Eight Months on Ghazzah Street: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

  “Don’t you remember at all?” she asked.

  He put a hand gently on her shoulder for a second as he stepped off the curb. “Why does it matter?”

  “Oh, I’ve been thinking about that lawn. About what it might be like to have real grass, instead of Astroturf. When they plant flowers here they look like wax. The trees all seem to be dying. You really didn’t see it? You don’t remember me mentioning it?”

  “’Fraid not.” They were at Dunroamin now, outside the metal door in the wall; Andrew fumbled with his keys in the half-light. “Seen any more rats lately?” he asked.

  “No. I’ve heard them.”

  “Damn.” Andrew dropped his keys on the step. He bent to retrieve them. She looked back over her shoulder, down the empty street. But it was not empty, because outside the computer-supplies shop, with its locked metal shutters, a man in a thobe stood in the shadow of the wall; he was looking away from her, his head turned toward the Medina Road, and in his hand, butt downward toward the pavement, he held a rifle.

  “Andrew—”

  Her voice died in her throat. She put out a hand, and softly touched his bent back. He straightened up, the keys jangling, and pushed one into the lock. There was a scrape of metal. “Must oil this,” he said. “No use waiting for Raji to do it, might filthy up his best suit.” He pushed open the door, and stepped inside, behind the wall. She glanced back down the street. The man was still there, motionless. “Come on,” Andrew said. She tore her eyes away, and stepped inside; he locked the gate behind her.

  Next morning at eleven the doorbell rang. She expected Shams, with some of the leftovers from the dinner for thirty, but instead it was a male visitor—a scented little man, with a bristling, freshly trimmed beard, a thobe, and a briefcase. Under his thobe he had a tight little paunch, which seemed less a part of him than a prized possession; as his eyes passed over her, he patted it with his free hand. “Hello, madam,” he said, and grinned broadly. “I am the landlord. I come to introduce myself.”

  “How do you do?” Frances said.

  “Can I come in and look at my property?”

  “Yes, if you like.”

  He stepped in, put down his briefcase, and brought his hands together, with a little double clap. “You have any complaints?” He spoke as if this were not possible; not even imaginable.

  “There are rats,” Frances said.

  “Outside?” said the landlord swiftly.

  “Certainly, outside,” she admitted.

  “But I am concern only with inside.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “I may tour around?”

  “Go ahead.” She sat down at the desk, to resume writing her diary; then got up as he left the room and wandered between the armchairs, restless, her arms folded protectively across her breasts.

  When the landlord had toured around he came back to the sitting room, with an expression of satisfaction. “I compliment you,” he said. “You keep it very nice. I am a lover of the British. What part you are from?”

  “Yorkshire.”

  “Yorkshire.” The landlord glowed, and kissed his bunched fingertips. “I am knowing your Yorkshire. I am knowing that country so well. Windsor Castle, Tottenham Hotspur. William Wordsworth, the Bard of Avon. Your famous Langan’s Brasserie.” His eyes slid over her again. “Madam, how many children you have got?”

  “I have four,” she said. “All boys.”

  “I congratulate you,” the landlord said, in simple pleasure. “And yet you seem to be a girl of twenty-one, madam.” He took occasion to sidle up to her, and pat her waist. She moved away. “You will be seeing more of me,” he promised.

  “Don’t forget your briefcase,” Frances said.

  “That lady across, does she wear the veil?”

  “Yes and no. She covers her head.”

  “Ah,” said the landlord, with a pious look. “Then I will not bother her. She will not open the door.”

  Bother me, won’t you, you fat little greasepot, Frances thought. She let him out and locked the door behind him. She hoped that he would hear the turn of the key.

  Frances Shore’s Diary: 8 Rabi al-thani

  Yet another letter in the newspaper today, debating whether women are the source of evil and sin.

  Yasmin says that the Bedu have hunting rifles, and sometimes bring them to town. I didn’t tell her why I was asking.

