“Like I care,” was Ness’s response to everything. It prompted Kendra to care in equal measure.
“You want to be an adult, be an adult,” she told Ness. But most of the time, she said nothing.
So Joel was reluctant to ask Kendra for help in acquiring a lava lamp for Toby. Indeed, he was reluctant to remind his aunt of Toby’s birthday at all. He thought fleetingly of how it all had been in a past that was receding from his memory: birthday dinners consumed from a special birthday plate, a lopsided “Happy Birthday” sign strung up at the kitchen window, a secondhand and unworking tin carousel in the centre of the table, and his dad producing a birthday cake as if from nowhere, always the appropriate number of candles lit, singing a birthday song he’d created himself. No mere “Happy Birthday to You” for his children, he would say.
When Joel thought about this, he felt driven to do something about the life that had been thrust upon his siblings and himself. But at his age, he could see nothing in front of him to mitigate the uncertainty with which they were living, so what was left to him was trying to make the life they had now as much like the life they had before as possible.
Toby’s birthday gave Joel an opportunity to do that. This was why he finally made the decision to ask his aunt for help. He chose a day when Toby had an extra session at the learning centre after school. Rather than hang about waiting, he scurried over to the charity shop, where he found Kendra ironing blouses in the back room but visible to the door should anyone enter.
He said, “’Lo, Aunt Ken,” and decided not to be put off when she merely nodded sharply in reply.
She said, “Where’ve you left Toby, then?”
He explained about the extra lesson. He’d told her before, but she’d forgotten. He assumed she’d forgotten Toby’s birthday as well, since she’d made no mention of the coming day. He said in a rush lest he lose his courage, “Toby’s due to be eight, Aunt Ken. I wan’ get him a lava lamp over Portobello Road he likes. Bu’ I need more money, so c’n I work for you?”
Kendra took this all in. The tone of Joel’s voice—so hopeful despite the expression on his face, which he tried to keep blank—made her think about the lengths he went to in order to keep himself and Toby out of her way. She wasn’t a fool. She knew how little welcome she’d been projecting towards the children.
She said, “Tell me how much you need, then.” And when he told her, she stood there thinking for a moment, a line deepening between her eyebrows. Finally, she went to the till. From the counter beneath it she brought out a stack of papers in a rainbow of colours, and she gestured for him to join her and to look them over at her side.
“Private Massage” made a straight line at the top of each of them. Beneath these words a silhouetted scene had been rendered, a figure lying facedown on a table and another figure hovering over him, hands apparently kneading his back. Beneath this, a list of massages and their prices ran to the bottom of the page, where Kendra’s home phone number and mobile number were printed.
“I want these handed out,” she told Joel. “You’d have to talk shop owners into putting them in their windows. I want them to go to gyms as well. Pubs, too. Inside phone boxes. Everywhere you can think of. You do that for me, I’ll pay you enough to buy Toby that lamp.”
Joel’s heart lightened. He could do that. He mistakenly thought it would be easier than anything. He mistakenly thought it would lead to nothing but the money he needed to make his little brother happy on his birthday.
TOBY TAGGED ALONG on the days when Joel delivered Kendra’s advertisements. He couldn’t be left at home, he couldn’t be left at the learning centre to wait for Joel, and he certainly couldn’t be taken to the charity shop where he’d get under Kendra’s feet. There was no question that Ness might look after him, so he wandered along in Joel’s wake and obediently waited outside the shops in whose windows the advertisements were put up.
Toby followed Joel inside the area’s gyms, though, because there was no trouble he could get into in the vestibules where the reception counters and the notice boards were. He did the same in the police station and the libraries, as well as the entry porches of the churches. He understood that this activity was all about the lava lamp, and since that lava lamp dominated his thoughts, he was happy enough to cooperate.
