by Jackie Kay
Colman is awake in room 310. He is smoking and drinking whisky from the mini bar. Glenfiddich. Now that his father is dead, he will always drink malts. After years of hating the bark and the flame of a peppery malt, Colman now finds himself relishing it. Strange that – how your mouth can suddenly switch allegiances. From now on it will be one ‘wee nip’ after another. Colman knows all their names. His father was a malt fanatic. Glenfiddich (if there’s nothing better), Glenmorangie, Laphroaig, Jura, Lagavulin, Port Ellen, Talisker, Cardhu, Braes of Glenlivet, Ardberg, Caol Ila. High peat, low sweet. No more Jack Daniels or Bells or Teachers or any other common stuff. Colman sips away, smiling to himself. High peat, low sweet.
Sophie Stones has found out Edith Moore’s address. Colman looks drunkenly for the bit of paper Sophie had given him. Here it is; Number 12 The Larches. A sheltered housing scheme, one of those places where old people don’t lie dead for days unnoticed, where they can ring a red bell and see somebody before they drop dead. How would he feel if he was an old woman living in a house with an emergency bell and some stranger turned up out of the blue with a blonde journalist asking questions about her estranged daughter, Josephine Moore. Maybe he should let it be, let sleeping dogs lie. Maybe he shouldn’t visit her at all. What a shock he was going to be. Fuck. She might have a heart attack or something.
The idea suddenly occurs to him that he needn’t mention anything to Mrs Moore about his father. He could simply say he was a friend or something. Wouldn’t that be kinder than the truth? But it would be tricking her, lying to her. How can lies be better than the truth? Good lies. What they call ‘white’ lies. Lies that are harmless, innocent, told from the mouths of innocent harmless white people. He isn’t that, is he? Can a black guy like himself tell a white lie? If he says Josephine Moore was his mother it would stop the old girl having to hear about all the transvestite stuff. The tranny stuff has just about knocked him out so what would it do to an old woman? What would he say to Edith Moore? My father was a black man when I was a little boy. He was a famous black man who had a beautiful face and a high laugh. My father played the trumpet. He was so good at it that the whole world loved the sound of his trumpet. He played his trumpet so brilliantly that people listening would suddenly remember things they thought they had forgotten. His trumpet told stories, he used to say. Old, old stories. That was all, he would never say what the stories were exactly. You tell me, was what he said. As a treat sometimes, he would ask for ingredients to his story. Everyone present had to give one. Whatever you could think up. A butterfly. A chest. A little girl looking through a keyhole. Hair. A baby ape. An old woman in a house by the sea. And then he would make up a song on his trumpet, a song that would tell the story of all these things together, and sometimes it was possible for each person to recognize the music of the butterfly, of the wooden house, of the little girl. My father was a trumpet player. Internationally known. At the time of his death, he had made fourteen albums. He had won several awards and had played with other famous musicians of his day. My father was brought up in a small Scottish town called Greenock. His mother was white and his father was black and in his day this was very unusual. Does any of this ring a bell? My father was your daughter. Colman Moody tips the last of his third Glenfiddich into his glass. Drink always makes him rant in his head. He quite likes it. He’s one of those guys that is actually more articulate, at least to himself, when drunk.
That’s totally unrealistic, he thinks to himself. I can’t say any of that crap to the old woman. Maybe it won’t matter. There’s a good chance that Edith Moore won’t be all there. She could have senile dementia or Alzheimer’s or something like that. Yep, good chance that she won’t be the full shilling. But, she’s bound to have a couple of photographs. Just one would do. One picture of Josephine Moore.
TODAY’S TELEVISION
Every morning in life Edith Moore wakes at 6 a.m. If she has been lucky she will have slept between 2 a.m. and six. Most of the night she sleeps fitfully, the sleep of an insomniac who can never, even whilst asleep, quite trust the fact that she is actually sleeping. The older she becomes the more difficult it is to find a good night’s sleep. She has to picture herself walking through the woods of her childhood, past her old house with the big men’s booming voices, past a steel tub where she scrubs the backs of her uncles, past a long line of shoes and boots that stretch the length of the hall in her childhood house. These days, awake or asleep, she returns to that house. The past is so vivid; the present is so dull.
