The House of Hidden Mothers

by Meera Syal

  ‘I know that, thanks.’

  ‘You’ve nearly drained your glass in the last-chance saloon, don’t you think? And aren’t there other things you want to do with your life right now?’

  Shyama sat up and looked Lydia straight in the eye. ‘You don’t approve, do you?’

  ‘It’s not about me endorsing your decision, Shyama. It’s just …’ Lydia shrugged. ‘I see a lot of women your age twisting themselves into agonies about the babies they should have had, can’t have. Let’s put aside the women who actually have kids who are driving them potty …’

  ‘I know that one, too.’ Shyama smiled weakly.

  ‘Right. But be thankful you’re not in the other camp – our generation who thought we could schedule in babies, and then found out ovaries don’t follow a time-management chart. Not that I think that was wrong. I would have been a miner’s wife if my granny had had her way.’

  ‘Yeah, I can just see you in a pinny, wiping up the coal dust and sputum from the hearth …’

  ‘More importantly, because of our sacrifices – and there were many – we can offer our daughters the luxury of choice.’

  ‘You don’t have a daughter,’ Shyama sniffed, ‘so you don’t know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Most of her generation don’t even call themselves feminists. Apparently it’s a swear word implying lesbian tendencies and a predilection for denim boilersuits. They defend topless models as empowered women making a smart career move; they drink and swear and shag like the worst kind of bloke and call it being equal and liberated …’

  ‘And that’s all of them, is it? Every woman under thirty thinks that way?’

  ‘Maybe just the ones I hear in my house.’

  Lydia uncrossed her limbs and jumped lightly down from the window-sill. Outside her window stretched the Flats, acres of green fringed by semi-wild foliage which extended a couple of miles into the next borough and almost to the end of Shyama’s road. Lydia had often jogged between the two houses for an impromptu coffee; Shyama inevitably drove round in her car. Recently, a flock of wild parrots had been spotted swooping over the treetops, noisy jewelled immigrants claiming their patch of the suburbs. It had even prompted an article in the local newspaper, inspiring Tara to purchase a bagful of birdseed which she scattered on the tiny balcony outside her room. She hadn’t said anything to Shyama, who, weeks later, had had to climb out there with the Hoover and tidy up the rotting heap of uneaten husks.

  ‘Tara is a lot smarter than you give her credit for,’ Lydia said lightly, snapping on the kettle. ‘Tea?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Shyama said, getting to her feet. She noticed she emitted a slight noise as she did so, something between a groan and a sigh. This was definitely one of the first signs of ageing. Being in a room full of her parents’ friends at going-home time was like listening to an arthritic symphony, a veritable orchestra of ‘Hai!’s and ‘Ooff!’s – and her favourite, ‘Oeeeweeesh!’, which had made Shyama and Tara flee the room, fists stuffed into their mouths. And now she too had joined the Osteoporosis Choir. She flexed her back for a moment, checking nothing had actually slipped off its axis.

  ‘You know I adore Tara,’ Shyama said, waiting for Lydia’s response. Lydia carried on rattling teacups. ‘It’s just … is it awful to say I love her but sometimes I find her – or at least some of her attitudes … disappointing?’

  ‘And you reckon you’ve never disappointed your mother?’

  Shyama grinned. ‘OK, I think this session’s well and truly over. I’ve got to get back to work anyhow. And by the way, I don’t intend to actually carry a baby myself. In fact, medically I can’t. So that’s that.’

  She enjoyed the look of surprise on Lydia’s face, and spotted something else there too. Relief maybe?

  ‘Right. Well that’s …well, I have loads of contacts in adoption, Shyama, if that’s—’

  ‘No, we ruled that out once we found out the length of the waiting lists round here. It’s even longer if you want to use donor eggs. By the time we were near the top of either list, I’d be … a lot older. And getting a baby – I mean any child under three – is also really difficult.’ Shyama saw Lydia take a breath, but ploughed on. ‘And I know there are loads of older kids who need a loving home, but many of them need really patient, specialized parenting because of what they’ve been through, and Toby and I felt … well, it wouldn’t be fair. On Tara, especially.’

