‘Hey, ya dat pretty coolie-girl look up from da window dere?’ He gestured over her shoulder. ‘Whe’ ya run go?’ he asked, nodding at her bag.
She didn’t reply.
‘OK sista. Watch wa ya do. Man trouble ya, ya tell ’em ya a friend of me. Derrek. Everyone know me ’bout yah.’
He watched the small figure walk away, drained the can of beer and threw it in the bin outside the kebab shop. His woman was waiting for him.
Beauty settled the bag on her shoulders more comfortably and headed towards the town centre. The man had scared her with his warnings about All Saints. Cars passed, and some taxis, but they didn’t stop when she waved. Squinting into the darkness, she prayed for a phone box.
Was that one ahead?
Please, let it be one!
It was! She struggled in. The door was stiff and trapped her bag as it closed on her. She pulled some coins from her jacket pocket and switched on her mobile. The screen lit up, the battery icon flashed and the phone went dark again. She picked up the handset of the public phone. It felt light and there was no noise when she held it to her ear. Frayed wires poked out of the side of the box, unconnected to the receiver in her hand. Who could she call anyway? She didn’t know a taxi number, and what was Nicola’s address? It sounded like Baby Street, but how could it be that? And where was the piece of paper with Nicola’s number?
Al-lh!
Was this punishment already?
I aynt going home.
She pushed open the heavy door and struggled out into the street. She’d have to try and find the train station. At least there would be lights and people.
I’ll go there. I can sit in the waiting room until morning.
What kind of people you gonna find there?
Allah’ll help me.
Will He?
Toba, toba astaghfirullah. He got me this far.
The black road glistened damp under the street lamps. Beauty shrugged the bag onto her shoulders, checked that no one was following, and peered into the gloom ahead. There was nobody coming. If anyone did, she’d cross the road. Once she got to town it would be safer. There would be people around, and police, too.
But someone was walking towards her. Two men. She turned left at the traffic lights on Sun Street and hurried past the Royal Mail sorting office. The sprawling depot was lit up and quiet. She reached a bend in the road and looked back at the junction. The men rounded the corner and came up the slope towards her.
She turned and hurried on. The road dipped and the street lamps ended. She stopped in the darkness under the arches of the silent railway bridge. They were still coming. She tried to walk faster but the cobbles were slippery underfoot.
She felt safer when she reached the glow of the Bilston Road Junction, but was dismayed by the intersection of ring roads, tramlines and subways.
Which way was the station?
Left.
She passed a signpost and tried to make out the letters.
‘A-B-C-D.’
Was that a word?
Cars slipped along the bright street as she headed into ‘All Saints and Blakenhall Community Development’ and away from the train station, towards Willenhall. It frightened her that her brothers might be peering from every car. At least there were no people walking here. Apart from the lady up ahead. Perhaps she was waiting for someone, or a taxi. Another woman out alone at night was good. Maybe she didn’t need to be so scared. God would look after her, as long as she didn’t doubt it.
16
After a car stopped to pick the woman up, Beauty was alone in the street again. Maybe the lady had just got off a train round the corner. There was no one following her now, but the fear of the cars remained. It seemed like they slowed down as they passed her.
That one definitely did.
When she reached the place where the woman had been standing, there was nothing apart from the rusting gates of a closed factory. What had that lady been doing?
She sat down on a wall to rest. So what if people stared? As long as it wasn’t her brothers.
Al-lh, please don’t let them be looking for me.
But the prayer felt empty. Beauty closed her eyes and tried again, searching in her heart for the fullness that came with words sent up to God.
‘Yo, sister!’
The voice jolted her awake. A silver BMW had stopped. Two Asian faces were at the open windows, their hair sculpted with gel.
‘How much do you want?’ the boy in the front seat called out.
She heard laughter over the Bhangra music. What did he mean? A pair of miniature orange boxing gloves and a Sikh khanda swung from the rearview mirror.
