A Life Apart

by Neel Mukherjee

  And yet, and yet, it lacks the fixity of logic because the elements of the set to be satisfied have margins of uncertainty themselves. For example, how can entering a cubicle after a reasonable time spent at the urinal be taken as a certain sign of cruising? But even if in these cases the laws of probability work to the advantage of the cruiser, everything could come down like a house of cards if the final checking out doesn’t lead to the neat snuggling of two desires fitting each other like identical spoons.

  Everything is predicated on that meeting. There are a number of ways leading to it:

  1. Standing at the pissoir, his cock out, massaged to erection. He hides it and pretends he has just finished peeing, shaking the last dribble off it if some kosher pisser enters the toilet. Sometimes he just buttons up and enters his cubicle. If it isn’t a genuine pisser, and he likes the look of the man, he stands there, making obvious what he’s doing. Chances of a hit on this one: 50–50, 50 for his liking the man, 50 the other way around.

  2. If the view from his spystrip really dazzles, and chances of this are low anyway, he rushes out after three or four seconds, making sure he has flushed noisily – just another casual public toilet user emerging from a cubicle to wash and dry his hands zealously. Chances of the dazzling one being a cottager: low. Chances of that click of reciprocal desire: still lower.

  3. On some occasions, 2 leads to 1, if he’s convinced the newcomer at the urinal is doing anything but urinating, or urinating AND.

  4. Then there is the possibility of Ritwik’s favourite cubicle being occupied by someone else. In this event, which irritates him immensely, as if he has some proprietary right over that one, he reluctantly confines himself to one of the smaller, inferior ones. Their disadvantages are many, not having a view being the most crippling; he has to depend solely on his ears then. But there is one thing working for them: being adjacent to another cubicle, a possible pick-up might happen without having to go through 1, 2, and 3. After a while it becomes obvious why the man in the next cubicle has entered it. Once that is confirmed, another little game of advancing feet, inch by inch, to the gap under the partition wall begins. Often this is preceded by noises, such as low moaning, or letting out heavy breaths in an overdone I’m-really-horny way. Once the feet touch, at least one certainty has been established. This could be followed by notes written on loo paper and passed on under the gap: ‘Do you have a place?’, usually, to start off with. Or just standing on the toilet seat and peeping over the wall into the next cubicle to see what he’s letting himself in for. No. 4 is a more prolonged game with elements of a blind date to it. It’s more exciting, sometimes, than 2 or 3, or even 1.

  5. Several people at the urinals. Sometimes this has what Ritwik calls the ‘honeypot effect’ – one or two cruising men at the urinals suddenly start attracting practically all the cottagers in the St. Giles toilets until there is a row of men, cocks out, checking each other out, all heads tilted left or right, angled downwards, sometimes craning back to catch the eye of someone at the pissoir across on the other side of the mirrors and sinks. It is a predictable set of movements, but of all the methods, this gives the most direct access to the goods. This is when it becomes most transparently a marketplace: there is no pissing around, wasting time and acting out tired old moves; it is sharp, to the point and immediately effective. Or not, but in that case at least the people involved are not left hanging on, thinking will he won’t he will he won’t he while doing some more hand-drying and pretend pissing and all that nonsense.

  No. 5 is also unflinchingly frank: Ritwik knows quickly who wants him and who doesn’t. Rejection, however couched, even if it involves just tucking a penis in and moving away to a position beside another person, is still rejection and potentially bruising. But it’s all part of the game, or the logic of the meat market: would a shopper buy maggoty meat out of kindness to the poor lamb which had died or the butcher who didn’t have any better? Ritwik himself has learned, a bit too efficiently, to reject: it is best done swiftly otherwise he accuses himself of leading them on and feels slightly guilty about it. Also very pleased, because someone fancies him. To be in the position of saying ‘no’ to someone and turning him down is one of the greatest luxuries in life, he reckons. He has it here, sometimes.

