Shadow Play (8 page)

‘Chakraborti, na? What's up, what're you doing here?' he asked my father, ‘and who's that? Isn't that Jaiswal?' as he noticed the man beside him.

‘Arey, Ramesh. Are you alone? Going home?' my father replied, lowering his window so they could see each other better.

‘Yeah, it's a short cut. I just dropped someone off at Howrah. But you guys tell me. What's up so late at night, right in front of the office?'

‘Yaar, this is what they call a coincidence,' said Jaiswal. ‘We were out on a drive to test this second-hand car I'm thinking of getting, and we decided to wait till it was a bit late so that the roads would be empty. Chakraborti's son also wanted to come along; there he is, sitting in the back. Then the bastard engine started making noises, so we pulled up and he went out to take a look. And it had to be right in front of the office. Must be the aura of the bloody place. Everything about it is inauspicious. And then who should we meet but you?'

It isn't necessary to mention that I was instantly on high alert again, all my indicators of peril fully operational. As Ramesh Uncle drove off, we had no way of being certain his suspicions had really been satisfied, so when Baba suggested that since our work was done, why not actually go for a drive before returning home, I enthusiastically seconded the idea. We couldn't take any more chances, I reasoned in furious quiet –
what if he turned the corner, reversed and followed us? We had to substantiate our story.

The silence inside the car testified to the seriousness of our situation. ‘Where should I go, Jaiswal,' said my father, to which he replied, ‘Drive anywhere, just drive'. We soon arrived at an extraordinarily wide street, four or five lanes wide. Of course there were buildings to either side of us, but what steadily became apparent was that they were constructed as one immense block that ran unbroken for a kilometre, permitting no exits. I had never been to this part of the city before, so I kept sliding along the seat to look out of both windows, never forgetting to check as well what cars were behind us. These buildings were not new; I remember them being five or six storeys high and miraculously awake considering the lateness and cold of the evening. Every window was open, and there were hundreds of balconies running along each floor. My glance went up and along, but there were people on each of them, sometimes one or two watching the traffic, sometimes an entire family. I could make out women picking up clothes to save them from the nightly dew, mothers knitting, even a boy studying unbelievably diligently under a lamp at his desk. The higher floors were harder to see, obscured by the fog around us.

There was nothing to do but drive straight ahead. The cars behind us remained at just such a distance, there was the fog and besides, Ramesh Uncle's black Morris was such a common model that we couldn't be sure if we were being followed until we arrived at the first opportunity to turn. And I wasn't the only one who was worried; I met Baba's eyes several times in the rear-view mirror, which proved that he must also have been checking constantly.

The lane we finally turned into could not have been more different from the main road. The buildings were just as awake and busy, but here they were barely ten feet apart, not enough for two cars to pass each other. The streets were still crowded, the paan shops were open, people were muffled up and chatting on the steps of storefronts. We'd barely crawled down a few metres and turned once more when we got stuck behind a stationary bus that presently turned out to be driverless. God would have been baffled by its business in such an alley in the first place, but someone on the street advised Baba to reverse and drive away, because a tree had fallen across the road up ahead and it wouldn't be removed until morning.

It was exactly then that I turned around and noticed a black Morris three cars behind us. Jaiswal Uncle was furious, probably out of nervousness. He said he would check if it was Ramesh. ‘What will you do if it is,' objected Baba, ‘you'll only confirm his suspicions. It's better to see what we can do, if we can get enough people together to deal with that tree.'

‘Babu,' he said turning to me, ‘stay here and we'll be back in a few minutes. Don't leave the car. You have to watch over it.'

I remember doing my best to remain alert for as long as possible. From time to time I turned around to check so that I could answer their question about whether we were being tailed. But three cars away, there was no way of being sure. After a while the cold got too much for me, so I pulled up all the windows. I began another effort to start counting in cycles of sixty, and that was the last thing I did that night: I don't even remember being carried upstairs to bed.

The next afternoon, when Ma was in the kitchen, I asked Baba what time we'd arrived home. He said various bystanders
had gathered and helped but it took a while to move the tree. When I asked if it had been Ramesh Uncle pursuing us, he replied without even looking up from his paper, ‘Of course not, that was all Jaiswal's unnecessary worry. Why would Ramesh chase after us on such a night? He must have been glad to get home as soon as possible. That's what we should have done too; then there would have been no misadventures. You tell me, are you feeling all right? I only hope you don't catch a cold, otherwise your Ma will never forgive me. If she asks, just say we went for a drive. Don't mention anything about Ramesh. You know how your Ma gets.'

‘And listen,' added Baba in English, as I was about to go down to play, ‘thank you for coming.'

I'm much older today than my father was that evening, but the reasons behind my presence in the backseat remained opaque to me long after I lost any lingering illusions about my strategic importance on that mission. I never questioned Baba about it again, just as I never asked what document had suddenly been so important. They became further facets of his invisibility, which soon afterwards was sealed forever when I left the house with my mother.

Years later, I was home for the first time from England (about to leave in a few days to take up my new position at St M.'s, but with no thought as yet of visiting my father despite a three-year absence: contact between us had withered to the point where he would learn I'd been home only after I'd returned to London), and Ma had just finished cooking. She was going to bathe and then we would sit down to lunch. In a ritual that I knew since my childhood, she took off a ring, a pencil necklace and her bangles and set them down before she went into the bathroom.
For the first time ever, I looked at them properly and then quizzed her about them while we were eating. The ring was from my grandfather. The necklace had been a gift from Baba, the very first thing he had given her. She hadn't even dared to wear it for a year until they were actually married, but carried it everywhere in her handbag. And now, though he was more than a decade behind her, and these days they rarely saw each other, she continued to carry this trace of my invisible father.

