In the Falling Snow (5 page)

He grabs the five £20 notes and tucks them into his wallet before slipping the thick wad back into his pocket. A sudden gust catches an abandoned newspaper and it begins to fly in all directions. He kicks away a few pages that are swirling around his feet and begins to move off in the direction of his flat. There are very few people out walking on this windy Sunday night, and he imagines that most folks are sensibly at home watching television or already safely tucked up in bed and getting ready for another week of work. For over twenty years he shared a front door with Annabelle, which meant that there was always a good chance that he would not be coming home to an empty house. The lights would be on, and the smell of cooking would have permeated the flat or the house, and perhaps there would also be the sound of music blaring out. After graduation they had decided to stay in Bristol, and so they moved out of their respective halls of residence and into a slightly damp one-bedroom flat in the supposedly respectable Clifton district. He accepted a job in the black community of St Paul’s, and Annabelle also successfully applied for a position in social work, although her own particular focus was single women and violent men. After a difficult pre-graduation dinner with her mother and father, Annabelle had decided not to apply for any jobs in publishing, which would have meant moving to London and perhaps spending the occasional weekend in Wiltshire with her parents. At the dinner, she finally introduced her boyfriend of two years to them, but having witnessed her father’s behaviour Annabelle had decided that there was nothing further to be gained by trying to be diplomatic. They had forced a choice upon her, and so she had chosen. The idea of moving into social work interested her, and it seemed practical given her boyfriend’s vocation but, after four years in Bristol, Annabelle felt burned out and in need of a change.

They were offered a husband and wife job in residential care in Birmingham and, without even thinking about it, they went one morning to a registry office in Bristol and asked two guests who were there for the wedding before their own if they would stay on for a few minutes and be witnesses. The registrar would not look them in the face, and the man’s hand shook as he turned the book around for them to sign. Having blotted the ink dry, the registrar handed the certificate to the husband, who quickly folded it in half and gave it to Annabelle, who pushed it into her handbag. They then drove out to a country pub for a celebratory lunch that soon descended into silence. He knew that as happy as Annabelle was with him there was no getting around the fact that Annabelle’s parents had ‘let her go’, and that he had no real family to offer her as a substitute. After two difficult years in Birmingham, a city they both loathed as much for the grating accent as the labyrinth-like city centre, it was he who suggested that they move to London and that Annabelle might consider switching careers and trying to get a job in the media. They had saved enough to put down a small deposit and buy their first property, a tidy Victorian terraced house by the village common in an unfashionably scruffy part of west London, and while he took up his new job as a community liaison officer for the local authority, Annabelle found employment reading scripts for a theatrical agency who, as though already anticipating how her life would develop as both she and her husband now closed in on thirty, suggested that she could work some days from home. Three years later, and only months after Mrs Thatcher was finally removed from office, Laurie was born. In addition to the house being filled with the aroma of cooking, and the sound of music, there was now the babble of a newborn child and the breathless gunfire of his excitable laughter.

By the time young Laurie found words, his father was pouring most of his energy into the local authority’s nascent Race Equality
unit,
which he one day hoped to lead. Laurie’s words soon took the form of a mild interrogation as he learned to ask, ‘Where have you been, Daddy?’ and ‘What did you do today, Daddy?’ and then eventually, ‘You’re not going out again are you, Daddy?’, and Annabelle would shush him while chopping carrots, or basting a chicken, or pushing her fingers into a batch of buns to see if they were ready. As he invested increasing amounts of time in his work, Annabelle’s supply of scripts and freelance work started to dry up, but it appeared to him that she had plenty to occupy herself with coping with Laurie and trying to be a pillar of support for her mother whose devotion to her grandson was genuine but, according to Annabelle, masked an increasingly obvious gaping void at the heart of her own life. He could see that Annabelle was struggling to cope with her own family situation and he was actively looking for an opportunity to help her to heal the rift. In the meantime, although he occasionally felt guilty for not being around the home more often, he had to admit that he was enjoying the new work opportunities to travel to conferences and make presentations, junkets which gave him a sense of having reclaimed some of his independence.

