Waiting in Vain

by Colin Channer

  I’ll always remember you, Sylvia, and the time we shared. Now I know how Dizzy must have felt when he heard Bird play the first time, like, “Yeah, this is the sound I’ve been searching for inside myself.” What more can I say, nice girl? To be or not to bop?

  So … I must go now. It would be nice if you choose to remember me. Yes, I’d like that. Remember me as the guy who didn’t want that cab ride to end, who didn’t want you to wake up until whatever was causing you to toss so much had been washed out of your soul, who really wanted to kiss you goodbye. I hope you like the coffee. My friend Sarge grows it on this little farm. Write to me in Jamaica and I’ll send you more if you want. Take care, Sylvia. It was nice to have met you.

  —Fire

  Daggers of lightning ripped the sky. Thunder balls shook the room. And the candles drew scary pictures on the walls. Sylvia fell asleep on her belly. One arm cuddled a pillow beneath her. The other one was glued between her legs.

  As she sank deeper into sleep, her face relaxed and the smile began to fade. But it took a very long time.

  book two

  chapter four

  Through his window in the first-class cabin, Fire watched the twilight soaking through the clouds. He was struck once again by the drama of the heavens, by the colors and shapes and textures that throbbed and shifted and eddied there. Leaning back in his seat, he concerned himself with the package in his hands, the one that Ian had sent to him at four o’clock in the morning, stipulating, as the bearer said, that it not be opened till he was over the Atlantic, where he was now, approaching the coast of Wales.

  It was a letter he saw when he opened it—attached by a clip to a check drawn on an account at a bank that was based in the Caymans.

  Fire—

  Don’t cash this until two weeks when certain things straighten out. I’m selling the watch. When I do that the check will be good. Right now it will bounce. Please though if you could give mama 2000 pound for me in the meantime then deduct it from when you cash the check which should be soon. Tell her the money is from me. Tell her I look good. Tell her she don’t see me cause I shame of my roots. Don’t say what you saw.

  Waiting to meet Fire at Heathrow was his cousin Courtney. He was short and ginger-haired, with narrow eyes cut into a broad, flat face. He grabbed Fire’s bags and hurriedly led the way, babbling on about carburetors, headers, and limited-slip differentials as they moved through crowded passageways and skipped up stairs to the third level of a parking garage, where parked between a yellow Toyota Supra and a black Honda Prelude was his latest restoration project, a ‘72 Ford Cortina Lotus—a boxy, pearl white coupe zipped from head to tail with the Lotus flash in racing green.

  Stepping over the bags, Fire walked around the car, running his palms over the paint job, checking under the wheel wells for rust. Then, satisfied that the exterior had neared perfection—there was a small dent near the driver’s door—he asked to see the engine, the legendary twin-cam, push-rod dynamo that spurred a hundred and fifty horses to power the rear wheels. As he checked it, he was thinking about his mother.

  It was his mother, not his father, who had taught him about mechanics. Her father, who was a cousin of the Manleys, was a fighter pilot in the RAF during the Second World War, and returned home to introduce crop dusting to the family farm where she was born and raised. By the time she was fourteen Fire’s mother had learned to overhaul and operate the biplane.

  Backing off so he could look at the Cortina in relation to the cars around it, Fire noted to himself that he would take it over either the Toyota or the Honda, which—with their aerodynamic noses and power-assisted steerings and noise-dampened cabins—in the company of the old Ford were like yuppies in a blue-collar bar. He loved old European cars: Mini Cooper Ss … BMW 2002s … Volvo P 1800s … Alfa Romeo Alfettas. Driving cars in which he could feel the pores of the road through the fingers of the shocks and hear the guttural cussing of the engine as he pushed it toward redline.

  “Lemme drive,” he said, excited now.

  Courtney threw him the keys, admonishing in his South London accent that his baby cousin be careful. “Many have died so I could have this.”

  Fire laughed at the vocational reference. Courtney was an undertaker. He’d passed only woodwork and bible knowledge at O level. What else, his father had said at the time, was he fit to do?

