Iris and Ruby. Rosie Thomas
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made to learn at school floated into her head and, without thinking, she yelled the words in time to the banging: ‘“Is there anybody there,” said the Traveller?’
The door suddenly creaked open, revealing a six-inch slice of dim light. Ruby was so startled that her voice trailed away in a squeak. She could just see a big fat man in a white dress.
She said, ‘I am Ruby Sawyer.’
Having taken one look at her, the man was already trying to close the door again. Ruby’s foot flew out and wedged itself in the crack. She wished for the second time that she was wearing proper shoes. She repeated her name, louder this time, but it clearly wasn’t enough.
She added loudly, ‘I am here to see my grandmother. Let me in, please.’
The resistance diminished a little. Immediately she put her shoulder to the door and pushed hard. It swung open and she fell inwards with a clatter of spilled belongings. The man’s face was a dark purplish moon of disapproval. He frowned, but he did help her to her feet.
Ruby looked around. Her first impression was of the inside of a church. There was a stone floor, musty wood panelling, a pale, weak light suspended on chains inside a glass vessel. A smell of incense, too, and some kind of spicy cooking.
‘Madam is resting,’ the man said frigidly.
The best course was obviously to be conciliatory.
‘I don’t want to disturb her. Or disturb anyone. I’m sorry if I made a noise. But, you know …’ The man didn’t help her out. He went on impassively staring at her. ‘I … I have come all the way from London. My mother, you see … Um, my mother is Madam’s daughter. You know?’
There was another silence. Whether he knew or not, the connection didn’t seem to impress him. But at last he sighed heavily and said, ‘Follow me, please. Leave this here.’ He pointed to her bags. She relinquished them with pleasure.
He led the way beneath an arch and through a bare room. Behind a heavy door there was a flight of enclosed wooden stairs. The lights were very dim, just single bulbs in the angles of walls, shaded with metal grilles. They went up the stairs and along a panelled corridor. It was a big house, Ruby thought, but it was dusty and bare, and all the stairs and corners and screens made it secretive. A place of shadow and whispers. It was much cooler in here than it was outside. A faint shiver twitched her skin.
The man stopped at a closed door. He bent his head and listened. She noticed that his face had turned soft and concerned. There was no sound, so he lifted a latch and eased the door open. There was a light burning in a teardrop of crimson glass, a carved divan seat piled with cushions under a shuttered window. In a low cushioned chair with a padded footstool a very old woman was propped up with her eyes closed. A spilled glass lay on the kelim rug.
Ruby took a step forward and she opened her eyes.
Dream? Someone I used to know who was buried beneath the sand while I was looking elsewhere?
I am afraid of these spectres who loom up out of the past. I fear them because I can’t place them …
Fear makes me angry.
‘Mamdooh, who is this? What do you think you are doing? Don’t let people walk in here as if it’s a public library. Go away.’
The woman, apparition, whoever she is, doesn’t move.
Mamdooh kneels down, picks up the glass, puts it back on the tray. I can see the blotches on his old, bald skull. At once I feel sorry, and confused. I put my hand out to him and it’s shaking. ‘Forgive me. Who is she?’
The woman – very young, strange-looking – comes closer.
‘I’m Ruby.’
‘Who?’
‘Your granddaughter. Lesley’s daughter.’
‘You are not.’
Lesley’s daughter? A memory disinters itself. A pale, rather podgy child, dressed in a wool kilt and hairslides. Silent, yet somehow mutinous. Have I got that right?
‘Yes, I am. You are Granny Iris, my mother’s mother, Cairo Granny. Last time I saw you I was ten. You came for a holiday.’
I am tired. The effort of recall is too much. Poor Lesley, I think.
‘Does she know you are here?’
The child blinks. Now I look at her, I can see that she is hardly more than a child. She has made the effort to appear otherwise, with startling face paint and extraordinary metal rings and bolts driven into nose and ears, and with a six-inch slice of pale abdomen revealed between the two halves of her costume, but I would put her age at eighteen or nineteen.
‘Your mother. Does she know?’
‘No, actually.’
Her answer is deadpan but, to my surprise, the way she delivers it makes me want to smile. Mamdooh has picked up the tea glass, tidied the tray. Now he stands over me, a protective mountain.
‘Ma’am Iris, it is late,’ he protests.
‘I know that.’ To the child I say, ‘I don’t know why you are here, Miss. You will go straight back where you came from. I’m tired now, but I will speak to you in the morning.’
‘Shall I send Auntie to you?’ Mamdooh asks me.
‘No.’ I don’t want to be undressed and put to bed. I don’t want to reveal to the child that sometimes this happens. ‘Just get her to make up a bed for, for … what did you say your name is?’
‘Ruby.’
It’s a prostitute’s name, which goes well enough with her appearance. What was Lesley thinking?
‘A bed and some food, if she wants it. Thank you, Mamdooh. Good night, Ruby.’
The girl gives a sudden smile. Without the glower she looks even younger.
I make my way to my own room. When at last I am lying down with the white curtains drawn around the bed, the longing for sleep of course deserts me. I lie staring at the luminous folds of muslin, seeing faces and hearing voices.
Majestically disapproving, Mamdooh led Ruby downstairs again. A little old woman, about five feet tall, with a white shawl wrapped round her head and neck, appeared in the hallway. They spoke rapidly to each other.
‘You would like to eat some food?’ Mamdooh asked stiffly.
‘No, thanks very much. Had some on the plane.’
‘Go with Auntie, then.’
Ruby hoisted her luggage once more and followed the old woman up the enclosed stairs and through the shadowy galleries to a small room with a divan under an arched window. Auntie, if that was the name she went by, showed her a bathroom across the way. There was an overhead cistern with a chain, and the bowl was patterned with swirling blue and white foliage. There was an old-fashioned shower head as big as a dinner plate and a slatted wooden board over the drain, and a blue-painted chair with some folded towels.
‘Thank you,’ Ruby said.
‘Ahlan wa sahlan,’ Auntie murmured.
When she had gone, Ruby peeled off her clothes and dropped them on the floor. She got under the thin starched sheet just as she was, and fell instantly into a dreamless sleep.
‘No, no, don’t worry at all. I just wondered if she and Chloe might be together … Yes, of course. Is she? In Chile? How marvellous. Give her my best wishes, won’t you? Yes, that would be lovely. I’ll give you a call. ’Bye.’
Lesley replaced the receiver. ‘She’s not there either.’