Authors: Monica Ali
CHAPTER FIVE
LENA ROAMED THE SITTING ROOM AS THOUGH LOOKING FOR A WAY out. She trailed her hand across a shelf, knocked a candlestick and set it straight. She picked up a photograph of Charlie but barely glanced at it. She put it down again.
Standing by the long, naked window, twisting her fingers, she regarded the door with infinite blankness.
'Tea,' said Gabe, 'coffee, cocoa, vodka ...'
Lena switched her gaze to the window. Her hair, tied in a ponytail, was limp and greasy. Her earlobes were stretched by thick gold hoops. A row of studs ran up the cartilage of the left ear. The tendons of her neck formed two thick cords.
She shook her head.
'Are you cold? I could put the heating on.' He felt shivery himself. He bit his lip to stop his teeth from chattering.
Lena began to pace. She wore black patent shoes with a gold clasp across the toes and low heels that tapped a nervy message across the pale oak floor.
'We don't have to talk,' said Gabriel. 'You don't have to tell me anything.'
If those were her tights he had found, if she had been living in the basement with Yuri, if she was now homeless as well as jobless she probably didn't know where to begin.
'It's late, anyway. Time for bed.' His throat hurt when he swallowed. He was coming down with something. Was he too cold or too hot? For a few moments he closed his eyes.
He was back in the cab, coming over Vauxhall Bridge, looking out of the windows at the London Eye and St Paul's and all the other jewels scattered against the purple velvet sky, and his hand was not so far from hers and he breathed the thin damp scent of her and did not look at her once.
'If you want sex,' said Lena, 'I don't have problem.'
Gabriel opened his eyes. 'No,' he said. 'What? No.' He shook his head.
Lena shrugged. The deep slash of her top showed the sharpness of her collar bone and only the faintest suggestion of breasts. In front of the television she came to a standstill and faced him. 'I don't have problem. We do it, OK, now if you want.'
Again, he shook his head, staring at her cadaverous little frame. He scarcely believed those words had spilled from it, and he was appalled. He wanted very much to have sex. 'Christ, no. That's not why I ...' He rubbed his face.
'Look. You don't know me, but if you think I ... that's not how I am, I'm not like that at all.'
'OK,' said Lena.
'You don't believe me? I didn't bring you here for ... you said you needed a place to stay.'
'OK.'
'Jesus.'
'OK.'
Gabriel got up. His throat was definitely inflamed and his head hurt. It was madness to try to help this girl. She could stay one night on the sofa and then she would have to leave. 'I'm going to take some aspirins and then get you a duvet. You can sleep in here. Right. You need anything else? Are you cold? I can get you a jumper, you know, if you're cold.'
He went straight to the kitchen, picked the tights off the worktop and threw them in the bin. He went to the bathroom and swallowed two aspirins, replaced the bottle, retrieved it and tapped out two more. In the bedroom he opened drawers and closed them until he realized he was searching for a jumper that would suit her and pulled out the first thing that came.
Lena was watching television in the dark. She had taken off her shoes and sat with her feet up, hugging her knees. Gabe held out the jumper. She took it without a word, pulled it on and stretched it over her legs.
Gabe wished it were already morning so he could put her out of his flat and out of his life. She wasn't in the least bit attractive. She was hostile. What was wrong with her? Offering sex like that but not a single word of thanks.
He would fetch a duvet and a pillow and leave her to it. He had tried to be charitable and she had thrown it back in his face.
He sat on the sofa next to her, but leaving the widest possible gap.
On the screen, some cable channel, a tedious 1940s movie played out. Oh, how can you ask me that? The woman wore a frothy nude-toned evening gown, although it appeared to be the middle of the day. The man was in a tuxedo. Through the open French windows was a swimming pool shaped like an internal organ; the way it glittered made everything look fake.
Gabriel turned to Lena. He would question her briefly but closely about Yuri.
Wasn't that why he had brought her here? She wasn't his responsibility. If she had no job that was her own fault. Oona had never fired her because Oona hadn't seen her again.
