‘“Very friendly”?’ Trudy said, and giggled.
Ruth kept her gaze steady.
‘Well.’ Trudy shrugged. ‘I sure don’t trust ’em.’ Then she said, abruptly: ‘You’ve probably been too busy with your friendly Arabs to know that Anjali’s in hospital.’
‘In hospital?’
‘So you didn’t know. Oh, yes. It’s the baby.’ She paused for effect. ‘It happened two days ago, on Tuesday. She had cramps, and bleeding. They rushed her in. There was an ambulance, and everything. They gave her drugs to stop the labour for as long as possible – they thought she was going into labour, you see.’
‘And how is she now?’
‘Stable. Well, I saw her yesterday, and she was stable. I’m sure she’d appreciate a visit from you.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Ruth said. ‘That’s awful. I’ll go today.’ She stood, helpless, while Trudy found a piece of paper and wrote down the name and address of the private hospital where Anjali was taken. She had preferred Anjali to Trudy, despite her affectations. They had joked, one day, about mother-in-laws – Ruth was not sure how the subject had come up, but all of a sudden she had found herself telling Anjali how Euan’s mother disliked her, considered her not good enough, not educated enough, for her only son. How in the wedding photos, Euan’s parents were standing apart from hers, and not smiling, not in a single one. How awkward Christmases were, and family gatherings: how she often locked herself in the bathroom, to hide her tears. How even when they had called their baby after Euan’s sister, who was in turn named for her grandmother, it had not brought the family closer.
‘I didn’t even like the name Anna,’ Ruth had said, and it was the first time she had said it to anyone. Anna, playing at her feet, had smiled and looked up, and she had sighed. ‘I mean I’m used to it now, she’s definitely an Anna now. But I always wanted to call her Lorelei or Bethany, something exotic, you know?’
‘Lorelei,’ Anjali had said, curving her tongue around the strange syllables. ‘For me – Maya or Mohini. But Maarlen and his mother are convinced Baby is a boy.’ And then she had talked about her mother-in-law, how she would come over one month before the baby was due, and stay for six months after that. They had both laughed, and grimaced, and commiserated over that. When Ruth left, they had promised to have another gossip soon: and Ruth had not, because then had come the day at Al Bander, and the war, and then Farid.
Now, she felt a surge of guilt, as if she had somehow betrayed Anjali, too.
*
Farid drove her to the hospital that afternoon. It was not far: on the outskirts of Manama town, just off the main roundabout. But it took a long time to get there: it was Thursday, the first day of the Arab weekend, and the roads were jammed. It took them almost five minutes to inch around the main roundabout alone. He could tell that something was up, that something had changed, she could see that. He kept glancing at her, anxiously, and clearing his throat. She tried several times to make conversation, but everything she said sounded somehow stilted. She tried to make excuses – it was the tail end of her headache, it was concern for her friend – but she knew he knew she was lying.
He parked inside the hospital complex, and said he’d wait for her there. The small parking lot was lined with miniature palm trees, each one trimmed and manicured. The walkways were lined with muhammadi flowers, lilac and white and red, and on either side of the sliding glass doors was a Chinese hibiscus bush, bursting with frothy crimson flowers. The grass in front of the entrance was unfeasibly green: a network of pipes and sprinklers criss-crossed the ground to ensure that the plants were kept damp. It looked more like a boutique hotel, she thought, than a hospital. Inside was cool and quiet, marble floors and white walls, bare apart from a trio of portraits of the King, his brother, and his son the Crown Prince, all smiling benevolently from under checked headdresses. The staff were dressed in crisp white uniforms and peaked hats – like pictures of nurses from the First World War. Even the bellboys standing at the lift had white tunics with gold buttons and caps with golden tassels, and the security guards at the entrance wore smooth charcoal suits and discreet earpieces, like presidential bodyguards.
