Friends have in the past described the choice of venue as callous, but the fact is that there is no such thing as a good place to end a relationship. If you took someone to Le Gavroche to dump them, you’d be accused of cruelty for choosing somewhere so nice to do something so nasty. Let’s face it, you’re never going to be the good guy. So you may as well go somewhere cheap. Though Pizza Express has advantages besides economy. Quick, attentive service, useful for when the shit hits the fan. A certain guaranteed level of busyness, which lowers the risk of a scene. The name – ‘Ex-press’ – acting as a subconscious primer for the task at hand. Also, there is always at least one diner who is already eating alone and crying, so no one is going to stick out.
And this is why, the weekend after that night out in Birmingham with Ranjit, a few days after sitting in a STD clinic, trying to avoid eye contact with other patients in the waiting room, dying of shame when the doctor called out my name in full, I tried to google a branch of Pizza Express in Wolverhampton. Though I should have guessed that the woman who had finally broken my pattern of three-month relationships would also play havoc with these rituals of termination. Everything went wrong.
There turns out to be no branch of Pizza Express in my home town, so we ended up in Pizza Hut in a retail park on the outskirts of the city. And it turns out Pizza Hut is good for nothing, not even pizza. The Fanta that I ordered tasted like booze, while Freya’s booze tasted like Fanta. The service was lethargic and hostile. My usual restaurant trick of trying to guess what Freya might order (I would basically point out the thing I least wanted on the menu) failed because everything on the menu looked like the thing I least wanted to eat. Also, Freya looked so lovely, was so cheerful, lunging for a French kiss underneath a sign at the salad counter announcing ‘Please use tongues’, that when it came to the crunch, I floundered.
Apparently, it’s not unusual for adulterers to be afflicted by contradictory feelings. Straying can paradoxically make you appreciate what you have at home. But for me, these conventional paradoxes were intermingled with a maelstrom of other contradictions. I felt guilty, but at the same time I couldn’t help feeling my actions were a symptom of a deeper relationship malaise for which Freya bore some responsibility. I wanted to confess and come clean, but at the same time I couldn’t see the point. (It was not like I had been in touch with the girls since. Or even Ranjit, for that matter.) The desire to leave the shop and return to my life in London was more intense than ever, and had become even more so after a bunch of kids ran into the shop, stole £200 worth of goods in a raid, and the police didn’t come to take a statement for almost a whole week afterwards. But at the same time I was less sure than ever how to get Mum out of the store. I missed Freya, looked forward to seeing her, but at the same time our weekly meetings were increasingly awkward and we were bickering, with Freya complaining endlessly that I ‘never talked’. I was grateful that she had stuck with me, but at the same time the old anxieties about our cultural incompatibility were still there. It was all utterly paralysing.
In the end, as we waited for our food, I went to the bathroom to give myself a pep talk. I stood before the red basins, looked into the red-framed mirror and, making eye contact with myself, went through a speech I had mentally run through tens of times before.
It’s time to call time on things. The problem, ultimately, is that she is white and I am brown and while I used to think our love could bridge the racial divide, I’m not sure any more. She fell in love with Arjan the metropolitan graphic designer, but I am now Arjan the provincial shopkeeper, and while she clearly expects to get her old boyfriend back, I don’t think I can separate the latter from the former. Moreover, I don’t want to separate the latter from the former. I used to think race didn’t matter, but my father’s death has made me realise that I need to maintain my link to my past, that I need a narrative connection between who I am and who I was. I used to think that Asian men who dated English girls and then went on to marry Asian women were cowards, men who didn’t have the courage of their convictions, who caved under social pressure and emotional blackmail, but now I can see that they usually give in because it is impossible. Because, no matter how many books she reads, she will never really understand what it means to be Asian. She won’t understand the intense sense of duty and responsibility I feel towards my mum. She won’t ever have the experience of someone despising her for her colour. Conversely, she will never know the pleasure of being alone in a room full of white people and for a stranger to come up and make you feel instantly at ease with just one word – ‘Kiddha?’ – or have the simultaneously infuriating and comforting experience of a car hire firm calling to say they have discovered several Tupperware boxes of curry, which your mother has squirrelled away for you despite your insistence that you don’t need to take any food back to London. And what about our unborn children? If we have kids, what will they be like? If they come out white, like interracial children do sometimes, I will walk around the park with strangers thinking I have kidnapped them. If they look like me, then they will have the burden of appearing Indian, but without actually being so. Because let’s face it, when it comes to marriage, one family always wins, and it is obviously going to be her family. They have the numbers and the cash, and my children will grow up white, if they ever see my mother they will not be able to communicate with her, if anyone ever gives them racial grief, they will not be able to make sense of it, their dislocation reflected in a grandfather who, on some level, resents them for being half-breeds. And while she and I can put up with her old man’s bigotry now, apologise for it even, I am pretty sure that I won’t stand for it when it comes to a child.
