A Cupboard Full of Coats (8 page)

‘But Berris never have his hair cut. Or even plait. Used to look nasty. Kids being kids they take the piss outta him bad. Must be that why he learn to fight so hard. Got so no one tease him any more ’cos when he fight you, it’s like say he wanna kill you, even the girls…’specially the girls. Always had to be someone there to stop him, ’cos from when we was boys till we come men, I never once seen him stop hisself.

‘All of us was living with family, the grandparents, or an auntie or some such. I live with my father’s sister then, and girl let me tell you that woman was a devil. But she was nothing next to Mistress Jolly. Berris’ mum family never want no truck with her bastard pickney, so she
had
to leave him with Mistress Jolly, never had no choice the way I see it, though to hear Berris talk you’d swear she had ’nough. Mistress Jolly take in a whole heapa kids, ’nough jingbang, collect a whole heapa money, but she keep near ’nough every dollar for sheself.

‘That woman was always vex for something. You might as well say “switch live in her hand”, ’cos it was there from sunrise till sunfall. Only time she put it by was Sunday morning when she go church and odd time the parents come. Barring that, them kids get some licks you see. ’Nough licks, man, ’nough licks.

‘None of us had much food then. Was mostly vegetarian but not from choice. If there was piece a meat in you house and you lucky, you peas might catch little the flavour, but the only time you had a solid chance of meat on you plate was Christmas Day and Easter, and even then was no guarantee.

‘Mistress Jolly was always walking and talking ’bout how the orphans was eating her out of house and home, but they must have been some serious slow eaters, ’cos the house was always being fix: new roof, extension, big old comfy chair. And that woman was fat! She was fat till fat roll when she walk. To look at her you would never say she was someone who live far from the kitchen.

‘But Berris was small. All Mistress Jolly pickney was small. We never have much but I still save a dumpling for Berris from my soup, or little dasheen, small piece of yam. Up to now don’t know why. ’Cept I seen him cry. Something pitiful. When he thought was no one there to see, I saw. See him put down some piece of bawling, never seen nothing like it in my life. Guess I felt sorry for him or something. Anyways I did it, give him a little food regular like. According to him was that little something save his life. Think that’s how we growed up to be so close.’

He paused for a moment and lit a cigarette. With a grimace, he swallowed a mouthful from his glass, then took a deep drag and exhaled.

‘He call me a fool when I marry Mavis.’ His voice was quieter now, tired. ‘Think that was the only time we nearly come to blows. Said she was easy, I wasn’t the first to fuck her, that she take me and make jacket to give her bastard a name. She never forget that. Never forgived him neither. After we come to England I still use to see him, we was still tight, but he couldn’t visit my yard. Was his fault for true and probably serve him right, but he still hate her for it. Hate her bad.

‘Course Mavis tell me all was lie, Berris jealous, the kinda thing she
had
to say, if you think on it, and I listen to what she have to say, but I study my son when he born, study him hard to see what he have for me. Like you, he favour his mum bad. Never could see me in him ’t’all. Think that was the reason I never send for him, even when we get settle here and we coulda.

‘Deep down in my heart, all that time, I never knowed, never knowed for sure…was he mine?’

‘Are you telling me all those years you never had a relationship with your son was ’cos of what Berris said?’ I asked.

The soup was finished. I replaced the spoon in the bowl as he took it, nodding. ‘Yep.’

‘So he said one thing and your wife said something completely different and, of the two, you believed
him
?’

‘You wanted the truth, that’s what you getting.’

‘Just so I’m clear,
you
messed up but it was Berris’s fault?’

‘I’m not making excuses…’

‘Yes you are! So what that he said it? So what?’

‘I did what I did. Can’t turn back the clock. All I’m trying to do is tell it like it was,’ he said.

He raised his brows, his hands, his shoulders in a shrug, and all at once he looked old. How many lives had Berris trashed in his lifetime, I wondered? How many? And yet Lemon still stood by him, still visited, still had him round for talks on old times. Even though I felt like a bully, like I was beating someone up who was making no effort to defend himself, I couldn’t stop.

‘She was your wife.’ To my surprise, my voice was choked. ‘Why couldn’t you just believe her?’

