Beauty (13 page)

Beauty Begum found an empty café and asked the large woman in a pink apron behind the counter for a pot of tea and a piece of flapjack. The smell of frying
haram
food didn’t bother her. Let other people eat what they wanted.

It’s a free world, aynit?

The woman called her ‘dook’, and said she’d bring it over.

‘We ay busy at the minute,’ she said, and winked at the pretty Indian girl.

Beauty chose a seat with her back to the wall, away from the windows. She had an hour to wait until the Jobcentre opened. She reached across to the next table and picked up a newspaper. It would pass the time and give her an excuse to drink the tea slowly.

She hurried past the topless white girl on the inside page, and tried to work out the stories from their photos: an open-mouthed bearded man, fist outstretched, shouting about something – Pakistani probably; that Prince boxer next to a picture of a smashed car; the beaten-up face of a man lying in a hospital bed next to a smaller photo of a group of hooded white boys; a row of girls with oiled bodies and bikinis; girls in white underwear lying on a bed touching each others’ thighs, with speech bubbles coming from their mouths.

She looked up as a small Indian man slipped into the seat at the table next to hers.

‘Oright?’

Beauty kissed her teeth and studied a picture of a Sikh with a large nose throwing a cricket ball.

‘You go to that RiteSkills course too?’ he insisted, spreading his toast.

‘So?’

She knew his type. London was full of Asian perverts like him, trying to pick up young girls in the street. Unless you were wearing a niqab
.
And sometimes even then.

‘It’s a bit early, innit?’ he said, looking at his heavy gold watch.

‘I’ve got to go to the Jobcentre.’

Beauty watched him suck margarine from his hairy, gold-ringed little finger. He was short, his high heels barely reaching the floor. His curly, blow-dried hair was dyed black. Yellow margarine clung to the hairs of his dyed moustache.

‘It do’ open till nine o’clock, y’know,’ he said.

‘I know that.’ Beauty covered her face with her hand and turned the pages of the newspaper again, staring unseeing at the row of near-naked bodies.

‘Nice girls in there?’ he asked.

She shut the paper.

No Asian bloke’s gonna say anything rude to me again!

‘What you doing out so early?’ she asked him. ‘Perving at young girls in cafés? What does your wife say about that?’

The little man tried to laugh it off, but Beauty had gone before he could answer.

Mark Aston went downstairs in his shorts to make some coffee. He’d heard the Paki bird – sorry, Bengali – leave the house earlier. He sat down on the sofa, scratched and
looked at the small rucksack by the front door. He’d told her she could leave it while she sorted her shit out up town. He’d be at home later on. Where else would he be? Bob hadn’t rung him with any work for today, and he couldn’t be arsed going to that course.

Waste a fookin’ time – better off giwin round the garages and looking for a proper fookin’ job.

He rolled a cigarette. At least he had enough ’bacca left for the day, but that was all, apart from the sixteen pence on top of the television. The only other thing he could think of was to get a ten of weed on credit, and sell half of it to Pete. Then he’d have something to smoke and a fiver to get a few cans.

Beauty hurried down Darlington Street towards the Crown House Jobcentre, keeping close to the shop windows. Her brothers wouldn’t do anything to her in front of other people, but she didn’t want to see them anyway. Perhaps they wouldn’t think to look for her there. Dulal would probably send the little one to watch the RiteSkills place.

A group of silent people waited outside the closed doors of Crown House. Beauty tried not to look at anyone. She thought about what to say to Jackie, her adviser, but was drawn to the worried expressions of the others’ faces. A black guy paced about muttering. An old lady in a violet mac smiled at Beauty when their eyes met. A white boy leaned against the wall in a black tracksuit and white Nike plastic cap, one foot raised under him.

They got problems, too?

The doors opened at nine o’clock and the black guy rushed inside. The white boy let Beauty pass before peeling himself off the wall and following her into the building.

A uniformed black security guard took up position next
to the glass doors and metal detector, and gave each person a quick glance.

Beauty waited in line. She gave her surname and National Insurance number to the receptionist at the Client Enquiries desk, and explained that she needed to see her adviser urgently. She took her ticket and sat down away from other people, but as the queue lengthened the seats began to fill up near her.

Don’t let anyone sit here.

