Losing My Identity Read online

  Once upon a time, I believed that I was content to live alone. I always have, through choice. I even believed I’d be content to die alone, in due course. The last thing I wanted was people fussing around me. I wanted to die peacefully, in my own bed, as Greer did.

  ‘Och, sweetheart! Put it out of your head.

  ‘She’d left it in a place where she knew I’d find it right away.’

  He grimaced. ‘Had she given the daughter in this story a name?’

  ‘Sheila. I suppose it’d have been too obvious to call her Leila.’

  ‘Elderly people living alone can get very embittered. She could have written it months earlier, couldn’t she? Years before, in fact?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Then forget it.’

  Easier said than done. ‘You know what I discovered? My grandmother divorced my grandfather. During the First World War. In 1915. It was unusual in those days, for a woman to divorce her husband. Specially during the war.’

  ‘I imagine the grounds for divorce were very narrow in 1915?’

  ‘They were.’

  They were both silent, each knowing the other understood exactly what that implied: another woman. Adultery.

  That had preyed on Leila’s mind: had Greer also had a secret sister (or brother) she never met?

  Hari was lying on her sitting room floor (no sofa big enough), replete with chickpea and aubergine tagine, and Leila’s special couscous.

  She’d used her precious Le Creuset tagine, insisting on washing its ceramic lid herself. ‘They don’t sell the lids separately,’ she said. ‘If I’m ever on Desert Island Discs, God knows what music I’d choose, but that’d be my “luxury” item. Couldn’t live without it. I cook everything in it, from savoury to peaches poached in Amaretto.’

  She was proud that her spice-kit was every bit as impressive as Hari’s.

  ‘Your mother was obviously as attentive to detail as mine,’ he said.

  ‘My mother could barely manage beans on toast.’

  He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Who taught you to cook, if your mother wasn’t all that keen?’

  She could have said ‘Claudia Roden’, without telling a lie. A Book of Middle Eastern Food was still on the shelf in Leila’s kitchen. She had twigged fairly quickly after arriving at St Severus College that if you were (a) female (b) obviously, from your accent, not a product of Roedean, (c) different from the usual scholarship kid, in that you had a modicum of cash about you at most times plus (d) slightly more tanned than ‘sunburnt’ would account for, you had two choices. To be shunned, or to be courted as some sort of exotic aristocrat. She had opted for the latter. Her fellow-students assumed from her name (she still used the ‘El’ in those days) that she was from a wealthy Arab family. She had bought Roden’s book when it first came out, in 1969, and practised a repertoire of half a dozen dishes. It wouldn’t have been a lie.

  But she felt the time for half-truths was past.

  ‘My husband.’

  Hari did that flat-out-to-sitting up thing that’s tremendously bad for people with dicky backs.

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘You heard.’

  He was on his feet by then. He pulled her round to face him. ‘You told me you’d never been married.’

  ‘I didn’t. I told you I’d found I preferred not being married. I chose my words very carefully, and I remember exactly what I said. You assumed something different.’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know. It didn’t seem relevant. I was married for a very short time. We both realised it was a mistake.’

  Hari sat down heavily at the table, and put his head in his hands, then looked up at her. ‘You’ve a nerve, giving me a hard time because I’d been married!’

  ‘Not true. I gave you a hard time because I thought you still were.’

  ‘Where is he now, your husband?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Oh.’ The sharp tone left his voice. ‘I’m sorry. How long ago?’

  ‘2012. October.’

  He gave a start. ‘As recently as that? Sit down, Leila. You need to talk to me about this.’

  She pulled out the chair opposite him. ‘We hadn’t been together for many years before, Hari.’

  ‘You married him when you were young?’

  ‘Not at all. I was in my mid-thirties.’

