by Meera Syal
It’s not just me. She disapproves of what I’m doing, I can tell, although it’s all perfectly innocent and above board. Habitual really. After my morning lectures, and before I go off to do my shift at the CAB switchboard (the kids need nappies, I grovelled to my ex-boss), we trot along to the hospital for Chila’s daily check ups. While she goes into one room to donate blood and urine, I sit in another sipping tea and chatting with Krishan. That’s it, just talking. I have nothing to hide. I have said this to Chila outright.
‘I have nothing to hide,’ I told her at the end of the first week of visits, when I thought I saw her arch an eyebrow ever so slightly as I left her in the haemotology waiting room.
‘Nothing to do with me, Sunny.’ She smiled and then said, ‘You’re wearing lipstick today. And is that a new top?’
In fact, it wasn’t a new top, just one that hadn’t fitted me for a few years, and the lipstick was just to cover up a cold sore I thought might be developing. I explained all this to her very cheerily and she just smiled again, which I found a little infuriating. I actually sat down then, knowing Krishan was waiting for me and had arranged his break especially around this time, but I still took the time to try and explain, because – and I don’t know why – I wanted her understanding, her approval maybe.
‘Look, Chila,’ I said, ‘I’m at a very pivotal part of my life, do you see? I’m going through all sorts of changes, new career, new image—’
‘New top,’ Chila interrupted, which I ignored, for the sake of the baby.
‘And,’ I continued, ‘I’m also trying to expand my social circles, be in touch with people who are sympathetic to the journey I am on. And besides, I’ve never really had any male friends, you know? The only men I’ve been close to fathered me or married me and it’s about time I put that right.’
‘So Akash is fine about this, then?’ Chila asked. The screen descended silently, between our nailed-to-the-floor chairs. She obviously didn’t get it, as is Chila’s habit, so I persevered.
‘I haven’t told Akash because that would make it look like I had got something to hide. If he asked me I would tell him, of course I would.’ I left out the bit about that being unlikely as we weren’t talking much anyway.
Chila looked straight at me then. I’d forgotten how beautiful she’s always been, and with this new baby-fullness ripening every feature, every pore, she did look divine, goddess-like even, the answers to old mysteries heavy on her brow.
‘I always thought our husbands were supposed to be our best friends,’ she said. The screen cracked slightly, a tiny fissure in an unseen corner, and I panicked, which is the only excuse I have now for saying what I said then.
‘Oh, yeah, right. And is Deepak yours?’
It was unforgivable, I know, and I ended up driving her home, in her car, not caring about the cab fare back to work, because she looked so upset and tired and I wanted to do something, anything, for breaking the unwritten rule, that we look after Chila. I let her show me round the house, which is beginning to resemble a museum with its polished furniture and immaculate surfaces, everything matching and nothing used. I oohed at the fishtank and aahed at the conservatory and ate plates of deep-fried goodies even though I wasn’t hungry, because we could almost pretend we were girlies again, catching up in a kitchen.
In fact, the only room that isn’t pristine, isn’t even finished, is the nursery. It’s a gorgeous room, overlooking the football-pitch-sized back garden, with a huge bay window and a bumblebee-bulging wisteria which climbs round the surrounding wall. The walls are lemon yellow, but there are no carpets, curtains or toys, not even a cot, just a Moses basket and a blanket. I know Chila has been decorating babies’ bedrooms in her head since we were both in short socks, so this struck me as extremely bizarre.
I asked her if her mum had been getting to her, those old-lady superstitions about not having anything ready for the baby before it actually arrives, in case all those mysterious unseen forces we call fate or sometimes God notice we are too happy, too smug at our good fortune, and decide to teach us a lesson in humility by taking it all away.
My mum used to scream if I ever began a sentence with ‘Aren’t we/I lucky that’ or if I ever dared to praise anyone else in the family. Even something as innocuous as ‘Does my hair look nice like this?’ or ‘That roll-neck jumper really suits Papa’ would turn her into some wailing foghorn of doom. She would spit ferociously, hold her earlobes in penitence and loudly beg forgiveness from the skies: ‘Nazar nahin lagthe! Don’t tempt the evil eye.’ Of course, being Punjabi, it came out as ‘ewil eye’ which somewhat lessened its dramatic impact, but her fear always alarmed me.
