The House of Whispers

by Anna Kent

  When Meena saw us walk in, she stood up and clutched Rohan to her, hugging him tight and ruffling his hair as if he were a child home from his first day at school. I looked away until she was ready to let him go, then she and I had our usual slightly awkward hug and air-kiss – not that she didn’t love me. Just not as much as she loved Rohan.

  ‘Abigail, how are you?’ she said, openly scanning me for signs of early pregnancy.

  ‘Good, thanks. And you? Hot, isn’t it!’ I said, ignoring the sinking of the shoulders that showed she’d seen nothing of interest.

  ‘Daddy has a meeting tonight,’ she said in reply as we took our seats, and Rohan and I nodded as if we knew what she meant. Clive was long retired and, although he kept his fingers in some philanthropic pies, I suspected his Monday evening ‘meeting’ might involve the pub. Again, there were things that were never spoken about in this family; certain dignities that were upheld without questions being asked.

  ‘Mili might come, though,’ she added.

  I nodded and Rohan said, ‘Great.’ Mili was his sister. Stunningly beautiful and achingly cool, she’d done everything ‘right’ in Meena’s eyes; despite being a couple of years younger than Rohan, she was already married with a two-year-old daughter. I was glad she was coming; when Mili turned up with the baby, the focus of attention was generally on little Sofia and not on my own childless state.

  I flicked through the menu while Rohan caught up with his mum. Outside, the sun was squeezing itself sideways through the gaps between the buildings of the High Street, its rays softer, kinder, than they’d been earlier in the day. A knot of drinkers mingled outside the pub, their voices rising to compete with one another so the overall sound that reached us here in the restaurant was loud, rowdy and punctuated with shouts. Music ebbed and flowed from the open windows of flats above the shops: the thump of a beat, the riff of a saxophone, the repetitive squawk of a child practising scales on the violin. Pedestrians strolled arm in arm in the uniform of summer: shorts, vests, slip-dresses and slopping flip-flops blackened by the city’s pavements.

  Suddenly I was aware of something moving faster than the prevailing speed of the street; something carving a way through the pedestrians and the mob outside the pub. I tensed involuntarily, but then I saw the signature scarf flying like a flag: Mili.

  My sister-in-law surged along the pavement and into the restaurant through what would have been the window as if she’d been caught up in a hurricane, her hair flying loose, chiffon scarf swirling about her. She was wearing a classic ‘Mili’ cocktail of brightly coloured East-West clothes and eyes followed her as she swerved between the tables, hands raised in apology to those she bumped. Gold studs gleamed in her ears, a tiny diamond studded her nose, and all her fingers were ringed in gold. Mili worked as a buyer at John Lewis, in the homeware department, and was one of those people who ‘had an eye’ for fashion and style – I knew no one who could throw things together as randomly as her yet somehow make everything look so well put together.

  ‘Hi-hi-hi,’ she said, giving her mum a quick squeeze and a showy kiss on the cheek. ‘And, hi, Love’s Young Dream.’ She gave Rohan and I each a proper hug before sliding into the seat next to Meena. ‘How’s it going?’

  I watched Rohan’s face drop with a thud that hit me in the gut. ‘No Sofia tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘School night,’ Mili grinned. ‘She’s at nursery now. Needs to get into a routine. So, no. Jay’s on Daddy duty.’

  ‘I don’t know. These nurseries,’ Meena shook her head, ‘breeding ground for sickness. You mark my words, she’ll be sick all the time now. You should have…’

  ‘… left her with you,’ Mili interrupted, rolling her eyes. ‘Yeah, yeah, I know, but it’s just not practical. I work four days a week. You wouldn’t be able to do anything if you had her with you. Think about your charity work! Anyway – let’s not go over that again. I’m starving. What are you all having?’

  ‘We haven’t looked,’ said Rohan, although I knew exactly what both he and his mum would order.

  ‘Hmm, maybe the pepperoni?’ Rohan licked his lips. ‘And what about you, my love? My gorgeous artiste?’ He pronounced the word with a long ‘ee’ as he looked at me over steepled fingers.

  ‘Ooh,’ said Mili, who never missed a trick. ‘Are you painting again?’

