Another Country

by Anjali Joseph

  ‘Speaking,’ said Leela brightly.

  The job was in Notting Hill, quite near Roger’s flat. For the next three weeks she trailed there, waiting to be humiliated when she bumped into him. She replayed the moment when he’d turned to her gravely and said, ‘I know this is going to hurt you but I have to say it. I don’t want a relationship.’

  ‘I know,’ she had said quickly, but he’d prolonged the conversation anyway. She hadn’t cried then, and he’d stopped her near his door to give her a lingering, unwanted hug, after which he’d pulled back and appraised her with his large, hazel eyes. ‘You don’t seem that upset,’ he’d noted.

  After three weeks, Leela called in sick, filed her time sheet, and on Sunday sent Estelle an email saying that her grandmother – she had none left, but felt a warm, sentimental pang for herself as she typed it – had been taken ill. She had to go to India.

  BOMBAY

  Chapter 19

  ‘Ah, you’re up,’ her father said. She stood in front of him, blinking and yawning. He was sitting in one of the cane chairs; his face broke into a smile. ‘Ma’s gone to get a few things, she has someone coming over, but not for a while. Have some coffee? Do you want me to make you juice?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ Leela said. She wanted juice. She waited. ‘I can make it,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll make it for you.’ He went to the fridge and removed three large smooth citrus fruit.

  ‘Oh, mosambi?’

  ‘Yes, these are good ones.’

  ‘Is it the season?’ she asked.

  Her father sliced each mosambi in half. He took out the juicer, reassembled it, and plugged it in. She watched his hands, small and long-fingered, as they pushed each halved fruit on the rotating press. The motor hummed. Outside a bird sang. In loose cotton pyjamas, she was warm, even mildly perspiring. She became aware of the back of her neck, warm and at peace.

  She sat eating quietly, cross-legged on one of the dining-table chairs. To her left, the balcony door was open, a curtain waving in the space.

  The newspaper was full of unfamiliar usages – encroachment (meaning an illegal building), gift (as a verb), incidentally (meaning importantly), hutment. In the colour supplement were bad photos of people who appeared to be famous. Some looked plump; they were dressed in spangles, at parties; after that came a horoscope, the TV section, and the classifieds. She read them: rooms in South Mumbai, Rs 4,000 onwards! Call centre interviews. OPEN INTERVIEW.

  ‘It doesn’t seem that difficult to get a job,’ she said.

  Her father looked disparaging. ‘Depends on the type of job you want. And have you any idea how many people would go for one of those things?’

  ‘Right.’ She closed the paper, looked at her coffee mug and considered whether to make more coffee.

  ‘Have you put your geyser on?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It might be a good idea to have a bath now,’ her father said. ‘The power often goes around one o’clock.’

  Leela went and washed her plate and mug and shambled past him. She passed the front door which opened. Her mother had returned.

  ‘Ah, you’re up?’ she said. ‘Not that it matters, but Priya and Elizabeth are coming over for coffee later. I’m just telling you.’

  Leela went back to her room and shut the door as an initial precaution. She lay on the bed.

  At the end of the afternoon, she set out for a walk up their quiet lane, with trees all around, and the sounds of birds. Vehicles came at her from three directions as she crossed the main road; behind, a motorbike turned in, a man called out, and in front were cars, and a bicycle coming the wrong way. She stepped onto the high pavement. Under some trees, a fat woman in a nine-yard sari sat behind a cigarette stall. Leela picked her way past. Then the lone but busy mochi, mending someone’s sandal as he smoked; she had to get off the pavement because of the knot of people near the tea stall. Thin men, who looked at her, and she strode past trying to appear indigenous, and au fait.

