Olives (12 page)

There was a
heavy crystal paperweight in the shape of the Al Aqsa Mosque on
Aisha’s desk and a furry toy monkey with big, dopey eyes sitting on
the top of the cabinet by the wall. She had a visitor, a veiled
woman with whom she was chatting animatedly. She barely looked up
at me, her voice cool.

‘
Thank you,
Paul. Just put them down on the side table there and I’ll return
them to you this afternoon.’

I bit my
tongue and went back downstairs, stopping halfway down the dingy
staircase to smack the gloss-painted wall with my fist. I sat at my
desk, calming down and gazing into my screen for a couple of hours.
I’d been spending my time drinking with Lars, missing Aisha’s
company but keeping myself busy socially rather than having to sit
down and think about what a total idiot I’d been. I felt guilty
about prying into her life and about hurting her with my stupidity
and selfishness. She had been kind to me, amused but tolerant of my
ignorance and patient with my constant questions and demands. I had
repaid her by digging into her pain, gouging away at the wounds
until I’d forced her away from me. Stokes the lonely journalist who
can’t switch off the desire to interrogate people, to indulge the
driving curiosity that wrecks trust and renders everything down to
the cold, hard facts that lie at the centre of all weakness. Pity
poor Paul.

Aisha strode
up to my desk, the page proofs in her hand. She wasn’t
smiling.

‘
This stuff
is approved. You’re going to buy me a drink at the Blue Fig tonight
at eight o’clock.’

I looked up
at her. Her face was serious, but her eyes were flickering between
mine uncertainly.

I nodded,
fighting to keep the astonishment from my face. ‘I am.’

She left
without another word but when the phone rang a few seconds later, I
answered it giddily, ‘Stokes Precision Engineering and Victorian
Toy Repair Service.’

‘
Paul?’

‘
Oh, hi,
Robin. What gives?’

His plummy
drawl sounded relieved. ‘Sorry, thought I’d got a wrong number
there for a second.’ His braying laughter jangled down the line.
‘Look, just called to make sure you got those proofs signed off
okay.’

‘
Signed off,
Robin. The whole thing’s ready to print.’

‘
Good work.
We’ve broken target by 10k and forward bookings are looking great.
We’ve hit bonus.’

Ah, Robin,
Robin. ‘We’ve hit bonus’ was code for Robin Goodyear has hit bonus.
Paul Stokes would remain scrabbling around in near-poverty in a
foreign country while the CEO, Michael Klein, joined Robin for
drinks in his converted Kentish barn or maybe down the road at the
BMW-lover’s pub, the Morgan Arms. They’d stand there at the bar in
their Aran sweaters, telling each other just how well the whole
Jordan thing was going and how clever they’d been to think it all
up, then drink their beers and go back to Robin’s for an impeccably
cooked Sunday roast prepared by Claire who would have drunk too
much because she’d been entertaining Mousey Hilary, Klein’s plain
little wife. Claire, a secretary at TMG before Robin ‘rescued’ her,
knew full well Klein spent most of his time in the office pushing
as much of himself as he could into the various openings offered by
Lynda, his bumptious and yet decidedly pneumatic personal
assistant.

I imagined
Robin naked and crucified upside down and managed a smile. ‘Good.
I’m glad you’re pleased, Robin.’

‘
Keep it up,
Stokesy. Hear Anne’s coming out to visit you. Do you good to get
your end away. Oh, wait a minute – haven’t you been servicing that
Dajani bird?’

Anne and
Robin had always got on, often chatted. They moved in the same
circles.

‘
Just been
waiting for Anne, Robin.’

How I hated
myself for not slamming the phone down on the bastard.

‘
Good show.
Well, must get on. Toodle pip.’

Toodle pip my
arse.
I wrapped up and went
home, too appalled at Robin to be mad with him. How on earth people
like him survive, let alone climb to the top of their little dung
heaps, constantly amazes me. I was angry when I got to the house
and stomped up the steps to Lars’ place.

Lars answered
the door in a sarong, gesturing me towards the fridge as he fiddled
with the mouse and closed whatever strange online session he’d been
absorbed in before he turned to me.

