Jubilee

by Shelley Harris

  So things are crap for Peter. Satish finds he’s not uncomfortable with this notion.

  ‘Do you know where he’s living?’ Colette adds.

  ‘I know he’s in London. Catford, is it? What does that have to do with the photo?’

  ‘He’s living in this shitty hostel. I saw him two weeks ago and he wouldn’t even let me come in and see it. Shitty. You could tell. And he hates his job. Do you know how I know everything’s crap?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because the whole time I was with him, the whole time, all he could talk about was how great it was. You know, it’s a positive advantage that he and Mum are living so far apart, because it means he can put in a few more night shifts.’ Her fingers stab the air, placing ironic quotation marks around the words. ‘It’s great that he’s working long hours because he says he can just pay off the debt quicker.’

  ‘Well, maybe he’s right. Maybe he just needs to do that for a while, put up with it.’

  Her glance is a rebuke. ‘He’s rubbish without Mum. He’s lonely, I think. I know he took that money. He was a bloody fool. She makes him say it, makes him call it … fraud … embezzlement. It’s like part of his punishment.’

  ‘Colette, it was fraud. He did those things. He was lucky, too. The bank could have prosecuted him.’

  ‘Well, I wish they had!’ Her voice disrupts the air between them. ‘I absolutely and bloody wish they had, because then he would still be in South Africa, with Mum, and he’d probably have had this tiny prison sentence which would be much, much more bearable than all these months of pain. Do you know how much he took?’

  ‘Roughly …’

  ‘Two hundred and fifty thousand rand. Do you know how much that is? It’s barely sixteen grand. Bloody fool! I wish they had prosecuted. They only reason they didn’t was because of the publicity. And she – Mum – makes him come over here because she says it’s easier to get work, but it’s hard, you know …’

  ‘Colette …’

  ‘We had lunch. I paid the bill and he was crushed.’ The last word is stretched as her mouth distorts. Suddenly, she’s crying.

  ‘Oh, no. Don’t do that.’ He imagines Maya waking, his mother coming downstairs. ‘Don’t cry, Colette, come on.’

  But she does for a while, moaning softly, and he lets her. He notices his hands are shaking and gets up to close the lounge door. She tails off, sniffs and looks round the room. ‘Shit. I need a tissue.’

  He won’t pretend to care about Peter’s predicament, but he has to stop this crying.

  ‘At least he has you here in England,’ Satish says, bright side. ‘And Cai.’ This triggers a fresh bout of sobbing.

  ‘It’s awful with Cai. He’s still furious about the whole thing. They’re hardly talking. Nothing’s going to be right until Dad goes home again. Nothing. That’s the problem, Satish. I should have told you about it. I’m sorry. That stupid email—’

  ‘He’ll work off the debt and then he’ll go home. It’ll happen sooner than you think.’

  ‘I just don’t know how long he can hold out, or how long him and Mum can be apart and still stay together. I can’t give him any money, I don’t have any, so I thought … that was the only reason I asked you to do the photograph, honestly.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  She looks up at him. Her nose is pink and rivulets of mascara run down her cheeks. ‘The money, Satish. Andrew Ford will pay us to be in the photograph.’

  ‘Listen, Colette, I doubt he’d even consider paying. That’s wishful thinking. He won’t do it.’

  ‘Yes he bloody will. I told him: we aren’t scenery. We’re people, and we’re the only ones who can do this for him. It wasn’t like that for the first photo, but it is now. He needs us.’

  ‘Well, good for you. He approached you with this?’

  ‘I told him we’d have to give up time to do this, and he’d made enough money out of us already. We made him rich. So I said that if he did pay us I’d—’

  ‘You’d what? What did you say you’d do?’

  ‘I said I’d make sure everyone turned up. Fifteen hundred pounds each. I promised him. I said you’d do it for me.’

  He can’t think what to say. He has nothing, no queue of words waiting in his mouth, nothing that might do as a response. He lets out an empty breath.

  ‘Satish, I know you’re angry, but I had to think about Dad. My money and his, that’s three thousand pounds and there might be more down the line. Newspapers, magazines. I can’t just leave him like this. I can’t shut the door on him. You couldn’t, either, I know it.’

