by Nick Louth
It was another Sunday evening when he next saw Taseena. He was just finishing off in the office when he saw her Toyota pull up. She didn’t waste any time. ‘Can I come round to your flat this evening?’
Wyrecliffe had already arranged to meet Erik Fousson, his opposite number at Agence France-Presse, for a beer. Erik won’t mind if I cancel, he thought. ‘Sure. I don’t think I’ve got anything in the fridge, but perhaps we can eat out.’
They ended up eating in a run-down café on the corner of his own street, where the falafel was excellent and where a Yugoslav band played good western rock. Taseena seemed to have something on her mind and her conversation was perfunctory. Later, back in his apartment, Wyrecliffe decided to take an assertive stance, even if only for the sake of his pride.
‘So you’ve been ignoring me for a while, now this. What’s up?’
She shrugged.
‘Are you at a loose end because Craig Douglas just left today?’
She looked up at him, caught out.
‘Taseena, I’m not stupid. I saw his byline on the pictures in your magazine article. I know he came with you on your trip round the Gulf.’
She didn’t speak for a moment, then began to giggle. ‘I suppose you think I’m very bad.’
‘Very bad indeed.’ He tried to keep a straight face, but the waves of her laughter washed it away like a seaside sandcastle. ‘Just as bad as I am,’ I suppose.
As their laughter gradually ebbed, Taseena embraced him.
‘Don’t worry about Craig,’ she whispered. ‘For him it’s just a fling. He’ll be off somewhere else soon, he never stays anywhere long.’
‘It’s what he is for you that I want to know. Where do I stand?’
‘Oh, witness the jealousy of the married man!’ She turned away and lit a cigarette. ‘He was a bit of excitement, that’s all.’
Wyrecliffe clenched his teeth as the cloying taint of menthol enveloped him. She hadn’t used the term exciting about him, but that half hour in the darkness of the car with her was the most exciting and erotic thing of his life. The vertigo of his vulnerability assailed him.
Taseena looked at the ceiling and blew out a plume of smoke. ‘The thing about Craig is…’
‘Enough about Craig bloody Douglas. Fuck him!’
Taseena burst out laughing.
‘Don’t say it,’ he said. Once his angry face had softened she started to kiss him, all over his cheeks and forehead, on the tip of his nose, and with little growling bites and tugs in his beard. She moved lower and he lay back, exposing his throat to her wet, exploring mouth.
‘You are mine,’ she said, simply. ‘You bad, mad, Englishman.’
He couldn’t suppress the deep exhalation, the comfort he felt. The word love, a stranger in his throat, was demanding to be let out against all caution.
‘Which way is the bedroom?’ she asked, getting to her feet.
He started to lead her, but she headed off in the opposite direction.
‘Where are you going now?’ he said.
‘I’m just getting my suitcases. They’re in the car. You don’t mind if I move in do you?’
Chapter Nine
London
August 2009
Wyrecliffe’s inbox was a mess. Hundreds of invitations, requests, pleas for news coverage, and charitable press releases. Wyrecliffe contributed to charity fundraisers but usually excused himself from the dinners, which were often tedious. Likewise he normally declined after-dinner speaking engagements. They were lucrative but rarely ended much before midnight, and incompatible with early morning broadcasting. The good and the great were all very well, but pleasantries were wearing and bores with ingrained opinions were attracted to him like flies to a cowpat.
In a starched lifestyle, crumpled informality became a secret vice, enjoyed on every possible occasion. So an e-mail invitation from Cantara intrigued him, despite the short notice. She was holding a flat warming party tomorrow, Friday, at eight o’clock. She described a homely little place she’d just rented in Mile End Road, in London’s East End. She had been forced to vacate her room in one of Imperial’s student halls of residence to save money. Wyrecliffe was a little concerned that the foundation grant wasn’t apparently sufficient to keep the daughter of Fouad Adwan close to her college. Mile End Road was at least a half hour journey from the campus by tube, which would surely hinder academic study and inclusion in university life.
That evening was already booked for a black-tie event to hand out awards to disabled swimmers. Still, that should finish around eight, and skipping the dinner would leave him time to visit Cantara’s party.
