Beauty (26 page)

Mark Aston sat in the armchair by the window of his sitting room and watched the street through the torn, grey net curtain. Peter was talking to a woman as she put a suitcase into the boot of her car. It must have been his missus, the one he said he wanted to dump. He was pointing to Mark’s house.

Mark flicked the ash from his roll-up into an empty beer can and watched the woman walk past his window. She looked expensive, tall and fit with a good figure. He opened another can from the box at his feet and went to the door.

Kate was waiting with the envelope in her hand. She’d told Peter to go inside. It was none of his business why she wanted to see Beauty.

‘Hiya!’ she said as the door opened.

A rough-looking type stood in front of her with shaven dark hair and sideburns, fading home-made tattoos on his wiry forearms, and a beer can held between two fingers and thumb of a large, dirty hand.

‘Oright?’

‘Hi, is Beauty here?’

‘Ar,’ he said. ‘Her’s asleep. D’you wanna coom in?’

Mark took a swig of beer from the can. She seemed like a nice enough bird. Not his type, mind.

Kate felt eaten up by his eyes. She could tell this brute had never met a woman like her before, and flicked her hair. She was still desirable.

‘No, it’s OK. Could you give her this, please?’ She handed Mark the envelope. ‘Tell her I’m sorry I couldn’t wait. I’ve got to drive all the way back to London tonight,’ she said.

‘K. Sowund.’

Mark slid the envelope into his back pocket and watched her hips sway as she walked to her car. He ignored the two
Pakistannies
in the Vauxhall Astra on the other side of the street. No point letting them know he’d clocked them. He switched off the sitting-room light and returned to the chair near the window to see what they did. These two looked different, but the car was the same as on the first day.

Mark knew he could handle them on his own and it would be a damn shame not to give them a proper beating. But this was Asian shit and there was no telling what he’d start
.
These fuckers were crazy when it came to their sisters. The Bengali lad he’d padded up with in Liverpool had got seven years for knifing his sister’s boyfriend. Mark had listened to the stories because there was nothing else to do for twenty-three hours a day.
Proud of hisself, the fookin’ prick.
Someone else would have battered him sooner than Mark had done.

He could talk to Bob about it but didn’t want to involve him. He’d deal with it himself. But he’d have to move house quickly in case things turned nasty. And Beauty. And where would he get the money from? A landlord would want two months’ rent upfront. If Beauty chipped in a couple of hundred they might manage with what was left of the money he’d made on the barriers,
but he’d rather have done it on his own … to show her that he could take care of them both.

His eyes strayed from the Pakistanis to the other cars in the street and stopped at Pete’s Fiat Punto under the street lamp. Four hundred quid he’d get in a chop shop for that. Tonight, if he wanted it. Maybe more for a two-year-old car. He’d have enough cash for them to move straightaway. Beauty wouldn’t even know he’d gone.

Not while those two were still out there, though.

Mark watched the two men get out of their car. As they began to cross the street and come towards the house, he ran through to the kitchen and into the yard. The dogs clawed at the insides of their kennels, but he went to the last one. Satan had been used for fighting, and although Bob swore blind it was a Staffy, Mark knew different. The dog was leaner and had the flatter head and squarer jaw of a pit bull. Mark didn’t trust the animal, and never took it anywhere without a muzzle. This time he wouldn’t need a muzzle.

Beauty had stopped in the kitchen to fill a pint glass with water before going up to her bedroom. She was glad Mark hadn’t been there when she got home. He would have noticed something wrong. She just wanted to sleep forever, to go away and never come back. She was scared, too, of what she was about to do.

She sat on the bed and looked around the room at her belongings, her two salwars hanging on the clothes rail, a pair of sandals, her few pieces of make-up on the bedside table and the packet of antidepressants next to her toilet bag. Not even a photo of her mum or sister.

You come into this world with nothing …

Afterwards she lay back on the bed and closed her eyes. She was sorry for the trouble she’d caused people: the
white guy, Mark, and his neighbour, his girlfriend, the girl and the old man at the care home. Her mum and brothers. It wasn’t their fault either. They were just doing what they were supposed to. They didn’t invent the rules.

Life aynt fair.

Beauty kept her eyes shut and rubbed her stomach, full from water.

Toba, toba astaghfirullah.

Mark held Satan by the collar with one hand, the other gripping the dog’s powerful jaws. He struggled with it along the dark passageway. The beast could feel his excitement. He edged forward to the corner of the house until he was close enough to hear whispered voices at his front door. A low wall extended from the end of the passageway to the pavement. If he could make the few steps without Satan going for him, the two Pakistanis would be pinned against the front door. If they tried to jump over the wall to get away from the dog they’d have to get through him, or go up the passageway.

