Beauty (24 page)
The two women walked up Darlington Street towards the town centre. Beauty wondered how long this would take. She hadn’t wanted to go with Kate. She only had her pink salwar to wear, the old-fashioned one her mum had given her, and had wanted to go to the launderette before it closed. The lady had pulled up in her car as Beauty was returning home from her morning shift. She’d begged Beauty to let her take her out for tea, to apologize for how she’d behaved. Peter had explained everything to her, she said. Beauty winced at the thought of these strangers talking about her and told the woman there was no need to say sorry. But Kate had insisted and it had been easier to go.
Kate Morgan strode ahead and looked at the shabbily dressed people, the women in cheap high street clothes from many seasons ago. It was another world. Kate was glad she hadn’t worn anything too ostentatious. Her D&G overcoat and scarf, Diesel jeans and trainers were enough. Lots of designers made urban-chic clothes these days.
The Indian girl next to her – Bangladeshi, Peter had corrected her irritatingly – was a funny one. That thing she was wearing really was peculiar. Kate would have felt sorry for her, but
actually
it was quite embarrassing. She
looked like an old woman with all the excess material bunched between her legs. Maybe she was religious. Or straight out of a village. Other Asians in the town didn’t dress like that.
Beauty
.
Her name was a bit cringeworthy too.
Beauty struggled to keep up. The lady didn’t want to go into any of the cafés. They looked dirty, she said, so Beauty took her to the Wulfrun Centre instead.
The coffee bar was in a roped-off section in one of the plazas. As they slid into seats opposite each other, Kate apologized again for the night before. Her nerves had been on edge, she said. Her relationship with Peter had hit a rocky patch recently, and she hadn’t known where she stood with him.
Beauty eyed the passing shoppers for her brothers’ faces. Would they dare do anything if she was with a white woman in a public place?
‘Everything’s OK now,’ Kate said.
She watched the pretty girl break off a small piece of cake and put it in her mouth … ever so daintily. Was she sweet and naïve, or was it just an act? And did it matter, now that Peter had shown Kate how he really felt? She’d let this one know about it, just in case. You could never really trust another woman.
She beckoned the Bangladeshi girl to come closer.
Beauty leaned forward. She was glad the lady was smiling and happy today. But why did she want to tell a stranger her private stuff?
‘We had wonderful sex last night!’ the woman said.
Beauty didn’t move.
‘He
literally
tore my clothes off.’
She tried not to hear her words. Her cheeks stung.
‘
Grabbing me … touching me everywhere
.
And he was so hard!’ She’d never had such intense orgasms with him. ‘You know that feeling when you
literally
melt?’
Beauty didn’t want to listen, didn’t know what the woman’s words meant.
Yes, you do.
Kate sat back in her chair.
‘It was such a relief,’ she said. ‘I’d been suffering these terrible anxiety attacks that he didn’t love me any more. You can imagine what I thought when I saw you there! That’s why I just had to say sorry for being such a cow. I’m usually a very chilled-out person.’
Beauty let out her breath. ‘Does that mean you’ll get married now?’ she asked, and reddened in case it was another of her
arwa
questions.
Kate smiled at the girl’s innocence. There was nothing to fear. She was a complete child; likeable, too. And she was a good listener, just what Kate needed.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve felt so low about it over the last couple of years, I don’t think I’ve got the strength left in me to keep on struggling. I was on the floor the day before I came up here.’
Beauty wondered what the woman had been doing on the floor. She watched the passing shoppers – white, Asian, black, Chinese, Iraqi faces – and hoped the lady would finish talking soon.
Kate scraped the cream from the plate with the side of her fork. ‘Here I am, banging on about myself! What about you? Are you going out with anyone at the moment?’ she asked.
Beauty wanted to tell her that Muslim girls didn’t have boyfriends. Or if they did, they didn’t talk about it.
‘I’m waiting for the right bloke,’ she said. Did that sound white? The woman nodded, so it must have done.
