Tree of Pearls

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Something about a fight in a hotel in Cairo,’ he said. ‘I believe you were there.’

Oh.

‘Well, they’re not criminals,’ I said. ‘It’s ridiculous. If Eddie’s decided to abscond, that’s his business … probably he just threw out some accusations to muddy the water.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ he said. I was pleased. ‘Now tell me about the fight.’

I love the way people throw out questions as if they were nothing. ‘How are you?’ is a good one. This was another. Six words. It sounds so easy. I was silent a moment, thinking, collating. Oh yes, the fight, that old thing. How will I choose to tell him about that? Given that I am telling him. And I was silent a moment longer, wondering if I could resist some more.

I could. But I wouldn’t, and I knew if I tried to I would be pretending.

He was watching, eyebrows tragically calm. He looked as if he had heard a thousand and one stories.

‘Eddie and I had a disagreement in a hotel corridor,’ I said. ‘Hakim had followed us because he feared for my safety, and when Eddie … attacked me, Hakim pulled him off.’

The ‘more’ gesture again, the eyebrows in repose at once calm, tragic and receptive.

‘That’s it, really.’ I don’t need to mention the knife, or say that Hakim had been working for Eddie, naif little fool that he is, nor that Eddie had been attacking me with a sexual purpose. I don’t think he needs to know that. And I felt the shameful ripples of Eddie and sex run over my shoulders and down my back.

‘What was the disagreement about?’

I didn’t answer. He didn’t push it, but he didn’t retreat either. All I wanted was to know that Sa’id and Hakkim were all right. But Sa’id and Hakim are not my business any more.

‘Are you in touch with the el Arabys?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Hakim el Araby has been questioned. He’s not a problem. But Sa’id has not made himself available. Do you know where he is?’

‘No.’

I was thinking about Sa’id’s family: Abu Sa’id, Mariam, Madame Amina. Oh god, all these decent people. Caught up. I told him I shouldn’t have gone to stay at his aunt’s while I was dealing with Eddie.

‘He took a flight to Athens ten days ago. Have you heard from him?’

‘No.’

‘Despite their being such good friends of yours? Staying with you and all that?’

My heart was falling, slowly, gently. I am just at the beginning of my days of healing and rebuilding. What’s it to me if Sa’id goes to Athens? If Eddie moves on? Leave me alone. My old enemy and my old lover. They’re not mine.

‘We were hoping you could help. If either of them gets in touch with you,’ he went on, ‘you must let us know.’

I gave him a long low look. Does he have the slightest idea what he is asking of me here? What he is doing to me? What either of these men has been to me? How Eddie, despite the quick, spontaneous, devilish pact we made that night when I prevented Hakim from knifing him, has never been anything but my enemy, my complex enemy, on many many levels? The serious enemy – the one who brings out from your own depths your own worst faults, your weaknesses? It was to Eddie that I did the worst thing I have ever done, and I hate him for it.

It’s part of the story. There’s no avoiding it. A year and half ago, when he kidnapped me in London … I’ll put it simply – he was trying to fuck me, I resisting. I hit him with a poker, knocked him out. Then as he lay unconcious and, due to the workings of the autonomic nervous system (I looked it up later), still hard, I fucked him back. Did to him the bad thing he had been trying to do to me. Out of anger and revenge, I gave him what he wanted in a way he could never enjoy. And my worst self enjoyed it very much. So I hate him.

There. Very simple.

And Sa’id? Sa’id taught me to leave the dead alone, showed me how forgiveness works, made me capable, in myself, of seeing off Eddie and his frightful attachment. And, if I am honest, mine. My frightful … not attachment. My … interest. Something.

‘I don’t imagine,’ I said, staring at him, ‘that either of them will.’ Don’t you stir this up, you. I’m trying to win the peace here. I have a child to look after. Leave me alone.

‘If they do,’ said Preston Oliver.

‘Sure,’ I said. Easily, because they wouldn’t, and if they did – well, I lied.

*

Then it was time for me to fetch Lily. She and I ambled home in the dark, unable to hear each other speak for the traffic heading west on the Uxbridge Road. We cut into the small streets as soon as we could, and admired other people’s lives glowing through their bay windows: their televisions and their teas. Lily wondered why we don’t live in a house.

