Jubilee (34 page)

‘I’m horrible,’ he says. He sits down beside her. She starts licking the top of the cake. ‘I’m a—’ He checks to see who’s near them. No one. ‘I’m a nasty little bastard … fucker.’

She still doesn’t look at him. He can see the path her tongue has driven through the blue icing.

‘Go on,’ she says.

‘I’m a thicko.’

‘Uh-uh.’ She shakes her head.

‘All right. I’m a stupid little bastard.’

‘What are you?’

‘I’m a horrible, horrible fucker.’

‘Louder.’

‘Do I have to?’

The cake is denuded of all icing now, just a wash of transparent blue over its top. She takes a big bite and speaks through the mouthful.

‘Wow-er,’ she says.

He laughs. He shouldn’t – this isn’t in the bag yet. But he laughs, and he waits for her to swallow. She says: ‘Louder. If you want to redeem yourself.’

‘I’m a horrible, horrible fucker!’

It really isn’t in the bag. When she faces him she’s stopped joking.

‘No, Satish. Say it really loud because it’s really true. You were a horrible, horrible fucker, because you thought I’d blackmail you even though I’ve been your friend for years and years and that’s not something friends do. You should have known – I never would.’

It takes him two goes to get up on to Miss Walsh’s wall. Once there, he places his feet carefully so he won’t stumble, then clears his throat.

‘I,’ he says (Andrew Ford and Mandy turn his way; Cai looks round), ‘AM A HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE FUCKER.’ He looks down at the toes of his shoes and hears someone clapping.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘You’re done.’

He stays with her until the white van has gone, and people are starting to sit down. Peter is in his place, with Cai diagonally opposite. Cai studiously avoids eye contact with his father. Andrew Ford positions himself at the head of the table, and now there are two other photographers as well, marking him like conscientious defenders, shadowing his movements and taking their own pictures of Andrew Ford checking his camera, Andrew Ford in discussion with Sarah, Andrew Ford surveying the table.

‘That one’s from the
Sunday Times
,’ Colette tells Satish. ‘The other one’s from the
Gazette
.’

The
Bucks Gazette
. Ford’s
alma mater
: the paper which printed the original picture. Satish wonders if Ford sees anything of himself in the young lad they’ve sent today. Maybe not, but the
Gazette
boy will have seen it for sure, allowing himself to hitch a ride on the possibility of glory: glory on the turn of a lucky moment.

‘Oh my God!’

At the end of the street, a black car has stopped and disgorged a man. Colette shades her eyes against the sun and watches as he makes his way over to Andrew Ford.

‘Oh my God! I’d heard a rumour, but … Shit! Neil Listick!’ She makes as if to stand, then thinks better of it. The man is wearing a trilby, and a long coat swirls behind him.

‘Doesn’t he call himself Neil Wilson now?’ asks Satish.

‘Yeah, I know. But seriously, Satish. Neil Listick! Fuck!’

Neil Wilson reaches Andrew Ford and the two men pump arms and pat each other’s shoulders. People stop their conversations and watch. There’s a patter of clicks from the press photographers.

‘He did those margarine ads last year, didn’t he?’

‘Yeah. But …’ She looks at Satish. ‘Shut up! I know: mighty, fallen. But come
on
, give him his due. The man was a god.’

Georgia leads the new arrival to a spare place at the table, whisking away the ‘Reserved’ sign. Everyone’s looking at him, can’t take their eyes off him, so at first it’s only Satish who sees the figure coming in at the other end of Cherry Gardens. Stephen – shoulders back, chest out, a bloom of purple around his eye – makes for the unfilled places nearest Andrew Ford. But then Georgia spots him and waves him away, up to the unfocused end of the table, turning from him before he can remonstrate.

‘Did you fix it?’ Colette asks Satish.

‘Fix it?’

‘The blackmail stuff. Is it sorted?’

‘Yes. Sorted. If you want to know …’

‘I don’t.’

It’s nearly time. Just one more thing to do.

‘There’s a question I’ve kept asking you,’ he says. ‘And you keep not answering it. How did you get involved in all this?’

There’s a pause. ‘I told you,’ she says. ‘My dad. The money.’

‘No. I understand that part. But the rest of it. You said Andrew Ford got in touch.’

