by Tim Pears
It had also made a difference that she’d stopped using her bike: she felt less visible on foot. For walking had become both the means of escape and the reason for it. Blaise slipped out of school so that she could go for a stroll. For the articulation of her joints, the stretching of her muscles; breath in her lungs, thought in her head.
‘Why are you walking so fast?’ Akhmed demanded. ‘It’s either open or closed. Going quicker’s not going to make any difference.’
She used to go to the Wasteland. Now she and Akhmed ambled along Charlbury Road, through the north Oxford conservation area of large, detached houses and their spacious, tousled gardens. It was eerily quiet. There was no traffic here.
‘Who lives in these houses?’ Blaise wondered.
‘Rich people,’ Akhmed said. He looked around. ‘Where’ve they all gone?’
‘Nowhere,’ Blaise murmured. The whole area seemed abandoned. She felt like she was passing through some emergency they’d read about in the news tomorrow. Some upper-class catastrophe.
‘You’re right,’ Akhmed nodded, judiciously, as if it were his confirmation that made it so. ‘See, they’ve all got cars parked in the driveways.’ He frowned. ‘Maybe they’re asleep.’ Perhaps the wealthy too said prayers at odd hours of the night like his pious brother, and needed to catch up in the afternoon.
Blaise walked the deserted streets, past the still houses. This silence could feed you, she thought. If you had money this is what you’d do, you’d buy a big house with a big garden where you could be quiet, surrounded by other people who chose the same thing.
Akhmed skipped quickly to catch up with her. ‘You know what’s crazy,’ he said, ‘is that it’s English I’m missing. English. I mean, I wouldn’t mind dodging geography, either.’
His momentum had taken Akhmed a few feet beyond Blaise by the time he registered that she’d stopped still. He turned to find her glaring at him.
‘I told you you didn’t need to come,’ Blaise said, and set off again. ‘Didn’t I?’ she asked as she passed him.
Akhmed stood for a moment, staring at the spot on the pavement that her trainer-shod feet had just occupied. He turned, and glanced towards the withdrawing figure, until the gap opening up between them provoked an energy that overcame his paralysis. He jogged after her, the textbooks in his rucksack thumping against his spine. ‘Someone has to look after you,’ he said, as they crossed Bardwell Road, into Dragon Lane. ‘I mean, what if you get caught?’
‘It’s creepy here,’ Akhmed whispered, edging closer to Blaise. ‘All these bones. I never liked it here.’
The lower jaw of a sperm whale pointed straight up, a Gothic arch. In a side bay a procession of skeletons made ready to set off, two by two. Tiger and rhino, red deer and pig, reindeer and horse. They advanced placidly across the tiled floor of the museum, stunned in the act of embarkation upon a prehistoric ark. One-humped camel, Irish elk, giraffe. Bringing up the rear, calmly meeting their doom, an Asian elephant with its calf.
There didn’t seem to be any ventilation. Blaise stripped off another layer of clothing. The only other people here were young women with foreign accents chasing after red-faced toddlers. Blaise wished she could take off her sweaty T-shirt. From the top of marble columns, cast-iron ribs rose in arches to the apex of the glazed roof. The great hall was a giant greenhouse. It was wrong, Blaise thought. An error. A room so full of bones should be cold.
The skeleton of a Nile crocodile feigned lifelessness, ready to pounce. Akhmed skirted the undisguised malice of its sharp-toothed jaws, his hand on Blaise’s arm, half grasping her for reassurance, half pushing her to safety.
‘Come on,’ Blaise said, setting off towards the back of the Natural History Museum. ‘Let’s go in the Pitt Rivers.’
‘Where do you start?’ Akhmed wondered. ‘In a place like this?’ He shook his head. ‘There’s no order.’
They wandered through the maze of cluttered display cases, each one packed with ethnographic objects that had been collected together according not to where they came from or their age but to a general theme. Musical instruments. Weapons. Tools. Magic objects: amulets and charms from Africa, Melanesia, the Americas.
‘Each case is like an Ark of the Covenant,’ Blaise said.
‘An ark?’ Akhmed demanded.
‘You know,’ she said. ‘It contained the tablets of the laws of the ancient Israelites. My dad says these cases are like that. Densely packed with meaning’.