 

(A dream noted in my diary, from February 1976, shortly after I learnt of my great-aunt's death)

 

In our giant family seat, a mistress has arrived to visit me. She is much older, stately and beautiful, and married to a bedridden man. A loving and devoted carer, these are the afternoons she claims to attend the club, twice a week, to have tea with friends and renew library books. I take her hand in mine just for its incredible softness; it's a small miracle. But our shared drawing room is a much-violated space: children scamper around constantly, servants peep through the cracks in shutters when they aren't appearing with unordered tea, one by one, followed by equally unsolicited biscuits, sweets and water, while relatives wait eagerly in every adjacent room for these spies to report their findings.

We move to the room I've been assigned; since my father sold up, no part of the house belongs to us. I'm suffered, kindly enough, during this unexpected stay, and two young nephews have been cleared out for me.

Here at least there are no stares. I draw her into my arms and fill my senses with her perfume, my lips grazing hesitantly
against her neck and shoulders, too anxious almost to begin the moment for fear of it concluding. She smiles and lies back; I envelop her in my embrace.

We jump startled out of bed, still fully dressed: in lying down we nearly crushed something small and moving. I lift the sheet by its corner and sweep it off in a single motion. Three kittens appear exposed and mewling, without a mother. I'm still wondering if this is a prank when my lady reacts in a fashion I would never have imagined. She leans over and lifts one of them, her long fingers pinching between its ribs, oblivious to its pitiful flailing. Without pausing she hurls it a few feet away, screaming, ‘Rooms are meant for humans.'

 

Because of the effects of the sedation, it took me over an hour to work out that I was in Brazil. After I realized they were speaking Portuguese I thought we might be somewhere in Africa, but then I asked the driver's friend who was very courteous and open with me, just as Faisul of Brick Lane had been. He also informed me that the local time was three o'clock on Wednesday morning. Perhaps it was the policy of their organization to put forward such a face, or else it was one of the indulgent eccentricities of absolute power. As I sat in the back of the van, shaking my head, rotating my neck, and stretching my arms and legs which were sore as though they'd been tied, it was strange to ponder how Faisul had been in my Tooting room less than a week ago, and that the Wednesday before that I'd been waiting to meet him at Shoreditch station.

There wasn't much more to recall: I'd calmly submitted to the three men waiting for me when I returned to the main road after spending the night in that demolition site. Even though I'd spotted them from some distance away and it was morning, I behaved as though I expected them there, and couldn't imagine running a second time. Without a word I had got into the back of the white van whose door they held open. Later, in a room
without windows, I was injected twice in the left arm, and must have fallen asleep. I awoke in another van in Brazil.

Foolish thoughts coursed through my mind: I wondered what the landlady would decide about me. She was used to my quietness and my disappearances, but would she inform the police when I didn't show up on the third for our usual cup of tea and cake over the rent? I thought about the faces at The Three Bells and how they would respond to any inquiries. It had not taken long for me to be accepted once they'd actually approached me, and soon I felt just as easy about sitting at the bar and listening to their chat as I did about taking my drink to the conservatory area to be alone. In either case my next pint was poured and waiting whenever I was ready for it. The discussions I participated most often in were about cricket, and that was only when something reminded me of an incident or a player from the seventies or earlier. Most of the other things that occurred to me to remark on during pub conversations were to do with minor changes I'd noticed on my walks through different parts of London, and occasionally I contributed an observation I found relevant, about a new supermarket appearing or a building being demolished, a shop changing hands or new kinds of people I had noted in a particular area. What these aroused was astonishment at my habits, because I spoke in detail of neighbourhoods that were as unseen and far off to those around me as India or Brazil would have been. For a brief time this tendency even earned me the nickname of ‘Postman Pat'.

I thought then of Patty: would she worry or would she swear off and dismiss me? For three years she had been the reason my pints were always ready, and it was nearly two months since I first took her home after hours. Now, as we drove in
silence, I recalled images of Patty astride me, which alternated with those of her face in close-up as we kissed, and Patty as she prepared breakfast in my kitchen, standing over my cooker in her underwear with the radio on, with as much command as when she presided over her bar.

I was surprised to find myself close to tears. I realized I was drawing strength from the fact that someone who had chosen to remain friendly with me despite my silences for three years would not dismiss me immediately from her feelings. I wished I had not been so self-absorbed over the last fortnight, that I had left her with at least some indication of my plans. But what could I have revealed that didn't involve revealing more, and that wouldn't have surfaced once the police were called in?

Yet Patty was the only person who would have been satisfied with a word. She never inquired about my past, never a question about why I hadn't responded to her before (except once when she remarked happily after we made love that we could have begun doing this a lot earlier). I became aware of a pulsing that began behind my temples and plunged through the rest of me in spasms, as though my insides were caving, and soon I knew this was actually the sensation of falling away from Patty. I hadn't even been conscious for most of the time since the morning two days before when I woke up amid the rubble, but now in the van my entire loss seemed to focus itself on the loss of Patty, and I felt that if I only had her with me, I should not require anything else.