Akram's War Page 3

  Grace notices me eyeing the arrangement. ‘Collect them, when I’m good. Not always good, though – I can go for months under my duvet.’ She laughs. ‘You’re lucky, you’ve caught me good.’

  It’s a long time since I have been this close to a white person, and I shiver. Now that I can see her in the light, she is fatter than I thought. Her face, although young, appears marked as though underneath the thick layer of make-up she has bad skin. She smiles, exposing the silver front tooth. It seems to move, and then, with a practised motion, flips onto the tip of her tongue. She retrieves it and rolls it between her fingers into a ball.

  ‘Kit Kat foil,’ she says, exposing a gap in her mouth. There it is – the flaw I wanted – and feeling immediately more relaxed I offer her a broad smile.

  ‘Milk and sugar, or do you want something stronger?’ Her shoes drop to the floor and she kicks them underneath the sofa. With one hand smoothing the cloth around her rump, Grace swivels on her toes and goes into the kitchen, leaving the door between the rooms ajar.

  The ceramic dogs feel smooth and cold to the touch. I hear the kettle boil in the next room, the hot liquid pour, and the rattle of teaspoons against porcelain. Grace returns with two steaming mugs and places them on the coffee table. She lands heavily on the sofa. ‘So the prostitute thing – would I be forgiven?’

  ‘If you believe in that sort of thing.’

  ‘What you doing dressed like that? You been to a party or something?’

  ‘It’s the armistice remembrance event at eleven,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, what for?’

  ‘It signifies the cessation of hostilities. In World War One.’

  Grace gazes at her watch. ‘Good eight hours until eleven.’ She sighs and continues in a louder voice, ‘Take your hat off, and drink up, it’s better while it’s hot.’

  The tea has been mixed with whisky and burns my throat.

  ‘How come you don’t have a car? Pakis always have cars.’ As she lifts the mug to her face a shadow falls across her pale chin, and where her fingers wrap around the mug there are thin, stained creases between the joints, blue and brown, as though coloured in with pencil. Her hands grow visibly redder as they grasp the warm mug. It startles me that gora skin is so permeable, soaking up like a sponge, and as though to confirm my sudden theory, when she puts down her mug and smiles, the lower part of her face is flushed from the conducted heat.

  I notice a photo in a frame next to the TV. It is of Grace, younger and slimmer. She is holding a small child, a girl of about two.

  ‘That your kid?’ I ask.

  ‘Man in your condition, thought you’d need a car.’

  Grace’s reference to my leg reminds me that it is hurting. I knead at the knee joint, more out of habit than in expectation of alleviating the pain. Sometimes I am hopeful when it hurts, as though pain signifies that there is still life left in that part of my body. In the bedroom Azra and I share is a full-length mirror. When I look into it, it is perfectly possible to squint out my bad leg. Tricking myself, I feel pride in the condition of my body, not quite as muscular as it was and sporting a decadent paunch, but otherwise buff.

  ‘I did a course once,’ Grace says, dropping to her knees.

  I watch as her fingers work around my knee joint, the unexpectedness of her touch making me lean back against the sofa and close my eyes. Gradually the pain subsides, and as it does so, as if something else is switched immediately on, I feel a sliver of wet and a hardening between my legs.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, opening my eyes and trying to wriggle free. ‘It’s better now.’

  She ignores my statement and slowly rolls up my trousers to a point above the knee. I expect her to be horrified – the leg is a mass of dark keloid scarring, and the titanium articulation bulges from the skin at an unsettling angle – but she simply resumes massaging the affected area, the pain now replaced by pleasure. She wears no rings and the sight of her colour pressing into mine, alternately turning white and returning to pink, seems somehow wrong; I almost expect a dark brown to rub off me and creep up her fingertips. Her touch is soft and warm. My heart races and I clench my entire body as though my hands might jerk out to where they have not been invited.

  ‘Armistice Day.’ She sighs. ‘Your leg’s fucked and still you glorify the maiming and the killing.’

  Through a gap in the curtains I can see still an unchanged black sky, ominous, a sky to die under. I recite, ‘Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim.’

  ‘You what?’ Her hands release my knee and she returns to the sofa. We sit pressed against each other and drain our mugs in one large gulp.

