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I wonder if I could tell my mother that, if that would be an explanation for her, to say, mum, he was there, I wanted him, that’s all it was.
I’m not sure if that would be enough for her, if she’d understand.
We sat on a wet bench and we didn’t hold hands, and I wanted to feel the rough of his face on my skin.
There was nothing very emotional about it, we weren’t bonding at a deep level; I was looking at his shirt and imagining the buttons scattered to the floor like fallen pennies.
He said shouldn’t you be getting back and I said I’m sure I’ll think of an excuse.
And we went to his house, and we went to his bed, and we spent a long time doing the things.
He teased me about my accent, and I stood on his chest and hit him with a pillow.
He tried to twist my hair into bunches, and I undid the buttons of his shirt.
He kissed my ankles, and my calves, and he lifted up my dress and kissed my thighs and I took down his trousers.
And then suddenly a seriousness came over what we were doing, and I thought about laying my little-known grandmother in the ground, and I thought about that last day of summer, and almost at once we were making love.
Really, urgently, absolutely making love.
I’d never before felt such a deep need to move that way, slowly, carefully, inexorably.
It made me feel primitive, rooted, connected to the dirt of the earth and the light of the stars, a spun thread pulled across the span of generations.
I was swollen and pregnant with desire, and the need swept through me in waves, my hands clutching like a newborn baby, clutching the sheets, his skin, the air, whitening my knuckles, straining to pull us into closer and tighter and deeper embrace, and when we were finished the bedsheet was torn and the mattress had slipped to the floor.
And when I left, before midnight, I didn’t leave my phone number and I didn’t ask for his.
I don’t think my mother would understand that either, if I told her, if she was ever to ask.
I went back to the relatives’ house, and when they asked me where I’d been I said I’d gone for a walk and got lost, and they looked at me sweetly and fed me sympathy and scones.
And the next day I made the long journey home, and I had a secret dazzle of a thing I could smile quietly about at work.
Only then it was a secret that was growing, and there was a becoming place inside me that I hadn’t been prepared for.
Perhaps my mother would say well if you play around like that you’ve got no one to blame, if she knew, perhaps she’d say oh my God did I teach you nothing?
Perhaps she’d say you should go and find him, he’s got a right to know, and he should be helping to support you, financially.
I wonder if I’d be able to convince her that I didn’t want to, that it had been a wonderful one-off and I wanted to leave it like that, unended, a suspended moment.
Maybe I won’t tell her any of it, if she asks.
Chapter 16
She can hear creaks and sighs coming from upstairs, murmured voices, slow footsteps. The flush of the toilet. She looks up at the ceiling, the woman in the kitchen of number nineteen, the mother of the boys playing cricket with milk crates outside, and she wipes her hands clean of roti flour. Darling she says, calling through to her husband, darling, nana and papa are waking up, and she puts the kettle on and begins to lay out another breakfast for her husband’s mother and father, bowls of yoghurt sweetened with honey, slices of fruit, juices and tea. Darling please! she says, a little more urgently, and she hears the television going off and she sees her husband appearing in the hallway. Good morning mother he says, looking up as his mother slowly descends, are you well, did you sleep okay? Good morning son she says, her voice heavy with the strain of moving down the stairs, and as she reaches him she pauses for breath, leaning forward to allow him to kiss her on each cheek, yes I slept okay, thankyou, yes I am well she says.
She moves through the kitchen, awkwardly, bulkily, she says good morning child and the mother in the kitchen says good morning would you like some breakfast mother? She pours water from the kettle into the teapot, and they both sit, hands folded on their laps, waiting. The stairs creak and they hear the pained exhaling of a man who does not find walking easy. They hear the son greeting the father and the father greeting the son, and the two men join them and sit at the table. They each murmur a small prayer of thanks, and there is a moment’s silence as the first mouthfuls of breakfast are taken. The front door opens and closes, and they all look round but there is no one there. The son calls out the names of the twins, and there is no answer but they hear footsteps and a door closing upstairs. He looks at his wife and she puts her spoon down and goes to see if things are okay, she hears a voice, her daughter’s voice, singing very quietly, talking from behind her bedroom door.
She waits outside the room for a moment, wondering if she should ask is everything okay, and then she turns and goes back to her breakfast.
Inside her bedroom, the girl is singing, waving a ribbon around her head in a wide slow circle and balancing on one foot. She is looking at herself in the mirror, pulling faces, tugging her mouth open as wide as it will go, grinning, frowning, tipping her head to one side and cupping a hand around her ear.
Outside, at number twenty-five, a man with a long beard is levering the lid from a tin of pale blue paint, he is plucking the loose bristles from a thin paintbrush, wiping the dust from his downstairs windowframe with a damp cloth, laying the first sticky press of paint across the bare grain of the wood.
The man in the kitchen of number sixteen hears her voice again, saying darling can’t you reach me can’t you, and the plate in his scarred hand shakes and spills toast crumbs to the floor. He has no way of making silence, so he concentrates instead on the sound of his daughter dancing lightly up the stairs. She is singing a song she has heard on the radio, he listens but he does not recognise it. He puts the plate in the sink, he tidies the other things, the lids on the jam and the honey, the margarine in the fridge, the knives and the cups in the sink. He could not, he tried but he could not reach her.
