Sometimes I imagine myself lying on the ground, clinging to the big shiny boot of the man who brings in the piece of paper. Rubbing my cheek against the leather. Saying that I will do anything he wants.
But what would be the good of that? I would have to get rid of my faith first, and I am unable to do that until I find out exactly where it is.
In my skull perhaps. I have a bony cave of secrets under my scalp, just like everyone. They could dig their way into it, but that would be the end of me. No chance of a pen in my hand then. No words on paper. I give up. I renounce. I have no faith any more.
I understand completely that it would be gratifying to kill me. I am an annoyance, as well as a source of undesirable odours. I get in the way of what ought to happen next. Sometimes I find myself completely in sympathy with their point of view.
Perhaps my faith is in my elbow. Elbows are awkward things, jabbing out into the world, making space for themselves. They are also far from beautiful. The only elbow it’s possible to love is the elbow of a baby, so soft and dimpled that it fits into your mouth like a plum.
My elbows are dry. When I hold my arm out straight in front of me, wrinkled skin hangs. Sometimes it seems very funny to me that once I had those plum elbows too. At other times I feel as if time has stopped moving in a straight line and is zigzagging back and forth like a snake on the floor. I feel my grandma’s hands in my hair. I hear her voice vibrate against the back of my head. I watch my grandfather throw his switch on to the earth and walk back inside.
Without question I am lucky that I have no children. My little son with the plum elbows was never born. But sometimes I forget it. I feel the tingle of milk beginning in my breasts. I feel my belly lift and tighten as if someone is about to be born. After a while I come back to myself and I am glad that I am alone, that my grandparents are dead and that everyone in my family has signed the piece of paper. Or have they? Perhaps they never needed to, because they were clean of faith.
I remember everything about when I was taken away. There were six of us in a room, and the Lord was with us. Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name.
This is why they keep us alone most of the time, so that two or three cannot gather together. But being alone does other things as well. It makes time whip backwards and forwards like a snake about to strike. It makes a baby come to me.
Of course I pray. I say words, as if my faith were in my mouth. The others tell me: ‘I will pray for you,’ and I say: ‘I will pray for you.’ It makes our prayers sound like wheels, rolling across the world and touching on one another.
But my faith is not in my mouth. I pray less than I ever did.
My voice was beautiful. I was a praise-singer. I used to rise up, and then raise them up. The sound would grow from deep inside me and swell richly until my forehead was slick with the dew of praise. I sang for hours and never tired. My voice was a gift and I gave it back to the Lord seventy times seven.
Yes, I thought a lot of myself, the way a woman does when her skin is ripe and soft and her voice sways a roomful of hearts.
Now I look back at that singer with her blaze of a smile at the end of a song, and I’m watching a child dance in imitation of a grown woman. My voice has dried up. All last winter I had a cough from lying on the ground. I don’t worry about it too much. My voice will come back, or else it won’t. I used to think that my faith was in my voice. It made people turn to me like flowers. They called my voice a gift from God.
I won’t sign the piece of paper. This is not something I’ve decided. It has come to be true for many reasons which are all one reason. My missing toenail, my knotty hair, the veins on my feet, my disinclination for prayer. The sound of the switch and the slam of my head against the wall. The grey hairs that’ll still be growing after I die. My elbow joint, working away like a knuckle under the flesh. My brain which says that the men are right, and what I am doing is not sensible.
The Lord refusing to be with me, then suddenly giving me a child.
The smell of myself.
The fact that I can’t, anywhere, find where I keep my faith.
A THOUSAND ROSES
I’M DRIVING IN the dark. There’s not another car in sight. I haven’t seen one for miles. Only my own headlights, brushing the loneliness. You wouldn’t believe how this road chokes in summer. Miles and miles of glittering cars, stuck together in a glue of heat and exhaust. The mist is coming down. Dad listened to the forecast earlier. Mist and fog patches over high ground and in coastal areas. Driving conditions may become hazardous.
‘Surely you can wait until the morning?’
