Dottie

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  Patterson on the other hand was gaunt and lank, with a casual air that gave an impression of indifference. His manner was both morose and tense with checked violence. He would make a very unfriendly enemy, Dottie thought. His face had an ashen look, as if greyed by illness or a poor diet. It was creased with narrow folds of flesh, running from his temples to his chin. It was a face that seemed set and crafted, moulded on an ancient design. He looked around the room casually when he first entered, come into their midst to judge them. When he smiled, the smile did not sit well on his face, perching for a brief and uncomfortable rest before flying suddenly away. He spoke with a gentle growl, a steady monotone full of arrogance and authority. He still had an accent, but he appeared neither aware nor concerned by its African tones.

  The sisters were wary of him. Sophie was unashamedly frightened, staring at the floor in his presence. Patterson stood at the door, looking beyond them at the cradle in which Hudson reclined. ‘May I?’ he asked, hunching his shoulders deferentially in Sophie’s direction. As he did so, he dropped his eyes for a moment, and really looked as if he was begging for a favour. The pose only held for a moment and then shifted, as if Patterson was performing a customary politeness. In any case, it seemed incongruous and insincere, a gesture intended to humour Sophie.

  It was still early in the year, and the weather was chilly. The great freeze of that winter, which was to cause unprecedented chaos and suffering in the country and along the European North Sea coast, had not yet arrived. If anything it was warmer than usual outside with a bright wintry sun and clear skies. In their gloomy room, though, it was decidedly cold, and Patterson made no move to take off his coat. He was wearing a tailored grey coat, which made him seem tall and flat, adding to his air of unreality and enhancing his ceremonial manner. He held Hudson for a few moments, looking into his face and down his body. He put him back in the cradle reverentially, but with a hint of irony in his manner.

  ‘A fine young man,’ he said with a small, polite smile. ‘I pray that the Almighty give him a long and active life, and bless him with health and fertility. May I offer the mother my congratulations for such a wonderful child? I understand that you have called him Patterson. Thank you for the honour you do me and my family.’

  ‘Hudson Patterson Balfour,’ said Dottie, refusing to be intimidated.

  Patterson glanced at her and smiled an acknowledgment. ‘A magnificent name,’ he said. ‘One to do credit to a boy with a bright future. I was only being selfish in mentioning the part connected with me first. Because I was so honoured . . .’

  ‘Please, take off your coat and have a seat. I’m afraid it’s not very warm but we can put the paraffin on. Jimmy told us that you are from Ghana. The land of Kwame Nkrumah and the Ashanti, and a wonderful warm climate, I’m sure. Here we only have this miserable winter,’ Dottie said, conscious that she was putting on airs but unable to silence herself. She hoped she had said the names properly, but Patterson made no response. ‘Please, have a seat. Would you like a drink?’

  ‘Please,’ said Patterson, declining, ‘don’t go to any trouble.’

  ‘Some tea, at least,’ Dottie insisted, enjoying the firmness with which she was offering hospitality. In her mind, she was making sure she would not offend against the legendary African welcome to strangers.

  Patterson shook his head just as firmly and declined. He had come to bring them news of Jimmy, and he discharged his errand while standing inside the open door. Jimmy, he told them, was in jail, serving a five-year sentence, minimum. Sophie’s mouth fell open and she put her hand across it as if to stifle a scream. Patterson looked at her for a long moment and then nodded slightly, approving this anguish. He ran his eyes over her and smiled. Dottie watched him with rising unease.

  ‘What is he in . . . side for?’ Dottie asked softly, wanting to force Patterson’s eyes away from Sophie but none the less afraid to provoke the aggression that his every gesture hinted at.

  ‘He is accused of burglaries in Manchester. The police arrested him in the street. He had his bag of tools with him but they said he was on his way to a job, a break-in. They said they had prints and witnesses from other jobs he did. It doesn’t matter, they’d say anything. I hear they beat him up. And they say they suspect him of other crimes too. Bad crimes. Now they’ve caught him on these things, they will blame him for something else as well. It’s their way,’ Patterson said, speaking quietly but with unmistakable bitterness. ‘That’s where they want all of us. In jail. The way they look at it, all black men are criminals and deserve to be locked up. It’s because they don’t like people like us in their country. They’re afraid of us, and of what they’ve done to us. If they could, they would kill us.’

  That was all the explanation he intended to give. He listened silently while Sophie protested Jimmy’s innocence. ‘He was working on a building site,’ she cried, beginning to sob as the realisation of what had happened began to overcome her. ‘He’s a welder, everyone knows that. Didn’t anybody stand up for him? Help him?’ Dottie went and stood beside her, and took her arm.

  Patterson held a hand up to stop her. After a moment he bowed stiffly, as if engaged in grave ceremonials. Dottie felt no temptation to laugh, for she could see that Patterson took himself seriously. ‘If there is anything you need for the boy,’ he said, ‘you must call on me. Or if you need help yourselves . . .’ He put a card on the edge of Sophie’s bed and left without another word.

  ‘Thank you for coming to tell us,’ called Dottie, following him out to the landing.

