By Ryan MB Munroe

A man with the “right” life—North London house, status objects, private school fees—realises the cost of his ambition has been spiritual. Then his father appears, and the story turns from realism into reckoning.

Ryan looked at his watch. Rather than a symbol of pride, it shamed him. It was pre-owned but had still cost him over twenty thousand pounds, a fact he hid from his wife. The timepiece was a reminder of the crowded City bar more than a decade ago; a Belgian banker had corrected Ryan’s pronunciation of the make of watch, ‘It’s Ah lang-hur und Zuh-neh, certainly not A langay and soney! Jesus, Ryan, take it back and get a Swatch; nice and easy for you to pronounce, no?’ 

Hadn’t his father warned him? At every turn, they will try to pull you down because your success troubles them. His father had drilled the fact into him from the age of five – You are at war.

Could he seriously be considering throwing this all away for some fantasy? The five-bedroom detached house sat in a prime North London neighbourhood, St John’s Wood. It was a double-fronted, early Victorian villa. As English as jam and scones. Proud white stone steps led to the smart black door. Proud neoclassical Doric columns stood on either side of the door like Roman centurions. That Englishness of borrowed grandeur. Ryan had seen large Victorian houses like this his entire life, and now he owned one, well, most of one. 

The other women in his past had been drunken flirtations, a stray hand between warm legs in the back of a nightclub in Shoreditch or Bond Street, a night out with clients, or his SVP’s gone awry. But what he was considering with Chioma was something entirely different. 

He stood outside his home. His house, his family, and his responsibility. His younger brothers didn’t understand. Mummy’s care workers? Him pay for it. Isaac’s appeal? Him pay for it. School fees, holidays, second home in Dordogne, the buy-to-lets in Manchester and the Olympic Park, this pile in London? Him pay for it. The return for this huge investment of money and time; nothing. He felt nothing most days. There were fleeting moments with his children and wife, winning a deal at work. In that order. But all these moments passed, as fragile as leaves in winter.

For some time now, Ryan had a recurring idea that he was, in fact, dead. It always crept up on him around this time of year when they celebrated their father’s passing. The graveyard stamped him, leaving a stench, a belief that he, too, had died but had yet to realize it. The graveyard was his real home. The evidence of this was everywhere. The crows that had gathered around the house recently, a trio of them, black, flappy things like coal-coloured brollies made flesh. The birds congregated on his roof or rested on the upper windowsills. Just his house, the evil black birds seemed to ignore the other houses in the street. Worse than this was the dead tree. His family had noticed the leaves outside their front door in the height of summer. Now it appeared lifeless to them; it was less noticeable now, in the late Autumn. He had phoned the council, and a few weeks later, some men had arrived and marked it with a large X on its trunk. The tree was a London Plane, one of the many in the road, transplanted here, non-native. Now, it hung its head low, marked for beheading. There was more evidence that he had died and had somehow continued to exist in a slowly rotting, unreal world. At work, there were days when he hardly spoke to a soul. Even the commute home by taxi, the streets were sometimes eerily quiet. The few passengers were sullen-faced and grey. He’d often come home, and his family would ignore him. The children would just grunt and not look up at him from their phones. His wife would do the same, in the middle of a yoga pose or on the phone to friends or her mother.

He should go inside, he shouldn’t linger here, for if he did, someone, somewhere, might call the police, and he would suffer the indignity of getting questioned outside his own house. Sorry, Sir. We had a call from a concerned individual that you were behaving strangely, loitering.

What would he do if he was home and saw a black man lingering by someone’s front door? Ryan thought of the numerous calls to 999 when a few black youths had gathered in the street, and he was fearful for Oliver, who had gone to the park with his best friend, Max. That’s the excuse he had used to justify calling the police. Ollie’s safety. He had told the operator when she asked What colour are these youths? They’re all black. They’re fucking always black. If three white boys in chinos and rugby shirts had been loitering in the street, would he have called the police? He told himself if they had been white but dressed in ‘street gear’, he would have done the same. But he knew, deep down, that was bullshit. Many of the white boys, sons of barristers and bankers at his son’s school, dressed in hoodies, slack jeans, and dark trainers. And the sad truth was his life would have been easier if he had been born white. There. He had said it.

