Iris and Ruby (29 page)

‘Ruby, I am not going to do this.’

Surprise made her jerk backwards and the back of her head hit the wall.

‘Fuck,’ she murmured and rubbed it with her free hand. ‘Why not?’

‘I think it is not right.’

‘You don’t fancy me.’ This was startling. She was used to trading elements of herself as a powerful currency, the dollar standard, with everyone from boys she met in clubs to Will. She had been doing it since she was fifteen. Only Jas had been different.

‘Yes, I do. Do not be stupid.’

‘Well, come on then.
I
want to.’ She tried to smile saucily at him, but her lips seemed to get stuck.

‘No.’

‘What’s the matter with you?’

He seized her wrist, hard, then turned it over and with infinite gentleness kissed the thin skin where the pulse beat.

‘I like you too much.’

‘Right. Wasn’t doing it with me what you were after, you and Nafouz, when we first met?’

Ash said angrily, ‘Nafouz is not me. And yes, at first, all right. Everyone knows European girls, English girls, they will make love to Egyptian boys, it doesn’t matter to them. Egyptian girls are not like that.’

Ruby stabbed a finger towards the concrete block. ‘What about all of them?’

‘They are not out here, are they? Most of them, their brothers are in there, their cousins, friends, people who know them all their lives. They come out, to dress up, dance, maybe have a drink or two, even, if they think their fathers will not know about it. But not to do this.’

‘I see.’

‘I think you do not.’ He took her face between his hands, forced her to look at him. ‘Before, you were just a tourist girl. Now I know you, you are Ruby to me. Better than rubies. Perhaps I love you.’

Ruby let out a disbelieving hiss of laughter from between her clenched teeth. She felt rejected, but at the same time another thought dawned on her.

Perhaps what he said was true.

It was possible that they were now dealing in another currency altogether and she didn’t have to trade herself in the old one. Perhaps, like Jas, Ash was going to be different.

‘Why do you not believe me, Ruby?’

‘If you’re saying it, OK, then I do believe you. I don’t know why you would love me, that’s all. Anyway, boys usually say that to get you to shag them, not as a reason for not doing it.’

‘I took you to visit my family,’ Ash said, hurt. ‘Did you
not understand? My mother said to me, “Who is this girl?” and I tell her the truth, “I am not sure, but she is important” and so you are. Why would I not love you?’

She sat in the circle of Ash’s arms and stared at the ground beyond their feet. The shards of glass had begun to reflect a cold grey glow like polished steel. The eastern quarter of the sky was turning grey too. In another hour it would be dawn.

‘You can do what you want, I suppose,’ she muttered. And then, because the lack of grace in that was so audible, she turned her face against the warmth of his neck and inhaled the scent of skin and whisky. ‘I’m glad we went to your place, right? I’ve thought about it a lot. There’s no reason why your mum should take to me on first sight, but she’ll probably get used to it. If you want to go on seeing me, that is.’

‘I do,’ he said, as solemnly as a vow.

Ruby smiled. ‘All right. If you’re not going to shag me, we could just have a cuddle.’

‘
Make love
,’ he corrected her.

‘Whatever, yeah.’

He took off his jacket and spread it over their shoulders, a shred of a blanket. Then they lay back with their arms round each other, Ruby’s chin in the hollow of his shoulder, the length of their bodies pressed together. She made a small contented noise, deep in her throat, and let her eyes close.

‘There,’ Ash said softly.

When she opened her eyes again, the sky had turned from midnight blue to pearl grey. She sat up, swallowing a yawn and frowning at the taste in her mouth. The lights beneath them were dimming, and as she watched a whole orange ribbon was extinguished.

‘We have to go,’ Ash said. They stood up stiffly and linked their cold hands together.

The doors of the club were locked and only a handful of
cars and mopeds remained in the square of weed-burst asphalt that formed the car park. The taxi was there, but they had to make a tour between the other cars and then down the blank concrete side of the building before they found Nafouz. He was sitting on a rusty oil drum, his hands hanging loose between his knees and his head bent. A hank of his black hair fell forward like a dead animal’s pelt.

Ash darted over and shook him roughly by the shoulder. Nafouz’s head lolled like a puppet’s before he managed to hoist it upright. It was obvious that he was very drunk. Ash shouted a stream of Arabic at him as Nafouz got uncertainly to his feet, and if they hadn’t supported him by taking hold of an arm apiece he would have fallen over. They half dragged and half carried him across the waste ground to the taxi.

