Beauty

by Raphael Selbourne

  The noise grew. The tables filled with empty glasses, were cleared by the fat man, and filled again. Hayley went off to talk to boys. Mark chatted about his business plan and what he needed to get it going and how long it would take him to make the money. Beauty listened and was encouraging.

  He aynt got no one. Al-lh give him a good life.

  ‘Go for it. Work hard and you’ll get what you want,’ she said.

  Insh’allah.

  Bob came back. They could eat.

  Beauty told Mark she wasn’t hungry, but he stood up and she had no choice. It would be rude. And she wanted to see what white people ate at a party. She’d tell Sharifa. One day.

  Mark told her not to worry.

  ‘S free.’

  They made their way to the buffet tables and waited in the queue for a paper plate. There were metal trays of small sandwiches. Beauty took two with tuna and lay them flat on the plate to make it look full. The pink line between the pieces of bread on the next tray looked haram. She passed unheated, wrinkled grey chicken legs, sausage rolls, and a plate of orange balls. Would she sound thick if she asked what they were?

  ‘Ay you sin a scotch egg before? Fookin’ ’ell!’

  Enda!

  ‘Those are crisps,’ he said, pointing to the various bowls. ‘Ay you sin them before either?’

  Beauty nudged him with her elbow.

  Al-lh, don’t let me flirt!

  She didn’t mind him teasing her. He didn’t do it like her brother would have done.

  ‘Dumb bitch!’ he would have said.

  There were trays of southern-fried chicken and purple Chinese chicken wings, a bowl of chicken tikka masala, and white rice. Apart from the curry, the meat was cold and dry. She took a piece of the orange chicken and a spoonful of coleslaw. Mark took some of everything. She was disappointed by the food, and felt sad for the people carrying plates piled high back to their tables.

  Is this all they eat?

  She wished she could have made something for them.

  There was no space for her plate among the glasses on the table, so she rested it on her lap. She pulled off the skin from the chicken leg, and the curled white sinew, which was haram. The meat was slimy and tasteless, but she ate the tuna sandwiches.

  Beauty was happy looking at the people, and shocked by how much they drank.

  Bob sat down next to her. He had a kind face, round-cheeked and friendly, and his eyes were shining.

  ‘Y’m all right for a drink, am y’?’

  He’s drunk!

  Mark talked to Karen’s brother, Dave, about the off side bearings on his LDV, and noticed Bob sitting next to Beauty. He was glad the older man was making an effort with her. Bob knew he liked her. Why else would he have brought her to the club? Not that he’d said anything to Mark about it. That was a real mate.

  And thank fuck no one had said ‘Paki’ near her.

  ‘He’s all right you know,’ Bob told her.

  She knew who he was talking about. Could Mark hear? He was busy explaining something with his fingers.

  ‘He talks about you a lot.’

  He likes me.

  ‘He’s ’ad a rough life, but he’s got his head screwed on right.’

  Bob drank a third of his pint and wiped his mouth.

  ‘What ’e really needs is a good woman to sort ’im out. He’s a sowund bloke,’ he said. ‘Loyal.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Beauty believed him.

  ‘If he likes someone he’ll do anything for ’em.’

  Al-lh! Does he mean me?

  She looked up at the older man. His eyes were suddenly serious.

  ‘Mark said you had some bother wi’ yer brothers, or some Asian lads in a car.’

  What had Mark told him?

  ‘Listen.’ He leaned towards her. She could smell beer on his breath. ‘You get any grief off anyone in this towun, anyone, you come and tell me. They’ll get … that.’ He kissed his fist.

  Beauty thanked him. There was something cold and threatening in his eyes now. She looked at the men standing at the bar, drinking and laughing with the buddhis. Bare forearms with faded tattoos under blond hairs; shaved and balding heads. Her brothers would die of fright in a room like this. It felt good to be safe in here.

  ‘And see if you can talk some sense into that bloody niece of mine,’ Bob said.

