by Meera Syal
Deepak’s eyes did not waver from the screen. He was trying to work out where that cold snap in his eyes and baring of teeth came from, how Tania had managed to make him look so frightening, so ugly. The camera does lie, he told himself, it must, it is nothing but a distorting mirror.
The final shot was Chila, looking sheepishly at the door, then at the camera, giggling nervously and saying, ‘Honestly, men!’ Blackout.
The applause was deafening. Jonathan was on his feet, leading an unsteady standing ovation, shouting, ‘Director! Speech, speech!’
Martin hugged Tania wildly, too drunk to notice she stood in his arms stiff as a stick, her eyes still fixed on the screens which now played nothing but fuzzy electronic snow. ‘Listen to that, Tans! You’ve done it, babes. You’ve bloody done it now!’
Tania remained where she was, collecting plaudits, embraces and several subtly exchanged cards from film and TV people who gave her the come up and see me sometime wink as they left, while Jonathan stood at her side like a proud father, beaming benevolence. Even some of Tania’s rivals flashed tight, envious smiles as they passed, mentally binning the similar-sounding ideas they had intended to make, anxious to gather together and enjoy a detailed post-mortem with scalpels.
Beroze and Suki nodded briefly. ‘Good work, Tania, much better than any of your other stuff.’ Beroze smiled genuinely. ‘You went for the whole picture. I mean, we’re like any other bunch of people, right? We have our successes and our failures. It’s all a lottery in the end.’
Tania nodded. She said thank you again.
Suki leaned into her. ‘How do your friends feel about the film then?’
Tania paused. ‘I just told the truth,’ she said.
Deepak guessed she would be on the upstairs terrace, once he had ascertained she was missing and yet no-one had seen her leave. All three exits from the bar led to here. He knew she would seek air and darkness. From the top of the stairs it was easy to see anyone up there, with the neon light pouring through the glass doors. She was pacing along the terrace, almost lazily, her arms folded against the cold. Her sari pullau unfurled slowly behind her like a sail, the beads on its hem tinkling gently with each step. She did not cease pacing or look up when he swung the door open.
‘What the fuck have you done?’
Pace, sniff, pace, turn.
‘Aren’t you going to answer me?’
She stops now. She looks at the floor. She shrugs.
‘Are you so bitter, you have to mess up everyone else?’
She looks at him. His hands itch. She clears her throat, huskily. ‘I shot what I saw.’
He shoots forward and grabs her shoulders. Not hard, enough to feel trapped birds fluttering beneath her clavicle. She is firm and unyielding to the touch, marble smooth, unbreakable.
‘You saw what you wanted to see, you—’
‘Bitch?’ she offers calmly. ‘Whore? Trollop? Rundi?’
Her stained lips around base Punjabi gutter terms. He is aware of her bare midriff in between blouse and sari. She feels heat coursing from fingertips to singing flesh. Narcotic familiarity. Red petals falling, poppy pods crushed, offering sweet selfish release.
‘I had to do what was right. Like you did, Deepak.’
Hearing his name makes him loosen his grip. His hands trace a journey from shoulders to back to waist. The shock of skin makes him inhale sharply. He smells salt on her breath.
‘Chila,’ he stutters, ‘deserves better than this.’
Tania nods, lifting her neck so her face tilts towards him, heavy flower on fragile stem. The world slips sideways; they shiver for a foothold. Her hands tremble as she reaches for his face, cupping his cheeks, infinitely tender, holding him up.
‘Then why are you punishing her?’
Deepak raises his eyebrows into question marks. She tames them into relaxed curves, erases the line of discontent furrowed deep between his eyes. Her knee slips between his, he holds it there.
‘Punishing her for what?’
She feels seawater spring from her lashes: the storm approaches; she knows there are rocks and her feet will bleed.
‘I only saw it through the camera. I only admitted it then. You torture her for being exactly what you wanted when you married. You blame her for your own choices. For choosing someone whose goodness would make you hate yourself. For not admitting you needed more. For not being brave enough to choose a fair fight, and picking a punch-bag. For wanting it too bloody easy, Deepak.’
