by Meera Syal
Sunita took a long hard look at her body in front of the changing-room mirror. Despite the hours in her bathroom, she had managed to avoid looking at her reflection for what felt like years. Her face she could manage, her extremities were tolerable. She had even painted her toenails, last winter for Chila’s wedding. But that vast undiscovered country between her neck and ankles, that had been invaded and reclaimed by children, hair and cakes. It was not her home any more.
Where should she start? She traced the stretch marks across her belly and down her thighs, a relief map marking out dangerous journeys she had somehow survived. She took in the heavy drooping breasts whose nipple eyes stared at the floor, as if waiting to be told off for letting themselves go. There once was a waist here, she remembered, somewhere around here between these two bulging rolls. She circled the area where it used to be with her thumbs. She flapped the pouches on her underarms, fleshy wings, useless for flying. She jumped up and down a couple of times, and noticed which bits kept moving after she had landed. Most of them, she concluded. And what happened if she bent over, sideways on to the mirror? What shape did she make? A beanbag doing aerobics? A marshmallow attempting the hurdles? How much there was of her! Amazing really, what one’s clothes disguised. Amazing that someone who felt so ravenous took up so much space.
‘Are you OK, madam?’ A startled assistant stood in the doorway, the cubicle curtain in her hand. She was trying hard to look Sunita straight in the eye, but only succeeded in twitching nervously.
‘Oh, fine, thanks,’ replied Sunita airily. She jumped again, this time trying to notice what happened to her buttocks in mid-air.
‘Um, we would ask, if you are going to try that dress on, madam . . . we would prefer it if you wore some undergarments.’
Sunita bent over to pick up the silver dress from the floor, causing the assistant to emit an involuntary whimper and back off hurriedly.
‘No need to try it on. It’s perfect,’ she said. ‘Do you take Visa?’
Martin got out his credit card and crossed his fingers as the assistant swiped it through the computerized till. He registered the satisfying beep of approval and waited for Tania’s present to be gift wrapped. It was just a silly little gift which had caught his eye as he left the tube station. A snowstorm of the New York skyline, but not yer cheap plastic bubble containing a tired polystyrene snow flurry. This was state of the art kitsch: thick glass, avalanches of velvet snow swirling around the Empire State, the Twin Towers and, his personal favourite, the art deco Chrysler Building, an elegant spire of silver lattice and symmetrical chrome. It even played Sinatra’s ‘New York New York’, one of their tunes, which always recalled for him a Soho coffee shop with condensation-steamed windows and cold fingertips that tasted of hot chocolate.
He had promised her a weekend in New York at Christmas, but the way work was going, she might have to make do with a couple of bagels and a session with the snow dome. Still, he reasoned, as he made his way towards the Tisdale Centre, this would remind her that he hadn’t forgotten. And women, in his experience, were not always impressed by the large, expensive gestures. Sometimes the small, cheap ones did just as well.
He recognized her laugh, or he might not have looked round. Of course, he could identify spoken Punjabi, but he somehow never associated it with Tania’s voice. But there she was, sitting at a window seat in a café, deep in conversation with a frizzy-haired man whom Martin thought he recognized, or worse still, who just looked familiar because sometimes, Asian men did to him. There were probably a million innocent reasons why they were together and having a good time. But the easy flow of their banter disturbed Martin, particularly as some of it was bilingual, an odd guttural word thrown into the middle of a sentence which excluded him as effectively as a masonic handshake. This was a club he couldn’t join. He had wangled the odd day pass, but life membership and bar privileges would not be forthcoming.
Martin was struck by the intimacy that a shared language could evoke, and how his writer’s ear heard different tunes in each one. French always sounded dirty and indolent, provocative pillow chat, even if a couple happened to be arguing over who last unloaded the dishwasher. Spanish was passionate and slightly amused, as if the speaker knew it was obligatory to lose their temper about something inappropriate before the end of the sentence, and then forget about it two sentences later. Russian depressed him, in the way a good vodka hangover did, and Mandarin was noble and slightly condescending. He had heard Malayalam once, in a South Indian vegetarian restaurant. He chose it as his favourite so far, as the bubbles and rolling tongue plosives sounded like a large man farting in the bath. But Punjabi, he decided, he hated. It was crude, soil-bound, backslapping macho shouting, no spaces to listen as Tania and the Bloke seemed to constantly talk over each other. They wouldn’t be doing that if they had stuck to English.