‘No,’ I said, turning away so he wouldn’t see my face. ‘I’ve got to get back.’
‘You know best, I suppose,’ he said, not looking at me either. I’d been very careful, but he’d picked up something. Like a smell or a slick of sweat on a palm.
‘It’ll only be a few days, Dad. You sure you’ll be all right with Johnny?’
‘I’m his grandad, aren’t I?’
Dad knows that flesh and blood make everything all right. Whether you approve or disapprove, whether you like or dislike, you love. Love isn’t an idea to Dad; it’s as strong as stone.
Dad goes to bed at ten and rises at five, summer and winter. He kneels down slowly, his joints cracking, and sets a match to the fire he’s built the night before. When the flame spurts, Dad warms his fingers. He’ll be asleep by now, on his back with his mouth open. Johnny will be sleeping too. Safe, both of them, now that my car’s not parked outside the cottage, and I’m not there.
‘Jacinta, are you there? I need to speak to you.’
Khalid’s voice, on the answerphone. Dad raised his eyebrows, because I didn’t cross the room to pick up.
‘Are you there, Jacinta? Are you in your father’s house?’
Khalid waited for a long moment; then there was a click.
I asked Dad to call him back. ‘Say you don’t know where I am.’
‘You’re asking me to tell a lie, Jacinta.’
‘Dad, please. Just say it. Say we’re not here. Say you thought I’d gone to Wales.’
Dad shook his head. ‘Why can’t you speak to him yourself?’
‘You don’t understand, Dad. There are things you don’t know.’
‘Then tell me.’
Inspiration flashed through me. ‘It’s to do with Johnny.’
‘Oh.’ Dad’s face sagged. He would do as I asked now.
I should have been in Wales. Carola and I had booked a two-day canoeing course on the River Wye, our first ever weekend away from the children. Carola’s mother was going to look after them. We’d got the hotel and railway tickets on a cheap deal.
Dad sighed heavily. ‘I suppose you know what you’re doing, Jacinta.’ Dad had met Khalid, and decided he was all right. ‘He’s training to be an engineer,’ he said to me. ‘He’s already got a degree in mathematics from his own country.’
‘Just phone him back, Dad. Please. Now.’
‘You know best,’ he said at last, coldly. He would stretch his conscience for my sake, and Khalid would believe him, because Dad was a man of his word.
A few minutes later he came out to the garden where I was pushing Johnny on the swing.
‘Your answerphone was on.’
‘Did you leave a message?’
‘Yes.’
I put Johnny to bed early, and Dad came out to the car with me. Already, night had fallen.
‘Get Shep and Jasper in now, Dad,’ I said. ‘You ought to put your bolt across, these dark nights.’
‘We’re safe enough here. The dogs come in at ten and not before.’
‘You will lock up properly?’
‘You don’t need to worry about Johnny. He’ll be all right with me,’ said Dad. He was still angry that I’d made him lie. He’d understand later. I put my hands on his shoulders and felt his bone and smelled his oldness. We said goodbye.
My car is a small box, trapped in the huge box of night.
Suddenly the mist is everywhere. I turn on my fog lamps.
I try to breathe deeply, steadily. I make my fingers relax on the steering wheel.
Johnny. Think of Johnny.
There’s always mist up over Bodmin. Once I pass Colliford Lake and the road drops, it will clear.
The needle of the speedometer is falling. I can’t see the side of the road now. The slower I go, the worse the engine sounds. My tyres rasp on the safety strip and I haul us back on to the tarmac. I must keep to the crown of the road. I shouldn’t be driving in this.
Crawling now. Twenty miles an hour, eighteen, sixteen.
Soon you’ll be going downhill and the mist will clear.
I know the road too well. The bare browns of the moor, the little lake, the sweep of bog and grazing. Small clusters of trees, wire fences, thorn bushes around lonely farms. Wind always blowing, even when the mist is heaviest, and a lick of wetness in the air that tastes of salt. Always the noise of the wind.
