One For My Baby Read online

  Our plastic chopsticks clatter and clack as we decimate the fish, our heads dipping to greet the bowls of rice, which is shovelled into our mouths with noisy abandon. The Changs wash down their meal with tea or tap water, although they insist that I drink mineral water, fetched from the Shanghai Dragon’s tiny bar.

  ‘It soon New Year,’ Joyce tells me.

  ‘New Year?’ We are near the end of January.

  ‘Chinese New Year. Very important for Chinese people. Like Christmas and Easter for westerners. When I little children size, we don’t even think of Christmas. We don’t care for toys. We don’t care about Ken and Barbie going to the disco. Only Chinese New Year.’

  ‘It’s based on the lunar calendar, right? When is it this year?’

  Joyce confers with her family in Cantonese.

  ‘New Year’s Eve, February 15th,’ she says.

  ‘It’s going to be the Year of the Rabbit,’ William tells me in his pure London accent, his mouth full of noodles.

  ‘We have party,’ Joyce says. ‘Here. Shanghai Dragon. You come.’

  ‘Can I bring someone?’

  ‘Bring someone? Of course. Bring everyone. Bring your family.’

  My family? That’s easy for Joyce to say.

  This simple certainty about family is the thing that I envy most about the Changs. Joyce and George and Harold and Doris and Diana and William all know exactly what their family looks like.

  But I am finding it increasingly hard to know where my little broken family begins, and where it ends.

  twenty-four

  On the day that my nan is discharged from the hospital, I am meant to be giving Jackie Day an English lesson.

  When I arrive home from doing my nan’s shopping, a fistful of supermarket bags in my hands, Jackie is already waiting for me on the doorstep, her daughter by her side. The lump silently contemplates me from behind her greasy brown fringe.

  ‘Jackie—sorry I’m late, I tried to call you.’

  ‘My battery’s flat.’

  ‘I had to do some shopping for my grandmother. There’s nothing in her flat. She just got out of hospital a few hours ago.’

  ‘Well, that’s good.’

  ‘But now I’ve got to take this stuff round to her.’ I apologetically lift the heavy supermarket bags. A packet of jam tarts falls out and Jackie retrieves them for me. ‘I’ve got my mum’s car. So I can’t give you a lesson.’

  ‘I’ll take her shopping round for you.’

  The lump has spoken. Her voice is surprisingly high-pitched and girlish.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll take it. If you tell me where she lives. I’ll get the bus.’

  I think about it for a moment. Why not? She wouldn’t do in my grandmother for her jam tarts. Would she?

  ‘Would you?’ I say.

  ‘Sure. Haven’t got anything better to do, have I? And you don’t exactly need me here, do you?’

  ‘That’s really sweet of you, darling,’ says Jackie.

  ‘It’s not far,’ I say. ‘I’ll give you the address and get you a taxi.’

  ‘I can get the bus.’

  ‘I’ll get you a cab.’

  I realise, to my shame, that I do not even know this child’s name. Jackie saves me.

  ‘Thanks, Plum,’ she says.

  Plum?

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Thank you, Plum.’

  She shuffles her feet, stares at the ground through her protective fringe, doesn’t know what to do with her hands.

  ‘No problemo,’ mutters Plum.

  When we have called a taxi and Plum has been packed off with my nan’s address and provisions, I make a cup of tea.

  ‘So,’ I say. ‘You named your daughter after a fruit?’

  ‘Don’t make fun of her.’ But she doesn’t say it angrily. She says it almost gently, as if I am too stupid to know any better. ‘She gets enough of that at school. People making fun of her, I mean.’

  ‘She gets bullied?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I manage to stop myself saying—she’s a big girl, I wouldn’t fancy meeting her up a dark alley. But I rephrase the statement in my head. ‘She looks like she can stand up for herself.’

  ‘She’s a lamb,’ Jackie says, and I am touched by the undisguised and unembarrassed affection in her words. ‘I know she’s a bit overweight, but she’s as soft as they come. And kids can be cruel, can’t they?’

  ‘They certainly can.’

  ‘They pick on anyone that’s a bit different.’

  ‘They certainly do.’

