No Place of Safety (7 page)

‘You could help prepare the evening meal this afternoon,' said Ben. Simon stopped with his hand on the knob. ‘The food for supper. Peel vegetables, chop up, that kind of thing. I told you about it last night. We start preparing the meal about five.'

There was the faintest of glimmers in Simon's eyes.

‘Yeah,' he said. ‘Yeah, I'll help.'

But when he came down and settled his bulk on the three-legged stool in the kitchen it was evident he would be no help at all. His mother had obviously done everything for him, making him quite incapable of fending for himself. He was set to peel potatoes for the shepherd's pie (and a great number of potatoes needed to be peeled for one of the Centre's shepherd's pies), but he had no idea how to go about it, and more potato seemed to be hacked or scraped on to the newspaper than into the saucepan. Alan tried him on carrots, to no better effect. Then Katy suggested he cut up the braising steak she had cajoled out of the Dewhurst's manager at a knockdown price (he thought she was one of a large family, and would probably have been quite
unforthcoming if he had known she was feeding a refuge for the homeless), and then feed it into the hand mincer which Ben had brought along with his own effects to number twenty-four. When this proved to be just about within his power Katy opened the cupboard and took down a packet of custard creams. This was what helping had been all about. For form's sake she put them on a plate, but she and Alan had no more than one each.

‘Is this the problem with your family?' she asked. She could not yet manage the neutral tones that Ben did so well.

‘What?'

‘Eating?'

‘Yeah.'

She tried again.

‘Were they trying to get you to slim?'

‘Yeah . . . That and the cost.'

‘Didn't you have a job?'

He shook his head slowly.

‘Never had a job. Mum's just a housewife, and Dad's a caretaker. Not much money coming into the house. Then the doctor said I ought to slim, and they started laying down rules.'

Ben had been doing work on the plumbing in number twenty-two – he was a supremely handy odd-job man. Now he came in, stood in the kitchen doorway and said: ‘Wouldn't it be better to obey the rules than live rough on the streets?'

‘Yeah,' said Simon slowly. ‘But there were other things.'

And with that gnomic utterance they had to be content. The set of the body was one they all knew, it said he would answer no more questions. Ben will find out eventually, thought Katy. When Simon had finished feeding the mincer with chopped meat, he took the last couple of biscuits and sloped off to his bedroom without another word.

Most of the people in the refuge had changed by now, though Tony, the young boy, had been given an extra week's grace, because Ben was hopeful he could get him to go back to his parents' home. Bett Southcott had been and come back, more willing to help this time: Ben's policy of patience and quiet sympathy seemed to be paying off in her case. They
had a new dog – Queenie, a humorous jet-black mongrel, the pet or friend of a girl who called herself Jezebel. There was also an undersized, rat-like person with vicious eyes, who smelled. His name was Mouse. Katy had to keep telling herself that there weren't many like him. Jezebel was a jolly, uncomplicated girl whose very nickname was a humorous gesture. She kept the supper table lively, and Queenie made for conversation with her variety of begging techniques.

‘You could learn from her,' said Ben to Simon.

He looked down with his dull eyes at the funny black face, not seeming to comprehend.

After supper Jezebel and Tony washed up, and Alan put away. There was chaos if the washers-up were allowed to put away – things would go missing for days. That was the last duty of the day, however. Once or twice, on fine evenings, Alan and Katy had gone with Ben to the pub and sat outside with a soft drink. They were never quite sure that they were welcome, though, and they were unused to pubs. They told themselves that, after all, they had been together, the three of them, all day. Tonight Ben just said he was off for a pint, and they respected his privacy. He had been on duty since before breakfast time, with odd jobs, shopping, and a long confessional session with Bett Southcott. Alan and Katy settled down to a game of Scrabble, sometimes interrupted by people coming down for a mug of coffee, or their having to get up to shout up the stairs to tell someone to turn their tranny down. The Centre was never entirely quiet until about midnight, but most of the noises were expected and comfortable.

They were getting into a routine – a routine that would have been unimaginable only a few weeks before. Sometimes Alan and Katy felt like pinching themselves to make sure their new life wasn't a dream.

It was coming up to ten o'clock, and they were watching a feeble sitcom on television, when the front door bell rang. Alan pressed the mute button and went out to the front door. Katy, impelled by she knew not what except that she thought it was a female voice, went to the hall door to listen. Whoever she was, she was urgent, impassioned. Katy went
out into the hall, then to the front door to stand beside Alan.

‘I've told her there's no room,' Alan said, turning to her.

The girl outside was brown-skinned, dark-eyed, and very beautiful. She looked about seventeen, and was carrying a small suitcase. She was clean, almost well dressed, in the Western manner, and she did not look like a candidate for the Centre.

‘Please.
Please
. You've got to help me,' she said, her black eyes turning to Katy. ‘My father is trying to force me to marry a terrible man. A horrible person, someone I hate more than I can explain. I'd commit suicide rather. If I sleep rough my father will find me. I would stand out. If I go to relatives they'll send me back home. Please! Please help me!'

Katy's decision was immediate.

‘You can sleep with me in my room,' she said, standing aside. ‘Tomorrow we'll talk it over with Ben. He'll know what to do.'

Katy and Alan made no bones about it: they were not going to wait up for Ben, not going to ask his permission. By the morning he could be presented if not with a
fait accompli
then at least with a situation that would seem to have been temporarily solved.

