Dottie

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  ‘You didn’t say that before,’ Estella said.

  ‘A woman of the world like her would’ve known what to do with such an invitation. That’s what her flouncing about was supposed to mean, I suppose. She’s all right, really, I think,’ Dottie said, giving Estella a small, ironic smile. ‘Do you mean I’m making it up? Anyway, we arranged to meet in a restaurant in Clapham High Street called Wilbur . . . Do you remember the place, Sophie? Towards the Common end, just by that big furniture store. We go past it on the bus in the mornings.’

  Sophie nodded and smiled, then deliberately shifted her gaze away and fixed it on the figure standing by the ward door. She was making a show of her affections, if that was what they were, behaving with a ridiculous lack of restraint like a sulking teenager, Dottie thought, suppressing a sneering smile. Sophie heaved an agonised sigh, sickening with love for the tall, thin orderly who lounged against the wall just inside the ward doors. He was dressed in whites. His long coat, which was a size or two too big for him, was unbuttoned and flapped unheeded about him whenever he moved. Pieces of tubing peeped out of his pockets, intended to be mistaken for stethoscopes perhaps, or other necessary tools of the trade. His face had a weathered tint, as if he was used to spending time in the open. His complexion revealed a touch of dark blood along the way, Dottie guessed, as did his wiry auburn hair, receding to reveal a nobly curved forehead. He wore dark-rimmed spectacles which were pushed hard against his face. There was something unsettled about him. When he spoke, his voice was high-pitched and quarrelsome, grumblingly expecting to be misused.

  He was at the beck and call of the nurses and the sister, and performed the tasks he was set with a tight-lipped parody of jauntiness, making a joke of his oppression. The nurses sensed his hostility and tried to evade it with bland endearments. Their manner implied forced tolerance and quite visible condescension. It did not contain the least trace of affection or encouragement. To Dottie he seemed a little damaged, perhaps even slightly dangerous. His head nodded whenever he was about to move, as if relaying a signal from a deeper source. He was positioned on the very edges of the sight lines from the staff nurse’s desk in the middle of the ward and the sister’s glass cubicle at the end. From his vantage-point, he leaned forward now and then to glance at the patients and their visitors. He gave all of them long, satirical looks and raised his eyebrows dramatically as if he disapproved of something they were doing. Then he slid back against the wall, grinning to himself. Dottie was filled with a premonition that this would be Sophie’s next man, and that when she left the hospital she would bring him to Horatio Street. Her apprehensions were for Hudson as well as for herself, and for the danger that would come in their midst.

  ‘Anyway, I met him . . . the grandson . . . last night,’ Dottie said, tearing her eyes away from the orderly. ‘At the restaurant where we had arranged.’

  2

  She arrived at the Wilbur restaurant early despite her attempts at delay. She had found herself hurrying through the gloomy, ill-lit back-streets by which she had chosen to take a short-cut. When she got to the restaurant, she found that it was too cold to stand outside or to stroll up and down the litter-strewn High Street pretending to be taking the air. She was close to the Bedford Hill meat-market, where generations of sinners had plied their humiliating trade and plummeted to unimaginable depths of degradation. If she lingered too long on the pavement, Dottie thought, some punter was bound to stop and attempt a negotiation. Or a policeman was likely to turn up and bully her with his self-righteousness. So there was nothing else for it but to go into the dimly-lit restaurant and wait. She would rather not have faced on her own the supercilious looks the waiters were bound to give her. She would rather have stridden in gracefully after he had been waiting for seven or eight minutes and was just beginning to wonder if he had got the wrong day. And what if he did not turn up? Would she have enough money to extricate herself honourably? She resisted the temptation to read the scrolled menu in its softly-lit frame. It hung in the recessed doorway, its tiny characters and inflated figures doubled over with mockery at her pretensions. At least she was not too afraid to go in, she congratulated herself, as she would have been not long ago.

