by Louisa Young
And of course it would thrill western men who got off on Islamic stuff. Like Eddie.
When I thought about the men, men I knew or had met, who might have seen this tape, my skin quivered.
For a moment I recalled Zeinab and her friends dancing at home: the night before her wedding, the leila el-henna, or at Hassan’s sobou, the seventh day after his birth. ‘I danced all my boys to life,’ Zeinab said. I’ve never seen anything more pure and beautiful and inspiring than the women dancing at home, for themselves, for the pleasure and the elevation of their hearts, dancing like a horse runs, like a lark sings, like a stream flows, like a mountain sits. Because it is right for you to do it. Not like this.
I put on another tape. Fast forwarded all through. More of the same. Then another, then another. Then another. The sixth tape was of even worse quality, and had even worse contents: films of people at it, out of focus, taken from one angle only, unintelligible fumblings, scrawny arses, half-visible faces, bored female ones squashed into pillows, male ones with their eyes shut yet desperate. Nasty sheets with floral patterns – the same sheets – and a duvet cover, brown on one side, pale blue on the other. It wasn’t Janie’s pretty girly bedroom, with its books and photos in silver frames. She wasn’t any of the pasty limbs either. Different people, different girls, different men. Loveless, careless, desperate, bad sex. The people doing this did not know they were being watched.
I had by this time perfected a method of half-looking as the stuff span by on double speed. I wanted to see what it was, I didn’t want to see it. Half-watching, warning each nasty image not to think it was going to be able to stay in my mind. I had to see what there was in order to know …
And then out of the jerky flurry appeared Ben Cooper’s face. And there was his arse – presumably Ben Cooper’s arse – pounding. I wound back and stopped. Ben Cooper’s twisted-up red face, in his moment of crisis. And Noor, beneath him, looking bored.
So everybody has their little bit of insurance, and this was Janie’s. Ben couldn’t know that this existed. He certainly didn’t know it was being filmed. Couldn’t have. He’s a vain man, as well as a man with a well-developed sense of self-preservation – at least he used to have. And this was years ago. When Noor was alive.
I couldn’t remember when she died.
Perhaps he did know about this film. Janie could have told him. Perhaps this is something he wants. Why, after all, of all the straws which must be available to a man in his line of work, did he clutch at me? Perhaps that was personal too. Perhaps he thought I had this film and that I would produce it to get him off my back. Perhaps he thought Eddie had it – though why would Eddie have it?
I turned back to the job in hand. Fast forwarded the rest of tape six. It made the edges of my stomach curl up, but at least it was short.
Tape seven started a lot easier, in a way. There was I, dancing again. It was much later, and I was much improved, doing things I had learnt in Egypt and Turkey. I was wearing an outfit that the little girls in Luxor had embroidered when I was staying with Abu Nil and Hakkim, when Nadia was ill … It was one of the best I ever had, crimson and silver with fringes of beads that you could make shiver like a swarm of bees – or not, which was the key. This was a more professional-looking production. I was in a club – maybe Shiraz, it was hard to tell – and the crowd were keen, mostly Levantine. There were different angles, so presumably more than one camera. Again I had no recollection of the film being made. Then the lighting changed, grew a little dimmer, and the camera drew in closer. I was dancing incredibly badly. It looked like me but could hardly have been. Then I was taking my costume off, bit by bit – that same costume – then I was writhing on the floor with my bare arse in the air and my legs akimbo. It wasn’t me. It was Janie.
FIFTEEN
Eddie Again
On Wednesday the tape ran out on the answering machine, and I decided to take it as a message from God to start talking to people again.
First I rang Cooper and told him that I would do as he wanted, and on his own head be it. I was lying.
Then I rang Neil, who told me that the hearing had been fixed for next week, and that Jim’s lawyers had rung him saying that Jim wanted to come and see Lily this week.
‘Why didn’t he just ring me?’ I asked.
