Peter kept himself occupied all afternoon and was relieved that his resolve not to switch on the computer had so far held. It was a good sign, a faltering step across the rope bridge between ape and true human being. Did that mean he had to give up his designs on her?
He had another shower instead, shaved, and tugged at the tusk-like nasal hairs that had appeared overnight. Eyedrops whitened the bloodshot of his eyes. He put on his loafers, rolled up his sleeves, and checked himself in the full-length mirror in the bedroom. Handsome.
Downstairs he laid out the vegetables in the kitchen and searched the radio for some Indian music. Or was that overdoing it? Probably. He found a ‘community language’ station, and turned it off until Beauty arrived.
She looked exquisite on his doorstep in a black salwar-kameez with embroidered trim and a dark brown headscarf. He stood aside to let her in, and ached at the sight of her slender neck.
Beauty followed him into the kitchen. She was looking forward to eating. And leaving, as soon as she could. The bloke looked at her too closely.
‘What do I do first?’ he asked.
Beauty put her cigarettes on the table.
‘Chop the onions,’ she said.
She watched him labouring over the onions and asked for another knife.
‘Small pieces,’ she said, and rolled up her sleeves.
Bismillah hir Rahmaanir Raheem.
Peter saw her lips mumbling something as she stripped the onions. Her gold earrings trembled as she moved. Some kind of blessing? For what we are about to receive may the Lord … Sort of.
‘I found an Indian station by mistake earlier,’ Peter said, switching on the radio.
Beauty listened to the sweet voice of Alisha Chinai: Kajra re, kajra re mere kare kare naina.
‘It’s from a film,’ she said.
Peter had watched an Indian film the other night, he said.
‘Did you like it?’
‘Yes,’ he lied. The songs were interminable, the film four hours long, but the women were magnificently beautiful. ‘It was very … innocent,’ he said.
‘That’s how they are,’ Beauty said. So what if the actors didn’t kiss, and Rani Mukherjee didn’t take her clothes off?
Peter opened a bottle of red wine, and took some mineral water and a lemon from the fridge. ‘Right, what’s next?’ he asked.
‘Hot the oil. Fry the onions a bit, then put the garlic and ginger in after.’
She washed the meat at the sink, her lips moving as she did it.
‘Can I ask what it is you’re saying when you touch the food?’ Peter asked.
Wasn’t it a respectful question?
‘Bismillah hir Rahmaanir Raheem,’ Beauty said. ‘It means … Allah the Mercy One … I dunno in English.’
*
Peter leaned against the sideboard and watched Beauty move about the kitchen. She washed the rice and put it in a large pan of cold water. He passed close by her and switched on the cooker. He was happy with her company. Lewd thoughts seemed out of place with the food, the music and the Arabic words.
Eat and go, Beauty told herself. If he tried anything, she’d give him two slaps. It was worth the risk for the food. She stirred the onions and enjoyed the stinging in her eyes, after so long. His house would smell, and his nice clothes.
He’d been almost the only white person in both shops that morning, Peter told her as she grated the ginger and garlic. In fact, generally people didn’t seem to mix at all. You never saw mixed white and Asian couples. Why was that? Beauty scraped the meat from the chopping board into the pan, mixed it in with the melting onions and said she didn’t know. Asian people liked to stick to their own kind.
Beauty covered the meat with water and sat down at the table. She lit a cigarette and watched Peter, his shirt buttons open, glass in one hand. He had a soft face and nice smile when he wasn’t perving, which he wasn’t anymore. He was lonely, it was obvious, and needed to talk. She didn’t mind. Weren’t there things she wanted to find out, that she needed to know? It was better to look stupid alone in front of him, one person; and he hadn’t laughed at her the last time they’d talked.
She got up to stir the rice and sat down again. The meat would take some time to cook.
‘Can I arx you something else about them other stuff?’ she said.
Peter set out plates, knives and forks and sat down opposite her. ‘Of course.’
He opened a drawer in the table, took out a small candle, lit it and placed it between them.
