by Rosie Thomas
Ruby turned tail, even though her throat was now painfully dry. She paced back into the sunlight in the middle of the square and turned full circle, trying to work out which of a half-dozen alley mouths to make for. She had no idea.
Her glance passed across someone leaning against a wall a few yards away, then jerked back again.
Here was a face she recognised. Where and when had she seen it before?
Yesterday, that was it. It was Nafouz’s younger, handsomer brother.
He was slouching, one knee bent with the foot pressed against the wall behind him. He was also openly watching her.
Ruby marched up to him.
‘I’m fucking glad to see you,’ she said, trying to hide just how relieved she actually was. ‘I’m completely, totally bloody lost.’
He looked slightly shocked at her language, but also pleased and – surprisingly – rather shy.
‘I think you are lost,’ he agreed, his nice smile showing his good teeth.
‘Are you following me?’
‘Why would I do that?’
He was still smiling so that she didn’t know whether it was a straight question or a mocking one.
‘How the fuck should I know?’
‘You swear very much for an English girl, Ruby.’
‘D’you have a problem with it?’
‘It is not problem for me, no.’
‘Right. Look, now you’re here, can we go somewhere and buy a drink? I’m really thirsty.’
He pushed himself away from the wall. ‘Of course. Please come with me this way.’
They made their way together down a thin passageway with the old walls on either side leaning inwards so they seemed almost to touch at the top.
Ruby said, ‘Um, I’m really sorry. I’ve forgotten your name.’
‘It is Ashraf. You can call me Ash.’
‘OK, then, Ash. Where are we going?’
‘To a place the tourists like.’ His smile flashed at her over his shoulder. He was definitely mocking her now, but she was too thirsty to bother with a response. They walked in silence for a few minutes. The gathering threat had subsided, Ruby noticed. Either she had been overreacting, or she had become less conspicuous because she had an escort.
After a few more corners of the maze she was about to protest, but then they came to an entire lane that was filled with rickety chairs and tables, spilling out of the open doors of a café. Waiters with trays held at shoulder height threaded between the tables, plonking down cups and bottles and bills. Ash had been right about the tourists, because almost all of the people crammed into the alley were Westerners with cameras and bags of bazaar purchases. Mucus-faced urchins and Egyptian women with dark faces and glittering eyes worked the tables, trying to sell purses and lighters and packets of tissues. Ash took Ruby’s hand and towed her through the crowd to a just-vacated table, well-placed on the threshold of the café itself. Peering into the gloom inside, Ruby saw the glint of huge, fogged mirrors covering the walls.
A waiter was already looming over them as she sank into a chair. She asked for a bottle of water and a cup of coffee and some yoghurt and then gestured to Ash.
He shook his head without speaking.
‘Sorry. Forgot,’ Ruby sighed.
When the water came she tore off the plastic top and downed half of it.
‘Why are you in Khan on your own?’
Ruby told him.
‘I am sorry for your grandmother’s illness,’ he said. ‘She will be well soon, inshallah.’
‘Yeah. I hope so.’
Once she had quenched her thirst and spooned up some yoghurt, Ruby sat back and looked around. Ash was watching the crowds, with his face in profile. He was very good-looking, with fine, almost feminine features and thick, long eyelashes. She reached out to the pack of Marlboro that showed in the pocket of his shirt.
‘Can I bum one of these?’
‘You are a woman. It is better not smoke in public.’
Ruby snorted, then clicked Ash’s lighter to the cigarette. After inhaling deeply she said, ‘So. No swearing or smoking. What am I allowed to do, according to you?’
Ash raised one eyebrow. ‘Maybe come for a ride with me?’
‘You’ve got a car?’ It was an entrancing idea. She was dying to see Cairo beyond this isthmus of ancient streets but after her experience in the bazaar she would have preferred not to try it alone.
Rather stiffly Ash said, ‘I have my moby. You can be pillion passenger.’
‘Moby? Oh, one of those bikes with engines. OK then.’ Ruby scraped the last of the yoghurt out of the jar.
