This Is Where I Am (25 page)

Pool and Beer

Mince and Tatties

Real Ales and Real People

Two men contemplate us through blue smoke. Their faces are weathered and tracked with broken veins. One is gangly, his mouth fallen in on empty gums. The other is small, wears a cap. The one with no upper teeth clicks his tongue. ‘All right, folks?’ A little flurry of spittle accompanies his words.

‘Well,’ sniffs Debs, her hand on the brass doorplate. She pushes, and a waft of warmth, of dark polished wood and live bodies and malt rushes out. Inside I can see long red benches and glittering brass. From somewhere hidden, a curl of music rises thinly. It is a fiddle, I think.

‘Well,’ repeats Deborah. ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine.’

12.

It is fine, actually. The food, I mean. I have steak pie, Abdi has the fish. We’re pretty much done now, but he pokes the remainder of it with his knife. Our table is a play of intersecting sun and shade, four neat squares reflecting from the window behind Abdi on to the surface, slicing dark smooth wood with bouncing light.

‘Why is so much orange? Your beer is orange, that fizzy stuff you drink is orange, every food you eat is crispy-fried-and-crumbs orange.’ He holds up a piece of fish, screwing up his eyes as if he’s examining it. ‘Hello, Mr Fish. Yes, all nice fruity colours – and yet, you people never eat fruit.’ Grinning widely as he gabbles. My fault; I suggested we have some wine to celebrate. Mentoring Abdi in the wicked ways of the west. Well, we were both getting a bit gloomy thinking about the Refugee Council.
Shit
. Oops, pardon me. I check my watch. I should really be getting back, but you feel a bit pointless, sitting there behind your desk, with not a clue what to tell those desperate faces. So many lives about to be turned upside down.
We’ll sort it out
, I’ve assured him.
There’ll be marches, protests. Don’t you worry
. But I know it’s taken the shine off Abdi’s excitement. God love him, he even asked if Geordie could come and live in his new flat. So, if a wee drop of cheap white wine can get his fizz back, then where’s the harm? He’s a big boy, he doesn’t need to keep drinking it. And we’re pals again, proper pals having lunch and sharing a laugh.

‘Don’t forget most of our women are orange too.’ I nod towards a skinny blonde who’s propping up the bar. I say blonde, but she’s really platinum, with skin so tanned I’m not surprised she’s wearing sunglasses. Abdi sloshes us both another glass of wine.

‘A toast!’ His voice is a little too loud.

‘Another one? What for now?’

He clears his throat. ‘Today, I have very good news.’

Not again. I lift my glass. ‘And I say once more: To your new hoose. Lang may your lum reek.’

‘Ah, no, not my house . . .’

‘Old Mr Bullmore’s deid?’

‘Deborah! As you know, Mr Bullmore and I no longer converse. Since his return from the hospital he has been most subdued. I believe Sergeant Heath may have visited him again. But I do not wish him to be dead. No.
Dear friend
. Today . . .’ he is bouncing in his seat. The tie, loosened by now, veers slightly to the left and the dip of his collarbone is glistening. I watch him lick his lips. His every move is taut with concentration. ‘I have also got a job!’

‘Oh, Abdi!’ I clap my hands, foolishly like a little girl. ‘How? Where?’

His finger waves admonishment. ‘Do not pretend, my dear, dear friend. Before I come here, I have the interview. The interview your dear, kind brother has made for me?’

I had completely forgotten. At Gill’s that night, at dinner, I’d given Richard Abdi’s details, asked if there was anything he could do about the apprentice scheme. But the sneaky bugger had not said another word. I notice the blonde girl staring at us. At Abdi, to be fair. He
is
a handsome man, but it’s not his face. There is lightness about him, a luminosity that’s striking. It’s not gaudy, or brash. There’s a dignity to him I’ve never seen before. He is a bright patch of satisfaction. The woman smiles at him, and he gives her a steady grin.

Aye.
Buggers
. Plural. ‘Is that right? And why did no one tell me?’

