With hindsight, naturally, I blame myself. But there and then, Hamid nodded. He liked a spiritual test. A scene of so much exposed flesh was, he said, an affront to all that was holy and good. Omar was less high-minded. He shuddered at the evidence of what age and gravity can do to a body. I proposed that we remain in position on the beach until we had observed at least one beautiful naked woman. Could we overcome our lust? That, I said, was our sacred challenge, and I, for one, embraced it.
They each nodded. Hamid checked his phone to make sure we hadn’t missed The Call. Then he switched on the camera, and, with an outstretched, rigid arm, held the zoom at the ready. ‘Good man, Hamid,’ I said, clapping him on the back. When the moment came, we would not spare ourselves a single detail.
But the woman never appeared. In Brighton it seemed only families, gay men and old people took off their clothes. To make matters worse, Omar kept leaving desperate voicemails for his mother to ask if his father had backed down yet. When he called again, his old man picked up.
As I say, I blame myself. But if Omar hadn’t started shouting, itemising for the benefit of his father’s moral outrage the jihadi excesses he would perpetrate in the family’s name, we might not have had to run like maniacs from the three coppers who laid siege following complaints from the public. Before we had the chance to harden ourselves to even one naked female, they gave chase.
While Hamid had the purity of heart and Omar, his father’s business brain, I had the reaction time and speed, even, it seemed, on beach pebbles. Back in Peterborough, I walked ten hours a night across the Amazon warehouse – otherwise known as the Fulfilment Centre. The Centre is the size of seven football pitches, and my average pick-rate was one product every twenty-nine seconds. Even as I speak, the proof is on the warehouse wall, in a Black Maxi Shatter-proof Poster Frame, RRP £19.99. My ‘Employee of the Month’ picture.
Everyone there calls me ‘Legs’ because 1) I am fast and 2) no white person can ever remember ‘Limazah’. Joy was the first.
I never knew it till the day Omar asked me to flee with him to jihad, but I wanted to know what fulfilment meant when Amazon wasn’t number-crunching the shit out of it.
At the police station, Omar and Ham weren’t detained for more than a few hours, but they were cautioned for public disturbance, and now were known to the police. It was difficult to say how much the cops knew about Omar’s jihadi boasts to his father, but the truth was, he’d been giving it large there on the beach.
Those few hours alone were not easy for me either. Would Omar and Ham be released? Were the cops still looking for me? Had they seized Hamid’s phone? Had The Recruiter made contact even as they sat in the interview room?
Perhaps it was the trance of the surf, or maybe the sweet smell of suncream, but when Omar and Ham finally returned, I clasped each to my chest in a spontaneous show of happiness and brotherly love.
Omar frowned. Hamid sighed. Where was my righteous anger?
The X Factor buzzer sounded again.
Then Omar’s phone rang and we jumped. It was Omar’s mother. His father, she told him, hadn’t relented. Omar could only return home to pack a bag for Turkey.
‘Tell the old prune I can’t wait to go!’ he said. But as he ended the call, he had to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand.
‘No, no, no,’ I counselled as his knees gave way and he sank to my beach towel. ‘Hold on to your anger, bro. In the days to come, it will sustain you when your feet are blisters, when your eyes are blind with sand and when you’re cursing yourself for having an iPod in your pocket instead of toilet paper.’
Hamid was angrier and more committed than ever. Another neighbourhood in his parents’ native city had been flattened that very morning. Plus, he added, the tea in the police station had been of the poorest variety and quite frankly, an insult. Did the English working classes strive to be common?
Back on the prom, we spotted CCTV everywhere. At last, even my cheer faltered. Were we now being watched? ‘Brothers,’ I said, ‘we need to disappear.’
‘We need to get our arses underground,’ said Omar.
‘We need a phone signal,’ said Hamid.
Because everything still depended on that call.
‘The Sea Life Centre?’ said Omar.
As if he could do better.
‘Think,’ I said. ‘How often do you see coppers out enjoying a family attraction?’ Omar and Ham strained to recall. Earnestness, I feared, would be our undoing.
‘Go, go, go!’ I ordered, and we sped down the concrete stairs, with Ham pulling up the rear.