Then they kiss, and the sky goes black as clouds cover the face of the moon, candles go out in sacred places and the stars make their excuses and leave. All the ties snap one by one with discordant twangs, duty, loyalty, family, security, but not, as one would expect, tradition, for their histories are littered with unsuitable lovers who inevitably come to tragic ends, drowned in pots in fast-flowing rivers, bricked up in shaded palace walls, stoned in blazing, heaving courtyards – at least, the ones that are caught. They do not know yet that this is part of who they have always been, that passion needs confinement to flourish, eroticism is fatally intertwined with restraint and that a rain-spattered sari will always win over a spangly scrap of Lycra.
They know none of this because they are lost on slippery pathways, in wet warm caves. And if they had opened their eyes, they would have seen Chila, Sunita and Martin watching them through yellow-tinted glass. They took three separate doors, they stand in three different places, they see no-one else except the silhouette that is sometimes one person, sometimes two.
Martin’s version is filtered through alcohol and fatigue. He sways to the rhythm of their deep kisses and knows somewhere, deep down, that this was always going to happen. He veers between having a sensible chat with Tania about this the next day, or sprinting down to the bar, grabbing the lemon-slicing knife and driving it through the third button of Deepak’s designer shirt. He wanders back down towards the noise and smoke, descending the stairs into his own portable hell.
Sunita’s lips part slowly of their own accord. A fluid warmth begins in her belly and spreads tentacles outwards, along sinews and nerve endings as her body slowly comes back to her. She feels herself rise and fall with their breath, feels the weight of her heart as it gradually heaves itself from its bed and begins a slow waltz around her chest, feels the ache in her limbs and the perspiration at her neck and the moan gathering in her throat as she moves with them but alone. It wasn’t in a book, then. What she was missing was out there among the plastic chairs and the tinfoil ashtrays, the quiet eye of the hurricane, and she stands at its edges, being slapped and buffeted back to life. She takes the stairs back down three at a time, her scars aching gloriously, as they should.
Chila waits until she is absolutely sure before she starts crying. She gulps and hiccups and streams sticky liquid and lava grief, and the harder she cries, the harder they kiss. She wants to hold both of them, she wants to stand between them, her bookend loves. She only knows now what it was that she did not recognize on her face on that screen. It was fear. And now she knows what she was afraid of, what has always haunted her, what propelled every smile, every altruistic gesture, every cheerful acquiescence, every I don’t mind, jaan. She has constructed a whole life around it. No-one must leave. No-one leaves nice people. I am nice. I will make myself nice. Someone should have told her, her mother, her friends, all those romances she read, all those films she watched, all those customs she upheld, that there are no guarantees. She walks down the stairs like her grandmother. On the balcony, the children play.
Spring
5
SPRING BUSTLED IN late to London, full of excuses and panting slightly, tweaking tightly furled leaves and reluctant bulbs in its wake, gently shoving fronds and blades through paving stones and crumbling brick, shooing away sulky clouds and frost-breathy wind until finally, a shaky sun wobbled into view, anxious to make up for its long hibernation.
Mostly, it was business as usual. The traffic still slithered its way in choky snakes th
rough small gaps, the shops replaced their Winter Sale signs with Spring Offers placards, and the pelicans still breakfasted on pigeons in Green Park. Diligent housewives, for whom the term was not yet an insult or an anachronism, dusted, polished and scrubbed, or instructed their Filipino maids to do so. Debris and detritus were discarded with gusto, as attics, cellars and outhouses were ransacked and cleared to let in the new air. Crocuses nodded their leonine heads from flower beds and pots, approving the bulging bin liners being carried from front porch to hatchbacks, bound for charities or city dumps. One woman’s cast-off became another woman’s posh party frock, one person’s hand-me-down another’s perfect fit.
