by Rebecca Ley
All our people, the ones who stayed. All of culture, all of memory, all of food, the idea of belonging to a place, an arbitrary piece of land. A language. All of it, my mother: gone. All those years, I hadn’t changed my name. It was one of the few things I had left.
These were the things I would take, things that mattered above all else. The things that reminded me of home.
I thought about leaving and what that would mean. How long we’d be on the road. My fever had subsided but my head still burned. And it had left with it a solid ache in my jaw. I went into the bathroom and took the rest of the drugs George had given us and put them into my bag. I looked into the greyed and murky mirror and pulled my top lip back over my teeth, trying to see where the dull ache was coming from. One of my front molars had a distinctly grey colour, and when I lifted my head I could just about see that the middle crevice was black. Shit, I said to myself. I thought about where we might end up. How long we’d be away. I wondered if we’d come back, or what there might be out there. What there might not be. I thought about the ways you could die on the road, and I thought about how this could be one of them.
I went through my grandmother’s sewing basket and retrieved some thick thread and her nail cutters, in case. I went back up to the bathroom. I tied my hair up. I tied the thread tightly knotted to the door handle, and the other end, taut, to my blackened tooth. I looked at myself in the mirror, with the thread pulling out of my mouth like that and I let out a low moan. I breathed out, one, two, three. I held the door handle in my hand. I swung it gently back and forth. One, two, three. One, two –
I slammed it as hard as it would go. I heard a crack, and my whole body convulsed. A loud noise of horror came from inside me and I heard it as though it were coming from another body. I held my mouth open, wailing, and felt inside. It had cracked, but was still partially attached. I continued to wail, grabbing the nail clippers and feeling for what was left of the tooth. I reached inside and with all my strength, pulled. One, two, three twists. I felt it fly from my gum and my body fall. Everything went black.
I awoke in a small pool of blood. My mouth was encrusted and metallic, and my throat tasted strongly of that dense iron taste. I didn’t know how long I’d been on the floor but the two parts of my tooth still lay next to me. I got up, slowly, and took a couple of the pills that George had given us. I washed my mouth out with water, and tried not to feel the gaping hole with my tongue. It was cavernous and weeping, but it was out at least, I could tell. I looked at the grey remnants of it, the solid roots, the way I’d had to twist it out. I vomited in the sink, a pale stream of bile. I washed my mouth again and tidied the bathroom just as I’d left it. I kept my bedroom neat, made my bed, even as my hands trembled.
I went into the living room and sat by the disused fireplace. I looked into the old cinders and felt the surface of my grandmother’s chair. I laid my head down, but my eyes clicked open, as though I’d forgotten something. I checked my bedroom one more time, and waited for my grandmother to come home.
I couldn’t tell my grandmother I was leaving; that I knew without Jaminder having to tell me. I didn’t know if she’d understand either way or if she’d ever figure it out. The idea of her alone in this house threatened my strength to leave, but I knew they had no reason to hurt her. Not like me. Not like Jaminder. When she came home she went straight to her sewing. I came into the kitchen, holding my small bag in my hands.
‘I’m going for a night,’ I told her. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.’
She looked up from her stitching. ‘Oh, Mathilde. Do you have to go back?’
‘Just for a night,’ I said. ‘And then it’ll be over.’
She had laid out silk patterns on the table and was trying to keep them smooth with one hand and cut with scissors with the other. ‘It’s a slippery fish,’ she muttered, trying to keep the animal of cloth still underneath her hands. It was expensive, and with one wrong movement, she could ruin it. I looked at her like that, and wondered at the futility of making expensive clothing for rich people when she could knit and could prepare plenty for people to live out the winter. But this is what paid her way for today.
‘If you hold it down like this,’ I showed her, ‘It will be still for you. There, now cut it.’ She cut with her scissors along the lines she made.
‘How did you know that?’ She smiled at me.
‘I learnt from the best.’
