Nightingale Point

CHAPTER ONE

Chapter One ,Elvis

Elvis hates to leave his flat, as it is so full of perfect things. Like the sparkly grey lino in the bathroom, the television, and the laminated pictures tacked up everywhere reminding him how to lock the door securely and use the grill.

‘Elvis?’ Lina calls. ‘You want curried chicken or steak and kidney?’

Elvis does not answer; he is too busy hiding behind the sliding door that separates the kitchen and living room, watching Lina unpack the Weetabix, bread and strawberry jam. She unscrews the jar and puts one of her fingers inside, which is a bad thing to do because of germs, but Elvis understands because strawberry jam can be so tasty.

This is the nineteenth day of Lina being Elvis’s nurse. He knows this as he marked her first day on the calendar with a big smiley face. There are fourteen smiley faces on the calendar and five sad faces because this is when Lina was late.

She puts the jar of jam in the cupboard and returns to the shopping bags, taking out a net of oranges. Elvis hates oranges; they are sticky and smelly. He had asked for tomatoes but Lina said that tomatoes are an ingredient not a snack and that oranges are full of the kind of vitamins Elvis needed to make his brain work better and stop him from being a pest.

Lina’s face disappears behind a cupboard door and Elvis watches as her pink coloured nails rap on the outside. He likes Lina’s shiny pink nails, especially when her hair is pink too.

‘Elllviiiis?’ she sings.

He puts a big hand over his mouth to muffle the laughter, but then sees Lina has removed the red tin from the shopping bag – the curried chicken pie. He gasps as he realises he wants steak and kidney.

‘Bloody hell!’ She jumps and raises the tinned pie above her head, as if ready to throw it. ‘What the hell you doing? You spying on me?’

‘No, no, no.’

‘Elvis, why are you wearing a sweatshirt? It’s too hot for that.’ She slams the tin down on the counter.

‘Steak and kidney pie,’ he tells her. ‘I want steak and kidney pie. It’s the blue tin.’

‘Yeah, all right, all right.’

‘Can I have two?’ he tries, knowing his food has been limited. He is unsure why.

‘No, Elvis, that’s greedy. Now go. Get changed. You’re sweating.’

‘Get changed into what?’ he asks.

‘A T-shirt, Elvis. It’s bloody baking out; go put on a T-shirt.’

Elvis goes through to his bedroom and removes his sweatshirt. He stands for a moment and looks over his round belly in the mirror, moisture glistening among the curly ginger hairs that cover his whole front. When he takes off his glasses his reflection looks watery, like one of his dreams. He then pulls on his favourite new T-shirt, which is bright blue and has a picture of the King on it. It also has the words The King in gold swirly writing. He smiles at himself before going to the living room to sit on his new squashy sofa.

Elvis listens carefully to the steps Lina takes to make the pie: the flick of the ignition, the slam of a pot on the gas ring. Then, the sound he likes best, the click of her pearly plastic nails on the worktops. He loves all the flavours the tinned pies come in and he likes the curried chicken pie most days, but today he really does want steak and kidney.

‘Right, master, your pie is on the boil,’ Lina says as she walks into the living room. ‘Nice,’ she says, acknowledging his T-shirt.

‘Are we going to the bank holiday fair?’ He had seen posters for it Sellotaped up on bus shelters and in the windows of off-licences: Wilson and Sons Fairground on the Heath, 3–6 May. Helter Skelter, Dodgems, Ghost Train! He really wants to go.

‘Yeah, maybe when it cools down a bit.’ Lina flops on the sofa next to him and picks up the phone. ‘Go.’ She waves him away. ‘Why you sitting so close to me? I am entitled to a break.’

But Elvis is comfy on the sofa and he has already sorted the stickers from his Merlin’s Premier League sticker book and watered his tomato plants on the windowsills. He has already carefully used his razor to remove the wispy orange hairs from his face as George, his care worker, had taught him, and rubbed the coconut suntan lotion into his skin as he knows to do on hot days. This morning Elvis has already done everything he was meant to and now he wants to eat his steak and kidney pie and go to the fair.

