The procedure at the police station was swift and disrespectful. Gabriel was photographed, fingerprinted, then charged and told that he could make one phone call before being transferred to the local prison. Once there, the day warder told Gabriel that he was lucky, for there was an immigration lawyer in the visiting room seeing somebody else, and that when she had finished she would come along to see him. In the meantime, the warder took Gabriel to a cell which already contained a sick man, and while Gabriel waited for the lawyer, he thought again of the girl and felt his mind beginning to wander. She had ridden to the police station in another car, and Gabriel imagined that she must be frightened. He worried about what she was saying, or what she had already said, but no matter what anybody might say, Gabriel knew that he did not force himself upon the girl. He had done nothing wrong. He was guilty of nothing that would bring shame on his family name. When Gabriel looked up he saw a woman standing silently by the door to his cell. The prison warder pointed.
“That’s him. Do you want to talk to him?” Gabriel’s eyes met those of a small, masculine woman who tucked a strand of loose hair away from her face and behind an ear. She looked up at the warder and nodded.
“Oi, you!” The warder shouted. “Down here.”
Gabriel climbed down from the top bunk, and the warder addressed the woman.
“I’ll give you five minutes to let him know what’s what, then I’ll be back. Any trouble, just shout.”
The warder walked off and left Gabriel standing with the woman. She looked over Gabriel’s shoulder towards his cellmate, but she said nothing about this man. She returned her gaze to Gabriel.
“Hi, I’m Katherine. I work for an immigration law firm and we should have a talk.” She waited, but her prospective client said nothing, so she continued. “Your situation is made all the more complicated by the other charge. You do understand this, don’t you?”
Gabriel knew the woman was trying to help, but he wanted her to understand.
“Please, I did nothing bad. The girl was not unhappy.”
Katherine arched her eyebrows. “The girl is fifteen, Gabriel. The father says you were intimate with her. I’m going to get you a lawyer, and then the official charges will be brought by a Crown Prosecutor and you will have a chance to defend yourself.”
Gabriel clung tightly to the bars of the cell with both hands.
“But I did nothing wrong. You must believe me.”
The woman nodded, and then she pointed.
“That man, does he need some medical attention?”
Gabriel turned to look at his cellmate.
“I think he is suffering.” Having said this, Gabriel turned back to look at the woman. “Please, I have done nothing wrong. And I cannot go back to my country or they will kill me.”
“Look, give me a day or so and we’ll try to get you the best lawyer. Meanwhile, using what information you’ve already given to the police, I’ll start the asylum procedures.” She paused. “I’d better go now. The warder did this for me as a favour.” She looked again at his cellmate. “And keep an eye on him. People have a habit of not calling a doctor in these places. Until it’s too late, that is.”
Gabriel glanced at his cellmate, who seemed to be attempting to sleep, and then he looked again at Katherine, who smiled and nodded at the same time.
“I’ll see you later, then.”
Gabriel watched the woman walk off, and long after she had disappeared from view he continued to stare after her, imagining that it would be from her direction that hope might eventually emerge.
Gabriel looks up and registers the girl’s face transforming itself from alarm to outright fear, but he keeps walking through the driving rain. He is tempted to say “hello,” but he is unsure of how she might respond and so he once more lowers his eyes. He decides to stop some fifty yards past the girl, and he turns and peers back down the road. The girl appears to have recovered, for she once again holds her thumb out in the hope of attracting the attention of passing vehicles. But at present there is no traffic, only rain.
Gabriel waits. He holds out his thumb, but he does so awkwardly as though embarrassed to find himself begging in this manner. And then a car splashes to a halt just beyond the girl, and Gabriel watches as she sprints the few yards and jumps in. The car speeds off and now Gabriel is alone. Once again the wind picks up, and the rain becomes torrential. There is no place to shelter, so Gabriel continues to hold out his thumb in the hope that somebody might take pity on him, but car after car, and lorry after lorry, swish by, their headlights cutting through the driving rain, but none stop for Gabriel. He thinks of Denise, and he wonders if she ever thinks of him. After all, she chose not to speak out against him. Surely she must think of him and wonder what has happened to her friend? Perhaps the honourable thing would be to go back and rescue her from her situation, but he understands that this would not be wise. As he continues to think about Denise, a lorry slows beyond him, its red tail-lights glowing in the darkness, and then it comes to a complete standstill. Gabriel walks tentatively towards the passenger side, his eyes stinging from the slashing rain. When he reaches the lorry, the passenger door swings open and a heavy-set man in a tight T-shirt peers down at Gabriel.
“You getting in, or have you got gills?”
