Bunmi carried the picnic basket. At nine she was the strongest even though Folake was eleven. I always claimed to be older than my actual age, which was seven, because it seemed unfair somehow never to be able to catch up; I would always be younger than the two of them and I could never change that.
‘Quick, quick!’ Mrs Tripathi called. She gathered the folds of her lavender sari in one hand, but she did not seem prepared to move into the ferry. The Bravermans crossed the gangplank with the Tonets. There was a couple I did not recognise: two adults who could have been Malaysian, maybe Thai. I couldn’t tell. I knew they were not Japanese. Our mother looked behind and then ahead as if she had lost something. One way, then another. She seemed to have forgotten about the boat.
‘Is Daddy coming?’ I asked, my voice rising a little anxiously. In hope.
She looked at me for a moment as if she did not know who I was – a stray boy who had sidled up to her, held her hand and would not let go. ‘No, no,’ she sighed and smiled. ‘You asked him yourself, didn’t you?’
I grimaced at my stupidity.
Folake marched to the front of the ferry, and Bunmi and I followed, while our mother went downstairs. Seasick, she said. The sea was calm, the sun was out. I could hardly feel the roll of the boat. The adults were simply nattering away from us. We preferred to remain on the upper deck anyway. I looked behind at the retreating skyline from the side of the boat, at the skyscraper where they had filmed Spiderman, the junks scattered across the harbour, the steep descent of hills. There were Chinese all around us – families, old men and women, people on their own – all travelling to the island or further afield. Some guarded large bags of merchandise by their feet. The stitched blue ridge of a baseball cap peeked out of a bulging jute sack. A young woman in a navy Mao suit and impeccable black bangs took birdlike nips out of a steamed bun. She chewed for a minute at a time before beginning again. I thought it would take her for ever to finish.
The boat pitched and people held out their hands to the railing or grabbed their seats to steady themselves. In a moment things were calm again. The sun climbed and I took off my jacket with the rising temperature. A breeze filtered through the ferry, but it was more a warm thick mist than a cooling spray. Some passengers stood to exercise. Most sat staring straight ahead or behind, depending on the direction of their seats. An old tired-looking man in near-rags dozed beside a bird cage. I could see no birds.
‘Look, there it is!’ Bunmi pointed. The island.
It seemed tiny and uninhabited in the distance and I wondered how it would support us all. ‘Are you sure?’ I squinted. ‘It looks too small.’
Folake rolled her eyes and tutted and they both leaned against the railing, gazing out languidly. I ran to the lower deck to inform our mother about the sighting. The ferry swayed, throwing me sideways, impeding my progress, but I liked that. It was an adventure for me. She was sitting in the very centre of the boat, facing away from the prow, facing away from the island.
‘It’s there, it’s there!’ I called, running up to her. ‘The island’s there!’
She turned to look, then swivelled round again. A fraction of a second. ‘Come and meet everyone.’ She held out her bangled arms and beckoned me.
I noticed the others then: the Tonets, the Bravermans, Mrs Tripathi, the Asian couple. There was a man sitting next to my mother I had never seen before. His hair was cut short, like a schoolboy’s, pale blond, almost white – a cloth left too long in the sun. His eyebrows were similar. That startled me. Against his tanned skin it gave him a ghostly appearance. He wore a beige linen suit and a light blue shirt with a speckled amber tie.
‘Here is Mr Ooststroom,’ my mother said. ‘From the Dutch consulate. Say hello now, like a good boy.’ She introduced me to everyone else, even though I already knew most of them.
‘Hi!’ Sarah Braverman waved.
Her brother Jonathan glanced at me, then looked out to sea again. His jaws worked slowly as he chewed fluorescent pink gum. It would not be long before all that issued from his mouth were conceited Canadian bubbles.
‘Getting tall, isn’t he?’ Jonathan’s father appraised me. His own son was burly and squat, much like himself, and pleasant only on the rare occasion he managed to rouse himself from insolence.
‘Oh, yes. They all shoot up at this age,’ Mrs Tripathi exclaimed. ‘Like beanstalks.’ Her own children, whom I rarely saw – they had been packed off to English boarding schools – carried about them an air of detachment and melancholy. They often remained in England with their cousins during the holidays. Mrs Tripathi, who was a frequent participant on these outings, missed her children terribly, yet seemed bewildered about who had sent them away. My mother held on to me for a moment, like a trophy, before I slipped back upstairs.
