Afsana
Gill unlocks the craft room. All her keys jangle as she tries to find the right one. Inside it smells like paint and new carpet. The walls are spotlessly white. She opens a window and a rush of fresh air cuts through the chemical smell. I can see the staff car park, the bus stop, the pink petals from the blossom trees clogging the drains along the main road. She puts her pile of papers and pens down on the metal table.
‘We haven’t used it much yet,’ she says, ‘but the relatives like to know we offer this kind of thing. And now you’re here…’
It makes me feel a bit sick, the thought of her relying on me. Now I’m here I want to run in the other direction.
‘You’ll mainly be watching today of course, helping record what they say. Seeing how we do things. We’ll be trying to work on their memory books and maybe gather some ideas for displays.’
I look at the pin board on the wall, half full of grainy photocopied images: an old-fashioned car, a church with the steeple cut off half way down, a group of women in 1950s dresses standing on a promenade. The photos are cut out and backed on coloured paper. All the stencilled letters are wonky.
‘Ok, Sana?’ she says.
‘Fine.’
‘You’ll get the hang of things in no time.’ She hands me a packet of cheap custard creams and a paper plate. ‘Open these and I’ll go and fetch the group.’
There’s an empty notebook in front of my seat. And a pen. I didn’t think about this when I applied. I thought about all the physical stuff. The hygiene training and everything. I prepared myself. Gill probably thinks she’s easing me in gently. Just a little spot of writing.
I can hear them coming down the corridor. I lean on the table and try to look natural. Maybe Ewan was right. If I was really cut out for this I wouldn’t be so scared.
‘Sana, help Albert into his chair, will you?’ Gill says.
She walks him in – her arm through his, and all the others follow on behind. It feels a bit formal. Like a procession. I’m so nervous I want to laugh. Nobody’s talking. I take his arm and he smiles and pulls me in too close. His waistcoat is covered in tiny little dots. I steer him slowly round the top end of the table to the chair furthest from the door. He takes my hand and kisses it, like an actor in a film.
‘Sana, this is Malcolm, Tony and May. May’s still feeling a little unsettled, aren’t you, love?’
‘Unsettled is the least of it,’ Malcolm says banging his fist on the table. He has a Scottish accent. Even sitting down he’s massive. Tall and bulky and impossible to ignore. ‘Unsettled is the tip of the bloody iceberg.’
He looks at me.
‘What’s your name again, hen?’
‘Afsana.’
‘Afsana. Af. Sana. Well, that’s a new one.’ He angles his chair away from Gill and leans across the table. ‘What is it we’re doing here, Afsana? What are we waiting for? What’s expected?’
I sit down next to May who mutters something under her breath. Before I can answer him Gill steps in. ‘Life stories, Malcolm,’ she doesn’t look up, ‘we’re sharing memories.’
‘Well in that case let’s start at the beginning. Picture it: The Glasgow slums, nineteen…. nineteen…,’ he waves his hands around and almost hits Tony in the head, ‘oh, sod it. A bloody long time ago. One cold morning when the rain is shitting down, a baby slips out of its mother a month too early. Slips out of her like a mackerel from the Clyde.’
Gill sighs. ‘It’s Tony’s turn now, Malcolm, we’re listening to Tony’s memories.’ She reaches out and touches Tony’s sleeve. He jumps a little and looks up, adjusts his glasses, tries to focus. ‘That’s right, isn’t it, love. You remember? We were talking about where you met your wife, Jean.’
He clears his throat. ‘Willerton Conservative Club 1952. A tea dance. She was wearing a blue dress and I–’
‘A Tory, eh! I might’ve known. I can tell by the way you wear your glasses. Blue was the right colour for her then. Appropriate. I bet it was buttoned right up to the top.’
‘No politics, Malcolm. You know the rules. If you start you’ll have to leave the group.’
