Dottie

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  After that, his efforts at seduction became more expressive of contempt than desire for her, to show her that his attempt to force her was only a casual affair, not seriously undertaken. He would come up behind her and put his hand between her legs, groping for her cleft. If he walked past her he would reach out and squeeze her breasts. He growled at her when she was near, and his body exhaled odours of dank earth. Dottie stayed in her room now all the time she could, but Sophie was getting ill again, and there was no helping going in their room to see her. She had to cancel a weekend trip with Estella to stay with friends of hers who ran a golf course in Broadstairs, but she refused to miss any classes however much Sophie groaned at her.

  Patterson began to stay away from the house, sometimes for two or three days. His absences were like a reprieve to Dottie, even though he locked the living room and took the key with him. When he came back, he opened a tin of something and ate, asking no questions and paying scant attention to anyone. Even Hudson learned to avoid him. Something in his appearance reminded Dottie of the way he had looked when he came out of prison. His chin bristled with a reluctant stubble, and his mouth habitually twisted into a slight sneer. He slept in the living room when he stayed, leaving Sophie in her sick-bed upstairs. It was as if he was the injured party, Dottie thought, sulking around the house or staying away as he wished. When the bills came he left them alone, and Dottie was forced to plead with him for his share. At least he could unlock the living room so Sophie could come down and watch television, she begged.

  Dottie did what she could to cut back. Hudson no longer went to Joyce, instead Laura looked after him sometimes and the rest of the time he stayed with Sophie, the two of them managing as best they could. Dottie went to Social Security, but got very little from them since Patterson was still living with them. Estella came round with advice, but her greatest use to Dottie was as it had always been from the start of their friendship, that her cheerfulness and good sense kept Dottie from sinking under the burdens that had returned as they had habitually done throughout her life.

  3

  It was about this time that she started her new job. The woman under whose charge she was placed treated her as if she had no idea what Dottie was there for. Mrs Waterson looked through Dottie’s file while the latter waited with all appearance of patience. Her stomach churned with nervousness while she sat in a comfortable chair beside Mrs Waterson’s desk. The other typists and pool-secretaries who worked under Mrs Waterson were in front of them, bent over their work. The lady pursed her lips over what she read and shook her head gently, glancing sympathetically at Dottie. It was not her fault, she seemed to be saying. Dottie was advised to stay close to her for the next few days and pick up what she could. Mrs Waterson was small and soft-spoken, her skin darkened and coarsened by the sun. She told Dottie she had spent many years in East Africa, and had loved it. All the open spaces, the outdoor life, beautiful countryside. The men, of course, had loved to hunt. Her husband had been an engineer with the PWD in Moshi, but he had been retired after independence. ‘They wanted to run their own show,’ she said, smiling with perfect understanding. Her husband had died within months of returning to London, to their old home in Leytonstone. He could not bear the misery of London after all that time in Africa, she said.

  Dottie followed her around the building, went to the cafeteria with her, and found herself nodding and snoozing in the warm office as she sat beside her while she typed or explained the mysteries of the holiday form. After a few days it was clear that Mrs Waterson was beginning to take a liking to the new typist. She told her stories of her two grown-up children, and even brought in some photographs. The daughter was a teacher in Leeds and lived with her family in a very pleasant house just down the road from Headingley Cricket Ground. The son was a mining engineer in Zambia. He had been there throughout all those years of the troubles, and had even gone in to the Congo once or twice to see for himself, into Katanga where all those dreadful mercenaries were causing such havoc. His passion was sailing, and he was at it whenever he could get away. He had sailed all the way from Durban to Mombasa with a couple of friends in some kind of boat, she didn’t know what they called them. Catamarine or something like that. They went all round the islands and reefs along the east coast, perhaps places where no man had been before. It was a pity he was a miner, she said, because he had a gift for natural things: animals, the sea, that kind of thing.

