The Cambridge Curry Club (10 page)

He would grow his thinning hair into a ponytail and sideburns, wear flared studded jeans and a shirt
unbuttoned
to his waist, a black leather jacket, heavy leather boots, smoke pot, ride his Harley Davidson into the wind and not only to Harston village on Sundays past the church and the graveyard; there would be a girl waiting on the highway to heaven and she would ride pillion to San Francisco in a leather jacket with flowers in her hair and she would ask for nothing. Everybody had a hungry heart. He would be a rider on the storm.

Rupert was going through mid-life angst; it was the hormones, said Diana’s mother.

CHAPTER SIX

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread

T
HE MID-MORNING TRAFFIC
dawdled through narrow Mill Road, past the solicitor’s firm, the bakery, the Indian curry houses, the Internet café and the
grinning
drunk lurching against the windows of the
Chinese
supermarket. A young man in T-shirt, jeans and black slippers pounded the pavement with urgent steps past the fish shop at the moment when Mr Chatterjee and Banerjee passed through its entrance. He looked over his shoulder in panic. The wind tickled the banner proclaiming
The Lord is Your Guiding Light
outside the church at the corner, before whisking away the hat of an elderly man and crushing it under the wheels of an indifferent car.

The young man continued to run, desperately
seeking
refuge. Only minutes ago he had been sniffing his mother’s fragrant saffron rice, wondering how many of his annoying cousins would stay to lunch; now he was a fugitive, lungs bursting, legs racing for life. Too late, he saw a large woman in a blue sari leave a shop door to bend over a black bag on the pavement.

He collided with Swarnakumari, and the impact lost him a slipper, but he dashed wildly through the entrance. The young man’s breathless tale as he was hustled behind the curtain to the Staff Area at his request was garbled: his sister had eloped with her English boyfriend to get married in Ireland and was on her way to Stansted. Although the rest of the family was distraught, it was his uncle who had exploded in rage, swearing retribution. His own father had been placatory; such a violent response was hardly
appropriate
. His son would follow the pair, he soothed, and use his powers of persuasion to prevent their departure. The apoplectic uncle nevertheless insisted on accompanying the young man, who quailed at the words; he had been his sister’s confidant, assisting in the online ticket reservations. A sly, fat cousin sounded the alarm as he fled down the stairs. Three burly young neighbourhood thugs, eager to teach him a lesson on cowardice,
followed
in vengeful pursuit.

‘Durga, quick, bring out that Roman robe and the woman’s veil!’ commanded Heera. ‘They’re both in that old cupboard there, along with the kimono that those drama students gave us.’

The young man was hustled into the shapeless robe, and a lady’s veil of indeterminate cultural origin placed over his head. Durga suggested kitten heels. He stared at his feet in dismay, increasingly agitated as he realised he had lost a slipper in his haste to find refuge.

Heera was soothingly maternal as she imparted her instructions. She had taken command, driven by
compassionate
empathy to aid the fleeing pair. He was to remain in the main shop area and act like a
customer
, she warned. Durga suggested crutches to lend
authenticity to his veiled and robed disguise. Eileen was directed by Heera to retrieve the telltale slipper from outside the shop, but she was blocked at the entrance by the elderly customer returning from Catnap.

Outside, the three burly young men giving chase met in simultaneous impact, subsiding in a heap of arms and legs. They plucked themselves free,
straightening
their collars with a scowl. The slipper lay humble and telltale, pointing truthfully towards the shop. A thug wordlessly held it aloft as he entered, and like gangsters in a film, the trio moved warily sideways through the clothes racks, awaiting the bullet that could whistle through the thermal socks and teddy bears or even the net curtains at any instant. The leader ordered his companions to their hands and knees to search under the clothes racks and in the wardrobes.

‘Oh, hello there again,’ twittered the elderly lady to Swarnakumari at the till. ‘Oh, these poor wee cats, someone has to look after them! I couldn’t have any cats in me own home, my Arthur said … Sorry I’ve popped in again, but I’ve remembered what I’d forgotten. I still have to get Dorothy a birthday present, you see! It’s her eightieth; she’s as spry as anything, still lives in her own home, you know. I’ll just have a little wander and let you know if I find something, dear.’

