Tree of Pearls

I could understand that he was pissed off at having to ask me. But I wanted his opinion of the situation as a whole – well I did. An idea had occurred to me – ‘Eddie’s done this on purpose to wind me up’. But you see if I entertain thoughts like that, I’m doing Eddie’s job for him. Nurturing seeds of mindfuck. I need Harry to remind me that Eddie is in the past and that none of this means anything to me.

Yes. And bears shit in the Vatican. What I promised myself, what Sa’id told me, was that if Eddie reappeared I could deal with it. Nobody said deny it, we said deal with it. So deal. Eddie’s actions are touching those who touch me. So.

It hadn’t been a long respite, had it? What? Six, seven weeks off from him?

Harry was looking at me. ‘So?’ he said.

‘Would you understand,’ I said, ‘if I were to say that I want nothing, ever, to do with Eddie again, to such a degree that I don’t even want to talk to you about this now? Because it’s not me he’s having a go at … Would you understand if I just backed off completely, and said look, you and Oliver do what you have to do but this is not my business? Would you think me disloyal? Would you …?’

He kept on looking. His eyes took on a narrowed flatness. Thinking.

‘You put yourself at risk going to Cairo to face him off for the sake of multicultural society, to stop the BNP getting that money,’ he said, fairly mildly. ‘All I’m asking is a question or two.’

‘I’m very keen on multiculturalism,’ I said.

‘I would have thought you might also be quite keen on our … friendship.’

‘And I would have thought you would be quite keen on my safety and preservation.’

Stop it, stop it. This is the kind of argument we used to have. We don’t do this any more.

‘I am,’ he said. ‘But I think you’re probably up to thinking about him for five minutes. For my sake. For the sake of my career, and stuff, if that means anything to you.’

‘It does,’ I said.

‘I understand your reluctance,’ he said, ‘but don’t hide. Hiding won’t help.’

Well, he was right.

‘We’re getting there, Harry, aren’t we?’ I said.

‘What? Where?’ He looked very slightly irritated.

‘Not arguing,’ I said.

He frowned and wished I’d shut up, though he didn’t say so, so I did for a moment, to be kind.

‘The Egyptian police put Oliver on to Hakim and Sa’id,’ I said after the moment was over. I said Hakim’s name first in case Harry felt delicate about Sa’id. Which he has done on occasion.

‘Why?’

‘Because of the fight – the hotel thing I told you about – when Hakim was defending me.’ (Sa’id had not been defending me. He’d been on the loo. When he had reappeared and realized what was going on he’d been angry.)

‘What about the money?’

‘I told Oliver about it. That I’d given it to charity.’

I’d told Harry what I had done with the money. He had thought I was mad. He had said, ‘What reason do you have to trust him? There’s plenty of poverty in Egypt, you know. Jesus.’ I saw in his eyes now that he was thinking the same thing now. I didn’t mind him thinking it. He didn’t know that Sa’id was not like that. It’s very much to Harry’s credit that he has any faith in human nature at all – he spends so much time dealing with crime, and he knows too well what poverty does even to people who were decent in the first place. And yes, poverty is strong in Egypt. I may be in love with the place but I’m not blind. I may have a weakness for minarets but that doesn’t mean I don’t see the flies.

I think Harry had feared that Eddie would want the money back. He underestimated quite how batty Eddie actually is. Eddie got a kick out of giving me money. He had a big psychological confusion around dancing and whoring. I’d refused everything he had ever offered me and he was happy as pie to be able to force me to accept something. Made him feel big. Bigger than me. The more money it cost him to do it, the bigger that made me, and the bigger he’d feel about vanquishing me. He would only want his money back if he thought he hadn’t got his money’s worth. Which he had, because the more it cost him the more he valued it. If I’d just let him pick me up all those years ago when he used to come and watch me dance in the restaurants on Charlotte Street he would never have got so obsessive about me and none of this would have happened.

So it is all my fault. All my fault for having some virtue.

‘So what’s happening now?’ Harry was asking.

‘Now I’m stopping pretending that this hasn’t happened, and that it doesn’t mean anything, and anyway it’s nothing to do with me.’

He smiled.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m really fucking sorry.’

‘So am I,’ I said, and I was glad he was there.

‘Well,’ I went on. ‘I assume there are people looking for Eddie. And the Egyptians have questioned Hakim. And Sa’id has left the country.’ I don’t know why he should have gone to Athens. Business, perhaps. The family is in alabaster. Always has been. So perhaps he has been selling alabaster. Or buying marble, or arranging for malachite and lapis lazuli to traverse the world. But that is not my business. My business has been to put distance between us.

But I want to know he’s OK.

I could ring Sarah. Their mother. Two months ago, when Hakim had been staying with me in London, Sa’id had sent him back to Cairo, and neither Sarah nor I knew where he was. We had been worried.

Sarah is English. She lives in Brighton – she’s an academic. I like her but she … has reservations. She was married to Abu Sa’id for some years. Lived in Luxor with him. Bore his sons. Walked out when Sa’id was ten and Hakim five. Couldn’t take it – I don’t know, we’ve never talked about it in detail. I know a little about the complexities of an Englishwoman married to a man in a provincial Egyptian town. Expectations, confusions, culture, religion, habit, communication … but she and I never got close enough for me to know the details of her own story, because Sa’id didn’t forgive her and when she realized what was happening with him and me her past came down over her in clouds of disapproval and irresolution.

The plan was, she and Sa’id were going to make up. I left them all in Egypt, and that seemed to be the next step. But by then I was out of the picture. Out out out. No Angeline in that family. I had just exposed them to all the mayhem with which Eddie is so generous, and then jumped ship. Though it’s true Hakim had managed to find Eddie on his own, and make his own mayhem.

But I could call Sarah. I supposed she would be back in Brighton. And I could call Madame Amina, the aunt, Abu Sa’id’s sister-in-law. Abu Sa’id is the father. It’s a village custom – you’re called after your first-born. His actual name is Ismail. He’s not particularly a village man but he prefers simplicity; he stayed in Luxor while the boys went to school in Cairo, spending time with Madame Amina, and becoming cosmopolitan.

If the police have been round they might, of course, be angry with me about it.

‘Left the country,’ Harry was saying, slowly. ‘Where’s he gone?’

Harry knows I was in love with Sa’id. Harry told me I was a life-avoiding coward for leaving him. Harry told me I’d been a life-avoiding coward ever since I came so near alongside death with Janie. Harry thought I should get a grip. Harry was right.

‘Athens, apparently,’ I said.

‘You haven’t heard from him?’ he asked.

‘Not since I left Luxor,’ I said. Not since he wrapped me in his big white scarf at dusk on the dusty landing stage on the west bank of the Nile, and didn’t try to stop me going.

I’d rung when the news came through of the massacre at the Temple of Hatshepsut. Only weeks before we’d looked down on it by moonlight when we snuck out at night on to the flank of the great sphinx-shaped desert mountain behind his village. Sixty-two people killed, practically on his doorstep. Sarah had said he looked like death. (He doesn’t look like death. He looks like life.) But that’s all I knew.

Harry put his hand across and lifted my chin. I’m always amazed by how far he can reach. ‘Eddie won’t come to Britain. He can’t …’

‘He can do any mad thing he likes …’ I said, but Harry cut in.

‘He can’t. Immigration or customs would have him in two seconds. François du Berry is a man with a very circumscribed life. Are you scared?’

‘No. I just want to get on with my life.’

‘What do you want to do about Sa’id?’