A Matter of Marriage

by Lesley Jorgensen

  He was not certain of Mrs. Begum’s status in that regard, but her sudden flarings of temper at unexpected times, her irritability, and at other times her strange absentmindedness—his cravats had been missing for days now—could well be put down to this. How prey to their bodily functions women were.

  The smoke had ceased, but now Kareem could be seen talking to the Bourne children, Andrew and Jonathon. They must have walked over from the Lodge, hoping for more of Mrs. Begum’s ladhu balls, most likely. A minute later both of the children were on Kareem’s shoulders, laughing and screaming as he ran across the side lawn with them and pretended to fall, tipping them onto the grass. Really, Kareem had lost all notion of dignity. But Dr. Choudhury was in a mood to be indulgent and allowed himself to smile with theoretical understanding at the high spirits of youth.

  Anyway, perhaps he was, as the elder statesman of the college and still, of course, a fine figure of a man, also a convenient authority figure for Professor Beeton to beat herself against. Ah, that sunshine was very pleasant. He laced his hands over his stomach and closed his eyes for a few seconds to enable himself to concentrate more fully. In short, her behavior could well be viewed as a cry for help from one of his sex, his age and his experience. His, shall we say, savoir faire.

  Kareem was standing again, but now rotating with increasing speed while grasping a child’s arm and leg. That child’s mouth was open in a sort of continuous, happy wail, while the other child jumped up and down, shouting, “Me! Me next!” Surely Henry and Thea never did anything of the sort.

  Bertha was indeed one of those women who, having sacrificed their childbearing years to academia and career, were perhaps, in the twilight of their lives, grappling with regret, nay, even remorse, that certain opportunities peculiar to the female sex had passed them by. The more Dr. Choudhury applied his mind, the clearer it seemed.

  Yes, that was it. He nodded sagely and squeezed his tummy a little with his interlaced fingers. In short, Bertha had developed feelings for him, and was now exhibiting all of the behaviors of a woman scorned. Possibly that hope had been fanned by his sitting next to her at the last-but-one faculty meeting he had attended. And, how could he forget, later that same day he had also made her a coffee (a dreadful muddy concoction of decaffeination and soy) after dinner at High Table. Poor woman. Thrown together as they were: his distinguished features and intellect, her understandable susceptibility as a woman of a certain age, or, to put it more kindly, a femme de trente ans . . .

  And his absence at the most recent faculty meetings, coupled with, he must admit, his failure to respond to her incessant emails about budgets and publication records and goodness knew what else (as he had only skimmed them), what a blow that must have been. In the circumstances. Although in the final analysis, his status as a married man, his personal unavailability to her, would have to be the real cause. She was a woman after all: it could only be personal.

  Where was that young man? Dr. Choudhury could no longer see the smoking. Excellent. He left the sunshine, walked to the sitting-room doorway and back again, then sat at one end of the sofa, in pleasant expectation of the furtherance of their friendly chat. A faint sound reached him from upstairs: a slamming door, then a flurry of downstairs patterings and a moment later his youngest child flew into the sitting room, flapping and flouncing, hair damp, bosom heaving, eyes brimming, and flung herself down on the sofa next to him.

  “Abbaaah!” she wailed, then wriggled even closer to him and tried to tuck her head under his arm, like a baby bird. “Why won’t Amma tell me where she is? She’s my sister!”

  Why did no one in this family have any self-restraint? Even the bath had not calmed her. Dr. Choudhury stiffened, caught, he well knew, between the hard place of Baby’s demands and the rock of something far worse, should he be so foolish as to divulge even a hint of Munni’s present location.

  Shunduri was sniffing miserably now, and her wail had been succeeded by a kind of invisible bouncing jiggling motion of the sofa springs, which made him feel most uncomfortable and tense in the calves. He tried to extricate his arm.

  “Shush now, Baby. Go and help your mother in the kitchen.”

  “Abbaaah!”

  “Baby, shush. You must . . .” He tried to think of a way to turn the conversation. “How are your studies? What are your grades?”

  “Abbaaah!”

