by Meera Syal
‘Not the same at all, Toby, no,’ Sita said firmly. ‘If you had heard Kohli sahib’s story, you would never say that.’
None of Prem and Sita’s friends would ever forget Kohli sahib’s story, shared during the monthly kitty party which had suddenly become an impromptu therapy session, where, one by one, each couple spat out their shameful family betrayals over spiced cashews and lamb samosas.
‘I had already sold the farm when we were about to leave.’
Everyone had turned to look at Kohli sahib, a man of few words who sat gripping his whisky tumbler like a light sabre, both hands around it, ready to fight. His wife placed a warning hand on his arm, which he ignored. He was already back in the room in Jullundur with its peeling turquoise walls and slowly revolving ceiling fan barely stirring the warm soup of the evening air. He had been flushed with achievement and imported whisky, filled with love for his family in this room with him – his brothers, their wives, the children still running in a tumbling pack, playing hide and seek in and out of the carved wooden screens and folding doors. His wife had been worried that the brothers wouldn’t take it well that their bhaiya from the UK wanted to sell one of the farms to release cash for his daughter’s wedding. But no one had objected, no one was being left homeless, it had always been the agreement in the will, and here they were, sharing crispy, just-fried jalebis with syrupy-tipped fingers to the night orchestra of crickets and gossipy cornstalks exchanging their secrets, a sports bag at Kohli sahib’s feet containing the proceeds of the sale. It was too much money to be carrying around so they were going to drive through the night and deposit the whole lot in a bank first thing. His brother’s son sat next to him, refilling his glass, a big strong youth built for land work, tendons rippling as he banged the whisky bottle down. His nephew put his arm around him and whispered in his ear like a lover, ‘Leave the money where it is. Just get up and go now. You are still here in five minutes, we will kill both of you.’
Kohli sahib’s hand had trembled as he remembered and beads of sweat popped up on his forehead like bubbles breaking on the surface of his skin, an eruption deep inside.
‘I looked up at my brothers – both of them were looking back at me. And I knew they would do it. And no one would ever even find our bodies.’
His wife, next to him, her voice low, devoid of emotion, added, ‘He didn’t tell me until we were ten miles away, just threw me into the car. I left my best shawl behind. I thought he was having a heart attack or something. His face was like a sick moon.’
There was a respectful pause for a story like this one, dredged from the sediment of communal memory. They all carried this ache in some form; it was the legacy of leaving, they knew this now. But not back then, when pastures new and fast money and oh, more than anything, opportunities for their children were the prize. Who knew then what the price would be years later?
‘They want to punish us,’ Kohli sahib had said finally. ‘When we escaped, they resented us, the ones who got away. They thought we were all millionaires, so they asked us for everything. And we gave it, because we were rich, compared to them. And we felt bad for having abandoned them. But not now. Now the gap is closing. We can never afford to buy there again, those days are gone. I think that’s what they wanted. You left us, so now we don’t want you back.’
Much later that evening, as Prem and Sita picked their way home through the garden, Shyama was already heading for the stairs. Toby caught up with her in the hallway, pulling her into his arms. They stood there for a while, not saying anything, their breathing gradually finding each other’s rhythm.
‘I’m sorry,’ Shyama began, her voice muffled, her head on his chest.
‘None of that,’ Toby whispered. ‘We’ll find a way.’
Shyama raised her head, studied his face in the half-light. ‘I thought … This is it, isn’t it? I’m forty-eight.’
‘Only just.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Beyond forty-five everyone thinks you’ve moved from brave to keep trying to just deluded. I saw it in Dr Lalani’s face. I wish I could let go. It’s just so hard to give up hope.’
‘Oh, there’s always hope.’
‘Adoption? I thought …’
‘You know what, Shyams?’ Toby stroked a stray tendril away from her forehead. ‘Let’s not think about anything tonight. Not your ovulation chart or taking your temperature before we take our clothes off or propping your legs up with pillows afterwards. We don’t have to do any of that crap any more. Can we remember how to do it just because it’s fun?’
Before Shyama could answer, Toby bent his knees and scooped her up in his arms. She gasped in surprise, then laughed throatily as Toby staggered slightly, making her grab for a handhold on the bannister.
‘Shit,’ Toby cursed, ‘Shyama, can you—?’