Was it so bad to celebrate the good things occasionally? Were we so ungrateful, so presumptuous, that one glancing reference to a possible blessing would bring a lava-wave of ancient wrath into our house, sweeping us away like spindly weeds? Maybe this was just my mother’s way of teaching us to count your blessings. Unfortunately, all it taught me was to hope for the best, very quietly, and expect the worst, very stoically. Clearly anything good that happened was merely a fortunate, whimsical accident, a mistaken jewel spotted glinting in the dust which we might admire for a while, possibly hold for a moment, before They snatched it back, and then retired sniggering to the place I was convinced They lived, that shadowy alcove at the top of our stairs.
However, Chila maintained that the nursery remained bare because ‘I just can’t find the right kind of material, you know, that would go in a girl or boy’s room. It’s really hard, finding bisexual curtains.’
‘Don’t you mean unisex?’
‘Same thing, innit?’
I laughed so hard I started choking. Chila was patting me on the back and trying to breathe herself, gasping, ‘Don’t! My bladder’s not up to this!’ and we clung onto each other for what seemed ages, just hiccuping and wiping tears and both of us knowing, without saying, that for this moment, it was the way it always used to be and how sweet it was to be back there, together.
And then Deepak walked in, carrying an absurd bunch of orchids which he nearly dropped when he saw me. We sobered up smartly, and within seconds Chila had snapped back into Mrs Hostess and was rustling up a fresh truckload of refreshments. It was a while before I could look at Deepak without feeling embarrassed. I was mildly surprised that he hadn’t sprouted a forked tail and horns. I was looking for manifestations of evil somewhere on that handsome, groomed body. But it was the oddest thing; I felt sorry for him. He looked older, tired, strands of grey peppering his hair, no more strutting cock of the yard walk that I always associated with him, but a humble hand outstretched, a welcoming hug that lasted a little longer than necessary, as if he was grateful I was there.
‘You look amazing,’ he said to me a few times. I’d forgotten how long it was since we had seen each other. ‘Been working out?’
‘Something like that,’ I muttered back, uncomfortable with this best-friends-again full frontal assault.
And then, ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’ he kept asking me, pointing at Chila, his arm around Chila, pouring tea for Chila, plumping up cushions behind Chila, devotion brimming his eyes. Chila took it all graciously. She even kissed him back.
I thought about that tree falling in the forest. If no-one sees it, it hasn’t really happened. If I hadn’t been there, would he have poured the tea? If he hadn’t asked me about Akash, would I have said, ‘He’s doing really well. His own practice is up and running and we’re thinking of moving to a bigger place’? I suddenly realized why we were all hanging onto these remnants of a friendship. We needed each other as audience, we confirmed each other’s fragile normality. If they had come to my house, I would have served cakes too.
Deepak insisted on driving me back to work, knowing I was late. There was a third person sitting on the back seat during the whole journey, she whose name we dare not mention, and at one point I asked him to put the radio on, petrified the silence would force me to ask about her. Luckily, he chattered on, mos
tly about his newest purchase, some warehouse he’s turning into a trendy shopping mall.
‘Did you know,’ he asked me, ‘Hackney has a higher number of resident artists than any other London borough? It’s cheap, there’s large properties available which the creative self-employed need, and there’s a good amount of urban regeneration funds being poured into the area. And what they need, the jewellery makers and designers and the like, is a workshop-combined-viewing-space, a place where they can work and sell from. And that’s where I come in.’
I found this baffling. It was like listening to Margaret Thatcher campaigning for the removal of VAT on sanitary towels, unnatural and inappropriate. I’d always put Deepak down as a glorified landlord, like his father, doing up properties on the cheap, renting them for stupid amounts, selling them off finally to the highest bidder and starting again in another area where people wanted to live but could not buy. For them, London was like a huge Monopoly board, except they owned the bank and never went to jail.
‘Blimey,’ I replied. ‘That sounds a suspiciously socialist concept, Deepak. Presumably you’ll be charging a huge entrance fee.’
