Miss Webster and Chérif Read online

  ‘Sky TV!’ His excitement warmed the room. The summary of news packages lay beneath his fingertips.

  ‘Which package have you ordered? Oh, Madame Webster, if you got this one we could see the news on Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia and Sky and CNN!’

  And in that instant, her hand on the taps, the filling kettle slippery in her grasp, facing her October garden washed in pale sunshine and drifting leaves, Elizabeth Webster decided on the £47.00 package, which gave her world news from every known station and thirty-eight channels of digital nonsense, reality TV and interactive shopping. She marched out the back door and yelled at the ascending engineers who had not yet reached the aerial.

  ‘Get the dish! We’re going for Sky!’

  Several distant neighbours who were sweeping leaves, or preparing for the shops, heard the shout. Miss Elizabeth Webster, whose acid opinions and savage tongue had plagued village committees for years, and whose near-demise had unleashed creeping evil thoughts, some as nakedly unkind as, ‘the old cow deserves all she gets’, was heard shouting down the back gardens – saying yes to afternoon game shows and UK Gold, yes to Paradise Island, Antique Auction Bargain Slot and Most Haunted. That voice that had always been raised in contempt and dissent was at last proclaiming herself one of us. That spell in hospital changed her for the better. She’s much more human now.

  This was certainly one section of opinion expressed at the bus stop and in the shop. But another school of thought, those involved in the church and the campaign to have the telephone mast sited elsewhere, had absorbed the fact of Chérif’s presence and did not like what they saw. That young Arab boy from the college who is living with Miss Webster – have you seen him? Oh yes, he takes the early bus every morning. The Sky dish looked ordinary. But there was the uneasy combination of young Arab man – an unknown foreigner who spoke several languages – and a recently installed, highly sophisticated communications network, which troubled the torpid consciousness of an English village. Little Blessington was too far away from the city to be a safe harbour for strange faces. The self-contained huddle of old houses, with only one new row behind the pub, remained a village that was untroubled by students, overflowing dustbins, abandoned cars, burglary or petty crime. The pond gleamed with water lilies, not floating plastic bags, everyone recycled their bottles and knew the names of each other’s children and pets. Whatever announced itself as new and different was noticed and picked over. The new Sky dish was carefully observed and discussed in detail. Someone had heard that Miss Webster’s lodger arrived on her doorstep in the middle of the night and that she took him in, never having seen him before and having no real idea who he was. What can she have been thinking of? She never used to be so imprudent. It will all end in tears, you mark my words.

  No good can come of this.

  4

  Unsuitable Music

  The vicar came to see them on a Thursday night just before Guy Fawkes. By this time Chérif had been resident in Miss Webster’s house for well over a month. The vicar was not exactly spying, but on something of a fishing trip. Everybody wanted to know what was really going on in the cottage at the bottom of the lane. Miss Webster’s attendance at communion seemed no more irregular than usual, but her stony-faced concentration had mutated into something reflective and peaceable – entirely uncharacteristic of the old girl. She gazed thoughtfully at her surroundings more often than she used to do. She forgot her collection envelopes, then slapped a ten-pound note and some loose coppers on to the dish when it approached her pew. No one ever put cash in the collection bowl, and so the congregation present pretended not to notice. The spare change rattled with a vulgar clink. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works. ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ muttered Miss Webster, audibly objecting to the collection of church funds being represented as a charitable act that demonstrated Christian virtue and benefited others. Her neighbours heard her, but they were used to muffled, enraged muttering and occasional sudden departures. She sat there oblivious, scratching her spiky white hair, as if she had developed lice. Dear me, she looks like an escaped lunatic. After this minor incident the vicar’s wife gave him a prod.

  ‘High time you plucked up courage and visited Miss Webster. I hear she’s stopped being abusive and that she’s got one of the students as a lodger. Good thing too, considering how ill she’s been.’

  And so the vicar was disposed to think well of Chérif. If the old lady keeled over again she wouldn’t lie dead, undiscovered and decomposing, for days on end. Someone would raise the alarm. We are, after all, each other’s keepers. Chérif opened the door, but Miss Webster was right behind him, peering beadily at the visitor.

