Born in the 1980s Read online

  When he gets home, Jack asks me what I want to do about the baby and I tell him not to call it that.

  He tells me he doesn’t want me to have an abortion, and I tell him I don’t want to give birth.

  It soon becomes clear that the decision is down to me, whether we like it or not.

  I tell Jack he just wants me to have it so he knows what he’s doing with his life and he doesn’t deny it.

  It would still be amazing, he says, putting his hand on my stomach.

  It wouldn’t always be a baby, I tell him, moving his hand away and standing up.

  You don’t have to do this by yourself, he says as I walk away, and I tell him to be quiet because it feels like everything we say is scripted.

  And because what he’s saying isn’t true.

  That night, when he curls his long, warm body around me, I imagine us as two foetuses under a quilt. I turn onto my back, spread my arms in the most unfoetal way I can.

  When I fall to sleep I dream about a lost kitten.

  I know it’s officially autumn when I get to work, because Tony who sleeps in the kebab shop doorway is sitting at the bar.

  ’Ello darlin’! he exclaims as soon as he sees me, showing me his gums. I’m here for my autumnal coffee, he tells me, it’s the end of British Summer Time.

  I walk behind the bar to put a shot of coffee in the machine and Megan looks at me as if Tony’s existence is my fault.

  I’m going to do the banking, she says and we both ignore her.

  If I’d known you were going to be here, I’d have put my teeth in, Tony says.

  If I’d known you were coming I’d have worn a shorter skirt, I say back.

  Tony puts his head back and laughs, his big phlegmy laugh cracking out around the empty restaurant. I put his coffee down and pour a slug of whiskey in it, happily reducing Megan’s profits.

  Well, I’ve been living in this place for six and a half years today, he starts and I raise my eyebrows as if it’s the first time I’ve heard him say this.

  Six and a half years. You didn’t work here back then, did you?

  No, I tell him, I was still at college.

  And how old were you then? he asks me.

  I tell him I was eighteen.

  Really? he asks in a soft, surprised voice. He pauses for a minute then, fleshy eyelids threatening to fall down onto watery eyes as he stares down at brown, speckled hands. I imagine those hands as they might have been once, soft and pink as an infant’s, or hard and calloused as a working man’s.

  Eighteen, eh? And where have those years gone? he asks me gently.

  I shrug and he takes a sip of his coffee, silent for once.

  He clears his throat elaborately, then starts telling me about his girlfriends when he was my age: Pauline with the long legs and Dorothy who used to give him blowies in the back of his Morris Minor.

  I put some more whiskey in his mug and offer him a slice of carrot cake.

  You’re too good to me, he says.

  As I smile back at him, I realise I’m being kinder to this stranger than I have been to Jack for weeks. And I don’t even know why. I think about the warm body that I left in bed this morning, the way his hair works itself into a tangle where he has been sleeping on it, and the creased look his face gets from lying on his front, then I look at Tony, staring into his coffee, frail strands of hair just about clinging to his head, and I wonder at myself.

  I take my bag into the kitchen and steal two sirloin steaks for tea.

  On the way home, I see a lone woman on the central Grief Bench, her wispy blonde hair catching in the cold wind. The sky above her is low and dark, and so is the sea she stares blindly into. I speed up, fumbling in my bag for my keys.

  I start preparing tea straight away, trying to remove the woman’s blank face with routine and domesticity. But instead, I just imagine her kitchen, empty. Her dead husband’s shoes waiting by the door.

  The steak seems different now, not food, just a stolen slab of flesh. I cook it anyway, trying not to think of morgues or sucked-out foetuses.

  When Jack gets home I hug him hard and present him with his meal, then get him a beer, feeling slightly self-conscious about my fussing. He’s unnerved and keeps looking at me in a way that makes me feel twitchy and unhinged.

  I try not to be disgusted by the blood on our plates. But as he stuffs large chunks of steak into his mouth, I find myself becoming annoyed that he hasn’t noticed I’m not eating mine.

