A Cupboard Full of Coats Read online

  A Cupboard Full of Coats

  YVVETTE EDWARDS

  A Oneworld Book

  Published by Oneworld Publications 2011

  This ebook edition published by Oneworld Publications 2011

  Copyright © Yvvette Edwards 2011

  “Turn Around Look at Me”, by Jerry Capehart (CA) ©1961

  Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. (BMI) All rights Reserved

  The moral right of Yvvette Edwards to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved

  Copyright under Berne Convention

  A CIP record for this title is available

  from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-85168-762-6

  Typeset by Glyph International

  Cover design by Ghost

  Oneworld Publications

  185 Banbury Road

  Oxford OX2 7AR

  England

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Acknowledgements

  A Cupboard Full of Coats

  1

  It was early spring when Lemon arrived, while the crocuses in the front garden were flowering and before the daffodil buds had opened, the Friday evening of a long, slow February, and I had expected when I opened the front door to find an energy salesperson standing there, or a charity worker selling badges, or any one of a thousand random insignificant people whose existence meant nothing to me or my world.

  He just knocked, that was all, knocked the front door and waited, like he’d just come back with the paper from the corner shop, and the fourteen years since he’d last stood there, the fourteen years since the night I’d killed my mother, hadn’t really happened at all.

  I had imagined that moment a thousand times; Lemon had come back for me. He knew everything yet still loved me. Over a decade filled with dreams where he did nothing but hold me close while I cried. Had he come sooner, my whole life might have panned out differently and it might have been possible to smile without effort, or been able to love. Had he come back before, I might have been happier in the realm of the living than that of the dead, but he had left it too late and things were so set now I could hardly see the point of him coming at all. Yet there he was.

  He stood there in the cold, wet and wordless. He offered no excuses or explanations; no I was just passing through and thought I might stop by. He didn’t tip a cap or smile and enquire after my health, nothing. He stood there watching me as if he wasn’t sure whether I might throw my arms around his neck with a welcoming shriek or slam the front door in his face. But I did neither. Instead I watched him back, till eventually he gave a small shrug that could have meant just about anything.

  He had what my mother had always called ‘high colour’, a black man with the skin of a tanned English gentleman, and like a gentleman, he had always dressed neatly. In that respect, he hadn’t changed at all.

  His taste in clothes seemed the same a decade and a half later, or maybe he’d just found himself stuck with the wardrobe he’d purchased in his youth. He wore Farah slacks that day and a Gabicci suede-trimmed cardigan with a Crombie overcoat thrown casually over them.

  Though the rain had stopped, he was thoroughly soaked through, from his hair – which he had always kept skiffled low but which was longer now: a silver-tinged Afro that was damp and forged into steaming tufts – to the lizard-skin shoes on his feet. But though his clothes were still the same, he had aged. There were changes around his face; the crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes were wider fanned, the bags beneath them full and heavy, and his old skin bore new lines. His eyes were red-rimmed, the whites yellowed, the expression intense as he looked at me, already asking questions, talking of things that should be whispered even when alone, and it was me that looked away, looked down, wondering if my own eyes were as eloquent as his, afraid that they might be speaking volumes, scared of the things they might have already said.

  I opened the front door wide as he wiped his feet on the mat outside. It used to say Welcome, but was so faded now, only someone who knew what it had said before would be able to guess the word had ever been there at all. He bounded over the step like a cat, lithe-footed. He had always been a good mover, the kind of man you could not take your eyes off when he danced, the kind of man you had to drag your eyes off, period. I closed the front door quietly behind him.

  He was in.

  He stood inside the hallway looking around. I had done a lot with the house in the time he’d been away. The green doors and skirtings had been stripped. The old foam-backed carpet had been replaced with laminated flooring. The last time he’d been here, the walls were covered in deep plum velvet-embossed wallpaper; now they were smooth, clean, white. I sniffed.

  ‘You need a bath,’ I said.

  He nodded. I walked up the stairs to the bathroom and he followed. I turned on the taps and the tub began to fill.

  ‘I’ll get you a towel.’

  I left him in the bathroom while I went in search of a towel and some dry clothes for him to put on afterwards. As guys go, he wasn’t really that big, kind of average height, medium build, but he was bigger than I was, and I knew nothing of mine would fit him, even if he had been prepared to wear it. There was still some male clothing in the wardrobe in my mother’s room. Though I had considered it often, I hadn’t cleared out her stuff, and her room was pretty much as she’d left it, but tidied, her things neatly packed away, as if she’d gone travelling on a ticket with an open-date return and might come back at any moment. I even changed the bedding every couple of months, though I couldn’t say why. It was just me here, and while I often passed time in her room, I never slept in my mother’s bed, ever.

  Inside her wardrobe I found a dressing gown, maroon with paisley trim, and I took it back to the bathroom with the towel. The door was still ajar, and though I knocked first, I found him stepping out of his underclothes as I entered.

