A Foreign Affair

by Stella Russell

  ‘I’ll be back here at seven tomorrow morning,’ promised Aziz as he and one of the eye clinic drivers set out to push the LandCruiser back up the road to a mechanic’s.

  Chapter Two

  If only…

  If only I’d been listening to what Aziz was saying instead of pondering Queen Victoria’s knickers. If only Aziz hadn’t over-reacted to my Inshallah and banjaxed the car. If only the Rev had ignored the commotion at his gate and the call to be a Good Samaritan and got on with writing his sermon instead. If only I’d been able to refuse his invitation on the grounds that the guesthouse lacked any form of air-conditioning. If only he’d married someone else… If I’d never come within a hundred miles of the Revs, I might never have acquired a criminal record. Not strictly true, actually. Still, to say the very least, Mrs Rev was a seriously aggravating factor.

  An aggressively amplified recording of the call to prayer from a nearby mosque woke me at around the 5.30 am on my first morning in Yemen. Sweating between my yellow poly-cotton sheets, nerves all a-jangle, I began to feel queasy as I recalled the events of the previous evening.

  After a blissful hour or two of exfoliating and moisturising, I’d begun to feel myself again and cheerfully raided my wheelie case for something decent to wear for dinner: a halter-neck paisley silk cat-suit by Stella McCartney, secured for a song off Ebay, and a matching pair of espadrille wedges. Skin all a-glow and cool as a cucumber, I’d at last descended from my spacious apartment in the rear eaves of the church to the Revs’ living quarters behind the altar, banking on an invitation to join them for a stiff sundowner.

  But Mrs Rev was not half as welcoming as her husband had been. The trouble is my tendency to scrub up so nicely very often disjoints the noses of older women like Mrs Rev and my sister-in-law Fiona. After giving me a top to toe glance of pursed disapproval and grumbling something about it being ‘just a kitchen supper, nothing special’, Mrs Rev had turned her back, in its outsize beige tent, to me in order to attend to whatever was on the stove. That left Mr Rev and me to make small talk, which inevitably required me to answer the question: ‘What brings you to Aden?’

  ‘I wanted a break from my job at the Daily Register – I was very stressed…’ I told him. How much better the word ‘stressed’ sounds than ‘bored’!

  Why would I go into detail? The last thing I wanted was the Rev Googling me and finding no trace of anything I’d ever written for the paper. He didn’t need to know that I’d spent months telephoning purveyors of fine hearing aids, stair lifts and corduroy trousers to solicit their advertising for the Register’s Saturday magazine before my efforts to get myself noticed by editorial resulted in my relocation, to the terminally stagnant backwater of the paper’s letters page.

  But I needn’t have bothered to say anything at all because, ‘Quite so…quite so,’ he was answering vaguely, too busy hunting down old bottles of gin and tonic to a hiding place in a broom cupboard, in a duster bag hanging behind the vacuum cleaner, to listen to me. Not so his missus though: ‘People don’t tend to come to Aden for a break, dear,’ she interjected, her back still turned to me, ‘I would have thought Dubai or Abu Dhabi would be more up your street, so much more - what’s the word one hears everywhere these days? - aspirational.’

  ‘Horses for courses!’ I replied mildly, ignoring her insult.

  No. I decided that I certainly wouldn’t be treating that pair to the tale of Sheikh al-Abrali’s letter. The Revs were patently not the kind of people to understand how, on a putty grey morning a month before, every last corpuscle of my Flashman blood had thrilled to that summons from afar. For the life of them they wouldn’t be able to understand how instantly and powerfully my genetic programming had persuaded me of a need to remove myself to a land I knew nothing about, to do I knew not what, in the service of I knew not whom, for how long I could not say.

  Call it a Flashmanic basic instinct, or just ‘manic’ if you like. I’d call it a reckless courage born of acute despair and advanced boredom. If I outclass and surpass my great great great grandsire in any respect it’s in my appetite for risk, and never more so than when I am bored. Ralph and I have discussed it at length; I probably have my great-grandmother, youngest daughter-in-law of Sir Harry Flashman’s youngest granddaughter, the first Roza Flashman, who became lady-in-waiting to the unlucky wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, to thank for my daredevil ‘act now, worry later’ streak. Anyway, on that dismal morn, I was in the office, scrolling up and down the sheikh’s letter to the editor, stone deaf to a colleague who’d pronounced it ‘a pile of poo’ that would be sure to land its author in jail in his country if it were ever printed. No, no; I would not hit the ‘delete’ button.