A thin, pale-faced Asian woman in jeans and an army jacket, with bulging eyes and unkempt hair, came towards the empty seat next to Beauty, dragging a large-eyed five-year-old boy in an anorak. Beauty smiled at the boy hiding at his mother’s side, and leaned forward to poke her tongue out at him. The child squirmed out of view behind his mother.

The woman dragged the boy out to stand in front of her.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘He’s really naughty.’

‘Are you naughty?’ Beauty asked him. ‘He’s beautiful,’ she said to the mother.

‘Apni?’
she asked Beauty. Are you one of us?
‘Kya toom Pakistani ho?’

‘No, I’m Bengali,’ said Beauty. ‘Are you from this place?’ she added, to avoid answering more questions.

The woman was happy to talk about herself as they waited. She’d left Manchester with her Hindu boyfriend five years ago to have their baby. Her family didn’t want to know her or the kid and she hadn’t seen them since.

Five years without seeing her Ama! For a Hindu bloke!

Beauty prompted her, and listened to the flow of words as she stared into the boy’s large eyes. At least this lady had a child to look after.

She doesn’t have to worry about herself.

When her number was called Beauty was relieved to get away from the woman and her story. She made her way past the other advisers’ desks and the backs of their ‘clients’ to the far end of the room.

A plump, middle-aged woman in a blue skirt and jacket stood up and smiled.

‘It’s Beauty, isn’t it? How are you? Take a seat.’

Jackie remembered her well. The girl had sworn at her when she gave her the application form for the Basic Skills course.

Beauty sat down on the blue office chair and said nothing.

‘How can I help? How’s the course going?’

‘I had to leave home.’

Beauty bit her lip and looked at her hands on her lap.

Jackie understood. She’d had diversity awareness training in Walsall. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Beauty said.

‘Have you got somewhere to stay?’

She thought of Mark’s bathroom. ‘No.’

‘Have you got any money?’

The question hurt, but there was no one near enough to hear. ‘I can get some – maybe a hundred pounds.’

‘Have you got any friends you could stay with?’

Beauty shook her head. Jackie felt she was asking the wrong questions. Weren’t there often mental health issues surrounding cases like these?

‘And you can’t go back?’ she asked. The girl shook her head again without looking up.

‘Are you pregnant?’

‘No!’ Beauty said.

Was she? After a night at the white bloke’s house? Isn’t that what her mum had said? No. That Somali witch had laughed at her. You had to lie down with no clothes on like she had seen Hana doing. She shook the image out of her head.

‘Have you suffered at home from violence or abuse?’

‘No! They aynt like that!’

‘I’m sorry, I have to ask.’ There would be more money and resources available for her if she’d suffered domestic violence. Or if she was pregnant.

‘It’s family stuff,’ Beauty said. ‘They want me to get married.’

Jackie nodded. ‘Are you in any physical danger?’

‘No!’

Am I?

Jackie had seen the stories in the newspapers of women found buried in suitcases with their throats cut. There was no point in asking the girl much else. She tried to imagine what the girl might have been through. You could never tell with Asians. This one seemed different, more alert than most of the dead-eyed zombies she usually saw, prodded along by their brothers or fathers, or by mothers who spoke no English. Jackie was fed up with it. Now that ‘mandatory referral for training’ had started, she saw the thunderous-looking Indian women, on her walk to work in the mornings, hobbling and waddling across town to the various private training providers – another pointless exercise, from what she had heard so far – which had sprung up everywhere. At least her caseload had shrunk, though; she’d lost nearly half her clients. Some had found jobs to avoid being sent on the lengthy courses; others had simply signed off. Most, however, had tried to switch over to Incapacity Benefit. But the word from the DWP was that IB claimants were next on the hit list. They had six months at most until she’d have to start weeding out the serial malingerers among them.

She gave Beauty the list of refuges, telling her to come back at two o’clock when they could go through the domestic crisis forms together. The girl deserved more
help than most of the troubled white kids she had to deal with. Like the one coming towards her in the black tracksuit and white cap. Jackie sighed.

‘Hello, Chris.’

‘Yeah right,’ the boy said, sitting down and resting his elbows on her desk. ‘I still ay bin fookin’ paid. What you diwin’ about that?’

Beauty knew the lady had felt sorry for her and wanted to help, but it was shameful answering her questions. At least she hadn’t had to talk badly about her family, and she might get enough money – five hundred pounds the lady had said – from the Crisis Fund to get a room to rent. Maybe she could find an old white landlady, with a cat, and she could look after them both.

Who’s gonna take a Paki girl in?