  ‘Oh, hello Vicar, it’s you. Well that’s all right. Come in and have some thé à la menthe. We’re perfecting the mix.’

  Two things upset the vicar: Chérif’s arresting beauty and the fact that Miss Webster said ‘we’. Beauty always appears sinister to the paranoid, because it blinds you to other things. And as for the cosy plural – the gorgeous lodger was clearly more deeply embedded in the household than he should have been. Keep it short, friendly, professional. He crouched a little as he entered her small sitting room. Miss Webster had elderly bits of farming equipment hanging from her ancient oak beams which gave the room a rustic look and were designed to put paid to anyone over five foot ten. The vicar glared at the green man who stared grimly back from the fireplace. There was a new hand-woven carpet of intricate and cunning workmanship covering the original dull green. The tapestry glowed red, ochre and white. Filled with alarm, the vicar backed off. The thing glowed with heat and deserts, but appeared too beautiful to be trodden on, like the victorious treasures over which Agamemnon himself had hesitated.

  ‘It’s Ramadan,’ announced Miss Webster, ‘so Chérif can’t eat anything until sundown. Thank God it gets dark after four. Otherwise I’m not sure I’d last. We’re having our petit déjeuner now. Dates, milk, fruit, tea, croissant, cakes and sugar with everything. And we eat dinner much later on. You’re very welcome to join us.’

  ‘Ah, Ramadan. I take it you’re a Muslim.’ The vicar addressed Chérif and managed a fake grin of idiotic broadmindedness. ‘Well, Miss Webster, you must have got into all this while you were in Africa.’

  ‘Oh yes. I’ve quite given up pork. Chérif doesn’t eat it.’

  The spiky haircut was far more alarming than the sudden conversion to Mohammedism.

  ‘Do sit down, Vicar,’ said the old lady pleasantly, ‘and you can walk on the carpet. It won’t attack you. Chérif! Tea!’

  The vicar eyed the young man with well-disguised caution. The boy wolfed down a glass of milk and set into the cakes, every one of which came from Maison Blanc, creamy, delicate and expensive.

  ‘And I gather that you’re here to study?’

  Foreign students. Like all the 9/11 bombers. That’s where they learned about radical Islam. Not in their own bloody countries, but while they were pretending to be engineers in Hamburg. The vicar caught himself thinking the worst. Chérif explained his degree course. Maths. Chemistry. Well, at least he wasn’t doing the MA in Weapons of Mass Destruction. The vicar mistrusted the university’s biology programmes after discovering that Saddam Hussein’s top scientist, informally known as Dr Death, had done her research work at that very institution down the road. He looked at the boy over the top of his bifocals. Handsome devil, English excellent, accent slight.

  ‘You must miss your family.’

  They all had huge families. So there were always spare candidates for martyrdom.

  ‘I keep in touch by e-mail. We write regularly. Phoning is expensive.’

  ‘You’re welcome to ring Saïda from here, my dear. You know that. His mother has my number, just in case. I stayed in her hotel back in September. Well, you know that if you were ill, I’d ring the hotel straight away.’

  ‘I know, thank you.’ The boy seemed anxious to please. He anticipated Miss Webster’s empty glass, observed her gestures, nodd
ed, deferential, whenever she delivered her judgements. This, at least, was one of their good points, respect for their elders. But that hadn’t stopped the Taliban, most of whom were hardly more than children, insisting that everyone grow beards and that women, even their mothers and grandmothers, should be banished from the schools and streets. The vicar looked at Chérif’s dark curls with increasing mistrust. He had never suspected Islam of being an attractive religion and found it inconceivable that anyone would choose to be a Muslim without having a scimitar pressed against their throat. The boy’s beauty glowed like a talisman, a warning. The vicar sank steadily downwards into the green sofa. He felt less and less secure. The strange, decorated glass of sweet tea was burning his fingertips. The liquid tasted like a honeyed drug. Miss Webster was now telling him about the cannon they fired off from the barracks every evening during Ramadan to announce the ending of the fast.

