Dispossession (6 page)

“I thought I’d show you some of the sights,” she said, “try
if that jolts your memory at all. That’s what I told the doctors, anyway, it
was the only way I could get you an exeat. Might work, you never can tell.”

“Uh-huh. So what’s the real reason?”

A flicker of her eyes, and then she was totally inscrutable
of face and voice both as she said, “I just want to spend an hour or two with
my husband, all right? Just the two of us, no nurses banging in and out, no
visitors, no nobody.”

“Sue, listen... Okay, you’ve got some photos, and I guess
they’re proof of something. But whatever happened, that still doesn’t make me
the man you married. None of what you’re saying fits me, or anything I know
about myself. It’s not just that I don’t remember doing this stuff, it doesn’t
make sense to me that I ever would have done it. I’m sorry, but the man inside
here,” and I lifted a hand to tap my head, only just remembered in time not to
do that, “is not your husband. Whatever I look like, inside I’m just not the
same person.”

“Actually,” she said, “you don’t look the part either, right
now. My Jonty’s pretty, wouldn’t have married him else. That makes it easier, a
bit. So all right, let’s just play the doctors’ game for them. You be what the
hell you want to be; I’m the tour guide. I’m supposed to be driving you around
to see what you recognise, so don’t ask where we’re going. I want you to tell
me, soon as you figure it out.”

o0o

It wouldn’t, it couldn’t work, and so I told her. I knew the
streets of the city too well; they’d been my playground as a student here and
my workplace since, they held many memories from many years and I could summon
up all of those with no effort at all, and of course none of them was a memory
of her.

She just nodded, shrugged, told me not to worry about it.

And took me somewhere I’d never been in my life.

It wasn’t that mysterious really, only a suburb that was too
dull for students and too posh for any of my clients, too far from the centre
and too insulated for me or anyone ever to have passed through it on the way
from somewhere to somewhere else. It existed
sui
generis
, encircled by roads and its own smug contentment, a bourgeois
province that needed no more than its own reputation to keep it so.

Semis to the right of us, semis to the left of us, no access
to the motorway ahead; and if this wasn’t the valley of the dead that we drove
along, it was a pretty fair imitation. Me, I liked the quiet life, but this...

This was the main shopping street, for all those souls who
preferred not to take the Metro to M & S and Bainbridge’s in town. There
were local equivalents, clothes shops catering for no one but the middle-class,
middle-brow, middle-income Middle England; I even saw one emporium that still
carried its title in gilded letters on the window,
Draper and Haberdasher
. Every shopfront bore an
individual trader’s name; there were no chains here, no video stores or
supermarkets, nothing so common.

And we parked right there, on this Street that Time Forgot,
and her ladyship looked at me expectantly, teasing and hopeful both. Something
here, then, something I was meant to see or react to. It had to be the shops,
surely; there was nothing else. I looked more carefully. An ironmonger—and yes,
again, it still called itself an ironmonger, and I wondered if they still sold
screws loose by weight, from little wooden drawers—and a bakery where surely
they still baked their own bread on the premises. And a delicatessen with small
ill-lit windows and a display of tins so drab it didn’t even tempt me out of
the car, and a Chinese takeaway, and...

Ah.

Beside me, Sue had wound the window down on her side, and
was resting her elbow on the rim.

“Take your time,” she said, taking a pack of Gauloises from
her jacket pocket and tapping a cigarette out, finding a brass Zippo in another
pocket, lighting up.

A smoker. I’d married a smoker.

“It’s the takeaway,” I said. “Right?”

“Bingo.”

Made sense. She was a Chinese girl, after all. That was the
only conceivable relationship, between this girl and this street. I supposed
that I could live here, or make some shift at living; a creature of habit I,
and already too many of the habits of age. But not she; she’d be as much an
alien here as she was to me. Even her car didn’t belong in this traffic.

The Sunniside Chinese Takeaway
,
it was called, no clues there. But I felt confident enough to chance my arm.

“Your parents?”

“Yes! Brilliant, did you...?”

But the enthusiasm that made scrutable all her feelings on
her face died quickly, as she read my own on mine.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “that wasn’t fair. I didn’t remember, I
was guessing.”

“Unh. Well, good guess, then.”

