Miss Webster and Chérif (25 page)

‘Allah karim,’ whispered Chérif.

‘Will it come here?’ Karen pleaded with the old woman to keep the war at a great distance, away from her mother and father, her little sister, her friends at work, the cottage on the edge of the woods and her beautiful Arab boy. But Miss Webster had no comfortable words for her to hear.

‘War will always be with us in one of its several shapes. But it may not pass directly through Bolt or Little Blessington.’

And if it did?

Miss Webster imagined a medieval dance of death, the bishop and the king leading the knight and the merchant hand in hand past the church and the village shop, following the grisly black silhouette of the skeleton cut out of darkness, armed with the scythe and the hourglass. Karen pictured her new office transformed into a heap of glass and metal, the board with NEW INSTRUCTIONS reduced to a shredded mass of green baize and painted beading, the burning photographs of desirable residences curling at the tips in flame. Chérif saw the market square of Al Sho’la, the stalls, cars and people blown to bits, and then he saw the market at Tinnazit and his uncle buying rice. He saw the old scales, carefully polished scoops of brass and the row of different weights that the vendor wrapped in paper before packing them away at the end of his working day. He saw the brown paper bags in which the rice was sold. Behind the stall he saw the donkeys tied to wooden stakes, the smoke rising from the outdoor restaurants, which amounted to a row of benches and stones facing the baked hills. He heard the boys singing and saw them chasing one another in the dust. Everything was safe and ordinary, the market conducted its business to a noisy accompaniment of taped dance music and exasperated shouts. He smelt the hot wind from the desert. Then he clasped his hands before him on the sheets and looked up at Miss Webster.

‘I know,’ the old woman smiled, ‘you want to go home.’

The weather turned warm. The apple tree blossomed and filled the garden with a dense, pink scent. The hedges and beds unfolded like a clenched fist, as if the earth, suddenly convinced that it is better to be generous, squandered her gifts. Chérif reclined on the somewhat mouldy sun-lounger and listened to tales of bombs descending on men and women shopping for flour and cooking oil, far away, in another world. On 3 April 2003 the Americans destroyed the electricity power grid which supplied Baghdad and the city fell into darkness. The marines captured the airport and were inside the perimeter within days. Chaos overwhelmed the city. The giant metal statue of Saddam Hussein buckled and fell into the midst of spitting, cheering crowds. The siege was almost over and the looting began.

A plain-clothes officer materialised upon the cottage doorstep at around 11 a.m. about a month after the attack in London. He flashed a plastic card in a little leather wallet. She didn’t have time to read the name, but suspicion flared in her stomach.

‘Miss Elizabeth Webster?’

‘Yes. What do you want?’

‘We’re following up the incident in London. I hope you’re quite recovered.’

‘I’ve had the stitches taken out of my stab wounds if that’s what you mean.’

‘Well, are you busy? May I come in? It won’t take long.’

She stood aside and drilled the back of his light coat with her malevolent glare, then sat him down at the kitchen table and looked him over. He was about forty with calm, still features and he carried a battered foolscap folder which he laid out on the table before him. The stillness alarmed her. Never trust people who don’t fidget. They are preparing to strike. She stood before the sink, refused to offer coffee as a bribe and said nothing. He gazed back, very calm, very settled. Probably a trained killer, thought Miss Webster and assessed the distance between her hand and the kitchen knives, nestled in the wooden block. She knew what it felt like to be stabbed. What would it take to stab someone else? He opened the file.

‘And Mr Chérif Al Faraj, your lodger, how is he now?’

‘He’s at college.’

Who wants to know? All the hair on the back of her neck bristled and rose up beside the raised white spikes.

‘I have your earlier statement to the Met. Here. Were you present at all times when Mr Al Faraj spoke to the investigating officers?’

‘No. He speaks English perfectly well. He doesn’t need me.’

‘And is it your view, Miss Webster, that this assault in London was a simple attempt at robbery?’