She gave her name to the receptionist, and asked if it was possible to see Anjali, and the receptionist asked her to be seated. The settees were leather and chrome, and there was a sleek stack of imported glossy magazines on a glass coffee table. American Vogue, French Vogue, Tatler and Harper’s Bazaar and the most recent editions of Hello! Ruth thought of Anjali showing her around the baby’s room for the first time, telling her that the inspiration came from Hello! magazine, and she felt a pang, imagining Anjali falling upon the discarded or out-of-date issues that Maarlen must have brought home.
She had a long wait. She was too distracted by her own thoughts to read any of the magazines, and she fell to thinking instead of the wealth that Bahrainis – or at least the Arab inhabitants, and the more privileged Indians – enjoyed. Farid had tried to explain to her the structure of society here. The sheikhs and sheikhas – there were hundreds of them, the relatives of the King – kept themselves apart. Unless you were one of them, you rarely saw them or interacted with them. You might see their cars – recognisable by the special number plates, with fewer digits than anyone else – and you might catch glimpses of them, crossing the lobbies of the more expensive hotels or being ushered into nightclubs through side doors. But you never met them, or got to know them. Bahrainis who were not related to the royal family came next: and they too lived a pretty good life. Low taxes, good wages, plenty of household staff for their villas and gardens. They holidayed often, in Dubai or America or Europe; their children studied at the top universities abroad. And then, Farid explained, there were the non-Bahraini Arabs: the Kuwaiti or Iranian emigrants, like his mother, or Maryam, who had fled the country for fear of persecution. There were the wealthy Indians and Filipinos – although, he emphasised, even if you were born in the Kingdom or married a Bahraini, as a non-Arab you would never have equal status. And then came the economic migrants, the Africans and subcontinentals who laboured on the building sites or worked as indentured servants. Expats and Westerners, he teased her, were not so high in society’s stratification as they liked to think: but she was all right, as long as she stuck with him.
When she questioned him further, as fascinated by the rigid layering as he was by the difference between Protestants and Catholics, he had used the analogy of prostitutes. The Saudi boys would pay thousands of dinar for an Arab girl, he told her, thousands and thousands. Then a pale-skinned Westerner, English or French. The Russians were cheaper, because they were a lot more ubiquitous. But they were usually beautiful, so they cost more than the Moroccans or the Filipinas. Cheapest of all were the Indians and Eastern Europeans.
He would take her into any bar, he said, in any hotel, and she would see the prostitutes, working in packs. There would always be a blonde one, a dark one, a plump one, a thin one – different nationalities and body shapes to cater for different tastes. You could sit in a hotel bar and watch them circle, watch the men debate their merits and then signal the one of their choice; disappear, and return an hour later.
She had protested, disbelieving, and he had laughed at her naivety, her innocence, he called it. At the time, it had seemed a game. But now, she suddenly realised how little she knew him, and wondered if he had used prostitutes before. It was an unpleasant thought. Perhaps it was being in a hospital that was making her think such things, but they had not always been as careful as they might have been.
Stop it, she told herself, sternly. Stop it. Two days ago – only two days – she had truly believed she had never been, could never be, happier.
She sat there, feeling sicker by the minute, until an orderly appeared to take her up to Anjali’s room.
The room was on the sixth floor of the clinic, looking directly out over the glittering skyscrapers of the financial district and the executive hotels beyond. Maarlen was there, standing by the window, twist
ing the cord to turn the slats of the blinds outwards and back in. Light slanted across the room, thinned, disappeared, blazed again. He turned when Ruth entered, took a step towards her, and stopped.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he said, and he attempted his usual bow. Then he said, in a low voice, ‘It means a lot. Anjali does not have many friends in Bahrain. I know you have been a good friend to her. She talks of you often.’
Anjali was propped up immobile in bed, pale and exhausted, with pads and wires attached to her stomach, monitoring the baby’s heart rate. Ruth kissed her cheek then sat down on a chair beside the bed, stiff and awkward with pity for Anjali, that she should have no better friends to call on.
