Tree of Pearls

by Louisa Young

  ‘I saw it, ya habibti. What I saw …’

  For a moment I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  ‘River of blood,’ he said. ‘It was, a river of blood. Murdered children. Women. A young man from Qurnah, I knew him, a policeman … we brought a wounded woman to the fabrique. This English girl, five years old. You think I didn’t think of Lily? And now everyone is being arrested, questioned, sacked, everyone is blaming everyone else. Wild accusations, wild fears. Desperation and ignorance has turned brothers to this.’

  His hand was still on my neck, heavy.

  After a long while I said: ‘But should this divide us? This division that belongs to others?’

  ‘It belongs to me too,’ he said. ‘This is my home. Could I know you would be safe here?’

  His name: el Araby. The Arab. There are two famous el Arabys: the poet, and the nationalist hero.

  ‘So I am punished for being English,’ I said.

  ‘No, no, habibti. If I wanted to punish you I could do far worse. I am letting you off.’

  I put my arm up and gently touched his hand where it lay on my neck. His eyes were on me.

  ‘I don’t want you,’ he said. ‘I don’t want what you bring. You are desirable, ah … But I don’t.’

  Night edged in around us.

  ‘Don’t come back,’ he said, and his hand trailed down, and round, and touched my throat, where I had laughed. ‘Don’t come back,’ more quietly. A pause. A long pause. As if he was checking to make sure that I knew what this was, or rather what it wasn’t. Then a hand on my cheek, an arm round my waist. Buttons, one two three four five six seven all down the front of my dress. I didn’t help him. I considered stopping him. His warmth: his body. His pauses. My nemesis. A lifting of my hips towards its own.

  The cushions slid down between the keel and bulwark underneath us as we slipped down. Ungainly and immutable. His breast, his collar bone, his leather hejeb and the smell and taste of him. The cold of the river, our warmth. Don’t come back, he said. The slow movements of the felucca in the water, a slow echo of the rhythm of our movements.

  I mean it, he said, punctuating and making me gasp. Go away. I love you. Go away.

  The moon was rising; it threw some silver on his face, but only his eyes were light.

  At some stage I turned him over, took his arms above his head and kissed him, covering him, laying my cheek alongside his, my body over him. Shivering with the cold, the pair of us.

  Don’t, he said. You know why.

  But it’s love, I said.

  I know, he said, I know that. And turned me over in turn and fucked me till I wept. He tried to pull away, his gesture of manly responsibility, but I stopped him, just whispering the age-old phrase of a hundred possible meanings, it’s all right. He didn’t know why it was all right, but he accepted it, trusted me, couldn’t stop then anyway. And he kissed me till I melted, and fucked me again, and held on to me in the rising moonlight until I stopped shaking, and wrapped me in his arms, his hair, his scarves, his love. I was mortally cold. My cheek against his and our breath melding, the sweat of our bodies slick and cooling. He had a strand of my hair in his mouth. I said nothing when he took it and bit through it, his teeth gleaming, nothing when he wrapped it around his forefinger, pale gold on dark gold in silver light. This is your father, I murmured, this is our love. Feel it, take it, have it. It was real.

  But I didn’t tell him, because it was too late.

  *

  He fell asleep, his hands in my hair. I lay a while, then extracted myself, watched him a while, kissed him a while, rearranged my clothing, buttoning my buttons, wrapping the white scarf around me. I spread the dark lapis scarf over him. He shifted, and murmured in soft Luxori: khalliki jembi. Stay by me. So many times he has said go away, and now, once, in his sleep, khalliki jembi.

  I bent over and bit off one of his black curls, gnawing against the grain of it, and tucked it into my bra. I turned to leave, to clamber gently from the boat, but I couldn’t. I slipped down beside him again, and lay alongside him a while longer, and another line of poetry came up from the depths, a Bedouin poem, about – oh, about all this. The love which doesn’t just slip into place. The love which has no place into which to slip. ‘He reached your arms, stretched on the pillow, forgot his father, and then his grandfather.’

  And then remembered them again.

  I was woken by a noise. Don’t know what. I was alone.

  Raised myself up like the Lady of Shallot: out flew my web and floated wide, the curse has come upon me, cried …

  Considered casting off and floating down to Cairo to die.

  We shouldn’t, perhaps, have done that. Making love makes love, as Chrissie said. Creates it, feeds it, replenishes it. Fucking leads to kissing. And if we are to kill it we shouldn’t be feeding it.

  A phrase from ‘El Atlal’ came to my mind: ‘Don’t say we willed it. Fortune willed it.’

  It’s all my fault, I thought, I shouldn’t have left him last time. Should’ve thought.

  Thought of Lily. Thought of Nippyhead.

  Thought of Harry.

  Clambered out, very gently, on to the bank. Scrambled up to the road. I dare say he was there somewhere in the darkness, in the trees, watching me.

  *

  It took me half an hour or so to walk back to the Winter Palace. I didn’t hurry.

  I saw Shezli in the foyer. ‘You’re free to leave, madame,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I replied.

  ‘Your friend is in the bar,’ he called after me as I drifted by.