‘What are you getting at? They wanted his coat and my handbag. Isn’t that robbery?’

This meddling intruder had invaded her territory. She should have felt more secure standing over him, but she didn’t. Neither spoke. Neither moved. His stillness enveloped the kitchen.

‘Miss Webster. Did you suspect or did you have any inkling that Chérif Al Faraj may have known his attackers?’

That took the biscuit and Miss Webster began a low rising growl.

‘What are you accusing him of? Beating himself up? Egging them on? Damaging his own kidneys? Asking for it?’

Silence.

‘Well?’

The visitor spread out his fingers, very pale, very steady, across the folder.

‘I’ll be frank with you, Miss Webster. Since 9/11 and the terrorist attacks against our embassies we are investigating all foreign students who originate from volatile states. Mr Al Faraj has been involved in a very odd incident –’

‘Are muggings odd in central London?’

He shrugged.

‘You say that he spoke to his attackers.’

‘Yes, he did. He probably didn’t understand them. It takes him a moment sometimes to get hold of someone’s accent. But I saw what they were doing. They caught him off guard. They wanted his jacket.’

The officer changed tack.

‘And has he any other friends here? Arab boys his age?’

‘I’m not his keeper. He has an English girlfriend.’

‘And does he attend the local mosque regularly?’

‘If you’d done your research you’d know that there isn’t one,’ snapped Miss Webster. ‘And for your information we fasted for Ramadan together. I’m not a spy and I don’t like answering questions about my lodger when he’s not here to defend himself. If you want to know more about Chérif, ask him.’

She folded her arms and set her jaw like an angry mastiff. The officer nodded and stood up. As he stepped out of the porch he asked one last question.

‘Has Mr Al Faraj ever mentioned a woman named Carmen Campbell?’

The final question. They always withhold the most important question until they are almost gone. You’re off your guard, relaxed. The interview is over. But this is the javelin they have come to throw. This is the thing they really want from their hapless informants. This is the moment of betrayal.

A poster on a theatre wall rose up before Miss Webster. She expected to see the singer, gleaming in her second skin of cobalt blue, but instead a terrified child, her head a mass of decorated dreads, glared, aghast, menaced, out of an inner dark. Carmen. Is it a crime to be passionate? Is it a crime to care? Is it a crime to love someone, no matter what she has done or what the law says she deserves? The glittering eyes of the fugitive begged Miss Webster not to speak.

‘Carmen Campbell? Never heard of her,’ lied Miss Webster with ferocious conviction, ‘and no, he hasn’t ever mentioned the name.’

She arranged her face into a fixed, unsmiling mask and stared him down. He climbed back into his nondescript blue Ford, which was blocking the lane, without thanking her or taking any kind of formal leave, and drove off. He had not looked at her again. As she backed into the cottage her eye rested on the CD, perched on the television set, the spare and elegant face of the outlaw jazz singer met her with a half-smile of gratitude. And there in gleaming italic script she saw the name,
Carmen Campbell, Best of
. The plain-clothes officer could have been looking past her straight into the singer’s eyes. Miss Webster took a hefty swig from the sherry bottle without bothering to find a glass, her knees and hands suddenly unstable and twitching. Anger had a galvanising effect on Elizabeth Webster, who always stood four square in a rage. She never trembled with fury. This was fear.

Chérif had lost a lot of weight and Karen voiced her worries. ‘Should we take him to see Dr Brody or Dr Humphreys?’

‘Nonsense,’ said Miss Webster, ‘he’ll put it on again. Anyway, think of the Duchess of Windsor. She said you could never be too thin or too rich.’

Karen had never heard of the Duchess of Windsor. Miss Webster grinned.

‘Don’t worry, my dear. She was a naughty American lady who came to no good – living proof that you can be too stupid and too fascist. I think that we have to get Chérif out of this unhealthy country for a while. His exams end on 12 May and I’ve got tickets for the 14th. Don’t tell him yet. It’s a surprise. I want you to send an e-mail to Abdou, asking him to meet the flight. I’m hoping that you’ll come next time when the house-buying boom is over.’

