Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart (3 page)

She was so proud of their beautiful minimalist penthouse in one of the best parts of Belsize Park. Their builders had worked on it for a year before they moved in to transform it from the top half of a tall Victorian house into the striking ultra-modern space it was now. She and Jeremy had spent the best part of another year working to finish it off and furnish it. It was intolerably cruel that just when everything was finally almost ready and they were about to embark on a brand new phase of their life, her mother-in-law should come along to spoil it. Because Smita had no doubt at all that was what Sylvia was going to do. Not intentionally, of course; Sylvia was, God damn her, a good woman who just couldn’t help doing the wrong thing at every step. She would blunder into their beautifully organized lives and, with the best will in the world, she would wreak havoc. She always did.

Whatever the circumstances, she had the capacity somehow always to put her foot in it. When she first saw Smita’s new kitchen for example, with its clean lines and post-industrial look, she had giggled and said it reminded her of her school science lab. Now that was obviously a totally trivial, insignificant thing but it had rankled and, ever since, Smita had rarely entered her kitchen without remembering it.

Then there were the wretched flowers; every year, for
the past three years since they had got married, Sylvia had sent Smita a bouquet on her birthday. “How
sweet
,” her friends said. “How lucky you are to have such a lovely mother-in-law.” But what they didn’t seem to grasp was that the flowers always came on the wrong day somehow or they were flowers which Smita didn’t like or to which she was allergic. Of course she knew that Sylvia hadn’t done it on purpose; the flowers were ordered online from Dubai. Jeremy told her she was being unreasonable; his mother meant well and how could she be expected to know Smita’s taste in flowers? Smita had to display the bouquets prominently or Jeremy would have taken offence but every year she would glare as she passed the vase, a heavily scented reminder of her mother-in-law in her front room.

Now it was going to be her mother-in-law herself and, for the zillionth time, Smita felt it was more than she could bear. Especially with the other change that was on the way. How could she be expected to cope with the extra responsibility of having her recently widowed mother-in-law living around the corner?

If it had only happened the other way round; if it had been Sylvia who had gone first and not Roger, how much easier that would have been. Well, for Smita of course, not for poor Jeremy, whose relations with his father had always been even worse.

Although frankly his relations with both his parents had always been something of a puzzle to Smita. Her relations with her own parents, her mother, Naisha, and her father, Prem, were so much more straightforward
somehow; she loved them, they drove her mad, they loved her, she drove them mad but, at the end of the day, they all took it completely for granted that they were a non-negotiable part of one another’s lives and they would no more try to distance themselves from one another than they would try to do without food or clothes or shelter. Jeremy called Smita’s family “claustrophobic”. But Smita had trouble recognizing Jeremy’s relations with his parents as family relationships at all.

For a start, they had lived on different continents most of the time since Jeremy had been sent away to boarding school at the age of eleven. When they met, they were cold and distant and formal with one another. Jeremy and his father shook hands, never hugged. In some respects they didn’t even know one another all that well. If Smita asked Jeremy before a visit, “Does your Dad like fish?” or “Would your mother prefer tickets to the theatre or the ballet, do you think?” he would look blank. Smita knew exactly how much coriander her father liked in his favourite dish. Jeremy only spoke to his parents every few weeks, if that, and when they were all together, they always seemed strained and awkward.

But at least Roger could be good fun, when he was in the right mood, with a drink in his hand and he definitely had a soft spot for his feisty daughter-in-law. Smita wouldn’t have minded nearly as much if it had been Roger, recently widowed, coming back to live out his days close to his only son. Except that would never have happened because, if it had been Roger coming back, he would have gone to live in the country somewhere, in a
village with a nice pub. He would have bought a large and shambling dog to keep him company and he would hardly have bothered them at all. Who knows, he might even have taken up with some merry widow in the village and started out on a whole new chapter of life. Whereas Sylvia –

Smita heaved a huge sigh and abandoned her peppermint tea. She stood up and went over to the big window again and there were Jeremy and Sylvia down in the street below, busy unloading Sylvia’s luggage from the boot of the car and apparently already in the middle of some fractious disagreement. Why on earth had they brought the luggage here instead of leaving it at the hotel first? Had there been some awful last-minute change of plan? Smita panicked; she wasn’t having Sylvia staying here.
No way
.