Gabriel doesn’t understand, but the man seems friendly enough. He climbs up and is suddenly embarrassed to be dripping water all over the man’s seat. The man reaches behind his seat for a musty-smelling towel and he tosses it at Gabriel.
“Don’t worry about the wet.” The man begins to pull out into the traffic, and then he starts to laugh. “Look at the windows. You’re steaming the place up.” He takes the towel from Gabriel and rubs the inside of the windows with it, and then he tosses it back at Gabriel. “What were you doing out there, mate, building an ark?” The man laughs at his own humour and then he points to the radio. “Do you want music or do you want to talk? You blokes seem to have a routine.”
“Thank you.”
The man looks quizzically at Gabriel and withdraws his hand from the radio controls. He looks again at Gabriel. “Heading north, I take it?” Gabriel nods.
“Yes, please, north.”
The man registers this information and for a few moments he drives on in silence.
“Now you’re not an Afro-Caribbean, are you?”
Gabriel shakes his head and speaks quietly.
“No, I am from Africa.”
“Africa!” exclaims the man, as though it all makes sense now. “You wanna smoke?”
Again Gabriel shakes his head.
“What’s your name, then?”
Gabriel thinks for a moment and then remembers what Katherine told him. “Solomon,” he says. “My name is Solomon.”
“Like in the Bible.” Gabriel nods.
“Yes, of course. Something like that.”
III
For a woman of her age she remains in pretty good shape. She was never a beauty, but in her day she was able to turn the odd head. A few men even whistled after her in the street. Not that they were
really
interested, but they noticed her, and then they stopped noticing her, and by the time she and Brian had entered their thirties she was walking down the street to silence. Brian seldom walked anywhere, for he preferred to drive his company car: to work, to the golf club, to his business dinners; Brian seldom bothered to put the car away in the garage. He justified his laziness by banging on about how dangerous the streets were these days, and how you only had to travel a mile or two in any direction to find yourself in the British equivalent of Beirut. He didn’t like it when she reminded him of the Chadwicks, who were driving along the avenue at the end of the road and minding their own business when suddenly they were blocked in by two vans. Four men jumped out of the vans and bashed in their windscreen with monkey wrenches and took all their jewellery and money, and so to her way of thinking it didn’t seem to matter much where you were these days, for people seemed to feel that they could pretty much do whatever they liked to you. There had even been a story in the local paper about a woman who was badly beaten up by a gang of kids in the park across the way when she tried to stop the young hooligans from mugging her six-year-old daughter for her bike. But because Brian never listened to her when she said that he ought to walk but just be vigilant, and because he used the preponderance of street crime to justify his laziness, Brian began to grow tubby. Their infrequent love-making became, for her, deeply connected with the problem of shifting one’s weight. Brian hated her to mention his little potbelly, so she stayed quiet on this subject. Which was generally how they passed through their thirties and forties with each other. By staying quiet.
And then he left her, and the quietness intensified and threatened to overwhelm her until she noticed Mahmood. All things considered, she planned her assault quite well. Nice perfume, translucent nail polish, grey hair unbunned, and the neckline just daring enough to suggest that what lay beneath the horizon might still be worth exploring. And much to her surprise it worked. These days he arrives every Thursday evening at 7 p.m. precisely. Before he comes round she lights a dozen scented candles, and then she turns off the lights. She plumps the cushions, and places a white china bowl of mixed nuts on the glass-topped coffee table. She once tried savouries, but he did not take very well to them. Another time she tried music, but he listened for a while and then told her to turn it off. He did not ask her to turn it off, he ordered her with one hand busily pulling his lobe, as though her choice of Chopin had somehow damaged his oriental ear. These days she does not bother with either savouries or music. At 7 p.m. he knocks twice, and then he rattles the letterbox so that the flap clatters noisily. She has lost count of the number of times she has suggested to him that knocking at the door is sufficient, but he seems to be helplessly addicted to the letterbox. However, as she quickly draws the curtains and then pads her way to the door, she reminds herself that this annoying little habit of his is just another part of their ritual.