No one would see.

He stepped out of the darkness.

Beauty felt the blackness grow around her. Her head felt light and the pain left her as she floated down through the bed.

Was this dying?

It felt nice. Quiet and cool, but not scary any more.

She opened her eyes as she slipped down.

How strange it was … so light … and free.

Shapes moved in the swirling darkness, figures emerged and disappeared into the shadows. A cloudy hand took form and a voice came to her from far away.

‘You’ll come back and talk to me, won’t you, dear?’

Beauty tried to reach out as she passed but her fingers slipped through the old lady’s hand.

A grey face billowed out of the darkness, black holes where its eyes should have been.

‘My mum’s an utter bitch.’

Beauty shrank back as the mouth spewed out the milk that the woman had drunk from her mother’s breast. It would fill the lady’s grave and drown her when she died. Beauty wanted to save her but knew she couldn’t
.
That’s what happened when you cursed the mother who had carried you for nine months inside her. You could never pay her back, not for one kick you had given her. If you carried her on your back for a hundred years it still wouldn’t be enough!

What did she do for her mum?

Strange naked creatures writhed in the shadows around her, their legs entwined; beasts with two backs, moaning and grunting. She tried to close her eyes, but she had no body any more, just a sense of being.

Her mum sat in an armchair alone, her face lined and aged.

‘Where are my grandchildren?’

Beauty cried out but no sound came and her mother vanished.

She slipped past a young girl in a red wedding sari. The girl’s eyes begged her to stay. Sharifa! She was getting married! Where was her husband? Beauty reached out but her sister turned away, her image fading.

Her brother’s face appeared close to hers, wet with tears. Why was he crying?

‘You didn’t do nothing wrong. It wasn’t your fault,’ she tried to say. Her brother heard her, and smiled.

She stopped floating, as if she had reached the bottom of something. There was only darkness around her.

But when she felt the baby inside her, the faces of her family surrounded her again, warm and smiling.

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

‘A new life is more important than anything.’

‘Leave her alone now.’

‘She’s going to be a mother.’

A dog appeared next to her and nosed at her hand.

‘Where am I?’ Beauty asked.

‘Y’m free,’ said the dog.

Mark washed the blood from his hands in the kitchen sink and flattened the piece of skin on his knuckle gouged up by the Pakistani’s teeth. His heartbeat returned to normal.

The two had been slow to react. They’d stared at the snarling pit bull and pressed back against the door.

Where was she? They just wanted to talk to her.

But one of the cunts had a bottle of accelerant in his hand. So Mark didn’t have a fucking clue what they were on about. Mate.

Satan sprang, open-jawed, at the nearest man’s thigh. The other bloke scrambled over the low wall as Mark’s fist smashed into his nose and teeth. Mark would have set about him on the floor but his mate had managed to kick the dog away and hobble to his car, and he had to catch Satan. You couldn’t have a fucking pit bull loose in the street.

He managed to grab Satan’s collar as the dog ran past him but had to punch it in the head to stop it from writhing and twisting to bite him. He dragged it back to the passageway, slipping when he aimed a kick at the Pakistani as the man stumbled away clutching his bleeding face. But it was only a glancing blow.

What with holding the dog ’n’ that.

Mark pulled shut the iron gate and ran to the over-revving car as it struggled out of its parking space. He put a nice dent in the passenger door, stood side-on to the window, and shattered it with his elbow before the driver bumped past the car in front and accelerated away.

Almost ran over me fookin’ foot.

He waited until the lights had disappeared and silence had returned to the street, and looked around at the windows of the neighbouring houses. If anyone had been watching from behind their curtains … well, he’d just been defending himself.

Innit.

His elbow was hurting now and he couldn’t straighten his arm easily. His right hand had started to swell, too. Mark dried his hand on his trousers, took a can from the fridge and went into the darkened sitting room. He took a long drink of beer and managed to roll a loose cigarette with his swelling hand. He pulled the curtain to one side and peered into the street. Those two wouldn’t come back in a hurry. They’d be in A&E for hours. He’d bring a couple of dogs into the house later, just in case. They’d keep him company if he spent the night down here, and wake him up if someone came to the door. Pete’s Fiat Punto was outside and he still had Dave’s number in Burntwood. It would be risky going over there, but if he left it till dawn there’d be less Old Bill on the roads. He could park outside the chop shop and wait at the café for Dave to bring him the money for the motor.

He’d be back in Wolves by ten o’clock.

What would he tell Beauty? Wouldn’t she want to know why he was in a hurry to move? Would she come with him?

Mark was glad she hadn’t woken up. She didn’t need to know.