  Settling into the Recaro seat, Fire ran his hand over the burl dashboard and flush door panels, eyeing excitedly the rows of analog gauges and toggle switches.

  “Go on,” Courtney urged. “Crank it.”

  When he twisted the key he felt as if he’d tweaked a lion’s ear. A roar erupted from the belly of the machine.

  “Want some music, Fire?”

  Courtney pulled some tapes from the backseat.

  “Wha y’have?”

  “The Diamonds. Go Seek Your Rights; Sugar Minott, Good Thing Going; and a dancehall mix tape. Kilamanjaro versus Stone Love.”

  “Yes, rudie,” he said, booming him—pressing fists. “Gimme some o’ dat.”

  The windows down, the engine bawling, they shunted onto the motorway, seduced by the nihilistic ghettocentric rhetoric, urged toward rebellion by the brutish kick drum, which came down on their skulls like a pistol whip, commanding them to mash the gas.

  When they reached Brixton, though, a different mood fell over them. To Fire it felt as if the skins from the dead in the Atlantic and in the plantation fields had been sewn into a shawl and draped around his shoulders.

  Arriving from America, where black people had so much more—more wealth, more education, more numbers, more influence, more history, and consequently more hope—to this London, this England—where black people have lived in large numbers for only fifty years and had not had a chance to nurture their own Spike Lee or Reginald Lewis or Alexis Herman or Toni Morrison or Henry Louis Gates or Colin Powell or Johnnie Cochran or Carol Mosely Braun—underscored his reason for moving home.

  Jamaica, despite its motto, “Out of many, one people,” was a black country, and he was a black man, and there, on that island, no matter how hard things were at times, he waited for scraps at no one’s table. He was no one’s scapegoat. No man’s Sambo. No one’s recurring nightmare. And people there did not whisper the word white in conversation, because they know that in 1833 and 1865 and many times before that and since, the black people of Jamaica have risen up and spilled white blood, licked it off their fingers, swallowed it, burped, and said, “No problem.”

  On the high street, a doddering bus transformed the car into a front-row seat for the long-running drama of the Brixton tube station, which if it were ever adapted for the stage should be called Notice Me. For camped outside, lying in wait to pounce on weary passengers, were scores of predators, some in packs, some alone. A skinny Trinidadian in a tight brown suit and tube socks was waving his bible like a tambourine and screaming for all to repent. A group of Black Israelites in outfits inspired by Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Star Wars were screaming into a microphone, in a fake American accent no less, that the white man would be the black man’s slave after the coming Armageddon. To which a Greek chorus of coked-up druggies lounging on a cardboard bed in front of the 7-Eleven were screaming, “Monkeys can’t rule anything except bananas.” Which made the schizophrenic dread who’d been screaming as he defended himself against invisible stones realize that he wasn’t being pelted by the duppy of the last white woman who gave him head but rather the last monkey on which he’d performed cunnilingus. “Monkey pussy taste nice but i wi mad you,” he screamed to the preacher. “Doan nyam it.” The preacher screamed back in tongues, “Shala-mala, shala-maloo … askillapunka … I rebuke you.” To which the dread screamed, “You suck de same monkey too.” And the preacher began to beat him with the bible. “Shala-mala, shala-maloo … Lissen, I wi put away God business and throw licks in you moddacunt, y’know. Stop dis chupidniss now!”

  Further on, they passed the market, a pepperpot of food and races; and Cold
Harbour Lane, the new front line, where rudebwais in Hilfiger distribute pharmaceuticals to a richer, more wanly dressed white clientele; and the park around St. Matthew’s, a hulking presence with Doric columns that due to lack of faith was no longer just a church but also an arts venue—with a restaurant in the crypt.

  Continuing on Effra Road, they passed some terrace houses in need of love and care; and the Eurolink Business Centre, a hothouse of local capitalism in the shell of an old synagogue. Then moving quicker now, as Fire felt the pull of his house, they cut through Brixton Water Lane and entered Herne Hill, a scarf of relative affluence on the edge of Brock-well Park.

  “So where’s Nan?” Fire asked, as they walked up the steps of the brick Victorian.

