Beauty (15 page)

Mark sat in the passenger seat of Bob’s Transit as it crept around the avenues and side streets of Bushbury, his eyes scanning the front gardens and passageways for the scrap that people left out to be taken away. First thing in the morning was the best time, before anyone else did the rounds. They’d already found two baths on Showell Road, and a couple of television sets. They were good for the copper in the back. You had to smash them open to get at it, but the yard paid top dollar for it. They should have a good day.

Mark needed it. Seventy quid would sort him out for a while. The house was due a damn good clean, now that someone else was there. The place was a fucking tip, he knew. He’d seen the horror on Beauty’s face, and heard her retch when she came out of his spare room.

Anyway, who was she to complain? At least he had a roof over his head.

Still, the money would come in handy, if she stayed on for a few weeks. He could get some more breeze blocks from Bob to sort them kennels out. Clean the house out proper. And she’d be no bother as a lodger. She was all right, for a Paki.

She ay a Paki.

Asian, then.

Bengali.

‘Keep yer fookin’ eyes open, will y’? There’s two radiators over there,’ Bob said, stopping the van. ‘Fooksake, where’s yer fookin’ head?’

‘Sorry mate. Giss a hand then.’

‘Caar you diw ’em on yer own?’

Mark tipped his cap to the back of his head, relit the roll-up and jogged up the drive of the house. He pulled both radiators to his chest, staggered to the van and pushed them on to the back.

‘D’you ’ave to make so much fookin’ noise?’ Bob said, as Mark got into the cabin. ‘There’s people asleep.’

‘They was fookin’ heavy. Still, not bad so far, eh? D’you reckon we’ll pull a hundred and fifty quid?’

‘We might, if you keep yer eyes open. Heavy night was it? Who d’you end up with?’

‘No one. I went to Flanagan’s for one or two. I was home at twelve.’

‘Had enough of that tart then?’

Mark thought of Kelly. He knew he shouldn’t have gone to Flanagan’s. She’d sidled up to him at the bar and rubbed her tits against his arm, and his cock with her hand. He’d pictured her arsehole, and told her to stop.

Didn’t he want her to come back to his house later?

No. He had a mate staying.

That dey matter, Kelly said. If his mate were fit he could join in.

It was a bird.

‘Am y’ shaggin’ her?’ she asked.

The van bumped and clanged its way down Fourth Avenue, past pale yellow houses and arched cement porches. Mark stared out of the window. It wasn’t so bad round here. At least there weren’t any Kosovans.

He thought of the Asian bird in his spare room.
Shagging her?
It didn’t seem right. He couldn’t picture her … bent over …

‘What’s the fookin’ matter with you? Dey you see that cooker?’

Bob stopped the van, and together they lifted it on to the back.

‘Come on then, spit it out,’ Bob said. ‘Y’ve bin quiet since we left.’

‘Nothing. I’m sowund.’

‘No you ay. Y’m sitting there jumping and twitching. And you look like a fookin’ tramp.’

‘We’m diwin’ a tramp’s job, Bob.’

‘The money’s all right, ay it?’

‘Yeah, I know. But I do’ wanna do this forever.’

‘That’s it? Listen, it’s like I keep saying. You need a good woman. Look at me and Karen. She put me straight.’

Mark looked at the round-bellied, cheery-faced older man. It was true. She had sorted him out, smartened him up and got him working more.

‘What about an Asian bird?’ he asked.

‘You wha’?’

‘I got one staying in me spare room at the minute.’

Beauty woke to the noise of dogs barking and Mark shouting at them from the bathroom. She listened as he went downstairs and slammed the front door. Silence fell on the house again.

She’d lain awake when she got back from Peter’s house the night before, struggling not to think about what he had told her. He was quite a nice bloke, softer than she expected a white person to be, but he’d said some terrible things.

There is no God …

No
tochdir
, no destiny, nothing wroten in her book?

Was he right?

Did Allah know that she would commit a
zinna
by disobeying her parents and living with a strange man? And if so, how could it be a sin if everything was already decided?

But Beauty knew Allah existed, so the white bloke must be wrong, mustn’t he?

It didn’t seem so bad thinking about these things in the daylight. She stared at the ceiling and tried to remember what else he had said.

‘
We grew out of monkeys over millions of years.
’

Everyone knew that monkeys were men who didn’t go to the Mox on Fridays. Or was that just a kids’ story?

And what else did white people believe? If there was no God that meant there was no heaven or hell. No punishment, no
zinna.
So what happened after you died? Where did you go?

