The Cambridge Curry Club (7 page)

The presence of the police car was initially
reassuring
, but the officer drove off an hour later. Mr Chatterjee bolted every door and window in his house, placing chairs and tables and heavy objects against every exit. He wondered whether he should leave the lights on, but the electricity bill during Durga Puja and Diwali had been high, and prudence prevailed.

Long after Swarnakumari was asleep, Mr Chatterjee continued to sit upright in his bed, a torch and the cordless phone at his side, the cord from his pyjamas
dangling nervously as he trembled. He felt the warmth from Swarnakumari’s soft folds touching his thigh. How peacefully she slept! The last words she uttered before she closed her eyes were that God and Guru Ma had taught her to fear nothing. He marvelled at his wife’s composure; she squealed at the sight of a
cockroach
, but could be as steady as a lighthouse in a storm. Her faith in her mentor had been an irritant until this moment; perhaps it was time to test her Guru Ma’s wisdom.

He leaned over and felt his way to the prayer book that he knew lay on her bedside table. Shining his torch low, he stared at the first page. Under the picture of a woman with streaming black hair was the blueprint for a spiritual life. He read Tagore’s words from
Gitanjali
, and, inspired, decided he, too, would make his life simple and straight like a flute made of reed for the Divine One to fill with music.

Mr Chatterjee continued to read with increasing respect, discovering the philosophy of life that his wife attempted to adopt; it included purity of action and heart, compassion for those less fortunate, and a homily on health. The consumption of vegetables and fruit such as apple, pear, pineapple and melon was advocated to reduce the
tamasik
destructive forces in the body. Mr Chatterjee grimaced as he read the word ‘pineapple’. He put away the torch, as worried about the life of the battery as his own, and lay next to Swarnakumari, inhaling her healing softness again. He extended a
hesitant
arm, his body cupping her back. Then he
remembered
; he had forgotten to find out what Guru Ma had to say about sex. As he groped in the dark for the light switch, there was a sudden thud and a crash. Mr
Chatterjee leaped out of bed in alarm, forgetting his arthritic knee, reached for the telephone and shakily called the police. A moment later he heard his daughter’s incredulous voice calling. Mr Chatterjee had forgotten about Mallika’s return that evening.

The police car he had summoned to his house woke the neighbourhood; those who had cats and those who had dogs; those who were elderly and those who were young; those who went to work and those who did not. The same officer emerged from his car. The
Neighbourhood
Watch Co-ordinator had been shamed.

Sitting upright on his leather sofa the next day, Mr Chatterjee answered the policewoman’s questions about his neighbours Mary and David. When had he last seen David and Mary? How had Mary seemed to him? Had he ever overheard any disagreement between the couple? Did he know the nature of David’s medication?

Prefacing his every reply with the words, ‘As the Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator …’ Mr
Chatterjee
proceeded to display his powers of observation and his legal competence to the young WPC. He inquired whether he should send a letter to the
neighbourhood
about the burglary. She raised her eyebrows. ‘This was no burglary, it’s fairly straightforward.’

Mr Chatterjee was perplexed; he decided to write a letter on the following Monday to Cambridgeshire Police on the public’s right to know. A day later he had the distinction as the Neighbourhood Watch
Co-ordinator
of hearing the news first. Mary had killed David. She had poisoned him and confessed, ringing the police herself. She was in a low-security prison, and her lawyers felt that a reduced sentence could be
obtained on account of the blinding headaches she had been suffering and for which she had received no medication.

Mr Chatterjee was appalled. Calculating the time of death, he realised that David had been murdered a few feet away from him at the very moment he was
watching
an adult film on the ‘Mute’ button. The body had lain in rigor mortis until the morning. It was said that Mary was clearly not in her right mind. She had told the police that she drew back the curtains to let in the sun, and brought David his morning cup of tea, placing the tray by his bedside. She had drunk her own before ringing the police to say that David did not want any more.

