Maps for Lost Lovers (39 page)

No, no, she’ll be here. He goes past a bank of late-summer wild grass and his dawn shadow is sliced up into thin uniform strips on the tall narrow leaves like a sheet of black paper coming out of a paper shredder. Once, pointing to the drawing of a porcupine-like clump of grass in a book of butterflies and moths, Jugnu said, “It could be argued that this species has taken part in
all
stages of civilization’s progress: used for making spears, as support for vines, and, finally, wind instruments for music.” Shamas is sure he has seen that species growing behind the church of St. Eustace, and now his mind turns yet again to the controversy that the vicar has generated over the last few days. The reverend told his 200-strong congregation not to associate with two people who have left their spouses to live with each other, that the two—although regular church-goers—are adulterers who would go to Hell if not persuaded to repent. His diktat, he says in
The Afternoon,
is guided by Christian love for the couple and a desire to bring them back to the church.

According to
The Afternoon,
he had responded to an immense amount of gossip by issuing instructions in the parish newsletter.
In relation to the
distressing news about two people in our church rebelling against God, all
members are reminded, sadly, of
1
Corinthians
5
vii, about not associating
with them.
He followed this by naming the two lovers in church and telling worshippers that if they loved the couple and did not want them to burn in Hell, they would support his decision. Then he published a clarification on how church members should behave towards the couple, making the points that 1 Corinthians 5 vii is
not
optional; that it is not loving to offer hospitality and comfort to someone in rebellion against God, because that would tend to confirm them in their disobedience, which leads to eternal death; that invitations to share fellowship should be conditional on repentance first being fully shown.

Before leaving the house over the past few days, Shamas has been hoping he would not run into the vicar. He doesn’t want to risk hearing the man speak of the matter lest some phrase or reasoning of the holy man may apply to Chanda and Jugnu, lest he, Shamas, be given a new insight into the motivation of the two killers, a disturbing piece of knowledge he would later wish to expel from his consciousness.

The bodies of the two lovers could be anywhere—here in England, in Europe, in Pakistan. Illegal immigrants come into the country in lorries and trucks and planes and boats without anyone knowing anything about it. If the living can be brought in, why can’t the dead be taken out?

The summer’s ending and soon it would be like being surrounded by wounds, the leaves of autumn. The van the two brothers owned is still there outside the shop, used by the father to bring in supplies from the cash-and-carry, though it is hard to know how the couple manages to keep the shop going on their own. Kaukab says she has heard that a new boy is at the premises these days; walking by she has caught a glimpse of him amid all the sacks and boxes—it is someone they have taken on as help, no doubt.

Behind him someone clears his throat, bringing him hurtling forward from the summer to the present moment—the summer’s almost-end. “Brother-ji.”

He turns and is face to face with a stranger. “Yes?”

The man is smiling under that moustache as fine as mink, the hair spreading out a little because the lips are stretched, and he places a hand on his shoulder in a good-natured Pakistani manner. “Allow me to introduce myself . . .”

Shamas doesn’t catch the name or the beginning of the cascade of pleasantries that follows it because he is alarmed by the fact that the hand on his shoulder is holding a burning cigarette, an inch away from his cheek, his eyes. And in the second or two that it takes for it to become clear that what he has mistaken for a cigarette is in fact a pale-apricot Band-Aid wrapped around the man’s index finger, the name has been spoken; the ripple of panic on his face has also caused the man to remove his hand and take a step backwards, embarrassed at his over-eagerness, or perhaps offended by being rebuffed.

Shamas gives his name and, transferring the bundle of newspapers to the other side of his body, frees his right hand for a handshake. The man’s aftershave or cologne has a citrusy note, like raindrops flavoured by falling on lemon trees, like a room in which someone has recently eaten an orange. Didn’t he smell it earlier—was this man walking behind him, without him being aware of it? “What can I do for you?”

