Losing Touch (15 page)

Arjun doesn't talk to Murad for long. His arms are tired and he hands the receiver back with, ‘See you soon, son.' She grabs at the phone.

‘I won't keep you long. I just wanted to ask if you would eat kedgeree—'

‘Mum, I've met someone.'

‘A girl?'

‘No, a boy. Just kidding.' Murad laughs. ‘She's got her own business. Scuba-diving.'

‘My goodness, well, that
is
good news. I'm so happy for you. Owns her own business, too, just like you. How lovely.'

‘And she's coming with me. To England. That's why we'll probably stay at a B&B. It'd be a bit of a squash in the pink room upstairs.'

‘A B&B?' Sunila can't keep the surprise out of her voice. Murad is forty-nine and yet she is embarrassed about him discussing his sleeping arrangements. ‘I suppose that might be best.'

‘No worries. Really. Sasha's pretty easygoing, anyway.'

‘Sasha? Very nice. Is she, ah, Indian?'

‘Indian? No. She's a born-and-bred Aussie.'

Aussie
. Relief. Not Indian and not one of those Aborigines. Of course, there's nothing wrong with Indians or Aborigines. Some of them can be very nice.

‘So where did you meet her?'

‘Travel adventure convention. Our stalls were right opposite each other. Ride the Bay and CoolDive. Loads of people around her stall, too.'

‘That sounds nice. How old is she?'

‘Forty-one.'

Eight years younger than Murad. The fading dreams of grandchildren crack, fragment and pixel away. Even Tarani's pregnancy was touch and go. Still, an active forty-one-year-old might have a chance.

‘Isn't she a bit old to go scuba-diving?' Beat. ‘It's not that she's
too
old. Forty-one is young, isn't it? It just seems strenuous, that heavy equipment and being in the water all day.'

‘It's all right, Mum. Sasha's been scuba-diving all her life. And you should see her. She's got so much energy.'

Sunila imagines her grey-haired son with his pot belly and a slightly less grey-haired, pot-bellied woman standing on the bottom of the ocean floor in their diving gear. She's seen these sporty older women with their overbaked skin. Is this Sasha a hearty type? Does she say ‘G'day'?

‘And how long have you known each other?'

‘Let's see. Must be a year now.'

He talks on about Sasha while Sunila bites back the words.
And it took until now to tell me?
Murad has always been cautious. He just wanted to be sure about Sasha. And it's a good thing that he's waited before bringing someone all the way to England for a visit. Should she ask about Sasha's parents, or will Murad take offence? But he is saying goodbye and there's no time to ask more questions.

The reality hits her. She won't have Murad to herself. No late-night chats over tea and biscuits. No opportunities to talk to Murad about God's plan for him. Even though it's been thirty years since Murad left the church, she still talks to him about Jesus. It's her responsibility. She would like to remind him of
Honour thy father and thy mother
. There's no honouring involved with sons who uproot and tear off to Australia.

It's all very well owning a business. Nice to say to the friends and neighbours,
Oh Murad's business is flourishing. Cairns, you know
. But this kayaking; what is the attraction of straining your arms and back? By all means, go to the seaside. Jesus loved Galilee, although she can't imagine Him paddling about in a yellow plastic boat. And what is wrong with having a business in England? So many nice places to kayak, like Brighton or Cornwall. And then there's the Lake District.

And how will Arjun take the news that some scuba-diving stranger is coming with Murad? The truth is that Arjun may not have much longer. His trips to the toilet are much slower. His voice is weaker. He sleeps less at nights, nods off during the day. But how happy Arjun will be to see Murad. The last time, Arjun stayed awake for nearly all of Murad's descriptions of Cairns and the funny kayaking stories. She can see that Arjun is as baffled as she is over Murad's choice of business, but at least Murad is happy. That's what counts.

