Mr. Loverman

by Bernardine Evaristo

  The gargoyle can’t help but react to his charm. She replies all wistfully, “Just tired, sir. I was out clubbing last night and I’m paying the price today. You know how it goes.”

  “There is always to price to pay, isn’t there?” he says, jollying her along. “I have had one or two such days in my life as well.”

  Who you kidding, Morris? That is an understatement of such magnitude it falls firmly into the category of mendacitude. Your entire life has been one long hangover.

  She nods her head, smiling wearily, appreciative.

  “Now, what can I get you, sir?”

  “I’ll have a refreshing cup of peppermint tea.” Morris turns and touches my elbow. “Barry, what you having?”

  “Cool, gimme a Coke with lemon and ice. I’ll get seats.”

  Got to let my friend have his dignity. Man must put his hand in his pocket to feel good.

  My hawk eyes see the only free spot, at the back in a corner. One table, three comfy red leather armchairs. Then I see the competition. Two ladies approaching it clumsily from the right, balancing heels, trays, and bulging shopping bags. My survival skills kick into action, and I move pantherlike across the room and lunge into a seat just as they arrive, pretending not to show the pain in my jolted joints. In these situations, best not to make eye contact, so I direct my attention to a poster on the wall—which implies that the grinning Italian founder of this coffee chain has all but handpicked every single coffee bean used in his thousands of coffee bars worldwide.

  The women totter off. Adios. Arrivederci. Auf Wiedersehen, ladies, or whatever language you speak, because I can tell you tourists.

  From my vantage point I observe the beau monde of Bond Street. Mainly youngish, mainly female, and half of them have skirts so short and heels so high they look like hookers. Every single one of them has a mobile phone either sitting on the table or being fiddled with.

  Morris pootles over with the drinks.

  Now . . . unless I’m also suffering from dementia, did he not just order a cup of peppermint tea a moment ago at the counter? So how come my spar has bought himself a tall glass of hot chocolate stuffed with pink marshmallows, squirted with a whipped spiral of fresh cream that forms a glazed spume, onto which is sprinkled cinnamon powder and into which is inserted three chocolate flakes?

  He parks his posterior next to mine, no sign of shame sweeping his face.

  “Morris, seeing as you on the slippery slope downward, have some rum in that. Overproof: it will blow your balls off.”

  He needs to relax, I need to relax, and we both need to enjoy the prospect of our new life together.

  But he don’t respond.

  I take out the silver hip flask from my inside jacket pocket and wave it in front of him. “C’mon, don’t be so boring. A little is better than nothing, ehn? Sooner or later you goin’ succumb, so save yourself the aggravation.”

  Morris tries to act affronted for a moment, as if he couldn’t be guilty of such weakness of will, but when I begin to pour the golden elixir into his concoction he don’t try stop me.

  As it makes its way down, there is a palpable sizzle. When I pour it into my Coke, there is a hiss.

  We both take our respective sips, and when it hits the spot it relaxes my still somewhat frazzled nerves after the traumatization of the past two days.

  “Nothing rum can’t make better,” I say, feeling my chest warm up. “It guaranteed to dissolve the stressment.”

  Morris closes his eyes as he plunges a long spoon into his drink and scoops up some rum-soaked cream.

  “Feeling better?”

  “Much better, thank you, Mr. Walker. Teetotalism is like a bereavement. You remember all of the good times you had with a glass of something. Such good times.”

  Yes, and we got even better times ahead, if I play my cards right.

  We turn to face each other, both beaming the slightly idiotic, blurry smile of those starting to get tanked up.

  Everything cool now, Morris. You and me always vibes good, eh?

  Long time we been vibes-ing.

  * * *

  I look up to see Maxine wending her modelesque way toward us, black hair shaved on one side with a long, straightened fringe thing sweeping down the other, outsized sunglasses, tiny white T-shirt, what they call skinny jeans (which only merit that description if you’re a beanpole like Maxine), and Day-Glo stilettos, of the kind usually seen on lap-dancers, I do believe.

  We all present carefully selected versions of we-selves to the world at large.

  She got her groove goin’ on; her daddy got his. She just don’t know how much yet.