The speech went on. And would have gone on even longer had a Pizza Hut worker not emerged from the toilet cubicles he had been cleaning. He had heard me muttering. We exchanged an awkward glance in the mirror and I pretended my hands needed washing. As I did so, I imagined Freya’s reaction. She would cry, of course. Maybe ask if there was someone else. But I would stick to my guns. Not mention the girls. Move on. Come on, I told myself. Let’s do it.
However, this sense of resolution evaporated as soon as I returned to our table. When the food arrived – a ‘Shrimply Delicious’ pizza which looked neither shrimpy nor delicious, and Freya’s ‘Virtuous Veg’ option, which, being covered in a layer of grease, really didn’t look very virtuous at all – we both laughed. Freya began eating anyway, and I was reminded of another thing I loved about her – unlike so many of my previous girlfriends, she was not funny about food, forever fasting on a juice diet, her appetite an echo of her lust for life. And then, out of nowhere, she said, ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
My heart skipped a beat, and I began perspiring. Out of nowhere, an alternative speech popped into my mind, something about the mind-bending, character-crushing nature of drugs and diminished responsibility. Have you tried skunk lately? Ketamine is a horse tranquiliser, for God’s sake! But I would not need to use it. Freya put her hand on my arm and announced, in an apologetic tone, ‘I’ve found your aunt.’ I succumbed to a coughing fit. ‘Are you cross?’
I wasn’t cross. Just surprised. And relieved. And disappointed. And, as often seemed to be the case lately, bewildered. The fact was that I had barely even thought about my aunt since that night. Except to accept that my expectations of family reunions were unrealistic, being, as they were, based almost entirely on denouements in Disney movies, scenes from Shakespearean comedies and episodes of Surprise, Surprise, the TV show in which Cilla Black reunited tearful, invariably cheerful members of the public with long-lost loved ones, often in the chirpy presence of Bob Carolgees, famous for his ventriloquist act with Spit the Dog.
Seeing Jim, if it was Jim, and I didn’t really know or really care any more, made me realise that if you are the one doing the searching, the long-lost relative may not be the person you expect or want them to be. Also, if you are the one who has become estranged from your family, you may not want to be found. And the plain fact
that Surinder Bains had done such a good job of disappearing suggested that she did not want to be.
However, maybe because Freya was more thorough than me, was not assisted by a maniacal skunk-addled Punjabi, she had found her. Though her key breakthrough was perhaps even less cinematic than mine had been with Jim. Apparently she had typed the words ‘Surinder Bains’ into an internet search engine, some kind of logarithm prompted the search engine to ask ‘Did you mean Sue Baines?’, and she was directed to an article in a regional trade magazine. She opened her handbag and handed it over. ‘I know you didn’t ask, but I just couldn’t help myself.’
The Valley Country Hotel, which aims to be Surrey’s number-one four-star hotel, has appointed Sue Baines as General Manager. Her appointment to the 132-bedroom hotel that boasts one of the region’s largest conference facilities reflects the hotel’s determination to firmly position itself as the number-one choice for leisure and conference guests.
