Homesick (19 page)

Simon waved at her from the other side of the hall. She raised her hand, and he mouthed, “Dance?” She nodded assent.

The accordion player arpeggioed through a chord, but the caller said, “And now we will sing a song for you before we take a small break.” There were muted cheers, and someone shouted something from another corner of the room, and people cheered again. Simon shrugged at Preethi and started to walk toward her, but the music started, and instead of crossing the empty dance floor, she watched him walk around the crowd, to make his way to her more discreetly. He was a cautious man.

“I know a girl that you don’t know,” the singer started, “little Liza Jane,” the rest joined in. The crowd began to clap. Preethi started to clap, too, her hands automated, her feet more independent, tapping a different, faster rhythm. If Simon had walked across to her, placed his hand about her waist, and swung her around, she would have danced with him, cheery and carefree.

“Oh, Eliza!” they sang, and she mouthed the words with them.

A young woman skirmished into the centre of the hall, hair hanging down in greasy spurts from under a full-brimmed
hat. She wore a denim miniskirt and a revealing shirt, her breasts threatening to gate-crash. On her legs she wore a pair of PVC cowboy chaps. She turned to her friends and beckoned them, but they shook their heads and shrugged.

“Ruthie!” one of them shouted. “Get ’ere!” But she began to dance. It was not a fluid dance or a hopping-stamping movement. Ruthie put her hands out in front of her, as if to perform what the British think of as an Egyptian dance, straight arms sliding back and forth like a clock stuck at a quarter past three. Preethi was discomfited. She let her eyes film over, to transform the scene to the forest she wanted to see, of drunk locals in cotton shifts, their hair covered in roses and tumbling honeysuckle, curls of blond and auburn grazing loose breasts, plumply tempting men in breeches. Her eyes glazed, and she saw a wisewoman standing in the middle of the hall, beckoning people to come to her, summoning forth the evil of rain that would spoil the crop, dancing it away with sudden thrusts to the ceiling and the sky beyond. People around Preethi watched silently as the song continued and Ruthie’s drunken swayings diminished her, until her legs began to give way and she stumbled toward the floor, pulling at the chaps so that she made a drunken striptease, which some men stood and watched and jeered and others turned from, ashamed that they had seen.

Freddie thrust a glass toward her.

“Thank you,” she said. Simon had been stopped by a colleague, a middle-aged woman, who was trying to convince him to dance. She watched him, and Freddie followed her eyes.

“Is that your husband?”

“Yes.”

“Looks nice.”

She laughed. “What’s nice? How can you tell?” It was strange, but despite the years, this boy, this man, seemed more familiar to her than Simon. She turned to look at him. “Do you remember how earnest we were about everything?”

“Oh, yes. But that’s every teenager, isn’t it? Knowing everything. We would have made a funny pair, wouldn’t we?”

“Do you think? I think—together—we could have conquered the world!”

He laughed. She had used a stock phrase, a journalist’s cliché.

Simon reached his arm about Preethi as he halted at her side.

“Where have you been?” he asked her.

“Outside. I met a friend. This is Freddie.”

“Hello, Freddie. Now, who are you married to?”

And she watched her husband charm Freddie, holding the handshake a little longer than necessary, looking up into his eyes.

He turned to her: “Look, I need to go and talk to other people. Are you all right here? When do you want to go?” he asked, and she heard the new note that had chilled his voice toward her recently. The children were older, their youngest almost sixteen. Perhaps, oh, God, perhaps he has someone else, she thought.

“No, not go. Just spend some time together?”

“Fine,” he said. “Come and talk to George. He’s been asking after you.”

“No. Time, just you and me.”

“At a barn dance?” His eyebrows raised.

“Yes, at a barn dance.”

He turned as someone tapped his shoulder. She turned to Freddie and began talking again. But soon his sister came and claimed him, took him away. Simon took her hand, and they walked purposefully through the crowd. He took her to the bar, and when they were given two glasses of red, he clinked their glasses. He turned to face her and smiled, so he was completely hers. There was no malice that she could detect in his face.

“Do you still love me?” she asked. It was not a sudden question, she thought, just a curiosity, now that she was drinking her third glass of red.

