Now we are forgiven, p.22
Now We Are Forgiven, page 22
Frankie hesitates before speaking again.
‘Do you really want me to come with you?’
China’s face contorts. She stares at Frankie incredulously.
‘Are you offering to come?’
‘Yes – if you like.’
She laughs – with genuine amusement, which makes Frankie feel more unsettled then any forced laughter might.
‘No, Dad. I wasn’t serious. I’d rather die of Covid than die of embarrassment. You stay at home and watch the world on telly, like you always do. You stay at home and watch the world burn, black people die, transgender people get murdered while you count your pennies, do up your expensive houses that you bought cheap and watch old movies while drinking bottles of nice wine. Like you always do. You and all the rest of you old white fuckers. Talking of which, I’m going back to Mum’s.’
‘What? When?’
‘First chance I get.’
‘But we were just getting to know one another.’
‘Exactly.’
Day 72, 3 June 2020
Since her return from the BLM march, the atmosphere between China and Frankie has been choked with tension. Frankie is still trying to make amends for sanctioning Roxy’s illicit visit and as a result is vigorously cleaning China’s grubby, untidy room, which he usually leaves untouched out of simple resignation. China has made little attempt to make it any more homely since she arrived. It still resembles what it originally was – a room essentially for storage – only now it languishes under several layers of laundry, half-drunk coffee mugs and scattered footwear.
Frankie picks up the last of the pairs of sweatpants on the floor to put them in the wicker laundry basket and a plastic wrap the size of a baby’s fist falls out of one of the pockets. Inside there are green stalks and leaves. Even the fact that it is triple wrapped does little to block the sour smell leaking from it.
Normally, he would have just returned it to the pocket – he is under no illusions about China’s self-medicating habit – but for some reason he feels in a mischievous mood. He makes his way downstairs holding the wrap in his hand.
‘What’s this?’ says Frankie, brandishing the baggie.
China, sitting on the grey sofa, still in her leopard-print pyjamas, looks up from the book she is reading.
‘What’s it look like? And what are you doing snooping around among my stuff?’
‘I wasn’t snooping among your stuff. I was tidying up your shit.’
‘Just put it back where you found it.’
Frankie holds on to the bag and sits down on the chair opposite.
‘Is this what I think it is?’
‘What are you going to do?’ says China, turning her gaze back to the book again. ‘Confiscate it? I’m nineteen. I can do what I want.’
‘Are you into this stuff? I’m not exactly a stickler about drugs, but I’ve read that for teenagers it can mash up your brain pretty badly.’
‘I haven’t really had an opportunity to be into it. Stuck here and all.’
‘Then why is it in your pocket?’
She wearily looks up again.
‘I had a couple of spliffs when I went out for a walk. So hand me over to the feds why don’t you?’
She holds up her hand for her stash. Frankie hands it over and China, slipping it in her pocket, returns, once more, to the book.
‘Look, China. I’m not quite as straitlaced as you think I am.’
‘Who said I thought you were straitlaced? You get bladdered often enough. As if that was better than a little weed,’ says China, finally giving up on the book and giving her attention to Frankie. She doesn’t know why, but she can’t help but feel defensive as well as innocent. Like she had been caught shoplifting something small from a big chain store.
‘I used to take quite a lot of drugs when I was your age,’ says Frankie. ‘There was nothing else to do.’
China, despite herself, finds herself interested in her father’s druggie years. She had always known that Frankie had been far from innocent in his teenage days. Nodge had told her all about it, but somehow being confronted with it now nonplusses her.
‘What kind of drugs?’
Frankie wonders if he should change the subject, worried what Veronica will make of the conversation. After all, weren’t parents meant to be role models for their children? But at the same time, he senses a small gap through which he might drive some toothpick of intimacy. After the Roxy fiasco and the subsequent BLM march, father and daughter relations seemed to have struck an all-time low.
