The Cambridge Curry Club (3 page)

‘Shall I show you my tattoo?’ challenged the girl called Sam.

‘That’s entirely your decision,’ replied Bob.

Sam swiftly unbuttoned her blouse for an instant to reveal a black rose tattoo nestling between her Wonderbra-enhanced breasts, before turning to the aloo tikkis in the microwave. ‘I used to work in a salon on Green Street. I do hair, nails, mehndi, threading and facial. I used to do full body wax also,’ she continued archly. ‘You know –
full
. Where does she keep her pickles?’

The young woman hunted in a cupboard. She walked closer to Bob, scrutinising his face. ‘You need to look after yourself. If you don’t, who will? Anyway, I’m saving up for a boob job now.’

Bob felt no obligation to respond.

‘What’s that about boobs? Take some of mine, they’re too big.’ Heera turned to Bob, who was perched on a kitchen stool. ‘
Jaan
, again hiding? Sam, what magic are you working on my husband? Leave him alone. Come,
jaan
, look who’s here – it’s Manoj Daryanani!’ she announced flirtatiously.

Manoj Daryanani was a tall, slim man with an unlined face. Dressed in a spotless white kurta pyjama, he greeted people from afar with folded hands, backing away as if from contamination.

‘
Jaan
, look after Manoj, give him some pakoras,’ advised Heera.

‘No fried things! He has a problem, you know, with his digestion,’ warned Manoj’s wife, a silent fellow sufferer.

Charlie and Barry waved their whisky in wobbly
unison
. ‘And do you remember what Karnani said at the end of the shareholders’ meeting?’ asked Charlie. ‘That he must thank people “on the backside”.’ The two men roared at an old joke, the ice in their glasses rocking in merriment. Another voice roared from the carpet, reaching a crescendo:

An elderly Englishman declared as he waved a kebab in his listener’s face, ‘I do agree, without Asian medical personnel, the NHS would collapse.’

Heera hurried over to ‘Shakespeare’. ‘Brahma-ji, you must be so tired, dinner is served on the table.’

‘Su-er.’

Bob turned to leave the room. ‘Where are you off to, Bob? Aren’t you going to cut the cake?’ cried his sister Sarah.

‘You’re a lucky man, Bob,’ observed his cousin Jonathan.

‘Heera’s a lucky woman to be married to my brother,’ contradicted Sarah. ‘Let’s raise a toast to the happy couple.’

‘Speech, speech!’ clapped a woman with flaming henna-dyed hair and blue clanging bangles on her wrist.

Bob put his arm around Heera and addressed a speck on the floor. ‘She’s everything to me.’

A murmur went round the room. ‘Ah, bless.’ Heera sniffed, before twisting herself out of his embrace to cry, ‘Who wants tiramisu, who wants apple crumble, who wants ice cream and who wants rosogulla?’

‘Mustn’t be naughty!’ vowed Sarah, a hand fluttering over her abdomen, as she greedily surveyed the desserts. ‘Ooh, shall I give in this once?’

‘Wouldn’t you rather have the cake and eat it, too?’ asked her husband Brian sourly.

Sarah always surrendered to her sweet tooth, but rarely to her husband. She had persuaded him to exchange their house in Royston for a dilapidated farmhouse outside a Tuscan village, hoping to convert the barn and stables into luxury tourist apartments. The legalities of the transfer of property deeds were as much a nightmare for Brian as working the ancient water pump and cleaning out the well. He harvested the grapes and olives and struggled to find a match for broken kitchen tiles. She never wanted sex, only olives by the truckload to sell in the local market. He was ready to return to England, but Sarah refused. He wished he could write an autobiography with the title
My Grapes of Wrath
.

‘Anyone for coffee?’ Heera approached Manoj
Daryanani, who asked for a glass of hot water. His wife explained, ‘For his voice.’

‘Why, what’s wrong with it?’ queried Heera.

‘He sings.’

‘
Wah ji
, you are a gayak, you are a singer, and you did not even tell us! That means you must perform for us right now. Yes, yes, I’m not taking a “No” from you. It’s my anniversary, you have to please me. Come on,
ji
,’ cried Heera persuasively.

Manoj Daryanani, who needed a straight-backed chair, now occupied the carpet so recently vacated by ‘Shakespeare’. Heera carried out a harmonium and a pair of tabla, but he looked disdainfully at the
instruments
and waved them away as he cleared his throat. ‘
Hari, meri itni suno
,’ he intoned. It was the first line of a devotional song.

