The Handsworth Times

by Sharon Duggal

  ‘Oh we have some savings still,’ she says instead. ‘Money is not our problem.’

  ‘Okay but you know you can ask anytime, right?’

  Usha nods silently, her head hung low. The pregnant pause that follows is broken by the sound of yelling and loud thumps on the stairs.

  ‘Bagsy in the bathroom first.’

  ‘Get off, I’m desperate.’

  ‘Fuck off, Kavi, you can go in the garden if you’re desperate. It’s easier for boys.’

  ‘Don’t stink it out, shitface,’ Kavi shouts from the hallway.

  ‘Sorry!’ Usha says to her friend, embarrassed. ‘I don’t know where they get this terrible language… probably school.’

  ‘Oh blimey, Ush, don’t worry about it, they probably get it from our lot anyhow!’ Brenda laughs and begins to gather up her things. ‘I’ll let you all get on with it,’ she says as she leaves by the back door.

  Later that afternoon the house is quiet; Usha knows it is a forced and eerie quiet that comes with emptiness rather than with the fullness of serenity. She has tidied away the vacuum cleaner to the small cupboard under the stairs and has tucked the dusters and other cloths below the sink. The mop and bucket have been squeezed and emptied and placed in the corner behind the bathroom door. She looks around the kitchen at the walls which desperately need a fresh coat of paint. She grabs the scourer from the sink and begins to rub at a yellowish stain on the wall above the cooker before sitting down at the kitchen table to sort through a tray of lentils. The kitchen is silent except for the low white noise of the TV in the next room. The quiet is punctuated by the soothing rain-like sound of the lentils being shifted across the stainless steel plate into sorted and unsorted piles. The quiet of the moment is abruptly broken by a loud bang on the back gate. Usha jumps, inadvertently knocking the tray of lentils with her hand. They scatter across the tray, merging back into one pile and she sighs. A second later, Brenda crashes in through the back door breathless with excitement.

  ‘I’ve had an idea, Usha,’ she says.

  Usha moves automatically towards the kettle but Brenda grabs it from her hand and gently guides Usha back towards the kitchen chair.

  ‘Sit down and listen, bab,’ she says as she puts the kettle on. She plonks herself on the vacant chair next to Usha, lights up a cigarette and pauses to stare at the flat mustard-coloured lentils in the tray in front of them.

  ‘Are these for eating?’ she says, picking a couple in her fingers and scrutinising them. ‘You can’t be having that for your tea, can you?’ She lifts up a handful and lets a stream of lentils spill through her fingers. Both women watch as they cascade satisfactorily back on to the tray.

  Usha begins to explain that the lentils will be boiled into a sort of spicy soup when Brenda launches into a garbled monologue,

  ‘We have to do something, Usha, otherwise this community will just explode or whatever the right word is. So, I have done some thinking and I have had an idea, it might sound naff and that but maybe this could work.’ Brenda pauses and takes a long drag on her cigarette; she exhales slowly before continuing, ‘So, I thought we could get the kids involved in something – you know give them a reason to get up and get out of a morning… keep them off the streets and that and then maybe they would feel a little more motivated, you know what I mean?’

  Usha returns to separating the lentils into thin lines, meticulously examining each line for stones before shifting the separated heaps from the left to the right side of the tray.

  ‘Looks like you’re checking a babbie’s hair for nits,’ Brenda observes.

  Usha forces a small smile. She concentrates on the lentils and Brenda’s words are just a murmur in the background, not dissimilar to the white noise of the television seeping through the wall. She wants Brenda to leave her alone so she can continue her task unperturbed – it is a task which focuses her mind just enough to stop the whys and ifs around Billy’s death from dominating her thoughts. Brenda continues to speak.

  ‘As I was saying, I was watching this thing on the telly last night and the kids were all hanging around and doing nothing so their teacher gets them to put on a show, like a performance.’