It didn’t quite work out like that. Wyrecliffe had been persuaded to stay for pre-dinner drinks after the awards, so it was after ten when the taxi dropped him outside her address. Rusting railings with bikes chained to them led to a peeling front door on which there were five grimy buzzers. Cantara’s had an orange Post-It advertising ‘Party! Fourth floor.’ He could hear music from the top floor, though it wasn’t loud. The outer door was already ajar, and stopping to remove his black tie and undo his collar in a nod to informality, Wyrecliffe climbed the stairs. The flat door was open, and the waft of cigarettes and pungent food assailed him on the landing. A scruffy young man in the doorway was eating a jam tart. At the sight of Wyrecliffe’s sizeable dinner-jacketed presence, he creased up the foil container and stowed it in his pocket as guiltily as if he’d been caught smoking crack cocaine. Wyrecliffe asked after Cantara, and the man shouted her name into the flat and added. ‘I think it’s a neighbour, come to complain about the music!’
Cantara appeared at the door. ‘Wow, it’s James Bond,’ she laughed.
‘Yes, sorry about the get-up. I’ve been to a formal do, no time to change.’
He hardly recognised her. She was wearing a crushed velvet scarlet dress that somehow didn’t suit her, too much make-up, and high heels that she struggled to walk in. But that wasn’t what he noticed most. He’d never seen her hair before, a luxuriant mass of tumbling dark curls, presumably prepared for the occasion. Her eyes, with contact lenses rather than the glasses she had worn before, were lovely too. She seemed less studious, less intense, more feminine.
The party was evidently winding to a close, there were fewer than half a dozen guests there, all student age. But in a cramped bedsit with just a single bed, a fold-down table and some floor cushions it didn’t look empty. Cantara had made some efforts to make the place homely. The woodchip wallpaper and damp stains had been hidden with head scarves pinned to the wall, and a broken window pane had been neatly sealed with plastic and masking tape. He offered up the bottle of wine he’d bought. ‘I know you don’t drink, but I’m sure some of your guests do. Me, for example!’
She took him into the tiny kitchen, with a view over hospital outbuildings and a litter-encrusted railway embankment, and poured him a small measure of his wine in a white plastic cup. He looked at the remains of the food. A few crumbs of falafel, a tub of humous, some softening crackers, a stick of celery. The sink was full of dirty pans and dishes.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think you would.’
‘Real people, Cantara, real life. Of course I’d come.’
She introduced him to a couple of the others there, a rather spaced-out young man named Alan with a ginger crew cut who was studying medicine, he said, ‘by taking lots of it,’ and Tina, a washed-out mother of young twins from downstairs with a fiercely tight ponytail and hoop earrings. ‘Are you a copper?’ she asked.
‘Yes, a chief superintendent from Special Branch.’ Wyrecliffe winked at her.
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Alright, actually I’m a nationally known radio personality.’
‘And I’m the Queen of Sheba!’
They both roared with laughter, and toasted each other, she with a can of Carlsberg Special Brew, he with his puny cup of wine.
Cantara came over and offered him a plate on which she had carefully arrange
d crackers, humous and thinly cut slices of celery. He took a cracker, and thanked her.
‘So Chris, what do you think of my new place?’
‘It’s lovely.’ A white lie, but only at one level. Loveliness is a relative term. He thought of 1989 and Ain al-Hilweh. The two crowded rooms at the refugee camp, the open sewers and the plastic bag for a shower. The memory of a little girl with a twisted foot came flooding back.
‘My student room at Imperial was better. It wasn’t damp, and the toilet flushed properly. But I couldn’t afford it.’
‘I’ve already e-mailed the trustees about that,’ Wyrecliffe said. ‘You shouldn’t have to live this far out after just a year.’
Tina broke into the conversation, and with greedy blue eyes sliding over Wyrecliffe’s face, said she was leaving. She took Cantara’s arm and led her out onto the landing. Wyrecliffe refilled his plastic cup, stepped past ginger Alan who was dancing alone with his eyes closed, and stood with his back to the wall, next to the open doorway.
‘Tara, who is that gorgeous bloke,’ Tina demanded.
He couldn’t hear Cantara’s reply, but imagined it.
‘Off the radio? Really? Well, I hope you’ve shagged him.’ Tina’s raucous laughter echoed round the stairwell.
Cantara’s retort was angry in tone, but one he still couldn’t discern.
