Foreigners, Drunks and Babies

by Peter Robinson

  The lift up to the Pain Control Unit was empty for once. As it juddered to a halt and the doors opened, I grasped my two plastic shopping bags and, stepping forward, found myself engulfed in a great crowd of people. They had been silent as the lift doors opened, but now were laughing loudly and smiling at each other. What was going on? There were three camera crews, some photographers with flashguns, and journalists holding microphones towards me. Stationed in amongst them were the wheelchairs and stretchers of immobile patients – with their eyes all trained upon me. Some of the walking wounded had positioned themselves strategically craning their necks just to catch a glimpse of me. Among them were the faces of nurses and even some junior doctors I had come to know during Patrick’s stay on the ward. Momentarily bewildered, I looked around for the bandaged head of my nearly fatally damaged young man.

  Patrick was standing at the far end of the corridor, as distant from the lift as he could get, with Alex beside him in his chair. Alex was clearly doubled up in stitches. Patrick had a hand over his half-paralyzed mouth. He seemed to be laughing too, laughing till it hurt. But I had no idea what was supposed to be so funny.

  So then they told me how, that very day, Her Royal Highness, the one with the freckles and russet curls, would visit the unfortunates who fell within the scope of her charity’s care. That was why the orderlies, the nurses, the news people, walking wounded, those on trolleys and in chairs had been waiting in a hush of expectation near the lift.

  Then suddenly, just as the boys were explaining, Her Royal Highness came sweeping out of the lift with her entourage around her. Mingling with the gathered crowd, she stooped slightly forward, turning her head just a little to one side.

  ‘And how have you been keeping?’ she asked an old lady who could hardly contain her excitement at being addressed by celebrity.

  ‘Yes, indeed, it’s your health matters most,’ Her Royal Highness was saying to another.

  But now Patrick and Alex were taking cover in the side ward. While my wounded love climbed back under the sheets, I took the liberty of drawing the curtains around his bed. Then I perched myself on the coverlet beside him. And at that moment it seemed more than likely that this being mistaken for somebody else was how he would remember me – the embodiment, he’d told me, of his second chance at happiness. That hubbub of excitement dropping down to a hush at what was supposed to be Her Royal Highness’s lift arriving, its doors slowly opening to reveal … only an upset for boom-mike and camera, no glad-handing princess, a cliché on her lips. No, but there, momentarily astonished, with full plastic bags beneath the world’s eye and smiling, smiling the smile that showed the gums above my slightly gapped front teeth, only me, my flesh and blood and bones, a bewildered self in that foreign land alone.

  National Lottery

  ‘So let me see now … “At the time of your first marriage, where did you plan to be buried?”’

  The Consul looked up. His pen hovered over the form with its column of questions. He had warned you some were unusual. The Consul’s pate glistened through his bar-code haircut. He wore a precisely trimmed moustache, and carried the embonpoint of a man who enjoys his food. The Consul had evidently spent much of his life abroad. He displayed the graceful condescension of one who knew his station, one become accustomed to the experience of others knowing theirs around him. Yet was there a trace of some obscure province in his almost accentless Received Pronunciation? If so, it was long dead and buried. So, now, where were we? Here’s where you were: in the Consul’s office, sitting before him, silent and staring – as if he were the one with the attitude problem. The Consul offered a slight, a would-be apologetic smile.

  Outside, the rain continued to fall, nothing of a British drizzle about it, rather the full-scale Asiatic downpour. The liquid daylight was momentarily overshadowed as an unfurled umbrella passed outside. Then it glimmered through the transparent plastic of one bought at a convenience store, somebody caught in the rain without her own. The guard on the Embassy Gate had his lodge to keep him dry. He’d nodded you through on catching the repeated, one-word purpose of visit. Like a castle armoury, crowded racks of umbrellas dripped in the Consulate’s entrance.

  A woman in her thirties came into the office. She dipped slightly, mumbling her apology for interrupting, and balanced a piece of paper on the edge of the Consul’s desk. The secretary had muddy specks up the backs of her ankles. It was ten past eleven on a dull day in the latter part of June. As she was leaving, the Consul asked his secretary to bring two cups of coffee, milk, and no sugar for his co-national, yes, and biscuits. With the slightest of bows, she turned and disappeared.

  This interview at the Consulate, overlooked by a photographic portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in her younger days, would be the final hurdle. Truthfully answer the series of questions, and your daughter could be granted her passport without further delay. But here was the snag: when you married your first wife, you weren’t even planning to die. The thought of where your expired corpse might be buried hadn’t so much as crossed your mind.

  ‘When you married your first wife …’ No, that cheerful girl in white veil and bridal gown, being photographed amid grime-smutted gravestones, hadn’t even seemed your first one at the time. Barbara Penny, with her rare maiden name, used to say she’d make sure to die first. So you could be the one who pined away from grief. But would you have the face to attend her funeral now? So where did she plan to be buried? Barbara preferred to be cremated, she’d said, and her ashes scattered across some barren moor – and this other wife? Isabella doubtless hoped to be interred at the municipal cemetery of her birthplace, near the graves of so many dear departed.

