by Roger Curtis
‘The first thing you have to remember, Sarah, is that you’re part of a family. In all families there are people you like, and some you don’t like but respect – and a few that you just can’t abide at any price. But because you belong yourself you have a special relationship with them – all of them – and whatever else they might think about you, in time they’ll come to trust you. Then you can help them, but only then. It will be difficult for you, Sarah. You’ll need to forget you were a doctor, or rich housewife or whatever you were – and you’ve got to stop feeling sorry for yourself. God knows, all of them are worse off than you, although that’s not the way you’ve got to look at it. What I’m saying is try not to take refuge in what you were.’
My God, Sarah thought, what has Jack Adams told him? Has he deliberately set me a challenge I can’t possibly meet, so that he and his fearsome mother can watch me plummet still further? It didn’t seem likely.
‘When are you free?’
‘Anytime.’
‘No commitments at all?’ He looked at her in disbelief, then pity, as he saw from her expression that it was true. She had not, until then, realised just how sterile her world had become.
‘We’ll start you in here for a few days. Help with the food. Get to know the regulars. That way they’ll know you – or at least some of them will – when you start on the streets.’
She found she was not alone in the disfigurement stakes. Chris, a reformed alcoholic lawyer who appeared every day at four to help serve tea, had lost an ear on the Northern Line one Saturday when he had been slow to hand over his wallet. Then there was Samantha, who had herself walked the streets before coming over. She had a deformed nose from an infection caused by a ring through the septum. There were others Sarah had yet to meet.
The first few days stretched her to the limit. ‘First it’s your patience, then your intelligence. Let them go,’ Marcus had told her. ‘Then it’s down to basic humanitarian instincts and that’s the make or break situation.’
At the end of her second week he grinned at her as he closed and bolted the door. ‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘The first real hurdle is to stay with us. Not many pass that test.’
She saw little of Mark during those early days. It had seemed at first that continence was a natural consequence of – and sustained by – the work she was engaged in; and in some ways was even an advantage of what she was doing. Sexual matters were rendered trivial in the face of the greater issues that now dominated her life. She thought she could appreciate how nuns, for example, could divest themselves of such feelings through the assumptions of their faith. But as the days passed it became clear that things were not that simple. The more she came to terms with the work and felt comfortable in it, the more persistent the ache became, and the more intense the frustration of not being noticed by men. Worst of all was when, on being introduced to a young and attractive male, he first set eyes on her ravaged cheek.
In the house her frustration had been compounded by a new discovery: the finding of semen stains in Mark’s bed when she searched there after he had left for work. Once there was a faint tinge of red. Obviously he had a mistress. It pained her that he would not tell; when she asked he just shrugged and walked away.
Once, on her way home after dark, she stopped off at Tottenham Court Road station and went into the Ann Summers shop in Charing Cross Road. Every customer seemed to be an acquaintance in disguise who knew her intimately but whom she couldn’t quite place. She left hurriedly without buying anything; but it was not the last of her visits there.
After a while she saw that there was no real conflict between her private thoughts and her new-found work. There was no one standard of conduct that an individual had to observe. More than that, no-one else seemed to think it relevant. You could still do good and enjoy your thoughts as best you might, even if you did from time to time feel guilty about it.
A nip in the air and dew on the car windows signalled the end of summer. Marcus had told her that what might have seemed a pleasant exercise in sociology would now turn into a worsening inventory of hardship and deprivation. ‘By next spring a lot of faces will have gone,’ he had said, ‘and not through emigration. You must be prepared for that, Sarah – assuming you’re still with us.’
On the Monday morning of her third week the hall was more packed than she had ever seen it. It had rained and the floor was a slurry of London grime, cigarette ends and spilt food, though not too much of the latter because it tended to be retrieved as soon as it fell. The smell was at odds with the greater stench of unwashed bodies.
Sarah was needed behind the tables. When Marcus came up she was wielding a soup ladle.
‘Don’t stop now, but when you do be sure to introduce yourself to Mr Fadil, who’s just come in. I’ll ask him to take you around the streets tomorrow. Nice lad. Had some medical background but not too sure what. You’ll like him.’
For all her involvement and satisfaction with the work, Sarah had to admit that the clang of the great door as it closed after the mid-day meal was the single most welcome event of the day, if not of her entire existence during this period. She liked the way Marcus would turn and stand with his back to it, as if the last intruders had been expelled from a city under siege. For a few minutes the team would slump down at one of the tables and drink coffee, saying little, bracing themselves for the afternoon’s onslaught.
Sarah, near the point of exhaustion and cradling her mug, was startled by a familiar voice from behind her chair.
‘Is it you, Dr Potter? I truly didn’t dare believe when Marcus told me. Potter is after all a common name.’
‘Ali? Is it Ali?’
‘And your face? That story too I did not believe!’ He peered at her without embarrassment. ‘Alas it is true.’
‘It doesn’t matter anymore, really.’
‘Then you are a very brave woman. But then that does not surprise me.’ He pulled up a chair and sat beside her. ‘So tomorrow you come with me, yes? Then we can really talk.’