‘Because we live in a flat,’ I said, interestingly. I was tired.

She said she’d like to live in a house. I concurred in a non-committal grunting fashion.

Then felt bad about my lack of interest. ‘Why?’ I asked.

‘So that when you die I can bury you in the garden and you’ll still be near me.’

‘Oh sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Oh.’

‘I know it won’t really be you,’ she said. ‘I know it’ll just be your body, and worms will eat it, even your eyes, and your lovely little nose.’

I looked down at her, and she reached up, and touched the tip of my nose tenderly.

Oh sweetheart,’ I said.

‘But what I really want is a leopard that can read my mind, and knows where to go.’

Oh my god, I thought. And said: ‘So do I.’

THREE

I’m not Canute

It was seven by the time we got home – time Lily should be getting ready for bed. Harry was sitting on the doorstep, up at the end of the long red-brick balcony that leads to my flat, reading the Independent and ignoring the cold. He looked to Lily first. She seemed to have forgotten all about him – and then remembered.

‘Dada!’ she trilled, blinking at him. He stood – unfolding himself as he does, like a camel or a telescope – and picked her up, and her legs hung down as if she were a puppet on his hand. Long dangly big-girl legs. She’s five now. A creature of playgrounds and reading books and the girls’ gang, no more the plump little dimpled thing I used to know. My girl.

He smiled at me over her shoulder. As you see dads do. Dads in coats carrying big girls in coats. In the park, at the playground. Girls climb up on their dads. My girl, her dad.

I opened the door and they followed me in. The hallway seemed smaller than usual. So did the kitchen. What with this new identity spreading out all over the place. Of course Harry’s been there many a time before, but Lily’s father hasn’t. And he seems to take up space.

I’m not complaining.

I started to make an omelette, automatically. It wouldn’t be a very nice one because I was rather too weary to whisk it up properly the way she likes. I tried to do a little yoga breathing as I whisked. Just because a policeman asks you some questions it doesn’t mean your life has to be upended again. It came out as a sigh.

‘Can I do it?’ Harry said.

I just stared at him.

‘Why not?’ he said.

No reason at all.

‘Make up for lost time,’ I said. I have cooked tea for his child seven nights a week for five years; he has never.

‘Can I put her to bed too?’ he said.

‘You don’t have to ask,’ I said. ‘At least you don’t have to ask me.’

‘No you can’t,’ said Lily. ‘But you can read me a story.’

Harry eyed her.

‘You know what?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘You don’t boss your father.’

She thought about it. I observed, interested.

She changed the subject. Enquired about the omelette, wanted milk, carried on with normal business. Much like I’m doing myself, now I come to think of it. My normal business of my family. Of Lily. Of incorporating Harry. And this is going to be such an interesting business. I must keep my mouth shut and let them work it out for themselves even though I know everything much better than they do. She can tell him what she wants; he can learn. I’ll just stand by. Or lie in wait. Or bite my tongue. Or something.

But I won’t be thinking about Cairo.

*

When she was asleep we sat at the kitchen table. Again. This could be turning into a routine.

‘Was it OK with Oliver?’ he said.

I could feel my face falling back into itself. When the child is awake and with you, you tend to the child. And then the moment she crosses the school gate, or sleeps, everything else floods back.

Of course you can’t keep things in boxes. Of course they must be dealt with.

‘Waah – he was OK,’ I said. ‘I think.’ I didn’t want to talk about it. Talking about it affirms it, makes it truer. And me talking about it makes it my business. But Harry has a right to know. I could feel it getting more tangible by the second. And I added, ‘But it isn’t OK.’

‘How so?’

‘Eddie’s left Cairo. Well, gone off. Disappeared.’

‘Off the scheme?’ cried Harry.

‘Think so. Assume so. Don’t know how it works.’

Harry stared at me. Not aghast, but –

‘Why didn’t he tell me?’ he said.

‘Don’t know,’ I said. Why did he tell me?

‘But I’m meant to be … fuck,’ he said. ‘Oh fuck.’ I could see what he was thinking. Not informed equals left out. Why? To what end? Fearing.

‘Do you think it’s because of me?’ I said.

‘Could be,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know. But to tell you and not me – Jesus. How long ago?’

‘I don’t know.’