‘That’s what bothers me about Peter,’ Kate said. ‘Sometimes I think, “Is he the right person for me?” You know, a man’s got to be supportive, sensitive and caring? As well as good-looking, interesting and all the rest of it. He has to make you feel like a woman?’
Beauty waited. Was there more?
‘Then there’s his bloody family!’ Kate felt the familiar stabbing pain in the pit of her stomach at the thought of Peter’s mother. She’d never been good enough for
Mummy
’s precious little boy. ‘His mum’s an absolute cow.’
Beauty winced. How could anyone say that? And how much longer would she have to listen to this? Was she supposed to say something? ‘What about your parents?’ she asked. ‘Do they get on with him?’
‘Well, that’s another thing that’s ruined my relationship with Peter … and all my other boyfriends actually,’ Kate said. ‘Nothing’s ever been good enough for my
mother.
She’s so overbearing and critical, you know, about everything I’ve ever done. It’s really screwed my self-confidence and self-esteem with men.’
Kate ripped at the corner of a serviette. They’d never been there to support her when she’d been at her lowest points, she said. She’d done everything for them. Who was it who’d been there when her mum was weeping down the phone about how badly Kate’s father treated her? And what about that time her mum had been
physically
sick in Kate’s toilet, when Kate had told her that Dad had been out to dinner with another woman?
Beauty watched the growing pile of torn paper. What was the woman talking about?
And what was ‘self-esteem’?
Kate looked up and saw the blank expression on the face of the girl opposite her. What could she understand? Unless you’d lived through these things yourself, you
couldn’t possibly know about the awful chains of guilt which Kate’s parents had made her drag around.
‘My mum’s never done anything for me,’ she said.
Beauty choked and coughed to hide it. Had she heard right?
She gave birth to you!
‘She’s an utter bitch,’ Kate said.
Beauty felt the tears fill her eyes. Her heart beat in her ears. What kind of
shaitan
could say that about her own mother?
Al-l
h, if my daughter said that about me, I would stab her.
Kate noticed the girl’s eyes shining strangely. Had she put her foot in it? Peter had mentioned something about her having only recently left home. Well, it wasn’t Kate’s fault, was it?
‘Don’t you get on with your parents either?’
Beauty’s chest hurt.
‘Peter said you’d left home?’
She couldn’t breathe.
Don’t tell her anything.
‘I can’t blame them,’ she said.
You aynt never told no one.
This one needed to hear it though.
Beauty stared at the empty coffee cup on the table. ‘He started touching me when I was ten years old …’
Kate closed her mouth.
‘… and tried to rape me when I was twelve.’
She shut her eyes, and listened.
‘My old man pretended he didn’t know what was going on, cuz of the shame; then he blamed me for being a slapper; I started cooking and cleaning for the whole family when I was nine; they forced me to marry an old man when I was fourteen. And I never went to school.’
Beauty couldn’t look up, didn’t care what the woman
thought, didn’t want to see her face, and felt no shame. Not any more.
And a man’s voice beside her said: ‘Causing trouble, sis?’
Dulal Miah stood on the other side of the rope and motioned away with his shaven head. ‘Let’s go.’
Beauty glanced at the white woman …
Help me!
… and back to her brother.
His jaws were clenched in the smile she recognized, which had always come before she got a beating. ‘Nah, man. I’m staying here,’ she said.
Man? No Bhai-sahb?
She saw his eyes narrow, nostrils widen, his fists grip the rope.
He’s gonna lose it.
‘
Tarra amarray marri lar.
’
‘So?’
‘You gotta do what’s right.’
‘I aynt marrying no one.’
The white woman still had her eyes closed.
‘Think about Sharifa and Faisal. How they gonna get married?’
‘They’ll find someone.’
‘
Tui amarray arr derchtay nai.
’
Kate Morgan opened her eyes, saw Beauty’s look of fear and an Asian man leaning over the rope, his hand on the girl’s shoulder.
‘Take your fucking hands off her!’ Kate shouted.
Dulal looked at the faces turned towards him. White
faces. Fathers with blond-haired five-year-old children in short-sleeved shirts.
