Now we are forgiven, p.6
Now We Are Forgiven, page 6
‘Come in, London,’ says China in a 1930s BBC announcer’s voice.
‘Reading you, Brighton,’ says Nodge. ‘All tickety-boo?’
His face almost fills the screen. She can see the large pores of his skin, like the peel of an orange.
‘Can you stand back from the phone a bit. It’s like you’re going to burst through the screen and devour me.’
Nodge retreats and the rest of the apartment comes into view, as ever immaculately tidy. She notices a spray of mixed wild flowers in a blue fluted glass vase on the industrial steel coffee table. Otherwise it seems there is little colour or decoration. She assumes this is deliberate to emphasize the clean lines of the furniture.
‘That’s better. No work today? Have the unregulated goblins of the Uber brigade finally brought you to penury?’
Nodge glances at his watch.
‘I start a shift in thirty, so I have to be quick. What’s happening?’
‘The wicked stepfather is being annoying.’
‘Quelle surprise.’
The picture wobbles as Nodge starts to move about the room. He adjusts a photo of him and Owen on their wedding day on the shelf above the grey-veined soapstone fireplace then heads into the en-suite kitchen area, where he pours himself a coffee from a cafetière.
‘What about your real father?’ says Nodge, taking a swallow of the black liquid and grimacing. It is cold and bitter. ‘Have you spoken to him?’
He pours the rest of the coffee down the sink and puts the grey porcelain mug into the dishwasher. China notices that her old school pencil case is down the side of the cushion of the egg chair. She fishes into the unzipped top, takes out a compass, opens it and traces out an invisible circle on her thigh.
‘Uncle Jon, you’re not going to give me grief, are you? I haven’t spoken to him.’
Nodge reaches into the fridge and takes out the packed lunch he prepared the night before – focaccia with mozzarella and tomato, a brownie, some quinoa crisps, and a can of Fanta, which Nodge has never really lost the childhood taste for.
‘One of your shirt buttons is undone.’
Nodge reaches down and closes the button. It pops open again immediately.
‘You should cut down on the Fanta.’
‘Frankie worries about you,’ says Nodge, fastening the button again and putting the snacks and drinks into a Tupperware container, snapping the top closed.
‘What are you? His representative on earth?’
‘I’m his friend.’
China becomes aware of a hammering from downstairs. It will be Silas, she supposes, on one of his endless DIY missions. His latest project is to build bookcases on the landing.
‘He should be worried about me. I can’t get a proper job. Working at Nando’s is rubbish. I’m reliant on Mum for cash. But she hasn’t got hardly any because she spends most of it on Silas and the Beelzebrat.’
She turns the phone to show her Nando’s uniform from where it is draped on her bed. To her annoyance, the inescapable Kardashian now rests on it, shedding hair.
‘I happen to know that Frankie gives you quite a generous allowance. Anyway, why did you take a gap year if you couldn’t afford it?’
China rises from the chair, still holding her compass. She places it on her work desk, which sits on the other side of her bed from the dressing table, turfs the cat off the bed then starts trying to remove the hair from her uniform. Kardashian jumps into the space she has left in the egg chair, settles and closes her eyes again.
‘I was sick of studying. Fourteen years of it without a break. And as you know I was meant to be travelling the world. Until, you know, Sophie pulled out at the last minute. Me and her are so fucking over.’
Removing as much of the cat hair as she can, she sits down at her desk and starts fiddling with her compass again, propping the phone up against her desktop computer screen.
‘You’ve got other friends.’
‘Not ones that are going to fill in on a global tour at a week’s notice. Anyway, I don’t have any friends anymore – not since I left school. They’ve all gone off to uni. All I’ve got is Instagram posts of what fun they are having, or TikTok videos of them and their new buddies. I’m unhappy, Nodge.’
Nodge’s face becomes severe. He brings it close to the phone camera again. This time the pores look like the surface of the moon.
‘This is a conversation you should be having with Frankie.’
China taps idly at the switched-off keyboard of the computer, spelling out f. u. c. k.
‘I can’t communicate with him. We rub each other up the wrong way. Every single time.’
