Another Country (21 page)

‘You smoke very seriously. I don't think I've ever seen quite that expression before.'

‘I'd hate to get it wrong.'

He was leaning back, his legs extended. He grinned.

Leela began to feel altered, as though the sensory world still existed, but she apprehended messages from it only after a gap of two or three seconds. He passed her the end of the joint. She extracted what she could, and kept the smoke in.

‘So what are you doing here?' she asked.

‘Tara, Meena, good friends of mine. Nice girls.'

‘Do you know Vikram Sahni?'

‘Vik, yeah, of course. You came with him?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Are you –'

‘Am I –?'

Aditya chuckled. ‘Chill out, Leela Ghosh. Otherwise I'm going to feel my good grass from Manali has been completely wasted on you.'

Leela laughed. ‘This is a nice house, isn't it? Well, very large, beautiful – situation.'

‘You mean having a house like this? I'd say.'

‘That too, but I meant it's well situated, a nice piece of land, a great view.'

‘Are you an estate agent?'

They both began to giggle.

Leela noticed Vikram striding up. He looked displeased, and grown up, his white shirt still impeccable. He is handsome, she thought, but boring. He looks like a cartoon of a handsome person. This thought made her, and in response her new friend, laugh even more.

‘Hello Adi. What are you two up to?'

‘Vik, come and sit down. Do you want some lovely grass? No, wait, we smoked it.'

‘You're a charasi, that I know, but I didn't realise you were, Leela.' He looked down at her. She was starting to feel sick. At about this time Aditya began to seem superfluous. Below, the house was illuminated; it appeared quite far away. Leela tried to imagine standing up. Even thinking about it felt like a lot of effort.

‘Ugh,' she said, without realising she'd spoken.

‘Charming,' said Aditya.

Something occurred to Leela. ‘What time is it?' she asked Vikram.

‘Nearly one.'

‘Oh.'

‘Do you have a curfew?'

‘Never mind.'

Aditya got up and lit a cigarette. ‘Well, I'm going back down. See you later, Vik. It was nice talking to you, Leela Ghosh.'

They watched his swaying figure move towards the house.

The night was warm and gentle. But Leela felt sick.

‘Come on,' Vikram said. ‘Or were you planning on sleeping here?' He put out a hand to her.

‘What's your fucking problem?' She pushed away the hand and began to get up, though it seemed to take more marshalling of the limbs than she'd realised. Her legs bounded around like an uncoordinated frog. ‘Ah.' She stood. I have done something stupid to my body, she thought, with the old sadness. Things weren't bad, but I misunderstood them, and created a bad situation.

‘It's all so needless,' she said.

‘What?' He looked angry.

‘Doesn't matter.'

‘I was looking for you, you know. I thought we'd come together to the party. You were talking to Tara, then you weren't there, and I looked around for you and had no idea where you were. I called your phone six times.'

‘You were talking to that girl anyway.'

‘Which girl?'

‘Oh, bullshit. Fucking bullshit.'

They began to make their way, stumblingly in Leela's case, down the hill. Vikram grabbed her wrist.

‘Ow!' she said. The resentment in her voice made her aware she was angry.

‘Okay, walk by yourself. Do you mean Niharika?'

‘That girl in the pink dress who wouldn't stop staring at you and chirruping.'

‘She's a friend's younger sister. I've known her a long time.'

‘You didn't even introduce me. It was like you totally forgot I was there.'

‘I introduced you to Tara.'

‘But then you ignored me.'

‘Don't be crazy, Leela.'

They were at the foot of the small slope, nearing the main garden.

‘Fuck off,' said Leela, raising the ante slightly more than she'd intended.

He paused mid-stride. ‘What?'

‘Just stop being horrible to me. Leave me alone. You're the one who ignored me.'

He came to a complete standstill. They were outside the lit veranda, and Leela had a thought, half paranoid, half interested, that someone might hear.

He looked at her, his face again not easy to read. ‘How do you think you'd get home?'

‘I'd manage.'

‘Well, I'm not going to leave a girl in a part of town she doesn't know in the middle of the night, sorry.'

They walked through the party, and Vikram got caught near the door to say goodbye to the sisters. ‘Don't go!' cried the younger, Meena.

He grinned. ‘I have to get Leela back.'

She regarded Leela with comic hostility. ‘Stay. Aren't you having a good time?'

‘I'm having such a good time,' Leela said. ‘I just have to go, I live in a hostel.'

Meena's face was baffled. ‘So go tomorrow. Vik, do something.'

‘We have to go. Thanks for a great evening.'

Tara said, ‘Let them go, Meenu. They've had enough of you.'

‘You bitch.' She pinched her sister in mock rage.

They finally escaped. The night outside was weirdly normal, a man selling cigarettes down the lane. At the end of it, a rickshawala with whom Vikram negotiated to take them to Bandra. The sea road, then the highway, frightening and anonymous: along it, construction sites and makeshift shelters of tarpaulin, thin men and women around a fire; long stretches of slums. She couldn't orient herself, and was silently glad not to be alone. She leaned forward onto her knees, wondered if she would be sick, felt tired.

