What Came Before He Shot Her (60 page)

Fabia joined her, looking pleased. Ness assumed her expression had to do with finding a subject of probation doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing while on probation. But when Fabia spoke, it was on another subject.

She said, “Hullo, Ness. I have some good news. Some
very
good news, if I might add. I think we’ve come up with a solution that’s going to allow you to attend that course at the college.”

Ness had given up hope of this. Anything other than her dismal music-appreciation course during the autumn term was a long-ago im-possibility at this point, and when that had become apparent to her in weeks gone by, she’d dismissed the thought of millinery altogether, bitterly concluding that anything Fabia Bender had said about looking into matters in order to help her finance her dream was just an example of the social worker blowing smoke to placate her.

But Fabia was there to prove her wrong. She said, “We’ve got the money. It took some doing because most funding had already been al-located for the year, but I did manage to find a rather obscure programme based in Lambeth and . . .” Fabia brushed aside the rest of the explanation. “Oh, the details don’t matter. What does matter is the course itself and getting you into it for the winter term.”

Ness could hardly believe things had fallen into place since the rest of her life had never given her an indication that such could possibly happen. But now . . . The certificate course would mean that she had the opportunity for a real career, not merely a job at which she worked day after day just waiting for something to happen to alter her circumstances.

Still, life had taught her to be cautious about excitement. She said,

“They going to accept me? Dat course started in September, innit.

How’d I catch up wiv the rest of the girls if I missed the opening? They give the same courses in the winter term? Cos they ain’t lettin me join up if I missed the first part, are they?”

Fabia drew her eyebrows together. It took her a moment to unravel what Ness was talking about. Then she realised. They were going at two slightly different subjects. She said, “Oh. No, no. Not the
certifi -

cate
course, Ness. Wouldn’t it be lovely if I’d managed to find full funding for that? But alas, I haven’t. What I do have is one hundred pounds for a single course. I’ve had a look at the college catalogue and there
are
single courses available.”

“Jus’ one . . . ? Oh. Yeah. Well. Figgers.” Ness didn’t attempt to hide her disappointment.

Fabia was used to this sort of reaction. She said, “Hang on, Ness.

You can only take one course at a time anyway. You’ve got your work to do here, and I can assure you that the magistrate has bent as far as he’s going to bend when it comes to you. He isn’t going to rescind the requirement for community service. That’s something we can’t even think about, my dear.”

Ness said in less than gracious fashion, “So wha’ course is it, den?”

“There are three actually, so you have your choice. But there’s one small problem, although it’s hardly insurmountable. None of the courses—and this includes the entire certification programme, by the way—are offered here at the Wornington Road college site.”

“Then where the hell’re they offered?”

“At a place called the Hortensia Centre. Near Fulham Broadway.”

“Fulham
Broadway
?” It might as well have been the moon. “How’m I s’posd to get down to Fulham Broadway, wivvout money for transport? Like you say, I got to do community service here. I can’t do dat an’ get a job ’s well to pay for transport—if there was any jobs, which there ain’t. And anyways, what’s one bloody course at some Hortensia Centre going to do f’r me? Nuffink, far ’s I c’n see.”

“I did think your aunt might be able to—”

“She works in a
charity
shop, Fabia. Wha’ d’you t’ink she makes for doin dat? I ain’t askin her for money. Forget dat shit.”

Majidah had come to the kitchen door, having heard the agitation in Ness’s voice, not to mention the volume, her grammar, and her choice of language. She said, “What is this, Vanessa? Have you forgotten there are small and impressionable children in the very next room? They are ears and sponges. Have I not told you this more than once? Profanity is an unacceptable form of expression in this building. If you cannot find another means of sharing your displeasure, then you must leave.”

Ness said nothing in reply. She merely slammed the biscuit containers back into the cupboards. She took the trays through to the play-room as a means of ending her conversation with Fabia Bender, which gave Majidah time to learn what it was that had caused her agitation.

By the time Ness was back in the kitchen, the Asian woman knew it all.

