A Matter of Marriage (7 page)

He carefully closed the passenger door and stretched backward as far as he could. He was stiff with post-fight tension, and his eyes stung with fatigue. This was not how he'd planned his return to his parents. Not that he had done any planning: he'd managed to avoid thinking about it pretty much, what with the last-minute rush of leaving Jo'burg, where no sooner had he settled in that city than the old ache of family and home had started up as it never had in the desert.

It was only after he'd fought his way through the claustrophobia of Heathrow and sighted the queue for taxis that he'd realized the impossibility of simply coming home: that every expectation would be that he was ready to marry. He was twenty-seven, no longer a student, and back at last. There were no more barriers to arrangements being made.

While away he'd missed Rohimun most of all, missed her with a terrible ache; part love, part loneliness, part guilt, all the worse for not having realized it till then. He'd changed some money and called her on her mobile, but it was disconnected. It was only then that he'd called his parents, let them think he was still away, but said that he'd be home in a couple of weeks—
as soon as I can, yeah—
and asked for Rohimun's number and was told by his father that she no longer existed and by his mother that she was gone, gone, no one knew where.

He'd hung up in despair and could not think what to do next except what he'd been flown over for: chase the artists and artists' agents for the Goodman Gallery. But almost as soon as he did, he found his sister's name on the lips of the London dealers and curators, their memories fresh of her sellout exhibition and the disappearing act she'd pulled on its opening night.

Most of them wouldn't touch her with a barge pole now: unstable and unreliable, Rohimun's old agent Nigel had said, in the course of bitching, unknowingly, to her brother about commissions not filled, calls not answered and deposits he'd had to return. Her old teachers at the RCA were no help either, and in the end Student Services had asked him politely to leave.
We can't help you anymore. Really. Try the police, try Missing Persons
.

And then, as he had stared despairingly at one of his sister's portraits, on show in an upmarket Soho gallery, the dealer, piqued by his interest, had, in her elegant drawl, repeated to him the story of Rohimun's disappearance. She'd seen his expression and touched his arm and said, “Look, there's a chance she might be at the V&A tonight. Not that she's showing anything of course, but it is her thing. Best of luck, darling.”

He'd acted quickly: asked the woman outright to organize an invitation for him. She'd laughed at his cheek, but said, “Here, darling, take mine, they know me there.” He'd thanked her and flown out the door, already calling the assistant curator whose couch he'd been crashing on, to beg the loan of his dinner jacket.

Tariq had arrived at the V&A out of breath, just in time to follow the last straggler in. Then he'd seen Munni, behaving like some
gora
slut with that man. It was Allah's judgement on him, without a doubt.

He sighed. Dew was everywhere: condensing on the bonnet of the rental car; sparkling on the low hedge nearby. He rubbed his eyes and yawned. How soft and wet England always was, even in summer. In South Africa, dew was a winter thing, and in the deserts further north, a nightly visitation with nothing soft about it. He walked around to the driver's side and sat heavily, closed his eyes. He'd become a good catnapper.

—

O
NE A.M. AND
Richard was tired out from fucking but too hungry to sleep, and the moon was shining cold and clear through Deirdre's white plantation shutters onto his clothes on the floor. He started to search for his cigarettes, but they were nowhere to be seen. Deirdre's Silk Cuts and a lighter were lying on the kitchen counter, so he took them out onto the miniature bedroom balcony.

It was becoming less satisfactory, staying over at Deirdre's place. Perhaps their officially casual arrangement was becoming too routine. But Deirdre wasn't like Thea had been, wanting to start her own family, move to the country. She'd never made demands on him he wasn't comfortable with, save the odd bit of pushiness when it came to selling art to his friends, and they could look after themselves.

Postcoital tristesse? Deirdre's body was made to please. Richard turned to look at her sleeping in all her glossy, hip-jutting perfection, like a shop mannequin that had somehow fallen onto the bed. With a wig. Maybe he should go back to bed right now, slip his hand between her legs . . .

He flicked ash over the railing, which glittered, spun above him, then vanished. Like that Kipling poem, about the sparks flying upward to nothingness. Surely he was in a good place now. He was no longer carrying the debt he'd taken on to free himself from the Abbey. He was in a first-class Chambers and in the running to take silk and Queen's Counsel before he was forty. He was free, completely free, of the morass of burdens and obligations that had sunk his parents' marriage into the ground.

