Beauty Read online

  Once he’d got away Peter had realized he had no other plan. He’d imagined that with his new-found freedom would come a rush of the joys of life. So far it hadn’t. Nevertheless, the first month away from her had been sweet. He’d reread some of his favourite books, and had fallen asleep in front of made-for-TV films with no woman there to tell him otherwise. ‘Are you coming to bed now?’ wasn’t a question.

  But his literary heroes were less consuming than he’d anticipated, and merely reminded him that he was doing nothing useful with his life. The television and internet had taken their place. They didn’t challenge his inactivity in the same way. The realization that he wasn’t going to have a career of any interest or reward had hit him since he’d reacquired his independence of thought away from her. His youth had passed him by in idle and unproductive contemplation of life around him. For the past five years he’d watched Kate’s friends thrusting themselves ever further forward in various media environments, braying their ignorance and surface knowledge wherever they went. At social gatherings his own underachievement embarrassed him in front of his intellectual inferiors. Worst of all was the endless talk of property prices and DIY, in which he could only take part through association with Kate’s loft conversion. The ‘what-are-you-up-to-these-days?’ questions had become harder to answer, and he knew her friends told her he was a useless freeloader. Balls to them. Who cared if they’d been to Iraq for the BBC?

  But the idea that he might be jealous disturbed him. At one time he’d thought he’d do something creative. He’d even sat down to write, but had soon realized he was unable to follow Goethe’s imperative that a writer should turn his attention to the real world and try to express it; to write one must have something to say. All that Peter had laboured to produce had been a list of grievances born of his despair at the dumbing-down and coarsening of the arts. How many acclaimed novels had he flung into the corner of the room, enraged, when he reached the inevitable ‘he was sat’ and ‘they were stood’? And what was the moral purpose of these novels?

  And after each failed attempt of his own to put his thoughts on to paper Peter was left with the nagging question:

  What’s the point?

  To anything. Everything.

  At least now he could look at pornography on the internet in peace.

  5

  Faisal Rahman caught up with his older sister as she passed the library. Beauty ignored him, and kept walking. When they reached the bus station she asked him if he had any money. He lied and said he hadn’t. She didn’t want to walk, but couldn’t admit to having money herself. That would start a fight about where she’d got it. They’d have to walk the two miles home.

  He’d start nagging once they were away from people and past the mess of roadworks, traffic lights and underpasses, and out onto Cannock Road. She could feel her foot beginning to hurt, but kept going and tried to hide the pain in her scowl. Cars crawled past them and Beauty slowed down.

  ‘You OK, sis?’

  ‘My foot’s hurting,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not far now. We’re nearly there.’

  Now he asks me if I’m OK. What does he want?

  ‘Get Dad to take you to the doctor,’ he suggested.

  Right across the road from the flat and the old man has to come with me.

  ‘Sis?’

  ‘What?’

  Girls. White probably.

  ‘What’s a good present for somebody?’

  ‘How should I know? You lot never buy me nothing.’

  No Eid clothes, birthday presents, nothing.

  ‘It depends who it’s for,’ she added, grateful that he still asked her for advice.

  ‘A girl,’ he admitted.

  ‘Well, if it was me, I’d get something expensive,’ she said. ‘Gold. Maybe a necklace. Or a mobile phone.’

  That’s gonna kill him. He won’t spend money on anyone. Spoilt kid gets everything he wants.

  Faisal was silent. ‘I thought maybe a CD,’ he said.

  ‘What! For a tenner? You cheapcake! Anyway, what you doing buying presents for a white girl?’

  ‘How do you know she’s white?’ he said.

  ‘You’ve just told me.’ At least she had something on him now, and maybe he wouldn’t cause trouble when they got home.

  ‘You ain’t gonna say anything are you, sis?’ he begged, and went quiet again as he realized how she’d outwitted him. ‘Bhai-sahb ain’t gonna believe a lying tramp like you anyway.’