  The restaurant was a converted shop. Thick dark curtains on brass rods hung across the glass at the front. The tables were arranged in two rows with a central aisle, at the bottom of which ran a counter that served as a bar. The room was lit as if it were a cavern, and was festooned with fishing nets and oiled ropes. Muted and deflected light bounced off tunnels and shafts to reveal a chamber above rock-pools. In the corners stood huge shells and baskets full of shingle and old twine. The cavern’s silence was shockingly serene so close to the unresting sea. The tables were all empty, their cream-coloured cloths laid with glittering cutlery and shiny plates. An older woman was standing behind the bar, her head bent over something she was softly reading out. Leaning forward, with his elbows against the bar, was a plump young man who was obviously the waiter. He straightened up slowly when he saw Dottie and approached her with a friendly smile. He was welcoming but not very enthusiastic, and looked as if he would not be surprised if Dottie merely asked him for the time of day and left. His dinner jacket, though obviously shiny and slovenly to the practised eye, struck Dottie with its due magnificence. She lost her thin pretence of calm and stammered her first few words.

  ‘Miss Balfour, we’re expecting you,’ the waiter said, speaking with a touch of an accent and throwing in a hint of a bow. He did this with his fleshy, embarrassed smile, conceding that she was bound to have seen through his act. ‘This way please,’ he said with a sigh, and led off as if to guide Dottie through a restaurant overcrowded with throngs of noisy eaters. Hardly had she settled herself down when the waiter reappeared beside her, offering her a drink. She asked for a glass of wine and composed herself to wait. She knew she had enough money to pay for the wine herself if the worst came to happen, although such worries seemed superfluous. Mr Mann had obviously booked the table, and she hoped the restaurant could see that she was the guest. On second thoughts perhaps it was better that she had arrived first. This way she would be calm and he would be the one who was flustered.

  In the event he still managed to catch her out, appearing in front of her while she was keeping her eyes lowered to avoid the smiling looks of the older woman behind the bar. Dottie had been watching the waiter and the woman reading, wondering what it was they were so solemnly bent over. She had come to the conclusion that they were Italians and were reading something tragic about the plummeting lira – she knew about these things now that she worked in big business – when the woman looked up and caught her with a radiant smile. In the confusion of her retreat, Dottie did not notice the approach of the man she had been waiting for. He was grinning broadly, leaning forward to shake her hand across the table. ‘My name’s Michael,’ he said. ‘And you must be Miss Balfour.’

  ‘Dottie,’ she said. Even in her confusion she was struck by the ease and confidence of his manner. There was nothing at all flustered about him. She took him in all at once, just a hasty glance, but she saw that he was very slim and his hair was tinted with red. The waiter was beside him, relieving him of his coat and looking pleased to see him. He spoke now with a trace of an American accent, exchanging pleasantries with a familiar customer. Michael Mann ordered a bottle of wine while they waited for their meal, and moved aside the candle that stood between them so he could lean forward as he talked to her.

  ‘Dottie,’ he said, nodding as if he was pleased with the name. She did not see Dr Murray in him except in the eyes, but then she had hardly known the old doctor, and would have had no idea what he would have looked like as a young man. He was nothing like as dark as the doctor, and his beard was more patchy, without the fullness that had given the old man such dignity. That was just as well, she thought, since she had not come to meet the doctor. He would remain the grand old man of her dreams while before her sat only a relative of his. ‘It’s nothing special but
I like it here. The restaurant, I mean. I hope you don’t mind fish . . . It’s a family business. They’re very welcoming, aren’t they? I couldn’t resist that after the first time I came.’

  He talked like that for a few minutes, smiling and chatting to her. They were like two people in a painting, she thought, leaning towards each other across a restaurant table, deep in conversation. That was how it would seem if you were looking at the picture and trying to understand it or if you were a painter trying to portray life. What could they be saying to each other? He could be discoursing on the power of Art to transform Life, and she could be making a case for the economic reorganisation of the human community. Or they could be debating and lamenting the Hegelian exclusion of their contribution to human history, to humanity itself, or living again remembered moments of tendernesses they had shared. In the painting, the red tint in his hair would be more pronounced, and perhaps his beard would need to be thicker to emphasise the patches. The two elbows on the table hunched his shoulders too much, so they would need to be relaxed a little without losing the urgent, straining posture he had assumed.

