The Inquiry Page 25

‘You should see us when it’s all going off.’ Bridget turned up the lighting and looked down at Tariq. ‘He’s calm enough, isn’t he? I wonder what he’s thinking?’

  Sara and Patrick exchanged raised eyebrows while she noted readings from the monitors and checked the intravenous flow. ‘Not a lot changing. That’s good enough for me. I’ll leave you in peace.’ Dimming the lights, she quietly closed the door behind her.

  ‘So then…?’ said Patrick.

  ‘Yes, I’ll never forget that moment. The warmth, the beauty of the day, the contours of the hills. The touch of his hand. As if I was being set alight.’

  Her expression darkened.

  22

  He led her by their enfolded hands off the track, down and across a field to a copse. There in a clearing, he dumped his rucksack and hamper, and laid out a rug and two cushions.

  ‘Wherever I am, I like to have my creature comforts,’ he said.

  Shafts of sun drove through leaves and branches to warm her. She sat on the rug, cross-legged, watching him. Even the simplest of his movements was beguiling. The clasping of their hands confirmed at last that perhaps they were more than friends; not that she had doubted it but, over the days and weeks spent together when he would never give her a physical hint, not even a peck on the cheek, she had occasionally wondered. She could, of course, never allow him to go beyond the most chaste of touches. Though, if his lips were to approach hers…

  He unpacked the picnic, and offered her a smoked salmon sandwich, crisps and tomatoes, and lemonade which he removed from a cold bag. When she’d finished these, he pulled out a small box with two slices of cheesecake which he placed on paper plates.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting all this,’ she exclaimed. The walk had made her thirsty and she stretched out her plastic glass. ‘This lemonade’s delicious. What did you put in it?’

  He smiled. ‘I am glad you are enjoying it.’

  He watched her drink and eat hungrily; she felt his eyes on her. ‘You’re not eating much,’ she said.

  ‘I prefer to watch you,’ he said. He edged closer and put an arm round her, kissing her on a cheek as she chewed – his lips had touched her skin almost without her knowing. She light-heartedly affected to ease him away but liked the closeness. He accepted the hint, took a sandwich for himself and fastidiously nibbled it.

  ‘This is a place I could stay for ever,’ he said.

  She turned to him, beaming with pleasure. ‘So could I.’ The sensations coursing through her body and thoughts churning in her head were unlike any she’d felt or known before. Until now, ‘love’ had been a dutiful, unquestioned affection for her father and a few of her favourite relatives. There’d been the odd boy she’d had a crush on but this was wholly different; she was sure she’d discovered what the word ‘love’ could really mean. Did he feel the same?

  After the picnic, they lay down on the rug and pillows and she felt sleepy, almost in a trance, serenaded by the soft rustling of leaves and cries of birdsong.

  She thought she heard a stirring in the undergrowth. ‘What was that?’ She opened her eyes to find him leaning over her.

  ‘Just a fox coming to get you.’ He grinned and stroked her cheek, slowly moving his hand down to intrude beneath her T-shirt.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Whatever her mind told her to say, her body was relaxed, at ease. His fingers now stroking her breast, a fluttering of goosebumps gave a thrilling shiver. He gently removed his hand. She felt relief and disappointment.

  He raised his head over hers, looking down on her. ‘You are a beautiful woman,’ he said. ‘I have never seen a beauty like yours.’ She frowned and shook her head at him. ‘I mean it.’

  He cradled her head in his arm and moved their faces closer together. He kissed her, his tongue travelling around her mouth and teeth in a way she had never imagined. She reacted unsurely and he drew back. ‘Have you kissed a man like this before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It is good, yes.’

  ‘Yes, it’s good.’ She turned her face. ‘But we shouldn’t.’

  ‘Do you not love me, Sara?’

  She gazed into his eyes, so close that they seemed to go in and out of focus. ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘Love, yes. I believe this is our love. It is all right, we will do nothing you do not want to.’ He looked deeply into her, with the gentlest of smiles. ‘But does it not mean the time has come when we must know each other properly?’ His hand moved more eagerly down to her trouser belt and she felt him undoing her buckle. She wanted to say no but her throat was dry; words wouldn’t come out. Her belt opened and he pulled down the zip of her jeans, his fingers creeping beneath her pants.

