by Alex Marwood
She’s about to say the address when her natural suspicions stop her. There’s no need for them to know. It’s not like she’ll be switching the phone off. She tells the woman the address of her mother’s flat, because it’s the first thing that springs to her mind.
Footsteps soft-shuffle down the corridor and a man appears, wearing what look like chef’s whites. He wields a bunch of keys, like a jailor, and peers enquiringly past the flowers at the receptionist.
‘Visitor for Janine Baker.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘Oh, riiiight.’
‘Her daughter,’ says the woman, significantly.
He turns to Collette and gives her an up-and-down look. ‘I was beginning to think she was all alone in the world.’
‘Yes,’ says Collette. ‘I couldn’t get here sooner, I’m afraid. I’ve been abroad. I had to make arrangements.’
‘Fair enough.’ He turns and starts walking back up the corridor. She hesitates for a moment, unsure as to whether she’s supposed to follow or not, then, when he turns and looks over his shoulder, hurries to catch up.
Deeper into the building, the smell of nappies is stronger and the smell of polish weaker. They pause at a double fire door as he unlocks it. ‘It’s a toss-up,’ he explains. ‘I know you’re meant to keep them unlocked, but whoever made that rule clearly wasn’t trying to herd cats like we are. I’m Michael, by the way.’
Collette nods and mutters a second greeting. On the far side, the atmosphere is slightly damp, slightly feral, like the air in the underground she’s just come off, the walls a soothing mint green. She walks beside him, glimpses an empty dining hall, Formica tables and a wall-length window overlooking a garden full of privet and the corrugated iron wall of a warehouse. I must start stockpiling opiates, she thinks. I don’t want my last view to be of this. A seascape, a bottle of gin and a bottle of Oromorph: that’ll do me if I make it that far. In a lounge, shrivelled forms sit on non-absorbent surfaces and stare silently at Jeremy Kyle on the television. Each chair has a built-in tray sticking out from its right arm, each bearing a medical-pink earthenware teacup. There are no visitors, no people standing up by themselves who aren’t in uniform. Wrong time of day, thinks Collette. At least, I hope so.
‘Your mum’s in her room,’ says Michael. ‘She likes to stay there most of the time. Till lunchtime, at least.’
‘Fair enough,’ says Collette. Janine was never a very sociable sort, in between boyfriends. God knows how she managed to replace them, sitting in her chair smoking and gazing at the telly while her peers went out arm in arm to the bingo, but she did. Even got three of them to marry her, for a bit. ‘How’s she doing?’
They reach a junction and the wall colours change abruptly. To her right, sky blue, to her left, where he leads her, candy pink. Even in second childhood, the genders are distinguished by decor. ‘She’s fine,’ he says soothingly.
Always good to get a medical opinion. ‘Sometimes she’s a bit confused, but mostly she’s quite content,’ he adds.
So why did they decide she needed taking away? wonders Collette. This is how I remember her all my life, though I suppose the Temazepam and gin might have had a bit to do with that. Cardiac-related dementia, they called it when they informed her. Her heart’s failing and the oxygen’s just not getting through to her brain.
They reach a door, which sits ajar like all the others she’s passed, so the staff can see the inhabitants without going inside. No real privacy in a twilight home. Collette wonders if they even close the doors at night and suspects that they don’t. From behind the door they have just passed, a reedy voice rises in a wail. ‘They won’t let me they won’t let me they won’t let me! Bugger them. Why can’t I? All I want is…’
‘Here we are,’ says Michael, drowning the voice out. ‘Now, don’t be surprised if she’s gone downhill a bit since you last visited. It can come as a shock, I know, but Mum’s still inside.’
Last time she saw her was in the garden of Collette’s flat in Stoke Newington: her hard-won respectability, her move into home-ownership. Three-odd years ago, looking unimpressed as she smoked her Bensons under a monstrous parasol, gin and tonic rattling ice in her hand. I loved that flat, thinks Collette. I was so proud of it. It was my proof that all the work I’d done was paying off. I wonder what’s happened to it? Taken back by the bank, I suppose. Someone else is living there now, enjoying my kitchen, probably using my parasol and congratulating themselves on their auction bargain. And Lisa’s probably credit-blacklisted until the end of time.
‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘I’ll remember.’
