by Meera Syal
‘If you mention culture one more time, I might just throw up,’ said Seema calmly.
Raj stared at his wife as if she had just acquired another head. Akash coughed nervously, swivelled his head and looked straight down Tania’s lens. Chaos theory personified, thought Tania as she adjusted the focus.
‘Um, Seema, could you—’ Akash began.
‘I could end up like my mother. I’m supposed to because everyone says she’s a saint, but she’s sixty-three and I’m thirty-three, and I’ve already had enough practice at being a good girl and keeping quiet and I’ve got lots more years to live and I’m scared of wasting them and I don’t have any more time to wait until my husband gets kinder or sexier or . . . better, because I seem to have spent all my marriage waiting and I know I’m supposed to try everything and think of the kids but we don’t have any because we don’t have much sex and I’ve been taking the pill behind his back and anyway, what more can you try if you don’t love somebody any more?’
Akash blinked rapidly. Raj seemed to deflate in his chair, his knees and arms shrivelled to stumps and the bones in his face dissolved, leaving a sagging bag pinpricked by two glittering eyes.
‘I’ve met someone else,’ Seema said.
Tania went in closer for a BCU of Seema’s placid face and could not stop her fingers trembling. She was lost, the wife, Tania recognized all the symptoms, way down the rocky road to hell, hand in hand with her angel.
‘Who?’ whispered Raj.
‘It doesn’t matter. He’s not you.’
Tania didn’t see the chair but she felt one of the legs clip her ear as it flew past her head. The sound quality wasn’t great, but the roaring and screaming sounded rather good when distorted, and the slipshod angles really worked, Raj’s jagged profile whipping past camera, Seema’s panicked eyes, the bone of her ankle as she cowered behind the table, Akash’s bald patch visible as he emerged from his hiding place under the desk and wrestled with Raj, the scattered files, the unused tissue box, and finally a bull of a man sitting quiet as a child amongst the debris. The world in pieces, how else could you shoot a scene of two lives fragmenting?
Afterwards, Akash sat on his sofa, limp as a rag. Undone, all those weeks of work, all those reassurances, all those noises of encouragement, all shattered with a few well-aimed words. Why had he not guessed what was going on? It was a textbook scenario, the reluctant partner with a hidden agenda. What pained him most was that Raj had been making such remarkable progress. Akash had not held out much hope when he first assessed him, had already shoved him into the box marked Neanderthal Man. But week by week, layer by layer, Raj had unpeeled himself, exposing nerve endings to the air. For anyone, this was an achievement; for this recent cave dweller, a ghetto boy made good, it was nothing short of a miracle. He had every excuse in the world not to change; he could have attributed all his failings to racism, bad parenting and a lack of positive role models, had he been familiar with the vocabulary, but instead, he had turned up once a week to talk and bought his wife flowers. Bad timing. Human nature. Kismet. Karma. Whoever we blame, the shit smells the same.
Tania, meanwhile, was packing her equipment away, humming to herself.
‘Are you going to put what happened in the programme?’ Akash said eventually.
Tania didn’t look up. ‘Can’t tell yet. Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On what happens next.’
Akash closed his eyes. ‘They won’t be coming back.’
‘No,’ said Tania. ‘Fancy some lunch?’
Martin’s stomach rumbled so loudly that he wondered if downstairs’ repulsive shih tzu puppy had managed somehow to break into the flat. He reread his opening paragraph, angling his computer screen away from the window. ‘Ben, Matt and Tony are three thirty-something lads who share a flat above a betting shop in downtown Clapham. They consider themselves quite ordinary, decent blokes: they like football but hate Arsenal on principle; they think Page Three is a laugh but wouldn’t leave it lying around; they get pissed occasionally but not to the extent that they’d barf in a mate’s car, forget their names or sleep with their girlfriend’s sister. Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention . . .’ Martin paused. ‘They’re all transvestites. No. They’re all in love with the same woman.’ His stomach emitted another warning grumble. ‘They are all originally from the planet Zark,’ he typed, and switched off the computer without bothering to save any of his morning’s efforts.