Lina has his new special phone in her hand. Elvis loves his phone; it is his favourite thing in his new living room, after the television. The phone is so special that you can only make a call when you put money inside and you can only get the money out with a special key that George looks after. Beside the phone sits a laminated sheet with all the numbers Elvis will ever need: a little drawing of a policeman – 999; a photograph of Elvis’s mum wearing the purple hat she reserves for church and having her photograph taken – 018 566 1641; and a photograph of George behind his desk – 018 522 7573. Elvis is trying to learn all the numbers by heart but sometimes when he tries, he gets distracted by the fantastic noise the laminated sheet makes if you wave it in the air fast. Next to the phone is a ceramic dish shaped like a boat that says Margate on it. The dish is kept filled with change for when Elvis needs to make a call.

He watches carefully as Lina feeds the phone with his change and starts to dial, her lovely pink nails hitting the dial pad: 018 557.

‘Go and sit somewhere else,’ she snaps.

But there is nowhere else to sit apart from the perfect squashy sofa, so Elvis goes into the kitchen where he can watch and listen to Lina from behind the door. In secret.

‘Hi … I’m at work. Elvis is driving me nuts today,’ she says into the phone. ‘He keeps bloody staring at me … Yeah I know … Tell me about it … Ha ha. Yeah, true true …’ She slides off her plimsolls and pulls the coffee table closer, putting her little feet up on it. ‘But you know what my mum’s like, always busting my arse over something: look after your baby, wash the dishes, get more shifts. I thought the whole point of having a baby was that you didn’t have to go work no more … Exactly … Especially on a day like this. Bloody roasting out.’

Even from behind the door Elvis can see that the nails on Lina’s toes are the same colour as those on her fingers, but shorter. The colour looks like the insides of the seashells Elvis collected at Margate last summer. He likes Lina’s toes; this is the first time he has ever seen Lina’s toes. He likes them but knows he is not allowed to touch them.

‘Can I have a biscuit?’ Elvis asks as he comes out from behind the door, now peckish and unable to wait for the pie to boil.

‘Hang on. What?’ Lina rests the phone under her chin like one of the office girls at the Waterside Centre, the place where Elvis used to live before he was clever enough to live by himself in Nightingale Point.

‘Can I have a biscuit?’ he asks again.

‘I’m on the phone, leave me in peace.’ She tuts then returns to her call. ‘But look, yeah, I’m coming to the fair later. Soon as I’m done with the dumb giant here I’ll be down … I’ll get it; pay me later.’ Lina slides the rest of the money from the ceramic boat into her pocket.

Elvis pictures the laminated sheet of Golden Rules that hangs in his bedroom. Rule Number One: Do not let strangers into your flat. Rule Number Two: Do not let anybody touch your private swimming costume parts. Rule Number Three: Do not let anyone take your things. Lina is breaking one of the Golden Rules. Elvis must call George and report her immediately.

Lina picks up the laminated sheet of phone numbers and uses it to fan herself. It makes her pink fringe flap up and down, and Elvis wants to watch it but he also knows that he must report her rule break. George once told him that if he could not get to the house phone and it was an emergency, he could go outside to the phone box to make a call. The phone box, on the other side of the little field in front of the estate, is the second emergency phone. Elvis must now go there. He leaves the living room and slips on his sandals at the door. Jesus sandals, Lina calls them, but Elvis does not think Jesus would have worn such stylish footwear in the olden days. He opens the front door gently, quietly enough that Lina will not hear. Then, and only because he knows he is allowed to leave the flat to use the second phone for when he cannot use the first phone, Elvis steps out of flat thirty-seven and heads into the hallway of the tenth floor.

CHAPTER TWO

Chapter Two ,Mary

Ever since Mary woke up she has been feeling uneasy. And as the mother of two, grandmother of four, nurse of thirty-three years and wife to a fame-chasing husband, Mary knows what uneasy feels like. Her elbow has been twitching and she can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. Something is coming.

She opens the pink plastic banana clip and allows her long greying hair to fall about her shoulders. Everything is cooked and cooling but she now needs something else to occupy her mind, to stop herself from worrying.

She covers the last plate – vegetable spring rolls – and stands within the tiny space of bulging cupboards and greasy appliances as she looks for a place to lay them. The worktops are already loaded with plates of food; each one gives off a different fried smell from under sweating pieces of kitchen roll.

