Marina Lewycka - The Lubetkin Legacy

She approves an extension to their grant for a further year, and sitting on the train from Mombasa back to Nairobi she ponders on how little she really knows about Kenya, and what a lucky and sheltered life she has led.

You could say I was lucky with Lucky. I perfected my fake stammer while the real stammer all but disappeared. It was as if I was coming to life after a long hibernation, alert and curious about the world I had woken into.

One Sunday in autumn, with the sun bright and low in a cloudless sky, Stacey and I climbed the path at Alexandra Palace, our hearts beating slightly from the effort. At the top of the rise we turned to look back over the city spread below us, its steep terraces, leafy parks and pincushion of towers all smudged in a smoky haze: so much history, so much splendour, so much hum-drum.

This was Stacey’s idea of a perfect day out. Personally I would have gone for a cosy matinee at the Curzon, but she insisted that Monty needed his exercise. She wasn’t being nearly as pliant as I’d been led to expect from our earlier encounters, and I found this annoyingly arousing. She was wearing her fawn raincoat with high heels, and holding Monty on a lead. I was wearing my white trainers and linen jacket, and wishing I’d worn something warmer. I’d been recalling my visit from the fraud investigators.

‘Anthea and Alec — they’re quite a pair, aren’t they?’ She gave a sly smile. ‘Were you scared, Berthold?’

‘I was a bit.’ I bent down and threw a stick for Monty, who was racing up and down the hill with his tongue hanging out and a manic grin on his face. ‘I didn’t know whether they were investigating Inna or me.’

‘I did my best to get them called off, but unfortunately these investigations can gather their own momentum. It was because Inna’s Housing Benefit claim came through a different department. How is she, by the way?’

‘I’m not sure. I tried to persuade her to ditch that Lookerchunky bloke, but she was having none of it. Last I heard from her was a picture postcard from Crimea. Did you know Crimea was famous for its nudist beaches?’

‘Isn’t she a bit old for that?’

‘I don’t suppose that’ll stop Inna. She was never one for playing by the rules. So when did you realise that she wasn’t really my mother?’

‘That mad woman told me — the one who delivers sermons wearing a shower cap. I tried to warn you.’

‘Mrs Crazy? You believed her?’

‘One of the saddest aspects of my job is how little solidarity there is — I mean, poor people don’t stick together. They snitch on each other. You know, there’s a dedicated phone line in the council offices for people to report their neighbours. It never stops ringing.’

I felt a stab of hatred. That stony adversary, belligerent fruitcake, venomous God-botherer, over-coiffed old cow. I hoped she got a good long sentence for assault and battery and would be forced to let her hair dye grow out behind bars.

‘So all our efforts — the dementia, the forgotten husbands, the office fire, the casket of parrot ashes — it was all for nothing?’

‘It was a good laugh, wasn’t it?’ she giggled.

‘So where does that leave us now? I mean, what happens to the flat? Will I have to move out?’

‘Not necessarily. It all depends on who you live with.’

From the summit of the hill, London straggled southwards, pulsing like a living thing, vast and complex in all its grime and glory. A wave of emotion caught me off guard.

‘I’d like to live with you, Stacey.’ I just blurted it out without thinking, the way I had blurted out my invitation to Inna Alfandari, but as soon as I said it, a comfortable sense of certainty settled over me like a warm coat. ‘If you’d have me.’

‘Mm. I’d like that too.’ She smiled, then her smile opened into a laugh. ‘It would be great. Your flat is so spacious compared with my little shoe box. But,’ her smile wavered, ‘what about Monty? Pets aren’t allowed in those flats.’

I stared at the little mongrel that now stood between me and perfect happiness. He yapped a few times, picked up his stick, raced madly around in a circle, then dropped it at my feet and sank his horrible little teeth into my ankle. I moved him away quite roughly with my other foot but you couldn’t really call it a kick. She picked him up and held him to her chest.

Snuggled inside the fawn lapels between those magnificent breasts he turned his beastly head and surveyed me with a look of triumph. ‘Yah!’

‘Couldn’t we pretend he belongs to someone else?’

‘Berthold, you can’t build a whole life on a fib.’ She threw me a severe look. ‘I mean — you’ve already tried it once.’

The mongrel smirked. ‘Yah, yah, yah! Grrr!’

‘There was no need to go to all that trouble to pretend Inna was your mother. Under the bedroom-tax rules, any occupant would do.’

‘I didn’t know that.’ The wide blue sky seemed to spin for a moment, then settle with a bump on the treetops.

‘Most people don’t. You could have inherited the tenancy from your real mother anyway.’ She giggled. ‘Of course most people wouldn’t just take a complete stranger into their home like you did, Bertie.’

‘Well, if I’d known …’ If I’d known, I might have chosen somebody different; somebody more normal. But then I’d have missed out on all the globalki, slotalki, klobaski, the vodka, the wailing folk songs and off-kilter history. A whole journey into a different world, in fact. ‘Still, no regrets.’

Stacey replaced the dog on the ground, took my hand, squeezed it, then let it go. ‘It makes me think how different the world would be, Bertie, if only people could remember to be kind to each other.’

Her cheeks were rosy from the cold. I pulled her towards me and kissed her on the lips. She surrendered with a sigh, closing her eyes and opening her warm mouth to let me in. A sharp wind lifted the corners of her coat and tousled her ponytail. I smoothed it with my hand.

‘I love you, Stacey. I love your kindness and your cuddliness. I love you because you’re ordinary. I love …’ Well, actually, I didn’t love the ponytail or the dog; but even those might grow on me with time.

‘I love you too, Berthold. But I’m not clever with words like you.’

‘Words aren’t everything.’

‘Yah! Yah!’

Monty had spotted another dog, a pretty white husky, on the path ahead, and off he ran for a spot of bottom sniffing. I took her in my arms and kissed her again. I can’t remember how long we stood there leaning together before we heard him yapping for attention. I held her tighter, wanting to keep her for myself, but I could feel the persistent yapping was a distraction. It had acquired a breathless high-pitched note of distress.

After a few moments she pulled away and said, ‘We’d better go and find Monty. Sounds as though he’s in trouble.’

Following the direction of the sound, we left the footpath where Monty had disappeared into the bushes on the trail of the white husky and plunged into a thicket of shrubs. Brambles snagged at my legs, and presumably at hers, but she pushed on single-mindedly. The dog was whining pitifully now. I would have strangled the little sod, but as we came deeper into the bushes, we saw he had almost done that for himself. There he was, hanging by his collar from a metal bar that was sticking out of the laurels, wriggling to free himself. But his weight pulled him on to the metal protrusion, which I could now clearly see was the pedal of a rusting bike, wedged in the upwards position. The more he wriggled, the more he tightened the noose. I ran forward to lift him free. He yelped his appreciation and tried to lick my face with his smelly doggy tongue. I quickly passed him to Stacey, who held him close until his whimpering subsided.