Em and the Big Hoom (10 page)

I couldn't believe it. For a moment, I felt such rage, I could have horsewhipped the fatty and her sister.

‘How could you do this to me?' I asked. (All right, all right, I screamed.)

‘Because we love you,' said Tia Madrinha. ‘And tongues are wagging.'

‘Whose tongues?'

To which there was of course no reply. But then
TM
rose like an empress from the throne and said that she was Going Home. It was clear that she was not. It was clear that she wanted to be made to stay. Darned if I'd do that.

‘Thank you so much for calling,' I said.

She misunderstood.

‘One day you will indeed thank me for calling on him,' she said. ‘But I do not have to reply to you. I shall give witness before God. And
He
will be the best judge of my actions.'

Then Mae started snivelling and I turned on her like a Fury. At this,
TM
stomped off and then Daddy put down his paper and said, ‘For the love of God, Imelda, go and bring that woman back or we shall never hear the end of it.'

So I ate humble pie and brought her back and swallowed my rage because Daddy was looking quite ruffled and I suppose if I have to –

The entry breaks off but begins the next day:

Gertie says that if you say to yourself, ‘Every day in every way I get better and better,' you end up getting better. So all morning I told myself, ‘I have the chin of that lovely girl in
Anarkali
. And I have the poise of Merle Oberon.' I said it to myself and in the end, when I looked, I still had my own chin. I will never be able to cut an emperor dead at twenty paces in defence of my love as that dancing girl did. And I can't be Merle if I am made to go to church in the morning and confess that I have sinned against my parents and my godmother. So when I called, I don't think I was all cool and ironic. I almost squeaked when I heard his voice on the other end. The usual bark, of course: ‘Mendes.' I have tried so hard to modify this but to no avail. And then when I said, ‘It's me,' he started to laugh quite immoderately. But something about the stern quality of my silence must have communicated itself so he swallowed his mirth and suggested that we meet for lunch. ‘I don't think I could talk about this over lunch,' I say and my tone is edged with a hint of frost. So he says he will spring for tea for two at whatever time I say and at a location to be picked by me. So I say, ‘Five thirty at Bombelli's then,' and I hang up.

When I get there, he's already reached. It's five forty-five. He knows he has to give me fifteen minutes of grace because I have to travel into town and he's just a quick hop away, but he's there. He's deep in some specifications. I can tell. I hated specifications when I was at
ASL
, miles and miles of numbers and if one of them goes wrong, the static won't precipitate or something. I hate them even more just then. My life is in disorder and he's looking at specifications. I feel bruised by the world.

Then he looks up and sees me and his face changes and he comes over and walks me out of the restaurant and to the sea.

(
NB
: What is it about the sea? Is it because it's there?)

We walked for a bit and then he took my hand and he stopped me and we stood there in the middle of the rush and the push and the chanawallah and the hijras and the laughing babies and gossiping ayahs and the balloons and the clouds and the glitter on the waves turning it all to metal. And then he said, ‘Do you want to do this?' I didn't know what to say. Then he said, ‘I do.' I thought the girl was supposed to say that. So I did the only thing a fella could do. I nodded. And then he put his hand on the back of my neck. I thought he was going to kiss me in the middle of the rush and the push and the etc. But he just left his hand there and I remember thinking, ‘So might a man calm a horse.'

I didn't even know I was crying until he gave me his handkerchief.

Yes, I blubbed. Angela Brazil would have been so ashamed of me but I just couldn't stop blubbing. A policeman came up to us and asked poor
LOS
what he was up to.
LOS
said that he was innocent and I had to raise my tear-streaked face and say that I was all right and we were getting married. Only, I seem to have got the tenses wrong so the poor man thought I was saying we were already married. He looked at our hands and I saw that
LOS
had nice hands. Sort of capable. If we are ever going to have a nuclear bomb fall on us and if we survive, he will be able to build a hut and strangle a huge cockroach. But no rings on those hands. Or on mine.

My parents were taken to the police station.

It must have been an augury of things to come.