‘Why don’t you sing a film song instead? How about “Yeh Shaam Mastani”?’ suggested Barry, now on his third Scotch and viewing the world through
heavy-lidded
eyes. Barry was recovering from a disagreement earlier that day with his teenage son. The drink would dull the pangs of parenting.

He ached to leave it all and return to India. Perhaps he was not too old; he might still find a job in an Indian company. Life wouldn’t be the same, of course, none of the luxuries they took for granted in England, but at least he would never again feel the fear, the black pounding of his heart as he discovered the cannabis hidden behind his son’s physics textbook. It was still not too late to take his son back to India. Ari was a good boy in bad company, but what would Shanti say? It would kill her, the way she pampered that boy, as if he were a prince from Patiala. It was all her fault,
spoiling
him, letting him think he could do whatever he wanted, money from his mother any time, so what if Dad didn’t give it to him, the manipulative little bugger went to Mummy. ‘Come to Mummy, son, Mummy understands her
beta
.’

He had told Ari from the very beginning, ‘Yes, it is hard to live in this British society. You can’t be
mediocre
if you want to be accepted here, you have to show you are the best at something – swimming, maths, science, computers, something at least – then they will admire you. But instead you have become a zero, a nothing, a charsi, a drug addict, and what do you think, just because you can fool your mother, you can do the same with me? You will know what your father is made of if you ever touch that stuff again.’

‘Yes, why don’t you sing “Yeh Shaam Mastani”,’ repeated Barry jovially, as he hitched his trouser waistband.

Manoj Daryanani frowned at Barry’s levity. Thirty minutes later, during his rendition of ‘Raag Bageshree’, the bolder members of the audience had already escaped via the conservatory door. Those who remained trapped leaped with unapologetic haste after the last prolonged note and scattered, beads of a strung note onto the carpet.

The guests disbanded at the moment that the Trinity College clock struck midnight over Great Court. Heera surveyed the empty living room with satisfaction. She had already guessed Sarla’s gift by its contours; always the same Indian wrapping paper bought in bulk and the same box of chocolates without an expiry date or manufacturer’s label from a shop in Wembley. Sarah and Brian’s gift was olive marinade.

Bob was lying on their bed, staring at the ceiling. What was it that ridiculous little man ‘Shakespeare’ had recited about a tide in the affairs of men taken at the flood, and was this such a time, to submit, release the torment and anguish within and allow it to take its course, let it take him to good fortune or to defeat? Or would he regret it forever afterwards, and would the shame be a torment far greater? Would he be forever damned, or should he plunge, surrender?

The crumbling sensation in his throat all evening turned to fuzzy warmth as he remembered. The
meeting
had been in a small conference room. As the
executives
streamed in, Bob’s secretary hurriedly handed him a copy of the Finance Director’s memo before the heavy oak door closed. Bob nodded to his colleagues, his eyes roaming the room, a swelling bubble of excitement as he recognised the dark, bent head of a man reading by the window. The man turned and looked at Bob, eyes a cool smoky grey that clashed and tumbled into his own, and Bob turned from the flint of the other man’s gaze to take a seat at the table. As the diminutive Finance Director talked, a powdery thirst invaded Bob’s throat, and he reached for a jug of water, staring involuntarily at the golden hair on the wrist of the man beside him. The lights dimmed as they looked at the first chart in the PowerPoint presentation on the wall at the far end of the room.

Bob felt tingling heat on his thigh as the brushing
movement of a hand left its searing imprint. He
continued
to stare at the wall. As Adam teased Bob’s ankle with his own, Bob grappled this new, daring reality while tortured angels tumbled and frolicked in a
forbidden
fountain, resisting banishment. At the end of the meeting, he hurried towards the door. A cool voice behind him asked if he would like to stop by at the pub. Without meeting Adam’s eyes, Bob mumbled that he had to get home. ‘Another time, then,’ Adam had said smoothly, turning away. ‘No, wait!’ flung Bob. It was a strangled, torn sound.

As Heera entered the bedroom, she knew something was wrong, something far worse than unwrapping stale chocolates from Sarla for the third consecutive year. She had found Bob pacing the room, a half-empty whisky glass in his hand. He never drank upstairs, and usually shared a pot of Chinese green tea with her before
retiring
. He told her he had something important to say, but that it could wait until she was ready, and she had looked at him, wordlessly taking her
perspiration-stained
pink nightgown and matching robe from the room, returning drawn and anxious a few minutes later.

