The Cry of the Dove: A Novel (23 page)

'If you are stalking me I will sort you out,' he said.

I was shaking when I said, `What are you saying?'

John was watching from the distance when Jim wiggled his finger at me and walked away.

I put the drink down and rushed out. John was right behind me. 'Are you all right?' he said and pushed his glasses up.

`I am fine, J ... John,' I said.

'What happened to your arm?' he asked.

`Nothing really. Just a scratch,' I said and walked away.

The last thing I needed was for John to show me any sympathy. I trudged on like a doll held together by plastic screws and any human kindness or sympathy would melt them away leaving me a heap of disjointed limbs. It was a moonless night, but the huge electric lights were like tiny sick moons floating on the water. Their artificial light, which lit the whole area all night long, made everything look unreal, as if we were all actors in a sci-fi film. I wrapped my shawl around me and wished that I were somewhere else or dead. I craved the silent, pitch-black nights of our village, with no noise whatsoever apart from the rhythmic chirruping of the cicada, the distant barking of dogs and the perfume of honeysuckle and white ful.The dark sky enveloped you, covered you like a duvet stuffed with ostrich feathers and under it you could close your eyes and have a deep, sound sleep.

Whenever I left the house Liz shouted after me, `You've begun visiting your customers in their houses when their wives are away. Courtesan!' She was in a bad mood. Since she saw her GP she hadn't stopped swearing. He ordered her to stop drinking, and said to her that her nervous system and her liver were being eroded `slowly but surely' by alcohol. The first evening she tried not to drink, but come ten o'clock she was at Sadiq's shop begging for a bottle of cheap wine. She would pay him later. I didn't know what to do. I knew that a niece of hers called Natasha lived in Kent, but what would I say to her? `Call the AA, your aunt should be committed to an alcohol treatment centre.' How could I, me the immigrant tenant, tell the middle-class English what to do with their aunts?

I shall never forget that day as long as I live. Daddy walked in earlier than usual ruffled and tired. He was always well groomed so it seemed odd. He went straight to the library, pulled the curtains shut and lay still in the dark. He asked the ayah to wash his head with water and vinegar then rub some willow-tree oil on his forehead. She told me that while she was massaging his head he kept repeating, `Serving His Majesty the King-Emperor is a badge of honour I shall wear with pride until I die.' I ran out to fish for news. The gardener told inc that there was a public gathering in the maidan. Hita's father was addressing the crowd. The British opened fire. `People say that your father, miss, shot Hita's father and left him dying there.'

I ran out looking for Hita. When I finally found him he was holding the bars of the iron gate tight. His eyes were wide open and his jaws clenched.

`Rita, Hita jaan,' I pleaded then placed my hand over his. He pushed it away as if I had leprosy and began shaking. He released the bars slowly and walked out through the gate. I never saw him again.

Before going to work, I found two letters on the landing addressed to me, which had never ever happened before. I usually got orders in the post: pay your overdraft, pay your rent, but I rarely received a proper letter. I opened the first one and saw John's signature. I do apologize for Monday. Can we meet on Friday instead? I have to be out of town. From the sinking of my heart I realized how psyched up I was to meet him. The second was a white decorated card inviting me to Parvin's wedding in three weeks' time. Reception, Reed Hall, University of Exeter. Four years ago we were scavengers looking for leftovers in garbage bins and whenever we found a mouldy sandwich we would run to the park to eat it; `The Paki beggars are back,' they used to say at the White Hare, and now she is getting married to Mr Mark Parks, a handsome white English man with a metal hook for a hand.

That evening Allan was caressing my arm. `It looks much better now, Salina, you don't need the rubber gloves,' he said.

I looked at his wet-gelled hair, his bowtie, his shiny shoes and thought that it would be nice to have him as a brother. He was honest, discreet and protective. Would he watch me or watch over me? Was I a potential shame or a loving younger sister? What are brothers like with their teenage sisters in this country?

It was coming. I could see it in the way he collected the glasses if he was free, the way he kept an eye on me, the way he offered me coffee at the end of the evening. `Sugar?' he would say as if he was calling me that.

