A Matter of Marriage (28 page)

It was late enough for him to make his excuses, but he kept sitting there, accepting cups of tea and mangoes—hoping for some word, some sign from Dr. Choudhury or his wife, that one or the other was going to resume the conversation about Rohimun. Or some kind of hint, at least, of current troubles, future plans.

He even followed Mrs. Begum out to the kitchen at one point, on the pretext of helping her to carry out the heavy tray, in the hope that something more would be said, even a passing comment. But nothing. The photos had been cleared away from the kitchen table as if they had never been.

O
NLY AN HOUR
after going to bed early, Rohimun awoke, a pulse beating heavily between her legs. The sixth hot night in a row. She slid out of her sleeping bag and off the great bed, pushing her hair back from her face, but it still lay along her back like a wool blanket; she wanted a glass of refrigerated water, a cool shower. But the builders had turned off the water and power yesterday for some reason. She couldn't wash, couldn't have a cold drink, was too hot and wakeful to go back to sleep.

A breeze stirred through the open window, balmy and warm. The river. She'd been in the gardens at night: surely walking down the front lawn to the river was not that different.

She pulled her duffel bag out from under the bed and found a towel, her flip-flops, the toiletry bag, and the thinnest
salwar
Mum had packed—a double layer of creamy muslin. Why shouldn't she get out? Four days solid she'd been cooped up inside. At first, because she'd been so rattled by Richard Bourne's visit, she'd really tried to keep a low profile. But then, because of the increase in her productivity, she'd been painting from dawn to dusk and hadn't cared where she was.

But now she'd started to recall being back in Simon's flat: the endless weekends where they never went outside, their dirty clothes piled in a corner of the bedroom, the depression in the plasterboard near the front door where he'd punched the wall. What would Richard Bourne think of someone like Simon? Probably be great mates, with their posh accents. Probably went to school together or something, maybe with Richard a few years ahead.

He had looked so peaceful sleeping, and when he'd first woken, his eyes had opened wide, staring into hers as if in surprised recognition. His pupils, clearly visible in the dim light against light-colored irises (blue? green?) had expanded rapidly, as if he'd been dreaming of some bright sunlit place, and woken into darkness.

Oh, for Chrissake. She bundled up her things and shuffled into the hallway. All was quiet: the hot spell seemed to have reduced the usual creaks and sighs of the Abbey's night-time cooling. She walked down the front stairs, the flip-flops clapping at her heels and her fingertips skimming the smooth banister rail—more like satin than wood.

Outside it was warm but without the stuffiness of the Abbey. Rohimun started over the clipped lawn for the river, stopping at irregular intervals to hop about in search of an errant flip-flop. She would feel better after a dip, and she could wash her hair
.

—

A
FTER ANOTHER HOUR
of desultory post-dinner conversation and even more tea and some snacks, Richard was a man in pain. The betel nut had worn off, and the headache had returned worse than before and was making his vision shimmer so that Dodi and Diana above the mantel seemed to be following him with their mournful dead eyes: watching, waiting, for him to do something.

It was almost midnight when he left Windsor Cottage, feeling as if he had been run over by a steamroller and then somehow overinflated, with lamb ghosh and rice and dahl and rice and chicken korma and rice and green onion salad and pakhoras and onion bahjees. And mango. And more sweet milky tea. God, he couldn't bear to think about it.

His skin crawled with nicotine cravings, and he had to stop himself from breaking into a jog as he walked down the front path and closed the garden gate. At the car, he wrenched open the glovebox and pulled out its contents looking for cigarettes, hoping without hope that some long-forgotten second pack was hiding in there.

—

R
OHIMUN ONLY RELUCT
ANTLY
decided to get out when her shivering had become continuous: she must have been in the water half an hour at least. She scrambled onto the stone steps and stood awkwardly to towel and dress, her body leaden and cold, missing the river's buoyancy. But she felt fresh and clean, and not at all tired.

Without the restriction of underwear, the muslin top and pants were cool and airy against her skin. She wrapped the towel around her head, and her hair hung heavily down her back, its dripping ends brushing against her bottom as she walked up the slope to the Abbey. Her restlessness and claustrophobia were gone, and her fingers itched for dawn, to hold the paintbrush, to start mixing white spirit into the yellows so they would go on as a thin, watery wash, like a beam of morning sunlight.

