Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,16

find her own way home.’ And Bea scattered liberal handfuls of corn over both our doorsteps. Snowy liked the Hotel Moulay Idriss. Soon she was striding about with confidence, clucking and pecking her way into other people’s rooms and leaving little piles of yellow-white droppings wherever she went.

Next door lived a family with five children, and a grandmother who slooshed down her stretch of landing first thing each morning with water from a metal bucket. Each time Snowy dared to pass her by, she hissed and shooed and flicked the ground with the edge of her djellaba.

Once the corridor was dry, a girl, not much taller than Bea, appeared. She stood patiently on the landing to be checked over by the fierce old lady. Her hair was braided into two plaits and she wore a white pleated skirt and sandals. Over one shoulder she carried a leather satchel.

‘Where’s she going?’ Bea asked.

‘Who?’ Mum said sleepily.

‘The girl next door. Come and look.’

‘I expect she’s just going to school.’ Mum stretched out under the covers and then in a coaxing voice she said, ‘If you make some strong tea with sugar in, I’ll get up. I promise.’

*

The next morning we were woken by the lady who lived in the room on our other side. She stood in the doorway and shouted, loud enough to wake the whole hotel. She held a dark red sequinned cushion in one hand, carefully like a tray, on which was a murky yellow stain. She pointed an accusing finger at Snowy who sat innocently in her nest of straw, chattering happily, her feathers up around her neck. The woman stood there, holding out her cushion and shouting. Mum struggled out of bed and tried to reason with her, but the woman continued to point at the cushion, at Bea, and at herself, and then with a vicious kick in Snowy’s direction she swept out of the room. Bea rushed over and picked Snowy up in her arms. Her eyes were spinning with alarm. The woman’s shouts of fury continued through the dividing wall.

Mum sat on the end of Bea’s bed. ‘It looks like we’re going to have to find Snowy another home.’

Bea didn’t answer. Then she said in a very small voice, ‘I’ll train her.’

‘I’ll talk to Akari,’ Mum said. ‘He’ll know what to do.’

That afternoon Akari came and took Snowy away.

‘I will look after her. Very special,’ he beamed as he hurried down the corner stairs.

We refused to return his smile. ‘Like hell,’ Bea said under her breath.

The only people who commiserated with us on the loss of our pet were the two women who lived on the opposite side of the landing. When they saw Akari disappear down the stairs with Snowy clucking her last in a cardboard box, they came across and offered Mum Turkish cigarettes and a glass of wine. They were big women who wore brightly coloured djellabas with silky hoods halfway down their backs, and their hands and feet were covered in an intricate web of design.

‘Tattoos,’ Bea whispered.

‘Henna,’ the woman nearest me laughed, noticing my fascinated stare. She took my face and held it still with one hand, while with the fingers of the other she twisted a strand of my hair between her fingers. It made a dry, brittle sound in her hand like the scratching of an insect. ‘Henna,’ she said, turning to Mum and switching to French to convince her.

‘They say you need henna on your hair to make it grow thick and long.’

I looked at their heavy black plaits.

‘All right,’ I agreed.

I was taken through the curtain into the dark recess of their room. It smelt of perfume and night-time, as if they had lived in it for ever. Bea was sent to get a towel and to fill a bucket from the tap in the corner of the courtyard. My hair was brushed back off my face in preparation.

The women poured a heap of green powder into a bowl and, with Bea’s water, stirred it into a thick mud that smelt like mud but with something sweet and something sour mixed in. They patted the henna, cold and slimy, into every strand of my hair, coiling it up on top of my head so that when they’d finished I felt like I was wearing a soft clay helmet. They dipped the corner of the towel in water and wiped away the streaks of green from my face and ears.

I was led triumphantly back on to