Baines, who previously ran The Orchard in Rye, and assumes responsibility for over 80 staff and conferencing space for up to 387 delegates, said of her appointment: ‘The Valley Country Hotel is a hidden gem that has established a great reputation for service. During the last two years the hotel has renovated all its guest rooms and pavilion. I want to build on that. We can definitely improve when it comes to corporate bookings and weddings.’
To be frank, this small article wouldn’t have detained me for a second. I saw my hypothetical aunt, even after reading it, in terms of my mother, and could no more imagine her as a high-flying businesswoman than I could imagine my mother at a drum-and-bass gig. But Freya was nothing if not meticulous in her research. She had looked up the electoral register for the hotel in Rye and, sure enough, found that one of the permanent residents was one ‘Surinder Bains’.
I could tell she was excited from the sheer amount of stationery she had invested in the search: there were highlighted photocopies, the relevant sections emphasised with arrows on Post-it notes. I could vaguely recall once feeling such excitement myself, but was disorientated by the direction lunch had taken. I didn’t know what to say. Then, from among her documents, Freya produced a printout from the hotel website, advertising a £60-a-head five-course Christmas lunch. It announced: ‘Leave the cooking to us this Christmas and enjoy world-class food and service with Christmas Day lunch at the Valley Country Hotel.’
‘Shall we go?’ she asked.
Christmas? I hadn’t thought that far. Needless to say, when I did, I had mixed feelings about the idea. On the one hand, neither my mum nor I were going to feel particularly celebratory, with Dad gone, and with Christmas being when Freya and I had once planned to wed. But on the other hand, we were supposed to have been split up by then. Could I walk around with the guilt another whole month? Pretend that night in Birmingham had never happened? I had no idea.
‘You don’t want to spend Christmas with your family?’ I asked.
‘What, with my father complaining about the food he doesn’t help with and my brother molesting his teenage girlfriend?’
‘Ha.’ I stared at my pizza. What would we be like in a month’s time? ‘We would just be going to look, right? A recce?’
‘Just to look.’
‘We don’t have to talk to her, even if she is there?’
‘Absolutely not. Doubt she will be there anyway. I mean, who works on Christmas Day?’
My father didn’t work on Christmas Day. And he would bang on all year about how much he was looking forward to the one time of year the shop was closed. ‘Can’t wait until Crimbo,’ he would remark whenever anything went wrong, or if he felt particularly exhausted. But on the day itself, he would invariably be up at 4.30 a.m. as usual, and if someone rang on the door to ask for emergency supplies, he wouldn’t be able to resist serving them. Long hours, seven days a week, were the reason my grandfather, my father and thousands like them did well. My father disliked even leaving the shop to go to the loo, arguing that people always expected to be greeted with a smiling face if they popped in for some milk, emphasising how small shops relied on repeat trade. But Christmas highlighted the fact that all-day shopkeeping had made him dysfunctional.
It also revealed his fundamental lack of frivolity. I remember once coming home from infant school bearing a present given to me by ‘Father Christmas’, which prompted my actual father to take me to his study and present me with the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry for Santa, and an accompanying lecture. My mother, who still talks of ‘Christmas Father’, attempted to provide comfort, but she has never really been a ray of festive cheer either. And, true to form, she announced, before I had to make any excuse, that she planned to spend the whole day at the temple.
The weekend was more fun than most of our Midlands assignations. Freya came up to help in the shop on Christmas Eve, which turned out to be unexpectedly entertaining given the surprising number of people who came in to buy emergency presents. My mum was uncharacteristically pleasant to Freya. And we dropped her off at the temple before heading to Surrey at ten on Christmas Day morning, spending the journey working out what signal I would employ if I wanted to leave, and wondering out loud what the lunch might be like.
It was our first Christmas Day away from home for both of us and we decided it would most likely be a small affair, that the revellers would include a spattering of French people (apparently, in France the big day for celebrating Christmas isn’t the 25th but the 24th) and professionals who had to work alone away from home on Christmas Day (radio DJs, BBC continuity announcers, tow-truck drivers, priests, etc.). I think the image, for me at least, was built around a Jamie Oliver Christmas cookery special. But as we stood in the middle of the ‘intimate pre-lunch bucks fizz reception’, in the ‘country-house hotel’, we realised we were wrong.