  Courtney checked his watch. “On her way home from classes, I’d fink.”

  They’d stopped for takeout on the way.

  “She won’t be hungry when she comes?” Fire asked. “You didn’t pick up anything for her.”

  Courtney thought for a second, then shrugged his shoulders.

  “Is awright,” Fire said as they went inside. “I’ll make something.”

  Courtney shrugged again.

  “So what she doing at the polytech?” Fire asked, noting that the lawn was shaggy. Come on, he thought. You’ve living here rent-free, Courtney, you could take care of the fucking place.

  “Farting around,” Courtney said, straightening the For Sale sign. “She claims she’s studying computers … she can’t even fucking type.”

  “So what is she doing, then?”

  “I fink it might be word processing. But I’m not really sure.”

  Fire had purchased the house when he sold film rights to his first novel, The Rudies, an epic about the rise and fall of a Jamaican gang in London. At the time, the neighborhood, like a lot of Brixton, was considered marginal. Since then, however, yuppies, priced out of Thatcherite Dulwich, had moved in, increasing property values exponentially. He didn’t foresee this when he bought the place, neither did he care. He bought it for the park, an undulating green triangle, with a duck pond and a wonderful lido, where he saw nothing but sky while floating on his back in the summertime, the sun warming his face like a hot copper penny.

  To command a view of the park, he kept the top floor for himself. Courtney and Nan lived in a first-floor duplex, and Phil, Fire’s first roommate when he moved to London, lived on the floor below him. Phil was away on tour with a chamber ensemble and was expected to return in a month.

  “So, did Nan get called for the gig with that design firm?” Fire asked, as he made her a veggie-rice pilaf. He was down in Courtney’s kitchen. Some eggplant, which had been tossed in olive oil, was sitting aside on the counter. In a Dutch oven, the rice was simmering in a vegetable stock seasoned with onions, garlic, cinnamon, and allspice.

  “No,” Courtney replied. He was sitting at the breakfast table, shoveling food into his mouth.

  “What about the gig with The Face?” Fire asked, chopping the plum tomatoes.

  “No.”

  “I can’t see why she doesn’t get hired. She’s a good photographer.” He reached into a cupboard for a bottle of honey.

  “She’s got problems,” Courtney said, flatly.

  “I know,” Fire replied with a chuckle. “You.”

  Courtney changed the subject. “How’s your dad?” he asked.

  “Fine,” Fire replied, spilling the box of currants he was opening. “Still at the School of Art. How’s yours?”

  “All right. Still a cantankerous bugger, but e’s all right. E’s still fucking around with that twenty-one-year-old Paki girl. I wish I can be like im at is age. E’s sixty-seven! D’you realize tha? And e’s still able to keep up! E’s got the dick of deaf. I’m convinced that’s how Mum died. Fuck cancer. He poked er to deaf.”

  “Where’s he living now? The old man told me he moved.”

  “Wimbledon. Did he also tell you Dad’s girlfriend is pregnant?”

  “Get the hell outta here!”

  He stirred the eggplant, the currants, and the honey into the rice. Only the dill was left.

  “Serious as cancer … or getting poked to deaf for tha matter. Six months pregnant. Maybe Dad didn’t tell your old man because he didn’t want to get im jealous. Your dad’s not into girls anymore, is e?”

  “Whatever.”

  “So school begins next week,” Courtney said, retreating from this sensitive issue. “It’s Kings College ain it?”

  “Not this year. I’m doing some fiction workshops for emerging writers at the Eurolink Center. Word Star is putting it on.”

  “Well that’s mighty nice of you. From what I’ve heard they don’t have much money to pay a big shot like you. Mr. Somerset Maugham Prize. What’s next then, a Booker? Nan says you’ve been—what—short-listed for Dangling on the Brink of the Edge? Maybe that’ll be your breakthrough in America. It’s a shame you don’t do well there.”