Beauty stood up and walked back towards the town centre, ignoring the car. She felt it crawling behind her but didn’t turn round.
They’re just kids messin’ about. Keep your eyes down. They’ll go away.
The car drew level.
‘Come on, how much do you want? There’s four of us in here. We ain’t never tasted no pudi from Pakistan before.’
Now she understood.
‘Fuck you, asshole!’
The car was a few metres ahead. She could smell their perfumes from the open windows.
‘And I aynt your sister, egghead!’
The face at the window turned to say something to the driver. The brake lights went on and the car stopped.
‘You Paki bitch, come here!’
Beauty ran.
The car caught up with her, the boys shouting from the windows. The wall to her left ended, became a grass bank and a side street. It was blocked off to cars. They couldn’t follow her.
She ran past houses and front gardens, parked cars and open gates. She kept running and tried to listen for steps behind her, but didn’t dare look back.
When the pain in her foot forced her to slow down Beauty looked over her shoulder and stopped. There was no one behind her. She leaned against a wall, hands on her knees, panting. Were they still searching for her?
Al-lh, please!
She straightened up and peered over the wall at a dark and silent house. Should she hide in the front garden? A caravan on bricks filled most of it, and a narrow path led to the door of the house through broken washing machines, gas cylinders, cookers, piles of paving slabs and car tyres. A noise from inside the caravan startled her.
There’s someone in that thing.
Al-lh please, where am I?
Ward Street, the empty factories and foundries of All Saints and Blakenhall, and the All Saints Working Men’s Club. As she neared the junction, the lights of a car swung into the street, flashing as they rose and fell over the speed hump. She dropped down alongside a parked car, held her breath and waited. The gravel dug into her knees as she watched the light sweeping up the pavement towards her. The car slowed down and stopped. She could hear tabla drums through the open windows.
‘I’m telling you she ain’t here bro.’
There was a pause.
‘I ain’t getting out of the car to look. You go, blood.’
A door clicked open. Beauty stood up, saw the driver climbing out of the car, and ran. She reached the end of the road as the car reversed, its body-kit scraping over the speed humps. She saw headlights as it accelerated and caught up with her as she turned the corner and –
‘FOOKIN’ ’ELL!’
Mark Aston rubbed his chest where the girl had hit him, and clocked the motor that had pulled up on the other side of the street.
‘Here, y’m that Pak … that bird off the course,’ he said.
Beauty recovered from the blow and recognized him – the racist bloke with the cap.
‘Who’s that lot?’ Mark asked her, nodding to the car. Asians. Mostly they were pussies, but he’d seen a few in jails in Leeds and Manchester who knew how to look after themselves.
‘I dunno,’ Beauty said. ‘They were following me.’
Is he gonna leave me here?
Mark took a few steps towards the face in the passenger se
at window.
‘You gorra fookin’ problem, rag’ead?’ he called out, opening his arms in invitation. The electric windows slid up and the car pulled away slowly.
‘Knob’eads,’ he said. He wouldn’t have minded if they’d got out of the car; it might have been a laugh.
He turned back to the Paki bird. She looked scared.
‘You OK?’
Beauty nodded. ‘I was looking for a friend’s house.’
‘Wha’, round ’ere? Where is it?’
What’s the name of the street?
‘It’s in …’
Please, what’s it called?
‘I can’t remember it,’ she said.
‘You sure y’m all right?’ Mark asked. ‘You look like shit.’
Beauty took a ball of tissue paper from her pocket and pressed it against her nose.
Mark fastened his jacket and was about to move on.
‘Tay a good idea walkin’ round here on yer own, like. You gonna be all right geddin’ ’ome?’
Beauty didn’t want to be alone in the street again.
‘I can’t go back home. I left,’ she said. Would he care?
Mark noticed the small rucksack on her back. ‘What you gonna do then?’
‘I dunno. I’ll go to the train station.’
‘They kick you out when it shuts.’
