The Book of other People Part 4

HANWELL: (sadly) We couldn't afford the uniform for the grammar. I pa.s.sed the eleven-plus, but we couldn't afford it.

HANWELL SNR: (laughing till he cries) Still telling that old chestnut? Dear, oh dear. Bit antique that story, isn't it? I'd rather call a spade a spade, let everything come up roses. Well, whatever floats your boat, Hanwell, I'm sure.

HANWELL: (sung) I put a chestnut in a boat . . . I rowed it with a spade . . . A rose I gave my love that day.

HANWELL SNR: You've gone soft.

'Whose bike is this?'

Hanwell sat up and was greeted - not with any particular surprise, although with a little sheepishness - and offered the first chips out of the fryer, which he accepted.

'I've a little fold-up table somewhere here . . .'

Hanwell watched Hanwell Snr struggle with the household bric-a-brac and shabby furniture piled up in the back of the van. A tall lamp with a ta.s.selled shade and a coat stand lay across each other: a coat of arms for the house of Hanwell. The ambulance driver, Bunty, who might have kept things clean for him, had died the year before - her money had bought this little concern. Maybe she had cooked him his greens, too, and watched his drink, and it was only now that the ghastly bloat took hold, and the blood vessels broke and dispersed beneath the skin of the nose and cheeks, and the orange whiskers grew wild and laced with grey. It was a shock. Historically, Hanwell Snr was physically superior to Hanwell: Sit on my back - go on, sit on it! You won't break me! Usually said to a lady, and then when she was settled like the Buddha he'd do a press-up or two, sometimes five. Now he turned, holding the little table upside down against his vast belly, and this soft thing, more than all the rest, announced him as a man deserted by women.

'There we are' - his great a.r.s.e pressed on the tabletop; the cast-iron legs sunk deep into the lawn - 'I don't believe in standing and eating.'

He brought out two little stools, and Hanwell sat on the one handed to him. For a time, Hanwell Snr made his own reluctance to sit appear quite natural, busying himself with the hot oil and dismissing certain chips as not fit to be thrown in the fryer if his only son was to eat them. When the fuss of frying was over, Hanwell realized the obvious: his father couldn't stand to look at him. They remained looking out on the meadow beyond the green, Hanwell Snr leaning against the van, despite his beliefs, with his sweaty cone of newspaper and chewing each chip a long time. He looked across Hanwell if Hanwell spoke, but never at him.

Of their conversation, Hanwell could retain practically nothing, finding it quite as unreal as their dream talk earlier. While Hanwell silently pursued a series of unlikely but longed-for confessions (Well, son, the thing is . . . . . . To tell you the truth, I regret terribly To tell you the truth, I regret terribly . . .), in the real, thick ripple of the air Hanwell Snr was sweating and rambling about the Suez business and the Araby b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and other matters of the world that Hanwell - the least political of men, a man for whom the world was, and could consist only of, those people he saw or spoke to every day, fed, washed or made love to - could not comprehend. At last the topic turned to the people who concerned Hanwell - Hanwell's wife, Hanwell's daughters. Hanwell shyly described his current difficulty, making use of the doctor's careful and superior phrases ('mental disturbance' and 'a tendency toward hysteria'). Hanwell Snr drew a hankie from his back pocket, worked it round the grime on the back of his neck. He took his time folding it back into quarters. Hanwell saw at once that his father thought it entirely typical of Hanwell to marry a woman who was broken in some way, and now felt much the same satirical disgust he'd expressed when the boy Hanwell, instead of laughing at being dangled from a pier, took it in his head to cry. . . .), in the real, thick ripple of the air Hanwell Snr was sweating and rambling about the Suez business and the Araby b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and other matters of the world that Hanwell - the least political of men, a man for whom the world was, and could consist only of, those people he saw or spoke to every day, fed, washed or made love to - could not comprehend. At last the topic turned to the people who concerned Hanwell - Hanwell's wife, Hanwell's daughters. Hanwell shyly described his current difficulty, making use of the doctor's careful and superior phrases ('mental disturbance' and 'a tendency toward hysteria'). Hanwell Snr drew a hankie from his back pocket, worked it round the grime on the back of his neck. He took his time folding it back into quarters. Hanwell saw at once that his father thought it entirely typical of Hanwell to marry a woman who was broken in some way, and now felt much the same satirical disgust he'd expressed when the boy Hanwell, instead of laughing at being dangled from a pier, took it in his head to cry.

