Tree of Pearls Read online

  Then Harry came to put Lily to bed. ‘I was thinking I’d like to have her for weekends sometimes,’ he said, ‘but actually I’d rather be with both of you.’

  ‘You’ll be wanting parental responsibility, anyway,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I will. Better write to the court. When we get back the new birth certificate.’

  New birth certificate.

  I didn’t tell him.

  That night I lay in bed thinking of the tiny Egyptian inside me, and I dreamt of a painting I’d seen in one of the tombs outside Cairo, where the occupant – Ptah Hotep – is portrayed with a tiny adult-proportioned daughter, just tall enough to reach his knee, holding on to his calf with one outstretched hand and striding along with him, between his knees, as he strides that Egyptian tomb-carving stride. If I remember rightly he was the Pharoah’s Official Keeper of Secrets, and hairdresser. Or maybe that was Ti. Anyway, plus ça change.

  *

  On Monday Preston Oliver rang during breakfast: well, while Lily was letting her porridge get cold and I was wondering why I didn’t feel like drinking coffee.

  ‘Can you make it down here for 9.45?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said, on principle.

  ‘Try,’ he suggested.

  ‘I’m not available,’ I said.

  ‘Make yourself available,’ he said. ‘Seventh floor. They’ll tell you at reception.’

  So I rang Zeinab and took Lily round there to play with Hassan and Omar, school having broken up, and climbed on a number 94 from the Green, changed at Oxford Circus and read the paper all the way in self-defence against Christmas shopping and rucksacks and loden coats and swinging cameras and Selfridges bags and all the rest of the battery of the tourist in London. And got off at Westminster, and ambled down Victoria Street, and approached our national centre of law enforcement at about five to ten. I was glad to be late. It made me feel free.

  I’d never been inside before. It just looks like an office. Computer screens everywhere. Could have been a newspaper office, or an insurance office, or anything. Noticeboards, big rooms divided into little ones by unconvincing screens. Photocopiers. Someone had put up some half-arsed paper-chains. I hate offices more than almost anything. My sweat smells different in office buildings. I come over all metallic.

  Oliver’s office was not big, not small. I know people set store by this stuff. Status and so on. But I wouldn’t know where to begin. He had a window, though, so he can’t be that lowdown. And a desk of his own.

  ‘Glad you could make it,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, well,’ I replied.

  He looked at me.

  ‘Coffee?’

  Visions of Nescafe floated up on the smell of central heating. ‘No thanks,’ I said. I haven’t been sick at all, I realized. Aren’t you meant to be sick? Maybe I wasn’t pregnant. I was going to the doctor that afternoon.

  ‘Harry will be joining us in a moment,’ he said, ‘but before he does I want to talk to you.’

  I grunted.

  ‘You’re going to have to help us, Angeline.’

  Bollocks I am, I thought. And just gazed at him, as a cow might. A nice fat pretty cow called Bluebell.

  ‘You’re a freelance, aren’t you? Consultations and what-have-you? I’m hiring you.’

  Oh yes? I almost laughed.

  ‘I’ll give it to you straight. We have to find him. And we can’t. The Egyptians have lost him. And there’s no point us sending anyone there, unless they know something more than we do at present. And you have been volunteered.’

  I blinked. Slowly. As if I had very long, very heavy lashes. Hard to lift up again.

  ‘You can pick up where he left off in Cairo. You know the city, you know people who knew him as du Berry, you know where he went when he was there, you speak Arabic. And you won’t be going for long …’

  ‘I won’t be going at all,’ I said.

  ‘Yes you will,’ he replied. Very straight, very sure of himself.

  ‘No I won’t.’ What I should have said when Ben Cooper first lured me into Eddie’s orbit in the first place. No.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘Because it is your civic duty.’

  I didn’t laugh. Funnily enough if there had been one reason why I might have gone, that would have been it. Because I do have this honourable brave and public-minded streak. But no.

