by Jen Thorpe
‘I guess I’ll just do my best, Dad. That’s all I can do, right?’
‘Right. So now, let us focus on the important things. How have sales been?’
‘The usual. Mostly cigarettes.’
He looked down the tracks and threw a few breadcrumbs from the bag in his pocket to the pigeons. Nazma could tell from the way he stood that he wanted to say something to her, so she gave him time, cleaning up around the cash register and turning all the notes in the same direction. The winter light filtered into the kiosk, and, outside, the sky was a blue that it never is in summer.
‘I’ve been thinking that if sales don’t pick up, we try a new business.’
‘That seems sudden. What would we even do?’
‘Well I thought … seeing as you will be able to make deliveries …’
‘Dad, maybe you should ask before you picture me as your driver for your new business. I mean, I’m not even used to driving a car. What were you thinking?’
‘Well, you know those festivals you always read about in the news?’
‘Um, do you mean like Rocking the Daisies?’
‘Exactly! Well, you know they have the caravans?’
‘For people to stay in?’
‘No, Nazma, with the food! I saw them on Top Billing.’
‘A food truck? Are you thinking of a food truck?’
‘Maybe a pastry truck … instead of being my driver, maybe you could be the baker?’
‘Wow, Dad, this sounds huge … But we don’t even have a caravan, and how would it all work with the shop? How would we work out the shifts and everything?’
‘It’s just an idea. I think this London trip has got me thinking about what we could do as a family … And maybe this could be something.’
Her father looked down the tracks both ways for a sight of the trains that were, as usual, delayed. Though it was painfully irritating for passengers, it was good for business.
‘Anyway, it’s just a thought,’ he continued, ‘but I quite like it, you know. I feel like suddenly, for the first time since we’ve moved here, something is shifting. The other day I even considered buying a new pair of pants.’
‘Don’t overdo it, Dad.’ She laughed at him. ‘Let’s just take it one step at a time, shall we? You never know, I could fail this thing. Then who would be your caravan driver?’
He winked at her, then left the kiosk, walking slowly, talking to the pigeons. Nazma returned to her study guide, but thoughts of baking red velvet cupcakes, macaroons and pastries distracted her. By the end of the day she’d mentally baked a thousand imaginary cakes and had hardly studied at all. She pictured herself in a flour-dusted apron, and she knew that, whether she passed or failed the godforsaken driver’s test, the tiny station kiosk wouldn’t be enough for her any more.
She left the kiosk for the last time before she would or wouldn’t be a legal driver. As she came up onto Main Road, she felt as if someone was watching her. Turning around, she couldn’t see anyone she recognised on the road. But, facing the mountain again, she spotted Sam in his car. He stared through the glass, and her stomach knotted with anticipation. He rolled down the window and waved, and she walked across to meet him.
‘Were you waiting for me?’
He was wearing a thick navy jersey that looked homemade. There were patches over the elbows, and the collar was misshapen. It suited him, and made him look like the dad version of himself.
‘Maybe. You’re going to have to stop avoiding me. I know where you work.’
She smiled as he lit a cigarette. ‘I’m one up on you, I know where you live.’
‘Oh, but I know where you live too – remember, we broke the law together.’ He laughed, but she could tell he was uncertain of himself.
‘What have you been up to? I can’t believe we’ve only got one more session left. Time flies …’
‘Where were you last week?’ he blurted.
‘Urgh, long story involving awkward talks with Simon.’
‘Simon?’
‘We ended up in hospital with him.’
‘We?’
‘Me and Ruby. It was the strangest day ever.’
‘Sounds like it.’
‘How was the session?’
She could feel they were talking around the topic that really needed discussing, to stave off the silence that would mean they’d have to look at each other properly.
‘It was all right. I ended up working with Johnson. He seems cool. But … it wasn’t the same without you there. I … uh … went past the station the other day.’