‘You know … like … people who don’t believe in God or heaven ’n’ that?’
She stared into the flame.
Peter wondered where this notion had taken her. Did the prospect of worms scare her? Or that there was no soul? Had she realized that she wouldn’t be punished for any ‘sins’ she might commit?
She looked up. ‘How do they know what’s right and wrong?’ she asked, and looked away again, embarrassed.
Peter smiled. It was a good question. She’d obviously been giving this some thought.
Her face opposite him caught the glow of the flame as she waited for a reply. But how could he answer without conceding something to religion? That the principles of a liberal enlightenment, human rights and political correctness were derived from Judeo-Christian values? Tricky in one go. Perhaps some moral equivalence might serve his purposes better. If he were to stand a chance of turning his sensual and intellectual desires into reality, he’d need to be clever about it.
Beauty watched him rub his chin and wondered why he needed so long to answer.
‘Well, I guess we all make our own choices,’ he said. ‘What’s right for one person might not be for another.’
Beauty heard him, but had to repeat the words to herself in case she hadn’t understood and said something dumb. Nothing he said made sense at first. How could everyone decide what was right or wrong?
Peter saw her eyes narrow as she considered his words. He had to open her up to other ideas, on sin, for example, without betraying the superiority of the belief system he wanted to make appealing. It might take more than an evening.
‘Actually, it’s more a “don’t do to others what you wouldn’t have them do to you” idea – a Judeo … a Jewish-Christian thing,’ he said. It might be less alarming for her if he steeped it in something she could relate to. ‘I suppose that’s what most people believe.’
Beauty wondered what Jewish was. Christian she knew. Issa was a Muslim prophet. Her brother accused her of being a fucking Christian after he had found out she had let those two people with the magazines into the house. But what was the other one? What did they believe?
She went to stir her curry again. The rice was nearly done.
Peter poured himself another glass of wine while her back was turned.
‘What’s … Jewish … mean?’ she said, returning.
Wine rolled over the edge of the glass as he put it back on the table. Surely to God she’d heard of Jews! Maybe she didn’t know the word. Or was it true they were known as ‘pigs and monkeys’? Isn’t that what the Qur’an said? Or so he’d seen on a television programme once.
‘You know, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, the Ten Commandments … Israel?’ he prompted.
Beauty was embarrassed by the surprise in his voice. But the names reminded her of the sitting room in London, and the mullah’s brother telling her stories of the times before Mohammed. Of Mussa and Ibrahim. And how the Ehudi would all go to hell.
‘You mean Ehudi?’ she asked.
Peter considered the etymology of the word. Ehudi. Yehudi? Menuhin? Ehud? Barak, Olmert?
‘I think so,’ he said.
She didn’t know anything about them, except that the Ehudi’s prophets were Muslim prophets too. She remembered the strange men with long beards and sidelocks in black coats and hats she’d seen near Finsbury Park years ago, and her cousin Marouf shouting at them from the car window. Fucking Ehudi!
She’d never known why he had sworn at them. They were old men.
‘They’re God’s people, aynit,’ she said to Peter. ‘Allah-manush. They believe, too.’ The mullah’s brother had told her that as well. He’d scolded her when she’d asked him how they could be God’s people and go to hell just for being Ehudi, but she hadn’t understood his answer. Now this bloke was saying that people who didn’t believe in God had the same ideas as the Ehudi and Christians? So why did they eat and drink haram stuff, why did they have lots of boyfriends and children with different men?
And hadn’t her brother always said that Muslims weren’t like that; screamed it at her?
‘If white people got them Jewish and Christian ideas you said, how come they do what they want?’
Peter looked at her across the table with curiosity. By ‘white people’ did she mean atheists? Non-Muslims? And is that what Muslims or Indians thought of white Brits?
‘You can’t do whatever you like. There’s the law,’ he said. ‘Anyway, do religious people never do anything wrong?’
Beauty picked at the dried wax which had dripped from the candle. The mullah and that other pervert. Touching her. And the beatings. You couldn’t blame God for that.
‘They know it’s wrong,’ she said.
