The Lubetkin Legacy (32 page)

This seemed odd for the
Daily Mail
, but the paper obviously has moments of insight. Come to think of it, lesbian Bronwyn had mentioned something to the same effect, which I had put down to gender confusion. Either that or I had been teetering on the brink of love and was oblivious to everything else.

‘Hm. Thanks, Luigi. This coffee's good.' Though after weeks of Lidl own-brand instant, my palate may have been jaded.

‘Kenya AA, boss. The best. Special for you. That little black girl that come in here tell me to get it.'

One thing you can say about Kenya, it's always possible to get a good cup of coffee here. Kenya AA is without a doubt the finest coffee in the world. Violet's office is just around the corner from the Bulbul Coffee Bar on Kenyatta Avenue, and she sometimes goes there with colleagues from work to enjoy the pastries as well as the coffee – the NGO employs four local staff – or sometimes she meets up with one of her cousins for a pizza. Having longed for Kenyan food during her time in England, she now finds herself missing the varied tastes of London.

Her new job is challenging, especially as she is left almost entirely to her own devices. The woman who interviewed her in London, Maria Allinda, she soon realises knows much less about Africa than she does and is happy to let her take decisions on a day-to-day basis about where the NGO's resources should be focused. She spends her first month visiting enterprises in and around Nairobi, familiarising herself with the work that is already being done.

She meets women who humble her with their energy and optimism – women like Grace Amolo and Nouma Mwangi who set up a poultry farm on the eastern outskirts, and built a school in their community; women like Scholastica Nalo, a widow who supported four children with a small tailoring business, and has now taken on two apprentices.

Another group of women in Nyanza need funds to buy coffee bushes and lease land in an area where cholera has wiped out many breadwinners. Cholera, although easily treatable
now, is still endemic in Kenya because of poverty and poor infrastructure, another consequence of the relentless corruption that sucks the blood out of a country and injects poison instead. Just like mosquitoes spreading their disease, she thinks. Didn't that mad old lady who lived next door in London say something about cholera in Kenya? She smiles, remembering the crummy flat she left behind and her eccentric neighbours, and wonders: What happened to the cherry trees?

One day, her work takes her out to the coastal island of Lamu where a cooperative of local women has opened a thatch-roofed guest house near a popular resort. The long stretch of beach with its white sand and clusters of palm trees is idyllic; you can hear the swell and surge of the great Indian Ocean and the calls of the fishermen returning in their dhows at dusk with their catch. But you only have to go half a kilometre inland to encounter the poverty. Two of the women who started the cooperative are widows of fishermen lost at sea. They have deep-set wrinkled eyes from squinting against the sun, and lean muscular bodies like her Grandma Njoki. Before they received the grant to start the cooperative, they had worked as prostitutes in an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa that was destroyed in a bomb blast in 2002. They came back to Lamu with their savings and started their own guest house. Gradually other women from the island came to join them; there are seven of them now. Then in 2011 two British tourists were kidnapped by Somali pirates from a remote resort a few miles up the coast, and tourism in the area slumped. But the guest house was close enough to Lamu Old Town to feel safe, and gradually business picked up again.

She approves an extension to their grant for a further year, and sitting on the train from Mombasa back to Nairobi she ponders on how little she really knows about Kenya, and what a lucky and sheltered life she has led.

You could say I was lucky with Lucky. I perfected my fake stammer while the real stammer all but disappeared. It was as if I was coming to life after a long hibernation, alert and curious about the world I had woken into.

One Sunday in autumn, with the sun bright and low in a cloudless sky, Stacey and I climbed the path at Alexandra Palace, our hearts beating slightly from the effort. At the top of the rise we turned to look back over the city spread below us, its steep terraces, leafy parks and pincushion of towers all smudged in a smoky haze: so much history, so much splendour, so much hum-drum.

This was Stacey's idea of a perfect day out. Personally I would have gone for a cosy matinee at the Curzon, but she insisted that Monty needed his exercise. She wasn't being nearly as pliant as I'd been led to expect from our earlier encounters, and I found this annoyingly arousing. She was wearing her fawn raincoat with high heels, and holding Monty on a lead. I was wearing my white trainers and linen jacket, and wishing I'd worn something warmer. I'd been recalling my visit from the fraud investigators.

‘Anthea and Alec – they're quite a pair, aren't they?' She gave a sly smile. ‘Were you scared, Berthold?'

‘I was a bit.' I bent down and threw a stick for Monty, who was racing up and down the hill with his tongue hanging out and a manic grin on his face. ‘I didn't know whether they were investigating Inna or me.'

‘I did my best to get them called off, but unfortunately these
investigations can gather their own momentum. It was because Inna's Housing Benefit claim came through a different department. How is she, by the way?'

‘I'm not sure. I tried to persuade her to ditch that Lookerchunky bloke, but she was having none of it. Last I heard from her was a picture postcard from Crimea. Did you know Crimea was famous for its nudist beaches?'