‘Ah, too small, too small,’ she mutters. But no one could accuse Mary of failing to make the best use of her space. In each corner of the lino two-litre bottles of Coke are stacked like bowling pins; on tops of cupboards tins upon tins are stashed, heading slowly towards their expiry date; and on a small shelf above the fridge sits no less than seven boxes of brightly branded breakfast cereals. She buys them for her grandbabies. Though after a long shift on the ward she loves nothing more than to peel off her tights and eat two bowls of Frosties while lying on the sofa listening to The Hour of Inspiration on Filipino radio. Mary shuffles around some things, swears to finally get rid of the dusty sandwich maker and to stop buying five-kilo bags of long grain rice.

Her elbow. Twitch twitch twitch.

‘Stupid old woman,’ she mumbles. She knows she is being ridiculous, worrying too much about everything and nothing. She makes a mental list of her worries and tries to remember what the doctor on The Oprah Winfrey Show said to do with them.

‘You think of a worry, you cross the street,’ she says as she pictures the studio audience of determined, applauding, crying American women.

Mary thinks of each worry: talk that teenagers are gathering in the swing park at night to watch dogs fight; the cockroaches that continuously plague her kitchen; the smell of gas that sometimes lingers on the ninth floor; the woman from the top floor who was robbed of her shopping money last week as she got in the lift. It’s a long list.

‘Cross the street, cross the street.’ Mary waves her arms as she imagines each worry float off behind her. But then larger worries, those that are more likely to happen, these are things she can’t dismiss as easily, namely the imminent arrival of her estranged husband, David. Fifteen months he had been gone and then a call from Manila Aquino Airport two days ago: ‘My love, I am coming home, but I am on standby. You know what these airlines are like: locals back of the queue.’ She has heard this from him before, claims of him booking a ticket, being at the airport, getting on the next flight. Even once a call to say he had been diverted to Birmingham and would arrive the next day. She had wrung her fingers with anxiety for almost a week until he finally landed on her doorstep – their doorstep – with an excuse she now struggles to remember. For David, there is always some excuse, some distraction, some offer of money he can’t turn down. Whenever he is due to return home the world is full of people desperate for a poor Johnny Cash tribute act. Or maybe he is with one of his many floozies. Mary has never gotten over her own brother’s accusation that David had ‘a floozy waiting at the side of each stage’.

‘Cross the street,’ she says more weakly as she pictures David’s travel-weary face, greasy rise of hair and fake Louis Vuitton suitcase. ‘Cross the street.’ She cringes as she imagines David pulling her in for an obligatory married couple kiss. ‘Cross the street.’

‘Talking to yourself again, Mary?’ Malachi waves a hand as he enters the kitchen.

She felt bad for pulling him away from his studies, but also pleased for an excuse to check in on him and his younger brother Tristan. When had she turned into such a meddling old woman?

‘I’ve fixed the TV,’ Malachi says.

Mary takes the two small steps needed to cross the kitchen and throws her arms around his middle.

‘It wasn’t even broken.’ He shakes free from her arms and wipes the small beads of sweat on his dark brown skin. ‘Your aerial was unplugged. Tell the kids to stop playing behind the TV.’

Mary nods, knowing she will never tell her grandbabies any such thing – those perfect little girls would have to throw the TV out of the window before she dare aim a cross word at them. Each time they come to stay they leave her exhausted, and the small flat trashed, yet she can’t wait till they come again.

‘Why don’t you open a window in here? It’s twenty-four degrees already.’ Malachi leans over the sink and pushes on the condensation-streaked glass. It screeches loudly as it gives way, allowing the heat from outside to do battle with the steam from Mary’s cooking.

‘I have the vent on, see.’ She indicates the tiny, spinning, dust-covered fan. ‘You look tired,’ she says gently, keen not to nag the boy. ‘Too much study, study, study.’

He looks up at the window and undoes the top button on his shirt. Mary does not like the way he has taken to wearing collarless shirts; she watches MTV sometimes, and knows this is not a fashion among young people. She notices too, as he goes under the sink, that his trousers – muted green cotton with a sharp crease down the middle – are for a much older man.