Mr. Campbell: A packet of Drum tobacco, please.
Mr. Asham: There you are. That’s five-sixteen, please.
Mr. C: Here’s twenty.
Mr. A: Thank you [pause]. Wonderful weather.
C: Lovely.
A: Will you be out in the garden?
C: Probably.
A: Good weather for a party. Or a barbecue.
C: Maybe.
A: Saturday will be good. Very hot. Very good for a barbecue.
C: Yes, it will.
A: My son will be working on Saturday afternoon. I will not, I will be free.
C: Really?
A: Yes, I hope I will be out with some friends.
C: Do you?
A: Yes. Maybe we will go to a barbecue at the house of a friend!
C: So you like barbecues?
A: Very much.
C: What’s your favourite thing about barbecues?
A: The food. Especially the chicken. That is very good.
C: And what else?
A: I like to be outside, it is very relaxing.
C: Yes, it must be, given how much time you spend in here, where it’s very hot and stuffy. [pause] So, do you have any friends who are having a barbecue?
A: No.
C: You don’t know anybody?
A: No.
C: Oh, well, that’s a pity … I suppose you won’t be having a barbecue, will you?
A: No. I won’t.
C: Oh, what a shame.
After Mr. Campbell left, Sam peered round the shelves. Mr. Asham was staring at his palms whilst opening and closing his eyes. He brought his hands to his face. He sighed. He began speaking in a language Sam did not understand. It sounded like a prayer, perhaps a lament, and then Mrs. Maclean came in. When she bought a newspaper, Mr. Asham was his affable self once more. He spoke of the weather; she was polite; barbecues were not mentioned. But there was something forced about his cheerfulness. When Sam brought his ripe avocado to the counter, all Mr. Asham said was, “Sixty-five.”
Mr. Campbell can’t have been the only person who treated Fahad this way. His reaction suggests a deeper wound caused by many hands. When he sat in that park, thirty-one years later, it had still not healed. In retrospect, it seems amazing that he could have been so unhappy, for so many years, and almost no one knew. I don’t think his wife, or any of his children had any more idea than the hundreds of people who came into the shop each day. Fahad was such a private man. For many years, the only person who knew how he felt was a woman named Trudy. Like Fahad, she was an outsider. Trudy was a Filipino woman in her early thirties who worked as a prostitute. Unlike Fahad, she was not supposed to be living in Scotland, because she did not have permission from its government to do so. In this time without borders it is hard for people to imagine how great a problem this was. No one was allowed to enter another country unless they had permission. If they did and were caught, they would be sent back where they had come from. That they might have a very good reason for not wanting to go back was usually ignored. Trudy’s reason was a husband who said he adored her and could not live without her, but who expressed these fine feelings by pushing burning cigarettes against her skin.
In 2016 she had been living in Comely Bank for fourteen years. Whilst she did not like sleeping with strange men, it was an occupation she remained stuck in: If she worked in a shop or office the government would find out that she was living in the country and then force her to leave. Trudy was thus trapped in her job, and the country, with no obvious means of escape. But she was neither passive nor a victim. She made the best of things. She had six or seven regular clients, and she knew what they liked. She took holidays twice a year whose common feature was the sea. Whether sailing round the coastline of Scotland, or walking on the crumbling cliffs of southern England, it pleased her to have so much water in sight. Though the waves were the wrong colour, and it was too cold, it reminded her of home. It is probably for the same reason that so many Survivors like to live close to the sea. When you gaze out over so much water, anything seems possible.
Though prostitution was illegal in most cities, Edinburgh was more permissive. Everyone knew the places with blacked-out windows and signs that said MASSAGE and SAUNA offered another kind of relief, but the police usually turned a blind eye. This tolerance had its limits: Trudy could no more tell people what she did than people could say they had been to visit her. In both cases, there would have been strong disapproval, and perhaps the police would have been informed. As a result, there was still a degree of secrecy about visiting her. Regulars did not use the front entrance, but instead walked down an alley that led to the back door. In some respects, her house was like an exclusive club, albeit one where you couldn’t meet the other members. This suited most of her customers, who tried to pretend they were her only client. Sam was the only person who was interested in the idea that she saw other men. Even as early as 2014, his curiosity is obvious.