Particularly, she’d concluded that Ness’s interest in millinery had been the result of her visit to Sayf al Din’s studio in Covent Garden. Majidah was secretly thrilled by this. Ness was openly embarrassed. Ness hated the thought of fulfilling anyone’s expectations of her, and while she could not know what Majidah’s expectations were, the fact that Ness’s interest in millinery had arisen from her visit to the Soho studio was enough to suggest that Majidah was somehow responsible. In Ness’s mind, that gave the Asian woman power, and power was the last thing Ness wanted her to have.

“So,” Majidah said when Ness set the trays down on the work top.

“This is how you react to a small setback, is it? Miss Bender brings you news—which any other human being of reasonable intellect would be forced to consider good, is this not the case?—and because it is not
precisely
the news you wish to hear, you throw the apples out with the bathwater, do you not?”

“What’re you on about?” Ness asked irritably.

“You know very well what I’m ‘on’ about. Girls like you, they are all the same. They want what they want in an instant. They want it tomorrow. They want it yesterday. They want the end without being capable of sustaining the effort to get to the end. They want to be . . . I do not know . . . some skinny, sickly, catwalk model, an astronaut, the arch-bishop of Canterbury. What does it matter? They always approach it the same way, do they not? And this is to say they have no plan. But even if they
did
have a plan, what would it matter since they cannot attain what they wish to attain by dinnertime? This is the problem with you girls. And boys as well. Everything must happen to you at once.

You have an idea. You want the result. Now, now, now. What nonsense this is.”

Ness said, “You finished? Cos I don’t got to stand here and listen to you rave, Majidah.”

“Oh but that is exactly what you
do
have to do, Miss Vanessa Campbell. Fabia Bender has found you an opportunity, and you bloody well will take it. And
if
you do not, then I shall have to ask her to find you another community-service placement, for I cannot be expected to put up with an adolescent girl without any brains, which is what you will be indicating you seriously lack if you do not accept the money to take the millinery course.”

Ness was struck dumb by Majidah’s use of the word
bloody
. So she made no immediate reply.

For her part, Fabia Bender was less unrelenting than the Asian woman. She told Ness to think about her offer. One hundred pounds was the best she could do. There might be more money available in the spring and summer, setting students up for the autumn term. But as for now, it was a take it or leave it proposition. Ness could think it over, but since the enrollment period was fast coming upon them, perhaps she didn’t want to think it over for too long a period . . . ?

She would not need to think it over at all, Majidah said, if
she
had anything to say about it. She would accept, she would be grateful, she would attend, she would work hard.

Well and good, Fabia told the Asian woman kindly, but Ness would have to be the one to answer.

MAJIDAH WAS DETERMINED as to what Ness’s answer would be, so the very next day she ordered her over to her flat for late-afternoon tea once the child drop-in centre was locked tight as a drum, with its security lights switched on for the night. She made her usual stops in Golborne Road, purchasing courgettes from E. Price & Son, haddock from the corner fishmonger, and a loaf of bread and carton of milk from the grocery. Then she marched her charge onto Wornington Green Estate and up to her flat where she put on the kettle. She instructed Ness to get the tea things ready, telling her that a third cup, saucer, and spoon would be required but not telling her who the additional tea drinker would be.

That became apparent soon enough. As if the boiling water were a herald, the sound of a key sliding into the door of the flat announced the arrival of Sayf al Din. He did not immediately enter, though. Rather, he cracked open the door and called out, “Ma? Are you decent?”

“What else would I be, you foolish boy?”

“Lovemaking with a rugby player? Dancing in the nude like an Isa-dora Duncan?”

“And who might that be? Some nasty English girl you’ve met? A replacement for that dentist of yours? And why might she need a replacement, I ask you? Has she at last run off with the orthodontist? This is what comes of marrying a woman who looks into other people’s mouths, Sayf al Din. It should not surprise you. I told you from the first it would happen.”

Sayf al Din came into the kitchen as his mother was speaking. He leaned against the doorjamb and tolerantly listened to her expound on her favourite topic. He was carrying a covered dish, which he extended to her when she had concluded her remarks.