  He turned around to face me, making no effort to cover himself. The bathroom light was on and its bright glare permitted neither shadow nor softening. Though only in his fifties, he was headed towards an old man’s body: thin and hairy, and gnarled like a cherry tree. His pubic hair was thick and grey. His penis flaccid. I could smell his body above the hot bath steam: moist stale sweat, tobacco and rum. He nodded his thanks for the clothes, turned his back to me and stepped into the bath.

  I heard him turn the taps off as I picked up his wet clothing from the floor, and as he lay back and closed his eyes I backed out of the bathroom, pulling the door shut behind me.

  *

  By the time Lemon came downstairs dinner was ready. Minted couscous, grilled salmon and cherry tomatoes, with spring onions, black olives and yellow peppers tastefully strewn across two large white plates. The dressing gown was knotted tightly around his waist, and his pale legs carried him soundlessly across the living-room floor.

  ‘You hungry?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘You have anything to drink?’

  I indicated the bottle of wine on the table, but he shook his head.

>   ‘Water? Juice? Strong?’

  ‘Strong’s good.’

  ‘Help yourself. Cupboard under the microwave. Glasses are above the sink.’

  In my mother’s day, unless she was entertaining, the double doors at the end of the through-lounge were always kept locked, so that you had to go out into the passage to enter the kitchen. But I kept them open always, and he went through to the kitchen. I heard him opening cupboards, finding the things he needed. He’d always been good in the kitchen; tidy and able. I only just made out the sound of the fridge door closing and I shivered.

  Most things, all they want is a little gentle handling.

  I refilled my own glass for the second time from the bottle on the table, sipping this one slowly as I waited for him to return. When he did, he was clutching a tumbler filled with a clear liquid that was probably vodka, diluted with water perhaps, or perhaps not. I picked up my fork and began to eat as he sat down and took a couple of glugs from the glass in his hand. I saw him wince as if he felt the liquor burn on the way down. He glanced at me, read the question in my eyes, and briefly waved a hand in my direction, dismissing it as nothing.

  His knuckles were bigger than I recalled, or maybe they just seemed bigger because they were so clumsy wielding the knife and fork as he grasped them tight and started poking around the food on his plate, investigating, unhappy. After a while, he looked at me and asked, ‘Ah wah dis?’

  My laughter caught me by surprise. He had come to England when he was still in his twenties, had lived here some thirty years since, and normally spoke slowly, his English tinged with a distinctly Caribbean drawl. He was from Montserrat; a small islander. That he had chosen to ask what I was feeding him in that way was an indication of the level of his disgust.

  ‘If you were expecting dasheen and curry goat you’ve come to the wrong place.’

  ‘I never expect that, but little gravy would be good.’

  ‘You should taste it,’ I said, as he pushed the plate away from him into the centre of the table, shaking his head.

  ‘You want some pepper?’

  He shook his head again.

  I carried on eating. He liked the brown food; brown rice, brown chicken, brown macaroni cheese, brown roast potatoes, the kind of food my mother was so good at cooking, the kind of food I never prepared.

  ‘My wife died,’ he said.

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Cancer. Five months back.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Wasn’t ill or nothing. Just couldn’t eat. Lost some weight. Went to the doctor’s. Doctor send her straight to the hospital. They open her, look inside, then sew her back up. Wasn’t nothing they could do.’

  He swallowed a mouthful from his glass, closed his eyes as it went down, then took another quick swig. He dabbed the sleeve of the dressing gown delicately against the corners of his mouth as if he were using a napkin. He would have seen her hollowed out, skeletal, with even her gums shrunken so her dentures no longer fit. They would have used wax to plump her cheeks out, to give her mouth a fuller, more natural shape, and a transparent liquid tint to make her skin tone lifelike. In the right hands she would have looked healthier dead than when he’d last seen her alive. Though I knew he was married, I had never met his wife.

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Mavis.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  He shrugged. ‘I took care of her myself. Never put her in no home or nothing. Had to give up my job and everything. Couldn’t manage both.’ He raised his glass again, this time to sip. ‘Must be the first time I touch her, she fall pregnant. Her mum was gonna chuck her out in the street and she never had no place else to go. Must be three months from I meet her, sex her, baby on the way, and we done married off already.’

  ‘Did you love her?’ The words were out in the open before I’d even realized they’d been in my mind. It was the question I had wanted to ask him when I was sixteen years old. All this time it had waited, as intact as if it had been embalmed, buried deep inside my memory banks, and I hadn’t had a clue.

  ‘Baby was on the way so fast, and she was sick, sick and vomiting till the boy born. Bills was coming like mountain chicken after rainstorm, one after the next after the next. Never had time to roll on a beach, or check a dance till dawn. Never really laugh much…hardly smile. But at the end, I was there for her. Cooked her pumpkin soup. I feed her from the spoon and wipe her chin. I change her nappy and clean her mess. I did that.’

  ‘Did she love you?’ I asked.