Akhmed analysed her tone of voice, to see whether there was sarcasm or irony there that would invite him to participate. He was unable to detect any. ‘Why am I whispering?’ he asked.
Blaise offered no explanation, so Akhmed tried to answer himself. ‘It’s either cos it’s so dim in here, or cos of those shrunken heads.’
Blaise ambled on. ‘My dad used to bring me here when I was younger,’ she said. ‘Whenever we were in town, him and me, we’d drop in here on the way home. We had five minutes to each choose one thing.’
‘What thing?’
‘Something different. Then I had to show it to him, and explain why I liked it, and wanted to share it with him. And he’d do the same with me.’
Akhmed nodded, unsurprised, as if he and his father had played similar games.
They strayed among the display cases. Blaise liked the tiny handwritten labels, attached to artefacts with cotton thread; sometimes the items themselves were written on. She appreciated the clutter; the atmosphere of Victorian curiosity and quest. She recalled Ezra telling her about a professor of anthropology in the university, who studied the work of Victorian ethnographers in order to reveal more about nineteenth-century Englishmen. Her father had given a disbelieving chuckle.
‘Look,’ Blaise exclaimed. ‘I chose this once. I remember.’ It was an ivory globe, a little larger than a tennis ball. There were a number of circular holes in its surface. Inside was another ball, inside that one another, and so on and on. Eleven graduated hollow spheres. Each one was elaborately carved and fretted.
‘Chinese,’ Blaise said. ‘Imagine how long it must have taken to carve that.’
Akhmed frowned. ‘You’d make it with a computerised machine tool today,’ he assured her. ‘You wouldn’t touch it.’
‘My dad reckoned it would have taken more than one craftsman’s lifetime.’
‘What?’ Akhmed said. He wrinkled his nose with mistrust. He peered a little closer at the ivory sphere, as if to interrogate it. Its smallness. Its absurd, superfluous complexity.
‘That’s what Dad figured,’ Blaise said. ‘That’s what he told me.’
The battered, pale-grey Ford Escort that limped into Blenheim Orchard early Monday evening, with its dents and scrapes worn proud as war wounds, and rust spots spread like some automobile skin condition, was the oldest car Hector Pepin had ever seen trundle on to their estate.
It had been another hot, bright afternoon that was beginning to give way, with the sun drained of its ferocity as it fell in a slow arc towards the edge of the earth, to a pleasant evening.
The old Escort drew to a halt behind the two cars parked outside the Pepins’ house, hemming them both in. A slight, balding man dressed in a black suit, white shirt and thin black tie climbed out. He turned and fed the loose seat belt all the way back into its sprung holster, and when he closed the door Hector watched him less slam it shut than feel it home; inviting bolt to click solicitously into mechanism. The man walked along the short avenue between the Pepins’ cars towards the front door, and as Hector tentatively descended the stairs he heard the doorbell ring.
After waiting a moment to allow anyone more eager than himself to answer the door, Hector did so, and with the awkward deference of a shy eleven-year-old he invited the man inside. If he’d not been too timid to look at him when he spoke, their eyes would have met at almost the same level.
‘Kindly tell your father, my boy,’ the visitor said, in a tone that sounded like a friendly proclamation, ‘that Abdul Azam is here.’
<
br /> ‘I don’t think he’s back from –’ Hector began, but then stopped himself as he heard the distinct familiar sound of their side gate banging against the wall of the house. ‘I think he just came home,’ Hector said, and stood there, waiting. Not sure whether it was more polite to go and tell his father they had a visitor or to stay with their visitor until his father reached the hallway of his own accord. He gazed at the corn-coloured carpet, taking in the man’s black shoes: the leather was cracked in thin lines across the bridges. Hector glanced up briefly: the man stood with a serene, incurious smile on his face. At ease, Hector observed with admiration.
The back door opened and closed. Ezra came rushing through from the kitchen, sweating and breathless.
‘Daddy, this is Mr Azam,’ Hector said.
‘Hello,’ said Ezra, offering his hand. ‘Ezra Pepin. How nice to meet you. I hope you haven’t been waiting long, Mr Azam.’
‘Please, call me Abdul.’
