In the Slammer With Carol Smith (19 page)

I know what she’s asking. What color I am. I won’t give her that satisfaction. Martyn knows why she left him, though he won’t say. She wanted the children to be white.

‘Oh, very—’ I say. ‘We all are.’

‘Well, thanks—’ I say, into the pause at the other end. ‘You’ve been most kind.’ I’d half like to admit to her how little I know Martyn, yet I’m not sure whether that’s true. ‘Why don’t you send your picture along? He could hang it on the bulletin board.’

‘Thank you, Miss Smith.’ But she hasn’t hung up yet. When it comes, it’s not tinkle. ‘I did.’

After, I think of how at the start of her call I wanted dearly to talk to another woman of maybe my age and middle education, it being so long since I had. But the feminine digs deep. So much still running in the dark sluice that willy-nilly is shared, that sorority denies. Yet could we have talked about houses?

Houses that stand still will have ever the same qualities. But a house that moves? Maybe even harder to rid yourself of than what I tote? With no kids to yell—
Stop!

—On the ward there was a rich seventeen-year-old whose family had solved their status quo another way—they had five residences. They themselves were what moved. Which had put her where she was. When she called her parents she had to check the calendar. We often found her weeping. ‘The liars. They should be at Shallygar. For the salmon fishing. They swore they would be. But I suspect they’re holed up with that nasty German couple—at Bonn.’ The truth is on both her face and ours. They don’t want her call.—

This has been my first international call—to the real overseas. Bermuda was a mere tropic away, and only to an airline. Do the newspapers that shuttle the modern age along every morning forget or not admit how many like us lag? Or see only the smart haircut.

What this old-style phone system is said to lack is not always so, however. You can often see the person at the other end of the line.

One step though, I will go. Be brave, Carol. Buy that calendar.

At the stationer’s, the line of lottery buyers is straggling out past me. I always wait until the last has gone. As they come in they are furtive, or even muttering some prayer. Once they’ve put down money they sweep a royal look around at the rest of us. Each of the men must have some secret place at the ready to store his ticket to the future; the hand is always quicker than the eye. Among them it is not proper to talk. The women may chat at the owner, particularly if they’ve had a previous near miss, but they push their luck into a corner of the purse, as if it must be ignored.

The owner remains impassive, his eyes on his small daughter. Small enough to be pre-teen, wise enough to be twenty, she has the curved nostrils and long eyes of a beauty-to-be, and perfect manners. On the afternoons when her mother works elsewhere she is the little mother of the store. Though now and then the father reins her in. No woman ever tends his counter. Darkish males, uncles or cousins in this Indian or Pakistani clan, do so, in substitution so steady that one cannot keep track. Toward evening, cookery smells waft from the rear, and sometimes a farther clatter; there may be a backyard. The clan may even have bought this rundown four-story on the district’s fringe. Over west, on the avenue’s corner, there is even a bar, from which the lottery customers may come. None are ever countrymen of the owner; these and he must know too well what he sells. And what they should buy.

I admire this establishment. Also the network it must belong to. They help keep the city a public place in a way that the plazas and the great buildings where all landlords are absentee can never mime. Privacies are in view here, even in control. My alleyways, that sell nothing, offer the same.

Meanwhile, I like coming in here, to be recognized. Is that weakness, in terms of the life I have opted for? A routine that will lead me back into the world of houses—and of family?—Are you afraid of family, Carol? Dr. Camacho never asked me this directly. It was assumed in our separate versions that all of us on the ward were. Or else had no family to be afraid of.—As in other respects, I am half and half.

Here at the stationer’s there is surely a parable of the family. And lined up or not, in contrast, snapshots of the common luck. Each evening they and we are a kind of evidence. Our glances crisscross absently. But in the main they are not regarding me. People may never anywhere, much. I have to consider that it’s I who am registering them. And have been, all along? … I know who would agree. This is what comes of registering him.

‘Yes, Miss?’ The owner is behind the counter. He knows me, if only as he knows us all. It’s my turn.

He hands me the day’s paper. And a letter. Addressed to me—me—in that large square hand, and with a foreign stamp. Taking it, a sensation quivers up my arm. All the notes and self-conscious epistles we four used to scatter when I was that college-girl. Since then a few bank notices, on the trust, or public notices sent on by the welfare precinct. Never a letter addressed to me personally, at a known address.

