The House of Hidden Mothers

by Meera Syal

  And then she joined them, a sudden brushstroke of colour on the dun landscape in a sari of pink and blue, a basket under her arm. An exotic flower transplanted to this harsh soil, but she seemed to have taken root and thrived. Mala raised her free hand to wave at the boy. She kept waving each time he swung forward – it must have been a game. Toby kept pushing and Mala kept waving and the boy kept kicking, whilst Shyama crept round to the front of the house and left the present on his car’s bonnet. He would read the card much later, then leave it on the kitchen table so Mala could read it herself without watching his face. He didn’t want her to see a disappointment he had no right to feel.

  Dearest Toby, he heard her voice so clearly as he read her words, I wanted to give Krishan something for his birthday and Christmas – yes, it is one of those combined-present gestures, but hopefully it’s big and loud enough to cover both. Apologies if the Teddy Bears’ Picnic theme gets a bit wearing, there is a mute button underneath, I checked. Maybe one day you might tell him the story of how his Auntie Shyama helped wish him into the world, but no matter if you don’t. I’m so glad he is here. Enjoy every moment, the old clichés are true – it goes in a heartbeat and your heart goes with them.

  Be happy, always.

  Shyama.

  Then he had remembered the book Shyama had shown him years ago, that image of a blue-skinned deity with the universe in his mouth. He still wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, but as he had stood in the garden afterwards, still watching his son on the swing kicking his heels to the sky, he felt a little closer to the answer.

  Shyama drove home with the radio tuned to a seventies golden-oldies station, she and Lydia singing loudly and mostly out of tune the whole way back. Tara and Dhruv had prepared a chicken biryani with a sprig of holly stuck in the top to get everyone into the festive spirit. They discussed their plans for refurbishing Prem and Sita’s Delhi flat, where they now lived, handed round the latest printed-up snaps from their engagement party last month, and then Tara filled them all in on how her first term had been at Gauri’s college. They took special care to point to everyone in each photo to see if Prem could name them. Every man in them, according to him, seemed to be called Yogesh.

  Sita had received one phone call from India in February, when news had reached the family there that Prem was not well. She had recognized Yogi’s voice just from his namaste. That was as far as he got before she hung up.

  Sitting at the table listening to her family chatter around her, Shyama could scarcely believe that a year had passed since she had brought her parents back to the country they now called home. She, of course, did not know that this time next year, her father would no longer speak, but that she would cherish the touch of his hand in place of her name. That her daughter would announce that Shyama was soon to be a grandmother and that if she was to have any chance of finishing her degree, her mother would have to come over and do some seriously hands-on childcare. That there would be someone else in her life who she thought she could love, but that she was quite happy to wait and see. That her parents would never visit India again. All this was still to come, unknown and unnamed, waiting to be lived.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Huge thanks firstly to the Transworld team for their patience and for cheerfully waiting so long for this book. In particular, Marianne Velmans, for her unending encouragement and faith, and Jane Lawson, for her insight and forensic attention to the text.

  Special thanks are due to Dr Anand Saggar for all his medical advice and expertise, often at the most unsociable hours of the day.

  Deepest thanks to K and N for sharing their remarkable story and for opening up their hearts and meticulous records for me. I am so glad your journey ended with a family.

  And finally, thank you to my parents, though those words will never be enough, measured against what you have always given me and continue to give: wisdom, conscience, purpose, love.

  Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee

  By Meera Syal

  There’s no such thing as a happy ending, is there . . . ?

  Sunita – perfect housewife – is married to Akash, but is her marriage what it seems?

  Chila – warm, loveable – has married with great fanfare the entrepreneur Deepak. But are they really in love?

  Tania – beautiful, rebellious – has rejected her traditional upbringing for a top television career. But is she really as tough as she says?

  As Tania uncovers a devastating truth, are the three friends about to learn the hardest life lesson of all . . . ?

  Read on for a preview . . .

