Tree of Pearls

by Louisa Young

  I hung up thinking about age gaps. Thinking about Sa’id. Trying to fix him in my mind. In practical terms.

  He is nine and a half years younger than me. Despite his English blood, his five languages, his time at the Sorbonne, he is specifically Egyptian. He uses a phrase like ‘my Arab brothers’ without a touch of the self-consciousness that other educated, cosmopolitan young Egyptians might bring to it, at least in front of Europeans. He pretty much runs the family business, though his father is there, and Hakim. When he sails a felucca on the Nile he steers with his foot, as Nile boatmen have for thousands of years. He is intelligent, political, patient, funny. Better read than me. He will happily haggle over mint tea for hours with an amusing customer, haggle to the last five Egyptian pounds, flirting and joshing in various languages and currencies, pouring handfuls of cheap turquoise scarabs into their pockets for souvenirs, and then go and read George Soros on solutions to the crisis of the Third World Debt. His grandmother calls him damu sharbaat: sugar blood. It means, so sweet, so funny. I don’t know what he plans to do with his life. With his brain, with his inclinations. His habit of trailing clarity and understanding in his wake.

  Sa’id is perfect. My perfection. My golden heaven.

  So why did I leave?

  I have wondered about this. It wasn’t just that half term was over and Lily expected me and I had a ticket booked. You don’t leave a man like Sa’id for everyday reasons of practicality and administration. The truth is I don’t know why I left him.

  I thought of Chrissie, weeping on the empty grave of a man she knew nothing about.

  This is my child’s father. I know him, and yet, and yet … There is plenty I don’t know. Of course mystery is magnificent, because it has all its potential forever, as long as it remains mysterious. A conversation came back to me: Sa’id and me at Fishawy’s, a café in Khan el-Khalili in Cairo. Under the sunbleached awnings in a narrow mediaeval street, talking about Orientalism, about whether we had attached any racial or cultural ideals to each other – was he my Rudy Valentino, was I his Ice Queen? So much of my dream life has been Egyptian, so many of my yearnings and desires, through the physical joy of the dancing and the haunting humanity of the music, let alone, when I actually got there, the architecture and the fabulous Nile and the ruins and the desert and the taste of the air and the friends and the generosity and honour and, of course, the ancient English tradition of being enchanted by the East (I could hardly claim immunity from that). So had I fallen in love with the country and taken this man as its personification? I said no, I was well acquainted with Egypt, with Egyptians, and if I had been going to do that I had had plenty of opportunity before, when I lived there. And I’d fallen in love with him in London. I hadn’t even been in Egypt for years. He could have been just another Arab lad trying to build a life in Shepherd’s Bush. There was nothing special about him, except himself. I’d asked if he thought I orientalized him. (What did we mean by that? Glamorized him, yearned for him, played that game of so desiring the beautiful mystery that you keep reinforcing its mysteriousness, in order to continue to desire it, while ignoring what it truly is, refusing to know it truly, because if you did the potential would be lost.) He said he just wondered. He had shaken his head, looked at me sideways.

  Gérard de Nerval, as well as walking a lobster on a lead in Kensington Gardens, had a good line about dreams and memories vis à vis the Orient, and whether the romantic and poetically inclined late-nineteenth-century European mightn’t do better not to go there at all. Something about how when you swap the dream for the memory you don’t always get a good deal.

  Am I saying I left him in case he was going to prove to have feet of clay? Was it that simple? Teenage idealist ruin-your-life romanticism?

  But I know reality can come up with more and better stuff than my dreams. I know that my imagination is not all the world has to offer; I don’t construct, alone, the best that there could ever be. I don’t not go places because I prefer my own version of them to the reality. I may be arrogant, I may like to be in charge, but not that much. Sa’id was in every way lovelier than I could have invented.

  He had been perfect to me. And if you think someone is perfect, you don’t know them. And if you’re having their child you have to know.

