by Tim Pears
This amused Abdul enormously. He actually broke into a guffaw. ‘Two seconds every hundred years,’ he repeated. ‘So now they measure time not by stars but atoms, Ezra. How they do this Abdul cannot explain. My son Ishtiaq would have to explain such things.’
Abdul paused, as if inviting Ishtiaq to tell Ezra exactly how atomic time was calculated. Ezra turned to Ishtiaq, who was frowning, perhaps gathering his thoughts. But before he could speak, his father resumed.
‘In an actual fact time, Ezra, is measured by atom vibrations. In each atom many, many electrons moving, trembling, around nucleus like tiny planets around the sun. Do you know,’ he asked, turning abruptly to Hector, sitting on the rug, ‘how many electrons you can find in a speck of dust?’
Hector looked from Abdul to his father – who raised his eyebrows – to the ground, to the sky and back to Abdul, then shook his head.
‘One thousand billion billion,’ Abdul said, emphasising each word, and he chuckled again, with a pleasure infectious enough to make others smile. ‘Latest atomic clocks,’ he drawled proudly, as if he had something to do with making them, ‘they lose one second in a thousand years.’ He looked from face to face among the men and boys around the rug, nodding his delicate head. ‘One second in a thousand years.’ And then he stopped nodding, and instead started shaking his head, obliged to remind himself that he was being tempted to take for achievement what was only folly.
It was around then, or a little later, that it occurred to Ezra that for Abdul this picnic was a kind of farewell party; that he was treating all the Pepins to a grand send-off to Brazil. What else would it be? Or had Blaise told him, through Akhmed, that she was staying behind? He didn’t appear to be disconcerted by her playing the role of daughter-in-law.
Conversation on the other rug, meanwhile, continued between Sheena and – when they were not obeying their mother’s orders to replenish people’s plates – Zenab and Taslima. The three of them spoke with a gathering intensity, their bodies adjusting to enable their heads to move gradually closer together. Mrs Azam presided, and Blaise sat close to her, saying not a word, occasionally stealing glances in Akhmed’s direction which he, rarely looking up, caught only one or two of. But when he did, he let slip a furtive smile of sly triumph. And Blaise, Ezra reckoned, seemed happier, more genial, here today, than she had in weeks. What was going on?
Throughout the rest of that day, after they’d returned from the picnic, Ezra found his mind consistently slipping from whatever business it was preoccupied with to the same recurring notion. Lolling in the swimming pool with Louie, mowing the small lawn with the electric mower later that afternoon, and on, right up until he lay in bed waiting for Sheena to join him, Ezra Pepin was bothered by this simple reproach: I, we, have given our daughter freedom of thought and deed, ever since she attained the age of reason, and suppose it’s not what she wanted? Not at all?
Sheena turned off the light and came out of the bathroom. She got into bed and after checking her alarm clock, then taking a sip of water from her glass, she nestled against Ezra, with her head on his chest, feeling his arm curl around her neck and shoulder.
‘What were you talking about at the picnic?’ Ezra asked. ‘With Akhmed’s sisters?’
‘I was telling them about the São Paulo landless squatters project.’
‘You were?’ Ezra said, unable to stop the smile that lifted his lips. ‘Did they join up?’
‘They were very interested, actually, you old cynic, Ezra Pepin. Zenab and Taslima might well get involved in the solidarity campaign.’
‘Really?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’
They lay with one white cotton sheet covering their naked bodies, perspiring in the stifling night. It was the kind of heat that made everyone cranky; reaching the end of the day, Ezra congratulated himself on the effort he’d expended on remaining congenial.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Sheena said.
‘What about?’ Ezra asked. He waited patiently through the long pause that followed, his wife’s breathing felt through his own ribs.
‘I rang the lettings agency.’
Ezra understood this meant something momentous. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions, though. ‘You did?’
There was another fraught pause. ‘We’ll stay,’ she said.
