Brick Lane (16 page)

Then there were the special things that Mrs Islam's mother had handed down to her. Put a finger up the baby's bottom once a week to purge his system. Suck his nostrils to clear away the snot. Roll the nipple between your thumbs before feeding so the milk is ready for him. Leave him for one hour a day on his belly to strengthen his neck and chest. Make a little pillow of feathers and bay leaves and cloves to help him sleep. Parrot feathers were best. Add some ghee to his bathwater to keep his skin soft. Paste turmeric and aniseed on his chest to cure a cough. Rub his feet with coconut oil to draw out a cold. Never, ever turn him upside down.

Nazneen filled the kettle. She hoisted the baby on her hip. 'Gi-gi,' she said. 'Go-gi.' The baby quivered in anticipation. 'Ga!' she said. 'Gi-ga, gi-ga, gi-ga!' Raqib leaned back, incredulous. His bottom lip hung. Banners of drool proclaimed his adulation. Nazneen jiggled him. Up and down. Up and down. 'Dah,' said the baby, and kicked his fat legs. He stared at her face as if it were a wonder, as if he beheld beauty there. His eyes, unfurled now from the ancient wisdom they brought from the womb, were wide worlds, bright as stars. She put him down on a nest of cushions brought from the sitting room. He was shattered. Betrayed. He howled like a widow.

Nazneen smiled. She poured boiling water on tea bags and made ticking noises with her tongue. Then she picked him up again. 'Do you cry for me? Is it me? Do you cry for me?' And with these words made good his loss.

'I'll take him back with me this afternoon,' said Mrs Islam. 'Let you catch up on some housework.' She made circles in the air with a finger. Her small black eyes appraised the room. 'My niece is coming. She loves to play with babies.'

Eleven, said Nazneen to herself. There were eleven chairs in the room, not counting the cow-dung armchairs that went with the sofa. How was she supposed to tidy up? There was nowhere to put anything. And Chanu's books and papers grew like weeds. And the dust – it came from nowhere, like a plague, and it could not be cured.

'He's so small,' said Nazneen. 'Send your niece to me.'

'Nonsense. I'll take him.' Mrs Islam slurped at her tea. The bristles around her wart were long today. Soon they would be plucked.

Nazneen busied herself with Raqib. She dabbed at his chin with a tissue. She examined his fingernails. She put him on her shoulder and patted his back to expel some imaginary wind. He made a noise, an experimental sort of sound, which she seized upon as distress and walked with him over to the window. 'There, there,' she said. 'Never mind. Look, look, look.' But she kept him against her shoulder so that it was she who looked out.

The sun is large and sickly. It sweats uncomfortably in a hazy sky, squeezed between slabs of concrete. There is barely enough sky to hold it. Below, the communal bins ring the courtyard like squat metal warriors, competing in foulness, contemplating the stand-off. One has keeled over and spilled its guts. A rat flicks in and out of them. A boy, sixteen, seventeen, walks by. He tests his shoulders this way and that. His head moves in and out like a chicken, strutting. He holds a cigarette in one hand and a radio or a tape player in the other. His friends call out to him from the shelter, next to the entrance to Rosemead. It is their headquarters. The bins have been evicted. Bhangra. That's what they play, Razia tells her. Bhangra and Shakin' Stevens. All hours of the day, and some of the night. The parents are losing control. But some of it is quite good – her eyes slide left, and narrow themselves to two shiny slivers – particularly the Shakin' Stevens.

Rosemead faces her unblinkingly. There are metal frames on the windows. For one week they had sparkled and zinged. They had promised much. They had sung about how neat they were, how new. And then they fell into line. Overnight. The next morning they were subdued. The light did not play with them. The brick, dull red, got its way. The frames are as dirty, as sullen, as their hosts.

You can spread your soul over a paddy field, you can whisper to a mango tree, you can feel the earth beneath your toes and know that this is the place, the place where it begins and ends. But what can you tell to a pile of bricks? The bricks will not be moved.

A television aerial dangles from a window like a suicide. A pile of boxes blockades another window. Razia's place is curtained, and the back of a head bobs around behind the curtain: Shefali or Tariq hiding from Tariq or Shefali. The tattoo lady leans forward, watching the yard and drinking. Her hair slides down the sides of her head like an oil slick. She has dyed it, but it remains unwashed. She is wearing a man's vest. Her breasts, patched with dark ink, flop against it. Her thighs run over the chair. She transfers her can from one hand to the other and back again. How can she just sit and sit? What is she waiting for? What is there to see?

