Losing Touch (14 page)

Six a.m. From the kitchen window, Sunila can see that the wood pigeons have knocked over their water dish again, the silly things. She opens the back door and steps out into the cool morning air. She refills the water dish from the hose and places a large stone in the middle to weigh it down. She glances up at the rose bushes. All these dead heads. A few minutes will take care of them. The secateurs are hanging on a nail inside the shed door. She puts on her gloves and collects the compost bag, breathes in the sleepy, damp, morning earth smell, the milk-blue sky promising another hot one. She snips at the withered flowers and drops them into the bag. One of the deep yellow roses has opened to reveal faint pink streaks on its inner petals. She inhales the scent and closes her eyes. A beautiful English country garden.
You are nearer God's heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth
.

She brushes her hair back with her wrist. The wood pigeons haven't come back yet. The first sun is warming a small orange and black butterfly on one of the lobelia bushes. What's that song about the butterfly? ‘I chase the la-la-la-la butterfly of love.' Such a pretty melody.

The butterfly stutters away along the fence and over a patch of bright colour. Between the pots at the bottom of the garden is a young fox, lying there, as bold as you please, soaking up the sun. He's probably already done his business on the lavender. Dirty beast. His coat catches the light and his tail lies across the earth like the long, fluffy brush she uses for dusting around the picture frames. His quick breath moves his body up and down. He looks like a drawing from a children's book: white whiskers, amber eyes, slender black forepaws like a dancer's feet. He stands up, widens his rear legs, and she realizes he is going to do more business right there.

‘Not on my lobelias, you don't!' She raises the secateurs and rushes at him. His head pops up like a flag and he is a red streak through the fence. She bends down to look through the narrow gap, half expecting to see his mocking narrow face. Nothing but dense green bush. He might be in the middle, laughing at her, or he might be several gardens away.

‘And stay out.' She marches back to the shed to deposit her secateurs and gloves. She empties her bag into the compost heap. Cheeky bounder. She'll have to block that gap in the fence.

She steps inside the kitchen to collect her tea and then sit on the back step. Despite the fox, the morning is still perfect and she can relax for a moment to inhale the drifting scents from the flowers. That peony needs repotting. Perhaps she can do it later after she's attended to Arjun.

‘Sunila?'

She sighs. A few moments of peace and quiet. Is it too much to ask?

‘Sunila?' Seventy-five and he still has such a loud voice.

‘I'm coming.' The words sound irritable. She tries a brighter note. ‘Just closing the back door.' But the door slips out of her fingers and slams shut. She puts her tea down on the counter. No chance of drinking that now. She hurries into the living room. Arjun is standing up and leaning on the walker.

‘Good morning, Arjun. How are you?'

The body is less. The legs are another pair of folds in his pyjama trousers. The hands, long thin fingers that used to carve descriptions, edicts, stories, out of the air, are now speechless in his lap. He used to be able to type emails to friends in India. Now he has to use both hands to grasp a pencil, the rubber tip-tapping out messages, key by key. The thin hair no longer disguises the dark marks of age spreading maps across his skull and cheek. His skin, always dry, has developed spots that turn into red welts that peel and weep if they are not regularly rubbed with cream. The back of his head is always itchy, his ankles, his knees, his elbows and wrists.

‘Please open the door.' He pushes the walker.

She can see it; the stumble, the fall, the crack of bone. ‘Don't go so quickly. I'm coming.'

‘Don't fuss, Sunila.'

‘You're so impatient. You'll break your hip and then where will we be?'

‘I'm not going to break my hip.'

She opens the door wide and stands back.

He moves slowly, finding the rhythm of walking. She watches him as he navigates the doorway and trundles through to the toilet.

‘Thank you.' His voice comes back with a slight echo. It's only the bathroom acoustics but it sounds as though he's calling from another world. She shivers, goes back into the kitchen.

She considers turning on her cassette player but decides to wait until he's finished. How much longer before he is unable to shave or wash, to comb his hair? These days she has to help him pull his trousers on. She finds a pullover, tracksuit bottoms, socks and the comfortable boxer shorts he now prefers. The small pile of clothes is so much smaller.