  Maxine clocks me and erases a flash of irritation when she sees I am not alone. She makes a beeline for Morris, whips off her shades, and kisses him on both cheeks like one of those mwah-mwah-luvvie types, which she is, actually. A stylist to the stars.

  “How lovely to see you, Uncle Morris. It’s been ages. I’m so pleased you could come too.”

  The way that girl has mastered the Englishman’s use of irony is re-mark-a-ble. I could write a two-thousand-word essay on it: fiction, falsification, fabrication, fancification. Is not that she don’t like Morris. Oh no, she loves her godfather; it’s just that she wasn’t planning on a tête-à-trois.

  “Maxie. How yuh do?” Morris asks her.

  What does the cheeky madam do next? She sits down opposite him and gives me one of those middle-class English smiles that involves a wide elasticizing of the lips and nothing else.

  “What about a kiss for your father?” The father who needs his daughter’s affection now more than ever. My basso-profundo voice booms like a cannon into the flapping, squawking gathering: “What about showing some respect for your father?”

  Wings settle, feathers fluster, then float down, the room hushes.

  Maxine goes stony on me, which is pretty scary if you don’t know her, because she got a load of black war paint around her eyes. Both my daughters can put on that hard face our women develop to protect themselves, no matter how soft they feeling inside. Carmel too. Anytime you see her on the street she looks ready to box someone.

  Maxine rises to the bait. “I am so pissed off with you, Dad.”

  Soap opera just come to Café Zanza on Bond Street. Ears are cocked, waiting for the escalation of this dramatic scenette.

  “Maxie,” Morris intervenes. He’s holding a chocolate flake to his lips, the last of the family of three to be decapitated. “You letting yourself down. Treat your father with respect, nah?”

  Yes, Morris. You go-wan. Tell her.

  She looks sheepish, mumbles “Sorry” at Morris, then starts rummaging in her fancy Gucci handbag that won’t be a knockoff from Ridley Road Market but the real thing, paid for by Mr. Credit-Card-Loan-Shark.

  What I tell her? Neither a borrower nor a lender be. This is the problem with fathering. You have all of this armchairing, psychobabble, and experientialism you wish to impart to your children, but they act like you insulting them when you try.

  What is more, the so-called sorry is aimed at Morris, and he thinking the same thing, because that chocolate stick don’t move from its last-rites position.

  “Hang on a minute,” she says, aware that me and Morris are quietly waiting for her to state whatever case she is planning on stating. “I’ve just realized I’m starving, and I’ve got to chuck some food down in the next few minutes or I’ll faint. Won’t take long. Promise. Then we can conversate.”

  Con-ver-sate.

  “Let me get you something to eat,” Morris offers, rising. “A sandwich?”

  Don’t be silly, man. Don’t you know Maxine treats wheat like poison? Allergic to it, apparently, after a lifetime of eating bread.

  “No, I’m fine, Uncle Morris. I’ve already bought something. Maybe some water, please?”

  Water, water, water. What is this obsession with water these days? I come from one of the hottest countries on earth, and most Antiguans never bothered much with drinking water. Was anybody
dying from dehydration over there?

  She takes a packet of that sushi nonsense out of her bag—popular with anorexics. She rips open the plastic cover with her black talons and pops supposedly edible objects into her mouth. I lean over and examine the contents of her “lunch”: four raw slivers of salmon on top of a thumb-sized blob of rice, a few lettuce leaves, about twenty bean-things with tails that look like human embryos, strands of grated carrot, birdseed, a few pickled slices of ginger, and some slimy black leafy substance that looks like it should-a remained in the sea.

  Maxine’s been starving herself since she was fifteen, when someone told her she could become a model, which she did, but only during school holidays, because no daughter of mine was goin’ bypass her A-levels. By the time she’d finished school she’d stopped looking like a giraffe-freak and had grown curves like a normal woman, whereupon the agency dropped her. I swear I’ve not seen that girl eat a proper meal since.

  She could do with a hearty meal of cow-foot stew, dumplings, yam, macaroni cheese, fried spinach, green beans, and a chunk of sourdough bread. The kind of food that was a source of conflict between her and Carmel when she was a kid.