  Small children stopped and stared at her. Beauty pulled faces and offered them crisps. People she didn’t know came and said things she couldn’t hear over the noise of voices and laughter and music. But their faces were friendly, and she smiled back. Bob came again to check she was ‘all right for a drink’. Everywhere cheeks grew redder, eyes shone and she realized most people were drunk.

  Why shouldn’t they be?

  Was it that bad?

  If they didn’t believe it was wrong.

  Hayley came and went from the table.

  ‘Talk some sense into that niece of mine.’ That’s what the man said.

  Beauty watched the teenager struggle on her high heels towards the toilets. Her skirt was too short. But no man, brother, neighbour or friend of the family seemed to notice her hombol and buni sticking out. No one pointed at her, or pulled their grey beards and called her a whore, or tried to touch her.

  Even so, some things you should only show a husband.

  Bob made his way through the crowd, dancing the conga alone, saw his niece and slipped his arm through hers.

  ‘Come on, you lot, what y’m all diwin’ sitting dowun? We’m giwin’ dansin’!’

  Hayley pulled Beauty to her feet. She looked at Mark for help, but he was still talking to Karen’s brother.

  They were nearly at the dance floor. Bob was singing and holding the two girls tight. The noise grew as they neared the speakers and the dancing bodies.

  Beauty looked over her shoulder for Mark.

  Al-lh! Amarray ita horrai yona! Don’t make me do this!

  There were tables at the edge of the dance floor. When Bob reached it and loosened his grip, she slipped into one of the chairs.

  Bob looked round for Beauty, but Mark sat down next to her, and she was safe. Unless he asked her, too!

  ‘Please, don’t make me dance,’ she said to Mark. She wanted to grab his hand. She’d touch his feet if she had to.

  ‘Do’ you lot dance then?’

  ‘No.’

  I don’t.

  The music made no sense to her. She watched Bob with his niece. They moved their bums and shuffled their feet. What kind of dancing was this?

  You’ll have to kill me before I do that.

  *

  Once she would have liked to learn Indian dancing, and dreamed of wearing nice saris like in the films. But the old man wouldn’t let her watch them on television. They were half-naked shaitani shaking their bodies. But she knew he watched them.

  The dance floor filled with people. Small children bounced up and down, the older ladies in black dresses kicked out their high-heeled feet. Bob danced with them, said things in their ears and they threw back their heads in laughter. Hayley did pop-star routines with a little girl in a tracksuit and vest.

  It was nice to watch. They were good people. The dancing ladies were enjoying themselves. Mark pointed out people to her and they laughed together. Bob came and drank from his pint, his shirt buttons opening, and returned to twirl the shrieking women around.

  How could any of this be bad? Beauty couldn’t wait to tell Sharifa about it. The buddhis were her mother’s age. But when had she ever seen her ama laugh like that? Would she ever see her mum’s sad, sweet face as she danced the damail at her daughter’s wedding with the other mothers?

  Sharifa’s wedding, maybe. I hope she sees that.

  The whooping, bare-armed women spinning round in front of her turned her choked tears to laughter.

  ‘Y’m all right?’ Mark shouted above the music.

  She was fine. It was just a bit smoky.

  He went to the bar to get her another drink, and Ha
yley came and did a pop dance in front of her to a medley of sixties hits.

  ‘Am you coomin’?’

  ‘No, I can’t. My leg hurts,’ Beauty said.

  Hayley sat next to her, panting. ‘Do’ you like this song?’

  ‘I dunno, I never heard it.’

  What is this rubbish?

  ‘It’s the Beatles!’

  ‘I dunno what that is.’

  ‘Ay you never heard of them? Fookin’ ’ell!’

  ‘I’m Asian. We don’t do them things.’

  I don’t.

  ‘Me mates do at school. They’m Asian.’

  Hindu.

  ‘It’s easy. Come on, I’ll show you,’ Hayley said.

  Beauty might have done, if she’d been alone with her sister. But not to this music. Not in front of men.