Was it so long ago when he used to wear a shirt and tie and a suit for work? He'd stand in front of the mirror, deftly knotting his tie in a half-Windsor. How proud she was to see him take his place on the rostrum in church, right next to the pastor and senior elder. Humble and all, but so nicely dressed. She remembers the ceremony to ordain him. She'd sat in a pew towards the back of the church, covertly watching the other church members seeing her Arjun elevated to this important position: an Indian and no different from any of them.

These days they don't go to church. It's too much for Arjun, who has to sit near the back in case he needs the toilet. And she won't go alone. All that pity. And they call themselves Christians. They're gloating over the fact that the Kulkanis no longer hold so much influence in the church.
How the mighty have fallen
. Well. God knows what's in people's hearts and they'll get what's coming on Judgement Day.

The phone rings. Arjun calls out from the bathroom. ‘Get the phone.'

‘I know. I heard it.' She hurries to pick up the receiver.

‘Mum!'

She sits down suddenly on the sofa where Arjun's sheets and blankets are still muddled together.

‘Murad?' Her voice dries up.

‘How
are
you? Sorry I haven't called for a while. It's been crazy at the shop.'

‘Oh, Murad!' She feels herself pouring into his name. Three months since they last spoke, and then only briefly because he was leaving
on safari.

‘So, how's everything? Dad holding up?'
Dead
. 1974 when he first moved to Australia and only a year later when he became this new, bouncy voice on the phone. He's forty-nine now and the years have settled the stretch into his voice.

‘He's fine. He's just in the bathroom having his wash. I'll call him.'

‘In a minute. Tell me about yourself first?' He sounds so
perky.

‘Well, I, I don't know. I went to Sainsbury's yesterday?' Without realizing it, Sunila copies the question-like style of their conversation.

‘Sainsbury's? Still there, then?' Murad chuckles. ‘Good old Sainsbury's. Marks and Sparks too, I bet? You like your Marks and Sparks.'

‘Ye-es.' Sunila is hesitant. Is Murad making fun of Marks and Spencer?

‘Can't remember the last time I went there. Must be—'

‘Five years. Since you were here.'

‘Five years? That long? I can't believe it. So, Mum, still doing your hospital work?'

‘That's changed now. The hospital work takes almost all day. I can't leave your father—'

‘That's right. Of course you can't go.' Murad's voice is softer. ‘You probably don't get out much at all, do you?'

‘Well, I do the shopping. At good old Sainsbury's.' She laughs a little and Murad laughs too. ‘And the post office. You know, here and there. Short trips. Sometimes I go on the bus to Uxbridge. It's a new line. It's just around the corner on Adelphi Crescent.'

‘The U7, isn't it? Goes along Charville and up Pole Hill. Took it into Uxbridge last time I came over.' He sounds more like his old self.

‘That's right. Your old school.'

‘Mellow Lane. I used to bike to school up Pole Hill.'
Mella Line
.
Oi used to boike
.

‘I remember when you came home and told me. “Mum, I made it up Pole Hill.”'

Murad laughs. ‘Quite a climb, eh? The rolling hills of Hayes.'
Heels of
Highs
.

‘No hills here, son. All flat as far as the eye can see.'

‘I know. A lot of flat bits out here, too. But not where I am. And you should see the rainforest, Mum. We do four or five tours a week now.'

The name of his company comes back just in time. ‘What happened to the Ride the Bay, the kayaking and all?'

‘We're doing a fair bit of business so we've expanded into these eco-rainforest tours. People are wild for eco-anything.' His voice is unstretching a bit; more like his younger self. ‘But Mum, it's beautiful. The flowers. Amazing.'

Murad describes the Bumpy Satin Ash, the Red-Fruited Palm Lily and the nectar of the Golden Penda that attracts parrots. He never showed any interest in gardening when he was living here. Why couldn't he have loved her garden?

‘Yes, I do like flowers,' she says weakly. Even her Papa Meilland rose, with its deep red velvet petals and throaty scent, can't compete with some big, gaudy, yellow thing that parrots prefer. ‘Murad, you know I'd love to come and see your rainforest, but, you know, your father's flying days are over.'