He was rubbing his forehead, adding information to what he already knew, computing visibly. Suddenly he snorted an angry noise and started to walk about.

So it’s true, it’s happening, it’s affecting things. Am I Canute to try to hold back the tide?

‘Apart from what it means for your career,’ I said, ‘and your position on the case, what does it mean?’

‘It means he’s a fucking lunatic …’

‘We already know that,’ I pointed out.

‘… because when he was there, he was safe. He had his ID and a few of the Egyptians keeping an eye on him. But if he goes off, he’s at risk. And he is a risk. Fuck! How did it happen? Do you know any … fucking Oliver. Fuck him.’

I could understand that he was pissed off at having to ask me. But I wanted his opinion of the situation as a whole – well I did. An idea had occurred to me – ‘Eddie’s done this on purpose to wind me up’. But you see if I entertain thoughts like that, I’m doing Eddie’s job for him. Nurturing seeds of mindfuck. I need Harry to remind me that Eddie is in the past and that none of this means anything to me.

Yes. And bears shit in the Vatican. What I promised myself, what Sa’id told me, was that if Eddie reappeared I could deal with it. Nobody said deny it, we said deal with it. So deal. Eddie’s actions are touching those who touch me. So.

It hadn’t been a long respite, had it? What? Six, seven weeks off from him?

Harry was looking at me. ‘So?’ he said.

‘Would you understand,’ I said, ‘if I were to say that I want nothing, ever, to do with Eddie again, to such a degree that I don’t even want to talk to you about this now? Because it’s not me he’s having a go at … Would you understand if I just backed off completely, and said look, you and Oliver do what you have to do but this is not my business? Would you think me disloyal? Would you …?’

He kept on looking. His eyes took on a narrowed flatness. Thinking.

‘You put yourself at risk going to Cairo to face him off for the sake of multicultural society, to stop the BNP getting that money,’ he said, fairly mildly. ‘All I’m asking is a question or two.’

‘I’m very keen on multiculturalism,’ I said.

‘I would have thought you might also be quite keen on our … friendship.’

‘And I would have thought you would be quite keen on my safety and preservation.’

Stop it, stop it. This is the kind of argument we used to have. We don’t do this any more.

‘I am,’ he said. ‘But I think you’re probably up to thinking about him for five minutes. For my sake. For the sake of my career, and stuff, if that means anything to you.’

‘It does,’ I said.

‘I understand your reluctance,’ he said, ‘but don’t hide. Hiding won’t help.’

Well, he was right.

‘We’re getting there, Harry, aren’t we?’ I said.

‘What? Where?’ He looked very slightly irritated.

‘Not arguing,’ I said.

He frowned and wished I’d shut up, though he didn’t say so, so I did for a moment, to be kind.

‘The Egyptian police put Oliver on to Hakim and Sa’id,’ I said after the moment was over. I said Hakim’s name first in case Harry felt delicate about Sa’id. Which he has done on occasion.

‘Why?’

‘Because of the fight – the hotel thing I told you about – when Hakim was defending me.’ (Sa’id had not been defending me. He’d been on the loo. When he had reappeared and realized what was going on he’d been angry.)

‘What about the money?’

‘I told Oliver about it. That I’d given it to charity.’

I’d told Harry what I had done with the money. He had thought I was mad. He had said, ‘What reason do you have to trust him? There’s plenty of poverty in Egypt, you know. Jesus.’ I saw in his eyes now that he was thinking the same thing now. I didn’t mind him thinking it. He didn’t know that Sa’id was not like that. It’s very much to Harry’s credit that he has any faith in human nature at all – he spends so much time dealing with crime, and he knows too well what poverty does even to people who were decent in the first place. And yes, poverty is strong in Egypt. I may be in love with the place but I’m not blind. I may have a weakness for minarets but that doesn’t mean I don’t see the flies.

I think Harry had feared that Eddie would want the money back. He underestimated quite how batty Eddie actually is. Eddie got a kick out of giving me money. He had a big psychological confusion around dancing and whoring. I’d refused everything he had ever offered me and he was happy as pie to be able to force me to accept something. Made him feel big. Bigger than me. The more money it cost him to do it, the bigger that made me, and the bigger he’d feel about vanquishing me. He would only want his money back if he thought he hadn’t got his money’s worth. Which he had, because the more it cost him the more he valued it. If I’d just let him pick me up all those years ago when he used to come and watch me dance in the restaurants on Charlotte Street he would never have got so obsessive about me and none of this would have happened.