  1

  NOT EVEN SNOWFALL could make Leyton look lovely. Sootfall was what it was; a fine drizzle of ash that sprinkled the pavements and terrace rooftops, dusting the rusty railings and faded awnings of the few remaining shops along the high road. They formed a puzzling collection of plucky bric-à-brac emporiums (All the Plastic Matting You’ll Ever Need!) and defeated mini-marts (Cigs ’N’ Bread! Fags ’N’ Mags!), braving the elements like the no-hopers no-one wanted on their team, shivering in their sooty kit. Grey flecks nested in the grooves of the shutters of the boarded up homes, abandoned when new roads were put down and old ladies died; they settled silently on the graves in the choked churchyard, giving grace and shadow to long-unread inscriptions – Edna, Beloved Wife; Edward, Sleeps with the Angels – and dressed the withered cedars in almost-mourning robes of almost-black. Pigeons shook their heads, sneezing, blinking away the icy specks, claws skittering on the unfamiliar roof which had once been the reassuring flat red tiles of the methodist church and was now a gleaming minaret, topped by a metal sickle moon. The moon at midday, dark snow and nowhere to perch. No wonder they said Coo.

  An old man picked up a frozen milk bottle from his front step and held it up to the light, squinting at the petrified pearly sea beyond the glass. He’d seen an ocean like that once, in the navy or on the TV, he couldn’t remember which now.

  ‘You waiting till the whole bloody house freezes then?’ his wife called from inside. A voice that could splinter bone.

  And then he heard them. Nothing more than an echo at first, muted by wind and traffic, but he felt the sound, like you always do when it brings the past with it. Clop-clop, there it was, no mistaking it. And then he was seven or ten again, in scratchy shorts with sherbet fizzing on his tongue, racing his brother to open up the coal shute at the front of the house before the cart drew up and the man with the black face and the bright smile groaned, his sack on his back, freeing swirls of dust with every heavy step.

  ‘Come here!’ the old man shouted behind him. ‘Quickly! You hurry up and you’ll see a . . . bleedin’ hell!’

  The horse turned the corner into his road, white enough to shame what fell from the sky, carrying what looked like a Christmas tree on its back. There was a man in the middle of the tinsel, pearls hanging down over his brown skin, suspended from a cartoon-size turban. He held a nervous small boy, similarly attired, on his lap. Behind him, a group of men of assorted heights and stomach sizes, grins as stiff as their new suits, attempted a half-dance half-jog behind the swishing tail, their polished shoes slipping in the slush. A fat man in a pink jacket held a drum around his neck and banged it with huge palms, like a punishment, daring anyone not to join in. ‘Brrrr- aaaa! Bu-le, bu-le bu-le!’ he yelled.

  The old man understood half of that noise, it was brass monkey weather all right, but what did he mean by that last bit? They couldn’t like the cold, surely.

  ‘Another of them do’s down the community centre then,’ said his wife, sniffing at his shoulder.

  Other neighbours had gathered at windows and doorways, the children giggling behind bunched fingers, their elders, flint-faced, guarding their stone-clad kingdoms warily, in case bhangra-ing in bollock-freezing weather was infectious.

  Swamped, thought the old man; someone said that once, we’ll be swamped by them. But it isn’t like that, wet and soggy like Hackney Marshes. It’s silent and gentle, so gradual that you hardl
y notice it at all until you look up and see that everything’s different.

  ‘Like snow,’ he said, out loud.

  Trigger, the horse, was enjoying himself. Anything was better than the dumpy pubescents he was forced to heave around paddocks in Chigwell for the rest of the week. This was an easy gig, a gentle amble past kind hands and interesting odours. Early this morning, he’d been woken by an old lady in a white sheet breaking coconuts beneath his hooves. She had sung for him. She smelt of pepper. There was none of the kisses and baby talk the stable girls lavished on him to impress the parents, but her patient worship had made him snort with joy. He stepped lightly now, considering he was carrying a heavy-hearted man on his back.