Beauty shuddered at the blackness that arose in answer. She threw back the covers and got out of bed, scratched her head and looked about her for a scarf.

Anyway, how could someone who didn’t believe in anything be right? The Qur’an said that Allah made people, and that everything you did in your life was wroten down before.

How do you know? You can’t read it.

After you die you go to heaven and hell
.

How d’you know?

What did white people think?

‘
There is no God!
’

What about Christians?

Was she stupid for not knowing these things, and how could she find out?

At the care home they might think she was thick if she gawped every time she heard something new.

They might not give her the job.

*

Beauty lifted the wicker blind to let in the sunlight, opened the window and listened to the birds singing. They were free, flying from tree to tree, looking after their babies and singing songs to themselves. They didn’t have to worry about anything.

She jumped when the phone rang.

01902 421352

Call waiting.

Beauty pressed the green button and listened.

‘Hello? Is that Beauty?’

A woman’s voice.

‘It’s Jackie from the Jobcentre.’

She’d found a placement for her in a care home for the elderly. Did she want to go and see it and talk to the manager?

Today?

Yes. It was easy to find. She’d have to get the 72 bus to Rough Hills. The manager’s name was Maria. Should Jackie phone and say Beauty was going?

Can I do it? What if they give me something to read?

Yes, she would go.

Why shouldn’t I work? That’s what normal people do, aynit?

White people.

No woman Beauty knew had ever worked.

And it would be a good thing looking after people who had never had children, or whose kids had died.

Toba, toba astaghfirullah.

The doors of the bus hissed open outside the Sunny-side Residential Care Home for the Elderly. Beauty walked up the driveway of the old house, rang the bell and waited. She caught her reflection in the glass of the porch. Would they want a Paki?

The door was opened by a plump young woman in blue trousers and a nurse’s top.

‘Y’m all right, loov?’

Beauty scrawled her name in the visitors’ book and followed the girl along floral-carpeted corridors. The air smelled of stale food.

‘If you’d just like to wait in here with the service users, I’ll go and find Maria.’

Beauty wondered what ‘service users’ were, and followed her into a large reception room. She stopped in the doorway, open-mouthed. How many people there were!

Ehcter, deuter, tinter …

Twenty? More?

Elderly ‘service users’ sat in armchairs along the walls, one thin seat touching the next. Some dozed, their heads tilted forward or to one side, others stared ahead unseeing. A television in the corner of the room showed a daytime chat show.

There were no brown faces. Had they seen a Muslim
girl before? Working here? The women wore long skirts and cardigans; some of them had bandages under their rumpled tights. The few men looked smart in jackets and V-neck jumpers

‘Hello, chick,’ a voice said. ‘You coom for the job, have y’?’

An old woman from the row of chairs beside her leaned forward. She had a large purple bruise on one cheek and her eye was red with blood. She motioned Beauty towards her.

‘Coom and let me have a look at you, sweetheart. I do’ see so well any more.’

Beauty stood in front of the lady and allowed herself to be inspected. A cloudy eye stared at her while Beauty noted the lady’s neat blue skirt, white blouse and pearl necklace. The woman held out a trembling hand and Beauty took it. Was that right?

‘I reckon you’ll do very well ’ere,’ the lady said, smiling.

Beauty smiled back.

Sweet buddhi.

‘Don’t mind me bruises. It ’appens, when y’m old,’ the lady said.

She looked Beauty over again and winked.

‘You’ll get the job. They caar find anyone to look after us. Why do’ you go and sit down, loov? That Maria will take forever. We’ll talk again, eh chick?’

Beauty said that she would, and went to the table by the window. She felt awkward as she smiled at the faces that watched her, and avoided the eyes of those that didn’t.

They never had children to look after them when they got old, so they come to these places, aynit.

That’s good. Back home they’d die, if they was poor and had no one.

But it wasn’t a very nice place and she felt sorry for the
old people. The smell was bad and the furniture tatty. Pictures on the walls of men on horses were faded and crooked; the Silver Jubilee teacups on the hooks of a narrow dresser were chipped.

Outside the window, cars flashed past on the busy road, the high-rise flats of Chapel Ash beyond. It was a clear day. Low hills were visible in the distance, beyond the city.

What’s out there?

‘Where are you from, dear?’

Beauty looked into the pale blue eyes of a woman sitting near the table.

‘Er … London.’

A man’s voice growled. ‘She means where’s your family from. India? Pakistan?’

