A Matter of Marriage (34 page)

There would be no warm salad for him tonight, no fresh-chopped chilli for his son. She slapped the cork mats onto the table. She would heat up the leftover dahl and make rice and nothing else. If they wanted to behave as if they were two unmarried men digging together in Oxford, with no wife or mother to care for them and be told what was going on, she would feed them like they were too. Hah. She was not going to cook for them, only in readiness for Shunduri tomorrow and in case of visitors; not that anyone ever visited her unexpectedly, with three unmarried children and no prospect of change in that corner of the sky.

Perhaps Tariq had told Dr. Choudhury of a job somewhere—she hoped it was not Cambridge. She remembered Mrs. Darby reporting what Prince Charles had said, about Cambridge being in the fens. Swamps were dangerous places, prone to flood and disease, which she well knew could destroy families, even whole villages.

And there was no need for such a job. There were no money worries, she was sure of that. They had no debts and money in the bank, thanks to Mr. Kiriakis's generosity over the last three years. They had everything they needed. Except for children that did what they should. They could live here in comfort without Dr. Choudhury working for the rest of their days, even if they paid for three weddings. She took up her tea towel and rubbed the sink so hard that it squeaked. Not that
that
was so likely anymore, in this family born to bad luck.

—

D
R.
C
HOUD
HURY, ENSCONCED
in his wing-back chair in order to await the Saturday evening meal, looked at his wife as she dusted around him in the sitting room. Mrs. Begum, it was true, though incessantly active and occasionally silly, was still his other half, his helpmeet, and the thought of leaving her for such a period of time, even for the holiest of purposes, was a difficult one. How would she cope without him, the wellspring of her life?

He allowed her to straighten his pile of newspapers and magazines and watched tolerantly as she slapped the ottoman back into shape, lifting his feet at the correct time so that she could ease it back under his slippers without inconvenience. Anything he could do to make her life easier. She truly was his other half. Since she had joined him in the UK so many years ago, they had never been separated for more than a couple of days, and even that only the once. And a great stress and strain and inconvenience to himself it had been.

The 1994 Manchester conference on Historical Architecture (the host city finally chosen by a despairing committee under severe but equal pressure from London and Edinburgh) had taken him away from hearth and home for only forty-eight hours, but in that time, smallish items such as socks, ties and underwear had unaccountably gone missing, the room telephone had proven to be a nightmare of unpredictability, he had repeatedly found himself locked out of his hotel room and, on one occasion, had the disturbing experience of his room disappearing completely.

He was not a man who could be expected to keep such minor things as underpants, the exact location of his room and the right way to use a key-card to the forefront of his mind, and he had found the whole episode most distracting, even distressing. It had certainly been a lesson to him: no life without wife, as they say, and he hated to think about how bereft Mrs. Begum had been for those two days, sitting at home without him. Pining.

But he would never expose his wife to the dangers and inconveniences of travel unnecessarily, so separated they must be. He had heard that the shopping was very good in Mecca and Medina, and he would bring her back some gold, and some nice saris. And besides, she had shown no sign of having developed a spiritual side, so she was not, to all appearances, ready for this experience.

Haj, or perhaps just Umrah Haj, Lady-Haj, would be best for her when she was old and sick and brooding on her own mortality; in short, had done some more thinking on serious things, as opposed to just dusting and cooking. And plotting marriages.
That
seemed indeed to be all she could think about now. He would not be so selfish as to rush her into such an experience before she was ready.

And with Tariq to travel with him, any such domestic problems, as he had suffered previously when travelling on his own, should be to some extent ameliorated,
Inshallah.
Though of course there was no comparison to the way that a wife would look after one's small needs, like socks warmed on the radiator, and paan mixed just the way it should be. Dr. Choudhury stretched and yawned. He and Tariq would have to rough it, iron their own shirts, et cetera . . .

