All the Beggars Riding

by Lucy Caldwell

  ‘That’s Catherine,’ he said. ‘Or Katya, as she likes to be known.’

  ‘Is she – I mean, was she . . . ?’

  ‘She’s a postgrad student of mine. I told you I was a bastard. This is Anna.’ He dragged out a canvas from the wall, another naked woman, painted from behind. ‘And this’ – a Spanish-looking girl, painted in black outlines and block colours – ‘is Miriam. This is Miri, too.’

  The last one was a view of the inside of a woman’s thighs, seen from just above, as if you were kneeling, her knees held open by just-seen hands.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘They’re . . .’ I tried to find a word that was complimentary, and not – what was the word he’d said his sister was? – pass-remarkable. ‘Interesting,’ I finished, lamely. But he didn’t seem to hear.

  ‘I tell myself it’s because I’m an artist. We have different needs to normal people. Different rules apply. But basically, I’m just a cunt. A bit like my Da.’

  Neither of us said anything. The sun was setting now, throwing all sorts of shadows on us inside. After a minute, he restacked Miriam and Anna.

  ‘Well,’ he said, and he spread his hands in front of him, palms up, in a mocking, ironic sort of way. ‘Now you’ve seen my soul.’

  ‘We have the same hands,’ I said. We did: I’d noticed in the pub, when he was quoting poetry, and I did again now. We both had our father’s hands, long and slim with tapering fingers.

  He laughed, and it wasn’t a nice laugh.

  ‘I was always so jealous of you,’ he said quickly, not meeting my eye. ‘You and your brother – Alfie.’ He pronounced the name at a distance, with care.

  It’s the sort of cliché the writing tutor would say not to touch with a bargepole, but you could have knocked me down with a feather. I think my jaw actually dropped and I gaped at him.

  ‘You were—’

  ‘Jealous of you, of course, madly. You were obviously the ones he wanted. We weren’t enough for him. Otherwise – Well. Why would he have done it? I bet if he could’ve divorced my ma he would’ve. I always used to think he was probably waiting until I was in secondary school, you know, the way some folks do. I mean it can’t have been fun for him, can it? No, you were his real family. The ones he wanted.’ He spoke fast, but quietly.

  ‘Michael,’ I said. ‘Michael . . .’

  There weren’t the words. Even if I’d been the sort of person that was good with words, I doubt there’d have been the words.

  ‘But Michael,’ I said again.

  He met my eye for the first time since he’d begun his speech; forced a laugh. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I mean it’s not as if I’m bitter or anything. Ha. Not that that sounds – What I mean to say is, I’ve had long enough to get over it, haven’t I? Or at least I should have done.’

  He turned away, walked a few steps towards the Lagan-facing window. Neither of us said anything for a while. The sun was almost fully set, little more than smears of red and orange on the river.

  ‘He was a weak man,’ I said, slowly, and as I said it I realised I’d never put it in those terms before, so simple, so human. ‘I always thought – and I mean right up until this year, I thought – that he was some kind of heroic figure, like a god or something, you know, from a legend. That he loved on a different scale, a different plane than normal people. Than the likes of me. But now I – meeting you, and hearing – everything you’ve just said – it’s just dawned on me. That, well, yeah. He was a weak man, not a strong one. He wasn’t some Byron, or some Casanova. It’s the opposite. He was a slave to – he let himself be ruled by – his lust, and his – and when you look at the trail of, you know, devastation he left behind? It isn’t that he’d rather be with you, or with us. It’s that – he was too greedy, too weak, and’ – I couldn’t believe I was only just realising this, there, now – ‘he didn’t have a superhuman love, after all. Not at all. God, I think that’s the longest speech I’ve ever made.’

  It was: I think I’ve managed to capture it down pretty much as I said it, as it falteringly, stumblingly, but irrevocably occurred to me.

  He walked past me and stooped down, a darker shadow than the shadows; picked up the Bushmills bottle. He uncapped it and swigged, then offered it to me.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said reflexively. And then: ‘Actually, please.’

  He handed me the bottle, his hands – our hands – shaking. I took it; glugged, the firewater fuming and scorching my throat. Wiped the lip, and passed it back. He twisted the cap back on it, and set it down.