Afterwards, she had asked Bob in the dim bedroom light why he had chosen their anniversary to tell her. All he could say, standing ridiculous and pale in his faded blue striped pyjamas, was that big occasions made his decisions seem smaller. He had finally found the handle to the door of his closet, and he was coming out. He could no longer conceal, only reveal; he would not hide, he would announce with pride – he was a bisexual.

Then Bob crumpled at the hurt she would feel, the
disgust and repulsion, her accusations of trickery and fraud. He had never meant to deceive or dissemble, he beseeched, he was fragile and frail.

If he was frail, so was she, Heera thought fiercely. It wasn’t only her depleted hormones that needed replacement; she needed implants of reassurance. He had never really been by her side, she decided; she had been living with a phantom, hollow, filled with straw, lit and brought to life by another. What had he expected her to say? she thought dully, head exploding, as she lay awake in the dark. What did he think she would do with his revelation? And it had to be a coincidence, one of those amazing ironies of life, that her cousin had told her of Javed’s divorce and of his forthcoming visit to England.

Bob had a dream that night; he was a boy in his father’s cottage near the moors, running home through the heath to his mother, who was wearing a blue and white floral dress. She scooped him into her arms for a warm embrace, and he hugged Adam back. Heera responded sleepily. As suddenly, his arms fell away from her, and he turned on his side again, heart thumping in the darkness, afraid that she might be awake.

It was Adam who banished Eve from the Garden of Eden.

CHAPTER THREE

The customer is always right

T
HE WIND PROWLED
for new victims as cyclists wobbled, their nostrils filled with the sniff of fresh bread snaking out from the bakery on Mill Road. The smoke from its blackened chimney was whirled away over the grey rooftops, and three doors down from IndiaNeed the handpainted sign
Wright and Sons, Bookbinders since 1930
flapped noisily above the entrance to the shop. A young man in a black leather jacket and merino russet scarf announced his arrival; inside, an elderly man shuffled towards him in the dim light, weaving through stacks and piles of theses, glue, buckram, bookbinding tools and overalls. The young man took delivery of a Cambridge thesis bound in black, pressing it proudly to his chest as he left.

The blonde florist arranged the blooms in buckets on the rack outside the Sunflowers Florists shop, waiting for her boyfriend to propose. The wind spotted two Pakistani women walking slowly past the solicitor’s firm towards IndiaNeed, and playfully buffeted the
elderly
lady and her stick into the shop. Abandoning her mother, the younger woman swooped on the soft toys,
gathering armfuls of teddy bears that were as suddenly dropped back onto the shelves.

‘One ear or two – does it really make a difference?
Arre
, tell the child that they are special designer
teddies
. Doesn’t that expensive Steiff teddy always have a button only in one ear? See, I am giving these to you at a special discounted price. One for a pound,’ urged Heera.

The young woman needed little persuasion; the
one-eared
toys were shiny and new. Shabbier toys were always removed by the volunteers and despatched to the skip, along with the reject clothing that often only missed a button or a thread. A firm regularly collected the contents of the skip and paid the shop fifty pence per bag. Heera’s neighbour was an airline manager, who offered to send the reject bags to any charitable
institution
in India free of charge, but Diana
Wellington-Smythe’s
grey eyes had narrowed at the suggestion; she was convinced the contents would be distributed or even sold among Heera’s relatives and friends.

The elderly Pakistani lady examined a furry black monkey lying in a basket next to her chair. Its giant tail had been mistakenly sewn on in front, and she looked at the freak toy in silence. Swarnakumari frowned and whispered, ‘This is not good, Durga. What will that lady think of us? I thought we had thrown that dirty thing away. Who put it there again?’

‘The Korean girls?’ suggested Durga.

‘Auntyji, this is not for you,’ appeased Heera smoothly, attempting a seamless exchange with a blue Beanie Baby teddy announcing
It’s a Boy
across its chest. ‘Take this, only two pounds.’

‘Who put that blue teddy there again?’ asked
Swarnakumari, perturbed. ‘I had thrown it into the rejects bag.’

‘I did; there was nothing wrong with it. Why did you throw it away?’ Eileen was surprised.

Swarnakumari remained silent; some secrets were best kept buried, like the stories the black bags never revealed.

The elderly lady held the monkey firmly in her grasp, waving Heera away with her stick as the
daughter
spotted the sign
IndiaNeed
and the photograph of the smiling Rajasthani villagers on the wall.

‘Does the money you make go to India?’ she probed.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘And only to India?’

‘Yes,’ repeated Heera, surprised.

The daughter catapulted her protesting mother out of the chair. The monkey tumbled onto the floor, where it lay brazen, its furry tail on display. They left without a purchase.

