Desiring Cairo

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It never takes him long to get to why.

‘I think she’s been writing me letters.’

‘Does she think you killed her husband?’

‘Well yes she does, actually.’

‘Join the club, darling. We’re a flaming conspiracy, evidently. I killed him, by writing that article, which apparently affected his heart. Every policeman you ever saw killed him, by being a policeman, which was contrary to what he liked. The jury killed him, separately and together, by finding him guilty when he would have preferred not. The prison warders killed him; the prison doctors killed him, the judge killed him and chopped him up into little pieces and left him out for the birds. How did you kill him then? By being the object of his unrequited desires?’

‘I suppose so … God, Fergus, that’s a relief.’

‘Did you think it was only you? So did I, till I got to gossiping. You should get out more. You know Harry killed him too, and Ben Cooper, only no one’s told him yet that everybody else did too because they like to see him suffer. What has she done to you then? Letters? Phone calls?’

My journalist filter went up.

‘Are you going to be writing about this?’

‘I’ll just say “a girl he admired”. Nothing to identify you. Promise.’

‘Oh Fergus …’

‘Please. For colour. There’s no sex in it so far. Please.’

I thought for a moment. I did quite want to give him something, because he’s a friend and he’s helped me in the past. I did also want very much to keep my nose clean.

‘I tell you what,’ I said.

‘What,’ he said.

For a second I was about to say ‘I’m not telling you’. That’s Lily’s great joke: ‘You know what?’ ‘What?’ ‘I’m not telling you.’

‘I think … let me think about it.’ I was thinking that perhaps I wanted to see her first, clear the air, then I thought no, if she’s feeling that way about so many people I don’t need to. She’s not going to firebomb the lot of us.

‘Is anyone taking it seriously? Has she made any threats at all?’ (This Irishness is contagious. I don’t know if it’s my dad’s Liverpool Irish blood coming out in me but whenever I talk to an Irish person I start using their accent. It makes Brigid, Cork born and bred, piss herself laughing.)

‘Not to my knowledge. I think they’re all taking it with a pinch of salt. I was exaggerating a little bit, you know. I don’t think she’s been pestering the judge. The woman may have some sense. Have you met her? She’s a funny woman and that’s for sure.’

‘What’s she like?’ I realised I had a clear picture of her as being a bit like the Queen, but younger. Respectable, pretty, pearls, elegant in a dull way. Grace Kelly. Handbag. Why? Because she lived in Monaco? Because Eddie had classy taste and modern art?

‘Oh, she’s basic gangster Euro-trash, a Marbella queen. Army father, boarding school, home counties, ran wild, ex-model, still wearing the make-up that was in style when she was young and gorgeous, and her heyday hairdo. Brigitte Bardot without the class. White stilettos, shiny eye-shadow. Permatan. Permapissed, as well. Drinks like a Mexican maggot. When Eddie started ignoring her she took to astrology and small dogs. And possibly younger men, but she’s always been crazy about Eddie. And terrified of him. Flaming lunatic, basically. There’s a lot of them around.’

Oh.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Didn’t your boyfriend tell you, then?’

I hung up on him.

He rang back ten seconds later, apologising profusely.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK, you mean it. I’m sorry. Her name’s Chrissie. She’s born Christine Louise Evans, then Chrissie de Lisle, no less, and for no reason other than sheer pretension, in her salad days, and now she goes as Christina Bates. So we’ll speak on Monday, will we, or over the weekend?’

‘Yeah. No promises. Would you let me know if anything else … you know …’

‘My darling, I’m gossip central on Mrs Bates. Short of anyone blowing a fuse and trying to sue, I don’t think anything’s going to happen except more of the same. And you know what our friends in the Bill are like, till the stalking law comes in they can’t move on this stuff till she’s pouring petrol through your letterbox. But I don’t think she will. She’s an old bat exorcising her sad old life, if you ask me. Ignore her and she’ll go away.’

‘Thanks, Fergus. I’ll speak to you.’

‘Indeed you will,’ he said.

It occurred to me as I hung up that Fergus didn’t know I’d hit Eddie on the head with the poker, and that I didn’t know if Mrs Bates knew or not. And I didn’t know if she’d been visiting him in prison, and I didn’t know when the funeral was. Which I wanted to know, even though I didn’t want to go. So I rang back and asked him. Yes she had, she’d been regularly, and there had been something of a rapprochement between them; and next Tuesday, 11 a.m., at Southgate. The same cemetery where Janie is buried.

I was relieved by our conversation, but not that relieved.

Then I ate a bowl of cornflakes and went to get Lily.

*

When we got back from the park Hakim was standing in the middle of the kitchen with stars in his eyes.

‘I speak to her,’ he said. ‘I go tomorrow. I want to tell you.’ Then he grabbed my face and kissed me, grabbed Lily’s and kissed her, then disappeared into the bathroom, presumably to wash off our touch because moments later he reappeared and then disappeared again, out the front door, crying, ‘I go to mosque.’