‘Pah. We are men together. We talk, we decide. Why should a very un-orange woman be consulted of manly things?’

I find myself rising in my chair, planting a kiss, hard on his cheek. The scrape and the soap-smell, dizzying.

‘Well done you!’ I arrange myself back on my chair, pulling it further from the table. ‘That is just fantastic. Tell me all about it.’

‘I start in one month’s time! Apprentice fishmongerer.’

‘Mong
er
.’

‘Mong-ger then!’ He rolls his eyes. ‘We have training and college, and we work with supervisors. At the end I will get a certificate and –’

‘Fish college? What about going to study English?’

‘I can do that too. My work college is only one day, my training is for two. It is very, very excellent. They do it so for people with benefits, they can still train.’

The more wine he consumes, the looser his sentence structure becomes. It’s quite sweet. I forget to be annoyed that Richard never consulted me, or that Abdi never cracked a light. I am a
good
mentor, so I am. My little mentee is flying the nest . . .

‘And they have part-time work when I am qualify, so even if I train to be a teacher, I can still make money.’

‘What about Rebecca?’

‘I know, I know.’

‘If she was going to school this year, it would make it so much simpler.’

‘Yes. Well, she is not. I have speak –’ he frowns ‘– spoken to Mrs Coutts, and she will watch her one day. The college has a crèche, so she can go there when –’

‘Abdi, I’ve been talking to my sister. She’s a teacher too, a headteacher. And she told me about this special language unit. We might still be able to get Rebecca in it this year. She’d need to go to a place called a child development centre first –’

‘At a crèche she will play quite happily. Is no assessments, I do not think. Just water and sands. I will tell them she is very, very quiet . . .’

My hand is tingling. It’s adamant it wants to thump him. ‘Abdi, you have to face up to this. It’s great you’re moving on – but what about Rebecca? You’ve lost your wife, but she’s lost her mummy.’ I hear my voice quaver a wee bit as I teeter, then dip on wine-soaked rails into . . . I dunno. A rollercoaster of prim self-pity, a Hollywood speech? ‘Believe me, I know what it feels like when someone who’s your whole life just isn’t there any more. It tears you apart –’

‘Thank you, Deborah.’ He takes my hand and kisses it. Refusing to let me upset his equilibrium. And I know what he’s going to ask me now, and I know I’m going to say yes. I want to.

‘From my heart. You have made so big changes to me. I trust you. I hope you trust me.’

‘Mmm.’

I wait for the request, smooth out my poker-face.
Please will you watch Rebecca on the other day?
But it doesn’t come.

‘Why do you think we were matched? Is it because you have lost your husband and I my wife? Did you ask for this? For a lonely man? Because sometimes I think it is that you project your emotions on to me.’

‘Project my emotions?’

‘Yes. Like I am your mirror. If you feel a certain way you think that I will too. I am grateful for my life, Deborah. I do not want to look backwards, only forward. Rebecca will do the same.’

‘Well, that’s just bullshit.’

‘Is it?’

I am furious. ‘Why? Did you have a choice about me?’

‘I had a choice to say no.’ He takes a sip of wine. ‘And then I met you, and I said yes. But you have not answered me.’

I am in a dark beer-stained tunnel whizzing far too fast. This insistence on honesty, who started it again? ‘No, I did not ask for a lonely-hearts date, if that’s what you’re implying. In fact, do you want to know how I got you? Do you really bloody want to know?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK then. I asked that it could be someone from Africa.’

‘Why Africa?’

I change my position. The light’s shining directly in my eyes. The sly wine gleams in my glass as I lift it, see the greasy slide of it up and down, up and down.
Push-me, pull-you
. Suddenly I find it very
vitale
to do this, to be horribly, plainly honest.

‘Some of my husband’s family were from Africa . . .’

Abdi’s eyes widen. I imagine his chest expanding, poised to welcome me as one of his own.

‘
South
Africa. White, not black.’

He makes that eloquent
Ah
that he does.

