Beauty (22 page)

Kate Morgan stood on the doorstep, holding her coat against the
bitter
cold. It was a foul place, and had taken her hours to find.

His car was there and the lights were on in the house. Why didn’t he open the bloody door?

She knocked again.

Peter froze. This couldn’t be happening! He looked through the hole again. She was still there. He’d have to open the door.

‘Hi! Why didn’t you ring?’ he said, stepping out of the house to kiss her on both cheeks.

‘I thought I’d surprise you.’

Peter heard bitterness in her voice.

‘Can I come in?’ she said.

He stood sideways to let her pass, large in a waist-length, fake fur coat. ‘Have you had your hair done?’ he asked.

She ignored his question. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘I’ve just had a cooking lesson from a neighbour. You must be hungry – let me get you something to eat.’

Kate headed for the kitchen. When did he ever cook? She took in the pretty Indian girl in a headscarf and black eyeliner, the candle and empty plates.

Beauty started.

‘This is all very cosy,’ the woman said. She ran her
fingers through her hair, and smoothed out her travel-creased clothes.

‘Hi, I’m Kate. I’m Peter’s
girlfriend
.’

Peter looked from one woman to the other. ‘This is Beauty,’ he croaked.

‘Beauty? What a lovely name,’ Kate said. She took off her coat and handed it to Peter. ‘Could you get my bag from the car, please? I’d like to have a word with – Beauty, is it? – alone.’

Peter didn’t want to leave them in the room together but he recognized the strident tone in her voice and went to get her bags.

Beauty stood up. She shouldn’t have come. What trouble had she caused in a stranger’s house?

‘I have to go,’ she said, and made to move round the woman.

‘Please, I need to know. Is there something going on between you and him?’

Beauty flushed at the accusation. ‘No!’

I don’t do them things. I’m Muslim
.

But Beauty couldn’t blame the woman. She shouldn’t have been in a strange man’s house. ‘He asked me to show him how to cook.’

The woman’s angry eyes looked at her from head to toe. ‘Come off it, I wasn’t born yesterday!’

Beauty didn’t know what the woman meant. ‘I don’t care when you was born!’ she said, and took a step towards the back door.

Kate moved to block her path. ‘Didn’t he tell you that he had a partner?’ Kate heard her voice tremble.

Beauty felt sorry for the man’s pretty girlfriend with the pale skin and dark hair. ‘He said he didn’t have a wife.’

Kate felt the energy drain from her. That was just like him to think he was being clever, playing with words. Kate wanted to believe her. The girl’s voice was at once
angry and apologetic, her eyes sympathetic. But surely this ‘Beauty’ knew Peter was drooling over her? He was just the type to want some young, submissive Asian type.

The lady looked like she was about to cry.

‘I shouldn’t have come,’ Beauty said. Had she encouraged him? Hadn’t she seen how the bloke had perved at her?

‘It’s not your fault,’ said Kate.

But Beauty knew that it was.

Kate clutched the back of the chair to steady herself. The exhaustion and hunger from the journey were making her dizzy.

‘I’m sorry. I just get so emotionally spun out sometimes.’

She took Beauty’s hand and squeezed it.

Leaning against his car, Peter smoked a cigarette, Kate’s heavy weekend bag at his feet. (How many bloody clothes had she brought with her?) Before going back inside he’d let her find out there was nothing going on. The whole thing was a disaster. He’d blown it with Beauty, and Kate would put him through hours of anguished relationship analysis. This time he’d tell her it was over. Definitely. As soon as she started shouting.

The front door opened and he took a step towards Beauty. ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said, attempting a casual air. ‘Sorry about the, er … interruption.’ It sounded feeble.

Beauty glanced at him. It wasn’t his fault. He was a man.

‘Go and look after your girlfriend,’ she said and turned away.

Peter watched the door to Mark’s house close behind her. He picked up the bag and went to face Kate’s ire.

The conversation went much as all the others had before it, except that when Kate got to the ‘do-you-still-love-
me?’ part, he told her he ‘didn’t know any more’. After a moment to absorb the news, she burst into tears.

Peter was horrified to find himself becoming aroused.

Afterwards, her head on his chest, post-coital regret hit him hard. She’d moaned in his ear that she loved him, and he’d mumbled something barely audible in return.

