by Meera Syal
Then his phone rang.
‘Toby?’ Her voice doused him like a cold shower. He instinctively moved away from Mala.
‘Shyama …’
‘Are you out? Where are you?’
‘Er … bought a few things. For the baby. Didn’t even have any nappies …’ He didn’t mention that he wasn’t alone. ‘Sorry, Shyams, I know you wanted me to wait, but—’
‘No, that’s fine. You did the right thing. You can show me everything soon.’
‘What?’ Toby’s head felt heavy, he was a lumbering oaf.
‘I’ll be back soon. Papa’s just woken up.’
Prem opened his eyes and, like a newborn, encountered a strange new world. He couldn’t put his finger on what exactly had shifted: there was his beautiful granddaughter, his smiling daughter, the woman he assumed was his wife, kissing his hand and smoothing his brow. She obviously adored him and there was something so familiar about her, a sense of a shared history, that he felt almost sure that she was indeed Sita. If it turned out not be her, he would be very cross indeed. He sat up, he ate, he walked around on faltering foal-like legs, he had all kinds of tests involving syringes of blood and scans and lights being shone in his eyes, and everyone around him kept telling him well done and talking about miracles and luck and the grace of the gods. The woman who was his wife even went to the local temple to say puja and to make an offering of thanks – although that wasn’t like his Sita at all. But he was sure, once he got home – they said in the next couple of weeks – that all the missing pieces in his jigsaw brain would be found and the picture he saw would be him and Sita, together again.
Shyama didn’t book her ticket home straight away.
‘I want to wait a couple of days or so, just to make sure Papa’s OK to travel. Maybe we can all fly back together.’
‘Shouldn’t you at least reserve a seat or something?’ Tara asked through a mouthful of coconut water. They were strolling through one of the street bazaars near the hospital. Neither of them liked the malls, despite the welcome air-conditioning. They were enjoying their shared magpie taste for the goods on display, attracted to the cheap glass bangles and the dupattas embroidered with tiny mirrors which caught the hissing flare of the gas lamps dotted like fireflies amongst the stalls. ‘The flights will all start booking up soon … you don’t want to miss my little brother turning up.’
Shyama’s stomach contracted at Tara’s words. Brother. They would be almost twenty years apart and have no genetic link, and yet her girl was letting him in finally.
‘There’s still a month to the day,’ Shyama said brightly. ‘And actually, I want to spend more time with you before—’
‘—you spend your days mopping up poo and sick?’
‘Before I sit like a Madonna with the chosen babe, overcome with the wondrousness of birth,’ Shyama said in her best hippy voice. ‘Seriously though, aren’t you coming back with me? Your term’s nearly over, isn’t it?’ she continued, skilfully avoiding a large pothole through which a couple of large crows sifted expertly, delicately picking out discarded morsels of old food. ‘Your project must be nearly finished now.’
‘Ye-es,’ Tara hesitated. ‘But I have so much work still to finish, a five-thousand-word essay, and all my research material is here. I mean, I could come … for a week, maybe?’ she added hastily, seeing Shyama’s deflated expression. ‘If you need help, or—’
Shyama bit back her disappointment. ‘No, it’s fine. It would be silly for you to fly back just for a few days.’
This wasn’t a surprise. Ever since she had had supper with Dhruv’s family, she had suspected that Tara would draw out her India stay as long as humanly possible. Tara’s description of the house and his parents had been spot on. They lived in one of the few remaining family kotees in central Delhi, in a shady street near a small park. All of the houses around them were impressive new builds, whilst theirs stood aloof in dignified disarray: peeling shutters, a riotously overgrown front garden bursting with bloom, a defiantly battered Maruti on the drive. Dhruv’s mother, Gauri, was a literature professor at a local college; his father, Shekhar, did something in publishing. The house was lined with books, paintings were propped up haphazardly against the walls, student types wandered in and out of the open-plan sitting room with food in their mouths – it was the kind of creative chaos Shyama would have loved to have grown up in. The conversation was easy and erudite; Shekhar chain-smoked tiny bidis that smelt of cloves, dropping trails of ash as he waved his hands to emphasize yet another indisputable fact, which his wife would then demolish with a finely turned phrase. Tara and Dhruv sat together, not touching, a calm connection between them.
Shyama managed to get a moment on her own with Gauri late on in the evening, when they were all flushed with good wine and lazy lingering chatter.
‘Gauri …’ she began.
‘Oh, please don’t do the big thank-you speech, we adore having Tara here. She’s been so good for my daughter – such a focused young woman. You must be very proud of her.’
Shyama could only nod. How proud she was she couldn’t express. She always had been. She didn’t say it enough.
‘It’s just … how can I put this?’ Shyama hesitated. ‘I don’t want to offend anyone … a young single girl living here with your son … and you, of course. It would be generous and unusual in London. I don’t know how it looks in Delhi …’
Gauri shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t think anyone is looking, but if they are, I don’t care. Do you?’
