Eight Months on Ghazzah Street

‘It looks as if I’ll have to.’

‘Well listen, Fran, we won’t be apart for long. And by the time you get out to Jeddah, we’ll be fixed up with a house, and everything will be ready for you.’

‘I’d rather go with you. But I suppose they have their rules. Oh, look, am I to pack these?’ She held out a candlestick, one of a pair from a local pottery, rough, heavy, unglazed.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Souvenir. Take those funny baskets as well, the ones that fall over.’

She began to wrap the candlestick, rolling it in her hands. ‘Are you sure that this is the right thing to do?’ she said. ‘Is this what you want?’

‘They’re doubling my salary,’ he said flatly.

‘What?’

‘You heard.’

She turned away and bent over the tea-chest again, cleanly stabbed by avarice, like a peach with a silver knife.

‘We could be in and out within three years,’ he said. ‘Your salary is paid in riyals, tax-free. All you need out of it is your day-to-day living expenses and you can bank the rest where you like, in any currency you like. Turadup are offering free housing, a car allowance, paid utilities, yearly leave ticket, school fees – though of course –’

‘That would be plain greedy,’ she said, ‘having children so that you could get their school fees paid.’

‘Pollard did say –’ He looked at her in slight anxiety. ‘He said that his only reservation was how you’d settle in. As you’ve been a working woman.’

‘I won’t be able to work?’

‘Unlikely, he thinks.’

‘Well, if you’re going to earn all that money, I’m sure I can occupy myself. After all, it’s not for ever, is it?’

‘No, it’s not for ever. We should think of it as a chance for us, to build up some security—’

‘Will you pass me those salad bowls?’

Andrew was silent. He passed them, one by one. Why, really, should she share his vision of their future? She had come to Africa at her own behest, a single woman, one of the few recruited for her line of work. She had lived alone before they met; for three nights in succession, he had sat by himself, seemingly disconsolate, on a corner stool in the bar of an expatriate club, not even looking her way, but concentrating hard; until she had asked him to go home with her. She had fed her dog, and then cooked eggs for them, and asked him what he wanted out of life. Later, in the sagging double bed with which her government bungalow was furnished, he had lain awake while she slept, wishing furiously for her to act and understand; and although it had taken a little time to work, within a matter of weeks she had turned to him and said, ‘We could get married if that’s what you want.’

So perhaps, too, he should have wished her into suggesting Saudi Arabia; then she would have known it was her own decision. But from what he had heard it was a part of the world in which women’s decisions did not operate. He made a leap of faith: it will be all right, I know it will. ‘Frances,’ he said, ‘we won’t go unless you want to.’

She slotted a wrapped teacup into place. ‘I want to.’

It had been raining, earlier that day, and there was a heavy, animal scent of drenched earth and crushed flowers. In the kitchen their housemaid, Elizabeth, was washing glasses – pointless really as they would soon be crated up – and they could hear the separate clink that each one made as she put it down on the draining-board. The dogs and cats were coming in to be fed, wandering to the back door to wait around, like the Victorian poor. ‘I really think we ought,’ Andrew said.

‘In point of fact, I don’t think we’ve anywhere else to go.’ She picked up a broad felt marker and daubed their name on the side of the tea-chest, SHORE, FRAGILE. GABORONE – LONDON.

‘No,’ Andrew said. ‘No point.’

She crossed out LONDON, wrote JEDDAH. Another pang stabbed her, as sharp as the first. She imagined herself already in Saudi, a discreet teetotal housewife, homesick for this place that was not home in another place that was not home. It was almost dark now; the air was cooling, the sun dipping behind the hill. ‘What was Jeff Pollard doing, recruiting you? I thought he was trying to persuade everybody what a grand life it was as a freelance consultant?’

‘Well, it can’t be such a grand life, because he’s just signed up with Turadup himself. He’s going to manage their Jeddah business; he’s had experience out there, of course.’

‘So you mean you’ll be working with him?’

‘There is that tiny drawback.’

‘I hope we don’t end up living near him as well.’

‘They do pay for your housing, so it’s probably a case of taking what you’re given.’

‘That’s fine,’ she said, ‘but just try to ensure that what we’re given doesn’t include Pollard. Do you think they’ll all be like him?’

‘He’s a type. You get them everywhere. But Parsons isn’t like that.’

‘I suppose he’s another type.’

‘Yes, you’d know the one. Genial old duffer. Safari suit, doing the African bit. Two sons at medical school, showed me their photographs. His wife’s called Daphne.’

‘And did he show you a photograph of her?’

‘He didn’t, come to think of it.’

‘Perhaps he thought it would over-excite you.’

‘When he asks you what you want to drink, he says, “Name your poison.”’

‘I see. Weybridge abroad.’

‘Melbourne, I think. He keeps a place in the Cotswolds though. He’s been with Turadup for twenty years. He’s a shareholder. Pollard says he’s a millionaire. Anyway, he seems very enthusiastic about this building. About the whole scene in Jeddah. He says it’s a very stimulating place to work if you’re in the construction business.’ He paused. ‘I’ll tell you what he said exactly.’

‘Go on.’

Andrew bit his lip. ‘He said, “I have witnessed the biggest transportation of ready-mixed concrete in the history of the human race.”’

‘I’d like to witness a large gin. Let’s celebrate.’

‘We’re late,’ said the man across the aisle. She jerked out of her doze; she’d not realized, at first, that he was speaking to her.

‘Are we?’ She consulted her watch.

‘It’s always late,’ the man said tetchily. ‘Of course, if you fly Saudia, they’re always late as well.’

‘Do you go often to Jeddah?’

‘Too often. The Saudia flight’s supposed to take off at twelve-thirty, but it never does. Not in my experience. I suppose the staff are having prayers. Bowing to Mecca, and so forth.’

‘How long do prayers last?’

‘As long as it takes to inconvenience you totally,’ the man said. ‘I can tell you’ve never been in the Kingdom. Noon is movable, you see. Noon can very well be at twelve-thirty. Nothing’s what it says it is.’

Oh dear, a philosopher, she thought. She might as well put on her Walkman. She leaned down to inch out her bag from under the seat in front, and as she groped for it she felt his eyes on the back of her neck. ‘Nurse, are you?’ he inquired.