Empire Building

It didn't look much when he took it over, the Empire Stores, but a man with business instinct could see the potential. The previous owners had been fined by the Health Authority' and finally gone bust. Hamid, however, had standards. His wife told people this too, with a small shake of her head as if she were being philosophical about it.

The neighbourhood was a transient, shabby one, with terraces of bedsits and Irish lodging houses. The parade of shops, Hamid calculated, was far enough from the Holloway Road for people to rely upon it for their local needs, which he had all intention of supplying. The shops were as follows: a wholesale dressmaking business with a curtained window behind which the sewing machines hummed - those Greek ladies knew the meaning of hard work; a dentist's surgery with frosted glass; a greengrocer's that had ageing fruit and early closing on Thursdays - now how can anyone prosper with early closing; then the Empire Stores, and next door to it a newsagent's run by an indolent Hindu and his wife. Hamid put a notice UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT in the window of the Empire Stores and restocked the merchandise - liquor behind the cash desk, where he sat in control, and groceries along the aisles. His aims were not modest, but his beginnings were.

His own wife and children were installed in a flat in Wood Green, three miles away, where the air was fresher and the neighbourhood more salubrious. The streets around the Empire Stores were not respectable; you need only have taken a look at the cards fixed to the newsagent's window -even a family man like Hamid knew the meaning of those kind of French Lessons. Business is business, however, and it is a wise shop keeper who is prepared to adapt. Or, as his father was fond of saying: to those who are flexible comes strength.

The local blacks were big West Indians who drove up in loudly tuned cars and who suddenly filled the shop. They bought party packs of beer in the evenings and left a musky male scent behind them. One of the first things Hamid did was to extend his opening hours until 9 p.m. Then there were the single young ladies who bought Whiskas and yoghurt and disappeared into the sodium-lit streets. How solitary was the life of these young English women with no family to care for them; no wonder they fell into evil ways. Hamid installed a second cold shelf and stocked it with pizzas, two ranges of yoghurts and individual fruit-juice cartons for these bedsit dwellers and their twilit lives. Such items moved fast.

Sitting at the till, its numbers bleeping, Hamid thought of the dinner being prepared for him at home - the hiss of the spices as they hit the pan, the buttery taste of the paratha he would soon be eating. He thought of his son Arif, his neat, shiny head bent over his homework, the TV turned right down. He thought of his own tartan slippers beside the radiator. Passing them a carrier-bag, he gazed with perplexity at these lost, pasty-faced English girls.

His main income, however, came from the drunks. It was for them that within the first three months he had doubled the bottle shelf-space and increased his range of cans. Business was brisk in Triple Strength Export Lager. These men, their complexions inflamed by alcohol, shambled in at all hours, muttering at the floor, murmuring at the tins of peas. They raised their ruined faces. Hamid avoided their eyes; he took their soiled bank notes or the coins they counted out, shakily, and fixed his gaze above their heads. Flesh upon flesh, sometimes their fingers touched his, but he was too well-mannered to flinch. Sometimes they tried to engage him in conversation.

It was bemusing. Not only did they poison themselves with drink, rotting their souls and their bodies, but they had no shame. They leaned against the dentist's frosted glass, lifting the bottle to their lips in full public view. They stood huddled together in the exit of the snooker hall, further up the road, where warm air breathed from the grilles. Sometimes he could hear the smash of glass. Lone men stood in the middle of the road, shouting oaths into the air.

Business is business. Sometimes he raised his eyebrows at Khalid, his nephew, who helped him in the shop, but he never offended his wife by describing to her this flotsam and jetsam. One night she said: 'You never talk to me.'

It was the next week that a man stumbled in and steadied himself against the counter. He asked for a bottle of cider and then he said: 'You'll put it on the slate?'

'I beg your pardon?' Hamid raised his eyes from his newspaper.

'I'll pay tomorrow.'

'I'm sorry,' Hamid said. 'It is not shop policy.'

The man started shouting. 'You fucking wog!' he yelled, his voice rising. Hamid lowered his gaze back to the dancing Urdu script. He turned the page.

'Get back to the fucking jungle, fucking wog land!' the voice slurred - 'where you belong!'

