Desh (8 page)

The hunger

While her mother recuperated, Aila remained, to all appearances, a married woman, and as long as her father believed the visa application was progressing as it should, he let her come and go pretty much as she pleased without bringing shame on the family, and the prid pro quo for her return to work was that he now accepted the odd hours she worked.

So, to her infinite delight, he stopped breathing down her neck when she claimed to be working nights and didn't even bother to call the club. His antennae were aimed elsewhere and with Nessa on the road to recovery, her antennae were drawn towards Clapham.

That night Revolutions heaved, as always on Fridays, and she stalked the bar, with glossy red nails wrapped round a glass that stayed half full and a bank of black lashes glued to her top lids. Then he walked in and she stopped pacing. He'd do. A brother with the right look, he had the bulging arms under a white tee and jeans packed tight. He moved towards her.

“You eyeing me down, girl?” he said.

“What if I am?”

“Fine with me, but your man's not going to like it.”

“I don't have one, so you up for the job?”

From that point it flowed like a river. They flirted while she touched his chest and RnB pumped out over a sea of bodies. When ‘Paper Planes' started she grabbed his hand and led him to the podium. “Let's do it. They're playing my song,” she said.

He planted a leg between her thighs, so Aila opened and closed her legs around his and lowered her body until she was down in a low squat with her face near the crotch of his jeans. Below them, the floor erupted with shouts of “Oh yeah” and “lower, girl, lower”. She grabbed his hips and slid back up, swaying from side to side, then swung round into a deep backbend and let her head hang upside down, facing the people below. Teeth flashed iridescent white and as she pulled herself up, thighs pressed behind her. The track finished and they left the podium to claps and cheers and pushed their way back to the bar. His tongue felt hot. “There's you with all your curves and me with no brakes.” He followed Aila outside.

When the last of the smokers left them alone in the dark, she wrapped her legs around him as he carried her down the passage and pushed her hard against a brick wall. They didn't have long, but she was done in minutes and afterwards she walked away, deaf to his entreaties, because he meant nothing. He was just a random choice, like a husband.

So fuelled for the time being, Aila focussed on work and the business turned a corner. January had been a good hunting season with new memberships rolling in and it looked set to continue for the next month. She made deals with people that Neil didn't think were probably legal. “Well that's the Bengali in me,” she said, clocking up another ten sales on the white board.

“You're a demon when you get going, Begum.”

After work, she made time to see Shafia again, who, since she'd been swallowed up with marriage, had become harder to reach, and she'd resigned from the club soon after Aila got back from Syhlet. The pressure from her mother-in-law became too much, and Nayan decided the pin money she brought in didn't justify all the aggro. Plus, she was pregnant.

Aila hugged her friend. “I'm so happy for you! When's it due?” As Shafia rambled on about due dates and getting fat and debated the exact moment of conception, Aila thought about Maryam and the other cousins who'd gone the same way. But Shaf wouldn't see it that way now. “It's the best feeling in the world, “she was saying, “I get what everyone means now. You know what?”

“I can guess, so don't go there. Not you of all people.”

“You'd make a great mum, Ails.”

“So I'll adopt, when the time comes.”

“That'll go down a treat. Help me out here, Souljarette. I don't get Kettle crisps in for just anyone.” They reconnected over a carb fest and Aila went home feeling maybe she hadn't lost her friend quite yet.

And after two weeks in isolation, Nessa came home. She walked with a stick and her voice still sounded raspy, but she was back and the pall that had descended over the house started to lift. The bathroom upstairs lost its dank, musty smell and the dust eddies in the corner of the dining room disappeared and Sadhan stopped smoking in the house at night.

But the buoyant mood was pierced a few nights later. The phone rang and Sadhan went, because he always answered the house phone. Aila turned back to watch the film her mother had chosen, a romantic epic with Karisma Kapoor that she'd seen at least ten times before, until she heard her father shouting in the hall.

Gourab was on the phone, and he wanted to talk. He hadn't heard from his wife since the wedding and he missed her. Aila refused to speak and wouldn't take the receiver her father held out. Instead she walked back into the lounge and left him to listen from there to the shrieks that followed.

When Gourab finally gave up, Sadhan came into the lounge with a face like thunder. If it weren't for her mother's intervention, there would have been another nasty scene, but she knew better than to rest easy. This wasn't going to go away of its own accord and, sure enough, the phone rang again and again. Not every night, but always around the same time, between ten and eleven, when Gourab finished work, plus five hours for London.

One night she tried a different tactic and answered the phone while Sadhan stood by. Gourab said he missed her and asked for her mobile number.

“Why would I do that? We've never exchanged texts, or emails – or letters for that matter.”

With Sadhan in earshot, she put the phone on loud speaker, “Do you remember a conversation we had after the wedding? A particular conversation about why you decided to marry me?”

He stayed quiet. “Oh well, see if you do, next time. Would you like another word with my father or are we done here?”

The calls continued through the end of February and punctuated the tension at home, and if Sadhan was in a black mood, she'd stay upstairs in her room until he left for the restaurant. One night, she called Tom, and told him about a plan she had, that had been brewing since the ‘Janitor's' calls started. But when she finished, he urged her not to ‘mediate' with her father, as he'd said before. Aila knew that this made sense, but then she'd been mediating with her father since she'd come of age.

So, for the next few days she waited and when the inevitable call came, she pounced. Her father stood by as Gourab started with the usual whine about how cruel his wife was, and how much he loved her and Aila let him carry on for just long to make sure her father was listening, then she dangled the bait.

“But after the wedding, remember when you came to our house? You said I was fat and ugly and one night you told me you only married me to come to the ‘ukay'. Remember? To get unlimited leave to remain, your ULR as you so sweetly called it. So what's with the bleeding heart act?”

