Losing My Identity Read online

  Glasgow was like Plato’s city of two halves. The West End was still the city of the comfortably-off, the douce, the successful and respectable. In Dowanhill, sex was what the coal used to be delivered in.

  He’d obviously been watching for her, because he’d come downstairs to meet her. The first thing he did when he opened the door to his flat was punch a code into a very fancy alarm console. Leila stifled a desire to laugh. Really? A burglar alarm in a flat?

  She was introduced to The Beasts. They were cutesy-pie dwarf lop-ears, one pure black, the other a most attractive blue-grey. Nora and Deirdre. Harry was clearly ultra-proud of them. While he was out at work, they lived in the largest size of dog-crate money could buy, complete with their litter trays, water-bottles, feeding dishes (fancy ones, on stands) and toys. When he released them, they ran to him like cats.

  ‘They’re house-trained?’

  ‘Of course. They’re exceptionally clean animals. Their only vice is chomping on electric wires.’

  Looking round, Leila could see that every piece of wiring for lamps, TV, etcetera was encased in rigid plastic conduit.

  ‘They’re perfect for someone like me, who works irregular hours, because they don’t need walked. I’ve read there are examples of rabbits living to twelve or thirteen?’ He looked at her almost pleadingly, and she nodded, although off the top of her head she had not the faintest idea how long domestic rabbits lived.

  ‘I’d like to think I’ll have them for a good few years yet anyway,’ he added, fondling the black one’s ears.

  He shut the animals in the sitting room and led the way through to an ultra-sleek kitchen.

  ‘You really don’t have pets, even though you’re a vet?’

  ‘It’s because I’m a vet.’

  Over the years, countless farmers had tried to palm off collie pups and fluffy kittens on her. She had nothing against collies; they were the most intelligent dogs by far. And she liked cats. But as she’d tried to explain to the pet-pushers, it was a bit like the argument for celibacy of priests: she always felt she could care more for all animals if she didn’t have any of her own.

  ‘You said you didn’t like working in small animal practices?’ Harry sounded troubled.

  ‘As I told you, that was because of the owners, not the animals.’

  ‘You don’t have some inbuilt antipathy to rabbits?’

  ‘Of course not.’ She smiled to herself. The people she worked with on farms thought the only good rabbit was a dead one.

  ‘Or to their owners?’

  ‘Not specifically.’

  Harry had obviously spared no expense in modernising the flat. The kitchen was like an illustration for a glossy mag – though it wasn’t so large as Leila’s. As clean as an operating theatre. A glass-topped dining-table, and those Louis Ghost chairs that used to be all the rage in John Lewis. They suited the room; made it look bigger. Black granite worktops, very sophisticated double ovens, everything immaculate. A sheet of black glass behind the hob.

  ‘I like that,’ she said. ‘I have stainless steel behind mine. I can never get it smear-free.’

  ‘I see enough stainless steel at work.’ He tapped the glass lightly. ‘You realise I don’t keep all this clean myself? I have someone who comes in to see to it. Don’t you?’

  ‘No. My grandmother would turn in her grave.’

  ‘I’m preparing a vegetarian meal for us both. If you absolutely need to eat meat, I’ll have to pop out and kill a lamb.’

  He set a heart-shaped aubergine on a chopping board, and began dissecting it with meticulous precision; the knife was clearly sharp enough to cut through bone. Leila found she couldn’t watch.

  He’s equally particular in the way he dresses. I imagine he’s changed since he got home from work. This isn’t his business gear, but he looks like catalogue man. A very expensive catalogue. She made a mental resolution to do some clothes shopping, so she could keep up. Then she gave herself a shake. Already assuming this would be a regular occurrence!

  ‘Go and explore, while I put the finishing touches to this.’

  She returned to the elegant bay-windowed sitting room, and studied it, conscious of both rabbits studying her. One wall was completely occupied by bookshelves. He had several very nice pieces of Scandinavian and Venetian glass. He seemed to favour blues and greens and turquoises. A collection guided by aesthetics rather than value or signatures. Leila applauded that. She recalled reading somewhere that lonely people make the most enthusiastic collectors, particularly of glass…

  Two bedrooms, with an en suite for the larger one.