He calls in through the gap in the doorway. ‘Janine, love? Are you decent?’
He mother’s voice, but not. It’s gone reedy, like that of the weeper next door, and breathless. ‘Yes, thank you, dear.’
‘I’ve got a visitor for you,’ he calls, and pushes the door full-open.
Janine sits in a high-backed faux-leather fauteuil in front of a window that looks out on to a blank wall, two plastic tubes hooked into her nostrils. She looks up with childlike curiosity and a big smile, then her face falls, fills with confusion.
‘Are you sure you’ve got the right room?’ she asks, between breaths. ‘Who are you?’
Collette feels a lurch. She was never much of a mother, but she can’t have forgotten me, surely? ‘It’s me, Mum,’ she says, and walks further into the room. Crouches down beside her mother’s chair and looks up. ‘Lisa.’
Janine’s shrunk. She looks like a facsimile of herself, like someone’s run her through a photocopier that’s running low on toner. Last time Collette saw her, her hair had been loose-permed and lowlights ran through a base of yellow blonde. Now, she’s grey: grey skin, grey eyes, grey greasy hair that looks like it’s been cut with the kitchen scissors, charcoal lines running up from her lips and into her nostrils. She stares at Collette for a long time, then shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says, decisively. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Lisa’s only seventeen. You’re bloody ancient.’
‘She comes in and out,’ says Michael. ‘Don’t let it worry you. Next time you come, she’ll remember everything, most likely.’
Collette puts a hand on her mother’s. Wrinkled, spotted, big blue veins standing out on the back. When did she get like this? She’s only sixty-seven, for God’s sake. It can’t have all happened since I went away, surely? Was she getting like this and I just didn’t notice?
‘And Lisa’s pretty,’ says Janine, snatching the hand away.
Collette finds that she is trembling. She busies herself by looking down at her bag and searching out her packages. ‘I brought you some stuff, look. I thought you’d like them. See?’
She holds up her gifts, like prizes. ‘Those chocolates you like. And some nice smelly stuff. Chanel, look. You always liked Chanel.’
‘Ooh,’ says Janine, all sunny smiles again. She snatches the box of Ferrero Rocher from Collette’s hand, delves within with the fervour of someone who’s eaten nothing but mash and pudding cups for months. ‘Mmmmm-mmmmm,’ she says, mumbling them between blue gums and gasping for breath between smacks. She’s grown a moustache. Thick hairs like wires, blacker by far than the hairs on her head. She holds up the bottle of Chanel Nº5, always her aspiration scent, the one she longed for, the one Collette would save and save for from her Saturday jobs, to buy her for Christmas. Wrinkles her nose and drops it on the patterned carpet as though it were an empty box.
‘So what was it you wanted?’ she asks. ‘I haven’t got any money, if that’s what you’re after.’
Collette perches gingerly on the pink candlewick bedspread on Janine’s bed. ‘No,’ she says, gently. ‘I just wanted to know how you are.’
‘It’s my daughter who’s got the money,’ says Janine. ‘Not that she can be bothered to come and see me. D’you want a chocolate? They’re nice, these.’
‘Yes,’ says Collette, ‘that would be nice. Thank you.’
Chapter Fifteen
‘These are lovely,’ s
ays Vesta, and helps herself to another. ‘What did you say they were called again?’
‘Shirini Khoshk.’ Hossein hovers a finger over the white card presentation box, selects a heart-shaped sandwich covered with shreds of something green and pops it whole into his mouth.
‘I’m never going to remember that,’ says Vesta. ‘You know what they remind me of? Biscuits.’
‘Yes,’ says Hossein, solemnly. ‘That’s right. They are like biscuits.’
‘Well, I never knew Persians ate biscuits.’
Hossein smiles. ‘What did you think we eat?’
Vesta sits back in her lawn chair, dunks a pastry in her PG Tips. ‘Oh, I dunno. Babies and that, I suppose.’
‘Only on Eid,’ he says. ‘They are very expensive.’
They lapse into contented silence and gaze up at the azure sky. The garden is prepared for Vesta’s party: blankets from her airing cupboard and her mother’s full tea service laid out on a side-table Hossein has carried out, and water bubbling on a primus stove left over from the Three-Day Week. The others are due any minute, but she doesn’t really mind too much if they don’t show up.