  At least she’s moved on from her teenage idea of fine dining: a glass of white wine and a packet of cheese-and-onion crisps.

  I realize I might never sit down to a meal with my wife and daughters again. Our fragile nuclear family is about to explode. What parental price will I have to pay? I have no doubt that from Wifey and Donna’s point of view, I will go from head of the family to dead in the family.

  Finally, madam is ready to con-ver-sate.

  “The thing is,” she begins, twirling her long-fringe-forelock thing, “it’s probably better if you and I have this conversation alone . . . Uncle Morris, it won’t take long.”

  Morris starts to fidget, but he’s waiting for my say-so.

  “Morris,” I say, tapping his knee, “stay.”

  He settles back down.

  She ain’t got no choice but to con-ver-sate on our terms. This battle of wills lasts thirty seconds before she launches herself.

  “You have really upset Mum. She can’t take any more of your . . . shenanigans. I mean, coming home drunk in the middle of the night instead of going to bed at a reasonable hour with a mug of Horlicks . . . or . . . something stronger, whatevs.”

  “Maxine,” I reply, cutting the facetey wretch off, “you love the fact that I don’t act like some old codger with one foot in the grave, so don’t give me any of that Horlicks crap. And you been out on the lash nuff times with me and Morris, so even you don’t believe what you saying. Listen to me good: it is true, I am a sinner and a drinker and as the porter says to Macbeth, Faith, Sir, we were carousing till the second cock.”

  Morris splutters so much he practically spits out his drink.

  “Dad, you are totally incorrigible,” she says, just managing to resist a laugh herself. I can always win Maxine round.

  “Yes, my dear. But you know what? Your daddy still got his joie de vivre, and he keeping it.”

  “There are limits. I am totally baffed by your behavior.”

  Baffed . . .

  “What you don’t seem to get is that just because Mum puts up with it, it doesn’t mean she’s not devastated. Do you know—”

  “That’s enough, Maxine.” I raise my hand. “Your mother should get out more, which would stop her obsessing about my business and trying to contravene my basic Human Right to Freedom and a Social Life (Article 15a). Look at her: church-shops-doctors-funerals. I remember in the ’80s she used to socialize with her work friends from the town hall. That Joan, Mumtaz, and the other one who even came to dinner once or twice. Nice women. Carmel had plenty to chat about in those days, because she was occupied with work and therefore not banging the Bible over her head and mine. She even bothered with her appearance and smartened up for a while. A shame it didn’t last.

  “Do you know how many thousand times I’ve heard Jim Reeves crooning ‘Welcome to My World’ out in the front room of an evening? She lucky I ain’t smashed that crackly ole 78 to smithereens. I’d be relieved if she got herself a social life. She and Merty should doll themselves up and go to calypso dances. Just make sure I’m not there.”

  I pull a face. Morris does too.

  “Maxine, as one of the fellas said in King Lear, I am too old to learn.”

  “Which is unfortunate, as Mum isn’t too old to be hurt.” Her voice rises dangerously near the high-decibel range again. “As for your rudeness to Asseleitha—”

  At that moment her mobile starts doing a Saint Vitus dance on the table.

  “Just a sec. Sorreeee,” she mouths, already taking the call. I could be on my deathbed and still hear, Sorry, Dad, I so have to take this call. Hold that breath, will you?

  I slip Morris a fiver to fetch a couple of Cokes, which I infiltrate with some more overproof.

  “Sorry about that,” Maxine says when she’s finished. “Where was I? Okay . . . sure, Mum’s friends can be narrow-minded, but it’s not been easy for them. Actually . . . I admire them. Honestly . . . I do.” Her eyes go all slippery-slidery. “Mum thinks that you’re, well, you’re a . . . misogynist.”

  Not so long ago you was throwing up baby sick all over me.

  “On what grounds am I a misogynist? Pray, tell?”

  I remember wiping up your mushy green poo like it was yesterday.

  “The way you treat her friends.”

  Wiping the snot from your nose, tears from your eyes.

  “I don’t like them. At least not three of them.”

  Teaching you how to walk, catching you when you fell.