Malcolm pretends to zip his lips together. He winks at me. I look away. On the other side of me May is rocking gently, staring at her hands, rubbing them together. She leans closer. ‘I had a dress with blue buttons,’ she says, ‘I wore it in the tea tent.’
Tony looks bewildered. Albert has already put his head down on the table and fallen asleep.
‘A blue dress, Tony?’ Gill prompts.
‘And I asked her to dance…’
‘Of course you did,’ Malcolm says, ‘It was the logical next step.’
‘A quickstep.’
‘No use in hesitating.’ Malcolm stands up and gets into the ballroom position, as if he’s ready for a partner. ‘Come on, Tory boy. Don’t keep a lady waiting.’
‘Sit down, Malcolm.’
He does, but somehow, in the confusion, May has pushed her chair back and is halfway towards the door. By the time I catch up with her and take her arm she’s shaking. Humming a tune under her breath as if her life depends on it.
‘It’s ok,’ I tell her guiding her back to the table, ‘let’s just sit back down with the others.’
‘Come on then, Tony, tell us more about this dance. We’re just dying to hear all the details. Did she let you get fruity? Did she let you undo some of those buttons by the end?’ Malcolm leans forward and cups his ear. Tony shrugs and looks at Gill for guidance.
‘To everything there is a season,’ May says to her hands ‘a time to weep, a time to mourn, a time to laugh– ’
‘Would you credit it?’ Malcolm says to no one in particular, ‘a Tory and a God-botherer. Please, won’t someone just get me the fuck out of here?’
‘Language, Malcolm.’
Albert wakes up and sits upright as though someone has just stuck a pin in his arm. ‘What’s happening?’ he says too loudly, ‘what are you saying? What have I missed?’
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Really?’ Albert looks around, scans our faces for confirmation. ‘Really? I was sure that was only a dream.’
There are footsteps outside. Someone running down the corridor towards us. Keys jangling. Gill looks up. Alison is at the door, out of breath and gripping onto the frame.
‘You’re needed,’ she says to Gill, her eyebrows raised.
‘Sorry, Tony,’ Gill says and then ‘Sana – you’re going to have to take over in here – just for ten minutes or so. Then you can take them into the dining room for tea.’
‘Ok,’ I say, ‘no problem. That’s fine.’ The words just slip out of me. Really I want to grab hold of her hand and force her to stay. But she’s gone and May is rocking next to me and Malcolm looks like all his birthdays have come at once. He moves into Gill’s seat before I can say anything and taps her pen on the table. He reaches across and takes three biscuits from the plate.
‘What song did you dance to, Tory boy?’ he says through a mouthful of crumbs.
Tony hesitates. He looks anxious. He glances at me and I nod for him continue.
‘The Very Thought of You,’ he says, ‘it was always our song and we danced to it at our wedding.’
I try to write it in the notebook. It’s the kind of detail Gill’s looking for. May’s whispering next to me. Something about a boy. I can’t concentrate. I don’t know the song and I’ve half forgotten the title already.
‘Was it swish, Tory boy? Were you just drowning in champagne?’
‘What?’ Tony says. ‘What’s that?’
‘I can’t hear anything either,’ Albert shouts, ‘not a bloody thing.’
Malcolm stands up again and starts to sing. The very thought of you. His voice is deep and gravelly. Slightly off key. It doesn’t match the words. He sounds like the football fans who used to fill the streets near ours after matches. I should stop him really. I should try to bring things back in line. But Albert seems happy for the first time today. He starts to hum, murmurs the words along with Malcolm and then takes over.