  *

  Chrissie brought two little trout with her and some vegetables, and cooked us a lovely little cordon bleu cookery-course meal (that genteel upbringing again), even down to the finely chopped parsley sprinkled on boiled new potatoes and the flaked almonds on the trout. Flakes from a flake.

  ‘You need good food,’ she said.

  It was curious not to have a bottle of wine with it, but there you go: her on her wagon, me breeding. I had no urge to drink at all. Didn’t want to. She, on the other hand, did. Big time. She had tried out every damned potentially interesting non-alcoholic drink on the market, from camomile to Aqua Libra, and had settled on nettle cordial. ‘It tastes OK,’ she said. ‘You have to drink dock-leaf cordial afterwards.’

  But you don’t need vino for Veritas.

  ‘I was wondering,’ she said, ‘why I married him. Do you know why? Shall I tell you?’

  I was still wondering if I wanted to know when she started telling me.

  ‘Sex,’ she said. ‘Fatal to a well-brought-up girl, you know. I just fancied him so much, and I thought that if we were sleeping together that meant I had to marry him, and of course if I was to marry him I had to be in love with him … a vicious circle of total misunderstanding. Never loved him at all. Except – well you kind of do, just by sleeping with them, don’t you? Making love – ha ha! So yes, I made all that love, and then assumed I was in it. God, I was young.’

  I thought of what Fergus had said: ‘The way she loved that man was a crime.’ Now, as she distanced herself from her own past love and youthful self, I could see that they were both right, truths overlapping like layers of ice on a frozen pond … ready to shatter at any moment.

  She was crazy for him – then. Passion was all – then. Now, in order to remain sane, she has to invent a distance, put all that passion away down the other end of that distance, and pretend it had been there all along. In the hope that it will stay there. I liked the making love theory. Harry had a similar one, warning against promiscuity. ‘Fucking leads to kissing,’ he’d say. ‘You have to be careful.’ I never let myself think about him kissing Janie.

  Chrissie was still talking. ‘I’m so glad he’s dead,’ she was saying. ‘I can’t believe I said that. But I am. Only way I could really get out of him. I tried to before – tried to leave him. Drinking was a way of leaving him. Of just being elsewhere from him. And Darla! Poor little Darla carries the whole burden, the whole thing …’

  Darla is the daughter.

  ‘I know, I know. But what can I do for her now? She needs so much, and I’m just going to make myself strong and then start making it up to her. I don’t blame myself, because my position was impossible, but I am the only person who can do anything for her. And I’m going to. When I’m well.’

  She didn’t look well, to tell the truth. She did look better than I’d seen her look before. But that isn’t saying much.

  She was staring at her nettle cordial.

  ‘You probably don’t want to talk about him,’ she said.

  ‘No, not really.’

  A silence settled over us briefly, a soft dusting of it.

  ‘I didn’t know what he did. He was a businessman. I didn’t know what businessmen do. I hadn’t a clue. Was that stupid of me? Was that stupid? I never thought. Is that stupid or bad, never to think? And Darl …’

  I could see which way she was heading. All that trouble to have a child, and this is the heritage you give it, selfish to have had it at all, selfish bad weak drunk blame bad guilt bad bad … well I felt for her, but I could not play mother confessor in Eddie territory. It was not safe. Eddie should not be in my head at all, under any pretext, and I should not be listening to this when I know he’s not dead a
nd she doesn’t.

  She started to cry, and because I couldn’t give her brandy I gave her chocolate. She dried up and started apologizing. I hugged her and said never mind, never mind. She was wearing less scent since she’d sobered up.

  ‘I’m so sorry about what I did to you,’ she said. ‘Those letters. This isn’t a duty apology, for the programme. Really. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Yes, well, flowers, razorblades – at least you were imaginative,’ I said, in a jocular fashion, hoping to jolly her out of it.

  She froze.

  There was one of those silent moments before something comes crashing down.

  ‘I never sent you a razorblade,’ she said.

  A pause.

  ‘Well,’ I said, mildly, non-committally.

  She was staring at me.

