26a Page 3

  Ida was usually the last to finish eating because her food was special. She had to do things to it. First, she preferred everything stewed—fried up, mushy, with added beans and chili. She liked to be able to pour her roast dinner, steak and kidney pie, rice and stew, sausage and chips, with the beans, onto her plate. And this took time alone at the cooker, stirring and seasoning, and sometimes sitting down to eat at the kitchen table as if she’d forgotten everyone else in the other room. She’d chuckle with Nne-Nne between mouthfuls, and if anyone came into the room the laughter would stop. Second, because Ida often felt cold, what she ate had to be warm, preferably hot. She warmed everything up, including salad, cake, bread, cheese, coleslaw, Safeway’s black-currant cheesecakes (which she was fond of and got agitated if Aubrey forgot to buy them), apples, biscuits and ice cream, until it was almost but not quite liquid. She had her own separate salt and pepper pots that she’d adapted herself with a darning needle from empty tubs of Vicks, which was the sole medicinal substance she believed in.

  The two things Ida said most commonly were “You better ask your daddy” and “Have some Vicks.”

  Since Diana had gotten out of the carriage Ida had stopped eating. Her lunch was going cold. She was leaning forward with her head to one side, gazing at the bride. Almost there, with all of her veil and sequins and flowers intact. Georgia and Bessi watched their mother carefully and looked at Aubrey, who was having a fight with his peas. “Look, Daddy,” said Georgia.

  Now she arrives and her prince holds out his hand. The earth has hushed. There they are, a pool of perfect, shimmering, unbreakable love, ready in God’s greatest UK branch to receive his divine blessing. Diana’s lifting her luscious eyes and they shine out through the veil in their cases of dark mascara blue. Charles, in his medals and buttons, the dashing groom, one of the world’s most eligible bachelors, keeps turning his face to Diana’s because he can’t help it. She sends back shy smiles and concentrates on becoming a princess. She is doing everything right. Love will last when it begins like this.

  “Is there any pud?” asked Aubrey, who smacked his lips and smoothed out his napkin. He liked pudding. All kinds of pudding. Sponge cake, rice pudding, trifle, fruit salad with golden syrup, bakewell tart (invented in Bakewell, Derbyshire, Aubrey’s hometown and origin of the parson’s nose). Layers of pudding were lining his stomach. That’s what happens when you get “over forty-five,” Bel had recently told the Little Ones. The things you like start showing on your body and it becomes harder and harder to get rid of them. You had to do two hundred sit-ups and a hundred push-ups every day, which Aubrey didn’t, which was why he had custard and syrup and sponge on his stomach and red bits of vermicelli in his eyes. Over forty-five sounded horrid. Georgia and Bessi thought that thirty-six might be the best time to stop (they would stop at the same time, they had decided during a particularly long session on the beanbags, of course they would—like husbands and wives who didn’t need divorces, until death do us part).

  Today was rice pudding with optional ice cream, but Ida ignored Aubrey’s question by pretending she hadn’t heard him, which was unlikely because his voice, the only male voice in the Hunter household, was the loudest. Couldn’t he smell it? Rice baked in milk on a low heat for an hour and a half until the top was skin only had one smell. What he really meant was, I am ready for my pudding now; when I am ready, the pudding is ready. Ida took up her knife and fork and returned to her stew. Georgia and Bessi said, “It’s coming, Daddy,” and Bessi felt annoyed a bit and wished he’d be more patient. Bel got up to fetch more gravy, because the room was full of things about to snap and the sniggering accusation of a perfect wedding.

