Read Online Genie and Paul by Natasha Soobramanien - Free Book Online
Authors: Natasha Soobramanien
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Embankment she got out, thinking perhaps she’d change to the Northern line, but on a whim she decided to leave the Underground altogether and walk somewhere instead. She was dragged for a moment by a riptide of tourists towards the Thames entrance, until she pulled herself free and walked out onto Villiers Street, past the rows of hooded homeless mummified in their sleeping bags, heads bent monk-like in the warm morning rain. She tried to get a look at their faces. A man by the park gates was selling umbrellas. He must wake up every day praying for rain.
And all the while, as she turned left into the Strand, past the Gothic hollows of Charing Cross station, past Trafalgar Square and up along Charing Cross Road, past places so familiar she barely saw them any more, these central streets which, unlike the streets at home in Hackney, scarcely felt as though they belonged to her, or if they did, they belonged to all Londoners, streets where all kinds of Londoners came together, past places where memories of Paul through the years were layered one over the other so that here she saw him emerge through the crowds clutching a bag full of paperbacks from a second-hand bookshop to disappear into a side-street, down to Bunjies Folk Cellar, or, there, down tin-pan alley, face pressed to a shop window, looking at the drum-kits and further along, stumbling out of the Astoria, blinking in the too-bright streetlights, fucked and boss-eyed after some night, all of these Pauls oblivious to one another, with Genie catching sight of them one after the other from the corner of her eye as they darted throughthe crowds, Genie struggling to follow them, she did not realise until she reached it that she had actually had in mind a final destination. The hospital. The hospital where she’d been born. No, not born – she was hungover, confused. The hospital where she’d almost died . She could not call this, her arrival here, now, an accident. But perhaps it would lead to one; perhaps she would meet Paul here, arriving, too late, to visit her.
Surely, thought Genie, walking slowly around the perimeter of the hospital, when something, someone is so wanted, so that he was almost there in front of her but in some closely aligned parallel universe, utterly unreachable – surely she could, just by wanting him here so badly, will him into existence. Could she not make him materialise in front of her? Summon him like the devil he was?
Passing a side entrance, she observed a group of people smoking with a kind of desperation that made them seem troubled. And they were a group, not simply the relatives of patients or hospital staff on a break gathered casually. They had apparently arranged to meet here. The group seemed to be mainly men in their late twenties to forties, with only a few women, one of them beautifully turned-out, wrapped in a butter-coloured pashmina, whose face, when she turned in Genie’s direction, looked deeply ravaged despite the care she had obviously taken with her appearance. The woman was moving to hug a new arrival, her pashmina swinging loose to shroud them both.
When she stood back to readjust it, Genie had a clear view of the man who had just joined them. She cried out then in surprise. At times like this, hungover, Genie had only a fragile sense of who she was, like bad reception on an analogue TV, one of those old black and white ones with the calligraphic aerials: a slight movement, a shift in perspective and she lost the picture. In her shaky state, coincidence wasnot a rare but meaningless phenomenon. In this state, it felt sinister. This coincidence could mean nothing or everything. She had lost the picture but she had been right after all to stare more closely at the static and find meaning in it. She’d been right all along, she thought, as she ran over to the group, and to Sol.
The Dragon Bar on Leonard Street had been a favourite of Paul’s when he’d lived in the squat with Sol on Kingsland Road, but no
And all the while, as she turned left into the Strand, past the Gothic hollows of Charing Cross station, past Trafalgar Square and up along Charing Cross Road, past places so familiar she barely saw them any more, these central streets which, unlike the streets at home in Hackney, scarcely felt as though they belonged to her, or if they did, they belonged to all Londoners, streets where all kinds of Londoners came together, past places where memories of Paul through the years were layered one over the other so that here she saw him emerge through the crowds clutching a bag full of paperbacks from a second-hand bookshop to disappear into a side-street, down to Bunjies Folk Cellar, or, there, down tin-pan alley, face pressed to a shop window, looking at the drum-kits and further along, stumbling out of the Astoria, blinking in the too-bright streetlights, fucked and boss-eyed after some night, all of these Pauls oblivious to one another, with Genie catching sight of them one after the other from the corner of her eye as they darted throughthe crowds, Genie struggling to follow them, she did not realise until she reached it that she had actually had in mind a final destination. The hospital. The hospital where she’d been born. No, not born – she was hungover, confused. The hospital where she’d almost died . She could not call this, her arrival here, now, an accident. But perhaps it would lead to one; perhaps she would meet Paul here, arriving, too late, to visit her.
Surely, thought Genie, walking slowly around the perimeter of the hospital, when something, someone is so wanted, so that he was almost there in front of her but in some closely aligned parallel universe, utterly unreachable – surely she could, just by wanting him here so badly, will him into existence. Could she not make him materialise in front of her? Summon him like the devil he was?
Passing a side entrance, she observed a group of people smoking with a kind of desperation that made them seem troubled. And they were a group, not simply the relatives of patients or hospital staff on a break gathered casually. They had apparently arranged to meet here. The group seemed to be mainly men in their late twenties to forties, with only a few women, one of them beautifully turned-out, wrapped in a butter-coloured pashmina, whose face, when she turned in Genie’s direction, looked deeply ravaged despite the care she had obviously taken with her appearance. The woman was moving to hug a new arrival, her pashmina swinging loose to shroud them both.
When she stood back to readjust it, Genie had a clear view of the man who had just joined them. She cried out then in surprise. At times like this, hungover, Genie had only a fragile sense of who she was, like bad reception on an analogue TV, one of those old black and white ones with the calligraphic aerials: a slight movement, a shift in perspective and she lost the picture. In her shaky state, coincidence wasnot a rare but meaningless phenomenon. In this state, it felt sinister. This coincidence could mean nothing or everything. She had lost the picture but she had been right after all to stare more closely at the static and find meaning in it. She’d been right all along, she thought, as she ran over to the group, and to Sol.
The Dragon Bar on Leonard Street had been a favourite of Paul’s when he’d lived in the squat with Sol on Kingsland Road, but no
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