  ‘You’ve got to have respect for the dead.’ I feel light-headed from the alcohol.

  Grace puts her knee to her chest and rubs her ankle. ‘Been working since lunchtime,’ she complains. ‘Respect for what?’

  I reach for her foot; turning sideways, she allows me to place it on my lap. Her eyes register surprise but not fear. Gently I press around a callus at the back of her ankle, careful not to touch a rolled horizontal tear in the skin where her shoes have rubbed. It feels alien, Grace’s legs resting across mine, as though they’re not part of her at all but objects of flesh wrapped in a thin membrane, specimens for inspection. Blue veins blanching to my touch zigzag downwards across the slope of the dorsum of her foot, joining and branching again at the toes. A soft bulbous sweep of flesh marks the limit at which the tissue squeezed into the shoes. Hers are working feet, not slender and pointed like Azra’s. They’re like the feet of a child, a triangular wedge of tissue with short toes rendered softly swollen at the nail. As I pull back on the toes she sighs, extending her foot gracefully like a ballerina’s, and at the same time the malleoli at the ankle slide into prominent view. I recall an image of a girl standing on tiptoes reaching for fruit on a tree, her malleoli jutting out like something that might catch the sun and sparkle, bony and delicate like an Adam’s apple – a picture I can’t place, as though invented. I want to stroke the arch of her foot and milk each digit. A tense heat rises in me.

  ‘Ooh, that’s better. Murder out on those streets.’

  I shake my head to free myself of illicit thoughts. ‘Respect for the dead. For the uniform.’

  ‘Looks good on you.’ She takes off my cap and considers the badge at the front.

  ‘Double-headed eagle, that,’ I say.

  ‘Two-faced, I’d call it.’ She throws the cap onto the low coffee table before us.

  ‘We’re all two-faced. Didn’t you say I caught you at a good time, not bad?’

  ‘I didn’t say bad.’ Angrily she pulls her foot away. ‘I have good times and other times when without the pills I’d draw the curtains and take to my duvet. They take the edge off it, like drawing back the curtain a bit, but that’s all you need, isn’t it, an edge?’ She pauses as though waiting for an answer. ‘They sort of slice off the worst bit at the top.’

  ‘Give me back that foot,’ I demand. ‘I’m not done yet.’

  ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’ she asks.

  ‘We had strict rules of engagement.’

  ‘Sounds clever.’ She looks over at the picture next to the TV. ‘Pakis got morals, haven’t they; they don’t let shit happen for no reason. They got an edge.’

  I stop rubbing the foot. ‘Most of them have cars too.’

  ‘A gentleman would have taken his hat off before he came into the house.’

  ‘Bad luck, is it?’

  She looks at me and for a while says nothing. She has the trick of a mother, the prolonged silence adding weight to her words when she finally speaks. ‘Soldiers are stupid, they do what they’re told.’

  ‘They do what’s right by their country.’

  ‘That’s worse.’

  ‘There is a right.’

  ‘All that soldier talk. Heard it before.’ She swaps feet and I begin to rub her left ankle.

  ‘Worse, this one,’ I say, boldly touching the deep laceration behind her ankle. Around it the skin is yellow and
raised. It amazes me that she could walk at all. The soles of her feet are black. She flinches but allows me to continue.

  ‘I could fall asleep,’ says Grace, clenching her teeth as though that might keep her awake. She lies flat on the sofa, leaning her head against the armrest and closing her eyes.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t then.’ She keeps her eyes closed and smiles as I continue to rub.

  As my other hand casually brushes against my chin I am suddenly re­awakened to the absence of my beard, and the very thought seems to make the skin sore and itchy. I pinch my chin, thinking back to the house I left earlier, my parents and Azra sound asleep and, before that, the ritual in the bathroom. I was then certain of something, and although that belief hasn’t waned, I have put myself to a test. I still feel in control but I have been distracted. The martyr is permitted to act out any depraved fantasy – his sins are forgiven and that is a truth. Truths can’t be overruled: they are written, and faith requires that however contradictory it may seem, you can’t pick and choose from what is written. Still, really, this. . . Placing her feet gently on the sofa, I stand up. ‘Thanks for everything.’