At six in the morning, the daylight arrives at last. Edith has watched it coming for some time. She gets up thankfully. Another day of life for the old body giving out. There is life outside her small house; she listens to it: the paper boy, the milk lorry. The warden will come in a few hours, to do her rounds, check that they are all still living! She moves her legs round to the floor, before trusting her feet to carry her weight, pulls on her needle-cord dressing gown. She walks into her bathroom and washes her face with freezing cold water. She never had hot water as a girl and still regards it as a luxury to wash her face with hot water. Edith Moore hates waste. She was so accustomed to hardship, she cannot allow life to go easy on her. She lives off her pension and never dips into her savings. She does not want for anything, but she worries about her bills, her gas and electric. She worries about the system for heating water that operates in this house. She never has found the switch that turns the hot water on, and yet when she does her dishes or has her bath, there it is, piping. When she goes to hand-wash her pants or her blouse or her bra or her nightie, it is still piping hot. She has asked her warden about the water and her warden has said hot water is always available because of the system. But where is the tank and the switch? Edith asked. ‘Never you worry your pretty head about that!’ the big warden replied, annoying Edith so much that she’d have loved to take a good swipe at her. The cheek of it. That beefy warden is so bone idle she can’t take the trouble to find out the things Edith needs to know. She’s too busy getting back to those big plates of noodles that Edith has spied her eating.
Edith likes the plain fare: boiled ham, cold chicken, a slice of tongue, greens, a bowl of Allbran, a nice banana. There’s plenty foods she avoids altogether now that she is eighty-seven. She is not a great fish eater. The taste and the smell of it stay with her for too long. Once she suffered a bit of fish to be polite to somebody. She has forgotten them, but the fish is still memorable. The stench. Never again. She hates foods that repeat themselves, just like she hates people who repeat themselves, or she used to. She has the strange feeling that she might be repeating herself, but she is never quite sure if she has said something before or not. Whenever she gets an opportunity to talk, even if it is to the warden, Edith finds she just can’t stop and has no idea afterwards what on earth she has said. But the sad feelings of her own words linger with her and she can feel them if she moves her tongue to the roof of her mouth. Pickled onions, pickled beetroot, gherkins, onions, sybies, blue cheese, anything curried, anything spicy. All to be avoided. All foods which repeat themselves.
The last time Edith saw her daughter Josephine, she brought her a carry-out curry. Edith had never tasted one before. She has in her possession many letters from her, safe in an old suitcase under her bed. The living, curly sight of her own daughter’s handwriting. She has not had one for over four months now and fears the worst. There’s one thing she’ll say for Josephine: she kept sending her cheques, every week. Every week for the past thirty years. She has strapped the letters in with the elastic bit of the suitcase that is usually used to keep clothes flat for their journey. Safe.
It was a chicken curry. Josephine assured her that it was ‘mild’. Which gave Edith the wrong idea; how could a curry be mild? Curries were wild, hot foods for hotshots and show-offs, for daredevils. The chicken was covered in a yellow spicy sauce that did not agree with her stomach. Edith remembers the unnaturally bright yellow colour of the sauce. And the peculiar fat bloated bread that came with it, th
e exaggerated bread that was named after a grandmother – what was its name? You were expected to tear wee bits off this giant bread and dip it into the yellow swimming sauce. Josephine sat there on that chair, quite the thing, dipping and licking her fingers, showing off. Which house was that? 20 Aberdower Street? 26 Graham Road? 35 Lochore Road? 18 Duncan Drive? Cracking a bit of a giant’s crisp named after a grandfather. Thingimibob. Edith can’t remember names any more. Pop. Pop goes the weasel.
The more she tugs, the more unravels. The night that Josephine brought the carry-out chicken curry she was wearing a man’s suit. Edith still asks herself about this. Why bring her a curry in a man’s suit? Why bring her a curry when she doesn’t like foreign food?
Old words she cannot reclaim, old phrases she cannot bring back to land, old memories that float further away from her as one day ebbs into the other. She imagines herself right over on the other side of the coast waving to the wee girl she once was who is walking with her skirt up gingerly into the sea.
