‘I don’t see you till you was six. Some coloured man come knocking on my door and the man ask Brenda if I living in the house. Standing behind him is a small boy in a blue school uniform and with a sharp parting in his hair and wearing glasses. I think you know the boy. Brenda call me to the door, and the man tell me that Shirley finally die of the lung infection that is making it difficult for her to breathe, and that he can’t keep Shirley’s son as the boy should be with the father. This is how I find out that you are now my responsibility, and suddenly I find myself being asked to play the role of the father. Brenda usher both you and the man inside, and then she put on the kettle. Me, I sit down heavy in a chair and wonder how the hell I’m supposed to play this role. I marking you sitting in a corner and screwing up your face like you trying hard not to cry, and Brenda come to sit with you and she start talking soft and offering you sweets, but still you can’t hold back the tears. The man tell me that he marry to Shirley before she even have you, but the pair of them never pretend with you that this man is your father. The man insist that it’s Shirley who tell him that if anything happen to her then he must give you to me, and I watching the man sipping at his tea and making a loud noise, and then the man look up and catch me watching him and he just shrug his shoulders. That night I lie in bed with Brenda and tell her that I don’t see how we can afford a child. Between her work at the hairdresser’s and the bar, and my work at the factory, we have just enough to cover the rent payments on the house. I don’t have much in the way of vices; I smoking a little, and drinking a few beers when I go down to the pub to pick up Brenda at the end of a night, but I already discover that if a man is living in a house, and not just one room, then paying bills in England is a serious business. I see Brenda watching me, but she don’t say a thing. She wait until I finish talking then she put out the cigarette in the ashtray to the side of the bed. The woman turn to look at me. “He’s your child, Earl. It doesn’t matter what you think of Shirley, or if you believe she tricked you. The only thing that matters is he’s your child and you better face up to this fact, okay?” When Brenda finally fall asleep I get out of bed and creep along the corridor and open up the door to the bedroom in which you’re sleeping. I go inside and look down at you lying there with your mouth open and your nose slightly blocked up with cold, and I’m thinking to myself that nobody can say that I don’t do nothing with my time in England. I lose my best friend, and then I get fooled off by a woman, and then I find myself living with an English girl, but at least I have you. But I’m not ready for this. It’s not you that I don’t want, son. I just don’t want this life, because England already hurt me enough as it is. It seem like every time I think I discover some peace of mind then something else come along to trouble my head. But it’s not you that I don’t want, it’s this damn life. I looking at you lying so still and peaceful and I want to bang my head on the wall because I just don’t have any idea how to go forward with my life. I watching you sleeping on the bed in front of me but I just not ready. A part of me want to turn back the clock and find myself in the Harbour Lights bar with Ralph, and I want somebody to give me back my law book and my dictionary, and I want back my mother and my father and Desmond and Leona. Your face is so peaceful and I looking down at you, Keith, and I want to tell you about tall, crazy Ralph, who you never going to meet, and how the two of us sit together drinking beers and listening to the wind passing through the palm trees and the two of us thinking of England. The idea of England is fine. I can deal with the idea. You understand me, son? I can deal with the idea.’
The young man seated two rows in front of him on the bus is watching an action film of some kind on his iPod. The youth’s baseball cap is turned backwards on his head so that despite the mid-afternoon gloom he can just about make out the faded logo of an American sports team. He can also hear the screeching of tyres and the popping of gunshots as the action film climaxes in some sort of car chase sequence. He is still not sure why he decided to take the bus back to London instead of the train, but he suspects that some part of him imagined that the longer journey would give him more time to turn things over in his mind, but as the bus hustles its way down the M1 all he can think about is the time when his father came to see him, the week after the thirteenth birthday visit, and abruptly announced to Brenda that he was taking his son to the pictures. Brenda shrugged her shoulders and told him to go upstairs and get ready, while she stood calmly by the door and waited with his father. He couldn’t be sure if Brenda was standing guard to prevent his father from storming into the house and causing confusion, or if she was worried that his father might disappear without waiting for him. Either way, he hurried upstairs and grabbed his coat and scarf, and then he ran back down, not because he was eager to go to the pictures, but because he didn’t want to leave Brenda alone for too long.
‘What time will you be bringing him back?’ Brenda ruffled his hair as she spoke, and then she encouraged him to fasten his scarf into a knot around his neck. ‘Not too late, all right?’
‘Whatever time the film finish.’