Khalid appeared from the stock-room and stood there. Hamid kept his eye on the page. He read that there was a riot in Lahore, where an opposition leader had been arrested, and that ghee was up Rs 2 per seer.

'Fucking monkeys!'

Khalid put down the crate of Schweppes and escorted the man to the door. The next day Hamid wrote a notice and Sellotaped it to the counter.

He sat there, as grave as always, in his herringbone tweed jacket. He held himself straight as the men shambled in, those long-lost rulers of a long-lost Empire, eyeing the bottles behind him. He had written the notice in large red letters, using Arifs school Pentel: PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR CREDIT AS A REFUSAL OFTEN OFFENDS.

That was in the late seventies. War was being waged in the Middle East; a man had walked on the moon; Prince Charles had still not found a wife. Meanwhile Hamid filled out his VAT receipts, and in view of increased turnover negotiated further discount terms with McEwans, manufacturers of lager.

In 1980 the old couple who ran the greengrocer's retired and Hamid bought the shop, freehold, and extended his own premises, knocking through the dividing wall and removing the sign H. LAWSON FRUITERER AND GREENGROCER.

Apart from 'good morning', the first and last conversation he ever held with the old man was on completion day, when they finalized the transaction in the lawyer's office down the road.

'Times change,' said the old man, Mr Lawson. The clock whirred, clicked and chimed. He sighed. 'Been here thirty years.'

They signed the document and shook hands.

'Harold,' said Hamid, reading the signature. 'So that's - your name.'

'You know, I was in your part of the world.'

'My part?'asked Hamid.

'India.'

'Ah.'

'In the army. Stationed near Mysore. Know it?'

Hamid shook his head. 'My family comes from Pakistan.'

They stood up. 'Funny old world, isn't it,' said the old man. Hamid agreed, politely. The lawyer opened the door for them.

'How about a quickie,' said the old man.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Little celebration.'

Hamid paused. 'I don't drink.'

They reached the head of the stairs. 'No,' said the old man. 'No, I suppose you don't. Against your religion, eh?'

Hamid nodded. 'You first, please,' he said, indicating the stairs.

'No, you.'

Hamid went first. They emerged into the sunlight. It was a beautiful day in April. Petals lay strewn in the gutter.

'If I'd been blessed with a son, maybe this wouldn't be happening,' said the old man. 'But that's life.' Hamid nodded. 'You've got a son?'

'Yes,' said Hamid. 'A fine chap.'

'Expect he'll be coming in with you, in due course.'

Hamid murmured something politely; he didn't want to offend the old man. Arif, running a shop? He had greater things in mind for his son.

Hamid had a new, larger sign fitted to cover the new, double shop-front and this time had it constructed in neon-illuminated script: THE EMPIRE STORES. He extended both his liquor and grocery range to cover the extra volume of retail space, adding a chicken rotisserie for take-outs, a microwave for samosas and a large range of fruit and vegetables - all of a greatly improved quality to those of H. Lawson. The old man had left the place like a junk heap; it took seven skips to clear the rubbish out of the upper floor and the backyard. One morning Hamid was out in the street, inspecting a heaped skip, when one of his customers stopped. She was an old woman; she pointed at the skip with her umbrella.

'See that?' she said. 'The wheels? Used to have a pony and cart. Harry did. For the deliveries.'

'Did he really?' Hamid glanced up the street. He was waiting for the builders who were late again. Unreliable.

'Knew us all by name.' She sighed and wiped her nose. 'No...' She shook her head. 'Service is not what it was'

'No,' agreed Hamid, looking at his watch and thinking of his builders.'It certainly isn't.'

Hamid, who always bought British, traded in his old Cortina and bought a brand-new Rover, with beige upholstery and stereo-player. He transferred Arifto a private school, its sign painted in Gothic script, where they sang hymns and wore blazers. On Parents' Day the panelled halls smelt of polish; Hamid gazed at the cabinets of silver cups. His wife wore her best silk sari; her bangles tinkled as she smoothed Arifs hair.

The conversion of the upper floors, above the old fruit shop, was completed at last and Hamid stood on the other side of the street with Khalid and his two new assistants. He looked at the sunlight glinting in the windows; he looked at the dazzling white paint and the sign glowing below it: THE EMPIRE STORES. His heart swelled. The others chattered, but he could not speak.

