by Sara Alexi
As she clicks the kettle on, the phone rings.
“Hi Mum!”
“Terrance, did you get your essay in on time?” Juliet asks.
“Yes, no worries. Just wondered if you were coming home soon or what.”
“Come home to where, love?”
“I don’t know, just home.”
“Darling, I don’t have a home there anymore.” Images of the home where they all lived together for so many years spin in her thoughts. The moments of laughter, cups of tea, the coziness of them all together, the Englishness of it all.
“So that’s it, you’ve gone?”
“You and Thomas helped me plan this. We searched maps together to decide on location. You and Thomas divided all the household stuff out between you when I whittled my belongings down to two bags. Why are you …?” Juliet looks at the clock. “It’s six in the morning where you are. Why are you even up so early?”
“Mum, just come home. It’s Easter in a week.”
“OK, Terrance what is it?” Juliet pushes her hair off her face before putting her hand on her hip. She looks at the floor, taps her toe, waiting for the whole story. It feels like a familiar action, a practised patience.
“Look, there’s been a bit of a cock up.”
Juliet sighs and sits down. These words tell her this has something to do with money. Thomas is amazing with money, but then again he is earning. Terrance, on the other hand, the dreamer, never has it under control.
“The job I had at the university bar? Well I was studying one evening and I sort of got so carried away with it that I forgot to go. Well, that idiot James from the first year was there, at the bar I mean, so he took my shift and must have done some super grovelling because, well, basically, he took my job.”
“And?” This sounds so familiar.
“And, well, I was looking for another job, but I had ages before I needed to pay the rent and I had a bit in the bank. But, wouldn’t you know it, last week Jim finally said he had fixed my car but he wanted two hundred quid. So really, if it wasn’t for Jim, I would have my rent money. But the landlord says he is coming round at the end of the week, he kind of threatened, saying he had a load of students who wants this room and if ...”
Juliet cuts him short. “Do you have a job now?”
“I have even heard he can get really heavy, Mum. Someone said he chased a student out through the ground floor window with a stick once.”
“Terrance. Do you have a job now?”
“At least it was a ground floor. Yes, in a student sandwich shop. I talked the manager into opening more hours and giving me a job, but he won’t pay me till the end of the month.”
“You have the gift of the Blarney stone, Terrance. I’m not sure you deserve it!”
“The end of the month, Mum. Are you even taking me seriously? What’ll I do about the rent?”
“OK, listen. Is the sandwich shop enough to pay the rent?”
“No. I’m on my way to a job cleaning the floors of the local co-op before the shop opens.”
“Ahh, so that is why you are out of bed so early.”
“Come on. This is not funny. What am I going to do? They’re not going to pay me till the end of the week and all I have is a bag of rice and half a bottle of ketchup.”
“And a car and a mug for a mum.”
“The best mum in the world, you mean. You couldn’t see your way to lending me a bit in advance of my jobs, could you?”
“It had to be something like this to get you out of bed so early.”
“Mum, can you? Please?”
“Last time, Terrance?” The cat has jumped on Juliet’s knee; she strokes it and kisses its head.
“Absolutely!”
“I’ll transfer it online, and it’ll be cleared in three days. Is that OK?”
“Fantastic. Thanks, Mum, you are the best.”
“Apart from that, how’s your life?”
“It’s great. I’ve hooked up with a girl called Emma. She’s doing a Ph.D. in Waste Management. She took a look at my dissertation and said it was really good. She’s going to Peru on some work experience exchange or something. I do miss you though, Mum.”
“Yes, but you are fine really?”
“Yup. Brilliant! No worries. Got to go. Time to scrub floors for a living. Thanks for the money, Mum. You are a saint. Love you.”
“Love you too.” But the line is already dead. Immediate desolation freezes the room. It is a familiar feeling for Juliet.
It was exciting when the boys first went to university. She was backwards and forwards to them, covering the country. The joke was they had chosen universities on the opposite ends of the UK just to be awkward.
