The aunties, after they had washed up, had sat on blankets in the shade, stroking and arranging one another’s hair like people in a French painting. Ali was kissed and fussed over, enjoying the sight of his aunties’ painted toes in their delicate sandals, even the rolls of fat around their stomachs, where their saris had come loose.
That afternoon, Ali had shown his cousin Zahida his bedroom. She was fourteen, a year older than him. They’d looked out at the view of suburban gardens (where he’d once seen a married couple kissing), and he pulled out his copy of
The Man with the Golden
Gun
. They bounced on the bed and then she pressed her lips to his. She said she wanted to be ‘secret’ with him, and he got a torch and led her up the ladder into the attic where there were discarded toys and dusty trunks which had carried his father’s things from Bombay. Her bangles clattered and jangled. They couldn’t stop giggling. Zahida was convinced there were rats and bats. Who would hear her muffled screams so far up?
They kissed again, but she placed her mouth close to his ear. His body was invaded by such sweetness that he thought he would fall over. She bent forward, placing her hands on top of the filthy water-tank, and in a delirium he continued caressing, until, making his way through intricate whirls of material, he reached her flesh and slid his finger into the top of the crack. That was all. She made noises like someone suffering. He could have remained with her there for hours, but his excitement was yoked to a fear of discovery and punishment. He said they should go downstairs. He went first, and urged her to follow.
‘What’s wrong?’ she had asked. They were back in his bedroom.
‘You’re leaving tomorrow. I don’t want you to go.’
‘When I grow up,’ she said, ‘I’m going to be a pilot like my dad used to be.’ Ali had never been in an aeroplane. ‘I’ll fly everywhere. I’ll come and see you.’
‘That’s a long time away.’
Ali envied his cousins seeing one another almost every day. They lived close to one another and the family’s drivers ferried them to one another’s houses whenever they wanted. ‘We are being called to weddings and parties the whole time.’
Then Zahida said, ‘Papa told me you’re invited to stay with us.’
‘But that’s not going to happen, is it? My parents don’t like to go anywhere.’
‘Come on your own. There’s plenty of room. All kinds of bums and relatives turn up at home! Come for the holidays, like we do here. Christmas would be good.’
He said with shame, ‘I would, but Dad doesn’t have the money to send me.’
‘Why not?’
He shrugged. ‘He doesn’t earn enough.’
She said, ‘Save up. Didn’t you help out at the circus last Easter?’
‘Yes.’
‘It made us all laugh like mad. You weren’t a clown, were you?’
‘I came on to clean up after the elephant,’ he said. ‘It made the audience laugh. Mostly I carried props around.’
‘But you’re so small!’
‘I’ll get bigger.’
She said, ‘You’re big enough now to wash cars and dig gardens.’
‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘I can do that.’
‘You can.’
He kissed her. ‘Tell India I am coming!’
He was surprised to see his father standing at the foot of the stairs, watching them both.
It was then the taxis had arrived, hooting their horns.
When everyone had gone, Ali’s mother sighed with relief. She was leaving for work. His mother was a nurse who worked nights; when she could, she slept during the day. Now, she and father had a row about what the eldest uncles had said to Dad. In a sulk, Ali’s father went into his room and sat at his desk with his back to Ali. He was studying law by correspondence course, which Dad’s wealthiest brother, the head of the family, was paying for. He had become angry with Ali’s father, who had failed his exams and didn’t seem to be making much of himself in England. At lunchtime, he had shouted, ‘There are so many opportunities here, yaar, and the only one you’ve taken is to marry Joan! Why are you letting down the whole family?’
As it was, his mother was already annoyed with the men. A few days before, after she had shown off her new washing-machine, they had given her all the Bombay family’s washing to do. ‘I’m not their servant,’ she said, throwing down the pillowcases filled with dirty clothes. Father, with Ali’s help, had to figure out how to work the machine, one reading the instructions, the other fiddling with the dials, as a pool of water crept across the floor. Then they ironed and folded the clothes, pretending it was Joan’s handiwork.
Dad might now study for hours, with a furious look on his face. Ali sat down, too. In his father’s room, where Ali was supposed to have been preparing for the new school year if he was to keep up with the other pupils and not become like his father, all he could hear was the ticking clock. The house seemed to have stopped breathing. His mother wouldn’t return until the morning; she’d make his breakfast, ensure he had a clean towel, and, when Mike knocked, send him to the swimming baths.