‘Yes …’

‘But I don’t think that happened, did it?’

‘Um …’ She’s fiddling with her bracelet. It’s suddenly become fascinating.

‘I won’t be asking you to stand up and shout or anything. I think I know why, anyway.’

‘Oh, fuckadoodle-doo. It wasn’t Ford. I mean, it didn’t start with him. It started with …’ She looks across at the table and he follows her gaze; Stephen is talking with the woman next to him, pointing at Andrew Ford, gesturing to himself.

‘It started with Stephen, didn’t it?’

‘Yes! How did you know?’

Stephen’s script coming out of her mouth, that night in his lounge: the promise of money. She’d made it happen.

‘Stephen came to you and told you you’d be paid for this. You wanted to help your dad.’

‘Yes! But it’s not just that. He … Stephen’s good at finding people. He kept sending me these letters, for years, trying to make some money from the photo. Don’t look at me like that! I never did anything about them. I got rid of them, straightaway. But then this one came, and it was nasty. Do you already know about this?’

‘Tell me.’

‘He’d found out about my addiction. About what I was like, before I got clean. I don’t know how. He tracks people down.’

‘Yes, he does.’

Satish looks over at Stephen, now holding forth to the small group around him. He knows how this story ends, and it makes him want to go over there and lay into him all over again.

‘He knew what I’d done, and he guessed Dad didn’t. He said he’d tell him.’

‘He asked you to get me involved. He knew I wouldn’t do it otherwise.’

‘Yes! And I just had to … Honestly, Satish, I wouldn’t have done it without that. It would kill Dad if he knew, finish him off. You don’t know …’

But he does, of course. He knows the terror of revelation, and Stephen does, too. Nasty little bastard. So that’s that: Stephen and Colette and Satish and Andrew Ford, all of those dominos falling to bring them right here.

Ford is standing at the head of the table. He signals for quiet.

‘Right,’ he says. ‘We’re going to set up the shot.’

Satish puts his arm round Colette and kisses the top of her head.

‘Forget it,’ he says. ‘It’s over and done with.’

It’s time to go. They’re waiting for him.

Someone said a photographer would be coming. He was from the
Bucks Gazette
. He’d turned up a few minutes before they were all due to start. There were a lot of parties that afternoon, but he wanted to do theirs. Miss Walsh had said he was welcome.

After the branding, Satish had pushed Cai off him and run into his own house. His mum wasn’t in the kitchen, but he didn’t know how long that would last. There was a pan on the stove and a bottle of oil next to it. A red mound of powdered chilli sat on a plate. With the pain building, worse than ever, he had to get somewhere more private.

Satish had gone up to the bathroom. He’d curled up on the floor and hummed quietly, trying to think about the humming and not the hurt. He put off what he had to do for as long as possible, but time was getting on and he had to …

Satish counted aloud, trying to trick himself like his dad tricked him when he had to do something painful: count to three but do it on two. One, two …

He shouted when the T-shirt came unstuck from the burn. He couldn’t help it, tried to keep it down but it was such a terrible thing. He sat on the toilet seat until the dizziness went. The idea of putting anything on the wound was unbearable, but then he thought about his parents seeing it so he opened the medicine chest with a click and pulled out some Savlon and a bandage. It took a long time, with lots of rests in between, but in the end he had a passable dressing, one that would get him through what he had to do next. He found a packet of aspirins and took two, crunching them dry because he didn’t want to lean down to the tap for water, and then he left.

Miss Walsh was over by her house, talking to a man with curly dark hair. He had a camera round his neck, a serious-looking one. It had a long, chunky lens. From time to time his fingers would make gentle contact with it, as if he were checking it was still OK. Miss Walsh was touching her hair a lot, and laughing.

At Sarah’s house, Mrs Miller was delighted to see him.

‘Any port in a storm!’ she told him. ‘All hands on deck!’ She’d made two big bowlfuls of coronation chicken, and they needed to be taken out to the table. Would he be a dear? He would, one at a time.

Coronation chicken was a banned substance in the Patel family. Since the Food Meeting his mother had repeated her injunction that none of them should touch the stuff. On his way to the table he looked down at the creamy mess. It was sprinkled with slender white ovals: flaked almonds, Satish reckoned. The smell made him feel sick.