  Not an inch of fitted carpet anywhere. Immaculately-varnished floorboards, and expensive-looking Persian carpets.

  In the small room he seemed to use as a study, his degree certificates framed on the wall. Hari Gill. Leila struggled to remember if she’d ever written anything to him, spelling his name wrongly. Narrow escape! Hari, not Harry. On the desk, a singularly handsome marbled blue fountain pen. She picked it up to examine it. She was the only person she knew who still wrote with one. Aurora. An Italian make. Medium nib, same as she used.

  No artwork on the walls. Not a single painting. No sign of any musical instruments either.

  She strolled back to the kitchen. ‘I like your glass collection.’

  He gave her a particularly warm smile. ‘I pick up pieces I take a fancy to, when I’m travelling around. I think most of it’s Scandinavian, but I have some Murano too. What they call Murano sommerso, I’m told. The ones that look as if they’ve been encased in clear glass.’

  ‘I collect glass too, but more of a theme. Birds from Finland. I should probably stop – I have more than eighty now.’

  Another of their companionable silences.

  ‘You don’t play any instruments, Hari?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘So where did you learn to read music – were you in a choir before?’

  He shook his head, grinning. ‘I played the cello at school. Badly.’

  ‘You use a fountain pen?’

  The eyebrow thing. ‘Yes, for writing my own notes, before I type them up. We’re all so thirled to computer keyboards these days. I find using pen and ink helps me think, when it’s something I have to think deeply about. Why?’

  ‘So do I. I’d say that makes us real oddballs in the scientific community.’

  ‘I suppose. What colour of ink do you prefer?’

  ‘Blue. As true a blue as I can find. I normally use Private Reserve American Blue. I don’t dare try that Noodler’s one everyone raves about.’

  ‘The one that eats pens? Me neither. Though I don’t use anything more exotic than Parker’s. I must check out your American Blue sometime.’

  They smiled at each other in something like fellow-feeling.

  He wasn’t exaggerating about being a good cook. The table was groaning with dishes of assorted savouries. Leila was particularly taken with the small puffed items – almost like croissants in consistency – covered in poppy-seeds. ‘These are glorious.’

  ‘Pooris,’ said Hari. ‘I won’t make them for you often. The ultimate Indian-Glaswegian fusion cuisine: deep-fried. Terribly bad for you. But they’re not difficult to make. I could show you, sometime.’

  ‘This pakora’s not from a shop either is it?’

  He looked horrified. ‘The shop version is disgusting. The batter should be light and crisp, like tempura. The supermarket ones are like chewing gum.’

  ‘Have you always been vegetarian?’

  ‘I have. My parents weren’t though. I guess my work might have made me a veggie.’

  He poured a glass of Riesling for her. ‘I told you I’d show you that it’s perfectly possible to drink wine with Indian food.’

  ‘But you’re not having any?’

  ‘I intend to drive you home. Unless…’

  ‘I can take a cab. It’s daft for you to have to go out again.’

  ‘I want to.’

  Unless? Had he been going to say,
‘Unless you want to stay?’ What a nerve!

  He frowned at her request for coffee after the meal.

  ‘In the evening? Are you sure? It’ll keep you awake.’

  ‘I don’t really sleep anyway. I can see you don’t believe me – I suppose most people don’t. It’s hereditary. All my childhood memories of cosy mum-and-daughter times are of cups of tea and Barmouth biscuits at two in the morning.’

  ‘Tea’s better for you at any rate. I have every kind of tea you can imagine.’ To illustrate, he flung open a cupboard that seemed to be entirely occupied by tea caddies, and selected one. ‘I defy you not to like this.’

  Leila agreed, half-heartedly, to drink tea, and he embarked on a routine worthy of a Japanese tea master, before setting before her a cup (none of your mugs: a proper bone china cup, with a saucer) of pale amber liquid. She got it wrong again.