“Nothing, brother-ji. I saw you just now and decided to come over to say
salaam-a-lekum,
a little hello. I am well aware, Shamas-ji, of the kind help you have provided for us Pakistanis through your office and am a great admirer of yours. I just wondered if I could be of any help to you in this difficult time.”

For the briefest of moments but comprehended perfectly during it—as when a summer insect flies across a lit television screen in a room that is otherwise dark, the components of the insect’s flight seen in a sequence of perfect silhouettes—Shamas wonders absurdly whether this man is an apparition seen only by him, sent to bestow benevolence. But the moment passes and the insect disappears into the darkness it had come out of. “Difficult time?”

“I meant the difficulty you are having with your daughter and your younger son. They have left home, yes?”

Shamas takes a step back, in shock and incomprehension. “Forgive me but I have to leave.”

“We know these are delicate matters but we feel we have to offer you our services. We are aware that the girl and the boy have left home. The girl has cut off her hair and wears Western clothing now.”

These things are known to everyone, of course; there is nothing sinister in that. Such knowledge comes into the neighbourhood’s eyes innocently: it’s no different than Kaukab’s comment about a woman she doesn’t know but who walks by the house daily that she’s stooping more and more these days. No, everyone knows that Ujala and Mah-Jabin have left the parents’ house; but what “services” is this man referring to? Shamas wonders if this man has mistaken him for someone else. And who is this “we”?

The man has noticed his puzzled look and clarifies: “What I mean to say is that we can bring your children back. We run a small discreet operation: no one official will ever know about us—we have been so quiet even you hadn’t heard of us until now. We have ways of infiltrating women’s refuges where the girls go to hide, and by using the National Insurance numbers we can find which city the runaway boys are living in. Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol, London: no place is far enough. We charge a small fee, to cover expenses, but we won’t ask
you
to pay anything, as a sign of our respect for you. We know you have helped people all your life; even back in the early days here in England you were helping the immigrant factory workers with jobs, housing, pay, unions, and learning English. It’s all well known.”

“It was nothing.”

“You are too modest,
jannab-sahb.
But now the Almighty Allah, fate, and our good fortune has arranged it so that we can be of some use to
you.
It’s our duty and your right. It doesn’t matter where the children are, we’ll find them discreetly: we could bring a chick out of its egg without breaking the shell. We made a few mistakes at the beginning, like the time we gave the address of the women’s refuge that a man’s wife had run off to, claiming he was violent towards her, forgetting that a woman should choose the poison being offered by her husband over the milk and honey of strangers—and then he broke in and put a bullet into her head. But now we are more careful.”

“I don’t need my children brought back from anywhere. They are not runaways,” Shamas states firmly, understanding everything now. The news of this gang of bounty hunters had come to him at the office last week and he had initiated enquiries, asking the office to gather information which could be presented to the police. This man has obviously found out that questions are being asked and is here to try and dissuade Shamas. Would he try to bribe him, believing that a dog with a bone in its mouth cannot bark?

Shamas looks him square in the eye. “I don’t need anyone to kidnap my children. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to be somewhere urgently.”

The man opens his heavy arms—the bones in them must be the size of monkey wrenches—with a glint of a gold chain at the wrist and, as though through a barrier of pain, says: “Kidnap? Shamas-ji, that is how white people would see it. They of course don’t understand our culture. The children and runaway wives
have
to be brought back.”

Standing here face to face, Shamas doesn’t wish to counter him or explain anything to him: he’ll dismiss everything Shamas says and soon it will be as though when the two of them opened their mouths they revealed not tongues but index fingers pointing and jabbing in the other’s direction.

“They
must
be brought back. Girls can become prostitutes if they are on their own and the boys drug addicts. They can be taken in by unscrupulous individuals. There is a saying in Urdu:
Dhukhia insaan to
sher ka bhi bharosa kar leta hai.
A lonely and distressed person will trust even a man-eating lion. In the past twelve months we have saved forty-seven of our youngsters from such a fate, and six wives who had left their husbands. One boy had decided to become a . . . a . . . a homosexual— please don’t mind my bad language.”

