by Bali Rai
And now I didn’t know if he would want to talk to me. I hadn’t had any messages in the last couple of days. What if he was angry? What if he wanted to drop me? And what was I supposed to say? Hey Sukh, sorry for being so rubbish but I’m back now and I’m OK about it all . . . ?
‘Are you listening to me?’ asked Nat.
‘Yeah I’m listening,’ I told her.
‘You’ve got to hear me too, babe,’ she replied, sounding a bit exasperated.
‘I’m sorry, Nat.’
‘That’s what you need to tell Sukh too,’ she said.
‘He’ll just tell me to get lost.’
‘No he won’t.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Let me think . . .’ she began.
‘I didn’t reply to any of his messages, Nat, and now he’s stopped sending them. He’ll probably drop me like a stone . . .’
She sighed for about the tenth time since I’d called her. ‘Look – do you love him?’ she asked.
‘More than anything . . .’
‘And you’re OK with this whole feud thing?’
I grinned despite myself. ‘It is a bit Bollywood—’ I began, but Nat cut me off.
‘Answer the question, minx.’
‘Yes – I’m fine now. I just wanted to think about things – that’s all . . .’
‘And he’s sent you what – thirty-odd messages?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So call him, apologize for being crap and meet him somewhere, for God’s sake.’
‘But what if—?’
‘That’s it – I’m going. You’re doing my head in now . . .’
‘I’m sorry, Nat . . .’ Just what I needed. My best friend getting pissed off with me too.
‘Look – you haven’t got time for this shit. We’ve all got GCSEs coming up. The last thing—’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I admitted, tears suddenly appearing.
‘Don’t cry, honey . . .’
‘But Nat – he’s going to hate me now.’
‘Right, sod this. Get your little ass over here,’ she demanded.
I thought about having to make up a reason to go out for my parents. ‘I dunno if—’
‘Rani – we’re going to revise together, not have a sex-and-drugs-and-naughty-things party . . .’
‘Let me ask – I’ll call you back.’
Nat didn’t reply straight away.
‘Nat? You still there . . . ?’
‘Tell you what,’ she replied. ‘Leave it for a couple of hours. Come round about five.’
‘But you said to—’
‘I’ve got a plan, Stan,’ she said.
‘Nat?’
But the line was dead.
I went downstairs about an hour later, after trying to concentrate on maths homework without success. My dad was in the living room, snoozing, and my mum was out in the jungle-like conservatory, watering her zillion and one plants. She heard me approach and turned to me.
‘What do you want?’ she asked in Punjabi.
‘What makes you think that I want anything?’ I said, pretending to be offended.
‘Rani – you have on that face. Every time you want something you look like that.’
‘I’m sorry for being alive,’ I replied flippantly.
‘Shut up! You never talk like that . . .’ she told me.
‘I just wanted to go over to my friend’s to revise for my exams,’ I said, waiting for her to say no.
‘Rebise?’ said my dad from behind us. He’d obviously woken up. And still not learned how to pronounce ‘v’s correctly, something lots of older Punjabis couldn’t do.
‘I want to go and revise at my friend’s house,’ I repeated.
‘When?’ he asked me, totally ignoring my mum’s part in the conversation.
‘Five o’clock,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back by nine—’
‘Nine?’ he replied, going off the idea.
‘Dad – it’s only four hours . . . and Gurdip can pick me up later.’
The mention of my brother sealed the deal and my dad told me I could go, as long as I didn’t turn off my mobile and only if I was really going to ‘rebise’ and not mess about.
‘Dad, I’ve got my GCSEs in under five months. I want to do well . . .’ So I can get out of here, I thought to myself.
‘OK – beteh – you going,’ he replied, in English this time. ‘Ju calling Gurdip at the half-eight, telling him where to picking you up.’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ I said, before going back upstairs to ring Natalie.