Which is why Martin moved out as soon as his window boxes turned green, taking only his computer and cookbooks, and moved in with Stella, a nurse from Finchley with South Italian blood. She was exotic enough for him to feel fascinated, and he had already decided that Italy was as far east as he would now venture in his search for love. Tania found his note three days later when she returned from a shoot. He left no forwarding address, so she too requisitioned an army of black bags and sent the rest of their relationship to the Mencap shop.
The gently warming earth and unseasonably flirtatious winds persuaded Sunita to peel off a few layers of winter woollies, amazed to discover that her body had been changing without her knowledge or permission. The blouses and jackets she had worn this time last year no longer fitted. The pouches and strained seams which she must have filled once now hung off her limply, like a former wrinkled skin. Against her face, the colours seemed faded and old. When she spotted flashes of unexpected colour amongst the weeds and junk in her garden, a red tulip winking at her through the rim of a rusty can, she dashed to her wardrobe. She opened it and faced an expanse of beige and grey, a veritable accountants’ tea party of elasticated waistbands and sensible shoes. She flung the whole lot into her recycling tub, threw the children into a double buggy, checked the expiry date on her credit card and took the first available tube to town.
Chila knew that winter was finally over when she woke up and was not sick. The metallic fur on her tongue had disappeared, the ache in her breasts had abated, the dizziness that accompanied every sudden move had stopped. She sat up gingerly, sniffing the change around her, seeing it in the quality of light that filtered through the pink satin curtains, sharp and expectant, smelling it, a subtle tang of moss and the heady aroma of hyacinth as she flung open the window to see if Deepak’s car was still there. She had missed him again.
She rubbed her stomach tenderly, whispering, ‘Let’s have paranthe for breakfast, eh?’
Deepak paced around the abandoned warehouse he had acquired just before Christmas. His father had counselled him not to invest: bad area, too much repair work needed. Viewing it through a sheet of sleet, Deepak had harboured his own doubts, but on a point of principle, i.e. his father said no so he had to say yes, he went through with the sale. And now, with unclouded sky flooding in through the frosted roof and dandelions appearing in mouldy corners, he could see nothing but potential. It was a good day, and he knew this evening would be even better.
Akash heaved a sigh of relief as he cleared away case notes from the post-Christmas bumper crop, his first as a fully qualified therapist. Every 2 January, the centre was deluged with fraught couples who had discovered under mistletoe and surrounded by turkey carcass that they really hated each other. There was nothing like a few days with close family in a confined space to bring the worms up to the surface. He checked his watch. The bursting buds outside his window seemed to beckon him, a thrush swayed contentedly in a high branch, its throat ululating sensuously. That decided it; he shut the filing cabinet and got his coat. He was taking the rest of the day off and could either go home and surprise Sunita or try and catch his therapist for a one-to-one session. He hesitated for just a second, wiped a fleeting image of some grainy footage from his back brain and set off for home.
Chila moved carefully around her kitchen, still not used to movement without the accompanying seasickness. She drew up the floral blinds and almost blinked at the sparkling surfaces that winked back at her. Mrs Singh knew her stuff all right. Mrs Singh was the cleaner that Deepak had hired as soon as Chila’s pregnancy was confirmed, insisting no child of his would be threatened by his wife’s obsessional devotion to housework. He had peeked at the doctor’s notes during one visit and had been horrified to read that Chila was medically described as an elderly primigravida – an ancient mother, no less. Chila thought this was a tad unfair; on paper, she was thirty-five but at least she had managed to implant a seed in her ancient womb within a year of marriage.
Deepak had gone quiet for a few days after this information. Chila guessed by his dark looks and slammed doors that he was mourning the gaggle of nubile, fertile youngsters he could have chosen to bear his heirs. However, when he finally noticed that his silences and sulks were making Chila weepy and jumpy, he relented, for the sake of the baby, she fondly imagined, and instead showered her with unprompted favours. Neither of them could have guessed that Chila would turn out to be one of those rare unfortunates who get morning and evening sickness for twice as long as the three-month regulatory period. Half a year later, Mrs Singh was too permanent a fixture to demolish. It was the first of many grandiose gestures that had marked the last few months: first the cleaner, then a course of driving lessons and a spanking new Toyota when Chila passed her test first time. Next an extension into the vast garden, encompassing a sun lounge and a huge fishtank that covered an entire wall; and finally the gold credit card, a joint one naturally, which he encouraged Chila to use at every opportunity, although she had used it with caution, knowing he would have proof of every purchase when the statement came in.
