Royals Page 2

  By now it was a full-blown street party, and the neighbours were doing unfathomable things like dancing around the maypole. The bunting I’d made out of coloured glitter was sparkling under the sky, and Mum’s sausage rolls were reheating under the long stretch of sun. ‘It means they’re meant to be together! God is smiling on them!’

  Well, first, she was wrong. And second, I wanted very much to believe in G-d, but not one who is so intimately involved in your love life as to announce himself through meat pastries. I find it invasive. I know you’re not meant to say things like that out loud and that’s why I was quiet much of my teenage life. I wrestled, endlessly, with the idea that my inner life was abnormal. But nothing ever felt inappropriate when I put it into a design. The most Jewish I feel is when it’s a massive relief any time a serial killer turns out not to be Jewish. But I imagine that’s the same for all minority religions and ethnicities. In that we are united.

  Mrs Patel was wearing an incredible saffron-coloured sari and I saw my mum covet it as much for the fabric as for the way her belly was permitted to hang out. My mum was always on a diet and she was always covered up. I saw her in a swimsuit one or two times at the local baths, and when we stopped going, I couldn’t figure out if it was because I was being teased by the other kids in the pool, and she felt helpless, or if she didn’t like her body anymore. And worse than strangers was the people she knew to wave to. It’s easy to reveal yourself in front of people you’ll never see again; that’s why none of us minded when we were half-naked on the beach in Brighton or Kent or any of the rubbish places I hated to visit, until I grew up and understood they were actually lovely.

  Your childhood holidays are, naturally, infected by the memory of your childhood pain. It’s incredible to go back years later and find not only does it not hurt, but that you can relax there. Mum always took her stitchwork, that’s what I see beyond the pebbly beaches, grey sky and sick seagulls.

  Mum did beautiful stitchwork. If you’ve wondered why that’s been a theme for me, it came from her. Tiny rosettes, red against gold, royal colours in a domestic setting: teapots, cats around flowerpots. This rose-tinted vision of Britain that is actually true, a real, partial truth. Our roses, our flowerpots, our cats, our china – they are lovely enough to withstand the ugly underbelly of England, these beautiful, delicate things standing tall in the face of ugliness: motorway flyovers, drunks pissing on sleeping tramps, Pakis out. And the Pakis they want out love the tea and china, too.

  Mum told me her own mother had sewn all her jewellery into their clothes before they escaped the Warsaw ghetto. They didn’t get far. She thinks the Nazis never found the hidden jewellery. I always assumed they did. I assumed they ripped the clothes apart before setting them to work.

  It’s like Americana, cowboy hats, cowboy boots, lassos, Sam Shepard plays, all these things are sturdier and more useful, but in their usefulness, now that I’ve travelled the globe, I see the appeal of theirs, but I love our cornucopia more. Because the things we have are just as good at being alone as a cowboy on a never-ending plain. A pink-rinse old lady drinking from a cup of never-ending tea. She knows as much as the cowboy. She’s just more frail. We’re just more frail. The stiff upper lip is the last bastion against completely and utterly floundering from the lava crust and into hell. The terrible, terrible stories from the generation before covered in the lace you could only see through at certain angles to what lay beneath. To what was holding it all together. It’s weird to imagine that trauma can hold you together rather than be the thing that destroys you. But that’s how I saw my mother. The nails and the hair were the nod to polite society; the tracksuit was for the moment polite society falls apart and you need to run. In case it happened again.

  So, she was admiring Mrs Patel’s sari and I was admiring the way the light bounced off my Union Jack glitter bunting, the sausage rolls were ageing rapidly, becoming visibly rife with despair. Edna and Marsha were saying, ‘You must come and visit us at the shop,’ and I was saying, ‘Yes, I should. That would be lovely,’ when every fibre of my being wanted to shout, ‘Get fucked.’

  Perhaps my latent bad manners drew him back. Because that’s when my dad came home from his shift. ‘Oh.’ He looked surprised. He looked how someone is supposed to look when they feel the emotion of surprise. ‘Did you start without me?’

