The Flood (21 page)

‘May,’ she corrected him, slightly coquettishly. He had fine features, a noble hooked nose not so different from Alfred’s, though finer, thinner. She reminded herself she was doing this for Dirk, so there was no harm in sitting talking. ‘What was your name again, Jehan…?’

‘Jehangir, Mary, Jehangir. In the Koran, Jehangir is the son of Aqbar, which means the Mighty One. They call him Shah-han-soar, which is, the king above other king –’

‘King of Kings,’ she helped him out. She wished he would offer her another biscuit. In his culture, it might be rude to reach out and take one, from the small gilt plate on the pretty table, for May understood about different cultures, unlike her husband, who had been a little narrow. It was lovely, a man looking after her. Alfred hardly ever made her cups of coffee.

‘Yes, Mary. Kings of King, Kings of King. Aqbar takes a Hindu woman, makes her Muslim, marries her …’

This was encouraging, to May. ‘I once knew a nice Hindu,’ she confided. ‘I like your religion, with everyone included. I didn’t realize it was like that. My friend was the man who ran the post office. Mr Varsani. Very honest. Though Alfred didn’t think so. My husband got a thing about his change … But I like the idea we could all be together.’

But her new friend fired up at once. ‘Hindu don’t have Book!’ he said, indignant. ‘This is rubbish religion, if they don’t have Book.’

‘Mr Varsani was very sincere,’ said May, thrown off course; she had thought he would be pleased. ‘Indian, like you,’ reproachfully. ‘I don’t suppose you knew him?’

‘I am Pakistani, Mary!’

May had never really understood the difference. ‘Don’t you think all religions are good? Hindus do,’ she suddenly remembered. ‘My daughter told me that’s what Hindus believe.’

But this was a definite wrong turning. ‘Let me explain you Hindus,’ he said, leaping up, flashing his eyebrows, smiling, mocking, looking rather elderly once he was in motion, with a little pot belly that quivered as he gestured. ‘If I say to you, “Now we worship the cow”, you say to me, “Rubbish, rubbish, dear”. This is the Hindu: he worship the cow. God never forgive you to worship the cow.’

May decided to back off Hindus. It was One Way, after all; Hindus couldn’t get in.

Now Jehangir returned to the theme of marriage. He didn’t like cows, but he did like trees, and waxed lyrical now as he sat close to May and explained how the God made the trees pregnant, smiling at her with tender meaning. His breath smelled sweetish and peppery; he was very intense; his lips were red; after a while his voice was hypnotic. He was looking deep into her eyes.

May tried to hotch away very slightly, and a spring in the chair poked sharply at her buttocks. She blushed, hotly, remembering her mission. She reached for her coat (which she’d slipped off, as they chatted, embarrassed by its worn fur collar, wishing she had worn her best blue one) and pulled, from the pocket where her money was, her newspaper cutting with the photograph of Dirk.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘This is my youngest boy. You must know him. Where can I find him?’

‘White fella,’ he said, sounding disappointed, as if her son should have been Pakistani.

‘Do you know him? You don’t know him.’ Her heart sank. She had been buoyed up with hope, and the pleasure of the chat. Now it all seemed empty. Jehangir didn’t know him. She started to gather her things together.

‘There are hundred, hundreds hundred, thousands hundred, One Way people now,’ he told her, whirling his hands about. ‘I know only the Muslim people, Mary. Muslim people very good people.’ There was a long pause while she buttoned her coat; her fingers felt like someone else’s; the coat seemed unwilling to be buttoned, as if her body wanted to get out. He watched her, his eyes intent and hot. Suddenly they were gazing at each other; she was out of her depth, too old, too frail, but her eyes gazed, and her body sweated, and she failed to force the button through the buttonhole.

‘If I marry you, you can become Muslim. I can have four wives, the Koran say.’ He smiled a complicated, ghastly smile, a mixture of lust and gallantry and despair because he knew she was going.

May was touched and upset by his need of her, but as pity began, her excitement vanished. Men were needy: she knew about that, but she made it to her feet, she extended her hand. In any case, he didn’t really mean it.

‘I’m going,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very kind. Thank you for telling me about your religion.’ She stood there smiling with her hand stretched out.

But she had forgotten some courtesy, some essential stage in the dance of compliments, and now the good will was cooling, dying. She had got it wrong as she often did. Her friend was staring at the floor again, eyes darting up briefly to hers, then away. His parting, from above, looked very straight, and very white. Without meaning to, she had rejected him. Now he had some moral high ground to reclaim.

