by Louisa Young
Haha! I hadn’t killed Eddie! Well that was a comfort. In a way.
I went to call Harry.
‘Does Chrissie know?’ I asked. He was on his mobile, in a cab.
‘Nobody knows,’ he said.
‘So how do you know?’
‘I’ll tell you later.’
‘Why don’t you ride the Duke any more?’
He laughed. ‘Why d’you think? The electrics are fucked. I’m sorting it out.’
‘When?’
‘Spare time, girl, as if I had any.’
‘Where?’
‘Kitchen table, of course.’
‘OK,’ I said.
I went back to Sa’id.
‘Still coming to Cairo?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s not what this is about. I mean, it’s not about him.’
‘OK.’
‘You’ll have to help me,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ he said. Then: ‘If there is danger for you in Cairo, you must tell me. I respect you. Your reasons. But I can protect you. Don’t prevent me from doing so. Don’t shame me.’
*
When I came in with Lily after school the phone was ringing and Sa’id was answering it. Lily went into the kitchen for milk.
‘Eddie,’ he said, passing it over. I took it, frozen, and held it in mid-air. Four hours ago I would have thought it a trick of Chrissie’s. I didn’t know what to do.
His voice came from a series of distances.
‘Evangeline!’ he was crying, with high enthusiasm. ‘There you are! My little honeybunch! Let me hear your voice!’
Frozen.
‘Now who’s the dago? You don’t need to wipe your arse on that kind of thing. Speak to me darling. Are you coming? Are you coming? Or shall I come and get you?’
I hung up slowly.
Sa’id’s clear eyes were on me.
*
I unplugged the answering machine after that, and didn’t answer the phone. Every time it stopped ringing I 1471ed. Sometimes it was the ‘unobtainable’ of a foreign number.
He knows I know he’s alive. He doesn’t care that I know. He thinks I will come and get that money, knowing that he will be around. He’s acting like we’re going on holiday together. After everything.
*
Sa’id was superb. I couldn’t tell him. He knew, and didn’t make me. Just held me, in his arms, in his gaze. And they say only Allah is perfect.
*
Harry came round on Thursday. It was my idea. He and Sa’id shook hands, then Harry and I went back to the Winfield and yes, Sa’id babysat. It was OK. I liked it.
We sat in the same darkened corner, darkened further by Liam’s disapproval. I had to go and have a word with him. ‘Liam,’ I said, ‘Harry’s a nice man. You don’t need to worry.’
He laughed hollowly. Ever since he had sent his copper friend round to Eddie’s to check on me, and Harry had been there, he’s had a bigger down on Harry and a bigger air of concerned disapproval for me. The thing being, Liam thinks Harry is a villain. Most people do. Because he sort of used to be. That’s his cover. Very good cover too.
Liam drank a glass of milk, and told me affectionately to sod off back to him then and not blame him if it all came to a terrible end. I promised I wouldn’t.
‘Talk me through it,’ I said to Harry. ‘Tell me everything.’
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know yet. You must help me.’
‘Don’t go,’ he said.
‘Talk me through it.’
He told me that it was very simple. He told me that in the course of his interrogations Eddie had offered to deal, and that the powers that be, having satisfied themselves as to the quality of what he was offering, had agreed to it; that he had been tried and convicted and imprisoned by a system which had no idea of what was going on behind the scenes; that the ‘illness’ had been a preparation for his ‘death’; the clout by the old enemy a mere handy coincidence. He told me he didn’t know that much about it. He said he wasn’t meant to know about it, but that he had a mentor on the RQZ, or PST, or something (half police business seems to be in acronyms; it’s impossible to follow) to whom he had spoken about me, and my experience of Eddie, and this mentor had told him what had happened. Because the mentor, personally, had some doubts about dealing with Eddie of all people in this way, and that Harry, as a significant officer in the case, had a right to know, and particularly because of me. I was gratified. To know that someone somewhere gave a fuck.
‘Do you think it was a wise thing to do?’ I asked him.
‘What?’
‘Deal with Eddie that way.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I think it was mad. But nobody cares what I think. And anyway, officially I don’t know. And if anybody knew I knew then I’d get’ – here he gestured a silence – ‘into trouble. And blow the project.’