  ‘We had to start when the wedding started,’ Mum said.

  ‘But you didn’t wait?’

  There was no use repeating it. One of my brothers kicked a soccer ball to him and he caught it with his foot, and did not kick it back, just rolled it back and forth with his toes like it was a lie he was burnishing.

  ‘Look how beautiful Mum’s cake is.’

  I said it too loud, like a tour guide at a world heritage site: ‘Look here, the pyramids! Look here, the painting by the pharaoh’s tomb!’

  He looked at it, which once I thought about it I didn’t really want him to do. I should have known it would just upset him.

  ‘Steven helped. He was brilliant.’

  Mum must have known she shouldn’t have said that. It took her a beat, like a live show on time delay to catch rude words, but then it hit her. That was a mistake. The bunting glittered.

  Somehow, even Charles and Diana’s wedding was supposed to be about him. But he was drunk and I saw him as the court jester. His shift had ended an hour earlier and he’d stopped by the Crow and Eagle. He was jealous of me and Mum. It upset him that I made her happy. He wanted her to be happy, but he didn’t know how to do it himself. He bought her perfume on her birthday and he hit her. He got her kitchen remodelled, and he hit her. He gave her three wonderful sons. And he hit her. He cheated on her. And he hit her. He told her she was beautiful and he hit her. He told her she was a wonderful mother and he hit her. He told her she was a terrible mother and he hit her.

  I was too little to help. And then, one day, I was big enough to help. And the anger was redirected at me. I was just grateful he wasn’t hitting my mum any more. She was my world. Now my world was safe; I was just an inhabitant of my world. This was more bearable. It was a terrible time. But it was worse when it happened to her, the person I loved most.

  There was a football game going on, but I sat among the old ladies, trying to blend in with them, hoping they would protect me from him. Edna and Marsha said ‘Hellooo’ and then went right back to talking to each other. Perhaps it’s what had drawn them so close, their disinterest in their brother; they had to be fascinated by each other, or there wouldn’t have been much left to talk to except the wallpaper.

  ‘Darling,’ Mum said, fumbling for the right words, like they were keys at the bottom of her handbag, ‘We’re just so happy you made it.’

  ‘Not too happy to wait.’

  The neighbours shuffled. They knew. Edna and Marsha picked up their purses, barely nodding at him on their way out. Suddenly I wanted to say, ‘Yes! I want to see your corset shop!’ but they were almost out of sight, as if they’d shape-shifted rather than shuffled. Even an elderly human mushroom could pick up the pace when they sensed a family argument brewing.

  The Indian family left. I memorised the gold thread against the mustard yellow, how it tricked the eye. I love it when fashion does that. There were Jamaicans who’d made a flag with Hailie Selassie standing next to Charles and Diana.

  In the news analysis still going on from the television commentators, no one much noticed Charles, as if he wasn’t even at his own wedding.

  Dad took a slice of the cake. ‘This is too spicy. We’re not in the old country now.’

  ‘Oh. Everyone else likes it.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about everybody else.’ He looked at the blaring TV. ‘Why don’t we let the blessed couple decide? Let’s give them a taste.’

  He smeared the cake across the television screen over Diana’s face. ‘I can’t eat, it’s my wedding, I have to fit into my frock!’ He pretended to do her voice. Mum was trying not to cry. Then he turned to her: ‘Go get your w
edding dress!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Yours is better than hers. Go put it on.’

  ‘No, darling. We’re having a party.’

  ‘Your guests don’t look like they’re having much fun.’

  ‘We are!’ someone offered.

  ‘Go get your dress. It was pricey. Don’t you know where it is?’

  ‘I know where it is.’

  ‘Don’t put it on, Mum.’

  ‘Was I talking to you?’

  I shrunk deeper into the old ladies, as if I could cover myself with their pink and blue hair. Even in my anxiety about what he’d do next, I noticed Mrs Misher’s hair was apricot this time around and the colour danced in front of my eyes even as my heart sank.

  I got up and went to the kitchen to get a cloth to clean the telly. He followed me.

  ‘Shame you’ll never have one.’

  ‘A telly?’