And he had Deirdre, no strings attached. Henry probably envied him. Richard's friends certainly did. Her body, so lean and clean, her business sense, the androgynous, quirky haircuts and clothes, put her streets ahead of the wives and girlfriends of his set, with their “fun” jobs, conservative outfits and family jewelry. Had the novelty worn off? The cigarette was spent now, and he had a foul taste in his mouth.

Back in the bedroom, sleep was impossible, and the ultra-mild cigarettes had left him wanting something with more taste and body. There was enough moonlight to sort out his clothes, and he could dress in the sitting room. From here he could walk it to his flat in forty-five minutes and pick up cigarettes on the way. He'd been sitting on his arse all week; it would do him good.

—

T
ARIQ WOKE, STIFF
and sore, and stared disbelievingly at the dashboard clock. Four a.m. How had he slept that long? He started the engine and pulled back onto the road as smoothly as he could. No more delays: Rohimun needed to be in a bed. Time to head home and deal with Mum and Dad. Amma and Abba.

Mum and Dad's new home and its distance from the Oxford Bangladeshi community could only be a plus. He could just picture all this happening in their old house. Ten Auntie Jiis in Mum's kitchen cooking for the disgraced family, as if there'd been a death. “What a pity! What a tragedy! And who would have thought! Such a nice girl . . . They'll never get a good match for Shunduri now . . . This is what comes to these hi-fi modern families . . . asking for cream-coffee and next thing they're too good for the community-center's
melas.
”

And the male elders in the sitting room drinking chai and chewing paan and telling Dad it's all about respect, and she will have to be sent back to Bangladesh so as not to taint the family, and this is what comes of leaving your roots.

And, thanks to this magazine article, the focus would be squarely on Munni, not the prodigal son who'd barely written and never called in eighteen months away. So much for all his debating about how to handle his own story, what to tell them and when. Anyway, they would have enough on their plate with Rohimun's return, which,
kunu oshibidah nai
, would be no hardship in comparison. Funny how the words were coming back.

His jaw clicked with a gigantic yawn. He could really do with a Red Bull for this last stretch, but stopping now, Munni perhaps waking while he was out of the car, was too big a risk. He'd seen how freaked out she was the last time he'd left her. What had that fucker done to her? God, he needed some music. He massaged the dial of the car radio. Maybe the upbeat drumming of a Bhangara station: those Sikh boys were always on somewhere. Even some of the more upbeat Bollywood tracks would be better than nothing.

He remembered Hussein from down the street before he too went fundamental, going on about the racism of the music industry in England, how Asian music CDs were outselling
gora
CDs almost two to one, but the compilers of the top one hundred and the producers of mainstream radio and television shows having a blanket policy of ignoring sales figures for Asian music. Nothing had changed: Asian music was still a joke unless it was Ravi Shankar or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan at the Albert Hall; too refined, too “ethnic,” to be a threat. Too distant from the masala of influences that produced Anglo-Asian bands like Fun Da Mental and Asian Dub Foundation.

But some things had changed forever. Those passionate arguments they'd managed to have, despite all being on the same side, would never happen again. Football-mad Hussein, always bouncing on the balls of his feet (“Good for the calf muscles, man!”), Tariq had last heard of training in Pakistan; stocky little Ali, like a baiyya to them both, missing in Afghanistan before his son was born, both men probably dead. They were the only ones he'd been able to keep in touch with: outsiders like himself, asking the big questions.

And the rest of the old crowd, he could guess well enough. Arranged marriages that had probably lost their luster by now, driving taxis and double-shifting in restaurants to support parents, in-laws and the new baby every second year, younger sisters' dowries and the endless pleas for help from the family village in Bangladesh. And what flood and pestilence in the old country didn't take, age and loss of hope here in England would.

The rush of hedgerows slowed as Tariq began to concentrate on road signs. Dad's directions, so English with his “go around a bit” and “up a bit,” no left or right, the only certain landmarks being the different pubs: The Weeping Maiden, The Weary Traveller and, of course, The Saracen's Head. Surely he was getting close now.

