by Diana Evans
Stephanie had said to Damian the night before last, ‘Get a therapist. That’s what people do when they’re depressed. It’s not something to be ashamed of.’
And Damian had said, ‘I’m not depressed.’
‘Oh really,’ Stephanie drawled with her now frequent sarcasm. ‘Well, I beg to differ.’
Her well of comfort and support was running out. Exhausted were the don’t-shut-me-outs and I’m-here-if-you-want-to-talks and blah blah blahs. Wrung out and stiff were the soothing cloths of cool water to mop his brow through this momentous time of bereavement and adult orphanness. It was time for psychology, for she herself was not adequately trained, and there was only so much a wife could do to help when her husband had turned into a ghost, when he spent entire evenings sitting at the computer looking at random websites or whatever he was doing. Sometimes with horses that won’t drink you have to just drag them to the water and dunk their face in it. Forget about their feelings.
‘I have three children, Damian,’ she had said, ‘not four. Please, for all our sakes, get some help.’
With that she had removed herself from the dining room, leaving behind on the table some leaflets for local counselling services that she’d picked up. Since then she had practically ignored him, and he had ignored the leaflets, putting them on the shelf where the maps and telephone directories were kept. He couldn’t imagine sitting in front of some nodding stranger in a little room with a plant and a box of tissues and unveiling his heart. It was not in his make-up. His father would never have done such a thing. He would see it as self-pitying and white. Did the slaves have access to therapy? Were they treated for post-traumatic stress disorder? No, Laurence would opine. They got on with it and mustered strength and sang songs and drew on their spirits, and they had a whole lot more to complain about than one measly little family bereavement. They were being bereaved every day, every hour, every minute, en masse, their throats cut, their sweethearts raped, their brothers whipped, their fathers lynched. Who are you to complain?
Two weeks ago, Damian had gone to his father’s flat in Stockwell to clear out the last of his belongings. The books, the African carvings, the crocodile skin shoes were now in boxes in the garage at home waiting to be sorted through. He wasn’t sure what to do with it all, and its presence there was having the effect of magnifying the feeling that he was being haunted. He’d been having absurd dreams. He’d dreamt that he was in an airport and he had to catch a plane and he was running but his suitcase was too heavy and when he opened it he found his father inside but he was a boy instead of a man. There was an unnerving instant last week when Summer, who bore a striking resemblance to Laurence, had looked at him in a particular way, and it had seemed exactly as if Laurence had come to say hello to him in her face. And then just now, on the walk from the Arcade to the Satay Bar, crossing Railton Road with Michael, a chilling moment of déjà vu. On that same street, about a year ago, he had been walking towards Brixton station after a meeting, when he had seen coming towards him a shabby old man in dirty jeans and a threadbare denim jacket, his hair wild and matted, his face long and haggard, a hopeless, wayward gait, almost like a drunk. It was Laurence. He hadn’t recognised him at first, his own father. When he did recognise him he was shocked and embarrassed, for them both. They shook hands. They stood there for a while trying to have a conversation but it was stilted, and after a few minutes Laurence had walked on. Watching him go, Damian’s strongest thought was that he would never, ever end up like that. He would never become a penniless, staggering drifter of a man whose own son did not recognise him. It occurred to him now that Laurence must have already been ill on that day. It was only in the last six months of his life that they had seen each other more often.
‘My bad,’ Michael said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Been meaning to ask you, how you getting on without your old man?’
Damian nodded, fake lighthearted. ‘I’m getting through.’
The spectre of Stephanie rose before him, with her therapy leaflets.
‘You miss him?’
‘Not much. I guess. A little. Not really, though.’
‘Look, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, bro. I get it.’
Damian did think about telling him about the déjà vu moment back there, but he was ashamed. Michael wouldn’t understand. He came from a happy family where the mother and father were eternally in love and the children were adored and did not call their parents by their first names. Instead he went to get more drinks, after which they talked of other things, eventually returning to the problems with Melissa. It was the pressing issue, and Damian had always been more the listener in their friendship. It also made him feel better about the recent ‘feelings’ he’d been having, which sitting here drinking with Michael he could see were off-key.
‘What you need is a date,’ he said. ‘When was the last time you went out alone together?’
‘Last month some time,’ Michael said, and just then, as though conjured by the memory of it, Bruce Wiley stopped by their table, a largeness of belly and scruffy jeans, beer in hand. He was with one of his models.
‘What’s up, Mike,’ he said, clamping his shoulder in greeting before giving dap.
‘Hey, big man, you just crossed my mind. That was a bashment to remember,’ Michael said.
Damian and Bruce shook hands as well, having not seen each other in years. ‘And where’s the mighty Melissa tonight?’ asked Bruce. ‘Friday night is date night in Obama custom, you know. I hope she’s not at home all by herself.’
‘He brings the message,’ Damian said. ‘You see? Date night.’
‘We’re not the Obamas,’ Michael said when Bruce had moved on, running into someone else he knew, which was practically the whole bar.
‘Doesn’t matter. It’s the same principle.’
