Writing on Skin

by Sara Banerji

  The frightened head turn of Slug informed her.

  ‘Filthy fucker. He deserved it!’ cried Pimples.

  Gerald had been in Slug’s embrace when the gang arrived; Slug having flicked his beckoning, ‘the-house-is-empty’ curtain some hours earlier, and feeling let down because of no response.

  ‘I was struggling, mates,’ Slug had told his friends. He was one of those people who, despite appearances, loved to be liked, no matter what the cost.

  It was probably his littleness, his weakness, and the precision of his nature that saved Gerald’s life when the gang struck. Suffused in love and sweet intentions, he went down like a small rag teddy, collapsing instantly on to the back doormat and knew nothing more till the police came.

  Slug had a hard time persuading the gang that he was innocent of gay intentions, and if it had not been for all their mind-muddling sniffs into plastic bags he would not have succeeded.

  The police might not have believed Hermione either if she had not been seventy and owned what she did, when she told them that Slug had been there to save her, not to molest. And they raised the odd eyebrow when, at the last moment, as the lads were being bustled into the van, Slug cried out, ‘I’ll come and see you in there, lads! I’ll bring your Uhu.’

  Hermione told a cynical cop, ‘They are keen on model planes.’

  Slug never asked Hermione why she’d defended him, and she never discussed the matter either, merely accepting without comment next day his shivering and wildly plucked petal-shedding bunch, culled by the look of it from a dozen local gardens.

  There is a Hindu tale of a scorpion who asked a frog to swim it across the river, promising the frog not to sting it on the way. The frog, trusting, agreed. Halfway across, the Scorpion stung.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ asked the frog, dying.

  ‘It’s my nature,’ said the scorpion, drowning.

  It was Slug’s nature.

  The house had been made unlivable by the frantic plunders of the skinheads. Hermione had to go somewhere. Why not India?

  She went to London that next night, stayed with Daniel, and went with him and Lalia to see his latest hit, Lonely Man.

  The story was set in ancient India. A princess, Rajkumari, falls in love with a wandering yogi. After many difficulties at last she is able to join her lover. They walk round the world, enjoying each other, listening to people’s thoughts and sometimes regret that they cannot fly. Gradually the thoughts of men begin to make the yogi bitter.

  According to Hindu belief all that exists is the dream of God, and one day the yogi falls out of God’s sleeping mouth.

  Rajkumari searches everywhere for him and at last, passing God’s teeth, tongue and palate, leans into the throat of God and sees her beloved splashing about in the ocean of Infinity.

  He calls to her to help him but she cannot.

  In the dark of the endless ocean he encounters a child, who, after some cross discussion, reveals himself to be the absolute person that is beyond God.

  Rajkumari brings crowds who manage to rescue the yogi. But he returns changed, for he has tasted the ocean of Infinity, has conversed with the Absolute, and can now see through Maya, or illusion.

  He has gone beyond love.

  He no longer walks but sits listening to the beating of the heart of God.

  Rajkumari tries to get the yogi’s love back, but fails. She tries to go home to her parents but they will not have her. She tries to stay among the yogis but they will not accept her. At last the gods, out of pity, turn her into a goose, and she flies alone, crying.

  The music seemed to come down like a spell upon the waiting audience.

  Lalia made a strange sound, half sigh, half something else that for one terrible moment Hermione thought was crying. But then, exasperating the person sitting behind her, Lalia leant over to Hermione and whispered, ‘Daniel will never be alone if he can write music like that. Someone will always love him, won’t they?’ and gave a soft laugh.

  ‘Hush!’ came from behind. Hermione caught Lalia’s hand in the dark and found it trembling and cold.

  Because of the music Hermione had become filled with optimism. ‘I feel sure that once I reach India everything will be all right.’

  ‘Hush!’ furious this time.

  ‘Shut up, you fool,’ snapped Hermione quite loudly so that dozens of people turned and a rustle of rage went through the rows.

  The show came to an end at last. The audience stood to applaud. ‘Composer, composer!’ they yelled.

