The House of Hidden Mothers (44 page)

Sita leaned on the doorframe, weak and dizzy. She could see that Prem was crumbling. He gaped at this man clutching his feet, his hands hovering uselessly at his sides. He wanted to touch him – of course he would, she knew that. Usually he would never allow anyone to get as far as the actual feet – just the gesture of bending to touch them was always enough for Prem.

‘
Jaan
,' she tried to call, her pet name, the Urdu word for life itself. This man was her life and his big heart would betray them. But the word died in her throat, swollen by heat and thirst.

And then, just as Prem seemed about to offer his hands to Sunil, to bring him up with his blessing and forgiveness, Sunil got up abruptly and turned to the bailiff, producing a wallet from his pocket. ‘How much?' he asked in a calm, cold voice.

The bailiff began muttering something about bribing a government official and obstructing the course of justice, but Sunil merely peeled a few more notes off the rolled bundle in his hand.

‘Hah, hah …' he mimicked him dismissively. ‘Name your price. Look at them …' He gestured to Prem and Sita. ‘They don't even live here, you know that? They just want to make a quick sale and take the money back to their English mansion. And anyway, how long are they going to live, heh?'

He pushed the notes into the breast pocket of the bailiff's shirt. Where was Ravi, Sita thought wildly. He should be seeing this, he should be taking pictures on his phone or something. She grabbed her handbag and pulled out the sponge bag. She stood in the doorway and waved bundles of cash at the bailiff, shouting at Sunil, even though every word tore at her throat.

‘You want us to play this game? Here! How much? Have everything! Doesn't matter what is fair, I have more money than you so I must be right,
hena
?'

Sita threw a roll of notes at the bailiff, who caught it expertly in one hand. A small noise came from somewhere: Prem, looking at her as if she was a stranger. He shook his head slowly, just once, and backed towards the bed, where he sat down heavily, his face in his hands. The bailiff seemed to consider the weight of the cash for a moment, then removed the notes from his breast pocket and returned them to Sunil. At that moment, Sheetal entered, puffing with exertion and fanning herself with her dupatta.

‘Well?' was all she said to Sunil. She could see the answer in his twisted face.

Sheetal threw him a look of blazing contempt and briefly checked her phone before saying casually, ‘Mummy's got rid of her tenants in the South Ex flat. We can be in there by Friday. No thanks to you …'

As they turned to go, the bailiff cleared his throat. ‘Your auntie and uncle require some water. We need permission to help ourselves in the kitchen.'

Sheetal didn't even bother to look at Prem and Sita as she walked out.

‘You don't touch anything. I don't know these people. Buy your own water.'

And they were gone.

Sita wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. More than anything, she wanted a drink. She pushed past the bailiff and sat down next to Prem, taking his shaking hand. ‘It is finished,
jaan
. Finished.'

Then the bailiff was standing next to her. She hadn't noticed before, but he had a grave sweet face and touchingly sticky-out ears. He could have been any age between twenty and forty, a man-child of indeterminate age, and he was holding out her money in his open palm.

‘Take it, Auntie. It would be kind to buy the men some lunch. I will get you water.'

Tara spent the rest of the day feeling constantly wrong-footed, expectations and assumptions peeled from her layer by layer as she talked and walked and listened. The students who greeted her and Dhruv were so different from those she had left behind on her course – not just the obvious external stuff like their clothes (cleaner jeans and T-shirts, not a whiff of grunge or shabby chic), but because of their infectious zeal to reform and challenge, which made her feel quite heady. Oh, they were angry, with the usual spitfire fizz of youth and possibility: they attacked their country's insidious corruption on every level, the growing gap between the poor and the newly minted millionaires, the cancer of the caste system, the sexual war being waged in their cities and villages, the growing number of unemployed, disaffected men who found themselves jobless, without women, due to the growing imbalance caused by female infanticide. One lone voice stood up and raged against the commercialization of cricket and the over-reliance on foreign imported players. But for every complaint, they offered solutions, suggestions: marches, campaigns, social-media action. They talked about spirituality in the same breath as politics. It was as if everything was up for grabs, no sacred cow going unchallenged. It was the surge of hope, the lack of cynicism that made all the old arguments seem real and urgent to Tara. And how comfortable they all seemed in their skin; all of them dated someone – some of them kept it quiet from their families, others didn't. The subject of arranged marriage never came up, nor the scourge of the slums or Bollywood. This was a generation just pushing through the pangs of birth, emerging newborn, baring their teeth and eager to run. There was so much to do, but that's where the thrill lay, with what could be.

