The House of Hidden Mothers

by Meera Syal

  He hesitated in the hallway, aware the women were in mid-conversation. It sounded urgent, secretive, drifting through the half-open kitchen door.

  ‘A baby is so much work … you need so much energy to look after them properly.’

  ‘I’m fitter than a lot of women half my age.’

  ‘I know, darling, you look very nice. But honestly.’

  ‘Women in India have kids well into their forties. Look at Kamla Auntie, she was forty-eight when she had Vippu.’

  ‘Yes, but he was her seventh. She had lots in between. God knows why, the woman should have used up her energy getting a job instead of lounging around eating chocolates and watching TV melodramas. But what I’m saying is her body knew what to do, and her older ones helped her with the baby.’

  ‘I have Tara.’

  A brief pause. They let that one go.

  ‘Anyway, Mama, like I told you, I won’t be having a baby – any baby. I can’t, and that’s that. So we might consider adoption or—’

  ‘Adoption? At your age? Why do you want to start all that hard work all over again? This is the time you should be relaxing and going on cruises. Anyway, how can you adopt? You’re not married.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter nowadays.’

  ‘Well, it should. We are modern, but not stupid. What happens if you adopt a baby and your Toby runs off with someone younger? Someone more like him? You want to be a fifty-year-old on your own with a little one?’

  ‘Marriage doesn’t stop husbands buggering off. Remember?’

  So Shyama had told her mother. Toby initially felt confused, then slighted. She had insisted on keeping their IVF a secret from her parents for the last four years, so why choose to tell Sita now when it wasn’t going to happen? And how had adoption filled that gaping loss so soon? He heard a chair being scraped back, a tap turning as the kettle was filled, then silence descended. If he left it much longer, who knows what he might hear next? So he cleared his throat and walked into the kitchen.

  ‘Hey!’ Toby sang cheerily, making straight for Sita first, hands together in a respectful namaste.

  ‘Namaste, Sita-ji,’ he intoned solemnly, making Sita giggle like a schoolgirl. It always worked. He had fretted over how to address Shyama’s parents for ages. Shyama had vetoed any kind of Mum/Dad/Mrs/Mr business – one too formal, the other reserved only for bona fide son-in-laws, and they’d had one of those who had turned out to be a thoroughly bad sort. So how about the all-purpose suffix of respect for those older or more important than you, one word merely added on to the end of the name. Ji. It made Toby feel like an over-impressed American from the fifties, wanting to add ‘Neat’ and ‘Swell’ to the rest of the sentence. But it covered a million cultural potholes and it was, after all, one very small word.

  Sita slapped him playfully on the shoulder. ‘Funny boy. Cuppatea?’

  ‘Lovely, thank you.’

  Toby glanced at Shyama, cradling her mug between her hands, who shot him a small tight smile. She looked tired, with smudges of shadow beneath her dark lashes, and the pain clouding her eyes made his chest ache. He laid a hand over hers and gave it a small squeeze – there wasn’t much else they could say now with Sita there. It didn’t matter, telling her mother, mentioning adoption, she had needed to talk and he hadn’t been there. He would have liked to throw his arms around her and carry her upstairs, but Shyama discouraged him from being too lovey-dovey in front of her parents. ‘It’s a cultural thing,’ she had explained, which was no explanation at all. He considered it for a second, tempted to see if Sita would throw a bucket of cold water over him in response.

  ‘Toby, would you mind if I call Prem over? He has some more papers to sign. We were wondering—’

  ‘Mama, he’s just got in,’ Shyama interrupted.

  ‘He doesn’t mind. You don’t mind, do you, Toby?’

  ‘No problem, Sita-ji. A pleasure.’

  As Toby added milk to his cuppatea, Sita picked up the phone and made a brief call in Punjabi. A moment later, a gate at the end of Shyama’s garden swung open and her father strolled through it, a bundle of files under his arm and his ever-present pipe clamped between his teeth, each step punctuated with a puff of smoke as if he was being power-steamed towards the back door.

  Shyama greeted her father with a hug and got up to make his tea, very strong, a splash of milk, piping hot, the way he liked it. His kindly face and the tufts of hair above his ears reminded Toby of a koala bear.

  Prem dropped the papers on to the kitchen table and slapped Toby manfully on the back. ‘Toby sahib!’ he joshed. ‘How are you?’

  The first time Toby had visited this house, Shyama said to him, ‘You know how English people have fairies at the bottom of their garden? Well, I have parents.’

  Once he had got over the surprise of Mr and Mrs Bedi occupying the ground-floor flat of the house that backed on to Shyama’s, and once he had reassured himself that there wasn’t any possible way they could see him defiling their daughter in the master bedroom, he had accepted it surprisingly easily. Extended families were common in farming communities when he was a lad. As Sita placed the obligatory plate of biscuits before him, he remembered his own mother’s wind-reddened hands producing scones and bread warm from the oven, her satisfied half-smile as Toby and his father and brother fell upon them with barely a thank-you. The memory brought a lump to his throat.

  ‘You OK, beta?’ Sita enquired. She called him ‘son’. The lump got bigger. Toby felt Shyama’s eyes on him. He had to be the strong one; that was the deal now.

