The House of Hidden Mothers (52 page)

The phone rang and switched to speaker.

‘Mum? Are you there yet?'

‘Almost, and you're on speakerphone, before you say something rude in front of your Auntie Lydia.'

‘She taught me every rude word I know, so don't worry about that … just wanted to know if we should have supper ready for when you get back? Are you staying? Or …'

Three dots. An open-ended question. No answer yet.

‘I'll let you know soon. How's Dhruv?'

‘Right here, Auntie!' She could hear Dhruv making fun of her even from this distance.

‘Yes, touch my feet when I get back … did you do the open-top London bus tour then?'

‘Actually it was so cold …'

‘… we went to the movies and ate two tubs of mixed popcorn. It was extremely cultural, you would be proud.'

They usually finished off each other's sentences. Lydia thought it unbearably cute. Shyama thought it occasionally wandered into just about unbearable, but Lydia said that was because she was turning into a bitter old cow, and when she fell in love again, she would probably do it herself. How I love an optimist, Shyama had told her. What's the alternative? Lydia had replied.

‘How's Nana-ji today?' Shyama asked, speeding up a little as the track suddenly widened and the landscape dipped around her; they were going to higher ground.

‘He's OK. Had a bit of a slow start this morning, but the carer was great, she got him dressed and by lunchtime he was all there, recognized us all, chatting away. He even helped Nanima with a bit of gardening. We're going to take them to Westfield later on for a walk in the warm …'

‘Are you mad? It will be rammed, three days before Christmas.'

‘Hey, we live in Delhi, we can handle a few pushy shoppers …'

‘Oh, got to go, sweetie, call you on the way back!'

‘Bye!' they both said together before hanging up.

Shyama parked up. She could see the house clearly now. It was really a cottage sitting in a small courtyard with one ramshackle outhouse and a large fenced garden at the back. It must have been cheaper to buy here than down in the village because of its inaccessibility, but the views were impressive and uninterrupted. There was a muddy estate car parked outside the front door, a National Trust sticker on the windscreen. A lit Christmas tree was just visible through the curtains in the front bay window. Shyama reached over to the back seat and grabbed the present, its shiny paper patterned with tiny Santas crackling in her hands. She had chosen one of those educational play centres in bright primary colours with various levers and buttons and scrunchy things to keep little hands and minds busy. She had asked the sales assistant for something suitable and this had appealed to her – she liked anything that multi-tasked.

‘I'll walk from here, I think.' Shyama opened the door. Lydia gave her one last searching look. Shyama nodded back her answer and set off for the house.

As the track wound round the curve of the hill, she saw he was in the back garden. Toby had his jumper sleeves rolled up and was tying something to the large tree at the far boundary in that methodical, unhurried way she remembered. He stepped back and straightened out the wooden swing, pulling down on the ropes, testing the weight. It looked like a cradle – a small seat with a back, and holes for legs. He called out something snatched away by the wind, and the boy toddled into view on fat unsteady legs, his arms outstretched in his quilted jacket. She couldn't see much of his face due to the large bobble hat low down on his head and fastened under his chin. She saw strands of dark hair, pale olive skin. Toby lifted him up and kissed him roughly on his cheek, but the boy wriggled away from it, his hands grabbing air, his legs kicking in anticipation. Toby relented and settled him carefully into the swing and gave it a little push. More, higher, she thought she could hear him say, but of course he probably couldn't say much yet. He expressed himself with the grip of his plump hands and bouncing knees.

And then she joined them, a sudden brushstroke of colour on the dun landscape in a sari of pink and blue, a basket under her arm. An exotic flower transplanted to this harsh soil, but she seemed to have taken root and thrived. Mala raised her free hand to wave at the boy. She kept waving each time he swung forward – it must have been a game. Toby kept pushing and Mala kept waving and the boy kept kicking, whilst Shyama crept round to the front of the house and left the present on his car's bonnet. He would read the card much later, then leave it on the kitchen table so Mala could read it herself without watching his face. He didn't want her to see a disappointment he had no right to feel.