He had to eat. No, he had to tidy up first. He surveyed the collection of coffee cups and full ashtrays around the sitting room and knew they would have to be washed, wiped and back in their allotted homes before Tania came back. Which was a little unfair as she had left them there. Foolishly, he found her debris comforting, little piles of Tania around him while he worked.
He ambled over to the kitchen counter and picked out Madhur Jaffrey’s Flavours of India, its cover stained in the traditional way with yellow fingerprints of turmeric. He flicked through and paused fondly at the recipe for lamb with palak, the dish he had tried to impress her with on her first visit to his flat. He had arranged everything perfectly: candlelight, incense sticks burning, a Ravi Shankar CD playing (Kula Shaker would have been too obvious and naff), and a couple of local taxi firm numbers prominently displayed by the telephone, so she knew he wasn’t expecting anything on a plate.
He had been besotted the moment he had walked into the offices of the production company, half an hour early for a meeting, and saw her through a glass door arguing with someone he later discovered was her boss. So he looked up and . . . What did Richard Burton do when he first clapped eyes on Elizabeth Taylor? He laughed out loud, astonished at the absurdity of her beauty. Tania’s face shamed every pale imitation he had seen, in photos of those huge carved temples, the pouty heroines on the film posters in his local Indian supermarket, the airbrushed maidens in the wall friezes of his local tandoori. (Not that he hadn’t ever seen an Asian woman before, God no, he grew up in Slough after all.) They were all of a type these images, long-haired, sloe-eyed, hour-glass women, the ideal blueprint captured for posterity. He never thought he’d meet someone who rendered every cliché impotent. It was her paradoxes that ensnared him: the tailored suit and the leonine mane of blue-black hair, the delicate hands banging savagely on the table, that perfect face spitting fishwife bile.
So really, he shouldn’t have been surprised when, weeks later (after she had been sacked), after the lamb palak and a couple of bottles of wine, just at the point when Martin reckoned it was time to wrap up this fragile exotic bloom and send her safely home, Tania rolled over, carefully ran her tongue over his lips and whispered, ‘Now. Right now.’
He replayed the scene as he left the flat and walked briskly towards the high street, a tantalizing peep show of tangled limbs, discarded clothing, and the darkness of her, enveloping him. He had been too shocked to worry whether his breath smelled of garlic or if he was wearing the Road Runner motif boxer shorts he chose when he expected to sleep alone. He suspected he could have had galloping acne and a fungal infection and neither would have deterred Tania from her quest. Was he chosen? Or was she up for it and he happened to be in the vicinity? Two years later, he still occasionally asked himself this same question, worrying it like a loose tooth; delicious uncertainty was what kept them going, kept it all fresh and exciting. He knew he was the envy of his mates; there had been the usual Whey-hey gags about dusky maidens and their rubbery limbs, tantric sex a-plenty and possibly a nice back rub at the end of it.
‘They’re real goers, the good girls, aren’t they?’ his friend Joe had confided in him. ‘I had a Greek girlfriend once, all demure in daylight but it was like she was some carnal vampire. The minute it was lights off, we were at it for hours. Catholic women, Jewish birds, all the same. Not allowed to do it, see, so it’s all they think about. Thank Christ.’
Now the more obvious jokes had worn thin, and he and Tania were still together, his friends’ envy had softened into a
sort of grudging admiration. If a struggling writer like Martin could keep a high-maintenance totty like Tania happy, he must be doing something right. He just wished he knew what it was.
But then, he debated, as he strolled past the first parade of shops, pausing in front of the newsagent’s window, maybe it was better to preserve the mystery of whatever unknown chemical kept them together. It was true, there was a part of Tania he would always find fascinatingly alien, and he did not know if that was a racial or a female thing. It was not, as people often asked, anything to do with her family, as she rarely saw them and talked about them even less. It was not ostensibly a cultural barrier: she understood basic Punjabi but didn’t speak it; Martin had been to India and she hadn’t; it was Martin who brought home the latest fusion CDs and had to prise her away from Frank Sinatra to listen to them; it was him who brought home fireworks for Diwali or booked tickets for a Dussehra festival, and her who always refused to join in. ‘Ghetto groupie’ she had called him, only half joking. Although nowadays, fashion victim would have been a more accurate term, as brown was indeed the new black, in couture, in music, in design, on the high street, judging by the number of plump white girls prancing around wearing bindis on their heads and henna on their hands. Martin couldn’t understand it; the more the rest of the world found Tania’s background fascinating, the more she rejected it.