‘But the project’s aim is to protect Eddie,’ I observed.
‘Yes.’
‘And you don’t give a shit about Eddie. You’d happily see him rot.’
‘Yes.’
‘So why protect the project?’
He was silent a moment.
‘It’s my job,’ he said, then before I could pull his hair out he said, ‘No, listen. I have to respect my job. I have to keep my cover, and ours, and my colleagues’. Don’t I?’
This was a macho boy teamwork thing – all the stuff I don’t get. But I know it exists, and there’s not much you can do about it. For some people it matters. I hadn’t thought Harry was one. Had him down as more the maverick.
‘It’s just loyalty, Angel,’ he said.
‘So why does anybody else want to protect Eddie?’
‘He’s their investment.’
I didn’t see that.
‘You don’t grass your grass, because then nobody will ever grass to you again.’
‘But nobody even knows he’s alive! How would any potential future top villain witness protection scheme candidates ever know what had happened? It’s ridiculous, Harry, the whole thing. They should just have killed him anyway.’
‘That’s not allowed, sweetheart.’
No. It’s not.
Silence sat on us for a while.
‘So how can I do it, Harry?’
‘Do what?’
‘You know.’
‘Get him?’
‘Yeah. Get him.’ Get him. Win.
Stop him. That’s all.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Well think of something. Talk me through it.’
In the end I talked him through it. I’d go and pick up the money. He’d find me.
‘Is he allowed back in Britain?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not that that would necessarily stop him.’
True.
‘Don’t go,’ said Harry. ‘What can you do? It’s what he wants you to do. You’re letting him win, reacting to his blackmail.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m doing what I would be doing anyway. I wouldn’t go just to get the money …’ As I said it I knew I would. The BNP, with their disgusting little stickers and their disgusting little minds, could do a lot with £100,000. Thinking of my neighbourhood and my friends, of peeling off and scrubbing out the ignorance and hatred that appears from time to time – not too often, they know our soil is not fertile for them here – on our walls and bus-stops. Thinking of Stephen Lawrence, and the war. Thinking not just of the pain and damage they cause to Blacks and Jews, but the outrage they cause to me, and to any halfway decent person, simply by being, and being so pathetic and poisonous … No, Eddie had me there. Having the power to stop them getting money, I would. So he wins that one. But he won’t win in the end because I am going to. I just don’t know how.
‘Why do you have to win, Angel?’
He knew why.
‘Because I’m proud,’ I said.
‘Not enough,’ he replied.
‘Because he’s threaten
ing me.’
‘Ignore it. It might go away. If not reconsider, deal with it later.’
‘Because he knows my weaknesses.’
He looked a query.
‘Because he started in about Lily. Saying he might be her father. It was bad enough posthumously, but what if he makes anything of that now?’
‘Legally he doesn’t exist,’ said Harry. ‘He won’t exactly be applying for parental responsibility. Dead men don’t get custody.’
‘I’m not in the least bit worried about anything legal he might do. Legal isn’t really the problem here, is it?’
‘Nope.’
He sighed. He felt guilty. Poor sod.
‘I’ll have a word with …’ He paused. I supposed he meant the mentor. He couldn’t even tell me the guy’s name. ‘You never know.’
‘Never know what?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Nor do I.’
‘Don’t go,’ he said.
But I had to. It didn’t matter about anybody else. I knew that I had to get him. It was just between him and me, really. I was more scared of him than of anything in my life, but I wasn’t scared, too. Or either.
TWENTY
Cairo
Our flight was on Friday morning, changing at Athens. It was another beautiful golden eternal Indian summer day. Every time you thought winter drab might finally set in, it dispersed again and that old and melting October sun came on through again. Seemed like autumn would never end.
We left for the airport in shiny early morning silence, astounded by the secret life of the city, the clean quiet calm of 5.30 a.m. We seemed to be ‘we’. How had that happened, I wondered. Turn your back for two seconds and the habits of a lifetime curdle. Sharing reactions. Except that there I was, suddenly, hurtlingly lonely for Lily, and Sa’id was not. And suddenly nervous. Scared, even. Not of Eddie – not yet. Of being apart from my beloved. No small hands. No ridiculously charming comments. No being patted absentmindedly. None of the little love representations to which I was so accustomed.