  Usha feels bad about wishing Brenda gone and irritation is replaced with guilt as she remembers the hours of support over cups of tea she has had from this woman sitting opposite her now. Brenda has visited regularly since Billy died – not daily, but at least a couple of times a week and certainly more than any single person that she could call a friend in the Indian community around her. Even the visits from Bibi and her father are not as frequent as Brenda’s. Since Mukesh lost his job no-one had offered the kind of the friendship that Brenda had offered – unconditional and constant, unwavering even in more trying moments – the kind of friendship one doesn’t realise is needed until it exists and becomes indispensable. Usha rises from the table, reboils the kettle and begins to concentrate on what Brenda is saying.

  ‘That won’t be any good around here,’ Usha says as she makes tea. ‘It isn’t America here or even like London. This isn’t the sort of area that can be made better with a song and a dance, Brenda.’

  ‘I know that, bab, but the idea of giving them something to do… your lot could lead it, Anila is into all that stuff, she can put it to good use instead of hanging out with those radicals she mixes with. What do you think? We need a project that will bring people together – not just one type of people but everyone around here. We are all facing the same problems after all, aren’t we?’

  ‘Well, yes some of the same.’

  ‘Oh hell, I’m sorry Usha, I didn’t mean Billy, I meant no jobs and the shops closing down and teenagers with nothing to do and that… sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay, Brenda, I know what you meant.’

  Usha stirs the tea and places a mug in front of Brenda and then returns to separating the good lentils from the bad.

  The next day Brenda comes crashing in again through the back door. This time Usha is scrubbing at a cracked, brown layer of burnt rice on the bottom of a saucepan.

  ‘Horrible noise those Brillos make,’ says Brenda, by way of announcing her arrival. ‘Make my skin crawl, they do, like nails down a blackboard.’

  Usha looks up and smiles weakly at her friend. Brenda’s exuberance unsettles her; it is not an emotion she can remember feeling since Billy died and it is strange to be in the presence of it.

  ‘I have written out some notes and Eugene has copied them,’ Brenda says enthusiastically. ‘I am going to pop them through the letterboxes around here but I thought I better let you know. I have put your address on them inviting people to come to a meeting. It’s on a Saturday in the day, like, so no blokes will come – they’ll all be watching the football results at that time, dreaming about winning the Pools and that.’

  ‘When?’ Usha says panicked. She looks around the kitchen and fixes on a small cobweb in the corner of the ceiling which she has been unable to reach for days. Brenda follows the direction of Usha’s eyes, grabs the copy of the Handsworth Times from the kitchen table, stands on tiptoes and swipes at the cobweb. Both women watch as it floats down to settle on the edge of the counter top. Usha gathers it up in a dishcloth, shakes it into the sink and washes it away with a running tap.

  ‘The house looks spotless, Usha. Don’t worry, it isn’t for a week or two anyhow. I just thought it would be better here than mine. Eugene has his tools all over the place all the time. It’s just to get some ideas about what we can do, you know, like your Anila, get active and that.’

  Usha looks at the words on Brenda’s home-made leaflet.

  MAKING HANDSWORTH BETTER FOR OUR CHILDREN – CAN YOU HELP?

  The words seem odd together but Usha can’t work out why.

  ‘Great,’ says Brenda, interpreting Usha’s silent contemplation as acceptance.

  One week later, Kavi flicks through the Handsworth Tim
es, and asks,

  ‘Why is that Brenda woman always here these days?’

  ‘Mom and her are organising a meeting or something,’ Kamela replies, even though the question is directed at Usha.

  ‘Bloody meetings!’ says Mukesh. As he speaks he sucks up the fumes from a cigarette he holds through a tunnel made by curling his thumb around his index and middle fingers so his whole hand becomes a pipe. Usha waves away the smoke before she speaks.

  ‘Brenda thinks the children around here need to get involved in something positive. She is organising this meeting to get ideas. Young people are bored and that leads to trouble,’ she says, repeating Brenda’s words from the day before.

  ‘It isn’t just boredom,’ says Kavi, ‘we haven’t got anything to look forward to in a shithole like this. No one has got any money to go to a match or see a band or even go to the pictures. There are no jobs for people like us and the police are always on our backs, especially if you are a boy, picking on us for no reason. There’s no point in anything when it’s like that all around us and Brenda’s bright ideas aren’t going to change that.’