Tariq slowed further and made another attempt to scan for something decent on the radio. He paused on the dial, recognizing the title song of the 1970s Bollywood movie
Sholay
. Two friends as close as brothers, enduring adversity together and sticking by each other, no matter what. But the song was cut short before the final chorus and succeeded by the imam's wailing call:
Allaahu Akbar, Allaahu Akbar . . .
The
azan fajir
, the call to dawn prayer. Tariq's hand snaked out and flicked it off, and silence filled the car as he swung the steering wheel left. They had arrived.

I
T WAS EARLY
on Saturday morning, and Dr. Choudhury, bleary-eyed, had just nodded his assent to Tariq's leaving the house to make the necessary arrangements, when without further ado, his wife whirled from her station at the kitchen sink and fell to her knees in front of him. She reached for his feet, but he, too quick for her, tucked them under his chair.

Despite this, she stayed there on the floor, staring up and trying to fix his eyes with her own. He determinedly looked over her head, and stirred more sugar into his tea.

Mrs. Begum spoke softly, as if praising him. “The father of my children is a loving father, the best of fathers, and I know, I know in my heart, of his love for his Munni, his first daughter.”

She paused, but Dr. Choudhury, not deceived, kept his eyes on the kitchen door.

His wife spoke again, her voice now a little less soft. “She has suffered enough, she is a good girl, she loves her family, she wants to be forgiven. How can anyone live in this world, without their family?”

He hurrumphed to clear the tension in his throat. “Nothing can be done. That girl has ruined her own life.” No one could have been a better father than he. He could hear Mrs. Begum's grunted exhalation as she sat back on her haunches and knew from the heat on his skin that she was still staring at him. That feminine stubbornness that brooked no ignoring. “If you must punish someone, punish me. I am her mother! I taught her, disciplined her . . .” She began to sob.

Dr. Choudhury switched his gaze to the tabletop. Someone had to uphold proper standards, proper behavior. Sacrifices, great sacrifices he had made for these things. Why should it be only him? “She has ruined more than her own life. She has shamed us all.”

“Was I ruined too, then, husband? Do you not remember what we did?”

He jumped up, half in fright at her bluntness, pushing his chair backward to escape.

She followed him, still on her knees. “
Lal Abba
, most loving father,” she said, as if reasoning with him. “Your first daughter, your Rohimun. She was young and stupid and in London on her own. With Tariq away, with no family with her, she fell.”

An aggrieved tone crept into his wife's pleading then, and she did not reach for his feet anymore, but rested her hands in her lap. “This would never have happened if I had gone with her, if her whole family had been with her. I could have looked after her, made sure she was safe. You let her sleep here, she is upstairs now. Why make her go to the Abbey? She has suffered enough. Surely you could let her stay near her mother's arms. We are not in the Desi community here. And what would the Bournes think of your daughter if they find her up there, in the Abbey, on her own?”

Dr. Choudhury stepped around her to the kitchen sink and stared out the window. His wife would never have spoken to him like this before they had come here to this village, away from the community and into the arms of that woman, that Mrs. Darby. A woman like that, both widowed and independent and virtually next door, was bound to bring trouble to a traditionally minded woman like his wife. He continued to look out the window, but Mrs. Begum's vegetable garden was no help. Where had they gone so wrong in the management of their two daughters? One had all the looks, the other all the talent; and virtue, he suspected, belonged to neither.

He, unlike her doting mother, could see Baby with clear eyes: her vanity, her insecurity, her self-absorption. Where these traits had come from, he could not tell. As for Rohimun, there was bound to be trouble when both temper and talent were given to a woman. Look at what had happened to his own mother. Painting until his birth, then dead by his seventh birthday, no one would tell how. Perhaps that had been the inevitable result of her sex ruling and limiting her creative life: such women perhaps should never marry.

But even so, what Rohimun had done to this family: the pain and sorrow she had caused, the damage to the reputation of all of them, her recklessness, her refusal to think about the consequences of her actions . . .

“This cannot be simply set aside.” He wiped a finger across his upper lip. “She would taint all of us, were she to return. After what she has done, what has been said about her. You cannot move me. And be clear on this, Mrs. Begum: Bourne Abbey is not Windsor Cottage. Into one house in this neighborhood, she shall never be welcome. That cannot change.”

