by Meera Syal
‘Well, he was eighty odd, lived in the same house all his life, couldn’t cope with a big Bengali family as his neighbours. I mean, they were noisy. I could sort of see his point. That’s why it was so hard. I felt . . . disloyal. Both ways.’ Sunita exhaled gently and watched the yellow neon lights above her flash past the car, fluorescent beads flying through an inky sky. ‘It used to be simple, didn’t it, Tans? Us and them. My job was clear. Defender of my people. Waving my flaming sword over their heads. I liked feeling useful. But some of them don’t even say thank you. And most of them are so bloody angry.’ She paused, squinting against the smoke, and handed the cigarette back to Tania. ‘Maybe it’s something to do with being a mother. You see everybody’s point of view. I imagine some of the poor sods I meet as babies, gurgling on sheepskin rugs with dimpled bums, and I wonder what the hell happened to them between being on the rug and standing in front of my desk.’
‘Oh god. Spare me the bad childhood crap. We’re not just what’s happened to us—’
‘I’m not saying that,’ snapped Sunita. ‘I’m just saying . . . I’m saying I have to do this job because we can’t afford for me not to. Not while Akash is still studying.’
‘So you won’t be moving to the mansion in Epping then?’
‘Not yet.’ Sunita sighed. ‘But then, I never married him for his money, did I?’
‘Tch! Did you learn nothing from your mother?’ Tania waggled her finger at her mock sternly.
‘Yeah well, at least I married a brahmin, unlike you, polluting your genes with a gora.’ Sunita giggled. ‘And what will your poor children be, hah? Crazy mixed up mongrels who won’t know how to eat with their fingers.’
‘No kids for me,’ Tania said grimly, ‘not unless they’re scrambled and on toast.’
‘And what does Martin think about that? He looks like good daddy material—’
‘Martin knows the score,’ Tania butted in smoothly. She began feeling around in the glove compartment. ‘Now, what sounds do you fancy? Bit of nostalgic bhangra? Massive Attack? Blast of R and B?’
‘I dunno . . . Educate me a bit,’ said Sunita. ‘Play some of this new fusion stuff they’re all listening to. Is that what it’s called? Indo-garage-funk-thingy. You know, you’re hip and with it, aren’t you?’
Tania paused for a second and then slipped The Best Of Aretha into the CD player.
‘Ah, sod it,’ she said. ‘I’m off duty now.’
Chila stood in the doorway, flustered by the honking of Tania’s horn. She glanced behind her at her new glass coffee table in the centre of the through lounge, groaning under the weight of plates of sweetmeats, freshly fried samosas and a just unwrapped Black Forest Gateau. Her surfaces were so polished they sparkled, just like the advert said. Maybe she had got it wrong, but she thought that they wanted to see her new house as well as her. She beckoned them over furiously, she mimed food going down her throat, she even rubbed her tummy and said Yum yum, which made Tania roll down her window finally, laughing.
‘I’ve booked somewhere for dinner! Hurry up, Chila sweetie!’
Sunita tapped Tania apologetically. ‘Er, don’t you think we ought to go in for five minutes? You know, bless the three-piece suite and that?’
‘Look, I was lucky to get this reservation. If we’re late there’s twenty other wannabes who’ll just grab our table . . . Nice suit, girlfriend!’
Chila clambered into the back seat, panting slightly, her tailored Punjabi suit emphasizing her voluptuous bust and cushiony hips. ‘Like the goddesses on the temples,’ Deeps had told her last night. ‘All woman, real woman. Stuff your pasty stick insects, eh? Men want a bit of meat in their sandwich!’ She hadn’t liked the last bit of that. It made her feel like she should cover herself with lime pickle and hand him a serviette. But she had kissed him all the same until her lips hurt. The yellow chiffon scarf settled around her shoulders, making her skin look almost black in the half-light.
‘I didn’t know we were going out. I mean, if I’d known, I could have put my Lycra on or whatever.’
‘Nah, they’ll love that look where we’re going. Nothing like a bit of the genuine ethnic for their street cred,’ said Tania, starting the engine.
‘Where are we going?’ Sunita and Chila said together.
‘Soho. Innit?’