‘Isn't she a bit old for that?'

‘I don't suppose that'll stop Inna. She was never one for playing by the rules. So when did you realise that she wasn't really my mother?'

‘That mad woman told me – the one who delivers sermons wearing a shower cap. I tried to warn you.'

‘Mrs Crazy? You believed her?'

‘One of the saddest aspects of my job is how little solidarity there is – I mean, poor people don't stick together. They snitch on each other. You know, there's a dedicated phone line in the council offices for people to report their neighbours. It never stops ringing.'

I felt a stab of hatred. That stony adversary, belligerent fruitcake, venomous God-botherer, over-coiffed old cow. I hoped she got a good long sentence for assault and battery and would be forced to let her hair dye grow out behind bars.

‘So all our efforts – the dementia, the forgotten husbands, the office fire, the casket of parrot ashes – it was all for nothing?'

‘It was a good laugh, wasn't it?' she giggled.

‘So where does that leave us now? I mean, what happens to the flat? Will I have to move out?'

‘Not necessarily. It all depends on who you live with.'

From the summit of the hill, London straggled southwards, pulsing like a living thing, vast and complex in all its grime and glory. A wave of emotion caught me off guard.

‘I'd like to live with you, Stacey.' I just blurted it out without thinking, the way I had blurted out my invitation to Inna Alfandari, but as soon as I said it, a comfortable sense of certainty settled over me like a warm coat. ‘If you'd have me.'

‘Mm. I'd like that too.' She smiled, then her smile opened into a laugh. ‘It would be great. Your flat is so spacious compared with my little shoe box. But,' her smile wavered, ‘what about Monty? Pets aren't allowed in those flats.'

I stared at the little mongrel that now stood between me and perfect happiness. He yapped a few times, picked up his stick, raced madly around in a circle, then dropped it at my feet and sank his horrible little teeth into my ankle. I moved him away quite roughly with my other foot but you couldn't really call it a kick. She picked him up and held him to her chest.

Snuggled inside the fawn lapels between those magnificent breasts he turned his beastly head and surveyed me with a look of triumph. ‘Yah!'

‘Couldn't we pretend he belongs to someone else?'

‘Berthold, you can't build a whole life on a fib.' She threw me a severe look. ‘I mean – you've already tried it once.'

The mongrel smirked. ‘Yah, yah, yah! Grrr!'

‘There was no need to go to all that trouble to pretend Inna was your mother. Under the bedroom-tax rules, any occupant would do.'

‘I didn't know that.' The wide blue sky seemed to spin for a moment, then settle with a bump on the treetops.

‘Most people don't. You could have inherited the tenancy from your real mother anyway.' She giggled. ‘Of course most people wouldn't just take a complete stranger into their home like you did, Bertie.'

‘Well, if I'd known …' If I'd known, I might have chosen somebody different; somebody more normal. But then I'd
have missed out on all the globalki, slotalki, klobaski, the vodka, the wailing folk songs and off-kilter history. A whole journey into a different world, in fact. ‘Still, no regrets.'

Stacey replaced the dog on the ground, took my hand, squeezed it, then let it go. ‘It makes me think how different the world would be, Bertie, if only people could remember to be kind to each other.'

Her cheeks were rosy from the cold. I pulled her towards me and kissed her on the lips. She surrendered with a sigh, closing her eyes and opening her warm mouth to let me in. A sharp wind lifted the corners of her coat and tousled her ponytail. I smoothed it with my hand.

‘I love you, Stacey. I love your kindness and your cuddliness. I love you because you're ordinary. I love …' Well, actually, I didn't love the ponytail or the dog; but even those might grow on me with time.

‘I love you too, Berthold. But I'm not clever with words like you.'

‘Words aren't everything.'

‘Yah! Yah!'

Monty had spotted another dog, a pretty white husky, on the path ahead, and off he ran for a spot of bottom sniffing. I took her in my arms and kissed her again. I can't remember how long we stood there leaning together before we heard him yapping for attention. I held her tighter, wanting to keep her for myself, but I could feel the persistent yapping was a distraction. It had acquired a breathless high-pitched note of distress.

After a few moments she pulled away and said, ‘We'd better go and find Monty. Sounds as though he's in trouble.'

Following the direction of the sound, we left the footpath where Monty had disappeared into the bushes on the trail of the white husky and plunged into a thicket of shrubs. Brambles snagged at my legs, and presumably at hers, but she
pushed on single-mindedly. The dog was whining pitifully now. I would have strangled the little sod, but as we came deeper into the bushes, we saw he had almost done that for himself. There he was, hanging by his collar from a metal bar that was sticking out of the laurels, wriggling to free himself. But his weight pulled him on to the metal protrusion, which I could now clearly see was the pedal of a rusting bike, wedged in the upwards position. The more he wriggled, the more he tightened the noose. I ran forward to lift him free. He yelped his appreciation and tried to lick my face with his smelly doggy tongue. I quickly passed him to Stacey, who held him close until his whimpering subsided.

