by Sara Alexi
Chapter 22
‘I understand her sadness,’ Saabira says. ‘I did a terrible thing because I lost my child.’ Her voice sounds far away, even to herself. Poor Cyril. He did not deserve the life his mother had given him, but then how much of the life Aaman lived did he deserve? The damage that Cyril’s history has done to him is apparent. At four he was already starved of the love and affection that every child needs to grow and learn. She wants to hear more about his life but the weight of her own deeds are sitting heavily inside her, struggling to get out.
‘I didn’t mean to.’ Her words gush out before she is ready. And they are untrue. ‘Actually, I did mean to, but I was so sad.’ She corrects herself but feels compelled to add the justification. ‘I was distracting myself trying to make other things feel important…’ She listens to herself recounting her own tale of the village dying, the need of the harvester, their lack of money and, as the story rushes out, her tears flow, because what she hears most clearly are her manipulations and excuses to try to justify what she did. So she stops talking. She sits still and reflects, and then, demanding the truth from herself, she starts again, speaking slowly.
‘When they told me my baby was dead it was as if the ground had been opened beneath my feet and I felt like I was falling. I fell and fell and everyone and everything around me became unimportant because nothing matched the death of my baby and there was no bringing him back.’ She takes a breath. ‘When you fall you expect at some point to hit the bottom and I willed this to happen. I wanted whatever the bottom was to come quickly. If it was death or madness it was better than the feeling of falling. The chest-emptying, gut-wrenching, sadness in which I was lost. But the bottom never came, I just seemed to keep falling and in that black hole I was so alone.’
Her hands are intertwined on her knee and very gently Cyril puts his fingers on her forearm. His nails are black with dirt and split and torn, but it is such a tender, respectful touch that it gives her comfort and courage.
‘Aaman was too real. His tenderness touched me so deeply that when our baby died I pushed him away.’ The truth was she had not wanted to feel anything at all. Nor did she want anything to do with her life. Most of all she wanted nothing to do with the man who helped her create the life that was gone. If not for him it would never have happened. The life would never have been there in the first place and she would not have felt the sorrow. She blamed him. It was his fault.
Also, as time went on, there was the fear. If she allowed her sorrow to find refuge in Aaman’s arms, which, after a while, she really wanted to do, then of course they would become close again. If that happened they might create another life which might die too and she would spiral down the dark wasteland again. There might be no recovery the second time.
With a stiff back she compels herself to go on.
‘I sent him abroad. I told him it was to raise money for the machinery the village needed, but really I wanted him gone so I could be alone with my misery and to ensure that we would not create another small life that might die.’
‘Where did you send him?’ Cyril asks. The innocence in his voice makes her snort but to assure him that she is not laughing at him she lifts her head and gives him a small smile.
‘I sent him overland to Greece. From there he was meant to go to Italy, and from Italy to Spain where it is easy to work and get papers, and then he would fly back. But…’
‘But what?’ Cyril asks. Coco’s nails click across the sticky lino floor. She sniffs first Cyril and then Saabira, and then gently pushes her muzzle into Saabira’s hand. Saabira strokes the dog’s fur, which is surprisingly soft. It is very soothing.
‘But the world can be an unkind place and he was locked in prison in Turkey and he was beaten and robbed in Bulgaria.’
‘Oh.’
‘Then he got stuck in Greece. He could not make money to move on or to come home.’
‘Oh.’
The first time she had woken in the night to find Aaman sweating and crying and hunched in a corner of their Sialkot home after his return she had been terrified. He wouldn’t speak about what was troubling him and she could not guess. But slowly, as the weeks turned into months, he tried to explain to her how he had become a faceless, worthless illegal immigrant and how that had stripped him first of dignity and then of hope. He thought he would never see her or his mother and father, or his grandparents again. That he would die before he could return home; it was just a matter of when and how. The world around him considered him less than human, a problem to be moved on to another location. Every morning before the village was awake he would be up and ready in the square to try for work, but on so many days he was not chosen by the farmers seeking casual labour because he was so small. On the days he did not work he often did not eat. He had seen others starve to death and there was no one there to care.