‘Miss?’ The owner is speaking to me. ‘Today is the last paper. The subscription is run out. But I can renew.’

I don’t need to open the letter. My month is up. How neatly Martyn has managed it. Of course I’ll renew in his name. Surely the owner can’t care less what my status here is, whether tenant or live-in, or however fly-by-night. Eyes lowered, he is discreet with all who enter here.

‘Yes, renew of course,’ I say, plunging, but into what? ‘Same name. But I haven’t the money with me. I’ll pay you tomorrow.’ I can use the ‘green’ still in the church salesman’s shopping bag.

He shakes his head. With reason? I have never spent a dime in his store. ‘Not necess-aree. We know the gentleman.’ His forefinger doesn’t quite touch the letter. He knows that script better than me.

It’s the little daughter who saves me, from what I can’t say. What would have been my question? About ‘the gentleman?’

A delicate jangle at my elbow. She’s tapping it. ‘You live in the place with the drums? He always promised I could see them.’

A swift phrase from her father, not in English.

‘Mother said yes, dear father.’ Head bent over her joined palms, bangles quiet. But she knows her power. ‘Alas, he was not free that day.’ She nods up at me. ‘He had to go to re-hears-al.’ The word stretches; she is proud of it. ‘So for twenty minutes, half an hour, may I?’ Her wheedling shifts between her father and me. ‘I shall keep the time careful-lee.’ With a smart wriggle she lifts a wrist. I see—we all see—that she has a bright red wristwatch.

‘It is for the Miss to say.’ But he is proud too, that I see what a father is. When I signal yes he motions one of the younger men to accompany her. ‘To escort back. But he is to wait outside your door.’ There follows some jokery from her kinsmen, several of whom are always in the store. The young man detailed to go with us says, ‘They tease that you don’t play the drum, no woman does. So why? And that you are just showing off the watch.’

‘I understand what they say per-fect-lee. I have not forgot.’ She tosses her head at them.

As we head off, the father and I bow. He resembles any news vendor or stationer of his nationality, whichever that is, Paki or East Indian, whom you may see around the city. Study the man closer—the furrow of his brow, the curl of that lip, and he is perhaps a person. As with them all.

We are several doorways west of the corner bar. A half-block faces us, then the long avenue, down the middle of which is my door. She slips her right hand in mine—a shock. I am careful not to squeeze. Her steps are not mincing, but very short. I tailor my steps to her. Twice down the half-block, she glances at her left wrist. To enchant me a mere one of her tricks would do.

Sleepy-lidded, smoothing his polished black hair, the young man follows behind.

‘He makes fun of my mother, she speaks no English; they none of them want her to learn,’ she whispers. ‘He there is my cousin. But I won’t marry him.’

‘Are you supposed to?’

She nods. ‘The minute a girl gets the blood, they start on it. But my mother tells them … no.’

‘But how old are you?’

‘Old enough.’

‘You speak fine English.’

‘We all can, when we want to. We came first to Paddington.’

She sees I’m not sure where that is. ‘London.’

‘I have traveled. But not there.’

We are at the curb, waiting to cross the avenue. The traffic light is red.

‘What’s the farthest you have ever been?’

I consider. Church gardens, at night? The dayroom of a hospital? Prison corridors at dawn. Small towns, around Boston. A huge arena, not that far. Or the multiples of this city, from hock-shops to basement lairs, but always looking out to sea?

—Or the tidy island skies of Wedgwood blue, reflected poolside. Where the girl lying in the deckchair next to mine at siesta hears as I do the lazy voice floating down from the balcony: ‘That bronze bikini suits Carey’s friend’s tan, doesn’t it? Right down to the crotch.’ For a sec my friend is silent, then: ‘When Mum’s drunk she always tries to excite Father. Probably has him by the coat-tail. In a sec we’ll hear the door slam.’ But we hear nothing. Carey’s burnt-peach cheek blooms over me. The rest of her in her white suit is darker than me. ‘Carol—’ she breathes, ‘we chums are going to make a bomb. Not to hurt anybody. Just to signify. Want to horn in?’—

The little fingers in mine are like twigs. I say: ‘Bermuda. That’s the farthest I’ve been.’

