Somebody Loves Us All (14 page)

Paddy shook his hand. ‘I know. I’m Patrick, Paddy.’

Why did Paddy not then say, ‘Come in, Iyob’? For some reason, he found himself waiting for the other man, Helena’s ex-student, now employee. He’d come from Syria with some business training apparently and Helena had been very pleased to have him on her team. Apart from his skills, the presence on staff of a graduate was itself a great advertisement for the place. Yes, he had worn a bow tie, though not today. He wore fawn-coloured trousers, a white shirt and a blue zip-up windbreaker. Running shoes. He was a neat and compact man, with a black moustache, cropped hair greying at the temples. He was any age from forty-five to fifty-five. Also, as Paddy remembered, he was the source of some recent problem.

Paddy stayed there in the doorway, waiting as if Iyob was trying to sell him something. Except Iyob also seemed to be waiting. As if Paddy were the one who’d dragged him out here, as if it were Iyob’s door they stood at.

Finally Iyob spoke again. ‘May I come in?’

‘Helena’s not here of course. She’s at the school.’

‘Yes, I know this.’ He lifted a finger, pointing it at Paddy’s chest. ‘I am sorry to arrive but you are the one I would like to see.’

‘You want to see me?’ Paddy began to explain that he worked
from home and that he had a client coming soon. Maybe if Iyob rang later.

Iyob held up his hand, showing Paddy five fingers. ‘Five minutes. If you are available.’

They sat in Paddy’s office. Immediately Iyob was looking at the space where the cartoon used to hang, now marked by the dirty lines on the wall. Paddy felt drawn for a moment to explain, but he held out. Iyob didn’t need to know.

‘Where is this picture of you?’ he said.

‘I’m getting it repaired,’ said Paddy. ‘How did you know?’

‘At the party, we leave our coats here. I see this picture.’

‘Do you mind me asking how you got in the building, Iyob? Only we’re supposed to have this security system.’

‘A man in the other apartment.’

‘He let you in?’

‘The architect.’

‘He was an architect? How did you know that?’

‘On the buzzer I pushed. I say I make a mistake.’

Meaning he’d done this in a calculated way or that he really had made a mistake? ‘You pressed the buzzer for Harley Architects and Geoff Harley let you in?’ It seemed wrong to mention Geoff by name, as if Paddy were exposing him to some risk, but this was his fault after all.

‘I don’t see the name of Helena there. I looked for her name.’

For some reason only Paddy’s name had been put on the buzzer panel at the time they’d bought the place and they’d never got around to fixing it. ‘We have different names, surnames.’

‘Because you are not Dora’s father.’

‘Dora? No. But how do you know Dora?’

‘From the school. She works there.’

‘Of course.’

‘This is the reason I am here. A problem with Dora at the school.’

‘Iyob, I really think this is something to take up with Helena,
your employer. I’m not anything to do with the school. Helena is the total boss. I’m not involved.’

‘Sorry but you are involved with Helena, true?’

‘That’s true, with Helena, not the school though.’

‘Not the school. I understand.’

‘So you see I can’t be of help here. If you have an issue which is employment related, you must take it up with Helena. She’s a very fair person, you know.’

‘I know. She is very fair. She has been so kind to me. But she is the mother to Dora. It’s difficult.’

‘I think you’ll find her very fair even in matters which concern her daughter. Dora’s temporary anyway.’

Iyob looked puzzled.

‘Not forever,’ said Paddy. ‘She’ll be at the school for only a short time.’

‘You know this, you are involved with the school.’

‘Not involved in any official way. Helena just mentioned to me, casually you know. We chat about her work sometimes.’ This wasn’t the line to go down.

‘About me? Do you chat, do you know?’

‘About you? No.’

‘Already I tell Helena, her daughter is not the best for the school.’

‘So you’ve discussed it. Good.’

‘Not so good. Because she won’t listen too much. Helena is too busy, she is too worried for all these things.’

‘The review.’

‘The review, yes. Very stress.’

‘Stressful.’

‘Stressful with everything. Not a good time for another problem, I know.’

‘Perhaps after the review, you should bring this up again. Helena has a lot going on. Plus maybe by then Dora will not be there.’

Iyob sat back in his chair, studying the floor. ‘You know she makes movies, films? Dora.’

‘I know.’ Surely she hadn’t been having screenings in the lunchbreak.

‘You seen?’

‘Seen her movies? A little.’

