A Cupboard Full of Coats (6 page)

‘I know how it looks,’ I said, ‘but Ben…’

Red’s hand came up in a Stop sign. ‘Just don’t! Don’t you dare blame him.’

‘I wasn’t going to
blame
him…’

‘I don’t wanna hear it,’ he said. ‘This is the end of the line. I’m not doing this any more.’

‘If you would just let me explain…’

‘But I don’t care what your reasons are. He’s been here for five hours. You haven’t seen him for a fortnight. How could things get this bad so quick?’

‘Red, if you would just listen…’

‘But it’s just more rubbish. He’s a little boy. Four years old! Don’t you think he’s already got enough on his plate?’

I didn’t answer, because what was on his plate was me: absent mum, useless mum, bad mum. I knew it and I didn’t want to discuss it in more detail in front of Lemon, but Red was on a roll.

‘You don’t visit. You don’t phone. You don’t do anything.
I’m
the one going round mopping up, making good, lying to him so he thinks, despite everything you do and every word you say, that you care. Well, I’m done with it. No more.’

All I wanted to do was wrap the discussion up as quickly as possible. ‘It’s obvious there’s no point trying to discuss this with you, so where do we go from here?’ I asked.

‘I’m not bringing him any more. You want to see him, you come to
our
home and see him there. You wanna talk to him, pick up the phone and ring.’ He glanced at Lemon lounging on the settee in his dressing gown, like a sugar daddy. ‘Assuming you can make the time.’

‘You seem to have forgotten something; he’s my son too!’

‘Really?’ Red asked, looking at me, waiting for more, but I could see no need to elaborate. The fact that I was Ben’s mother was irrrefutable. He shifted the bag to his other hand and turned around to leave. He was almost through the livingroom door when he stopped and turned around. The anger was gone, replaced by an expression I could not identify.

‘Do you know he cries for you?’ he asked. ‘Did you know that?’

He watched me for a moment, waiting for a response, but it was so inconceivable I could think of nothing to say. Then he waved his hand as if I were a waste of space, dismissing me. He left the room and a moment later the front door slammed shut.

And then, in case the whole thing wasn’t already bloody obvious, and only Lemon had been endowed with sufficient insight to recognize this was not a positive development, at that moment he turned around to look at me, shook his head slowly and said, ‘Hope you don’t think I’m minding you business when I say that did not go well at all, at all, at all.’

3

Although it was not yet three, and early in the day even by my standards, I poured myself a glass of wine. I did not offer Lemon a drink. The rational part of me knew that the episode with Red and Ben was not Lemon’s fault, but another part of me held everything that had happened firmly against him; if it had not been for him I would have changed my clothes and gone to the park instead of the cinema, so there would have been no wet trousers and no scene. If he had not been here when we returned, Ben would have been paying attention to
me
and because I would have been paying attention
back
there would have been no cleaning done upstairs and the old car would still be sitting in the corner of the bedroom gathering dust. If it had not been for him, my head wouldn’t have been so filled with Berris that I could hardly think properly, never mind function. No matter which angle I approached from, Lemon sat squarely in the way, and however much I tried, it was impossible to push the blame beyond him.

He helped himself to a vodka on the rocks anyway, watching me all the while, giving me a look that asked:
Well? Are we going to talk about this or not?
It was a look I pretended not to understand; my private business was nothing to do with him. Instead, I fixed my face into an A
sk me any questions and I’ll chop your head off
look to keep him at bay. And so for a while he said nothing.

He looked comfortable leaning on the counter, glass raised, examining the contents as though it were the first time he’d ever had the opportunity to study the clarity of vodka at leisure. It wound me up that he dared to look relaxed when my life was breaking down around me. Then I realized that whatever he did would wind me up because it wasn’t the things he did that pissed me off so badly, it was
him.
Why had I asked him to stay? I had succumbed to a moment of weakness, a desire to confess the unspeakable, had believed that somehow this man could deliver me, as if such a thing was possible, as if life had not already taught me that the only person I could ever truly depend on was me, and I felt as angry with myself as I did with him, that I had been stupid enough to believe that anything good could ever come from bringing history into my home. It was as much my fault as it was his, and not talking to him was childish and ridiculous. This knowledge, though obvious, instead of making me behave differently however, simply increased my resentment.