Lena watched the television; his jumper formed a tent over her knees. The light from the screen played with her face, screwing the angles around. She had a feline nose, small and snub, high, skinny eyebrows and a pale scar of a mouth. It was difficult to tell, Gabe could not decide, whether she was pretty or not. She turned her face and now he could see her eyes, darker than he remembered, livid blue in the television's flame.
'Lena,' he said. It sounded like a sigh. He cleared his throat. 'Whereabouts are you from?'
'Whereabout,' said Lena flatly, as though that were the answer she gave. She looked at the screen.
'What country?'
The man laughed in an avuncular manner then kissed the girl on the neck. He was twice her age.
'Belarus,' said Lena.
Gabe reached for something to say. He looked at Lena. 'Oh,' he said. 'What's it like?'
Lena twisted her lips; scorn for the entire country or, perhaps, merely for Gabe.
Gabriel tried again. 'Which town?'
She ignored him. She plucked at the jumper, unravelling a thread or two.
'How long have you been in London?'
She rested her chin on her knees. Her earrings, though they were gold, spoke only of poverty. Curling her toes, she attempted to grip the slippery-hard edge of the sofa, and to maintain her slovenly position, Gabe knew, she had to hold herself rigid as hell.
'Were you living in the basement with Yuri?'
There's that whole darn mess with Mr Hammond! If only there was a way to clear that up. You see, I walked in on Celia that day when Bobby was supposed to ...
The girl was walking around now, swishing the folds of her dress. Get on with it, thought Gabe, wanting, in spite of himself, to know what it was that Bobby was supposed to have done.
Enough, thought Gabe. 'I said, were you ...'
'Mazyr. My town. Mazyr.' Whatever quality it was that breathed life into words was missing from Lena's voice. The words that slid from her mouth were stillborn.
Gabriel let his head fall back against the sofa and stared at the ceiling, wishing she would speak again. How could he get her to speak?
The television girl prattled. She explained everything, the whole darn mess.
Gabriel sat up. The tux man strode masterfully across the room to the ottoman where the girl had flung herself.
Lena giggled, watching it all end happily.
'Yeah,' said Gabe, 'why do people watch these stupid shows?'
Lena rearranged herself, sitting properly and crossing her legs. She gave him a sideways glance that seemed playful but when she spoke it was in a petulant tone. 'I think is good show. I like.'
'How were'
'You say you will not ask question,' said Lena, anger quickening her voice.
'But all you do is asking. Ask, ask, ask.' Gabriel saw how badly her fingernails were bitten, a ridge of crusted blood. 'Are you a police?
Do I ask you question? No.'
She was hardly in a position to ask questions. She had asked him one. 'Go ahead,' said Gabe. 'Ask me. Anything you like.'
Lena drew up her shoulders. It was more a flinch than a shrug, as if the thought of finding out anything about him was disgusting. 'What is name?' she said.
'Gabriel.'
'Like angel.'
'Yes.' It was simple. He would talk to her and then she would talk to him. How could he have expected her to speak? She had not even known his name.
'Whereabout,' said Lena, shaping the word with care, 'you are from?'
'A small town in the north, Blantwistle.'
'Oh, what is it like?' she said without interest, turning his questions back at him.
I'll tell her then, thought Gabriel. I'll tell her what it's like.
Gabe picked up the remote control from the coffee table. 'My father says it's ... never mind. It's small, it's a mill town, was, I mean'
'What he is like?'
'Dad? I don't know. He's just a normal ... ordinary, you know.' Gabe turned off the television. He had thought the room dark before, but it hadn't been.
Now it really was. There was only the light in the hallway and the ghostly shimmer of the windowpanes. The white coffee table held a faint luminescence; the rest of the furniture thickened the blackness in places, and Lena, swathed in black, appeared disembodied, a little pale streak in the air.
'My father,' said Gabriel. He wanted to tell her. But what? Why did she come to him, anyway? Had she come to him? One look they had exchanged in the catacombs, what could one look mean? How much? Did she look at him, then, the way he thought she had? They had only seen each other for a second or two, the rest he had made up, invented now, tonight, because he was what? lonely?
Was he lonely? Had he been lonely? Or was that something he had just now begun to feel? Was she making him lonely? It didn't make any sense. He was feverish.
