main road. No hug, no peck on the cheek, no wave, just withdrawal and retreat. Poland. Back at college watching Wajda’s
Man of Steel
and
Man of Marble
. Solidarity buttons. Lech Walesa as a cool guy before it became clear that he was an anti-Semite. But it’s Poland, right. Home of Treblinka and Auschwitz. You don’t change people’s minds in a couple of generations. What else did he know? Kielbasa sausage, but he’d never tasted it. And Chopin, the man she probably thinks of when she imagines a real composer, not Wynton Marsalis. He closes the door and listens as the metal letterbox rattles noisily, and then he is suddenly enveloped in darkness as the sixty-second delay expires and the light clicks off.
Back upstairs and in the privacy of his flat, he opens another bottle of wine, this time with a corkscrew, and pours himself a fresh glass. He then scatters a few crackers on a plate and cuts off a hunk of Gruyère, before carrying everything through into the living room. He kicks off his shoes, and puts his feet up on the coffee table, then reaches for the remote control and turns up the volume of the CD player. Strange, but the flat suddenly seems empty without the girl. He again notices the framed image of Brenda’s face on the windowsill and remembers that it was Annabelle who took this portrait. Although Brenda was clearly ill at the time, there is a serene aspect about her in this photograph which he has always liked. At the end of their first year at university, and before Annabelle went back home to do the work experience job that her father had set up for her at the
Wiltshire Times
, they travelled north together. He had telephoned Brenda as soon as he got the letter and insisted that he would be spending the summer with her, and although she had tried to persuade him just to go ahead with his Inter-Railing plans, his mind was made up. When Annabelle said that she would like to meet Brenda, he called again and having asked her what medicines the doctor had prescribed for her, and checked if she would mind if he did some university work at the city library from time to time, he eventually raised the subject of his previously unmentioned girlfriend. Brenda laughed, then coughed long and hard, before finally asking, ‘Well, is she coming with you or not?’
Brenda lived in the same modern terraced house in which she had raised him. When his father went into hospital, and it looked as though he might not be coming out any time soon, the West Indian man to whom Brenda and his father paid rent made it clear that he did not want her in his property. He came to collect the rent on a Friday night, and he stood on the doorstep and told Brenda that she had no right to do what she had done so she had better take her white arse out of his place by the end of the month. Brenda slammed the door in the man’s face, but on Monday morning she presented herself at the housing office of the local authority who, having listened to her situation made it their immediate business to find a place for Brenda and her charge on their proud new development. Back then the Whitehall Estate featured tree-lined pedestrian walkways, grassy communal spaces for kids to play in, and concrete benches and tables for parents to sit around and talk with each other. However, within weeks the rope swings and carefully assembled mounds of tyres had been slashed and vandalised, and the sitting areas were defaced with graffiti. Glue-sniffers and clusters of youths with cider bottles seemed now to dominate every underpass and footbridge, and although the model estate was no longer visited by enthusiastic groups of studious-looking men with clipboards and cameras, he never once heard Brenda complain. Their house had underfloor heating, a bathroom upstairs, and out back there was a small fenced garden with a tiny lawn surrounded by a thin border of soil in which Brenda showed him how to plant daffodils and bedding flowers. Brenda couldn’t stand the
Man of Steel
and
Man of Marble
. Solidarity buttons. Lech Walesa as a cool guy before it became clear that he was an anti-Semite. But it’s Poland, right. Home of Treblinka and Auschwitz. You don’t change people’s minds in a couple of generations. What else did he know? Kielbasa sausage, but he’d never tasted it. And Chopin, the man she probably thinks of when she imagines a real composer, not Wynton Marsalis. He closes the door and listens as the metal letterbox rattles noisily, and then he is suddenly enveloped in darkness as the sixty-second delay expires and the light clicks off.
Back upstairs and in the privacy of his flat, he opens another bottle of wine, this time with a corkscrew, and pours himself a fresh glass. He then scatters a few crackers on a plate and cuts off a hunk of Gruyère, before carrying everything through into the living room. He kicks off his shoes, and puts his feet up on the coffee table, then reaches for the remote control and turns up the volume of the CD player. Strange, but the flat suddenly seems empty without the girl. He again notices the framed image of Brenda’s face on the windowsill and remembers that it was Annabelle who took this portrait. Although Brenda was clearly ill at the time, there is a serene aspect about her in this photograph which he has always liked. At the end of their first year at university, and before Annabelle went back home to do the work experience job that her father had set up for her at the
Wiltshire Times
, they travelled north together. He had telephoned Brenda as soon as he got the letter and insisted that he would be spending the summer with her, and although she had tried to persuade him just to go ahead with his Inter-Railing plans, his mind was made up. When Annabelle said that she would like to meet Brenda, he called again and having asked her what medicines the doctor had prescribed for her, and checked if she would mind if he did some university work at the city library from time to time, he eventually raised the subject of his previously unmentioned girlfriend. Brenda laughed, then coughed long and hard, before finally asking, ‘Well, is she coming with you or not?’
Brenda lived in the same modern terraced house in which she had raised him. When his father went into hospital, and it looked as though he might not be coming out any time soon, the West Indian man to whom Brenda and his father paid rent made it clear that he did not want her in his property. He came to collect the rent on a Friday night, and he stood on the doorstep and told Brenda that she had no right to do what she had done so she had better take her white arse out of his place by the end of the month. Brenda slammed the door in the man’s face, but on Monday morning she presented herself at the housing office of the local authority who, having listened to her situation made it their immediate business to find a place for Brenda and her charge on their proud new development. Back then the Whitehall Estate featured tree-lined pedestrian walkways, grassy communal spaces for kids to play in, and concrete benches and tables for parents to sit around and talk with each other. However, within weeks the rope swings and carefully assembled mounds of tyres had been slashed and vandalised, and the sitting areas were defaced with graffiti. Glue-sniffers and clusters of youths with cider bottles seemed now to dominate every underpass and footbridge, and although the model estate was no longer visited by enthusiastic groups of studious-looking men with clipboards and cameras, he never once heard Brenda complain. Their house had underfloor heating, a bathroom upstairs, and out back there was a small fenced garden with a tiny lawn surrounded by a thin border of soil in which Brenda showed him how to plant daffodils and bedding flowers. Brenda couldn’t stand the
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