Desiring Cairo

by Louisa Young

  *

  On Sunday night, with Lily sleeping, I listened to my answerphone for the first time since Friday. Two from Sarah, saying nothing. One was Mum, how was I. Zeinab, did we want to go to the park. Then Sa’id: ‘I was going to take Lily out. I am so sorry. I’ll ring you again.’

  He has such beautiful manners.

  I wished he’d left a number. There’s something about ringing someone back, making that connection, yes I want to talk to you too, I’m not just accepting your attentions, I’m paying my own.

  I couldn’t ring him, so I rang Harry.

  Harry was a bit chilly.

  This was the third time running Harry has been a bit chilly.

  Fuck him.

  I went to bed. I love going to bed.

  *

  Thank God the post the next day didn’t arrive till after I’d taken Lily to school. There was a letter from a lawyer I’d never heard of. I’ve learnt to dread letters from lawyers I’ve never heard of. This one was a corker. Blah blah, legalistic waffle, effect of which was, here is a letter for you from Eddie Bates, written and left by him to be delivered to you should he kick the bucket.

  This is all very well, I found myself thinking. This is all very bloody well. I held the enclosed letter – dangling, by the corner. Same type of envelope. Same handwriting.

  So why post one directly, and have one sent via a lawyer? Depending of course who posted the other. I stared at the envelope, and found that my shoulders were bunched high around my neck, and that I was cold.

  I stepped on to the balcony, and leaned over, and gazed out at the road west, the envelope dangling still.

  The dead won’t leave me alone.

  I opened the envelope.

  My darling girl.

  You will not read this until after I am gone, and not unless my life has been a failure in at least one – and not the least – way. I hope you will never need to read it. But perhaps I have failed, and you have grown old without me, and stand now old and in need of help from one who always – but you know.

  So. My darling. I know you too. I know you are proud. I would not for the world offend you. But this is for – because, you know, I know you know, because I told you. It is for Lily. Don’t be proud. It is not for you to interfere here. You cannot come between a child and her father. Don’t squawk! I saw the integrity in your soul when you battled to accept what you hated but believed to be the truth – that Jim Guest was her father. And I saw you fight Jim off. If you read this, I have never tried to prove my claim. I don’t want her, I never wanted her. I wanted you. And she is your Achilles heel, my dear, isn’t she? Persephone to your Demeter? So for your sake I honour her. And because it might have been me, and for your lovely sister’s sake, and just because it becomes a man to look after women, there’s £100,000 for her in an account in your name at the Banque Misr, Nile Hilton branch, in Cairo. It’s all quite clean and legal. You are safe. Go and get it.

  Oh, my darling girl. Perhaps it would have been worse any other way. I know that what I wanted you for were the very things you would have had to have given up in order to be with me. Thank god I never lost faith in you, and you never lost your understanding.

  Ever your EB.

  By the way. Mr Stephens is under instructions to donate £100,000 to the British National Party within six weeks of the date of my death unless he hears from the bank that you have collected the money. In person!

  It was almost familiar by now. The surge of fury, humiliation, outrage, incomprehension. The heat under the skin, the tightness of the teeth. The words – he’s mad. Fuck him. He can’t do this. He’s done it.

  I never used to be manipulated. Gossip, machinations, bitchery, small group politics. It didn’t work on me. Nobody knew what mattered to me. I rose above, and laughed. I was the queen of transcendence, and I hardly even knew it.

  But Eddie!

  Here he is, dead, and he’s running rings round me.

  I am only a delicate little human being. I only want to be left alone. I am fed up with being tormented by dead people.

  Actually …

  Now I come to mention it.

  I am not quite so tormented by Janie.

  Well, I’m not. Since Mum told me of her shame. Her shame has comforted me. Brought me pity. Compassion. Compassion? Maybe.

  £100,000 to the British National Party. He is such a bastard. Such a clever bastard. How could he know so well what I could not accept?

