and tea leaves. Miniature cemeteries crowded out the flowerbeds that must once have brought some brightness to the front gardens.
May heard Julian’s indrawn breath. A man was hunched against a wall for support, coughing the life out of his guts, gasping and heaving between each spasm. A sailor was crossing the road, carrying a parrot on his arm, the blue and green plumage of the ragged bird muffled as if it had been dipped in muddy water. A small boy flinched in the doorway of a shop, as a woman raised her fist, lowering it as soon as she noticed she was being watched, her anger temporarily thwarted from making contact with its target. Bunched up at the street corners, and standing outside the high iron-grilled factory gates, groups of men smoked, huddled together in twos and threes, their caps dragged well down over their eyes, their jacket collars pulled up firmly to their necks, the top button done up. Every moment or two one of them would suck in his cheeks, before landing a globule of foamy spit on the pavement.
“These men and two and a quarter million more cannot find work,” Julian said more to himself than May, shaking his head.
But May was not listening. She was looking at a man whose face was so ingrained with coal that it seemed that no amount of washing could ever remove the stains. May smiled at him, her gesture returned with an expression that lit up the young man’s face, his smile revealing white teeth that dazzled in contrast to his sooty lips.
“For a moment that boy reminded me of my brother,” she said, smiling once again at the thought, as she and Julian walked on. “Same sort of age, I think.”
And as they both looked more closely they began to see that among the scenes of hopelessness there was an intense vitality to these streets. Groups of shoeless children were playing near the steps of the houses, jumping, hula-hooping and chasing one another around the cold hard pavements with as much abandon as the children May had watched playing on the powdery sand of her island home. Women stood in animated conversation, sharing grudges and gossip, their arms tightly folded over their dingy aprons. Some knelt, their backs rounded over a pail of sudsy water, or squatted with a brush, demonstrating their pride in producing the most gleaming of thresholds. A couple of women were turning a skipping rope, their chatter uninterrupted by the children who hopped over the whirling arc between them. Two little girls were absorbed by something in the sky directly above them and, following their gaze, May and Julian made out a vapour trail emerging from the tail of a high-flying aeroplane, as it formed the word “OXO” in blurry white letters.
Julian closed his eyes as shame began to creep over him. What had he been expecting to gain by this cursory visit north? On the way up he had tried to defend the research-based purpose of the visit to May. His own words returned to him now and he regretted them. Over breakfast May had told Peter about some of the families who lived in her cousins’ neighbourhood in East London. The children, many of whom had so little, played together and laughed together as if the riches of the world were theirs. Women who spent back-bending hours of the day cleaning and cooking and doing their best to manage, viewed life with a cheerfulness that was instinctive, infectious. And men, even though unemployment meant they struggled to maintain their natural place in the hierarchy of society by providing for their families, were rarely beaten entirely. May’s ability to look beneath the superficial was unmistakable. Her insight startled him.
That evening the mayor had moved on and two single rooms had become available in the hotel. Julian suggested they go out to a film and a plate of fish and chips afterwards. As Popeye, the spinach-eating sailor, appeared on the cinema screen accompanied by his hoop-eyebrowed girlfriend, May was unable to suppress a shout.
“That’s it! It’s her! Different body but same face!”
“Who?” hissed Julian, taken aback by the little outburst.
“Tell you later,” she promised.
But later Julian had forgotten to ask her why she had laughed so much at the sight of Olive Oyl, although he did notice that May pushed the chips to one side of her plate, leaving them uneaten. By an unspoken agreement they did not dwell on the sights and experiences of