by Meera Syal
I made a call to Suki. I managed to blurt out what had happened before she followed her first instinct to slam the phone down, and then she gabbled advice and lists and numbers at me until my head span and I had to beg her to slow down.
‘I want to know what we can do now, right now!’ I asked her.
‘Be there,’ she said. ‘He can’t go abroad, the baby’s too young for people not to notice.’
‘But what if . . .’ I couldn’t say it. I thought it. A burning car, Dad’s funeral pyre, hot blood flowing in a delivery room, the expanding heat in my head.
And then I heard Chila and Sunita descending the stairs behind me and finished off quickly, promising I would call later. But I couldn’t stop shaking. I shook all the way into the kitchen, couldn’t hold the kettle to fill it at the tap, spilled coffee all over Chila’s pristine counters. By the time I attempted to sit down at the kitchen table, my limbs were doing their own epileptic boogie, knocking against the table, comic morse code, making the laminated coasters jump in sympathy.
Sunita leaned towards me. ‘Tans?’
Even Chila looked up from her lap momentarily, confused at the intrusion into her grief.
I tried to brace myself against the chair back and felt it jar rhythmically into my back. I grabbed a table leg for support and it seemed to quiver in my grasp. It might have been funny if it hadn’t been so grotesque.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I managed to gasp, wondering why my teeth were chattering, cursing whoever, whatever was pulling my strings, making me dance like a marionette on acid. Sunita came and stood behind me. She gripped me around the shoulders, trying to absorb the tremors.
‘It’s OK, Tans,’ she said quietly.
Of course it wasn’t, but thankfully, she didn’t insult me by turning all maternal. It was far too soon for that. She held me with the practised efficiency of a care worker. We both knew I had no business making such a scene when I wasn’t even the patient. Look after Chila, as always, her firm grip seemed to be reminding me. And I tried to tell her I wanted to, although it came out sounding like some strange East-European dialect. I would look after Chila, as soon as I had managed to forget about Dad and desertion and dead babies. And then I saw Chila looking at me and I knew. The purity of her, every inhibition scorched away, bleached bone clean. I knew nothing could stop her asking me now.
‘Why did you do it, Tania?’ she said simply.
I felt Sunita’s hands tighten their grip on my back. My jaw trembled so furiously that I felt bones clicking somewhere in my skull.
‘I . . . I . . .’
‘Do you love him?’
I shook my head. That was easy, it did that all by itself.
‘Did you love him?’
I ached all over, I wanted desperately to pee, I wanted her forgiveness but I could not lie, not this time.
‘Yes,’ I said, and as I said it, I felt the tremors receding. ‘Yes, I loved him. I really did.’
Chila almost smiled, I grieved for how much older she looked.
‘I don’t think I ever loved him,’ she said calmly. ‘It was the idea of him. I . . . wanted to do what was right . . . and good. You know?’ Oh, we all knew.
My breathing began to steady. Sunita’s hands were making small gentle circles on my back.
‘But you should have told me, Tans. Or he should,’ she continued, in that same fatigued whisper. ‘When I saw you both . . .’ She paused, searching for words. ‘Saw you . . . kissing . . . out there, out in the dark. I had the chance then, you know, to stop pretending. But I didn’t. None of us did, did we? Why, Tans?’ She used my nickname.
My hands stopped their restless fluttering and lay limply in my lap. I wanted to tell her this wasn’t the ending I had envisaged for us, the fall-out of that ill-timed kiss under jaded stars. We could have all been nobler, braver, stronger, good. But in the end, was it any better, to excuse the desire and destruction that had torn us apart? That was me too, all of it, all of us; destroyers and preservers that gave us this dark, dogged strength. Without it how would we survive?
But I didn’t get a chance to say any of this, because we all heard the key turning in the lock of the front door and we inhaled as one, turned as one, rose as one to greet Deepak as he walked calmly towards us. Behind him, through the open door, I glimpsed the flash of whirling blue lights, the silhouettes of a careful advancing army. I can’t recall his face at that moment. I fixed on the baby in his arms, the first time I had seen him, wrapped in a car blanket, all there, breathing, blissfully asleep.
Chila uttered an involuntary cry and ran towards him, snatched him away, and he fitted, perfectly I thought, into the crook of her arm beneath her breast.
Sunita placed herself instinctively between Chila and her husband, legs wide, hands on hips, almost spoiling for a fight. I sat down again, clung on to the chair like driftwood, thankful for ballast.
Deepak glanced over his shoulder, the siren blue revealing hollows and contours in his face. He raised a hand to them, the waiting officials, a cowboy’s mocking salute, thanking them. For what? For waiting? For finding him?
Chila had almost stripped the baby down to his nappy, feverishly checking over his body, palpating the tiny ribcage, the plumped up thighs, the malleable wobbly head. God, babies are too small, I thought. His frailty almost made me dizzy.
‘Chila?’ Deepak said.
She would not look at him, raise her eyes from her ministrations.
‘I just wanted to see him,’ Deepak said.
