Monday, May 26, 2008

Doctor Graham was on the ward that night, Filofax and all. The self same doctor who’d pronounced ‘You’ll never have children’ to Marilyn seven painful years previously. She doubted that he recognised her, even remembered her face. This brisk and bubbly Nurse Wilkinson was far removed from the wide-eyed newly wed whose dreams he'd shattered to pieces.

‘Mine’s black, two sugars please, Nurse’. He shot Marilyn a patronising wink, lest she should deign to find his commands unreasonable, and she resisted the urge to spit for the first time in her life, into his piping hot tea. The mug said ‘The Boss’. There were just some folks in life who seemed to enjoy the faults in God’s creation, she thought.

A first class maternity nurse, Marilyn soon had panicking mums rosy and smiling. Once the new arrivals were clean and wrapped up like presents she would retreat, allowing the women some privacy with their little miracles. Then she would weep. Though she had prayed and prayed for selflessness, thanked God for every fresh life she had the privilege of delivering into this world; though she shone in the wake of these newly happy families, part of her couldn’t let go of the dull ache inside - the knowledge of her defective womb.

‘Hey Baby’, Fraser whispered in her ear, and she jumped. He’d just arrived for his evening shift as porter, and thoroughly deserved the playful slap she gave him for shocking her so. She sometimes regretted having found him work on her ward - the hours were ridiculous - but these crossover shifts always lightened her heart. How fortunate she was to have a man who never let her down. His warm smiles never ran out, and while other Caribbean men from his area were out prowling for ladies and smack, he was racking up the hours for their future together.

‘Hey’, she said. A glance at the clock confirmed it was only three hours till home time, three hours until the dawn of Valentine’s day - a big fat sleep followed by an afternoon out with Fraser. She grinned, ‘Can’t wait till tomorrow, Sweetheart’. She was really looking forward to the moment he came and joined her in morning slumber - entwining his strong wiry body with her softness once again.

Fraser understood that grin. ‘You bet’, he replied, though there'd been no question. ‘Busy night?’

‘You kidding?’ said Marilyn, waking up to where she was, and with a stolen kiss on the lips, she spun away down to the arrivals room.

Fraser was amazing. He always knew exactly what she needed to hear, including when she needed to hear nothing at all. Other men would have left her by now, left her long ago in fact. ‘Faulty goods’, they’d say. But the two of them still gazed at each other like teenagers and she knew that would last forever. From that very first day their eyes had met, twelve years ago tomorrow, there was no looking at any other fella. He was her everything, and yet still he was not enough. No matter how often he filled her to the brim with his affection, like a canvas cup she emptied soon enough, leaving behind a damp, hollow feeling, the chilling embers of their hopeless burning passion.

It was a bitterly cold night outside and the ward was crazy. Two nurses down and a doctor out on call meant zero time for the remaining team to catch their breath. A woman had just been brought in, well into labour. She’d been in and out three times already over the last two days and even the skin on her forehead was ready to split. Marilyn prayed that this time it would actually happen. She wondered, though, if it was really such a clever idea to have a child at thirty-nine. But she imagined holding a newborn of her own in her arms, all sticky and new; she knew she’d relish that joy at any age.

Annie was her name. She seemed so frail Marilyn wondered whether she’d last the ordeal. Her purple eyes betrayed worries well beyond the pain of contractions. She was clutching a tapestry over-night bag, which Marilyn offered to unpack.

‘Yes - the picture’, said Annie. Among the array of hospital necessities, Marilyn found a teak-framed photograph of what she supposed to be three generations - mother, daughter and a baby.

‘You?’ Marilyn asked, a warm smile on her face, and Annie responded with an urgent nod. Placing the picture on the bedside cabinet, Marilyn focused on the image of Annie and imagined herself there instead: her black skin in contrast to Annie’s pale face, her strength in place of Annie’s fragility, and her smile chasing away Annie’s fear. But she was just the middle of a picture; there was no beginning nor end. The mother and baby figures faded to dark silhouettes in her mind’s eye.

‘That’s my first child,’ Annie said without breathing, ‘he’s fourteen now.’

‘He’s a cute one,’ said Marilyn. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Davey Grace’, Annie said.

‘That’s a - ’

‘I named him after the boy I should have married.’

‘Nurse Wilkinson!’ Doctor Graham barked from the gangway.

‘I'm so sorry,’ said Marilyn, ‘I’ll have to go.’ She touched Annie’s hand to show that she did want to hear the story. She might have been touching a doll.

‘It doesn’t matter’, Annie said. With an awkward but genuine smile, Marilyn picked up her clipboard and left the room. Annie Andrews, maiden name Rosewarne. ‘Annie R’ was sewn into the inside of her bag. Something about the name nagged at her - Annie R. Hadn’t she heard it somewhere before?