He moved to the kitchen door, eager to escape the sense of entrapment and failure that were as tangible in this kitchen as roasting spices.

Mrs. Begum scrambled to her feet, pulling at the
pallu
of her sari to wipe her face, and held out her hands, like a child showing an uncle or a father that they were clean. “How, tell me, how can she ever marry and clear her name if she is not allowed back in this house? You are cursing her. She cannot hide at the Abbey forever. You are giving her no choice but to go upon the town, to become someone's girlfriend, someone's mistress, again. Your own daughter.”

He averted his eyes from her empty arms with an effort that made his tone harsh. “What is done cannot be undone. Who would marry a girl like that? No one we would want in our family. She must be gone from here today.”

His wife gasped with the pain of his words, and he escaped into the hall, shutting the kitchen door on her cry. Truly the sins of the parents were being visited upon their children. Surreptitiously he bit down upon the fingertips of his right hand to ward off the further bad luck that must surely be coming.

Walking almost on tiptoe, Dr. Choudhury hurried to his study, locked the door behind him, went to the sari cupboard and opened it. He reached in and ran his hands across the folded stacks of silks, microfibers and brocades, breathing in their familiar scent, and saying under his breath the first line of the first
ayah
of the
Surah Al-Fatiha
, the old formula of prayer and protection.
Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem
. In the name of Allah, the infinitely compassionate and merciful. In the name of Allah.

But this morning neither saris nor
surahs
could soothe him, and he closed the doors of the cupboard and sat down in his study chair and swivelled it from side to side, trying to rock himself into calmness. Where could she go? Where would she go when she could no longer stay at the Abbey? How could he be a good father in this?

He pulled open his desk drawers searching for something to eat, but they were so clean and empty that it looked as if Mrs. Begum had dusted their insides. He slumped in his chair, let his hands drop between his legs and stared at his so-so-clean desk. All come to this.

—

R
OHIMUN WOKE TO
the sound of familiar household noises drifting up from downstairs: the clash of pans on the stove or in the sink, running water, the
bong-bong-bong
of Mum hitting a wooden spoon on the side of a pot after stirring, the kettle's whistle cut short, cupboards shutting, and the murmur of a male voice that could have been Tariq's or Dad's. There was bright sunshine in the little room and her first thought was that she'd overslept and was late for school.

She sat up, remembering, then lay back intent on misery. But soon, somehow distracted by the fresh smell of the sheets, the narrowness of the bed and the sound of birdsong, she drifted back to sleep.

Sometime later she woke again, but now the sun was slanting through the dormer window at a higher angle, and her mother's warm hand was patting her face and telling her to be up now, it was time to go. Old fears rose in Rohimun's throat then, as she remembered her arrival in the grey dawn light and her mother silently helping her to take off her sari and putting her to bed in her blouse and petticoat. Her breath caught as she tried to speak, to ask for one more sleep in this child's room.

Her mother's arms went round her, and she whispered in her daughter's ear, “Nah, nah, nah, my Munni, my precious one. Don't worry, don't cry.”

She was dressed and walked downstairs and into the kitchen and quickly fed, taken out, past the shut study door, to Tariq's car where she was once again put into the front passenger seat. There, great tearing sobs rose up, hurting her ribs and pulling her forward jerkily against the pressure of the car's acceleration, drowning out Tariq's words.

At least a minute passed before she could hear him and understand that she was going somewhere else, just for a while, somewhere close, until everything had been sorted out. She looked around and realized that she was not on the A road heading for the motorway, but on a narrow lane that travelled downhill toward the bend in a sparkling river, then climbed up again, past stands of mature trees.

“It's the Abbey that Dad's been working on, Munni. You'll be safe there and I'll visit you every day: it's just till I've sorted out Dad, you know? Just for a few days and then you'll be back home, I promise you, yeah. I promise.”

The Abbey loomed then, and Tariq's little rental car zipped up and around the back, away from the scaffolding.

“No one's here on the weekend. I made sure. Come on.”

