The garden is immaculate and empty. There’s a new conservatory blistering out from the back of the house. Through it, he can see Mandy’s old dining room. Mandy goes right up to the back door, framing her face with her hands so she can see through it properly.
‘Posh new kitchen,’ she reports. ‘Marble worktops. Not a spoon out of place. They even have a wine cooler, look.’
But Satish is scanning the windows, top and bottom, making sure they’re not being observed. ‘Come on, you’ve seen it now,’ he says.
‘Do you remember the melamine, and that fake wood?’ asks Mandy.
‘Yes. Let’s go.’
‘Just a minute. Don’t you want to see what the rest of the downstairs is like?’
She grabs his hand and pulls him towards the conservatory, and he feels a rush of adrenaline. When she lets go they stand side by side, both cupping their faces now, peering through a foreground of bookcases and wicker chairs to the dining room beyond.
‘It’s very … tidy,’ he says.
These neat people have tidied away part of his childhood. They, or their predecessors, or their predecessors, have got rid of the arch between the lounge and dining room, and sealed up the serving hatch. They’ve stripped away the fingerprints he once left on her wallpaper, and chucked out the carpet on which he trod.
‘It’s smaller,’ says Mandy.
‘I know,’ says Satish. ‘It always is.’
Back in the safety of the street, he asks her, ‘When did your parents move?’
‘Well, in ’84, the day I got my A level results – I had the letter in my hand – Mum came in and told me they were getting divorced.’
‘Were you surprised?’
She does that eyebrow thing again. ‘What do you think?’
‘So they both left Bourne Heath?’
‘Yes, and it was a good thing, too. I never wanted to come back.’
‘So what’s your mum doing now?’
‘She died,’ says Mandy. ‘Cancer.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She looks away from him. ‘It happens.’
Satish watches a young woman rearranging a pyramid of cupcakes. She takes one off the top, stands back, and looks at the rest. After a few moments, she replaces the cake.
‘You know,’ Mandy says, turning to him, ‘I’ve been trying to work out what made you come here today. I’m so glad to see you, but – let’s be honest, Satish – this was an appalling place back then. Appalling attitudes. Why would you come back?’
He smiles. ‘It’s a long story.’
She waits. When it’s clear there’s nothing forthcoming, she says, ‘There’s something we need to say to each other. I want to talk about what they did to you that day.’
Suddenly she’s too close to him.
‘You know …’ he tells her, shaking his head. ‘Long time ago, not worth …’
‘I bet no one else says this. I bet everyone else here today pretends it never happened. But I don’t want to do that. I want to talk about it and I want you to let me.’
‘It’s been thirty years, you know … I don’t have much to say about it. I’m fine.’
‘I’m very glad.’ She bites her lip, draws breath. ‘I’m not fine, though. This is something I’ve thought about a lot.’
‘What? Jubilee Day?’
‘A lot. After I got older, especially. It occurred to me … I mean, I have always felt quite strongly that … Did you ever think about the irony, that it all happened because of me, and that in the end I was the one who wasn’t there, so I couldn’t stop it?’
This eccentricity pulls him up short. He pauses, considers it. ‘It would never have occurred to me. You couldn’t have stopped it.’
‘I might have done.’
‘You couldn’t. And it didn’t happen because of you.’
‘It did!’ Her stridency comes from nowhere. ‘It was the kiss they were so angry about, wasn’t it? It was as if I set it all going, then sort of abandoned it. Abandoned you.’
‘No. That’s not true.’
‘I had a responsibility that day. What they did to you …’ She reaches up to him and, before he can stop her, her fingers are stroking his upper arm.
‘Mandy, don’t.’
She pushes back the material of his shirt over his scar.
‘Here it is. God, I want to bash them all in! God, Satish!’
He breaks away from her and smooths down his sleeve.
‘It’s not so bad,’ he says. ‘It’s all in the past.’
‘Don’t say that! It was a terrible thing.’
‘It was a terrible thing at the time,’ he says. ‘I don’t think about it much now. It hasn’t defined me or affected me. It’s not who I am. I don’t mean this cruelly, but your guilt is misplaced. Nobody could have rescued me. I rescued myself.’
