by Ann Kelley
‘Mimi?
‘Yes, the charming jolie-laide. One of her many rings.’
‘Really? Mum’s eyes widen in interest. ‘I’ll write it down for you.’
Later, Mum says she had no idea that Mimi had been to Herr Weinberger’s flat.
‘What’s a jolly led, Mum?’
‘Jolie laide. It means a woman who is not conventionally pretty but interesting and unusual looking, more or less. It’s French.’
Perhaps that’s what I am – jolie laide.
Willy looks very dapper lately, come to think of it. He has trimmed his beard and hair, and looks pleased with himself – a dapperling! It must be spring. I wonder why she took off her rings? Was she doing his washing up? Cleaning his bath? Mum doesn’t wear rings, not even her wedding ring any more.
Mum is feeling stronger today, she says. It has been three weeks since she came out of hospital and five weeks since her operation.
The deliveryman has a coffee now when he comes with our groceries. He’s called Sid – well he’s actually called something else but it’s too difficult to pronounce or remember so he says to call him Sid. Mum has a coffee pot on when she knows he’s coming so he can’t refuse. She flirts outrageously with him, even though he’s half her age. She asks him if he’s heard of a writer called William Saroyan, who was Armenian-American, apparently, but he hasn’t. She’s such a know-it-all. I’d never even heard of Armenia. It’s good to see her looking cheerful.
I take Bubba outside and sit on the steps with her pretending I’m Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I sing ‘Moon River’ to her and call her Cat but she scampers into the bushes and a blackbird hurries away, sounding its alarm note. I’m afraid she’s going to be a good hunter: I better get her a collar with a bell on it.
Mum comes out.
‘Mum, do you ever see clouds that look like clouds – not like hippos or volcanoes or Alsation dogs or horrible faces?’
‘Yeah – that one there. It’s a Cumulus Gigantus.’
‘I knew that.’
‘Course you did.’
‘Where’s Armenia, Mutti?’
She tells me the story of the destruction of practically the entire Armenian population by the Turks. It wasn’t all that long ago – the first part of the twentieth century, a genocide even before the Holocaust. Millions of people slaughtered. I don’t understand why we are so terrible to each other. It’s as if people suddenly go mad and start killing anyone who is different from them. But we are all human and ought to be able to live together by now. It’s obvious no one is ever going to be able to absorb the amount of history we need to not make mistakes in the future. How do teachers decide what to teach children? I suppose, though once you have learned to read, the rest is up to you. If you want to know things you can look them up in books and libraries and archives, whatever.
Who was my donor? ‘Female, under twenty.’ It’s like the epitaph for an unknown soldier. She could have been a beautiful young woman, a university student who died in a car crash after a party; an actress; a young mother who stepped off the pavement with her baby in a buggy in front of a bus. Has she a boyfriend or husband who is mourning for her? What happened to the baby? Her parents must be feeling dreadful. But at the same time, they will have the consolation of knowing that their daughter’s heart and lungs are helping someone have a longer life. Will they be aware that I have survived this far? I expect they do know. If it was my daughter who had died, I’d be glad her organs were still being used – my blood pumping through her heart, my breath filling her lungs. How weird and wonderful! They might have donated her corneas and her kidneys as well. Her organs could be helping several people, not just me. Should I give her a name? I feel I should. It would be like having an imaginary friend. I think I’ll give her an ordinary girlie name, not like my own awful name. Augusta, Ugh!
List of names I like:
Susannah (graceful lily)
Hannah (graceful one)
Estelle (a star)
Grace (graceful, attractive one)
Flora (flower) Better not have this one as I’ll get confused with Flo.
Josephine (female version of Joseph – increaser, whatever that means. I suppose it means he had lots of children.)
Annabelle (graceful, beautiful)
Daisy (eye of the day, small sun)
Madeleine (elevated, magnificent)
Beatrice (she who makes people happy)
That’s the one. She’s made me and my family happy. So, welcome Beatrice, to my life. Bee for short. Be. That’s very apt.
Ohmygod, I’d forgotten about Bubba.
‘Bubba, Bubba, Bubba, Kitty, Kitty Kitty!’
