The Cry of the Dove: A Novel (16 page)

I rushed to the public toilets and changed into a long black skirt, a white frilled shirt and flat shoes. I tied my hair and coiled it into a bun, then put on some light makeup. I looked like my old self, the shepherdess from Hima. The only difference was the wrinkles, as if a cock had stamped on my face on its way to its cage leaving a web of lines behind. I treated myself to a cheeseburger and a large Coke, thought about the evening job, psyched myself up, as Parvin would say, and walked to the hotel. I gathered some courage and opened the old heavy door. The receptionist gave me one of her mechanical smiles and said, `You need to see Mr Wright, the bar manager.' I nodded. `Next time use the side door to the bar.' She opened a door to an old dusty office, full of wine boxes, plastic glasses, mats, and there in the middle of it all sat Mr Wright, oiled and groomed, wearing a spotless black suit and a bowtie. He was speaking on the phone like the old aristocrat in the television ad who ordered Persian carpets to be flown in from the end of the earth. Mr Wright looked like an old gentleman's butler but behaved as if he were not in service. He put the receiver down and looked at me, standing in the middle of the small office and gripping the handles of my cheap black bag. His grey eyes shot an arrow of disapproval at me.

`Good evening, Salina" he said slowly, careful not to mispronounce my name.

`Good evening, Mr Wright,' I said.

`Call me Allan, please' With both hands he pressed his gelled hair into place, rubbed his nose and said, `You are early today. Go and dust the glasses and bottles in the bar. I will pay you cash, three pounds an hour.'

`Thank you,' I said and almost stumbled out.

A sea of bottles and glasses extended in front of me. I put on the rubber gloves he gave me and began wiping the glasses. `Don't wear them when you collect the glasses, just behind the counter please,' he said. Half an hour later, the customers started arriving. Mr Wright and someone called Barry were serving behind the bar and I continued dusting and polishing. Men in grey suits, salmon-pink shirts, striped ties and tired faces drank bitter and smiled. They sucked their cigars, filling the small space with the smell of tobacco. In a cloud of smoke, and among the clink and clank of glasses and chatter, I became invisible to the customers. They would see a thin dark hand taking away the empty glasses to create more space on the table for their hands and elbows.

`It is raining cats and dogs,' I said to Minister Mahoney one morning. He was sitting by the fireplace. The house in Branscombe he had inherited from his mother was old and spacious, with a `Victorian fireplace, with poppy and swallow tiled insert. She was so fond of this fireplace.' He took off his raincoat and his walking shoes and stretched his thin legs towards the flames. `You insist on leaving,' he said, rubbing his hands and looking at the embers. `I bought you a return ticket to Exeter as promised,' he said. He gave me seventy pounds pocket money, the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English and the address of a cheap hostel run by the local authorities. `I wrote to them so they are expecting you,' he said without looking up.'The return ticket so you can come back if you are ever in trouble.'

The ticket, yellow around the edges, was still in my silk Chinese box, which Parvin had given me for my birthday, together with my mother's letter, the lock of hair, Noura's mother-of-pearl hair combs, a bottle of perfume, a Mary Quant lipstick and Francoise's turquoise silver necklace. I got dressed and packed my things in the small bag he gave me. He drove me to the nearest railway station. It was raining heavily when we got there so he opened his raincoat, invited me to move closer, covered my head and part of my body with it and ran to the platform. He smelt of books, open fires, lavender, honey and wine. When the guard blew the whistle I tore myself away, hugged him and jumped on the train. `Take care of yourself, child,' were his last words to me.

I had never been on a train before, so I followed an old lady and sat next to her. `Toilet please," I said and she pointed at the sliding glass door. I found the sign, opened the door, closed it, locked it, put the lid down, sat on it and cried.

WITH MY UMPTEENTH FILLING OF THE DISHWASHER behind the bar, I began seeing the sparkling of glasses without seeing the glasses themselves. The smell of the detergent, beer, nicotine and breath filled the small bar. I straightened my back and gave some instructions to myself. Do not cross the sea! Do not depart! You are not allowed to tonight. My mind ignored the laughter, shouting, smoke, stale smell of mats and travelled all the way to prison, which I cleaned with Noura every Thursday. Equipped with a sweeping broom, two buckets of water and mats and some disinfectant Noura swept the rooms and I went down on my knees and mopped the floor. Noura swung Madam Lamaa's large bra in the air and laughed loudly and I kept my head down trying to get the dirt out of the cracks in the cement. Squatting on the floor the guard prodded me with her stick. `Are you leaving the corners for the spiders?'

`Nothing, but nothing, frightens me except spiders,' said Noura.

`Good, I shall bring you a bucketload of them,' said the guard.

Parvin was reading a glossy magazine when I told her what the GP Dr Charles had said. The cleaner at the hostel said that immigrants were living off this country, `and the doctor said I foreign and waste NHS money.'

She blew her fringe off her forehead, folded the magazine neatly and put it back in the rack, ran her hands over her shalwar kameez then rushed up the stairs holding my hand firmly. She pushed the door open and walked into his room. He ignored us and continued writing.

`Look at me!' she said quietly. `Just look at me!'

He took off his glasses and looked up.

`She told you she is having palpitations, night sweats, little sleep, didn't she?'

`Yes.. '

She did not let him interrupt her. `You call yourself a doctor! This woman is ill and you send her off without any medicine, afraid to spend some of your precious budget.'

Plump and erect in his chair the doctor seemed small, but when he stood up he was taller than Parvin.

`Sit down and listen,' she said quietly so he sat down.

`Miss Asher imagines men with rifles follow her around Exeter,' she said.

`Just hostel,' I said.