  ‘You do have a choice, Kavi. I don’t like what Anila is doing, I don’t even know what she is doing really, except she is trying to change something for the better. Anything has got to be better than this. Brenda will be coming around often. We have a meeting to plan and it feels like a small bit of hope,’ Usha says before returning to the kitchen. She picks up empty tea-cups along the way.

  ‘Bloody meetings,’ Mukesh mutters again.

  The following morning, the contents of the fridge sit neatly on the kitchen table. The inside of the fridge has been wiped down with washing up liquid and the door is propped open to allow it to dry. Usha stands at the sink with the fridge trays and shelves piled in front of her.

  ‘Hey Mom,’ says Anila as she stumbles into the kitchen in her nightdress. She picks up one of Benda’s photocopied leaflets from the worktop and glances at the details. ‘Shit – it’s the same day as the march,’ she mutters but Usha doesn’t hear. ‘I can take some of these to The Shoe if you want, Mom,’ she says, ‘I’m going later. The Youth Movement members can give them to their moms and stuff. Want a hand?’ Anila takes a glass shelf from the draining board and a tea towel from the worktop. Her back is towards Usha, who turns from the sink to watch her daughter. Anila is humming a familiar pop tune as she dries the shelf. She stands directly in a shaft of sunlight, intersecting it as it streams across the kitchen and a yellow glow illuminates the top of her jet black hair. The lightness of her presence is strange to Usha and she feels as though she has stepped beyond the heavy familiarity of her own kitchen. She wonders how Anila can be cheerful when any minuscule sign of joy appears incongruous in the weighty atmosphere she has become used to. She stares at her daughter’s cropped hair for a moment longer and then turns towards to the sink.

  ‘Thank you, beta,’ she says.

  Chapter 23

  Anila strolls towards Villa Cross with her hands dug deep into the pockets of her sleeveless patterned jumpsuit. She hums a tune that has been stuck in her head for days, irritating her with its catchy refrain and evasive title. The da-dum of it swirls around her brain and she tries to shake it loose, actually dislodge it by literally shaking her head from side to side, but the tune is on a loop, stuck fast and the only way to repress it, she realises, is to block it with thoughts of Kash.

  Anila is acutely aware that when she reaches The Shoe it will be the first time she’s seen Kash since he touched her and her whole being was thrown into a state of confusion. She will have to speak to him but how to approach him is the question that has occupied her for days. She concludes that she will get there early, to arrive before him, and so when he arrives he will have to acknowledge and approach her first. Even so, what will she say without seeming childish and inexperienced? Did she want him to touch her again? She wasn’t sure if she did. A hand on her shoulder causes her to jolt.

  ‘Hey, I’ve been calling you from across the street. Didn’t you hear me?’ It is Marcus. He walks directly beside her and continues chatting cheerily, ‘Are you going to the meeting? I think it will be a good one with that NF march just a couple of weeks away now.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah I’m going. Sorry, I didn’t see you.‘

  The two friends chat about the importance of the imminent meeting. It will be a logistical planning meeting was what Kash had said and Anila had to ask Nina to explain what logistical meant that evening on the phone.

  ‘I like the haircut,’ Marcus says, ‘I almost didn’t recognise you at first. It’s pretty cool, man.’ Anila touches her own head. She had forgotten just how short her hair was, even though Usha has made constant reference to it with comments which are too earnest to have been made with the intent of spite or malice.

  ‘It will grow out, I suppose,’ her mother said, or, ‘It looks a little longer today than yesterday, perhaps it will grow quickly,’ or, if she was particularly tired and spoke without thinking, ‘It is so ugly Anila, you used to be so beautiful before.’

  ‘Actually, I got something for you,’ Marcus says, slowing down his step to match her pace.

  ‘For me?’ Anila says surprised.

  Marcus rummages in the carrier bag he is holding and pulls out a brown package, inside is a thick paperback book.

  ‘Wow, thanks Marcus what’s it about ?’ Anila asks turning to the blurb.

