Forest Gate (17 page)

I
DON'T KNOW WHAT
5 said to Meina, but she burst into tears and almost squeezed the life out of me when I got back to her flat. She was trembling but wouldn't tell me what was wrong. It took me over an hour to calm her.

I couldn't tell you the reason I decided to go to Cornwall; it just felt like a good idea at the time. It was still raining when we left. Meina and I were going to make our way alone, Mr Bloom would meet us down there in a couple of days. We waited half an hour for a cab and we had to meet the driver at the top of the road because he refused to drive into the estate.

'Those boys are bad boys,' he said, pointing to Ratchet and his crew. He had a strong Pakistani accent. 'Three times they rob me. I report police, they do nothing. Lazy bad boys. I come here with nothing. I get job. Every morning I wake up in dawn. Look at time. You are my first job. Fifty pound I pay controller. I not complain. Have to work. I have wife. Three children. Send money home in Pakistan. Those boys they don't like work. No school. No job. Bad boys. Lazy.'

'Leyton station,' I said, catching his eye in the rear-view mirror.

We passed rows of shops; some closed down, some shiny and new. Phone shops, a KFC, a kebab shop, a one-pound shop, Primark, a pizzeria and three Internet shops. There were lots of people selling stuff, mostly stolen goods, download pirates. The rows of houses were two-storey, Victorian, over a hundred years old. Everything was dangerous and loud – scheming opportunism everywhere.

My eye caught one of the proper vendors – he had been here a long while – a Chinese man with a gold tooth selling mangoes and fresh vegetables from a crate that said 'N. Korea' in bright red letters. As always the tyre place across the street had men hanging around wearing oily sports gear. For them, today was no different; three men under a tarpaulin roof, barrel chests, denim jeans and steel-toecapped boots. The pavement was strewn with stacks of rubber for sale. I stared at a man in oil-spattered grey tracksuit bottoms working under a battered BMW 323i with a G-Unit sticker on the bumper. When I wound the window down I felt the stinking morning breath of east London rush against my cheeks, I saw the looming vastness, heard the pssst-pssst sound of blasted air. Over there a wide expanse of trees and labyrinthine streets; decaying pavements for miles pockmarked with decades of neglect. Over here a poster of a double-decker bus in the window of a chip shop that read 'London remembers 2005'.

I sat with my legs pressed against Meina's. She linked one of my arms with hers. The news was being read by a sleepy male voice on the radio. There had been rioting and a running street battle in Birmingham. Asians had been in violent clashes with blacks over the alleged rape of a young Jamaican girl inside an Asian-owned hair salon. During the fighting an eighteen-year-old black man had been stabbed to death by a group of armed Asian men. He was on his way to work. I wasn't sure whether to laugh at the story or cry. Meina squeezed my arm as though she could tell what I was thinking. There was another report on hurricane Noel that was about to hit the Bahamas. The driver kept watching me through the rear-view and switched over to Radio 1.

'Who do you think names all the hurricanes?' asked Meina.

I shrugged. 'Can you see the way he keeps looking at me? He thinks I'm gonna rob him.' I sighed heavily and tears welled in my eyes. Meina clasped her hand in mine and smiled. 'Don't worry about me,' I said.

'But I do.' And then: 'Can you promise me you'll try to have some fun?'

I didn't answer. I was trying to remember the name of the black kid on Merseyside who got murdered with the axe in his head by that footballer's brother. What was his name? Barton.

'I'm OK,' I said when she forced me to acknowledge her gaze.

'Don't lie,' she said. 'You're just like my brother. It's not your fight.'

'I'm sorry, Meina,' I said, letting go of her hand, 'but you're wrong.'

We took the train to Liverpool Street station and changed for the Metropolitan line to Paddington where we bought tickets to Penzance. The ticket salesman told us the next train left at 1.06. We walked around for a bit, bought munchies, books and magazines from WH Smith and shared a coffee (double mocha macchiato with whipped cream). We were tired by the time we got on the train. It was fairly quiet so we got one of those four seats with a table to ourselves. Meina worried that we would be asked to move but I told her it was cool. Eventually the train started to move. We packed our bags in the overhead rack and then, knackered, fell asleep. After twenty minutes, a black man in a blue uniform woke me up asking for tickets.