We piled onto a local bus, Mr Braverman making a head count before we trundled off. The driver scowled at him when he gave the all clear and we seemed to move off at a lurch. Despite the speed of the vehicle and the thrown-open windows, people fanned themselves with whatever came to hand: a newspaper, a Japanese fan; an islander cooled her baby with the warped aluminium lid of a cooking pot. Mrs Tripathi wafted the folds of her sari back and forth, and I inhaled the spices and flavours of her kitchen. ‘I am not sure what his position is,’ she whispered to Mrs Tonet. ‘Third secretary, second secretary, I think. Looks too young to me.’
Mrs Tonet nodded and glanced over her shoulder at Mr Ooststroom who was sitting on the other side of the aisle. He tapped his foot against the rusted metal floor as if listening to some inner music. His brown leather shoes glinted like mirrors. My mother sat in front of him, next to an elderly man who gazed solemnly out of the window. Every so often Mr Ooststroom would lean forward to speak with her. She would smile or nod or add something in reply, continuing to fan herself as if the conversation itself were heated. None of us – my sisters, Mrs Tripathi or Mrs Tonet – could hear what they were saying.
‘Always tagging along behind the C-G, they say,’ Mrs Tripathi said. ‘Man’s got ideas above his station.’ She slapped the side of her neck as if she had foiled a feasting mosquito, then rubbed her fingers together to destroy the phantom evidence.
Mrs Tonet said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he’s fast track. Some of them are young, young these days. One or two, in my husband’s office, they are like schoolboys. I want to fix their ties sometimes and send them home to their mothers.’
Mrs Tripathi harrumphed, looked out of the window for a moment, then glowered again at Mr Ooststroom.
Folake swung her legs back and forth, tapping the seat in front of her. Mrs Tonet turned and frowned. A clump of flies buzzed heavily along the aisle, slow enough to be hand-swatted, but like them we were too lethargic with heat to bother. A young couple wearing flip-flops seemed to squint from behind suspicious eyes. Like the driver, they too appeared to scowl. I wondered what they made of us all, this itinerant crew, the varied nationalities. Were they puzzled? Were they angry? They seemed angry to me.
We bumped along the narrow road – the town was long gone by now – past the hillside houses and cyclists and pedestrians. Mostly the road was clear apart from the ubiquitous wild dogs.
‘What’s he saying?’ Folake hissed, bringing her legs to an abrupt halt. ‘Why’s he whispering like that?’ She said this to the seatback in front of her, although Bunmi and I knew who she was talking about.
‘Should I ask him?’ I said, trying to be helpful. I did not like it when Folake was cross.
‘Shut up, stupid!’ she shot out. ‘Was I talking to you? Who asked you anything?’ Folake had been sent to boarding school two years earlier and had returned a different person. She had come back cranky and unpredictable. During the holidays I could never quite gauge her mood until it was too late and she was thrashing and hissing like a Medusa. Often I longed for her to return to England so that Bunmi and I could live in peace. But Bunmi would also be off soon – at the end of the summer – so I tried to appreciate this time we had together, my
sisters and I. I decided to keep a close eye on Mr Ooststroom.
We straggled off the bus and trekked the two hundred metres to the beach. The air was still, the sun’s gaze unflinching. Our mother donned a pair of oversized sunglasses to repel the glare from the sand. Mr Ooststroom removed his suit jacket. The back of his shirt clung to him so that one could make out his shape – broad and trim as an athlete – unlike some of the diplomats who had grown fat on good living. Mr Braverman, although in his early forties, had already lost control of his middle-age spread. His son Jonathan plopped into the water – the first of us – trying to attract as much attention as possible.
‘C’mon, hurry up!’ he yelled to no one in particular. ‘It’s warm!’ He did a few elegant backstrokes, then jack-knifed beneath the surface. I looked away.
The women spread out mats and rugs on the sand, while the men made a show of removing debris and rubbish and the odd bit of driftwood, but there was not much of that. Sarah put on her snorkel and flippers and then waddled into the sea. Her mother followed close behind, then Mr Tonet and two of his children ran in.