  There are the beginnings of a fraternity here among some of the regulars, of whom Ritwik has become one. He smiles at some of them, or nods and acknowledges their presence and some are glad of this small social gesture. It’s not solidarity or anything, just a flickering registration of the commonality that brings them together underground. They don’t know each other’s names, where they live, or indeed, where they disappear once they reach the upper world. They only exist for each other in this strip-lit netherworld.

  Ritwik has had sex with a couple of these regulars. There’s Martin who works for British Rail, has short spiky hair and a goodnatured leer permanently stuck on his face. And the other man, whose name he doesn’t know or hasn’t bothered to find out, who takes off all his clothes, every single stitch, and leaves his cubicle door wide open while playing with himself and fingering his arsehole. He shuts it as soon as he hears new footsteps but if he thinks it’s safe he opens the door fully again.

  There is no rivalry within this set of people; in fact, when a newcomer arrives and shows an interest in one of them, the rest, who know they are not fancied, egg on the lucky one. They keep watch if the people they are familiar with are having sex in the open: it’s a give-and-take, this one – they get the pleasure of watching and in return they provide an early warning service.

  Sometimes they warn off each other from ‘time-wasters’, people who come and endlessly tease, hang around, show cock, peep, peer, lock themselves in cubicles for ages but ultimately never pick up anyone. Just as ‘genuine’ is a high recommendation in this world, ‘time-waster’ is equally pejorative. Ritwik is glad to have the more experienced ones dissuade him from running down such cul-de-sacs. It is, of course, a minor corollary of Sod’s Law that almost every ‘time-waster’ is gorgeous.

  Ritwik also realizes, in slow stages, that his is a type of minority appeal, catering to the ‘special interest’ group rather than the mainstream, because of his nationality, looks, skin colour. He keeps pushing the word ‘race’ away. The mainstream is blonde, white, young, slim. Or, more accurately, that is the desired mainstream. He doesn’t satisfy the crucial first two although the last two can influence the swing cruisers.

  One nameless man, to whose twoup two-down off the Woodstock Road he goes back one night from St. Giles, tells him how this world divides into two classes: the rice queens – men who fancy Oriental guys – and the potato queens – men who have a thing for white British men. That puts him in a type of classificatory limbo, although for lack of a better taxonomy the latter term will have to do. All in all, if the swing cottagers are taken into account, he doesn’t do too badly although it could be better, significantly better.

  This cottaging business is developing into a kind of fixture in Ritwik’s life. Every evening, or almost every evening, he finds his way here unerringly, like an insect following a pheromone track. Sometimes he does a round at the Angel and Greyhound Meadow under Magdalen Bridge, but it is a less familiar dance, not of the thoroughly rehearsed St. Giles variety. Besides, St. Giles offers solid shelter from the frequent rains and wind. And an embarrassment of riches.

  That, above all, is what he finds incredible – the sheer availability at practically all times, the accepted and understood fact that at certain types of places, at certain times, you can get what you want. It’s there for the taking; you just have to turn up and wait for it.

  But there are good days and bad days. There are cold evenings of nearly frozen feet, the socks like a thick sheath of ice, spent waiting, waiting for footsteps which are few and far between, evenings when the cottaging population seems to have become almost extinct, or when the few available ones do not please at all. To wait is to experience time in its purest form; he unders
tands how viscous, like treacle, it is in its unadulterated state. During these evenings, he paces around inside his cubicle, running to the hinge at the slightest sound. Some of these evenings seem to be jinxed – only the old, dirty-mac brigade seems to be out hunting.

  Sometimes he sits on the toilet seat and thinks of how to carry on the essay from where he left off, still lying on his desk under the weight of a bottle of Quink. Sentences flit and hide, like a sudden green flapping and screeching of parrots overhead: It is the bright and battering sandal of representation that bruises Hopkins, not dark nights of the soul, not theological despair, not the fugitive presence/absence of God. How to hold and contain, how to speak God’s grandeur, and nature, His book’s, in fallen language, language ‘soiled with trade’, other than to burn, buckle and bend the old language to forge a new? This straining against linguistic representation is acted out as a personal drama of despair, but, paradoxically enough, the bruising of the poet releases his scent, like camomile or thyme crushed . . . The rain beats out its peculiar music on the reinforced glass and concrete roof overhead. It lulls and comforts him. All he is waiting for is the sound of the right footsteps.