‘I smoked grass from time to time. When I could get hold of it.’
China throws her legs up on the sofa and pushes a cushion behind her head.
‘How often is “from time to time”?’
‘Pretty much every weekend. Don’t forget I grew up in The Bush. The streets smelled of skunk all the time. Now it’s all gussied up, you don’t get it so much. All Saints in Notting Hill was the frontline. But Shepherd’s Bush was a frontline.’
China’s laugh sounds almost enunciated. Yargh Yargh Yargh. She makes a peace sign.
‘Frankie the stoner. “Don’t bogart that joint”. “Pass me the bong”. “I’m so wasted, man”.’
‘I think it damaged my brain pretty thoroughly anyway. Probably why I ended up as an estate agent.’
‘That explains that, then. What else did you take?’
China has now given Frankie her full attention and it’s his turn to feel uncomfortable. He decides to press on all the same, sitting forward on the chair, closing the space between them.
‘Pretty much everything, I guess.’
China laughs again, not so much out of pure amusement but incredulity.
‘What? Like – junk?’
‘No, no, no. Nothing like that. But – I don’t know. Speed. E. Amyl Nitrate. Shrooms. Coke. Acid.’
China, shifting on the sofa, finds that she has mixed feelings about this confession. She is curious. On the other hand, it wasn’t something dads were meant to do. Like sex. China had never done coke or acid. She thought of them as serious drugs. Adopting a neutral tone, she fixes her eyes on Frankie’s face, which is open, although cautious.
‘What was coke like?’
‘I had a friend called Tony once. Diamond Tony. Not a very nice man. He had a hairdressing business. Ended up going bankrupt and living on the streets because he was so into the snow. It’s a bad drug.’
China nods, in the manner of a formal investigation between a case worker and client.
‘Is it fun, though?’
‘Of course it was fun, or I wouldn’t have taken it, would I? But not for very long. And it makes you very depressed afterwards. If you’re too inside of it, you have to get a new nose. In the end it’s like tearing up £50 notes and flushing them down the toilet.’
China takes her nose between two of her fingers and waggles the tip.
‘I wouldn’t mind a new nose.’
‘Don’t say that. Honestly, though, Chi. Don’t get into gack. It’s not a good place to go.’
Because of the frankness of these confessions, China finds herself taking her father seriously for what feels like the first time in years. Frankie, sensing this, decides to push the borders further, stung as he is by her habitual portrayal of him – even before the BLM march – as a naive, narrow-minded member of the Daily Mail-reading petit bourgeoisie. He leans even further forward in the chair and lowers his voice.
‘Once, when I was a teenager, I did this kind of natural high. It was called Morning Glory. It was flower seeds.’
China almost doubles up with laughter on the couch, bringing her knees up to her chest and hugging them.
‘Flower seeds! Shut up!’
Frankie looks around the room as if to check if someone is listening, then continues.
‘It was called getting an organic high. Not very different from ’shrooms only more horrible. The seeds were called Heavenly Blue. I was round Uncle Nodge’s house with him and we took a load of these things. They were disgusting. And we drank a lot of cheap red wine, too. Bull’s Blood, it was called. Also disgusting.’
‘What did they do to your poor adolescent head?’ says China, stretching out again.
‘Apart from making me feel sick? They lowered my inhibitions. Uncle Nodge and me… ’
Frankie suddenly feels that he pushing at the borders of his relationship with his daughter too far.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘Listen, I’m going to finish up your room.’
He rises and begins to head towards the stairs. China rises too, as if she has caught the odour of something she doesn’t want to lose the scent of.
‘How did it lower your inhibitions?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Whatever it is, I won’t mind.’
‘I wish I hadn’t said anything.’
‘I don’t know what you think you could say about what you did thirty years ago that could shock me.’
They stand face to face, separated only by inches of air.
‘We had sex. Sort of. I mean, not… You know. But there was. Contact.’
