“Go on ahead. Don’t wait for me. Go. I’ll meet you in Ramallah.”
Mr Ali went silent. I gazed at the green sunlit garden, the busy thrushes, the bursting daffodils, but I could feel a desert wind on my cheek, and all I could see was dry rocks and thorn bushes.
“That was you? The baby in the bundle?”
He nodded.
A door opened and from the interior of the house I heard the sweet jangle of Arabic music and the noisy patter of daytime television. Then Mrs Shapiro appeared on the doorstep wearing her dressing gown and her Lion King slippers.
“Will you take a coffee mit us?”
Mr Ali didn’t reply. His eyes were fixed somewhere else.
“My name is Mustafa,” he said quietly. “It means one who is chosen. My brother Tariq told me this story.”
I wanted to touch him, to take his hand or put my arm round his shoulder, but there was a reserve about him, a self-containedness, that made me hold back.
“Did he tell you what happened to the other baby?” I asked.
Mr Ali shook his head. “He told me only that the soldier who shot at the bridegroom had on his arm a tattoo—a number.”
Mr Ali’s story had cast a shadow over me, and I found I couldn’t join in with the cheerful gossip over coffee. I caught his eye once or twice, and I kept wanting to ask him what had happened to the al-Alis; whether they had all made it to Ramallah, and whether he, Mustafa, had ever found his mother and brother. But in my heart I knew the answer.
I was troubled, too, by the story of the soldier with the number tattooed on his arm—what was in his mind when he shot the young bridegroom? How could a Jew who was himself a survivor of the death trails of Europe act with such casual cruelty against the hapless civilians of his promised land? What had happened in his heart? Then I started to wonder about Naomi herself—when she had let herself be photographed in the archway at Lydda, did she really not know what had taken place there two years before? Or did she know, and consider it a necessary price?
“What are you thinking about, Georgine?” Mrs Shapiro reached across and patted my hand. “Is it your running-away husband, darlink? Don’t worry, I heffa plan.”
“No. I’m thinking about…how hard it is to live in peace together.”
She threw me an oblique look. “Ach, this is too serious.” She lit a cigarette for herself and one for Nabeel. “Better to enjoy the happiness of today.”
§
After we’d finished our coffee I left to go home. The sun was still shining and Wonder Boy was still sitting patiently under the tree, gazing at the thrushes’ nest. Mr Ali was back up his ladder. Inside the house, Nabeel was clattering pans and playing music, and Ishmail was vacuuming. A westerly breeze stirred the tips of the saplings and made the daffodils dance. But I kept thinking about the twin babies in the bundle, heavy as watermelons—the one who was chosen, and the one who was not.
If only I had Mrs Shapiro’s gift for living in the present, I thought, as I walked home past the front gardens greening with new growth; trees, shrubs, weeds, grass—everything was coming to life. Near the corner of my street, a willow tree was sticking out its silvery buds through a railing. I thoughtlessly snapped off a pussy-paws twig, and my mind flashed back to the bunches of pussy willows and catkins we used to bring in to decorate our classroom at Junior School in Kippax. Soon it would be Easter. I remembered Mrs Rowbottom’s plonkety-plonk on the piano and our thin wobbly voices as we sang ‘There is a green hill far away’. How that hymn had scared me as a child. It had seemed a harsh intrusion into the happy world of Easter bunnies and foil-wrapped eggs. I knew now, as I hadn’t known at the time, that those hills were not green at all—they were rocky and barren. I’d been puzzled, then, by the absence of a city wall; now I realised that so many walls had been built and knocked down and rebuilt again over the centuries, that time itself had lost track of what belonged to whom.
He hung and suffered there. Yes, the history of that place was steeped in cruelty. Mrs Rowbottom had glossed over the details of what happened during the crucifixion and tried to convince us that ‘without a city wall’ meant ‘outside’. But when I asked Dad he said, “War and religion—they both ‘ave an unquenchable thirst for human blood. They feed off each other like nuggins.”
Mum rolled her eyes to the ceiling.
“E’s off again.”
“What’s…?”
