ODDLY ENOUGH, I can see it from Ali’s point of view now. It is odd, considering what he’s done.
But it must have been the most enormous shock, coming to live with me in London. His whole life was turned upside down. Apart from the emotional rift with his parents, the culture shock and all that, for the first time in his life he was poor. Until then he’d lived such a privileged life with his family, his servants, his money and his government contacts. People like Ali live that way, in the East. Sometimes I thought of my mother, taking down the biscuit tin and counting the notes, one by one, as if by some oversight she’d missed one the last time.
In Earl’s Court he was cut off from all that. He never complained – he never said he regretted it – but the flat was expensive and he wouldn’t let me pay for it. He was too proud for that; he said he wanted to care for me. I suppose, being Oriental, he felt more manly that way.
By the end of May he’d found himself a job. After jet-setting around the world, Bahrein one day, Singapore the next, it must have felt cramped to sit all day in a cupboard. Actually, three cupboards. That was Savewise Travel. In one sat the boss, Farouq. He was a Muslim from Uganda, with oily hair and a smooth telephone manner. In another cupboard sat Eileen, the secretary, her fingers smudged from thumbing through timetables. And now in the third sat Ali. He didn’t fly any more; he planned other people’s journeys. Savewise was down the Cromwell Road, and near his beloved mosque.
From then on, the tempo changed. Though the flat still had a temporary air, with my suitcases half-packed, the week settled into a shape, with five working days and then the weekend. I’d forgotten about weekends just as you forget, when you’re grown up, how the year used to be shaped around the school holidays. When he was out, I slept. I slept a lot of the time nowadays. You’d think I had everything to get up for, wouldn’t you? But I slept.
We rented a TV and on Saturday mornings we lay in bed, with mugs of tea on our stomachs, watching Swap Shop. On Sundays we wandered down the streets, past windows with their curtains closed all day, as ours were – windows with ‘Freehold Investment For Sale’ boards outside, and dustbins crammed with wine bottles and with milk cartons because nobody got around to having a milkman deliver. It was that sort of area.
All Sunday the big church stayed padlocked. There were drifts of rubbish against its fences and cars jammed in its driveway, not for Holy Communion but to save on residents’ permits.
‘Does nobody believe in God?’ Ali asked.
‘Only you.’
He kept asking me to marry him. He wanted me to bear his children. I expect he pictured one of those Span houses along the motorway, with him and me in it.
‘Why would that change things’, I asked, ‘when we’re together anyway?’
‘I want to be sure of you. I never feel sure.’
He was standing in the kitchen doorway. I was chopping up ginger for a curry; I liked Pakistani food and I was learning to cook it.
‘I’m never sure . . . that I’m getting there.’ He moved his hands, trying to express – what? A vacuum?
‘I love you more and more,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I feel quite desperate.’
When I was little I prayed for things. I prayed to God for patent leather party shoes. I prayed for the sort of party my friends had. I prayed for my Mum to be there when I got home from school. I soon found that nobody had been listening.
I poured seeds into the blender. ‘Do you pray about me?’ That stabbing edge had crept into my voice. ‘Do you, when you’re on the rug?’
‘Don’t put it like that.’
‘When you’re praying, then.’
‘Heather, my prayers aren’t like that. I told you. They’re not pleas, or confessions. You don’t even come into them.’
‘Don’t I?’
‘They’re for our Prophet . . . they’re adoration, and submission . . . They’re –’
‘Wait.’
I switched on the blender motor. The engine rasped, the spices rattled round. I leaned on the top, holding it down. Him and his prayers – why did I feel so excluded?
When the motor stopped he said, gently, ‘Perhaps you’d love me better if we were married.’
I said flatly, ‘You don’t want to marry me.’
‘I do!’
‘I don’t believe you.’ I peeled the garlic with my sharp knife.
‘You think it’s just . . . well, physical? How can I convince you?’
‘You needn’t bother,’ I said.
‘Don’t you trust me?’ he asked. ‘Darling, you seem to have a poor view of human nature.’
‘That’s my problem.’ I stabbed open the papery skin. ‘You needn’t worry about it.’
‘How can I make you believe me? What can I say?’
‘Words never do any good.’
‘They’re not just words . . . they’re my feelings.’
‘Don’t like feelings,’ I said. ‘Don’t like prayers . . . bloody prayers . . .’
He stepped into the kitchen and touched my hair.
‘Why do you try to spoil things, when they could be so perfect? What’s the matter with you? Suddenly, these ugly words.’
I went on cutting, my knife flashing. My eyes smarted from the garlic fumes.
For the first time in months I dreamed of Jonathan, crow-like in his black school blazer. I’d spoiled that all right. He was probably married now, with two kids. Like Ali, he was the marrying kind.
How could Ali love me? I started dropping hints about my past, hurting him. I willed him to see how worthless I was. One Sunday we went rowing in Hyde Park. He rowed and I lay in my flounced, yellow dress. I felt clammy and painted, but he said I looked as pretty as a milkmaid.
‘You’ve got a funny idea about farms,’ I said.
He just smiled at me. He was happy, remembering similar outings under a hotter sky, with his sisters and his aunts and his cousins. I could never count all his relatives. The laughter, he said, the warmth.
He thought he could start another family with me. I wished he didn’t. He sat in his shirt-sleeves, pulling the oars. His face glowed. He looked so innocent. His family had kept him that way. I realized: he looked younger than my little brother Teddy.
He was still reminiscing. ‘Your new dress . . . yellow’s always been my favourite colour. I used to believe that it was invented when I was born.’
‘What?’
‘That it didn’t exist until then.’ He paused. ‘You know, I’ve never told anyone that.’
We drifted on. He shipped the oars and we slid silently through the water. I closed my eyes. Willow leaves brushed my cheek, gently, as if blessing us both. I couldn’t bear it. I felt stifled, as I’d felt on the garage roof with Jonathan.
‘Ever done it in a boat?’ I asked.
‘Done what?’
‘Done . . . you-know-what.’ My voice was stupid and pert.
A silence.
‘You know I haven’t,’ he said at last, in a level voice. ‘I’ve told you about my two, unsatisfactory . . .’ He stopped. ‘Well? Have you?’
I kept my eyes closed, so I couldn’t see his face. ‘Ever so rocky.’
I heard the oars bump as he fixed them on the rowlocks.
‘Shut up!’ he hissed.
Then the boat was pushing violently through the water, the branches scraping my face.
That night he was rough, heaving me over like a sack of coal – as if I were heavy, but grubby too. I was grubby; I was worthless. Why had it taken him so long to realize? My face pressed into the pillow as he entered me from the rear, pushing in with difficulty. Behind my head his breaths were quick and shallow. He didn’t speak. His hand slid under me, humping me up against him; his fingers sank into me, and it hurt.
I bit my lip, refusing to cry out. My brain locked shut. He went on for ages . . . I counted to fifty, in French, and started again. Afterwards I fell into a heavy sleep, as if I were dead.