  She would be altogether more casual, maybe a hint of bemusement in the way she regarded his insistent manner. Her hands were joined together and resting on the table, fingers intertwined to conceal any agitation she might be feeling. She was wearing a dark purple dress, long-sleeved and V-necked, which Estella told her made her look slim and elegant. Round her neck she wore a silver chain, and a dark silver brooch of a single oak leaf was fixed over her heart. Her hair was brushed back, and held off her face with tiny purple clips. In her eyes, which would only be marginally visible in the painting, was a look of mild surprise that she should find herself where she was.

  What colour were her eyes? What colour were his? You can’t paint the colour of eyes, she thought. You would have to make the eyes stay still to capture their colour, and you would miss the life in them. She did not think any painting would be able to catch the colour of life.

  ‘Did you know him well?’ he asked. The smile had faded from his face now that he was ready to talk, and his manner was less agitated. The realisation that he was nervous too made Dottie attend to him more. ‘The woman in the library said . . . you cried when you found out about his death. That you went to ask about him. Were you a friend of his?’

  ‘No, not really, hardly anything like that. I used to see him in the streets . . . and in the library,’ Dottie said, feeling as if she had agreed to meet the grandson under false pretences. She should have refused. There was nothing she could tell this man about the doctor. She had come out of curiosity, and that was not fair to him. ‘I don’t think we ever spoke to each other. He used to greet me. He was very kind. I thought maybe it was because we were both black people,’ she said.

  ‘You never spoke to him!’ Michael Mann said, a small grimace of anguish and disappointment crossing his face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dottie said. The look of agony on his face made her feel that it was she who had lured him here with false promises. ‘I don’t know what the lady in the library told you. I should’ve warned you on the phone.’

  He shook his head, and then had to wait while the waiter brought the wine. It came in an earthenware jar, and the waiter evidently wanted to tell Dottie about this style of serving wine. When he had done so to his satisfaction, he took the order for their meal. Michael dealt with all that, making suggestions with evident authority and glancing at her to make sure of her acquiescence. He was the good-humoured host, full of smiles and charm. And she was in the painting again, she thought, having decisions made for her. In a way it was necessary. It would not be much of a subject if the man in the dark jacket and red-tinted hair only requested the odd dish of a favourite vegetable while the slim lady in a purple dress and silver oak-leaf brooch ordered the grand platters for herself. She would have to be painted differently for that, gross and slavering. Anyway, he was paying the bill, she hoped.

  ‘The woman in the library only said that you had cried . . . It was my fault,’ he said after the waiter had gone. ‘I’m not surprised that he greeted you. Did he never speak to you? Even once?’

  She shook her head. ‘Once he pointed to a headline in the newspaper he was reading. It was about the French losing Algeria,’ Dottie said, and saw Michael smile and then nod. ‘At other times I thought he would’ve spoken, but I was a little bit afraid of him I suppose, and I did not give him the chance. Whenever he saw me in the library he stood up and lifted off his hat. He went there every day to read the paper. Did the lady tell you that? In the street, he took his hat off and bowed a little. I thought if I ever had a grandfather I would’ve wanted him to be like that. Sometimes, as I passed him, he dropped his head as if he was . . . As if he was ashamed or sorry about something. That’s how he looked, anyway. But I don’t think he ever spoke.’

  ‘Do you have any idea why he was interested in you?’ Michael Mann asked. He was smiling broadly now although moments before Dottie had seen his eyes beginning to redden and moisten. ‘That’s amazing, all that about dropping his head with shame. Did you wonder?’

  ‘My . . .’ Dottie had almost said social worker, and stopped after the one word, shocked at herself but none the less surprised at the unfamiliarity of the words. It must have been a long time since she had said those words to anybody. ‘My friend Brenda . . . I told her about it. She thought I must’ve reminded him of someone, but I think he was being kind. He always seemed such a kind man.’

