Sitting upright on his leather sofa the next day, Mr Chatterjee answered the policewoman’s questions about his neighbours Mary and David. When had he last seen David and Mary? How had Mary seemed to him? Had he ever overheard any disagreement between the couple? Did he know the nature of David’s medication?
Prefacing his every reply with the words, ‘As the Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator …’ Mr Chatterjee proceeded to display his powers of observation and his legal competence to the young WPC. He inquired whether he should send a letter to the neighbourhood about the burglary. She raised her eyebrows. ‘This was no burglary, it’s fairly straightforward.’
Mr Chatterjee was perplexed; he decided to write a letter on the following Monday to Cambridgeshire Police on the public’s right to know. A day later he had the distinction as the Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator of hearing the news first. Mary had killed David. She had poisoned him and confessed, ringing the police herself. She was in a low-security prison, and her lawyers felt that a reduced sentence could be obtained on account of the blinding headaches she had been suffering and for which she had received no medication.
Mr Chatterjee was appalled. Calculating the time of death, he realised that David had been murdered a few feet away from him at the very moment he was watching an adult film on the ‘Mute’ button. The body had lain in rigor mortis until the morning. It was said that Mary was clearly not in her right mind. She had told the police that she drew back the curtains to let in the sun, and brought David his morning cup of tea, placing the tray by his bedside. She had drunk her own before ringing the police to say that David did not want any more.
That evening Mr. Chatterjee felt nauseous and, for the first time since he could remember, was unable to eat Swarnakumari’s macher jhol, dal and rice. He looked at his wife’s plump form without comfort, and a dry fear invaded his being of ageing, waning life force, sense and faculty slipping away invisibly like the dew with the first warm rays of the sun, of burden and loss. It had been easy to be young, and it might be difficult to be old. The unformed questions hovered, taking voluminous shape as he looked at Swarnakumari’s placid face. What were her unfathomable depths? Could she one day take on the aspect of Kali in a mood of vengeance, slashing his world with a word, a swoop, a sword? Could she dismember him in his sleep? He imagined the sheets covered in blood, his blood; afterwards, she would lovingly apply bandages to his body to stem the thickening flow.
He considered the large chopping knife lying in the kitchen drawer. Mrs Banerjee, after all, had been given to menopausal moods and had thrown objects in threatening rage, her large kohl-lined eyes flashing. Banerjee had told him so. It had happened almost fifteen years ago, he had added reassuringly, but Mr Chatterjee remained discomfited. Banerjee said he had simply stepped out of the way as an object whizzed past, and retirement had brought its own prudence; she would never hurl glass again. Men who had already lost their hair lost the last shreds of dignity at this age, mourned Banerjee. It was best to let women have their way; the alternatives were too dangerous, he joked seriously. His cousin Bikash’s wife had trashed an entire collection of Matchbox Dinky cars painstakingly acquired by Bikash over thirty years. They would have been worth a small fortune, his son-in-law Heinz had lamented. Afraid he had revealed too much, Banerjee hurriedly changed the subject to the lack of kidney donors among South Asians in Britain.
Mr Chatterjee listened to Banerjee without his customary attentiveness. He was still deeply affected by the deaths of his neighbours, for Mary had died of natural causes in prison two weeks later. He could no longer be certain of his judgement, nor of his observations of human nature, but of one thing he was convinced: devotion came in several forms.
A year later, Mr Chatterjee was still deeply affected – by his new neighbours. Prior to Mary’s funeral, there had been a flurry of activity from the two sons, who arrived in two matching self-drive vans and dismantled the home, piling the furniture and other items in the front garden as if for an auction. Peering through the net curtains, Mr Chatterjee witnessed the efficiency that could be produced by the equal distribution of blue and red sticky labels.
A For Sale sign had been stuck by a careless estate agent in the hedge on Mr Chatterjee’s side of the house while he sank unsuspecting into his favourite armchair with his Bengali newspaper. The doorbell rang, a young couple brushed briskly past Swarnakumari, and Mr Chatterjee glanced up from the riveting results of the Mohan Bagan football game to find himself in the midst of an unorthodox inspection of his living room brick by brick, wall by wall. The woman even leaned over to examine a small discolouration in the paint on the wall directly behind his head. She wrote on a pad, noting the paint and the woodwork in a professional manner and stared disparagingly at the ceiling; the couple then proceeded through the conservatory and into the garden.