  ‘A wedding.’

  I looked deep into the cake as if it were my security detail. But it wasn’t helpful, my lack of courage always made him angrier.

  He picked up my sketchbook and flicked through, laughing.

  ‘Those are precious to me,’ I began.

  I could see my mum in the distance, begin to stand up, very nervous now. I didn’t want her further involved so I tried to move back outside to the protection of other people, hoping he’d forgotten about the wedding dress.

  ‘You frighten us when you’re like this, Dad. Just lie down. Go to bed. Take a rest and then come back to the party.’

  ‘Don’t treat me like I’m a monster. You gang up together, and you make sure not to let me in. You started this without me so it could just be you and her.’

  ‘Everyone’s here. The whole street is watching.’

  ‘Oh and judging? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘I’m saying they can see us. So let’s be polite.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do, you little shit. I am polite.’

  He walked back outside, right up to her. ‘Did you get your wedding dress?’

  She looked at her feet, the half-moons of her pedicure pulling her in place, a Revlon undertow.

  ‘Well, did you? I don’t see it anywhere.’ He mimed looking around. Guests continued to scatter.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ she said, from within the waves.

  ‘You don’t have to, Mum.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘Calm down,’ said Mrs Misher. ‘You’re making a terrible flapdoodle.’

  The word ‘flapdoodle’ seemed to tip him over the edge.

  ‘I don’t have to be driving a cab. I could be a doctor or a lawyer like the fancy Jews. They’re still not really English, you know. None of this makes you really English. Your sausage rolls. Your wedding mugs. Your fucking bunting.’

  He ripped it down. I remember that glitter spilled from a Union Jack and was sprinkled across his angry face. It made me smile.

  ‘Don’t you dare fucking smirk at me.’ It might have been ‘fucking dare smirk’. There’s a difference, like a seam at the side versus a seam at the back.

  And the glitter kept dancing. And it made me laugh.

  Before I could move, he landed the first punch. I stumbled out, crashing through a stall of Pimms. Strawberries rolled across the pavement. A ginger cat looked at me with disdain, his fur clashing with Mrs Misher’s hair as she bent down to me. Where were all these ladies’ husbands? I felt in that moment – or maybe, in all moments – like Dad was the only man present.

  My mother was on her knees. My father was already gone, saying ‘He’s fine’ over his shoulder, as he headed upstairs.

  Mum was afraid of a great many things, but they weren’t ever the right things. It’s as if every weather report she ever read gave a notice about ‘extreme weather’ but she’d be too in a tizzy to hear the rest. She’d just start stocking up with canned goods to see us through the inevitable floods. And all they’d been alerting the viewer to was that the weather would be ‘extremely nice. Unusually pleasant.’ She had no portion control with her fears, especially when it came to my well-being. And yet she’d seen my father hit me several times now and, each time, she’d tearfully patched me up, but as it was going on, she was a stone statue.

  You could hate her for it. You could. But I’ve come across several children of Holocaust survivors who’ve ended up in abusive marriages. Parameters of what is acceptable have been irretrievably damaged. She kept telling herself, ‘This is nothing compared to that.’ But I knew when she saw me that day that she knew it was something. She knew, I believe she knew, time was running out for us to stay with him; the ghetto was about to be sealed. She kept cooking, she kept cleaning. But she was ready to be awakened, the rapid eye movement when someone is on the surface of sleep, between worlds almost. Some key part of her was ready to be told: time to wake up, now.

  Likely she knew, before I did, that I was not like her other boys. Likely she knew, before I did, that I would one day find my way and that I would not leave her behind. I thought, as I was lying there, that she was licking my blood from my hair, but it was one of the neighbourhood cats. It didn’t even seem that odd that my mother was licking away my blood. It seemed like something she’d be prepared to do for me.

  ‘Shoo!’ shouted a neighbour, and her husband said, ‘Don’t shout, it might be the last thing he hears, you don’t want it to be your shrieking voice.’ Using our terrible family breakdown to have a miniature marital dispute.

  Someone tutted, ‘It’s not right, on such a lovely day,’ as if there could be better-suited days for such behaviour.

