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The Living
Anjali Joseph
LONGLISTED FOR THE DSC PRIZE FOR SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE 2017In this tender, lyrical, and often funny novel, Anjali Joseph, author of Saraswati Park, shines a light on everyday life, illuminating its humour, beauty, and truth.There is a certain number of breaths each of us have to take, and no amount of care or carelessness can alter that.This is the story of two lives. Claire is a young single mother working in one of England’s last remaining shoe factories, her adult life formed by a teenage relationship. Is she ready to move on from memory and the routine of her days? Arun makes hand-sewn chappals at his home in Kolhapur. A recovered alcoholic, now a grandfather, he negotiates the newfound indignities of old age while returning in thought to the extramarital affair he had years earlier.These are lives woven through with the ongoing discipline of work and the responsibility and tedium of family life. Lives laced with the joys of friendship, the pleasure of sex, and the redemptive kindness of one’s own children. This is the story of the living.In this tender, lyrical and often funny novel, Anajli Joseph, author of Saraswati Park, shines a light on everyday life, illuminating its humour, beauty, and truth.
Copyright (#ulink_12dd7c24-0548-5deb-ae21-2b0104a16048)
4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016
Copyright © Anjali Joseph 2016
Anjali Joseph asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Cover photographs: © Suparat Malipoom / EyeEm / Getty Images (top); © Rahul Kattayil / Getty Images (bottom)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Source ISBN: 9780007462841
Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780007462827
Version: 2017-05-26
Dedication (#ulink_4ce6e7d9-a07b-58ea-bcfe-34dabd64487b)
To my parents
Epigraph (#ulink_1f5a5ded-81ff-5882-82d2-1d6423cfd8c4)
The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.
Bhagavad Gita, 2.11,
translated by Swami Sivananda
Contents
Cover (#ua4e0b2dc-3ac0-5591-8e87-3ba2d7e85eed)
Title Page (#u343d328e-5cbb-5e14-a484-516c9ceff143)
Copyright (#u33812235-de9e-5322-aca2-b3f69d0100b1)
Dedication (#udf3771a2-9e0c-5bd5-925f-1e50824b8f88)
Epigraph (#ueee01254-49bb-512a-9ac1-575256c659bf)
Part I: Shoes (#u09992ffc-65b8-56a6-9d01-093e5965e6c1)
Chapter 1: A long way from the morning (#ua9b0cd47-e5dc-5e3c-9204-e857950ed85d)
Chapter 2: Like heavy water (#u4f4dd201-9a09-5fda-9588-016baffeb435)
Chapter 3: Nothing’s new (#ua9894229-d1bb-557a-b406-2a9d956e7f39)
Chapter 4: A person who could be looked at (#u33da1c99-e879-591e-916d-4b256c1b37e7)
Chapter 5: Life was simple (#ufb136d70-8ff5-5c85-9919-81493929a0ee)
Chapter 6: The day and what it wanted (#ufca995f9-8d7f-5eb9-8cc1-9927f8e82252)
Chapter 7: Waiting (#ub93f616e-bf25-5e7f-910f-26c0b53304fd)
Chapter 8: People want everything to look perfect (#u4114651f-307d-5a1d-96a6-a8d2541dffee)
Chapter 9: When I’m tired (#u1966cde5-c605-5ab6-ae59-3e6e23976b79)
Chapter 10: There was weather (#uc442ef08-3299-59a0-8875-d1dd583f9594)
Chapter 11: The smell of the ink (#u3fb82785-0450-579d-8161-a95495ad0679)
Chapter 12: Sunny delight (#u6c9f630f-3ea8-57be-9111-4a9d108b0638)
Chapter 13: He doesn’t look like his dad (#u40797bc7-4741-5f8b-a33d-e010e51451e8)
Chapter 14: A spotlight (#udcc63319-5926-504a-8a21-422d8524027d)
Chapter 15: This is better (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16: Autumn couldn’t ever come (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17: The cars carried on passing (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18: That feeling (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19: Alphabetti spaghetti (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20: Ash (#litres_trial_promo)
Part II: Chappals (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1: A small temple (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 2: Is it time? (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 3: Ghost story (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 4: All in the head (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5: The hides (#litres_trial_promo)
Part III: Shoes (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21: His good white shirt (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22: A bottle of something (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23: The way she is (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24: Summer doesn’t have a date (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25: From the doorway (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26: Higher faster (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27: Like sugar (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28: Bad for you (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29: Closing time (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30: About right (#litres_trial_promo)
