Czytaj książkę: «The Trouble with Rose»

1
Wedding Day

In the natural course of things, by the afternoon of her wedding, a bride is thinking ahead to all the things life will have in store for her. Love, joy, romance, silly little spats with her soul-mate that will be sorted out – hopefully in bed, nibbling on toes – and the endless harmony, the never-ending fun and the countless hours she will spend doing nothing much at all in the arms of the love of her life. She imagines that from now on things will be perfect, she will be happy, and gone forever will be anxiety, irritability, chin hair and a generalized tendency towards narkiness. In short, she will become a better, more grown-up version of herself.

She knows that all of this wonderfulness will start with an enormous slice of cake followed by a steamy night in bed, hopefully in a remote tropical island where none of her extended family will be able to call her, text her, tweet her, or otherwise be able to find her. In the normal course of things, on the afternoon of her wedding, a bride is not behind the bars of the local prison waiting for her lawyer to bail her out or for her extended family to tell her all the things that have gone wrong in her life. I’m not saying that this has never happened in the history of weddings. I’m just saying that it is rare.

Before I tell you about my wedding day, I should make a note here – actually it’s more of a disclaimer – about my enormous extended family (mentioned above). Is this story about them, you ask? Well, no. Are they always there, do they have an opinion about everything, and can’t you just ignore them?

Well. Yes, yes, and no.

I have so many cousins, aunties and uncles that live in London that I have to look at every Indian man or woman passing by just to make sure they aren’t one of them. The thing with my relatives is that they tend to feel insulted pretty easily. You should know this before I go on with my story. They keep score of who gives them regular updates about their life and grovels for advice, who invites them to what, and who sends them a box of champagne truffles for Diwali and not just a regular Indian sweet box with plain laddu in it. They also like to write notes.

Dear Rilla,

I hope you enjoy the hundred-and-fifty-piece NutriBullet I sent you. It is a superior brand to the plain three-piece blender sent by Auntie Parul. Thank you for the champagne truffles. I don’t drink (as you know), so I have given them to my cleaner. I know you are too busy to visit us (have you got a job yet?) but I thought that I would remind you that our home is your home. Don’t forget your family.

Best wishes.

Yours truly, etc.

All in all, it is better to turn and stare at every Indian person walking by, just to make sure it isn’t one of the GIF (Great Indian Family) in case you accidentally ignore them. Or, in my case, so you can make a quick getaway. Of course, since every other person you see in London looks more or less Indian, this can make you see monsters lurking around every corner, and turn you into a neurotic mess.

My GIF forms the backdrop of just about everything. They are the wallpaper and the furniture, the muzak, the Thames, London traffic, pollution and global warming rolled into one. They are always there and generally in the way. And no matter how much you think you can deal with them, the truth is you can’t.

Let’s go back now to the matter at hand, the story of the bride who got arrested on her wedding day. I’ll tell you the story the way it happened. Or at least, I’ll tell it to you almost the way it happened. Which is nearly as good.

The setting for the wedding is Bloomington House, a country estate near Cambridge, its rambling red-brick walls charmingly cocooned in a wood of crab-apple and ash. Today, cloud shadows play hide-and-seek on the lawns, and the trees that are waking up in the half-light of spring shiver naked in the breeze, their reflections playing leapfrog with the koi in the pond. Next to the pond is a Japanese meditation garden, where someone has clearly been thinking about alien invasions because there are crop circles ranging all the way from one side to the other in order of size.

In this romantic scene, a large number of cars have recently pulled up and evacuated my numerous relatives in all their colourful glory, tucking in sari trains, sprucing maroon lipstick, jingling bracelets, chattering non-stop. I watch this from a window in the back room in which I am waiting. How long before all of them head into the barn for the wedding ceremony? I scan the grounds. There are too many of them, this is the problem. They keep stopping, gesturing and exclaiming at the view, the manor, the gardens, the weather, each other’s clothes, jewellery, complexion, hair, manicures, the works. Just looking at them is exhausting. I turn and pace the room, my hands on my waist. Why is this dress so tight? I fidget with the buttons at the back but the snug bodice won’t let me stretch my arms far enough.

This will be over soon. This will be over soon. What is the matter with this place? Why is it so hot in here? I fan myself with my hands but it makes no difference.