Lily looked bemused.

‘His mother,’ I explained. ‘He hasn’t seen his mother for fifteen years, and tomorrow he’s going to see her. After fifteen years.’

She gazed after him. ‘So will I see my father after fifteen years?’ she said.

Childish logic. I sat on the floor and drew her to me.

‘Oh, darling, I don’t know,’ I said.

She wouldn’t sit with me. ‘Well you should know,’ she said. ‘You know everything else.’ Then she looked at me, and then she went into my room and sat silently on the bed.

For a moment I was dumbstruck. Then I followed her in.

‘I wanted to go into my room,’ she said in a tiny voice, ‘but it’s not really mine.’

I sat by her. ‘Sweetheart?’ I said.

‘I don’t want to cry,’ she said.

‘You don’t have to,’ I said. ‘You can if you want.’

‘I feel bad but I haven’t done anything bad.’

There are times when you feel completely bloody useless.

‘Sometimes bad things happen to us even if we’re good,’ I said. ‘What’s making you feel bad? Do you know?’

‘It’s too difficult to explain,’ she said. Her lower lip was sticking out, just a tiny bit. The tears stayed in her eyes. Full and curved. Their shape echoed the shape of her cheeks.

‘Well what’s it about? Just tell me the subject. You don’t have to explain it all.’

‘I don’t want to,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘I want you to know already,’ she whispered.

And of course I did know. There was only one thing about her that I’d ever claimed not to know, that I’d ever claimed not to understand. Or rather – that I’d ever known was there, but not talked about, not shared, not dealt with. There was such closeness between us that I knew if she would choose an orange or an apple, if she wanted a bath or not, what story she wanted at night out of twenty to pick from. I always knew which hand she’d hidden the coin in. I knew every damn thing about her, and I knew this.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll find him.’

When she looked up at me I swear her eyes were twice the size they had been. She grinned like a maniac.

‘You do know! You do know!’ she yelled.

‘I know what you want, darling. I don’t know where he is or when we can find him …’

‘But you know I want him!’

That was all she needed. God, she was happy. I felt so small that I hadn’t admitted I knew it all along. To myself, quite apart from her. Going to bed that night she was telling herself a story. ‘Well a daddy might be in the zoo, but only if he had other children, because he wouldn’t go to the zoo if he didn’t have a child with him, so a lost daddy wouldn’t go there, unless he was a zookeeper MUMMY! IS MY DADDY A ZOOKEEPER?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘It’s quite funny you not knowing things,’ she said, with an echo of Harry. I kissed her and we did the rituals: ‘I love you up to the moon and back again’; ‘I love you too, now shut up and go to sleep’; ‘Will you scratch my back?’ ‘No I won’t.’ ‘But it was worth a try, wasn’t it Mummy?’ ‘Yes now shut up and go to sleep’; and then I went and rang Harry.

Because frankly, out of the choice I had, he was the best.

He was out. I didn’t leave a message. Anyway then Brigid and Caitlin and the boys appeared bearing sleeping bags, and Lily got out of bed, and the lilos had to be blown up and the whole thing turned into a hoopla of considerable proportions. Around ten I gave up and left them to it, and went to watch the news. It was all about the dead princess and her boyfriend. (‘It was her own fault,’ said Lily. ‘She was a mummy. Why didn’t she have her seat-belt on?’)

Halfway through Hakim came in and said: ‘He’s no good that man. No good for Egypt. Rich as ten thousand men. And he did not look after your princess. In Egypt they say your government killed them because they hate Islam and want no Muslim man in your royal family. I say bollocks.’ At the same time as I was amused by his finding so soon the grosser end of our lovely language, and pronouncing it like the young bull he so reminded me of, I could see the sincerity of his distaste.

SEVEN (#ulink_91c8be11-139f-5770-8943-4cea8f8d6fc7)

Brighton (#ulink_91c8be11-139f-5770-8943-4cea8f8d6fc7)

The next day, Saturday, there were two letters. One contained a razor blade, the other a poem.

Distracting is the foliage of my pasture

The mouth of my girl is a lotus bud

Her breasts are mandrake apples

Her arms are vines

Her eyes are fixed like berries

Her brow a snare of willow

And I the wild goose!

My beak snips her hair for bait,

As worms for bait in the trap.

I knew this poem. Not that it’s famous, out of its field. It’s from an ancient papyrus. It’s, I don’t know, three thousand years old. I didn’t like it – I’d never liked it. Hair as worms, bait in a trap. Ugly. Violent. Fixed berries, vines, snares. It speaks to me of desire and resentment – a bad combination.

And a razor blade.

How very unpleasant.

Each one gave me a cold shudder. I didn’t know, actually, which was nastier.

I burnt the poem and broke the blade in half with a pair of pliers, then wrapped it in cotton wool, soaked the package in baby oil and threw it in the rubbish, which I then took out on to the balcony and dropped – plop! – into the wheelie bin seven storeys below. I’m pretty ritualistic on occasion.