The Inheritance

by Sheena Kalayil

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’

  She waited as he cleared some piles of paper off a chair, looking around for somewhere to put them down. When he turned, his eyes swept over her briefly before he said, ‘Actually, why don’t we take this to a café? I could do with a coffee.’

  He didn’t wait for an answer but shrugged into a jacket, held the door open for her. There was only two minutes’ worth of chat to be had, merely a checking-in, she knew, but did not say anything. On the street, he took her elbow briefly – no, no – directing her away from the café across the road, popular with students and faculty.

  ‘Do you mind walking a bit? I know a nice place.’

  He took long strides, and she matched them. He held the door open again. There was a wooden bar at the window where they sat and where he laid out the papers he had rolled up and stuffed into his pocket.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  She had ordered a hot chocolate, which she then regretted: it looked childish with its small mound of marshmallows spilling over the edge of the mug, arriving next to his elegant espresso. After he had ticked through some questions, made a few notes, he folded the pages, leaned back and smiled.

  ‘So, well into your first year. How’s it going?’

  ‘Um. I think I’m doing OK.’

  ‘You’re taking a module with Marc Duplessis, aren’t you? South African studies?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Are you enjoying it?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘What do your parents do?’

  ‘My dad works at the hospital,’ she said. ‘My mum stays at home. Well, she works from home. She sews things for people.’

  ‘Brothers and sisters?’

  ‘One brother.’

  When she didn’t continue, he laughed.

  ‘Not very chatty, are you?’

  She flushed. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be—’

  ‘No.’ He laughed again, patting her arm briefly. ‘That’s not a criticism, just an observation. I’ve sort of put you on the spot, haven’t I? I don’t mean to be giving you the third degree.’

  They fell silent, and he stirred his coffee before making a sweeping gesture to the streets outside.

  ‘Is this all you wanted it to be?’

  She paused, then answered honestly. ‘I never thought I’d get in.’

  He smiled. ‘Well. You have.’

  ‘Yes.’ She tried to smile back. ‘I guess I have.’

  He didn’t look away, but said, ‘I felt the same way, you know. I felt like a fraud the first few years when I was at Oxford. It’s a good feeling to have though. It shows that this means something to you.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I enjoyed your talk,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes, I saw you there. Thanks for coming. Although,’ he leaned towards her so his shoulder momentarily bumped against hers, ‘you made me slightly nervous.’

  ‘Did I?’ The question fell out of her mouth.

  ‘Writing down everything I said so you could hold me to account later.’

  ‘So I could try and make sense of it later,’ she retorted without thinking, then bit her lip when he started laughing.

  ‘Was I so opaque?’

  She was mortified. ‘Dr Martin—’

  ‘Ben—’

  ‘Please don’t think—’

  ‘Rita,’ he was grinning, and he touched her hand lightly. ‘Please. No need to explain.’

  He returned his hand to his cup. ‘It’s actually good for me to hear. Next time I’ll be more direct.’

  She smiled weakly and cupped her hands around her mug as he sipped his coffee.

  ‘Do you mind me asking? Were you born here?’

  She shook her head. ‘I was four when my parents moved over.’

  He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. ‘We have that in common. Neither was I.’

  A marshmallow bounced off her cup as if in reaction to his words, and she placed her teaspoon over it to hide it.

  ‘Where were you born?’ she asked.

  ‘Harare, which was called Salisbury at the time. I came here, well, London, when I was sixteen. But you know, it makes us different people, that dislocation. I’d be a different person if I’d stayed on.’

  He stopped there, but she found herself drawn into the conversation.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  He unfolded his arms, leaned against the counter, stirring his coffee.

  ‘Well, there would be practical things. I’m sure I would have carried on playing cricket; I might even have made the national team, because I was a big fish in a small pond there. I might have married this girl I went out with who lived down the road.’

  He turned and grinned, but she could see his eyes were serious.

  ‘But it’s more than that.’ He tapped his spoon against his cup. ‘There are subtleties. I’ve got used to a different type of rain. I listen to music I probably wouldn’t have listened to. I would have stuck with listening to rock and punk and the like, but actually moving away meant that I started listening more to music from Africa. Do you like desert blues?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘I don’t know much about it,’ she said after a pause.

  ‘Well, I need to play you some songs sometime,’ and then resuming as if he had not interrupted himself, ‘I read different things, I connect with different things, laugh at different jokes.’

  There was a pause as if he were about to continue, but then he straightened up.

  ‘What about you? I know you were only little when you left, but how would you be different?’

  She picked up her cup. It was empty, so she put it down again.

  ‘Different clothes, I guess,’ she started. ‘Different language.’ Her response was insipid and obvious in comparison to his reflections, and this only served to make her feel gauche and inept. ‘I’d probably have a different hairstyle,’ she heard herself saying, then seeing his eyes move in that direction she stopped, feeling self-conscious. She pushed some strands away from her eyes and cleared her throat. There was a smile playing on his lips, as if he were aware of how his attention unsettled her. Then he pushed his cup away.

