“How long are you here for?” asked Louise.
“One point seven eight metres,” said Youssef.
Louise looked at his face in puzzlement.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t understand.”
Youssef lifted his hand to the top of his head, then brought it forward and held it level at the same height.
“Long one point seven eight metres” he said.
Louise had caught his last name, Hamed but had not been able to register the other parts of the youth’s name. “Oh, Hamed, we say ‘high’. Or ‘tall’,” she said. “I am Louise. I am one point six five metres tall.”
As she spoke Louise pointed at herself for her name and held a hand at head height to indicate how tall she was.
“Mrs Louise,” said the youth. “Hamed my grandfather. Khalil my father. My family name Al Tuma. I Youssef Khalil Hamed Al Tuma.”
“Thank you, Youssef Al Tuma,” said Louise. “I think you must play cricket. You caught that bag beautifully. Let me give you the correct grammar. I say, you say.”
Youssef caught her meaning. As she spoke he repeated her phrases.
“Now you tell me on your own,” said Louise.
“I am Youssef Al Tuma. I am eighteen. I am one point seven eight metres tall.”
“Well done! You learn very quickly.”
Youssef looked her in the eye again. His gaze was very direct, as if he was looking across a stony desert, focusing on a distant figure. Louise found his gaze disconcerting, as if her mind was the desert and her soul the distant figure.
“Why is it tall, not high?” he asked.
“Things or people,” said Louise without thinking about it. “This shelf is two metres high, but I am one point five seven metres tall. Where are you studying English?”
“High School but too old for classes,” Youssef replied. “English bad.”
“Do people talk to you? Your friends? Other students?” asked Louise.
“They fourteen years,” said Youssef. “For maths I go Year 12 class. Too old in English class. Just two subjects. I have Matriculation.”
Louise understood that he had been put in Year 10, with fourteen year olds because of his language problems. Matriculation meant that in Syria he would go to a university, if one was still functioning. Perhaps as an eighteen year old, he was in danger in Syria? Old enough to fight for either side, so likely to be killed by both?
“Youssef, I would like to welcome you to New Zealand and give you some English lessons,” said Louise. “Will you come to my house to learn?”
“I like,” said Youssef. “Husband trouble?”
Louise was baffled for a moment. Yes, she did have husband problems but surely that was not what the young man meant? She translated his English into her English, ‘Will your husband have trouble?’
“No. My husband Frank does not like foreigners but he will be at work. Can you come in the morning?” Louise handed Youssef a note she had quickly written giving her name and address.
“Work six thirty to eight thirty. Classes at ten, three times,” he replied, tucking the note away. “I come tomorrow?”
Louise took Youssef to mean that he had classes mid-morning on three days a week but no class on the next day.
“Tomorrow after eight thirty. How will you get there?” asked Louise. Her house was not far away by car but the walk would take nearly twenty minutes and might cut down on the time they had together.
“Bicycle,” he said. He made it sound like ‘by cycle’. “Must go,” said Youssef. “Go now to pay, then home.”
He moved off and Louise went back to her shopping list. She was distracted by him, a young man in a foreign country, with little English and probably no friends. Louise thought Kezia might know about him from high school. She must ask her because the young man intrigued her.
“A hundred and twenty four dollars and twenty cents,” said the woman at the till. Louise gave her Visa card to the checkout assistant.
“I’m sorry,” said the checkout assistant. “That card isn’t working.”
“It was before,” said Louise, “and I know there’s enough in the account. Would you please try again?”
The checkout assistant pushed keys, pushed a button under the counter, and said, “Sorry. Still not working. I’ll get help.”
“Do you have another card?” she asked.
“No,” said Louise.
The checkout assistant pushed a button and moved Louise’s purchases to one side in order to deal with the next customer. A supervisor arrived. She knew Louise as a regular customer and had seen her in church. Wahanui was a small town in a small country.
“I have checked your Visa card, Mrs Copperfield. I am sorry to say it has been reported stolen. I suggest that you go home now and ring Visa directly and ask what the situation is.”
Louise could not find her debit card; it was there in her bag, but she could not find it in her state of acute anxiety.
“Please, lady, I pay,” said a male voice beside her. It was the young Syrian, Youssef, holding out a credit card.
“It’s all right, I’ve found it,” said Louise, fishing the debit card from her bag. “Thank you so much Youssef.”
Louise finished paying then waited for Youssef. He was two back in the queue but she did not have long to wait.
“Thank you, Youssef,” she said. “I don’t know what happened to my card but you were kind to offer to pay.”
Youssef digested her words carefully.
“Please, not picking up. Sorry for lady.”
Louise digested his words carefully in her turn. His English really did need help. She got the message at last; he had not been coming on to her, he had felt sorry for her distress. Coming on to her? At her age?
“Please come with me now. Coffee. No problem?”
“No problem,” Youssef replied. An invitation to coffee was part of his culture. It was what one did to sort out a problem, find out information, or say thank you for a kindness.
Louise took Youssef to the coffee house near the supermarket. He looked a little awkward, as Kezia sometimes did when following her mother around a shop.
