Beauty (14 page)

The Ford Transit bumped and jolted over the speed humps on Graiseley Road. Beauty sat in the passenger seat holding on to the door handle, while oddly shaped metal bits jumped on the dashboard and on the floor around her feet.

Mark swung into the car park at Asda and pulled up across two spaces. He went round to wrench the door open for Beauty, and she hurried to keep up with him as they walked to the entrance.

Asian eyes followed them down the aisles towards the home furnishings department. Couples nudged each other. She shifted under their looks and the bright lights. Mark seemed happy to linger and find the bargains. Beauty went to look for bleach, sponges and rubber gloves.

‘We need bog roll ’n’ all,’ he called out.

As they waited to pay at the checkout, Mark asked her if she was happy with the money they’d agreed on. She got the hint, pulled out the roll of notes from under her kameez and offered him twenty pounds.

‘Is that all right?’ she asked.

‘Beauty!’

She looked up at him.

‘I mean, like … nice one,’ he added. He paid for his sausage roll and they left.

*

When they got back to his house she made her way through the obstacles, up the stairs and into the clean bedroom. She covered the bed with a mattress liner and the new lime green sheets, smoothed down the empty duvet cover and stuffed the pillows into new yellow cases. Mark knocked and came into the room, a can of beer in one hand and a portable television in the other.

‘Thought you might want this. I’ll fetch you a table and I should have a lamp ’n’ all.’

He plugged the TV into the wall, yanked the aerial around until he was satisfied with the picture and ran through the channels.

‘I fixed this misself,’ he said.

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

He returned with an anglepoise lamp, a flat brown alarm clock radio, a ring-stained bedside table, a clothes rack and hangers, a full-length dusty mirror, and her rucksack, at which point she stopped him. She had everything she needed, she said. She arranged her belongings on the bedside table and decided to wait until he had gone out before she cleaned the bathroom.

Mark called up that there was a cup of tea for her and she went downstairs.

EastEnders
was on. When two lesbians kissed noisily on screen Beauty looked at Mark as he ironed his clothes.

‘You OK, then?’ she asked him.

‘Sowund. Wha’ ’bout you?’

‘I’m OK now. Thanks again for what you done.’

Mark sniffed at his shirt and threw it on the back of the armchair, satisfied. ‘Thass all right, got misself a lodger, dey I? Even if it is only for a few days.’

The kissing on the television had stopped.

‘What was that all about with yer brothers then?’

‘Oh, you know. Asian stuff.’

‘
Ami tamar marray sude
,’ Mark said in Bengali.

Beauty stared at him in surprise, her ears and cheeks burning. She covered her mouth, but her laughter soon filled the room. ‘Do you know what that means?’ she asked, clutching her stomach and wiping her eyes.

‘Yeah, course. I wanna fook your m –’

She heard his Bengali accent again and her laughter broke out. The scowl and frown left her face, and her white teeth flashed. Mark was pleased that he’d made her laugh. She was a damn pretty girl.

He’d heard it from two Asian lads he’d shared a cell with, he told her. It was a long time ago, though, he added hurriedly. They’d also told him how it was for sisters, in Asian families.

At eight o’clock he put on his jacket to go up town. There was a spare key if she needed to go out, and Honey was outside if Beauty wanted to let her in. She did. Mark opened the back door and the pregnant creature came to sit at Beauty’s feet, nosing for her hand.

He watched his bitch.

‘Y’ve got a friend for life there,’ he said to Beauty. ‘Probly sleep outside yer door. If you get scared, giw round to Pete’s. He said ’e do’ mind.’

Beauty locked the door behind him and went upstairs to the bedroom.

It would only be for a few days, until the money came.

She sat down on the bed, pressed her face against the window and looked out at the darkened yards and the lights of the houses through the trees.

What if Faisal saw Mark at the course? He’d know she was here. What if? What if? She was tired of her thoughts, and of feeling hunted.

When they gonna give up? If I had a boyfriend?

No. If you was pregnant they’d have to.

Or if I moved far away.

And what would she do if they stopped looking for her?

She pictured herself in a small flat, high up maybe, or on the ground floor with a small garden and high fences so no one could see in. She’d get a cat and play with it; she’d look after it, and they would hide together from everyone. Beyond that she couldn’t imagine.

She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes. The blackness and sparks behind her lids were familiar. Images from the last days replaced each other in the darkness. She shuddered at her brothers outside in the street, and felt shame for the two Indians selling their mobile phones; she pulled faces at the Asian couples who stared at her in the supermarket, and told her little sister what white people’s houses were like inside; and she was running in the dark street, her rucksack jumping on her back, turning the corner. No one was there to save her and the car pulled alongside, her brothers’ faces staring at her in silence.