Ezra felt a gulp of anxiety thrust up into his throat, as if Sheena had just issued a dreadful challenge rather than make the declaration he most desired.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
‘While Blaise does her GCSEs,’ she said. ‘We’ll review it in two, three years’ time. Can you live with that, Ez? I was thinking, you could leave that job anyway.’
‘Oh, no.’
‘You could even go on a trip on your own to your tribe if you want. If that’s what your heart is set on.’
Ezra squeezed Sheena’s shoulder, and shifted his body away from hers so that they lay on their sides facing each other.
‘I can live with it, darling,’ he said. ‘Can you?’
‘Of course,’ Sheena said. ‘The whole idea of it was for you and the children, after all. I mean, my life here is fine.’
‘You know, I do believe you’re right,’ Ezra said. ‘I think it’s very wise,’ he added, trusting that these words, aided by the loving expression on his face, would vindicate Sheena’s sacrifice, on his or whoever’s behalf she thought she was making it. He kissed her. ‘You’re not worried about losing our daughter to purdah, though, are you?’
Sheena frowned and smiled at the same time. ‘She’ll do what she does. I can accept that. Freedom of choice means what it sounds like, doesn’t it?’
Ezra kissed Sheena again, pressing his lips to hers. At the same time he inched across the mattress to snuggle closer to her. He felt his erection make contact with her thigh, and assumed she must be aware of it too. He withdrew from their kiss, and gazed at her.
‘Ez,’ Sheena said. ‘I’m really tired. Not sure why. Maybe my period’s on its way?’
‘That’s okay,’ Ezra said. He kissed her again.
‘You all right?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Sleep well,’ he said, and rolled over. His phallus pressed beneath his body weight against the mattress. It was a pleasant enough sensation, and Ezra assumed he’d drift off to sleep with a hard-on sustained by erotic reverie. But within moments his brain was steering his mind back over the course of the picnic earlier that day. Snippets of dialogue, gestures, pauses, joined one to another and reeled through his mind’s eye, snagging at certain moments that had bothered him even at the time but been easily suppressed. Discrepancies of communication which could have been swept under a barrier of language or culture returned to Ezra, and he suddenly realised, with a stab of annoyed admiration, that the Azams had not organised the outing at all. They hadn’t invited the Pepins. They thought Ezra and Sheena had organised it, and invited them.
‘Thank you.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘It’s so kind of you.’
‘No, it’s so kind of you.’
What a comedy. What playthings they were. No, it was Blaise who’d engineered the occasion. She’d arranged the entire picnic – without much help from Akhmed, who, Ezra suspected, was wary of the enterprise – but told each family the other was inviting them. She’d brought them all together.
Which was quite an achievement for a girl just turned fourteen, Ezra considered; an accomplishment, indeed, of which he wouldn’t mind boasting to Abdul Azam.
15
A Visitor to the House
Saturday 16 August
Ezra Pepin stood with Hector, and Simon and Jack Carlyle, on the shadowed platform of Havant Station. Looking out along the tracks in the direction from which their train might one day come, Ezra saw no movement. Trees stood unnaturally still, as if listening, in the warm air. A cool, unexpected breeze shivered along the platform. People who were sitting on the broken benches trembled. Others stood beside
their luggage, primed for disappointment, prepared to bear it with fortitude.
‘Mum said we should have gone via London,’ said Hector. ‘Up to Paddington. Across to Clapham Junction. Out of London from there.’
‘Yeh,’ Jack agreed, sagely.
‘Your mother, Hector,’ Ezra said, ‘is a leading authority on the British rail network.’
It was the Saturday following the Sunday picnic on Port Meadow, and Ezra had allowed Hector to persuade him that there existed a computer games shop in Guildford selling a unique selection of imported software that he and Jack needed desperately to visit.
‘Isn’t that exactly the kind of junk you buy on the internet?’ Ezra had asked. ‘What do you need to go to an actual shop for?’ It was an absurd demand, and he agreed to it. He also insisted, and at the same time regretted, that he’d have to accompany the pre-teen boys on such a trip. Simon had done the same. ‘There’s no point in us both going. Let me,’ Ezra suggested, in the hope, the expectation, that Simon would demur and insist that he be the one to fulfil this tedious paternal obligation; after some to and fro polite negotiation Ezra would reluctantly allow Simon’s will to prevail. Ezra could do with the day for work while Simon had nothing better to do with his time, and might even enjoy the expedition.