‘Some people let lawyers go to their heads,’ said Neil. ‘Once they’ve got one, they have to get them to do everything. It makes them feel grand. Costs them, too, of course.’
Then I rang Jim, and was incredibly sweet and nice. We arranged that he would come the next day, Thursday. Nora would be at work so wouldn’t be able to make it.
Then I rang Neil back and told him that Nora couldn’t be bothered to take half an hour off work to see the child she was wanting to take away from a happy secure home. ‘Goody,’ said Neil.
Then I rang Brigid and asked her to pick Lily up from school, and invited her and the boys and Caitlin and any of the sisters who were around to tea on Thursday.
Then I rang the school and left a message for Lily that Brigid would be picking her up today.
Then I rang Mum to tell her about the hearing and she said Neil had rung her already. She wanted to read me her affidavit out over the telephone, said Dad’s was brilliant, and only a paragraph long, and reminded me to put into mine about my lack of a sex-life, presuming, she said, that …? She left the question hanging. So did I.
Then I rang Zeinab and we had a gossip. Her boy Hassan had got chicken pox.
Then I rang Brigid back and asked had her kids had chicken pox because Lily might be gestating them. Brigid said no they’d all had them, didn’t I remember, they all got them at once last year, no it was the year before. I thought Janie’s right, I don’t notice what goes on in my friends’ lives. Then I remembered that Janie never said that, it had just been me fantasizing an argument with her in my head. So obviously it’s me that thinks it.
For a moment I seemed to get away with it. For a moment I thought of her, without my new knowledge of her slashing across the thought like a knife at ritual slaughter. But only for a moment. I’d lain awake half the night trying not to think about it, watching the shadows change shape in the room, and wishing Lily would wake up and come in to me. The other half I spent trying to fantasize more arguments with Janie. I shouted at her, I cajoled, I ignored, I pleaded, I was gentle, I was quiet, I was cold, I was kind, I was businesslike, I wept … she said not a word.
In daylight, I knew that she was the only person I ever would talk about it to, so I had better get used to having no answers.
Then I rang Harry and left a message saying that I was sorry that it had come to this, but that I was actually doing everything for the best as far as I could judge it. I’m not sure why I did that.
Then I decided that all these were delaying tactics: I went down to the Winfield, smoked three cigarettes, drank two large vodkas, and rang Eddie on the pay-phone.
Siao Yen answered.
‘May I speak to Eddie, please?’
‘How?’
‘Please may I speak to Eddie?’
‘Is?’
‘This is Angeline Gower. Please may I speak to Eddie Bates?’
Liam’s head shot up behind the bar. He glanced at me, relinquished the glasses he’d been unpacking from the dishwasher, pulled himself up and sat himself slowly down on his stool across the bar from me.
‘I’m listening to this,’ he said. He didn’t look at all happy.
Eddie wasn’t there. ‘Thanks, tell him I called,’ I said and hung up.
Liam looked at me.
‘Well?’ I said.
‘Just thinking what funny company you’re keeping these days,’ he said.
‘I can’t help it,’ I said. ‘They’re keeping me.’
He kept looking, then gave a little huff.
‘Anything I can do,’ he said, phrasing it as a general offer, not a specific inquiry.
‘Thanks,’ I said, and went home.
*
He called within the hour. Was I free? The exhibition at the Academy?
As it would be daylight and a public place, and because a daytime appointment now would keep things ticking over for a day or two, and buy me off having to tell him I would rather eat scorpions than meet him for an evening date, or in private, I said yes.
He’d pick me up, he said. No, no, said I, I had some things to do and I would meet him there. Two o’clock. Of course.
I suspected, from our previous encounter, that things had got beyond the stage where what I wore could either enflame or douse his desires. He wanted me on principle and out of pique as much as anything, and a carefully unattractive outfit could perfectly well turn out to be as inflammatory as Janie’s black bustier. Who knows. I once knew a man who went into palpitations at the mere mention of grubby white bra straps. I decided not to change at all, and went out in a pair of baggy, faded, once-glamorous Indian pyjamas that would normally never get beyond the front door, let alone as far as Piccadilly.
