The Little Red Chairs (19 page)

‘My wife she say to me, you are the army Bluey, I am the lover. She want me to teach my kids behave nice and have respect for others. Of course,’ he went on, ‘when we first marry we have conflict, she cook fish and chips every evening and I try to persuade her to be more adventurous, I tell her everybody different, different tastes, different food, different politics and oh my God, different God.’

It was with a certain pride he went on to say that now his wife experimented with dishes and used her spices, chillies that he grew under glass, in his little garden in Kent, the three colours, the red, the green and the yellow. He also got chilli flakes in the market they went to on Saturdays. His wife loved trinkets and he showered her with them. Soon he rolled up his cotton sleeve to show his mom’s name –
Helena
– inside a reddish heart surrounded by a lucky blue dragon. His Mom was his queen, taught him everything he knew, she said to him,
Bluey, there exist some great consciousness between people, but they do not know it and
that
is why there is war.
His Mom complains to him that he does not love her anymore, because he does not go home to Mozambique and he tells her when he phones her every Saturday that so long as he can see her in his mind, it means he loves her and the day he stops seeing her, then he will go home on a visit. He was not always such a loving son. One night, aged about twelve, he opened the window in his mom’s house and he ran. Not found for two days. Lived in a field near a farm and the farmer’s wife gave him a potato and a carrot to eat, raw potato and raw carrot.

Soon after he was found, his grandfather, who had been a boxer, brought him to a place where they did cage fighting. Two people in an octagonal cage, naked, and the only thing not allowed is to take the other person’s eyes out. Before you start, you don’t know who you will fight. Is he taller? Is he stronger? Is he tougher? When you go in you bring everything mean and bad, you use hands, feet and after forty minutes, win or lose, all the bad stuff gone and in the moment you are free. Free.

Fidelma listened, carried away by his stories, but at the same time fretting, because she did not want to go home to Jasmeen and say she had not got the job. It was Jasmeen who had helped her, looking on the internet night after night, and it was Jasmeen who had guided her to fill in her application form. As if he had read her mind, he opened the form, scanned it, then looked at her and said her name aloud.

‘Fidelma, a beautiful name, a goddess perhaps … Why do you want to work in Bluey’s bank?’

‘It’s complicated,’ she said and clammed up, begging him with her eyes not to ask too much.

‘Ireland always green,’ he said. ‘I take my wife and kids one day and we play golf, like it show on the television … green
green green,’ and he looked at her and said he knew how quick a person can lose heart, lose hope. He had lived and worked in many countries, having left home at a young age, with his bag on his back and a few quid in his pocket, his mom crying by the gate. One thing he never forgot. It was a restaurant in Barcelona and he was looking in the window at people eating shellfish and laughing at the mess they made, just outside looking in, when a waiter in black tails, followed by more waiters, came out and told him to move on. He was dirt in their eyes.

‘In those moments I want to kill … have you ever wanted to kill, Fidelma?’

‘Yes,’ she said, much to his surprise.

Then he read the two references she had brought, the one from Gerry her solicitor and the other from Father Eamonn. Gerry was succinct, simply attesting to her character, while Father Eamonn’s was more florid. Bluey read bits of it aloud, her breeding, her family descended from kings and queens, her convent education, her cultural yearnings, her love of literature, her French-themed boutique, which, alas, was lost during the financial crisis. There was no mention of her husband and long before she had put her wedding ring in a little box. The letter ended with a quotation from Byron –
She walks in beauty like the night.

Bluey looked at her, sizing her up, saying that if she walked like beauty in the night, could she clean like beauty in the night?

‘So I’m hired,’ she said with excitement.

‘Not yet.’ He needed guidance. He needed to sit alone, meditate and ask his Mom. She would sit downstairs and remember the things Bluey had told her and that he gave everyone the same opportunity, had Latinos, Africans, Eastern Europeans, Angolans, West Indians, Chinese, all under his watch.

She sat in the big hall, with almost nobody around, staring at a ceramic sculpture of an elephant, painted blue and white. A money pot perhaps. Bluey had said that of the thousands of flowers displayed in that bank every day, the money flower was the most popular with the traders. They believed it brought them luck. Money money money. Green green green.

He came on her unawares and as he stepped off the escalator, he was smiling.

‘Congratulations,’ he said and they moved to a quiet corner, where they sat and he was suddenly formal as her new employer. Her job would commence in one week, she would clock in at eight in the evening and out at six in the morning. She would write her name in a ledger when she arrived and on departure, although very soon the system was due to be digitised. She would be given a tunic and trousers to wear. Light blue tunic and navy trousers. She could bring her own shoes if she wished. She would start on the fourth floor and move up as she progressed. The person immediately above her would be her trainer, for the first six weeks, and would evaluate the work that she did. That person would report to the supervisor and above him was the manager, Lukas. Her trainer was a nice lady, but strict. She wore plaits on the top of her head and they called her Medusa when she was angry. The plaits turned into snakes, but Medusa did not know that. However, there was no need to worry, as each Friday all went to the pub for one hour and drank beers.

‘A little bit of your story and a little bit of my story Fidelma … and everybody good friend.’

Then he took out a photograph of himself as a very young boy setting off for the world and many adventures. He wore poor
clothes and poor shoes, but it was the smile that would carry him. What did she make of the person in the photograph? She hesitated. He said if she had one word to describe him, what would that word be?

‘Plucky,’ she said. He liked the word. He was certain that they were going to get on well. He must run now –
She walks in beauty like the night
.

He waved to her from beyond the revolving doors.