  As Daniel rose the spotlight was turned on him. Turning to those who sat behind and who had been so aggravated, he bowed.

  The furious people became instant smiling sycophants. Daniel introduced Hermione, then signed their programmes. They felt blessed to have been disturbed and sworn at by the mother of great Daniel Crombie.

  It was only as the family were walking out that Hermione at last dared to turn and look at this amazing man who had created such beauty. She could not think of any words that were good enough, so just touched his hand.

  He smiled at her, his face rosy with love and being loved. He turned to Lalia and she was weeping.

  ‘I am crying because it was so gorgeous,’ she sobbed, mascara running down her face in tears. ‘It was music to make you love the whole world.’

  Daniel held everybody up in the aisle and, looking very serious, carefully wiped her face with his large hankie. Nobody minded being held up by him at all.

  Hermione wondered, as they followed the slow, bemused, thrilled audience towards the street and taxis, how she could have been partly responsible for the creation of someone so huge and tawny and musical, then laughed softly at being awed by her own child.

  Chapter Eight

  It was arranged that Hermione’s grandson, David, should accompany her as far as Waswar, where his parents, Rupert and Anne lived. Hermione was to stay there for a few days before flying on to India.

  David had not wanted to go. It was his eighteenth birthday in two days and he had wanted to spend it with his friends in London but his uncles Edward and Daniel had bribed him.

  On Hermione’s last night before leaving, Edward, Lalia and David came to dine at Daniel’s. Daniel went in for a style of decor which was so modern as to be theatrical. The dining chairs consisted of tall oblongs of blond wood rising perfectly perpendicular from the floor to form both legs and back and, jutting out, a seat that was as narrow as the ice ledges into which mountaineers plunge pitons. Every part of the dining table, right down to the screws was made of transparent glass. Hermione found it odd to look down and see her magenta napkin-covered knees.

  She sipped champagne out of a black glass, touched her mouth with the raw silk napkins, had her spirit soothed by the sandal-perfumed candles, admired the whirled yew chandelier, relinquished her plate gracefully to a bower waiter in Doc Martens, Bermudas, shorn hair and winking earrings and settled back to enjoy civilization.

  During the meal sudden bursts of song came from the kitchen. At one point, after a particularly loud and soaring aria, the hatch door shot open and the opening was filled by a dark female face, glistening with sweat and crowned with a flaring fuzz of pale purple hair.

  ‘Did you hear that, my sweetheart? How am I coming along?’

  ‘She’s trying to get a part in Lonely Man,’ explained Daniel.

  ‘Well? And am I getting it, my beloved?’ demanded the face in the hatch. And then confidentially to Hermione, ‘He’s not one for keeping his word, your son. You’ve brought him up badly.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Hermione penitentially.

  ‘Come on! Pudding, Lucretia,’ cried Daniel sternly, clapping his hands.

  The face retreated, the hatch door slapped shut, and the singing continued mutedly from beyond, accompanied by the thumps and slurps of food being prepared.

  Edward leant across the table and said, ‘You will have to move in with us when you get back, Mother. You can’t stay alone any longer after nearly getting murde
red by those glue-sniffers.’

  Hermione gazed at him, feeling angry with Edward, for mentioning the matter.

  ‘You are the last one to condemn them,’ she said softly.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ snapped Edward, his eyes cold.

  David, smiling at his reflection in the glass table, said, ‘Dreadful business, Granma. I shall have to keep an eye on you from now on!’

  It was just before the main course was served that Hermione saw something so surprising that in a single moment she was forced to reassess … Daniel, Edward, Lalia, disaster.

  Through the transparent glass of the dining table she saw Lalia’s hand softly slide across Daniel’s knee, and saw Daniel’s hand take it in both of his and gently, passionately, caress it.

  Hermione’s gaze jerked up, shocked, astonished, and she found herself looking into Lalia’s face. Bright colour had sprung into her daughter-in-law’s cheeks, and her eyes sparkled. She gazed at Hermione for a moment with an expression of mixed happiness and guilt.

