Mira in the Present Tense by Sita Brahmachari Read Free Book Online Page A

good-bye.”
    He stands in the doorway of his shop and waves us off. Mum waits for a gap in the traffic. I turn round to look at Dusty Bird as he walks inside. The last thing I see is him “man crying” (that’s what Mum calls that sort of choked-up cry). His back, round like a tortoiseshell, heaves up to his ears, and then drops down again. He rubs his eyes with his fists in a rough way, like he’s angry with himself, but his tortoiseshell back carries on heaving up and down, up and down.
    At last there is a space in the traffic and we turn out onto the road.

    By the time we pass the Forum, where a line of people, all with the same quiffy hairstyle like Elvis Presley, are queuing up for tickets for a gig, Nana has finally got her breath back, enough to laugh at the “characters,” as she calls them, in the queue. Nana thinks, compared to the ’60s, we live in a dull, ironed-out world where everyone pretty much looks the same.
    â€œDusty Bird’s always had a bit of a soft spot for me. We used to show paintings together on the Embankment. Dusty would flirt outrageously with me and then he and Kit would start their usual banter…‘What’s your secret, old man?’ he’d ask Kit, and your granddad would always answer the same way…‘Charm, Dusty. If you’ve got to ask, you haven’t got it.’ ‘Then make sure you don’t lose it,’ Dusty would tease…“
    Nana stares out of the window. I don’t even know if she’s talking to us or herself. It’s like her memories are kaleidoscoping her back in time.
    â€œHe wasn’t bad-looking in his day. He had this long mane of curly black hair and green eyes, a bit of a gypsy look, a real beatnik.”
    â€œWhat’s a beatnik, Nana?” I ask.
    â€œArty types, writers, us lot, in the fifties and sixties…rebels, protesters. We couldn’t stand being told what to think or how to behave. We had a lot of battles to fight,” she sighs. “We were young! You’ll do the same one day, hopefully.”
    For some weird reason, when Nana talks about having battles to fight, I can’t help thinking of Jidé Jackson, but then again it seems like I can’t help thinking about him, whatever anyone says.
    â€œI thought you were a hippy?” I say.
    â€œWe evolved,” laughs Nana.
    It’s impossible to think of Dusty Bird as a beatnik or a hippy, or whatever. He’s bald and quite fat and old. But when he looked at Nana I think he could see her as she was when she was young, and she could see him too. Sometimes you just think of people as old and you don’t think about who they are or what they’ve done in their lives.
    It’s easier for me to imagine Nana when she was young because I’ve got photos of her, and she was more beautiful than most people I’ve ever seen, even in magazines and films. She had long, thick black hair with short bangs, and huge dark brown eyes. She was small and slim…as small as me. She looked a lot like that actress in the old films Nana likes to watch—I think her name is Vivien Leigh.
    It’s not just the photos that make it easier to imagine her being young. Nana still wears clothes from the ’60s. Aunty Abi calls it “vintage gear,” but Nana says it’s just her original bohemian wardrobe that she’s never grown out of. She says she’s been waiting for a new fashion that would make her ditch her old look, but she hasn’t been convinced by anything else yet, and now, apparently, “the wheel of fashion has turned full circle.”
    Nana Josie has got to be the most stylish person I know. She always wears beads and jewelry and something—a scarf, a ring, a handbag, anything really, that nobody else has, because you wouldn’t know where to buy the things she wears. I can see why Dusty Bird wanted to go out with Nana and I can understand why he cried man