Dottie

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Dottie said. She knew more was expected of her, a cringing vow of good behaviour or a promise that she would be good and never trouble the good matron and her school more often than absolutely necessary. As the silence stretched between them, the dog turned nervously round, its eyes large with anxiety.

  ‘Very well,’ the matron said, rising abruptly to her feet. She went away to fetch Sophie, leaving Dottie alone with the corgi. The dog growled softly and gave Dottie a wondering look before returning to its slumbers.

  Sophie had put on weight in the nine months since Dottie had seen her. That was the thought that flashed through her mind before Sophie threw herself at her with a cry of ‘Oh Sis’. Despite the matron’s disapproving stare and her attempts to intervene between them, Sophie clung to her sister and sobbed with complete and absurd abandon. When Dottie could find the presence of mind, after Sophie had exhausted the first crescendo of her passion, she moved both of them away from the fire and noticed that the matron and her dog had left the office. They sat on the floor and held on to each other, Sophie weeping bitterly while she told her sister how much she hated the school and how the other girls tormented her. During the day they made her fetch and carry for them. At night, they dressed her in mocking finery and made her into their dark queen. She could not escape them, could not even sit by herself without being bothered. Someone always came by to say something or play with her hair, or make her into a butt of one of their endless jokes.

  When the matron returned she brought them two cups of tea, but Dottie was ready for her. She looked the older woman in the eye and allowed her to see all the dislike she felt for her, allowed her to feel the challenge that she was making. ‘I want to take my sister away,’ she said.

  The matron raised her eyes to heaven, and put the cups abruptly down on her desk. ‘Come along, my dear,’ she said, ignoring Dottie and bustling Sophie out of the room. ‘Let’s get you back upstairs.’

  ‘I ain’t afraid of you,’ Dottie said, and saw the matron smile. ‘You want to keep her here like a circus animal, but I’ll be back for her. Then she can come and live with her family.’ Dottie had to wait until the matron returned before she could finish what she wanted to say. ‘You’re a cruel, bad, bad woman.’

  For a moment it looked as if the matron would burst into rage, shout at Dottie or even attack her. She caught her breath and turned red, then slowly her eyes shimmered and the corners of her mouth lengthened. ‘Thank you, my dear,’ she said, her chin raised and her fists clenched in the effort to control herself. ‘If you’ve quite finished. Your sister is here because she can’t manage outside. This is in the judgment of people who are your betters in every respect, and who only have your sister’s well-being at heart. They sent her to us because they thought we could be of use. We’ve done our best to give your sister the help we could and that we thought she needed.’

  ‘No, you’re treating her like an animal,’ Dottie cried. ‘You should ask her . . .’

  ‘We’re doing this out of charity to our fellows,’ the matron said, raising her voice and interrupting Dottie, determined to complete what she wanted to say. ‘Both for the love of God, who sent His son to redeem us, and for the love of man and the kindliness that we think is proper in his converse with fellow men. We charge no fees and make no profit from this activity, and our institution is governed by the church and funded by the local authority. In your eyes we run a circus, and you think me a cruel, bad person. You are entitled to your opinion in both cases. But by everything you have done, you have revealed nothing so much as your lack of charity and humility, and I regret that you were too old when they found you to be able to benefit from similar preparation as your sister is receiving, if I may say so. I knew this was a mistake. I should never have allowed it. Now if you don’t mind, my dear, I must ask you to leave and to make no further arrangements to visit here.’

  It was Dottie’s turn to smile. ‘I’ll be back for her,’ she said.

  3

  She gave Mrs Holly no choice when the latter came round. Help me get Sophie back or leave me alone, she demanded. She told her about the speech that the matron had made. Brenda Holly shook her head and sighed, then gave her a knowing, maternal smile. ‘There’s no need for such ructions, love,’ she said. Dottie snorted with contempt, for she could sense that Brenda was not convinced. She told her about the treatment Sophie received at the hands of the other girls, and saw Brenda Holly’s face cringe with distaste.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

  ‘We can have a row about it if that’ll convince you. Help me get her out of there! Let her come home before they do terrible things to her!’ Dottie cried. ‘Just you listen to me, there is no one there who cares what a fat black girl feels or wants. Now they dress her up, I don’t know what they’ll do to her tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s all right. It’s all right,’ Brenda Holly said, taken aback by the tumult, shocked by the feeling in Dottie’s words. She wanted to reach out and touch the young woman who was burning up with bitterness and anguish. ‘I want to help you, my love, but . . .’