She started awake at the noise. Honey barked and scratched at the bedroom door. A thud came from the kitchen below and Beauty sat up, straining to hear.

The dogs outside were quiet; but she had to go down and check.

Honey followed her downstairs and through the darkened kitchen. When she stopped to peer into the sitting room the dog brushed past her, sniffed at the front door and growled.

Voices.

Beauty went out to the back yard, the dogs stirring in their kennels. The knock at the front door carried down the passageway and they started barking. She fumbled for the latch on the back gate and ran along the path to Peter’s house, stumbling in the dark.

The light was on in his kitchen.

Peter lay on the sofa with his eyes shut, blowing smoke at the lampshade and brushing ash from his chest when it fell. He played out scenes of himself on a petal-strewn four-poster bed in a marble-columned palace amid the lakes and mountains of Rajasthan. A demure-but-eventually-yielding veiled Mogul Indian princess abandoned first her religion, and then herself, to him in the midnight moonlight.

He heard the sound of tapping from the kitchen. It was most likely to be Mark, but his heart beat faster at the thought that it might be her.

Peter opened the back door and Beauty appeared from the darkness. He stopped smiling when he saw her anxious expression. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.

‘There was someone outside the house. Mark said you wouldn’t mind if I came round.’

Peter closed the door and locked it. The figure of his dreams didn’t have angry brothers.

‘Are they still there?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. It might be a friend of Mark’s.’

‘I’ll check.’

He took his keys and went to the front door. He’d get something from the car, see who it was, and come back.

He returned, locked the door and slid the bolts into place.

‘There’s no one there,’ he said.

*

Beauty sat in the armchair while Peter made tea. He put the mug on the coffee table in front of her and sat in the chair opposite. Where had Mark gone? he asked her.

Where do white people go?

‘To the pub?’ she guessed.

The words were strange to her, but it sounded like a normal, white answer.

Peter watched his Indian princess, her hands in her lap. Demure.

‘Do you think it was your brothers?’

‘Maybe,’ Beauty said. If not them, Dulal could have got someone else to come looking for her. No one she would recognize. The Pakistani boys at his work would do it. Pakis would do anything.

Peter scratched around for another opening. ‘Families can be difficult sometimes.’

Beauty picked up the mug of tea. ‘I left home, aynit,’ she said, and hoped it would be enough to keep him from questioning her further.

Apart from the possibility of danger outside, Peter was enjoying himself. Her reluctance to talk was a challenge. Unyielding at first.

‘Do you mind if I ask why?’

A flash of irritation crossed her face. ‘They wanted me to get married.’ She took a cigarette from the packet he offered her and lit it. What else was he going to ask?

Peter watched the smoke curl up around her.

‘Was that … an arranged marriage?’

She nodded.

‘And you didn’t want to?’

Peter slid the ashtray across the coffee table to her.

Beauty flicked the tip of the cigarette and shook her head.

He had a right to know, didn’t he? Wasn’t he helping her too?

So what if I tell someone? Do I have to hide it inside of me always?

‘They were gonna send me back home again.’

Peter was entranced, his eyes drawn to her headscarf, her sensuous mouth and slender neck, the slight swell of her chest, her long shirt and the outline of her thighs in the embroidered trousers. Her eyes avoided his but her discomfort at his gaze and the silence excited him.

‘It’s called a salwar-kameez,’ Beauty said. She didn’t feel threatened. The man lounged on the armchair, the top buttons of his shirt undone. This one fancied himself too much, but she felt he was a wimp, not a dangerous pervert. And she didn’t want to go back to Mark’s empty house.

Peter didn’t mind letting her know he was giving her appreciative looks. As long as he was careful not to go too far. For the moment she was too scared to leave.

‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked, feeling that the silence was no longer to his advantage.

Beauty crushed out the cigarette. What could she do? Had she really thought about it?

‘Find somewhere to live and sort my life out, I guess.’ Wasn’t that what normal people said?

Peter saw a chance. Of course she’d have to find somewhere else to live. You could smell Mark’s house from halfway down the street. Should he offer her his spare room now?

‘Is everything OK at Mark’s?’

Beauty nodded.

‘Isn’t it a bit … ?’

‘What?’

Peter wrinkled his nose.

‘No,’ Beauty said. Mark had saved her life that night. She wasn’t going to cuss him to no stranger.

Silence fell in the room again. Peter watched her sip tea. Perhaps he should try and lift her spirits. She’d been in a dark hole of despair, a prison. She’d run away from a forced marriage and a life of slavery. Surely she would want to embrace all that life had to offer.

‘At least you’re free now.’

Beauty let herself look at him. He’d stopped perving.

‘To do what?’

