‘Should I turn the fan down slightly?’ she fusses, heading over to adjust the dial. As she reaches out her arm, she senses Milah’s eyes fixing, disapprovingly, on her cupcake tattoo. Milah mutters something under her breath. Karim responds to it, sharply. Milah lowers her eyes again, submissively.
‘A sweet tea,’ Valentine announces brightly, straightening up. ‘Would she like milk?’
She addresses this question directly to Karim.
‘Black is fine,’ Karim insists.
Milah murmurs something.
‘Just a splash, then,’ Karim rapidly modifies.
‘And you?’ Valentine asks. ‘Should I make a pot?’
‘No, I’m good.’ Karim shakes his head. ‘Too many stimulants play havoc with my libido. Diminish my sense of focus.’
Valentine’s eyes dart towards Milah. Milah stares at the floor. Her expression is unreadable.
‘I mean we could always cancel today’s session if …’ She bites her lip, her eyes moving anxiously back and forth between the two of them.
‘Absolutely not!’ Karim’s horrified. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s only a short, twenty-minute session, but building up trust is imperative. It’s critical. We need to establish a routine. Regularity is essential for people in your mother’s condition. They experience love not through words but through actions. We need to let the patient know that we can be depended upon.’
‘Of course.’ Valentine nods, intimidated.
Karim removes his handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket and pats his face with it. ‘I’ll head upstairs directly if that’s acceptable?’
‘Absolutely. Would you like me to …?’
Valentine starts towards the door.
‘No. It’s fine.’ He shoves the handkerchief away again. ‘I prefer to find my own way – to arrive under my own steam – strictly on my own terms, in other words. I can’t get caught up in family politics. That would be fatal. I come as a friend – freely – not as a gift or as a favour. I must strive to be independent.’
Karim performs a formal little bow to each of the two women and then promptly leaves them. They both listen, in silence, as his gentle tread recedes up the stairs.
‘Tea,’ Valentine mutters, then dips (almost a small curtsey) and leaves the room herself.
When she returns, several minutes later, holding a small, round copper tea-tray, she is astonished to find Milah sitting on the floor (like an infant), the rugs around her strewn with photographs that have been removed (without leave) from her art portfolio.
Milah glances up at her.
‘I did art at school,’ she announces, in perfect English, ‘but I quit halfway through my A-level. The Prophet – peace be upon him – cursed the image-makers. In our religion tattooing is haram.’
‘Haram?’ Valentine echoes.
‘Forbidden. Allah curses the person who does tattoos and the person who has tattoos done.’
‘I see.’
Valentine frowns, uncertain what to say.
‘Although you can become a Muslim with a tattoo,’ Milah concedes. ‘Even if you’ve applied tattoos. Islam erases all the sins you have committed before becoming a Muslim. Allah is Oft-Forgiving and Most Merciful. You can still pray, do wudhu and perform all your Islamic duties with a tattoo. Look …’
Milah scrambles to her knees and lifts the black robe to waist level. Underneath the robe she is stick-thin and wears a vest and a pair of fashionably baggy jeans. She yanks down the waistband and shows Valentine a neat, blue ‘tramp-stamp’ depicting a couple of small dolphins (standing, tail to tail) on her lower back.
‘I love dolphins,’ she explains, mournfully, ‘but I regret having it done now. I try and keep it hidden from my daughter. It’s important for a mother to set a good example …’
Valentine places the tray down on the sofa, then unfolds the small, occasional table and transfers the tray on to it. She is angry about the photos but struggles not to show it.
Milah drops her robe and clambers to her feet. She heads back to the sofa, leaving the photos on the floor, moving through them without much care.
Valentine immediately crouches down and gathers them together.
‘I had a portfolio once,’ Milah sighs, plumping herself down again. ‘I loved art. But when I think about how much I loved it now – how passionate I was – it just seems so strange; almost unbelievable. When you love something that much – with such a high level of intensity – it can almost become a kind of burden, a worldly attachment, a distraction from what’s truly important.’