For a start, it was hardly intimate: there must have been more than a hundred people in the overheated room, ranging from one to a hundred years in age. A peek through the net curtains covering the floor-to-ceiling glass doors revealed no sign of actual ‘country’ or ‘valley’. The room itself felt more civic centre than country-house hotel, it being a large 1980s brick extension attached to a Georgian mansion. As for the bucks fizz, well, it was one part flat supermarket champagne to three parts Del Monte fruit juice, served in a plastic flute by a waitress who didn’t seem to realise that she could make life a lot easier for herself by pouring champagne down the side of the glass, rather than straight into it.
‘I feel like I have gatecrashed a registry wedding,’ whispered Freya under her breath.
‘I feel like I have gatecrashed a funeral,’ I replied.
‘An unfriendly funeral. Where everyone has fallen out over the will.’
‘Anyway, happy Christmas.’ I sipped the bucks fizz, attempted to chink my flute against hers, and laughed when the plastic made no sound.
‘Happy Christmas,’ said Freya, leaning over for a kiss. ‘The man from Del Monte say “yes”.’
Several young children ran around us, playing with new toys, presumably presents, and highlighting another thing we had been wrong about: the preponderance of solo diners. Most people had come in large family groups. The only two couples were Freya and I, and an elderly couple, who looked like they had a combined age of more than 200. She was in a wheelchair and plugged in via tubes to canisters of what was presumably oxygen. He was pushing her along, but seemed barely capable of the task, given his own frailty.
‘Bit, um, white, isn’t it?’ said Freya, who had tied her hair into two bunches with tinsel for the occasion.
‘A day in Wolverhampton and you develop racial Tourette’s,’ I said, unable to resist making the point.
She conceded. ‘Touché.’
Like so many provincial hotels out of season, the Valley Country Hotel seemed to be staffed entirely by schoolgirls, presumably from a nearby town, who for the occasion were dressed in short skirts trimmed with tinsel and fur. One of them came up to us with a tray piled high with Christmas crackers. We pulled at t
he ends of one and the contents – a plastic comb, a joke – spilled on to the brown carpet. Freya read out the joke.
‘What would happen if cows could fly?’
‘Oh God, I hate jokes.’
‘That is so you – “I hate jokes”.’
‘What?’
‘Cheer up, for God’s sake.’
My essential joylessness was one of her most frequent complaints – next to disapproval at the weightlifting, which had taken me up a jacket size. I mounted a defence. ‘It’s the difference between, say, seeing something acted out badly at the theatre and someone describing something amusing they saw in the street. I just prefer natural wit.’
‘As I was saying,’ continued Freya, who liked the theatre. ‘What would happen if cows could fly?’
‘Let me guess. They would fly to the Milky Way?’
‘No. Actually, you would get a pat on the head.’
I groaned, she pulled a face, and in the pause that followed we noticed the elderly couple struggling with their cracker. They had managed to get hold of their respective ends, but she didn’t have the strength to hold on to hers. In the end he pulled both ends himself, and when another comb and joke fell on to the floor, Freya retrieved it and read out the joke for the benefit of the couple.
‘What do you call a bunch of ducks in a box?’
‘Um.’ Like me, he seemed to approach Christmas cracker jokes like crossword puzzles. ‘A box of quackers?’
‘Yes! How did you know that?’
‘I hate jokes,’ he laughed.
‘See,’ I interjected at Freya. ‘Not just me.’
We got chatting. It turned out the couple had lived in a village near the hotel their whole lives, though it was more or less a town now. He was a retired engineer and they had been coming here for decades, from back when the main house had belonged to a local aristocrat who used to open it up once a year for a ball. Two of their three children had got married here, and they had spent eight of their last Christmas Days at the hotel.
Marriage Material Page 18