Losing Touch (6 page)

‘I love maths. Do you love maths, Murad?' Sadiq swings his legs and sucks at the lemonade.

The next pause is a long one. Finally, Murad relents. ‘Maths. Chemistry. And biology. Biochemistry.'

What on earth is biochemistry? It sounds dangerous.

Murad studies his empty plate. ‘It's the study of chemical processes in living organisms. It's new. Our chemistry teacher, Mr Randall, told us about it. He's one of the pioneers.' Something softens in Murad's face. ‘Two separate sciences, but they're connected.' He softly repeats the word. ‘Connected.' An old Murad-habit of iteration, to hear again how the words sound.

‘Can you blow things up? I can't
wait
to do chemistry. It's called “stinks”.'

‘Sadiq. You should call it “chemistry”.' Arjun tries for propriety.

‘And biology is called “bilge”.' Sadiq yawns. ‘Can I go to the toilet?'

Arjun takes Sadiq to the gents, offers to stay with him and is loftily waved away.

Back at the table, he decides to risk a question. ‘Is this biochemistry offered at any university?'

‘Mr Randall says Cambridge.' Murad says this in a way that indicates he understands Cambridge is some impossibly distant country where he will not go. ‘But there are others. Cardiff, Sussex, Leicester.'

‘Three A-levels. That's the usual load, isn't it?'

‘I'll have to take S-levels as well. It's competitive.' Murad's voice is soft, as though he doesn't want anyone to hear him talking about competing.

The two years of brain-grinding drudgery required to take A-levels are bad enough. How will Murad handle scholarship exams?

He clears his throat. ‘You want to take S-levels?'

‘Three A-levels and two S-levels.'

Arjun coughs, sips his tea. ‘Murad, I have always said that you are a highly intelligent boy.'

He ignores the lifting shoulder as Murad body-blocks the words.

‘I believe you can do this A-levels and S-levels.' Arjun feels his language cracking apart under the strain. ‘Very hard work, but you can do it, isn't it?' He sounds like Sunila. He clears his throat. ‘What I am saying is that we are behind you all the way.'

‘Mr Randall runs a study group. After school. He's coaching the S-level boys.' Murad is breathless with imparting so much personal information. ‘He says he wants me to take S-level biology and chemistry. He says I can pass.'

Arjun suppresses a smile of sheer pleasure at his son's pride, at the acknowledgement of the teacher and the boy's excitement over whatever this biochemistry may be.

‘Of course.' Arjun empties his cup. ‘Of course you should take them. And of course you will pass.'

‘Hullo.' Sadiq is back. ‘Can we have another cake, Uncle?'

Arjun's son. Going to university. ‘Go and choose the one you want.' He lifts his chin at Murad. ‘You too, son.' He hands over a pound note.

‘Thanks, Dad.' Murad half-smiles.

Arjun feels his chest grow with pride. A-levels and S-levels. Murad will be eighteen by the time he takes these exams. It's all happening so quickly. He can report to Sunila that her silent son is going to an English university.

He glances at his watch. There will be enough time to have fish and chips on the way to Haseena's house. The boys come back and Murad gives Arjun the change. Murad tells Sadiq a joke and Sadiq hiccups with laughter. Arjun sits back, undoes the top button on his coat. It's suddenly warmer.

They head back through the village, the boys wandering ahead. Arjun wonders if Murad sees a carthorse pulling a plough, a cricket game, a windmill with sails gently turning, Argue & Twist Solicitors, Ivan Huven – Baker, a young boy in a red shirt running away from a bull with a lowered head.

They stop over the last narrow bridge as a steam train puffs underneath. Murad crouches as the train stops at the station. Arjun admires the way he straightens up in one effortless move, laughs at something Sadiq says and walks on towards the exit.

The small train puffs more steam, emits a squeaky toot and trundles unevenly away across a field where four plastic ducks bob unconvincingly on a pond with a life-size leaf floating near the edge. Arjun waits while the last carriage finally disappears into a tunnel and turns to follow his son.

