Collected Stories (6 page)

*

He awoke abruptly. The front door bell was ringing. It was six in the morning. Roy tiptoed downstairs with a hammer in his hand. Jimmy’s stringy body was soaked through and he was coughing uncontrollably. He had gone to Kara’s house but she’d been out, so he’d decided to lie down in her doorway until she returned. At about five there had been a storm, and he’d realised she wasn’t coming back.

Jimmy was delirious and Roy persuaded him to lie on the sofa, where he covered him with a blanket. When he brought up blood Clara called the doctor. The ambulance took him away not long after, fearing a clot on the lung.

Roy got back into bed beside Clara and rested his drink on her hard stomach. Clara went to work but Roy couldn’t get up. He stayed in bed all morning and thought he couldn’t ever sleep enough to recover. At lunchtime he walked around town, lacking even the desire to buy anything. In the afternoon he visited Jimmy in the hospital.

‘How you feeling, pal?’

A man in his pyjamas can only seem disabled. No amount of puffing-up can exchange the blue and white stripes for the daily dignity which has been put to bed with him. Jimmy hardly said hallo. He was wailing for a drink and a cigarette.

‘It’ll do you good, being here.’ Roy patted Jimmy’s hand. ‘Time to sort yourself out.’

Jimmy almost leapt out of bed. ‘Change places!’

‘No thanks.’

‘You smug bastard – if you’d looked after me I wouldn’t be in this shit!’

A fine-suited consultant, pursued by white-coated disciples, entered the ward. A nurse drew the curtain across Jimmy’s wounded face.

‘Make no mistake, I’ll be back!’ Jimmy cried.

Roy walked past the withered, ashen patients, and towards the lift. Two men in lightweight uniforms were pushing a high bed to the doors on their way to the operating theatre. Roy slotted in behind them as they talked across a dumb patient who blinked up at the roof of the lift. They were discussing where they’d go drinking later. Roy hoped Jimmy wouldn’t want him to return the next day.

Downstairs the wide revolving door swept people into the hospital and pushed him out into the town. From the corner of the building, where dressing-gowned patients had gathered to smoke, Roy turned to make a farewell gesture at the building where his friend lay. Then he saw the girl in the leopard-skin hat, Kara’s friend.

He called out. Smiling, she came over, holding a bunch of flowers. He asked her if she was working and when she shook her head, said, ‘Give me your number. I’ll call you tomorrow. I’ve got a couple of things on the go.’

Before, he hadn’t seen her in daylight. What, now, might there be time for?

She said, ‘When’s the baby due?’

‘Any day now.’

‘You’re going to have your hands full.’

He asked her if she wanted a drink.

‘Jimmy’s expecting me,’ she said. ‘But ring me.’

He joined the robust street. Jimmy couldn’t walk here, but he, Roy, could trip along light-headed and singing to himself – as if it were he who’d been taken to hospital, and at the last moment, as the anaesthetic was inserted, a voice had shouted, ‘No, not him!’, and he’d been reprieved.

Nearby was a coffee shop where he used to go. The manager waved at him, brought over hot chocolate and a cake, and, as usual, complained about the boredom and said he wished for a job like Roy’s. When he’d gone, Roy opened his bag and extracted his newspaper, book, notebook and pens. But he just watched the passers-by. He couldn’t stay long because he remembered that he and Clara had an antenatal class. He wanted to get back, to see what was between them and learn what it might give him. Some people you couldn’t erase from your life.

Azhar’s mother led him to the front of the lower deck, sat him down with his satchel, hurried back to retrieve her shopping, and took her place beside him. As the bus pulled away Azhar spotted Big Billy and his son Little Billy racing alongside, yelling and waving at the driver. Azhar closed his eyes and hoped it was moving too rapidly for them to get on. But they not only flung themselves onto the platform, they charged up the almost empty vehicle hooting and panting as if they were on a fairground ride. They settled directly across the aisle from where they could stare at Azhar and his mother.