Mr Chatterjee followed, bewildered. The woman turned her gaze from the rock garden, the tinkling water fountain and goldfish to observe sternly that it would not do, it was not suitable as a play area for a young child. Mr Chatterjee meekly agreed, but demurred when she suggested the water fountain and goldfish be removed, and the rock garden covered. The couple returned to the hallway, sniffing appreciatively, their noses following the smells as they peeped into the kitchen and nodded at Swarnakumari with her floury hands.
‘Can we go upstairs?’ asked the man.
Tearing his gaze from the man’s muddy boots poised on the first stair, Mr Chatterjee finally found his voice. ‘Why?’ he asked.
Three months later, as Mr Chatterjee was writing a letter to the City Council about dog fouling at the lamp-post at the corner of Fendon Road, a large removal van drew up, followed by a car. Mr Chatterjee’s curtains twitched. His new neighbours had arrived.
Mr Chatterjee heard the sound of laughter as he drank the tea that Swarnakumari had prepared for him that Thursday morning. It was that boy again, he thought angrily. That boy and Mallika together. He peered through the net curtains. They were outside his front gate.
The new family had bought a house where a life had been snuffed out, where memories swirled and fires of devotion still burned, and although he had refrained from comment he agreed with Swarnakumari that the new occupants should have performed a little ritual of prayer for the gentle departed souls of David and Mary, who might still want to linger. Perhaps even at this moment, their spirits were straying, seeking refuge in the Chatterjee side of the house, tinkling the Japanese wind chimes, swaying the curtains and dimming the lights.
The African family had spelled mystery. What business could possibly have brought the three of them all the way from Australia to Cambridge? wondered Mr Chatterjee. The talk of the Science Park and the Napp Laboratories was nonsense. What did the African man really do for a living?
Applying the strategies of deduction he had developed over the years, Mr Chatterjee concluded that, as his neighbour appeared to have unlimited funds for renovation of the house, there was an unambiguous trail of involvement in the illegal export of ivory. He knew that Portobello Road in London was awash with ivory of indeterminate age. Under British law, ivory had to be older than 1947 to be sold. The man had escaped to Australia from Nigeria, but when he found the police were on his heels he moved his family to the modest semi in Cambridge to provide a cover for his clandestine activities until he was exposed, for capture meant a maximum sentence of seven years of imprisonment. Mr Chatterjee was so convinced of the truth of his own speculation that he instructed Swarnakumari and Mallika to avoid contact with the family. Invited by his neighbours for an evening drink on a number of occasions, he had politely declined, recommending to Swarnakumari that she, too, find a suitable excuse. No member of the Chatterjee household was to be implicated in the trafficking of tusks.
Loud music, parties, overnight guests, carelessly parked cars, the slamming of doors and conversations in operatic tones next door obliged Mr Chatterjee to resort to longer daytime naps, and he spent waking moments in a state of roadside recovery, his
wellbeing severely tested and threatened. He envied Swarnakumari her ability to sleep soundly.
Compounding his worries was the adverse impact he feared his new neighbours would have on the value of his property. He arranged a free annual valuation by a different Cambridge estate agent to proudly remind Swarnakumari of the wisdom of a profitable investment. He would have erupted in prickly indignation and incomprehension at the suggestion that his own move to Newton Square thirty years ago might have been a matter of similar concern to his neighbours.
Mr Chatterjee looked at the Nigerian teenager’s loose, fluid limbs, his low-slung jeans and hooded top and the grace rippling through his feet as he twisted effortlessly on his skateboard. Joseph was dangerous, even if he was only seventeen going on eighteen, he decided. He had caught Mallika listening to something she called ‘gangster rap’ and ‘garage’, and she had turned defiant. She no longer sang ‘Rabindra Sangeet’. Banerjee was saddled with an Albanian son-in-law; who could foretell the frightening fate that might befall his own household?