  ‘You want milk in it? In Darjeeling? And it’s not any old Darjeeling. It’s not even the first-flush variety everyone raves about. This is second-flush, from the Margaret’s Hope estate. Pure nectar. And it should be the perfect temperature for drinking. Milk indeed!’

  ‘I always have milk in tea.’

  ‘Then I shall get some for your next visit. Putting milk in destroys the health benefits, you know. I’ll send you a link to some literature. Now, try that and tell me it isn’t heavenly.’

  She sipped from the brew he’d set in front of her. It was actually rather pleasant. Not bitter, the way tea without milk always tasted to her.

  When they adjourned to the sitting room, the bunnies frolicked around their master’s feet, and came to him when he called their names. They played with a ball the way a dog might.

  Leila was taken aback when the black one, Nora, jumped onto her lap like a cat. ‘I didn’t realise rabbits were so competent at jumping.’

  Hari was clearly delighted. ‘She likes you!’ He gathered the other bunny up onto his side of the sofa.

  He’d put on music. Not Indian – she wasn’t expecting that, after what he’d said – and not classical, but something with a slow, sexy beat and a wailing saxophone. ‘Orchestre Baobab,’ he said, in response to her questioning look. ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘I do. But it’s not what I expected you to listen to, somehow.’

  He laughed. ‘I worked for years with a guy from Senegal. He played this all the time, and I got hooked.’

  ‘You play music at work?’

  ‘Of course. And not anything sombre either. It’s not at all like what you see on these gory TV dramas.’

  I bet it’s not. The detectives in them are all men…

  ‘I know surgeons play some pretty weird stuff while they work. Heavy metal, and so on. I didn’t envisage pathologists doing the same, for some reason.’

  ‘Of course we do. The patients are unlikely to complain. It makes the time pass more quickly. I turn it down when I have to dictate my reports.’

  He must see such ghastly sights day by day. Maggot-ridden bodies that have lain for weeks because no one cared. Bodies with limbs hacked off, throats cut. And worse. And yet he always seems so calm and cheerful, with his impeccable, old-fashioned manners and his impeccable dress sense. I’ve never met anyone so apparently completely in control of their emotions. I guess it goes with the territory.

  ‘You have no paintings,’ she said.

  ‘Never got round to buying any.’

  ‘And no photos?’

  He held up a finger, and trotted through to the room he used as a study. ‘I have my graduation photo. Look. I had hair in those days.’

  He dropped her home before midnight. After she’d showered and got ready for bed, she switched on the laptop to check her emails. Hari had already sent the link to an article in the European Journal of Heart Health. Addition of milk prevents vascular protective effects of tea.

  Read the abstract, said the accompanying email. I don’t imagine you subscribe to this journal, so if you’d like to read the full text, let me know, and I’ll print it off for you. Looking forward to seeing you on Thursday. Don’t know how you’re placed for time that day, but if I get away from work by five, I thought we might meet and have a bite to eat in town before we face Phyllida? I’ll ring you Thursday afternoon.

  PS if you must put milk in your tea, try soya milk. There’s some evidence that it’s less disruptive of the benefits.

  Leila made herself a coffee. A strong one. With lashings of cow’s milk.

  She fell into a reverie. She had no illusions about what she was embarking on with Hari Gill. And yet… and yet… it still felt like being unfaithful, no matter that she knew Sam wouldn’t be coming back for her.

  It had been a party in a down-at-heel flat in Cambridge, when Leila was finishing her fourth year at St Severus. The flat belonged to Catherine Fitzherbert’s elder brother, Arthur, and it was down-at-heel because even in those days, property there was eye-wateringly expensive. Although Catherine’s parents owned what seemed like half of Norfolk, and a house that could accommodate a regiment (and did, apparently, during the First World War; at least, the equivalent of regiment’s-worth of young officers off their trolleys with shell shock…), with the benefit of hindsight, Leila recognised that they didn’t have much ready cash. She also supposed, from the same perspective, that Arthur had been released from the bondage of living in College at Trinity because he was in the final year of a law degree.

