He stood at the door of the room. It seemed he was alone, but I was not going to ask him about Kornelia. ‘If we pack my car and yours,’ I said, ‘we could take the bags to a charity shop.’
‘Sure.’ He looked surprised but also relieved that I was doing all this.
‘Unless you have something else in mind?’ I folded a purple dress. I folded a pair of leggings.
‘No. It’s got to be done.’ His shoulders were slumped but he looked better because he had gone for a haircut.
‘Remember,’ I picked up a deep red velvet dress. ‘She wore this not last Christmas but the year before.’
He shook his head and stepped into the room, sat on the bed. ‘Keep it. Don’t give it away.’
At least he had stopped saying, ‘I’m gutted.’ I must have heard him say it a hundred times. On and on like a mantra. ‘I’m gutted, Natasha.’
I stood up to try on a black jumper. It looked baggy enough to fit me. Just about. A large A5 envelope caught Tony’s attention. He extracted it from the box it had been thrown into, pushed down by a travel pillow.
‘X-rays,’ he said. ‘That time she twisted her ankle in Prague. We had it X-rayed. Do you have a bag for rubbish?’
I pointed to the one nearest the window. He dropped the envelope into it and turned back to pick up the travel pillow. ‘I suppose I could use this, no?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘The more you keep the better. I just thought you had gone through all this stuff?’
‘No,’ he said, rummaging inside a shoulder bag. ‘Kornelia did it all.’
Now that her name was mentioned there was an opportunity for him to expound. But I sensed a weariness in him and I accepted it. He did not owe me an apology or an explanation.
‘Would Naomi like these?’ I pointed to a pile of fitness-related things – a Slendertone Abs Belt, a power ball, pieces from a dumbbell set.
‘Yes, I think she would. She said she might drop by tomorrow on her way into town for more shopping.’ He was beginning to systematically look through the box nearest to him.
Naomi was a good ten years older than me. I had always looked up to her and she was generous, giving me time and encouraging my studies. Often I did things to impress her, feeling that she knew more than me, that she had an edge and access to privileges that were beyond my reach. If she was not who she was, down-to-earth, accessible, without malice, I would have envied the uncomplicated way she got on with her life, the sense of rootedness and belonging that was out of my grasp. I would even have envied her closeness to Tony. ‘Will the boys come with her?’ I asked him now.
‘Not this time.’ Tony adored his grandchildren. I had never seen him happier than when he was playing football with them in the back garden or taking them out for the day.
‘Look,’ he said, holding out a large baby doll dressed in a white christening dress. I had never seen it before. ‘I bought it for her on eBay,’ he said and smiled. ‘Vintage 1960s. To substitute the one that got confiscated at the airport.’
‘You knew that story too?’
‘Yes, she told me she never got over it. It still made her angry. She had felt chuffed with herself, participating in the Olympic Games in Rome, coming home to a special welcome; instead they confiscate her new doll at the airport. So I got her to describe the doll and we went online together so that she could show me what it looked like. She didn’t imagine I would actually buy one for her until it came in the post.’ He tilted the doll and the eyelids with their thick lashes closed over the blue eyes. The hair was also plastic,
shaped as if it were combed back. ‘Do you want it, Natasha? She would have liked you to have it.’
He held it out for me and even as I took hold of one hard, chubby arm, I felt a stab of irrational dislike. A familiar envy. Yes, this was the baby my mother would rather have had, creamy pink with blue eyes, a child with blonde hair that she could comb straight and pat down, not me.
We worked together, Tony and I, until it became dark outside. We packed the two cars and headed into town, braving the Christmas rush. We made it in time to the charity shop before it closed. Buoyed by a sense of achievement we decided to go for a drink and a bite to eat. It was not easy to find two parking spots but we managed in the end. The road in front of the vodka bar was thronged with a farmers’ market. Various stalls sold cheeses, organic vegetables and fish. It seemed like a long time before we were seated with a menu in our hands.
Near the end of the meal Tony said, ‘Yesterday I went to my solicitor and changed my will. I had to because of how everything is different now. I’ve left the house to the two lads with Naomi as their executor in case they are not yet of age before my time comes. If I don’t overstay my welcome and spend left, right and centre, there will be a bit of cash left over for you.’