Vikram took her shoulder, and made her lean back.

At Bandra, near the station, they got into a taxi.

Leela leant back in the seat as more familiar parts of town, like Cadell Road, passed.

They were outside the Buddhist temple at Worli when he said, ‘So why were you so angry?'

The roads were nearly empty, just a few drunken drivers and the odd taxi. She said, ‘I don't know. I felt self-conscious, I didn't know anyone, I didn't know what to expect.'

‘I was only being friendly to Niharika, I've known her forever.'

‘Good for you.'

He grabbed her wrist. ‘What's going on?'

I'm going to be sick, Leela thought.

‘I'm crazy about you, Leela.'

It registered on her that they were on Annie Besant Road, passing the high walls of the GlaxoSmithKline compound, popularly referred to as ‘Glasgow'.

‘So am I,' she managed, her heart dully thumping in the conviction of imminent calamity.

Just before the flyover, Vikram's face loomed closer to hers, his expression tender, and briefly she caught the taxi driver's eye in the mirror, cynical, interested.

Chapter 28

His hand was on the curve of her waist; the top of her right foot rested warm in his left instep. They lay there for a while.

‘Why?' she asked.

He sighed, an exhalation she felt as well as hearing: a warm snuffle, a heave of the chest.

‘She'll just immediately get into gear. She'll want to know how serious it is.'

She went tense. ‘How serious is it?'

His arm tightened about her. He was always willing to be demonstrative. ‘It's serious.'

‘I feel like it's weird, this being shifty around her. Why?'

He sighed again. Leela looked at the white-painted corner of his bedside table with something like recognition. The furniture in his room had come to seem intimate with her.

Her days were Vikram interleaved with things that were not Vikram: work, the increasingly unreal life of the hostel, which now served as a place where she returned late, tired, and crashed out, or woke in a brief lull, disoriented, and then recalled what she had to do in the day. Which was, to rise, to meditate in a token way, though all she did now was to feel excited, almost ill with a rash of thoughts, and then to bathe, wash her clothes, pack her bag, and go to work again.

‘Where
are
you these days?' asked Chitra, bumping into her in the porch.

Leela grinned.

‘Aha! I knew it. Shobha saw you going out to meet some guy. Is it the same one? Come to my room.'

They went up. Leela enjoyed the urgency that seemed to attach to her. She told her story; earlier, she'd mentioned Vikram to Chitra, but diffidently.

‘So you like him now?'

‘Of course. I really like him.' She thought it an annoying question. She was sitting on the floor; she leaned back onto her hands.

‘I'm really pleased for you,' Chitra said. She looked awkward.

This is what it'll be like, Leela thought. People will be envious, they won't know what to say. She said what Amy might have said. ‘Well, who knows if it'll work out.' Immediately she regretted her tone.

Chitra looked surprised. ‘I'm sure it will,' she said quietly. Leela was aware of being consoled and felt irritated. ‘It sounds great,' Chitra said. ‘I think he really likes you.' She continued to look at Leela speculatively.

‘Are you going to dinner?'

‘Come.'

She waited at work to tell Sathya, who didn't show up the next day.

‘Hey, coming for a cigarette?' she asked as soon as she walked in and saw him.

‘Ten minutes.'

She waited. When they went outside and he lit up, she said, ‘So remember the guy I was talking about, Vikram?'

‘Your friend?'

‘We got together.'

‘Oh, really?' Sathya was looking a bit ashen. ‘Hey, good for you.'

‘It turns out he did like me.'

‘Of course he did,' he said absently.

Leela gave up.

She didn't go home for a fortnight, but one Saturday Vikram had a wedding to go to.

‘Are you going to tell your mother?' Leela asked.

‘I'll tell her,' he said finally.

She went home for the weekend.

On Monday Sathya wasn't in office. She had to remind herself of the constructions she used to use, and those she'd adopted in order not to sound different: the later ones had come to have their own rightness, like
in office
for
in the office
. She tried to archive the earlier usage so she wouldn't forget it, the purity of Standard English reinforced by school books. She was always having to learn things that would enable her to fit in, but those lessons were always being replaced.

She worked hard, finished the mailing for a trustees' dinner, called the secretaries of each trustee to confirm dietary preferences and spent two hours waiting to get the seating plan approved before Joan trashed it and said impatiently, ‘I'll explain tomorrow.'

It was annoying that Sathya wasn't there. Leela wanted to talk to someone, begin to delineate her vague unease.

But Vikram, reliably, was there. She would meet him as soon as she'd been home and changed and dropped off her things. And when she was in the hostel, with its hive-like chatter in the evening, the tube lights in the reception area flickering on and thrumming, and the girls either arriving in work clothes, handbags held officiously, hair half up; or floating around, lax, in printed wrappers that may have resembled what their mothers wore at home to be comfortable, she found herself exhausted, not wanting to leave the bustle of the hive, where she could be quiet.

