by Helen Harris
Jeremy heard the “dear” and relaxed a fraction. “I’m only trying to be helpful,” he said plaintively. “I could be sitting in my office working right now. I should be sitting working in fact. But I’ve taken time off to help you get settled. I know this is a bloody awful time for you. But you won’t make it any better by digging your heels in and getting all stubborn and refusing to do the simplest thing.” He glared at his mother and felt himself flush.
Their food came. Jeremy’s salad looked strikingly unhealthy with quantities of bright pink dressing and croutons and his mother’s cake looked like a Japanese plastic display model of a piece of cake.
Jeremy persisted. “Exactly how long are you planning to stay here? It’s not even all that nice.”
His mother said deftly, “You chose it.”
Jeremy felt himself flush again. “We chose it because it was nearby – obviously. We imagined you would stay here two or three nights max and then move into a service apartment – as we’d discussed – and take your time to work out your next move.” He puffed in exasperation. “I don’t see why it’s such a big deal suddenly.”
His mother laid down her cake fork and clasped her hands. She looked away from Jeremy at some distant vista. “I don’t think I want to live in North London,” she said.
Jeremy was outraged. “Where do you want to live?” he demanded and, without waiting for an answer, he exclaimed, “Yesterday you wanted to get back on a plane without even leaving the airport. Today you tell me you don’t want to live near your own son and daughter-in-law. How am I supposed to take that? In a few months time you’ll have a grandchild here too, your first grandchild –”
“About the grandchild,” his mother interrupted, suddenly veering off on a tangent as she always did, “there’s something I need to ask about him.”
“Or her,” Jeremy said reproachfully.
His mother gave a knowing smile. “Of course you’re right dear, so long as he’s healthy, that’s all that matters.” She paused. “There’s something that’s bothering me though.”
Jeremy was alarmed. “A health issue?”
“No,” his mother said hastily. “No, not a health issue.” She hesitated.
Jeremy asked, “So what is it then? So long as this isn’t just a ploy to change the subject.”
“It isn’t,” his mother answered huffily. “Rest assured. Afterwards we can go straight back to discussing how many nights you think I ought to stay at the hotel and where you think I ought to live.”
They glared at each other.
“Well?” Jeremy asked.
His mother picked a glace cherry from her synthetic-looking cake and rolled it dubiously around her plate with a fork. “I hope,” she began hesitantly, “I hope that Smita will let me be involved with the baby.”
“You what?” Jeremy asked.
“I hope,” his mother repeated uncertainly, “that Smita will let me have a role in my grandchild’s life, you know what I mean, that she won’t keep me at arm’s length.”
Jeremy was outraged. Furiously, he replied, “I don’t understand you. What has Smita ever done to make you say such a thing?”
“I’m not really saying it,” his mother ploughed on. “I’m asking it. You know perfectly well Smita doesn’t have a very high opinion of me. I’ve never been a high flier like she is, more of a plodder. I’m worried she won’t think I’m up to scratch. I need to know. Will I be involved in the baby’s life or won’t I?”
Jeremy didn’t care anymore if he sounded exasperated. “Of course you will be. You’ll be the baby’s grandmother.”
“Ah, but the baby will have two grandmothers, remember,” his mother said. “And it’s perfectly natural for a woman to turn to her own mother first. I realise that. So I’m asking: do you think Smita will allow me to do things with the baby too?”
With a sinking heart, Jeremy understood that a whole new avenue of trouble was opening up ahead of him. “What sort of thing,” he asked cautiously, “did you have in mind?”
His mother volunteered eagerly, “Babysitting. Taking him for walks and outings. Maybe having him to stay when you two want a weekend away. After all, I’ll be much closer here in London than Naisha up in Leicester.”
Uneasily, Jeremy said, “You know, it’s awfully early days yet.”
“Of course it is,” his mother agreed. “Of course. But I need to know. If I’m expected to make plans.”
She went back to rolling the toxic-looking cherry around her plate.
Jeremy sighed. He checked his watch. “Listen,” he said impatiently, “I really have to run. I don’t know why you have to go looking for trouble before it’s even happened. I’m sure – if you don’t scare Smi by coming on too strong way too soon – she’ll be perfectly OK about all this kind of thing.”
