4 Three Coming -2
Then, when their bumps become too large and cinema seats no longer accommodate them, the
women begin to meet up for lunch in Kilburn Park, often with the Niece-of-Shame, the three of
them squeezed on to a generous bench where Alsana presses a thermos of P. G. Tips into Clara's
hand, without milk, with lemon. Unwraps several layers of cling-film to reveal today's peculiar
delight: savoury dough-like balls, crumbly Indian sweets shot through with the colours of the
kaleidoscope, thin pastry with spiced beef inside, salad with onion; saying to Clara, "Eat up! Stuff
yourself silly! It's in there, wallowing around in your belly, waiting for the menu. Woman, don't
torture it! You want to starve the bump?" For, despite appearances, there are six people on that
bench (three living, three coming); one girl for Clara, two boys for Alsana.
Alsana says, "Nobody's complaining, let's get that straight. Children are a blessing, the more the
merrier. But I tell you, when I turned my head and saw that fancy ultra-business thingummybob ..."
"Ultrasound," corrects Clara, through a mouthful of rice.
"Yes, I almost had the heart attack to finish me off! Two! Feeding one is enough!"
Clara laughs and says she can imagine Samad's face when he saw it.
"No, dearie." Alsana is reproving, tucking her large feet underneath the folds of her said. "He
didn't see anything. He wasn't there. I am not letting him see things like that. A woman has to have
the private things a husband needn't be involved in body-business, in a lady's .. . parts."
Niece-of-Shame, who is sitting between them, sucks her teeth.
"Bloody hell, Alsi, he must've been involved in your parts sometime, or is this the immaculate
bloody conception?"
"So rude," says Alsana to Clara in a snooty, English way. "Too old to be so rude and too young
to know any better."
And then Clara and Alsana, with the accidental mirroring that happens when two people are
sharing the same experience, both lay their hands on their bulges.
Neena, to redeem herself: "Yeah .. . well .. . How are you doing on names? Any ideas?"
Alsana is decisive. "Meena and Malana, if they are girls. If boys: Magid and Millat. Ems are
good. Ems are strong. Mahatma, Muhammad, that funny Mr. Morecambe, from Morecambe and
Wise letter you can trust."
But Clara is more cautious, because naming seems to her a fearful responsibility, a god-like task
for a mere mortal. "If it's a girl, I tink I like Irie. It patois. Means every ting OX, cool, peaceful, you
know?"
Alsana is horrified before the sentence is finished: '"O K"? This is a name for a child? You
might as well call her "Wouldsirlikeanypoppadomswiththat?" or "Niceweatherweare having"."
And Archie likes Sarah. Well, dere not much you can argue wid in Sarah, but dere's not much
to get happy 'bout either. I suppose if it was good enough for the wife of Abraham'
"Ibrahim," Alsana corrects, out of instinct more than Qur'anic pedantry, 'popping out babies
when she was a hundred years old, by the grace of Allah."
And then Neena, groaning at the turn the conversation is taking: "Well, I like Me. It's funky. It's
different."
Alsana loves this. "For pity's sake, what does Archibald know about fimky. Or different. If I
were you, dearie," she says, patting Clara's knee, "I'd choose Sarah and let that be an end to it.
Sometimes you have to let these men have it their way. Anything for a little how do you say it in
the English? For a little' she puts her finger over tightly pursed lips, like a guard at the gate 'shush."
But in response Niece-of-Shame puts on the thick accent, bats her voluminous eyelashes, wraps her
college scarf round her head like purdah. "Oh yes, Auntie, yes, the little submissive Indian woman.
You don't talk to him, he talks at you. You scream and shout at each other, but there's no
communication. And in the end he wins anyway because he does whatever he likes, when he likes.
You don't even know where he is, what he does, what he feels, half the time. It's 1975, Alsi. You
can't conduct relationships like that any more. It's not like back home. There's got to be
communication between men and women in the West, they've got to listen to each other,
otherwise .. ." Neena mimes a small mushroom cloud going off in her hand.
"What a load of the cod's wallop," says Alsana sonorously, closing her eyes, shaking her head,
'it is you who do not listen. By Allah, I will always give as good as I get. But you presume I care
what he does. You presume I want to know. The truth is, for a marriage to survive you don't need all
this talk, talk, talk; all this "I am this" and "I am really like this" like in the papers, all this
revelation especially when your husband is old, when he is wrinkly and falling apart you do not
want to know what is slimy underneath the bed and rattling in the wardrobe."
