One for My Baby (18 page)

But she doesn’t. Joyce just stays out in the back garden with my mother, planting lilies in patio pots, moving shrubs that have outgrown their space, preparing for the new season as the two children gently brush the morning’s fall of snow from evergreen shrubs and conifers.

“January,” Joyce had barked at me. “Busy time of year for garden. Time to get smacking. The early bird is always on time.”

“Catches the worm, Joyce.”

“You know what I mean, mister.”

According to Joyce, it is always a busy time of year for the garden. And I can hear her voice now, surprisingly gentle as she murmurs to my mother, and although I can’t hear her words, I am certain that they are not talking about my father. That feels like some kind of victory.

I turn to watch my dad coming down the stairs with the last of his things. It is a box of old vinyl albums. I can see
Four Tops Live!
and Stevie Wonder’s
I Was Made to Love Her
and Gladys Knight and the Pips’
Feelin’ Bluesy
.

Aren’t you getting a little old for all that baby, baby, baby stuff? I say, nodding at the box of Motown records in his arms, wanting to hurt him.

“I don’t think you’re ever too old for a little bit of joy,” he says. “You believe in a little bit of joy, don’t you, Alfie?”

And I hate him so much not because I can’t understand him, but because I understand him so well. He is my father, he will always be my father, and I am afraid that there is much of him in me.

Our lives feel closer than I care to admit. All those nights in rented rooms with women who keep a suitcase by their bed and talk in their sleep in a language you can’t understand. All that sneaking around, all those little lies, all that settling for something that you know in your heart is only second best.

Yes, I believe in a bit of joy. These days that’s pretty much all I believe in. But I have this fear that, for me and my old man, those rented rooms are the only home we will ever know now, the only home we will ever deserve.

Then he is gone, bumping awkwardly out of the front door, while in the back garden I can hear the laughter of the women.

part two: chips only with meal

nineteen

Jackie turns up on our doorstep when I am in the park with George. My mum lets her in, gives her a cup of tea and biscuits, tries to make her feel at home. My mother will let anyone into our house. It’s a wonder she hasn’t been murdered by now.

“She’s in the living room,” my mum says. “Nice young girl. Dressed a bit – well – tarty, perhaps.”

“Oh,
Mum
,” I say, sounding as though I have just broken my Action Man.

“Well, she said she had an essay for you,” my mother says breezily. “I thought she was one of your students.”

“My students are all foreigners, Mum.”

I peer through the crack in the living room door. There she is on the sofa, still dressed for dancing or double pneumonia. Strapless top, minimal skirt, heels that could take someone’s eye out. Sipping her tea, looking at the pictures on the wall, all these arty black-and-white photographs of working men that my old man collected when he started making some money.

I think about making a run for it. But she might start stalking me. Best to get it over with.

“Hi,” I say, coming into the living room.

“Oh, hello.” She smiles, trying to get up, and then deciding against it with the tea and biscuits on her lap. “Look, I’m really sorry to bother you but –”

“It’s okay. But I thought I made it clear that I’m not an English teacher.”

“Oh, you made it clear that you
are
an English teacher,” she laughs, making a little joke of it. “You just don’t want to teach me.” She places her tea and biscuits on the coffee table and picks up a manila envelope by her side. She hands it to me.

“What’s this?”

“An essay. About
Othello
.”

“
Othello?”

“
It’s the one about sexual jealously.
One that loved not wisely, but too well
. Desdemona, Iago and all that lot.”

“I know the play.”

“Of course. Sorry.”

An essay about Othello? Just what I need in my life.

“Will you read it?”

“Look –”

“Please,” she says. “I’m desperate to go back to school. And I’m serious about this subject.”

“But I don’t –”

“And I was good at it! I was so good at it! Because I loved it! Books made me feel as though – I don’t know – as though I was connected to the world. Magic, it was. Just give me a chance, okay? Before you decide you don’t want to teach me – read my essay.”

I look at her, wondering what an Essex dancing queen could know about loving not wisely but too well.

“I’m really sorry to bother you. Really sorry to come barging in like this. But if you read my essay and decide you still don’t want to teach me, then I promise I’ll leave you alone.”

So I promise to read her essay just to get rid of her. And as I lead her to the door and she says goodbye to my mother, I feel a pang of sympathy for Jackie Day. She just doesn’t understand. Teaching has got nothing to do with it.