Marilyn tumbled off the bus at the Horsefair, and began her walk towards Temple Meads. She still questioned whether they’d done right in moving back out to Brislington after all the mess of the St. Paul’s riots; maybe they should have stuck nearer to Fraser’s family. Though she was used now to this changing bus malarkey, tonight she found it particularly unsettling. Why in the world could they not just coordinate the bus service like every other big city had by now? Bristol seemed to have been left behind in Maggie’s grand plans for economic growth. She understood why Pa had finally made the journey back to Jamaica after all these years. It wasn’t just the big things; all the little nuances of English life in the end wore you down. Like the way everyone kept themselves so much to themselves; building friendships could be like digging in quicksand. And people didn’t care enough about anything anymore; respect had become a rarity. Moving ‘back’ was not something she could do though; she’d never known any home but here. But how screwed up it had all become.

At 11.42pm, after a pretty frightening labour, Annie had given birth to a healthy and beautiful boy. She’d named him ‘Joe’ after her little brother who died aged two from heart failure. Marilyn had been amazed by her sadness, even in the wake of this new life. But she was still more amazed when Annie’s stern husband arrived and seized the baby, without even giving its tired mother a second glance. Marilyn had seen this so many times now. Later they would leave the hospital - she stumbling with her handbag, overnight bag, and the wounds of childbirth, he parading 50 yards ahead with his new son.

She crossed over by King Street and took the usual shortcut towards Castle Green. A black lad, no older that seventeen, came flying down the alley. He flashed past her, the coppers hot on his tail. Two of them - an older scrawny white fellow and a younger, larger black man. Marilyn sighed. They could easily be the same men who took in her brother Del, that harrowing night nine and a half years ago. Could well be these very men who swore unswervingly that Del was their man, got him banged up in Horfield prison for what should have been the best years of his life. While their identity was ‘protected’, Del’s was ripped to shreds. His only true crime - and she knew this with every bone in her body - the charge of being in the wrong place and at the wrong time. But possession with intention to deal narcotics meant twenty years, and twenty years meant just that for a black man. She’d happily have wagered her soul on his innocence, but the devil wouldn’t buy it. It was Fraser who had restrained her when they'd sent him down. He knew a sister's passion could only add pain to Del’s sentence.

Marilyn boarded the bus, flashing her pass behind the straggling late-night workers. She checked her watch. There wasn't a week went by she didn’t visit him, and watching the hope slowly seeping out of those big brave eyes was killing her. So, ten years and he’d be out. The world could be done with in ten years, for all she knew. Wasn’t that what the politicians were predicting? And in any case what chance would a middle-aged Jamaican man with a criminal record have of finding his way again? Pa said he was to go back ‘home’ and he was surely right. The church said they’d help, but Del didn't deal all that well with pity. And so it’d be Marilyn and Fraser - like it was now so it would always be. Family was number one, so how had she become so very alone?

‘Ain this your stop, Miss?’ The driver looked around at her, and sure enough they were on New Bridge Road already. More and more she found herself doing this recently, withdrawing from the day’s events.

‘Cheers, Lionel’, Marilyn said, ‘see you tomorrow’. Sighing again, she stepped down onto the pavement. Like many nights, she was the only person alighting here. Always the only black. But it had been their decision to move away from the trouble, to become a minority again.

This night there was something in the air, like the damp stillness between spring floods. A certain Valentine’s stillness perhaps - everyone in restaurants or in their homes, making love or arguing. She thought of her own Valentine, soon to be heading her way on the dawn bus. She knew their stillness would be one of love.

Inside the building there was broken glass on the stairs and the sweet smell of spilled wine and trouble. Marilyn bent down to pick up a sleeveless record, and discovered it was ‘My Special Dream’ by Shirley Bassey – Pa’s old favourite song. Looking back up, her heart now beating time in her throat, she saw the door of the flat open and realised what had happened. But it was worse than she'd thought. The pungent odour of urine emanated from the flat. Moving closer with her hand over her mouth, she saw the red paint on the open door: NIGGERS OUT.

When Fraser turned in that morning, Marilyn was still piecing together what remained of their life in 36b.

‘Baby what’s -?’ Fraser began, as he walked through the open door, but then the look on Marilyn's face told him all he needed for now. He came over to where she was kneeling, amid smashed family photographs and letters. He encompassed her shivering body and she felt herself crumble into his warmth. ‘It’ll be okay, Sweetheart, it’ll be okay.’

Marilyn awakened in his hold. ‘No it won’t Fraze, you didn’t see what they did - the things they wrote.’ Fraser’s gaze fell on the bucket of red soapy water in front of her. In spite of Marilyn’s efforts, he could see with a single glance at the well-scrubbed door and the murky windows the impact of what had happened. ‘It’s not our stuff, Fraze. It’s us. It’s everything.’ Marilyn looked up at Fraser challenging him to contradict her.