Kate felt the rage in the man’s eyes turn on her, something deranged and uncontrolled.
‘Who’s the white bitch?’ Dulal said to his sister, without taking his eyes from the white woman.
Kate felt as if she’d been slapped. ‘I beg your fucking pardon!’
The chair tipped over as she leapt to her feet. Beauty felt more eyes turn to them as the lady screamed.
‘WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?’
Kate had
never
been spoken to like that in her life! She wasn’t going to let this
ape
get away with it. Or come near Beauty, for that matter. Not after what she had just heard from the girl.
Beauty watched a white bloke in a red football shirt and heavy gold jewellery making his way through the tables towards them.
‘
Bhai-sahb
, please, just go. I aynt coming,’ Beauty said. Now there’d be more trouble.
The man appeared at Kate’s side. ‘Y’m all right loov?’
He nodded at
the Paki hassling two birds in the middle of the Wulfrun Centre, for fook’s sake.
‘Is this bloke bothering you?’
He stepped over the fallen chair towards Dulal Miah.
‘
Tar gor zolai limu
,’ Dulal said to Beauty, and was gone.
Kate searched the crowd until she was sure he’d disappeared. The man in the football shirt picked up her chair.
‘Thanks for the help,’ she said, sitting down. ‘We’re fine now.’
‘Am you shooer?’ he asked.
Kate nodded.
The man shrugged and made his way back to his table.
The two women looked at each other in silence. Kate saw the anguish in Beauty’s face, the horror of her words and experiences.
Touching me when I was ten years old … tried to rape me … beat me until I married a forty-five-year-old …
This was no TV news story to be dismissed, undeserving of consideration because it came from a backward and savage culture. It was something real, tangible, in front of her. And more serious than her own.
Beauty took a tissue from the sleeve of her jacket, uncomfortable under the woman’s gaze. She didn’t need pity. Not from someone who called her own mother a …
that word
. But she was grateful to her for making Dulal go away.
‘Was that your brother?’ the woman asked her.
Beauty nodded.
‘Peter never said anything,’ Kate said.
Beauty pushed the tissue back up her sleeve. ‘I don’t talk about it. I only told you, cuz …’
Kate averted her eyes.
The two women were silent again.
‘My God, I’m shaking,’ Kate said.
She held out her hand to show Beauty.
‘What did your brother say?’ she asked.
‘That I’m killing them back home.’
‘Did he threaten you?’
‘No. What can he do?’
Tar gor zolai limu. I’ll burn his fucking house down.
‘You should not have to put up with this,’ Kate said. ‘You’re a person, too. You’re entitled to a life. I think you need to talk to someone.’
‘Who?’
‘A professional. And you need a refuge, somewhere away from all this.’
‘There’s one here for mental Asian women,’ said Beauty.
Kate felt an overwhelming sadness for the young woman chewing her lip in front of her, the weight of long suffering across her features. Helping her would go some way to … ‘Come on, girl, let’s get you back to Peter’s. You need a hot bath and a back rub, and we’ll look for something on the internet – a quiet and safe place in the country where you can get some peace. I know where to look, believe me. You can’t live like this any more.’
Peter wouldn’t be back from work yet, and he would have left his laptop at home.
It was almost dark when Kate pulled up outside the house. She went upstairs to prepare a bath for Beauty. She’d brought her aromatherapy bath set with her as well as a new towel and dressing gown. OK, so the essential healing oils wouldn’t solve anything, but they couldn’t hurt. And it felt right to look after her. Considering … everything.
While Beauty was in the bath Kate went through Peter’s cupboards until she found a comforting hot drink to make for them both. She switched on the heating and the lamp in the sitting room, drew the curtains, and pulled the coffee table up to the sofa so that they could both see the laptop.
The boiler fired up in the kitchen. Kate decided to get started on the internet. It would occupy her thoughts. She typed in ‘Asian women refuge’ and opened the links. She’d expected more. Most were havens from domestic violence offering community language speakers, counselling, therapy and help in accessing training, education and benefits. Few gave addresses. One, in Derbyshire, had photos of the premises: a converted manor house in large, well-kept grounds, with a river,
chickens, sheep and vegetable gardens. To Kate it looked ideal. She returned to the search engine and tapped in ‘Asian women’s mental health’, opened the first page, and scanned the links.
