Mr. Loverman
Page 6
She ain’t answered the question.
“Yes, but Donna . . . would you like it? Would you approve? Would you tell your friends and skip around your house singing?”
“Of course I wouldn’t jump for joy, but as I said, it would be up to him. Most likely it would be . . . a phase. All teenagers go through phases.”
Donna certainly did, but I won’t bring that up now.
“You wouldn’t like it, then?” the Grand Inquisitor shoots back, elbows on the table, face radioactive.
Merty’s the product of a lifetime of hardship, ever since she mommy left her. Everybody else gotta pay.
“The point is that people should be free to express themselves as they want to.”
“So, tell me, Donna, would you prefer it if he brought a girl home, not a boy? Honestly?”
Donna starts to mop up the spilled juice with a napkin, but she’s just swirling it around on the table. “Yes, of course, any mother would . . . I want grandchildren.”
“You can still get grandchildren, so that’s no excuse. This means you wouldn’t like it?” Merty keeps her eyes trained on Donna.
My daughter looks helpless, paralyzed.
But I can’t get involved. How can I?
Carmel would normally intervene on behalf of her favorite child, although she don’t like to stand up to Merty, but she’s quieter than usual; must have her dying father on her mind.
“Look at him . . .” Merty is unable to stop her worst self running amok. “He could become an antiman. All his speaky-spokiness and private schooling that everyone knows is a breeding ground for sodomites.”
My grandson has had enough. He draws himself up and, in the expensive Queen’s accent that has cost me a fortune in school fees, booms, “That’s it, I’ve fucking had enough of this. Stop talking about me like I’m not here. Mum, I’ll be outside.”
And he gone.
Is this the little boy who used to fine me tenpence for swearing or he’d report me to Donna?
A voice wades into the conversation: “Look how you upset this young boy.”
Is this me talking?
“You should be ashamed . . . insinuating things. How you think that make him feel? And my daughter don’t need to justify herself to anyone in this room.”
I just rode in on a white steed brandishing a gold-tipped saber.
Merty blinks slowly and swivels her head away from me, as though her head is set on ball bearings and can do a 360-degree turn.
Donna offers me a grateful grimace. Daddy has redeemed himself. (It never lasts.) She stands, picks up her bag, takes her car keys out, departs.
The two Gorgons sit there.
Pumped up. Victorious. Primed.
Candaisy, who rarely says peep anyway, keeps her eyes averted from everyone.
Asseleitha’s wearing that screwed-up expression she favors, like her lips are tied into a bunch with invisible string.
The whole lotta them should clear out of my house.
Carmel starts to rattle up the plates.
After such melodramatics, is time for everybody to calm down.
This is when Asseleitha decides to pitch in. Why Carmel keeps company with such a nut job is beyond my reasoning.
“Those homos are rightly suffering,” she says. “God saved us to make us holy, Mr. Walker, not happy.”
This is what I truly believe happened to Asseleitha. Someone sliced off the top of her head, scooped out her brains, put them in a blender, and turned on the switch. Once it was all mash-up, they poured the mixture back in through her scalp and stitched it all up.
Maybe that’s why she never takes off that narsy ole beret.
Seeing as the Guinness has reached saturation point, I plunge in. “What on earth you talking about, Asseleitha? Everybody got a right to happiness. Why don’t you mind your own business about what people do?”
Everyone freezes except Carmel, who starts making so much noise at the sink it’s like the Lancaster Bombers just hit their target—a porcelain crockery factory in Dresden.
I can feel Morris willing me to shut up.
“Why you defending them?” Merty is ready to start on me now.
Thank God Asseleitha comes to my rescue with her derailed train of thought: “The homos are suffering because suffering is part of their salvation. The Lord says they should be beaten that they mayest be better.”
Laaard. They think Daniel got a temper? It is in his genes. I will show them a temper. I am a lion and what-a lion do?
I stand up and punch the palm of one hand with the fist of another. “Someone’s goin’ give you beats one of these days, you crazy lady.”
There is a communal pantomime gasp of horror, as if I am the kind of monster to really beat a woman.
“I thanks God for your life,” Asseleitha replies, gets up, and walks out of the kitchen, as if all her joints been bolted together.
Now Candaisy, who has been eating in a quiet, dignified manner, speaks for the first time.
Candaisy might not be one of the sit-and-bitchers, but she’s a sit-and-listen-to-the-bitchers kind of person. According to Carmel, she seeing an OPP (Other People’s Property)—a married man five years younger.
Candaisy speaks with the light, breathless, girly voice of women who don’t want to grow up.
“I personally . . . I personally . . . think . . .” She timidly trails off.
Right, Miss Candaisy, how the hell else is a person supposed to think except personally?
“I personally think we should live and let live. It’s not their fault if they’re . . .”
Boy, she brave, goin’ up against Hitler and Himmler.
“You’re right,” Carmel says gently, putting her hand on her arm in sisterly solidarity. “It’s not their fault they’re sick, but it is their fault when they act on it. We should pray for their souls to be saved. Now what I object to, what I really, really object to . . .”