That night Arif stood, his eyes closed and his face pinched with concentration, and recited:

'Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;'

His eyes opened. 'Know who it's by?'

Hamid shook his head. 'You tell me, son.'

'William Wordsworth. We're learning it at school.'

For the second time that day, Hamid's heart swelled. He put his arms around his son, the boy for whom everything was possible. He pressed his face against his son's cheek.

1981. Ronald Reagan became President of the USA. In May the Pope was shot and wounded. In Brixton there were riots; Toxteth too. In July Prince Charles married his Lady Di.

Khalid, too, was married by now and installed in the first-floor flat above the shop. National holidays were always good, business-wise; by now the Empire Stores was open seven days a week and during that summer's day, as people queued at the till, Hainid kept half an eye on his portable TV set. A pale blur, as Lady Di passed in her dress; a peal of bells. As Hamid reached for the bottles of whiskey, the commentator's voice quickened with pride and awe, and Hamid's heart beat faster. 'Isn't she a picture,' said his customers, pausing at the screen. Hamid agreed that, yes, she was the most radiant of brides. Flags waved, flicking to and fro, and the crowd roared. Our Princess, his and theirs... Hamid smiled and gave a small boy a Toblerone.

That night his wife said: 'You should have seen it in colour.'

Hamid pulled off his shoes. 'You've put it on the video-tape?'

She nodded and turned away, picking up the scattered jigsaw in front of the TV, where his daughters had been sitting.

'We can watch it later,' he said.

'When?' Her voice was sharp. He looked up in surprise. 'It's not the same,' she said, closing the box.

That night a bottle was thrown up through the window of Khalid's flat. It shattered the glass; Khalid's bride cowered in the corner.

The next day, while the Royal couple - oh how happy they looked - departed on their honeymoon, Hamid inspected the damage. He gazed down into the street, through the wicked edges of glass. They were intruders, those people entering the Empire Stores. Yesterday's glory had vanished. Hamid sat down heavily, on the settee.

'How could they do this to us?' he asked. 'What have we done to deserve it?'

Khalid, who was an easy-going chap, said: 'Forget it. They were just celebrating.' He lowered his voice, so his bride couldn't hear. 'They were one over the eight.'

'What?'

'Drunk.'

Drunk on the drink he had sold to them. Yesterday they had had record takings.

He closed up the shop that night and walked to his car. On the pavement lay a man, asleep, his face bleeding. Cans lay around him. Hamid remembered how once, years ago, he had called an ambulance when he had found a person in this state.

Now he just made a detour on the other side of the pavement.

That autumn he installed closed-circuit surveillance in the shop. He now had three assistants and an expanded range of take-away food. Children from neglectful homes came in with shopping bags; they had keys around their necks, and runny noses. They bought bars of Kit Kat and crisps and hot pasties. These mothers did not look after their youngsters; they sent them into the streets to consume junk food.

The dressmaker's was taken over by a massage and sauna establishment, which installed black glass and a Georgian door. All about lay the ruined and the dispossessed. This was their country but these people had no homes. New, loitering men replaced the old. Strange faces appeared for a week, a month, and then after a while he would realize they had vanished. To where? His neon sign shone out over the drab street. Inside the shop lay the solace of food, and order.

That year his turnover doubled. He fitted out an office in the store-room and managed his growing empire from there, drinking tea from his Charles and Di commemoration mug. He had now converted four flats above the shop, and the lease of the newsagent's shop next door was coming up shortly; he had his eye on that.

In an attempt to brighten the neighbourhood, the council had planted young trees along the pavement. Their leaves were turning red and falling to the ground. Opposite, the sunset flamed above the chimney-pots. As he said his evening prayers on the mat behind his desk, he felt both humbled and grateful.

That evening he looked into his girls' bedroom. They were two sleeping heads. Arif was in the lounge, bent over his computer game. Hamid ruffled his hair; Arif smoothed it down again.

'And have you a hello for your father?'

Arif pressed a button. '570,' he said. '680.'

Later, when Arif was asleep and Hamid had eaten, he said to his wife: 'They teach them no manners at that expensive school?'

She turned, 'You think you can buy manners with money?'

