Miss Webster and Chérif

by Patricia Duncker

  ‘Yes, yes. It was fine. I did OK on the English. But it’s not over yet. I have to do a maths test on Friday and they won’t accept me officially until the bank draft clears and I have written proof that I can pay the fees.’ He paused. ‘I’m at the accommodation office. They don’t have much. Term’s started.’

  ‘Hang on. I’ll be there in forty minutes.’

  The accommodation office was run by two prophets of doom. They addressed themselves entirely to Miss Webster, as if Chérif were either dumb, illiterate or autistic.

  ‘He’s going to have real problems finding anything anywhere, Miss Webster. Everything’s taken. We haven’t anything on campus and his budget isn’t very big. It’s expensive in town. He doesn’t have enough for a flat. He can’t pay the agency fees or the caution. You really need three months’ rent to begin with. So that’s out. And we’ve got no flat share offers left. We have this room in Wickham, but he’d need a car ...’

  ‘Well, is there anything at all?’ Miss Webster began to tap the desk. Her bony fingers rose and fell like the hammers in a piano. The prophets wriggled uneasily before her.

  ‘These people in Highwater, out beyond Stanford St Mary, are renting a room. It’s not expensive and it’s a twenty-minute bus ride round the ring road. There aren’t any extras for water or electricity. No cooking facilities. Shared bathroom. It’s just that – well, I was trying to explain –’

  ‘Ring them. We’ll go and look.’

  Chérif’s face had set fast, his mouth tightened into a grim line. Had something happened? The young woman clearly found it difficult to hand over the address. Miss Webster snatched up the card and stalked out; she hated embarrassment and indecision.

  Highwater was on the rough boundary of town, beyond Great Mills DIY, Dobbie’s Garden World, Dixons and Asda. They turned into the estate beside a burned-out telephone box and a shattered bus shelter. The dustbins toppled into the street and a featureless patch of straggling grass, criss-crossed by muddy tracks, served as a playground. The houses were neglected and too close to each other. A pile of wooden pallets loomed like a barricade in front of a battered corrugated iron shed.

  ‘Oh dear, this doesn’t look hopeful.’

  Highwater. The address began to take shape in her mind. One of her indigent pupils had moved here, a sensitive timid little thing, the youngest in a large Catholic family, and the boys on this estate, or some of them at any rate, had used her guinea pig as a football. Elizabeth Webster worried that her Clio would end up with the windows smashed in, her umbrella stolen and the tyres slashed. There were no black faces anywhere to be seen. It was a white man’s estate. But Chérif had recovered his optimism. He peered at the houses. She realised that he was not reading the overflowing skips, the yellowed net curtains or the cars propped up on bricks as she did. She was calculating poverty, he was counting the door numbers.

  ‘I think it’s this one.’

  Two small children were destroying cardboard boxes in the front garden, then sitting in them and pointing plastic guns at each other. One of them had a patch over her left eye. It was unclear whether the patch concealed an ailment or served as a prop in the game of pirates and castles. They both rushed to the doorway when the alien car pulled up and screeched for their mother with harrowing intensity. A skinny bottle-blonde slithered sideways past the pram and bicycle wedged in the hall.

  ‘Are you from the college?’

  She looked at Elizabeth’s smart cream mac and clean shoes. Then she saw Chérif. She stopped dead and stared. The arresting beauty of the strange young man was like a trump card, laid down on the broken concrete path between them. A man with a self-inflicted blue tattoo on his forearm lurched out behind her.

  ‘Mr Leering?’ Miss Webster looked down at the card and then up at the man. He smelt of oil and hadn’t shaved. ‘We’ve come about the room,’ she said, her heart clenched. Then she stood aside. She was taking over. This was Chérif’s call. She would never set foot in a house as ugly as this one. The man pushed past his wife, ignored Chérif and looked suspiciously at Elizabeth.

  ‘This one’s not your grandson, is he? Can’t be. He’s too dark. Well, I’m sorry, but we can’t accept Arabs. The college said that he was Arab and that he doesn’t have any references. We can’t take them if they don’t have references. And we can’t have any Arabs. I’ve got kids and I’m not taking risks.’

