Brick Lane (83 page)

'Open the door, you bitch!'

Razia held on to her legs.

'Ma! Ma! I'm dying.'

The panic in Tariq's voice made Nazneen's heart thump.

'Aah, aah, it's these cramps. Let me out and rub my leg. It's killing me.'

By the light of day, and by the dark of night, your Lord has not forsaken you, nor does He abhor you.

The life to come holds a richer prize for you than this present life. You shall be gratified with what your Lord will give you.

'Ma, I've been sick in the bin. The bucket is full and it stinks. Let me out to empty it.'

Nazneen clung to her lifeline. What would be would be. It was not of her making.

'Are you there? Can you hear me?' Tariq talked fast, the words running into each other like raindrops down a windowpane. 'I think we're rushing it. It's not good. It's not right. It means I might have a relapse. I just need a little fix now. Let me out for an hour. I'll be back in an hour and I'll be a lot stronger then. Just let me out. Come on, Ma, let me out.'

It was not of her making. It was not of her making.

'One five-pound wrap,' screamed Tariq. 'That's all I need. You bitch.'

For a few moments all was quiet. Then Tariq began to cry.

She stood in the kitchen with Razia and sipped a cup of tea. The walls were tiled, blue and green squares right up to the ceiling. A narrow tabletop, painted white, squeezed in between the fridge and the door. Razia called it a 'breakfast bar' and lined up cereal packets like ceremonial soldiers along the back. When her husband was alive, when the flat was filled with junk, every spare pound (and many that were not spare at all) went back home to buy another brick for the new mosque. After he died, Razia spent her money on her children, and on her flat. She never talked about going home. 'Tell me this,' she said with her oblique smile. 'If everything back home is so damn wonderful, what are all these crazy people doing queuing up for visa?' And she would get out her new British passport and bend it between thumb and forefinger.

Nazneen perched on a stool at the breakfast bar. The seat was moulded plastic, two parted indentations to fit the buttocks. She wondered how much it would cost to put little tiles all over her kitchen.

'So,' said Razia. 'You are leaving your old friend.'

'Dr Azad lent some money, and Chanu had some saved up.'

'Have you told the boy?'

Nazneen gazed at Razia and mouthed the word 'no'. She looked down at her tea. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and escaped down the bridge of her nose.

'Come on. Tell me. Take my mind off- other things.'

So Nazneen began the conversation she had already rehearsed by herself, and still she played both parts. Razia, who had not learned her lines, stayed quiet.

'He lifts me up inside. It's the difference between . . .' She cast around. 'I don't know. It's like you're watching the television in black and white and someone comes along and switches on the colours.'

Razia said, 'Mmm.'

'And then they pull you right inside the screen, so you're not watching any more, you're part of it.'

'Mmm,' said Razia again.

Nazneen thought about what she had said. She was pleased. It was not an easy thing to describe.

'Is called
in love,
no?' said Razia.

Nazneen sighed. 'It is too difficult. It is ridiculous.'

'But you want this?'

'Everything goes against it. Family, duty, everything.'

Razia rolled her big bony shoulders. She was tired. Even her shoulders were too heavy for her today.
'In love,'
she said. 'It is the English style.'

Nazneen lost a sandal and slid off the stool to retrieve it. She felt her friend looking at her but she would not return the look. How irritating Razia could be sometimes! Who was it who made herself so English, anyway? With her British passport and track-suit and Union Jack sweatshirt. Who was the one almost getting like the Queen herself? She would not ask for Razia's opinion now. She would do as she pleased.

A knock came at the front door.

'It will be the doctor,' said Razia, 'come to give Tariq his medicine.'

Razia let the doctor in. He had come with a helper, deployed just outside the bedroom door to discourage any idea of escape. Razia went to and fro, emptying slops, throwing away food that looked untouched and replacing it with fresh.

Nazneen sat on the stool in the kitchen and watched a pigeon walk the window ledge. The pigeon stood on the brink, ducked its head, and walked back along the ledge.

Dr Azad entered the kitchen. 'Ah, good, good,' he said. He found a glass and filled it with water.

She should show her gratitude, for the money. 'How is the boy?' she said.

'There is a lot of pain for him,' said the doctor. 'A lot, a lot of pain.'

'Will he get better?'

'Maybe. If that's what he decides.'

He drank the water down quickly and refilled the glass. Then he pulled something out of his suit pocket. 'I brought this for Tariq. I'll go and give it to him now.' But the doctor did not move. He shook up the snowstorm and watched the tiny blizzard whip around miniature castle turrets. He tapped the blue glass dome. 'It's calming, don't you think?' Another shake. 'Watching everything settle back down.'

Nazneen assented.

'You know, actually my wife gave me this particular one.' The corners of his mouth turned down and his eyebrows lifted into his peculiar smile, and met his thick black fringe. 'Back in the early days, we used to give each other gifts, only little things like this because money was scarce. We lived on rice and dal, rice and dal. But my wife told you that. We lived on a cup of rice, a bowl of dal and the love we did not measure.' The doctor drank his second glass of water. He checked his cuffs and ensured they were perfectly aligned, peeping virginally from his jacket sleeves. Nazneen thought, he will not continue. He would like to swallow his words with the water. But the doctor had gone too far to stop now. 'We thought that the love would never run out. It was like a magic rice sack that you could keep scooping into and never get to the bottom.' He let the snowstorm tip between his fingers and dangle upside down. 'It was a "love" marriage, you see.' The puffy grey skin around his eyes seemed to grow, as if he had shed tears on the inside. 'What I did not know – I was a young man – is that there are two kinds of love. The kind that starts off big and slowly wears away, that seems you can never use it up and then one day is finished. And the kind that you don't notice at first, but which adds a little bit to itself every day, like an oyster makes a pearl, grain by grain, a jewel from the sand.' He put the snowstorm back in his pocket. He rinsed his glass and stood it upside down on the draining board. Then he wiped his hands and inspected his fingernails. 'Yes, well, I will see the patient, and then I have a lunch to attend. Good, ah, good.'

He clicked his heels together as if in salute and made to leave. At the door, he turned. 'All the little irritations,' he said. 'Who would think they could add up to anything?'

Nazneen dreamed of Gouripur. She sat cross-legged on a choki and Amma sat behind her and plaited her hair. Hands that smelled of garlic and ginger tugged at her hair and lifted her scalp till it pinched.

'When you were born, I put you to my breast and you did not feed.'

She loved to hear the story. But a part of her was guilty. From the day she was born she had caused trouble.

'How many days, Amma?'

'Many, many days.' Amma tied a ribbon at the end of one plait. 'You looked like a chick fallen out of the nest.'