Brick Lane (47 page)

'Nervous?'

'Yeah, you know,
nervous.'
He trembled his hands. 'Like when I met you.'

She laughed. 'Me? I made you nervous?'

'What's so funny? You made me nervous.'

Nazneen rocked in her seat. She tried to quell her laughter, but it spurted out everywhere. She put her hand over her mouth, but the laugh came down her nose, out of her ears, through her eyes, from her pores. 'Oh, oh, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard.' She tried to compose herself. 'But do you only get nervous in Bengali? Why don't you stammer in English?'

He raised his eyebrows. He stroked his beard. 'But I do. Maybe you don't notice in English.'

Nazneen wiped her eyes with a napkin. She smoothed her hair and checked her bun. Was it true? Did she not notice in English? Well, why would he say it if it was not true? She straightened up the salt and pepper. People said all sorts of things that were not true. But it seemed possible that she simply had not noticed, or – more than that – had decided not to know.

Karim leaned across to her again. 'What's the real reason? Why do you not want me?'

A waitress came to clear the table. She stacked the cups on top of the plate. Then she wiped the surface in long smooth strokes, each one perfectly placed so there was no wastage. Not an inch of the table felt the cloth twice. The blue-green veins on her hands stood up proud and the skin on her knuckles was rough. On her right hand she wore a ring shaped like a beetle. The nails of her ring finger and her little finger had been filed to a pretty shape and the cuticles pushed down to reveal little white crescents below the pink. The other nails were ragged. On her forefinger, just below the nail, there was a hard lump of skin. When Chanu had begun his Art History course and taken notes all day and long into the night – so many notes that Nazneen knew he was copying out entire books – he had developed a lump exactly like that. The waitress moved on to the next table.

Karim waited for her answer.

How did Karim see her? The real thing, he said. She was his real thing. A Bengali wife. A Bengali mother. An idea of home. An idea of himself that he found in her. The waitress stood by the counter. In her right hand she held a pen. Between her thumb and forefinger, she rolled the pen round and round. She spoke to a customer. The pen kept rolling.

How had she made him? She did not know. She had patched him together, working in the dark. She had made a quilt out of pieces of silk, scraps of velvet, and now that she held it up to the light the stitches showed up large and crude, and they cut across everything.

'I think I know.' Karim regarded her with great sympathy, as if she were a child, suddenly orphaned. 'If you were with me you'd never be able to forget what we did, when it all started. Technically, yeah, it was a
sin.
It bothered me too. So it's for the best. Really. Pray like hell. That's what I'm going to do. Allah forgives. "O My servants, who have transgressed against their own souls! Do not despair of the mercy of God, for Allah forgives all sins."' He nodded. He seemed to want her to join in. 'Is that what it is?' he said. 'The sin of it?'

She touched his hand for the last time. 'Oh Karim, that we have already done. But always there was a problem between us. How can I explain? I wasn't me, and you weren't you. From the very beginning to the very end, we didn't see things. What we did – we made each other up.'

At eight o'clock, when the bags were packed and the tension in the flat ran so strong that you could reach out and pluck it like a sitar string, Nazneen went downstairs to see Razia. She descended two flights, paused at Razia's level, and carried on down.

There were no boys in the stairwell. A blister of paint from the metal banister came off on Nazneen's hand. She stepped over an empty cigarette carton, a brick and a syringe. Outside, the estate was dead. A pile of turf squares stood on the scrubby grass at the centre of the courtyard. They had been delivered in summer. Then, they were bright and even. Soon enough, they blended into the environment. There were no kids out this evening. Nazneen walked around the courtyard and into the centre of Dogwood. Where did everybody go? Now that she had decided to stay, had everybody else packed up and left? Windows were lit; the air was dense with curry smells, but not a single body in the courtyard. The cars in the car park were not revving. Where were the boys who drove in and out, in and out, and played that music with the big, bulging beats? It seemed that everyone had fled, evacuated in an emergency of which she alone was ignorant. Where were the little lads who sat on the edge of the raised beds that once held lavender and rosemary and now cradled old cans and dog dirt, where had they gone to smoke and duck their heads like old hens?