‘Put on something warmer. And not black. You're too young to wear black. Pick a nice colour. Pink or something.' Arjun watches his daughter stamp upstairs to change out of her black corduroys and black sweater. Tarani was never an easy child, but that's nothing compared to how she is at thirteen. She hates the phrase ‘earliteen'. She hates anything he says to her.

He calls up the stairs. ‘And don't be long. We're leaving in five minutes.'

Sunila and Murad have gone to Pavi's and he is to take Tarani with him to visit Haseena. The children have been fighting again. Murad, sixteen, mocks Tarani's skinny, childish frame and the desperate way she counts the few hairs in her armpits. He wants to tell Murad,
Let her be
. But Murad has a new, fierce armour that repels everything that doesn't immediately concern him. Obviously, good manners are no longer necessary.

These days, Murad only has time for his bodybuilding. Arjun has heard the painful squeaking of springs behind Murad's door and once saw the chest expander protruding from under the bed. Murad is making himself into a different person, one who will never have sand kicked in his face providing he actually makes it to a beach.

Sunila tells Tarani to ignore Murad's teasing, but she can't. Her face crumples each time her brother jeers at her. Arjun feels the word-hooks, feels the bleeding below the skin, tries to think of something to say that will heal her. But she has no time for him either. He is also the enemy. She narrows her shoulders against him, squeezes herself inwards so that no one can reach her. She is gradually turning concave. He wants to tell her to stand upright, to push her shoulders back. He has tried to get her to play squash. It would boost her confidence. But she refuses, says it's too hard.

Tarani comes clumping downstairs disguised as a chameleon: green skirt with an Indian design of elephants and a neon-pink t-shirt under a dull-orange hand-knitted sweater that Sunila gave her two Christmases ago, never worn until now. She lifts her chin, waiting for his disapproval, waiting for him to send her upstairs to change again. But Arjun doesn't want to see what alternatives she can find.

He clears his throat. ‘That's a nice skirt. Did Pavitra Aunty give you?'

‘Haseena Aunty.' The voice is packed with cold anger. And there's something else, too: the agony of being small and unattractive. His heart contracts for her. She will walk out of the house looking like a carnival clown purely to
show
him. Her black stockings sag around the knees and ankles. Her shoes, school lace-ups, are unpolished.

‘Come. Sit down.' His voice is gentle, and he sees her glance at him. He motions to the stairs and she sits, waiting for him to say something. He rummages under the stairs for the bag of shoe polish that only he uses.

He lays out the black Kiwi wax, brush and soft cloth and, beginning with the left shoe, uses a brush to apply the polish. He balances her foot on his bent knee as he brushes and buffs the leather until it gleams dully. Tarani, thin hands grasped together, looks down at her newly polished shoe.

‘See what a little effort can do?' He polishes her other shoe, ties her shoelaces, collects the brush, polish and cloth and puts the bag away. ‘If you do this your shoes will always look nice.'

She is still sitting on the stairs staring up at him, as though he's just told her a secret. Her eyes are large and slightly scared. ‘Thanks, Dad.'

‘All right. Let's go.' Underneath all the sulky resentment and rude behaviour is
fear
? Why? He's always loved her so dearly. What has made her afraid?

She pulls on the heavy, hairy camel-coloured coat that makes her look, as Murad says, like a yeti. At least she will be warm. He wraps his wool scarf around his neck and pulls on his thick parka and lined leather gloves.

The morning is flint-edged, sun sparkling off the frost on the pavement, hedges and trees. Clouds of their warm breath pulse ahead as they walk to catch the bus. Tarani glances down at her shoes. Sometimes, she kicks one foot out a little further, just to see the polished leather, pretending that she's kicking the last of the dead black leaves iced onto the pavement. He can't remember when he did anything that made her so happy. Halfway across the field they spot the bus coming along the Uxbridge Road and race to the bus stop. Tarani giggles as she runs. By the time they climb aboard, he is laughing, too.

He pays their bus fare and she looks at him.

‘Well, you're getting fast.' He hands her a bus ticket.

‘I'm not that fast.'

‘I used to run faster than you.'