He had constructed the very palace that Chila had created from catalogue clippings and blobby paste all those years ago, and now she did not even have to keep it clean. All she had to do was live in it. And wait for him. She took out a spray bleach and a j-cloth and went hunting for a stray smear or stain, giving up when she got to the dining room. At that moment, Chila hated Mrs Singh with a vengeance. Now she couldn’t clean, she no longer listened to the radio. Now she had no breaks to look forward to, she had stopped watching tapes of her favourite shows, despite the spaceship-sized satellite perched on the new roof. Now she could buy anything she wanted, she realized how little she actually needed any more.
Chila padded to the hall and settled in the comfy chair next to the telephone, flipping through her address book, a rather smart leather volume which had replaced the Snoopy Fun Pad she had used for ages. She reassured herself by noting all the new entries over recent months: her luncheon circles, since she had formed a splinter group from Manju and Leila’s cronies; the expectant mothers she had met in antenatal classes; the friends of her families who now invited her to all their functions as a respectable married lady; the ever-expanding circle of acquaintances from Deepak’s business contacts. Her diary boasted similar successes; almost every day was marked with some celebration or dinner, weddings, namkarans where babies were given their names, engagements, ladies sangeet nights, Krishnaji’s birthday, Baisakhi harvest bonfires, Diwali (already booked, although by then she would be bringing a baby to the celebrations), even a couple of funerals, from which now she could be excused, thanks to her delicate state. A whole year mapped out for her, the essentials of birth, marriage and demise, just as she had always hoped. Continuity, as satisfying as the pages rippling through her fingers marked out her days. And then she spotted Tania’s number, next to Sunita’s in the ST section. Chila’s rule was best friends classified by first name, everyone else by surname. She automatically raised a forefinger, ready to dial one of their numbers, as she had tried to do so many times. Each time the same thing happened. She would shake, she would see a silhouette in neon on a windy terrace and she would rush to the bathroom to be sick.
Of course, today that would not happen because the nausea seemed to have left her at last and no-one could have
been more attentive and generous than Deepak recently. She took a deep breath and dialled Sunita’s number first. She heard the engaged tone and slammed down the receiver, relieved. She pretended to check Tania’s number, although she knew it by heart, and slowly dialled the first digit, then the second, all the while steadying her breathing, rehearsing her tone, her opening words, then leaving a suitable pause for Tania’s apology.
Chila had already forgiven her for the film. After it was broadcast on television, the Daily Mail critic had called Chila ‘a comedienne in the making’ and the Express had waxed lyrical about her ‘artless innocence and joie de vivre’, which even Deepak had grudgingly admitted was a compliment. And as for the other incident, well, alcohol makes people do silly things, and who wouldn’t fancy Tania, the belle of the evening, and that gorgeous sari. Besides, they had always been friends, even before Chila had come along, and the fact that Tania had not rung meant she really felt rotten about it. Not to mention Sunita, who probably took the whole thing very badly, what with being filmed secretly, and was too embarrassed to get in touch and it was all so silly and just one phone call could put it all right . . .
By the time Chila had dialled the fifth digit of Tania’s number her hands were shaking so badly that she could barely aim her finger steadily. She could feel something rising from her chest and, as it grew, she knew it was not bile but something else sour and curdled, somehow mixed in a lumpy soup with Deepak’s presents and his frequent business trips and his baffling erratic mood swings. If she made that call Chila would know everything from the first breath that Tania drew, because lies were so easy to smell on the breath of someone you knew too well, and the thought of knowing everything made her heave as she pressed the final number and from the downstairs toilet she could hear, faintly, through porcelain and water, Tania’s voice on her answering machine telling her if she didn’t leave a message, how the hell would she know who had called?