Nadifa Mohamed
I have to take care on this floor. My narrow, high-heeled boots struggle to find purchase on the smooth white marble, flecked here and there with brown fossilised shells, relics of prehistory within the steel, glass and concrete of Hammersmith Broadway. I pause for a moment by the Tube entrance and gaze at the flower stall heaving with buckets of roses, tulips, irises, sunflowers, and baby’s breath and wonder if he will bring a bouquet with him. I stand like a pebble in the cascade of commuters and take a deep breath. I won’t get the Piccadilly line, I decide, the vertiginous escalators, the bad-tempered rush through the corridors and the awkward intimacy of a strange man’s heart beating against my ribs in the humid carriage are the last things I need right now. I take the battered iPhone from my coat pocket and double-check exactly what he said in his last text:
loking forward c u by statu at 7
He is the fourth from the site and the tallest so far, 6’3” according to his otherwise bare profile. What he lacked in words he made up for in photos, he had uploaded eighteen from his travels but wore large mirrored sunglasses that concealed half his face in most of them. In the handful from Dubai you could see the remains of a woman who had been closely cropped from the images; a heavily henna-painted hand draped over his shoulder, the hem of an ornate abaya and gold sandals beside him and in one close-up the reflection in his lenses of a pretty girl with deep dimples in her cheeks and a red, lacquered smile. Even from that dim image I knew I wasn’t as attractive as her. I’m not the kind of woman who makes men’s eyes light up or who turns their heads in the street but neither do they seem disappointed when they meet me. The hijab has actually seemed to make them more intrigued in the few months I’ve been wearing it. The religious guys in ankle-skimming gowns and white prayer caps surreptitiously check me out now rather than scowling and muttering under their breaths, the white guys are the worst though, staring into my eyes as if I’m a snake that might be charmed.
I take the lift to the bus station and check my reflection in the glass doors. I look smart, presentable in a raspberry wool coat and black trousers. My threaded eyebrows are so perfectly arched they open up my otherwise small face. The black scarf around my hair is folded intricately around my jaw and held in place by a constellation of diamanté brooches. My stomach performs a small flip as the lift reaches the floor. I am early enough to take the bus and at this time the routes into central London are quiet; I can put my bag beside me, stretch out my legs and listen to my music in peace. I flip the music player to the next song and hear snatches of Arabic, Somali, Hindi before I finally settle on bass-heavy R’n’B. Walking lazily to the bus stop I speed up when I see a number 9 to Aldwych pull into the kerb. I press the Oyster card against the reader and see that the balance is low again, the money from my temp job at the hospital haemorrhages into these machines; I’m getting sick of struggling in this city alone, coming home to nothing but bills on the doormat. The route begins in the bus station and the Polish driver is still wiping crumbs from his thick blond moustache after his short break. I yank open the narrow, horizontal window to clear the smell of smoked kielbasa from the air and take my favourite position on the right-hand seats above the wheels. I sit a little higher than everyone else and the double-glazed panel serves as a picture frame to the snatches of city we catch from traffic light to traffic light. I know this route intimately, years of un- or under-employment kept me chained to London’s buses, my internal clock in tune with the timetables and particularities of certain routes and even certain drivers. I know the impatient, the rude, the generous, the late, the lecherous, all by sight. I also know this ring road beside the station and the tall, modern office building outside of which a young woman was raped recently, and the Iranian supermarkets and restaurants garlanded with strings of light bulbs. The Kensington Olympia is hosting a wedding show and I turn my head at the couples exiting with plastic bags full of the crap that weddings seem to involve these days. Would tonight be the start of that journey for me? I needed to become like one of those women on the street, they were neither perfect nor very individual, but had moulded their relationships into something real and tangible that others could see. I would make him believe that I was the right one for him; he could close the laptop and step away because I would be all that he was looking for. He had written that he would consider women up to the age of thirty-four, my real age, but I had told him I was twenty-nine. I had fibbed that I work in public health but in all honesty I sit on reception at an outpatient ward. I also said that I had travelled to Doha and Thailand and Brazil but haven’t left London since a visit to my grandparents a decade ago. All of these details are insubstantial; they say nothing of whether I will be devoted, faithful, fertile, the qualities that these men are looking for deep down.
The bus lane along High Street Kensington is clogged with double-deckers and I browse the clothes shops as we chug along, the heater under my feet burning the soles of my boots. A gaggle of Italian schoolchildren in matching pink T-shirts clamber aboard at the stop opposite the underground station while their beleaguered teacher negotiates the fare at length with the driver. Just as the doors beep ready to close, a bearded drunk staggers on. He presses the orange cover of a freedom pass hanging around his neck to the reader and then raises his hands to announce his presence.