Nodge has moved to the bedroom he shares with Owen, dominated by a king-size bed draped in pure white Egyptian cotton with a Keith Haring ‘Safe Sex’ poster above it featuring two anonymous pale pink male figures in outline, holding one another’s cocks. Each has a green cross instead of facial features. Picking up the rest of the gear he needs to take on the shift – a spare pair of glasses, a book, a pair of leather gloves – Nodge places them in his canvas shoulder bag.
‘Apart from anything else, he’s pretty much a fascist,’ continues China.
Moving close up to the camera eye again, Nodge raises a heavy knitted unibrow.
‘No, he’s not.’
‘He is.’
‘You don’t even know what a fascist is.’
‘He is one anyway. Do you know what he said to me the other day?’
China does a passable impression of Frankie’s west London, sub-cockney brogue. ‘ “Colonialism wasn’t all bad, China.”’
China puts a finger to her head, pulls an imaginary trigger and blows her imaginary brains out.
‘He also told me that he “loves England”. Loves “England”! Not even Britain. But England.’
‘He’s hardly Nigel Farage.’
‘He’s Tommy fucking Robinson.’
‘He voted Labour. He’s a Remainer. I’ve never heard him say anything racist in my life. Not intentionally, anyway.’
‘Intention doesn’t count. It’s how the person who experiences it feels about it that matters.’
China hears a piping sound offscreen. It is a high tenor voice singing:
‘Three little maids who all unwary /come from a ladies’ seminary.’
‘Did you ring me up for a political debate? One of your re-education sessions?’ says Nodge.
Owen drifts into view at the corner of the screen. He is wearing a gold Japanese kimono and carrying a floral fan. He drapes his arm around Nodge’s shoulders and puts his face next to Nodge’s so they together fill China’s screen. Owen is wearing a black wig with bunches on either side and pancake-white makeup with thin pencilled eyebrows. He flutters a yellow paper floral fan in front of his face.
‘Hey! Jiang Qing! When you coming to see us?’
‘Why are you in drag, Owen?’ says China.
‘Mikado.’
‘Mick who?’
‘He’s in a gender-blind version of The Mikado. Am-dram,’ says Nodge.
‘The ignorance of Zoomers is fucking terrifying,’ says Owen. ‘I’m Yum-Yum.’
‘Who’s Jiang Qing? Is he in The Mikado?’ says China.
‘Christ, China,’ says Owen, raising both pencilled eyebrows. ‘She was the leader of the Gang of Four.’
‘That Indie band?’
‘No, the Chinese communist who… the wife of Mao… she… ’
Owen sees China yawning theatrically on the screen.
‘Never mind.’
Owen, rolling his eyes, starts singing again, then disappears from the edge of the screen with a wave of his fan. As if in replacement, JJ briefly moves across the background carrying a bone-china teacup with an unlit cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth. He is dressed in purple pyjamas, his grey hair is tied up in a knot and he is carrying a small trumpet.
‘Now what? Who’s that? What’s going on?’ says China as JJ wanders offscreen.
‘JJ. A friend of ours. Or rather, Nanki-Poo. Also in The Mikado. He’s a player in the Titipu big band. He’s going to be staying with us for a few days in a little while. He’s having the builders in.’
The strains of ‘A Wand’ring Minstrel, I’ come from off camera, delivered in a faltering tenor by JJ.
‘It’s like one big crazy party down there. What is your part in this carnival of cultural appropriation?’
‘Not one of my talents, I’m afraid.’
China turns the compass around in her right hand, and punches more letters on the computer keyboard. B. O. R. E. D.
‘Nodge, to get back to the point. I didn’t ring for a political debate. There’s no point since you’d agree with me anyway.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’
‘I need any ally somewhere who isn’t away at uni. You’ll have to do.’
‘I’m in London and you’re in Brighton, so it’s not much of a geographical improvement. I’ve got to go in a minute, China. Are you okay, though?’
‘Of course. I have everything. Except a life. Or a father who is actually living in the twenty-first century.’
‘No one has a life, China. Or at least not a life like you see on your Instagram feed.’
