41

The bus stopped again. Beauty didn’t mind the traffic. She was early for the shift at the care home. She’d washed, dressed and left the house as soon as it was light, glad to get out of her bedroom and be among other people. The white woman in a fast-food restaurant uniform sitting next to her leaned into the aisle to see why they weren’t moving.

Beauty rested her head against the window and the voices returned from the night before.

‘Tui amarray arr derchtay nai.’ You’ll never see Mum again.

Her brother’s hand on her shoulder.

‘Take your fucking hands off her.’

Where had the lady learned to speak like that?

She’s white. They can say what they like.

Thass good, aynit?

‘You do not have to put up with this.’

The woman was right.

Good she said it.

Beauty shuddered at the rage in her brother’s face and lifted her head from the vibrations of the window. What did the white lady really know anyway? Beauty didn’t understand what Kate’s mother had done that was so terrible, but maybe they had problems too. White stuff. She looked at the white faces on the bus around her, women in their fifties on their way to supermarket jobs, and rested her head against the window again.

‘Homla’s coming! You got to be there … or you’ll never see Mum again.’

Her brother’s words were less scary with other people around. She’d turned over in bed a thousand times that night, sat up, smoked, and lain down again. Her head spun at what she had to do; the future; the choices she had to make. The white bloke was right. She was free to make choices and control her future. But what if he was right about the other stuff he had said?

There is no God.

And she had jerked up and smoked another cigarette in the light of the city sky falling on her bed.

From the window, Beauty stared at the reflection of the bus in a car showroom. Her eyes pricked with tiredness. She’d managed to sleep the night before but it hadn’t seemed any different from being awake. Her head had felt heavy, something pressing inside, the same faces and questions swirling around her.

Who would make sure that Sharifa did well at school, that no one forced her to marry a freshie or an old man?

‘Get your fucking hands off her!’

When would she be with her mother again?

‘You’ll never see us again.’

And she’d arrived at the place the white woman had shown her on the computer, with the green grass and the chickens and the stream. And for a few moments in the darkness of a stranger’s house she’d managed to stroke the sheep and shoo away the cockerels scratching at the flower-beds, a dog at her side wherever she went.

Dogs is haram.

So what?

They were almost people, too. If only they could talk.

And she’d shaken her head and whispered aloud in the dark: I am going loony. And the ducks on the river at the bottom of the garden faded.

Anyway, could she live in a place like that and not think about … stuff?

Could she start a new life alone in a different city?

Why not? Lots of people did.

White people, though. Not Asians.

You’ll never see us again.

She closed her eyes.

If only I could stay like this forever, in the dark behind my eyes.

And as she’d turned in the night, the sheet had wrapped itself around her like a shroud.

It felt cool and clean, and the spinning in her head stopped.

The bus lurched to a halt and she opened her eyes.

‘For fook’s sake,’ a man said behind her.

Beauty pushed the tea trolley back into the empty kitchen and loaded the dirty cups and saucers into the dishwasher, relieved to have something to keep her from thinking. She enjoyed serving tea in the morning. The old people woke to the noise of rattling plates and teaspoons as she bumped into the sitting room.

Later she made a round upstairs with Maria to change the bed linen. The rooms were small, some of the sheets soiled from the night before.

Maria punched a pillow into a clean pillowcase.

‘I kicked ’im out like you told me,’ she said.

Beauty was smoothing down the blanket. Kicked who out?

Her boyfriend! I didn’t tell her to kick him out.

‘The basstud took all my stuff to Cash Converters – me jewellery, stereo, me fookin’ MP3 player – the fookin’ lot.’

Beauty stopped at the door clutching the dirty sheets. What trouble had she caused now?

‘You gonna get it all back?’ she asked. Maria joined her in the corridor.

‘My brother’s gonna sort ’im out,’ she said.

Beauty took the clean linen from the trolley and followed Maria into the next room in silence. People she didn’t even know would get hurt and Maria had lost all her belongings.

Cuz of me, aynit.

After lunch she went into the dining room to clean tables. There was only one resident there, talking to a social worker, or someone like that, so she thought it would be OK to carry on if she was quiet. Beauty moved around the tables squirting cleaning liquid, rubbing and wiping as she went. She liked the jobs she could do without worrying whether she was getting them right. Like making the tea, and helping the buddhi get dressed.

But Maria’s story continued to bother her, and the part she had played in it.

She smiled at the old lady as she passed, the one who watched for the postman from the sitting-room window every morning. The health visitor, or whatever she was, a large woman bulging out of a blue trouser suit, sat opposite her.

‘… he couldn’t come,’ Beauty heard the woman say. She spoke as if the old lady was deaf.

‘So how have you been since I was last here?’

‘Oh, quite well, thank you, dear.’

‘And the staff are looking after you?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Have they been keeping you busy?’

‘Yes, yes – we had a nice sing-song the other day.’

