A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar (12 page)

‘How can I teach her when I can’t speak to her?’ I complain, but Millicent only answers, every time, ‘Ask, and it shall be given’.

I keep on knocking but it does not open. I sit opposite Khadega, both of us cross-legged on a suzani rug. I continually fail to understand her, or to be understood. The expression on her ill-formed face grows ever darker as I painfully try to extract words from her until I want to pull up the suzani threads, unravel the images of pomegranates and leaves and use the threads to wrap around her neck and half-strangle her, she is so insolent. It is an immense relief when Lolo brings refreshments and I am released so that Millicent can spend the remaining hour with her.

After luncheon today Millicent held a makeshift service in the courtyard, and telling Khadega that this is our normal practice she invited her to join. They knelt together and bowed their heads.
Dear Lord
. I watched Khadega’s mouth move over the sounds as Millicent incanted the lines. When the prayers ended Millicent picked up Khadega’s hand and rubbed it, pressing the surface veins on the top of her hand like violin strings.

Afterwards, they came into the small kitchen and Millicent instructed Lolo to ‘do something domestic’ with her. They stood at the table and she ‘helped’ Lolo. They cut the wild garlic and the grasses Lolo uses to flavour our food and, as they cut, Millicent asked Khadega questions, only the simpler of which I could understand. Does your father respect you? Does your mother understand you? Are your sisters kind, or cruel? Khadega was not forthcoming, particularly about her family, but eventually she answered: my mother hates me, Rami also, and my father only loves Lamara, the pretty one.

As the questions continued I noticed that Lizzie had left the courtyard. I went down into the garden to see if she were there. Despite the dead-heat of the mid-afternoon, Lizzie was walking towards the small native outhouse at the bottom of the orchard. I ran behind her.

‘The conspiracy has set in somewhat, hasn’t it, darling?’ Lizzie said. She was wearing a long blue Chinese smock without the satin trousers and her hair was untidily gathered at the back of her neck. A blue convolvulus flower was poked behind her ear; it was wilted. She snapped a small branch off a jujube date tree and hit it, gently, on leaves of the small shrub-like trees that make up a hedge, not looking at me.

‘Where are you going?’

‘For a walk.’

‘She’s monopolising all her time, isn’t she?’ I said.

Lizzie stood upright, as if shaking off an unwanted thought and flicked a leaf with irritation.

‘What?’

‘Millicent. She’s focusing totally on Khadega. It leaves us out, rather.’

‘Oh. That. All in the name of evangelism.’ She was squinting in the sheer light.

‘Yes.’

Lizzie turned away from me. I stumbled after her; the heat was ferocious, and the fabric of my satin trousers began immediately to soak with my sweat.

‘Shall I come? Let me get Ai-Lien and we’ll come with you.’

‘No. It’s too hot for the baby out here.’

‘Oh, she won’t mind. She’ll sleep.’

‘No.’

‘She is a native after all.’

Lizzie backed away from me as if offended by my presence, then turned, and when I called out her name, she didn’t look back. She opened the gate at the bottom of the garden.

‘Take a hat at least,’ I shouted pointlessly, ‘or a scarf.’ She walked out despite the sun, each strand of hair looking as though it might at any moment be set on fire, her long cotton robe flapping about her legs, the camera held on its leather strap around her neck.

I watched her go for a moment, puzzled as to why Millicent asked Khadega so many questions and why they spent so much time in the kitchen, but as I write this now it occurs to me that she intends to infiltrate Khadega’s home and convince her that there are better alternatives. Home, after all, is the central province, the base of power. If Khadega’s conversion is to be successful then she will be cast out from her family, and it is likely that she will be isolated, condemned, despised and rejected. The only way to persuade a young woman to undertake such an experience is to convince her that where she currently abides is oppressive, and to offer her an alternative, better sanctuary. Entry to the home represents, for Millicent, the ultimate missionary goal of entry to the heart, gateway to the soul.

These are her techniques, now I can see them, and this, I presume, is how she cast her spell on Lizzie.

12.
London, Present Day

Chestnut Road, Norwood

Whoever Irene Guy was, she was certainly a hoarder. The room was carpeted with a well-walked-on beige shag and in the air was the distinctive smell of old lady. A suggestion of skin, pieces of person everywhere, hair, flakes, scalp and nails, all become dust and settled, now unsettled by Frieda. Once, Frieda remembered now, she had looked up the constitution of dust and saw that it was dead skin cells and the dried faeces and desiccated corpses of dust mites. Lovely.

The room was a heap of indistinguishable matter, so much of it that Frieda had the sensation of being ingested. A nut-brown sofa commanded the centre of the lounge, covered in magazines, papers, books, knitting needles and endless piles of debris. Hanging above a faux-marble mantel that rested over an alcove where once a fireplace might have been was a large print of a map. A river ran through the centre, leading off to a heavenly, celestial horizon. The tributaries were all labelled: ‘The River of Death’ running towards ‘The Desert of Eternal Despair’. Along the bottom was a quote: ‘Know, prudent cautious self-control is wisdom’s root.’

Frieda walked slowly around, both wanting to touch everything, and not to. She had asked a friend, Emma, to come with her, but she was busy, and so alone, like an absurd burglar, she began to look for clues as to who Irene Guy had been.

In front of the window she realised that there was a large brass birdcage and was disconcerted to see that inside it was an owl. Frieda looked at it, assuming it was stuffed, and then looked again. No. It was possibly breathing. Its eyes were closed. Tufts of feathers around its ears – were they ears? Its wildness was a shock. Tawny feathers. It was odd enough, to be allowed into a strange house, a stranger’s house, and Frieda felt peculiar, a trespasser, but she was not sure what she was supposed to do with a live bird.

