Jubilee (12 page)

‘You know,’ his father continues. ‘We came to this country with so little. Look at all you have now. That’s what I’d like to see, in the
Sunday Times
. That’s what I’d like other people to see. Back then, who knew what you would do?’

‘I can’t do it. I’m too busy.’

But his father isn’t interested.
Busy
is a trifling thing. He’s remembering their journey, his own tenacity, Satish’s rise.

‘We’ve always been proud of you, Satish. But look at this! All you have.’ He gestures towards his son as if his achievements are lying on the table between them. ‘It’s important, you know. What are immigrants? All we hear: they live in detention centres, they clean our houses. You need to show them something different.’

No he doesn’t. If nothing else, he has earned the right to that. ‘Papa, this isn’t about politics. It’s a publicity stunt.’

Maya returns to the table; in the dip of her head, in her pursed lips, he thinks he reads contrition. He thinks she knows now, when it’s too late, when contrition is irrelevant, that she has somehow steered this the wrong way.

His father will not let go. ‘Why do you not want to do this?’ he asks, and he’s abandoned casual interest or jovial enthusiasm. His tone is gentle and probing and thus takes a step closer to the truth of the thing. Satish sees himself surrounded. He clamps his mouth closed, scared he’ll supply an answer. He searches for the clever thing, the killer argument, the way out. Then it comes to him.

‘No,’ he tells them. ‘And that’s that. I’m not going to do it.’ They all need to hear it: his family, Colette, the lot of them. He’ll say it as many times as he needs to: no.

In the quiet, two coins fall from Manik’s hand into the bowl. Three cards lie in front of Satish. They can start playing again.

Sometimes, being six was about wanting to be eleven. For Colette, it was about Mandy and Sarah. Being around that relationship of theirs, that axis of power and desire, was a heady thing. You could lose your bearings completely. You’d veer towards the two of them, heedless of the dangers of running aground or breaking apart. If you were six, Mandy and Sarah put out a siren call, and here was the pull of it: if you were six, they were just about everything you wanted to be.

They were unattainably eleven, unreachably sophisticated. At school assembly they sat, subversive, in the back rows near the really big kids – the fifth years like Cai and Satish.

Colette would see Mandy and Sarah at lunchtimes, playing Elastic with their friends. Somehow, when she caught sight of them, they were never the ones on anchor duty, standing bored with the loop stretched round them. Instead, they were always the jumpers, flicking their feet in and out of the white twists. Her memories are of their insouciant anklesies, their focused kneesies, their occasional, contortionist waistsies which would bring the game to a triumphant end.

At home, Colette was sometimes allowed to break into their lair and watch their mysteries up close. ‘It’s just little Colette,’ Sarah would say, as she opened the bedroom door on one of Jan Brecon’s visits. Once inside, Colette watched the girls putting on the make-up that was forbidden in public. They used blue and green eye shadow, a legacy of Sarah’s sister Diane, liberated from her bedroom after she went off to be a nurse. They ran snail trails of roll-on gloss over their lips. Its artificial flavours – peppermint, bubblegum, strawberry – became an olfactory token of those private times. Once, Mandy bit the ball out of the top of the vial and just poured the gloss on. It looked like plastic on her mouth and, where her lips met, it went white.

Their bodies fascinated her. Sarah already had breasts – just small ones, but they counted. She had bought a halter-neck top and was trying it on for Mandy.

‘Can you tie a good bow? You can help me if you want,’ she told Colette. Sarah held the top snugly at the front, then fed the straps through to her. Colette tied carefully, balancing the lengths of the loops and ends so that it looked pretty hanging down. Sarah had freckles on her back, and her shoulder blades were like wing stumps. Colette reached out to touch her, a tremor in her hand. She wondered what it would feel like: the warmth she would meet, the hard and soft of it. Her fingers looked grubby beside Sarah’s clean skin. She let them make just the lightest touchdown, four fingertips across the rise of bone.

‘Ouch!’

‘Oops. Sorry. I—’

Sarah twitched her shoulders in distaste. ‘Your hands are freezing! What are you doing? Get off!’ She frowned at Colette for a moment. ‘Did you tie the bow?’

‘Yes. It looks nice.’

Sarah turned away from her towards Mandy, from whom she demanded a more informed assessment.

Once Colette had turned six, the older girls had taken upon themselves the responsibility of tutoring her in matters cultural, biological and sexual. No one knew how to kiss except Mandy and Sarah; the girls made sure she knew how to snog on a first date, why no one liked David Cassidy any more, and which boys at school were worth fancying.