  And all because nationality comes through the mother … that was where our problem started, or, at least, why we had one. Our only daughter hadn’t, unfortunately, been born in the United Kingdom. She was brought forth alive by caesarean section five months before you were free to marry her mother. Clara might have been, speaking technically, an accident, but neither of her parents were getting any younger. She was far from the unwanted love child of fable. No, admit it, you were just a fond, foolish old father who, sixteen months before, had still not quite reached the end of the reconciliation period in a ‘no fault’ divorce.

  Then there had been that brought forward and re-scheduled last leg of a fourteen-hour flight so as to be at the Ospedale Maggiore and acknowledge little Clara before she was sent into the outside world with her first official document stamped ‘father unknown’. The ceiling fan wobbled on its stem in the maternity unit as you sat at her pale and gaunt mother’s bedside, allowed to hold the little mite, your daughter, with her fingers so tiny and stick-like you were afraid to touch them for fear they would come off. Yet there she was, a part of life: six weeks premature, illegitimate, though with an ex-pat Brit for a dad. By this means Clara did at least have two as yet unmarried parents, was a native of Puglia, and a citizen of the Italian Republic – on account of having been born there, and seeing as she was her mother’s daughter.

  The rain continued to bounce on the concrete walkway that ran beside the Consul’s glass office wall. There was a hinged, double picture frame standing on top of his bookshelf. In one wing was the colour photo of a woman in oval-shaped sunglasses, with long black hair pulled tightly back from her angular features. She was posed before a conquistador-style hacienda. In the other were two olive-skinned children, a boy and a girl. Each displayed a toothy, shining grin.

  The Consul picked up a transparent plastic folder crammed with the relevant documents.

  ‘So,’ he began, ‘I see you failed to have your illegitimate daughter’s birth registered with the British Consulate in Rome … and that, if you’ll allow me to say so, was your first mistake.’

  ‘I didn’t think there’d be a problem, me being English.’

  ‘Ah but, as you soon found out, there was – at least one,’ said the Consul, underlining the obvious.

  Yes, we soon discovered our mistake. Don’t even tr
y to apply for your daughter’s British passport until you’re married to the mother, an old Asia-hand advised us. Nor would it be a case of walking up that well-known aisle. One of those bittersweet afternoons of confetti, feasting, and speeches was more than enough. When the Decree Absolute had come through, you telephoned the Consulate and enthusiastically inquired what we had to do to get wed, in a civil ceremony, there, at the Consulate, on what was, after all, British territory?

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t,’ came a voice down the line. ‘You see, unless the Consulate is in a country where the religion will not permit it, our policy is to publish the banns here in the Consulate, then inform the local government office where you are residing that we have declared you legally free to marry.’

  The official will have heard a loud gasp of surprised exasperation down the phone.

  ‘Your marriage must be performed by the local authorities and recognized as a marriage within the legal system here,’ her explaining voice continued.

  ‘But you seem to have made things difficult for everyone, don’t you?’ said the Consul, benignly. ‘Why didn’t you follow the standard procedure?’

  Not being nationals of our country of residence here in Asia, and the language so notoriously difficult to master, neither of us would have understood the majority of official words uniting us – let alone been able to read our own marriage certificate. Then that scrap of paper would have had to be translated into two or three languages, at least, so it could serve its bureaucratic purpose on our pilgrimage through expatriation’s vale of whatever it might be.

  ‘As you know, my wife is Italian, and neither of us speaks much of the local language … ’

  So naturally enough, you had called the Consulate of your second wife-to-be and found they would happily perform the marriage in a tongue you could more or less understand on what was technically Italian and European Community soil. So there we were, standing in front of a large polished table, surrounded by walls of almanacs and, beside them, a print of The Temple of Concord in Rome, a large parchment-like sheet laid out before us, the presiding under-secretary wearing a red, white and green sash. The long civil document was read aloud in the three differently relevant languages.

  With punctilious anti-clerical zeal, the marriage document spelled out what precisely were the social purposes of matrimony, what rights were conferred and what duties required. It made a point of retroactively legitimizing Clara, and informed us that within six months, were you resident in the Republic of Italy, and within three years if not, you would yourself be entitled to apply for nationality. It was only as we left the Italian Consulate by way of its reception waiting room that we noticed and remarked on an enormous advert for the Superenalotto attached to its dingy off-white walls.

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ said the British Consul, ‘but I take it you appreciate that this stratagem of yours put us in quite a quandary. We have our protocols, to which we must adhere, all laid down in agreements signed by the British and local governments, and these do not make provision for marriages conducted on alien territory within this country. You see, my staff were perfectly correct in informing you that this Italian marriage of yours could not be recognized by the United Kingdom authorities, because the ceremony had not taken place on local territory and had not been recognized by the relevant powers that be.’

  ‘Fog in the Channel …’ you thought yet again.

  ‘Though I have to admit,’ he went on, ‘it was a clever dodge of yours to get the immigration people here to recognize this Italian marriage certificate.’

  He had slipped the photocopy out of its folder and was waving it in the air, looking like nothing so much as Neville Chamberlain as he descended the steps of his plane from Munich, announcing peace in our time once more.