  “Well, if it should be it will be. What is for you cyaah be un-for you, y’know, Courts. The American market is so difficult. So big and so competitive. They have so many of their own writers to admire. Updike. William Kennedy. I have enough money now to do the things I like to do: buy music and books, travel, help people, laze about. And success in America might ruin that. See, Courts, there is a certain point, with money, where it can become a burden. Where you always feel like you have to be watching it. And you have to hire people to watch it for you. Then you have to start watching them. Then you won’t have any time to read books and listen to music and just laze about. And then you don’t want to help people because the money becomes an end in itself, and you become so taken up with making it grow, as they say, that you don’t want to do anything that might make it stand still even for a little bit. Yeah, I want my money to grow. But not like a tree. Like grass. Spread out.”

  “So is Word Star paying you then?”

  “Of course. If you give away things for free people don’t appreciate it. They begin to feel entitled. And that’s a bad thing. No one’s entitled to anything but a fair chance, kind encouragement, and a kick in the ass when they keep fucking up, Courts. And that’s why I’m over here. But should I really have to do this? Where are the black writers who were born here and spent most of their lives here? The ones who’ve done really well? America. That’s where they are. Teaching in the best universities.”

  “Would you call them sellouts?”

  “No. It’s quite complex. They’re trying to get the biggest market for their work. And that’s understandable. There’re only a million and a half black people in all of Britain versus thirty-two million in the States. I guess they feel they have to get more before they can start giving back. Labels like ‘sellout’ are too simple to describe the challenges faced by black people, Courts. Have always been. No, I wouldn’t call them sellouts. They’ve had to take a different route because they haven’t been as lucky as I’ve been. By the way, how are Little J and Kyle and Locksley?”

  “They moved to America—Brooklyn, I believe. A lot of people have moved over there. England’s getting tougher and tougher every day. Layoffs everywhere. Maybe I should move over there. The funeral business must be better over there wif all the drive-by killings and disgruntled postal workers. Not to mention cancer and hypertension. Shit! Over ere I’ve got to wait for a car to run over somebody or until someone dies of old age or boredom.”

  Fire and Courtney stayed up chatting about cars and music until they heard the tinkling of Nan’s keys at the door. They were in the living room now. Fire was flushed with warmth when he saw her. He’d known her since they were teenagers.

  “Oh, you’ve already got supper,” she said, as she walked toward Courtney to give him a kiss. She spoke with modulated precision. “I brought you supper, luv—for you too, Fire—donners.” She dug a space between them with her hips.

  “I heard you’re going to the polytech, Nan,” Fire said. “What’re you taking up?”

  “Computer-aided retouching—A
dobe Photoshop.”

  “Courts told me you were doing word processing.”

  “What does he know about me? He pays me no mind. He’s too busy with his dead bodies. I’m beginning to think he’s a necrophiliac—”

  “That explains my attraction to you, Nan.”

  Nan slapped Courtney playfully, then continued on about school.

  When Fire woke up the next morning, Nan was sitting on the edge of his futon. Wiping his hair away from his face, he sat up and gathered the covers around his middle, aware—too much so, he felt—of the form of her breasts through her light nightgown.

  She’d acquired some lines in her face, he noticed—to her advantage, for they drew attention to her best features: her dark eyes and thick lashes, and her slightly crooked Cypriot nose. Poor Nan. She needed a different kind of man, Fire thought. She needed a man who encouraged without prompting. For, as bright as she was, Nan was in thrall to self-doubt. At times he was inclined to believe that Courtney withheld his support to ensure that she’d never outgrow him. Which began to make more sense now as he considered how Courtney had pressured her to drop out of university in Liverpool, where she’d gone to study math, threatening to leave her if she didn’t return to London—where there were lots of lonely black girls. In love and insecure, she obeyed him, promising her parents that she’d finish up at Goldsmith’s. But that didn’t work out, and she lucked into a job as a photographer’s assistant, which she did off and on whenever she could find time. Courtney’s ego required a lot of nursing.

  “I’ve got something to show you,” she said, handing him her portfolio.

  He asked her to get him a T-shirt from his duffel bag, which was sitting on the floor between a steamer trunk and a folding chair. As she turned away he flipped through quickly, preparing himself before she asked his opinion. To his relief, most of the work was good. Good but not brilliant. Solid though. Which is all most people will ever achieve in this life.