by Francis King
He found the right bus at Brighton station, and he and a foreign-looking, elderly man in an open-necked aertex shirt and a Panama hat, helped her up the steep steps on to it. ‘I’m quite a weight,’ she told the elderly man, who was out of breath when he and Mehmet had finally got her to a seat. ‘No, no, madam. No!’ the old man gallantly protested between puffs for air.
When they reached the front, she and Mehmet strolled, arm in arm, along it. Like two lovers, she thought. Then, because she was getting an ache in her calves and had increasing difficulty in picking up her feet, they sat in one of the shelters. ‘I like just sitting here – watching the world go by,’ she told Mehmet. And what a world! There was an almost nude, elderly man (no more than a rag of a thing to cover his parts), who was pierced with rings everywhere, nipples, nostrils, navel, earlobes, even there. The Lord of the Rings, she told Mehmet; but of course he didn’t get her little joke. There was a young couple, she extremely fat and he extremely thin, who were so much all over each other, hands everywhere, mouths glued together, that one wondered how they were able to walk. A real exhibition! There were also innumerable old people, hardly able to totter along, with their little, yapping dogs. There were also a lot of people – the young were the saddest – who were being pushed along in wheelchairs by minders whose faces almost all had identical expressions of combined dutifulness and boredom. She pointed to one of these wheelchairs, containing an ancient, bearded man, his shrivelled legs bare beneath exiguous shorts, with a tall, erect woman, like a grenadier, pushing him. ‘That’s how I’ll end up,’ she told Mehmet. ‘Nonsense, Mamma. You are getting better and better.’ When he said it with that conviction, she almost believed that the troubles of the night before had been no more than a nasty nightmare.
Before they went for fish-and-chips at a café down on the beach, she told him that they must find that cashpoint. It had to be a Woolwich one, she said, but after examining the card he said No, she could use that card anywhere, though that way it might cost her a little extra. Would she like him to go to get the money – he was sure that there’d be a bank somewhere near – while she waited for him in the shelter? She suffered a brief dread (once she had told him her pin number, might he not draw out what he could and vanish?) and then a deep shame at having entertained such an idea. Anyone could see that he was honest, one hundred per cent – which was more than could be said for Eric, who was constantly returning from his cruises with things that by rights were the property of his employers.
The fish-and-chips were delicious, much better than those from that chippy in Kingsland Road, and she enjoyed her glass of Guinness with them. Mehmet had opted for a glass of wine, from which, at his urging, she sipped, wrinkling her nose. ‘ I’ve not really got the taste for wine. Now my Eric – with him it was a different matter. He was quite the connoisseur.’
It was a long walk, with many stops to rest on a succession of benches, to the pier. There were some really gorgeous girls about and you’d have expected him to look at them. But not a bit of it. ‘That girl’s giving you the eye’ she told him at one point; but he laughed and shrugged, totally uninterested. ‘Well, it’s only to be expected,’ she said. ‘You’re much the most handsome man to be seen.’
‘Nonsense, Mamma!’
On the pier they played the machines with money that she recklessly dug out of her bag. From time to time they were laughing together and even hugging each other at some small win; but more often they were groaning when, just as the grabber seemed about to bring them some treasure, it suddenly dropped it, or when a ball just failed to enter a hole.
The most wonderful moment of the day occurred at the shooting gallery, where, after a number of tries, he at last won her a huge pale-blue teddy bear. At once he handed it to her. ‘For you, Mamma.’
‘For me?’
‘Sure.’
‘But haven’t you a girlfriend to whom you’d like to give it?’
‘I have no girlfriend.’
Could she believe that? She found it hard to do so. She held the teddy bear up before her, inspecting it, and then she cuddled it against her face. It had an odd smell, like that of the cellophane wrapping taken off a packet of fish fingers. But she loved its soft fur and its small, expressionless, night-dark eyes. ‘ You’ll have to carry him,’ she told Mehmet.
‘That’s all right, Mamma.’
