by Annie Murray
‘Must’ve been dreaming,’ she said muzzily.
‘It’s all right, Mom.’ Karen struggled to sound in command, though she was frightened. ‘Look, I’ve just got home. I’ll make us both a nice cup of tea. Dad’ll be back soon, and I can get the dinner on, so don’t worry – all right?’
‘Thanks,’ Margaret said. She sat up, reaching for her specs, feeling stunned and foolish. ‘Thanks, love.’
Ten
May 1984
The next Tuesday morning Joanne pushed Amy along to the playgroup, very relieved to have somewhere to go. I need a break from family, she thought guiltily. As she turned into Villa Road she took deep breaths of the warm air, feeling as if she had been let out of a lock-up. Karen had been on the phone again last night, on about Mom having bad dreams and seeming frightened and not herself. And Dave’s mood had slid down again. She badly needed to get out.
While Margaret had been in hospital, Dave had been as kind and supportive as it was possible to be, minding Amy while Joanne went to visit, sending a get-well card to his mother-in-law, and treating Joanne as if she was fragile and needed his care and protection. But she could feel it beginning to wear off. Nothing had happened, but she could sense she was back to walking on eggshells, that his mood was building up again, until some unpredictable moment when he would explode.
She hurried along, anxious not to be late, realizing how much she was looking forward to the toddler group, to seeing Tess and, even more, Sooky and Priya.
‘Who’re we going to see – d’you remember?’ She leaned over the buggy while she was still moving to talk to Amy.
Amy twisted round to look up at her.
‘You’re going to see your little friend Priya.’
‘Piya!’ Amy couldn’t manage the ‘pr’ yet. She jiggled against the straps in excitement. ‘Piya!’
It felt wonderful to Joanne to think they had friends. Michelle had always been her best mate before, but Michelle didn’t have children and lived so far away – not to mention the rift between them over Dave. She couldn’t count on Michelle for everything now; she needed to make other friends. She walked much more confidently into the church hall, said hello to Tess and helped her finish getting the things out. She was pleased with the way Tess almost seemed to expect her now to come early and help. As the other mothers arrived, she found it easier to talk to them too.
‘Where Piya?’ Amy asked.
‘She’ll be here in a bit, I expect,’ Joanne said. ‘What d’you want to do, Amy?’
Amy immediately pointed at the painting table.
‘How about waiting for that till Priya gets here – shall we go and play with the dollies instead?’
But no, nothing else would do. Joanne sat beside Amy again, talking to Mavis. She kept looking at the door. Sooky was often late. But after the first hour had gone by she realized Sooky and Priya were not coming. She was surprised by just how disappointed she felt.
When it was over they all spilled out onto the pavement. Despite Sooky not turning up, Joanne felt quite cheerful. She had had a chat with a few people and hadn’t felt so crippled by shyness as she had the first few times. A nervous new mother had come, and she had been able to show her what to do. Just a bit of conversation and company made the whole day seem so much brighter. Humming, she turned to cross the road.
She stopped with a jolt. Dave was standing there on the other side, by the big gurdwara, the Sikh temple, staring straight at her. He was waiting, hands pushed into the pockets of his jeans. In those seconds she was struck again by how good-looking he was – blond, strong and athletic. And how frightening.
As she pushed the buggy across the road, her heart was hammering and she had to force a smile back onto her face.
‘Look who’s here, Amy – Daddy’s come to meet us!’
She could see some of the other women turning to look. Why the hell is he here? she thought. But she knew the signs. He hadn’t come out of interest in Amy: he’d come to spy on her.
‘Hello!’ she greeted him. ‘What’re you doing here? Have you got an early dinner break?’
He didn’t smile back. He looked fed up and angry.
‘Yeah,’ he said sulkily. ‘Thought I’d come down.’
‘That’s nice.’ But it didn’t feel nice at all. It felt as if he had intruded on her day. ‘We can have something to eat together.’
As they walked home she chattered away about what Amy had been doing. She could feel the vibes of his bad mood, but she couldn’t think of anything she’d done to cause it.