She walked back up Darlington Street, searching the faces ahead for her brothers. The pawnshop Mark had told her about was opposite the other Jobcentre, near the bus station. Cash Generators, he’d said it was called. They bought everything.

She found it easily. The windows were full of televisions and stereo equipment, computers, cameras and PlayStations. A small display area was reserved for jewellery. Beauty looked at the rows of sovereign rings, bracelets and necklaces. Cheap, white people’s stuff. Not like the proper Asian gold in her pocket.

People came and went as if it were a normal shop. Maybe it wouldn’t be so embarrassing after all.

A young man with spots and a crest of dyed blond hair directed her down some steps to the buying counter, where a small queue of people waited. Some clutched
plastic bags or stood with boxes of household appliances between their legs. A man emptied a rucksack of DVDs onto the counter, and a tall shop assistant checked each case for the disc.

‘We can give you a pound a film,’ he said.

Beauty could only see the man’s wide frame and shapeless washed-out clothes, but she heard the anguish in his voice.

‘You gimme two quid each for the other lot!’

‘These aren’t major titles. Do you want to sell them?’

‘I’ll have to, wo’ I?’

The assistant made a pile of the DVDs and carried them to a partition at the end of the counter. The goods were checked again, the man signed a form, received the money and left, shaking his head.

Beauty looked away.

This is shameness.

Another assistant, a fat man with a badly tucked-in, beige nylon shirt, appeared from a side door. The queue shuffled forward. Two Indians took mobile phones from a supermarket carrier bag and put them on the counter. The fat man whistled.

‘These ’m ancient!’ he said, unpacking them. ‘I can’t give you more than …’

The men waited.

‘… four pound fifty.’

‘Each?’ one of the men asked.

‘For the pair. These things belong in a museum.’

The two Indians looked at each other.

‘Kya pessa lélu?’

‘Ha, lé lé.’

‘We’ll take it.’

Beauty looked away again as they came out from behind the partition.

*

When her turn came she took the gold bangles from her pocket and put them on the counter, proud of their rich colour.

‘Do you want to sell or pledge?’ the fat man asked her. She’d get more if she sold them, he explained, rather than borrowing against them. The price would depend on their weight. He gathered up her bangles and went to the side room to weigh them.

Beauty stood at the counter and waited. At least she’d have the money for a B&B for a few days. She could have a bath, and sleep.

The man returned.

‘I can give you forty-five pounds for them.’

Forty-five pounds? They were worth three times as much. She felt sick and her face burned. She looked up to protest, but stopped. Forty-five pounds for five years of misery. She wanted to snatch them out of the fat man’s hand, but knew she couldn’t.

She went to the cubicle to sign the form and poked the thin roll of bank notes into the pocket of her jeans under her kameez.

Faisal Rahman watched his older sister hurry away from the shop and back towards the town centre.
Bhai-sahb
had let him bunk off school to come and look for her, but it had been his idea to hang around outside the Jobcentres.

Beauty headed back towards Dunstall Park. She’d know tomorrow whether she would get a crisis loan from the social fund, and how much it would be. Her adviser had told her that based on her age, number of weeks signing on and her ability to repay fortnightly, she might get three hundred and twenty pounds. Jackie had read the questions aloud and filled in the forms.

As for the RiteSkills course, she would have to stay on it.

Her brothers would find her there, Beauty said.

Unless she moved away from the area, Jackie told her, she’d have to carry on attending. If she wanted a placement in a care home for the elderly, it would keep her off the course and out of the way of her family. Jackie could arrange it for her straight away. She could start on Monday.

Old people who have no children to look after them.

Beauty agreed to try.

In the meantime Jackie recommended going onto Incapacity Benefit in case the placement didn’t become a permanent job. She’d need a sick note from the doctor, though.

Beauty told her she wasn’t ill.

Stress from family matters, Jackie said, and that she’d had to leave home. That’s all she would have to tell the
doctor and he’d understand. Lots of sick notes crossed her desk each week, she assured her.

On Newhampton Road Beauty ignored the admiring glances of men, her eyes fixed on the pavement, and stopped at a phone box to call the B&Bs from the list Jackie had given her. The cheapest was twenty-five pounds. She had enough for one night. She’d get her bag from the white bloke’s house, thank him and go.

What about tomorrow?

Mark Aston was hungry and hadn’t moved for an hour. When he heard the faint tap at the door he got up from the armchair and looked through the grey net curtain.

