Exposure

by Talitha Stevenson

  Suddenly Rosalind felt very angry. She stood up and lifted the washing on to her hip so violently that a balled-up pair of socks bounced out of the top of the bag and rolled away. 'Alistair, you're not the reason we all breathe, you know. People have all got their own lives independently of you,' she said.

  He watched her, amazed, as she climbed the stairs. Then he bent down and picked up the socks where they had stopped by the umbrella stand.

  Luke took a bag of shopping down the side passage to the bottom of the garden. In his numbed state he had wandered about the local delicatessen picking up curious food for Goran and Mila: overripe bananas and hot roast chicken, rye bread and a packet of butter, some potent-looking Italian cheese and four litde chocolate truffles wrapped in foil and cellophane. He had no idea what the Serbian palate preferred. He had picked up baked beans and thought himself incredibly unimaginative. It had occurred to him that some religions didn't let people eat certain things—he knew Jews weren't allowed to eat bacon and some Indian people weren't allowed to eat beef (or was it the other way round?) but he was pretty sure no one cared about chickens. He had assumed Goran and Mila would be deeply religious in one way or another, as people who got into wars usually were.

  He went down the side passage and knocked on the annexe door. There was a scuffling sound followed by dead silence.

  'It's Luke again,' he said softly. There was more scuffling, uninhibited this time.

  'Please come in,' Goran called.

  He pushed open the door. 'I'm so sorry if I scared you. We must work out a signal, mustn't we? What about three knocks, then two short ones?' He tried this out on the picnic table.

  'OK,' Goran said, and smiled, wondering if Luke thought he was in a spy novel. He didn't care if it was a game to this English boy, though—they needed him. And he was kind and it looked like he had brought them some more food. Goran stretched. He couldn't help staring at the plastic bag.

  'Um—I got you this,' Luke said. 'It's nothing special but it should fill you up again.'

  'Thank you,' Goran said, reaching out for it, 'you are very kind to us.'

  They all sat down and Luke smoked a cigarette and watched while the other two ate. 'Were you all right on the sofa?' He picked up one of the cushions he had brought them. They were from the old playroom and they had Disney characters on them. 'Donald Duck didn't keep you awake quacking all night?'

  'We sleep beautiful,' Mila said.

  Luke was touched by the gesture of intimacy constituted by this complex sentence. He smiled warmly at her. 'Good. You were very tired, weren't you?'

  'Yes,' she said, looking down as if she was ashamed of something—of his overt reference to her physical self, perhaps. He told himself to remember there might be religious aspects to this, too, particularly with the women.

  'So, we must go to find work today,' Goran said. 'I will try to get work as driver.' He handed Luke a tatty business card, which read, 'Kwik-Kabs, W6.'

  'My friend told me this place,' he explained.

  'Your friend? I thought you didn't have any friends in London.'

  'Not now. They send him back to Belgrade.'

  'Oh, I see. Did he come over like you? God, getting sent back after all that effort.'

  'No, he came ten years ago. He claim asylum. But he was involve in drugs.' Goran raised one eyebrow in a way that implied a weary suspension of moral judgement. 'It is expensive to live here,' he said.

  The charmed numbers of Luke's salary danced through his mind. 'Well,' he said, 'W6 is Shepherd's Bush, I think. It's not far. This is a mini-cab firm.'

  'Yes, mini-cabs,' Goran said, nodding, pocketing the valuable card again. 'I study all London roads for five months. Ask me a road. I know Ealing to Embankment to Camden Town to Victoria.'

  'That's amazing. Don't you need a British driving licence, though?'

  Goran shrugged and opened the packet of butter.

  Luke shook his head at his own naivety. 'No, probably not. Of course.'

  'And we find Mila a job too. We know some shops and also we go to a cleaning agency we hear about.'

  It occurred to Luke that his own cleaner was from an agency. He could never remember her name—and it was too late to ask now without seeming rude. Katya, was it? Where was Katya from? He had forgotten to tell her there was no need to come in while he was staying with his parents, and he imagined her unquestioningly laundering the untouched bedclothes and polishing the spotless tables as she had done once when he went on holiday. She obviously thought he was rich and crazy. Perhaps she was right.