On the journey home, the train was crowded; but they had been early enough to get two seats. ‘ I think I’ll take a little nap,’ she told him. ‘I feel quite done in. But in the nicest way,’ she added. She put a hand on the head of the teddy bear, which was seated in her lap.
‘Maybe I go along to the bar.’
‘Yes, do that, love. It’s boring for you to sit here listening to me snoring.’
‘I bring you something?’
‘Oh, no. Thank you. I’ve eaten and drunk far too much already.’
‘Sure?’
‘Sure.’ She looked up at him, with a sudden access of gratitude and love.
When she opened her eyes, the train was entering Victoria and he was walking down the aisle towards her. She yawned and then, putting a hand up to her mouth, yawned again. ‘I had a lovely snooze.’
‘I saw you.’
‘I don’t feel tired at all now. Quite my old self.’
‘Quite your young self,’ he corrected her.
As they were passing out through the automatic gates – these days there never seemed to be anyone to inspect the tickets, there must be an awful lot of cheating going on – an odd thing happened. There were three girls behind them, and one of them jostled her rudely in her eagerness to hurry through. Meg turned to say something, but before she could open her mouth another member of the trio addressed Mehmet. ‘ So we meet again!’ She laughed. ‘A bad penny,’ said the third girl. They all laughed. Then they all pushed through and the girl who had jostled Meg turned her head and shouted at Mehmet: ‘See you!’
‘See you,’ he repeated in an unenthusiastic, embarrassed voice.
‘Who were those?’ Meg asked. A shaft of jealousy had pierced her, taking her by surprise, since jealousy was something almost unknown to her.
‘Oh, they were in bar. One spoke to me. Asked for cigarette.’ he added.
Meg felt like saying ‘ Pull the other one!’, seeing that there was no smoking on the train. The jealousy lingered.
Back home, Mehmet sat her down in her armchair and said that he would make the supper for them.
‘There’s not much in the fridge,’ she said.
‘Never mind. I make pasta.’ He went into the kitchen and soon began whistling as he went about his task.
Meg cared for pasta even less than for pizza. It was odd that he never remembered that. But she would not tell him that she would much rather have two poached eggs, or even sardines, on toast. Suddenly Mehmet reappeared with a glass of Guinness for her. ‘ Oh, I mustn’t! You want to make me squiffy!’
‘I want to make you happy.’
‘But I am happy. Very happy.’
There was a lot of this kind of affectionate banter between them as they ate the spaghetti, which he had prepared with some tinned tomato sauce found in her store cupboard.
‘I know it’s wrong to cut up spaghetti, but I just can’t manage it otherwise.’
‘I’ll show you.’
They both laughed as his lesson all too often ended in a strand of spaghetti falling either on the length of tissue that she had tucked under her chin or on to the floor.
‘I’ll never get it,’ she sighed, her eyes moist with tears of laughter.
‘Mamma will, Mamma will!’ It was as much an order as a prophecy.
She watched the telly, the teddy bear once again in her lap, while he washed up. Then he returned. ‘All done,’ he said. He rubbed his hands together, as though on that warm day he was feeling cold. He gave a little shudder. She wondered if perhaps he was sickening for something. Once again his face, so healthily flushed in Brighton, was looking alarmingly p
ale.
‘Are you all right, dear?’
‘All right? Of course, Mamma. What is wrong with me?’
He sat down in an upright chair just behind her, as though he were planning to watch the television programme over her shoulder. She heard the chair creak and creak again, as he shifted in it. Then he said: ‘Mamma, there is something I want ask you. Something important.’
‘Yes, love? Anything, anything.’ But already she felt uneasy. He had never before addressed her in that sombre, official tone. It was like being spoken to by that young man at the Social Security, the one who always wore a tie-pin and glasses attached to a silver chain which dangled round the back of his neck, to swing from side to side when he was being emphatic about something.
‘I am in trouble, Mamma. No residence permit, no work permit. You know so. Any work for me without work permit is bad, long hours, little money.’ He sighed.