Neena frowns, Clara cannot raise serious objection, and the rice is handed around once more.
"Moreover," says Alsana after a pause, folding her dimpled arms underneath her breasts,
pleased to be holding forth on a
subject close to this formidable bosom, 'when you are from families such as ours you shoul
have learnt that silence, what is not said, is the very best recipe for family life."
For all three have been brought up in strict, religious families, houses where God appeared at
every meal, infiltrated every childhood game, and sat in the lotus position under the bedclothes
with a torch to check nothing untoward was occurring.
"So let me get this straight," says Neena derisively. "You're saying that a good dose of
repression keeps a marriage healthy."
And as if someone had pressed a button, Alsana is outraged. "Repression! Nonsense silly-billy
word! I'm just talking about common sense. What is my husband? What is yours?" she says,
pointing to Clara. "Twenty-five years they live before we are even born. What are they? What are
they capable of? What blood do they have on their hands? What is sticky and smelly in their private
areas? Who knows?" She throws her hands up, releasing the questions into the unhealthy Kilburn
air, sending a troupe of sparrows up with them.
"What you don't understand, my Niece-of-Shame, what none of your generation understands
At which point Neena cannot stop a piece of onion escaping from her mouth due to the sheer
strength of her objection. "My generation? For fucks sake you're two years older than me, Alsi."
But Alsana continues regardless, miming a knife slicing through the niece-of-shame
tongue-of-obscenity, '.. . is that not everybody wants to see into everybody else's sweaty, secret
parts."
"But Auntie," begs Neena, raising her voice, because this is what she really wants to argue
about, the largest sticking point between the two of them, Alsana's arranged marriage. "How can
you bear to live with somebody you don't know from Adam?"
In response, an infuriating -wink: Alsana always likes to appear jovial at the very moment that
her interlocutor becomes hot under the collar. "Because, Miss Smarty-pants, it is by far the easier
option. It was exactly because Eve did not know Adam from Adam that they got on so A-OK.
Let me explain. Yes, I was married to Samad Iqbal the same evening of the very day I met him. Yes,
I didn't know him from Adam. But I liked him well enough. We met in the breakfast room on a
steaming Delhi day and he fanned me with The Times. I thought he had a good face, a sweet voice,
and his backside was high and well formed for a man of his age. Very good. Now, every time I
learn something more about him, 7 like him less. So you see, we were better off the way we were."
Neena stamps her foot in exasperation at the skewed logic.
"Besides, I will never know him well. Getting anything out of my husband is like trying to
squeeze water out when you're stoned."
Neena laughs despite herself. "Water out of a stone."
"Yes, yes. You think I'm so stupid. But I am wise about things like men. I tell you' - Alsana
prepares to deliver her summation as she has seen it done many years previously by the young
Delhi lawyers with their slick side partings Then are the last mystery. God is easy compared with
men. Now, enough of the philosophy: samosa?" She peels the lid off the plastic tub and sits fat,
pretty and satisfied on her conclusion.
"Shame that you're having them," says Neena to her aunt, lighting a fag. "Boys, I mean. Shame
that you're going to have boys."
"What do you mean?"
This is Clara, who is the recipient of a secret (kept secret from Alsana and Archie) lending
library of Neena's through which she reads, in a few short months, Greer's Female Eunuch, Jong's
Fear of Flying and The Second Sex, all in a clandestine attempt, on Neena's part, to rid Clara of her
'false consciousness'.
"I mean, I just think men have caused enough chaos this century. There's enough fucking men
in the world. If I knew I was going to have a boy' she pauses to prepare her two falsely
conscious friends for this new concept I'd have to seriously consider abortion."
Alsana screams, claps her hands over one of her own ears and one of Clara's, and then almost
chokes on a piece of aubergine. For some reason the remark simultaneously strikes Clara as funny;
hysterically, desperately funny; miserably funny; and the Niece-of-Shame sits between the two,
nonplussed, while the two egg-shaped women bend over themselves, one in laughter, the other in
horror and asphyxiation.
"Are you all right, ladies?"
It is Sol Jozefowicz, the old guy who back then took it upon himself to police the park (though
his job as park keeper had long since been swept away in council cuts), Sol Jozefowicz stands in
front of them, ready as always to be of aid.
"We are all going to burn in hell, Mr. Jozefowicz, if you call that being all right," explains
Alsana, pulling herself together.
Niece-of-Shame rolls her eyes. "Speak for yourself
But Alsana is faster than any sniper when it comes to firing back. "I do, I do thankfully Allah
has arranged it that way."
