The Last Gift Read online

  She went upstairs to put the washing away and to air the bedroom, and she saw that he had gone out in the garden and was sitting on the terrace. The sun was behind the house that late in the afternoon, and the terrace was in the shade. He was bent forward, elbows on the arms of the chair, sitting in his profound stillness, although she thought she could see his neck shiver even from that distance. Will it occur to him that he had not only been silent about his shame, but that he had been lying to them, to her, for thirty years? What will she have done, that woman he left behind? She will have given him up for lost and divorced him for abandonment. Can you do that in Zanzibar? Divorce an absent husband? Or will she still be waiting for him to return, trapped by his absence? Perhaps in his eyes he was not even a bigamist since he was allowed four wives in his Islam, and he married her under those rules, probably. Why four? Why not three or five or six? In his favour, it has to be said that after taking one in this system he has not taken another. What will he tell his children? Their children. Will he tell them that they are the children of a bigamist?

  Jamal rang home one evening a few days later. He was on his own in the house: Lisa and Jim had gone for a week’s break in Berlin where they had a friend. You’ll love Berlin, they told him, you must go there one day. Lena had gone home to Dublin for a few days, and was then going camping or boating on the Shannon or something like that with her boyfriend. Both Jim and Lena were on the same submission deadline as him, and he could not understand where they found the audacity to take a break. He was at his desk whenever he had the strength, writing, checking details, revising, with the internet as a bit of a break when he got weary and blocked. He rang his Ma because he felt perpetually guilty about not calling her. He did not think she enjoyed speaking on the phone; she was always eager to end the conversation and never delayed him when he said he had to go. Ba was the legendary hater of the telephone who winced when it began to ring and scowled furiously while anyone was speaking on it. Yet even though they were perhaps happy enough not being rung, Jamal still felt bad for not ringing. He should call to ask after them, and for them to know that he cared how they were. Yes, he had good reason to feel at fault. The last time he called was two weeks or so ago, and it must be more than a month since he had been down to see them. The news then was of improvement, but he should show his face, be a caring son at a time when his father was ill and his mother in distress. So he rang that night, alone and feeling the loneliness, but feeling good about the progress he was making with writing up his thesis; almost there, for what it was worth. That was what he told her, almost there.

  When he asked about Ba, she said he was doing fine, able to say and do more every day. He thought she was being careful and guessed that all was not well, or that he was within earshot and she could not speak freely. She did not suggest passing the phone to Ba. He asked if she was all right, and she said yes, yes, what could be wrong with her? So he said that he was thinking of coming to see them at the weekend, and after a moment he heard the smile in her voice as she said, that will be lovely.

  He was contemplating emailing Hanna, to see if she was free to come as well (he knew that Nick would somehow be too busy), when his heart jumped from a noise downstairs and he knew at once that it was someone trying to force the front door. He had put the chain on before he came up, as he always did when he was on his own, and sometimes he went down in the middle of the night to check that he had done so. His first thought was that it was the young people who bothered the neighbour next door, the one he saw painting his garden shed the day he moved in. Sometimes when they were sitting in their dining room, they heard banging noises and shouts and then young people running away laughing. That old man was the only dark-skinned person who lived in the street, apart from Jamal, who obviously lived in a house shared with other students and was not as vulnerably alone. He had often thought he should speak to the old man, show him courtesy, say some words of condolence to him about his persecution, but he did not. He did not know what to say. He just smiled to him now and then when they passed.

  So Jamal’s first thought when he heard the noise at the door was that the youngsters, whom he had never seen but could picture in his mind, boys and girls between fifteen and seventeen, tightly fleshed and grinning, had somehow found out that his housemates were away for a few days and he was on his own, and decided this would be a good time to give him a bit of a scare. He thought himself cowardly about confrontations and did his best to avoid them. It was not only fear of pain that made him avoid them, but of being browbeaten and mocked by loud voices, of being made to look foolish by cruel laughter. Now he trembled a little as he ran downstairs, his mind racing with what he should do. The bell rang before he reached the door, which he saw was unlocked but was held tightly ajar by the chain. They should put a bolt on the door.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he asked, barking to disguise his terror.

  He recognised Lena’s voice as soon as she spoke. She sounded worried and out of breath. He hurriedly unhooked the chain and let her in. In those few seconds while he struggled with the chain, he pictured her on the pavement, anxious, glancing over her shoulder at someone who had followed her down the street. When he opened the door, he expected to see eyes glittering in the dark behind her, but there were no terrors at her heels. His imagination was panicking him as usual. She looked weary, though, and as she walked in, she gave him a fragile relieved smile. Their front door opened straight into the dining area, and Lena put her bag down on a chair and stood there, looking uncertain. After a moment, she stepped forward and hugged him, and he held her, his arms fully around her, grateful for her embrace.

