A Matter of Marriage (36 page)

“What's happening wiv Affa?” she said. “I haven't heard nuffink,
as usual
.”

She sounded like a coolie-girl. He saw Dad raise his eyebrows, and even Mum was briefly silenced before asking her if she had any new favorite dishes.

As they drove home, Tariq found himself looking, with a lurking suspicion, for the man with the car he'd seen in the break in the hedgerows, but the narrow laneway was now deserted.

But when they arrived at Windsor Cottage, the same black car was already there, on the verge, and someone was pacing next to it. Kareem fucking Guri. Tariq met his deceitful sister's eyes in the rear-view mirror and watched her poor attempt at surprise and puzzlement over Mum and Dad's questions. No wonder she'd been able to travel with so much luggage, hadn't been affected by all the train cancellations.

Tariq parked up in the drive. Kareem turned toward the car and waved hello, but Tariq ignored him and walked to the boot and started lifting bags out.

Shunduri joined him there. “It's so nice to be home, Baiyya,” she said, using her little-girl voice.

He dropped the last suitcase on the gravel and slammed the boot shut. “Drove up here with your boyfriend, then?” he said, but quietly so Mum and Dad wouldn't hear.

Shunduri brought her face close to his, and hissed at him through the fabric. “I caught the train! I didn't . . .”

Tariq picked up the two heaviest cases. “Leaves on the line, yeah. Save it, Baby.”

She flounced off, leaving him with the bags. He took two steps with them, but then Kareem was blocking his path saying
Salaamalaikum, Baiyya
and trying to touch his feet. Tariq suppressed an urge to kick him and walked around him. He wasn't greeting no boyfriend.

He stopped at the front door and looked back to see his father at a loose end, and Kareem half inside one of the rear car doors, wrestling with the last suitcase, which appeared to have become stuck between the front and back seats. Even Mum seemed a bit lost for words: torn between pleasure at having her daughter home and irritation at the timing of Kareem's arrival. Did Mum and Dad suspect anything? Surely Mum would.

—

M
RS.
B
EGUM EYED
her youngest daughter, her black robes billowing out around her on the lino as she squatted on the kitchen floor to pull out the largest silver tray. All sorts of thoughts were going through Mrs. Begum's head. She had a clear picture in her mind of Tariq's final visit home from university in full beard, Punjabi-pyjamas and topi, shouting at Munni for her Western clothes. And an older memory, of how she, Syeda Begum, had dressed to hide her stomach in the weeks of argument and shame that had led to her own marriage.

“Take that off, Baby,” she said. “We are home now.”

Shunduri looked up at her. “Kareem's still here, innit?”

“Take-it-off. We are not Arabs.”

Shunduri placed the tray on the table and, in slow motion, started to undo the front buttons of the enveloping drapery, her veil still in place. Mrs. Begum folded her arms to stop them from slapping her into speediness.

Tariq's voice, then Kareem's, could be heard in the passage.

She laid a hand on her daughter's arm. “Stay here and get the tray ready. And mangoes.”

When Mrs. Begum stepped into the hall, she saw Kareem at the front doorway, loaded down with boxes, much as he was the first time he'd visited. He genuflected awkwardly in a sort of half-bow. She felt a wave of heat, of hot rage, move through her body at the thought of the opium that he had brought into their house.

Had he known? No matter: even if he had, she had no choice; they had to be brought together, for everyone's sake. All must be forgotten, for the sake of their family's future. No one could know but her. She swallowed her anger and gave him a false smile and a look as sharp and cold as the blade of her
dhaa
. Take that and beware. We will love you like a son if you marry her, and kill you like a dog if you do not.

Dr. Choudhury appeared from the sitting room, which allowed Kareem to make his
salaams
. Mrs. Begum popped back into the kitchen to remind Baby not to come out until she collected her, as there was no need for Kareem to think that they were eager. When she walked in, Shunduri, headscarf still in place, was in the middle of doing the buttons of her
abaya
back up.
Furu shaitan
, little devil that she was. “Stay,” Mrs. Begum hissed and returned to the sitting room.

There, Kareem was distributing his gifts: a whole durian for her in all its stinking, prickly glory; a GPS each for Dr. Choudhury and Tariq; and a large, brightly colored book, for the “other” daughter. Her husband read out the book's title in a neutral voice,
The World's Greatest Artists
, and put it to one side without comment. No present for Shunduri: Kareem had come with a purpose then.

