A Matter of Marriage (6 page)

Did Raphael ever miss the village in which he'd been born, the dialect of his childhood, as he lived in the holy city and painted to order for the Vatican? What had he, the son of peasant farmers, thought of the corrupt wealth of cardinals? Rohimun thought of her mother, wanted to ask her how she'd felt about what she'd left behind, if it had all been worthwhile.

And what of Rohimun's own pilgrimage? To London and commercial success as a portrait painter. Had this path led inevitably to Simon and his kind? To burning out as an artist? It hadn't happened to Raphael. Not that she knew. He'd painted his best after he achieved success, had never returned to the village of his birth. Not that was recorded, anyway. She sighed again.
Fuck the Masters
.
I must paint like Rohimun Choudhury at her best. If I can paint at all
.

—

R
ICHARD HAD LOST
Deirdre in the crush immediately inside, but was quite happy to avoid the air-kissing hysteria of the first fifteen minutes of Deirdre's arrival anywhere. Rent-a-crowd would be off in half an hour anyway, especially as the word seemed to be that Lucian Freud was a no-show to open the exhibition, and some arts administrator in Chanel and a stiff blonde bob was standing in for him. Predictably, all Richard could think about was a nice quiet smoke. Why had he ever agreed to this? The numbers around the doors were thinning now, so it would be easy enough to head outside. By the time he got back to the main entrance, it was empty except for a turbaned security guard, who nodded at him as he passed outside.

It was raining properly now, but there was a sheltered spot a few feet to the right of the main doors. He lit up a smoke, noticing that the guard was also enjoying a discreet cigarette. The air was cool and sweet, and cars hurried past, gleaming darkly. He considered his options, thought about when he would have to return and get caught up with Deirdre's crowd again, and tried to calculate just how pissed off Deirdre would be if he didn't go back in at all.

—

A
HAND LANDED
on Rohimun's neck, squeezing the flesh, then pinching the little hairs on her nape.

“
Love.
”

She froze, made herself keep looking at the Raphael. In a light summer sky, ravens circled. Faded by time of course. They would have been much darker, more dramatically contrasting, when freshly painted.

“Give me your purse,” said Simon. “That's a bloody awful hairdo. You could clean the toilet with it.”

She turned toward him as he took hold of her handbag. His eyes were bright and his top lip, near the nose, was pinkish and glistening. She felt a surge of disgust. He must have done a few lines just now, in the cloakroom or the toilet, having stashed the rest in her purse for later.
Her
purse. Without thinking, she pulled back viciously on the straps of her handbag and stepped away from him.

“You fuckin'
bitch
,” he shouted, making her jump, his face suddenly much closer to hers, dark red and screwed up, like a shrunken, concentrated version of himself.

He put his other hand on the bag as well and hauled her toward him. Her soft sandals struggled for grip on the floor, and Rohimun twisted away. Then the strap broke, and she lost her balance and would have fallen but for Simon's arms yanking her against him and spinning her around in some kind of monstrous waltz.

She could hear the rustle and shift of attention in the room, and with a surge of shame leaned into Simon. His head bent down as if to whisper endearments, pale blue eyes focused on hers. Then he let go of her and pushed her hard with the heel of his hand on her sternum. She staggered sideways and came up against a man's shirtfront. He grasped her forearms, held her up, and she looked up into his face. Tariq.

Gasps and smothered laughter ran around the room, along with a comment about it being a bit early for a domestic.

Simon's voice, shrill with need and anger and self-justification, rose above it all. “She's pissed!”

Baiyya, big brother, clean-shaven and in a dinner jacket as she'd never seen him, while she was dishevelled and still reeling from Simon's pseudo-embrace. Tariq turned his gaze away from her and toward Simon. She felt sick to her stomach. After almost two years away, Tariq comes back now? For this?

Slowly and awkwardly she sank down, until one knee, then the other, was on the checkered marble floor. She stared at the two men. Such stillness, with Simon standing in front of the avid exhibition-goers, and her beautiful, beardless brother to one side of him, an arm outstretched toward her, though his eyes were turned away. For one strange second she was outside of it all and could see their trio with her painter's eye: a tableau, classically balanced, with all the whirling color and activity of the red-carpeted arrivals visible behind them.

—

T
HE BUZZ OF
the exhibition crowd, audible to Richard through the open doors, suddenly quieted then was broken by an angry shout, followed by the rising murmur of people with something to talk about.

“Oh, man,” said the guard. He looked at his half-finished cigarette, then dropped it onto the flagstones and walked quickly toward the main doors.

