Jubilee

by Shelley Harris

  ‘Look!’ she says again, pushing a CD towards him. It is – of course – The Only Language They Understand. ‘That’s you!’ she tells him.

  ‘I know it’s me. They used it … they did it a long time ago.’

  ‘Yeah, but don’t you see? They did, like, adverts and everything. Loads of stuff. You’d basically be a celebrity again.’

  He smiles. ‘Not much of a one,’ he says. ‘Not for long.’

  ‘Papa, honestly,’ she tells him. ‘It would happen. It really would. You’ve just got to do the photo. Because it would make you happy.’

  Behind Asha is the picture of the boy popstar, the one who found fame when his school was on TV. The boy grins over her shoulder, clean and unthreatening. Is he happy? He looks happy in the photograph, and that’s enough for Asha. Imagine if being a celebrity was the best thing that could happen, a guaranteed path to joy. Imagine someone’s miserable, and too sad or dumb or stubborn to do what’s best for themselves. Imagine they needed a little push.

  The door opens. It’s Maya. Satish and Asha look round, Satish folds up the notes.

  ‘What’s this?’ she says.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Satish. ‘It’s just a school thing. I’m dealing with it.’

  Maya looks closely at Asha. ‘Oh yes? Fill me in.’

  ‘I will. But right now I need to deal with this.’ Satish waits, but Maya shows no signs of leaving. ‘Really. I’m in the middle of it. I’ll fill you in later.’

  ‘Right.’ She waits for something else to be said, and when it isn’t she turns and leaves. They both watch the door close, watch the handle dip and rise again. Asha looks back at Satish.

  ‘You really don’t want her to know, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Even now you’ve, like, caught me and everything?’

  ‘Yes, even now.’

  Asha considers this. He waits for her to realise his weakness, her strength – to capitalise on it; he can see her processing. It’s a strange moment, waiting for guile to surface in Asha’s face. This is how she loses her innocence, he thinks. And suddenly he’d do anything to stop it happening. It seems like the worst thing in this whole catalogue of worst things, stretching right back to the summer of 1977.

  Then her face folds in on itself and she bursts into tears.

  ‘Oh, no, Papa,’ she says from behind her hands. ‘Papa, is it really that bad?’ It takes him a moment to realise the way this has turned, that she’s not angry or defiant or threatening; she’s frightened for him. He pulls her off the chair and onto the bed next to him. She pushes her face into his chest and sobs. ‘It’s really bad isn’t it, Papa?’

  She can’t see his expression: he can let himself go, for a second or two. He hopes she can’t feel his chest contracting.

  ‘No,’ he tells her, keeping it short. ‘It’s not that bad. Really.’

  ‘But Mum doesn’t know.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then it must be really, really bad.’

  He draws breath to deny it again, and then he thinks: you idiot. You bloody idiot. She’s the only one seeing this clearly. It is really, really bad. She’s eleven, that’s all, and look what you’ve dumped on her shoulders now. She’s scared for you. Grow up, he tells himself.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he says, cupping her cheek and tipping her head so she can look at him. ‘You are right. It was bad. Was. I was … very, very stupid. Mum doesn’t know yet, but she will. I’ll tell her, I promise. And then, when Mum knows, it won’t be a secret, and things will start to be all right. Do you understand?’

  She looks at him warily.

  ‘I mean it,’ he says. ‘I’ll tell her today. No more secrets.’

  And he can see what she meant, where it might come from: Asha wanting things to be better, a different sort of life – and, God knows, he understands how that feels. Cai would have, too.

  ‘Will you tell her what I did?’ she asks.

  ‘No. You didn’t understand what you were doing. I’ll tell Mum everything except that. We’ll keep just that one secret. All right?’

  She nods into his chest. ‘I’m sorry, Papa. I just wanted …’

  ‘Shush,’ he tells her.

  ‘How did you guess it was me? How did you know?’

  ‘Asha, you said you’d tell on me. Only kids do that.’

  ‘I’m not a kid.’

  He smiles. ‘You are.’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘You are,’ he says, stroking her head. ‘You’re just a kid.’