I did not need any complications at work. `No thank you.' I stopped before using his name, which I normally used freely. I stretched my legs on the velvet upholstery and sipped the coffee. It was coming. I could feel it.

`Salma, would you like to have dinner with me next Wednesday?' he said and adjusted his bowtie.

He knew that I did not work on Wednesdays. I swallowed hard and said as kindly as possible,'I don't think so, Allan.You're like a brother to me.'

I could see that the message had got through to his eyes; he lowered them to hide the hurt.

We drank the coffee in silence then Allan sighed and said, `Do you have any brothers?'

`No,' I lied. I could hear distant barking, cars whizzing by, a radio singing somewhere. I got up and said, `I must go home.'

Mahmoud was a few years older than me, thin and regal in his wide, long white body shirt. He would look at me and try to twist his wispy short moustache then curse. His silver dagger, which had an engraved handle, a blood groove and a leather scabbard, and his cudgel were fixed to his ammunition belt.

`He thinks he is the sheikh of the tribe. He walks like a turkey cock, legs wide apart. He was circumcised late, that's what it is,' Shahla would say and suck on her teeth.

He would wave his cudgel in the air threateningly whenever I moved. But sometimes he would come home from school carrying a small brown bag full of Turkish delight and Mary's biscuits, which was practically the only food that the village store sold. He knew that I loved shaking off the sugar powder, flattening the delight with my hand and then placing it between two biscuits like a sandwich. Sitting on the edge of the well in the courtyard he would watch me eat the biscuits with a mixture of love and disgust. He was a gentle brother. He was the desert police on patrol. Shahla would suck at her old long pipe and say, `Watch your step, girl.'

When I opened the front door the smell of naphthalene hit me. I tiptoed to the sitting room and there she was reclining on the dirty sofa in a crimson and cream sari embroidered with gold and with a crown of dry flowers on her head. Her face was smeared with a rancid dark yellow butter that she had scooped out of a silver box. Her hand, bruised and limp, rested against her heart and a letter. `I just got married to Hita. Isn't it splendid?' she said.

The heavily embroidered sari resting on her left shoulder glittered in the dark, but you could see her dirty cotton underwear above the skirt.The tilting crown pulled her grey fringe back showing the red lesions on her forehead and the spidery thin red veins on her cheeks. She rubbed her eyes and said, `My father, how on earth would he have known?' then began crying.

`You look lovely in your sari, Liz,' I said and put my hand on her convulsing back.

She tried to suppress her tears, but they burst out in one howl followed by rhythmic sobs. `He wrote me letters asking for forgiveness, once, twice,' she said.

I held the back of her head against me and said, `Shush, shush. It's all right. Shush.' I could feel the warmth of her head against my tummy and the tears running down my arms.

Her hot tears melted the butter creating a crooked line down her face and her kohl was smudged around her red swollen eyes.

I ran to the kitchen and brought a towel, soap and some warm water. `Let me wash off the make-up,' I said gently and began rubbing off the yellow butter with the wet kitchen towel. She sat quietly while I scooped off the butter then rubbed her face gently with soap and water. She looked up and said with difficulty,'My father shot him then shot himself.'

`Shot who?' I asked.

`His father! He didn't know He wanted them to say "salaam" this and "salaam" that, and he refused. My Hita's father,' she slurred.

Her face was clean and even red when I said, `Would you like to have some rest?'

`The bride will retire to her bedroom. Charles, you may kiss the bride.'

When I put my shoulder under her arm and pulled her up the stairs she was obliging like the black cloth doll her ayah had made for her. She slipped under the dirty white duvet. I turned her head sideways, opened her mouth then said, `Goodnight, bride.'

She sighed then went to sleep instantly.

I rushed downstairs, put the lid firmly on the silver box, wiped it clean, then rubbed the dark butter off the sofa and coffee table, opened all the windows and doors, tipped the wine down the sink and washed the tray and dirty glasses.

I sat down on Elizabeth's armchair and read Hita's letter, which was crumpled on the floor.

