From Pasta to Pigfoot (4 page)

‘So, you and Michael…'

‘Ye-es?'

‘You've been seeing each other long?'

‘Almost two years,' Faye said slowly. She took another sip of her rum, wondering what was coming next.

‘So, then, is it serious?' His tone hadn't changed and he sounded like someone discussing the weather and not delving into personal territory with a virtual stranger.

Philomena chuckled and waved a lazy hand in Faye's direction. ‘Girl, just ignore him! You don't have to be telling any of us your business.'

Wesley shrugged and grinned, although the humour stopped short of reaching his eyes. ‘Hey, just curious, you know.'

Without warning, he switched topics. ‘I hear there are good things happening in Africa these days – how's Ghana's economy doing?

What the hell is this?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
time?
Faye gritted her teeth, wishing she could phone a friend or, preferably, a hit man who could remove this intensely annoying man.

She tried to shrug off the numbing effects of the rum and opened her mouth to speak. Her tongue suddenly felt heavy and wayward, as if it had a mind of its own and was ready to do its own thing. She focused hard on her words and forced them out carefully. ‘Well, from what my dad says, the economy is going through some challenges at the moment. But the country has a lot of natural resources, so things should pick up over time.'

Michael and Luther had also been listening and to her relief, Luther smiled and nodded. Michael, on the other hand, was eyeing the half-empty glass in her hand with alarm.

But Wesley wasn't finished. ‘Do you get to go back home often?'

Stopped in her tracks, she stared back at him and groaned in silent agony.

Okay, Faye, you big mouth, kiss goodbye to all the brownie points you just scored!

As her now captive audience was still waiting for her response, she tried one or two sentences out in her head before answering. Then she took a deep breath.

‘Well', she started, sounded awkward, and stopped. She squirmed uncomfortably on her cushion. Taking a swift gulp from her glass, she tried again, trying hard not to sound apologetic.

‘Well, my father, my brother and I came to live in England when I was five after my mother died. My father
travels a lot for his work and, well, we've never really had the chance to go back since…'

Her voice trailed off as she took in the expression of barely disguised scorn on Wesley's face. Desperate to avoid his eyes, she took another sip of her drink and stared fixedly down into her glass.

The taste of the rum was now beginning to make her feel very sick. It was patently clear to everyone that Faye's moment in the spotlight was over and Jiggy and Michael quickly turned back to the music selection spread out in front of them. Before long they were in the middle of a loud and obviously familiar row over the lyrics of the Steel Pulse track that was now playing. Wesley, on the other hand, continued to stare at Faye while she studiously gazed into her glass and wished herself a thousand miles away from her present situation.

‘You know,' he said thoughtfully, as though in answer to a question she had asked him. ‘One thing you must understand is that it's crucial for us black people to know our motherland. Back in the colonial days, all the white people went out chasing after other people's lands. They bought our brothers in Africa – but, you know something?'

Faye didn't and, at this point, the throbbing in her head induced by the drink was leaving her with very little desire to find out. Her bottom was now almost completely numb and, although desperate for the toilet, she had to fight her increasing need to ask Philomena for directions to the bathroom, miserably aware that she might not be able to stand up.

Wesley's brooding blue eyes were still fixed on her.
Completely oblivious to her dilemma, he continued his lecture.

‘Even when they set up their colonies, the white people I mean, they always remembered where they came from. They never said “We are Indians” or “We are Africans”. Oh, no!'

His voice was getting progressively louder as he spoke, either not noticing or not caring about Faye‘s growing discomfort and her surreptitious attempts to pinch some feeling back into her now nerveless backside. With scarcely a pause for breath, Wesley continued his lecture on the history of the slave trade and the dispersion of the ‘proud black peoples of Africa' around the world. While the others carried on with their conversation, Philomena listened enraptured to her friend's rich, lilting and – to Faye – almost incomprehensible accent, her head rising and falling in time with the music. While Wesley's voice went on relentlessly, Faye was feeling dizzier by the minute.

Struggling to concentrate through the hazy alcoholic stupor that was threatening to engulf her, she realised that Wesley had finished with history and was now talking about the present day mental colonisation of black people by whites. The insinuation was crystal clear as he stared fixedly at her, his face flushed with passion.

‘So, today, if we black people don't know our homelands, we have allowed ourselves to become cultural slaves.' The accusation in his voice was unmistakable. His reproachful expression suddenly reminded Faye of the look on her physics teacher's face on the day she had unwittingly set
off a minor explosion in the school lab.