‘
What’s
new?’

‘
I’m meeting
Aisha for drinks tonight.’

‘
Okay. So
it’s back on.’

‘
What’s back
on? It’s not as if we’re anything more than friends.’

‘
Like friends
sulk when they don’t see each other for a couple of days? Huh? You
sulk if I’m not in when you get home, English? Hmm? I think not.
Surely you’re friends. Look, just go to her. You’re crazy, but go
anyway. Stop being a puppy sick. You say puppy sick?’

I laughed
despite myself. ‘Sick puppy, you silly sod.’

Lars sat
back, contentment on his handsome Scandinavian features as he
raised his can in a toast. ‘Yes, like this. Go with her, Paul. Be
happy. Be careful. Here, I have a present for you. Watch it if you
like, don’t watch it if you like.’

Puzzled, I
took the memory stick he offered me. ‘What is it, Lars?’

He smiled
grimly. ‘It’s Hamad Dajani’s goodbye video. A friend of mine in
Jordan TV got it for me. Like I say, watch it if you
like.’

When I had
finished my beer with Lars, I went downstairs and stood in front of
the TV for a very long time before putting the memory stick down by
the screen and going to the bathroom to wash.

The Blue Fig
is a funky art-house café bar in the wealthy Abdoun district owned
by a couple of Jordanian bigshots, all wooden flooring and antiqued
steel trimmings. It’s a popular meeting place – in the summer it
heaves with rich, pretty young things come back from the Gulf. Even
now, early in the cool autumn evening, it was becoming noisy. I
spotted Aisha in a quiet corner away from the bar. She wore the
brown woollen outfit again and I couldn’t help my grin.

‘
I thought
we’d try starting again,’ she said, standing to meet me as I walked
up to the table.

There was a
second’s hesitation – her hand wasn’t held out. I leaned forward
and kissed her cheek, my hand resting lightly on her hip. It felt
like the most natural gesture in the world. She smelled of warm
spice.

She handed me
a little blue plastic bag. ‘Here. I brought you a little
something.’

I opened the
bag. It was a delicate pen and ink sketch of a bunch of olives on a
branch. I wanted to cry.

‘
Listen,
Paul, I owe you an apology. I’m sorry. I guess it was too soon
after my cousin to start talking about all that family stuff and I
just flipped out. I’m really sorry. I thought an olive branch was
appropriate.’

An
uncomfortable, burning sensation seared my throat. I managed to
swallow and keep the tears out of my eyes.

‘
Thank you.
It’s beautiful.’

She smiled.
‘The salsa girls won’t forgive me. I stood them up.’

‘
Aisha, I’m
sorry.’

She leaned
forwards, put her finger to her lips. ‘Shush. Enough.’ She put her
hand on mine and squeezed it, an electric moment of soft warmth. I
felt myself falling into those gold-flecked eyes, our long gaze
driving a thrill through me, a feeling close to fear and yet
ecstatic. Aisha broke the moment first, taking her hand away to
reach for her handbag and fuss for her cigarettes.

I looked down
at the table rather than meet her eyes. I tried to force a light
tone, but just sounded manic. ‘I’ve got my own troubles anyway.
Anne, my girlfriend, is coming out from England to visit me at the
end of next week.’

She froze for
a second, her hand still in her bag. I had told her about Anne long
before, but my girlfriend hadn’t been a topic of conversation
between us precisely because I had avoided bringing it
up.

Aisha looked
up at me and I cursed myself as I saw her strained face, her smile
as bright and brittle as her voice.

‘
You must be
pleased. How long is she staying?’

‘
For the
week. She’ll go back just before the court case comes
up.’

‘
This will be
her first time here?’

‘
Yes. I
honestly didn’t think she’d come at all. She’s very busy with her
work.’

Aisha lit her
cigarette and puffed the smoke high into the air.

‘
You never
told me what she did.’