She appears from nowhere, my little black ghost, chirruping with pleasure, her little tail held high. Oh no! What’s she got this time? It’s a mouse and she’s taken it inside.
‘Come here puss, come here,’ I ask her nicely and she drops the mouse, which is only sucked rather badly; I can’t see any puncture marks. I think Beelzebub’s teeth aren’t as sharp as an adult cat’s teeth. The mouse sits still and the kitten loses interest. However, as I try to catch it, it scuttles away under Daddy’s desk. The little hunter tries to follow it but the gap is too tight so she crouches instead, peering at it and swiping with a black paw. After a few minutes she gives up jumps up onto the sofa. I whisk her off the pale suede and shut her into the bedroom. A mouse loose in Daddy’s flat! I’ll have to hope Bubba gets it eventually, or it finds its way out. If it dies from shock I’ll smell it. A dead mouse smells like a gas escape. I read somewhere that they actually pee all the time, even when they are running. Mum says she has that problem, but I think she’s exaggerating. So wherever it goes the floor will be contaminated. Ugh, it puts me off sitting on the carpet or walking barefoot.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
INSIGNIFICANT—DESTITUTE OF MEANING; WITHOUT EFFECT; UNIMPORTANT; PETTY
TYRANT—AN ABSOLUTE RULER; A RULER WHO USES HIS POWER ARBITRARILY AND OPPRESSIVELY; AN OPPRESSOR; A BULLY
PRECIOUS IS COMING to see me. We have bought cakes and pastries from the patisserie and Mum has found some South African tea – Red tea or something – that she thinks his Mum might appreciate. It’s called Rooibos, which means Red bush. I have made some scones and we have Cornish clotted cream and strawberry jam to go with them – must introduce Precious to our traditional food. I wonder if he’d like Cornish pasties?
‘Hi, Presh.’ We hug and he shakes Mum’s hand. He is very old fashioned and charming and Mum loves it. He is as tall as her and looks totally different without his dressing gown. Normal. He’s wearing a white hoodie, a fake fur hooded parka, a woollen scarf and woolly gloves, jeans and probably thermal underwear, though I don’t ask. His feet are huge, in leather sneakers. He has a cough, which I worry about. Is it significant? Does it mean he is ill? He assures me he is fine. Mum and Agnes sit and chat and we have tea and cake. Beelzebub is being naughty, as usual, tearing around the back of the sofa and leaping onto our heads. Agnes is scared of him – scared of a kitten! And she’s from a country that has lions and leopards, though maybe that’s why she’s frightened. So she is banished to the bedroom – Beelzebub of course, not Agnes. Let’s hope the mouse doesn’t appear. I expect she’d have forty fits (a Grandma expression).
Precious has never been on Hampstead Heath. It’s cold and windy but bright and sunny. Daffodils are everywhere in the little front gardens on the edge of the Heath.
‘Are you running yet?’ I ask.
‘No, but I’m working out at a gym, to rebuild muscle. I lost lots.’ He still whispers.
‘Yeah. Well, you’re looking good. How do you feel?’ He looks hunky actually,
‘Yeah, good, good.’ He towers over me and I feel rather insignificant.
‘What’s happening with your family in Zimbabwe?’
He shakes his head and doesn’t reply.
‘Oh, I’m sorry… Look, the swans!’ A black swan has joined an ordinary white one on the pond. He mu
st have escaped from Regent’s Park or somewhere. He is the negative and the other the positive, each one with small fierce head held high, strong neck proudly curved, the powerful wings folded and neat, and we cannot see the scaled legs and webbed feet under the green water. Bloody hell, I forgot the camera.
‘The thwans are like uth,’ Precious says, beaming.
The white swan leans her head to the black swan and their beaks meet in a caress. I feel light-headed, dizzy; something twists in my belly.
I tell him about the mouse and he says I’m right, his mother would have a fit if she knew, and he laughs loud, jumping up and down in glee. He grabs my hands and makes me jump with him, then he starts running and drags me with him, and I’m laughing and nearly wetting myself. And he twirls me in a circle around him, the white crisp grass crackling under my red DMs, his huge sneakers. We are laughing and laughing, carefree as a couple of kids, and the sulking rooks peer down in amazement at us and fly off together, squawking to a quieter tree.