That was the time when Juliet decided to take her love of the Greek language, which she had begun to learn all that time ago with Michelle when they went on holiday, to a new level.
She applied, and was accepted, to do it as a degree at the local technical college, full time but based on home studies. She and the boys were all students together and qualified together. That was a great three years.
Juliet realised, retrospectively, that the fervour that fired her studies had been a wall to conceal the divorce that she and Mick started as soon as the boys were studying. Mick even said that her chasing around the country after them was trying to compensate for the separation. ‘Guilty conscience,’ he called it. Desperate to get far away, Juliet would retaliate.
Juliet was determined that they wouldn’t feel rejected or squeezed out by her and Mick’s alienation. The most important thing for Juliet was for her boys to know that her love continued even if her marriage didn’t. So she chased around and studied hard until they all stood in cap and gown receiving their rolled parchments, each in a different little bit of England.
Thomas got a job in the town where he had studied for his degree and he said he had no plans to move back near her. Then Terrance continued his studies for another two years with his M.A., and it was Juliet who began to feel abandoned.
When the divorce came through, the house went on the market, all was amicably split (even if Mick was grumpy and sarcastic), and Juliet moved into a poky flat round the corner from the family home and finished her degree. She had no idea where she was meant to go after that.
She was saved by an offer from her tutor to do some translation work. It began with one piece he just didn’t have the energy for and grew from there. Juliet channelled her energies into making it her career. She fell lucky and found she had a niche market.
Her work grew, her confidence to be alone grew, and when Terrance announced that he would probably stay on after his next year to do a Ph.D., Juliet gathered the courage to be selfish and consider the move to the warmer climate where her soul had lodged and remained unmoved for ten years.
The sound of a horn brings Juliet to the present. Juliet glances at the clock. Aaman is over an hour late. The horn belongs to a truck promised the day before. “But, never mind, it is here today,” the driver smiles. It takes them half an hour to load the rubbish and Juliet gloats at the space left behind as it drives away.
Aaman is an hour and a half late.
Juliet sits with a coffee, the cat, and a good book until she realises she is kidding herself and she is killing time waiting for Aaman.
He is two and three quarter hours late.
Juliet, feeling empty, looks in the fridge. It too is empty. Thoughts search for why Aaman is late, re-running events of the previous day. Things said. Things unsaid. Intuition knows he is not coming. That snaps her into a decision and she arms herself with shopping bags and purse and heads to the car.
A farmer’s market is held in the next village twice a week. In amongst the stalls, the perfume of fresh vegetables is delicate, hovering like the smell of rain. Juliet pushes thoughts of Aaman and Terrance aside as she strolls along. She tries to recapture the impression the market had on her on her first visit, the envelopment of a foreign culture, the excitement of the unusual. The expectancy o
f everything and anything. The limitless possibilities.
Passing the first array of fruit, she is beckoned with barked ‘hellos!’ and bellowed promises of the best ware. There is noise everywhere as the sellers compete for customers. Juliet cheers as the callers’ sounds merge with people near her chatting in the relative cool of the shade under the stalls’ canvas covers. Clusters of people, clothed in the colours of summer, catching up with each other, passing pleasantries, rehearsed clichés, and niceties block the path of her progress. No one hurries. The fruit stalls heave with the abundance of the season. Red, yellow, and orange compete with the vegetables in purple, white, sand, and green. This is a time for vegetables and neighbours, sustenance of body and spirit. Juliet’s soul lifts itself from its resting place and soars with wings amidst the songs of exchange.
She stops to look at apples when another stall holder calls, “Hey, pretty lady. You come buy from me, for you very cheap price. Where you from? America? I have a brother in Boston. England? I have a cousin in Birmingham.”
Juliet is hooked. He is smiling at her, a cheeky smile inviting her to collude, to suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride.
She accepts.
“I’m from England. I was born in a town called Bradford.”
“Ah Bradford, I have uncle in Bradford.”