“Please find a table,” she said, pointing at an empty one. He left her and sat at the table. She guessed black coffee. Sugar was at the tables in small glass containers.
“I want to say thank you,” Louise said. “You are a gentleman.”
“Not Sir,” said Youssef. “Youssef Khalil Hamed Al Tuma.
Louise laughed. He thought a gentleman had a title.
“To me, a gentleman,” she said. “I want to teach you English. Not classroom English. Ordinary people English.”
Youssef beamed. He understood what Louise meant. His English at High School was slow and repetitive, dealing with things like catching a train and booking a hotel room.
There were no trains in Wahanui, and he certainly could not afford to live in a hotel. The lessons were delivered as if speaking to mentally deficient students, slowly and in a peculiar inflexion that he never heard on television except in British comedies such as the re-runs of Fawlty Towers.
“How much money I pay?” he asked.
“No money,” said Louise. “Zero. Nothing. To say Thank You.”
“Coffee is thank you. No pay, no come.”
Louise realised that it was a cultural thing. Take nothing for nothing.
“You can work in my garden,” she said. “I really need the help.”
Youssef thought that was a good way of paying for his lessons. This lady was well-to-do, spoke clearly and quite fast, which was what he needed.
“Good,” he said. He held out his hand to seal the bargain. Louise was laughing inside at his old-fashioned English manners, probably learned from period costume videos of BBC films. She kept a straight face. With a pen from her bag, she wrote down her address and drew a little map from the bus stop to her house. She arranged to take him there now, and then run him back to where he had left his bike and was surprised when
he accepted quite readily. Apparently they now had a business relationship. Now to deal with the Visa.
Youssef turned up the next day. He seemed shy and diffident. Kezia met him at the door.
“Who are you?” she asked abruptly, taken aback by an Arab at the door.
“Youssef. Youssef Khalil Hamed Al Tuma. Your sister said come for lesson.”
Kezia laughed at the thought of Louise being her sister. “Hold on, I’ll just get her. Step inside,” she said.
Kezia liked what she saw. Youssef was tall and dark, with lovely eyes. He spoke so enchantingly, even if she had to strain to understand him. She could really go for him.
Kezia led the way to the kitchen. She pushed the door open.
“Mum, a man is here to see my sister. I’m off to school now,” she yelled. Then she turned and bumped into Youssef, who had not understood ‘step inside’ meant come in but wait.
“Sorry,” he said.
Kezia snapped at him. “I said wait inside,” she scolded.
“Sorry, beautiful lady,” said Youssef. Kezia was not sure if he was being sincere or taking the mickey. She pushed past him, picked up her back pack and started walking to school.
Louise invited Youssef into the kitchen. She sat him down, made some toast and coffee and began to point at items around them.
“What’s that?” “What’s this?”
Youssef knew many of the items but those he did not know he wrote down in a notebook. Forty five minutes passed quickly.
“Time to go to school,” said Louise. “I can give you a ride if you like. It’s on my way to work. “Same again tomorrow?”
“No, lady Louise. I have school,” Youssef replied. “No lady Louise. I bike.”
Louise was pleased he had used a pronoun and a verb. Suddenly she realised she needed a course book. Just giving names for things would not help his English much. He needed more than that, but what she did not know.
‘Time to go to the library for some books and the internet for worksheets,’ she said to herself.
CHAPTER 13.
Louise had to replace her invalid credit card. She used the telephone to contact the number printed in tiny blue numbers on the card itself. The Customer Services operator at Visa was very efficient. Louise had to have a new card issued. The old card had been cancelled using her password and the family question that was used for security. She should change both, and find out who had her private information.
Louise was puzzled. Frank never bothered with her laptop or her accounts. Kezia knew her password and obviously knew Louise’s mother’s maiden name, Meade. Charlotte? It couldn’t be.
But Charlotte had called in for coffee one afternoon.
Louise’s first thought was, ‘Does she know about my slip up at the party? Probably not. She probably had sex with that young man who was all over her and wants to avoid talking about the party. Charlotte Hoar. Charlotte the Harlot. I can’t talk. I don’t even know who I slept with that night.’
Charlotte was relaxed and pleasant. They chatted about this and that, the children, the garden, the shop that Charlotte owned and how hard it was to get good staff. She could remember Charlotte asking if she could use the laptop while Louise made the coffee.
“That reminds me. I have to transfer money from my own account to the business expenses account or there won’t be enough to pay the staff their wages today and my two ladies will be mad at me,” said Charlotte. “I meant to do it before I went for my run but I forgot.”
Louise gave her the laptop, which was already running once she had opened the lid.
In fact, when Charlotte clicked on the ANZ Bank icon, Louise’s name and password came up automatically. Charlotte wrote them down, clicked on Security and read ‘Mother’s maiden name?’ ‘Partner’s date of birth?’ She quickly wrote the information down.
“Get through?” asked Louise as she brought coffee and muffins through from the kitchen.
“No,” said Charlotte. “Too hard basket. I couldn’t get my password right. On my laptop it comes up automatically.”
“So does mine,” Louise had replied. “Otherwise I would never remember.”