  Deepak had noticed the hostile onlookers, albeit in fragments through the shimmering curtain that hid him from the world, but the cold stone in his chest, hidden beneath the silk brocade of his bridal suit, made them unimportant. He had explained his dank foreboding away many times, over many months now, using the dimpled smile and the mercurial tongue that had made him a business success and rendered matrons in the neighbourhood giddy with gratitude when he graced their kitty parties. Fear of commitment, he’d said to the stone in the spring. Any eligible bachelor taking the plunge is bound to feel some pangs of regret. She is as sweet as the blossom outside my window, and just as virginal. Fear of failure, he’d told the stone as he’d eyed up the passing girls from his pavement café, pluckable, all of them, bruised by summer evening blue. She doesn’t need to prance around in thongs and halter necks, her beauty is beautiful because it’s hidden and it will be mine. Fear of becoming my father, he’d smiled at the stone as he tramped through new-fallen leaves, recalling his parents’ amazed faces as he’d confirmed his choice of bride. A Punjabi girl! They had almost wept with relief, having endured a parade of blonde trollops through their portals for most of their son’s youth. Marrying her does not mean I will become my father, take up religion, grow nostril hair and wear pastel-coloured leisure wear, he told the stone playfully. We have choices. Wasn’t that the reason his parents had come here in the first place? And now it was winter and the stone refused any further discussion on the matter. It was done.

  And there they were, waiting. Ahead of him, the bride’s welcoming committee stood in the doorway of the crumbling hall, garlands of flaming marigolds in their hands. His own Baraat, the menfolk from his side who were his companions on this journey from callow youth to fully paid up member of the respectable married classes, roared their arrival. Bow and be grateful, the man who will take your daughter off your hands for ever is here! His future mother-in-law teetered forward, her face shining; brown moon, white horse, grey snow. Deepak drew his tinsel curtain back over his eyes and felt the warm horse rumble and heave beneath him.

  Chila looked at his toenails and felt a strange sense of dread. His feet were fine; brown, not too hairy, clean enough. But she could not tear her eyes from his toenails as they walked round the fire (about to be wed, head bowed submissively just in case anyone might suspect she was looking forward to a night of rampant nuptials). Ten yellowing, waxy nodules crowned each toe, curled and stiff as ancient parchment, a part of him she had never noticed before, feet that demanded attention because of their glaring imperfection, the feet of a man who might read Garden Sheds Weekly every evening instead of loving her. Chila told herself off. This was unfair, sacrilegious even, on your wedding day.

  Or maybe it was just being prepared, like her mother was. Her mother who had handed over a parcel of brand new and frilly pink lingerie which she had bought as part of Chila’s trousseau, ready to wear when her daughter finally moved in with Deepak tonight, man and wife, all official. Her mother who had coughed with embarrassment as Chila discovered the sprinkling of rose petals hidden amongst the Cellophane, shyly folding in on themselves like her own fingers were doing now. ‘Sweet, Mum.’ Chila smiled, ignoring the subtext in her mother’s eyes, My poor baby will have the dirty thing done to her tonight. Chila had not had the heart to tell her the dirty thing had already taken place many months ago in a lock-up garage just off the A406.

  ‘Move, didi!’ her brother Raju hissed, pushing her round the holy fire. She could not look up even if she wanted, weighed down by an embroidered dupatta encrusted with fake pearls and gold-plated balls. The heavy lengha prevented her from taking more than baby steps behind her almost-husband to whom she was tied, literally, her scarf to his turban. She would have liked to wear a floaty thing, all gossamer and light, and skip around the flames like a sprite, blowing raspberries at the mafia of her mother’s friends whose mantra during all her formative years had been, ‘No man will ever want that one, the plump darkie with the shy stammer.’ But she had shocked them all, the sour-faced harpies, by bagging not only a groom with his own teeth, hair, degree and house, but the most eligible bachelor within a twenty-mile radius.

  She stole a sneaky glance at Deepak, who was checking his profile in the fractured reflection of the silver mirror ball above their heads, each winking pane with its own tiny flaming heart, a thousand holy fires refracted in its shiny orb. Bloody hell, he was fit and he was hers. She wanted to celebrate. But instead she was mummified in red and gold silk, swaddled in half the contents of Gupta’s Gold Emporium, pierced, powdered and plumped up so that her body would only walk the walk of everyone’s mothers on all their weddings, meekly, shyly, reluctantly towards matrimony. Chila tilted her head with difficulty and took in a deep gulp of air before she began the next perambulation, glad of the momentary rest while Deeps adjusted his headdress. She locked eyes with Tania, sitting straight-backed on the front row. She’s looking a bit rough today, thought Chila, with an unexpected tinge of pleasure.