'Well, I'll say this,' he said, finis.h.i.+ng his lecture about Hanwell's inept.i.tude at choosing things right and seeing the way of things, and moving on to the more general subject of 'women', which allowed, at least, the concession that Hanwell's trouble might not be Hanwell's fault alone: 'They rewrite history - can't let a man be himself. Always telling you what you would be and should be and might be, rather than what you are. And what they're offering in return for all that isn't half as good as they think it is - or I've never found it so. But maybe you've done better - Lord knows, they look a d.a.m.n sight better these days than in my day . . .'

Twenty yards from where they sat, two young women in sun-dresses were helping each other achieve a handstand. Hanwell Snr nudged Hanwell in his gut, and Hanwell felt strongly the implicit insult to his own mother, who still lived, and still wore her flapper curls - white now - close to her forehead, and the same heavy felt cloche caps and Harold Lloyd gla.s.ses, perfectly round and thick-rimmed. He said nothing. He ate his chips as the blonde, peaky-looking girl firmed her body in preparation for the arrival of the lovely thick ankles of the brunette, well fed as they never were ten years earlier, and when this brunette overreached, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressed tight against the cotton of her yellow dress and her legs went backwards, and the crinoline frothed over her blonde friend's narrow shoulders, Hanwell and Hanwell watched them laugh and shake together and fall, finally, in a human heap on the gra.s.s. Soon after, Hanwell Snr gathered the two empty paper cones and pressed them into a soggy ball in his hands, and said he'd better open the shutters, as it was teatime and folk would be wanting their food. Hanwell never saw him again.

On a date in 1986, one that only the record office would remember now, the phone rang in Hanwell's kitchen as he cooked. He was making pizza with homemade dough for the young children of his second family, and his topping was a loose, watery, fresh tomato sauce, laced with anchovies and black olives, so piquant and delicious you could eat it by the spoonful and forgo the crust altogether. It is possible only I liked to do that. I extrapolate my feelings too generally.

'Yes, I see - thank you . . . it was good of you to let us know,' said Hanwell in a voice a shade more posh than his own. He put down the phone and left the room. After the pizza was finished, he came back in, pale, but composed. He said his father had died, a sentence that required us - my mother, my brother, and me - to invent a whole human in one second and kill him off the next. Hanwell had said nothing to prepare us. He had known weeks earlier that his father's death was imminent - he did not go to him. Twenty years later, Hanwell's son would not go to Hanwell when his hour came. It happens that in the course of my professional duties I am often found making the statement 'I don't believe in patterns.' A b.u.t.terfly on a pin has no idea what a pretty shape it makes.

'He never settled,' said Hanwell, 'and now he's come to the end of the road,' a quaint metaphor, like those that Borges enjoyed, and we, equally, interpreted it literally, thinking of Brighton pier, Brighton being Hanwell country for us, and the place where Hanwell's people generally died. When I was a kid, I had a dream - never forgotten! - of the cool, flat Brighton pebbles being placed over my body, as the Jews place stones on top of their dead; piled up and up over my corpse, until I was entirely buried and families came to picnic over me, not knowing, for I was Brighton bedrock now, as Hanwells had been (in my dream logic) since there were Hanwells in England. There have always been Hanwells in England. But I am a female Hanwell and lost my name when I married.

J. Johnson Nick Hornby, with ill.u.s.trations by Posy Simmonds A Writing Life

JAMIE JOHNSON was born in 1955, in Southend, Ess.e.x. He studied English at Cambridge University, and has contributed to the was born in 1955, in Southend, Ess.e.x. He studied English at Cambridge University, and has contributed to the TLS TLS, the Literary Review Literary Review, the Independent Independent and and Mojo Mojo. This is his first book. He lives in North London.