Some memories have become more vivid as time has gone on. Some have shocked her by just shoring themselves up, like unexpected booty, treasure brought in by the tide. When those memories arrive home, and they tend to arrive at three in the afternoon when she is having her afternoon cup of tea with her gingernut biscuit dooked into her tea to soften it against her gums, when they arrive in through the back door she is shocked and still. But delighted. Old memories are like old relatives. She grabs the stick of liquorice, shoves it eagerly into her own mouth. Attacks the sherbet fountain.
Edith Moore passes a lot of her time remembering her husband, John Moore. Sometimes, he will spring up into her mind, fully formed. Other times, she will be trying to capture him. John Moore was different from any man Edith had ever met. His skin was very dark, his eyes the deepest darkest eyes she had ever seen. She saw John Moore’s eyes in the eyes of her little daughter. John Moore has been dead such a long time now. A whole lifetime away. So far back that she could have made him up. Except there he is, on the mantelpiece, smiling in his grey suit. The new homehelp – a nice girl, Cathy, but asks too many questions – picked up the photograph and said, ‘Oh my! He’s handsome. Who’s he?’ When Edith replied, ‘That was my husband,’ Cathy was shocked. Aye. She might have tried to hide it, but Edith saw it just the same. Shocked at her this auld, auld woman, going out with, no, married to, a black man. It was written all over her face. Edith watched her hoovering, thinking things. She watched her dusting Edith’s china, thinking things. She was sleekit, but she wasn’t sleekit enough for Edith. Sharp as a tack is Edith. She may not be ‘all there’ but she is still sharp as a tack with certain things. Not much gets past her. For a long while, John Moore’s picture was away in the cupboard. But she missed him. Missed having him in the room in his grey suit.
But it wasn’t just the suit. (She can still see that suit. It was dark, big broad lapels, linen. Very fine. No doubt about it. It had cost a penny or two.) It was the tie that did it. A hand-painted silk tie. It looked almost tropical. Pinks and blues, exotic. Now why had she gone and dressed herself like that and what was it she had been saying to her? Edith can’t remember a single word. The memory has no sound. It is a silent movie. There is Josephine, eating her curry with the sleeves of her shirt rolled up and her tie flicked back over her shoulder to stop it getting stained with the bright yellow sauce.
In her memory, her daughter is moving in the jerky, uncoordinated way that people move in the silent movies of the past. Her arms look big for her body and her elbows are awkward and her eyes move too fast. The suit jacket is over the back of the wooden chair.
You never know the minute, Edith says to herself. When you are a mother you never know the minute that your child will go and do something downright peculiar and then go missing. Josephine was all she had. Josephine hasn’t written for ages now, nor sent the regular weekly money she is usually so good at sending. The money that Edith cannot bring herself to spend, but puts away in her savings for a rainy day. Perhaps she went away abroad for a while. Perhaps she’s been awful busy. Why won’t she come and visit like she used to? Nobody knows her like Josephine knew her. And if nobody knows you how can you be yourself? Edith could be somebody different every day and most probably nobody would notice.
Even her doctor wouldn’t notice. He sees that many crabbit old women, he probably gets them all mixed up. Edith had to have Doctor Ferguson out the other morning with her angina pains. The doctor said to her, ‘Well, Mrs Moore, you’re no getting any younger.’ And Edith said, ‘That I’m not, doctor.’
Edith opens her paper to see what’s on the telly today. The telly keeps her better company than anybody now. It’s a good day today because the snooker is on and Edith loves watching the snooker. And at eight-thirty on BBC 2, there’s a big romance with costumes. Edith enjoys seeing them, all dressed up in their fineries from the past.
INTERIORS
It is 9.27 on Colman Moody’s digital watch. He gets up and staggers into the shower. The shower thunders down on him, pounding and shaming him awake. If only his shower could work like this hotel’s shower, he’d be laughing. Today he needs to be conscious, fully awake, in charge of himself. He whistles in the shower.
It is 10.47 and he is ready for the off. He’s nervous now. He couldn’t eat much of the big buffet breakfast downstairs or take in anything more than a headline. He has on clean trousers and a denim shirt. 12 The Larches, Colman says the address out loud, 12 The Larches.