At this his mother made to rise. So did Big Billy. Little Billy sprang up. They would follow her and Azhar. With a sigh she sank back down. The conductor came, holding the arm of his ticket machine. He knew the Billys, and had a laugh with them. He let them ride for nothing.

Mother’s grey perfumed glove took some pennies from her purse. She handed them to Azhar who held them up as she had shown him.

‘One and a half to the Three Kings,’ he said.

‘Please,’ whispered Mother, making a sign of exasperation.

‘Please,’ he repeated.

The conductor passed over the tickets and went away.

‘Hold onto them tightly,’ said Mother. ‘In case the inspector gets on.’

Big Billy said, ‘Look, he’s a big boy.’

‘Big boy,’ echoed Little Billy.

‘So grown up he has to run to teacher,’ said Big Billy.

‘Cry baby!’ trumpeted Little Billy.

Mother was looking straight ahead, through the window. Her voice was almost normal, but subdued. ‘Pity we didn’t have time to get to the library. Still, there’s tomorrow. Are you still the best reader in the class?’ She nudged him. ‘Are you?’

‘S’pose so,’ he mumbled.

Every evening after school Mother took him to the tiny library nearby where he exchanged the previous day’s books. Tonight, though, there hadn’t been time. She didn’t want Father asking why they were late. She wouldn’t want him to know they had been in to complain.

Big Billy had been called to the headmistress’s stuffy room and been sharply informed – so she told Mother – that she took a ‘dim view’. Mother was glad. She had objected to Little Billy bullying her boy. Azhar had had Little Billy sitting behind him in class. For weeks Little Billy had called him names and clipped him round the head with his ruler. Now some of the other boys, mates of Little Billy, had also started to pick on Azhar.

‘I eat nuts!’

Big Billy was hooting like an orang-utan, jumping up and down and scratching himself under the arms – one of the things Little Billy had been castigated for. But it didn’t restrain his father. His face looked horrible.

Big Billy lived a few doors away from them. Mother had known him and his family since she was a child. They had shared the same air-raid shelter during the war. Big Billy had been a Ted and still wore a drape coat and his hair in a sculpted quiff. He had black bitten-down fingernails and a smear of grease across his forehead. He was known as Motorbike Bill because he repeatedly built and rebuilt his Triumph. ‘Triumph of the Bill,’ Father liked to murmur as they passed. Sometimes numerous lumps of metal stood on rags around the skeleton of the bike, and in the late evening Big Bill revved up the machine while his record player balanced on the windowsill repeatedly blared out a 45 called ‘Rave On’. Then everyone knew Big Billy was preparing for the annual bank holiday run to the coast. Mother and the other neighbours were forced to shut their windows to exclude the noise and fumes.

Mother had begun to notice not only Azhar’s dejection but also his exhausted and dishevelled appearance on his return from school. He looked as if he’d been flung into a hedge and rolled in a puddle – which he had. Unburdening with difficulty, he confessed the abuse the boys gave him, Little Billy in particular.

At first Mother appeared amused by such pranks. She was surprised that Azhar took it so hard. He should ignore the childish remarks: a lot of children were cruel. Yet he couldn’t make out what it was with him that made people say such things, or why, after so many contented hours at home with his mother, such violence had entered his world.

Mother had taken Azhar’s hand and instructed him to reply, ‘Little Billy, you’re common – common as muck!’

Azhar held onto the words and repeated them continuously to himself. Next day, in a corner with his enemy’s taunts going at him, he closed his eyes and hollered them out. ‘Muck, muck, muck – common as muck you!’

Little Billy was as perplexed as Azhar by the epithet. Like magic it shut his mouth. But the next day Little Billy came back with the renewed might of names new to Azhar: sambo, wog, little coon. Azhar returned to his mother for more words but they had run out.

Big Billy was saying across the bus, ‘Common! Why don’t you say it out loud to me face, eh? Won’t say it, eh?’

‘Nah,’ said Little Billy. ‘Won’t!’

‘But we ain’t as common as a slut who marries a darkie.’

‘Darkie, darkie,’ Little Billy repeated. ‘Monkey, monkey!’