This is nice just as it is, she thinks. To be honest, I could do without having to make polite conversation with people I hardly know, though of course that’s the way they become people you do know. I bet him from Flat One doesn’t bother to show. Didn’t answer his invite. Not that I’m bothered if he doesn’t. All sandy hair and pale lips and not meeting your eye in the hall. Not a party animal, Gerard Bright. No great loss to one, either.
Who would have thought, thinks Vesta, glancing across at Hossein, that at nearly seventy my best friend would be an Iranian asylum seeker half my age? Not Mum and Dad, that’s for sure. They thought the Pelcsinskis at number seventeen were suspiciously foreign, with their weird cabbage-based food. What on earth would they make of the world now? We hadn’t even heard of Iranians before the 1980s, and now they’re all over the place. Like Somalis. Haven’t had many of them down here, though. They seem to be more of a north London thing.
‘Ooh, I saw your article in the Guardian, by the way,’ she says. ‘Very interesting.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘Thanks, Vesta. I didn’t think anyone I knew would see it.’
‘Oh, you know. I like to go through the papers in the library. If there’s one thing you have a lot of when you’re retired, it’s time. So tell me something.’
‘Yes?’
‘I thought you weren’t allowed to work?’
‘I’m not. They don’t pay me. They make a donation to the Medical Council for the Victims of Torture.’
‘Oh. I see. That makes sense, I suppose.’
‘It does. They were good to me. They deserve something back.’
‘Still. Seems like a pretty pointless rule. All these people moaning about scroungers and they won’t let you work.’
Hossein shrugs. ‘It keeps my hand in.’
‘True.’
‘And it’ll make it easier to get a job when I get my papers.’
‘That’s true too.’
She starts to reach down to take the cling film off the food, but Hossein puts out a hand, pushes her back by the arm. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘I’m not ninety, Hossein.’
He tuts and gets down on his knees. Looks up as Cher comes round from the side-return, with a tall, fair-haired woman in tow. Vesta gets to her feet to greet them, like an old-fashioned hostess at a cocktail party. ‘You must be Collette,’ she says. ‘I’m Vesta.’
Collette blushes slightly, and shakes her hand. ‘This is very nice of you.’
‘Oh,’ Vesta waves a breezy hand over her bounty, ‘it’s nothing. A pleasure. Always a pleasure to get to know your neighbours.’
‘Hello, again,’ says Hossein, and she stutters a greeting, the colour on her pale cheeks deepening, but only meets his eye for a split second. My my, thinks Vesta, our new lady’s got a thing for the handsome lodger, and it’s only been a split second since she moved in. How cute. He could do with a nice lady friend. I’ve not seen him with a woman since he got here. ‘How are you settling in?’ he asks.
Her eyes are tinged slightly pink. Crying, or hay fever? ‘Okay,’ she says, and looks up at the sky.
‘Here,’ says Vesta, ‘sit down, do. Have the chair.’
‘Oh, no, I couldn’t. Someone else must…’
‘You’re the guest of honour,’ says Cher. ‘Just take it.’
Collette lowers herself selfconsciously into the spare deckchair. The beautiful man has his back turned to her now, uncovering a collection of old-fashioned teatime foods laid out on elegant antique plates. The old lady has a stack of matching cups and saucers and one of those big brown earthenware teapots at her side, on a spindly table. She studies her as she pours: she’s the only neighbour she’s not seen in the flesh before. She’s a surprising-looking woman. Tall and dignified, with nut-brown skin and steel grey hair, and the sort of profile that wouldn’t go amiss on a Cherokee brave. Not what you think of when someone says ‘the old lady downstairs’. Somehow that always conjures up pictures of walking sticks and buns full of Kirby grips. This woman looks like she’d be running an intensive care ward, if you let her.
Cher has sprawled herself on the edge of a blanket, platform soles like orange boxes on the ends of her skinny legs. The man keeps his eyes studiously away from the bare flesh, concentrates on the task at hand. What am I doing here? Collette wonders. I don’t want to make friends. All I want to do is go and lie down and think about Janine.
As soon as the wrapping is off, Cher’s hand darts on to the sandwiches. ‘I’m starving,’ she says.