He couldn't think straight. He would take some more aspirins. 'My father,' he began again, 'is a bit set in his ways. Of course, he's of an age when. What I mean is he's always been like that. Knows what he likes and likes what he knows. Lot of men are like that, especially in Blantwistle, ha ha, maybe in your town too. Same place, same street, same friends, same job ...' He ran on and on, scarcely knowing what he said. 'Doesn't have any idea what it's like for us, you and me, floating, I don't know, not that we're the same, I'm only trying to point out, when you have to make your own way ... Sorry, I don't feel very well.' He tipped forwards, head in hands, and blew hard. Why was he talking like that?
Lena rose and switched on a lamp. She ran a finger over the shade. 'I stay here, two, three days, I clean for you. OK?'
'You don't have to clean,' said Gabriel. He was shuddery, as though at the end of a crying jag. She was only a pot-washer. An illegal one, most likely, she didn't want to talk to the police. 'I have to ask you about Yuri.'
She looked sullen.
'It's either me or the police.'
'I have do nothing. Is it my fault he drink?' The end of her nose went red.
Gabriel drew strength from her discomfort. 'So tell me what happened,' he said.
'Yuri have go for shower. He take long time but I don't think nothing. I go to sleep. I wake up' She bit her lip. 'He is good man, Yuri. If I can help but no way for helping him.' She bent her fingers so far back it was painful to watch.
'So you ran away? Why?'
Lena pulled a face.
'But you lived down there, with him?'
She made a sound that could have meant 'yes', could have meant 'no'.
'Why did you come back that day?'
She pulled her skinny shoulders up to her ears and let them slump again.
'Not good enough,' said Gabe. He stood up. 'That's not good enough.' She shrank as though she were afraid of him. He felt cruel, but he did not care.
'Come on,' he said, 'spit it out.'
'Money, I leave some money. Some little bit I save.'
'And? Did you get it?' said Gabriel, unsure where to take the interrogation next.
'How?' said Lena, her eyes blazing in her hard little face. 'How? I go and you are there!'
So that was the look she had given him. He was there. He was in the way. The shock of understanding made him laugh. Her eyes were bright and threatened to spill but he could only laugh and he was sorry, but he couldn't help it at all.
He made up a bed on the sofa. Lena perched on the edge of the chaise longue, her small flat body like a shadow that had slipped underneath the door. Gabe plumped the pillow. 'Right, then,' he said. 'All set.' His tone was brisk but the sight of her filled him with pity. She looked so dreadfully alone.
'Lena,' he said, 'tell me where you hid the money. I'll get it for you.'
She jumped up as though he had proposed to rob her and then she tried a smile.
'Back wall, count bricks from corner, four from right, seven up. That one is loose.' She stepped close and touched him, laying her hand on his chest. 'You are good man,' she said.
Finally, thought Gabriel, she was beginning to understand. 'I only brought you here to help you. I don't know what else you were thinking, but you should put it out of your mind.'
She patted his chest weakly and scanned his face and searched his eyes.
Whatever it was she was looking for she seemed to have found. Abruptly, she withdrew.
Gabriel waited in the bedroom until he heard the toilet flush and the opening and closing of the bathroom door. When he passed the sitting-room door she was undressing in the lamplight with her back to him. For a few moments he watched her. He focused all his charity on the pathetic ridge of her spine.
In the bathroom he stood before the full-length mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair a mess, stubble on his cheeks and chin. He tried to see what Lena had seen. He had changed into his jeans and fleece after service but still there was something of the kitchen about him and Gabe couldn't decide what it was. A tall man, big in the shoulders, strong in the jaw. He looked as if he were preparing to push something or someone out of the way. Perhaps he had been too rough on Lena; he should have let her take her time. It wasn't as if her answers would help Yuri they were only a formality and he understood why she wished to avoid the formality of the police.
He would help her because he felt sorry for her, though Yuri aside hers was a familiar story and usually you had to steer clear. Not that he'd get sucked in. He'd find the money she mentioned, maybe make a few calls, get her a job within a day or two and then she'd be moving on. Though if it came out and the police, officially, were still looking for her, what would that mean for him? He laced his fingers together on top of his head and rested his forehead on the mirror, watching his breath steam steadily up.