Inside the Winking Eye
By Elizabeth Noel
Melbourne, Australia
Eleanor polished a knife that didn’t shine quite like the others. She placed it down and surveyed the table. Crisp white tablecloth, deep blue plates, and a small vase of pink peonies that she picked from the farm just yesterday. Her surroundings were so familiar, so Eleanor, yet despite all the years, they still somehow resonated with a past that wasn’t hers.
Blue eggshell walls now enclosed her, no longer the spring green, off white, or various subtle wallpapers that she had put up over the years. Her husband gave up objecting to the endless need to redecorate. He gave up objecting to most things.
Dubai, United Arab of Emirates
Rebecca applied another coat of mascara. She had become pale and thin but didn’t care. She was wearing a borrowed pair of faux leather pants and a thin yellow blouse. She put her key in her pocket and pulled out her hand with ease. She touched her left ring finger. It felt light.
The farm was a million miles away.
In the taxi, Rebecca thought about everything that had been said and said again. Don’t repeat yourself. If there is nothing new to say, don’t say anything. Out the window, the lights of Sheikh Zayed Road sparkled as if a thousand people were winking at each other because they all knew. She couldn’t do it.
‘Don’t cry,’ she said to herself, and the driver glanced at her in the mirror.
‘Where you from?’ he asked.
It was the first thing everyone asked in this city. ‘England.’ The answer felt hollow. A half-truth. Her shell came from England, her language, her mannerisms, but in eight years so much of her had been fleshed out, right here.
The driver listed his cousins who lived in different English cities. She didn’t know London, Manchester, or Liverpool. She left university and came here. Her father worked in the United Arab Emirates the year she was born, and the words had a familiar ring. On arrival though, the Arabic script, national dress, and the smell of heat made her feel faint.
‘England very beautiful. Life very good. Why you come here?’
English people, people she had known for years, loved to ask this, too. The question was heavy. What are you running from? Who are you trying to be? Don’t they lock women up over there? You must have to be careful?
Islam was everywhere. Cloaking the city in an undercurrent of velvet, whispering its presence into the warm air, and sweet umm ali. It was intricate, complex, woven through everything, so there was endless space to stand with God, to lean on God. It didn’t feel like that in England. Christianity was something you hid in your pocket, and only pulled out in a crisis or passed around at Christenings.
‘How can anyone intelligent believe in God? Women especially would be better off without religion,’ his father had said to her, and she had winced, wishing she was back in the velvety fold where faith was not frowned upon. She thought of Dima, a linguist from Jordan, and Samah, an architect from Saudi. She had become friends with them through the female horse-riding league. Do you think Zaha Hadid cared about being able to drive a car? Women make up 22.5% of Government in the UAE, that’s 1.1% lower than the USA. Rebecca thought about repeating Samah’s words, trying to emulate her pride and certainty, but his father was already bickering with Eleanor about whether two o’ clock was too early for a gin and tonic.
The restaurant was typically modern and high up. She was now inside one of the winking eyes. She was early, but he was waiting for her, still in his work suit, playing with his phone. He probably hadn’t been home yet, and as the word entered her mind, she flinched.
Home.
One syllable, four letters, but behind it lay a thousand rooms that sit along dark cold corridors, up winding stairs where if she wasn’t careful, she could become lost and breathless. Home was a past, a present, an imagined future as well as a house, a city, a nation. She wanted her home to be a heart, a soul, a body. She had wanted to commit, to find a home in him. He had wanted Australia. Within a month of getting engaged, the plans to move began, and now the ring that glistened on her finger, forming tiny rainbows on the walls when it caught the sun just right, was inside her purse wrapped in silk.
He got up as she walked towards him. An intended kiss on the cheek became an embrace which turned into a moment that lasted too long for the location they were in. He smelt of the day; laundered clothes, warm skin, office coffee, a trace of red wine on his lips.
Eleanor’s husband, Robert, came home with four bottles of wine; two red, two white, all Australian just as Eleanor instructed, but he knew it would be wrong.
‘Hello darling.’ He tried to hit the right pitch for cheerful without kowtowing.
Eleanor was drying dishes. He put the bottles on the new marble counter and leaned in to kiss her. She turned to put a glass in the cupboard, and his kiss drifted in the frigid air between them.