“Dennis, she’s only nine.”
I never did find out what a nuggin was.
Mum always waited until closing time on Easter Saturday to buy chocolate eggs for us, when those that were left were reduced to half price.
“What d’you want them fancy eggs for, Jean?” Dad said. “We’re remembering an execution, not celebrating a birthday.”
But he ate them anyway. He had a real fondness for chocolate.
41
Cyanoacrylate AXP-36C
On Sunday I’d planned to make the most of the fine weather and do some gardening, to get some good dirt under my fingernails, have a go at the nasty spotted laurel bush and see off the fat brown slugs. But I seemed to spend the whole day on the phone, and each phone call left me feeling more upset. The first call was at nine o’clock (on Sunday morning—would you believe it!) from Ottoline Walker, the Scarlet-mouthed Slut.
“Hello? Georgie Sinclair? Is that you?”
“Who’s speaking?” I kind of recognised the voice already.
“It’s me. Ottoline. We met. You remember?”
Like hell I remembered. Big banana bogey. Ha ha.
“Yes, I remember. Why are you ringing me?”
“It’s about Rip…” (well, it would be, wouldn’t it?) “…I just wanted to tell you I had no idea you were still…sort of…involved.”
“Sort of married, actually.”
“He told me it was over between you two ages ago. He told me you didn’t mind…”
“He told me he was advancing human progress.”
“Oh. I see.” There was a pause on the end of the phone as she fumbled for a response. “Look, I’m really sorry. It sort of changes things…I mean, when you’re in love, you don’t always do the right thing…you don’t think about the consequences for other people.” She paused. I said nothing. “I believe in commitment, you know.”
“Like you were committed to Pete. And now you’re committed to Rip.”
“That’s not what I mean. You make it sound terrible.”
“Actually…” I stopped myself. I didn’t want her to have the satisfaction of knowing how much she’d hurt me.
“Ben doesn’t know, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“What about Pete? Does he know?” I almost called him Pectoral Pete.
“He found out. Poor Pete. It was awful. He was going to kill himself. Then he was going to kill Rip.”
She sounded as though she was sniffling on the phone, or maybe I imagined it. Anyway, for a moment I felt sorry for her.
“You’ll not get much commitment from Rip. He’s committed to the Progress Project.”
There was a silence. In the background, I could hear music on the radio—a woman singing blues.
“That’s the other thing I wanted to ask you. This Progress Project. What is it, exactly?”
“Didn’t Pete tell you?”
“He did, he talked about it endlessly. But he wasn’t very good at explaining. I somehow couldn’t get it.”
“It is quite complicated.”
“But then with Rip it was just the same. All those big words. I realised it must be me who’s a bit thick.”
She gave a little self-deprecating giggle that was quite endearing.
“Er…hold on a minute. I’ve got written it down.” Where was that bit of paper? I rummaged in the desk drawer. “Here it is.” I read aloud. “The human race faces unprecedented challenges as we enter the millennium of globalisation. We need to iterate new synergies if we are to make progress in meeting the aspirations of the developing world, while clear
ly understanding at the same time that nothing shall prejudice the economic achievements of the developed world.”
There was another pause. The woman blues singer let out a long throbbing moan.
“That’s it?”
“Isn’t it enough?”
“Well, sort of, I suppose. What does it mean exactly?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
She made that sound again on the end of the phone. It could have been a sniffle, or a giggle. I put the phone down.
§
Grabbing my secateurs, I pulled on my gardening gloves and stomped out into the garden. The sun was shining, but my head was full of dark clouds. Still fired up with thoughts of Rip and the Scarlet-mouthed Slut, I hacked away pitilessly at the ugly laurel bush—Wonder Boy’s favourite haunt—grinding the fallen leaves into the mud. What gave her the right to ring me on a Sunday morning to cadge sympathy? Snip. Still sort of involved! Snip. I believe in commitment! Snip. Snip. I should have just put the phone down as soon as I heard her voice, instead of letting myself get drawn into conversation. Now I felt so wound up and angry that all thoughts of peace in the world had evaporated like water in the desert. And yet I had felt a frisson of fellow-feeling, and I was secretly glad to discover that despite her big scarlet mouth and her slut stilettos, it was the Progress Project that was his real mistress. After an hour or so the phone rang once more. I carried on snipping and let it ring until the answering machine clicked on. Then a minute later it started ringing again. And again. This was some persistent bastard. I put the secateurs down and went to answer it.