  She’d pushed him too far. Now there would be a fight.

  They walked on in silence, but he quickened his pace and told her to hurry up. At the shops by the crossing she waited as he went in to spend some of the money he’d said he didn’t have. She stood by the shop door and pulled her jacket about her, grimacing with the cold and the pain in her foot. Faisal came out, his pockets stuffed with chocolate bars. They crossed the road and headed over the grassy mound to the concrete stairwell below their flat. Beauty winced as she climbed the stairs behind him, and stuck her tongue out at her younger brother’s back in his new Adidas tracksuit. Preparing herself for what was to come, she followed him along the concourse, took a deep breath as he opened the front door, and went in after him.

  *

  The flat was quiet. Bhai-sahb would be asleep upstairs, and the old man was probably watching television in the sitting room. Her little sister would be lying on her bed reading. What else could Sharifa do? Faisal never let her go on the internet and she wasn’t allowed a radio. Their mum would be asleep as well.

  Beauty took off her shoes, went down the corridor and into the bathroom to wash her feet. She could stay in there for a while before the little one or the old man banged on the door and told her to come out.

  The cold water made her gasp and she looked at the swelling lump on her left foot. If the old man had paid to put a curse on her, she didn’t want him to know it might be working. He’d said that curses wouldn’t work on a shaitan. At least that meant she wasn’t a devil.

  She’d found the tabiz in her pillowcase a month before, and had broken open the wax seal with shaking hands. The tiny roll of paper that she pulled from the small tube was full of Arabic words written backwards. At first she couldn’t imagine where he’d got it from. Not in Wolverhampton; he hadn’t been anywhere and they didn’t have any money. Had he borrowed some, she wondered, or maybe got a Hindu to do it? They were cheaper.

  But when she showed it to Bhai-sahb, he went crazy and forced the old man to admit he’d paid an ulta-imam in Birmingham five hundred pounds to curse her.

  Back in Bangladesh he’d paid imams nearly a thousand taka to make her want to marry the mullah, and be good. When she got ill her brother had called a doctor, but the man didn’t know what was wrong with her. Bhai-sahb thought the mullah’s family might have cursed her for refusing to live with him, and he’d gone round the villages looking for the highest imam he could find to come and see her. The elderly man in the Punjabi suit, whom he brought back with him, had scared her. But he’d spoken kindly, looked about the house and the rough land around it, and eventually pointed to the fish ponds near-by. There was a fish with a tabiz tied round it, the imam had told them. Find the fish, take off the tabiz and the girl will get better.

  Beauty had watched from the house as the men dragged nets across the ponds and inspected each fish. Finally they found it. Bhai-sahb broke open the tabiz and ran to the old man shouting, the fish in one hand and the roll of paper in the other. The old man shrugged and came into the house. He hadn’t helped to look.

  Beauty turned the tap off and thought about washing properly before going upstairs to pray.

  What’s the point?

  ‘Toba, toba,’ she said aloud, touching her cheeks three times protectively.

  Al-lh dhway, I didn’t mean it like that.

  If she went to pray they’d say she was only pretending, doing it to hide from them and make herself look holy.

  I aynt never seen Bhai-sahb pray in my life.
He read Siffara and Qur’an a bit, then gave up. He was into dodgy stuff so he gave up everything. Back home they thought he was a gundha till he got rid of his gangster clothes.

  She touched the lump on her foot lightly.

  Al-lh, why they doing this to me? What did I do wrong?

  I aynt going to marry no one to save the old man’s face. I’d rather die. Especially not a mullah. For him I suffered.

  Why didn’t the mullah give up and marry someone else?

  Cuz he wants to get married legal way and come to this country. He’s balla zat and the old man wants to lift his own name back home.