‘My religion very strict,’ he said, sullenly. ‘All bad thing banneded, very banneded. I am always good Muslim, Mary.’

‘May. I hope I haven’t made you go against your religion.’

He bowed, stiffly, ignoring her hand.

The sun kept shining all that day. It was only April; clocks had not gone forward; but this was the third day in succession the light had managed to survive the morning. People who were living provisionally, waiting for the world to heal itself, came out and dared to stand on the pavement. The centre, where flooding had only been minor, had for some time been grey and ghostly, since the outlying population had lost faith in public transport. Probably not much was different today, except for the sun and the government statement. But that was all they needed: hope.

Today was the Gala. Miraculously. Four days ago, people had been sneering at the thought of the city celebrating its history. Now they stretched and sniffed the air. The damp squares and the flowerless gardens soon became thronged with noisy people, smiling at strangers, almost skittish, not worrying how they were going to get home, enjoying air, movement, colour, the queer kiss of daylight on their skin. Blades of grass, sodden with water, shook off the drops, sprang up again. Birds sang deafeningly of spring. Beggars came out from their soaked smelly shelters: ‘Lovely day, miss, sir’ they said, and dared to smile into people’s faces as they stretched out their caps and boxes towards them, feeling, for once, they were part of the others, all of them sharing the same good news. People were generous, because they were happy.

The clean-up campaign was really getting going. Soldiers had been working for seventy-two hours and the worst of the mud had been jetted off the buildings, scrubbed off the kerbs, washed into the drains. The big hotels sported notices, ‘Open For Business As Usual’. Some had imported flowers for their window-boxes; looked at closely, they were spread thin, but passers-by exclaimed with delight to see red tulips and peonies waving, frail as butterflies, silk-skinned and fragile, warm small flames to burn away darkness. The commissionaires, who had slumped into depression, unable to show their caps and gold braid, burst like kings on to the drying sidewalk, blinking at the daylight they had almost forgotten, their drink-pinked cheeks like old rose-petals, shining and wrinkling in the sun, proud of their pitches, at ease, benign, doffing their caps to pretty women and customers, puffing their chests like turkey-cocks, booming their wares with baritone abandon, rib-cages straining at golden frogging: ‘Taxi, madam?
Righty-ho’,
tossing tips in the air before pocketing them, white in the light on their long spin down.
‘Lovely
day, madam.
Lovely
day.’

They were starting to believe they had turned the corner. The way things had been going, the hotel trade was finished – no one would ever take holidays in a city sliding under the sea. Now suddenly they were going to have a good night. The most distant city airport, on higher ground than the others, had been re-opened, by government decree. The rumour was, plane-loads of celebrities were coming, attracted to the city by giant bribes. The heart of the Gala was a smart fancy-dress party, invitation only, at Government Palace, with fireworks in Victory Square at midnight. (There would be another, smaller display of fireworks just after sunset for the Towers; the government had to do something for these people, but the Gala brochures were slightly vague; the Towers were not on the Central Map.) Highlights of the evening would be shown on giant screens that were being erected all over the country. After months of staying in, the crowds streamed out:
‘Lovely
day, madam,
lovely
day.’

Street sellers were out with trays, even a stall or two had been set up, selling flags and badges saying ‘CITY GALA’, and people bought them, and stuck them on their jackets.

One little boy had six on his coat, run across his front like medals. His young mother led him proudly along by the hand, enjoying the way people smiled at him. Joe walked with his head up, swinging his arms, solid, sturdy, the hope of the city, his ginger hair fire-red in the sun. He began to sing, loudly, ‘Happy Birthday’; his mum had said it was the city’s birthday. Torn between joy and embarrassment, she walked without looking at him, grinning at strangers, miming ‘Isn’t he a show-off?’, but knowing show was what they needed.

‘I came because it’s such a lovely day,’ said Angela, lying, as Gerda ran towards her from the gates of the school and into her arms, splashing her horribly, shouting ‘Mum! Mum! What are you doing here?’

‘Don’t look so surprised,’ Angela said,
sotto voce.
‘Anyone would think I never come to meet you.’ People, she thought, were looking at her; they recognized her, doubtless; she felt ashamed.

‘Well, you don’t ever come to meet me,’ Gerda said, factually, then with the acute sensitivity of the child who has to worry if Mummy is happy, ‘It doesn’t matter, Mummy, don’t be sad.’

