Miss Webster and Chérif

by Patricia Duncker

  But Miss Webster never heard the return conversation, which would, in any case, have been conducted in his own language, rather than French. Chérif claimed that he rang back on Karen’s mobile, as he could not bring himself to run up a bill on Miss Webster’s phone. He sank into a demoralised hangover, brought on by disgrace.

  ‘Chérif says he can’t thank you enough.’ Karen slumped down at the kitchen table. ‘Is his mum furious too?’

  ‘Luckily for him,’ said Miss Webster, grappling with her Italian percolator, ‘she knows nothing whatsoever.’

  Miss Webster rarely entered Chérif’s room, except to hoover. The photograph might still be hidden there, but she never looked again. Every time she did enter the room she shuddered, appalled by the sudden explosion of pink floral horror which still coated every surface. She returned to a project abandoned nearly a year earlier: a knitted quilt in orange, red and gold squares. She found the completely mindless task of knitting three dozen squares, all exactly the same apart from the colours, marvellously soothing. She menaced the boy with the massing web of Saharan shades, which were destined to replace the unchanging floods of roses.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ he said, stretching the quilt out over his knees as it grew across the sitting room. He noticed that she simply stitched the different squares together at random.

  ‘No rhyme or reason to the whole damn thing,’ said Miss Webster, turning on all the lights. ‘I can’t be bothered.’

  ‘C’est comme la vie,’ said Chérif, suddenly gripped by unnecessary philosophical revelation. ‘You think there’s a pattern, but there isn’t.’

  ‘There probably is a darker purpose,’ replied Miss Webster grimly. ‘We just can’t see it.’

  And the world news in the illuminated square before them was indeed darkening. There were desert shots of Western troops massing in the Gulf, and sinister grey ships in small convoys slicing the blue. In the last days there shall be wars and rumours of wars. Miss Webster checked her emerging bulbs. A white bank of snowdrops sheltered by the woods on the left side of the garden fluttered in full bloom. Against the dead leaves and browned grass they braved it out, facing a wretched month of wind and rain. War was coming. But the green points and clumps of daffodils, gathered in groups on her lawns, rose up in planted ranks like dragon’s teeth. Nature could not wait; the growing time had come. War is not a natural thing, Miss Webster muttered to her daffodils. It can be stopped.

  They sat watching archive footage of the Iraqi national flag and Saddam Hussein making defiant speeches of heroic resistance, which Chérif actually understood.

  ‘Great Iraqi people,’ he translated the text into a version that was significantly different from the subtitles, ‘heroic people of glory, faith, jihad, sacrifice and bravery ... Peace be upon you ... Dear Brothers, the Zionist aggression is perpetuated by a common arrangement between the Zionist entity and the American administration ... He speaks classical Arabic. Like the great poets in history.’

  ‘Really? And how do you know about these great poets?’

  ‘From the librarian in Tamegroute. He ran a small class for us. We learned lots by heart because he wouldn’t let us touch the books. It’s very beautiful. Listen.’ And he recited the verses in Arabic.

  Abbas, I wish you were the shirt

  On my body, or I your shirt.

  Or I wish we were in a glass

  You as wine, I as rainwater.

  ‘Good heavens.’ Miss Webster had no idea what he had just said; it was as mysterious and peculiar as Saddam Hussein’s mad paean to the Iraqi people’s love of self-sacrifice. They switched channels. Al-Jazeera broadcast the entire speech. Chérif followed the thunderous dictator, who now appeared dressed in military attire, transfixed by every modulation in the titanic rant. Miss Webster concentrated during the Koranic interludes, which were sung, like Gregorian chant, but otherwise she sat wondering what she would do if the war came to Little Blessington. It wasn’t likely, but it’s just as well to be prepared.

  ‘I’d hide you,’ she assured Chérif, ‘in the cupboard under the stairs. There’d be lynch mobs out, looking for foreigners.’