  ‘And I didn’t send you any flowers,’ she said, ‘because I’ve been sent those things myself by my husband, sent them in anger, I mean, in sadism really. The dead flowers, the nasty poems, the notes that sound so innocent but deny your very existence; I’ll give you one, it was, “Darling how I long for our happy little family to be together again”, sent to the clinic after my second abortion, with two dozen pink roses. The razorblade was before the first. Just to make it clear. So no, I didn’t send you any razorblade. If someone did, it wasn’t me.’

  I tried hard to think of something to say but there was nothing I could say. Either she’ll get there or she won’t. I can’t say a thing.

  ‘How curious that two people should be sending you unpleasant things at the same time,’ she said. ‘Very confusing, of course, I see that. It was at the same time? Of course, or you wouldn’t have thought it was me. And did you get flowers? Poems? Did you?’

  Those bloody men. Oliver, whoever. Thinking this fake death was a good way to do things. And Eddie. Look at the state of this woman.

  I watched her, and I saw her working it out, putting it together with the empty urn, disbelieving, believing. There is a fairly strong human tradition of not believing in death anyway: look at the ancients, at Christianity, at plastic surgery, at cryonicists, at Osiris. Look at Gilgamish, the first written story: he went to find a flower at the bottom of the sea to bring his dead friend back. Look at me, with Janie. Look at Chrissie, looking at me, realizing that for her the timeless human dream is about to come true. Here, at least, death shall have no dominion.

  What had her question been? Did I get flowers and poems?

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  Then: ‘So, what …?’

  ‘He is alive,’ I said. She knew anyway, but I wanted her to think I’d told her, so that she would be loyal to me. Or at least not hate me. I felt that this might help, at some unspecified time in the future. I felt that Chrissie’s reaction to her husband’s treachery might be volcanic, and that my position in relation to both the explosion and the lava flow would benefit from a little … positioning.

  What would her first reaction be? Relief or anger? Which is bigger, her love or her sense of betrayal?

  The look that came into her eyes was gentle and light.

  ‘Oh, is he,’ she almost whispered.

  Jesus, it’s love, I thought. Then saw clearer. It wasn’t just love. Or not just love of him. It was, perhaps, love of the fight she was going to have with him now. Or something.

  *

  I knew I shouldn’t have told her. I knew it could be risky to Harry – but now that Oliver knew I knew, and was using that, and given that the gravedigger had told her anyway, I felt covered. Plus I had a sense of the unavoidability of meltdown – it wasn’t working, this protection racket. It had gone wrong anyway, so why not add to the chaos in the interests of bringing on the ultimate conflagration, to be followed by settlement and sweet rest? Why not indeed. Like the fundamentalist Christians who wanted to go and shoot up Jerusalem for the millenium, to encourage the second coming. Good thinking, boys.

  But I was glad I had told her. Because I like truth. And I think she has a right to know. And I don’t like men messing around with women’s lives. And I hoped it would give Oliver a headache because he was a bully.

  Of course once she knew the fact of it, she wanted the details. Like how did I know? I told her I had gone to the police with the wild communications, and that when he had started trying to manipulate me into going somewhere they had, as a final resort, told me why I should under no circumstances go. (I didn’t tell her that the policeman in question was Harry, nor that I had ignored his advice.) She wanted to know where he had tried to get me to go, where he was. I reverted to Teflon, told her it wasn’t known. I didn’t mention Egypt – of course I didn’t! I didn’t want her knowing that I knew anything about it. But by this stage I was tripping over myself. How could I have not known where he was trying to make me go? No-one would fall for that.

  And then she said: ‘What about Egypt?’

  And I said: ‘What about it?’

  And she said: ‘He always wanted to go there and he never did. He loves Tangiers but he’s known there. I bet he’d go to Egypt. I bet he would.’

  And then she said: ‘It’s one of your places, isn’t it? With the bellydancing and everything? Aren’t you going to Egypt soon?’

  Surely I hadn’t told her. Had I?