JAMIE JOHNSON is the author of JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH, a memoir about s.e.x addiction, which was shortlisted for the is the author of JUST CAN'T GET ENOUGH, a memoir about s.e.x addiction, which was shortlisted for the Guardian Guardian First Book award. He was born in 1955 in Southend, Ess.e.x, and has contributed to First Book award. He was born in 1955 in Southend, Ess.e.x, and has contributed to Esquire Esquire, Playboy Playboy and and Nuts Nuts. He lives in Ess.e.x with his wife and two children. (CAN'T GET NO) SATISFACTION is his first novel.

JAMES JOHNSON rereads the poems of John Donne every year. He is the author of two previous books, and has been shortlisted for the rereads the poems of John Donne every year. He is the author of two previous books, and has been shortlisted for the Guardian Guardian First Book award. He has contributed to the First Book award. He has contributed to the TLS TLS, the Literary Review Literary Review and the and the Independent Independent. He is currently a Visiting Writer at Ess.e.x University, and lives just outside s...o...b..ryness with his wife and four children. HOW DRY A CINDER is his second novel.

JIM JOHNSON is the author of several books for adults, including HOW DRY A CINDER, a historical novel about the last years of the poet John Donne, which was longlisted for the John Donne Prize. He lives in Hartlepool in the North-East of England with his wife, five children, two cats, one dog, two gerbils called Romulus and Remus, and Dylan the goldfish. This is his first children's book. is the author of several books for adults, including HOW DRY A CINDER, a historical novel about the last years of the poet John Donne, which was longlisted for the John Donne Prize. He lives in Hartlepool in the North-East of England with his wife, five children, two cats, one dog, two gerbils called Romulus and Remus, and Dylan the goldfish. This is his first children's book.

ANNIE GREEN is an artist, and the ill.u.s.trator of the much loved Elvis the Elephant series. She too lives in the North-East of England, with a large menagerie including a snake. She drives an old 2CV called Poppy. is an artist, and the ill.u.s.trator of the much loved Elvis the Elephant series. She too lives in the North-East of England, with a large menagerie including a snake. She drives an old 2CV called Poppy.

J. THOMAS JOHNSON is the author of several books. He has worked as a bartender, lumberjack, nightclub bouncer, pearl-fisherman, police-dog trainer, professional wrestler, private detective, Nepalese tour-guide, a.s.sa.s.sin, and writer-in-residence at a number of British universities. He has been fascinated by the Alaskan wilderness ever since he was a child. He lives with his partner, the ill.u.s.trator Annie Green, just outside Hartlepool in the North-East of England. is the author of several books. He has worked as a bartender, lumberjack, nightclub bouncer, pearl-fisherman, police-dog trainer, professional wrestler, private detective, Nepalese tour-guide, a.s.sa.s.sin, and writer-in-residence at a number of British universities. He has been fascinated by the Alaskan wilderness ever since he was a child. He lives with his partner, the ill.u.s.trator Annie Green, just outside Hartlepool in the North-East of England.

Five things you didn't know about JIMMY JOHNSON JIMMY JOHNSON: 1. The first single he bought with his own money was 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'!2. The uncle of his best friend at school used to play ba.s.s with the Starlight Vocal Band!3. He had a ticket to see the s.e.x Pistols play at the Screen on the Green in Islington - but he didn't go!4. He has an iPod - but his kids have to download the music for him!5. JOHNSON'S POP MISCELLANY is his eighth book - but the first one to mention Gilbert O' Sullivan!

BRIAN BRITTEN used to play for Reading, Millwall, Leyton Orient, Southend United, Walsall, Tranmere Rovers and Hartlepool. He was once described as 'the best defender never to have played in the top two divisions'. He claims to have kicked 'at least six' future England internationals. used to play for Reading, Millwall, Leyton Orient, Southend United, Walsall, Tranmere Rovers and Hartlepool. He was once described as 'the best defender never to have played in the top two divisions'. He claims to have kicked 'at least six' future England internationals.