‘You are still hungry I think.’
‘Yeah, I am, actually.’
Ash stopped the waiter and asked him for something. While they waited they smoked and watched the tourists come and go. Because she was with Ash and because Iris actually lived here, Ruby now felt superior to mere holiday-makers.
A plate was put down in front of her. There were two fried eggs and a basket of flat bread.
‘Perfect,’ she crowed, and Ash looked pleased.
While she devoured the food he told her that he worked at night as a telephonist in a big hospital. ‘Very good job,’ he said.
He was also trying to improve his English, and saving up to pay for a computer study course. Nafouz was helping him, but they had to give money to their mother and younger brothers and sisters. Their father had died more than two years ago.
‘May he rest with God,’ Ash added.
Ruby put her knife and fork down on a clean plate, and picked up the bill the waiter had brought. She frowned at the blurry blue numerals.
‘I would like to pay for you, but this place is not cheap,’ Ash said awkwardly.
‘Why should you pay for me?’
‘Because I am a man.’
‘I can pay for myself. For now, anyway,’ Ruby said. ‘And you haven’t eaten anything. Shall we go?’
They left the café and Ash led the way back to the underpass. It was surprisingly and disorientatingly close at hand.
Ash’s bike was locked to a grille in the wall at the end of the narrow street leading straight to Iris’s house and the big mosque.
‘What’s it doing parked right here? You are following me,’ Ruby accused. ‘Did you tail me all the way round that bloody bazaar?’
He only grinned and straddled the machine’s seat, sliding his hips forward to make room for Ruby on the pillion. ‘You are coming?’
‘I suppose so. Just for half an hour. Then you’ve got to bring me back to check how my grandmother is, right?’
She sat primly upright at first, but then the little machine shot forward and she had to grab Ash round the waist in order not to fall off the back. He sped into the traffic, weaving in and out of taxis and buses. Ruby ducked her face behind his shoulder, too afraid to look where they were going. The dusty sides of cars flashed past an inch from her thigh and clouds of gritty blue exhaust fumes made her eyes sting. When they stopped at traffic lights she put her feet on solid ground with a gulp of relief, but only a second later they would lurch forward again in a surge of metal and revving engines. Cairo appeared to be one solid mass of overheated chrome and steel.
‘You like?’ Ash howled at her over his shoulder.
‘I hate,’ she screamed back, but he only laughed.
They emerged into a vast square set about with tall buildings and with an inferno of endlessly revolving traffic trapped within it.
‘Midan Tahrir,’ Ash mouthed at her.
‘Is that so?’
He waved a reckless arm at a low pink block. ‘Egyptian Museum. Very famous, I take you soon.’
‘Can’t wait. Are we going to stop?’
‘Maybe.’
A moment later they shot out into slightly clearer air. Ruby saw branches and leaves against open sky as Ash swung the bike in a flashy circle and cut the engine to bring them coasting up against the kerb. Ruby sprang off, coughing and rubbing her eyes, and Ash locked the bi
ke to a puny sapling rooted in the wide pavement. They were in a boulevard lined with trees. On the other side, beyond several lanes of traffic, was a low wall and then seemingly empty air.
‘Come,’ Ash commanded. He took her wrist and they darted into a gap between thundering buses.
Below and beyond the wall, there was water. It was a wide, swirling, grey-brown river and on it sailed a dozen little boats with slanting masts and graceful sails like unfurled handkerchiefs. Ruby leaned far out over the wall, looking at the vista of bridges spanning the water, towers and distant trees.
‘Nile river,’ Ash said at her side. She gazed at the ripples and reflections. Tall buildings on the opposite bank and humid grey clouds swam on the moving surface.
‘That way’ – he gestured – ‘Alexandria. Then Europe. And that way’ – he swept his left arm in a stately arc along the river – ‘Egypt.’ For Ash, it seemed, the name was enough to convey the magnificence of his country. He took her hand to emphasise the importance of what he was showing her.
‘Yeah.’