Instead, Simon said, ‘Look, old chap, why don’t we both go? We each thought we were going to go anyway, we’d each set the day aside. Ed’s rehearsing. Minty’s enjoying birthday indulgences, shopping for books and shoes; having a facial at that new place on Beaumont Street.’
At Oxford Station the woman at the ticket counter directed them via London. ‘Couldn’t we travel across country?’ Simon wondered. The woman consulted her oracle and printed out an ambitious itinerary of four changes – three with changeovers allowing less than five minutes’ slack in total, the fourth with a wait of almost an hour – that if successful would shave eleven minutes off the London time.
The journey down had worked. More than that, Ezra had to admit: it was an exhilaration. The men and their sons leaped from their carriages at Reading, Basingstoke and Bedhampton, scanned around for guards or information screens, then dashed for a connecting train already girding itself for departure from a distant platform. The two men fancied they were sharing elemental skills, passing on to their sons some aptitude necessary to the modern world, as they hunted through the jungle of railway stations, skittish trains, scrambled timetables.
They’d reached Guildford and taken a taxi to the shop, where the boys holed up for a spendthrift hour while the men strolled around before coming back to collect them.
On the return journey their precarious path gave way beneath them. The first train was late leaving Guildford, and was held up along the way. They spent an unexplained interval just outside one station, with a view of two large derelict brick warehouses. Half the roof slates had fallen in. The old warehouses looked like they had been abandoned for a century, superseded by flimsier sheet-metal sheds and Portakabins near by, but been spared demolition. English railway stations seemed to require these ruins.
The train took off again and hurtled along, desperate to get back on schedule. Then it slowed down, and crawled through the countryside. From tired fields black cows observed the train pass. The travellers missed their connection at Havant, where they waited for the next appropriate arrival, which was itself now running late. A voice issued from loudspeakers: ‘The twelve thirteen South West train service for Southampton Central has been delayed by fifteen minutes.’ The voice was computerised and female. ‘Please accept my apologies for the late running of this train.’
Jack turned to Hector and said, ‘My Mum said we’d be going by London, too.’
‘Have you got your mobile?’ Hector asked. He’d removed his glasses and was wiping them with a corner of his T-shirt. ‘’Course.’
‘Why don’t you text her, tell her what they’ve done?’
‘Will you two boys stop, already?’ Ezra demanded. ‘Here,’ he said, giving Hector a pound coin. ‘Go and find a chocolate machine. Get us all a bar or two of something.’
Hector stared at the coin with an expression of puzzled contempt, then the boys left their bags of newly acquired computer accessories in their fathers’ uncertain care and slouched off in search of sugar. Ezra’s attention shifted to Simon beside him, chewing his lips with agitation. Ezra followed Simon’s gaze, to two or three men in suits kicking their heels, fidgeting with mobiles, parading their self-important frustration.
As if Ezra had then asked him what was up, Simon said, ‘Oh, why not just let them take over?’
‘Who?’ Ezra asked. ‘What?’
‘Women. Let them have it all, if that’s what they want.’ Simon’s veinous face twitched. ‘I don’t know about you, Ezra, but whenever I see men working ostentatiously hard – when you know there’s no national emergency, and today’s Saturday for God’s sake – it amuses me. They look like overgrown boys acting out adolescent games, fantasies, of how one should behave as a grown man. It’s ludicrous.’
‘You think slackers like you, Simon, are the real men of our epoch?’
‘Go ahead. Laugh, Ezra,’ Simon scowled. ‘Don’t you notice how one profession after another reports more women joining their ranks than men? Vets. Solicitors. Dentists.’
‘Architects.’