I carried my drink into the living room and he followed. I sat on the settee and he sat down beside me. I shifted over a bit towards the end, so we were further apart. He reached over and switched the telly off. When he turned around to face me, I could tell from his expression he intended to stall no longer and I began gathering a few openly hostile responses in my mind to bring to any discussion concerning me or anything I considered to be My Business.

‘You know I’va son, don’t you?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I answered.

‘You know how long I never see him?’

‘Nope.’

‘Guess.’

‘I’m not really in the mood for guessing games…’

‘Thirty-two years,’ he said. ‘From the day me and Mavis

came to England till the day I took her back home to get bury. Left him behind with Mavis’ sister, the oldest one. She was still living with Mavis’ mum. There was plenty space for the boy to run round, ’nough people to watch over him. Was only supposed to be for a year or two, now here we are.’

He sighed, as though he had finished talking. I waited for what felt like a long while before saying, ‘I’m assuming there is actually going to be more, that you were actually endeavouring to make a point?’

‘I wrote to him, after Mavis pass,’ he said, his tone neutral, as though he hadn’t heard me speak and was continuing of his own accord. ‘First letter I ever write him. Mavis used to write all the time, think sometimes two, three letters a month. We never had no more kids after we come here, and well, I wasn’t around much, working working working, come night-time out with me friends, as you know. Think she was probably bored most the time. And lonely. But she never said a word. Never said, “’Isn’t it ’bout time you start stay in?” or nothing. Can’t remember her complaining about a thing, all the years we was married, ’cept the cold of course, always the cold. Never could get used to it, no matter how long we live here. Couldn’t stand it at all. Anyway.

‘Though I was never one for writing and such like, I wrote him when she died. He moved to the States ’bout ten years ago. New York. Married an American woman out there. You might think it strange I never just ring but after all the years I never ring when she was alive, was a habit hard to suddenly break after she pass. So I wrote him, told him ’bout the funeral arrangements, etcetera. Mavis always say she never wanted to be bury here in the cold ground for all eternity, so I took her back home, like she wanted. Wrote and tell the boy the date and time. He came over on the day. Never brung the wife but he came – thirty-two years I never seen him till then – and he brung the grandkids.’

He put down his glass and ran his palms over his trousers as though trying to smooth out any creases. I had seen people do this in the undertakers, occupying their hands as if doing so straightened out the thoughts in their minds and made it possible for them to say things they could not otherwise say. I remembered an elderly Jamaican woman, widowed two days, who stood beside her husband’s casket twisting her handkerchief between her hands for half an hour, then saying, ‘I’ll never forgive him for this.’ I looked down at the floor and Lemon carried on.

‘Course I knew they was born, Mavis tell me and I seen the pictures John send, but at the funeral was the first time I actually laid eyes on them in the flesh. Two boys and a girl. The girl…’

He was grappling for words though I didn’t know why. He was a natural storyteller and, angry as I was with him, I was entranced.

‘At the graveside, I was crying, man, couldn’t stop. Anyway, I felt something and I look down and she was holding my hand real tight, and she smile at me. You know, if Mavis wasn’t six foot under by then, that’s exactly what she woulda done, hold my hand and smile. No words, nothing extra, just a little simple something for me to know she was supporting me, standing by me, like she always done, even all them years when I give her no reason for it, never give her nothing back, but she done it anyway. Now I’m not a man to go with all the jumbie business – though me nah say a word against Jack Lantern, you understand – but I when I look into the girl’s eyes, was like looking into her grandma eyes for true and the thing shock me.

‘That night, couldn’t sleep, just up pacing this way and that till after dawn when there wasn’t any point trying to catch sleep again. And I wondered, how could a little nine-year-old girl know to do that, that that was the best thing she coulda done, that nothing else in this life coulda comfort me more? Just a hand. One tiny hand. How could she know? S’impossible, innit?