Richard followed, telling himself that another hour of the opening was still preferable to spending all Saturday placating Deirdre. Once inside, the guard pushed without hesitation through a wall of backs. Richard stopped near the door, keeping the guard in sight. From where he was, he could see over people's heads to the two men that the crowd had circled.

An Asian man in a dinner suit, his face set and angry and as impossibly handsome as a magazine model's, was standing over a young woman on the floor. She sat awkwardly on one hip, an orange and pink sari piled around her, breathing quickly, her soft features blank and slack-looking. One hand gripped a thick braid that hung over her shoulder, its end brushing the floor. Richard edged forward without thinking. Was she hurt? Sick? The other man was shorter, with gelled hair, his face flushed and angry-looking. But the guard was watching the Asian man, as if he were the greater threat but also almost as if waiting on his word to act. The crowd had stilled again, waiting also.

Someone's mobile phone beeped, and then all was noise and motion. Gelled-hair turned toward the girl and, just as Richard took another step, the Asian man moved swiftly, his shoulder colliding with gelled-hair with enough force to make them both grunt, and to knock the shorter man off-balance. He crashed to the ground on his back, his face, white as paper now, framed by a black tile. Someone in the crowd called out in an encouraging way, as if this were the entertainment for the night. The guard put a hand to his radio, watching the two men intently.

The Asian man pulled the girl up with one quick movement that also seemed to propel her, sliding and skidding on the marble floor, through the parting crowd and toward the main doors, keeping a tight hold on her all the while. Short and plump, she only came up to his shoulder, and was struggling to keep up with his long strides.

Richard followed just behind them, the guard catching up with him at the doors.

“Aah,” the guard said warningly, one hand patting the radio on his shoulder, which was squawking like a fractious baby.

“That's family trouble for sure. Best to let them go, man.”

The couple ran down the carpeted steps as if pursued, and for a second the girl looked back over her shoulder, her face, lit up against the darkening sky by the light through the glass doors, distraught and fearful. Beneath the yellow awning, the sari's colors brightened, and the fabric's loose end rippled and flew back from her shoulder toward him.

As they left the carpet for the pavement, she seemed to stumble and the man half picked her up, swept her along past the few remaining photographers, flashbulbs going off, and they disappeared down the street.

Richard followed in their wake until he reached the photographers, who were packing up their equipment. One of them was trying to wave down a taxi. When he saw Richard looking down the street, he shouted, “They're long gone, mate. He had a car.”

Richard offered him a cigarette. “Do you know who they were?”

The man waved energetically at a taxi that drove past without stopping, then shook his head in disgust. “Nah. Gatecrashers, maybe. Protesters. Somethin' like that. Jaysus, what does it take to get a cab.”

Another photographer appeared, younger than the rest, coming back from the direction in which they'd gone. “That's that Paki girlfriend of one of the Trust-fund boys, I fink. Took a shot through the side window.”

“Well, aren't you the lucky one,” one of the other photographers jeered. “That'd be worth a bit, Asian girl in a car. Never seen that before.”

“Just fuckin' jealous you are. Too old and fat to run for it now.”

Richard turned away and retraced his steps, unsettled by the quick drama and mystery of it all. The guard was still at the top of the stairs, drawing on a fresh cigarette with a contemplative air. Richard stopped near him, unable to let it alone. “What do you think happened in there? To start the fight.”

“It was over that girl, yeah.”

“So they weren't gatecrashers?”

“No, no.” The guard gave him a reproachful look. “All invited.” He turned and went inside.

Richard stayed outside to finish his cigarette, mildly disgusted at his own nosiness. Was his own life so boring that he had to stick his nose into other people's now? The girl was probably fine. Her face flashed into his mind again, as she'd looked back, her round face, the full bottom lip, with its deep central crease. He walked toward the entrance and into a burst of laughter and talking, and Deirdre on her way out with a couple of her stockbrokers in tow.

She gave a small shriek when she saw him. “Darling, how clever of you! I'm famished,
so
ready to eat something after all that excitement. There's nothing left to wait for now, and I know
you're
starving.” She walked him back outside and, after waving the suits into a taxi, skipped over to him. “How about a curry? On second thoughts, all that
fat
.”

She waved again at the departing taxi, which appeared to be receiving conflicting directions.

The taxi sped off, then braked and performed a U-turn before passing them again.

Deirdre's long fingers hooked into his arm and pulled him out from under the awning. “So, Japanese, then? I know this
darling
little place.”