‘I don’t like booty schedules, they don’t work. It kills the spontaneity. I prefer things ital.’
‘Who’s calling it a booty schedule? It’s just a date,’ said Damian. ‘Look, babies throw a spanner in the works. Take her out, that’s all. Go out dancing or to dinner or something. Make her happy.’
‘Oh, that’s not easy, to make a woman happy,’ Michael laughed. ‘Men shouldn’t be held responsible for that.’
‘True,’ Damian was laughing too. ‘But you’ve got to try at least. Look what’s at stake.’
Michael thought about it, downing his drink. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said, and looked around again at all the honeys. None of them compared.
‘We’ve got to do something, I guess. She’s the love of my life.’
*
‘OK. I need tops, skirts, trousers and shoes,’ Hazel said.
‘I need a red dress. I don’t have a red dress. I’m trying to be more feminine.’
‘You always say that.’
‘I know, and I always end up buying more jeans. Don’t let me.’
‘OK. Where do you usually get your jeans from, by the way? I like your jeans.’
‘Topshop.’
‘Oh theirs never fit me, I’m too fat. They don’t make them for women with hips.’
‘You’re not fat,’ Melissa said. ‘You’re Amazonian.’
Having met at Topshop as planned, they were walking now through the central avenue on the ground floor of Selfridges that led from perfumery to the clothing concessions. Why wade and trawl through the Oxford Street hoi polloi, tramping from shop to shop, when you can come here, where everything resides? This was Hazel’s view, lover of the department store, frequenter also of John Lewis and House of Fraser. Melissa liked the tramping, albeit less on a Saturday when you could walk only in slow motion – concessions were only highlights, you missed stuff. Ultimately she preferred a more bohemian kind of shopping experience like Portobello or Camden, where from the cubic shade of a market stall a face might look out, lined and wanting, as you touch earrings, pendants, fabrics, and a little hut nearby might sell falafel or mulled wine and you could drift along drinki
ng it in the cold air, in the strange colourings of light, the charisma of the cobblestones, the dirty sheen of the canal. Department stores had no personality and they lacked fresh air. And Selfridges was a beast of a department store, a glittering homage to materialism, the shop assistants were like overseers, standing around with their open pots of cream and eau de toilettes, their faces extreme with paint, all around them a dizzying profusion of objects and escalators and wild electricity. High and multiple-ceilinged as it was, it was more of a subterranean experience.
It had been some time since Melissa had been shopping for clothes, not since buying maternity wear. Everything looked over-bright or over-tight, too frilly, clothes for clowns and nubile nymphs, tacky colours, strange concoctions of garments. It was making her feel weary, not excited like it always had. ‘Look at all this stuff,’ she said.
But Hazel was already delving. ‘I love this place.’ She picked up something bright green made of lace with holes in it.
‘I don’t even know what that is.’
‘It’s a dress.’
‘Wow.’ Melissa noticed a grey skirt and held it against her. ‘Hm. Not sure how I feel about pleats.’
‘Pleats are for schoolgirls and the over-fifties. You told me that,’ Hazel said.
‘Did I?’
They trailed the cotton. They perused the chiffons, silks and satins, meanwhile chatting.
‘I must come over and see him soon.’ Hazel was talking about Blake. ‘I’m such a bad godmother. I did warn you, didn’t I? Why do you have to live so far?’
‘It’s not that far. Just go to London Bridge and get a train.’
‘But a train! An actual train!’
Hazel was one of those Londoners who perceived the south as another state. West was best. The river was the end. Beyond it was no-man’s land, the streets were alien, the skies were darker, the people were base. She did not understand Melissa’s relocation to a random road in such a southernmost enclave, far away from friends, family and civilisation. She herself lived in Hammersmith. Oxford Street was a short bus ride away, or she could take the tube. She only ever took trains to places like Margate, to the provinces.
‘You westerners, you get a nosebleed if you cross the river, it’s pathetic,’ Melissa said.
‘I seem to remember you were the same once.’
‘Yeah, well, I’ve evolved. Actually, I’m getting used to the train thing. It’s good reading time.’
‘If you say so,’ Hazel snorted. ‘What are you reading? I need some recommendations.’
‘I’m trying to read Middlemarch but I’m thinking about giving up. Hemingway as always, some of his stories. And I just read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It’s good but very depressing, end of the world kind of thing.’
‘I hate those kinds of books.’
They were long since agreed that Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex was one of the best books ever. Melissa liked The Corrections but Hazel didn’t so much, she had found it wayward and self-indulgent. She was a fan of The Kite Runner, which Melissa hadn’t read yet. As for the Chekhovs, Delmore Schwartzes, Grace Paleys and the more obscure books Melissa liked to read, Hazel didn’t have time for it.
She was Melissa’s oldest, boldest friend. They had gone to the same primary school. Hazel worked in advertising. She had a wide and glamorous smile behind which was an oft-foul tongue, and long, bouncing, half-French, half-Ghanaian curls falling down her back, the most beautiful, the most envied of their schoolgirl pack, the one the boys always went for first and then made do with a lesser girl if she was already taken. She was gutsy, self-actualised and tactile. Today she was wearing a clinging blue wool dress, caramel eye shadow and high-heeled sock boots. And a red coat. She was that type. She twinkled.