Shyama tumbled on to the stairs as Toby tried to straighten up. With a sharp intake of breath, he clutched his side.
‘Think I’ve pulled my rib angle …’ he muttered through gritted teeth.
‘Your what?’ Shyama felt slightly giddy.
‘’S OK,’ he hissed. ‘Done it before. Hot and cold compresses, ibuprofen … be fine.’ He raised an eyebrow at Shyama. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have had that extra chapatti.’
‘Shut yer face.’ Shyama heaved herself to her feet. ‘Here …’
She stood next to him, taking his weight, gently massaging the flesh where his hand lay, feeling the knots under the skin, taut muscle, not an inch of fat, youth pulsing through him like a warm river.
‘I’ve always been a healthy girl,’ she said in her mother’s singsong accent. ‘Which, of course, is the Indian way of saying fat.’
‘You’re not—’ Toby winced, unable to finish. Shyama kneaded her fingers more gently, slipping into storytelling mode, the best distraction when Tara had been hurt or scared as a little girl.
‘ “Healthy” as used in the matrimonial placements in the Hindustan Times. Or Shaadi.com now – I suppose even arranged marriages are online. I love reading the ads families put in, all the euphemisms … If someone’s described as “homely”, that means plug ugly, “wheatish complexion” means could pass for white and looking for similar so as not to pollute the family hue, “modern” means smokes and drinks for a bloke and she’s definitely not a virgin for a woman, and “healthy”? Usually means the parents’ beloved child is a bit of a porker.’
‘It’s not like that, actually.’ A voice rang out loudly from the sitting room.
Shyama swung round towards the open door and discovered Tara’s head poking out from the depths of the sofa.
‘I know loads of people who’ve met online on Asian dating sites and their parents have nothing to do with it.’
‘What are you doing, sitting in the dark? I didn’t even know you were back!’ Shyama blustered, recalling Tara’s last words to Sita before disappearing off for the evening.
‘Clearly,’ Tara sniped back. She stood up, a half-open family-sized bag of cheesy snacks in one hand. With the other she furiously brushed luminous orange crumbs from her front while avoiding any eye contact. ‘It’s called assisted marriage now, anyway. Only the really fundy families monitor the meetings. Usually people put their own profiles up, date as long as they want and only tell their families if they want it to go further.’
‘ “Fundy”?’ Shyama enquired. She could feel Toby tightening up next to her, tensing beneath her touch.
‘Fundamentalists.’ Tara finished her tidy-up, having simply moved the mess from her clothes to the floor.
‘Didn’t realize you were so up on the Asian dating scene. So, anything you want to tell me?’ Shyama teased, hoping this would end the conversation on a truce, that Tara would remove herself so she could turn back to Toby and finish what they had been trying to begin.
‘Not now. Not ever, actually.’
Tara pushed past them and then leaned in to Shyama, exhaling a cloud of cheesy-smelling breath. ‘And next time you’re going to do it on the stairs, warn
me first so I can shoot myself.’
She stomped up every step to her room and slammed the door for good measure.
As Shyama flew up the stairs after her, she barely registered Toby calling after her, ‘Shyama, leave it. Shyama!’
She didn’t bother knocking. Tara stood facing the door, waiting for her. She knew exactly what she was doing, which enraged Shyama even more.
‘How dare you?’ Shyama began.
‘How dare I?’ Tara shot back. ‘Isn’t it bad enough you’ve been trying to get up the duff, without shagging like teenagers?’