  “I have a cramp.” He stood and moved with alacrity to the mantel, leaned upon it and stretched out a leg and rubbed it with ostentatious concern. “Perhaps it is the blood supply . . .”

  “I need my sister. I miss her.” Shunduri stood up as well, and Dr. Choudhury shrank back. So much emotion, and her mascara was smeared.

  “Baby, your face.”

  “I don’t care . . .”

  He looked at her more closely. She must be truly upset. What had Mrs. Begum said to her? Perhaps her marks . . . no, Mrs. Begum had never been concerned with such things.

  “Why won’t anyone tell me where Affa is?”

  “My leg . . .”

  “My only sister!”

  “Perhaps it is my heart . . . referred pain.”

  His daughter walked to the window and pressed her nose against it, but the sight of Kareem striding back toward the front door, running his index finger under his top lip as if he had a sore spot there, seemed only to ruffle her further.

  “Abbaah!”

  “Tariq! Tariq!” Mrs. Begum’s call from upstairs, virtually a shout, ricocheted around the house. “Tariq! Are you home? You must come!”

  No reply was heard, and he continued to clutch the mantel while he waited, with all the experience of so many years together, for his wife to scold the furniture in each room with her son’s name, before finally resorting to her husband for assistance.

  “Tariq!” was heard clearly through the sitting-room doorway now, but when Dr. Choudhury, with the feeling of Mafeking relieved, turned to look for his wife, Kareem was there as well, eyeing Baby’s stormy state with no apparent surprise. Mrs. Begum’s head was poking around the doorframe behind him, her hair disordered and a double crease between her eyebrows.

  “What, what?” cried Dr. Choudhury, grateful for the distraction, though maintaining a wary grip on the mantel. He cast a quick eye at the mirror for reassurance, then turned to the new arrivals.

  Kareem ducked his head toward him. “Can I help, Khalo? Can I do anything for you, Khalama? I’m at your service.”

  Mrs. Begum ignored him and looked at her husband. “It is . . . The time is one o’clock. I cannot find Tariq.” Her right hand swung into visibility, carrying the brass tiffin holder.

  He opened his mouth, then shut it again as Shunduri moved to his side and gave his arm a jealous squeeze.

  “What, Abba? What is it?”

  His wife cut in, glaring at him. “I promised . . . I promised Audrey Upwey I would send her my fish biryani to taste.”

  “Ah,” he said, confused. Really, the convoluted mind of the female. “Now? Why now, of all times?”

  “I will take it for you, Amma,” said Shunduri.

  His wife’s telegraphing stare redirected to her youngest daughter and transformed into sweetness itself. “Nah, nah, nah, my Baby,” she coaxed. “You will help me here.”

  Shunduri met her mother’s gaze with a smile of steel. “I want to show Kareem the Abbey, Amma. Properly. He has come all this way, and we only saw it for a minute, just before. I will take the tiffin for you.”

  Mrs. Begum’s face, though still wreathed in smiles, underwent a subtle change, hard to describe but somehow alarming.

  Kareem shuffled his feet a little, seemed to be trying to catch Shunduri’s eye. “Eh, no need to go back there, yeah?” No one responded, and he looked around the room, as if for help that was failing to arrive.

  Mrs. Begum switched her gaze to Dr. Choudhury. Suddenly he realized, with one of
those telepathic flashes that only happen between couples who have been married for such a long time: the tiffin was actually for Rohimun.

  Ah, the instinctive cunning of Mrs. Begum. His stupid son had neglected to deliver his other daughter’s food. Feeling both triumphant and aware that he had better set off before things got any more complicated, he cleared his throat and, by dint of turning to the mirror to adjust his shirt collar, liberated his arm from Shunduri’s grip.

  “Ahem. I have not yet had my, er, pre-prandial stroll. And in my state of health, with this cramp, I do feel that it would be most imprudent to depart from my routine at this juncture.” As he spoke, he strode to the doorway and took hold of the tiffin container. “I will take this.”

  Shunduri squawked in protest. “Let me come with you.”

