Caryl Phillips - In the Falling Snow

‘Have you finished?’

‘Actually no, I haven’t finished. You’re not the one having the horrible conversations with him about wanting to monitor his email and check the websites he visits, are you?’

‘Come on, Annabelle. They invent personalities, you know that. It’s not real.’

‘Well, the internet’s been real enough to get you into hot water. Or is this Yvette girl really a nun who is just pretending to be a cheap prostitute?’

‘Have you finished?’

‘There’s a serious point here, Keith.’ She pauses. ‘Sometimes I feel like the only way to retain proper control over our son would be to install bloody CCTV in his room. It’s not been easy, and for the last three years, while you’ve been playing Mr Eligible Bachelor up the road, it’s bloody well me who has had to deal with Laurie.’

‘I said, have you finished?’

‘Yes, I’ve finished, but sometimes you just disappoint me.’ Annabelle pours the tea, but refuses to make eye contact. ‘I suppose I haven’t gotten over the fact that the sensitive young man I knew during my last year as a teenager bears so little relationship to the man who twenty-five years later bloody well left me. But then again, why should you be the same person?’

‘And do you think you’re the same young woman?’ He pauses. ‘Well?’

She looks at him as she places the cup of tea in front of him. ‘I’m sorry, you’re right.’

‘I don’t know why you’re suddenly biting my head off.’

‘I said I’m sorry, okay?’

‘I heard you.’ He pauses. ‘Look, it doesn’t make sense to be snapping at each other like this.’

‘Is the tea all right?’

‘Yes, it’s fine. Thanks.’

He looks at Annabelle. ‘Is the tea all right?’ Really, that’s it, right there in a nutshell. ‘Is the tea all right?’ No real attempt to take any responsibility for whatever she’s venting about, it’s just a quick middle-class shuffle and all the unseemly hostility is swept under the carpet, and they can once again proceed with civility. ‘Is the tea all right?’ Did he imagine her anger? And she has yet to talk to him about the tears in her eyes when she opened the door, but Annabelle appears to have calmed down and he is disinclined to raise anything that might once again disturb her. Twenty-eight years ago this girl found the courage to lean over and speak to him during the interval of a play. Yes, this girl, the one in front of him, the girl from Ashleigh who is concerned about the Earl Grey tea. He stares at her and he feels the question rising within him.

‘Do you still think about going to live abroad?’

Annabelle looks closely at him over the top of her cup of tea. She places it back in the circle of the saucer. ‘What made you think about that?’

‘Well, I just wondered. You remember how we used to talk about it back then.’

‘Jesus, Keith, another ten minutes of living under Mrs Thatcher and I’d have willingly moved to Timbuktu.’

‘The more I think about it the more I wonder about this place.’ He pauses. ‘I mean, Britain. It’s not like it’s done a lot for Laurie.’

‘Really? So where do you think we should have brought him up? The West Indies, your imaginary homeland?’

‘I don’t know, Annabelle, but I’m done with all this, okay? I simply can’t be doing this any more. I’m so bored with myself, and fed up with what’s become of my life. And maybe you’re right about the Yvette thing. Maybe I am behaving recklessly in order to get some kind of thrill because I’m just bored. I’m forever waking up in the morning and feeling that I’m stuck. I can’t put it any better than that. Some part of me knows that there’s a lot more ahead, I really believe that, but I can’t quite work out how the hell I got stuck here.’

‘Sounds like you’ve become middle-aged.’ Annabelle begins to laugh. ‘Welcome to the club. And I told you, don’t look at me like that. They’re your words, not mine.’

‘I’ve been thinking about my mother a lot recently. Wondering if this is the grown-up son that she imagined.’

Annabelle puts down her cup of tea and looks up at him.

‘Keith?’

