by Louisa Young
About the worst of it is that Islam, a beautiful religion, gets so warped, and so misrepresented, and … but don’t get me started. This is not a simple area. Enough.
We’d worked out the colour schemes for the costumes, and the basic designs – they’re always much the same, actually, for cabaret. There’s the sweep of skirt with a central slit and a modesty panel down the front behind it (for one of my first costumes I’d forgotten to put one in, and my knickers showed, and I was sent home. It was a truly humiliating occasion, like a dream of going to school with no clothes on, when you’re five). Then there’s the veil, the headband and the bra. We were doing one with pantaloons and a little striped brocade low-cut waistcoat as well: old-fashioned, but very sexy the way the waistcoat lifts the tits under the muslin shirt. But generally they want to see leg.
I used to enjoy embroidering the bras: tiny detailed work, stitching and stitching like a Dickensian heroine ruining her eyes by candlelight, or the slaves making the robe for Oscar Wilde’s young king. Then when your back feels like a fifteen-year-old rubber band, ready to split if you wriggle your shoulders, you look up and realize you have created an item of tiny glistening Faberge perfection, each sequin glinting, each bead just so, the whole encrusted with minute exquisite cheap tat, arranged to seduce and beguile with flash and glamour. It’s a complete and gorgeous illusion. From a bag of haberdashery to the Arabian Nights, because I say so. Now I get someone else to do it. Zeinab knows a group of Sudanese women in Wembley who are incredibly neat and quick, and when they’re not embroidering they’ll sugar your legs, give you a massage, henna your feet, plait your hair – anything that quick little hands can do.
Some girls are so bosomy I have to charge them extra for the extra time it takes to ornament their bras. Some want such garish colours that I charge them danger money. I was embroidering one myself today, in sea-green and gold. Zeinab calls it harem when we sit and work together: one possible root of the word originally meant outlaw, lawless, meaning not so much bad as not covered by the laws of the world – a place with its own law. A place where you didn’t have to fuss about what was meant to be going on outside. I like that.
In this atmosphere, the work should have been soothing, pleasant, but the outside wouldn’t leave me alone, and the work just gave me time to brood. I didn’t want Cooper to want anything more from me. I didn’t know what I wanted Harry to want. I wanted Jim to disintegrate into thin air. And I wanted to know that which I did not know.
To take my mind off it I encouraged Zeinab to gossip and chat; unfortunately her subject for the day was how I had to have a child so that Lily would have company. Zeinab has an English husband and three beautiful sons, and tells me about once a day that she does not see why I of all people should take so literally what the prophet’s daughter Fatima said: that the best of women is she who does not see men, and who they do not see. Today, for once, rather than denying it, I felt that Fatima was right.
I got back from Zeinab’s at about five, expecting to find Brigid and everyone having tea. No one was home. My guess was that they’d stayed at Brigid’s – I couldn’t remember what exactly we’d arranged – so I nipped down the balcony and down to the next floor to her flat. No one there. I nipped down two more floors and round to the other side of the building to Maireadh’s. No one there. Of course, Maireadh would be at work. I ran over to the next block to see Reuben, Maireadh’s boyfriend. He hadn’t seen Brigid since yesterday. I ran down to the Winfield.
‘She’s not been in today,’ said Liam behind the bar. ‘Reuben was in last night though.’ He gave me a vodka and tonic and let me use the phone. I rang home, rang Brigid’s, rang the school (no answer), rang Maireadh’s, rang Reuben.
Liam sent the other barman down to the post office to see if anyone had been in for a packet of sweets. Shirin at the post office said no, she hadn’t seen any of them today. I suddenly thought Jim, then unthought it. He wouldn’t. Possession may be nine-tenths of the law but a man making applications to the court wouldn’t kidnap the child.