  Two weeks ago they had danced at a party given by one of her friends. It was a happy party, the friend had just been awarded his PhD, and there was laughter and hugging and noisy music. Before they left, they danced more intimately and ended up kissing on the way home. Jamal could not believe this was really happening. He thought her beautiful, which was also a way of thinking that she was too beautiful for him. He was surprised when she asked him to the party. Living in the same house, they talked in the way of housemates, and sometimes all four of them went out for a drink together, but their friendship was businesslike. They talked about their work, their parents and friends, the gas bill, and when Lena was talking, Jamal looked at her with pleasure while he could do so without seeming to stare like someone besotted. Sometimes he watched her when she was in the garden. It turned out she loved the garden, and they cleared it up and planted bright flowers just as he had imagined when he moved in. When she was out there and he was reading at his desk by the window, it was hard work to keep his eyes on the page. But he had to be careful to respect housemate rules, not to seem to be staring at her. He had gone to the party with her in this frame of mind, going out with a housemate, and was joyfully surprised by the kisses on the way home.

  When they had reached the front door, she pulled away from him a little and put the flat of her palm on his chest. He understood this as a signal to stop and tried to see if her eyes would tell him more clearly what she meant, but she would not make eye contact with him. He took his time downstairs to calm himself and then went up to his own room. He felt strangely rebuked by what had happened, as if he had misunderstood or was trying to take advantage or was forcing the issue. He knew that she had a long-term boyfriend in Dublin because she sometimes talked about him. His name was Ronnie and he was a journalist on one of the Dublin papers, and every few weeks Lena went back to spend some time with him. So Jamal did not expect anything to come of their kisses and nothing did. It was just a snog after a party, a little bit of fun, and after that he slipped back into housemate mode as if nothing had happened. But now here she was in his arms again. He thought of that evening as he held her (he had thought about it several times) but he also sensed an unexpected tension in her arms and in her back, a surprising firmness in the way she held him, a need. Her grip on him eased a little after a while and she stepped back.

  ‘Is everythi
ng all right?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I must eat something.’

  He sat waiting at the table while she went to the kitchen to make herself a cheese sandwich. She took a few bites and then began to talk. She went on a boating holiday with Ronnie on the Shannon for a few days, she said, and got back to Dublin to find that there had almost been a catastrophe. ‘My parents were going to Galway for the weekend, and they left my younger brother Marco on his own at home. It was the first time they were doing that, leaving him for the weekend. He is seventeen, though, not a baby. It’s just that they’ve never left him like that before. They asked him if he wanted to come along. It was some kind of reunion with university friends and Marco did not fancy that. They asked him if he wanted to have a friend round, but he said no, he was all right. They set off late on Friday afternoon, and after driving for about an hour and a half they turned back. My mum said that something did not feel right and Dad turned round and headed straight back. They found Marco in the garage with the engine of Mum’s car running. They got there in time, but can you imagine?

  ‘He has never done anything like that before. He’s just like everyone else. He listens to music, knows what’s fashionable, watches football on TV. Maybe he likes to be pampered more than he should. Mum gives him a lift to school every morning and indulges all his whims about food, and lets him watch TV until all hours. All of them bearable adolescent vices, I suppose. For boys. I tell him he’s a spoiled brat. Then he does something like that. It was incredible. It was the last thing I would have imagined Marco doing. I don’t even know if he did it it deliberately or if he just lost himself. He couldn’t give any reason for what he did, just that suddenly he felt incredibly lonely and depressed. That was what he said. How can you live with someone for years and not know what’s going on in their heads? God knows how Mum guessed. I’ve just been sitting with them these last few days while they have been going round and round what happened, what they feel about it and what we are all going to do. The psychiatrist wants them all to go into some kind of family therapy, me too, but I said you start and see how it goes. I couldn’t bear the thought of that, some smug stranger who was going to sit there asking probing questions and then piecing us all together again. Can you imagine your brother doing a stupid thing like that, though?’

  ‘How is he now?’ Jamal asked.

  ‘He is completely shaken about what he has done,’ Lena said. ‘Of course. He is appalled at what he tried to do, but Mum and Dad will never be able to stop being anxious about him, nor will Marco himself. If he doesn’t know what made him do it, what’s to stop him doing it another time?’

  Then, after he made them tea and she had time to sit on her own for a few minutes, she talked about her parents. Jamal knew that her father was Italian, which was not hard to guess because her name was Lena Salvati. Her parents had met when he came to Trinity College Dublin, on a year abroad for his language degree, she said.

  ‘Why Dublin?’ he asked.

  ‘Why not?’ she replied. ‘Does that seem to you a strange place to learn English? What about Joyce then? And Yeats? And Jonathan Swift? Not to mention Oscar Wilde.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  When her father finished his studies in Venice, he returned to Dublin to be with her mum. They are both translators and do all kinds of work, translating scholarly essays, fiction, poetry. After the incident, her dad reminded them that one of his nephews had done something just like that, running a car engine in a closed garage, but he too was found in time. Marco was not around when he said this, and her dad looked at them without saying what was in his mind, which was probably that Marco was trying it on to see what a suicide attempt felt like. Then after a moment, he made a face to dismiss this thought.

  Jamal and Lena sat at the dining table long after her urgency had diminished, drinking tea and talking, and as they talked Jamal felt a charge slowly building up. When the moment came he was not taken by surprise as he had been the night of the party. She reached for his hand across the table and he held it between both of his. Then she said, Can I stay with you tonight?