Anjali spoke about what had happened – the stomach cramps, the blood, the rush to hospital, the tests and more tests, the drugs to delay labour. She was going to stay in hospital, she said, until the baby was born. She paused then, and looked sideways at Maarlen.
‘The baby,’ she said, ‘it is a she. I mean to say, she is a girl. They did ultrasound tests.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘I say to Maarlen, a girl is not so bad. Look at Ruth’s beautiful girl.’ Anjali attempted a laugh. ‘Ruth, where is little Anna?’
Ruth explained that she was with Noor, Dr al-Husayn’s daughter.
‘Really?’ Anjali said, and she frowned. ‘Dr al-Husayn is a good man, a very good man. He is an excellent doctor, and he has been very kind to Maarlen. He find us our house on the compound – when first we arrive we are in a nasty apartment, very noisy. He is a good man. But his daughter – she is troubled, no?’
‘Troubled?’ Ruth said.
‘I do not know the details, I must confess. When she come out here to live, it is only’ – she turned to her husband – ‘February? Valentine Day? Anyhow’ – turning back to Ruth – ‘she come here because there is some problem, she is expelled from school. That is why she lie around the house all day, not go to school.’ Anjali stopped. ‘Oh, but Ruth. I do not mean to alarm you. I am sure your little princess is completely all right.’
‘Noor has always been perfectly pleasant, perfectly normal,’ Ruth said. ‘I wouldn’t leave my daughter—’
‘Oh, no, but of course not,’ Anjali said. ‘I am sorry, Ruth. Forgive me.’
There was a momentary silence. Ruth could feel her mind hiving with sudden doubts and fears. Almost every day, for the past few weeks—
She must not think like that. Anna was fine, Noor – whatever might have gone on in her life – was capable, devoted. She had seen Anna with Noor. Anna was perfectly happy, perfectly safe.
But she wondered, even so, if it was too early to take her leave of Anjali. She was suddenly anxious to get back: to curl up with her daughter and close the door and not let anything, anyone else in. Her heart was beating fast, as if it was trying to keep her body afloat. Suddenly, everything she had ignored, held at bay for the past few weeks was closing in on her: she could feel herself sinking, submerging. The ground she had thought to be solid was not at all.
She stayed a few more minutes, then made her goodbyes.
*
In the car, she says to Farid: it’s no good. We can’t do this. I can’t do this any more. He does not understand what has happened. What’s changed? he keeps asking her, what’s different? and he thumps the steering wheel in frustration, so hard the car swerves across two lanes and almost causes an accident.
‘I love you, Ruth,’ he says. It is the first time either of them has said it, said those words. I love you.
Something tightens within her. ‘You love me?’ she repeats.
‘Don’t you love me?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. They have not talked of love. Maryam’s words, her warning, suddenly echo in Ruth’s ears.
‘I didn’t know—’ she tries. ‘I didn’t think—’
In her bag, her mobile phone starts ringing. She takes it out: it is Euan. She stares at the screen, frozen. She does not answer. He rings off, then immediately starts to ring again.
‘Pull over,’ she says to Farid. ‘Please pull over. It’s my husband.’
He jerks the car off the highway and onto the scrubby verge. She opens the door and scrambles out. The air hums, pulled tight by heat.
Fearing the worst, she takes the call.
*
The preparations were finished and the trip was set for Monday. He was to go at first light, returning for the Maundy service on Thursday, all being well. Now – the calm before the storm, he tried to joke – he was free to spend some time with them.
‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘Are you outside?’
‘Oh,’ she said, vague, ‘I’ve just been to see Anjali at the hospital, I’ll tell you about it later.’
‘I’ll be home shortly,’ he said. ‘I was going to surprise you, but I just couldn’t wait.’
They only just beat him home.