‘I’m sure you did,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t let me do it, that’s for sure.’ It’s the nearest she’s come to bitterness. ‘You barely ever spoke to me again, after Jubilee Day.’
‘You’re reading too much into this,’ he says firmly. ‘It was bad, but it happened a long time ago and you were a kid. Those people were looking for an excuse, and I gave them one. You need to – what do they call it? – you need to absolve yourself.’
‘Hmm.’ She doesn’t say anything for a while. Satish is going to speak again, but then she says, ‘Well, how selfish that would be. That would be self-centred, wouldn’t it, to come here and think about my own absolution? The thing is, you’re probably right.’ She looks up at him, appealing. ‘But I don’t think it’s something you do for yourself, Satish. I think someone does it for you.’
‘Fine.’ He makes a swirl in the air with his finger. ‘Consider yourself absolved.’
‘You think?’
‘Absolutely. Absolution.’
They stand there for a while longer, but he can’t think of anything new to say. They turn away from her house, towards his, and Mandy takes his arm.
‘The absolution is good,’ she says. ‘But it’s not why I came back.’
‘To this appalling place? So why did you?’
‘You won’t believe me. You’ll think it’s flim-flam.’
‘Go on.’
‘You’re easy to Google. But I wanted to touch you.’
Chapter 36
Mandy leaves; she’s spotted Colette at the other end of the road. Satish watches her move away from him, and stays watching as the two women reunite, a piece of silent theatre: there’s Colette’s polite puzzlement, recognition, delight, her open mouth, her wide eyes. They move in for a kiss which Mandy performs air-style, as she did with him, but Colette does it the old-fashioned way, a smacker on each cheek. They hug, they pull back to look at each other, they hug again. It’s been weeks since his last meeting with Colette – the row in the café, his shameful accusation. He needs a reunion with her, too, but he can’t face it just yet. He leaves them to it.
Satish is alone outside his old house. After the photograph, he’ll do a meeting. He’s found one nearby. Ninety meetings in ninety days, that’s what they say you need to do. We have a disease, they say, but we do recover. Each day we are given another chance.
There’s a young couple outside, watching proceedings. They’ve left his – their – door open, and through it he glimpses neutral colours: linen and calico, they’d be called, pebble and bamboo. In the window of the front extension there’s a taupe blind. Blue hydrangeas still squat in the front garden, but the driveway’s changed, its cracked concrete replaced by a spread of black tarmac. Down the centre of this waddles a toddler, stiff-legged and rocking from side to side. Her father’s gaze never shifts from her, tracking her progress towards the pavement.
Satish sneaks a look up at his bedroom window. Not much to see there: a silver light fitting, the creamy backs of curtains, the pale wood of a wardrobe. But, like the school playground, it is a palimpsest, full of what used to be there. He can see a boy behind the glass, his hand pressed against the
window, his eyes watching another window over the road. He can see the mark this boy’s hand makes. The lad is dwarfed by his own shirt collar. His hair curves in a shiny pudding-basin, a little long at the back perhaps; he’s uneasily halfway between child and man. Satish can see a girl in the room with him, moving towards him. He sees them come together and beside him in the street there are faint traces of the other watchers who saw this, too. He sees the boy being marched out of his back gate, sees him running for home. Satish, grown-up now, bids them goodbye: the watching boy, the kissing boy, the victim, the runner. Each day we are given another chance.
The woman moves away from the wall towards the toddler, and towards Satish. As she looks at him her face opens in recognition, her mouth already framing a question. He nods at her and turns away.
The table is loaded with goodies. At the age of twelve, he’d have been hovering over them, assessing them, doing a recce in preparation for the party. Now he swipes a pretzel for old times’ sake. That’s what they’ve used, in place of his mum’s chakli. There’s also a beige pile of something damp to stand in for the coronation chicken. But Mrs Hobbes’ cakes have been reconstructed in glorious Technicolor (he remembers them, half-iced, on her kitchen counter), and not much has changed about the jugs of squash. The remarkable thing is the proliferation of Union Jacks: on the tablecloth, the cups and plates. Plastic Union Jacks on wooden sticks – just the same kind as Colette was holding in the original photograph – have been put next to some of the place settings along the table. Where did he find those, wonders Satish – eBay? Twenty years ago this would have been unacceptably nationalistic. Ten years ago it would have been ironic. And now? Well, now it’s probably retro, or something like that.