The words fall into some kind of air duct between London and Queensland. Do they boom and echo on their way to the wide Australian deserts where Kipling's Old Man Kangaroo hops through the saltpans, whatever saltpans are? These days her phone conversations with Murad are hinged on fence posts that become further and further apart. It's as though a time machine has whisked Murad into some other galaxy and she can only watch through a small, misty porthole.

How wonderful it would be to travel again: the anticipation of leaving, feeling the ground drop as the plane lifts up, pushing through the clouds to another world where there is always sunshine. Dorothy Frances Gurney might have felt nearer to God's heart in a garden, but Sunila has always felt closest to God in an aeroplane. How liberating it is to fly. No one asks you for anything, no one complains if the food isn't hot enough, no one asks if you've potted the begonias.

‘Ah, Mum, I was only joking. Can you imagine getting Dad on a plane? I'm coming over to see you. Three weeks' time.'

‘Really? Murad, are you really coming?' She runs out to bang on the bathroom door. ‘Arjun! Murad is coming!' She turns back to the phone and ignores the muted roar of protest from the bathroom. ‘This is the best news I've heard in a long time. It will be so lovely to have you here. You can have your old room. I'll have to clear a few things away.'

‘Actually, I thought I'd stay at a bed and breakfast—'

‘What are you talking bed-and-breakfast nonsense? Why spend all that money? I just have to move some of Dad's stuff out of the way.' She hesitates. ‘We've redecorated it since you last saw it. Dad's favourite colour. Pink.'

Murad clears his throat. ‘Listen, Mum, you don't have to—'

Murad, here. After five years. ‘Now. Tell me what you'd like to eat. I usually cook curry and rice for Dad.'

‘Anything, Mum. Curry is fine. We don't have a lot of Indian restaurants around here. Mind you, there's a Thai-Indian fusion place. Bombay prawns. Pakoras.
Amritsari
fish. Amazing.'

‘Darling, as you know, we – we don't eat prawns. And we don't have deep-fried food. It's not good for your father.'

‘Oh, no worries, Mum. Whatever you cook will be fine. So, let me give you the flight times—'

But her heart is bursting for her son. ‘Murad. If you want prawns, I'll get for you.'

‘No, don't do that, Mum. I know you're not allowed to eat seafood.'

Bottom feeders
, the Seventh-day Adventists call them. But wouldn't Jesus get prawns for His son if he wanted them? Is it blasphemous to think of Jesus having a son?

‘The flight's coming in at some terrible hour. It's Air New Zealand. Do you have a pen?'

She finds a pen in the kitchen and shakily writes down the details. She hears Arjun trundling back into the living room. She follows him to his armchair and holds out the phone as he takes forever to turn around, position himself at the edge of the chair, lower himself onto the seat, push the walker out of the way, retrieve his handkerchief and blow his nose, tuck the handkerchief back into his pocket and finally sit back and take the phone. ‘Hello, son? You're coming to see us?'

Murad is coming. Murad is going to be right in front of her, eating her food, drinking her mango lassi and telling her all his news; Murad who always understood her much more than any close friend. When Murad sees her he will understand, without explanation, how she has had to care for Arjun day and night. He'll see how she has anticipated and answered all of Arjun's demands. He will understand all her lost hours, her wasted days, the self-denial that has reduced her shopping trips to once a week. He will wipe away her tears and there will be no more suffering.

She carefully copies Murad's flight times on the calendar. Two whole weeks. He can't stay longer, of course, because of his business. Demanding and all, but look at what it has done for him: so strong and independent, even if he does talk a bit funny. How wonderful it would be to tell everyone at church. They'd be happy for him, too, so it wouldn't count as boasting. Perhaps Arjun might consider going to the Harrow church next Saturday, just for the second service. She glances at him, cradling the phone in both hands, the fingers unable to grasp.

‘So, how's Australia, then?'

Will Murad tell Arjun about the flowers in the rainforest? What secrets can she hold on to, that Murad will tell her not to tell anyone? She remembers the long-ago days of whispering in the kitchen when Arjun was in the next room or upstairs:
don't tell Dad…