Tania led her brood right down the centre of Dean Street as the pavements were heaving with people, spilling out from restaurants and cafés, drinking in the balmy night air with their cappuccinos and bellinis, playing at Continental café society until the rain and frost reminded them they should really be indoors with a cup of cocoa and the TV guide. Behaving like a Brit is so dependent on the weather, thought Tania as she pushed her way through a group of bemused cagoule-clad tourists, cameras aimed at a couple of drag queens who were arguing dramatically in a doorway. At their feet, a bored young man in a parka shook a tin mug at them half-heartedly, perhaps hoping to catch a falling sequin. His mangy terrier lay with its paws on a handwritten notice that said ‘The drugs don’t work and I can’t either. Please HELP!’
Shiny happy people laughed on every corner: office workers with their jackets on one shoulder and a girl in tan tights and a grateful smile on the other; the media wallahs in their uniform of distrait black and carefully unkempt hair, sending round wine bottles like Chinese whispers in their huddled smoky groups, greeting passing friends with loud joy, the joy that suddenly comes at those moments when life begins to resemble the film set in your head. Here we are in Soho and everybody knows me. Even a soundtrack was provided, the rasping melancholy notes filtering out from Ronnie Scott’s, the parp of irate taxis and the windy blasts of cheesy show tunes escaping through swinging stage doors while actors in incongruous costumes snatched a quick between-acts cigarette. The only ones who seemed unaware that this was officially the centre of cool were the pre-theatre patrons up from the suburbs, men in shiny jackets and women in Jaeger twinsets, trying to mind their table manners with half an eye on the passing tramps and the other on the handbags under their seats, next to their matching shoes.
Tania strode past them contemptuously. This was her patch now. She did not want reminding that she once wandered down this street in a too-new suit, clutching photocopies of her mainly fabricated CV, envying the frazzled couriers and surly sandwich sellers who dashed in and out of various adjoining TV and film companies with the Bolshie haste of the permanently late. That was before media was a respectable profession for women like her. Now it had replaced pharmacy as the new aspiring Asian vocation and she was continually bumping into doe-eyed babes and mockney lads at industry gigs whose confidence reminded her how fine the line was between pioneer and has-been. She had been one of the first. That counted for something, didn’t it?
She rang the buzzer of her club, tucked away between a patisserie and a fetish accessory shop, and bundled her charges inside proprietorially, half-expecting to see mittens on strings dangling from her friends’ coat sleeves.
Sunita followed Chila up the narrow stairway which led into a bordello-like reception area, all red velvet and ironically tacky tassles, to a desk attended by two blonde women with icy smiles. She tugged instinctively at the hem of her velvet dress, knowing it was forming an unattractive shelf over her bottom. She felt overdressed and she could feel her tights beginning their inevitable sag around her crotch. She wondered why Tania’s good nights out always felt like an audition. A plate of sag paneer and makhi thi roti in a local dhaba would have been enough for her.
‘And two guests please, Sammi.’ Tania smiled at one of the airbrushed Valkyries, who looked up for a moment and stopped, her pen in mid-air.
Chila was looking round with the wonder of a child in a department store grotto. She reached forward tentatively and held one of the gold tassles gently in the palm of her hand, letting the fringes dance a samba on her fingers.
‘Did you get these from John Lewis?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry?’ said the receptionist politely.
Tania attempted an ‘Oh you’ chuckle and began moving up the stairs, beckoning the others to follow.
‘My mum’s got these in her sitting room, actually,’ said the receptionist, her smile beginning to thaw into something approaching human. ‘She calls it the Best Room. She makes me die!’ The bored drawl had taken on a sing-song lilt that belonged in a suburban Midland parlour surrounded by chintz.
The other receptionist leaned forward and whispered, ‘Loove your outfit, by the way. This stuff is really in at the mo. Is it DKNY?’
Chila looked down for a moment. ‘No, Bimla’s Bargains, Forest Gate, I think . . .’
They were still laughing about it two hours and three courses later, re-enacting the scenario with empty bottles and stained napkins, Chila good-naturedly taking up her role as idiot savant, pulling faces which made them clutch their sides and long for the bathroom.