  ‘What are you doing for the rest of the night?’ he said.

  ‘What? Oh – nothing, I mean – I have no fixed plans.’

  ‘Shall we go kaileyin’?’

  ‘Shall we go what? I mean’ – and I tried to imitate his accent, the way he’d said it earlier – ‘“Whoa, Mikey”.’

  It was a lame excuse but the excuse to laugh has never come as such a relief.

  ‘Kaileyin’,’ he said. ‘Like – shall we go out on the lash? Make a night of it. Paint the town red.’

  ‘I think I’m a bit old for that.’

  ‘So’m I. But it’s never stopped me yet.’

  ‘All right, then,’ I said. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘Right y’are, then.’ He paused. ‘What you just said about – our father.’

  He stopped. Our father hung in the air.

  ‘What you just said about our father. There’s a couple of lines – here, hang on a sec.’ He flicked on a light – the shock of it, like being plunged into cold water – and went over to a stack of books in a corner and squatted down beside them, rifling through. ‘Here we go.’ He motioned me over and stood up to show me. It was a battered green and cream paperback, a pencilled portrait on the front, stuffed with Post-its and coloured tags, its margins full of scrawled notes.

  ‘It’s my MacNeice, from college. My Selected. Here. Page . . . seventy-one, here we go.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It’s the one I was quoting at ya earlier, about London. There’s a verse in that – this here – that makes me think of Dad.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘“Under God we can reckon on pardon when we fall, but if we are under No-God nothing will matter at all, arson and rape and murder must count for nothing at all.”’

  It was utterly still in that room, as he read. Everything – even the sunset – seemed to have been stopped, for us, to hear those words.

  ‘“So reinforced by logic”’, he read on, his voice growing louder, ‘“as having nothing to lose, my lust goes riding horseback to ravish where I choose, to burgle all the turrets of beauty as I choose.”’

  He stopped, closed the book. ‘Well, that’s what I think, anyways. Here. I think you should have this.’ He held it out.

  ‘Me? Oh, no, I couldn’t – not your personal copy, with all of your notes in it. Thank you. But—’

  ‘Lara,’ he said, and the way he said my name wasn’t like the stripping of paint, but softer, like gravel through water. ‘Lara, I’d like you to have it. It’s been – good, you know, meeting you. Good for me. I think it has. And I’d never have had the courage to look you up myself. Write to ya out of the blue and that. Go all the way over to see you.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, and I took the book he was still thrusting at me, smoothed its cracked cover and ran my thumb over its dog-eared corners. ‘Thank you. Thank you for this, which I shall treasure, and thank you for – well, for agreeing to meet with me, for a start. For allowing me to see your wonderful studio, for—’ I stopped. ‘I’ve actually – that is – I’ve got something that I thought – that I thought I might . . .’ My mouth has never been drier. I pulled the sheaf of papers from my handbag, crumpled from where I’d folded and stuffed them in. ‘I thought I might give this to you, and then I decided of course I wouldn’t, but then, after what you said, about me and Alfie being the family that – which is so not true – I don’t know, feel free to throw this away, or whatever, but if you were interested even a little bit in hearing my side of the sto
ry – I’ve done my best to get it down.’

  ‘You’re a writer?’ he said, taking the pages.

  ‘Oh God, no, no, not at all. I went to some classes – but only because I was taking this old man, a patient, well, a friend, actually, who wanted to write down his life story, you see. That’s sort of how all this started.’

  He flipped through the pages.

  ‘Please don’t,’ I said, ‘not now. It’s – it’s not literature, I’m not a writer. It was just a story I had to tell. On every single page of it I was excruciatingly conscious of how much I wasn’t a writer. The way your poet – MacNeice – captures London in the rain in just a few words. I could never do that. The people, the places – they’re not even a ghost, here, of the real thing. But maybe you’ll read it, and . . . Well. You’ll understand, or at least understand a bit better.’

  ‘My turn to say thank you,’ he said.

  Another moment, and something seemed to pass between us: something asked – or answered – agreed.

  ‘Right, well,’ he said. ‘We’re in danger of getting dead heavy, here. I hope it’s not just me that could do with another drink.’