Dearest Toby
, he heard her voice so clearly as he read her words,
I wanted to give Krishan something for his birthday and Christmas – yes, it is one of those combined-present gestures, but hopefully it's big and loud enough to cover both. Apologies if the Teddy Bears' Picnic theme gets a bit wearing, there is a mute button underneath, I checked. Maybe one day you might tell him the story of how his Auntie Shyama helped wish him into the world, but no matter if you don't. I'm so glad he is here. Enjoy every moment, the old clichés are true – it goes in a heartbeat and your heart goes with them.

Be happy, always.

Shyama.

Then he had remembered the book Shyama had shown him years ago, that image of a blue-skinned deity with the universe in his mouth. He still wasn't exactly sure what it meant, but as he had stood in the garden afterwards, still watching his son on the swing kicking his heels to the sky, he felt a little closer to the answer.

Shyama drove home with the radio tuned to a seventies golden-oldies station, she and Lydia singing loudly and mostly out of tune the whole way back. Tara and Dhruv had prepared a chicken biryani with a sprig of holly stuck in the top to get everyone into the festive spirit. They discussed their plans for refurbishing Prem and Sita's Delhi flat, where they now lived, handed round the latest printed-up snaps from their engagement party last month, and then Tara filled them all in on how her first term had been at Gauri's college. They took special care to point to everyone in each photo to see if Prem could name them. Every man in them, according to him, seemed to be called Yogesh.

Sita had received one phone call from India in February, when news had reached the family there that Prem was not well. She had recognized Yogi's voice just from his namaste. That was as far as he got before she hung up.

Sitting at the table listening to her family chatter around her, Shyama could scarcely believe that a year had passed since she had brought her parents back to the country they now called home. She, of course, did not know that this time next year, her father would no longer speak, but that she would cherish the touch of his hand in place of her name. That her daughter would announce that Shyama was soon to be a grandmother and that if she was to have any chance of finishing her degree, her mother would have to come over and do some seriously hands-on childcare. That there would be someone else in her life who she thought she could love, but that she was quite happy to wait and see. That her parents would never visit India again. All this was still to come, unknown and unnamed, waiting to be lived.

Huge thanks firstly to the Transworld team for their patience and for cheerfully waiting so long for this book. In particular, Marianne Velmans, for her unending encouragement and faith, and Jane Lawson, for her insight and forensic attention to the text.

Special thanks are due to Dr Anand Saggar for all his medical advice and expertise, often at the most unsociable hours of the day.

Deepest thanks to K and N for sharing their remarkable story and for opening up their hearts and meticulous records for me. I am so glad your journey ended with a family.

And finally, thank you to my parents, though those words will never be enough, measured against what you have always given me and continue to give: wisdom, conscience, purpose, love.

Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee

By Meera Syal

There's no such thing as a happy ending, is there . . . ?

Sunita – perfect housewife – is married to Akash, but is her marriage what it seems?

Chila – warm, loveable – has married with great fanfare the entrepreneur Deepak. But are they really in love?

Tania – beautiful, rebellious – has rejected her traditional upbringing for a top television career. But is she really as tough as she says?

As Tania uncovers a devastating truth, are the three friends about to learn the hardest life lesson of all . . . ?

 

Read on for a preview . . .

NOT EVEN SNOWFALL
could make Leyton look lovely. Sootfall was what it was; a fine drizzle of ash that sprinkled the pavements and terrace rooftops, dusting the rusty railings and faded awnings of the few remaining shops along the high road. They formed a puzzling collection of plucky bric-à-brac emporiums (All the Plastic Matting You'll Ever Need!) and defeated mini-marts (Cigs 'N' Bread! Fags 'N' Mags!), braving the elements like the no-hopers no-one wanted on their team, shivering in their sooty kit. Grey flecks nested in the grooves of the shutters of the boarded up homes, abandoned when new roads were put down and old ladies died; they settled silently on the graves in the choked churchyard, giving grace and shadow to long-unread inscriptions – Edna, Beloved Wife; Edward, Sleeps with the Angels – and dressed the withered cedars in almost-mourning robes of almost-black. Pigeons shook their heads, sneezing, blinking away the icy specks, claws skittering on the unfamiliar roof which had once been the reassuring flat red tiles of the methodist church and was now a gleaming minaret, topped by a metal sickle moon. The moon at midday, dark snow and nowhere to perch. No wonder they said Coo.

