Authors: Belinda Bauer
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’ He was sorry. Even though he was relieved she wasn’t going to church again, he was sorry that she had found no comfort there, or anywhere.
He slowly drummed his fingers on the bedroom door and said, ‘When I get home I’ll clean the house.’
When James got to work, Ang’s sleeping bag was still unrolled on the bench. There was water on the floor where he had used the tiny handbasin to wash himself, and on the table were little bits of wire, a pair of pliers, and a bottle of aftershave with the face of a famous footballer on it.
James felt awkward – as if he’d walked into Ang’s home without knocking.
‘Sorry,’ he said, as Ang edged past him to roll up the sleeping bag.
‘Is good,’ said Ang.
He used to have a mattress, but Brian had bitched about it taking up all the space in the kitchen, until Ang had dumped it in the old inspection pit, where it leaned uselessly against a wall, while he slept on the bench.
‘You want some tea?’ said James.
‘Yes, please.’
James put the kettle on and picked an intricate piece of wire-work off the table. ‘What’s this?’
‘Car,’ said Ang. ‘See?’ He picked up a second piece and showed James how they would fit together to make bodywork and a chassis.
James grinned. ‘Clever,’ he said. ‘Daniel would love that.’
There was a loud silence, until the kettle switched itself off with a click.
‘You should make more of this stuff,’ said James. ‘Sell it, you know? Get some extra money.’
Ang shrugged at the car in his hands. ‘Is not for money,’ he said. ‘All Hmong make this.’ He put it down and opened the old broom cupboard next to the sink, and stuffed the sleeping bag on the high shelf.
‘Did you make that too?’ James pointed at a broad strip of colourful material that was pinned to the inside of the door.
‘No,’ said Ang. ‘My mother.”
‘What is it?’ said James.
‘
Paj ntaub
,’ said Ang. ‘Umm, iiiiiis … Story, umm … cloth.’
‘Story cloth?’ James opened the door wide so that the light fell more fully on the material. It was beautiful. A foot wide and two foot long, it had a dark-red background, with intricate curlicues and spirals and zig-zags sewn on to it in repeating patterns of wildly clashing pinks, oranges, magentas and greens.
‘That’s great,’ said James.
Ang grinned proudly and his slender brown finger pointed out various symbols, as he struggled to tell James their meanings. ‘This iiiiiis … snail. This iiiiiis … I don’t know English. This iiiiiis … flower …’
‘Very beautiful,’ said James.
‘You want?’ said Ang, and started to peel off the sticky tape at one corner.
‘No!’
‘I give,’ Ang insisted. ‘For Anna is happy.’
James’s nose tingled with sudden emotion. It would take more than a strip of needlework to make Anna happy. There was only one thing that would ever make her happy again, and even James couldn’t give her that. Instead he had been the one who had taken her happiness away from her. It was hard to remember now that they had ever been happy at all, but they
had
been, and he had to hold on to that.
He felt a sudden prick of anger at Ang. His guilt wasn’t Ang’s to fix. Let the little bastard find a guilt of his own and fix that!
‘No!’ he said, more roughly than he’d meant to. Ang flinched and stopped picking at the tape.
Immediately James felt bad. Ang wasn’t being mean: he had seen Anna’s pain and offered up the only thing of value he appeared to own.
Unselfishly.
‘Thanks, mate,’ James said. ‘But your mother made it. You keep it.’
‘Two sugars in mine,’ demanded Mikey from the doorway, and Ang swung the cupboard door shut.
‘Feck, it’s freezing.’ Mikey was only five-eight, but he filled any room with his big voice and his restless nature. He sat noisily in one of the chairs and picked up the aftershave. ‘Goal.’ He read the name, then punched the air with both fists. ‘GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLL!’
They all laughed. Mikey had the knack of making everything feel OK again. James was glad he’d walked in when he had.
Ang held out his hand for the bottle, but Mikey sniffed it and winced. ‘Jesus! That’s one nostril won’t need picking for a week! Who’s the lucky lady, Ang?’
Ang looked at him blankly and Mikey tapped the bottle in salutation. ‘You got a girlfriend?’
‘Girlfend?’
‘Girl. Woman. You know,’ said Mikey and traced a universal hourglass with his hands.