“It wasn’t hard. Why are we here, Sue?” Not just so that she
could show me her parents’ place of business, I’d guessed that also. It had to
have some greater significance.

“This was where we met,” she said.

“Oh. Right. Uh, how, then?”

“Over a No 37, with fried rice and a Coke,” she said,
straight-faced.

“I never ordered anything by number.” And this time I really
was certain, or wanted to be. I might have married a smoking stranger, three
impossibilities in a single incredible act; but surely not that, not so
ignorant and patronising. Please...?

“No, all right,” she said, grinning now,
only winding you up, Jonty
. And maybe making a
point also, that she knew me well enough to do it. “It was a Special Chop Suey,
actually. Which is No 37, but no, you didn’t ask for it by number.”

I nodded, sat back, gazed blankly at the takeaway’s frontage
for a minute while she ostentatiously blew smoke out of the car, and either I
was being hypersensitive here or this was also a message, or the same one
again,
see how well I know you, Jonty? Husband
mine? You hate the smell of cigarettes, but you married me anyway...

Then, “What the hell was I doing here?”
Never been here in my life, guv, can’t think of a reason
why I would.

“I don’t know. You didn’t say.”

“So what did I say?”

“‘No
37, fried rice and a Coke. Please.’” But she glanced at me, shrugged a quick
apology and said, “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“You don’t want to go in, try to remember? Mum’ll be there,
if Dad isn’t.”

“No. I’m sorry, Sue, but... No. I don’t want to do that. Not
yet.”

“Fair enough. I suppose.”

“To be honest,” I said, “I don’t want to move at all, unless
it’s towards a bed.”

She looked at me sharply, anxiously. “Not feeling good?”

“Not very.”

“Shall I take you back?”

I shook my head, slowly and carefully. My neck was as stiff
and sore as the rest of me. Lucky not to be in a surgical collar, I thought;
but that was only a side-effect of the big one. The bone-deep discomfort of
sitting in a cramping car was a constant and increasing reminder, how lucky I
was to be alive.

“No,” I said when the headshake didn’t seem to be enough,
she didn’t look persuaded. “Truly, I don’t want to go back. It’s only the body
getting through to me, nothing to worry about. The head’s fine. And I hate
hospitals, I’m dead glad to get out.”

“Yes, but you hate being driven, too,” she said. Scoring
points again, I thought, making demonstration, how well she knew me.

It was true enough. Normally I loathed being a passenger in
someone, anyone else’s car. But, “I’m in no condition to drive,” I said, “and I’d
sooner be out than in. Besides, I’ve just discovered one major advantage to
sitting this side.”

“What’s that, then?”

“The seat belt goes the other way.”

It took her a second, but she caught on; she’d seen the
diagonal bar of bruising on my chest, when she helped me into these utterly
comfortable, utterly unfamiliar clothes. I’d tried to chase her out, but, “I’m
your
wife
, for God’s sake, Jonty,” and I
couldn’t argue with that. Or with her, really, she was adamantine with spikes
on.

Come to think of it, she’d have seen all the damage before
that. Three days she’d sat by my bedside, they’d told me; and I couldn’t see
her leaving the room at their request if she wouldn’t leave at mine. She’d have
seen them washing me, changing the dressings, whatever. Likely she’d have
joined in, if she was allowed.

So yes, she’d know where I was hurting. She’d understand how
relieved I was, not to have the belt lie tight across the worst of it. And of
course she’d accuse herself, I could see her doing it; she would say, as she
did say, “Have I been driving too fast?”

“No. It’s just the nature of seat belts, you feel them. Stop
fretting. You were going to tell me how we met?”

“Oh. Yes. All right...” She gazed across the street at the
takeaway, and a smile touched her lips. Genuine amusement, I thought, rather
than just the romance of nostalgia. And sure enough,

“You were awful,” she said. “Or I thought you were, at
first. It was late, it was my night off so I was helping here, I used to do
that. Back then, I used to,” with a sidelong glance at me,
before you changed things
. “And you came in, it
was only ten minutes before closing and there was no one else in, it’s quiet
here even at the weekends. Not like the other side of town, we don’t get the
closing-time trade out here.”