‘Well pardon me for breathing. Just asking ain’t I?’ Tina said, the clack of her heels receding down the concrete stairs. ‘If you don’t want him, send him down here. I can find Radio 4. Just twiddle his knob!’
Cantara came in and slammed the door, turned off the music, and stalked into the kitchen where she noisily set to with the washing up. Wyrecliffe, suppressing his amusement at the exchange, noticed that Alan, now the only remaining guest, was flagging. The medical student had sunk to the floor, and was nodding his head to an imaginary beat. Wyrecliffe stepped over him and jointed Cantara in the kitchen.
‘Hello there Tara,’ he said.
She shook her head with a grimace, squirting detergent into a pan and scrubbing it fiercely. ‘That Tina is awful. I don’t know why I invited her.’
‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ Wyrecliffe said. He took off his dinner jacket, hung it on the back of the door, undid his cuffs, rolled them up, and put the cuff-links carefully in his trouser pockets. He found an apron on the draining board, and put it on. ‘Here, give me a bin bag and I’ll tidy up in the other room.’
He came back in a few minutes. ‘Where do you keep your disinfectant?’
‘Why?’
‘Alan’s been sick. I’ve cleaned it up with newspaper, and mopped the carpet, but it still pongs a bit.’
He nursed Alan for another hour as he knelt over the toilet. Wyrecliffe had told Cantara he would pay for a taxi to take the student home. The trouble was Alan was barely conscious. He couldn’t remember his student address, only his family address in Manchester. Cantara knew that he had been staying in Imperial’s Pembridge Hall in the first term, but had moved. She didn’t know where to. She searched her own mobile’s phone book for friends in common, while Wyrecliffe searched the address book of Alan’s mobile. Neither worked out. The out-of-hours emergency number for Imperial was no use either, with the duty officer woodenly cited the Data Protection Act for refusing to disclose student information to third parties.
By 3am, after pouring black coffee into Alan, and finally discovering he could hold it down, Wyrecliffe said he’d take him home by taxi.
‘Your home or his?’ Cantara said.
‘Ideally his. But failing that my flat in Baron’s Court. I’d rather he didn’t wake up in my place with someone he doesn’t recognise, but he can’t really be left on his own in this state. And I wouldn’t feel right leaving him here with you.’
Wyrecliffe bade goodbye to Cantara, and ended up carrying Alan down the stairs. As he ruefully considered the responsibility he had landed himself with, Wyrecliffe reminded himself that all this was a lot easier than the last time he’d carried a young man.
In the cooler air outside Alan was finally able to stand, so Wyrecliffe walked him to the main road where he hailed a cab. They headed to Imperial seven miles away while Wyrecliffe, using a website of Imperial’s accommodation on his iPhone, engaged in a game of twenty questions to establish where Alan lived. After abortive trips to Eastside Halls and Garden Hall in South Kensington, a round trip of more than eight miles, Alan finally remembered. He now lived in Brixton, five miles away in south London, having dropped out from college at the end of the summer term. On the final leg of the journey, Alan recovered enough to ask Wyrecliffe slurringly who he was. When told, he nodded sagely, as if he’d expected it all the time.
‘She’s in love with you, mate.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Yeah, she is. When I asked her out last term, she said there was only one man in her life. A BBC man who had saved her from…something.’
‘Really,’ Wyrecliffe said sceptically.
‘Yeah. You know, she’s a Palestinian refugee doncha?’
‘Yes, Alan, I do.’
‘From the camps, like. In Beirut.’
‘In Sidon, actually. Ain al-Hilweh,’ Wyrecliffe said, looking out into the rainswept London streets.
‘It must be pretty tough there.’
‘Yeah, tougher than we can imagine.’ The taxi had come to a halt outside the address Alan had given. The student looked at the meter, and gave a squeal.
‘It’s alright, Alan. I’ve got to get home from here anyway.’
‘I’ll owe you the sixty quid then,’ Alan said, getting out. ‘Thanks, mate.’
‘No problem. So you’re quite fond of Cantara?’ Wyrecliffe asked.
‘Yeah. She’s really, really nice, and pretty. But she’s lonely, and she needs someone. When I asked her out, she was kind. Wasn’t horrible about it, you know, like some are, but she said the bloke who held her heart was a real man, in a different league from all others, and that she had loved him with all her soul since she was three years old.’