Her unwillingness to be impressed annoyed him. He began jabbing his finger towards nearby landmarks. ‘See, Cairo Tower. El Tahrir Bridge, up there 26 July Bridge. Gezira island. Sheraton Hotel.’ The last was a hideous cylinder on the tip of a tongue of land opposite.
‘No, really? Amazing.’
He jerked her wrist sharply and she stood upright, startled and defensive.
‘Watch it,’ Ruby snapped.
They faced each other, glaring. The breeze off the unfamiliar river was humid, and the sprawl of an unknown and hostile city stretched away on every side. Suddenly Ruby missed the clatter and roll of skateboarders under the concrete spans of the South Bank, and the smell of hot dogs, and all the damp, foggy chill of London. She heard Lesley’s voice and shut that off inside her head.
It was important not to piss Ash off because he was the only friend she had here.
But it was Ash who began laughing first.
‘You make a frown like a monkey,’ he told her.
She corrugated her face even more elaborately and crossed her eyes until they were both laughing. Then she nodded at the river. ‘It’s beautiful. I like the boats.’
‘One evening I take you sailing in a felucca. At sunset. Very romantic.’
‘Great. I’d rather that than the fucking museum.’
‘Ruby,’ he sighed.
‘Sorry. Gimme another brown?’
‘What?’
‘A ciggie. A cigarette, for God’s sake. I’ll buy some if you show me where, if that’s the problem.’
‘No problem,’ he said politely.
They began walking, their hands occasionally brushing together. Ruby noticed the top of a grand pillared building behind a high wall guarded by a couple of armed and uniformed men. She was surprised to see the Union flag hanging limply from a central flagpole.
‘What’s that place?’
He shrugged. ‘British embassy.’
‘Oh.’ Ruby wasn’t very interested.
They passed beneath a huge, ancient-looking tree, its trunk a mass of writhing tendrils for all the world like dun-coloured snakes. In its thick shade the air was almost cool.
‘Banyan tree.’
They stopped and looked up into the canopy of coarse leaves. Taxis cruised and honked a few feet away, a couple of passers-by glanced incuriously at them. Ash’s throat was smooth, his skin pale brown. Ruby stepped up close, put her hands behind his head and pulled his mouth down to hers. She kissed him hard, flicking her tongue between his lips.
She saw the flash of dismay and disbelief in his eyes before he stepped sharply backwards.
‘Why you do that?’ he demanded.
She had done it without thinking, just because she felt like it.
‘Didn’t you like it?’
He had liked it, of course, but it was not what he had planned.
Ash had intended to make a play for the English girl, that went without saying, but he had expected to chase her until she was cornered and when she finally gave way the triumph would all have been his. Now she had taken the initiative and he felt diminished. He had no idea what to expect next.
They were now both aware of the breadth of experience and expectation that separated them, and they were uncomfortable.
‘You have boyfriends,’ Ash said flatly.
Ruby tried to give a careless laugh, but it came out sounding harsh.
‘Yeah. What do you expect? Yes, I do. Have had.’
He nodded. ‘I see.’
She didn’t like his disapproval and tried to startle him back into sympathy with her. ‘No, you don’t. My boyfriend died. In an accident.’
Ash’s eyes were very dark brown and the whites were so white they looked blue.
‘What? Accident in a car?’
‘No. He fell. He fell off the balcony of someone’s flat. It was late at night, a party. He had been drinking and taking stuff. I didn’t see how he fell. Maybe he jumped, I don’t know. He was a bit fucked up. His name was Jas.’
Ash shook his head. This information was almost too much for him, but he took her hand gently and led her a few steps to a bench facing the river wall. They sat down with their backs to the traffic and stared at the ugly cylinder hotel across the water.
‘Did you love him, this Jas? Did he love you?’
He asked this so simply and tenderly, and his directness seemed to flick a switch in Ruby. She almost heard the click. Without any warning tears welled up in her eyes and poured down her face, scalding her cheeks as they ran.
‘Maybe. Yes. It wasn’t like you think.’