  ‘Are you enjoying yourself here?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Social life keeping you up at night?’

  ‘Not too much.’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘Don’t be too serious, Rita.’

  She felt her face burn as he continued. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You must be batting them away.’

  Then, when she remained quiet, not sure how to respond, certain that he was making fun, he said, easily, ‘I’m just teasing’, as if to confirm her thoughts.

  ‘I’ve joined this dance group,’ she blurted out.

  ‘Really? Good for you.’

  ‘There’s an event actually,’ she said. ‘In a few weeks.’

  She realised that she was telling him this because she wanted him to come. It was an overture – her way of modifying their acquaintance. It was clear that he was amused by her, she could see, and this made her feel safe in one way, as one does with a favourite uncle. But it also made her chafe against his interpretation of her shyness: there’s more to me.

  ‘Well, that’s great,’ he was saying.

  She swallowed. ‘It’s a fundraiser actually, for a hospice . . .’

  ‘How much are the tickets? I’ll get two.’ He was pulling out his wallet, slipping out some notes, which he handed to her.

  ‘Just put them under my door if I’m not in.’

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ he said briskly. It felt like a dismissal, and so she slid off the stool.

  ‘Well, thank you for the drink.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Now he appeared distracted, and he pulled out a newspaper she had not noticed before. She left the coffee shop with a strange sensation in her chest. She stepped out onto the street and noticed that it had been raining while they h
ad been inside. Something made her turn her head. She glanced back hoping to meet his eyes but saw his head was bent, his hand to his ear now, speaking on the phone. If he had intended anything more than a friendly invitation, she had mistaken it. He was kind, and he needed a coffee.

  That night, she searched his name. There were several Ben Martins in the world, few who had been born in Zimbabwe-then-Rhodesia. He had authored two books, was the keynote speaker at a conference in Copenhagen on Land Reform, he had studied at Corpus Christi Oxford. A few years ago, he had completed a half-marathon; a year ago, the Great North Run. Both times he had raised money for SOS Children’s Villages, the first in Zimbabwe, the second in Mozambique. He had a full, complete life without any need for her.

  She regretted telling him about the performance: he will have thought her a show-off, or worse, forward. And while she admitted that she wanted him to see her on the stage, that she was confident of how she appeared, she was less sure that she wanted his wife at his side to discern the schoolgirl crush on her husband. She could imagine them exchanging a knowing glance at her expense, laughing about it later that night. And while she ran through her head several times an imaginary dialogue when she would explain that there was a problem, that she had mixed up the dates/venue/charity – she even had a dream where she stood before him while she babbled on, as he shook his head with an amused smile, I don’t believe you, Rita – she found herself, a few days later, slipping the tickets and loose change under his office door.

  Her brother Joy, his wife Latha and their daughter Mira visited that weekend, staying in a hotel in the centre. Joy: so named because he brought joy to his beleaguered parents, baited and derided by their families for not producing a baby for several years. Joy: who seemed to have taken in the changes in his life – a new high-school, a new language and environment at age fourteen – in his stride, who now had a job in finance in the City. When he had decided to get married, he told his parents with customary self-assurance that he would arrange his own match, and within days settled on Latha, a pharmacist, whose parents owned a business in Bangalore, and who was keen to live in London. He was a perennial optimist, confident, slipping from Malayalam to English and back with an ease she never had.

  That afternoon, she was their guide to the coast, where they climbed up the cliff from the beach, Mira on her father’s shoulders. To her surprise, her brother had marched uphill, certain that Rita could keep pace with him, which she did, but leaving Latha puffing behind. It was as if he wanted to brandish the attributes he shared with his sister, as agile and nimble as he; to contrast his sibling with his more sedentary spouse. And when Latha, ever-confident, ever-critical, had finally appeared at the brow of the cliff, he had teased his wife, before holding out his hand to pull her up the last few steps, then pinching her cheek affectionately. It was with a frisson of Schadenfreude that Rita noticed Latha’s hair in disarray, her flustered expression: a vision of times ahead, when she could be less daunted by her sister-in-law. Watching them, she remembered that before Joy had announced his intention to get married there had been a very pretty, fair-haired girl who had once come to the house and who Joy had, brazenly, in front of his parents, held around the waist. She remembered mutterings from her parents’ bedroom that night, a few more visits from the girl, who then faded away, so that when Joy got married nobody mentioned his friend. A blip on his report card, just as she would be a blip on Julian’s.

  Aside from a tug at her heart when she felt her niece’s small arms around her neck in a farewell embrace, she was glad when they left. She had spent the year before arriving at university explaining at length why she wanted to study anthropology, and there was still that incomprehension, that indulgence that belittled her decision to a whim rather than a seriously regarded selection. She would always be the youngest, she would always squirm under her sister-in-law’s uncompromising scrutiny, her brother never let her finish a sentence. When they left, she waved them away and then decided to walk back from their hotel to her halls of residence.