At the end of the table there’s a tripod, a man crouching down to adjust its height. Andrew Ford, surely? The wildness has gone from his hair; it’s salt-and-pepper now, curly still but cropped close to his head. With that assertive nose of his there’s something oddly Roman about him. When he sees Satish, he smiles.
‘I don’t need to ask. It’s Satish, right?’ He holds out his hand.
His assistant Georgia is stage-managing this, he explains, and he indicates the young woman who rearranged the cupcakes so fastidiously.
‘Georgia knows pretty well how I work,’ he tells Satish. ‘She’ll be sorting out the stuff that goes under my radar.’ He waves his hand vaguely in her direction. ‘Gives me time to focus on the important things. Like you, and the other veterans of Glorious. Looking forward to it?’
‘Umm … yes. Happy to do it.’
‘Great, great. Now, I’ll be wanting you to recapture exactly what you were doing when that first photograph was taken – same seat, same body language, the lot. OK?’
‘All right.’
‘Pretty familiar with the original? I bet you are. I can’t go anywhere without hearing about it. Haunts me!’ He laughs and shakes his head.
‘Yes, I know the feeling.’
‘Well, another fifteen minutes of fame, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Great. Be ready in a bit. See you then.’
Colette is perching on the wall in front of Miss Walsh’s old place. She’s fiddling with one of the beads on her skirt, catching it under her fingernail, releasing it and catching it again. Satish watches her, unsure whether this is the right time to fix things. But just as he thinks: yes, it’s time, someone else gets to her first, a man in a leather jacket, and she looks up at him with such open pleasure that Satish retreats. It’s Oscar, of course; she grabs a fistful of his jacket and pulls him close, burying her face in the leather. She’s good at getting what she wants. There’s something she wants more, though. When she sees the old man appear at the end of the road, she’s off.
He’s shorter; not just because Satish has grown up, but because the other man has somehow grown down. He’s become compressed, he stoops. Colette walks at his side, solicitous, leaning into him slightly, looking up at his face. As Peter approaches, Satish draws himself up higher. He’s young and strong, and this time being younger has its advantages.
‘Dad, you remember Satish,’ Colette declares, stagily. The two men clasp hands. Peter’s is a fleshy paw; Satish cannot recall ever having touched him before.
‘Of course,’ says Peter, his voice diminished too. ‘How are you getting on?’
‘Excellently.’ He lets the word hang for a moment. ‘And you?’
‘I’m …’ He looks round him, across at his old house, then shakes his head suddenly. ‘I’m fine! Never better! I’m working in London, so I get to see Colette from time to time. And Cai, of course.’
Like Satish, Peter has chosen a suit for the photograph. His is a little shiny, and there’s a worn patch on his left shoulder, the sort you’d get from a bag strap. Satish wonders what Peter takes to work with him in that bag. The suit is dated, even Satish knows that, and his shoes have been deformed by bunions over the years. All this Satish sees, and he’s aware that it should engage his sympathies.
‘So,’ says Peter. ‘Colette tells me you’re doing very well, Doctor!’
‘Yes. And I’m working in London, too.’
‘And we meet right here, after all these years. Strange thing, eh?’
‘I heard about your situation,’ Satish tells him, feeling the swell of a nasty joy. ‘I’m sure you’ll be back on your feet soon.’
Satish sees the T-shirt before he recognises its wearer. It’s a vivid yellow – a punch of colour at the end of the road. There’s rough black lettering across the top and a pink strip over the middle, pushed into a curve by the man’s paunch.