  Harry was sitting on a barstool, his long back curved and his head resting on one huge hand, patience and … something else … in his posture. I moved into the room and sat up on the stool next to him. Without looking at me he ordered me a hot chocolate.

  After about fifteen minutes, he said: ‘It would never have worked. No shared history. I bet he doesn’t know who Reg Varney is.’

  About three minutes later he said: ‘Sorry. That was a bit heartless.’

  Then, ‘So what did he say?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him.’

  Harry was silent. I realized he was smiling.

  ‘Then you don’t love him,’ he said. Statement, not question.

  ‘I do,’ I said.

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘How could you not tell him, if you loved him?’

  ‘I …’ I said.

  ‘Oh, of course you love him, a great poetical love like a song and your heart and your soul and dreams and passions and he’s everything, he’s – oh, yes, I know, I know. But you don’t love him for … for the shared past and the imminent future. For being safe and all being well. For real. For reality. For dealing with reality. Look – here you are with me. Not him. Me. You could have changed everything by telling him, including quite possibly him sending you away, but you didn’t do it. I’m taking you home, he doesn’t know you’re pregnant. You and I have been sorting out the problems, you and he have been gazing at the sunset …’

  ‘That’s not fair. It was him who sorted things with the police …’

  ‘I know. I know. But that is … immediate, drastic and finite. Like how you and he are together. I’m talking about the stuff that goes on and on. Like children. Don’t feel bad about it. It’s all right. He can still be the dad, some kind of dad. You’ll work something out. But you don’t love him. You don’t, or you would have told him. You would have. You couldn’t have not told him.’

  I was looking into my frothy chocolate.

  ‘You don’t want him, you don’t trust him, you don’t love him. He’s turned you down, you’ve turned him down. Angel,’ he said, and he bent his head a little; ‘I’m gloating, I know I am. I’m sorry. I’m just very fucking happy.’

  I sat for a while before I looked over in his direction.

  ‘What are you saying, Harry?’ I asked.

  He looked at me sideways along the bar, and didn’t grin.

  ‘I’ll give you time to wa
sh his sperm off you before we go into that,’ he said.

  I stared at him.

  He stared at me.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘We must leave any minute.’

  ‘It’s not washable,’ I said. ‘It’s taken root.’

  ‘I know,’ he said gently. ‘I know.’

  I stared at him for a moment longer. And he leaned over towards me, and kissed me.

  Our first kiss had been at a bar. A million years ago. We’d met three minutes earlier, he’d been the first to break away and my knees had given way beneath me.

  Kissed me like yesterday, like forever.

  *

  Upstairs, when we were collecting our bags, the phone rang. Harry answered.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’

  I watched as he hung up. Blinked. I knew who it was. They’re both leopards, I thought, and they can both read my mind, and they both know where to go. It’s just Sa’id is going somewhere I can’t join him.

  *

  Chrissie slept all the way to Cairo, and all the way to Heathrow. During one brief waking period she said to Harry: ‘Thank you for talking the policeman out of it. I don’t know how you did it, but thank you.’

  I looked at them across the plastic seatbelts and nasty little trays. Harry shrugged.

  ‘Mr Shezli told me,’ she was saying. ‘He’d got hold of the idea Harry was a policeman, and told me I was very lucky to have such a man on my side, and that between him and Sa’id they’d convinced him. He told me that. Said I should be grateful. Well I am. Even though I don’t quite understand how you go from being Eddie’s thug to being the kind of man who can talk foreign policemen out of prosecuting me.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve never been a thug,’ said Harry. ‘I’m too skinny.’

  Chrissie smirked at him. Jesus, does she fancy him? My immediate, animal reaction was ‘Oy, woman, lay the fuck off’. I considered that a moment. Laid my hands across my belly. Hello, little one, I said inside.

  Eight weeks ago, flying home from Cairo, I had wept all the way. Tonight I was silent, feeling parts of me slipping into place.

  *

  For a moment, by mistake, I got the Umm Khalthoum channel. She was singing a song called ‘Fakkaruni’: ‘They Made Me Remember’. ‘They spoke to me again of you, reminded me, reminded me … They took me back to the past, with its joys and its sweetness …’ I listened for a moment or two. There was a line I wanted to hear. ‘And I remembered how happy I was with you, and oh my soul I remember why we came apart.’

  Ah.

  Then the opening of ‘El Atlal’. ‘Fakkaruni’ is an Abba song compared to ‘El Atlal’.

  I turned it off.

  *

  Somewhere over the eastern Mediterranean, Harry said: ‘How old is he? Twenty-six?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Same age I was when I lost you,’ he said.

  *

  Somewhere over France I said: ‘Harry.’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘I fucked Eddie.’

  A pause. I hadn’t thought about saying it. It just came out and got said.

  ‘I know,’ he murmured. Another pause. ‘He told me. All about it.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘With some relish.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘And I know you wish you hadn’t.’

  I bowed my head. Said nothing.

