‘ “Dirty Arab. Go home,” they would shout, hanging out of their cars as I walked down the street with my bags of shopping.
‘Sometimes they would proposition me, ask me for sex as if I was a prostitute and then spit at my feet when I refused, saying I was stuck-up, ideas above myself, that I thought I was too good for them.
‘I made one friend, a woman from the upstairs flat. She was very kind to me. She told me not to pay any attention. She said they didn’t know any better. That the shipyards, the steel industry had closed down and they weren’t qualified to work in the new kinds of jobs – call centres, offices, that kind of thing. So they got bored and went down the pub where their heads were being filled with nonsense: National Front, BNP…
‘I felt differently after that. I began to feel a bit sorry. I realised that perhaps I was the lucky one. I had an education. I had at least a chance of something better. But then one day...’
Mamma stopped. She looked down at her hand in David’s. She spread her other hand on the table and then closed it into a fist.
‘You don’t have to…’ David began.
‘Oh, I do, I do,’ she said. ‘I’m nearly at the end now. And then it is done. Done.’
She took a deep breath.
‘So, one day, I was walking through the shopping centre. I was on my way to meet Enzo at the end of his shift. We liked to walk down by the sea together before dinner.’
Mamma smiled, remembering something.
‘Yes, we loved to do that. It was so nice down there. The air was so fresh that it washed you clean. You could forget everything.
‘And that evening, I remember, I’d made a special effort to look nice. I can remember exactly what I was wearing. I was six months pregnant by then and I was very proud of how I looked. I put on a sundress, white and covered with big yellow sunflowers. I took a pink rose from the vase on the kitchen table and put it in my hair.
‘There was a short-cut I could take to the hotel where Enzo worked. You had to pass through a shopping centre. Well, I didn’t like to go in that shopping centre. It always gave me a bad feeling. But it was quicker to walk that way. It took much longer to go all the way around.
‘Over and over again, I have asked myself why I didn’t just walk round. But it was five o’clock in the evening so most of the shops in there were just closing and the exit was right next-door to Enzo’s hotel.
‘They appeared from nowhere. I still couldn’t tell you where they came from. I was alone, walking through the shopping centre and then suddenly they were all around me, five or six of them in a circle, just a little way inside the entrance.
‘“Well, what have we here, then?” one of them said. “Pretty lady…”
‘I saw that he had a long scar right across his cheek. In that moment, I knew I was in real trouble. I had never felt more afraid.
‘They pressed in closer around me. One of them reached out and touched my hair. Another put his face right up to mine. I could smell the alcohol on his breath and he took my breast in his hand and squeezed it so hard that tears came to my eyes and I couldn’t see clearly any more. All I could think about was the baby inside me.
‘“Yeah, you like that, don’t you?” he said and I shook my head as hard as I could.
‘He put his finger under my chin and tilted my head so that I had to look at him.
‘“Oi. Did you hear that?” he said to the rest of them. ‘Our little foreign lady here doesn’t like me? Boo hoo. Thinks I’m not good enough for her, eh? Maybe she’ll like one of you better.”
‘One of the others came up to me then and tried to kiss me. His lips brushed the edge of my mouth. I pushed him away. He grabbed my arm and twisted it hard behind my back whilst another put his hands between my legs.
‘I found my voice then. I started to scream and scream.
‘And that’s when it all went wrong.
‘A figure came running into the shopping centre and I saw instantly that it was Enzo. He must have heard me screaming. Whether he knew it was me or just a woman who needed help, I’ll never know.
‘He stopped when he saw me.
‘“Farah!” he said, because that was my name back then. David, you should know, that is my real name: Farah.’
David nodded. He didn’t seem very surprised.
Mamma continued. ‘When they saw Enzo and heard him say my name, the men took a few steps back from me.
‘“Is this your girlfriend, mate? This one?”
‘“She’s my wife,” Enzo said, quietly. All the time, he was looking at me. He never took his eyes off me. He gestured for me to come towards him.
‘I have wondered many times why they didn’t just run away. Perhaps they panicked. Perhaps they had not yet had their fun. Perhaps they were just too full of drink to think about what they were doing. I don’t know.
‘“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the one with the scar said. “Fucking a dirty Arab. Planting one in her an’ all. There’s too many of ‘em as it is. They’re at it like rabbits.”