  ‘It is not my civic duty to put myself in the line of a maniac who has threatened me, attacked me, kidnapped me, tried to rape me, pretended to kidnap my daughter. It is my civic duty to go nowhere near him.’

  ‘You won’t be going anywhere near him,’ he said. ‘That’s the whole point. He’s not there. All you will be doing is looking for footsteps. Then when you find some, you come home. No harm done.’

  ‘I don’t think you have a clue what you’re suggesting,’ I said. ‘I have no training for this, not a clue how to do it, I don’t want to do it, it would be dangerous – it’s a completely stupid idea. Dangerously stupid.’

  ‘What is?’ said Harry’s voice behind me. Cold. I hadn’t heard him come in.

  ‘Sending me to Cairo to find out where Eddie’s gone,’ I said.

  I looked up at him. He was looking at Preston Oliver.

  ‘No,’ he said. Very simple.

  ‘Yes,’ said Oliver.

  ‘Why?’ said Harry. ‘Haven’t we got any coppers? No detectives? No professionals? No one but a young woman to do our dirty work for us? The one person in the world most at risk from this crazy fuck who would be safely inside if it hadn’t been for someone’s clever idea?’

  ‘That’s why she’ll go,’ he said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Harry.

  ‘She knows she’ll never be safe till he’s sorted out. Don’t you?’ And he turned to me, and gave me a look so smug I could have jumped out of the window.

  I stared back at him levelly, then looked across to Harry.

  ‘I thought you said he wasn’t Ben Cooper,’ I said.

  ‘He wasn’t,’ said Harry.

  Oliver sat, pale and still, on his grey plastic chair behind his grey metal desk on its grey plastic carpet.

  ‘It’s true though, isn’t it?’ he said. For a moment I couldn’t remember if it was or not. Then I thought, ‘No!’

  ‘If I could think of a better way, believe me I would,’ he said, and sighed and turned as if to produce the contract that he had ready-drawn-up all along, waiting to get over my paltry objections before getting me to sign.

  ‘But I’m pregnant,’ I heard myself say.

  Silence.

  I heard only the sound of Harry staring at me.

  ‘All the more reason to get him sorted out then,’ said Oliver seamlessly. And smiled up at Harry. ‘Congratulations.’

  But Harry was still staring.

  ‘Oh,’ said Oliver. ‘Or not?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘It’s not Eddie’s, is it?’ said Oliver. Almost laughing.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ I said. Furiously but calm.

  Harry came back to life.

  ‘You’re not sending an unqualified pregnant girl to find Eddie Bates. I don’t believe that you can do this. It’s stupid and it is too dangerous.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ repeated Oliver patiently. ‘As I was explaining, she won’t be going anywhere near him. She’s going to Cairo precisely because Eddie is not there. OK? And can I remind you Harry that you are here as a courtesy? Your objections have been noted. She’s going.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said.

  ‘You are going, because if you don’t, we will not see Bates again until he chooses to reappear. Which he will. I leave it – as he does – to your imagination where, when and how that might be. Your pregnancy simply means you will have to go soon. Which we want you to do anyway. You’ll be going as a dancer. Look for work, and while doing so find footsteps. That’s all. For goodness sake,’ he said, ‘you’re a perfectly intelligent girl. Just go to
Cairo, ask around a bit, and then come home. You can manage that, can’t you? I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss.’

  I didn’t like being called a girl. But I liked everything else less.

  ‘I can’t get work. I don’t dance any more.’

  ‘You don’t have to. Just tell people that’s what you’re doing if they ask.’

  ‘They won’t believe me. There is no work. It’s all Russian girls now. Anyway there are no tourists since …’ I didn’t want to say it.

  ‘That doesn’t matter. You don’t need work, you only need an excuse to be there. And anyway, there’s plenty. No Egyptian girls are dancing now. They’re scared. So are the Europeans, everybody. There’ll be plenty of work on offer, and everyone will be delighted to see you.’