  Mark came back, and Hayley went to writhe a few steps away from them. Bob danced over to his niece, his shirt completely open. Beauty saw the thick gold chain, his hairless flat chest and the tight, round belly below, before he disappeared again behind the laughing and cheering women. The smaller children were led away by their parents.

  ‘He’s well gone!’ Mark said to her above the music.

  The older man rubbed backs with one of the ladies in a short, strapless dress that showed her tanned, freckled shoulders. He turned to face her and jammed one leg between her thighs, and they pressed against each other, grinding to a Hispano-pop rhythm. Laughing faces surrounded them chanting, ‘Off, off, off!’ Bob had his back to Beauty and Mark by now, and she saw him fumbling with his buttons. Mark jogged her arm to keep looking, and Bob’s trousers fell to the floor to a loud cheer from the ladies. Mark watched Beauty. Her eyes widened in disbelief, her white teeth showing in a frozen half-smile. Was Bob’s pissing about too much for her?

  With his back still to them, Bob clicked his fingers above his head and his shirt tail lifted. His small, white bum caught the disco lights and changed colours. Beauty’s mouth opened, and the ladies rocked back together, screaming. She turned to Mark.

  ‘Y’Allah-goh!’

  She covered her open mouth.

  If the old man saw this!

  ‘Let’s hope he do’ turn round!’ Mark shouted above the howling and clapping and whistling.

  Al-lh! If her mum could see! She’d pee in her clothes!

  A woman ran up and lowered her mobile phone in front of him. The camera flashed, the ladies crowded to see the photo and screeched with laughter.

  Mark stared at Beauty. Her face, her eyes shone, and he knew he liked being with her. Loads.

  They got into the taxi outside the club. As the car passed the places where she’d run and hidden that night, she shuddered for the girl that might still have been out there, hunted and tired, if it hadn’t been for the white bloke next to her. Where was that Beauty now? Was she still wandering the streets with her bag?

  Mark talked and laughed about the evening’s events, and Bob’s drunkenness. He’d had a good night. He’d shown Beauty that he wasn’t alone, and that she didn’t have to be either. He was happy that she’d enjoyed herself, had relaxed and laughed; and that Bob and Karen and everyone else had liked her. No one had asked him what he was doing with a Paki, or said anything about it. He’d have knocked them out if they had. Even Bob. Not that Bob would have said it. Wasn’t he always telling Mark to find himself a decent woman? But Mark knew it might be hard for Beauty to accept a white bloke like himself as her own. Asians stuck together. He’d never heard of anyone going out with an Asian bird.

  The taxi rattled over black cobbles under railway bridges, past dead, brown factories and into the light on the ring road. Beauty looked out of the window, through the drops of rain that spotted the glass. The car slipped past a figure on the other side of the road, dark-haired and limping, in a denim jacket and a rucksack. She twisted round to see who it was through the back window. But there was no one. Was she seeing ghosts? Bhout?

  Beauty stayed downstairs with Mark until she finished her coffee. He talked about getting a proper job and finding a better place to live. He reckoned it would take him a couple of weeks to get the money.

  She listened. He had a good brain, she told him, and it was always good to work towards something.

  She put the cup on the new coffee table and said she had to be up early. Mark asked her if she’d had a good time. She had.

  ‘Night, Beauty.’

  Their eyes met for a second before she looked away. But for Mark it was enough. There was something there, some flash of understanding. The door closed behind her and he swivelled in his office chair.

  Nice one.

  32

  Peter woke up late, stretched, and hawked to clear his throat.

  Beauty was coming for dinner, or at least to show him how to cook. The gloom he had felt at her last visit had passed. The pity he had felt for her ignorance had given way once more to an exquisite thrill at it. It wasn’t her fault she hadn’t been to school. In fact, it was a miracle to come across someone who had had little or no stimulus, input or influence from human life.