As she watched Jeremy and Sylvia, wondering what on earth was going on, Sylvia suddenly looked up and saw Smita’s face at the window and gave a great, enthusiastic wide wave with both arms as if they were dear long-lost friends or as if she were signalling to a taxiing aircraft. Smita waved back, just a little, with one hand and, straight away, Sylvia plunged back into the boot again as if she had been rebuffed.

Smita retreated from the window. Now she felt sicker than she had all day. She simply could not face what was about to happen. But there was nothing at all she could do about it either, now that her final wicked prayer for a plane crash had gone unanswered.

The intercom buzzed. Smita walked over and lifted the
receiver and when she exclaimed, “Hell
o
!” Jeremy’s voice answered rather shortly, “Hi, we’re here.”

Smita dashed to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. Never let Sylvia see her looking less than her best. She gave a last quick look around her apartment, saw that it was looking beautiful and went downstairs to hold the front door open welcomingly.

After a moment, she could hear voices in the stairwell; Sylvia’s carrying tones and someone else who, oddly, wasn’t Jeremy. Smita craned to listen; it was the downstairs neighbour, cranky old Mrs Castellini; Sylvia and Mrs Castellini apparently engaged in an animated conversation about the unusually cold spring weather. Not a squeak out of Jeremy; what was he doing, why didn’t he hurry her up? And how come Mrs Castellini was being so matey with Sylvia when she was always so hostile to them?

Smita could imagine Jeremy standing on the stairs, doubtless seething, red in the face, probably carrying all his mother’s luggage too but still not managing to open his mouth and tell her to get a move on. Smita waited; oh, this was so typical. She could hear Mrs Castellini recalling the long hard winter of 1963 – snow lying in London for two months, the Thames freezing over – and Sylvia outdoing her with 1947; she had only been a small child but she could still remember it quite clearly, the snow that had fallen in January and stayed on the ground until Easter. In sheer exasperation, Smita closed the door quietly and went back upstairs. She may as well carry on with making the lunch until Sylvia finally deigned to make her way up and greet her.

A few moments later, she heard Jeremy push against
the front door, assuming it would be open, exclaim and unlock it before coming into the flat calling loudly “Smi? Smi? Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she called back. Now her hands were covered with green flecks of chopped coriander. Too bad; she came out into the high glass atrium, holding her hands up so Sylvia could see how hard she was working on her behalf and greeted her, she thought very warmly, “Hell
o
Sylvia, how
are
you? How was the
flight
?”

Sylvia was out of breath from all the stairs – and all the talking – and instead of answering, she barged forward and seized Smita in a smotheringly close embrace. As if, Smita thought resentfully, she was trying to make up with the scale of the hug for the slightness of her feelings.

Afterwards in the kitchen, Jeremy whispered to her – Sylvia was paying a lengthy visit to the bathroom to freshen up – “Couldn’t you at least have come down and opened the door to her?”

Smita was indignant. “But I
did
,” she whispered back. “I
did
. I stood there for
ages
waiting for you both to come up. But she was taking so long, nattering away to Mrs Castellini, that I gave up and came back up here to get on with the
lunch
.” She glared at her husband. “Why did you bring all her luggage here instead of dropping it off at the hotel first?”

“It took forever to get here,” Jeremy whispered back, “and anyway
she
wanted it this way round.”

“Oh,” Smita said nastily. “Of
course
.” Then, relenting, she asked, “Apart from the weather, what on earth was she talking to Mrs Castellini
about
?”

“Mrs Castellini was offering her condolences,” Jeremy whispered. “Actually she was rather nice.”

“How did she
know
?” Smita whispered.

Jeremy looked a little uncomfortable. “I happened to have a chat with her a few weeks back. I told her that my father had died.”

Smita was amazed and rather put out. She whispered, “I thought we weren’t talking to them until they agreed to redecorate the common parts.”

