Finding Arun

by Marisha Pink

FIVE

  ‘HERE you go mate, get that down you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ mumbled Aaron sleepily.

  It was the fourth night in a row that he had slept on Jez’s sofa, and the fourth morning in a row that Jez had woken him with an over-stewed cup of tea. Ordinarily he might have complained, but since his friend had put him up without asking any questions, Aaron felt obliged to politely accept the lukewarm drinks without comment. Following Arthur’s shameful confession in the kitchen, Aaron had stormed out and headed straight for Jez’s house. He was furious at his father’s deliberate disregard for his mother’s dying wishes, a trait that, ironically, it seemed he’d picked up from Catherine herself. He couldn’t stand the thought of spending another moment in Arthur’s company and he knew that the old man would never think to look for him there. He wasn’t sure that Arthur even knew where Jez lived.

  The two boys were old friends who had schooled together until Jez had eschewed the idea of A levels and swapped degree prospects for DJ’ing and drug taking. It was a decision that had seen him promptly cast out of the village’s elitist social circles and rendered his mother the subject of idle gossip and pitying looks. Aaron’s parents had tried to discourage their friendship, fearful of the influence that Jez might have on their son, but Aaron had always admired Jez’s determination to carve out his own path in life and as a consequence they had remained good friends.

  ‘So?’ said Jez, lighting up a cigarette as he joined Aaron on the sofa.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you gonna tell me what's going on?’

  ‘I was hoping we could just skip over that,’ replied Aaron glumly, drawing a deep sigh. He pulled himself into a sitting position and curled the duvet around his shoulders for warmth, ‘it’s kind of difficult to explain.’

  ‘Look, mate,’ said Jez, clouds of smoke billowing from his nostrils, ‘I’m not being funny, ‘cause I know that you’re going through a bit of a rough time with your mum and stuff, but you’ve been acting proper weird these last few days.’

  Aaron instantly stiffened at Jez’s words, momentarily astonished to discover that he knew about Kalpana, before realising that she wasn’t the mother he was referring to.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me anything. In fact, I’d just as soon as not know what’s wrong, but my mum will be back tomorrow and you know what she’s like. She’ll be asking all sorts of questions; can’t even get her to stay out of my own bloody business, never mind keeping her nose out of yours.’

  Despite himself, Aaron felt his lips form a faint smile. It was the first time he’d smiled in days and it felt good.

  ‘It’s my mum,’ he said finally.

  ‘Yeah, I guessed as much.’

  ‘No, I mean my birth mum. She’s alive.’

  ‘Flipping hell, are you being serious?’ exclaimed Jez, springing from the sofa with such energy that he knocked over the now cold cup of tea.

  Aaron was silently grateful.

  ‘I wish I was joking.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She’s been writing letters to my mum for years and Mum’s been writing back. I found the letters when I was clearing out her study. Turns out that she didn’t die after I was born at all.’

  ‘That is messed up, mate.’

  ‘It’s more than messed up,’ replied Aaron bitterly.

  ‘Why the hell did they tell you she was dead then? I don’t get it.’

  ‘Not a clue. Apparently Arthur didn’t know that she was alive either. He says that Mum only told him the day that she died; claims he didn’t know about the letters.’

  ‘Surely he must have known something? You can’t keep something that huge a secret.’

  ‘Apparently you can,’ retorted Aaron sarcastically.

  ‘What did the letters say?’

  ‘They were mostly just updates, but she seemed ... I don’t know, just really, really grateful to my mum, like she owed her whole life to her or something. She talked a lot about what she had been doing; I think she runs some sort of shop. Oh, and apparently I also have a brother and a sister. She talked about them quite a bit too, especially the boy. It sounded as though he was recovering from something in some of the earlier letters, an accident maybe, but she seemed really quite proud of his achievements.’

  ‘Did she ask about you at all?’

  ‘Oh, all the time. She was always asking after me; asking how I looked and what I liked to do, about how I was doing at school, those sorts of things. A few times she thanked Mum for sending her photographs too; she obviously still cared about what happened to me.’

  ‘Does she know that you thought she was dead all this time?’

  ‘That’s the thing, I don’t know. It’s odd that she would ask so much about me, and that Mum would tell her everything so freely, but that she’s never asked to see me, except for in the most recent letters. She mentioned some kind of agreement, so maybe she did know? She also said she’s sick, really sick by the sound of things; maybe that’s why she’s suddenly changed her mind?’

  ‘This is mental, mate, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna go and see her?’

  ‘I thought about it, but I just don’t know if I want to go through all of that again.’

  ‘Go through all of what?’ queried Jez.

  ‘Getting to know someone, getting close to them, only to lose them. It was hard enough with Mum.’

  ‘How can you say that? We’re not talking about just anyone, Aaron, this is your mum. The woman that gave birth to you!’