China feels her blink rate accelerating and a faint but swiftly growing tightness in her stomach.
‘Who had sex?’
‘Me and Nodge.’
China stares at her father as if hypnotized. He seems to be transforming in her mind as she speaks.
‘Shut up!’
‘You did ask,’ says Frankie, taking a step towards the safety of upstairs.
‘Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.’
Now she is blocking his way.
‘Aren’t you being just a tad homophobic here, China? I mean if I said I’d had… contact… with a woman, would you…?’
‘Fuck off!’
Before Frankie can make it to the stairs, she runs past him, bumping him quite hard on the way. She marches into her room and slams the door behind her so hard the plasterboard wall seems to shake.
* * *
She emerges half an hour later. She finds Frankie staring out of the window, wondering if he has finally destroyed the last vestiges of his relationship with his daughter. China sits herself on the sofa and stares in his direction. He turns and looks at her, but she doesn’t actually seem to meet his eye.
‘Too much information?’ he ventures.
‘Much too much.’
But any hostility in her voice seems to have evaporated.
‘I’ve never told anyone that before. Nobody. Ever. Not even your mother,’ says Frankie, taking a step closer.
China hesitates before replying. She feels disoriented, unsure but oddly flattered by being taken into his confidence. Frankie sits on the floor in front of her as if awaiting judgement from a higher power.
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ she says.
‘Sure. I guess so. Thanks.’
Slowly, as if feeling her way, China gets up and goes into the kitchen, gets one of Frankie’s QPR blue-and-white striped mugs, drops a teabag in it, boils the kettle then pours the water over the bag, watching the steam from the mug rise and disappear into nothing. This is what her life is like, she decides. She returns a few minutes later with the cup for Frankie.
‘So, what – are you gay?’ she says, handing the cup to him.
‘I don’t think so,’ says Frankie, taking the cup carefully. ‘It was the only time it ever happened with anyone. I never felt attracted to men. It was just one of those things.’
‘Did you… did you enjoy it?’
She sits back on the sofa.
‘I sort of did. Yes. Though I would never admit that to anyone.’
‘Except me.’
‘You didn’t want a cup of tea yourself?’ says Frankie, anxious now to move on and away from the subject.
‘I think I need something stronger.’
‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ he says. He suddenly feels acutely vulnerable. China fidgets nervously in her pockets. She feels the baggie there which she had forgotten about. She rolls it between her fingers, then brings it out and waggles it in front of his face.
‘Tell you what. Shall I roll one?’
Frankie, not quite knowing how to respond, takes a sip of the tea, playing for time. In the end, he says nothing.
‘Just to help me through these difficult teenage years?’
Frankie puts the tea down on the coffee table.
He smiles.
* * *
Half an hour later, the room is seamed with the rich smell of grass. China reclines on the sofa, a saucer doubling as an ashtray balanced on the arm. Frankie crouches on a brown leather footstool. China is staring intently at Frankie’s nostrils.
‘You’re making me uncomfortable,’ says Frankie.
‘There’s bristles in there. Like a toothbrush. A toothbrush up your nose. Two toothbrushes.’
‘I was young once,’ says Frankie.
‘You ain’t now, old man.’
‘Got hair coming out of all the wrong places.’
‘And no longer coming out of the right places.’
Frankie carries on ineffectively rolling a spliff, spilling tobacco and weed on the carpet.
‘Hair’s a funny thing.’
‘Ker – a – tin,’ says China. ‘Is what they call it.’
‘Fuzzy stuff all over you and, like, on your face. What’s the point of face hair? What’s its significance? Or ear hair for that matter. Or hair hair.’
China shrugs and nods, contemplating the question deeply.
‘I’ve got hair on my back too,’ says Frankie.
He suddenly seems puzzled.
‘Have I got hair on my back?’
‘It’s your back,’ says China.
Frankie gazes at China. Her eyes are glazed.
‘I can’t see it. Can I?’