  ‘No,’ she gasped, ‘this is wrong.’ Among the forces assailing her, an intruder sneaked in: fear. She hoped he saw her fright because then he would know he must stop.

  ‘Allow a man to judge what is right and what is wrong,’ he said. ‘We will do no more than we should.’ He straightened, now seeming to tower over her. ‘Let me just see you. All of you.’ She was feeble, woozy, her mind felt separate from her limp body. She closed her eyes – trying to ignore what was happening. She felt his hands slide her jeans down; a breeze passed between her sweating legs. He removed her boots and socks and slid the jeans over ankles and feet. She put a hand on her pants, but still lay inert, eyes closed.

  ‘Your skin seems so pale,’ he said.

  ‘My English mother,’ she murmured.

  ‘You never told me that.’

  She breathed softly, his voice echoing, her sleepiness overwhelming.

  ‘Perhaps this explains why there is something so special about you.’ He eased away from her and she heard tiny, muted sounds of undressing, a zip opening and a brushing of clothes. She half-opened her eyes; he was crouched over her, his shirt still on but trousers and pants down to his knees. She saw the pinkness large and straight.

  ‘We mustn’t,’ she whimpered.

  ‘I will be careful,’ he said. It was happening, she must move. She tried to raise her shoulders but his hands were on them, pinning her. His body was over her, blocking her escape. He yanked down her pants, put his knees between her legs and pried them apart. His breath came heavily and urgently.

  ‘Stop,’ she whispered. ‘Please stop.’ She raised her voice. ‘No. Please no. I’m not ready. Not yet.’

  He clamped his hand over her mouth. ‘Shush.’ She felt breathless. ‘It is too late, Sara. It will be beautiful. This is our love.’ He pushed himself hard into her: for reasons she did not understand – maybe a fear of suffocation – she instinctively put her arms around his back and pulled him up and against her so tightly that his head dropped over her shoulder and the oven-like fierceness of his breathing passed beyond her.

  He forced hard, further and further into her, hurting her more than when he had entered, then, with a shudder, flopped on top of her, motionless. For a second she wondered if he’d died. Suddenly he raised himself, pulled himself out of her, still stiff, the most painful seconds of all. She felt trickles dripping on her pubic hair and thighs. He turned and slumped on his back. Freed of his weight, she could breathe more easily. A prickling burned deep within her eyes. She couldn’t bear him to see and rolled away onto her side where she could brush escaping tears away. He’d put her jeans to the side of the rug and she stretched a hand to grab tissues from a pocket. She wiped herself where he had been and retrieved the tissue. It was smeared with small streaks of fresh blood.

  She heard sounds of him cleaning and tidying himself and then felt his body closing once more against hers.

  ‘It was good, yes,’ he said.

  She didn’t want to reply but somehow – instinctively and without thought – a tiny voice murmured, ‘It hurt a little.’

  They drove home in silence. Occasionally he turned to look at her and smiled; her eyes stayed fixed on the road ahead. Her body was sore, her head clouded with shame. There was no one she would be able to tell what had just happened. It was inconceivabl
e to say anything – anything at all – to her father. Perhaps if her mother had been around things would have been different…

  She thought of friends with mothers and sisters, all on hand to advise and confide in. If only she’d been able to discuss Kareem with such a sister, none of this would ever have happened; right at the start they’d have said, ‘No!’ She’d never have found herself with a man, unaccompanied, in a deserted wood, miles from home. Now, after this, she was more alone than ever. She would always be alone; always have to work it out herself.

  ‘He raped you,’ said Patrick. ‘Violently. Sounds like he drugged you as well. It was an assault.’

  Sara’s eyes were on her father, motionless except for the chest, slowly expanding and contracting. ‘We shouldn’t use such words,’ she whispered. ‘It might upset him.’