Peter watched her face lost in thought. What had she suffered? Guilt pricked him for the thoughts he’d found so hard to overcome. This was a wounded bird, not an object of lust.
Her curry was perfect and hot, and Peter hadn’t seemed to mind her eating with her hand; the rice had scalded her fingers nicely and she had left her plate empty except for the stalks of a dozen fresh chillies.
Beauty passed her hand in front of her face and thanked Allah for the food.
Shobor shukor al-hamdu lillah Allah – tumar dana ha-ba lai siro din ola habai tai.
Peter sniffed and sweated on the other side of the table. She told him to drink milk if the curry was too hot. He finished eating and filled his mouth from a carton in the fridge. It worked.
Beauty lit a cigarette and blew out smoke with relief at having eaten so well for the first time since leaving home.
‘Have you got any brothers and sisters?’ she asked him.
Peter wrestled with the espresso maker at the sink. He was happy to give up on religion and philosophy for the moment.
He had an older brother, he said; didn’t see him very often. They didn’t get on.
‘Has he got a wife and kids?’ she asked.
He hadn’t.
What about your parents? Don’t they have a right to see their grandchildren?
But she didn’t ask him.
‘I suppose neither of us has found the right person yet,’ Peter said, hoping it would open a more promising avenue.
Beauty flicked cigarette ash onto her plate. White people all wanted ‘love’ marriages.
Don’t you?
‘What’s a right person?’ she asked.
‘I have no idea,’ Peter said. Attractive and not overweight (admit it), sexually curious but inexperienced, non-nagging. ‘You tell me.’
He poured himself coffee, preparing to fit her description.
‘If someone respects their parents, looks after them; if he works hard and takes care of his wife and children – thass perfect,’ Beauty said.
Peter was disappointed by the assured answer. Was that it? What about intelligent, good-looking, witty?
‘And the perfect woman?’
‘Someone who looks after her in-laws and children, who makes her husband strong and keeps him in line,’ she answered. ‘Then you can love that person,’ she added, and reddened. Why had she used that word in front of him?
Peter sensed her embarrassment. He stirred sugar into the small coffee cup and saw the Asian men at the supermarket, the providers and protectors, loading their cars with children and onions. Was that why their chests swelled, and they bristled with masculinity? Could he do that? Was there fulfilment to be had from playing the dutiful husband and father? Was that ‘love’? Was that the appeal of an arranged marriage – in fulfilling your duties and enjoying your wife’s fulfilment of hers? And what about his own parents? They were ‘getting on’, weren’t they? Was he looking after them? Peter had always had a childhood belief in his parents’ longevity, had always expected to go before them. Or was this just a selfish refusal to face up to his obligations as a dutiful son?
Beauty looked at the white man lost in thought. She’d shut him up finally. Maybe she wasn’t so stupid after all.
Peter raised his head and considered the young woman across the table, the empty plates between them, his full belly. It felt right.
‘I wanted to ask you something, too,’ he said.
Beauty poked the wax from the candle into the flame. It was nice talking to him, and she felt comfortable in his house. He was different from other white people she had met; he didn’t think bad of her Asian stuff; he wasn’t rough. His house was clean and warm and you could eat properly.
‘I know this might sound crazy,’ he began.
Beauty sat up, alert. His voice had gone strange. She shouldn’t have relaxed. Was he going to say something embarrassing?
‘And I don’t know what situation you’re in or what your plans are, but …’
Beauty measured the distance to the back door. She could be there in a few steps. All this talk of love and the perfect man – had she been flirting with him? A little? The old man was right – she did bring trouble on herself.
‘… I was thinking of moving house – somewhere near or far … it doesn’t matter with my job,’ Peter went on, ‘and was wondering if you wanted to … share it with me, you know, as housemates?’
He looked at Beauty for a reaction.
The knock at the front door startled him. Who the hell could that be? Peter went to answer it. Probably that bloody yob come to get in the way. Wasn’t he supposed to be away working somewhere?
Peter looked through the spyhole in the front door.