by Alex Barr
A few weeks ago I was on Facebook. I only use it to post pictures of my work. But somehow, through some mutual ‘friend’ I suppose, I came across Kay’s mother. Suddenly, Jane and Christopher, I was looking at you.
One photo was at the beach. How you’ve grown! You were smiling, sunburnt, squinting into the sun. Another was a riding lesson, both of you very serious and important. Kay’s mother held Christopher’s pony’s bridle, her father held Jane’s. The caption read Having a lovely time with our lovely grandchildren.
I didn’t post a comment. I went for a long walk. On the headland above the village is a high sheer cliff. I stood there a long time and listened to the sea, and the wind in the dry grasses. Then remembered the stone a friend says has been dowsed and draws magic from deep in the earth. I always thought this was nonsense, but I bent and touched it to send you my blessing.
I find this is my seventh letter. It’s hard to remember the other six. I think I got stuck on one topic each time, something I thought would interest you. There was the Seagull Letter, the Seal Pup Letter, the Seaweed Letter … I don’t know whether you read them, or had them read to you, or what you thought of your birthday and Christmas presents. Maybe the letters were unsuitable. Or unwelcome, like tar on the beach. And the presents tainted, attempts to arouse your gratitude or make you notice me.
Perhaps I should have overcome my fear and driven to see you when I still could. Now my hands are claws, useless for steering, but still able to wield a needle and scissors—just. I’m very slow! The good news is, that gives my work scarcity value. If you ever see my wall hangings you’ll find them quite original. The grey of the sea goes into them, the duck-egg blue of the sky, and the brown of the creel netting, but I often add blobs of red, which sing out. One day I might portray a creel with a lobster in it, wondering how something easy to get into is impossible to escape.
Meanwhile, it’s almost time to draw the curtains. I look at these hands and think I’m clawing my way into the future. Gales are forecast, but moving lights in the dark show one crew setting out regardless. Join me, Jane and Christopher, in wishing them safe passage. And give Kay and Roger my very best wishes. With all my love, your Grandma Ella.
Trouble
This feller’s got trouble written all over him.
There he is at the counter with his back to me, ordering coffee in a rough voice. His body language is wrong, he’s standing unnaturally still, and when he moves he lifts his arms jerkily like a puppet. And his clothes, they’re wrong too. A tight wolf-skin-coloured anorak with two inches of jacket showing below it. Has he thrown on the first things he found? No, he’s done it deliberately to make me stare, so he can stare back: ‘Lookin’ at me?’
You can bet your life he’s going to sit near me. Not in the window by the two old women. Not in the corner by the young couple with the baby. See? Here he comes. Hair short all over. His face bad news just like the back of his head.
It doesn’t matter that I’m minding my own business. Enjoying a cup of tea on the way home from a day’s cycling. Reading headlines in the local rag—GIRL FIGHTS OFF PERVERT, MAN BEATEN IN SAVAGE ATTACK—the usual stuff. I knew it’d be with me that he’d have the problem.
He sits at the next table, eyes me up and down. That’s how they start, his type—set you on edge, get you on the wrong foot. He’s looking for something about me to comment on. My cycling shorts perhaps. Thinks I’m too old to wear them at fifty-three. So how old’s he? Thirty I’d guess. Then why does he make me think of a kid of ten?
When I was ten Dad took me to his home town in Scotland. Every day kids cornered me in the street outside my Grandad’s. They sneered at my accent and spat incomprehensible insults. I knew they were insults from the tone. One lad started jostling me. Dad called from the window, “Sock him.” I didn’t. I never did, the whole week.
I was never afraid of a roughhouse. At home I scuffled with friends, wrestled, and shouted, “Pile on!” But in a real fight I was terrified of losing my temper. If someone cheated me or hit me with malice the blood would surge behind my eyeballs, I’d go OTT, roar like a demon, lunge at the enemy’s eyes and balls. Afterwards I’d sit alone in the shed, drained and miserable, shaken by the thought of the damage I’d tried to do.
Dad taught me to box. Well, that’s what he thought. What he did was dance round me and land hard slaps on my face barehanded.