She unashamedly eyeballs her husband.
“. . . is the kind of married man who sticks his business in any ole smelly, venereal, baggy pussy that’s had more dingle-dangles stuffed up it than I’ve had hot dinners. Those kind of men should be publicly flogged in the town square.”
At that, Merty’s forkful of macaroni cheese, which has started the journey from her plate, can’t quite travel all the way to her mouth.
I go to the fridge and fetch another Guinness, slamming the door, imagining a certain head trapped in it.
One day soon I goin’ be free of all this.
Then suddenly it’s all hustle and bustle and Must be goin’, Carmel dear, and thank you for lunch, Carmel dear.
“I goin’ pray for your daddy, Carmel,” Merty says, hugging her.
“May he live many more years yet,” Drusilla says, squeezing her shoulders.
What is the matter with her? The man is nearly a hundred years old.
“Charles is waiting for me,” Drusilla adds unnecessarily, a triumphant dig at Merty, who ain’t got no one waiting for her.
Charles is some ninety-year-old Jamaican fella been courting her. Carmel told me he owns three houses . . .
Candaisy is the only one who acknowledges me with an empathetic smile as she leaves, as if disassociating herself from the other three, as if she knows the torment within my soul, the suffering I have to endure, and any time I want to off-load . . . she ready to listen.
Oh, I see, is this how you catch OPP, Candaisy?
No, Barry, don’t be mean, you ole bastard. She all right.
There might be three of us left in this room, but I can still feel the presence of the other cronies as if they’re still here, like . . . Chernobyl.
Morris is telepathically willing me to do what I said I was goin’ do.
This might be my time to talk to Carmel, but is it wise when we both so worked up? Anyways, after four or five or six pints of Guinness, I feeling a bit woozy. End-of-marriage conversations should be conducted stone-cold sober and away from the kitchen knife drawer.
I give Morris the upwards-onwards nod, but Carmel notices. “Barrington, you ain’t goin’ nowhere . . . Morris?”
Morris jumps up so fast he almost falls over. You should-a taken it slower, man. Be cool. Don’t let her boss you around.
I mouth I’ll catch him tomorrow, and he gets up. Exeunt.
Melodramatics not done yet.
Carmel wipes her hands on a tea towel and sits down in the chair Merty just vacated.
“Bar-ring-ton,” she begins, slowly, deliberately, like she’s struggling to control herself, like I’m her recalcitrant child who goin’ be grounded for a month after her hecture. “As well you know, these mi friends, lifelong friends, best friends, most loyal friends, and I don’t appreciate you threatening them. After all of this time you don’t even know them properly, because you’ve never bothered to find out who they are deep down inside. You treat them like monsters, when they are real human people with real human feelings who’ve had a harder life than you’ll ever understand, because you lacking in human decency, sensitivity, compassion, all-round empathy, and good manners besides.”
I go to defend myself as normal, but I can only let out a croak that is thankfully more silent than not.
“Your problem is you don’t go to church to get religious instruction, which is why you ain’t got no morals. I’d like to remind you what I said this morning when you sneaked into my bedroom for the millionth time like the skunk you are. Things is goin’ change in this house, yuh hear? Soon as I get back from seeing my daddy, we goin’ get a new regime and you goin’ mend your ways.”
Yes, my dear, things is goin’ change beyond your current comprehension and wildest imaginings. You goin’ get a new regime all right. Don’t worry about that.
“No more late nights and no more no-shows or I goin’ make your life hell,” she says. “You been walking on the dark side too long, Barrington, and now I goin’ drag you into the light.”
Then she makes the sign of the cross, bends her head, and begins to pray for my soul.
5
Song of Despair
1970
Carmel, what you doing at eleven o’clock on a Wednesday morning communing with your dark side, flopping about on the settee in the living room, still wearing your maternity dressing gown
the heavy damask curtains drawn but letting through a cold slice of English daylight, while you staring at the ceiling rose with the flowery lampshade hanging from it that you bought from Debenhams in the sales two years ago like
you ain’t got nothing better to do with your time and ain’t the mother of Donna, who’s still only ten years old and needs you?
yes, she needs you to get her sleepy little head out of bed in the morning—get her ready for school and take her there
because this is what mothers supposed to do
whether you feel like it or not
and you should wash too, you know
whether you feel like it or not
how long you goin’ wait before the dirt on your body has to be scraped off with a trowel?
or you think you don’t stink renk and don’t need the bubble bath Barry draws for you every evening in vain hope?
listen here, Carmel
why don’t you go upstairs right now and scrub up your
filthy-new-baby-flabby-self and leave the scum behind?
whether you feel like it or not
as for Maxine?
