by Meera Syal
It was only after the second or third session that I realized we three hadn’t really sat down and talked like this for years. Oh, we’ve kept up OK, but as our lives got busier, we forgot about the soul chat. Sometimes I go to bed with a head full of long-forgotten memories, and I turn them over and over in the dark, enjoying the smells and colours they bring back.
Akash leaves us to it. He’s always been sensitive that way, understanding that we won’t get down to the essentials if he’s watching. And then after Chila’s gone and I’m tidying up, that’s when Tans goes up to the study. As I pass the door on my way to check on the kids, I hear them chatting inside, Akash’s bass chuckle, Tania gabbing over it, and sniff the fumes of happiness which somehow escape from the rolled up towel wedged against the door. No, I’m not jealous. I still believe in the sisterhood enough to know that the most Tania will do is flirt, and the most Akash will do is let her. As far as I’m concerned, anything that brings back his enthusiasm has got to be good for all of us eventually. Talking about relationships endlessly might make him look at his own. He might even finish some of those books. I can wait. I have given up so much to be where I am now, it seems the . . . careful thing to do.
3
MRS WILKINSON WORRIED about the traffic mostly. She had bought her flat after her husband died, hoping for a bit of peace and quiet. It stood on a pleasant tree-lined avenue off the main road, no shops or schools nearby, and even had the added bonus of some cherry trees right in her view. That was how she kept track of the seasons, since time had turned from a regimented march into this slow meandering contemplation. It was one of her greedy pleasures, waiting for the tightly scrolled buds to unfurl and burst into white and pink froth, almost overnight.
And then that blasted clinic had opened up right opposite, right under her favourite tree, the one with the scarred trunk and the most audacious blooms. She had protested, with many of the other residents. She had even got her motorized shopping trolley out for a march, or rather slow conveyor belt, to the local council offices, to argue that inviting a lot of loonies into the area would do nothing for the mental health of the neighbours, to say nothing of the effect on their house prices. Those officious red-tapers had reassured them that the Tisdale Clinic was simply a therapy centre offering a range of services to perfectly ordinary people who just felt they needed a bit of extra help.
‘No Care in the Community cases,’ the pompous jobs-worth had shouted in her ear, as if she was deaf as well as slightly gouty.
Stuff and nonsense, she had shouted back, ordinary people did not have the time, never mind the money, to be sitting around hugging cushions and harping on about what they didn’t have when they were six. Ordinary people, like her good self, went through two wars, three dead babies, rationing, a husband with cancer and the reshuffle of Radio 4 without ever complaining that life had been unfair. And why did every Tom, Dick, etc. expect to be happy all the time anyway? Two spoons of salt for every one of sugar, she’d told him, that’s the way it is. By then he’d gone back into his office and she had to ask a passing coloured lady for some help to find a lift. The lady was awfully kind, and yes, Mrs Wilkinson had been a tad upset that day because she had wondered if she was going to have to move house again.
At first, Mrs Wilkinson steadfastly refused to even look in the vague direction of the Tisdale Clinic. She was aware of bodies coming and going, the car engines and slamming doors saw to that, and just to show them, she moved her armchair from the window to the other side of the room and turned up the radio with her gnarled, knotted fingers. But gradually, imperceptibly, she became interested in the constant flow of human traffic which arrived and departed every day, with the swell and regularity of the tides. She could have set her watch by them, had she worn one.
Beneath the benevolent blossoms, a hundred times a day, couples met with tender embraces, or uncertain nods, or sometimes walked right past each other, one leaving the door to slam in the other’s face. They climbed the steps slowly, as if their hearts were boulders on their backs, or briskly, as if business had to be done and done quickly, or sometimes, rarely, hand in hand like infants in a school play, they made their entrance with self-conscious pride. While the trees kept their promises, and sprouted shoots, exploded into flower and shed their fragile blooms with comforting precision at their feet, love fashioned some unlikely pairings. Mrs Wilkinson would never have joined the sour-faced bottle blonde with the sad jowly gentleman in a suit, nor the mousy hausfrau with her leathery, tanned medallion man. What made that scowling pretty boy walk out with someone old enough to be his mother? And why did that gorgeous couple, who arrived in matching sports cars, both on mobile phones, look so lost when they faced each other on the steps? Why did the wind decide to blow at that moment and unsettle a blizzard of petals which fell, cruelly, like confetti?