  Chapter 20

  In the hut, she woke, thought about sleeping again, remembered that she had planned to rise early to swim in the sea, which was so conveniently close. When she’d arrived the previous night, she had looked at the path, heard the boom of the breakers, and gone to bed with the usual sense of excitement. Now she just felt nervous. The mild depression of the habitual oversleeper took hold; everything anticipated was already anticlimactic. She let go of the vision of herself rising with the dawn, drawn to the beach like an amphibian, swimming in the waves and then walking back up the cliff for breakfast in the café. ‘I love swimming in the sea,’ she heard herself say, explanatorily, to herself about herself, ruining the moment. She sighed. There had been mosquitoes in the night, not many, but lying still and waiting for them to be sated had not worked. She got up, needing to pee. The room was plain, a cement floor and a small ceiling fan. I am paying, she thought, to rent a hut similar to the one the bai at home lives in. Though with more privacy, and near the sea. The frivolity of her project was embarrassing. But she would go through with it. Afterwards, she would be able to say, ‘I went travelling – in India?’

  She dressed, came out of the hut, and locked the door. The world appeared, bright blue, yellow, and green. Coconut palms, and long fallen fronds on the sand; a man in a hoisted-up lungi washing under a tree; a clothes line; a bird shouting; a couple of crows on the ground fighting over a piece of coconut shell.

  ‘Ah, morning.’ It was Johnny, the man who’d rented her the room. ‘You sleep late.’

  ‘Well, I –’

  He grinned and rounded the corner carrying his watering can.

  When she got to the café she decided to eat breakfast and wait till the afternoon to swim.

  The water was cooler than she’d imagined. She walked in, enjoying its fizz against her calves. To her right, some blond children played. They dove under enormous breakers and resurfaced neatly. The waves were bigger than she remembered, but this was still the Arabian Sea, just further down the coast from Bombay. She began to stride out. She’d forgotten the weight of the water, or the largeness and interconnectedness of the sea. A wave rose, a fat swell, and she jumped, slightly late, but it passed, setting her down. She giggled, looked down, realised another was rising next to her. She jumped as it broke, and was sucked into it, swirled around – drowning, was this what it was like? Such a busy experience, inhaling salt and water, and thrashing about?

  A moment later, she was dumped on the beach. She knelt, sputtered, and hacked, then realised she was in only two or three inches of water. The blond children, aged perhaps five or six, who had been diving under the waves, were looking at her.

  At lunch in the café, she eavesdropped on the next table. One of the two men, this one without much hair, tanned and in a singlet and cropped combat trousers, was talking about his job.

  ‘I was in England, southern England,’ he explained carefully. ‘A place called Slough. It was soul-destroying – consumer publishing –’

  Leela’s head whipped round.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said the toned, overtanned blonde woman in the group.

  ‘What do you do, Jane?’ asked the other man, who was mousier and European.

  Jane gave Leela a slightly reproving look. ‘MTV, I work in MTV. Well, no, it’s – well, yes, it is pretty glam at times, but it’s just work really. You know?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, of course,’ the first man said. He stared at Jane. Leela began to evolve a fantasy in which they smiled and waved her over, and Jane realised that Leela was the coolest person there. They would go to the beach together, hang out, and the unattractive man and the less unattractive man would pay attention to Leela in the same compelled, creepy way.

  Jane caught Leela’s eye and looked put off. She turned, flicked her hair, and lowered her voice as she continued to talk. Leela eyed her yoga mat, rolled up with a useful little handle, and thought of the signs further along the cliff for yoga classes, and free DVD screenings. Kill Bill, which she’d seen,
was this week’s film. She imagined going to the screening and, afterwards, making friends … it went hazy. She paid the bill and went back towards her hut.

  Some days later, she’d finished the book she’d borrowed from the clifftop library, which was stocked with thrillers and odd volumes left behind by previous tourists. She thought of leaving. She still hadn’t been to the nearby village. There was a temple there, but a cousin had warned that, here in the south, many temples had a dress code: women must be in saris, men in a mundu. She dreaded being caught out by not knowing what to do: wave an agarbatti? Pray, certainly, perhaps offer flowers, but beyond that she had little idea.

  There was a bakery café somewhere on the way to the village. She read about it in the guide book: the café, and the walk, were rehearsed so many times in her mind that the idea of either became exhausting.