That evening Mr. Chatterjee felt nauseous and, for the first time since he could remember, was unable to eat Swarnakumari’s macher jhol, dal and rice. He looked at his wife’s plump form without comfort, and a dry fear invaded his being of ageing, waning life force, sense and faculty slipping away invisibly like the dew with the first warm rays of the sun, of burden and loss. It had been easy to be young, and it might be difficult to be old. The unformed questions hovered, taking voluminous shape as he looked at Swarnakumari’s placid face. What were her unfathomable depths? Could she one day take on the aspect of Kali in a mood of vengeance, slashing his world with a word, a swoop, a sword? Could she dismember him in his sleep? He imagined the sheets covered in blood, his blood;
afterwards
, she would lovingly apply bandages to his body to stem the thickening flow.

He considered the large chopping knife lying in the kitchen drawer. Mrs Banerjee, after all, had been given
to menopausal moods and had thrown objects in
threatening
rage, her large kohl-lined eyes flashing. Banerjee had told him so. It had happened almost fifteen years ago, he had added reassuringly, but Mr Chatterjee remained discomfited. Banerjee said he had simply stepped out of the way as an object whizzed past, and retirement had brought its own prudence; she would never hurl glass again. Men who had already lost their hair lost the last shreds of dignity at this age, mourned Banerjee. It was best to let women have their way; the alternatives were too dangerous, he joked seriously. His cousin Bikash’s wife had trashed an entire collection of Matchbox Dinky cars painstakingly acquired by Bikash over thirty years. They would have been worth a small fortune, his son-in-law Heinz had lamented. Afraid he had revealed too much, Banerjee hurriedly changed the subject to the lack of kidney donors among South Asians in Britain.

Mr Chatterjee listened to Banerjee without his
customary
attentiveness. He was still deeply affected by the deaths of his neighbours, for Mary had died of
natural
causes in prison two weeks later. He could no longer be certain of his judgement, nor of his
observations
of human nature, but of one thing he was convinced: devotion came in several forms.

A year later, Mr Chatterjee was still deeply affected – by his new neighbours. Prior to Mary’s funeral, there had been a flurry of activity from the two sons, who arrived in two matching self-drive vans and dismantled the home, piling the furniture and other items in the front garden as if for an auction. Peering through the net curtains, Mr Chatterjee witnessed the efficiency that
could be produced by the equal distribution of blue and red sticky labels.

A
For Sale
sign had been stuck by a careless estate agent in the hedge on Mr Chatterjee’s side of the house while he sank unsuspecting into his favourite armchair with his Bengali newspaper. The doorbell rang, a young couple brushed briskly past Swarnakumari, and Mr Chatterjee glanced up from the riveting results of the Mohan Bagan football game to find himself in the midst of an unorthodox inspection of his living room brick by brick, wall by wall. The woman even leaned over to examine a small discolouration in the paint on the wall directly behind his head. She wrote on a pad, noting the paint and the woodwork in a professional manner and stared disparagingly at the ceiling; the couple then proceeded through the conservatory and into the garden.

Mr Chatterjee followed, bewildered. The woman turned her gaze from the rock garden, the tinkling water fountain and goldfish to observe sternly that it would not do, it was not suitable as a play area for a young child. Mr Chatterjee meekly agreed, but demurred when she suggested the water fountain and goldfish be removed, and the rock garden covered. The couple returned to the hallway, sniffing appreciatively, their noses following the smells as they peeped into the kitchen and nodded at Swarnakumari with her floury hands.

‘Can we go upstairs?’ asked the man.

Tearing his gaze from the man’s muddy boots poised on the first stair, Mr Chatterjee finally found his voice. ‘Why?’ he asked.

Three months later, as Mr Chatterjee was writing a
letter to the City Council about dog fouling at the lamp-post at the corner of Fendon Road, a large removal van drew up, followed by a car. Mr Chatterjee’s curtains twitched. His new neighbours had arrived.

Mr Chatterjee heard the sound of laughter as he drank the tea that Swarnakumari had prepared for him that Thursday morning. It was that boy again, he thought angrily. That boy and Mallika together. He peered through the net curtains. They were outside his front gate.