you is a disgrace, lady
that child might choke to death any minute, she so wheezy she not been allowed outside the house since Barry brought her home from intensive care at Hackney Hospital, where she was tubed up for two whole weeks
but when Barry sticks that succubus in your arms, bawling for your teats and wriggling its fingers greedily, wanting to suck the life force out of you and you can’t wait to dump her right back in the pink wooden rocking cradle that you bought from Randall’s up at Stamford Hill
nor can you forget the time he popped out to the corner shop and you dropped her and
when he came back and saw the dark bruise starting to show
he looked at you like you was Myra Hindley
and he not left you alone with her since, but thanks God
she didn’t die because baby’s skulls is so fragile, thanks God
he didn’t call those nosy-parker social workers who none of you like interfering in your private business, and thanks God
Barry’s the man you always thought he could be, right this minute feeding Maxine cow’s milk from a bottle in the kitchen when you got a milk cart full of the stuff in your boobies that could feed a whole nursery full of babies
how can you not feed your own child, you monster?
like you got anything else to be getting on with?
seeing as
Merty is organizing your household after Barry told her you’d not moved from your bed in days and he was worried like when Donna was born and you went off of your head, and though
Barry calls Merty Camp Commandant behind her back, but at least the two of them are communicating these days
and Merty organized a rota with the Ladies’ Society of Antigua to help out
so Candaisy cleans your house every Saturday afternoon, even though it has three floors that take four hours to get through because she’s so meticulous, what with her now being an auxiliary nurse at Hackney Hospital
although you don’t actually care no more if the floors are heaped with dutty clothes, or the toilet bowl is caked with shit, or the bathtub has a rim of human grime
and then Candaisy goes home and starts all over again, cleaning the two-bedroom council flat she’s living in with her daughter, Paulette, and Robert (from the Bahamas), who still won’t marry her
who says he loves Candaisy but y’all think she deserves better than a man who spends most of his wages down the bookies Friday evenings, and thanks God
Asseleitha treks down to Dalston to do the shopping for you at Ridley Road Market on Saturdays (she’s now a cook in the staff canteen at the BBC in the Strand, so she can only afford to live in that grotty rented bedsit by Clapton Pond with damp, mildewed walls)
and she comes back weighed down with shopping bags and cooks up a big pot of stew and a big pot of rice to last the whole week, seeing as you too lazy to cook and otherwise you and Donna will have to rely on Barry’s cooking capabilities, which is, basically—overboiled potato, soggy fish fingers, lukewarm baked beans, and lumpy jam sandwiches galore
and then Mondays to Fridays, Merty picks Donna up at eight thirty a.m. prompt to take her to William Patten School with her own brood of boys (aged four to ten years) trailing behind her in the snowy sludge, because Merty has five boy pickney, and all for Clement too
who’s a good man, even though she calls him Mr. Merty in public and you see him squirming, but at least he don’t stop out nights and puts his brown pay packet unopened from British Rail on the kitchen table every Friday and
what with his wage and hers from the work cleaning rich people’s houses up at Hampstead
they finally got a deposit for a mortgage, and to
think you used to be jealous that she had five pickney because you wanted more, but Barry don’t have much of what they call in Woman’s Own a “sex drive,” so your monthlies was coming regular for ten years after Donna born
and now you got the second child you said you wanted, but you acting like you don’t want her
are you mad?
what is wrong with you? thanks God
Drusilla’s night-cleaning shift at the office block down at Bishopsgate starts at seven p.m. (twelve hours after her first shift runs, from seven a.m. to ten a.m.), so she can collect Donna from school in the afternoon with her own four pickney (three by Maxie Johnson, who was gunned down in Miami, y’all heard on the Antigua gr
apevine), and one by that Lewis who came and went) and then she takes all ten pickney back to her yard (Merty’s five, Drusilla’s own four, and your Donna) and makes tea for all of them, never once complaining
about you slumping around like the lady of the manor in your big living room looking out on to your big garden, when she’s the one in a tiny council house that’s been condemned
and Drusilla’s the one to wash and plait Donna’s hair and grease it with Dax to stop it getting all dried up and matted, even though the English children at school still call Donna Sambo in the playground
and to think you used to tell Donna she was a beautiful little girl every day, until you reach that point where you went
somewhere else
and you not come back yet
and now she’s becoming Daddy’s Girl
Daddy, who puts her to bed and listens to her reading her favorite book, Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, for the hundredth time
who got time off from work at Ford’s
who’s home all the time now, when before he was out all the time
so much so that
one wintry Saturday, in the dark, early hours, you left behind your bed, your hot-water bottle, and a sleeping Donna, walked downstairs into the icy hallway, and put your big brown overcoat over your thick polyester nightdress, your black winter Clarks ankle boots over your bare feet, your brown woolly hat over your mussed-up hair, and your blue woolen gloves over your rapidly freezing fingers
and you marched over to his latest property, which he was supposed to be decorating on Palatine Road with Morris, and banged on the big lion-head door-knocker
and when the pair of them answered, eventually, in their paint-spattered blue overalls with paint brushes in their hands, you still barged inside and had a look, but there was no whores in various states of undress anywhere and so
you skunked off and
felt so chupit
but still you worry
he up to something
but how can you complain when everybody was so envious of you, especially
when you bought that expensive white leather settee suite from Debenhams that’s goin’ last a lifetime, because you covered it in plastic and control who sits on it and anybody puts their feet on your sofa they dead, yes, they dead, plastic or no plastic, socks or no socks