  But Satish can shut the door on Peter: let the wolves get him. He can see Peter doing it to him, can see it with clarity even now: the older man breaking his gaze and turning away from the glass, as if the window made what was happening not real, as if he were absolved of responsibility by the fragile division between them.

  ‘No,’ he says.

  ‘Think about it,’ she tries again. ‘Think about your dad, when things went wrong for him.’

  ‘Colette,’ he warns her.

  ‘A few money problems and he’s in the shit. You were able to help him out. But what if you hadn’t been able to? Wouldn’t you have tried anything for him?’

  ‘It’s not the same. Your dad is …’ Finally he says: ‘Your father’s a resourceful man, Colette. I’m not doing the photograph. End of discussion.’

  Colette bites down on her bottom lip. He can see her fighting the inclination to beg, to persuade or manipulate.

  ‘Well, that’s it,’ she says finally. ‘End of story.’

  ‘I’m tired. You should leave.’

  And it’s nearly a perfect exit; he’s silent, and pissed off, and in full possession of the moral high ground and he’s at the door, and holding it open for her when he remembers, this is Colette. He wants to part in high dudgeon and he wants to give her some comfort, but he doesn’t know how to do both. He grimaces, then moves towards her. She bends her head obediently while he drops a small kiss on her forehead and hopes it feels perfunctory.

  ‘Go home,’ he tells her. ‘Get some sleep.’

  Chapter 9

  The night before the Jubilee party, Colette had trouble sleeping. She woke early, excited, and lay in bed until she heard her dad get up. She’d promised to help him with the decorations.

  ‘Just you, me and Ram,’ he’d told her. ‘God knows how that’s going to work out! So I could do with a bit of company, some cups of tea. I’ll wake you up when I’m ready to go.’

  ‘I bet I’m up before you!’ she’d said. ‘Dressed and ready!’

  He’d smiled at her, reached out to stroke the back of his finger down her nose. ‘You’re on.’

  In the event it was boring, this grown-up work going on high above her, the occasional talk passing over her head. She did bring them tea, ordered from her mum in the kitchen and transported sloppily, one mug at a time, down the pavement to her dad and Mr Patel. Dad had her hold the base of his ladder for a bit, then she experimented with what happened when she let go: nothing. She needed a wee so she left, and he didn’t stop her. The morning dragged. The sun came out, went in again. Colette examined the barbecue in the back garden, poking around in the ashes underneath the rack, putting the tip of her tongue to her black fingers then wiping her hands down her jeans.

  ‘I AM THE ALL-POWERFUL ONE!’ a voice behind her shouted, and she screamed.

  Her brother loomed over her in his pyjamas and dressing gown, arching his arms and wiggling his fingers. ‘Power!’ he shouted again, his eyes wide. ‘You are in my power!’ Then he did a sort of hopping dance on the patio.

  ‘Cai! You gave me a real fright!’

  ‘Were you scared of the all-powerful one?’

  ‘No. You were just really loud.’

  He looked at her hands. ‘Burgers later! Magic, yeah? Where’s Dad?’ She told him. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Fancy doing something a bit more interesting, then?’

  He took her into the s
hed, and made her swear ten different ways that she wouldn’t tell. Then he found a box of matches and a squeezy bottle hidden high up on a shelf. When they came out again, he made Colette go first and told her to check for grown-ups.

  ‘Right,’ he said, when the coast was clear. ‘We’ll do it behind the shed.’

  Behind the shed was a space no one cared about. It was useful because you couldn’t be seen from the house, and exciting because there was no fence so you could get into other people’s gardens – people who lived behind their road, in Chapman Lane. Cai did this a lot. He’d been caught once and a policeman came to tell their parents about it. Her mum had said she was livid.

  ‘We’re going to start a grass fire,’ Cai explained. ‘They have them all the time in Australia. They cause devastation. They kill kangaroos.’

  ‘But I don’t want to kill kangaroos.’

  ‘We don’t have any here, do we? It’ll be fine.’