The trucks rumbling by prevent her from answering. On truck nights, opening my one free window, listening to them, heavy sounding or rattling light, I can about tell the hour it is between midnight and sunrise. And almost always, what day of the week it will be.

‘That’s only this hemisphere,’ she says when she can.

We cross. She stops to sigh. ‘But run by the British.’ She glances at me sidelong. Most of her glances are. Her full face, if one can call such a small area that, is quite as handsome as the profile. But one feels that she’s reserving it. ‘Your gentleman, he tells my mother we were right to come here, even though at home my uncle, her brother, was a chemist. And my father a pharmacist. Uncle says the British let us rise. But somehow we are still in the same place.’ She shrugs. ‘But in London, the schools are not for babies. Like here.’

We are almost at Martyn’s building.

‘I thought your mother didn’t speak English.’

The young man has stopped short behind us. So they all know where I live. It has a stoop. He leans there, a lanky young bird, with a beak too old for him.

‘She doesn’t.’ She aims this at him. ‘She was kept in the house because in London, our women, too many have jobs to sweep the airports. She wouldn’t like to see. Or get respect on the street. But over here, since my aunt die, she takes care of uncle’s kids. So she is still in the house.’ She cocks her head up at me. ‘She doesn’t want to speak English; she is sad I speak it so much. But your gentleman, he can speak some of ours, eh? Through him my father goes to school. To get the accountant’s license, the CPA. This lazy one here, he thinks he’ll just be my husband. And get the shop.’

The young man’s face mottles, up to the slicked hair.

She wrinkles her little curved nose at him. ‘I plan to be a gentleman’s popsy, Cousin. Like the lady here.’

Her arm lifts just in time to shield her face from the slap. But not the watch.

It is one of those whose works are exposed; I can see those still jiggling. ‘Only the crystal is smashed,’ I say. But she mourns over it like for a pet. Then spins round and thrusts it at the cousin. ‘Take it back to them. Show what you did.’ And when he balks: ‘Or I’ll tell them you try to rape me. So you’ll be sure of the shop.’

When he goes she calls after him: ‘I shall come back on my own, tell them. In half an hour. I’ll use this lady’s clock.’ She turns to me. ‘He’ll say I talk dirty because I go to the American school. Silly arse. Did they think I kept my ears glued, in Paddington?’ She grins at me. ‘Yes, they did.’

On the way upstairs I say: ‘I’m not his popsy. Whatever that is. And not a lady, either.’ When she doesn’t reply I feel I am the child. ‘But I know where to repair that watch. Over on Canal.’

‘You think? They bought it at the free port, when we came here. But I am only given it now.’

Open the door of Martyn’s place and you don’t at once see the drums, in their line-up left of center of the glass wall. A couple are on stands, another pair hang on the wall; the two largest are poised on end, one in each corner of the nook. Some have designs painted or incised on the surface; some are amber-smooth, but fringed at the side with dangling tassels or braid. These are more instruments than would suffice for a troupe of six or eight; perhaps a performer played two, or kept a spare. A couple appear tawny new; most are darkened, no doubt by hand use. That there are no drumsticks is at once noticeable. And no players. These drums are meant to be heard; indeed, piled or upended or hung, they are like a stave from some song, written out in leather notes and still faintly sounding.

She paces down their line like good scholar. I see at once that they do not engage her. Finally she says: ‘Not for rock-and-roll, eh?’ and lets her eyes rove. ‘What’s that?’

‘The office.’

She peers in. ‘Ah, one of those com-puters. My father buys also.… Can I see the rest? Of the flat? … Okay!’

Passing the drums, she gives one a pat; it slightly resounds. ‘Wo-oo. Veree na-tive. Like he said, when I ask.… We hear about those Africans from the estate manager here; my father too deals with him.…’ When the earrings bounce the tiny bells reverberate like airs and graces from that other place, or time.

The bulletin board rivets her. She studies it for minutes. Is she really reading it? She devotes as much time to the postings far above her height as to the ones below. I am being given a lesson in the art of pretense, but what’s she after? I pretend to read the paper, least I can do. While, like all in the shop, I bask in her charm—the profile, the bangles, the tinyness. The attention one must pay, wants to pay, like a fee.

When she whips around, the sandals clop. Always too big for her, the ones she wears, and too adult. ‘Why don’t you read your letter?’