Louise Doughty - Black Water

‘Amen,’ said Nina, already lifting her head and reaching for the serving spoon.

Harper sat staring at her for a minute, until she beckoned with her fingers, the spoon lifted in the other hand, ‘Come now, young man, don’t be shy, hand that plate over.’

The stew had lumps of meat in a dark brown gravy with a strong smell that, at first, made Harper’s stomach turn. But when he put one of the lumps of meat in his mouth, it was not chewy like the meat they had had occasionally in Holland but fell apart in his mouth in soft moist pieces. Harper wondered if the strong smell and the taste of what he was chewing was what they called, over here, flavor . Throughout the meal, Poppa questioned him about his life in Holland and how it had been, coming to America that was, until Nina said gently, ‘Michael Senior. .’

‘My apologies, Nicolaas, it’s a lawyer’s habit, asking people everything about their lives, drives Nina here a little crazy.’

‘Spreads himself thin, sometimes,’ Nina said looking down into her stew and giving a soft shake of her head. ‘Always, in fact.’

‘I have the same name as my son, that’s quite common here,’ Poppa said. ‘Stick to Poppa, it makes things easier.’

‘Michael Junior is certainly a chip off the block,’ said Nina, as she ladled a second helping onto Harper’s plate, saving him the embarrassment of asking for more. ‘In some respects, that is.’ She slipped the serving spoon into the dish of mashed orange vegetable on the table and looked at Harper and Harper felt confident enough to shake his head.

‘Is he like you too?’ Harper asked politely, congratulating himself on the grown-upness of the question.

Nina glanced at Poppa and Poppa said, ‘We’re not a usual household here, Nicolaas. Michael Junior’s mother died when he was around your age. Nina came into our lives about a year later, and she’s been the best wife and mother we could have hoped for.’

‘Even though, legally speaking, I’m neither,’ Nina said with a smile that seemed resigned but not particularly unhappy. ‘Well, not quite yet.’

‘Soon, though. .’ said Poppa firmly, looking over his glasses at her and beaming, before turning to Harper and adding, ‘Nina’s mother was from Salvador. She’s Catholic,’ as if that explained everything.

‘And we weren’t too sure about the father side of things when I was growing up,’ added Nina, with a half-laugh that implied this was something else that was openly discussed, amusing even.

Harper looked from one of them to the other, amazed. This, then was the house he had come into — a house where people joked about not having fathers, where, for once, he wasn’t the odd one out because he was too brown or not brown enough and had been born in an internment camp in a country the other side of the world, a country so distant he only had his mother’s word for it that it actually existed.

‘The damn Japs cut my father’s head off,’ Harper announced cheerfully, keen to impress upon them that no unconventional domestic arrangements could prove shocking to him.

A start passed between Poppa and Nina, as if they had given each other the small electric shock you get from shaking hands with someone when you’ve walked towards them across a cheap carpet. Nina raised her eyebrows at Poppa and Poppa coughed into his napkin before saying, ‘Yes, we heard that story, Nicolaas, Michael Junior told us a bit about you and your mother, and what you both endured in the Pacific.’ He coughed again. ‘But I should say, we don’t allow profanity at the kitchen table.’

After the meal, they helped Nina clear the table, then she washed up while Poppa and he went through to the sitting room so that Poppa could show Harper certificates with his name on them that were framed and ranged along one wall. Harper began to wonder when his mother might return and it seemed Poppa and Nina might be wondering the same thing as twice during their conversations Poppa went into the kitchen and closed the door behind him and he heard the murmur of their voices. It was dark by now.

Eventually, Nina came in and clapped her hands and said in a happy-sounding voice that he was going to stay the night. By then he was too tired to have the polite and grown-up conversation that would be necessary in order to extract more details and so allowed himself to be led upstairs to a small room with a narrow single bed against one wall and a table with a huge sewing machine and a basket full of large folded material that looked like curtains. Nina brought him a glass of milk and a T-shirt belonging to Michael Junior to sleep in and told him where the bathroom was. When she went out, she left the door ajar and the landing light on.

‘You know where Poppa and I are, right downstairs, need anything, you holler.’

He was tired enough to fall asleep quickly, despite the strangeness of this arrangement, but later he woke and the landing light was still on and he could hear raised voices downstairs. He slipped his feet down and padded silently to his bedroom door. He couldn’t see anything but heard several voices in the hallway and could feel the chill of night air. One of the voices sounded like his mother’s but a little odd, high-pitched. Should he run down to her? Poppa was speaking to Michael then, and the two men had a brief, angry-sounding exchange. He caught the words, ‘You think this is alright? This!’ Then the front door slammed again and there was silence. He padded back to his bed and pulled the quilt over him and lay listening for a while but there were no further sounds.

The next time he woke, it was pitch dark. He lay for a moment, confused about where he was, particularly about how comfortable the small bed he was lying on was in comparison to his cot at the end of his mother’s bed. A telephone was ringing, somewhere. There was a certain amount of rustling on the landing outside his room. He fell asleep again.

In the morning, he woke up to full light through thin green curtains, birdsong. The house was quiet.

Nina was in the kitchen. On the table, a place for one was laid. Outside, the dog, who had turned out to be called Jimmy, was running up and down the garden. The sun was high and bright.

Nina smiled and gestured to the table. ‘I ate breakfast a while back but Poppa’s sleeping late so we’ll go to church this evening. He had to work in the night. It happens.’

Harper hovered by the table, assuming the place set was for Poppa’s late breakfast, until Nina indicated with her hand that he should sit. As she poured a glass of milk for him, she said, ‘I expect you are wondering what those youngsters are up to.’ Harper nodded. Nina smiled reassuringly, but he had the feeling she wasn’t too sure of her own answer. ‘They had a good time last night. They’ll be over later.’

He had just finished a breakfast of eggs and a bread roll when Poppa came thumping down the stairs. He burst into the kitchen, fully dressed, grabbed a roll from the basket on the table, said, ‘Morning, Nicolaas,’ and turned to go.

‘At least have a coffee!’ wailed Nina, as Poppa rushed back out without bidding either of them goodbye. The front door slammed.

‘When they call, he goes,’ Nina said, shaking her head. ‘There’s always someone in trouble somewhere.’

Harper never returned to the boarding house. That Sunday, his mother and Michael came over with a small suitcase with stiff clasps that contained his clothes, two books which he had to give straight back to them as they belonged to the local library and a new ball that Michael had bought him as a present. He was told he would be staying with Nina and Poppa for a few days while his mother and Michael ‘sorted out a few things’. The few days turned into a fortnight. Then it was announced to him, with some degree of fanfare, that Anika and Michael were going to get married. They were all going to live together in the big house with Jimmy the dog. The room with the sewing machine was going to become Harper’s official bedroom and he could choose which colour it was painted as long as it was blue or white. It was the first time he had ever had his own room.