by Helen Harris
“We’re both fine thank you,” Jeremy answered frostily. “Don’t worry, it was nothing really; just a small bump while I was getting a parking place.”
“You broke a light while you were parking?” Smita asked incredulously. “But that must have been an awful bump. Did Anand cry?”
Suddenly Jeremy felt furious; why should he have to lie, why should he have to go along with Smita’s absurd neurotic rules? “Luckily he wasn’t in the car,” he said, glaring at her, “because, fortunately, I left him upstairs with my mother while I moved the car.”
“You what?” Smita exclaimed.
“You heard,” Jeremy said, flushing. “And thank God I did because otherwise he would have been in the car when I had my little smash. Would you have preferred that?”
Smita threw her work bag down in the nearest armchair and faced him, her fists on her hips. “That’s not the point,” she yelled.
Jeremy didn’t answer. He turned away. He had been through enough already today. As Smita’s voice rose behind him, he wondered when arguing had become their usual form of communication.
In the morning, Anand’s nappies were bright green and Smita asked indignantly what Sylvia had given him for lunch. When Jeremy said he couldn’t remember, Smita rang Sylvia, waking her at seven thirty am, and demanded to know.
Jeremy could hear Smita shouting from the bathroom where he had taken Anand to clean him up. “Okra!” She shouted. “What were you thinking? How could you give him okra? Babies shouldn’t have okra before at least a year. Why did you do it, Sylvia? It’s absolutely crazy! Why?”
Jeremy dabbed Anand gently clean. Anand pumped his legs in the water and gurgled. “Grandma meant no harm,” Jeremy murmured softly. “Did she? Did she?”
It struck him how easy and natural it felt to call his mother “Grandma” even though he had not been able to call her “Mum” for years.
PART TWO
2009
SYLVIA AND ANAND stood perfectly still in front of the giant aquarium and waited for the biggest of the sea turtles to swim past again. It seemed to spend its days steadily circling the huge tank as if on a purposeful private mission. Despite its bulk, it swooped gracefully through the water, regally ignoring the other sea creatures and its expression, although morose, seemed to be both dignified and determined.
Anand exclaimed, “Here she comes!” and Sylvia watched the turtle swoop towards them again, its flippers extended backwards like a pair of wings, its scaly face looking weary and wise. Sylvia was pleased that Anand was not the sort of child who waved or pulled faces at a passing sea turtle – there were plenty of them about – or, even worse, shouted out names or banged on the glass. He stood perfectly quietly, only clutching excitedly at Sylvia’s hand each time the turtle reappeared. How she loved the feel of his small hand in hers.
It was only when the turtle had swum out of view again, powering up towards the top of the tank, that it occurred to Sylvia to ask Anand, “Why do you think it’s a ‘she’, dear?”
Anand looked puzzled. “Isn’t it?”
“Well,” Sylvia answered thoughtfully. “Of course it may be but it’s hard to tell with a turtle, isn’t it? Why do you think it’s a ‘she’?”
Anand paused. “She looks like a lady turtle.”
“Does she?” Sylvia asked dubiously. “I’ll have to take a closer look the next time she comes past.”
They waited again in companionable silence.
“There!” Anand exclaimed, turning triumphantly to his grandmother as the turtle reappeared. “You can see now, can’t you?”
“Well,” Sylvia said slowly, “to be honest, I can’t really dear but if you say so, then I dare say she is.”
“She is,” Anand insisted. He looked up at his grandmother somewhat coyly. “She looks like you.”
Sylvia scrutinised the turtle’s small greenish head as it swam past for the umpteenth time. The comparison wasn’t flattering but better, she supposed, than a galumphing farmyard animal.
“Well,” she ventured, “it’s true, I used to love swimming.”
Anand exclaimed, “Why don’t you ever come swimming with me?”
Sylvia briefly imagined Smita’s horror at this suggestion. “That’s an idea,” she answered vaguely. “Who do you go swimming with, darling?”
“My swimming teacher,” Anand answered glumly. “He’s called Kev. He’s not very nice. I’d far rather go with you, Grandma.”
