A Life Elsewhere

by Segun Afolabi

  The track at the school in Hastings was new, better than anything we had previously used. This was a school where no one thought anything of flying abroad for the half-term. Most of the other competitors had arrived before us. They looked polished, almost professional, as we straggled off the coach. My stomach yapped a little, then growled and I could feel my lunch lurch.

  As the start drew near we poured onto the field, talking, stretching, warming up. A group from another school turned to look at us, then folded in among themselves like bats. It was no secret I had broken a string of county records for my age group the previous year. My picture had appeared in the local newspaper. And then there were some sentences in the gazette. I hung medals and certificates on the walls at school. I talked incessantly of my own prowess. I make no apology for this, either now or then: I used to think it was an essential ingredient of success. I could envisage my life stretching out ahead of me, consisting of adulation and accomplishment in equal measure.

  Thirty minutes into the games and it was clear we had serious competition. People were not even qualifying in the heats. Suddenly it seemed to me that the bar on the high jump was insurmountable, distances on the field too arduous. I felt tired in a way I had never experienced before. Not from fatigue or from running too hard. It was simply exhausting to watch success slip so quickly away.

  There comes a time when you realise all the effort you’ve put in – all those early mornings, the rigorous diet, the training, pushing yourself to the limit – amounts to nothing. I told friends I would return the next year, invigorated. I convinced myself of that at the time. But I never picked up another pair of running shoes, never stepped onto another track.

  I don’t think the boy ever guessed I would catch up with him. He probably thought he could shake me, an old dog giving up the chase. But I caught him all right. I could tell he was shocked; he didn’t say a word. He did not struggle. Halfway back to the shop we met Cedric. There was a queue of traffic alongside us. The air was beginning to thin in the onslaught of winter darkness.

  I caught a glimpse of the other boy lurking behind a pillar. I realised then he had been a decoy. I cannot describe how I felt then. Cheated? Flummoxed? Enraged? All three?

  Cedric told him to take off the shoes. They were unsaleable now. The boy slipped them off nonchalantly, kicked them to one side. Then he began to put on his own worn-out trainers. I should have noted that from the beginning; no one enters a shoe shop wearing decrepit shoes. I’ve noticed that. The boy sat there, saturnine, bored, as if this happened every other day. When I said I would call the police, his expression did not change. I don’t know what I was expecting. Remorse? Something, anything to let me know he had registered regret. But that did not happen. Not after my threat to resort to the law or my rising tone of voice or Cedric’s more temperate approach. The boy’s face just expressed contempt.

  You could say I lost my temper. I could feel suppressed rage seeping from my chest, like a disturbed wound. I raised my hand, then slowly brought it down again and scratched the back of my neck. I was ready to strike out. The boy didn’t even cringe. He showed no emotion whatsoever. I don’t like to see that in children, coldness, valves already shut off. Perhaps that’s exactly what he expected. Quite possibly he had been struck before.

  It’s a good thing we haven’t any children, Isobel and I. I can’t abide surly behaviour. I am just the sort of person who could so easily lose control.

  Cedric told me to cool off. Deidra led me back to the office, like an invalid. When I sat down my hands were trembling, the knuckles doing some kind of dance. In the end the boy’s mother was contacted. She apologised, even paid for the shoes, and thanked the staff for not alerting the police. That’s what Cedric told me the next day. I left early. That’s not something I often do.

  I drove to the supermarket, bought sea bass, mineral water and a bottle of white wine. For once I had arrived home before Isobel and I wanted to surprise her. Also, I needed something to do with my hands, to keep myself occupied. I turned the music up loud, opened the wine and started on that. Isobel doesn’t drink during the week. She says it impairs her judgement, her reasoning, and she likes to keep her mind clear. She is an orthoptist at a children’s hospital, not that it would make any difference to her work.

  I heard the door shut. Then the music was turned down so that it was almost inaudible.

  ‘Turn it back up!’ I shouted from the kitchen. I was still simmering. I walked into the living room, a glass of wine in one hand, a bowl of steaming white rice in the other.

  She was lingering by the stereo, wearing her long beige coat, her bag limp over her shoulder. I waved the bowl about so that steam plumed into the air. It was supposed to be a jovial gesture. She took one good look at me. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said.

  I shrugged and sauntered back into the kitchen. ‘Time to eat!’ I called.

  In Isobel’s work with the children she often gets to see a side to life I am unaware of. Sometimes she strikes a tone with me that isn’t appropriate. ‘Now then,’ she might say quietly, ‘tell me all about it.’ Her hands held gently together, her voice smooth, modulated. I know she would like children of our own, but me, I’m not so sure.

  I explained what had happened during the day. The shoes marching out defiantly, the high-street chase, how I’d wanted to lash out. I have always thought of myself as a particular kind of man, the kind that could never strike a child. No matter what. But that’s all over now.

  Isobel made a few cooing noises. I didn’t know what she meant. She gathered up the dishes and walked into the kitchen. She was wearing a batik wraparound the colour of blueberries swirled in yoghurt, a white T-shirt and an oversized tan cardigan. You could say that Isobel is stunning and you would not be exaggerating. I could hear the hot tap gushing, the basin filling up with suds. When she returned, I was in the middle of pouring the last of the wine.