Stupid. I was panicking. Brigid would guard Lily with her life. She would never let anything happen to her. It’s just a little domestic crisis. Something came up. Why didn’t she leave a message? Ring in? I ran home to check if there was any sign that they’d been back – a coat, a half-drunk cup of apple juice. A note even. I couldn’t remember how I’d left the kitchen that morning. There was my coffee cup, there was the cheque, the peonies still drooping. I put them in the bin. How can you lose a woman and five children? The answering machine was flashing three messages.
‘Angie, I think we’re going to have to do better. Give me a ring.’ Cooper.
My mother, wittering a bit. Something about some stuff and she wanted to know what I wanted to do with it.
‘Angel, it’s Harry. Um … don’t know where you are. Please give me a ring. Shit. Need to talk to you. I’ll leave the mobile on. Please call as soon as you get this message.’
I rang Brigid, Maireadh, Reuben, Liam. Only Liam answered. Did I want him to speak to his pet copper, he wanted to know. No. I went out to see if my car was anywhere visible. No. I came back in and the answering machine was flashing again.
‘Evangeline. Eddie Bates here. Guess what! Your little girl has popped round to see me. Why don’t you come on over? Bring the book with you.’
I sat down for two seconds, just long enough to think that this was not something I could bear to think about, and I rang him.
‘Marvellous!’ he crowed. ‘How lovely to be able to see you again so soon. Come straight on round.’ The man is mad.
I didn’t shout. I hardly did anything. I gathered myself up enough to say: ‘Why do you have Lily?’
‘She just turned up to see her Uncle Eddie! Isn’t that nice!’
Why is he talking nonsense? Is it real nonsense or trick nonsense?
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Talking about peacocks! Lovely girl. Image of her aunt.’
She doesn’t look like me. I have ordinary grey eyes and hers are huge and speckly. My hair is straight and fair, hers is curly and darker. Peacocks.
I thought he was leaving the country.
‘I’m coming over.’
*
I rang Cooper. He wasn’t there. I left a message with a secretary that I was going to Bates’s house. I tried to make it sound significant and dangerous. It wasn’t difficult.
I rang Harry. The vodaphone number I had dialled was unavailable, please try again later.
I rang the showroom. Jean said she’d give Harry the message.
I rang Liam. He said Brigid had rung saying she couldn’t make it to work that evening. He said she had said Caitlin had had an asthma attack. She was at the hospital. She’d brought Lily home first and had left her there with Harry.
My mind went blank.
‘With Harry?’
‘That’s what she said.’
‘But she doesn’t know Harry.’
‘She said he was at your flat and Lily was pleased to see him so she left her with him.’
‘What was Harry doing in my flat?’
‘Search me,’ said Liam.
‘Why didn’t she call me?’
‘You weren’t there,’ said Liam. ‘She thought Harry was all right.’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ I said. Harry had kidnapped Lily for Eddie Bates. ‘I’ve got to go.’
Where to, Liam wanted to know, and did I want him to come with me? I said no but gave him the address and said if I didn’t call in an hour would he get his copper to come there.
‘You’re a lovely girl, Angeline,’ he said. Thanks, I said.
*
Brigid still had my car so I took a cab. The engine ticktick-tickticked as I got out on Pelham Crescent.
Eddie’s house looked quiet from outside. Inside it was even quieter. He answered the door himself.
‘Where is she?’
‘Come in, come in,’ he purred.
‘Where is she?’
>
‘Not in fact here.’
‘Where is she!’
‘I’ve no idea.’
He’s no idea, I’ve no idea. Three years old. He could have put her in the attic and be lying through his smooth and pearly white teeth. Does he know I know that Harry had her? (Harry! What are you doing?)
‘How did you know she was missing?’
He smiled.
‘How did you know about the peacocks?’
‘Have a drink, my dear. I’m afraid I’ve given Siao Yen the evening off.’
He was so smooth and so cruel.
‘Really,’ he continued. ‘She’s not here. I just wanted to make sure you would come, and having been disabused of the belief that you respond nicely to correct approaches, I had to use subterfuge.’
I looked at him.
‘Really,’ he said.