Ang shook his head. ‘Shit, no.’
‘You should get one,’ said Mikey. ‘Shouldn’t he, boys?’
‘Get what one?’ said Pavel, hanging up his coat. ‘He should get a girl,’ Mikey went on. ‘Young fella like him. Good looking, sense of humour, own teeth.’
‘Own broom,’ snorted Pavel, as he lit a black cigarette.
‘Ahh, girls
love
a man with a broom,’ said Mikey. ‘A broom’s a big turn-on to the ladies.’
He winked at Ang, who grinned and held out his hand again. This time Mikey gave him the aftershave and Ang put it under the sink.
James put a mug of tea in front of each of them.
‘How long have you been here, Ang?’ said Mikey.
Ang held up three fingers.
‘Three years. And how old are you?’
‘Twenty-one,’ said Ang.
‘Bollocks’ said Mikey, and he and James laughed while Pavel merely raised an eyebrow. ‘But you should get a nice girl,’ Mikey went on. ‘Even better, get a nasty one, hey, Pavel?’
He winked at Pavel, who only shrugged and blew three perfect smoke rings.
Ang shrugged and gestured at the kitchen. ‘Where?’
Mikey looked around and then waved away his concerns. ‘Easy. Get this place done up. Brian won’t mind. Bit of carpet on the floor. No windows, so you don’t need curtains. Get a lamp—’
‘A double bench,’ said James.
‘That’s right!’ laughed Mikey. ‘You’d have a girl in no time. I mean, you’re almost as gorgeous as me!’
‘Of course,’ said Pavel, ‘but he never as
white
as you.’
‘
Nobody
’s as white as me,’ said Mikey proudly, twisting the hairs that curled like vermicelli around the strap of his wristwatch.
‘He had a girlfriend,’ said James. ‘What was her name?’
Ang looked blank, so James appealed to the others. ‘Remember?’
‘No,’ said Mikey.
Pavel shook his head and looked doubly cynical.
‘Yes, you do,’ said James. ‘Her name was Zij or Zoë or something. We were going to meet her father and everything.’
‘Aah! That’s right!’ said Mikey. ‘But he didn’t know where she lived.’
‘She don’t tell,’ shrugged Pavel laconically.
‘Of course,’ laughed Mikey. ‘Because who wants their fecking fiancé coming round their
house
!’
They all laughed except for Ang.
‘Don’t worry, mate,’ said James. ‘She wasn’t the one for you.’
Ang nodded sadly. ‘She break my hat.’
‘She what?’ said James.
‘She break my hat.’
They all stared at him quizzically until James had a lightbulb moment. ‘She broke your
heart
.’
Mikey spat tea across the room he laughed so hard, and even Pavel chuckled without smiling, making his cigarette wobble between his lips.
Ang looked mournful enough to make the whole thing even funnier, and they didn’t stop laughing until Brian Pigeon came in and told them to stop enjoying themselves and get to work, or they could all go back to whatever third-world shithole they came from and stop stealing his money for doing
bugger all
.
James could have reminded him that he paid shite wages and
bugger all
national insurance by employing illegal immigrants. But he didn’t, of course.
He worked in Brian’s garage and he lived right next door in Brian’s flat.
He wasn’t saying a
thing
.
THE KITCHEN TABLE
was a mess. James was naturally untidy, and it was already covered with junk – torn envelopes, bills, pizza boxes, dirty plates, tools, newspapers.
Anna sat at the table with a cup of tea and fed Charlie. Those little gurgles, the happy panting of impatience for the next spoonful of chicken and vegetables.
If she closed her eyes – as she often did – he might as well be Daniel.
But it only took her one cup of tea in close proximity to the mess to decide she could never not care about germs. She sighed and got up and put Charlie out of harm’s way, then flapped open a bin bag. She used her forearm to sweep much of the rubbish into the bag.
Anna was brutal with rubbish. There was no room for sentiment when it came to cleaning the flat. James knew that if he put something down in the wrong place, he was liable to lose it.
As the junk slid off the table, Anna caught a fleeting glimpse of Sandra and Mitzi. The photo had been under the pizza box. She stopped and reached into the bag to retrieve it, and stared at the blonde woman and the curly dog.