Beauty came in and sat down on the sofa where she had slept the night before. There was less rubbish on the floor, the beer cans and plates of food had gone, and the air was not as bad. Had he sprayed something?

‘How d’you get on? What d’yer adviser say?’ he asked her.

‘She told me to go on the sick. Incapacity Benefit.’

‘What with?’

Beauty scratched her forehead to cover her eyes.

‘Stress,’ she said.

What is that?

Mark nodded. ‘Good idea. Fookin’ ’ell, yer adviser mooss like you. That’ll be an extra tenner a week. Did you apply for the crisis loan?’

She had.

‘You might get three hundred quid. Depends how old y’m am. You caar use it for rent you know?’

‘I know. The lady done the form for me.’

Mark raised his eyebrows. Pakis got special treatment at the Jobcentre. Everyone knew it.

‘I just came to get my bag and say thanks for last night.’

‘It weren’t nothing,’ he said. ‘Jooss a few … Asians … in a car.’ It was a shame they hadn’t got out. Then she’d have seen something. He’d have battered the lot of them, with or without Bob. And put a few dents in the door panels on that fake M3. Maybe even kicked in a backlight unit.

‘D’you fancy a brew?’

‘No, I should get out of your way.’

‘Have a cup a tea,’ he insisted. ‘You got somewhere to stay then?’

‘I’m going to a B&B.’

‘Black two sugars waar it?’ Mark said, returning from the kitchen with two mugs.

Beauty took the cup and wiped the rim with her sleeve.

Bismillah hir Rahmaanir Raheem.

Mark rolled a cigarette and watched the Asian bird on his sofa. ‘Fit’ wasn’t the right word for her. Pretty. He couldn’t make out what her body was like. Paki clothes didn’t show much.

‘Anyway,’ he continued. ‘I were jooss cleaning up. The place ay usually like this. I had to let the dogs in cuz of the bad weather.’

Beauty nodded and looked at her tea.

‘So what you gonna do then?’ he asked.

‘Stay in the B&B until that money comes, and look for somewhere to live.’

‘I’ve bin looking for a lodger to rent me spare room. You could rent it for a few days even,’ he suggested. ‘A fiver a night?’ She’d been here one night already.

‘I can’t stay here!’ she said. ‘I mean … you done enough.’

‘You wo’ be in me way. Anyway, I like Indian food.’

‘Thanks, I’ll be fine.’

‘Is it cuzza me dogs? They wo’ come in now it ay raining. And the room’s clean.’

*

The spare room was above the kitchen and looked out over the backyard. He was right, it was clean. The purple pile carpet had kept its colour and the walls were white. The room even smelled faintly of paint. A large double bed with an orange velvet headboard and a new-looking mattress stood along the far wall.

Beauty went to the window and looked down at the dog in his backyard, at the colourless, damp concrete of the surrounding houses, and the trees that hid some of them from view. There was no road and no one to look at her. It was tucked away, sheltered from everything.

Can I stay here? With a white bloke?

They went downstairs. Mark wanted to know. He needed the money.

‘Think about it,’ he said to Beauty. ‘How much is a B&B? You could spend that on a set a sheets an’ a duvet cover; towels – yer gonna need …’

There was a knock at the door. The dogs barked in the yard. Mark got up from the armchair to see who it was through the ripped curtain.

‘It’s two Asian lads.’

‘Is it them? Is it my brothers?’

‘How the fook do I know? Wodder they look like?’ He peered again at Faisal Rahman and Dulal Miah. ‘One’s ’bout fifteen, in tracky bottoms,’ Mark said. ‘The other one’s older.’

Al-l
h! How did they find me?

‘Please, don’t answer the door. Don’t let them in, I’m begging you.’

‘Do’ worry, I ay gonna.’

A fist pounded on the door. Beauty ran through the kitchen and out into the yard. The dogs barked louder around her, and clawed at the doors inside their kennels.

Mark followed her outside.

‘If they do’ give up I’m giwin’ out there. They wo’ come here again.’ He looked around for a useful weapon. The shovel.

A clean-shirted arm appeared above the fence two doors down and pegged a pair of pants to a washing line.

‘Oright, mate!’ Mark called out.

Peter could just make out Mark’s head over the fences. His dogs had been howling for some time. He raised a hand in greeting.

‘Here, listen,’ he heard Mark call out. ‘I could really use a favour.’

