Jubilee

by Shelley Harris

  Auntie Manju joined in, and Satish’s mum. When people were wet enough they were attacked with more coloured powder, which clumped on eyebrows and the tops of heads, silting into the folds of Manju’s sari. Satish’s dad stood, fastidious, at the edge of it all until they spotted him, Satish leading the charge, and went on the attack.

  ‘In the name of Lord Krishna!’ yelled Sima as they pelted him with pink and green and yellow. Satish’s mum took handfuls of purple and shook it over her husband’s head until he stood, caked in colour, coughing and laughing.

  For high days and holidays and sociable weekends, Uncle Ranjeet played host. Satish got used to falling asleep on Dinesh’s floor, his quilt wrapped round him, lulled by the sound of adult talk from below. But one Saturday, a couple of months before the Jubilee, his cousin had news.

  ‘We’re coming to you next week. There’s going to be a National Front march down our street!’

  Satish took this in. ‘A march?’

  ‘Yeah. Right down our street. Mum and Papa want us to come to you for the day.’

  ‘A proper march? And we can’t stay for it?’ The National Front was in the papers a lot. They wore braces and boots and shaved their heads. They waved Union Jacks. Nothing this exciting ever happened in Bourne Heath.

  As Satish had feared, the excitement of the day – Ranjeet’s downstairs window was smashed with a brick, his neighbour’s young daughter had stood at her gate, screaming at the marchers until her dad dragged her in – was experienced second-hand, and after the event. In Cherry Gardens, Satish’s mum laid on a feast for the family, showing off all the culinary skills she usually did not get a chance to demonstrate. Sima, playing in the garden, threw a ball awry and knocked the fan out of the kitchen window. She turned to her brother in horror, lower lip already wobbling, eyes wide. When their dad came out to yell at her, Satish stopped him.

  ‘Sorry, Papa, It was me. I just … I threw too hard.’ His dad hesitated, looked closely at Sima, and at Satish, then stretched out and cuffed his son. Satish closed his eyes against the blow, but when it came, it was more like a stroke. He opened his eyes to find his father still looking at him.

  All the things he was to do later, the medical degree, the marriage, inviting his parents to live with him when things got tough, all that made him a good son, a dutiful one. This, though, was something different. The look his father had given Satish was the sort of look any son would want to see on his father’s face, a kind of deep and private pride. Once he’d seen that look, a boy might spend a lifetime trying to earn it once more.

  Now Satish plays the good father himself, kissing his kids goodnight, fetching their sleeping bags from the car. When the children are in bed the adults eat, and afterwards they play Teen Pathi, shoring themselves up with enough chai to see them through the early hands. Sima plays cards like a demon, needs watching all the time. His father, equally competitive, is apt to distract his opponents with desultory talk of one sort or another before going in for the kill. Satish resigns himself to his losses, and hopes Maya will play sharp tonight. She smiles across at him from the other side of the table.

  ‘Into the pot!’ They’ve all brought supplies of bitty little five pence pieces; the coins chink into the bowl.

  ‘Dealer …’ Manik nods towards Maya who shuffles cleanly. She loves this bit. Satish hears the slide and click of the cards as they’re dealt out. Manik and Sima pick up theirs, have a quick look, and Sima glances at her husband.

  ‘So,’ says Ram. ‘Those roadworks at the Bassetsbury roundabout. Another four months, they think. How are you managing your journey each day, Manik?’

  ‘Oh, it’s stressful, of course, very time-consuming,’ Manik tells him. ‘And all the other routes, they’re just as bad now, with the overspill.’

  ‘Terrible,’ Ram agrees. ‘Neeta, are you betting?’

  ‘Blind,’ she replies, slinging another coin into the pot. ‘Manik?’

  Manik looks round the table. Everyone does their best to be unreadable, apart from Sima, who grins and dips him a heavy wink. ‘I fold,’ he announces, pushing his hand away.

  Then it’s Satish’s turn, blind too, another five pence in, and his dad’s commiserating with Sima about her own commuting problems.

  ‘The thing with teaching is, there can be no lateness, eh, Sima? I suppose you have to start everything so much earlier in the mornings?’ He lobs in his stake. He hasn’t looked at his cards yet.