I believed that she wasn’t there. You can smell a child’s presence in a house. An extra light dimension, breathing, a warmth, something. I had lived with it, known it, taken pleasure inhaling it every night, had tried and failed and thought better of trying to describe it to people who thought I would resent not being able to go to nightclubs any longer. She wasn’t there.
‘Then where is she?’ I murmured.
Bates was pouring himself a drink. ‘Sherry? Champagne? What would you like?’
‘To know where she is.’
‘We’ll deal with that all in good time,’ he said. ‘Now, I believe you have something of mine.’
‘No I don’t. I gave it to Ben Cooper.’
‘Ah!’ he shouted, almost gleefully. ‘Ben Cooper! Of course, the missing link. I should’ve guessed. No reason for you to want to have anything to do with me, is there? Is there!’
I wondered how much he had had to drink.
‘Darling girl,’ he said. ‘Darling girl. Really, how terrible that a wonderful girl like you should have to run errands for a little squit like Ben Cooper. Now how can I possibly make it up to you. You poor thing. Have a drink.’
He danced back to the drinks cabinet and pulled a bottle of champagne out of an ice-bucket. It was still dripping ice-mist. He’d got it ready. Taken it out of the fridge. For this occasion.
‘I must go,’ I said.
‘No no no you mustn’t,’ he said.
‘I have to find Lily,’ I said, and moved towards the door.
‘Stop or I shall shoot you!’ he cried. Oh, Jesus. The gun. I looked round.
He was aiming the bottle of champagne at me, a white napkin over his arm, easing off the wire and tickling the cork. Thinks he’s bought me, does he?
‘Here we go … o-o-o!’ He shouted. ‘Wheeee!’ and raised the bottle. The cork flew out and hit the Chagall in the middle of her merbelly.
‘You’re not going anywhere, though, are you?’ he whispered to me. Oh, god, he’s mad. I took a glass of champagne and drained it.
‘You don’t have my child and I don’t have your book,’ I said, gently. I was suddenly glad of the practice I had had over the past weeks in not panicking. Jim didn’t panic me; this won’t panic me. Jesus, I’ve been not panicked from Casablanca to Istanbul, and via the back roads too. I shall deal with it. That’s what women do. Deal with it.
‘I don’t give a hoot for the book, my darling, not a hoot. Poor little Ben, trying to prop himself up with irrelevant objects.’ He was laughing. I wasn’t.
‘What have you got me here for, then?’
‘To tell you off. Or maybe fuck you. Or maybe both.’
Change the subject, change the subject.
‘You kidnapped Lily to tell me off?’
‘Didn’t kidnap anybody. Took advantage of circumstances, that’s all. But if you don’t behave I’ll have her killed. Now. Put this on. Let’s get in the mood.’
‘I’m leaving now,’ I said.
‘I know where she is!’ he said. ‘You don’t know that I don’t! You just behave, and then little Lily will be back in Mummy’s arms.’
‘Where is she, then?’
He just tutted, and handed me a bundle. A bright, shimmering, flouncy bundle, pink and silver. It was a belly-dancing costume. It was one of mine. I shook it out: the chiffon skirt, the silver embroidery, the long veil with its silver edging, The bra fell heavily to the floor. Pink and silver, encrusted with rhinestones, stained with sweat. I remembered it. I had made it. I had given it to Janie.
Janie. She had loved my dancing, wanted to join in but she was no good at it. She’d had a few classes, got excited about it and then given up, as she so often did. Janie, what is going on? Janie, my sister my friend my sister I miss you I miss you I miss you. Not that you would have been a blind bit of good in this situation. Idiotic Janie.
‘Put it on!’ he urged, smiling. ‘You can change in the hall. I’d like to maintain the mystique. It’s quite safe, no one will see you, there’s no one else here.’
‘Where is Lily?’ I said. I was getting boring.
‘Do as you’re told,’ he said.
I went into the hall. I sat on the pristine carpet at the bottom of Vivien Leigh’s staircase and pulled off my boots and my jeans. Only half an hour before Liam calls his policeman, I thought. Harry may have Lily but he won’t hurt her. He may not be the man I knew but he won’t have become someone who hurts children. Will he? No. No … No. Liam said Brigid said she liked him. Pleased to see him. God, Brigid, you weren’t to know.
