by Tim Pears
Suburbia, patches of rubbed grass, industrial sheds, scrubby hedges. Ezra stared out at the unlovely landscape. He turned back from the window to find Blaise studying him. He winked at her, but she didn’t respond, though she remained peering intently at him. Or through him.
In an attempt to shift his discomfort, Ezra asked, ‘How’s Akhmed, honey?’
Blaise blinked. She still gazed in his direction, but he was able to watch subtle shifts and tremors around her eyes and mouth, as if clouds of thought were passing by beneath the surface.
‘He’s just a friend,’ she said. Blaise’s expression took on a certain petulance, as if she’d been accused of doing something wrong. ‘He’s sweet, Daddy,’ she shrugged. ‘Okay? I mean, he liked me too much. He was never serious.’
‘I didn’t realise,’ Ezra said, blandly, suppressing an exultant bubble in his stomach.
‘We weren’t really a couple, you know.’
‘No?’
‘And they think they’re so special,’ Blaise said.
‘They do? Who?’
‘Oh, the children of immigrants.’
‘What do you mean, special?’
‘You know. That they’re obliged to interpret the culture to their parents. On behalf of them. When in fact all children do this, don’t they –’
‘Do they?’
‘All children do this for their poor parents drifting out of date, out of reach of the times they live in. Just when you want your parents to explain the world, you realise you’re beginning to explain it to them.’ She gazed out of the window.
‘Surely not.’ Ezra tried to work out whether such moments had already arisen between himself and Blaise. What she’d said made no sense, until he thought of himself and his father. When he was more or less the same age as Blaise was now. Explicating the plots of films. Telling him the names of famous singers, sportsmen, young politicians.
Blaise found herself recalling the moment a week before, when she’d met Minty Carlyle coming out of the Animal Sanctuary shop in Summertown. They’d said hello, Minty had asked whether Blaise was browsing, Blaise had said she was after a card for her grandad’s birthday. It struck her that Minty was peering at her with open hostility; she suspected that Minty didn’t like her. It was a relief when she’d grown out of having to call her Auntie Minty – a strange fad in their families’ friendship, which seemed, now she thought about it in relation to Louie, to have long passed by. Blaise was glad, too, that Jill was her godmother, while Minty was Hec’s.
Minty had stared at her with that dislike evident in her narrowed eyes, and said, ‘I only hope you appreciate your father, that’s all. I could forgive anything, I could accept anything, if only you did.’ And then, instead of waiting for any kind of reply – thank God – she’d walked off along South Parade.
Suddenly Blaise heard her father clear his throat. ‘I don’t want to talk about Akhmed,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Will you tell me something?’
‘What, darling?’
‘What was my childhood like?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘What was I like as a child?’
‘My goodness, darling, your childhood is barely over!’
‘Of course it’s over, Daddy. Please: think.’
Ezra duly pondered. ‘A person changes a great deal,’ he said. ‘As a parent one shares a house with a succession of people. You were no different.’
‘Which was your favourite person? The best time with me?’
‘Now.’
‘Daddy!’ Blaise’s right foot jerked forward, automatically as if her knee had been tapped to check her reflex, and kicked her father on the shin.
‘Ow!’ Ezra winced.
‘Apart from now,’ Blaise insisted.
Ezra sighed, put his laptop on the empty seat beside him, and turned back to his daughter. ‘When you were very little,’ he said. ‘Trying to crawl. It was so frustrating for you not to be able to move around of your own volition. Well, you did move: you rolled. You’d be sitting up, and you’d look at where you wanted to go, lie back and roll over a couple of times. Then sit up again, only to find you’d rolled in the wrong direction: instead of moving towards Mummy on the sofa, you’d rolled in a diagonal to the bookcase. So you’d fall on your back and try again. You were so determined. You looked like a spy in a James Bond film, ducking under laser beams.’
Blaise smiled, and Ezra continued, ‘When finally you did get yourself into the correct crawling posture, on all fours, you’d aim straight ahead, only to set off backwards. You could only find reverse gear.
