by Jacob Ross
Ara lifts her head and a scream unravels from her throat. She cannot stop herself.
She is still screaming when she sees, at the edge of her vision, the hands reaching up to her, the fingers dark and beckoning as if they belong to the gloom.
He’s lost the woolly hat and one sleeve of his shirt is hanging off an arm. His hair is not as she imagined. It is cut close to his skull and curly; and his face is long and slim, the cheekbones high and prominent. He is standing on the edge of the platform, inches above the deep drain of the tracks. He’s beckoning her with his hands.
She draws back, conscious of the torn dress, her exposed flesh. Little throaty sounds escape her. The hands hang in the air a while, then they withdraw. When they re-emerge they’re gloved.
And still she hesitates, feeling disconnected and half-drowned in this dislodged world of hums and moans and shifting metal.
He shakes his head, still urging her with gestures to the brink of the broken carriage. She pushes a hand at him. Ignoring it, he reaches up and curves an arm around her hip. She feels the roughness of the glove against her skin as he strains to lift her down.
On stable ground, she realises that the terrible jolt that tore through everything has jackknifed most of the carriage off the rails onto the platform. Through the darkness in which the rest of the train is buried, she hears sounds – hollowed-out shouts, preternatural sobs.
Directly underneath, a soft voice calls. It draws her eyes downwards past the twisted metal and cables. Sirah’s yellow scarf is a lazy toss of colour against a rail, and just beyond it, a womanshape – a mess of hair, pale bare shoulders – the rest melding with the darkness. The part of her friend that Ara sees looks broken and malformed. Ara presses her palms against her eyes, feels herself sinking. The stranger’s hands are under her armpits, holding her up and steadying her.
The man leans over and is motionless, as if he is listening for something beyond the sounds that reach them. Then he straightens up.
‘No use,’ he says. His voice is low. She senses no feeling in it.
They are standing in a narrow gap on the pale tiles of the platform. His raised arm draws her attention to the steady yellow glow of the Way Out sign beyond the broken carriage. It is still lit up. With another movement of his hand he tells her that to get to it, they have to scale the carriage that lies across the platform.
He turns his back on her and begins to climb. A gasp escapes him. Now she sees the torn trouser leg, the seeping gash just above his left knee. He is stuck for a while, his shoulders heaving. He mutters something vicious and begins the struggle upwards. His hands and his right leg are doing all the work.
Once on top he looks down at her. Things groan and shift above them. He raises his head at the domed roof from which cables hang like entrails. ‘Fall soon,’ he says. ‘You come now or I leave you here.’
He lays himself flat and lowers an arm to her.
She reaches for the hand and she is clumsy. She doesn’t want to be. There is a hollowness in her gut and a confused wariness of this stranger whom she was wishing dead a while ago.
She’s terrified of him leaving here without her, but feels the resistance of her will at what he is requesting: that she lift her face and arms to him. That he closes his fingers around her and draw her up to him.
He says something impatient. She thinks it is a curse. She rises to the balls of her feet and tries again. He catches her wrists. Half of him is over the edge. He grimaces with the effort to drag her up. Animal sounds break out of him – grunts and hisses and gasps.
Now that she is up beside him, he slides down to the floor on the other side and stands below with open arms. She aims for the spot to his left and lets herself go. He catches her and steadies her. She pulls herself loose and steps away.
His shape is a dark outline against the glow of the emergency lights behind. He’s drawn himself upright and is glaring down at her. ‘There is no honour in a stupid death, just a stupid death,’ he says. ‘You are not naked. Your friend over there is naked.’ He jerks his chin at the upended carriage. ‘She cannot think of honour now.’
He pulls off his dirty gloves and dumps them at her feet.
For a moment, Ara cannot absorb his words though the sounds and their rhythms are familiar. She blinks at him, feels her skin go cold when it comes to her that he is speaking Arabic. It is measured and modulated. Formal but beautiful – the way she gets paid to talk to clients at the bank. She knows that by this manner of speaking, he is placing her at a distance, pushing her away. There is nothing in his accent or his choice of words to betray his provenance.