When she arrived to meet Vikram, some minutes late, as she'd begun to be, he was radiant. He gave her a hug. ‘I missed you, baby.'

‘I missed you too. What happened?'

He grinned hugely. ‘You're coming over for dinner on Saturday. Mummy wants to meet you.'

On Saturday morning she had a dream about Roger. They were hugging tenderly. He smelled the same: vaguely alkaline, vaguely lemony, but underneath of musk. His shirt was soft at her cheekbone. He wanted to persist in the hug, and the dreaming Leela was aware of how comforting it was: she wanted to remain in it too. The Leela in the dream, though, broke away. ‘Why?' she asked. ‘Why? Why?' She was inconsolable and in this moment Leela awoke. She felt terrible sadness, the conviction she'd done the wrong thing, and the usual despair at her own weak will, the lack of control or decisiveness in her subconscious. What a stupid dream, she thought, and lay still and sorrowful, regretting that it was over.

‘Lovely to see you, Leela,' Vikram's mother said.

‘It's lovely to see you too,' Leela said. She began to step out of her chappals, and Shalini raised an eyebrow. ‘You don't need to take off your shoes, dear.'

‘It's just that I walk everywhere,' Leela said.

‘Keep them on, we all do.' Did Vikram's mother look down at her feet briefly? Leela followed her into the drawing room. Even when she had spent time in the flat, in the afternoon or early evening when Shalini had been out, she and Vikram hadn't been in here. Now, she felt she was transgressing. Vikram's mother must have realised they had been in the flat; the servant had probably told her.

Shalini turned and smiled at Leela, who saw incisors. She bumped into the corner of a sideboard and said, ‘Oh, sorry.'

‘What would you like to drink?'

‘I –' She looked around for Vikram.

Shalini, elegant, collected, watched her. ‘There's gin, whisky, vodka. Rum, I think. Or a glass of wine?'

‘Sure.'

‘Which one, dear?'

‘Is there any wine open?'

‘Would you like red or white?'

‘White, please.' Leela went red. Was this a test?

‘I'll get a bottle opened. Gopal?'

The servant, clad in white, appeared. He was thin and in manner elliptical, at least when Leela had seen him; often, when she had been in the flat at quieter times, he had been out or in his tiny room at the end of the kitchen, the radio distantly audible. He said, ‘Madam?'

‘White wine laana. Naya bottle. Jo fridge mein hai.'

He nodded and went away.

‘Let's sit,' Shalini said.

They sat on perpendicular sides of a corner sofa. Leela realised that she hated this room, and why; it had been ordered for display, to convey massiveness and money. She could not imagine anyone sinking onto the sofa to read delightedly, or stare at a wall and think.

Gopal came back with a tray, a chilled bottle of wine, and two glasses.

‘Madam ko dena,' Shalini said. Leela got a glass of wine.

‘What about you?' she asked.

‘Oh, I don't really drink,' Shalini said. She smiled. Ah, thought Leela. I drink copiously, she imagined saying. Don't you find it smoothes out every social occasion? She took a sip of the wine. It was medium-dry, pleasant.

‘How is the wine?'

‘Lovely, thank you.' When would Vikram emerge?

‘Good. We got some new bottles. It's French, I think. I haven't tasted it.'

‘It's very nice.' Leela took another sip. She imagined saying something in the manner of the blonde, bobbed woman from a wine programme on TV in her youth. ‘Acidic, fresh, just a
whiff
of cat's pee.'

Shalini smiled. ‘So you live in the hostel, Vikram tells me? The one near Sassoon Dock?'

‘Near the Post Office, yes.'

‘How do you find that? Do you have a lot of friends there?

‘A few. It takes time, of course. But I have some really nice friends here now.'

‘Ah yes, you used to be in England, is that right?'

‘I grew up there, mostly, but I'm from Bombay.'

‘But your parents don't live in Bombay?'

‘No, they're in Pune.'

‘That must be very pleasant. I believe the weather there is very good? I haven't been for years. Since it was Poona.' Shalini spoke so calmly, in such a measured way, and Leela admired her poise. Everything was where it ought to be, her short silver hair blow-dried, her earrings impeccable, her silk shirt beautifully pressed; there wasn't the sense of a frenetic attempt to keep things under control that was there in Leela's mother. But, she thought, none of the fire either.

Shalini's fine eyes examined her. ‘And how do you like being an independent woman in Bombay?'

Leela tried to discern whether there was sarcasm in the question; she didn't think so. ‘I like it. I love the city, I always have.'

‘Bombay can be a difficult place for a woman on her own.'

‘I like it,' Leela persisted. She looked at her feet. Her worn kolhapuris were in a white plush rug.

‘You have a very simple look, very nice,' Shalini said. ‘Where do you go for your services, which parlour?'

Leela blinked.

‘Your pedicure, waxing, things like that?' The other woman's eyes lingered on Leela's arms, which weren't waxed.

‘Oh, I don't. I've never really –'