‘I’m living in a kind of daydream. I’m happy as can be, and, foolish as it may seem, to me that’s everything…’
He sings the whole verse and chorus while Malcolm conducts with the pen. His voice is all 1940s. Smooth and rich. Like Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire. And May has stopped rocking now, finally. Her hands aren’t clenched. She stares up at the newly painted ceiling. For just a minute her face is full of peace. Everything is suspended. And I can’t help thinking of Mum ironing in the living room on a Saturday afternoon. We’d watch musicals and old films. Just me and her. Amina out with a friend or upstairs reading romance novels smuggled in from the library. I’d dance and try to do handstands against the armchair. Once at mosque, someone had claimed that music was haram except in prayer. Except for voices raised in du’a. Amina had nudged me and rolled her eyes but she didn’t say anything. I wanted to ask Baba about it but I was too scared. I practised the argument in my head, the one I never had the courage to speak out loud. Surely even the Prophet (peace be upon him) liked to dance every now and then? I wanted a lilac dress like Debbie Reynolds in Singin’ in the Rain. Standing on a stepladder in the empty sound stage while Gene Kelly turns on all the lights and the smoke and the wind, so that the billowy bits of her dress blow back. He sings into her face. I wanted to stand on the back of the sofa and balance and let it roll over onto its side while singing and smiling as if it was the easiest thing in the world.
‘What’s your name, hen?’ Malcolm says quietly.
‘Afsana.’
‘I used to have a dress with blue buttons,’ May says, ‘I wore it at the field day to serve the tea.’
‘Do you fancy a dance, Afsana?’ Malcolm puts on a posh voice, ‘will you do me the honour of taking a turn about the room?’
I shake my head. I need to establish some authority. Tony takes his glasses off and massages the bridge of his nose. He puts them back on and squints at the window, noticing something, half standing up to get a better look. And now Malcolm’s seen it too. I turn in my chair and there’s an ambulance pulling into the car park. A quick burst of lights, a flash of yellow and green.
‘Fuck me,’ Malcolm says to nobody in particular. ‘The bastards! Who’ve they done away with this time?’
After lunch I hover in the day room. Gill is nowhere to be seen. The other staff come in and deal with toilet trips and refills and then disappear. Nobody gives me any instructions. May beckons me closer and I kneel by her chair so she can whisper.
‘Mum let me serve the tea,’ she says counting each statement off on her fingers, ‘I wore the dress with the blue buttons. I saw him running into the trees. Such a little thing. And he never came back. They won’t let me out to find him. But you understand.’ She looks at me, so directly, so full of pleading. ‘They say he doesn’t talk but he speaks to me. I read things in his eyes. You understand, don’t you?’
I don’t have time to answer. Alison is coming towards me from the kitchen. Two paramedics stride through the corridors and out the front entrance.
‘If you see him you’ll tell him where I am?’ she says.
‘There you are, Sana. Have you managed to have a break yet?’
‘No. I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure–’
She waves away my apology, ‘we’re going to have to finish your training tomorrow, I’m afraid.’
‘Ok.’
She rubs her hand over her eyes and beckons for me to follow her out into the corridor.
‘There was a death,’ she says, in a whisper, ‘Flora. A sudden stroke. Gill’s trying to contact the family before we release the body and there’s paperwork. Everything’s up in the air.’
I try to picture Flora, try to remember if I was ever introduced. ‘What do you need me to do?’
‘There’s one thing,’ she says, ‘you can say no if it’s too much.’
‘Anything.’
‘Can you sit with her? Make sure the room’s straight and clean, make sure she’s got her dignity for when her relatives arrive?’
I nod. There are noises from the day room now. A woman is screaming. There are groans. Someone shouts something about wanting to go home.
She squeezes my arm, ‘I’d better go and sort that rabble out,’ she opens the door and we both wince at the noise. ‘Room twelve,’ she says, then disappears.
The quiet is such a relief that I don’t have time to be scared. Flora is laid out on the bed with her eyes closed. I kneel on the floor and lean over her. Pull the covers higher, right up to her neck, and straighten out the sheets. Her hair is thin and yellowy. Her skin looks grey, like concrete. I think of my mother in the hospital, nearing the end and how Baba wouldn’t let us see her after she was gone. He kept us away from all of it. He could barely speak. He shut himself into the study and wrote letters and waited for his mother to arrive.
I asked Amina what they would do with her body.