Richard turned to face her, took her other arm and walked her backward until she was up against the gallery wall, in the shadows, and pressed to him hip to hip. He reached behind her and hooked his hand under her bottom to pull her against his groin, then slid his hand under the hem of the smock and against her crotch. Her mouth opened, and he kissed her hard, spreading the lipstick.

“Takeaway, your place. Let's get a taxi.”

His fingers were inside her before the taxi had gone a block. The urgency of his desire almost kept them in the lift and, then again, against the door to her flat, only prevented by her leggings.

When the key was finally fumbled into the lock and they staggered inside, Deirdre pulled away, wanting to shower, to slip into lingerie, her usual routine, wanting the latest purchase praised, but he didn't let her.

A swift upright fuck with her legs around his waist followed in the entryway, with Richard almost instantly dissatisfied, wanting more, trying to carry her into the sitting room. But as he stopped to disentangle himself from suit trousers and shoes she fled laughing to the bathroom. He stripped off and followed her, but by then she was in the shower. She beckoned him in, but the sight of her body leaning against the glass, attenuated by the steam to a minimalist sketch of womanhood, strangely only made his desire fade. He padded out to the kitchen, wondering whether he would have time for a smoke before Deirdre had finished her shower, primed herself with moisturizer and perfume, and climbed into the newest bit of satin and lace. As it turned out, it was two cigarettes and a coffee before she returned, in latex.

T
ARIQ DROVE THE
rental car hard, his arms straight, going fast now that they were on the motorway. Dashboard lights drained color from his face and forearms, and made Rohimun remember a scene from some old black-and-white movie in which the hero was slowly descending an endless ladder into a bottomless pit.

She shivered, but could not bring herself to turn on the heater. Her sternum and right hip felt bruised and tender. The important thing was to be still. And quiet. If she didn't say or do anything, nothing would happen. Baiyya, big brother, wouldn't ask anything of her, tell her what he thought, what he was going to do with her. They would just keep driving through the darkness, getting further and further away from London.

When they'd left the V&A, she'd been faint with shame and fear, utterly unable to think what would happen to her next. Tariq had dragged her to a shiny white car and bundled her into the front passenger seat and slammed the door behind her.

As Tariq had got into the driver's seat, there had been a blinding double flash through her window: a photographer must have caught up with them. Her brother had thrown the car into gear and accelerated away, and had not spoken or looked at her since.

It had taken them forever to get out of central London, caught in the web of Friday-night traffic, and she kept thinking that Simon would be at the next intersection. But when they eventually merged into the constant swinging speed of the motorway, it brought her no relief.

Now Tariq was saying something about coffees, and he pulled into a service station and got out before she could say, no, please don't leave me. As soon as the driver's door closed, she central-locked the doors and shrank down in her seat, keeping her eyes on her fingers, which she clenched on her lap, then spread out, then clenched again.

The angry rattle of the driver's door handle made her jump, and she leaned across the car to fiddle hopelessly with the handle before she remembered she'd locked it. Tariq slid back into his seat, a steaming polystyrene cup in each hand.

“Munni,” he said. “Take these.”

Her pet name, little Munni, from ever since she could remember. God, how long since she'd heard that from him.

“Munni. The coffees.” Tariq fished in his pockets and pulled out a handful of sugar sachets, tearing them open and emptying three or four into her cup, then the same into his. He never used to have sugar.

He drank his coffee quickly, holding the cup in his left hand as if in the habit of keeping the right hand free. Rohimun watched him as she held her coffee, still far too hot to drink. Tariq here, back in the UK, after so long. Had he known she would be at the V&A tonight? Had Mum and Dad sent him? She shuddered again, pushed the thought away.

Tariq had lost some puppy fat along with the beard, looked taller and thinner, but fit. Wiry, that was the word, with his face and hands darker, more weathered. His alertness, the impression that he gave of physical readiness, was also new. Perhaps this was manhood, after so many years of being a student. His old impatience was still there though, not far below the surface: one quick drum of his fingers, which he then suppressed until she managed to finish her coffee.

No more words were exchanged until after they had set off again.

“So, you knew him, yeah?”

“Yeah.” She forced herself to sip the coffee. Despite the burning shame, some
shaitan
, some devil inside her would not let her lie. He may as well know the worst. “He was my boyfriend.”

“Jesus.”

He glared at the windscreen, shifted up a gear and merged from the slip road into the busy motorway traffic. Rohimun swallowed, her palate sore from the scalding drink, wrapped one hand around the sash of her seatbelt, the other protectively across her stomach, and waited for what she knew was inevitable. The explosion of rage, the slaps, perhaps a beating.

