Zadie Smith - NW

“Yeah,” said Felix.

“You sound doubtful. Course, I didn’t know your mum very well, I’m sure… I know your dad hasn’t got much good to say about her. I don’t know. Complicated, innit. Families. You’re too close to it, it’s hard to see. I’ll give you an analogy. See them paintings your dad sells sometimes, the dots, with the secret picture? If you stand too close, you can’t see. But I’m across the room, aren’t I? Different perspective. When my old man was in his residential home — dump, terrible dump — but I’ll tell you, some of them nurses told me things about him I just had not a clue about. Not a clue. Knew him better than I did. In some senses. Not all. But. You see what I’m trying to say, anyway. It’s a context thing, really.”

Now they stepped out onto the communal grass, under a mighty sun, huge and orange in the sky.

“And your sisters, they’re well are they? Still can’t tell them apart, I bet.”

“Those girls, man. Tia’s just long. Ruby’s bare lazy.”

“Your words! Not my words! Let the record show!” said Phil, chuckling, and put his hands up in the air like an innocent man. “Now let me get this right: ‘long’ means always late, doesn’t it? I think you told me that last time. See! No flies on me. I keep up with the slang. And ‘bare’ means ‘a lot of’ or ‘very’ or ‘really.’ It’s an intensifier, more or less. I keep up. Helps living in here, you hear the kids talking, you stop and ask them. They look at me like I’m a mental case, as you might imagine.” He sighed. Then came the difficult segue, always difficult in the same way.

“And the youngest lad? Devon? How’s he doing?”

Felix nodded, to convey his respect for the question. Phil was the only person on the whole estate who ever asked after his brother.

“He’s all right, man. He’s doing all right.”

They crossed the lawn in silence.

“If it wasn’t for these, I tell you Felix, I sometimes think I’d be gone from here, I really would. Move to Bournemouth with all the other old bastards.” He rapped the tree with a knuckle and made Felix stop under it and look up: an enclosing canopy of thick foliage, like standing under the bell skirts of a Disney princess. Felix never knew what to say about nature. He waited.

“A bit of green is very powerful, Felix. Very powerful. ’Specially in England. Even us Londoners born and bred, we need it, we go up the Heath, don’t we, we crave it. Even our little park here is important. Bit of green. In some melodious plot/ Of beechen green/ and shadows numberless … Name that verse! Ode to a Nightingale! Very famous poem, that. Keats. Londoner he was, you see. But why should you know it! Who would have taught it to you? You’ve got your music, haven’t you, your hip hop, and your rap — what’s the difference between those two? I’ve never been sure. I have to say I can’t understand the bling-bling business at all, Felix — seems very backward to me, all that focus on money. Maybe it’s a symbol for something else — I can’t tell. Anyway I’ve got my verses, at least. But I had to learn them myself! In those days, you failed the eleven plus and that was it — on your bike. That’s how it used to be. What education I’ve got I’ve had to get myself. I grew up angry about it. But that’s how it used to be in England for our sort of people. It’s the same thing now with a different name. You should be angry about it, too, Felix, you should!”

“I’m more about the day-to-day.” Felix nudged Phil Barnes in his side. “You’re a proper old leftie, Barnesy, proper commie.”

Laughter again, bent with laughter, hands on knees. When he reared back up Felix saw tears in his eyes.

“I am! You must think: what’s he on about, half the time. Propaganda! What’s he on about?” His face went slack and sentimental. “But I believe in the people, you see, Felix. I believe in them. Not that it’s done me any good, but I do. I really do.”

“Yes, Barnsey. Take it to the bridge,” said Felix and thumped his old friend on the back.

They made their way out of the estate, up the hill, toward the street.

“I’m going up the depot, Felix. Afternoon shift. Sorting. Where’re you going? You walking down the high road?”

“Nah. I’m late — I’m going into town. Best get the train. Might get this bus first.”

It was right in front of them, opening its doors. Mrs. Mulherne, another Caldwell resident, was dragging a shopping bag backward out of the wrong door, her back bent, her tights wrinkled at her fragile ankles — Barnes ran forward to help her. Felix thought he’d better help, too. She felt light, almost fly-away. Women aged differently. When he was twelve Mulherne had seemed just a little too old to be running around with his dad: now she seemed like his father’s mother. Next-morning glimpse of a pair of sturdy pink legs, wrapped in a ratty bath towel, dashing down the corridor to the only loo. Not the only one, either. “So brave, looking after them four wee ones by yourself. She’s not good enough for you, dear. You deserve better. Everyone feels so bad for you.” The Ladies of Caldwell expressing their sympathies. At bus stops, in doctors’ waiting rooms, in Woolworths. Like a hit song that follows you from shop to shop. “Does everything for them kids. Die for them kids. More than I can say for her.” One of them, Mrs. Steele, was his own dinner lady. A great blush whenever she saw him — and extra chips. Funny what you remember later — what you realize.

• • •

“Grace what?” “Grace. End of.” “You don’t have a last name?” “Not for you.” At this same bus stop. Eyes on the ankles of her dark blue jeans, straightening the cuffs over and over so they sat right on her high black boots. Kiss curl cemented to her forehead. He thought he had never seen anything so beautiful. “Come on now, don’t be like that. Listen: know what ‘Felix’ means? Happy. I bring happiness, innit? But can I ask you something? Does it bother you if I sit here? Grace? Can I speak to you? Both waiting for the same bus, innit? Might as well. But does it bother you if I sit here?” She had looked up at him finally, with manufactured eyes, the light brown kind you buy on the high road. She looked supernatural. And he had known at once: this is my happiness. I’ve been waiting at this bus stop all my life and my happiness has finally arrived. She spoke! “Felix — that’s your name, yeah? You ain’t bothering me, Felix. You would have to matter to me to bother me, you get me? Yeah. It’s like that.” Her bus coming over the hill. Then. Now. “Nah, wait, don’t be like that, listen to me: I’m not trying to chirps you. You just struck me. I want to know you that’s all. You got a face that’s very… intensified.” Lift of a movie star’s eyebrow: “Is it. You got a face like somebody who chirpses girls at bus stops.”

• • •

Five and innocent at this bus stop. Fourteen and drunk. Twenty-six and stoned. Twenty-nine in utter oblivion, out of his mind on coke and K: “You can’t sleep here, son. You either need to move it along or we’ll have to take you in to the station to sleep it off.” You live in the same place long enough, you get memory overlap. “Thanks for seeing me off, Felix, love. Good to see you. Knock on my door any time. Send my love to Lloyd. I’m just downstairs and you’re always welcome.” Felix jumped back on the bus. He waved at Phil Barnes, who gave him a double thumbs up. He waved at Mrs. Mulherne as the bus climbed the hill and overtook her. He pressed a hand against the glass. Grace at seventy. The Tinkerbell tattoo in the base of her back, wrinkled, or expanded. But how could Grace ever be seventy? Look at her. (“And, Fee, remember: I weren’t even meant to be there. I was meant to be at my aunt’s in Wembley. Remember? That’s the day I was meant to be looking after her kids, but she broke her foot, she was home. So then I was like: might as well get the bus into town, do some shopping. Felix, please don’t try and tell me that weren’t fate. I don’t care what nobody says, blatantly everything happens for a reason. Don’t try and tell me that the universe didn’t want me to be there, at that moment!”)