The Cambridge Curry Club (20 page)

Mesmerised by her authoritative tone, the
photographer
clicked obediently.

‘Did you get it, love? Now another one of the four of us. C’mon Swarna, heroine of the hour, c’mon Heera, Eileen, we can do better than that. We are the “
Cambridge
Curry Club”. United we stand, though we may fall or fail. Right – we’re ready.’ They posed, beaming at the camera.

The photographer clicked again to the
accompaniment
of a thunderous crash upstairs. A shower of golden dust sprayed the group, followed by another and yet another, until they stood choking and gasping, ghostly apparitions – victims of DIY floor lamination.

A large, jagged hole had formed in the ceiling of the
charity shop. As they gazed upwards in mute horror, a fresh mound of rubble fell through, knocking the
wallet
out of Heera’s hand and burying it beneath a pile of bricks and dust. A tousled head appeared directly above, and a Yorkshire-accented voice said
cheerily
, ‘Eh oop! Sorry about that. Everyone down there all reet?’

The shop was plunged into darkness.

Epilogue

S
IX WEEKS LATER
, spangled golden Christmas lights winked at the thronging shoppers in the city centre as the Salvation Army band struck up a carol outside Lion’s Yard. Not far away, Mill Road carried its own festive look; bunting, miniature Christmas trees and snowmen decorated the shop windows, but the
bookbinder
was closed; Wright, the elderly owner, had an inflamed knee. The wistful blonde florist turned
contemplative
; the boyfriend had not proposed, but there was always next year. The grocers Veejay had artfully placed mulled wine sachets above the coriander and ginger. A brand-new pizza and kebab takeaway called Bytes4U was proving popular with the residents; a special promotion offered a large pizza at £9.99 with free fries and a Coke and a red-and-white candy stick that said
Xmas Xtra
. Its predecessor, IndiaNeed, could never have offered such inducements, and had humbly surrendered to the takeaway’s gleaming ovens, chrome counters and sunshine teenagers in perky caps and aprons.

Swarnakumari and Mr Chatterjee were away,
holidaying
in Kolkata over Christmas. Their sudden
decision to leave Cambridge could be traced to Mr Banerjee’s brush with fate in early November. He had been walking along Queen Edith’s Way on a Sunday afternoon in the fading light, admiring flowering
winter
jasmine in a passing garden when a sharp object was thrust into his back, and a voice commanded him to hand over his money without turning round. Banerjee froze before removing his wallet containing a pound in change and a smiling photograph of Heinz and
Madhumita
, and turned. The next moment he lay on the ground, writhing, as his attacker fled. A resident sounded the alarm, but Banerjee lay unconscious until the ambulance arrived. The young thug sped away, cursing as he found the meagre coins, flinging the
wallet
into thick shrubbery at the junction of the road. Unknown to Banerjee, the worn Indian leather wallet and the smiling photograph of Heinz and Madhumita were to nestle for several years among the leaves, along with an abandoned packet of salt and vinegar crisps, unnoticed by the human eye.

It was difficult to ascertain whether it was Banerjee or Mr Chatterjee who was left more shaken by the incident. But for an urgent letter to be written to the City Council complaining about a faulty streetlamp on Newton Square, Mr Chatterjee would have been Banerjee’s companion on Sunday’s fateful walk. Mr Chatterjee lay sleepless as tortured thoughts encircled his pillow; would the assailant have attacked two
elderly
men on a walk, or only one? Would the thug have targeted him more brutally than Banerjee for not
carrying
his wallet at all, and would he have been left to bleed, a cracked skull, life ebbing on the Cambridge pavement of a Neighbourhood Watch street?

Madhumita, Banerjee’s daughter, was tearfully apologetic. She would have flown out immediately, but their schedules were ‘real tough’; neither she nor Heinz had leave for the rest of the year. Mr Chatterjee had pursed his lips silently at the thought of the ketchup clown, although Banerjee was more understanding. Heinz was going to buy a new car next summer and the couple had planned a holiday to Europe, he explained. Banerjee was simply too blind to see how foolish it was to rely on offspring to sweeten old age, thought Mr Chatterjee with sudden insight. Children were like the books he borrowed from the Rock Road Library: to be kept only for a limited period. He nevertheless viewed Mallika’s application to Stanford on the
recommendation
of her supervisors with anxiety; in geographical location, it was dangerously close to San Ramon.