“No, I can imagine.” Looking up and down the street, I
couldn’t see a pub. A hotel down on the corner, yes, offering B & B no
doubt to the genteel; they’d have a public bar, but probably little enough
custom.

“Right. Anyway, there you were, coming in and asking if you
were too late. Which you were, almost; but it was nice of you to ask, so I said
no, it was okay. And you looked knackered, and you ordered dead quick, first
thing you saw on the menu, almost, so I figured you were starving hungry with
it.

“So I called the order through the hatch to Dad, and turned
the telly back on to give you something to look at while you waited; but when I
turned round it was me you were looking at. Staring at. It was creepy. I mean,
I’m used to it, sort of, you weren’t exactly the first; but with you being the
only person in, and it was dark outside and there was no traffic on the street
or anything, and you just stood there not saying anything, just watching every move
I made, catching my eye every time I looked at you, not even blinking when I
tried to stare you down. And you weren’t even smiling, just, just
looking
... I got scared, a bit.”

“I’m not surprised,” I murmured. I couldn’t relate this to
me at all, it was a story about a stranger; but I wanted to know the ending,
so, “What did you do?”

“Went back to help clean up in the kitchen, and asked Mum to
take your meal out when it was ready.” Smiling again, she added, “I told her
you were another kinky white boy hot for little yellow sister. She still doesn’t
like you very much.”

Well, no. I could see that. Six or eight weeks was not very
long to win over a doubting mother-in-law. Especially one who’d been however
briefly encouraged to think of you—of me—as a toe-rag only interested in her
daughter for the basest of reasons. Parents and children traditionally have
problems with each other’s sex-lives; no blame to her if Mrs Chu still saw only
slobber and lust when she looked at me, still watched my fingers and wondered
where they’d been and what they’d done, on or inside her daughter’s blessed
body.

Me too, I looked at my fingers and wondered. Like everything
else, my sex-life had been settled and familiar for a long time now,
comfortable and contented, no risks sought or taken. It seemed unlikely somehow
that the same would apply or be allowed to apply with Sue. Sleeping with a new
partner was always different; but this was not only a question of a different
body, a different nature, different habits learned. Sue’s soul, I thought,
inhabited another realm from Carol’s. Their genes, I thought, were perhaps the
least part of their difference; and
vive la
différence
, I thought, and...

And what the hell was I doing, thinking this way? Proving
Sue right, perhaps, showing that I was after all only a kinky white boy with
the hots for little yellow sister; because Sue might impossibly be my wife but
Carol was my partner still, I’d been faithful to her through all the years we’d
been together and maybe I’d had a brainstorm a couple of months back but I’d
recovered now, the knock on the head had maybe knocked things back into shape
again and I wasn’t, I was
not
even going to
fantasise about sleeping with Sue.

Even if I’d already done it. Some crazy variant on wanking
with a mirror, that would be, fantasising about my own sex-life...

“So was that it?” I asked, dragging my attention back to the
story before she read my thoughts on my face, infinitely scrutable Westerner
that I knew myself to be. “You sold me a meal and then hid out in the kitchen,
and that was that?”

“No,” she said, “that wasn’t that. You were really going for
the dirty-old-man act that night, I could’ve called the cops on you. We got
everything ready for next day, and then we locked up. Mum and Dad went off
home, they only live round the corner from here; and I walked down to where I’d
parked, and on the way I had to walk past this Volvo, and I got the shock of my
life because I was just doing that when the door opened and you jumped out.
With all the wrappings and containers in your hands, you’d bought a fork from
Mum and eaten your dinner in the dark, just sitting in your car there watching
for me. I think you were trying to pretend you’d just finished and you’d only
got out to dump the leftovers, but you didn’t do it very well. Just stood there
staring at me again.

“And I wasn’t going to scream or run away, I’ve got my pride
and I’ve done defence classes, and anyway I figured you weren’t that much of a
threat with your hands full of rubbish. So I glared at you, fierce as I could
manage, and said, ‘Well, what, then? What do you
want
?’
And you said you were sorry, you couldn’t think straight and you knew you weren’t
handling this very well, you must look like a right creep, you said. And I said
yes, you did, and you said you weren’t really, really you weren’t, you said,
only you just desperately wanted to talk to me but you couldn’t think of
anything to say.