‘We are all the same here, the same brown skin fighting for respect in this society. Why carry on India–Pakistan enmity here? Even the leaders of both
countries
have started peace talks now, so what’s the problem with these two? The daughter was pretty, though. She reminded me of Nafisa,’ observed Heera. ‘You know, Swarna, Nafisa coolly sent her mother-
in-law
back to Lahore, and I hear the room has been given to three Japanese students. Of course, it’s not far from the Bell Language School, so the room must be in demand. She’s making good money, but how do those poor students all fit? I know Japanese girls are tiny, but still, three? By the way, her sister Razia is with Nafisa’s neighbour’s husband now. He was helping Razia build
her extension.’ Heera chortled. ‘
Arre
, if you ask me, he should have looked after his own extension, if you know what I mean. Anyway, long story, some other time.’

Eileen bent to pick up the monkey. ‘I’m off to rearrange the soft toys,’ she announced, her quick eyes noting their disarray. She placed the monkey on the shelf next to a blue-eyed china doll. The story of
Beauty and the Beast
had always been a favourite with her.

‘Girls, why are the English so mad about their teddy bears? Teddy waiting on their beds, telling Teddy their secrets … Bob has a teddy called Charlie, you know. Such a shabby teddy! Only one eye. When I first met Bob, I actually offered to sew the other eye on.’ Heera chuckled. ‘You know how it is in India, those dhobis wash the clothes so carelessly sometimes, the buttons become loose, so my mother had a huge collection of assorted buttons, all colours, all sizes, in a big biscuit tin. I could have found an exact match. But Bob said he preferred Charlie with one eye.’ She called out, ‘Four out of four Englishmen don’t wash their teddies, Swarna!’

Two startled elderly ladies sifted through the pile of net curtains, eavesdropping with bright bird eyes. ‘Are you all Alsatian, then?’ chirruped one, turning to
Swarnakumari
. ‘I have a lady next door who is Alsatian. She’s very nice, very nice, very well-spoken indeed. Lovely dark eyes. Dear, when you’re ready, could you measure up this curtain for me?’

Swarnakumari turned to Durga in bewilderment.

‘Forget it. Asian or Alsatian, what does it matter? No point trying to explain to these sweet
buddi
biddies
,’ whispered Heera. ‘Half of them can’t hear, half can’t see, half can’t walk, half can’t talk.’

‘Dogs and Indians once had to use the back door,’ mused Durga.

‘The Irish too,’ added Eileen as she disappeared down an aisle. She was fiercely proud of her heritage. Annoyed by Durga’s appropriation of the Diaspora to signify Indian sub-continental migration alone, she usually remained silent. Some things were felt, and not always said.

A middle-aged woman had been standing uncertainly in a corner; she rummaged in her bag and removed a plain gold band and a platinum ring studded with a large ruby. ‘There, you can ’ave ’em both and good riddance,’ she rasped, flinging them on the
counter
in front of Heera. ‘Me old man’s done a runner, gone an’ left me, so I took me engagement and wedding rings to the jeweller’s down the road.’ She jerked her head sideways to indicate the location of a Mill Road shop. ‘An’ what d’yer know, they’re worth no more than five quid after all these years. Five quid, I tell yer!’ she repeated, her voice rising. ‘I been with ’im all these years, and the bugger couldn’t even give me a decent gold ring. So I says I’ll take ’em down to the charity shop and get rid of ’em. You can do what yer want with ’em,’ she told Heera. ‘Don’t never want ter see ’em no more.’

Heera handed the rings silently to Eileen, who placed them on a little velvet fold and slid them onto the jewellery shelf below the till counter.

A wedding ring always reminded Durga of Pooja, the popular, leggy prefect at her school in Bombay, now Mumbai. Pooja and Anil had married, won a
Wills Made for Each Other
couple contest and a new car. A year later, Durga had sat uncomfortably in a living room in a
Cuffe Parade apartment overlooking the bay, witness to a marriage rotting twig by twig. Pooja had initially turned a blind eye to Anil’s affairs and embarked upon revenge romps of her own. Her husband’s Malayali chauffeur with jasmine oil-greased hair was startled, but willing. It was her discovery of the maid’s gold earrings tucked under Anil’s pillow that impelled a dramatic confrontation between the couple. He must choose, Pooja said imperiously. Anil obeyed with alacrity and stayed with the maid; humiliation sent Pooja out of her marriage and house into obesity. Durga had heard later that a week on a health farm in
Bangalore
had restored Pooja’s holistic balance. Two months later, she wedded the masseur and flashed a new gold ring on her finger; jewellery was both the bane and balm of her marriages.