JIMMY JOHNSON is a professional writer. FOREIGN NANCY BOYS is his twelfth book. He lives in - and supports - Hartlepool. is a professional writer. FOREIGN NANCY BOYS is his twelfth book. He lives in - and supports - Hartlepool.

THANKS TO: THE LORD G.o.d ALMIGHTY (love You, and everything You do for us), Sharon Osbourne (DA BOMB!), Simon Cowell (I've nearly forgiven you!), David and Victoria, Wayne and Coleen, Mum and Dad, baby bruvva, everyone in the Barnet Posse except Nicola Braithwaite, everyone at the Pink Coconut in Bushey. And yo Mr Osbourne! I wrote a book! Even after all what you said about me when I left school! A big shout-out to Jim Johnson for his help in putting this together. Top man.

Lele Edwidge Danticat

It was so hot in Leogane that summer that most of the frogs exploded, scaring not just the children who once chased them into the river at dusk or the parents who hastily pried the threadbare carca.s.ses from their fingers, but also my 39-year old sister Lele, who was four months pregnant with her first child and feared that, should the temperature continue to rise, she too might burst. The frogs had been dying for a while, but we hadn't noticed, mostly because they'd been doing it quietly. Perhaps for each that had expired, one had taken its place along the river bank, looking exactly the same as the others and fooling us into thinking that a normal cycle was occurring, that young was replacing old and life replacing death, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly, just as it was for us.

'This is surely a sign that something terrible is going to happen,' Lele said, as we sat on the top-floor verandah of my parents' house one particularly sweltering evening. Even though my father, the former justice of the peace of the town of Leogane, had died more than ten years ago, and my mother five years before that, I've never been able to stop thinking of the place that I, and now my sister, called home as theirs. The dollhouse facade of our wooden ginger-bread had been meticulously sketched by Papa, who'd spent his nights after work updating and revising each detail as their home was built from the ground up. He and Maman had driven to the capital to purchase the corrugated metal and bordered jalousies, a journey which at the time, before my sister and I were born, took several agonizing hours in an old pick-up truck that they'd inherited from my half-French grandfather, the previous justice of the peace. The sh.e.l.l of the truck was still out there somewhere among the dozens of almond trees that dotted our three hectares, its once thunderous engine rusting into the earth, like the neglected memorial it was.

The air on my verandah was just slightly cooler than it was in either of the two bedrooms where my sister and I slept, just as we had as children, surrounded by shelves lined with leather-bound notebooks filled with the concerns and complaints that had consumed the days, and sometimes nights, of our father and grandfather. Last year, I decided to read all their notebooks before I moved them to the courthouse archive in town. And now, despite her current condition, my sister, who was in the middle of a separation from her husband, was helping me sort through them.

'In all of their notes,' Lele was saying, 'I've not seen one mention of frogs dying like this.'

Before becoming pregnant, Lele had been a heavy smoker, and sometimes when she made some p.r.o.nouncement - for she had one of those voices with an air of always seeming to be making a p.r.o.nouncement - she sounded a bit out of breath. This was further aggravated by the fact that she now had a baby pressing on her lungs, I'm sure, but, come to think of it, she had spoken that way even when she was a child, sometimes purposefully emphasizing a lisp that strangely enough made her sound even more certain.

'I've talked to a few people about it,' I told her. 'I even called some doctor friends in Port-au-Prince.'

'What would doctors know about dead frogs?' she promptly cut me off. 'You need world specialists, people who study the earth.'

Throwing her head back, three long plaits bouncing in the evening air, Lele tapped her palm for emphasis and said, 'Mark my words. The summer won't pa.s.s before there's a catastrophe here.'

Living only a kilometer or so from the river, I thought that the eventual smell of rotting frogs might be at least one potential catastrophe, but, in the days that followed, there was no smell at all. As soon as the burnished skins and tiny organs were exposed to the sun, the shredded frogs dried up, vanis.h.i.+ng into the river bed.