‘No fee,’ he said, ‘No need. There’s enough tourists from the richer areas with money who want to buy individual and authentic pieces, especially ethnic stuff. You can buy bindis down the Kings Road now.’
Bindis. That’s what gave it away. When a man displays any sort of shopping knowledge, if it’s not about cars and computers, you know he’s been talking to a woman. It was her voice all right. It had to have been her idea – quirky, risky, one jump ahead. Suddenly I missed her fiercely, sitting there next to Deepak. I felt jealous, that all that fizz and fury and acid wit and dirty laugh belonged to him, rather than me, us. I hadn’t forgiven her, but I wanted the chance to say it to her face. And I understood why he loved her, because hadn’t we all? That’s when I pretended I had to listen to the news, and we sat through a bulletin and the beginning of a play about Scottish drug addicts before he finally dropped me off.
As I was getting out, he grabbed my hand. ‘I’m really glad you’re back in touch with Chila,’ he said.
‘We were never out of touch, really, just busy,’ I told him, wondering when he’d let go of me.
‘You will be around, when the baby’s here?’ he said. ‘She’ll really need you then.’
I nodded and got out.
He rolled down the window. ‘Promise me?’
God, he looked sad. I wanted to say, If you’re going to leave her, you bastard, at least take some responsibility for it. But for a second, I had a feeling I was looking through some strange refracting mirror. I recognized that expression, someone at the edge of a precipice, fingers clinging onto crumbling chalky rocks, exhilarated and frightened to fall.
‘I promise,’ I whispered, and didn’t look back as he drove away.
I found myself avoiding the cracks on the pavement all the way to the office door, carefully placing my foot in the dead centre of every slab like I used to as a little girl. ‘Nazar nahin lagthe. Let them be all right.’
Krishan reckons I’m going through a second childhood, or maybe catching up on the youthful rebellion I never had. It’s true, I’m showing all the classic symptoms. I’m putting unnatural colours in my hair. I’m going out a lot and coming back late, reeking of crowded rooms. I have periods in the day when I forget that I have two children. I shave my legs daily in the shower and enjoy it. I’ve discovered where Kiss FM is on the radio. I spend increasing amounts of time either with people younger than myself, say at college, or with similarly badly behaved women who are sneaking out of the house with cigarettes and/or miniatures in their bags and two pairs of shoes, flatties for driving and stilettos for jiving. We’re quite a powerful group, us wrinkly teenagers, us pre-menopausal minxes. And I keep meeting more and more of us, at benefits naturally, at the ICA for Indian cinema seasons, at selected clubs where the music is old enough for us to hum the tunes, and not so loud that we can’t have a decent chat in a corner, at Asian comedy nights in out of town theatres, at obscure children’s puppet shows where mythological papier mâché gods tell our kids the stories that we should have learned at our mothers’ knees, had they had the time and we the inclination to listen.
I can spot One of Us from five hundred yards. My antenna is finely tuned now. She could be in jeans or a sari, have a bad perm or a sleek bob, be carrying a baby car seat or a briefcase (although it’s usually both); she will usually be married or thinking about not being married or recently de-married; she will be a dutiful daughter, an efficient wife, an over-anxious mother. She will organize an evening out to a T, have food cooked and babysitter booked weeks ahead. She will step out of the house still applying mascara; she will have lit up before she reaches the end of the road. By the time she has reached the party, she is singing loudly and slightly mad.
We dance longer and wilder than anyone else, as the recently released always do, and the real teenagers, the ones with unsullied bodies and sulky beautiful faces, move away from us, appalled. I’ve seen the expression on their faces, somewhere between shame and fear. Women almost old enough to be their mothers are taking over their territory, upsetting the natural order of things, shaking their considerable booty around with no consideration for sensitive souls or low-flying aircraft.
