Beauty (12 page)

After a car stopped to pick the woman up, Beauty was alone in the street again. Maybe the lady had just got off a train round the corner. There was no one following her now, but the fear of the cars remained. It seemed like they slowed down as they passed her.

That one definitely did.

When she reached the place where the woman had been standing, there was nothing apart from the rusting gates of a closed factory. What had that lady been doing?

She sat down on a wall to rest. So what if people stared? As long as it wasn’t her brothers.

Al-l
h, please don’t let them be looking for me.

But the prayer felt empty. Beauty closed her eyes and tried again, searching in her heart for the fullness that came with words sent up to God.

‘Yo, sister!’

The voice jolted her awake. A silver BMW had stopped. Two Asian faces were at the open windows, their hair sculpted with gel.

‘How much do you want?’ the boy in the front seat called out.

She heard laughter over the Bhangra music. What did he mean? A pair of miniature orange boxing gloves and a Sikh
khanda
swung from the rearview mirror.

Beauty stood up and walked back towards the town
centre, ignoring the car. She felt it crawling behind her but didn’t turn round.

They’re just kids messin’ about. Keep your eyes down. They’ll go away.

The car drew level.

‘Come on, how much do you want? There’s four of us in here. We ain’t never tasted no
pudi
from Pakistan before.’

Now she understood.

‘Fuck you, asshole!’

The car was a few metres ahead. She could smell their perfumes from the open windows.

‘And I aynt your sister, egghead!’

The face at the window turned to say something to the driver. The brake lights went on and the car stopped.

‘You Paki bitch, come here!’

Beauty ran.

The car caught up with her, the boys shouting from the windows. The wall to her left ended, became a grass bank and a side street. It was blocked off to cars. They couldn’t follow her.

She ran past houses and front gardens, parked cars and open gates. She kept running and tried to listen for steps behind her, but didn’t dare look back.

When the pain in her foot forced her to slow down Beauty looked over her shoulder and stopped. There was no one behind her. She leaned against a wall, hands on her knees, panting. Were they still searching for her?

Al-l
h, please!

She straightened up and peered over the wall at a dark and silent house. Should she hide in the front garden? A caravan on bricks filled most of it, and a narrow path led to the door of the house through broken washing machines, gas cylinders, cookers, piles of paving slabs
and car tyres. A noise from inside the caravan startled her.

There’s someone in that thing.

Al-l
h please, where am I?

Ward Street, the empty factories and foundries of All Saints and Blakenhall, and the All Saints Working Men’s Club. As she neared the junction, the lights of a car swung into the street, flashing as they rose and fell over the speed hump. She dropped down alongside a parked car, held her breath and waited. The gravel dug into her knees as she watched the light sweeping up the pavement towards her. The car slowed down and stopped. She could hear tabla drums through the open windows.

‘I’m telling you she ain’t here bro.’

There was a pause.

‘I ain’t getting out of the car to look. You go, blood.’

A door clicked open. Beauty stood up, saw the driver climbing out of the car, and ran. She reached the end of the road as the car reversed, its body-kit scraping over the speed humps. She saw headlights as it accelerated and caught up with her as she turned the corner and –

‘FOOKIN’ ’ELL!’

Mark Aston rubbed his chest where the girl had hit him, and clocked the motor that had pulled up on the other side of the street.

‘Here, y’m that Pak … that bird off the course,’ he said.

Beauty recovered from the blow and recognized him – the racist bloke with the cap.

‘Who’s that lot?’ Mark asked her, nodding to the car. Asians. Mostly they were pussies, but he’d seen a few in jails in Leeds and Manchester who knew how to look after themselves.

‘I dunno,’ Beauty said. ‘They were following me.’

Is he gonna leave me here?

Mark took a few steps towards the face in the passenger seat window.

‘You gorra fookin’ problem, rag’ead?’ he called out, opening his arms in invitation. The electric windows slid up and the car pulled away slowly.

‘Knob’eads,’ he said. He wouldn’t have minded if they’d got out of the car; it might have been a laugh.

He turned back to the Paki bird. She looked scared.

‘You OK?’

Beauty nodded. ‘I was looking for a friend’s house.’

‘Wha’, round ’ere? Where is it?’

What’s the name of the street?

‘It’s in …’

Please, what’s it called?

‘I can’t remember it,’ she said.

‘You sure y’m all right?’ Mark asked. ‘You look like shit.’

Beauty took a ball of tissue paper from her pocket and pressed it against her nose.

Mark fastened his jacket and was about to move on.

‘Tay a good idea walkin’ round here on yer own, like. You gonna be all right geddin’ ’ome?’

Beauty didn’t want to be alone in the street again.

‘I can’t go back home. I left,’ she said. Would he care?

Mark noticed the small rucksack on her back. ‘What you gonna do then?’

‘I dunno. I’ll go to the train station.’