  ‘Long day, Sita-ji.’ He smiled and patted the chair next to him. ‘So, Prem-ji, what have you got for me this time?’

  Prem sat down with a sigh and gave an apologetic glance at the untidy heap of papers before him. ‘We have another court date!’ he said jovially, as if this wasn’t the sixth in as many years, all of which had come to nothing.

  Toby sat beside Prem and cast an eye over the first few pages, the usual tiny print and legal gobblededook they had come to expect from these official missives. He wiped his palms on his sweatshirt, conscious of the smell of manure rising from his clothes, and flicked through them quickly.

  ‘So, five weeks away then, the next court hearing. Have you made sure your lawyer has got all the right papers this time?’

  ‘Oh, the lawyer had the right papers all right.’ Prem smiled at Toby. ‘It was the clerk in the court. He had brought the wrong file.’

  ‘You’re happy with your lawyer, Prem-ji? It’s just … well, this has been going on a long time and …’

  ‘The Indian courts. They’re a mess. We are lucky we even have another hearing. Sometimes the file disappears altogether and you have to start again. At least we have another chance.’

  There was a brief pause while everyone in the room nodded and sighed, not daring to meet each other’s eyes, not wanting to see the resignation or recrimination residing there. The story was a long and painful one, the kind Prem imagined telling a gaggle of wide-eyed grandchildren around a blazing fire, epic in scale and mythic in theme, brother against brother battling over land and property. Told a few generations on, he hoped it would reveal itself to be a valuable moral fable and not the sordid paragraph of everyday betrayal it was now.

  Five years before his retirement, seven years before hers, Prem and Sita decided to invest their life savings in a piece of Back Home, a three-bedroom flat in South Delhi not far from either the centre or the airport, close to Prem’s favourite brother’s place, the idea being that Yogesh could keep an eye on the property until Prem and Sita occupied it. A small flat near family, perfect for their retirement: the summer months in England with Shyama and Tara, the winter months in Delhi, eating falooda kulfi at their favourite café, wandering around the Lodi Gardens reliving their college strolls when even the brush of a hand could send Prem into a tailspin of unrequited longing, playing taash in shaded dhabas over a peg of whisky with the old friends who had decided to stay, those who were left.


  Of course, they both knew it wasn’t the India they had fled. How could it be? Why should it be? Connaught Place was now a grubby concentric car park, overrun with American-style eateries and confused, sweating tourists dodging the bloody sprays of betel-nut juice spat out by bored shoeshines. You couldn’t stroll through the Lodi Gardens without being knocked down by some mad jogger (jogging in India! What was wrong with a brisk walk?), and the old friends had to live near enough (or be strong enough to brave the insane Delhi traffic and mish-mash of flyovers, half-finished bridges and endless, never-progressing roadworks) to be persuaded to come out to visit them.

  But, unlike most of his contemporaries, Prem did not fear progress. During his many trips over the last few years, often at short notice to attend some legal hearing or sign some incomprehensible form, he had watched with growing wonder as the Delhi skyline had transformed from sleepy small town to skyscraper city, the horizon crowded with glittering fingers in concrete, steel and glass, aggressively pointing up, up, up. That’s where we’re going, buddy, Third World, my ass! His childhood haunts were almost unrecognizable; it was like looking at an old familiar face and finding not wrinkles and pouches but taut new skin, a reconstructed jawline, a smile too white and wide. Time hurried forward at breakneck speed, having been held back for so long, and they had to run to catch up. And they would soon overtake, judging by how much the flat had increased in value in the last ten years or so. Almost quadrupled. Their modest investment had turned out to be an accidentally smart business move, a large three-bed in a prime location. Such a shame, then, that they could not get into it.

  Sita broke the silence. ‘Look what happens when you do people a favour.’ She shook her head.

  ‘Mama …’ Shyama began. She was in no mood to hear the whole sorry saga again, but for Sita, the constant retelling of it reaffirmed the injustice.

  ‘I said to Prem when Yogi asked us’ – she turned to Toby, knowing he would at least pretend to listen – ‘when Yogi said, oh my poor daughter and her family, they need somewhere to stay just until their house is finished, I said to Prem, this is a mistake.’

  ‘The flat was just sitting there, empty, what could I say?’ Prem said for maybe the thousandth time.

  ‘I knew as soon as Sheetal and her useless husband moved in, they would never leave. First they stopped paying rent, after just one year.’

  ‘Sita, they know all this!’ Prem attempted a breezy chuckle, rolling his eyes at Toby as if to say, it’s nothing, this is nothing.

  ‘And then,’ Sita ploughed on, ‘they build an extension there, they have two children there, and during this time Yogi has got rich enough to buy two flats of his own which he could have given them to live in, no? And then your favourite brother’s daughter sublets the garage – our garage – to a bicycle-repair-wallah, making money from our property whilst they are refusing to give it to us.’

  ‘Hah, of course, that was naughty,’ Prem conceded. ‘Another biscuit, Toby?’