  ‘And for your information, I didn’t name my daughter after a fruit.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. I was in my doctor’s waiting room when I was pregnant and I picked up this glossy magazine. You know the kind of thing. Full of glamorous parties and famous people inviting you into their lovely homes.’

  I know the kind of thing.

  ‘And there was this sort of society page. Full of beautiful people having a rare old time. Not that all of them were beautiful. Under their suntans, you could tell that some of them were—what’s the word?’

  ‘Ugly?’

  ‘Yes, ugly. Especially the men, who tended to be a lot older than the women. But even though they weren’t all beautiful, they all looked happy. You know what I mean?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘And there were these two girls. Now they really were beautiful. Models, they must have been. Or actresses or something. Or the daughters of rich men. They looked like sisters, but they weren’t. Blonde, tall, tanned. Wearing dresses that were like little slips. The kind of dress that looks like you could sleep in it. They were smiling. White teeth. Leggy. What do you call those special glasses for champagne? The long, thin ones?’

  ‘Flutes.’

  ‘Flutes. They both had these flutes of champagne in their hands. I mean, I guess it wasn’t Spanish cava or Asti Spumante, right? They had their arms around each other. These long, thin, brown arms. And what I thought about them was—they looked as though nothing bad had ever happened to them in their lives. Nothing bad. Ever. And the funny thing is, they were both called Plum.’

  Jackie sips her tea.

  ‘It’s a pretty name for a girl.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘My husband—although he wasn’t my husband then—always thought it was…stupid. No, not stupid. Pretentious. They don’t like that where I come from. They don’t like you getting above yourself. My husband was typical. You’re too clever by half, Jack. Too clever for your own good, Jack. I mean, as though being stupid was something to be proud of. But I went ahead and called her Plum anyway, went to the registrar of births, marriages and deaths by myself and had Plum put on the certificate. Stuff him, I thought. Stuff Jamie. If it wasn’t for Jamie, I wouldn’t have been in that doctor’s waiting room in the first place. And I would never have seen that magazine with the Plum girls.’

  ‘You mean you were seeing the doctor because you were pregnant?’

  ‘No,’ says Jackie. ‘I was seeing the doctor because Jamie had just broken two of my ribs.’

  When we have finished our lesson, we drive round to my nan’s place. Plum answers the door. She is smiling.

  ‘We’re watching the wrestling,’ she says.

  Inside her white flat, my nan is propped up on the sofa. There are pillows behind her back and a duvet over her legs. She is staring with enchanted delight at the television where two fat men in luridly coloured latex are screaming at each other. One of the men has a shaven head, the other has Pre-Raphaelite locks that tumble to his meaty shoulders.

  ‘Oh, it’s The Slab,’ says Jackie, as the screen fills with the image of a bald madman. ‘Your favourite, darling.’ She turns to me. ‘The Slab is Plum’s favourite.’

  ‘The Slab rocks,’ says Plum. ‘The Slab kicks butt. Big time.’ She sort of snarls at me through her fringe. ‘Your ass belongs to The Slab. He will bring y
ou down. He will nail your worthless hide to the Tree of Woe, mother.’

  ‘Language, darling,’ says Jackie.

  ‘Hasn’t she got lovely eyes?’ says my nan.

  We all stare at her. She’s talking about Plum.

  ‘Me?’ says Plum, blushing with disbelief. ‘Lovely eyes?’

  ‘Have you ever seen this programme, Alfie?’ my nan asks me, as if I have been deliberately keeping its existence from her. ‘They’re having a right old punch-up.’

  ‘But it’s all fake, isn’t it?’ I sniff.

  ‘It’s not,’ says my nan. ‘Go on, mate—give him one in the cake hole.’

  ‘Nice Greco-Roman style counter!’ says Plum, shaking her fist. ‘Elbow strike to the face. Knee to the gut. Headlock takedown.’

  ‘But it’s not sport, is it?’ I say. ‘Not real sport.’

  ‘It’s sports-entertainment,’ says Plum, not taking her eyes from the screen. ‘Sports-entertainment, they call it.’

  ‘Who’s The Slab fighting, darling?’ Jackie asks. Thirty minutes ago she had been asking me about the dialogue of Carson McCullers in the same quietly inquisitive tone.

  ‘Billy Cowboy. He sucks. Big time. His ass belongs to The Slab.’