  ‘What if they find out who did it?’

  Cai gave her a gentle push. ‘They never will. These grass fires just start on their own. No one will guess. We’re going to squirt some of this stuff over there,’ he indicated a tuft of grass and an adjacent dandelion, ‘then we light it and – boom, whoosh!’ His hands sketched a pillar of fire followed by a flattening of the land. ‘OK?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Great! You do the bottle, I’ll do the match.’

  ‘I don’t want to do the bottle. What if it burns me?’

  ‘It won’t. Only once it’s lit. You’ll be fine.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘All right. Don’t. I’ll find someone older to do this with. Someone who’s not so scared.’

  She thought about it. ‘Do you promise I won’t get hurt?’

  ‘Yeah. And if it goes well, I’ll tell you the C-word.’

  Cai showed her how to tip the bottle and aim it at the grass. At first it squirted too far, but she worked out how to adjust it, and then kept going until the grass and the dandelion were soaked.

  ‘Right,’ Cai said. ‘Let’s light it. Stand back.’

  He took the bottle from her and put it round the side of the shed. He struck a match but it went out. While he was trying the next one, she noticed a movement near the dandelion. A beetle was making its way towards her, tilting from side to side as it ambled, its black back slick with fluid. When Cai threw the match, it would be burned. Colette reached out for it.

  A moment later there was a jumble of sounds, the ch-ick of the match, and Cai shouting her name, and a sort of whoomph.

  She felt him grab her round the waist and they both tumbled backwards. In front of them was an explosion of fire, just as Cai had said there would be. They sat where they’d landed and watched it blaze, then burn lower. The dandelion was gone, and so was the beetle. There was a rough circle of black, but the fire didn’t spread the way Cai had said it would. They waited until it had all gone, till they could smell the charred stuff.

  ‘That was brill!’ said Cai. ‘Did you see it? It just went up – wham!’

  He reached a finger into the blackened grass and touched it lightly, pulling his hand away as he made contact. ‘We did it wrong though. We’ll do it better next time.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Next time, we’ll make sure the grass is really dry.’

  Later, Colette went out into the street again. It was magic. No cars – they’d all been moved – and up there, as high as the roofs of the houses, stretched line after line of pennants and Union Jacks, running almost to the end of the road, where her dad and Mr Patel were finishing up. She stood right in the middle, on the white lines, without worrying about traffic, and tilted her head back until all she could see was the sky and the bunting. Above the flickering pennants were skidding clouds, and clearings of blue. Another clearing was coming along soon.

  Colette closed her eyes in anticipation, bending her knees slightly to stop herself falling backwards, and listened to the noises of the street. She could make pictures from those noises, like a guessing game. Behind her, there was an open window with music coming from it, loud and jangly. The Chandlers, probably, Stephen’s room, the front one. Mr Chandler would be banging on his door soon; she heard him through the wall sometimes. You could collect even better swear words from Mr Chandler than from Cai. I’ll break your fucking neck! he’d shout. You insolent little bastard! Cai had promised he’d tell her the C-word, but she knew it anyway: I’m not taking this crap from you!

  Colette could hear her dad and Mr Patel ahead of her, at the entrance to the road, scraping a ladder along the ground and talking quietly. She smiled. It felt good, having Dad just there, being able to hear him. Somewhere nearby a front door opened and closed. There were slow, grown-up steps. Mrs Miller, coming to see what was going on? Then the steps got quieter, moving in the other direction, until she couldn’t hear them any more.

  When the sun finally came out, it was a wall of red against her closed eyes. She squeezed them even tighter. Her face felt warm. She stayed like that for a while, tipping her head back, until her neck hurt and finally the world shifted under her feet. She steadied herself, then heard the clang and rattle that was the adults packing up a ladder: job done. Colette prepared a smile for them as they marched towards her, her dad at the front saluting to her jokily and Mr Patel behind him, bringing the back of the ladder into line. As they headed for the garage, her dad brought down his hand and jerked his thumb backwards. ‘Ladder-wallah!’ he whispered, then snorted a laugh. Colette stared over his head and up to Satish’s window, which was rendered semi-opaque by the sun. Inside the room, she could see two figures.

