Now we are forgiven, p.18
Now We Are Forgiven, page 18
‘Doing something together. Father and daughter.’
‘We’re together all day.’
‘But this is actually doing something. Slow down a bit.’
Frankie’s breath is already coming heavy. He stares again at the tree tattoo on China’s back and feels a new determination to prove his worth.
‘I’m barely running, Dad.’
‘Just give me a chance to adjust.’
China slows her pace fractionally as they make their way down the deserted road, the shops all closed apart from the cash ’n’ carry which has a substantial queue outside. After five minutes, Frankie is panting pitifully.
‘Do you want to stop?’ said China, removing an earbud, not looking round but hearing the rasping and heaving of Frankie’s breath.
‘What makes you think that?’ says Frankie determinedly. He takes a desperate swig of air. China keeps a steady pace. Up to and past Portobello they enter Chesterton Road, tree-lined, vaguely suburban. He sees the top of Grenfell Tower, still with its green-hearted mask of shame and the legend ‘Forever in our Hearts’. China has hardly broken sweat. Turning, she sees Frankie’s T-shirt is soaked with perspiration. His face is red and what’s left of his hair is matted under the headband.
‘Keep going,’ gasps Frankie, forcing a smile. He has made a promise to himself that he is going to surprise China – prove that he isn’t past it after all. But he is beginning to wonder if he isn’t going to end up making the reverse point.
They pass the borders of the St Quintin estate, within 500 metres of the house where they once all lived together, then they make the gates of Little Wormwood Scrubs on Dalgarno Gardens, flanking the spreading blocks of the Peabody Estate to the north-east of the park. Perspiration runs down Frankie’s forehead and cheeks despite the sweat band and into his eyes, blurring his vision. His breath is coming so heavy now, he feels that his lungs are going to start bleeding.
‘Dad,’ shouts China, looking over her shoulder, still jogging. ‘I think you should stop for a while.’
‘I’m fine.’ Frankie pushes on. ‘Just need to get through the wall.’
‘You’ve only been running fifteen minutes. There isn’t usually a wall at fifteen minutes.’
‘It’s been all wall since we started.’
Frankie slows still further and falls thirty yards behind China. He makes a resolution to at least do one lap of the park, but twenty seconds later he flings himself down on a bench, his chest burning. He even has to wait a minute before he can take a swig of the sweet warm yellow liquid in his bottle. China runs on, either oblivious or indifferent. Frankie watches as she jogs into the distance.
Watching her fluidity of movement, he feels a burst of pride and love. She is so strong, so at ease with her body. So determined. So young.
At the same time, he has a strange epiphany. He seems momentarily to realize that she is not just his daughter, but a complete human being, with terrors, feelings and an entire universe of personhood inside her skin.
It frightens him because it momentarily reveals to him how vulnerable she is. She is not just a thorn in his side. It was too easy to think of her that way. He had watched, since the divorce, her innocence and trust gradually dissipating. He knew that he had a role in that dissipation, in accelerating it and intensifying it, and he also knew that it was the most precious thing that she possessed. And he had helped destroy it.
After a while, a young woman, similar in height to China, emerges from the tree line on the far side of the park. Frankie automatically thinks momentarily how attractive she is. He realizes in the same instant that it actually is China – she has shed her track top and taken the hair band off.
Ashamed, he slots her urgently back into her correct conceptual pigeonhole. China was right. What a vile thing it is to be a man. He watches her speed up as she realizes that Frankie is watching her. He thinks of his own flabby body. It is a wreck. He must do better. His breath more or less returning to normal now, he rises from the bench, grits his teeth and jogs towards the gate, estimating that they will arrive there at about the same time. As he makes it to the gate – puffing again already – China comes towards him with a broad grin on her face.
‘How you doing, old man?’
Frankie puts a thumb up. He is determined to make it back to the flat. Following in China’s slipstream, he tries to keep pace. This time, for some reason, it doesn’t feel so bad, although he is still breathing with difficulty. Maybe he has got to the other side of the wall after all. He manages to keep running albeit at half China’s pace until they arrive back at the front door, Frankie only stopping once or twice on the way to catch his breath. China has already used the latch key and is waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.