  2

  He came again the following Sunday, and brought with him an electric fan heater. He found them eating their dinner of boiled cassava and spinach. They were in the midst of an austerity campaign which was part of the drive to save money for the house they intended to buy. He would not stop for long, leaving the fan heater inside the door and tutting irritably at the gratitude the two sisters tried to express. Before he left, he waved in the direction of Hudson, who replied to his greeting with several hearty chuckles. The austerity measures were not allowed to interfere with his food, and he enjoyed the full attention that a young lord of his age and circumstances could expect. Patterson gave their plates a lingering stare before he left, not quite able to hide his disgust.

  They waited until they heard the front door close before they pounced on the fan heater. Sophie giggled with pleasure at her new gift. She took it over to Hudson to show it to him. He reached out for it, smiling at his mother’s pleasure. Later, when all was calm again, Dottie suggested that they sell it and add the money to their house fund. They still had the paraffin to keep them warm, and that was quite adequate to their needs.

  ‘Sis, it’s a gift!’ protested Sophie, turning to Hudson for support.

  ‘If you want to live in this room all your miserable life, that’s all right and fine with me. But if you want to find a place for the baby to grow up in, then we have to find the money however we decently can.’

  ‘No, Dottie. Selling gifts is not decent, it’s mean. We’re hitting hard times, but they ain’t so bad that we have to sell gifts that people give us out of kindness.’

  Patterson came again the following Sunday, with a bag filled with food: rice, corned beef, spam, biscuits and tins of condensed milk. Dottie was inclined to be ashamed but Sophie’s gratitude knew no inhibitions, and she thanked him profusely. He stopped for longer this time, although he still refused to take his coat off. He sat on Sophie’s bed, perching on the edge, holding Hudson on his lap. Sophie had insisted on putting a waterproof on his lap, in case Hudson wet himself or worse. Hudson sighed wearily at the indignity but made no fuss. Patterson sat dandling the baby over a sheet of red tarpaulin like a priest officiating at an infernal rite.

  It became a regular feature of their Sundays that winter, that late in the afternoon Patterson would call on them. To begin with, they talked about Jimmy, as if duty-bound. Was there any news? No, not much. Patterson could not be too insistent in trying to discover J
immy’s whereabouts and condition because, he told the sisters, the authorities were interested in him as well. Well, no news is good news, and he knew enough to know that if anything happened to Jimmy he would be informed at once. He had his own sources who were keeping an eye on things, so they were not to worry their heads about that. They could not keep the information of where Jimmy was held away from them, could they? Dottie asked. Oh yes they could, Patterson told them. They could do anything they liked, and generally did, especially to black people. They talked less about Jimmy in subsequent visits since there was so little any of them could add to what had already been said.

  Patterson always brought a gift, a bagful of shopping, some ornaments, a vase, an ashtray, a china antelope. One Sunday he brought them a folding garden chair to go with the other one that Ken had bought. He gave the gifts to Sophie, or left them by her bed. He did not tolerate any expressions of gratitude, and if Sophie insisted on thanking him, his brow darkened and he quickly departed. If he said anything about the gifts it was that they were for the child.

  He had come to them like something out of a fable, appearing to them in the early months of the year, like a promise of new life, Dottie thought. He was not, and she knew that, but she still liked to think of him in that way. He was a magnanimous prince travelling incognito, hiding his kind heart behind a frightening scowl. He had broken his journey among their poor lives and had transformed them with his generosity and friendship. There was no magic in what he did, although it would have been something worth celebrating if Patterson had turned out to be a genie or a gullible fairy with a mighty wand who could change their stinking hovel into a gilded palace, or fill the wildness in the back-garden with blooms and bird-song. The small gifts he brought lifted the gloom of their lives enough, and made them happy.

  At first he had terrified her, and made her frightened for Sophie. When she came to know him better, she saw the respect and care he lavished on her, and she envied him his sense of the importance of such things. Jimmy was his brother and so he had come by to help out. She still could not understand how the bond between Jimmy and Patterson could have come about, but she could no longer doubt his care for them. Despite his appearance of inflexible rectitude, like something carved out of an ancient hard wood, she thought, there was something quick and warm underneath the ceremony of coldness.

  Hudson himself, the young emperor of their impoverished kingdom, had made his feelings known. He was obviously fond of Patterson, and when he began to crawl in the months that followed he would leave what he was doing as soon as Patterson arrived and propel himself cheerfully towards him. Patterson would take his coat off, the coat which always made him look like an undertaker, Dottie thought, and he would get down on his knees despite his Sunday best and play with the child.

  Patterson asked about the name. Such a beautiful and powerful name, as muscular as the river itself, he said. Had he seen it? they asked him. Well, it had been muscular when it was in its prime, he said. You could still see that, but the parts of it he had seen looked a little dirty. He had seen the river, the sisters said to each other, their voices hushed as they contemplated the mystical power of the sight. There were dead fish floating belly-up in it, he added, but failed to dispel the beautiful and supple vision he had created. They told him about their brother Hudson, finding new relief in the confessions and recountings. When they had finished, his bitterness flowed unchecked for several minutes, making the sisters exclaim at its passion. Afterwards Dottie felt ashamed of the orgiastic indulgence of racial feeling, but could not deny that she had taken pleasure in the cruel condemnations, and felt a kind of unity and purpose which had filled her with strength and pride.