“Sure, does he have a vegetable stall there?”
“No, he works in a vegetable shop. It is posh in Bradford.”
Juliet laughs.
“Bradford posh, I don’t think so.”
He looks the length of her, self-satisfied that he has her attention.
“Tell me,” he murmurs in a lecherous way, “tell me about your Bradford.” He is only in his twenties, playing the role.
Juliet is flattered by the attention and enjoying the banter. Besides, she hasn’t spoken to anyone face to face except Aaman for she isn’t sure how many days.
“It is full of Victorian stone buildings that need a good wash, mills that have been revived for families to visit as ‘an experience’ at the weekend, and rows and rows of back-to-back houses.”
His interest is quickened to learn a new English phrase. “What is this ‘back-to-back houses’?”
“Long streets of stone houses where each one joins the next, a terrace of houses, and each house has another house built on the back facing the opposite way. It was a cheap way of building lots of houses for the workers of the mills, when they were working.”
“Stone houses, very expensive.”
“No, as cheap as it comes. It is full of Pakistanis. In some areas of Bradford, there are more Pakistani children than British children in the schools.”
“Rich Pakistanis!”
“Ha, yes! I guess some of them are now.” Juliet’s childhood view of the Pakistanis shifts. Then they were poor migrants, today many are affluent Britons of many generations. “But there are still some that are poor.”
“But not in England.” He beams as he waves a parting gesture, more a flourish of finality as he has lost Juliet. She has wandered on, her mind balancing and adjusting her preconceived thoughts around Pakistanis in England forty some years ago, when she was growing up, with the people of Asian origin who live there now. Aaman comes to mind. His situation, compared to the Pakistanis of Bradford, is absolutely desperate. Separated by such a distance from his wife and family with no notion of when or how he will return. No passport, no papers, no money, no permanent job. Just the clothes he stands in. The same clothes every day. Desperate. Her anger with him for not showing up dissolves. She hopes he is safe wherever he is.
With bags and bags of fresh fruit and vegetables, Juliet drives home. The cat is waiting and grows delirious as it smells fresh fish from the market.
Juliet chooses an old terracotta pot to be the cat’s bowl. She empties some of the little fish into the dish and puts it on the floor next to the fridge. The cat lifts his head to her to be stroked before he hungrily eats.
With a glass of water after the heat of the day at the market, Juliet revives. It had been good to talk to Terrance. She decides to call Thomas.
“Mum? Hey, good to hear from you. Have you spoken to Terrance? He has got himself in a financial pickle again.”
“Yes, I spoke to him; I am just transferring something to him now.” Juliet picks up her laptop.
“Mug.”
“I would do the same for you, in fact I remember a time when ...”
“So how is it out there Mum? Are you happy?”
“Yes, it’s great, I have just been to the market. You must come, with Cheri, you would love it.”
“We’re thinking about it, it’s just that getting time off together is proving tricky. Have you made any friends?”
“No, well yes, I think so. I have had a man here working for me from Pakistan. At first I think I was resenting him being here a bit but now I like it. He works really hard.”
“You’ve made friends with a builder?”
“He’s not really a builder more sort of a house boy …”
Juliet pulls the phone away from her ear as Thomas bawls with laughter.
“House boy! You have made a friend and it is with your house boy. Mum, tell me you are kidding. Please!”
“Thomas. Stop it. Maybe house boy is the wrong term. He does all jobs that need doing around the house, from washing pots inside to moving rubble outside. He is very sweet, a little unsure of himself and sometimes a bit full of himself.”
“And you have made friends with him because?” Thomas is hooting between words.
“There is no because, he is just working for me at the moment and we are getting to know each other.”
Thomas finally manages to control himself and stops laughing.
“Mum, be careful.” Juliet can see him wiping his laughter tears from his eyes. “There are plenty of people in the world that will take advantage of anyone who appears alone, lonely even. Why don’t you come back here for a visit? You can stay with us. We have just rented a bigger flat so there’s room if you don’t mind the settee for a bed.”