  ‘Well, Mr Mahmood,’ she shrugged, but she didn’t sound upset. ‘Theft is something you just have to get used to. I thought you’d be used to it by now?’

  ‘Theft?’ I repeated. ‘I’m not worried about that,’ even though I always have been. I explained again about the insolent boy. I thought she might be shocked.

  ‘Oh that! That’s nothing new,’ she said. ‘I’ve sometimes wanted to hit out, you know. You can’t help that.’

  I nibbled the edge of my glass.

  ‘It’s only natural to feel anger at that kind of behaviour,’ she continued. ‘They’re doing it for a reason, though. You have to remember that.’

  I wasn’t quite sure how to take this, the ease with which she’d said it. I stood up and the table swam before me. I was a bit drunk – I am not often that way – I simply couldn’t settle down. I placed the rest of the crockery into Isobel’s foamy sink. My muscles were aching already from the mid-afternoon sprint.

  I picked up the car keys and announced I was going for a drive. She immediately grabbed them off me and said, ‘Let’s go,’ as I knew she would.

  We decided to visit the hill in order to walk off the alcohol. The evening was slick with fresh-fallen drizzle and as soon as we reached Elsworthy Road neither of us was in the mood to leave the warmth of the car. Instead we carried on, through Camden and then to the centre of town to look at the lights along Bond Street. Isobel was driving slowly. She didn’t want to miss a thing.

  ‘I simply have to go there.’ She kept pointing to shops. Expensive shops.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, agreeing too quickly. I felt nauseous. I opened the window a crack and leaned up against the door. Isobel looked across at me. ‘Eyes on the road, please,’ I snapped. By the time we reached Piccadilly, I felt calmer, more refreshed.

  Isobel, I think, was led to expect an undemanding life. To have things easily provided, frequent trips around the world. I don’t think she ever envisaged being with someone like me. It must have come as a surprise, gone against everything her parents had encouraged her towards, to suddenly find on her wedding day
, me and not some high-flown tycoon exchanging the marital vows. I know her mother was crest-fallen. It wasn’t difficult to notice that. Mr Hamilton put on a brave face, but in the beginning none of that mattered to us. Young love, as they often say, is blind. Life in a warm milky sea.

  Perhaps it was the mother, her insistence. Dreams she had always aspired to, and been let down, so she turned to Isobel. I am only speculating. Perhaps I’m way off the mark. My mother used to say, when she was living, that it did not matter who you loved, what you did in this world as long as there was a little happiness in it.

  I used to get annoyed with Isobel because sometimes she would remind me of her mother. Her distrusts, her exactitude, the way she held herself so stiffly when I wanted her simply to let go. The way she turned from certain things – music, say or people, raised voices – because they seemed to crowd the light. Who and what she thought she ought to be.

  There was a time fraught with difficulties when I wasn’t sure what we were doing. But that’s passed. I fought for Isobel the way I’ve fought for most things in my life. I know she did not want me in the beginning. Not for a long time after that.

  We’ll catch a bus sometimes, a train, discover a part of town or the country we have never been to before. Occasionally we have caught the wrong train, a bus going in the opposite direction. But there won’t be any panic, a rushing towards the exit. Quite often we’ll remain seated and let the vehicle lead the way. Isobel doesn’t mind this, although I know she would never allow such a thing to happen on her own.

  Like me, she has lived in other places – Guadeloupe, Martinique, New York City after that – so she doesn’t mind the travelling. Perhaps it comes from living a fractured existence. All that broken geography. Learning to live a different life.

  Isobel once said I was abrupt with people, I cut them off, that underneath a warm exterior I harboured a cold nature.

  ‘When?’ I demanded. ‘When am I like this? Examples please.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she laughed. ‘All the time, really. In a way.’

  At the back of my mind I feared she was thinking about having children again, but she did not mention it. I think a part of what she was saying has something to do with living in the city. I often strike a particular note with people and I can’t say why. The sales representatives, for example, who come into the shop. Sometimes I make them feel as if they are the most important encounter of my day. That what they are saying bears close attention. What they are doing is admirable. At the end of it all – the bright photographs illustrating technicoloured shoes, leotards, samples of baseball caps, something that has happened in their day, their lives – there comes a point when they realise they have done most the talking. They’re talked out. And all I have given of myself is the minimum, the bare bones, while I know everything that has happened to them, the dry reality of their day. Sometimes there will be a moment when they realise this. It is awkward because it’s a signal to me that they might want something in exchange – muscle, blood, a heart, something more vibrant. And I know that there isn’t any of that, only bones. Does that make me cold?

  My customers, on the other hand, I treat as if we’ll meet again. That’s a favourite part of my job, the interaction, so I try to get it right. People don’t like to admit they don’t know, that they might need some help. I have learned that over time, so I ask the staff to approach them in a particular manner – not invasive or aggressive – so they are put at ease. People don’t like to feel crowded. There is a kind of satisfaction in watching them select an item, try something on. I love it when they walk out with bags of shopping in their hands, contented. Or the ones who ask demurely if they can wear the shoes out of the shop.