‘Of course, you cracked it soon enough, darling, and that was when you entered this period I’ll never forget: when you scuttled around the house picking up every damn thing you could lay your hands on – every sharp, or poisonous, or small and swallowable object we owned. You’d pick it up, study it, discard it, and then grab something else. As if you were making an inventory of all our possessions, like some demented little old landlady.’
‘But you liked that?’
‘It was hell, Blaise. We couldn’t take our eyes off you for a second. You fiddled with electrical appliances, dragged heavy furniture on top of yourself. You had bruises and bumps on your head the whole time, you looked like a tiny pugilist. You created havoc. It drove Mum crazy. Me, too, but I found it so impressive, this drive to development. To ownership of the world. Nothing was going to stop you. You were unstoppable. Not that we wanted to. Our first child. It was thrilling, actually.’
It was only when he’d finished that Ezra was able to perceive the effect his recollection had been having on Blaise, and now he saw her face once again tremble. As if he’d hurt her, had reduced her somehow, with the memory. She squeezed her eyes shut. Her lips closed over her teeth to keep them still. She fought back a need to weep as if to reveal it to her father, or simply in a public place, would be a terrible humiliation. Unable to keep down whatever it was that was rising, Blaise bowed her head. Ezra waited some moments, then stepped across to the empty seat beside her and put his arm around Blaise’s shoulders. She hid her head against his chest and let go. Her breath sobbing out of her lungs as Ezra held her against him smelled of milk, and then of satsumas, and then a little later of tobacco, faintly, as he hugged his daughter to him, in what he suspected was not simply comfort, but also an apology, for the dazed parental wonder Ezra only wished he could offer her always.
19
Hotel Corridor
Saturday 6 September, Sunday 7 September
Ezra Pepin stood beneath the platform at the front of the Adelphi Suite as it gradually filled. Guests had been observed coming into the Waldorf Hilton, and were physically screened when they entered the inner lobby. At the door of the conference room they showed their invitations again, to Isis Water staff, and were pointed, or in some cases escorted, to their seats among the two hundred or so stackable but comfortable chrome and blue-cushioned chairs. The majority of invitees were men, most middle-aged, who on this hot summer Saturday wore drab suit and tie. In convivial packs they sauntered forward. Many shared a habit of checking the seat before they sat down. Then they rustled papers, or leaned towards each other and conversed in low, discreet voices.
Chrissie Barwell whispered in Ezra’s ear that all the speakers were here, backstage, and he nodded. He allowed himself for a moment a little self-congratulation: he really was a damn good organiser. He knew what he had to do himself, and he knew what could be delegated; that was the skill, and he happened to have it.
The people who should be here are here, Ezra thought. The technicalities are in hand, the presentation will begin on time and proceed in due order, these guests are about to be impressed. They’ll make the decision to invest. And after that … looking out across the grey and balding heads, Ezra spotted his daughter entering at the back. A prickle of embarrassment crawled up his back. He realised at once that he’d made a terrible mistake allowing, encouraging, Blaise to attend. He’d duped himself.
‘
I’ll be right back,’ Ezra told Chrissie. He walked along the front of the platform. Blaise was seating herself in the centre of a row towards the back. Ezra strode up the aisle beside the wall, alarmed by the sight of his girl dressed in her bright eclectic teenage garb, slouching into this room full of middle-aged and older men, as out of place a person as you could imagine, the sight of her practically screaming, ‘I am innocence, I am truth, I am imminent disruption.’ Wasn’t her letter to Klaus Kuuzik merely a foretaste? Hadn’t her mother risen to her feet at the back of countless meetings to protest at colonialism and hypocrisy?
Hold on, Ezra told himself. He slowed down; perhaps he was over-reacting. It was hardly Blaise’s fault that this invited audience were so conservative in their manner of dress. And anyway, there’s someone in a polo shirt and slacks; another in a casual skirt. Don’t be ridiculous, man. What are you going to do? Haul her out?
Ezra advanced no further along the back wall: he asked the security guard in that corner to make sure he or one of his colleagues stood close to that girl near the back, ready to whisk her away, in the unlikely event that she acted out of order.