‘But the world is not a bad place.’ Saabira recovers herself a little, enough to realise that Cyril knows only too well how hard life can be.
‘He got home?’
‘Yes.’ This knowledge still gives her relief. Aaman got home, he is safe.
‘He got help from a lady. Her name was Juliet, and we named our daughter after her.’ She says all this in one breath and tries to keep her voice, light, breezy. ‘She was English like you, but she was living in Greece. She gave Aaman back his pride and his dignity. In fact, it is because of her that it is now possible for us to be here in England.’ How she feels about Juliet shames her. So far she has kept these feelings to herself, shared them with no one, and she is not about to share them now.
Suddenly she feels the need to be active and declares that it is a good time to do something other than sit. Coco is still pushing her nose into her hand.
‘Shall we see if there is anything that you would not mind being taken somewhere else?’ she asks as Cyril stands too. He takes a plastic bag from the broken crib on the table and hands it to her.
Chapter 23
‘Shall we start with these?’ Saabira picks up a pair of jars. ‘They could be of use to someone, and we could give them to the charity shop in Greater Lotherton. If someone buys them, the money will help sick animals.’ She pauses to let Cyril consider. He takes one of the jars and turns it around in his hands, and gives it back to her. He is grinning now. Saabira smiles. ‘So we are agreed, yes?’ Cyril nods, and the grin grows wider. ‘Good!’ exclaims Saabira. ‘That was not difficult. I believe we are going to be successful.’ The jars are deposited by the cooker, which is as good a place as any to start a pile for charity, and she turns her attention to the crib.
‘I don’t think that this can be mended. A spring is missing along with a rocker, and three of the uprights around the handrail have also gone,’ she says, and Cyril looks sad. ‘But I think it will burn well,’ she adds; Cyril puts it in the backyard and with two strokes of the axe it is in pieces, which he stacks. Back inside, Saabira is looking at the bookshelf. The dark rims around her eyes have spread because she has been crying but Cyril thinks she looks just as nice. He would never have guessed that she had all those emotions inside her. It is messy, like his insides. Maybe other people are like that too?
‘This bookcase.’ It lies on its back; one leg is missing and it will not stand. She touches it gently. Everything she does is flowing and soft. ‘It has only half a back and two of the shelves are missing. I don’t think anyone will want it.’ She speaks slowly. He knows she is trying to be gentle. Not even Matron Jan tried to be gentle. Archie did a bit, especially at the end.
‘So we can recycle it?’
‘It is plastic. I don’t think it will recycle and, also, we cannot chop it because plastic is not good to burn.’
He knows plastic does not burn. Or rather, it does, but the fumes are bad.
‘So it will fill a big hole in the ground?’
‘I think if we put it in the skip the people who take the skip will crush it until it is very small.’
‘How small?’
Saabir
a makes a guess, showing him with her hands. He nods sagely, picks it up without her help and, with a push and a shove, manoeuvres it out of the front door through the wardrobe porch and into the waiting container.
They continue like this for some time and the chaos in the room reduces until all of the ceiling is visible and in some places the collection of things is only shoulder-high. The top of the table is clear, and Saabira declares that she needs to take a break and check on her family.
‘Is he alright, did I upset him?’ Aaman asks as she comes in through the back door.
‘He is fine, it wasn’t you. And I think we are making progress. We are talking as we work so it is slow. Almost every item we have thrown away or chopped up has required a discussion, why he needs it, why he doesn’t.’ She puts the teapot and the mugs by the sink. ‘Do you know, they put him in a mental asylum because he did not get on with the children in the children’s home?’ She puts the kettle on and washes out the teapot and the mugs. It’s a relief to be home. The morning has been exhausting, and Cyril seemed relieved too when she suggested they have a break. He went out onto the moors with the dogs, some of which had started to whine.