Dust

Brown dust. White dust. Black dust. The black dust was the most ingrained of all and Fidelma was told that it must be rooted out of the corners. Glass was washed with lukewarm water and wiped down with endless balls of newspaper. In her blue tunic and her hair drawn back severely, Dara would hardly recognise her now. Not that she looked in mirrors, but occasionally, she caught sight of herself in one of the big windows that looked onto the Thames, the water a sheet of dark at night. Sometimes from the pleasure boats, music and the sound of the revellers could be heard through the double-glazed windows.

She watched others as they dusted, trying to learn their techniques, some so brisk, some flicking the cloth, skidding and skiddering over the surfaces, except for Maria, who went about her tasks with great zeal, because everything mattered, even the most menial thing. That was her philosophy, that and the rapture of the tango. Maria believed that one night and enigmatically, a tall man, a big boss in the bank, would appear and with a kindred intention, they would glide down the corridor and break into tango. It was not a dream as she said, it was a fairy tale and in their predicament, fairy tales were crucial.

They were night people, one step away from ghosts, and strangers to each other. Some had husbands, as she guessed by their wedding rings, and many had children, who, contrary to the rules, telephoned in the night to report some crisis. The
mothers, knowing that phone calls were forbidden, lurked in corners, to listen. Many had fled horror, countries they could never go back to, while still others yearned for home. They all carried memories and the essence of their first place, known only to them. For Fidelma, it was such a small memory, young grass with the morning sun on it and the night’s dew, so that light and water interplayed as in a prism and the top leaves of an ash tree had a halo of diamond from the rain, the surrounding green so safe, so ample, so all-encompassing.

It was her last morning in the convent grounds and Mass had been offered up for her private intention.

‘Off your arses … off your arses.’ It was Medusa’s battle cry, as she flitted from floor to floor in her important role as assistant supervisor, the woman with the snakes, eyes darting towards this and that and screaming at the slightest provocation. She was a tiny woman, dark-skinned, all bone, her hair neatly plaited with the plaits arranged on the crown of her head and the brown scalp showing through, somehow saddish-looking.

‘Stop looking at me’ were her first abrasive words to Fidelma, who had been merely admiring the perfect symmetry of the plaits.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘Do I hear a Paddy … do I smell a Paddy?’ Medusa said, two fingers to her nose, for others to relish the joke.

‘I suppose you like snow,’ she said then.

‘Yes, I like … snow,’ Fidelma answered.

‘Ho ho ho, Honky likes snow because snow is white and I am not white, I am black,’ and at that she went off, cackling, saying Mrs Paddy had six weeks’ probation to prove herself.

‘Don’t pay any heed … don’t let her get to you,’ Maria whispered
and at the tea break, she gave her a leaflet with a ‘Miracle’ prayer, which was in Spanish.

*

In the mornings, after they had clocked out, they ran, recklessly, they ran as if they were fleeing catastrophes. The fear that governed their whole lives was now compressed into this urgency to catch a bus or a train to allow a husband or a mother or a cousin to go to work.

Fidelma walked, so as not to arrive until Jasmeen had left for work. Jasmeen was not a morning person and needed her
space
, as she said more than once. The streets were empty, except for the few enthusiastic joggers, who ran and sometimes stopped by a railing to flex their muscles. There was the sad debris of the night, plastic bottles, condoms, cigarette butts, damp wads of newspaper and vacated sleeping bags, on steps and in doorways. The street sweepers, with their saffron stripes, were easy to pick out, meeting each morning at the same place, all foreign, exchanging a few words, even laughing, as they steered the barrows, their wide brooms upright, jutting out.

Along the way, she stopped by a wooden hut, where taxi drivers queued for their breakfast. In the first week they were resentful of her, but as time went on she was admitted, in fact given precedence in the queue and for some reason, they called her Shelagh.
Let Shelagh go … good on ya Shelagh.
The man behind the tiny counter remembered her order – a decaffeinated coffee with a little milk,
caldo
.

‘
Caldo
,’ he repeated and she would nod.

Then she walked by the Embankment, where the floating
restaurants were moored, all white with the splendour of temples, and some of the houseboats with gardens on their decks, or in tubs, flowers and tall rhubarby plants, with the water plashing against them.

*

A little girl always stood behind the long narrow window in the flat that adjoined Jasmeen’s. She fitted exactly into it, stock still and quite pensive. Fidelma reckoned she would be five or six and wondered why she waited, so steadfastly, there. Then one morning she waved. It was a very wan wave of the wrist, as if she was answering a command to wave at some dignitary.

Not too long after that, she smiled.

Finally, they met in the communal back garden, where Fidelma had carried out her mug of tea, wanting, as in Cloonoila, to be near nature, even if nature was one square of hummocky grass, with a horse chestnut tree at one end, lesser trees, bushes and forty-eight sets of windows spying on what went on.

The little girl came onto the balcony, smartly dressed in a lilac dress that was padded at the hemline so that it ballooned out and she wore pink leggings and black patent leather shoes. Her skin was golden, like the colour of a walnut shell. There was a perfection to her, the eyes, the pert eyelashes, tiny teeth, nails polished turquoise and the cuticles so perfectly defined.

‘Hello,’ Fidelma called.

‘Sshhh,’ and she moved nearer as she spoke. ‘It is strictly forbidden to come into the garden … I can come on the balcony, but not the garden,’ she said. She had had her big bowl of cereal and this was her time for fresh air, but twenty seconds before half past, she must go in again.

‘Who forbids it?’

‘My daddy … It is also strictly forbidden to come into another house.’

‘So your daddy is very strict.’

‘Sometimes, but when he takes his pills and falls asleep … he can’t remember the password for the TV and I have to remember it for him,’ and she laughed, proud of her mastery over him. Her daddy took naps. Old people took a lot of naps.