Murad
should
be happy; he should have a partner. What is life unless you have someone to talk to? She will tell him that when she sees him, and he will smile at her in his gentle way.
Yes, Mum
. The thought makes her want to cook or clean something. That kitchen windowsill could use a good wipe down. She rinses the cloth out under the cold tap. But she cannot fight back the feeling that she has lost some small, comforting thing that once shaped the whole day. She stops mid-scrub. She will never get it back.

Sami: I can't sleep.

Arjun: You're having a hard time, aren't you?

Sami: I'm very boring at night. There's no sleep anywhere.

To
: [email protected]

Dear Sami,

Sometimes I think that rain washes sleep away and that is why you could not find any. I'll bet tonight you'll find quite a bit of sleep and it will be all washed and fresh from the rain.

All last night and this morning we had some snow but mostly wind. When this happened, I couldn't find any sleep either but it didn't wash away with rain. It got so cold that the sleep turned to ice and froze like an ice cube. Now that the sun is out, I hope that it melts enough sleep so I can find it tonight, just like you will!

Love

Grandpa

A life measured in buttons
. Arjun presses the button that elevates him into a sitting position on his bed. If he waits a moment he will have sufficient energy to ease himself sideways into the wheelchair next to the bed. But the energy doesn't come. There's no more mystery about where the energy went. Energy doesn't come to the elderly, or to those whose diseases are taking them, piece by piece. The firing of neurons is now a faint kindling.

Once those fires used to take him, without conscious thought, to church where he stood beside the pastor. He remembers, once, how he lightly ran down the steps from the rostrum to help old Mrs Baldwin stand up to read from the Bible. How fragile her shoulders were under the blue polka-dotted jacket, and the thin hands that shook inside the white gloves. How grateful she was, smiling at him from beneath the brim of the white hat, as he steadied her after her reading and helped her back to her seat. She must have been terrified, wondering if her legs would give way, if she would lose her balance. What courage she had; something he can understand now.

Jonti, once compact, body thin and helpless and shaking, Nawal gently buttoning his shirt. ‘See what I have to put up with,
bhai
? Treated like a baby, only. And this Nawal.' A quivering hand dancing in the air, reaching to touch Nawal's cheek. ‘How she takes advantage, isn't it? Signs the girls up for some fancy summer camp in Bournemouth. She says I wobbled my head yes. But she knows I can't wobble my head no.' And Nawal holding the quivering palm against her cheek. His eyes on hers, the only focus his body can manage.

Once it was easy to rock up, to use his body's weight to ease himself off the mattress. He actually used to walk to the bathroom. But he has learned to wait. Most of the body's cravings can be subdued, as he learned even before he became sick.

The miracle that he once had a lean, muscular body. Some of the women from the club used to pass comments and smile when he played in squash tournaments. Could he have had coffee with one of them, or even an affair? What was he like, back then, that these ridiculous ideas were feasible?

Back then
he was a young, healthy thirty-six. He wore white shorts and ran after small rubber balls with speed and accuracy. Surely he was a superman in those days. Do those other squash players from
back then
also lie in bed wondering where their bodies went, wondering at what date the synaptic rush and response slowed and failed?

Further back was his boyhood in India. How easily, fluidly, he ran up and down mountains as though up were almost the same as down. How he jumped over rocks, between rocks, balancing with his arms flung out, his body leaning this way and that as the impetus carried him forward, forward.

In some faint responsive memory of movement, he moves his legs and finds he can edge himself gradually, carefully, into the wheelchair without catching his feet on the coverlet. He smiles at the triumph; he can still get out of bed by himself, which means he can still go to the toilet by himself. Small victories. He can't even boast to Sami, who is not only well past the stage of getting out of bed by himself but doesn't need a safety rail at night any more.

Arjun realizes, with humility, that he is far behind his grandson, now bounding ahead into his future. At one time he was angry: if the brain could regenerate cells, why couldn't his body rebuild muscles so that he could walk in the garden with his grandson?