The truth is, he has no clear memories of the woman who was his mother, just fleeting images of a slender lady and a man, and himself as a very young boy, and all three of them living together, one on top of the other, in a small room that was always cold because the fumes from the paraffin heater made him sick. As a result, the unshaven man never took off his heavy cardigan or his trousers, but the man was kind to him, that much he remembers. Often the two of them would be left alone while his mother went out to work, and the man would give him large sheets of plain paper and a pencil and encourage him to draw, but he remains disturbed by the fact that he doesn’t remember ever leaving the cramped room until he was old enough to go to school. By then it was his mother who was spending most of her time with him in the room, while the man went out to work, and it was his mother who used to talk incessantly about a man called Mr Littlewoods who she hoped would send them back home, but he was practically an adult before he was able to cast his mind back and realise that this Mr Littlewoods was, in fact, the pools coupon, and that only by marking down ten draws on the coupon would this Mr Littlewoods grant his mother her wish and send them back to the West Indies. However, while his mother talked to Mr Littlewoods, he started to go to school where he learned that he had other names besides Keith, most commonly ‘chocolate drop’. In the afternoons he would come home from school and meet his mother still lying on the bed in their attic room and it was his job to take food from the cupboard in the corner and go down one flight of stairs to the communal kitchen and ask whoever was in there to boil up something for his mother to eat. And then later the unshaven man would come back, but usually with his eyes and nose running, and he would sit on the end of the bed, and take off his brown shoes, which always seemed to be damp from the rain, and carefully rub cream into his dry elbows and his aching feet and promise his mother that one day they would get out of this one room and start living like English people until, that is, the morning when he discovered dogshit smeared all over the bottles of milk on the doorstep and he stopped talking about getting out of the room and living like English people, and with his mother too poorly to say anything, and the man now seemingly reluctant to say anything at all, his world began to go quiet and maybe it’s this sudden silence, which fell on him like a heavy blanket and smothered the light and life from his world, which accounts for the fact that to this day he has no clear memories of his mother. And then one afternoon he returned from school and discovered that his mother was no longer in the bed and the unshaven man was standing in the room with his coat on, and a packed suitcase by his side, waiting for him. The man didn’t even give him time to put down his school satchel, he just took him by the hand and the next thing he remembers is a train journey to another town, and then a ride in a taxi, and by the time the man knocked on the door to the strange house he was beginning to understand that he might never see his mother again. The next morning the new woman wiped away his tears with a white handkerchief which she then pushed into his pocket. She suggested that they go for a walk, and the woman held his hand tightly as they walked past buildings that were coated black with soot and through streets that were dense with fog. She told him that it was mild, but he didn’t know what mild was. He knew hot and he knew cold, but this was a new word for him. Once they reached the shops she bought a big bag of jelly babies, and as they walked back in the direction of the house she started to talk. She told him that his father had put on weight because of the tablets that he was taking, for England had hurt his head. She laughed: ‘He prefers books to people. Except you, that is, and perhaps me when he’s in a good mood. Trust me, though, he’s happy to see you, love. Since he’s come out of the hospital things have been difficult for him, and even the smallest upset makes him disappear inside himself, so it’s best not to take it personally, that’s how I cope. You have to understand that it’s not always you that he’s upset with, it can be something he’s just remembered from the West Indies, or something he’s read in one of his books. He’s sensitive like a petal, which is why I fell for him, but he has got a bit of a temper, although I shouldn’t let that bother you. They told me at the hospital that if they released him into my custody then I’d have to keep an eye on him and make sure that he takes his medicine, but he’s stubborn like an ox, your dad is, and it’s as though he prefers to be depressed and anxious rather than take a few tablets and get better. He can give you some gubbins about how he’s taken this pill and that one, and then I look in the bottle and has he heckaslike. He says not only do they make him fat, but he feels like he’s swallowing his tongue, and he does go on about it. These days it’s two buses for me after work, so I’m sometimes late, but you’ll soon get used to the idea of being around him and he’ll appreciate having you in his life. I’m hoping that he’ll soon be able to find a job and get out and about again, but if he doesn’t hurry up the Pakis will have all the jobs. But one thing at a time, eh?’ He remembers walking with one hand in the woman’s hand, and the other hand in his pocket holding on to the bag of jelly babies, and the woman never stopped talking. ‘We’ve got a gogglebox so you can watch television, but only after you’ve done your school work. You’ll be going there tomorrow, love, but let me tell you now, if they call you names you just let them have it. “Ginger” or “Shortie” are one thing, but even that’s not nice, yet I imagine they’ll be laying it on thick with you. I try to remember that there’s good and bad everywhere, but I won’t have name-calling, and neither should you.’ When they got back to the house his father was sitting quietly at the table reading a newspaper. He stood by the door and looked at his father, but what should he say to this man who seemed to be ignoring him? He knew that the kind unshaven man, who gave him paper and pencils to draw with, would not be coming back, and then again he felt the tears welling up in his eyes. Brenda took his coat and hung it up, and then she removed the bag of jelly babies from his pocket and handed them to him, but he didn’t want any. He began to cry for he couldn’t remember what his mother looked like. He knew that he had a mother, but her face was already lost to him. The slender lady was gone.