The house had been in his name, never my mother’s. I swallowed, thinking that the former playboy of Khartoum would indeed find himself spending left, right and centre, especially if Kornelia started to make demands.
‘Thank you, Tony, for all you have done for me,’ I said flatly, wishing that he would not want to be thanked. But he did. I saw it in the way he put down his knife and fork and sat back. I managed a few more sentences, a more genuine show of gratitude. Something was slipping away from me, an opportunity I had never acknowledged as such.
The next morning Tony went swimming at his gym and I read the Sunday papers. It was there, why shouldn’t it be, pared down,
words standing up thin on the page like spikes.
A twenty-one-year-old man is being held at a high-security area of Glasgow’s Govan police station after officers raided a property near Brechin on Thursday. His arrest is understood to be related to downloading radical Islamist material.
He should not have been downloading material. He was looking into weapons used for jihad. That’s what he told me.
After lunch, Tony suggested we visit the Garden of Remembrance in Hazelhead. We walked around but the atmosphere was heavy, toxic. We did not stay long. ‘I don’t think I will come again,’ he said when we got back into the car. And I felt the same way. He dropped me back at the house and stayed away most of the afternoon. It felt strange without my mother, as if the house was full of her and drained of her at the same time. It struck me for the first time as strange that we always went to Naomi’s for Christmas dinner. Why didn’t they come to us? It must have been a throwback to Tony’s time in Khartoum. He would come for a short holiday and spend it at Naomi’s house in Fraserburgh. Even after he married Mum and after they moved to Aberdeen, he kept the same habit. Perhaps Mum wasn’t confident of pulling off a British Christmas dinner. Perhaps she didn’t mind falling into his regular routine.
Naomi didn’t drop by as promised and I was disappointed. I had always liked her because she was not presumptuous. She had a talent for accepting others as they were, on their own terms. Tony must have been like that in Khartoum – no wonder he was popular. When I went into the kitchen to make dinner, I overheard him talking to Naomi on the phone. I burnt the onions hearing him mention in the same breath Kornelia and Christmas in Fraserburgh.
‘I don’t want her to be there,’ I said when he put the phone down. ‘This is the first Christmas without Mum. It’s not right.’
I had misjudged. His anger was swift, as if it had been building up all weekend. His voice rose sharp as a slap and everything he said was the truth, no exaggerations, no lies. ‘Listen, you can’t suddenly turn up and tell me what to do. I call you and you don’t pick up, you don’t get back to me. Where were you when your mother
was in hospital, when she needed you, when I needed you? She was dying, for God’s sake, and you just went on with your selfish life. I had to practically beg you to come up for the funeral. So now back off and let me do what I like.’
Early the next morning, I let myself out quietly and pushed my key through the letter box. My car was full of those things of my mother’s I had decided to keep. When I stopped for petrol, the clock in the shop showed 5.50 a.m. I bought a new SIM card, a buttery and the new edition of
Classic Car.
I was going to visit Malak on the way. This was how I got through the night, thinking of her and her house and how good I had felt staying with her and Oz, like I was worth something and we were ringed by wider spaces, the past, the future, the Caucasus, the Grampians, my memories of Khartoum. It should not have ended, not in the way that it did. I had not been able to speak to her since the police took our phones. Now I wanted more news of Oz. And she always got up early to pray so I would not be disturbing her.
It was a little after dawn when I parked in front of her house. Without the snow, the fields and the house itself looked bleak. She came out of the front door or at least it seemed to be her. Her appearance was noticeably different. Hair straight as a helmet, pencil skirt, leather jacket, boots reaching her knees. It was as if she was dressed for a part – what part, I wasn’t sure.
‘I thought you were the taxi,’ she said and explained that she was going to Glasgow for a few days.
