by Ed Siegle
‘You up yet?’ he asked.
‘Very funny,’ Jackie replied.
‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’
‘Give me the good, go on.’
‘I’ve got the day off and I’m coming over,’ said Joel.
‘Lucky me!’
‘So, are you ready for the bad?’
‘Bad for you, or bad for me?’
‘Worse for you, I’m afraid.’
‘Isn’t that always the way?’
‘I saw dad on the news last night – in Jardim Botânico.’
‘Typical,’ Jackie said with a tut.
‘I’ve got it on tape.’
‘Oh, joy of all joys.’
Joel walked along three or four streets of terraced houses with brightly coloured doors until he reached Jackie’s, where he let himself in. In the living room, an ashtray spewed cigarette butts on to a coffee table and tooth-marked pizza crusts lay in a box on the floor. There were empty wine glasses bearing faint prints of lips, some of which were probably Debbie’s. Joel picked up the ashtray, took it into the kitchen, threw away the butts and washed it out. He put the kettle on and watered a limp basil plant on the windowsill. Jackie came in, wearing a furry coat, red lipstick fresh. They observed one another. A trace of perfume reached him. He nodded towards a mug on the side.
‘I’ve given you sugar,’ he said.
‘Well, don’t blame me if you end up wth a hippo for a mother.’
‘I know what you’re going to say,’ said Joel, holding up his hands. ‘But he’s there in glorious Technicolor.’
‘Name your price,’ said Jackie. ‘I’ll lay any odds you like.’
She sank into the sofa and watched the video. Joel watched her. The curtains were still drawn, and light from the television flickered on her skin. He looked for quivers in the movements of her face, but her eyelids maintained as steady a rhythm when the man who looked like Gilberto appeared as when the hijacker ranted in Portuguese, ‘Are you watching this? This isn’t one of those films you see on TV. This is my film! I made it myself! Just watch while I blow off her head.’
‘They should blow off your blinking head,’ Jackie said.
‘Dad, or the hijacker?’ asked Joel.
She reached for an ashtray, crushed a pinkish butt, then checked her make-up in a leopardskin compact mirror.
‘Best be off,’ she said, standing up. ‘Don’t want to keep Miriam waiting.’
‘That’s a mighty fine dress for the bookies.’
‘I bet better when I look my best.’
‘Aren’t you even going to entertain the possibility that it’s him?’
‘You mean impossibility, I think.’
Jackie left the room.
‘Instead of chasing ghosts, why don’t you ring Debbie?’ she called from the hall, all chance of response denied by the closing of the front door.
It was obvious she wasn’t meeting Miriam, but Joel wished she’d find a less ridiculous man than Carlo to be secretive about.
Jackie walked to the corner, stopped and lit a cigarette, then looked back towards her door. She enjoyed standing on corners smoking: it felt pleasantly seedy. She winked at her reflection in the double-glazed door of number 1A. She was starting to think the coat was a mistake; it was warmer than she’d thought. Her red dress didn’t really go with it, and the coat didn’t really go with anything, except perhaps road-kill. But Jackie liked to look on the edge of shabby because at least it was looking something. Her exterior might be a little wrinkled, but underneath she was pure milk.
She wondered if Joel was ever tempted to follow her – as Gilberto had in the last months in Brazil. Joel was a man who wanted all the facts. When they’d fled to England twenty-five years ago, it had not been enough for a ten-year-old Joel to know Brazil was ‘over there, petal, past the end of the pier’; he’d needed to know the compass bearing.
Life was complicated enough without the old goat playing tricks again. Jackie had one relationship to extinguish and another to set alight – the last thing she needed was Gilberto jumping out of his grave to muck it up. He was dead and he could bloody well stay that way. She felt a stab of fear for Joel. There was no need to panic, she told herself. Joel would come to his senses, she was sure. It could not possibly be Gilberto. Joel would watch the clip again, doubt would creep in, and everything would settle to its normal chaotic level. Sooner or later he’d patch things up with Debbie. There’d been plenty of rows, sure, but if you didn’t row – that was when you had to worry. She told herself they’d work it out, that before you knew it they’d have a couple of little ones and there’d be no more time to fret about the departed.