So it is all my fault. All my fault for having some virtue.

‘So what’s happening now?’ Harry was asking.

‘Now I’m stopping pretending that this hasn’t happened, and that it doesn’t mean anything, and anyway it’s nothing to do with me.’

He smiled.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m really fucking sorry.’

‘So am I,’ I said, and I was glad he was there.

‘Well,’ I went on. ‘I assume there are people looking for Eddie. And the Egyptians have questioned Hakim. And Sa’id has left the country.’ I don’t know why he should have gone to Athens. Business, perhaps. The family is in alabaster. Always has been. So perhaps he has been selling alabaster. Or buying marble, or arranging for malachite and lapis lazuli to traverse the world. But that is not my business. My business has been to put distance between us.

But I want to know he’s OK.

I could ring Sarah. Their mother. Two months ago, when Hakim had been staying with me in London, Sa’id had sent him back to Cairo, and neither Sarah nor I knew where he was. We had been worried.

Sarah is English. She lives in Brighton – she’s an academic. I like her but she … has reservations. She was married to Abu Sa’id for some years. Lived in Luxor with him. Bore his sons. Walked out when Sa’id was ten and Hakim five. Couldn’t take it – I don’t know, we’ve never talked about it in detail. I know a little about the complexities of an Englishwoman married to a man in a provincial Egyptian town. Expectations, confusions, culture, religion, habit, communication … but she and I never got close enough for me to know the details of her own story, because Sa’id didn’t forgive her and when she realized what was happening with him and me her past came down over her in clouds of disapproval and irresolution.

The plan was, she and Sa’id were going to make up. I left them all in Egypt, and that seemed to be the next step. But by then I was out of the picture. Out out out. No Angeline in that family. I had just exposed them to all the mayhem with which Eddie is so generous, and then jumped ship. Though it’s true Hakim had managed to find Eddie on his own, and make his own mayhem.

But I could call Sarah. I supposed she would be back in Brighton. And I could call Madame Amina, the aunt, Abu Sa’id’s sister-in-law. Abu Sa’id is the father. It’s a village custom – you’re called after your first-born. His actual name is Ismail. He’s not particularly a village man but he prefers simplicity; he stayed in Luxor while the boys went to school in Cairo, spending time with Madame Amina, and becoming cosmopolitan.

If the police have been round they might, of course, be angry with me about it.

‘Left the country,’ Harry was saying, slowly. ‘Where’s he gone?’

Harry knows I was in love with Sa’id. Harry told me I was a life-avoiding coward for leaving him. Harry told me I’d been a life-avoiding coward ever since I came so near alongside death with Janie. Harry thought I should get a grip. Harry was right.

‘Athens, apparently,’ I said.

‘You haven’t heard from him?’ he asked.

‘Not since I left Luxor,’ I said. Not since he wrapped me in his big white scarf at dusk on the dusty landing stage on the west bank of the Nile, and didn’t try to stop me going.

I’d rung when the news came through of the massacre at the Temple of Hatshepsut. Only weeks before we’d looked down on it by moonlight when we snuck out at night on to the flank of the great sphinx-shaped desert mountain behind his village. Sixty-two people killed, practically on his doorstep. Sarah had said he looked like death. (He doesn’t look like death. He looks like life.) But that’s all I knew.

Harry put his hand across and lifted my chin. I’m always amazed by how far he can reach. ‘Eddie won’t come to Britain. He can’t …’

‘He can do any mad thing he likes …’ I said, but Harry cut in.

‘He can’t. Immigration or customs would have him in two seconds. François du Berry is a man with a very circumscribed life. Are you scared?’

‘No. I just want to get on with my life.’

‘What do you want to do about Sa’id?’

‘Just know he’s ok.’ I had brought trouble to their family. Remember when Hakim had first arrived in London, out of the blue, claiming that he was bringing trouble to my family. Little did he know. I was ashamed to ring them. Would they curse me and throw down the telephone?

I left him. Why unleave him now?