He stood up. “Please, whatever you do, just don’t say anything to her about this whole issue yet. She’s feeling very fragile at the moment.”
His mother grinned. “Pregnant women can be terribly touchy.”
Jeremy ignored the remark. Before he left, he said, “You’ll have to tell me on the phone tonight where it is you actually plan to live. I’m curious.”
As he drove out of the hotel, his phone rang and it was Smita complaining that he had forgotten to telephone her father to wish him a happy birthday, as he had promised. Jeremy had never understood why, in Smita’s family, a phone call was always expected as well as a card. For a moment, he had the disagreeable sensation that he was surrounded by demanding women. But it only lasted for a second or two and afterwards of course he was ashamed of it.
Sylvia watched her son leave and reflected, for the umpteenth time, how very foolish he was. It was only when he was out of sight that she realised how very foolish she was too. She was starting out on the wrong foot entirely. She had only been back in England for twenty-four hours and already she and Jeremy were rubbing each other up the wrong way. Her only son. Why did it have to be like this? And the baby, her only grandson; why was she already getting into an argument about him before he was even born?
She leapt up from the table, in as much as someone of her age and build could leap, and charged out of the restaurant after Jeremy. Behind her, she was dimly aware of someone calling and a commotion but she carried on. She reached the revolving front door of the hotel in time to see Jeremy’s car turning out of the forecourt into the street. Too late. Dispiritedly, she turned away to be confronted by two waitresses from the coffee shop, one holding out her bill and the other her handbag.
She retreated to her room; sleep, what other consolation was there? As she lay in bed, curiously untired the moment her head touched the pillow, she reflected for the umpteenth time on Jeremy and Smita’s marriage and what a very ill-conceived pairing it was.
Jeremy had first brought Smita out to meet them about five years ago. They were still living in Riyadh then, Riyadh the dusty, Riyadh the drab, Riyadh the insufferable. They had known he was seeing a girl for some time but he had never told them anything about her. Silly boy; did he imagine they would be shocked that she was Indian? When they had lived all those years in Delhi and absolutely loved it? In any case, as soon as he announced that he was bringing a girl and that her name was Smita, of course the penny dropped. Sylvia and Roger were absolutely thrilled; firstly, because it laid to rest certain unspoken concerns which they had long had about Jeremy and, secondly, because they imagined that having a young Indian woman in the house would be such fun. Quite what they had imagined, she really couldn’t say now – doe eyes and ankle bracelets? – but it certainly hadn’t been Smita.
Of course what they didn’t know then was that Smita Mehta had been born and brought up in Leicester and was, as far as she was concerned, not really Indian at all. Her parents, who had arrived in Britain when they were young children, might still be Indian, especially her father, Prem. But she was utterly one hundred per cent British Asian, a new generation which had never previously existed, cutting swathes. She had ne
ver even been to India and she had no wish to go there either.
She listened with an expression of polite amusement as Sylvia and Roger reminisced about their years in Delhi. They had moved there from Hong Kong in the early Seventies when Sylvia was expecting Jeremy and they had ended up staying for nearly ten years. It was true they had loved it although Sylvia was conscious as she described it to Smita – the lovely big house in Lodhi Colony, the amusing servants, the drinks on the veranda in the sudden Indian dusk – that it did all sound awfully days of the Raj. So she was keen to stress that it was the place they had loved; the myriad sights and sounds and smells of India which first startled and then captivated you, the flowers, the birds and chipmunks in the garden, the markets and, oh, everywhere, the colours, the glorious colours.
Smita listened politely but eventually she said, rather primly Sylvia thought, that it sounded nothing like the country which her parents described. Well, that felt like a slap on the wrist.
Sylvia protested to Roger afterwards, “Of course there’s poverty and ghastliness in India, we all know that, but there’s no point pretending you can’t have a perfectly marvellous life there too. Where in India did her parents come from anyway?”
Roger had replied “Gujarat” and Sylvia had been surprised by a pang of jealousy because, obviously, Roger had been having private personal conversations with Smita on his own.
