by Tim Pears
Not that Natalie derived any pleasure from chaperoning Harry and Alice for the first time. She had no idea how far Alice and Harry’s relationship had or hadn’t developed – it was one thing she and Alice didn’t discuss – and she was unable to shift her attention from them, watching for signs of intimacy: for fingers touching, a whispered private joke, a surreptitious kiss. And although she saw none, that only reinforced a conviction that Alice was holding back out of tact, not wanting to hurt her.
At one stall Simon undertook a fitness test, in which his blood pressure, lung capacity and heartbeat recovery rate were monitored, and the results fed into a computer. The council officer studied the read-out and told Simon that he had the body of a nineteen-year-old.
‘Blimey,’ Zoe exclaimed, ‘I bet he was glad to get rid of it.’
‘No, that’s brilliant, Simon,’ Alice approved. ‘That just shows, all your diets are worth while.’
Instead of being overjoyed that despite his weight he was as fit as someone ten years younger, Simon was most put out. ‘There must be something wrong,’ he told the man. ‘Maybe you didn’t measure my pulse rate properly.’
‘It’s perfectly accurate,’ he was assured, but Simon continued the grumbling of a hypochondriac as they strolled on.
‘If you think about it, they’re only testing the heart and lungs, that’s nothing. What about the other organs? You could be suffering from some fatal disease and still do well on that stupid test. It’s irresponsible, that’s what it is.’
‘Stop bellyaching,’ Zoe told him. ‘You’re like an old woman.’
‘Zoe!’ Natalie exclaimed, lowering her guard of a jealous chaperone for a moment. ‘We don’t need that sort of sexist remark.’
They wandered through the crowd in the hot afternoon, and after a while Zoe suggested they split up, and the group separated: she and Simon went one way, Alice and Harry the other – followed by Natalie. Zoe nipped after her and took her arm.
‘Hey, Nat,’ she said, ‘let’s look at this Twai-kan-do demonstration; you can tell me what it’s all about.’
Natalie let herself be led reluctantly away; she blanched when Zoe whispered in her ear: ‘Let’s leave the lovers alone for a while, eh?’
‘My feet are killing me. Time to go home,’ Simon soon suggested. ‘We’ve left Robert and Laura on their own long enough.’
‘Robert and Laura?’ Zoe asked. ‘What have they got to do with each other any more?’
‘Use your eyes, darling,’ Simon told her.
Harry had been almost as oblivious to his surroundings as Natalie. Increasingly when with Alice he found himself wondering what to say or do, and that was an uncomfortable situation for Harry to be in, since in every other part of his life he knew exactly what to do.
They left the park, had tea in a café in St Peter’s, and walked back up the hill. In the warm evening they dawdled along the drive to the house. Not far away believers were being called to Evensong by church bells pealing, the notes chasing each other round and round – they saw Simon dash towards the side door in the garden wall. Robert was gunning the engine of one of his cars in the back yard. Laura was visible in the rose garden in a gaberdine mac, gathering petals to fill a bowl, till she was cut off as they approached the front door.
The house was floating in the soft evening light. Harry felt his footsteps plodding far below him. They reached the front steps.
‘Well, boo-boo,’ Alice said, ‘do you want to make me a passanda some evening this week, or what?’
Harry looked across the garden towards the sunset. ‘Alice,’ he replied, frowning, ‘I want to kiss you.’
Alice followed his gaze across the lawn. ‘Well, go on, then,’ she told him. He stepped forward and she turned towards him. Their lips met and remained pressed together for some time, in a long, passionless kiss. Eventually they withdrew.
‘You certainly took your time,’ Alice declared.
‘Me?’ he replied. ‘What about—’
‘But it was nice, Harry,’ she interrupted. ‘See you on Thursday?’ She reached forward and kissed him again briefly, smiled, and let herself inside.
Harry involuntarily took one step after her, although Alice had closed the door without a backward glance. So Harry took a step back – the same step, as if retracting it – turned, retreated down the steps, paused and looked back over his shoulder at the blank white door, before setting off at a thoughtful pace down the drive. He was repeating the indecisive choreography of nine years earlier, the day he had asked Charles Freeman for his daughter’s hand, and it would be ever thus: in the ensuing years Harry Singh would walk in a straight line towards his fortune, except that occasionally he would be halted, and turn a little figure of eight of vacillation, on account of his wife.
It took Harry a further six months of courtship – during which time their kisses became passionate and their trysts more frequent, including Sunday suppers with his family – before he summoned up the courage to propose. And then he needed a great deal more, as Alice proceeded to lay down a long list of conditions that would have sent a man with less perseverance running straight back into the arms of an arranged marriage, which, his parents occasionally assured him, it wasn’t too late to reorganize.
‘Number one,’ Alice explained, ‘is I’m not giving up my job. It’s as important as yours even if it’s not so well rewarded materially, that doesn’t mean a thing, it just shows what a corrupt society this is. I’m not giving up my career, Harry, I’m not going to be dependent on you or any other man. In fact, number two is we keep separate bank accounts.’
‘Is this a yes or a no?’ Harry tried to interject, but Alice had her faraway look and ignored him.