  ‘Then let her come home,’ Dottie interrupted her, staring at Brenda Holly with a coolness that the latter found painful.

  ‘It’s not a joke, you know . . . what you’re asking for. You can’t just do things and undo them like that,’ Mrs Holly said, resenting the unspoken accusation. Dottie looked away from her without a word, and they sat silently for a long time before Mrs Holly sighed deeply, then nodded with sudden decision. ‘I’ll have to look into it,’ she said, and saw a small, fragile smile of relief appear on Dottie’s face. ‘I am sure the matron means no harm, but perhaps the school isn’t doing Sophie any good. We can try and find her somewhere nearer, so she can live at home. I thought it would be good for her . . .’ She stopped and looked at Dottie for a moment.

  From the look in her eye, Dottie guessed that she was trying to find words to say sorry, so she smiled and thanked her. Her mind was on the victory she had engineered, and she was not that attentive to the warnings and cautions Mrs Holly was reading out to her. Dottie no longer thought of her as the powerful arbiter of her life, but the decent aberration that even cruel systems throw up. If she was careful, she should be able to use her to achieve her own ends, she thought, and get Sophie and Hudson back so they could all live like a normal, happy family.

  After Mrs Holly had gone, Dottie lived again through her moments of triumph, and this time she saw the look of hurt on Brenda’s face. As the memory sank in, she thought of the older woman with just a slight stirring of shame in her breast. It had never occurred to her to ask what miseries tormented Brenda Holly’s life, or what cares her life imposed on her. Then just as quickly as the thought had entered her mind, she shrugged it off and forced it away.

  The weeks of the summer passed slowly, and she knew that Sophie would spend her seventeenth birthday in captivity. That was how she thought of it and, despite her visit to the Archbishop Lanfranc School for Girls, the image that flashed across her mind when she thought of her sister was the same one of prison yard and guard dogs that she had carried with her to Hastings the first time she went there. She would be out by September, Dottie promised herself, and then they would celebrate Dottie’s nineteenth birthday together. The thought of her sister’s return so filled her days now that her loneliness was close to being unbearable. She was too afraid of her neighbours in the house to speak to them, but she spoke about Sophie’s return to some of the women at work. She even told her landlord, who smiled wickedly and said he would have to charge another rent. When Dottie protested, his eyes wandered absently as he gave her body his usual scrutiny. It was obvious that what he saw there did not thrill him, but none the less he made the ritual pass at her. If she felt she needed a bigger room, now that her sister was coming, they could come to an arrangment. He could come by one evening and they could talk all about it.

  Dottie spent hours sitting by her window, watching the shadow-play of the leaves on
the elm tree and reading. She read with a relish that she found in nothing else. Each new piece of knowledge suggested the next, so she moved from one book to another with the rightness of logical discovery. Sometimes she tried to write down what she had found out, but it took her too long to do this, and even then what she wrote came nowhere near what she wanted to remember from the book she had read. So she took her chances, thinking that in the long run she would retain what her mind found memorable. She wrote down the titles of the books she read in an old exercise book, and took pleasure in this growing list of the trophies that she was collecting from her forays into the fabulous world of books and learning. It was not, she admitted to herself, a very impressive list. She still could not read the large Dickens books she had once taken out of the library, and at times she despaired that she ever would. In her mind that had become the test of her advances. How could she ever think of herself as learning anything when a whole row of large Dickens novels stood on the library shelf, looking down at her? And Dickens was not the only one to mock her with her ignorance. Everywhere she went, everything she did announced her stupidity to her. She did not even know who Archbishop Lanfranc was, or what he did. Everybody else in the country probably did. Nor did she know the meaning or condition of her presence in a place that had no use for her. What did she know, poor Dottie? At least, she consoled herself, she no longer needed to take books out from the children’s section. She had learned enough to escape that small indignity.