There were other visitors, too, who arrived bearing different burdens. The anorexics were easy to spot, inevitably dressed in huge, shapeless jumpers, whatever the weather, with their stretched bony faces poking out, tortoise-like, from the voluminous folds. They would always be accompanied by a parent or two, anxious middle-aged people, worn out from smiling too much, who would hover round their emaciated child, watching them take reluctant sparrow steps towards the clinic. Those girls, and they always seemed to be girls, never visited for very long. Mrs Wilkinson concluded that they were brought to the Tisdale for some emergency consultation and then taken away to what she hoped were pretty houses in the countryside where they could eat cream cakes in soft sofas and get out of that terrible knitwear.
The obese over-eaters did not dress much better (How many ways are there of wearing a flowery tent? argued Mrs Wilkinson), but they seemed to enjoy life more than the skinnies. Mrs Wilkinson actually looked forward to their Monday night meetings when, she fancied, the pavement would begin shaking as they all rolled into view, chattering between frequent stops to catch their breath. They were a mixed bunch, men and women, although fat was a strangely democratic uniform and from a distance it was sometimes hard to tell. She had never before seen so much flesh in one place; it was mesmerizing, the heaves and rolls contained under fabric, moving around like tumbling animals under a blanket and, strangely, wonderfully comforting. These were the people Mrs Wilkinson would have chosen to be her friends.
There were others who made her want to close her curtains and weep. The beautiful haunted woman, in expensive clothes, who stepped smartly out of the entrance and pulled out fistfuls of coiffeured hair as she descended each step. The gangly boy, only about twenty, who left the building still waving a jolly goodbye and as soon as he reached the pavement, collapsed against the soothing bark of a tree and howled like a stricken beast. Too many to recall, the numbers pained her as much as her final impression of their faces. But by now, she was something of an expert at spotting who was going to make it and get better, and who wasn’t.
It was all in the exit. No-one entered that building without hope; even the smallest grain of faith could yield, in time, a pearl. But how they left it, that said everything. Mrs Wilkinson’s whole day could be ruined by a couple leaving the building in stony silence, a tangible forcefield around each of them, the static crackling as they said their stiff goodbyes. She wanted to open her window and tell them, silly fools, Don’t you realize how quickly you will grow old? But those days when two people would emerge together, blinking in the light, and one, perhaps, would wait for the other patiently, to put away a tissue or adjust a scarf, those were glorious days. Only tiny kindnesses, but the ones that counted, the million little mercies we take for granted, the mundane gestures that keep us, tentatively, together. Those were the occasions when Mrs Wilkinson would pour herself a sherry and put on her Countdown compilation video tape. Living where she did, she had learned to celebrate even the smallest triumph over adversity.
She kept a close eye on the couple who were approaching the clinic. Handsome folk, Asian or Middle-eastern perhaps, good jobs, the clothes were discreet and well
-made, although his choice of jewellery gave away some common origins. He strode up the steps without waiting for her. Not a good sign. She rolled her eyes but managed a small smile and followed him up. Mrs Wilkinson glanced over at the sherry bottle. She would wait on this one.
Akash plumped up some African print cushions on the sofa in his consulting room and placed a strategic box of man-size tissues next to it on the floor. He stood up sharply, hearing a familiar whirring hum at his back.
‘Do you have to film me doing this?’ he asked with a sigh.
Tania adjusted the focus on her DV hand-held camera and nodded wordlessly. She went in for a close up on the tissue box and then slowly panned round towards the bulging bookcase, going in on the titles in jaunty lettering on the pristine spines. ‘Anger Management: A Crash Course, The Tao of Captain Pugwash, Sexual Symbolism in Eastern Religions, Now I’m Better, Why Don’t You Like Me Anymore?’