  Then: ‘But I told you … I let you believe that we hadn’t … that we weren’t …’

  ‘Well, you weren’t, were you? That was – I gather – it was one mad thing, wasn’t it? Not exactly a romance.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Angel,’ he said. ‘He got us all in various ways. And now he’s dead. And we’re not.’

  Echo of Sa’id: God has taken him, leave them to it.

  And that’s the truth.

  EIGHTEEN

  Sekhmet

  At Heathrow, Harry put Chrissie in a cab to Chelsea, straight to an AA meeting. Then she was going on to her shrink. Energy returned to her. Alongside, I think, a realization of what she had escaped. A kind of realization. She wanted to come back to mine afterwards; Harry murmured to her perhaps not.

  He and I stood in Arrivals, surrounded by people, under ugly overhead lighting, eyes sandy with sleeplessness, bags around our feet. Did he have to go to work? I didn’t want him to leave.

  ‘Let’s get the tube,’ he said, and headed off.

  ‘We could have shared Chrissie’s cab,’ I said.

  ‘No, we couldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  We were jostling through the crowd, getting separated. He was pushing ahead, clearing a way for me.

  ‘I’ve had it, Angel,’ he said, over his shoulder.

  ‘What?’

  I lost him for a moment. Caught up with him and a degree of calm at the entrance to the tube, as he bought our tickets.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  He manhandled us through the barrier.

  On the platform, standing in front of a sign saying ‘Piccadilly Line’ he said: ‘I’m fed up. I’m fucking fed up with this …’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Jesus,’ he said.

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  ‘Haven’t you noticed?’ he said. ‘That I am completely fucking in love with you, as much as I ever was, more than I ever was, just, just … For fuck’s sake, Angeline!’

  My jaw dropped. It did. He put out his finger, and raised it.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ he said. ‘Come to bed with me. Sorry about the decent interval and all that, but let’s just … let’s. Now.’

  ‘We can’t now,’ I said, stupidly. ‘We’re on a railway platform.’

  ‘Then let’s,’ he said, ‘when we get home.’

  I looked at him. He’s so tall.

  I stepped up on to the wooden seat against the wall, and looked him in the eye.

  ‘Harry,’ I said.

  ‘Hello,’ he answered.

  I stared at him. Harry.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said.

  He gave me a suspicious look.

  ‘Now what?’ he said.

  ‘January 30th,’ I said. ‘Come to dinner. Will you?’

  ‘And till then?’

  ‘As usual,’ I said. ‘Just, how we’ve been.’

  ‘We’ve been a lot of things,’ he said.

  ‘Please,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’ he said. In a kind of ‘I know you’re up to something’ voice.

  I felt a bit wobbly. He saw it. I didn’t know why I had to do this but I had to.

  The long slow stare he was giving me. Tipping his head back a little because I was taller than him now. The look came up under his eyelashes.

  Well, I kissed him. The arms went round me, and he lifted me, and after a while he put me down.

  He started to smile. ‘So, what, am I on a promise then?’ Eyes locked.

  ‘I …’ I said.

  ‘What, kiss me now and then not for a month?’ he said. Quoting what I’d said to him, all those years ago, in that bar.

  ‘Only three weeks,’ I said.

  ‘January 30th.’

  ‘January 30th.’

  ‘I’ll put it in my diary.’

  ‘You do that.’

  ‘I will,’ he said, not taking his eyes off me.

  I shook my head quickly. Felt another seismic shift.

  *

  He took me home, and then he went back to his flat, and then we met for lunch and, talking, we were almost late to go and get Lily. She roared out of the classroom into my arms. Then remembered to be angry with me for staying away from her and scrambled down me, and went to Harry instead. Then remembered that he’d gone away too and stood between us, looking puzzled, until I fell on my knees in the school corridor and gazed at her, level eye to level eye. She agreed to look quizzically at me.

  ‘Hello, girl,’ I said.

  ‘Did you bring me a present?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Seizing the moment as I had so rema
rkably failed to do over the past days.

  ‘What?’ she asked, pleased, peering to see if I had it concealed about my person. Which of course I had, in a way.

  I smiled and found my smile had gone very wobbly round the edges.

  ‘Baby,’ I said.

  She didn’t grasp it at first.

  ‘What baby?’

  ‘Our baby,’ I said. ‘Ours. Baby boy or baby girl.’

  She looked at me, and carried on about her business. There was a small problem with her scarf, and some rationalization required of the school bag and the lunchbox. We walked home through drizzle, the three of us. Made tea. Offered the chammy-leather camel, the Egyptian equivalent of a donkey in a sombrero, that Harry had brought for her. He left, and as he did I thought – he’s left, he’s coming back. She and I had a bath. Read stories: Bluebeard, Five Minutes’ Peace and a chapter of the Big Friendly Giant. Now there’s an ideal man. Lay in bed.

  ‘Did you get it in Egypt?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The baby.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Truthfully.

  She cuddled very close to me and looked down at my belly.

  ‘Is it a real baby?’

  ‘Yes, my darling.’

  She thought a while. Curiosity and shyness fighting it out across her golden face.

  ‘Did someone put their little sperm into you?’ she whispered at last.