‘Alright, crock?’
Frankie nods, unable to find the breath to reply.
‘Sorry,’ he says eventually as they make their way up the stairs.
‘What for?’ says China. She is already breathing normally again.
‘Slowing you down. Being old. Being me.’
They make their way up the stairs and go through the front door. China sits and begins pulling off her trainers. She raises one to her nose and inhales.
‘Ripe.’
She prises the other trainer off and throws them both on the floor without thought. Other detritus left by her includes three coffee cups, two notepads, three books, a pair of knickers, a pair of legwarmers and two dirty plates.
‘You did well,’ she says to Frankie. Frankie, still trying to recover, doesn’t respond. She peels off her socks and throws them after the shoes. After a few seconds she looks up.
‘We can try again tomorrow if you like. Just get some decent running kit. It’s like I’m in training with Homer Simpson.’
Frankie smiles. Minutes later, he is ordering shorts, trainers and a running vest from Amazon.
Day 27, 19 April 2020
Frankie rises from bed at five past nine. China is still asleep. He makes himself a cup of coffee and settles down to read the news on his laptop. Afterwards, he cleans and tidies the room assiduously, as he does every morning. Tidiness not only keeps chaos at bay; it gives him something to do. Dusting, sweeping, polishing the surfaces. He cleans up China’s mess, complaining loudly, hoping that China is in earshot, not that it will make any difference one way or another. Then he makes a cup of tea and stares out the window as he does every day, wondering how he is going to fill the stretch of hours ahead.
By 10:25, the sun has worked its way around the sky and penetrated the front room. It dazzles him. Up until this moment, he has hated the lockdown. He had dreaded it coming and panicked when it arrived. All day long and all night long with nothing to do but watch TV, drink and fight with China.
But right now, at this moment, as he stands and stares out of his window into perfect spring sunlight and an uncluttered sky, denuded of aircraft, he decides that lockdown isn’t so bad. In fact, he now realizes that he rather likes it.
In the wake of this insight, as if it has jemmied open a secret door, an unexpected trail of revelation comes. Ever since he left school, more than thirty years ago, life has been activity – working, striving, trying to get ahead, battling to keep one step in front of the next person who was, in turn, trying to bring him down with their own momentum. The need for money, the need for praise, the need for success. At weekends, the need to sort out the house, look after the kid, do some DIY, mow the lawn, do some washing. Even play was relentless and competitive, watching football an ordeal. It was endless.
At this moment, it occurs to him that he has been chasing nothing at all. Or nothing worth chasing anyway. He was running for a finish line that didn’t exist. That never did exist.
Or he was on that line already. Which was also, somehow, the starting line as well. He would be here, precisely here, until the real finish came – as it came, out of the blue, nearly fifteen years ago, to Colin. In that sense, life was all one moment. Wasn’t it?
He sinks deeper into his own mind, unanswerable questions spawning like a virus. Where had all the hunger for tomorrow got him? His drive towards future success had led him into bankruptcy. Until the lockdown happened he had been on the same old cycle – trying to get a partnership in F&R, buying a flash new car, getting himself rich again. Rich-ish, anyway. Admittedly he had given up on getting a trophy girlfriend – Roxy was hardly that – but why did he need a girlfriend at all? Weren’t girlfriends just another promise of the fool’s gold of the future? Why not just sit here, staring out of the window? He isn’t achieving anything, but then again, he isn’t doing anyone any harm.
He opens the window. He can hear birdsong. Of course he cannot identify the bird; it is just a fucking bird. But the song is liquid, melodious, delightful.
He had started the day with the question he has asked every day since lockdown began. What am I going to do? But for the first time today, he thinks to himself instead, Why do I have to do anything?
He rocks back on his heels slightly and listens to the birdsong as it changes rhythm and pitch and watches the shape of the shadows on the wall. He is still bored, but so what? Is it a crime to be bored?