Mother’s look didn’t deviate. But, perhaps anxious that her shaking would upset Azhar, she pulled her hand from his and pointed at a shop.

‘Look.’

‘What?’ said Azhar, distracted by Little Billy murmuring his name.

The instant Azhar turned his head, Big Billy called, ‘Hey! Why don’t you look at us, little lady?’

She twisted round and waved at the conductor standing on his platform. But a passenger got on and the conductor followed him upstairs. The few other passengers, sitting like statues, were unaware or unconcerned.

Mother turned back. Azhar had never seen her like this, ashen, with wet eyes, her body stiff as a tree. Azhar sensed what an effort she was making to keep still. When she wept at home she threw herself on the bed, shook convulsively and thumped the pillow. Now all that moved was a bulb of snot shivering on the end of her nose. She sniffed determinedly, before opening her bag and extracting the scented handkerchief with which she usually wiped Azhar’s face, or, screwing up a corner, dislodged any stray eyelashes around his eye. She blew her nose vigorously but he heard a sob.

Now she knew what went on and how it felt. How he wished he’d said nothing and protected her, for Big Billy was using her name: ‘Yvonne, Yvonne, hey, Yvonne, didn’t I give you a good time that time?’

‘Evie, a good time, right?’ sang Little Billy.

Big Billy smirked. ‘Thing is,’ he said, holding his nose, ‘there’s a smell on this bus.’

‘Pooh!’

‘How many of them are there living in that flat, all squashed together like, and stinkin’ the road out, eatin’ curry and rice!’

There was no doubt that their flat was jammed. Grandpop, a retired doctor, slept in one bedroom, Azhar, his sister and parents in another, and two uncles in the living room. All day big pans of Indian food simmered in the kitchen so people could eat when they wanted. The kitchen wallpaper bubbled and cracked and hung down like ancient scrolls. But Mother always denied that they were ‘like that’. She refused to allow the word ‘immigrant’ to be used about Father, since in her eyes it applied only to illiterate tiny men with downcast eyes and mismatched clothes.

Mother’s lips were moving but her throat must have been dry: no words came, until she managed to say, ‘We’re not Jews.’

There was a silence. This gave Big Billy an opportunity. ‘What you say?’ He cupped his ear and his long dark sideburn. With his other hand he cuffed Little Billy, who had begun hissing. ‘Speak up. Hey, tart, we can’t hear you!’

Mother repeated the remark but could make her voice no louder.

Azhar wasn’t sure what she meant. In his confusion he recalled a recent conversation about South Africa, where his best friend’s family had just emigrated. Azhar had asked why, if they were to go somewhere – and there had been such talk – they too couldn’t choose Cape Town. Painfully she replied that there the people with white skins were cruel to the black and brown people who were considered inferior and were forbidden to go where the whites went. The coloureds had separate entrances and were prohibited from sitting with the whites.

This peculiar fact of living history, vertiginously irrational and not taught in his school, struck his head like a hammer and echoed through his dreams night after night. How could such a thing be possible? What did it mean? How then should he act?

‘Nah,’ said Big Billy. ‘You no Yid, Yvonne. You us. But worse. Goin’ with the Paki.’

All the while Little Billy was hissing and twisting his head in imitation of a spastic.

Azhar had heard his father say that there had been ‘gassing’ not long ago. Neighbour had slaughtered neighbour, and such evil hadn’t died. Father would poke his finger at his wife, son and baby daughter, and state, ‘We’re in the front line!’

These conversations were often a prelude to his announcing that they were going ‘home’ to Pakistan. There they wouldn’t have these problems. At this point Azhar’s mother would become uneasy. How could she go ‘home’ when she was at home already? Hot weather made her swelter; spicy food upset her stomach; being surrounded by people who didn’t speak English made her feel lonely. As it was, Azhar’s grandfather and uncle chattered away in Urdu, and when Uncle Asif ’s wife had been in the country, she had, without prompting, walked several paces behind them in the street. Not wanting to side with either camp, Mother had had to position herself, with Azhar, somewhere in the middle of this curious procession as it made its way to the shops.