Should We Fall Behind, page 20
The school day went slowly, even slower than the long rainy day before it but, other than the new boy, no one bothered her too much and she was grateful. When Grace came to meet her soon after the school bell rang she flung her arms around her legs before she realised what she was doing.
‘Hey, Tuli Wuli, everything alright?’
She nodded and squeezed Grace tighter. ‘Can I play in the garden when we get back?’
‘Sure you can. Tell you what, maybe we can go to the playground instead of going straight home. I’m sure your mum won’t mind if we do. I’ll text her.’
‘Oh no. Not the park. Just the garden. Just Grandy’s garden please. I promise I won’t stand on the books.’
Grace laughed and ruffled her hair. ‘You’re a sweet little thing for sure. But all the other kids are going to the park by the looks of it. Wouldn’t you rather be with your friends? You haven’t seen them all half-term.’
‘Just the garden please.’ Tuli said.
‘Okay Tuli-Wuli.’
Back at the house, Tuli used the metal chair to scramble up on the small apple tree which stretched from next door into Grandy’s garden. She sat in the lower branches looking over the wall towards the abandoned car. She’d always wanted to climb the tree but was never brave enough. Now, she reckoned, if Storyman was brave enough to stay outside all night, she was brave enough to climb the tree. She wanted Storyman to see what a big girl she was. Perhaps then he might be her friend.
She couldn’t tell if Storyman was in his car-house or not from the tree. She called over but there was no response. She pulled a handful of crispy leaves from above her head and threw them over the wall. The leaves drifted down, some blew onto the windscreen, others landed on top of a pile of rags near to the car but still Storyman didn’t appear. She grabbed another handful from branches above her head, holding onto the knobbly bark to steady herself as the tree shook. She called out again but nothing happened. She didn’t want to shout too loud, aware that Grace might hear and tell on her and she’d no longer be allowed in the garden. Mummy didn’t like men, not since Jamal Daddy went away. She might think Storyman was real and dangerous like the men she’d once warned Tuli about.
‘But what about all the daddies? Daddies bring children to school on their own sometimes without mummies there to stop them being dangerous,’ Tuli had said.
‘Sometimes even daddies hurt children.’
‘But Mummy,’ she said, ‘your daddy didn’t hurt you. You said he loved you. Loving isn’t hurting.’
‘No, he was a good daddy but not all daddies are kind all the time. Papa died when I was around your age, Tuli, and then my stepfather wasn’t so good.’
‘But children love their daddies, Mummy. In books, I mean. Daddies are always nice in stories. ‘
‘I’m talking about real life, Tuli. Don’t ever go too close to a strange man, or a big boy on your own. Okay? They can hurt you.’
‘In fighting?’
‘In lots of ways, You’re too young for this conversation. We’ll talk about it when you’re older.’
Tuli was confused. Lots of things grown-ups said didn’t make sense, like the time Jamal Daddy was tickling her and her mother told him he shouldn’t play in that way, it wasn’t right for a grown man to do those things. After that, every time he read her a bedtime story, Mummy would stand in the doorway and watch and when Tuli was pretending to be asleep, she heard them shouting at each other outside her bedroom.
‘What the fuck?’ Jamal Daddy said. ‘What the hell is going through your head?’
‘Nothing,’ Ebele said, but even Tuli knew she was lying.
‘Why are you monitoring every minute I spend with Tuli all of a sudden?’
‘I’m not!’
‘Yes you are. You hover around us every time I read her a story or play with her. What’s going on?’
‘Nothing. I just think it’s not appropriate. You’re not really her dad.’
‘I love Tuli. I’m not pretending to be her dad but I have the right to have a fatherly relationship with her. I’ve been around since she was tiny, remember? What’s not appropriate about that?’
‘She’s getting older. She’s growing up. Kids grow up fast and I just think you can’t keep playing with her like that. People will say things.’
‘For fuck’s sake. She’s five years old! I’m playing with her as if she’s a five year old I’ve known since she was less than two. You’re out of order, Ebele.’