Mrs. Begum relaxed a little and asked him did he know how Mrs. Guri was, and he bobbed his head and passed on Mrs. Guri's respects and all the news of Brick Lane with as much deference as the touchiest elder could have wanted. Did they realize, he added, he had a particular reason to know the Guris and be grateful to them: they had made him their son for the visa, and had been as good to him as his own parents?

Mrs. Begum listened to Kareem's proffered history and again reviewed her memory of her last conversation with that snake Mrs. Guri. She had never said that she knew Kareem so well, that he was her adopted son. So Mrs. Guri had warned her, but not promoted the match. Why not? Did she not think they were good enough for the Guris, with their big restaurant and their daughter married to an accountant? She realized she was staring at their visitor so hard that he paused, swallowed and seemed to lose the thread of what he was saying. Well, she would see about that. She would call Shunduri in soon then, no more delays, and she would see how they were together, and get to all the bottoms of their lies and disrespectings, this day today.

D
R.
C
HOUDHURY WOULD
want to know at once. Henry Bourne took the shortcut to Windsor Cottage from the Abbey: downhill to where the river turned and almost doubled back on itself, then straight uphill, using Mrs. Choudhury's colorful washing flapping on the line at the top of the hill as a guide.

Henry looked up every so often as he toiled uphill, to make sure he had not veered off course. He really should consider doing some sort of fitness thing: he and Richard used to run up here without thinking about it. Most unfair that Richard never seemed to put on any weight, even though it was Henry who walked the dogs twice a day. And he knew for a fact his brother did nothing but paperwork.

By the time he reached the cottage, he was sweating in the afternoon sun, and there was a big black car that looked familiar parked in the lane out the front. He hesitated: he hadn't considered they'd have visitors. But the thought of delaying his news and having to immediately retrace his steps up the even steeper rise to the Abbey, decided him. He would only stop in for a minute, perhaps have a glass of water from Mrs. Choudhury and, hopefully, persuade Dr. Choudhury to drop by later this afternoon.

He halted at the front door and flapped his arms about a bit to air his armpits. His shirt felt too tight and his hair was sticking to his forehead. Oh well, nothing ventured.

He knocked on the door. “Hello! Helloo!”

Curtains twitched at a front window, and he averted his eyes. But the next instant there was Dr. Choudhury, opening the door and smiling.

“Well, hello
,
” he said again, relieved and pleased. Good old Choudhury.

“Henry . . .”

“So pleased I could catch you. I've, ah, got some . . .” Only then did he notice Tariq, standing behind Dr. Choudhury. “Oh, hello there! Beautiful weather, isn't it! Just going on and on!”

There was a pause, and Henry tried not to squirm on the outside.

Tariq pushed the front door wider. “Come on in, Henry. Good to see you.”

Henry entered the hall and stopped. “I'm so sorry, you've got visitors. I should have called . . .”

“No, no,” said Tariq, his hand on Henry's shoulder pushing him forward to follow Dr. Choudhury into the sitting room. “This is Kareem Guri, up from London.”

“Ah, yes. We've met, haven't we. Good to see you again. Lovely day, isn't it?”

“Yeah, man.” Kareem grinned and pumped his hand hard, several times. “You've been keepin' fit then?”

Henry, disconcerted, eyed Kareem's breadth of shoulder and bulging pectorals. “Oh, ah, yes. Just walking, you know. Lots of walking.”

“And you know my sister, Shunduri.” Tariq gestured toward a tall black-robed figure sitting next to Mrs. Choudhury.

Henry stepped forward, his hand out. “Good Lord. Ah, hello again, Shunduri, nice weather . . .” He dropped his untouched hand, feeling he'd done something wrong but unable to work out what.

“So, ah, Shunduri,” he said, trying to make up for his involuntary exclamation, “how was the drive down from London?”

There was silence, and he had the definite impression that, yet again, he'd done the wrong thing. Perhaps they'd had an accident? But that car didn't have a scratch on it. A speeding fine?

Kareem's hand hit Henry's shoulderblade with a gentle smack. “The drive was good, man. All good. Shunduri came by train.”

“Oh. Well, that's nice too.”

Another pause: perhaps they'd had a tiff. Or something. He couldn't think of a thing to say. He stood on one leg, then the other.

Mrs. Choudhury appeared at his elbow. “Cup-of-tea?”

“Oh, ah, I would love to, Mrs. Choudhury, but perhaps a glass of water, if it's not too much trouble. Just a flying visit really. Dr. Choudhury, I was actually hoping I could have a word? About the Abbey.”