“Hello, Georgina, I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”
That voice. I shivered as though a cool hand had touched my bare skin. It was the first time we’d spoken since the episode with the poem and the Velcro handcuffs. “Have you got a minute? I just wanted to let you know that I’ve heard back from the Land Registry about Canaan House.”
I took a deep breath. Despite my resolution, I could feel that warm red-panties glow coming over me again. I mustn’t let my hormones take over.
“And…?”
He explained that the house was unregistered, and that if Mrs Shapiro wanted to sell it she would need to register it, for which she would need the deeds. I had to force myself to concentrate on what he was saying.
“What about that son you mentioned, Georgina? The son in Israel? Maybe he knows where they are.” He was still angling for information.
“I met him the other day.”
I told him an edited version of our doorstep encounter. I didn’t mention Mr Ali and the Attendents, but I told him about Damian.
“Damian Lee from Hendricks & Wilson’s. There he was, chewing on his pencil and pretending he was making a valuation.”
“Ah!” Mark Diabello caught his breath. “That explains the BMW I saw parked round the back of their offices.”
“So Damian’s job is…?”
“To persuade the son to let the social worker’s friendly builder have the house for, say, a quarter of a million, then disappear back off to Israel with the cash in his pocket.”
“Just like you tried to persuade me?”
“That was different. I wasn’t working for the buyer. Tsk. Naughty Damian.” His voice oozed disapproval. “I told you they were crooks. And it’s only a 1 Series two-door hatch.”
§
“You mean, just a starter model, really.”
I tried to picture Damian with his gelled-up hair sitting at the wheel of a secondhand BMW. The little shit!
At about five o’clock, just as I was trying to decide what to have for tea, Rip rang. I listened to his facing-unprecedented-challenges voice leaving a message on my answering machine, telling me to ring him immediately. Well, let him ring. He still thought he could boss me about. Typical. Probably he was ringing to tell me he wanted to take the kids up to Holtham at Easter with the Scarlet-mouthed Slut—“He told me it was over between you two ages ago. He told me you didn’t mind.” There was something about the tone of Rip’s voice on the answering machine that reminded me of…glue. Cyanoacrylate AXP-36C. I thought of the B&Q package stowed in the mezzanine study and smiled to myself. Peace in the world was all very well, but no way was it going to extend to Rip and me. No way. When someone hurts you like that, what you want is revenge, not peace.
I didn’t ring back. I went upstairs to my room and got out my exercise book.
The Splattered Heart
Chapter 8
GINA’S REVENGE
Early next morning, heartbroken Gina made her tearful way to the Castleford branch of B&Q. The sight of the jolly orange-clad building made her broken heart leap with smile. Inside it was vast and creepily echoing like a church, and full of weird men prowling around the aisles, eyeing lovely curvaceous Gina lustfully, and wiggling their saucy screwdrivers suggestively. She made her way to the extensive adhesives section. At last her eyes lit on a tube of glue that said in large letters: DANGER! AVOID CONTACT WITH SKIN.
§
I stopped. I couldn’t help thinking about the picture of the little girl at the glue exhibition. Messy stuff.
§
The last phone call came just as I was getting ready for bed. I knew it was Mum—she usually rings about this time—but I was taken aback by the flatness in her voice.
“Your Dad’s been took poorly,” she said. “He’s got to have that operation on ‘is prostrate. Doctor says it could make ‘im imputent.”
I could just imagine poor Dad with that long-suffering look on his face and seedy Dr Polkinson telling him what did he expect at his age and we’ve all got to die of something. The operation date wasn’t fixed, but it would be sometime soon after Easter. My mind went into overdrive at once, trying to work out the logistics of going up to Kippax, leaving Ben with Rip, and meeting my deadline for Nathan.