Eddie was waiting for me in the foyer at the Academy. He looked, if I were to view him dispassionately, handsome.
Janie would have said that’s only to be expected. Excitement spreads. Once things start happening, all sorts of other things start happening, even irrelevant and unwelcome ones. She would have said: so, he’s handsome – of course you notice, you’re all upset and therefore open to things.
Or at least …
Enough. Not now.
Do not imagine that I am saying I found Eddie attractive. Just that there was just enough there – just the acknowledgement, if you like, woman to man, that he could be attractive – to make his desires not quite so absurd as they might have seemed. He could have been a contender, if he hadn’t been a dangerous madman. To which Janie would say: ‘Dangerous madmen usually are rather attractive, I find.’ At which point I would roll my eyes, and she would laugh, and I would laugh, and Harry would come in and say: ‘What are you two on about?’ Or Jim would come in and say: ‘Knock it off, would you, I’m trying to concentrate in here.’ He’d be watching the boxing on TV. Back then. Back then.
He greeted me lavishly. Kisses both cheeks, arm around waist, hug to body, hand on the back of the head to press me to his chest.
He was perfect company for an exhibition: erudite, if not in this field, enthusiastic, appreciative. He asked questions, followed the answers, bought the catalogue (£25 – the big beautiful illustrated one), laughed when I made jokes, which I did, and took me to Fortnum’s afterwards for ice-cream. He didn’t mention Cooper, Harry, the address book, his lunatic behaviour when I had last met him, his designs on my body or anything else unpleasant. I felt flattered, spoiled, and thoroughly on edge.
As we left Fortnum’s I started to make going-home noises, but he tucked my arm through his and, in keeping with my ‘if I stay passive perhaps we can just tick along nicely until it’s all over without anything horrible happening’ approach, I let him. He took me into St James’s Square and started to put me into a dark green Jaguar. ‘I’ll take you home,’ he said. Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea.
‘I’ve still got some things to do,’ I said. ‘Just drop me at …’ Still making polite excuses, courtesy still pinioning me as headlights do a rabbit.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course,’ still holding the door.
I knew suddenly what it was. It was the holding the door for me that told me. He was just being nice to me. Patient. Putting me at my ease. Off my guard. It’s just like how young men used to behave when they thought you might still be a virgin. Approach her gently, indirectly, do nothing to startle her. Send flowers, take her on easy, unthreatening daytime dates, give her treats, flatter her. Drive her home, don’t try to snog her on the doorstep. Ring when you say you will. Then, when she trusts you, pounce.
Well, that was all right, then. Now I knew.
Now, how can I find out how long this stage, this role, will last, and milk it?
How funny that he wants me to trust him, when here am I worried about whether he will trust me. Or rather, here’s Ben worrying about that. Me, I’m just ticking over. Brigid was wrong. Me, I’d rather watch reruns of Baywatch on a loop tape than have anything to do with this man. I don’t know when I had decided that he was connected with Janie’s tapes, but decide it I had. He had to be.
Bates must really have absolutely no fear about anything Ben can do to him. Funny attitude to the police, in a criminal. Perhaps he has friends in high places.
Just ticking over.
As I relaxed into my judgement of the situation, Eddie grabbed my hair, pulled my head back, forced my jaw with his other hand and shoved something into my mouth. I started to yell, to struggle, but he yanked my head again so I was staring into his face.
‘Think about Lily,’ he said, quite quietly, and pushed me into the car.
*
I woke up in a room I’d never seen. The light told me it was late afternoon. My head was bad – woozy, disobedient. I shook it, which made it worse. I was lying down, on something which smelt expensive. Open, my eyes hurt. I closed them again.
I tried to think. I think I tried to think. It didn’t work anyway.
*
When I woke again it was dusk. My head felt no better but something in me did.