  ‘You all right, Collie?’ The ladder offloaded, her dad was coming over to her. ‘What you doing, then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘Just looking at the street.’

  He crouched down next to her, holding her gaze for a second, then swept his arm theatrically across her field of vision. ‘What do you think of all this, then? Not a bad job?’

  ‘Brilliant. I can’t wait.’

  ‘Yeah. We’ll give you kids a good time. In a few minutes I’ll be finished up here, then we’ll look for Cai, see if we can’t get a bit of help out of him.’

  As her father straightened again the street darkened, its brief moment of sunshine gone. They both looked up and saw it at the same time: Satish’s window was a little more transparent and the figures in his room could be seen moving behind the glass. They were moving towards each other. Colette felt goose pimples on her arms in the cooling air. She wanted to turn for home, but she stayed where she was. Above her, there was Satish, tentatively reaching out. Colette squinted, trying to identify the person with him, still just a shape, a silhouette really. A girl. Then, in her height, in the blunt line of the bobbed hair, she was suddenly recognisable: Mandy, of course. Satish’s hand touched her arm.

  Years later, watching two cars collide ahead of her on a motorway, Colette had cause to recall this moment. There was the same sense of inevitability, of the implacable geometry of the thing, the trajectories converging here, now, unstoppably. There was the same fear too, adrenaline jumping in her blood as she stared up at the window, though it was by no means clear to her, looking back, how she knew to be frightened. Soundlessly, Satish ducked his head as he came closer to Mandy, then veered quickly round to place a kiss on her cheek. Colette gawped.

  Tall beside her now, her dad grabbed her hand, jerking her back slightly as he sometimes did when they were about to cross the road together. She heard him breathe in sharply as Mandy, bold, came forward again. The two watchers froze, mouths open, eyes raised, waiting for the next instalment. Satish had let go of Mandy and stepped back, but now she leaned towards him – was she holding his hand? – and brought her mouth up to his and kissed him on the lips. She took her time about it, Colette thought, and wouldn’t Sarah be proud of that? It made her feel little, all of a sudden.

  Her dad was gripping her hand hard. He’d gone very still, and she c
raned upwards to see his face.

  ‘Little bastard,’ he said quietly, more a statement than an expletive. ‘Little Paki bastard.’ Then he looked down at her.

  ‘Go on in,’ he said tightly. He paused for a moment, then: ‘Get Cai out here. Now.’ The lovely morning felt spoiled. Colette wanted to make it right again but she didn’t know how, and she hurried away to do as he said.

  Chapter 10

  The journey to Sima’s place takes half an hour. Satish’s parents are following in their own car.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Maya asks, as they ease out of the driveway.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Really? I thought you didn’t sleep so well last night.’

  ‘Dad!’ yells Mehul from the back. ‘Can you stop? I’ve forgotten my DS.’ Satish hesitates, pressing on the brake.

  ‘No,’ Maya tells the boy, shuffling round so she can see him. ‘I don’t like you taking that thing anyway. You can play with your cousins.’ She turns to Satish again. ‘I woke up last night and you weren’t there.’

  They swing round the war memorial at the top of the high street and head out on the road to Bassetsbury. ‘I’ll be bored,’ complains Mehul from the back. Satish hears Asha telling him, ‘Shut up,’ but applies selective deafness. No such luck with Maya.

  ‘So you can’t sleep,’ she says. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Can’t you sleep, Papa? Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine, Asha.’ He glances at Maya, who’s slipping off her shoes. ‘I’m fine,’ he repeats. ‘Busy time at work.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She props her feet up on the dashboard and looks out of the window. For a while she’s quiet, watching the hedge running next to them, a rider on a horse the other side of it, glimpsed in flashes where the hedge is sparse. Ahead there are cars waiting to turn right. He slows down.

  ‘Is it trouble getting to sleep or are you waking up, then?’

  ‘Forget it,’ he says, casually. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Mum! Look!’ Asha leans forward, taps Maya on the shoulder. She points to a sign, an A-frame set on the pavement next to them: