Losing Touch (8 page)

Tarani traces over the frost on the inside of one of the small windowpanes. ‘Why do we have to come here anyway? It's always Hampton Court or Kew Gardens. And now we'll have to have one of those stupid cream teas.'

Sunila wants to tell her daughter to be grateful, to look around her at this beautiful building. The English took their superior architecture to India and the other colonies. They taught the natives how to make ceilings. Ceilings protected you from rats and snakes and the hell of the Indian summers.

‘I thought you liked cream cakes,' Sunila says.

‘I do, but that's not the point, is it? We have to do it because it's
his
idea and it's what we always do when we come to this place.'

‘You like the cakes, so what difference does it make whose idea it is?'

Tarani lifts a hand: the long fingers, the thin tendons, the smooth skin, the way the wrist bends. It looks like a flower stem. Sunila wants to say this aloud, but Tarani drops her arm.

‘Forget it. I knew you wouldn't understand. You always take his side.'

Sunila wants to shake her.
Don't you see how much he has to worry about? His job, the bills, arranging the future for you and your brother. And everyone in the family comes running to him with their problems or asking for a loan. Now your favourite aunt is running off with some banker, ruining the family name, and it's your father who has to talk sense into her. And despite all of that, he thinks of us and tries to do something nice.

‘Here they are. Dad looks cross.' Tarani sounds satisfied.

Murad is keeping up with Arjun even though it looks as though Arjun wishes to stride ahead. They will have to sit over their cream tea, no one making eye contact, the conversation as dried out as the scones. But at the last moment, as they take the stone steps two at a time, Murad says something and Arjun laughs. And although the sun doesn't break through, suddenly there is more light around the glass doors where Sunila and Tarani wait.

The tie is uneven and he persists until it lies smoothly between the crisp collar wings of his white shirt. The old wall mirror gives him back an undulating version of his anxious frown.

‘I don't know why you bother. It's only the hospital.' Sunila rubs her nose with the flat of her hand.

More than his leg, he is worried about Murad, who is expecting to pass all his A-levels but is struggling with his S-level chemistry. After Cardiff University sent their offer, conditional on him passing chemistry, he spent an entire weekend in his bedroom refusing everything Sunila cooked, but accepting the McVitie's chocolate biscuits Tarani smuggled in.

He eventually emerged with a fluff of facial hair. Arjun's heart ached for him, but the boy needed some purpose. ‘Pull yourself together. And shave, for goodness' sake. You look like one of those hippies.'

Arjun tilts his head and inspects his Harris tweed jacket, the small, neat pattern of his brown silk tie, his fine wool trousers and the shining shoes. Sunila has polished them, grumbling because he insists on Kiwi and not one of those modern sprays. She says it's all the same. He knows it's not. The polish must soak into the leather for at least two hours, preferably overnight, and only after that can you brush and shine the shoes properly. She says she dislikes the smell of shoe polish. He guesses that she thinks of the hundreds of street corners where the shoe-shine boys, bent heads, bent backs, feet braced, steadily polish away the endlessly creeping Bombay dust.

He tucks the white handkerchief into his top pocket. ‘Where's Murad?'

‘At his preparation lesson with Mr Turrington. They have a double lesson today. Tests next week only.'

‘Good. I'll be back after lunch.'

‘
After
? What will you eat?'

‘I'll get a sandwich or something.'

‘What nonsense, a sandwich. I can make something for you to take.' She is already halfway down the stairs. ‘There's some of that curry left. You can have it with rice. I'll put it in a Tupperware and wrap a fork in a napkin and put it in a plastic bag.'

‘You think I can walk into the hospital with a Tupperware box of curry?'

He tries to look casual; she's watching him come downstairs. The left leg has been failing more frequently.

He'd ignored the doctor's advice to seek a specialist until his leg gave out on him when he was shaking hands with Pastor Hargreve and his wife after church. There was no warning that the leg was weak, no staggering, no gradual numbness. His leg vanished beneath him and he fell, grabbing at Mrs Hargreve's bosom before rolling down the three white steps. Mrs Hargreve screamed while her husband calmly rebuked her. ‘Don't be an idiot, Maisy.'

The pastor collected Arjun from the pavement.

‘My leg. I'm so sorry. I hope I didn't—'

‘Oh no. I just – I thought it was a mouse or something.' Mrs Hargreve daintily tugged her sunflower-patterned jacket around her wide shoulders.

‘A mouse? Jumping on your tits?' The Hargreves' daughter snorted. ‘You thought it was your lucky day.'

‘Rebecca, that's quite enough.' Pastor Hargreve helped Arjun back into the church.

And then came all the questions, the concern. He was used to listening to problems, counselling patience, mediating disputes. He had to swallow the kindness, and the aftertaste remained in his throat.

Haseena phoned. ‘Arjun
, bhai
? Pavitra said you fell at church last week. You need a neurologist.' She sounded quite stern. Was it the effect of the break-up with her boyfriend?

For almost seven months last year, Haseena ignored the outraged family and went about with some person named Hadley, a divorced English banker who was fond of gambling.
Off to see the ponies
. Arjun went to Haseena's for lunch and talked to her in a calm and reasonable manner. Haseena politely listened and then went to dinner with Hadley at Brown's Hotel. The aunts and great-aunts sucked their teeth, held prayer vigils and predicted terrible things. It couldn't have been worse if he'd been a Muslim. Finally, in November, Nawal let it slip that the relationship had ended. No one found out why but the great-aunts, relieved to be off their aching knees, went back to their word puzzles.

‘Arjun, you know what Jonti would have said.' Haseena was clearly anxious if she was playing the Jonti card.

‘All right, Haseena. I'll ask for a referral.' He knew exactly what Jonti would have said.
Idiot to ignore, isn't it?

He saw the specialist in December and now, three months later, he is on his way to his follow-up appointment. He walks to the bus stop with his elegant black cane. It's more of an accessory since he only has to lean on it occasionally for those moments when the leg decides to leave and he has to wait for it to come back. He thinks of it as though it's wandered away, has paused somewhere, while his impatient body frets for its return.

How does a living part of the body become a stranger, behave so differently without the rest of the body's consent? He never used to consult any part of himself when he stood or walked or picked up a squash racquet.
I'm not myself today
. If part of him vanishes, then part of the intrinsic who-he-is also vanishes. Who is left? He listens to his body. He learns how to wait. But when his leg returns, everything just picks up where it all left off, as though mocking his anxiety.

The bus comes quickly and he gets on with a quick pivot of the stick. He walks confidently down the aisle to find a window seat. He notices an open newspaper in the seat ahead. The owner shuffles the pages and Arjun glimpses the headline. ‘Charlie is Our Darling!'
The photo is of Chaplin with yet another woman. How can they put that kind of gossip in a newspaper? He glances again. The
Daily Mail
.

The rain has cleared up and the sun shines on the still-glistening trees, sparkles on the grass and a large pool of water reflects a still portrait of a betting shop. Umbrellas have been furled and raincoats have been daringly unbuttoned. There is a sense of freedom in the sunshine, warm and welcome through Arjun's window.

It is too early for the pubs to be open, but he can imagine what they will be like around lunchtime. If the sunshine persists, perhaps people will spill out onto the pavement and raise their half-glasses of shandy or lager to each other.
Cheers
. He imagines the women in their office dresses and the men in jackets, ties loosened, everyone full of stories from the morning's business. He would like to hear them laughing and talking in that energetic way of the young.

Suddenly someone plops into the seat next to him. A young girl settles herself and says, ‘Hello Mr Kulkani.'

Rebecca, fifteen, in a red corduroy dress, clumpy black boots and a multicoloured knitted hat. ‘Hello Rebecca. What are you doing here?'

‘Just going to the shops.' She pulls her hat off. ‘This stupid hat. My mother made me wear it. What do you think? She made it.' She holds it out for him to look at. It is a yellow, red and black eyesore. He wants to say the correct thing,
It was very nice of her
, but the hat is so angrily ugly.

‘Does your mother enjoy knitting?'

‘What do
you
think?'

‘Well. She's a kind person.' His voice wavers a little. Is knitting necessarily a product of kindness?

Rebecca echoes the thought. ‘She's not kind. She hates everything.'

She stuffs the hat into the pocket of the black raincoat bundled over her arm. ‘Where are you going?'

‘The hospital. For tests.'

‘Oh, right. So, what are the tests for?'

‘My leg. It keeps going out. As you may remember.'

They make eye contact and the laughter trips out of him. Rebecca laughs too, rubs the back of her hand across her mouth. ‘You should have seen my mother's face. She looked like she'd been electrocuted.'

‘It was terrible.' He tries not to laugh again.

‘It was the funniest thing I've seen in ages. She was holding her boobs like they were the crown jewels.'

Rebecca is a fizzy drink of energy; she flaps her hands about, opens her eyes wide, rocks forward. She stops laughing and looks down. ‘Still, that's bad luck. Your leg.'

‘Oh, it's been happening for a while. It's probably nothing.' He wonders what it's like to be that age again, to feel all that vitality rushing through the body. He remembers back in India when he would start running full tilt up the hill to the school: the sheer exhilaration and strength of his body.

Rebecca touches his arm. ‘I'm coming with you.'

‘That's very nice of you, but aren't you—?'

‘This won't be much of a detour.'

He doesn't want this red-haired young girl with orange fingernails to accompany him into the specialist's office, to witness the bored sympathy, the formulaic kindness
.
More than that, he doesn't want a witness to his disease being handed to him with a follow-up appointment card. He is quite prepared to lie to Sunila.
Just a bit of muscle fatigue, the doctor said.

But Rebecca stands up. ‘My dad says when I've made up my mind, there's no stopping me. This is our stop. Come on, Mr Kulkani. It could be worse. It could be my mother.'

They walk through the hospital gates and along the path between the spindly rhododendron bushes. The red and brown building looks ancient. He wishes it was metal and glass and modern, with the promise of new medication and advanced treatment.

‘Do you watch
The Partridge Family
, Mr Kulkani? I watch it round my friend's house. David Cassidy's
so
dishy. I want to get my hair feathered like his. You won't tell Mum, will you?'

‘What? No.' They approach the automatic doors. The left one swings wide, the right tags along afterwards as though it isn't sure it wants to open.

‘Anyway, last week—'

‘Rebecca, I really appreciate you coming in with me, but I think it will be better if I do this alone.'

She purses a mouth unevenly caulked with red lipstick, probably applied as she was walking away from her home. ‘I can get you a cup of tea while you're waiting.'

He hands his piece of paper to the receptionist and they are directed to a waiting room. ‘You'll be called shortly.'

‘We all know what that means.' Rebecca leads the way, her boots squeaking as if she is squashing mice with each step.

The waiting room is a faded wash of peach. A few old people have settled into the stuffed chairs like elderly pot plants. Rebecca selects a deep, soft-looking chair with a black velvet cushion and offers it to him.

‘Thank you, Rebecca.' He dislikes these soft chairs, but doesn't like to refuse her.

She pulls her own chair closer to his. ‘Fancy some tea?'

‘No, thank you.' He clears his throat. ‘So, Rebecca, how are you doing at school?'

A scornful look. ‘School?'

A nurse comes in. ‘Mr Kulkani? Come this way, please.'

He stands up and collects his cane while the nurse taps her clipboard against her leg. He turns at the doorway. ‘Please don't wait, Rebecca. I don't know how long this will take.'

She's looking down at her boots, her hair masking her face. He hopes she has heard.

He follows the nurse, expecting to be taken into a doctor's office, but he is deposited in another waiting room.

‘Wait here. They'll call you in a minute.' The nurse walks away.

The second waiting room is smaller with fewer magazines, but the chairs are more padded. This might be a bad sign. He examines them. Are there indentations, signs of long occupancy?

Just as he is considering whether it's worth sitting down, another nurse arrives and takes him to a small office. The impression is of stepping into a boat: blue-painted walls and the ceiling wavering with light reflected from a long fish tank set against the window. He sits in the hard-backed chair and prepares to listen to the doctor's attempt to diagnose him.

‘Let's see what we have here. Well, Mr Kulkani, this motor neurone history in your family and your tests appear to confirm what I thought.' Dr Artunian, a young man in his early thirties, settles his glasses. ‘Probably spinal muscular atrophy. Probably.' He looks up, the words floating between them. Arjun doesn't want to say anything that indicates he accepts this nebulous sentence. Even though he's guessed for years, carried the self-diagnosis around at the back of his mind, he still feels the emotional rush.
Not that
. Not the slow rot of muscle, the lapse of response, the body's retreat from the will.

‘Yes. That's what I thought.' The words barely make it out of his mouth. Did he actually say anything?

He remembers when he worked as a nurse, comforting patients also condemned to long, relentless diseases. He sat next to their beds, listening to their fears that their wives wouldn't be able to take care of them, that their children would be too afraid for hugs, that they would turn into that hell of
being a burden
. He sat and listened long after he should have been off-duty.

But this barely qualified doctor doesn't want to wait for more than the five minutes he has allotted to Arjun. How can a young active man, who has no personal knowledge of the reality of his theory, be qualified to pass on this information?

‘I'm fairly sure it's SMA, but we'll schedule more tests to confirm. Let's set you up for next week, Mr Kulkani.' He hits a buzzer on the desk and talks rapidly into a speaker. He turns back to Arjun. ‘I'll have more information after I see the results. That's it for now, Mr Kulkani.'

Arjun is irritated with the way his name is repeated, as though the doctor is afraid it will escape and keeps hauling it back by its tail. He stands up. ‘Thank you, doctor.'