‘Let’s get back, Gussie, you look cold.’ I don’t tell him I feel warm inside, warm and happy and excited. He wraps his arm around my shoulders and we walk, my steps enormous to keep up with him. I’m enveloped in his bigness and strength. I wonder whose heart he has under his ribs? I don’t ask if he has a name for his new heart. He has more important things to think about: his father and sisters; their future; his home, his health.
I can’t wait to go to school and start learning about the world – politics and stuff (as Phaedra would call it). Why doesn’t someone do something about Robert Mugabe? He’s insane, isn’t he? Shouldn’t he be locked up and looked after, given drugs to cure him? His people are suffering for his illness, he isn’t. Or is he a tyrant? Mum would say he is. An evil tyrant who is torturing, starving and killing his own countrymen, and everyone is suffering because of his actions. What do you do with someone like that? Don’t look at me, how should I know? I’m only twelve. The trouble is he is also destroying the life of my friend and his family.
‘What do you think will happen in Zimbabwe?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Won’t the people rise up and destroy the bad government?’
‘How can they fight against guns?’
I hadn’t thought about that. I suppose sticks and stones aren’t going to win any battles.
After they left, Mum told me what Agnes had said: that her husband has changed his mind. He now feels he must stay in Zimbabwe and help in the only way he knows. He’s a doctor and that’s what doctors do. Nearly everyone who can, is leaving – those with money abroad, or friends or relations who would sponsor them. He feels he must stay to help care for those who are too sick to care for themselves. Their farmer friends were ditching all their belongings and getting out, with no money. Most of his Zimbabwean doctor colleagues have already gone to Australia, New Zealand, Canada or South Africa.
‘But my daughters?’ Agnes had asked. ‘They will stay with me,’ he said. ‘No. You must send our daughters to England. Get them on a plane.’
He had agreed at last, after a long argument. He’ll see if he can get them a flight out.
‘Won’t you miss him?’ Mum asked her.
‘He will do what he wants to do. I cannot stop him.’ Agnes said.
‘But how will they live?’ I ask Mum. ‘Will Agnes be able to be a doctor in England?’
‘God knows, but it’s presumably better than trying to live under Mugabe.’
Kalibusiwe Ilizwe Le Zimbabwe. That’s the national anthem. Blessed be the Land of Zimbabwe.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
RECONCILE—TO RESTORE OR BRING BACK TO FRIENDSHIP OR UNION: TO BRING TO AGREEMENT OR CONTENTMENT; TO PACIFY: TO MAKE, OR TO PROVE CONSISTENT
PROFOUND—DEEP; REACHING TO A GREAT DEPTH; INTELLECTUALLY DEEP; LEARNED; DEEPLY FELT
MUM AND I and Beelzebub are watching Les Vacances de M. Hulot (M. Hulot’s Holiday). It’s one of my favourite comedy movies of all time. The trouble is it still hurts when I laugh, and I can’t stop laughing. Jacques Tati’s walk is enough to give me hysterics. I love when the English wife strolls in front of her husband wittering on about nothing and finding shells on the beach and he ignores her totally. And when Tati goes to sea in a kayak that collapses and concertinas into a shark-fin shape, sending all the swimmers into a panic; and when he plays ping-pong in the hotel and causes chaos. And when he accidentally ignites a firework with his pipe; the ice-cream that threatens forever to topple but doesn’t – so many details that make up a brilliantly hilarious movie. There’s no real dialogue, just music and funny noises, so you don’t need to know French. I really like another of his movies – Mon Oncle (My Uncle). Perhaps we’ll watch that another time, when my ribs have stopped aching. It’s great having all Daddy’s movie collection to choose from. I’ll miss it when we go home.
I’ve been thinking about Precious and his family. If his father stays in Zimbabwe, but sends Precious’s sisters to England, they will be like me, fatherless. I think Precious is reconciled to the idea of staying here. He needs the specialist medical care he’ll get in England. He and his mother are living in West London with relatives. Maybe he could come and stay in Cornwall? We have loads of room. I’ll ask Mum.
I have been thinking about the word ‘reconcile’. I have an idea. I am going to perform reconciliation between Daddy and Mum. I saw that adoring look she gave him in hospital when he said he would look after us. And after all, it is spring.