She pauses for a second, thoughtfully. ‘I suppose Karim feels that way about his healing work with the disabled. He thinks it’s charitable. He thinks it’s a gift from God.’
‘He was amazing with Mum,’ Valentine concurs. ‘As soon as they met he had her eating out of his hand. I’ve never seen her so completely at ease with a total stranger. It was incredible.’
‘He’s enormously wealthy,’ Milah continues, ignoring Valentine’s interjection. ‘Independently wealthy, but he inherited all these strange ideas about service from his mother.’
She glances over towards the door, then lowers her voice, furtively. ‘His mother ran a chain of brothels in Calcutta,’ she confides, with a shudder.
‘It must be a little tricky …’ Valentine starts off.
‘I mean if you decided you wanted to dispense with his services for any reason,’ Milah continues, pointedly, ‘it wouldn’t be a problem for him, financially.’
‘So how did the two of you meet up, originally?’ Valentine tries to change the subject.
‘My boyfriend’s grandmother had a stroke …’ Milah starts off, then puts a hand up to her cheek. ‘Ow. My jaw’s really hurting,’ she groans. ‘My lip’s still completely numb. I refused any anaesthetic until halfway through, but then the pain got so bad …’
Valentine straightens up from her portfolio, shocked. ‘You refused anaesthetic for root-canal work?’
Milah shrugs. ‘I’m one of those people who likes to know exactly what’s happening to them. No sugar-coating. I like to feel what’s going on – be totally aware. My family all think I’m hyper-controlling …’ – she flaps her hand, dismissively – ‘but it’s really just hyper-sensitivity. I’m an empath.’
She glances over at Valentine. ‘D’you know what that means?’
Valentine nods. ‘I have a fair idea.’
‘I’m just amazingly sensitive,’ Milah continues. ‘Like my ears are very sensitive, for example.’
She points to her ears (which lie concealed beneath a shiny layer of black cloth). ‘Sudden noises can really spook me. I’m like a wild zebra, or a deer … Sometimes the sun dips behind a cloud and I get this massive shock. Like a real jolt. And the wind really freaks me out. I’m just mega-mega-sensitive.’
She ponders what she’s just said for a minute, then adds, almost as an afterthought, ‘In fact I find the burqa really helps with that. The burqa is like Allah’s love embracing me, it’s like I’m folded up in his love. Everything just bounces off it. I’m totally safe in here, totally focused and at peace.’
Valentine has stopped packing up her photos and is now listening intently.
‘I suppose it’s the same for you with your clothes and your make-up,’ Milah suggests, sensing this interest, ‘even the tattoos. It’s like they’re a shield. And the real, vulnerable you is just hiding behind them.’
Valentine ponders this hypothesis for a second, slightly unnerved.
‘I guess I tend to see the hair-dye and the tattoos and the antique fabrics as me,’ she eventually responds, ‘the best part of me. The perfect part.’
‘The bit you can control.’ Milah nods.
‘Exactly. And the rest is just … just …’ She struggles to find the right word.
‘A mess,’ Milah helpfully contributes.
‘… just … just slime.’ Valentine goes one step further, her earlier veneer of joyous ease and calm suddenly shattering. ‘Just
a big pile of nasty, stinking –’
‘Like in Doctor Who,’ Milah interjects, enthused, ‘when they open up a Dalek and you peek inside and there’s just this big, ugly pile of pathetic, throbbing goo …’
‘That’s it!’ Valentine’s both shocked and delighted by this comparison.
‘I used to feel that way too,’ Milah confides. ‘It was horrible. I felt so vulnerable. Everything flooding in. Nothing to stop it. No centre, no core.’
‘Just this big, black, angry hole …’
‘A bottomless pit.’
‘Which you could fall into at any minute.’
‘And that hard, angry voice just barking away at you, telling you how stupid you are, how ugly and ungrateful, how everyone despises you, how you deserve to be despised …’
‘You had the voice too?’ Valentine’s astonished.
‘Oh yeah.’ Milah nods. ‘All the time. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. Couldn’t meet my own eyes. I felt so ugly and tired and used-up and fat … I just thank Allah – every minute of every day – that I reverted back.’
