A Matter of Marriage

by Lesley Jorgensen

  He moved forward, but Rohimun did not. “Come on.”

  Her head was tucked down so he couldn’t see her expression, and her arms were tightly folded. He grabbed her tunic, pulled hard to get her into the hallway, and nearly fell over Mum, who’d been hiding behind the door.

  “Shush, shush!” she admonished before he’d said a word. “It is all fine, fine!” But she was clutching the talisman pinned to her blouse, like she always did when she was saying what she wanted the truth to be, rather than what it was.

  Tariq looked toward the sitting-room doorway, and his mother nodded at him in vigorous confirmation.

  “Go there. Go!” Then she threw an end of the chunna over Rohimun’s hair and started to push her down the hall, walking behind her and telling her in a piercing whisper, “Kitchen now. Go, go. The men will talk first.”

  As Tariq walked through the open doorway into the sitting room, he could see his father standing at the room’s far end, facing the fireplace, one hand on his chin and apparently deep in thought. Jesus. He’d seen this before. Dad was playing Amitabh Bachchan as the sorrowing tycoon disappointed by his children in the big reconciliation scene out of Khabi Kushi Khabi Gum. And milking it even more than Amitabh did. He walked to the center of the room.

  “Salaamalaikum, Abba.”

  His dad was in a cravat for the occasion and wearing his gold rings. Mum had weaned him off these for work years ago, having been quick to realize that at Oxford, striped ties with a regimental feel were the thing, and that in some circles even a wedding band on a man was inappropriate. Trust him to go by the Bollywood book tonight.

  Dad half turned, and Tariq bent and reached for his father’s feet, but was gently prevented.

  “My son, my son . . .”

  He was drawn upward to be kissed on the forehead, twice. He’d seen his father just two hours ago. The perfume had been ladled on as well.

  “Abba.” Tariq reined in his temper, tried to match his father’s tone. “Your eldest daughter Rohimun, your little Munni, she’s here, to ask for your forgiveness.”

  Dr. Choudhury gave an exaggerated start and faced the fireplace, one palm raised in negation. “I have no daughter by that name.”

  Pompous bastard.

  “Dad. Abba.” Tariq took a steadying breath, alarmed at his own welling anger. “There’s been enough sorrow already, yeah? She’s suffered and she needs your help. Family help.”

  The palm did not move. “I have no—”

  “Look, Dad.” He could feel his neck and scalp filling with heat. Rohimun could probably hear everything, and the prick knew it. His father was enjoying himself. He’d already decided to accept her back but he wanted to enjoy his big scene first, really draw it out. Didn’t matter that he was making her bleed.

  “She’s here, yeah, like you asked her to be. Last Tuesday.”

  Dad gave him a reproachful look, making it clear that Tariq wasn’t playing his part properly. He gave an Amitabh-style sorrowful paternal sigh and reverted to the mantelpiece. The raised palm did not waver, and Tariq could see, reflected in the mantel mirror, his father’s approximation of noble sorrow overlain by an expectant complacency. The urge Tariq felt to grab him by his stupid cravat and tell him everything, tell him how it really was, rose in him like a wave.

  The back of his father’s head showed the same thinning white hair and hint of scalp that he himself would have in twenty years. He had a dizzying sensation of blood draining away from his face, and drifted toward his father, his hands closed into fists. But as he moved, there was a sound from the hallway, a gasp, and he saw his mother’s horrified face in the mantel mirror. He felt sick. Jesus Christ, what had he been about to do?

  He whirled around and strode out of the sitting room into the hall. His mother was standing with her back to the closed front door, watching him, her lips pressed thin. Shame overwhelmed him, and he went to touch her feet, but she stepped aside, opening the door and whispering, “Your father, he must think you have left. Go, go. Munni is out back, on the patio. Go to her now, around from the front. Be quiet.” She shoved him outside.

  He looked back at her, his clever mother, then she slammed the door hard behind him, giving Dr. Choudhury the desired message that he had, to all appearances, lost both son and eldest daughter.