  He threw back the duvet and stood up. Forget that other stuff. He would be her spiritual and intellectual liberator, nothing more. And everything had to be right that evening. The poor girl’s eyes had shone as she’d listed the ingredients he had to buy. Powders – red, yellow and grey – not to bother with the gorom moshla, which, it had taken him a moment to realize, was garam masala: that was for Pakistanis, apparently; onions, chillies (small, green and hard, she’d said), garlic, ginger, brown rice, fresh coriander leaves, and brown sticks – which might be bay and cinnamon; lamb shoulder, sheep or ‘baby’ chicken. A halal butcher would know what he meant. She told him how to have the mutton bone cut properly; the chicken skinned and in eight pieces.

  He had a shower, shaved and put on a pair of straight, dark blue jeans and brown suede Oxfords, his white Aquascutum shirt and a grey jacket. Outside in the weak sunshine everything seemed brighter, closer and more colourful than on a work day. He switched on the car radio in a buoyant, purposeful mood, and searched for something suitable. An echoing ‘Midlands Underground 1-0-7, Midlands Underground 1-0-7’ and a black youth saluting his listeners:

  ‘… big shou’ out to all my bredren. Big up all you sexy-body ladies. Hold tight all my Walsall soldiers. Hold tight my WV10 crew, all my B70 crew, the DY6 – keep it locked in, locked on. All my texters, all my signalists down in the block at HMP Featherstone – big yourselves up – trooss me this next choon is massive, y’get me?

  ‘P-P-P-Pull it op selektah!

  ‘Br-Br-Br …’

  A pump-action shotgun, loaded and fired twice, and a sultry New York black woman’s voice:

  ‘Treat me good, treat me right

  Lick my body all through the night

  Do it slow, do it fast

  Suck my pussy and lick my ass … ass … ass …’

  And a bass line that distorted the speakers of the stereo.

  Peter stopped at the traffic lights on the ring road, opened the window and affected an air of urban boredom for the benefit of the woman in the next car. He was in high spirits, and the ‘4-4, Speed Garage, Bassline House and Bashment’ on the radio made him feel like he belonged in the architecturally brutalized city.

  The lights turned green and he pulled off as if in a hurry, which he wasn’t, and considered having a subwoofer and amplifier fitted to the car.

  At the Bilston roundabout he turned the music down. He was nearly forty, for God’s sake.

  *

  He headed towards Dudley and a small brick precinct with an Indian supermarket and greengrocer’s. He parked outside the Apna Punjab pub and avoided looking at the five lolling Jamaicans drinking cans of beer, talking loudly in patois and laughing.

  The small supermarket was busy, the aisles full. He could just make out the vegetables through the pastel and turquoise nylon-looking robes and scarves of overweight middle-aged Indian women, emptying crates of chillies into plastic
bags. Peter waited, and tried to keep out of the way of turbanned men setting out more boxes of vegetables, and fathers with paunches and thick gold jewellery carrying sacks of flour and rice on their shoulders while calling their young children to follow them. Excusing himself frequently, he managed to nip in and out of the line to get what he needed. By the time he reached the tomatoes he’d had enough of the place, but he stifled the irritation he would usually have allowed himself to indulge in had he been at Sainsbury’s, with Kate. It might look racist here.

  Away from the vegetables, things were calmer. There was a butcher’s at the far end of the supermarket, which doubled as a Western Union branch. Posters of smiling relatives in India advertised the service. A map of the Punjab hung on the wall, behind five white-aproned men chopping meat. It wasn’t halal – he’d have to go elsewhere – but he lingered as he passed the attractive, slim young mothers in order to inhale their perfume, the shampoo of their layered and highlighted black hair and, he imagined, the washing powder of their freshly laundered blouses and tight jeans. What type of lingerie did Indian women wear?

  The younger butchers nodded to the Bhangra rhythms coming from speakers hanging on the wall and a woman singer’s sweet, high-pitched voice. Their shoulders twitched to the banging drums and the whistling that punctuated the chorus. It was happy music. The butchers smiled at the women as they passed large plastic bags of meat over the counter.