  He didn’t know me. He didn’t. He saw me dance, and his … feelings for me were based on that. We had half a dozen conversations. I danced for him, and fought with him, and he told me what Janie had been, and his role in it, and he drugged me and kidnapped me and jumped me and I knocked him out with a poker and fucked him while he lay unconscious. Where was there time for him to get to know me?

  And did I know him? Knew enough to know I didn’t want to know more, that was all.

  Yet.

  Admit it. If you don’t admit it how can you ever deal with it?

  A tiny, narrow, fine, thin thread of fascination, needling through the right and proper reaction to such a man. A sharp wire which made me hate and fear and mistrust all the more. A vulnerability to him.

  Anyway he’s dead.

  I decided to ring the lawyer, because perhaps it was all nonsense.

  When I got through to him it went like this:

  ‘Mr Stephens? My name is Evangeline Gower …’

  ‘Ah yes, Miss Gower, I’ve been expecting to hear from you. You will have received our communication …’

  ‘Mr Stephens, did you read the letter from Mr Bates to me?’

  ‘No, that was a private communication which we simply sent on as a matter of routine after Mr Bates’s demise …’

  ‘Have you sent me any other letters on his behalf?’

  ‘Well no, Miss Gower, though …’

  ‘Though what?’

  ‘Well as you may know, as I assume the letter will have explained, though perhaps …’

  ‘Mr Stephens, please don’t attempt to be discreet. My letter said that he has put £100,000 in a bank account in Cairo for my daughter, and that if I don’t give you proof that I have collected the money by a certain time you are under instructions to donate a sum to the BNP. Is that true?’

  ‘Well yes it is.’ I could feel him not commenting. Of course he wouldn’t comment. Lawyers don’t. They don’t say, ‘Yeah. My client was a flaming loony, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Mr Stephens,’ I said. Sighed. ‘Mr Stephens, what would you accept as evidence?’

  ‘The bank is under instructions to let us know when the transaction has been completed.’

  ‘Mr Stephens.’ (‘That’s ma name! Don’t wear it out!’ cried the inappropriate comedian in the back of my head, in a Grand Ole Opry voice.) ‘Mr Stephens. I don’t want the money.’

  He was silent for a moment. ‘The legacy – the sum of money – is not in your name. It belongs to the child.’

  ‘She doesn’t accept it.’

  ‘She is a minor, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. Five.’

  ‘An interesting question,’ he said. ‘And a complex situation. But my responsibility as a trustee of Mr Bates’s estate is to fulfil his instructions. If the legacy is not collected within the time stipulated, I must make the other payment.’

  ‘It’s blackmail,’ I said.

  ‘What an interesting point,’ he said. Just the kind of thing Eddie would have said. Oh shit, what kind of lawyer would an old gangster like him use anyway? Why am I appealing for a let-out from the man representing my enemy?

  ‘Thank you, Mr Stephens,’ I said, and I hung up, and I recalled what I had been saying to myself about answers. Well, I had one. I knew now what Chrissie had been going on about. So I can go and get the money and give it to her. Simple. Spit Eddie in his dead eye, too, by doing what he wanted, then doing what I want, thus squishing his plans in the dirt. Dead men can’t win.

  And if I give her the money
maybe she’ll leave me alone.

  I screamed, quite loudly. One good thing about my neighbourhood is that you can do that, and nobody bothers about it.

  The phone rang. My voice was still a bit out of control from the scream, and I answered it sounding funny. It was Sa’id. I gasped his name like a young wife waiting for news from the front, like a lost traveller. But squeaky, too. He wasn’t sure it was me. Then there was a knock on the door, and another, which rapidly became an actual knocking, and so before I could speak to him I had to go and placate it. It was Mrs Krickic from next door.

  ‘What’s the matter!’ she shouted. ‘Why you screaming!’

  So much for the neighbourhood. I placated her.

  Out of this foolish chaos I came back to the phone.

  ‘Sa’id?’

  ‘Angeline?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Edgware Road. Can you come?’

  ‘Can’t you come here?’