‘It is our responsibility to stay close to home as much as possible. That's the only way we can keep our souls connected to our roots. You don't do that, then you're just a slave to the white man!' Wesley ended suddenly and loudly, the unexpected volume of his voice instantly recapturing her flagging attention.

She later decided that it was the shock of the loud voice as well as the patronising tone that did it. As it was, the combination of the rum and, in Faye's opinion at least, the undeserved glare of accusation levelled at her from Wesley's piercing blue eyes wreaked devastating results. Crushed by the weight of her defensiveness at this unwarranted attack, her usual tact and diplomacy vanished. Once again the music conspired against her and there was absolute silence as, in complete exasperation and bewilderment, she blurted out indignantly.

‘But you're white yourself, how can you say that!'

Philomena's broad smile vanished. Luther, who was about to start playing a new CD, froze. Jiggy and Michael's conversation stopped abruptly, Michael staring at her in mortified disbelief while Jiggy slowly shook his head from side to side. Only Wesley looked unperturbed.

Now feeling very sick, Faye looked blindly at the blurred faces staring at her and tried to stand up before she passed out. The others seemed frozen and, as no one came to her assistance, she gritted her teeth and willed her bottom to cooperate, finally managing to struggle to her feet unaided. She did not remain standing long.

After taking a couple of steps, the last thing she heard
before her legs gave way and she collapsed gracelessly into an amethyst yellow cushion was Wesley's strong lilt proclaiming disdainfully,

‘Girl, let me tell you something: black is not a colour; it's a state of mind!'

2

Cultural Dilemmas

‘Wake up, child!' The loud voice reverberated through Faye's head without mercy. The dark room suddenly flooded with light as the heavy raw silk curtains were pulled back.

Faye groaned and tried to raise her head. But her head might as well have been made of iron and the pillow a magnet because after a couple of feeble attempts, she gave up and sank back under the duvet.

‘What on earth were you up to last night, young lady?' Lottie said in the rich Scottish accent that sounded as though she had left Glasgow for London the previous week, instead of more than twenty years earlier.

Faye's only response was a weak groan. Unmoved, Lottie pulled the heavy duvet back a few inches and tried not to laugh as Faye clawed frantically at the covers, trying to crawl back into her warm cocoon.

She took one look at Faye cowering miserably under the duvet and she shook her head without sympathy.

‘Look at the state of you,' she said sternly. ‘Come on, up
with you – you'll feel better after a nice shower!'

Finally realising that Lottie had no intention of leaving until she had been obeyed, Faye crawled out of the comfort of her bed and staggered into the adjoining bathroom. Her head was throbbing and her hand shook as she brushed her teeth before returning to her room where Lottie was bent over picking up the clothes strewn across the floor.

‘Oh God', she wailed, sitting on the corner of her bed. ‘I'm dying!'

Dressed in one of William's old T-shirts that barely reached her knees and with her hair sticking out in all directions, she looked like a long-legged street urchin. Lottie's expression remained unmoved and Faye knew better than to argue, even if she had had the strength to try.

Tall and angular, with greying brown hair cut into a severe bob, Lottie had been part of the Bonsu family since Faye was six years old.

Born Charlotte Cameron, Lottie was the fourth of seven children and had grown up in a small and very crowded terraced house in Glasgow. Unlike her brothers and sisters, who had left school at the first opportunity, Charlotte, who dreamed of becoming a teacher, had stayed on, eventually winning a scholarship to study at the leading teacher training college in the city. While her mother openly grumbled about where all this education would lead, Charlotte's success was warmly welcomed by her proudly working class father who basked in the heightened status his daughter's achievement brought him. Barely literate himself and having left school at fourteen, Jim Cameron was from a long line of dock workers, as were most of
his friends. When she finally qualified, ‘our Charlotte, the teacher' gave him something to boast about to anyone at his local pub who would listen. Excited at the whole new world now open to her, and having read about the shortage of good teachers in the English capital, Charlotte decided to move south to London where she soon found a teaching job. However, after three years of fruitlessly trying to force English and history down the bored and uncooperative throats of the inmates of an East London comprehensive school, Charlotte came to the sad conclusion that teaching was not after all the vocation for her and gave in her notice. Her father did not hide his disappointment when she decided instead to train as a nurse and managed to secure a trainee position at a teaching hospital in Tooting.

‘What do you want to be doing changing bedpans and catching diseases from all those poofs and bloody foreigners?' Jim had grumbled, finally starting to wonder if his wife didn't have a point about too much education.