  That happened today, this afternoon. Someone came into the shop. Someone famous. I’d seen him during the summer on my television screen. He wasn’t shopping for himself; he had a young boy with him, most probably his son.

  I let Deidra do the talking, make the sale, do all of that. He bought a pair of football boots. Not the best, I noted. It was the boy’s choice.

  They were warm people, relaxed. I watched them from where I stood, half-heartedly checking the stock. They smiled along with Deidra. The boy kept giggling. His father laughed out loud. A few customers sidled up for autographs. He was in the last Olympics, that one. An Olympian. He had a winner’s smile.

  At one stage he caught me looking and I turned away. I think I lost my nerve then. I don’t remember, I just felt weak. I fled into the office and sat staring at the paperwork. Half an hour may have passed. I thought I should telephone Isobel at the hospital. ‘Who?’ she would say. ‘Which Olympics?’

  Instead I slipped out of the building. It was wrong of me; I wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behaviour in anyone else.

  It was cold outside, but bright and still. People moved less briskly in the streets, the reality of the new year setting in. I walked to Charing Cross with the intention of turning back. But then I just kept moving.

  Along Whitehall a bus waited patiently for its passengers to alight. It was stationary when I caught up with it and so, without hesitating, I stepped on. I didn’t check where it was going. I just wanted to go and go and go, be carried somewhere far away.

  It is a helpless feeling to know that no matter how hard you run, however much you exert yourself, you are never going to move faster than this, overtake the man in front. Perhaps I understood that then, when I was seventeen. I could, in a minor way, have grasped something early on: that there is a moment or a series of moments in life when you must wear a different pair of shoes, walk in another direction from the one you had planned, and however well you succeed in your pursuits, there will always be an element of regret.

  The bus shuddered across the river. A refuse container made its sluggish progress beneath the bridge. I got off at the next stop and crossed the road into the park. It surprised me to see people there in the middle of the week, in the cold. I left the path after a while and slipped onto the field. There were some children at one end playing at the long jump. I walked around the perimeter slowly and I could hear their laughter. The track seemed warm and buoyant beneath me. There were signs – paint peeling off wooden benches, sections of the track torn out – of decay and neglect. The trees in the distance rustled slightly, but I did not feel the breeze.

  I don’t know why I behaved the way I did, that day in the shop with the thief. He had looked so angry with me. As if I had been in the wrong. What if Cedric had not been there? Would I have struck out? I would like to think not, but I’m not so certain now. Sometimes I think I would take better care of my shop – the expensive shoes, the labelled clothing, the sports equipment – than I would my own child. And I am blind with fear.

  I took off my jacket, laid it down to one side of the field. I stretched my limbs slowly, deliberately, the way I had been taught, because at my age things can so easily go wrong. I took up position and cast my eye to the end of the track. The children had stopped what they were doing. They were quiet now. Watching. And then I was sailing, the wind unfurling round my ears, the soft rubber track making me feel supple. As I neared the end of the straight I didn’t stop as I had intended, but instead, rounded the bend and ran at a slower pace back to the start. When I finished there was a faint applause and when I looked up, there were the children in the distance who must have been cheering me on. I hadn’t heard them. I had heard nothing except the wind and my quick heartbeat, my laboured breath.

  Perhaps I have failed in my life, in my endeavours. Perhaps the meaning of it all has passed me by. I cannot say for certain that it has. I just don’t know. I cannot say that in a year from now I will be lulled to sleep by underground trains. I could be someplace very far from here. Sometimes I long for heat.

  If it came right down to it, if I thought about it clean out, pared back the skin, the tired flesh and arrived at the bones, I realise the one certainty in my life is Isobel.

  GIFTED

  THE MOTHER WOKE to the
sound of screaming. One was trying to take something from the other, and the youngest had found his lungs. She moved swiftly, past fatigue, throwing the robe over the places where she had been beaten, past the bedroom door, into the chill of the corridor, into the room where the screaming was. She shut the door behind her and cupped her mouth as if she were about to vomit. The boys looked round at her and fell silent. She did not have to speak or scold or raise her hand. They understood.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Why are you misbehaving this early morning? Don’t you know your papa is sleeping?’

  The boys’ eyes grazed the carpet and then each other guiltily. The youngest tried not to smile with shame.

  ‘He stole my toy!’ the other one started. ‘He won’t give it back.’

  His brother held the bright red plastic machine behind him, and inched away.

  ‘And so what!’ the mother said. ‘He is your brother. Don’t you know you must share your things? Ah, ah! You must show a good example. How many times do I have to tell you?’

  He shuffled his feet and glanced at his brother. He did not feel generous towards him at all. He felt everything would be taken from him eventually and given to the younger one.

  ‘And you too, Dayo – did you ask your brother if you could play with his toy?’

  ‘Yes!’ The boy looked wildly about and clutched the machine to his chest. He could not meet his mother’s eyes.

  ‘Hmm – always ask before you take something. Otherwise you’ve done a wrong thing. You understand?’ She held the flat of her palm against her hip. She had been ignoring the pain; now the danger had passed and she winced as she remembered the kick.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ the older boy asked.