  IV.

  The room is enormous and for one which contains such a lot of furniture – an ornate gilt mirror, chairs, a sofa, a divan, a grand piano with its legs resting on small saucers of water to prevent insects from climbing it and building their colonies inside, and books, books everywhere, in glass-fronted dark wood cupboards taking up two entire walls and a large section of the third – it seems unusually full of light. The curtains are not heavy and the two doors are wide open, one to the courtyard, one to the interior, which is also filled with diffuse light on this sunny day, so rare for monsoon. Miss Gilby has time to take in the room and its furnishings before Bimala arrives accompanied by her husband for her first meeting with her English tutor and companion. Miss Gilby tries to steady her hand around her teacup; she is surprised she is as nervous with anticipation as possibly Bimala is this morning.

  She moves over to one of the bookcases; this appears to be the one that houses English books only. Complete works of Shakespeare. The collected poetry and prose of Milton. The works of Dr Johnson. There’s a lot of poetry: Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Browning, Tennyson. Beautiful octavo editions in brown leather with gold-tooled letters on the spine. She picks out one that says, laconically, ‘Lyrics’ only and starts leafing through it. Instantly she recognizes it as the volume of medieval English short poems so beloved of her and Violet, the very book from which they took turns to read aloud to each other on evenings spent in each other’s company only. A random poem catches her eye – ‘Now springes the spray,/All for love I am so seek/That slepen I ne may’ – then another: ‘He cam also stille/Ther his moder was,/As dew in Aprille/That falleth on the grass.’ She is so stabbed with nostalgia, with a kind of homesickness, that she puts the book back and carries on with the safer activity of reading only the titles on spines. Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas More, Locke. She moves to another cupboard. This contains only Bengali books. She has to bend slightly and crane her neck in order to read the writing on the spines. She can only manage to do this slowly in the beginning. Before she has had a chance to decipher some of the letters, as a little test of her fledgling literacy in the language, she notices an edition of Mrs. Beeton. Surely a mistake in shelving otherwise how could it have strayed here, among the Bengali books, she thinks, when she hears footsteps and the swish of fabric outside. Without hurrying, she moves to the sofa, sits and puts down her cup on the glass-covered table in front of her.

  As husband and wife enter the room, Miss Gilby stands up. Mr Roy Chowdhury says, ‘No, no, Miss Gilby, please remain seated, there’s no need to stand.’

  Bimala stands at his side, head down, the aanchol of her sari lifted up to the back of her head and over it, the rich magnetic blue of the cloth accentuating the deep vermilion parting in the middle. She looks as if she would prefer to be invisible or to hide behind her husband. Dark skinned, slightly built, arms with bangles – gold, coral, the mandatory white shell of the married woman – but nothing ostentatious, the sleeves of her simple blue blouse coming down to her elbows, a plain gold chain around her neck, small gold earrings. She refuses to look anywhere except at the coloured geometric designs on the tiled floor.

  Miss Gilby takes in a deep breath – her heart is beating very fast – and says as clearly as she can manage, ‘How do you do Bimala. It is such a pleasure to meet you at last,’ every word separate, enunciated, crystalline.

  Bimala keeps her head bowed. Her husband stands at her side and says something in Bengali, which Miss Gilby cannot quite follow. They advance into the room, she so draggingly that it seems she is willing the floor to open up and swallow her, and take their seats on the divan opposite.

  Mr Roy Chowdhury addresses Miss Gilby: ‘She’s feeling very shy. She’s been so nervous about this meeting that she has stayed up nearly three nights in a row.’ He laughs affectionately. Bimala whispers something quickly to him. The body language leaves Miss Gilby in no doubt that she is aghast that her husband should reveal this to her English tutor. Which means, Miss Gilby rejoices in her heart, Bimala understands a lot more English than she had been led to believe.

  ‘What is there to be nervous about? I’m here to be your friend.’ Miss Gilby tries to make her voice as amiable as possible.