I persuaded her to cancel the taxi booking and that I would give her a lift to the station. We went back indoors so that she could use the phone. I was grateful for those moments inside the house, to wander around and recharge myself. I was looking at the empty space on the wall where the sword had been, when she joined me. ‘My great grandfather said that he got it back from the Russians. This is the sword Shamil wanted to fight with until it was shattered into pieces. The fact that it is whole represents the sacrifice he made. The other day when Oz was playing with it in the snow, he
wasn’t respecting it enough. He has – as I have – a heritage which is moral and thoughtful and merciful. Did he honour it? Or did he choose to go along with those who claim they’re acting in the name of Islam and at the same time don’t follow the principles of submission and restraint?’
I was taken aback. ‘You don’t believe he’s guilty, do you?’ Maybe she knew more than I did.
She tensed a little. ‘He’s involved. But I can’t be sure. It’s all moved online these days. You can do it all on a laptop – run a website, fundraise, send money abroad, post this and that. Search for whatever needs searching for. He’s ruined his life; how will he ever get out of this?’
She was not asking me a question. She went on, ‘Or I think “that little squirt ruined
my
life”. Because I forget he is old, I forget that to the world he is a man. I keep going back to when he was little, when he was nine, fifteen. My memory mixes all these versions of him together. And I feel the same anger that I felt for him when he muddied his brand new trainers or went out without locking the front door. Then I shake myself, this isn’t a prank … I keep going back over things he said, the way I brought him up. I don’t believe it. Except that I remember one time. There was something on the radio about a suicide bomber and he said “cool”.’ She looked down to the ground.
I could imagine him breathing the word without smiling, without intending to shock. ‘So what did you say to him?’ I asked.
‘I let it pass. We do that sometimes, we mums, we pretend not to hear.’
That stung. We mums. As if I would never find out, as if I would never be part of that group.
‘We bury our heads in the sand,’ she continued. ‘Because we are busy or we can’t be bothered to start an argument or because we can’t keep tabs on every little thing. And they do pass, these fads and moods. They go through phases. He went through a phase, I remember, of believing all these conspiracy theories about 9/11
– that it wasn’t Muslims that did it. I argued with him then, I talked him out of it, or at least I thought I did.’
I too had my misgivings about Oz. No situation at any given time is entirely new; the constraints and conversations are different, the fears are different, but still today is a ripple of former times, a version of what has been passed down. Supposing Oz was neither completely guilty nor completely innocent. Suppose he had done something wrong but that something might not be what he was arrested for, might not be what he would be punished for. And at the end of the day we would all accept what was happening. We would all have a rationale for it, a way of putting it into perspective.
I said, ‘We should go. I don’t want you to miss your train.’
She picked up the house keys. Her movements were a little nervous, her shoulders dropping. Despite the effort over her appearance, she looked the slightest bit gaunt, she looked her age. ‘I’ve got an appointment with a London lawyer who specialises in terrorist arrests. He’s coming up to Glasgow to meet me and talk to Oz. They haven’t charged him with anything yet.’
It was when she started talking about Oz that I guessed the part she was dressed up for: activist mum campaigning for the release of her son.
I gave her my new mobile number, she gave me her house phone and the number of the hotel she was staying at in Glasgow. We would be in touch from now on. I drove slowly, wanting her company but unable to tell her about the last few days.
‘I was in denial when he was first arrested,’ she said. ‘Then I told myself I have to help him in every way, every possible way. I have to get him out of this mess. I can’t just sit back and cry. What good would it do? Yes, it’s been a shock for me but it’s not about me now, it’s about him.’
Light was beginning to gather around us but below the clouds I could still see the full moon. It looked like a sun. ‘I haven’t spoken to him,’ she said in reply to my question. ‘They wouldn’t let me. And
they wouldn’t let me take him anything. No change of clothes, no food, no nothing. I called his father in Cape Town.’ She sounded breathless, maybe because she was speaking too fast. ‘Instead of getting on the next plane, he says, “They might drag me into it and then what use would I be to him?” Can you believe it!’
Yes, I could believe it, but I kept my eyes on the road. She sighed and touched her forehead. ‘So I’m on my own now in this. But I know people in London. I know people in the media and in human rights groups and I am not going to take this lying down.’
We were inside Montrose now, passing the caravan park, empty now, nothing like in the summer. She said, ‘You don’t look well, Natasha. You look like you haven’t been sleeping properly.’