Beauty carried on wiping. The large woman sounded bored. If she didn’t like old people why was she doing this job?

‘They cut your hair as well?’

She talked to the buddhi like she was an idiot.

‘And are they giving you enough to drink? Water’s very good for you – it was on the Today programme this morning.’

Beauty saw the woman turn, and noticed the irritation on her face.

‘Could you please bring my mother a glass of water?’

Beauty didn’t understand. Where was her mother? There was only the old lady she was talking to, who lived in the home. The people here didn’t have children. How could the fat woman be her daughter?

‘What’s wrong with you?’ the woman asked her. ‘What are you gawping at?’

Beauty stood open-mouthed. ‘That’s your …’ She pointed, the cloth still in her hand.

‘She’s my mother, yes. I’m hardly going to visit someone else’s, am I? Can’t you see she wants a drink of water? Don’t you people do your jobs properly?’ She turned back to the old lady opposite her. ‘Mum, what’s this one like? Do I need to have a word with the manager about her?’

The woman’s mouth moved, but Beauty couldn’t hear anything.

That’s her daughter!

Blood pounded in her ears and her chest felt painful.

They got kids!

She couldn’t breathe; sparks drifted before her eyes.

What about the others?

What about Ethel?

*

Ethel was sitting on the edge of her bed, a framed photo in her hands. They dropped to her lap as Beauty appeared in the doorway.

‘What’s happened, dear?’

Ethel followed her gaze to the picture and turned it so that Beauty could see the faded image of a young woman with curly, shoulder-length hair lying in a field beside a baby girl in white knickers and a cotton hat. A young, dark-haired man in a suit stood behind them.

‘He was a handsome chap, my Arthur. A good man. Twenty-five years ago, he passed away.’

Beauty was sorry for her husband, but had to know about the baby.

‘Was that your daughter?’

‘Yes, dear. That’s Margaret – she was such a sweet child.’

‘How did she die?’

‘Heavens! She’s not dead, dear. Whatever made you think that? She lives in Leicester. She’s married to an engineer. I see her every month or so.’

Beauty searched the old lady’s face for an answer. ‘Why are you living here?’

‘She couldn’t look after me,’ Ethel said. ‘I’m a bit of a handful, I’m afraid. She takes me out to tea once a month and I go to hers for Christmas and New Year.’ She winked. ‘Between you and me, I prefer to stay here.’

Beauty closed her mouth and tried to swallow. ‘Have them other people got kids too?’

‘Yes, most of them. Why?’

Beauty felt her legs tremble and the room begin to swirl around her.

Al-lh, help me!

A hand touched her shoulder and she heard a man’s voice. ‘What’s the matter with her?’ A sharp smell made her open her eyes.

She was sitting in the armchair. Norris Winterton knelt beside her and passed a small brown bottle under her nose again.

‘I think I’ve upset her,’ Ethel said.

Norris got to his feet slowly. He poured a glass of water at the sink and handed it to Beauty.

‘What’s she been telling you?’ he asked her, sitting on the edge of the bed next to Ethel.

Beauty took the glass and looked into his kind grey eyes.

That most people here got kids.

‘I was just showing her a picture of Arthur and my Margaret, that’s all,’ Ethel said. ‘She thought Margaret was dead, bless her!’

‘She may as well be, for all you see her,’ Norris said. ‘Shocked, were you?’ he asked Beauty. ‘These old fools think their children give a damn about them!’

Beauty saw the anger in his eyes.

‘Left to rot in this bloody place. You know the smell in the sitting room? Half of them piss where they sit. Not enough staff. They’ve only got four of those bloody tarts for thirty of us. Is that enough?’ His voice rose, his face growing redder.

‘Norris, stop it! You’re scaring her,’ Ethel said.

‘Where are your children and grandchildren?’ he shouted.

He stood up and headed for the door, turned to say something else and grabbed for the doorframe to keep himself upright, reaching to open his shirt with a shaking hand. Beauty jumped up, her head clear, and guided the old man to the armchair. He sat down heavily, struggling for breath.

‘Run and fetch Maria, dear,’ Ethel said to Beauty, reaching for the alarm beside her bed. ‘Tell her Norris is having one of his turns.’

Maria rushed past her on the stairs.

‘Find Louise! Tell her to bring his medicine from the office and phone an ambulance – quick!’

Beauty waited outside Norris’s room for the paramedics to finish. They’d been with him for half an hour. Maria had told her not to worry. It happened two or three times a month, she said. He was always getting himself in a bother about something or other. But Beauty knew that it was her fault for upsetting him.

What if the man died?

Please, God, don’t let him die. Allah, amar zan néughia. Take my heart instead.

A man in a yellow and green uniform came out of the room.

Please, God. Please, God.

With rest and quiet he’d be OK, the man said. They’d stabilized his breathing for now, but they shouldn’t let him get excited. It was bad for his heart.