Kendra had given Joel several hundred massage leaflets, and the truth of the matter is that Joel could have easily dumped the lot of them into the canal and his aunt would have been none the wiser. But Joel wasn’t moulded to be dishonest, so day after day he trudged from Ladbroke Grove to Kilburn Lane, down the length of Portobello Road and Golborne Road, and to all points in between in an effort to shrink the size of the pile of handouts he’d been assigned. Once he’d exhausted all the shops, eateries, and pubs, he had to get more creative.
This involved—among other things—trying to decide who might want a massage from his aunt. Aside from individuals sore from overworking their muscles in the gyms, he came up with drivers forced to sit in buses all day or all night. This took him at last to the Westbourne Park garage, an enormous brick structure tucked under the A40 where city buses were housed and serviced and from which they departed on their rounds. While Toby squatted outside on the steps, Joel talked to a dispatcher who took the path of least resistance and told him distractedly that, yes, he could leave a pile of handouts right there on the countertop. Joel did so, turned to leave, and saw Hibah coming in the door.
She was carrying a lunch box, and she was garbed traditionally in headscarf and a long coat that dangled down to her ankles. She had her head lowered in a way entirely unusual for her, and when she raised it and caught sight of Joel, she grinned in spite of the performance of self-effacement she’d been giving.
She said, “Wha’ you doin here?”
Joel showed her the handouts and then asked the same question of her. She gestured to the lunch box.
“Bringin this for m’ dad. He drive the number twenty-three route.”
Joel smiled. “Hey, we been on that.”
“Yeah?”
“To Paddington station.”
“Cool.”
She handed the lunch box to the dispatcher. He nodded, took it, and went back to his work. This was a regular errand Hibah ran, and she explained as much to Joel as they went outside to where Toby was waiting.
“’S a way my dad keeps his finger on me,” she confided. “He t’inks he get me to make and bring’m his lunch, I got to dress right an’ I can’t mess round wiv anyone I’m not s’posed to mess round wiv.” She winked. “I got a niece, see, more like my age than lit’ler cos my bruvver—tha’s her dad—’s sixteen years older ’n me. Anyways, she’s seein an English boy, an’ the world comin to an end cos of that, innit. My dad swear I ain’t ever seein no English boys an’ he’s goin to make sure tha’ never happen even ’f he has to send me to Pakistan.” She shook her head. “Tell you, Joel, I cannot wait t’ be old ’nough t’ be out on my own, cos tha’s what I am plannin to do. Who’s this?”
She was referring to Toby who, on this day, had not been talked out of his life ring. He’d been sitting on the step where Joel had left him, and he’d popped up and come to join them as soon as they left the Westbourne Park garage. Joel told her who Toby was, without adding anything to the information.
She said, “I di’n’t know you had a bruvver.”
He said, “He in Middle Row School.”
“He helpin you wiv the handouts?”
“Nah. I jus’ takin him wiv me cos he can’t stay on his own.”
“How many you got left?” she asked.
For a moment, Joel didn’t know what Hibah meant. But then she flipped her thumb at the advertisements and she told him he could easily get rid of the rest of them by shoving them under the doors of all the flats in Trellick Tower. It would, she said, be easier than anything. She would help him do it.
“Come on,” she told him. “’S where I live. I get you in.”
A walk to the tower compr
ised no great distance. They trotted across Great Western Road and ducked into Meanwhile Gardens, with Toby dawdling along behind them. Hibah chatted away in her usual fashion as they took one of the serpentine paths. It was a fine spring Saturday—crisp but sunny—so the gardens were peopled with families and youths. Smaller children ran about the playground behind the chain-link fence of the drop-in centre, and older boys zipped about a graffiti-decorated skate bowl that abutted it. They used skateboards, in-line skates, and bicycles for their activity, and they attracted Toby’s attention at once. His mouth opened into an O, his steps faltered, and he paused to watch, unmindful as always of the odd sight he presented: a little boy wearing too-large jeans, a life ring round his waist, and trainers that were closed with duct tape.