Afterwards, Dhruv took her to a dhaba café nearby, with Formica tables and framed posters of black-and-white Hindi films on the walls. They ate chicken kebabs, which sizzled on the plate, and dense creamy daal, which they licked off their fingers in the rare pauses in their conversation.

‘This looks just like my mum's mate's café back in the East End,' laughed Tara. She was almost full but couldn't stop eating. At some point that day her appetite had come back; her whole body felt hungry.

‘Not homesick, are you?' Dhruv asked through a mouthful of naan. He obviously liked his grub – the slight roll of his tummy under his sweatshirt told her that. Tara found it comforting, the sight of someone at ease with their body and their food. You can tell what a man's like in bed by the way he dances and the way he eats – she had read that somewhere. She imagined Dhruv breaking buttons on shirts and ripping seams in his haste to get naked and tuck in.

‘OK, do I have pickle on my nose again?' Dhruv asked her, rubbing his face with his sleeve.

She had been staring at him, maybe even drooling. Old deeply buried feelings pushed at her skin, too painful, too messy. She needed to eat some more.

‘Homesick?' She bit into a
papard
, which splintered satisfyingly on her tongue. ‘Sick of home, more like. Wherever that is now. I love it here, it feels … relevant. New. Does that make sense?'

‘Totally.' Dhruv nodded. ‘You know India is the world's youngest nation, statistically? Almost half our population is under twenty-five, the median citizen is a twenty-nine-year-old city dweller. By 2020, sixty-four per cent of the population will be of working age. It's what economists call a sweet spot. Now, if we can develop our neglected manufacturing sector and pull emphasis away from our over-developed service industries, we could do something about all the jobless bored men who take out their frustration on our newly emancipated working women …'

Tara stopped chewing and stared at Dhruv. ‘Bloody hell, is that your election speech or does it just come out of your mouth like that?'

‘I've thought about it a lot,' Dhruv said reverently, nodding. ‘And I'm an unemployed Economics graduate hoping to go into journalism, and those are my best chat-up lines right there.'

‘Always does it for me, statistics and flow charts,' Tara shot back. It struck her how impressive it was that he could be witty in several languages. Dhruv had made the students laugh on several occasions with a stream of Hindi, only some of which she had understood. All those impromptu lessons with Mala hadn't helped with comedy banter in the slightest. But then, everyone seemed to be effortlessly bi- if not tri-lingual. Why did the English ever need to acquire other languages when everyone did them the favour of speaking theirs?

‘So, you finished college and started volunteering for Shakti? Why?'

Dhruv swallowed down a mouthful and wiped his hands on his paper serviette. He took some time to do this, cleaning around each fingernail thoughtfully.

‘My sister,' he said finally. Tara waited. ‘Usual story – married to a guy the family knew. The minute she's his wife he turns into some … caveman. He had been violent towards her for some time before she finally told us.'

‘God …' Tara breathed, afraid to say more.

‘Of course, the minute we knew, we brought her home. She filed for divorce – and then found out she was pregnant, so …'

‘She went back?' Tara blurted it out.

Druv nodded. ‘We told her so many times … My parents, they didn't care about what the neighbours would say, they supported her, but Nisha … she wanted the child to have a father. And she thought it would change him.'