  Goran winked at him and whispered, 'And Mila also will not need a British driving licence.'

  The two men laughed and Mila joined in uneasily. Luke wondered if it was only not knowing the language that made her so quiet, or if she thought women were meant to let men do the talking. He wondered if that was how it was where they were from and he was surprised by how angry this made him. He addressed her directly, raising his voice a little to compensate for the language gap and also to rouse her from this submissiveness, at least in front of him. 'Well, you'll be on your feet in no time, won't you? You'll have some money soon,' he said.

  Goran answered, through a mouthful of food: 'Yes. We are better this way than many who must still work for paying their journey. We had enough to pay ours. At least we take our own money for working and we begin life now. We make some money and the first thing we must buy is EU passport and National Insurance number.'

  'Buy them?'

  'Yes. Of course. We must buy one passport and one National Insurance number.'

  'Don't you both want them?'

  'We buy a second later. First we buy one and also we pay two telephone bills, with the passport name and UK address on them. Then we can open English bank account for bank loan.'

  'Can you do that? It's amazing you can do that.'

  'Yes, we are lucky. For some—these ones who must work illegal for years before they finish to pay for their journey—the Immigration will catch them and send them back. But this will not happen for us. We will be too quick. And, also, who are we? Where we are from? Nobody knows.'

  'It's quite a plan,' Luke said. 'A good plan, I mean.'

  'Yes, of course. I think about only this plan for eight months, all the time while the UN they "escort" the last Serb families out from my city, Pristina. You know it is only Albanians now in Pristina? All Serb families must decide. Do we go to a new city—maybe to Belgrade as my uncles did? Do we go further into the north, to Vojvodina? Maybe we go west, to Montenegro. Or do we say goodbye to all of Serbia?'

  'And you decided to say goodbye,' Luke said.

  'You must understand, Luke, Pristina is our city where we grow up and we go to school and university. All my life Albanian people are not allowed in our schools, in our university and all of this. Now we are not allowed. Now all the street names they must be changed. They put it up in Albanian language, not Serbian. For a while some streets have no name. You can imagine this?' Goran laughed and put on the voice of a dimwitted innocent: '"Hello, where do you live?" "Oh, I am sorry, I live nowhere." It is crazy, Luke. So, like I tell you, we sell everything, we leave everything. We throw away our passports. It is a good plan, yes, because it is all what we have now.'

  Luke was desperate not to reveal his ignorance of what they had suffered but too grimly fascinated to keep quiet. 'I know it was terrible with the fighting and everything, but won't you and Mila be homesick? It's where you come from, after all.'

  'Homesick?'

  'Oh—it means when you wish you were at home, not far away like you are. It's when you think about being in your own bed and having your favourite food and all that. It's called being "homesick".'

  'Yes, I understand. Maybe it is different, Luke. I think maybe I am sick from Kosovo. You know? I am sick from a broken city—from all these broken houses, these broken churches, broken shops, broken schools. I am sick from these UN soldiers who must walk around with Serbs now because Albanians they want to kill
us always, every day, in our streets where we grow up.

  'Now I am sick from Albanians and from Serbs, too, because after all what we have seen, all this killing, nothing it is really change, Luke. It is still hate—always same hate and same old, old hate stories. And still these stupid country people fathers—Albanian and Serb, too—still now they teach their sons these stories and this hate and they have a machine-gun on the wall. Can you believe this, Luke? The family eat the dinner and, look—here is a machine-gun This is Kosovo.

  'I am sick from my own country, Luke, and I am sick from my own father—educated man— who teaches me from a little boy also to hate in the old way and also he is so crazy he wishes there still was Communist in power.'

  Goran laughed bitterly and then, as he contemplated Luke's pained face, the bitterness faded. He tapped his fingers against his own head. 'Where is your question, Luke? I talk so much it is lost. My answer: no, I am not homesick. I think maybe in England I am going to be healthy. And...' he tore off a large chunk of bread and a piece of chicken '...I cannot think sad for my own bed because I sell it.'

  Goran ate ravenously, while Mila consumed a banana in tiny bites, watching Luke over the peel.