‘He was in a children’s home?’ Aaman is sitting cross-legged on the rug in front of the fire with Jay. Between them are a selection of pans and lids. Aaman is holding a wooden spoon which he passes to his daughter. She immediately starts bashing away at the pots and then, with her left hand, she picks up a lid and uses this to hit the biggest casserole dish. Aaman leans back and laughs heartily, which makes Jay bash even harder.
‘Yes!’ Saabira shouts over the noise, knowing her answer is useless. Aaman has probably forgotten his own question, and they cannot have a conversation with Jay in full swing on her improvised drum kit. But Saabira’s shouting gets Jay’s attention and her fingers uncurl, the lid falls forgotten and her arms stretch out before her for a cuddle from Mummy. ‘Ahh, come here my little love.’ Saabira joins them on the rug and Jay squirms onto her lap.
‘So do you think he has been in homes and hospital most of his life then?’
‘He said he didn’t fit in at the home and he had trouble sleeping, which is not surprising really. His mum killed herself and he found her.’
‘Oh my goodness, the poor man. I think that is enough to confuse anyone. Why did she kill herself?’
Saabira opens her mouth to answer him but shuts it again. If she says it is because her baby died in childbirth they will spend the rest of the evening talking about their own unknown child. She will stay mostly silent so that she does not have to talk about the black place she went to, in which case it will be almost inevitable that the darkness of their loss will turn the conversation to Aaman’s trials and all he has suffered. It will make a very miserable evening. Better to say nothing.
‘She was sad.’ Saabira dismisses the poor woman’s anguish and feels like a traitor. She is grateful when the kettle sings and gives her an excuse to put Jay on the rug and give herself some physical distance from Aaman.
‘So, does he want to continue tomorrow with his house clearance, and if so can I be of any help?’ Aaman asks.
‘Yes and no in that order.’ Saabira brings the teapot and mugs over. ‘I am going to see if I can persuade him to accept your help though. He is having to do most of the heavy lifting himself. I am not strong enough for the bigger things.’
‘So you chucked some stuff out then?’
‘Yes, quite a lot. It seems that he has an issue with clear surfaces. He feels like they are canvases or drawing boards and his mind fills them with horrible images he has seen in his life. His mother’s suicide, the children at the home laughing, a boy at the hospital who had something called ECT, which is a form of electric shock treatment for the depressed. But I think he may have imagined that. I cannot imagine such a thing in this day and age. Anyway, the boy had a seizure and Cyril witnessed this. Ah, so many unpleasant things.’ And as she says it she wishes she could take the words back. She will have thrown Aaman right into his own store of memories of unpleasant things. She stops pouring the tea to look at him. But he is smiling at Jay as he stacks up the pots and pans to put away. ‘You know, it has been a few years since my return from Greece. I have said this to you before but I will say it again. There were bad things, yes. But the good things were so much more than the bad. Without Juliet and her kindness I would not have even been offered a job here. The past cannot be changed, but we can turn negative experience to positive by the way we handle them in the present and how we let them affect our future.’
The familiar thumping of her heart starts at the mention of Juliet’s name. She knows that it is very wrong of her to feel the way she does. Juliet’s kindness changed their life for the better and yet all she can feel at the mention of her name is a petty jealousy.
‘I think I will feed Jay before I put the food on. Tonight we are going to try something very English. Fish fingers. But it is not the fingers of fish because, of course, fish do not have fingers.’ She hides behind her role of mother and cook. Taking a jar from one of the cupboards over the sink and grabbing Jay’s bib and a tea towel from the rack over the Aga, she pulls out a chair and puts out her hand to invite Jay to walk to her and sit on her knee. Steadying herself by clasping Aaman’s little finger, Jay makes it all the way from the rug to the table on unsteady legs. Aaman lifts Jay onto Saabira’s knee and returns to flop on the sofa. Sometimes he behaves as if he is very English.