‘John Andrews, yes,’ Sarah said. ‘He’s good looking. I like Richard Greenwood. Well, everyone likes Richard Greenwood because he’s gorgeous. But really gorgeous boys only like the best-looking girls, so it depends if you’re one of them.’ Sarah ran a hand across the flicks at her temples, sweeps of hair lacquered to solidity with repeated spraying. Mandy, lying on the bed, rolled over and shared her own wisdom.

‘Yeah – good looking’s good, of course. But being a laugh is good, too. I like it when—’

Sarah cut across her. ‘And don’t go for anyone shorter than you, even if they’re good looking. So no one like Robert Meade, OK?’

Colette tried to nod sagely. Robert Meade?

‘He’d be good as a friend, though,’ advised Mandy. ‘For boyfriends, try to go for boys in the year above. Dominic Irving’s nice, I think.’

Sarah’s judgement was swift and damning. ‘Eeughh! His hair! His shoes! Mandy! Dominic
Irving
! His stupid hair!’

‘It’s not that stupid. Anyway, I didn’t say I really liked him. He’s quite nice, that’s all.’

Sarah sighed heavily. ‘He’s all wrong. I have to tell you
everything
.’

‘Yeah? Well he’s better than some.’ Mandy widened her eyes and pouted. Her voice went up an octave. ‘Ooh, Stephen, can I watch you play football?’

Sarah frowned. ‘Shut up.’

‘Go on, Stevie-boy. Can I listen to you shout at your brother? Can I?’

‘I said shut up!’

‘Stephen, I think I LOVE you. Ow!’

‘Well, not everyone agrees about boys,’ Sarah said, with a final tug at Mandy’s hair. ‘Just don’t go for someone short, or younger, or really ugly.’ She leaned down towards Colette, dropping her voice to a mock whisper. ‘Like Dominic stupid-hair Irving.’

When one problem page correspondent in
Jackie
wrote in fear of an early death – ‘I’m bleeding, and I don’t know why. I can’t tell my mum because I’m too embarrassed’ – Mandy and Sarah enlightened Colette with girlish enthusiasm. She left that day a little shaken, and somewhat unclear as to the details of the process. She was fairly sure that her winkie was involved, and absolutely certain, after a vigorous debate between the two bigger girls, that Ruth from 5A had Started.

Even when they didn’t notice her, she noticed them. She watched them, ‘going down the shops’, ‘going up the rec’ and, on one thrilling occasion, ‘going up the off’. They came home with two cans of Cream Soda.

Sometimes she’d catch them playing separately. Not Sarah so much, but Mandy. Colette at the end of Cherry Gardens, counting all the red cars, and Mandy coming round the corner from the main road with her bike, getting a fright when she saw Colette there.

‘Gordon Bennett!’ she said. ‘You scared me!’

‘Can I come to your house?’

‘No. Sorry. I’m having my tea.’ She walked away. There were two more red cars, and an orange one that probably didn’t count, and then Satish appeared from the same direction. ‘Hello, Colette,’ he said, and ruffled her hair. She ducked out from under his hand and watched him turning into his drive the way Mandy had turned into hers a couple of minutes before: a mirror image, the two houses opposite each other. In her head there was already a triangle: Sarah’s house, Mandy’s house, her own. Now there was a line, a short one, between Mandy and Satish. After that, she watched the line between their doors and saw them on it sometimes, running, looking both ways, slipping quickly into each other’s homes. On Jubilee morning they must have managed it without her seeing.

That day Colette had woken up early to help her dad, and seen her new clothes draped playfully over her chair. There was the red pinafore which had caused so many quiet curses during its production. The blue blouse with leg o’ mutton sleeves had been a womanly touch and far too old for her, but she had begged for it and loved its graceful lines, the sleeves bagging gently at the long cuffs. They were propped up on the chair back, the pinafore hem reaching the edge of the seat, new white socks hanging down from it to red patent shoes on the floor. It was as if Colette had put them on, then dissolved inside them. She would show the outfit to Mandy and Sarah. They would tell her how smart she looked.

‘They’re to stay clean, all right Colette?’ her mum had lectured. ‘Keep your sticky fingers off them until it’s nearly lunchtime. Jeans and T-shirt for the morning.’