  ‘You going?’

  I nod.

  ‘Free country.’

  I feel tall and powerful standing over her supine form and she in turn seems smaller than before, as though she has shrunk into the upholstery. I glance at the photo and then at her. ‘The kid in the picture, she’s yours, isn’t she?’

  She nods. As my shadow looms over her I examine her face, but it betrays no emotion. Even with her eyelids screwed tightly shut she knows I am staring. Under exertion, her eyelids quiver, and a muscle twitches in the corners of her lips.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You have to earn that story,’ she says.

  ‘You got another drink?’ I ask, giving in as I knew I would.

  ‘Bottle’s in the kitchen.’

  I take the mugs from the table and go into the kitchen. After swilling them under a tap I quarter-fill each with Scotch.

  Grace is asleep when I return. One cheek lolls against the sofa, her arms bent casually to each side as though in contentment or perhaps even defeat. Unlike my wife, Grace sleeps easy. I put down the mugs and pick up the photo. The toddler is cute. She stares out of the picture with sad eyes, a strange thing for a child. ‘Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim.’

  ‘What you saying that shit for?’ Suddenly Grace is awake and she leans forward, her eyes examining mine. ‘Don’t give me no Pakistani walla-walla. It can’t help.’

  ‘It can help.’ I whisper another Bismillah and kiss the photo, and gently, as though it is a sacred object, return the frame to where I found it.

  ‘If you had a car you’d get into it and piss off now.’ A single black tear drops from her left eye. It stops momentarily at her cheekbone. She swipes it away, leaving an angular smudge from eye to cheek, and as she does so her upper lip pulls up, exposing the dark gap in her mouth.

  ‘You should get that tooth seen to,’ I say, regretting the words as soon as they are uttered.

  ‘Can’t,’ she says matter-of-factly.

  ‘Why not?’

  She looks away. ‘I’m in need of it.’

  We each pick up our mugs and slowly we drain them, mostly in silence. From time to time her eyes lock onto mine and her lips purse as though she is considering me kindly. At those moments I clench against the adrenaline, my heart racing and stomach muscles contracting. A clock on the wall – the big hand has the head of Mickey Mouse at its tip – chimes weakly as it records four o’clock.

  ‘Really, I should turn in. Big day tomorrow,’ says Grace wearily.

  ‘Big day?’

  She glances at the photograph, closes her eyes and smiles.

  Emboldened by the drink, I reach for her foot, suddenly desperate to make some sort of last connection. She claws it away under the sofa.

  ‘It’s been lovely, but I’m so sleepy.’ She yawns, putting a fist to her mouth.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I mean it. Thanks.’

  Grace stretches out a hand and pulls my wrist towards her. ‘You’re all right.’

  ‘You’re too trusting,’ I say irritably.

  ‘If you want to fuck me you can.’

  I pull my arm away and shrink back. I feel tears welling up and struggle to hold them at bay. Finally I stutter, ‘I’m a m-married man.’

  ‘Men get sore when they think they can’t fuck you.’ Her voice is dreamy and warm.

  ‘It’s okay, I don’t mind.’ I pick up my cap and put it on my head. Finding my stick, I aim for the door. Then I backtrack and, stooping over the sofa, negotiate the thin brittle fibres of her wavy hair. They scratch my face and I kiss her lightly on the cheek. I recall the rose scent she left behind in the street and how it filled me with pangs of both desire and panic. Now I’m closer still but I don’t feel it as keenly. It puzzles me, as though with proximity something has waned. ‘I’m not angry,’ I say. ‘You’re a nice girl.’

  Grace turns her head quickly and plants a kiss on my lips. Hers feel dry and rubbery and nothing like the electrical charge of my imagination. Then she opens her eyes and, staring at the ceiling, smiles. ‘Come on, soldier boy, let’s go to bed.’ Emboldened by the drink, I feel happy and careless.

