Strangers

by Carla Banks

  The city hid itself behind a veil. The centre was a sweep of concrete, ugly, dirty and crowded, where the past had been eradicated. She remembered Joe’s fascination with finding the lost sectors of old cities–the hidden rivers and wild enclaves in the centre of London, the forgotten remnants of the past.

  There was little of this here. The old city was fast disappearing but, despite the changes, the narrow streets of the old quarter still carried the remnants of the original labyrinthine pattern. Here and there she could still see the old buildings: houses made of clay, the doors and windows obscured by mashrabiyaat. These grilles allowed the people inside to look out on to the streets, but excluded all strangers. They were like the eyes of the women, dimly visible when the light caught the covering over their faces.

  Other ex-pats told her that the city was changing so fast that landmarks could disappear overnight, whole blocks razed and replaced by newer, higher, more elaborate constructions. A culture built on sand has no sense of permanency.

  By the end of the fortnight, she knew the compound from end to end. She knew the staff in the commissary, and she had attended coffee mornings at the houses of ex-pat wives who, having little prospect of work here, seemed to devote their lives to gossiping and complaining about their host country. The only thing she learned from them was how to make wine from fruit juice and bread yeast.

  She got to know the gardeners–Filipinos, mostly–who worked quietly and inconspicuously keeping the lawns green and immaculate and the gardens blooming. They were friendly and helpful to a newcomer who was trying to find her feet. She got into the habit of taking them fruit juice and biscuits while they were working, and sat on the step in the shade talking to them. They lived in poor conditions–mostly in segregated hostels. They weren’t allowed to bring their wives and families with them, and they all seemed to be supporting extended families at home. They were cheerful and resourceful. She helped them with their English and, in exchange, they taught her a few words of Tagalog, including a useful obscenity or two.

  She worked hard on the house. It was the first home of their marriage, and she wanted it to be comfortable and welcoming. Most of all, she wanted it to be theirs. They’d rented it furnished, so she tried to add some personal touches. She framed some of her Newcastle photographs and hung them on the wall. She bought a red glass vase on one of her trips into town and put it on a low table where it made a splash of colour against the neutral walls.

  The kitchen alone was probably as big as her flat in London had been. Their pots, pans and crockery huddled in forlorn isolation in the cupboards, and Roisin’s shopping from the commissary barely filled half the shelves of the massive ice box that dominated one corner of the room.

  She spent a lot of time alone. Joe was working long hours. His department in the hospital had been without a senior pathologist for several weeks, and he had a massive backload of work to catch up on. He left the house at six each morning, and was rarely home before nine. By the end of her fortnight of enforced idleness, Roisin had had enough.

  It was Wednesday afternoon. The weekends ran from Thursday to Saturday, and Roisin was due to start work the following week. Joe had promised to be home early, and they planned to spend the evening together. Roisin had hoped that they might be able to go into the city on Thursday or Friday and do some more exploring, but Joe said he would probably have to work.

  ‘You haven’t had a day off since you got here,’ Roisin had protested.

  ‘What do you think they pay these salaries for?’ he’d said as he disappeared upstairs to shower. The subject hadn’t come up again.

  She looked at the clock: four thirty. The hands barely seemed to have shifted since she’d last looked. Joe should be back in half an hour. It would be their first proper evening together for a fortnight, and she’d planned a small celebration. She’d bought a chicken and it was simmering on the stove in coconut milk and spices, filling the house with its fragrance.

  She went upstairs to shower–she was going to surprise Joe with the new dress she’d bought just before they’d left the UK and hadn’t had a chance to wear. She’d lived in jeans for the past week. She was drying herself when the phone rang and she went into the study to answer it, catching her shin on the last unopened packing case. It was Joe’s and it contained his medical books and notes. He’d said that he would unpack it himself, but it was still there, sitting uncompromisingly in the middle of the floor.