‘Does it seem … proper? Sorry if I sound like an old auntie, but you have to help me out a bit here, Gauri. Nobody in my circles back home would let their daughter do this. I mean my Indian friends …’ Yep, there was the old auntie speech, jumping right out of her mouth. How did that happen? ‘Not that I’m in any way traditional … I mean I’m divorced – I don’t know if Tara told you. I’m with a younger man, English, we’re not even married.’
Gauri was listening intently, her keen eyes showing nothing but understanding. Shyama thought, I could tell this woman almost anything, yet she left out any mention of Mala. She had an uncomfortable feeling that this would be the one thing Gauri would not understand.
‘So I’m hardly a model mum. In fact, if I tell you all the things I’ve done wrong or just messed up, we’d be here all night … and Tara’s weathered them all. And for some reason, she still seems to quite like me.’
Shyama knew she was gabbling now, but this felt like a confessional, an epiphany. All those years spent trying to mould her daughter into the young woman Shyama thought she ought to be, only for Tara to find her own way without her help – or maybe despite her. After so long trying to bend her daughter’s will to hers, it was only now that she saw her child clearly, just when she had to learn to let her go.
‘What I mean is …’ Shyama steadied her voice. ‘If she stays with you, I would like to cover any expenses … we don’t want to take your hospitality for granted. But I need to know she’s safe. And welcome. And that she won’t get hurt …’
‘Listen to me,’ Gauri said softly. ‘I did the proper thing for my older daughter and it left everybody broken – her, us, her son. The people I was trying to impress, appease – they are the same ones who now whisper behind our backs. Who was it for? All of that … properness? I trust my son. I trust your daughter. As long as she’s under my roof, she is my daughter too. They’re decent kids. If anything changes, they will tell us. Right now, they’re testing the world together. It’s so much easier with a friend, isn’t it? Now I think we need a top-up …’
Shyama booked her ticket back for 14 November. On 13 November she sat with Sita and Prem in the hospital gardens at the back of the complex. It was a perfect December day in Delhi, warm enough to lounge comfortably outside without a jacket in the crisp air, which would turn chilly after sunset. In their room in Thaya-ji’s house, with no heating or curtains, they would have to sit huddled under thick quilts stuffed with layers of raw cotton, s
o heavy they trapped you where you lay.
The doctors had advised that Prem should stay at least another week to be fit to travel, which would be the baby’s due date, but Sita had insisted she could cope now without Shyama, he was back to his old self and the rest of the family were around, of course Shyama must go home.
At the boundary wall, shaded with deep-green Maulsari trees, two men in white kurtas and pressed slacks, armed with long wooden sticks, were trying to scare away a monkey hiding amongst the dense waxy leaves of the upper branches. They didn’t seem committed to the task in hand, poking lazily in the general direction of the animal, which strolled around unconcerned, dropping empty peanut shells on their heads.
‘Funny, you don’t see so many monkeys on the streets any more,’ Sita remarked, passing Prem a handful of just-rinsed grapes before she rose stiffly, brushing herself down with quick, impatient movements. ‘Bathroom,’ she told Shyama as she hobbled off. ‘Make sure he finishes that fruit …’
Shyama was remembering the monkey on their hotel balcony when she and Toby had first visited the surrogacy clinic, how Toby had quickly undressed her under the slowly revolving ceiling fan, how she had still been talking when he entered her, how much she had taken that enthusiastic passion for granted.
‘Is she coming back?’ Prem asked, offering her a grape. She popped it into her mouth, the sweet grainy juice bursting on her tongue.
‘She won’t be long, Papa.’
‘She’s … nice. But she will never replace her.’
‘Sorry? Replace who, Papa?’
Prem sighed, rolling the grapes around his palm like worry beads. ‘Your mummy.’
Shyama forced the rest of the fruit down her throat; it had become a rubbery tasteless mass. ‘That was Mummy … she was just sitting here …’ She tried to keep the panic out of her voice.
Prem patted her hand, his voice husky with emotion. ‘I miss her too … but she’s not coming back, beti.’
Shyama took out her phone and by the time Sita returned, she had cancelled her flight.
Mala found Toby sitting on the stairs, his head in his hands.
‘Toby sah— Toby?’
Toby looked up wearily. He didn’t seem to see Mala, he was talking to himself.
‘I asked her, what’s more important? I said, if you’re not here then what has all this been about?’
Now he was looking at Mala. Was he asking her a question? She lowered herself clumsily on to the step above his. She wanted to smooth his hair, press his head to her stomach so he could feel what she was feeling: elbows and knees responding to his voice. She had never wanted to do that for her husband. It was true, what her family pandit had told them all those years ago after he had performed the funeral rites for her father. Her mother had been sitting cross-legged in their courtyard, her hair loose and unkempt, small cuts on both her wrists where the glass bangles had smashed into her skin as she broke them against the stone floor, her face as pale and unadorned as her new widow’s sari.
‘Now you must teach your daughters to be mittee.’ He had squatted next to her, a sheen of perspiration glistening on his bald head, his sandalwood prayer beads entwined around his long thin fingers. ‘Sweet like honey to bring them a good man. They have no father, no brother to protect them. Open their hearts like petals. Like the lotus whose roots are in mud, don’t let them be bitter. From the mud of this sorrow let something beautiful grow.’