“Come on, keep up your guard.”
Wham, another slap. “Ow,” I said.
“Move, ye’ve to keep moving.”
Wham. “Ow.”
“Duck, ye’ve to duck your head.”
“I don’t understand what you have to do.”
When I grew up I did some judo. Learned how you have to concentrate your energy. Lost some of my fear of unknown men and their physical presence. Only got as far as orange belt, but winning that was a big step for me. On the way home from the grading meeting I called on Dad.
“Ye can hold your own now,” he said.
“I don’t know about that.”
“Aye. A quick chop says who’s boss.”
I said, “That’s karate. This is judo. It’s just sport. It means ‘the gentle art’.”
He gave me an empty look and turned his attention back to the telly.
The feller’s still looking me over. No shame, no uncertainty. I’ll ignore him, read through the paper a second time. No, too depressing. Look at the plastic flowers, the menu.
No good. He leans towards me. I freeze.
He says, “I’ve just lost me dad.”
There’s a long pause. Then I say, “I’m very sorry.”
“Can’t gerrover it. I’ve not slept since yesterday.”
“What happened?”
“He woke up with a headache. Three hours later they took him in. Ten hours later he was dead. A massive brain haemorrhage.”
Now we look at each other straight. His face is like a medieval carving I saw in Germany. One of the crucified thieves. Scored with deep vertical lines, nose and forehead bony. His eyes, rimmed with red between swollen pillows of flesh, droop at the outside edges as if weighted.
“Was it unexpected?” I ask.
“Totally.”
“Must have been a terrible shock.”
His eyes lose focus. “Can’t go for a pint with him no more. Can’t go and say, ‘Hey, Dad, lend us a fiver.’” He twists his hand down and holds it out backwards to illustrate. “I mean, your dad’s your best friend, isn’t he?”
The waitress brings more coffee which saves me thinking of a reply. He stirs it with a distant look, like someone just hauled from a shipwreck, but his eyes have filled.
“I’m at war with Jesus,” he says. “For taking him.”
There’s no answer to that. Jesus and I lost touch some time ago. Dad still goes to church when someone’ll take him. Maybe he prays for me, who knows?
I ask, “Is your mother living?”
“Yeah. She can’t cope, doesn’t know where she is. She’s on tranquillisers.” And as if he’s just remembered, with mild surprise, “So am I.” He looks straight at me again. “He wouldn’t have suffered, would he?”
“No.”
“Wouldn’t have felt no pain.”
“Not a thing.”
He seems satisfied.
I ask, “How old was he?”
“Fifty-three.”
Time to go. I pay the waitress and stand up with my saddlebag. My thighs are stiff. He looks up at me. I wish I could say, ‘Sorry for your trouble,’ but I’m not Irish.
“Bye then. I’m very sorry.”
“Is your Dad alive?” he asks.
“Yes. But he’s been that close to dying.” I hold up finger and thumb an inch apart. “One time I really thought he’d gone.”
“And I bet you cried.”
I mutter something about Dad starting to recover before what was happening had sunk in. The feller nods and takes a swig of coffee.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, you’ll have
cried all right.”
Whiskey and Halva
“Failure is instructive,” Raj says.
“Because it makes me determined to succeed?”
Raj shakes his head. The fierce sun makes blue highlights in his hair. “Because you confront your ego, Dermot. That monkey on your shoulder.”
“There’s no monkey on my shoulder.”
“Correction—an ape. Even more hard to shift.”
Across the square a boy of about fifteen is shouting urgently, “Soba, Aw Wadi, Aw Wadi.” He bends forward, his pointing arm tense. But the bus he points to isn’t one they need.
“So where is Mr Madi?” Dermot asks.
A forlorn question. It’s clear they won’t get to see the Souk al Gamal, the camel market, or the whirling dervishes. The slow time will go unfilled. Raj holds up his right hand with the fingers curved back, the gesture of an Indian dancer.
“I imagine he fails to achieve petrol. Thus sharing my own petrol failure, leaving us with failure to achieve our aim.”
After another half hour it’s back to the government rest house. Raj’s heel-less shoes flap annoyingly.