He has become accustomed to letting go. He is no longer anxious to keep up with Sami whose world no longer contains Arjun's stories of tigers and elephants, or descriptions of the Himalayas, the old peanut and monkey jokes. Sami writes his own stories now and Tarani types them in emails to Arjun:

Et all your los

Eat all your lunch

Et samwis et noodlos ed pasdo

Eat sandwiches, eat noodles, eat pasta

I like pars a lot

I like pears a lot

Occasional accounts about his grandchild's progress in pre-school are enough. Arjun is content to love from a distance.

More buttons: one to release the brake, one to start the chair rolling forward, and a small handle to direct the chair through the doorway. He remembers to tear off some sheets of paper before he uses the horizontal bar to help lift himself onto the seat.

How long has it been since he was indignant about having to sit to urinate? Now he is merely relieved to sit instead of having to stand.

What importance he used to attribute to small things: his perfectly ironed shirts, the knife-like crease in his trousers, the well-tailored jackets and suits, his meticulously folded socks and underwear, his Kiwi-polished shoes, his leather wallet. These details made him feel a little taller, a little better prepared to face the hostile country he had moved to.

It was Tarani's job to lay the table, but she never did it properly. He remembers that he would make Tarani straighten knives, move glasses over an inch or two so they were correctly aligned, refold the napkins properly. A well-laid table brought a kind of grace to the meal.

Murad's job was to wash the dishes while Tarani dried. Murad was methodical. Tarani was careless, swiping at plates and rubbing handfuls of cutlery together in the towel and jumbling them into the drawer. How many times did Arjun have to order her back into the kitchen where she angrily redried plates and pans, or disentangled the spoons and forks and knives, throwing them into their dividers?

It all meant something, some sense of striving for decorum and order, some sense of fitting in to the middle-class neighbourhood whose ideals he's never quite grasped.

But their neighbours are now used to them. They've been there for fifty years; they're the old-timers. He's seen nearly all the houses on the street change owners at one time or another.

Now they are the sweet old couple at number four, Oriole Drive (
ah, bless
). Sunila greets everyone with a friendly smile and wave, invites them in for tea, hands out biscuits to the children on their way home from school. She has achieved her coveted position of being accepted. She is harmless and old.

Her high heels no longer strike static from the pavement as she busies to work and back home again with carrier bags of groceries. The children are gone; there is no one to scream at in the evenings. She can't even scold him for long without becoming breathless.

He used to laugh at her as she retreated to the kitchen coughing and angry. But now he sees that this is how she stays alive. This is the vigour that allows her to dress him, cook for him, wash him, help him to the bathroom in the day, turn the TV on or off, fetch his photograph albums, take them away when they are too heavy to hold, fetch down books for him and reshelve them when he can't remember the page he wants.

Now he becomes anxious if she coughs too much. He urges her to rest, to take more time watching her soap operas on her bedroom TV. Like him, she also can no longer tolerate the news. What has happened to ‘England's green and pleasant land'? It is so far outside his and Sunila's comprehension that it's best to shut it all out. They enquire after each other's health almost tenderly. Did she sleep? How many hours? Was he restless? Did he have to get up more than twice in the night?

Another button to flush and he transfers himself back into the wheelchair, finds his way back without bumping into the door. As he shifts gingerly from wheelchair to bed, he has the impression that someone else is in the room. Perhaps Sunila heard the toilet flush and came downstairs.

He leans back against the elevated bed, catches his breath and says, ‘Did I wake you?'

‘You might have done, you took that long, you stupid old git.' The voice is young, male and cold. A flashlight is shone directly at his face. There is a crash and swearing as the flashlight is dropped and a chair is overturned. He expects a blow to the head; he must die now. He hopes he will have enough breath to say that they have very little money in the house, but to take whatever there is down here. There is nothing upstairs. Perhaps he can save Sunila from this final shame of being humiliated and hurt by a maniac child.

But the blow doesn't arrive. There is heavy breathing and the voice says, ‘You're Indian, intcha?'

Arjun manages, ‘Take what we have. I'll tell you where it is.'

‘I can't take nothing from you, you old
bhenchod
.'

Arjun flinches at the language. Even now he cannot accustom himself to the casual way that young people swear. And then he realizes the boy is Indian, hence the swearing in Hindi.