‘Number three is I don’t want any children. Well, not yet anyway. Maybe never. I don’t know and I don’t want to commit myself. There’s no point in staking a claim to freedom and then becoming a slave to bawling babies, is there? It’s only fair to warn you.’
‘There’s enough children in the world already, I suppose,’ Harry bravely accepted. ‘Except I thought you liked them.’
‘Number four,’ Alice continued, oblivious to his accord, ‘is we share all the household chores: I’m not being your put-upon housewife, Harry Singh, no way, I’ve seen your mum run around after you lot of ingrates. Cooking, housework, gardening, everything: we’ll draw up a contract.’
‘A contract?’ Harry asked, his conviction faltering.
‘Not a legal one, fish-face! Don’t be silly! I mean between ourselves. We can change it around as we go along, if we want, by mutual consent. Like, you might want to do all the cooking – in fact, you’d better. I can’t bear cooking, in case you hadn’t noticed. If you want me to cook you’ll have to sing for your supper. Get it?’ Alice chuckled.
‘Get what?’ Harry asked, bewildered.
‘Singh for your supper, silly,’ Alice repeated, but, getting no response, she continued, ‘anyway, you might do all the cooking and I’d do all the cleaning. As long as it’s fair.’
‘I’m sure it should be,’ Harry agreed. ‘But are you saying yes or no?’ he asked.
‘On the other hand,’ Alice digressed, ‘we shouldn’t just assume we’d live together. I’ve often thought the ideal relationship was the one between Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. I don’t really want to not live here, it’s a big house, you know.’
‘You’re right, Alice.’
‘And number … five,’ she said, counting her fingers, using them as an aide-mémoire, since she’d had many months to rehearse her list of conditions. ‘Number five is I’m not changing my name. I’m not going to be your chattel, Harry, an appendage to another patriarchal lineage. We can be Singh-Freeman, or Freeman-Singh, or just keep our separate names. I’m not sure yet. It’s up for discussion.’
Harry wanted to weep. ‘But what do you want?’ he groaned. ‘Do you want me?’ he demanded.
Alice looked at him with a smile. ‘Of course I do, boo-boo,’ she said.
The table went quiet. Everyone was waiting for Charles’ response.
‘I’m going to marry Harry,’ Alice – oblivious to her father’s temper tantrums – chuckled. The others braced themselves.
Charles smiled. ‘He’s a bright spark, that young man,’ he announced. ‘Good business sense. I like him. Good for you, Alice. He’ll go far,’ Charles said. He didn’t yet know how far.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and toasted Alice and her absent intended with a Beaumes-de-Venise Laura fetched from the kitchen.
Charles telephoned Mr Singh, put engagement notices in The Times and the Echo, and encouraged Alice to start planning their wedding with as much help from him as she required, not just because he was making up for Alice’s mother not being around but also because, as ever, the man-in-charge liked the idea of a good party.
Alice and Harry were married on a hot Saturday in the middle of 1984, with a wedding in the same church in which Alice had once sung in the choir – with the same giggling priest – preceded by a blessing in the Singhs’ Hindu temple.
Harry took a ring from Simon, his best man (as Alice had predicted, they’d become friends, and Harry didn’t have any others) and placed it on the third finger of Alice’s left hand. And then, in his phlegmatic tone of voice, Harry repeated after the vicar, ‘I Harry take thee Alice to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.’ Alice had to fight off an attack of the giggles, because she thought Harry was going to conclude: ‘Respectfully yours, Amen.’
Charles Freeman gave his daughter away with a light heart. His youngest child was the first to be married, at the age of twenty-four, and he was genuinely glad for her; despite his wife’s death, Charles regarded marriage as an appropriate condition for men and women to live together.
‘It’s about time you bucked your ideas up,’ he’d told Simon some weeks before, on Simon’s thirtieth birthday. ‘It’s all very well, these women of yours floating in and out of the house, but you ought to think about settling down with one of them,’ he advised. He had no idea.
The church was packed. Harry had a large extended family who filled the first six pews on the groom’s side and he had a great number of acquaintances, who could be defined as people with whom he’d exchanged money, property or favours.
James came with his camera. Outside the temple, where just the closest family had attended, he took a photograph of Harry and Alice blurred by a blizzard of rice. They had to shake it out of their hair and clothes before going into the church, only to be assailed again on the way out, this time with confetti. Before leaving for the reception at the big house on the hill in Charles’ chauffeur-driven Rover, Alice threw her bridal bouquet over her shoulder. It landed right in the arms of her chief bridesmaid, Natalie (who’d refused to wear a dress, and was attired instead in a page boy’s outfit). Displaying great presence of mind and quick reactions, Natalie promptly pushed it up in the air again without catching it, like a volleyball, and this time it fell into Laura’s hands; she did grasp it, to be greeted with a chorus of whistles and cheers. Laura glanced involuntarily towards Robert, who responded with a surreptitious smirk.
Using a rapid shutter-release, James caught that sequence in a series of photographs, but then instead of going to the reception he went back to his bedsit.
‘I know you vowed never to return there,’ Zoe had argued with him a couple of days before. ‘But this is your sister’s wedding, for God’s sake.’