Ali slipped out without his father appearing to notice; he didn’t want to stay at home if no one was laughing or talking. He was surprised to find Mike still outside, kicking a tennis ball against the front wall.
‘Come on out, yer bastard. Bin waitin’ for yer,’ he said. ‘What you bin doin’, cryin’ and all that?’
He and Mike trudged across the flat park at twilight; goal posts like gallows stood in the mud.
‘You took yer time gettin’ out,’ said Mike. ‘Nearly dark now.’
‘People were round.’
‘’Ate it when that ’appens. Yer with yer mates now. Everyone’ll be down the swings.’
Ali and Mike always went straight to the swings. If it was raining, they shared cigarettes in the dank shed where the footballers changed for the weekend league.
Mike shouted, ‘There they are! The scrubbers are out!’
They started to run. It wasn’t far. Ali knew all the kids; they weren’t his friends but they lived near by, some younger, others older. His mother called them ‘rough’.
‘Where you bin?’ one of them said to Mike.
‘Waitin’ for Ali.’ E ’ad idiots round. There were dozens of ’em, smellin’ the place out. It can’t be allowed, so many darkies in a council ’ouse!’
The girls were on the swings, the boys smoking, spitting and hanging from the metal uprights. The boys attempted to twang the girls’ braces against their breasts as they swung up and down, but mostly they were discussing the dance. It was up at Petts Wood and there’d be a reggae group. At the moment, they all loved Desmond Dekker’s music and were talking about whether they’d be let in to the dance hall or have to sneak in through the back way and get lost in the darkness. The girls would be allowed to slip past the doormen, but the boys were obviously too young. Ali knew he had no chance.
‘There’s nothing wrong with my family,’ Ali said to Mike.
‘You over ’ere now,’ said Mike.
The two of them looked uncomprehendingly at each other. Ali spat and strode away, but realised he didn’t want to go home. He would walk the streets until he was ready to see his father.
At the top of the road he noticed Miss Blake’s light on behind the net curtain. Sometimes he went in to see her on his way back from the young actors’ club or his Spanish guitar lesson. She always gave him sweets and half a crown. She lived with her brother, a porter at Victoria Station who was well known for fighting in the local pubs.
Miss Blake was blind and always at her gate when the children returned from school and the commuters from work. Some of the other kids would cry out at her – ‘She’s playing a blinder today!’ – but she would continue to stand there, a pure, inane smile on her lips. Sometimes, Ali walked around his bedroom with his eyes closed and his hands out in front, trying to know what it was like for her. He had visited her a lot lately, needing a few pennies. In return, she asked to hear what he’d done at school and what he thought of his friends. He had begun to enjoy his monologues; it was like keeping a diary out loud. Whatever he said, she would listen. It was odd, but he spoke to her more than he did to anyone else.
He tapped on the front window. ‘Hi, Miss Blake.’
‘Come on in, Alan, dear.’
She thought his name was Alan. He enjoyed being Alan for a while; it was a relief. Sometimes he went all day being Alan.
He followed her into the kitchen which had patches of curling lino over the bare floorboards. The kitchen couldn’t have been painted for twenty years and it smelled of gas. To keep warm, Miss Blake always kept the stove lit. She knew where everything was in the house, just by touch. The radio was playing wartime big-band music.
She got him a glass of water which he tried never to drink, the glass was so filthy, and he placed it next to the metal box in which she kept her change. She always seemed to have plenty of coins. She was meant to have paintings inherited from her family, and in the neighbourhood it was rumoured that, unable to see them, she had sold them.
She sat there, waiting for him to speak.
At first, he thought he would tell her about the visit of his family and the restaurants they’d all been to; how they’d seen the zoo, Madame Tussaud’s and Hyde Park. But he had never mentioned his Indian connection before. She didn’t know he was half-Indian; she was the only person he knew who wasn’t aware of this.
He had no idea of her real age. She could have been in her forties; she could have been in her early thirties. It was all the same to him.
‘Alan, light me one up,’ she said.
He pulled out a Players Number Six for her, and she took it and placed it in her mouth. She smoked heavily, and liked him to light her fags so she could hang on to his hand with hers.
‘Where you bin?’ she said.
