Me and Mr Booker Read online

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ I said. I told them how he kept a bedroll in the boot of his car so he could go out and sleep in the bush whenever he felt like it.

  I pointed out my father’s car parked in its usual spot, a plum-coloured Jaguar he’d bought second-hand after my mother gave him some money if he promised never to ask her for any more.

  ‘He likes the open road,’ I said.

  ‘What ho,’ said Mr Booker. ‘Toot toot.’

  On the way back to the party we came through the pine forests that skirted our suburb. In the afternoon heat the trees gave off a waxy smell as if they were melting. When we came down over the hill all the houses around us shone like reflections in glass. I asked if England was anything like this and they said no because it was never this hot, or it hadn’t been for years.

  ‘I’d like to go there one day,’ I said.

  ‘What for?’ said Mr Booker.

  ‘To look for my roots,’ I said.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Mr Booker glancing back at me to see if I was serious.

  It wasn’t true. I had no particular reason to want to go to England except that I’d seen it on television. I just wanted to go anywhere that wasn’t here.

  ‘England or America,’ I said. ‘Either is fine. Or Paris.’

  ‘Make up your mind,’ said Mr Booker.

  I told him not to rush me and he paused for a moment before glancing at me in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ he said.

  They stayed at the party for another two hours, drinking and dancing. I had never seen anyone dance as well as Mrs Booker. It was because she had done ballet, she told me, starting when she was four years old. And then, when all of my mother’s other friends had gone home, they said they should do the same. My mother thanked them for coming and said how much she enjoyed meeting them.

  ‘Come again soon,’ she said. ‘Whenever you feel like it.’ After drinking champagne in the heat all afternoon she looked like she needed to sleep. She had taken her shoes off to dance and her hair had come loose from the paisley headband she wore to keep it flat.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mr Booker.

  ‘We’ve had a wonderful time,’ said Mrs Booker.

  ‘We’ve decided to steal your daughter,’ said Mr Booker. ‘If you have no objections.’

  My mother laughed and draped her arm across my shoulder as if she was protecting me, then changed her mind and let me go. The next moment Mr Booker leaned down and kissed me on the cheek, whispering loudly enough in my ear for everyone to hear.

  ‘You’ve been warned,’ he said.

  And then we all walked up the driveway to their car, arm in arm. My mother and I waved to them as they pulled out into the road and drove away.

  ‘What wonderful people,’ said my mother after they had vanished around the corner. She was happy her party had gone well, that so many people had come. She said you couldn’t have enough friends. The more the merrier.

  Like I said before, my father had never liked my mother’s friends. He said they were all phonies. He blamed the women for turning my mother against him.

  ‘As if I needed any help,’ my mother said.

  Later Mr Booker told me it was the hat I was wearing that day that gave me away. I said it was my father’s hat, the one he’d worn when he was mowing the lawn, which was a job that had fallen to me after my father left. I said I had worn it to hide my hair because it had grown too thick and untidy. He said he remembered the green skirt I was wearing and the boy’s shirt with the press-down buttons and the red plastic sandals on my feet.

  ‘You looked like an underage tart,’ said Mr Booker.

  ‘You say the nicest things,’ I told him, then curled round to lick his balls the way he liked me to.

  random acts of kissing

  I spent a lot of time with the Bookers that summer because there was nothing else to do, and because I didn’t want to hang round with Alice any more. Alice was my friend from school. She lived across the road and I used to go to her place all the time to get away from home.

  That was before my father left. After he left Alice’s parents told me I was taking up too much of Alice’s time. I could tell they were confused about how my mother was going to get on now that she didn’t have a husband. When I told them that my mother was happy she didn’t have a husband they looked at me strangely, as if I’d said something rude. After that I stopped going round there, and a couple of months later Alice’s parents decided to send her to boarding school in the country.