I’ll dance for him; if he tries it on I’ll kill him. Like Morgiana, Ali Baba’s servant girl, when she recognized the captain of the forty thieves having dinner in their house, disguised as a venerable merchant with a long white beard. After cooking and serving the dinner, she decked herself in all her finery, anklets and bracelets with silver bells, her long amber necklace and her golden girdle with the jade-hilted dagger hanging from it in its decorated sheath, all the little presents Ali Baba had given her before for being so clever and killing all the thieves when they were hidden in the oil pots. She had antimony round her eyes, which glittered with a feverish light, and henna on her slender hands and feet, and her shining hair fell down to her gold-circled waist. First she danced like a happy bird, the dance of the handkerchief, and the Persian dance, and then she started the slow, swaying, dance of the dagger, with Abdullah the black slave playing the tabor, strange and mysterious, and she pulled the blade from its silver sheath, waving and gesticulating as she plunged it first into imaginary enemies and then, as the rhythm quickened to a feverish pace, whirling and whirling and enchanting the eyes of the men, she plunged it into the old merchant’s heart.
Her prize was Ali Baba’s son Ahmad. I’ll get ten years. Self-defence. I’ll never see Lily. Mum and Dad will look after her. It’ll be all right. I’ll just be a crippling failure at the only thing I ever wanted to do, that’s all. Not the end of the world. Lily doesn’t need me. One hair of her head, one tear on her face. I promised her. Promised Janie, promised Lily.
The carpet tickled my arse. I stood to pull on the skirt. The fact that the waistband still fitted gave me momentary and irrelevant pleasure. I took off my top and fastened on the bra. There was a simple ring in my belly where the ruby ought to be. (Little Egypt came out struttin’ wearing nothin’ but a button and a bow, oh oh oh oh; she had a ruby in her tummy and a diamond big as Texas on her toe, oh oh oh oh …) I must have looked like crap, untanned, unsugared, unshaven, unfit, red lines round my waist from the jeans, with my scars and my very slightly withered left leg which nobody but I noticed. There had been no muscle there when it came out of plaster. Nothing. Bone, skin, and a sort of amorphous floppiness. A shocking horror to a dancer.
Why am I worrying about the details of my appearance when Eddie Bates has kidnapped my child? Because it prevents me thinking about what is going on. What is going on? Find out. Find out what he wants. He’s mad. Let’s hope it’s something simple.
If he just wants sex will I?
Why should he get what he wants?
Would I?
For Lily?
<
br /> For even the chance of helping her?
Where is she?
And if I do, what will he do?
And if I don’t?
I don’t do that.
I am not a prostitute for any price.
I don’t do it for money, I do it for love.
For love of Lily?
I don’t trust him anyway.
I don’t do that. I don’t sell sex.
I can dance, though. I can dance for anyone.
Standing in the hallway, I heard the music start up inside. A very familiar sound. My music. A tape of Ahmed’s band. ‘Our little percussionist,’ he used to call me, because I controlled my anklet bells so beautifully – I could dance with them silent for fifteen minutes then with one flick have them shiver and ring; I could carry the stillness which is the heart of the dance. Everything I know about controlling my little cymbals I learnt from the Sufi dancers at Al-Ghoury. I loved the idea of being a musician and a dancer. Dancing the music.
Why does Bates have a tape of Ahmed’s music? He has planned this. What has he planned? Is this just a complex and ineffably maladroit pass? He didn’t know I existed before last week. Why does he have Janie’s costume? Does he know who I am?
I am not going to be tormented. I am not going to run away and be stalked around this big house by a man who wants my body. In the film of my life Sharon Stone is not going to be me, whimpering, while Robert de Niro points a gun to my head and cries: ‘Dance, bitch, dance!’ I will not teeter on frightened high heels for anyone’s gratification.