  Elizabeth stood before them, dumbfounded. The children abandoned their boxes and came to stare at the old lady with short spiky hair and the beautiful silent man. Nobody said anything.

  ‘Sorry. We can’t take him,’ the man repeated. He never looked directly at Chérif.

  Miss Webster exploded. ‘How dare you be so rude!’ Her skin tingled and her mouth went white. Chérif intervened in French.

  ‘Madame Webster, it’s all right. They’ve said no. And why. Ils ont dit non. Et pourquoi.’

  Now the entire family gaped at Chérif. He addressed the old lady with deference and respect, but the strange language suggested a shared, exclusive code. The monster Caliban had begun reciting poetry. He pulled gently at her sleeve.

  ‘It’s all right. Let’s go.’

  Elizabeth glared at the children, who shrivelled against their father’s trousers, then she stormed back to the car. No one had ever dared to be rude to Elizabeth Webster when she was in her prime. There were consequences whenever she was crossed or contradicted.

  ‘You aren’t even an Arab, are you?’ she thundered at Chérif, ‘you’re a Berber!’

  ‘What’s the difference to them?’

  Elizabeth felt the rejection in her stomach and behind her eyes. They drove back to the cottage in silence. The sky was gigantic, pink and gold. She was still in a pale rage when they arrived. Nothing would pacify her. She threw her car keys down on the coffee table and rang the university accommodation office.

  ‘Yes, Miss Webster, the Leerings did ring,’ squeaked one of the hapless administrators, flattened by Elizabeth’s torrent of menaces and her electric delivery. ‘They say they’re very sorry. It’s not your – um – young man they object to. It’s just that they’ve made a decision –’

  ‘To be intolerant and racist. I grasped their motives perfectly, thank you very much. I shall be making an official complaint against them and against you for harbouring such people on your books. I shall be in touch via my lawyers. Goodbye.’

  She hammered the phone back into place. Angry letter. Copy to the press office and the vice-chancellor. And threaten them with the newspapers. She must have snarled the last word aloud. Chérif stood helpless in the middle of her sitting room, clearly more devastated by her outburst than by being turned away from the inn.

  ‘The newspapers would probably support the Leerings.’ He sounded wretched.

  ‘Did you suspect that this would happen?’ Elizabeth launched a fresh round of accusations, more sharply than she had intended. Chérif winced. She eyeballed him aggresively. Impasse. He stood accused of being in on the whole thing, and staging his own exclusion.

  ‘It will be easier to find somewhere when I know other students.’

  Once more he had failed to understand her anger and assumed that he was its cause. She wanted him out of her house. That must be the reason for this rage that welled up from a secret place, fathoms deep. But her wrath arose from a very simple source: Elizabeth Webster loathed being thwarted or denied. She was used to being heard and obeyed. Anything else was intolerable.

  ‘Don’t waste money and time on these people. You don’t need to find anywhere else. You’ve got to start your course. Buy books. Settle in. You’re staying here. There’s no point besieging the estate agents until you know for sure that your cheque has cleared and that you’ve passed your maths test. And you’d be better off saving your cash. Even a B&B costs a fortune.’

  ‘B&B?’

  ‘Never mind. You’re staying here.’

  ‘Are you sure, Madame Webster? Je ne veux pas m’imposer.’

  H
is hesitation gave her the licence to insist.

  ‘Nonsense. I’m inviting you. An invitation. Do you understand?’

  There was a long pause, and then he said, very simply and quietly, ‘Merci, Madame Webster.’

  ‘Oh, forget it all. I hated that place and those people. They murdered one of my pupils’ guinea pigs. Un petit cochon d’Inde. I’d love to have you here. And we should be celebrating. If you aren’t wanted for murder and haven’t stolen the money, you’ve got a place to study for your degree.’ Elizabeth Webster’s face crumpled into laughter wrinkles. She looked older and younger at the same time. ‘How shall we celebrate?’

  ‘Tea!’ said Chérif.