  ‘What you should have done,’ he continued, with a kindly paternal air, ‘is simply accept the formality of a second marriage in the local ward office, not go trying to wriggle through that loop-hole.’

  The Italian marriage certificate had been conveniently supplied with a translation. So we had taken it to our provincial city’s overcrowded Immigration Office, filled out the bundle of forms required, purchased the document taxation stamps from the nearby post office, returned, frittered away some more time in the queue, and submitted a request for two dependent-status visas: one for a newly-wed wife and one for a legitimated daughter.

  To qualify for such visas, the persons must of course re-enter the country with the correct documentation entitling them to apply, within thirty days, for dependent status. It was naturally not possible to substitute these visas for the short-term tourist-status visas while remaining in the country itself. Your new, second wife had pages of such stamps in the back of her passport. It was starting to look suspicious. More than once an immigration officer had advised her, seeing that the man accompanying her had a resident-status stamp, to apply for the correct visa. Little did he know that it was only by Bella’s and Clara’s repeatedly pretending to be tourists that our little family had managed to remain united … while the divorce proceedings with Barbara trudged on their wandering and solitary way. Being aliens in a foreign land had now also obliged you to make an honest woman out of Bella.

  The Union Jack was more or less still flying on Peaks Road as that vintage double-decker bus leaned out round its switchback curves. Bella clung on tight to Clara as we were scrutinized by a grey-haired administrator-type in a three-piece suit, a fob watch, and university-blue tie. It was the double-decker buses that had clinched the similarity; but, even before seeing them, there was something curiously nostalgic about the police uniforms and postboxes. Clara’s pushchair steady on the Star Ferry’s planking deck, she was borne on the waves between container ships, lighters and junks, with the flashing glass spires of insurance offices, merchant banks and consulates in the distance. After only an hour on Nathan Road, her little face was flecked with black smuts from the air. Down in the bird market overlooked by rickety balconies on the tower blocks’ drab frontages, mynah birds, parrots and budgies competed with the bargaining in a rapid-fire Cantonese …

  So after a couple of days in Hong Kong we were enabled to re-enter this country having secured the correct official documents and stamps. Thus the immigration services for our place of residence had, effectively at least, recognized the Italian marriage as legally furnishing me with a pair of dependents.

  ‘We frankly had no alternative but to contact our legal department in London,’ the Consul continued. ‘I’ve never had to deal with another case like it, you know, not in all my years with the service!’

  Finally and at last, back came an answer from the people at the relevant ministry. Yes, these two European citizens, with documents that proved them to have been married on European territory, and further documents that evidenced the de facto recognition of this marriage by the authorities of their country of residence, could indeed be recognized by the British state as married. Which is how it came about that, after all the separate journeys, the telephone calls and paperwork involved, you were sitting before the Consul attempting to answer that series of questions.

  ‘Since your daughter is to be granted citizenship on the basis of your own claim to United Kingdom nationality, it is necessary to authenticate these qualifications,’ the Consul had explained. ‘Let me just confirm … your passport number is?’ 120652B. ‘Were your four grandparents born in the British Isles?’ ‘Were your two parents born there?’ ‘Do you own any property on British Crown territory?’ But this time the answer was ‘no, you didn’t’. Your first wife, Barbara, she’d been gifted with it all as part of that ‘no fault’ divorce.

  ‘So,’ the Consul said, ‘at the time of your first marriage, where did you plan to be buried?’

  The Consul had repeated his question. But what could you possibly tell him to complete his pink official form?

  ‘I know it’s an odd one,’ he candidly admitted, ‘but as you’ll appreciate this questionnaire is not exactly designed for
cases like yours. We sometimes have to process applications from polygamous cultures and ones with very extended families. I’m sure you see what I’m getting at …’

  But answer came there none.

  ‘… and I wonder,’ he continued, ‘have you had any similar difficulties – living, as you appear to do, not only here but also at least some of the time in Italy? Their red tape’s notorious the world over, is it not?’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, we have,’ you admitted, ‘but nothing quite like this!’

  Unabashed, the Consul took up with his left hand the skeleton curriculum vitae you had sent for the purpose of proving your patriotism. He was glancing down the lists: schools, universities, degrees, precarious posts, hand-to-mouth hourly paid employment, bread-line literary jobs – not a thing you could use as supporting evidence with Barbara when rehashing the same old arguments about how it was time to start a family.

  The Consul sipped at the coffee his secretary (apologizing for interrupting us) had brought in. He thanked her with his graceful condescension. The Consul glanced from the CV out over his desk. The coffee was still too hot to sip.

  ‘Sorry,’ you said, apologizing for the silence. ‘There’s no answer … I was twenty-six … I wasn’t even thinking of dying.’

  ‘Better not leave a blank,’ the Consul immediately advised. ‘Go on, just make something up.’

  How about beneath those rugged elms, or in that yew-tree’s deepening shade? Or should it be in some corner of a foreign field? And which part, precisely, of our Sceptred Isle was supposed to constitute your native ground? You can bury my body under the railway viaduct at Berwick on Tweed. Or take me back to Carrickfergus … Anywhere in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland would surely do … but, still, you couldn’t resist. He did say make something up.