  He was silent a moment.

  ‘OK. I must collect things too. Meshi?’

  ‘Meshi.’ OK.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Half an hour.’

  ‘OK.’

  It felt like a lovers’ tryst. But it wasn’t. I was going to get some facts out of him. It is not unreasonable to want to know what the hell is going on. And anyway, what’s so sacred about reason? I want to know. Do I need a reason?

  Being a rational kind of gal, I am not convinced by this line of argument – of reasoning, I was going to say. But there are more things, Horatio. There are.

  I changed from crap baggy clothes to fit-for-the-outer-world almost slinky clothes. From ancient black trousers to the bootcut ones. From an old sweatshirt of Zeinab’s husband’s to a little Agnès B sweater that I bought when my book was published. And I put on some mascara. Well yes I did. Oooh, missus.

  Then the door went again.

  Harry.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, surprised.

  ‘I was a bit chilly yesterday,’ he said.

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Oh. All right.’

  A silence.

  ‘I was passing,’ he said.

  ‘Anything else?’ I said.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ he said.

  Why not? I let him in, and went through to the kitchen.

  Actually there were things I kind of wanted to talk to him about. But didn’t. Like missing persons, and letters from dead people.

  He didn’t seem to have much to say. He looked tired and sad.

  ‘Yeah?’ he said. He thought I’d said something. So I did.

  ‘How can you tell if someone is missing?’ I only said it because I wanted to get back on good terms with him. Wanted to unfreeze the chill which I seemed to be contributing to. I just wanted to say something, and that was what popped out, because it was on my mind, and because I had been thinking of talking to him about it. Out it popped.

  ‘Because they’re not where they should be,’ he said. ‘What’s it about?’

  So I told him.

  ‘You remember the Egyptian boy who was staying with me? Who wanted to find his mother? Well we found her, and he went to stay with her and …’ I could see the freeze settling back in. A cold seeping from him, across the floor and up my leg.

  ‘What?’ I said, accusingly.

  ‘What do you mean what?’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  And another of our little silences.

  ‘What’s the matter,’ he said, slightly bitterly, as if considering an academic question. ‘What’s the matter.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I knew this tone of voice. It precedes anger, and is often symptomatic of conclusion-jumping. It is his worst habit.

  ‘Angel,’ he said. I knew what he was going to say: ‘I’m not a fool’. Before going off in as foolish a direction as ever man took. ‘Angel, I saw him. Please.’

  ‘You saw him! Where? How d’you – but you never met him, did you? Did you meet him? How did you recognise him?’

  He was silent.

  ‘Harry! What!’

  ‘I saw you and him together,’ he said. He sounded embarrassedly aware how like a line from a country and western song that ends in murder this was. ‘I saw you outside that café in Queensway. So drop it.’

  ‘Drop what?’ I said, automatically continuing bolshie and defensive, while underneath trying to make sense of what he was saying.

  ‘I saw you with your Egyptian friend. In Queensway. So stop pretending that he’s some kid that you’ve lost, some little orphan. Please.’

  Oh. He thinks Sa’id is Hakim (or vice versa). He saw me with big handsome grown-up Sa’id and he’s jealous. Ha ha ha! And he thinks I was lying. Oh very bloody ha ha ha.

  ‘That was his brother,’ I said coldly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That was Hakim’s brother Sa’id. There’s more than one Egyptian in the world.’

  ‘Why’s his brother here? I thought they lived in Egypt.’

  ‘People travel, you know,’ I said. Sarkiness just gets me sometimes. For example when I feel put upon.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. He sounded sad.

  ‘I don’t lie to you, Harry,’ I said.

  ‘That’s why I minded,’ he said.

  Oh fuck it. I started laughing, and then I started to hum: ‘We can’t go on together, with suspicious minds …’ And he started laughing too, and then he said, ‘You know I called in the security videos from the café …’

  ‘You what?’