  Dottie found out also that the man who had employed her was impetuous to have done so, but that no harm was done. In no time at all, aided by Dottie’s patience and politeness, Mrs Waterson was able to release her into the office and give her work to do. The other women in the office were friendly but cautious, and for a while longer Dottie remained under Mrs Waterson’s protective wing, earning smiles and special greetings from her. The work itself was easy compared to what she had been used to, and she applied herself to it with diligence.

  In those same early weeks of her new job, when her whole life seemed transformed by a change from routines that she had lived by for seven years, Sophie was taken to hospital. She received a phone call from Sophie’s doctor one Thursday afternoon, after one of Sophie’s check-ups. She had to stand by Mrs Waterson’s desk to take the call, and was aware of the office manager’s disapproval as she listened to the doctor describing Sophie’s condition. She had collapsed during the examination and the doctor had had her admitted as a casualty patient. He was now suggesting that she needed constant care and should be admitted to a special hospital. Later that evening, Dottie went to the hospital in Tooting where Sophie had been taken. She was drowsy with the drugs she had been given but was very happy to see Dottie and Hudson. They went back every evening for the next few days, but then Sophie was moved farther away, to a hospital in Penge.

  Laura helped Dottie find help to look after Hudson during the day, and she herself looked after him in the evenings while Dottie made the journey on the buses. It was autumn. Chilly winds and torn leaves swirled across the open hospital grounds as she walked from the bus stop to the medical ward. Sophie was lethargic and depressed, sometimes hardly able to keep her eyes open while Dottie was there. Some evenings, when Estella was not teaching, she gave her a lift and waited for her in the wind-swept car park, dozing in the car. The ward sister spoke to Dottie one evening, telling her not to distress herself with the nightly journeys. Dottie burst into tears, sitting at the tiny desk in the alcove where the sister had taken her for a private word.

  ‘There, you see,’ the sister said, her own eyes moistening at the sight of this tense young woman so suddenly melting from a touch of kindness. ‘Can’t you see that all that travelling and worrying is doing you no good?’

  How could she explain to this kind woman that Sophie looked just as Sharon had done in those last days, Dottie thought? She could not leave Sophie alone with that, even with the drugs and nurses. The sister consoled her, and told her that Sophie was very ill but that was no reason for Dottie to make herself ill too. Two or three visits a week would be better. ‘To tell you the truth, dear, I don’t think Sophie would notice in her state.’

  Laura agreed with the sister, speaking on these matters with a degree of expertise, being a hospital worker herself. Veronica lent her support, and Estella too was invited to contribute words of encouragement. Her conscience pacified by these women, Dottie began to feel less guilty about not visiting Sophie every night. Patterson found out about Sophie’s admission and came to see Dottie. He hardly said anything, but his face was stricken with remorse. He insisted on leaving a large present of money to Hudson, which was only a polite way of offering them help. He went to see Sophie twice, but gave up after that. He appeared now and then to take away the few belongings and stores of his that still remained in the house, but Dottie was still running into his things months after he left.

  Andy, their old landlord also came to Horatio Street one Saturday afternoon. He looked very tired but was full of smiles. He told her that he had come once bef
ore but Patterson had told him there was no one in. Andy had tried to leave his greetings but Patterson became exasperated and told him to clear off. Dottie saw that he was beginning to lose some hair, and that his eyes looked bloodshot and watery. He was collecting rent from his Brixton house, which was in Saltoun Road, and since that was so near he thought he would come by and ask Dottie to come to the cinema with him.

  ‘Is that the house full of niggers?’ she asked him. ‘The one your tenants turned into a dirty African village?’

  ‘You remember!’ he cried, clapping his hands and laughing.

  She told him about Sophie and his voice hushed with sympathy. Would she still like to come to the cinema, though? On one of the evenings when she was not visiting? He looked so desperate and demoralised that she did not know what to say. In the end she touched him on the cheek with her open palm.