Men paused at their table all evening en route to the bar or terrace, drawn by the three burnished moons floating in the half-light of Tania’s favourite corner table. ‘Jewels in an Ethiope’s ear,’ muttered one out of work actor as he fiddled with a stash of coke in his trouser pocket, hoping the monosyllabic director he’d been schmoozing for three hours would still be there when he returned from the toilet, brighter and wittier than before. ‘That’s what I need,’ mused another, as his yapping girlfriend stalked him around the bar, moaning that he had forgotten to book a table and it was their anniversary. He pictured the one in the lemon suit serving him a home-made korma and then leading him to a silk-lined bedroom, dropping veils as she went, and taking him through a few positions in the Karma Sutra before gratefully moaning his name as they drifted into incense-scented sleep. A couple of them attempted conversation, friends of Tania’s friends, who sidled up with small talk and smiles.
Tania enjoyed seeing them witter, enjoyed the unspoken questions hanging in the smoky air. The sense of dislocation that dogged her like a shadow momentarily faded. She was used to not belonging anywhere totally. In fact, it was quite a relief to peel off the labels randomly stuck on her forehead somewhere around 1979, which read ‘Culture Clash Victim – Handle with Care’ or ‘Oppressed Third World Woman – Give her a Grant.’ She’d met enough people like her whose isolation was their calling card; being different, having an objective third eye, that’s what her business wanted. ‘All artists are lone wolves, remember that,’ a producer had told her some years back, just before he had patted her knee and asked if she could operate a dictaphone.
Lately, though, something else was bothering her. She couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. The fatigue, well, that’s what happened when you were swimming upstream all the time; the insomnia, that she’d suffered with since her teens. She took another sip of wine and watched Chila and Sunita whispering together, their hands linked unselfconsciously, and her heart creaked wearily in its cage. She was lonely. And it was only when she was with these women that she realized she was. She drained her glass in one swift gulp and banged it down on the table.
‘Come on, Chila, let’s get the photos out the way, then!’
Chila shook her head. ‘Oh no, listen, you don’t have to . . . I mean, we can do it another time.’
‘Photos! Photos!’ Sunita began chanting, waving her serviette around like a celebration flag. Her face was flushed, she could feel cool air on her cleavage and knew her dress had given up the battle with her bust and let gravity do its work. On the spinning carousel in her head, she saw teething babies, grumpy husbands, unironed shirts, bathroom scales and the old man from her office float by. She waved them all on and drained another bottle of red wine.
Chila brought a small Cellophane-covered book from her bag and laid it carefully on the table. ‘This is just the official ones of the reception. I couldn’t fit the other twelve albums in my bag.’
‘Suppose you’ve got a video too,’ said Sunita, grabbing the album and flicking through it. ‘Oh, look at you. Hai hai! Such a blushing virgin bride.’
‘Yeah, about seventeen hours of video,’ Chila sighed, ‘all with Hindi love songs on them and those fancy Top of the Pops effects. You know, twenty little me’s all swirling round on a glitter ball. Quite nice actually . . .’
‘God, he’s a bit of all right, your Deepak, isn’t he?’
Tania looked over Sunita’s shoulder at a glossy soft focus photograph in which Deepak stood stiffly behind Chila, his arm resting on her shoulder. Behind them was a garish rosy sunset over a golden beach. Just above the fringed palm trees was the logo ‘Paradise Video and Photography Services, Barking.’
‘You didn’t go on honeymoon, did you?’ asked Sunita.
Chila shook her head.
‘Then what’s with the beach?’
‘Oh, no, the photographer put that on in his studio. It’s really clever, innit?’ Before Sunita could answer, Chila flipped over a page and said, ‘And wait till you see what he’s done with these.’
The first thing Sunita saw was Chila’s head floating in the middle of a rose bush. She put down her wine glass and blinked slowly. No, it really was Chila’s disembodied head in the middle of the blooms, in full bridal headgear, smiling uncertainly as if she was slightly embarrassed that the rest of her body had decided not to turn up. There was Chila and Deepak running towards each other, arms outstretched, the mountains of Simla behind them in glorious Technicolor.