* * *

'You can collect him in a couple of hours. Give him a feed now, and we'll go.' Mrs Islam's voice brought Nazneen back. Her words were sharp as an eyeful of sand. She never raised her voice. It was the kind of voice that never needed to be raised. It cut words to a fine point and launched them decisively.

Nazneen turned round. 'No,' she said. 'He'll feed later.'

Mrs Islam took a handkerchief from her sleeve. She shook it out and wiped along her hairline. Winter and summer she wore the same thing: a cardigan over a sari, black socks, carpet slippers. She would not change for the seasons. They did not bend to her and she would not bend to them.

'You better do it now. I'm ready to go.'

'He's staying here,' said Nazneen. 'With me.'

Her guest looked at her. Her features could not accommodate surprise, but her eyebrows dug themselves a little closer together. Nazneen noticed for the first time how dark they were, untouched by the white that had leached her hair. 'What's that?'

Nazneen trembled, but the warmth of Raqib's body against her chest fired her resolve. 'He's staying here.' She could have added something to soothe. Something to show her respect. She could have said, I'll bring him later. He's not well today. Another day, I'll bring him. He'll be in good hands with you. All she said was, 'He's staying here.'

Mrs Islam gathered herself. She picked up her handbag and sat with it open on her lap. For a moment, Nazneen imagined her grabbing Raqib and stuffing him in the cavernous black leather. But Mrs Islam simply closed it, rubbed the glass clasp with her thumb, and got up. 'The white people,' she said, 'they all do what they want. It's nobody's business.

'If a child is screaming because it is being beaten, they just close the door and the windows. They might make a complaint about noise. But the child is not their business, even if it is being beaten to death.

'They do what they want. It is a private matter. Everything is a private matter. That is how the white people live.' She went towards the door and Nazneen followed, watching the uneven swing of her walk and forming questions about her hip that she did not ask. Mrs Islam passed her papery hand over the baby's face. The baby reached out to her and leaned across, but Nazneen held him fast.

The Dr Azad question was troubling Chanu. The question was this: was it hostility or neglect that led the doctor not to return hospitality? Or it was this: was it a matter of numbers, so that one more dinner would ensure an invitation? Or possibly this: did it matter, did it make any difference at all, if the invitations continued to be one-sided? More and more frequently, it was this: what manner of snob was this Azad?

'He eats my food, he reads my books. God alone knows where else he finds any intellectual stimulation, any companion of the intellect. Shall I ask him when we will be going to his house? I can ask like this.' Chanu rubbed the back of his head, tipped his chair back and spoke with the suggestion of a yawn. 'So, Azad, what are you hiding at your house? Are we going to come around and find out?' He let his chair fall flat again.

Nazneen spooned apple into the baby's mouth. He grabbed at the spoon and sent it flying. He laughed, spraying her with gunk. She was astonished that she had made this creature, spun him out of her flesh. When she remembered that Chanu had made him too she was stunned.

'Maybe he never thinks of it,' Chanu continued. 'He just needs a little prod. Or it could be that he doesn't consider me part of his circle. A doctor is a cut above. But what is a doctor, really, when you think about it? He memorizes everything from books: broken legs, colds and viruses, eczema and asthma, rheumatism and arthritis, boils and warts. It's learning by rote. Symptom and cure. Hardly an intellectual pursuit. No. He's just a finger blown up to the size of a banana tree. Let him guard his house, and put some barbed wire around it too. I am not interested.'

Nazneen put the baby on the floor while she hunted for the spoon. Beneath the table, the files and papers had been breeding, intermarrying with balls of string, boxes of staples, rolls of labels, chains of clips. A pair of pants lay exhausted in a heap; a sock sat fossilized in dust. The spoon was nowhere to be seen. The baby crawled under the table with her and pulled her hair. His face this last month had turned from awed to quizzical. His features were not fully drawn, but they were more than sketched. When he looked at her now, he was always on the point of asking a question. Behind the question was a very big joke, and he looked as though he would let her in on it. 'Hello,' she told him, 'I'm looking for your spoon.'

'Maybe if I get the promotion,' Chanu went on, 'then he will be more inclined to extend his hospitality. That's probably the kind of man he is.'

Nazneen came up. She scooped the baby under one arm. She checked Chanu's face to see if he required any response from her. He was mulling over his words, scrunching them this way and that, into a wrinkled brow, a taut cheek. His eyes looked somewhere far off. She was not needed. She took the baby through to the kitchen and fetched another spoon. He spoke these days of 'if. It used to be 'when'. When the promotion came through. And he never spoke about Wilkie, or his successor, Gerard, or Howard who came after him. He spoke more often of resigning.