  Somebody called an ambulance. My mum was sobbing and clinging to me. As I waited, I thought ‘Plum blossom with jade would be a good colour combination.’ As I waited, I could see Diana on the Union Jack bunting as they carted me away, see her blonde through my blood. I hoped it wasn’t bad luck for their marriage.

  CHAPTER 3

  I woke up on the paediatric ward of Guy’s Hospital. There was a vase of extraordinary flowers on the windowsill and I let my eyes adjust to them: roses with snapdragons, honeysuckle and pansies, as if someone had taken the most British things and decided they could be passionate, too. I hadn’t thought of that until I saw those particular flowers.

  I looked around and saw other teenagers of various races and shapes and in various positions, some prone, others propped, a few walking. There was a dull throb in my left arm. I tried to sit myself up but I was in pain. The lower rib. The same one he’d cracked before. I don’t think he especially aimed there. It was just his height and my height. It’s because I was too big for this.

  ‘Your mum was here with you. Lovely lady. She just left for her shift.’

  The nurse didn’t judge Mum for letting this happen and neither did I. Her tag said ‘Edith’ and Edith helped me sit. She turned away a moment and returned with a cup of Angel Delight, a cheese sandwich and an orange juice.

  ‘Do you think you could manage some of this?’

  They all looked great and I scoffed them down.

  ‘Good lad. Oh. She left you your pens and paper. Are you a writer?’

  I shook my head gently so as not to further twist the rib. ‘Clothes.’

  ‘Oh, I wish you’d redesign this uniform. But I hope you won’t be here long enough to do it. I think you’ll have a couple of nights here, then you’ll be home.’

  She didn’t ask where home was and I didn’t say, ‘I don’t want to go home.’ I was on a hospital ward and it felt like the dream I’d fostered from Enid Blyton books of how boarding school might be. They would feed me and keep me safe but I could be alone. Alone, left entirely to my own devices, but with back-up protection if anything went wrong or got scary. This was the first time he’d landed me here. I’d been to the emergency room before, but they’d treated me there, clicking my nose back in place as stars spun.

  I tested myself by swinging my legs over the side of the bed. Bad idea. The nerves in my chest were tweaking out as I tried to straighten
my back. Sometimes a teacher would shout at the boys in my class, ‘You’re getting on my last nerve!’ I understood, as I winced with the kind of pain that makes people want to die, that nerves might, in fact, be finite.

  I was so contorted in agony, it took me a moment to realise there were some very sick kids on the other side of the room. One was badly burned. But the parents turned to and looked very sorry for me.

  At eighteen, I thought I was just on the cusp and, even though I had no friends my own age, I was relieved not to have been sent up to the adult wing. Jasmine, on the other hand, was furious about being sent to the juvenile ward.

  ‘I’m nineteen years old!’ she said. ‘I had my nineteenth birthday last month at Annabel’s.’ It was the first thing I ever heard her say.

  I thought she was one of the most frightening things I’d ever seen. She looked like a witch from a fable, an illustration from the Oscar Wilde children’s book I sometimes read when I was trying to block out the sounds of the house.

  She was bone white, cuts on her arms, holes all the way up her ears, piercing the cartilage like a nightmare, black charcoal staining her chin where they’d induced the vomiting. I’d no idea there was a great society beauty on the bed across from me. She looked around – saw the burns kid being tended to by their parents, the comatose boy, the painfully thin girl being pushed in a wheelchair – and decided I was the one worth talking to. It was night-time, of course. That makes it easier to meet anyone. Even on a hospital ward.

  ‘Can you hand me my cosmetics bag?’ she asked, and though it was a query it had the cadence of a demand. ‘It’s in my handbag, over there.’

  Like moving towards the vampire to drain it of the power to scare you, I let myself take one step, and then another. She just watched me and said, ‘Cor, you’re in a lot of pain.’

  Her vowels were rounded and she said ‘cor’ like someone who’d repeatedly watched Oliver! on a summer beach vacation. She let me move towards her in my wincing, mincing agony.