October 13, 2014
It’s the middle-aged men who slow as they pass. Most wear suits or smart-casual clothes and have a taken-care-of look. They neither stare nor furtively glance at the door. Instead they turn their heads in a ninety-degree arc, first one way, then back, so that their interest is concealed. They must walk by every day, thinking how easy it would be. They work hard, they deserve it, their wives will never know. All they need is the nerve.
For all his curiosity, it took Sam almost two years to walk the short distance from the gate to Trudy’s red door. In his diary entry for August 24, 2016, he offers a long, involved justification that begins with Lucifer, his Friday volunteer, telling him about a “friend” who went to see Trudy, then meanders for six pages through the rights and wrongs of prostitution and the importance of understanding all forms of sexual relationships, and then concludes by saying it is fine if he goes in the name of research. I omit this for a simple reason: It is total rubbish.
August 25, 2016
At three o’clock I went and pressed the bell. I stood and waited, as many must do, but unlike them I felt neither anxious nor fearful. I didn’t care who saw the back of my head, what conclusions they’d draw, whom they’d tell. There’s no one to divorce or dump me. I won’t lose my job. The only reason I was relieved when the intercom spoke was because I wanted to see inside. “Do you have an appointment?” it asked. “No,” I said, “Shall I come back later?” After a few seconds of confusion or thought, I heard a bolt being drawn back (the sound of which always makes me think of a gun). The door was opened by a small woman who was Thai or Malaysian, but definitely not Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. She had shoulder-length black hair with red streaks and was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of pink shorts. When she smiled her teeth looked sharp. “I’m Trudy” she said, and I put out my hand, forgetting where I was. She laughed and took it, and her hand was warm and limp. I followed her down a dim corridor brightened by photos of “exotic” scenes: a white sand beach ringed by palm trees, two red pagodas surrounded by bamboo, a swath of rainforest with blue and yellow parrots in flight. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “I was getting so bored.”
She led me into the back room, which in most houses on that block is the lounge, but in hers was a bedroom. Apart from the bed, whose sheets were grey, there was just a small chest of drawers and a chair, both of which were that pale Labrador colour that marks something as coming from IKEA. I wondered if she had a second bedroom that was just for her.
“Don’t be nervous,” she said, mistaking my distracted state for a case of the sexual jitters. “I’m not,” I said, and then felt disappointed. For all my efforts to follow in other men’s footsteps, their shoes did not quite fit. They rubbed and pinched too much for me to forget they were only borrowed. I did not feel lustful, angry, or nervous. I felt I’d been miscast.
“Sit down,” she said, and I obeyed. The bed gave a ludicrous creak. She took a step towards me and put her hands on my shoulders, and her breasts, up close, seemed bigger. I could smell coconut, and
my tongue felt large in my mouth, but my dick was nonexistent. I wondered if this was how some of her customers felt. Did the scene live in their minds for weeks, or months, a well-scripted fantasy of which they were the star, only to find, after all the rehearsals, that it was not as they’d imagined? The legs in their fantasies had been smooth and long; hers were short, thick, and fleshy, with large patches of scar tissue on her hips. Perhaps this sight was enough to make some of these men pause.
But the result of contemplating all their non-desire was a minor twitch of arousal. Enough to make me push up her T-shirt and dislodge her bra. Her nipples were brown, large, wonderful in my mouth. “Yes,” she said, and put her hand on my groin, and I pushed against it, and then Trudy was no longer there. She was neither Caitlin nor Sinead but a hybrid: Caitlin’s eyes, Sinead’s black lips, the former’s bum, the latter’s breasts, the legs of maybe a third. And the fact that this transformation was unoriginal, wholly derivative, made me harder still. That’s why we close our eyes when we kiss: so we can think of another. Of course, Trudy and I were not kissing: It is the one thing (besides anal) you aren’t allowed to do. She undid my belt, then my zipper, and then she was holding my dick in one hand, my balls in the other, and when it has been a long time—almost three years—you struggle with disbelief.