He looked sharply at her. She was putting the crockery away in the cabinet.

'What are you trying to say?' he asked. - Manners are taught by example. At home.'

'And don't I set a good example?'

'When you're here.' She sighed, and shut the cabinet. 'I think he is suffering from neglect.'

'You say that about my son?'

Neglect? Hamid thought of the boys with faces like old men's, and keys around their necks. Pale boys buying junk food.

'It's his age,' said Hamid loudly, surprising himself. 'He's fourteen now. A difficult age.'

'If you say so.'

She sighed again and reached up for something on the top of the cabinet. It was a box of Milk Tray. How plump she was becoming; her kurta was strained tight over her belly.

'Come to the shop,' he said, 'and there I'll show you the meaning of neglect.'

She sat down, shaking her head in that philosophical way. More and more she irked him by doing this. She examined a chocolate and popped it into her mouth. He looked at her and the word rose up: junk food.

He ignored this. Instead he asked: 'Doesn't Arif understand? I'm working for him. For all the family.' He ran his fingers through his hair. 'For the future.' His voice rose higher. She glanced warningly towards the bedrooms. 'I'm working so that he need never work in a shop! You understand me, woman? Can't you understand?'

She said nothing, though she tilted her head. He thought she was assenting, but then he saw she was just choosing another chocolate.

Hindus are lazy. History has proved that point. Their religion is a dissipated one; Their life-style one of self-indulgence, of the inaction that comes from fatalism. Take Mr Gupta's attitude, for example, to the expiry of his lease. He smiled and raised his hands: the new price was too high; he had this trouble with his stomach; he had been robbed three times in the past year. What be, will be...

Hamid would have suggested that Mr Gupta invest in vandal-proof shuttering, as he himself had done. But he could always have that fitted when he took over the lease, which he did just as the trees outside frothed into blossom, in celebration.

Islam is a progressive faith. He progressed, removing Mr Gupta's sign and installing THE EMPIRE NEWSAGENTS over the door. He now had one double shop and one single; his properties dominated the parade of shops. Indeed, that week several of his customers joked that he'd soon be taking over the street. Hamid smiled modestly.

The state of that shop! The squalor and the unexploited sales area! The possibilities! It was a dusty little con-tob newsagent's when Hamid took it over, but after a complete refitment he had doubled the shelf space and the stock, and introduced fast-profit items including a rental Slush-Puppy dispenser in six flavours - a favourite with the local latch-key children.

Dirty magazines, he was not surprised to discover, had a brisk sale in this neighbourhood and he increased the stock from seven titles to fourteen. Knave and Mayfair, bulging flesh ... he kept his eyes from this nude shamelessness. He placed such journals on the top shelf. Boys little older than Arifcame in to giggle and point; they stood in a row on his display bases. These boys, he thought, they are somebody's son; does nobody cherish and protect them?

It was during the first month of business that Hamid opened the local newspaper and read: 'We are sad to announce the death of Mr Harold Lawson, universally known as Harry to his customers and many friends. For thirty years he was a well-loved sight on the local scene, with the fondly remembered Betty, his pony ...'

Hamid read on. It concluded: 'A modest man, he seldom mentioned his distinguished army record, serving with the King's Rifles in India and being awarded a DSO for his bravery during the Independence Riots. He leaves a widow, Ivy, and will be sorely missed. It can truly be said that "they broke the mould when they made Harry".'

Outside the petals had blown into the gutter, just as they had lain the day Hamid had accompanied the old man into the street two years earlier. It was the slack mid-morning period and Hamid stood in the sunshine, watching the clouds move beyond the TV aerials. For a moment he thought of the earth rolling, and history turning. He himself was fond of poetry, despite his lack of education. What was it Arif used to recite? ' Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, /And pause awhile from letters to be wise.'

That evening he asked Arif who was the English poet who had written those words. William Shakespeare?

'Dunno.'

Hamid placed his hand on his son's shoulder. 'No, that's "All the world's a stage",' he said. Arifs bones were surprisingly frail. He sat with his eyes on the TV screen where first a house, then a car, burst into flames.

Hamid kept his son's exercise books on a special shelf. He searched through and found the quotation, written in the round, careful writing Arif still had a year or so ago.

'Ah. Samuel Johnson.'