But then he realized that for the five days of the pilgrimage he would be required to wear nothing but the ihram, which was no more than two lengths of white cotton around his waist and shoulders. He brightened. White had always flattered him, and there would be no ironing. He had many memories of bachelor disasters with laundromat and iron, until he had discovered the shirt washing and ironing services in Oxford's township. Not as cheap as in Dhaka, of course, but well worth the expense until his bride had arrived and had been able to take over such duties. If anything needed washing, he thought vaguely, Tariq would sort it out. He yawned again. The sitting room was quiet now that his wife's fussing had stopped, and she'd closed the door on leaving, so she must be intending to hoover.

He laced his hands over his stomach (hardly a stomach at all really, just a certain softness and fullness around the midriff entirely appropriate for his age and status) and allowed his eyes to close while he contemplated the changes that he would be bringing to their little household. The time was right to inform his family, and to prepare his wife the best he could, that they would be without his care and protection for the best part of three weeks. Mrs. Begum would not be completely alone: Shunduri would have a break from studies soon and she could keep her mother company, help her with the household, while he was gone.

Not that there would be much for them to do with their head-of-family gone. But he would not begrudge them some idleness while he followed his star. His mouth opened just a fraction and a tiny, contented rumble escaped, what some could almost have called a snore.

—

D
R.
C
HOUDHURY SNORTED
himself awake to the smells of onion and garlic cooking, and the sound of his stomach rumbling. By the time he had wandered into the kitchen, the onion-garlic smell had matured to sweetness as the onions had begun to caramelize. The stove was full of pots; he lifted lids and peered in. Rice of course, chicken, egg . . . How many mouths was Mrs. Begum preparing to feed? But she was chopping up a goat haunch with a cleaver, and his mouth was full of saliva, so he kept the question to himself.

He did feel a little irritated that she was so preoccupied. What had happened to all her curious hovering earlier, so desperate to learn his secret? In the sitting room, she had dusted the occasional table next to his chair for a good minute. He cleared his throat and moved away from the stove. Mrs. Begum dropped the cleaver on the countertop, darted in front of him and gave a rapid stir to the onions. He cleared his throat again, and his wife met his eye.

“Tomorrow, Sunday, Baby is coming.” She turned back to the stove and messed again with the onions.

“Ah, yes. It will be good to see her at this juncture,” Dr. Choudhury said, placing a weighty emphasis on the last two words.

Mrs. Begum gave the onions one last stir, then uncovered the spice tray and started to launch teaspoonfuls of powdered color into the wok: the warm gold, khaki and mid-brown of turmeric, cumin and coriander.

“
Haldi, Jeera, Dunya . . .
Baby might stay for a week. Maybe more,” she said in an airy tone, without turning, and started to stir each pot, banging the respective spoons on the pan sides before moving on.

“Ah,” he said, flinching at the next round of pot-banging and water-splashing. “That is good.” He needed to make his announcement now, before it was lost in the hurly-burly of kitchen preparations. He wondered, not for the first time, if it was really necessary to make such a noise when cooking. But how to start? “A cup-of-tea,” he said firmly.

Mrs. Begum gestured at the stove, upon which every hotplate was flaming and full.

“Where is that electric kettle I bought you? Have you returned it?”

His wife's expression made it clear that she would have if he had not hidden the receipt, and she nodded toward the cupboard-of-useless things, as she called it.

With a great show of self-restraint, he opened the cupboard and peered inside. Boxes. After some seconds of suspense, Mrs. Begum's arm dodged in front of him to remove a cardboard box with, he now noticed, a picture of a kettle on it. She thumped the box onto the kitchen table and started to undo the flaps, but he waved her away, delved into the styrofoam and pulled out a collection of papers. He sat down to read them.

“Warranty. Hmmm. Guarantee. Ah, Instructions. Electrical Safeguards . . . Wash first. This kettle must be washed before use.”

Dr. Choudhury watched as his wife pulled the kettle out of the packing foam and gave it a lightning-fast rinse before filling it and plonking it on the kitchen counter. She grabbed a wooden spoon and gave the curry base in the wok a quick stir, throwing in aniseed and cloves. Then she sped back to the kitchen table, reached into the box and pulled out a disc-like object attached to a power cord, jammed the cord into an outlet near the stove and plonked the kettle onto the disc with an audible click. It started to hiss almost immediately.

