Rebuilding Coventry (9 page)

‘Yes!’
said Sidney, who hated football.

‘President
Reagan — yes?’

‘No,’
said Sidney, ‘Margaret Thatcher.’

‘Winston
Churchill?’

‘He’s
dead,’ said Sidney.
‘Morto.’

‘Princess
Di … Rolls Royce?’

‘Yes,
and while you’re here, old cock, piri-piri chicken please, for two, with
potatoes and a salad and a cold bottle of
vinho verde.
That is, if it’s
not too much trouble. I mean we’ve only been waiting nearly two bloody hours,
watching you prat around, you big tub of lard.’ Sidney said all this with a
charming smile. The cook took the glass from his forehead, drank the contents
and gave Sidney a friendly thump on the head, which hurt Sidney and killed the
insects. The cook shouted harsh instructions to the toothless crone who caught
a passing chicken, and strangled it, after a short struggle.

Within
another half hour pieces of the unfortunate chicken were spitting on the
barbecue and cutlery had been brought to the table. A bottle of delicately
green wine dripping with condensation was put before them. The small child
emerged from the sea, went into the kitchen and brought them a large, crisp
salad. The crone laid down a dish of small, steaming potatoes still in their
skins. Salt and pepper appeared, then curls of melting butter, and finally the
chicken, succulent and crisp-edged and smelling of lemons and garlic.

They
started to eat and were at least halfway through their meal before a bucket of
ice-cold water washed the food off their plates.

13
Calcutta

To be hungry is to feel an
emptiness in the belly, but the worst thing about hunger is the feeling of
panic inside the head. I am getting desperate, the idea of stealing food is no
longer unthinkable. I am growing cunning … I am a fox; my eyes are narrowing
and are fixed on a bunch of bananas which are just inside the door of a twenty-four-hour
supermarket. The grocer, a beautiful Asian boy, is reading an Indian-language
newspaper. He looks a kind boy; I don’t want to steal from him. I go into the
shop and ask him for a banana.

The
fluorescent lights expose my sooty face and hands. The boy looks up; he is
alarmed.

‘Bananas
are twenty-five pence each,’ he says and adds, ‘regardless of size.’

I
select a banana, the largest of the bunch. I take it to the checkout. He rings
up twenty-five pence on the till and holds his hand out. I give him two and a
half pence.

‘I’ve
got no more money, I’m very hungry.’

‘Sorry,’
he says, shaking his glossy head. ‘You are the third tonight to ask.’

‘I’ll
pay you back,’ I plead.

‘No.’

‘I beg
you.’

‘No. Go
away.’

I peel
the skin from the banana.

Before
I can get it to my mouth he snatches it from me. I snatch it back. The banana
slips and slithers between us and eventually disintegrates and falls onto
discarded till rolls on the floor. He wipes his sticky hands on his short
overall with small cries of disgust.

‘You
are a dirty cow,’ he says. ‘And a thief.’

‘I’m
hungry,’ I say. ‘I’ve never been so hungry before.’

‘Good,
so now you know,’ he shouts. ‘I am from Calcutta. There
everybody
is
hungry.’

A
white-haired Indian man comes out of the back of the shop. He wears the
expression of someone at the end of his tether. The boy gathers the wasted
banana together and throws it into a bin underneath the counter.

He
could have given it to me after all.

14
Heartbreak House

Derek Dakin sat on the
marital bed and removed his trousers, socks and shoes. He had some trouble
untying his shoe laces because his hands were trembling. He got up and opened
the wardrobe door and hung his folded trousers carefully over a wooden
coat-hanger on the right side of the hanging rail.

Coventry’s
clothes, careful and respectable, hung on the left side. Derek touched each
article of Coventry’s clothing. He then buried his face in the brown sleeve of
her eleven-year-old winter coat. He sniffed hard and smelt a vague smell of
Tramp (the perfume he’d bought her for Christmas). Its sweetness was
intermingled with the rancid smell of the cigarettes she smoked.

He had
always known that one day his wife would leave him, though he had not expected
murder to be the motivating factor in her decision.

He
thought, she was so beautiful and
good.
Whereas he was very
plain-looking (even before he lost most of his hair) and he was
not
good.
He was riddled with faults. He harboured grudges and spent too much time with
his tortoises.

Derek
took Coventry’s winter coat off the hanger and put it on. It fitted him
perfectly. He looked into the full-length wardrobe mirror and watched himself
as he fastened the knobbly little buttons up to the neck. Derek then squeezed
his bare feet into Coventry’s brown, high-heeled court shoes. He wobbled over
to the chest of drawers and found a headscarf and a pair of gloves. He put them
on. While he was there he squirted himself with Tramp. He looked through
Coventry’s dressing-table drawers and found a stub of pink lipstick and slashed
the cloying stuff across his lips. He went back to the mirror and looked at
himself through half-closed eyes. But it was no good. However hard he tried he
couldn’t make Coventry appear in front of him.

He
undressed and put her things away. As he did so he thought, ‘My heart
is
breaking.’
He could feel that organ, so long associated with love and romance, tearing
away from whatever kept it in place.

‘I
shall die of a broken heart,’ he said in a whisper to himself.

He put
his pyjamas on over his underpants and got into bed on Coventry’s side. He
clutched her pillow to him as though it were Coventry herself. He moaned, ‘Coventry,
Coventry,’ into the depths of the curled duck feathers of which the pillow was
composed.

It was
Derek’s habit before he went to sleep to talk Coventry through the happenings
of his day. Sometimes Coventry went to sleep before he’d finished. When this
happened Derek would lie at her side and look at her perfect face and
congratulate himself on having this exquisite woman for his wife.