  The bank account required her word that he was a fit and proper person, but the fact that he lived in her house helped enormously. Miss Webster’s reputation and the scale of her investments whisked them past all obstacles. She counter-signed all his documents, upon which he was variously referred to as her ward, protégé and godson, all in one day, by confused officials who needed to put a name to the connection. Chérif flung himself into the programme of induction seminars, laboratory tours and library visits. He came home with files full of unnecessary information. Elizabeth spread them out on the kitchen table and read every word. Sexual harassment. Hardship fund. Chaplain’s visits. Sports insurance. Health and safety regulations.

  ‘Are you on the seminar lists and have you been given a personal adviser?’

  They hunted through the lists and yes, there he was.

  ‘I think Friday’s a rubber stamp affair, Chérif. Especially if you’re such a hot shot in maths. After all, you’re paying foreign student fees. Has the bank draft come through? Unless you turn out to be penniless or go for the dean in a mad knife attack, you’re in.’

  ‘Why should I want to knife the dean?’

  ‘It’s an English figure of speech.’ He stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. He was slowly learning how to be teased.

  ‘I will pay you rent,’ declared Chérif, shoulders back, decided.

  ‘You can pay me a peppercorn rent so that there are no obligations either side. And you can contribute to the food. For the rest you can help me cook and dig the garden. That’s it.’

  ‘Peppercorn?’ He frowned. Was she to be paid in grain and vegetables? But she was laughing again.

  He rang her on Friday. By then they had known one another for precisely five days.

  ‘My money has come through at the bank and I’ve paid the first set of fees. And I got 91% in the maths.’

  ‘Well done. Are you coming home? Or shall I come and pick you up?’

  ‘I’m at the supermarket by the bus stop. Shall I get anything? There’s a bus in ten minutes. I’ll come home by bus.’

  ‘Get some more milk. Full cream. Pas demi-écrémé. See you soon.’

  Half an hour later she found herself looking out down the track through the porch window, anxious at the wind and drizzle. Did his anorak have a hood? He should have taken the folding umbrella that would have fitted inside his rucksack. For the first time in her life she was waiting for someone to come home. Then she saw him running down the track, a plastic shopping bag banging against his rucksack. The rain shone on his thick black curls, darkened the shoulders of his anorak, glistened on the face of his watch. She bundled him inside.

  ‘You should have taken the umbrella. I told you to take the umbrella.’

  ‘But I love rain,’ he smiled.

  It was just over a year after the 9/11 attacks, the declaration of the War on Terror and the assault on the Taliban in Afghanistan. In the gruesome wake of accumulated atrocity, the television was filled with synopses of events, historical assessments and never-before-shown footage of catastrophe. It was also the first truly chilly evening of the autumn. When she put the rubbish out she could smell the bonfires in the early dark. Dr Brody’s wife was also out there, two gardens away, gathering in the chickens. Elizabeth heard her making mad clucks and chuckles at the dissenting hens. Chérif lit a fire in the stove. The first fire of the year. They watched it bristle and crack as the sticks went up. He didn’t bother with the firelighters and used only the minimum of newspapers. Even his movements were frugal and careful. He saved everything. Elizabeth understood this. Someone who lived so close to abjection and nothingness would know in his guts what it costs to live in this world.

  The two towers of New York stood smoking on the television. Some of the hijackers were not much older than Chérif. She looked at his cautious pile of tiny sticks and then back at the extravagant courage of absolute sacrifice. Two jets, two vast buildings, thousands and thousands of lives flung into dust. Who knows 3,000 people? It was unimaginable.

  ‘Do you often light fires?’ She acknowledged to herself that this must be a redundant question, for behold the practised hand, cupping the flame.

  ‘Every night. To cook. We cook outside.’

  Elizabeth nodded. What was the effect of repetition? What did it mean to see this huge descending tower folded in upon itself and rushing downwards in an explosion of dust, again and again? When something is repeated its meaning changes. Tyger, Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? She looked round at Chérif. He was sitting in front of the stove, collapsed like a deckchair, with his arms around his knees.