  A time and tide in my affairs had come at last, I’d felt. Shaking myself free of the shackles of water-cooler spite, Pret a Manger sandwiches, swipe card entrances and strip lighting, I’d felt the ennui of the past year evaporating like dew off an Alpine meadow. I was damned if I was going to squander another second of my allotted lifespan at the Daily Register. Galvanised by one last glance at the sheikh’s mention of it being the 50th anniversary of the British pull-out and his gracious, just Albion, will you be deaf to your southern Arabian foster children’s cries? I logged off, tossed an empty paper cup and half a Danish in the bin, grabbed my handbag and Nicole Farhi coat off the coat stand and made a dash for the lift.

  That was how it was, but I dared say that given half a chance Mrs Rev would decide, just as my sister-in-law Fiona had, that I’d been fired and had headed out to Yemen on a quest for my ‘next fix of kicks’. I’d overheard Fiona saying as much to a friend of hers on the phone on the eve of my departure from Widderton: ‘Yes, Yemen…Aden, I think…No, I’m not joking… do anything for a thrill … hoping she’ll be gone some time…bin Laden’s lot….I’d never say this to Ralph, you know how he dotes on her, I wouldn’t exactly pay them to kidnap her but…’

  After mixing me a repellently weak gin and tonic - no ice, no slice - the Rev had poured himself and his wife a glass of water each. He and I then repaired to either end of a squeaky wicker sofa where he regaled me with a long and winding tale about how their church compound had suffered three attacks by al-Qaeda. In the past year, I learned, the Revs had passed no fewer than a hundred and twenty sleepless nights, worrying over finding funds for round-the-clock security guards, panic buttons and the embellishment of those high compound walls with barbed wire and shards of broken glass.

  Yawning through discreetly flared nostrils I exclaimed at their plucky Blitz spirit, politely cursing religious extremism and all its works. But frankly, I strongly suspected them of over-egging their tale, of fishing for donations for some search-lights or watchtowers for their church. My powers of empathy had been fatally weakened, I think, by a suspicion that parking oneself in a church on the Moslem Arabian peninsula, so close to Islam’s Holy Places, was asking for trouble. However, gasping for another drink in the hope that it might keep me awake, I didn’t want to offend my hosts so confined myself to answering ‘You’re always going to get a few youngsters who overstep the mark, aren’t you? I think how the Welsh welcomed English second-homers….’

  ‘You can’t compare it with that, dear,’ said Mrs Rev, impatiently clicking her fingers at me to get me to pass her my glass for washing up and indicating I should go and sit at the table: ‘You might be interested to know that there’s been an Anglican church on this spot in Aden for well over a hundred years, since the 1850s.’

  ‘Really?’ I countered, noting her testy tone, ‘Actually, I find I don’t take much pride in our colonial past, but that might just be an age thing…’ I’d be giving as good as I got, I’d decided.

  I took my place at table on a plastic stool, noting the absence of wine glasses. I placed a hand around the plastic water cup that had been set for me, glancing around me in such a way as to leave no room for doubt that I’d appreciate a second gin and tonic. With Mrs Rev busy under the sluggish stir of the overhead fan,
ladling out bowls of gluey rice and pulpy vegetables, the Rev stirred himself to fix me one, measuring out the alcohol as laboriously as if he were slaving over an in vitro fertilisation.

  Two sips later, and half way through that first course, I felt strong enough to broach a new subject. ‘I’m wondering whether I need to wear the full black rig all the time…’

  ‘I shouldn’t have thought so – up in the north, in Sanaa, yes, - baltos are pretty much de rigueur, I gather - but not here in Aden. You can more or less wear what you like here…’ he began and was immediately slapped down by his wife; ‘Rubbish Keith! Take it from me, dear,’ she said, eyeing my already almost empty glass disapprovingly, ‘You’ll feel much more comfortable if you cover up – long sleeves, no cleavage or crotch area on show, headscarf, legs covered. I doubt you’ll be getting any more wear out of that particular outfit! What a pity! More stew?’

