She did not want to move, to wake him.
He had cried out in the night, twice. He had used the Arabic language that she could not understand. She did not know whether he called for God, or for his family, but it was not for her. Each time, to calm him, she had wrapped her arms tighter round him and had let her nakedness warm him.
He was still now and his breathing was quiet. His head was against her, cradled in her arms. Faria did not know whether she would be cursed or praised. She had been told to give him love and had done so. He was at peace.
She did not want him to wake, but could lie there no longer. She extricated herself.
Ashamed of deceit, no glow of pride, she moved first the arm that was above her shoulder and round her neck. Then the arm that reached across the small of her back, and the hand over her hair. His eyes did not open. So slowly, she eased away from him. She rolled on to the floor, felt the bare boards and a protruding nail gouged her buttock. She went on to her hands and knees and crawled clear of him.
He did not stir, slept on. He had not touched her scar — had never gazed at it. He had shown no sign that the scar — a motor accident in a cousin's van, on early-morning ice — frightened or disgusted him. Every other man she had known in the Dallow Road, and all those in the cottage, had stared so blatantly at it, as if it repelled them. He, in spite of the scar, had loved her. For that, she believed she owed him more than he owed her.
Tears came to her eyes. She convulsed, wept.. She was a whore, she betrayed him…The imam who had recruited her, twenty months ago, had said before she was sent away to sleep, 'Much may be asked of you. Only the most strong and dedicated are capable of doing what is asked of them. Are you?' She had sworn she was. Her strength and dedication was to sleep, body to body, him inside her, until she had given what was asked of her. She swallowed hard, and used her wrist fiercely against her face to wipe the tears. She had been, through one night, loved.
Light, spots and lines, lay on his body.
She dressed, then rooted in her bag. She lifted clear from it the black robe, the jilbab, that would cover her from neck to ankles, then searched for and found a deep grey scarf, the dupatta, that would mask her neck and hair and would be drawn across her face. But Faria did not yet dress in the jilbab and the dupatta, would not make them filthy.
He slept and her movements threw glancing shadows on to his skin. He seemed to reach out for her, not find her, and his arm subsided, but he did not wake. In two hours his life would be over — finished, destroyed — and she thought it good that he slept. She slid on her shoes. What should she tell him at the last? What were the last words she would speak to him before she slipped away, left him? Awake, him holding her and her holding him, she had rehearsed what she would say…She took the new bucket and went to the door.
Faria heaved open the loose plank. It groaned. She thought he must wake, but he did not.
She crawled through the hole. The back of her T-shirt caught a wood splinter, and she wriggled to free herself.
Looking around her, up at the windows of the houses on either side, out into the gardens beyond the broken fencing, Faria saw that she was not watched. She took the top from the rain butt, lowered the bucket into it, filled it and saw the swirling scum. She replaced the top, and went back into the dark and the damp of the room, through the hole and worked the bucket after her.
He slept, but soon she would wake him — must.
'Tell me about the way men walk, describe to me every inch of their faces.'
'Yes, Joe — same as the last time you asked me.'
The low sunlight made jewels on the wave caps, but Naylor sat beside Joe Hegner in the recesses of the shelter hut where the sun did not penetrate. It was more than an hour since he had last rung his assistant director…Nothing to add that was new. Neither had he rung home…Nothing to say. They were in place as the American had demanded. A hundred yards west along the esplanade was the pier, and the tide must have reached its high point: the sea lapped the top of the pillars then fell back and tossed up weed. Set in the middle of the esplanade, level with the pier, was a foot-high brick square in which Parks and Gardens had planted shrubs and alongside it were the boys, Boniface and Clydesdale, in their cat A further thousand yards, Naylor's approximation, down the esplanade was the entrance to the ferry-port, where the big boat now unloaded articulated lorries from its bow ramp. A man came towards them, pushing a pram in which a baby yelled.
'He's fifty. A grandfather, maybe. Caucasian. It'll be the daughter's kid and howling.'
'Thank you, Dickie. I'm not deaf as well.'
A minute passed. He had no conversation, nor did it seem expected of him. Hegner sat beside him, hunched, alert, and he had the stick upright between his legs and leaned his chin on it. Another man came.
'Little chap, could be forties, but he's all wrapped up. Has a fishing bag on his shoulder and—'
'Thank you, Dickie.'
Another minute slipped. No, Dickie Naylor would not have said he was near to panic, would have denied panic. But his gut was tightening and his hands clasped and unclasped, and he shifted his weight continually on the slats of the shelter seat, and his eyes ached from peering ahead. Not yet panic, but closing on it. Thoughts raced, jumbled, in his mind. A bomber would strike and he didn't know where — a cell member, a junior, under torture, had supposedly spoken of a ticket and where it would be used and at what time — a gamut of arrogance and egocentricity and the chase for a career's legacy had put him, Dickie bloody Naylor, into the palm of the American.
'Two lads, around twenty. Big rucksacks. One is Caucasian and one is Afro-Caribbean. Look to be half pissed…students.'
'Thank you, Dickie.'
If Hegner was close to a similar state of panic, he showed none of it. Not even apprehension. He had started to hum a tune. One of those sickly sweet, sentimental songs that were played on the radio at this time, as Anne cooked his breakfast with that station on her radio. Irritation swarmed in Naylor, was kept with difficulty in check. The humming lilted on. He imagined consequences. Men and women of the Internal Investigation Branch, grim-faced and no understanding of the reality of pressures, would come out of the dark burrows, would examine the logs for details of the release of a prisoner, would confiscate mobile telephones and locate the source place of calls, would dig down into the earth, drag away concrete debris and uncover a body wrapped tight in plastic, would check the tasking of an RAF helicopter and…God, it was a bloody nightmare. He saw himself confronted in a police station's interview room by Branch officers — probably would know them, but no damn chance they'd acknowledge previous association. Heard the caution given. A bloody nightmare like no other. The American had said that a red carpet would be unrolled for him. Naylor doubted it. He gazed away, as far as his eyes could focus, along the length of the esplanade. Didn't believe in red bloody carpets. Saw emptiness, no one coming. He stamped his feet, beat a tattoo with his shoes. He flinched as the first of the sun's strength slid into that corner of the shelter hut and the light bounced on Hegner's darkened spectacles. He shifted again and let the breath, his frustration, whistle in his teeth.
The humming stopped. 'Calm yourself, Dickie. He'll come.'
'There's no one coming.'
'Think of the glass as half full. Just keep describing the faces and the walk.'
'Time is cut fine, they'll be starting to board. Where you said, there's no man coming.'
Naylor saw the wide smile, thought it was meant to belittle him. 'Your problem, Dickie, is that you let your worries get on top of you. Believe me, he will come, right here and right past us.'