  ‘I caught her mixing colours this evening,’ Rohan said, nodding as if he were my manager. ‘I think she might be onto something.’

  ‘Another dog?’ Meena said with a little laugh. Her fingers fiddled with the paper napkin.

  ‘No,’ said Rohan slowly. He looked at me with narrowed eyes, a tilted head and the hint of a smile. ‘I could see something was bubbling inside her. The colours – they looked like skin tones. What do you think it’s going to be? I’m thinking a portrait? Am I right?’

  I shook my head vaguely. I hated talking about my work, especially when it was still in this opaque state.

  ‘Oh, come on! You must have some idea,’ said Meena. ‘What was in your head? You can tell us.’ She leaned further towards me, eyes wide and I pictured her on the phone to her coffee-morning friends telling them I was painting again. These are women who inhale Chinese whispers like oxygen: by mid-morning I’d have painted a whole collection; by the afternoon, I’d be ‘exhibiting’; by this time tomorrow, my entire collection would be ‘pre-sold’.

  Patience. I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply, exhaled, then said, ‘Rohan’s right.’ I smiled at him. ‘I think it might be a portrait.’

  Mili nodded. ‘A departure. Good. It’s good not to get typecast, so to speak.’ I smiled; she knew nothing about art, but then she said, ‘Do you have a muse?’ and I stared at her with my mouth half open as things slid into place in my head and I thought: you know what, Mils, that’s actually a really good question.

  Grace, I realized right then and there, was my muse. Not only was it because of her that I’d started to paint back at university, but it was as a result of her encouragement that I’d managed to secure that first gallery exhibition, the one that had launched my career. She’d pushed me out there to meet people in the industry; she’d forced me to approach gallery managers. But there was also something far less tangible about her influence. Something to do with the way she challenged me. She fired me to places I would never otherwise have gone. She did something to my head; allowed me access to things I otherwise couldn’t see.

  There was also the fact that, once upon a time, she’d saved my life.

  Rohan, Mili and Meena were all looking at me across the table. Meena’s head was tilted sideways, her face hungry to receive the information that would be transmitted like a news bulletin to the aunties on her WhatsApp groups. Mili’s face was open with curiosity and a genuine interest, and Rohan was smiling indulgently with his eyes half closed. It was the perfect chance to say, ‘Actually, yes, she’s called Grace and, hold onto your hats, because she’s coming to stay!’ but I couldn’t do it – not here, not like this.

  ‘Nah,’ I said, scrunching up my forehead. ‘I don’t have a muse. Well, not that I know of.’ I laughed, and they laughed with me.

  ‘Yes, let her hit the big-time, then she’ll get a muse,’ Meena said. ‘But, first, she needs to have a baby!’ She rubbed her hands together and Mili looked at her watch.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ she whispered to me. ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Anyway, beta,’ Meena said to Rohan, innocently, I think. ‘Did you decide whether to take the job in New York?’ and it was as if the world stopped turning. Every sound fell away: the scrape of knife on plate, the clatter of crockery, the shouts from the open kitchen, the sound of the cars passing, the buzz of conversation in the restaurant – even the din from the pub across the road – everything faded away as I held my breath and waited to hear what Rohan would say.

  Nine

  I’d been in the kitchen the night Rohan had come home and told me he might need to move to New York – ‘might’, I soon learned, being an understatement as it turned
out because there was no ‘might’ about it. It was just before the heatwave began and the weather was still unremarkable – the usual British summer of four seasons in one day. It seems odd now to think of weather that wasn’t a talking point; weather that hadn’t taken on a character of its own, baking the house, the street, the city and its residents – but I remember it wasn’t raining, neither was it sunny. The windows were closed. The sky was nondescript and the light was fading although it wasn’t yet dark enough to switch on the lamps. In this dreary light, the house felt brooding and shadowy – fully expressing the legacy of its Victorian roots, despite what we’d done to bring it up to date.

  Rohan had been for a post-work meeting and I was halfway down a bottle of wine by the time I heard his key in the door. I waited for the pause as he threw his jacket over the bannister, then tracked the steps of his work shoes along the tiles of the passageway towards the kitchen. When he was at the threshold, I jumped up and squeezed my arms around him, pinning his own inside my embrace as I kissed him.