  It comes to him that he doesn’t have to do the photograph now. He thinks of himself walking into the frame, Satish grown up, made new. Asha would love it. There’s nothing to make him do it any more. But there’s nothing to stop him.

  Chapter 34

  Satish is late. He was meant to leave the hospital at six, which would have left him plenty of time, but work never goes that way, so now he’s hurrying, walking with a long stride because he can’t stand the indignity of running. There’s a chance that he’s not just late, but too late, in which case he can go home and quite reasonably claim that he did his best, that it wasn’t his fault.

  In his hand is a bit of paper with an address, and he keeps looking at it. Without this constant reiteration, he thinks, he might end up going somewhere else entirely. He wonders whether, if he looks at it enough, it might have mercy on him and change its instructions. Go to the cinema! it might say, or I’ve booked a table for two! Or, best of all: Come home.

  He’s a full fifteen minutes late now, and just as he decides that’s his limit, he rounds a corner and it’s right in front of him: the church, a breeze block with a steeple, a place where he doesn’t belong.

  On the pavement people swerve round Satish, tutting. They glance at his face and they know why he’s here; they must do. He’s not sure whether to brazen it out and stroll across as if he owned the place, or keep his head down. He crosses the street with his eyes on the tarmac, and halfway over there’s a squeak of tyres. A car horn sounds, very near, and he jumps; the car’s right next to him, the bumper inches away, and the driver behind the windscreen shouts soundlessly, her hands on her head. Satish scurries on, through the iron gates into the churchyard.

  He’s in no state to do this. Heart pounding, he’s replaying his near-miss, catastrophising. Six inches closer, he thinks … He really, really needs to sit down, and the only bench in the churchyard has a pile of dog faeces next to it. A sign directs him up a grave-lined path to the church hall. There’s an ice cream carton on the doorstep, half-full of water, fag ends floating in it leaking plumes of yellow. The curtains are closed; he can’t see inside.

  Behind him there’s a crunch of gravel and it’s this, in the end, that propels him forward and away from witnesses. He’s in a lobby: coathooks and stacking chairs and a noticeboard for a mother and toddler group. Through a rectangle of wired glass he sees a room in semi-darkness, a group sitting round a low table: mostly men, one woman. She’s bent forward on her seat, a cup tilting in her flaccid hands. The table’s covered in leaflets and books. A candle gives out a soft light.

  Too late, thinks Satish. And then one of the men sees his face through the glass and raises a thumb. There’s a black tattoo climbing out of the man’s T-shirt, curling up his neck and wrapping itself round the side of his shaved head. He smiles broadly and beckons again.

  The handle squeaks when Satish enters. Heads turn. He makes for a chair near to the door, stumbles against it, goes to sit down then bobs up again: the tattooed man’s made a noise, a sort of whisht, and he’s grinning and pointing at the empty seat next to him. Satish clatters his way there, round the back of all the chairs.

  He sits as he is: coat buttoned, briefcase on his lap. The tattooed man shakes him by the hand. Satish raises his head to meet the gaze of the group, but they’re not looking at him. They’re looking at another man. He’s clean-cut and suited. He could be a banker, or a lawyer, or a teacher. He could be a doctor.

  ‘Hi. I’m Philli
p,’ he says. ‘And I’m an addict.’

  Chapter 35

  The bunting looks fantastic; they must have been at it all morning, thinks Satish. Then he sees the white van, the crew of men in matching black T-shirts (At Your Service: the events people) and he remembers: it won’t be two blokes and a ladder this time. He’s standing near the quiet end of the road, in the cul-de-sac that leads to the primary school. Cherry Gardens is closed to cars, so he’s parked here instead. He’s a bit early.

  There’s still a tree at the end of the close, and next to it a gap through which the kids still – he assumes – pass on their way to school. They must do, because the gap seems wider and more formalised, the overhanging branches neatly trimmed to adult height, the fence on the other side in good repair. He wanders over to it, squeezes through and stands outside his old school gates. Since he left they’ve done some redevelopment at Bourne Heath County Combined. Most childhood things look smaller when you revisit them, but his school has grown. It’s done well. The curved wall of a new classroom bellies out into the playground. In front of him, in the old music room (terrible, terrible noises hauled from reluctant instruments by enthusiastic Juniors), he can make out a bank of computers, a gift, he’s sure, from the good burghers of Bourne Heath and their active PTA.