‘You think I didn’t want to believe her? You think I never try? Girl, you can’t even begin to imagine my misery, the ways I let her down. What I told you ain’t nothing.’

‘What, there’s more?’

‘Always more. But I need to get a refill first. You want one?’

I shook my head. I had been concentrating on eating. The glass of wine he’d brought me was still full.

‘Think I better have some soup first; line me stomach a bit.’

‘Okay,’ I said, and he went.

There was a time when I would have been overjoyed to know just how dissipated Lemon’s family life was. Clearly, since then, I had grown up. Now I just felt angry with Lemon, angry he had given Berris free reign to manipulate his thoughts, then done little else other than sit back and accept the resulting unhappiness, like a willing victim patiently poised, awaiting a fatal stab in the back.

I asked him why he had come to see me and he had started from the beginning, with his childhood, and Berris was there. Berris was at my own beginning too. Everything had begun with him, literally begun from the first moment I laid eyes on him here in this very house. Up until then, my childhood had been spectacularly humdrum. It had chugged along with the monotony of a fairy tale; the odd discomfort here and there swiftly resolved and resulting in a happy-ever-after. It had been solid, unwavering and predictable. Like my friendship with Sam, my best friend from the day I started secondary school and found myself in the formroom sitting beside her. Samantha Adebayo. She was also at the beginning. My life changed on a day that started with Sam, the day we counted virgins and netball practice got cancelled.

Considering it was the moment that signalled the beginning of the end of my childhood, you might have thought something dramatic had marked it out; a blazing comet crossing the sky or thunder pounding like a roll of drums. Instead it was a usual day, completely normal, a day so ordinary that I hadn’t suspected a thing.

4

I waited for Sam on the corner of Amhurst Road and Dalston Lane, outside Easton Chemist’s, at the bottom of Pembury Estate where she lived with her family, the whole of the Adebayo posse; her mum and dad, herself and three younger brothers.

Her family was the complete opposite of mine, where it was just me and my mum and everything was quiet and in its place. Her dad was kind of okay but Mrs Adebayo could be a bit weird. Because of her, I didn’t visit them much, but on the occasions I had, Sam’s house was as noisy and crazy and manic as the school dining hall at lunchtime. Compared to hers, my house was like a morgue.

From where I stood I could see through the courtyard, almost to the middle of the estate. The Adebayos lived in the block right at the top, overlooking the park, and there were several exits between that end and where I stood, but I knew Sam would come out this way because she always did. This was where I met her every morning; a short walk down from where I lived and across the road from Hackney Downs Station where we caught the 48 bus to take us to school.

I was digi because it was a Monday and on Mondays after school we had netball practice. About half the time, Sam forgot her kit. She was pretty scatty, forever leaving something behind or just forgetting things completely. I was digi because I didn’t want to end up at practice on my own. But the minute I saw her, I relaxed.

She was running from the moment she came into view, racing through the estate in the disgusting maroon uniform we hated so much, satchel flapping, blazer and cardigan undone, the carrier bag with her kit in it held between her teeth, her hands busy pulling her auburn hair into a ponytail; late as usual and still not finished dressing.

‘Jay, you gotta stop letting your mum do your hair, man,’ she said as she reached me, slowing down to a walk, which I picked up alongside her. My mum had washed my hair the day before and spent the evening cornrowing it into fine plaits that ran from my forehead to the nape of my neck, like Leroy’s from
Fame.

‘I’ll take them out for you at first break,’ she said.

Up until then, I’d quite liked the style, but if Sam thought it was dry, it would have to go.

‘Okay.’

‘You done your biology?’ she asked.

I nodded.

‘Man, I can’t do shit at home. You don’t know how lucky you are. Once I’ve finished my O levels I’m out of there. My family’s seriously fucked.’