The plastic bag containing the snow globe felt unreasonably heavy in his hand. If she looked over at him in the next ten seconds, he would wave and smile. He would go over, introduce himself, wait to be introduced back, and they would all have coffee together, like grown ups. After two minutes of watching Tania toss her hair and smoke in an unnecessarily dramatic manner, Martin stomped off back towards the underground station. If he hurried, he could catch a double Woody Allen bill at the Metro, Hannah and Her Sisters, followed by Manhattan. He was a big boy, he could see New York on his own.
Tania checked the top of Martin’s computer; stone cold, which meant he had not been in the flat for hours. There was nothing left in the oven for her, which hurt for some reason, although he had cleaned up the kitchen and had even circled a couple of comedies in the satellite TV guide for this evening. She wandered around the flat aimlessly, stepping over her mess from the day. She needed company this evening.
Her long lunch with Akash had left her feeling restless and free-floating. It was her own fault; never have an unplanned meal with a therapist. What began as a post-mortem on the morning’s drama turned into an impromptu confessional. It had begun innocuously enough. Although they had known each other for years through Sunita, it was always the women who had talked, managed the friendship, with Akash an occasional bystander, affable enough but never involved. They both had Sunita’s version of each other to contrast and compare, privately, without wanting to upset the easy balance they had achieved. Akash found Tania to be just as clever and spiky as his wife had described, her lauded beauty was obvious, but what intrigued him was how she used it as a diversion, keeping the gawpers at bay. Tania, personally, had never understood what Sunita saw in Akash. He was good looking in a faded intelligentsia sort of way, he was smart and perceptive, naturally, but this passion and energy that Sunita had always described must have fallen away with time, like his hair.
However, after a couple of glasses of wine, or maybe because of them, she could see what Sunita meant. Once she began opening up, he was on the trail like a bloodhound, worrying her for more detail, sniffing at her for dates, smells, colours, how she felt. And he laughed a lot, encouraging her to embellish her anecdotes. In retrospect, they were amusing, she supposed. The way her father would line them all up for inspection, like troops, before going to school, and send them off with his motto, ‘Be better than the person in front! No loafing, understand?’ Her mother’s secret stash of treats which she tied into the end of her sari pullau; when she unfolded it, sweeties and loose change and folded cuttings from magazines would fall out. No-one was ever allowed to read the cuttings, except the ones found in the last sari she wore when she died. Tania had hoped it would reveal some poignant insight into her departed mother’s soul; instead she found a coupon for twenty pence off her next purchase of tinned fruit salad, and a cut out of some Hindi film star which her mother had written on in scrawly writing, ‘Eyebrows like this please.’ And the pointless day trips her father would organize on Sundays usually, when he would jump up from the table, rub his hands and say, ‘We should see Watford. Watford is the place to go nowadays.’ Never a theme p
ark or a seaside, but a grey collection of anonymous suburban holes where her father would register at a local estate agent’s, claiming he was thinking of moving to your lovely town and had they got anything in the hundred thousand pound region?
Akash had commented that this was her father’s version of wish fulfilment, he longed for something bigger and better, and for those few short minutes in an estate agent’s office, he was a rich man who had made it, who had choices. Tania pointed out that her father’s actions had merely embarrassed his children to the point of hysteria, and given her a morbid fear of acquiring a mortgage. What she wanted to say was that it made her hate who she was, standing behind her mother in a cheap coat with too much oil in her hair.
‘You should write some of this stuff down,’ Akash had told her.
‘Confessional work bores me,’ she replied. ‘That’s why I’ve always chosen docs over drama, why I never use a narrator. The camera as objective witness, that’s what it’s all about.’