‘I’m looking forward to it.’
‘Ah, but it won’t be so much fun. You will be shamed by being part of a so-called civilised society.’
It seemed to Sarah that he had aged. The black hair had become peppered with grey. But there was a brightness in his eyes that she could not remember.
‘What brings you here, Ali?’
‘I lost my job when the hospitals merged. At one point I lost everything. And then, you see, I became one of these people – for a while.’
‘It was a close-run thing, Sarah,’ Marcus said, overhearing as he passed. Then he turned to Ali. ‘I’m sure you won’t mind me saying that?’
‘Dr Potter knows much about me already.’
‘Sarah, Ali. Sarah, please.’
For a brief moment she would come to treasure she was overwhelmed by a desire to cry. It was the same feeling she had experienced one day alone on Beacon Hill when the clouds were driven off by the evening sun to show her the golden carpet that was Oxford. It was moving because it was splendid and unexpected and new. And what was wonderful now was that for the first time in many years she knew what it was like to be amongst friends.
The morning ended as it had begun, with rain. They were sitting under the rear awning of a hamburger stall on Jamaica Road. Ali took her paper cup and put it inside his own, then tossed them both into a nearby bin. ‘What did you think, then?’ he asked.
‘To be honest it seems an intrusion into their private life when we have to lift the polythene to talk to them.’
‘They don’t mind – most of them.’
‘And the others?’
‘Almost gone from this world. I think it’s brightening. Let’s press on.’
By mid-afternoon they had reached a large gap between two faceless office blocks fenced off from the pavement by plywood boarding. The place was inert and s
ilent. The permanence of the long defunct cigarette advertisements rearing up from behind the fence suggested a locked battle between mighty and anonymous commercial concerns for the right to develop the site. Perhaps they had lost interest and given up the struggle, each defeated by the bleakness of it all.
Ali put his hand through a hole in the boards. With a click a short length creaked open on a rusty hinge.
The ground within had been excavated to a depth of several feet and then left, with only an abandoned digger remaining to guard it. The hole had exposed the foundations of a former building, leaving a ring of caves and crevices that had once been cellars. Sarah was surprised to see that each was occupied, although the openings were obscured by patchworks of plastic bags and old curtaining. The whole resembled a bitten sandwich with the most unsavoury of fillings. No-one was to be seen.
‘The police clear them out now and again, but it’s a token gesture. However many times they did it they would always come back. There’s too much on offer.’
‘A concrete slab over your head?’
‘Better than a sodden cardboard box, or being dripping wet with condensation under a bin liner. This is a prime site, Sarah, and there is – how shall we say – competition for it.’ She saw from his expression that the inhabitants of this grim place did not always live in harmony.
Ali climbed down some steps improvised from the wooden detritus that still littered the site. At the bottom he held out his hand for her to grasp. ‘Who’s at home?’ he called.
Three of the makeshift curtains were lifted and then allowed to fall, giving Sarah only momentary glimpses of the haggard faces behind. But a fourth was held high while the occupant stepped out onto the orange London clay. There was still pride in his bearing.
‘Sheikh Ali, welcome! Had’st thou forsaken me, I kept asking myself, all those aeons ago. How did you fare in the pleasure palaces of Kubla Khan?’
‘I sought them in vain, Excellency, but what I saw was far from delighting the eye and the ear.’
‘How so?’ He was suddenly serious and attentive.
‘What you have here, Hassan, is paradise on earth compared with those people.’
‘Ah, I believe, I believe. And Jazreel, you saw her?’
Sarah’s ears pricked up. This was not idle banter after all.
‘She’s working under great strain, Hassan. Little help, less food, few medicines, and now there’s fear of cholera. There are many sick, many deaths.’
‘Aah, poor, poor country.’ He appeared to wipe away a tear. Sarah could not decide if it was imaginary or real. ‘Poor, sad country. When will you return?’
‘Soon, when I have saved the fare.’
‘They will not give you that?’ His voice resonated with deep indignation. ‘Not even that? Devils!’
‘They don’t want us there. The government.’
‘Devils, devils, devils.’ He turned and walked back into his hideaway, his concentration wavering, then giving way completely. They heard him muttering ‘devils’ under his breath until the sheet fell. Then there was silence.
‘A junior diplomat in Iran,’ Ali explained. Taught at the university in Terhan for a while before he fled here. Then he flipped. Sometimes he can be quite lucid, other times you can’t make contact.’
‘He seemed a nice old man. Can’t we do something for him?’
‘Sarah, let me tell you something. Nice is not a word we use. It has no meaning. For these people niceness was left behind before they became what they are.’
‘Ali, I want to ask you some questions.’
‘About Jazreel?’
‘About both of you. And life.’
‘Then let’s have some tea.’
They walked along the street and turned down an alley between two featureless warehouse walls. It led down to the river where water lapped around a tiny fenced concrete platform with a white painted seat. In the water two wooden dinghies bobbed and plopped like conversing turtles.