I fought the
urge to steal a smoke from her. I couldn’t believe Jordan was doing
this to me. I’d never smoked in my life, although my father did.
When he left, my mother threw out all the ashtrays and suddenly
smokers weren’t welcome at home. Smoking never bothered me, one way
or the other, although I tended to avoid smoky rooms just because
of the smell it left on you. And I’d avoided smoky girls because it
is, when you come down to it, just like kissing an ashtray. Which
got me thinking about kissing Aisha and so I blew it and took one
of her cigarettes with a shaky hand.

‘
She’s a
lawyer.’ I said as I lit up. Aisha raised an eyebrow, but I shook
my head. ‘Contract law, not criminal stuff so no, I haven’t told
her about the court case. She’s very good at it.’

‘
Did you live
together?’

‘
Now you’re
just being nosy.’

The spark was
back in her eyes and she flicked her hair back. ‘You’d know about
that, wouldn’t you,
ya
Brit?’

I winced.
‘Okay, yes, we lived together but not, well, not quite like that,
not at first. She was my landlady and things sort of developed. But
I still paid her rent up until I left her. I mean, left
England.’

Aisha’s face
was serious. ‘Do you love her?’

Did I? Anne
the golden girl. Anne of the fiery temper and the ‘yah set’
friends. Anne the determined career girl with the Saab Aero and a
flat in Balham pronounced ‘Barm.’’ Bling bling Anne. Anne the lover
who liked to be on top. Anne of a million years ago, another
continent. Anne who hadn’t changed since I left England, while I
was becoming another person. Anne who didn’t belong in this life of
mine, this new life. Dreams of Anne and home drifting
away.

I scanned the
busy bar. Three guys in open-necked, square-patterned shirts stood
by the beer taps smoking cigars; a group of six girls two tables
away looked through a photo album, shrieking with delighted
laughter; a big, boisterous table at the other side of the room
chattering, two young men standing up and slanging each other in
loud, laughing voices, their body language exaggerated as they
accused each other of being liars.

I looked back
at Aisha and nodded. ‘I think I did, yes.’

I walked
Aisha home. It was getting chilly and her heels tapped shorter
steps than mine on the uneven pavement. The plastic bag bumped
against my leg and I folded it around the little picture to hold it
in the crook of my arm. She spoke into the cold distance ahead of
us.

‘
You asked me
if Hamad was revenging my father.’

I started to
interrupt her, to tell her I didn’t want to know anymore, but she
silenced me by taking my arm.

‘
No, it’s all right. I want to tell you. Hamad took my
father’s death badly. I don’t mean that any of us took it well. It
was a very bad time. But Hamad was always an angry man and his
reaction to
baba
dying was furious. I think he
learned how to focus his anger into hate. He was always very
religious. He won prizes for reading Koran at school. My father was
never strict like that, but he was a quietly devout man in his way.
Hamad became more explosive as he got older, more…’ She paused as
she searched for the right word. ‘In Arabic we say
borkan ghadab
. More than a, volcano, yes? He was angry
always. He would go a lot to the East of the city, he had friends
there. My father used to worry about him. After father’s death he
used to be away from home for days on end. He drove my mother
half-mad with worry, but he would always turn up in the end,
usually in a very bad state, half-starved. He wouldn’t talk to Mum
about himself, but he was always close to Daoud. He lost a lot of
weight over that time.’

Aisha stopped
walking and pulled her cigarettes out. She lit one and offered them
to me. I hesitated but took one. We stood together and Aisha
gestured down the street towards her house, her eyes shining in the
sodium light.

‘
I heard them
arguing one night, out in the garden by the olive trees. Daoud was
telling Hamad to stay away from someone or something and he was
hissing back at Daoud. They were arguing in whispers, but of course
they became louder as the argument became fierce between them.
After this, Hamad was gone for a month. Daoud used his business
contacts to try and keep track of him. But Hamad had disappeared.
Daoud heard he was in Lebanon and finally he drove up through Syria
and across to Lebanon to look for him. It’s not a long drive. We
have some business in Lebanon and the people there tried to help
Daoud, but of course it was too late. Hamad was in the south and
had gone across the Israeli border.’