Mark could see she wouldn’t last the night, not in her state. But did he want a Paki in the house? The dogs wouldn’t like it.
‘You can crash on my sofa tonight, if you like. There ay no one else there. Jooss me dogs, but they dey coom in the house, jooss Honey, cuz she’s expecting puppies.’
Beauty looked at the white man standing in front of her in the light of the street lamp, his thin pale face and the cap tipped to the back of his head.
‘I ay a nutter,’ Mark said, seeing the fear in her eyes. ‘You can have a cup of coffee, a chat if you want, and go to sleep. I ay gonna bother you. Anyway, ’sup to you.’
The streets around her were dark and quiet, the empty factory buildings haunted at this time of night.
‘You sure thass OK? I aynt gonna get in your way?’
‘Nah, y’m all right. We’ll have to walk though, unless you’ve got a few quid for a taxi.’
The driver was a Sikh in a turban and long grey beard. No one spoke, and it was only a short journey to Prole Street. Beauty passed the coins to the old man through the glass partition when they arrived.
‘Dunnia kya horee hé?’ he muttered, loud enough for her to hear.
What’s the world coming to? I’m running away, thass what.
She got out of the taxi and slammed the door.
Something in the street smelled bad. It was coming from the dark passageway running down the side of Mark’s house. Beauty peered through the iron gate and heard the snuffling of animals.
Kutayn! She’d forgotten.
‘Coom in, y’m letting the heat out.’
Beauty stepped into the suffocating air of dogs, and a smell of acrid, stale piss filled her mouth and nose. She gagged at the stench and covered her mouth. The white bloke’s back was turned and he didn’t see.
Al-lh, how can I stay here?
‘It’s a bit untidy,’ Mark said, turning the cushions of the sofa over to hide the stains of the night before.
‘Sit down, I’ll mek us a coffee.’ He went through to the kitchen, and the fetid air came in sharp and damp as the door closed behind him.
Beauty looked at the sofa and sat down, her bag on her knees. The carpet was brown with stains, and thick with dog hair. Empty beer cans were everywhere. Dirty shoes and clothes lay on the floor next to plates of unfinished, haram food. She put her hand in front of her mouth, but nothing could keep out the smell.
Al-lh, why have You sent me here?
17
The rucksack jumped again on Beauty’s back as she struggled to run in her sandals. A toothless woman burst out of a caravan and tried to grab her arm as she passed. She broke free, tripped, and felt the gravel digging into her knees and stinging her hands. She struggled to her feet and ran. A car appeared beside her, the face of her older brother shouting through the window, as she rounded the corner into the mullah’s brother’s fat belly. She was eight years old again, sitting on his knee. He held her small face in a sweaty hand and crushed his bearded wet lips to hers …
Beauty’s head jerked up from the arm of the sofa; a dog leapt back and sat thumping its tail in greeting.
She wiped her mouth in disgust. The thing had licked her.
How long had she been asleep?
Beauty looked around the room in the grey light coming through the torn curtains. It was her first white person’s house. Did they all live this way? Everybody said they were dirty, but they couldn’t all be like this, could they?
Cold air and the smell of piss came from the kitchen. How could an animal have opened the door? She pressed back against the sofa as the dog inched closer and rested its head on her lap.
‘Please, get off me, I’m begging you!’ she said. Did it want her to touch it, like white people did?
She patted the dog’s head with her left hand, the one that she wouldn’t use to eat with.
Honey banged her tail against the sofa and looked up at her.
‘Can’t you talk?’ Beauty asked, as the creature pressed closer against her. ‘Feshab, kuta. You’ll have to let me stand up.’ How could a dog have a name?
Beauty got up, stretched, and went to the kitchen doorway. She could taste the smell.
‘Al-lh! Is this a kitchen?’
The sink was under a smeared and splattered window. Cupboard doors hung open, a cooker and fridge sat where they had been dumped on their arrival, and a washing machine, the clothes half pulled out, had flooded the floor around rolls of carpet and bundles of the local newspaper. Through the muddied glass of the back door she saw the form of a dog rear up and rest its paws on the window.
