The Pleasure Seekers (13 page)

‘I’ll want my own house, of course,’ Siân pushed on. ‘Our own little place. We can find something nearby so your parents don’t feel too abandoned. Just think, love – no one to bother us, our own little place.’

‘You know what I think,’ Babo said. ‘I think you quite like being a memsahib. Why would you want to live in London where you’d have to do everything for yourself, when you’ve got a galley of slaves to do everything for you in India?’

Siân squealed. ‘That’s not fair, you terrible man! You know it’s not. I’m busy learning languages and how to make dhoklas and what not. It’s not like I’m lying around like a beached whale all day eating bonbons.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said Babo laughing, drawing his wife into him. ‘Thank God for that.’

Babo never forgot his first image of Nercwys: a village of matchbox houses under a shroud of snow. There was something about the quality of light that winter afternoon – meagre and ancient, the way it trickled through the coverlet of clouds in long oblong shafts of grey. It made him wistful, as though he were returning to a place he’d known in a previous life. And even though Babo didn’t believe in that sort of thing, it was a feeling that would recur every time he re-entered the village of his wife’s childhood.

The drive to Nercwys was long and haphazard. Siân sat in the front seat of Bryn’s old Morris Minor with her brother, Owen, while Babo sat in the back, watching the countryside pass by in a series of muted black and white frames. He thought about their journey up until this point, how at every stage they’d been received and sent off by someone. In Madras, Prem Kumar had insisted that the whole family, even Chotu (who was in the throes of preparing for his board examinations), be present for a formal send-off at the airport. In Bombay, Meenal and her shipbroker husband had picked them up from the domestic terminal and taken them to their flat in Andheri, where Siân and Babo slept fitfully for six hours before waking again and making their way across the city in darkness to the international airport. At Heathrow, they’d been met by Babo’s old Polytechnic friend, Bhupen Jain, and his wife, Mangala. All the way to Euston, Bhupen talked about how bad life was for immigrants in the UK, and how difficult it was to run the post office. ‘All these young goons and hooligans,’ he complained. ‘I can’t leave Mangala alone at the till for even one moment. It’s just not safe.’ Bhupen talked and talked right until they reached the carriage doors, asking how business was in India, and if Babo was still drinking and eating meat, until Mangala cut in and pointed to Siân’s belly. ‘Nothing you’ve said about the good news. What a man you are. Don’t ask how I put up with him,’ she said to Siân, producing two tinfoil-wrapped rolls from her handbag as they clambered on to the train. ‘Train food is no good and too expensive. See you on the way back, and may God shower many blessings on your baby.’

When they finally arrived in Chester, Babo expected to see the entire village of Nercwys on the platform waiting to greet them, but there was only Owen, looking serious and a bit stunned, shuffling towards them with a bouquet of red holly berries in his hands.

The drive to Nercwys seemed longer than it actually was because it was done mainly in silence. Every once in a while Siân asked a question about someone in the village, to which Owen replied monosyllabically – married, dead, moved away, sold, miner, alcoholic. A few times Owen had to pull over because Siân thought she was going to be sick. ‘I’m used to Indian roads now, aren’t I?’ she laughed, ‘I need those extra jolts and bumps. This is all much too smooth for me.’

Outside there were trees, the names of which Babo didn’t know, bare of leaves, lining the entrance to the village like a row of ceremonial soldiers. Beyond, where he couldn’t see, ran the River Terrig. They were nearly there now. Siân was pointing things out – The Crossing House where Mrs Bivins lived with her spinster daughter, Rhianne. The Tin House and Nercwys Hall. Hendre Ucha, the house with the first grass tennis court in the village.

Siân wanted Owen to drive all the way down the street, past the post office where she used to buy liquorice rings as a child, past the chapel, and The White Lion, and the old school house, before turning around and driving back up the street. As they crawled up and down the main street, it seemed to Babo that all the inhabitants of Nercwys had gone indoors to watch quietly from behind their curtains. There wasn’t a soul to be seen except one man walking across the fields, his footprints like a trail of crumbs in the snow behind him, and the cows, standing disconcertedly in clusters, chewing the cud. ‘Here we are,’ Siân said, turning to give Babo a nervous smile as the car came to a halt outside Tan-y-Rhos.