  Beauty rubbed her feet dry and put on some sandals, opened the door and listened. She could just make out the noise from the television in the sitting room and the old man muttering. She walked quietly down the corridor and into the empty kitchen to start cooking. He’d want a lamb and chicken curry. The little ones couldn’t eat anything too hot so she’d have to make another two, without naga, the chilli peppers the old man liked. Dulal, her older brother, would eat whatever she made, depending on his mood. But if there’d been a fight, he wouldn’t touch anything she’d cooked. She might have poisoned it. If he ate after a fight, he’d get diarrhoea the next day. Of that she made sure. It had taken him years to realize what she did. Beauty laughed and pulled the sack of onions from the cupboard.

  ‘What the fuck are you laughing at?’ Faisal’s voice startled her.

  ‘Nothing. Can’t I laugh?’

  ‘To yourself? You’re fucking crazy.’

  Beauty chopped the onions. They’d always told her she was faggol and she’d believed them. The old man had told Miss McKenzie, her primary school teacher, that his daughter was mad. When she was eleven years old they heard her talking to herself and took her to see imams, so she started talking to herself in Turkish instead. Their neighbours in London at number 36 were Turkish and she’d learned how to say bir, iki, uc, merhaba and hoscakal from their six-year-old daughter. The old man had stopped them playing together, but Beauty remembered the sounds and rhythms of the child’s prattle and talked her own gibberish version of it to herself whenever she thought anyone was listening at the door.

  ‘Well, what were you laughing at?’

  ‘Mind your own business.’

  ‘Was it something the halla said?’ he insisted.

  ‘Why do you keep talking about her? Did you fancy her?’

  Beauty knew she had to be careful. He was easy to wind up.

  So what if I do? Fight’s gonna come sooner or later anyway.

  ‘And who were those blokes with you?’

  ‘What blokes?’ she said. ‘I didn’t see no blokes.’

  ‘Liar. There was two blokes standing there, laughing and talking.’

  ‘So what? It’s a free country, aynit?’

  What’s free?

  ‘You shouldn’t have been with them.’

  Why not?

  But she couldn’t argue with him. She knew she shouldn’t have been standing with them.

  ‘Anyway, Bhai-sahb’ll be up soon,’ he said, and left her alone in the kitchen again.

  I didn’t want to go on that course. He forced me.

  Since they’d got back from Bangladesh her older brother had been cold towards her. He hadn’t wanted her to marry the mullah either, but he blamed her for the mess that had come of it, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to get married until it was sorted out. Who else could he blame?

  Beauty finished the onions and started on the garlic and ginger. She’d cooked for the family since she was ten years old, when her ama had gone into hospital. Tonight she would make the hutki, too, for her mum, just how she liked it. She stood at the cooker, measuring powders in a wooden spoon and stirring them into the onions, garlic and ginger. Above the frying she heard noises from her older brother’s bedroom overhead. He’d be down soon. She made sagu, and set a place for him at the table. Maybe he’d be too tired to get angry before going to work. It would depend on how much trouble the little one managed to cause.

  She listened to steps coming down the stairs and watched as a form approached the ribbed glass of the kitchen door. Maybe it was only Faisal – he was getting so big these days she couldn’t be sure. The handle turned and her older brother, Dulal Miah, stood in the doorway, hair flattened and eyes dark with sleep. He was putting on weight – his neck had fattened out and his nose seemed thicker and flatter. He was starting to look like the old man.

  He smiled at his sister.

  ‘All right, sis?’ he croaked, shuffling to the table and sitting down heavily. Beauty put the bowl of porridge in front of him.

  ‘Do you want tea, Bhai-sahb?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

  Thanks!

  She filled the kettle with water and threw in two handfuls of loose tea and a piece of cinnamon after it.

  That’s gonna be tasty.

  ‘How was the course?’ he asked.

  ‘Dunno. It hasn’t really started.’ She wanted to say how embarrassing it was sitting next to white people, how the black blokes looked at her and how shocking the things that the white girls said were, but she knew he wanted her to go.