Lubna from school had lost the hearing in her left ear after her father had caught her sitting in a cafe with a boy: he had driven her home without a word, taken her to the landing and thrown her down the stairs. Tariq, unlike many of his friends, had never raised a hand to his sisters. But there had never been a matter of family honor before. He couldn't do much while he was driving, though. It would be stopping that would be dangerous. Oddly enough, the thing that scared her most was the thought of Tariq taking her back to Simon. Or Simon finding her. She felt sick at the thought of that photographer, of the scene at the V&A; that would surely mean payback.

Tariq glanced at her, then away before she could meet his eyes. “This is going to kill Mum and Dad.”

The relief: he was taking her home. The shame. Rohimun felt her eyes well up, and she started to search fruitlessly for a tissue.

She heard Tariq puff out a sigh. “Munni. I didn't mean it like that.”

“It's alright. You're right anyway, Bai.” Rohimun found a paper napkin and pressed it against her eyes. “I don't know . . . I can't think what to say.” God, how could she face her parents?

“I'll talk to Dad. Mum will want to talk to you though.”

“No. Not tonight.” She shivered and pushed her body further back into the seat. “I can't talk about this. I can't, I can't. Couldn't you talk to her? Please, Bai?”

He frowned, but his eyes were glittering and liquid.

She reached out, hope in her heart, and awkwardly brushed her hand, sticky with her own tears, across his fingers on the gearstick. “Please, Bai. I just can't face Mum tonight. You know what she's like. Please.”

They were off the motorway now, and the narrow country road was bounded by ditches of featureless, deepest black that made her feel as if the roadmetal on which they travelled was detached, floating above the countryside through which they passed. The road itself had become a series of sweeping blind curves, unlit except by the headlights. She shivered again, and this time Tariq reached out and flicked the heater up.

“I just wish I'd had some idea. All this time away . . .” He hit the steering wheel with the heel of his palm, and she could not stop herself from flinching. “I don't understand how this happened. It's not like he's some village
gundah
straight out of Bangladesh. Or a pub-man. He looks like an educated boy, high-class family.”

“Yeah, very high class. High-class bullshit.” She winced at Tariq's startled look. “Sorry, Bai.”

“So why didn't you just leave him?”

“I did, a few months ago. I went to Shunduri's flat. I couldn't cope with going to Mum and Dad's.”

“Baby's in London now? Jesus. What'd
she
do?”

“I told her we'd had a fight, you know? But he was there within a day: I think she called him. And then they did the story on him in that magazine.” Rohimun felt her face burn.

“I've been out of the country, you know?”

She swallowed. It gave her a sharp pressure in the chest to tell her brother, almost as bad a pain as when Mum had left the awful message on the answering machine after the magazine article came out. Nothing but
Munni, Munni
, then crying until the machine cut out. Rohimun never answered the phone after that.

“He's a society boy, yeah? So the magazines, the papers, they were interested in him, in who he was with.” Rohimun swallowed again and went on, very softly. “He told them I was living with him, and they printed it.”

There was silence in the car now, but Rohimun could see that Tariq was crying. So Mum and Dad had told him nothing. She may as well have stabbed him. She forced herself to continue. “After that I knew I couldn't go home.”

She didn't need to tell Tariq her other great dread: that when they got home, the door would be closed to her anyway. That Shunduri was their only daughter now.

In the silence Tariq drove on, the headlights illuminating a continuous tunnel of black hedgerows.

She closed her eyes and drifted into a doze, broken now and again by panic and the conviction that it was actually Simon driving, or that Simon was behind them. Then Tariq was on his mobile, speaking quietly in Bangla. She hadn't heard it in so long, she could feel the tears start again.

When he finished, he turned to her. “Mum and Dad aren't living in the community, the Oxford community now. Don't forget that. It's not like they've got neighbors watchin' their every move anymore, yeah. It's a
gora
village in the countryside.”

At least he could still speak to her. “Have you seen them then? Since you got back?”

“Nah. I only got back from Jo'burg a week ago. Been looking for you.”

She tried to swallow the lump in her throat. So they hadn't sent him. “It won't make any difference, Bai. I mean, they haven't changed that much. They'll never take me back. And what if a reporter turns up, or a photographer comes around, yeah. What Dad's precious stately home will do then, I don't know. Sack him maybe.”

Tariq gave a sudden grin. “Put him in the stocks, more likely. Look, I'll think of something. Mum and Dad'll come around. They just need some time.”