The plane was called Neoptolemus. The journey was long. All that time to be doing nothing; suspended in inability to affect or move on or do anything. The very voyage was like traction; like those weeks in hospital with my shattered leg up and pinned, immobilised, on drugs, in pain, plotting how to make sure we kept Lily. Heathrow, checkin, wonder, coffee, boarding, waiting, sitting, dozing, eating, landing, waiting, air-conditioning, muzak, coffee, transfer, boarding, welcome aboard, seat belt, no smoking, sitting, crunching joints, sleeping, waking. Absolutely nothing you can do. Sometimes I find it relaxing.
Sa’id was quiet. I watched his face as he dozed. Watched as he happily took his copy of Al Ahram on the plane. This is an Arab man returning to his homeland, where he will be different to how he has been with me, in mine. So then I had another sudden flurry of fear. Not for him, nor of him, but of Egypt. What do I know about this country I am so attached to? It’s been what, eight, nine years? What am I doing? Who is this man and where is my child?
But I know the answers to all this. What I don’t know is what is going to happen.
I had booked myself into the Hussein, a hotel whose small-scale faded grandeur and balconies made it an Englishwoman’s dream. Also it was well away from downtown, where Eddie would be waiting for me. Also it was in the gate to Khan el-Khalili, where I could get lost like nowhere else in the world. Sa’id was not booked in with me. He was to stay at his aunt’s in Garden City, officially, though of course he would not. He didn’t want me to stay at the Hussein – said there were fleas, it was too old and dirty. I wondered if it was now. In my day it had had bell boys in clean darned uniforms, soft with age, all of whom would arrive together to change a light bulb, and an old old man who would fold the towels into a different shape every day: Monday a lotus, Tuesday an ibis, Wednesday a papyrus flower, Thursday a palm. Sa’id wanted me to go to the Sheraton or the Nile Hilton. I could understand why, up to a point, but it had made me sad, because I had grown accustomed to his understanding everything, including things he had no business understanding. Woman things. English things. Then I said, ‘Why do you want me to stay at the Hilton?’ and he looked a little puzzled for a second, and then he laughed and said, ‘I don’t. It is automatic. What we say to visitors. I am just saying what my aunts used to say.’ So I was happy with him again. Though a little sad to be a visitor. But then I am. So.
When we finally spewed out into the air terminal there was the sign saying that drug smugglers were liable to death by hanging over and above a fine of 500,000 Egyptian pounds. Which I read as hanging over and above a fire … which I thought, in the second before I self-corrected, was going it a bit. And there was the bit saying they hoped this warning will be needed, or heeded, and someone had added in a not, because the top of the h’s downstroke had been worn off (or was it an n all along?)
And we were there, and it all unfolded out over me, and I was so pleased to breathe that air and sense that city that I nearly hugged Sa’id, before remembering that actually, no, I shouldn’t. Because now we are in another land. This other land. So other, and yet so familiar.
The other travellers were greeted by relatives and small children and bunches of slightly dilapidated gladioli; we were not. The el Arabys are not like other families. I wasn’t sorry. Others had family cars waiting; we found a black and white Cairo taxi, fake fur dash and Hassan el Asmar blaring on the stereo. There were so many things I had forgotten about Cairo. Not the smell – or at least I thought I hadn’t, but when it came over me, fragrant with apple and honey and shimmered through with dust, I realised I hadn’t remembered it at all.
Midan el Hussein. The sparse palms of the wide and formal square, looking pristine today like an illustration from a Babar book; the clean walls of the mosque of the prophet’s grandson, for whom the square is named; the inlaid tambourines hanging from the shop ceilings, the outside ceilings, because what is inside and what is out is different here. Those damn beige leather toy camels. The neon green gleaming through the lattices on the minarets. Remembering how scared I was the first time I arrived here, and spent two days on the balcony watching a tiny girl I nicknamed the Princess, in a grimy garnet-coloured satin frock, with a frill, and grey track-suit trousers underneath, playing with a plastic bag while her mother sold paper handkerchiefs. First it was a hat (which worried me), then it was a doll, then a football, then a balloon, then home to two small stones, then a sledge (which gained her a companion, who pulled and was pulled), then forgotten as a young boy with a pink football appeared. I looked for her now. She must be fourteen, and probably long gone from here. Though where would she go?