Dr. Choudhury, sitting in a wing-back chair near the window, gestured to the seat next to his. “Please. Make yourself comfortable. Tell us all. My son would like to hear as well.”

Henry sat down in the proffered chair with a small sigh of relief. “It's all the upshot of a last-minute decision really, that I, ah, took a bit of a punt on, earlier this week.” He glanced anxiously at Dr. Choudhury. “I hadn't been able to get hold of you, Dr. Choudhury, on the Thursday, or after, you understand . . .”

“Yes, yes.”

“Well, ah, a couple of archaeology students from Swindon Tech called me Monday morning and asked if I had anywhere in the grounds that they could excavate. Frightfully keen they were: said they'd be properly supervised and all that, by their Honors supervisor. At first, you know, I couldn't think of anywhere, but at the last minute I remembered the filled-in area in the eastern wall of the long gallery. You know, the one we originally thought was a walled-up window? Well, the next thing I knew they had drop cloths on the floor and rope around the perimeter and had dug out this niche. And it's
tiled.
”

Dr. Choudhury leaned forward in his chair. “Tiled?”

“Yes. I just had a look at it now. Rows and rows of tiles in a sort of flattish semicircle. They haven't excavated all of it yet, but it looks as if the whole niche is tiled. I've never seen anything like it before. All I can think is that the Reverend Bourne was behind it all. Ah, sorry, everyone: he was the first Bourne to own the Abbey, about a century and a half ago. So, I thought that the reverend might have tiled the niche in order to put a stove in there to warm the gallery in winter.”

Dr. Choudhury stood and started to pace. “Any sign of a stove, or a flue?”

“No, that's just it. None at all. Though we haven't gone all the way up to the top of the niche yet. Those students are at it right now. Pretty keen they are too. I remember when I was young—”

Tariq interrupted. “What sort of tiles?”

“They're not really like anything I've seen before. I can't guess at the era, to tell you the truth. They're mainly a blue glaze, then some green with raised gold marks, sort of swirls.”

“Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts maybe?”

“I suppose. That would date it to around the Reverend Bourne's time. And he was happy enough to put heaters and running water into the family wing, and tack on the conservatory. But all my research says that as far as the Abbey itself went, he was a stickler for restoring its original features and stopping there.”

“Well,” said Dr. Choudhury, his tone brisk and happy. “It looks as if my duties here are not yet completed.”

“I didn't mean to . . .”

“Not at all: I'm very glad that you came here, Henry. This could be an important find. It brooks no delay. No delay at all.”

Dr. Choudhury looked expectantly at Tariq, who stood up from his chair and smiled at his father and then at Henry. “Nice day for a walk, yeah.”

Kareem followed. “Yeah, it's nice weather, innit? I'd be honored to come along as well, Uncle, Baiyya.”

“Yes, wonderful, the more the merrier,” said Henry. “Is, ah, Richard around? I haven't seen him all morning and I thought he . . .”

Mrs. Choudhury reappeared just then, carrying a large silver tray heaped with samosas, diced mango and glasses of water. “Richard is not here.”

“Oh. He's been out all morning, so I thought he might be . . .”

Mrs. Choudhury gave Henry a look that seemed to push him toward the door. “Go, go now,” she said. “All of you. Stop. Take one,” and she shoved the tray toward Henry and Tariq. “Take a samosa. You can eat them on the way. Tariq.”

“Yes, Amma?”

“Take that too.” She nodded toward a shiny metal container that was sitting on the hall floor, and Tariq scooped it up without a murmur and headed out.

Kareem set off after Tariq, and Shunduri started to do the same, but quick as a flash Mrs. Choudhury stepped in front of her with the tray.

“Take this, Baby. Into the kitchen.
Take it
.”

Shunduri made an odd little noise that sounded to Henry almost like a growl, but she took the tray.

Mrs. Choudhury, her hands freed, made a shooing motion at Henry. “Go. I will talk with my daughter now. Go.”

Henry, pleased at so much general interest, hurried to catch up with Dr. Choudhury, who was at the front door. “I bet there'll be a few people at the university who'll want to hear about this,” he said. Dr. Choudhury grunted in a non-committal way, and Henry added, “You might get another paper out of the Abbey yet, all to the academic good, eh!”

Dr. Choudhury still did not reply, and as his walking speed continued to increase and Henry was feeling the beginning of a stitch, he let himself fall behind. Perhaps Dr. Choudhury was being careful to reserve judgement until after he'd seen the niche himself—the most sensible thing to do, of course.