“What a nice girl,” my mother says when Jackie has left. “Bit on the thin side. I’ve seen more meat on a butcher’s apron. But she speaks English already, doesn’t she? What does she need you for?”

“She doesn’t.”

There’s a new barmaid at the Eamon de Valera. Russian. Short red hair. Starting at Churchill’s when the new term begins, Yumi tells me. I watch the young Russian struggling with pints of Paddy McGinty’s Water and packets of pork scratchings before I introduce myself. She’s going to be one of my Advanced Beginners.

By now these conversations have developed their own internal rhythm. Where you from? How you finding London? Any trouble getting a visa (not applicable to students from the EU or Japan)? Do you miss your mum’s apple strudel/prawn tempura/chicken kiev?

Olga tells me what they all tell me. London is more crowded than she imagined, more expensive than she bargained for. Even the kids with rich parents flinch when they see the price of a room in this town. How much harder must it be for a young woman from a former Communist hell?

I can’t help Olga with her accommodation problem. I’m looking for my own place right now, and I’m also struggling to find somewhere I can afford, although I don’t tell Olga any of that. But this standard complaint about the price tag of everything in London gives me my favourite opening gambit.

“This city’s not cheap,” I say, leaning on the bar. “But there’s lots of great stuff that you can get for free.”

“Really?”

“God, yes. You’ve just got to know where to look. For a start there are the parks. The view of London from the top of Primrose Hill. The royal deer in Richmond Park. Holland Park is full of all these sculptures that you suddenly come across. Walking by the Serpentine –”

“The Serpentine?”

“That’s a lake – in Hyde Park, where there are these wide, sandy paths where people ride horses. Next door to Kensington Gardens.”

“Where Diana lived?”

“That’s the one. She lived in Kensington Palace. That’s a fantastic building. People still put flowers on the gates. Then there’s St James’s Park by Buckingham Palace – beautiful. And Kenwood House by Hampstead Heath. It’s this gorgeous house full of Rembrandts and Turners and in the summer they have these classical concerts. Mozart drifting across the lake as the sun goes down over Hampstead Heath …”

“Two pints, love,” calls a voice from down the other end of the bar. “When Mozart gives you a moment.”

I change the tempo when she comes back.

“You shouldn’t miss the Columbia Road flower market. Or the piazzas at the British Library.”

“I love pizza.”

“You can watch a trial at the Old Bailey. You should see Prime Minister’s question time at the Houses of Parliament. The markets at Brick Lane and Portobello Road. The meat market at Smithfield. The Picassos and Van Goghs at the National Gallery …”

I make it sound wonderful. And it is wonderful. That’s the beauty of it. I’m not lying to her. It’s all true. You can get anything you like in this city. And you can get it for free. You just have to know where to look.

She goes off to pull a few pints of O’Grady’s bath water and when she comes back I tell her about the Harrods food hall and how there are always people giving away top-of-the-range nosh. She gets very animated, and at first I think she must really have been on a rotten diet back home, but it turns out she’s just excited about the prospect of bumping into Dodi Fayed’s dad. I tell her about the music at the Notting Hill carnival, the fountains at Somerset House, the way the Embankment of the Thames looks at night.

It’s all going great. It’s only when they ring for last orders that I realise I was meant to have gone to the airport hours ago, to meet Hiroko’s flight from Japan.

The arrival gate is deserted now, but Hiroko is still waiting for me at the meeting point.

It seems very Japanese the way she has stuck it out, a combination of stoicism and optimism. And here I come, ridiculously late, running across the empty hall to hug her, full of shame and relief, wishing she had someone to meet her who was much nicer than me.

She is exhausted after the flight from Narita, but we decide to go into town and have something to eat. We jump on the Heathrow Express and soon we are in a little noodle restaurant in Little Newport Street.

Hiroko is really starting to fade now. Behind her glasses her eyes are puffy from lack of sleep. But she has some presents she wants to give me. Two pairs of chopsticks, one large pair for a man and one smaller pair for a woman, thirty years of feminism apparently not yet reaching the Japanese chopsticks industry. Then she gives me a sake set – two small cups and a pot. And a bottle of Calvin Klein’s Escape from duty free.

“Thank you for these lovely gifts,” I say. There is something about Hiroko’s formality that encourages me to be formal too. “I will always treasure them.”

She smiles with delight. “Welcome,” she says, with a little nod of her head. And I feel bad that I haven’t even missed her.