  Luke was overwhelmed by Goran's speech. The scenes were familiar to him only as excerpts from action films and it was with little jerks of consciousness, like waking up with a thud from a dream, that he remembered this had been their real life. Goran was full of so much anger and hope that Luke wanted to turn away from him for rest. But Mila was not much of a relief, with her silence and her odd staring. He smiled at her again—out of nervousness. 'Is it OK, Mila? I'm sorry if you don't like it. Do have some chicken. Or—or just bananas, of course, if you prefer.'

  'Yes, I like. Thank you,' she said, eating faster.

  'I didn't know what you might want, really,' he said.

  'I like ...' she said, holding up the banana itself in place of the word, and smiling helplessly, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment.

  Goran leant towards her. 'So, Mila, you don't speak him about it—you eat it.'

  She scowled at him while he tutted and rummaged in the bag for more food. He took out the cheese, broke off a chunk and ate it like a piece of cake. Then he looked at Luke. 'So, where is this bad girlfriend?' he said.

  'Arianne, you mean?'

  'This is not an English name.'

  'No, it's a French name.'

  Goran nodded. 'French girl. Where is she? She is with another man already?'

  How had Goran guessed? He was mortified that it was so easy to work out the story. 'Yes,' he said, 'with another man.'

  Goran put out his hand and shook Luke's knee back and forth. 'Then she is not a good woman for you. A bad girlfriend. Why do you spend your time? If any woman did this to me I would say goodbye. If Mila ever did this to me...' He jerked his head towards her and she smiled innocently at one then the other of them, not having understood their conversation. Goran put his hand over hers, and Luke found that the mixture of affection and secret threat made him shudder.

  'Really?' he said desperately. 'I mean, don't you think you could forgive? If someone's sorry— really sorry— and they want to try again...'

  Goran shook his head. 'No,' he said. He raised Mila's hand to his lips and kissed the delicate fingers. 'What is "really sorry"? It means nothing.' Then he pointed Mila's hand at Luke, squinting along the fingers as if it were a gun. 'I kill you,' he said, 'and now I am "really sorry"?'

  Luke was appalled. It was like being told that he was a fool and he must stop hoping. Surely there was a chance Arianne might realize how stupid she had been. She would suddenly realize and she would tell Jamie Turnbull that she had made a mistake, that she still loved Luke.

  For 20,024 hits there would be 20,024 kisses. And then she could come back to him. And it would all feel natural and right.

  Goran was still shaking his head and eating the cheese. Surely being sorry counted, Luke wanted to insist. If you were sorry and someone said, 'OK, I forgive you,' then it was as if it never happened, wasn't it? You only had to decide between you.

  And forgiveness was a virtue. He had learnt this at Sunday school. After confession, Father Matthew used to say, 'Go in peace.' All Luke wanted was to say, 'Come back in peace,' to Arianne. He saw her coming through the door, he felt their hands clasped loosely in the excruciating tenderness of reunion...

  But beneath this vision lay the knowledge that what had turned him on beyond everything else was Arianne's selfishness, that joyous lack of conscience, which had exposed him and his ordinary life to the baroque. If she had ever been sorry, even once, she would not have been herself. And he would never have known the alchemical pleasure of having his abject shame fucked into golden insignificance.

  He watched Goran drink almost the whole litre bottle of water, his head tipped back, the Adam's apple rising and falling mechanically in the broad neck.

  Chapter 16

  Kwik-Kabs was down an alleyway, just near Shepherd's Bush Green. Two restaurants, one a Chinese takeaway and one that promised a hundred different fillings for your baked potato, backed on to it and kept the narrow path full of steaming rubbish bags and greasy packaging. Even though no more than two or three customers had ever ventured down there to book a cab in person, Bogdan Malici, the owner, had fitted flashing yellow lights above the Kwik-Kabs sign. These lights had reminded him of New York, where he had never actually been, but he had elaborate fantasies about the place, and any time there was a programme about it on TV, Bogdan would watch. Beneath the sign was a small hatch in the wall through which his sister-in-law, Zigana, was now accepting a light from one of the drivers. Above her imperturbable face, the lights flashed and rotated against the dirty brick walls. When it rained, they reflected in the puddles. To the left of Zigana's hatch was a doorway covered with a constantly rattling bead curtain.