The traffic clears and we fly past Kensington Gardens and the Albert Memorial, the dead prince shining golden on his plinth, what woman wouldn’t want her man struck in metal? Eternally loyal, silent and hard. I had chosen the Eros statue in Piccadilly as a meeting point to force some romance into what so often feels like a job interview. The little iron cherub with his bow and arrow also gave some charm to a part of the city that teemed with fast food packaging, prostitutes’ calling cards and lost tourists. Frigid trees in their winter nakedness stand against the jewel-toned monument, it’s impossible to imagine them lush, green and dense again but in a couple of months they will be clad in leaves and blossoms. The road widens to four lanes and doormen pose in red polyester frock coats outside heritage hotels with chintz curtains in their windows. I notice a nasty smell in my nostrils and turn away from the window; the drunk has moved seats again and is sitting beneath me. His thick, black, wavy hair is enviable but it’s also oily and peppered with large grey flakes of dandruff. The smell is hard to pull apart but there is sweat involved and urine and perhaps even vomit. He feels my gaze on him and turns his head sharply back until it hits the rail hard. Our eyes meet and he gives me a hazel-eyed, bloodshot stare. He must have once been a good-looking man, poetic in a way, with strong eyebrows, long eyelashes and a full mouth.
‘Suck. My. Dick,’ he mouths slowly in an Irish accent, then giggles to himself.
I roll my eyes dismissively and return to watching out of the window. We have passed the new development of hundred million pound flats, and armoured Bentleys and Range Rovers wait, their hazard lights flashing, for their Russian and Chinese owners to return. A batmobile-like Lamborghini overtakes the bus with an aggressive roar of its throttle and then has to stop abruptly at a red light. I look inside its leather interior as the bus crawls up beside it; two young Arab men lounge inside in distressed jeans and garish T-shirts, they have the stiff gelled hair and trimmed goatees of low-rent male strippers but they exude wealth from the gold on their wrists and their necks to the stack of parking tickets stuffed carelessly under the windscreen wiper. They speed off with Arabic pop wailing behind them. We reach Harrods and I check my phone. Twenty to seven. Another ten minutes and we should reach Piccadilly.
The sky is indigo now and a squall of rain falls lightly on to my cheek from the open window, I slam it shut. The exterior lights studding the facade of Harrods are lit and the skeleton of the building glows orange. I hate the place; its expense, disorder and incongruous Las Vegasness. The Italian students disembark giddily, boys and girls brazenly pawing each other on the pavement, all tongues, hands and sexual entitlement. At that age I was terrified even to be seen walking beside a boy, the shame alone would have killed me; my desires were lived out only in my mind.
The bus feels airy again even though the smell remains. The drunk’s legs splay out in front of him, his battered trainers tied clumsily around his toes with string, he smiles and hums to himself. A wealthy-looking family waits in the gangway for him to make room for their pushchair. The father is middle-aged, tall, sandy haired, wearing salmon pink trousers and a mustard tweed jacket, he must be cold but his face is flushed red. He tries to manoeuvre the buggy into the small gap while his blonde baby sleeps with her hands over her knees. His wife behind him is a narrow, brittle thing with chestnut hair and teeth that look like they have been whitened with Tipp-Ex. A shy boy in the clothes of a wartime evacuee, grey short trousers and a wool jacket with red piping, hides his face behind a new iPhone.
‘Do you mind moving?’ the mother says sharply to the drunk. Her lips move awkwardly as she speaks and I notice that they look swollen and stiff. Silicone.
He doesn’t move but reaches for the baby’s hands with both of his grimy ones, ‘Allo gorgeous . . .’
The father jerks the pushchair back. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Leave her alone. You shouldn’t be sitting here anyway, can’t you see the sign?’ he points a finger to the blue and white notice on the side, reserving this area for pushchairs and wheelchairs.
‘I’m disabled, yer posh cunt.’
‘I told you we should have got a cab,’ the wife looks like she is about to implode with anger.
Their son looks with widened eyes to his father then mother and then back again. His thumb is still twitching as he absentmindedly plays a game on the phone.
His father tightens his grip on the pushchair, the skin around his signet ring draining to yellow, ‘I’m not going to tell you again, clear off before I tell the driver to move you himself.’
‘That playing-fields of Eton shite ain’t gonna work on me, pal.’
‘I’m not your pal.’
‘Why don’t you take yer anorexic wife and little ponce of a son and feck off yerselves.’ He gestures dismissively to the exit and lounges even deeper into the seat.
I sigh, a fight seems to happen on every tenth ride I take, over petty nonsense like this mostly.
The mother rushes back to the driver and makes an appeal, her son staying close behind her.