‘Everything is subjective, Tania. Even for a voyeur like yourself. And your raw material is other people’s lives.’
Tania leaned back on her chair, grinning. ‘Snap,’ she said.
She grabbed her handbag and decided: she would go and see Chila. She wanted to sit in a cardamom-smelling kitchen and eat home-fried snacks. Her tongue felt rusty; the halting Punjabi she had attempted with Akash had exercised muscles in her tongue and throat she’d forgotten about. Chatting to Chila was a good non-chemical sedative; half an hour’s gossip about dado rails was just what she needed to relax. She thought about writing Martin a note but instead, placed her DV camera carefully in the middle of the dining table, before leaving.
Deepak scanned the row of pans squatting on the cooker, wondering where to start. He lifted up the lids in turn, checking what Chila had left him for supper. Aloo gobi, chicken with spinach, daal, rice and a tower of freshly made rotis. A Post-it note on the fridge informed him that inside waited a chocolate cake with his name on. Deepak went straight to the bread bin, pulled out a couple of slices of white bread, scooped up some chicken between them and ate it as he wandered from room to room, surveying his domain.
This was the first time he had been in the house without Chila, and it was only now he began to notice how much the place had changed. Gone were the heavy brown velvet curtains from the living room, and the lamp made from an old whisky bottle. It was all frou-frou frills and co-ordinated pouffes, and those stupid glass animals taking up some valuable shelf space. Deepak removed a couple of his trophies from the menagerie and put them on top of the television defiantly.
The back room wasn’t much better. Deepak had fondly called this the Den, although the Knocking Shop might have been more appropriate in his bachelor days. This is where he had put his sound system, drinks cabinet, large floor cushions and low-level lighting. At one point, after he had invested in an electronics warehouse, this whole room was controlled by a single remote control. At the push of a button, the curtains would close, the lights would dim, a jazzy number would begin playing from hidden speakers and the radiators would turn up to full blast. ‘Is it hot in here?’ he would ask whoever, proffering more wine and waiting for the first layers of clothing to be removed. Then there was that terrible incident one night when he had managed to pull some incredibly classy Sloane, whose father also happened to own a few very promising franchises, and showed her into the room with a flourish. He pressed the requisite button, and suddenly it was Armageddon. Rock music screamed through the speakers, the curtains flapped in and out like epileptic bats, the radiators attempted to rattle themselves off the wall, and the lights dimmed, grew and then blew up. Selina/Sarah/Sophie did not even bother to remove the shards of light-bulb from her hair before she left.
Deepak laughed out loud, chuckling to a halt as he took in the velveteen wallpaper, the rosewood dining suite and chairs, the place settings ready at each chair. Did she actually spend time folding those napkins into swans? He sat at the head of the pristine, as yet unused table, a song running through his head vaguely remembered. Something about having the perfect wife, the perfect life, flowing water and no idea of what it all meant. He had been baffled by too many choices, that’s why he was here. The initial amazement he felt at being able to attract so many women soon grew into a kind of contempt. It was all too easy. And if they tumbled so quickly for him, how many others had there been before him? He realized these were gross double standards, but the contempt had flowed both ways. As the notches built up on his bedpost, the bed itself grew bigger and lonelier. How he had ached for tenderness instead of tortured acrobatics, the sickness of longing and waiting for someone, instead of this endless, satiated, lazy pleasure.
He had tried to explain how he felt to Manoj who, having been married for five years by then, called him an ungrateful sod and asked him for any leftovers he might throw his way.
Surprisingly, it was Asif who had provided some comfort. ‘Ah, ready to tie the knot, eh?’
‘God, no. Just to have something . . . else, I suppose.’
Asif poured him a large whisky and put a fatherly arm around his back. ‘All these lovely girls you have been seeing, gorgeous, all of them. Was there any one of them you would choose to be the mother of your children?’
‘I haven’t thought about kids yet.’