She walked past the concrete valley that sheltered the meeting hut, past the destitute playground, over the car park, along by the raised beds, and back to the foot of Seasalter House. When Dr Azad greeted her, she screeched.

'I've been to see Tariq,' he said quickly, as though she would reprimand him. 'He's getting along, I'd say.'

'Yes,' said Nazneen. 'I was just. . . walking.'

'Good, good,' said the doctor. 'Excellent,' he added, having considered the matter thoroughly. He stood so stiffly, as if it cost him something dearer than money to bend a joint. His black shoes shone. The coat he wore was long and heavy. His shirt collar scratched the underside of his chin.

Nazneen resisted the urge to reach over and undo a button.

'I'm going to Razia's now,' she said.

'She needs the support. Until, of course, you' – here he coughed discreetly, as if the matter were a delicate one – 'urn, go.'

Nazneen sucked the soft walls of her cheeks between her teeth and chewed them. Why had Dr Azad lent the money? Did he expect to get it back? She would return the girls' tickets and her own and take him whatever she could get for them. As far as he knew, they were all going away. Why did he lend the money? Was it a cure? For that special Tower Hamlets disease that he had discovered and named and which would never get into the medical books. What had he called it? Going Home Syndrome. Did he, with his own marriage broken, want to save another marriage where he could? Did he simply want to get rid of Chanu? Get rid of this ridiculous man who claimed him for a kindred spirit?

'Dr Azad, did your wife leave you?'

A shadow passed over his face.

Wasn't it obvious enough long ago that she had left? Nazneen bit into her tongue.

'No,' he said softly. 'She is still there. In a manner of speaking.'

'Of course,' said Nazneen. 'Yes.'

A wind blew in over the courtyard and fetched up a crisp packet at her feet.

'Dr Azad,' she said. 'Why did you give my husband that money?'

The end of his nose was pitted with age, his cheeks had given way to jowls, pockets of air puffed the skin around his eyes, when he smiled the corners of his mouth turned down, and it was a big, generous smile. 'It's very simple. Because he is my friend. My very good friend.'

The day had come. Nazneen sat on Bibi's bed. The girls stood by Shahana's desk looking as though they were waiting to be shot. Nazneen had not heard Shahana speak since yesterday morning. All her features seemed to be pulled together at the centre of her face, as if by a drawstring. Everything was locked up. Her face had shut down. Bibi had gone beyond desolation, to indifference. On the broad canvas of her face nothing was written.

'Shall I tell you a story? Which one would you like to hear?'

Bibi lifted her shoulders slightly and dropped them. Shahana remained frozen.

'Shahana, Bibi, listen to me.' Nazneen stopped. What could she tell them? If she revealed everything now, how could they hide it?

The flight went at two o'clock in the morning. Chanu had calculated that they would have to leave at ten. Nazneen decided on nine o'clock as the time to tell him. It would give them an hour to talk things over, to say goodbye.

'Sometimes things don't turn out so badly. Sometimes the bad things that you think are coming don't come at all. You just have to wait and see.'

If he knew now, he would work on her.

He could not sway her.

She would not take the risk.

'I'll make things right. Be patient. Don't make yourselves upset.'

He would go and the girls would stay with her.

It was possible that
he
would be the one to change his mind: put the tickets away and start unpacking.

It was his one last dream. He would not rip it up.

'Shall I tell you that story? Which one did you want?'

If he stayed they would unpack together, man and wife, and the long night through lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling and for ever after that avoid each other's eye and the reflection of what was in them, what was true: that for both of them the time had gone and it was too late now, too late.

Nazneen got up. 'I don't feel like a story either,' she said.

As she went past the desk, Shahana kicked her on the shin. 'Wait and bloody see,' she cried. 'How long have you waited? What have you seen? What about if this little memsahib is sick of it? What are you going to do about that?' Nazneen moved out of reach. Shahana kicked the chair. She kicked the desk. Then she turned round and kicked her sister.

Chanu was in the bedroom. He wrote on a label and stuck it on the wardrobe door.

'Very good of the doctor to deal with all this. The wardrobe – I thought we should sell it, rather than ship it. Do you agree?'

'Oh, sell it,' said Nazneen. 'Definitely. Get rid of it.'