‘I’d love to see where he lives. He doesn’t talk about it much. He hasn’t invited me.’ Karen clearly brooded on Chérif’s evasiveness. ‘What’s his mum like?’

‘Tough, glamorous, ambitious. All good qualities in a woman, my dear. Cultivate them.’

Karen straightened her miniskirt in the dining-room mirror, which hung above the pine cabinet with the drinks and glasses. The mirror tilted forwards, thus giving her a rather splendid cleavage.

‘That’s right, you’ll do nicely,’ said Miss Webster. She had not mentioned the officer’s visit to anyone else. She kept this troubling development to herself.

On 1 May 2003 George Bush declared that major hostilities in Iraq were at an end. They sat watching the looters destroying the offices of Saddam’s administration. A cheerful man in a dirty T-shirt pushed a television away in a wheelbarrow. He made a V-sign to the cameras. Behind him huge coils of black smoke boiled out of the ravaged blank windows. Broken glass and wrecked vehicles littered the roadways. A masked gunman retreated behind a garden wall, then ducked down, his gun still visible, the single eye of the barrel pointed at the audience. The whole world held its breath as this new beast, its hour come round at last, reared its back on the streets of Baghdad. Miss Webster pursed her lips grimly and Chérif covered his face.

‘It’s not over, is it?’ said Karen, desperate to hear the comfort of her own voice, sounding through the calm of an English evening in late spring.

‘No,’ said Miss Webster, ‘it’s not over.’

She was excited as they began their descent into Casablanca and peered out of the window at the approaching white lights. But Chérif appeared to hold his breath, ready for a plunge into the abyss. He sat braced for impact, his eyes tight shut. Faced with three thugs, all far larger than he was, and an inevitable bloody doom, Chérif fought back, clearly courageous to the point of being foolhardy. She diagnosed fear of flying, with possible added indigestion, and offered him a honey pastille. He refused.

‘We’ll have to change planes. It’ll mean taking off again.’ Chérif took the sweet. He didn’t open his eyes, but sucked hard. The wheels bucked down on to the runway in a series of alarming bangs and one of the overhead lockers flew open. A few passengers grunted in alarm, but Chérif never flinched, as if gathering all his strength for some terrible trial that was awaiting him in the
salle d’attente
. His replies shrank to alarming monosyllables; his colour drained away.

‘Are you sick?’ Elizabeth Webster leaned over, genuinely worried on his behalf. Her own stomach, apparently made of tin, and trained on school dinners, never rumbled or wobbled, whatever the circumstances. Fearlessness defined her character, the danger of terrorism never entered her head, and as for planes – she no longer cared if they dropped from the sky in droves, like dead pigeons.

‘Yes. A bit.’

‘What are you afraid of?’

He turned to look at her, but said nothing. The flashing lights on the wingtips gleamed across the cabin windows. She returned his gaze, astonished by the upheaval in his eyes: fear, regret, anguish, tears. This last look bore the shadows of a leave-taking, an unmistakable farewell.

‘Chérif! What is the matter?’

A babble of Arabic thanked them for choosing Royal Air Maroc and everyone leaped out of their seats and dragged coats out of lockers. A baby began to wail, slightly off-key and at intervals filled with splutters, then he pitched his yells an octave lower, deepening to a terrifying rhythmic howl. Chérif got up and grabbed her hand luggage.

‘Please, Madame Webster. I will carry that.’

She was in two minds whether to stop him in his tracks and demand an answer or to let it all go; but people pushing behind him down the narrow aisles, struggling into jackets and cardigans, grappling with enormous packets, nudged the moment aside. They were swept asunder until well inside the tunnel leading to the airport.

‘Are you ill?’

He had recovered his colour a little. She relaxed, reassured.

‘Well, I suppose you’ve only ever flown once before. Had you ever been in a plane before you flew to England?’