There must be a window. It was normal yellow and purple London dusk. I imagined I must be at Pelham Crescent.
Where was the window?
Trying to move, I realized that my hands were tied. With something silky. I wished I felt like myself. I knew enough to remember that I would have laughed at the cliche. I didn’t laugh.
How long before I am me?
*
It was like when you eat too many hash brownies and see the same person come into the room over and over again. When you smoke too much shisha and the walls start to melt as you lean against them. When you drink too much cider and the room spins and spins and spins and spins and spins and won’t stop spinning. When it’s too hot. When you spend two weeks on the same seat in a coffeeshop with a Colombian opium-eater, just keeping him company, you know, just keeping company, passing time. You do not leave that seat.
*
When I woke again I was in a nightclub. No, a restaurant. I was on a leather banquette. I could feel it sticking to my thighs through thin material. Eddie was beside me, drinking champagne and laughing. He had his arm round my shoulder but he was talking to somebody else – a man. My eyes were already open when I woke. What the hell had he given me?
Our table was covered with half-eaten food: a dish of greenish ta’amiah, babaganouk, tsatsiki, kibbeh. Damp ravaged mounds, dripping olive oil, with flags of long, sweet-leafed parsley askew atop. Castles after a battle. The droplets of water on a quartered cos lettuce gleamed at me. Long clean spring onions, shining like bone. Scarlet tomatoes. Dishes of meat, grilled, dripping a little, a little juice, a little marinade, a little blood. The plate in front of me had a knife and fork resting against it. The food was half-eaten, the taste of chargrilled meat was in my mouth.
I was wearing a loose chiffony dress with a belt at the hips. I didn’t know it. I had no underwear on.
First thought through the swamp of my brain: Lily.
Lily’s all right. She’s with Brigid. Brigid will cover.
Jesus, it was Shiraz. It had changed, though. It was noisier, and the people were wilder. It seemed late. The same night, I supposed.
I wondered how I had been behaving. All I needed to do was carry on behaving the same way, then make a run for it. What, until Ben frightened me into coming back?
No, I’m not coming back again, I’m going to Egypt with Lily. Become Harem – outlaw. Perhaps from the same root as Haram, forbidden. The other possible root of the word is H’rim – Sanskrit for keep out. Keep out.
Keep awake. Keep thinking.
Eddie was taking no notice of me. The other men … I didn’t know them. Arab-looking. Rich. One had a diamond ring which flashed in the low light. I couldn’t make out w
hat they were saying.
The music changed. Perhaps it was that the voices died down. Ah, yes. The dancer.
I didn’t know her. Well, I wouldn’t. A lot changes in three years. She was young and thin. The old ideal of a dancer is a willow stem planted in a sand dune – but not this modern girl. She had the pomegranate tits, though.
‘Tits like pomegranates, eh, darling?’ Eddie was talking to me. Whispering. I felt his breath. And his hand on my arse. My brain must still be addled. He just said what I was thinking. It’s just drugs. Don’t be frightened.
She was good. Very proud-looking. Not English – maybe Turkish. It’s so hard to tell, in a club. Everyone has become so westernized, such a western version of the East. The crowd liked her. Lots of handclaps and encouragement. Eddie liked her too – beckoned her over, and she came. Fire burned up the edges of my mind, tearing up the periphery of my vision. I closed my eyes to block it and it took over the whole of me, made me quiver. Eddie held me close.
‘Cold, sweetheart?’ His hand crept up, rubbing my tit.
The girl vamped him, snake arms, jump and shimmy, veil round his head, emphasizing her already emphasized tits with her upper arms, pressing them together inches from his nose. I could smell her make-up, and her sweat. Sway figure eight, sway figure eight, sway figure eight. Pulse and thrust, pulse and thrust. No fertility or childbirth here, just unadulterated coitus.
‘Like her?’ murmured Eddie. ‘Shall we take her home?’ He reached for a champagne bottle and ran his fingers up and down it, looking at her, and at me.