  The memory was making her shaky, buffeted by a swirl of emotions. Fear, anger, guilt, the sense of violation that had never left her. She had one hand on the bed; Patrick took the other and gently held it between both of his. ‘If your father was listening, he’d use the same words as me.’

  ‘I didn’t understand it at the time,’ she forced on, appearing not to hear him. ‘I couldn’t tell anyone.’ She stared at her father. ‘Least of all him. Certainly not the police. The disgrace. My first thought was that I’d have to marry him. It seems absurd now to think that was the only solution for the person I then was.’

  ‘To think how careless he was.’

  ‘Care was not in his vocabulary. You only realise that later.’

  ‘No,’ said Patrick. ‘Except for himself.’

  ‘The ridiculous thing was that I didn’t end it there and then. He and I were the only ones who knew what had happened – there was no one else to talk to. I had to try to work it out. I might be pregnant. He said he had tickets for a trip on the Millennium Wheel. It wasn’t one of my study or work experience days so I said yes. And among the crowds, nothing could happen. There was a part of me that still ached to see him – to understand better, to know answers. To look at him.’

  They agreed to meet at the entrance to the Wheel at 2 p.m.

  She arrived early and hid behind a tree, watching, waiting. Ten minutes later he showed up. He looked around, searching, a puzzled expression in his eyes. The anxiety on his face momentarily pleased her – until she started wondering how long he’d stay before giving up. Maybe he’d approach another girl and offer her the ticket to accompany him. She jumped up from her seat and ran, exaggerating her breathlessness so she could say she’d sprinted from the slow-running tube.

  ‘Hello, Sara.’ He was as controlled as ever. ‘Did you not think I would wait? Have I ever been impatient with you?’

  The heat of summer had worn off and the day was cool enough for her to need a cardigan over her cream blouse and jeans. Kareem wore a brown leather jacket she hadn’t seen before; it enhanced his lean figure and the flat stomach beneath. She tried to ignore it. She gave him a peck on the cheek and resisted when he tried to pull her into his arms.

  ‘It is time for our ride,’ he said, affecting not to notice.

  The wheel inched its way up until they could take in the sweep from Tower Bridge to Vauxhall and beyond. The day was cloudy, compressing the city more intimately than a clearer sky. From this angle the epicentre drawing the eye could only be Westminster and Whitehall: the glass walls of City towers were too immersed in greyness, the flatlands in the far east and west too undefined. London’s skyscraper boom stood smeary in the murk.

  Sara leant on the rail by the curved window, awe-struck by the street patterns below and the tiny figures scurrying through their day. It was her city, whatever her family roots and culture – and she was a modern woman of contemporary London with all its opportunities and temptations. Her eyes swivelled right to Lincoln’s Inn – her future, taking on the white, male supremacy. Had she now ruined it all?

  She felt his hands gliding from behind over her hip bones and joining at the front of her waist. Unthinkingly, she leant back into him and felt his hardness against the top of her buttocks. She froze, scared of both her modernity and of him – and of where it had led her. She pulled away and turned to face him.

  ‘It’s stunning,’ she said, forcing a smile.

  ‘Yes.’ He didn’t return it. ‘What do you see when you look below?’

  ‘I see the city I live in.’

  ‘And when you look at Big Ben and those Houses of Parliament?’

  She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just say.’

  ‘Tradition, I guess. British democracy. Pretty pinnacles.’

  ‘That is not what I see,’ he said with unusual coldness.

  She saw the same change in his expression as when he had silenced her in that dappled copse. The same intruder, fear, returned. He looked around – the other two couples in their pod were a few yards away with their backs to them, out of earshot. He moved closer to her and whispered harshly into her ear.

  ‘What I see are centuries of false superiority. Empire, financial exploitation, colonialism, snobbery, the takeover of lands and culture. Oppression is the word vulgarly used but commonly understood.’

  She squinted at him. Where was all this coming from? ‘You don’t look like an oppressed person to me, Kareem,’ she murmured back.

  ‘How do you know, Sara, what beats within me?’

  ‘Do you want to explain?’

  ‘Anger. The hurt of our people. I sometimes burn with the desire for revenge.’

  ‘Why? It’s history. It’s over.’