NATALIA & SUKH
NATALIE STOOD OUTSIDE Sukh’s parents’ house, wondering how much money it would take to buy such a big place. It was a mock-Tudor mansion with a double garage and long driveway. The iron gates at the front had a Sikh symbol as part of the overall design and the word BAINS. Very tasteful. She rang the bell again and then turned to admire the pebble driveway, sectioned off in three colours, white, brick-red and green. The borders were immaculate, with purple and green shrubs. Not a weed in sight. No one answered the door but from somewhere she could hear the beat of an R & B tune. She rang once again, wondering where everybody was and whether Sukh would get into trouble because a white girl was calling for him. It had been known to happen. In fact she had never even been round to her boyfriend Dev’s house. Didn’t know what it looked like or what his parents were like. She smiled as she remembered Dev telling her that it was an ‘Indian’ thing. She rang one more time.
Finally, deciding that no one was going to come to the door, Natalie walked round the side of the garages to a smaller gateway, through which she could see a landscaped garden. She debated whether or not she should try the gate, walk down the side of the house and try to get someone’s attention. Someone was definitely in because they were playing a crappy tune by some generic R & B artist. By the time she had finished debating with herself, all of thirty seconds later, she was already standing underneath a veranda-style balcony at the back of the house, framed at the sides by ivy-covered trellises, the leaves a deep shade of green. Above her, the window furthest to her left was open, the source of the music. She called out to Sukh but got no reply.
Turning to face the garden, she saw a patio area made up of white pebbles and walked over to pick up a handful. From beneath the window she gently threw a pebble up. It hit the wall to the side, not really having the desired effect. She tried again, this time hitting the window with a slight tap. The third pebble flew in through the opening and announced her presence. Someone was in. Someone shouted a few very naughty words . . .
Sukh stuck his head out of the window, after turning his CD off, ready to shout at the idiot throwing pebbles, or to call the police if it was a burglar. As if he didn’t have enough to deal with, he thought to himself. Down below him he saw Natalie and once the initial shock was gone, his stomach turned over. Rani. It had to be about Rani . . .
‘Natalie! What the fuck . . . ?’
‘But, soft!’ she began, a big smile cracking across her face, ‘what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Sukhy boy, my son!’
‘NAT! What—?’
‘Sukhio! O Sukhio! Wherefore art thou Sukhio? Deny thy father and . . .’
Sukh groaned and considered finding the pebble that Nat had chucked through the window so that he could fling it at her stupid head. He couldn’t see where it had landed. Instead he turned to Natalie again. ‘What do you want, Natalie?’
Nat grinned up at him. ‘So much for bloody romance!’ she said. ‘I’m here to see you. You lettin’ me in or what?’
‘What do you wanna see me about?’
‘Doh! Whaddya think, sexy boy?’
Sukh groaned again and told her to go around to the front of the house. ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’
Natalie waited, as patiently as someone with her itchy feet could manage, for Sukh to open the door to her. When he eventually did she let him have another sickeningly sweet smile and asked him what had take
n him so long.
‘Nothing,’ replied Sukh sullenly.
‘Putting your trousers back on?’ asked Nat, annoyingly.
‘Look . . . what is it that you want, man?’
‘Our mutual love is coming round to mine at five and I want you to be there,’ said Natalie seriously.
‘Why?’ asked Sukh, trying to sound cool but spitting out his reply just a bit too quickly.
‘Why do you think . . . ?’
Sukh looked away as he spoke, still trying to seem cool. ‘She wants to see me she should reply to my messages an’ that . . .’
‘She feels stupid,’ replied Natalie, unmoved by Sukh’s attempted nonchalance, ‘and, to be fair, she should.’
‘What if I don’t wanna see her?’ asked Sukh.
‘What if I just bang both your heads together?’ said Natalie, meaning it.
‘What if you just mind your own—?’
‘Look – I don’t have to be here,’ Natalie reminded him. ‘You want to carry on sitting around in your boxer shorts, listening to shite music and sending fifty messages an hour, that’s your prerogative. Me, I’m just trying to help – so if you’re gonna be all wankyboy about it . . .’