She put her scissors down to begin the pinning. ‘Did you hear about Kenwood House?’
‘What about it?’ I said, and felt my resolve weaken.
‘It’s been cleared out, apparently,’ she said, without looking up from her pinning. ‘Empty again. Police came round last night and cleared the lot of them out.’
‘Where did they go?’ I said, but I knew, didn’t I? It was only a matter of time.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said, quietly. She looked out the window. ‘They’re always watching, aren’t they? They always know where we are, and what we’re doing.’
I hoped for my sake that wasn’t true.
I hugged her around her back, and laid my head on her shoulder. She had three pins hovering in her mouth, and couldn’t speak so she took the pins from her mouth and laughed. ‘You remind me of Margot sometimes,’ she said. ‘You’ll do something and it will make me think of her, just as she was.’
I released her and looked at my small bag and thought of its contents. ‘Do you need reminding? Don’t you think of her?’
‘Every day,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘And I think: I’m glad she died with France. I’m glad she never saw it burn. She would’ve hated it here, wouldn’t she? Pretending to be English, in some way or another.’
My grandmother laughed. ‘Yes, Margot would have hated it here. She would’ve hated it just like you.’
Act normal. I parked my bike outside George’s house at five o’clock, and didn’t bother to lock it up because no one was around. I knocked on the door, and he opened it. He wasn’t wearing a suit, for once, and had on an old t-shirt that hung loose around him. I could tell from the fabric it was years old, and from the design too. Nothing was manufactured like that now. It was the first time I’d seen him off guard, and it frightened me.
‘Great,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something for you.’ His face said anything but great. His skin was ashen and he looked distracted. Just act normal. But he was supposed to act normal too.
‘Okay,’ I said and followed him inside. He led me into the kitchen and then took my hands in his.
‘Are you feeling better?’ he said.
‘Almost,’ I said. I directed my mouth towards the ceiling, hoping the malice would end up there, and would dissolve by the time it reached his eardrums. He held my hands and shook them as though I wasn’t the one who had just spoken, as though I wasn’t listening.
‘Thanks to the drugs you got for me. It could’ve been worse, I suppose.’ I said, and I felt again his hands in mine and wondered about where his fingers had been and what they had touched.
‘I only ever try and do what’s best,’ he said.
Maybe in his head that’s what he really did think, and he did imagine it was all the best out of what we had.
‘I’m glad anyway,’ he said, ‘you need to stay healthy. You’re young. You’ve got a lot of life to live yet. A lot of life to give to others.’ He smiled at me.
‘I don’t know if I’ll ever have children,’ I said.
‘What you’re saying,’ he said, earnest again, but faintly amused, ‘you know how illegal that is.’
‘Why would I want a child when we can barely feed ourselves?’
He let go of my hands and rubbed his face, as though he was smothering a laugh. ‘You might change your mind, you can’t know. But I respect you for it. For considering it.’
I couldn’t determine whether his tone was threatening or sincere, but I followed him, my eyes glued. After all this time, his movements weighed on me; I still followed
them. He gestured at the counter. ‘By way of an apology, for the last one.’ There sat a brand new radio just the same as the last. As though nothing had happened. My hands shook as I willed for the noise to drown out my fear. I went over to it and turned it on. I smiled at him. I meant it. He had cemented the distraction I needed.
The music blared and the old tunes beat up at us, and I wanted to laugh, thinking about how I could listen to music one last time, then tell him I wanted some fresh air and I would be gone. He took my hands in his again. I thought he might want to dance with me, and I thought, as I was so close to freedom, I didn’t mind. He had a broad smile on that didn’t match his t-shirt and he looked at me expectantly.
He turned and gestured towards the kitchen table. ‘Look,’ he said, over the music. There, like a photograph of what life should look like, was a chocolate cake. Glossy and thick and perfectly built. I shuddered, wondering where it had all come from. How he got it.
‘Chocolate,’ I said. Dirty word.