The skate bowl comprised three levels ascending one of the hillocks, the easiest level being on the top and the most difficult and steepest on the bottom. These levels were accessed by means of concrete steps, and a wide lip around the entire bowl offered a waiting area for those who wished to use it. Toby climbed to this. He called out to Joel.
“Lookit!” he cried. “I c’n do it, too, innit.”
Toby’s presence among the riders and the spectators was greeted with “Wha’ the hell” and “G’t out ’f the way, stupid git!”
Joel, flushing, hurried up the steps to grab his brother by the hand. He got him out without making eye contact with anyone, but he wasn’t able to carry off the rescue nonchalantly when it came to Hibah.
She waited at the foot of the steps. When he dragged Toby, protesting, back to the path, she said, “He simple or summick? Why’s he got that tape round his shoes?” She made no mention of the life ring.
“He’s jus’ differ’nt,” Joel told her.
“Well, I c’n see that, innit,” was her reply. She gave Toby a curious look and then looked at Joel. “He gets bullied, I reckon.”
“Sometimes.”
“Makes you feel bad, I ’spect.”
Joel looked away from her, blinked hard, and shrugged.
She nodded thoughtfully. “Come on, then,” she said. “You too, Toby. You been up the tower? I show you the view. You c’n see all the way to the river, mon. You c’n see the Eye. It’s wicked, innit.”
Inside Trellick Tower, a security guard kept a position within a windowed office. He nodded at Hibah as she made for the lift. She punched for the thirtieth floor and the views it offered, which were—despite the grimy condition of the windows—as “wicked” as she had promised. It was a spectacular aerie, reducing cars and lorries to matchbox vehicles, vast tracts of houses and estates to mere toys.
“Lookit! Lookit!” Toby kept calling as he dashed from one window to the next.
Hibah watched him and smiled. She laughed as well, but there was no meanness in it. She was unlike others, Joel concluded. He thought perhaps she could be a friend.
She and Joel divided the remaining stack of Kendra’s massage advertisements. Odd floors, even floors, they had soon dispensed with them all. They met at the lifts on the ground when they had finished their job. They walked outside and Joel wondered how he could thank or pay Hibah for her help.
While Toby moved off to gaze into the window of a newsagent—one of the group of shops that constituted the ground floor of the tower itself—Joel shuffled his feet. He felt hot and sticky in spite of the breeze coming up Golborne Road. He was trying to develop a way to tell Hibah he had no money to purchase a Coke, a bar of chocolate, a Cornetto, or anything else she might fancy as a sign of his gratitude when he heard her name called and turned to see a boy approaching them on a bicycle.
He came upon them quickly, pedalling from the direction of the Grand Union Canal to the north. He wore the signature gear of baggy jeans, tattered trainers, a hoodie, and a baseball cap. He was clearly a mixed-race boy like Joel, yellow skinned but otherwise featured like a black. The right side of his face was dragged down, as if pulled by an unseen force and glued into position permanently, giving him a sinister expression despite his adolescent spots.
He braked, hopped off, and threw his bike to the ground. He came at them swiftly, and Joel felt his intestines squeeze pain into his groin. The rule of the street meant that he had to stand his ground when accosted or be marked forever as having the bottle for nothing but peeing his pants.
Hibah said, “Neal! Wha’ you doin here? I thought you said you was goin to—”
“Who dis? I been lookin for you. You say you headin f’r the bus garage an’ you ain’t dere. Wha’s dat mean, den?”
He sounded threatening, but Hibah wasn’t the sort of girl who responded well to threats. She said, “You checkin up on me? I don’ like tha’ much.”
“Why? You ’fraid to be checked up on?”
With some surprise, it came to Joel that this was the boyfriend Hibah had mentioned. He was the one she talked to through the school gates during their lunch period, the one who didn’t attend school as he was meant to do but rather spent his days doing…Joel didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know. He merely wanted to make it clear to the boy that he had no interest in his property, which was what he obviously felt Hibah was.