‘Shall I make you a sandwich?’ she called through from the kitchen once they were inside. He’d sat down at the table, looking through the paper. ‘There’s cheese – and a bit of ham.’
His voice came through to her, hard and sarcastic. ‘Yes, all right – make me a sandwich then. If it’s not too much trouble for you.’
She went to the door.
‘Well, which d’you want: ham or cheese?’
‘Ham,’ he said savagely. ‘With mustard. And tomato.’
Oh no. Joanne rummaged frantically through the fridge. No tomatoes.
‘I’m sorry, love.’ She went back to speak to him. ‘We haven’t got any tomatoes in . . .’
He stared at her, then leapt up, kicking the chair back so that it tipped over.
‘For ****’s sake. All I want’s a bit of dinner – that’s all. Not too much to ask, is it?’ He picked the chair up and slammed it under the table. Amy started to cry. ‘Forget it, I’ll go to the chippy. At least I can get a decent bite to eat there.’
A moment later he had gone, slamming the door.
Joanne went to Amy and picked her up. Could Amy feel her shaking?
‘Sshh, babby – it’s all right. Don’t worry. Daddy’s just a bit grumpy ’cause he’s hungry.’ She kissed Amy’s forehead. ‘Shall Mommy make you an egg with soldiers?’
She settled Amy in her high chair with a little board book and went to put a pan on the gas. Staring at the orange-and-mauve flame, she was shaking with upset and anger. At other times when he got worked up she had blamed herself, convinced she must have done something to make him so upset. He was so sure everything was her fault that she had started to believe it as well. But this time she knew it wasn’t true.
‘I never asked you to come home and spoil everything, did I?’ she whispered. ‘Why couldn’t you just stay at work and keep out of the way? You can get your own bloody dinner.’
Even her own anger upset her. She had always loved Dave, felt tender towards him for the hurts and difficulties of his life, his trying to be the big man when his father was dead and his mother like a childish hippy, with her magic crystals and scented candles and ridiculous theories, completely wrapped up in herself. But over these months he had become like a stranger and she was gradually losing respect for him, as well as the fondness that made her keep forgiving him.
Later he arrived home with a bunch of flowers – roses – which he must have had to go out of his way to buy.
She saw him come through the door with them and for a moment her temper flared again. So you think you can just buy me off? Why can’t you just not be so nasty in the first place? All afternoon she’d been churned up, not knowing if he was suddenly going to come home again, afraid of what was going to happen next. But she wanted to keep the peace, wanted things to be better. What choice did she have? They needed things to be right for Amy.
‘Here,’ he said gruffly, in the hall. ‘Bought yer these. Sorry about earlier.’
Sorry about earlier. Was that it? At least he hadn’t hit her. She swallowed.
‘Oh, they’re lovely. Thanks. I’ll put them in that nice vase – remember the one Karen gave us for our wedding?’
He held out the flowers, but as she went to take them he didn’t release them, so they ended up staring at each other, both holding the bunch of crimson roses. He studied her face.
‘I need to know . . .’ He trailed off and looked down.
‘W
hat?’ She stifled her impatience.
‘I just need to know you’re my wife.’ He still couldn’t meet her eyes.
Joanne let go of the flowers, sighing. She suddenly felt tired to the core. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘I dunno.’ He was upset now. ‘Here, look, take ’em – they’re for you.’ She obeyed, raising them to her nose, almost for comfort. They were tight buds and didn’t smell of much. ‘I just get these thoughts . . . I’m sorry. Look,’ he said wretchedly, ‘give us a kiss, will yer?’
She obliged, holding the flowers out to one side. Dave closed his eyes and held her close, breathing her in. His lips reached for hers, then he pulled back.
‘Say yer love me?’
‘Oh, Dave – you know I—’
‘Say it!’ The anger was back, quick as striking a match.
‘I love you – you know I do. I’m your wife.’
The evening was quiet and fairly harmonious. They ate their dinner and watched TV. Later Dave wanted to make love to her, so she let him. She lay in the dark afterwards trying to decide what she felt about him, about all of it.