  She said, why was I going? I said – and of course this was true too – to tell the father of his incipient child. She didn’t ask about him. Of course not. She was in her own drama now. She was buzzing, glittering. Little glints of energy pinged off her as her specks of realization connected up into a web of knowledge.

  And then she said: ‘Can I come with you? If he has been there, maybe I can find out where he’s gone. I can ask the police, and go to those bellydancing clubs and things. You can help me,’ she said. Looking happy. ‘And I can help you, and look after you.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s stupid, he’s not there, there’ll be nothing to find out, you don’t … there’s no point.’

  ‘No harm done then,’ she said brightly. ‘No reason not to. And I have to. Please help me. It’ll be much better than me doing it alone.’

  ‘But Chrissie – why do you need to know where he is?’

  Stupid question.

  ‘Have to,’ she said, simply, which made a kind of sense.

  ‘Think about it,’ I said. ‘You’ve had a terrible shock.’

  ‘Oh, I will. I’ll probably think of nothing else,’ she said.

  ‘You may change your mind,’ I said. ‘Don’t do anything in a hurry. After all, as far as he’s concerned you think he’s dead, so you’re safe from him, so …’

  She looked at me. ‘Safe isn’t the point,’ she said.

  That, of course, is where we differ.

  I looked at her. Tear-stained, deep-cleavaged, manically sober, only very precariously attached to her rocker. I could just imagine her stravaiging Cairo looking for her former late husband. I could just imagine what good it would do her, and I could just imagine the effect she would have on my plans to get hold quickly of one quiet, small piece of information and bring it back to Oliver like a good dog.

  Safe?

  Oh fuck.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll help.’

  Fuck her bloody perspicacity. Fuck fuck fuck.

  *

  The thought of seeing Sa’id was constant at the back of my mind. It made my heart leap and flex like a fish.

  *

  Harry came over again the next day. I was surprised by how much time he seemed to have but, the way he talked about it, it seemed that half the force was pulling sickies every five minutes, and those who didn’t – like him – were allowed a little leeway. The everyday, small-scale, low-level corruption he talked about was hideously depressing: officers making every assault racially aggravated or sexual, so they could claim to be cleaning up in those areas; chucking extra charges at the last minute on people who had said they would be pleading guilty and not seei
ng a lawyer; going out and pulling twenty prostitutes because at least ten of them will be guilty of something, and that’s a 50 per cent clean-up rate. ‘Too many of my colleagues,’ he said, ‘have what you might call a statistics-led attitude. As long as an offence happened on paper they don’t always care that it didn’t happen anywhere else.’ He told me about a fantasy he used to have about leaving the force and becoming a security advisor to eco-warriors. It was getting harder and harder, he said, to tell who was the villain. Which was why he liked Eddie – no question there. But when he saw demonstrators against the arms trade being arrested, he said … and then he went quiet. I’d never heard him say anything remotely disloyal about the police before.

  It was Christmas Eve: a dingy, grey, mild Christmas Eve, a dull milky London winter day like any other. Looking at the trees, you’d find it hard to believe they had ever had leaves. Hard to imagine there really was a sun behind that great grey plain of cloud. Every window of every house was shut; people inside preparing for the glut of food, booze, squandered money and TV into which the celebration of the fleshly manifestation of god has descended. I do like Christmas – the private aspects. Family, candles, warmth in midwinter. It’s the public face that makes me boggle. The advertising, the crass consumption: OK, the commercialization.

  We all went to the park – Harry, Lily, Adjoa and me. The little girls were jumping at Harry like puppies, and trying to pick his pockets because he’d told them he had a magic ant in there which could turn them blue or green or yellow. Then he picked them both up at the same time and put them in the dustbin. Shrieks of delight tore across the drab winter lawns; gaiety like summer. He promised to put them down the loo when we got home. They formed themselves into a small marching troop and stamped off in time yelling, ‘Hurray for Harry! Hurray for Harry!’ A little later I overheard Adjoa say to Lily, ‘It would be rather an interesting experience, wouldn’t it,’ and Lily replying, ‘Yes, it would – seeing all the poos.’