“D’you want me to come up to Kippax, Mum?”
“It’s all right, duck. I know you’re busy.”
“Mum…”
I was racking my brains for some cheerful or uplifting comment, when Mum chipped in.
“Did you hear about that friend of yours, Carole Ben-thorpe?”
“She wasn’t my friend, Mum.” I shuddered as I remembered her watery reproachful eyes. “Her dad was a scab.”
Carole Benthorpe had been my friend once, before the miners’ strike—the short Heath strike of 1974, not the year-long Thatcher strike of 1984-1985. “Scabs take the gain without the pain,” Dad had said. “You never get a scab giving up his wage rise that were won on’t backs o’t strikers.” There were only four scabs in Kippax, and her father was one of them. After that she didn’t have any friends.
“Dad always told me not to talk to scabs.”
“Aye, and he’s right,” said Mum. “But she weren’t a scab, were she? She were only a little kid.” She sighed. All this had suddenly become too heavy. “Anyroad, all I was going to say is, she won the Jackson’s Saleswoman of the Year award. It were in t’ Express. She got a weekend in Paris.”
“Oh, that’s so brilliant! Good for her!”
I felt an unexpected burst of joy for Carole Benthorpe, not about Jackson’s or the award, but because she’d survived what we did to her.
That cold winter in 1974—the men hanging around in knots on the streets instead of disappearing underground as they were supposed to, the women pawning their rings and chuntering about how they would make do without a wage coming in. One day after school some of the kids waylaid Carole Benthorpe on her way home. They jostled and taunted her as she walked along, then things got a bit rough and a couple of lads pushed her into the icy tadpole ponds by the back lane. Everybody cheered and laughed as they watched her flounder. Me, too—I’d stood and laughed with the others. I could still remember vividly how great it had felt to be part of that cheering, jeering gang. Carole Benthorpe crawled out covered in slime and ran home, all wet and bawling. Next day in the school toilets she carved the word SCAB into her forearm with a Stanley knife.<
br />
“If you see her, Mum, give her my love.”
“Oh, I never see ‘er. She lives up Pontefract way now.”
What I really wanted to say was more complicated, and I wasn’t sure how to put it into words—it was about guilt and shame and forgiveness, and wanting her to understand that we truly believed we were justified in doing what we did, even though we knew it was wrong.
42
The right glue for the materials
I was half-heartedly trundling the vacuum cleaner around the house on Monday afternoon, worrying about Mum and Dad, when the phone rang. I thought it might be Mum with some more news of Dad’s operation, but it was Mrs Shapiro.
“Come quick, please, Georgine. Chaim is mekking trouble.”
I realised I’d been half expecting it. Apparently Mrs Shapiro and Ishmail had gone off with Mr. Ali in the red van to choose some paint at B&Q in Tottenham. Nabeel had stayed behind to start sanding down the woodwork and one of the downstairs doors had been left unlocked. They got back at about four o’clock with their five litres of matt emulsion—“Eau-de-nil—very charming colour—you will see it”—to find Nabeel and Chaim Shapiro wrestling on the carpet in the dining room.
“Fighting like the tigers. You must come, Georgine, and talk to them.”
“But what’s that got to do with me?”
“Why you are always arguing, Georgine? Please come quick.”
By the time I got there, the wrestling, if it had ever really happened, was over and there was an uneasy truce around the dining-room table. Mr Ali was sitting on one side of the table, flanked by the Uselesses, and opposite them sat Chaim Shapiro, leaning back heavily, his arms and legs splayed out as though the chair was too small for him, cracking his knuckles from time to time. Mrs Shapiro sat next to him, chainsmoking and fidgeting with her rings. Wonder Boy was sitting on a chair at the head of the table, looking very magisterial. I could hear their voices arguing as I came in through the front door, which had been left on the latch for me, but as I entered the dining room they went quiet. I sat down at the other end of the table, opposite Wonder Boy.
2009 - We Are All Made of Glue Page 29