  For the first time since he had come to England real fear flooded Chérif’s face.

  ‘Mobs?’

  ‘Well, maybe. It’s always better to expect the worst. The power would go first, of course. But we’d be OK. I’d get out the camping gas and we have the wood stove. We’d need candles and a stock of gas bottles.’

  ‘What if the water goes off?’ Chérif began to imagine disaster. Miss Webster did not live near a well. The desert people always lived near wells. But she remained unperturbed.

  ‘We’ll divert the stream in the woods. It’s only twenty yards away. Water isn’t a problem in the country. And we can dig latrines, like soldiers do at the front. Heating’s more difficult.’ She warmed to her theme. ‘Masking tape. The Iraqis have the right idea.’ They watched the market stalls in Baghdad loading up with brown tape and paraffin. ‘Tape up the windows so that all the glass doesn’t fly out and slice you up when the bombs drop.’

  Chérif had never lived in a city and the house where he was born had bars and blankets across the windows.

  ‘Why don’t they just leave Baghdad?’ he asked, incredulous, as they watched amazing images of people carrying on with their daily lives, negotiating the shopping, buying spices, opening up their restaurants and garages.

  ‘They don’t have the option. They can’t leave. They’d be shot. Anyway, you don’t want to leave everything that’s familiar. Everything you own. I’d never leave the cottage. I’d rather die here.’

  She looked around at her books, pictures, heavy lined green curtains, the framed photographs of landscapes in France, the new DVD player, and realised that she was speaking the truth; this was her tomb, her pyramid, the final resting place.

  ‘We would go out into the desert if the soldiers came,’ said Chérif, reflecting on his own fate.

  ‘It’s as well to have a plan,’ Miss Webster declared. ‘The soldiers always do come in the end.’

  Newsnight began with Paxman slumped at an angle across the desk. Saddam Hussein had apparently written two novels, which were being reviewed. Miss Webster bounced on her sofa with joy, for the titles were delightful: Zabibah and the King, which had been published anonymously, but widely acclaimed as a work of genius, and The Impregnable Fortress, heralded with universal eulogy and published under his own name in 2002.

  ‘He should have called the first one The King and I,’ she crowed. ‘When on earth did he find time to write them?’

  ‘You don’t have to do much if you’re a dictator,’ said Chérif. ‘You seize power and then just sit there. The secret police do the rest.’

  ‘So young and yet so cynical,’ grinned Miss Webster.

  ‘Do these novels tell us anything useful about the inner workings of Saddam Hussein’s mind?’ Paxman demanded of the unfortunate Iraqi intellectual in exile who had just read and summarised both literary productions. The scholar paused, baffled. His main area of expertise was economics.

  ‘No, not really,’ he said. Then he added, ‘Novels don’t tell you anything. They’re not real. They’re just stories.’

  Paxman raised his eyebrows and rearranged his expression into a sneer. ‘Thank you. We’ll bear that in mind.’

  And the world moved on to other things.

  But no one doubted that the war was indeed coming. Too many soldiers had been moved into place. What kind of courage would be needed now to think twice and turn back? A massive anti-war demonstration took place in London. Eight coaches left from Great Blessington at six in the morning. Miss Webster and Chérif gaped at the crowds, people with dogs and children in pushchairs, battling grannies in dated red hats, entire families with similar faces – many of them had never carried a banner before in their lives. Yet house prices in their damp corner of England rose week after week, in an elegant and steady arc. As the war seeped closer people longed for stability, safety
and a walled garden. It was as if two forces, the impulse to kill and the desire to purchase, had found a rising rhythm and begun to dance. Karen kept busy. Her list of appointments – viewings, surveys, valuations, estimates – filled up every day. Her mobile phone tinkled tunes incessantly as she tore from place to place, measuring up conservatories and sitting rooms, calculating every inch of habitable space, assessing flood risk, harassing solicitors, demanding sealed bids on her desk by Friday morning. Often the house she priced up was sold even before she could print off the particulars. She dropped round to visit at the cottage almost every late afternoon during February and March and sank down, exhausted, beside Chérif at the kitchen table. He fair-copied lecture notes and she wrote descriptions of bedrooms. Miss Webster supplied tea and advice.