He passed the front garden, the two cars in the gravel drive amongst the sculpted arrangements of willow trees. He stepped to the lower ground floor entrance, ignoring the steps to the grand first-floor black door. He went inside and slunk into his home like a black cat, feeling a little like an intruder. A memory from his childhood, hearing the haunting, wheezy track of Brian Eno heralding the start of the arts and culture programme Arena on BBC2. How he had loved that music, that anthem that his mind was about to be fed, washed with culture. It was the same with the South Bank Show, the opening credits, that piano. As a boy, he dreamed of attending Oxford one day, having an important job, and living in a big house with posh white friends. It was not their money he had envied as a boy but their sophistication, diction, and extended taste. Their homes, with rows upon rows of books and their white knuckles exposed as they wrestled their first editions of great dead writers from their shelves. He wanted to be grey, know everything, and own expensive objects d’art on mantelpieces that framed roaring fires. And above the fireplace, a huge canvas, a Katz or Rothko. He had been waiting his entire life for this moment to walk into his beautiful home with its beautiful objects, which he could discuss at length and impress. A home where a beautiful, smart wife lived with his two beautiful, privately educated, confident children. All this Ryan had achieved. But for some time, he had been thinking, so what now? He had followed all his father’s instructions to lead himself here, but what now?

Ryan rattled his keys, fake coughed, and rattled his keys once more. He made a big play of slamming the heavy door because he knew his cleaner would be there. She always arrived late lunchtime five days a week.  His own immigrant worker. The lower ground floor entrance led to a lobby for shoes and umbrellas, leading to a hallway with views of the garden mud room down the hall and the garden. To Ryan’s left were two guest bedrooms, a cinema room, and a gym and laundry room. Behind him was the boiler room. To his right, doors led to the kitchen and breakfast room.

The cleaner emerged from the back of the house, the gym room to be precise, into the hallway as Ryan stood in the small lobby. She was framed above the ornate cornicing and blushed pastel sand colour of the walls, the burnt red of the dado rail. Margo had stripped the house when they purchased it and put her design all over it. 

A thin East European woman called Mary, not her real name, smiled at him. She stood directly under the chandelier in the hallway that glistened in the afternoon light and gave her a soft, illuminated halo. Once, about a year ago, when Ryan was working from home, a younger woman called for her at the door and asked to speak to Agnieszka. When he had looked at her blankly, the girl said Mary. 

Her small feet were in blue plastic caps. The floor of the hallway, a beautiful hardwood herringbone. She stood statue-still, her eyes like glass; she had the face of someone in the military. Skin of marble. He almost expected her to salute to attention in her blue cleaning pinnie. Ryan thought, a thought so absurd he almost sniggered, why was her uniform blue? Like her, the cleaners back at his office seemed always dressed in blue. His daughter once told him, colours have moods. For blue, he clearly remembered her telling him blue was the colour of joy and optimism. Cleaning as a route to joy?

What was he doing here? 

Ryan hadn’t rehearsed what he would tell her. He stood there in front of the tiny woman with a pair of the most piercing grey eyes. Harsh, deep wrinkles, maybe ten or more years older than Ryan, ‘Hello, Mr Ryan.’

Ryan said hello and took a step forward, and she imitated and did the same. 

‘I hope I didn’t scare you. I took the afternoon off work – stomach bug, I think … I’ll, I’ll just go up to bed.’ He lied perfectly. They nodded to each other, but although dismissed, she stood watching him.

He placed his satchel down and slipped out of his Churches branded shoes, and they joined the rabble of trainers, heels, and leather slippers in the nest for footwear next to the antique umbrella stand. He approached the stairs as Mary downcasted her eyes and headed to the kitchen. As he was about to climb the stairs, Mary asked him, ‘Would you like clove tea? Good for stomach?’ The cleaner’s voice always sounded older than the body it came from.

‘No, don’t trouble yourself. Do you need to hoover the bedrooms?’

‘I finish already, Mr Ryan. You go, sleep.’

‘Thank you.’ He smiled and, for effect, held his stomach.

He climbed the steps and arrived at the grand hallway on the ground floor. At the foot of the stairs to the first floor, he looked to the wall and almost shuddered when he saw the framed photo of his wedding day, Margo’s blue eyes staring at the viewer, big, hopeful eyes. Margo’s pale skin was whiter than most whites. Her body was delicate, although she was tall. Her hair was fine; it shone a chestnut brown in the photo that Ryan knew coloured when she bathed in the sun. Her dark hair made her eyes bluer. She was riddled with tiny freckles, invisible from a distance, only appearing upon close inspection. Her lips were shapely but so thin, much thinner than his. He looked at himself more than sixteen years ago; his hair was healthier, his toothy wide grin, the dumb hope. And now here he was, sneaking off from work. What would Margo make of this, he thought. The threads of the stairs creaked hello in a frog-like voice as he placed his foot on the first step. He looked up at another framed picture of his parents-in-law, flanked with the smiling faces of his two children, Oliver and Georgia. Beyond that large frame, almost out of view from the ground floor, was a photo of Ryan’s and Margo’s parents together, what an odd photo. His father wore a jumper, his mum had made an effort, and surpassed Margo’s mother, who was dressed simply with no make-up. Margo’s dad was, as always, in a good suit, top button done up. On the first floor landing was a picture of Isaac’s three children, taken when they were much younger – three wide-grinning Black children with beautiful eyes and hopeful expressions, despite having a deadbeat for a father. Whenever a twinge of guilt was felt about how he treated his brother, Ryan remembered all he had done for his children: birthday presents for the girl, Whitney, career guidance for Jerome, and he had been a better father to Cassius than his brother had. They were all grown now, and he never saw them, although he’d receive the text now and again asking for a ‘loan’. The apple never fell far from the tree, he thought. 