‘They can never take us, Lynnie, no matter what else, okay?’ He kissed her. Marilyn picked up a photograph of her mum, and one of herself as a teenager.

‘I guess these seem fairly useless now’, said Fraser, handing her the crumpled wrap of flowers from underneath his arm. Foxgloves – they’d been her favourite flowers since she was a little girl. Nanna had said they healed sick hearts.

‘I love you, Fraser’, she said, taking his hand to help herself up, and moving towards the kitchen in search of an unbroken vase. The formica work surface was strangely clear. She couldn’t think why she’d not checked their savings jar hours ago - it was of course gone. ‘Fraze.’

‘Darling.’

‘Fraze – our savings have gone’, she said. How long had they been counting the pennies? Priding themselves on their frugal lifestyle, saving everything for the future – for what? ‘The adoption agency won’t even look at us now.’ Staring out at the yard below, she recalled the last time they’d been robbed, when they first got married and were still living with Pa. The pillar-box savings had been taken and their honeymoon had been postponed forever. She’d been sad because she’d always hoped to find the owner of the box... Annie R 1957... Annie R! That was why the name had stuck in her mind. She’d so longed to meet the lonely owner - perhaps only to find her today, exhausted, fearful and disrespected in the wake of her new child?

She looked at Fraser. She had so much to be thankful for, so many blessings that couldn't be taken away from her, no matter how much hatred burned outside.

‘Fraser, I know it seems weird’, she said, ‘but would you mind if we went down to Arnos Vale? It’s just my mum; it was 30 years ago today.’ Fraser walked towards her, took her hand and kissed her. They closed up the flat as best they could and started the walk down to the cemetery, leaving the police - and all that would entail - until they returned.

‘I always figured there must’ve been a day when it happened’, said Fraser, ‘but – ’

‘I know’, said Marilyn. ‘I went once, twenty years ago. But it disturbed me. Before then I wasn’t really aware that I was missing something. Something I could never have.’

The world was beginning to wake up: the morning sun shone hazily, curtains were pulled across revealing sleepy faces, doors opening to usher in milk from doorsteps. A few early risers were outside already, de-icing their cars in the February frost. Marilyn held Fraser’s hand tightly; they said little but to Marilyn they seemed closer than ever. As they plodded towards Arnos Vale she could just as easily have been ten years old again, scrambling towards the cemetery with Pa. But this time she was approaching from a different direction, and she was leading the way. Twenty years on, she ought to have a renewed perspective, and she thought that maybe finally she did.

Hovering by the gates, she was aware of her body, of her awkwardness - her inability to explain what was going on here. In one hand she held the foxgloves that Fraser had given her.

‘Is okay, Lynnie. You go ahead’, he said. It was enough. Taking both his hands she squeezed them, hoping to borrow from his warmth some of the calm, the logic, into her own veins. Then she released him, thanking him with her eyes.

She tried not to rush, pacing briskly like she remembered Pa doing a score ago. Her eyes fell on the stones around her as she walked: Beloved Mother, Dearest Mum, Loving Ma. She thought again of Annie’s photo with her mother and child, then of herself as an individual in the midst of space, unconnected with the past and the future. Was she really so disconnected?

She knelt down at her mum’s grave, as she’d watched Pa do decades before. Sorrow crept into her being. For the woman lost in her prime of life, the woman she’d treasured stories and pictures of, the woman she’d never known yet knew intimately. Accepting that Lulu was once alive, that she should have been an integral part of her life, Marilyn at last felt able to grieve. She was inside the scene she’d observed back in 1964; she was a participant and it didn’t frighten her any more.

She looked up at Lulu’s solemn gravestone. Murky with tears, she read the words Pa must’ve had to choose in the opening of the grief he would wear forever. Beloved Sweetheart and Mother. She thought of poor Annie, how unbeloved she seemed, and then it struck her. Not death, bareness, racism, poverty, prison, injustice - none of these evils on this long hard day, in this long hard life, could take away what she had with Fraser.

She placed the foxgloves carefully on the grill, blew a kiss and planted it over Lulu’s name. She drew herself back onto her feet, elated with the exhaustion of sobbing. Then she ran, faster and faster, back to Fraser. Seeing his figure in stillness on the bench, suddenly so small in the fierce morning light, she could wait no longer.

‘You’re right Fraze!’ she screamed through her breathlessness. ‘You’re SO right! They can’t touch us - and ain nobody gonna get their mits near us anymore!’ Fraser swung her around, her feet coming off the ground, and she felt she was made of candyfloss, so light she might fly away.

But there was no time for that and they both knew it. Instead, there were police to deal with. There was a ruined home to clear up, maybe yet another council relocation list to fight, and most certainly a Valentine’s day to celebrate.