  ‘I’m sorry, Andy,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right, but if you need anything or something like that,’ he said. He shrugged his shoulders and gave her a forlorn wave, his eyes watering with self-pity. ‘Give my respects to your sister. You know your house in Balham, it’s a dump now. It’s full of Pakis cooking their dirty curries.’

  4

  She went to see Sophie every other day, but the visits soon began to take on a sameness and futility that made the ward sister’s advice seem less selfish than it had done at first. Dottie went to see people at the Council to get help, especially in looking after Hudson, and to plead for a rebate on the rates. She went to the building society and explained her circumstances to the bald man who had been so proper with her before, and he agreed to extend the repayment period, reducing her monthly payments. She organised and mobilised and sought out every help that experience and advice could provide. None of it daunted her, to all appearances, and she smiled and charmed where she needed as if it were all that life had prepared her for, all that it had asked of her. Estella watched her with admiration, applauding her cunning and daring.

  ‘Daring!’ Dottie said. ‘You’ve got the wrong person for that. Look how long it took me just to learn to stand on my feet.’

  In her own secret heart, though, she rejoiced that she had not been found wanting by this latest sadness. Sophie was getting better in hospital, although she was often unhappy and wanted to be let out. Patterson had disappeared, or only appeared for brief visits, building himself another nest somewhere else. Laura was becoming a good friend, coming round with jokes and little delicacies that she had prepared for her young man Hudson. I’ve come courting, she would cry as she bustled into the house. When she found her young man, she touched his testicles with the tips of her fingers, sniffed them and then sneezed violently, testifying to the power of young Hudson’s manhood. ‘My husband!’ she would cry in her ecstacy. In order to be obliging, Hudson proffered his loins to her as soon as she appeared, inviting her to have a sniff. The first time he did this Laura took a step back and gave him a long hard look. ‘I suppose he does that to all the women,’ she said.

  But a surprise awaited Dottie, for Estella announced that she had been offered a job in television in Birmingham. She had given her half-term notice at the college and would be starting in the New Year. After the congratulations and commiserations were over, they talked about all the things they had planned but had never got round to doing. They would have to wait for the times when they visited each other, Estella said, feeling treacherous for abandoning her friend. ‘I’m not going to the end of the world. You Londoners think anywhere outside your filthy city is the back of beyond,’ she said. ‘You must come and visit, and I’ll show you the delights of real England.’

  ‘I’m not a Londoner,’ Dottie said, feeling a little as if she was being ungrateful to the city that had tolerated her for all the years. ‘And of course I’ll come and visit. I’ll have missed meeting your aunt Madeline, though, and that trip to the golf course in Broadstairs that we never got to make.’

  ‘It wasn’t a trip to a golf course,’ Estella said patiently. ‘My friends run a golf course. We were going to stay with them at their house, which has a garden, and plants and other normal-sounding things. Just some miles from here and not the other side of a volcanic mountain range on the slopes of which roam sabre-toothed tigers and painted barbarians. Why do you have to talk about it as if it were an anthropological field-trip?’

  ‘And the camping trip to Scotland! I suppose we can still do that,’ Dottie said after a moment. ‘And the river trip down the Danube as well, and the walking tour around Old Carthage.’

  ‘Did we plan all that? Whose idea was Old Carthage?’ Estella asked, grinning at their excess. ‘At least we can make sure we stroll past the bordello near Balham Public Library. I still don’t believe that, you know. Let’s make sure we visit that shrine anyway, where the first faint glimmerings of knowledge struck the youthful Dottie.’

  She would not have known how to tell Estella without embarrassing both of them, but she was very sad at her impending departure. With Estella she had learnt to lose her diffident fears, and had discovered that no one minded if she swaggered a little or strode confidently into offices and shops. It was not much to learn, and the surprise was that she had taken so long to do what others did without thought. She had seen young people do things that filled her with envy for their daring and lack of concern. Yet she had worried about so much, about everything, and had done so little, out of fear of seeming ridiculous. Estella routed and despatched those little apprehensions, taking no notice of them, and perhaps was quite unaware that Dottie harboured them. That was the kind of ally she would be losing, she thought.