  It’s a Sunday afternoon and the school is deserted. Satish thinks of the playground, round the corner and out of sight on a different day, long ago, the climbing net, the slide, and he finds he can think of these things now without flinching. It happened. But it’s not happening now. He considers the intervening decades, the children who have inhabited this place. He thinks of cricket and footie and twenty-one and British Bulldog, and the songs of the girls: Keep the kettle boiling, miss a loop you’re out – you’re in! and Vote, vote, vote for little Annie and all the shoving and running and slapping and kicking that mark out children’s tenancy of their playground. He wonders whether there is any part of this place that has not received the touch of a child’s hand or foot or bum at some point during the last thirty years. It is there in front of him, printed invisibly on brick and tarmac, smudged onto glass and cleaned off and smudged on again.

  When he passes back between the tree and the fence he wants to sit down. He perches on the kerb, the same place they always used to sit on those do-nothing afternoons, him and Cai, Mandy and Sarah, and sometimes the Chandlers. Sitting like this, he can see the street from much the same height as when he first came to Bourne Heath. The cars in the driveways have changed, and not just because time has moved on; you need a bit more money to live here now, he thinks. The Minis and Datsuns and Morris Minors have been ousted in favour of Chelsea tractors.

  He’s so caught in this shift between then and now that when a figure emerges from Cherry Gardens and heads towards him, looking familiar yet strange, he isn’t surprised at all. She’s grown curves – she’s voluptuous, even – and that hair, which has entered his imaginings from time to time, is no longer the sleek bob he remembers. She would change, wouldn’t she? A girl like her would never stay still. She’s a woman now, and that hair is long, fixed up elegantly at the back. Some things never alter though. He can tell as she’s walking towards him; she’s still trouble.

  ‘Mandy?’

  She comes up to him and it is her: Mandy, groomed with Gallic style. She’s aged, as they all have, but it’s Mandy nevertheless. She looks at him keenly, making the same transition, then opens her arms wide. They embrace in the French way: one, two, three air kisses with their cheeks touching, and Satish feels a little jolt: that was easy. They pull back to look at each other. Mandy winks at him, then reaches up on tiptoes – it all comes back! – holds his hands in hers and plants a fourth kiss, deliberately, onto his lips.

  ‘It’s so good to see you. So good,’ she says, rubbing her lipstick from his mouth with her thumb.

  They walk back to Cherry Gardens together. He says, ‘So, here we are then!’ and she giggles.

  ‘It is just lovely to see you, Satish. Best thing about the day.’

  ‘You’re looking wonderful. You’re looking … French.’

  ‘I live in Paris! Did you know that?’

  ‘I did. I cheated – internet. But you do look … there’s something, anyway.’

  Cherry Gardens has been decorated only as far as the photographer’s end of the table. The space behind won’t be in the photograph, so there’s no point. The rest of the houses, including Satish’s and Mandy’s, stand bare, unadorned. It puts him in mind of an old film, a spacecraft landing in a field outside a quiet town, the ship all the more alien for the ordinary things around it. A little bit of the past has crash-landed in Cherry Gardens.

  ‘Tell me about France.’

  ‘Well, I’ll never be properly French, evidently.’ She stresses the final syllable. ‘But I’ve lived there long enough. I’ve had a French husband.’ She looks at him, raises an eyebrow. ‘In fact, I’ve had two.’

  No, she hasn’t stayed still. Two of them! And French! He can see them in their beautiful suits, knowing what wine to order, and using that accent …

  ‘Two, Mandy? You’ve been busy.’

  ‘I’m never idle. Do you want the run-down? Do we have time?’

  ‘I don’t think they can start without us.’

  The greenery is more lush than he remembers, the trees more mature – of course – and the houses they shade have grown, too. All those street-facing doors have gone, obliterated by new extensions.

  ‘Well.’ Mandy nudges against him as they walk. ‘Potted history. I married Luc when I was 24 – too young, of course. He was a bastard. I know they all say that, but really. After we separated his mum rang me. She apologised. Then I met Jaffa.’