  In real life weddings were different. There were no television cameras and no archbishops. People came as they were, in not-new suits, with stubble, and behaved as they behaved. Ida married Aubrey in a drafty church in Sudbury in the spring of 1965. The vicar couldn’t pronounce her name and there were six guests, some of them sneering, none of whom she knew. Aubrey’s parents, Judith and Wallace (also on the mantelpiece, looking historical and dusty), one of his brothers (the other absent because he didn’t like Africans and particularly ones that were joining his family), an old school friend called Arthur who sprayed spit when he spoke, his new Spanish girlfriend Monica, and a sad old woman at the back in a purple coat who’d wandered in off the street. “Tokhokho,” Ida said to the vicar as he struggled with the three staccato, fearless, perfect Os. “Er, yes,” said the vicar, “To-cocoa.” He couldn’t do it. Irritation feathered his nostrils (he’d missed his breakfast and resented Saturday-afternoon weddings because it meant he missed the horse riding). And it didn’t matter anyway. The name was about to be lost, sent drifting out to sea on a raft made of yesterday.

  Ida the bride was slim and delicately muscled and the tips of her shoulders had a sheen. Her forearms were a circus of bangles. Behind each set of thick, skyward lashes she’d dabbed a fingertip of indigo and wrapped her hair in a white scarf laced with copper. Her body was brown all over and there were wide black tribe tracks down her cheeks. The dress—simple, cream and sleeveless with a slash of peach across the middle—stopped at the knees and her bare calves dipped into a pair of tiny white shoes. Throughout the ceremony Aubrey’s brother William, with the stubble, kept looking openmouthed from the swarthy brown calves of his almost sister-in-law to the flushed pink neck of his little brother. He had never seen anything like it.

  “So…the pudding, then?” prompted Aubrey.

  “It’s not ready yet,” Ida muttered.

  “Wait, Daddy,” said Bessi. “Mummy hasn’t even finished.”

  “And they’re asking her the question,” Georgia added.

  Aubrey sighed to himself and sipped Liebfraumilch. Everyone wished he wouldn’t.

  The twins were hoping that The Wedding might make Ida and Aubrey remember things, that they loved each other, that Ida was very pretty indeed and Aubrey was a nice man sometimes, sometimes lots of times. They wanted their parents to look deeply at the picture of them on the mantelpiece beside the dusty relatives, standing arm in arm behind confetti (how pretty, how pretty she is), and walk back into each other’s eyes with an “ahhh, remember our day” look, and beating hearts. Because then they’d be able to adjourn the perplexing divorce decision for good and Aubrey would go to bed at night cuddling his wife instead of marching up and down and making lots of noise. There was always something, they were finding, that made divorce out of the question—apples, new school uniforms, the Brent d’stression, which would make it hard to find somewhere to live.

  But so far, Ida and Aubrey hadn’t looked at each other once, not once, not even a glance. In fact, there seemed to be nothing less they’d rather do, particularly now, during the question. “Listen, Daddy; listen, Mummy,” said Georgia.

  “Do you, Diana Frances Spencer, take thee, Charles Philip Arthur George, to be your lawful wedded husband?” asked the archbishop.

  The photographers run into her eyes. St. Paul’s is ablaze. It is hot with hymns. They have sung “I Vow to Thee, My Country” and she is leaving herself behind. She wants to take one last look back there, where everything was loose, uncertain and recognizable, but the cameras are marching. There is no more time. It is past. She will wake up tomorrow morning on a cloud of majesty, scores of maids at her feet, mosaics and angels on the ceiling, and dear Charles at her side snoring.

  She says: “I do.”

  “Are they going to kiss each other now?” asked Kemy.

  “Yeh, in a minute,” Bel said.

  “Is he going to use his tongue?”

  Georgia and Bessi had just done the wishbone and Georgia won. She wished for Aubrey to look at Ida deeply and lovingly, and if not, Neapolitan ice cream. Bessi made a wish too (what was Georgia’s was also hers). She wished to be famous one day but only for two weeks because it might get irritating after that. Two weeks was how long their holidays were for—so far Corfu, Tunisia, and the Canary Islands, on the burning beaches (
which was another No).

  Kemy sniggered. “They’re kissing. Look!”

  “He’s no good at it,” Bel said, looking at the kiss sideways. “He’s not moving his head.”

  Cameras cannot catch the inside of a kiss. Charles’s head stays still and Diana receives him obediently. It is not a passionate kiss. There is no tender hand pressing into the small of her back, no arching against him and the round of her breasts seeping into his rib cage. Their lips shake hands. It is sealed. She belongs to him and he belongs to his mother. There are bright sighs and chatter from the congregation and then they are singing again, the hymn “Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation.”