I dreamt for months of the day I could rub my body with your oil, Elizabeth. I mixed sandalwood powder, turmeric and oil in a bowl while reciting carefully the names and titles of your family and mine. I took off my clothes and rubbed my chest, back, hands, lips, fingers, toes with the oil until my skin turned yellow and soft. I sat there waiting for my sweat and blood to seep through the oil then I scraped it &, put it in a silver box, added more oil to it, mixed it until it was an even fine paste then stored it for the big day when you will rub your delicate white skin with it until it turns dark yellow, until you become mine.

THE SMELL OF PINE BATH OIL PROMISED A HANDSOME, rich man in the garden, under my bedroom window Under the influence of the fumes of the concentrated herbal bath I forgot that I didn't have a window overlooking a garden. I stretched my body in the hot water and relaxed my muscles. All of that bending to stitch, iron and feed the glasses into the washer has stiffened up my neck and shoulders. Soon I will be thirty-one, hunchbacked, grey-haired and alien. Soon I will be begging Sadiq to marry me and I would be happy to send two hundred pounds a month to his wife in Pakistan. A face dripping like wax looked back at me in the Indian mirror. I pulled the straps of the bra up, put on a black dentelle shirt, which I had bought from a charity shop and mended, and a long embroidered black skirt, which used to belong to Parvin. One day in the hostel she had gone mental and thrown all the contents of her wardrobe on the floor. `I cannot bear it any more. Take this, and this. Take all," she screamed. I never wore the black low-heeled shoes wrapped in soft tissue paper and hidden among the jumpers. I bought them on a whim then realized that only old women wear sensible shoes in this country. I longed for my grandmother's worn-out flat plastic green shoes. `I walk in streams, ponds, on dry land and they are quality. Your kind father buys me two pairs a year from the capital, a single dinar each,' she used to say.

Leaving the house in stiletto shoes I overheard Liz on the phone whispering, `She's got more money. She buys fresh brown bread and Earl Grey tea. Sally must be hustling.'

I sat on one of the benches outside the Waterfront restaurant, where they served you dustbin-lid pizza, and drank my Diet Coke. The newly built flats overlooking the river looked empty, no one in them, no one could afford them. Like houses made of biscuit and icing sugar, they looked bright, sparkling, but easy to crumble. The waterfront was full of people, young Italian kids studying English, Spanish girls doing tourism, American students, local skinheads with their large black dogs in their slashed black jackets and Union Jack T-shirts. I watched the Goodtime ferry carrying people across from one side of the river to the other; its lights ebbed and flowed in the water.

Suddenly the fine hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I knew that breeze. She was out there crying, looking for a foothold. I knew that wind. A sudden chill ran through me so I bent forward as if winded and hugged my erect nipples. The muscles where my ribs meet between my breasts were inflated then collapsed as if I had sunk inwards. I was drowning. Her dark hair stuck to her head, her soft tummy was sticking out and her feet were tiny. When Madam Lamaa slapped her bottom she cried for air. I counted the fingers of each hand: one, two, three, four, five. I counted the toes of each foot: one, two, three, four, five. Her soft fingers curled up around my forefinger like a tender vine that had just burst open. Seconds before her soft lips touched my nipple Naima snatched her away, wrapped her in a blanket and rushed out. She was hungry and my breasts were brimming with milk. I howled at the barred window The inmates stopped me from hurling myself against the wall. When I came round Noura and Madam Lamaa were holding me down. `It's for the best, love. It's for the best.'

My legs were covered with dry blood and my tummy was sticky with milk and tears.

Even the bouncers in Dansers were middle-aged. I paid four pounds and walked in. I looked at my reflection in the long mirror by the entrance. My hair was frizzed up, my face glistened with sweat and my skirt creased. I pushed my hair back and entered the half-empty club. I felt that all eyes were on me, X-ray eyes that could see everything including my shameful past. I rushed to the bar, ordered two Diet Cokes to save myself the journey back, walked to one of the tables in the corner and sat down. It was on a raised floor surrounded by a wooden banister so I felt as if I was sitting in a pavement cafe watching passers-by. The disco mirror balls reflected the red and green flashing lights and scattered them all over the dance floor, which was empty apart from two middleaged blondes in tight short white skirts dancing around their handbags. One elbow resting on the palm of one hand, the other hand rotating in the air, and when they were about to fly off a sudden throwing of the right leg in the air caused a forced landing. I recognized drowning women like me instantly.