  ‘Inevitably,’ she agrees. ‘It just takes – oh, hang on.’ She aims two coins at the bowl. ‘It just takes a bit more organisation. I haven’t been late yet.’

  ‘I fold,’ says Maya, after a peep at hers. Next to her, Satish’s mum looks unimpressed with her own hand.

  ‘Fold,’ she declares. ‘Ram, concentrate on the game!’

  ‘How are those reports coming on, Sima?’ says Ram.

  ‘Oh, the reports. Well, they’re coming on slowly, Papa. They always do. We’re using this computerised system now, this, um … comment bank, it’s called. It’s meant to make the process quicker, but you know these things – they never live up to the hype. Satish?’

  Satish is looking at his cards. He has a pair, and a low one at that: two fives. ‘Folding,’ he says.

  With just his father and sister left in the game, Satish knows things will turn a little more entertaining. Each has a talent for bluff and double-bluff, and both are hungry to win. He sits back to enjoy it. Sima looks at her cards once more. She purses her lips together, taps the table with her nail, lets out a sigh. This one’s a bluff, he reckons; she’s not really studying her cards in the way you do when you’re willing them to say something else, so she must be quite happy with them as they are.

  His father hesitates, then slings in two coins; gulled, he’s upped the stakes. Sima tips four into the pot.

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘Over to you, Papa.’

  His dad smiles broadly, scoots his hand over to the pile next to him and counts out two five-pences. ‘Sima,’ he tells her. ‘Show me what you have.’

  They turn their cards together. Sima’s lips remain pursed as she assesses their hands; hers is an eight, seven and six, different suits. Not bad, but definitely beatable – there’s been a little daring in her play, as usual. Her father pushes his into the centre of the table: a three, a ten and a king, all of clubs. She’s won the pot. Sima raises her eyebrows, crumples her face into pathos.

  ‘Oh, Papa! I was so distracted by that talk of reports and paperwork!’ she hams at him. ‘I nearly lost my concentration! How will I ever manage to count all this lovely money?’

  They laugh, father and daughter eye to eye across the table. Manik wanders into the lounge to retrieve the remaining barfi and Maya slips into the kitchen. Satish watches his dad and sister laughing at each other, and is aware of his mother watching him watching them. It’s compelling, this family life. It can be onerous and fractious and sometimes plain dull, but here they are anyway, against all expectations. When Amin threw them out they escaped in the night, just them and what they could carry: a suitcase and £55. No one thought they would flourish, but they have done. They have flourished in open defiance of Idi Amin and the summer of ’77.

  Neeta starts to gather in the cards, ready for her deal. As she’s tapping them down, Maya comes back, glass of water in hand.

  ‘Hey, I meant to ask,’ she says to Satish. ‘Did you ever talk to Colette about that photograph?’

  Satish looks straight at her and shakes his head minimally, but she looks away and doesn’t catch it. His fingertips press into his thighs.

  His dad asks: ‘What’s this? What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s nothing, just …’ He shakes it off with a shrug. ‘… domestic things. Boring. Stakes into the pot. Let’s play.’ Behind him, Satish hears a noise, and jumps: but it is just Manik.

  ‘It didn’t sound boring to me,’ says his dad. His mum says, more loudly than she needs to, ‘Right, come on Ram. Into the pot!’

  Satish kee
ps his eyes down. His nails scratch at the fabric of his trousers. He hears the coins going in, sees his pile of cards grow – one, two, three – as his mum moves her quick hand around the table. When she’s finished he can hear the others appraising them, or guessing at them, the little sighs and tuts, the bluffs.

  ‘What did I miss?’ asks Manik.

  ‘Let’s start play,’ says Satish.

  They are seated round the table, volatile, but settling now. Manik peeks at his cards, picks up two coins and rubs them against each other. If he puts them in the pot then Satish can bet, and Sima will, and they’ll be thrown into the game themselves; momentum will save him. Satish waits. Manik turns to Sima.

  ‘No really,’ he says. ‘What did I miss?’

  ‘Shush, now. You betting?’ But the coins stay in Manik’s hand.

  ‘Something about a photograph,’ says Ram. And now he’s looking at Satish, quizzical. Neeta sighs and her body jerks slightly with the kick she’s administering to his shin. Sima leans back in her chair, folds her arms and watches him, too.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Satish tells them.