  By the time Alice came back for the summer we had nothing to say to each other. Partly because she had started seeing her sister’s ex-boyfriend, who did so many drugs everyone called him The Space Captain, and partly because she felt sorry for me as my parents had split up and I didn’t have a boyfriend. I thought about telling her that I didn’t want anybody feeling sorry for me, but Alice had a mean streak and I didn’t want it to come out on my account.

  I don’t think the Bookers felt sorry for me. It was more that they were looking for some company themselves. And everybody else they knew had children. Maybe they thought they were being kind, but then it turned into something else. I can’t say what exactly, but we all seemed to feel it almost from the start.

  Mrs Booker would ring my mother and ask her if it would be all right to take me out to lunch, and of course my mother would say yes. She liked the Bookers. She liked their good manners and the way Mr Booker gave her presents of flowers and chocolates and kissed her hand when they came to pick me up.

  ‘They have style,’ she said.

  When I told the Bookers this they beamed.

  ‘We do our best with what we’ve got,’ said Mr Booker.

  It was true. They made a big effort. They dressed up even if it was only to go to the pub, which made lunch seem like a special occasion.

  Sometimes it was. I remember one time it was their wedding anniversary. They had been married eleven years. They had met on a train when they were both students in Manchester.

  ‘The first thing I noticed were her legs,’ said Mr Booker.

  ‘The cheek,’ said Mrs Booker.

  He said he had watched her climb aboard the train in front of him in a skirt up to her armpits and her legs were the longest he had ever seen.

  ‘It was lust at first sight,’ he said.

  ‘We were married three months later,’ said Mrs Booker. ‘In a registry office.’

  ‘Totally cuntstruck,’ said Mr Booker.

  Mrs Booker slapped his arm and told him not to be vulgar.

  ‘Just stating the facts,’ he said. Then he had the waiter bring a third bottle of wine.

  Nobody said anything for a while then Mrs Booker told me they had decided to look for a house to buy so they could have a garden and a cat. That was when I asked them why they didn’t have children. They both looked stricken.

  ‘No luck in that department,’ said Mrs Booker.

  ‘In the meantime we’ve decided to adopt you,’ said Mr Booker.

  There was something dangerous in the way he stared at me at that moment. It was so full of violence and sadness he seemed to be about to lift up the table and throw it through the window. Instead he turned away and gazed out at the view of the lake below. We were on the top floor of a hotel overlooking the silvery water and the mountains in the background. We had been sitting there for over two hours.

  ‘When do you want me to move in?’ I said.

  Mrs Booker smiled at me, her eyes swimming with tears.

  ‘Your mother couldn’t live without you,’ she said.

  I knew that about my mother. She was a strong woman but not so strong that she knew how to live without at least one of us at home and, since Eddie had gone, that meant I was the one.

  ‘She dotes on you,’ said Mrs Booker. ‘You’re her pride and joy.’

  ‘I’ll have to leave her sometime,’ I said.

  Mr Booker turned to me then and said that he was prepared to adopt my mother
as well if it would make things easier. That way, he said, we could all be one big happy family.

  The next moment a waiter came and asked us if we needed anything more and the Bookers said no and asked for the bill, apologising for being the last to leave.

  ‘I haven’t had this much fun since grandma caught her tits in the mangle,’ said Mr Booker.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said the waiter, humouring him because he could see how drunk the Bookers were.

  Mrs Booker was so drunk she asked Mr Booker to drive her home to bed.

  ‘Certainly, my sweet,’ he said, holding her upright as we stepped into the lift. They were like two playing cards leaning up against each other all the way down to the car park.

  Their flat was just a couple of boxy bedrooms off a corridor and a low-ceilinged living room. The furniture wasn’t theirs, they said, and most of the stuff they had brought with them from England was still packed up.

  I sat down at the dining room table and waited for Mr Booker to finish helping Mrs Booker into bed. She kept apologising to him. I could hear them through the half-open bedroom door.

  ‘I’m sorry, my darling. I’m so useless. I’m no good to anyone.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ he said. ‘Just go to sleep.’

