In the Falling Snow (21 page)

‘Well, you’re not going to leave me standing outside in the rain all morning, are you?’

‘You can’t call and tell me you’re coming?’

‘I wanted to surprise you.’

‘Well you managed that all right.’

He pours the water on to the teabag and waits for it to steep. There’s no getting around it: the house smells as though it hasn’t been cleaned or aired in a long while. From the kitchen, he can hear the studio-based morning chat show on the television, and
he
imagines that his father has settled down to resume watching. The topic for the day is teenage pregnancies in schools. Apparently there is an epidemic of them, particularly in the so-called immigrant communities. He removes the teabag and stirs three spoonfuls of sugar into his father’s tea, before carrying the mug through into the living room. He places the tea on an old wooden stool that is clearly a substitute for a table, and then he collapses down into the shapeless armchair to the side of the sofa. It is nearly two years since he last visited, and that was only because he was in the north of England for a conference and it seemed somehow wrong not to at least stop by and say ‘hello’. The greeting back then had been equally unenthusiastic, but at least his father and the house had appeared somewhat presentable. As his father continues to watch television, he looks around and is alarmed to see the decline in both his father and his living conditions.

‘What happened to your helper?’ He tries to ask the question without it coming across as accusatory.

‘She says she wants some time off, and so I say fine, then go. The council don’t send anybody else yet, but I’m doing just fine for now.’

‘Well I can give you a hand, if you like. Let me just put my stuff upstairs then I’ll start to give things a going over.’

‘Why don’t you just relax yourself and things can fix later on? No big rush. Anyhow, the less I have to do with those people from the council, the better. They think that I don’t know what is going on. First, they send some stupid little man around saying that he is part of the “befriending scheme”. You know, they pay them five pounds an hour to come and talk with you, or take you to the pictures or to some park, like you is too stupid to think for yourself. Then the next thing you know the damn council want to take what little money you have and push you into some place like the Mandela Centre.’

‘You mean supported living?’

‘I don’t care what fancy name they give it, it’s a home and they jail you up in a little flat. The place is full of crazy people wandering the corridors looking for relatives who abandoned them years ago. What the council don’t take from you the other residents thief from you when your back is turned.’

‘But there are people there to look after you and give you medical care. Anyhow, I don’t see what your problem is with the Mandela Centre. Half of your friends are in the place and you go down there, don’t you?’

‘I go down there to pass the time, but I don’t reach the stage yet where I need to be locked up and looked after. I already had enough of that in my life as it is.’

His father looks directly at him and he can see in his eyes that he is fiercely resolute.

‘Listen, Dad, nobody is locked up, right. Everybody has the keys to their own place and you’re free to come and go as you please. You know that. I see a lot of Associations for the Elders in my line of work, and the Mandela is one of the best. There’s no stigma attached.’

His father continues to glare unblinkingly.

‘Look, I know I mentioned it as a possibility when I was last here, but did you at least think about it?’

‘Yes, I think about it.’

‘And?’

‘You know, for a man with such a big education you can sometimes act stupid. I think about it, and two years later you come back and find me still living at home. You really need to ask me what conclusion I did reach?’

He takes the few clothes from his sports bag and lays them out on the bed. He realises that, despite his father’s stubbornness, he will have to sit him down and raise the subject of the
condition
of the house and once again tentatively explore the possibility of his father moving into the Mandela Centre. As he was doing the washing-up he noticed mouse droppings on the kitchen counter top. He cleaned them up with a paper towel and then rinsed and dried his hands before yanking open the fridge door, where he was greeted by half-eaten plates of food that had long been abandoned, and rancid packets of cheese and butter that had passed their sell-by dates. It isn’t just that things are disorganised and untidy: his father is living in conditions that represent a health hazard. Having emptied the few clothes from his bag, he opens a double wardrobe and tosses the holdall into the bottom of it. On the top shelf of the wardrobe, where one might expect to find a pile of folded sheets or neatly balled up socks and loosely stacked underwear, he is surprised to discover a cardboard box that he lifts clear of the shelf. The box is full of photographs, but they are mainly black and white shots of people that he doesn’t recognise. There are some of Brenda, and a few of his father as a younger man, presumably shortly after his arrival in England. The fashions seem to suggest the sixties, and although in every photograph his father and his friends appear to be cold, they also seem surprisingly content. He wonders if he should take the pictures downstairs for this would, of course, be a legitimate way to encourage his father finally to talk about the past. He holds the box out in front of himself, as though making an offering, and then he decides to replace it in the wardrobe having realised that it might be more politic to raise this subject later, after his father has had time to adjust to his presence. He hoists the box up and on to the shelf and then pushes it to the back and out of sight.

In the evening they sit together in the pub, his father nursing a pint of Guinness and still sporting the pork-pie hat that he always wears on stepping outside his house. His father has made
it
clear that he knows that there are some photographs in a box somewhere, but he is unsure of their exact location, and he doesn’t understand why his son wants to look at them with him. He decides to say nothing further, but tomorrow, or the next day, he will just hand the box to his father and see if the evidence of the photographs provokes a response.

‘So what about the book that you was telling me that you want to write. A book about music, right?’

‘I’m surprised you remember.’

‘You think I don’t have no memory? Two years ago, when you was last here, you couldn’t shut up talking about it, so I imagine it’s this that you’ve been doing all this time.’

‘Well, I’ve got a job so there’s only so much that I can do. You know how it is.’

‘Me, I don’t have no job, so I don’t know how it is any more.’

His father sips at his Guinness and then returns the glass to the watery circle on his stained beer mat. He watches the old man reach into his pocket for a pack of unfiltered cigarettes and then, with slightly shaking hands, he takes one out, lights up, and then drops the book of matches on to the table.