His head disappeared from view.

Peter groaned. Christ, did he want to bring one of them round? Why did he have so many if he couldn’t look after them?

‘Come wi’ me,’ Mark said to Beauty. ‘He’s safe.’

He opened the back gate and she followed him along the narrow path which ran between the yards.

‘Pete, can me mate jooss sit round yours for five? I got to sort something out. Wo’ be a sec.’

Peter looked at the headscarfed beauty in front of him and felt his heart quicken and the blood rush to his cheeks. ‘Hi … I’m Peter.’

The girl nodded, chewing her lip, and ignored his outstretched hand.

‘Sorry, I didn’t catch your name,’ he said.

‘Beauty.’

Peter moved around the kitchen thinking of something to say. That he’d seen her this morning leaving Mark’s house?

‘That’s an unusual name. Is it … ?’

She avoided looking at him. ‘It’s Bangladeshi.’

He wanted to say ‘it suits you’, but the anxious look on her face told him it wasn’t the right moment.

The sound of dogs barking and raised voices in the street came through the open front window. Peter went to look out.

‘What’s happening?’ Beauty asked from the kitchen.

‘Mark’s waving a spade at two Indian chaps. They’re going.’

He drew back from the window as the two passed. Had they seen the net curtain twitch? What was he getting involved in?

The girl had followed him into the front room. ‘Have they gone?’

Peter saw the torment in her eyes. ‘Who were they?’ he asked.

‘My brothers.’

‘Are you OK? Come and sit down.’

Peter guided her to an armchair and went to the kitchen to fetch her a glass of water. Who was she? Why were her brothers looking for her? How could she be called Beauty?

Mark let himself into the kitchen.

‘Oright?’ he said to Peter at the sink. ‘Nice one for that, cheers.’ He spotted the cups. ‘I’ll have one if y’m making it. Two sugars.’

‘Everything all right now?’ Peter asked.

‘Sorted,’ Mark said, loud enough for Beauty to hear. ‘They ay gonna come back here in a hurry.’ He went into the sitting room and sat down on the sofa.

‘What did you say to them?’ asked Beauty.

‘That there waar no Pakis here. And if they came back I’d knock ’em through the fookin’ floor and set me dogs on ’em.’ Mark saw her eyes widen. ‘Fookin’ ’ell, you
should’ve heard Honey, man. Proper giwin’ for it, she were. Yer brother shat hisself.’

Beauty winced.

Al-l
h!

‘Here, they ay gonna set fire to me house, am they?’

Peter watched the frightened, pretty girl. He’d seen the stories on
Midlands Today
, involving Muslims mostly, burning each other’s houses down and stabbing their daughters/sisters/wives/cousins to death over some primitive concept of ‘honour’. Mark seemed to take it lightly, enjoy it even. What was going on? Were these two an item? How could that be?

‘Am y’ coomin up the towun tonight?’ Mark asked him.

Peter didn’t think so. He had to be up early.

‘D’you fancy giwin’ out?’

Beauty looked up.
Is he talking to me?

‘That aynt my thing,’ she said.

Mark nodded. ‘What d’you wanna do about the room?’

‘I dunno,’ she said. Would her brothers come back? Or would they get someone else to watch the house? And how could she stay here and bring trouble to these strangers?

Al-l
h, what do I do?

‘Them pair ay gonna show up ’ere again. It’s probably the safest place in Wolves.’ Mark turned to Peter. ‘I told her to stay ’ere, rent me spare room, the clean one, for a fiver a day or whatever, ’stead of staying in a B&B, and save her money till she’s got enough for her own place. At least she’d be wi’ friends.’ He indicated himself and Peter.

‘Why not?’ Peter said. For that matter she could have his spare room. Free.

‘What d’you reckon then?’ Mark prompted.

‘I suppose so, for a few days,’ she said.

I can’t go home ever. Not now.

‘Right, nice one. We can giw up Asda and I’ll show you them sheets. Finish yer tea, I’ll jooss fetch the keys to the truck.’

Peter waited until he’d gone before speaking.

‘Are you OK?’

Beauty nodded.

Does it matter any more if I talk to strangers? They think it’s normal an’ I aynt gonna say anything bad.

‘Have you known Mark long?’ the man asked her.

She kept her eyes on the coffee table. ‘We met the other day, on a course.’

‘So, those were your brothers?’

It was family stuff, she said.