  ‘Naughty?’ Sita stared at him. She bit back what she wanted to say so hard she tasted blood. ‘Fifteen years we have been asking, begging them to leave, ten years of fighting in the courts, and you call your niece naughty?’

  Prem swallowed hard; the plate of biscuits he held out to Toby shook slightly in his hand. Sita knew she had gone too far, but oh, how much more she could say about her stupidly soft-hearted husband, who could never say no to family. All the times he had dutifully dispatched money to pay for sisters’ weddings, nephews’ graduations, medical bills, over the years. He was the second eldest son, he would remind Sita, as she watched helplessly whilst the bundle of precious, sweated-for notes was sent away without even touching her hands. There goes the new fridge, she told herself, the central heating, the repairs to the car, the remote, longed-for possibility of a holiday. There goes any thought of private education for their only child, when so many of their friends’ oolloo kids had got to university only because they had the money to pay someone to wring exam results out of their spoiled, vacant heads. There it all goes. And here sat her husband, with a plate of biscuits in his shaky hands, and she felt her own heartburn churning under her breastbone like an acrid sea. They had spent their retirement years fighting for the home they had wanted to retire to, and now they were older and more tired and maybe – but she could not face this thought head-on – maybe it was already too late.

  ‘He is my brother,’ Prem said softly, placing the plate carefully back on the table. ‘Yogi touches my feet when we meet.’

  ‘Hah, and he also left you all the restaurant bills when we ate!’ Sita laughed bitterly, patting Prem’s arm as she rose, filling the kitchen with activity, collecting mugs, flicking on the kettle again. Punjabi therapy – hot tea and changing the subject – worked every time.

  They ate together, as was usual whenever Sita and Prem came by at this time of day. It was taken for granted that Sita would bring a carrier bag full of food in Tupperware boxes, or often the pans themselves, still gently steaming with rice, daal, biryani, whatever she had thrown together in her seemingly effortless way.

  The meal was a quiet, strained affair, Shyama picking at her food and chewing listlessly, Toby cleaning his plate so fast he had to suppress a series of spicy burps, ungraciously hoping that Sita and Prem would hurry up and leave so he could digest what was really ailing him. Nearly half past nine already. He had to be up early to open the farm for their weekly hay and feed deliveries. Shyama could sense his restlessness without looking up. She, on the other hand, wanted to draw out this meal for as long as possible, knowing that the moment Toby said, ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she would howl like a madwoman at the moon. She needed noise, distraction.

  ‘Mama?’ Her voice sounded unnaturally loud to her ears. ‘Didn’t you say this has happened to loads of your friends as well?’

  Sita paused halfway up from the table, plates in each hand. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You said lots of them have had property stolen from them by their families?’

  ‘Oh, yes! For example, Rishi Bhaga, you remember him – consultant, three kids, all of them doctors too, married to Rani, lives in Gerrards Cross? Well, he hired the Dorchester for his daughter’s wedding.’

  ‘Who could forget?’ said Shyama drily, exchanging a fleeting smile with Toby which flooded him with relief. She was still in there, still glowing.

  ‘He told his grandfather to let out his top floor to a second cousin. That was fifty years ago, and can you believe the lying cheaters are still there? They have never paid poor Bhaga sahib a penny. When his family go to India, they have to sleep on blow-up mattresses in the same house, one floor below, or fork out for a hotel!’

  Prem tutted and slurped his tea, happy in the knowledge that there was always someone worse off than them.

  ‘Bhaga sahib says these people have even built their own entrance round the back. He said – remember, darling, so funny he was – he said, “We have Partition in our own damn house!” ’

  ‘And Kailash, didn’t she?’ Prem knew the story backwards, but also knew that Sita would provide the melodrama the telling required.

  ‘Hai, her papa had just died, she knew he had given her the house in his will, being the only child and all, and her thaya – that’s her father’s elder brother,’ she said with a kind nod to Toby, ‘he sold the house without telling her, while she was in hospital having a hysterectomy.’

  ‘And Jaggi and Mohini also.’ Prem helped himself to another biscuit, grateful for his wife’s animated relish in others’ misfortunes.

  ‘Hah! They bought a brand-new-build in an NRI complex – non-resident Indians, Toby, like we are now.’ Sita paused for breath.

  Toby nodded, warmed by Shyama’s stifled smile across the table.

  ‘They thought they would be safe, you see? Security gates and twenty-four-hour guards, but when it was all finished and they flew over, they went there straight from the aeroplane with their bags, all ready to move in, and when Jaggi put his key in the l
ock it just wouldn’t fit! At first they thought there was something wrong with the key. Then they found out one of the labourers from the next block had just walked in with his family and changed all the locks. They even waved to them through the window, laughing at them as if to say, you left it empty, what do you expect?’

  ‘They used to burn down English holiday homes in Wales,’ Toby piped up.

  Sita stared at him, nonplussed.

  ‘The Welsh nationalists?’ Toby added. ‘They were angry the foreigners had bought up all these properties, pricing local people out of the area, and then just left them unused for most of the year. I mean, you could see their point, I suppose.’ He stuttered slightly under Sita’s unwavering gaze. ‘It’s sort of the same problem, isn’t it?’