  He produced a sound midway between a snort and a laugh. ‘Why on earth? I’m sorry – I have no right to ask that.’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t know it was a mistake until I’d done it, did I? We’re not all blessed with the gift of hindsight.’ Leila glared. ‘We parted in under two years anyway.’ I didn’t stick with it, and pretend it wasn’t happening.

  ‘But you stayed in touch with him?’

  ‘On and off. There was no reason not to. It was a relatively amicable parting.’

  ‘You divorced?’

  She made a head movement that could have been construed as a nod, and looked away from him.

  ‘Braver than me, then.’

  ‘You had a child. It’s different.’

  ‘Was he another vet?’

  ‘An academic. A mathematician.’

  ‘Scottish?’

  She shook her head. ‘I met him at university, originally. Then we met up again many years later.’

  ‘Did he live here with you? In Glasgow, or here, I mean, in this house?’ He had to clear his throat once or twice to get the words out.

  ‘No. We lived in Paris for a while. Then back in England. Never here in Glasgow. My mother didn’t like him.’

  ‘I don’t know why I’m asking you if he was Scottish – if you learnt all your Middle Eastern cooking from him?’

  ‘He was Lebanese. Maronite. You want to tie me to a chair and shine a bright light in my face, Herr Obergrūppenfuhrer?’

  ‘That’s not fair. You must have known I’d have a few questions, springing it on me like this.’

  ‘Have I questioned you?’

  ‘No – but I never lied to you.’

  ‘I didn’t lie to you either.’

  His brow relaxed ever so slightly. ‘Maronite – that’s the Christian ones, right?’

  ‘Right.’ God forbid that I should have been married to a Muslim.

  ‘Ghazali – was that his name?’

  ‘No, it was my father’s. I already told you that.’

  ‘What was your husband’s name?’ Hari’s voice was still husky.

  ‘Sam.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very Lebanese. Sam what?’

  ‘Samir Gemayel.’

  Now he laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh. ‘You only pick men with surnames beginning with g?’

  Two can play that game. ‘I wasn’t aware I “picked” you?’

  He pulled that annoying trick of calming down instantly. ‘No, I don’t suppose you did. Was he a lot older than you?’

  ‘Only a year or so.’

  ‘He died very young then? How…?’

  ‘In a terrorist attack. A bomb.’

  ‘Oh, my God. I’m sorry, Leila.’

  She could see him racking his brains, trying to remember 2012.

  ‘Not here. He was in Beirut.’

  ‘And you and — Sam — didn’t have children?’

  ‘No. Hari?’

  ‘What?’

  ’Shut up now, please. Enough.’

  If she’d been a cadaver on his cutting table, he’d have been able to tell. But she wasn’t. In which case she wouldn’t tell.

  They’d been back in England, Leila working once more with a practice in Hampshire, when it had happened. That had been the one bright point – not to be in an overcrowded Parisian hospital, surrounded by people whose language she’d never thoroughly come to grips with. Sam’s French had been good enough for both of them, so she’d been lazy about learning.

  She had hoped – maybe even prayed – all the seemingly endless journey in the ambulance. One of the veterinary nurses had trav
elled with her, holding her hand.

  Days before, she’d attended the problematic, out-of-season birth of a prize goat. She hadn’t told the practice she was pregnant – all the other vets were men, and she was sure they hadn’t even noticed. She’d caught ovine chlamydiosis. It was almost twenty-five weeks. There should have been a chance the child would survive. But they had fewer facilities for premmies in those days, even in the south of England. It was a girl. Sam was, if anything, more broken-hearted than Leila. He blamed himself for not being there. He’d been at a conference in Chile. She’d known even as he rushed from the airport to take her home from hospital that the marriage wouldn’t last. She had never known one single marriage that had survived the loss of a child.

  She and Sam had stayed in touch sporadically, and even seen each other, from time to time. She had no idea if there had been other women. Probably. But he was very discreet about it. Beirut was his real and abiding love. No woman could compete with that. So when he turned up occasionally on her doorstep, unannounced, she’d never asked too many questions.

