Brick Lane (57 page)

'No,' admitted Nazneen. 'I did not know. And what is "chromosome"?'

Shahana was offended. 'Well, it's something to do with biology. But aren't you interested that we have less than the chickens?'

Nazneen picked another blade of grass. She forced herself back into the moment. The girls returned from their walk and asked for ice creams. Nazneen considered whether to wake Chanu but before she could decide he sat up. He belched lightly, with his hand over his mouth, and then yawned with abandon. 'I'll go for the ice cream,' he said. 'Stretch my legs.'

'I'm having a good time, Abba,' said Bibi.

'Then it is worth it.' He looked at Shahana. 'And you?'

'Oh,' she said, 'nothing could be better.'

He hesitated. Something dark passed across his brow. But then it was gone. He lifted his jowls in a smile. 'As long as the memsahib is pleased.' And he walked across the grass, down to the lakeside.

'Are you in love with him?' Shahana looked fierce. Her eyes narrowed.

Nazneen went into freefall. She bowed her head.

'I mean, have you ever been in love with him? Perhaps before he got so
fat?'

Nazneen reached out to her daughter. She stroked her arm and she would have liked to embrace her, hug her tight against her body. 'Your father is a good man. I was lucky in my marriage.'

'You mean he doesn't beat you,' said Shahana.

'When you are older, you will understand all these things. About a husband and wife.' Nazneen did not know which one of them was wiser, the mother or the daughter. She did not know if Shahana's questions were acute or naive, but all the same she felt proud of the girl.

Shahana was not satisfied. 'But do you love him?'

Bibi sat with her feet drawn up to her bottom and her arms around her knees, bracing herself for a crash. 'Do you, Amma?'

Nazneen laughed. 'Well, you silly girls. Don't you think I love my family? Look, here is your father now, and he has chocolate ice creams.'

On Monday morning Mrs Islam came for her money. She leaned against the wall in the hallway and another chunk of plaster was dislodged. For a few moments she massaged her hip and she let out a groan that at once suggested great pain and the capacity to bear it. She sprayed a cloud of Ralgex Heat Spray. Most of it landed on her chiffon sari but it appeared to revive her. 'I've brought you something, child. Here. Carry my bag for me.'

When she was recumbent on the sofa, Mrs Islam closed her eyes.

Nazneen stood by. From the next-door flat there came a faint and rhythmic knocking. It was the bed moving. The neighbour had another new boyfriend. Nazneen blushed. She wondered if others listened to her bed and how much it had already told.

'Whenever He is ready, I am also ready.'

Nazneen was used to this. She no longer bothered to protest. She waited. Listening to Mrs Islam was like being in Gouripur, listening to the radio in a storm. She kept on cutting out.

In the flats immediately next door, there were white people. And they minded their own business – something Mrs Islam had told her years ago – and now she knew why. For this English peculiarity, she was grateful.

'The mosque school is full. Do not send your daughters. We cannot take them.'

Nazneen saw that the wart on the side of Mrs Islam's nose had grown a secondary knobble. From this nodule grew a fourth hair. The hairs were long. Perhaps Mrs Islam's hand had grown too unsteady to pluck them, or her eyesight too weak. Perhaps she was, at last, attaining invalidity. And the hair on her head was not tied tightly, as it usually was, in a neat spool of white held together by the invisible powers of Godliness and elastics. Now it more nearly resembled the nest of a slovenly and spectacularly incontinent bird, and it glittered with the demented treasure of a dozen black metal pins.

Nazneen went to the showcase and opened the door. From beneath the wooden elephant she pulled out a yellow envelope, and counted for the third time that day the five ten–pound notes. Chanu was determined she should have no more. For a couple of weeks he had said, 'That crook, I'll give her nothing. All money goes to the Home Fund.' But after a persuasive visit from her sons, he had settled on fifty pounds per week.

'How much money do you have, child?' Mrs Islam began to press along the length of one hand with the other, still with her eyes closed.

'Fifty pounds. As agreed.'

Mrs Islam opened her eyes. Those eyes could not miss anything. They were small and dangerous. 'Arthritis. The hands of a cripple. But do not worry. I am too old, anyway.' She fished in the pocket of her cardigan and held something up. 'Take them, take them.' Her voice faded away, and her head fell back as if she had fainted.

She recovered. 'When I was a girl, my mother massaged my hands every day. I had the smallest and most supple hands in all of Tangail. But now' – she sighed – 'I can't get these bracelets on. Take them, child. Take them.'

The bangles were of dark green glass, motes of gold suspended inside.

Mrs Islam took a handkerchief and wiped her brow. She smelled of mints and cough syrup; a layered smell, such as of perfume over sweat, the sweet smell of decay.

'Very pretty,' said Nazneen.

'Yes, yes. Take what you want.' She allowed her eyelids to droop. Her voice was barely louder than the rustle of her lilac chiffon sari.

Nazneen held the envelope. She held her tongue.

Mrs Islam began to massage her temples with her crippled hands.

Before her elder, Nazneen waited without comment or patience. The old woman, the better to relax her face, let her mouth hang open. Nazneen imagined cramming the money inside that black hole.

'So you are going back.' The geriatric voice had vanished.

Overhead, a vacuum cleaner was switched on. The bed next door had stopped moving against the wall. 'I don't know.' Nazneen counted the money a fourth time.

'You don't know. Of course you don't. Why should you know? If you are planning to rob an old woman of her money, then you should know nothing. Better keep your mouth closed.'

'I have your money here.'

'You have it all?' snapped Mrs Islam. Her black eyes glittered. 'Give it to me. How much is here? A thousand pounds still owing, and you are going to run away? Give me the rest.'

'That's all I have.' A taste of bile came in her mouth.

'No, child. Are you going to swim back home with your pots on your head? You have money for the plane ticket.'

She could have spat, right there and then, on the lilac chiffon. She swallowed. 'Not here. I don't have any money here.'

A change came over her guest. Mrs Islam began to breathe heavily. She held her chest and she shrank inside her sari, as if she were being eaten alive from the inside. She gasped and waved her hand. Nazneen rushed to the bag to find Benylin or some other, more extreme form of unction. But Mrs Islam waved the bag away. 'Come close to me,' she croaked. Nazneen kneeled down by the sofa and Mrs Islam grabbed her hand. Her skin was hot and dry as sun-baked leaves, and her knuckles were sharp. From this close range it was possible to see all the thousand tiny veins on her cheeks and nose. They showed through, so it seemed, where the skin had worn away. 'I have been a widow many years.' Nazneen breathed in the complex smell of the sickroom, of smells hiding smells. 'God knows how I have suffered. Without a husband all these years. Listen to me. Get close. God has tested me, a widow's life is no joke. I think I will take a little Benylin.

'Good girl. Put it back now. No, give me your hand again. I was telling you about my husband. He left me alone. But even before he died – God bears me witness – he was no use at all. I do not know what substance filled his head, but it was not brain. He was Dulal, the son of Alal. Do you understand me? He was like a spoilt child. Without me, he was nothing.'

She paused a while. She inspected Nazneen's face as she would inspect a mango at market, squeezing it gently with thumb and forefinger.