by Monica Ali
Gabe stretched his legs and twirled his empty glass. ‘Hey, don’t knock it. We don’t want you ending up as a nun. Did you say there’s another bottle somewhere?’
‘It’s here. I’m opening it.’ But she kept her hands in her pockets. ‘There’s always this stuff hanging over us, isn’t there? The way the media is today. We get it all the time. And it’s really huge – all the terrible poverty, terrorism, climate change.’
‘I suppose. But it’s been the same for every generation, there’s always something, a big threat. At least we didn’t have to live through the war, and then there was the Cold War after that.’
‘I don’t know. In a funny way I think I’d have preferred it. It was more collective, but our things just make us turn in on ourselves.’
‘The enemy within,’ said Gabe. He’d get a ring, that’s what he’d do, though with the money for the restaurant and the money for Lena he’d have to work out how much he could spend.
‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘No, not Islamist cells in Birmingham, that’s not it. I mean, we don’t know who the enemy is, not with any clarity – and we can’t be sure it’s not us.’
‘It’s not me. I promise.’ All this anxiety. This wasn’t the Charlie he knew. And she’d got things back to front. It wasn’t bomb fear that gave her single-woman-going-nowhere fear. It was the other way round. Once he’d proposed she’d stop dwelling on this stuff.
‘Somewhere in the backs of our minds,’ said Charlie, ‘there’s this nagging doubt – that we’re our own worst enemies. What a horrible thought.’
‘The war on terror making more terrorists?’
Charlie sighed. ‘I suppose. We can always try blaming everyone but ourselves for global warming and third world sweatshops but, you know …’ She trailed off. She picked up the bottle and the corkscrew. ‘It’s all bitty and blurry and muddly. You know, in a proper war, or even in the Cold War, there’s a really clear enemy and it all makes sense, like a story with a beginning, a middle and an end and you know what you want the end to be, but now we don’t have a good story, the plot’s all over the place.’
‘That’s not so bad, is it? You said that film was rubbish because it had too much plot.’
‘I did. But I was probably wrong. Anyway,’ she said, approaching with the bottle and an exaggerated sashay, ‘I had a little moment and it passed. Normal service has resumed.’
‘But you’re serious about the teaching idea?’
‘Me, honey?’ She put on her breathy, jazz-set voice. ‘Who, me? Can you picture it? Chained to a classroom every day? I like my freedom too much. I like saying yes or no to a gig.’
He ran a bath for her, adding a block of bath salts that he’d carried in his coat pocket all day. When they dissolved they released dried rose buds that floated to the surface, and he said he would come and scrub her back when things in the kitchen were under control. I’ll have to go away more often, she said, if this is what I get.
Emptying the shopping bags, Gabriel lined up his ingredients – couscous, garlic, root ginger, coriander, a jar of harissa sauce, a tin of chickpeas, and lamb chops. Dad, he thought, would hate this meal. He’d have the lamb chops, grilled, some boiled potatoes on the side. Gabriel sighed and broke the garlic bulb. It would be a lot less fuss.
Mag’s café every Friday lunchtime, dinner as they called it; that was Ted’s weekly treat. He took Gabriel once and they had chicken pie with chips and baked beans and steamed jam pudding with custard. It tasted like heaven. They’d been at Rileys and Gabriel must have been sick of going there by then. Maybe not, maybe that came later. There came a time when he refused to go.
Wide-eyed still that day, yes … now it was coming back, they had been in the warp room and it blew his little mind. The room was long and low and two, three times the size of the school hall, with three vaults across the ceiling, northern lights, the same as the weaving sheds. He walked slowly up and down the length of the creel, drinking in the rainbow colours of the multitude of spinning cones as though he were visiting the crown jewels. An enormous, elongated spider’s web vibrated across the machinery, as the yarn wound on to the drum.
‘Lovely when there’s a coloured job on.’
‘Dad,’ said Gabe. ‘It’s cool!’
‘Come up here, by the cylinder. This is Hattersley’s latest. Best make in’t world is that.’
‘How’s it work, Dad? What’s it do?’
‘First things first,’ said Ted. ‘This beauty’s what you call a warp machine. Rileys’ve took the section warping road, but there’s many in this town won’t know what a section warper is.’