In the past twelve months alone? How long has this been going on? There is a sickness and a tightening at the base of Shamas’s throat. He wonders what else this person is involved in. Contract killing? Did he have anything to do with Chanda and Jugnu’s disappearance? Shamas is sure no one at the office knew anything about this before last week: when people come to the office asking for help because a daughter has left home or a son, they are told plainly that since the children are of age there is nothing legal that can be done; nor is it legal to disclose addresses and telephone numbers of women’s refuge centres. Do they call this man and his associates after they leave Shamas’s office in disappointment?

The man seems not to have read Shamas’s silence as hostile. “We’ll need photographs of Mah-Jabin and Ujala, of course, and National Insurance numbers. Credit card details too prove useful. Very little force would be used, I personally guarantee that.”

Shamas’s skin has become chilled: the man knows Mah-Jabin and Ujala’s names. “I
know
where my children are,” he hears himself telling the man. “Now excuse me. I really must leave.”

“We’ll be gentle. We do what the parents say. One mother and father wanted us to bring back the girl—who had run away a week before her arranged marriage to a decent-enough cousin from Pakistan—and they said we could use as much force as we liked but were not to hit her face because that would show in the wedding photographs and video. If we had to we should hit the body—which would be covered up with the wedding gown—or we could hit the head—where the veil and the hair would hide the bruises.”

“As I said, my children are perfectly happy and so am I.” He is trying to suppress his anger, his earlobes hot.

“You may be happy but is your wife?” A voice comes from behind Shamas.

He turns around and sees that two men are standing ten yards away from him, and behind them, a further ten or so sun-filled yards along, on a narrow cement path that cuts through the swathe of wild grasses and late-summer’s imperfect blossoms, is a car, three of its four doors open. Maple leaves glisten above it, those at the lower edge of the canopy moving rhythmically to and fro on their long stalks like the pendulum of a clock. All this is glimpsed in the sweep of the gaze, but Shamas’s eyes have returned to the two men because they have begun to walk towards him.

And the man who had been talking to him takes a step nearer to him too, aggressively. The two men arrive and in turn take his right hand into their own in an enforced shake, smiling.

He is not used to this: the people he has dealt with up until now have left their authority at the door when they entered his office. All three of these however are standing too close to him, and he is starting to tremble, experiencing a kind of vertigo and an unpleasant lightness in his feet—an awareness of being close to the edge of something.

He wonders whether Suraya’s husband could have sent these people.

Maintaining his composure—he does not wish to appear undignified in front of these strangers—he steps out of the cordon they seem to have made around him and begins to walk away at a controlled pace. But they, obviously unconcerned about what he may think about them, break into a little run as they try to keep up with him and he is brought to a halt as all three overtake him and block his way. It could almost be playfulness— but he is beginning to think that it is not a game but a blood sport.

One of the two who had been waiting behind him earlier says: “Shamas-ji, you are happy with the situation but your wife came to us several months ago, a year and a half ago to be precise, to see if we could track down her son Ujala, and before that, four or five years ago, she had wanted us to see if your daughter Mah-Jabin hadn’t fallen in with bad company. She told us in passing that she was devastated when Mah-Jabin left her husband, despite the fact that like every other decent mother she had told her daughter that the house you are going to—the house of your husband and in-laws—is Heaven but you are not to desert it even if it becomes Hell, that as far as the parents are concerned a daughter dies on the day of her wedding.”

The second of the new arrivals says, “Your wife did not want you to know about the fact that she had visited us obviously because you don’t have a mother’s heart in your breast and wouldn’t have understood. A mother misses her children when they run away so she wants them back.”

“Some women in the neighbourhood had put your wife in touch with us—she is, of course, a very polite and pious lady. In the end, on both occasions, she didn’t want to go through with it, but we were very distressed by her plight. She said her children were the other half of her heartbeat.”