  Andrew’s model arrived at last. It was detained by the customs men, and he and Jeff had to go up to the airport and collect it, taking Hasan with them in case anyone had to be bribed. They brought it back here, to my surprise, and put it down on the dining room table. It was a perfect white palace sealed in a Perspex box, like a spoiled child’s toy. They looked like death. Jeff said, I shall have to go and borrow Russel’s electric drill. I said, why, what are you going to do to it, isn’t it right? Andrew said, The Ministry would go mad if they saw this.

  And when I looked closely, I saw that the model makers had peopled it, and that on its snaky glass escalators, and on its emerald plastic lawn, there were miniature women—pin-thin Californian executive women, in sharp suits, and flossy Californian secretary women, with miniskirts, and tight sundresses showing off their glossy plastic shoulders and their half-bare plastic breasts.

  Andrew stamped around saying, have we got a wire coat-hanger, have we got tweezers?

  When Jeff brought back the drill they made a little hole in the back, and tied the tweezers to the coathanger, and pushed them through the hole. Then one by one, they got a grip on the plastic women, by their heads, and dragged them out, swearing, saying have they no bloody idea in Los Angeles? Well, there’s my morning gone, Jeff said. I collected the little women in the palm of my hand. They were perfect, each one with the same doll’s features, and crushed skull.

  Jeff went back to the office then, but Andrew knelt down and looked at his model for a long time, his hands flat on the table and his chin resting on his hands, pretending to gaze up from street level. I said, to encourage him, it will be all right now, you can fill up the hole with glue. He said, the money is running out.

  I was amazed. I thought that in the Kingdom I would never hear those words. It can’t be running out.

  He said, we are running out of money to pay the subcontractors, because the Saudi government has not paid us.

  Why not?

  Because oil has fallen, they’re cutting back. It’s hitting everybody, all the government departments. They’re all fighting each other for cash.

  But they must have vast reserves—

  Of course, but Turadup KSA hasn’t got vast reserves. I may not get paid for another month.

  But you will get paid?

  Eventually. We are waiting for some money to be remitted from Riyadh.

  He looked worried. Depressed. Said, I don’t think somehow I will ever see the building finished. It is, he said, just like the rest of the world, you dream about something but they won’t let you do it. I think I was dreaming about this building before I saw the architect’s plan, before I’d ever heard of Turadup. But to them it’s just another capital project.

  I saw him gathering his wits, for months of silent effort. We’ll just have to wait, he said, sit it out, but I really think, I really do think, that they’ve cheated me. The promises were false.

  I put the Californians in my desk drawer. They looked care-free, even with their mutilations. Andrew will now start to think about the building day and night, and if there is anything else to be thought about, that will have to be done by me.

  “I have to ask you something,” Frances said to Andrew. “About the empty flat. Though I realize you may be bored with the topic.”

  “I haven’t found out anything new, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I was just thinking that an awful lot of people seem to know something about it. All the khawwadjihs have heard the rumor, even though they have different versions of it. And so, what they’re doing, this couple, isn’t it very risky?”

 
“Of course it is,” Andrew said. “Presumably it’s a risk they’re prepared to take. You can’t keep things quiet in this town.”

  “Can’t you? You see, he needn’t use Dunroamin. Why does he? You said yourself that there were hundreds of villas empty in Jeddah, that there were whole apartment blocks to let.”

  “I suppose that if you drove up to what is meant to be an empty block, or an empty house, and went into it, and if you did that a few times, people might notice and get suspicious.”

  “That’s true. So if he comes here, it would look as if he were visiting somebody.”

  “Yes. Quite legit.”

  “But what if our neighbors see him? Or see the woman? Are they in on it? Do they know?”

  “Yasmin and Samira don’t hang about on the stairs, do they, waiting to accost strangers?”

  “But Raji? And Abdul Nasr?”

  “Maybe they’re in on it. This man is a VIP. They wouldn’t cross him, would they?”

  “But what about us?” Frances said. “How can they rely on our discretion?”

  “They probably think I’m too attached to my paycheck to rock the boat.”