Wyrecliffe was too stunned to speak.
‘Anyway,’ Alan said cheerily. ‘I’d come along tonight just in case she had changed her mind.’
* * *
August 2009
‘Damn,’ Wyrecliffe slammed the phone down. It was half past five and Imogen had just rung to announce she wasn’t coming to tonight’s charity gala evening at the Royal Opera House. Two and a half hours’ notice. Sure, they’d had another row last night, but hardly an epic one, and he’d made the mistake of assuming she would be happy to come along. She knew it was a fixed point in his diary. She knew it was one of the few black tie events that mattered to him. A sumptuous annual dinner, to which she damn well knew they had been invited for the best part of twenty years, and were expected to attend together, marital difficulties notwithstanding, because it raised funds for refugees around the world.
Now she suddenly claimed she had never liked it. Yes, he’d had to agree that those stuck under plastic in sodden camps in Rwanda, the baking hills of Eritrea and even in Lebanon would be astounded that wealthy benefactors would be guzzling, for their benefit, a seven-course meal with separate wine for each course. Imogen had often said it was disgusting and, yes, he could see her perspective. Still, the high and mighty had oversubscribed for this epic feed, and the chance to hear a recital from the ROH’s world-famous chorus. The Fouad Adwan Foundation was in line for five per cent of the funds raised, seventeen grand last year, and now he had no one to take. Imogen would be well aware that it would be tough to get a replacement at short notice.
Lady Simons would have been the obvious choice. She was the only presentable female foundation trustee, but was already booked elsewhere. Imogen had suggested, presumably sarcastically, that he take Samantha Mason, the foundation’s leggy and twice-divorced administrator. Wyrecliffe had once, foolishly, slept with Samantha. It turned out to be an exhausting and noisy performance. Samantha would take an invitation to the ROH as a
green light for an encore, which wouldn’t bode well for getting up at three, as he had to for the Saturday edition of Today. Even if he made that clear, Samantha’s legendary inability to hold a drink, and her inevitable flirting would be taken as evidence of his poor judgment by those seated around the table, many of whom Wyrecliffe had known for decades. No, Sally wouldn’t do.
Did she have to be a she? Although Wyrecliffe would no doubt be able to get one of the crusty male trustees of the foundation to take the place, it just wasn’t done to have a male partner, however deserving, however relevant to the cause, especially at an event billed as a dinner and dance.
No, the only possibility was Cantara. She was presentable, female, teetotal and an emblem of the foundation’s good work. She was also less likely to be booked on a Friday night, Wyrecliffe noted with a twinge of guilt. The only slight worry was any outbreak of militant Middle Eastern politics or feminism in her conversation, but he thought he could handle that. In any case, the fact that he had helped her get an education through the foundation would at least blunt the gossip that such a young escort would otherwise engender. He texted her and got an immediate response.
Yes plz! W@2wear?
That hadn’t occurred to him. Stupid! Of course Cantara wouldn’t have a cocktail dress. It was hardly on the essentials list for the average Palestinian refugee. He prayed she wouldn’t wear that vermilion number from the party which made her look like an under-age Bulgarian prostitute. No, she’d have to buy something, and he would have to pay. He looked at his watch and whistled. Two and a half hours to dress himself, get her to Oxford Street, get her dolled up, and then off to Covent Garden. Could it be done? It had to be. He picked up the phone.
Meeting at Oxford Circus Underground station was the first mistake. They took ten minutes to find each other in the unforgiving home-bound crowd, and then fight their way into John Lewis, a department store big enough to have all she could need. Amazingly, Cantara was totally unfussy, the dress was settled in minutes flat, a conservative mauve number with puffed shoulders. But in her hurry to make the rendezvous she had forgotten make-up, tights and worst of all, any shoes that might match. All she’d brought was a hairbrush, earrings, and some eyeliner. An hour later, Wyrecliffe was sitting counting the minutes outside a changing cubicle clutching in his hands a designer handbag, and a pair of mauve shoes with an inch and a half of heel. Against Wyrecliffe’s better judgment, the clucking and matronly shop assistant had suggested she have sheer stockings with a suspender belt with matching heart shapes, but had to show Cantara how to do it up. From the laughter in the changing room, all was not going well.