Colette runs by him into the stranger’s arms. The man is stout and bald and for the first moments Satish stares at him as if this new face were not a face at all, but a room in which he is searching for someone. Then he can make out a mouth, unchanged, and eyes which, isolated from the skin around them, are still the eyes which look at you from the photograph. Yes, he thinks, this is Cai. This is what Cai would look like if he had grown up.
Cai – the new Cai – breaks away from Colette and comes towards him. ‘Satish,’ he says. ‘Hello, stranger.’ He holds out his hand. Satish hesitates, then takes it. It’s muscular, scratchy with hardened skin. Satish thought it might set off some kind of reaction in him, this touch, but they’re just two middle-aged men shaking hands. He doesn’t know what to say.
‘Let’s get this out of the way,’ says Cai. ‘I was a horrible little tosser and I’m sorry.’ He waits, and when Satish says nothing, he adds, ‘A late apology, I grant you.’
‘Well …’ Satish begins.
‘I would have said sorry a couple of weeks back, but …’
‘Yes,’ says Satish, remembering the last-minute funk which sent him home that day. ‘Sorry about that. Like I said in the email, I wasn’t very well.’
‘Yeah?’ says Cai. ‘Well, whatever. We’re here now, right?’
‘Yes,’ he agrees, ‘we’re here now.’
And then there’s nothing more to say. All the other things – remonstrances, epiphanies, absolutions – they are surplus to requirement. The two men stand opposite each other, waiting for the next thing to happen. Satish searches his bank of small talk for some currency. He points at Cai’s T-shirt.
‘Never Mind the Bollocks?’
Cai nods, laughs. ‘Yeah – out and proud! Couldn’t resist it. Souvenir T-shirt. Maybe not quite part of the Punk ethic, yeah?’ Looking up, he seems to check himself, then suddenly moves away from Satish, back the way he’s come, round the end of the table and down the other side.
‘I’ll just tell them I’m here,’ he says. ‘Andrew Ford …’
Behind him, Satish hears a click of annoyance: Colette has reappeared, and beside her is her dad. Peter stares at his retreating son, then spots someone else seated at the table a few places down, unlit cigarette in her hand, rifling through her handbag.
‘Mandy? Is that you?’ He moves towards her and she rises to greet him. He takes her hand
and squeezes it between both of his.
She pulls back slightly. ‘Mr Brecon?’
‘Peter.’
‘Yes, of course. Well …’ There’s a brief silence as Mandy looks from Peter to Colette. When nobody says anything she continues. ‘Funny circumstances to meet in, after all these years. How are you keeping?’
Peter pulls Mandy towards him. ‘Come here,’ he says, wrapping his arms around her. She angles the cigarette away as he closes the space between them. Colette starts forward.
‘Dad?’ she says.
Mandy stiffens, and after a moment Peter releases her.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ Peter tugs his jacket down. ‘Just … being back, you know.’
Mandy folds her arms across her chest. ‘How are you keeping?’ she repeats.
‘I’m keeping well. Back in Britain for a while, like you.’
‘Yes,’ she says warily. ‘Mother country …’
Peter opens his mouth to say something, but there’s a young woman moving purposefully towards them, a toolbox in her hand, a toolbelt round her waist. When she reaches them she points at each of them in turn.
‘Satish, yes? Peter? Colette? Mandy? Great. Four for the price of one. Don’t go anywhere.’ She grabs a nearby chair and then plonks her toolbox on it. When she opens it up, Colette lets out a little, ‘Oooh.’
‘Make up!’ says Mandy, and Satish sees that the box is filled with tubes and pots and palettes. There’s a pack of baby wipes and a clump of cotton wool.
‘I’m Saffron,’ she says. ‘Andrew’s asked me to pop on a little make-up, OK? We’ll start with you, Mandy.’
Wordlessly, Mandy pushes back her fringe and closes her eyes. Saffron snaps open the pack of wipes and passes one over Mandy’s face.
‘Nice job,’ she says. ‘I bet it took you ages to do this, and here’s me taking it all off again.’ When she’s finished she dips a sponge in a pot of something flesh-coloured and starts dabbing it on.
‘Is this necessary?’ asks Peter. ‘For all of us? For the men as well?’
Jubilee Page 26