‘I will, I will. Now, let’s see, Sheena’s in there, and there’ll be kids everywhere down here. Oh, first of all, can I get you a drink of something?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Tea? Water?’
‘No, no. Abdul doesn’t need a drink. You want to send them to their rooms?’
‘The children? Oh, no, much easier for us to go up to the spare room. My study, I should say. Do come with me.’
The sofabed had been flipped up. Ezra ushered Abdul Azam in, relieved that the room was tidy: he hadn’t yet found time to start working through his papers, in preparation for the trip. When he did, this study would become chaotic. For himself he swivelled the chair out from his desk. Ezra sat side-on to his desk, facing his guest like a doctor. He was relieved to sit down. Abdul must be about a foot shorter than me, Ezra thought. The height of the average Achia, he realised, recalling how it had taken him weeks to overcome his awkwardness with people he towered over.
‘The Raj Cuisine, isn’t it?’ Ezra began.
‘That’s right.’
‘We used to go there all the time, Abdul. When we were first, you know, together. And married. And had Blaise.’
‘Ah, yes. Blaise.’
‘We lived on Walton Street. Then we moved along to Kingston Road. Then a bit further, here to Blenheim Orchard.’
‘Always moving away from restaurant. That what it is.’
‘Oh, but I miss those days. Remember when Raymond Blanc’s used to be a piano shop?’
Abdul raised his eyebrows. ‘Long time ago, Ezra.’
‘You remember the locksmith’s where Branca’s is? And when the Jericho Café was Lancelyn Lighting?’
‘Of course Abdul remember.’
‘Loch Fyne was that cheap bicycle shop? And now Sip. See their posters? Opening soon: a new concept in eating. I thought, What, through the ears?’
Ezra laughed at his own wry observation. ‘Am I right, Abdul? I mean, really.’ Abdul Azam smiled back, though possibly not at Ezra’s humour.
‘It used to be that expensive junk shop?’ Ezra continued. ‘Before that there was a guy who welded together his own iron bedsteads. We bought our marital bed from him. A beautiful thing. Fell apart eventually. Too much … well, children bouncing on it, I guess.’
‘Over thirty years Abdul is there,’ Azam smiled. ‘A lot of changes.’
‘Have they been good for you? More restaurants. Are they unwanted competition, or do they drag customers to Walton Street for all of you?’
‘Ah, business, Ezra,’ Abdul drawled, as if to indicate that Ezra need not bother himself with such weighty matters. ‘Sometime good, sometime bad. Sometime you know why, sometime you don’t. It’s like that. But people they come to my restaurant. Always they come.’
‘We certainly did.’ Abdul had not changed since the last time Ezra had been in the Raj Cuisine. He was instantly recognisable, with his narrow moustache, his thinning hair. Ezra must have spoken with him – of items on the menu, the weather outside, the popularity or otherwise of whatever films were playing at the cinema across the road – fifty times. There was a familiarity between them. Except that he wasn’t sure whether or not Abdul remembered him. Another English customer from years ago.
‘Everybody come to Abdul.’
Abdul Azam wore a smile of disconcerting constancy on his face. It seemed to suggest wry amusement at something shared with his companion, the acknowledgement of a mutual understanding.
‘Thing is, Ezra,’ Abdul was saying. ‘Thing is, everything change, but Raj Cuisine don’t change, no, Abdul still there.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Other people, they can run around. Abdul try to take what is called the long view.’
‘That’s very sensible, I think.’
‘Thing iz, everybody struggle with time,’ Abdul spoke with a nasal twang, stretching every vowel. The voice of a patient man. ‘Everybody have trouble with time. Even Abdul.’ The same fixed smile remained on Abdul’s face as he spoke, in his slow insistent drawl. ‘Always I am asking, time does it go in straight line? Everywhere I look I don’t see lines. I see circles: of sun and moon, of planets around sun. Any place we look how man has measured time, we see circles and wheels.’ Abdul’s hands described small globes. ‘Cogs revolve in mechanical clock, Ezra. Hands of clock ticktock round and around. Why? If time is linear. Why?’