We drag her suitcase down to the Bar Italia on Frith Street for a night cap. And that’s where we see my father.

At first I think I must be hallucinating. For my old man is dressed exactly like John Travolta in
Saturday Night Fever
.

White three-piece suit, heavily flared trousers, dark shirt, no tie, stack-heel shoes. In any other part of the country the way he looks would get him arrested. In the middle of Soho he hardly attracts a second glance.

He comes into the Bar Italia, scanning the faces drinking espresso and latte, sweating heavily inside his white disco suit despite the hour and the season. Then he sees me.

“Alfie,” he says.

“This is Hiroko,” I say.

He shakes her hand.

“I’m looking for Lena,” he says. “We’ve been to a club in Covent Garden.”

“Some kind of seventies night?”

“How did you know? Oh, of course. The clothes.”

I feel that I can’t be too hostile to my father in Hiroko’s presence.

“She’s not here,” I tell him. “Get separated, did you?”

“We had an argument.” He runs a hand through his hair. He’s still a good-looking old bastard. “Nothing really. It was stupid.”

“What happened?”

“It was the music. It was all over the place. The DJ was playing stuff from the sixties, stuff from the eighties. As though it was all the same. Then he put on ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’.” He looks at Hiroko. “By the Supremes.”

Hiroko smiles and nods.

“And Lena said:
oh, I love Phil Collins
.” My old man shakes his head at the memory of this sacrilege. “And I said: Phil Collins? Phil pigging Collins? This isn’t Phil Collins, sweetheart. This is the original. This is Diana Ross and the girls. This is one of the greatest records ever made. And she said she had only ever heard Phil pigging Collins’s version, and who cares anyway? It’s only a bit of pop music. It’s just a bit of fun. Then I wanted to go home. But she wanted to stay.” He looks at us like a man in shock. “Then she left. Just like that. But she’s not there. She’s not at home.” My old man scans the Bar Italia. “And I don’t know where she is.”

“Do you want a cup of coffee or something?”

“No, no. Thank you. Better keep searching.”

My father says goodbye to Hiroko and me and goes back out into the Soho night, looking like the ghost of discos past.

After that first day, George and I do not get hassled in the park. It’s strange. We are out there very early on Sunday mornings, when the place still belongs to the creatures of the night. But they leave us alone. They watch for a few minutes. Then they move on.

And it’s because of George. The way he moves, there’s nothing limpid or weak or namby-pamby about Tai Chi. His movements radiate internal strength. The drunks just walk on by.

“Why did you change your mind about teaching me?”

“I saw how much you want to learn.”

I read Jackie’s essay. It’s depressingly predictable stuff – talking you through Iago’s scheming, Othello’s rage and Desdemona’s innocence as though she is telling you the plot to
Lethal Weapon 4
. A tale of sexual jealousy, betrayal and revenge. Starring Mel Gibson. Up against the wall, Iago. This time it’s personal.

Just what you would expect from a high school drop-out. She even produces Rymer’s hoary old quote about one of the morals of the play being “a warning to all good wives that they look well to their linen”. Whatever that means.

I feel sorry for Jackie, but it gives me a warm feeling to know that I don’t have to teach this stuff any more.

There’s no cover note with her essay, nowhere to send it back to. Just a business card – Dream Machine: Cleaning the Old-fashioned Way – and a mobile phone number. I could wait until I see her at Churchill’s but I don’t want to leave it that long. I want to get shot of Jackie Day as soon as I can.

I call the mobile and get a recorded message that she is working at the Connell Gallery on Cork Street. That’s not far from Churchill’s. I decide to return the essay in person so that I don’t have to come home and find her camping out in our front garden.

Although it’s only a ten-minute walk, Cork Street feels like another city compared to where I work. You can smell the money in the air. I find the Connell Gallery, thinking I will drop her essay off at the reception desk. Then I see her.

She is not dressed for dancing. Her fair hair is pulled back and tied with an elastic band. She is wearing her blue nylon overalls. And she is cleaning the plate-glass window. When she sees me she stares at me for a moment and then steps into the street.

“What are you doing here?”

“Returning your essay. I didn’t have an address.”

“I would have picked it up. At Churchill’s. Or your mum’s house. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“I’ve got my own company,” she says. “Dream Machine. We work all over the West End.”

“Who’s we?”

“Me. And sometimes I bring in another girl. If the work’s there.” A pause. “What’s wrong?”