Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(198)
Every sensible person in the country had met the annual restriction on the use of hose pipes by limiting what was planted in his garden. But this, of course, was not Wardah's way. Wardah Malik had planted as usual, row upon row upon endless nasty row of fragile seedlings that she tended to every afternoon. The hose pipe banned because of the drought, she watered every loathsome plant by hand, hauling water by the bucketful from the outdoor tap near the kitchen.
She used two buckets for this exercise. While she was engaged in filling one bucket and carrying it to the edge of the vegetable patch, she expected Yumn to sling the other bucket round the plants. But prior to that daily exercise, there was cutting, pruning, picking, and weeding to be done. Which is what they were engaged in at the moment. And Wardah expected Yumn's help in this as well. Curse her to eternal, burning, scalding, skin-bubbling torment.
Yumn knew what lay behind Wardah's demands upon her: from cooking to cleaning to slaving in the garden. Wardah sought to punish her for doing so easily that which she herself had been nearly incapable of doing at all. It hadn't taken much investigation to discover that Wardah and Akram Malik had been married ten years before Wardah had been able to produce Muhannad. And another six years had passed before she'd been able to present her husband with Sahlah. That was sixteen years of effort resulting in only two children. Given the same amount of time, Yumn knew that she would be giving Muhannad more than a dozen babies and most of them males. So when Wardah Malik looked upon her son's wife, she saw her superior. And only by enslavement was she able to ensure that Yumn knew and remained in her place.
Curse her to everlasting, freezing, rat-infested, starvation-ridden torment, Yumn thought again as she hacked at the rock-hard earth that the sun had baked into a brick-like consistency, despite her daily ministrations of water. She aimed her hoe at a Gibraltar-shaped clod beneath one of the tomato plants, and as she drove it into the earth, she pretended the clod was Wardah's bum.
Whap went the hoe. The old witch rears back in surprise. Whap. Whap. The nasty crone howls in pain. Yumn smiled. Whap. Whap. Whap. Yumn draws first blood on the cow's backside. Whap. Whap. Whap. WHAP. Wardah falls to the ground. WHAPWHAPWHAP-WHAP. She's at Yumn's mercy with her hands uplifted. She begs for a release that only Yumn can give her, but WHAPWHAPWHAPWHAP-WHAP, Yumn knows that her time of triumph has come and with her mother-in-law at last defenceless, subdued, a slave to the killing whimsy of her own son's wife, a veritable—
“Yumn! Stop it at once! Stop!”
Wardah's cries broke into her thoughts as if disturbing a dream, and Yumn woke from them just as abruptly as a dreamer wakes. She found that her heart was pounding ferociously and the sweat was dripping from her chin onto the front of her qamts. The handle of the hoe had become slick from the wetness of her palms and her sandal-shorn feet were buried in the earth she'd managed to rearrange in her attack. Dust was rising on every side of her and settling against her streaming face and her sweat-drenched clothes like a gauzy veil.
“What are you doing?” Wardah demanded. “You stupid girl! Look what you've done!”
Through the haze of soil sent upwards by the flailing of her hoe, Yumn saw that she'd hacked down four of her mother-in-law's prized tomato plants. They lay like storm-felled trees. And their fruit was thoroughly mashed into crimson pellets, completely beyond redemption.
As, obviously, was Yumn herself. Wardah threw her secateurs into her trug and advanced upon her daughter-in-law angrily. “Is there nothing you can do without destroying it?” she demanded. “What do I ask of you that you don't ruin?”
Yumn stared at her, feeling her nostrils flare and her lips move into a sullen line.
“You're thoughtless, lazy, and completely selfish,” Wardah declared. “Believe me, Yumn, had your father not paid us handsomely to take you off his hands, you'd still be at home tormenting your mother instead of exasperating me.”
This was the longest speech that Wardah had ever made in her presence, and Yumn was at first startled to hear her normally docile mother-in-law say so much. But her surprise quickly dissipated as her muscles coiled in a desire to strike the other woman across the face. No one was to speak to her like that. No one was ever to speak to the wife of Muhannad Malik without deference, subservience, and solicitousness in her voice. Yumn was gathering her wits to reply, when Wardah spoke again.
“Clean up this mess. Take those plants to the compost heap. Repair the row that you've ruined. And do it at once, before I act in a way that I'll later regret.”
“I'm not your servant.” Yumn threw down her hoe.
“Indeed you're not. A servant with your talent for doing nothing would have been dismissed within a week. Pick up that hoe and do as I say.”
“I shall tend to my children.” Yumn began to stride towards the walnut tree, where her two boys—oblivious of the altercation between their mother and grandmother—zoomed their toy lorries along the old, exposed roots.
“You will not. You will do as I say. Get back to work at once.”
“My boys need me.” Yumn called to the children: “Lovely ones, shall your ammī-gee play with you now?”
The boys looked up from their game. Wardah ordered, “Anas. Bishr. Go into the house.”
Confused, the children hesitated.
Yumn said gaily, “Here comes Ammī-gee to play with her boys. What shall we play? And where shall we play it? Or shall we walk to Mr. Howard's for Twisters? Would you like that, darling boys?”