  She swore and grabbed at her leg as she picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Sweetheart, it’s me.’

  Her heart sank. ‘Joe.’ She could hear the flatness in her voice–she knew what was coming.

  ‘I’ve got to stay late again. I’m sorry. I can’t do anything about it. You wouldn’t believe the chaos here.’

  He sounded tired. She swallowed her disappointment. ‘OK. I’ll be fine. The chicken will be a bit dried out.’

  ‘Did you do something special? I’m sorry, sweetheart.’

  She bit her tongue on a sharp comment. They’d discussed their plans before he’d left that morning. ‘It’s OK. I’ve got things to do.’

  She finished drying her hair, and pulled on some jeans. The smell of spiced chicken that had been making her feel hungry seemed unpleasant now, rich and cloying. She went downstairs to switch off the stove, then stood in the vast empty kitchen wondering what to do with her evening.

  Her leg was hurting where she’d caught it on the packing case. She rubbed it, wincing as her fingers touched the tender spot where a bruise was starting to form. It was OK for Joe to say, I’ll do it, but he was never here. And it wasn’t him hacking his shins on it every time he tried to get into the room. She went back up the stairs to the office and tried to push the box into the corner where it wouldn’t be such an obstruction, but she couldn’t get enough grip to get any traction. It was too heavy to lift. She decided to take all the stuff out, put it somewhere where Joe could sort through it, and get the box put away.

  It was filled to the top with books. No wonder it was too heavy to move. She knelt on the floor and began taking them out, big medical tomes with dark covers and forbidding titles: The Pathology of the Foetus and the Infant; Foetal and Neonatal Pathology…

  Underneath the books, Joe had stacked various papers and journals, which she moved carefully on to separate shelves, and right at the bottom of the case was a folder full of personal miscellany. She spent a happy ten minutes flicking through old magazines, looking at a postcard she’d had made of one of her photographs with a message she’d scrawled on the back in the early days of their relationship. And there was a photograph, slightly creased, of their wedding.

  She sat on the floor, looking at it, remembering how, when they had come out of the register office, someone had thrown petals that came down in a shower and clung to her hair and to her dress. The photographer had caught them in that moment, laughing in a cloud of brilliant colours.

  The phone rang. She made a long arm and picked it up, her eyes still on the photograph. ‘Roisin Massey.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Massey. Could I speak to Dr Massey please?’

  ‘He isn’t here. Do you want to leave a message?’

  ‘It’s Mike Alport, his technician.’

  ‘Hi, Mike.’ She had talked to Mike on the phone but she hadn’t met him yet.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you. I thought he’d be back by now. Could you ask him to give me a ring when he gets in? Tell him it’s about those results he wanted. They came in just after he left.’

  Roisin stared at the phone.

  ‘Mrs Massey?’

  ‘Yes. I’m here. Sorry. When did you say he left?’

  ‘About an hour ago.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. He said he might stop at the shops.’ Her voice sounded odd and artificial. ‘I’ll ask him to call you, OK?’

  She sat looking at the phone after Mike had rung off. Joe must have…He was probably still in his office, dealing with a backlog of admin. He wouldn’t necessarily have told
Mike that. He’d want to be left alone to get on with it.

  Her fingers reached for the phone, pulled back, then reached again. She dialled Joe’s direct line, the one that went straight to his office, or to his pager if he was on duty and away from his desk. She listened to the phone ringing, then to the automated answering service that told her he wasn’t available and invited her to leave a message.

  He wasn’t there.

  She stacked his books carelessly on the shelves. One of them toppled off and fell open on to the floor with a heavy thud that resonated through the silent house. A dog barked in the distance. She picked up the book, trying to avert her eyes from the pictures, afraid she would see photographs of dead babies, babies with terrible diseases, but instead the infants looked normal: tiny, wrinkled, newborn, their minuscule fingers clenched, their eyes dark and curious.