“May has sent you lamb
rogan josh,
” he said. “Apparently, she had time to spend in the kitchen between her trysts with the orthodontist.”

“Am I not able to cook my own meals, Sayf al Din? What does she think? That her mother-in-law has lost her wits?”

“I think she’s trying to win you over, although I don’t know why.

All things being equal, you’re an utter monster, and she shouldn’t bother.” He came to her side and kissed her soundly, setting the covered dish on the work top.

“Hmmph,” was his mother’s response. She looked pleased, however, and she peeked beneath the foil covering and sniffed suspiciously.

Sayf al Din said hello to Ness as he poured boiling water into the teapot and gave it a few swishes to heat the porcelain. He and his mother fell into a rhythm of making tea together, and as they did so, they talked family matters quite as if Ness were not in the room. His brothers, their wives, his sisters, their husbands, their children, their jobs, a new automobile purchase, an upcoming family dinner to celebrate a first birthday, someone’s pregnancy, someone else’s DIY remodeling project. They brought tea to the table, accompanied by Majidah’s pappadums. They sliced a fruitcake and toasted bread as well. They sat, they poured, they used milk and sugar.

Ness wondered what she was to make of all this: mother and son in harmony together. It left her with a raw feeling inside. She wanted to leave this place, but she knew Majidah would not permit it because she also knew Majidah’s ways by now and one of them was to do nothing without a purpose. She would have to wait to see what that purpose was.

This became clear when the Asian woman took an envelope from the windowsill where it stood propped up behind the treasured photo of herself and her first husband, the father of Sayf al Din. She slid this across the table to Ness and told her to open it. They would, she said, then speak further on a topic most important to all of them.

Inside the envelope, Ness found sixty pounds in ten-pound notes.

This, Majidah told her, was the money she needed for transport. It was not a gift—Majidah did not believe in giving gifts of cash to adolescent girls who were not only not relatives but also quasi-criminals in the midst of fulfilling their sentences to community service—but rather a loan. It was meant to be repaid with interest, and it
would
be repaid if Ness knew what was good for her.

Ness made a not illogical assumption about the use to which this money was to be put. She said, “How’m I s’posed to pay dis back if I’m goin to dat class and workin in the drop-in centre and I got no job?”

“Oh, this is not money for your transport to Fulham Broadway, Vanessa,” Majidah then informed her. “This is to be used to travel to Covent Garden, where you will
earn
the money for transport to Fulham Broadway as well as the money to repay this loan.” To Sayf al Din, she said, “Tell her, my son.”

Sayf al Din did so. Rand was no longer in his employ. Her husband, alas, had put a stop to her working in the same room as another man, even draped in her claustrophobic
chador
.

“Foolish idiot,” Majidah interjected redundantly.

Sayf al Din thus had to hire a replacement for her. His mother had told him that Ness was interested in millinery, so if she wished for em-ployment, he would be happy to take her on. She wouldn’t earn a fortune, but she would be able save enough—after repaying Majidah, his mother put in—to finance her transport to Fulham Broadway.

But hadn’t Rand worked for Sayf al Din full time? Ness wanted to know. And how could she do Rand’s work—or even a small part of her work—when she still had to do her community service?

That, Majidah informed her, would not be a problem. First of all, Rand at work had all the speed of a tortoise under anesthetic, her vision being occluded by that foolish black bedsheet she insisted upon wearing as if Sayf al Din would ravish her on the spot had he the opportunity to lay his eyes upon her. It would hardly take a full-time employee to replace her. Indeed, a one-armed monkey could probably do the job. Secondly, Ness would divide her day into two equal parts, spending half the time fulfilling her sentence to community service and the other half working for Sayf al Din. That, by the way, had already been arranged, cleared, signed, sealed, and delivered by Fabia Bender.

But, Ness said, when was she supposed to take the millinery course?

How was she supposed to do all three things: work for Sayf al Din, fulfill her obligations to community service, and take the millinery course as well? She
couldn’t
do all three.