‘What did you get?’ She eyed the bag. ‘I hope it isn’t anything undergraduate.’
‘Tamburlaine, Sauvignon Blanc, Organic.’
‘We’re not part of the hippy movement, Robert.’ She folded the tea towel into a neat square. ‘We don’t want warm wine! Put it in the fridge.’ She sighed. ‘Not there.’
Robert moved the wine.
Rebecca sat down. He had already ordered for her. This started as a game when they first met. She would choose from the menu and type it into her phone, and he would order. He nearly always got it right. It amazed her that he knew her tastes so intimately as if he was a sommelier waiting on her soul. Apart from that one time when he ordered soft shell crab at Thiptara. It crunched between her teeth like cockroaches, not that she said anything. When did this game first make her feel like a child, incapable of making decisions? Why hadn’t she said anything?
‘How are you?’ His soft blue eyes were wrapped in dark circles. Tiredness always dented his good looks.
‘I’m ok, you?’
He shrugged. ‘You’re spending a lot of time with Lisa. She never struck me as warm.’
‘She’s supportive. She understands.’
He twisted his glass. ‘Understands?’
‘She’s done this before.’
‘Done what? What have you done, Rebecca?’
Rebecca sighed. She shrugged her shoulders.
He shook his head. ‘You wanted to move to Australia. Is the farm so bad? We planned this. Millions of people all over the world are desperate to live in Australia.’
She was not one of them.
She shut her eyes and thought back to the summer spent with Eleanor and Robert in Europe. She pushed her finger where the ring was meant to be. She thought about the cake that would be delivered to her mother’s house, and the dress that was hanging in the wardrobe of her childhood home. She opened her eyes to him. Him whom she had loved without thought but hadn’t understood until after that trip. From the window the city glowed. Urban lights stretching to the heavens with all the lives that could be lived behind unopened doors. Another way. Isn’t that what moving here had taught her? There are many ways to live.
She wanted to be out there, running along the Satwa beach track, heat and sea air pushing in against her. The smell of shisha and possibility wafting from the shops.
How long will the Dubai Mall taxi rank be? She looked at her watch.
‘Rebecca, are you even listening to me?’
Eleanor looked at her husband as he read the paper by the patio doors, waiting for guests to arrive. Forty-two years she had spent with this man. She was convinced he had a mental disorder of some kind.
‘Asperger syndrome,’ she had told her sister. ‘He must have some strain of it because he is terrible. You don’t understand what my life is like with him. He’s so misogynistic with his men’s only clubs, and all these boards he sits on. Boards are code for cults. Male cults.’
Eleanor had thought of leaving him.
What she did not know was Robert had thought of leaving her.
He thought Eleanor was the one with a mental disorder. Bad genes and faulty wiring. That must have been the cause of their misery. It couldn’t be his fault. It couldn’t be entirely hers. They both wanted to be happy.
Eleanor thought of the summer. How could Rebecca have misunderstood so much? Couldn’t she see Robert was sick and how difficult he is? She had told her he most likely had Asperger syndrome.
Eleanor thought of the day that had been brought up as a pivotal point. The straw that broke the back, but no. Eleanor had behaved impeccably. If only her son had cut his hair before visiting England, she wouldn’t have needed to intervene. The barber on the country lane was the perfect opportunity. She only prevented the hairdresser from making a bad situation worse. These rural people are never as well trained as city people. Any good mother would have done the same. If Rebecca was to marry him, she would have to learn. Goodness knows her son would be a mess without proper guidance. He’d probably turn into his father.
‘Somewhere to be?’ He said as if she had kicked him.
Rebecca thought of a lamb. Doe eyed.
‘What were you thinking about?’ His eyes flicked to her.
‘About being outside. I’m cold.’
The waitress served their meals.
Rebecca looked at her plate. Soft shell crab. ‘I was also thinking about England.’
‘Are you homesick? We would go back to Europe at least twice a year.’
Homesick. She was home. When would they come back here to sand and heat and anonymity? The endless call to prayer that set a rhythm to the day? Who would she be in Australia? What would he and his parents turn her into?
‘I was thinking about…that day in the car and the barber shop.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Not that again.’
She folded her arms across her chest. ‘You’re 36 years old.’
