Brick Lane (58 page)

'You have too much tension in your face. You should press at the temples, and the tension will disappear. If you don't do this, lines will come.'

'I already have lines.'

'Nonsense, you are just a child. You are barely older than my sons.' She sighed and then sucked on her teeth. 'They are no better than the father. God gave them only half a brain each. Worse than that, they do not know it. To know that you are not clever, you must reach some minimum standard of intelligence. Do you see? All they give to their mother is trouble. I thank God for giving me sons, but why such sons as these?' There was a wet look to her eyes and she blinked hard a few times. Nazneen pressed her hand.

Mrs Islam's voice grew harsher. 'What they lack in brain, they make up in muscle. We must look to the positive. We must make the most of the opportunities God gives. I always find a way to manage. Don't make any mistake about that.'

'Can I get something for you? A glass of water?'

'When I am gone, my sons will be all right. See how weak my pulse comes? But I have provided for them. Not too little, and not too much either because why should they squander what I have built? I would rather give it to the mosque. I would rather give it to the school and let those who have brains make use of them.

'Yes, I do all these things for my community, and I expect no thanks.' She raised her hand as if to ward off gratitude. 'If someone is sick, they come to me. If someone's husband runs off, they come to me. If a child needs a roof, they come to me. If someone has no penny for rice, they come to me. And I give. All the time, giving.' Her head lolled to one side. She had given everything, her last ounce of strength.

Nazneen looked down at the parched, translucent hand of her elder and her better. She bent her head and kissed it.

'From the goodness of my heart, I give. And when those who have received don't want to pay what they owe, they run off to foreign countries, and they say, "Why should we pay her? She's just an old woman." And so it is. So it is.'

Nazneen went into the kitchen and opened the cupboard under the sink. She moved aside the rice pan and the frying pan, the colander and the grater. From behind the plumbing she retrieved a Tupperware box and took out three blue notes and five pale gold ridged coins. She took the twenty pounds to Mrs Islam and put it in the zipped compartment of the portable black pharmacy. Mrs Islam took her bag and struggled to her feet. 'Don't look so sad. When you leave for Bangladesh, I will make a big party for you. All my own expense. Just finish paying the debt, and then leave it all to me.' She walked across the room with a surprisingly light step.

Razia wanted to buy cloth and Nazneen accompanied her to Wentworth Street. Market stalls lined the road selling leather goods, coats of every kind of synthetic, bright handbags on cheap chains, shoes that looked disposable, Jamaican patties, tinned food at 40 per cent off. They ignored the stalls and stuck to the pavement. Past Regency Textiles and Excelsior Textiles Ltd, cloth draped on wire hangers in windows, Balinese prints, wax-block African prints (with certificate of authenticity), beyond the 'exclusive' luggage of Regal Stores, past the untitled window where cellophane-wrapped blocks of fabric were suspended on end in a pattern of diamonds. They crossed the street and looked inside Narwoz Fashions. Yellow Rose Universal Fashions caught their attention briefly, and Nazneen was pulled into Padma's Children's Paradise (East End) by a keen assistant who offered 'special prices' on all the stock. Nazneen fingered a little baby dress, all plum velour and silver netting.

'Something you're not telling me?' said Razia, patting her stomach.

Nazneen let go of the dress. 'Of course not.'

Razia perused the stock of Galaxy Textiles Ltd: Retail, Wholesale and Export at 70% Clearance Permanent. She found nothing suitable, and they moved on to Starman Fabrics.

'How is Shefali?'

'We are waiting for the exam results. If she gets good marks, she has been accepted at Guildhall University.'

'Such a clever girl.' Nazneen examined a roll of raw silk, the colour of marigolds. She thought it would look well on Shefali. 'And Tariq?'

Razia was bending over a cotton print, fine wavy lines of pink on a lemon background. 'Tariq is getting out more and more. Some weeks I hardly see him.' She laughed and tucked her hair behind her ears. The cut of her hair had grown blunter and blunter over the years, as if the scissors had become worn out with use. 'Now I have to start complaining that he is never at home. This is our role as mothers. Whatever the child does, we must complain.'

The shop assistant, a girl of around twenty with a heavily powdered face and patches of mauve above the eyes, regarded Razia with suspicion. Razia was dressed in stretchy brown trousers that accidentally finished before her socks began, and a collarless man's shirt. The assistant hastily checked over her own clothes, smoothing down her outfit as if it might become infected with a nasty anti-fashion virus.

Nazneen gave the girl a stare which the girl unblink-ingly returned.

'Where does he go?' said Nazneen. She had thought and thought of telling her suspicion to Razia. But how could she say such a thing to her friend? And what evidence did she have?

She had no evidence but she had a certainty that would have been overwhelming were it not for the fact that only a grain of doubt was needed to tip the scales. Karim talked about drugs on the estate. He knew a great deal about it.

'See those kids down there.' He stood at the window but Nazneen would not go and stand with him. She did not want to stand in view with him. 'Those kids, they're all users.'

She did not understand.

'They're users, addicts. They're all scaggies.'

'What it is? Users?'

'They're all on heroin. All of that lot.'

'Drugs.'

'This estate is
full
of it. You got no idea.' He came away from the window. He passed close to her but they did not touch. They touched only in the bedroom. 'Some of them, right, twelve years old. Know how it got this way? Ten years ago, this place was clean, yeah? There was just Tippex, or gas – you know, lighter fuel. A bit of weed. Ganja. All right. Nothing bad. But then, what happened, this area started going up. And the City started coming out towards Brick Lane. You got grant money coming in, regeneration money. Property prices going up, new people moving in, businesses and that. And we started to do well, man.'

He sat down at her sewing machine. 'That's the problem.
That
is the start of it. No coincidence. S'like what happened in America when the blacks got organized. Black Panthers, all that. You've got to keep them down, keep them quiet.'

His phone was on the table. He spun it around. Nazneen traced the cords of his forearms in her mind.

'The FBI – the Government – they got together with the Mafia, and flooded the blacks with drugs, set them up with all the guns and stuff, so they can just get high and shoot each other. Long as it stays in the ghettoes, man, they're not
bothered.'

Nazneen wondered if her English had failed her, misled her. She said, 'The Government gave the drugs?'

'Know what I'm saying?' said Karim. 'You got to ask the questions.'

For a while he looked inside his magazine. He rubbed his beard, cupped his chin in his hand and tested the bristles.

'Not like they
couldn't
stop it, if they wanted to. Everyone
knows
the dealers.' He gave a short, bitter laugh. 'It's not hard. The dealers are the ones the kids look up to. With the flash cars and all the gold. But, know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking—' He shook his head as if it could not be true. 'I'm thinking as long as they're on the scag, they stay away from religion. And the Government – it's more scared of Islam than heroin.'

'Where does Tariq go?' Razia shrugged. She pulled on her long nose. 'Who can say? Certainly not him.'

'Looking for something special?' The assistant's face powder was several shades too pale. It made her neck look unwashed.

'For my daughter.' Razia removed her glasses and pressed her eyes. Nazneen saw that the seat of her trousers hung low and unfilled, her bosom had strayed down towards her stomach, and her arms strained against her shirt. It was as if she had been tipped in such a way that her flesh had run into all the wrong places.

'What about this one?' said Nazneen.

Razia studied the orange silk. 'I'm not sure.' She turned to the girl. 'We will look around.'

'Right,' said the girl, as if she had thought as much.