Coffee finished, Charlotte took her leave, pleading urgency to get home to sort out her banking.
Louise’s Visa card had to be replaced, meaning a ten day delay and a cost of twenty dollars. The bank urged her to replace her password and change her security questions.
“Charlotte would need my password and Mum’s maiden name,” she said aloud. “She would know both, but Frank’s birth date? It couldn’t be her. There wasn’t time.”
CHAPTER 14.
Since long before the party, in fact since high school, Charlotte had been seeking revenge for Louise stealing from her. The party sharpened her focus: she would get her own back for Louise sleeping with Nigel, for stealing her partner. She had been watching Louise for some time now, dressed at night in a black hoodie with the Chinese gym pants favoured by senior citizens and the poor, ten bucks at The Warehouse, and in the day, wearing a dark blue track suit.
Because the door on the left of the back porch only led to the laundry Charlotte had no trouble turning off the freezer early one morning when she was snooping round the house. She gave Tess the dog her doggie treat then turned off the freezer at the wall switch to punish Louise. That was over a week before and the damage had not yet been discovered.
Killing the credit card had been so easy. Charlotte had not seen Louise with her dead credit card, but could imagine all sorts of scenarios in her mind. It had been so easy. Although there would be a record on Louise’s laptop, it would show Louise had entered the security details herself. If Louise ever went so far as to complain, the Visa people would think she was forgetful at the least, suffering a mental illness at worst. Frank would assume the latter so Louise would not go there. If she remembered Charlotte’s visit, Charlotte would just deny knowing any security details, easy peasy.
The next punishment involved paint. Charlotte went to a large hardware store to find what she wanted. She was surprised at the cost.
“Forty six dollars?” said Charlotte to the counter attendant in the hardware store. “For this small tin? That’s daylight robbery!”
The woman behind the till had heard the same complaint many times.
“The smaller tins are the dearest way of buying paint,” she said. “For sixty dollars you can get twice as much.”
“I don’t need twice as much,” said Charlotte. “I just want to paint a small sign.”
“What colour do you want?” asked the shop assistant.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Charlotte. “It’s to go on a shiny white surface.”
“Here’s a tin we mixed up for an order but the man buying it said we had made the wrong colour. It’s a very dark grey, almost black. He asked for French Grey, which is actually a greeny-grey colour. I had to take it back. You can have it for twenty dollars.”
Charlotte thought that would suit her purpose admirably. It would be a hard colour for Louise to clean off. Louise kept her front door spotless. Louise watered the pot plants almost every day, and swept the corners with a dust broom, the kind with a plastic tray on a long handle, with a clip to hold the broom.
The only difficulty Charlotte faced when painting the message on Louise’s front door was the smell of the paint. For once the old woman diagonally across the road was not on the lookout. Charlotte had opened the tin at home so that the lid was not too tight. To her annoyance, a little had spilled on the carpet of the car. She would have to use some turps when she got home. That smelled too. She would have to keep Nigel away from her car until the smell of the turpentine dispersed.
CHAPTER 15.
Louise had an easy shift at work, which was unusual. More often, the pressure was on as doctors demanded records as if theirs was the only patient in the hospital. Louise liked to run the records to the ward or consultation room herself if possible but sometimes that was not possible. Today was the exception. Lou
ise even had time to chat a little.
Feeling good for once, Louise got home in time for Alexander to have his milk and biscuit before he went off to play. Kezia came in next.
“Mum, what was all that about this morning?” she asked. “Picking up boys and bringing them home. I should wonder!”
“I think you fancied him, didn’t you?” Louise bantered.
“You told him I was your sister!” Kezia replied.
Louise laughed at the joke. Kezia was becoming more like a young friend than a daughter. Louise smoothed down her hips and gave a wriggle.
“I thought I might scare him off if he knew I had a child,” she laughed.
Kezia became serious. “Seriously Mum, what was going on?”
“He helped me with stuff that had fallen off the shelf,” said Louise. “He was so quick catching a packet of icing sugar! You should have seen it! His hand just flashed out before the bag hit the ground. Being in a paper bag it would have burst.”
“Why bring him home?” asked Kezia.
“Well, my Visa card had been listed as stolen. Did you do that?”
Kezia shook her head emphatically as she used to when she had been a little girl, falsely accuse of some misdemeanour.
“Well, Youssef offered to pay. Honestly, he has no money and he offered to put my stuff on his Visa. Wasn’t that nice?”
Louise stopped to see if Kezia was paying attention. She began to pour tea. Kezia got some muffins out of the cupboard.
”One or two?” asked Kezia.
“Oh, just one thanks. Those muffins are fattening,” Louise answered. She could have kicked herself for saying that because Kezia put the muffins back in the cupboard. Kezia was plump; ‘Puppy Fat’ Louise called it, and was very self-conscious.
“So, why did you bring him home?”
Louise thought for a moment. “I liked him. I felt sorry for him. I wanted to repay a kindness. He needs to learn English and our garden needs work.”
“Cupboard love. You fancied him but he was too young for you!” squealed Kezia. Mother and daughter laughed and hugged each other.
The Stalking of Louise Copperfield Page 7