  For several minutes we watch the ludicrous waltz being played out on what I assume is some godforsaken satellite station. In normal circumstances I might have taken control of the situation and turned over to Newsnight. But I am grateful to Plum for bringing my nan her shopping, and I am glad to see my nan looking so happy after her ordeal in hospital. So we watch the pumped-up, buck-naked brutes beating each other up for our entertainment—or pretending to.

  The bald wrestler—Plum’s hero, The Slab—appears to have the upper hand. He advances across the ring beating back the long hair—Billy Cowboy, apparently—with a series of forearm smashes that may or may not have connected. Billy Cowboy is soon flat on his back, his overdeveloped body glistening with sweat and baby oil.

  ‘Your cold, candy ass is mine, he-bitch!’ The Slab howls at the prostrate Billy Cowboy. ‘Your giblets belong to the buzzards!’ He jabs a furious finger at his rival’s lifeless body. ‘Know your damn place and zip your damn lip! He-bitch!’

  The Slab turns his back on Billy Cowboy to climb the ropes and lecture the crowd, who all appear to be grotesquely overweight children dressed for their yearly trip to the gym.

  The referee turns away to consult with a judge at the ringside, and that’s when Billy Cowboy leaps to his feet, the fringes on his boots dancing with excitement, as one of his henchmen pushes a large silver dustbin under the ropes.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I say. ‘As if they would just happen to have a dustbin in their corner. For those moments when what you really need is a dustbin.’

  ‘Ssshhh!’ says my nan.

  ‘Bow down before your master, he-bitch!’ The Slab is shouting. ‘Smell the fear and pass the beer! For The Slab is back in town! Come with me to the Tree of Woe!’

  Despite the ten thousand voices bawling at The Slab to turn round, Billy Cowboy manages to creep up behind him and brings the large silver dustbin crashing down on his back. The Slab falls from the ropes like a dead bird and for the first time I believe that someone could get slightly hurt out there.

  ‘What’s wrong with the referee?’ I demand. ‘How did he miss that?’

  ‘Come on,’ says Plum. ‘If the referee saw everything, that wouldn’t be true to life, would it?’

  Plum and my nan stare at me, amazed that I still don’t get it.

  Then the pair of them turn back to the TV screen, as if what is being played out before them is neither sport nor entertainment, but all the injustice of the world.

  twenty-five

  ‘Are you sleeping with Olga?’ Lisa Smith asks me.

  ‘Olga?’ I say.

  ‘Olga Simonov. One of your Advanced Beginners.’

  Lisa Smith squints at me over the top of her reading glasses. On the other side of her wafer-thin office door, we can hear the laughter of the students, the scuffle of their work boots, the rhythmic chatter of Japanese.

  ‘I know her.’

  ‘I know you do. But how well?’

  The heat is on again at Churchill’s. Lisa Smith is watching me like a short-sighted, bilious old hawk. I am the focus of her attention once more because the police are not going to press charges against Hamish for what he did in that public toilet on Highbury Fields. My colleague was so relieved to be off the hook that he immediately walked down to Leicester Square and offered oral sex to an undercover policeman.

  I really admire Hamish. There are plenty of cute young boys he could be chasing at Churchill’s—smooth-skinned East Asians, brooding Indians, tactile Italians—but he never goes anywhere near them. Hamish has that enviable ability to separate work and pleasure which I so painfully lack.

  ‘I haven’t slept with Olga. On my life.’

  ‘Is that the truth?’

  It’s the truth. I have walked to the top of Primrose Hill with Olga on a Sunday morning—the one time of the week when she is free from the demands of both Churchill’s International Language School and the Eamon de Valera public house. We have held hands as we looked down at the city, and then walked to Camden Town where she let me chastely kiss her on the lips over a full English breakfast.

  Olga and I have walked by the canals of north London, looking at the house boats as I slipped my arm around her waist and marvelled at the springiness of youth. That’s what you lose as you get older—that springiness. We have wandered the wilder parts of Hampstead Heath on Sunday afternoon, eaten ice cream in the grounds of Kenwood House, and she has told me about her home, her dreams, the boyfriend she left behind. But I haven’t slept with her. Not yet. I’m still waiting for the green light.