Jackie squashed a butt under her shoe then ambled down Islingword Road and round the corner towards town. She crossed at the lights and walked under the trees that flanked the skate-park, where whiter-than-white kids in baseball caps, trousers hanging low, slouched on BMXs at the top of ramps. Two boys watched her pass, faces set.
‘I can see your pants,’ Jackie yelled, which made one of them swear and the other blush.
A man with a bare chest and a dirty sleeping bag asked for change for a cup of tea, but she didn’t pause because she was thinking of how best to end it with Carlo. Heaven only knew why she’d even started it. Anyone who added an ‘o’ to their name deserved to be given a wide berth. He’d been fun for a while and there was always something to be said for a slightly younger man. Most older men were dead from the hairy nostrils down. The trouble was that, although Carlo had initially been inflamed by her individuality, now he wanted her tailored to his design. He had started to make remarks about her Thursday nights with Miriam at the Rusty Axe. At first Jackie thought that if she saw a little less of him, he might forget about ownership and remember to enjoy the parts she was prepared to lend. But it was clear, now, that he wanted all of her, and since all of him didn’t add up to all that much, it was time to move on. She was fifty-seven and she wasn’t about to change her ways. Besides, there was a genuine prospect of something developing with Tony, a delight she’d resisted considering for several years, mainly because he was the senior partner at Joel’s surgery. Tony’s retirement loomed, Jackie’s good intentions were withering and, more to the point, Tony seemed to be finally over the death of his old moo. Thankfully Jackie had yet to spot the woman haunting any news clips – though knowing her luck it’d be the Apocalypse by Friday and all the dead would be raised, just when life was looking rosy.
Jackie hurried through the streets of North Laine. Finally she stopped to check her reflection in a shop window, opening her coat to view the settle of her dress. Then she smiled, tied the belt loosely, turned the corner and waved at Tony.
Joel cleared a space on his mother’s sofa, lay back and watched the clip again. He wished he knew what she really thought. Did she still think about Gilberto? Joel wondered how she would feel about him going back to Rio. He couldn’t believe it had been so long: twenty-five years, though it sometimes felt like yesterday. Debbie had often asked why he hadn’t gone before. His old mate Liam had even been working there for the best part of a year, with a flat and a spare room – Christ, Joel was the reason Liam had caught the Brazil bug in the first place.
It wasn’t easy to explain. I’ll go next year, he’d always said, and told himself he didn’t want to aggravate his mother’s scars. Over the years he’d convinced himself it wasn’t that important, that he wasn’t really fussed. Brazil was just a place he’d been as a kid, his father had died – fathers did die – big deal. What was there to gain? It had no bearing. He didn’t get much holiday and he could use it to better purpose. He had a good life, a good job, a good set of mates. He was happy. There weren’t any cavities to be filled.
He wondered whether his mother ever thought about the early years in Brighton, following their escape. Joel would always remember entering Britain in ’75 as if descending to some nether world – a thousand white hands at Heathrow stretching to grasp returning loved ones,
rows of pale faces staring until recognition sparked dead eyes. Children skipping into the arms of grannies and grandpas and uncles and aunts and sisters and brothers and mothers and fathers – fathers seemingly everywhere: filling the airport, stuffing the world, arriving and waiting and pushing trolleys piled with family luggage, while Jackie and Joel stood like boulders in a river. Joel clutched a shoebox and wore green shorts and a yellow T-shirt; everyone else wore jumpers and coats, most of them brown or black or grey. Then, just when it seemed all colour had drained from the world, with a shriek and a waddling rush came a woman wearing an endless multicoloured scarf. Jackie and Miriam hugged and hugged and Miriam covered Joel’s face in kisses, then led them through crowds of ghostly faces into a forest of concrete pillars where Joel remembered the cold moved through him in a sheet – so different from the gentle chill which sat on your skin late on a Rio winter’s day.
Joel and his mum had huddled under a blanket in the back of Miriam’s Renault 4, sipping sugary tea from a Thermos cup, as Miriam tried to rattle them back to Brighton before they froze. He remembered the orange strobe from street-lights which hung frozen above an empty motorway. He saw his breath like smoke, his mum’s too. Their eyes met often. She smiled and stroked the back of his head.