He said to Hibah, “Thanks for helpin wiv the handouts,” and he started to move towards Toby, who was bouncing rhythmically against the glass of the newsagent’s by means of his life ring.
She said, “Hey. Hang on.” And then to Neal, “This is Joel, innit. He goes to school wiv me over Holland Park.” The tone of her voice made it clear enough: She wasn’t happy about making the introduction because she wasn’t happy about Neal’s attempt to claim ownership of her. She said to Joel, “This here is Neal.”
Neal looked Joel over, disgust making his lips go thin and his nostrils flare. He said, not to Joel but to Hibah, “Why you wiv him in the tower, den? Saw you come out, di’n’t I.”
“Oh, cos we makin babies, Neal,” Hibah said. “Wha’ else we be doin in the tower in the middle of th’ bloody day?”
Joel thought she was mad to speak in this way. Neal took a step towards her and for a moment Joel thought he’d be put into the position of having to brawl with Neal in order to keep Hibah safe from his wrath. That was far down on the list of things he wished to do with his afternoon, and he was relieved when Hibah defused the situation by saying with a laugh, “He just twelve years old, Neal. I showed him and his bruvver the view is all. Tha’s his bruvver over there.”
Neal searched out Toby. “Dat?” he said and then to Joel, “Wha’s he, a freak or summick?”
Joel said nothing. Hibah said, “Shut up. Tha’s dead stupid, Neal. He’s a lit’le kid, innit.”
Neal’s yellow face went red as he turned back to her. Something within him was going to need to be released, and Joel braced himself to be on the receiving end of it.
Toby’s call supervened. “Joel, I got to poo. C’n we go home?”
Neal muttered, “Shit.”
Hibah said, “You got tha’ right, at least.” And then she laughed at her own joke, which made Joel smile although he tried to suppress it.
Neal, who couldn’t track the humour, said to Joel, “Wha’ you laughin at, yellow arse?”
Joel said, “Nuffink.” And then to Toby, “Come on, Tobe. We ain’t far. Le’s go.”
Neal said, “Di’n’t say you could go anywheres, did I?” as Toby came to join them.
Joel said, “Won’t answer f’r the smell ’f you mean us to stay.”
Hibah laughed again. She shook Neal by the arm. “Come on,” she said. “We got time ’fore my mum wonders where I am. Le’s stop usin it up like this.”
Neal came around at that reminder. He allowed himself to be led in the direction of the scent garden and its shrouded path. But he looked over his shoulder as he walked away. He was marking Joel. It would be for a future encounter of some sort. Joel knew it.
KENDRA’S INTENSITY OF purpose paid off sooner than she expected. The day after Joel set out with her massage advertisements, she received her first phone call. A
man requested a sports massage as soon as possible. He lived in a flat above a pub called the Falcon, where Kilburn Lane became Carlton Vale. She made home visits, didn’t she, because that’s what he needed.
He sounded polite. He was soft-spoken. The fact that he lived above a pub seemed to make it safe. Kendra logged an appointment for him and loaded her table into the Punto. She threw Cumberland pie into the oven for Joel and Toby and produced some Maltesers and fig rolls for their pudding. She gave Joel an extra pound for having placed the advertisements so wisely, and she went on her way to find the Falcon, which turned out to be sitting on what was nearly a roundabout, with a modern church opposite and traffic shooting by from the three roads that met in front of it.
It was no easy feat to find somewhere to park, and as a result Kendra had to lug the massage table some hundred yards from a lane that veered away from the main roads and provided space for two schools. She also had to cross over Kilburn Lane, so by the time she struggled inside the pub to enquire how to get to the flats above, she was out of breath and sweating.
She ignored the stares of the regular patrons gathered at the bar and hoisting pints at the tables. She followed the directions, which had her return to the pavement, go around the building, and find a door with four buzzers lined up on one side. She rang, banged her way up the stairs, and paused at the top to regain her breath.