‘I never felt so shame. Every time I think ’bout it, water come to me eye. To know she live nine long years and not once I ever did a thing for her, not a biscuit, not a ginnip, not a bean, and she still give me her hand. Man, it make me feel small.

‘John never stop in Montserrat. Went back to the States same night. Had some urgent business to attend – or so him say – so off he went. Didn’t get a chance to speak to him or nothing.

‘Anyway, I wrote him. Asked after the family and such like, then ask why he don’t come up to London. Said I would pay the fare and they just come up and stay by me for a few weeks. He wrote back real polite, not angry or nothing, say he long find comfort in the Church and he have all the father he need right thereso. And you know what? The worse thing of all? I couldn’t even say nothing, because the man was right. His whole life I never put myself out even the once. Why should he raise a finger to do something for me now?’

The tale was done, his point made and I bristled.

‘Look, no offence right, it’s nice of you to share this with me, but my situation is not the same as yours.’

‘I never said it was.’

‘But that’s your point, isn’t it? You’ve messed up with your son, I should try not to mess up with mine.’

‘All I’m saying is sometimes you know things need sorting but you don’t do it. Someday you might find you dallied so long, the time’s passed and you don’t have the choice no more.’

‘But I’ve been there for Ben. I’ve bought him birthday and Christmas presents, and every Easter I get him an egg…’

‘And tomorrow?’ he asked.

I knew he wasn’t asking about the one day, he meant the future; tomorrow and the day after and all the tomorrows thereafter, but I responded literally.

‘Tomorrow, I’ll go and take some advice. In law, Red doesn’t have a leg to stand on. He can’t stop me seeing my son. It’s my legal right.’

‘You legal right,’ he repeated slowly, like he was feeling the words in his mouth, exploring them, rolling them around. As though he had been talking about rum and I had brought up rhubarb. When he looked at me, his eyes held something in the way of contempt.

‘I need some decent food,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna go do some shopping and when I get back, I’ll cook.’

‘Fine. Whatever.’

‘I take it when I get back you gonna let me in?’ he said.

He was offering me a choice. When I looked at him his eyes were speaking again, mocking me:
I know you
, they said,
know the type very well. You’re a runner. A duck-and-diver. Scared.

‘You can take my key,’ I said, getting up. ‘That should reduce some of your worry, shouldn’t it?’

Having given him the key so he could go shopping to buy the things he needed to cook, I naturally expected him to have the money to pay for them, but he did not. When he asked me for money, I collected my purse, grudgingly pulled out a couple of twenty-pound notes, and handed them over without meeting his eyes.

I gave him a curt nod on his return home. He was laden with so many carrier bags it looked like he had done the whole week’s shopping. Though I wondered when I saw the mass of food he had bought, I could not quite bring myself to open my mouth and enquire just exactly how long he planned on staying. Nor to mention, though it hadn’t escaped my notice, that he hadn’t had the courtesy to hand back any change.

It was not my intention to make him feel self-conscious – it would have been pointless anyway; the man was immune to subtlety – but I sat on the high stool in front of the breakfast bar scowling as he hummed and unloaded some of the bags, then began searching the entire pot cupboard for a suitable vessel in which to bubble up his concoction.

As soon as he had hoisted the pumpkin out from inside one of the bags, a piece that was about a quarter of the size of a large one, burnt-orange flesh oozing moist white pips, I knew what he was making. What else would a Montserratian man shop for and cook on a Saturday? It was such a stereotype that on another day, in better humour, I might have chuckled. He was making soup.

I watched as he exerted himself, thwacking the skin off the pumpkin, reducing the flesh to fine-slivered squares, then chopping the cucumber and onions while the kettle boiled. Everything went into the pot on the stove and he lit the fire beneath it.

My mother had cooked pumpkin soup on Saturdays, virtually every Saturday when I was young, yet I had forgotten. Somehow, it had slipped my mind. Lemon had eaten here, eaten
that
here, years back, laughing and blowing hot spoonfuls with Berris. He was contriving to look innocent, but I damn well knew the only reason he was cooking soup now was to take me back to then.