  Why not? What possible harm could it do?

  When I come out of Lisa Smith’s office, I see that Hiroko is waiting for me down the hall. She is pretending to read the notice board—rooms to let, rice cookers for sale, bicycles wanted—but she slowly turns to face me as I approach her, her black hair swinging across her glasses, and I am afraid that she is also going to ask me if I am sleeping with the Advanced Beginner known as Olga Simonov. But she doesn’t.

  ‘I want to apologise,’ she says.

  ‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘For standing outside your house that night. I just thought—I don’t know. I thought we were good. You and me.’

  ‘We were good.’

  ‘I don’t know what happened.’

  I don’t know how to explain it. You cared too much for me, I think. And if you knew me—really knew me—you would understand that I am really not worth it.

  You are kind and sweet and generous and true and decent, and I am none of these things, haven’t been for quite a while. You got me wrong. So wrong that it scared me off. Never give someone that power over you, I want to tell her. Don’t do it, Hiroko.

  ‘You’ll meet somebody else,’ I say. ‘There are a lot of nice people in the world. You could feel something for any one of them.’

  ‘But I met you,’ she says.

  Then she smiles, and there’s something about that smile that makes me doubt myself. There’s something about that smile that makes me think Hiroko knows more about all this than I ever will.

  The window of the Shanghai Dragon is full of flowers and light. Displays of peach, orange and narcissus blossoms are aglow with the warm light coming from dozens of red candlelit lanterns. The restaurant is a riot of scent and colour among the drab greys and traffic fumes of the Holloway Road. There is a CLOSED sign on the door, but the old place has never looked more alive than it does tonight.

  We stand on the street looking at this small miracle on this busy north London road. My mother, my nan, Olga and me, basking in the warm glow of all the red lanterns.

  ‘So beautiful,’ says my mother.

  Pasted to the door of the Shanghai Dragon are two red posters with gold Chinese characters, signifying happiness, lon
g life and prosperity. There are also two smiling, bowing figures on the door, a girl in traditional Chinese dress and a boy also in traditional Chinese dress, mirror images of each other, their hands clasped, open hand on closed fist, in salutation to the New Year. They both look absurdly cute, happy and fat. And, above all, prosperous. We ring the bell.

  William suddenly appears behind the plate-glass door, his round face grinning as he fiddles with the catch, swiftly followed by his sister Diana. Then there are the parents, plump Harold and shy Doris, followed by Joyce and George. They are all smiling with pleasure. I have never seen them so happy.

  ‘Kung hay fat choi!’ the Changs tell us, as we go inside.

  ‘Happy New Year to you too!’ My mum smiles, although kung hay fat choi means ‘wishing you prosperity’ more than anything to do with the passing of another year. Or perhaps the Chinese believe that prosperity is necessary for happiness. I reflect that sometimes this family seems completely British to me—when George is tucking into his fried chicken wings at General Lee’s Tasty Tennessee Kitchen, or when I see Joyce drinking ‘English tea’ with my mum, or when Doris is watching Coronation Street, or when I hear the undiluted London accents of Diana and William, or when Harold goes off to play golf on Sunday morning. But tonight the Changs are Chinese.

  Inside the restaurant we can hear the sound of fireworks.

  ‘It’s only a tape,’ William tells me, rolling his eyes with all the world-weariness a six-year-old can muster. ‘It’s not real fireworks.’

  ‘Chinese people invent firework!’ Joyce tells him.

  ‘I know, Gran, I know.’ Trying to placate her.

  ‘But authority don’t like people having real firework,’ she says, calming down a little. ‘They get all in a dizzy. So now everybody use tape to scare away devil spirits. Works just as well.’

  I introduce the Changs to Olga, who Joyce immediately sizes up with an expert eye.

  ‘Alfie not getting any younger,’ Joyce tells her. ‘Can’t live like playboy forever. Need a wife pretty quick.’

  Everybody laughs, apart from Joyce, who I know to be perfectly serious.

  In any other gathering, Olga, as the youngest, hottest woman on the premises, would be the belle of the ball, the centre of attention and the first to be offered drinks. But in the Shanghai Dragon tonight, and in Chinese homes around the world, it is age that takes precedence. My nan is the star guest here.