A welcome sign said that the Aquarium had been enjoyed by families since 1871. Omar said they must have been, like, really, really bored in the olden days. There, beneath the coast road, the Sea Life Centre stretched out before us in vaulted Victorian gloom. The air was humid. The lights were dim. The tanks gleamed. I took a deep breath. ‘Try to look normal,’ I whispered. ‘Try to blend in.’
‘With fucking fish?’ asked Omar.
The place was packed and noisy with Bank Holiday families. Perfect. My heart stopped thudding. We slid through the cavern of the public hall, past the snack stand, and started to relax at last. There was no sign of Security, no one with bad-ass flaks or Bluetooth.
So we pressed our faces to the tanks and became schoolboys all over again. We had time to kill, didn’t we? Omar and I made kissy fish-lips at assorted occupants of the tanks, and even Hamid laughed because, man, some of those fish were big ugly sons-of.
‘Ham,’ I said, ‘check. How many bars on the phone?’
‘Three,’ he said.
‘Result,’ I said.
Children’s voices bounced off stone walls and pillars. At the rock pool, we stirred up the starfish and prodded the crabs. I walked sideways for a time, for a laugh. But I admit: something deep in my gut wobbled when a hairy mofo of a catfish looked me in the eye. I knew it and it knew it too: a primitive, unspeakable understanding was hurdling the space between its brain and mine.
We were each capable of ugly things.
‘This way!’ I said, waving us forward and deeper.
And deeper still – past tanks of pulsating jellyfish and pale electric eels. We stood, watching the eels slide between red fingers of coral. ‘Ham,’ I called over my shoulder, ‘how many bars now?’
‘Two!’
Up ahead, an octopus writhed, all arms and suckers. ‘Allah made a mistake with that one,’ I laughed.
Hamid boxed my ears.
Which is when we turned a tight corner and it appeared: a shining glass tunnel of water and light.
‘Allahu Akbar,’ whispered Ham.
It was beautiful – beautiful like nothing I’ve ever known in Peterborough. Beautiful like it would be on the inside of one of those snow-domes, only with fish floating past instead of snow. I suddenly felt small, small like a barnacle stuck to the rock of the world. But if I was that small it was because the world was big and, inshallah, eternal. A crazy kind of calm washed over me, and there, underground and on the run, I felt my heart lift.
We stepped inside the tunnel, pointing and gawping. Light pulsed across the glass, and it morphed from soft purple to blue to green. Enormous sea turtles paddled by. Sharks hovered overhead like guardians. Stingrays zipped and glided. Streams of bubbles rose up and, as we walked on, a bower of angelfish and butterflyfish moved with us.
All was one there, underground. There were no borders. No walls or checkpoints. No them, no us.
Omar’s mouth gaped. His eyes shone. Ham shuffled forward, staring at the pure white bellies of the sharks overhead. Classical music dripped from the walls. I thought, it’s like that tunnel they say appears when you die.
Which is when Omar’s phone bleeped and he fumbled for it. ‘What the f—’
I eyeballed him. We couldn’t risk complaints.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he said, blinking back tears and grinning all at once. ‘It’s a text from my mother. It was a big wind-up. My father wanted
to teach me a lesson. I’m flying to Turkey next week to oversee a shipment of dates.’ He raised his eyes to the bright glassy sky and gave thanks. ‘Dates!’
‘Bro,’ I said, ‘I’m really, really happy for you. Like, really.’ And OK, maybe I was happy for myself too. Cos, as of that moment, I was off – the – hook. A free fish.
Hamid, devout radical though he was, clapped Omar on the back. It was big of him. A shoal of Boy Scouts moved past, their chatter briefly deafening. Then the hush returned to the tunnel and we heard the ringtone of Hamid’s phone.
da nuh
da nuh
da nuh da nuh da nuh da nuh
The theme from Jaws.
Hamid froze. Omar and I froze. Even the shark overhead froze.
We looked at the display. ‘It’s him,’ said Ham.
The Emir’s man.
We stared for long moments at the throbbing screen. A baby sea turtle swam up to the glass and stared too.
Then Hamid swallowed hard and, with one gentle swipe of the finger, ended the call.
‘The Moving Finger writes,’ he said,
‘and having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line.’