  He sounded sheepish. ‘I called in the video. I didn’t want to look at you when we were passing …’ I didn’t ask who ‘we’ was. No nose-rubbing. ‘So I got the video in the next day. Silly really.’ He offered this as a reconciliation object. A confidence shared, a foolish secret for us to bond over.

  ‘You got the video from the security camera so you could spy on me,’ I said.

  ‘Ah –’ he replied.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Harry,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ he said.

  The thing is, I was delighted that he was jealous, but I was utterly undelighted to be spied on. Anyway it’s wrong. Just because he’s police, and he can. It’s an abuse. I don’t like that. I don’t like him doing it. I looked at him, sitting in his grown-up clothes, his older face, his familiar shoulders, his unchanging slouch.

  ‘You shouldn’t do crap things,’ I said.

  He looked back, under his eyelashes. A pause.

  ‘Oh?’ he said.

  When he says ‘oh?’ in that way, that slow, challenging, lazy, insolent way.

  This is why chairs get thrown out of windows.

  God but the baggage piles up around us, wherever we sit. If we sit still for three minutes it comes swooshing in on the tide and gathers round our feet, and one bit spins away as another bit spins closer, and gradually it all settles in around us again. Flotsam, jetsam and the kitchen sink.

  I wasn’t going to make a headmaster speech about how it damages him as much as it damages me. I didn’t care to hear his opinion on what I had done that was crap. I didn’t want him here when Sa’id came.

  ‘I’ve got to go out,’ I said. ‘No doubt we’ll speak later.’

  And then there was the knock on the door, and then the rattle of the key in the lock as Sa’id got no answer and let himself in. Harry didn’t take his eyes off me.

  Sa’id walked in, pale.

  He and Harry sneered at each other.

  ‘At least I told you,’ Harry said, and stood and left. Spitting. Part of me grabbed his arm and shouted, ‘He’s not my fucking lover! Ask him!’ Not the physical part of me though. Not any part that anyone would notice.

  *

  Sa’id ignored the drama. Just glanced at Harry as he left, then settled himself at the kitchen table and asked me for coffee. I was about to snap at him to make it himself. Hovering on the knife-edge where courtesy and feminism battle it out, cheered on by cultural habit.
Courtesy and cultural habit (his) won this time. As I made the coffee he inquired after my health, told me I was looking well, alhamdulillah, and so on round the calvacade of courtesies.

  I wanted to ask him if he’d found out anything about Hakim, but I sat, and accepted the cavalcade, because there is nothing you can do till it has run its elegant course.

  ‘I am sorry I have not been able to return to your home before,’ he said, as it started to draw to a close.

  ‘Sa’id, please don’t stand on ceremony,’ I replied. ‘My home is your home.’ A fairly naïve thing to say, though it didn’t occur to me at the time.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, thoughtfully, not being by any stretch a naïf man. ‘But not, also.’

  I looked a question. He didn’t follow up on the more complex notions of how at home, if at all, a foreigner can feel in another land, or a man in the women’s quarters, or a Muslim in a house of Christian extraction, if not actually Christian, or any of the other things that didn’t cross my mind. He applied himself more immediately and locally.

  ‘You have noticed,’ he said, ‘of course, that there are some things happening, and you are wondering what and why. And you want to know, because you are human, and female, and you feel an interest.’

  ‘And because I may be able to help.’

  He looked at me slowly.

  ‘But you know, Sa’id …’

  He smiled at me.

  ‘I am living in a state,’ I found myself saying. ‘I am surrounded by mysteries and confusions, and I want some order, and some knowledge, and I don’t know where to start.’ It is surprisingly easy to say such things to foreigners, things you wouldn’t say to an English person. Perhaps because we are all constantly living in fear of the judgement of our peers. ‘So,’ I continued, ‘I have decided to start with the giving of knowledge.’ I didn’t know I had, until I said it. ‘I am telling what I know, in hope that others will then tell me what they know.’

  ‘Sympathetic magic,’ he said. ‘You make, and what is made comes to you. You imitate, and it becomes real. Give and it shall be given.’