‘She’s almost six. She’ll be six in just a few weeks.’
‘Fucking hell, Ebele. What are you saying? What the hell is going through your head?’ Whatever it is, it isn’t right.’
‘I’m just saying you’re not her dad. People will think it’s weird if someone who isn’t a kid’s dad is all, you know, physical with them.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Ebele. You’re sick.’
The fight was a few days before Jamal Daddy disappeared forever. Tuli knew it was because of the things Mummy said, and also the things she didn’t say.
There was no-way she could tell her mother about Storyman! She kicked her legs and waited for him to appear. Time went even slower than it did at school. When she got fed up with waiting she jumped from the tree and landed on the small patch of lawn. She dragged her feet across the soft grass making tracks in the damp ground.
Grace sat at the kitchen table with a pile of exercise books spread out around her.
‘You okay, Tuli?’ she said when Tuli tramped back into the house. ‘You want a snack? Get too cold in the garden, did it? I knew it would.’ She spoke without looking up. There’s chocolate in the drawer. Don’t take too much though, your mother will be annoyed with me if you don’t eat your dinner later.’
‘Chocolate, yes please,’ Tuli said gleefully. She’d had an idea! She opened the sweet drawer and quickly stuffed three Penguin bars into her fleece pocket before grabbing one more bar which she held in her hand as she ran from the room, shouting ‘I’m going to watch telly.’
‘Hey, slow down. Don’t run in the house,’ Grace said, glancing up for just a second. ‘And take your shoes off, Tuli. And just CBeebies, okay? And close this door. I’m working.’
Tuli switched on the TV and flicked through the channels before settling on a programme about farmyard animals but it wasn’t very interesting. She climbed down from the sofa, checked the chocolate bars were still in her pocket then quietly slipped out of the room. She stood still for a moment, listening to the blare of the TV and the sound of the kettle boiling in the kitchen. She edged open the door of the flat, stood in the small shared entrance and stared at the front door. The latch was high up and she stretched her hand above her head to see if she might be able to reach it. All she wanted to do was let Storyman know she was going to be in the garden again, that he could talk to her and tell her things about his world like he did last time. She could give him the chocolate biscuits so he wouldn’t be so hungry-looking. She’d run back quickly and Grace wouldn’t know anything about it. She walked her fingertips up the door towards the lock. It was slightly out of reach so she jumped up to try and nudge it. Eventually, the front door swung open and a blast of air pushed her backwards into the narrow hallway. She managed to grab the door before it slammed against the wall and pulled it quietly behind her until it was slightly ajar. She teetered on the doorstep looking out over Black Horse Lane.
23. RAYYA
On days when the carers arrived early, Rayya slipped into the living room downstairs and sat with the curtains drawn. The rows of DVDs and old video cassettes were gathering dust on shelves built many years earlier by Kostas. In the dark, she imagined Satish reclining on the settee beside her: his body curled around hers, a bowl of farsan between them, watching Rajasthani deserts flicker across the screen in Technicolor. The squeak of a door or footsteps above always dragged her back to reality, empty and overwhelmed with yearning for the minutiae of her everyday life with her healthy husband: shopping for groceries together, cups of tea in bed, disagreements over which film to watch. Neither she nor Satish ever cared much for British television, with its chintzy game shows and stream of cookery programmes, but now, when the presence of the carers disturbed her in the darkness, she switched between channels searching for distraction. Occasionally, the banality of travel programmes transported her but never for long enough, and in those tiny moments of respite questions surfaced to nag at her: how has my life become so disrupted? Why should my Satish be this way? Hasn’t there already been enough cruelty? The ask varied but the sentiment was clear: Why us? Why me? Once, in the presence of Daban, the pleasant young man who helped her with computer things, a ‘Why Me?’ almost slipped out and she was horrified. She held her tongue just in time. What would this hard-working young man think of her, surrounded by holiday photographs, a comfortable house, things many people his age no longer had a chance of acquiring in their lifetimes? Shame inched through her body until Daban threw a curve ball, announcing he would no longer be caring for Satish, and the shame was rapidly replaced by profound sadness. Later, she lay in bed berating herself for not making more of the opportunities to converse with Daban. She tried to summon up a more transcendental connection in a bid to feel less alone but, as hard as she tried, mantras were inconsequential and prayers would not come.
