A Matter of Marriage (23 page)

Tariq was talking to her, something about paintings. She could get by with just nods and smiles as she continued to watch Richard on the couch. Then Henry was beside them, telling Tariq about the Kiriakis Trust and what central heating can do to oils and watercolors and somehow her glass was empty again, and Tariq, so attentive, was taking care of that while Henry went on and on . . .

—

T
HINGS WERE GOING
very well, Mrs. Begum thought, as she chatted to this so-friendly Richard. Still single, just like Prince Charles's youngest boy, and she'd never believed for a minute that an eldest son would refuse his inheritance, especially something so important as Bourne Abbey, so famous that the government was helping to pay to fix it, paying her husband to supervise, it was of such greatness. Was he planning, now that all that hard work was done, to take it back from his brother and his wife and the two little boys, so lively, though not so handsome as Tariq at that age? Perhaps he was planning a marriage and wanted the Abbey so that he could pass it on to his own children?

But it didn't matter, she thought, patting his hand as he spoke. He had enough money even if he didn't take the Abbey as well, and so interested in her family, even asking if Tariq was married, which of course was halfway to asking about her daughters' status. No sense of humor, but his wife could give him that. Tall thin men were well balanced by short-and-round. He would do well for Rohimun. A good match for outside the community. No one could turn their noses up at that. And then Dr. Choudhury would be forced to bring her back into the bosom of the family.

How to do this? Mrs. Guri's matchmaking skills would be of no help here. Richard now knew that Tariq had two sisters, she had made sure of that, but how to introduce them when Shunduri was sulking in London and Rohimun was still forbidden to Windsor Cottage? Richard and Rohimun were so close to each other right now, but so far. The photos, she would show the photos to him. He was a man: all men lived through their eyes. That would be enough to start something.

She put her hand out, arresting his next question to her, something about bindis. “Not Choudhury, dear Richard. We do not change our names on marriage like Christians do. That is my husband, Dr. Choudhury. Begum. I am Mrs. Begum.” She patted his hand. “You must come to us at Windsor Cottage, Richard. And I will feed you. You are too thin with your London living.”

He looked pleased, if still solemn, and accepted for next weekend.

—

D
R.
C
HOU
DHURY WAS
having a wonderful time. He kept catching his reflection in the mantel mirror, side-lit by the candles like that special make-up mirror Baby used to have, and his hair was a silver floating nimbus around distinguished, nay, noble features. Patrician, that was the word.

Perhaps not quite as tall as Richard but far better dressed: what had Richard been thinking of with his blue suit and green tie? Surely he had looked in the mirror before coming downstairs. And those lines in his skin. It was true,
gora
skin did wrinkle early, but didn't they have creams for that now? Even he, perhaps twenty years older and hardly a line, would occasionally make use of Mrs. Begum's Nivea pot. With which, really, she should have been a bit more liberal herself.

Everyone wanted to talk with him; he hadn't been left alone for a moment. One would almost think that this little gathering was in his honor. And perhaps it was in a way: the Abbey was almost completed and where would they have been without him? With his knowledge of historical architecture, not to mention his first-rate artistic sensibilities, the Abbey had been transformed. Richard Bourne, the eldest son, such a serious man, had distinguished him by his attentions at the door and had only just left him alone now. Henry treated him more like a baisahib, a big brother, than anything else, and of course he would be happy to continue to guide Henry and his family into the future.

He lifted a hand to his hair and could see out of the corner of his eye the reflected glint of gold on his little finger. He had secreted the signet ring in his pocket when Mrs. Begum, too anxious to be on time, was pushing him out of the house. When she had caught him slipping it onto his finger as they walked, he had pointed out that Prince Charles had one just like it. Pah. He knew her weakness for that family.

There she was now, sitting with Richard. Dr. Choudhury glided to their couch, a little two-seater, and perched himself graciously on an arm with an opening hurrumph to let Mrs. Begum know that he had arrived. What a picture he must look in his charcoal-grey flannels, navy blazer and white shirt. His deep burgundy tie with its gold Ottoman print was a sign of his taste triumphant over Mrs. Begum's predilection for stripes, and threw a little extra color onto his skin. What a splendid duo he and Richard would make against the pastels of the couch, if only Mrs. Begum would move.