*
It was painful to see Euan making an effort those last few days: he was more loving, more attentive, than he had been in weeks. He hired a car for two days to take them around the island: to the gardens at Al Areen, to the camel farm, even out to Al Bander to watch the sunset – all places she had discovered with Farid. Being there with Euan seemed a mockery of all she had felt, or thought she had felt, with Farid. She felt sick the whole time, in case someone – a waiter, a parking attendant – would recognise her and make some innocent comment, which would give away everything. Bahrain had seemed limitless: a playground. Now, she understood how small it really was: how bounded and circumscribed are all imagined freedoms.
*
Sunday was Palm Sunday. The service was joyful, spectacular. A procession of children strewed palm fronds along the aisle to the altar, and there was even a real, live donkey led in on a rope. They sang Psalm 118: Let Israel say, ‘His love endures for ever!’ Let the house of Aaron say, ‘His love endures for ever!’ Let those who fear the Lord say, ‘His love endures for ever!’ and for the children they sang a hymn of which Ruth had always been fond. Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to hear, Things I would ask him to tell me if he were here, Scenes by the wayside, tales of the sea, Stories of Jesus, tell them to me. It had always summed up, for her, the gladness and simplicity of faith. She had sung it to Anna, often, as a lullaby. But now the words felt facile, sentimental and saccharine, and she mouthed rather than sang them. She felt unspeakably sad as she did so: apprehending what she had lost, of earlier, innocent times when she did not realise that she was unhappy. After the service, everyone was laughing, clapping, applauding the children and the donkey. How long, she thought, could she keep this up, this façade?
*
That night, Euan asked her to pray with him. They had fallen out of the habit, since coming to Bahrain: he had been arriving home so late, she had taken to going to bed without him, or pretending to be already asleep when he got in. But now, there was no excuse.
‘Ruth?’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
As he gazed at her, she wondered if he knew, or suspected. But his eyes were bright, steady. His belief in who he was, in what he was doing, shone so fiercely that it obliterated – made impossible – any shadows. He did not know a thing. He thought her struggles were struggles of faith, not knowing she had passed that, was beyond that now. His incapacity to see, she realised, was a naivety, a kind of innocence, and all of a sudden she felt hollow with sorrow for him. She thought of how he had looked at her on their wedding day, of the private promises they had made each other, on top of their public vows. How nothing could and ever would come between them. Sadness tightened around her chest. It was something, she knew, that she would carry with her always.
For a moment, the resentment and guilt and discontent towards Euan she had amassed and nurtured over the past few weeks melted away. It was just her and him, the man she had loved. And he, she realised, in his innocence, blinded, had no idea, no idea at all. For a moment, she wished with all of her heart that they had never co
me, that they had never left Ireland, that they were safe in the cottage by the lough.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, and she tried to put into those small words an apology for everything, for all that had happened, and all that was to come.
‘Jesus said,’ said Euan, still holding her gaze, ‘“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”’
Her frustration with him flared again. She said nothing, did not even move, but he felt it; she saw him feel it, like an arrow. He closed his eyes, and ducked his head. When he looked up at her again, his eyes were glinting. ‘I love you, Ruth,’ he said.
The way he said it sounded as if he was saying goodbye: and she realised that in a way, he was. Both of them were. To everything they had known before: to how, or who, they had been.
As she looked at him, she had a fleeting vision of Paul at Miletus, taking his leave of the Ephesians. I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. Paul is eager, in his outward words, to suffer pain and martyrdom and die. Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again. Prison and hardships are facing me, but I consider my life worth nothing to me. But suddenly she saw him in a new light: gaunt and frightened in his travel-worn robes and dusty sandals, hauling himself onto a rocky outcrop to address the people thronging on the harbour by the boat, his foot slipping on the sea-spattered stone. He is trying to convince himself, as much as them. He does not want to go, she realises. He knows he has to, but he does not want to go.
Lord, take this cup from me: yet not my will, but yours.
How had she not seen this before? For all of Euan’s rhetoric, for all the ease with which he talked of death, he was scared of pain, and scared to die, just like anyone.
It’s too late for that now, she wanted to say.
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