Then came another note in the diary. Just two lines:

The two old biddies asked
ANDY
to introduce them.

Irony of ironies!

‘Why?' I asked Em. ‘Why was it ironic?'

‘Because he was in the running himself for Imelda Carmina Ana . . .' she said and winked. ‘Yes, I know. But I was a hot number then even if I didn't know it myself. Now I look at the pictures and I think, “Whoo, she is pretty,” but then? I was too busy worrying about whether the cow was eating grass when I got up from my chair. What things women have to worry about! Thank the stars I didn't have to do my arms and legs. My, I went with Gertie once and she shrieked every time they pulled at the wax.'

‘Andrade?' I drew her back to the story.

It began when Audrey said that David had invited her for a drink.

‘Who's David?' Imelda had asked.

‘Not any old David, silly.
The
David,' Audrey said.

‘Which is the David?'

‘The one in the movies.'

‘You didn't know David?' I asked Em.

‘We didn't go and see too many Hindi films. When
Awaara
came out and
Anarkali
, I think, yes, we went for those. And that film about the rickshaw puller which left me so sad for a week, I could hardly eat. But not so many that I would know who David was. But Audrey said that she was keen to meet him. I said she should go then. But she said, all girly-girly, that she couldn't possibly unless I went along. So I shrugged my shoulders and said I would go. We met in a nice quiet little place which seemed to have been done up to look like a European restaurant. You know, fat candles, white-and-red-checked tablecloths, brave chrysanthemums and a girl in peach satin singing the blues. Only the waiters were Indian and one of them was picking his nose. He saw me look and he wiped his hand on the back of the tray. But I suppose they were all boys from the muluk and they didn't know better. I stopped looking at them and focused on the girl singing. She was tapping her cheek with a rose. I thought that was overdone but she got lots of tips so I suppose it worked so who was I to argue? Audrey and I had got there early, so we just sat there, enjoying it all. What they call ambience these days. I kept thinking, “This is a real restaurant. If anyone took a picture of me now, whoever saw it would know I had been in a real restaurant.” Then David arrived. He was a little gnome of a man and seemed friendly. He asked me if I would like something to drink. I said I would like a Coca Cola. “You're a Coca Cola girl, I see,” he said. I didn't know what that meant but he said it in a way that suggested it might have many meanings. I was trying to decide whether I was in trouble or not when suddenly Audrey got up and said, “I'm going home,” and she left. “What happened?” David asked me. He looked a bit hurt, like a child who has been abandoned on the playground. I should have felt sorry for him. He was bald and gnomey and sad so I said, “Let me go and find out.” I thought I could catch up with her. He said, “No, let's just talk. Tell me about yourself, Coca Cola Girl.” I thought Audrey might be ill. I began to get worried. I looked at the door. I began to get up. He smiled again and said, “If you leave now, everyone will think I am a naughty man.” I sat back down but then he said, “But I
am
a naughty man.” In that one second, he changed from a hurt little boy into something greasy.

‘“I must freshen up,” I said and rose again. He made a grab for my hand. I pulled it away sharply and went to the loo. The singer was in the bathroom. I washed my face and saw that she was looking at me. “You have a nice voice,” I said. “Thank you,” she said. “And now you walk out of the bathroom and go straight home.” I told her I had ordered something. I felt I couldn't leave if I had ordered something. “What did you order?” she asked. “A Coca Cola,” I said. “Forget it,” she said. “Anyone can drink it. Now you write a little note to him saying that you were ill and had to go home and give it to me.” I wrote it and put my name at the end. “Chhee, chhee, don't sign it, silly. No, better still, I will write it.” Then I made such a mistake, I still remember it with shame. I asked, “Doesn't he know your handwriting?” She looked at me for a long moment and then she said, “I
sing
here.” Before I could say anything, she added, “And I was trying to help you.” I could have wept. “I know,” I said, “I'm sorry.” I went outside and Andrade was there. He stepped up to me and asked, “What's the matter?” but I couldn't wait to talk. I just wanted to be alone. It was all too much. Audrey wanted to meet David but Audrey ran away. Then David started to act up and so I ran away. Now Andrade was waiting for me and I had to start running. And then Audrey popped out of nowhere and she looked at me. I couldn't take it any more so I started crying. She didn't say anything so I started running. She stopped Andrade from coming after me.'