  ‘Leila!’ Arthur had hailed her across a smoke-hazed room. ‘Someone you must meet. Leila El-Ghazali, Samir Gemayel.’

  She wasn’t overly impressed at first sight of Sam. He was barely half an inch taller than she was, and the face under the shock of curly black hair wasn’t a conventionally handsome one. But his eyes! Pools of Guinness. And his smile – he smiled readily and often – was attractively crooked.

  ‘Sam’s from Lebanon. I’m sure you young people must have a lot in common. You hadn’t met already?’ Arthur was tremendously pleased with himself. And just as ignorant as most English, assuming that because they were both from roughly the same part of the globe (as he thought), they must know each other, or at least be compatible.

  And on that last point, Leila supposed he was correct. As she studied Sam, she decided he was indeed exceptionally attractive: the sort of less-than-perfect features she’d quickly come to prefer, topped by that unruly mop of hair that always looked in need of a cut, and those eyes that always seemed to be full of glitter-dust. He had perfect manners, and an intellect that towered over hers. He’d lived in Beirut until he was in his early twenties (he was a year older than Leila), taken a degree at the American University there, then come to Cambridge to do a PhD.

  They left Arthur’s party together and saw each other daily thereafter.

  It was partly the exotic, heady cocktail of his ancestry that so attracted her. His father was Druze, his mother Christian (her grandparents were Armenian). Sam spoke four languages with equal facility. He played the piano well enough to have been a professional musician. His otherworldly, fine-tuned mind existed in planes of mathematical concepts Leila couldn’t follow, scientist though she was. He was funny and witty and clever. And fickle, to everyone except his one true love. And his one true love was a city destined, within the next few years, to become the paradigm of war-ravaged cities everywhere. But of course, that was all in the future.

  He was vastly amused to find that, despite her reputation as Arab aristocracy, Leila was an impoverished Glaswegian. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘My family has enough money that we need never worry about a thing.’

  Although she was twenty-two, and it was the era of free love, he was the first man she’d slept with. She had no illusions from the start that she was his first, or even in the first twenty. Sam liked women, and women liked Sam. But she also learned what it meant to be totally subsumed in another’s identity, to feel them closer than your own skin…

  St Severus was a mixed college by the time she went there, but the ancient Fellows who made the rules were det
ermined to prevent fornication. So there were ‘guest hours’. When Sam was caught leaving Leila’s room at eight one morning, around two months into their affair, he cheerfully explained that they were engaged to be married.

  They were inseparable for the next eighteen months until he graduated. Then he announced he was going home, to take up a lecturing job. It was 1974, and Leila was in the final year of her degree.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘You’ll love it there. Beirut is the most beautiful city in the world, as well as the oldest.’

  He used to get furious with people who referred to it as ‘the Paris of the East’. ‘Beirut was a hub of civilisation while Paris was still a mosquito-ridden swamp,’ he’d say, his eyes flashing, ‘and while people in Britain were living in mud huts and had no written language. The Phoenicians were there. More than five thousand years of continuous occupation.’

  His West Beirut sounded like Paradise. A magical place of elegant, red-roofed colonial mansions, with wrought-iron balconies and airy, high-ceilinged rooms, and stylish cafés and bookshops, frangipani and jacaranda and mulberry trees shading the streets, and bougainvillea sprawling among the climbing roses spilling over garden walls.

  ‘We’ll live in the family home with my aunts. It’s a huge house.’

  ‘And they’ll approve of us living together?’

  ‘I suppose we’d better get hitched,’ he said carelessly.

  Leila protested that she needed to finish her own degree.

  ‘You can finish there. I’m sure there’s a veterinary medicine department.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I need to finish here.’

  ‘Then you can come as soon as you graduate.’

  But Leila had a job offer. The practice in Dorset where she’d undertaken two extended placements had offered her a position, and she had set her heart on taking it. Simon, the senior partner, had been exceptionally kind to her, and it was a large, prosperous practice. Plenty of varied experience for a newly-qualified vet.