He looked astonished. “Why even ask? Of course I do. I could not love you more if I tried!”

She laughed. “What an unfortunate turn of phrase,” she drawled, and turned away from their introspection. “Who was that girl, Ruth?”

“Why did you ask me?”

“About Ruth?”

“
No
. About loving you? Of course I love you. There’s no one else for me.”

“Fine. Why did they let her dance all by herself?”

“Oh, she’s just one of those girls who always get drunk. Look, do you doubt me?”

“No. Well, I … no. No, I don’t doubt you. At least—it’s different here. Different with these people. I need the loo, Simon. Why does someone keep shouting ‘Si’ at you?”

“They think it’s funny. Look, the loos are that way. Come on,” he said and pulled her hand. He led her into an atrium to the side of the hall. There they parted, he to the men’s, she to the ladies’. When Preethi emerged, Simon had vanished. She looked about the atrium, and where there had been people walking to and fro, there was no one. Not one person. The toilets had been empty, and when she emerged
from the smelly sterility, she felt transformed, as if she had travelled into another time, another place. There were no sounds, no noises at all. She stood and waited. And then she heard hurried footsteps, a man’s feet coming toward her from the gravel outside.

A fat man in a white shirt and white trousers stepped through the doorway.

“Where are we?” he asked. He fanned his face with a straw hat.

“I … I don’t know. I—well, I don’t live around here,” Preethi said.

“Nay, lass. What’s the village? What’s the nearest town, then?”

She smiled at him, dumb, listened for the noise of the crowd, for the racket of the playing band or the child-adults shouting. Nothing. Just her, and this man. He looked about him, gazed at her blank, tipsy face. He strode toward the hall, grasped the double doors, and suddenly sound entered her vacuum and the buzz and flow of the dance came out to the atrium, and the man walked into it and away from her. He walked across the dance floor and to the band, and the caller clapped him on the back. The man threw his hat to the ground and, behind the band, picked up a guitar, nodding his head again and again as the band teased him. Preethi watched him from where she stood. She had been certain; she had been afraid but certain that she was the only one here, in this building, and that the fairies she was so sure she would see had finally arrived.

•

George said, “Come, now, you haven’t danced
one
dance.”

“Are you asking me to dance, George?” Preethi said, smiling sweetly.

“Well, would you dance with me if I asked?”

“No. You’re a bloody awful dancer.” He laughed rowdily.

“Thing is, Preethi, I thought when I said ‘barn dance’ that people would understand that I meant, you know,
English
country dancing. But look, they’ve all got these bloody cowboy hats, and they’re yee-ha-ing as if they were from Texas or something.”

She was suddenly animated. “I know! I don’t understand. I was expecting a clear demonstration of Englishness. I was expecting chocolate-box Englishness. I was expecting to watch, like a tourist; I was expecting—”

“But you’re not a tourist, are you?” George pointed out. “You’re from England. You were born in London, I remember you telling me.”

“Yes. But …”—but he had wrong-footed her. Yes, she was
from
England, by birth. She was
from
England the way she certainly was not
from
Sri Lanka. Her demands of Sri Lanka were as stringent as her demands of England. She had an impression of the way countries should be, the way their inhabitants should behave, the way everything should be.

“I know what you mean, though.” George sighed. “These idiots don’t know how lucky they are. They have so much that’s good here. They’re surrounded by countryside and tradition, good food, the land, and what do they do? Sit at home and watch American crap on the telly.”

Simon had joined them. “Not all of them, George. The rest of them are out getting legless.”

“Well, at least
that’s
a good British tradition,” George said, and he and Preethi giggled, but Simon looked out at the crowd, and Preethi noticed his jaw twitch.

Anthony and his wife were walking unsteadily toward
them. She held his arm by the sleeve, at the elbow, like a nanny leading a child. They came to a stop in front of George, Preethi, and Simon.

“Well, boss,” Anthony slurred, “it’s been a fine party. A fine
dance
you have led me!”

“Thanks, Anthony. Have you had a nice time, Beatrice?”