‘I think nothing,’ Ash said.
Ruby knuckled her eyes and sniffed hard. She tried not to cry, as a general rule. Not about Jas, or anything else. She usually tried not to think about Jas being dead either, except as a bare fact, but now she couldn’t stop the thoughts – or the images that came with them.
The flat had been on the ninth floor of a stumpy tower block on the edge of a no man’s land of railway sidings and warehouses with broken windows that looked like cartoon eyes in the darkness. It was a rain-smeared late night that had begun in a pub with Jas and some of his friends, and ended in a boxy room with a couple of mattresses on the floor. There were quite a lot of people in the flat. Not the ones who had been there at the beginning, they had melted away and different faces had bobbed up. Two girls had been arguing about the music that was raggedly playing, and one of them had snatched a CD and flung it at the wall. Her boyfriend had given her a shaking and her head wobbled disconcertingly. When he pushed her away from him she fell sideways on one of the mattresses.
Ruby was sitting on the other, with her knees drawn up to her chest like a shield. She had been wanting to go home for a while, or at least somewhere that wasn’t this place, and wondering how to negotiate an exit. She was dimly aware that Jas had moved away but she felt too out of it herself to pay any attention to what he might be doing. The next thing was a shout, and a ripple of movement in the room that pushed the girl on the next mattress into a sitting position and sent several others stumbling towards the door onto a balcony.
Ruby found herself walking towards the door. Cold air blew towards her, and the few steps seemed to take a long time. There were one or two voices, high-pitched with alarm, but most of all she could hear a huge silence. She knew at once that something very bad had happened.
The balcony was small. There was a flowerpot in a corner with the brown stalks of a dead plant sticking up, and a scatter of cigarette butts and roaches. The walls were brick, topped with gritty stone. A white-faced bloke was holding on to the stone as if he was on a ship in a bad storm, and a girl was half turned away with her hand over her mouth. Ruby walked very slowly to the wall and looked over.
A long way down, Jas was lying on his side with his head and his arms and his legs all at weird angles. There was a dark pool spreading round his head. He was dead. Just in one glance you could tell that much.
The girl took her hand from her mouth and started to babble.
‘I just saw his feet and legs going. His shoe caught on the edge. I wasn’t looking, I just sort of turned. I saw his legs and his feet, falling.’
The sick-looking man put his arms round her. ‘OK,’ he said. Ruby wondered why, when it wasn’t OK at all.
‘Who is he?’ someone else muttered. She realised now that she hadn’t set eyes on any of these people before tonight. Jas had been her connection. He made friends easily, but never tried to keep them. They had drifted along together, Ruby and he, without asking themselves or each other any questions.
When the police arrived, there wasn’t much she could tell them. It was that that shocked her, really. She knew his name, and the address of the house where he squatted. He came from Sunderland, and he liked curry and Massive Attack. He had made her a CD compilation and decorated the insert with red biro swirls.
It wasn’t very much. It wasn’t very much for a life that was now over.
The police drove her back from the police station to Will and Fiona’s house in Camden. It was already light and people were going to work in their neat clothes. A policewoman offered to come in with her and explain what had happened but Ruby shook her head. She scrambled out of the car as quickly as she could and bolted inside. She hoped that no one would be awake yet so she could slide into her bedroom without being seen.
But Will was up. He was coming down the stairs, wearing a suit and a blue shirt and a dark-red tie, his cheeks and jaw shiny from his morning shave. In the kitchen there were kids’ drawings on the pinboard and a bunch of flowers in a milkjug on the table, the same as yesterday.
‘Fi’s still asleep. Where have you been all night?’
He was in a position to ask the question because he was her stepfather’s brother, so she was part family as well as part lodger. But they were also conspirators because when they were alone Will didn’t always treat her like family. Or at least, the way families were supposed to treat each other. Ruby thought he was rather pathetic, but she had taken advantage of the situation in the past. Being in a conspiracy with Will meant she could get away with things that he and Fiona, as a fully united front, would never have allowed.