  ‘...so everyone stops together. Very practical. It’s harder for Chérif here in England. The other students keep offering him chocolate biscuits. It’s better if he comes home earlier. I have the whole thing ready so that we can pounce like vultures on the cakes.’

  ‘And are you following Ramadan too this year, Miss Webster?’ Green leaves of mint floated in the bottom of his exotic tea.

  ‘I am indeed. It makes the cooking so much easier.’

  ‘I see.’

  The vicar put down his glass.

  A week later an incident occurred at the village shop. Miss Webster’s cottage was right at the end of the lane, the last little brick and flint house, facing the meadows, before the woods closed in and the village gave way to tangled deciduous green. The trail continued onwards, narrowed and smothered by bushes, until it finally ended in a derelict muddy farmyard, which, contrary to all appearances, was still inhabited. A few antique, scratching chickens clustered in the mud. But the farm people used the road leading to Bolt, the next village beyond the ruined abbey, which was actually nearer, thus no one except Sunday walkers ever passed the cottage. The way back to Little Blessington led through slush and puddles. There had been a co-ordinated move on the part of the inhabitants of the other three cottages to asphalt the lane, which was under shared ownership. All four properties had to agree, under the terms of the leasehold, and share the costs. But Miss Webster refused. Her objection, which she never explained, was incomprehensible to her immediate neighbours. She lived nearest the woodland. She had more of the uneven track to negotiate than any of the other residents. The expenses would be shared between the four cottages; therefore she stood to benefit from the improvements more than anyone else, and at no extra cost. Still, she refused to countenance the scheme, without ever giving her reasons, and nothing could be undertaken without her consent. Chérif had to run the gauntlet of her antagonists’ front windows on the way to the shop.

  No one actually wished Miss Webster dead, but there were a certain number of rueful shrugs from the pro-asphalt lobby, which accompanied their congratulations at her escape from the hospital. They were not as well disposed towards Chérif as the vicar had been. Opinions varied. Who was this pretty Arab who made his theatrical late-night appearance so rapidly upon her return? Was he taking advantage of her hospitality and her solitary, vulnerable situation? Miss Webster had been very ill, indeed out of her mind, and was almost certainly not quite recovered. Nothing else explained the Arab. He appeared to have installed himself on a permanent basis. The less tolerant among the neighbours wanted to know: where did he stand on the question of asphalt and did he have any influence with the old hag?

  Now, Miss Webster could never be described as generous, not even by the most fervent well-wishers, and she was usually as vulnerable as a reinforced iron cauldron. People who make it clear that they have chosen to live alone and are not the victims of tragedy – unforeseen accidents, fiancés killed in wars, inheritance disputes and duplicitous offspring – are always suspect. They might be perverts or spies. They are certain to manifest signs of being eccentric, odd or mad. Miss Webster chose solitude and other people were afraid of her. The pro-asphalt neighbours interpreted her cropped hair and diminished figure through a mist of malevolent clichés. But they did not dare to prey upon the old woman directly. And so there was no conspiracy. Nothing was actually said. Any comments they exchanged aloud were pitched in terms of incomprehension and regret. But the cottages arrived at a tacit consensus. They would take it out on the boy. None of them spoke to him. He was ignored at the bus stop, and gently avoided whenever he passed. Then came the incident at the shop.

  Chérif had been sent out by Miss Webster to purchase kidney beans, butter, self-raising flour and an uncut loaf of brown bread. The village shop stood four-square, facing the bus stop and the school gates, a substantial affair with two aisles that did steady business all year round, because they were so far from the city. Mrs Harris, a fervent member of the pro-asphalt lobby, could see right to the end of both passages from her lookout post behind the till, where she defended the alcohol, newspapers and cigarettes. A system of traps and hidden alarms were placed in key locations, and the shop had stopped selling fireworks after an incendiary incident with a firecracker.