She headed for the commemorative china plates as a chic young blonde turned to Heera. ‘I was in the shop yesterday, and I think I lost a diamond earring in here,’ she cried. ‘Did you find it?’

Heera moved away with the blonde customer at the moment when Mr Chatterjee and Banerjee entered. Javed arrived a moment later, pausing to look at the golf set near the window, momentarily delaying the
desire to see the love of his life as he flexed a golf club and tested its quality.

‘Nice big place,’ said Banerjee.

‘I do not see Mrs Wellington-Smythe,’ Mr Chatterjee fretted.

‘Oh, there she is!’ said Banerjee obligingly.

Mr Chatterjee straightened imperceptibly.

‘Your wife, over there,’ said Banerjee.

As he followed Banerjee’s pointing finger,
Swarnakumari
emerged from the Staff Area, wet and flushed from repeated handwashing. It was Eileen who had noticed the bird droppings on the sari. Swarnakumari had already spotted her husband, but the sight of the shapely young blonde on her knees had initially
distracted
Mr Chatterjee’s attention from his wife. Like bunnies in a china shop, the blonde and the three thugs hopped by on all fours, searching under the voluminous dresses trailing to the floor from the clothes racks. Eileen stood, arms folded, lips pursed, surveying the steady destruction of order.

‘Nice big shop,’ repeated Banerjee. Swarnakumari approached her husband, who remained taciturn.

Javed looked past Eileen at Swarnakumari, and at Durga, his gaze moving to settle on Heera and
registering
shock. He reminded himself fiercely that she had changed, but not beyond recognition; she had aged, but not to his dislike; he would be Hafiz, the Persian Sufi mystic seeking beauty of the soul, not of the flesh.

‘Can I help?’ asked Heera.

Javed continued to stare without speaking.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she shrugged, and walked away.

The elderly customer approached a shelf of hats while the young man draped in robe and veil stared at
the wall. ‘Ooh, isn’t that china plate nice! Dorothy likes the Royal Family, she does, got the Jubilee collection, too. If it’s not too difficult, luv, could you use one of your crutches and pass me that pink hat on the shelf? The one with the flower, luv, that’s it. Mebbe I could give her a hat instead of the dictionary, though she loves doing the crossword, she does.’

The young man obliged, and the robe fell away, revealing a hairy wrist. Mr Chatterjee stared, while his friend Banerjee was still absorbed in a book on
German
baking in ten easy steps. Javed followed Heera with his eyes; Mr Chatterjee watched Javed watching Heera.

‘Ooh, wool and made in Italy, too! That’s posh. Dorothy will like that. Poor Edith, went to Italy, quite rude and nasty they was with her, poor thing, but I like Italians, so friendly, never heard of anyone’s bottom being pinched, have you? Come to think of it, I wouldn’t have minded someone whistling at me or pinching me bottom, but they never did. I knew a nice Italian family on Neville Road, can’t remember the name now. You looking for something special, dear?’ asked the elderly customer kindly.

Heera rushed to the defence of the silent young man. ‘She’s deaf-mute, poor thing.’

‘Oh goodness! And crutches, too! Some people have such rotten luck, don’t they? I mean, look at poor Edith. She had that cancer scare, then the heart and the pacemaker, and going so quickly, too. Oh well, that’s life for you. Oh, there aren’t any electric ones, if you’re looking for those, dear,’ said the elderly customer
helpfully
, spotting one of the pursuers. ‘I already been in here half an hour ago, and I was looking for electric
blankets, and I didn’t find any, but this nice lady here said there were some new Edinburgh ones. The thing is,’ she leaned over confidentially, ‘my Arthur used to say—’

The thug pushed her roughly aside, tripping over the blonde making a desperate bid to find her earring. Shocked, the young man in disguise moved jerkily forward with his crutches, inadvertently knocking Heera on her thigh. She tottered and Javed rushed solicitously forward, helping her to a chair.

Eileen was silently observing the wanton destruction of a morning’s work. She disappeared into the Staff Area, returning a minute later carrying the toy gun partially concealed by an apron. She stood in front of a thug, her grim face a terrifying, shadow-ridden mask as she recalled an assailant’s attack on her brother in a Belfast alleyway. There could be no doubt that she would pull the trigger, and a silent agreement passed between the thug and Eileen. The three men vanished. There had been no witnesses.