‘Oh, yes, you have, you are right now! We only know truly what we want, when we imagine what we will leave for our children. You think my Leila was the prettiest girl on offer? The wittiest? The richest? No. But when I imagined her speaking Urdu to my son, making him our food, mixing with my family, she fitted. Like an old warm glove.’ Asif laughed into his glass.
‘Well, that’s really persuaded me to rush down to the nearest marriage bureau and order myself something comfortable. Is a little bit of excitement, fun, spark, too much to ask?’
‘For you, yes,’ replied Asif sternly. ‘It’s too late for you. You associate the bad girls with the good times. That’s why in an ideal world, both partners should be virgins. You know nothing else. You don’t know if there is anything better, so what you have is perfect. You want to spend the rest of your life searching for the next best thing? Calling it love, this pain in the guts, when actually you might just have diarrhoea? Same symptoms, yaar.’
‘You can find both,’ Deepak said quietly. ‘I did once.’
‘And where is she now, this goddess?’
Deepak shrugged. ‘Making someone else’s life hell, I suppose.’
They both registered the overwhelming sense of déjà vu when he opened the door. It could have been the old days, the good days, when Tania would waltz past him swinging a bottle or a take-away carton, kick off her shoes and enjoy the feel of his eyes upon her while she reclaimed his space, purring. Now it was different. Now she stood like any other visitor on the doorstep; the woman he would have died for was now no different from any passing window cleaner or Jehovah’s Witness.
Neither of them spoke for a moment, pondering, perhaps, the fickleness of it all. To have been so intimate, to have been able to walk away from it so quickly, to have believed as feverishly in something that turned sick and pale just months later. Maybe that was all there was, the momentary truth of a connection, the serial monogamy roundabout their parents would never ride on, fearing sickness and wobbly legs afterwards. What made people climb back on, knowing that they were wrong once and would probably be wrong again, knowing it would hurt, probably, eventually? You minimize the risk factor, Deepak answered himself, like the good businessman that I am, and you choose blue chip safe stock, so when you fall it’s never too far or wholly unexpected.
It is safe here now, Deepak told himself, mantra-like, before he said, somewhat ungraciously, ‘She’s not here.’
‘Oh.’
‘Gone to see her mother. She won’t be back till late.’
‘I see.’
Tania turned to leave, longing for the safe haven of her car. If she could just get inside and strap herself in, turn the
music up loud, all this would pass.
‘Actually, I would like to talk to you. Have you got a minute?’
She hesitated, still not daring to face him. His voice brought back whispered conversations in dark, damp-sheeted places.
‘It’s about this TV thing you’re doing . . . with Chila.’
It was work then. Work was allowed, facts and timetables were permissible, they both knew that.
‘I can’t stay long,’ she said finally, as she edged past him, careful not to let an inch of their bodies meet in the doorway. ‘Martin’s cooking me a meal tonight,’ she added, as he shut the door behind her.
Deepak gestured at the small mountain of untouched food on the cooker. Tit for tat. See, I’ve got someone who loves me too.
‘She’s a good cook,’ Tania said dismissively.
‘She’s a good woman,’ replied Deepak.
They allowed themselves a look then, amused, cynical. Let the games begin.
‘Martin’s brilliant at housework too. I mean he actually enjoys ironing. He finds clean bathrooms thrilling.’
‘Does he wear a frilly apron when he’s hoovering then?’ Deepak circled the settee, still keeping a distance from her.
‘No, because he isn’t one of those troglodytes who assumes personal hygiene is only for poofters.’
Deepak stifled a chortle and removed an invisible dart from between his shoulderblades. Banter as foreplay, their mutual weakness, the thrill of a matched opponent who predicts your every move. The skill of an evenly matched enemy who knows your Achilles’ heel.
‘And Chila isn’t one of those ladettes who thinks saying fuck a lot and downing pints means she’s a feminist.’
Tania moved to the armchair, perching on the arm. ‘Martin’s one of those rare men who really likes women. Even with their clothes on. And he makes me laugh.’
Deepak moved to the sofa, leaning on it nonchalantly. ‘Chila’s one of those rare women who enjoys being one. Even when she’s wearing trousers. And she makes me horny as hell.’