Years ago, soon after they made the long journey to England, Rayya and Satish agreed together they could no longer justify a belief in the gods they’d grown up with. This eventually extended to religion as a whole. It wasn’t the book learning which convinced them, rather the journey itself and the reasons they’d wanted to escape their impoverished lives in the first place. Satish was bright and managed to win a scholarship to attend school past the age of puberty, unlike many of his peers, but this also meant travelling on foot across the dusty Delhi streets for over an hour twice a day. His mother insisted he took up the school place; it offered a chance of earning more money in the future.
‘It’s the only way to stop this cycle. Labouring in the heat will continue to be the cause of death for all men in my family for decades to come if we don’t put a stop to it now,’ she said, and eventually Satish’s father gave permission.
For Rayya, as a young woman from a lower caste there was no such opportunity. Her destiny was set out before her. At best she would be a maid like her mother, washing grubby underwear and sweeping the dirty floors of a Brahmin family in a nicer part of the city. And, if she rallied against a life in servitude, her only other option would be scavenging like countless hordes of other children her age, rifling through rubbish tips for glints of metal and old rags which could be transformed into utensil holders or dishcloths. There was no chance of a better life for a young woman of Rayya’s standing: like the Victorian governesses and scullery maids she read about as an adult, her trajectory was still very much dependent on the men in her world. Satish couldn’t bear the idea of his beautiful Rayya being looked down upon by some rat who in actuality only had a surname to flaunt as a sign of superiority. At nineteen, he secured a job as an assistant to a travel agent and he and Rayya began to carve out a different destiny, transforming their dreams into reality with the help of Satish’s Employee Discount Benefit and his discipline in putting aside one or two rupees from his scant wage packet each week. It took three years to save the money, by which time they were married and England beckoned. God did not fit in with the political and intellectual bent they aligned themselves with, at least this is how Satish once presented it.
‘There is no God, Rayya, my darling. If there was, I would thank him for you and you alone. As far as I can tell, this is the only tangible evidence of his holiness. The rest we have done for ourselves, fighting all the way. He has not helped us one bit; if anything, he has held us back.’
‘Oh Satish, you shouldn’t put me on such a pedestal,’ she said at the time. But beneath the flattery she knew he was convinced in his rejection of God, and she more or less agreed. She never told him she still avoided washing her hair on a Thursday and rarely, if ever, could bring herself to cook meat on a Tuesday; those rituals were harder to dismiss. Sometimes, she still tried to summon up a distant god so she could ask the questions which tormented her, and if some such deity were to manifest itself, to reprimand it for the unfair hand she’d been dealt.
These days, Rayya had different rituals on weekdays. After the carers left in the morning, she stood by the window in the room where Satish lay and watched little children snake down the road towards the primary school on the corner. In particular, she waited for the beautiful girl from next door to emerge with her mother and watched as they strolled down the pavement, hand in hand, describing each scene to Satish.
‘Today she is wearing those stripy dungarees. The blue and white ones which make her look so sweet, like a baby’s toy. And her jumper is yellow like a lemon.’
She wanted Satish to picture the girl: her carefree skip, and the way she swung her arms like a pendulum when she walked, and her striking hair, long curls the colour of cloves and cinnamon. She wanted him to grasp the living, a world which would continue to flourish long after they had departed it. She acquired some comfort in the idea that whilst a harsh winter was crushing down on the two of them, for others spring blossomed, bringing with it lighter air and a fresh scent of renewal; she longed for Satish to gain such comfort too.
Afternoons were less predictable, as far as the next door child was concerned, and Rayya always felt her own heart soar a little if she unexpectedly caught a glimpse of her running ahead of her mother on the way home from school. Sometimes the child came home with her downstairs neighbour and occasionally she played out in the garden, in school holidays and weekend mornings.