  ‘“Spacious landing. Access to loft with internal loft ladder.” Does that make it sound as if the ladder comes down when you open the loft door?’ The language of estate agents’ details created a domestic code, disturbing and opaque, with financial implications.

  ‘No. Put loft ladder fixture. Then they can’t remove the thing.’

  ‘I’d better ask them.’

  ‘“Kitchen, 12’ 6 10’, with slate floor to patio.”’

  ‘Nice big kitchen. Does the slate continue on to the patio? Sounds wonderful.’

  ‘It does, but it wasn’t pretty. Not to me. The particulars are just a map really. You have to see it all with your own eyes. And the floor wasn’t a selling point. I thought it looked cold.’

  ‘You can’t carpet kitchens.’

  ‘But I like your pottery tiles. They’re not black and shiny.’

  Chérif listened to the women talking and fluttered the pages of his textbook. He paused over the image of a stone fragment covered in unintelligible designs.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Karen.

  ‘It’s a Sumerian tablet. It was discovered in Iraq. It’s still in the museum there.’

  ‘Which will soon be blown to bits by the Americans, I expect,’ said Miss Webster. They all peered at the fragile, doomed treasure. ‘Can you stay to supper, Karen?’

  Miss Webster cooked lamb stew with saffron rice. She had mastered just the right combination of lemon, garlic and ginger.

  ‘Put on the second CD.’

  Carmen Campbell, Best of had been a request Christmas present to Chérif. They discovered that the new DVD also played CDs and the singer’s smoky, liquid voice oozed through the dining room and washed against the dresser and the kitchen cupboards. Strange, suggestive, insinuating, that voice haunted their chilly spring. Miss Webster became deeply attached to the songs, their ghostly chants and angry eruptions. No, passion never counts as crime. Carmen Campbell lined the walls of Miss Webster’s mind, her uncanny presence was never questioned. She settled there, and made her home. Miss Webster could no longer imagine music that did not benefit from the anarchic attack of several thousand amplified volts. She had passed, imperceptibly, into the electronic age.

  ‘Have you got any exams before the Easter break?’ Miss Webster demanded.

  ‘No. They’re all in May.’

  ‘Ah, good. Give me your timetable as soon as you have it.’

  She winked at Karen. Miss Webster was clearly planning something.

  On Monday 17 March 2003, President George Bush addressed the American people, and in passing, the rest of the world.

  ‘My fellow citizens, events in Iraq have now reached the final days of decision. Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised ... The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfil their stated ambition and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other ... before the day of horror can come, before it is too late to act, this danger will be removed.’

  The weapons inspectors had already left Baghdad.

  Chérif’s second term at university ended officially on 22 March 2003. His last bout of coursework had been handed in early, so that he could concentrate on the war. He spent the next four days in the cottage, glued to Al-Jazeera. The images were both disquieting and repetitive. Here was the skyline of Baghdad, exploding with flame, and here was a strange, gesticulating creature in battle fatigues, with a gun prominent beneath his armpit, haranguing the assembled journalists. This was Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi Minister of Information.

  ‘Does he say the same things in Arabic?’ enquired Miss Webster. ‘In English he sounds quite mad.’

  At that moment al-Sahhaf declared that the Americans were all lying in a ditch with their throats cut, whereas a small inset screen above him showed a battalion of tanks speeding unopposed across the desert. Then one image arrested the attention of Miss Webster and Chérif and held them open-mouthed and staring. A tribal herdsman, muffled and swathed against the clouds of fine sand, stepped in front of his dark, low tent and his curious goats, defensive and alert, his gun ready. Behind him lurked two veiled women and a gaggle of frightened children, pointing and shrieking and running away from the convoy. The man stood, rigid and baffled, as the war rolled towards him and then away again, on the long road to Baghdad.