  Dr. Choudhury had a flash of inspiration of his own. “Your shoes are not suitable for outside-walking.”

  “But, Amma, Abba!” cried Shunduri, with escalating tragedy. “I’m only trying to help!”

  Mrs. Begum shook her head in concert. “Nah, nah, Baby, we have a guest,” she said, but was unwise enough to allow a victorious note to creep into her voice.

  His wife should know better, that such a thing would be a red cloth to a bull for their youngest child.

  Shunduri folded her arms, with an expression that said this was war. “I have to go, Amma.”

  “What, my Baby?”

  “I have college tomorrow.”

  “Now?” Mrs. Begum gasped, gripping the doorframe with her free hand. “To London? You, you leave your mother and father here now, this afternoon, before eating with us?”

  “Yes, Amma. I have to go. Studyin’.” Shunduri fixed her eyes above her mother’s head, arms still folded, and tapped her foot.

  “You come to visit your father and mother, your only brother, and you do not even stay one night?”

  “I can’t, Amma. I’ve got college.”

  Mrs. Begum’s shoulders drooped. “You do what you wish, then. Go, go. I do not mind. I am grateful that you remember us, visit us at all now. Now that you are so big-big at school in London and the bank. My pride in you is as high as the sky, with all your study and your big job.”

  Shunduri flushed then, her eyes filling with tears. Dr. Choudhury waited for a rapprochement between mother and daughter, but it was not to be. His wife’s arms were folded as well, leaving Shunduri no choice but to press on, bending to touch her father’s feet and then her mother’s, in farewell. Mrs. Begum turned her head away.

  After a brief hesitation, their daughter slipped between them both and ran outside, as his wife pulled her pallu over her head and walked toward the kitchen. There was a brush against his trouser leg: it was Kareem, touching his feet.

  “Sorry, sorry. Salaamalaikum, sir, Khalo,” Kareem muttered, straightening and bobbing his head at Dr. Choudhury, then in the direction of the kitchen. “My respects to Baiyya, to your family . . .”

  “Yes, yes,” he responded irritably. Kareem’s attentions were noisome now that he was about to drive Shunduri, their youngest, home unchaperoned. What did they really know of this man anyway? He had smiled and smirked and made love to them all and now he was off again. Well, good riddance.

  —

  AS SOON AS they were both in the car, even before he’d started the engine, Kareem spoke, just like Shunduri knew he would.

  “How could you treat your mother like that, Princess?” He looked sternly at her in the rear-view mirror, his tone very different to what it had been in the cottage. “That is disrespect.”

  She glared at him, but did not reply.

  “What would your Affa and Bai think of you disrespectin’ your mum like that?”

  She leaned forward and hissed into the back of his neck, her voice quivering. “They don’t care. And I don’t care about them. At least I’m wantin’ to end up in a proper marriage, yaah, like no one else in my family.”

  “Hey, what are you talkin’ about? Relax.”

  They were both silent then, Shunduri scrabbling in her bag for a tissue.

  “You should go back and apologize. They’re your parents.”

  “Never.” She shook her head violently and looked out the window. They hadn’t even come out to say goodbye. It was all his fault anyway, that she needed her sister so much. Her stomach was in a tight knot from the scene with her parents, and just when she needed Mum so much too. But she needed Rohimun more. Rohimun wouldn’t, couldn’t, judge her: how could she, given all the trouble she was in.

  Kareem reached back and touched her knee. “You only have one mother, one father. I should know, yeah.”

  They drove away from the cottage slowly, and just up the road, out of sight, Kareem pulled the car over so that she could climb into the front passenger seat. He took her hand and squeezed it.

  She gave a long shuddering sigh and held his hand with both of hers. “I miss my sister like you wouldn’t believe, yaah.”

  “Course you do, Princess. What’s all that about anyway?”

  “She’s . . . she’s in trouble. She had a gora boyfriend, an’ there was trouble, like, between ’em. Maybe he was giving her beats. But she wouldn’t take my advice. So Tariq brought her home, but they won’t tell me anyfing. And they won’t let me see her.”