*

At midnight he tapped on her door. He’d noticed the light on when he went to the toilet, but no noise had come from her room all evening. He knocked again. Mark turned the handle, pushed the door open a few inches and went in.

Beauty lay on the bed fully dressed, her arms thrown wide. The care had passed from her brow, her forehead was free of lines, her lips slightly parted and smiling.

Beauty opened her eyes and looked at the man standing at the foot of her bed.

It felt right for him to be there, near her. The pain and heaviness in her head was gone.

Mark let himself be looked at.

‘What happened to your hand?’ she asked him.

‘Nothing … one of the dogs had a giw at me.’

Mark picked up the mini hi-fi he’d found that morning and sat by the window to keep an eye on the street. The stereo had no power cable, but he reckoned he could fix it. He decided not to mention moving house until he got back from selling the car. It wouldn’t be any bother to pinch. He’d disabled the alarm the first day he had met Peter.

Beauty sat on the sofa with her feet tucked under her, sipping from the mug of tea he had made. She watched him open the back of the stereo and pick out the small screws with his large fingers. It felt comfortable being with him, as if she could say anything she wanted to him. And she liked watching him fix his machines.

‘Where did you learn to do them stuff?’ she asked.

Mark looked at Beauty as his fingers felt their way past circuit boards inside the stereo. ‘Dunno, just picked it up, I guess.’

‘Did your dad teach you?’

‘Me old man? He waar there!’ He cut a piece of gaffer tape with his teeth. ‘I’ll teach my kids though,’ he said. ‘A girl ’n’ all. It’s useful stuff. People chuck all sorts of things out cuz they caar fix ’em – computers, the lot, man.’

He gestured around the room at the various pieces of equipment wired together. His integrated computer-stereo-TV-DVD components had all come from the re-cyke or people’s front gardens.

‘You gonna have kids one day?’ she asked.

They exchanged glances and Beauty looked away.

‘Hope so,’ he said.

Mark wanted to tell her. He’d never talked to anyone about it before, not even his ex. That slag.

‘Me girlfriend lost a babby when I were nineteen. I’d’ve loved that kid to bits, man, and stayed outta jail ’n’ all, I reckon.’

A screw dropped to the floor and Mark was glad to look down and fumble for it.

Beauty didn’t speak. She didn’t want to ask what had happened. If he wanted to tell her, he would.

‘Had a miscarriage, dey she?’

Mark pushed a plug into the socket of an extension lead at his feet and switched on the stereo. The standby light came on and he smiled at Beauty with satisfaction.

‘Found that this morning. There ay much wrong with it,’ he said. ‘Just the CD drive to sort out.’

Beauty smiled back. He was a good man. She’d had to trust him from the moment he’d saved her in the street.

Mark prised off the front of the stereo.

‘What about you?’ he asked without looking up. ‘You planning on having lots of kids?’

Beauty remembered the baby she had dreamed of inside her and the faces of her family around her.

Leave her alone now.

She’s going to be a mother.

Insh’allah.

‘If God gives them to me,’ she said.

Mark nodded as he placed the drawer of the CD player on the windowsill. He pulled back a corner of the net curtain. The street was quiet in the dull street light.

His hand trembled as he put down the clips to the sliding door of the stereo.

Fook it, giw for it
.

‘Does it have to be with a Muslim bloke?’ he asked.

He tried to make the question sound casual … her being from a different culture. But he felt his face turn red as he stared into the stereo, waiting for her to answer.

Beauty watched him. She’d never been able to picture a husband’s face. But she was free to choose now. She had everything she needed: work and somewhere to live; she’d begun to read; she could do what she wanted. And he was the best man she’d ever met. She wouldn’t meet another like him. He would be a good husband and father and make her happy. She’d cook for him and clean the house while he repaired things in the sitting room. He’d work hard, they would have everything they needed in a small house and she’d be safe with him.

‘He has to be an honest man, who works hard and looks after his parents,’ Beauty said.

Mark had no idea where his father was, he told her. There was just his mam, who didn’t seem that bothered about seeing him at the minute. Not that Mark could blame her. He’d let her down too many times.

‘I ay gonna do that again.’

Beauty rested her head on the arm of the sofa.

*

Mark plugged in the soldering iron and waited for it to heat up.

‘Can I ask you summing?’ he said.

Beauty wasn’t embarrassed any more in front of him.

‘Will you take your headscarf off?’

She sat up and pulled the edge of her scarf over the tips of her ears. ‘My hair’s a mess. That’s why I wear it,’ she said.

Mark dripped solder onto a piece of card and held the tips of the copper wires in a spot of the silvery liquid.

‘Do’ matter. It’s more natural,’ he said, looking round.

Beauty wanted him to see her.

Her chest and neck flushed as she slipped the scarf from her head.