—

A
FTER
T
ARIQ HAD
walked her up the crooked dark stairs at the rear and shown her into the room that Dad had chosen for her, he left to run back down to the car for some more of her things. Rohimun walked forward slowly, a little shocked by the room's size. She'd expected something like the bedroom that she shared with Shunduri at the cottage, but this was gigantic: big enough to be a basketball court or a dance studio; and flooded with light, from a large bank of mullioned windows at the far end, and above those, just below the ceiling, a row of high square windows that made the room bright despite the dark oak paneling and the green curtains that surrounded the lower windows as well as the bed.

Long rectangles of sunshine lay across the floorboards like carefully spaced beach towels. The bed, a massive four-poster that must have been built in here, dominated the room. A leather-bound trunk rested under the windows on the far wall and a 1930s-style veneered cheval mirror sat in one corner between the massive bed and the stone fireplace, looking flimsy and disposable in comparison. Her easel from school rested on the ground, along with the old carpenter's tray full of paints and brushes and rags, and a battered sketchbook, as if she'd just dropped them there, home from college for the holidays. She walked to the windows: trees, hills, and to the right she could just see the river they had passed. This building must face it.

Tariq came back in with an army kitbag and a toiletry bag, placed them on the bed and nudged the easel with his shoe. “It might take me a while to get your stuff from London, yeah. I found these in Mum and Dad's shed, just for now.”

“Oh.”

“Thought it would keep you busy: you know, for the next few days.”

She hadn't told anyone that she couldn't paint anymore, had hardly picked up a brush for almost twelve months. Tariq's obvious pride in his find kept her quiet. She mumbled something, and after he had fussed around some more, giving her a three-tiered tiffin container from Mum and showing her how to stow the kitbag and his old Scout camp stretcher under the big bed, he left. She listened to his steps recede down the hall with a mixture of desolation and relief.

—

T
ARIQ S
LID INTO
his car, shut the door and found a tissue to wipe his eyes and nose. He'd promised Munni he'd never abandon her again, and what was he doing to her now, less than a day later? No one could live without family. He'd learned that the hard way.

Growing up in the Oxford Bangladeshi community, a respected captain of his school and his school's soccer team, with the occasional dip into Christian life with one of his father's university dinners, he had seen himself as confident and worldly for his age compared to his school friends. But once he was at Oxford University, living at college had been a shock. He had not realized how different his life would be without the rounds of visits to friends and relatives, the name days, the celebration of new babies, circumcisions and Eid, the glory of visitors from Bangladesh, community-center
melas
for betrothals and weddings, and the great duties of laying out and burial.

There was so much empty time. All his habits of hospitality that he had taken for granted, of feeding his guests before himself, always paying for their coffees, were inappropriate or laughable. He was a sucker for always buying and never drinking; a try-hard for cooking people meals, giving lifts, helping out with assignments.

Few reciprocated; no one understood his big-brother kindnesses. And no one visited your room, called or dropped in to see how you were going, unless it was with an agenda: they needed a meal, a lift, to borrow an essay or a smoke, or to see if they could tick off sleeping with a Paki on their must-do list. He was completely unprepared for the loneliness of student life, disconcerted at how much he missed friends and family.

All his Bangladeshi and Pakistani friends, without his “in” into Oxford, had disappeared off to red-brick universities to do all the usual Asian courses: optometry, pharmacy, engineering and medicine. They were sharing apartments and houses, cooking, cleaning, smoking and talking together in their own little enclaves.

The few Asians at Oxford were coconuts, Bounty bars: only brown on the outside, and in every other respect living the
gora
lifestyle, drinking alcohol, eating
haram
food and squiring around white girls. They were embarrassed to be seen wearing or eating anything too ethnic, or even associating too closely with those like themselves. They seemed to his eyes to have acquired the status amongst their white friends not of equals but of mascots, secure only if they were the only one.

His choices of art history and philosophy of aesthetics, of which he'd been so proud, not running with the usual Asian ambitions, had started to feel like a curse, and Oxford itself a mistake. He was singled out in all the tutorials, having to explain who he was and where he was from, before the usual interactions were allowed. Then, when people started to relax around him, the jokes they were too inhibited to tell before, about being good at cricket and not seeing him in a dark room, would start to come out.