‘Stay here then, and die. Allah knows I did my best.’ He turns to leave.
She hears herself cry out.
He does not look back.
She follows the shifting back as best she can through the cold fluorescence of emergency lights, sidestepping piles of shattered concrete, squeezing past tangles of wire-work.
Once or twice she catches up, especially when they are picking their way through darkness. She stumbles often in those moments, colliding with the injured leg, which draws from him a grunt.
When there are no more exit signs, he navigates by looking at the roof. She knows now that he will not abandon her. He lingers at the top of stairs and limps on when she is a couple of steps behind him. At times her legs give way. He stops, steps back, hauls her up by an arm and releases her abruptly. There is something punitive and wilful in his action. He never looks at her.
She’s lost her sense of time; has no idea of destination either. Ara does not know exactly where this stranger might be leading her. There are moments when she believes there will be no end to the climbing, the lifting, the squeezing through, the fearful avoidance of sputtering cables; that in this anchorless hollow beneath the city, all there is and will ever be is this limping man-shape in front of her that she’s attached to with her eyes.
They are on level, undamaged flooring. She senses a change in him. His limp is slower, more cautious. He looks back and points. She draws up and stands beside him. The tiled tunnel curves ahead. At the end of it there is a bloom of luminance, a colder, neutral light. The glow becomes stronger, more broadly spread as they walk forward.
Ara looks up at the striated ascent of twin escalators, dead but still intact, past the silhouettes of the swing-gates, to bluish light spilling in from the street. She thinks she hears hammering above, sirens and the far-off drone of voices.
He says something. When she looks at him his eyes are closed and he’s resting a shoulder against the wall. She can view his face more clearly – the skin so smooth and fine, she cannot see the pores. He’s much younger than she thought and this surprises her.
She stands a little ahead of him, studying his face. His eyes are lidded, his head turned slightly downwards.
‘Jazak…’ She moistens her lips, tries to say the rest but wants him to look at her, to acknowledge her gratitude while looking her in the face. But he’s somewhere inside his head, his chin angled in the direction of the stairwell.
‘Jazak – Jazak Allah Khairan,’ she mutters.
His big dark eyes are boring into hers. He answers her in English. ‘No need for thanks. It is not for you I do this. You understand?’
His words sink in and they confuse her. She focuses on his rage. It is dismissive, low-voiced, intimate.
‘I am more than this, you understand?’ He swipes a finger at his clothes. ‘No slave; no dog; no asshole. Where I come from, many hundred people work for me.’
Ara raises her head and it is all she can do to hold his gaze.
‘You say the same god speaks to us? Then I ask you this, Mundukuru: why do we hear his words so differently? Why not your friend here with me? Why you?’
That fast flash of distaste that draws his brows together and quivers his lips is like the brief opening of a doorway into himself. Mundukuru. She absorbs the insulting word. Feels relieved by it, even grateful. Mundukuru – a Juba curse; a Southern
er, she decides, from the country her parents fled.
Ara looks down at the wounded leg, then at his face. He’s in pain. He’s clamping down on it, lifting himself above the hurting, but it is there in the tensed brows, the stiffness around his mouth.
The pounding overhead is louder. Urgent voices descend on them. Ara feels the stranger’s hand on her shoulder and steps nearer.
‘Go,’ he says. His voice is low and urgent.
She shakes her head, ‘And… and… you?’
‘Go now!’
She shakes her head again.
‘You don’t go right now, I strike you!’
She winces at his words. Does not know how to take them.
‘Maa jazeel al-shukr,’ she says. This time he does not reject her thanks, but he does not answer her.
She wants to ask him how he’ll manage the stairs; wishes to offer him her shoulder.
She can make out the words of shouting men above, the hydraulic hiss of heavy machinery.
‘Go! Emshi alaan! Leave me alone. Emshi yellah.’ Now his voice is raised.