‘
Beta
, don't hurt us.'

‘Shut up. Don't say anything.' A pause. ‘
Madarchod
.'

‘
Beta
, please don't swear.'

‘Don't call me son. I'm not your son.'

Arjun tries to slow his breathing down before the panic attack starts. The words are coming with difficulty but at least he can deliver short sentences. If he has to explain anything, he is done for.

‘What the fuck am I meant to do now? I mean, I come all this way to break into your
bhenchod
house and you're fucking
Indian
.'

‘Son, could you put the light on?'

‘Oh yes. Rub it in. Not only can I not smash your
madarchod
head in and take your money, I have to turn the light on so you can make a positive ID for the police. Well, why not? Why fucking not?' There is patting and slapping as the young boy feels his way around the room. More swearing as he contacts the sharp edges of the cupboard. Then the light is turned on. Arjun doesn't move.

The intruder comes around to him. He is a large boy dressed in a black tracksuit and a black balaclava that obscures his nose and mouth. The holes for the eyes are large and Arjun can see that he has thick eyebrows that are bunched together in anger or, perhaps, anxiety.

As Arjun blinks against the light, the boy's eyes come into focus. ‘So young.'

Slightly muffled by the wool, the boy says, ‘You don't know how old I am, do ya?'

Arjun considers. ‘Sixteen? Seventeen?'

‘You're wrong. I'm fifteen.'

‘
Such
a big boy.'

‘My mum's side. We're all big. You should see my sister. She's huge.'

Arjun has a vivid picture of a teenage girl crammed into a tracksuit wearing a similar balaclava and tries to dismiss it before he starts smiling. This is no smiling matter. Despite the fact that the child is so young, he could easily do a lot of damage. He takes a careful breath.

‘I'll tell you where the money is.'

A sigh. ‘Nah. I can't take your money, Uncle.'

‘But you went to all this trouble.' He breathes in and out. ‘Breaking in and what-all.'

‘How come you're Indian? Me mates said no one's Indian over on this side.'

Behind the balaclava, Arjun thinks there may be a ferocious sulk going on.

‘No other Indian families moved in this side. What to do?'

‘How long you been here, then?'

‘Almost fifty years.' Breath. ‘We've seen so many people leave and new ones arrive.'

‘Yeah, well, I didn't come here to listen to all that.'

‘Son, that cupboard over there.' Breath. ‘There's money. Take.'

The boy pulls the cupboard door open, squats down and pulls out a few envelopes. He leaves them on the floor. ‘If only I'd hit you like I was planning. Then I could've taken the money and run.' He pushes at the balaclava. ‘It's like Samar says. I'm rubbish at this.'

‘But if you'd hit me first,' breath, ‘I couldn't tell you about the money.'

‘Yeah, but I
hit
you until you
tell
me.'

Arjun imagines the boy sitting enthralled in front of a TV show. ‘Son, that hitting is for stronger fellows.' Breath. ‘One hit,
pachaak
, and I'm gone.'

‘Yeah. You can't even breathe properly. You're really old, innit. No offence, like.'

‘Seventy-five.'

‘Fuck me. Sorry, Uncle.' The boy sighs. ‘I better go.'
Ah be'uh go.
The glottal stop swallows the words, turning them into some peculiar dialect. The young have no patience with language.

Arjun is curious. ‘How did you get in?'

‘Your front door, mate. You want to change the locks.'

Alert to the noises of the house, he hears Sunila moving upstairs. ‘Son, go quickly. My wife is upstairs.' Breath. ‘She has the red emergency button.'

‘Shit. I'm off. Listen, Uncle, get a deadbolt.' He hesitates, snatches up one of the envelopes and exits through the front door, slamming it behind him.

Arjun listens for the running feet, but there is nothing. Despite his bulk, the boy is light on his feet. He admires the ingenuity. He must be experienced at breaking in to deal with their lock so easily.

‘Sunila. Come down. He has gone.' His voice is so weak he is certain she can't have heard.