LITMIR.BIZ

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and I were almost the last to leave. We emerged into the short-lived, dewy cool of pre-dawn and walked hand in hand through the deserted streets to his flat. The place was empty and silent. It was the first time I had been there and I took in its temporary, makeshift atmosphere. It was a staging post; somewhere to take a brief respite, not to settle in. There were boots in the hallway with the shape of strangers’ feet in them, a handgun on a shelf in the living room.

      ‘Except for Jessie, everyone is away at the moment,’ Xan said.

      We touched our fingertips together, briefly, superstitiously.

      Then he took me in his arms.

      His bedroom was bare, almost monastic, the bed itself narrow and hard.

      He knelt above me and I smiled up at him.

      ‘It’s not the first time, is it?’

      ‘No,’ I said.

      His tongue traced a course from my mouth to the hollow of my collarbone, lingered there and then moved downwards. ‘That’s good.’

      I had had several lovers, Xan more than several, but for both of us this was a first of its own kind.

      The last first time, the first of many. That was how certain we both were of what we wanted and believed. And for me what followed was nothing like sex with the polite, awkward boys I had half enjoyed in London. It was unlike anything I had ever known, and it was wonderful. I didn’t know you could laugh and cry at the same time, and feel that strangeness of another body within yours and yet love and trust every fibre of it.

      Afterwards Xan gathered me against him and we looked a long way into each other’s eyes. We were sweaty, exhausted, and my whole body felt as if a hundred thousand new nerve endings had just been connected.

      ‘I love you, Iris Black,’ he said.

      ‘Xan Molyneux, I love you too.’

      ‘Is it too soon for us to say that? If it’s the truth?’

      ‘It’s not too soon and I know it’s the truth because I feel the same way.’

      Neither of us said so, but we both knew that if we left it too long to speak of it, that might be too late. I laughed, to hide a shiver.

      ‘Anyway, how can you work out how many days would be proper? Is there a formula? Twenty or fifty?’

      ‘I have known you for more than twenty days. It’s thirty-eight, to be precise.’

      The precision touched my heart. I had totalled up the days too, like pearls.

      I put my hand to his face and drew his head to rest against my shoulder. ‘We will be happy,’ I whispered.

      I could see, through the uncurtained window, that dawn was breaking.

      The memory flashes through my head, as richly textured and vivid as my fever dreams, and just as evanescent.

      What I begin falteringly to describe to my granddaughter is a shop window in a Cairo street. The shop was called Sidiq Travel, the name painted across the chocolate-brown fascia in faded art nouveau lettering. In the window were two posters, one of the Eiffel Tower and the other of an improbably golden Beirut beach complete with waving palms and a white-jacketed waiter with a silver tray of cocktails balanced at shoulder height. There was also a propped-up double-sided cut-out of the Queen Mary. Everything was coated with the grey-white gritty dust of Cairo.

      Ruby’s head is bent and she is writing in her notebook. I can’t see her face.

      ‘Mr Sidiq sold me the ship from his window display,’ I say. ‘To make a hat.’

      Ruby’s shoulders hunch and it now seems that there is desperation in her posture. My voice trails away until the silence is broken only by the tiny splash of the fountain.

      What am I trying to say?

      ‘Go on,’ Ruby says at last, miserably. ‘About the Queen Mary.’

      I can’t catch the memory. A moment ago it was there, I’m sure of it, and now I’m left with its absence. What were we talking about?

      ‘It doesn’t matter.’ My forgetfulness seeds a sudden rage in me. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say again, much louder.

      She is still writing, then crossing something out and rewriting it. The pencil seems to gouge the page.

      ‘Let me have a look.’

      ‘No.’ The notebook snapped shut and held against her chest.

      What have I said, that’s now being withheld?

      ‘Hand it over.’

      ‘I won’t fucking hand it over,’ she yelps at me, jumps to her feet and looks around the garden for an escape route. There’s nowhere to run to.

      I lever myself to my feet, painfully, and we confront each other.

      My anger fades; what is the point of it? I hold out my arms instead and Ruby hesitates, chewing her bottom lip, then shuffles forward with her head hanging. I put my arm round her, seeing how smooth and lustrous the skin of her forearm is. I have forgotten the silky charge of young flesh. Gently, I take the notebook out of her hands and when I look at her face again I see that she is on the point of tears.

      ‘Ruby?’ ‘What?’ she wails.

      I put my hand out to the arm of my chair, searching for some support, and lower myself again. Then I open the notebook and look at what she has written. It is only a few sentences and I can hardly decipher them.

      The letters are childishly formed, the words uneven and the letters jumbled. She has written qunen for queen.

      ‘I told you, didn’t I, but you didn’t fucking listen.’

      ‘Don’t swear like that. It’s monotonous, apart from anything else.’

      She did tell me she was dyslexic, and I heard her but I wasn’t listening. I am so wound up in my own history, in my frailty and fear.

      I feel ashamed of myself. ‘Come here.’

      She stoops down by the chair and tries to take back the notebook, but I keep a firm hold on it.

      ‘I am very sorry, Ruby. You wanted to do something for me, and you were honest about what you thought you could do. Whereas I was impatient and thoroughly selfish. Will you forgive me?’

      A sigh. ‘Yeah.’

      ‘I spend too much time thinking about myself. It happens, when you’ve been alone for a long time. Can you understand that?’

      ‘Yeah, I s’pose.’

      The mulishness is melting out of her.

      There is something else I should say, while I am being honest.

      ‘I am very glad you came,’ I tell her. Then the absurdity of what we have just tried to do strikes me all over again and I start to laugh. ‘It’s very funny. I am the memoirist who can’t remember.’

      ‘And I’m the am … the ama … shit. The writer who can’t write.’

      Her eyes are still bright with tears but she begins to laugh too. The laughter is spiked with sadness for both of us, but it fills the garden and drowns out the trickle of water.

      Mamdooh appears in the archway that leads into the house and stares at us in mystification. I have to blow my nose and wipe my eyes.

      ‘Mum-reese, there is a visitor.’

      ‘Who can that be? Doctor Nicolas?’

      ‘It is a visitor for Miss.’ He tells Ruby frostily, ‘He is your friend you are seeing yesterday.’

      I tell Ruby, ‘Go on, then, don’t keep your friend waiting, whoever he is.’

      She skips away.

      I

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