The wind continues to gust, and as he makes his way along Uxbridge Road he turns up the collar on his jacket and leans slightly into the gale. He can hear dustbins being turned over, and up ahead of him a row of decorative plastic pennants which have been strung up outside a petrol station look as though they, and the flimsy piece of rope to which they have been affixed, are about to fly clear of the forecourt. Then he feels suddenly overwhelmed by panic and checks that the wallet with the five £20 notes is still in his pocket. As he nears his street, he rues the fact that, having left the family home, he has found it difficult to enjoy his new freedom for he has never been able fully to reconcile himself to the fact that each time he arrives back at the rented flat it will be
a
cold beginning. He has to switch on the lights, he has to turn on the heat, draw the curtains, warm up the place, select the music, and create some atmosphere. He has almost forgotten what it feels like to slide into a body-warmed bed. Three years ago, it was entirely up to him to transform the empty flat into a place that he could relax in, but it soon became apparent that there were aspects of the shared responsibility of marriage that he was going to miss desperately. Before turning into his street, he decides to stop at the pub for a quick drink. His local is one of the few pubs left in west London that has refused to capitulate to the sawdust-on-the-floor and alcopop trend, so at the best of times there are only a handful of ageing drinkers in the place. However, the melancholy, almost nostalgic, ambience of the Queen Caroline seems, these days, to match his own mood.

He carries his pint of Australian lager across to the jukebox, rummages around in his trouser pockets for some money, slots in the £1 coins, and then taps out the song numbers. The jukebox is a relic from an earlier period, as are the singles that will eventually swing into place. Bob Marley, Barry White, the Isley Brothers, the Clash, the Specials, and Stevie Wonder. He smiles to himself realising how helplessly he has become a creature of habit, for these are probably the same six songs that he chose the last time he ventured into this pub. As ‘No Woman, No Cry’ begins slowly to crescendo and energise the musty atmosphere of the public bar, he picks up his pint and tucks himself behind a circular wooden table in the furthest corner of the empty room. The upholstered bench is dirty, and the shabby fabric needs to be either cleaned or replaced, but from this vantage point he is able to monitor the door and observe everything that might occur in the pub. In this sense, he is in control, which is precisely what Yvette accused him of needing to be.

She covered her glass with the top of her hand, and then she
watched
as he decided to pour himself another drink and quickly took a sip. She pulled at the collar of her turtleneck sweater, as though suddenly afflicted with a flush of heat, and she smiled and told him that the one thing she had learned from her break-up with Colin was that men who rigorously police the boundaries of their lives are always looking outwards. According to her, such men don’t seem to understand that whatever it is they have inside is most probably wilting, or even dying, because they are refusing to take the time to nourish their inner selves.

‘You think I sound like some new-age imbecile, don’t you? You don’t have to say anything, I can tell by the way you’re just staring at me.’

He put down the glass of wine and reached out to cup her hands with his, but she withdrew so abruptly that her whole body snapped away from him.

‘What’s the matter? I only want to hold your hands.’

‘Keith, don’t treat me like I’m stupid, okay. All this bullshit about how I’m too young, and I work for you, and we don’t have enough in common. You’ve got it all worked out in your head like it’s some bleeding presentation that you’re giving. Doesn’t it matter to you that I really care, and that I’d actually like this to work out? It’s not as if I’ve been with any other blokes since Colin left. And, in case you’ve forgotten, it was you who asked me out, remember?’

‘Listen, I’m not arguing with any of what you’re saying. And you’re right, since I split up with Annabelle I have been a bit more stand-offish and vigilant, if you like. I suppose it’s only natural that once you get your freedom back you want to protect it.’

‘So what are you saying?’

‘I suppose I’m saying that policing my borders is a good way of putting it, but I don’t want to be like that.’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘The problem is I can’t just suddenly let my guard down and get involved in something serious.’

‘So you don’t think I’m serious?’

‘Of course you are. Listen, Yvette, I think you’re great.’

‘But you’re finishing with me.’

‘I told you, it’s not going anywhere, how can it?’

‘Well why didn’t you think of that before you fucked me?’

For a moment he thinks about refilling his glass, for she has finally hit a nerve.

Yes, he had been secretly looking at her, but it was actually Yvette who had asked him if he wanted to go out to the cinema, and a week or so later, when she had finally forgiven him for falling asleep, it was she who suggested that he visit her north London home. He could have said ‘no’ and not gone to the cinema with her, and he could have made up some plausible excuse and not visited her home. But he liked her and he wanted to sleep with her, and he was curious to know if she wanted to sleep with him, which it soon transpired she did. It was a bit much suggesting that he was the only one responsible. Rather than give voice to these thoughts, he deemed it best to leave while there was still some vestige of civility about their discussion. He pushed his glass away from himself, then slid from the barstool and started to edge his way towards the hallway.

‘Listen, it’s getting late so I’d better go.’

Yvette shook her head in disbelief.

‘So that’s it then, you want to just end it like this?’