And then Ezra returned to the front, and resumed his overseeing role for the presentation, by a succession of speakers, of Oxford Isis Water’s first audacious venture abroad. Klaus Kuuzik introduced the project. Thomas Kohler gave a reassuring description of the hard credentials of the private security firm, run and staffed solely by ex-SAS men, with whom Isis Water were going to work in close partnership. Professor Abu Ghassan explained why in his opinion, contrary to received wisdom, now was the perfect time for penetration of the Middle East market: to engage Arab custom and loyalty before a settlement was reached, not after, when all the magpies would come swooping.
Between each speaker brief films were screened. About the company. About Israel and Palestine and future markets beyond.
About the world shortage of water, an increasing challenge that presented unprecedented opportunity for resourceful companies: huge profit would be made from the shunting of water south from northern and western regions.
Ezra glanced intermittently in Blaise’s direction; there was nothing about her attentive presence to suggest disruption, he reckoned. And he was right. Blaise gazed forward, though she hadn’t really seen much since Klaus Kuuzik had stepped back from the front of the stage. With her mouth closed, she was tapping her teeth with her tongue. She imagined her teeth to be the keys of a piano, and she ticked out a tune upon them.
Sarah Carney corroborated Hisham’s insights with an outline of strategies the company, along with advertisers Jacobsen and Brown, intended to employ. Carl Buchannan outlined the logistics of diverting, bottling and shipping Turkish water.
Alan Blozenfeld spoke in numbers, of investment criteria, interest rates, projected returns, illustrating his speech with diagrams and graphs. Klaus Kuuzik returned to the stage to wrap up proceedings with a declaration of his excitement at the courage no less than the lucrative reward this venture promised.
Klaus made a joke that prompted a particular kind of laughter, common in such large gatherings: it told of relief, but had also a knowing, rehearsed quality. Blaise Pepin may have been the only person who didn’t even smile. She was certain that Klaus could see her; that although his gaze ranged around the conference room it kept returning to her, and if she betrayed herself by acknowledging his eye with a smile Blaise feared that she would then blush crimson. Other people around the hall would notice; heads would turn. So she sat immobile, inexpressive.
Blaise hardly heard Kuuzik emphasise Isis Water’s belief that water was a commodity of value only when supply was renewable. ‘Let us bear in mind always,’ he said, ‘that we do not inherit the earth from our parents; we borrow it from our children.’ He finished by staking his future as Chief Executive of Isis Water, indeed his reputation in the industry, on the belief that initial loss would turn to trading profit within five years. Which, Ezra reckoned, was a flourish of pure bravado – was he gambling that no one’s memory would last that long? Or perhaps the higher the level of power, the less promises meant. And then Klaus reminded everyone present of their invitation to the party that evening, at which their celebration could find full expression.
The company had booked two entire residential floors for senior employees and guests, in addition to further rooms dispersed throughout the five storeys of the hotel. At half-past seven Ezra rose from a nap in his room on the second floor. He showered, brushed his teeth, rolled his armpits with aloe vera anti-perspirant deodorant, and pressed a spray of Sienna on to his neck and wrists. He dressed in his rented galabeya, which he’d chosen from the costumiers’ brochure, passed around the office, prompting merriment and ribald teasing, for days. Ezra’s choice was a black cotton kaftan, embroidered with a row of four white circular swirls which rose up the centre of the gown from its hem. At the chest the column split into two rows that ran up to the collar, then tracked around each shoulder to meet at the back of the neck.
Ezra liked the elegant simplicity of the design, and he’d taken only a moment to select it from the brochure a fortnight earlier. Now, standing in front of the full-length mirror in his hotel bedroom, he wondered how it was possible that the brochure – even though it had featured the galabeya worn by a model, a swarthy, mustachioed Arab – failed to show what here was painfully apparent: the white-embroidered line looked like a zip up the middle of the gown, undone near the top. Elegant? It looked absurd. Risible.