We were five months away from our O levels and the end of our school days for ever. It was kind of strange knowing that, like the end of school was supposed to mark the beginning of being grown up, but I didn’t feel grown up at all. I didn’t have the first idea about what I wanted to do with my life. The only thing I was good at was writing stories, but that wasn’t much use when you were trying to work out what kind of career you could end up with. That was another difference between me and Sam. She always knew exactly what she wanted to do and no matter what, she went ahead and did it. Her mother was English and her father Ghanaian and she was totally against mixed relationships. She was sick of her parents arguing all the time, sick of being in a twobedroomed flat and not having her own bedroom, sick of being the only girl in her family and having to slave behind her brothers, and sick of being told what to do. As soon as our exams were over, she was leaving home.

‘You should’ve come over the garages on Friday,’ she said.

She was talking about the car park underneath the tower blocks on Nightingale Estate. There were always loads of guys hanging out from the estate down there, renters mostly, trying to get the girls who passed through into the empty garages on a one-to-one. I didn’t like the scene as much as she did and it wasn’t just because the boys all seemed so immature, or even because the second they laid eyes on Sam it was like I’d suddenly become invisible. I had a deeper personal problem: French kissing. I’d never done it. You couldn’t count the hours spent practising on oranges; cutting them in half and gouging out the fruit using only my tongue. Good French-kissers left the pith clean, but I was nowhere near that level of proficiency. Usually, I just ended up with an exhausted tongue, and sore bits at the corners of my mouth so that when the juice touched them it stung like hell. I was terrified my inexperience would make me look ridiculous, and over the garages, that fear made me mute.

‘Was it good?’

‘It was wicked. I got asked out again.’

‘Who by?’

‘Donovan, innit! Jay, if I tell you something, you gotta promise me you’ll never tell anyone as long as you live.’

She was so dramatic. ‘Like
I’d
tell anyone,’ I said, rolling my eyes.

‘You have to promise me. Swear on your mother’s life.’

‘I swear, okay?’

‘I saw his wood.’

‘Liar!’ I shrieked.

‘I swear.’

‘I don’t believe you.‘

‘You think I’d lie about something like that?’

‘How did you see it?’

‘He took it out. He wannid me to touch it –’

‘Ergh! Gross.’

‘But I said “no”, of course,’ she added, but it sounded kind of lame, like maybe she had only added that last bit because of how I’d reacted, and I wondered whether she really had touched it.

Donovan was in the sixth form at Homerton House. He had been asking her out for months, and the way she told, it was like he was some renter and she just wasn’t interested. But I knew she had
some
interest, because I caught them kissing once, one evening when all the kids were playing out on my road and we decided to play Knock Down Ginger with the old fogies who lived on the first floor in Bodney Mansions. But when we took the corner into the dark stairwell, Donovan and Sam were already there, doing some serious kissing and grinding up. She looked well shamed when she saw me, and they both tried to play it like nothing had been going on. But it was blatant. I’d caught them cold.

‘So what did it look like?’ I asked.

‘Like a saveloy when the skin’s peeled back.’

‘Ugh! I am
never
gonna eat saveloy ever again,’ I said.

‘When I’m older, I’m only gonna go out with white guys,’ Sam said.

‘Why?’

‘Coloured people are more sexed than white people. That’s what my mum says. That’s why they shouldn’t mix.’

This was news to me and I was quiet as I digested it. Because she had one black and one white parent, Sam was an expert on everything to do with colour. I was lucky to have her as a friend. I learned a lot from her.

The bus stop was crowded with people, including two African boys from Shoreditch School, who were usually at this stop in the mornings. One of them fancied Sam. He tried to pretend he never saw us, but he was just styling it. His friend gave him a butt with his elbow in the stomach, then started to laugh.

‘Stupid bubus!’ Sam said, loud enough for them to hear. She called all Africans ‘bubus’, even her dad. Then, turning to me, she whispered, ‘Ugh! Can you imagine me and one of those bubus doing The Nasty?’

For an instant, my imagination ran riot. I stared at Sam, she stared at me. There was silence. Then we both cracked up.

I started taking the cornrows out during biology and by first break they were gone.

‘I wanted you to look like Farrah but it ain’t happening, man,’ Sam said, as she teased my hair into large curls that fell out as soon as she let them go. According to her, Farrah Fawcett-Majors wasn’t just the best looking of the three Charlie’s Angels, she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
She
was the woman who should have played Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve, the world’s bestlooking man.