‘I’m not going back,’ James replied, hunched up in her small kitchen.
‘You only made the vow to yourself,’ Zoe cried. ‘It’s not even like you’re going to lose face with anyone. What do you achieve by being so stubborn, James?’
‘Bad things happened there. If I go back, they’ll happen again, so I’m not going.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘If they were having the reception anywhere else, I’d go. They didn’t have to have it there.’
‘Jesus, James!’ Zoe cried, exasperated. ‘I can’t talk to you now, you’re so unreasonable. I’m going downstairs. Let yourself out,’ she told him, adding: ‘You are the most obstinate person I’ve ever known. Including my grandmother.’
Harry and Alice spent their honeymoon in India, first visiting Harry’s family home in the city of Bombay. Close relatives he’d barely heard of, never mind knew, queued up less to meet Harry for the first time than his English wife. After a week of incessant hospitality – from which Harry found respite in daily, hour-long international phone calls back to his office, because he didn’t trust his small staff to make decisions – Harry had to drag Alice away for their holiday proper.
‘Your Aunt Padma invited us to her place, Harry. We get on so well.’
‘She’s a gossiping housewife, not your sort at all, Alice. I don’t get it. Anyway our train tickets are booked.’
‘And your Uncle Javed’s such a flirt, Harry.’
‘He’s a dirty old man, Alice.’
‘And the twins are so sweet. Granny Singh said I was the only one except her who could tell them apart.’
‘They’re ill-mannered brats, if you want my opinion. They let them run around shouting the house down. How on earth are we going to transport all this extra luggage? What with their presents and your shopping expeditions, I’ll have to send it separately.’
‘Don’t be grumpy, Grandpa. Although on second thoughts you’re right: it’ll give the airline the freight of their lives.’
‘With what they’ll charge us they should be happy,’ Harry stated, either ignoring, or more likely missing, Alice’s awful pun.
They spent their final week in Goa, which had been Harry’s idea, although by the time they got there he was itching to get back home to work, assailed by the mounting conviction that without him at the helm his business would crumble. His daily phone calls stretched to two hours and he arranged for a delivery of photocopies of all recent transactions and contracts, as well as copies of the Financial Times and Property News, to be brought over by one of his team of piecework labourers, who got a free flight out of it.
‘Sounds like a good courier opportunity for the guy,’ Alice remarked.
‘It’s just a one-off, Alice,’ Harry told her.
‘Do you think a sense of humour’s a genetic inheritance or a cultural acquisition?’ she asked.
‘Probably a combination of the two, I should think,’ Harry replied.
Their first two days in Goa were not happy ones. Harry was unable to relax on the beach or swim in the sea for more than ten minutes at a time before returning to his papers, to reread the small print of house-exchange contracts. Which was about as long as Alice could spend there too: her pale skin burned and she had to retreat into the shade.
‘Relax, Harry,’ Alice implored. ‘At least one of us should enjoy this paradise.’ He rubbed the strongest sun-tan lotion into Alice’s shoulders: it blocked ultraviolet rays but didn’t help her skin actually go brown.
‘Stop it, Harry,’ Alice told him. ‘I’ll do it myself: your fingers are all fidgety.’
Yet despite everything it was in Goa that Alice and Harry did finally relax with each other; they would return home from their honeymoon having replaced the tentative, exploratory negotiating of newly-weds with the easy intimacy of a longstanding couple.
On the third day Harry and Alice ate the same food and were struck down by a virulent case of food-poisoning. Until then they had remained modest with each other – unsure whether to be in the bathroom at the same time, undressing either side of the bed and
sliding under the sheets towards the other’s nakedness.
In the middle of that night, however, Alice awoke from a repulsive dream in which, swimming in the warm Arabian Sea, she found herself surrounded by jellyfish. Undulating their tentacles, they floated around her. After initial terror, however, Alice realized that none of them were coming any closer: they didn’t wish to sting her. And she understood suddenly why: she was not a victim but, rather, somehow their incubator – they were guarding her, because they had laid their eggs inside her. Inside her the gelatinous bodies of baby jellyfish were squirming and growing.
Alice awoke from a nightmare sea into a nauseous reality. She staggered out of bed and into the hotel-suite bathroom, to discover Harry collapsed over the toilet bowl, already doing what she had to do within the next two seconds. She reeled to the shower unit, dropped to her knees and let go a jellied splurge of vomit.
Harry, meanwhile, though still heaving, had managed to push himself up in order to sit on the bowl, because no sooner had he emptied his stomach than his bowels had erupted too, and molten lava poured out.
Eventually Harry’s stomach and rectum stilled. Breathing hard, he became aware of the world beyond the boundaries of his own body: Alice had crawled into the shower, and lay curled up in her own mess. Harry made his way giddily over.
‘Alice. Are you OK?’ he croaked.
She was whimpering, her eyes closed. Without opening them she whispered: ‘Help me, Harry.’
He helped her get up and take off her soiled T-shirt, and turned on the shower. When the water had washed away Alice’s evacuations, they held each other under the warm water until they were clean. They barely had the strength to dry themselves before collapsing back on the bed.