Banerjee was in pain, and waiting for an operation on the National Health Service to his shoulder, but no date had been provided. The uncertainty was already taking its toll. Mrs Banerjee’s military-style ministrations added to the general discomfort, and it was impossible to tell which was more intolerable. Banerjee’s malt whisky had been banned and banished; medicine and alcohol were a lethal combination, bellowed his
commanding
officer.

A witness to Banerjee’s tribulations, Mr Chatterjee was deeply alarmed on several counts. The assailant could still be concealed in the bushes, ready to pounce. In the meanwhile, Mr Chatterjee read about another attack, reported in the
Cambridge Evening News
, on a blind woman who was out walking. Two youths kicked away her cane and snatched her purse. Mr Chatterjee was shaken to the core, as he lay in his bed staring at
the ceiling that night. This was not the Britain he had dreamed of as a boy growing up in Calcutta, this was not the country of Shakespeare and Keats and Shelley and Wordsworth. It was a wasteland, he thought. It had become a council estate wasteland and Hooligan’s Choice – not Hobson’s – before his very eyes.

Banerjee’s NHS wait was deplorable; this could not be permitted to happen in the country that rationed his friend’s pension and had swallowed his tax
contributions
. Mr Chatterjee felt unease, betrayal, and as a
consequence
the Neighbourhood Watch duties were no longer challenging; it seemed irrelevant and futile to invest in securing other homes with his own still at risk. Old age had always been a worry to Mr Chatterjee; now he was deeply troubled. For some days, he had not bothered to glance at the magazines on the top shelf at the newsagent, nor had he scanned the headlines in his Bengali paper with the same relish.

Returning late from a Diwali party in Girton two days after the Banerjee incident, he was surprised to see a police checkpoint on Trumpington Road. As he
fearfully
rolled down his car window, the officer inquired about the extent of his consumption of alcohol earlier that evening.

Unfamilarity with the situation made Mr Chatterjee, a man of legal precision, respond meekly and weakly, ‘Not much.’ He watched miserably as other cars were let through. Recovering his wits as the officer approached him with the breath-testing unit, he
supplied
quickly, ‘I remember now. It was one glass of whisky.’

It was too late. The officer took no notice,
proceeding
with rapid instructions that left Mr Chatterjee
trembling like the Japanese wind chimes in his
conservatory
. He blew into the tube, cupping it with both hands. The officer shook his head. ‘That’s no good, sir. Try again.’ Mr Chatterjee continued to quiver while Swarnakumari sat wordlessly beside him. The second attempt failed. ‘No, don’t hold it sir. Just blow. Blow!’ Mr Chatterjee humbly confessed that his nervousness prevented him from fully comprehending what he had to do. Could the officer explain slowly? he asked, whereupon the officer warned him that if he did not blow properly one last time, he would be under arrest.

Mr Chatterjee had spoken the truth about his intake that evening; the officer eventually let them pass. The couple did not speak as they negotiated the Long Road bridge. Mr Chatterjee’s hands clutched his dignity on the steering wheel, as he drove steadily past the Sixth Form College and Tennis Centre.

He recalled an incident from the time his cousin Palash Ghosh was visiting from Jamshedpur. Mr Chatterjee had extolled the English way of life with enthusiasm. ‘Observe the immaculate dress of the English. Even coach drivers wear black suits. Observe how respectful they are towards cultured Indians. My postman calls me “sir” just for giving me the post – the accountant, the busdriver, all of them say “sir” to me.’ Ghosh had agreed; English civility was exemplary. Ghosh had been equally impressed by the English roundabout.

Swarnakumari looked ahead; her fingers unclenched eastward. Mr Chatterjee’s fingers were perspiring over the wheel. He now sensed that ‘sir’ had more inflections than one.