‘Indeed. It’s not funny, it’s just inevitable. I wonder how long the numbers will keep rising. I mean, obviously middle-class women have joined middle-class men in all their spheres of employment. What next? Do working-class women rise through the educational ranks, and middle-class men trickle down to join their proletariat brethren?’
‘Sounds possible, Simon,’ Ezra agreed.
‘The point is,’ Simon explained, ‘that the gender engineered by evolution for reproduction tends also, in general, to be the more efficient one. It happens to be during our time that reproduction is brought under some semblance of control. We’re the first to live with the consequences.’
Ezra kept quiet. Simon appeared to have nothing to add. Ezra thought of Blaise. He and Sheena had told the children that the trip to Brazil was postponed. Hector was relieved. Louie greeted the announcement with indifference, as if he’d never taken it altogether seriously in the first place. Only Blaise was disappointed, to judge from her immediate reaction, jaw dropping, eyes narrowing. But she collected herself, recalling that this was, after all, proof that her parents had changed direction purely to accommodate her wishes. Perhaps her initial annoyance, Ezra thought, arose simply because the victory had been too easily won.
That week Akhmed had seemed to be at the Pepins’ house every day. On Monday Ezra came home from work to be greeted by the sight of the boy watching TV on his own. Ezra said hello, tried to engage him in conversation. Akhmed said little.
‘What’s the news?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘Iraq?’
A shake of the head. Giving nothing away; of his thought or opinion. Two days later, Akhmed got into a digital portrait Sheena took with Blaise’s DV camera for a family trailer she wanted to email to one of her sisters. She set it up outside the front door, the camera perched on a car bonnet, with everyone facing the setting sun. Akhmed’s small eyes were screwed tight, Sheena had a hand over hers, Hector’s were hidden in the shade of the peak of his baseball cap and Louie’s by his wide-brimmed sun hat. Ezra, just home from work, shielded his eyes with his briefcase; it looked as if there might be something heavy and precious inside, and Ezra was resting it atop his head. Only Blaise’s brown eyes were open and clear before the low evening sun, gazing serenely at each future viewer of the image.
‘Akhmed,’ Ezra asked Sheena later. ‘Is he stupid? Is that it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Is that why he doesn’t say anything?’
The night before, Friday, Ezra was getting changed after work when he saw Blaise outside in the garden. Sitting in a deckchair on their small lawn, wearing her gold bikini, she had her eyes cl
osed. Standing behind her, Akhmed was rubbing suntan oil into her shoulders. Ezra stood at the window, peering out. The early evening sun was growing less harsh than it had been. Akhmed took longer than he needed to. He was using the suncream as oil with which to massage Blaise’s skin. Ezra almost convinced himself that the image was lascivious, hinting at sexual precosity. In the end, though, he had to admit that there was something sad about it.
‘Ezra, will you shush? The boy’s shy. A little boring, even. If Blaise likes him, trust her.’
Ezra wasn’t sure he did. Simon Carlyle was right, the world was hers for the taking. And whatever she wanted to do with her life he’d surely accept. Except to retreat from it. To efface herself.
‘This is a platform announcement. The twelve-thirteen South West train service for Southampton Central is running thirty minutes late. Please accept my apologies for the late running of this train.’
Other trains arrived, from each direction: with their tinted windows they entered the station, came to a smoothly sinister halt, then pulled out again.
When the Southampton train finally approached, the passengers waiting on the platform shuffled forward with a certain trembling, sullen anxiety, as if worried that the driver might, in his unapologetic haste to make up lost time, not actually bring the train to a complete halt but only slow it right down and then begin to pick up speed. They attacked the doors and clambered aboard as quickly as they could. The train then sat in the station without moving.
‘We won’t get home in time to try out all this stuff,’ Jack moaned. ‘And it’s Mum’s birthday,’ he added, grabbing at less selfish grievance.
‘We’re meant to be taking her to the Old Parsonage for tea,’ Simon explained.
‘I hope she has a nap this afternoon,’ Ezra said. ‘You too. All of us. The thing tonight won’t get going till eleven or twelve.’