Dr. Choudhury tapped the table and looked at his wife over his glasses. “Mrs. Begum. I have not yet read the Instructions.”

She rushed back to the stove and started to pick up pieces of goat and drop them into the curry. “Mrs. Darby has one. I have seen it,” she said, her eyes on the stove.

His annoyance deepened further. He dropped the papers on the table. “There was no need, Mrs. Begum . . .” But he was drowned out by the combined efforts of hissing kettle, whooshing flames, bubbling rice, sizzling meat and an energetically wielded wooden spoon. Mrs. Darby this, Mrs. Darby that: he was sick of hearing about Mrs. Darby.

These days their life on the outskirts of Oxford had a reminiscent glow. Until they had come here, they had been of one mind, one mind only. His. Such misunderstandings as had existed previously (he now had trouble recalling anything of significance) had been nothing, nothing, compared to this ongoing tension, this feeling of hidden, unspoken conflict and struggle for supremacy that had arisen ever since Mrs. Begum, at Mrs. Darby's instigation, had joined that Institute for Women.

She had her own ambitions now: this “fund-raising” lark.
Zakat
, charitable giving, was the fourth pillar of Islam. He could afford to give alms: why this need for sewing and cooking of cakes and painting of plates and selling these items to each other at market stalls as if they were hawkers on the street? Where was her dignity and sense of position? She should be tied to him, not some Mrs. Darby, with her electric kettles and her recipes.

Dr. Choudhury would have waited for a better time, would have built up to his important news with more tactful circumlocution, in short, broken it to her more gently, but there were limits to the disrespect that a
paterfamilias
could tolerate.

He raised his voice. “Mrs. Begum,” he said. “
Mrs. Begum
.”

His wife turned to face him, spoon in hand.

“As you know it is exactly two weeks before
Dhu al-Hijjah
begins.” She looked at him expectantly. “For a man such as myself, of, ah, a certain age, where one becomes more aware of one's own mortality, particularly when one's health is not number-one . . .” He patted his chest significantly.

Mrs. Begum was watching him now, listening, but again with that guarded blankness that he had observed on previous occasions when he had alluded to his own poor health. But no mind.

“The time has come for me to fulfil the fifth pillar and, some would say, the most important duty of Islam: to travel to Mecca and Medina and . . . the other places, to perform the holy duty, the great pilgrimage of Haj.”

He had the gratification of seeing his wife actually jump at the last word. He had her attention now, one hundred percent. Full of the nobility of his cause, he lifted his head, splayed the fingers of his right hand across his chest and continued.

“Circumstances, recent circumstances, have conspired to free my time sufficiently, to undertake this great duty,
Inshallah.
And Tariq: while it is true he is young, he has recently reached a
crise religieuse
in his own development and would thus also benefit from performing his greatest duty. Particularly in the company of his own father. It will be, therefore, not only the fulfilment of an important religious duty, but also of great benefit to the, ahem, filial–paternal bond.”

“Eh?” she said. “
Haj?
”

There was a short silence. Just as he was about to further enlarge upon his aims and goals and justifications for this decision, Mrs. Begum startled into action.

“I need my Munni back. She can help me while I am alone and be a big sister to Baby.”

“Eh? What has that got to do with . . .”

“How, and what, would I do here, while my husband and my son are there? With one daughter in London doing only Allah knows what and one abandoned by her family . . .” She swung her arm, still holding a wooden spoon, toward the kitchen window, splattering the curtain and its contents with rich brown sauce.

“You just told me, wife, that Baby is coming home.”

She dashed a hand across her eyes and dropped the spoon into the sink, her voice high and strained. “Only a week. What is a week? Nothing, nothing. I have lost one of my children, and you take another away with you. Only Baby is left for me now. This is the worst time for a father and a brother to leave her without care and protection.” She clutched the talisman pinned to her blouse. “Aah, my god. Munni in the Abbey and Baby almost betrothed and then my husband goes away and takes my only son.”