‘Is Rileys’ way the best way, Dad?’
‘There’s some as says so, aye.’
‘So the yarn comes through here,’ said Gabriel, putting his hand up, ‘and then …’
Ted pulled him back. ‘Watch out. There’s fingers been lost before now. Man’s been scalped on this machine.’
‘Is it dangerous, Dad?’
‘Can be,’ said Ted. ‘In me father’s time, yer granddad, the warpers wore ties and this one time he heard a scream and came running.’ He bent down, his face level with Gabriel’s, and rolled his eyes. ‘And there’s the warper, got his tie caught, there he is goin’ round and round on t’ beam.’
They went for a brew in the tacklers’ room and Mr Howarth was there, checking the form. ‘Pick a number,’ he said, ‘any number, one to thirty, go on, lad.’
‘Twelve?’ said Gabriel. He hoped he’d got it right, though there wasn’t much to go on and really it didn’t seem fair.
Mr Howarth ran his finger down the page in his newspaper. ‘Piper Marie, hundred to one, you’ve picked a blimmin’ donkey there.’ He raised his voice and called, ‘Bill, Bill, give me a number, quick, make it a good ’un.’
In the corner, a pile of clothes stirred and Gabe saw that they contained an old man, his chin resting on his chest. ‘What? What? Come again.’
‘Number, Bill, for the gee-gees. Be my lucky charm.’
The man’s head lifted and Gabriel stared at the geological wonders it revealed, the ridges and crevasses and potholes. ‘Bugger off,’ said the ancient, ‘I’m on a break.’
‘Dad,’ whispered Gabriel, nudging Ted, ‘when’s he going to retire?’
‘Retired about a century ago,’ said Mr Howarth, ‘did Belthorne Bill.’
‘Why’s he still here then?’ Gabriel whispered.
‘Deaf as a post,’ said Mr Howarth. ‘Bill, you deaf or what?’
‘Aye,’ said Belthorne Bill, ‘I’ll have a cup.’
‘Fifty-odd year he worked here,’ continued Mr Howarth, folding his paper. ‘Can’t grudge him a place in the corner and, aye, I’ll mek ’im a brew. Take a good look at ’im, son, that’s a living legend you got sat there.’
Bill, it turned out, came from over the hill, in Belthorne, a distinguishing mark in Blantwistle when migrants from such distant lands were practically unknown. He walked the seven miles to work and back every day and was famed for his stringent timekeeping and for never having a day off sick. One winter, when the snow had fallen marvellous deep overnight and all the roads were closed and half the mills were sleeping in a hypothermic daze, Belthorne Bill had taken a shovel and cleared a path over the hillside, yard by freezing yard, clocked in with a touch of frostbite and said he was sorry for being late.
‘Tell you what,’ said Mr Howarth. ‘Yer dad and Bill, much alike, very much a pair.’
Gabe looked at Ted. He looked at the crumbling man.
‘Don’t you know what I’m talking about? Best of British, that’s what they are.’
Charlie pressed her body up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. The head of garlic was still in his hand.
‘Hey, I thought you were going to join me. The water was getting cold.’
He turned round and kissed the top of her head. ‘Sorry. Look at me. Useless. I haven’t done a thing.’
‘Should we get a takeaway?’
‘
Would you mind?’
‘I’ve got five places on speed dial, how could I mind?’
‘I keep thinking about the mill, about Rileys. It’s a shopping centre now. Hadn’t thought about it in years.’
‘Thinking about your father, you’re bound to, now that he’s … you know.’
‘God, you smell good,’ he said.
She pulled her head away. ‘Are you all right, Gabriel? It’s so awful about your dad.’
She was wearing a red kimono. The silk felt like a balm. ‘I’m all right,’ he said, automatically, but as he said it he decided it was true. ‘Worried about Dad, of course, but I’m fine.’
‘You know I’d like to meet him. If you’re not ashamed of me, that is.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Gabriel, ‘but I thought I should see him first on my own. You said it yourself – can’t say much on the phone. And I’ve planned it in already. I’m going up tomorrow on the train.’