  Don’t you want that? he says finally, when the steak’s the only thing left on my plate. I tell him I’ve gone off meat and he just frowns, then sticks his knife into the middle of it, lifts it off my plate like some kind of Neanderthal.

  That evening, Jack’s sister Holly comes round. She’s just got back from a year working in Southern Africa. She tells us about the state of things over there, then goes on and on about how weird it is to be watching Eastenders.

  Jack tells her that I’ve been banned from conversing with the homeless and I wonder if he’s doing it to please me, or because he thinks it will make us look more philanthropic. I laugh along anyway, looking amused then modest as necessary.

  You know what she’s like, he says in that proud voice. She nearly cried the other day about this old man we saw – she wanted me to give him my shoes!

  I smile, like I always do when he says this kind of thing, but I’m wondering now whose benefit he’s saying it for. If he’s actually just saying it for me, to remind me how kind I am.

  As Holly laughs, Jack pulls me close and just before I disappear into his shoulder I see Holly’s face change. Her laugh falls into a slightly sad, slightly awkward smile and she looks towards the telly.

  I stop going over everything in my head for a minute and try to see what she’s seeing. I realise we look happy, with our dirty plates on the table and our clean clothes on the radiators. I think of Jack pulling me towards him like that and for a second I can see things as if I am him. I can imagine us muddling on together in this rented flat, with a little person that we’ve made by ourselves. And even though I know the picture isn’t real, I realise what it means that he can see it. I kiss him hard on the mouth even though Holly’s sitting right there, then I start asking her questions and listening intently to her answers. I give her my full attention, feeling ludicrously affectionate towards her.

  The doctor confirms the test and I start to feel sick all the time.

  Jack gets used to the idea that our lives aren’t about to radically change and I get sacked for misconduct from the Quayside. It feels like the end of an era, like the end of school or the start of puberty or something. I start looking for a job where I won’t get sacked for trying to help people, and go regularly to the doctors to be probed and examined. The day of the operation gets closer.

  The night before I’m due to go into hospital Jack wakes me up, and I tell him to be careful of the kitten.

  What kitten? he asks and I shake my head, confused.

  I can’t sleep, he says. Come for a walk with me.

  The way he says it is enough for me to drag myself out of bed.

  Outside the moon is bright and there are streaks of silver blue cloud high in the sky. The yachts on the water look gothic. Water slaps eerily against them every now and then.

  It’s obvious where we’re both heading and we make our way to the Grief Benches without saying any words, but when Jack puts a foot on the step, I pull him back.

  Let’s sit here, I say, lifting myself up onto the wall instead. The damp moss seeps through my jeans but I don’t care.

  Jack puts his arm around me so I’m wrapped up in his coat and we both stare out to sea, dry eyed.

  What Am I Doing Here?

  Christine Cooper

  Cerys stared at the screen in front of her. She had been waiting three minutes for her emails to load. Last week it had taken more than six. She had long since given up being in a hurry round here, even if she was paying by the minute; it just wasn’t worth the stre
ss. At the next computer but one, Emily had managed to access her mail with surprising speed, and was typing away. They usually managed the trip into town to check emails once a week; Cerys was never sure whether it was a treat or a chore.

  Outside, the dusty South African sun beat down its forty degrees. Inside wasn’t much better: a creaking fan made sluggish currents in the sticky air, and flies buzzed round Cerys’s head. She looked at her watch. She’d been waiting almost five minutes. They’d have to get a move on to be back before the daily storm turned Soweto’s streets to rivers. The rain came punctually at four o’clock every afternoon in summer. And it was serious rain: the sky would turn black, and release such a torrent of water that you might well be standing under a waterfall. Shop-owners locked up, market traders threw tarpaulin over their wares and ran for cover. There would be thunder and lightning too; beautiful, dramatic forked lightning. Then, after exactly twenty minutes, the storm would leave as suddenly as it arrived, and after another hour of that sun, there would be little evidence it had ever happened at all. Nothing happens by halves here, Cerys thought. And then she noticed that her emails had loaded.