By the time Rohimun had paced up to the Abbey's great main door, she was warm again. She stopped there, reluctant to go straight into the black, airless interior, but also wanting to clarify her thoughts about the painting before she headed upstairs.

She unwound the towel from her hair. In the toiletry bag somewhere was an elastic. She wove her hair into a loose plait, swinging her hair to her side to continue plaiting when she could no longer reach behind. She hadn't done this in months, except for that last night in London: Simon had hated her plait, called it low-rent ethnic, to go with a sari and cardigan in the high street.

In the painting, the figure and its landscape were static and the rose hovered stilly. It was only the hair that was active, powerful, dynamic. A force of nature? Of womanhood or sexuality? Or maybe it was freedom. Her scalp crawled at the memory of the weighty chignon that was Simon's preferred dress-up style for her, so tight it was an effort to blink. And then there'd been the patronizing advice of the women in his clubby London crowd, to get her hair straightened or to crop it, telling her she was too short to carry that much hair, that it made her look like Cousin Itt.

She remembered Mum plaiting her hair, could almost feel her fingers, her voice telling her to stop wriggling, that it was her one beauty. And Bai pulling on it at school, saying she didn't need to get a paintbrush, she had one already. When she reached the ends, she slipped the elastic over the plait then squeezed it out so that it left a pattern of drops on the moonlit flagstones. Plaiting it wet like this, it would take two days to dry, but it would be a cool line down the middle of her back while she painted, and a connection to the past that, for once, she was happy to have.

She would paint the hair wilder, she thought, as she ran up the stairs: each flying lock thick and solid, but also more snaky and sinuous. Hair with muscle and movement, rather than shine: Medusa, rather than a shampoo commercial.

—

B
Y THE TIME
Richard pulled up in front of the Lodge, the clock read a quarter past midnight. The options, of a half-hour drive to the nearest motorway service station to buy some smokes, or letting himself into the Lodge and trying to sleep in that bloody Batman sofa bed, were equally unattractive. There was no way he could sleep feeling like this. He couldn't even sit comfortably in the car. A small, painful burp escaped. He was Monty Python's Mr. Creosote after that last fatal wafer. He had to get out, get some fresh air.

Outside the car, the air was pleasantly warm, and there was a soft homogeneity about the country darkness, entirely different from London's busy evenings, where the night was continually displaced by streetlights, car lights, shop windows.

He put his keys in his pocket and started to walk, moving off the gravel and away from the house as soon as he could so he wouldn't disturb anyone, breathing deeply in an effort to clear his head. After the low-ceilinged clutter of the Choudhurys' cottage, the flat silent fields, punctuated by mature oaks, seemed gigantic and simple and dignified, like Norman churches or concrete sports stadiums. His eyes adjusted to the dark, and even the headache seemed to lift a little. Jesus, he hoped that was the worst of it. He had given up before, but never cold turkey from the pack a day that he had crept up to over the last twelve months. The thought of another day like this gave him the horrors.

Going this way, there was only one field between him and the Park proper, and he began to walk diagonally across it, long grass swishing noisily against his legs, punctuated by the intermittent scutter of a rabbit or rat in the hedgerows, disturbed by his regular strides. He should be heading directly for the Abbey. What was to be done about the girl, Rohimun Choudhury? Or was it Begum? He'd assumed too much already. She couldn't stay at the Abbey indefinitely: that much was clear. Dr. Choudhury of all people must be aware that it was only a matter of weeks now before Henry and Thea moved back in. And the disappearance of the photos once Choudhury came home, the absence of discussion of their middle child, did not bode well for her father allowing her home anytime soon. Surely there was some way he could help, a reason for her to need him.

The idea of pilgrimage came back to him: how it was seen as more pious to journey by foot, and to travel lightly as a sign of one's detachment from material things; how the most zealous, or perhaps those most in need of redemption, would go great distances barefoot, or even on their knees. Giving up smoking was certainly a penance. But where was he travelling to?

