I notice a photo in a frame next to the TV. It is of Grace, younger and slimmer. She is holding a small child, a girl of about two.
‘That your kid?’ I ask.
‘Man in your condition, thought you’d need a car.’
Grace’s reference to my leg reminds me that it is hurting. I knead at the knee joint, more out of habit than in expectation of alleviating the pain. Sometimes I am hopeful when it hurts, as though pain signifies that there is still life left in that part of my body. In the bedroom Azra and I share is a full-length mirror. When I look into it, it is perfectly possible to squint out my bad leg. Tricking myself, I feel pride in the condition of my body, not quite as muscular as it was and sporting a decadent paunch, but otherwise buff.
‘I did a course once,’ Grace says, dropping to her knees.
I watch as her fingers work around my knee joint, the unexpectedness of her touch making me lean back against the sofa and close my eyes. Gradually the pain subsides, and as it does so, as if something else is switched immediately on, I feel a sliver of wet and a hardening between my legs.
‘Thanks,’ I say, opening my eyes and trying to wriggle free. ‘It’s better now.’
She ignores my statement and slowly rolls up my trousers to a point above the knee. I expect her to be horrified — the leg is a mass of dark keloid scarring, and the titanium articulation bulges from the skin at an unsettling angle — but she simply resumes massaging the affected area, the pain now replaced by pleasure. She wears no rings and the sight of her colour pressing into mine, alternately turning white and returning to pink, seems somehow wrong; I almost expect a dark brown to rub off me and creep up her fingertips. Her touch is soft and warm. My heart races and I clench my entire body as though my hands might jerk out to where they have not been invited.
‘Armistice Day.’ She sighs. ‘Your leg’s fucked and still you glorify the maiming and the killing.’
Through a gap in the curtains I can see still an unchanged black sky, ominous, a sky to die under. I recite, ‘Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim.’
‘You what?’ Her hands release my knee and she returns to the sofa. We sit pressed against each other and drain our mugs in one large gulp.
‘You’ve got to have respect for the dead.’ I feel light-headed from the alcohol.
Grace puts her knee to her chest and rubs her ankle. ‘Been working since lunchtime,’ she complains. ‘Respect for what?’
I reach for her foot; turning sideways, she allows me to place it on my lap. Her eyes register surprise but not fear. Gently I press around a callus at the back of her ankle, careful not to touch a rolled horizontal tear in the skin where her shoes have rubbed. It feels alien, Grace’s legs resting across mine, as though they’re not part of her at all but objects of flesh wrapped in a thin membrane, specimens for inspection. Blue veins blanching to my touch zigzag downwards across the slope of the dorsum of her foot, joining and branching again at the toes. A soft bulbous sweep of flesh marks the limit at which the tissue squeezed into the shoes. Hers are working feet, not slender and pointed like Azra’s. They’re like the feet of a child, a triangular wedge of tissue with short toes rendered softly swollen at the nail. As I pull back on the toes she sighs, extending her foot gracefully like a ballerina’s, and at the same time the malleoli at the ankle slide into prominent view. I recall an image of a girl standing on tiptoes reaching for fruit on a tree, her malleoli jutting out like something that might catch the sun and sparkle, bony and delicate like an Adam’s apple — a picture I can’t place, as though invented. I want to stroke the arch of her foot and milk each digit. A tense heat rises in me.
‘Ooh, that’s better. Murder out on those streets.’
I shake my head to free myself of illicit thoughts. ‘Respect for the dead. For the uniform.’
‘Looks good on you.’ She takes off my cap and considers the badge at the front.
‘Double-headed eagle, that,’ I say.
‘Two-faced, I’d call it.’ She throws the cap onto the low coffee table before us.
‘We’re all two-faced. Didn’t you say I caught you at a good time, not bad?’
‘I didn’t say bad.’ Angrily she pulls her foot away. ‘I have good times and other times when without the pills I’d draw the curtains and take to my duvet. They take the edge off it, like drawing back the curtain a bit, but that’s all you need, isn’t it, an edge?’ She pauses as though waiting for an answer. ‘They sort of slice off the worst bit at the top.’
‘Give me back that foot,’ I demand. ‘I’m not done yet.’
‘Have you ever killed anyone?’ she asks.
‘We had strict rules of engagement.’
‘Sounds clever.’ She looks over at the picture next to the TV. ‘Pakis got morals, haven’t they; they don’t let shit happen for no reason. They got an edge.’
I stop rubbing the foot. ‘Most of them have cars too.’
‘A gentleman would have taken his hat off before he came into the house.’
‘Bad luck, is it?’
She looks at me and for a while says nothing. She has the trick of a mother, the prolonged silence adding weight to her words when she finally speaks. ‘Soldiers are stupid, they do what they’re told.’
‘They do what’s right by their country.’
‘That’s worse.’
‘There is a right.’
‘All that soldier talk. Heard it before.’ She swaps feet and I begin to rub her left ankle.
‘Worse, this one,’ I say, boldly touching the deep laceration behind her ankle. Around it the skin is yellow and raised. It amazes me that she could walk at all. The soles of her feet are black. She flinches but allows me to continue.
‘I could fall asleep,’ says Grace, clenching her teeth as though that might keep her awake. She lies flat on the sofa, leaning her head against the armrest and closing her eyes.
‘I don’t want to go,’ I say.
‘Don’t then.’ She keeps her eyes closed and smiles as I continue to rub.
As my other hand casually brushes against my chin I am suddenly reawakened to the absence of my beard, and the very thought seems to make the skin sore and itchy. I pinch my chin, thinking back to the house I left earlier, my parents and Azra sound asleep and, before that, the ritual in the bathroom. I was then certain of something, and although that belief hasn’t waned, I have put myself to a test. I still feel in control but I have been distracted. The martyr is permitted to act out any depraved fantasy — his sins are forgiven and that is a truth. Truths can’t be overruled: they are written, and faith requires that however contradictory it may seem, you can’t pick and choose from what is written. Still, really, this. Placing her feet gently on the sofa, I stand up. ‘Thanks for everything.’
‘You going?’
I nod.
‘Free country.’
I feel tall and powerful standing over her supine form and she in turn seems smaller than before, as though she has shrunk into the upholstery. I glance at the photo and then at her. ‘The kid in the picture, she’s yours, isn’t she?’
She nods. As my shadow looms over her I examine her face, but it betrays no emotion. Even with her eyelids screwed tightly shut she knows I am staring. Under exertion, her eyelids quiver, and a muscle twitches in the corners of her lips.
‘What happened?’
‘You have to earn that story,’ she says.
‘You got another drink?’ I ask, giving in as I knew I would.
‘Bottle’s in the kitchen.’
I take the mugs from the table and go into the kitchen. After swilling them under a tap I quarter-fill each with Scotch.
Grace is asleep when I return. One cheek lolls against the sofa, her arms bent casually to each side as though in contentment or perhaps even defeat. Unlike my wife, Grace sleeps easy. I put down the mugs and pick up the photo. The toddler is cute. She stares out of the picture with sad eyes, a strange thing for a child. ‘Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim.’