Mr Chatterjee studied his neat list of errands for the morning. Driving out onto Queen Edith’s Way, he stopped for Banerjee, who was rubbing his hands against the cold at the corner of Nightingale Avenue. They were on their way to buy fresh fish from the Bangladeshi shop off Mill Road, to make their selection from rui mach, ilish mach, koi mach, tangra mach and chingri mach. Mr Chatterjee believed that it took a Bengali to truly discern the freshness of a catch. He was not alone in this assumption.
As they loaded the fish into the car, Banerjee suggested they visit the charity shop. Mr Chatterjee looked surprised, but Banerjee was insistent; his wife had heard about Swarnakumari’s legendary bargains, especially Mr Chatterjee’s splendid grey Marks & Spencer cardigan. Banerjee’s own maroon Debenhams cardigan had sprung two asymmetric holes, and he had been directed by his wife to procure an immediate and inexpensive replacement.
Mr Chatterjee would not be persuaded to visit the shop, and, loath to admit his reluctance either to Banerjee or to himself, he mumbled an excuse, but to his amazement Banerjee remained firm. It was either the charity shop or a confrontation with his wife. Any man in his situation would have chosen the former without a moment’s hesitation.
Mr Chatterjee had no alternative but to acquiesce. It was his first visit to IndiaNeed, and he wished he were not attired in the ill-fitting grey Marks & Spencer cardigan, which made him appear meekly round-shouldered and small. He wished he were not smelling of fish, wished he could be alone and without Banerjee at the time of his introduction to the Honourable Mrs Wellington-Smythe.
CHAPTER FIVE
Charity begins at home
DIANA WELLINGTON-SMYTHE LIVED in England and dreamed of Tuscany. Summers were spent in their grape-laden villa outside Florence with her insolent daughter Imogen, silent son James and reticent husband Rupert. The Scrabble, draughts and chess were never unpacked, and returned to England in pristine condition during the last week of August. Imogen was growing breasts and James was growing restive, but Chianti at lunch and supper restored Diana’s partial tolerance of Rupert, pale and city pink in short sleeves. As tall as her husband, she was imperious in classic Armani, her blond hair, too intimidated by its owner to be curly, swinging straight down her neck. Her features struggled between boredom and equine haughtiness.
Father and son, mother and daughter strolled in silence to the village piazza in the evenings as the sun glinted on the window shutters of the white-walled houses, setting the red geraniums ablaze. They stopped for ice cream at the local gelateria overlooking a narrow cobbled street. Human nature was like gelati, the elderly man told the signora; at its best when it had more flavours than one, the mellifluous pistacchio melting into the earthy brown of cioccolato, creamy vaniglia surrendering to the spicy strawberry red of fragola. It was the only counselling Diana would ever have.
On their way back to England from Florence, the family had dallied in Rome. Diana had shopped at Via Condotti; at Missoni, she abandoned the struggle into a size ten. Imogen, with her size six hips, swinging blond hair and pout, moodily twirled an orange and red flame-twisted scarf around her neck and stared challengingly at her mother in the mirror. They made their way to the Trevi Fountain. It had been drizzling, and the steps were wet as James and Imogen watched the scurrying tourists and their squealing slide toward the fountain, slippery peas posing in a pod. Imogen’s lips curved mockingly as Diana impulsively asked Rupert for a coin.
‘Euro or British, darling?’ he asked, reaching into his trousers as an Asian man offered him a dozen roses ‘per la bella donna’. As Diana watched, Rupert waved him away indifferently. For one brief, mad moment, there was nothing in the world she wanted other than a single red rose.
Diana had recently joined a private class of Intermediate Italian learners who shunned the courses offered by the Sixth Form Colleges of Cambridge and met in an elegant home on Grange Road instead. ‘Non parlo bene l’italiano,’ she began with uncharacteristic hesitation, placing the mandatory bottle of Barolo on the table in front of the teacher, an Englishwoman who had lived in Florence as an artist for many years. The man next to Diana leaned over and smiled a crinkly, warm smile of wealthy cologne. ‘Ma, Signora, non è vero,’ he murmured. Diana had found a man to contradict her at last. Afterwards they talked of Tuscan painters’ light, and the next evening they walked along Quayside, continuing into Midsummer Common, past the cows flicking their lazy tails, along the water and past the houseboats, returning to an Italian café and its red-checked tablecloth.