A dark presence loomed ahead: the Abbey. He paused, trying to orient himself. It must be the western wall. The rose garden should be close by. When he thought of her, he had several images now. There were the photos taken before he knew her: a cheeky, happy schoolgirl with her brother, a resentful overdressed teenager. And then his own memories: her flying run as she left the exhibition with her brother, the fierceness of her expression as she half lay on him with the palette knife, her hair falling over his face and chest. And the woman in the painting, communing with the gigantic rose as it shed golden light over her visage.

He followed the yew hedge that marked one side of the sunken rose garden, one of his favorite places. He stepped through the Romanesque archway and stood amongst the bushes. He could just make out the garden's four quarters, separated by little clay channels and a central, circular depression, recently excavated: a Celtic cross design, he recalled Henry saying. Henry and his ghosts. Was Henry's ghost sleeping? He thought of the ghost stories they used to scare each other with as children, while their mother wandered, alone and lonely, through the galleries and halls.

Had Mother left an impression here, her misery a vibration that had sunk into stone and wood, flags and threadbare carpets? Or had all trace of her disappeared when she'd been taken to London for treatment, a wraith even before she'd departed. He'd tried to hold on to her the morning she'd left in the car. Her sickly nicotinic sherry-sweetness had been almost tangible in the air, but her thin, narrow palms, the soft pebbled tweed of her skirt, had slipped through his fingers, impossible to grasp. Even now he could see the flash of her pale nape, between coiffed hair and collar, as she turned into the interior of the taxi. His father's hearty falseness. “Mummy'll be back soon. When she's well. Who's for a game of checkers?”

He'd run up to her room then and seen her hairbrushes and scent bottles gone from the dressing table, with only circles of dust to mark their passing. The wardrobe half empty, her best coat gone from its special hanger, and the empty sherry bottles cleared away. That afternoon he and Henry had fought hard and bloodily in the stable yard. Henry still had the scar from that fight: a small chunk taken out from between his eyebrows, courtesy of one of the garden stakes they had been lunging with. But Richard carried no mark from that day. Nothing at all.

As he left the rose garden, the wall of the Abbey was before him, and he rested his hand on the stonework. He was near enough to see the green room's windows now, glassily blank, dark as any of the others. Was Rohimun asleep? Here he was, under her window like some minstrel lover. All he needed was some particolored tights and a lute. He felt no closer to knowing what to say to her, despite so much having changed since last week, at least from his perspective. And this business of the media.

He froze as a window squeaked open above him. There was a clatter, then something hit his shoulder, fell to his feet, and he heard her voice, low and clear, “Shit.”

He touched his shirt and his fingers came away wet; crouched down and found a paintbrush. He shook it a couple of times over the grass and set off for the main entrance, making no effort to tread softly on the gravel. He wasn't sneaking up back stairs anymore.

He was halfway up the main stairs when he heard her coming, saw her flying down the treads in loose white pants and a tunic of some fabric so light that it caught the air and floated around her as she moved. She hadn't seen him though, so he cleared his throat in warning, and she gave a small cry and stopped, gripping the balustrade.

“Who's there?”

“It's me, Richard Bourne,” he said, some of the old Blimp awkwardness creeping back. “You dropped your brush.” He held it out to her.

“Oh.” After a small hesitation, she came forward and snatched it out of his fingers. “Jesus Christ.”

“Sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you.” He leaned toward her a little, although he didn't intend to. “Rohimun Choudhury. Ah, Begum.”

She stared back at him levelly, beginning to catch her breath. “Choudhury.”

He fought down the urge to apologize again. “I just wanted you to know I didn't realize you were Dr. Choudhury's daughter. I've just been at your parents' for dinner.”

Rohimun blinked and broke her gaze. When she spoke again, she seemed less certain. “Who told you?”

Was she curious, or angry? “Mrs.—your mother. She wants you home, I think.”

“It's Dad that's not so keen, yeah. But things are getting better.” She seemed to be trying for a matter-of-factness that didn't quite come off. “They just don't know what to do with me.”

“How can you paint at this hour?”

“I wasn't. I had some brushes on my windowsill to dry. I knocked them over, opening the window wider for more air. So, don't worry, no oil paint on your tiles.”

“Henry'll be relieved.” He almost felt like the intruder once more. “Though he would've been even happier if he'd been able to find his ghost.”