  Ida was trying to remember how she’d felt at that moment, after the kiss. Aubrey had gripped her shoulders as if he’d been practicing how he’d do it. He’d looked about him first, into the congregation, bashful. Here goes. Left or right. Right. No, left. His face descended and then disappeared. Someone coughed, his father, who had come wearing an old green suit that gave the impression he might be at that moment turning into something mightier than a man. A long, growling, nicotine cough and Aubrey finished it there, half holding her hand, perspiring, and they looked back at the vicar, into the new country of their marriage.

  It was now that Ida finally looked over at her husband. Georgia and Bessi sat forward. Her eyes left Diana and Charles walking back up the aisle, and traveled across the carpet to Aubrey’s chair. They moved up his legs, over the mound of stomach waiting for dessert, lingered briefly on the crowded mantelpiece next to him, the foggy old photographs and the silver men, and arrived at his face. Aubrey was no longer handsome, and perhaps he had never been handsome. He had barrels of exhaustion under his eyes from the long sleepless nights, ridges in his lips from sucking cigarettes, and a mottled pallor to the skin from not enjoying life (Bel said). Ida had not looked at him this closely in a long time, and it was a disturbing sensation, their children present around them, that she did not in her heart feel a faint recognition of desire.

  Aubrey may have sensed that he was being observed by his wife, because he glanced toward the armchair and up into her face. Georgia and Bessi were encouraged by this, though it was not the kind of look they had been hoping for. It was a brief, disappointed moment in which Aubrey’s eyes said, “Where the fuck is my pudding?” and Ida’s eyes said, “Get it yourself and who the fuck are you anyway?” It was broken by Ida taking off her glasses and laying them on the windowsill. She got up and said, “Bel, come and help me in the kitchen,” and left the room.

  DIANA’S BOUQUET HAD six different kinds of flowers: gardenias, white freesias, lilies of the valley, golden roses, white orchids and stephanotis. She and Charles were on the Buckingham balcony now, after their kiss, and another glass ride, and another kiss. They were facing the cameras waving and the bouquet looked heavy. Georgia studied it carefully and decided, a quick one, that there should be less because flowers were not meant to be a burden. If she had done it, she would’ve made it less.

  From the palace they were going to Hampshire. Then they’d fly to Gibraltar for a twelve-day cruise through Egypt on the royal yacht, for romance and making children. Ida and Aubrey had returned to their planets. There were three thousand miles between the rocker and the chocolate armchair. Georgia and Bessi were sensing that it might take more than a royal wedding and a red carpet and the Archbishop of Canterbury to close the distance.

  So for now, everyone ate rice pudding. There was no Neapolitan so they had choc-ices instead, which wasn’t bad. This combination of ice cream with something warm meant that Ida didn’t have to heat up her ice cream and they could all eat their pudding in unity. They arrived together at the end of dessert when the crystal bowls were empty apart from shallow puddles of ice cream which had to be scooped in vanilla strips into the spoons, so that the Hunters became an orchestra.

  When the pudding was finished, Georgia went outside to water the rosebush. She didn’t have to say, “Please may I leave the table thank you for a good dinner.” She liked it when she didn’t have to say this.

  While Georgia was in the garden, Bessi went into the kitchen, still hungry because there hadn’t been enough roast potatoes. She was ashamed. She opened the oven and saw three curls of bacon left around the remains of the chicken. It’s not Ham, she thought, it’s bacon. She ate one of the salty pink curls, hoping Georgia wouldn’t know.

  “You’re eating Ham!”

  Kemy was there suddenly at the kitchen door. “I’m telling Georgia.”

  “Oh, don’t!” Bessi pleaded. “Please don’t! She’ll be ashamed at me!”

  “Only if you make me a chicken sandwich.” Kemy was also still hungry.

  Bessi thought about it. “Okay,” she muttered.

  “Toasted,” said Kemy. “But only a bit.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “And with the crusts cut off.”