  Yet, something remained unplacated in Dottie, some unease she could not quite overcome. He had been very kind to them. He was always courteous and soft-spoken, but she found herself circumspect in his presence, mistrusting him. She tried to think of a way of explaining this to herself, but she could not.

  A picture that described her feelings came to her in an unexpected way. One day at work someone brought in a calendar that she had received as a gift from an admirer, and the women in the line huddled together, flicking through the beautiful photographs of magnificent landscapes that were touched with romance. The landscapes were simple and uncomplicatedly benign, places where she would be able to sit silently on a log beside the path or atop a rock like a harmless and romantic innocent. They were places she could make-believe were made for her, anyone could, and where she could feel at one with everything. She had even been in such places, or perhaps it was truer to say that she had felt such moments, when the colours and the symmetry of objects had a rightness as if that was how they had always been since the very first times, and always will be. As she gazed at the pictures, Dottie found herself thinking of Patterson. When she imagined him there, she knew he would stir the hidden forces of the earth into turmoil and mischief. Not because of anything he might do, but because they would feel a subterranean antagonism from him. However courteous and soft-spoken he was, she felt his violence bubbling underneath the surface, like the ferment of organs and gases behind a placid smile. In his presence, she found it hard to resist the inclination to efface herself.

  He made no sign to her, and Sophie said nothing, but Dottie began to feel that she was in their way. Jimmy was not often mentioned any more. Sophie’s affection for Patterson was almost fawning when he was there, and had all the marks of passion when he was not. Dottie knew from her sister’s charged movements that there were times when it was all Sophie could do to stop herself from touching him. She had seen her watch him with her lips parted, longing for him with an openness that was almost comic. He would have had to be blind not to see Sophie’s desire for him. Patterson appraised her ample body with undisguised interest, but without the confusion and abandon of the stricken. It was as if she was not there, Dottie thought, although if she hadn’t been there she imagined they would have been tearing at each other. Once she had been confirmed in her passion, Sophie seemed to have lost all fear of him. She returned his looks openly, chided him for spoiling Hudson with affection and even teased him about his clothes, which were inclined to be formal in a stiff-necked way. He rarely stayed longer than an hour or so, and he only ever came on Sundays, but Sophie spoke of his visits as if they were the most important events of their week.

  Dottie thought she knew what Patterson was up to. When she was feeling charitable, she recalled the gratitude she felt towards him and the many kindnesses he performed for them. At those times she saw him as being protective, guarding his brother’s cherry tree. More often, as time passed, she knew that his intentions were less selfless. Perhaps, she thought in her cynical moods, it was some African custom. You have the use of your brother’s goods in his absence. Just as likely was that it was a male custom, she thought, wherever that member of the human species found a woman looking feeble and stricken.

  But Patterson made no demands, and seemed concerned that that should be understood. He never allowed his visits to extend beyond the time that a close but not intimate friend of the family would take. He always dressed formally when he came, and thanked them profusely for the kindness they had done in letting him call on them. They made him feel human, he said. He did not burden them with any of his problems, and only hinted at the palpable bitterness that afflicted him when he spoke of Jimmy in prison. He told them once that he had visited him, but adamantly refused to reveal where he was being held. It was too far away, he told them. And Sophie would only feel the need to drag herself there for no very useful purpose. Dottie almost suggested writing but managed in time to hold her breath, without having put Sophie in a position of being forced to admit that she could hardly write. In any case, Sophie did not seem all that concerned, and Patterson gently changed the subject.

  For all the importance that the Sunday visits came to assume in their lives, Dottie was uneasy about them. Part of her looked forward to them, and she was not stupid enough to deny th
e painful tingling in her own chest as Sunday afternoon came near. Sophie was not the only one who found herself stirred by Patterson’s presence. She had been a long time without a man, that was all, she told herself. She felt the urges bite in her, as did every living thing. It was almost two years since Ken left her, and although in that time she had been approached by men, she had not been tempted enough to succumb to the kind of brutal invitation they were offering. It was incredible that men were like that, so without mercy. The sheer audacity of their approaches had surprised her. She could not imagine herself being able to make those kinds of blatant assaults if she had been born a man, however desperately urgent her need. And these men had not looked urgent, just desperate and callous. Perhaps men were simply made predatory and did not require any special resolution to behave in that way.

  Even now, with Patterson’s intrusive presence in their midst, it was not as if she was in the grip of an unmanageable frustration or something brutish like that. She was conscious, and was made uncomfortable, by the desire she felt for him. It was not something she was likely to succumb to, for whenever she felt herself weakening, the air of menace he carried came to sober her and disperse the illusions she had allowed herself to entertain. He was too much for them, she thought, too knowledgeable and worldly. She was afraid that he was playing with them, that he knew what he was doing much better than they did – certainly much better than Sophie did – and that one day he would exact a price that would be too high for them.