Right, are you going to do the decent thing and prescribe enough medicine for the next three months?F

The doctor began scribbling on a small piece of paper. `Here you are! Now get out!' he said, handing Parvin the paper.

'You also think that we waste the NHS, us Pakis. Well, I have some news for you. We are both British and soon we will be sitting in your very seat.'

I got excited and said to Parvin, `Is OK do medicine?'

`You want us to pay tax. We will pay you in shit because that is what we're getting at the moment.' She blew her fringe off, pulled me out, down the stairs and through the waiting room.

I overheard the doctor shout,'You are most welcome to it ... miracles ... no money ... recovering ... heart attack ... rather live in Pakistan.'

`You're fucking welcome to it,' Parvin screamed.

The flushed receptionist ushered us out and shut the door.

Parvin's hazel eyes were filling up by the time we got to the chemist. She handed him the prescription and hid behind a shelf decked with sun creams.

`Me need rat poison,' I said.

`Oh! Please shut up!' she said from somewhere behind the stacked-up shelves.

`Fluoxetine twenty milligrams and E45 cream,' the Sikh chemist said and smiled.

Allan looked at me and said, `You look tired. Maybe you should go home. It's your first day, after all.'

I said I was fine, but wanted to go to the toilet. When I got there I looked at my face in the mirror: strands of hair had fallen on my sweaty forehead, my eyes had sunk in their dark sockets and my face was pale. I pinned back my hair, washed my face with cold water and gently dried it with the towel. I went up and began collecting and washing glasses again. When the last customer left the bar Allan waved at me with a glass in his hand. `Try this wine,' he said.

`A soft drink please," I said.

He raised his eyebrows and said, `You don't drink?'

`I am tired, that's all,' I lied.

He poured me some fizzy mineral water in a slim glass, put some ice and lemon in it and handed it to me. I sat down on the stool and drank it all in one go.

`Here you are! Twelve pounds,' he said and handed me the cash.

I realized that he had stuck to the original agreement and had not counted all the overtime I had put in.

`Thank you Allan,' I said. `Is there anything you want me to do before I go home?'

`Yes,' he said, `please put away the clean glasses.'

Wave after wave, fear like an electric current used to rush through my body while I lay in the ex-army bed, reducing me to a heap of flesh and bones, turning me into a slain chicken convulsing and leaping about. I would hug my breasts and rock myself, reciting my mother's letter until panic loosened its grip on my insides, until some fresh air rushed into the room, until I surfaced and began to breathe. I knew what it felt like when the chicken gasped for air and finally died.

I walked back to the hostel as tired as if I had climbed all the mountains surrounding Hima. At night I did not have to think about the possibility of walking out of my room. I lay in bed wondering. What if my family discovered my whereabouts? What if I had to walk out of this room and look for a job? What if I was ill, seriously ill? I used to hold my mother's letter, my reed pipe, and the lock of her hair Noura was able to cut off, and rock in my bed. The window was too small, the bed was small, the world was small and when I died my grave would close in on me because I was a sinner.

It was just after midnight when I finally staggered back home with aching shoulders, back, arms. `Whatever is part of me is hurting,' my mother used to say and drink some brewed bugloss. Standing on the highest point of the footpath, which used to be the main road a long time ago, leaning on the green railing, I was able to locate myself. This country was right in resisting me; it was right in refusing to embrace me because something in me was resisting it, and would never belong to it. To be introduced first to four walls covered with metal sheets did not help. If I had been dropped by parachute in Branscombe, where Minister Mahoney lived, in that evergreen valley leading to the sea, I could have fallen in love with England. We were like two old friends now, who had become familiar with each other's anger. I should forgive Britain for turning me into moss that grows in cracks, for giving me the freedom to roam its cities between five and seven in the evening, for confining me to the space between the sole and the heel, and Britain should forgive me for supporting Italy in the World Cup, the nearest I could find to my old country.

Parvin walked through the glass door and I was right behind her. `I have an interview this afternoon,' she said to the young woman minding the customer service counter.

The girl sized her up and said, `Please wait here.'

A young man in a black suit, black shirt and grey tie walked towards us. The suit I made for Parvin looked a bit loose and shabby, but Parvin by pulling her back straight and keeping her chin up made it look elegant and expensive.

`Mark Parks, assistant manager,' he said and offered his left hand.

Parvin shook his hand and said, `Parvin Khan.'

`Miss Khan, this way please,' he said and guided her through a corridor.

I did not know whether to go with her or to wait outside.

She put her arm behind her back and waved me off.

I stood there looking at the corridor and wondering whether Parvin was all right. I needed the toilet desperately, but did not dare move in case I missed her coming out. `Can I help you?' the customer service woman asked.

`Yes. If friend come out please say urinate me.'

`I will tell her that you've gone to the Ladies,' she said and pressed the button of the money machine. A black drawer dinged then slid out.

While watching Great Expectations on television, I opened my Advanced Learner's Dictionary and read Minister Mahoney's inscription, To Salma, may this country bring you happiness, then looked for the letter E. Expectation: think or believe that something will happen, wish or feel confident that one will receive. Liz expected this country not to change, her fortune not to decline and the sun not to set on Swan Cottage. She wished that her mansion and horses had not been sold and that her servants were foreign and obedient. Gwen wanted to educate the children well so they loved their mothers, called them often, visited them and hugged them. I expected to find milk and honey streaming down the streets, happiness lurking in every corner, surprise, surprise, a happy marriage and three children to delight my heart. Parvin expected a job, marriage, stability and a family who would accept her the way she was. Parvin had a proper education, she went to a comprehensive, passed her A-levels, and was doing a sociology degree at a community college when she had to run away. She often said, `At first everything seemed possible in this country, but the fucking orgasm does not last long'