Her hand moved with slow purpose. For the next few minutes, she didn’t speak, except to compliment my dick. And it felt good, amazing at times, but my mind was soon up to tricks. The stupid part was that this was a situation without risk. There’d be no anatomical sleight of hand, no swapping of hand for vagina. I knew it was impossible for her to get pregnant, but in the end it was useless. I imagined the swelling, the birth. I saw the years of sacrifice, the wish to escape, and although her hand kept pulling, I was totally soft. I prepared myself for one of the usual reactions. I didn’t think she’d be hurt or angry, and she would not accuse me of being gay. The more likely alternatives were that she would feign sympathy, or worse, that she would regard it as a kind of challenge. An awkward struggle would ensue, with her utilising every method of arousal—lips, tongue, teeth, her hair’s caress—until her efforts seemed desperate.
“Don’t worry,” she said, and her hand stopped moving. “Most are like this first time.” Although there is probably some truth to this, it was still irritating. Fucking condescending, I thought, which is why I said, “Yeah, really?” Unsurprisingly, this show of anger didn’t bother her: It is hard to intimidate someone who has your flaccid penis resting on their palm. Instead she shrugged and said, “It’s true. Yesterday a man could not. He even cried about it. I know that he wanted something but did not want to ask.” I asked her what he wanted. “I don’t know,” she said. “But he will come back. He had something in his pocket. Maybe a rope. Is that what you like?” she asked, for an obvious reason: I had gotten hard. Whilst this probably did not surprise her, I was fascinated. I’m sure I have no interest in tying up girls, or being tied up, and definitely none in pain. At the time I thought it might just be her voice, so I told her to tell me more about those other men. She hesitated, and as she did her fingers stroked up and down. I heard about an old man who likes baby talk, an ugly man who tells her she’s hideous, several preferences for lingerie of a particular colour. Up and down her fingers smoothed as she spoke of their fetishes. I’m sure some of it was made up, but there were others I recognised even from her vague description. I’m not surprised about Mr. Campbell, but I’d never have guessed about Mr. Asham. After a few minutes it seemed as if she wasn’t even talking to me. I’m not saying she’d forgotten I was there—my penis was in her hand—more that whether I was listening was irrelevant. When I came she seemed almost surprised.
Like Sinead, Sam was desperate to avoid sex, albeit for different reasons. She wanted to avoid an unwanted pregnancy; for him there was no other kind. It was this that kept him from sleeping with Sinead or anyone else. Obviously, this was an irrational fear: Though there was no foolproof method of contraception available at the time, if two people were careful, if they used condoms, spermicide, and contraceptive pills, it was very unlikely the woman would become pregnant. But even this was too great a risk for Sam. For the previous three years he had not only abstained from sex, but also from going on dates, or anything that might be a date, even if the girl had a boyfriend, girlfriend, or husband and seemed completely uninterested in him in any romantic or sexual way. He did not go to parties. He did not go to bars.
He did not return to Trudy for several weeks. It was not because he was too busy in the shop or lacked money; it was because he felt the blush of shame that often follows pleasure.
Sam wanted to know more about the other men who visited Trudy, but he was afraid she would get angry if he asked her directly. That she told him as much as she did may seem surprising, given her need for secrecy. But she had many customers who were stimulated by stranger things than hearing about other men’s desires. And after nearly ten years working as a prostitute, Trudy was understandably tired of men and their appetites. She had no close friends, and she had lost her faith in God, so she could not make the weekly confessions that Mrs. Maclean offered up to Father Robert. Sam was not exactly a priestly figure, and certainly could not provide absolution, but perhaps there was a kind of release in being able to tell someone. It might have also made a difference that he did not try to have penetrative sex with her. After that first time, she rarely touched him during their hour together. Instead she talked and he listened while his hand did its work.