Sunita snorted loudly, her hands bunched into fists.
‘I don’t want to be the man you think I am, Chila. I was always going to bring him back.’
Chila shook her head slowly. She was already far away. Deepak took a step towards her, an old man’s shuffle.
Sunita and I exchanged a brief look, saw in each other’s faces, despite everything, compassion, regret, a flicker of resignation. Too much suffering, time to lay down arms, maybe, soon.
Deepak made one last attempt. ‘I wanted to see him, that’s all.’
Well, that’s when the proverbial doo-doo hit a rather large fan and it all went off, gung-ho coppers and blaring loudhailers and sirens so loud they woke the baby up. As Sunita quite rightly said afterwards, what was the bloody point when it was all over anyway?
‘I expect they’ll file it under Domestic,’ she intoned, Eeyore-like, much later, when we had completed all the statements and endless form-filling, and had sat round for ages just watching Chila watching her son, the only person who had managed any sleep in forty-eight hours.
We had an extremely efficient timetable of naps worked out, so one of us would be with the baby while the others tried to rest, but we ended up all crashing out on Chila’s king-sized bed. I woke up stiff-necked, dribble patches on my clothes, reeking of sweat and relief. The baby was spreadeagled in the centre of us, limbs far-flung, an X marking the spot, a farewell kiss.
I was not embarrassed until then, the morning after, and I snuck out of the house with my shoes in my hand while the household stirred behind me. Chila’s family were due to arrive, Akash was on his way bringing food and children, the family machinery was cranking back into motion and I didn’t fancy playing Spare Part Auntie at the party. Besides, I had my own family to visit.
It only struck me when I drove back into the hospital car park that Chila and Sunita had no idea that my father was ill. I don’t know if they’d be interested. I suppose I will tell them, if they ask.
Since then, there’s been a couple of telephone calls. Chila called me once. To thank me, for Christ’s sake. She couldn’t talk for long, Anand was crying for his feed. I recognized her mother’s village twang issuing orders in the background. It sounded like she’d requisitioned half the neighbourhood as on-site nannies. Chila mentioned putting the house on the market and something about a trip to India. She said she’d get in touch again but hey, babies keep you busy.
Sunita rang up for Suki’s number. I was with Suki at the time. We
sort of hang out together. She’s got some interesting friends, bit intense some of them but I’m happy to drift along, chewing the fat. I’ve met Jasbinder Singh a couple of times too. Amazing woman. Haven’t mentioned anything about a film. Yet. So when Sunita called, I passed the phone to Suki and the two of them chatted happily for twenty minutes while I hovered around pathetically, trying to listen in.
I gather Sunita’s working hard for her first-year exams, Akash is whisking her off for a romantic weekend to Barcelona immediately afterwards, Nikki’s lost her first tooth. Life goes on, in a fashion.
We’re still waiting for Dad to make up his mind whether to rejoin us or move on. Never say die. I don’t anyway. The doctors say my father is effectively dead but they don’t see what I see on those screens. It’s a question of interpretation. And it is possible to love without expecting anything back. They say you feel that for your children. One day, I’d like to ask Sunny and Chila about that too.
8
FROM A DISTANCE they looked like a flotilla of swans, gliding between the cedar trees, iridescent flashes against the granite of stones and monuments. The sun shone cruelly, inappropriately, as others huddled around sleek, low, black cars, shaking their white plumage, clucking respectfully, shedding white shreds of tissue from sleeves and bags, waiting. Some were sitting on the grass, as there had not been enough space inside for the unexpectedly huge crowd. They nested in small plump groups. Old women removed their shoes and massaged their feet, sighing with the breeze, waving away the tissue snow and playful midges, angling their stiffened backs towards the sun.
‘They look like they’re on a picnic,’ muttered a wife to her husband as they swept by, armed with a trowel, a small rake and basket of bursting bulbs. Mrs Keegan had never been happy about the arrangement, having a crematorium within the graveyard grounds. People should have the option, one or the other. Sharing facilities was just penny-pinching and probably disrespectful. She wanted to visit her brother’s grave and mix with the other regulars who came to dig and plant and remember. That was the difference. They chose to remember, they kept the body and didn’t fry it and send it off into the air up a chimney, nothing left to remind you or bring you back for a chat. And the way they wailed! As if they weren’t drawing enough attention, dressing up in white clothes like they were off to a wedding. She tugged on her husband’s arm to hurry up and quickened her pace past the cars, towards the chipped angel in the far north-west corner where her dwarf tulips would just be exploding into red and yellow fractured cups.
Mr Keegan slowed down a little. He had never dared say, but he looked forward to these foreign cremations. There was always a good turn out, they seemed to have a lot of friends, the deceased, and it cheered him up no end, seeing all those cream and snowy silks instead of the usual black stiff suits, which always reminded him of scavenging crows. True, they made a lot of noise. It was upsetting sometimes, the dramatics, the flinging themselves around. But he wondered if it wasn’t better that way, to let it all out and not be ashamed, rather than the choking, muted snuffles that his wife occasionally allowed herself, as she dug around in the soil, telling the headstone what she’d been up to that week. I mean, what was the point of that? It’s not as if they ever did anything very interesting, and Mr Keegan reckoned they had more important things to consider on the Other Side than Mrs Keegan’s corn operation, or their projected caravanning trip around Norfolk. No, best to have it done and dusted, he concluded, and why not make it a festive send off? That’s the way he wanted to go, with a brass band and a piss-up. Not that she’d let him.