If I stop the car, and roll it into the verge, the mist will hide me. No one will guess where I’ve gone.
Johnny. Think of Johnny, fast asleep in my old bed. He’s safe. Khalid won’t come looking for me there. He’ll believe my father.
Lights. Lights behind me. Too late to turn my headlights off, too late to roll into the side of the road and hide. Panic jolts thoughts out of me in sparks, like live wires brushing.
Lights, full glare. Too close. Right up behind me. Khalid. He’s not in London at all, that’s why Dad got the answerphone. He’s here. His lights fill my car. He’ll see me.
So close, too close, it’s dangerous.
Oh God, he’s going to go into me, push me off the road. That’s why he’s up so close. He’s trying to push me off the road and then he’ll get me out of the car. He’s flashing his lights. He wants me to stop. I will not stop.
He’s falling back now. I clutch the wheel and won’t look. They say don’t look back, don’t catch their eye. It makes them more angry.
And then he does it. His lights are there again, blinding, and he pulls out with a surge of speed and he’s alongside me, very close, sounding his horn to make me move over. And I look, I do look though I know I mustn’t, and I see the men crammed into the car, two in the front, two in the back.
Their car passes me and accelerates away. For a few seconds its rear fog lamps are bright, and then it fades in the murk.
I’m shaking too much to keep driving. I pull over and switch off the engine, and then the lights. I open the window wide and the cold air pours in.
I hated hide and seek when I was a child. I would walk out of my hiding place and face the seeker, rather than wait to be caught.
Coming, ready or not …
I’m ready. Come and get me. I can’t take any more. It’s less than a day since it began, but I can’t take any more.
Three months ago it was high summer. Johnny was in the paddling pool from the moment he came home. Yes, that’s how it was all summer. The splash of water, the smell of plants drinking, Johnny laughing, the rush of the hose. Our garden is tiny, but in the evening light it looked green and gold, like paradise. Our new lodger stayed in his room, working. He was a mature student of engineering, quiet, considerate, polite. The perfect lodger, I thought, after the first week.
I’d put Johnny to bed one evening and I was watering the garden when I heard the front door open. It was Khalid, on his way up to the small room that had been collecting heat all day.
I brushed my palm over the lavender bush, and went into the house.
‘Khalid!’ I called softly. Upstairs, his door opened.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s so hot, I wondered if you would like to sit in the garden.’
A pause. Maybe all he wanted was to rest, alone.
‘Thank you. I am taking a shower now, and then I will come down.’
I stood in the hall, looking up the narrow stairs. I could hear every sound he made. The house was so small, so cheaply built. Every sound that Johnny made was familiar, grooved into me so that any break in the pattern sent me running. But the footfalls of a grown man were as strange as the smell of another adult in the house.
I could hear everything. Khalid’s shower, the flush of his toilet, the clink of the mug where he kept his toothbrush. I hadn’t guessed that taking a lodger would make me think so much about the work of caring for a body. The time it takes, flossing and brushing, pumicing dead skin and putting plasters on corns, each of us intent in our separate rooms. Hairs caught in the plughole, soap scum and toothpaste scum, nail clippings, soggy towels drying on the heated rail I forgot to provide until he asked. Khalid was to give me his bedding to wash once a week.
‘You’re welcome to use the washing machine any time,’ I’d told him. ‘I’ll peg out your washing if you’re not at home, or put it in the dryer.’ But he was too private for that.
‘I will use the launderette.’
He came out into the garden, damp from his shower, in a fresh pale blue shirt and chinos. He was not much taller than me – five eight or five nine, maybe – but he was strong, stocky even. He carried a newspaper. Maybe I had created awkwardness for him with my invitation. He might have preferred to stay in his room. He’d thought, I’ll bring a newspaper, and then I won’t have to talk.
Khalid stood at the open French windows, looking around the garden, letting his eyes rest on one thing and then another. He stepped forward, on to the flags, and pointed at the apple trees.
‘What is that shape in English? The way it’s cut to fit the wall?’