The owl did not move and so she backed away from it and walked over to a bureau and opened a narrow drawer. It was stuffed with old Christmas cards.
To Irene, Merry Christmas, love George and Rini, Xmas 1981
.

The bedroom was a rush and clash of colour. There were throws, rugs, cushions and very bright purple curtains. Several rugs layered each other on the floor, with felt patterns and appliqué motifs edged with crouching stitches. Frieda sat on the bed, slightly oppressed by the burden of a stranger’s intimate space.

In the corner of the room Frieda saw a dusty glass dome. She bent down and swiped at the dust on the glass. Inside was an entire street scene in miniature at the centre of which was a temple, complete with a monkey on its roof. There was a shop with a hanging sign saying ‘money counter’ and a row of red flags with Chinese characters imprinted in gold. Next to the stall was a doorway labelled ‘opium den’ and in front of it a market stall where three upside-down chickens hung, tied at their feet, Peking style. At the end of the street were two figures in Chinese dress standing next to a donkey. There was a key lodged into a thick wooden base and when she turned it, clicking it round, gently, twice, a mechanical version of an oriental tune played out and the figures began to move, wonkily. The donkey raised its head up and down, in and out of a miniature water trough. It’s charming, she thought.

She wiped away more of the dust with the sleeve of her black woollen cardigan and, as she did so, a grumble came from what she assumed must be the airing cupboard in the hall. The heating seemed to be on. She walked back into the living room. A strip of late-afternoon light striped the carpet, cut across objects scattered all around the floor and climbed the wall at an angle.

The owl’s eyes were still closed. Only once, previously, had she seen an owl this close and that was in the foyer of a hotel in Moscow. That had been a tawny thing, magical, mainly because of its Russianness. She had looked into the eyes of that Russian owl before going to bed in the small, chilly room and dreamed all night of spiders and leaves. This owl was bigger, with more white feathers layered amongst the brown ones. It still did not move, though it seemed to be alive. Frieda began to calculate. If the funeral had been on the thirty-first of August, then it must have been at least a few days, or even a week, before that when Irene Guy died. The owl must not have been fed for – well over a week. Could that be possible? And what did owls eat, anyway?

Frieda wrapped the entire birdcage, complete with the owl inside, in two bin liners that she had fished out of one of Irene Guy’s kitchen drawers. She strapped the cage into her bicycle basket – luckily, an old-fashioned large one – using string found in the same drawer. She had looked through endless books, cards and picture, but was still unclear as to who Irene Guy was. Trudging, invasively, through a lifetime of ephemera proved to be tiring, and eventually Frieda decided to come back the next day to look for photographs. But how could she leave a living owl?

Rain came at her like small knives. She cycled carefully along the route that went past one of Nathaniel’s favourite pubs in Brixton. London traffic has neither heart nor compassion for a cycling woman and particularly cruel are the screeching black cabs that skirt up against her wheels. Glowing ahead was the pub, shining potently like a castle on a hill in a fairy story, and Frieda knew that there was a high chance that Nathaniel would be in there. The poor owl hadn’t made a noise and she could only presume that a detour at this stage wouldn’t hurt it. Dripping with rain, she poked her head through the door.

‘Is it OK to bring my bike in?’

The barman nodded. Balancing the bike against the wall, Frieda left the cage in the basket covered in its bin liner and stood damply at the bar examining the wine list. Within a minute a hand pressed flat against the small of her back.

‘Frie’,’ Nathaniel said, ‘naughty of you but marvellous.’ He was several glasses in and less conscious of onlookers than usual. He grabbed at her hand and pulled it towards himself.

‘I’m exhausted to my core, no help in the shop, just me,’ he said, holding out his oil-stained fingers. ‘What do you want, Pinot Grigio?’

Frieda smiled at him. ‘I’d love one. Yes.’

‘Good girl,’ he said. She was about to tell him not to good-girl her, as if she were a Girl Guide leader, but didn’t bother. He had some difficulty balancing himself on the bar stool next to her, but once done he immediately put his hand on her knee and gave it a squeeze. The pores on his nose were open and more visible than usual.

‘You’re looking delicious,’ he said. ‘Windswept.’

‘Hmm. You’re not.’

He put his hand up towards her lips, as if to shush her, but lurched forward and accidentally jabbed her cheek instead. She pushed his hand away.

‘What brings you to my humble office?’ He cast his hand around like an estate agent demonstrating the width of the kitchen. He put his hand back on her leg, this time further up her thigh.

‘Know anything about owls?’

‘Only stuffed ones. Taxidermy. Tried it once, pretty gory.’

Frieda very much wanted to talk to him about the letter, the flat, the owl, the hotel and the estrangement of being back here. She had a list in her head. The police and military vans, for one. The rules from the Sheikh. The cutting of the hair, already a lifetime away and also, a growing frustration with her job and a sense of wanting to do something else. Just the thought of the fluorescent-lit boardrooms aflutter with earnest interns caused Frieda a migraine. From unfortunate sandwiches eaten under an umbrella whilst wandering along the Strand to losing hours to an inadequate phone system, Central London office life with its persistent slipping away of time was gently barbaric, and this barbarism was highlighted by the surreal contrast of the assignments abroad: she came back sun-blinded from foreign colours to sink down into English grey.

She looked at the grey in Nathaniel’s black hair and realised that she had not noticed it before. When did that arrive? Everything she had to say, about where she was currently, slipped on to the floor beneath the bar stool. She sipped her drink.