Chapter 28
In the dead of night, Anila awakes soaked in sweat. She kicks off the blankets and tries to get back to sleep. Her body and mind are exhausted by the day’s events but sleep only returns in sporadic bursts, full of vivid images of Kash and the jeering face of the thug who beat her up the day before. Soon it would be morning and a creeping sense of panic begins to take hold of her at the thought of facing another day.
Dawn arrives unexpectedly, filling the room with a hazy pink light. Anila sits upright, giving up on sleep and wondering whether the creaking of the stairs might disturb the others if she creeps down to make herself a cup of tea. She decides not to bother and instead tentatively begins to draft a letter on a sheet of paper torn from an exercise book.
Dear Nina,
Something happened a few weeks ago and I need to tell someone. You are not here so it will be easier for me to tell you rather than anyone else (meaning Kamela and Mom of course).
I know you are going to think I am a stupid little girl when you have finished reading this but I hope you will give me more credit than that and understand that the reason I got myself in this situation was not because I am daft or a slut but rather because I am trying to make something good come out of the bad that is all around Lozells and Handsworth – the racism and the boredom and the hopelessness that we have to live with around here. By joining the Handsworth Youth Movement I really thought I could be part of changing all that or at least drawing attention to it so people like us (the ones that don’t get a chance to go away like you – you don’t know how lucky you are!) and the other kids around here aren’t forgotten. Anyway, I am sorry I couldn’t tell you this when you were here but I think you will understand how difficult that would have been for me – we don’t really talk in this house about anything important since Billy. Plus my period hadn’t started by then so that was an extra massive worry. Thank god I don’t have to think about that anymore…’
Once Anila starts writing she finds she cannot stop and the words keep flowing out of her until all is said and there are no words left. She ends the letter by describing the incidents at the march, the way she had slapped Kash in front of the crowd, getting beaten and arrested, and finally about Mukesh hanging in the window in his underwear in full view of the women at Usha’s meeting on the same day. She reads back over the pages she has written, too exhausted to change anything, and seals the letter in an envelope before she has time to reconsider. Finally, she throws on some clothes and creeps down the stairs to the front-room where she knows Usha keeps her address book and some postage stamps in the drawer of the sideboard.
A few minutes later, Anila sits on the wall of St Silas’ Church next to the post-box which now contains her letter to Nina. The day is just beginning but already she feels worn out from the catharsis of the letter writing. She stays seated on the wall for an immeasurable amount of time and only returns home when the households around her begin to stir; windows are flung open to let in the morning breeze and new light of day as Church Street awakes to a quiet Sunday morning.
Anila flicks through the copy of Saturday’s Handsworth Times which was delivered to the house by mistake the evening before. The Agarwals still owe money to Frank Lavery for unpaid newspaper bills but the paperboy, used to delivering to the house, sometimes forgets and still posts the paper through the letterbox on his rounds. The headline on the late edition looks promising, Yobs clash with peaceful protesters it says. Reading on, however, Anila struggles to suppress her growing anger with the paper’s reporting. Local West Indian and Asian youths disrupt planned peaceful protest opposing immigration at a time when jobs are scarce for English men and women, the article reads. Anila tosses the paper to the floor. She, alongside Kash, Marcus, Aazim and others are named the main perpetrators of what the paper calls an unofficial radical group called Handsworth Youth Movement supported by militants. It describes Anila, more sympathetically than the others, as… one member who is the sister of riot-tragedy schoolboy Billy Agarwal.
After discarding the newspaper, Anila listens to the sound of Usha moving around the kitchen, already embroiled in her domestic tasks. The rest of the household is still in bed and, besides the occasional shuffling noises from the kitchen, the house is silent. Anila imagines her letter arriving with Nina, at a house she cannot picture. She feels repulsed as images of Kash in The Shoe whirr through her head; his contorted, convulsed face makes her want to throw up and she has to distract her mind by picking the newspaper up from the floor. For a moment, she wishes she hadn’t sent the letter and just tried to forget what happened that day but it is too late, the letter is sent and, regardless of all her misgivings, she is relieved to have shared the burden. Anila paces the room as quietly as she can, overwhelmed by tiredness. She picks up objects randomly, looks at them fleetingly and then replaces them. For the first time she notices a pale square on the wall where a group picture of the Agarwal children used to hang. She tries to recall when it may have been removed but can’t. She wonders if Usha removed it before the women came for the meeting yesterday to prevent any references to Billy that might cause her to rush out of the room without explanation.
