The road went on, the views of mountains and gullies, brambles and bracken, burns flowing, marshes that were in every shade of brown. The last stretch would always be the most difficult, the longest, accompanied by silence, too late for enthusiasm, too late for change of any kind. She must keep going.
She was tired too, she had to admit. Her knees were beginning to ache, her back a little stiff. She did not want to stop and stretch, nor eat a snack. She did not want to risk losing momentum, giving up like the others had given up. Come on, come on, you are nearly there, one last push. It would have been better if David had come with her. He would not have left her alone. He would have stayed with her until the very end. She should have thought of this – a trip for the two of them, a couple. Instead of the whole trouble with the women’s group, instead of Moni and Iman. She missed him and suddenly she could make Glenuaig Lodge in the distance and soon, very soon, there would be the grave up on the hill.
Up on the left, she spotted the two gravestones, the taller one that belonged to Toby Sladen, Lady Evelyn’s grandson, and then the shorter, older, broken one. It was a steep climb and she scrambled through stalks and brambles. She had made it, she had found it and here she was.
‘Lady Evelyn Cobbold, 1867–1963, Daughter of the 7th Earl of Dunmore, Widow of John Dupuis Cobbold.’
Salma sat near the grave, catching her breath. When she could speak, she greeted Lady Evelyn, knowing that her presence could be sensed, maybe even her prayers could be heard. She called her by her Muslim name – Zainab. Your state is my future, Zainab, one day I will follow to where you are, and I will know what you now know. Motionless after hours of walking, Salma could feel the wind cool against her face and parched lips, the muscles of her thighs stretching. Here she was at last looking down at the bronze plaque, the photo of which had caused such offence and made the women in the group stay away. Certainly, someone had tried to cross the words out, clawed at the flat bronze with a rock or a knife, fuelled by outrage. Lady Evelyn had requested the original Arabic verse, but her exact wishes could not be fulfilled and instead an English translation was used. Words that could be read by anyone walking past, understood and objected to. Allah is the light . . .
The clouds shifted and a shaft of sun touched the bronze, blurring the words and the grooves that had been scraped in over them. Salma blinked, her eyes dazzled. Strange that now, instead of the words, she could see her own smoky reflection. It was blurry at first, but when she took a deep breath and wiped her eyes, she could see more clearly. It was not the Salma of today, weary and scruffy, instead it was her future, all she had ever done layered and marked over her features.
She did not recoil in horror, nor smile with joy. The future was stories repeating themselves. The future was a more pungent, more bitter extension of the present. A fresh mix of desires fulfilled, and others thwarted, the improbable and the inevitable. She will earn more, enjoy her work and her youngest son will graduate from medical school. She will dance at her daughter’s wedding, carry a grandchild, book tickets for her and David to go on pilgrimage to Mecca.
Hints of her friends’ futures floated towards her too, the bronze plaque a screen, a whirlpool of images, translucent as a mirage. Moni succeeds, against the odds, in getting Murtada to return from Saudi Arabia. They have another baby, a bright wilful little girl who sparkles their life until Murtada announces that he is returning to Sudan and he wants his family with him. No, says Moni again, I will not leave this country. Adam, Adam, Adam, Moni says, and her future is a more complex negotiation than the present. Iman’s English improves. She works and can bring her mother over from Syria for a visit. But her greatest material success comes in middle age with the widower she lands as a husband, a house whose mortgage has been paid off.
Then the images were of Salma again. The positive medical test, the hushed voices and days in hospital. For her to be buried in her beloved Egypt would be too costly, too inconvenient, she was destined to stay put. Loved until the very end, her husband devoted, her children gathered around her.
She covered her face with her hands. The future was not meant to be seen. This was not why she had come, not to see the end but to save the present. Not to learn the obvious lesson that there was less time left. Is that all you will give me, Lady Evelyn? Is this how you receive your sister, Zainab? I want to know how I can go on. How I can keep going without taking a fall, without giving up or making a fool of myself. You were lonely too, you were tired, help me. I came here for rejuvenation, a recipe for patience, a cure for disenchantment, the will to keep going, keep going, without