  It was ridiculous that a woman of her age should be so full of uncertainties. Inside she did not feel as if she had grown at all, even though her mind was continually being enlightened and not a day went past without revealing something to her. The other part of her, the real one buried deep inside her, was still the awkward, frightened girl who had kept watch on her mother, and had forced herself to come near and attend to her decaying stinking body when she was required to. How could she lose that odour of death and squalor? Everyone must have smelt it on her. When she allowed herself to think about it, even now, there was a touch of play-acting about the responsible and adult things she did. She went to see Council and Social Security officials and demanded money and help. No one laughed at her or chased her away. How had she got away with it? How had she got away with walking into that office building just off Blackfriars Bridge and striding into the room so properly occupied by Mrs Waterson and the other women?

  Not only had she fooled them all into allowing her into their office building, she gleefully reflected, but she could see that she was impressing them. They even told her how good she was, and some of the people brought their typing directly to her instead of going to Mrs Waterson first. Mr O’Brien, the man who had interviewed her, always stopped to have a friendly word with her when they passed in the corridor. Once he stopped to tell her that he had heard about the excellent job she was doing.

  ‘Who told you that?’ Dottie asked, and then wished she had not. It made her sound anxious and desperate for praise, rather than quietly confident. Mr O’Brien beamed and looked comically conspiratorial. He tapped the side of his nose and said, ‘A little bird told me.’ Dottie forgave him this stupid remark because he had been kind to her in so many ways. He had been nice enough to give her a job, and was always courteous and encouraging. Now and then she was sent to work with his secretary, Mrs Renton, to help out over some rush job, and also as a way of marking out her potential. Mrs Waterson told her this, acting as if it were in her gift that Dottie had been chosen in this fashion. Dottie had already found out from Mrs Renton that Mr O’Brien had asked for her to be given the extra training. She was to cover for Mrs Renton when the latter was away.

  There was no reason that she could see for Mr O’Brien to do this, and in every other way he seemed a thoroughly hard and demanding man. He had even had a good war, leading his men to glorious deeds in
northern France. A captain’s war, Mrs Waterson said, although Dottie was not sure what that meant. She was afraid that any day the scales would fall from his eyes, and he would see what an imposter she really was. And what of Mrs Renton? Had he not thought how she might resent Dottie being foisted on her? She was pleasant enough in a chatty, mothering way, but that did not mean she was not laying the foundations of a slow-maturing, nasty plot.

  Really, if you looked closely and did not mind the odd distortion, there was not much wrong with her life after all, despite Sophie’s illness and Estella’s looming departure. She was only half-way there, half-way through her life, as much again lay ahead of her. She thought of herself as living until she was fifty, and at twenty-six years old she had just gone over the hill. She had no grounds for this figure. It expressed both hope and ambition, without conceding to the terror of being cut off that she had felt all her days. Nor did it tempt fate by seeming over-confident or over-ambitious. A round figure, that would let her do one or two of the things she hankered for, and allow her to see Hudson grow into a man.

  5

  One day in November, on a sunny Saturday morning, Dottie went to Balham with Estella and Hudson. They intended to visit the library first and then go to the market. Hudson was two years old, and inclined to know his own mind about most things. He had little experience of libraries but took to this one at once, settling in the corner with the other toddlers among whom he found a gracious and accommodating welcome. One of the young librarians was reading from a picture book, and Hudson was moved enough by her attempt at The Owl and the Pussycat to give her his complete attention. He watched her every move with care, relishing the details of her performance, expecting that sooner or later she would reveal something important about the universe. Dottie and Estella stood with the other adults for a few moments and then drifted to the main library for a look. Dottie wanted to see if any of the old faces were still there. The librarian who had been friendly with Dottie was delighted to see her, beaming with pleasure as she came round the counter to speak to her. As always, her friendship came as a small shock to Dottie.