‘Good?’

‘Silly. Funny.’ Paddy shrugged, at a loss. He thought of the prize they’d won in Sydney.

‘Comedy?’

‘Sort of.’

‘I can’t believe this. Dora is not very comedy.’

Paddy laughed. Iyob was no fool, no slouch. ‘This is true.’

Iyob clasped his hands together and drew a sudden short breath. Was he asthmatic? ‘At work she points the camera on me.’

‘At work?’

‘She puts the camera on her desk and points it on me but I don’t know. Is it on, is it off? She says off but I say show me the camera and she says no. She doesn’t let me look to check.’

‘You think Dora’s been filming you secretly?’

‘Secret, this is right. For this secret film, I go back to fucking Syria, you know?’

He looked up at Paddy in a sort of challenge, leaning forward as though about to leave his chair. Paddy saw that Iyob was wearing a gold chain around his neck and that it held a cross. Was he a Christian? What difference did that make, were the Christians persecuted in Syria? He’d have to Google it. Syria was next to Iraq. Suddenly Paddy’s hideous ignorance about Iyob’s life must have been deeply apparent to that life’s owner.

‘Right. But why would she do that?’

‘This girl.’ Iyob threw up his hands.

Paddy told him he’d done the right thing, he’d told her he didn’t want it to happen, he’d talked to his employer about it. That was all good. He couldn’t do any more than that.

‘Maybe I break the camera,’ said Iyob.

‘Oh, sure, break the camera! Why not. But no, not a good idea.’

‘I ask her this, please don’t put the camera on the desk. First time I look over and start smiling, saying cheese. Good mood from me, you know. Stop, she says. She don’t want that. I say, I don’t want this film. Fine, she says. No sound on the camera, she says. Okay but don’t film please. Sure, sure, she says. Next time she puts the camera in her bag with a hole.’

‘Peephole?’

‘Peeping! If she was not Helena’s daughter, I should take this bag and throw it out the window on the street.’

‘Probably you don’t want to do that, Iyob. She’ll have the message by now, I think.’

Iyob looked around the room. ‘Mr Thompson, it’s not
Eye
ob. Iyob.’

‘Sorry, Iyob. Call me Paddy.’

‘Piddy?’

‘Paddy, with an a.’

Iyob slumped back in his chair. ‘When will she leave the school?’

‘Dora? I’m not sure.’

‘She tells me, what do you want to hide? Why are you afraid? What is the reason you don’t want this film? You work at this desk, what is wrong if I film this? It’s life. I make a film of life.’

‘You have your privacy.’

‘A man from Syria comes to work in a new place. It’s interesting she says. There’s no smiling. She says I look sad when I work. Perfect like this. Sad man from Syria. Homesick and lonely and suffering. But hey, listen to this. Paddy, I’m not sad! I have my wife, my son. A place to live. I work hard, I like this. I’m very happy to work. New Zealand is a great country.’

‘She’s making assumptions.’

‘She says, I film you, you look very lonely, lost. Lost? Me? You kidding me, I say. But she won’t believe it. Incredible, this girl. I say, okay, I make a film too. Girl comes from Thorndon, not happy. She’s very angry about something. I don’t know, maybe she needs a boyfriend.’

‘Okay.’

‘She says, no, she don’t think so. And I say, a boyfriend to make her happy. Get married. No, no, she tells me. Because she has a
girlfriend
, she tells me. This girlfriend makes her very happy. Then I say, well, this is not the same thing. Paddy, what I believe is it’s not right for this to happen. Homosexuals. See, it’s my beliefs. You have different beliefs maybe, or the same.’

‘Different.’

‘Sure. But you are not homosexual.’

‘No. But I don’t have your beliefs.’

‘Okay. And you stand up for your beliefs. Like me. But Dora, she says, no, because I’m a—bigot, she says. A bigot. I know what it means. In my upbringing, I think she has a perversion, okay. I say this.’

‘This is where it went wrong, I think.’

‘I don’t tell her what to do but I believe it. No, she gets mad, says I am harassing her. I can’t work here if I have this belief. So on, so on. Shouting, whatever. Goes to her mother, tells her I’m a terrible man. You think I will lose my job now? I think so. But before Dora comes, everything is very nice at school, very good work, very happy people. Dora doesn’t like happy people. If you are very unhappy, you try to spread this. What everyone is, they try to make this the same in everyone. I’m mad so my English goes fucked. But you try to make the same as you, this is what’s happening everywhere. These terrorists, you know, it’s like it. They love death, so it’s easy for them to say, you can be dead like me. Boom! Now I lose my job. Fair or not fair? Ask me.’