  ‘Hello!’

  ‘Give us a chance to get through the door!’ Rohan protested, and I tasted beer on his lips and smelled the pub in his beard as we kissed again, slower this time.

  ‘I can’t help it if I missed you. How was the meeting?’ I let him go.

  Rohan pulled a beer out of the fridge and popped the lid. ‘Cheers!’

  I raised my glass.

  ‘Well,’ he said slowly. ‘Funny you ask. It seems I may have news.’ He paused. ‘Tell me… what do you think about moving to… New York, New York?’ He put the beer down and did jazz hands.

  ‘What?’ I said, struggling to catch up as my insides fell through me. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yes. They want to send me to New York – initially for a couple of months but it could easily be extended if we decide we want to stay. What do you think?’ My mouth opened and closed, utterly speechless. ‘I’m thinking six months,’ Rohan continued. ‘Upper East Side pad – trendy brownstone – a loft maybe? Just think, Abs: Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, Central Park, MOMA, the Guggenheim… the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art… and your birthday in New York!’

  And I was thinking, just not of the good things but of the horrors of a city – a city I didn’t know, at that. Traffic, sirens, congestion, crowds, the subway and the sweaty, suffocating stench of a humid, New York summer. Terrorists. 9/11! Guns! Fear oozed through my guts; it slid around my organs and fired up my heart.

  ‘We can’t go. No way,’ I said, and my voice came from far away, but it was too late. The panic had already gathered, a burning ball in my abdomen, scorching my insides and making sweat break out on my forehead. It swelled inside me and ballooned up towards my throat, squeezing my chest until I struggled to breathe. I grasped the counter as the kitchen swayed.

  ‘No!’ I gasped. ‘Just say no.’

  ‘But Abs…’ Rohan said. He breathed slowly in and out with his eyes closed, then pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. ‘I already said…’

  ‘You said…?’ I slumped onto the counter, my head in my hands, my mouth gasping for air.

  ‘Abs,’ Rohan said carefully. He put a hand on my back. ‘Breathe for me. In and out. In and out. Nice and steady. Come on. Sit down.’ He led me to a chair and I fell hard into it as my knees buckled.

  ‘Let’s just calm you down. You’re having one of your “moments”,’ Rohan said and I didn’t have the breath to defend myself. All I could hear was the racing of my blood as it coursed through my body.

  ‘I have to go,’ Rohan said quietly. ‘With or without you.’

  I pushed my hand against my chest, pressing, pressing, as my eyes beseeched him: don’t go. Don’t leave me.

  We stared at each other and I saw the hesitation in his eyes; the question of whether he really could leave me. After a long moment, he changed the subject, but the issue had sizzled between us ever since, an unseen echo of the stifling heat of that interminable summer.

  ‘Yes, darling, what did you decide?’ I asked sweetly as Meena and Mili looked at Rohan. He rubbed his moustache and peered at me through a narrowed gaze I wasn’t sure I liked. I knew he was trying to gauge whether I was about to have a ‘moment’, and weighing up how bad that would look in front of his mum.

  ‘Well…’ he said slowly.

  Meena cocked her head at him. ‘We’re waiting!’

  ‘Well,’ said Rohan again, and I took a sip of water. ‘We talked about it,’ he said carefully. ‘It’s obviously something they really want me to do, but Abi can’t get away from the hospice.’

  He looked at me as if seeking my reassurance, and I nodded, relieved. He’d stay! I’d have to tell Grace she couldn’t come after all, and everything would be fine. ‘They’re short on volunteers as it is,’ Rohan said, and I nodded again: this was all true, though I only volunteered once a week.

  ‘So you’re not going?’ Mili asked. ‘Well, hello, career suicide.’

  Rohan traced a pattern on the paper mat with his fingertip. ‘However, they really, really need me there by the start of September and they’ve agreed it can be only for six weeks, so…’ He pursed his lips. ‘I’ll come back for a couple of weekends whenever I can… kind of like commuting…’

  His words hit me like a punch in the gut. Six weeks? Had I heard him right? I stared at my wine glass, not daring even to move.

