Caryl Phillips - In the Falling Snow

‘Well?’ Annabelle sounds impatient. ‘Why think of her now?’

‘I don’t know.’ He pauses. ‘What are we both turning into?’

‘Speak for yourself, I’m not turning into anything.’

He is not talking about her looks, but presumably she knows this. And if so, why this resistance to change? Change can be good, if you remain vigilant about the direction you are moving in. His problem is a lack of vigilance. He hates to admit it, but he sometimes feels as though he’s lost his bearings.

‘You look like you’re drifting off again.’ Annabelle claps her hands. ‘Hello, anybody there?’

‘The other day I found that Grover Washington CD that we used to listen to at university. Well, cassette tape back then. We pretty much lived together for our second and third years.’

‘Is that why you’re asking about living abroad?’

He nods. ‘Probably. When we finally got to go Inter-Railing at the end of that second year, I felt happy. Charging around all over the place. One day we’re in southern Spain, then we’re riding a funicular in Norway, then we’re in the red light district in Amsterdam. I worried the whole time about going back and having to deal with your father. I thought he might make you change your mind.’

‘You’re not serious, are you?’

‘Well, he’d sent you that letter about your “irregular liaison” and how he wasn’t in favour of colour prejudice in England, he just wanted an end to the thing that caused colour prejudice. In other words, immigration. So bloody clever.’

‘And you thought I’d fall for that?’

‘I didn’t want to lose you, and everything seemed so perfect just riding the trains. We were free, whatever that means.’

‘Yes, well the sustaining fiction was that we were somehow escaping the problem, wasn’t it?’

‘Is that all it meant to you?’

‘It was the best holiday of my life.’ She pauses. ‘Ever.’

‘Really?’

‘Keith, my parents used to go on Christian group holidays, if they bothered to go anywhere at all. To the Isle of Man, or looking at churches in Austria. I hated it. And when I was a small girl, and Daddy was stationed overseas, you know how it was. Just me and Mummy, trapped in some stupid little seaside town. Travelling around Europe with you was amazing, and you were so careful and thoughtful.’ She stands up and begins to clear the cups and saucers from the table. Then she laughs. ‘What happened to that sensitive boy?’

‘Very funny.’ He stands and picks up a tea towel, and as she washes the dishes he begins to dry them. ‘Remember the chef at the posada near Lisbon where we arrived really late that night? He made us tomato soup with an egg in it, and then carried the two bowls from the kitchen to our table. And later, I remember when we were taking the ferry from Boulogne back across the Channel towards Dover. You were asleep on a bench downstairs, but I stood up on deck and watched as the ship edged closer to England and I knew that we both had to go back to Bristol and do our third year, but I didn’t want to come back. I didn’t feel like I had any reason to come back to England, aside from the degree that is. If you’d have come upstairs on deck and said, “Keith, let’s not bother with our final year,” I’d have taken the next boat back to France with you, no questions asked. But you continued to sleep, and you didn’t come up on deck, and I just kept watching England come closer and closer, and I kind of knew that it was going to get bad with your parents, but what could we do?’ He pauses. ‘I suppose that Grover Washington cassette helped a bit. Winelight , that’s what it was called. We really wore it out.’

Laurie rejects his father’s offer of a glass of beer and continues to stare out of the window. Annabelle looks across at them, her arched eyebrows asking if it would be better if she left the kitchen, but he quickly shakes his head and then takes a long swig of beer from the bottle. The pair of them had been waiting for almost two hours when they finally heard the front door open and then crash shut. They looked up as Laurie walked into the kitchen and grunted a circumspect ‘hi’. He seemed tired, but the only unusual thing about him was the fact that he was without his headphones.

He stared at his son and tried to remember the last time he had seen him ‘undressed’ in this way, but it was obviously quite some time in the past. Annabelle leapt from her seat and offered to make Laurie coffee or tea, but their son shook his head before slumping into a chair at the table, his body language suggesting that he knew full well that his parents were keen to talk with him. Annabelle reached into the fridge and poured herself a glass of Perrier and then passed him a bottle of beer. He looked at Laurie.

‘Would you like a glass? Or do you want something else?’

Laurie stared at the beer, then at his father, and then he turned and looked out of the window.

‘No thanks.’

Annabelle coughs quietly into her hand and clears her throat. ‘You know, we’ve been worried about you.’

‘Mum, please.’ Laurie speaks without turning to face either of them.

‘Your mother’s right. Where were you?’

‘Just out.’

He can hear the tone of defiance in his son’s voice, but he knows that this is not the time to be coy. ‘Out where?’

‘Like I said, just out.’

Annabelle reaches over and touches Laurie’s shoulder, but her son shrugs away from her and she is forced to hang on.

‘Laurie, your father and I need to know where you’ve been.’ Laurie turns now to face them both. ‘You mean you want to start checking up on me? You don’t trust me, is that it?’

‘Last night your mother called me to come and get you at three o’clock in the morning from a police station. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s not normal and it doesn’t inspire a lot of trust. So let’s get this straight, okay? Where were you? Were you with those two partners in crime of yours?’

‘I didn’t commit any crime, they did. And they’re not my partners.’

Annabelle lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘But they’re your friends, right?’

Laurie looks at his mother. ‘They’re not my friends. Well, not any more. And you can tell Grandma that I won’t be going to Barcelona. Not with those two anyhow.’ Laurie once again turns away and stares blankly out of the window.

He readjusts his position on the kitchen chair and pulls himself more upright.

‘Well, I’m glad to hear that. Who are they anyhow?’

‘Just two guys from school. Easy Fingers and Armani Lite. Their real names are Gladstone and Stuart.’

‘And you think that’s funny, do you?’

‘Am I laughing? I told you, they’re just two guys from school.’

‘Two guys who happen to carry knives.’

‘That was nothing to do with me. I thought they just did dinner money. You know, hassle-free pickings. I saw them after they’d done the guy, but I shouldn’t have let them leave the knife with me.’

‘You didn’t have to take it, Laurie.’

‘What, so they could do me too? You can get stabbed in this town for just looking at someone in the wrong way. It don’t matter if you know them or not. That’s why I don’t like to leave my postcode, right? And I don’t like public transport neither. It isn’t safe. Anyhow, I left the knife with a friend of mine and when the coppers picked me up she gave it to them.’

‘Well I’m glad one of you had some sense.’

Annabelle takes a sip of her water and then she once again clears her throat. ‘I met Chantelle. Last night. She seems very nice.’

‘Yeah, well now she’s in bother for grassing the pair of them up.’

‘Laurie, they’re in police custody so there’s nothing they can do to her.’