“We’ll have to think about it,” Sylvia said evasively. “See what Mummy and Daddy have to say. Now tell me, do any of the other creatures in the aquarium or the fish look like anyone else you know?”
This game kept them both happy for a remarkably long time. Anand found a splodgy fish which looked like his art teacher and a creeping snail which reminded him of his friend Jonathan. Of course, Sylvia could not share with him her discovery that a pink sea anemone waving its fleshy legs in the air reminded her no end of a certain Miss PeeJay Clarke.
Afterwards, they had a quick look in the gift shop but Anand said he didn’t like plastic turtles and fish, only real ones. Sylvia had a chuckle over a furry stingray; whatever next? They went and sat on a bench beside the river for a little while and talked about this and that while both enjoying ice creams. The weather, in May, was barely warm enough for ice cream but they felt like it anyway. Anand was not actually supposed to have ice cream but Sylvia frequently flouted Smita’s ridiculous petty rules; what was childhood, for heaven’s sake, without ice cream? Anand had chocolate and Sylvia had strawberry.
Sylvia recalled that it was she who had given Anand his first taste of ice cream on a spring day just like this, it must have been three years ago, sitting in the cafe in Regents Park. She could still remember the look of shock on his little face when she fed him that first spoonful of Cornish vanilla. He had recoiled from the cold but then, almost immediately, a look of dawning delight had come over his face and he had opened his mouth eagerly for more. Sylvia had been breaking Smita’s rules then too but, really, what did Smita’s rules matter? When Smita had shown herself, over the past four years, to be such a hard-hearted person?
When Sylvia looked at her watch, it was half past four and she couldn’t believe how the time had flown.
“I’m afraid we need to be on our way,” she said sadly to Anand. “Daddy is expecting you home for supper by six.”
Anand scowled. “I don’t want to go to Daddy’s,” he protested. “I don’t like staying at Daddy’s. I want to go home to Mummy’s. Why don’t you ever collect me from Mummy’s? Then, afterwards, I could go back there.”
Sylvia looked down helplessly into Anand’s scowling face. How could she begin to explain to him the complications which surrounded their afternoons together?
Ever since the Separation, it had become terribly difficult for Sylvia to spend time with her grandson, let alone speak to him on the phone and it seemed to her that in recent months it had got even harder. Smita’s disapproval of Sylvia had hardened since the Separation into frank animosity. She didn’t want her little boy to have anything to do with her ex-mother-in-law now, as she saw it, he didn’t have to. Except that Sylvia wasn’t yet her ex-mother-in-law because Jeremy and Smita hadn’t yet managed to get divorced and, even if she were, nothing could conceivably stop Sylvia from seeing Anand anyway.
Whatever obstacles Smita put in her way, Sylvia knew she would ride roughshod over them. She would not even hesitate to resort to illegality if need be. She had never felt this strongly about anything. She had always been rather a conventional, law-abiding person. But she had never before confronted a situation which was so patently nonsensical; a benevolent grandmother being denied access to her grandchild, her only grandchild, by his wicked mother. The word “wicked” wasn’t too strong either for wasn’t Smita the one responsible for the break-up, the one who, through her actions, had made poor little Anand the child of a broken home?
Jeremy was blameless – except in so far as being a doormat and a pusho
ver, he had let Smita get away with everything. It was Smita who had gone back to work the minute she could, abandoning Anand to a series of nannies. Jeremy and Sylvia had both been desperately unhappy about that but Smita, apparently, couldn’t care less. She had coldly rejected Sylvia’s offer to look after Anand instead.
Six months after returning to work, Smita had taken on a new role which involved regular trips to the US. She had been away for Anand’s first birthday; she had sung “Happy Birthday” to him over the phone from New York. When Sylvia had happened to mention what a pity it was to miss one’s child’s first birthday, Smita had practically bitten her head off, retorting that Anand was too little even to know it was his birthday, he wouldn’t be able to remember it when he was older and, anyway, they had had a big party the following weekend, hadn’t they, where they had taken loads of pictures which he could look at in years to come.
When Smita was away, Jeremy was left to juggle his own important job and the baby single-handedly. To Sylvia’s surprise, he didn’t actually seem to mind that much. She couldn’t in her wildest dreams imagine Roger putting up with that situation for more than twenty minutes.