  “And the landlord—does he know?”

  “I don’t suppose there’s a special adulterer’s rent book.”

  “But listen, Andrew, there is something wrong here—because if the khawwadjihs know about it, if they talk about it and speculate and make jokes, then the Saudis must know about it, too, mustn’t they? So are you saying that there’s a benign conspiracy, that everybody knows, but they turn a blind eye?”

  “I don’t know.” He was exasperated; she had known he would be, before too long. “I don’t see how you expect me to enter into the thought processes of a Saudi princeling having a bit on the side. What is it, Fran, have you finished your detective story? Do you want to go up to the library tonight?”

  “Yes, we could do. I’m getting bored with them though. I’m never really happy with the motives. The books don’t go into motives enough. It’s all stuff about the footprints in the garden, and the caliber of the murder weapon, but you never find out what really interests you.”

  “Maybe,” Andrew said tentatively, “you shouldn’t be so interested in the empty flat.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if the whole thing hasn’t been made up.”

  “By whom?”

  “Oh, by some bored expat trying to brighten his life. After all, it’s just the sort of thing we like to believe about the Saudis, that they’re hypocrites, and that they do all this hole-in-corner stuff.”

  “That would be boring for you, though. If none of it were true. I wonder if this chap up above has any idea how much time we spend discussing him?”

  “I can’t imagine.” She tried to imagine. She tried to picture the man, whom she knows that one day she must meet on the stairs—if the rumor is true at all. But she could only see a stiff white thobe, unoccupied, in two dimensions, like the one the laundryman held up to the streetlights and headlights of Al-Suror Street; she could only see a ghutra framing nothing, an emptiness where the face should be. His image wouldn’t move, it wouldn’t turn the key in the lock, it wouldn’t climb the stairs; if I can’t imagine it, she said, it can’t happen. Surely nothing in Dunroamin can happen without my knowledge. “Just suppose—” she said. But Andrew had lost interest in the conversation. She had taxed his patience; he had the building to think about, the great world outside the wall.

  “I think,” he said, “that you’re on your own too much.”

  She said, “I like my own company.”

  The weather had cooled down; not much, but enough. In the dead time between Christmas and New Year, Frances thought she might sunbathe on the roof. There were higher buildings around, but no one ever looked out of them; and she could hear cousin Clare’s voice, speaking to her from the summer ahead, saying, Why Frances, you’re just as pale as when you went out there.

  Hands flat on the warm parapet, she looked out over the city. Over on Medina Road an endless stream of traffic went by. There was distant snarling of engines, bestial but subdued, as if a hidden circus were in town. There was the usual dust haze, pierced by the bones of half-finished buildings, the scaffolding, derricks and cranes. In recent weeks there had been changes; earth-moving equipment had been trundling about the vacant lot on the other side of Ghazzah Street, and a deep ditch had been gouged by the side of the road; as she watched, a single dog, crouching, fled across the waste ground.

  Frances crossed the roof to the back of the building, and looked down into the narrow streets behind Dunroamin. This was why, she remembered, she had liked the roof at first; this privileged and private view. It could have been another city; it was a domestic, small-scale scene, of back alleys and backyards, of side doors and washing lines. A colored servant, her head wrapped in a scarlet cloth, turned a sharp angle of the next block; she had a bundle in her hand, something wrapped in newspaper, and she moved silently, with her flapping sandals, her dusty gray heels, toward the dustbin. The scholars have implored that the faithful should be careful how they wrap their rubbish; that they should not put their vegetable peelings into the Saudi Gazette, and throw them into the trash; that they should not tear up squares of Al-Riyadh, and hang them in a privy. For that newsprint may contain the sacred name of Allah.

  Frances unfolded her canvas chair, sat down, rubbed sun cream on her legs, opened her book. A fly circled her head; she flapped a hand at it. The traffic noise nagged at her. It was hotter than she thought, and windy; grit blew across the page. After five minutes, the print danced before her eyes. She stood up, and a pain lanced through her skull. She refolded her chair, tucked her book under her arm; went back down the stairs, stumbling a little, into cool silence.