Anila’s restlessness is interrupted by the sound of something dropping through the letterbox. The envelope is handwritten and addressed to her and she slips it into her back pocket to read in the bathroom, the only private space in the house. The note is from Marcus.
Hi Anila,
I just wanted to know you were okay after yesterday. I haven’t seen much of you at the meetings recently and we didn’t get a chance to talk yesterday, obviously, but, well, I have been thinking about you. I will be at the Bomb Peck at 11am this morning if you want to talk – it’s quiet there on Sundays. It would be good to see you.
Anila slips the note into the envelope, folds it and returns it to her back pocket. She brushes her teeth, washes her face, careful to avoid the bruising, and returns to the living room to wait for 11am to draw near.
Two hours later, Marcus and Anila sit on a concrete slab in the shade of a derelict house that edges the Bomb Peck. They share a can of coke and talk intermittently, throwing stones at a pile of bricks in front of them. Anila is aware of how comfortable she feels in Marcus’s presence.
‘Your parents didn’t look too pleased yesterday,’ she says.
‘They think I am going to fuck up – ruin my chances of going to university if I get in trouble with the Pigs.’
‘You want to go to university? Anila says, surprised.
‘Well, it isn’t just for white people and you Indians you know, Anila?’ Marcus replies. ‘It’s a long shot – what with coming from around here and being black as well. I’d be the first in my family, man, and probably the first West Indian in Lozells, if I ever did go.’ Marcus talks with his head tilted slightly downwards and Anila watches the contours of his profile as he speaks.
‘Nina was the first in our family. It’s not impossible,’ she says and then, after a pause, ‘What about the Handsworth Youth Movement?’
‘What about it? It’ll be over a year if I do go, and one clash with a few idiots isn’t going to put me off, man.’
‘Suppose so.’
‘What about you? You haven’t been at the meetings lately. I thought maybe you’d fallen out with Kash or something – quite a few people seem to be recently.’
‘What do you mean? ‘
‘Well, he can be an arrogant tosser sometimes,’ Marcus says and Anila smiles wryly. ‘It pisses people off,’ Marcus continues, ‘I mean he is a good leader, inspiring and that but he is a bit full of himself, man. Did you even know he was married? About to have his second kid by the looks of it.’
‘His wife was there yesterday, at Thornhill Road… I don’t know if I will go back,’ says Anila. She pulls her feet up onto the slab and hugs her knees. She is keen to move the conversation away from Kash; even the sound of his name makes her feel nauseous
. ‘I’ll be busy with college and that soon,’ she says.
A couple of much younger children arrive at the Bomb Peck and start to kick a football to each other. They shout and laugh as they play, encouraging each other to kick the ball this way or that with mis-used expletives.
‘I’ll have to get home,’ Anila says, stretching out her legs.
Marcus gets up first and holds out his hand to help her up. As she rises to standing position he pulls her gently towards him and moves his mouth towards hers. As he gets closer, the face Anila sees coming towards her is Kash’s not Marcus’s, and in alarm she jolts her head backwards and pulls her hand free. Marcus doesn’t resist.
‘Shit!’ he says, shocked by her response. ‘Sorry, I just thought…’ but Anila doesn’t hear as she begins to run in the direction of Church Street. The two young boys who are playing just a few metres away stop their game and stand watching silently as Marcus shouts after Anila and she continues to run. She doesn’t look back.