‘You …?’ Valentine frowns.
‘I reverted back to Islam.’
‘You were raised a Muslim?’
‘Nope.’ Milah shakes her head. ‘It’s like a figure of speech. My parents are both atheists. They grew up in Pakistan but they were raised as Christians. I went to a Catholic school in Portsmouth. With Islam you don’t “convert” you “revert back”.’
‘I don’t understand …’ Valentine’s confused.
‘You revert back to an original, natural belief,’ Milah explains, ‘back to your original nature – who you always were underneath. You start again. The slate is wiped clean. Allah is the original Old Testament God. Ours is the original, Abrahamic faith.’
‘But wearing that thing isn’t …’ Valentine points to the burqa.
‘The full burqa isn’t a requirement, no. A woman should be modestly attired and her head always covered. The burqa is a preference. It’s my choice. It’s like my way of showing Allah – and my husband, my family, the wider community – how much he means to me. It’s like I’m at once obliterated by my love for him and also embraced in his love – protected by him.’
‘I’d love to …’
Valentine is about to say ‘obliterate the bad bits’.
‘Try it on?’ Milah completes her sentence for her.
‘Uh …’ Valentine blinks, anxiously. ‘Isn’t it very hot?’ she asks (by way of sidestepping the issue).
‘Not really.’ Milah is already pulling off her burqa – first the niqab that hangs over her head and shoulders. ‘Obviously you have to move around really carefully because you lose a big chunk of your peripheral vision. And it can be difficult not to trip over on the fabric until you’re fully accustomed to walking in it.’
Next Milah removes her abaya – the lower, robe part of her outfit – and offers it to Valentine. Valentine’s gut instinct is to refuse – point-blank – to put it on, but she is momentarily disarmed – and distracted – by the extraordinary sight of Milah now completely exposed: her extreme youthfulness comes as a shock, for one thing; her natural grace, her lovely neck (her dark hair drawn back into a neat bun), her gappy teeth, her boyishly lean figure …
In person she is an entirely different creature from the crabbed and sullen individual Valentine had previously envisioned – she’s light as a feather; a little, modern sylph; a wide-eyed, coffee-skinned Edie Sedgwick.
While Valentine digests this jumble of sense-impressions, Milah is carefully pulling the abaya over her head, and before she knows it she has been engulfed – devoured, consumed – by its heavy, sepulchral folds. Her initial sensation is one of weight and heat, then of airlessness (a sudden spasm of panic, then one of equally sudden – and unexpected – calm). She briefly revels in the scent of the thing – it smells of the road, the street, the town, of dust and detergent, of spice and otherness. Her scrabbling hands eventually locate the armholes and her head the neck hole. As soon as her head pops out Milah is pulling on the niqab which is slightly elasticated around the forehead and made of a silkier, lighter fabric. Milah expertly adjusts the thin, divided grille over her eyes, centring it on her nose, then steps back – this newly hatched praying-mantis of a girl – gazing at her, concerned (like a kindly warden checking up on the mental well-being of a favoured inmate).
‘How is it?’
‘I don’t know. Fine. Airless. Stuffy.’
As Valentine speaks, the light fabric of the niqab gets drawn into her mouth. She blows it out.
‘Walk around a bit.’
Valentine starts to walk. It’s difficult, especially in the shoes she’s wearing.
‘It’s like a coffin,’ she puffs, kicking off the shoes.
‘A shroud.’ Milah nods (apparently not remotely offended by the notion).
‘That doesn’t worry you?’
‘Nope.’
She grins. ‘Just imagine’ – she chuckles – ‘if you went outside now and walked up and down the street, nobody would have the slightest clue who you were. In fact they’d think you were me.’
‘Sorry?’ Valentine stiffens.
‘Nobody would know it was you.’
‘Outside? On my own?’ Valentine’s throat contracts.
‘You’d be anonymous – completely free. Imagine!’
‘You reckon?’ Valentine slowly turns towards the door, tantalized.