  For a moment, he did not respond. When he shrugged it was as if he considered the question irrelevant. He said, ‘She let me stay.’

  It was my turn to share, to present my life’s summary. His turn to ask random, intimate questions. I waited but he asked nothing. Finally, ‘I have a son now,’ I said.

  Lemon looked around the room slowly, taking in the alcoved shelves filled with books, the comfy wicker chair beside them, the settee that ran the length of one wall, the stereo in front of the window, the TV on the stand above it. There were no toys to be seen. Nothing to indicate that anyone other than me lived here. I had photos but they were not displayed like fertility trophies on my walls.

  ‘He lives with his dad,’ I said too quickly. ‘He’s coming tomorrow. Comes every second weekend and stays.’

  He nodded, then stared back down at his glass without the slightest curiosity. I was relieved. I was always braced for the automatic surprise to that statement, the judging people did of me, their revision of everything they thought they knew about me before, like knowing that one fact put me as an individual into context. He hadn’t done that and I was glad. In all the years he’d been away, there were some things that hadn’t changed. People always felt they could trust him. That had always been his gift.

  ‘So is that why you came?’

  He looked up, eyes narrowed, brow furrowed. I had lost him.

  ‘Because of Mavis.’

  He smiled sadly, and shook his head.

  ‘We never talked,’ he said. ‘About you mum and all that.’

  Though I knew we would talk about her, that it was inevitable she would come up, I panicked, standing up even though I hadn’t finished eating, reaching for his plate, scraping the untouched contents on to mine, gathering together the cutlery and placing it on top.

  ‘She’s been dead for years. It’s over,’ I said.

  ‘Is it?’ he asked, then looked away, down at the floor, wriggling his toes as he spoke, alternate feet tapping the floor like the hands of a drummer sounding a beat. My heart began to pound, the wine spun inside my head and from nowhere nausea rose inside my stomach like a buoy.

  ‘Berris came to look for me,’ he said, then added, ‘He’s out.’

  I did the washing-up. Then wiped down the cupboards and the worktop. I cleaned the cooker, emptied the bin, then swept and mopped the kitchen floor.

  Lemon was in the living room. Smoking. I could smell it. It was something I had forgotten, the smoking. Him and Berris had both smoked back then and burned incense over it. Benson & Hedges and the occasional spliff. My mother had provided the incense. She had never been a smoker herself. The only other man she’d ever lived with was my father and he hadn’t smoked either. Yet, like everything else, she accepted it without a murmur, throwing the windows wide, pinning the curtains back, waving the joss stick around in circles. I closed my eyes and for a second I saw her: small and slim and perfect, arms raised, dancing.

  He’s out.

  He had served fourteen years of a life sentence, a fixed-term punishment with rules and walls that had now ended, and I envied him. Able to begin his life anew, his crime atoned for in full. Blamed and punished, he had served his time, then been freed. Free to visit Lemon so the two of them could talk. Now Lemon was here to talk to me. I inhaled deeply, leaning against the wall, eyes closed, willing myself to calm down, unable to stop the question echoing inside my head: how much did Lemon already know?

  I took a sauc
er from the cupboard and carried it back into the living room. He’d been using his hand, his cupped palm, to flick the ash into.

  ‘I don’t have an ashtray. I don’t smoke,’ I said, handing him the saucer.

  He was sitting in the middle of the settee. I moved to the wicker chair opposite and sat there, watching him, waiting for him to speak. He held the cigarette pinched between forefinger and thumb, took a long, slow drag and opened his mouth to allow some of the smoke to curl lazily upward into his nostrils, before finally drawing it down into his lungs. As he blew out, his rounded lips shaped the smoke into rings and he pulsed them out, one after the next, till the smoke was gone.

  The nausea from earlier was still there, like my mother was being exhumed, and in the silence it was getting worse. I was desperate to know what he knew, yet at the same time petrified he would blurt it out before I was ready. It was that fear which drove me to speak first, to start the conversation from the outside edge, the farthest point away from the core that I could find.

  ‘So how’d he look?’

  ‘He’s changed.’

  I raised my eyebrows, looked up at the ceiling and pursed my lips to contain a snort.

  ‘Don’t believe it if you want, but it’s true.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before…’

  ‘He’s not the only one.’

  I felt the familiar stirring of anger, and I embraced it. Had he expected to find me the same after all this time, after all that had happened? ‘I’ve grown up,’ I said. He didn’t respond. Instead he concentrated on putting the cigarette out. ‘So what did he want?’

  ‘To say thanks for me being his friend.’

  ‘How touching.’

  ‘And he asked after you.’

  ‘Ahh…sweet.’

  ‘And to say sorry.’

  ‘Fuck him!’

  Lemon raised his eyebrows. His was the old-school generation. It was all right for them to rass claat and pussy claat and bomba claat, but children were expected to be seen and not heard. Even though I was an adult in my own right, I was still a clear generation younger than him. He considered my swearing disrespectful.