‘Have a sandwich,’ says Hossein, and she laughs and flicks his upper arm with one fuchsia fingernail.
‘Did you make that cake, Vesta? Ooh, Vesta-cake. I knew you’d make a cake.’
She’s so kiddish, thinks Collette. And these people: they’re enablers. They treat her like some cheeky niece, indulge her. ‘We’re not cutting it till we’re all here,’ says Vesta. ‘Offer those sarnies around, Cher. Don’t just hog them. Would you like a cup of tea, Collette?’
‘Um,’ she says, ‘yes, that would be nice, thank you.’
‘Got better manners than you have, anyway,’ says Vesta to Cher.
‘Probably wasn’t drug up in care,’ says Cher, and stuffs a sausage roll whole into her mouth. She’s as skinny as a string bean, though she has a pair of surprisingly large breasts for such a small frame. Probably doesn’t eat much when it’s not given to her. Those kids never do. Cheese doodles and diet Coke, most likely, and the lack of calories made up with Baileys.
‘Milk and…?’ asks Vesta, and picks up a teacup.
‘Just milk, thanks. That’s a pretty service.’
‘It was my mother’s. Booth’s silicon china. It was a wedding present to my gran, before the Great War.’
‘Oh, how lovely,’ says Collette. She has nothing of family, now. Not that there ever was much. The one thing her mother achieved with her own life, as far as she knows, was to get out of Limerick and cut off her ties. After that, once she got to London, once she was pregnant and alone and the council gave her a flat, it was as if all the fight went out of her. She just sat there waiting for a man to save her and weeping as, one by one, they never did. There will be nothing but pound-shop china and second-hand pans for the council to clear out of her flat when they get round to it. She didn’t even have many friends to swap Christmas presents with. That’s how a lot of people amass decorative stuff: gifts and inheriting.
‘I would have died if the burglar had broken these,’ says Vesta. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to stop seeing my mother’s face.’
‘I’m sorry about your breakin. That must’ve been horrible. Did they get much?’
‘Scary, more than anything,’ says Vesta. ‘I’ve lived here all my life, and nothing like this has ever happened before. I just hope… you know. Now they’ve been in, they could come back. They do say they do that.’
‘It’s okay,’ says Hossein. ‘I’ll fix a chain lock on that door. They won’t get in again. Bastards.’
Vesta laughs. ‘My knight in shining armour. He’s an absolute godsend, this one,’ she says pointedly to Collette; lets her know she hasn’t missed her attempts not to look at him. ‘He’ll do anything for you, if you ask him.’
‘Well, not anything,’ says Hossein. He turns his golden smile on Collette, and Vesta sees her glow in the reflected light. ‘So, how are you settling in, Collette? Are you enjoying your luxury accommodation?’
‘All mod cons,’ says Collette, and waves away a sandwich from the plate Cher holds out. She remembers her gift, blushes and digs in her bag. Finds her pack of chocolate HobNobs and offers them to Vesta. ‘I brought these. A… a contribution. I’m sorry. They look really poor, against all this…’
‘Nonsense,’ says Hossein, as Vesta takes the biscuits and hands them on to him. ‘HobNobs are one of your country’s finest foodstuffs.’
‘Thanks, love,’ says Vesta. ‘What a treat.’
‘Don’t let him get started on food,’ says Cher. ‘He’ll go on for hours about his mum’s lamb with rhubarb if you let him.’
‘Lamb with rhubarb?’ says Vesta, ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
‘Oh, God, it’s beautiful,’ says Hossein, and his eyes glow with liquid nostalgia. ‘The lamb is cooked for hours, so it falls off the bone, and she used to throw in fried mint and parsley at the last minute, so it’s still crunchy when you eat it…’
‘Told you,’ says Cher. ‘What are these? Arab cakes?’
‘Iranian,’ says Hossein, and pronounces the ‘a’ long, like an aaah. ‘Not Arab. Iranian.’
‘Whatever,’ says Cher, and pops a little baklava in to chase down her sausage roll. ‘Nnnnfff,’ she says, and sprays pastry flakes over the blanket, ‘that’s sooo good.’
‘I know,’ says Hossein. ‘Really, it’s hard to believe that such beauty could come from an evil empire, isn’t it?’
‘Can we start the cake?’ interrupts Cher.