Sometimes
he would carefully draw back the sheets and blankets and Coventry’s nightdress
and gaze at his wife’s naked body. In doing this he was not activated by desire.
Sex had played only a walk-on part in their lives together. It had never been
centre stage. No, he was content to look and experience the power of
possession.

He
couldn’t live without Coventry. She protected him from the world and its many
humiliations. He would probably die in his sleep tonight. His heart was
breaking into pieces, had come loose from its moorings. He could feel it
distinctly now, as it tugged and struggled to be free.

He
imagined John, his son, phoning around to the relations. ‘Bad news. Dad’s dead.
He died in the night of a broken heart.’ Tears ran into the pillow as Derek
imagined the grieving relations, his orphaned children; his body inside the
coffin; his workmates wearing suits and black ties, standing at the open grave,
sorry now for the torment they had put him through on the shop floor so often.

He
fantasized about the two-minute silence there would be at the next meeting of
the Tortoise Society. Bob Bridges, the chairman, would break the stillness by
saying: ‘Derek Dakin knew his tortoises.’ High praise from Bob, who knew
his
tortoises.

But
best of all, when she heard of his death, Coventry would come back and throw
herself on his freshly earthed grave. She would blame herself and rip her hair
out and rend her clothing and refuse to move, until forced to by the
authorities.

Derek
was almost disappointed when he opened his eyes and found himself still alive,
with the bedroom lights blazing and his face and teeth unwashed. He got out of
bed and crossed the landing. A light shone under the bathroom door. He tried
the door; it was locked.

‘Won’t
be long,’ shouted John. Derek walked impatiently up and down the small landing.
He straightened a few pictures of steam trains, then the bathroom door opened
and John came out.

‘God,
Dad, you look awful.’

Derek
said: ‘I’m entitled to look awful, aren’t I? Your mother’s committed a murder
and run off.’

‘I didn’t
mean that, Dad. It was just a bit of a shock to see you wearing lipstick.’

Derek
said: ‘It’s your mother’s lipstick. I was …’

‘Look,
there’s no problem. Don’t feel you have to explain. It’s cool. This is nineteen
eighty-eight. The lipstick is great and so is the perfume.’

John
watched a great deal of American soap opera drama and knew what to say and do.
So he hugged his father and said again: ‘It’s cool,’ and shut himself in his
bedroom.

Derek
went into the bathroom and removed the lipstick with a face flannel. When his
lips were rubbed clean he came out of the bathroom and knocked on John’s door.

‘John, it’s
Dad. I want to explain.’

Mary
came out of her bedroom. Her pretty face was swollen and red from a marathon
crying session. ‘What’s up?’ she asked. ‘Have you heard from Mum?’

‘No,’
said Derek. ‘Go back to sleep.’

John
opened his door. He avoided looking at Derek’s face.

‘I can’t
go to sleep,’ said Mary. ‘I want my mum.’

The
three of them stood on the landing in their nightclothes. Nobody knew what to
say or do. Mary felt bereaved twice over. For three years she’d had a violent
crush on Gerald Fox. He had never known about her love for him and now he never
would.

Eventually,
after an awkward silence, Coventry’s family went to their respective beds.

15
Over in Three Minutes

WANTED.
HELP IN RATHER UNCONVENTIONAL HOUSEHOLD.

LIVE-IN.
SMOKER PREFERRED.

APPLY
IN PERSON TO PROFESSOR WILLOUGHBY D’ERESBY,

BUT
PLEASE DON’T INTERRUPT
EASTENDERS
.

GOWER
STREET. NO NUMBER, ALAS, BUT LOOK FOR

LARGE
URN OUTSIDE FRONT DOOR.

I was
staring at Professor Willoughby D’Eresby’s advertisement in a newsagent’s
window when a man with an executive brief-case came and stood by my side. It
was five o’clock in the morning. The street was shiny black and deserted. The
newsagent’s window spilt yellow light onto the man’s black lace-up shoes. He
cleared his throat.

‘Are
you a business girl?’

‘Yes, I’m
a self-employed chimney-sweep.’

He
looked at me. He had a nice, stupid face. He was disappointed. ‘Sorry to bother
you.’

He
turned away and walked down the street. His shoes clicked loudly on the
pavement.

He
walked like a man who had nowhere to go. I clung to the pool of light and
watched him. He turned around and looked at me. We stared at each other for a
few seconds. London had defeated me. I was mad from hunger and terror. He
walked back to me, swinging his brief-case. He said very quietly: ‘Have you got
anywhere to go?’

‘No,
have you?’

‘No.’

‘A
park?’

‘Yes,
all right.’

‘It’s
not too cold?’

‘No.’

He held
my hand; he’d been drinking. He asked me my name. I refused to tell him. He
said his name was Leslie and that he’d missed his train. Three of his teeth
were missing. We walked without speaking until we came to a square. The gates
were locked.

‘Can
you jump over the railings?’ he asked, in his quiet voice. I answered him by
pulling on the overhanging branch of a tree and, using it to steady myself,
onto the top of the railings. I balanced on them for some time, comfortable in
my old clothes and shoes; ready to leap and run and turn somersaults in the
grass.

It took
him longer to climb over. He was careful and slow and I said, ‘You’ve only got
one decent suit, haven’t you?’

‘The
one I’m wearing,’ he said. ‘My interview suit. I didn’t get the job, though,’
he added. When we were in the park he held my hand again. ‘I don’t like the
dark,’ he said. The trees swayed overhead as we lay down together. It started
to rain.

‘I can
smell soot,’ he said.

‘It’s
me,’ I said.

He took
his white shirt off and put it, carefully folded, inside his brief-case. He
started to tremble in the cold. I told him to put his suit jacket back on.