He paused as a crowd began to filter out of the memorial hall, led by three young women. He reckoned they may have been sisters, or maybe it was the bleached white suits against the warm brown of their skins, but they stepped together, precisely, almost touching. He realized, with a faint shock, that one of them was carrying a baby, couldn’t have been more than a few months old. That wasn’t quite right, surely, bringing a young one to such an occasion. But he was a bonny chap, gurgling away. Mr Keegan thought of his own grandchildren and wished hungrily that they were with him. He turned away reluctantly. He could see his wife in the distance, kneeling down at the feet of the angel, already yanking out weeds with military precision. He adjusted his belt and set off along the path to join her.
‘I didn’t realize your dad had so many friends,’ Sunita whispered to Tania as they made their way slowly towards the cars.
‘Nor me,’ Tania replied. It took a long time to reach the main body of the crowd as she paused to namaste to some faces she vaguely recognized, accepted embraces and murmurs from others she did not know at all. People began instinctively to throng around her, the three of them at the centre of a dazzling mass, slow-moving sails circling their island.
‘So many people,’ Chila breathed, squeezing Tania’s hand.
She muttered back, ‘Thank God I can get away with calling them Uncle and Auntie because I don’t know any of their names. I should know. I should have asked.’
‘You’re doing fine, Tans.’ Sunita patted her. ‘Better than Prem, anyway.’
Tania’s brother brought up the rear of the crowd. He was supported by his wife and an elderly man who was having some difficulty holding him up.
‘Bas buche, enough,’ the old man kept soothing him, wishing Prem would angle his wailing away from his deaf aid. He’d seen it too often, the way the children would fall apart like this, after years of wanting to escape their parents. But then, hadn’t he left home at seventeen, and then left India itself without a backward glance? He felt the sun beating down on his bald patch and sweat begin to prick through the skin. Only a short walk, he thought, and he could sit down on the grass and wait. Not long now, to send his old friend off, to set him free.
Prem straightened up when he saw Tania. She looked so different with all that hair pulled back so severely, so straight-backed, scrubbed clean. The crowd parted smoothly to let him pass and he stood behind her, feeling calmer. He had done his best. His son would do the same for him. Some things would never be broken and he took comfort from that.
Somewhere, imperceptibly, a cog turned, a lever swung, sparrows shivered on their branches, a whiff of smoke, a memory of it drifted on the still warm air, and the gathering fell silent. All eyes swivelled towards the roof of the square-topped building.
Sunita gathered her dupatta around her body, planted her feet squarely on the ground, imagining roots taking hold, wanting earth, seeking solid ground. The sun felt good. Spain would be hotter.
Chila held Anand closer to her, smelled the milk and soap in his downy hair. She felt light as air, solitary. It was so strange to be standing with the old ones, aged couples holding hands, taking part in the old ways, and feel so new and unfamiliar. It wasn’t so bad, to be here alone. Not better, just different. It was monsoon season in India, the travel agent had advised her. Chila had replied that she didn’t mind rain.
Tania watched the first few flecks of ash spiral from the chimney’s mouth. Around her, muffled moaning began, bodies shifted, gently moving her, taking her with them. She gave herself up to the tide, gracefully, gratefully. Then more smoke, spattered with grey-black debris, coming faster and thicker, eager to escape the brick maw and billow across the unbroken sky.
‘Go on . . . go!’ Tania said, exhilarated, raising her arms above her, scattering the sparrows from the trees, who fluttered through the grey snow and beyond it, singing their journey as they flew.
About the Author
Meera Syal is an actress and writer. She has written a number of successful TV and film scripts, including Bhaji on the Beach and the multi-award-winning My Sister Wife, in which she also starred. She co-wrote and starred in BBC2’s hit comedy series Goodness Gracious Me, and is co-writer and star of the hugely successful series The Kumars at No. 42. Her first novel, the bestselling Anita and Me, won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, it has also been made into a successful film. Life Isn’t A
ll Ha Ha Hee Hee is her second novel. She was awarded the MBE in 1998.
Also by Meera Syal
ANITA AND ME
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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LIFE ISN’T ALL HA HA HEE HEE
A BLACK SWAN BOOK : 9781862300521
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN: 9781448109869
First published in Great Britain
Black Swan edition published 2000
Copyright © by Chestwig & Flares Productions Ltd 1999
‘I Will Survive’ – Words and Music by Dino Fekaris & Frederick Perren © 1978 Perren-Vibes Music/Polygram Int. Publ., inc., USA. Polygram Music Publ. Ltd, 47 British Grove, London W4.
Meera Syal has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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