Iris and Ruby: A gripping, exotic historical novel. Rosie Thomas
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direction and ducked through the stream of buses and cars. They were walking companionably towards Iris’s house when an extra-loud volley of hooting caught their attention. There was a black-and-white taxi parked where the alley finally became impassable to cars. The faded blue of the door was just behind it.
‘Lady, lady! We look for you!’ a voice shouted.
Nafouz was leaning out of the driver’s window and banging with his fist on the car door.
Mamdooh moved fast for a man of his bulk. He streaked across to the taxi and shouted at Nafouz, flapping his big hand towards the open end of the alley. From the passenger side of the car another young man climbed out and hung on the lintel. He looked like Nafouz, but a little younger. He was grinning and shouting back at Mamdooh, thumping on the car roof, clearly enjoying the scene. Two or three small children gathered to stare.
Nafouz slid out of the car. He appealed direct to Ruby. ‘We are friends, yes? I bring you, last night.’
‘No.’
‘Lady?’ Nafouz’s eyes were wide, hurt pools.
‘Yes, I mean, you drove me from the airport. That doesn’t make us friends, does it?’ She had kicked him, for one thing.
Nafouz turned away to burrow inside the car. Ruby looked at the other young man. He had the same slicked-back hair as Nafouz and a similar white shirt, but cleaner. He smiled at her.
‘I come all the way, bring this for you.’ Nafouz had re-emerged. He was holding out a CD case with a hand-coloured insert, a pattern of swirls and tendrils in red paint and black ink. Ruby looked at it. Her name was spelled out among the tendrils. Jas had painted the insert, and he had burned the CD inside it for her. It was one of his own mixes, just about the last thing he had made for her before … Before he …
She held out her hand. The CD must have fallen out of her bag as she scrambled into or out of the taxi. She would have been sad to lose it.
‘It’s only a thing, baby,’ Jas would have said. ‘Things don’t matter, people do.’
But she had so little of him.
‘Right. Well, thanks,’ she muttered.
She was about to take the case but Nafouz drew his hand back, teasing her. Her fingers closed on thin air, but Mamdooh was quicker. The case was tweaked out of Nafouz’s grasp and slipped into the deep pocket in the seam of Mamdooh’s galabiyeh.
There was a sharp exchange of words before Mamdooh turned back to Ruby. ‘If you like, Miss, you give him a little money. But it is not if you do not want.’
Ruby looked at the two young men and they stared back at her. An awkward flush of colour crept up her face as she felt the space of cobbled alleyway widen between them. She wished she hadn’t denied being Nafouz’s friend; she would have much preferred to be that now rather than the possessor or otherwise of a few Egyptian pounds.
‘How much?’ she muttered, in shame.
Nafouz was equal to the moment. ‘Twenty bounds,’ he said brightly.
Mamdooh clicked his tongue but Ruby rummaged under her shirt for her purse as the two young men watched with interest. She took out a note and Nafouz whisked it away. He winked at her.
‘You take a tour? I show you Cairo. Special Cairo, my brother and me. Not tourist places. Real city.’
Ruby hesitated. She would have loved to pile into the taxi and go cruising through the streets with them. She could smell cigarettes and the plastic seats of the car, and feel the hot diesel-scented air blowing in through the windows.
Mamdooh had already mounted the steps and produced a key for the blue door.
‘Another time, maybe,’ she said lamely. There were priorities, other matters she had to deal with first.
The younger brother came round to Nafouz’s side of the car.
‘I am Ashraf.’
‘Hi.’
The door was open, Mamdooh was waiting with the basket of vegetables at his side. The brothers were waiting too.
‘My name’s Ruby.’
Their faces split into identical white smiles. ‘Nice name.’
‘I’ve got to go now. But I’d like to take a tour, yeah. Have you got a …’ She made a scribble movement in the air for a pen, but Nafouz dismissed it.
‘We find you.’
‘Miss?’ Mamdooh said, holding the door open wide. His forehead was serrated with disapproval once more.
‘See you, then.’
Ruby marched up the steps. The taxi noisily reversed down the street in a cloud of acrid fumes.
In the cool hallway Mamdooh blocked her way. ‘It is important to have some care, Miss. You are young, in this city there are not always good people. Not all people are bad, you must understand, it is just important that you make no risks. Do you understand what it is I am saying to you?’
He was treating her like a child. In London, Ruby did what she wanted. Lesley and Andrew didn’t know what that involved, nor did Will and Fiona who were Andrew’s brother and his wife. She was supposed to be their lodger, but – well, after a while they had given up on telling her what to do and what not to do. That was because of Will. Even though Fiona didn’t know about him, the three of them had ended up in this kind of silent contract, where nobody saw anything or said anything in case it led to somebody seeing and saying everything. That was how Ruby summed it up for herself, at least.
And there had been some bad interludes. Ruby had seen and once or twice done things that she didn’t like to remember. The memories came back anyway, in the night, and they made her sweat and feel sick. The memories had a way of changing and speeding up so that they were like horror films of what might have happened to her. Her skin crawled, and she would twist and turn under the covers to try to make them stop and go away. She even wished for Lesley to come and tell her it was all right and she was safe.
But usually in the end she fell asleep somehow, or the daylight would come and she’d wonder what she had been so afraid of. The important thing to remember was that she had survived. Going back to people’s places when she shouldn’t have done. Doing too much stuff, or just drinking. Not knowing where she was or where she had been. Feeling like nothing, less than nothing. But that happened to plenty of people, didn’t it? Not just her.
Luck or cunning, Jas had said. That’s what you need to survive, in this day and age. It was important to have both. She could just hear his words, see him breathing out a snaky ring of blue smoke as he spoke.
So Ruby was sure she understood exactly what Mamdooh was saying and was certain that she could deal with whatever might happen to her here. She was impressed by her own cunning and her luck wouldn’t desert her.
‘Yes,’ she said stonily. She stood and faced him, giving no ground.
Mamdooh tucked the handles of the basket over his arm.
‘Mum-reese resting now. Later, she will speak to you.’
And order her home. Ruby knew what he meant her to hear, but she gave no sign of it.
Left to herself, she wandered through the house.
It was less opulent than it had looked in last night’s incense-scented darkness, and even more neglected. The great lamps that hung from the vaulted roofs were thickly furred with dust, and more dust lay on the stairs and on the broad sills of the windows. Cobwebs spanned the dim corners. The rooms were barely furnished with odd, unmatching chairs and tables that looked as if they had been brought in by an incoming tide and just left where they landed. There were no books, ornaments, or photographs – none of the cosy decorator’s clutter that Lesley arranged in her own house and those of her clients. There was nothing, Ruby realised, that told any stories of Iris’s past. Nothing accumulated,