People tut, kiss their teeth, curse at the unexpected delay. I check the time again. Eleven minutes until seven. I shouldn’t worry, Somalis are always late and even if I’m later than him that will be a good thing. I’ll look nonchalant, cool. Not desperate.
The driver turns off the engine and the bus sinks lower to the ground as does everyone’s mood.
‘Why don’t you jump into yer Merc or Aston Martin? Didn’t your queeeen Thatcher say only lowlifes get the bus? Fallen on hard times, have we old chap?’ He puts on a fancy accent and then continues. ‘One’s been to Harrods and now one’s heading to Fortnum and Mason’s for one’s turnips.’
I laugh despite my own irritation.
The parents huff and puff but they are impotent against him. I get the impression that the man is used to being listened to and obeyed in the same way the consultants at the hospital are; he just looks shell-shocked now, his hand constantly pushing his hair back from his face. His wife on the other hand has an edge to her; she has rolled her sleeves up and keeps trying to push around her husband to confront the drunk.
‘We pay our taxes; we give money to charities that help ingrates like you! The least you can do is give room to a working family, you wastrel!’ She thrusts her left hand in his face. A large diamond sends flares of light around her. She is more attractive suddenly; she looks alive and real.
‘Cha! Jus’ let the people sit down, bumbaclot,’ a teenage boy with an Afro comb plunged into his hair shouts, poorly imitating a Jamaican accent. ‘Why you have to go on? Keeping the whole damn bus waitin’.’
We murmur agreement.
‘So youse pay yer fucking taxes, do yer? Bully for you! It’s not like yer kith and kin didn’t fucking rape Ireland over and over again, is it? Oh no! You made all of your money from tea and scones and licking Prince Charles’ arse.’
‘I’m Irish, you dimwit! An O’Sullivan if that makes an ounce of difference,’ her brogue comes out now, ‘and it’s people like you who made me want to leave in the first place.’ The veins in her throat are pulled tight and her yelling makes her daughter startle awake. The child begins to cry and her father picks her up and rocks her against his chest.
‘Well, you landed on your feet then, duckface.’
The wife slaps him briskly across the mouth and before she can do it again, the driver leaps out from the cab. ‘All of you stop, police are coming, you and you have to wait here,’ he says pointing to the mother and the drunk, ‘the rest of you can get off.’ His foreign intonation sits lightly over his words; he was probably something big in Poland but earns twice that salary driving buses in London.
The boy with the Afro comb in his hair presses the emergency release button above the exit doors and they wheeze open. He sticks his middle finger up at the drunk and shouts another bumbaclot. We follow him off, we’re opposite Green Park Station and the traffic is blocked all the way up to the Circus. I decide to run rather than wait for another bus. Soon my shoes begin to slide against the damp concrete, I make slow progress against the crowds and lift my head only occasionally to measure the distance left. I can feel my make-up running from the sweat and damp air, I will look a mess by the time I reach him but I persist, led on by nerves and excitement. I cross the street and run past the Ritz, where I once saw one of my childhood movie crushes standing outside smoking a cigarette, up past Fortnum and Mason which has an ornate display of spring hampers in its windows before stopping to catch my breath. I need to walk so I don’t look so frantic when I reach Eros. I pant past the Japan Centre and Waterstones and then take out my compact. I look awful; mascara under my eyes, my nose running, my lips puffy and dry. I wipe Vaseline over them, quickly tidy my eye make-up and then blow my nose. I look across the road but the crowd is too large to spot him. The last bit of natural light is about to disappear from the sky but the large advertising screens cast a digital glare over everything. I take a deep breath and walk as elegantly as I can on my pinched feet across to Eros. I look first for men, then black men and then Somali men but I don’t see him. I check the time. Quarter past seven. I swivel my head from side to side, worried that I won’t recognise him from his pictures, for some reason my eyes begin to well up and I wonder how long I will have to wait. I can’t imagine not waiting, I have waited two weeks already for this to happen, I don’t even have food to go home to because I expected to eat out with him. I don’t care how desperate it makes me look, I’ll wait an hour if I have to. The rain starts to fall again, harder this time and I move away from my position right under the bow and arrow. Huddling in a corner with couples snuggling against the cold, I tell myself that this is the last time this will happen, that I won’t be the only woman who doesn’t have a man’s arm around her after tonight, nor the only one getting soaked while they hold their men’s jackets over their heads. I look up at the little iron brat and wonder why he never sees me. My phone vibrates in my pocket and I plunge my hand in to grab the call but it stops. I hold the phone close to my face and see a black message box on the screen, my heart is pounding and I have to read a few times before I understand what it says.
Sum ting came up, not gonna make it. raincheck?