‘They’re new, don’t you want them?’ asked Eileen, handing a pile of net curtains to Swarnakumari.

‘I have already got net curtains,
na
. Your Uncle says our house must look English from the outside.’

Swarnakumari never referred to her husband by name, oblivious to the confusion caused by ‘Your Uncle’ as the substitute. She had initially refused to arrange the display when asked to ‘do the window’, and announced with a vigorous shake of her head, ‘I am not here to clean. Your Uncle would not like me to do that.’ Diana Wellington-Smythe had merely arched an eyebrow, enunciating in slow English thereafter to Swarnakumari and the Korean volunteers.

‘White wisps of respectability,’ commented Durga, examining the net curtains. ‘Give the immigrant net curtains and he simply blends, like the tea packet labels that say
Product of more than one country
. But to blend or
not to blend into the diasporic cuppa – that is the question.’

Swarnakumari picked at a loose thread on the
curtain
. ‘Durga, my Mallika is not listening to me at all nowadays. See, she is now twenty-two. She has finished at Emmanuel College and she wants to do postgraduate also, but I am thinking if she settles down with a good Bengali boy, she can also continue her studies, but she is not agreeing. Early in the morning she was fighting with me when Your Uncle was not there. Tell me, if your parents find an intelligent boy from a good family for you, you will agree to see him,
na
? At least you will not say “No” straight away?’

‘What’s this got to do with me?’

‘You both are similar – see, you are twenty-nine, your studies are over, now you are doing this research on charity shops for the television, and soon you are going to London for your new job. But you must also think of marriage, or it will be too late. That is what I keep telling Mallika.’

Heera bent to pick up a basket of baby clothes. ‘Too late? Too late for what? You know, girls, when I was eighteen I was in love with a boy called Javed. He was our neighbour. He used to write beautiful Urdu love poems. Then my parents found out. Usual Hindu–Muslim problem and both the families immediately stopped it. Javed was sent to Dubai; he owns a big construction company now. Three days before he left, we met for the last time and we went for a walk on the beach. He suggested a camel ride, and we sat on the same camel, but the camel wouldn’t move. It just sat there in the sand. People were staring and laughing and suddenly there were many stalls there – peanut-seller,
balloon-seller, coconut-waterwala. People even threw peanuts at the camel to make it move. Then the owner told us to get off, and he kicked the camel hard on its bottom.’

Heera paused; no one said anything. She continued, ‘We went back home. Javed didn’t say a word to me again, and he left for Dubai. For many years, I refused to see any of the boys my parents showed me. After all, if you fall in love, you fall in love, right? The heart remembers its broken song for ever. Then Bob came to Hyderabad. He knew one of my brother’s friends, and that’s how we met. There was such a big fuss when Bob proposed – you know, how could I like a gora, an Englishman, how could I leave India forever and go to England and all that – but we got married anyway.’

‘Your Bob is a good man, just like Your Uncle,’ confirmed Swarnakumari.

‘Yes,’ replied Heera, ‘he is a good man, otherwise why would I follow him to this country?’

‘Javed was a Muslim, and you a Hindu.
Baba
, it would not have been possible. Love is blind, I know, but I am telling you, such marriages are very difficult,’ Swarnakumari said sagely. ‘There is too much
difference
. Too much adjustment for both parties.’

‘And your esteemed opinion is based on …?’

Ignoring Durga’s sarcasm, Swarnakumari persisted earnestly, ‘See, in arranged marriages, quarrels about basic things are not there. Everything is matched. That is why these marriages work,
na
?’

‘Work. Marriage is work,’ muttered Eileen, who had been listening with interest as she returned with an armful of boy’s clothes, looking as if she would hold them forever.

‘Tell me, Swarna, do you love your husband?’ asked Heera moodily.

Swarnakumari was surprised. ‘Of course. You always give your love to the man you marry.’

‘I didn’t mean that. What sort of love is the love for a husband?’ said Heera.

‘A mistake,’ said Durga.

Swarnakumari continued patiently, ‘A marriage should also be blessed by the gods, but it is the woman who has to make sure everything is in its proper place. Then only it works. She must accept that there are things she wants but cannot have. The tragedy is our young girls these days don’t know themselves what they want. They are confused, and they feel pressure. They are trying to be like these English girls. Parties and clubs, drink, wearing those clothes showing
everything
, and they want—’