A Matter of Marriage (18 page)

Then a warm hand had touched his shoulder and a friendly voice sounded in his ear. “Come, brother. Come on inside. Lost your topi?”

He turned to see a man his own age in full beard and the flowing robes of a
dishdasha
, and tried to conjure a sensible reply over the hollowness inside. Words would not come.

“I have some spare topis inside, brother. Come with me to wash.”

Tariq tried again to speak. “I'm not . . .” but his throat had seized up. How long since he had spoken to a man like himself? He could not speak the words of denial.

Tariq's legs moved in spite of himself. Shame assailed him when he was led into the shoe room, and he stepped on his heels to remove his shoes like a boy unable to untie his laces. He felt a topi placed on his head from behind, and the words he should have uttered outside the mosque came to him unbidden.
Allah aftah li abwaba rahmatika.
O Allah, open Your gates of mercy for me.

He was steered into the washroom, crowded with other men stooped and crouching over taps and troughs. He bent down to strip off his socks and roll up his trousers. The old routine that he used to follow with his father at Ramadan and Eid reasserted itself. He began to wash hands, mouth, nose, face, forearms, head, ears, nape, feet and toes, all in the marvellous comfort of prescribed order. He had come home.

No guiding hand was necessary now as he walked into the open hall of the masjid and took his place on the jigsaw puzzle of carpets, the hundreds of men standing shoulder to shoulder. The
kutba
had just finished and the imam was descending the
minbar
to lead the congregation. Tariq's throat was still closed so he could not speak his
niyyah
, his intention, but he bowed his head in submission to the imam's “
Takbir!
” As the slow ballet of the
raka'ahts
began, his breaths deepened, and the multitude of voices around him resonated through his body:
Allahu Akbar.
God is great.

His throat opened and his voice flew out to join them. “
Assalaamu 'alayna wa'ala 'ibaadillahi-s-saalihin.
” May peace be upon us, the righteous servants of Allah.

Seated on his left calf with the toes of his right foot flexed forward for the
Tasha-hud
, he gloried in the peculiar, familiar muscular tension of the position, and extended his right forefinger toward the mihrab and Mecca. This is my destiny. His eyes had followed the line of his finger toward the short, broad back of the man in front of him. This is where I belong.

—

J
UST LOOK WHERE
all that had gotten him. Tariq felt the breeze strengthen and caught an oak leaf as it tumbled. He turned to see where his sister was. Who was he to tell Munni where she belonged?

“Hey,” he said to her. “It's up to you, yeah?”

She was silent.

“I'm not going to make you do anything. We can go back to the Abbey, hide out in the stables till Henry's gone if you want. Go visit Mum and Dad another day. It doesn't matter.”

“No.” She dug a toe into the ground. “Let's get it over with.” He returned to her and picked up her
chunna
, draping the muslin across her shoulders so that it hung behind her. The sky was darkening from pale blue to violet, making the silver embroidery on her top shimmer. “Come on then.”

They skirted the garden hedge, around to the front door of the cottage. Tariq knocked, with Rohimun standing behind him. The door swung open with no one visible, like some B-grade horror film, and he repressed a groan of his own at his family's need to wring every drop of drama out of a situation, Asian-style.

He moved forward, but Rohimun did not. “Come
on
.”

Her head was tucked down so he couldn't see her expression, and her arms were tightly folded. He grabbed her tunic, pulled hard to get her into the hallway, and nearly fell over Mum, who'd been hiding behind the door.

“Shush, shush!” she admonished before he'd said a word. “It is all fine, fine!” But she was clutching the talisman pinned to her blouse, like she always did when she was saying what she wanted the truth to be, rather than what it was.

Tariq looked toward the sitting-room doorway, and his mother nodded at him in vigorous confirmation.

“Go there. Go!” Then she threw an end of the
chunna
over Rohimun's hair and started to push her down the hall, walking behind her and telling her in a piercing whisper, “Kitchen now. Go, go. The men will talk first.”