On this afternoon, Rayya read from Mr Biswas until she was tired, then she took off her glasses and laid them on top of the book, apologising.
‘My eyes hurt, darling. I don’t know why, perhaps because the light is changing so rapidly these days. You don’t mind, do you? I will read again later, after a little rest. Perhaps after feeding the boy in the car. He wasn’t there yesterday, Satish. Did I tell you this? I only went once because the weather was so terrible but I think he will be back. His sleeping bag and other items are still there. Some of his clothes had fallen out of the car. I thought about picking them out of the mud and washing them but I didn’t want him to think they’d been stolen. Anyway, I think it will be better to give him more of your old things instead. Is this okay, Satish?’
She looked for signs of accord in his eyes. There were none.
‘If he still isn’t there later,’ she continued, ‘perhaps it’s because he’s found his friend, this girl he seems to have fallen in love with. I think she is apna; certainly from the way he described her she seems like one of our own, and her name is of our magnificent Betwa. Or maybe it is just modern parents; so many English take on our pretty names these days. I wonder if he dreams about this Betwa. Sometimes when we lose someone, the only place for them is in dreams. Poor boy.’
She stopped speaking when she heard an unusual noise in the street; a person yelling in a way which set it apart from the usual hollers and shouts in the park. This sound was urgent; more a scream than a call. There was a desperation to it.
‘Someone is upset,’ she said to Satish and she rose to see what was happening.
Across the road, children ran around swings and balls. The park was busy but all appeared normal for the time of day. The noise was close by but she still couldn’t see the cause of it. She pushed open the window and stuck her head out. Almost immediately below, the small dark woman from next door was clearly distraught but her piercing voice was muffled by the roar of traffic making it hard to work out exactly what she was shouting.
‘TULI! Tuuuliii! Where the heck are you?’
It took a moment for Rayya to realise the cry was the unusual name of the little girl next door, the name she sometimes heard being called out in quiet moments through her upstairs walls. She quickly closed the window and ran down the stairs, grabbed her front door key, flung open the door, hitched up her long skirts and ran to her neighbour. The woman was shaking, tears streamed from swollen eyes as she spoke words which made no sense. Rayya placed both her hands on her shoulders and tried to steady her.
‘Where is the little girl?’ she asked.
The woman’s answer was carried on breathless sobs. ‘She was inside. Watching TV. I went to see if she was okay but she’s gone. She’s disappeared. I can’t find her. She’s disappeared.’
‘How is she disappeared?’ Rayya asked as calmly as she was able.
‘The front door was open. I heard it bang and went to look. She’s a tiny thing, just an ankle biter really. But the door was open.’ Distress shrouded the woman’s face. ‘Tuli. Tuli. Where the heck are you?’ she shouted again.
‘Perhaps she is with her mother?’ Rayya offered. ‘Maybe you can telephone the mother?’
‘No. Her mum’s at work. She’ll kill me. Ebele will kill me. I was only supposed to have her for an hour or so. Oh shit, where the fuck is she? What if she’s lost? What if someone’s got her?’
Rayya looked across to the park. It was teeming with football games and small children running rings around their adults. She looked for a gap in the traffic. When one appeared, she ran across the road, lifting up her sari as the screaming of the neighbour was drowned by the screech of a lorry. On the other side of the road, she tucked her sari hems into her petticoat so it was knee length then began to pick up speed. People along the pathways of the park stared at her, watching as she darted past, but she was oblivious to the onlookers. She scanned clusters of children for Tuli but there was no sign of her. On her second lap, sweat dripped from her forehead blurring her vision. Her feet hurt and she realised she was still wearing her house slippers, now damp and covered in filth. She looked towards where she’d left her neighbour crying out, but her view was obscured by whizzing traffic. The sound of her own thumping heartbeat cancelled out all other noise. She headed across the grass, slowing her sprint to a jog, attempting to steady her breathing. A line of six, possibly seven people stood outside the cafe and clapped as she ran past.