  Later, lying in the dark with the curtains open, she told him that she had been thinking about him a lot while she was away. He could hear her smile in the dark as she spoke, lying close to him. She had written him a postcard while they were camping along the Shannon but had not found a moment to post it. Or perhaps she had not dared, or was not sure if she should. She posted the one to her parents but when it came to the moment, she left the one to him in her handbag. Then Ronnie rummaged in her handbag while she was not there, looking for something, she never found out what, because he found the card. He was hurt, furious, you can imagine. What is this, you fucking tart? He was that furious. There was not that much in the card, really, just hello we’re having a nice time, but then thinking of you at the end and love Lena xxx. Ronnie did not like that, thinking of you and love Lena xxx.

  ‘Have I told you about Ronnie?’ she asked him.

  He nodded in the dark and then said: ‘Yes, a little bit.’

  It was over between them really, but she just did not know how to tell him, how to talk to him about it. They had been together for a couple of years but as that time passed she found him increasingly exhausting. She had liked that at first, his intensity, and that he always wanted to do things, walking, camping, a racing car exhibition, an arts festival. Come on, let’s have a bit of light and joy in our lives. It forced her out of her natural sloth, and some of that hiking and camping made her body ache in an unexpected and pleasurable way. But as time passed she found it exhausting, and his enthusiasm began to feel like frenzy. To be honest, she began to find him tiresome but felt disloyal for thinking that. He was a generous man, even to complete strangers. She did not want to think ill of him but she did not really feel she had a taste for some of these things he wanted them to do. She tried to tell him that, but he laughed at her and said she was a lazy bitch who wanted to spend the whole weekend in a chair reading a book. Well, not the whole weekend, she told him, but maybe not so much bustle. There was so much he wanted to do, so much he wanted to experience, he said. He didn’t want to spend his life sitting on his backside. He loved Ireland and wanted to see all of it and never wanted to go anywhere else, not even for a visit.

  ‘And it’s true,’ she said. ‘I was thinking of you a lot. I was thinking of you when I might have been thinking of him, ever since that night at the party but before that as well.’

  Jamal made a humming noise, which signified pleasure, agreement, encouragement, please go on. He caressed her and waited for her to hum in return. The simple talk of lovers.

  ‘He found the postcard on the second day of our holiday,’ she continued after a moment, her voice more subdued now, the smile in it gone. ‘He came to find me with the postcard in his hand, holding it out like evidence. What is this, you fucking tart? Then he tore it to pieces and flung them away, littering his beloved Ireland. We went through the rest of the week like that, arguing about everything. Every night in our tent he insisted on making love and at times it felt like he wanted to hurt me. You should have heard the names Ronnie called you. I had not expected that of him, that kind of poison. I had not expected to hear what he said about me, let alone nigger this and paki that and big cocks. Maybe that was the angry boyfriend speaking, and later he will be ashamed of what he said. The more he said, the more sure I became about him but for some reason I thought I would hang on until the end of the holiday. I don’t know why I didn’t walk to the nearest bus stop and make my way to Dublin. Maybe I was afraid of getting lost, or getting into trouble or because I thought he would make a scene. For sure, by the end of the week I knew what I wanted, and I could not wait to hurry back here and break the news to you.’

  Only she got back to Dublin to find that Marco had tried to kill himself. It took a few days to absorb the shock of that, and she saw that it would take her parents and Marco himself a lot longer to muddle through the mea
ning of what had happened. So after those few days she grew impatient to leave before they dragged her into the endless circuit of their regrets. She wanted to get back here, to her work, to him, to see him and to tell him about what had happened. To tell him how she felt.

  Then it was his turn to tell her how beautiful she was, and how he loved her dark-blue eyes, and how incomparably sweet was her voice. Wasn’t it strange that he lived across a landing from her for months and did not know how she felt about him, when all the time he was aching for her?

  ‘I knew,’ she said. ‘I knew how you felt. I couldn’t miss it, and then I began to think I liked the idea. When that happened after the party, I thought that would be the start for us, but you went shy or reserved and I couldn’t work it out.’

  ‘You put the palm of your hand on my chest,’ he said. ‘I thought you were saying that’s enough.’

  ‘The semiotics of the flat palm. It was a moment of conscience. I wish you had brushed the hand aside,’ she replied.

  ‘You talked about your boyfriend,’ he said. ‘I thought you were saying don’t get any ideas.’

  ‘I wanted you to say forget about him, that’s all over,’ she said, smiling in the dark.

  ‘I was badly brought up, not enough experience in such matters, not enough daring. My Ba did not much like the idea of boyfriends and girlfriends, and I suppose I’m still backward on the subject,’ he told her.

  ‘Well anyway, while I was away I thought when I get back I’ll just tell you that your time is up,’ she said.

  They talked until the hours before the dawn, and he told her about his Ba and the illness that had overtaken him, and how he was going to Norwich for the weekend to see them. She said she had just found him at last and he was already talking of leaving her, and he said only for a couple of days and then he would hurry back. It was light by the time they fell asleep.