  When she looked down again, Lalia had withdrawn her hand from Daniel’s, but Hermione knew now.

  Edward and Lalia accompanied herself and David to Heathrow next day.

  ‘Your suitcase is ridiculously small,’ said Edward. ‘I suppose that’s a good sign, and that you intend to come back soon.’

  ‘Do you suppose that?’ said Hermione coolly.

  Lalia put her arm round Hermione and said, ‘Don’t let him bully you!’ and her arm felt warm and heavy on Hermione’s shoulder, alive.

  Hermione was wearing a cerise tracksuit for the journey. She planned to arrive in India like that, without possessions, lacking plans, and she thought of the garb as the Western equivalent of a yogi’s garment – unflattering, loose, useful and genderless.

  She was modelling herself on Mahadevi, though this was a comparison so ludicrous that she could have explained it to no one, except perhaps Unity who had the knack of understanding her.

  Mahadevi was a twelfth-century Tamil saint who had betrothed herself to God and, as a self-humiliating act of social defiance, she’d wandered South India naked.

  Hermione, too, was attempting to cut herself off from the world of men with an unacceptable outfit.

  David pointed out, ‘You can’t go into a Muslim country wearing that, Granma.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ cried Hermione, knowing perfectly well.

  ‘Muslim women keep their bodies covered from top to toe,’ muttered the boy, embarrassed now.

  ‘Come on David,’ cheered Lalia. ‘Your grandmother isn’t a Muslim woman.’

  ‘All the same … you know … trousers don’t do there,’ mumbled David. Hermione knew he was embarrassed to be seen with her dressed like this. And felt pleased.

  When it was time to go Hermione flung one last kiss on to Lalia’s face with the sort of intensity kept for people who are almost without hope and then rushed, blinded with crying, into passport control.

  Edward was exhausted when he got home from Heathrow.

  As he dismissed the babysitter, collapsed in his armchair and stared at the newspaper, he heard Dinah ask, ‘Why are you crying, Mummy?’

  Lalia shook her head desperately. ‘Don’t be silly. Of course I’m not.’ She knew Hermione would never find her a healing yogi, but all the same was determined to shed no tears because of it.

  Edward, leaning back in his chair staring at the day’s headlines, his eyes seeing no words, his posture imitating that of a man surrounded by the comfort of convention, stirred. His shoulders flinched in the way that a ticklish horse does when troubled by flies. He could not allow the clouds of his mind to part and reveal his wife’s secret anguish. The gristle of his ears moved almost audibly, as his body began to betray him.

  ‘Daddy, Mummy’s sad because Granma’s gone,’ said Dinah.

  Edward pressed his elbows to raise a body grown suddenly hot with the flush of desire. He had once heard an imprisoned man say that there are no bars once the drug takes effect. Edward’s prison was life itself. He stood on numb legs, in Hell at the moment, eager to reach his only paradise, that which perched on the point of a needle.

  Edward had had no children with his first wife, Carmen. ‘It is because you are an addict,’ she had said bitterly, when she divorced him. ‘You have made yourself sterile through drugs.’

  He had waited for two years before asking Lalia to marry him. When she had agreed he had been filled with astonished joy, for he had always feared that it was Daniel she loved, and not him. Sometimes he wondered if he had asked her to marry him that day just to test her, like one who keeps pressing at a sore tooth to see if it still aches. Having been certain that she would refuse, he was always trying to trap her into admitting her love for Daniel.

  ‘My brother Daniel is such an interesting person,’ Edward had said. ‘He is sexually ambiguous so that you never know what kind of man he really is.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Lalia had replied, something chill in her tone.

  Edward knew he had gone too fast. ‘Daniel has all that charm, and yet so often uses it wrongly.’ He had to tread carefully here, not push her back into defensiveness.

  ‘How do you mean?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘He’s too loving,’ soothed Edward. ‘He loves everyone and everyone loves him. He’s like that damned Great Dane of my mother’s, Percy.’

  ‘That’s a good thing to be,’ said Lalia smiling, so that Edward knew he had her on his side again.