  ‘I’d love another drink. And a bite to eat. God, I’m suddenly starving.’

  ‘Come on, then.’

  He was right when he’d said ‘misfits’. We were: both of is, in our own ways. But for the briefest of moments that night, our jagged edges fitted together and made each of us more of a whole.

  My brother and I left his studio and descended into the Belfast night.

  From: Michael Connolly

  To: Lara Moorhouse

  Sent: Sunday, 18 September 2011, 23.12

  Subject: your story

  Dear Lara

  Well, I read the manuscript you gave me over the w’end. I’m not sure what I expected. But whatever I expected, that certainly wasn’t it. You said you’re no writer, and

  certainly it was raw in places (not that that’s a bad thing,

  necessarily) but I found it extremely moving, and I don’t think that’s just because of my personal involvement in the story. I’d never thought how hard it must have been for you. For your mum. Jesus.

  You’ve an ear for the way people talk, you know. I think you must get that from our father. He used to be involved in a lot of amateur dramatic productions (that’s how he met my mother) and he was able to take off anyone, my uncles and aunt always say of him he’d have everyone in stitches. Anyhow, that’s by the by. You should consider, and I really think this, doing a course or something, maybe an Open University one or a correspondence one that would fit around your schedule, that you could do in your own time. Have you ever thought about that? To be fair I’m no real judge, but I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t think it. I think you’ve got something there.

  On another note: I’m having a show this November, at the Mullan Gallery on the Lisburn Road. I don’t know if I

  mentioned it? If you were interested, or wanted an excuse for another visit, you should come over. The opening night is Friday 18th, and my mother and perhaps my sister will be there then, so for your own sake that probably wouldn’t be the day for you to come. (Though I told them I’d met up with you: there’s been too many secrets in this family. Nicky’s face though I say it myself was a picture.) But it’ll run until Christmas, so any weekend after that – or indeed during the week if that suits better. I’d be happy to drive you round, take you to a few more places. You’ll no doubt see Belfast in its natural state, i.e. cold and wet and windy, but what can you do.

  Glad to hear you’re liking the MacNeice.

  Think about an OU course.

  M.

  Afterwards

  It’s over a year later now

  It’s over a year later now, as I write this. Many things have changed, since I wrote those last pages, my account of going back to Belfast. Most in ways I would never have predicted, could never have imagined.

  Mr Rawalpindi died. That’s the first thing I should say. It happened fast: within a few days. He didn’t, in the end, as he’d dreaded, have to go into a nursing home, lose his dignity, his independence. I returned from Belfast and found out he’d collapsed at home a day or so before; the interim carer found him and he was taken by ambulance to hospital. It wasn’t anything specific, or new, just his whole body packing in, organ by organ. He died in Hammersmith Hospital on Monday 19th September 2011, and I was there, though he was unconscious and had no way of knowing. I miss him every day: almost as much as I miss my mother. Another person I lost, and realised I’d lost too late. I wouldn’t have any of this, wouldn’t have done any of it, if it wasn’t for him.

  I’m still writing. Writing more than ever, in fact. At Michael’s suggestion, and with the encouragement of the teacher at the Irish Cultural Centre, I’m enrolled on a course with the Open University. The strange thing is, though, that when it came to deciding what I was going to write, I realised I wasn’t going to write my story or my family’s, after all. I thought about it. Thought about giving us all voices, or even telling it from my father’s point of view. But it seemed, finally, that there was no need to. I’ve told that story: I’m at peace with it now. That’s not to downplay how important the telling of it was. Writing my story, I think, in many ways saved my life. It certainly changed everything: the course of bitterness and recrimination and despair that I fear I was set upon. It let me forgive my mother, and let go of my father. It let me meet my half-brother, and in a small way, help him too to let the past go. I’ve been over to Belfast twice in the past year, and we email each other occasionally, and it helps to know that we’ve got each other. Writing this gave me a purpose, too, a goal; a reason to get up in the mornings. It taught me that writing isn’t self-expression, vomiting self-pity onto the page. It’s the taking and shaping of things, carefully, again and again, until they make a sort of sense that not only you but others can understand, and maybe benefit from. At the start of this narrative I’m obsessed with knowing. I’ve come to realise that you can never know: but you can understand, and that’s what fiction does, or tries to do. It takes a detail – one of the myriad details that are or could be true – and burnishes it until it is somehow more and better than itself, and in the light of it you can start to understand: just maybe, perhaps, in a little way, what it’s like to be someone else. I’d never, for a start – in fact until Michael said it – considered how hard things had been for my mother. She was in love. For better or worse, she loved my father.