  ‘No. It is never over.’

  ‘We live in a different world now. It’s becoming more equal. Yes, it’s slow and there’s a way to go, but we’ll get there.’

  ‘My God, I might wish I had your innocence, your illusions. But when I look down at this so-called Palace of Westminster,’ he hissed, ‘all I want is to see it explode into the air and spew out flames. And for those inside to fry and their souls to rot.’

  She looked down and away from him, surprise turning to shock and, then, mystification. In the seconds he spoke those words, a potential and fearful truth flared. The man she had seen as one person was, stage by stage, act by act, revealing himself as quite another. ‘I can’t believe you mean that, Kareem.’

  His shoulders slumped, the fire diminished. ‘Yes,’ he said dully. ‘I mean it. I mean it when I say it.’

  ‘If it’s just words, don’t speak them.’

  ‘Every revolution begins with “just words”.’

  Their pod was now past the Wheel’s zenith and, as it crept back towards ground, they stared out in a subdued, uncomfortable silence, emerging into the dampness of a gathering drizzle. She wanted to get away. More than want, it was desperation. To hasten her escape, she tried to display a gratitude she did not feel. ‘It was great, thank you, I really appreciate you getting the tickets. But I said I’d meet someone for tea.’

  ‘Oh, who is that?’

  She frowned, shook her head at him and, as the pod came to a rest, turned to go. Did he seem momentarily ashamed? Was he capable of feeling shame?

  ‘I would very much like to see you again so that we may discuss any issues that have arisen between us.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She spoke into the distance.

  ‘I will wait in the car in the usual place on Thursday.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she repeated.

  She turned on her heel and headed towards Westminster Bridge. As she sped up, she glanced back to check he wasn’t following, her heart thumping so hard that it was painful. She looked up to the top of the Wheel – thank God she hadn’t been alone with him in that pod.

  The date was Monday 10 September 2001.

  ‘Can you remember where you were on 9/11?’ she asked Patrick.

  ‘Of course. Sitting in the law library. One or two people started leaving. You could detect an atmosphere. Within minutes we were all out watching the TV in the bar next door.’

  ‘Impossible to forget, yes?’r />
  ‘Totally. And you?’ he asked.

  ‘It was one of my work experience days at the solicitors’ – I didn’t know then which branch of law I wanted to do. It was the end of the lunch break. Like you, we all crowded round. In our case it was in reception. It was the only place with a telly.’

  She stood and peered through the glass partition to the ante-space. The nurse was seated in front of the computer, the small ward beyond as silent as the night except for the occasional siren from the streets below. No signs of consciousness in her father – she must stop looking for them.

  She sat down again beside Patrick, moving both her hands around one of her father’s. ‘And yet,’ she said, ‘unforgettable, appalling, catastrophic, tragic, out of the blue – whatever you might want to call it – Kareem didn’t even phone or text me. Nothing. Even after what he’d said on the Wheel. I thought he might feel ashamed, want to apologise without delay.’

  ‘Perhaps, for once in his life, he was too embarrassed,’ said Patrick.

  ‘I don’t think so. I can imagine him sitting on his own, watching it all unfold. But I still can’t fully imagine what was going on in his mind.’

  She took a book out of her bag. ‘That night of 9/11 I stood on a chair in my room to fetch my copy of the Qur’an from a top shelf. It had been gathering dust for years.’ She laid it on the bed and opened it at a marker. ‘This was the page it fell open at. Must have been the last time I’d read it. Chapter 33, Verse 35. I’ve no idea what girlish thoughts I’d been having. Read it.’ She paused. ‘Read it to me aloud.’

  Patrick gingerly took the book. ‘“For Muslim men and women, for believing men and women, for true men and women, for men and women who are patient and for men and women who guard their chastity, and for men and women who engage much in Allah’s praise, for them has Allah prepared forgiveness and great reward.”’

  ‘I hadn’t guarded my chastity, had I? But what seemed a miracle happened – my period came. I thought pregnancy would be my punishment. When it wasn’t, something changed. The fear went. I knew where I stood. I thought hard. I decided to see him one last time.’