He hears footsteps on the stairs behind him, pulling him out of his thoughts. He turns – China, descending, nods at Frankie, goes straight to the kitchen and makes herself a cup of tea and some wholemeal toast. Frankie watches her silently instead of gabbling as he usually does, trying to make conversation as he usually does, and refrains, for once, from complaining about the mess she was even now scattering behind her.
After a minute or so, China returns to the living room, Death of a Salesman in one hand and the cup of tea balanced finely on the plate that holds the toast. Frankie finds himself regarding her from a viewpoint of unaccustomed tranquillity.
My daughter.
My beautiful daughter.
He continues to watch, in a reverie, as she sits on the sofa and bolts down her breakfast, concluding with a loud burp. Death of a Salesman is balanced on the arm of the sofa. Then, leaving the soiled plate and cup where she has put them on the coffee table, she rises from the sofa and reaches for a brass gong that sits on the sideboard.
She strikes the gong gently with an attached metal stick with a rubber bulb on the end. It chimes once, sending a throb and a vibration into the air. She sits down cross-legged, as she does every day around this time. She lights an incense stick, takes a deep breath and closes her eyes.
‘Mind if I join you?’ says Frankie.
‘You hate meditation,’ China answers, without opening her eyes. Frankie takes this as assent or, at least, not refusal. He tries sitting cross-legged but finds it uncomfortable and sits instead with his eyes closed on a straight-backed dining chair. He tries to relax. He knows he’s meant to watch his thoughts, but he can’t get a sense of watching anything other than the pinky-white blurs behind his eyelids. As far as Frankie is concerned, he is his thoughts. He can’t get past the flotsam and jetsam and find his way into the clear stream.
After twenty minutes, China opens her eyes and sounds the gong again. Frankie is still sitting on the chair with his eyes closed. Slowly he opens them.
‘You meditated too?’ she says.
He nods.
‘How do you feel?’ says China.
Frankie considers this carefully.
‘I’m not sure what the point is.’
‘The point is that there is no point.’
On this day, at this moment, he determines not to argue with her. On this beautiful blue morning with the birds and the flowers and the clear air. What is there to fight about, after all? It was all an illusion – ambition, hope, worldly status.
‘What the matter with you?’ says China, perplexed by Frankie’s uncharacteristically calm demeanour. She picks up Death of a Salesman, sits on the sofa and starts to read.
‘Nothing,’ says Frankie softly. He smiles. China looks up again, discomfited.
‘Why are you staring at me like that? Why aren’t you saying anything? Why are you grinning like a weirdo?’
‘I haven’t got anything to say.’
‘That’s never stopped you before.’
‘So what’s the book about?’ says Frankie.
‘It’s about a man who wants to be special when he is very ordinary,’ says China, returning her eyes to the book. ‘A man who wants to be a good parent, when he doesn’t know how to be.’
‘Sound likes a real page-turner. What happens in the end?’
‘I don’t want to spoil it for you.’
‘It’s “literature”, so endings don’t matter, right?’
‘He kills himself if you really want to know.’
Frankie nods and rises from the hard chair to sit down in the armchair that faces the window. China, unable to concentrate, now gets up and heads back towards the kitchen, teacup in one hand, book in the other. On the way, she trips slightly on a heavy barbell left on the carpet that she uses for weight training and, losing her balance, a remnant of tea from her mug dribbles onto the carpet. Normally Frankie would have run to get a cloth, complaining loudly, but now he just sits there, continuing to smile.
‘Sorry,’ says China, taken aback at Frankie’s lack of reaction.
‘That’s okay.’
China shrugs and returns the mug to the sink. Still hungry, she spreads a croissant with some jam and sits down on the sofa again. She makes no effort to get a cloth and remove the tea stain from the carpet. Normally, her indifference would have infuriated Frankie, but he continues to regard her benignly.
China picks up her phone and begins texting. The croissant, as she bites into it, distributes crumbs all over the sofa that Frankie has just hoovered and cleaned. A blob of strawberry jam follows the crumbs. Frankie – though it is now becoming more of a struggle – holds fast to his sense of tranquillity.