  Tariq stood still, breathing fast, dazed. He’d never gotten so close to real violence before, with his own family. What was happening to him?

  He walked blindly into the little front garden and turned to face the house. It was proper twilight now. He could hear floorboards creaking in the hallway, and the rise and fall of his father’s voice, perhaps less pompous now, a little hesitant. Or maybe that was just his own wishful thinking. He started to make his way quietly around to the rear of the cottage. Would Mum do this for him as well, fight with cunning and flattery, treats and lies, to get him back, if she knew?

  Around the back, he found Rohimun sitting on the stone flags of the patio, hugging her knees. Her head and neck were bare. He stood in front of her. “You alright?”

  She gestured to a basket next to her, lined with paper towels and filled with samosas. “Have something to eat. Mum’s made samosas.”

  Tariq thought he could see Rohimun’s chunna in the darkened garden. It was quite a way away, a little bundle caught up in the shrubbery. “Did Mum put you out here?”

  “Yeah. She took me into the kitchen first. Then of course she wanted to go back and listen, so she sent me out here with the basket. Look.” She pointed toward the Abbey, only just visible against the last of the setting sun. Three small lights, torches probably, moved slowly back toward the Lodge. “My visitors are going home already.”

  Rohimun seemed relaxed, almost cheerful: very different to what he’d expected. Perhaps it hadn’t all sunk in yet. Yet she’d been stressed enough before. He felt sick. Mum had seen something of his state, had acted to stop him going further.

  “What did Mum say?”

  “She wasn’t too bad. She calls me her naughty girl now.”

  “What does that make coolie-girl Baby?”

  “The good one, I guess.”

  He sat down and managed a tight smile. “She’d be pleased, yeah.”

  “Does Baby know what’s going on?”

  “No. She was down this week, though, and she knows I took you home, so you’re around somewhere. But we’d be mad to tell her. She’s not called Sky-News Shunduri for nothing.”

  “She’ll be really pissed off then.” Rohimun put on the rapid, high-pitched drawl of their Asian princess sister. “No one ever tells me anything, yaah.”

  He reached across his sister to choose a samosa, but once he had it in his hands, it no longer looked so good. “I can’t take any more of this tonight.”

  “What do you mean? What happened, Bai?”

  He let his head drop until it rested on his forearms, muffling his voice. “I almost lost it with Dad.” They could’ve all been eating together now, if he’d handled it better, let Dad stretch it out, do all the posturing he wanted. If that had happened, if they had welcomed Munni back, it would have been a sign.

  “Maybe it’s for the best.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “I just mean, you’ve . . . we’ve . . . tried . . .” She looked embarrassed and uncomfortable.

  He couldn’t believe it. This was all wrong. Angry and resentful before, relieved now. It didn’t make any sense. She should have been, should still be, crushed with anxiety about what Mum and Dad thought, what was to be done, whether she could ever be part of the family again. How could she not be when he was feeling all these things, for her as well as himself?

  He stood up. “I’ll get your chunna.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Don’t talk rubbish.”

  Rohimun scrambled up as well, her voice high and tight.
“I don’t want the stupid chunna. It’s you that wants it. You’re the one that keeps pushing all this, not me. I never wanted any of this.”

  Tariq, not trusting himself to speak, turned and strode into the shadowy garden. His whole family was fucking mad. Dad playing the Bollywood Abba, Mum maneuvering them all like fuckin’ chess pieces, now Rohimun saying she didn’t want to come home in the first place. After all he’d done. Not to mention that he was turning into some kind of gundah psychopath, wanting to beat his own father up. Why did he ever think he could just come back?

  He stopped at the far edge of the lawn and gazed back. The mound of compost, backlit by the light from the house, seemed like a crouching, mourning woman. To never be allowed to return. What would that be like? To be treated by his family as if he’d already died?

  Rohimun was cautiously picking her way down the garden toward him. With the house lights behind her and without her chunna, she looked like some gora girl in jeans and a shirt. When she reached him, she didn’t gesture toward his feet, say Sorry, Bai, sorry. Her head was high, her eyes met his. He braced himself for more anger, but she took his hand without a word. They stood silently in the cool prickle of falling dew and crisp grass. He understood nothing anymore.