‘Have you actually read any of these tomes?’ Tania finally said, after switching off the camera and carefully placing it on Akash’s weatherbeaten desk.
‘It’s probably not a good idea to be brandishing that dinky toy about when they come in,’ Akash said, irritated.
‘They know I’ll be here, right? They’ve given their permission. I’ve got the consent form right here.’ Tania picked through the contents of a china fruit bowl on the side table. ‘Are they NHS referrals, then? Or members of the neurotic rich?’
‘They pay the minimum, as they know they’ll be seeing a counsellor in training. And anyway, they asked to see someone . . . like me, sympathetic to their culture.’ Akash tried to keep the defensive edge out of his voice. ‘They’ve been coming to me for a couple of months actually.’
Tania was peeling a grape slowly, slicing delicately through the skin with her thumbnail. Akash was momentarily mesmerized by this – the precise incision, the glistening streak of juice, the translucent flesh beneath, vulnerable and exposed – simultaneously wondering if everything Tania did was for effect.
It became burdensome after a while, this constant silent commentary in his head. There were no spontaneous gestures left in the world; everything had a motive, deliberate or unconscious. Every human being was supposedly unique, a complex collision of inheritance and environment, and somewhere hidden, in a spark caught between snapping synapses, the unpredictable kink, which in a crisis sorted out the sane from the rest of us. Some people called it the soul, he supposed. Although it seemed to him the more he saw of people, the more they seemed, depressingly, the same.
Maybe it was his job, his vocation that had caused this temporary rift between him and Sunita. Maybe now it was impossible for him to see her clearly, to react instinctively, emotionally, to what was bothering her, because every time he looked into those disappointed eyes, he flicked through case files in his head, pages flipping like a metronome. After all, who enjoyed taking their work home? He plumped another cushion and wondered if gynaecologists had lousy sex lives.
‘It’s not a toy, by the way, this baby,’ Tania said, patting her video camera proudly. ‘State of the art, broadcast quality, used by news crews all over the world and yet still compact enough to fit into a lady’s handbag.’ She threw the rest of her grape up in the air and caught it expertly in her mouth.
Akash felt he was expected to applaud.
‘I’m using the DV for all the counselling sessions,’ Tania continued, rummaging in her handbag, which was actually large enough to contain a couple of cameras and a tripod. ‘It will give them a nice grainy feel . . . hand-held shots, no individual mikes, just the atmos I pick up with the built-in one, like I’m another person in the room just listening. It will make it feel—’
‘Authentic?’ said Akash, a small hard smile pinching his lips.
‘Hey, you’re the one who wants to be Dr Ruth. I’m happy not to film you at all.’
The intercom buzzed and a disembodied voice informed Akash that his two-thirty appointment had arrived.
He quickly sorted through a haphazard pile of papers on his desk, breaking off to speak into the intercom.
‘Do show them up, Maureen.’ After locating the missing file, he added over his shoulder, ‘You know exactly why I am doing this, because people like us need to know that there are other people like us they can talk to, if they need to.’
‘Oh, I dunno,’ replied Tania smoothly, ‘I think there’s nothing worse than being judged by your peers.’
‘Yeah, you call it judgement, I call it justice, and that, my dear Tania, is the difference between us.’
Tania picked up the camera and winked at Akash. ‘We make a great team, don’t ya think?’ she said, just in time to catch Mr and Mrs Dhillon walking through the door.
Fifteen minutes into the session, Tania’s neck began to tingle. Something was going to happen, she could feel it. The introductions had been cordial enough. The Dhillons seemed unfazed by the camera, having been reassured that their real names would not be used and that Tania would only film them in wide angle. Why they assumed that this would preserve some anonymity, Tania did not know, but she was not about to set them straight. Akash had been more nervous, clearing his throat too much and fiddling with his pen, until Raj and Seema had finally forgotten they were being filmed and stopped being polite.
