What good did it do? How did it help anyone for me to know the difference? For their part, these women seemed not to want to be differentiated or even seen, because they always scurried away those few times our paths crossed. Therefore it was a situation governed by mutual avoidance. As the weeks went by, something appalling began to happen. I began to feel a fearful disgust at these scurriers as they intermittently appeared out of the walls and concealed spaces of the building. The feeling was elusively familiar. One morning, as an accidental encounter again dispersed a group of them into hiding, I recognized that my repugnance for these ladies was the repugnance one feels on coming upon vermin.
Out of shock at my monstrousness, I’m sure, I decided (in defiance of the house rules) to tip the service personnel. Easier said than done. My unknown cleaner or cleaners rejected the bills I left under my mattress (and placed them, folded, on my bedside table) and she/they ignored an envelope marked ‘TIP! PLEASE TAKE! THANK YOU!’ Evidently I would have to dispense the cash in person. The problem was, I couldn’t make contact with a recipient. My long working hours – this was pre-Ali, when I was trying to single-handedly set up and operate the family office, an experience I never want to revisit – meant that I’d leave my suite too early and return too late to cross paths with the housekeepers, who moreover were trained to observe an extreme lowness of profile, the better to achieve their labour’s almost magical effect. One Sunday morning, I finally spotted a distant uniformed figure hastening across the corridor. I practically sprinted after her. When I turned the corner, she was nowhere to be seen; yet, from somewhere behind the walls, a kind of poltergeist could be heard. I opened an unmarked door and found myself in a windowless room with a rough concrete floor and a whining service elevator. For some reason I felt a little frighened. I was on the point of turning back when a cart laden with sheets came in. A small lady was attached to it. There was an exclamation, followed by a statement that was linguistically impenetrable but very clear: my presence alarmed and dismayed her. I gave the lady a reassuring smile. ‘Baksheesh, for you,’ I said, and I pulled out a wad of dirhams and made to bestow them on her. She, who appeared to be equally in her thirties and fifties, made a negative hand gesture and, without meeting my eye, drove the cart into the elevator, whereupon she was as it were absorbed still more deeply by the building. I abandoned my quest to privately reward these workers. Apparently that would have been to put them in harm’s way.
To avoid another such fiasco, I keep this place clean myself. It’s no big deal; I like to mop my marble floor, the cleanliness of which I gauge by the blackening of the soles of my bare feet. When Mrs Ted Wilson came in, everything was spick and span.
She dabbed away her tears and her resemblance to poor Lucy Vodden.
She was intent on staying. Short of manhandling her, I saw no way to get her out. I must admit, I was curious about Ted Wilson; and inevitably I was curious about his wife, especially with her being a damsel, and in distress. But curiosity killed the cat. We all know of those gallant volunteers who rush towards a burning train wreck only to suffer lifelong trauma from the nervous shock caused by the scenes they witness, not to mention the lung disorders contracted from the fumes they inhale or the financial ruin resulting from lawsuits brought against them about what actions they took or failed to take. I resolved to keep as much distance between Mrs Ted Wilson and myself as was consistent with the basic civility that might reasonably be expected of me, the put-upon stranger.
She got up and wandered to the glass walls, and one might have thought she was going to step right out into the brilliant white tartan of the marina towers. After a contemplative moment, she gave her attention to the décor: large black leather sofa, two matching leather armchairs, big flatscreen, massive black leather massage chair, mezzanine bedroom, computer desk with computer, framed photograph of Swiss mountains. I’m sure she also took in the air purifier, and the ultrasonic humidifier, and the electronic salt and pepper mills, and the 3-D glasses, and the touchless automatic motion sensor trash can. ‘This is basically exactly what Ted’s place looks like,’ she said. ‘Do you guys shop together for furniture, too?’
Now she was inspecting my bookcase. She pulled out a volume of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and said, ‘You even have the same books.’ She said distractedly, ‘You know Ted’s a historian, right?’
I said, ‘A historian?’
Mrs Ted Wilson took a seat. She related (unprompted) that when her husband initially went to Dubai it had been in order to teach for a year at the American University in Dubai. No one foresaw that he would almost immediately be offered the job with the advertising agency that was (as he saw it) his big chance to ‘finally break the 70K barrier’ and escape the ‘humiliation’ of an intellectual career that had left him teaching a course called ‘The American Experience’ in a place called Knowledge Village. (I pointed out that ‘Knowledge Village’ was merely the somewhat naïve-sounding (in English) designation given to Dubai’s academic hub, but Mrs Ted Wilson didn’t seem to hear me.) The Wilsons had spent most of the previous decade ‘dragging’ their two children (a boy and a girl) from one place to another, and now that both were in high school they agreed it was ‘out of the question’ to ‘uproot’ them again. Mrs Ted Wilson, meanwhile, had ‘a project that I wanted to complete’. It was agreed that Ted would take the ad-agency job and the family would take things as they came, on the basis that ‘life has a funny way of working out’. This plan now struck her as humorous, judging from the little noise she made.
By now her misconception about the quality of my association with Ted Wilson was beginning to trouble me. I said to her, ‘Look, there’s something you should know. I’m afraid I don’t know your husband that well. I’ve just run into him here and there.’ I further stated, ‘I do, or did, scuba dive, but I’ve never dived with Ted.’ As I made this disclosure, I was in the kitchen fiddling at opening a wine bottle, my back turned to her. This was my way of giving her space to take in my contradiction of her husband’s story. After a moment, I approached her with a glass of white wine, which by virtue of having opened the wine bottle I was now obligated to offer her, God damn it.
I said, ‘What was his field? As a historian, I mean.’ I placed the wine glass within her reach.
Mrs Ted Wilson seemed dazed. ‘German history,’ she said.
Interesting. ‘Which aspect?’
‘Which aspect?’ She seemed to be having difficulty. ‘Sorry, you’re asking me which aspect of German history Ted specialized in? You mean what was his dissertation about?’
‘Sure, why not,’ I said.
‘Certain economic features of nineteenth-century Waldeck und Pyrmont.’
There wasn’t much I could say to that.
I gave her my card. ‘In case you need to get in touch,’ I said. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She wrote her contact details on a piece of paper. ‘Thanks,’ I said, staying on my feet. As far as I was concerned, we were done.
But I’d forgotten about the glass of wine, and now she reached over and took a large mouthful of it and, for the first time, examined me. ‘So what brought you here?’ she asked.
I said, ‘Oh, the usual.’
‘You ran away,’ she said. ‘Everybody out here is on the run. You’re all runners.’
It occurred to me that in all probability she’d had a few drinks earlier in the evening. ‘I’m not sure that’s entirely fair,’ I said.
‘Well, am I wrong?’
I said something about a unique professional opportunity.
‘Oh, don’t give me that shit.’
I