She thought of her mother. Ama would be shuffling around the flat, moaning and crying, unable to sleep.

‘I don’t know … meet whoever you want. Anything … everything,’ Peter said.

But what was
he
doing? He could hardly recommend smoking drugs and masturbation as a useful way of spending one’s life. That was just for the time being though; hadn’t he been in a kind of prison too?

The house was quiet. Beauty glanced at the man opposite her. How old was he? Didn’t he have any family?

‘Haven’t you got a wife?’ she asked, and blushed. That wasn’t a white question.

Peter thought of Kate. ‘No.’

She looked around the room, at the books, the computer and television. Not married. If she lived on her own, nobody would be able to tell her what to do, what to cook and clean. She wouldn’t have to spend her life with a man more than twice her age. Someone who pinched and prodded her when he wanted.

Peter’s voice pulled her back. ‘Do you think your family will stop looking for you?’

‘
Insh’allah
,’ she muttered to herself. Would they? One day?

Not unless I was married, or had a kid.

Peter caught the word and sat up. If God willed it? Predestination? Christ, did people really believe this stuff? Could he dissuade her of it as a first stage in seducing her? It might be an interesting intellectual exercise. And there was nothing else to do.

‘So do you believe things are destined to happen?’ he asked.

Beauty held his eye for a moment to see if he was mocking her. ‘Whatever’s wroten in your book, thass gonna happen.’ She looked down again. ‘Thass wroten in the Qur’an.’

What do I know? Let him explain it
.

‘What do you believe?’ she asked.

Peter composed his answer before exhaling it, slowly.

‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that as long as no one is stopping you, then you have the free will to make choices and decide your own future. If it’s all been written down beforehand, then how can you be responsible for the decisions you make and for what you do?’

He watched her face for a reaction. Had he made it clear enough? Leaving aside his designs on her for a moment, would she understand the implications for herself, that she was in control of her destiny, that she could break free of the shackles of a religious mindset that would only enslave her to a paralysing fatalism?

Beauty listened. That word again.
Free
. Was she really
free
? She’d chosen to leave home, to say no to a marriage she didn’t want; she could have said yes like so many girls did. Was that what he meant?

She watched the man gently rubbing the patch of chest hair at the top of his shirt with his fingertips. What was he smiling for?

*

Peter was enchanted by her discomfort, innocence and
naiveté.
He felt alive. This was for real, not like one of the fatuous conversations he’d endured at Kate’s dinner parties, among the Italian designer kitchenware. A person’s physical and spiritual survival might depend on what he said.

It crossed his mind that he wouldn’t have been so concerned had she been overweight and unattractive.

‘Look, I don’t want to knock anyone’s religion,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s free to believe in whatever gods they want.’

Beauty flinched. There was only one God!
Al-l
h
. The One. What did this bloke believe in?

He can’t be worser than a Hindu.

‘What religion are you?’ she asked him.

‘None,’ he said. ‘There is no God.’

Beauty choked on the tea and put the mug down.

‘You don’t believe … ?’ She couldn’t say the last words. Their meaning was darkness. If there was no …
toba, toba
…

‘I don’t know anyone who does,’ Peter added.

Beauty stared at him.

He doesn’t believe in anything?

What madness is this
?

Dulal used to call her a
fucking Christian
and
Ehudi
, but they’d never accused her of this.

‘That doesn’t make no sense.’

‘Why not?’ Peter asked. It made no less sense than the idea of a Divine Creator. He watched the thoughts passing across her brow. Surely she had thought about this before! What else had she never considered?

Beauty couldn’t think. The questions swirled around her. ‘Where did … how … ?’

‘Did everything get here?’ Peter offered.

She nodded.

‘A massive explosion of gas … out of nothing.’ There.
That should rock her foundations. And for the killer blow … ‘How did people get here?’ he asked. ‘We evolved, descended, we grew … out of monkeys over millions of years.’

He sat back, satisfied with her open-mouthed reaction. She
was
hearing this for the first time!

Beauty looked at the man on the sofa. Was he taking the piss?

Fa ranná.

It wasn’t good talking like this.

What if he’s right?

What if there is no …

She stood up.

‘I have to go,’ she said.

It was too soon for Peter. He’d never known a conversation hold such promise.

He followed Beauty along the dark path until they stopped at Mark’s gate.

‘Come back any time you like,’ Peter said. ‘It was just getting interesting.’

The dogs growled at the sound of his voice.

Beauty couldn’t see his face in the darkness. What was he … a man or a devil?

‘Will you?’ he urged.

‘Yeah, maybe,’ she said. ‘And thanks for, you know, before.’

The gate clicked shut behind her.

The dogs barked and Peter hurried back along the path.