Transit by Rachel Cusk

Author:Rachel Cusk
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Random House

The builder’s van had broken down: the foreman Tony said it happened all the time. We were in Tony’s gleaming maroon Audi, driving to the hardware depot to pick up some materials.

‘This is nice car,’ he explained, taking his hands off the steering wheel to demonstrate. Inside, the car was spotless black leather. ‘I buy a car that never break down,’ Tony said, ‘and look what happen. It’s me has to go pick up cement.’

Earlier I had stood in the street and watched him line the boot carefully with dust sheets.

‘Like assassin,’ he said, grinning widely to show an impressive set of white teeth. ‘Room for two bodies,’ he added significantly. He pointed at the door to the basement flat. ‘In Albania,’ he said, ‘I know people – big discount.’

We sat in the slow-moving traffic with the radio on. Tony said he kept it on to improve his English. His daughter spoke better English than him, and she was only five.

‘Five years old!’ he yelled, slapping the leather steering wheel. ‘Amazing!’

The grey roadside inched along beside us. Tony glanced out at it frequently, drawing himself up in his seat. He drove erect behind his mirrored sunglasses with a single finger resting on the leather steering wheel. His big hard thighs were splayed comfortably in a perfect V. He wore a tight red T-shirt that showed his powerful chest and bulging forearms.

‘I love England,’ he said. ‘I love most the English cakes.’ He grinned. ‘Especially the hijack.’

You mean flapjack, I said.

‘Flapjack!’ he shouted deliriously, throwing back his head. ‘Yes, I love the flapjack!’

His daughter, he went on, enjoyed school – she talked about it all the time. In the mornings he would find her sitting fully dressed in her uniform on the stairs, waiting. Her teacher had told him she read better than some of the ten-year-olds.

‘My daughter,’ he said, jabbing his own muscled chest, ‘reading English better than the English.’

The family had moved to England three years before. The only person they knew when they came was Tony’s sister-in-law, who lived in Harlow. Since then Tony had persuaded his brother and cousin to come here too. He liked to have his family around him – he returned to Albania every couple of months, driving non-stop in the Audi until he got there – but he wasn’t sure it was so good for his wife.

‘It stops her getting used,’ he said.

Used to it, I said. It stops her getting used to it.

‘Yes,’ Tony said, nodding his head approvingly. ‘It’s good.’

It stopped her getting used to it, he went on, having her family to depend on. She had made no friends and was frightened of going anywhere on her own. She wouldn’t even go to their daughter’s school: it was Tony who dropped her off and picked her up and went to the assembling.

Assembly, I said.

‘I love,’ Tony said, grinning widely, ‘the assembly.’

Unlike their daughter, his wife could speak no English at all.

‘And my daughter,’ he said, ‘she don’t speak Albanian.’

She could understand a few things but English was the language she knew.

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