Hearing a faint purring behind her, China turns and sees Kardashian looking immensely self-satisfied stretching herself out on her egg chair. She wonders what it would be like to be a cat, or any animal, living entirely in the present, without anxiety for the future or suffering the ache of the past.
Nodge slips on his jacket and turns away from the screen. China can hear him calling goodbye to Owen and JJ. China stares at her wrists. Still playing with the compass, she begins gently prodding at the skin. A small puncture appears and a globule of blood.
‘What are you doing, China?’
Taken aback, she realizes that Nodge has returned to the screen and that her bleeding wrist is in view of the camera.
‘Nothing.’
‘You just put that point into your arm.’
‘So?’
‘Are you self-harming?’
‘Christ, Nodge, I was barely thinking what I was doing.’
‘China…?’
‘I’m fine! Honestly.’
She puts down the compass and wipes away the drop of blood with the palm of her hand, but it simply spreads it into a pink stain on her skin.
‘I have to go. Can we talk about this later?’
‘No,’ says China firmly. ‘It’s nothing. Nothing to talk about.’
Nodge looks sceptical. The image on his phone wobbles as he makes his way towards the door.
‘Bye, then,’ he says, looking worried but with a final wave. Then he vanishes from the screen.
Feeling, for no reason she can understand, unfairly abandoned, China stares at the blank screen and becomes once again conscious of the hammering that continues downstairs. She checks her Insta account. Still no likes. She picks up the compass again, deliberately this time rather than absently. She turns it around in her fingers, as if uncertain what its purpose is. She tests the thin skin around her wrist with the point, pushing the skin until deep and concave, to the point of breaking.
Christmas Day 2019: Brighton
The Christmas lunch, cooked by Silas, has been meticulously prepared. He is meticulous about everything. The meal is more sociable than either Veronica or China anticipated. Despite Mason receiving gracelessly some of the presents that ‘Santa’ has brought him – along with the punchbag, he received a pair of off-message trainers, an eco-friendly box of naturally flavoured jelly sweets and a voucher securing a goat for a family in Africa – he has been unusually well behaved, cheerfully anticipating the ‘tree presents’ that tradition, such as it is, demands. These are the non-Santa gifts – family offerings – which are distributed after the Christmas meal.
After the turkey and trimmings – China has waived her vegetarianism for Christmas Day, temporarily adopting the mantle of flexitarian – there is Christmas pudding with a sprig of holly and served with brandy butter plus an enormous trifle, concocted by China, without alcohol in consideration of Silas, who is a strict teetotaller. The women have drunk deeply of the good Primitivo that Veronica had been gifted by one of her grateful clients. Silas sticks to G&T made with fake herbal gin.
Mason, having that morning spent thirty minutes hammering at the punchbag, has usefully consumed a great deal of pent-up energy. His perpetual restlessness is becoming a cause of concern – there has been talk of setting up an ADHD diagnosis. The sooner he’s drugged up and locked in a room the better has been China’s contribution to the debate about his behavioural difficulties. Silas, meanwhile, has been complaining to whoever will pretend to listen about the cost of all the presents and the waste involved – he is always mindful of money and landfill. His justification for this grousing is that his work is intermittent and he does not know how much he will earn from one month to another. China simply thinks him a miser. Generosity, Veronica confirms secretly to China, does not come to Silas readily.
The family snap the crackers, slap on the paper hats and tell the jokes contained within. They are reliably unfunny. They phone absent relatives and friends then settle into armchairs and the sofa – threadbare, but redeemed by a colourful woollen throw – in the living room. The room is in chaos, but then it is a relaxed, comfortable and jumbled house, which is the way Veronica likes it. The Christmas tree, which stands six foot high, is close enough, with the teetering silver angel on top, to touch the vintage chandelier hanging from the ceiling rose. The tree was dressed by all of them a week ago with baubles, tinsel and foil-wrapped chocolates. There is a spreading pile of gifts underneath, most of them for Mason – another reason, perhaps, for his temperate mood. The wood-burning stove in the fireplace forces out heat and for once China does not berate her stepfather for its polluting presence.