‘An old Persian poem,’ he murmured.
Omar stood blinking, dazed with relief. I seized Hamid’s head between my hands and kissed it hard. In the water above us, a troop of striped clownfish bounced in the current.
And moments later, as we stepped up into the soft light of evening, I suddenly remembered Joy.
Imagining Chekhov
Woman with Little Pug
From Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Russia (1868): ‘The numbers going to bathe at Yalta bid fair to make it the new Russian Brighton.’
At the Grand Hotel in Brighton, the appearance of a new arrival – a woman with a little dog – became the general topic of conversation amongst the front-desk staff and regulars. Guy Ingram, seated in the conservatory with the morning paper on his knee, observed her approach the vast zinc dais of the hotel bar, push back her floppy hat and ask the bartender for a bowl of water for her pug pup.
In the days that followed, Guy glimpsed the woman on the prom, in the Pavilion gardens and in the twisting, tourist-mobbed Lanes. She was invariably alone and wearing the same straw hat with a pair of oversized dark glasses. The pug trotted along after her, in tow on its silver lead. On occasion it lay cradled in her arms, its legs – Guy sickened at the sight – grotesquely akimbo.
Guy had recently passed the crumbling milestone that is one’s fiftieth year. He had a ten-year-old daughter, Hermione, and twin sons, Seb and Julian, who had gone off to board at the age of twelve. It was unnatural, he’d insisted to his wife, for boys to kick about the house after they’d reached puberty. He’d reminded her that he had boarded from the tender age of eight, when his parents had turfed him out, and had it done him any harm? Was he emotionally stunted?
Four years his senior, Martha’s most recent midlife crisis was a Master’s course in Psychodynamic Therapy. She passed entire days in the breakfast room making masks with old greeting cards, glitter, feathers, condoms and the burst blister packs from her antidepressants. What did it mean? Guy asked himself, but never for long.
His own midlife crisis – if ‘crisis’ was indeed the right word – had manifested itself in a series of extramarital dalliances arranged online. After a few brief encounters, he’d quickly determined that the most efficacious way past a woman’s guilt or unease was an unshowy display of calculated compassion. It was no longer helpful to say, ‘My wife is prone to headaches’, as it had been for the cavorting class of his father’s generation. No, these days one explained with an air of utter decency and restrained grief: ‘My wife suffers from depression.’
The opportunities seemed endless. Just last month, he’d popped down to Brighton, ostensibly for an appointment with Roedean’s headmistress to discuss Hermione’s chances. He’d explained to Martha that the head’s day for meeting parents was Wednesday – Martha’s MA workshop day.
Pity.
This week, his escapades in Brighton doubled as a search for investment properties. It was a bonus that the pert, young estate agent had warmed to his financial savvy. In truth, knowledge of the market and its vagaries constituted little more than ball-scratching for a City man of his calibre. But Gemma might merit more. She’d worn a prim navy dress, a beguiling trench coat and knocked-off Louboutins.
The louche morality of Brighton was of course overstated; that particular version of the town existed mostly in the febrile imaginations of middle-aged, soft-paunched Londoners who longed to have more than A level results and the fear of mansion tax to occupy their Dark Nights of the Soul. That said, he was happy enough to succumb to seaside cliché. It was really rather fun.
Ascending the spiral staircase to his room, he tapped his breast pocket for Gemma’s card. Overhead, the Grand’s vast cupola ennobled him. It made him feel not-sordid, and he never failed to appreciate the crowning view. Except now, as Guy turned his eyes skyward, he experienced something strange, something alien – a sharp and repeated sense of loss – for above him, disappearing again and again at each bend in the spiral, was the woman in the floppy hat.
A few hours later, Guy predicted – correctly – that the woman would be too besotted to leave the dog behind in her room at dinner time; instead she would ask for a plate of something to be served to her in the conservatory. The evening was sultry, and he had already taken up his position when she walked languidly in, the pug scampering after her, its claws clattering horribly on the tiles. Tat-a-tat-tat.
Through the wide windows, the Channel was glassy. The gulls cried out. The full moon was a stopped pendulum, grave and low above the sea. There wasn’t a breath of a breeze or a single white-cap.