Charlotte was halfway through her final year at St Luke's when she met and fell in love with Olu, a handsome Nigerian doctor who had joined the hospital on a six-month contract. Soon the romance was public knowledge and when Olu proposed four months to the day after their first date, the other student nurses in her hostel clubbed together to throw a party for them.

Olu insisted that they had to visit Lagos for Charlotte to meet his parents and to see his country before they got married.

‘You will love Nigeria, Charlotte,' he would say constantly, his dark brown eyes gazing deep into hers.
‘And my family will love you very much.'

Deliriously happy, Charlotte swallowed her apprehension about Jim's likely reaction and finally found the courage to tell her father her good news.

'You want to
marry an African
? Are you off your head, girl?' he had asked in incredulous disbelief, too shocked to tell anyone except his wife.

‘She should have stuck with working in the local factory like her sisters, Jim. I told you so!' was the furious response he got from her. Even though she had finally been proved right, her mother was too upset to tell any of Charlotte's sisters. After all, there was no sense in putting any ideas in
their
heads either.

Charlotte, however, was determined not to let anything destroy her happiness. Ignoring her father's pleas to come to her senses and see things from his point of view, she refused to feel any guilt for what he now saw as his complete lack of credibility down the pub if any of this ever came out. She was even more determined to put aside Jim's pleas because, as she made the travel arrangements for their trip to Nigeria, she hid a secret but very strong feeling that she was pregnant.

The afternoon before they were due to leave for the airport, Olu failed to show up for his final shift. No one at the hospital had any idea where he was and after yet another phone call from the hospital administrator, Charlotte was starting to panic when he rang the bell at the flat in the hostel that she still shared with two other student nurses. Her initial relief on seeing he was safe faded quickly as she took in his haggard appearance,
rumpled clothes and a strong smell of stale beer, so completely at odds with his usual impeccable appearance. Filled with dread, as he pushed past her and made for her room, she remained standing.

Olu, who clearly couldn't, sat down heavily on the small bed, waiting until she finally walked into the room. Keeping his red-rimmed eyes fixed to a spot on the floor between his feet, he remained silent while she stared at him, too afraid to even ask what was wrong.

‘Charlotte, please forgive me,' he said eventually. His voice was muffled and his speech slightly slurred but the shame in his voice was unmistakable.

‘We cannot go to Nigeria,' he said slowly. ‘I already have a wife, Charlotte. She lives with my parents in Lagos.'

Charlotte looked down at him, numb with shock and unable to say a word. After a brief glance up at her, he lowered his head again and continued haltingly.

‘You know, I have wanted to tell you so many times and, God forgive me, I couldn't do so. But you must believe me… I had planned to leave her and to marry you – I swear to you!' His voice became more animated as he went on. ‘I phoned my parents today to tell them about you but they told me that my wife is pregnant with our first child. Apparently, she's been waiting for my return to surprise me with the news. Charlotte, my beloved, please try to understand…'

His voice tailed off into silence at the icy contempt blazing at him from her eyes. She stared stonily down at the hunched figure sitting on the bed as though he were a complete stranger and, without uttering a word, walked out of the room.

When Olu eventually left the house, Charlotte took refuge in her bed and stayed there, unable to speak to anyone. Refusing to see Olu, or answer his frantic phone calls, or even talk to her anxious friends, she lay staring silently at the ceiling, only getting out of bed to use the bathroom or to go to the kitchen to make yet another cup of peppermint tea to relieve the nausea that constantly threatened to overwhelm her. This continued for several days until one of her flatmates, coming home from her shift, found her lying in a heap on the kitchen floor and frantically called an ambulance. By the time they reached St Luke's, it was too late to save her baby. Following an overheard phone call with his wife, who was anxious to find out why his return had been delayed, Olu's guilty secret was soon public knowledge. Unable to stand the undisguised contempt of the hospital staff, he abruptly terminated his contract and returned home to his unsuspecting wife.

Confessing to her flatmates that she felt alone and couldn't bear to go home to face the inevitable “I told you so's” from her parents, Charlotte decided to escape the hospital and its memories of Olu. She scoured the newspapers and the cards on the windows of the local newsagents, desperate to find a job that would give her the chance for a new start, until finally she spotted a small advertisement in the daily paper for a housekeeper. The job involved looking after a widower who had recently come to England with his two young children and, intrigued by the sound of the vacancy, she phoned the recruitment agency.