‘Yeah, so. I spent some time there when I was younger. Just a month, you know?’ I drain my glass. At the bottom, in the dregs, fragments of my steak pie rest.

Know the worst of me, then see what’s left.

‘I didn’t like what I saw.’

The woman flourished her feather wand, and all her clothes fell off. Nothing but a golden G-string to cover her modesty. The crowd clapped furiously, even Callum and his pinched, prudent mum, but I was embarrassed for the poor soul up on stage. She had a lovely voice, had pretty much been the star of the show, while all around her topless girls danced and pranced the night away – a plume of ostrich feathers each and the spindliest of heels giving them their stature. The woman’s nipples were also clad in gold, and I wondered what she felt as she painted them on in her dressing room. Was this, for her, the grand finale, or the denouement she’d been dreading? Gold tips waiting under that gorgeous dress?

‘Wow, what a show!’ Callum beamed at me, and I at him, conscious his mother was watching.

‘Well. Shall we go for suppa now, my boy?’ Myra cut between us, stroking my husband’s cheek. ‘Fatten you up a little, hu? They do terrific steak here. Oh, isn’t Sun City marvellous?’

Callum saved his broadest smile for her. I took his arm, squeezed until he returned his attention to me. That was one of the very few parts of Callum that stayed, right until the end. His smile. On our good days, I’d call him my Cheshire Cat, and he’d elongate it further, till the tilt of his cheek met the droop of his eyes. But then, there, it was strong and full, it was lips that searched mine and pushed in hard and I loved them. Just the look of them, knowing they were mine, what they had whispered to me last.

‘Can we just head home, Ma? I think Debs is a little tired.’

Immediately, Myra’s eyes slid from him to me. ‘Oh. What a shame. We’d planned to make a real evening of it.’

‘But we still can, Ma. How about we go home and you make us some of your fantastic
vetkoek
?’

‘Honestly, I’m fine,’ I said, squeezing ever harder. Why were men so stupid?
Vetkoek
were greasy dough balls that she insisted on stuffing with some kind of curried meat. I think it was beef, but I was scared to ask.

‘You don’t like my
vetkoek
, Debs? Shame. I was going to show you how to make them for my boy.’

‘No, I love it.’
I’ve had them twice already since we got here
. ‘It’s just – everything makes me feel sick at the moment.’

Going for the sympathy vote here. You too were a woman once, Myra
.

‘Ach. Everyone moans about the sickness. Me, I was fine, fine, fine. You just have to get on with it, Debs. That’s what life’s about, you know.’

Callum returned my squeeze. I think he thought I was being affectionate. ‘Remember Debs isn’t used to the heat, Ma.’

‘Tchu.’ She clacked her tongue. ‘You should be here when it’s really hot. My! Even my house-girl scuttles into the shade, but me, I just keep going.’ She jiggled the cheek of Callum’s father, who had returned from the cloakroom with a pile of jackets. ‘Someone has to run this family, eh?’

‘What’s that, darling?’

An apparently absent-minded, mild man, Callum’s dad seemed to float through life, his wife tethering him to the world. I liked him, hugely. Even Myra mellowed when he came close. He’d been very kind to me since we’d arrived – suggesting we all take things easy, limiting Myra’s mad schedule of braais and excursions to no more than one a day. The odd conspiratorial wink, or an arm offered as we strolled round the garden, suggested that he was actually far more present than absent. He’d clearly decided that, since retiring to South Africa to placate his wife, he’d bob gently on the surface, while she swam with the sharks. Well, it was her natural territory.

‘Family, Angus. We’re talking about family.’

He kissed the top of my head. ‘And what a beautiful family we have. Soon to be even more beautiful, thanks to this clever girl. Shall we head for home, dear daughter-in-law? I don’t know about you, but I’m all spangled out.’

‘Oh but look – there’s the Swanepoels. Oona!’

A blonde woman returned Myra’s wave, but kept walking. ‘Ach, just one drink, Daddy, then we’ll go. Oona! Oona!’