He quickly licked his dry lips and then shrugged his shoulders. This degree of indignation was not something that he had anticipated.

‘Listen, let’s just leave it. We can talk about it later, okay? I probably need to do some thinking.’

Yvette held on to the counter top with both hands, and then
she
stepped down from the barstool and caterpillared her bare feet into her fluffy carpet slippers.

‘So what do you think’s going to happen now, Keith?’

‘Listen, Yvette, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Well you had better go then, hadn’t you.’

‘Look, I’m really sorry about everything.’

Yvette moved swiftly past him and into the hallway, where she yanked open the door.

‘Just fuck off, Keith. I don’t like being used. Colin tried and it didn’t work.’

He could hear birds twittering in the small front garden, and then a sputtering car attempted to change gears as it passed by. He looked into Yvette’s fiery green eyes, but it clearly didn’t make any sense to linger.

‘I’m sorry, Yvette. Really.’

He felt the rush of air behind him, and then he heard the crash of the door as it slammed shut. He stood still, shocked at the fury that he had unleashed. Carefully buttoning up his jacket against the early evening chill, he began to walk quickly back in the direction of the tube station.

The music has stopped, so he feels in his pocket for more change and then stands and crosses towards the jukebox. He selects the same artists, but different tracks, beginning with Bob Marley’s ‘Exodus’. He sits back in his corner and nurses the third of a pint that he still has in his glass, having decided not to bother topping it up with another half. The music is good, but there’s no escaping the fact that the pub is dismal. His mind revisits the problems of work, and the policy report on trans-racial adoption that his department is supposed to produce by the end of the week, and he shakes his head. After many years working in the Race Equality unit, during which time he has contributed to drawers and cabinets crammed with spurious material associated with countless quickly forgotten
initiatives,
he has no appetite left for reading, let alone producing, these meaningless policy reports. Twenty-five years ago, when he was leaving Bristol University, he thought differently. The urban insurrections, or riots as the media liked to call them, which punctuated his days as a student, convinced him that staying on and doing graduate work would almost certainly prove to be a frustrating waste of time. He already understood that while he would be bashing the books in the university library, out there on the streets there were youths who looked just like him who were being brutalised and beaten by Maggie Thatcher’s police. His generation of kids, who were born in Britain and who had no memory of any kind of tropical life before England, were clearly trying hard to make a space for themselves in a not always welcoming country. Back then that’s how it seemed to him, and that’s how he tried to explain it to Annabelle’s father when he and his wife took the young couple to dinner at the Madras Bicycle Club shortly before they graduated.

He had been warned, for when he and Annabelle went for coffee after the Tennessee Williams play, she had confessed to him that her father could be a ‘difficult’ man. She told her new friend that her father was an ex-army officer who had resigned his commission because he was distressed at having to associate with fellow officers who he regarded as being a cut below by birth, but who behaved as though they were a cut above by divine right. Her father had used his old school tie contacts and forged a successful career for himself in banking, but he had recently retired to the tranquillity of the countryside. ‘I’m it,’ she said, ‘the only child they were able to have so they dote on me, but they also kind of resent me a little for not being two, or even three, and that way they wouldn’t have had to put all their eggs in the potentially disappointing Annabelle basket. Of course, he wanted a boy, so the daddy’s little girl thing never really worked for me.’ He listened to Annabelle, but he found it difficult to hear anything that she
was
saying for he couldn’t take his eyes from her stunning, almost perfectly oval face. Her wispy brown hair was tied back with an elastic band, although unruly strands sprouted out from all sides so that the overall effect was a weird bohemian self-possession. When he entered into the second year of the sixth form he had a girlfriend of sorts, but that solitary relationship was more about sexual confidence-building than any kind of affection, or even attraction, and once he was accepted at university their friendship gradually petered out. For most of his first year at university his energies had been thoroughly invested in football and drinking, and the notion of pulling a bird seemed so vaguely remote that he spent a great deal of time affecting a lack of interest. However, from the moment during the interval of
Sweet Bird of Youth
when the girl looked up from her theatre programme and leaned across the empty seat between them and asked him if he was enjoying the play, he was intrigued. At the end of the performance, as they were both putting on their coats, he found the courage to ask her if she was a student, and she not only told him ‘yes’, she also scribbled down her name and the number of the phone in her hall of residence and handed the piece of paper to him saying, ‘I thought I was the only one who went to see Tennessee Williams’s plays on my own.’ As she smiled and turned to leave, he heard the words emerge of their own volition. ‘Would you like to have a coffee?’