Beauty (19 page)

Beauty sat up on the bed.

Al-l
h, this aynt good.

‘D’you fancy giwin’ out later? There’s a do on at the club.’

‘What club?’

‘Where I bumped into you that night when them Asian lads was looking for you.’

Beauty stood up and straightened her headscarf.

I can’t do that.

Mark scratched dried paint from his hands at the door. It might be hard to convince her, but he wanted her to come.

‘Tay a nightclub. It’s a family place, really. Bob’s a member. One of his nephews got engaged, or had a kid, I caar remember which. There’ll be food laid on, and a bit a music.’

Mark looked at Beauty. Would she come? He wanted to show her that he knew people. That he wasn’t a no-mates loser.

‘Giw on, it’ll be a laff.’

Beauty tidied her few things on the bedside table.

He wants me to say yes.

I can’t go. ‘Look what the bitch is doing.’ Thass what the big one’s gonna say.

They think I’m doing those things anyway.

‘Yeah, sure,’ she said, and saw his face light up with surprise.

‘Nice one!’ Mark said. ‘We can get a taxi back whenever you want. I’ll put aside a fiver for it.’

He ran downstairs to feed the dogs and get ready.

‘Going out?’

With a bloke?

Should she?

It aynt like that.

Aynit?

It wasn’t a nightclub. He said it was a family place. She’d be safe with him and one day she could tell Sharifa that she’d been to a white party.

Could she really go?

Why not?

The taxi left them at the corner of the Willenhall Road. Mark felt good in his black jeans and polished shoes. He pointed out the spot where they’d run into each other, but Beauty didn’t recognize it.

When was that?

They walked to the flat-roofed, red-brick Working Men’s Leisure and Social Club. Beauty felt her bum was uncovered without a kameez hanging low behind her. She wore high boots with her jeans rolled up, a black printed T-shirt, her denim jacket and a black headscarf. Nothing Asian. Apart from the way she did her eyeliner and her headscarf.

The elderly man in a dark suit at the door nodded to Mark, and smiled kindly at Beauty. Mark signed in for both of them.

‘I’ll get this,’ he said, and paid the forty pence entrance fee for non-members.

Beauty breathed deeply –
do they have Asians in here? Al-l
h! –
and followed Mark into a large, strip-lit lounge with lino floors and a pool table. Black padded benches
ran around the outside of the room, separated by flashing fruit machines. White people sat at tables, young and old together. Children, too. Muffled music came from a room beyond.

Beauty flinched at the light and kept her eyes on Mark’s back as he headed to the bar. She knew she was the only Asian there, and that eyes were on her.

What’s he doing with a Paki?

Her headscarf felt tight and her scalp itched under it.

Mark nodded to the people he knew: Bob’s sister and one of her neighbours. Beauty tried not to look at the faces around her, and stood next to him at the bar. A massive bloke, with thin dark hair swept over a balding head from ear to ear, came to serve them. She watched his belly tremble under the short-sleeved white shirt as he moved.

‘Oright, Tone. Bob in yet?’ Mark asked him.

‘He’s through there.’

The fat man nodded over his shoulder. The face of a pretty young girl appeared at the serving hatch behind him. She waved to Mark.

‘That’s Bob’s niece, Hayley,’ Mark explained to Beauty.

He ordered a pint of Carling. ‘D’you wanna J2O?’ he asked her.

‘Has it got … ?’

‘Do’ worry, it’s non-alcoholic.’

Beauty thanked him, and was glad he’d spoken quietly.

Mark stood in the doorway of the large function room, sipped his pint and looked around for Bob. He’d have pulled a few tables together for his family. Over there, near the bar. Away from the dance floor, for the time being.

Beauty carried her bottle of orange juice and felt awkward as he introduced her to ‘Bob’s Karen’, and his
niece Hayley, a girl of thirteen or fourteen chewing gum and looking about her to see if there were any nice boys there yet.

‘Sit dowun, loov,’ the woman said.

Beauty squeezed past the chairs to sit with her back to the wall next to the lady. Was that the older man’s wife? She had short, spiky, dyed blond hair. Women’s sovereign rings, bangles and men’s chains and lucky charms covered her hands and wrists, and she had a tattoo on each forearm. Beauty couldn’t make out the pictures and didn’t want to stare.

Mark sat down next to her. Their legs were almost touching. ‘Tay really started yet,’ he explained. ‘It’ll get busy though, do’ worry.’

Beauty didn’t want it to get busy. What if he left her alone? What could she talk about with these people?

‘There’s food ’n’ all down there. We can get some in a minute.’ Mark would wait for the nod from Bob.

‘Here, Kaz?’ Mark leaned past Beauty and she saw into his ear. ‘Is Steve-o doing the music?’