  ‘What?’ snorted Mili, jolting the table as she banged her hands down on it in a way that made me jump, heart skittering. ‘You’re commuting to New York? Oh my God, you’re my hero! You absolute legend!’

  But Meena was shaking her head, her face serious. ‘Oh no, beta, no. You can’t leave Abigail. There must be some other way.’

  ‘I have to go, Mum,’ Rohan said quietly and Mili nodded, one eyebrow raised. Meena inhaled deeply then tilted her head and looked at me.

  ‘What’s wrong with New York, Abigail? You should go. It will be good for you.’

  I opened my mouth but Rohan took the words before I could say them. ‘She’s needed at the hospice. And she’s painting. It’s too disruptive. I can fly back after four weeks for a long weekend.’

  Meena looked from him to me and back again, her antennae for marital troubles quivering. She frowned at me.

  ‘Go with him, Abigail. I know you do good work at the hospice, but he’s your husband! And it’ll be good for you to have a break, relax… How do you expect to start a family when you’re always so… busy?’

  ‘He chose to go, not me,’ I muttered.

  ‘What, Abigail? What did you say?’

  ‘His choice.’ I gave a tight smile and looked out toward the street, and then Meena leaned further towards Rohan and me, and said:

  ‘Anyway, I’ve just remembered. Speaking of children, I’ve something to tell you.’ She paused, making sure she had our attention, then continued. ‘So, I was at a coffee morning the other day – just a small one, a charity thing where they sell goods made by those ladies in villages all over the world? You know, like that embroidered bookmark I got you? Anyway, this time it was quite good. There were hats – what do you call them? Panama, like the canal? Oh, and earrings. Very nice earrings. I got some for myself, actually.’ She touched her ear but realized she was wearing her usual gold studs. ‘Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, coffee morning. So the point is – Jyothi Aunty was there.’

  She said this last bit with an exaggerated nod that made me think I was supposed to know the significance of Jyothi Aunty being there. My eyes slid to Rohan. He was only half listening since he was accepting the drinks from the waiter; directing the glasses of white wine to Mili and me, the juice to his mum and taking a long swig of his own pint of lager.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, rolling his lips to remove the froth.

  ‘So,’ said Meena, as if she was starting to tell a really interesting story. ‘Do you remember Jyothi Aunty’s son, Anouj?’

  ‘Mmm-hmm,’ said Rohan. ‘How could I forget? All those times you rammed us together at dinners and
weddings. Wonderful Anouj.’

  ‘Accountant Anouj with the “good prospects” and the “Mercedes saloon”,’ said Mili with an eye-roll.

  Meena glared at both of them. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘Anouj is married now – to a very nice girl – and his wife’s just announced she’s expecting.’ She sat back with a big smile as if Anouj’s purpose in the world was now complete.

  ‘How lovely,’ I said.

  ‘But – the interesting thing is,’ Meena continued, ‘and this is confidential, of course, because I’d never gossip about such things – but apparently they’d been trying for over a year. And then they saw a doctor, a very well-respected specialist – and look, the proof’s in the pudding – or the bun in the oven!’ She laughed at her own joke then carried on, ‘Because she’s now passed her twelve-week scan.’

  ‘You make it sound like a degree,’ said Mili darkly.

  ‘Okay,’ Rohan said. ‘That’s great news. Do wish them well from us.’

  ‘Harley Street,’ said Meena, nodding. ‘I got his number. I hope you don’t mind. He’s not cheap, and he has a long waiting list, but it’s worth a try, wouldn’t you say?’ She leaned back with a big smile and a nod, and folded her arms.

  ‘You told Jyothi Aunty we needed this guy’s number?’ Rohan said, throwing his hands up. Meena bit her lip in a ‘sorry-not-sorry’ manner. ‘For God’s sake, Mum. You know we’ll be the talk of the aunties now. Everyone will be gossiping.’ He sat back in his seat. ‘All the coffee mornings will be, like, “That wife of Rohan’s can’t have babies. She’s too this, she’s too that.”’

  Meena laughed. ‘Oh, come on now, Ronu. No one thinks like that. Anyway, it’s not as if they don’t know… You’ve been married for three years now and,’ she waved her hand at my belly, ‘still no baby. Goodness, it’s no secret. Maybe it’s time to accept some help.’