  “What sort of Desi family are we?” Her voice was calm now. “Fucked up, I reckon, like all the Anglo-Desis.”

  His chest heaved in a half-laugh, half-sob. “Yeah.”

  So these were the new rules. No apologies for swearing in front of him, no chunna. No need for family ties, perhaps? He felt sick. But then she put her arms around him, and her soft plumpness, so like their mother’s, leaned into his chest. He rested his chin on her head.

  They stood like that for a time, until Tariq’s breathing slowed and his nausea receded. Perhaps it didn’t matter what his sister was, what she did, as long as she didn’t abandon him, because he would fall, fail, without her. He could never do this on his own.

  Eventually, quiet now, they drifted together back up the garden and sat down again on the patio’s edge. And then they talked properly for the first time in years.

  And it was here that Tariq learned that his sister was perhaps even more afraid of re-entering the family fold than of returning to London, friendless and free. And how she had always known that her brother’s need for family, for belonging, was so much greater than her own. And for a time, at least, even the terrible secret that still lay between them—that he was not all that he appeared—seemed a little less insurmountable.

  Sixteen

  WHEN DR. CHOUDHURY finally left the sitting room and walked into the cottage’s hallway, there was no one to be seen. It was very quiet.

  “Mrs. Begum?” he called out. “Where are your children?” He could hear her slow tread on the landing above, but there was no reply. Where were they all?

  After a little while, he found himself standing irresolutely by the front door. He may as well open it: the house could do with a little freshening up. Cool air flowed in, but nothing else. Perhaps there was a full moon. Women were so prey to their natural cycles.

  He teetered on the edge of the first step before retreating inside, shutting the door on nature with secret relief. Claude Levi-Strauss was a man of such insight when he divided the world between the natural and man-made forces. Like him, Dr. Choudhury was a man of civilization and culture, whereas Mrs. Begum, less developed, was all nature and impulse. Perhaps he could surprise her with a nice set of Wiltshire Staysharps in their own pine block: he had seen one on the shopping channel. And then she would relinquish that dangerous village-type dhaa for good.

  The hallway was still dark, not an auspicious sign. After a consideration of the risky complexities of microwaves and how they had a tendency to ding in a way that could be heard all over the house, he decided to forgo the dangers of a wifeless meal for the pleasure of intellectual exercise in his study. And he was almost certain that there was a leftover ladhu ball, still edible in its foil, in his desk drawer.

  Was that a noise? Maybe his wife was intending to come downstairs again. His stomach rumbled. Perhaps he would wait in his study until he was sure. On the way he passed the ornate hall mirror, almost full-length, and stopped to briefly examine his reflection in a manner that would be virtually imperceptible to others.

  Yes, first-rate. A man of the intellect, but of compassion too, like Amitabh Bachchan in Mohabbatein. Or maybe Ek Rishta. The life of the mind was so preferable to these petty domestic matters that preoccupied the minds of women. Was that a hint of jowl? Of course not. He smoothed his hair, a distinguished white now, back from his high brow. Jowls were on Mrs. Begum’s side, along with lack of height and incessant activity.

  Beneath the hall mirror was a small telephone table on which Mrs. Begum had placed a stack of saris. The top one was the color of a ripe plum with a deep edging of antique gold, Mughal-style, on a black background. An excellent combination for the coloring of maturity. He slid his fingers underneath so as not to disturb the folds, and carried the stack into his study.

  When they had moved to the cottage, just on three years ago, the lack of storage space in their bedroom had prompted him to suggest that Mrs. Begum’s most elaborate and rarely worn saris would be best stored in the built-in cupboards of his study, and the arrangement had worked very well. They were not crammed upstairs, and he had the pleasure—the cultivated aesthetic pleasure of the well-educated man—in seeing the glow and sheen of these rich fabrics every time he opened his cupboard doors.