Ryan passed the first floor, the master bedroom and little Georgia’s room, two generous rooms, both with en suite. Further, up more exposed wooden steps to the second floor with three rooms, a small study for each child and Ollie’s room. He found himself in Georgia’s study. Her tiny laptop and posters of pubescent white boys, angelic black boys with light skin, boy bands, all the childish drawings of her early years gone and replaced with this ‘tween’ junk. He sat in her small chair; it creaked in response. He surveyed the posters of white teeth and clear skin and a promise, a lie, that adulthood would be so much better than childhood. It was a lie he had believed in as a child.

He allowed time to dissolve; if he could stop time, it would delay the awful truth he had concluded that day. And that truth was he wasn’t sure he loved his wife anymore. The thought had struck him unawares in the glow of seeing his old girlfriend.  It wounded him so to realize the constant of the last twenty years: a comforting, old, dear, loved friend that had tended to him and mended him from the field. It terrified him that he felt nothing when he thought of cheating on her like a kettle gone cold. He was desperate for something he still believed in, dearly loved, and was willing to die for, so perhaps that’s why he had come to his daughter’s study. She was the last thing left. There had always been that afterglow of contempt all fathers felt for their sons, something he had observed keenly in his own relationship with his father. A mutual, muted hatred that was unexplainable. But for his little girl, Ryan only felt love. He took out his phone, and it had a screensaver not of his wife or the four of them, just Georgia, his daughter. She was far prettier than most girls at her all-girls private prep school in West London. Her hair was straight, and a dark brunette; she looked like an Indian girl, and indeed, many had thought at the school Georgia was one of the few rich Hindu girls. Her eyes were bright hazel, a face of perfect symmetry. People often commented Georgia should be a model, which horrified Ryan. 

He couldn’t risk all this, could he? 

He sat in a tiny seat designed for a child and looked at his text messages.

Chioma>

Ryan: Crazy bupin into u Glad I got your number now!

Chioma: Me too! It was great to c u! Can’t believe you work across the street!

Ryan: Sooo…Lunch?

Chioma: Yeah, cool!!

Ryan: When?

Chioma: I’m alwys hungry

Ryan: Me too!

Chioma: But, I’m like – is it lunch yet? At 9 am!

Ryan: Then you need feeding! ☺

Chioma: Yes please!

Ryan: Maybe dinner instead then?

Chioma: You think lunch wont satisfy me?

Ryan: I can satisfy you

Chioma: EASY TIGER!

Ryan: I’m sorry, I’m idiot!

Chioma: Come to my office, 1pm ext 4532, tommrw?

Ryan: OK!

Chioma: Greedy boy!

He didn’t know how long she had been standing there. He smelt a whisper of bleach when he turned and saw ‘Mary’ standing in the doorway. 

She took one gentle step forward. ‘You OK, Mr Ryan? I bring you tea,’ she said softly, clutching one of his mugs, a plume of steam rising from it, the words BEST MUM EVER boldly printed on its side. He stood, approached her with a small smile, and then took the mug. She nodded as if he had asked her a question and left him holding the mug. As he turned back, he stopped.

At Georgia’s desk sat a man in a suit, old and bald, wiry. There was that familiar wet patch at the front of the bald forehead, the hideous thick-rimmed glasses. The old man had a grin, revealing some of his gold teeth. That sweet, boozy cologne his father liked to use, another recogniser, filled his senses. It was his father. Terror trickled down Ryan’s back, and his breath refused to leave his body.

For a few heartbeats, Ryan stood completely still. Then the mug fell from his hand, smashed, and hot tea flung onto his wool suit legs and scalded him. Ryan jumped back just as Mary came running back into the study, ‘What happen, what happen?’ she cried and saw the spilled cup and dumb look on Ryan’s face. 

Ryan looked back up from the steaming puddle on the varnished floor. When he looked back at Georgia’s desk, the chair was empty.

Litro Magazine

ambition class family guilt haunting infidelity inheritance literary fiction London psychological fiction race Story Sunday