  Chérif wandered round the shelves gathering up his prospective purchases. He knew he was being watched, but proceeded, unhurried, apparently relaxed, towards the cash desk. Shopkeepers were always wary, suspicious, vigilant. He got out the purse. Mrs Harris stared at him and then at the purse, a black-and-white tweed square with a dog-tooth pattern and a tarnished snap clasp.

  ‘Wait there.’

  She retreated into the cubbyhole where she kept her mugs and kettle and seized the telephone. Chérif stood nonplussed amidst the newspapers, then began reading the football results. He could hear the woman talking but not what she said.

  ‘Miss Webster? Your lodger’s in the shop. And he’s paying for his shopping with money from your purse.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s using your money. He’s got your purse.’

  Miss Webster pulverised her telephone in a sudden onset of enlightenment and roared out of her front door. She rampaged down the muddy lane, hatless, in her cardigan and slippers, slicing through the puddles like an armed destroyer, her stockings muddied, all her guns trained on the shop door. She took the corner by the gas canisters at speed and burst forth between the aisles, sending the postcard rack spinning.

  ‘Out of my way, Chérif!’

  The boy recoiled, amazed, into the Coke cans and wine bottles.

  ‘Now listen to me, you racist cow, if that child has my purse it’s because I gave it to him. I sent him out to do the shopping. Are you refusing to serve my lodger? Do I have to call the police? What’s gone through your head, eh? Do you think I don’t know what goes on in my own home?’

  ‘Miss Webster, don’t take on so,’ Mrs Harris decided to overlook the verbal insults, as she had heard from Dr Brody’s wife that Miss Webster was capable of far worse. ‘I only thought –’

  ‘You didn’t think. None of you knows how to do it. Now take this boy’s money and let me get out of your infernal dustbin of a shop.’

  She snatched the purse, hammered a ten-pound note on to the counter, grabbed the self-raising flour from Chérif, thrust the purse back into his confused grasp, executed a rapid pirouette, resuming her former flight path, and pounded out of the door, leaving Chérif staring bewildered at the white-faced Mrs Harris. The shopkeeper was, however, used to crises.

  ‘I was only trying to help. Here’s your change. You know, with that temper Miss Webster’ll have a stroke one of these days. You can’t tell her anything.’

  ‘A stroke?’ Chérif queried the one word that didn’t match his interpretation of the sentence; to him a stroke was a caress.

  The language problem for Chérif was more complex and ambiguous than ever became apparent in ordinary conversation. By disposition he was quiet, and concentrated hard on understanding the mysteries of dailiness. He tried to work out the world according to Miss Webste
r first, through observation and deduction, before pestering her with questions. It is untrue to say that traffic instructions are universal. Chérif puzzled his brains before the motorway garniture that he saw every day and which resisted obvious interpretation. Sometimes he emerged utterly stumped, despite his heroic effort at comprehension.

  ‘Madame, qu’est-ce que c’est le Hard Shoulder’? “Hard”, c’est dur et “shoulder” c’est épaule, non?’

  Elizabeth Webster was trapped in the fast lane and not in the mood for lucid explanations.

  ‘It means “accotements stabilisés”. You can stop on the edge.’

  ‘But it says No Stopping on the ’ard shoulder –’

  ‘Chérif, just shut it, will you? I’ll explain later.’

  And so he learned not to interrogate her when she was driving, but because he held back he made some hilarious assumptions. The funniest of these, which kept her chuckling for days, was the meaning of the sign at GROVE FRUIT. They drove past the fruit farm whenever they went into the university. GROVE FRUIT was a large market garden, which, despite its name, actually concentrated on vegetables. They had decided to launch into strawberries earlier that year and put up a huge sign with a badly drawn spiky red blob perched at the end, which read PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES.

  ‘Do they have great trouble with thieves?’ asked Chérif.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Thieves stealing fruit.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘Well, it says pick your own strawberries.’

  ‘And leave mine alone? Chérif, you’re a treasure. No, it means what’s yours is mine. Come and pick my strawberries and when you’ve paid for your punnets they’ll be yours.’

  ‘Punnets?’

  Chérif stared at the prickly red blob, which remained swathed in mystery.