‘That is none of your business!’ Shyama sputtered. The sprint up to the attic had left her breathless. She wanted to roar fire instead of panting like a geriatric. The irony was, she felt as defiant and exposed as a sixteen-year-old caught on the sofa half undressed with her spotty tumescent consort. Everything she wanted to scream at her daughter would sound like adolescent whining: It’s not fair! You always ruin everything! What about me? If she had the oxygen and the patience, she would sit Tara down, take her hand and try to explain how those long years with Tara’s father had felt. How he would treat her with charming deference in front of their friends and family, who would comment on how lucky she was to have such an attentive husband – and how then, later on, he would lie on the very edge of the bed with a contortionist’s ease to avoid even an inch of their bodies touching. How many nights had Shyama spent smothered in supposedly irresistible perfume, squeezed into underwear which had holes and wires in all the wrong places, steadying her breathing so he wouldn’t guess how much she longed for just one look or caress that would make her feel wanted, or even noticed. She didn’t dare instigate anything herself; the one occasion she had attempted to ‘take the initiative in the bedroom’, as the magazine headline had screamed at her, she thought the poor man was going to leap out of the window. Later he’d said she had caught him by surprise. It had been on the tip of her tongue to shout, ‘Yes, that’s the bloody idea, isn’t it?’ But by that time she had eaten most of a tub of cookie-dough ice cream and had got back into her tracksuit, so it seemed the moment had indeed passed. She had thought she was an aberration, a freak. Men wanted sex all the time, didn’t they? It was the women who feigned headaches. What was so wrong with her that she managed to buck the trend like some accidental Medusa, shrivelling a man’s desire with one desperate look? It had not even occurred to her that this particular man was too tired to oblige as his sap was being expertly milked elsewhere. She would have liked to tell Tara that it does something to the soul, this benevolent and gradual amputation of affection, of touch. And that this kind of spontaneous fumbling on the stairs was not only what she needed, it was what had finally healed her.
‘If it was none of my business,’ Tara spat, ‘why even tell me about all the IVF crap? Did I ask? No. Do I care you’ve stopped when I didn’t know you’d started? No again.’
‘I thought you’d want to.’
‘What? Share the love? Mum, there is no part of my brain that even gets why anyone your age would want a kid. So yeah, thanks for letting me know you’ve given up. At least I don’t have to worry about dying of shame seeing you pushing a buggy up and down the high road.’
‘Maybe I haven’t given up.’
The moment Shyama said it, it became true. Her anger receded, leaving cold calm resolve, which not even the slight tremor around Tara’s mouth could dissolve.
‘You’re joking.’ Tara shook her head slowly. ‘OK, for the record, just stop including me in any more baby chat, we both know it’s pointless.’
‘Fine. If that’s what you want,’ Shyama said evenly.
‘It’s what you want, Mother. We done now?’
Meanwhile, in the ground-floor flat opposite, Prem sat on the carpet in front of the television with the sound turned down, one eye on the recorded cricket highlights, paperwork spread before him. Next door he could hear Sita gently snoring. He had waited for her to fall asleep, pretending to read his newspaper until he could slip back out to the sitting room and begin the familiar task of reordering their legal papers, ready for the next round. He had decided to make a definitive list of the various stages of their ten-year struggle to repossess their flat. It made sobering reading, as he knew it would, which is why he hadn’t wanted Sita to see it.
March 2002 – eviction order granted in Delhi High Court with order for Yogesh Bedi to vacate within six months. Order ignored.
November 2002 – arrived at flat with bailiff. Yogesh Bedi refuses to vacate, bailiff says not legally allowed to use force and tells us to forget it. Yogesh Bedi seems very friendly with bailiff, not sure why.
January 2003 – lawyer asks for new eviction date with new bailiff and is told original paperwork is lost and he will have to reapply all over again.
April 2004 – lawyer reapplies for new eviction order.
December 2004 – new court date given: January 2005.
June 2005 – new eviction order granted.
January 2006 – date fixed for eviction in October 2006.
October 2006 – eviction halted as Yogesh Bedi’s lawyer argues we do not intend to live in flat but to sell it to someone else. This is because we are apparently too old to climb the stairs.
January 2007 – application for new eviction order.
May 2007 – date given for new hearing: November 2007.
November 2007 – eviction hearing. We discover that judge who was handling our case has been changed, he has retired or moved court, no one is sure. We are told we have to refile all over again.
February 2008 – lawyer reapplies for eviction order. Clerk points out there is a mistake on the court records. Flat has been noted as number 14, not 14A. Case halted as new records have to be filed, even though we showed them ownership papers and it was their fault, not ours.
November 2008 – lawyer reapplies for new eviction order in front of new judge. Eviction date given for March 2009.
March 2009 – day before eviction, Yogesh Bedi’s lawyers claim eviction illegal as no paperwork received from chief inspector of police to sanction eviction. Lawyer swears he had it lodged with the court but now somehow it cannot be found. Eviction postponed.
October 2009 – new eviction date given for February 2010.
February 2010 – lawyer informs us whole court building dealing with our case has been relocated from original site in Thri Nazar to new site of Patiala House, resulting in delay of all cases as all records need to be moved to new site. He will inform us when new court is up and running.