‘They kick you out when it shuts.’

Mark could see she wouldn’t last the night, not in her state. But did he want a Paki in the house? The dogs wouldn’t like it.

‘You can crash on my sofa tonight, if you like. There ay no one else there. Jooss me dogs, but they dey coom in the house, jooss Honey, cuz she’s expecting puppies.’

Beauty looked at the white man standing in front of her in the light of the street lamp, his thin pale face and the cap tipped to the back of his head.

‘I ay a nutter,’ Mark said, seeing the fear in her eyes. ‘You can have a cup of coffee, a chat if you want, and go to sleep. I ay gonna bother you. Anyway, ’sup to you.’

The streets around her were dark and quiet, the empty factory buildings haunted at this time of night.

‘You sure thass OK? I aynt gonna get in your way?’

‘Nah, y’m all right. We’ll have to walk though, unless you’ve got a few quid for a taxi.’

The driver was a Sikh in a turban and long grey beard. No one spoke, and it was only a short journey to Prole Street. Beauty passed the coins to the old man through the glass partition when they arrived.

‘
Dunnia kya horee hé?
’ he muttered, loud enough for her to hear.

What’s the world coming to? I’m running away, thass what.

She got out of the taxi and slammed the door.

Something in the street smelled bad. It was coming from the dark passageway running down the side of Mark’s house. Beauty peered through the iron gate and heard the snuffling of animals.

Kutayn!
She’d forgotten.

‘Coom in, y’m letting the heat out.’

Beauty stepped into the suffocating air of dogs, and a smell of acrid, stale piss filled her mouth and nose. She gagged at the stench and covered her mouth. The white bloke’s back was turned and he didn’t see.

Al-l
h, how can I stay here?

‘It’s a bit untidy,’ Mark said, turning the cushions of the sofa over to hide the stains of the night before.

‘Sit down, I’ll mek us a coffee.’ He went through to the kitchen, and the fetid air came in sharp and damp as the door closed behind him.

Beauty looked at the sofa and sat down, her bag on her knees. The carpet was brown with stains, and thick with dog hair. Empty beer cans were everywhere. Dirty shoes and clothes lay on the floor next to plates of unfinished,
haram
food. She put her hand in front of her mouth, but nothing could keep out the smell.

Al-l
h, why have You sent me here?

T
he rucksack jumped again on Beauty’s back as she struggled to run in her sandals. A toothless woman burst out of a caravan and tried to grab her arm as she passed. She broke free, tripped, and felt the gravel digging into her knees and stinging her hands. She struggled to her feet and ran. A car appeared beside her, the face of her older brother shouting through the window, as she rounded the corner into the mullah’s brother’s fat belly. She was eight years old again, sitting on his knee. He held her small face in a sweaty hand and crushed his bearded wet lips to hers
…

Beauty’s head jerked up from the arm of the sofa; a dog leapt back and sat thumping its tail in greeting.

She wiped her mouth in disgust. The thing had licked her.

How long had she been asleep?

Beauty looked around the room in the grey light coming through the torn curtains. It was her first white person’s house. Did they all live this way? Everybody said they were dirty, but they couldn’t all be like this, could they?

Cold air and the smell of piss came from the kitchen. How could an animal have opened the door? She pressed back against the sofa as the dog inched closer and rested its head on her lap.

‘Please, get off me, I’m begging you!’ she said. Did it want her to touch it, like white people did?

She patted the dog’s head with her left hand, the one that she wouldn’t use to eat with.

Honey banged her tail against the sofa and looked up at her.

‘Can’t you talk?’ Beauty asked, as the creature pressed closer against her. ‘
Feshab, kuta
. You’ll have to let me stand up.’ How could a dog have a name?

Beauty got up, stretched, and went to the kitchen doorway. She could taste the smell.

‘
Al-l
h!
Is this a kitchen?’

The sink was under a smeared and splattered window. Cupboard doors hung open, a cooker and fridge sat where they had been dumped on their arrival, and a washing machine, the clothes half pulled out, had flooded the floor around rolls of carpet and bundles of the local newspaper. Through the muddied glass of the back door she saw the form of a dog rear up and rest its paws on the window.

Beauty picked her way around the bin bags of clothes and pools of water and climbed the steep, airless stairway. The door to the bathroom stood open and she stared inside in horror. The worst hole-in-the-floor in Bangladesh was cleaner than this!

She wiped the seat with wet toilet paper and looked away to avoid seeing the colour of the damp wads she dropped into the water. The door wouldn’t shut properly so she sat with one leg stretched out to block it in case the white guy came in. She’d have to wash later, somewhere else. She let the first squeeze from the toothpaste tube slide down the plug hole and brushed her teeth with her finger, rinsing her mouth with her right hand. That much was safe. If you weren’t able to wash properly, it wasn’t
haram
.