It is 11.18. A row of bungalows in a round with a clump of larch trees in the middle. A few curtains go back in the round of houses and an old suspicious face peers from each one. There is no face behind the lace curtains of Number 12. Maybe she is not in. Damn. He meant to get here earlier. Mini bars are bastards. He’d have been all right if that ominous dwarf fridge had not been waiting for him when he got back, had not opened its wee door and offered itself up to him.
He chaps the door cautiously, then louder. He hasn’t used the word ‘chap’ in his puff. He is becoming his father. Jesus, he is turning into his father. His father would often say, ‘Who’s that chapping at the door?’ Where did that come from? Was it because only men used to knock on people’s doors? He chaps again and peers through the letterbox. She might be dead on the floor. Nobody answers. He knocks harder. She might be deaf. The old biddy is what? Eighty-seven? Eighty-eight? Something like that if she’s a day. The blue door of Number 12 remains closed. Colman tries to imagine the door opening and a woman emerging from behind it, looking him up and down as if he was going to rob her, mug her, murder her, lock her in her wardrobe for days, tie her to her armchair, make off with her tin box of savings, under her bed. Pull her mattress back and yank out her savings. Men that look exactly like Colman are always in the news. Some top arsehole in the police said recently that black guys were more likely to be muggers than white guys. It is quite possible that Edith Moore is somewhere in that small house spying on him, terrified that he has come to mug her. So he shouts something just in case, through the letterbox. ‘Mrs Moore? Mrs Moore. I knew your daughter. Mrs Moore. Mrs Moore. Are you at home?’ Colman is close to tears. Perhaps it’s the hangover, but he shouts, his voice nearly breaking, ‘I won’t do you no harm.’
The curtains at the nearby Larch houses are pulled back now. Mrs Tweedy is out in her bit of front garden. Mr Harrison is on his path. Mrs Scott is at her window. Mrs Saviour and Miss Innes are all standing staring. The other folk are ailing and cannot get to their windows so easily, but they are listening. Mrs Mason, the warden, is on her way to find out who the young man is who is banging at Edith Moore’s door.
It is rare for somebody to turn up at the Larches that nobody has ever seen before. People know that Mr Harrison’s daughter comes twice a week. That Mrs Sinclair’s daughters take it in turns. That Mrs Tweedy has no one. That Miss Innes has a couple of mobile friends. That Mrs Saviour has the minister and the doctor out regularly. But nobody has ever seen this young man before.
‘Can I help you?’ Mrs Mason asks Colman.
‘I’m looking for Mrs Moore. This is her house, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, a Mrs Moore lives there right enough. She’s probably out. She goes out more than anybody here. For her messages. Likes to get them fresh every few days.’
Colman is wondering how he can prove who he is. His head is full of the news. Perhaps they think he’s a criminal. Why else are they all staring at him? ‘She’s the only one around here that still goes out for her own groceries,’ Mrs Mason is saying. The name Colman Moody won’t mean a thing. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, ‘I’ll try again.’ ‘Dear, dear, from your accent, you’ve come a long way, have you not?’ ‘London,’ Colman says. It is on the tip of the warden’s tongue to offer Colman a cup of tea at her place whilst he waits because Edith is never out long. ‘Why don’t you go down to the shops and have a look for her. If you turn right just there at the top of …’
‘I don’t know what she looks like,’ Colman says, before he manages to stop himself.
‘What did he say?’ asks Mrs Saviour.
‘He doesn’t know what she looks like. He doesn’t know what she looks like,’ says Mr Harrison whose hearing is absolutely perfect.
The older Edith Moore gets, the more she suspects that other people want to pry into the business that is her own life. The older she gets the more certain she is that all the other Larch folk want to do with their time is drink Edith’s tea, eat Edith’s light sponge and pry into Edith’s past. The old people at the Larches can take over your life. None of them invites her back to their place. All they want is to come to her place and take up afternoons and afternoons of her time. She is fighting fit compared to most of the old buggers – apart from her angina pains. A hospital doctor recently told her that her heart and her lungs are the youngest looking organs he had ever seen for someone of her years. Perfect, he said, perfect organs. Edith felt quite proud. She can still walk. A bit shaky on the old pins, but she can make it there and back to the row of shops on the main street.