  ‘Stick at it. They might find you a job.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’ve got to do the reading first.’

  ‘That ain’t gonna work.’ He sounded irritated. ‘Didn’t you tell them we tried everything? Can’t they just find you a job?’

  He must have really needed the money; and he was right about the reading. She knew the alphabet, but how letters became words remained a mystery. There was something wrong with her, she knew that now. They didn’t need to tell her.

  ‘They’re gonna talk to us one by one tomorrow and see what we want to do.’

  He grunted and spooned sagu into his mouth. She put the tea in front of him and went back to the cooker, asking about his work over her shoulder. Things were going OK, he said. They were going to make him a supervisor soon.

  Beauty heard footsteps overhead again and hoped it was her mum.

  Faisal came into the kitchen in another new tracksuit, carrying his new mobile phone. Dulal had had to buy it for him – as payment for doing well at school and staying out of trouble.

  ‘Yo, blood,’ he said to his older brother, slapping him on the shoulder.

  ‘Don’t talk like a fucking halla.’

  ‘At least I don’t hang around with them like I saw her doing today,’ Faisal said.

  ‘I wasn’t hanging around with black people. I was saying goodbye to a girl I sat next to,’ Beauty said.

  ‘Faisal, stop shit-stirring or you’ll get a kick. Get me the post.’

  Dulal Miah carried on eating and drinking tea while he opened the letters addressed to his mother and sister from the Department for Work and Pensions. He grunted in satisfaction, put the letters down, leaned back in his chair and rubbed his stomach.

  ‘Sis, don’t bring no more shame on us.’

  Shame? I didn’t bring no shame on no one.

  ‘I aynt shaming you,’ she said.

  ‘Good. Cuz that’ll be the end if anything else happens.’

  What are they gonna do now? Kill me? They already tried that.

  ‘And make sure you help Mum with the washing.’

  Help Mum? She doesn’t do nothing. All right, I can’t blame her for that, she’s my mother.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ she said.

  She glanced at Faisal and could tell from his fidgeting that he was deciding whether to say more.

  ‘She was smoking Dad’s fags as well.’

  Beauty saw her chance. ‘Did you want them for your white girlfriend?’

  ‘She’s lying, Bhai-sahb,’ he said. ‘I ain’t got no white girlfriend. She’s lying like she always does.’

  ‘I told you to stop shit-stirring,’ Dulal said.

  Beauty could feel her older brother looking at her and she waited for the shouting to start, but he didn’t say anything. She turned to face him, but he
remained silent. Faisal looked at his brother. What was wrong with Bhai-sahb? What he’d just heard was usually enough to send him into a rage.

  Beauty turned back to the cooker. Dulal’s calm, and the cold look in his eyes, worried her more than his shouting. It could mean only one thing.

  Mullah Habib Choudhury.

  Had she missed the signs? Had there been any? She hadn’t heard the phone ringing more than usual, or the whispered conversations that stopped when she came into the room. She should have expected it, though. Dulal wanted to get married. He was twenty-five and needed a wife, but what family would let their daughter marry a man who couldn’t control his own sister? Once they started asking around they’d soon find out about Beauty’s failed marriage. And besides, he’d never find a decent wife, born here, unless the old man arranged it, and as long as she refused to bring the mullah into the country, the old man swore that he wouldn’t. He had promised her to Habib Choudhury long ago, and so far he hadn’t been able to make Beauty keep his word.

  Maybe she was wrong. Perhaps Bhai-sahb was just tired of fighting. He knew she’d been through a lot. He still asked her advice on what job to take, how to put up with Paki comments at work, or how to ask a girl out – not that he ever did.

  Dulal stood up and left the kitchen, shutting himself in the sitting room with the old man. Faisal went upstairs, not sure what his brother’s silence meant. But Beauty understood. Was that why her mum was still in bed? The talk would come later that night, before Bhai-sahb went to work.