  One day…She and Joe had married in a hurry, but one thing they both knew was that they wanted children. Roisin, at thirty-two, didn’t want to wait much longer and they had a tentative plan to try for a family after his contract in Riyadh ended. But, in the back of her mind, she could see his face, suddenly cold, turned away from her, and she could hear her mother’s voice: Rosie, you hardly know him!

  She made herself focus on the task in hand. The packing case was just about empty. She dug down to the bottom and found a page from a newspaper. It was tucked into a plastic pocket to preserve it, and it had been folded, leaving a photograph on display. It was a picture of a young man with a carefree smile. She unfolded the paper carefully, looking at the date. It was from April that year, and she wondered why Joe had kept it. Underneath the photograph, there was an article:

  BRITISH STUDENT ‘ABANDONED’ IN SAUDI JUSTICE

  Supporters of a man who was executed in Saudi Arabia last week, today accused the government of failing to intervene. Haroun Patel, a Pakistani national who was a student in the UK in 2003, was convicted of smuggling heroin in Riyadh. A spokesperson said, ‘Her Majesty’s government is unable to intervene in cases involving nationals from other countries.’

  An execution. She remembered that first morning with Damien O’Neill, when she’d found her way to as-Sa’ah Square. It’s known colloquially as Chop-Chop Square…

  Early April. In early April, she and Joe hadn’t even met. When that article was written, when people were reading it, she was running along the tow path with Shadow dancing ahead of her, and just a week or two later, Joe would be running along that path towards her, the course of their lives about to change for ever.

  As she read on, the images of the Kingdom that she was starting to form in her mind melted and changed. They were confused and disparate images: the houses in the old city, tall with small, shuttered windows, houses built close together creating narrow, shadowed alleyways that protected the inhabitants from the relentless sun; the compound with its sharp-edged shadows cast by the buildings, the blinding reflections that enclosed the watcher in brightness, the dryness, like ashes, that the light left behind.

  And she didn’t know any more what she was seeing.

  8

  DESERT DEATHS

  Riyadh: Thirteen workers–mostly Africans–lost their way in the desert and died of thirst in the Taef region of Saudi Arabia. They are thought to have gone looking for work when their residency permits ran out. (Reuters)

  Damien O’Neill leaned back in his chair. It tilted, and he stared at the ceiling, watching a lizard making its way across the cracked plaster. He was beginning to think that he might have a problem, a problem that centred on Joe Massey. He’d been concerned about Majid’s rather dismissive hostility when Massey’s name had been mentioned. Somehow, during his previous contract, Massey had managed to bring himself to the attention of the police.

  And now there was something else. As he walked home from work that evening, Damien had passed one of the thriving internet cafés that had sprung up all over the city. And there, all his concentration focused on the screen in front of him, was Joe Massey. Damien had been sufficiently intrigued to stop and watch for a while, but Massey’s intent gaze hadn’t wavered as he keyed instructions into the machine, stared at whatever had appeared on the screen in response, scribbled down notes and keyed in more instructions.

  All the ex-pat houses were set up for internet access, and Massey would also have had a computer in his office at the hospital. But internet traffic was closely monitored in the Kingdom. Though ostensibly for people without their own internet connection, in practice the cafés were often used by those who had particular reasons for keeping their activities anonymous.

  These were troubled times. Westerners had been killed on the streets of the Kingdom, and Damien had an ex-pat community whose safety was his responsibility, as was their impact on the society they so imperfectly understood. If Massey was here with an agenda, then Damien wanted to know what it was. There was nothing he could do now though. He filed the problem for future consideration.

  The call for Maghrib, sunset prayer, brought him back to the present. He scribbled down some notes for the report he intended writing next day, then went downstairs to see what Rai had left in the way of food. As he walked through the shadowed spaces, the doorbell jangled, an intrusion from another place and another time. He heard the sound of a car pulling away.