August 2010 – lawyer informs us Maharajah of Patiala had objected to one of his buildings being taken over by government for court purposes and has lodged appeal. Very sorry, nothing to do with him.
January 2011 – Maharajah of Patiala wins his appeal. Court shifted back to original building.
November 2011 – lawyer sorrowfully informs us that in the move our papers were somehow mislaid. Have to refile case.
February 2012 – lawyer reapplies for eviction order, given date of March 2012.
Prem considered himself a happy man, but these last ten years had sorely tested that belief. Joviality was the lifebelt to which he had clung through decades of stormy seas, a cultivated cheery manner which had seen him through the trauma of Partition, months in a refugee camp, years of struggle and poverty – not the kind of poverty people moaned about here: oh-why-can’t-I-have-a-wide-screen-telly, we-only-get-one-holiday-a-year type of complaining – but the kind of hardship that gnawed at you every waking day. Trying to keep your one shirt and trousers clean, calculating how little you could survive on today so your brothers and sisters could eat too, studying under street lamps because the electricity had gone whilst mosquitoes flew joyfully into your borrowed spotlight and dive-bombed your face. Then a menial Indian government job, his pay almost gone before he got it, the family grateful for good son Prem, the worker, the trier who never complained and always smiled, even when treading water furiously, head just above the waves,
gulping for breath.
Landing at Heathrow airport in 1962, during one of the harshest winters on record, when the entire country was snowbound and blizzard-beset for two months, he knew he had left part of his heart behind. It had fractured as he touched his mother’s feet in farewell, splintered as they took off into bleached-white skies; fragments had been sucked into the aeroplane’s vents and released into the air above Delhi, where they would find their way back to the ground-floor flat in the old city and land like tinkling glass in the open courtyard by the spreading tulsi plant. And yet, heart cracked and teeth chattering, as he stepped out into the icy maw of his new country, it felt like finally reaching the shore. He practised the smile which froze on his face and stayed there. It fooled everyone, and most of the time he believed it too.
As he climbed back into bed next to his beloved wife, he shut out the whispers of regret and the missed opportunities, the suspicion that their kindness could have been read as weakness, that his belief in justice might turn out in the end to be a childish fantasy.
Shyama, in bed next to Toby on the other side of the garden, rubbed liniment into his twisted muscles and silenced regrets of her own, the wistful scenario of having met this man when she was younger, when they would have had more choices. But now the idea of an unnamed, unborn child hummed between them like electricity, and later on they would lie together talking it all through, all spark and hope again.
CHAPTER FOUR
MALA WAITED UNTIL dusk, just as the red bled into blue, then black-blue, like the bruises she pinched on her own thighs in the dustbowl of her marriage bed. She hurried through her daal, finishing before Ram, who sat chewing like a patient goat, mouth open, champ-chump.
Mala started clearing up around him, sealing the lids on the clay pots of yoghurt and pickle, shaking the basket of crumbs far from the door to lead the ants away, taking the pans to the tap which spewed out just enough water to get them clean. Mala scrubbed and sighed, remembering how proud they used to be of having their own tap. One in every home in the village! Pogle sahib boasted, telling anyone who would listen. Now he and everyone else felt a little poorer, and a little more foolish for their pride, because of Seema and her hot-and-cold-running house. These two rooms and small courtyard had felt world enough to Mala when she was brought here after the wedding. Lucky girl, everyone had said, no father, hardly any dowry, and a man only five miles from your village agrees to take you off your widowed mother’s curse-carrying hands. And only ten years older than you. You could have ended up like Madhu or Sona, those teenagers tied to bandy-legged, one-toothed greybeards. Mala had smiled dutifully, lowered her eyes and replied, yes, I am lucky, but she thought to herself, my mother had to sell half the little land my father left to seal the match. And even when I was listening in from the kitchen, his family were dropping hints, like crumbs on the cushions, about claiming the other half also! Mala’s mother had managed to brush them aside gently, reminding his family that she still had one more girl to marry off, and they had let her off. If only they could have seen Mala herself, the blushing virgin bride-to-be, on the other side of the paint-flaked door, her one good vegetable knife in her hand, ready to run in and make a masala mix of their guts if they lifted one more claw towards her father’s fields. Or that’s how Mala had imagined she would have reacted in the Technicolor movie in her own head.