He flicked ash onto the ground through the window. It blew away down the road. She knew he wanted more of an explanation from her, but she didn’t have the energy to tell him all the details at that moment. She only knew that she needed to move forward, that the plans her dad had suggested made her feel truly excited for the first time in a long time. That they were more exciting than Sam apologising to her or even them making up. She was angry at him, and she didn’t want to get distracted if he was just going to let her down again.
‘I’m sorry. It’s been a bit of a mad week.’ Her excuse sounded like a lie.
‘I wish you’d tell me about it. Come for a drive. You can even drive, if you like? Free practice. We could do parallel?’
She paused, looking beyond the car at the last of the afternoon light falling on Devil’s Peak. Something told her not to get into the car. Her body was reacting to his presence, but she was still hurt and, on such a positive day, didn’t want to go back to feeling less important than an alarm’s light bulb.
‘I’m sorry, Sam. I’ve got to get home. My mum’s expecting me. I’ll see you later this week though, okay? Last session.’
‘So you won’t just come for a quick drive? Or a coffee? I promised you a coffee.’ He sounded desperate.
‘Maybe after the study’s finished and we’re both a bit more sure about what we’re doing, and what we want.’
‘I know you think I’m not, but I am. I am sure. The other night …’
She leant in through the window, interrupting him. He still had the same comforting smell of pine and dust. She was tempted to get in, climb back on top of him and take up where they’d left off, but she knew that would just be avoiding the problem. She saw hope in his eyes; she didn’t want to hurt him.
‘Hey, don’t worry about the other night. We can’t go back there. We can’t go back anywhere. But we can go forward, and I just need to focus on that for now. The going forward stuff … the being grown-up stuff. You know?’
He exhaled a deep sigh. ‘You could give me a chance, you know. If you’d just give me a chance and get in the car I could show you. Come back with me to my place and let’s talk.’
‘I need you to give me a chance to move forward, Sam. I’m doing so well.’
He turned away from her and nodded. ‘I’ll see you at the session … I can’t believe this whole thing is nearly over.’
She knew he meant more than just the workshop. His window wound back up but he just sat for a while, avoiding her gaze. She wasn’t sure whether to walk away or wait, so she half hovered around the pavement, getting cold. Eventually the engine started, and he drove away, easing into the traffic. After a minute, she couldn’t see him any more, and the lurch of her stomach made her ask herself if she knew in which direction she really wanted to go.
32
Ruby
Philophilia: Love of kindness
The call to Cambada was made, and two days later Ruby found herself in the same deep leather chair in the sparkling Ministry reception area, with the same unresponsive receptionist, waiting to see the Minister. The magazines hadn’t been updated since Ruby’s previous visit, so she was forced to re-flick through the same articles in Psychologies magazine. The receptionist remained automaton-like, gazing only at her screen. Ruby strained her ears but couldn’t hear her breathing and briefly wondered if she really was a robot.
Ruby looked around the room, her eyes coming
to rest on the flowers next to her. They were fake sunflowers, their fabric an overly bright yellow. As she turned away, something caught the light and her eye. It was a tiny little camera in the corner of the room, its lens adjusting and readjusting almost inaudibly. Someone must have been watching upstairs to see whether she would be granted access. The receptionist looked up at her watching the camera. Ruby raised her eyebrows at her. A few minutes later the receptionist directed her to the lift again, and as she passed the reception desk Ruby gave her a wink to let her know that she was on to her.
The lift was jasmine scented, and contained an impressively large man. She got in and turned to gaze at the doors, but it was impossible to ignore him. He smelled of old cigarettes, alcohol and a lack of sleep. His shirt stretched over his belly, with his pants pulling up in all the wrong places. He cleared his nose, a deep animal sound, moist and thick, and it made Ruby want to put her fingers in her ears. She was relieved at last to escape the lift.