  ‘And I have a daughter,’ I said, ‘who needs looking after.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘Well, DI Makins hasn’t had his paternity leave yet. Have you, Harry? You can start as soon as you like. She’ll be leaving this week.’

  Harry’s face.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it’s Christmas.’

  ‘If she goes I must go,’ Harry said finally.

  ‘No.’

  I looked from one to the other. Make decisions for and about me, why don’t you. Ignore what I say, why not?

  ‘I’m going home,’ I said. Harry made to leave with me. As we left he turned and said to Oliver, not as a threat but as a quiet statement of fact: ‘You will regret this.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Oliver, calmly.

  SIX

  Yes, I am

  I stormed down the corridor to get out of that place as fast as I could. Harry followed me, steering me past sharp-edged filing cabinets and ugly, bloodless men in shirt sleeves. We burst out on to Victoria Street, mid-morning full of taxis and buses, limp rain and London life. Each of these people no doubt was carrying their own drama. The volume of human activity. I am beginning to hate cities.

  ‘I’m not going,’ I said, as soon as we were outside. I said it warningly, as if I thought he were going to try to persuade me. Traffic noise drowned me anyway.

  He took my arm and stared about, as if searching for an island of peace. ‘Pub?’ he said to me. ‘Café?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I hate places.’

  ‘You’re pregnant,’ he said.

  I shot him a look. I don’t know what I meant by it or what he read into it. It was, I think, imploring, silencing. We seemed to be walking west, and after a few moments we cut north towards St James’s Park, up the beautiful little Queen Anne streets, red brick and white stone steps, where dandies and countesses used to live. Government offices, mainly, now. Crossing Birdcage Walk he was still with me, silent. We stepped over a low iron fence, and found a bench, and sat, and gazed out over the lake, the flamingoes, the mandarin ducks, the fountain, the willows. Pretty as a picture.

  ‘You’re pregnant,’ he said again.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. And again saying it out loud made it truer. ‘I believe so.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I said, automatically, but not pleased. Is that his first reaction? Why didn’t I tell him?

  ‘When did you find out?’ he said. I wasn’t sure that I didn’t feel a little interrogated. He’s checking for his basis and then he’s going to judge me. Find me wanting, or not.

  ‘Saturday,’ I said. ‘I’m seeing the doctor today.’

  Someone was feeding the ducks, who were making a big racket, pecking and splashing. Duck dramas.

  ‘I don’t know much more than you, you see,’ I said. What I meant was, ‘I desperately need you to be nice here.’ I think he sensed that, but we’re only human. He didn’t know what to do.

  ‘It’s Sa’id’s, I suppose,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said. Meaning it to sound like a jocular confirmation, not like a reluctant acknowledgement, but I don’t know how it came out. Anyway, what did he mean by supposing? Of course it’s Sa’id’s. Who else’s?

  And what’s this ‘it’? ‘It’ is not a friendly term.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  For a moment I read that as ‘Are you going to keep it?’ – that great euphemism – and I nearly told him to fuck off. Just in time I reminded myself that that’s not what he said, and therefore not what I should respond to. It may have been what he meant. But I can give him the benefit of the doubt here. If I thought he was suggesting that I might want an abortion … Jesus, my skin curls up at the idea. No judgement – no judgement – on a woman who needs to do that. But I don’t, and I won’t. And I couldn’t bear to hear Harry suggest it because how could I forgive him? This is a baby. One of those small innocent sweet-smelling things that love us. Like Lily was. Like he was, and me.

  I remember from somewhere that before three months you don’t tell anybody. Don’t know why, or where I heard it. Perhaps because most miscarriages are during that period. A blue dot on a strip of plastic.

  ‘I’m going to have a baby, god willing,’ I said. And smiled at him. As I did I felt the smile grow wider and wider till it nearly fell off the edges of my face. It grew from right inside me, and blossomed all over my mush like an immense flower. Harry felt its force.

  ‘So you are,’ he said. And gave a funny, sad, little desperate sighing laugh.