'You have them right?' I joked.

'No,' she said, 'I gave them all to you.'

I laughed and pulled the four orange tickets out of my pocket, like a magician.

'Ta-dah.'

The ticket man didn't find it funny. He took the 'out' tickets and punched a hole through them with his machine without saying anything.

Lickle shits.

Meina pulled out three gossip magazines and a book of short stories she had bought. I unfolded the
Guardian
and tried to hide my book,
Another Country
. She seemed engrossed in an article I could see was all about a TV presenter who was having an affair with another TV presenter. She saw me watching over my paper and laughed.

'You look like a proper
Guardian
reader,' she said and then moved over to the seat next to mine. She kissed me. It felt forced, a nervous gesture. I wanted her. Before she could back away I held her wrists and I kissed her back, feeling her strong pulse when I moved my fingertips to her neck. I guess she could feel me getting hard because she flinched. I slid my arms around her waist and for a moment she held me, then she let go and slid back on the seat, flushed with embarrassment. I couldn't quite work her out. Was she my girlfriend or not? Maybe tongue kissing in public was a bit much for her. Could she tell I was embarrassed too at my thing sticking up from my jeans? I shielded myself with the newspaper.

'Now I know what type of woman reads all that stuff,' I said, pointing to her magazines.

She smiled. But she still didn't look at me.

'How much do you think you can tell about a person by what they read?' she asked.

'Nothing,' I said. I slid my Baldwin novel under my
Guardian
.

'Everything,' she said. I hoped I wasn't sweating.

'What's going on in the serious papers?'

'Can you believe it?' I said. 'After thirteen years they think they've got the evidence to convict those five white guys who killed Stephen Lawrence . . . Thirteen years, that poor woman.'

'What poor woman? Who is Stephen Lawrence?'

I shook my head. 'Who is Stephen Lawrence? Are you serious? Don't they test you people when you come into the country?'

'You people? What do you mean by that?' She tried to kick me under the table.

'Stephen Lawrence is our Emmitt Till. My brothers used to bang on about it all the time. I remember 5 said his death made it all clear. He said Stephen Lawrence was the black boy who showed the world that the black man in the UK had no bollocks, was dead, had no value. He said we stood by, we watched, we did nothing.'

Meina just stared at me blankly.

'Don't look at me like that. What are you looking at me like that for?'

'You look funny when you're angry.'

'I'm not angry, just thinking.'

'Really?' She laughed and raised her eyebrows. 'So what else does the paper say?'

'Not much . . . Some celebrity has adopted a black boy. From Senegal . . . that makes me sick.'

'Why?'

'What do you mean, why? It's part of that Western fantasy to own all things exotic. These are black boys we're talking about who'll grow into black men. Not Louis Vuitton bags.'

'Being adopted is the best thing that could happen to these children. It's a blessing,' she said.

Exasperated, I folded away my paper. 'I've probably read more gossip stuff in this than all those magazines put together. What about you? What's going on in your celebrity world?'

'Nothing much. There are a few pictures of some royals. What do you think about them?'

'I bet you can guess,' I said. 'I had time for Diana but they killed her because she was with an African.'

Meina gave me her 'what are you on about?' look. I waved her off dismissively and tried to cross my legs. 'Meina, can I ask you something?'

'What?'

'Will you go out with me?'

'Go where?'

'I mean, you know, be my girl?'

'So you'll be staying with me?' she said and I felt myself blush.

I lowered my eyes. 'For a while, God willing.'

She laughed nervously.

'I'm sorry I kissed you like that before,' I said.

'It's OK,' She turned her face to look out of the window. 'It looks so peaceful.'

I pressed my head against the glass. I have lived in London all my life and I had never seen anything like it; it looked vast, unending. 'It's true what people say about us Londoners and the M25,' I said, but I'm not sure she understood what I meant.