He’d finished this speech standing up and pointing his finger, his face coloured with the effort. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his mouth.

‘I don’t think Dora is a terrorist,’ said Paddy.

‘Not what I mean,’ said Iyob.

‘I understand.’

Iyob gave a brief noise, like a laugh. Then he held up five fingers. Five minutes. ‘What you can do?’ He shrugged. Was he asking Paddy what he could do, or was he expressing the notion that there was nothing to be done. Having spoken so forcefully,
he now seemed almost at once to be completely deflated. Perhaps he was simply exhausted. It had cost him an enormous amount of energy to come to the building, to find Paddy, and then to say all of this. He shook Paddy’s hand and thanked him. Paddy muttered something about talking to Helena and how he hoped the situation could be resolved. Iyob barely took this in.

Paddy looked at the bag that was beside his desk and remembered the gift from Caleb’s mother. He took the container out and opened the lid, passing them over to Iyob. ‘Please,’ he said.

Iyob moved his face close to the baking. ‘Who made this?’

Paddy explained briefly about Julie and Caleb. He found himself showing Iyob the poem. Iyob took the sheet and spent several moments scanning it. It was if he were reading it for clues as to what he should do in his situation with Dora. Perhaps Paddy hadn’t explained this very well. Iyob used his finger to move along each line and he made slight noises with his lips. Paddy ate a ginger gem and waited. Iyob then passed the poem back to him. ‘I understand, then nothing,’ he said. ‘Is this English?’

‘It’s English being tripped over,’ said Paddy. ‘A person trying to say sounds.’

Iyob held a ginger gem, turning it around and investigating it. The shape, with its flat top and angled base, did look strange. Then he wrapped it in his handkerchief and put it in his jacket pocket. ‘I bring you nothing.’ He looked disconsolate. Paddy told him he didn’t need to bring anything. Still Iyob seemed unconvinced.

After Iyob left, Paddy called Helena but she wasn’t available. She was sourcing new whiteboards in Petone.

When Angela Covenay arrived with Sam, Paddy asked if he could speak to her in private for a few minutes. Sam immediately turned away and walked off a few paces down the corridor. Paddy had invited him to wait in the living room but to no effect. Angela
told her son not to disappear anywhere. Paddy noticed that after she’d spoken, she waited a few seconds, looking at his back, as if sound took this long to travel to Sam Covenay. They left the door to the apartment open a little and went inside where they sat in his office. Paddy didn’t like the boy in the corridor but there wasn’t anything to be done. Sam was going out the way he’d come in, Paddy thought, in a pose of direct contravention, piggish and staunch and stupid.

‘How do you think Sam is?’ said Paddy. This was more or less the most dishonest opening possible in the circumstances and in the moment it took Angela to adjust herself to the question, he took up his own inquiry. ‘Because I don’t think it’s working.’ Bluntness sprang from him. He’d imagined something more shaded than this but also he didn’t regret it. He’d tried this once before and he needed to be more forceful. Also the agitation of Iyob’s visit was still with him. Angela was wide-eyed, as if she’d been slapped. ‘He could keep on coming here and sitting in the corner but it would be a waste of everyone’s time. Yours, mine, his. It would be unprofessional of me to continue to treat your son, Angela. I can’t do anything for him. In fact, he’s gone backwards since our first sessions. I’m very sorry about this. I’m suggesting we end the treatment. Obviously we won’t meet today and I’d like to revisit the fees over the entire period. I feel I’ve done nothing for you but I know you’re unlikely to accept any conditions that put you in a position of appearing to have gained an advantage. Angela, you have not gained an advantage. I’ve failed here. It happens. I should have spoken up sooner, that was negligent. Sam needs someone else, not me.’

She was staring at him, amazed and hurt. She seemed determined not to cry. Her face was flushing. ‘You don’t think something, something small even, is happening? Might happen?’

‘No, I don’t.’ He thought at once of the moment that ended their clinic a week before, but he believed he managed not to let this tiny and confusing piece of information show. That had been pure hopefulness on Paddy’s part. Sam had just wanted
out of there as fast as possible and had accidentally bumped him on the way past. And the moment hadn’t been repeated at their last clinic.