“Bai, they'll never—”

“Of course they will. You're Dad's favorite, yeah?”

“They
won't
.” Rohimun startled herself with the force of her tone, and they both fell silent.

Then Tariq spoke, his voice tight. “They've fucking got to, alright? They're all we've got.” He cleared his throat. “If they can't forgive, I won't leave you here. You could come back to Jo'burg with me.”

She stared blankly at him, but he kept his eyes on the road.

“Just let me worry about it for now, right?”

South Africa. He wanted her with him, even if it meant breaking with Mum and Dad. He knew about Simon, and he didn't care. He wasn't turning the car around and driving back to London to sort things out with a
funchait
, or even shouting at her about the family honor, telling her that she'd made her bed.

She dipped her head and looked at her naked wrists. It'd been so long since she'd worn her bracelets. How long ago had Tariq discarded beard and topi? He was clearly no longer her fundamentalist big brother home from university, who repelled her confidences, threw her precious jeans in the rubbish and told her that she should be wearing a burqa. She stole another look. But neither was he the old Tariq, carefree enough to take her hand at the school gates and walk her home, laughing and teasing and talking with his friends, as she towed along a whining Shunduri with her other hand.

“Do you really mean that, Bai?”

“Do I mean that? Do I mean that?” His voice was loud and harsh, as he braked hard, gearing down the car to steer it into a lay-by.

“Jesus Christ, Munni.” He was shouting now, as he switched off the engine and turned toward her. This was the Baiyya she remembered from university, always angry. Rohimun felt her ribs constrict. “Do you think I would lie to you, after what I saw? My own sister?”

She felt her head shaking. “I don't know, I don't—”

“Do you think I wanted to be away? For eighteen, nineteen fucking months, no family—”

A sudden roar of engines behind them shook the whole car and seared the interior with light, while a large vehicle drew up alongside. Simon. He'd found them. Rohimun gave a long moaning indrawn breath, her left hand scrabbling between the seatbelt and the door catch.

“It's a lorry. Shit. It's just a lorry, Munni.”

She couldn't breathe out, only little gasps in and in and in, ratcheting up a bubble of pressure just under her diaphragm, rising and swelling and pressing on stomach, lungs, heart. Pins and needles rippled up both arms. Tariq was swearing gently, in Bangla this time, as he got out and came around to her side of the car. There was a wave of cold air as he opened her door and fumbled around her feet, and she felt the slimy rim of the polystyrene coffee cup circling her nose and mouth.

“You're breathing too fast, Munni. Try to slow it down, yeah? Just slow it down.” He put his hand on her forehead and stroked it backward, a little way over her hairline. “It's alright, yeah? We'll work it out. I won't leave you, Munni. I won't leave you again.”

She closed her eyes against the glare of the light and the dreadful bubble in her chest. The pressure inside was easing, with the warmth and weight of his hand and the murmur of his voice, speaking in Bangla, like years ago, when she used to climb into bed with him after a nightmare and he would let her snuggle in close and just talk and talk softly about what he was going to do when he grew up and the names of the planets and how clouds filled up with water. What terrible tiredness now.

—

T
ARIQ WATCHED HER,
bracing her forehead with his hand as he dropped the coffee cup onto the floor. She had fallen asleep so fast after hyperventilating, it was almost a faint, but her color wasn't so bad now, and she was breathing more slowly. He pulled a wet tissue from her fingers and wiped her chin and the bridge of her nose where the coffee cup had rested, then leaned awkwardly in, searching for the lever to recline the seat. Her feet were icy in her sandals, and it took him almost a minute to tease out the fine leather loops from around her big toes before they could be removed.

He put his hands around an instep to chafe some warmth into it, but Rohimun turned and tucked her other foot into his hands as well. Tariq, still squatting on the verge next to the car, found himself cradling her feet as he looked up at her unconscious face. The traditional posture to beg for forgiveness.

“
Allah rasta, shunnah Munni
,” he said.
May God help you forgive me, precious Munni
. For all the selfish lies, and the selfish absences. None of this would have happened if he'd been around for her. God knows why she still called him Baiyya: some big brother he'd been.

Tariq dropped the sandals in the back seat and stood to take off his dinner jacket, then slid it under her seatbelt to wrap it around her. He ached with tiredness. The lorry was gone now. They would stay here for a couple of hours, have a nap, prepare themselves for the onslaught at home. It was less than an hour to go on these back roads, if he could remember the way, before having Mum and Dad to deal with.
Inshallah
, God willing, she would sleep till then, though only God knew how things would go from there.