October 4, 2016
The first time I see them is strange, knowing they’ve been with her, knowing what they’ve done. But after that it’s just another piece of information, no different from knowing they like fishing or speak Czech. For example, yesterday, I had to listen to Randall drone on about flour beetles for ages, how they can regulate their population size or something, and only once did I think of him doing that really clichéd Mummy-I’ve-been-naughty routine. Honestly, I don’t know how she keeps a straight face. Is it just the kind of men who visit prostitutes, or are they (we?) all like that? If it’s everyone, does that make it normal? Of all the things I’ve heard from Trudy—the humiliations, the choking, her having to hold a gilt picture frame around her head—nothing seems beyond them. Even the weirdest thing ends up seeming banal, like that thing with the shop coat and the mask.
The face on the mask was that of an elderly woman with grey hair and white skin. The teeth were somewhat exaggerated; on her head she had a crown. The woman was head of the British Royal family, and though she had a name—Elizabeth Windsor—she was usually known as The Queen. She was soon to acquire the dubious honour of being the only monarch to lose her kingdom completely.
Why did Fahad make Trudy wear this mask? Given that we have none of his letters or diaries, we can only speculate. But it is surely significant that he had such a powerful person act in a submissive fashion towards him.
But perhaps the mask, for all its strangeness, was only a symptom of a greater frustration. When Fahad was young he thought that the shop would be only temporary, that he’d do it for five, ten years, then leave the street, perhaps the city, maybe even the country. But no one could run the shop as well as he, and why pay someone to do an inferior job? So for three decades he had stood at the counter and suffered people’s condescension—hating it, but not quite hating them, at least not fully, because it would only take one invitation, one evening at their house or a restaurant for them to see he was more than a shopkeeper. Word would spread, and he would be welcomed. They’d throw a party; there’d be grilled meat, laughter, dancing, fireworks, his name burnt into the sky.
Part II
The death of oneself is neither impossible nor extraordinary; it is effected without our knowledge, even against our will.
—Marcel Proust, The Fugitive
9. Autumn Begins in Us
HER COLLAR ALMOST COVERS HER cheeks; a green scarf fills the gaps. She has let her hair grow long. She is walking briskly,
a little too fast, because her heels are starting to hurt. She slows, thinks, Wish I were Muslim. Then I’d have an excuse.
The leaves are perfectly yellow and red; very soon they will drop. They will fall on the path and the river and everything will change, sort of. Any change you can predict does not seem interesting. It can only confirm.
The path is not as quiet as it should be. At nine o’clock on a Sunday morning people should be at home. They can have someone to fuck, a person to hold, a loved one, an intimate friend, and in exchange (though not a fair one) she should be granted these moments when no one is looking at her.
Caitlin brings a hand to her cheek but does not touch it, as if an itch had flared then gone. She looks around, first at the couple approaching, hand in hand; then at the old man with the black Labrador; then at two little girls in pink, one of them hopping, the other skipping, both with great excitement. As if the world is about to be treated to their latest performance.
A blur of brown, then mallards land. She watches them swimming till the couple, the old man and his dog, and the little girls have passed. Did they look at her? Did they stare?
Walk, just walk.
The river runs straight, and so does the path. The ducks quickly recede. There is no one ahead. For the time being, she is safe. Safe and free to think about that moment in the future.
They are at a restaurant on the shores of the Mediterranean. The restaurant is busy, and they have not booked, and so the waiter asks them to share a table with another foreign couple. The other woman is intelligent, beautiful, with a name like Danielle or Sophie. The man is unimportant. The couple do not want to share, yet cannot say so. After they’ve introduced themselves, said where they’re from, the conversation stalls. Then Sam makes a clever joke about the waiter and they all laugh. By the time the entrées arrive it will seem as if they have known each other for years.
The Casualties Page 8