I had what might have been the same room, and I sat on what might have been the same balcony smoking a Cleopatra (I had forgotten that I smoked in Cairo) and looked out over what might have been the same soap opera: a biggish boy with a piece of rope is hitting out at a smaller boy, who lies down in the middle of the street and yells, making a huge drama and bellowing. No one takes any notice. The bigger boy hides the rope, just in case. The smaller boy jumps up and runs and gets it, chases the bigger boy up Sharia el Moski. A few minutes later the bigger boy reappears, having won the rope back. The smaller boy, frustrated, steals a glass from a café table and stalks Bigger Boy. They circle each other, just two figures in the milling crowd, Smaller Boy (a coward) using a large lady in purple as a shield. A prosperous man in a silver suit remonstrates. Plump lady takes no notice whatsoever. Café man requires the glass back, and after a little scuffling Bigger Boy (though something of a psycho) gives it back. The glass breaks; as Café Man chases Psycho across to the garden a passer-by picks up the shards of broken glass and puts them on a café table. A waiter appears and takes them in. Coward festoons himself across the wheels of the cigarette seller’s small wagon, protected by the man’s desire to protect his stock. Psycho glares from across the way and slowly, slowly, through the milling crowd, inches his way towards him.
A smal
l girl who could well have been the princess is chasing a football; she is knocked down by a man in a white gallabeya and turban, riding a bicycle. Six or eight people gather; an orange-shirted one-legged man sitting on a skateboard swoops her up, cuddles her and crab-propels her on his board back to her mother, trapped under a baby and her wares on the kerbside. She sits with him, protected, as a policeman with a Kalashnikov tells off the cyclist, who proceeds on foot, pushing his bike, chastened.
A scampy girl of about seven, in ankle-length black and antimony, is stroking the Psycho, trying to get him to play. He is now five feet from the Coward, staring at him. The cigarette man takes no notice, though the coward is lying almost entangled in the paraphernalia of his wagon, his livelihood.
The princess substitute jumps up and runs to play; she kicks the ball under an otiose green railing that wanders across the square. A young policeman kicks it back. She is pleased, and passes it again and again to see if he will do it again. He does. It hits a fat man’s belly. He ignores it. Princess chases it. Another man heads it. A beggar in blue with writing in a white patch on his back wanders, whirling, very very slowly, then suddenly picks up, focuses, touches four people for money in three minutes then disappears, presumably to get his dinner. A herd of fat-tailed sheep pass by, followed by a lime-green Mercedes. The cowardly boy gives the Psycho money. Is he paying him off? Or had he stolen it in the first place?
What had I forgotten? I hadn’t forgotten a damn thing. I felt the dust settle into my hair, and began to laugh when the evening muezzins started up from both al-Hussein and al-Azhar just across the main road, rivals as ever with the most beautiful voices. I hadn’t forgotten the names of the times of day when you pray: Fajr Sobh Zohr … A’sr … Maghrib and Isha. I hadn’t forgotten the period during which an appallingly tuneless muezzin had arrived at al-Hussein, and everybody said he was someone’s son-in-law and couldn’t be sacked … but he was, in the end. I hadn’t forgotten Ahmed el Gentil who ran the el Halwagy coffee shop round the corner, so called because he was kind to everybody, so he said, and who claimed to know everything in the whole world. I hadn’t forgotten how your snot goes black within hours of arrival, how the last of the mameluks leapt from the walls of the citadel on his horse. Nor the constant encouragement from young men in the street that you should ‘walk like an Egyptian’ – directly through the wild and gloriously sociable traffic. Beep beep. I’m coming through beep beep no you’re not beep beep oh yes I am beep beep oh OK then beep beep shukran thank you beep beep afwan you’re welcome beep beep what? Oh nothing I’m just beeping along to the music on my radio. Beep.