Mr Chatterjee’s changing moods mirrored the dreary
winter landscape. When he continued to stare at the leafless trees outside as he sat at his desk on a Monday, his Parker pen idle in his hands, Swarnakumari
produced
the telephone number of Heera’s Essex travel agent who specialised in cheap fares to India. Mr
Chatterjee
protested over the stops at three Middle Eastern destinations en route, but the persuasive Gujarati man pointed out reasonably that it was high season with low availability. Mallika would invite an Indian friend to stay, and look after the house; the neighbours,
including
Joseph, had offered to keep an eye. Mr Chatterjee demurred but Swarnakumari, now calm, referred him to the chapter on parenting in the missing prayer book. When a bird was ready to fly, said Guru Ma, a sloping nest was never a deterrent.

Swarnakumari’s skilful manoeuvres infused new
vigour
in Mr Chatterjee, who now believed that the
holiday
in India had always been his suggestion. He took enthusiastic control, checking the locks on windows and doors, pruning the bushes and clearing away the leaves, switching off the fountain feature and storing the garden Aphrodite in the garage. The neat bundles of junk mail in there reminded him to instruct Mallika to stack the post neatly on his desk during their absence. He organised the payment of the utility bills and discontinued the Bengali newspaper for a month, glancing only out of habit at the magazine covers turned upside down.

‘Going home?’ asked the envious newsagent.

It was eight years since the Patels had returned to Gujarat on holiday. The shop was only closed half-days on Sundays, and there was no one to take command if they went on holiday; the son was at university and had
already expressed his lack of interest in his father’s enterprise, and Mr Patel’s brother and nephews ran shops of their own in Ealing and Wembley. Mr Chatterjee was startled by the newsagent’s wistful reference to ‘home’.

After the holiday in India with Swarnakumari, Mr Chatterjee’s life would chart a different path. The
passengers
had arrived in Kolkata fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. The pilot had mentioned strong tail winds.

Bob was unlikely to patronise the Bytes4U takeaway. He was no lover of fast food. He was pining for Indian food, Heera’s food. Repeated calls to her after the shop’s closure traced her to a Tupperware demonstration in Farida Nayak’s living room. Standing on a familiar doorstep a week later, he fumbled ruefully for his key before ringing the doorbell instead. The hallway still carried lingering odours of spice.

They sat at the kitchen table with a fruit bowl in its centre. El Salvio loved red seedless grapes, he thought, before realising he had transposed two realities and two households, two lives and a split existence. How easy it would have been not to leave at all, to share a convivial pot of Chinese green tea with Heera and put the
rubbish
out in the bin in the frost-covered patio, and climb the stairs to sleep and never have climbed down again.

He noticed, heart sinking, that she offered him the Wedgwood cup and saucer reserved for guests. She sat stiffly on the kitchen stool, regal and resolute in her shapeless kaftan. Staring at the turmeric stain below her shoulder, he was mesmerised by its yellowness as it engorged, swelling into a flame of orange hope. He began slowly in a quiet voice, telling her of his
childhood in the dank cottage on the moor, the rooms filled with reproach, his confusion, the beatings and his cowed resistance, the city, the unending questions of who and what and why he was, and his fear of the ending of the world and his life without knowing, the struggle, the battle to find his self, himself. He loved her utterly, he knew that now.

Heera rose to fill the kettle and in the rising steam recalled her meeting with Javed in the cosy Turkish restaurant on King Street. The flickering candlelight had enacted a shadow dance on his face; the mystery of the missing card on the bouquet now solved, he recited the Urdu couplet, soft, baritone, seductive. He had penned additional lyrics for the occasion in praise of steadfastness, and she had listened spellbound. They had laughed at each other’s slide into middle age; she patted the rolls of flesh around her hips and he pointed wryly to his chin and his protruding stomach. When she shut the door firmly later that evening, he lingered outside her house under the moonlight on the gravel path, looked up at the night sky and knew she had set him free.

Heera sat down at the kitchen table again. She told Bob that nothing had changed; she was still his wife, and he her husband. She had her self-esteem and dignity and her standing in the community, and just as a decision to leave had not been taken hastily, so was his desire to return to be weighed with care. If he returned, she said firmly, it would be on her terms. With a
compassion
that left him wordless, she said she knew he was not ready, whatever he might profess to the contrary, and the matter of the mortgage should be settled in the meanwhile; the house on Tenison Road would be sold,
and she would move into a small flat. A small flat? he asked, dazed. It was not a split decision, she said,
smiling
. There was always a right action and a wrong one; the right action was the one that never seemed to be so at the time.