It was not that they mistrusted Ben, doubted his sympathy or compassion. They knew him, their newly discovered father, or thought they did. His instinct would be to offer the girl the protection of the Centre. On the other hand, they remembered the note of caution he had sounded after his talk with Dickie Mavors: they had to be more careful who they took in. And there was no doubt that the newcomer fell well outside the usual category of young people for whom the refuge was set up.

Her name was Mehjabean Haldalwa, but she said she was known at school as Midge. That Katy found out, and much more, as they talked before sleeping together in the three-quarters bed in her room. Her father was Razaq Haldalwa and he owned five corner shops in the Kirkstall and Headingly districts of Leeds, staffed by relatives of varying degrees of closeness. In general it did not seem that Midge was afraid of her father, or was anything other than affectionate and respectful. His, however, was a success story that had gone sour, especially since the supermarkets were by law allowed to open on Sundays. It was her father's financial predicament that was behind Midge's present plight. Three months before she had been a schoolgirl without a care in the world – beyond, that is, passing exams, finding a university course
that might lead to actually finding a job, and all the other areas of anxiety that Katy and Alan were similarly aware of.

The question was, how to break the news to Ben, and this was the subject of many looks and whispers as Alan and Katy went about their early-morning chores.

‘Ben, we had a new one come last night,' Alan finally said, as, all three in the kitchen, they made the breakfast toast and tea. Alan tried to keep his tone light, as Ben usually did when talking to the young people at the refuge, but all the same Ben looked up from his buttering of toast.

‘I thought we were full. Did somebody take off?'

‘No . . . It was a bit of an emergency.' Under Ben's bland gaze he stammered a little. ‘It's . . . it's this Indian girl.'

‘Pakistani,' said Katy quietly.

‘Yes. Pakistani . . . She's being forced by her father to marry a man she hates. She came here to sort of hide . . .'

He stumbled to a stop. Ben's look became thoughtful.

‘There's refuges for people in that sort of situation. I'm pretty sure there's one in Bradford. I wonder how I could get a telephone number for them. Obviously they won't be in the book. They have to be
there
for women, but keep themselves quiet, which must be a bit of a problem.'

Alan and Katy breathed a tentative sigh of relief.

‘But you won't turn her out?'

Ben shook his head without hesitation.

‘No, of course not. But we must face the fact that this is not the best place for her. It's the same with her as with addicts. Better for the girl herself and better for us if we can find somewhere where there are people with experience of this particular problem, people with the tools to help her.'

Alan looked surreptitiously at Katy, and they both nodded.

Later on, Mehjabean came down. Katy had arranged it like that so that they had a chance to soften Ben up first. Only she didn't put it like that to Midge, and she didn't even put it like that to herself, for she had an enormous respect for Ben, even as she was a mite sceptical about his treatment of the obvious skivers and bludgers. Midge came into the kitchen, smiled at Ben, then she and Katy set to to make more toast and marmalade and strong coffee, which she said
was
her
drink. Then they all sat around the battered old table.

‘So your family is trying to pressure you into a marriage you don't want, is that right?' Ben opened gently.

Midge's eyes glinted. When she looked like that she didn't seem like a Midge at all, but very much a Mehjabean.

‘Not pressure –
force
. My father is in debt to this . . . this man, this
horrible
man, and this is his way of getting him to cancel it.' She shook her head, her mouth set firm. ‘I would never have believed it of him, never.'

‘It doesn't sound like the usual Asian marriage,' commented Ben. ‘Seems like it's the wrong way round.'

Mehjabean nodded.

‘It is. But he wants
me
. And this is his way of getting me – of
buying
me. He doesn't mind if I'm reluctant – that gives it more spice for him. It's not my father's fault . . . No, that's not true: of course it's his fault, of course he should not think of selling his daughter to a repulsive old lecher. But he is under a lot of pressure. It's not just him and us: it's the whole large family, people who depend on him for a not very good living. The longer I can remain vanished, the more I can escape the pressures from him and them, and the more he'll be forced to find another way out of his difficulties.'

‘Yes, I can see that,' Ben said, his face screwed up in contemplation. ‘How did you get to hear about us?'

‘From a schoolfriend. She was on the streets for a bit, when her mum had a new boyfriend who was harassing her.'

‘You know, don't you, that we're a refuge for the homeless – '

‘I am homeless!'

‘In a sense.' Ben hadn't lost his cool. ‘But we're really for young people who have been on the streets for a while.'

‘If I sleep rough, my father will find me.'

‘What I'm saying is that there are places for people in your situation. I'm pretty sure there's one in Bradford for Asian women who are being pressurized into unwanted marriages or fleeing from unhappy ones.'

The glint was now steely in Midge's eye.

‘I am not an Asian woman. I am a British woman who happens to be brown-skinned and Moslem. If I
am
a Moslem.'

‘I think you know what I mean, Midge.'

His calmness and persistence lowered the temperature, as it usually did.

‘Yes, I know what you mean. But can you see it from my point of view?
Try
! Why should I be compartmentalized, made into a typical problem of my community?'

‘Well, there aren't many white British girls who are forced into marriage these days.'

It was said lightly. Midge saw the joke, and grinned.

‘I suppose what you're really saying is that I'm a bit of an embarrassment to you in the work you're trying to do.'

Ben didn't try any facile denial.

‘A bit of a problem, anyway. Something we're not really used to. And you could give a handle to people who will use any ammunition they can get against us.'

‘I can't see how giving protection to someone like me could provide ammunition for anyone.'