‘She just does not try . . . anything to make this better,’ Raj began. ‘I know she’s unhappy. I’ve tried, you know, the stuff you’ve been saying, talking more, more time together. I even bought her flowers last week without being asked. She’s still . . . cold. Ice woman.’
Akash leaned forward. ‘Seema? Is that how you feel?’
Seema shrugged and lowered her head.
‘You see that? See that, what she did? That’s what I get when I try to talk to her. Sod all!’ Raj shifted in his chair, crossing his legs away from his wife.
Tania framed it beautifully. She was getting frustrated at not being able to go in closer. They were a photogenic couple. He had typically Punjabi features, aquiline nose, strong chin, thick, wavy hair, a grainy wash of beard shadowing his cheeks. Those molten eyes, always their best feature, she thought, with a needle of nostalgia entering a soft part of her. Now the wife, she was interesting. Not a looker but she’d worked hard on herself, made the most of her bedroom eyes and heaving cleavage. Maybe it was the way the light filtered through the leaves from the tree outside the window, dappling her with soft, shifting shades, giving her a glow that Tania could only achieve with an expert DOP and a large amount of glycerine on the lens, but she looked up suddenly, this silent wife, and was transformed.
Incandescent was the word that sprang into Akash’s mind. This is not a defeated woman, he rapidly decided.
Different, thought her husband, a worm of suspicion entering his chest, she’s done something different and I’ve only just noticed. The last time she looked like this was on honeymoon. No wonder I fell in love.
Tania could not find the word, but she knew. Every sinew in her body vibrated, rusty strings plucked again after so long, painfully picking out, note by note, an old, old song she had tried to forget. She could sing the harmony to this, the tune that hung in the air between her and Mrs Dhillon. She reached for the focus on the camera and slowly, discreetly, began to zoom in.
‘Seema? Do you want to say something to Raj?’ Akash asked again gently.
Seema sighed, the winds of the world, oh, how she regretted everything and nothing, not one damn thing. ‘Yes. One bunch of flowers does not make up for years of . . . years of being shouted at . . . and ignored.’
‘I’ve been working on my temper,’ Raj said through only slightly gritted teeth. ‘You know I have. I’ve had to . . . unlearn stuff, like you said,’ he continued, looking at Akash.
Akash began to clear his throat and thought better of it. Instead, he slightly angled his profile towards Tania. ‘Yes, we’ve had long discussions about your family, Raj. You told us how you grew up basically watching your father bellow at your mother and, as she never complained,
you assumed this was normal behaviour.’
Raj nodded wordlessly, his eyes clouded over, scenes replayed through the veil of his mother’s dupatta, doors banging, glass breaking, the vice of her fingers on his small arm keeping him still and mute, Fiker na ker bucha, don’t worry, stand quietly, your papa’s passing. He was always reminded that he came from warrior caste, khattri, born a soldier, so there always had to be someone to fight. He was tired now, and if putting his balls on a plate and handing it to his wife was what he had to do, well, at least his children wouldn’t piss their pants when he walked past them.
‘These are the hardest habits to break,’ Akash continued, managing a reassuring smile. ‘The old ones. All men have to contend with the example set by their fathers. But for us, we are also having to reassess our cultural habits, too.’ Akash was flowing now. He loved these moments, when the theory became flesh, when it all fitted perfectly. ‘It is extremely hard, having to dismantle your belief system. Because we . . . you are not only having to question your attitudes as a man, but more specifically, as an Asian man. It can seem like you’re losing everything that makes you you, but we all know, at least I hope we do after two months together, that we are also the generation that can change things, redefine what being Asian and male or Asian and female means, without losing pride in who we are. Because culture evolves and changes, just like human beings.’
‘Oh, yeah? And how do we do that, then?’ said Raj, looking directly at Akash.
‘You’re doing it now, both of you, just by being here. Do you think any of our parents would have ever considered coming to a place like this, without seeing it as an admission of failure? You see, in our culture—’