Later, a woman in her late twenties got on and sat in our carriage. She wore a T-shirt under her coat with a Basquiat image on it and cooed softly into a mobile phone but I couldn't hear what she was saying. I fell asleep. When I woke up she had gone and two businessmen in dark suits and colourful striped ties sat in her place. One, with chubby red cheeks and clear green eyes, read the
Financial Times
. The other, with dark circles under his eyes and hair that he kept pushing behind his ears, was snoring loudly one minute, and reading a book by Andy McNab the next. Every now and then the men spoke to each other in the same flat tone. I must have been staring because one of them looked up at me like I had my nuts out, as though they were in his face. Suddenly a woman in her fifties with a long black scarf – patterned with liquorice allsorts – wrapped several times around her neck entered the carriage carrying a large silver case; it looked like some sort of instrument. She sat and placed the case upright between her legs. As I watched her stroke the loose wispy hairs that had escaped her bun I noticed the sticker on her case – 'Beware the cello player'. I tried to imagine the sound of a cello. I couldn't. For a second I wished for a world where it was OK to ask strangers for favours.

'Meina? Can I ask you something else?'

'What?'

'Do you blame me for what happened to Ashvin? Be honest.'

'No.' She stared at me, then asked: 'Have you done
Anna Karenina
at school yet?'

'Who's she? I haven't touched her,' I joked.

'No, silly, it's a book. She's a character who commits suicide.'

'I go to Forest Gate Boys, babe. Nobody knows
Anna Karenina
. I don't think I've had the same teacher in any subject for more than six months.'

'Anyway, Anna Karenina kills herself. Not because she is trapped but as a form of revenge on someone. I wondered if Ashvin was trying to hurt me.'

'Don't do that to yourself, Meina. Ash just couldn't see another way round it. What God, the world, the universe had done to him. He tried to move on. He tried.' I reached out to touch her hand.

'I did blame you at first,' she said. 'But now I understand his death is a test that I have to survive. I believed in him because he promised me things would be all right. You know, we didn't speak much, the two of us. Sometimes we could spend a whole day in the same room without saying a word. I miss him.'

She leaned in closer to me and touched my face. We kissed.

We both dozed during the long journey but fortunately we were awake as the Great Western train took us close to the cliff edge and we saw green hills, the harbours, the impressive churches and old buildings as we went through the main stations in Cornwall: Liskeard, St Austell, Truro and Carbis Bay. The train slowed and we arrived at Penzance soon after five. We didn't have to wait long for a taxi. It was a green Mercedes. The driver was a white man in his forties with an old-school moustache that turned down at the ends. As he drove slowly through the small fishing ports along the Cornish coastline it felt as though we had stepped into a different time. There were farmhouses with signs that read 'Closed for the season'. Great white birds with black beaks stretched their wings and floated through the low-hanging clouds.

'Are you nervous?' Meina asked.

'About what?'

'Seeing your sister.'

'Not really. She's not really my sister, is she? She's my half-sister. We don't even know each other.'

'Half-sister? We have no such words at home. Your sister is always your sister and your brother your brother. What's her name?'

'Belinda. She has my grandmother's name.'

'When did you last see her?'

'At my father's funeral. It was kind of awkward because our mothers weren't even mildly polite to each other but I remember we were sitting at the same table. I have a picture of us somewhere eating cake. We looked alike. I don't know how true it is but I think she was on his lap when he was shot.'

'What did he die of?'

'He was shot.'

By the time we arrived at the accommodation Mr Bloom had arranged for us, just outside Hayle, night was falling. The bed and breakfast was an old stone farmhouse surrounded by vines, ferns and roses. We rang the bell at the front door and a thickset woman with droopy eyes, mousy-brown hair and a veil of freckles on her face opened it. She looked distracted.

'I'm Pearl. Please come in,' she said.

The hall was more like a living room – large with soft wall lights. It was simple and unpretentious but there was a musky smell about it, like a damp towel, as though the windows had been shut all summer. The paint on the walls and doors was flaking and there were random objects everywhere: jars, bottles, brass animals, colourful feathers.

'Only two bags?' said Pearl as she tried to pull them from me.

'It's OK, thanks,' I said, but she took them anyway.

'You have a lovely place,' said Meina.

'I have the world's best collection of objects with absolutely no value,' said Pearl. She gestured up at the storm lanterns hung in rows around the walls. 'I put those up to help guests to find their way back on dark nights.' She headed for the stairs. 'Follow me. Try not to disturb my husband. He had a stroke but he doesn't miss much.'