The face of the man opposite was unsmiling, his hands resting on the top of a walking stick standing between his knees. He was smartly dressed, in polished brown shoes and a brown jacket. A shaving cut touched the collar of his white shirt.

‘Bangladesh,’ Beauty said.

The man grunted.

‘Don’t mind him, dear,’ the lady said. ‘He still wishes Enoch Powell was his MP.’

Beauty didn’t know what she meant but nodded, and stole a quick glance at the man staring at her from under thick white eyebrows.

Could she do this? Dressing, bathing and helping at meal times, her adviser had said. Would she have to help this man in the bathroom?

The girl who had opened the front door reappeared and beckoned to her. Beauty was relieved to get away from the man’s gaze. The lady with the bruise wished her good luck as she passed.

She was led along corridors to an office, and left alone. The small space was cluttered with a paper-strewn desk, a filing cabinet and a medicine chest on the wall. There were photos on a noticeboard of groups of bare-shouldered young white girls on a night out, their arms around each other, clutching glasses or bottles of beer.

Maria turned out to be not much older than Beauty, a pretty girl with long, dyed black hair and badly applied pale foundation covering her spots. She wore a tracksuit and short vest that showed a strip of blotchy pink belly and a pierced navel.

‘Iss Beauty, ay it? That’s a wicked nayum! Wish I had a nayum like that.’

Beauty relaxed a little. ‘Manager’ had sounded important. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard.

‘I ay the manager … she’s away. I’m a Key Worker. Got promoted last week, dey I. Jobcentre sent me here eighteen month ago. If you can handle a bit of poo and wee, you’ll be fine. Fancy a cup of tea ’n’ a fag?’

Beauty followed Maria past the open doors of small bedrooms and into a big kitchen with long metal surfaces and huge cookers. A large woman in a white apron and hat, with bloodshot cheeks and a red nose, was pulling trays from an oven.

‘Ello loov!’ she called over the noise she made.

Maria threw open the back door and Beauty stepped into bright sunlight and a garden surrounded by thick bushes and tall trees.

They sat on a wooden bench and Maria told her about the Home, the manager and some of the other girls who worked there. Most of them were sowund. She’d got her best mate Louise a job there, jooss. They were desperate for staff. If Beauty got on OK they’d probably start paying her in a couple of weeks.

Maria stubbed out her cigarette and went to make tea.
Beauty leaned back on the bench and squinted in the sunlight at the well-kept lawn and the flower-beds.

I can do this!

I’ll get a job and somewhere to live.

Maria returned with a blond-haired girl in a grey tracksuit and white England shirt and introduced her as Louise, who also thought Beauty’s name was wicked. The two girls smoked and laughed, and asked Beauty about herself.

Did she have a boyfriend?

‘No,’ Beauty said, and reddened.

Didn’t all Asians have arranged marriages?

‘Most of them.’

So a girl didn’t know her husband before she got married?

God! That was really bad! Louise could never do that.

Neither could Maria. What happened if it turned out he had a tiny cock? Could you get divorced?

Beauty laughed with them. Even if it was rude she didn’t feel they meant any harm.

Could a girl have a boyfriend before she got married? Louise asked her.

‘No.’

So Beauty had never had one?

‘No.’

Was she still a vir – ?

Hana’s twisting naked legs and the Iraqi’s
–

‘Yes.’

The girls were silent. Did they feel sorry for her? Did they think she was simple?

Maria’s best mate from school had married an Asian bloke. He was really sweet and kind, took her everywhere, bought her lots of nice things. But Maria hadn’t seen her since she’d got married last year.

‘You can’t go out with an Asian bloke,’ Beauty said. ‘They change after you get married.’
Apart from in films.

Had Beauty’s family found her a husband? Maria asked.

But she didn’t want to answer. ‘What about you two? Have you got boyfriends?’ she asked.

Louise’s divorce had just come through the other day. She’d gone out drinking to celebrate.

Maria’s chap was a useless stoner who sat about playing computer games all day.

Neither of them had kids. Everyone else they knew did. Had had them ages ago. They’d both like a babby one day, but with the right bloke. One who’d stick around.

Maria wanted someone who had, you know, a bit of initiative.

Louise had met a nice bloke down Flanagan’s the other night. He was quite a bit older than her, but he was good-looking and had a proper job. Beauty should go out with them one night. There weren’t any Asians there though. What type of bloke was she looking for?

‘I’m not,’ Beauty said.