Chapter 29
In the few days that follow, an uneasy silence returns to the house. The mood is not unfamiliar but is in contrast to the slightly charged atmosphere that had arisen in anticipation of Usha’s and Brenda’s first meeting, with its promise to bring a gathering of strangers and the intention to discuss the future instead of the past. The atmosphere is different now – from the shadowy back bedroom where Kavi’s stuff lies strewn across Billy’s bed to the pokey attic room where Anila and Kamela spend long days holed up away from the world, barely speaking to each other or doing very much of anything. That muted excitement, brought about by the suggestion of hope, has all but completely dissipated and instead shame and disgust have replaced emerging glimmers of optimism for Usha. She now can hardly bring herself to look at Mukesh never mind talk to him, or anyone else in fact. She refuses to answer the phone when it rings. She knows it is Brenda. The doorbell has rung a few times since the meeting but the callers have remained ignored, including Bibi. The back door leading from the kitchen to the garden has been locked and the back gate secured with a small pile of old house bricks. The house is quiet but it is not peaceful.
Early on Wednesday morning, Usha sits in the kitchen mentally constructing a list of all the jobs that need doing in the house and berating herself for getting distracted from the housework these last few weeks. She wears old brown slacks and a long discoloured tunic she acquired the year Billy was born. She examines the pencil-line cracks in the tiles that make up the splashback to the sink. She searches underneath the sink for the pine disinfectant she uses to wipe down the worktops and fridge and once she recovers the bottle she pours a glug of the thick neat liquid into a glass. Then, with an old toothbrush, she begins to scrub at the cracks, loosening the dirt and diluting it into a wash of thin grey water which drips down the tiles towards the back of the sink. Once this is done, Usha rinses out a dish-cloth, wipes down the tiled surface and steps back to look at her work. Not completely satisfied, she begins the whole process again. As she contemplates her next task, Usha becomes aware of Anila hovering in the kitchen doorway.
‘There is so much cleaning to do in this house,’ Usha says without looking at her daughter. ‘All those people walking around on our carpets without taking off their shoes. I felt too embarrassed to ask them, but goodness knows what they have brought into this house from the filthy pavements outside: pigeon and dog mess and the spit of the old men which might carry TB or goodness knows what else.’
‘The house is okay, Mom, just leave it. Let’s not do this again.’ Anila’s voice is frail and resigned. There is no danger of her shouting in frustration or screaming to the skies this time. From a distance, Usha scrutinises the bruises on Anila’s face with concern.
‘No,’ she says firmly after a moment, ‘the house is too filthy. I have neglected to keep it as clean as I should have. I haven’t got up to mop the carpets since before the stupid meeting on Saturday. Mice run around spreading germs whilst we sleep and then you and the others lie across the dirty carpets putting your bodies, and even your faces, where they urinate.’
Anila turns and leaves the kitchen. She goes upstairs and gets back into bed.
When she is alone again Usha looks around the kitchen. It seems unusually drab, despite the sunlight streaming in through the window which, instead of cheering up the space, highlights the grease stains which cover the out-of-reach parts of the walls and ceiling in a sticky, yellow film. Usha sits down, overwhelmed by her growing list of tasks. Instead, she imagines what Billy would have looked like if he had reached another year older. This was the age at which Kavi grew quickly – sudden spurts of growth which transformed him into an elongated version of himself, stretched out of recognition. She wonders if this is what would have happened to Billy too, although he was always thin and waif-like, more like Anila and Kamela rather than Kavi and Nina, who both hung on to the puppy-fat right up to adolescence, and beyond in Nina’s case.
The phone rings. Usha ignores it until it rings off. It rings again but Usha continues to ignore it. Once again it rings off and immediately begins to ring a third time. Kavi comes crashing down the stairs, cursing as he yanks the phone off the hook. He yells down the receiver without waiting to find out who is on the other end.
‘What the hell do you want? Can’t you take a bloody hint and go away?’
It is Nina on the other end.
‘Calm down, Kavi. It sounds like chaos there. Go back to bed but tell Anila I just got her letter this morning and I’m coming home at the weekend, right?’