  For years afterwards – even nowadays, if she was honest with herself – the sound of a baby crying brought a small, painful tug and tingle in her breasts. That may, in the end, be why I became interested in bovine mastitis. All those calves taken away too soon…

  She and Hari sat at the table in silence for several minutes.

  He was frowning again. ‘I wish you’d told me before. I don’t understand why you more or less lied about it.’

  ‘Less. I don’t like to talk about it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just tell me? Did you think I’d hold it against you?’

  In fact, she had felt it made them quits. One disastrous marriage each.

  He grimaced. ‘I sometimes feel I hardly know you. I think I know your history, then I find I was miles out.’

  You feel you hardly know me?

  ‘What do you expect?’ She tried to keep her voice light. ‘Since finding out all the stuff about my grandmother, I feel I hardy know myself.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound peevish. But I love you. I want to know all about you.’

  And that’s a one-way street? ‘You do know all about me. All that matters anyway.’

  He stood up, pulled her to her feet and embraced her. ‘You’re right. It’s daft to get hung up about water long under the bridge. I want to concentrate on our future, not the past.’

  Then shut up. I can read your mind, Hari Gill. You’re wondering ‘Was he good-looking? Better-looking than me? Better in bed?’ And she’d have had to answer ‘yes’ to the first, because Sam had been very much her idea of good-looking, as Hari himself was. And ‘no’ to the third question. Indisputably ‘no’. She tried to steer her mind away, before tears came.

  ‘Interrogation over – OK?’

  Hari pressed her tight against his chest. ‘Sorry. Did you mean it about preferring not being married?’

  ‘I don’t see the point.’

  ‘There is a point, surely? It’s about commitment.’

  ‘You can have commitment without some meaningless ceremony. You and I have both proved how meaningless it is. Can we drop it for now, please?’

  ‘One more question. Please? Was he like me, or totally different?’

  ‘As different as it’s possible to be.’ In his head most of the time rather than his body. Messy in the kitchen. Lousy in bed. But funny. A superlative raconteur. Which meant the bed part didn’t matter so much…

  And she fell into misery, wondering if she’d blown it. Because she didn’t know if she could bear not to have Hari now, just as she had reached the stage of accepting that there would never be any more phone-calls from Sam on her birthday, or rings at the doorbell at odd hours to find him standing there with a bunch of best-quality scarlet roses from a proper florist, a bottle of arak in a plastic carrier, and a cigarette perched at the side of his mouth… No more Valentines with silly verses (and, sometimes, obscure mathematical equations). The birthday cards and Valentines hadn’t arrived every year. Each time he’d missed a year, she’d think, ‘He’s settled with someone else, at last’.

  No tenacity. Not for his work, not for her. She needed stability. Sam feared it – it had stifled him. In fact, probably she needed boring.

  ‘Can I stay with you here tonight?’ Hari sounded contrite. ‘I’ll need to nip back and tend the bunnies, but I won’t be long. Or will you come home with me?’

  ‘I’d prefer to stay here.’

  ‘But I can come back?’

  ‘You can.’

  ‘And you’ll open the door for me?’

  ‘Might.’

  He was back to the old Hari, good-tempered and smiling.

  Hari phoned her from work next day, knowing she was working at home. It was the 23rd of May.

  ‘Have you had the TV on?’

  ‘No – why?’

  ‘Then don’t put it on till I’m back. I’ll try to get home early. Promise, Leila.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘I’ll know if you’re fibbing. I’ll be able to tell the minute I see your face. Damn it, I’m coming home now. I’m on my way. Put down whatever you’re working on and go out for a walk. I’ll text you once I’m outside.’

  And so it was that he was there with her when she was eventually allowed to switch on the set and see the disastrous fire that was ravaging Rennie Mackintosh’s irreplaceable library in the art school.

  Hari held her tight. ‘I know what that place means to you, because of your mother and grandmother.’