  The days were getting longer, and it was a beautiful evening. She felt the muscles in her legs stretch, and as the wind rustled through her hair she felt herself shaking off her family like cobwebs. When she walked past a bar with a group of drinkers clustered outside holding their beers, a man detached himself from the group and stepped in front of her, offering her his bottle. She hurried past, but the encounter evoked in her a strong sense of herself, her person: this body and these legs. She was alive; she held her face to the wind, feeling even the nerves in her fingertips. For some reason, as she laughed to herself at the man’s predictable proposition, she imagined herself standing in front of Ben Martin, her face turned to his, his eyes looking down into hers.

  3

  ON the evening of the event, there was a confidence in the light, a longer dusk. When she saw him slip in, alone, to sit at the back of the hall, a hum began in her ears, so loud she feared she would not hear the music. The programme began with the youngest performers, followed by three adult-age groups. She would be giving the penultimate performance, Maria the finale. They had decided on a sequence that fused flamenco and Kathak, long regarded as cousins, and Maria had chosen a very flattering gypsy-like costume for her to wear. The rhythm was complex, so was her footwork, and there was great applause at the end. Backstage, Maria was ecstatic: Rita’s contribution had helped to seal the evening’s success. Afterwards, when some of the performers were gathering on the street, planning where to go for a drink, she saw that he was waiting for her outside, leaning against the wall.

  She walked over to him. ‘Thanks for coming.’

  ‘My wife sends her apologies; she wasn’t feeling too good.’

  ‘I’m sorry you bought the ticket . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry about that . . .’

  They had both executed the pleasantries and now fell silent. Then he squared himself in front of her.

  ‘Rita,’ he said. ‘You were amazing.’

  She gave a short laugh, trying to hide her delight.

  ‘I mean,’ he continued, ‘I never expected you to be bad, but I never expected you to be . . .’ He broke off. ‘You took my breath away.’

  His words were more than she had ever hoped for. A warm feeling slid into her, like molten metal.

  ‘Rita!’

  ‘You go,’ he said, touching her arm briefly. ‘Go and enjoy. You deserve it. I’ll catch up with you later.’

  Later that week, another departmental gathering: more cheese and wine and conversation. She was reluctant to go this time: if Julian were there, then there would be a sense of déjà-vu, only he would be proprietary with someone else. In the end she went, simply because she wondered if Ben Martin would be there, and if he were, what he would say to her. Julian was not there, Ben Martin was, sitting on the end of a table, holding a glass of wine between his knees, smiling and nodding while two other students, attractive girls with big fulsome smiles and long blonde hair, held forth. She munched on a handful of crisps, surprised at how miserable she felt. What did they talk about with him? How could they be so garrulous when he was so close, his eyes never leaving them? She could conjure a stage on which she could perform for him, but there were many others vying for his attention.

  She dropped some crisps, bent to pick them up to avoid them being crushed into the carpet, when she saw a pair of shoes arrive in her vision. Straightening up, she saw it was him, having extricated himself from the two other girls, standing in front of her. He opened his mouth just as another lecturer came to stand next to him, so that his eyes held hers for a fraction of a second as if in apology before he turned to his colleague saying, ‘Marc, I believe you teach Rita. She’s one of my personal tutees.’

  Marc Duplessis had come over to ask Rita whether she was considering taking his module the following year: she had made some very good contributions and he would be happy to see her again in his seminars. He was a warm, personable lecturer – from Durban he had told her when she first
met him, before explaining that it was a city which had the largest Indian population outside of the subcontinent – but he was not Ben Martin, who now stood quietly, smiling and nodding, before he briefly touched her elbow and moved away. She was distracted for the next half hour, which she spent with Marc Duplessis and then with one of the other girls before she left, looking back to see him in serious conversation with another colleague – at least he was not being pigeonholed by another one of her peers. She was exhilarated: he had approached her, as he had done in the café. If she had not been clumsy, picking up morsels of crisps like the prig she knew she was, she might have managed a short conversation with him. He might have turned it to her performance; he might have wanted to know more about her training. She would have been capable of showing her passion for the dance, she was sure. An opportunity lost, but her heart was beating with excitement, the wife receding further into the background.

  The Easter break was drawing nearer and when next she had seen him just outside his building, he had raised his hand to stop her, asked if she was going down to London for the duration, and if she were, whether she would like to join him and one of his doctoral students. He was driving down, his wife was staying on, and there would be plenty of room in the car. He didn’t intend to drive beyond Clapham, but it was only half an hour on the bus across to Tooting. They were leaving in the morning and could be in London by the afternoon. The invitation seemed to come at a crest of a wave. She accepted and then spent the next few days wondering what she could get him as a thank-you present. It would be a long drive, and he would be saving her a train fare. She worried over the etiquette, not mentioning the lift to her friends for fear that they would tease her, uncover her crush. An hour spent looking online at titles classified as World Music was unproductive; from a shop on the high street she bought a box of chocolates.