‘I know you like your chocolate. I made it myself,’ he said, ‘on my own.’ He sounded like a child, like I was his mother and should respond appropriately with a well done or a congratulations or a how sweet of you.
‘I can’t eat it,’ I said. ‘My teeth hurt. I have toothache.’
‘You can,’ he said. ‘It’s the least you can do. You should be grateful.’
‘I feel ashamed of all the food we eat, when everyone else has nothing.’
He snorted. ‘That’s new. This isn’t shameful. This is pleasure.’ He said pleasure as though he could feel pleasure just as he said the word, that the p of pleasure was something dropped on his tongue, and maybe the l and the e and so on had a different sort of taste that was: pleasurable.
‘I don’t want it, George.’ I tried to sound kind. I counted the seconds in my head, as though I was saying them to Jaminder. Ten more seconds and I can try and leave? Twenty and I’ve acted normal, I promise. Thirty and maybe he can’t see the hatred in my eyes, pure and red, glossy like the cake.
‘I’m telling you,’ he said. ‘I want to watch you eat it.’ He took my hand again and pulled me to sit at the table. I sat down with a thud. I felt the hole in my mouth, still weeping.
‘My teeth hurt,’ I said. ‘I can’t, please, George.’
‘Think of all I’ve done for you,’ he said. ‘You have to eat it all. Every last bite. I put everything into it.’ As he said that he pulled up a chair next to me and tapped my knee and handed me a fork and tapped that too, on the table.
If I didn’t eat it, would he know? Would he know that it didn’t matter whether I ate it or not, because I would be gone by the morning? If I didn’t eat, he’d know that I didn’t have to eat it, and if I didn’t have to eat it, then he’d know I was gone, and he would undo it like a line of knitting gone wrong. One pull and he’d unravel the whole thing to a curly cable threaded mess, like cotton brains. That’s how I’d end up, and no one would ask. He’d say I’d gone anywhere. He could say anything and no one would ask him ever again.
Would she do it? Would Jaminder eat it, with no complaint? I thought, what’s worse, what’s already happened, or this? What happened to Jaminder or this?
I wondered how much time I needed, if the car was gone yet. I had to hold his gaze, like she’d said, for as long as possible. But my hands shook at the thought of it. I had to keep my eyes on it. I had to not look towards the window, as though I were waiting for something. I glanced at his watch: five fifteen. Not yet. I couldn’t leave yet.
I thought of all the times I had been desperate to eat chocolate and dreamt of it, tried to taste it in my mouth and taste with it the smell of my mother and her stirring chocolate and the care she took not to let the water in and turn it to mush. Her taking the chocolate’s temperature like it had a fever and making sure it was perfect, and then spreading and smoothing it out and caring for it like it was another child of hers, like it was me. I strained my ears but I couldn’t hear her voice in my head telling me what she’d do or if I should be ashamed or if I should be grateful. I couldn’t hear anything. It didn’t matter, anyway, because I didn’t have a choice. And it was better to do this than it was to die.
I picked up the fork and he nodded. He bit his lip in anticipation and I wondered what it was he wanted from me, what he was waiting for, what he wanted to see. I sunk the prongs in to the cake, moist and slippery. I spooled it out and watched the crumbs fall on the table. I didn’t watch his face watching me. The sound of the radio blared over us but I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t hear it because the cake became a noise and it soared in my ears. The chocolate melted and spread around my teeth and I swallowed. As the first piece of cake went down, the first piece of my childhood came up: all the times I’d stood with my mother and waited with her as she mixed and poured and I pressed my forehead to the oven door and licked the spoon. I thought of the bag I’d left hidden in the park under the old rickety decking of what once was a café. I thought of the recipe of tarte tatin and the way the first line started: commencer par préparer tous les ingrédients and the double m of commencer curled up and into each other with her perfectly familiar and reliable lilt. The first taste of cake made me miss all those things. Life as we knew it.