She had half-turned her head but she could not see him properly, seated there behind her. Why couldn’t he come and sit in the sofa, where she could see him? ‘Do turn that off,’ she said. She pointed at the set. ‘I haven’t got the thingummy.’ He jumped up. Somehow she had sensed already that what he was going to tell her was too important for her to listen to while she was also watching Eastenders.
Reseated, still behind her, he resumed. ‘I need you do something. You my only friend in England. Others – a lot of talk, a lot of ‘‘Hello, Mehmet, how is Mehmet, let me buy Mehmet a drink’’, but when I need help, real help …’
‘What is it you want?’ Her anxiety was mounting.
Suddenly he rose, lifted up his chair and placed it in front of her. He sat down on it, leaned forward.
‘Two days ago, in bar, I am talking to man. From Ukraine. Before he is illegal. Illegal like me. Now he has residence permit, work permit. How?’ He put the question that he had clearly been expecting her, sitting dazed before him, her mouth open, to put. ‘He marry English girl. Not real marriage,’ he went on. ‘ English girl is – what you say? – likes other women.’
‘Lesbian,’ Meg murmured. She had had a schoolmistress who had been like that. She was always trying to persuade Meg and one or two of the other girls to go bird watching with her. Not that she ever laid a finger on any of them or even said anything, but one always knew, didn’t one?
‘He give her thousand pounds and she marries him. Easy. For six months he lives in flat with her and her friend, girlfriend. After – free!’
‘So?’ But she already knew what would follow.
‘I want you marry me.’ He leaned forward in the chair. His eyes pleaded with her. She had never been able to resist the beauty of those eyes, glittering like mica when tiredness had not dulled them. ‘You have done so much for Mehmet, Mamma. Please! It is not real marriage,’ he added, as though she had not already taken that in. ‘Easy. And so important for me. Of course,’ he hurried on, ‘I cannot give you thousand now. But when I have work permit, I have job, and when I have job, I have pay, good pay.’
She felt one of those puppet-on-a-string spasms jerk her whole body to the right and then upwards, almost as though she were about to levitate. She had a momentary difficulty in getting out the words that she wanted. Then she said: ‘But Mehmet – I’m married already!’
‘If husband leave wife – vanish – you cannot get divorce?’ He was incredulous.
‘But I don’t know that I want a divorce. I mean – he might come back. Any day.’ But since more than four years had passed, she knew that that was now highly unlikely.
Again his eyes pleaded with her, searching her face and, as it seemed to her, her inmost being for what he wanted. ‘Please!’
She gazed at the unlit television screen, seeing on it a multi-coloured blob, the reflection of herself, and, obscuring that blob, another, uniformly dark one, of him. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, knowing already that she had, in effect, to choose between him and Eric. Then, surprising herself as much as she surprised Mehmet, she suddenly found herself sobbing. ‘Why does life have to be so bloody difficult?’
‘What is so difficult, Mamma? This is not difficult. First divorce. Then marry. Then live together, as we live together now. Easy!’ He got off his chair and knelt on the floor beside her. That was how men were supposed to propose to their sweethearts in the old days, but there was nothing romantic about this proposal. ‘ Mamma, Mehmet beg this of you. For him it is – it is life or death. Ukraine man told me –’
She cut in on that. She had no desire to hear anything more about that bugger from the Ukraine. ‘I must think about all this. I feel confused. It’s been so – so unexpected. My poor head’s in a whirl, aching.’ She was struggling to get out of the armchair. Suddenly she thought, as she pressed down on the arms of the chair with her hands and down on the carpet with her feet, all to no purpose: Yes, this is the end of that remission. I knew the bloody thing was coming back and now here it is.
As in the past, when he saw her struggling to rise, he jumped to his feet and put out a hand, which she then gripped. Automatically, as she got to her feet, she said ‘There we are!’, as she had always said. And then: ‘Thanks.’
‘Lean on me,’ he said.
But for some reason, having done that so often in the past, she now had an aversion to doing it. ‘I’m all right. Just give me the crutches, there’s a love.’