  Viewing them, sometimes moving his hands over them in the quiet evenings, brought him a measure of comfort, of gratification impossible to explain, ridiculous to discuss. The three-dimensional roughness of the gold and silver embroidery, the slippery liquidity of modern silks and microfibers and, most precious of all, the stiff smoothness of the raw silk Benares saris, some of them three generations old (many his mother’s and her mother’s before her), were like a secret treasure trove all his own. Truth be told, he even found it hard to tolerate his wife’s occasional forays into them on special occasions. He had arranged them by texture and color, in piles of three, with their matching petticoats, but without their fitted blouses. Those were still upstairs, in the top drawers of the tallboy.

  His stomach rumbled again. He had not eaten, his wife was upstairs . . . how had this mess happened? He had prepared himself so well for the role of stern but ultimately compassionate father figure. He had been willing to give his son and daughter all the time in the world to bring him round, to soften his paternal heart with their pleading. But where was the younger generation’s patience? Where was their respect? Did they not know that he was a man of many, many parts?

  He had been a good father; no one could say otherwise. Dr. Choudhury thought of his own father, of all the changes after his mother’s death. His father had started to lock him in the spare room after school to study until bedtime: the beginning of a relentless pressure toward the holy grail of a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford that ground on and on, through the end of primary school, secondary school and Dhaka University first-class honors degrees in History and Architecture.

  How many tears had he shed there, just him and the books and the old wardrobe full of his mother’s saris, forgotten since her death. He could still remember the scent of coconut oil that lingered on the material, which he always believed came from his mother’s hair oil. And the tiny catches in the fabric that perhaps were from snagging on bracelets, or the necklace sets that she was never photographed without.

  He had never pressured his own son like that. He had always been a first-rate modern father to all his children. Tariq had been free to choose his own path at university and his own friends. Even when Tariq joined Jamat-al-Islami and started dressing like some ignorant village elder, he had not interfered. And he had been right, right all along. Here was his boy, a grown man, broad-shouldered, no longer a fundamentalist, a number-one success Inshallah, with his Oxford
master’s and now home with his family. He was the perfect blend of East and West: comfortable in sherwani and dinner jacket, Bangla and English. Yes. Curry and pudding. Dr. Choudhury’s stomach rumbled again. He would have the ladhu ball in peace and quiet, so rare in this house.

  He opened the sari cupboard and carefully placed the three saris on the piles that were most complimentary to them, stood in contemplation, then moved away to lock the study door. It was, after all, his sanctum sanctorum.

  As for his daughters, there was no escaping the fact that they were a great disappointment. Especially his eldest, so promising in her paintings, like his own mother, but with the chance to fulfil her promise that his mother had never had. And now where was Rohimun? Her picture in a magazine and now a newspaper, like some page-three slut.

  Yet he would not think on such things. In fact, not the ladhu ball either. For now, the north of his internal compass was set once more for the sari cupboard.

  And pretty little Shunduri, never should have called her that, it was asking for trouble to call a girl Beauty. Unmarriageable, both daughters, unless of course his own high-prestige reputation in the community . . . But that was the trouble, all these peasant-type matchmaking families were the same. They cared nothing for art galleries and master’s degrees, just whether the girls could cook traditional-style and if Tariq had his own car.

  He removed the plum sari and shook out its folds to see the embroidery on the pallu. This, the most elaborate end of the sari, designed to highlight the swing of fabric down the back or over the bent arm, was truly beautiful: a series of alternating black and plum squares, framed by dark gold aari cutwork.

  Yes, this was the one he had chosen during their last trip to Leicester. Mrs. Begum must have just finished sewing the blouse. A beautiful choice, but a pity she was so short. And stout. A dramatic sari like this deserved a taller, slimmer figure. He looked up from the fabric to meet his own eyes in the cheval glass that stood in the corner. An essential piece of furniture, as he always told Mrs. Begum, for those occasions when he could not adjust his dress in the hallway mirror before leaving the house, that is, cottage. This color was perfect for him.