An old man picked up a frozen milk bottle from his front step and held it up to the light, squinting at the petrified pearly sea beyond the glass. He'd seen an ocean like that once, in the navy or on the TV, he couldn't remember which now.

‘You waiting till the whole bloody house freezes then?' his wife called from inside. A voice that could splinter bone.

And then he heard them. Nothing more than an echo at first, muted by wind and traffic, but he felt the sound, like you always do when it brings the past with it. Clop-clop, there it was, no mistaking it. And then he was seven or ten again, in scratchy shorts with sherbet fizzing on his tongue, racing his brother to open up the coal shute at the front of the house before the cart drew up and the man with the black face and the bright smile groaned, his sack on his back, freeing swirls of dust with every heavy step.

‘Come here!' the old man shouted behind him. ‘Quickly! You hurry up and you'll see a . . . bleedin' hell!'

The horse turned the corner into his road, white enough to shame what fell from the sky, carrying what looked like a Christmas tree on its back. There was a man in the middle of the tinsel, pearls hanging down over his brown skin, suspended from a cartoon-size turban. He held a nervous small boy, similarly attired, on his lap. Behind him, a group of men of assorted heights and stomach sizes, grins as stiff as their new suits, attempted a half-dance half-jog behind the swishing tail, their polished shoes slipping in the slush. A fat man in a pink jacket held a drum around his neck and banged it with huge palms, like a punishment, daring anyone not to join in. ‘Brrrr- aaaa! Bu-le, bu-le bu-le!' he yelled.

The old man understood half of that noise, it was brass monkey weather all right, but what did he mean by that last bit? They couldn't like the cold, surely.

‘Another of them do's down the community centre then,' said his wife, sniffing at his shoulder.

Other neighbours had gathered at windows and doorways, the children giggling behind bunched fingers, their elders, flint-faced, guarding their stone-clad kingdoms warily, in case bhangra-ing in bollock-freezing weather was infectious.

Swamped, thought the old man; someone said that once, we'll be swamped by them. But it isn't like that, wet and soggy like Hackney Marshes. It's silent and gentle, so gradual that you hardly notice it at all until you look up and see that everything's different.

‘Like snow,' he said, out loud.

Trigger, the horse, was enjoying himself. Anything was better than the dumpy pubescents he was forced to heave around paddocks in Chigwell for the rest of the week. This was an easy gig, a gentle amble past kind hands and interesting odours. Early this morning, he'd been woken by an old lady in a white sheet breaking coconuts beneath his hooves. She had sung for him. She smelt of pepper. There was none of the kisses and baby talk the stable girls lavished on him to impress the parents, but her patient worship had made him snort with joy. He stepped lightly now, considering he was carrying a heavy-hearted man on his back.

Deepak had noticed the hostile onlookers, albeit in fragments through the shimmering curtain that hid him from the world, but the cold stone in his chest, hidden beneath the silk brocade of his bridal suit, made them unimportant. He had explained his dank foreboding away many times, over many months now, using the dimpled smile and the mercurial tongue that had made him a business success and rendered matrons in the neighbourhood giddy with gratitude when he graced their kitty parties. Fear of commitment, he'd said to the stone in the spring. Any eligible bachelor taking the plunge is bound to feel some pangs of regret. She is as sweet as the blossom outside my window, and just as virginal. Fear of failure, he'd told the stone as he'd eyed up the passing girls from his pavement café, pluckable, all of them, bruised by summer evening blue. She doesn't need to prance around in thongs and halter necks, her beauty is beautiful because it's hidden and it will be mine. Fear of becoming my father, he'd smiled at the stone as he tramped through new-fallen leaves, recalling his parents' amazed faces as he'd confirmed his choice of bride. A Punjabi girl! They had almost wept with relief, having endured a parade of blonde trollops through their portals for most of their son's youth. Marrying her does not mean I will become my father, take up religion, grow nostril hair and wear pastel-coloured leisure wear, he told the stone playfully. We have choices. Wasn't that the reason his parents had come here in the first place? And now it was winter and the stone refused any further discussion on the matter. It was done.