  ‘So what do you think?’ I asked, in safety, now that he knew exactly what he was not allowed to think.

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ he said. ‘I’m in shock.’

  ‘So am I,’ I said.

  ‘I mean …’

  ‘What?’

  He was silent.

  ‘Let’s talk about it when you’ve been to the doctor,’ he said. I could see he was buying time, and I thought that maybe – yes, probably – he was hoping, quietly, that perhaps I was mistaken. But I knew I wasn’t. Some non-cerebral, non-logical part of me knew perfectly well. You don’t dance for years without getting to know your own body. You don’t nearly die in a road smash without recognizing life when it’s kicking around inside you. However young and tiny; however shrimplike, translucent. However few cells.

  Still, he can have time.

  I didn’t know what was in his heart. He wasn’t telling me. Well, he can have time.

  ‘OK,’ I said. We sat in silence for a few minutes. It wasn’t that cold. I love to look out over water. Even an urban ornamental lake.

  ‘And what about Oliver’s plan, then?’ he said.

  ‘I’m not going. It’s all mouth, isn’t it? It’s up to me how scared I am of Eddie. He’s not going to be coming to Britain, you said so yourself, so why should I care where he is? There’s no good reason why I should go except that Oliver wants me to, and is trying to spook me. So I won’t be spooked.’

  ‘He won’t like it,’ said Harry. Looking quite pleased at the prospect.

  ‘Not as much as I wouldn’t like going,’ I said.

  He took my hand and patted it. ‘Attagirl,’ he said, mildly.

  *

  The doctor, a camp black man with Lionel Richie curls and a tweed jacket, made me lie down, palpated my belly, asked me the date of the start of my last period, gave me a number to make an appointment at the hospital, three leaflets on the dangers of smoking and alcohol during pregnancy, and a certificate. It certified I was pregnant. According to him, it was ten weeks, because according to him it is counted from the date of the last period. According to him. But I knew exactly.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said the nurse, when I went in to be weighed and measured. ‘You can pee in a policeman’s helmet now, if you need to.’

  ‘Why would I need to?’ I asked. Which wasn’t quite the question I meant, but I had to ask something.

  ‘If you’re taken short,’ she said. ‘You’re allowed to pee anywhere, and a policeman would have to offer you his helmet. So I’ve heard. It’s probably like taxis having to carry a bale of hay for the horse. But you could try it.’
/>   ‘Thanks,’ I said. And got weighed. First time in years. She said a number in kilos, which meant nothing to me, which is just as well because I have a strong natural aversion to thinking about my weight. Biggest waste of energy. Think what women could do with all the time they spend worrying about their weight.

  ‘You’ll need to eat well,’ she was saying, ‘but don’t put on too much because it’s harder to get rid of afterwards. Pregnancy isn’t very good for the body, you know. This is your first? Well …’

  She took my blood pressure. It took me back to the time after the accident, the bad time, Janie dead, Lily in intensive care, Mum and Dad in shock, me in traction. Long nights with the black rubber bandage expanding and contracting, sighing like the tide, breathing slowly and regularly around my arm, the powdery feel against my flesh and the strong slow squeeze. All night, those long hospital nights. When they took it off I missed it.

  My body was so hijacked then. Immobilized, bound up, suspended, drugged – I still feel in some way more resentful of the doctors than the accident. The accident just did what it had to do – smashed up my leg and killed my sister. But at least it did it quickly. The doctors and the healing took so long. Back in this nurse’s hands, I felt that immobilizing force of medicine coming down on me again. Please don’t start telling me what to do, I can’t bear it.

  The thing is, having Lily, I think that I know all about babies. But in reality pregnancy is a new world to me. I thought of Janie: how happy she was to be pregnant, how happy we all were, even though we hated Jim, with his bullying insecurities – this was the first grandchild, who would shift the balances of our family and provoke love simply by being. And Janie never got that love. Never got beyond pregnancy.