Sukh looked at her and then smiled for the first time in a week. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘I really do want to see her.’
‘Thought as much,’ said Natalie, taking his hand. ‘Are you OK?’
Sukh took his hand away, regretting it instantly, and then looked to the floor. ‘Yeah . . . No – I’m just . . .’ He didn’t really know what he was, apart from being just a little excited at the thought of seeing Rani. Excited and nervous too.
Natalie smiled warmly at him.
‘Come in for bit,’ he said. ‘I need to have a shower.’
‘Are you sure? Wouldn’t wanna get into trouble with Mummy and Daddy Bains.’
‘Stop being such a dickhead, Nat, and wait in the lounge,’ he replied.
‘Only thinking of your needs, Sukhy, my boy . . .’
‘Shut up, Nat.’
Sukh showed Natalie into the living room, told her not to break anything and to get herself a drink if she wanted one, before heading up for a shower. Nat thanked him, sat down on a deep, aubergine-coloured leather sofa and waited.
SIX MONTHS LATER
RANI
‘WHAT THE HELL is this?’
Sukh leaned across the bed and picked up the CD cover. He lay back and looked at it as I pushed up against his side, stroking the fine hairs on his chest.
‘The Wailers,’ he told me, like I was supposed to know who they were.
‘Oh . . . them,’ I said, pinching him on the hip.
‘Oww!’
‘Shut up, you fool . . .’
I pushed closer to him, trying to hold in my belly as I did so. It felt wrong, like I was due on, which I was in just under a week. But it was more tender than usual, probably because I had spent the entire weekend eating spicy food at the wedding of one of my cousins. Hence fat-belly girl. I wondered if Sukh had noticed and was being cute by not mentioning it, or whether he just didn’t realize that I was fatter than I had been before I went away to Southall for the wedding.
‘Says here that it’s Bob Marley – you must have heard of him,’ said Sukh, yawning.
‘Yeah – everyone’s heard of him but this doesn’t sound anything like—’
‘It’s from the nineteen sixties.’
‘What’s this one?’
‘Stir It Up,’ he replied, showing me the cover.
‘It sounds old . . . How come Parvy has all this stuff in her collection?’ I asked.
‘She likes to be eclectic,’ he replied, running the tip of a finger along my shoulder and around and down to my breast.
‘Thought we had to go in a bit,’ I said, closing my eyes.
‘We do,’ he whispered, before finding my lips with his . . .
We got out of bed about an hour later. In the shower I stood thinking about the feud as the hot water blasted my face, and about how Sukh and I had left it all unsaid after getting back together. It was as though we had made a subconscious agreement to leave it alone and not talk about it. Ignore it. Not that I didn’t think about it now and then. I’m sure that Sukh did too, but it really wasn’t part of our lives – not the feud anyway. Avoiding my family had become second nature for us, but we’d have done that without a feud – it was what loads of Asian teenagers had to do. We weren’t any different. There was just more at stake if my family, in particular, ever found out.
Not that Sukh’s parents knew about me either. Parvy had said that it wasn’t worth telling them until we had decided that things were getting serious for us – like marriage-serious. Sukh had told me on more than one occasion that he didn’t think his family would mind. That his parents were easy-going about girls and relationships. But even with their liberal outlook, I was still likely to come as a shock for them – just like I had for Parvy. And it was a shock that could wait for now. We had our GCSE results to come and things were stressful enough.
The good thing about having finished school was that I could spend a lot more time with Sukh. We’d been like strangers in the final run-up to exams, both of us determined to do as well as we could so that we’d get into Queen Elizabeth, the sixth-form college near the university, ten minutes’ walk from Parvy’s flat. I also spent more time, if that was possible, with Natalie, who was still seeing Dev. Nat was scared that she hadn’t done well at her weaker subjects like maths and science, especially as she had her career mapped out, aiming for RADA or an equivalent drama college. She called it her three-step programme to a Bafta.