She nearly dropped it back into the bin then. What was the point of keeping it? Mitzi was only a dog, after all.
But she didn’t throw it away. She wouldn’t want someone throwing away a photo she’d given them of Daniel, even if the odds of recognizing him from it were a million to one. She wouldn’t throw it away. She couldn’t.
She propped it on the window-sill behind the sink.
And suddenly she was looking at the garden through the window.
My God! It felt so familiar!
The angle was odd and the flowers were
wrong
and the smell was wrong, too – it was grease and dry dust, not grass and blossoms – but Anna was
right there
, even though the flowers were far away. Or were they? The perspective wasn’t right and she couldn’t tell what kind of flowers they were, even though her father had loved to garden and had taught her some names. She squinted but she didn’t see anything she recognized – not even common flowers like roses and daisies. They were big and coarse and the edges were … black? And there was something on the window-sill …
She reached out a hand to pick it up—
There was nothing there. Her hand hovered between the sink and the window, with nothing in its grasp but air. No flowers, no grass, no misty trees. Just the stale air of a messy kitchen.
Anna shivered so hard she had to put out a hand to steady herself against the table to keep from stumbling sideways. She felt as if she’d been stretched out like a piece of elastic and now she’d pinged back, made limp by the effort.
Barely breathing, Anna waited for something else, but there was nothing, and already she couldn’t recapture the feeling of
something
.
She needed water. Again. She was desperate for water.
She hurried to the sink and turned on the tap and gulped greedily at the stream that flowed from it.
More.
More.
And more.
She drank more than she needed. More than she wanted. She drank as if her life depended on it. And even after she’d retched a couple of mouthfuls back up into the sink, she continued to let the stream pour down her lips and cheeks as the water spread fast inside her stomach, her legs, her fingertips, her
brain
.
Anna started to laugh and splutter at the glory of water filling her whole being. She was exhilarated. She put the ‘high’ in ‘hydration’!
Oh my God! Oh my God!
She felt so alive!
Finally she turned the tap off and stood over the sink, panting with relief.
She looked out of the window, giggling a little as she felt her pumping heart-rate slowly return to normal, and then – just as suddenly – she was overwhelmed with sorrow.
She stood in a puddle of water and cried and cried and cried until she’d emptied herself of what felt like every drop she’d just drunk.
What was wrong with her?
What if this sudden raging thirst was a symptom that there was something physically amiss? This was twice it had happened in a week. It was extreme, and bizarre. So bizarre that Anna wondered whether she should see a doctor.
She had refused to see anyone after Daniel had disappeared – not doctors and not counsellors. What could they have done? How could they have helped? Given her sedatives to make her sleep, make her forget? When she woke up, Daniel would still be gone. What mother wanted to forget her missing child? What doctor would try to make her?
But this … this felt
wrong
.
Wrong enough to see someone now?
As she stood, shivery-wet and sniffing, Anna imagined the scene.
Doctor, I get very thirsty.
Do you have a tap?
Yes.
Then turn it on.
The thought brought a wry smile to her lips. It was a simple solution to a simple problem. She
should
drink more water. She’d read somewhere that
everyone
should drink more water. Maybe this extreme thirst was just nature’s way of telling her that she was falling behind on her quota.
But even if that were true, then what was the vision of the garden telling her?
Something
.
She just didn’t know what. And now that it was gone, it seemed to be no more than a momentary flash of wild imagination.
But in her heart Anna knew it had been more than that: she had been there. And it had been almost close enough to touch … She closed her eyes and reached out her hand and tried to re-conjure that vision, but it was just a memory now, and no more or less vivid than any other.
And what would the doctor say about that craziness?
Probably plenty.
If Anna was going mad, she didn’t want anyone else to know. Even she didn’t want to know.
She opened the cupboard under the sink to find tea-towels to clean up the water.
He looks at the photo and he just knows things
…
Anna straightened up as Sandra’s words popped into her head, unbidden.
She stared intently through the kitchen window at the grey street and the red buses, but her mind saw only the sorry crucifix on the wall and the crumbs on Richard Latham’s jumper.
He just knows things.
Anna just knew things too!
She knew the garden as if she were there. She knew that the flowers were somehow
wrong
. She’d seen it all twice, and both times she’d had that raging thirst.