I look around me. Unlike the garden that is lit up with lanterns, and the hall for the wedding breakfast that is covered at my request in all sorts of roses – red, pink, Cabbage, yellow, white, Hot Cocoa, the lot – the back room in which I’m waiting is white-washed and uninspiring. There are rolled-up yoga mats at one end, chairs piled one on top of the other, a hatch in the wall with a view into the newly painted kitchen, a headless Spiderman on the counter, no doubt forgotten by a child. On the cork board, there are notices for yoga classes, an advert for the local florist, a dog walker whose ‘best friend has always been a dog’ since she was three, a request for clothes for the Salvation Army, a phone number to call if someone spots a missing person and another for people with gonorrhoea.

I stare at them and my breathing gets short and heavy. I look out of the window again. The flock of relatives is thinning but a few linger outside the barn. Come on, come on, come on, I whisper. I stare at them, willing them to go faster, and give me some space in which to think. And maybe to breathe.

My reflection stares back at me, the little bronze hoops in my ears and the band of dark pink and orange flowers pinned all around my head suddenly looking out of place, like they belong to someone else. My silver dress is fuzzy in the window. What made me choose silver? It is washing out my complexion, making me look pasty. My black hair is bundled up on top of my head but already coiled strands are making a getaway. There is a look in my eyes, a maniacal look. Do I always frown like this? I try to relax my forehead, but almost at once the brows knit back together. I rub hard at my forehead.

There is so little air in this room that I am finding it hard to breathe. I take gasping breaths. Finally, every last one of my relatives disappears into the barn, through the wisteria that hangs over the barn door like the tail of a bejewelled pony getting ready for dressage. It’s now or never. I struggle with the window latch. It is jammed shut, having recently been painted over with thick white paint. I push against the window, try to budge the latch. I take off my shoe and pound it, I claw at it with my fingers, rubbing my knuckles raw, but the window doesn’t budge. Not a smidge. I need a wedge, something that will slide under the window, splinter the new paint that has glued it shut. I look all around me. There’s nothing. Nothing! There is a knock at the door. A relative? My fiancé? A summons? I stare at the door then, heart pounding, I walk slowly to open it. Standing outside is a policeman.

‘You need to step this way, miss,’ he says.

I look frantically behind him towards the inner door of the barn. I am supposed to walk through it any moment now. I look at the police officer. His ginger hair has been hastily brushed and there are two croissant crumbs clinging to his enormous moustache. The man was clearly in the middle of his breakfast when he was sent out on this mission.

I take a deep breath and hold out my hands, keeping a wary eye on the barn door.

‘That’s okay, miss,’ the man says. ‘If you cooperate, there’s no need for handcuffs.’

The man is so relaxed his hands are lolling in his pockets. What is the matter with this man? He is smiling and bored at the same time. I am now starting to feel a little faint. Or maybe like I’m going to explode. I am going to burst out of this dress. The tiny buttons at the back are going to ping-ping-ping off me like bullets. I flap my hands to cool myself. I look desperately at the man.

‘Please, please, I—’

‘Now, miss, steady now—’

‘You don’t understand—’

‘Calm down, you need to calm down—’

This is when I scream. My scream rents the air and the man looks startled.

I’m good at screaming. When I was seven, a drama teacher spent a month with my sister and me, basically teaching us how to scream. There’s not a lot I remember about my education – through most of it I was busy trying to show everyone that I was unteachable, bunking lessons, running away from school, sitting morosely with my hands in my pockets and not saying a word when asked a question, getting into endless debates with teachers about the conformist nature of the school system – but I have learnt how to scream.

The man holds out his hands to me. ‘Now, now, miss, there’s no need to be like that about it.’ He still sees no need for restraints, not really. This is all in a day’s work for him. I feel a little affronted that I rank so low on his list of important criminals to track down.

I tear the gerberas off from my head, and the rest of my hair comes bundling down. I stamp on the flowers a few times and scream again. The inner door to the barn bangs open and a small horde of people come crashing through it. Behind them, I can hear a buzzing, like the busy hum of a beehive that can turn into thunder at any moment.

My parents, my fiancé and his parents all try to push into the back room, all at the same time, with my Auntie PK and Auntie Dharma.

My mother, Renu Kumar, first through the door, makes straight for me and grabs my shoulders. Her forehead is deeply furrowed, her pink lipstick indifferently applied and now a little smudged, her purple silk sari with its green border tucked in a little too high at her waist so that you can see her ankles.

‘What’s happening? Who is this man? What’s happening?’ She sounds a little frantic. She stares into my eyes.

Then Simon crashes into the room. His grey suit and tailored burgundy waistcoat with the blue paisley tie tucked in looks good on him but he has already managed to undo the top button of his shirt.

‘I saw a policeman walking up the driveway! What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing! Nothing at all. I—’

‘What are you doing here?’ Simon is staring at the policeman, looking completely confused.