On guard at Tahir’s office, two policemen in dusty black uniforms. Inside, long corridors. Sand has blown in through open windows.
“Any boxes, Mr Tahir?”
“Ma fi, Mr Smeeth.”
The desk fan blows dusty papers all over. The ad hoc paperweights don’t help. One is a Tahini jar filled with sand. When Tahir stoops to retrieve his documents there’s a round patch of sweat on the back of his shirt. Dermot thinks of the circles cut in the uniforms of prisoners-of-war.
“When’s the next freight train?”
“Ma fiish ghatr.”
At the rest house Raj is back for lunch. Every morning he checks the freight section at the airport.
“You know there are no trains, Dermot. Heavy rain washed away the line from the port.”
“I need to check. Do something.”
Raj nods. He understands.
“So nothing at the airport, Raj? Big-end bearing shells?”
“No.”
“Filter elements, carbon brushes, a decoke set?”
“Nothing. I am told every aircraft bombs the rebels. Or drops food to those unfortunates who flee the fighting.”
Claire says, “You’re being melodramatic, Dermot.”
“Am I though?”
“You think you’re some tragic hero. A character in a film.”
Dermot makes a slow circuit of the room. Picks up a cloisonné vase that belonged to his grandmother and wonders what she’d think of this scene. He straightens a pile of books. The top one is Ten Steps to Self-Improvement. He picks a rubber band off the carpet. By the time he returns to his starting point nothing has changed.
Claire is in her dressing-gown, green winceyette. Scarlet varnish is wearing off her toenails. It makes them look diseased. She keeps looking at him, then away, studying the sky through the grimy window. Perhaps the right thing to say is written among the clouds. He thinks of kissing her, risking an outcry. He doesn’t.
The rest house, Tahir’s office, American Express—no other life. Every day he walks the six blocks to look for a letter, trembling. He imagines slitting the envelope and seeing the edge of something. Doom? When he tries with awkward fingers to pull it out it will catch and buckle. He’ll unfold it, see the plain back first, then turn it over, breathless …
Sometime he walks in warm rain. Or after rain, everything steaming. Or when harsh sunlight makes palm-leaf shadows on roughcast walls. He passes huge pots with pointed bases on metal stands. Crowds of men around flaking kiosks buying Pepsi and Marlboros. Their dusty black faces contrast with the white of headcloths and djellabias.
So far, no letter.
“I shall go to San Giacomo College,” says Raj. “It may be suitable for my son.”
Evidently a Catholic school is next best to a Hindu one. Many saints, many gods, Dermot supposes.
“I wish you well with that, Raj.”
“And someone should wish us well with generators. We cannot repair them when correct parts are lacking.”
“And you can’t rent a flat till your furniture arrives.”
“Every day I pray to God.”
“One God? I thought you had several.”
Raj widens his eyes. The whites are very slightly bloodshot. “What else are you thinking, Dermot?”
“That you believe the world is supported by four elephants standing on the shell of a huge turtle.”
“If this is what you believe, Dermot, no wonder you are confused.” Raj says this without irony.
Often silence falls between them. Silent companionship. The ceiling fan throbs, as always except when there’s a power-cut. Looking up Dermot sees himself reflected at its centre like someone down in a well.
“Okay, Raj. Do you believe in rebirth?”
“Yes, because you know that Bireddin? He was valet to a bishop. And now is reborn as our dhobi wallah.”
“Raj?”
“Yes?”
“Why do you mispronounce my name? It’s not ‘Dare-mot’.”
Raj grins. “But it has to rhyme with ‘Dare not’.”
Claire says, “I’m ashamed, all right? I fell. You weren’t here. I didn’t hear from you. I didn’t know when you’d be back from South America. If you’d be back.”
“It was hard to phone from where I was. I arrived from the airport to a locked house, keys buried in my luggage. So I went to Ryan’s Bar and tried two hours later. You looked shocked, as if I was a stranger. Which I suppose I was.”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t hug or kiss me. The house felt empty.”
Claire sighs and squeezes her eyes shut.
Dermot says, “I soon picked up on the signs. Your hushed tone when your boss rang, the bed not slept in, your … awkwardness.”