Abdul raised his head and gazed at the ceiling. After some seconds he was still looking up, so Ezra found himself following Abdul’s gaze, as if there might be crib notes there; or Sheena had just had a Velux window installed in the spare room without telling him, opening a view through the attic right up to the horological stars. Even though of course it was still light outside.
Abdul lowered his gaze towards his host, smiling.
Ezra said, ‘You’re right. We clearly want to believe that time is circular. Why? I don’t know. For comfort?’
Abdul grinned. ‘Fear of eternity,’ he said.
Ezra nodded, in cautious agreement. ‘Is it an interest of yours?’ he asked. ‘You study time?’
‘Abdul no time to read books,’ he said with a regretful chuckle. ‘I have very clever customers, Ezra. They talk to me. I listen.’
‘I see.’
‘They all come to Abdul.’
‘Right.’ Ezra pictured a stream of lonely dons dropping in to eat at the Raj Cuisine.
‘You have heard of computer engineer, Ezra?’ Abdul asked in his slow-motion nasal sing-song. ‘In Arizona? Building big clock. Because he know that everybody only think about today. Tomorrow. People forget how to take long view, you see. That what I’m saying. He want to make clock that stay accurate for ten thousand years.’
‘You’re winding me up,’ popped out of Ezra’s mouth.
‘It tick once a year,’ Abdul continued, holding up a delicate index finger. ‘No hour hand, only century hand. You see?’
‘Yes. No. See what?’
‘Thing is, Ezra, clock like this help people take long view.’
‘Yes, yes, I see that, Abdul. Think in the long term.’
‘That what it is,’ Abdul smiled, glad the point had been made. ‘Take long view. But now I take too much of your time, Ezra.’
‘Not at all. Do you need to get back to the restaurant?’
‘Oh, they can wait for Abdul. But one thing, Ezra, before I go.’ Abdul placed a hand on his chest. ‘I can tell you. You are father. I am father. In an actual fact, I am worried.
‘So am I,’ Ezra nodded. ‘I’m worried, too.’
‘What my son he is doing with your daughter?’
‘Well, Abdul, that’s a damn good question. I’ve asked it myself. What is your son doing with my daughter?’
‘And other question. What your daughter she is doing with my son?’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘Abdul not old-fashioned, Ezra. But Akhmed, we don’t see him. Mother worried. Abdul worried. Because Abdul, he take the long view.’
‘Yes, I see,’ said Ezra. ‘I understand,’ he
nodded, wondering what Abdul meant. Abdul smiled at him, and he nodded back. Ezra tried smiling too; he shook his head ruefully. Still Abdul smiled. Ezra returned to nodding sagely, with a meditative frown, to give the impression that he was working through the deep layers of this conundrum before saying anything, an approach he suspected Abdul Azam would appreciate.
And then suddenly Ezra Pepin remembered something significant. ‘But look,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t matter, Abdul, not at all, because didn’t Akhmed tell you?’
‘Tell me?’
‘Why, we’re off to Brazil. In a matter of months. Weeks, really! The whole family. We’re going to Brazil for two years.’
‘All of you?’ Abdul’s smile might just have widened a little then, Ezra wasn’t quite sure.
‘All of us. To live and work there. Blaise and our son, Hector, will go to school there.’
‘That very good news,’ Abdul said. He stood up. ‘Thank you. Because they so young, that why.’
‘Exactly,’ Ezra agreed, as he followed Abdul out of the spare room. ‘So young.’
‘Very good news,’ Abdul repeated. ‘Abdul don’t think it good for a man to get married until he’s older.’
They went downstairs. The house was strangely silent.
‘I agree,’ said Ezra.
‘Akhmed get married like brother, after he finish university. Twenty-two, twenty-three.’
‘At least,’ Ezra said, opening the front door and stepping outside with his visitor. He walked him to his car.
‘You and your wife,’ Abdul said, ‘please, you come to Raj Cuisine again.’
‘We should.’
‘Have favourite dishes. Guest of Abdul.’
‘That’s very kind, thank you. We will.’
They shook hands, and Abdul Azam got into his decrepit old car. It gargled into life, and crawled ponderously away.
As Ezra re-entered the house he heard raised voices, the velocity of whose utterances accelerated, their volume increased, as he approached the living-room; and then stopped a split second before he came through the door.