  Twenty-one new messages. She noticed four from her sister Nicola, one after the other, a neat patch of order amid the chaotic mailing lists and porn adverts, with the words [No subject] alongside each. The first was sent three days ago, then two days ago, and the final two yesterday. Cerys stared at them, and felt a strange tightening in her stomach. She clicked the first one, and the geriatric computer began to whirr.

  *

  That morning, Cerys and Emily had woken as usual to the sound of cocks crowing. There were always chickens running around in Soweto. It was never clear who owned them; they seemed to run around wild, living off what crumbs they could scratch out of the dust. The sun was barely up as the girls washed in last night’s leftover water.

  Once they had arrived at the orphanage, the girls got the older kids up and helped feed them their cornmeal breakfast. Most kids came to the orphanage as babies, abandoned by parents who couldn’t afford them. Many were mentally or physically disabled and needed a lot of attention. The healthy ones were often fostered out, and didn’t stay more than a couple of months. There were a lot more kids of all ages lately, AIDS orphans. Only this morning, a little girl of about two had been brought by a family friend, directed to the orphanage by the police. She was terrified, sobbing and clinging at the skirts of the woman who brought her. Cerys had to hold her as the woman left, and it made her heart break, as it always did. Sometimes she felt desperate to get out, away from the hardship and the heartbreak. But at other times she thought, how can I ever leave? How can I leave these children?

  *

  Message sent: 12/07/06 19:06

  Mum and Dad asked me to write and tell you Granny fell over and broke her hip today. She’s in the Heath and she’s in a lot of pain. She’ll be operated on tonight or tomorrow morning. We tried to ring you, but no answer. Will try again tomorrow.

  Love Nic

  *

  Cerys grew up in small-town South Wales, in an ashamedly middle-class family. Her one saving grace was that her doctor parents had sent her to the local comprehensive. Cerys enjoyed being righteous, and she felt her class background did not allow her much opportunity for this.

  She had quietly earned top grades all through school, and gone on to study History at university. She loved it – she attended conferences on the Iraq war and climate change, and joined the campaign to free Tibet. She was filled with theories, ideas and news stories to the point of overflowing. But the more she studied the past, the more she realised it was the present and the future that needed worrying about. The state of the world preyed on Cerys’s mind, and she felt confined, fidgety. So after two years she dropped out and got on a plane to Johannesburg, with no idea what she would do there except that it would be something useful. Her parents were disappointed, she knew, but supportive. Well, financially supportive, at least. Every time she spoke to her mum on the phone, her mum would say: ‘Did you hear about that English girl who was murdered in…? She was volunteering like you…’

  *

  Cerys had met Emily on her first night in South Africa, in the youth hostel they were both staying in, and had liked her instantly. Emily was straightforward with a down-to-earth northern accent. Cerys had lost count of the times Emily made her laugh after a bad day. She was older than Cerys and she knew about the orphanage from someone back in Manchester. After hearing about it, Cerys decided immediately to join her as a volunteer there.

  For their first trip into Soweto, the girls had taken a taxi. The driver had not been happy about their destination, and in hindsight, it probably just drew more attention to them. But Cerys was sure they would never have found the orphanage on their own; Soweto was home to more than a million people. For the most part, it was laid out in a regimented grid structure; one dusty street lined with concrete-box houses was all but identical to the next. The houses were small and basic, with two tiny windows; the sort of thing that might be used to store logs or bikes in Britain. Corrugated iron roofing made them unbearably hot in summer, and cold in winter. A woman selling meat on a street corner waved her hand over her wares, and a cloud of black flies momentarily rose into the air before settling back to its meal. It was so hot that the middle-distance shimmered like a reflection in a lake, so that nothing seemed real.

  The orphanage was a long concrete building, two storeys high. Inside, the walls were whitewashed but the floors were grey and bare. A more loveless-looking place she couldn’t imagine. The director of the orphanage, an elegant but tired-looking woman in her forties, welcomed them.