‘Espalier. The branches grow along those wires – see?’
‘Yes. So, you have an orchard,’ he says, smiling faintly.
‘I’ve always wanted one,’ I say. ‘Full of fruit and flowers.’
‘My friend had an orchard,’ says Khalid abruptly. ‘It belonged to his family for many generations. His mother was the last person to grow fruit there, after his father’s death. But they lost the land.’
‘What fruit did they grow there?’
‘Pomegranates. My friend told me a poem his grandfather had written, about this pomegranate orchard.’
‘Do you remember it?’
‘I remember only some of it. My friend was young when the grandfather died. You know that pomegranate flowers come at the end of the little branches? Sometimes they are single, and sometimes they bunch together. They are very bright, the colour of fire. The poem was about this pomegranate fire.’
‘What happened to the orchard?’
‘It’s finished. All the trees pulled up and burned.’
‘Was that in your country?’
‘No.’
Pomegranates. On that warm summer night the word seemed to open like a flower. Khalid’s face lightened, and he smiled at me.
‘Have you mint in your garden?’
‘Yes, it’s there, in a pot behind the lavender.’
‘If I pick some, I can make shay na’na. Moroccan tea. I have green tea in my room. Wait one moment.’
We sat drinking tea. Khalid smoked.
‘It’s good,’ I said. ‘The tea, it’s very good. It’s so refreshing.’
He smiled again. ‘It’s whatever you want. Sometimes refreshing, sometimes relaxing. It changes to what you need.’
And there you were, Khalid. You changed to what I needed. Suddenly, in that moment, the change happened, and it couldn’t be put back. But I don’t know if I changed for you. Did I, Khalid? Or was your rage still burning in you when you looked at me, like the fire of pomegranate flowers on the end of a branch?
The mist is so heavy that I can’t see what’s ahead of me and I can’t see what’s behind me. There’s nothing but mist and silence, now that I’ve switched off the engine. I’m cold, but I don’t close the window. I’m listening for the sound of a car, coming closer, closer.
It was yesterday evening. I was packing for Wales. Stuff all over the bed, Johnny in the bath, the phone ringing, spaghetti sauce burning …
‘It’s OK,’ said Khalid. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll pack your case so everything comes out perfect.’
‘It’s all such a mess. I hate packing.’
‘Where I come from, we are always packing our suitcases. Always preparing to go away. Packing and unpacking and getting ready … Because there is nothing for us at home.’ He smiled. His eyes were soft and warm. ‘I’ll finish everything for you, and strap the case.’
He was right; his packing was perfect. When I unstrapped the case and opened it, everything was immaculately folded and fitted together like an expensive jigsaw. It was a shame to touch it, but Khalid would never know. I’d forgotten to put in my new electric styling tongs. After a day on the river, my hair would need work. I’d wedge the box right down at the bottom. I could lift Khalid’s layers without disturbing his packing—
My fingers met something hard that they didn’t recognise. Gently, I shifted a rolled-up shirt. In the heart of my packing, there was a strange shape. I parted the clothes.
It was gift-wrapped in shiny red paper. A present. A present from Khalid, for me to discover in Wales. I smiled, already imagining how Carola would watch as I opened it. ‘He’s fantastic, imagine him thinking of this, he’s so different from any man I’ve known before,’ I’d say.
Very carefully, I slipped my hands under the package and felt its weight. It was dense. Heavy. Too heavy, when for once I could travel light, without all the stuff you need when you have a child. Khalid was so lovely, so generous …
I listened. I could hear him downstairs, talking to Johnny. He was so good with Johnny. You’d think they’d known each other for years, not three months. Quietly, I opened the bottom drawer of my chest, slipped the package into the back and covered it with clothes.
I went downstairs. Khalid was carefully spooning the non-burnt layer of spaghetti sauce into another pan, but he turned to smile at me. ‘All you need to do is eat,’ he said. ‘Your packing is done. I have strapped up your case.’
Girl, Balancing & Other Stories Page 6