‘Would you like me to find out?’ Harry said at last. ‘If you don’t want to be involved … what with everything. I could see what’s happening for you. Even if I’m out of favour. I mean – as far as I knew it wasn’t an active case anyway. But there we go – let me see what I can see. Shall I?’

‘So you spend your days looking for my lover and your nights looking after my child?’ I asked with a smile.

‘Our child,’ he said. ‘And ex-lover.’

Uncomfortable phrases – but absolutely the shape of my world. Absolutely. I laid my head on the table, and after a while the mists of Egypt retreated from my mind. I got out the vodka, and proved my strength against Eddie by turning resolutely to my life and asking Harry if he thought we needed to make any plans or decisions or anything about Lily. And how it was going to be. He said no. ‘Let it roll,’ he said. ‘We’re doing all right, aren’t we? Am I behaving? And we can tell each other anything we don’t like.’

‘Do me a favour,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Tell us what you do like as well.’

He grinned.

‘No, I’m serious. It’s a root of good childcare. Love and reward their goodness, and pay as little attention as possible to badness. And make sure they know that you love them however bad they might be. You have to tell them. They’re always thinking that everything is their fault, because they think they’re the centre of the world. So you have to reassure them a lot, and …’

He was looking at me.

‘It’s important,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to tell you how to do it, I promise you, but there are a couple of things …’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I like you telling me. And I’ll tell you if I don’t.’

It made me happy. Thinking about Lily and her family life. Happy, in the heart of what matters.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Umm – Lily’s invited me for Christmas.’ He paused. ‘She says you’re going to cook a turkey.’

It’s a logical development. It’s bound to happen. It’s cool.

‘We go to Mum and Dad’s usually,’ I said. ‘Oh. Would you …’

‘I probably should,’ he said. ‘I mean, if you …’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Of course.’

‘OK then,’ he said.

‘Right,’ I said.

We smiled at each other. Family Christmas. Crikey.

‘I hate Christmas,’ he said, musingly.

‘I remember,’ I said.

Soon after, he left, and as he left he kissed me unlingeringly on the mouth, which seemed to me to be both firm and ambiguous, an interesting combination. For a moment I wondered what he meant by it, then shook off the thought. It was too brief to touch me but … But nothing.

FOUR

Answering the phone to Chrissie Bates

For the next week or so I behaved completely normally. Lily and I opened the doors of our advent calendar each morning, and at the weekend we went to the market and bought a tiny Christmas tree, which she covered with hairclips and doll’s clothes; while she was at school I copyedited most of an Iranian carpet magazine, which included re-translating someone else’s translation (from Farsi into nonsense) into decent English, hurrying to get it done before the school holidays. I got so involved with to-and-fro clarificatory telephone conversations with the translator that I forgot to screen my calls. And that is how on Friday afternoon I found myself answering the phone to Chrissie Bates.

‘Don’t hang up,’ she said. ‘Please. Please don’t. Please do this for me – oh lord. I’m not calling to ask you for anything. I just want to say something to you. Oh!’ And then she hung up on me.

Well, I didn’t like it one bit. Her previous phone calls had been … unpleasant, to say the least. So had the razorblade in the post, and the screaming heebie-jeebies when she had burst into my bathroom that time. Admittedly even now it was a little hard to work out which of the unsolicited letters and calls and acts of aggression had been from her and which from Eddie, but overall my view of Chrissie was that she was a nasty little thing who had been married to an even nastier one. Either way I didn’t want her around. Plus … there was the minor item that she had at one stage seemed very pissed off that Eddie was trying to give me so much money, and I had rung her and left a message saying she could have the bloody stuff, and stick it up her arse for all I cared, or words to that effect.

So maybe she wants it.

But she didn’t sound angry, or aggressive. For a moment I hadn’t been sure it was her, because I have only ever heard her voice drunk and furious before, unless you count the funeral where she was drunk, furious and tragic.

And anyway, she can’t have it, because Sa’id has fed it to the hungry children and bought them all new shoes so nyaaah.

The phone rang again.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ Chrissie said. ‘I’m not very good at this but I really want to do it and get it right. I’m sorry. There. I’m sorry.’

‘What?’ I said.

‘Sorry,’ she said again.

‘You’re ringing to say sorry for ringing?’