Beauty picked her way around the bin bags of clothes and pools of water and climbed the steep, airless stairway. The door to the bathroom stood open and she stared inside in horror. The worst hole-in-the-floor in Bangladesh was cleaner than this!
She wiped the seat with wet toilet paper and looked away to avoid seeing the colour of the damp wads she dropped into the water. The door wouldn’t shut properly so she sat with one leg stretched out to block it in case the white guy came in. She’d have to wash later, somewhere else. She let the first squeeze from the toothpaste tube slide down the plug hole and brushed her teeth with her finger, rinsing her mouth with her right hand. That much was safe. If you weren’t able to wash properly, it wasn’t haram.
How long can I live like this?
*
Back in the sitting room she cleaned her face with a moisturising wipe and put on some make-up in a hand mirror. The bags under her eyes made her look like a ganjuri.
Where’m I gonna sleep tonight?
What about your mum? Did Ama sleep last night?
Beauty put away her makeup, pushed her hand down to the bottom of her rucksack and felt for the sock with her jewellery inside. The white guy had told her where she could sell it. She’d struggled to answer his questions about herself, and before long he’d left her alone in the glow of the heater. She could leave it on all night, he’d told her. Them things didn’t cost much to run, and the meter was wired anyway.
The sock felt lighter. Beauty shook the chouri onto her lap. Where was the tickli? That halla naguni must have stolen it. The Somali bitch.
She clenched her fists until her nails dug into the palms of her hands. Cursing people was wrong, and at least she still had the bangles. They weighed three tulla and had cost thirty thousand taka.
Is that gonna be enough to stay out?
She put on a pair of jeans and a clean kameez. The dog watched her.
‘You OK?’ Beauty asked.
It sneezed.
‘Yarumk’Al-lh!’
You gone crazy? Talking to a dog?
<
br /> Why not? It’s one of God’s creatures, aynit?
‘Can’t you say one word?’ she asked the animal. She noticed the bitch’s swollen teats. ‘Are you the pregnant one?’ The dog cocked its head at her. ‘You are, aynit? Lucky you.’
Am I gonna see that day?
The old man and Dulal had told her many times that she would die when she was twenty-five, that she’d get ill in her stomach and die. Hadn’t the mullah’s family paid ulta-imams a fortune to curse her?
Twenty-four or twenty-five, he’d said.
Would it be long enough to feel the joy of holding her own baby? And who would the father be?
Peter Hemmings finished shaving and tried to smooth out the frown lines on his forehead with moisturising cream.
He looked into his pale and joyless eyes. The honeymoon period of his freedom from Kate was definitely over, and with it he’d found only emptiness. There had come no new lease of life yet.
He went back to the bedroom and picked out the clothes that would at least make him feel handsome for the day – straight beige cords, dark brown suede loafers and a white herringbone shirt.
It occurred to him that he might be in need of stimulating company. The fierce debates he used to have with his own friends had always made him feel alive. He had even liked arguing with Kate’s friends. Their clichéd arguments were easy to take apart, but they’d soon started avoiding him at social gatherings. He was too serious for them, and he didn’t take cocaine.
Peter threw back the curtains to let in some light and check himself in the wardrobe mirror. But the grey dawn made little difference to the gloom inside. God, what a dump! Was this where he’d end his days, slumming it with the proles? When he’d first seen Wolverhampton town centre it had made him want to leave the country. Cheap chain stores, bakeries and pound shops – PoundSaver, PoundStretcher, PoundHound. The dreariness and obese lumpen families were overwhelming.
He tried to drum up some satisfaction that Kate wasn’t there to ask him who he thought he was dressing up for, as she sipped the nettle tea that he brought her every morning, in the bed she never left until midday. She’d surely got the hint now; she’d even hung up on him the last time they had spoken.
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