Brick Lane (36 page)

'And we are always keeping to the rule?' said Nazneen.

'But it's his stupid rule in the first place!'

'I know,' said Nazneen.

When Chanu went out the girls frequently switched languages. Nazneen let it pass. Perhaps even encouraged it.

Years ago, before even Raqib was born, Razia had attempted to transfer the fruits of her Community Education classes to Nazneen. But they were delicate items, easily bruised. 'I need a help with filling form.' She had practised it about one hundred times a day. So far, she had found no use for it.

Over the last decade and a half she had gleaned vocabulary here and there. The television, the brief exchanges at the few non-Bengali shops she entered, the dentist, the doctor, teachers at the girls' schools. But it was the girls who taught her. Without lessons, textbooks or Razia's 'key phrases'. Their method was simple: they demanded to be understood.

Nazneen went back to Bengali. 'When I was first married, I wanted to go to college to learn English. But your father said there was no need.'

Shahana flicked her mother's hand away from her hair. When she sighed and her chest rose up against the white brushed cotton of her nightdress, Nazneen saw that breasts were beginning to come.

'And he was right. I know enough.' Her hand hovered above her daughter's shoulder. 'But when I was younger I was always worrying about everything.'

Shahana turned round. Her eyes, mouth, nose pinched up. 'So what? What are you talking about? What do I care? I hate him. I
hate
him.' She jumped up and clenched her arms and teeth. And she kicked her mother's shins with her little soft feet.

Two weeks was enough to learn all the features. She mastered basting stitch, hemming, button-holing and gathering. Razia came to supervise and set homework. Nazneen put in zips, flew through seams. She stay-stitched the flabby end of Chanu's vest and understitched the collar on a doll's dress. No more broken needles. No more snarled-up tea towels. Every spare piece of cloth in the house had been stitched together and taken apart and married to another. To practise on a long length she took down the curtains and sewed them into tubes. They lay across the dining table like deflated sails. Spools of coloured thread sat on Chanu's books, bright flags signalling the way to knowledge. Nazneen bent to her task while Chanu read and tapped the keyboard, sang and muttered, remembered his dislike of chairs and got to the ground, remembered his stiff knees and got up, hummed and read, tapped and talked.

Today he had gone to buy food. Shahana, leaving for school, requested Birds Eye burgers. Chanu was planning fish head curry, dried hilsha if there was no fresh. Nazneen, with cloth reserves depleted, was unpicking the lace edge of an underskirt and thinking she would get a finer needle when a knock came at the door.

Mrs Islam was propped up in the communal hallway, Ralgex Heat Spray in hand. Nazneen carried the cavernous black bag for her and put an arm beneath Mrs Islam's elbow as they walked inside. Mrs Islam had surprisingly sharp elbows. Nazneen cleared the sofa and the visitor lay down. She tugged her sari at the hip, applied the Ralgex and moaned. She sprayed her stomach, inserted the tin into the sleeve of her cardigan and sprayed again. Then she sprayed a handkerchief and placed it over her face. It was understood that these exertions must be made in silence and a proper recuperative period be allowed. Nazneen stood by.

Although she appeared in no way older than when Nazneen was a young bride, Mrs Islam had declared herself to be in her dotage. The black bag, which had itself aged severely, was a pharmaceutical cornucopia – as if, late in life, the bag had found its true calling. It carried a stockpile of tablets, lozenges, powders and bottles. There were jars of ointment and packets of mysterious granules. And there were canisters of medicinal spices and a few loose sheaves of herbs. But all these were merely held in reserve, for emergency procedures perhaps. Whenever Nazneen was ordered to delve for a medication it was invariably Benylin Chesty Coughs.

Mrs Islam waved weakly towards the bag and Nazneen leaped forward and undid the de–stoned clasp. She handed over the bottle and Mrs Islam drank deeply beneath her handkerchief. During the past ten years, Nazneen could not recall a single occasion on which she had heard Mrs Islam coughing. Benylin Chesty Coughs was very effective. Sometimes, in an afternoon visit, she would drink an entire bottle and fall asleep for an hour or so. Chanu would creep around and speak in exaggerated whispers to Nazneen. 'Isn't it an honour? See how relaxed she is here. I knew her husband.'