  “All right.”

  “And mayonnaise.”

  Bessi nodded bitterly and made the sandwich, with mayonnaise and salt and pepper. Sandwiches were very popular in that house. They’d all inherited a taste for chip butties from Aubrey and most of their meals were accompanied by a plate of bread in case anyone wanted a rice sandwich or a baked-bean buttie.

  Kemy ate her sandwich. Twice while she was munching, Bessi said, “You better not tell.”

  THAT NIGHT, THE twins lay in their beds in the dark. The umbrella girls on the walls had gone to sleep. The loft was silent.

  “It didn’t work,” said Georgia, into the black.

  “No,” said Bessi. “What shall we do?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we could get a tea towel with Diana and Charles on it and put it in the kitchen.”

  “Yes. That’s a good idea,” said Bessi. “You’re clever.”

  “We’ll have to ask Daddy for some money.”

  “Yes…”

  “Good night,” said Georgia. “I’m going to see Gladstone.”

  “Good night.”

  Bessi heard Georgia falling asleep. She always fell asleep first. She listened to Georgia’s breathing getting deeper and heavier.

  In her dream, Georgia walked to Gladstone Park. It was a warm night. She reached up and knocked on Gladstone’s door.

  “It’s me again,” she said, “green for Gladstone.”

  Gladstone was in his dressing gown. His hair floated around his head like a halo. He invited Georgia to sit down in the elegant armchair and tell him all about it over a cup of hot chocolate. She warmed her hands around the mug and asked Gladstone if he’d watched the wedding today. He said, “No, dear, I don’t have a television.”

  “It was a lovely wedding,” said Georgia. “We wanted Mummy and Daddy to like each other again, but I don’t think it worked. What shall we do now?”

  Gladstone sat smiling up at the ceiling. “Ah, my wife and I had our anniversary here, back in ’89. What a breakfast!”

  They talked about the roses. He told her to keep them moist. He knew a lot about growing things from planting trees. Georgia liked sitting with Gladstone, and she began to feel that there was nothing to do at all. She felt sleepy. In a slurred voice she said, “It feels like there’s someone missing all the time, when everyone’s together at the table. Is it because of Ham?”

  She heard Gladstone’s voice in the distance. It said: “My dear Georgia, the future has already happened, just like the past. And one day you will see that there are no answers, only the places we make.”

  3

  Escape

  One floor down from the loft, in the master bedroom, Ida turned her back to Aubrey. She began to drift. She wandered back toward home and on the way she remembered again the kiss, Aubrey’s face disappearing into hers, the sunshine afterward as they stepped outside. Maybe a little bit happy, that’s how she’d felt. Aside from feeling lost. As new countries, new beginnings, always give the sensation of being lost, of blindness. You step into a boat after midnight and the waves take you out. You drift. The horizon is anywh
ere and the morning never comes. Not until something inside is quietly shattered and it feels like relief. Then the lights come on, and you can see what has happened.

  That was how it began. Before Aubrey, before England, even before Lagos, Ida’s adventure started two hours after midnight, not on a boat, but on a bicycle. She was fifteen when she left Aruwa. Where the dust on the ground was red and inflamed, where the singing tree sang from the center of the village and the air was sticky. It was a deep dark blanket night and she was discovering loneliness. There were devils hanging upside down from the stars and they were shouting Go home! Where are you running to! She slowed down when she reached the singing tree, its trunk swollen from ancient sunshine and the yearly lashings of ferocious rain. There was a strange thickness to its leaves, an infinite green, and its branches stretched outward and forever. This was where the spirits lived and wisdom was woven, where children climbed branches in pursuit of magic. She’d climbed it often herself, all the way to the top, and sat there on a big blue day hearing voices, whispers. She walked into the world of it now, bowing her head, and prayed a farewell.

  In her bag she had a ruby cotton dress, two wrappers and T-shirts, a tin of shea butter, some underwear and a few niara from Uncle Aka for the bus to Lagos. Her mother’s beads were around her wrist. And everything else was under her skin.