  Goran had told Mila to wait on Shepherd's Bush Green while he visited Kwik-Kabs. He left her on a bench, looking at an old newspaper she had found beside her. Two laughing litde black boys were playing football and a drunk with feet bound in plastic bags sat on the grass a litde way off, but Goran felt sure he would not trouble Mila. The sight of the children was reassuring.

  He found the alleyway, just as Sergey had said he would, and walked down it. He smiled and raised his hand assertively at Zigana as soon as he saw her face. He spoke to her in Serbian, because Sergey had told him the boss of the firm was from Montenegro, and liked to help out other Slavs if he could. It felt almost illicit to speak Serbian to someone other than Mila. Goran said, 'Hi, I've come about a driving job. My friend Sergey Gazi told me about this place. D'you have any vacancies?'

  Zigana frowned and replied in English: 'I don't speak Serbian,' she said. 'I am Hungarian, OK? You are here to see Bogdan.'

  She pulled back inside the hatch and Goran heard her flip-flops carrying her down the hallway. He smiled at the driver who had lit her cigarette and wondered if he was Kurdish. He was small and very thin with a splash of white in his thick, dark hair. They smiled at each other but did not attempt to speak. They stood on the common ground of the alleyway, but it was as if what was most real in both of them still existed in different countries, far away from each other.

  With an incredible rattling, the bead curtain opened and Zigana, whose slim face had not prepared Goran for the width of her hips or her thighs, which were soft and dimpled in their red leggings, signalled to him to follow her.

  The hallway was dark and the floor tiles were oddly sticky and there was a strong cooking smell in the air, which he recognized. It was the smell of rasol: a dish of beans and dried meat cooked slowly, in the southern Serbian style. The mixture produced its own rich, flavoursome gravy, which, as his mother used to say, improved with being kept—just like a woman. His mouth watered at the thought of a plate of rasol and a chunk of good bread.

  Another bead curtain off to the right led into a small kitchen, full of cigarette smoke and steam from the cooking. There was a TV on
the sideboard, showing a tennis match, and the density of the silence for play added to the atmosphere of standstill as much as the heat and the single fly buzzing in the steam. A man in his early forties sat at the table with a dirty plate in front of him. He was drinking a Turkish coffee and smoking a leisurely after-lunch cigarette. The smoke curled up and drifted out of the filthy little window, which was open above the sink. He looked up as the bead curtain rattled aside.

  'This man comes about a driving job,' Zigana said, standing in the doorway behind Goran as there was only enough room for one person to stand in the kitchen.

  'You are Bogdan?' Goran said.

  The man nodded and Goran spoke to him in Serbian. 'I'm so sorry to disturb your lunch,' he said. 'I'm looking for work and I was wondering if you needed any more drivers. My friend Sergey Gazi suggested I come here. He said he worked for you a bit a couple of years back.'

  Bogdan surveyed Goran and said, 'Drivers come in and out. Where are you from?'

  'From PriŜtina.'

  Bogdan gave a low whistle. 'My God. Welcome to the UK.'

  'Thanks.'

  He stubbed out his cigarette and put out his hand to Goran. They introduced themselves.

  'So, Goran, you're a good driver, are you?'

  'I've been driving since I was sixteen. I know all the English road laws and regulations and I've studied a map of London. I concentrated on learning the routes from here in Shepherd's Bush to the main areas in my guidebook—like where the theatres and cinemas and restaurants are, or where the City businesses are.'

  'Very efficient,' Bogdan said. 'Guidebooks, maps, regulations. What did you do in PriŜtina?'

  'I was studying to be a lawyer, but when the trouble started ... You know how it was. I stopped all that years ago. Anyway, for now, Bogdan, I want nothing more in the world than to be a mini-cab driver.'

  Bogdan laughed. 'You can take me for a drive and we'll see if you're safe to let out on the road. If you crash, the police will trace the car back to me so I need to be sure you're OK. Getting a customer lost is one thing, but crashing without a driving licence is quite another.'