on my end. ‘Her teacher.’
‘Hold on a second.’
The receiver is placed down with a clatter. I can hear voices in the background. The man’s suspicious baritone, Vanessa’s sing-song, slightly defensive response.
‘’Ello?’
I smile to myself. There’s no contest, is there? This really is the greatest accent in the world.
‘Vanessa, it’s Alfie.’
‘Alfie?’ She puts her hand over the phone for a second, does a bit of explaining to her married man. As if she owes him any kind of explanation. ‘What do you want?’
‘I was wondering if you would like to come out for a drink or something.’
‘With you?’
‘Of course with me.’
‘But that’s not possible. I’m not living alone any more. I thought you knew that.’
‘Just a drink, Vanessa,’ I say, trying to keep the rising panic out of my voice. ‘I’m not asking you to pick out curtains.’
‘But what’s the point?’
‘The point? Why does there need to be a point? That’s what I always liked about us. There was never any point. Why does everybody always need a point?’
‘Sorry, I can’t.’
‘It doesn’t have to be this minute. I’m not talking about now. How about Friday? How’s the weekend looking for you? Pick a night. Go ahead. Any night. I’m free all weekend.’
‘I’ve got to go, Alfie.’
‘Hold on. I thought we got on well together.’
‘We had—what do you people call it?—a laugh. Okay? We had a laugh. But that’s all it ever was, Alfie.
Just a laugh. Now I want something more than just a laugh.’
I have a few Tsingtao by myself in a pub in Chinatown and find myself in the Eamon de Valera just before closing time. It is packed with foreign language students from Churchill’s. Yumi and Imran are sitting by the door.
‘Let me get you a drink,’ I tell them.
‘No thanks,’ Imran says.
‘Why don’t you go home, Alfie?’ Yumi says. ‘You look tired.’
‘What you drinking, Imran? Get you a pint of Paddy McGinty’s stout?’
‘I don’t drink alcohol.’
‘Don’t you? Don’t you? I never knew that.’ I look at Yumi. That beautiful face surrounded by the mass of fake yellow hair. ‘I never knew that Imran doesn’t drink alcohol. Is that a religious thing?’
‘Yes. It’s a religious thing.’ Not looking at me, the handsome bastard.
I put my arm around him, press my face close, watching him recoil from the fumes of a few Tsingtao. ‘But your religion doesn’t stop you from stealing someone else’s girl, does it, you hypocrite?’
They get up to leave.
‘Nobody stole me,’ Yumi says. ‘You can’t steal a woman. You can only drive her away.’
Then they go.
I see Olga behind the bar and push my way through the crowd. Laughter, smoke, the sound of breaking glass. Zeng and Witold are at the bar.
‘You okay?’ Zeng says.
‘You look all funny,’ Witold says.
I ignore them.
‘Olga,’ I say. ‘Olga. I want to talk to you. It’s important.’
She moves to the other end of the bar. A guy with an Australian accent tries to serve me. I tell him I want to be served by Olga. He shrugs, walks away. Zeng is pulling at my arm. I shake him off.
‘This is not so good,’ Witold says. Olga is still at the other end of the bar. She is laughing with someone.
‘Olga!’
Someone taps me on the shoulder.
I turn round and have just enough time to watch the fist coming towards me but not enough time to get out of its way.
The fist—all bony knuckles, plus the sharp sliver of a ring—smacks into the side of my mouth and I feel the warmth of split lips on the tip of my tongue. My legs have gone, and I find that I am only on my feet because of the elbow that I have resting on the bar. A pale, thin boy in cheap clothes is facing me, blood on his fist and something like hatred on his face.
He is being held back by Zeng and Witold but he is clearly ready for more. All around us the conversation has stopped and the patrons of the Eamon de Valera are looking forward to the floor show. Why are people so nasty? Why can’t they do the human thing? Why don’t they listen to The Slab when he’s talking to them?
‘Who are you?’ I say.
‘I’m Olga’s boyfriend.’
‘Really? That’s incredible. Me too.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘You’re nobody.’
Then they throw me out. The two bouncers. The big black guy who is built like a fridge and the big white guy who is built like a dishwasher. They pin my arms to my side and march me to the door, where they eject me into the street with more force than is strictly necessary.
There’s a beggar and his dog sitting on the pavement outside and I sort of stumble over them, lose my balance and pitch head first in the gutter.
I lie there for a while looking up at the stars faintly shining beyond the sick yellow of the streetlamps. My skull aches. My mouth hurts. There’s blood smeared down the front of my shirt. The dog comes over to me and starts licking my face but the beggar calls his name—‘Mister’, which I have to say is a pretty good name for a dog—and finally even the beggar’s dog decides to have nothing to do with me.
And suddenly I know what I have to do now.
I have to sleep with Jackie Day.
twenty-nine
I catch the last train out to Essex.
My carriage is full of young men who dress in suits and young women who dress like Jackie Day. It is like the rush hour for overdressed drunks. Everyone is loud and happy. There’
s no trouble. The carriage smells of kebabs, lager and Calvin Klein.
Near midnight the train slowly rattles out of the great metal barn of Liverpool Street Station. It is difficult to know where the city ends and where the suburbs begin, where the underground stations give way to small towns, what is London and what is Essex.
Drifting by in the darkness I can see the rotting hulks of sixties tower blocks, endless railway yards, forecourts crammed with second-hand cars, and then a track for dog racing, pubs, drive-through burger bars, Chinese and Indian restaurants, more pubs, ratty strings of shops, estates that seem to go on and on for ever. A world of cars, council houses and small pleasures. Essex looks like London with the big money gone.
The stops clatter by—Stratford, Ilford, Seven Kings, Chadwell Heath, Romford, Harold Wood, Billericay. The urban sprawl stretches deep into the night, the city never seems to come to an end. And then, after almost an hour, with most of the overdressed drunks sleeping or gone, it suddenly does.
The city’s overspill is abruptly replaced by flat green fields, black and silent beyond the lights of railway and road, and the next stop is Bansted. Out where the city finally starts trying to pass itself off as the countryside.
Bansted. Their home town.
The minicab drives slowly down a narrow street of pebble-dash semi-detached houses. Some of the houses have pretty little gardens, full of terracotta pots and flower beds. Others have their front lawns brutally bricked over, a car or a van parked where the grass should be. Almost as if you have to choose between the flowers or the cars. And maybe you do.
Jackie’s house has grass out front, but that’s all. No border for flowers, no space for plants. Just a plain grass lawn. I pay the minicab driver and walk up the drive she shares with her next-door neighbours. The house is in darkness. I ring the bell.
She answers the door in—what’s it called? the silky Japanese robe?—a kimono. And I smile to myself because that is just so typical of Jackie. She couldn’t have an ordinary dressing gown like everyone else. It has to be a kimono.