Paul and Stephen Chandler were already seated, facing each other over a plate of dhokla. When Satish came near, Paul stared at him. Satish couldn’t hold that gaze, but he could do this: he edged the dhokla to one side and placed the bowl of chicken right in front of them. He did it slowly, keeping his right arm straight by his side.

The photographer was walking up and down the table, holding up his camera every now and then and looking through the viewfinder. His finger wasn’t hovering over the button, but the others didn’t notice that; they kept sitting up straight when he came near, and smiling. Satish headed for the end of the table, where there were still some empty places, and sat down.

Colette couldn’t sit down, not yet. She was in her driveway, opposite Satish’s seat, jumping about in excitement. When she saw him she stopped her jumping and came up to him, eyeing his right arm warily.

‘Your poor arm, Satish,’ she said, reaching out to touch it.

He winced. ‘Better not, Colette. Hurts a bit. Listen, don’t tell anyone about it, will you? It’s a grown-up secret. Can you keep a grown-up secret?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

No, he thought. But maybe till the party’s over. Then her dad came up and pulled her to the other side of the table, to sit on his lap. Satish felt his own breathing coming quicker. He looked straight across at them. Finally Colette’s dad noticed and Satish kept staring until Mr Brecon had to look away:
I know what you did
. Colette reached for a paper cup and started fiddling with it. Her dad popped it out of her hand and put it back on the table. Then she leaned over for a cake and he told her: ‘Not till later,’ and pulled a plastic Union Jack off the table, slotting it between her thumb and forefinger.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Play with this.’

There was a buzz and a screech, and the music came on. Satish heard the rise of strings and brass, a few scattered cheers from along the table. A couple of people clapped.

Come fly with me, let’s fly, fly away

If you can use some exotic booze there’s a bar in far Bombay

Mr Brecon nodded his acknowledgement. Behind him, Satish saw his own front door open. His dad had changed into a clean shirt and tie. After him came Satish’s mum, holding Sima by the hand. Mother and daughter were dressed in matching long dresses – no saris, he noticed, but a new thing: English party frocks. They passed him, his mum smiling at the ground as if already disowning compliments. Sima saw Satish and tried to run to him, but his mum tugged at her hand and pulled her close, steering her into a seat halfway down the table.

Two places to Satish’s left Mandy sat down, an empty chair between them. He’d taken his punishment already, but she hadn’t. Perhaps, if no one saw them talking to each other, she could get away with it. He studied his cup and reached for her under the table with his good arm. His little finger touched a knee, and bounced off in fright. Mandy frowned. Satish’s hand ventured across again, hovered over her lap, moved until he bumped against her arm. He found her hand and held it. She looked down at her plate. She was murmuring something.

‘I’m sorry,’ she was saying. ‘They told me. I hate them. I’m so sorry.’

His palm, against hers, was sweating but he held on anyway, their thumbs pressing on the backs of each other’s hands, their fingers curled round each other.

In Llama land there’s a one-man band and he’ll toot his flute for you

Come fly with me, we’ll float down in the blue

Satish thought about what would happen next. It wasn’t enough just to keep clear of her this afternoon, he realised, not for a week or even a month. It would never be OK for her, to be seen with him. Mandy looked up and emitted a disgruntled ‘huh!’, and there was Sarah, seated just across from them.

Mandy made to pull away, but he held on for a bit longer. He concentrated on her hand, on filing its details away in his memory: the soft swell at the base of her thumb, the crenellations of her knuckles, the sticky heat of her palm and the cool of her fingertips. Then he felt a movement behind him, and suddenly Cai was there. The edge of Mandy’s nail slid across the backs of his fingers, and they parted.

‘Mind if I sit here?’

Satish did, hugely, but he couldn’t summon up the energy to say no, and in any case the request was a formality; Cai had already parked himself between Satish and Mandy. Satish went to scratch his head and touched a hat instead, and remembered he was wearing it – he alone of all the kids – but he couldn’t be bothered to feel embarrassed.

The man with the camera had finished circling the table. He crouched down at their end, and held up a black gadget which he clicked repeatedly, moving it around in front of him.

‘We’re OK, Satish?’ said Cai in his ear. He’d swivelled round so that he was side-on to his chair, and faced his friend.

‘Go away.’

‘I know things went wrong, but that’s over. We’re OK.’