‘Still Enzo refused to respond. Even from where I was standing, I could see the muscle working in his cheek with the effort he was making to control himself.
‘“Yeah,” said another. “You’re letting the side down, mate,” and he laughed, just a very ordinary laugh and then the man with the scar on his face slipped a knife out of his pocket and, quick as a flash, slipped it into Enzo’s stomach.
‘It sounds strange to say it but it wasn’t even violently done. So quickly, so casually, as if he did that kind of thing every day.
‘Enzo looked at him in disbelief. He watched as the man pulled the knife out. He watched as the blood began to spread across his stomach, flowering red across his shirt.’
Mamma’s face was wet with tears. She pulled herself up a bit higher in the chair as if steeling herself to go on.
‘Enzo fell to the floor unconscious,’ she said, her voice breaking, ‘and I never spoke to him again. I remember that I ripped the straps off my sundress and tried to stop the blood. I kept pressing the cotton against his shirt. Harder, harder. But it was no use. A man walking his dog ran to help us. He called an ambulance. But by the time it came, he had lost so much blood. He died in the operating theatre. The knife had severed a major artery…’
Mamma looked at David.
‘So you see?’ she said. ‘It was my fault. He died because he loved me. This is what happens if you fall in love with me. This is what happens when you love a dirty Arab woman. Nothing good can ever come of it.’
But she let David take her in his arms and cradle her head against his chest. Over the top of her head, his eyes met mine. He held his free hand out to me across the table. And I took it.
Epilogue
A letter arrived this morning, addressed in familiar copperplate handwriting. As I unfolded the pink paper at the kitchen table, two photographs fell onto my plate.
One is a photograph of Mamma and me. The other is older, faded black and white. A little girl in a white dress standing in a garden. A statuesque woman in high-waisted trousers and a man’s cotton shirt is holding the little girl’s hand. She looks squarely into the camera. A smile plays at the corner of her mouth.
I flip it over. On the back someone whose writing I don’t recognise has scrawled ‘Farah, aged 2’ in pencil.
I prop the photos against my coffee cup and smooth out the letter.
Ella-issima,
I wanted to send you these photos. David says I could scan them in and email them to you but you know me. I’d rather do it this way.
One photo is, of course, of you and me from your last trip. Wasn’t it fun, tesora? And don’t we look good?!!
It was so, so lovely to see you all. I couldn’t believe how much Grace had grown. And she just looks so much like you!!! I’ve been boring everyone here with all the photos we took and David still insists on calling me Granny Fab.
The other photo is of me and my beloved grandmother. It arrived in the post from
Madaar-Bozorg this morning and I absolutely wanted you to have it. Because I would have been almost the same age as Grace is now. Can you believe that? Madaar-Bozorg is 97 now – and, as she says in her last letter, still with all parts working.
Yes, tesora, I wanted you to see for yourself that you and Grace come from a long line of very strong women.
David’s new job is going really well. He loves living here – and so do I. But he’s still working out how to grow his roses in the California sunshine.
I think about you all the time, tesora. I still wish you’d consider moving out here. I miss you so much. But, as you say, England is your home in a way that it really never was mine. As long as you’re happy, carina.
One more thing and then I must go and open up. We’re so busy these days. People here are mad about vintage. I can’t keep up with these ladies.
I saw Katrina yesterday in Luccia’s, having breakfast! Well, brunch as they call it here. Can you imagine? It was such a coincidence. I almost couldn’t believe it was her.
She’s living in LA with her new film star husband. He’s terribly glamorous – and so is she. Her next film is a drama about pirates. Katrina plays the pirate queen. She’ll be filming in New Zealand, apparently. But she especially asked me to send you her love.
So tesora, call me when you get this.
All our love to Billy, Grace and you.
Baci,
Mamma
I look up from the letter and over at baby Grace, who’s already getting impatient with me. She’s wriggling her legs and holding out her fat little arms.
‘Mamma,’ she says. ‘Mamma.’
I smile and pick her up and balance her on my hip. She wrinkles her nose and pushes her face into the crook of my neck. She smells of baby and toast and Marseilles soap and something I can’t quite place, a fragrance that’s distinctively hers.