‘How’s Mam been, by the way?’ Siân asked. ‘Agitated?’

‘You could say she’s been a wee bit panicked,’ Owen grunted, as he helped Siân out of the car and steered her through the gates of the house.

Inside, Babo could smell chicken roasting. The first thing he saw was an antique barometer on the wall, whose blue needlepoint rested between ‘Change’ and ‘Fair’. There was a narrow, carpeted stairway that presumably led to the bedrooms on the first floor. Babo deposited their suitcases at the foot of the stairway. To the right was the front room with large windows that looked out on to Nerys’s famous rose garden, currently protected with a hill-up of branches, leaves and straw to insulate the plants through the winter. The wallpaper in the room was a dizzying mustard diagonal print, which overshadowed the upright pianoforte against the back wall and the modest collection of poetry and philosophy books stacked above it.

Bryn was by the fireplace, poking at the coals. ‘Hello,’ he said, dusting off his hands before walking over to shake Babo’s hand, settle him in his eye, fix him somehow, before allowing Siân to fall into his arms.

Nerys, standing in the doorway of the kitchen with an apron tied under her ample bosom, eyes wet with tears, spatula in one hand, came over and took hold of Siân, kissing her on both cheeks repeatedly. ‘My girl,’ she said, crying, ‘My girl.’ Babo stared at them for what seemed like a very long time, before Nerys, recovering herself, extended one dainty hand and said, ‘Very nice to meet you.’

‘Likewise,’ Babo said, ‘Sorry it’s taken us so long.’

Siân followed Nerys into the kitchen, their voices gaining in pitch and tempo until it sounded like they were speaking a different language. Babo, left to stand uncertainly in the centre of the room, looked out of the window.

‘Sit.’ Bryn indicated the chair next to his with a short nod of his head.

Hello, sit
: two words.

Babo sat beside his wife’s father and took note. He took note of the meticulous dark suit, the thick tortoiseshell glasses, the hair – whatever was left of it – combed back without any fuss, the neatly trimmed fingernails. He took in the lips, an anomaly on his face, somehow – sensual, a woman’s lips, his wife’s lips, blooming like crimson petals in the harsh desert of his face.

‘Geoffrey Boycott is looking lethal,’ Bryn said a few minutes later.

‘He certainly is.’

And so it went. This little dance between Babo and Bryn, of economy and restraint. Afterwards, Owen said that seeing the two of them slumped in their chairs watching the cricket was the most natural thing in the world, like watching two old geezers who’d known each other all their lives.

They had all been curious about Babo, of course. All they’d seen were photographs with inscriptions scrawled along the backs. For all they knew, Siân could have taken up with a jungle warlord, and they’d have been none the wiser.

Treat him like a regular person
, Siân had written to her parents.
Just remember to speak slowly and clearly
.

But it was difficult for Bryn and Nerys, who had only ever been out of Wales once, to Dublin in 1959, which didn’t help at all in trying to imagine a country like India and what life there could possibly be like.

At suppertime Nerys made the rare exception of allowing everyone to fill their plates from the kitchen so they could eat in front of the television. She brought over a plate for Bryn, with an extra portion of roast potatoes and sausages, the way he liked it. ‘And what can I get you?’ she asked Babo.

‘Oh, that looks nice,’ Babo said, looking over at Bryn’s plate of roast chicken and sausages and more of Trishala’s forbidden things. ‘That’ll do me nicely.’ Not knowing that in that moment he had absolved himself, because if he’d said, ‘Something vegetarian, please,’ all Nerys had were the potatoes and sprouts, and a tin of baked beans.