But Mrs. Begum did not appear to hear him. He hurrumphed again, and this time detected a little twitch of her shoulder, almost as if she were intentionally ignoring him, though this was impossible. She knew what was due to him: it was just that strange intermittent deafness that had befallen her in her later years. His own hearing was excellent. He tapped her shoulder gently, repeatedly, until she stopped talking.

He immediately addressed Richard with the little aside that he had prepared for their introductions, but which, in the surprise of meeting him and not Henry at the front door, and waylaid, furthermore, by Mrs. Begum's chitter-chatter, he had been unable to bestow.

“My dear friend Richard, when will we meet again in the halls of civilization, by which of course I mean London: so different to the wilds of nature that lie between our two present abodes.”

Richard gave him his fullest attention. “Indeed. And I think I saw you in the Park, heading toward the Abbey this morning. I spotted you from the Lodge. Were you carrying something?”

“Ah, a little
déjeuner sur l'herbe . . .
”

“A picnic, then. A bit early, wasn't it?”

Dr. Choudhury sat up a little straighter. His movements, his activities, were of such interest to Richard Bourne. Mrs. Begum seemed to have grown restless, and was beckoning to Tariq. Dr. Choudhury ignored her signs of feeling left out, enjoying this exchange between one man of the world and another.

“Even the most civilized amongst us need to ensure that they expose themselves to the natural beauties of the world. And on such a sunny day. As Khayyám himself did say,
Wilderness is Paradise enow
if
here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough, a flask of wine, a book of verse . . .
”

“
And thou.
” Richard finished the verse. “So where was Mrs. Begum on this beautiful day? And Tariq, for that matter.”

Dr. Choudhury was still leaning back on the couch but for some reason he felt as if Richard was leaning over him, almost cornering him in some way.

Dr. Choudhury's hand stopped halfway down his tie, a feeling of unease, of positive discomfort building in him. Why didn't Mrs. Begum say something about why he'd been seen with a tiffin container, walking toward the Abbey? For someone who never shut up, she was choosing an odd time to be as lively as a radish.

Her attention seemed to be focused upon her son, who had also picked a fine moment to be deep in conversation with Thea, just when his mother needed him. His own memory for Omar's verses seemed to have deserted him, and he gave a little giggle of surprise and discomfort. Richard stared at him expectantly, and he had the oddest feeling that their little trio had stopped breathing.

“Tariq!” Mrs. Begum spoke with considerable force, not at all the tone that one should use as a guest in a drawing room. The silly boy turned and looked but did not move.

Dr. Choudhury, beginning to feel warm under Richard's gaze, opened his mouth to call the boy himself, but with much rustling and a thoughtless passing kick to his ankle, Mrs. Begum leaned forward on the sofa so far that she blocked Richard's view of him. She complained to the room at large of a pressing need for more mango juice, then told him
sotto voce
that he had something, some bit of fluff, stuck just below his nose.

While Richard set off in search of juice, Dr. Choudhury was forced to repair to the powder room, his hand hovering delicately before his face
en route
. But search though he did in the pitiful excuse for a mirror, he could find no sign of anything untoward.

—

W
HEN
R
ICHARD RETURNED
with Mrs. Begum's juice, she was standing and, instead of the drink, took the edge of his sleeve and pulled him into a corner between the couch and a table holding a stack of Thea's magazines. To hear her, he had to bend his head down to hers, and he realized that she had put them in this position so that Dr. Choudhury could not easily intrude. Not that it had stopped the old reprobate before.

“Dear Richard, you will come to us next weekend?”

“I may be down a bit earlier, on the Thursday,” said Richard slowly. Thursday, for some reason, now seemed preferable than waiting till Friday. And it would certainly give him more time to sort things out, for Henry and Thea's sake.

“Thursday dinner then.”

“I'll look forward to it.”