Kavi puts down the receiver and turns towards the stairs. The phone rings again and he grabs the receiver.
‘What now, Nina?’
The voice on the other end isn’t Nina.
‘About time, I have been calling all morning.’ It is Brenda. She continues to speak before Kavi can get a word in edgeways. ‘Actually, I have been calling for the last few days. Tell your mom I am coming round and she better open the door – she can’t hide away from the world. We’ve started something now and we have to carry on however embarrassed she is about what happened with your dad. Tell her I am coming around, okay? Tell her to get the kettle on, I am on my way.’
‘What am I a bloody messenger-boy?’ Kavi mumbles before heading up the stairs. When he reaches the top he turns round and shouts back down the stairs, ‘Brenda is coming round now. Do us all a favour, close the curtains and hide if you can’t face her.’
Usha hears Kavi’s relayed message and retreats to the bathroom, emerging a minute later with her face washed and her hair tied back. She returns to her seat and resolves to ignore Brenda when she knocks on the door. Five minutes later the doorbell rings and Usha sits and twists her wedding ring in circles around her finger. Within seconds there is banging on the back gate. Again, Usha ignores the noise but it gets louder and louder, culminating in a crash that makes her rush to the window just in time to see a pink leg appear over the top of the back gate. A moment later, Brenda is standing at the kitchen window, looking in at Usha whilst smoothing down her floral-print dress and dishevelled hair.
‘You have to let me in now,’ she shouts through the glass.
Usha begins to laugh, unable to help herself, and by the time she opens the back door both women fall into each other giggling.
‘You didn’t see my knickers did you?’ Brenda says.
Usha, blushing at such a question, shakes her head.
Ten minutes later both women sit at the table, cups of tea in hand.
‘How will I face those women again?’ Usha asks. ‘It is so shameful for them to have seen Mukesh in that way.’
Brenda shrugs her shoulders, ‘I am sure we have all seen worse in our time. It wasn’t that bad, Usha.’
‘He was drunk and in vest and pants, climbing out the window in front of my mother – how bad can it be? I didn’t even know the children had locked him in the room. At least there was only on
e other community member there and that Shilly, well she didn’t seem like the gossiping type.’
‘One member of the community?’ Brenda repeats. ‘Aren’t we all part of a community here?’
‘Yes, but you know what I mean, the Indian community where this kind of behaviour would be judged very badly.’
‘I think this would be seen as unusual by any standards,’ says Brenda mockingly. ‘Even us goras, as you call us, don’t go swinging around out of windows in our underwear, bab.’
‘It is bad enough that we haven’t been to the temple since the accident,’ Usha continues, despite Brenda’s gentle mockery. ‘Mukesh says he hasn’t believed in god since he was a child and I can’t make the children go with me anymore. I don’t want to go on my own. My father has told me the community is concerned, and that we have neglected certain rituals that are important to do after a death. This will only make it worse.’
‘Forget what people think, Usha. All communities have a bit of that going on – not just you Indians. Blimey, us Catholics can’t talk – you should hear some of the gossip after Sunday mass.’
‘I don’t know,’ says Usha, ‘I don’t care about the rituals. Perhaps, like Mukesh, my belief is now being questioned too.’
‘Well, all the more reason to get on with something else – something important for now, for everyone. Your Bomb Peck idea was bostin and whatever those ladies think about what happened with Mukesh, that will soon be forgotten when we start making some progress. That coloured lady, Veronica, was it?… no, hang on, Violet… the one who was at the riot, and the fat one who knew the lad who got burnt, well I think they are going to be talking about a bit more than Mukesh’s pants, don’t you? C’mon, bab, let’s carry on with it.’
‘I don’t know, Brenda, I am very behind on the housework and the children will be going back to school and college in a few weeks – I need to concentrate on these things. Anila is mixed up in all sorts of things I don’t understand and Kamela and Kavi hardly leave the house. They are my priority. As for Mukesh…’
The Handsworth Times Page 19