"Good afternoon, Neena, good afternoon, Mrs. Jones," says Sol, offering a neat bow to each.
"Are you sure you are all right? Mrs. Jones?"
Clara cannot stop the tears from squeezing out of the corners of her eyes. She cannot work out,
at this moment, whether it is crying or laughing.
"I'm fine .. . fine, sorry to have worried you, Mr. Jozefowicz . really, I'm fine."
"I do not see what's so very funny-funny," mutters Alsana. The murder of innocents is this
funny?"
"Not in my experience, Mrs. Iqbal, no," says Sol Jozefowicz, in the collected manner in which
he said everything, passing his handkerchief to Clara. It strikes all three women the way history
will, embarrassingly, without warning, like a blush what the ex-park keeper's experience might
have been. They fall silent.
"Well, as long as you ladies are fine, I'll be getting on," says Sol, motioning that Clara can keep
the handkerchief and replacing the hat he had removed in the old fashion. He bows his neat little
bow once more, and sets off slowly, anti-clockwise round the park.
Once Sol is out of earshot: "OK, Auntie Alsi, I apologize, I apologize .. . For fuck's sake, what
more do you want?"
"Oh, every-bloody-thing," says Alsana, her voice losing the fight, becoming vulnerable. "The
whole bloody universe made clear in a little nutshell. I cannot understand a thing any more, and I
am just beginning. You understand?"
She sighs, not waiting for an answer, not looking at Neena, but across the way at the hunched,
disappearing figure of Sol winding in and out of the yew trees. "You may be right about Samad .. .
about many things. Maybe there are no good men, not even the two I might have in this belly .. .
and maybe I do not talk enough with mine, maybe I have married a stranger. You might see the
truth better than I. What do I know .. . barefoot country girl.. . never went to the universities."
"Oh, Alsi," Neena is saying, weaving in and out of Alsana's words like tapestry; feeling bad.
"You know I didn't mean it like that."
"But I cannot be worrying-worrying all the time about the truth. I have to worry about the truth
that can be lived with. And that is the difference between losing your marbles drinking the salty sea,
or swallowing the stuff from the streams. My Niece-of Shame believes in the talking cure, eh?"
says Alsana, with something of a grin. "Talk, talk, talk and it will be better. Be honest, slice open
your heart and spread the red stuff around. But the past is made of more than words, dearie. We
married old men, you see? These bumps' - Alsana pats them both 'they will always have
daddy-long-legs for fathers. One leg in the present, one in the past. No talking will change this.
Their roots will always be tangled. And roots get dug up. Just look in my garden birds at the
coriander every bloody day .. ."
Just as he reaches the far gate, Sol Jozefowicz turns round to wave, and three women wave
back. Clara feels a little theatrical, flying his cream handkerchief above her head. Like she is seeing
someone off for a train journey crossing the border of two countries.
"How did they meet?" asks Neena, trying to lift the cloud that has somehow descended on their
picnic. "I mean Mr. Jones and Samad Miah."
Alsana throws her head back, a dismissive gesture. "Oh, in the war. Off killing some poor
bastards who didn't deserve it, no doubt. And what did they get for their trouble? A broken hand for
Samad Miah and for the other one a funny leg. Some use, some use, all this."
"Archie's right leg," says Clara quietly, pointing to a place in her own thigh. "A piece of metal, I
tink. But he don' really tell me nuttin'."
"Oh, who cares!" Alsana bursts out. "I'd trust Vishnu the many handed pick-pocket before I
believed a word those men say."
But Clara holds dear the image of the young soldier Archie, particularly when the old, flabby
Direct Mail Archie is on top of her. "Oh, come now .. . we don' know what'
Alsana spits quite frankly on the grass. "Shitty lies! If they are heroes, where are their hero
things? Where are the hero bits and bobs? Heroes they have things. They have hero stuff. You can
spot them ten miles away. I've never seen a medal .. . and not so much as a photograph." Alsana
makes an unpleasant noise at the back of her throat, her signal for disbelief. "So look at it no, dearie,
it must be done look at it close up. Look at what is left. Samad has one hand; says he wants to find
God but the fact is God's given him the slip; and he has been in that curry house for two years
already, serving up stringy goat to the whiteys who don't know any better, and Archibald well, look
at the thing close up .. ."
Alsana stops to check with Clara if she could speak her mind
young girl looking at an old man close up; finishing Alsana's sentence with the beginning of a
smile spreading across her face, '.. . folds paper for a living, dear Jesus." |