Eleven
Early that morning Sooky had crept downstairs, carrying Priya.
‘We get you some milk, shall we?’ she whispered. The little girl was wide-eyed, still dazed with sleep. ‘Milk and toast?’
She always spoke to Priya in English. She wanted her to be good at English, to be quick-witted and get it when someone told a joke. It would help her fit in and make friends easily at school. Priya, like most children growing up soaked in more than one language, had taken her time to say anything at all except Mama and Baba. Now she was beginning to untangle the threads of words, to work out what to say to whom and in which language.
Sooky’s mother, Meena Kaur, didn’t speak English, even after more than twenty years in the country, so she always spoke to her grandchildren in Punjabi. To Sooky, these days, she didn’t speak at all.
Sooky hoped she was the only one up and about, that there would be a bit of peace – before it all started off again. Even today, though, despite what was happening in India, Dad would have left for the factory by seven. He liked to work on the accounts before the other workers came in, said he couldn’t think straight to handle figures by the evening. Mom claimed the factory was his mistress, but these days this was said in teasing, not complaint.
All day yesterday the house had been in a ferment: phone calls to friends in London, from the uncles in Delhi, Sikh friends and neighbours calling round, the hall full of ‘Sat Sri Akal’ greetings as people came and went, with heated conversations and debates and the TV on – everyone glued, horrified, to the news reports.
Things in Punjab had abruptly reached a head. After the long lead-up to the movement for Khalistan, a separate Sikh homeland, the leader of the movement, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, and his followers had occupied the holy of holies, the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The army had closed in on them and now Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had ordered government forces to storm the temple and flush out the rebels. For all Sikhs, whatever their politics, ‘Operation Blue Star’ (this assault on the temple) was a horrifying outrage. It represented total sacrilege.
Rajdev, her elder brother, was the most explosive of all. He was obsessed with Khalistan. He was forever on at Dad for not wearing a turban the way he did himself now.
‘What is wrong with you?’ Raj would rave. ‘Call yourself a Sikh? How can anyone tell you’re a Sikh? They want to make Hindus of us, and you play right into their hands! You could be anything – Hindu, Muslim; you could be a Christian, for all anyone can see. Have you no pride?’
Khushwant, their dad, a sagging, cuddly-looking man, would sigh.
‘Look, I leave all this politics to others – I’ve got a business to run . . .’
He’d take the cup of sweet tea that Mom would make for him when he got home, with a small stack of chocolate digestives on a plate, and keep as far away from Raj as possible. Raj seemed to be everyone’s conscience these days, along with his sharp-nosed wife Roopinder, who was like a glove puppet, echoing everything he said.
‘Why d’you have to push it all the time?’ Sooky had said to Raj, before everything blew up in India, so that you couldn’t just ignore it. ‘You’ve got your politics – Dad’s got his. Why make trouble?’
Raj had turned to her, his thin face with its long, straggly beard full of contempt. ‘What do you know, Besharam? I was the one born in India – it’s my country. They owe us. Sikhs have always been an oppressed people. We’ll have our own land: a Sikh land.’
And then what? Sooky had thought bitterly. If the land was full of ‘holy’ people like you and Roop, I certainly wouldn’t want to live there.
Not once had he, her brother – with whom she’d grown up and played, who’d walked beside her to school every day – ever given her a hearing about her marriage to Jagdesh or tried to see her point of view. He used to call her Veer-ji, the term of affection for his younger sister. Now all he ever called her was Besharam (shameless one) and condemned her for bringing dishonour to the family.
And Roopinder, smug with her two children and another on the way, just liked being nasty. It was a sort of hobby with her, Sooky realized, the only real outlet she had for her intelligence, and a way of making herself feel superior.
Sooky pushed the kitchen door open and, to her dismay, saw that she was not the first up after all. Raj was there, already dressed, his blue turban neatly fastened. He was standing by the sink, hunched up with the radio pressed to his ear.
‘All I can get is bloody Mark Tully!’ he fumed.