  ‘Is that what Tara thinks?’

  ‘I don’t know what she thinks, exactly …’ Shyama hesitated. ‘Every time I try to mention anything to do with babies, adopted or otherwise, she looks like she wants to vomit on me.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m confused here.’ Lydia paused. ‘Aren’t you worried that Tara doesn’t seem to be at all receptive to the idea of a new sibling? You know, it doesn’t matter how old you are, there will always be issues of jealousy, displacement.’

  ‘Get to the point, Lyd, I’m late already. Confused about what?’

  Lydia sighed. She wondered how much she should tell her dear friend about the frequent late-night chats she had with Tara, mostly on the phone, sometimes in her kitchen when Tara had turned up, tipsy and tearful, raging against the mother-stranger she lived with. Keith never questioned the intrusions, retiring discreetly to his study or returning to bed, understanding that for Lydia this was not work, it was something she regarded as familial duty. Tara would ask Lydia the questions that only Shyama could answer: why had she never been encouraged to keep in contact with her father? Why was she expected to babysit her grandparents whilst her mother was out having fun with Toby? Why did her mother make her feel inadequate all the time? Why was she so convinced that Tara would never really understand the struggles and politics of her mother’s generation, because Tara and her friends had all had it far too easy? (‘Oh, you want to talk about racism? Well, just listen to what we had to put up with!’) Ditto sexism (‘I nearly went to Greenham!’), self-image (‘At least you have role models now. Who did we have?’), and educational pressure (‘I was considered a freak because I couldn’t do science!’). Tara moaned to Lydia that it was like some twisted game of generational Top Trumps, where any experience or complaint she might have was automatically bested by her mother, who had got there before her and apparently suffered so much more. And even though Shyama encouraged Tara at regular intervals to ‘plug into your mother culture’, it was in a preachy, take-your-medicine-it’s-good-for-you kind of way. She’d direct her to the Mughal Miniatures exhibition at the British Library, the Indian classical-music concerts on the South Bank, various India-based news websites cataloguing the latest political scandals, the rise of the burgeoning middle classes, the hot new filmi actresses, the marches against the acid attacks on women who had dared to turn down their suitors, who then returned with plastic bottles of living death to fling in their faces.

  ‘I mean, I know she thinks I’m not … I mean, if she wanted me to be more Indian, why hasn’t she taken me to India? Kept me in touch with family there? Why didn’t she teach me Hindi? I only know a few Hindu prayers because of Nanima, not her! If she thinks I’m … inauthentic, it’s mainly her fault, isn’t it?’

  Lydia might have privately agreed with Tara, but she felt unqualified to mine this particular cultural seam. Jewish issues she could do – most of the people who had trained her were Jewish and she thought she had a handle on the guilt-mother-communal-trauma-heritage stuff. But this, this was her friend whom she loved, and her friend’s daughter, who was suffering, and she felt torn and compromised. Maybe now was the time to put that right.

  ‘I’m confused, Shyams, because you say you want a baby, you say you’ve ruled out adoption, yet you’re still going ahead with … What? Something. And Tara’s still not part of this massive decision. Shouldn’t she be?’

  ‘Lyd, I have spent the last twenty years putting Tara first. I gave up my job for her for years, I put up with a shitty marriage for her for years. I went without so much so she could have t
he kind of education my parents couldn’t afford for me. I may not have done the best job with her, but I did my best.’

  ‘Right. So, honestly, do you think that possibly you want a baby because you’re hoping to do a better job with the next one?’

  Shyama thought she must have misheard, but Lydia’s steady gaze confirmed what she had just said. Now she remembered why they had stopped taking holidays together – because there was always a point where Lydia’s heavy social drinking tipped over to sullen, determined self-destruction, a point where kind, measured Lydia turned into a viper-tongued virago, lashing out at anyone nearby, but mostly at herself. Ken had seen his wife through two stints of rehab and her adoring clientele knew nothing of her bouts of self-medication. And Lydia’s friends kept a quiet eye on their social boozing and prepared themselves for the occasional bouts of drink-and-dial she would inflict upon them during the early hours of some endless night. But it meant she stood on shaky ground when she decided to tell her nearest and dearest exactly how they were screwing up their lives.