Jeremy shrugged. Before he could continue, they were both alarmed by a sudden squawk and a loud thud from the bathroom. They exchanged glances. Jeremy ran over to the bathroom door and called loudly, “Mum? Are you ok?”

The door opened and Sylvia hobbled bravely out. “My, your tiles are slippery!” she exclaimed, rubbing her hip. “I nearly fell, you know. Thank goodness, I managed to grab onto the towel rail and save myself.”

Smita made a mental note to check the towel rail for damage and, sure enough, when she slipped discreetly into the bathroom a little while later, the towel rail was visibly lopsided and there were cracks running across two of the tiles to which it was fastened. Smita was livid. Sylvia couldn’t care less of course. Why, she hadn’t even noticed. She hadn’t been in the house for five minutes and already she was wreaking havoc. There was naturally no point in complaining to Jeremy. He would just say it was an accident and thank God his mother hadn’t been badly hurt. So Smita contented herself with writing “Call tiler” in large legible handwriting on the To Do board in the
kitchen and she hoped that Jeremy would notice it pretty soon.

He settled his mother comfortably on the cream couch and brought her a drink. Smita would rather he had seated her anywhere else for she would surely spill her drink but at least to start with Sylvia opted for tonic water only so Smita was grateful for that.

She carried on preparing the lunch, resentful that she should be working away in the kitchen when she felt so terrible while Jeremy sat across the room with his feet up, talking to his mother. If she was honest with herself, she would
rather
be in the kitchen than talking to his mother, but still.

Lunch seemed to be an ordeal for all three of them. Smita could only manage some rice and, while Sylvia made a great display of appreciation, in actual fact she only picked at her food which made Smita feel even more resentful, considering all the effort she had gone to. The only one who ate heartily was Jeremy, taking big demonstrative second helpings of lamb and rice and dal. Smita knew he was doing it partly to placate her and partly because, with his mouth permanently full, there was no way he could be expected to take part in the conversation.

Nobody seemed to have a great deal to say. Sylvia whose chatter normally drove them both to distraction was distinctly subdued; her bereavement and the overnight flight, Smita supposed. She herself was feeling so dreadful – and depressed now too – that it was an effort simply to keep up appearances and Jeremy who might
have been expected to jolly things along seemed to have decided to opt out and eat himself into an early grave.

In order to fill a particularly long silence, Sylvia told them for the second time the not terribly interesting story of the Russian gentleman who, it turned out, was no gentleman at all who had helped her with her case. Even though Jeremy and Smita had agreed many times before that if an old person started to repeat herself, it was a kindness to point it out to her, there was no response from Jeremy beyond a non-committal noise and leaning across to take a couple more spoonfuls of raita.

Smita would have made the effort, would have contributed
something
if only she hadn’t been feeling so unwell and, of course, if the only topic worth talking about was not totally taboo. She stuck to doing the hostess thing, offering food and afterwards tea and pretending to listen politely to whatever her mother-in-law had to say.

The meal was, all in all, a ghastly strain and Smita was glad when Sylvia said to Jeremy, soon afterwards, “When it’s convenient, would you run me over to the hotel please dear? I simply have to have my forty winks, I’m afraid.”

To Smita, she said brightly in the hall, “Thank you for a lovely lunch, dear. I’m sorry you went to so much trouble when you weren’t feeling well. I hope you get over your bug quickly. And maybe in a couple of days, when we’re both more ourselves, I can invite myself over for a cup of tea?”

“Of course,” Smita answered through gritted teeth, “of course you can.”

When the door had closed behind Sylvia and Jeremy,
Smita went wearily back into the front room and started to clear up. Jeremy had told her to leave it all for him but she preferred to have a job done to her liking. She wondered whether Sylvia really had no idea what the matter was with her daughter-in-law or whether, not having been let in on the secret, she was just being coy. She decided that Sylvia really had no idea; she was so self-centred and so obtuse, it was hardly surprising that she hadn’t worked it out. Well, if Smita had anything to do with it, she wasn’t going to find out in a hurry either because Sylvia simply couldn’t help herself; she would immediately tell the news to every single person she met. At the realisation that her mother-in-law was now part of this too, Smita allowed herself a few hot angry tears.