  Tidiness ends as we climb the stairs. Before the bedroom window sits a dressing table in laminated oak, an oval mirror attached above it. Its surface is covered with variously shaped bottles of scent and cosmetics, washes and creams, brushes for hair and for eyes, thick-handled safety razors and small, colourful vials containing lip gloss. Azra doesn’t have much of that stuff, and what she does possess she keeps locked in the vanity case she was clutching when I first spotted her at Arrivals. I saw her open it only once. There were small mirrors inside the lid and numerous plastic compartments attached to pivots to pull out. Inside them were secret potions the purpose of which she never revealed. It smelt of woman, the vanity case, more woman than I ever got to see. In Grace’s bedroom, shoes are discarded on the carpeted floor and books and magazines stacked a foot high in discrete piles along the walls. On one side of the bed is a small cabinet with a groaning ashtray and a small framed photograph of a baby, its round head filling the frame.

  I take off my number two dress uniform, draping each item carefully over a chair, and naked, I slide into bed next to Grace. She feels warm and soft, and as I nuzzle her neck I feel a comfort beyond that of flesh and the aroma of her perfume, the soporific comfort of an intimate bed. My cock, ramrod straight, throbs against her skin.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m a—’

  She puts a finger to her lips. ‘Shh.’ She kisses me. Her lips are now soft and moist and with my tongue I probe the gap in her teeth. Then I stop.

  ‘I need to tell you.’ I pull away. ‘I’ve never done it.’

  She shrinks back and looks at me, her chin resting on her hands. ‘I thought you were married.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You lied?’

  ‘No.’ I search her eyes but she expresses no surprise.

  ‘Pakistanis around here, they’re all married. Not that that stops them.’ She laughs. ‘I should know. They cruise by and. . . Well, let’s put it this way, for them all white flesh is game, and, if I might say so, the younger the better.’

  ‘We have a thing about white. I used to think it was something to do with school, how we Pakis got singled out, but it goes back further than that. We are subjugated, a slave race. The white man is still our master and the only way to get at him—’

  ‘Well,’ she reaches over and puts my hand on her breast, ‘you’ve conquered.’

  I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel. The breast is just tissue moulded to a shape, but strangely something that demands a response. I try to think of something to distract her. ‘Why do you collect those dogs?’

  She quickly replies, ‘So I’ll be forgiven.’

  We burst out laughing and I take the opportunity to w
ithdraw my hand. She reaches forward and presses her lips hard on mine.

  ‘That tooth of yours, what’s the secret?’ I say when she releases me.

  ‘You shouldn’t speak to a woman like that. You really are a virgin.’

  ‘Then that is proof?’

  She nods, pressing her body against mine. ‘Long time ago I went up to Newcastle to see my mum. Got drunk and in the middle of the night we had this terrible argument. Stormed off barefoot down the motorway. So you see from experience, I must know – are you on the run from Newcastle?’

  ‘I’m on manoeuvre.’

  ‘Lies. Tell you what, if the truth is a good truth, I mean one worth knowing, I might tell you about this.’ She fingers the gap in her mouth. ‘I’ll trade you.’

  ‘It’s something to do with the little girl in the picture, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s personal, but I’ll trade,’ she says again.

  ‘I’m sorry. About your daughter. I am sorry.’

  ‘I thought you were mad and we would fuck wildly, but you’re not mad, are you?’

  ‘Never known a white girl who’s invited me into her house.’

  Grace corrects me. ‘A prostitute.’

  ‘Still a girl.’ My head throbs from the whisky but I try to put on a serious face. ‘As you say, I’ve conquered.’

  She pulls the duvet up to her chin and considers me for what feels like ages.

  ‘Sex,’ I say dreamily, turning to look out of the window, ‘is problematic.’

  The view from the bedroom window is familiar. I can see the terraced houses opposite, separated from us by a narrow strip of road. A street lamp burns but overall the feeling is of quiet, a sense of lifetimes spun so fast, as though through a vortex, that they are over as soon as they have begun. A sense of death, as though our presence is proof of a long line of people passing through these identical houses.

  I pull away from her, rest my head on the pillow. ‘Any more grog?’

  She wraps a sheet around her body, runs downstairs and fetches a fresh bottle and, shivering, returns quickly to bed. She pours us each an inch and inspects me with a kind gaze as though waiting for me to say something. Still holding her mug, slowly she closes her eyes.