They stayed with Miriam in a terraced house on a hill with a view of the grey sea. Joel remembered a black Christmas, his first touch of snow, nights which fell at four and rose at ten, leafless branches on rigid trees, a cold white sun, pebbles like eggs on a sepia shore. He discovered scarves, mittens and bobble hats, men with pallid skin and hairy faces, mashed potato and baked beans. No one in Brighton was anything but white. He felt like the butterflies he sometimes found flapping against steamed-up windows. A change had come over the world, like a dream – yet part of him didn’t want to wake up, because he could see his mum was becoming happier.
At first, Jackie slept clenched in a ball in Miriam’s spare bed. Joel was supposed to sleep on a camp bed by her side, but would sneak into the other end and coil his arms around her legs, which sometimes thrashed as Jackie dreamed. Buried under the covers he would softly snore, as if asleep, while Jackie told Miriam the tale of her past few years. As Jackie gave up her stories, he felt her limbs unfold. Over time, there was more talk of England and less of Brazil. She went for walks, a duffel-coat hood pulled up. She would ask Miriam about the news, the changes in her thirteen years away, songs she heard on the radio, current fashions. One day Miriam took her shopping. That evening they went to the Rusty Axe.
Joel remembered Miriam returning with a woman who laughed with a cackle, and he lay in bed wondering who it was until he heard her say ‘my little Joel’. She came to deliver a goodnight kiss and stroked his head, her hair loose, exhaling a sharp, sweet smell. Before he faded into sleep he heard chinking bottles, a needle scratch across vinyl, music starting too loudly then turned down, Miriam whooping and his mum cackling again. Joel had a feeling they wouldn’t be going back to Brazil for a few more weeks at least.
Twenty-five years of weeks and counting still.
As time went on, Jackie did her best to forget the Brazilian years and Joel tried to etch them into his mind. As she slept in, he would sit in his pyjamas at the bottom of the stairs and wait for letters to fall on to the mat. At night he would lie awake and wonder how long it would be until they heard from his dad. One day Mum will take me to one side, he would say to himself. She’ll say, ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ The bad was never all that bad; the good was normally something you expected. So the bad might be that Gilberto was still in prison (but alive!) and the good would be that he was being released. When he came out, Joel knew he would probably have to come to Britain. It wasn’t so bad: it was cold, but the people were nice. The police didn’t have guns, so they couldn’t shoot him even if they wanted to.
While he waited for such a revelation, he kept his spirits up through nightly conversations. ‘Did you go for your swim today?’ he would ask a picture of his dad on the beach. ‘I bet you sat on the sand and drank a coconut; I bet it tasted as sweet as it always does when your mouth is salty. I’m keeping an eye on Mum for you, like you said. Write when you can – I know you keep meaning to. When you can find the time to sit down and write a proper letter – I know how it is. We’ll laugh about all of this one day, when you’re freed.’
Sure enough, bubbles of conversation floated to his room. He heard Jackie arguing on the phone in Portuguese, talk of papers and once the word ‘release’. He determined to be patient. His mum wouldn’t want to excite him until it was confirmed. Perhaps Joel would have to wait even longer to see his father, until Gilberto had fully recovered. Prison would have taken its toll. I’ll wait forever, he thought.
When spring arrived and he felt the sun on his skin, Joel came to see that England had its charms. He went for bike rides on the Downs, climbed trees, and threw pebbles into the sea. He started at school. He muddled his words sometimes and was the only child in his class who wasn’t white, though with his brown skin but pale blue eyes, his curly but not afro hair, there were those that weren’t sure how to label him. One girl decided he was a coon and a couple of lads preferred to call him a Paki, but most just saw another kid and gradually he slotted in between them. Parents would comment on how good he must be at football, given there was ‘a touch of the Pelé’ in him, and everyone wanted him in their team, until they saw him play. But Joel had to admit he liked being the foreign kid, the one they couldn’t quite suss, with a secret called Brazil they could never own.