And as they conversed with Simon, George said softly to Preethi, “Drinks like a fish, both do, since they lost their son in Iraq,” and he smiled kindly at them. “Have you met Simon’s wife?”

“Oh, Pretty,” Beatrice said. “Yes, we met outside. We talked about bringing up children and how it ruins our lives.”

George laughed and dug Preethi’s ribs with his elbow. “You turning Beatrice into a fucking feminist?”

Preethi smiled. She thought of her days, the rhythms of her days. The back-and-forth walks to schools, the buying of food, the preparation of meals. She thought of the years and years of PE kits and music lessons, chess clubs and drama productions. She thought of Simon’s daily arrivals home, how she would tease their daughter that she would be taken to the Beast’s house because she was always the first to greet her father at the gate, and how lately it was only a dog who waited patiently for his car door to slam. She thought of her garden, and the beans and courgettes that magically appeared every summer from seeds she had planted, and the vines that climbed her golden-bricked house, and the marigolds that dotted the beds orange so that from heaven it would look like the sun had shattered and sprinkled itself all over their land. Her children walked in sunshine; her children danced in sunshine. She had never claimed it had ruined her life. She and Simon had had a
good life, and if it were to end today, or tomorrow, it would have been as good as it possibly could have been.

George had his arm about Anthony’s shoulders, and Simon on the other side held Beatrice about the waist. Preethi put her arm about George’s shoulders, and there they stood, she thought, as she and Simon had stood at the CND march, with the politician who had won the war. The caller shouted, “Last dance, everyone, last dance!”

Simon escorted Beatrice to a chair, and George walked Anthony to the chair next to her.

Simon turned to Preethi. “Will you dance with me, my love?” he asked. She took his arm, and they walked to the centre of the hall.

“This one’s an easy one,” the caller said. “No circles or moving on or anything. Just promenade about the hall, and when I say, ‘Spin your partner,’ then promenade again. See—easy!”

And then she and Simon were walking together, arms linked, as if they were an old couple taking a daily stroll, or a newly married couple walking up an aisle, or a couple in love absorbed in each other, or they were just themselves, just Simon and Preethi, the golden ones, who walked in sunshine their lives through. When the caller shouted “Spin!” she took his hands and they spun, with their eyes only on each other, and she laughed and she grimaced, her face distorted and excited. Simon’s face was the same each time, though, a smile, passive and unafraid. On their last spin, he let go too soon. She fell, but he leaned over her, right down, and, holding her arm, lifted her, so that to anyone who watched, it looked as if she had made a low curtsy and he had pulled her up into a twirl. When she glanced about, embarrassed, she noticed that Emma stood alone, at the side, watching them. Her face was sullen, and Preethi
smiled, walked forward to break the silence between them, but Emma had been watching Simon. Preethi looked back to Simon, too. He smiled at Preethi only, and they linked arms again and walked away. Emma was only at the beginning of her dance, Preethi thought, and they were at the end. And we have done it well. They walked back to the open door, to where George stood with Anthony and Beatrice.

The caller said, “Before we finish, we’d like to sing a last song for you. It is called
‘Rolling Home.’ ” He played a chord on his accordion. The man all in white—my fairy, Preethi thought—sang the first verse as a solo:

And as each of the tenor harmonies joined one by one, the crowd silenced, until only the voices took off into the night, like elfin wings. Preethi looked up at Simon, and above his head a single moth flew idly, its lassitude echoing the men’s voices as they sang about ploughing and hedgerows and the labourers. As they entered the last chorus and the fairy-man sang the first verse again, Freddie came to say goodbye.

She looked up to his face, his now-broad shoulders, the greying brown hair, still wavy about the temples. And he looked down to her.

“If we had married, it would have been an entirely different world we live in,” he said.

She stepped to him, put her body against his, her arms high above her head about his neck, and placed her ear against his chest. She heard his heart beating steadily: she thought of Rohan, she didn’t know why. “Oh, Freddie,” she said. Tears had come to her eyes, and when she looked up, his eyes, too, had dulled. They did not exchange e-mail addresses or mobile numbers. But as she turned to go, he caught her hand, held it, and she turned back to him and walked away backward, letting go of him at the very last moment.