Bunmi fussed with the picnic basket, making sure nothing had spilled. She twisted this way and that, muttering to herself, trying to avoid gazing at the sea.
‘Come here,’ our mother said to her. She took the hamper out of her hands and then unzipped the back of her dress so she could wriggle out of it. We had all worn our swimming costumes beneath our clothes that morning. I tore off my shorts and T-shirt, but Bunmi and Folake had already reached the water’s edge.
‘Slowly, now. Take it easy,’ our mother warned. She walked to the shoreline with me. I splashed about wildly until I reached the paddlers, consisting of my sisters, Sarah Braverman, who had removed her snorkel, and all but one of the Tonets. Rafael Tonet and Jonathan were further out, swimming heroically away from us.
‘Don’t splash!’ Bunmi screamed at me.
I did not see that it mattered, being in the water after all. I looked back at the shore and saw our mother peering out at us from beneath a hand that sheltered her eyes from the sun. ‘Careful, now,’ she called. She waved once, put her sunglasses back on, then turned to join the others on the beach.
Jonathan swam around us, flipping over onto his back, then dipping beneath the surface. We could see him down there, along with the multicoloured fish. I twisted my toes in the sand and saw my foot disappear to the ankle. The water was clearer than a swimming pool.
‘Hey,’ Jonathan said, surfacing.
‘Hi,’ Bunmi replied without looking at him.
Folake stared curiously. They were about the same age.
‘Kind of creepy, isn’t he?’ he said after a moment’s silence.
‘Who’s that?’ Folake asked.
‘Old Mr Ooststroom. Like … who else?’ he said, as if he could not possibly have been referring to another person in the world.
‘Oh, he’s okay,’ Folake said. She swung her legs up nonchalantly, waving her arms in a wide arc for balance. It caused her to drift away slightly so that we had to move along with her, separating from the others a little.
‘I like him,’ I said. I could see why my sisters were wary of Jonathan. ‘He’s not so old.’
Folake tutted. No one else said anything.
‘He hangs round your mom a lot,’ he said casually. ‘She calls him Juice.’ Then looking round sharply he whispered, ‘My mom says he’s a snake.’
‘That’s rubbish!’ Bunmi announced, confronting Jonathan. ‘She’s only being kind to him. He’s got no family … She goes to church, you know, our mum.’ Her voice had become high-pitched and strange.
‘Ha!’ Jonathan cackled. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’
‘Shut up, Jonathan,’ Sarah said, but he only smirked.
‘It’s Joost, idiot,’ Folake said and she moved away from him. ‘Come on!’ she called to us as she glided back to shore.
There was a slightly broiled quality to those who had remained on the beach. Mrs Tripathi had thrown a swathe of sari over her head, but she still sizzled under it, and she spat out words randomly like fat from a poppadom.
‘It’s too hot today and we come here and cook ourselves in the outside. It’s like a madness. If I was one decade younger I would throw myself into the sea.’ She looked out at the water, making no effort to move towards it.
‘You can go paddling. With the feet.’ Mr Ooststroom wiggled his fingers to illustrate.
Mrs Tripathi looked at him as if he were slow – I was afraid she was going to shout – then said, ‘No, no. They are always finding dead people in there.’
‘Whaaa … !’ Mrs Tonet cried.
‘No, I’m sure that’s not true,’ Mrs Braverman put in quickly. ‘Maybe once in a blue moon. And certainly not here. It doesn’t happen, kids. Don’t worry.’
‘Well, it all joins up, isn’t it?’ Mrs Tripathi persisted. ‘The water from … from Colombia, Gabon will find its way here, believe me.’ She shivered as if suddenly cold.
No one said anything for a while after that. Jonathan looked out at the water as if he wanted to investigate. The Asian couple huddled beneath the only parasol, flinching from the sun like a pair of vampires. Even my mother, whose cool exterior usually weathered all temperatures, dabbed at a sheen of perspiration that refused to stop surfacing. Mr Ooststroom’s tie had disappeared and the top three buttons of his shirt were undone. A few wispy blond hairs sprouted out of an almost hairless chest. Sweat shimmered just above his upper lip where a moustache might have been. That’s what he lacked, I decided – a moustache like my father’s. Mr Ooststroom looked too young and clean – fresh-faced – for a man in his position. Second or third secretary, Mrs Tripathi had said. There was something about him, I began to realise. Something that did not quite fit. He had been sitting next to my mother throughout the trip. Bunmi and Folake strode purposefully away from him to kneel on the other side with the Tonets.