‘But what was that all about?' I asked, confused.

‘I asked Audrey the next day but she refused to tell me. It was only when she settled on that sweet-faced Marine who whisked her off to Wisconsin that I got the story out of her. You won't believe this but Andrade wanted to try his chances with me. So he asked her to take me to meet David. He knew David would try something and then he would step in and save me and I would, I suppose, fall over myself in gratitude and fall in love with him.'

‘That's . . .'

‘Wodehousian? Thought so. But that's what Aud told me.'

‘And what was her role in all this?'

‘Andy knew I wouldn't go alone so he got her to play along, to say that she wanted to meet David and to take me.'

‘But why would she play along?'

‘Oh, we all knew she was in love with Andy.'

‘She was in love with Andy and so she helped him to get you to try and fall in love with him.'

‘The heart has its reasons . . .'

‘Yeah, right.'

‘I know. I thought it was pretty stupid myself. But when I pushed her she said that she knew it wouldn't work and I would get angry with him and then she would have helped him and she could get a chance.'

‘You thought it was a good enough reason for playing along with this kind of shit?'

‘I wish you wouldn't use that word.'

‘Right, so speaks Miss Clean Mouth.'

‘The words I use are always clean.'

‘Sure, sure.'

‘There are lots of words you can use without evoking images that belong in the toilet and not on the tongue.'

‘I think that's the first time I've heard the words toilet and tongue used in the same sentence.'

‘Oh? Nothing like that in the Olympia Press?'

‘Em!'

‘No offence, no offence . . .'

We were wandering again, like lost tourists. I tried bringing her back to the subject of her ambivalence about marriage, but we'd reached a dead end.

Some days later, she showed us a letter to Angel Ears. It filled in some details
:

Ever since the day of the inquisition, I have been converted, as if by some alchemy only known to the engaged, the spoken for, into a watering pot. I cry at the least provocation but I am glad to say I do not blub. I simply tear up but
only in one eye
. Do you find that odd? Do you really want to marry a woman who cries with only one eye?

I know I want to marry you. But I wish we were the first to ever get married. I cannot help feeling that the institution has been somewhat corrupted and corroded by the misuse of others. We could show them, by a beyootiful and myoochooal respect for each other, how things must be conducted.

Have I ever told you how much I love you? Well, darling, I am telling you now, she said and began to drip like a spout.

‘You cried a lot when he popped the question?' Susan asked her one day.

‘I don't know why I kept crying. Mad things would set me off. Someone would ask me whether I wanted to be a June bride and I would find my face wet. Inside, I was like a monsoon, I was always moist so I didn't know I was crying when I was crying. Once I was sitting in a bus thinking I'd like him to have an engagement ring with a stone the colour of his eyes and I began to cry. A sweet old Muslim woman was sitting next to me. She took my hand and held it for a while. Then she said, “
Duaa kar, beti. Duaa mein badi taaqat hai
.” I told her why I was crying, that I was getting married. I must have got the tenses right this time so she asked, “
Nahin karni shaadi
?” I told her I wanted to. “
Bachpan ke liye ro rahi ho
,” she said, smiling. Maybe she was right; maybe I was crying for my childhood. My innocence, if you will.'

Em had suffered migration, displacement and the loss of a home when she was still a girl. After arriving in India, she and her mother had spent some tough months in Calcutta before shifting to Bombay. There they had awaited the arrival of the man of the house, who was still walking from Burma to India through jungles and swamps, surviving malaria and tigers. They had spent those anxious, long months living in a storefront room with no toilet – to use one, they had to walk to a relative's house once a day. And when she grew up Em had had to give up her studies and work to support the family. She'd been doing it for over a dozen years. And yet marriage felt like growing up? It seemed odd to me.