There is a moment’s pause, then they both burst into laughter.
‘Like the back of my head. Or any of my head. I mean, where is my head? I can’t see it.’
‘Top of your neck. You ever had a beard?’
Now Frankie has lit the saggy spliff and is trying to draw on it. Having managed to shallowly inhale, he passes it to China.
‘Your mother – God bless her little cotton socks – didn’t like them.’
‘Silas has a beard, though.’
‘No, he doesn’t.’
‘He did when he met Mum. This spliff is a mess.’
She tries to tighten up the paper with a few licks and presses with her fingers.
‘That’s better.’
Frankie affectionately mimics her in a high-pitched whiny voice.
‘Silas has a beard. That manky old stuffed teddy bear. That soft toy. That lame-o. Have you ever had a beard?’
China squints through the smoke, now satisfied with the draw she is getting.
‘Not so far as I can… ’
She pauses. The next word seems to elude her.
‘Recall,’ she says eventually.
‘But why not?’
‘Why not – what?’
Frankie screws up his face, trying to solve the conundrum.
‘Everything’s mixed together now – isn’t it? Male, female. Trans, straight. Sex, intersex. Pansex. Not that I know what intersex is. Or Pansex.’
China hands Frankie the repaired joint and he takes it.
‘Don’t use that word.’
‘Sex?’ says Frankie, taking a puff. ‘Why’re Zoomers grossed out by the idea that their parents had sex? It’s not as if there wasn’t evidence.’
China puts her fingers in her ears and makes a la-la-la sound. Frankie takes another puff and hands China back the joint. She takes it and inhales deeply, then balances it on the edge of the saucer. A few moments later, when China has stopped la-la-ing and removed her fingers from her ears, Frankie speaks again.
‘This stuff is potent. I’ve got a whitey coming.’
‘A whitey?’
She wrinkles her nose in disgust. She licks her lips. She suddenly feels starving.
‘I’ve got the munchies very bad, Dad.’
China throws her legs up on the footstool and stretches out her arms.
‘Bad Dad. That’s what you is.’
‘Haha,’ says Frankie. ‘Then you’re a… whiner, China.’
She picks up the joint from the makeshift ashtray.
‘I mean you’re not really a bad dad. Not in general,’ she says, sucking on the soggy roach. ‘Apart from abandoning us. And bankrupting us. You’re bad for smoking weed with your nineteen-year-old daughter, though.’
‘I expect I’ll forgive myself. I’ll see what we’ve got to cure those munchies.’
Frankie shakily makes his way to the kitchen. He returns a minute later with two Crunchie bars and a Terry’s Chocolate Orange. He starts to clumsily take the silver paper off the chocolate orange.
‘Now I’m feeling menolcholic,’ he says.
‘Melancholic.’
‘Like a melon with stomach pain.’
The scraps of foil fall to the carpet floor and he stuffs a segment of the chocolate orange into his mouth.
‘Why the feeling of… melon?’ says China as he hands her the remainder of the orange. His fingers are sticky and brown with chocolate.
‘Why? Good question. Why? Yes. Precisely.’
Frankie racks his brain for a reply that makes some sense. Or anything at all that might make any sense at all.
‘Because I still love your mum. That’s why.’
China shifts in her chair, snaps off half the chocolate orange and bites it.
‘Even I can see that, mate. Even when I’m bare lit.’
‘Didn’t think it showed. Your face is covered in brown stuff.’
‘Why wouldn’t you love her?’ says China, wiping her mouth with her pyjama sleeve. ‘She’s a great woman.’
‘I know.’
‘But then if she’s such a great woman – why did you leave her? Leave us.’
Frankie feels himself abruptly begin to come down from the high.
‘She didn’t love me anymore, China. And… ’
‘And what?’
China examines the chocolate stain on her pyjama sleeve, while consuming what is left of the chocolate orange.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
She hands him the remainder of the smouldering joint.