It was at that juncture that Sylvia reluctantly decided to leave her flat in Overmore Gardens. The year’s lease was already up. In late 2005, she moved with a heavy heart to Maida Vale. It was a compromise which allowed her both to be closer at hand to help look after Anand when Smita was away and not too far from Kensington to keep up her visits to dear Ruth. Wasn’t Maida Vale always a compromise?
Her flat on Sutherland Avenue was frankly gloomy but it had one huge advantage, beside which the garden square paled into insignificance. It backed onto an immense triangle of unbuilt land which formed a hidden private park between three apparently undistinguished streets. For Anand, it would be paradise. For his sake, Sylvia was prepared to put up with the many drawbacks of the move: the distance from Kensington, from Ruth and Heather and all her old haunts, the pervasive gloom of Maida Vale which hung over the anonymous streets like a head cold, the bore of having to find her way around a new neighbourhood, find new shops, new nodding acquaintances and new ways of passing the days.
Roger’s noises did not follow her to the new flat which formed another break with her past. Sylvia missed Roger’s noises ridiculously, considering what a nuisance they had often been; her flat on Sutherland Avenue was deathly quiet.
She made no effort to get to know her new neighbours, convinced that none of them could conceivably be a replacement for dear Ruth and they returned her indifference. It seemed for a while that she would settle into a pitiful sort of part-life: long weeks of meaningless mere existence interspersed with glorious weeks in which, with Jeremy’s connivance, she saw Anand every day.
He had become the most enchanting toddler imaginable; he had walked at eleven months, taking his new skill very seriously and refusing from then on either to sit in the pushchair or to be carried.
Sylvia had naughtily upstaged Smita by buying Anand his first pair of shoes. When Smita had protested – “Honestly, Sylvia, are there no limits?” – Sylvia had answered innocently that, now he could walk, Anand needed shoes. But Smita had subjected her to one of her know-all speeches about the developing foot and how essential it was for the child to walk around without shoes for at least six weeks to master the mechanics of walking. Sylvia’s premature purchase had most probably done untold damage to Anand’s gait. The shoes which Sylvia had bought disappeared and when, two months later, Anand was finally allowed shoes, Smita claimed his feet had gone up a size and she bought him a new pair instead. Sylvia regretted the robust little navy toecaps and the sturdy buckle and straps of the original pair. In their place, Smita bought him some ungainly-looking miniature trainers with lurid flashes of colour and unattractive Velcro straps.
Anand spoke his first word, Sylvia believed, in her kitchen. He was sitting in the high chair – without that absurd restraining harness which Smita insisted on – and Sylvia was at the cooker, with her back turned, when it seemed to her she heard him say behind her, “Yum yum.” She whipped round and exclaimed, “Did you say something dear?” And, looking thoroughly pleased with himself, Anand had repeated, loud and clear, “Yum yum!”
Sylvia had cried out in delight, dropping a wooden spoon in her excitement but Anand had been so thrilled by the noise which Sylvia had made and by the loud sound of the wooden spoon hitting the tiled floor that he had not said it again.
Still Sylvia knew it had happened. She did not tell Jeremy and Smita but hugged her secret to herself. She knew that Smita would not believe her in any case; for weeks she had been claiming, absurdly, that Anand was already saying, “Mum, Mum.” Sylvia knew the truth.
She did feel guilty, from time to time, about the strain all these arrangements made behind Smita’s back must be putting on Jeremy. It wasn’t right after all, was it, that Smita had no idea about the time Anand spent with his grandmother – or all the forbidden foods he ate there – while she was away in America. Still, whose fault was it that these arrangements had to be kept secret anyway? If only Smita were more easy-going, less rigid and neurotic, above all less spiteful, she would no doubt acknowledge the fundamental importance for Anand of spending time with his paternal grandmother. Especially, especially since there was no longer a paternal grandfather.