  ‘Quite delicious, but no thanks!’ I said, passing her my empty plate for removal, before changing the subject again. What did they advise in the matter of travelling outside the confines of Aden? Would I be safe? Mrs Rev answered me while quarrying at a jumbo tub of ice-cream: ‘I should jolly well hope so! I regularly drive myself out to the British war cemetery, past Sheikh Othman to Silent Valley, which is about twenty kilometres out of town – my father died out here in the 50s, so naturally, while we’re here, I do what I can to keep the grave tidy - and I’ve never encountered any problems…’

  Her mention of the Silent Valley cemetery reminded me of something that old club bore had requested just as I was making my getaway. ‘If it’s not too much to ask, my dear, and you have a moment, you might go and pay your respects to some old RAF chums of mine in Silent Valley – here’s a list of their names, just four of them – if you were able to take a few photographs…’ I’d taken the list, of course, and promised him I’d do as he asked. Now it seemed to me that a quick excursion to Silent Valley with Aziz on my first morning in Yemen and the efficient discharge of that small favour might be a good plan. Once the Rev had finished wincing at the effect a first spoonful of ice-cream was having on one of his molars he mentioned something about how, as a non-resident, I should take care to secure myself a permit from the Tourist Police to produce at the checkpoint on the edge of town. I thanked him for the tip, deciding to let Aziz take care of that.

  Mrs Rev was now waving her metal scoop in my direction.

  ‘No ice-cream for me thanks, but you won’t mind if I fix myself to another little G&T instead, will you?’ I risked, reaching over to the sideboard behind me to help myself to the bottles. I couldn’t endure the fine torture of watching the Rev fertilise my glass all over again.

  ‘You may have noticed dear, that Keith and I have drunk only water all evening,’ said Mrs Rev, watching me splash half the remaining contents of the gin bottle into my glass

  ‘Recovering alcoholics?’ I murmured, as sympathetically as I could manage.

  It so happened, I’d been heartily relieved to see that Mrs Rev wasn’t drinking. Rather like Fiona, she looked to me like the sort who’d turn first trenchant and then tyrannical when in her cups. I, on the other hand, tend to have any rough edges rubbed off me by alcohol. I cry and laugh a lot; social occasions go with more of an emotional swing when I’ve had a few.

  Mrs Rev was keen to set me straight: ‘Neither of us has ever had a drink problem, thank you very much, dear.’ Her flair for turning a ‘dear’ to a sneer was remarkable. She continued ‘- we don’t touch the stuff because we’d hate to offend our Moslem neighbours, wouldn’t we Keith?’

  The Rev, who was busy scooping the last trace of ice-cream from the sides of his bowl, went red and nodded. I guessed that he’d enjoyed the odd tipple until hen-pecked out of the habit; otherwise, why had the gin been so well hidden away?

  At that point my risk-taking daredevil took over: ‘But don’t you think one can bend so far over backwards not to offend anyone that one ends up flat on one’s back, asking to be walked on,’ I queried, ‘ I may be wrong but it seems a bit strange to be sitting here in a church a mere hop, skip and jump down the coast from their holy places, angst-ing about whether you can risk offending Moslems by having the odd sip of alcohol!’ A long, cold silence greeted this sally, but I had the bit between my teeth and plenty more to say, ‘More to the point,’ I continued, ‘didn’t our saviour himself perform a quick miracle to sort out an alcohol supply problem at a wedding? Chin, chin!’ I left them no choice but to clink their plastic water cups with my glass, ‘Lovely to meet you both and thanks for supper. I’m only rather sorry,’ I couldn’t resist adding, because I’d suddenly noticed a pale, wet stain to the left of my right nipple, ‘that you’ve managed to splash ice-cream on one of my favourite garments – “for behold how clumsy is the handmaiden of the Lord”, I joked, wagging my finger at my hostess in mock admonition.

  The Rev’s pale face turned a shade alarmingly near to burgundy as he leaped to his feet and began swabbing at my breast with his napkin. ‘You’re making it worse, Keith!’ barked Mrs Rev, in the tone of voice dog-owners use to say ‘Down boy!’ Then she turned her back on us both, to set about the washing up. No sooner was she done then it was ‘Well, time to turn in – 6 o’clock start tomorrow, communion service at 7. I imagine you’ll be joining us, dear?’

  ‘Thank you but no. I’m Anglican by birth but a practising Russian Orthodox Christian by choice,’ I declared.