‘You have to ignore it.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘The only way to deal with mother is to agree with mother. Otherwise, all hell breaks out. It was only a haircut. Hair grows.’ He pushed his hair off his forehead.
Rebecca understood that Eleanor was upset about the length of her son’s hair from the moment she arrived in England. She had been upset about several things, but they were easily rectified. First, she instructed him to throw away his t-shirt with ‘Bastad, Sweden’ written on it because it resembled a vulgar word. Eleanor didn’t realise that was the whole point. Her son had never visited Bastad. Secondly, she had reminded him that saying, ‘I’m full’ was ‘terribly undergraduate,’ and that, ‘I’ve had an elegant sufficiency was the correct phrase for his intended illocutionary meaning.’
Eleanor needed an intervention to rectify his hair. The opportunity came on a country lane. ‘Stop the car!’ Eleanor bellowed, and Robert pulled over the rented Range Rover.
‘Cut your hair,’ she instructed Rebecca’s fiancée.
Rebecca’s heartbeat echoed in her ears. She was suddenly inside a smart car with three other people, and a pregnant elephant painted in neon colours. He only saw his mother’s adamant face.
The car door opened, and he walked into the hair salon. Robert followed, and Rebecca was left in the back seat with Eleanor and the elephant. The seats were sticky against her legs. The hair salon had large open windows.
Eleanor fidgeted. ‘What is she doing? What is he doing? Rebecca, stop him. Spiteful boy.’
This was the women who had raised the man she loved. A man she had thought so capable. A man with so many layers. An engineer, a partner in a business, a mentor, a best friend, a polo player, an artist, a traveller, a lover, and of course a son.
‘It’s alright,’ Rebecca whispered.
Eleanor lowered the Range Rover window and leant out towards the shop. ‘STOP TAKING SO MUCH OFF THE SIDES,’ she screamed.
Rebecca placed her hand on Eleanor’s arm. ‘Please, sit down.’ The little lady slipped back into her seat, her mouth drooping past its usual scowl. She brushed her hands over her white blouse and smoothed the sides of her hair.
‘One must monitor these things.’
They drove the rest of the way to Rebecca’s Mother’s house in silence.
Back in the present moment, Rebecca pushed the soft-shell cockroaches around her plate.
‘Talk to me,’ he said.
Old words lodged in her throat. ‘I can’t.’
‘Can’t what?’
‘I can’t leave Dubai. I can’t go to the farm. I can’t live with or through your mother. I can’t let her choose the clothes my husband wears, the names of my children, or the flowers in my garden.’
‘She‘s a landscape architect for God’s sake,’ he scowled.
…
The doorbell rang.
‘Robert, don’t just sit there… doorbell. Fold the newspaper properly. Are you a child?’
‘Yes dear.’ He refolded the paper and put it on the glass coffee table. Eleanor sighed and went over to put the paper in the proper place. Life with Robert was frustrating. She had to get him to a doctor. There must be pills for this sort of thing.
…
Rebecca’s stomach tightened. She pushed the untouched plate away.
‘Are we still engaged?’ he said. The bravest thing he had ever said to her.
She unzipped her bag, pulled out the little silk handkerchief, and placed it on the table. His forehead furrowed and the corners of his mouth lowered on both sides as she pulled out the ring.
Rebecca wasn’t going to take over the farm from his parents with him. She couldn’t change 36 years of learnt behaviour. She couldn’t eat soft-shell bugs anymore. She couldn’t leave this city. Not yet. There was still too much to learn about life, and what it could be.
She got up. ‘I don’t like soft-shell crab.’
‘I suppose you’ll go back to England,’ he said.
She wanted to laugh. Run back to Mummy and Daddy? Who was this stranger in front of her? Losing him and everything she thought they would be together had almost split her in two. She couldn’t lose Dubai as well. It’s foreign yet familiar arms were the only thing holding her together.
Eleanor, Robert, and their guests sat down at the table, and Robert poured the organic wine.
‘Not so full, Robert!’
Robert smiled and cleared his throat. ‘To everyone’s health and to my wonderful wife for bringing us together today.’
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Elizabeth Noel is an emerging writer with British roots. She has lived all over the world and published previously with Springer and the Island Review.
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