  Shyama became aware of her own accelerated breathing, and she briefly wondered whether beneath the fury simmered a layer of skin-prickling shame.

  ‘Well.’ She finally found her voice. ‘Thanks for the free session. Just glad I caught you sober.’ She paused at the kitchen counter. ‘I’ve been talking it through with Priya anyway, and it was her idea. We’re going to find a surrogate.’

  The sound of Lydia’s cup smashing into the sink coincided nicely with the slamming of the door.

  Shyama was still shaky when she parked in her usual space on the forecourt of Bhupinder’s Khalsa Stores and hurried past the shopfronts with their wares displayed outside: iridescent garlands of bangles; boxes of sparkly stick-on bindis, including the triple-layered Big Macs, as Tara called them; food stalls offering up cones of buttered lemon-tanged sweetcorn and plastic tumblers of freshly crushed sugar-cane juice; hardware stores stocking appliances you would only find in this part of town: circular metal spice boxes with snugly fitting little pots inside them, one for each masala; grainy black griddles, slightly curved to give breath to every chapatti; an orgy of Tupperware, because there’s no such thing as a leftover; a cornucopia of serving dishes and novelty-shaped plates with different compartments for various nibbles; alarm clocks that sang out the call to Allah; mini elephant-headed Ganesh gods to stick on your dashboard (double insurance in case of accident); holy threads and bootleg Bollywood, and every staple half the price of the supermarket.

  The pavements were already thronged with shoppers. Five years ago this area had been considered a no-go ghetto; now it had been repackaged as a vibrant pocket of London’s multicultural heritage, with the help of some strategically placed murals – mosaic elephants always went down well – and a glossy leaflet urging visitors to ‘Follow the Spice Trail!’ which led them to the doors of the businesses that had paid for the leaflet in the first place. But nevertheless, it had worked and Shyama was grateful for it.

  She still felt that nudge of pride as she rounded the bend and saw the distinctive red-and-gold logo of the Surya Beauty Salon like a beacon up ahead. The business – her business – was doing well, although it had been a huge risk, investing what little savings she had left after the divorce in a new venture. But she had seen what other places were charging for traditional treatments such as threading and sugaring and knew she could undercut them, if only she could find the right location. And it had come up: a former chemist’s right here in Little India, as the area was now called in various tourist guides trying to big up East London and its many attractions. She had found the right staff – young women from India who wanted to make some real money on a short visa, who worked hard, knew their stuff and were so fast they could have threaded a gorilla in under ten minutes.

  She paused at the large picture window, taking a moment to watch her staff work their magic on the row of customers seated in their leather chairs, their faces tilted to offer up an eyebrow or an upper lip. Beside them, the girls held their thread between their teeth and one finger, heads bobbing like chickens as they expertly found each rogue hair, trapped it between twisted thread and yanked it out by the root. Their skill, coupled with the reasonable prices, now brought all kinds of women through the salon’s frosted-glass door. The Indian girls were training up other young women Shyama had found locally – she liked the mix of desis and homies. Her workplace was a noisy female retreat where a woman could walk in wearing the stubble of the world and walk out feeling like a million rupees. Thank God for my hairy sisters, Shyama thought as she pushed open the door.

  Shyama knew Priya was in the salon as soon as she walked in. From one of the cubicles at the back came the sound of furious expletives, inconveniently raising the eyebrows of all the women sitting in their soft leather chairs, whose threaders had to pause at every ‘Shit!’ and ‘Bollocks!’ that shattered their concentration.

  ‘How far gone is she?’ Shyama muttered to Gita as she hurriedly removed her coat and flung it over the stand near the reception desk.