  I think I’d already gathered that Mrs Rev was a muscular evangelical sort of Christian, in other words about as far a cry from my beloved Russian Orthodox as she could be, which meant that our fledgling enmity was, almost from the outset, as much sectarian as personal. Suddenly, I was helpless with laughter, visited by a vision of ‘muscular Christian’ Mrs Rev hauling me out of bed the next morning and heaving me fireman-fashion downstairs to church. She had the shoulders for the job – the thick neck, broad back and mighty chest.

  Narrowing her eyes at me, stony-faced, she made a little sign to her husband, as if she was flicking some imaginary insect off her forearm, before leaving the room.

  ‘I’m afraid none of the guest apartments is going to be free tomorrow…’ the Rev began. Hint taken. Round one – the first of many, it turned out - to Mrs Rev.

  But what a bore to have to pack my suitcase again so soon. Never mind. A new day had dawned and my native optimism with it; I was sure that something a good deal more pleasant than rationed gin and yellow poly-cotton sheets awaited me in this land I hadn’t even begun to explore.

  Yes. While showering I happened to notice that the bathroom supplies were of a decent quality so, once I’d dressed and almost repacked my wheelie treasure chest, I was careful to cram in a pair of soft loo rolls. Next, just as I was checking I hadn’t forgotten anything, it struck me that the room’s black-out curtains would make an excellent, bargain of a do-it-myself balto so, tugging two of them down, I packed them away too. Finally, Mrs Rev’s graceless low-church grouchiness, so powerfully reminiscent of my sister-in-law Fiona’s Scottish Presbyterian joylessness, meant that I felt no compunction whatsoever about raiding the guesthouse kitchen cupboards for some leftovers: a dented tin of baked beans, another half tin of Colman’s mustard powder, a half-bottle of cooking sherry, an opened but still fresh pack of Bombay mix, a bar of Green & Blacks chocolate without it’s paper wrapper and a single serving box of past their sell-by date Rice Krispies.

  Chapter Three

  A tiny congregation of Protestant ex-pats had just struck up a horrible hymn about Jesus being the rock who rolls away their blues when I descended those narrow loft stairs at shortly after 7 am. I tried to ensure that my now rather heavy case thudded down each step in time with the musical beat, but it was no use. The cursed thing insisted on a syncopated rhythm so that on that sunny Sabbath morn those gathered in His name in Aden were treated to the sort of din the Devil himself might make.

  Out in the quiet cool of the compound at last, I breathed more freely. Neither of the young security guards,
both of them dressed in navy blue slacks instead of those invitingly ventilated tablecloths - futas, as I learned to call them - showed any interest in the contents of my metal swag-bag. Instead, they confined themselves to admiring its shiny contours and streamlined design. Their curiosity sated, I was soon giving them something else to marvel at. I had them teach me how to say ‘good morning’ in their language. Sabbakh al-khair!’ whose literal translation, they told me, is ‘Morning the brightness!’ To this exclamation one replies with another Sabbakh al-Nur! , ‘Morning the Light!’ What fine and generous sentiments! It strikes me now, and I hope I don’t flatter myself if I describe my default spiritual position as celebratory.

  ‘The Prophet himself – Peace be upon him! – could not speak our language as well you, Madame!’

  ‘Oh, you’re just saying that!’ I protested, chucking him under his hairless chin and feeling him recoil, as if I’d administered an electric shock – but a pleasurable one.

  Just before we stray too far from the subject of my spiritual side, I think I recall at this juncture experiencing a fleeting instant of sheer ecstasy at the mere fact of being alive and free to do as I pleased. A lightning bolt of intuition told me that my Flashman soul had at last found the space and time it required to expand and grow but how, when, in what, and at whose direction, I still had no idea. Ignorance, for the time being, was bliss.

  Aziz was as good as his word, waiting for me outside the compound’s high iron gates. He’d parked the recovered LandCruiser at a rakish angle, half on, half off the narrow pavement and was standing in a patch of shade beside it jabbering into a mobile phone, gesticulating with a Rothmans in his other hand. In his freshly laundered pink shirt and matching futa, he looked as fetching as a little girl’s birthday cake. I think I’d realised within five minutes of our meeting the day before that with his long eyelashes and smooth cheeks, Aziz was not what Nanny Atkins would have called ‘a man’s man’. It was probably why I’d instantly felt at ease with him. I would have nothing, except perhaps his driving skills, to fear by venturing out of town in his company.