The new family had bought a house where a life had been snuffed out, where memories swirled and fires of devotion still burned, and although he had refrained from comment he agreed with Swarnakumari that the new occupants should have performed a little ritual of prayer for the gentle departed souls of David and Mary, who might still want to linger. Perhaps even at this moment, their spirits were straying, seeking refuge in the Chatterjee side of the house, tinkling the Japanese wind chimes, swaying the curtains and dimming the lights.

The African family had spelled mystery. What
business
could possibly have brought the three of them all the way from Australia to Cambridge? wondered Mr Chatterjee. The talk of the Science Park and the Napp Laboratories was nonsense. What did the African man really do for a living?

Applying the strategies of deduction he had developed over the years, Mr Chatterjee concluded that, as his neighbour appeared to have unlimited funds for renovation of the house, there was an unambiguous trail of involvement in the illegal export of ivory. He
knew that Portobello Road in London was awash with ivory of indeterminate age. Under British law, ivory had to be older than 1947 to be sold. The man had escaped to Australia from Nigeria, but when he found the police were on his heels he moved his family to the modest semi in Cambridge to provide a cover for his clandestine activities until he was exposed, for capture meant a maximum sentence of seven years of imprisonment. Mr Chatterjee was so convinced of the truth of his own speculation that he instructed
Swarnakumari
and Mallika to avoid contact with the family. Invited by his neighbours for an evening drink on a number of occasions, he had politely declined,
recommending
to Swarnakumari that she, too, find a suitable excuse. No member of the Chatterjee household was to be implicated in the trafficking of tusks.

Loud music, parties, overnight guests, carelessly parked cars, the slamming of doors and conversations in operatic tones next door obliged Mr Chatterjee to resort to longer daytime naps, and he spent waking moments in a state of roadside recovery, his wellbeing severely tested and threatened. He envied Swarnakumari her ability to sleep soundly.

Compounding his worries was the adverse impact he feared his new neighbours would have on the value of his property. He arranged a free annual valuation by a different Cambridge estate agent to proudly remind Swarnakumari of the wisdom of a profitable
investment
. He would have erupted in prickly indignation and incomprehension at the suggestion that his own move to Newton Square thirty years ago might have been a matter of similar concern to his neighbours.

Mr Chatterjee looked at the Nigerian teenager’s
loose, fluid limbs, his low-slung jeans and hooded top and the grace rippling through his feet as he twisted effortlessly on his skateboard. Joseph was dangerous, even if he was only seventeen going on eighteen, he decided. He had caught Mallika listening to something she called ‘gangster rap’ and ‘garage’, and she had turned defiant. She no longer sang ‘Rabindra Sangeet’. Banerjee was saddled with an Albanian son-in-law; who could foretell the frightening fate that might befall his own household?

Mr Chatterjee studied his neat list of errands for the morning. Driving out onto Queen Edith’s Way, he stopped for Banerjee, who was rubbing his hands against the cold at the corner of Nightingale Avenue. They were on their way to buy fresh fish from the Bangladeshi shop off Mill Road, to make their selection from rui mach, ilish mach, koi mach, tangra mach and chingri mach. Mr Chatterjee believed that it took a Bengali to truly discern the freshness of a catch. He was not alone in this assumption.

As they loaded the fish into the car, Banerjee
suggested
they visit the charity shop. Mr Chatterjee looked surprised, but Banerjee was insistent; his wife had heard about Swarnakumari’s legendary bargains,
especially
Mr Chatterjee’s splendid grey Marks & Spencer cardigan. Banerjee’s own maroon Debenhams cardigan had sprung two asymmetric holes, and he had been directed by his wife to procure an immediate and inexpensive replacement.

Mr Chatterjee would not be persuaded to visit the shop, and, loath to admit his reluctance either to
Banerjee
or to himself, he mumbled an excuse, but to his amazement Banerjee remained firm. It was either the
charity shop or a confrontation with his wife. Any man in his situation would have chosen the former without a moment’s hesitation.

Mr Chatterjee had no alternative but to acquiesce. It was his first visit to IndiaNeed, and he wished he were not attired in the ill-fitting grey Marks & Spencer cardigan, which made him appear meekly
round-shouldered
and small. He wished he were not smelling of fish, wished he could be alone and without Banerjee at the time of his introduction to the Honourable Mrs Wellington-Smythe.