‘It’s a fucking great mosque of a place on The Bishop’s Avenue. Queenie’s come through the gates and up the drive. She’ve rung the bell and the butler’s led her through five reception rooms. Picassos. Rembrandts. Cézannes. Ruthie’s on the couch, crying its little heart out. Queenie’s give her a hug and gone, “Ruthie, what is it? Tell your mother. I’m sure you and Ahmed can sort this out.”
‘Ruthie’s gone, “Mum? Aw, what he’s been doing to me! When I come here, me arsehole was the size of a five-pee piece.” “Yes, dear?” “Well now it’s the size of a fifty-pee piece. Take me home.” Queenie looks round the room and says, “Let’s get it straight. You’re giving up all this for forty-five pee?”
‘Ah, here she comes. Here come them famous lils.’
2. Cora Susan
Here she comes: Cora Susan.
She had a hundred yards of lawn to cross. Seen from that distance, she looked like the platonic ideal of a young mother. But where were the children? Peering through the prisms of the sprinkler spray, you expected to make them out, the children, circling her, tumbling at her feet. That must be why she walked so slowly, with an air of dreamy purpose (always one step behind, one step beyond) — to keep pace with the children. But there were no children … As usual, she wore a dress of white cotton, and a broad straw hat. The straps of a straw bag depended from her left shoulder (is that where she kept the wipes and diapers, the rolled-up sock with spit on it — for emergency cleansings of childish mouths? No: there were no children). A slight arrhythmia in the clack of her sandals: time delay, diminishing as she neared. Cora Susan’s hair was long and straight and fine, and a lucent grey, reminding you that grey was a colour — a colour like any other colour. She was thirty-six and five foot one.
‘Have a chair, dear. Paquita’s fetching you a nice glass of wine. I have unfortunate news.’
She took off her hat but remained standing on the lined deck. Unanswerably womanly, but not a mother. The spheres of her grey eyes were too shallow, and without the faults and nicks that they give you — that children give you. Her mouth contained something ungenerous, something resolutely unindulgent; it did not extend outwards into the world — it stayed within. And the secondary sexual characteristics, the breasts, the famous breasts. They were above all binocular: they were the eyes of a different creature, a different type of being, with qualities not necessarily shared by Cora Susan — candour, innocence, even purity. No child would maul them. There were reasons for all this.
Wine for Cora, one glass served by Paquita, and the bottle kept in an ice-bucket on the tray. For Joseph Andrews — Lucozade (couriered out from England by the gross). Every few seconds he slowly reached forward and touched her, rested a light palm on her, almost doctorly — on the elbow, the hand, the wrist.
‘It’s your father, dear. What can I say? He’s gone. He’s passed away … No great shock but he was your father, Cora. Now. You was — you was never told the truth, dear. Your gran’s version, dear. How’d it go?’
‘As it was handed down to me,’ she said in her accentless and warmly civilised voice, ‘Dad crippled himself falling off some mountain, and Mum converted and went to Israel. And I went to Canada with Old Ma Susan. That bit’s true.’
‘… Mick Meo did him, Cora. Your own grandfather did your dad.’
Audibly she breathed in, breathed out.
‘Relations between the Susans and the Meos was never of the smoothest. And I don’t just mean your mum and dad’s marriage. I know what Mick Meo done to Damon Susan. He drew a nine for it: attempted murder. How much do you uh …?’
‘Oh, Jo, please. Tell me everything.’
‘That’s the spirit, Cora. That’s my girl … Your mum and dad was chucking things at each other even before they was engaged. It was that kind of uh, relationship — a right old scrap. Then, as ill chance would have it, come the day when your mum calls Mick and tells him Damon’s took a liberty with her. A right liberty.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Not to put uh, too fine a point on it, dear, he give her one up the khyber.’
With no change in her tone and modulation Cora said, ‘He give me one up the khyber and all.’
‘I know he did, dear.’ Again, the hand on her wrist. ‘And if Mick had known that then there’s no chance Damon’d’ve lived. There’d have been none of this fucky nattempted. That I can assure you.
‘There was no mobile phones in them days. Leda’s left a message at the workshed. Mick’s out nicking high-voltage cables — dangerous work, skilled work — but he was a very good thief was Mick. He calls back: “He what?” But Mick’s out in Stoke and it’s the fucking miners’ strike and he … Anyway. He’s gone in there at dawn.’
‘Floral Grove. Stoke Newington.’
‘He’s gone in there at dawn. Your mum and dad’s fast asleep. In the same bed. So, I don’t know: must have patched it up. For the time being. Your granddad’s gone and drawn the curtains back. You know: rise and shine. Now unfortunately Mick’s still in his work clothes. Heavy boots with the shallow spikes. And the reinforced gauntlets — for them cables. Oh and his helmet. So he’s on Damon now, straddling him like, and nutting him and that, and the roundarms with the big gloves. Then Leda’s on Mick: seems she’s had a change of heart if you please. So Mick’s gone and locked her in the bathroom, and he give her a tap and all, unfortunately — but she was his own daughter, Cora …
‘Damon’s lying there weltering in his own blood. “Ah fuck. Ah Jesus.” All this. Mick’s gone, “How’s your nose?” “How’s me nose? I’m blind, mate!” Then he ‘ve started trying to uh, you know, “reason” with him. You know: “Uh, Mick mate. Look uh, no complaints. Fair’s fair. I stepped out of line. You taught me a lesson. That’s it. End of.” And Mick’s gone, “It’s a crime of passion we got here, boy.” Course he’s been puzzling for a means of doing Damon for years. “This is nothing, son. This is nothing.”
‘Mick’s dragged Damon on to the floor and got on the bed hisself. Then he’s broke both his legs. Jumping like. Then, when you could do what you liked with them, Damon’s pins is wedged sideways and your granddad’s taking running kicks at his cods and his chopper. With the workboots, more’s the pity. Damon’s not making much noise any more but now Leda’s come round and she’s yelling her head off next door. But Mick didn’t pay her no mind.
‘When he’s broke his arms and all his fingers, he picks him up by his hair and what’s left of his bollocks and slings him out the window, sad to say.’
‘And was the window open at the time?’
‘Unfortunately not.’
‘I’m trying to remember the house. They were on the second floor, weren’t they?’
‘Alas no. They was on the third.’
‘There was a lawn there. It was just lawn in the back.’
‘If only. That really was unfortunate. Just the previous week Damon’s had a rockery put in. So he come down on that. And it was that what done for him, landing on his bonce as he did. He was in Intensive Care for nearly a year. And of course Mick went away for his nine. Course, he could have pleaded uh, mitigating circumstances. “Your Honour, I did him because he’s give me daughter one up the khyber.” But he didn’t want to tar her with it, so he never. Then Old Ma Susan spirits you away to Vancouver. And you was lost to the Meos for ever.’