For the next few weeks Babo and Siân fell into different patterns. Most mornings Siân woke before anyone else and went for a long walk across the fields. By the time Babo came downstairs, respectably shaved and dressed, she would be sitting by the pile of old newspapers, helping her father roll painstakingly precise firelighters. After Bryn left for the quarry, Nerys and she sat with their knitting and embroidery or busied themselves in the kitchen with pastry or whatever the cooking endeavour of the day was. Babo occasionally went into Mold with Owen, and while Owen balanced accounts at Lloyd’s, Babo walked about town, whiling away hours in the pub doing crossword puzzles. Gradually, he felt the need to engage in something a bit more physical, so when Uncle Norman from next door complained about the state of his shed, Babo spent a week helping him fix it up and paint it. After seeing what a good job he’d done, Aunty Eleri, Bryn’s sister, got him to come around and put shelves in the greenhouse for her dianthus. By and by, the entire village had some odd job or the other for Babo to do, and soon, he was waking as early as Siân to make the most of the light, and to fulfil all his neighbourly obligations.

At nights, Nerys, Bryn, Siân, Babo and Owen played Scrabble on the kitchen table after supper. ‘It’s quite embarrassing,’ Nerys said without fail after losing, ‘Even though English isn’t your first language you’re better at this than any of us!’ Babo told her how he’d become a Scrabble champ during his YMCA days in London, when he and the other young men played till four in the morning because it was a time in their lives when they were more in need of friendship than sleep. ‘The trick is to know all the two-letter words,’ he said, ‘We memorized the whole list, and of course, the J, Q, X and Z words.’ The talk would then veer from vegetarianism to the IRA, and inevitably, to the situation between Pakistan and India, until half past ten, when Bryn, inspecting his pocket watch, politely excused himself from the table. ‘Some of us have to work tomorrow,’ he’d say, retreating from the room like an army general, his back straight, his slippers treading noiselessly up the stairs. He must hate me, Babo thought. How can he not hate me for unravelling the very core of his life? How do you possibly get over your only daughter moving all the way across the world just because she falls in love?

By Christmas, the days had grown even shorter. Siân’s older brother, Huw, and his wife, Carole, drove up from Brighton to spend a week with them, and were going to stay in a hotel in Mold before the idea got beaten out of Huw’s head by Nerys. ‘You can stay with Owen, who has a perfectly good spare room in his house down the street. I’ve never heard such nonsense in my life. A hotel!’

Babo liked his wife’s brothers. They were solid, upright men, easy to get along with. Huw was the city slicker, full of opinions and used to being right. He could talk for hours about football or the insurance business if you let him, and only Carole seemed to have the power to reign him in. But it was with Owen that Babo really bonded. They spent many evenings at The White Lion together (drink being forbidden in Tan-y-Rhos), and during these sessions Babo managed to draw out some details of Owen’s love affair gone wrong with an English school teacher, who disappeared soon after the engagement to take up a teaching job in New Zealand. Babo learned that what Owen really wanted was to be a farmer, working the land, watching his trees grow. ‘So why are you working in a bank?’ Babo asked, shocked that anyone would attempt to live life by avoiding his greatest desires. ‘It’s what’s expected of me, isn’t it? Either I’m a quarry man like my dad, or I go and do something properly modern like Huw.’

When Siân’s friends Gwen, Ronnie and Dee arrived for their three-day reunion, Tan-y-Rhos nearly burst at its seams with all the extra people and the multitude of shopping bags filled with baby things. For three nights, Babo watched Siân get all trussed up in maxis and beads. Her cheeks seemed to have filled out along with the rest of her body, making her look younger, less sad. Babo watched her with her friends – their laughter, their endless easy chatter, and he thought he had never seen his wife look so happy before, so giddy and complete. He wanted to ask whether she really wanted to go back to India after all, because wasn’t this her life, here?
Don’t do it for me
, he wanted to say.
Because I am at home in the world anywhere you are. But you are different. Perhaps you need these things
. Later, in bed, when he tried to bring it up, she put her finger against his lips and said, ‘Shush, love, it isn’t that way at all. You’ll see.’

On their last night in Nercwys, Babo and Siân walked through the falling snow to Aunty Eleri’s house at the top of the village where everyone had been invited to cram into her front room for supper. Aunty El stood at the door, dressed in her Sunday best, welcoming people into the haven of her home as though she were the village pastor. ‘Come in, come in, find a place to sit, help yourself to a drink. Aye, we serve alcohol on these premises, not like your father-in-law, Bob. We folks on this end of the village are a little less God-fearing.’