‘Keep going,’ he said. He began to press on my wrist like I was a peach and he was testing me for ripeness. It was his way of saying: you’re not ready yet. Every moment I wanted to get up and leave the table, and shut off the radio and tell him I’m done, was a moment I thought of Jaminder, and what she would do. The faster I eat it, the faster I can get to her.
I ate half of it, slowly, each fork becoming more tasteless and claggy than the last. I slowed to a sickly halt. My belly had swollen to a hard mound and my knees shook from the sugar. Moisture escaped my eyes as though my face were being squeezed and pressed, too. I felt outside of my body and not part of it. I felt it revolt. I felt its disgust with me, and the pressure on my insides. I felt the bitter coating of bile warming up my throat and I dug my fingernails into the kitchen table. I wanted to ask him if this is what he wanted, but I didn’t want to look at his face.
I put the fork down. I could feel the weight of my body pressing up on me. I bent forward. He raised a hand to press on my wrist and then the feeling became bitter and urgent. I screeched back my chair and made it to the kitchen sink and that’s where it all came up, piece by bloody piece.
With every retch I heard him laugh. He clicked the radio off to hear me better. He laughed, in the silence, with genuine mirth. I didn’t turn to look at him. I kept my face swung over the porcelain sink, clutching its cool edges. He said my name, or some version of it: Matilda, Matilda, Matilda. The anglicisation which once warmed me now felt like possession, a stripping of self. He said that name and then he laughed, like I was a great joke I myself didn’t understand.
I felt he’d fled his body, and all that was left was the laugh.
5
The feeling of sickness left me as quickly as the vomit. I wiped my mouth. I turned to him.
‘Why are you doing this?’ I said.
He stopped laughing. ‘No kindnesses were ever afforded to me. Don’t you see how lucky you are?’
I was given sanctuary. I was taken in, on this arbitrary plot of land. I was lucky where so many were not. Because we got out just in time, because Mrs P let us in. Because we had the right words on the right papers. Because we were able to work, because we had something to give. I felt guilty for it every day.
We had no religion, we never had; we were taught not to have. Because of this, when I imagined God, I imagined him as a human man, a fatherly figure I had never had. I imagined him talking to me and sometimes I talked back to him.
I spoke French to my mother in my head, and sometimes out loud to this God-like man. I rarely spoke it to the concrete, to anything real. My God belonged to no temple or church or any man-made structure, except the one that I made in my head.
I implored him, then, for something. I asked hi
m for forgiveness. I asked him to make sure an answer would be brought to me, in some form. I asked him for this small kindness, and I promised him I wouldn’t wish for anything else. I promised him I’d never wish for chocolate, or any superficial, material thing ever again. I promised him I’d never wish for pastry, or bread, or butter, or wine, or the sweet crackling of sugar in my teeth or the weight of a fruit in my hand. I promised him, if he granted me the kindness of our plan working. If he granted me the kindness of letting me go. I promised him I’d never wish for things that weren’t there, I’d only be happy for the things that were. If he could save our lives, if he could free us, I would sacrifice this liberty.
‘I know everything about you,’ George said. ‘I know what you know. And I’m not sure I want you around anymore.’
Perhaps his dressed-down attire was an indication that he wasn’t sure of his decision to send me away. He might have arranged it already, and intended to follow through with it, but maybe he wasn’t sure. Maybe he tore at the decision; maybe he tore, for a second, at the idea of owning someone like that. Or maybe that was attributing too much humanity to him.
I glanced at his watch and could see the hand had passed six o’clock long before. I wouldn’t be able to leave, not like this. I thought of Jaminder outside that hotel. Every minute she waited was a minute lost. A minute granted to them.
‘I want to see the jars again,’ I said. ‘I want to see them one more time.’
He smiled at me, grateful for this suggestion. He ran his hand through his disordered greying hair. ‘I’m glad you’ve shown an interest,’ he said.