  ‘We’re going to see elephants tomorrow. Have you been?’ Mike said. He was a tall, sweet-faced boy, who looked both younger and older than he may have been. His brow was large and rounded, like an illustration of a child in a children’s book. She had seen him in the café, looking at her and, sometimes, smiling. He sat with two older people. They looked as though they might have been his parents, but who came on holiday with their parents?

  When she smiled back and said ‘Hi’ one day, he nearly fell off his seat. He scrambled up. ‘Hi, I’m Mike.’

  ‘I’m Leela.’

  ‘Do you – do you want a coffee?’

  ‘What about your friends?’ The older couple had risen and were walking away.

  He grinned. ‘They’re my parents. I think they’re going to take a nap.’

  ‘Oh.’ Leela also grinned.

  ‘My mum’s just had cancer,’ he said as she sat down, ‘but she’s in remission, so I said I’d take them away, to get over things. Get some sun.’ He waved at the waiter. ‘Can we have two coffees please?’

  ‘Oh.’ Leela looked down. The waiter brought them milk coffees. He stirred sugar into his. ‘What do you do?’ she asked.

  ‘I make furniture.’ He smiled half apologetically.

  ‘Like a cabinetmaker?’ She realised that she knew almost no one who wasn’t a white-collar worker.

  ‘Yeah. It’s all right. It’s a trade. Lots of heavy lifting.’ He told her about people for whom he’d made cupboards, which he’d then carried up flights of stairs. ‘You’d think I’d be musclier.’ He indicated his lankiness. ‘What about you? What do you do?’ His voice was uncertain; he looked at her intently, his eyes tender, avid, doubtful.

  The waiters, who’d seen her alone and him with his parents, watched them with interest, for which she suffered; but it vindicated her. She would do what she wanted, she decided. As soon as she knew what that was.

  She told him about her jobs. They talked about London, about Ilford, where he lived, and his plans for his business. He had taught English in China, and enjoyed it. Then he’d started working for a man who made furniture. ‘It’s good money.’ He’d done a City and Guilds. ‘Evening class,’ he sniffed, wrinkling his face.

  ‘Did you like it?’

  He smiled. ‘It’s pretty simple. You’re not making art objects. But it’s good to work with your hands.’

  ‘Do you ever wish you’d been to university? I mean, if you enjoyed teaching and stuff?’

  He shrugged, and smiled. ‘I didn’t want to. I wanted to work as soon as I could. And it wouldn’t have been that simple. I don’t know. I don’t regret it.’

  She nodded.

  The breeze made a sigh in the palm trees above them. The sun was dimming.

  He asked her if she’d have dinner with him, after he had a drink with his parents.

  ‘Won’t they mind?’

  He made a conciliating grimace. ‘They’ll be fine. I’ll go for a drink with them, then I’m free. Eight o’clock?’

  At night the hotel garden became more mysterious. In clouds around the sulphur-yellow lights, insects murmured. The darkness was faintly electric. She jumped when the three noisy German boys from the next room turned the corner.

  Mike was outside the café, wearing the same clothes as earlier. He was half bowed, his back to her. When she got closer she touched his elbow.

  ‘Hi!’ He jumped, then smiled, and she saw again the childish-old-man crinkling of his face, which he then ironed into goodwill, the entire movement swift and automatic.

  He made a gesture of putting his arm around her without touching her. ‘Shall we go and eat?’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘One of those places along the beach? There are lots.’

  ‘Okay.’

  They walked past upturned fishing boats. ‘I haven’t been on this side of the beach,’ Leela said.

  ‘Oh, haven’t you?’ He turned to her quickly. ‘I came down here to watch them bringing in the catch yesterday evening, and early in the morning once. It was amazing.’

  ‘Was it?’ She smiled. Did the foreigners who came here see more than she did, she kept wondering. They opened their eyes; she was always trying to fit things into a pattern, and not be surprised.

  ‘They waved at me, they were really friendly,’ Mike said.

  She imagined herself watching the fishermen, and knew her presence would have altered the scene; they would have looked at her differently than at the foreign man.

  There were four shack restaurants.

  ‘How about this one?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ she said.

  ‘Is that okay?’

  ‘They all look the same.’ Each shack had plastic tables and chairs in the sand, a smaller covered section, and menus written in coloured chalk on blackboards.