He fetched them for her, handing them to her one after the other. She settled them in her armpits, wriggling her body. ‘Feels quite like old times.’ She smiled but it was not really a joke. ‘I’m going to turn in,’ she announced. ‘It’s been a long day.’ And such a happy day, she thought, until he had had to spoil it. ‘I’ll be thinking – thinking about that – that’ – she all but said ‘proposal’ and then went on – ‘that idea of yours. I can’t give an immediate Yes or No. You can see that, can’t you?’
‘Of course, Mamma.’ But she could see that she had upset him, from the way in which, instead of looking at her, he kept looking either in the direction of the television set or down to the floor. ‘I get you something before you go bed?’
‘Nothing, thank you, love.’
‘Some tea?’
‘Oh, no. That’ll only keep me awake.’
But she was kept awake anyway, as she struggled with her dilemma. She loved that boy, there was no doubt about it, she had to face the fact. He was always being so good to her, cooking her that blasted pasta he so much liked or warming her up a pizza, fetching her cups of Nes or tea, helping her to make her bed, and even insisting on doing the ironing if Fiona hadn’t had enough time. He was always so affectionate, holding her hand, putting an arm round her, or kissing her to say good morning or goodnight. He called her mamma and she really did believe that that was how he thought of her – she was now his mother in place of the mother so far away in Albania. Oh, she so much wanted to help him, and Sylvia had told her that, now that Eric had been gone so long without ever giving any sign, a divorce would be as easy as pie. But, but, but …
The truth was that she still believed, she still knew, that some day, suddenly, without any warning, she would hear a ring at the door and there would be Eric, the two battered Revelation suitcases, fastened with straps, beside him and his brown trilby jauntily tilted to one side of his head, smiling at her, as in the old days when he returned from a cruise. How could she divorce him when, sure as eggs is eggs, eventually that would happen? How could she then face him and say: ‘Sorry, sweetheart. I’m married to another bloke’? She could never do that to him. But, but, but …
When she was not telling herself that she had to think of Eric, she was telling herself: ‘ You have to think of yourself, old girl.’ That had been shitty behaviour of his, saying that he just couldn’t cope any more, and then skedaddling like that, without a word of warning. Who could forgive something like that? But she knew the answer to that: she could. When she searched her heart, she knew that Eric was not merely the first but also the one and only. Yes, she had to admit it, Sylvia was r
ight when she had told her ‘ I do believe that you still love that little rat.’
Eventually, shortly after four, Meg tottered out of bed and in doing so swerved against the chest of drawers in the overcrowded little bedroom and knocked off it the bulky Argos catalogue balanced on its edge. There was a loud thump, and then Mehmet was calling out: ‘Everything all right, Mamma?’
‘Yes, everything all right. I’m just on my way to have a wee.’ She had not really been on her way to have a wee, but now she felt obliged to make her perilous, painful way down the corridor to the bathroom.
‘Want any help?’
‘No, love. Thank you.’ Perhaps he, too, had been too worried to sleep.
Back in the bedroom, she took from a drawer the bottle of sleeping pills prescribed for her by Dr Karapiet. He had told her never to take more than one but now she recklessly swallowed three. The glass of water that Mehmet placed each night by her bedside was already almost empty but she managed somehow to get them down.
When, next morning, she entered the kitchen, Mehmet was sitting in his usual chair, his back to her, and eating his usual breakfast of a bowl of cereal and three slices of toast. Strangely, he did not turn round at the sound of her approach.
‘Good morning, Mehmet. How are we this morning?’
She hoped that her assumed cheeriness would conceal her feeling of dread.
Slowly he turned, without his usual smile. ‘Good morning, Mamma. You sleep well?’
‘No. Hardly a wink until at, oh, it must have been past four, I took a sleeping pill. Three sleeping pills, to be exact.’
‘Why you do that?’
‘Because I couldn’t sleep.’ She limped over to her place and sat herself down. Her left leg was tingling. ‘ I feel a wreck. I don’t know why I take those sleeping pills. Talk about that morning after feeling! They give me a real hangover.’
Usually he would have said something sympathetic, even patted her hand. Now, lifting a spoon of cornflakes to his mouth, he merely nodded his head.