  Michael Mann nodded, a look of pain in his eyes. Yes, Dottie thought, he had the eyes. They would be difficult to paint without making the warmth and understanding in them seem like weakness or self-pity. In the old man, the torment in the eyes had made Dottie want to turn away, to hide from the burden the doctor was carrying. In the younger man she saw that the brightness was the beginnings of tears and she resisted the temptation to look away. They would be grey in the painting, she thought, like luminous pools in twilight, and they would catch all the light but would keep their secrets to themselves.

  ‘It’s many years now since he passed away, Mr Mann,’ Dottie said, thinking to console him. ‘Five, six years? You must have found many people with their stories about him. He’d be delighted if he knew that you were here chasing up all the old trails, I’m sure of that.’

  ‘I doubt it, and please call me Michael,’ he said, smiling ruefully. ‘I suspect he’d think I was interfering needlessly, hunting him up like this. It’s what I would think if someone was doing this to me. But I have no other way of finding him . . . what his life would have been like in those last years. I’m staying in his house now, did I tell you that? There’s an old lady living downstairs, and two women live on the first floor. The old lady looks after the garden. She told me that very firmly. She remembers him well, she says, but I can’t get much out of her. I can’t tell whether she’s past it or whether she’s just a wily old woman who doesn’t want to talk. She was a tenant there while he was still alive, but she says he had very little to do with her.’

  Later, when she could no longer resist it, and when the food and wine had made both of them more relaxed and convivial, she asked him how it was that he had lost touch with Dr Murray in his last years. He raised his eyebrows and said, ‘Families, you know what they’re like.’ She persisted with one more question but he smiled and shook his head, implying that it was too trivial and petty a matter to be gone into. She was not convinced but could not blame him for not wanting to burst out to her with intimate details of family quarrels. He asked her about her job – just a secretary, she said, taking pleasure in the self-deprecation. After a little while she found herself talking about Sophie’s illness and the difficulty she was having finding enough people to mind Hudson while she went to work.

  ‘Have you advertised in the local paper?’ he asked. ‘Try it. It costs hardly anything and you don’t have to take anyone you don’t like. There could be someone a couple of streets away looking for a little bit extra and who would su
it you exactly.’ She looked sceptical but he persisted, and in the end offered to do it for her. He worked on a newspaper, he explained, and such things were not as frightening as they seemed.

  ‘Do you work on the local paper?’ she asked, beginning to see glimmerings of logic in his offer to help.

  ‘No,’ he said, then raised his eyes to heaven for a long moment of heart-felt thanks. ‘I used to, but I work in Fleet Street now.’

  She sensed from his conversation that he was not going to say anything more about himself, that he was only being friendly. No doubt he was disappointed and regretted arranging the dinner. The thought made her feel silly, as if she was a bore that he could not shake off. She found the fish too strong when it came. There was something wrong with the sauce, she thought, but Michael praised that the most, so she kept her opinions to herself. She left soon after they finished eating, when the first reasonable opportunity presented itself.

  3

  He rang her at work on Friday afternoon. Mrs Waterson was not amused and made her displeasure obvious, staring at Dottie as if willing her off the telephone. He wondered if she would like to go to the theatre with him. He’d just acquired a couple of free tickets for Saturday night, never mind how, and if she’d be interested . . . She said yes without any further thought, surprising herself with her alacrity. She would sort something out about baby-sitters later. Laura or Estella, otherwise she was in trouble. Yes, yes. She had tried to convince herself that she did not really like him. He had only been interested in himself, she thought, obsessed with himself. Something else about him did not appeal to her. Could it be that red tint in his hair? It could not be real, and some puritanical streak in her insisted that people who dyed their hair were cheats. Also, she disliked the way he thought he could avoid saying anything to her by making charming and flattering little comments. Probably a natural-born creep who knew how to evade answering questions. That was why he was a journalist, no doubt. Yet when he rang her she knew at once what her answer was, and heard in his voice the relief and pleasure at her acceptance.