Peter woke up late, stretched, and hawked to clear his throat.
Beauty was coming for dinner, or at least to show him how to cook. The gloom he had felt at her last visit had passed. The pity he had felt for her ignorance had given way once more to an exquisite thrill at it. It wasn’t her fault she hadn’t been to school. In fact, it was a miracle to come across someone who had had little or no stimulus, input or influence from human life.
He threw back the duvet and stood up. Forget that other stuff. He would be her spiritual and intellectual liberator, nothing more. And everything had to be right that evening. The poor girl’s eyes had shone as she’d listed the ingredients he had to buy. Powders – red, yellow and grey – not to bother with the gorom moshla, which, it had taken him a moment to realize, was garam masala: that was for Pakistanis, apparently; onions, chillies (small, green and hard, she’d said), garlic, ginger, brown rice, fresh coriander leaves, and brown sticks – which might be bay and cinnamon; lamb shoulder, sheep or ‘baby’ chicken. A halal butcher would know what he meant. She told him how to have the mutton bone cut properly; the chicken skinned and in eight pieces.
He had a shower, shaved and put on a pair of straight, dark blue jeans and brown suede Oxfords, his white Aquascutum shirt and a grey jacket. Outside in the weak sunshine everything seemed brighter, closer and more colourful than on a work day. He switched on the car radio in a buoyant, purposeful mood, and searched for something suitable. An echoing ‘Midlands Underground 1-0-7, Midlands Underground 1-0-7’ and a black youth saluting his listeners:
‘… big shou’ out to all my bredren. Big up all you sexy-body ladies. Hold tight all my Walsall soldiers. Hold tight my WV10 crew, all my B70 crew, the DY6 – keep it locked in, locked on. All my texters, all my signalists down in the block at HMP Featherstone – big yourselves up – trooss me this next choon is massive, y’get me?
‘P-P-P-Pull it op selektah!
‘Br-Br-Br …’
A pump-action shotgun, loaded and fired twice, and a sultry New York black woman’s voice:
‘Treat me good, treat me right
Lick my body all through the night
Do it slow, do it fast
Suck my pussy and lick my ass … ass … ass …’
And a bass line that distorted the speakers of the stereo.
Peter stopped at the traffic lights on the ring road, opened the window and affected an air of urban boredom for the benefit of the woman in the next car. He was in high spirits, and the ‘4-4, Speed Garage, Bassline House and Bashment’ on the radio made him feel like he belonged in the architecturally brutalized city.
The lights turned green and he pulled off as if in a hurry, which he wasn’t, and considered having a subwoofer and amplifier fitted to the car.
At the Bilston roundabout he turned the music down. He was nearly forty, for God’s sake.
*
He headed towards Dudley and a small brick precinct with an Indian supermarket and greengrocer’s. He parked outside the Apna Punjab pub and avoided looking at the five lolling Jamaicans drinking cans of beer, talking loudly in patois and laughing.
The small supermarket was busy, the aisles full. He could just make out the vegetables through the pastel and turquoise nylon-looking robes and scarves of overweight middle-aged Indian women, emptying crates of chillies into plastic bags. Peter waited, and tried to keep out of the way of turbanned men setting out more boxes of vegetables, and fathers with paunches and thick gold jewellery carrying sacks of flour and rice on their shoulders while calling their young children to follow them. Excusing himself frequently, he managed to nip in and out of the line to get what he needed. By the time he reached the tomatoes he’d had enough of the place, but he stifled the irritation he would usually have allowed himself to indulge in had he been at Sainsbury’s, with Kate. It might look racist here.
Away from the vegetables, things were calmer. There was a butcher’s at the far end of the supermarket, which doubled as a Western Union branch. Posters of smiling relatives in India advertised the service. A map of the Punjab hung on the wall, behind five white-aproned men chopping meat. It wasn’t halal – he’d have to go elsewhere – but he lingered as he passed the attractive, slim young mothers in order to inhale their perfume, the shampoo of their layered and highlighted black hair and, he imagined, the washing powder of their freshly laundered blouses and tight jeans. What type of lingerie did Indian women wear?
The younger butchers nodded to the Bhangra rhythms coming from speakers hanging on the wall and a woman singer’s sweet, high-pitched voice. Their shoulders twitched to the banging drums and the whistling that punctuated the chorus. It was happy music. The butchers smiled at the women as they passed large plastic bags of meat over the counter.
Peter went to the checkout at the front of the shop. The tall, fierce-bearded Sikh owner weighed and packed his vegetables in silence.
Outside, the Jamaicans had gone, and the Asian fathers and husbands were strapping their children into the back seats of silver or black BMWs and four-wheel drive Mercedes with chrome crash bars. Peter got into his car and watched the men. Pretty wives joined them. He looked at the single plastic bag on the passenger seat next to him, and back to the menfolk loading sacks of onions into the boots of their cars. Where did they get the money from? What jobs did they do? Were their marriages all arranged?
Peter drove out of the car park and headed back to Dunstall to look for a halal butcher. He turned on the radio to recapture his earlier mood, but the music had changed to the plaintive melody of a slow reggae tune.
‘How I envy you
You got a woman home waiting for you
And a baby and boy running to you
I need to find a good lady like you got’
Was this what he was missing? Providing for and protecting a beautiful wife and children?
‘To have a family would be so sweet
A joyful thing it would be
To have a woman and baby girl waiting for me
Would make me so happy-y-y-y’
Peter reached for the off switch.
*
Outside the halal butcher’s there were crates of onions, ginger and garlic on the pavement. He made his way to the meat counter at the rear of the premises. Framed verses from the Qur’an in Arabic script and pictures of the Ka’aba in Mecca hung on the walls. The butchers sharpened their knives to the sound of religious Qawwali music coming from an old radio on the worktop, a man’s voice yodelling in its range to the beat of a tabla drum.
The shop was dark, and there were few women. Men waited to be served. Peter presumed they were all Muslim and tried to guess their origins: Aryan Pakistani, high-cheekboned Somali, a wide-faced, dark-stubbled, south European/Slav/ex-Soviet Republic type, and a strawberry-bearded white convert in camouflage trousers. Peter felt uncomfortable in his Oxfords and jacket; and with his racial profiling of the customers. He studied the meat behind the glass.
The men in the queue in front of him chose carefully – shoulders of lamb, skinned ‘baby’ chickens, ‘boiler’ chickens, liver, gizzard, chicken ‘niblets’ and mutton chops.
‘Yes, mate?’
Peter asked for a kilo of lamb shoulder, diced into small pieces. He watched as the butcher sliced away the fat and sinews and cut the bone on an electric saw.