Kardashian sleeps on top of the bookcase pushed against the party wall that joins the house to the neighbour, insensible to the celebrations as she seems insensible to everything else. China lowers her gaze to the book spines, her eye briefly resting on The End of Your World by someone called Adyashanti (Veronica’s), Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard (Silas) and Watchmen (Mason). Mason only reads graphic novels, and then rarely, preferring Minecraft or, when visiting certain friends with more liberal parents, Call of Duty: Black Ops.
‘That animal is fat, lazy and largely useless as a pet,’ says China to no one in particular, sitting on the sofa next to her mother, staring at the inert furry blob breathing quietly on the bookcase. She is only slightly drunk. She has removed her paper hat and replaced it with a soft conical red velveteen one. Her top is an outsize sweater with Jeremy Corbyn’s face, topped by a red and white bobble hat, festooned across the front. It reaches almost to her knees. Underneath she is wearing expensive thick white tights, a Christmas gift to herself, which have remained miraculously unsoiled during the messy Christmas lunch.
‘Very body confident, though,’ says Silas, who is sunk into a faded red shabby-chic armchair. He is wearing black trousers, a white collarless linen shirt and a festive waistcoat decorated with holly sprigs. He sips at his alcohol-free G&T while at the same time surreptitiously checking his bank accounts on his brand-new iPhone – a generous Christmas present to himself – under the pretence of texting relatives.
‘Does she ever wake up?’
‘Occasionally. To eat. And shit probably,’ says Silas, not looking up. ‘Although she could probably do that in her sleep.’
‘Don’t you worry about her health?’
‘It is what it is,’ says Silas. ‘She’s got plenty of lives anyway.’
‘Who wants to start?’ says Veronica, waving in the direction of the pile of presents woozily, paper hat askew on her head.
‘Me!’ yells Mason, leaping to his feet from the embroidered Indian footstool upon which he has been sitting and fidgeting, foot tapping relentlessly, a soft jackhammer. He is still wearing his red paper Christmas hat. Somehow it has become stained by gravy. China earlier noticed him taking furtive sips of wine from Veronica’s glass. His cheeks are flushed and eyes slightly fogged. Silas looks at Veronica questioningly. Veronica smiles and nods. She feels relaxed, even content. Pine needles thrown onto the burner fills the room with a festive scent. A carol seeps out of the radio like incense in a thurible.
‘I want to open THIS ONE,’ shouts Mason, jumping up from the footstool and grabbing a long parcel wrapped in foil from the back of the pile. He starts tearing violently at the wrapping.
‘Read the tag first, Mason,’ says Silas evenly.
‘It’s from… ’ He strains impatiently to read the handwriting. ‘China to ME.’
He rips off the rest of the foil to reveal the blazing, brash packaging of a Nerf Super Soaker. His normally restless, twitchy demeanour is torn by a vast grin.
‘THANK YOU, CHINA.’
He runs to China, throws his arms round her throat, quickly lets go, then mysteriously disappears from the room, clutching his plastic booty.
‘Mason!’ calls Silas.
Mason is gone. No one can be bothered to find out where. The three remaining celebrants sit staring at the tree. China feels an invisible force pushing the air out of the room. She has little doubt about its source.
‘It made him happy, Silas,’ said China in a quiet voice, then takes a deep draught of wine. Silas nods, but does not respond.
‘Come on, Silas. It’s just a glorified water pistol,’ adds Veronica, smiling groggily. ‘Shall we do another present? Mason will be back in a moment from – wherever he’s gone.’
Silas nods again. His lips are pressed together. He clutches his glass of fake gin and tonic. White skin shows at the knuckle. He is making China nervous. She has always sensed something dark in Silas. Perhaps by provoking him with her forbidden gift, she is testing him to see if she can force it out into the open. There is a thrill to the fear.
‘Come on, Silas, don’t be a dick,’ she says in a slightly wary voice. Gently though, hoping to lighten the heavy air. ‘You don’t mind having a wood-burning stove in the corner spewing out poisonous particles for him to inhale, but you worry about the kid having a water pistol?’