  ‘Hello,’ Mike said to the man who came forward smiling.

  He’d been here for a beer, he said; he hadn’t eaten. He ordered a beer and she a fresh lime soda. They discussed which fish was fresh; Leela silently worried about the cost.

  Mike poured out his Kingfisher and drank from it contentedly. He rested the glass on the paper tablecloth. He was on holiday, she thought with envy. So was she, but she kept feeling she must come up with a better pretext.

  ‘Are you looking forward to the elephants?’ she asked.

  He laughed. ‘To be honest, it’s just great to get away, get some warm weather. My parents –’ his face took on a serious, protective expression when he spoke of them ‘– have been through a horrible time. Really horrible. Chemotherapy –’

  ‘That makes you feel crap, doesn’t it?’ she asked. His anxiety made her anxious.

  He waved his hand. ‘It’s horrible. But it’s over. My mum’s better. At least for now. It’s good to enjoy something. And it’s their anniversary.’

  ‘How long have they been married?’

  ‘Thirty years. They got married young. Had me. That was it.’ He hesitated. ‘Are you seeing anyone?’

  ‘No. I just split up with someone. Are you?’

  He hesitated again. She wondered at her own surprise.

  ‘I have been seeing someone for a bit. Not that long. I – I think I’m onto a good thing, though.’ He looked at her, and his face went through a conflict: question, avidity, then its extinguishing.

  ‘Oh, that’s great. What’s her name?’ She was no longer surprised.

  ‘Sarah,’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘What does she do?’

  ‘She works in a school.’

  ‘Oh, nice. Does she live near you?’

  He paused, and waved a hand. ‘It hasn’t been that long. But I think – I think I’m onto a good thing.’ He sounded dogged, as though arguing with himself.

  Leela nodded to show consent. The food arrived: kingfish cooked with butter and lemon, and chips on the side. The fish was very good.

  ‘This is how I like it – simple,’ Mike said. Leela, who had inwardly rolled her eyes at the thought of no chilli or anything, ate and agreed it was good.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want a beer?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ To save money
and out of an exaggerated sense of responsibility to herself, travelling alone, she didn’t drink during the trip.

  ‘Do you want another of those?’ He pointed at her lime soda. She smiled and shook her head.

  ‘So tell me about you,’ he said, his eyes quick.

  ‘Well, I was seeing someone, I was with someone for about three and a half years. In London. But I split up with him, then I was seeing someone else for a bit, now I’m single.’ She fiddled with her napkin.

  He watched her, eyes unquiet. ‘What happened with the – with your boyfriend?’

  She exhaled. ‘It just went on too long. Maybe we weren’t suited. Or maybe that’s just what people say when they split up.’

  He nodded. ‘So you stopped fancying him?’

  ‘Not that, even. He wouldn’t commit, and I got really angry about it until finally I couldn’t get angry any more.’ She shrugged.

  Mike nodded, attentive. ‘And then what happened?’ His long fingers plied his knife and fork.

  ‘Then I met someone else.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Leela stopped eating so that she could better talk. ‘Not like that. I didn’t do anything till I’d split up with Richard. It just made me realise – if I’d still been in love with him, or believed things could work out I would never have liked someone else. When I did, I realised that was it. It’d been dragging on for too long. He couldn’t make up his mind. Basically I thought, it’s not that hard to know if you want to commit to someone. You pretty much know immediately, as far as I can tell.’ Absent-mindedly, she ate a chip that had gone cold. Behind them, the sea did quiet, night-time things; the tide was going out.

  ‘What happened with the other guy?’

  She shrugged. ‘He was a bit older. I don’t know, I just didn’t really get it. Then afterwards I felt stupid. He kind of made me feel stupid. When you’re ten years older, you just know more stuff about life. I didn’t get that, but now I do. I wouldn’t let it happen again, I’d be more in control,’ she said. She clutched at her empty lemonade glass. ‘I’d never just go along with stuff. I’ve got it now. It’s like you’re always learning things, but never the things you need to know to stop making the same mistake in a new way.’