  Maya glances between the family members. She looks at Satish and frowns. ‘Yes, it is. It’s that Jubilee photograph. Andrew Ford is doing another one.’

  Satish could slap her, actually hit and hurt her; he has no idea why she can’t read the signs, why she won’t shut up. They are ranged against him, his father worst of all, craning forward now, ker-ching! in his widened eyes.

  ‘Andrew Ford is doing another photograph?’

  ‘Yes, Papa. But …’

  His mother places her fingers on her cards. She pushes at them, rubbing them minutely to and fro in front of her.

  ‘It’s a thirty-years-on photograph,’ Maya tells him. ‘The Sunday Times wants to do a piece. Colette says Satish is important for it, and Andrew Ford’s very keen to have him there. He—’

  ‘Sunday Times!’ repeats his dad. This is starting to tip just a little out of control, with the emergence of his terrible, coercive paternal pride, so now is the time to make it very clear, totally clear that—

  ‘It won’t happen. I just can’t do it.’

  ‘Satish?’ says Maya.

  ‘But why?’ asks Ram.

  ‘I’m too busy. It’s just a PR exercise anyway.’ There’s a sound in the hall, and Maya’s up and out.

  ‘So it’s PR,’ his dad continues. ‘Who cares? For people to see you again, and to know what you’ve done since. A doctor – Central Children’s! – your lovely family. Do the photograph.’

  Satish needs to flatten the curve of his rising anger. He presses his cards under his palm. In the hall, Maya is remonstrating with Asha (‘Get back to bed!’ ‘But Mehul’s keeping me awake. He’s being a pain.’)

  ‘You know,’ his father continues. ‘We came to this country with so little. Look at all you have now. That’s what I’d like to see, in the Sunday Times. That’s what I’d like other people to see. Back then, who knew what you would do?’

  ‘I can’t do it. I’m too busy.’

  But his father isn’t interested. Busy is a trifling thing. He’s remembering their journey, his own tenacity, Satish’s rise.

  ‘We’ve always been proud of you, Satish. But look at this! All you have.’ He gestures towards his son as if his achievements are lying on the table between them. ‘It’s important, you know. What are immigrants? All we hear: they live in detention centres, they clean our houses. You need to show them something different.’

  No he doesn’t. If nothing else, he has earned the right to that. ‘Papa, this isn’t about politics. It’s a publicity stunt.’

  Maya returns to the table; in the dip of her head, in her pursed lips, he thinks he reads contrition. He thinks she knows now, when it’s too late, when contrition is irrelevant, that she has somehow steered this the wrong way.

  His father will not let go. ‘Why do you not want to do this?’ he asks, and he’s abandoned casual interest or jovial enthusiasm. His tone is gentle and probing and thus takes a step closer to the truth of the thing. Satish sees himself surrounded. He clamps his mouth closed, scared he’ll supply an answer. He searches for the clever thing, the killer argument, the way out. Then it comes to him.

  ‘No,’ he tells them. ‘And that’s that. I’m not going to do it.’ They all need to hear it: his family, Colette, the lot of them. He’ll say it as many times as he needs to: no.

  In the quiet, two coins fall from Manik’s hand into the bowl. Three cards lie in front of Satish. They can start playing again.

  Chapter 11

  Sometimes, being six was about wanting to be eleven. For Colette, it was about Mandy and Sarah. Being around that relationship of theirs, that axis of power and desire, was a heady thing. You could lose your bearings completely. You’d veer towards the two of them, heedless of the dangers of running aground or breaking apart. If you were six, Mandy and Sarah put out a siren call, and here was the pull of it: if you were six, they were just about everything you wanted to be.

  They were unattainably eleven, unreachably sophisticated. At school assembly they sat, subversive, in the back rows near the really big kids – the fifth years like Cai and Satish.

  Colette would see Mandy and Sarah at lunchtimes, playing Elastic with their friends. Somehow, when she caught sight of them, they were never the ones on anchor duty, standing bored with the loop stretched round them. Instead, they were always the jumpers, flicking their feet in and out of the white twists. Her memories are of their insouciant anklesies, their focused kneesies, their occasional, contortionist waistsies which would bring the game to a triumphant end.