‘Basta così stare insieme con te,’ Philip had declared soulfully. Being with her was all he wanted, staring into her grey eyes after the macchiato. Diana melted quicker than the chocolate mint the waitress had placed on the saucer. Romancing in Italian in Cambridge led her three mornings later to perch among several Chinese vases in the living room of a Newnham home as Philip poured out the tea.
‘Do you take sugar?’ he asked.
‘Don’t you think I’m sweet enough?’ was her arch reply.
The tray rattled. He trembled at the fires rising. ‘Non c’è nessuno come te. There’s no one like you,’ he said unconvincingly, brushing her fragrant cheek and neck. She smiled faintly. He nuzzled her ear and drew closer. She was as soft as a giraffe on eggshells and smelled of lavender and a linen cupboard. Philip had warm memories of Wendy Barton’s house in Hampshire. At seventeen he had stood with Wendy in her dark, fragrant linen cupboard lined with wooden shelves and piles of crisp white sheets and embroidered duvet covers. Wendy of the pert, round, shiny breasts; one silken orb had looked larger than the other in the dim golden light. He had wanted to ask her about the irregularity, bounce the weight of one and then the other, but her mother was laying out the tea and shortbread in the kitchen below, the radio rising in a ghostly murmur. Wendy must be all grown up out there somewhere in London, gym-slim, married to a banker, two children, St John’s Wood, golden retriever, thought Philip, and he kissed Diana forcefully, sweeping her of all resistance.
The thought of wicked Wendy in London, still asymmetrically desirable, fanned his ardour. He continued to hold Diana in his arms, breathing endearments into her ear as he kissed her with increasing passion. He licked her earlobe and they subsided backwards onto the sofa where she was directly underneath his grandfather’s portrait, which admonished the easy abandonment of Philip’s green-checked boxer shorts.
Philip attempted to lift her, but she was rather more heavy-boned than he had anticipated, and they sank deeper into the sofa. As they kissed, Philip nibbled her earlobe again. Diana’s skin felt warm and yielding. She unbuttoned herself swiftly out of her purple cashmere twinset and was in the act of unzipping her brown Italian boots when her mobile phone began to ring. It flashed the IndiaNeed number. Adroitly gathering her belongings and her control, she answered; she had never liked losing either.
Back in the shop, Swarnakumari hovered expectantly as Heera spoke. ‘Oh, good morning, Mrs Wellington-Smythe, it’s Heera
from the shop. I’m sorry to disturb you, but it’s important. That’s why I’m ringing you. You see, we were just sorting the bags and we found—’
Heera turned to the others as she replaced the receiver. ‘D’you know what that Diana ki bachi said?’ She mimicked a clipped upperclass accent. ‘I’m sorry, Helen, shop matters will have to wait. I’m on my morning canter.’
‘Lady Godiva,’ murmured Durga.
Diana had returned to Philip waiting unclothed and expectant on the sofa. He lay there patiently like a painter’s sylvan Adonis sans woodland wreath. At the hint of steel in her voice as she spoke on the telephone, he had hastily draped his boxer shorts over his upper thighs. His grandfather’s stern portrait relented, but the moment had clearly curdled. Philip had once been a King’s College chorister, wearing the Etonian collar, singing in a pure, high voice at the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve. Then he sprouted hair on his chin and lost his voice, never to regain its power.
‘You look ridiculous, get dressed!’ Diana commanded in nursery nanny tones, and Philip obeyed, recalling his own nanny’s reign and rein of terror. Philip was resigned; he knew when he had been given his marching orders.
Diana’s grandfather had been given his marching orders after the Raj crumbled, and when he returned to England and to the impressive country manor in Berkshire, he had surrounded himself with antiques and artefacts acquired from India; a giant punkha fan of rosewood pinned to the wall, a peacock-shaped inlay table, figurines from Southern India, and the stuffed heads of tigers as sporting trophies. Diana’s father had joined the Foreign Service and travelled with his wife and without his child to Nigeria. It was left to the grandfather and nanny to instruct and educate Diana, a task they performed with admirable resolve.
The Cambridge Curry Club Page 7