She smiled and reached up to pat his shoulder. “You are a
good
man.”

Oddly moved by her praise, he was lost for words.

She beckoned him even closer, then whispered into his ear. “Dear Richard, your brother went to look for ghosts, last night.”

He shook his head. “No, I did. I took the boys with me.”

“Ah. Ah.” She nodded, waiting.

He hesitated, then continued. “I returned late this afternoon, on my own,” he said, watching her. “I did see something then. Someone.”

Mrs. Begum looked blank, but he suspected that this was a sign not of lack of understanding, but of rapid calculations going on beneath her smoothly coiled hair. She shook her finger at him, her eyes twinkling. “Do not question my husband, dear Richard. Do not question my son. Talk with
me
. Thursday, we have a nice-nice chat, talk properly. And you will understand. You will wait until then. Wait now.”

At her words, Richard glanced involuntarily at Dr. Choudhury, then Tariq, then felt Mrs. Begum pat his arm again and saw that she was dismissing him. He stepped backward, still holding her drink, and watched her go to join her husband.

What was all that about? Was he now going to be privy to the Choudhurys' marital woes? Or was there some other kind of message being given? And where did Tariq fit in to all of this? He thought back to that Friday night at the Victoria & Albert Museum two weeks ago. What the hell was going on? Four more days.

He looked over at the occasional table, but his cigarettes were gone, and Thea and Tariq were nowhere to be seen. His skin prickled with craving for nicotine, but the thought of leaving Dr. Choudhury in happy command of the drawing room, perhaps missing something . . .

Richard took a swallow of the juice. He felt as edgy and pumped up with adrenaline as on the first day of a trial, but there was no one to fight. Not yet, anyway. And in a minute he would have to sit down and eat his way through each course of Thea's strategically planned menu.

—

T
ARIQ WAS ADMIRING
the two sets of paired engravings in the Lodge's hallway when Henry's wife shot out of the kitchen and into him, her hands over her mouth, then almost fell backward, her heels skidding on the parquetry until he grabbed her arm. He could smell the alcohol on her breath, and beneath that, a sourness. This woman, whose elegant, tragic face had so drawn him, was about to be sick. She let out a yelp of distress and again covered her mouth. He couldn't leave her like this.

The toilet was close to them, under the stairs opposite the kitchen, and he hustled her in. Her skin was cold and damp beneath his hands. She dropped to her knees, and he only just got the lid up before her head was over the bowl, her long red nails gripping the rim as if she was going to pull it apart. And then, the growling scream of a wholehearted vomit. He pushed the door shut behind them both and grabbed a handtowel, wet it and squeezed it out. When the first heave was over, he wiped the back of her neck with the cloth and, after she lifted her head, moaning and teary, her face. He'd never done this for a woman before.

After a few more dives for the toilet bowl, and a gradual subsidence into retching, then silence, she sat down on the floor and leaned, eyes closed and sweaty, against the tiled wall.

Shit. He'd been the one plying her with drinks for the last hour. And she'd hardly been sober when he'd arrived. Who knows what else was in the mix. Valium maybe: mother's little helper, wasn't it, for these women-who-lunched? Perhaps this was her regular Sunday night. Or equally, there could be some desperate family secret behind it all—he knew all about those.

He gave her the handtowel and left her to it. At least she'd lost the lot fairly early in the night. He found Henry in the kitchen. A large blousy woman, some kind of char, had him getting plates out of cupboards. What a fucked-up family. But even though they were
goras
, he was not going to tell any man that his wife drank too much.

Henry straightened up when he saw him. “Hey, ah, Tariq! Did you see Thee come past?”

“She's not well, man.”

Henry froze, his mouth slightly open, looked at a platter on the kitchen table on which lay a pinkish terrine and then in the direction of the drawing room, telegraphing his concerns like a child.

Tariq put his hand on Henry's shoulder, ignoring the blousy woman's inimical look. You'd think she owned the place, that Henry was the servant. No respect. Well, fuck her.

“It's okay,” Tariq said. “We'll handle it.”

Henry didn't move. “I, ah . . .”