‘You still can, Dad.' She rolls the ticket into a tight cylinder.

‘I'm serious. You could run really well if you wanted to. You have the right frame, and you can accelerate quickly.' Accelerate. He makes her sound like a car.

‘There's loads of kids in my class who are faster than me.'

‘There
are
loads of kids. It's a plural.' The correction is automatic. ‘Anyway, I could teach you how to run.'

‘I wouldn't be any good.' Already she's turning away from the subject.

‘What's your time for the hundred?'

She shrugs. ‘I don't know.'

One moment she is close, a small child again, reaching for his hand. The next she is gone, her narrow shoulders closing around her.
I don't want you.
It is easy to slide from this one moment to recollections of others: the refusal of eye contact, the bare skimming of his cheek with her reluctant kiss, the deliberately ugly clothes, her nail-biting even though he has taken time to show her how to trim and shape her nails.

‘Sit up straight. You're ruining your posture.'

She jerks herself upright and stares out of the window. He glances at her profile: the thin long nose with its tiny bump. He calls her Big Nose but secretly loves the shape of it. It isn't one of those forgettable noses. Hers is distinctive, meant for great things. She could be a leader, perhaps even like Indira Gandhi, although Mrs Gandhi is quite ugly. And Tarani is going to be a beauty, despite the bitten fingernails and scrawny legs. She sometimes reminds him of Mughal paintings: long hands with fingertips that curve back, eyes that tilt up at the corners, high-arched eyebrows. He'd shown her the pictures but she turned away, repelled by anything Indian. She insisted, ‘I'm
English
.' And his response, ‘You're Indian. I'm an Indian father and you are my daughter.' He wanted to show his love, but she stamped upstairs, face frozen in anger.

He glances at her again, her face turned away. She thinks she is inscrutable with her careful blank expressions, forgetting that every little transitional flash of feeling is telegraphed as surely as if she has shouted at the top of her lungs. Poor Tarani, trying so hard to be like Murad. Murad has never had much in the way of facial expressions, so his metamorphosis to unsmiling Sphinx is more credible. Murad, with his belief that his spring contraption will make him popular with the girls; it's enough to make you weep if it weren't so funny. If only there were some way to tell Murad that to have girls like you, you just have to be yourself. Surely it's not so hard to understand. But who is Murad when he is himself? The morose eye-contact-avoiding boy who sits at the dining table? The strangely talkative cousin who entertains Sadiq? Is there yet another Murad whom Arjun doesn't know?

The rising volume of an exchange between the bus conductor and a tall, thin West Indian woman claims everyone's attention. The woman refuses to pay the bus fare for her three children who are all, she claims, under twelve. Two of them are old enough to stare back coldly at the curious faces. The passengers hang intently on the argument, some of them shaking their heads in delighted disapproval.
Who does she think she is?
The oldest, a boy with a strip of dark fuzz on his upper lip, mutters a curse at the conductor and there's a collective gasp of horror. His mother extends one arm and clips him around the head, dislodging his red-yellow-and-green-striped knitted hat. He makes the mistake of pursing his lips and making some indecent sucking noise. His mother uses her free arm and then her handbag to belabour him, screaming high-pitched abuse. In one athletic movement, he snatches up his hat and is halfway up the stairs when the conductor furiously rings the bell, shouting, ‘Off!
Now.
All of you.'

The bus halts, the driver craning over his shoulder as the family tumbles off. Arjun sees the boy scanning the bus. He stands there, sneering, in his red-and-black bell-bottom jeans and orange flowered shirt, the halo of frizzy hair sticking up everywhere. Probably doesn't brush his teeth either. The mother slams her hand into the side of the bus as it drives off. The passengers tut to each other. Arjun is relieved; at least she isn't Indian. The other people on the bus must see that
he
isn't from the West Indies. He is sitting quietly, fare paid, with his quiet daughter who now turns to him with a wide smile.

‘Did you
see
them?'

Arjun clears his throat. ‘When you are in public places, you must behave appropriately.'

‘They were
funny
.'