At her interview, Dr Bonsu, who was already impressed
by Charlotte's obvious intelligence and nursing background, was won over when he saw Faye's reaction to the tall young woman with sad eyes. His daughter had suffered the double trauma of losing her mother and changing countries, and was still extremely wary and shy around people. For Charlotte, the tiny five-year-old with huge eyes and stubby plaits covered in multicoloured ribbons could have been an older version of the baby she had pictured in her mind so often during her short-lived pregnancy. To her father's astonishment, and as though somehow sensing their mutual need for comfort, Faye had immediately taken to the angular dark-haired woman with shiny brown eyes, and spontaneously reached up to hug her.

Dr Bonsu explained to Lottie that, as an international medical consultant in a very specialised field, his job required him to travel constantly.

‘When my children and I first arrived here,' he explained, ‘we were accompanied by my cousin who was supposed to live with us and look after the children. Unfortunately, Sophia missed her friends and the active social life she had enjoyed in Ghana too much.'

Sophia, the doctor admitted, had complained incessantly about the cold weather – it was mid-July – and had eventually packed her bags and taken the next flight back home.

Shortly after her interview, Charlotte was offered the job and moved immediately into the large house in Hampstead with the Bonsu family, where she was soon known simply as Lottie. Although she never mentioned his name, Charlotte's experience with Olu had left her extremely bitter and cynical about the intentions of every
member of the male sex. Making it clear to anyone who approached her that she had absolutely no time for men in her life, she instead concentrated her efforts on making sure that her adopted family was well cared for.

Now, shaking her head as she took in Faye's misery, Lottie dumped the clothes she had retrieved from the floor into a nearby chair and turned back to face her.

‘I don't know
what
is going on in this house. How do both you and William end up with hangovers this morning when neither one of you hardly ever drinks?' she asked in exasperation. Although her tone was stern, her soft brown eyes showed her concern.

‘Michael was here about an hour ago to return your car, by the way,' she added. ‘Your father answered the door before I could get to it. You, needless to say, were out for the count!' She removed the car keys from the pocket of her well-worn brown skirt and dropped them on the pine dressing table with a loud clatter.

‘Don't, Lottie!' Faye clasped her head between her hands, cringing as the noise sent vibrations reverberating through her head. When the noise in her head had died down slightly, she peeked up through her fingers at the older woman.

‘Did Michael say anything about last night?'

Lottie sniffed. As far as she was concerned Michael was a complete waste of her breath.

‘He made some comment about you overdoing it with rum,' she said abruptly. ‘I expect
he
was responsible for letting you drink, although you should have known better since you were driving, Faye!'

This time Lottie couldn't hide her anger. Ten years earlier, her sister had been hit by a car while on her way back from work. The driver, a young salesman on his way home after a long session at the pub, had escaped with a fine while Moira had been sentenced to life in a wheelchair. Lottie's views on people who drank when driving were, if possible, even more venomous than her views on men.

Faye's lips trembled perilously; Lottie was hardly ever angry with her. After the trials of the previous night and in her present weakened state, she felt completely unable to cope with any more guilt.

‘I'm sorry,' she pleaded miserably. ‘Please don't be angry with me, Lottie.' The drummers that had taken up residence in her head were almost forgotten in the face of Lottie's rare display of anger.

The housekeeper's face softened. ‘Okay, Faye, but you know how I feel about alcohol when it comes to driving.'

She sat down on the bed and eyed the younger girl curiously. ‘So what
did
happen? Were you not meeting some friends of Michael's last night?'

Faye nodded and immediately regretted it as a wave of nausea washed over her. ‘He took me round to some friends that he used to live with. It was fine until I screwed it all up.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘They seemed like nice people – well, except for one of them who was really winding me up,' Faye sighed. ‘I don't know, Lottie, I felt a bit out of my depth, to be honest. They were all really intellectual and do a hundred different things and are really into black culture and music and
stuff. And I suppose me knocking back neat rum on an empty stomach didn't help.'

Lottie raised an eyebrow in disbelief. ‘Rum! Seriously, Faye, what were you thinking? Why on earth didn't you just ask for some wine if you wanted a drink?'

Faye shrugged. ‘You should have seen their faces when I asked for Coke to go with it – Michael looked like he was going to have a heart attack!'

She groaned again as she remembered Michael's exasperated glare and the concerned look on Philomena's face as he had bundled her into the car to drive her home. ‘Oh no, Michael…! He's going to be furious with me. I really thought we were moving on to the next level – he's never taken me out to see his friends before. I can't believe I've messed it up!'