This was a lucky thing for Lele, who at this stage of her pregnancy was still willowy and trim, in part because she didn't have much of an appet.i.te. The smell of most things sent her retching, except the moldy fragrance of ancient ink and dissolving paper, which she relished so much that I frankly suspected her of nibbling away at small fragments of the town's judicial legacy.

A week after Lele made her prediction, the frogs were no longer even a problem. A few inches of rain had fallen somewhere up in the mountains, and the river overflowed, drowning the remaining frog population and depositing a tall layer of sandy loam far beyond the river's banks, crus.h.i.+ng, among other things, the field of vetiver that I, like my father and grandfather before me, had faithfully planted at the beginning of every year. Some years I had actually made a profit from my vetiver, which was not only good for the soil but also very much sought after by perfume-company suppliers. Those years, I'd used the money to plant a few more almond trees near the section of our property that nearly merged with the open road. Lele loved the almond trees, and before she was pregnant, whenever she and her husband Gaspard came to visit, they'd both spend hours crus.h.i.+ng the fibrous fruits with river stones to dig out the kernels.

The morning Gaspard came to see Lele, I had to run off to court. I was a judicial witness in the case of a former priest who was suing for medical expenses for his psychiatric care. The priest claimed that he'd been forced by the police chief to offer extreme unction to some prisoners whom the police chief had then ordered executed before they could appear before a magistrate. I had been called by the priest's niece, with whom he was living after being expelled from his parish, to take a statement about her perception of the priest's mental health, and all I planned to do in court was reiterate what was already obvious: that for one reason or another the priest was now insane. The magistrate, who had no patience for cases in which there were no possibilities for bribes, would probably dismiss the case outright. However, since there were two local radio journalists expected, he had no choice but to put on the charade and pretend to listen to all of us before making up his mind.

I have no formal training in the law. All I know I learned by shadowing my father. His approach had always been the same. We are there only to witness, not partic.i.p.ate, he'd say, to grant a piece of paper, an affidavit, a notarized statement, which might be helpful to someone in some later legal proceeding or action. If we are required to speak before a judge, we need state only what we've seen. We do not conjecture or make guesses. We speak only when asked.

This is the approach I was taking with Lele and Gaspard. As Gaspard's four-wheeler pulled up in front of the house, I purposely accelerated mine in the other direction. I would probably have to be in court at their divorce proceeding. There would be enough time to take sides.

Neither the priest nor his niece showed up, so the magistrate dismissed the case. During the ten years I'd been doing this, I'd found that more people don't show up than do. Many simply wanted the benefit of the initial hearing, in the field or in my office, where I took most of my notes. The rest already knew the likely outcome of their cases or were too scared to present themselves.

Gaspard's car was still out front when I returned home for lunch. Gaspard was a small man, shorter even than my sister in her bare feet. He was handsome, though, with a dark-brown elfin face and a wide grin that he seemed unable to restrain even when he was angry. He was from a family of tailors and dressed very well, lately favoring airy white embroidered s.h.i.+rts and loose cotton pants.

Lele and Gaspard were sitting on opposite sides of the living room when I entered, Gaspard on our sixty-year-old fleur-de-lisprint chaise longue and Lele in a rocking chair by the louvered doors overlooking the now crushed vetiver field.

Marthe, who had been with us long enough to have delivered both my sister and me, sauntered over with a small s.h.i.+ny tray to collect an empty gla.s.s from Gaspard. I had an image in my mind of Gaspard having sat there all morning, sipping a single gla.s.s of Marthe's tasty, vanilla-essence flavored lemonade while staring at Lele's expressionless profile. Even though I had hired a younger girl to help her, Marthe still preferred to do most of the light work around the house herself, including receiving our guests. Marthe was in her late sixties, about the age that our mother would have been if she were alive. She also had the same moon-shaped face and stocky frame. Growing up, I thought Marthe and my mother were sisters. I'm still not convinced that they weren't.

I waited for Marthe to leave the room, then, rubbing my hands together, said, 'So, les amoureux les amoureux, have we reconciled?'

Gaspard looked up at me, his uncontrollable grin momentarily menacing. For once, while smiling, he almost appeared to be gritting his teeth.

'She hasn't told you?' he asked.