‘I know you don’t like me to smoke, but what am I supposed to do at my age? It don’t make no sense to give up now, and the landlord turn a blind eye. I better off going straight ahead and finishing off what I started.’

He pushes back his chair from the table and picks up his own empty pint glass. He waits for his father to drain his pint, and then he takes up the second glass.

‘Same again?’ He speaks more to himself than to his father.

When he returns to the table his father is concentrating deeply on his cigarette, the ash of which is hanging precariously from its end. He places the pint in front of him, and then pulls two packets of crisps from his trouser pockets.

‘Cheese and onion or Bovril? Whichever one you want is fine by me.’

‘I don’t want no crisps. At least not yet.’ His father gestures to the two packets with his cigarette, and the ash falls off. ‘I maybe take a crisp later so you can leave me one packet right there on the table.’

This cheerless pub has been his father’s haunt for more years than he can remember, and he suspects that a large percentage of the money that his father has earned in England has flowed across this bar. Although he has never enjoyed coming into this grimy place, for his father it obviously feels like an extension of home. These days the pub appears to have been abandoned by all but a few dedicated drinkers, who seemingly come here in search of company. He is shocked to realise that his father is one of these drinkers. Five years ago, the local university had pensioned off his father, and all the other blue collar janitorial staff, as they decided to outsource their labour needs to private companies, but he had hoped that his father might find part-time work back at the university, or in some other organisation that needed cleaners. Either that, or find a hobby to occupy himself and provide him with a new lease of life. However, during his last visit, he could clearly see that his father had made no effort to re-engage with the world of work in the wake of his redundancy, and it now appeared to him that his father was in danger of embracing a premature inertia that was laced with a hint of reclusive bitterness. He realises that he is both worried and sad to think that this is what his father’s life has become: mornings spent watching television at home, and afternoons and evenings given over to the pub. Because the television in the pub appears to be permanently tuned in to a quiz show of some description, he imagines that the only thing that might cause his father to vary his routine would be cricket. No doubt a Test Match, or a one-day
international
would convince his father that he should remain at home and spend the day staring at his own television set instead of venturing into this dispiriting place.

‘So how is everything with the social work then?’

‘Well, these days I’m mainly tied up with policy-making, but I can’t say I’m too interested in it.’

‘Making policies about what?’

‘About race and inequality and those kind of things, but the truth is it’s boring. However, it’s what I do, so that’s that.’

‘Well, I never did understand why a man of your qualifications would go into this line of work. Just because you’re black don’t mean that you have to work with black people.’

‘I don’t just work with black people.’

‘I think you know what I’m saying.’

His father stubs out his cigarette and then takes a sip of his pint of Guinness.

‘So tell me,’ he says, ‘if you’re so busy doing all this policy-making, then how it is that you’re here with me? And how long it is that you’re planning on staying here?’

This is the second time that his father has asked him how long he intends to stay, and it irritates him that his father doesn’t seem to be able to relax and adjust to his presence. He can’t admit to the situation at work with Yvette, but obviously his father senses that something is the matter. He looks at the creased lines on his father’s face, and his surprisingly soft eyes, and he watches as the older man slowly shakes his head and then lowers his gaze and takes another sip of his Guinness. He decides that it is probably best if they finish their drinks in silence and then go back to the house.

He lies in the single bed that he used to occupy as a child, and he stares at the black sky through the uncurtained window. In the street he can hear the late night noises of people wandering
back
from the pub, their voices raised in excitement, and their loud peals of laughter that are occasionally punctuated by the sound of a broken bottle. When he was a child, Brenda used to come upstairs and tuck him in, and she would always tell him a story, usually one that involved castles and princes, but he never seemed to hear the end of it, for her soothing voice always encouraged him to drift quickly off to sleep. He imagined that after he had nodded off, she would noiselessly get up from the edge of his bed, turn off the light in the hallway, and then tiptoe back downstairs and wait for his father to return from whatever pub or club he had been to that night.

When his mother left he didn’t understand how radically his life was about to change. How could he, for he was only six years old. One day he came home from school and the slender lady was not there and the unshaven man was waiting for him with a packed suitcase. He took him on a train to another town, and then to another house where he met a woman named Brenda and a man who was introduced to him as his father. To begin with, whenever he was left alone with this Brenda he would cry. If the woman suggested taking him out to the park, or to the shops, more tears would begin to roll down his cheeks. His father spoke to him, and tried to reassure his son that everything would be all right, but in his heart he already sensed that he would never again see his mother. As the days passed he began to accept the sweets and small gifts that Brenda gave to him in an attempt to win his favour, and eventually he stopped asking his father about his mother and began instead to ask Brenda, whose standard response was, ‘don’t you worry your head, pet, I’m here for you now.’ And the more Brenda repeated her cheerfully reassuring sentence, the more he gradually realised that she meant it and that she would look after him.

A whole summer passed, and he turned seven years of age,
and
his sad anxiety was slowly replaced by a guilty peace with the reality of his mother’s absence. One morning his father reached down and ran his hand through his son’s hair, and then sat him in a living room chair and told his boy that he would never again see his mother as she had gone to sleep. By now he felt an attachment to Brenda, but the memories of his mother came flooding back and he could not stop the tears from beginning to stream down his face. His father paused and swallowed deeply before telling his son that his mother was in heaven, but she still cared deeply for him. Then, as though appearing from nowhere, Brenda came into the living room with an ice-cream cone and suggested that the two of them go for a walk. He took the ice-cream in one hand, and slipped his other hand into Brenda’s, and together they left his father standing by himself in the middle of the room.