  “Hittin’ your sister!”

  “Yeah.” She and Munni had never been close, but she appreciated Kareem’s righteous anger almost as much as if he’d been defending her.

  “So’s Tariq going to sort him out? What’s been done about him?”

  “Nuffink. He’s not a Desi boy, you know. You can’t just have a funchait and break furniture over his head.”

  Kareem swore. “Want me to do somethin’ about it?”

  She considered. “No, I don’t want you gettin’ in any trouble. It’s alright. We’ll never see him again anyway.”

  “Are they sending her back to the old country, marrying her off then?”

  She dabbed her eyes. “Dunno. Don’t think so. I just don’t know where she is right now and I haven’t seen her in ages.”

  “Well, what else can they do with her? Eh, Princess, don’t cry. I understand. And this was your day, yeah.” Kareem kissed her nose. “Your day, Princess.”

  She felt better suddenly and pulled the sun visor down and started to repair her face. “That’s what they say to the bride on the day she marries, yaah. It’s her day.”

  He let go of her hand, started up the car and pulled out. “Plenty of time yet. You know I love you, Princess.”

  She cleaned away the mascara smudges under her eyes and re-powdered her nose and forehead, holding on to the dashboard with one hand. “Seein’ as it’s my day, take a right here. I want to go to Leicester and look at the shops, yaah.” The sari and wedding-gold shops in Leicester were even better than in Brick Lane.

  “Leicester? Princess, that’s an hour away, in the wrong direction.”

  “We left Mum and Dad’s early, innit?”

  “Jesus Christ.” He tapped the GPS as if hoping that it was still non-functional, but it sprang to life immediately.

  In three miles, turn right.

  “Look.” She pointed to her side window. “There’s Dad.”

  Her father was in the distance, upright and flat-footed, walking swiftly downhill from the cottage toward the Abbey ahead, the tiffin container jerking by his side.

  Rohimun, her affa, would know how to speak to Dad. Or maybe Affa could get Tariq to lean on Kareem. Or something.

  Kareem hunched over the steering wheel and stared at the building that loomed ahead of Dr. Choudhury, dark in the sunshine.

  “Jesus Christ, we’re not goin’ there again. You can count me out. Leicester it is. Shoppin’ in Leicester.”

  Eleven

  DR. CHOUDHURY WAS striding with the tiffin container swinging at his side, his usual
discomfort at plowing through all the ups and downs and unpleasant surprises of a grassland frequented by insects and other small wild creatures forgotten in his relief at escaping the marital home. Not that he was looking forward to seeing his eldest daughter, of course. She was a disgrace to the family.

  Their old closeness over art and her painting and her doing so well at school was as nothing to him now. He would simply knock, then leave the tiffin container on the hallway floor. Or perhaps, if she was quick to open the door, he would inadvertently catch a glimpse of how she was looking, perhaps even see if she had done anything with that far-too-large stretched canvas that he had seen on the roof of Tariq’s car the other day. Not that he would acknowledge her in any form: she was dead to him, a blot on the Choudhury escutcheon.

  On his way up the hill, he could see that almost all of the scaffolding had been removed from one side of the Abbey, leaving it looking strangely crisp and clean. Not long now until everything would be finished. But this thought brought with it various difficult problems, so he resolved to think of nothing but the blueness of the sky and the greenness of the vegetation.

  What a ridiculous size that canvas was, for someone who had only ever done life-size head-and-shoulder portraits. What was Tariq thinking? And also that she could have used those old paints that Tariq had dug up from the back of the shed, from her O-level days. His number-one-fool son should have known better than that, should have been well aware that such things degrade, as well as being of inferior quality compared to what she had probably been using in London.

  Dr. Choudhury swung the tiffin pettishly at some intrusive long grasses. What indeed could he have done but to direct Tariq to Green & Stone in Chelsea and Cornelissen & Son on Great Russell Street, as far more appropriate purveyors of professional-quality oil paints and brushes? Not that he cared what she did anymore. He just didn’t like to see his son so mistaken.