‘Now, sir, there’s no need to panic. I just need to speak to Miss Kumar here, that’s all. At the police station, that is.’

‘You know you’re not supposed to see her!’ My fiancé’s mother waves a hand about, tries in vain to get Simon out of the room. She is wearing a steel-blue skirt, with a long coat and hat to match. She looks as neatly put together as always, but her cheeks are a little red and her pearl necklace slightly askew, giving her a jaunty Camilla Parker Bowles look. Marie Langton has obviously been hitting the gin a little early today.

‘What is all this about, Officer?’ my father Manoj Kumar intones, smoothing back his salt-and-pepper hair that has been styled to such perfection that parallel comb-streaks can still be seen in it. He pats the collar of his Indian sherwani coat – long, gold and white, and too tight for him – that the GIF has made him wear today. ‘Surely, there’s been a mistake. We can get it cleared up in a jiff.’

There’s something about uniforms and official people that makes my father use his posh English, the one from which all trace of an Indian accent has been wiped. His disinfected accent does have its uses in some situations. Not in this one though.

‘Miss,’ the officer says, totally ignoring him, ‘if you come with me quietly, there’s no need for a display.’ He’s looking significantly at me. The man actually wants me to go quietly, he doesn’t want to make a fuss and that’s not out of laziness, I can see that. He is trying to protect my feelings. If he doesn’t have to say what he’s arresting me for in front of my family and in-laws, he won’t.

Everyone is staring at me. There is a sea of unblinking eyes, all waiting for me to speak.

‘The thing is,’ I look from face to face, ‘here’s the thing. See? I’m being arrested for shoplifting. You see what I’m saying?’ I say it with the air of someone about to choreograph a song to the theme. If this were a musical, I would be singing it. The thing is, the thing is, folks, be-ware! I am being arrested because I am wild as a hare! A hare, you say? A hare, I say! A hare? A hare! A hare? Be-ware! I think I’m going to pass out. I stare frantically from face to face. Get me out of here, get me out of here, I want to say, but nothing comes out.

‘That’s piffle,’ my father says to the police officer. ‘Rilla is a good girl. She would never do such a thing.’ He looks genuinely confused. It’s like my teenage years have left no impression on his memory.

My mother’s chin is trembling though. She’s pulling out a hanky that she has tucked into the sleeve of her sari blouse. My mother has the tendency to burst into tears. In family pictures she can be seen in the background with a hanky covering her eyes. Of course, since every family picture is crammed with the GIF, you would have to really be searching – a Where’s-Wally-scale search – to find her.

Now my father is patting her on her back and making shush-shush noises. It’s my wedding day, I’m getting arrested, and it’s just been revealed to everyone that I am a kleptomaniac. But no, my father is comforting my mother. Everything is upside down.

‘Darling, what’s going on?’ Simon asks. He has tucked a Hot Cocoa rose in the lapel of his new grey suit just for me, and his eyes, his eyes are even now looking lovingly at me. I swallow painfully. I don’t want to hurt him, but I know I’m going to. He places a hand on my shoulder. He is medium height, though this still makes him a good few inches taller than me. His dark hair falls over his forehead just the way I like it. ‘This is just a mistake, isn’t it? We should really get on with it. There’s a crowd of people waiting.’

The thing with Simon is he always thinks the best of me (and he hates to keep people waiting). He’s loyal, doesn’t worry a lot about little things and he rarely has any problems with other people. Which basically makes him the opposite of me.

‘I did something stupid. I’m so sorry.’ Suddenly my shoulders are slumped and there is a crack in my voice. I hate this kind of thing in myself. You think you are dealing with a situation in one way and then your body betrays you and it turns out you are not dealing with it at all. I realize that right about now I could do with a hug, but no one is offering me one.

‘This won’t take long, sir,’ the police officer says to Simon. ‘Now if you just—’

‘We’re about to get married though.’ Simon frowns. ‘You can’t just take her away. What’s your proof anyway?’

‘I am not at liberty to discuss the details, sir.’ The officer smoothens his moustache.

‘Can’t you wait till they’re married?’ My mother’s hands are clasped, beseeching. ‘At least wait till they’re married. Please, you have to!’

My mother – the only one in this room who really knows me, besides my sister Rose – has always said that no one will want to marry me. I’m just too rude, clumsy, stupid, standoffish, unfeminine and ungroomed. At the moment she just wants to make sure that I get married quickly, before Simon finds out what I’m really like. The one thing she is sure would never happen is now actually starting to look like it never will. There is an ominous twitch in her cheek.