The Indian government had imposed a news blackout across Punjab as soon as the crisis developed. It was hard to get the full picture of what was going on, let alone anything from Bhindranwale’s people. Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the leader of the separatists occupying the Golden Temple, was Raj’s hero.
Sooky felt a powerful stab of loneliness. She held Priya on one hip and filled the kettle, looking at her brother’s intense face out of the corner of her eye. He was such a stranger to her. He had grown his hair and insisted on observing all the religious rules. But it didn’t seem to make him any happier or nicer. What had happened to that warm, mischievous little boy she had known, who had giggled like a burbling stream, watching Dr Who and sharing his sweets with her? Now he was hard-faced, rigid and cruel – to her, anyway.
Last month he had joined the rally in London, marching with thousands of Sikhs demanding a Sikh homeland – Khalistan. He had pinned up a Khalistan flag on his and Roopinder’s bedroom wall and spoke in slogans. He seemed to feel contempt for anyone who did not feel exactly the way he did.
‘Don’t you care?’ he erupted, clicking the radio off in frustration. ‘They’re slaughtering our brothers . . .’ She could see he was close to tears.
‘Of course I care,’ she said. The situation had been in everyone’s mind, on everyone’s lips, building up over the past weeks. The army storming the Golden Temple, tanks pointed at the Akal Takhat – it was unthinkable, horribly distressing for every Sikh. ‘But, Raj, I don’t know what I can do. And . . .’ She knew it was a mistake even as she said it, ‘I just don’t think Bhindranwale is necessarily—’
She had lit the blue touchpaper.
‘You don’t think he’s what?’ he sneered savagely. ‘What would you know, you stupid woman? Sant Bhindranwale is our only hope.’ He slapped his hand on the table.
‘What do you know about politics: about having any kind of ideas, stupid? You can’t even keep a husband. I bet you don’t even know what to do in bed – look at you, thin and dried up like a dead stick!’
His face twisting with disgust, he crossed the kitchen. For a moment she thought he was going to hit her, but he went out.
‘I’ve got to go to work.’ The door slammed.
Priya started to snuffle, sensitive to the aggression in his voice.
‘It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,’ Sooky soothed her, sitting her in her hig
h chair. ‘Mommy’s getting you a drink.’
But as she turned away, tears rose in her own eyes. She tried to be tough and resilient for Priya’s sake, as well as her own, and not to be miserable. But living back at home, with the hostility of so much of her family, felt lonely and bitter. Dad was kindly enough in a distant way, but he didn’t know how to treat her now. She’d always been his favourite, but now she seemed only to fit into the framework of ‘disgrace’. Anyway, he was always so tired. He left what he thought was women’s business to the women – which turned out, in Dad’s book, to mean almost anything going on within the four walls of the house.
Raj and Roopinder were sanctimonious and spiteful.
But it was Mom’s reaction that hurt the most. Her endless silence seemed to contain such pain and conflict that Sooky had no words for it. It was all the more confusing because Meena had seemed to agree that Sooky needed to get Priya away from Jaz, her husband.
‘He keeps taking her off into the bedroom,’ she explained, weeping once she arrived back from Derby. ‘He was doing things to her. He locks the door. He’s not normal.’
She had speedily realized that her husband was a superficial, money-obsessed oaf without a hint of sensitivity to anyone else. That was bad enough, but as his wife she would have had to live with it. But his sexual weirdness was another thing altogether. Relations with her were a cold duty. He seemed far more interested in his small daughter. When she told Meena this, her mother turned her head away from her in horror. Even at the cost of the family izzat, or honour, she agreed, painfully, that Priya must be kept away from Jaz.
Sooky was so desperate to be rid of him that she had taken the quickest way out and shouldered the blame. Jaz claimed that they were divorcing on grounds of adultery – hers. So far as everyone else was concerned, she had done the thing that no wife was supposed to do: she had broken the marriage and behaved like a whore. She had grossly shamed her family in the community. That daughter – she was someone to be whispered about behind hands, the eyes boring into her, in the street, the gurdwara. She never went there now. She knew she was a cruel embarrassment to her mother.