  ‘Jaffa?’

  ‘Jean-Francois. He was fun, but it was brief. Quick marriage, quick divorce. These Catholic boys.’

  They’ve stopped halfway down the street and she’s looking at him.

  ‘You need a new hobby,’ he says, grinning.

  ‘Oh coquin! Anyway, I got one. Do you really want to hear all this? We’ll do you next, I promise. OK. So I left my job – terrifying – and I set up this business and language school. Business English, Anglo-American business practices, all that.’

  ‘You did well.’

  ‘Yes, I did. Well, that’s it, really. That’s me. I don’t need to ask about you, do I? Well, not the job. Know all about that. Do you smoke?’ She feels around in her bag.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can I? Do you mind? French habit.’ She lights up.

  ‘Look,’ he says, pointing to the house opposite. ‘Sarah’s place.’

  She squints at it. ‘Yes, of course! So that means …’ She counts down with her cigarette. ‘Miss Walsh and me and Miss Bissett – God, what a bitch!’

  He turns, and they’re standing right outside it. ‘The Chandlers.’

  ‘Little bastards.’ They look at the house in silence. Plastic window frames and blotches of colour in the flowerbeds. A people carrier in the drive. Then the front door opens and Satish runs out, Satish small but not scared and not running from anything. He comes right up to the two of them.

  ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Are you in the picture?’

  ‘Sandeep!’ comes a voice from inside. The boy flicks round again and runs back.

  Satish realises he’s holding Mandy’s arm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, letting go.

  Mandy laughs.

  ‘Yeah, I know. Spooky. But think about it. Little Sandeep. He’s living there.’

  They look back at the house, front door closed again, and Satish sees her point. He’s living right there. His laugh rolls out generously. It’s authentically funny, and now Mandy’s laughing too, both of them curling over slightly, touching each other and setting each other off again.

  ‘I think you’d call that the last laugh,’ she says.

  After a bit they make their way down to Mandy’s house on the opposite side, skirting the party table. Satish sees, in his peripheral
vision, food, drink, the red-white-and-blue. A few seats from the end, there’s a ‘Reserved’ sign, and Satish thinks of Stephen.

  ‘You now,’ Mandy commands him. ‘Tell me about you.’

  ‘You know about my job, then?’

  ‘Yes. Very flash. It’s perfect for you, being a doctor. A kids’ doctor.’

  ‘I’m a paediatric cardiologist.’

  ‘OK. So, what about the bits I couldn’t Google?’ They pass the end of the table, a gathering of people and equipment.

  ‘I haven’t had any French husbands.’

  ‘Careless.’ She fish-mouths, blows a smoke ring, skimming under it as she walks.

  ‘I’m married, though. Maya. We have two kids.’

  Mandy presses her lips together. ‘When did you get married?’

  ‘In … umm … she’d kill me for this … 1993.’

  ‘Long-service, Satish. You’ll have to tell me how. Are you happy with her?’

  It escapes him uncontrolled, half-gasp, half-laugh. The cheek of it! All this time and she’s still asking questions like that.

  ‘Yes,’ he manages. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ she says.

  They’re standing outside her old house and he looks up at her window, like he always used to, but there’s nothing for him to see there now. Mandy takes a couple of steps up the driveway.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Come on.’ She cranes round to see in through the front window. ‘I don’t think anyone’s in.’ She strides down further, beckoning to him. ‘Come on! Don’t you want to see?’

  ‘Mandy, it’s someone’s house!’

  ‘Yes, but it used to be mine. Come on!’

  ‘What if they’re in?’ But he’s already taken a few steps forward. ‘They’re probably round the back.’

  ‘So what? We’ll plead curiosity, or ignorance or something.’

  He takes the cigarette from her hand – ‘They’ll smell it!’ – and carries it back to the road, stubbing it out and leaving the butt on the pavement. He has a quick look to see if anyone’s watching them and hopes she doesn’t notice and think he’s a coward. She’s already at the gate, lifting the latch. As it clicks up she grins: ‘Just like old times.’