  ‘I think just half a leg left,’ Gita whispered, her index fingers still wound round with thread as her customer sat patiently, a palm placed on either side of her eye socket, stretching the skin in preparation. Gita fired something off in Hindi and a few of the other girls giggled companionably. They could have been sisters, her employees, these round-faced, sloe-eyed women, all with long tied-back hair, neat centre partings and a tiny red bindi nestling between their perfectly shaped eyebrows. They all wore short white Nehru-style jackets over their own shalwar kameezes, saris and jeans – no logo other than a small embroidered sun over the breast pocket. Surya had been Shyama’s first choice of name when she knew she was carrying a girl. She liked the idea of calling her daughter after the sun itself, a child full of light, warmth and fiery goodness. But her husband had vetoed it, wanting something more ‘user-friendly’. After an emergency Caesarian, a blood transfusion and liberal doses of morphine, Shyama would have said yes to anything. But she had compensated for her own missed opportunity by naming her salon Surya, thus proving Tara’s pointed observation that her business was the child she’d always wanted.

  Shyama roamed a practised eye over the room as she made her way towards the treatment cubicles at the rear, from where Priya’s swearing had now subsided to a generalized sort of wounded moo-ing. She smiled apologetically at the regulars who were in varying stages of treatments: women mummified under thickly caked face masks, or turbanned in towels like patient Nefertitis.

  Gita tapped her on the shoulder gently, a spool of thread in one hand, a thin folder in the other. ‘Didi? That info you wanted on the Moroccan argan-oil products?’

  After so long together, Gita still never called Shyama by her name, only ever addressing her as didi, respected elder sister, a habit Shyama found touching and ageing all at once. The bond they shared went beyond that of a boss and employee; they had met when Gita had come in one day all those many years ago for a leg wax. Despite Gita’s careful efforts to conceal them as she undressed, Shyama had spotted straight away the bruises mottling her thighs and wrists. She was as frail as a bird, all thin-boned and hunched against the gale of her husband’s daily abuse. Having just been through her own divorce, Shyama found it impossible not to listen, then advise and finally encourage her to escape the marriage that was erasing her. As is so often the case, the main reason Gita stayed and endured was money: she couldn’t afford to leave her husband. Not until Shyama offered her a job, and found beneath the droopy feathers a skeleton of steel and a ferociously loyal heart.

  And then, gradually, word must have been spread by Gita amongst her network of friends and their acquaintances, because women started to trickle in looking for something more than a threading. Maybe seeing that Shyama had been able to walk away from her own marriage without becoming a crack-whore or being struck by lightning had provided the nudge these other unhappily married women needed to flee theirs. Customers would call her over and enqu
ire in hushed tones if she could recommend a cheap counsellor or a good lawyer or, in more extreme cases, a nearby refuge where they could take their children. Who would have thought there were so many of them? Amongst all the plucking and preening, so much suppressed sorrow, so much anger or regret or just never-before-asked questions, which came to the surface in that space where women finally stop and breathe while their hair gets washed and their scalps get massaged and their faces are treated with gentle respect. Maybe the very act of beautifying themselves made them think, who is this for? For someone who has not seen my worth for many years? For myself? How can I justify spending money on apricot scrubs and French manicures when I willingly lay my face in the dirt as soon as he walks through the door?

  Shyama had felt powerful in her role as beautician/confidante, it suited her aggressively self-sufficient lifestyle at this single-and-proud stage in her life. Now, looking into Gita’s placid eyes, she wondered what her reaction would be when she found out what her didi was planning next.

  Shyama smiled her thanks at Gita, hurried to the last cubicle at the back of the salon and knocked gently before entering. Priya lay spreadeagled in matching lacy underwear as Neha disposed of a heap of pink wax strips, each one furred with small black hairs.

  ‘She’s evil!’ Priya moaned, raising a shaky finger towards Neha. ‘I think she drew blood this time.’

  Flipping the pedal bin expertly with a dainty foot, Neha rolled her eyes. ‘You’re worse than the kids who get their ears pierced! Next time I’m gonna give you a lollipop to shut you up!’ Neha’s cockney glottals, mingled with a Punjabi twang, always caught Shyama by surprise, so at odds were they with her serene classical beauty. ‘God knows how you had kids, innit?’

  ‘Darling girl,’ purred Priya, running her fingers over her baby-smooth legs, ‘that’s what drugs are for. For our next session I may just book an epidural.’

  Priya reached into her mammoth handbag, unpeeled a note from a whole roll and handed it to Neha, who snatched it appreciatively before bustling off to her next client.