The woman slipped off her hat and laid it by her feet before turning to take in the view. In the deep twilight, the ribbed ruins of the West Pier dissolved into shadow.
When the waiter appeared, Guy assured him that he was quite happy to eat his leg of lamb from a tray. It wouldn’t be a problem. After all, the temperature was more pleasant in the conservatory.
Whether the pug growled at him, the waiter or them both, it was impossible to say.
Guy ordered baby carrots and potato gratin but resisted the caramelised onion gravy. He chose a 2005 red Bordeaux, sank deeper into his armchair and remembered the sensation of closing his father’s eyelids after the old man had emptied of life. On the pillow below him, the bald, freckled dome of the paternal head had suddenly looked too small.
He watched the woman shake out a napkin and bend to wipe the pug’s nose. An errant slant of light from a colonial shutter fell across her face. The band on her ring finger glinted.
Guy’s meal arrived. He listened to her order the soupe du jour and a glass of Sancerre, to be charged to her room. ‘Six-three-four,’ she confirmed in a low, resonant voice. He repeated it to himself, and only now, as she shifted in her seat, did he see that she was actually far less beautiful than he’d imagined. Her hair was a faded brown; her eyes, an indistinct grey. Her cleavage turned faintly crêpe-like as she bent to stroke the dog. She was older than her slim figure suggested. Quite unremarkable in fact. Yet she intrigued him and he had no idea why.
He caught her eye, nodded and, as if on a whim, asked if he might offer the pug a morsel of lamb.
The woman looked up at him and immediately lowered her eyes. ‘He doesn’t bite,’ she said, blushing.
The pug sucked the lamb from his fingers. Revolting. ‘How long have you been visiting?’ he asked, as if summoning polite interest.
‘A couple of days. My husband was supposed to join me. We won this week at the Grand at his office Christmas party last year. But he’s been delayed.’
Her wine arrived. The waiter receded. For a long moment neither spoke.
‘I’m supposed to be enjoying myself,’ she said, smiling unhappily, ‘but the truth
is I’m bored.’ She blinked several times, as if she would blink away the words.
And again he saw his father’s dead, bewildered eyes asking, Is that all?
It was agreed with the peculiar ease of the mildly inebriated. He waited in the lobby while she returned the pug to her room. Room 634, he reminded himself. They crossed the King’s Road, making a mad dash through traffic. On the beach, she grabbed hold of his arm so as not to topple in her wedges. The pebbles crunched underfoot. It was the last bank holiday weekend of summer and the shingle was littered with drunken, furtive couples.
Guy and Anna seated themselves on his jacket. They noted how warm it was still, even at midnight. Guy told her that he worked in the City; that he owned two homes in London but was in search of investment properties in Brighton. He said that, once upon a time, he used to act – on stage, that is – revues, comedies – at Cambridge, but that person seemed like a distant relation now. Anna said she’d grown up in London but lived in Surrey. Her husband was away a great deal in Asia. His company sold health insurance to expats. He had trouble with his eyes. Her only talent was the piano. She was good but not gifted. ‘No,’ she said, ‘no children.’
He took her hand in his and when she did not withdraw it, something tripped in his brain. The moon seemed to sway. The pendulum swung.
‘You seem oddly familiar,’ she said.
‘More familiar than odd, I hope.’ And he did. He did hope.
They watched a satellite cross the night sky, a lonely pinprick of light.
He unbuttoned his shirt and laid his head in her lap. She fingered the hair of his chest. He forgot that he was a philanderer, a player, a user of women; forgot that he had often been here – or somewhere very like it – before. In that moment, absolved by the hushing of the tide, each foundered inwardly.
Later, as they walked through the door into Anna’s room, her hand shot to her mouth. ‘My dog . . . Oh, god. Where is he?’ She searched the bathroom. She peered under the bed and beneath the writing desk, coaxing and cooing. She ransacked the suitcase on the floor. Guy drew back the curtains. He even opened the wardrobe. But the pug pup was nowhere, and indeed there was no evidence it ever had been. ‘His bowl was here,’ she tried. ‘His lead was by the minibar. I can’t believe it! Someone’s taken him!’
all the beloved ghosts Page 10