  She kept her head turned away from the screen, buried against his chest.

  ‘It looks as if they’re getting it under control,’ he said eventually. ‘They’ll save most of the building.’

  ‘But the library! It was such a magical room.’

  ‘I know. Maybe they can restore it.’

  She shook her head, without looking up. ‘I’m glad you’re here with me.’

  They went back to Cathkin that night, and sat holding hands as they gazed out over the city.

  Twelve

  They had fallen quickly into a routine of spending almost all their time together, when Leila wasn’t travelling and Hari wasn’t needed as a witness or second opinion somewhere in England. Sometimes they slept at her place, more often at his, because of the hassle of transporting the bunnies. She didn’t really mind. Her one exception was Wednesday forenoons, when his cleaner came. Leila imagined the woman regarded at her with the same element of resentment as the rabbits, so after a single chance encounter, she avoided his flat on that day.

  Otherwise, she worked hard on trying to feel more like half of a couple.

  If she got up in the night, although Hari seemed to be sound asleep, as soon as she slid back into bed, a warm arm would snake round her once more, drawing her close. The first few times, she thought she’d wakened him, but no, he was still asleep. It’s as if I’m a part of him. I don’t know if I can ever feel that same way. Is this what love is? she wondered. She found no way of reaching a conclusion on that. She knew very well that before the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis, the caterpillar dissolves into a pool of gloop; all its organs, its appendages, its former self, surrendered to, subsumed in its new identity.

  Twice, over these weeks, Leila pretended to be away one more night than she actually was, to have the luxury of spending time in her own flat, alone. To see if there were any dreams, any night visits from ghosts.

  Besides, she loved the fact that when she was home alone in her own space everything was exactly where she had put it, and nothing was ever moved unless she’d moved it. That was immensely calming and comforting. No one to disturb the smooth surface. No one to blame but herself if an item got broken or misplaced.

  But it was too nerve-wracking, having to remember never to switch on a light in any of the street-facing rooms, in case for some weird reason Hari was passing (you never knew: there might have been a murder in the street round the corner…). She resol
ved not to be deceitful. When she absolutely needed a night alone, she would tell him. She would be frank.

  She decided he was suspicious anyway when he asked casually, ‘Maybe sometimes when you have to go on a trip, I could come with you, if I can get time off? I’ve usually got leave days I never take.’

  ‘You’d be bored.’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  She harboured a desperate desire to be able to watch him at work – not at the cutting-table, or course, but one of the times he had to give evidence in court. She was so sure he’d be superlatively good at it. She could have sneaked into the public gallery – but she knew he’d disapprove.

  They stayed for a solid week at Ardvreckie early in June, and swam in the sea every morning, then spent the rest of that month exploring Glasgow like tourists, seeing it afresh with each other’s eyes. Hari was horrified to discover she’d never visited the Hunterian museum. They spent a day there, lingering over the Rennie Mackintosh section.

  ‘His wife was at my mother’s christening,’ said Leila wistfully. ‘At least, that’s the family tale. I think my grandmother knew her from the art school.’

  ‘That’s as good as being related to royalty, in Glasgow.’

  ‘I know. Maybe it went to my head when I went to uni.’

  ‘Were you a real tearaway when you were there?’

  ‘Not a bit of it. Sober as a judge. I was a model student. Not like you medical students, off your trolleys on drugs.’

  ‘Some chance. I was living at home, don’t forget.’

  And possibly already geared up for some sort of arranged marriage… Leila drew away from him, but he held onto her.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. You were never tempted to try, when your parents were away?’

  ‘Never, then or now. Specially since I’ve seen what it can lead to, all too often. You?’

  ‘The same. Never wanted to.’

  ‘See? We’re basically like two peas in a pod.’

  She muttered a reply, and he continued, ‘I used to think it was “two pees in a pot”, you know, the way tinkers are supposed to celebrate a marriage?’