One of the aunties, Auntie Dharma, is counting her beads. ‘I told you not to fix a date when Mercury was retrograde. Shani is in the house of marriage.’ She is wearing a salwar-suit, her chunni placidly on her head, and a long thin white plait lying mousily on her back. She is skinny, her face as wrinkled as a prune, and her large eyes goggle from behind thick black spectacles. She calls herself a spiritual healer and works in a local meditation centre. She believes luck in marriage comes from your karma in a past life.

The other auntie, Auntie PK – the journalist who only ever wears khadi cotton, only ever in shades of beige, and doesn’t pluck her eyebrows or wax her upper lip or armpits – is looking cross and saying that someone will pay for this. She means some man somewhere in an air-conditioned office drinking a macchiato before changing for his tennis game. Her short spiky hair is standing up all around her head.

I breathe deeply. I can get through this, I’ve been through worse. And this isn’t the first time I’ve been arrested. But the walls of the white room are closing in on me. There are too many people between me and the door. I look hopelessly at the window. This is when Rose steps in.

Rose. My beautiful sister Rose, in her long silver dress – silver is really her colour, not mine, her beautiful hair blacker than black, her eyes dark as coal, her rosebud mouth, a glow all around her body, walks up to me and gives me a hug. I swallow painfully. A tear escapes but it disappears in Rose’s hair – or she brushes it away for me, knowing I hate people seeing me cry. It is just like Rose, she knew I needed a hug. No one else did. But she did.

She pulls back now and looks into my eyes. ‘It’ll be all right. Okay? Okay?’

I swallow and nod. I try to take deep breaths.

She cups my cheek in her hand. ‘This is not a big deal. You’re bigger than this.’

‘We’ll get a lawyer,’ Simon’s father John Langton cuts in. He is short and broad-boned, his hair cut neatly so that all the strands are exactly the same length. His eyes are a pale grey, so that they seem to look through you, not like Simon and his mother’s dark blue.

‘You are a lawyer,’ Simon reminds him.

‘We’ll get a lawyer,’ his father says.

At the police station, things happen quickly. Since what I have stolen costs less than two hundred pounds, I am told that I will be turned away with a police caution. Though, if I accept these terms, this will still count as a conviction and I will have a criminal record. (It’s true I’ve been arrested before but, since I was underage at the time, I didn’t get a criminal record.) When the officer interrogating me suggests the caution, I say, ‘I will take this under advisement.’ I have been waiting all my life to say these words. I confer with my lawyer, and I take the caution and the criminal record that comes with it. When we come out, my lawyer (organized by my nearly-father-in-law), a middle-aged woman called Gudrun, who is built like a Rottweiler, tells me to get a grip on my life.

‘Grow up. Get therapy. Next time, you’ll get fined or do time. And it’ll get really difficult to get a job. Kosher?’

Various members of my family are standing about outside the police station, waiting to pick me up. Simon is pacing up and down, ignoring everyone. The moment he sees me, he rushes up to me and engulfs me in a hug. He holds me tight and I stand rigid, not feeling like I can touch him right now, though I can feel the thudding of his heart.

He pulls back finally and searches my eyes. ‘Rilla, we can still do this. They didn’t want to give us another slot, but they did in the end. Let’s do it now. Okay?’ He’s still looking at me like I’m the most important person in the world. He has taken his jacket and tie off and he probably has no idea where they are. I love this about him. I love that he doesn’t care where half his clothes are.

‘Simon,’ I whisper, ‘I shoplifted. Don’t you see? That’s not normal.’

‘You’re under a lot of stress. The wedding, and the warning about not completing your MA. It happened. It happens to a lot of people.’ He looks firm. ‘If you just put one foot in front of another, it’ll be over soon. Then we can deal with the rest of it.’

‘Don’t you see?’ my voice cracks. ‘I can’t do this. I’m – not ready.’

‘You want to postpone the wedding? Okay, okay, look, we can do that. We’ll do whatever you want. Whatever you need.’ He is scanning my face, trying to sound re-assuring, though I can see none of this is making sense to him, none of it is really sinking in.

I look at him wordlessly. How can I explain it to him? How can I find words for something that I can’t fully understand myself?

I mutely shake my head. ‘The thing is, Simon,’ I blurt out finally, ‘I can’t go through with it. None of this is working.’

‘I told you,’ says my mother, tears pouring down her cheeks.

Somehow I escape everyone. I think it is because I scream, ‘Leave me alone!’ and disappear down into the underground before anyone can stop me. I enter a train at random, staring down anyone who dares to look at me, standing there holding on for dear life, still in my silver wedding dress. After a few random stations have whizzed by, I get off. I run out of the tube station and I end up on a park bench, bent double, face in hands, taking gasping breaths.