She clutched her mother’s hand very tightly. ‘This is my mummy,’ she announced, proudly, to anyone they met, as they walked to the car. ‘I was good at swimming,’ she told her. ‘I taught the others to jump in.’

Her mother liked it when she did well. Gerda tried to think of good things to tell her. Mum was looking pretty, in her fluffy pink coat, with nice lipstick and shiny yellow hair, so different from Grandma, all pleated and old, with funny damp skin and always worrying. She loved her grandma, but she was embarrassing.

Gerda spotted Miss Habib with a box of playdough. ‘Oh Mummy, please, that’s my teacher, she knows you’re a writer, she’s dying to meet you –’ (Miss Habib had never said any such thing, but Gerda so wanted to show off her mother.)

‘Do we have to?’ asked Angela, but then she looked down and saw an expression of such disappointment that she said, ‘Of course. It’s just, you know, I want to take you into town.’

‘Miss, Miss, this is my mother.’

Rhuksana was putting the playdough in her boot; her head was inside, so she couldn’t at first tell whose mother she was meant to meet. Though she longed to get home to hear the news about Loya, she came up smiling, ready to please, but when she saw it was Gerda’s mother, whom she’d never met, who never even came to parents’ evening, the famous author, the Iceland winner – sleek and shiny, smelling of money, her lipstick mark clear as a wound on Gerda’s cheek – she couldn’t help stiffening nervously, and her smile wavered, till she hauled it back up again.

‘Rhuksana Habib. Delighted to meet you.’

‘Lovely to meet
you,’
Angela deferred, though she’d noticed that moment of instinctive dislike. She was a novelist; she noticed. ‘I hear such wonderful things about you.’

‘Thank you.’ There was an uncertain pause. Seeing Gerda’s upturned, eager face, Rhuksana made an effort.

‘She’s a delightful child. Of course, very bright.’

Angela nodded, modestly. Of course Gerda was bright; it was hereditary. ‘Is she a good girl, most of the time?’ she asked, remembering the scene that morning. ‘I know they can all be terrors, sometimes.’

Gerda looked up at her, indignant. ‘She’s a pleasure to teach,’ said Rhuksana, coolly.

‘Bit wilful, sometimes,’ Angela smiled, trying to indicate she knew her daughter. ‘Bit of a bossy-boots, like me.’ Trying to disarm her, to win her over, but Gerda said, ‘I’m not bossy.’

Rhuksana’s smile faded. ‘Not at all, Mrs Lamb. She’s very sensible, in school.’

‘I’m not sensible,’ Gerda remarked, very definitely, with a stubborn face. ‘Grown-ups have to be sensible. I’m not a grown-up. My mummy is a writer,’ she added, proudly. ‘She’s a famous writer. Have you read her books?’

‘I wish I had,’ Rhuksana lied. ‘But I know she’s famous. Everyone does. My husband’s in publishing, actually,’ she added.

‘Oh really?’ asked Angela, and then, for Gerda, the conversation became infinitely tedious, the kind of conversation that grown-ups had, all names and places she knew nothing about.

‘…but very commercial,’ her mother was saying. ‘Their books do sell, that’s the main thing. I’m sure he’ll be very happy there.’

‘He doesn’t like it there, in fact,’ Rhuksana said. She wasn’t going to be patronized. Mohammed got patronized every single day. ‘He thinks they’re, well, a bit patronizing.’

There was a silence. Angela blushed. Had she been patronizing? Surely not. But Asian people were hypersensitive.

‘In any case, he’s trying to change their image. He’s found at least one remarkable book –’ Rhuksana continued, and then broke off. She would never convince this woman of anything.

‘What’s “patronizing”?’ Gerda asked, and then, not waiting for an answer, tugged sharply at Angela’s hand. ‘Why can’t we go?’ she said. She thought, with a small growing nugget of unhappiness, perhaps my teacher doesn’t like my mother.

The two women began to edge away from each other, making small, ineffectual gestures of appeasement.

‘Such a beautiful day,’ Rhuksana tried.

‘Gorgeous,’ Angela agreed, heartily. ‘Did you hear the news?’ she added, shading her eyes against the light. ‘The government says the worst is definitely over. Oh, and they think the flood defences were sabotaged.’ She suddenly remembered this wasn’t tactful; sabotage was usually blamed on the Muslims.