Sylvia had to admit, guiltily, that there was something a little disagreeable about having an attractive young woman around the house. Ever since her marriage, Sylvia had been the woman of the house. Smita was very attractive. She would lie beside the pool in her scrap of a bikini, slim and flawless, and Sylvia would come out for a dip in her capacious floral one-piece and she felt like a whale, sploshing up and down the pool.
Everyone thought Smita was wonderful, partly because she was so very pretty and partly because it made their ex-pat friends in Riyadh feel good that here was an Indian person with whom they could actually make friends.
Apparently only Sylvia could see clearly, by the end of that first visit, what was wrong; Jeremy had been caught up in Smita’s chariot wheels, as she put it to Roger after the young couple had left. They said goodbye at the airport, Jeremy all stiff and awkward as usual and Smita utterly charming but chilly. That was it, Sylvia complained to Roger; the girl was cold. She had set her sights on Jeremy for reasons of her own – maybe she liked the glamour of his career in broadcasting – and poor Jeremy was helpless, like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
Roger replied thoughtfully, “It’s unlike you to be so uncharitable, Syl. I must say, I found her a lovely young woman. A bit reserved maybe, yes, but I suppose she was on her best behaviour, wasn’t she?”
Sylvia tried hard to see things from Roger’s point of view. It would make the whole situation so much better if Roger were right. But, in her woman’s heart, Sylvia knew what was what and, besides, it went against Roger’s nature to think badly of any pretty young woman.
When Jeremy and Smita announced their engagement, about six months later, Sylvia sent an enormous bouquet, hoping to make up with an excess of flowers for her shortage of happy feelings. It was arranged that she and Roger would have dinner with Smita’s parents when they were next home on leave.
Sylvia preferred to gloss over that acutely awful evening in a showy restaurant in St John’s Wood. Smita’s mother, Naisha, an optician – as she managed to mention in most sentences – talked nineteen to the dozen. Her father, Prem, barely spoke. Jeremy and Smita both looked exquisitely embarrassed throughout and Roger, in his hale and hearty way, was so determined that everyone should get on and have a jolly evening that he had far too much to drink and ended up making a number of distinctly risqué jokes. Oh, it had been dreadful and afterwards Sylvia had felt terrible for Jeremy who was walking so innocently into the clutches of those two predatory women, Smita and Naisha, who would both perch on him and peck him to bits. She had never really had the closeness with her son which would have permitted her to say something. If she attempted to say anything, it would certainly be a disaster and it was a pity that knowing that hadn’t stopped her from doing it.
It was only three weeks before the wedding, she had left it far too late and when she caught Jeremy on his own one evening – Smita was at her book group – she should have stuck to discussing the wedding arrangements and not suddenly burst out, clutching her G and T for dear life, “Oh Jem, are you absolutely sure about this?”
Jeremy looked appalled. His mother hadn’t called him “Jem” since he was about ten years old. “What on earth are you talking about?” he snapped, as usual reddening immediately.
Sylvia couldn’t contain herself any more. “You and Smita,” she asked desperately. “Are you really absolutely sure you’re right for one another?”
Jeremy laughed. It was a harsh sarcastic laugh. “You’re unbelievable,” he replied, shaking his head. “How long have Smi and I been together? Two years? And the wedding’s been planned for the last six months? And you’re asking me now, with just three weeks to go, whether I’m sure we’re right for one another? For Christ’s sake!”
He walked out of the room with Sylvia calling beseechingly after him, “I wasn’t implying anything. It’s just, it’s a big step you’re taking and, you know, your backgrounds are very different.”
Jeremy reappeared in the doorway. Icily, he said, “You may have misgivings about Smi and her ‘different’ background but I don’t.” He paused menacingly. “And I don’t want to hear anything more about it ever again.”