China slops the tea again. This time a large drop falls on the sofa rather than the carpet. She ignores it and carries on texting. Frankie realizes that the robe he is wearing is working itself open. He hasn’t put on pants so quickly pulls it back together. China, he is relieved, doesn’t appear to notice.
My beautiful… daughter…
Now indulging in a complex manoeuvre that involves her tea, her phone and her croissant, China topples the remnants of the tea onto a brand-new book that Frankie had been reading and enjoying, a Robert Harris blockbuster. Unable to contain himself any longer, Frankie rises to his feet.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ he breathes, keeping his voice as neutral as he can manage.
‘Keep your shirt on, boomer,’ says China, without looking up from the phone. Now she feels comfortable, on familiar ground again.
‘Go and clear that mess up, and the tea you already dropped on the carpet.’
‘In a minute. I’m just answering this.’
‘No. Now!’
‘Chill the fuck out. It’s only a bit of cloth.’
All the same she reluctantly rises from the sofa, puts down what is left of the tea and the croissant and goes into the kitchen returning with a dampened J-cloth. She makes a cursory rub of the stain on the carpet, then a similarly token attempt on the mark on the sofa. She puts the wet cloth down on the arm of the sofa and picks up her phone again.
‘That’s not good enough.’
‘It’s fine,’ says China, smiling at a GIF of a virtual white bear hugging a virtual brown bear that a friend has just sent. Frankie purses his lips but feels helpless – China always makes him feel so helpless.
China, he realizes, returning to finish the clean-up, is now sitting on the stains she has made with the tea on the sofa.
‘Can you move, please?’
China, still texting, shifts a few inches to the left.
‘A bit more.’
Still texting, she moves a bit more. Frankie begins to dab at the stains.
‘I don’t think they’re going to come out,’ he mutters after a few minutes of careful dabbing.
China finishes her texting session and looks down at the damp patch to her left.
‘I don’t know why you get so stressed.’
‘Me – stressed?’
‘Yes – you, stressed.’
Patience finally exhausted, Frankie throws the wet cloth on the floor.
‘At least I’m not sticking compass points into my fucking arm.’
Stunned into silence, China can do no more than stare at him blankly.
‘Look, I didn’t mean… ’ says Frankie.
China has turned pale. When she speaks again, Frankie can barely hear her.
‘You’re an insensitive bastard. And Nodge is a snake for telling you.’
‘Don’t blame Nodge. He thought I needed to know.’
China gets up and stamps up the stairs back to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
Frankie feels blindsided. He had been so completely in the right and China so completely in the wrong. He had exercised patience and forbearance. All that it turned out to mean was the explosion, when it came, was even worse than usual. He had actually been beginning to enjoy the martyrdom of mopping up the tea stains. Now he has lost his right to complain, simply by pointing out an uncomfortable fact.
Perhaps it wasn’t the right moment to have mentioned it, though, he reflects. Now he has cast himself once more in the familiar role of villain. He shouts up the stairs at the closed bedroom door, but his voice comes out reedy and weak.
‘I’m sorry, China. I was upset. I didn’t mean to… you know… say that.’
The door remains firmly closed. He stares at the banister.
It looks worse now than when he started.
Day 37, 29 April 2020
Nodge shouts goodbye to Owen and JJ as he heads out to take the cab on his shift. They do not reply, but then Nodge never hears JJ reply because his voice is so soft and Owen is taking a shower.
There’s not much trade to be had during lockdown. Most of the cabbies queue up at Paddington or Euston for hours hoping for a lucky run that might earn them 50 sovs for a run out to the airport.
After cruising the empty streets fruitlessly for forty-five minutes, the heavens open and pavements are shiny with rain. A hand shoots up from one of the few pedestrians scattered on the pavement and Nodge picks her up, sharp-suited, a businesswoman by the looks of it. She barks an address at the north end of Ladbroke Grove and he goes back the way he came, ending up more or less where he started an hour previously. She pays the fare in cash – no tip – and climbs out into the rain brandishing her umbrella like a sabre.
