‘What you saying that shit for?’ Suddenly Grace is awake and she leans forward, her eyes examining mine. ‘Don’t give me no Pakistani walla-walla. It can’t help.’
‘It can help.’ I whisper another Bismillah and kiss the photo, and gently, as though it is a sacred object, return the frame to where I found it.
‘If you had a car you’d get into it and piss off now.’ A single black tear drops from her left eye. It stops momentarily at her cheekbone. She swipes it away, leaving an angular smudge from eye to cheek, and as she does so her upper lip pulls up, exposing the dark gap in her mouth.
‘You should get that tooth seen to,’ I say, regretting the words as soon as they are uttered.
‘Can’t,’ she says matter-of-factly.
‘Why not?’
She looks away. ‘I’m in need of it.’
We each pick up our mugs and slowly we drain them, mostly in silence. From time to time her eyes lock onto mine and her lips purse as though she is considering me kindly. At those moments I clench against the adrenaline, my heart racing and stomach muscles contracting. A clock on the wall — the big hand has the head of Mickey Mouse at its tip — chimes weakly as it records four o’clock.
‘Really, I should turn in. Big day tomorrow,’ says Grace wearily.
‘Big day?’
She glances at the photograph, closes her eyes and smiles.
Emboldened by the drink, I reach for her foot, suddenly desperate to make some sort of last connection. She claws it away under the sofa.
‘It’s been lovely, but I’m so sleepy.’ She yawns, putting a fist to her mouth.
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I mean it. Thanks.’
Grace stretches out a hand and pulls my wrist towards her. ‘You’re all right.’
‘You’re too trusting,’ I say irritably.
‘If you want to fuck me you can.’
I pull my arm away and shrink back. I feel tears welling up and struggle to hold them at bay. Finally I stutter, ‘I’m a m-married man.’
‘Men get sore when they think they can’t fuck you.’ Her voice is dreamy and warm.
‘It’s okay, I don’t mind.’ I pick up my cap and put it on my head. Finding my stick, I aim for the door. Then I backtrack and, stooping over the sofa, negotiate the thin brittle fibres of her wavy hair. They scratch my face and I kiss her lightly on the cheek. I recall the rose scent she left behind in the street and how it filled me with pangs of both desire and panic. Now I’m closer still but I don’t feel it as keenly. It puzzles me, as though with proximity something has waned. ‘I’m not angry,’ I say. ‘You’re a nice girl.’
Grace turns her head quickly and plants a kiss on my lips. Hers feel dry and rubbery and nothing like the electrical charge of my imagination. Then she opens her eyes and, staring at the ceiling, smiles. ‘Come on, soldier boy, let’s go to bed.’ Emboldened by the drink, I feel happy and careless.
Tidiness ends as we climb the stairs. Before the bedroom window sits a dressing table in laminated oak, an oval mirror attached above it. Its surface is covered with variously shaped bottles of scent and cosmetics, washes and creams, brushes for hair and for eyes, thick-handled safety razors and small, colourful vials containing lip gloss. Azra doesn’t have much of that stuff, and what she does possess she keeps locked in the vanity case she was clutching when I first spotted her at Arrivals. I saw her open it only once. There were small mirrors inside the lid and numerous plastic compartments attached to pivots to pull out. Inside them were secret potions the purpose of which she never revealed. It smelt of woman, the vanity case, more woman than I ever got to see. In Grace’s bedroom, shoes are discarded on the carpeted floor and books and magazines stacked a foot high in discrete piles along the walls. On one side of the bed is a small cabinet with a groaning ashtray and a small framed photograph of a baby, its round head filling the frame.
I take off my number two dress uniform, draping each item carefully over a chair, and naked, I slide into bed next to Grace. She feels warm and soft, and as I nuzzle her neck I feel a comfort beyond that of flesh and the aroma of her perfume, the soporific comfort of an intimate bed. My cock, ramrod straight, throbs against her skin.
‘I’m sorry I’m a—’
She puts a finger to her lips. ‘Shh.’ She kisses me. Her lips are now soft and moist and with my tongue I probe the gap in her teeth. Then I stop.
‘I need to tell you.’ I pull away. ‘I’ve never done it.’
She shrinks back and looks at me, her chin resting on her hands. ‘I thought you were married.’
‘Yes.’
‘You lied?’
‘No.’ I search her eyes but she expresses no surprise.
‘Pakistanis around here, they’re all married. Not that that stops them.’ She laughs. ‘I should know. They cruise by and. Well, let’s put it this way, for them all white flesh is game, and, if I might say so, the younger the better.’
‘We have a thing about white. I used to think it was something to do with school, how we Pakis got singled out, but it goes back further than that. We are subjugated, a slave race. The white man is still our master and the only way to get at him—’
‘Well,’ she reaches over and puts my hand on her breast, ‘you’ve conquered.’
I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel. The breast is just tissue moulded to a shape, but strangely something that demands a response. I try to think of something to distract her. ‘Why do you collect those dogs?’
She quickly replies, ‘So I’ll be forgiven.’
We burst out laughing and I take the opportunity to withdraw my hand. She reaches forward and presses her lips hard on mine.
‘That tooth of yours, what’s the secret?’ I say when she releases me.
‘You shouldn’t speak to a woman like that. You really are a virgin.’
‘Then that is proof?’
She nods, pressing her body against mine. ‘Long time ago I went up to Newcastle to see my mum. Got drunk and in the middle of the night we had this terrible argument. Stormed off barefoot down the motorway. So you see from experience, I must know — are you on the run from Newcastle?’
‘I’m on manoeuvre.’
‘Lies. Tell you what, if the truth is a good truth, I mean one worth knowing, I might tell you about this.’ She fingers the gap in her mouth. ‘I’ll trade you.’
‘It’s something to do with the little girl in the picture, isn’t it?’
‘It’s personal, but I’ll trade,’ she says again.
‘I’m sorry. About your daughter. I am sorry.’
‘I thought you were mad and we would fuck wildly, but you’re not mad, are you?’
‘Never known a white girl who’s invited me into her house.’
Grace corrects me. ‘A prostitute.’
‘Still a girl.’ My head throbs from the whisky but I try to put on a serious face. ‘As you say, I’ve conquered.’
She pulls the duvet up to her chin and considers me for what feels like ages.
‘Sex,’ I say dreamily, turning to look out of the window, ‘is problematic.’
The view from the bedroom window is familiar. I can see the terraced houses opposite, separated from us by a narrow strip of road. A street lamp burns but overall the feeling is of quiet, a sense of lifetimes spun so fast, as though through a vortex, that they are over as soon as they have begun. A sense of death, as though our presence is proof of a long line of people passing through these identical houses.
I pull away from her, rest my head on the pillow. ‘Any more grog?’
She wraps a sheet around her body, runs downstairs and fetches a fresh bottle and, shivering, returns quickly to bed. She pours us each an inch and inspects me with a kind gaze as though waiting for me to say something. Still holding her mug, slowly she closes her eyes.