The wedding passed off as well as could be expected. There were two weddings actually: first the registry office and then a ceremony in a Hindu temple in Leicester which Prem and Naisha had apparently insisted on. Sylvia was entranced by the ceremony: all the chanting of prayers and the fire and the smearing of auspicious dabs of colour on the young couple’s foreheads. It took her back years to the myriad sensations of Delhi and she thought rather badly of Smita for looking so obviously bored and sulky throughout. Jeremy looked frankly ridiculous, with his groom’s garland and his loose coloured shirt. But Roger said good for him for agreeing to go along with it and putting on such a brave face. Even when he was decades younger, there was no way that Roger would ever have agreed to sit cross-legged on the floor like that, draped in flowers, and let himself be daubed with coloured splodges. Sylvia snorted with laughter at the very idea of it.
The reception was held in a lavish country house hotel some way outside Leicester. For all her misgivings about the marriage and about her son being pecked to bits, Sylvia had to admit that it was a beautiful setting. Smita looked lovely and Jeremy, apart from grinning foolishly far too much, looked very dashing too. The large number of ill-assorted guests mingled good-humouredly and the sun shone. When Jeremy and Smita were driven away in a dark grey pre-war Bentley, Sylvia felt a predictable pang. She cheered herself with another glass of champagne and the hope that things might not turn out as badly as she anticipated after all.
Three years had gone by since then and Roger, poor dear Roger, had been starting to wonder aloud about grandchildren. Sylvia had reminded him hypocritically that young women nowadays had careers as well as children and it was only natural that Smita, having done so well, should want to make the most of it before having to deal with babies and nappies. Sylvia felt rather virtuous for appearing to speak in Smita’s defence when in actual fact – although nothing terrible had happened in these last three years – everything had reinforced her conviction that Smita was a cold calculating person. For all Sylvia knew, Smita didn’t even want children. Well, she had been proved wrong about that.
But look at the way Smita had welcomed her yesterday, not even bothering to come down to open the door to their absurd loft-style apartment. Smita had a pernicious influence on Jeremy too. The poor silly boy was so easily led. It was certainly Smita’s idea, not Jeremy’s, that Sylvia should stay for a mere two or three nights in the comfort of the hotel before being packed
off to a service apartment to save money. Once there, conveniently stowed away, they would manage her life as they saw fit. She was a nuisance obviously and they had decided to deal with the nuisance as best suited them.
Sylvia’s dimly glimpsed resolve of the morning swam into view, now large and solid and unavoidable as an iceberg. Jeremy and Smita would no doubt kick up a fuss, they would reproach her for playing havoc with their tidily laid plans. But she was not going to live in their pocket. It was silly to run back to the airport, she acknowledged that now. She would have to live in London; she really had nowhere else to go. But she was not going to live round the corner from Jeremy and Smita, no thank you.
She would go back to a part of London which she knew, somewhere she had once belonged and she would make the best of things there on her own terms. Not Chelsea; that would be far too painful and besides those little postage stamp houses were exorbitantly expensive nowadays. But it would have to be an area she was familiar with and one which was a long ride away from Belsize Park. She felt sad at the thought of being a long ride away from her grandson. But maybe he would be allowed to stay for longer with her on each visit if it took some time to get there. In her mind, she revisited the haunts of her youth as drowsiness slowly began to get the better of her. She remembered all the places where she had been young and happy and, just before sleep blotted out her thoughts, she set her sights on Kensington.
Smita was horrified to discover, one morning towards the middle of May, that she could not do up the waistband of her favourite black trousers. She could pull and strain but the two sides wouldn’t meet, however hard she tried. For a few moments, she felt something close to panic. Of course she knew, in the abstract, that when you were pregnant your tummy swelled up. Now it was actually happening to her, she felt suddenly desperate, trapped almost. It was as if she was losing control of herself, of her body; she, who had always prided herself on her supreme self-control. Now her body was doing something she didn’t like, didn’t approve of and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. Angrily, she forced the zip closed and left the two buttons undone, to be concealed under a long top. It was uncomfortable but it worked. She was nearly halfway to the Tube before it occurred to her that cramming her expanding belly into tight trousers might harm the baby and, terrified, she had to rush back home to change. Thank God, Jeremy had already left for an early meeting so she didn’t have to explain her sudden return to him. He would have been really angry with her and accused her of putting vanity before their child’s welfare.