‘Sweetie,’ she told him one night, as she watched him cook dinner, ‘I am the genuine article and therefore I don’t have to try. I just have to be. You, on the other hand, being middle class, white and male, have to try any passing bandwagon, because what else have you got?’
And she was right, as his fruitless efforts this morning had proved. Who wanted to watch a sitcom about three lads much like himself? What conflict could there be, except a fight about the remote control or a woman? Martin had been a great gag writer for other people. That’s how he had established himself relatively quickly, writer for hire on sketch shows, news quizzes, opening and closing quips for chat show hosts, a very funny guy when pretending to be someone else. But when it came to finding his own voice, he changed from life and soul party wit into sad bastard in the kitchen folding teatowels and eating all the crisps on his own. Now if he had been born a black woman, a single mother on a council estate with an errant ex-partner, bossy God-fearing parents and a radical lesbian rapper for a sister, he could write something amazing. Not a comedy maybe, but something with soul, purpose, fire. He would have suffered, the first prerequisite for creating Great Art.
When he had said all this to Tania, she had not even looked up from her book. ‘If you were poor, oppressed and desperate, you’d have more to worry about than writing a pissy little sitcom.’
He bought a copy of Broadcast and leafed through it as he ambled towards the park, depressed by the number of names he recognized doing better than him. He told himself it was just a matter of time before he found his niche. He could pick up the phone right now and get a gig team-writing soaps or medical dramas, but he feared becoming one of those TV battery writers, confined to their North London hutches, force-fed a diet of demographically agreed story-lines, creating characters whom you would only ever meet on a film set. Live first, write about it afterwards. That was the right way round. Of course, people like Tania could take the short cut; the snippets of her life she’d deigned to share with Martin made him salivate with envy. It was all so epic! The upheaval of emigration, the overpowering patriarchal father, a dying mother, the schizophrenia of her teenage years, the brother who made money and refused to have her name mentioned in his mansion.
‘What is it you are supposed to have done to make him hate you so much?’ Martin had asked her one evening, when the wind howled outside and they’d been in their duvet nest for nearly two days, just talking, eating, exploring.
‘It’s what I haven’t done, really,’ Tania said. ‘I haven’t been at home, feeding everyone, supporting everyone, smiling at everyone, keeping the family going, filling the hole.’
‘What hole?’
‘A mother-shaped hole. A bloody big one as she was eighteen stone with a wrestler’s biceps. They were big women, our mothers, in all senses of the word. They had plans, boundaries, a place. Why would you think you were in prison if you never saw the bars? If I went outside now, I’d just blow away. Like cotton wool.’
It was the only time Martin had ever seen Tania cry. Mostly she got angry. She even cried furiously and would not let him comfort her, which was annoying as he enjoyed the sensation of helpless tears soaking into his T-shirt. Nowadays, there weren’t enough opportunities for a man to feel, well, manly. Not that he complained too loudly, as they were both aware it was Tania’s wage packet that paid the bills, and his that took care of the extras. For now anyway.
He reached the park gates and hesitated a moment. The park was a riot of blooms and verdant greenery, cartoon primary colours, and somewhere, an ice-cream van sprinkling the air with an off-key version of ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’. The sunshine had spawned the usual rash of optimistic worshippers; pasty, half-stripped bodies lay on every available patch of green, their office clothes shed like old skins around them. There were couples everywhere, competing for the most in love title that good weather always encouraged in public places, feeding each other ice cream, finding ducks funny, sighing over the toddlers who wobbled past on fat eatable feet.