  In Flat 1 she lay on the sofa, her book splayed open on her ribcage; she held ice cubes, wrapped in one of Andrew’s handkerchiefs, against her forehead. I shall go to the roof in the morning or the evening, she thought, for five minutes’ spying, since that is my pleasure and my pleasures are now few; but to be on the roof in the heat of the day is a punishment, and I should have known better. Eyes closed, she imagined trees; the bark of silver birches, the dense black-green of pines, the scum of algae on English ponds. In July we will go home, she thought, for leave; into the needle-thin rain of the English summer, into dank unpromising Yorkshire mornings, and trees that are yellowing by September.

  It was New Year’s Eve. They were up at their usual time; Andrew took a shower, ate breakfast and left soon after seven to go to the site. These early starts gave her a sense of purpose, which she knew from experience would soon dissipate; there was no point, in the whole day, on which she could focus her energy. At eight o’clock she was already climbing the stairs to the roof; as if what was most necessary was to convince herself, by seeing the daylight, that another day had begun.

  She opened the door at the top of the stairs, and came out into the early sunshine, shading her eyes. In the far corner of the roof she saw a thin veiled figure, wrapped in an abaya. Her pulse skipped. “Yasmin?” she said. She approached, and saw the black shoulders stiffen with shock; then Yasmin turned, and pulled back the veil, her eyes wide, her expression guilty; she put a hand to her throat, a pantomime of consternation and fear.

  Frances stopped a few paces from her. “Did you think I was your mother-in-law?”

  “I didn’t expect anybody.” Although it was so early, Yasmin had made up her eyes, outlined their long shape in kohl, brushed in her lashes. But then, was she ever without her face? Was she ever without her careful, prejudged moods? Their friend Samira spent her idle mornings in front of the TV set, watching Egyptian soap operas; the camera dwelled on the faces of suffering women, their painted faces larger than life, their emotions theatrical, rehearsed. Did Yasmin watch them too? Already her features were melting into the artful. “I did not know you came up here, Frances.”

  “I come for the fresh air.” Already by eight-thirty a miasma rose from the pavements of Ghazzah Street; fri
ed chicken, sewage, a cocktail of sweat and diesel fumes.

  “I too. Just to get away.”

  “And how is your mother-in-law?”

  Yasmin made a graceful gesture. Everything she did, now, seemed staged; Frances had new eyes. “Oh, you know …”

  “I expect,” Frances said, “that she is still asleep.” You are lying, she thought. You weren’t taking the air. You were expecting somebody. Lover boy? So much falls into place. “They have some conflicts.” Raji’s worldly grin, his easy and flourishing career. Why Dunroamin? Because the lady has not far to go. Only a flight of stairs.

  Inside she cried and protested: not you, oh not you oh not you.

  There was a party that night. Frances slipped into her best white dress. She was losing weight, she noticed. She never thought of eating during the day, not until Andrew came home. She stood in the bathroom before the mirror, brushing her hair and fluffing it out, noticing that the little sun that it saw had streaked it, that it was a strawlike, irrecoverable mess. She took trouble over her makeup, but it seemed to lie on the surface of her skin, as if refusing its part in the charade.

  In the car she was silent. “Are you all right?” Andrew asked.

  “I saw Yasmin on the roof this morning,” she said.

  “I thought you had the roof to yourself.”

  “So did I.”

  He didn’t say, she noticed, what on earth was Yasmin doing up there. He didn’t express the least surprise. And already she was doubting herself. I cannot trust myself to make deductions, she thought; you cannot deduce anything from a flash of fear, sudden intuitions can be sudden errors. Something is wrong, but perhaps it is no particular thing; perhaps it is just the current of my life that has got diverted, that has washed me up in some shallows where I am alone with myself. Neon signs go by: FUN N’FOOD GARDEN RESTAURANT, ELECTRIC LAUNDRY, SUPERMARKET SINGAPORE.