‘Sit down,’ my mother said to me.
Mr Ooststroom looked up and smiled. I could not help but smile back. Then glancing at my sisters who were glaring at me, I looked away.
‘Sit down,’ my mother instructed.
‘Sit,’ said Mr Ooststroom. Soft ‘s’ like a swear word. Mouth full of cotton balls.
Jonathan Braverman tittered like the fat bird he was becoming. He would always struggle with his weight, but he would end up like his father, I could see that. I thought of my own father who was tall and slender, alone in the apartment on a Saturday. I wondered what he was doing. I wanted him here now, beside me. I sank to my knees and felt the hot glow of wrath from my sisters. Mr Ooststroom smiled again, which confused me. I wanted to hate him, but I wasn’t sure why.
‘Help yourselves, everybody.’ Mrs Tripathi passed round a plastic tub of oily vegetable samosas. She had made enough for all of us and more, but there were few takers. My mother opened the picnic basket: beige plastic plates, forks and knives, cups all in the same hue. She unleashed the implements from their separate compartments, undoing clasps, releasing the flask of iced water, the container of egg-fried rice. She reminded me of the geisha we had seen at a tea ceremony in Kyoto, as she ladled food onto our plates: two scoops of rice, a pincer of salad, a spoonful of chilli chicken. No one knew, apart from my sisters and I, that she had played no part in the preparation; the amah had done that. But it gave me pleasure to watch my mother in this uncharacteristic role.
‘Joost?’ she enquired. ‘Some chicken?’
Folake nearly gagged on her fried rice.
Everyone had brought their own food with the exception of Mr Ooststroom. He had already eaten two samosas, after Mrs Tripathi had pressed him to take another. He sat cross-legged, still in his brilliant brogues, the buff on them dazzling. He shifted his weight slightly, then looked down at me, at my plate.
‘There is enough?’ He hesitated. He looked at her.
‘Oh, plenty, plenty,’ my mother giggled, exaggerating her Yoruba tones. She began to load his plate with rice and chicke
n. She seemed, suddenly, like a girl.
‘Here, have some sandwiches,’ Mrs Braverman said. ‘We’ve got way too many anyway.’
Then Mrs Tonet was passing him a bowl of what looked like mashed potatoes and gravy, and Mrs Tripathi began to circulate the samosas again. He politely declined the offers of food, save for another samosa which he placed on the side of the plate my mother had made up for him. She glowed.
A group of jabbering bathers strolled past so that I could pick out stray phrases.
‘That’s what I said, but would she listen? Would she heck,’ a woman in a bikini and wraparound towel was saying. They sounded English. One of them said ‘wanker’, and I thought that was an English word, but I could not be sure. They were islanders, though; other people did not come here. It was too far off the tourist route.
‘Where are they from?’ I asked Folake. She would know more than anyone. She had come back from school with tales of England. Unfamiliar words. Strange phrases. ‘Go on, make yourself scarce,’ she would say, and I knew what she meant now, finally. She turned to look at the retreating bathers. ‘Oh, they’re …’
‘English,’ Mr Ooststroom interrupted. ‘British.’
Folake clamped her mouth shut.
‘Really!’ I exclaimed. I was secretly envious of Folake and her new words, her far-flung experiences. When she boarded a plane at the end of the holidays, my heart ached to travel with her. I wanted to taste a rhubarb crumble – an authentic crumble with hot, thick custard – in an old haunted building, to sleep in a room with a hundred beds full of children my own age. Pillow fights; that’s what she claimed. I had dreams in which feathers fell like snow.
‘What’s it like in England?’ I turned to Mr Ooststroom. My excitement had carried me away; there was no restraint.
‘Well, ah, it’s a liddle bit vet,’ he replied. ‘And it gets cold in the vinter, like Holland.’ He sounded as if his mouth were stuffed full of marshmallows. He could have painted a bleaker picture and I would have loved it still. Cold, wet – what mattered was that it was different and far away.
A Life Elsewhere Page 9