  Tania shot Chila a reassuring wink and just managed to turn a grimace of discomfort into an encouraging smile. She ached all over and the new slingbacks she’d bought in five minutes flat yesterday had already raised blisters. She was squeezed between two large sari-draped ladies, fleshy bookends who exchanged stage whispers across her lap, giving a wheezy running commentary to the great drama unfolding before them.

  ‘You see, how nicely she walks behind him? She will follow his lead in life. That is good.’

  ‘Oh, now the father is crying. About time. Daughters are only visitors in our lives, hena?’

  ‘Hai, they are lent to us for a short while and then we have to hand them over to strangers like—’

  ‘Bus tickets?’

  ‘Hah! But then where does the journey end, hah?’

  ‘Hah! Yes. Only God knows, as he is the driver.’

  ‘Now the sister is howling. I’d howl if I had a moustache like hers . . .’

  Tania leaned forward pointedly, hoping to obscure their view of each other and save herself another half-hour of homely wedding quips in stereo. But the women merely adjusted themselves around her, heaving bosoms into the crevices of her elbows. She suddenly remembered why she had stopped attending community events, cultural evenings, bring-a-Tupperware parties, all the engagements, weddings and funerals that marked out their borrowed time here. She could not take the proximity of everything any more. The endless questions of who what why she was, to whom she belonged (father/husband/workplace), why her life wasn’t following the ordained patterns for a woman of her age, religion, height and income bracket. The sheer physical effrontery of her people, wanting to be inside her head, to own her, claim her, preserve her. Her people.

  Tania checked her watch, angry at herself for hoping that the wedding might be running to schedule. Indian time. Look at the appointed hour and add another two for good measure. Memories of family picnics, outings to relatives’ homes, rare but treasured cinema visits, where she would bring up the rear, mute with shame at her clan’s inevitable late entrance. ‘So what if the food’s cold/the park shuts in ten minutes/the film has started?’ her father would boom. ‘Nobody minds, hah?’ Tania minded so much she got migraines. She closed her eyes as the priest began another mantra, willing the familiar words to take her back in ti
me and get rid of the small voice that chanted in time with the distant finger bells, the voice that said, You don’t belong.

  Sunita slipped into an empty seat at the back of the hall, just as Chila and Deepak were making their final round of the fire. Nikita stood at her side, shivering in her pint-size silk suit, so cute on the hanger and sodding useless in the snow.

  ‘Come here, Nikki,’ Sunita whispered, pulling her daughter close to her and moving her sleeping son to the other arm, plumply snoozing in his rabbit-eared Baby-Gro. She rubbed Nikita’s hands and face until she felt the glow returning, and heaved her onto the remaining inches of lap. The pristine magenta suit she’d squeezed into this morning was now a map of motherhood, marked out by handprints, chocolate streaks and a recent vomit stain which bloomed from her breast like some damp crusty flower.

  ‘Look at Auntie Chila, Nikki! She’s getting married, see?’

  Nikita nodded dumbly, absorbing the fairy grotto effects around her.

  This is where it starts, thought Sunita, a little girl at her mother’s knee wanting to be the scarlet princess whose beauty lights fires. Sunita felt a green stab of envy, seeing Chila, dark, dumpy, dearest friend Chila, parading her joy like a trophy. Sunita had been a perfect size eight when she wore her wedding sari. Akash had kissed each of her fingertips that night, awed by their perfection. She used to paint her nails then.

  ‘Mama looked just like Auntie Chila when she got married to Papa,’ Sunita told Nikita with a kiss.

  Nikita blinked. Disbelievingly, Sunita thought.

  Deepak and Chila finished their seventh round of the fire and paused before the priest, who held his hand up dramatically, waiting for hush. Pandit Kumar was pregnant with his own importance at this solemn point, emphasized by his impressive belly, which strained the seams of his beige and gold-trimmed shalwar kameez. He often thought of Elvis Presley at this juncture in the wedding ceremony, how the King would possess the microphone, angle that profile just so to the watching cameras with a daring insouciance, toss that quiff and casually break a thousand hearts. At such moments, Pandit Kumar forgot he was bald, sweaty and bandy-legged. He had the stage, he held the futures of two young lovers in the palms of his hands and he had a god-given duty to put on a good show.