For a moment Ezra stared at his preposterous reflection, wondering whether he had time to unpick the white embroidery, or if there was some other way out of this mess. Then it struck him that actually he could not have chosen a more appropriate costume if he’d tried. This was a fancy-dress party, wasn’t it? What he was wearing was a conversation piece, an ice-breaker that would save him a great deal of effort with the guests it would be his duty, as a senior employee, to mingle with.
It was in this jaunty mood that Ezra closed his door behind him and put the keycard into the galabeya’s one pocket, along with a few name cards and a handkerchief that were the only objects he needed to carry with him. No keys, no money, weighing him down, ruining the fall of his gown. He knocked on Blaise’s door.
‘Coming,’ she called. ‘Just a sec.’
Hotel corridors are invariably gloomy. Lit by weak electric light, regardless of the time or the weather outside. Ezra heard laughter sing out of an open doorway, a door click shut and footsteps recede briefly, out of sight along the curving corridor.
The door opened. Blaise stepped back into bright light. She was wearing a veil. For a moment of confusion Ezra’s brain told him this was something to do with Akhmed, and his fears that she would be swallowed up in a repressive subculture.
Blaise lowered the veil: in front of Ezra Pepin stood not his daughter but someone else. A gorgeous creature, her pretty face made up to draw all stray attention to itself. Eyes defined, blue and sad and sparkling. Glossy lips lustrous with promise and hunger.
Ezra’s gaze rose to the top of Blaise’s head, to a gold Egyptian headpiece, red and blue painted hieroglyphics around each side, at its front a cobra in a striking position. From each of Blaise’s pierced ears three coins hung on little chains suspended from stars. Around her lovely neck was a silver pendant necklace.
‘It’s the Eye of Horus,’ Blaise told her father.
She wore a bra covered with tiny jewelled beads. Burgundy, green. Gold, purple. There were silver coins along the bottom edge of the bra, and more coins which hung underneath and formed a triangular drape. Around her lissom belly, following its curve of a womanly girl, of a girl pretending to be a woman, was a thin belt of small coins.
Over Blaise’s hands stretched long latticed and beaded gloves which ran from a single loop over each middle finger up her arms, to just above the elbow. Ezra took it all in. A turquoise beaded belt rested on her hips, from which fell a long skirt, on top of it a semi-transparent scarf of chiffon or nylon or somethi
ng, covered with coins and various coloured beads, down to a hem that was ruffled and trimmed with another row of gold coins. At one of her feet was an anklet with silver bells. Blaise stood barefoot, only three or four inches shorter than her father.
Ezra had swallowed the sight of his daughter in a single tilting gulp. His blood, he feared, was draining into the maroon carpet. Blaise had not merely grown up, she’d been transformed in a single evolutionary spurt into someone else. This lurid gypsy who stood before him would now reveal that she had been sheltering in their house with them all these years, masquerading as a commoner child. She was a fugitive princess from some fairy-tale realm.
‘What do you think?’ she asked, and even her voice was changed, more deep and sultry than it had been two hours before. ‘Is this okay, Daddy?’ Her mouth was very slightly open, and he could see the tip of her tongue as she ran it along between her lips. Less seductive gesture than the novel taste of lipstick.
There was no blood left in his brain. Ezra could not calculate what he thought. Whether any thoughts he might have had were more fearful, angry, incestuous, philosophical, happy or sorrowful in their astonishment. ‘It’s fine,’ he mustered. ‘You look wonderful, darling.’ He noticed for the first time a smudge of magenta lipstick beyond the corner of one side of her lips, the slightest trace of her inexperience. ‘Wait,’ he said. He felt for his white handkerchief, leaned forward, and carefully wiped off the glossy smear. Ezra leaned back. ‘Quite wonderful.’ He held out his arm. ‘Shall we?’
The Palm Court had been transformed into an Arabian nightclub, with round tables and chairs filling most of the floor, except for a space for dancing between them and the stage. Along the sides of the room were curtained alcoves. Inside were low upholstered benches and cushions, in deep reds, greens, blues. They and the wall-hangings were decorated with the interlace, the intricate curlicues, of Arabic design. Ezra paused to study them.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Can you imagine how long it took people to make these? This divine geometry. I could gaze at them for hours.’