Mahmood is tall and striking. To begin with he used to step through the door and bend and kiss her on the forehead before stooping to unlace his shoes. He would place them side by side, like soldiers, in the hallway and then follow her into the candlelit living room. Back then he was slightly apprehensive, and she liked the way his eyes danced nervously around the room without ever alighting on anything. She loved his smell, which was strangely sweet and cloying, but she knew that it did not mask anything unpleasant. Mahmood was scrupulously clean, and she understood that whatever oils or lotions he rubbed into his skin were in all likelihood related to his culture, and she did not mind. In fact, back then she did not mind anything about him. Since Brian had left she had only entertained one other man, a recently widowed partner of Brian’s from the bank. However, this man had come to visit wearing a parka, some grubby slacks and trainers, not the suit and tie and the smartly polished shoes that she had been expecting. It was a Sunday afternoon, but there was still no excuse for such ill manners. He demanded a piece of lemon wedge with his tea, and he seemed disappointed that she was only able to offer milk and a tablespoon of honey that she managed to scrape from the bottom of an old jar. He then proceeded to praise his former wife’s abilities at knitting tea cosies and bed socks, and he lectured her on the excessive calories in date and walnut cake. She offered him a digestive biscuit instead, but he refused, and then when he went to leave she was forced to momentarily endure the rough wood of his tongue in her mouth.
It was after this visit that she planned her campaign with Mahmood who, at least initially, managed to exude both coyness and interest. These days Mahmood has dispensed with this performance. Mahmood manages to meet her eyes before stepping first on the heel of one foot, then on the heel of the other, and wriggling his way out of his shoes. He still lines them up next to each other, but after such a dismal approach to their removal, this gesture seems almost insulting in its affected formality. She is relieved that he still seems amenable to eating first, for to dispense with the etiquette of the shared meal would be to abandon dignity. However, “dignity” is a word that Mahmood seems to be increasingly unfamiliar with. These days he eats quickly, often with one hand (always his right hand), and he makes noises that alarm her. Today is no exception. Having finished, he stares at her as she clumsily moves a piece of chicken breast up and onto the back of her fork. He watches closely as she dips the fork into the rice and then dabs the whole construction in a shallow pool of curry sauce before levering it towards her mouth. It is painful, for she understands that he is suppressing laughter.
In bed she knows that she satisfies. He always shudders, but he does so quickly now and only once. These days their bodies separate with indifference and Mahmood is quick to give her his back. Sadly, her lover seems to have bolted down the short slope from attentive to perfunctory without any intervening stages of incremental boredom. One week he took the time to speak with her before, during and, most importantly, after their relations. The following week he was racing through the motions as though he was late for an appointment. Gone were the revealing half-sentences. “They call us Asians, but that doesn’t mean anything, does it?” Or personal titbits that she could take as signs of intimacy. “When I see my reflection in a mirror I know that I can never go back home.” He used to listen to her when she explained what an electric blanket was, or when she told him what the difference was between a bishop and a priest. When she suggested that he read “improving” books, he took the trouble to ask her what she meant, and her use of the phrase “birthday suits” actually made him laugh out loud. They were, of course, in their “birthday suits” at the time. He kept laughing and repeating the phrase as though unable to comprehend the absurd precision of the imagery, and she laughed along with him. Today she bore his weight and coquettishly wrapped one leg around him as though she wished to pull him deeper. But she did not; it was all show. A gesture to prevent her from feeling as though she was merely an object speared.
She does not blame Mahmood for her present degradation, for she understands the real culprit to be Brian. She silently endured too many years of his conversation in the form of monologues about the virtues of architecturally designed patios and breakfast bars, and the superiority of South African whites over French Chardonnay, conversations in which her opinions were never sought. On other days he would simply seize a seemingly random topic and start to complain. Did she realise that you used to be able to see a specific doctor, but now everywhere’s a group practice and you never know who the hell you will be getting? Was she aware of the fact that because of the bloody unions, his bank employees were now only allowed to “interface” with the public from behind “anger-proof” glass? She quickly learned that Brian had absolutely no interest in her opinions, but by not answering back she allowed him to look through and beyond her, until he finally convinced himself that she did not exist. When Brian walked away, she too was convinced that he was walking away from nothing, and it hurt. However, at least to begin with, Mahmood did not treat her as though she were invisible.
She stares at his back. To be desired is not unpleasant, and to be mounted and entered suggests desire. In the beginning she toyed with the idea of asking him to find a way to stay over. She wanted him to tell Feroza that he had to visit his brother in Leicester, but somehow she never found the courage to put this proposal before him, and he never suggested it to her of his own accord. One night she did ask Mahmood if the next day they might go to the town museum to see a visiting exhibition of priceless Eastern miniatures, but he looked at her with disbelief writ large across his brown face. With some effort she was able to imagine that his curdled face was rejecting the art and not her company. She smiled. But inwardly she decided that she would never again suggest anything beyond the boundaries of their arrangement. She was not a woman who coped well with rejection. But, if truth be told, Mahmood had not rejected her. He had simply arrived at a place where he no longer felt it necessary to either woo or enchant his fifty-five-year-old mistress.