‘He can’t drive,’ Ruby said. ‘Get his keys. You’ll have to.’

Ash staggered a little under his brother’s weight as he fumbled through the pockets of his leather jacket. Nafouz’s bloodshot eyes missed focusing on him. The keys emerged in Ash’s fingers and between them they forced open the rear passenger door and bundled him inside. Nafouz tipped slowly sideways until his cheek rested on the torn plastic seat.

‘I have not learned to drive a taxi,’ Ash said.

‘Why not?’

He angled his head, embarrassed. ‘It takes money. For Nafouz, there is driving. For me, school.’

‘I see. So we either leave him here and walk it, stay here with him until he sobers up, or I drive. Right?’

‘You know how to drive?’

Just in time, she stopped herself just from saying
of course
. In fact, she wasn’t certain that she could actually take this vehicle through the anarchy of Cairo traffic, but the opportunity had presented itself to save the situation and show Ash that she could do something.
Go on
, a voice murmured in her head. A voice she had heard often enough before.

‘Yeah.’ She held out her hand, and after a second he handed over the keys. ‘You know the way? You’ll have to direct me.’

‘
Inshallah.
’

But they were already leaping into the front seats. Ruby prodded the key into the ignition, stirred the flabby gearstick to check they were in neutral and started the engine. She reversed the car furiously in a spray of grit and then with a grinding of gears she searched for first, found it, and the car bucked forward. The metal fencing and the gates flew past them, and ahead the pale ribbon of road unwound down through the hills towards the city.

‘Go slower,’ Ash shouted.

By way of an answer Ruby straightened her arms, braced her hands on the wheel and trod hard on the accelerator. The first bend was sharp and turned sharper, doubling into a hairpin. She braked too hard on the crown and almost lost it, but by fighting with the wheel she kept the car on the road. They rounded the corner in a squeal of brakes and pinging gravel.

‘Let’s get back before we bump into the law.’ She laughed at Ash.

‘Let us just get back, please.’

It was easy enough where there was no traffic, but soon they were on a freeway mounted on concrete stilts where a steady flow of speeding trucks and cars built up. At a junction she forgot to drive on the right and a blare of horns made her jump and swerve so hard that the car rocked on its axles. Nafouz shifted and groaned in the back seat. It was almost daylight.

They came into the city, down avenues lined with tower blocks and measured out with huge advertisement hoardings. The drive she had made from the airport with Nafouz seemed long, long ago. Even in the dawn, the traffic here was the usual grinding, hooting maelstrom and Ruby hunched forward in her seat, trying to follow Ash’s directions and
concentrating on not hitting anything. Or at least not too hard. At last they came down Sharia el Gheish and passed through the old city walls.

‘I know where we are,’ Ruby shouted. She banged one fist on the wheel. ‘See? We made it.’

‘Thanks be to Allah for all his goodness.’

Ahead of them were the impenetrable alleys of Khan al-Khalili.

‘Where now? Which way?’

‘Wait. Stop here. Here, in this place.’ Ash jabbed his finger at a space across the kerb in front of a shuttered shop. ‘This is my friend’s. We will leave the car here.’

Ruby swung the wheel to the accompaniment of frenzied hooting and they bumped to a halt an inch from a concrete bollard. The taxi coughed and stalled.

‘How did I do?’ she beamed.

Ash passed a hand across his face, dragging his jaw downwards into a disbelieving gape. Then he very carefully got out. Nafouz roused himself and half sat up. His face had turned a strange, livid grey.

Ruby jumped out. ‘He’s going to throw up in a minute.’

Ash flung the door open and hauled at his brother’s shoulders until his head hung out of the car. ‘I am ashamed. I am very sorry that you see him this way.’

‘Ash, it’s not the first time I’ve seen someone drunk. Won’t be the last, either. Does he often get like this?’

Ash sighed. ‘Not very often. It is his way to leave his life behind him for few hours, you see? My father, sometimes the same. Now, we will walk home. I make him drink black coffee before my mother sees him. And you, Ruby? You know to go that way?’ Ash pointed along the street to the busy intersection where Mamdooh had led her out on the first expedition to the bazaar.