Ara nods. He will speak to her no more; she sees this in his face.
Before she turns, she dips into the pocket of her dress, points at his leg and holds out her handkerchief with both hands. She feels stupid. The gesture is ridiculous and his expression tells her that, but his face softens as he takes it.
A press of men and women in overalls and uniforms receive her at the top. She feels herself enfolded in a blanket, being spoken to, then lifted and tilted up the steps to the public road. Her head becomes an echo chamber with all the questions and exclamations crashing in on her until a woman’s voice cuts through the din and there is calm.
A pair of gloved hands sit her on the sidewalk and feed her something warm. The pavement is packed with blanketed people. She hardly sees them. She sips and rocks and stares at the mouth of the Underground.
She almost misses him. He’s surfaced on the other side of the road. She’s staring at the unsteady back progressing along the sidewalk.
The street is boundaried off by yellow tape. It is void of life apart from the pulsing blue of police cars and ambulances. He is exposed. She feels her heartbeat rising.
Ara is startled to see the woman, who is still kneeling beside her, following her gaze. Her eyes are grey and steady.
‘Was that man with you?’ The peak of her cap is like the pricked ear of a dog.
Ara shifts her gaze. She holds the woman’s stare a while. Says nothing.
The woman drops the cup on the pavement and rises to her feet. She brings her radio to her mouth.
‘DC, Lisa here. IC3 male, proceeding east along Regents Road. He’s limping. Do you have a visual, Tim – over?’
A fast voice answers her.
‘He’s right near you, Tim. Less than six yards past vehicle A77. On your right. Blue overalls – navy blue that is. Torn right sleeve – almost off his arm. Can’t miss him – he’s limping. Over?’
Another fast reply.
‘Yes, that’s him. Will you stop him, Mate. Over?’
The woman shoves off in a fast stride, then launches into a run. Ara watches her churning heels and her heart increases pace.
Before the woman gets there, the door of a van slides open. Men approach him from all directions. Their hands reach out and drop onto his shoulders.
They urge him backwards until he’s flat against the vehicle. Their hands are busy on his body. He’s turned his face upwards as if his mind is somewhere else. The largest of the eight spins him round to face the van. They spread his arms and feet. He looks pinned up against the white vehicle. One shoves a hand into his pockets and turns them out. A flake of white emerges. It hesitates at the edge of his pocket, then flutters to the pavement.
Ara watches them walk him towards a pulsing row of blue lights further down the street. As she stares, she is remembering the warm indifference of his palms; the breath of his effort on her face; the press of his fingers on her back and thighs as he eased her through impossible gaps and urged her body into shapes that allowed her to pass through them.
A BETTER MAN
She’d been looking forward to the two-bar electric fire in the living room to warm herself. She’d just walked out of a drizzle that had misted the world outside from the time she got up this morning – as if the night before had bled into the whole day.
Shehu had his elbows on the little dining table when she entered the flat, his face turned up towards the ceiling. Her bulging laundry bag sat on the floor behind him.
He did not return her greeting and a familiar heaviness came over her. She crossed her feet, swallowed on the creeping dryness in her throat, leaned a shoulder against the wall of the narrow corridor, and waited.
She sensed another presence in the room before she noticed the woman seated sideways on the old sofa, one leg over the other, a silver-strapped sandal dangling from her foot. Her purple nails were busy on the keypad of her phone. The woman kept her head down, a pile of tinted braids making a curtain around her face – the Congolese girl who’d just taken up residence with six other women in the flat above.
‘I need you to leave. Right now.’ Shehu swung a long arm at the bag.
She said nothing for a while, her eyes shifting from the young woman’s down-turned head, to him. She felt brave enough to ask him why. The woman made a clucking sound, sucked her teeth and carried on with her finger-tapping.
‘You’re not contributing anything,’ he said.
She knew that Shehu was not talking about money. He’d stared at her face, then along the rest of her, and everything he did not say was in that glazed look: two months in his bed with him and she still would not let him to touch her.
