Gravel Heart(40)

Frederica smiled and raised her eyebrows with incredulity at the same time, as if my flattery was only friendly banter.

‘He would have come to lunch,’ Frederica said. ‘I’ve told him about you, and I know he’d like to meet you. But he’s on duty today. He’s a physiotherapist in Denmark Hill Hospital, and he just couldn’t change his shift.’

Frederica herself worked in the Personnel Department of Lambeth Council based in Brixton, and when I said that I was languishing in a café job in Brighton and thinking of moving back to London, she told me to look out for a Lambeth advert coming out in the next couple of days. She sent me a cutting of it, and although I delayed applying until the last minute, and also applied for several other posts in different offices and businesses, and was almost certain it would all come to nothing, I was offered the Lambeth job and had not the strength to resist. I duly became a local government officer.





6

BILLIE

I found a small studio flat off Brixton Hill above a motorcycle shop. As if that was not noisy enough, my neighbours on the same floor and on the one above were bickerers who argued deep into the night, shouting and banging and throwing things. As soon as I could I moved, to a tiny sublet in Clapham Common and finally to a two-bedroomed flat in Putney. It took over a year to make that journey and in that time I had become reconciled to many things but in particular to the salary that went silently into my bank account in return for my lackadaisical efforts in the office. Rushing around in Café Galileo had tired me and put me on edge, assaulted some part of my senses one way or another, but the work of the Leisure Department was much more orderly and measured.

For a while I was content. I told myself it was a kind of holiday while I was working out what else to do, but as the weeks passed I could not resist the return of my anxieties, and then I thought I was drifting. I feared that word. I feared turning into one of England’s helots, becoming accustomed to bondage. Perhaps it was time to go while I had the strength, or maybe in a year or two, especially now I had a residence permit and need not rush my decision for fear of expulsion. I could save money, maybe retrain and then look for work in the Gulf or in South Africa, one of those places where they had jobs to spare for people like me. Or I could go back home and see if there was anything for me to do there. At times I thought I was waiting to return, at others that I never would.

In the meantime I went to work and performed my duties, biting my lip and letting the moment pass until what I did became routine and I no longer needed to suppress a feeling of uselessness as I did what was required of me. Some of my colleagues addressed their duties with a purposefulness I envied and pretended to share. I wondered if they were pretending too. I went out drinking with work-mates, and sometimes to the cricket or to a football match or a motorbike race, for a day-trip to whatever came up and was on everybody’s lips, to a music festival, a circus, to Wimbledon, the best tennis tournament in the world. We talked to each other as if we were on the same side, spoke the same language and had grown up with similar experiences and shared similar pleasures. Where I came from no one would dream of saying that anything to do with them was the best in the world. How could one know that without knowing the whole world? Here they have plenty which is the best in the world – the best goalkeeper in the world, the best university in the world, the best hospital in the world, the best newspapers in the world. You had to take that in with your mother’s milk to say such words without cringing. When it was necessary to do so I said those words. I was becoming naturalised.

I had many relationships with women. That is, I had more or less brief affairs with women I met and got to know, who also wanted to live a life of uncomplicated encounters. It was not always possible to keep the complications out, and cruelties were sometimes unavoidable, but I became better at sensing the moment when it was necessary for me to slip away. I had spent many years not knowing how to approach women, thinking of sexual intimacy as demeaning and an oppression, which enticed the victim into abjection, but then I found out it required nothing but willing partners. I learnt how to recognise the willing and how to make my availability known to them, and I did not try too hard or become too greedy. It seemed then that matters took care of themselves and one thing led to another without rancour. It was possible for a while to make the pursuit of pleasure the real point of everything. I found excitement in the mutually egotistical brevity of these encounters, which allowed me to suppress the distaste that was sometimes inevitable.

Mr Mgeni was fully retired now. He no longer had the strength for the work, and his blood pressure was dangerously high. The doctor told him he might have had a mild stroke without realising it. Now he needed to avoid exertion or he might harm himself. Mr Mgeni had his doubts about doctors but Marjorie did not. She insisted that her husband took his medication, which he preferred to avoid because it bloated and constipated him, but she did not allow any debate.

‘You are a stubborn, ignorant man,’ she told him. ‘And you have no choice but to take those pills, so better give up sooner then you can have a little peace.’

‘I am only sixty-seven,’ Mr Mgeni said querulously, refusing to submit to growing feebleness. ‘What am I supposed to do with myself? Sit around and get fat? I have only ever worked all my life, since I was a little boy. How am I supposed to stop now?’

‘You must be very tired then,’ Marjorie said. ‘Why don’t you take a rest?’