‘I know.’ She had been up all night but her head felt
supernaturally clear and the blood hummed in her veins. The world was clean and new and full of possibilities.

‘Go home now,’ Ash ordered. Nafouz got out of the back of the car, his hands and knees appearing to bend in all the wrong directions. He rested his head on the roof of the old cab while his body gathered momentum, then he launched himself crabwise towards the driver’s seat.

‘Oh no, you don’t.’ Ruby skipped in front of him and whisked the keys out of the ignition. She dropped them into Ash’s hand.

‘You did very well. To drive the car and everything. I am proud, you know, to be your friend,’ he murmured to her. The sidelong admiration in his eyes made Ruby’s day seem even brighter.

‘My friend? Aren’t you my boyfriend?’

‘Is that what you like?’

She saw that he was blushing. ‘Yeah, I do like.’

Ash slammed and locked all the doors of the taxi and pocketed the keys. Then he put one arm round his brother and said something sharp to him. Nafouz responded by standing up and wagging his head as he stared around, trying to work out how they had got here.

‘I am going to be late for work,’ Ash groaned. The two of them started walking, shoulders colliding, one rigid and the other made of rubber. Ruby watched until they turned the corner, then she walked slowly towards where the three minarets pointed at the sky. The metal shutters of cafés and shops were rolling up, and there were smells of coffee and cinnamon and fresh bread mixed with diesel fumes and singed rubber. The street was flooded with people hurrying towards the day. Her steps led away from the busy road, down the narrow alley that grew narrower to the point where no cars could pass, almost to the great mosque itself, and to Iris’s peeling and unmarked front door.

‘Home again,’ Ruby remarked aloud. The heavy key was still in her pocket, and now she unlocked the door, holding her breath as she pushed it open and praying that the household would be still asleep.

She trod silently up the dim wooden stairs and along the dusty length of the
haramlek
corridor. It was like creeping back into Will and Fiona’s after a night out.

Then a sharp voice called, ‘Ruby, come here.’

Iris was sitting among her kelim rugs and cushions. There was a book open on the low table, but her grandmother hadn’t been reading; she wasn’t wearing her reading glasses. Ruby took one step forward, raising her shoulders and clenching her fists, ready for the anticipated onslaught. This was familiar ground.

CHAPTER TEN

The child looks guilty, and therefore defensive. She pushes out her lower lip and glares at me.

I am relieved to see her safe: it has been a long night of waiting and imagining, watching the hands of the clock.

‘Did you enjoy yourself?’

She reaches down with one long arm, scratches the back of her knee. There is a piece of blanched twig caught in her hair and her clothes are dirty and even more rumpled than usual. Her eyes look heavy and her mouth is swollen. She has been lying on the ground, no doubt wrapped in her young man’s arms, and the memories of talk and kissing and the desert sky spattered with stars come flooding back to me. A lifetime and no time at all separates me from Ruby.

‘Yes, I suppose so. It was a weird sort of night.’

She is looking aside and over her shoulder, checking to see if we are alone.

‘You have been in your room, asleep, haven’t you?’

Her eyes open wide, and then her shoulders and fists loosen. We are both occasionally obliged to disobey orders or practise mild deception with Mamdooh and Auntie, and the conspiracy strikes us suddenly as very funny. We both
laugh as Ruby takes three steps and flings herself down beside my chair, knotting her fingers in mine.

‘I’m sorry if you were worried about me. I thought you were asleep, I just went out for a bit, then one thing led to another.’ She gives a gusty sigh. ‘Story of my life, really.’

‘From what I already know, I think you can take good enough care of yourself. I didn’t always behave in the proper way either, when I was your age, and I can’t say that I regret it.’ I reach out and pick the twig out of her hair, separating it from the dark strands so as not to pull on them, and she takes it from me and thoughtfully cracks it between her fingers.

‘Ruby? Will you reassure me that you are using contraception?’

A spot of red appears high on her cheekbone.

‘Yes. Or no, actually. It’s a bit ironic, you asking about that.’

‘Sexual irony? I would like to hear more.’

Now she sits back on her heels. ‘I’ve been on the Pill since I was fifteen. After Jas died, I … it seemed too casual to go on taking it. As if I was just waiting for the next shag to come along, you know? So now I don’t. But you can always use a condom, can’t you?’