  ‘And where were you when it happened?’

  ‘In the Hôtel des Voyageurs. Watching CNN.’

  Elizabeth Webster had never been to America and had no intention of doing so. In her considered opinion the United States was the source of disgusting food and consequent obesity, appalling films which took place at grotesque speeds, but hooked you all the same, unintelligible accents and bad taste in clothes. America was a nation of petty bosses with no trade unions to kick their shins and politicians who didn’t even bother to cover up their own corruption. There was therefore nothing more behind her next question other than simple curiosity.

  ‘Did your people think the Americans deserved what they got?’ Elizabeth Webster thought the Americans had had it coming for some time.

  ‘Of course. Some people did. The people of my village were horrified. It is forbidden to take innocent life. That is what we are taught. But we have supporters of the Palestinians. Mostly young people in the cities. They get very worked up.’

  Elizabeth did not follow Middle East politics in any great detail. It had become an insoluble barrage of accusations and reprisals, quarrels between old men, who sent the young to their deaths leaving behind unburied bodies, shattered buildings and blood on pavements. She disliked disorder, riots and injustice. Her temper was easily disturbed by self-serving righteousness and gratuitous declarations that changed nothing; she therefore often watched the news in a rage. Before them on Newsnight the second tower crumpled with the precision of a computer-generated special effect in a disaster movie.

  ‘What on earth did that have to do with the Palestinians?’

  ‘They are a dispossessed people. They are our people. The Americans support Israel. But it’s not only that. It’s hard for me to explain.’

  ‘You don’t think all that wanton destruction is justified, do you?’

  ‘No. Mais bien sûr que non. Mais moi, je comprends la rage derrière de telles horreurs.’

  ‘Don’t mix your languages,’ commanded Miss Webster.

  There was a long pause. They listened to the instant punditry and an alarming clip of the mad mullah installed by popular acclaim at the Finsbury Park mosque, declaring jihad in a leafy North London street. A Black West Indian Muslim, who was in charge of the Brixton mosque, suggested point-blank that the sooner the hero of Finsbury Park was arrested and deported the better. The mullah had only one hand; the other hand had been replaced by a hook, which he was waving in the air to excellent effect.

  ‘Look, Madame Webster! It’s the captain from Peter Pan. And here comes the crocodile. Tic, tic, tic!’

  The home secretary appeared,
looking fierce, and declared that the mullah’s days of freedom to preach terrorism were numbered. A police car revved across the scene.

  ‘Good Heavens. Did you read J.M. Barrie when you were a child? Whatever next!’

  ‘It’s a film,’ grinned Chérif, ‘Disney!’

  Chérif had some difficulty accounting for Miss Webster’s solitude. She never mentioned a family; no photographs of grown-up children decorated the shelves and no visible evidence of a husband, alive or dead, disturbed her arrangements. Then he found a set of working power tools stored in the cupboard with the vacuum cleaner and was reassured. She must be a widow who could not bear to look at photographs of her late beloved spouse. She had cleared out all his clothes and shoes, even his spectacles, and handed them over to refugees of the Turkish earthquake. Then Chérif made the mistake of referring to her departed husband.

  ‘My late husband? What are you talking about? I never married.’

  A shiver of alarm crossed Chérif’s face. He had clearly been misinformed, for by now he was persuaded that someone had mentioned the deceased husband. Elizabeth read the flicker incorrectly; she anticipated a mixture of scorn and pity for the spinster, the woman not chosen.

  ‘I didn’t want to marry. I would never have married. I wanted my independence.’

  This was quite beyond Chérif’s comprehension. In his world women had to marry. It was a disaster if they did not. And they all wanted children. Children were their raison d’être.

  ‘I didn’t want children,’ thundered Elizabeth Webster, her irritation uncanny and appropriate, ‘so why should I marry?’

  Chérif began to panic; his skin prickled. She could read his mind. Elizabeth was becoming dogmatic and irrefutable. She attacked the boy’s bewildered alarm, all guns blazing.

  ‘Do you understand why I didn’t want children and why I never married? Well, young man, do you?’