  At home, Colette was sometimes allowed to break into their lair and watch their mysteries up close. ‘It’s just little Colette,’ Sarah would say, as she opened the bedroom door on one of Jan Brecon’s visits. Once inside, Colette watched the girls putting on the make-up that was forbidden in public. They used blue and green eye shadow, a legacy of Sarah’s sister Diane, liberated from her bedroom after she went off to be a nurse. They ran snail trails of roll-on gloss over their lips. Its artificial flavours – peppermint, bubblegum, strawberry – became an olfactory token of those private times. Once, Mandy bit the ball out of the top of the vial and just poured the gloss on. It looked like plastic on her mouth and, where her lips met, it went white.

  Their bodies fascinated her. Sarah already had breasts – just small ones, but they counted. She had bought a halter-neck top and was trying it on for Mandy.

  ‘Can you tie a good bow? You can help me if you want,’ she told Colette. Sarah held the top snugly at the front, then fed the straps through to her. Colette tied carefully, balancing the lengths of the loops and ends so that it looked pretty hanging down. Sarah had freckles on her back, and her shoulder blades were like wing stumps. Colette reached out to touch her, a tremor in her hand. She wondered what it would feel like: the warmth she would meet, the hard and soft of it. Her fingers looked grubby beside Sarah’s clean skin. She let them make just the lightest touchdown, four fingertips across the rise of bone.

  ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Oops. Sorry. I—’

  Sarah twitched her shoulders in distaste. ‘Your hands are freezing! What are you doing? Get off!’ She frowned at Colette for a moment. ‘Did you tie the bow?’

  ‘Yes. It looks nice.’

  Sarah turned away from her towards Mandy, from whom she demanded a more informed assessment.

  Once Colette had turned six, the older girls had taken upon themselves the responsibility of tutoring her in matters cultural, biological and sexual. No one knew how to kiss except Mandy and Sarah; the girls made sure she knew how to snog on a first date, why no one liked David Cassidy any more, and which boys at school were worth fancying.

  ‘John Andrews, yes,’ Sarah said. ‘He’s good looking. I like Richard Greenwood. Well, everyone likes Richard Greenwood because he’s gorgeous. But really gorgeous boys only like the best-looking girls, so it depends if you’re one of them.�
� Sarah ran a hand across the flicks at her temples, sweeps of hair lacquered to solidity with repeated spraying. Mandy, lying on the bed, rolled over and shared her own wisdom.

  ‘Yeah – good looking’s good, of course. But being a laugh is good, too. I like it when—’

  Sarah cut across her. ‘And don’t go for anyone shorter than you, even if they’re good looking. So no one like Robert Meade, OK?’

  Colette tried to nod sagely. Robert Meade?

  ‘He’d be good as a friend, though,’ advised Mandy. ‘For boyfriends, try to go for boys in the year above. Dominic Irving’s nice, I think.’

  Sarah’s judgement was swift and damning. ‘Eeughh! His hair! His shoes! Mandy! Dominic Irving! His stupid hair!’

  ‘It’s not that stupid. Anyway, I didn’t say I really liked him. He’s quite nice, that’s all.’

  Sarah sighed heavily. ‘He’s all wrong. I have to tell you everything.’

  ‘Yeah? Well he’s better than some.’ Mandy widened her eyes and pouted. Her voice went up an octave. ‘Ooh, Stephen, can I watch you play football?’

  Sarah frowned. ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Go on, Stevie-boy. Can I listen to you shout at your brother? Can I?’

  ‘I said shut up!’

  ‘Stephen, I think I LOVE you. Ow!’

  ‘Well, not everyone agrees about boys,’ Sarah said, with a final tug at Mandy’s hair. ‘Just don’t go for someone short, or younger, or really ugly.’ She leaned down towards Colette, dropping her voice to a mock whisper. ‘Like Dominic stupid-hair Irving.’

  When one problem page correspondent in Jackie wrote in fear of an early death – ‘I’m bleeding, and I don’t know why. I can’t tell my mum because I’m too embarrassed’ – Mandy and Sarah enlightened Colette with girlish enthusiasm. She left that day a little shaken, and somewhat unclear as to the details of the process. She was fairly sure that her winkie was involved, and absolutely certain, after a vigorous debate between the two bigger girls, that Ruth from 5A had Started.