The receptionist on the second floor had changed since Ruby’s previous visit, and the new young man effusively offered her a selection of coffees. He was clearly lonely. She wondered if anyone ever talked to him outside of telling him what to do. Based on his grinning face she doubted it. Ruby accepted a cappuccino, stirring in extra sugar. She looked around for further cameras and noticed another across the room. It was so tempting to pick one’s teeth or make funny faces for the camera. ‘Eye see you,’ she whispered, trying to make one eye bigger than the other, and looked around to see if the receptionist noticed. He was beaming at Ruby, like a puppy wanting a pat, as unable to look away as the one downstairs was unable to make eye contact.
‘All okay there, Ms Bates? Were you talking to me?’
‘No …?’
‘Floyd.’
‘No, Floyd, I was just talking to myself. A persistent habit.’
‘Oh.’ He giggled. ‘My grandpa does that.’
‘Mm.’ Thanks.
‘Not that you’re old like him or anything. No no no.’
‘Any idea how long the wait will be to see Minister Cambada?’
‘No – she’s been a bit slower than usual since the accident.’
‘Oh no. I’m sorry to hear that.’ Ruby wondered if she’d injured her head and hence had a turnaround in her opinion of CIL. ‘What happened?’
‘Well, don’t let on that I said …’ He leant over the desk, folding his arms across the countertop and placing his head in the middle above his hands. He was so eager to talk that Ruby bet he would have given away the Minister’s bank details if he had them. ‘Her brother died and she’s not even sure when.’
‘Not sure?’
‘Well …’ He rolled up a sleeve, as though they were really getting to the good part of the story. ‘They’d lost contact.’ He looked around. ‘I’m not sure I should go into details, discretion and all that.’
She looked at him, contemplating whether to ask for more details or stop him now. ‘It must be tough working here,’ she said. ‘Very stressful.’
‘Yes. Thank you for noticing.’
She looked around some more, feeling him stare at her, wondering what he could and couldn’t say.
‘Ag, you seem the type to be discreet, so I’ll tell you,’ Floyd piped up suddenly. ‘Apparently he actually suffered from a mental illness and sort of lost contact with her family. Something like one of those diseases where you have lots of personalities. He lived as a homeless person because he couldn’t get a job, and he couldn’t live with their family because he was so unpredictable and aggressive. Imagine!’
Ruby wasn’t sure whether he wanted her to imagine living as a homeless schizophrenic, or imagine being the type of family member to abandon one. She felt dread – cool and heavy – settle in between her collarbones. Her pulse quickened.
‘How did he die?’ she croaked.
‘Hit by a car.’ He smacked one hand with the other, making a crack. ‘Just. Like. That. A woman knocked him over on a rainy day. She said he lunged in front of her car and that he looked like he was trying to fly. Just near here actually, in Obs. It was such a surprise for Joyce – I mean Minister Cambada. She hadn’t seen him in over five years and I guess she sort of assumed he was dead, but then when they got the call that he actually was, I think it hit her quite hard. Not hit, that sounds terrible. God – how could I say that? Anyway, she was really upset about it, thinking about him all alone in the hospital with nobody there. She had to grieve his loss all over again. Even if he wasn’t aware he was alone. But then she found out that actually some other lady took care of him and visited him in the hospital, but they don’t know why. I don’t know who that lady was – probably also crazy.’
Ruby’s mouth dried up, her hearing heightened. She felt as though she could hear the sound of the particles moving around her in the air. ‘Whoosh’ whispered her inhalations and exhalations. As she processed the information she’d just received, Floyd’s voice continued to recite details of the funeral and the family’s grief. He was midway through telling Ruby about how Cambada couldn’t make it through a day without sobbing when Janet walked into the room, sharp heels clicking on shiny tiles.
‘Floyd,’ she barked, ‘I hope you’re not talking Ms Bates’ ears off.’
‘No, Janet. Just day-to-day chit-chat. You know – the weather, the rugby. Can I get you a coffee?’
