11
So close to home, just on Willesden Lane. Strange convergence. She is leaning into a broken phone box, chewing the stick of an ice-lolly. Thick shattered glass, cuboid shards, all around. A few yards from Cleopatra’s Massage Emporium. Leah opens her eyes wide to store the details for Michel, which is one of the things marriage means. Drawn to the wrong details. Baggy gray track bottoms, off-white sports bra. Nothing else, no top. No shoes! Breasts small and tight to her body. It’s difficult to believe that she has had children. Perhaps that was a lie as well. A neat waist you want to hold. She is something beautiful in the sunshine, something between a boy and a girl, reminding Leah of a time in her own life when she had not yet been called upon to make a final decision about all that. Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impracticaclass="underline" you are walking toward her, at great speed you are walking toward her, and then what? And then what? Leah is quite close before she is spotted in return. It’s been three weeks. Shar drops the receiver and tries to cross the road. The traffic is rush hour frantic. At first Leah is grateful to be without Michel. Then her face turns into his face and his voice comes out of her throat or this is a marital excuse and it is her own voice in her own throat:
— Proud of yourself? Thief. I want my money.
Shar cringes and slips through the traffic. She is running toward two men, tall and hooded, with hidden faces, standing in a doorway. Shar enfolds herself in the taller. Leah hurries on home. At her back she can hear the ricochet of incomprehensible abuse, aimed at her, a patois like a machine gun.
37
Lying in bed next to a girl she loved, years ago, discussing the number 37. Dylan singing. The girl had a theory that 37 has a magic about it, we’re compelled toward it. Websites are dedicated to the phenomenon. The imagined houses found in cinema, fiction, painting and poetry — almost always 37. Asked to choose a number at random: usually 37. Watch for 37, the girl said, in our lotteries, our game-shows, our dreams and jokes, and Leah did, and Leah still does. Remember me to one who lives there. She once was a true love of mine. Now that girl is married, too.
Number 37 Ridley Avenue is being squat. Squatted? The front door is boarded up. A window is broken. Human noise from behind torn gray nets. Leah moves from the shadow of a hedge to the forecourt. Nobody spots her. Nothing happens. She stands with one foot hovering off the ground. What would she do with 37 lives! She has one life: she is en route to her mother’s, they are going shopping for a sofa. If she stands here staring much longer she will be late. In the front bay window: Mickey, Donald, Bart, a nameless bear, an elephant with its trunk ripped off. Fabric faces against dirty glass.
12
— You took your time. Feeling OK? You look a bit peaky. We’ll take the Jubilee, will we?
Pauline steps out of her front door backward pulling a tartan shopping bag on wheels. Always a little older than expected. Smaller, too. From the street it must look like human perfectibility: each generation improves upon the last. Fitter, healthier, more productive. From the owl rises the phoenix. Or rise only to descend again? Longer and longer until it’s shorter.
— Worried about you. You seem all through yourself.
— I’m fine.
— And if you weren’t you wouldn’t tell.
What’s to tell? On the look-out for her, still, almost a month later. Expecting her out of this shop, from behind this corner, by that phone box. The girl is more real to Leah in her absence than the barely signifying bump that is with her all the time, albeit hidden by a sweatshirt.
— I’ve only this blouse on and I’m sweating like a pig already. It’s not natural.
The Hindu Temple has the colours of a block of Neapolitan ice cream and is essentially the same shape. A block of Neapolitan ice cream with two upturned cones at either end. Old Hindus stream down the front steps, unconvinced by the warm spell. They wear their saris with jumpers and cardigans and thick woolly socks. They look like they have walked to Willesden from Delhi, adding layers of knitwear as they progress northwards. Now they move as one to the nearest bus stop, a crowd that takes in Leah and her mother, carrying them along.
— That’s lucky. We’ll hop on. Save time.
— Anyone over the age of thirty catching a bus can consider himself a failure.
— Sugar, I’ve left my pass! What’s that, love?
— Thatcher. Back in the day.
— One for Kilburn tube, please. Two pounds! She was a terrible cow. You can’t remember, I remember. Today this is Brent. Tomorrow it could be Britain!
— Mum, sit there. I’ll sit here. There’s no space.
— Front of The Mail. Today this is Brent. Tomorrow it could be Britain! The cheek of some people. The rudeness of them.
Sat opposite, Leah stares at a red bindi until it begins to blur, becomes enormous, taking up all of her vision until she feels she has entered the dot, passing through it, emerging into a more gentle universe, parallel to our own, where people are fully and intimately known to each other and there is no time or death or fear or sofas or
— and may have had our differences, but he loves you. And you love him. You should get on with it. Council’s set you up very nicely really, you’ve a little car, you’ve both got jobs. It’s the next thing.
You’re next. It’s the next thing. Next stop Kilburn Station. The doors fold inwards, urban insect closing its wings. A covered girl on her mobile phone steps on as they step off and disturbs the narrative by laughing and dropping her aitches and wearing makeup but Pauline is anyway compelled to say what she always says, with elegant variation, depending on the news cycle.
— Just two people kissing, this is Dubai — facing twelve years each. It’s just not permitted, you see. It’s ever so sad.