At the shoe section she sat down to try on a pair of pink wedges but didn’t like the way they looked in the mirror. She put them back and they walked on, passing boiler suits, jeggings, a blind man tapping his stick with a young Asian woman holding his arm, two people with buggies, wide walking. The music coming from the speakers was a Mariah Carey remix. Melissa recommended another book, which Hazel asked her to put aside for her. ‘I’ll get it when I come and see Blake.’
‘You don’t have to come and see him, you know. I’m always reminding him that you love him. Your main duty as a godparent is that you take him in if something tragic happens to me and Michael – that’s if I don’t kill him first.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Hazel said.
‘I’m not being silly.’
‘You love him. He’s your beau.’
Melissa had already talked about the current hostilities at Paradise, the tiffs, the time Michael neglected to pack a night bag for Blake when they were visiting his parents, the time he forgot to change his nappy before going to the park, because he didn’t think of things like that, men just don’t think of things like that, meanwhile Hazel’s eyes had started to glaze over and Melissa, noticing, quickly fell silent, ashamed. Hazel put the arguing down to common post-baby disruption. It would settle down. They just had to keep the peace and enjoy Blake.
‘Come on, it can’t be that bad. You and Michael are solid.’
‘Right now there is no me and Michael. It doesn’t flow any more. It’s too much like hard work.’
‘Wait,’ Hazel paused in her perusing, ‘you’re not thinking of splitting up with him, are you?’
‘Um, no … kind of … I’m not sure. In a way it feels like it’s happening all by itself, like we could break up any minute.’
‘But, you’re M&M. I mean, you’re chocolate. You can’t split up.’ Hazel had stopped shopping completely now and there was a look of dismay and urgency on her face. ‘If you and Michael broke up I’d be devastated. You’re my favourite couple. You still love him, don’t you? Tell me you still love him.’
Melissa didn’t answer the question. ‘Chocolate can break, actually,’ she said instead. ‘It crumbles, when you break it into pieces.’
‘Not M&Ms. It’s really hard to break an M&M in half.’
They both laughed. ‘Even if I do love him,’ Melissa said, ‘I don’t think it’s enough.’
‘Of course it is. Now you’re just basically being cynical.’
Hazel was disturbed, though, by the look of hopelessness on Melissa’s face, an absolute lack of faith. Grasping the severity of the situation, she pictured Ria and Blake without their father, which to her was a terrible thing, a sad and tragic thing. ‘The children!’ she said. ‘What about the children?’
Melissa had started looking through a rack of tops in French Connection, not really seeing anything, not concentrating. When she thought about the children she entered the realm of the caves. There were no answers. There was only darkness and fuzz, a sense of groping and things happening as they happened. ‘They’ll be fine,’ she said distantly. ‘As long as they still see both of us, they’ll be OK. There are other ways of bringing up kids than the nuclear family, you know. Why are we even talking about this anyway? I haven’t said we’re definitely splitting up.’
‘You’re not splitting up.’ Hazel put her arm through Melissa’s quite firmly and they walked on. ‘You and Michael are perfect for each other. You’re just not seeing straight. Do you really want to be a single mother?’
‘What’s so wrong with being single? I’d love to be single.’
‘No you wouldn’t.’
‘I would.’
‘You think you would but you wouldn’t. It gets lonely being single. Believe me, I know. You’re lucky to have what you’ve got, a good man who adores you. Michael’s good for you. He’s a catch. He’s something to be celebrated. You know what? Your life really started coming together when you met him. Remember you were living in that horrible room in Kensal Rise?’
‘Yeah, and?’
‘And you had to share a bathroom with that horrible girl? And there was that nasty fuckhead upstairs who was threatening you? What was his name again?’
‘Victor?’
; ‘Yeah, him.’
‘What about him?’
‘Don’t you remember the way Michael looked out for you? That day he was banging on your ceiling and shouting at you and Michael went up and dealt with him? He protected you. He defended you.’
‘I defended myself. I went up there too, remember. Michael didn’t need to be there. Anyway, the place wasn’t that bad. My room was nice.’
‘If it wasn’t for Michael you’d probably still be there.’
‘No I wouldn’t.’
‘You could be.’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘Where would you be, then?’
‘That’s what I’m always asking myself, where would I be? Maybe I’d be somewhere different. Maybe I’d be living in Brazil or Peru or the Caribbean, who knows? Maybe he’s holding me back. There might be another way, another course I’m being kept from. If things hadn’t happened the way they did they would’ve happened a different way, and that way might have been —’ Melissa’s phone started ringing. She found it in her bag and answered it, ‘Hello?’
‘Hi!’ said a sprightly voice. ‘Am I speaking to Melissa Pitt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hi! It’s Chun Song Li from Baby Beat. How are you today?!’