It was a long morning, waiting for the party to start. Her dad put up the bunting, and they saw Satish and Mandy kissing. Then it rained and that took ages, all of them waiting indoors for it to stop. Only after that, when the tables had been set out along the street, did it really start to look ready for the party. Miss Walsh brought out the paper cups and plates. Colette was sent to find stones to weigh down the Union Jack tablecloth after one gust whipped it up and sent cups, bowls and plastic cutlery tumbling onto the tarmac.

It was time to get excited. Colette stood at the head of the table and gazed up its length. It was perfect and untouched. Colette pictured it just an hour into the future, when the festivities were due to start. Soon, she thought, really soon, they could pour Coke into the paper cups, and put hamburgers and cakes on those plates. She could make a mess – nobody would tell her off – and would not have to finish her main course before she had pudding. She might sit next to Mandy, or Sarah. She heard a scraping two tables down; Mrs Miller was pushing a chair back into place, before turning and wandering back into her house to cook, or rest, or get changed. The thought occurred to Colette that now, with everything ready, her mum might let her put on the new clothes. She ran towards her own front door.

Her parents were in the kitchen. When Colette came in, they both turned towards her.

‘Can I get ready now?’

Her mum glanced up at the kitchen clock. ‘We’ve got about an hour. I suppose so. You can keep your outfit clean for an hour, can’t you?’ She sounded tired. There was a puffed-out feeling about her. As Colette turned to go upstairs she felt a silence weighing between her parents, and though she dawdled on the way to her room, hoping to hear what happened next, they remained quiet.

When she came down again, hungry for approbation, her dad had gone. She had dressed with great care, putting the socks and shoes on first because they were her favourite things, then polishing the red patent on a bathroom towel, just in case. After she had dressed, she had pulled the pinafore skirt up and tugged the blouse sharply down, wiggling a bit so that it sat properly on her shoulders. Her mum would do her hair in the kitchen.

‘Look at me!’ She entered with a grin.

‘Oh, Collie. That’s lovely. Go on then, give us a twirl.’ As she spun, her mother’s eyes narrowed.

‘I really struggled with that piping. Is it a bit wobbly? Hang on, stop a minute.’ She looked at the pinafore closely. ‘No, I think we can just about get away with that. What do you think?’

‘It’s great,’ and then, a beat later: ‘Thanks, Mum. Will you do my hair?’

‘Yes. Brush and bobble.’ Colette nipped into the hall to pick them up, then stood obediently as her hair was brushed in great scrapes against her scalp.

‘Up or down pony?’

Colette considered. She thought of Mandy and Sarah. ‘Down pony. Please.’

Her mum started stroking the hair downwards in long movements, pausing sometimes for quick little catches underneath to bring it all into line. The soft hairs at the nape of Colette’s neck twanged in pain. She tried not to make a fuss. When the ponytail was done, her mum knelt in front of her, pulling strands out to curl around her ears.

‘Lovely. If you hang on, I’ll let you have some hairspray. Special occasion.’ She came down with her big gold can of Elnett, redolent of grown-up elegance and babysitters coming.

‘Close your eyes.’ Colette braced herself while her mum sprayed round and round in the air above her. Opening her eyes a little too early, she could see the particles float down on her arms and hands. She could feel them settling on her face.

‘Oh, no. I don’t like it, Mum. It smells funny.’

‘Don’t complain. Please.’ The syllables fell sharply between them. ‘It’s meant to be a nice treat. If you really don’t like it, go upstairs, wash your face, pull out your ponytail, wash your hair, start again.’ The room went quiet. Colette couldn’t work out where this had come from, what she’d done wrong.

‘I’m doing my best,’ her mum said. ‘It’s just a bit of hairspray, for Christ’s sake.’

Holding still at the shock of the swearing, the bitterness of it, Colette searched for the magic words. ‘I didn’t mean anything bad. I’m … I didn’t mean anything …’

Colette had seen her mum like this before. She didn’t want to be cross, but once she’d started she found it hard to stop. Colette knew it was up to her to fix it, to help her make friends again.

‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m just not used to it. I’ll go and look in the mirror. I bet it’s nice.’ When she came back from the bathroom, trailing words of comfort: ‘It looks ace. Really brilliant,’ she could see this had done the trick, though whether it was her words or her absence that had achieved this, she did not know.

‘It does look good, Collie. I’m sorry. I’m just tired. Tired and grumpy. Give us a hug.’ Her mum pulled Colette against her belly and held her there. When they separated, she pursed her lips in a squashed smile.