Desiring Cairo. Louisa Young

hung up, and told him it was a machine, and did he want me to leave a message, or to leave one himself, or what.

      He paused for a second, then picked up the receiver and pressed last number redial (another trick he’d learnt from Lily, who uses it to ring Caitlin after I’ve been talking to Brigid). I watched his face as he heard his mother’s voice. Expressionless, it just grew softer and softer. I thought he might melt away completely, so I offered him my hand as something solid to hold. He took it and gripped it, and hung up the phone.

      ‘If she is not a good mother,’ he said, ‘I want you to be my mother. The English mother.’

      I kissed him on the forehead and narrowly stopped myself from telling him that I would do anything in the world for him.

      ‘May we ring the other number?’ he said.

      I called directory enquiries, got the number of the university, called the switchboard, got the extension, called the extension.

      ‘Hello, Sarah Tomlinson,’ said the same voice.

      I had decided to do it on a wing and a prayer. I could not have worked out a script and stuck to it. This is what came out.

      ‘Hello, Sarah, my name’s Evangeline Gower, I’m a friend of Ismail.’

      ‘Ismail?’ she said.

      ‘El Araby,’ I said.

      She was quiet. I heard voices in the background.

      ‘If this isn’t a good time I can …’ I said.

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. One moment.’ She spoke at the other end, and then came on the line again. ‘What’s it about?’ she said.

      ‘Hakim and Sa’id,’ I said. I could almost hear her heart-rate change.

      ‘What about them?’ she said, her voice completely different, narrow-throated, nervous, tense.

      ‘Hakim is in London,’ I said.

      ‘Oh my God,’ she breathed, and spoke again to the voices in the background. I could hear them retreat, and a click, some shuffling, and some breathing, and then, ‘Is he with you?’

      ‘Beside me, yes.’

      ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered, again, and she began to cry, very softly. Hakim was all eyes.

      ‘What’s she saying?’ he asked. ‘What?’ I held my hand up, mouthed ‘wait’.

      She carried on crying. I spoke to her: ‘Listen – do you want to ring him back? Can you take down a number? Otherwise … he wants to see you, you know. He wants to talk. Take my number, and if you don’t ring he’ll ring you tonight. OK?’

      She didn’t sound negative. I gave her the number and I thought she got it down. She was still crying. ‘I don’t want to leave you like this,’ I said.

      ‘I don’t even know who you are,’ she snapped suddenly, through the tears. ‘Who are you anyway?’

      ‘Evangeline Gower, friend of the family,’ I said.

      ‘Family,’ she said. She sighed. ‘I’ll ring in a couple of hours,’ she said. ‘Tell him … is he well?’

      ‘Very well,’ I said.

      ‘Tell him … say I’m not sorry he’s here.’

      ‘OK,’ I said.

      ‘’Bye.’

      ‘’Bye.’

      I put the phone down and said, ‘She’s not sorry you’re here, she said to say so. She’ll ring back.’

      ‘Alhamdulillah,’ he said, four times, and smiled, and went to Lily’s room, where if I put my ear to the door I could hear him saying el fateha, the opening of the Qur’an.

      *

      I tried to do some work: an article about an exhibition of Orientalist paintings that was coming up in Birmingham. The exhibition wasn’t open yet and there was some doubt about which paintings were going to be in it, because of some insurance problems. Doubt hung over, among others, an extremely famous and interesting pair with all sorts of splendid and evocative anecdotes attached. One, fairly innocent, harem scene had originally been painted as a cover for the other, more erotic, work, of which it was an almost exact copy, except that the harem ladies were covered up in various cunning ways. The main houri, for example, was sitting with her legs wide because she was holding a great platter with a watermelon on it, rather than displaying herself; another was adjusting her scarf rather than her nipple. The cover lived in the same frame, on top of the naughty picture, and the owner could remove it for selected guests, after dinner, and thus preserve both his pleasures and his reputation. The two paintings had been separated over the years and were now to be reunited. Or not. I was going to have to write two articles, so that they had something to use whatever the outcome. I wrote an introduction that would do for both versions, then admitted that I was not concentrating and rang Fergus.

      ‘Fergus, Evangeline,’ I said, in my brisk talking-to-people-in-offices voice.

      ‘Evangeline darlin’,’ he said, emphasising the Irish. ‘What can I do for you?’ This made me feel bad because of not having been able to do anything for him on recent occasions, but I don’t think he did it on purpose.

      ‘Mrs Bates,’ I said. Fergus fancies himself utterly ruled by deadlines and important busyness; he appreciates you getting to the point.

      ‘Oh my God, would you get out of my hair with that,’ he said, which was not the response I’d been expecting.

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘I’ve had it up to high dough with that woman,’ he said (at least that’s what I thought he said – I assumed it was something to do with bread rising; later he told me no, it’s high do, as in do re mi, as in top C, when you’re singing). ‘She’s off her flaming trolley, in fact if she and her trolley were ever intimately connected I’d have my doubts. Serious doubts. I can understand a widow woman being upset but she is the most abysmal specimen of a … why?’

      It never takes him long to get to why.

      ‘I think she’s been writing me letters.’

      ‘Does she think you killed her husband?’

      ‘Well yes she does, actually.’

      ‘Join the club, darling. We’re a flaming conspiracy, evidently. I killed him, by writing that article, which apparently affected his heart. Every policeman you ever saw killed him, by being a policeman, which was contrary to what he liked. The jury killed him, separately and together, by finding him guilty when he would have preferred not. The prison warders killed him; the prison doctors killed him, the judge killed him and chopped him up into little pieces and left him out for the birds. How did you kill him then? By being the object of his unrequited desires?’

      ‘I suppose so … God, Fergus, that’s a relief.’

      ‘Did you think it was only you? So did I, till I got to gossiping. You should get out more. You know Harry killed him too, and Ben Cooper, only no one’s told him yet that everybody else did too because they like to see him suffer. What has she done to you then? Letters? Phone calls?’

      My journalist filter went up.

      ‘Are you going to be writing about this?’

      ‘I’ll just say “a girl he admired”. Nothing to identify you. Promise.’

      ‘Oh Fergus …’

      ‘Please. For colour. There’s no sex in it so far. Please.’

      I thought for a moment. I did quite want to give him something, because he’s a friend and he’s helped me in the past. I did also want very much to keep my nose clean.

      ‘I tell you what,’ I said.

      ‘What,’