‘Shouldn’t you lot be at home in a stained housecoat burning your fingers over a griddle?’ That was all our mothers, after all. Sometimes I fast forward to my Nikki’s adolescence. I see myself sneaking into the house with my shoes in my hand, and she is on the stairs, in owly glasses and a quilted dressing gown, with an alarm clock in her hand. ‘Mum! What time do you call this? I’ve been worried sick!’ I tell her to chill out and take time to smell the roses. She tells me not to drop her at school any more because her friends laugh at my swirly leggings and diamanté nose ring. I tell her to learn Italian and fall in love with someone kind. She takes Hindi lessons and at the age of twenty-one, after graduation, asks me to find her a nice Hindu boy from a good family.
This makes me laugh out loud, when I’m in the bath with her and stroking her nut-brown, perfect little body. (It goes without saying she will rebel against whatever I stand for. All my feminist friends have been landed with daughters who love dressing up in pink and take several Barbies to bed with them every night.) And sometimes, when I watch Nikki sleep, I count the teddy bears on her pyjamas and whisper the Gayatri mantra into her ear to keep her safe in the dark, and I get the other version of the future. I see a weeping Nikki on the Jerry Springer Show, underneath her the caption, ‘Mom! You’re out of Control and You Smell Bad Too!!’ Nikki tells the audience how she’s always wanted a proper mommy, just like her friends. ‘You know, one of those plump ones with smiley faces who never complain and always have a hot meal ready, but she was too busy having fun,’ she sobs, and the audience sobs too. And then I come on but no-one hears what I’m saying as they’re booing too loudly and throwing chairs at me. I try and yell above the baying crowd. I want to tell them I do love my children and I always tried my best, but I wanted to make up for lost time, missed opportunities, to let my madness out in little controlled pockets while they sleep unaware in their beds, so I can come to them fresh, absolved, free from guilt, free from the smell I associate with so many of my mother’s friends, the sour, damp smell of unfulfilled potential. But it all comes out in sick-making soundbites: ‘I have a life too, you know! What about my rights, huh? Oh, blow it out your ass!’
And then I come to, sweating, and I kiss my babies over and over again and I promise them this is just for a short time, until I feel better, until I finally, properly, grow up.
Krishan told me I was part of a growing social phenomenon. ‘It’s being defined as middle youth,’ he informed me over our last pot of tea. ‘The baby boomer generation are refusing to grow old gracefully. They’re redefining what being middle aged means.’ Interesting he kept saying they when I meant us. ‘Staying healthier, indulging in luxuries, competing with
the twenty-somethings for entertainment. No more slippers and pipe by the fire if you’re forty.’
‘Thank God for that,’ I replied. ‘I don’t suit a pipe but I do have a pair of pink mules. Do they count?’
‘Pink mules? Definitely not.’ He smiled. Such a good smile. The right amount of teeth, warmth in the eyes, never wavering. Where have all these gentle-men-boys come from? Where were they when I was growing up? ‘Born Too Late for You to Love Me.’
My dad had that old song on some cheesy compilation record at home. It didn’t even feature the original artists. Their famous hits were sung by their non-union cheap impersonators, but as it was the only English record we had, I played it until the grooves had lost their tread. That record was special because it was unique, the only alternative to Hindi film songs, and therefore glamorous, admired, enjoyed. A monthly trip to the cinema was like a mini-holiday. Being allowed to go on a week-long school trip to France felt like emigrating or eloping. The occasional youth club discos we begged and pleaded to be allowed to attend were the highlights of our year. Any boy we met who didn’t have a Brylcreemed side parting and an eye-popping patterned jumper knitted by his granny was a demi-god, the dish of the day, the catch of the week – the boy who was different.
And now: clubs-pubs, mates-dates, cars-bars, holidays-hideaways, mags-fags, sex-shopping, bed-hopping, no-stopping, fusion-confusion – a cornucopia of choices, a smorgasbord of alternatives, as many avenues as there are aunties in the average family. I wonder if Krishan’s mother tells him to count his blessings? Why bother when you start counting and run out of fingers and toes?
I could have tried to explain this to Krishan – I almost did, until I realized how I would sound: ‘In my day’, ‘When I were a lass’, ‘Kids today, don’t know you’re born . . .’ Besides, bitterness gives you wrinkles and the portrait in my attic is already looking pretty rough. Instead, I talk to him. I breathe in the possibilities like a succubus from his minty mouth. I arrange another night out with the girls.