‘Is she … I'm sorry, don't say if you—'

‘Oh, she's alive,' Dhruv said. ‘She told us the beatings stopped. She had a boy – that helped, I suppose. I don't know if he's still actually hitting her. But she's scared of him, you can see it. He doesn't like her visiting us. I've hardly seen my nephew. And this is an educated middle-class woman who was given every chance to just … leave. That's what made me want to do something. That's how deep it is, the conditioning, the brainwashing. Physical violence – you can see it, you know what you're dealing with. But this – fear of change, choosing to stay in your prison – that's where the war is. In your head.'

Tara's phone rang. She couldn't answer it for a moment, still with Dhruv, with his sister in a flat somewhere not far from here, holding her son and listening for dreaded footsteps at the door. When she saw it was Nanima's number, she snatched it up. Dhruv saw the colour drain from her face.

‘Where are you?' Tara said in a high, scared voice. ‘I'll find it. I'm coming.' She stood up, disoriented. ‘Where's Batra hospital? Is it far?'

‘Not near …'

‘My grandfather's … he's been taken ill. I need a taxi … can you—'

‘I'll take you.'

Dhruv gathered up Tara's equipment, looped her handbag around his arm and led her away.

He crumpled slowly like a deflating balloon. That's what Ravi Luthra had told her. Walking in the heat of the day to the government offices to ensure the water and electricity in the flat were switched off, then finding the locksmith to change all the locks … why did Ravi let an old man do all that when he hadn't eaten or drunk anything?

‘I couldn't stop him, Auntie,' Ravi told her, shaking his head. ‘He insisted it all must be done today. I told him I would do it, but …'

Ravi assured her they were in the best neurological hospital in Delhi – they would know if it was a stroke, they would know what do to afterwards. Thank God they had been sensible enough to keep up their travel insurance. Prem was hooked up to a lot of machines; she had to find his hand carefully under the wires and tubes and not move it too much, because of the drip which had left a vivid purple stain around it. He had always had very delicate skin. Bruised like a soft peach. Sita was very impressed with the hospital, so clean and modern. Didn't Indians always make the best doctors? No joke to her. The nurses called them Uncle and Auntie – that kind of thing made a difference. They had discussed only once where they would like their ashes to be scattered, because that kind of talk upset Prem. They had both expected the other to say, ‘In the Ganges, of course. Back to Ganga Mama to join the debris of our ancestors.' But neither of them had said that. Sita liked the idea of Brighton. They had been on several day trips there over the years and she loved the noisy pier and the sound of the waves on the tumbling stony beach. Prem wasn't too specific, but he had insisted it should be somewhere in the mountains. Somewhere high and remote with no other people around, where he could get some peace. It had surprised Sita. It made her wonder, had he not found peace with her? Now she thought about it, in the hospital room with its soundtrack of soft beeps and trills, when had the poor man had any peace? He had fought his way out of poverty, endured the loss and trials of emigration, seen his daughter grow and suffer an unhappy marriage just when they thought she was settled, and now, this new baby. Could she have done more, to cushion him from all the stress of their lives? On the other hand, hadn't they been more fortunate than most?

Of course, Prem couldn't hear any of her thoughts, but if he could, if he had been able to speak to her, he would have told her that for him there was not a moment of regret, not a moment he would not have had again with her.

The sound of the phone ringing had dragged Shyama up from the depths of slumber, reeling her towards a surface she still hadn't found. Everything that happened afterwards felt as if she was still somewhere underwater, each movement clumsy and slow, as if weights were dragging on her feet. She might drown. Tara's voice so far away, she sounded like she was six years old again and it wrung her inside out. Toby's strong arms, his voice on the phone, ringing round for a plane ticket. Throwing a few belongings into a bag. Where was her passport? A hurried scribbled list of instructions for Geeta at the salon, her diary wiped – for how long she wasn't sure. It was only when she stood motionless in the hallway, her single bag at her feet, and looked up to see Mala peering at her from the top of the stairs that it struck her across the face like a slap. Mala. The baby was less than four weeks away. First babies often came before the due date, especially South Asian ones. ‘We cook more quickly, sweetie,' Priya had advised her. How could she leave? How could she not go?

‘Shyama …' It was the first time she had heard Mala use her name without the Madam attached. ‘So sorry for your papa. I can do anything? When you are away?'