  “You should still make the effort to be nice.”

  You sucked your thumb until you was nine.

  “I’ve held my tongue over half a century,” I finally reply.

  From zero to twelve years old I was your god.

  “Your problem is that you don’t understand women, Dad. You’re of the post-Victorian, prefeminist Antiguan generation that didn’t form strong platonic friendships across the sexes.”

  How she know? She only been to Antigua twice in her life. Last time when she was twelve. She’s not interested in the place. And I was born more than thirty years after the Victorian era, actually.

  “Maxine, dear, how many male compañeros your mother got?”

  No answer.

  “How many male friends Donna got?”

  The external signs of internal squirming are starting to show.

  “So don’t give me this balderdash, right. Most men don’t have close female friends neither.”

  I could tell her about Philomena, but I don’t have to justify myself to her. Smashing Irishwoman, secretary at Ford’s, big personality, great sense of humor, said she related to colored people because of the way she’d been treated when she first came to England and couldn’t get work or lodgings. We all liked her as a friend. Sometimes she’d join us in the Union Bar next door for a drink or two after work. The one time I mentioned this to Carmel, I saw fire flaring down her nostrils and fangs shooting out of her mouth.

  Naturally, I knew better than to tell Wifey that I’d kept up my friendship with Philomena, even to this day. Since I retired, I’ve visited her about twice a year at her house in Walthamstow. We have a pot of tea and one of her lovely homemade cakes and catch up on Ford’s alumni gossip, seeing as she’s still in touch with half the ole workforce.

  Anyways, how can I dislike women, Maxine, when I have always held you so close to my heart?

  I take a lug of my rum-and-Coke liquid medicine. I just want to enjoy my daughter. She should stop being her mother’s Harbinger of Grief. It don’t suit her.

  “Maxine, let we get one thing straight. You are not my keeper. Asseleitha deserved to be shouted down, and the others was running off their mouths so fast down the motorway they couldn’t see the speeding signs.”

  “You are this close to losing her.”

  I don’t even need to look at Mo
rris to know we sharing the irony.

  He emits the imperceptible cough that’s been used since time immemorial to make a discreet, nonverbalized point.

  But really, does Maxine honestly think she can lock horns with her father and win?

  “I don’t have to justify myself to you, so go phone your mother, duty done, you spoke to me.”

  Maxine don’t know what to say next, so I segue us out of the unpleasant part of our encounter into something more befitting of our usually smashing relationship that I couldn’t bear to lose.

  “Tell me what you been up to, my lovely daughter.”

  Morris is slipping down his chair. Been off the sauce long enough to lose some immunity.

  Asking Maxine how she is always works, because she always turns conversations into ring roads leading back to herself anyways.

  “Gosh, where do I begin?” she says after an honorable pause. She flicks that one-sided, fringe-forelock thing back and flops her long legs over the arm of her chair, letting those Day-Glo stilettos dangle.

  “Begin with some rum. You want some?” I wave my hip flask in front of her as if I’m waving a hypnotist’s pendulum.

  “You are so bad. I thought I could smell alcohol. It’s still the afternoon . . . Go on, then, just a smidgeon. It’s very calorific . . . I really shouldn’t.”

  She takes a genteel sip and beams daughterly love at me. For all her performance of outrage, me and her get on too well for her to strip me of my fatherhood and banish me into exile.

  Can’t say the same about her sister.

  I pour some into her empty (of course) water glass.

  “There is something else I thought I’d talk to you about, seeing as we’re here,” she says a little slyly.

  “The floor is yours, my dear.”

  “You know it’s a jungle out there in the fashion world, Dad. A jungle.”

  “You’ve told me enough times.”

  “I’ve only styled two shoots in the past month, one of which was in Skegness, of all places, and for some disgusting sackcloth dresses for some awful eco-save-the-planet fashion line. And I’m up to my ears in debt because schmoozing with the fashion crowd bloody well doesn’t come cheap unless you’ve got a Russian oligarch for a boyfriend, which, don’t remind me, I haven’t. All I attract these days are arrogant scuzzbuckets with money and fugly losers without it. And if I don’t mingle, the work dries up completely.”