He cast Ruby a look that begged her to play along. Janet seemed to know exactly what they were talking about, however, and glared at Floyd before asking Ruby to follow her through to the meeting room. As she plodded down the corridor, Ruby’s legs felt heavy with instability. Only when her feet touched the soft carpet again did she come back to her body and the present moment.
‘Ms Bates, I hope I can trust you to be discreet in the complete absence of Floyd’s discretion. Minister Cambada doesn’t plan on discussing what you have just heard today. It will only upset her. She has, as you can imagine, had a rough time of it.
‘She was informed that you had been visiting him, and that the hospital staff had listed you as his contact person. She truly had no idea he was living in Observatory – this is what she was most upset about. She felt that, if she’d known, she could have acted differently.’
Ruby nodded, head fuzzy, as she tried to understand what was going on. Jericho – crazy, idle, possibly schizophrenic, dead Jericho – had been Joyce Cambada’s estranged brother. It seemed too mad to be real. She must have missed something. She thought about him, trying to remember exactly what he looked like.
‘She knows that you were there, and that was very important for her, that someone was with him. But she doesn’t want to talk about it. It only makes her feel worse for not being there. So don’t bring it up. Pretend it never happened. Pretend you have no idea.’
Ruby saw a flash of Jericho’s bruised face, and how clean he was in the hospital bed. His skin was so much paler than Cambada’s, but now that she thought about him she recognised the similarities. The yellow in their eyes, the obscenely long fingers, the strange constellations of moles. She wondered how it could be possible that his family didn’t find him in all those years, when he was on the same street in Observatory for as long as she could remember. They abandoned him – he’d been left to die, and when he did die suddenly they were surprised. She tried to imagine her own feelings if Jeff disappeared, and then reappeared lifeless, a stranger. She couldn’t. She felt a possessive anger stir in her, replacing the shock.
The Minister walked in, her footsteps soundless on the carpet, and Janet made her exit. Grief had swollen Cambada’s face and exhaustion darkened her eyes. Despite her swollen face, her arms looked strangely thin, her watch suddenly too big for her wrist. She placed her hands on the table and clasped them until her knuckles were white. She had removed her enamel nails, and beneath them her own were short and flaky. Her long fingers seemed to require the support of one another. Not even looking up or meeting Ruby’s gaze, she began to speak in a hushed voice that sounded more like
a chant.
‘I apologise again for not coming to the Centre when I planned to. I had a family emergency to attend to, and following that I was not really in a state to visit again. It feels like a much longer time since we’ve seen each other than it actually was. Time truly is relative. I have had a lot of time to think about the work that you do. How important it is that those among us who are … peculiar … have somewhere to go to find assistance.
‘We’ve considered all the information that you’ve provided us with. We have been impressed by the results of your previous studies, and by the staff you employ. The Ministry is dependent on your continued work in the field of mental wellbeing. It is obvious that you and your staff and the work you do at the Centre have made a positive change in the lives of many special and important people who might otherwise have been ignored. With the exception of a few studies, which it won’t do for us to dwell on, the work of CIL has been critical in understanding how we can do better to take care of those who need it.
‘I’ve taken some time to reflect over the past few days about what it means to be different and how this can profoundly affect your life. I think that difference can be both a blessing and a curse. A lot of how we treat those who are different derives from fear – uncertainty about how to interact, to work with what they have, to speak from where they are. It makes me feel immensely relieved that you and your team have taken the time to learn this language of difference. You are there for people when others abandon all hope.’
She stopped, suppressed tears sealing her windpipe, the words unable to come. On instinct Ruby reached across the table for her hands, squeezed them, and released them. She’d once heard that compressing the nerves made someone feel better, de-stimulated them, which is perhaps why hugs worked.
Cambada breathed slowly, and finally opened her mouth again. ‘So I’m sure you can understand what I’m saying. We would like to renew your grant for the next five years. This is much longer than we normally extend things for, but I don’t know how long I will be in this job and I want to make sure that if I’m out in the next elections, you’re still secure.’ She interlaced her fingers tightly, placing them back down on the table.