‘Silly boy,' she whispered into his ear.

The prick of annoyance I felt was soon overtaken by curiosity. The bike the mutt had been hanging from had a familiar look. I pulled it clear of the undergrowth. Beneath a coating of mud on the frame I could make out the letters
Cu
… I rubbed at the mud with my fingers revealing …
be
. Red with white trim and a scratched-off patch on the crossbar where I had painted my initials. Eleven gears. But only one wheel. The front wheel, by which I had chained it to the Oxfam shop sign on the pavement, was missing. Come to think of it, I recalled that when I had discovered it was missing, just after my embarrassing Oxfam encounter with Mrs Penny (as I knew her then), the shop sign was missing too.

‘I think it's my bike. It was stolen outside Oxfam that day. Remember?'

She blushed, or maybe it was just the wind reddening her cheeks. ‘I think we can get it in the car, if you don't mind having Monty on your lap on the way home.'

We retraced our steps to the car park. She lowered the back seats and between us we managed to heave the muddy damaged
bike into the shiny little red car. Its front forks were bent, the handlebars were twisted around and its loose chain sagged pathetically on to the spick and span upholstery. It reminded me of something else that had sagged pathetically … well, never mind. All's well that ends well.

‘There!' Stacey patted my arm. ‘Let's walk down to the lake now. There's a nice little café down there. When I was a kid, I used to come here on a Sunday with Mum and Dad and my little brother.' A melancholy shadow slid over her face.

I squeezed her hand. ‘Tell me.'

‘That was before my parents split up. Before Dad walked out. So long ago.' She sighed. ‘We used to bring a picnic, hire a pedalo, and go off into the middle of the lake. We fed the sandwich crusts to the ducks and then there were Jaffa Cakes and tea out of a Thermos. That was the last time I can remember being really happy.'

Stacey clung on to my arm as she wobbled on her heels over a bump in the path. At the edge of the lake, Monty was barking dementedly at a white swan pedalo gliding along a few yards from the shore with a bunch of kids drinking out of cans and letting off party-poppers.

Suddenly a memory came crashing in on me: the absolute darkness, the fathomless water, the rope tightening around my middle as I dangled from a bridge in Hackney or Islington – I couldn't remember exactly where – above the white swan pedalo. Nige and Howard had found or stolen it somewhere and decided to bring it closer to home and keep it hidden under the bridge to use for fishing, and to impress their friends. I remembered their reedy excited voices as they hatched their plan. I remembered the voice of the policeman on the pavement above, interrogating them about the stolen pedalo; I remembered their squeaky emphatic denial of any knowledge of it whatsoever, no sir, it wasn't us. And I
remembered the splash as Howard, or maybe it was Nige, let go of the rope.

Although there was not much of a current on the canal, the white swan had drifted away so it was no longer directly beneath me when I fell. It had floated into the entrance of a tunnel where the canal went underground. Of course I couldn't swim, and as I floundered desperately towards it, it drifted away on the ripples I made with my splashing, the faint light gleaming on its puffed-out wings like a will-o'-the-wisp luring me into the darkness. I remembered the foul taste of the water gurgling through my mouth, my throat and lungs soggy with it, something slimy stuck to my tongue as I gasped for air. I remembered total blackness; whether inside me or outside I could no longer tell.

I had no recollection of how I was rescued, but I remembered throwing up wretchedly on the towpath, and Howard coaching me as we walked home, soaking wet and shivering, through the dusk.

‘So when Dad asks what happened, you're going to say you fell off a bridge, right? What are you going to say?'

‘I fell off a b-b-bridge.'

Stacey slipped her hand into mine. ‘Oh, you poor pet! That sounds terrifying!' She frowned. ‘I wonder where they got the swan. Maybe it came from here. They find them every winter, you know, abandoned in the bushes or even dumped on the River Lea.'

‘But how did they get it to Islington?'

‘There are secret waterways all over London. Probably full of dead bodies.' She squeezed my arm. ‘Were you scared, Bertie?'

‘Mm. As scared as I've ever been.' I was shivering uncontrollably now.

Stacey held me tight. ‘Let's go and get a cup of tea.'

‘I'd rather …'

I surrendered. I let her lead me to a small round table and order a pot of tea for two.

‘I'll be mother.' She poured the milk in first, from a small china jug, and then added the tea. ‘Say when.'

I gulped the warm tasteless liquid and as it trickled down inside me I felt the twist of cold and fear unwind.

Mother, I recalled, had offered me tea too, and interceded with Sid to let me warm up a bit before he thrashed me. Thwack! I didn't tell him about Howard and Nige and the white swan pedalo. There was no point in getting thrashed twice – first by Dad and then by them for telling tales.

‘I fell off a b-b-bridge.'

Mother said that was the first time she ever heard me stammer.