Peter groaned in the dark. Why had he done it? Would she see it as a last act of affection between them as their ‘relationship’ came to an end, or as a sign that they could ‘work things out’? Would they have to go through another round of bitter recriminations over the ‘emotional investment’ and the time she’d wasted on him? The best years of her life? It made her feel so ‘worthless and unattractive’, she’d sobbed. She’d always known he wanted a slave type, that he couldn’t handle an ‘empowered and independent’ woman like herself, and here he was preying on a virginal Asian girl half his age. He’d told her it wasn’t so, that he just wanted to learn how to cook a decent curry.

Peter looked at the slanting patches of street light on the ceiling. Why had her tears excited him? Was a woman’s vulnerability sexually stimulating? Was he moved by Kate’s pain, or had he done what he could to stop the nerve-shredding, guilt-inducing sound of her crying? He’d put his arm round her when she’d told him his coldness towards her was like a slap in the face. His hand had brushed against her breast, and for some reason he could not explain to himself, he’d been overcome with lust. For the first time in the history of their sexual relationship he was rough with her. And the anger he felt seemed to leave her satisfied.

Apart from regretting what he had just done, Peter worried that he was indeed chasing virginal innocents. Was it really the result of his own inadequacies and a deep-rooted antipathy to women? Hadn’t he been on the
verge of coming to a newer understanding of his purpose in life, and how to achieve fulfilment? Surely there was no place for such sexual neuroses. These were Western hang-ups.

Peter shifted under Kate’s weight and tried to extricate his arm. Hair went up his nose and he brushed it away in irritation. His ‘girlfriend’ nestled closer against him.

Cars passed occasionally in the street outside.

He thought again of the Asian men in the supermarket. The husbands and fathers, with their wives and children, loaders of onions, shepherds of broods, passers-on of genes. It was a simple existence. And what of
her?
The future wife and mother? Devoted? Caring? Supportive, understanding, soothing, bright, sweet, slim, pretty, shy yet adventurous? Feminine!

There, he’d said it!

He imagined tossing the word like a hand grenade into the middle of one of Kate’s dinner parties. There’d be baying howls of derision from her friends. ‘Feminine?’ they would shriek. What kind of a Neanderthal was she going out with? A repressed public schoolboy, Kate would say. Before it blew them all to pieces.

Peter smiled in the dark.

Where to find a woman like that? He’d buggered it up with Beauty, that much was certain. But was it only a person of religion who could be all those things? There was no God! Organic life was an accident, procreation its sole aim; human consciousness was a freak of nature to be used to ensure our survival, and religion merely a guideline to keep the family together as the basic unit of society. Different animals did it different ways. Meerkats stood on their hind legs to keep a look out for predators.

Peter yawned. What rubbish he was thinking! It was Kate’s proximity, he decided, that reduced his mental capacities.

It was over between them. What they’d done tonight on the sofa changed nothing.

He wanted his own Beauty.

Beauty Begum climbed the stairs in the quiet house. Mark wouldn’t be back until the morning, he’d said. She opened the door to her bedroom, switched on the naked light bulb and looked at the bare walls, the purple carpet, the orange headboard of the double bed in the corner against the far wall, and the lilac duvet cover. Her salwars hung on the clothes rack which Mark had given her, and her few items of make-up were arranged on the brown and white bedside table. She took off her jacket and sat down on the bed with her phone in her hand. Would her mum ring again tonight, late, after the old man had gone to bed?

She slipped off her sandals. It was still early and she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep yet. She stuffed the pillows into the corner, sat with her knees clasped to her chest, and pulled the duvet to her chin. She could still taste the marrow from the smooth pieces of leg bone, and the freshness of the hard, green chillies. She’d need to find somewhere to live with a proper kitchen. Soon. But she was grateful in the meantime, and thanked Allah again for what she had eaten.

Would she ever have her own kitchen? With her own children to cook for? Or a husband? She’d always been able to imagine the Bengali in-laws she would take care of. In her dreams they used to look a bit like her own
mother and the old man. But kinder. The picture was fading now. There was still no face of a husband.

What Bengali would touch a
bugri
-runaway? Even if she met one herself, they’d never have a wedding with both families doing things properly. A simple, holy one with dates and water. Any Bengali bloke would throw it in her face as soon as they had a fight.

You were a fucking bugri when I met you!

Or Indian, Sikh or Paki. They’d throw everything in her face. ‘You’re this, you’re that’; ‘You’re a Muslim’; ‘You’re a runaway’; ‘You didn’t have no family’.

Were white people like that? Everybody said they had lots of girlfriends before they got married and that they didn’t take anything seriously. And white women had children with different men. You could tell from their TV programmes. White people’s ‘love’ was like in the films. Every girl wanted that. Dreamed of it. The man was handsome and strong. You were shy when you saw him, your stomach turned over and your heart beat faster.