I say I escaped everyone, but I didn’t, because Rose is here with me.

I sit up. ‘I made such a mess of it. I always make a mess of it. Rose, why can’t I get one thing right?’ The tears that have been threatening all morning now start to pour down my face.

She takes my hand. She sits quietly, just holding my hand. Sometimes I think it’s uncanny how she knows just what I need her to do. When you’ve grown up with someone, maybe you get so used to each other that you know what every movement means. Every gesture comes with its code, every mood, each slump of the shoulders, every turning away. My sister knows the code. She can sense it before I can.

The fit of crying passes after a while and I sit there, my nose red, sniffles catching in my throat.

‘I guess you knew I was going to break up with him?’ I say now. I don’t look at her. I don’t need to, I know the look on her face. She doesn’t respond.

I stare blankly around me, where life seems to be carrying on as normal. A swan sits regally on the edge of a duck pond, its mate doing laps in the water. A chunky peanut-butter Kit-Kat wrapper sits next to an overfull bin that is starting to smell of dead rat in the sunshine. The bench I am sitting on has been dedicated to Lady Cornelia North, who donated it to the council in 1986. Red buses line the park, parents with dark circles under their eyes determinedly push buggies, a jogger talks to herself as she fast-walks past. I shut my eyes tight.

‘I guess I knew,’ Rose says.

‘I’m hopeless.’ I place my face in my hands again. ‘I wreck everything.’

‘Why this though, Rilla? I thought Simon was the one.’

I jerk my head. ‘He barely knows me. He thinks I’m perfect. I’m the opposite of perfect. You know! It wouldn’t have worked. How could it ever have worked?’

‘What if I make you the most beautiful garland in the world, Princess Multan, my phool, my Queen of Roses, Princess of Hearts?’ Rose’s voice becomes rounder, louder. Like she’s talking in a theatre, her voice ricocheting off moonbeams.

I speak through my tears. ‘Then perhaps I will marry you, Rup. Is that really your name?’

Rose gently blots away my tears, then she bows ironically. ‘Of course, my princess. It is I, Rup Singh. I was a prince once. A sorceress turned me into a commoner. I wait for the love of a true princess to change me back into the real me.’ Rose switches back to her normal voice. She speaks as if seeing this scene in her mind’s eye, from a long time ago. ‘And now you sit on the balcony waiting for the garland. You comb your beautiful black hair. Roses bloom in your cheeks. Your delicate hands cradle your heart. Your voice, like a nightingale’s, sings to your lover. To me.’

‘My lover with swarthy brown cheeks and coarse hands,’ I say. ‘But I love you anyway. And you come back with the most beautiful garland in the world, made of roses and marigolds, jasmine and hot-house zinnias. And in the centre, forming the heart pendant, a moth orchid. The most precious flower in the world for the most beautiful princess. You scurry up the trellis outside my window like a monkey. You give me the garland. I give you a kiss and promise to marry you.’

‘And I turn into a girl,’ Rose says.

We both laugh. My laugh has a catch in it, but it’s a laugh nonetheless.

‘I turn into a little brown nut of a girl,’ my sister says. ‘Ugly and scrawny, shifty and sly. Because the witch that transformed me did so not from a prince, but a princess. Now I am back. I am not Rup, but Rupa Singh.’

‘Oh well,’ I say softly, looking at her face now, shimmering in front of my eyes, ‘I promised to marry you, so I will.’

‘You will take me for your partner?’ Rose says. ‘Even though I am a woman?’

‘No one is perfect,’ I say.

We laugh. Laugh at this script that we know better than anything we’ve ever said. Because we’ve rehearsed it a thousand times, performed it a hundred. When I was seven, and Rose was nine.

‘Rose,’ I whisper. ‘Rose.’

We sit together, neither saying a word. I am scared to break the silence, scared that this moment will disappear.

‘I don’t think I know how,’ I finally say. The words well up. ‘Don’t you see? I don’t know how to make it work. I don’t know how to be with someone. I have never known.’ I look desperately in front of me, searching for something that isn’t there. Rose doesn’t say anything.

‘That is where I have to go back, isn’t it?’ I say it softly. ‘I have to go back to that. To Princess Multan and Rup Singh. To those living rooms in Tooting and Wembley and Harrow and Hampstead. That’s where I have to go.’

Rose doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. She knows as well as I that to make love work, you have to go back to where you learnt how to love.