June had been good but recently the summer couldn’t work out what to do with itself; one moment scorching sunshine, the next bucketing rain. Around mid-July Mrs Saldanha had taken to putting her washing on the clothes horse and placing it in the shelter of the back porch, so that she didn’t have to lurch out with the cane and take the clothes off the line soon as the weather turned. On this day it was sunshine with few clouds but you couldn’t trust the skies and she sat in the porch by her hanger, reading one of those Jilly Cooper novels about rich white people getting up to god knows what with each other – they were the only habit she thought of as a vice; good trash to pass the inexplicable days.
Mrs Salhanda had worked for forty years as an auxiliary nurse at Christie’s before being medically retired in ’02; for a few years after, she’d done voluntary days on the SureStart reception off Albert Road, before the hip got too bad for her to hold down even those duties.
Even with the cane and the pills, there was a visible wince as she manoeuvred her body into a standing position; it happened slowly these days, in folds and cracks. Meter readers and parcel bearers learned the value of patience at Mrs Saldanha’s door.
Today Mrs Rasahdi was there. It was obvious that the woman had something to say, and the tension crept back into their discourse for the first time in fifteen years. Mrs Saldanha led her through the front room with all its photographs.
They sat on the back porch and talked around it for a while – the Khan girl’s marriage, the latest mess Mohammed Afsal’s son had got himself into, this new government – before the thing was said.
‘He got his date,’ said Mrs Rasahdi.
‘That right?’
‘Right.’ Pause. ‘October seven.’
They watched the cats circle each other in the grass.
Mrs Saldanha lit a Dunhill.
‘How’d he take it?’
‘Ain’t spoke to him.’ Pause. ‘Wanted you to know before anyone else, cause it’ll get around, and you’ll get calls from the police counselling people, Victim Support an that.’
Victim Support. You work for forty years. You raise five children. You run the Neighbourhood Watch and the TRA. And then suddenly you are just a victim and that’s it.
‘They ain’t called.’
‘Nah, I thought they might have, but just in case.’
‘They ain’t called.’
‘They shoulda called.’
Pause. ‘Thanks,’ said Mrs Saldanha. ‘I real appreciate that.’
‘Thank you.’
They talked on. The Begum girl’s right of abode application had been knocked back again. They were doing something with the post office that had been boarded up the last six years. Aras Qureishi’s boy seemed to be doing alright at the law firm on Stockport Road.
After Mrs Rasahdi was gone to take the dog for a walk down the cycle paths, Mrs Saldanha finished her chapter of the Jilly Cooper book, marked her place with the sleeve, and went inside. It took fifteen minutes to get up the stairs to the bathroom and back down. She tied her scarf around her head, checked she had everything she needed and had done everything correctly, and left the house.
School holidays, and the 169 was full of kids being cheeky and messing around, but by this time only the silliest kid would have dared to cheek Mrs Saldanha or mess her around. She looked out of the window and marked the changes that were happening even now. More For Sale signs on the Princess Road semis. Another totalled bus station left a signature of sparkling blue dust. The Polish place on the Cavendish Road corner had its shutters down at three o’clock.
Normally she visited the Southern Cemetery on three calendar days: the nineteenth of January, the twenty-third of July, and Mother’s Day. This of course was a special occasion. Mrs Saldanha traced her steps to the stone, thinking about how this whole thing started, the pale and tentative woman courtside, and there had been some minister who had praised her after what she’d said, but to Mrs Saldanha her gesture hadn’t been about forgiveness or redemption or even the grace of God (although she did believe in God); she just couldn’t see the point of having this pain and horror extend any further.
She stood graveside for a long time. She moved when she remembered that they closed the gates these days, due to racist and anti-Semitic desecration, plus druggies stripping the metal for cash. Best to get going before the caretaker did his sweep.
Turning around brought a sharp pain above average. Through the trees the sky was still blue but somehow fragile looking, waiting to burst. And yet she’d lived with this condition long enough to know pain didn’t mean rain. Still, in the treelined air there were hovering points of phosphorescence where she tread, like the brightest stars of night in the day.
By Max Dunbar
http://maxdunbar.wordpress.
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