He’s back but he’s reconciled with (or is it to?) the Snow Queen and staying at her place. However, I have a cunning plan…
I wait until Mutti’s in the bath. The Snow Queen answers the phone.
‘Huh, it’s you,’ she hisses, and I can see icicles dripping from her nose, blood oozing from iceberg blue eyes. ‘I’ll get Jackson.’ She spits the words like bullets. I stick my tongue out as far as it will go and put a finger to the end of my nose and waggle my fingers.
‘Gussie?’
‘Daddy, dearest darlingest Daddy.’
‘Gussiebun!’
Gussiebun. He used to call me that when I was little. Oh, it makes me feel so… so little and safe.
‘Daddy, could you do something for me, please Daddy?’
‘Anything, you know that.’ I think he’s been drinking. Good.
‘It’s Mum.’
He sighs loudly. ‘Tell.’
Mum is reading a paperback Claire left her on How to Be a Better Human Being or something.
‘Mum.’
‘Sweetheart?’ She holds me around the waist as I lean into her.
‘Mum, could you do something for me?’
‘What is it? You know I’d do anything for you.’ She kisses my head. The book is obviously having a profound effect on her. She’s on her second whisky. Good.
‘It’s Daddy.’
She sighs loudly.
‘Tell.’
‘He told me he’d like to take you out to dinner but didn’t think you’d say yes and he can’t stand the rejection and he asked me to sound you out.’
‘Sound me out!’
‘Yes, he would really love to take you out and give you a treat as you’ve had such a hard time. He wants to take you to a really lovely restaurant.’
‘Lovely restaurant?’
‘Don’t repeat my every word! It makes you sound like a moron.’ I think she’s hooked. She makes an appointment to have her hair done.
She’s taking forever getting dressed. Mimi and I are watching Channel Four News and eating at the same time. Why do they always show starving people or dead people when we do that? It makes me feel sick and guilty. I know it’s right to know about the suffering in the world, but it’s always when we’re eating. Mimi changes the programme. Mum comes in wearing black trousers, a white frilly shirt and boots.
‘What about this?’
‘Nah.’ Mimi doesn’t approve. ‘Show some leg, darl. You’ve got great legs. Show your cleavage. Know what they say? If you’ve got it…’
‘Flaunt it.’ We all say and laugh.
Daddy rings the doorbell as if he hasn’t got a key and this isn’t his place. I open the door.
Bubba’s secure in my bedroom.
‘Honeybun!’ He kisses me gently. ‘Mimi.’ He kisses her cheeks. ‘Long time no see.’ Mum comes into the room. ‘Wow! You look… Wow!’ Daddy raises his eyebrows. She wears a black low-necked lacy job with a tight skirt that reaches just above her knees and red high heels. She’s had her hair done and wears red lipstick. I’ve never seen her look so pretty. Well, not pretty exactly, but gorgeous. Younger. She’s blushing. They go off like they actually like each other.
Mimi plays Scrabble with me but she’s hopeless. Keeps spelling words as if they’re Strine (Australian). In the end we spell anyway we like, but have to pronounce the word the way we spell it and lie about its meaning. It’s a cool rule and I learn lots of Strine swear words that I can use with Brett.
‘Mimi, do you think Mum might get back together with my Daddy?’
‘I dunno, Gus. What do you think?’
‘I don’t see why not. He can’t possibly love the Snow Queen, can he?’
‘Is that the one who looks like she’s got ice cubes up her arse?’
I giggle. ‘Yes, she’s awful.’
‘Well, I don’t know about your father. I don’t know him well. But I know your mother is concerned first and foremost about you and your happiness, sweetheart.’
‘I’d be happy if she and Daddy were together again.’
‘Yeah, well, darl, I don’t know what she’ll do. I guess you’ve just gotta wait and see what happens. You can’t force love, you know, Guss. Your go.’
‘No, it’s yours.’
‘Oh, is it? Righto.’ She puts down SHONKY on a double word with the Y at the end of PUN to make PUNY.
‘What’s that mean?’
‘Shonky? It means underhanded or devious. Strine.’
‘Okay.’ She’s winning now and loving it. Thank goodness we aren’t playing for money.