How long can I live like this?

*

Back in the sitting room she cleaned her face with a moisturising wipe and put on some make-up in a hand mirror. The bags under her eyes made her look like a
ganjuri
.

Where’m I gonna sleep tonight?

What about your mum? Did Ama sleep last night?

Beauty put away her makeup, pushed her hand down to the bottom of her rucksack and felt for the sock with her jewellery inside. The white guy had told her where she could sell it. She’d struggled to answer his questions about herself, and before long he’d left her alone in the glow of the heater. She could leave it on all night, he’d told her. Them things didn’t cost much to run, and the meter was wired anyway.

The sock felt lighter. Beauty shook the
chouri
onto her lap. Where was the
tickli
? That
halla naguni
must have stolen it. The Somali bitch.

She clenched her fists until her nails dug into the palms of her hands. Cursing people was wrong, and at least she still had the bangles. They weighed three
tulla
and had cost thirty thousand
taka.

Is that gonna be enough to stay out?

She put on a pair of jeans and a clean kameez. The dog watched her.

‘You OK?’ Beauty asked.

It sneezed.

‘Yarumk’Al-l
h!’

You gone crazy? Talking to a dog?

Why not? It’s one of God’s creatures, aynit?

‘Can’t you say one word?’ she asked the animal. She noticed the bitch’s swollen teats
.
‘Are you the pregnant one?’ The dog cocked its head at her. ‘You are, aynit? Lucky you.’

Am I gonna see that day?

The old man and Dulal had told her many times that
she would die when she was twenty-five, that she’d get ill in her stomach and die. Hadn’t the mullah’s family paid
ulta-imams
a fortune to curse her?

Twenty-four or twenty-five, he’d said.

Would it be long enough to feel the joy of holding her own baby? And who would the father be?

Peter Hemmings finished shaving and tried to smooth out the frown lines on his forehead with moisturising cream.

He looked into his pale and joyless eyes. The honeymoon period of his freedom from Kate was definitely over, and with it he’d found only emptiness. There had come no new lease of life yet.

He went back to the bedroom and picked out the clothes that would at least make him feel handsome for the day – straight beige cords, dark brown suede loafers and a white herringbone shirt.

It occurred to him that he might be in need of stimulating company. The fierce debates he used to have with his own friends had always made him feel alive. He had even liked arguing with Kate’s friends. Their clichéd arguments were easy to take apart, but they’d soon started avoiding him at social gatherings. He was too serious for them, and he didn’t take cocaine.

Peter threw back the curtains to let in some light and check himself in the wardrobe mirror. But the grey dawn made little difference to the gloom inside. God, what a dump! Was this where he’d end his days, slumming it with the proles? When he’d first seen Wolverhampton town centre it had made him want to leave the country. Cheap chain stores, bakeries and pound shops – PoundSaver, PoundStretcher, PoundHound. The dreariness and obese lumpen families were overwhelming.

He tried to drum up some satisfaction that Kate wasn’t there to ask him who he thought he was dressing up for,
as she sipped the nettle tea that he brought her every morning, in the bed she never left until midday. She’d surely got the hint now; she’d even hung up on him the last time they had spoken.

After coffee and a cigarette, Peter smoothed down his shirt front, pulling out the right amount of slack to cover his growing paunch, before making sure he had everything he needed for work and stepping out of the house. Drizzle fell on the scattered remains of a kebab on the pavement. As he turned to lock the door a movement in black caught his eye. A headscarfed Asian girl was coming out of the house two doors away: Mark’s house. As she walked past him, her face partly covered by a hand pulling at her scarf, he caught a glimpse of dark eyeliner, the outline of her cheek, her slender red-jewelled nose and delicate mouth. Peter stared after the girl as she hurried to the end of the street, turned the corner and vanished.

He must have made a mistake. How could such a vision have appeared from a hell-hole like that? From Mark’s house? That thug? Did Asian girls do that kind of thing? Muslim girls? Weren’t they out-of-reach, mysterious beauties, untouchable and unreal? Perhaps she’d come from the black family’s house next door to Mark.

By the time he reached Bushbury, Peter had had enough of the self-important opining of the Radio 4 presenters and switched them off. Silence was better than the
Today
programme. He watched the first children making their way to school. It was too early for the young white mothers in red England shirts pushing prams.

At the roundabout for the M54 his thoughts returned to the Muslim girl coming out of Mark’s house. He was sure it was his house. Peter didn’t know the bloke that well. Maybe he had all sorts of friends. Not that he’d noticed any mixed couples in Wolverhampton before. In
London he had, but they were anglicised middle-class Hindus, he presumed, and they had the air of people who had met on campuses and married soon after graduation.

His thoughts wandered at the traffic lights in Bloxwich as he pictured the headscarfed girl passing him in the street, and the fine profile of her face.

The van driver behind him sounded his horn.