  There is no verbal response from Bimala but she lifts up her face and looks at Miss Gilby. The large, doe-dark eyes take in the English lady, perhaps the first one she has ever seen at such close range. There is a hint of a smile in the corners of her mouth. She looks down almost immediately again.

  Mr Roy Chowdhury and Miss Gilby exchange glances that are at once amused and protective, the sort of look parents and teachers exchange over a child struck dumb by shyness. He says, ‘I think she will speak but it might take time.’

  Miss Gilby hastens to allay, ‘Don’t worry, this is just the first meeting. I’m sure she’ll open up with time, won’t you, Bimala?’ She turns her gaze on the young woman who still continues concentrating steadfastly on the patterns on the floor.

  Bimala says nothing then she whispers to her husband. Mr Roy Chowdhury nods enthusiastically, says something back, but Bimala seems to react to it with even greater withdrawal.

  Mr Roy Chowdhury asks Miss Gilby, ‘Bimala wants to serve you some sweets that she has made herself. She wants me to ask you if you will have some.’

  Miss Gilby immediately seizes her opportunity. ‘Yes, of course, I will be delighted. But on one condition.’ She pauses. Bimala looks up expectantly. Good, thinks Miss Gilby, she’s understood every single word.

  She speaks slowly and clearly, ‘I will be very happy to eat the sweets you have prepared, Bimala, but only if you ask me directly, not through your husband.’

  Mr Roy Chowdhury is pleasantly surprised by this move. He looks at the Englishwoman with admiration.

  The silence in the room is expectant. Mr Roy Chowdhury turns to his wife and asks gently, in English, ‘Did you hear that? Aren’t you going to ask her, Bimala?’

  Bimala has her hands clasped tightly as if in desperate prayer. She whispers something to her husband and before he can say anything, she gets up and runs out of the room, a flurry of swishing sari and tinkling bangles and anklets.

  Mr Roy Chowdhury breaks the surprised silence by chuckling out loud. Miss Gilby joins in too. He says, ‘It’s all a bit new for her. It’s been only a year that she has stepped out of the andarmahal.’

  ‘Please don’t apologize, I understand how terrifying it must be for her. Where did she disappear?’

  ‘I think she’s gone to get you tea. I’ll be surprised if she comes back. She’ll probably send one of the servants.’

  She smiles in acknowledgement. They sit talking for a while – he asks her if she is comfortable, if she needs anything, apologizes for any oversight on his part – he’s unfailingly gentle and courteous.

  Fr
om the sound of footsteps outside, they know that Bimala isn’t the one who is approaching the room; there is no music from her bangles and anklets, but instead the gentle tremor of crockery and cutlery being transported carefully on a tray. A servant appears at the threshold. Mr Roy Chowdhury says something, he enters, puts the huge tea tray down on the table between them and departs.

  ‘Good, tea’s arrived. Now, Miss Gilby, how do you take your tea?’

  There is a great deal of china on the plate, all white, and the teapot is covered in a cosy that has been beautifully embroidered with a motif of songbirds and creepers and roses. Miss Gilby is certain it is Bimala’s handiwork, a special object to be taken out for a special occasion, or maybe even made for this one. The tray is laden with small dishes containing about six varieties of sweets, four of each.

  ‘Goodness,’ Miss Gilby exclaims, ‘is this all her work? There’s just far too much of it for two. Won’t she be joining us?’

  ‘I doubt very much. But you must try one of each, at the very least. Otherwise, she’ll think you don’t like her.’ He can’t help smiling when he says this.

  Miss Gilby laughs: she is not wound up inside any more. As she watches Mr Roy Chowdhury pour tea, there is once again the sound of footfall outside and, along with it, the jingle of bangles, the rustling of cloth. It stops suddenly. Expecting Bimala, both Mr Roy Chowdhury and Miss Gilby look up. There is a long pause but no one enters. They look at each other and exchange a conspiratorial smile.

  ‘I think she wants to hear what you think of her sweets. Or what the two of us have planned for her,’ Mr Roy Chowdhury whispers.

  Miss Gilby whispers too, ‘Does she know that we know?’