…
suicide and self-harm among young women twice the national average; psychosocial, spiritual and physical health problems; relationship difficulties within the family; izzat and family honour; the pressures from the family to behave ‘well’; hard-to-achieve cultural expectations of women as daughters, daughters-in-law, sisters, wives and mothers; abuse and isolation; fear of speaking out …
Kate stared at the screen. She could imagine the horrific effects that might have on a person’s mental state.
Couldn’t she?
When Beauty came down the stairs wrapped in the bathrobe, a towel twisted around her head, Kate didn’t turn round. She looked pale.
Kate patted the sofa for Beauty to sit beside her.
‘I found a few things,’ she said. ‘There’s one not too far from here. It’s a lovely place.’
Beauty felt clean and warm after the hot bath. The lady was trying to be kind, and hadn’t said a word about herself since Beauty had told what she had been through; had avoided looking her in the eye, too.
Kate hit the ‘back page’ key, but she’d visited so many sites that the path didn’t return her to the original results. She clicked ‘History’, tapped in ‘Asian women’ and scanned the list.
www.AsianWomenBound-And-Gagged.com
Kate’s throat hurt and she struggled to breathe as she scrolled down the list, but she managed to find the site
she had been looking for. She opened the photos of the manor house. There was no need to see any of the websites Peter had visited. Nor to tell Beauty about it. She didn’t need such degradation on top of everything she had suffered. Let the girl at least be spared whatever squalor lay behind the pages and pages of links.
‘You see, it looks wonderful.’
While she rubbed her hair dry, Beauty looked at the photos of the old house, the green lawns and countryside around it. It was nice. Quiet. And the chickens running around reminded her of Bangladesh – the
good way
. But she noticed the woman’s hand shake as she moved the mouse and a drop falling on the keyboard.
‘You OK?’ Beauty asked.
Kate took the scrunched-up tissue paper offered her and wiped her nose. ‘It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter,’ she said.
It didn’t. Compared with what Beauty had been through none of her own crap mattered.
This new low of Peter’s was just more of the same thing.
Peter Hemmings switched off PM News on Radio 4. It ended at six o’clock and there were only the listeners’ banal emails on the day’s world events to read out: one-line solutions to Middle East conflicts and global warming.
He was looking forward to getting home, and had been all day. In fact, he was surprised by how much he had thought of Kate while driving around. And not sexually, although there had been that, too; he’d even found himself becoming aroused, in Walsall, at the thought of what she could expect when he got home. Did that mean he actually wanted her to stay? Christ! Surely he couldn’t have changed in such a short space of time?
How long would it be before her ways began to grate on his nerves again? Three days? Two? It would depend on the amount of analysis she made him suffer. It was his fault, he realized at the roundabout on Stafford Road, for failing to pull her out of the psychotherapy crap. He had no influence over her, nor could he have expected to: he’d failed to fulfil his duties towards her as a male. How long could a woman wait for a man to get through his extended youth and do the right thing? How long could she deny her reproductive needs? Wasn’t that what he wanted, too? What else was there in life apart from fulfilling one’s biological role? Yes, to intellectual striving and achievement, but maybe spiritual and philosophical contentment only came to those who provided for a wife and child. The creation of a new life would take him to a place of selflessness and cut the chains of his all-too-human weakness and vanity. Or was he losing it?
Peter parked in the street outside his house, relieved to see that Kate’s car was still there and that there were lights around the curtain in the sitting-room window.
How long before his eye roved to the flesh with which the world was so abundant? If he had to satisfy his urges, would his conscience allow himself the occasional, carefully controlled fling?
It would, he decided.
It was part of the male condition. A genetic defect.
Peter walked to the front door and slid the key into the lock. He stepped into the sitting room as Beauty slipped past him and out of the house.