  ‘Come in, come in. I’m Jessica. Have some tea.’

  The girls were waved into an office lit by a single bulb, and given tea so strong it could have been used as wood-stain. Soon they were meeting the kids in the playroom, and surrounded by little heads, excitedly bobbing and shouting, ‘Hello! Hello!’ It was all the English most of them knew. Donated toys lay on the floor and Cerys noticed that many were broken. She reached out and touched a little boy’s coarse, springy hair.

  ‘That’s Terrence,’ said Jessica. ‘He was one of the first babies we looked after. He’s been rather unlucky with foster-homes, poor darling,’ she smiled. ‘Come and see the baby room.’ Some of the kids tried to follow them, but Jessica shooed them back in, speaking in rapid-fire Zulu.

  The baby room contained rows of iron cots, each with a clip-chart on the end. Two women moved between the cots, picking up a baby here, feeding one there.

  ‘It can be a struggle in here,’ Jessica explained. ‘Babies move in and out all the time. When we’re full, it’s hard to give enough attention to them all; to notice if they’re sick, comfort them if they cry. We’re desperately understaffed, but we just can’t afford any more workers.’

  Cerys loved it already.

  *

  Message sent: 13/07/06 14:37

  Granny had a massive stroke on the operating table, and is basically in a coma. There’s a machine helping her breathe. She can’t move at all, and doesn’t know if you talk to her. It’s horrible.

  Nic

  *

  Cerys’s granny had lived in the house at the edge of the village forever, or that’s how it seemed to Cerys. Her granddad died when she was very small, so the house had always been Granny’s House. It was more than a hundred years old, and so had been infinitely more exciting than Cerys’s parents’ new build. Looking back, Cerys wasn’t sure if it was the quantity of nooks and crannies suitable for hide-and-seek, or just that they got away with more at Granny’s that made it so appealing. Then there were the delicious trays of cakes and puddings Granny pulled out of the Rayburn every visit. In spring, the field behind the house brimmed with daisies, and Cerys and Nicola would lie on their fronts in the long grass, ants tickling their bare legs, making daisy chains for Granny. Granny always put them on in delight, or draped them over a picture on the wall.

  There was a
n old apple tree in the corner of the field. Its gnarled trunk had grown at a wind-twisted slant, making it perfect for climbing. They had regular climbing competitions, which their older brother Mike always won of course. But Cerys’s favourite thing of all about Granny’s house was the grandfather clock. It stood tall and regal in the baize-green hallway, dividing time neatly into small slices of silence with its commanding tick, tick, tick. The clock was always Cerys’s special job when they helped Granny polish. She loved to turn the little key and open the secret door, to spy on the slow-swinging pendulum. It chimed every fifteen minutes, day and night, soothing in its regularity.

  *

  Message sent: 14/07/06 17:10

  Just to say there’s no change here. We try to arrange it so someone is always with Granny. Mike’s come down from Birmingham. When I held Granny’s hand, her eyelids flickered. Tried to phone you again.

  Nic

  *

  Cerys loved the orphanage, and hated it. After six months it seemed like she’d never known any other life but this; Emily was like her life partner, the children at the orphanage became their extended family, and the staff their drinking partners. They began to pick up some Zulu.

  One night, the girls had been at a party in their neighbourhood. Kwaito pumped out of a cramped concrete room, the bass turned up too loud for the ancient speakers so it crackled at the edges. Revellers spilled out into the street, and the stench of sweat hit the back of Cerys’s throat as she pushed her way in. Someone passed her a bottle of rancid-tasting firewater, and then she was dancing, twisting among the tightly packed bodies. The crowd moved as one heartbeat to the music. Then there was a man, a beautiful man with fine dreadlocks hanging around his jaw. She felt his hands on her, and she knew that it was just the same as all the other times; that it was cool to dance with the white girl, cooler to sleep with her, and even cooler to marry her and get a ticket out. But still she leant into him and smiled.