Part IV: Chappals (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6: In the dark (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7: The living (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8: Coming and going (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9: A tap on the shoulder (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10: Two plastic chairs (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11: The voice of heaven (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
I (#ulink_9144c09f-0eb0-554d-bb7b-96edce6844c4)
*
Shoes (#ulink_9144c09f-0eb0-554d-bb7b-96edce6844c4)
1 (#ulink_0c151b8a-19a7-54d6-aa74-84bd21e0c1dd)
A long way from the morning (#ulink_0c151b8a-19a7-54d6-aa74-84bd21e0c1dd)
This morning I couldn’t open my eyes. It was light, mind you. Sunrise is that early now. But I wasn’t waking up. The alarm went at a quarter to six so I could have tea, roll a fag, look at the sky, put on the radio quiet, take a shower. I left cereal on the table for Jason, and some fruit. It’d be there when I got home. Getting back at five … It’s hard to imagine, like a place at the end of a walk, across fields, a river, a bridge, a forest, hills, and a motorway. It’s a long way from the morning till the end of the day, a long long stretch.
Late. I flew down Plumstead Road, and up the inside way. My hair was wet, I was breathing too fast. By the time I came up the hill, the cathedral spire behind me, turned in at the factory shop and hurried through the gate it was a minute off seven thirty.
The morning had got brighter, real daylight. I came through the first door, and the second, up the little slope, through the double doors, hurried to my table, put away my bag and sat looking calm, trying not to breathe hard as the first bell went. From the corner of my eye I saw Jane’s head move. She was stood talking to John near the heel attacher but her hair swung as she turned towards me. I put my head down and started checking the first box of Audrey, a vintage sling-back with a bow on the vamp. I got out my black wax stick and fixed a scuff on the toe. The roughing machine was on now and that first smell of leather was in the air, sweaty and sweet and sharp from the spray the men use in the lasting machines. The windows at the closing end were bright but high up and far away. The lights were on, they’re always on, and it was warm, like it always is, from the machines, and there was the sound of the machines, the humming. I carried on checking the shoes, making sure they paired, and writing down how many times I’d done it and I heard the radio and other people’s voices and felt everyone around me at their machines or their station and Jane moving about to check on things and that busyness there always is as the shoes move around all of us a busyness where each one is doing the same thing over and over but fast enjoying being able to do it smoothly but thinking too or in another place and it was like I’d always been there, never left, never gone home or done anything else, and that’s how it always is.
2 (#ulink_eb2c8788-f511-5131-ac05-55e4470e6a61)
Like heavy water (#ulink_eb2c8788-f511-5131-ac05-55e4470e6a61)
Mum, Jason was saying. I pulled myself out of a dream. I was on the sofa. What time is it? I said. It was eight thirty. The telly was on.
I’ve turned into one of those people who fall asleep on the sofa, I said. At thirty-five. All I wanted to do was go back into the dream, one of those tired ones where you’re always on the move looking for something just around the next corner.
I was saying, Gran phoned today, Jason said.
Oh God, I said. I rubbed my face. When?
Before you got home.
Of course she did. No flies on her.
Mum, he said. Don’t start. He was frowning.
I’m not starting, I said. Definitely not. I chewed on my bottom lip. What did she say? I asked.
She wants me to go round and see them. She said Granddad’s not been well.
What did she say it is? I asked. Jason’s face was in between, talking to me, but vulnerable too. She knows how to make him feel guilty.
He leaned against the doorway, dug a hand in his pocket. She said he’s short of breath, he said, gets tired all the time. He watched, waiting to see if I was going to be unreasonable. I felt the nap of the sofa under my hand, fucked old velvet, and thought of the dream again, inescapable, like heavy water.