‘I love this one,’ said Chila, pointing to a shot of the wedding car. In the middle of the Mercedes bumper were Chila and Deepak, or more precisely their superimposed heads, leaning towards each other for a kiss. It was obvious that this particular photographer had a sentimental streak, or maybe he wanted to try out a new pair of scissors he had just acquired, but the whole album resembled a collision between an Indian film from the early Seventies and Salvador Dali on his day off. Here was Deepak holding a rose to his face while fountains spurted knowingly behind him; there was Chila, in miniature, superimposed on a large red balloon hanging from the bridal canopy. Various guests and relatives made ghostly appearances on garlands, in shrubs and, in one instance, from the flames of the holy fire.
‘Those are your in-laws, aren’t they?’ asked Sunita, too stunned to laugh by now.
‘Yes, Deeps didn’t like that one. He said his family looked like a row of kebabs. He hated this one too.’ She pointed to the final photograph, a plate of food displaying the various sumptuous courses offered during the reception. And there, in the middle of the bed of rice, were Chila and Deepak, feeding each other a sweetmeat. ‘I mean, I could see what he was trying to say,’ Chila apologized, ‘you know, here’s the food and here’s us eating. But I’m not sure it quite worked. Still, it’s different, eh?’
Sunita and Tania carefully avoided looking at each other, aware of the tremor in Chila’s voice. Protecting Chila was something they had always tacitly agreed on. ‘Well . . .’ Sunita began, clearing her throat, ‘like I said, your hubbie’s good enough to eat, so why not put him on a bed of basmati?’
Chila giggled, closing the book. ‘Yeah, he’ll do, as they say. Good job Tania’s got such good taste in blokes, eh?’
‘Pardon?’ said Tania quickly, the hysteria of the photos suddenly evaporating.
‘Well, I mean you did introduce us, Tans. Otherwise I’d still be sitting at home watching QVC and doing me toenails.’
‘How did you know Deepak then?’ asked Sunita, glad of an opportunity to steer the conversation away from Chila’s album.
‘Oh, you know, around,’ Tania muttered, hunting for a cigarette, ‘when I was looking for finance for this short film.’
‘Deeps has seen all your programmes, you know,’ Chila said smiling. ‘Even got some of them on tape.’
‘Got to go to the loo,’ said Tania, getting up. ‘Do you want to order some more wine, Sunny, while I’m gone?’
&nb
sp; ‘Oh, I dunno. I should be getting back really.’
‘They’ll be fine,’ said Tania over her shoulder. ‘Just call home and check if it makes you feel better.’
By the time Tania returned, the table was empty. A waiter stood beside it, coughing slightly as he handed Tania the bill.
‘They’re in reception, I believe,’ he said, his hand outstretched.
Sunita was sniffling into a paper tissue while Chila rubbed her back, crooning gently to her.
‘She just phoned home. A neighbour answered and said Akash had to take Sunil to hospital.’
‘I never should have left them,’ Sunita sobbed. ‘I just had a feeling . . . Tans, can you run me home?’
‘I can’t, Sunny, I’m over the limit. That’s why I left my car in the office car park.’
‘I’ve ordered her a cab,’ said Chila calmly. ‘I knew you were a bit merry. Do you want me to come with you, Sunny?’
Sunita shook her head. She was absent-mindedly shredding the tissue into flakes which settled like giant’s dandruff on her black velvet lap. The two receptionists were fielding guests who had just arrived for a private party upstairs. The arrivals shoved their coats hurriedly across the desk and averted their eyes as they passed the three women in the corner.
Tania turned her back to the stairs. Tiny bubbles started bursting somewhere near her left temple and she swore to herself. It wasn’t fair, getting the hangover before she’d gone to bed. She knew she could pick up the phone and ask Martin to come and pick her up but tonight she didn’t feel like answering the hundreds of questions there always were, when she returned from a night out without him.
Tania felt a tap on her shoulder. She swung round to face her boss. Jonathan was in his usual uniform of cord jacket and faded denim, at odds with his slightly sagging jowls and neat side parting. He was swinging a bottle of Bollinger from each hand.
‘Tans,’ he gushed, planting a smacker on her cheek. ‘Red Box are having a do upstairs, it’s the wrap for the adultery doc for Carlton. You ought to call in, there’s a few people you should meet.’ It wasn’t a request. Jonathan was already halfway up the stairs, following a couple of pert behinds in red Lycra.