CHAPTER TEN
BETWEEN EUSTON AND WATFORD, THOUGH THE TRAIN WAS crowded, he managed to change seats three times. The first time he was getting away from a malevolent child with swinging feet and an oblivious mother, then there were the mobile phone abusers, and just when Gabe thought he was safe in the ‘quiet carriage’, the stink of catering food packages unwrapped at his table forced him to beat yet another retreat. He’d found, so he thought, a haven at the end of the train when a woman boarded at Watford and quickly set about colonizing his space. She wore a tweed suit and good strong shoes and had an equally sturdy face. As she talked at him, the clink of fine china in her voice, Gabriel thought you don’t see many like her any more. She was empire-building stock, no doubt about it; she was Jam and Jerusalem, God and Golf, Gin Rummy and Croquet Lawn. And she talked and she talked until Gabriel staged an uprising, reaching overhead for his bag and explaining he was getting off at the next stop. ‘But that’s not for another hour,’ said the woman. Gabe nodded and staggered away, the train rolling side-to-side beneath his feet.
He squatted at the end of the next carriage, his back against the luggage rack, and closed his eyes. There was only the thunder of the track. There was only the dark space behind his brow.
When he’d gone back to Kennington in the morning Lena was standing by the long living-room window, leaning against it, as though she wanted to push herself through the glass.
‘I’ve got to go home,’ he said, ‘just for a couple of days. My father – I told you. I’m sorry, but it’s something I’ve got to do.’
She didn’t turn round. The only sign of life was her breath steaming up the pane.
‘There’s a set of spare keys. Look, I’m leaving them here. But maybe it’s best if you stay in.’ He didn’t know why he said that. Why should she not go out?
Still she made no response.
‘Sorry,’ said Gabe. ‘We’ll sort out everything when I’m back. You’ll be here, won’t you, when I come home. Won’t you? You’ll be here.’
Lena rolled round so that her back was to the glass. Gabriel felt a touch of vertigo. He wished she would step away.
‘Two, three months I hide,’ said Lena. ‘In cellar, in flat – what is difference to me?’
‘Hiding? In the basement with Yuri? What were you hiding from?’
Lena gave a slovenly, lopsided shrug. ‘What is difference?’
‘You had to hide the fact that you were down there? Or you went down to hide from someone? From what? From who?’
She melted against the glass, her eyelids drawn insolently low.
He reached her in a couple of strides and grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into her flesh. ‘Can’t you answer me? Answer me. Or get the fuck out of here.’
She rose at him in a rigid fury, veins standing proud on her neck. ‘Pimp,’ she spat. ‘I hide from pimp.’
He was still squeezing her arm but he was frozen, and his fingers wouldn’t release.
‘OK,’ said Lena. ‘You are happy now?’
His fingers opened and she walked away from him.
‘I think …’ Lena began. She rubbed her arm and looked around. On her pale pinched face a bloom of red flowered across her nose. ‘I think … I know this man. I think … but he is not …’
He wanted to go to her but his legs betrayed him. ‘What did he do to you?’
Lena rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. She sniffed. ‘Took my passport. Beat me.’ She punished Gabe with a smile. ‘This is all.’
He’d grabbed her arm. He’d hurt her. For pity’s sake.
‘I run away,’ said Lena. ‘I hide from him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Gabriel.
‘Yuri,’ said Lena with a defiant jut of the chin, ‘help me. Only from goodness of heart.’
‘Yes,’ said Gabe, ‘when you ran away he helped you.’ He was edging slowly towards her, ready at any moment to stop.
‘Later, few months later.’ She settled like a small black cloud on the arm of the sofa.
‘How did you meet him?’
‘Now you know everything,’ said Lena, ignoring the question. ‘I am disgusting, yes, you think. I get fuck out of here like you say.’
‘No,’ said Gabriel. ‘No.’ He touched his fingers to her shoulder. He waited, to see if she would cast him off. He dropped to his knees and caught hold of her feet and traced the line of each toe inside the black tights. He felt her ankles, her calves and up to her knees, pressing and moulding as if she were clay. When his hands were on her thighs he laid his head on her lap and she began to stroke his hair. He reached up and took her hands and massaged from the tips of her fingernails to the palm and on to the wrist. Tracing small circles, he worked his way up her arms and then rose to tip her gently back on to the sofa where he pressed his lips to hers.