I pick up the photo of Mamma and me again, holding it safely out of Grace’s reach.
We’re standing together, leaning on a white fence. Beyond us is the Californian ocean. Mamma is laughing into the camera. She’s wearing red lipstick and giant sunglasses. Her black hair is blowing out behind her in the wind.
My face looks better than it usually does in photographs, probably because I too am wearing oversized shades. And for once, I’m smiling. Mamma’s arm is draped around my shoulders and I look surprisingly relaxed.
I’m wearing the blue 1950s swimming costume that Mamma found for me, double-layered and meticulously lined, with ruched sides and a halter neck.
‘It was made for the hourglass figure,’ she said, ‘For real women, not today’s stick insects.’ And even I can see that I look good in it.
I take both photographs and tuck them into the top corner of my dressing-table mirror. With my one free hand, I attempt to tidy my hair.
‘Mamma,’ Grace says again, her face dimpling. ‘Mamma.’
I wonder if she’s laughing at me?
I go back to the kitchen, pick up my steaming coffee cup and drain it in one gulp. Now I’m ready. I carry Grace carefully down the stairs to the shop.
Five years ago, when Billy and I announced that we were moving in together, some people were very worried for us. They said that we were too young, that later we’d make different choices.
All except Mamma.
‘Love is love is love,’ she said, kissing us each on both cheeks. Later, she offered me the lease to the shop.
In our first year, we did so well that I was able to take over the café next door, which has given us a little more space. These days, Happily Ever After isn’t just a bookshop any more but a thriving community café where people can browse through our stock and enjoy a meal or a snack or a glass of wine and, of course, our coffee is the best in town.
Today, I’m planning our next writing workshops, which are proving extremely popular.
Lots of Billy’s students like to hang around in the shop. We put on seminars and hold reading groups in politics and philosophy, which are Billy’s great passions, of course, and then seminars and signings by foreign writers. We’re getting quite a following.
We live over the café now. It’s a bigger flat, with three large bedrooms, so I can use the old flat - the little livingroom and kitchen and the bedroom that Mamma and I used to share - as a storeroom and a rather luxurious office.
Tonight, when Billy gets home and we’ve put Grace to bed, I’ll slip over there and dial Mamma’s number. We’ll chat a little, about this and that. Then I’ll settle down to an hour or so of writing.
My first novel was a quiet word-of-mouth success. What we call, in the trade, a slow-burner. But there’s a new story that I’ve been carrying around in my head lately.
I know how it begins, the shape of it, the feel of it, how the words sound in my mouth when I say them out loud, how all the different pieces might fit together.
And now I think I know how it ends.
But this old photograph of Mamma and Madaar-Bozorg has sparked off new connections. My mind won’t stay still.
I’m trying to make sense of it, trying to relax my mind to that single, still point, let my breathing go quiet, let the raw edges find their own pattern and the rougher seams smooth themselves.
What would Mamma do?
I can feel her now, all around me, even though she’s thousands of miles away. A faint crackle under my fingers, a squiggle of blue, a flicker of yellow.
‘Shhhh.’ The Signals whisper. ‘Shhhh… Listen…’
And I can hear her now on the other side of the ocean, her voice with its slow rich vowels as she stirs the sugar in her cup of coffee, seven times and always anti-clockwise.
‘What do you feel, carina?’ she says, ‘What do you feel, deep inside you? What does this fabric already know? What does it want to be?’
Grace sits in the middle of the shop floor and looks at me with her calm, clear eyes. I smile at her and scribble quickly in my notebook:
‘An overcoat, a pair of leopard print shoes, a plume of emerald green feathers…’
I can’t wait to get started.
Acknowledgements
I’m grateful to Clarissa Pinkola Estés for her telling of the stories of the soulskin and La Llorona (The Weeping Woman) in Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, 1996, Ballantyne Books, which inspired some of Fabbia’s story-telling; and to Mark Strand for his beautiful poem ‘The Dress.’
I’d like to thank Debora Geary, Helen Harrop and Verity Nicholls for their early reading and feedback on the manuscript; and all the readers of Ruby Slippers for their encouragement.
A special thank you to Roger Nicholls for issuing the challenge; and Tom for believing in me.
The Dress (Everyday Magic Trilogy: Book 1) Page 22