‘Be quick, though,’ Milah urges her, grabbing the crocheted blanket from the arm of the sofa and lightly draping it over her head and shoulders. ‘I’ll wait here.’
She sits down and reaches for her mug of tea.
‘Okay, then … Sure. Why not?’ Valentine readjusts the grille over her eyes and nose, then heads, unsteadily, towards the door. Her heart starts to beat faster as she walks down the hallway. Every footstep feels weighted and momentous. Her body is unusually clumsy and lumpen – yet humming with an unexpected sense of significance.
It’s difficult to negotiate space. Her hip bumps into the phone table. She steadies herself, straightens the phone, grazes the aspidistra with her sleeve, and reaches for the door latch. Her hand is clammy and shaking a little.
As she twists the lock, her mind turns – inexorably – to the previous night: the cold metal of the latch between her finger and thumb; the touch of Gene’s ear against her cheek; the push of her breasts against his back; that feeling of carelessness – of insolence – of … of ease … a sensation she hasn’t felt since Mischa left … and – she grimaces, plainly pained by the thought – since Dad died.
She shudders, twisting the little handle still harder and yanking the door wide, tensing up, involuntarily, as if waiting for the whole world to fall in on her – like an overstuffed suitcase tumbling down, without warning, from the top of a cupboard; its contents a petrifying jumble of light, air and sound.
She waits to stall, to freeze, inhaling sharply in preparation (as if, at some level, she thinks she deserves such a bombardment:
Adulterer!
Coward!
Parasite!).
But nothing.
Instead she finds herself neatly one-step-removed, preserved like a pickle, or a quail’s egg in aspic, peeking out, tentatively, at the world through her grille. She feels like an inquisitive projectionist gazing into the cinema. The film plays on in the auditorium (the sound a muffled echo) but she isn’t really watching it or following the plot. Her involvement is just mechanical. The reel spins, unassisted. The pressure is lifted.
Valentine is overwhelmed by an intense feeling of gratitude and relief. She almost laughs out loud as she steps down into the front garden.
I am Aamilah, she thinks, another girl with a different life, a better girl. She glances down the road with the eyes of a stranger. She is free of herself.
Passing through the gate, her robe briefly catches on the intricate ironwork. She pauses to free the fabric (does so without much effort) and is about to step
out on to the pavement when she sees someone walking towards her – a woman with a pram. She steps back and lowers her eyes, her cheeks flushing, humiliated (like a child caught with its fingers in the biscuit barrel). The woman walks by without a second glance.
I am the dead Valentine, she thinks, a sweet darkness stirring within her, a strange ghost of Valentine haunting my former life …
She goes to inspect Karim’s car. Karim’s car is framed in black – like an invite to a funeral. The dead Valentine marvels at the shine of the chrome-work. The dead Valentine runs her hand along the side panels. But she is dead and feels only the vaguest notion of solidity. Everything is something but nothing in particular; just stuff, just a series of random atoms held momentarily in position – for the briefest of interludes – by a complex concatenation of time and space and human willpower. Everything is whole. Everything is unstrung.
Dead Valentine gazes up the road. She is no longer fearful, she is blank as an unaddressed letter. She is dead. She is empty. She is un.
Without fear there is no gravitational pull from the world around her. Without fear there is no climax, no shattering dénouement, no live wire, no earth wire, just a calm, cool, blue neutral.
She suddenly frowns, quickly glances down, and focuses in, closely, on her feet. Her frown deepens. She gingerly lifts her right foot from the pavement … Fine. She gingerly lifts the left …
Urgh! Urgh! Chewing gum! Melted into a vile, satanic glue on the warm concrete slab!
You clumsy idiot! A large bead of sweat runs down her cheek. It hangs, precariously, on her jawbone …
Hot. Hot. Hot!
She curses under her breath, turns, and hobbles back to the house, flops down on the front step, lifts the robe, and commences picking the sticky mess from her heel.
‘Bloody typical!’ she huffs, as it sticks to her picking fingers. ‘Disgusting!’
In the sitting room, several minutes later, Milah helps her to remove the niqab and abaya.
The Yips Page 29