‘Busy, busy, busy,’ he said.
She leaned forward. ‘It’s good to be busy. Doin’ what?’
He told her about the visit of his uncle, auntie and cousins. He told her the whole thing, dropping in the fact that they were from India. She listened attentively, as she always did, with one of her ears, rather than her eyes, pointed at him; he found himself speaking to the side of her head, to her wispy long hair and the lopsided smile.
‘Our father was in India for twenty years,’ she said. ‘’E was a tea trader. Said it was lovely. Better than ’ere in all this cold. Now your family are off.’
‘They’ve gone.’
‘You’re missing ’em.’ He didn’t say anything for a bit. ‘What?’ she said.
‘Yes. I do, and will.’ He added, ‘I’m going over there, when I’ve saved up.’
‘Won’t you take me?’
‘You?’
‘Oh, please say yes, you will.’
‘To India?’
‘Oh, take me, take me,’ she said. ‘My brother Ernie takes me nowhere.’ E just curses me. I beg ’im, just the day out, and why not? To smell and ’ear the sea, why not! They’ve got a blind school there.’
‘Where?’
‘Bombay. I’ve bin told of it! They might take me in to help the starvin’ sufferin’ children!’
What an extraordinary spectacle it would be in Bombay, the English Indian boy and the blind woman.
She was holding a chocolate. ‘Now, come ’ere, you poor boy. Open.’
He went to sit on the kitchen chair beside her. Her pinafore was stained. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, always half-closed. There was no reason, he supposed, for her to go to the trouble of keeping her eyes open. The dark moons of her eyes seemed to have become stuck to the top of her sockets.
‘Hot today.’
‘Where?’
‘All over.’ He was flapping his shirt. ‘I’m sticky.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Really? You need some talcum powder over you. I’ve got some somewhere. Let’s do this first,’ cause I know what you’ve come for.’
‘Do you?’
Ali opened his mouth in readiness. Then, he didn’t know why, he closed his eyes, as though expecting a kiss.
It was her other hand which reached up to his face; it was this hand which stroked his cheek, forehead and nose, and traced the line of his lips.
‘I’m only goin’ to feel ’ow big you are,’ she said, releasing the chocolate into his mouth. ‘’Ave you ’ad a birthday recently? You seem bigger. That’s what I’m trying to get at, Alan.’
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head, and thereby shaking off her hand at last. ‘No increase in size this week.’
‘Just a minute.’ Now she was holding up half a crown, which he took and pushed into his pocket.
‘Thanks. Lord, thanks, Miss Blake.’
‘Now keep still.’
She reached for his throat. Her hand was trembling. She was fumbling at something around his neck and then eased lower. Through his shirt she was feeling his chest as if she had never touched another human body and wanted to know what it was like. Her eyelids seemed to be twitching. He had never been this close to her before. He let the chocolate sit on his tongue without biting it, until it melted and dissolved in the heat of his mouth. He found himself thinking of writing to Zahida. When his father went to work tomorrow, he’d go into his room and take some of the flimsy blue airmail paper on which Dad wrote to his brothers. Ali always kept the stamps, and he’d write Zahida a love letter, the first of many love letters, full of poems and drawings, telling her everything. The letters, he knew, took more than a week to get there. He would start writing tomorrow and await her replies, which he would read on the school bus.
Miss Blake worked Ali’s shirt loose; it had come completely open. Nurses, like his mother, had to touch strangers all the time. Mother said it was natural; she had seen some rotten things, but no human body had disgusted her.
Ali was silently counting the money he’d make; at this rate he’d be able to stay with Zahida. There would be time for them to do ‘everything’, as she had put it. He would go where she went, to the club, to the beach, to parties, in the chauffeur-driven car. The family would welcome him as their own. In the evenings, he would sit around with the vociferous men telling stories and jokes, and talking politics. Maybe he’d get married over there and his parents would join him. He’d have to work out the details.
Miss Blake continued to touch him. She seemed to have several hands which went around his upper body, fluttering like dying birds. He had no idea where they would land next. His stomach? His back? He was unable to move, his eyes closed, and all he could hear was the radio, and nothing on it that he liked. He made to move, and Miss Blake let out a surprised cry and turned her face up to him. There was no alteration in the mushed clay of her eyes, but her mouth was twisted.