With the loud speaker on, his voice came through clear and strong. “I can't take this anymore. My parents paid your family, and yes, I felt that way at first, but things have changed. I'm in love with you now.”

She hung up. “It's a funny old game, Dad isn't it? He wanted a visa, you wanted money, and here we are.”

After this, Aila and her father hardly spoke and their paths rarely crossed. They lived and worked in shifts. He stayed at the restaurant until late most nights and slept through the days, while she came and went as she pleased, ostensibly working shifts. Mazid stayed away on campus through the week, but came back on weekends to be with Nessa. So once Aila had done the deliveries for the restaurant, she had time on her hands.

At St John's Hill, the traffic slowed. She turned to the bus stop opposite and saw a younger self at fourteen, maybe fifteen, standing alone like a whisper on the high street. With the headscarf pinned defensively, the mono brow and a pile of books clasped to her chest, she was as devout and studious as Aila had been. She hailed the approaching bus, clambered on and was gone. That girl faded a thousand lifetimes ago.

At the lights she stopped again and he crossed, with an arrogant swagger. As she watched the hips that swayed to a rhythm all their own, he clocked her face behind the wheel and walked round the car. “Have dinner with me,” he said.

She lowered the window. “You don't waste time. Here's my number.”

He tapped the digits into his phone. “And your name is?”

“Mia.”

He lived in a studio in Thornton Heath and he cooked. Afterwards, lying across the bed as she finished the jerk chicken, he looked into her face. “It's your eyes. You get this really dirty look and when I saw it I couldn't resist.” He took the plate out of her hands, and rolled towards her.

She sucked the grease off her fingers. RnB from an iPod filled the tiny room and swirled around her. He wrapped his long legs inside hers and kissed her neck. She writhed and swirled and came, with a few good slaps that hit the spot, and then she left without asking his name and drove home in a calmed state.

She had just crept through the front door and kicked her shoes under the stairs when Sadhan confronted her. Where had she been? Why did she never answer her phone? he shouted and before she had time to construct an answer, he continued. Her husband had called again, but this time with news. He'd been called into the office in Dhaka and questioned and they'd declined his visa application.

Her father couldn't understand it. Sobia's visa had been issued; he'd just opened the letter. No problem and no questions asked, yet they'd asked Gourab all sorts of questions like when did he first meet his wife? What colour eyes did she have? Could he show any emails from her? And when they asked him to hand over his mobile phone, his wife wasn't in the contact list and there were no texts from her.

“Why couldn't he just say he'd already met you? Is he completely stupid? How did I get lumbered with an imbecile for a son-in-law?”

Aila kept quiet and skirted round him until he'd finished ranting and left her alone, long enough to call Tom in relative safety. He understood hissed whispers and explained that a letter would follow confirming the decision. It would also state that her father had the right to appeal the decision, within a year. If he chose to appeal, it would be heard in court, at which point Aila might have to be involved, and possibly called on to testify.

After a few moments she said, “I don't think I could testify against my own family.”

Tom was quick to reassure her. “Of course. No-one's going to force you to do anything you don't want.
I just have to make you aware of the situation; beyond that, it's your decision, Aila, and from our perspective, as long as you feel safe at home, you don't need to do anything more.”

She might be safe, but she had to get out. Now.

The last of the diners had left the restaurant some time before, so the room was in darkness. Two people, holding hands, walked through the lobby of the Northumberland hotel, past the solitary drinkers at the bar and turned into the dining room. They crept between the tables and chairs and felt the plush buoyancy beneath their feet.

Streetlight shines through a slit in the drapes. She runs a finger over the gilt edge of a velvet seat and poses like a queen for his amusement. A note plays on the piano in the bar and hangs in the air for a moment.

They scurry upstairs to the room and slide the key card into the door, both giggling and whispering, then close the door. While the piano plays like a slow pulse, she removes all her clothes and stands facing him, full on in black stilettos, as he stays seated on the side of bed, with just a do rag round his head and leather wristbands up his arm.

She stands with legs apart and waits until his eyes have wandered up the length of her thighs before her fingers open the vulnerable slit between. Dark crimson nails press against the labia, red against pink, exposed to his scrutiny. The parted flesh has an acridity that mingles with her perfume, bought a few days ago from the Perfume Shop with an encounter like this in mind.

She can see the muscles in his upper arms tense, and the whites of his eyes moisten, as she stands her ground. He flicks his hand with a well-practised gesture and the watch clasp is released in one go.

“Dance for me, Mia.”

“Come closer, and closer again,” and he's on his knees, crawling towards her, face first.

Afterwards, Aila's face fell in the car when she saw the text from Mazid. His wife would arrive in less than two weeks. At home, her mother was over the moon and declared, “We've been blessed at last.”

Sobia arrived on the last weekend in March and slotted into the family almost seamlessly. She soon became the perfect daughter-in-law, cooking all the meals with Nessa's supervision and cleaning every inch of the house. Aila began to think it might be less of a disaster than she'd anticipated.

At least her mother had more support and so, while Aila still drove her to the hospital when her medication needed adjusting, she no longer had to stay when the physio came. Sobia could deal with that, though Aila still nagged her mother to do her exercises. “Ma, I work in a bloody gym where people pay forty quid a month for this stuff. You get your own personal trainer for nothing once a week and you can't be bothered? What is it with Bengalis?”

But she should have known the brief respite was too good to last and, not long after Sobia's arrival, her father did his usual trick and attacked at her most vulnerable time. He burst into her room after she'd gone to sleep and started shouting: “Your brother's sorted; why you aren't? You should be starting your married life too. Why aren't you working on the appeal? I told you to give me your statement of income, but you ignored me – you're too ‘busy' putting all your energy into that stupid job. What kind of job has women working until after midnight anyway?”