I raised my shoulders and shrugged, looking over at my sister, whose eyes never wandered from the devastated vetiver field.

'We have to clean up that field,' she finally said. 'And we should do it sooner rather than later. There might still be something worth saving there.'

'Sometimes, there's nothing to save,' Gaspard said.

He stood up and quickly breezed past me, but, as he reached the doorway, where he was closest to my sister, he walked back and laid a hand on my shoulder.

'Sorry, brother,' he said. 'You shouldn't have seen that.'

I shook my head, not sure what to say. It seemed like all the cards were in Lele's hand. It was her move.

I waited until I heard Gaspard's car start up. When his tires scratched the driveway gravel, I asked my sister, 'Are you sure this is the right time for irreconcilable differences?'

She got up from the rocker, pulled the louver doors shut, considerably dimming the room.

'I don't want to talk about it,' she said, plopping herself down on one of the old divans by the closed fireplace.

'Is he cheating on you?' I asked. 'If he is, I can find some way to have him thrown in jail.'

'He's not cheating,' she said.

'Are you cheating?'

She popped her eyes real wide in response, then pointed at her belly.

'Is it his baby?' I said, sitting down on the floor at her feet.

'You fool,' she said.

Placing my head on her knee, I felt like I did when I was a boy and would run home, devastated, after going with my father to record a death.

'You can't do this type of work if you cry at the scene,' my father had said, slapping the back of my head in front of his witnesses. Once, even after I had seen the severed body of a beheaded man. The man's own brother had taken a machete to his neck during a dispute over a plot of land. That night, Lele had let me sleep in her bed, but most importantly she'd let me cry.

'You sure you don't want to tell me?' I asked.

'Maybe in good time,' she said.

'Have we ever used this fireplace?' I said, pointing to the only concrete part of the house, a square cave that Lele had recently filled with giant decorative candles.

'Marthe would know better,' she said, 'but I only remember us using it once, the night you were born. It filled the whole place with smoke and nearly burned down the house.'

The next day I was taking an affidavit for an actual divorce when it began to rain. I was nervous about the river overflowing again, this time pus.h.i.+ng past the vetiver fields and the almond trees. Ours was now the only place that close to the river. The others, newer and shabbier, had been taken downstream in flash floods, many with entire families inside. I had been meaning to tell Lele that we should do something about the house. I had refrained from discussing it with her only because I hadn't decided myself what to do. Should we sell it to someone to whom we would be pa.s.sing on the same problem we now faced? Should we destroy it and rebuild on higher ground? Should I move somewhere else and use it only during the dry season? I was sure Lele would already have a solution, about which she felt a hundred per cent sure, so I wanted to make up my mind before speaking to her. Still, as it continued to rain and more pa.s.sers-by sought shelter on the front gallery outside my office, I saw myself becoming more and more walled off from Lele.

For years now, I had been holding quarterly meetings with the peasants in the villages, especially the villages upriver from us, telling them that the river was raging in response to the lack of trees, land erosion, the dying topsoil.

'What do you want us to do?' they'd ask me in return. 'Give us something to replace the charcoal and we'll stop.'

Sometimes in my attempts to get them to not cut down young trees, I'd reach for the basest metaphors, the most melodramatic pleas. 'It's like killing a child,' I'd say.

'If I have to kill a tree child to save my own child, I'll kill the tree child,' they'd say.

Now, thanks to their stupidity, or rather the stupidity of their needs, our parents' house might soon be under water. We might wake up floating above our beds and have to climb on top of a roof to wait for the current to die down. My sister might give birth in a tree.

'Merde,' I said to the complainant in front of me. 'Why do you want to divorce your wife anyway?'

'Because she's ugly,' he said, his face looking as deadly serious, though perhaps not as anxious, as mine.

'When did she get so ugly?' I was shouting at him, but he didn't even seem to notice.

'After the children,' he said. 'She lost some teeth and she's no longer kind.'

'What type of kindness are you expecting from her?' I asked.

'All kinds,' he said, winking. 'You know.

'How many children do you have?'

'Ten,' he said.