‘I have nowhere to go.’
‘What’s new? It’s Friday, you have the whole weekend to find a place.’
He swung himself to his feet, threw a withering sideways look at her. Without the frown, Shehu was good-looking and laidback. Half-Fulani, he’d told her. And proud of it. The other half he never mentioned.
He was happy, he’d said, to give her time.
‘Shehu…’
He grumbled something under his breath and strode toward the kitchen. The last word she caught was, ‘…useless’.
It was this that hurt her most.
Her feet took her through the drizzle to the 349 bus stop. She thought of phoning Gabriela, the laughing, older Saint Lucian woman who shared her shift, and lived on Stamford Hill. She imagined Gabriela offering sympathetic words, then advising her to call ‘one of her people’.
She pressed her back against the dripping railings of the playing field that ran parallel to the main road, the yellow laundry bag against her feet. The 349 arrived, hissed to a halt, then moved off. More came and as each one left she raised her head at the misted windows, reached for her phone, then changed her mind.
She watched the lights of the grocery store and small post office across the road go off. Shortly after, the Indian man came out, locked the door and pulled down the shutters, his wife a couple of feet behind him, hands held palms down over her head to keep off the rain. She disliked this smiling, sari-clad woman who made a point of not touching her hand when she dropped the change in it. ‘You Idi Amin people,’ she’d said.
The traffic grew heavier; the heavy rush of air of passing trucks dragged at her clothing. In the thickening evening, the streetlamps had turned the pavement a simmering yellow.
She was brushing the water from her hair when she became aware of the man at the edge of her vision. Same height as Shehu, the same bony muscularity. In the glow of the bus stop advertisement, she saw that he was blue-dark, like the men at home. Neat in his white shirt, black tie and dark jumper – a painted crest with white print across the front: LPS Security. He held a Tesco bag of shopping tautly in his hand. It was as if he were listening to the very air around her with his body. She felt the stirrings of an old defiance in her blood.
‘Are you alright?’ His En
glish was slow and careful; his voice soft and resonant – the kind that made you turn your head towards it in a crowd.
She pretended she didn’t hear him. The plastic bag rustled, and she ‘Habari gani? Nini tatizo?’ He’d switched to Swahili. There was a new certainty in his tone.
She did not return his greeting; and she certainly wouldn’t tell him what the trouble was. She was aware of her own breathing now, and the dampness of her clothes. She couldn’t tell how long he stood there, his free hand rubbing the drizzle into his closecropped hair, the long, blue-black face quiet as dark-water. She saw that he was quite young.
‘Maybe I help? I am not a bad man. Maybe I help?’
Another bus rolled up, the headlamps making of him a flat black manshape. A woman stepped out of the vehicle, a tumble of children behind her. The bus heaved and wheezed and trundled off, lifting a wave of dirty water onto the pavement. The man looked down at his shoes, raised his head at the retreating vehicle, shook his head and began walking on.
She heard him sigh; the bag of shopping rustled as he turned to face her.
‘Alans Road. After Farm Foods.’ He pointed at the store ahead. ‘Number five. Blue door. Kwa heri.’
He hoisted the plastic bag onto his shoulder and left her there.
She counted six more buses, then the traffic subsided. Now, there was just the occasional car racing to beat the lights at the junction ahead, and men’s laughter in the cab station next door. A group of women from the Turkish hairdressers across the road stepped onto the pavement, a hum of words between them, their scarved heads turning every now and then in her direction. The fat-bellied man in the shop next door had left his kebab counter and now stood facing her, his shoulders filling up the doorway. Outside the cab station on her left, a huddle of smoking taxi drivers. She felt their frank assessing eyes.
She took up the yellow laundry bag. During all her time in London, she’d been living by the words of a woman who saved her, when the rest of her village left her for dead: If the river can’t climb a rock, it will makes its way around it. She headed up the street, the picture of a blue door in her head.