Yet, despite these perfectly valid arguments, Sylvia still felt uncomfortable whenever she stopped to imagine all the machinations that must be involved on Jeremy’s part. What, for instance, did he tell the nanny when she was repeatedly given the day off? And what did he tell the nanny to tell Smita? Sylvia preferred not to question Jeremy too closely about these delicate issues for fear of provoking one of his outbursts. But she was profoundly uncomfortable with the idea, obvious when you stopped to think about it, that she herself might be contributing to the increasingly fraught relations between Jeremy and Smita.
Yet, when all was said and done, what else was she to do? She could not tolerate even the idea of seeing less of Anand, of having her hours with him rationed even further or, worse, shared with his squabbling parents. Sylvia had realised, to her amazement, that her feelings for this little golden boy were nothing short of passion. The illicit hours which she managed to spend with him were an idyll which sustained her through all the dreary days before and after. Since Roger’s death, Sylvia had coped. She had not fallen apart in public – other than in the immediate aftermath which was allowed – she had not been found wandering in a distressed state or inappropriately dressed, she had not been caught deep in conversation with someone who wasn’t there. But that was, frankly, as far as it went. Her days consisted of absence and emptiness and it was only the twin talismans of “Buck up” and “Righty-ho” which kept her head above water.
Anand’s arrival had transformed everything, not straight away but gradually over the weeks and months. Sylvia had identified the excitement she felt before seeing the baby, her racing heart and sweaty palms, for what it was. She had never expected to feel this way about her grandchild; she wooed him with gifts and songs and games, she was transfixed in the beam of his smile. Her feelings towards Jeremy softened too for wasn’t this the first considerate thing he had done in years?
In Saudi and Dubai, Sylvia had been surrounded by couples of her generation grumbling that their inconsiderate offspring weren’t having children. Even when they weren’t selfish and produced children, there could still be heartache. Look at Heather Bailey’s wretched daughter, a do-gooding aid worker who had gone and got married to an Ethiopian – nothing wrong with that, no doubt – but she had selfishly decided to settle in Addis Ababa and perversely to bring her children up speaking Amharic as their mother tongue. Poor Heather shed tears when she talked to Sylvia about it. Sylvia knew – on this score – she had been lucky. Moving to Maida Vale was a small price to pay for the time she got to spend with Anand. She no longer heard Roger yawning mightily in the next room or groaning in disgust at the morning paper. But she heard the sounds o
f Anand cooing and burbling, waking from his nap with a high pitched expectant cry.
She told herself that she had absolutely no need to feel guilty; she was perfectly civilized, she made every effort with Smita (even though she knew it wasn’t true.) As for Jeremy, poor, dear Jeremy, these days she felt she could forgive him practically anything, now he had brought little Anand into her life.
It would have been towards the end of 2005 or maybe early in 2006, it was wintertime anyway; Jeremy had popped over for tea one Sunday afternoon together with Anand because Smita was busy with something or other and couldn’t manage their usual lunch.
Sylvia noticed that Jeremy seemed somewhat preoccupied but as she supposed it had something to do with Smita, she studiously avoided asking him what the matter was. She entertained Anand with one of her stack of Ladybird books, holding him on her knee and showing him the brightly coloured pictures of everyday objects while naming them clearly and cheerfully. Anand could already do, after a fashion, “Dog” and “Cat” and “Car”. Every time they got to “Umbrella” however, he would explode with laughter as if the name – and maybe the object too – was simply unbearably ridiculous. While this was going on, for Sylvia read through the book two or three times before Anand tired of it, she was conscious of Jeremy staring moodily out of the window. She refrained from questioning him and instead, when Anand had finally had enough of the book, she busied herself preparing an extra special tea with jelly and sponge fingers for Anand and lemon drizzle cake for the two of them.
As they drank their first cup of tea and Anand conducted an invisible orchestra with a soggy sponge finger, Jeremy announced, “I’ve got trouble at work, I’m afraid.”
Sylvia tutted and tried to look sympathetic but the truth was she had no idea how to react because, she reflected, Roger had never had trouble at work. Or at least, if he had, he had never confided in Sylvia about it. Having said that, he had undoubtedly got himself into trouble with certain of his female colleagues from time to time but he would hardly have come running to Sylvia for sympathy over that. She tried to put this distracting and irritating thought out of her mind and concentrate instead on what Jeremy was saying.