“You are sweet sometimes, when you’re not being mean. When did you decide on a new flat?”
“Cheri got promoted so we are using the difference in pay to get somewhere bigger. It’s not much bigger, but as least we have a sitting room now.”
“Well done, Thomas, let me know if you need any help.”
“Not me, Mum. I’ll leave that up to Terrance. But seriously, if you want to come back for a holiday, just say so. But I’m afraid we don’t have a house boy to run after you.”
Thomas disappears into his own laughter again. Juliet hears him slapping his thigh and can picture him, knees curling to his chest rocking backwards the way he always did as a boy when he could no longer control himself. She smiles at the image, but with a touch of sadness from loss.
The chortles subside.
“Mum, actually, I have to go, I have to pick Cheri up. Can we talk later?”
“Sure. You go and talk her into a visit here and let me know if you need anything.”
After a reluctant goodbye, Juliet finishes the money transfer to Terrance and leans back on the sofa. The cat is at the door, and another cat is sniffing him nose to nose. They head bump and the new cat falls to the floor, rolling onto its back, wafting its paws in an invitation to play. The original cat licks its paws and ignores its new friend.
Wondering if her attitude to Aaman is reasonable, Juliet cuts herself some bread. She intends to eat the rest of the yogurt, the rice-stuffed vine leaves, and the olives she bought at the market. Aaman is a paid employee but he is also a person. She expects him to be subservient, or at least say thank you when she offers him things. But is that because she grew up in Bradford all those years ago which led her to accept that as normal? Maybe what she offers now is as it should be, no thanks necessary. Bloody Mick. Mick treated her with such disrespect for so long and took everything she did totally for granted that she no longer knows the reasonable way to act or what t
o expect.
Thomas didn’t help. But then, what does Thomas know?
The phone rings.
“Hi Juliet. How’s it going? Did you get rid of the cat?”
“Michelle, hi! Wow, loads of phone calls today. No, the cat has now taken up permanent residence. I gave it fish today.”
“Does the cat have a name now?”
“No, I don’t want to get that friendly. If I name it, I claim it, and I don’t want to claim anyone, or for that matter, be claimed by anyone.”
“Uh hum, that sounds mysterious. What’s up?”
“How have we managed to stay friends all these years? I mean, we hardly ever see each other, I am so lax at calling you so, seriously, I don’t mean to be rude, but why do you still call me?”
“Because you don’t fool me with your hard man act, ‘Jules’. You keep forgetting how long we’ve known each other. You act all tough. But why would someone who is tough and sure of themselves let someone like Mick under their skin? He was a cry for help if anything ever was. But I understand. I knew your mum when we were kids, and if anyone deserves someone to stand up for them, it’s you.”
There is a loud silence. Juliet had clearly been asking a rhetorical question.
“Have you hung up again, Juliet?”
“No.” Juliet strokes her scarred arm, her thin skin ripples at her touch.
“Well, don’t. Come on, tell me how things are shaping up.”
There is a long, deliberating pause.
“The garden is looking better. There are tiny buds that will ripen into bursting red fruit on the pomegranate tree.”
“Yes, you said you had some men digging away. Have they moved your three mattresses yet or will you be sleeping under the stars?”
“I have found one man to help. He cleared the garden. Really quickly actually. He was so determined, strong. He’s one of those people who doesn’t let anything stand in his way and just gets on with the job.”
“Wow, does he have a brother for me? He could help with my garden.”
“Ha ha, no. Find your own house boy.”
“House boy. Ooo Juliet, that sounds like fun!”
“Well, I had to shape him up a bit at the start, you know how it is, but he is working out just fine.” Juliet is laughing. “But seriously, he has been great. When it rained, obviously he couldn’t work outside, so he came in and cleaned out the old kitchen cupboards that had been just left. He laid the fire, even cleaned my bathroom without me asking.”