Hamid raised his voice; on the TV a siren wailed. - 'Remember?'

He looked at the title: The Vanity of Human Wishes.

Arif said: 'You're blocking my view.'

1983. Renewed fighting in the Lebanon, and the film Gandhi won eight Oscars. There were fires and floods in Australia and peace people made a human chain around Greenham Common. The future King of England was toddling now, so was Khalid's first-born son in the flat above the Empire Stores. Property was moving again, as the worst of the recession was said to be over, and Hamid converted the upper floors above the newsagent's shop and sold the flats on long leases.

With the profits, and another bank loan, that summer he bought a large detached house for his family, a real family home in that sought-after suburb. Potters Bar.

'I have worked twenty years for this moment,' he said, standing in the lounge. There were fitted carpets throughout28. There was even a bar in panelled walnut, built by the previous owners who had amassed large debts both by drinking and gambling, hence the sale of this house. He pictured his children sitting around the bar, drinking blameless Pepsi.

'This is the proudest moment of my life,' he repeated, his words loud in the empty room. Through its french windows there was a view of the garden, a series of low terraces separated by balustrades. Two small figures in orange anoraks stood on the lawn: his daughters.

Arif, however, was nowhere to be seen. Hamid would have liked him to share this moment but his son had been keeping himself to himself recently, growing more sulky. He had even objected to the move.

'Where will we get the furniture?' said his wife, standing in the middle of the room.

'We'll buy it. Look.' He took out his wallet. It was so fat, it couldn't close.

He found Arif sitting in the car, the radio loud. Hamid turned it down.

'Well, old chap,' he said. 'What do you think?'

'Great,' Arif muttered.

'Earth has not anything to show more fair: ...'

Hamid stood in the garden. The long, blond grass blew in the wind. It was dusk and he looked up at his home, the fortress where he kept his family safe. A light shone from Arifs attic bedroom - he had insisted on this tiny room, no more than a cupboard up in the roof. Down below were the bedrooms; then, below them, the curtained trench windows, glowing bluish from the TV. How solid his house, solid and secure.

Today he wore his tweed suit from Austin Reed. He stood like a squire amidst the swaying weeds. Summer was ending now, and grass choked the flowerbeds. Neither he nor his wife were proficient in gardening, but that did not stop the pride.

It grew darker. To one side of him rose the block of his house. To the other side, beyond the trees, the sky glowed Orange. This side lay London. He thought of his shops casting their own glow over the pavement; he thought of the blood-red neon of THE EMPIRE STORES shining in the night. How ashy those faces seemed, looking up at the window to gaze at the comforts within! Ruined, pasty faces; the losers, the lost, the dispossessed. The walking wounded who once ruled the Empire, pressing their noses against his Empire Stores...

He thought of their squalid comforts: those rows of bottles and those magazines showing bald portions of women's bodies. Here at home, on the other hand, he had a mahogany bookcase filled with English classics, all ;of them bound in leather: Dickens, Shakespeare and the poet he had taken to his own heart: William Wordsworth.

The trees, bulkier now in the night, loomed against the suffused sky. 'Dull would he be of soul who could pass by/A sight so touching in its majesty: ...'

A chill wind rattled the weeds and blew against his legs. He heard the faint thump of music, if you could call it music, from Arifs window. The long, dry grass blew to and fro in the darkness. He realized that he was shivering.

His wife said she was lonely. She sat in the lounge, its new chairs arranged for conversations, and all day she had the TV on. She talked about Lahore; she said she was homesick. She talked about her sisters, and how they had sat all morning laughing and brushing each other's hair. More and more she talked like this.

'Nobody talks to me here,' she said. 'They get into their cars and drive to their tea parties.'

'You must take driving lessons.'

'The car is so big. It frightens me.'

'Then you must have a tea party here.'

She thought about this for some time. Then she said: 'Who should I invite?'

'The neighbours, of course. And then there are the parents of Arifs schoolfriends.'

'But we don't know the parents of Arifs schoolfriends.'

'What about that boy, what's his name, Thompson? His father is an executive with Proctor & Gamble.'

'But what shall I cook for them?'

'And that very pleasant couple next door? We've said good morning often enough, and discussed the state of the hedge.'

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 1108