‘Ar,’ she said, and nodded to the door where a thin, pale boy was carrying a case of records to a low platform at the end of the hall.

‘That’s Steve,’ Mark said to Beauty. ‘One of Bob’s nephews. Thass right, ay it, Kaz?’

‘Ar.’

Bob came with drinks, and winked at Beauty. He was cleaner than when she’d last seen him. Beauty liked his cheerful face, tanned from working outside, his short grey hair and clean white teeth. His eyes smiled. He went away again, stopping to pat one man on the back and talk to another.

Mark pointed to other members of Bob’s family as they came through the door. His sisters Elaine, Janet and
Wendy. And his brother John. Beauty nodded her interest. There were brothers and in-laws and neighbours. He told her who they were, and what work he’d done on their cars.

‘Kaz’s brother Alan gimme a loada work round December time. Said I did a damn good job ’n’ all.’

Mark sat back and felt good. He was at home here. He knew everyone and everyone knew him. They liked him, respected him. He kept his word and knew how to graft hard. He could do just about any job they gave him. Apart from welding or panel-beating.

And they came to the table to greet him.

‘This is me mate, Beauty,’ Mark told them.

Beauty gave each one a quick glance and looked down again. It wasn’t so bad after all. White people could be pretty friendly.

Mark and Karen talked about cars, vans, breeds of dogs and how much they cost. She was looking for a Dog de Bordoh. Or a Kayner Korser Italiano. About eight hundred quid, Mark reckoned.

He went to the bar for more drinks, happy to have the money to get some rounds in. He’d make sure Bob’s missus was all right for drinks. And Beauty.

Hayley returned to the table with a can of Coke and a packet of crisps and sat next to her. Beauty noticed the young girl’s denim miniskirt and blotchy pink thighs. Hayley opened the crisps and offered them to her.

‘Am you Mark’s new girlfriend?’ she asked.

Beauty felt her face flush. ‘No, no! I’m just staying at his house. We’re … friends.’

Al-l
h!

The girl pulled crisps from the packet and put them into her red-lipsticked mouth. She had painted nails and two small gold coins on her fingers. Her arms were bare, and her young white chest was squeezed into a tight
pink vest. She wore make-up on her pale face, and her highlighted hair was layered and straightened.

‘He’s buff though, ay ’e?’ Hayley said.

Beauty coughed into her hand and touched her cheeks. ‘Is he?’ she said. ‘I don’t know about them things.’

‘You wha’? Lookaddim!’

They both watched Mark returning to the table, a triangle of three pint glasses in his large hands.

Maybe he wasn’t bad-looking.

This aynt good.

Mark sat opposite the two girls. ‘Oright, Hayley, how’s it giwin?’

The function room had filled with white people. Mark talked, while Hayley laughed and tried to flirt with him.

Beauty sat back and watched everything. Young girls in calf-length tracksuit bottoms, pink and white Reebok Classic trainers and pop socks weaved their way through the adults to the bar, and returned to their families at the tables with crisps and cans of Coke. Young mothers with ringed fingers, their hair pulled tightly back into ponytails, settled empty prams around the tables. Little boys tottered about in baby-sized Nike Air Max, short-sleeved checked shirts and gelled blond hair, clutching packets of crisps in tiny fists. They were dressed like their fathers, who stood at the bar talking and laughing, holding pints of lager and cigarettes in the fingers of one hand. The men made way for overweight middle-aged women, with large bare arms and short black dresses, carrying glasses of brandy. Gold flashed on fat fingers, chubby wrists and seasoned necks.

The noise grew. The tables filled with empty glasses, were cleared by the fat man, and filled again. Hayley went off to talk to boys. Mark chatted about his business plan and what he needed to get it going and how long it
would take him to make the money. Beauty listened and was encouraging.

He aynt got no one. Al-l
h give him a good life.

‘Go for it. Work hard and you’ll get what you want,’ she said.

Insh’allah.

Bob came back. They could eat.

Beauty told Mark she wasn’t hungry, but he stood up and she had no choice. It would be rude. And she wanted to see what white people ate at a party. She’d tell Sharifa. One day.

Mark told her not to worry.

‘S free.’

They made their way to the buffet tables and waited in the queue for a paper plate. There were metal trays of small sandwiches. Beauty took two with tuna and lay them flat on the plate to make it look full. The pink line between the pieces of bread on the next tray looked
haram
. She passed unheated, wrinkled grey chicken legs, sausage rolls, and a plate of orange balls. Would she sound thick if she asked what they were?

‘Ay you sin a scotch egg before? Fookin’ ’ell!’

Enda!

‘Those are crisps,’ he said, pointing to the various bowls. ‘Ay you sin them before either?’