Mala, holding up her sister, both of them numb with shock, had wanted to laugh at the stupid old goat. All his pagal pronouncements about flowers and bees weren’t going to stop their neighbours crossing the road to avoid her bad-luck-bringing mother, shaking their heads with pretend sorrow at the skinny dark girls who would never get married now. It had taken these many years to understand what he had meant. When Ram had married her, it was an act of charity which he somehow never let her forget, in his easy ownership of her, in his assumption that she would do whatever he wanted and he never had to thank her, because wasn’t she the lucky one? Her sweetness would have been seen as weakness; the more she gave, the more he would have drunk her dry.
But with this man, she was giving him something he could never have achieved without her. So he offered honey as thanks, and thus she opened just for him. But it was brief, this honeymoon. Soon she would not be needed any more. Chalo, let me enjoy this, just for a small while longer.
Toby seemed to see her now. He stood up and offered her his hand. ‘I had a trip planned … a surprise for Shyama. Now she’s not coming … would you like to?’
Whenever they passed the signs for Stansted airport, Toby always felt that they had finally left London behind. This time it wasn’t Shyama sitting next to him, or driving whilst he fed her wine gums and changed CDs on the car stereo. But the same sense of anticipation was there as before, a quickening in his blood, a gradual unknotting of the muscles around his neck and shoulders. He began to whistle loudly and tunelessly, like a happy-chappie workman. Which is, after all, he thought, what I am.
The landscape scrolled past for a while, like the painted background of a cheap cartoon when the same trees and fields keep reappearing behind the frantic characters caught up in a chase, running fast and going nowhere. Then suddenly there was a shift in tone and shade: the denuded hedgerows were further apart, their bare branches revealing unobscured miles of flatness, so many shades of brown, the land in winter repose as stark as he loved to remember it.
They had just crossed the border from Essex into Suffolk when Mala finally spoke.
‘We can stop somewhere? For … the latrine?’
The coy quaintness of the word charmed him. He found everything charming today.
They eventually found a roadside café a mile or so off the motorway, and decided to stop for lunch. He had expected plastic chairs and microwaved chips. Instead it was a family-run restaurant with gingham tablecloths and home-made pies, with thick serrated crusts that they broke open with their fingers, releasing herby clouds of steam. Mala ate every meal she encountered in the same way she would eat chapatti and daal: she would fashion a piece of bread, a pie crust or a chip into a scoop to mop up whatever else was on the plate. Toby watched the way she walked to the Ladies, swaying from side to side to balance herself like a fat-sailed schooner setting off from shore. Whilst she was on her third toilet visit since they had arrived, Toby pulled out his dog-eared road map and checked the remainder of the route. The car had a built-in satnav but he preferred to calculate his own journeys, enjoying the challenge of finding a secret shortcut and not having to drive with a disembodied posh voice telling him when to turn left and right. By his reckoning, they were only an hour or so away.
The gunmetal sky was beginning to fragment near the horizon, in the direction they were heading. As Toby had hoped, by the time they pulled into the driveway, the sky was a pale midwinter blue.
‘Acha!’ was all Mala said when Toby helped her out of the car. They stood for a moment on the gravelled path, taking in the red-bricked rectory with its casement windows framed by climbing ivy which covered most of the front of the house. Toby could tell from Mala’s face that she remembered this place, from that evening when he had shared with her his dream of moving out of London, of running his own smallholding. It was meant to be Shyama standing with him now, listening to the big speech he had been rehearsing for weeks – how this all made sense for their new life together as parents, how happy they would be. But it was Mala who smiled back at him like a co-conspirator, Mala who stood by his side when the local estate agent, a hearty middle-aged man with a wind-reddened face, turned up in a muddy Land Rover and shook their hands in greeting, Mala who wandered round the warren of rooms with him, all fusty and dusty as houses without people are, but they could both see beyond the tired wallpaper and dirty windows, knew what a beautiful home it could be. He naturally offered her his arm for balance as they toured the outbuildings and stables, the estate agent warning them away from the iced-over potholes which pitted the ma
in courtyard. It needed work, he agreed, a lot of work, but the potential was huge and he knew for a fact that the owners would take an offer, as it had been empty for some time and they were keen to sell.
‘Sadly, the couple in question have gone their separate ways, so …’ The estate agent shrugged mock sympathetically, brushing a non-existent speck from his brightly patterned tie. ‘Why don’t I leave you two alone for a while to have a think? Anything you want to view again … just give me a shout, I’ll be in the car.’
Toby stood looking out over the paddock, one corner of it given over to a training ring; the four-bar fence around the grey sand was weathered, splintered in places. A few jumps remained, the red-and-white-striped poles lying on the ground beside the rusting steel drums on which they must have once balanced, whilst children wearing hard hats and nervous grins hugged their knees to the warm sides of their ponies and prayed for flight. His boy was going to grow up in the saddle – he’d make sure of that.