‘They were not funny.' His voice is low. ‘They were rude and the bus conductor was right to throw them off.'

Tarani's voice is too loud. ‘But the bus conductor was rude to
them
. He kept saying they had to pay full fare.'

‘Two of the children were obviously teenagers.'

‘How do you
know
? What if they weren't?'

He laughs his false laugh, the one he uses when he doesn't have an answer. How can he explain the muscular build of the two boys, their cocky adolescent behaviour? He hesitates: but what if she's right? He glances around, pretending to look up at the advertisements next to the bell cord. There is a smell of righteousness in the air. Here and there people speak up: ‘You were right, Freddie. You don't want to stand for that nonsense.'
Freddie busies himself with collecting fares.

Arjun, too, would like to say something, but what if he is seen as
one of them
? Some people don't see the difference between West Indians and Indians. How ignorant the British are, as Jonti would say.

Tarani has turned back to the window. ‘The conductor was
wrong.
'

‘He was doing his job. Those people were—'

She whips around to face him. ‘There are boys like that at school. They're younger than me but they just
look
older.'

He is stunned. There are black children at her school? He swallows. He must be calm. After all, this is a progressive society. Everyone mixes with everyone else.

‘So, you know these boys at your school?'

‘Don't be—' She catches herself. ‘I'm not
friends
with them. They're
younger
.' She stares at the long cascade of blonde hair of the girl sitting in front. ‘They're always in trouble. But Janice, she's West Indian. She says everyone
expects
them to get in trouble. So.' She turns away as though everything is now clear.

Tarani has a black friend? He clears his throat again. ‘So, your friend, Janice?'

‘It's our stop.' She stands up and pulls the cord.

By the time they're off the bus and walking through the side streets to Haseena's house, the idea of Janice has almost vanished with their cold breath, but still he tries to catch up with it. Perhaps Janice is a good student, despite her background.

‘Have you and Janice been friends long?'

‘She's not my friend.'

Beat.

‘Well, she
is
my friend. But she's not with my
other
friends. We talk sometimes. I like her. She makes me laugh.'

So, a boisterous West Indian girl. Just as he thought. He is anxious. What if this girl introduces Tarani to reggae? He has heard terrible things about reggae and how it makes children want to take drugs. He wants to ask Tarani about drugs. Has she been offered any? Has she seen anyone taking them? He has no idea what they might look like. His medical training has taught him nothing about street drugs.

They arrive at Haseena's house and ring the bell. Haseena, fresh and beautiful in a simple blue and white sari, embraces Tarani. ‘You are lovelier each time I see you. Isn't she, Arjun?'

He tilts his head, not yes, not no
.
He cannot help this tightening of the stomach each time he sees her. They don't embrace; she briefly touches his shoulder.

‘You're a real beauty.' Haseena takes both of Tarani's hands. ‘Come, I have some things for you to look at.' She glances at Arjun. ‘Tea is ready to pour in the kitchen. And chocolate biscuits. Help yourself. We won't be long. Girl-talk.'

Arjun follows a familiar scent into the kitchen. He stands at the doorway admiring the range of neatly hung pots over the stove. How orderly everything is: plates displayed on shelves, mugs hung on a wooden stand. On the table a cardboard box is piled with what looks like underwear. Arjun is momentarily surprised, but the box turns out to hold small, plump, oval- and heart-shaped cushions, delicately sewn in cream and rose-pink satin, with lace trim and pale gold and grey velvet ribbon. How long it must have taken to sew all of these. He examines one. The stitches are almost invisible. It sits neatly in the hand, cool and satisfying to hold. He likes to think of these little cushions going to good homes. The old ladies will love them, pressing their noses against the soft material and thinking of long-ago summers on lawns when not-yet-gone-to-college boys played cricket.

Over two years since Richmond Park. They've handled it well, he and Haseena. He's been careful about not phoning, not visiting. She's never mentioned that one unfortunate event. But then it's not as though she has anything to complain about anyway. He never actually did anything. Attractive women dress to attract men. That's all there is to it. They can't blame men for paying attention.