Asian way was more than that. He was a stranger at first but a girl would love him because he was her husband, and he would love her because she was his wife. And if she became the
koutti
and was strong enough to control her husband and make him big, if she became the pillar of the house and took care of his parents, then his love for her would grow. That was her job. He had to look after his family, work hard, and be generous to her brothers and sisters. That was a man’s job.

Beauty looked at the bare walls from the corner of the room.

That was all gone. A kid’s dream. Those men didn’t exist. Not for her. It was better to be alone than to risk marrying a monster.

If only she had a child to look after! Just her and a baby. No man, no one to bully her, or throw mean things
in her face every time he got angry. No one who threatened to divorce her if she wanted to visit her mum. She knew what Bengali men could be like. Cousin Sweetie’s husband divorced her because she went back to Bangladesh for her brother’s wedding.

Talaq, talaq, talaq, when she got back.

No. It was better to be alone. Like the white girls pushing prams she saw from the windows of the bus.

But how would she ever have kids?

The phone rang. Her legs were stiff as she crawled across the bed.

Mark sat against the wheel arch in the back of the Escort van, his knees pressed to his chest, and looked at his phone in the passing orange motorway lights. The metal ridges on the floor dug into him painfully as they bumped over potholes in the road.

Where the fuck were they?

Junction 25.

Twelve more till the Stafford exit. Half an hour along the A449 to Wolverhampton. They’d be back by six o’clock.

It had been knackering work shifting concrete central reservations on the M62 all night, but at least he’d earned some decent money. Two hundred quid for eighteen hours’ graft. It was enough for his share of a deposit on a new house. If Beauty wanted. She’d get to know him better, see that he was a good bloke, that his heart was in the right place. She might get to like him. She did already, a bit. He’d re-home a couple of the dogs if he had to … Satan definitely.

He shifted his weight on the floor. It was too
basstud
cold to take off his jacket to use as a cushion.

The motorway lights flashed in the back of the van and lit up the bags of tools around him. Another junction.

It must’ve been pretty tough for Beauty getting used to how white people lived. He wanted to show her he was reliable and that he could take care of her. He’d told her about his plans to move, find work and get the mobile mechanic business up and running. She’d encouraged him. Apart from Bob, no one had ever done that before. Maybe his foster parents had tried, but by then he’d been too far down the road of car crime.

Mark strained to see the signs through the wire mesh and the front window.

Junction 23.

He’d give up the eight cans he drank every night, and all. He’d done it before. He’d save some money, and it would be a good gesture to Beauty. Show her he wasn’t a pisshead. Anyway, he could get by on a couple of spliffs of an evening.

And if she didn’t like him
that
way, then they could be mates. A mate was always good to have. They were friends already, weren’t they?

If she stayed.

Beauty lay curled up on the bed. She shut her eyes and covered her ears with her hands, humming to drown her mother’s voice. Words no daughter should hear. But the curses from the phone call grew louder.

Zibon ne tui tor horuta soke derchten nai! You’ll never see your children’s eyes!

She held her silent baby in her arms, its eyes closed, its chest still, and a doctor took it from her. Was it a boy or a girl?

And it was the night of
Shabe-Baraat.
She repeated the prayers of repentance. The
filista
should have taken her Book to God, for Him to tear out the pages of the good and bad things she had done that year. But the angels
stayed on each shoulder, the Book still open, ready to carry on recording. Where was her forgiveness for the past year? Was He not listening?

And then she found a prescription for her mother’s medicine in her hand and she couldn’t read it. Mark wasn’t there, and if she made a mistake her ama would die.

They wouldn’t let her see her mother’s body laid out in its white
haffon.
She pushed past them and grabbed her ama’s feet, but they hit her arms and she had to let go. And her dead mother’s voice spoke:

If I die I hope they don’t show you my face …

Mark closed the door behind him and locked it. Beauty’s jacket was on the sofa. He picked it up and hung it on a clothes hook on the back of the kitchen door.

He climbed the stairs quietly and threw himself on his bed. It was good to come back to a house with her in it.

Beauty opened her eyes to the grey light of dawn. Her head felt thick and her eyes stung.

She listened to the creaking stairs, glad that Mark was back, relieved not to be alone in the house.

Her skin looked yellow in the bathroom mirror, her eyes sunken and dark. She performed her ablutions properly for the first time since she’d left home, and felt better.

Ash-hadu alla ilaha illallahu wa-ash-hadu ann-na Muhammaden ’abduhu-wa-rasuluh.