  ‘Look, look,’ cried Chérif, ‘that’s like home. That man could be one of my family.’

  ‘Indeed. It’s exactly like your desert,’ agreed Miss Webster. ‘What an apparition! Like a medieval figure. Or even older. Thousands of years older. And it’s that way of life that will survive.’

  ‘As long as the wells stay OK,’ said Chérif.

  Miss Webster found the babble of Arabic oddly soothing. She continued with her golden quilt, looking up from time to time to see an intense and bearded man broadcasting from Baghdad, who gave a convincing impression of being terrified in the face of carpet bombs. Chérif explained opinions or translated speeches from time to time. They slithered between the BBC reports and the terrifying footage of Al-Jazeera, but always returned to Newsnight for their final dose of war reports. Chérif’s ravenous eyes wolfed down the images, as if he were hunting for a coded sign, something shining clearly through the sandstorm before the advancing tanks, something still visible through the deep smoke of the burning oil wells, the blazing buildings and the terrible confusion of war.

  ‘It will go on happening even if you don’t watch it, you know,’ said Miss Webster. ‘Come on, supper’s ready.’

  Six months in England and he had never been to London. She purchased tickets for a show and made plans for a foray into the legendary bright lights. What could draw his fanatical attention away from an exploding desert, thousands of miles to the east? The garden remained un-weeded, un-dug, and the recycling piled up beside the shed. Karen tried to understand; in any case, she was busy making thousands in commission fees. She sold an old coach house with a dodgy roof and sagging gutters for £270,000, then recounted her exploits, propping up the sink. Chérif did not listen. He never moved from the green sofa.

  ‘It’s his people, I suppose. Being blown up.’

  ‘Nonsense girl, where’s your geography? He doesn’t come from Iraq.’

  They stood side by side, worrying about Chérif.

  ‘I’ve got to go, Miss Webster, but I’ll take some of the bottles down to the recycling.’

  She kissed Chérif’s black curls; he stroked her arm, but never lifted his eyes from the screen with the subtitles in Arabic cruising across the bottom. Once Karen had rumbled safely away down the lane, splashing through the puddles, Miss Webster took evasive action. She stepped in front of the television and turned it off. He looked up in shock.

  ‘You can watch the highlights at eleven. Come on, Chérif. You’ll make yourself ill. You’ve got to eat.’

  Miss Webster unfolded her master plan for their night on the loose in the city.

  ‘I asked Karen to come too of course, but she has appointments all afternoon –’

  He
stared at her, expressionless, uncomprehending.

  ‘– Of course, if you’d rather not go.’

  Chérif remembered his manners.

  ‘I would be honoured to accompany you, Madame Webster. It is most kind of you to invite me.’

  They stared at one another across the chasm of the kitchen table.

  This ill-fated expedition to London caused the first serious difference of opinion between Miss Webster and Chérif, and the initial error, which unleashed a chain of disasters, was the decision to drive down. Miss Elizabeth Webster had not approached central London for nearly a decade. Many of the country roads had simply disappeared into fields; three-lane motorways materialised in surprising places. Her antique AA Map of Britain no longer charted the landscape. The earth lay all before them, as they roared through Suffolk at sixty. Miss Webster leaned over the wheel, baffled by huge green signs for the A14, which promised The Midlands and The North. The M11 was much announced, but impossible to locate. They stalled, mired in roadworks. Above them loomed the huge spring skies and sharp light. The frost melted away from the ploughed earth and the washed black outlines of the trees, still bare, but luminous, expectant, impatient for the coming green, lined their way. Chérif deduced the route by working backwards from Stansted, his original point of arrival. However, as soon as they reached the M25, he too was lost.