  ‘Kiss me goodnight.’

  I heard the sound of him pulling the curtains shut and then there was no sound at all for a moment, except the cars going by in the street below. I went out on the balcony and watched them. When Mr Booker came out to join me he put his arm around my waist, which I hadn’t expected, and we stood there together staring at the view. It was nothing much, just the street and the car park opposite and on the other side of that the shopping centre, which was the middle of town but just looked like every other suburb.

  ‘At least you’re close to everything here,’ I said. ‘Not miles away like we are.’

  He turned to look at me and there was something faraway in his expression, as if he had lost his train of thought. I knew he was going to kiss me because his arm pulled me closer to him and he leaned in so that his mouth was next to mine.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he said. ‘I’ve been wanting to do this all day.’

  ‘Do what?’ I said. I wasn’t trying to sound stupid, but I didn’t know what else to say.

  It wasn’t my first kiss. I had kissed two different boys from my school before, David Simmons and Luc Carriere, just to see what it was like, but their kisses were nothing like Mr Booker’s. Mr Booker’s kiss was frightening. It was like he was trying to swallow me whole. When I couldn’t breathe any more I pushed him away.

  ‘Do you think this is a good idea?’ I said. I could feel my whole body going faint from lack of oxygen.

  ‘Do you have a better one?’ he said.

  In the car on the way back to my mother’s place he turned up the radio and we drove along with Dionne Warwick blaring out the windows. He said he remembered Motown from when he was still wet behind the ears like me. When we pulled up outside the house he turned off the engine. I waited while he lit a cigarette then I reached over to take it from him so he had to light another for himself.

  ‘What do we do now?’ I said. I wasn’t used to smoking. I wasn’t used to the sickening kick it gave me in the bottom of my chest or the way it made my hands shake.

  ‘Act as if nothing has happened,’ he said. He was smiling. I could tell he was still drunk from lunch, which is why he had driven so slowly. He had to think about everything he was doing. Even the sight of his smoking cigarette seemed to make him stop and wonder what to do next. Then he remembered and made a little chuckling sound in his throat.

  ‘Do you think you can do that?’ he said.

  ‘I can try,’ I said.

  ‘Jolly good,’ he said. ‘Pip pip.’

  I laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’m just easily amused.’

  ‘That much is obvious,’ he said, taking my hand and lacing his fingers through mine. Then he told me I should go inside before he did something stupid. But I didn’t want to move because he still had my hand and he was holding onto it so tightly.

  I sat there beside him in the car and smoked my cigarette and told him that he shouldn’t go round kissing people at random because it would get him into trouble.

  ‘You think so?’ he said.

  ‘It’s a definite possibility,’ I said.

  And then he said that he would try to control himself in the future because the last thing he wanted was trouble.

  I watched him take a last swig from the hip flask he carried with him wherever he went. He shook it and held it upside down to lick the rim. He showed me how to blow perfect smoke rings. They drifted across in front of me and out the window where the breeze made them ripple and snake away.

  ‘Do you know any other tricks?’ I said.

  ‘Too many to name,’ he said.

  And then he didn’t say anything while the sun sank lower and the car filled with pink light.

  It wasn’t as if I knew what I was doing sitting there. I didn’t. It was just that I knew Mr Booker was happy I had decided to stay in the car and I also had the feeling that he was happier with every minute that passed because it meant I wasn’t scared of him, or of anything he could do to me.

  ‘How is this going to work?’ he said finally, stubbing out his cigarette and flicking the butt out the window.

  I said I didn’t have a clue.

  ‘Now you tell me,’ he said.

  the tea ceremony

  Without any encouragement from anyone my father had started inviting himself round to my mother’s house. He left notes in the letterbox, saying he wanted to pick up some of his tools or a book or a piece of furniture he claimed was his, and that my mother should call him to arrange a suitable time.

  ‘He’s lonely,’ my mother said.

