‘You know. Steve Martin.’
Where does that come from? Steve Martin? On your deathbed?
‘I love that song,’ she says. ‘D’you remember? We used to sing it. When you were little.’
She shakes her head.
‘I’d like to hear it,’ Janine says. ‘It was in South Pacific, too. Loved that film. Don’t you remember? We used to sing it.’
What song? What song? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Janine. I’m here and I’d do anything, and you’re going to make me let you down when you’re dying.
‘“Under the Bamboo Tree?”’ Vesta is standing back by the drip stand, trying to keep her presence low-key. But she sees Collette struggling and steps in to help.
A tiny up-down on the pillow, and Janine manages a smile.
Collette panics. A faint memory, some vague jumble of notes, but nothing concrete comes to her.
‘Shall I start her off?’ asks Vesta. ‘She’s feeling shy.’
‘Don’t need to be shy with me, Lisa. I’m your mum,’ whispers Janine.
Vesta takes a step forward and starts singing. Her singing voice is reedy, cracked: completely different from her mellow speaking tones, as though she doesn’t use it often. But the tune is clear, and the words, once she begins, come flooding back to Collette’s mind.
‘“I like-a you and you like-a me and we like-a both the same”,’ begins Vesta.
And she’s back in Peckham. Four, maybe five years old, before the drink really took Janine over, when she was still pretty and the world was young. They’re in the lounge, the TV on in the background, Lisa standing up on the settee and Janine in front of her, holding her upright on the squashy cushions with her hands. And they’re singing along with the telly, she remembers it now. The Man With Two Brains, Janine’s favourite film and, by default, hers. Janine even had an azalea in a pot, and laughed whenever she said the name, though Lisa never understood the joke. And she remembers that this was the song Janine used to sing to her in bed, back when she still sang to her. Her lovely mother: shiny hair and tight sweaters and the scent of Charlie on her collars. She used to sing to me when she tucked me up. I’d forgotten. Through all the years, I have forgotten.
She joins in. ‘“I like-a say, this very day, I like-a change your na-a-ame”.’
‘Yes,’ says Janine. ‘That’s it. That’s right, my darling.’
And she closes her eyes and never comes back. For the rest of the night, they sit with her, and hold her hands, and sing, until she leaves for good.
Chapter Forty-Six
She’ll go, now, thinks Vesta. Poor old Hossein. He’ll miss her as much as I will. More, maybe. Being by himself’s only something he’s had to learn lately.
She feels blank. Dazed. She’s desperate for sleep, longs for the narcotic bliss of unconsciousness. Remembers coming home from the all-night vigil over her father’s bed, in a car much like this, tired Nigerian driver, air-freshener dangling from the rear-view mirror, LBC on the radio. When her mother passed, she stumbled from the room and lay down in her own bed in the front room and slept until the undertaker knocked on the door. That was in the days when the basement door was still open to the street, before Roy Preece had it shut off, to protect her, he said, from burglars. I want to die at home, she thinks. Just not the home I’m living in.
Collette leans against the window and watches the south London streets go by. The driver has put a CD of mixed soul music into the player and turned it up slightly louder than necessary, a sweet gesture to give them their privacy. She sees him watch her in the mirror as they wait at the traffic lights at Tooting Bec, the sari shops and sweetshops just opening for morning trade. I need a bacon sandwich, she thinks. Funny how death always seems to make you hungry.
The heatwave finally broke in the night and fat raindrops fall against the windscreen. Vesta cracks her window open and breathes deeply of the fecund, green scent of cracked earth and exhausted foliage. London smells muddy in the rain. Especially after such a long time without it, the coat of smuts and dust that has settled on streets and cars and buildings washing down to grime the pavements. It’ll be autumn soon, she thinks. And then another long London winter, the rain and the cold somehow getting through your clothes in a way that country people could never imagine. But Collette will be long gone by then, and Hossein’s heart will be broken. I’ve seen the way he looks at her, when he thinks she’s looking away. It’s not like he can go too, is it? Not just now, but later. His future’s here. He can’t spend it on the run.