  ‘But that’s just it, Jez, she’s not my mum, is she? We buried my mum last week. Right now I don’t even know this woman. I never thought that I’d get a chance to meet her and I was okay with that. Now suddenly she’s here and she’s sick; what’s the point in going to meet her if she’s not going to be around for much longer anyway? I think it might be easier just to leave things as they are.’

  Jez looked at Aaron disapprovingly.

  ‘What are you so afraid of?’ he challenged.

  ‘I’m not afraid of anything, I just –’

  ‘Just do it, mate,’ interrupted Jez, ‘otherwise, you’ll always be wondering, trust me. If I ever found out where my dad was, I’d be straight over there. In fact, this woman can probably tell you about your real dad too.’

  ‘But maybe there’s a reason that Mum didn’t tell me about her? Maybe she’s dangerous?’

  ‘If she was dangerous, why would your mum have been writing to her?’ Jez answered coolly, raising his pierced eyebrow.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. It’s too far anyhow.’

  ‘Whereabouts is she?’

  ‘India.’

  ‘INDIA,’ exclaimed Jez loudly, this time spilling his own cup of tea over the arm of the sofa.

  ‘Where were you expecting her to be?’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, I know that you’re Indian, obviously, but I didn’t realise that you were, well you know, a proper Indian from India.’

  Aaron couldn’t stop himself as a slow smile spread across his face and a laugh burst forth from his lips.

  ‘Don’t laugh, mate, I’m being serious,’ grumbled Jez irritably.

  ‘Why are you so surprised?’

  ‘Well, because let’s be honest, it’s another world over there, isn’t it? Those Indians are different, backwards, not like the ones that are born here. But you’re not like them.’

  ‘Oh really? And what exactly are they like then?’ answered Aaron bemusedly.

  Anyone else might have been offended by Jez’s comments, but Aaron knew that they were born more out of ignorance than malice.

  ‘Well they’re a bit, you know, like that family that lives at the end of my street, the one that moved in last year. Perfectly nice, but a bit … simple. All funny clothes and greasy hair. I swear there are at least fifteen people living in there; not one of them speaks English and they all stink of frying.’

  Aaron laughed harder at this ridiculous portrait of a ‘proper Indian from India’, but Jez c
ontinued on unabated.

  ‘You think that I’m joking, but I’m not. Last year my mate Raj went to visit his family in Delhi. He said it was the worst holiday he’d ever been on. He had to share a room with two of his brothers and three of his cousins, all of them just on a mattress on the floor. They didn’t have proper showers or toilets; he had to go in a hole round the back of the house and wash himself from a bucket. And that’s not even the worst of it, he –’

  ‘Enough, enough,’ cried Aaron, gasping between breaths and holding his hand up to silence his friend. He had almost been reduced to tears and now he was doubled over in hysterics, struggling to catch his breath.

  Jez lit up another cigarette and puffed on it sulkily, seeming insulted that he was not being taken seriously, but despite his ignorance his assertions had struck a chord with his friend.

  When Aaron’s laughter subsided it gave way to a comfortable and contemplative silence in which he found himself questioning everything once more. He was certain that India and ‘proper Indians’ were not as Jez had described them to be, but he couldn’t accurately picture them. He knew little about his birthplace, except for the fact that it was the very reason he never quite fitted in, in London, and far from holding any attachments to it, he had come to resent it. The Rutherfords had never taken him back and his mother had never seemed particularly keen to talk about or to visit the place. If anything, she had actively discouraged it, a fact that seemed to make more sense in light of his recent findings.

  And then there was Kalpana. What did he really know about her, except for what she had written in her letters? Was she tall or short, fat or thin? Did they look alike? Would he recognise her? He had often wondered about his biological mother, imagining what kind of person she had been and what kind of mother she would have made, but Catherine had always been reluctant to discuss her and he had stupidly believed that it was because the memories of what had transpired in India were too painful to relive. Instead he’d made do with the little bits of information that he could glean from anecdotal conversations and over the years he had learnt to dismiss the more inquisitive thoughts just as quickly as they had arrived.

  But things were different now. Now he had an opportunity to learn the answers to all of those questions and more. His mother’s deceit and Arthur’s secrecy could not be reversed, but Kalpana was still alive and he could, if he wanted, fulfil her wish to see him. Yet something was holding him back, a feeling deep in his gut, a relic of former beliefs and allegiances. For all the thinking that he had done over the past few days, Aaron still couldn’t fathom why his mother would have kept something so important from him and, if he were to be believed, from Arthur. In spite of everything that he had unearthed, he remained convinced that she must have had a legitimate reason for acting in the way that she had. A reason he was sure that she would have shared with him, if only he’d made it home in time. Catherine Rutherford had loved him with every bone in her body and she would have done whatever was necessary to protect him, even if that meant keeping him in the dark on occasion. There was something about Kalpana that he didn’t know, Aaron was sure of it, and it was that something that made him reluctant to go in search of her.