I smiled to myself as I thought about it and then turned the shower off. I could hear Sukh moving around in the flat, and I got dressed and joined him in the living room.
‘You smell great,’ he said, sniffing my hair.
‘You sayin’ I didn’t smell great before?’ I joked.
‘Well – I didn’t want to say . . .’
I punched him and then, more seriously, I asked him if he thought I was fat.
‘Don’t be silly, beautiful,’ he replied, grinning. ‘You’re perfect.’
‘You might just be saying that,’ I told him. ‘You could be one of them pervs who likes to fatten up their girlfriends . . .’
Sukh shook his head. ‘You’re a funny bird, sometimes,’ he said.
‘So you don’t think that I’m fat?’
‘Rani – you’re not fat. You’re perfect.’
I couldn’t let it go though. ‘I’ve put on weight over the weekend,’ I complained.
‘Not that I can see,’ he said, picking up his jacket from the sofa.
‘I feel like I have.’
‘And what we’ve just been doing has worked it all off,’ he grinned.
‘I’m serious . . .’
‘So am I, Rani. You look fantastic, in and out of your clothes.’
‘But . . .’
‘Come here,’ he said, hugging me and kissing my forehead.
‘You would tell me, wouldn’t you – if you thought that I was turning into a heifer?’
Sukh squeezed me tight and told me that he loved me. I smiled at that and then let my neuroses go.
‘Come on – I’ve got to meet the football team for practice at six,’ he said.
‘Oh shit – I need to get home . . .’ I replied, wondering which excuse I was going to use on my dad this time.
When I got in my dad was far too angry about something else to even care where I had come from. He was pacing the living room, a tumbler of whisky and Coke in his hands, swearing at someone or something in Punjabi. I looked at my mum who gave me a don’t-ask look and then scurried off into the kitchen. Divy was sitting in an armchair, wearing a long black leather coat that made him look like some sort of gangster. I smiled at him but he was wearing a scowl to go with his coat and didn’t smile back or ask me how I was.
My dad turned to him and spoke in Punjabi. ‘How long have they had th
e shop?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know but they’re opening next week. Opposite us. Same lines, same everything. And menswear too.’
My dad swore. He took a long drink of whisky and then swore some more.
‘Let me deal with them,’ said Divy. ‘You’ve retired.’
‘No,’ replied my dad sternly. ‘This is not something you can deal with using your fists, Divinder.’
‘What’s happening, Dad?’ I asked, alerted to the mention of fists.
‘Nothing, beteh. You go and make the dinner with your mother. This is for us men to sort out.’
‘With your fists? It must be serious,’ I replied.
‘Why don’t you listen when you’re told to do something?’ snapped Divy in English.
‘Was I talking to you?’ I asked, angry at his tone of voice.
‘This is about the business which, once you’re married off to some other family, ain’t gonna be your concern.’
‘You stupid—’
‘BETEH!’ shouted my dad. ‘Leaving it, please.’
I glared at my brother and then at my dad.
‘Mind your own business, Rani,’ said Divy, before returning to the conversation and pretending that I wasn’t in the room. ‘They have to pay,’ he said to my dad in Punjabi.
‘No! Let the bastards open their shop. We will open a bigger one, with cheaper stock—’
‘But these fucking Bains . . .’
My heart started pounding in my chest. ‘Who are the Bains?’ I asked, but the look that I got from both of them sent me out to the kitchen to help my mum. Behind me the door slammed shut, shaking the frame.
‘Mum, what’s this about someone called Bains?’ I asked, my heart still racing.
‘Just some business enemies,’ said my mum, not looking at me; hiding something. Only I knew what it was.
‘Who?’
‘Nothing for you to worry about, beteh. This is an old problem . . .’
‘How old?’
‘Long, long time, Rani. Now get your hands washed – we need to start the dinner—’
‘Is it like a feud or something?’ I asked, taking a risk by leading her.