The Ralgex Heat Spray she carried around. The smell, mixed with the mints she kept under her tongue and the sweet syrup cough preparation, produced about her an aura of the sickbed. But her eyes were hard and bright and her voice came like darts.

'Gold mine,' she said, removing the handkerchief from her face and casting a glance in the direction of the sewing machine.

'I have been practising,' said Nazneen. She sat in the cow–dung–coloured armchair and held up a gather-stitched duster as evidence.

'When I was a girl we learned to stitch by hand. We did not have things so easy.'

Nazneen, who had a bit of cramp in her right hand and was toying with the idea of borrowing the Ralgex, could only agree. 'Yes. It is very fast. Good machine.'

Mrs Islam wiggled her carpet slippers. 'Are you going to start sending the girls? Your husband said you would send them but they have not been seen.'

'Oh,' said Nazneen. 'Yes.'

Through a fug of Ralgex Heat Spray, applied to the collarbone, Mrs Islam said, 'I am a sick woman now. Very, very sick. Anyone can say anything to me. They know how weak I have become. You tell me "yes, they will go" but you do not send them. But to sick old women it is possible to say anything.'

She was talking about the madrassa, the new mosque school. It had been established with a generous endowment from Mrs Islam. Shahana and Bibi were supposed to go after ordinary school had finished for the day but Chanu forbade it. He raged. 'Do they call it education? Rocking around like little parrots on a perch, reciting words they do not understand.' He would teach them. The Qur'an but also Hindu philosophy, Buddhist thought, Christian parables. 'Don't forget,' he told Nazneen, 'Bengal was Hindu long before it was Muslim, and before that Buddhist, and that was after the first Hindu period. We are only Muslims because of the Moguls. Don't forget.' And to Mrs Islam, he said, 'Yes, my wife will send them. I remember your husband. He was the most respectable-type man. One time we thought of doing some business. Jute industry. Import-export sort of affair.'

Nazneen opened her mouth to protest but Mrs Islam cut her off. 'You do as you please. I tell my sons – Mrs Ahmed always does as she pleases, I don't interfere. I tried to look after her son, loved that child like my own but she slapped me down and I don't interfere.' She took a swig of Benylin and a little red ooze appeared down the side of her chin. 'Only I can tell you this. A sick woman still has ears. If you think I have gone deaf, let me tell you my ears are good. I hear what goes on.' In her excitement she had half sat up but she remembered now her invalid status and rested with her forearms across her forehead. The bottle and the spray can framed her face.

'I will speak to my husband,' said Nazneen. She looked for a way out. 'How is your hip? Is it giving much trouble?'

Mrs Islam hitched down the side of her sari to expose a large, perfectly smooth brown hip. She grunted as if to say, satisfied now? 'My sons tell me to go for a hip replacement, but I say no. Do not waste a good new hip. I do not want to be buried with a new hip. God does not love a wasteful woman. Save the good hips for those who can use them. Give the money to the mosque and give me only a little for the Heat Spray. That's all I ask.' She paused a while and then said it again, more gently. 'That's all I ask.' Then she tried once more, attempting softness, the suggestion of fading, a hint that now – even now – she might be slipping from life. 'That's all I ask.'

Nazneen sat on the edge of her chair, within reach of the black bag.

'Open the bag for me, child,' said Mrs Islam, her voice still feeble.

Nazneen knelt and opened it.

'Place the money in the side pocket. I don't count it.'

'You don't count it?' Nazneen ran her fingers over the tarnished, twisted clasp. She looked inside among the packets and tubes to see where the money might be. It would clearly be more convenient to keep the money in the side compartment where it would be easy to find, rather than hiding somewhere in the depths of this pharmacy. She fished around. Something sticky on the lining. Some powder bursting through from a thin cardboard pack. The whole contents needed sorting out. She was just about to offer when Mrs Islam said, 'Ah, to be young and strong again.'

A packet of throat sweets was lying crushed at the bottom of the bag. Nazneen pulled it out and held it up. 'Look. Leaking honey.'

Mrs Islam twisted herself round and propped herself up on an elbow. 'Did you put the money in?' Her voice came sharp, and immediately she added in a weaker tone, 'Did you, child?'

'I can't find it.'

'Look again, child. Fifty pounds. As arranged.'

Nazneen looked closer, her head practically in the bag. The smell was overpowering, an essence of ill health.