  ‘I mean I know he’s not really gay,’ lied Edward.

  ‘What?’ Lalia had sat up abruptly.

  ‘Lalia, dear, no one is fonder of my brother than me. And I know all his faults come from too much kindness, too much liberalism …’

  ‘Go on. Get to the point, Edward. What are you talking about?’

  ‘Well, you know he is having a love affair with a man. His young Indian lyric writer.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  The bleak note in her voice encouraged Edward. ‘He’s a beautiful looking boy. You can’t blame Daniel. I mean as a man who is adored by all who meet him the temptations must be tremendous.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Lalia, and there had been a hot thick sound in her voice, as though she was fighting tears, making Edward feel that triumph was near.

  ‘Darling Lalia,’ he said, and taking her in his arms he had kissed her to console her.

  After they were married Edward became filled with a new self-confidence, and a determination to break his habit; but his elation faded as the knowledge grew stealthily in him that his wife still loved Daniel.

  For the first few years of their marriage Lalia had not become pregnant and Edward had been filled with fear that Carmen was right. Especially when they had both gone for medical checks and Lalia had been found to be functioning normally.

  Edward had come home pale and shaky.

  ‘What did they say?’ asked Lalia, and was surprised when he answered, ‘Everything is all right with me, too.’

  ‘You look so upset.’

  ‘No. No. It’s all right, I tell you,’ he lied. The doctor had confirmed that his addiction had probably made him infertile.

  After that whenever Lalia mentioned their having children, Edward turned pale or spat out in furious anger. In the end, without understanding, she stopped telling him how much she longed for a child.

  It was not that he did not wish to discuss his addiction with Lalia, it was that he could not. He could find no way of breaking through the wall a lifetime of silence had built up. He could find no way of telling his wife that he had made his body sterile through years of taking drugs.

  Just when neither, for their different reasons, expected it, Lalia became pregnant.

  Edward was joyfully amazed at first, but his good mood wore off soon and, ever prone to anxiety, he began to fear his genes had been damaged and the child would be deformed.

  The child was perfect.

  Edward held the rosy b
aby and felt that fate had dealt him at last a kind hand. But this time, he thought, he was not going to be disappointed. This darling creature would love him and call him ‘Daddy’ in spite of his faults, in spite of the fact that he was addicted to heroin.

  It was this realization that made him feel for the first time in his life that his addiction might be a problem that could be solved. Even so, his secret was too deep and hard for him to be able to tell Lalia the truth that she already knew, so he said he was going to Switzerland on business but instead booked himself into a private clinic for his cure.

  When he returned home Edward did not make any more of his secret visits to the bathroom, and he began to smile in a suddenly released way as though everything was going to be all right. He improved in health, increased in balance, became calm, and adored his growing child.

  Then he had received a letter from the man he had shared a room with during his cure in Switzerland. In the early days of their cure, when they’d secretly injected themselves, they’d also shared a needle.

  The man was now HIV positive.

  Edward began to wake sweating and shaking, and would lie staring into the dark, anticipating a future of unspeakable horror. Sometimes he would reach out to Lalia, longing for her love, needing her comfort, but then remembered he must not have sex with her in case he too was HIV and he infected her.

  He would watch her sleeping during long nights and because he dared not touch her, because he feared he might have infected her already, because he knew that not only did she not love him, but also he did not even deserve her love, his tender feeling became converted into hatred.

  Life like this was far too painful to be endured in cold blood. You needed to warm it if you were to get through. He began to take the drug again.

  When Dinah said that Lalia was crying Edward knew he should have comforted her, but he could not. Without the drug he was incapable of anything and had nothing to give anybody else.

  He rose and rushed from the room, went upstairs and into the bathroom where he kept his equipment hidden.

  He always prepared his body for the drug like someone getting ready to be ceremonially sacrificed. Now the shrill pain as the blunt needle pierced his flesh had the anticipatory delight of a lover’s bite. As he thrust in the plunger and felt the warmth spread, the words ‘Closer than a lover’ came to his mind.