As Tariq walked through the open doorway into the sitting room, he could see his father standing at the room's far end, facing the fireplace, one hand on his chin and apparently deep in thought. Jesus. He'd seen this before. Dad was playing Amitabh Bachchan as the sorrowing tycoon disappointed by his children in the big reconciliation scene out of
Khabi Kushi Khabi Gum
. And milking it even more than Amitabh did. He walked to the center of the room.

“
Salaamalaikum
, Abba.”

His dad was in a cravat for the occasion and wearing his gold rings. Mum had weaned him off these for work years ago, having been quick to realize that at Oxford, striped ties with a regimental feel were the thing, and that in some circles even a wedding band on a man was inappropriate. Trust him to go by the Bollywood book tonight.

Dad half turned, and Tariq bent and reached for his father's feet, but was gently prevented.

“My son, my son . . .”

He was drawn upward to be kissed on the forehead, twice. He'd seen his father just two hours ago. The perfume had been ladled on as well.

“Abba.” Tariq reined in his temper, tried to match his father's tone. “Your eldest daughter Rohimun, your little Munni, she's here, to ask for your forgiveness.”

Dr. Choudhury gave an exaggerated start and faced the fireplace, one palm raised in negation. “I have no daughter by that name.”

Pompous bastard.

“
Dad.
Abba.” Tariq took a steadying breath, alarmed at his own welling anger. “There's been enough sorrow already, yeah? She's suffered and she needs your help. Family help.”

The palm did not move. “I have no—”

“Look, Dad.” He could feel his neck and scalp filling with heat. Rohimun could probably hear everything, and the prick knew it. His father was enjoying himself. He'd already decided to accept her back but he wanted to enjoy his big scene first, really draw it out. Didn't matter that he was making her bleed.

“She's here, yeah, like you
asked
her to be. Last Tuesday.”

Dad gave him a reproachful look, making it clear that Tariq wasn't playing his part properly. He gave an Amitabh-style sorrowful paternal sigh and reverted to the mantelpiece. The raised palm did not waver, and Tariq could see, reflected in the mantel mirror, his father's approximation of noble sorrow overlain by an expectant complacency. The urge Tariq felt to grab him by his stupid cravat and tell him everything, tell him how it really was, rose in him like a wave.

The back of his father's head showed the same thinning white hair and hint of scalp that he himself would have in twenty years. He had a dizzying sensation of blood draining away from his face, and drifted toward his father, his hands closed into fists. But as he moved, there was a sound from the hallway, a gasp, and he saw his mother's horrified face in the mantel mirror. He felt sick. Jesus Christ, what had he been about to do?

He whirled around and strode out of the sitting room into the hall. His mother was standing with her back to the closed front door, watching him, her lips pressed thin. Shame overwhelmed him, and he went to touch her feet, but she stepped aside, opening the door and whispering, “Your father, he must think you have left. Go, go. Munni is out back, on the patio. Go to her now, around from the front. Be quiet.” She shoved him outside.

He looked back at her, his clever mother, then she slammed the door hard behind him, giving Dr. Choudhury the desired message that he had, to all appearances, lost both son and eldest daughter.

Tariq stood still, breathing fast, dazed. He'd never gotten so close to real violence before, with his own family. What was happening to him?

He walked blindly into the little front garden and turned to face the house. It was proper twilight now. He could hear floorboards creaking in the hallway, and the rise and fall of his father's voice, perhaps less pompous now, a little hesitant. Or maybe that was just his own wishful thinking. He started to make his way quietly around to the rear of the cottage. Would Mum do this for him as well, fight with cunning and flattery, treats and lies, to get him back, if she knew?

Around the back, he found Rohimun sitting on the stone flags of the patio, hugging her knees. Her head and neck were bare. He stood in front of her. “You alright?”

She gestured to a basket next to her, lined with paper towels and filled with samosas. “Have something to eat. Mum's made samosas.”

Tariq thought he could see Rohimun's
chunna
in the darkened garden. It was quite a way away, a little bundle caught up in the shrubbery. “Did Mum put you out here?”