‘And the tea?’
‘Look behind you.’
Sarah saw a tiny pub, little more from the front than a lattice window and a door, and a sign saying The Mary Rose. A slate board on the pavement listed the most basic of London fare.
‘Some jellied eels, no?’
‘No!’
He returned carrying a tray with two mugs.
‘You want to know about Jazreel because you are still just a little bit guilty. Am I right?’
‘In a way.’ She felt uncomfortable, then realised he was teasing her.
‘She recovered, but it took a long time. Almost until now. Then one day she was confident again and, you know, once more a real doctor. You heard me say that she runs a hospital, for the refugees. Well, not really a hospital because it has little a hospital should have. But the skill, the dedication, of those people! Ah, you should see what they can do.’
‘I would like to.’
‘Would you? Maybe you should. They told me you had that skill, once.’
‘They?’
‘People in the hospital spoke about you. The lovely lady in the white coat, always with a smile.’
‘And what do you see now?’
Ali thought hard, reluctant to answer. ‘A child becoming a woman again and having to learn a little more the second time round.’
‘Learning what, Ali? What do you mean? Give me an example.’
‘That in a camp like that nobody notices faces.’
‘So there’s hope for me?’
‘Hope in abundance!’
Sarah looked at the two bobbing boats, each with the same excursion, in the same perfect rhythm and with the same mutual indifference to time and tides and weather.
Ali would have sensed that she could not turn her head back to look at him. So it was unlikely he caught her faltering, whispered words. ‘It seems that Jazreel has everything.’
There were several cars on the drive so she sped past the house and parked in front of the stables. It was a rash decision. As soon as the first head appeared she felt guilty. When all three were looking at her, with exactly the same expression of resentful neglect, she felt terrible. I’ll find you all better homes, she promised them. I don’t deserve you any longer. She didn’t notice Jed had joined her until he spoke.
‘There’s a riding school t’other side of the golf course, Miss. They’ll take ’em off yer ’ands.’
‘Will you find out for me?’
‘Right you are, Miss.’
She went first to the conservatory, to see her butterfly. She’d called it Esmeralda because somehow the name seemed to reflect the splendour of its wings. Whether the gender was right she had never thought to find out. It was amongst the other butterflies, near a bowl of sweet things she’d left there the day before, but aloof from them, like a swan amongst ducks, there only because it was hungry. When she offered her hand it crawled onto it and rested there, facing her.
‘Esme – Ali and Marcus – can it really be true that I now have two friends?’
The butterfly shrugged its wings and rotated its body on its six legs so that it was pointing away from her. She expected it to re-join the others but it did not, and in the end she had to put it there against its wishes.
There was something menacing about the cars stationed outside the house. They had a dark severity about them that suggested work and purpose, not recreation. There was hierarchy, too, in the way they were parked. It was interesting that Mark had put his own car at a distance to make room for them. That was quite out of character.
Her slamming of the conservatory door was followed within seconds by the opening of the door to the dining room where, from the low, intense voices, she deduced they were gathered. It would be interesting to see who was there. But Mark intercepted her in the corridor. His voice was jovia
l, but his expression brutal.
‘Sarah-Jane, my dear, have you had a good day in town? There’s something I have to tell you.’ He took her roughly by the shoulders and ushered her away. She couldn’t understand the incrimination in his voice. ‘I think it’s better if you don’t meet them, don’t you think, Sarah?’
‘Why ever not. What’s upset you?’
‘Never mind, but I’d be grateful if you’d leave us undisturbed. You understand?’
‘No, and if that’s how you feel you can get stuffed, all of you.’ She spotted a weakness in his attack. ‘You want me to shout that down the corridor?’ She opened her mouth, as if to execute the threat.
Mark agonised between silencing her by force and appeasement, wisely settling for the latter. ‘Sarah, go and have a lie down – you must be tired after tramping the London streets – and I’ll bring you something when they’ve gone. How’s that?’
‘Brilliant if you stick to it. Pathetic if you don’t.’
He turned and left her crying in the corridor.
She climbed the stairs, slowly, with no purpose but to lie flat on her back and close her eyes against the world. So promising the day had been but now, here she was, jealous of a person she hardly knew for whom she had once felt only contempt. The woman had not been the only recipient of that. No. Perhaps they should get together and start a club. The Jack and Jazreel mutual protection society. You’ve been a bloody fool, she thought to herself.
It was an absorbing line of thought. But as the minutes, then an hour, passed, it gave way to a deeper longing that she had now come to accept would not go away. Then, just as her hand moved to her lower abdomen, the phone rang. She could not have guessed when she picked up the receiver that the call would seem an answer to her prayers.
It was a female voice, business-like and well used to dealing with people; above all it was an anonymous voice.
‘Mrs Preston, I’m glad to have caught you. Is this a convenient time to speak?’
‘As good as any other. Speak away.’
‘That’s good. I have a note here to say that you might be coming to tomorrow’s function at the Massingham Tower. Would you confirm that, please?’