Excited though Henry was, it was also rather galling for him to find, on the return journey, Dr. Choudhury as well as the others moving inexorably ahead of him as he struggled up the hill, samosa in hand, to the Abbey's main entrance. Twice in quick succession was too much. He put his head down and did his best, but he was puffed before he reached the top. It was awfully decent of Kareem to come back and wait with him while he recovered.

Henry looked up at him. “I don't suppose you could eat another samosa?”

“No problems, man, not wiv Auntie's homemades. Give it here. So how old is this building, anyway?”

“Oh, ah, its oldest part dates back to the twelfth century and then, ah, various bits were added after. It came into my family about a hundred and fifty years ago. That's when the Reverend Bourne got hold of it. He's my, ah, great-great-great-uncle. Phew.” He straightened up.

Kareem's hand squeezed his shoulder lightly. “Alright now, man?”

“Oh, yes, never better.”

They walked together through the Abbey's front entrance, and Henry eyed the main staircase with aversion. He decided to take every opportunity to stop and explain the provenance of the various paintings that they passed on the way up. Kareem's favorite, the executioner, still glowered at the stairway's lowest point, but there were three other Orientalist beauties to give him a bit of a rest before they got to the first landing.

—

W
HEN
T
ARIQ AND
his father reached the long gallery, Thea was there, in jeans and a t-shirt, working next to the archaeology students at the niche. She was squatting and seemed to be collecting some small items from the surface of the drop cloths. One student was on a stepladder, gently scraping at the ceiling of the niche, while the other brushed at its tiled wall. Even through the dust, the rich deep blue of the tiles was striking.

Thea must have heard them approaching across the floorboards, because she turned and held something out for them to look at. In her palm were some tile fragments, in the same deep blue as the rest.

“Look.” She licked her finger and rubbed the glaze, and on the dark blue a small gold star appeared, then another.

Tariq spoke impulsively. “There's no way that's Art Nouveau.”

Thea didn't look at him. “I'd agree there. Not even English, I think.”

His father hurrumphed. “French, perhaps? Puts me in mind of those ceilings of stars in Sainte-Chapelle. And the Hampton Court chapel. But they were painted on the plasterwork between the vaulting, Tudor fashion.”

Thea shook her head doubtfully. “It looks familiar to me somehow, from something I saw growing up, in Patmos. I can't think what though. There's nothing like this around here, in the original Abbey, or any of the Bourne additions.”

Tariq and his father ducked under the rope and stepped onto the drop cloths. There was limited room and so the students retreated, heading straight for their water bottles and drinking thirstily. A haze of cement dust filled the air.

They moved in further still, into the niche itself, hard up against the stepladder. This close, the niche had an exotic quality: it felt both ancient and otherworldly, and Tariq saw his father shut his eyes, as if he also was trying to absorb, and understand, the unique, unnameable quality of this space.

Tariq copied Thea, licking his finger and running it down one of the tiles on the dadoed portion. Its green became a brilliant emerald, with embossed loops and swirls of glittering yellow. He drew in his breath. “That's real gold in the underglaze, isn't it?” he whispered to his father.

“Quite likely.” Dad bent down until his nose was almost on the tile. “Handmade,” he said. “And very old.”

“How old can tiles be?”

“Well, I do believe the Assyrians provided the earliest, ah, non-Chinese examples. Glazed bricks, using an alkaline glaze colored by copper.”

“That's old.”

“I hasten to add, these are not likely to be that old. They are true tiles, not glazed bricks . . . The oldest European tiles would be fifteenth-century—Gothic, in other words. But I think, I cannot be certain, these tiles may be older than that. As old perhaps as the Abbey itself.”

—

B
Y THE TIME
they reached the long gallery, Henry was exhausted.

“Jesus Christ,” said Kareem. “You could play football in here.”

“Well,” said Henry, leaning against the doorframe for just a moment, “we did, as children. And cricket, I think. No room for boundary fielders though.”

At the far end of the gallery, Dr. Choudhury and Tariq could be seen standing in the niche, with Thea on the edge of the roped-off area, examining something in her hand. Henry pushed himself upright and pointed at the niche.

“There it is, Kareem. The cause of all our excitement.”

They started to walk down the gallery, and he waved at the two students, grey with dust, who were sitting slumped on the floor with their legs out, holding water bottles and looking like survivors of a desert sandstorm.