Beauty (28 page)

Dulal Miah stood up and stretched.

‘We’ll talk later,’ he said.

He passed her on his way back to bed without looking at her. Her father got to his feet and shuffled to the fridge. Why didn’t he say anything? Did Dulal make the decisions now?

Beauty slipped the rucksack from her shoulders as the children came back into the kitchen. She took the pot from the table and went to fill the kettle. The old man would want more tea.

Beauty asked Sharifa if she had prayed.

‘Yes, sis.’

What would happen when Sharifa started looking at boys? Would her parents find her good husbands to choose from, or let her meet a boy at college and marry him?

‘I prayed too,’ Faisal said.

Beauty nodded her approval.

Why was he being sweet? Was the bullying and swearing over? What would Dulal say later? If he was going to kick her out he would have done it by now. But why would he do that? It was better to have her at home unmarried than not here at all.

‘Eat,’ Beauty said to the little ones. Sharifa ate her toast. Later, she would want to know everything Beauty had seen and heard, where she had been, and what white people’s homes were like inside.

The old man shuffled out of the kitchen.

After the children had gone to school, she took more tea to him in the sitting room and put two pounds on the arm of his chair for cigarettes.

*

Later, Beauty watched from the window as he appeared from the stairwell below her and headed towards the shops in the rain. Her eyes ran along the doorways of the block of flats opposite, looking for signs of life. It was no longer a strange world. She’d been out there and was free now. No one could force her to do anything. She would look after her parents and make sure her sister married a good man one day.

She thought of Mark. She knew he understood. She’d left the money from the dole office on the pillow in the bedroom and wished she could have done more for him. He was a good man. The best.

She’d pray for him every day.

Outside, the sky was low and grey over the tower blocks. Beauty turned away from the window and went to make breakfast for her mother.

© Stefano Luigi Moro

RAPHAEL SELBOURNE was born in Oxford in 1968. He lived in Italy for many years, where he worked variously as a teacher and translator before moving to the West Midlands in 2004.

My thanks to Tindal Street Press for publishing
Beauty
, and to DB for her help with all things Bengali.