‘The coast is clear,’ announced Eileen, satisfied.

The young man flung back his veil. ‘Phew, that was close!’ he exclaimed. Mr Chatterjee scrutinised his face in stunned silence.

‘Wait, isn’t he one of them, too?’ Heera, struggling to stand, pointed at Javed.

‘Who?’

‘Him,’ accused Heera. Everyone turned to stare at Javed in suspicion.

‘Who is he?’ asked the young man, bewildered.

‘I don’t know. I thought he was one of your chaps,’ replied Heera.

‘Who is this person?’ scolded Swarnakumari in a
loud voice for her husband’s benefit. ‘Who were those three men?’

‘Looking for a man,’ supplied Durga.

‘Aren’t we all?’ contributed the chic young blonde sourly on her way out. ‘I was hoping I’d find the
earring
, but it’s not here, or maybe it’s just too busy on the shop floor today.’

‘Yes, there were three men looking for something they could never find,’ agreed Heera hastily.

The blonde left. Banerjee was gazing speculatively at Javed’s maroon Pringle pullover. Javed glanced at the motley group. He had not been expecting privacy, but the presence of so many staring Asians at the shop was intimidating. Blotting them out of his vision, he
whispered
tenderly to Heera, ‘I’m Javed.’

She looked at him in disbelief, and her eyes changed first, turning moist, brimming as her chin and lips trembled, buckling under a torrent.

‘Javed?’

He was wordless.

‘My Jav—?’ She recovered swiftly. ‘I mean … Javed. I didn’t recognise you!’

‘I would have recognised you anywhere,’ he
murmured
. ‘Still the same Heera, not a day older, you look just the same.’

Mr Chatterjee hovered within earshot.

‘I found just the thing for Dorothy. She’ll love this vase, but mebbe I should have got her a cardie instead. She feels the cold through her bones, poor thing, not much hair on her head now, you know, but she’ll still get her hair done on Wulfstan Way every week. Wants to look her best, and why not? A woman’s got a right to look her best at any age, but between you and me I
wouldn’t bother any more if I were her. I mean, it’s not as if anyone visits her, is it? It’s not right when children abandon their old parents like that, is it?’ quavered the elderly customer to Mr Chatterjee, who did not respond.

‘You look shocked, Heera. I’m sorry I frightened you by landing up like this,’ apologised Javed.

‘I’d better be off. I need to make sure my sis is all right.’ The young man absently surrendered the
borrowed
disguise to a startled Banerjee and commenced a search for the missing slipper. Eileen’s tart observation that he ought to be grateful he had survived to wear the one he still owned led him to tearfully thank Heera and the others. Immediately after his departure, Banerjee asked Swarnakumari for assistance in the search for a leather jacket and a Marks & Spencer cardigan.

‘Where is Mrs Wellington-Smythe?’ was Mr Chatterjee’s renewed query.

Heera stared up at Javed. The tumbling waters foamed and crashed into cliffs and crevices of worn memory; her heart pounded as she gazed into his warm brown eyes.

Javed could never have imagined a reunion in a
charity
shop amid customers whose motives would remain a mystery. There were two men smelling faintly of fish, and why was one staring at his cardigan and the other at his face?

He had cherished a burning flame, but time had flown; he was no longer the moony, besotted youth of three decades ago penning poems to her eyes and hair. Her hair was a shock. He remembered long, luxuriant black tresses in which he had buried his head and
entwined his fingers, not the henna-tinged hair limp around her neck.

Guilt-ridden and ashamed of his abandonment of Heera, he had swallowed his cowardice and carried his unease to his relationship with Shabana, finally
surrendering
to the forces of darkness pinning him into inaction and a dull acceptance of his fate. All he needed to know was whether she echoed his own yearning and longing, and if by some wild chance she was as unhappily married as he had been. Middle age was not so ridiculous that it precluded desire and spontaneity, banishing impetuosity. Passion did not belong only to the young, who knew not the value of what they held, and the mature vine glinting in the mellow autumn rays and burdened with the sweetness of ripened grapes was no less worthy than the young fruit that awakened eager and early to greet the
morning
sun.