Anansi Boys

Rosie was a good person. There was in Rosie a little of the essence of Francis of Assisi, of Robin Hood, of Buddha and of Glinda the Good: the knowledge that she was about to bring together her true love and his estranged father gave her forthcoming wedding an extra dimension, she decided. It was no longer simply a wedding: it was now practically a humanitarian mission, and Fat Charlie had known Rosie long enough to know never to stand between his fiancée and her need to Do Good.

“I’ll call Mrs. Higgler tomorrow,” he said.

“Tell you what,” said Rosie, with an endearing wrinkle of her nose, “call her tonight. It’s not late in America, after all.”

Fat Charlie nodded. They walked out of the wine bar together, Rosie with a spring in her step, Fat Charlie like a man going to the gallows. He told himself not to be silly: After all, perhaps Mrs. Higgler had moved, or had her phone disconnected. It was possible. Anything was possible.

They went up to Fat Charlie’s place, the upstairs half of a smallish house in Maxwell Gardens, just off the Brixton Road.

“What time is it in Florida?” Rosie asked.

“Late afternoon,” said Fat Charlie.

“Well. Go on then.”

“Maybe we should wait a bit. In case she’s out.”

“And maybe we should call now, before she has her dinner.”

Fat Charlie found his old paper address book, and under H was a scrap of an envelope, in his mother’s handwriting, with a telephone number on it, and beneath that, Callyanne Higgler.

The phone rang and rang.

“She’s not there,” he said to Rosie, but at that moment the phone at the other end was answered, and a female voice said “Yes? Who is this?”

“Um. Is that Mrs. Higgler?”

“Who is this?” said Mrs. Higgler. “If you’re one of they damn telemarketers, you take me off your list right now or I sue. I know my rights.”

“No. It’s me. Charles Nancy. I used to live next door to you.”

“Fat Charlie? If that don’t beat all. I been looking for your number all this morning. I turn this place upside down, looking for it, and you think I could find it? What I think happen was I had it written in my old accounts book. Upside down I turn the place. And I say to myself, Callyanne, this is a good time to just pray and hope the Lord hear you and see you right, and I went down on my knees, well, my knees are not so good any more, so I just put my hands together, but anyway, I still don’t find your number, but look at how you just phone me up, and that’s even better from some points of view, particularly because I ain’t made of money and I can’t afford to go phoning no foreign countries even for something like this, although I was going to phone you, don’t you worry, given the circumstances—”

And she stopped, suddenly, either to take a breath, or to take a sip from the huge mug of too-hot coffee she always carried in her left hand, and during the brief quiet Fat Charlie said, “I want to ask my dad to come to my wedding. Getting married.” There was silence at the end of the line. “It’s not till the end of the year, though,” he said. Still silence. “Her name’s Rosie,” he added, helpfully. He was starting to wonder if they had been cut off; conversations with Mrs. Higgler were normally somewhat one-sided affairs, often with her doing your lines for you, and here she was, letting him say three whole things uninterrupted. He decided to go for a fourth. “You can come too if you want,” he said.

“Lord, lord, lord,” said Mrs. Higgler. “Nobody tell you?”

“Told me what?”

So she told him, at length and in detail, while he stood there and said nothing at all, and when she was done he said “Thank you, Mrs. Higgler.” He wrote something down on a scrap of paper, then he said, “Thanks. No, really, thanks,” again, and he put down the phone.

“Well?” asked Rosie. “Have you got his number?”

Fat Charlie said, “Dad won’t be coming to the wedding.” Then he said, “I have to go to Florida.” His voice was flat, and without emotion. He might have been saying, “I have to order a new checkbook.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“Funeral. My dad’s. He’s dead.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She put her arms around him, and held him. He stood in her arms like a shop-window dummy. “How did it, did he…was he ill?”

Fat Charlie shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

And Rosie squeezed him tightly, and then she nodded, sympathetically, and let him go. She thought he was too overcome with grief to talk about it.

He wasn’t. That wasn’t it at all. He was too embarrassed.

THERE MUST BE A HUNDRED THOUSAND RESPECTABLE WAYS TO die. Leaping off a bridge into a river to save a small child from drowning, for example, or being mown down in a hail of bullets while single-handedly storming a nest of criminals. Perfectly respectable ways to die.