“All right! He’s divorced. I was staying with him.”
“So what happens now?”
“Nothing, Dermot. That interlude is over.”
Details kill you, Dermot thinks. The word ‘interlude’ maddens him. They both start shouting at once. Hurt by a partner’s absence! Stressed by a demanding job! Anger makes Claire’s bosom heave. Dermot thinks of her boss fondling her breasts. Her normally pale face is crimson, ill-matched with the rust red of her hair.
Raj invites Dermot to the India Club.
“But you can’t get petrol.”
“We will take a boxi.”
“They don’t stop for Europeans. I’ve tried.”
“I will be with you.”
The smell of hot oil, the rattle of the truck’s bodywork, the unintelligible conversation all around, make Dermot feel free to speak.
“While I was on a job in South America, Claire had an affair.”
“Who is that Claire?”
“I told you.”
“She who sends no letter. Even though the same spirit is in both of you.”
Dermot isn’t in the mood for mystical stuff. Except maybe the giant tortoise.
A tall man with a brown polished face and neat moustache leans across the narrow gangway and exchanges words with Raj in Urdu. Not that different from Hindi, it seems. The man turns to Dermot.
“Excuse my overhearing your mention of adultery. I am Dr Aftab Salik, University Department of Econometrics. You should know that, in my country, adulterous woman receives forty vips.”
“Whips?”
“Yes, vips.”
“And if it was because she was lonely and distressed?”
Dr Salik thinks for a moment. “Thirty-nine vips.”
The bustle of arrival cuts this conversation. Alighting in an unfamiliar street near the central market, Dermot steps on a cast-iron manhole cover. In the sun-gilded dust raised by the boxi, amid the clamour of voices and the flitting of black limbs in white robes, he reads letters raised in the metal, polished by passing feet.
“Raj! Raj! Look! My uncle went to work in t
hat foundry. It’s in a town in the North of England.”
Raj laughs. “A relic of British rule. These people took too long to shake the buggers off. We Indians beat them to it.”
“And so,” says Dermot, “did we.”
Met my love by the gasworks wall/Dreamed a dream by the old canal … Vents in the dirty brick-arched windows issued plumes, reflected in the canal. Familiar from childhood visits with his father. The interior smelt of smoke and burnt grease and hot sand. Men in sweat-stained vests made crimson spouts from the bowls of long ladles. Streams of molten iron so bright they belonged in a different world.
One moment the liquid could become anything. The next it cooled to a shape only shattering could alter. There was beauty in the virgin shine of those newborn castings. With lettering and lozenge shapes proud of the surface and keyholes to fit the long rods of men in peaked caps. The umbilical sprue of those manhole covers was yet to be ground off, patina had yet to dull them.
And here, in this baking city with its dark smell of decay and earth, its ochre streets whose blank buildings turn inwards in sanctified privacy, is one of them.
Afternoons in the rest house. No pattern. He stares at the walls, counts lizards. Reads books he wouldn’t read at home. Calls Abdallah—‘Ya Abdallah!’—to make a cup of tea, and disturbing him at prayer feels guilty.
The Ya Abdallah habit is from Raj, who is used to servants. When his furniture and effects arrive from Libya he can leave the rest house and his wife and children can join him.
“Glad I didn’t lumber myself with a family.”
“Not married, Dermot?”
“No, Raj. And I’ve just left my partner.”
“But you expect a letter.”
“There won’t be one.”
“Yet you go often to American Express to look.”
“There’s damn all useful she can say.”
“Usefulness is required by practical men. And you do not telephone.” He nods. “Always there is suffering.”
“Do you miss your wife and kids?”
Raj says nothing.
Every evening meal in the rest house is the same: meat chunks, okra, potato, spicy sauce, followed by green bananas. Afterwards they stroll around the diplomatic quarter. Quiet streets, lush squares of garden behind high steel fences. The slap of Raj’s shoes. Then back to the rest house for whiskey and halva and biscuits, and Raj sighing, ‘Ah, not very bad.’ A supper Dermot grows to dislike. But if he misses it or the walk he feels bereft.