  ‘That’s his problem,’ I said. I hated my father by then. I hated the way he treated my mother as if she was simple. He kept hoping she might change her mind about the separation, even after all the things he’d done to make her kick him out. Not that she wanted to go on fighting.

  ‘If only he could find someone else,’ she said.

  ‘She’d have to be nuts,’ I said.

  In the end she asked him over for afternoon tea. It was a Sunday afternoon. Lorraine was there too. She was boarding with us while she decided whether to marry her friend Geoff or not. Lorraine was an English teacher. Most of my mother’s friends were teachers, but usually they were younger than my mother because her older friends all had husbands and families and my mother just had me. Lorraine was only twenty-five.

  ‘Do you have trouble keeping the little fuckers in line?’ asked my father. We were all sitting out on the terrace while my mother poured tea and offered around milk and sugar.

  ‘No,’ Lorraine said. ‘Why would I? Poetry is their favourite subject.’

  My father realised she was joking and laughed, showing all of his crooked teeth. He didn’t look all that well since he’d moved out. He had put on a lot of weight and let his hair grow long and his skin was the colour of cheese because he spent so much time indoors. I wondered what he did all day. He wasn’t working as far as I knew. His last job had been selling real estate but it hadn’t been a success. He had no interest in selling anything, he said. Let alone real estate. He boasted to Lorraine that he’d never bought into the middle-class wet dream of home ownership.

  ‘I left it to my wife to sell us down that particular river,’ he said.

  My mother smiled in a bored kind of way. It was nothing she hadn’t heard before. Everything he said was something he had said over and over again to her, or to me if my mother wasn’t listening. He liked to lecture her about things he thought she was too blind to see for herself.

  ‘We can’t all live in motels,’ I said.

  He ignored me and sipped his tea. Then he turned to Lorraine again.

  ‘Of course I didn’t have the benefi
t of a higher education, so it was a bit more difficult for me to get my foot on the aspirational ladder, so to speak.’

  Lorraine was uncertain how to answer. I don’t think she really knew what my father was talking about, only that it wasn’t directed at her so much as at my mother, who was trying her best to stay out of the conversation, and that this was the reason my mother had asked Lorraine to join us, so she could act as a kind of decoy.

  ‘It’s never too late,’ Lorraine said.

  ‘For what?’ said my father.

  ‘To go back to school,’ said Lorraine, trying to sound cheerful. ‘My mother’s gone back to train as a dental technician.’

  ‘A dental technician?’ said my father. ‘That sounds like a thrill a minute.’ He smirked at Lorraine because she was beautiful and American and that was enough for him to turn against her now as if her whole race was an offence to him.

  ‘That’s what I told her,’ said Lorraine. ‘But she has her heart set on it for some reason.’

  ‘Perhaps she wants to sink her teeth into something,’ said my father, waiting for everyone to laugh. When nobody did he scowled at my mother and told her he had come to reclaim a couple of chairs from the room he had used as a study, which was now Lorraine’s.

  ‘I sometimes have guests around to my humble abode,’ he said, ‘but I have nowhere for them to sit.’

  ‘Take whatever you like,’ said my mother.

  He seemed disappointed, as if he’d been expecting some resistance or even a fight. He had always complained before that my mother gave in too quickly. A few times he had told me he was sorry he hadn’t married a woman with a bit more backbone, somebody who could have stood up to him and dished him up a bit of his own medicine. I told him that I thought maybe there were some people who just wanted a peaceful life.

  ‘Are you sure you can spare the chairs?’ he said.

  ‘Positive,’ said my mother. ‘I’ll help you load them into your car.’

  He explained that he didn’t have his car, and that he was hoping for a lift home. My mother looked at me.

  ‘Good practice for you,’ she said. She never cared that I wasn’t supposed to be driving around without a licence, because how else was I ever going to improve? Even then I knew that was an indication of just how much of my mother’s attention was taken up by Victor. She didn’t need to invent anything else to worry about.