  Before he has time to respond, a young man in a black turban walks towards where they stand chatting on the street. Anila vaguely recognises him from around and about and smiles as he approaches. The man stares back at her: it is a cold stare, direct and unflinching. Anila looks away awkwardly and the man walks on, physically colliding with Marcus as he moves past them. It is more than an accidental brush.

  ‘Oi, watch it will you?’ Marcus says, but the man ignores him and walks on a few paces before turning back towards them and spitting on the ground in their direction and casually walking away.

  ‘Oi!’ Marcus shouts after him.

  ‘Leave it,’ Anila says grabbing his arm, ‘he isn’t worth it.’

  Across the road she catches sight of three sari-clad women lurking in the doorway of Ashoka’s. They stare directly at her, and, like the man in the turban, they refuse to look away even when she glares back.

  ‘Fuck him and them, man,’ Marcus says. He places his hand in the small of her back and guides her onwards, ‘C’mon let’s get a cup of tea. We have loads of time before the meeting starts.’

  Herbert, the elderly cook at the Acapulco, brings over toast and tea while Anila waves away the pungent smoke of tobacco and marijuana from her face and reads the blurb on the back of the hefty paperback,

  ‘It’s about working men,’ Marcus says. ‘I know it doesn’t sound like much and there’s hardly any women in it but my history teacher gave it me and well, it’s great. I’ve never read a book like it before, you know about real people, man. I mean they are all white men and stuff but painters and decorators like my dad with the same troubles too, if you know what I mean.’

  Anila reads the title out loud: ‘Ragged Trousered… Phil – and – throw – pist’.

  ‘I don’t know what one of them is. I’ll have to look it up in the dictionary.’ She sips her tea and continues, ‘I don’t know much about anything yet.’

  ‘Nor me,’ says Marcus.

  ‘We’re a bit thick really around here, aren’t we?’

  ‘Speak for yourself, man,’ Marcus says and they both laugh.

  Marcus continues to grin at Anila – it is a warm and familiar smile and Anila suddenly feels a little shy of this boy she seems to have always known.

  ‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘it’s really, really nice of you. I don’t think anyone has given me a book before… No, hang on, maybe Nina gave me one for my birthday. Jane Austen or something. I hated it – all about posh women trying to get decen
t husbands, just like the Indian films our nan used to make us watch at The Elite on Soho Road! But I’m sure this will be better than that if you like it, so ta very much, it’s really sweet of you.’ The book sounds wholly unappealing but she vows to read it.

  Marcus stirs sugar into his tea with his head bowed and Anila wonders if he too feels shy in this moment. She stares at the dark silkiness of his hair and has an urge to reach over the table and touch it to see if it feels as soft and as moist as it looks.

  ‘So,’ Marcus says after a moment, ‘You and Kash seem to be quite close these days.’

  Anila sits back in her seat, she folds her arms and tries not to sound defensive.

  ‘I don’t know about close – it’s just HYM stuff and that.’

  ‘Really? That’s not what Olive Benjamin says. She says you like him, sort of really like him and that.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with Olive? So what if I do like him. It isn’t a crime is it?’ Anila feels annoyed, especially at the thought of Marcus and Olive discussing her in her absence. She can’t help but scowl at Marcus as he continues to stir the spoon in his tea.

  ‘You should be careful, Anila. Not everyone is how they seem you know.’

  ‘Olive said that too but what have I got to be careful of?’ Anila says, surprised at how irritated she feels. She lights up a cigarette and says, ‘I don’t need a dad, Marcus, I have already got one of those and besides I can like who the hell I bloody want.’

  Herbert appears at the side of the table and asks if they want anything else.

  ‘Nah, man, we’d better get on.’ Marcus says to Herbert, who continues to hang about at the side of the table until Anila nods in agreement.

  After leaving the cafe, Anila and Marcus head in silence towards The Shoe, exchanging only the occasional verbal observation about the walk. Ten minutes later they approach their destination.

  ‘I liked that,’ Marcus says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know, having a chat and that in the Acapulco. We should do it again sometime.’