Martin pitied anyone in the park who was single. Fortunately, he hadn’t been alone for longer than three weeks since his first relationship, although he had been a comparatively late starter at twenty-one. As a teenager, he wondered if he would be alone for ever, one of those sad bachelors you could spot at Tescos in the afternoons, poring over the additives in a curry for one, embarrassed at what their shopping basket gave away. The two potatoes, the two cans of beer, the individually wrapped cheese slices, everything packaged in small bites, stamped with co-ordinated sell-by dates. But strangely, all the qualities that branded the teenage Martin a weed – sensitivity, a sense of humour, the ability to listen, getting choked at adverts with puppies in them – miraculously transformed him into number one eligible bloke when he hit his twenties. That was the great thing about having a developed feminine side, women loved it.
Martin checked his watch. Tania would just be finishing off her filming. The sun was shining, his heart felt light as a kite and he wanted to see her. He walked towards the tube station, already smiling with anticipation. He would kiss her in the middle of the street and recite his favourite line from When Harry Met Sally, when two long-term singles finally meet their soulmates: ‘Tell me I’m never going to have to be out there again.’ And she would reply, on cue, ‘You’ll never have to be out there again.’
‘Start from the outside and work inwards,’ hissed Deepak.
Chila looked down at the battalion of knives and forks guarding her gold-rimmed plate, upon which sat three tiger prawns making V-signs at her with their feelers. ‘This one?’ she whispered back.
Deepak sighed, picked up the fork furthest away from the plate and placed it in her hand. ‘But peel them first.’ He smiled, and returned to his conversation.
Chila glanced round nervously, checking if she was being watched. Everyone else on the table seemed to be having a good time. Although she could now name all the wives of Deepak’s business associates – Leila with the bouffant hair and discreet diamonds, married to no-neck Asif, Chandni, face-lifted and regal, married to Ram, silver haired, including the ones sprouting alarmingly from his ears and nose, and Manju, plump and dusted as a bon-bon, married to gap-toothed Manoj with his slightly sinister grin – she still could not think of much to say. She had begged Deepak to excuse her from this black tie luncheon, claiming she had a mountain of ironing and a compulsion to reorganize her spice cabinet, but he had virtually dressed her himself.
‘You have to get used to these events. It’s part of being a tycoon’s wife, darling,’ he had teased her, sweeping her hair from her back as he carefully zipped up her
embroidered silk chemise. ‘Besides, this is an A-list event. Every year, East-West PLC publish a list of the hundred richest Asians in Britain, and as everyone who is anyone wants to be on it, those people are all going to turn up.’
‘Are you on it, jaan?’ she asked, wincing as a piece of hair snagged on a steel tooth.
‘Not yet, baby, but I’m getting there. Now go and pretty up. And wear the ruby set from Mum, it will set off your suit.’
Chila had stared at her reflection for a long time; he was right, the rubies danced like a circle of fire around her neck. He was always right. She so wanted to impress all his friends, to casually throw in murmured one-liners which would make them gasp and then laugh admiringly, throwing open their arms to let her in. She decided to practise a few before putting on her make-up. She tilted her head and laid a forefinger across her cheek. Yes, that made her look deep. She tried a laugh. No, that sounded like a donkey with wind. Maybe a snigger. No, too snorty, she sounded mean. She exhaled slightly, turning it into a chuckle at the last moment, hehhehheh, and sucked in her cheeks so dimples appeared like two commas, framing her mouth. That was it. She looked like she was having a good time, like she understood.
‘You are too awful,’ she said to her reflection, mimicking Leila’s catchphrase. ‘Manju, tell this man to stop being so naughty!’ She looked OK when saying it, cheeky but not aggressive, but she would have to find her own motto. It wouldn’t do to steal someone else’s. She would think of one on the way there. Something that was all hers.
‘Not hungry, Chila?’ Leila was looking pointedly at Chila’s untouched starter.
‘I think it’s such a nice change not to have desi food,’ tinkled Manju. ‘We go to so many of these things and they always drag out the chicken korma and the blasted lime pickle, as if we can’t eat anything else.’
‘Absolutely,’ smiled Chandni, as much as she was able without pulling on the cosmetic scars behind her ears. ‘Someone should really create nouvelle Eastern cuisine.’