‘Wash it,’ she said, ‘and wrap it and bury it.’
‘Wrap it in what?’
‘I don’t know’.
‘Will they pray for her?’
‘Of course.’
‘Which prayers will they say?’
‘I don’t know, Sana. Stop asking questions and leave me alone.’
But I couldn’t stop the questions. They stayed in my head. I wanted to know who would be touching her and what would happen if they did it wrong, and how long she would have to lie in the wet earth until judgement. I wanted someone to tell me which gate of Jannah she would be allowed through when the time came. I imagined her rolled tight with strips of white cloth, like an Egyptian Mummy, and I couldn’t get to sleep at night. In the dark I could hear Baba speaking on the phone downstairs and the sound of Amina’s bed creaking every time she rolled over.
This room is already clean and neat. There’s nothing much for me to do. So I sit down. Flora’s forehead is creased, like she’s searching for an answer, like death has interrupted something. I think about heaven – the way it’s always so white and blinding, in films and on TV. Like the tiles in all the bathrooms here. Like the new paint in the craft room. Ewan doesn’t believe in an afterlife. We should live in the here and now, not hold out for rewards that may or may not be real, he says. It’s like a drug – all of it. It’s just another form of control.
I reach out and touch her – fingertip to fingertip. I dare myself. She is somewhere else. She has to be. I wish her an afterlife full of colour. I wish her fountains and Persian rugs, flower gardens and dresses finished with gold thread. I wish her some tender meat and a better brand of gravy.
On the bus home I press my nose against the glass and feel the vibrations of the engine through my whole body. I tune everything out. Tonight it’s antipasti. Ewan wants to celebrate the turn in the weather, to revisit memories of his gap year in Tuscany. One day we’ll go there, he says sometimes, I’ll take you on a tour. We’ll taste the wine from the vineyard where I picked grapes until my fingers bled. He’ll pick the stuff up from the deli on the way home from work. He’ll lay out the strips of ham and salami in contrasting stripes and I’ll try not think about what Baba would say if he could see me. Sliced bread and the coffee table filled with bowls of herby rice and grilled vegetables swimming in oil. He’ll put an olive onto my plate and remind me that some tastes are acquired. This one was grown on an ancient tree in the shadow of Mount Etna, he’ll say, or something like that. He’ll hold the fork out and watch my face as I bite it. He finds it funnier every time.
Past the roundabout, the retail park, the takeaways. A hot whiff of spices through the open window. I close my eyes.
The week after Mum died I couldn’t sleep. I crept downstairs. Dadi was in the kitchen pouring chickpeas into a bowl of salted water. The kitchen smelled different already. I wanted toast and jam or the special crisps with the separate pouch of salt to shake. Dadi had filled the cupboards with strange food with labels I couldn't read. Big packets of flour and sacks of onions. She told me to hush when she saw I was crying. She gave me a glass of water and turned me around.
‘Tomorrow you help me make chole,’ she said, pushing me back up the stairs, ‘busy hands are better than tears.’
In the morning she stood over me while I toasted cardamom, cumin seeds and cinnamon in a pan. She told me how many peppercorns were too much. We made the paste and the gravy, we simmered and stirred. It felt like hours standing over the heat and steam. I wondered how women like Dadi ever managed to do anything else.
My stomach rumbles but the sound is swallowed by the noise of the engine and the beat of a song escaping from someone’s headphones at the back of the bus. I didn’t like it then but I could eat it now. Imagine her putting the bowl in front of me again. The sauce and sliced onions, the puffed up bhatura, the warmth of the spices mixed with snot and tears. I could tell Ewan that somebody asked me to dance today and somebody died. I could leave the ham and olives on my plate.
The sun streams in through the window and I have to cover my eyes. Somebody rings the bell before I get a chance to. I reach down to gather my bags. I’ll tell Ewan it was all fine. Then I’ll sleep. I’ll go back tomorrow. One day at a time. I’ll finish my training at the very least.