“Yeah. She took me into the kitchen first. Then of course she wanted to go back and listen, so she sent me out here with the basket. Look.” She pointed toward the Abbey, only just visible against the last of the setting sun. Three small lights, torches probably, moved slowly back toward the Lodge. “My visitors are going home already.”

Rohimun seemed relaxed, almost cheerful: very different to what he'd expected. Perhaps it hadn't all sunk in yet. Yet she'd been stressed enough before. He felt sick. Mum had seen something of his state, had acted to stop him going further.

“What did Mum say?”

“She wasn't too bad. She calls me her
naughty girl
now.”

“What does that make coolie-girl Baby?”

“The good one, I guess.”

He sat down and managed a tight smile. “She'd be pleased, yeah.”

“Does Baby know what's going on?”

“No. She was down this week, though, and she knows I took you home, so you're around somewhere. But we'd be mad to tell her. She's not called Sky-News Shunduri for nothing.”

“She'll be really pissed off then.” Rohimun put on the rapid, high-pitched drawl of their Asian princess sister. “
No one
ever tells me
anything
, yaah
.
”

He reached across his sister to choose a samosa, but once he had it in his hands, it no longer looked so good. “I can't take any more of this tonight.”

“What do you mean? What happened, Bai?”

He let his head drop until it rested on his forearms, muffling his voice. “I almost lost it with Dad.” They could've all been eating together now, if he'd handled it better, let Dad stretch it out, do all the posturing he wanted. If that had happened, if they had welcomed Munni back, it would have been a sign.

“Maybe it's for the best.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“I just mean, you've . . . we've . . . tried . . .” She looked embarrassed and uncomfortable.

He couldn't believe it. This was all wrong. Angry and resentful before, relieved now. It didn't make any sense. She should have been, should still be, crushed with anxiety about what Mum and Dad thought, what was to be done, whether she could ever be part of the family again. How could she not be when he was feeling all these things, for her as well as himself?

He stood up. “I'll get your
chunna
.”

“I don't want it.”

“Don't talk rubbish.”

Rohimun scrambled up as well, her voice high and tight. “I don't
want
the stupid
chunna
. It's you that wants it. You're the one that keeps pushing all this, not me. I never wanted any of this.”

Tariq, not trusting himself to speak, turned and strode into the shadowy garden. His whole family was fucking mad. Dad playing the Bollywood Abba, Mum maneuvering them all like fuckin' chess pieces, now Rohimun saying she didn't want to come home in the first place. After all he'd done. Not to mention that he was turning into some kind of
gundah
psychopath, wanting to beat his own father up. Why did he ever think he could just come back?

He stopped at the far edge of the lawn and gazed back. The mound of compost, backlit by the light from the house, seemed like a crouching, mourning woman. To never be allowed to return. What would that be like? To be treated by his family as if he'd already died?

Rohimun was cautiously picking her way down the garden toward him. With the house lights behind her and without her
chunna
, she looked like some
gora
girl in jeans and a shirt. When she reached him, she didn't gesture toward his feet, say
Sorry, Bai, sorry
. Her head was high, her eyes met his. He braced himself for more anger, but she took his hand without a word. They stood silently in the cool prickle of falling dew and crisp grass. He understood nothing anymore.

“What sort of Desi family are we?” Her voice was calm now. “Fucked up, I reckon, like all the Anglo-Desis.”

His chest heaved in a half-laugh, half-sob. “Yeah.”

So these were the new rules. No apologies for swearing in front of him, no
chunna
. No need for family ties, perhaps? He felt sick. But then she put her arms around him, and her soft plumpness, so like their mother's, leaned into his chest. He rested his chin on her head.

They stood like that for a time, until Tariq's breathing slowed and his nausea receded. Perhaps it didn't matter what his sister was, what she did, as long as she didn't abandon him, because he would fall, fail, without her. He could never do this on his own.

Eventually, quiet now, they drifted together back up the garden and sat down again on the patio's edge. And then they talked properly for the first time in years.