Strangely enough, she still trusts this lithe man who briefly visits her table on the way to her bed. When he first spoke to her outside the confines of the newsagent’s shop, he did so with a candour that she was sure Feroza had never been privileged to hear. He sat in her living room loudly sipping strong tea, and nervously rubbing one blue-socked foot on top of the other. She told him that last week she had been furious at the ill manners of the woman ahead of her in the queue at the shop. The woman had complained that she could smell curry on her copy of
Hello!
magazine, and when poor Mahmood had offered to refund her money, the rude so-and-so had simply stormed out. But they both knew that by itself this incident did not explain her asking him over for tea. She had framed the invitation as an opportunity for social intercourse and cultural exchange in an English home, but as he continued to sip loudly at his tea, her conversation stumbled and she heard herself comment that they had not had much weather of late, and then she fell silent and waited for him to talk. Which, in due course, he seemed eager to do. He told her about his first marriage at the age of twelve in his Punjabi village, and how his family had arranged everything without any concern for his feelings. Mahmood told her that he was traded as though he were a mule, and used as the bargaining tool in a dispute between two families. He told her about his childish attempts at sex with his fourteen-year-old bride, who quickly developed an appetite that a twelve-year-old boy could not satisfy. He admitted that, in an attempt to master his “woman,” he beat her, and he recalled the many times she ran away, and how her own father had once been forced to drag her back by her long black hair, screaming and kicking. The father slapped her face and then, suddenly remembering himself, he begged forgiveness from her husband, a twelve-year-old boy, for this act of transgression. Mahmood rose to his full height and thanked his father-in-law for returning his wife. In his heart Mahmood felt no anger towards his father-in-law; he felt only an embarrassment that his wife had humiliated him for all the village to see. She had made it plain that he could not control her, which by extension suggested that he could not control any woman. His fellow villagers not only sympathised with Mahmood, they despised his wife for her refusal to play the part that had been assigned to her.
Eventually, when he was sixteen, a delegation of men visited Mahmood, and while they were careful to pay him all the respect that his position demanded, they suggested to him that unless he was prepared to beat his wife as though she were a carpet, he should return the woman and shame her. Despite the indignities that he had suffered, Mahmood could not find it within himself to habitually raise his hand to his wife, and he knew that it would be impossible to jettison this woman and keep his honour intact. Therefore, after the departure of the delegation, he made a decision. He had seen the many photographs that the men in England sent back to the village, photographs in which they posed holding a radio, or standing beside a television set, or sometimes just clutching a fistful of five-pound notes. Mahmood made up his mind that he would leave for England and join his older brother in Leicester, where he owned three restaurants. He imagined that there would be no problem finding a well-paid job of some description in Mrs. Thatcher’s country, and after he had saved some money his ambition was to go to university, hopefully to study law or medicine. Mahmood dreamed of one day returning to his village in triumph as the most important man in the region, and he intended to spit in the face of the woman who had publicly humiliated him.
But she knows that Mahmood runs a modest newsagent’s in a small town in the north of England that boasts neither a cathedral nor a university. Mahmood lives in a place where if, on a Saturday afternoon, one happens to turn on the television set as the football results are being read out, towns of unquestionable insignificance will be freely mentioned, but Mahmood’s small English town will simply not exist. After ten years working in the kitchens of all three of his brother’s restaurants, and rising to a position where he ultimately had sole charge of The Khyber Pass, Mahmood had managed to save enough money so that he could consider starting up a business of his own with his new wife, Feroza. However, Feroza was aware that her husband could no longer stomach the disrespectful confusion of running a restaurant. The sight of fat-bellied Englishmen and their slatterns rolling into The Khyber Pass after the pubs had closed, calling him Ranjit or Baboo or Swamp Boy, and using poppadoms as Frisbees, and demanding lager, and vomiting in his sinks, and threatening him with his own knives and their beery breath, and bellowing for mini-cabs and food that they were too drunk to see had already arrived on the table in front of them, was causing Mahmood to turn prematurely grey. Feroza persuaded Mahmood that the newsagent’s business would be better for them both and, having been born and brought up in Leicester, Feroza knew all the intricacies of how to sell the day’s news to the English in either tabloid or broadsheet form. She persuaded her husband that they should leave the Midlands and raise their family in a small English town with decent schools and among people who still had some manners. And so Mahmood had fled Leicester, thus incurring his brother’s wrath, and only a year ago he had arrived with chubby Feroza to be greeted by the hospitable gloating of those who lived in this town.