  There were two black men she sometimes saw in the library. One was a short, glistening-black man, round featured and solemn. He sat at one of the crowded tables near the window, surrounded by large books erected into a shallow, three-sided barricade. He kept his head lowered inside his fortifications, completely absorbed in what he was doing, and only glanced up absently now and then. She took him to be a student of law or medicine, because of the size of the books, but he looked quite old to be a student, and his manner seemed too opinionated for the disciplines she had chosen for him. There was a hopelessness about his appearance, she thought, and his intensity was a kind of play-acting, as if he had already recognised that the odds against him were too high. She felt embarrassed for him, because his busy and arrogant manner was so obviously a fake.

  The other black man she saw sometimes was grey haired and old, with large features and tortoiseshell spectacles. He sat at the back of the library, where the fiction shelves faced the sets of encyclopaedias. Whenever she saw him he was reading a news paper, with his coat and hat still on, hunched forward to peer at the print. She stood and watched him one day, pretending to be browsing through the ‘T’s. He made small movements now and then, as if to intensify concentration. Suddenly he looked up and saw her. His face quivered with surprise, then after a long moment opened in a wide, joyous grin. With obvious effort but none the less surpassing grace, he half-rose from his chair and lifted his hat off to her. She grinned back and fled, filled with confusion. It was the look of pleasure she had provoked on that gnarled old face that had surprised her into panic, because in that sudden warmth in which he had bathed her she knew again her isolation and loneliness.

  July had turned into August before the news came that Sophie would be coming home in time to start school in September. Dottie bought a new iron bed for herself, thinking to give the older, sturdier one to Sophie, who needed something stronger for her weight. Brenda Holly donated three saucepans and a motley collection of cups and saucers. The landlord brought Dottie a smoked-glass flower-vase and a jar of crystalline ginger. He also gave her a threadbare old rug he had picked out of a heap left for the dustmen. Dottie begged him for a cooker, saying that the hot-plate was next to useless, and she had nearly killed herself switching it on. And could they not have a comfortable chair in the room? After much resistance the landlord turned up with a Baby Belling, which he wired up himself. She flattered him shamelessly, in the hope of getting more furniture out of him, but he reminded her that, despite his undeniably powerful feelings, he was a businessman. More furniture would mean more rent.

  When the day of Sophie’s return finally arrived, Dottie wanted to go back to Hastings and collect her herself, so she could stare the matron in the face and tell her that she had kept her word. Archbishop Lanfranc would be ashamed of you and your school, if he were to come upon this prison you run in his name, she would be tempted to say. You are nothing but a joke, Matron Temple. She knew Brenda Holly would not sympathise with her gloating fantasies, so she tried to make an outing out of it, affecting a tone of girlish innocence. It was a lovely day, Dottie said, just right for a train ride down to the sea-side. I don’t really know Hastings. It’s a very pleasant town, I hear, and so near France. Brenda Holly looked wise and shook her head. She thought the matron deserved better than that, and suggested that they leave her to make the travel arrangements herself. Dottie admitted to herself afterwards that she probably would not have been able to say all she wanted to the matron anyway. They met Sophie at Victoria and took her home in a cab. It was the first time either of the two sisters had ridden in a London cab.

  4

  ‘Now we’ll have to get Hudson out,’ Dottie said to Sophie later that night. She explained how they had to be careful not to panic Brenda by making too many demands at once, that they had to show her they could manage first. She showed Sophie the photograph of Hudson on a donkey and they laughed so much at the look of happiness on the boy’s face. ‘Let’s get him back soon, Sis,’ Sophie cried, rocking herself slightly from side to side. Later, when they were lying in their beds in the dark, Dottie asked her if she was all right. After a silence, during which Dottie had begun to think that her sister had fallen asleep already, Sophie answered that she was very happy, because now she was home. The last few weeks had been difficult . . . waiting for the day. No, she said to Dottie’s question, she had had no trouble with the matron, and the other girls had been very kind, saying how sorry they were to see her go, because she was always a good laugh. The gardener’s boy had pestered her, saying that she should come and visit him in the shed before she left. One day he surprised her on the far side of the playing field and became rough with her.