He worked at her with an urgency he had not known before. And yet he felt little desire. In this coupling they would be made new; from this they would draw their strength. He needed this, to wipe the slate, and to brand his indelible mark. Sweat rolled off his brow and into his eyes. It made them sting. He buried himself. He needed this. To engrave himself so deeply that the others would be erased.
He’d had to catch a later train because for a couple of hours he’d tried to keep her talking, gathering up her broken sentences, her scattered words and thoughts, piecing them together, making sense out of the senselessness, creating a coherence that wasn’t there in the telling.
The flat in which she had been kept was in Kilburn, the eleventh floor of a tower block that reminded her of her home town. There were bars on the windows, she told him. You can’t jump out of an eleventh-floor window, he said. ‘Tchh,’ she said, ‘you can.’ After a couple of weeks Boris brought another girl who had an iron mark on her arm. He put them to work first in a Golders Green sauna and then in a walk-up brothel in Soho. The men, she said, were mostly OK. They didn’t beat her. That was Boris’s job. No, said Gabe, these men (he wanted another word, one that did not include him) are not OK. Husbands, fathers, sons, she said. Men. There was one who was different, a very bad person, but she did not want to talk about him. She had been with him on the day she ran away from the Soho walk-up, Boris hadn’t locked the door, he was getting lazy because he thought she was completely broken by then, thought she would never run.
For a few days she slept out. She didn’t know exactly where, except it was close to the river. She met a girl, a Ukrainian, who took her home and got her a job at a café. It was hard, she said, standing up all day when you’re used to working on your back.
One day she saw Boris walk past the café and she didn’t even get her coat, straight out of the back door and never went there again. The Ukrainian girl knew Yuri and Yuri knew the perfect place. Living underground was OK once you got used to it though one time she had woken with a rat curled on the pillow and she had screamed and screamed.
You’ve got to go to the police, said Gabriel. They’ll lock this Boris up and throw away the key. Maybe, said Lena. But I will be dead by then. Boris will k
ill me first.
Gabriel mined the depths of his coat pocket for his mobile phone. If he called Jenny she’d pick him up at the station. He needed to talk to someone, even if it was only Jen. She wouldn’t judge him. He didn’t think so, but then he didn’t really know her now.
That panto trip, Dad put in for it and Gabe went with Jenny and Mum came as well to help shepherd the kids around. Aladdin, it was, at the Manchester Apollo but he couldn’t remember a thing about it except the coach journey. They’d had their photo taken before they boarded and then all the children were pushing and shoving because everyone wanted to sit at the back. Gabe got a back seat next to Michael Harrison and he saved a seat for Jenny, she was wearing her white fur hat with the pompom ties that she twisted on top of her head like bunny ears and she kept it on all the way. They had a Wagon Wheel each and a drink of Vimto. Mum had packed extra for Michael because she knew his mum would forget. The other mothers crammed the front seats while Mum, on brilliant form, walked up and down the aisle, giving out sweets and getting the kids to sing. She had brown platform boots on, and a white coat that swung open and closed over her skirt. Gabe could tell by the way some of the other mums looked at her they were jealous, and Mum must have known as well because after a while she went and sat by the driver and talked to him, keeping herself out of the way.
There was one Pakistani kid on the coach. They didn’t come to the socials, the football, the Christmas parties, though they’d come to the cricket and bring their own food. He was a bit of a runt, this kid, hair in all directions like a turnip top, shorts sliding off his arse, but he was tolerated because he’d do anything for a dare. Word spread round the back half of the coach faster than you could say ‘impetigo’ – the Paki kid was going to do something and everyone wanted to see. Gabe pushed his way through and pulled Jenny with him, the two of them pressed against prickly upholstery, peering over as the kid knelt on his chair and dropped his pants and, without a moment’s hesitation, inserted a pencil up his prick. ‘Fuckin’ ace,’ said Michael. Swearing was a religion with him. ‘Fuck panto. Bet Aladdin can’t do that.’