  If only I could have realised that when she was dying: realised that what I needed to say wasn’t How could you? or even I forgive you, but just I understand. Our conversations then were circular and fragmented and frustrating, me desperately trying to wring from her any facts, or scraps, that she could possibly remember. She was wary of my Dictaphone, and thought I was trying to trap, or to punish her; to force some kind of deathbed confession. Perhaps I was, and I regret it: regret not just letting her lie, and holding her hand, stroking the side of her face, and saying, It’s OK, it’s OK, as if I was the mother then and she the child.

  The story I’m writing now is Mr Rawalpindi’s story. It’s a story that needs to be told, and he’d be so thrilled if he knew it was going to be. His life in Anguilla, the most northerly of the Leeward Islands, and his childhood in the Valley, and around the cays. Seal Island and Dog Island, Prickly Pear Cays. Learning to swim before he could walk; fishing with his father and his brothers. Spiny lobster and crab; conch and mahi-mahi, red snapper, shrimp. His parents’ story, as he gleaned it, and as he told it to me: their lives as indentured Asian Indians, brought to Guyana as teenagers in 1915, and moving after the war and emancipation to Anguilla; getting married; their smallholding, and the living they scraped from the thin, dry soil. The goat, tethered to a post at the back of the outhouse. The pumpkin patch, and the three rows of tomato vines; the patch of leafy green callaloo. The stakes for pigeon-peas, and the pepper-plants. The mounds of
cantaloupe, and the lime tree. The rattles and bowls they carved from gourds, to sell to white people in the market. The necklaces made of dyed pumpkin seeds that he and his brothers made for the youngest sisters. All of this, I’ll try to conjure up. His decision to migrate to Britain in 1957, aged twenty-one, having heard the reports from Jamaica and the Windrush. How he never imagined that he’d never see home again. His life here, his realisation that he was gay, and the first man who broke his heart. The wealthy old New Yorker who fell in love with him and flew him across the Atlantic, and whom he nursed through a stroke and the pneumonia that eventually killed him. How does a poor immigrant West Indian meet and bewitch an old, white Rothschild? I’ll try to make it real, to get under the skin of things. Then the bequest – the return to London – the house in Hammersmith – the lovers of his later years. All of these stories I’m going to tell, all of these stories that make up him, and his story, and I’m going to do my best to do it all justice.

  There’s been a further unexpected outcome from writing my story. The teacher at the Irish Cultural Centre runs some workshops for troubled teenagers, and suggested I might get involved – they’re always looking for volunteers. Metres of red tape and multiple CRB checks later, I started in the New Year, and I’m now working towards a Diploma in Caring for Children and Young People. And that’s not all. I’m about to move in with Jake Obigwe, one of the youth workers on the scheme. He’s five years younger than me; unmarried; no children. I know that’s true because I’ve met his mother. His mother, and his sister (his father died when he was ten, so we have that together), and goodness knows how many of his cousins and aunts, and godchildren galore who adore him. God knows what he sees in me. I’m not, after all, exactly what you’d term a catch. But there you go. Life – love – is at once the most mysterious and the simplest thing in the world. If there’s hope for me, there’s hope for anyone. It may be too late for children of our own – I’m turning forty now, after all, and besides, we’re only just moving in together; it’s a big step from that to babies. But both Jake’s mother and his sister are long-term foster carers for the Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and for the first time it occurs to me that this is something I could do: that we could do, because you don’t need to be rich to do it, or even married. The children you love don’t have to be your own. And God knows there’s enough of them in need of a little bit of love. Mr Rawalpindi, I think often these days, must have loved me like a daughter, although I was too blind to see it at the time, and thought it was me doing him favours. I want to give someone the chance to be loved like that. I know I have it in me, love and what it means to love, the capacity for it: I never knew before.