  Dottie shut her eyes in the dark and held her breath. ‘What happened? What do you mean rough?’ she asked gently, trying not to frighten Sophie into silence.

  ‘He was squeezing me and trying to push me on the ground.’ Sophie chuckled in the dark. ‘I screamed. Just like Hudson used to do . . . with my eyes shut.’

  ‘And arms waving?’ Dottie asked, already laughing.

  ‘Yes, everything. When I opened my eyes he was gone. The next time I saw him I threw a stone at him and he ran away. But he said he’d get me one day. He’d bring his friends . . .’

  ‘Hush!’ Dottie whispered. ‘You’re home now.’

  Many other stories about the school surfaced in the days and weeks that followed, describing small misuses and abuses of other victims as well as Sophie. Dottie felt they vindicated the urgency with which she had sought Sophie’s return. She was not slow to tell Brenda Holly this, and to use it as the pretext for reopening her campaign to win back Hudson. Brenda smiled and blew Dottie an affectionate kiss. ‘You’re a wily little devil, but it won’t work. We’ve had an excellent report on Hudson . . . I told you about it.’

  ‘That was last year,’ Dottie interrupted. ‘You don’t know what’s been happening to him since then.’

  ‘We would’ve heard if anything had happened. He’s in a good home . . . and he’s lucky to be there,’ Mrs Holly said, raising her voice to stop another interruption that she could see coming. ‘You’ve got enough troubles as it is, and there is no sense at all in looking for more. Now listen to me, my dear, you know I’m on your side. You’ve got a lot of things to sort out here. Take my advice, and try and make things better for yourselves first. Sophie needs all the help you can give her . . . and I think it’s best for Hudson to be where he is.’

  Dottie smiled mirthlessly. She did not say anything, becaus
e she did not need to remind Brenda Holly that that was what she had said about Sophie. It was obvious from the obstinate look in Dottie’s eyes that this was only the opening skirmish in a long campaign.

  The Maiden’s Return

  1

  The landlord smiled when he saw Sophie. His eyes, which normally clambered graspingly over everything, softened and melted. ‘This is the little sister. We’ve been waiting for you for a long time! You’ve grown up, darling,’ he said, talking to her as if he had known her all her life. He took her hand and patted it with affection. When Sophie smiled, the landlord hunched his shoulders up playfully, pleased that he had amused her. He looked around for somewhere to sit, but there were only the beds. He drew Sophie with him to one of them, gently tugging her hand to make her follow him. When they were sitting, he held her hand in both of his, stroking her as he talked. ‘Are you happy to be home? Does your sister look after you all right? You tell me if she doesn’t. If you need anything, just ask for it, darling.’

  Sophie nodded and glanced at Dottie, who was standing by the door watching the landlord. Usually they talked at the landing, unless there was cause to invite him in to witness some new dereliction that needed repair, but he had slithered past her as soon as he caught sight of Sophie. Dottie’s instinct would have been to step in between them at once, to chase the predatory man away from Sophie. Her body was poised to move forward, but she could see that Sophie was amused by the attention the man was paying her, and the landlord seemed genuinely pleased to meet her. Dottie rocked back on her heels, studying the small, skinny man who had filled her with such loathing the first time she met him and wondering that Sophie was not frightened of him. His features had something of the starved, malformed child, she thought, which gave his face a look of physical fragility, so that despite his indisputable greed and cynicism, and the constant tokens of his lust, there remained traces of child-like innocence in his appearance. The landlord smiled, and Dottie saw his teeth bared in a kind of grimace and his skin crease across his shrunken face. It made her shudder to think of any kind of intimacy with him.