Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(100)
Sahlah had tried to humour him. Unable to face being the cause of her father's disappointment, she'd made valentines and birthday cards addressed to herself, and she'd brought them home, signed in the names of fellow pupils. She'd written herself chatty, gossipy notes ostensibly passed her way during science and maths. She'd found discarded pictures of classmates and autographed them to herself, with love. And when her father got wind of birthday parties, off she went in mock attendance to a celebration in which she was never included, jubilating instead in a tree at the bottom of the orchard, where she was hidden from the house and from the prospect of her father's disillusion.
But Muhannad made no similar attempt to fulfill their father's fantasies. He had no conflicts about being dark-skinned in a white-faced world, and he didn't seek to mitigate any consternation he encountered, consternation aroused at the sight of a foreigner living among a populace who were largely unused to dark faces. Born in England like herself, he no more considered himself an Englishman than he considered cows capable of flight. Indeed, the last thing on earth Muhannad would have wanted to be was an Englishman. He scorned what went for the English culture. He had only contempt for the ceremonies and traditions that formed the foundation of English life. He ridiculed the stiff upper lips that propriety required of men who dubbed themselves gentlemen. And the masks that Westerners wore to hide their biases and prejudices he eschewed entirely. He displayed his own biases, prejudices, and animosities like the family escutcheon. And the demons that haunted him were not and had never been the demons of race, no matter how he tried to convince himself and others that this was the case.
But she wouldn't think of Muhannad now, Sahlah decided. And she took up her long-nosed pliers as if making a pretence of work would somehow assist her in driving from her mind any consideration of her brother. She pulled paper towards her to sketch a necklace design, hoping that putting pencil to paper and carved beads in position would obliterate from memory that glitter in her brother's eye when he was determined to have his way, that streak of cruelty which he always managed to keep diligently hidden from both of their parents, and most of all that anger of his and how it whipped through his arms and burst from the tips of his fingers when she least expected.
Somewhere in the house below her, Sahlah heard Yumn calling to one of her boys. “Baby, precious baby,” she was cooing. “Lovely boy. Come to your Ammī-gee, little man.”
Sahlah's throat closed, her head grew light, and the African beads melded one into the other on the table before her. She released her grip on the long-nosed pliers, crossed her arms on the tabletop, and sank her head into their cradle. How could she think of her brother's sins, Sahlah wondered, when her own were as grievous and just as capable of rending the family irreparably?
“I've seen you with him,” Muhannad had hissed in her ear. “You slut. I've seen you with him. Do you hear me? I've seen. And you're going to pay. Because all whores pay. Especially white men's filthy slags.”
But she hadn't intended anything harmful. Least of all had she intended love.
She'd been allowed to work with Theo Shaw because her father knew him from the Gentlemen's Cooperative and because accepting Theo Shaw's offer of his computer expertise was yet another way that Akram Malik could demonstrate solidarity with the English community. The mustard factory had recently moved to its new location in the industrial estate on Old Hall Lane, and this expansion had necessitated an updating of business procedures.
“It's time we entered the twentieth century,” Akram had told his family. “Business is good. Sales are increasing. Orders are up by eighteen percent. I've spoken to the good gentlemen of the Cooperative about this, and among them is a decent young man willing to assist us in computerising each of our departments.”
The fact that Akram had perceived Theo as decent was what made his interaction with Sahlah acceptable. Despite his own affection for them, Akram would have preferred that his daughter had no contact with Western men. Everything about a daughter of Asia was to be safeguarded and kept in trust for a future husband: from the moulding of her mind to the protection of her chastity. Indeed, her chastity was nearly as important as her dowry, and no step was too great to take if it could ensure that a woman went to her husband a virgin. Since Western men did not hold these same values, it was from them that Akram had to guard his daughter from the onset of puberty. But he put aside any and all worries when it had come to Theo Shaw.
“He's from a good family, an old town family,” Akram had explained, as if this fact made a difference in his level of acceptability. “He'll work with us to set up a system that will modernise every aspect of the company. We'll have computerised word processing for correspondence, spread sheets for accounting, programs for marketing, and desktop design for advertising and labelling. He's done this already for the pier, he tells me, and he says that within six months we'll see the results in accumulated man hours as well as in increased sales.”
No one had argued against the wisdom of accepting Theo Shaw's help, not even Muhannad, who was least likely to welcome an Englishman into their midst if that Englishman were to be in any position of superiority, even one as arcane as computer expertise. So Theo Shaw had come to Malik's Mustards, setting up the computer programs that would revolutionise the manner in which the factory did business. He'd trained the staff to operate these same programs. And among the staff had been Sahlah herself.