‘“Non-accidental injury,” my social worker whispered in my ear.
‘The chaperone spoke. “We are not so much concerned with Britney’s current injuries but, as covered in the Children Act 1989 and fully consistent with more recent safeguarding directives, those injuries that the child might be expected to sustain in the future.”
‘I slid down in my chair, my ears ringing. The chief’s piece of paper was now one-sixteenth of its original size.
‘The social worker nudged me. “Miss Booth, would you like to say something?”
‘I stood up. “There’s nothing wrong with Britney. Them bruises, maybe they’re something to do with the blood she got when she was born. These things happen, don’t they? On account of my condition, I don’t get out as much as some mothers might, but I sit Britney by the window so she can look out and get her vitamin D.” My cheeks felt hot, and as I talked I was choking on my own spit. “I don’t know what you’re all on about. Can I get a solicitor? Am I entitled?”
‘“Miss Booth.” It was the chaperone. “We are here looking for a compromise. All these professional people around the table want only what is best for Britney, as I know you do. You may hire a solicitor — although as I am sure you have been told you don’t need one — but such an instruction would have to be entirely at your own expense. You are on benefits, are you not? There is no point in me adjourning this meeting — and therefore delaying what would be deemed to be in the best interests of Britney — if the instruction of legal counsel is unlikely.”
‘Defeated, I shook my head and sat down. I noticed that the piece of paper wouldn’t bend into a sixty-fourth.
‘“We will take a short break. I am sure you would welcome that, Miss Booth. It might allow you the opportunity to get some fresh air, and perhaps we can reconvene” — she looked at her watch — “in twenty minutes’ time and proceed on a more conciliatory basis.”
‘I took a seat in the waiting room. After a few minutes the social worker came and sat next to me. She whispered, “Grace, I’m on your side, but they want something out of you today. They want you to give something up. They want your agreement. If they don’t get it they’ll apply to the court.”
‘I didn’t know what she was talking about. “They want me to take her out more?”
‘“They would settle for an agreement on a care order. You’d still get to see Britney, I’d make sure of that. Britney would live with someone else and you would visit. Supervised, of course. If you agree today,” she paused and looked at me sympathetically, “I could try and convince them to give you two hours a week.”’
Grace pants, her breath hot on my face, and her eyes search mine for an answer I cannot provide. I draw warmth from her, skin on skin, brown and white. Without warning, my knee jerks, and agony shoots through me. Automatically, but with no real hope of relief, my fingertips search for the pain. Wordlessly, Grace pulls my hands away. Her fingers lightly knead and press the knotted joint; to my surprise, the pain subsides. As it goes, I relax back against the pillow. Then her fingers begin to walk up my thigh under the duvet, and I stiffen, raising myself off the bed a little. Her hand reaches the elasticated waist of my underpants and she pulls them down. Slipping her head under the duvet, she applies her mouth to me. I tense, every muscle centring to a knot in my gut. I climax quickly, and she comes up for breath, resting her head on my chest. I caress her prickly hair. Small, scrambled bubbles of oxygen burst in my brain as though bringing life to previously dormant nerve tissue.
As I stare down at our bodies pressed together, a picture swims up in my mind. A brown man in a dusty village, clad in rags with a dirty turban on his head. A memsahib walks past and he bows before her, careful not to look at her directly, his hands pressed to his chest in supplication. She is dressed in an unblemished white frock and behind her walks a servant holding a large bleached cotton umbrella. Following the memsahib, of course, were men. Always chaperoned by men, and in this particular case, an ample, moustached English fellow, a recruitment sergeant no less.
It is the only image I have ever been offered, from where I don’t know, perhaps a relative, that might represent my father’s father. This, what Grace and I are doing now, they would have called it mixing. The white man’s greatest treasure was his memsahib, and yet I feel no desire to exert power over Grace. In a fantasy, I would have grasped her hair tightly and held her down, hard, in vengeance for my grandfather.
It shames me that this is all I can think of, and I am thankful that her eyes are closed, as though now, after what has occurred between us, she could read my thoughts from my face. Inside my head something drains away, like the fluid from a lanced abscess, and as the euphoria fades, it is replaced by something tighter, more whole, as though the two hemispheres of my brain are more closely integrated, have reached some sort of understanding.
And for reasons of food and foolish bravery, the allure of the memsahib still clouding his thinking, hearing the recruitment sergeant call out his name, my grandfather would have taken one step forward and stood to attention: ‘Yes, Sergeant Major, sahib.’ My grandfather, one Sepoy Khan, would all his life, even during the torturous years as a prisoner of the Japanese, before he succumbed to typhoid, remember the day of the passing by of the memsahib. The English brought law and the drought abated and the crops grew from grains purchased by Sepoy’s salary; the family thrived, and the generations flourished until food was no longer an issue, and it was only once we were fed that we Pakistanis remembered that old grandpa was buried in an unmarked grave in Burma near an embankment where a railway line was once dug. As my mother always said, hunger is the worst thing. And we were angry. But we are a patient culture that bides its time.
From what Grace has related, it seems that the gora have turned in on themselves, and as though the fate of the gora and that of the Pakistani are diametrically opposed, right now I feel happy, strangely content. The sum of everything that has occurred before is somehow distilled, and more than that, balanced, as though all negatives and positives have been cancelled by each other, and in this moment, my head comfortable against the pillow and the weight of Grace’s head on my chest, I feel a peace I had not thought possible.
Still now, six months later, I do not know why I agreed to marry Azra. Waking up the morning after our wedding night, I turned over in bed and spread out and for a moment I forgot that Azra was there. Then I felt my thumb throb as though the skin might burst. A bright shaft of light through the open curtains caught my eyes. Startled by the sound of someone rapping on the front door downstairs, I sat up against the headboard. I heard the door open and the voice of my mother and that of a man. She showed him in, seating him in the front room, and called up the stairs, ‘Akram, your brother for you.’
I dressed and with a sense of foreboding made my way downstairs.
As I walked into the room and our eyes met, the visitor put down his tea and sprang up from the sofa. He smiled a broad, pink, gummy smile that contrasted with his paper-white albino skin. He was a large man, rotund, the skin stretched smoothly over his cheeks, giving him a boyish appearance. His upper eyelids were crisscrossed with fragile veins enlarged through the thick lenses of his spectacles, and he blinked frequently as though even the soft indoor light was too harsh for his milky eyes. A white turban covered his forehead, the odd pink tendril slipping from underneath. He had a sparse straggly beard with a pointed tip.
‘You remember me, brother?’ he bellowed. His eyes seemed to veer back and forth as though struggling to focus. In one hand he carried a large bunch of mixed flowers wrapped in gold cellophane. He thrust them at me and congratulated me, telling me that the big news all over town was that dear Brother Akram has taken a wife.