  Damien paused. He didn’t live behind the layers of security that protected most Westerners. He knew he was taking some risks, but he also knew that, if he hid behind those kinds of shields, he would effectively exclude himself from Saudi society, declare himself to be irretrievably other. Whoever was calling had chosen a time when Rai wasn’t here, and when the streets outside were quiet. Risk? He spun the wheel in his head, then opened the door.

  There, in the long shadows cast by the high walls and the walkways that linked the buildings, was a slender, black-swathed figure. Her eyes, behind the concealing niqaab veil, were luminous as she slipped through the half-open door into the twilight of the hallway.

  ‘Amy!’ He didn’t know whether he was shocked or angry. Or just pleased. She shouldn’t have come here alone.

  ‘I wanted to see you,’ she said simply.

  ‘For Christ’s…’ His exasperation faded as she slipped off her abaya. She was wearing a simple blue dress. Her skin glowed in the shadows, and the brightness of her hair made the colours around her fade to monochrome. ‘Do you know what could happen if anyone saw you coming here?’

  ‘Of course I do. So I was careful. Please, Damien. Don’t let’s get angry with each other, not now. It’s been too long since I saw you.’ She rested her hands lightly on his shoulders. Her eyes were almost level with his. He could smell her perfume, and see the way the delicate flush on her face was deepening as they looked at each other.

  As he kissed her, he could feel the anger flowing through him and knew she could feel it as well. Suddenly, she was urgent, her nails digging into him as she pulled his shirt free. He could feel her fingers unbuckling his belt. He lifted her up and sat her on the edge of the table that stood by the wall, pushing up her skirt and impatiently pulling her clothes aside.

  ‘Damien…’ she said, then as he touched her, her breath caught and she stopped speaking as the shadows of the evening gathered around them.

  By the time Joe got back, Roisin had finished unpacking the last case and had taken another shower to get rid of the sticky dust that seemed to settle over everything.

  There was a bottle of wine in the fridge, some homebrew that a neighbour had given her. It was to have accompanied the chicken that was now cold and congealing in the pan. As the hands on the clock dragged from nine to ten, she got the bottle out and poured herself a glass.

  She was lying on the settee, trying to concentrate on her book, when she heard his key in the door. It was almost twenty past ten, the latest he’d ever been. She sat up wearily and put her glass on the table.

  He looked tired. He’d loosened his tie and his shirt collar was open. His face was pale under his tan and he had shadows of fat
igue under his eyes. ‘Roisin.’

  ‘You look exhausted.’ She kept her voice neutral. ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘What? No. No, I didn’t have time. I’m not hungry anyway.’

  ‘You’ve got to have something.’ She stood up. ‘Joe, where have you been?’

  He frowned slightly, studying her face. ‘I’ve been working.’

  ‘Mike phoned. He wanted you to call back.’

  ‘When? I haven’t seen him. I’ve been in the library.’

  ‘The library?’

  He shook his head. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I should have come home like I said, but I’m getting behind with my own work. If I don’t keep up with that, I’m not going to get a decent job when we leave.’

  And he hadn’t felt able to tell her. You hardly know him, Rosie. And he hardly knew her. ‘You should have said.’

  He was looking at her with half-amused doubt. ‘What did you think? That I was out hitting the fleshpots of Riyadh? Because there aren’t any.’

  ‘Of course not. I just thought we’d agreed to spend this evening together.’ She saw his face start to set in the cold, distant look. ‘Mike said you’d left, and I was worried.’

  He seemed to pull himself back from somewhere. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’ve been on your own. I should have thought.’ He put his arms round her. ‘We could start the evening now. I didn’t mean to make you worry. You look beautiful.’ His smile was deliberately hangdog.

  She knew what he was doing, but she couldn’t resist smiling back. ‘And you look shattered. Go and have a shower, and I’ll get us something to eat. Here—’ She gave him the glass of wine she’d barely touched.

  He leaned forward and kissed her lightly.