Chanu looked at her.

'How overjoyed your sister will be to see you! Imagine it. Such joy!'

'Yes,' said Nazneen. It was inadequate. 'I have imagined it many times. Over many years.'

He opened the wardrobe and the doors hid him.

After a while, his voice came again. 'All my certificates here.' He closed the doors. He made a jolly face. 'Shall we sell those too?'

'Take them with you. Take one or two at least.'

He inspected her closely. His eyebrows tangled together. In his hand he had one of his framed certificates. 'Can't get mangoes from the amra tree,' he said. Then he sat down on the bed and held his knees.

She went close to him. Maybe an hour wasn't long enough.

'Haah,' he said, winded. 'Pheeooo-oo.'

Last night, when they went to sleep, he had wrapped his arm around her, moulded his body around her back, shaped himself to her. When she woke, he was still there.

'I haven't been what you could call a perfect-type husband,' he told his knees. 'Nor a perfect-type father.'

He had shrunk. Not just his cheeks and his belly, but all of him. His voice, his words, his temper, his projects, his plans. He had shrunk. And now he was just too small to send out all alone.

'But I haven't been a bad husband. Would you say? Not bad.' Chanu looked up at her and squinted as if her face was too bright to behold directly. 'Some of our women, they never go out. Her.' He motioned upstairs with his head. 'She never goes out. You never see her out, do you? Many aren't allowed to work. You know how it is. Village attitudes. The woman gets some money, she starts feeling she is as good as the man and she can do as she likes.' He smiled and his little eyes nearly disappeared. 'That's how they think. They are not modern. Not like me.'

'It was lucky for me' – her heart swelled as she spoke – 'that my father chose an educated man.'

Chanu grew a little. 'All this talk. We should be doing. Let's go into the sitting room and see what else needs to be done.'

Nazneen rolled up the rugs. Chanu stood and watched. After a while he lifted his shirt and peered at his belly. He turned to present his profile to Nazneen. 'What do you think? Very streamline, eh?'

His stomach no longer looked like a nine-month pregnancy. Now it was closer to six. He patted it affectionately. 'Will power,' he said. 'And ulcer,' he conceded.

'Hup,' he declared and sucked the belly in. He viewed it again, now with some uncertainty. 'Gone too damn far. Does this look like respectable type? Does it look like Soap Factory Manager, or like rickshaw wallah?'

'It's big enough,' said Nazneen. She wondered if she would keep the rugs or throw them away.

'I might go for samosas. Pack a few for the aeroplane. And I have to see Dr Azad about administrative matters, before he leaves the surgery.' Chanu let go of his shirt. It didn't occur to him to tuck it back into his trousers. At the remains of the showcase, he paused. 'But what were you doing trying to lift the computer onto a glass cabinet?'

'Too many boxes on the floor. Just tidying up.'

Chanu twinkled at her. 'My wife, tidying up! And making more trouble for herself. Never mind, it doesn't matter. But next time there's a big job to be done – leave it to me.'

He went to attend to samosas, administration and other matters pertaining.

Nazneen finished with the rugs. She took stock of the sitting room. She did a circuit. The boxes of Chanu's papers were labelled
Ship.
The coffee table had been tagged
Auction.
On the back of the sofa was another label:
Charitable Foundation.

Only the sewing machine remained to be packed. She sat in front of it for a while. The letter was still beneath the machine. She left it and moved to the window.

A rudimentary stage had been erected out of wooden pallets in the courtyard. Around the stage a handful of youths talked into mobile phones. A steady stream of young men filed into the courtyard from both sides of the estate. They too gathered around the stage. Everyone checked what was happening. Nothing was happening. Everyone checked again. One or two ran on the spot and jumped up and down. A boy with a red and green scarf knotted around his forehead carried what looked like a bundled-up old sheet. He put it on the ground and spread it out. It was a Bengal Tigers banner, hand-painted.

'Amma,' said Bibi from the doorway.

'Bibi,' said Nazneen, without turning. 'Bibi?' She looked round.

Bibi chewed on the end of her plait.

'Are you hungry? Do you want lunch?'

'No.'

'What is it?'