One day Joel came home and Jackie said, ‘I’ve got some news.’
There were tears in her eyes.
She borrowed Miriam’s car and drove Joel up to Devil’s Dyke. She turned off the engine.
‘I’ve always loved this view,’ she said, and took a tissue from her bag and blew her nose.
Joel looked over the ever-so-English landscape stretching north below the Downs. There were one or two other cars. A few people sat on the grass which fell away off the swell of the ridge. He looked through the windscreen down the slope. Panic was close. The news was bad, he knew it. It was always bad if they didn’t say there was good news and bad news. The fields below looked as far away as the bottom of the sea. He wished he were in a boat, with his dad, beyond the horizon, a million miles from here. He felt again the way he had on the mountain, Pedra da Gávea: as if his blood had turned to wire. Jackie was talking about his dad and Joel could picture him on the mountain, running away, as blades swooped from the sky and he thought of pterodactyls. The wires pulled in Joel’s veins and he clutched his knees. Jackie said his dad was dead; they were sending the papers; she shuddered with tears. The money, the flat, the body was missing; the papers were on the way. The prison, the papers, the flat, the money, the body, the body, the body…
Joel stopped the video, leaving the tape in the machine in the hope that Jackie might see the light, and let himself out of her house. He turned towards the seafront, his feet falling hard as he strode over the top of the hill, down past the police station and across St James’s Street. When he reached the Palace Pier he walked a short way along the promenade then shuffled down some steps on to the beach. He found a spot on the pebbles, sat, and gazed past the dying West Pier. He was glad to feel his brown forearms starting to burn and his shaved head sting. Pebbles jutted into his Brazilian flip-flops. He could hear wind tinkling in the rigging of surf-cats, summer tunes drifting from bathers’ radios, screams from the rollercoaster on the Palace Pier. He stared into the molten white of the sun on the sea and remembered reading that Newton had stared directly into the sun, discovering that light scorched his vision red and black. The nutter had even wedged a bodkin between his eyeball and its socket, to gauge the effects of pressure. Joel wasn’t sure what a bodkin was, but he’d happily give it a whirl. He took out his compass, breathed on the glass, polished it on the hem of his Flamengo shirt and placed it on a stone, cocking his head to ensure it was flat. The needle swung to s
tillness, precisely over north. He edged round until he could stare across the sea, southwest at 219 degrees. It was 5,734 miles to Rio de Janeiro. Keeping his eyes on the bearing, he kicked off his flip-flops and walked barefoot across the pebbles, hurting the hollows of his feet until they sank into shingle in the shallows. If his old man were also in the water, in Brazil – would they not be connected by a transatlantic wave of particles? It would be eight-thirty in Rio. Perhaps he still went for a morning swim on Ipanema beach.
Joel wandered back from the sea and sat on a wall by a basketball court. He watched kids slip balls between flexing knees, corn-rowed heads bobbing. A pick-and-mix of youth in Knicks and Lakers tops, tall baseball caps set wonky. Stringy boys smoked cigarettes to the butt and flicked them to the ground. Skaters rattled their boards and scooter kids licked Mr Whippys. Tourists walked past, pointing at the piers. Suddenly Joel sensed a coolness in the air, and found himself submerged in a suspension of temperatures, hot and cold together. He turned to look across the water but the sea mist had dissolved everything.
In Nelson’s dream, Yemanjá poured wine from an amphora into his mouth until it overflowed. When he awoke he found this strange, because Yemanjá was not the sort of deity to have much time for amphorae. Something a little more natural – more Brazilian – would have been in keeping: a coconut perhaps. The starry sky was starting to promise light. Nelson sat up, wiped dribble from his cheek and thought about food. Man, his stomach ached. Then he realised neither light nor hunger had woken him, but voices on the other side of the wall.
Half a leg was numb, but he grabbed his bag and hobbled round the corner. Beyond the wall a man hummed ‘Happy Birthday’, a woman giggled and keys chinked.
‘What’s the code, honey?’ the woman’s voice said.
‘Now think, sugar,’ said the voice of the man.
‘My birthday! Thirteen, o-six, sixty!’ said the woman.