She can feel him watching her and Jay as she goes through the routine of trying to feed their daughter. After a mouthful or two, Jay tries to take the spoon. Saabira allows this but still endeavours to guide her so she does not make too much mess – to no avail.
‘You must count your fortune,’ Aaman says. ‘My mother would never have let you get away with letting Jay make so much mess.’ He laughs. ‘Shall I get a damp cloth?’
Saabira looks at Jay to see what Aaman sees. She has food all around her mouth, right up onto her cheeks as if she has painted on a big smile. She laughs at the sight and all the tension leaves her.
Aaman baths Jay after she has eaten, whilst Saabira starts to cook. Halfway through she goes to the bottom of the stairs and calls up, ‘Aaman, you must count your fortune too,’ she says. ‘Your mother would never have let you bath Jay back at home. That is women’s work.’
Aaman laughs but he does not reply and the splashing continues.
Chapter 24
The morning sky, pale blue, empty of clouds, stretches over the moors, lightening towards the horizon. Cotton grass dots the heather, white pinpoints in a sea of purple and green. There is a hawk, a black spot high in the sky, but too high to be hunting. Cyril scoops grain from a large sack and pours half of it into Flop’s cage. The big rabbit’s nose twitches but the animal is otherwise motionless. The rest goes into the nursing mother’s cage. That’s it! He is done! Two cages, two lots of breakfast, no fuss, and he has finished. How much easier it is with fewer rabbits. He reaches for the sky, his fingers splayed, and allows all the noises that make a good stretch even better to escape him.
The creak of her back door tells him that Saabira is coming and he lowers his arms and darts back inside his own door, and then wonders why he did. He likes to be with Saabira. She makes him feel good. No one has ever done that before. Not his mum, not Matron Jan, really. Apart from the dogs, and Archie, maybe. He goes out to feed the rabbits several times that evening hoping that she might return but he doesn’t see her again until the next morning.
‘Hello. Did you sleep well?’ Saabira is smiling and her teeth look very white. Today she has her mustard tunic and trousers on, with the dark-pink cuff around the ankles. Her bracelets jangle as she opens her gate and steps onto the moorland path. He expects his tongue to get wrapped around itself as he tries to articulate his answer, but instead the words flow easily as he listens to his answer.
‘I had sweet dreams. Big empty spaces, like the moors but flat and smooth and no horrible pictures. It felt like c
louds.’
‘That sounds very nice. Do you feel like doing some more to your home today?’ Her hand is on his back gate.
If he says no she will probably leave, and if he says yes she will come in and they will spend more time together.
‘Yes,’ he says enthusiastically.
He stands to one side of his open door to let her in and he hopes she notices the teapot he has put on show on the table. He looked really hard after he got back from walking the dogs and found it amongst his blankets. He also discovered that the woollen blankets had mostly been eaten by moths.
The teapot is not new but the mould inside came away with a bit of poking with a stick. He couldn’t wash the teapot up, or any cups, because the sink is full and he doesn’t know how to get the pans clean to make it less full. When he got to this point he did do something right. He put all the dog food tins and the baked bean tins in plastic bags. As Saabira steps over the threshold she kicks one of these bags.
‘Tins?’ she asks, surveying the sink and the table. She smiles when she sees the teapot. ‘Tins can be recycled,’ she assures him. ‘And what a fine teapot! It has a picture of the queen on the side! Shall I make some tea, and we can drink it whilst we work?’
He bites his bottom lip; he does not have tea. Nor does he have a kettle. What should he say?
She saves him from the mild panic that is starting in his chest. ‘I won’t be a minute,’ she says, and picks up the teapot and mugs and leaves.
Maybe he can do something nice for her whilst she is gone? He looks around. There is nothing but mess and dirt. But outside the blue sky beckons. The drizzle of dawn has gone, the heather sways and small birds are singing, hidden in the bracken maybe. Their song is so full of life he is tempted to shut his eyes and let himself drift, let the pictures come, fly with the birds, but Saabira will not be long so he will not indulge himself.