Homesick (18 page)

T
hey had been sitting outside as the sky began to rest down on the crowd, its colours descending from pinks and peaches to every hue of blue and navy, like a dancer’s tiered skirt. The trees thrust upward as if to guard them from the inevitable night. The hall, overly lit by garish oranges that did not try to mimic the day but produced their own unique blend of the present and fashion, became the focal point for the two hundred people milling about the barbecue and salads. The woman sitting next to Preethi spoke.

“But it’s a lovely name, it sounds like ‘Pretty,’ ” and she patted Preethi’s hand. Preethi had heard this summation of her name many times before, yet she smiled, laughed a little, even: the woman meant well, and what was that, a small politeness to an old woman?

Preethi said, “I didn’t catch your name?” and the woman shook her head, as if shaking off the question and the need to answer. The music had begun to play, and a few of the younger secretaries whooped and laughed.

“Imagine,” said the woman, watching them, “never having to rush home because children need to be picked up from school or dinner needs to be made? Can
you
remember a time when you stayed late at work because you wanted to and then went off to the pub?”

Preethi could remember it, in London, a long time ago.
She looked at the girls in their tiny skirts and boots and cowboy hats, and she smiled wryly. They are half my age, she thought. They are getting drunk and acting stupid the way I did the year they were born.

A man’s voice echoed out to them from the hall.

“This caller is very good. I’ve been to a wedding where they played. Exhausting!” The woman laughed, her eyes turned up to the sky wearily.

Preethi stood. She would find Simon. He had promised not to leave her alone: she knew few people from his workplace, and although they were all pleasant, friendly people, she felt her status as an outsider. No one knew
her
. They knew the image she presented them on these occasions: this early summer barn dance or a Christmas ball, where she ladled on the diamonds and the kohl, rubbed her teeth nervously with a tissue for fear of lipstick smiles. She was not effete or fragrant. She did not groom as other wives did. Preethi was rough and ready, calloused hands from her garden, earth staining her palms the colour of the rest of her skin.

The previous Christmas, Simon’s PA, Emma, stared at Preethi’s hands, with the fingernails uneven and unpainted, and she was ashamed. Simon teased her on the way home, and in the dark she said coldly that he should stop. He took her literally and stopped the car.

“It isn’t important,” he said. “
She’s
not important.”

“But it
is
,” Preethi grumbled, not knowing why. She was never the first to point out her colour to anyone, never the one to shout “racism” like it was a trigger to be pulled. She just felt it, the burden of Emma’s stare. As Simon started the car she looked down at her hands in the dark, and even there, in her lap, they were the wrong colour, like an admonishment.

“She makes me feel I’m not good enough for you,” she said finally.

“Well you
are
, and she’s a bitch,” he said, pulling onto the dual carriageway. In the yellow blinks of fast motorway lamps, Preethi and Simon’s colours equalised to beige.

“Si!” a girl screeched as Preethi walked into the hall. Simon did not turn from the person he was speaking to but saw Preethi and raised his eyebrows. She knew he was annoyed. In the taxi on the way here, he had prudishly wished that the young ones would not get so drunk. At Christmas, some of the women had had to be carried into the coach.

“Si! Come and dance!” the girl shouted again. Simon did not look round, just waved his hand in the direction of the voice. Preethi looked toward the girl. She had no idea who she was. Why did she call Simon “Si”? Could there be an intimacy that Simon had hidden from her? He spoke very little of the office and the people there. And yet she knew in her heart there was no one for Simon but
her
. She knew it. Ridiculous! How could she
know
it? We are all in the business of creating illusions, aren’t we? Even the people we have slept next to for twenty-five years get up, go out, and become something we have no understanding of.

Simon beckoned to her. “Darling, this is Tony Stroud. Tony, this is my wife, Preethi.”

“Delighted,” the man slurred. He was already extremely drunk.

She smiled into his eyes as the caller said, “This is the Carolina quickstep!” and the accordion, suddenly loud now that she was inside, blasted through her as she stepped toward Tony.

“Are you having a nice time?”

He did not hear, and put his hand to his ear. Simon had
moved away from them both, toward his senior-management men in the corner. She slipped to the side of Tony, and as she did, she noticed he seemed tremulous, and she put her hand lightly on his back and guided him away from the dancers, who had formed two circles and were walking in a large formation, their hands linked crosswise with their partners, women in the inner circle, men in the outer.

What am I to do now, she thought. She looked about and saw Emma standing nearby, a fixed grin on her face. Preethi smiled at her, but Emma looked through her, turning away. Next to her, his back turned, was a man Preethi knew. Preethi realised suddenly who he was: Prince Myshkin—Freddie. She could not countenance his presence, understand even. She circled the hall, stood at the farthest point away from him.

She watched Emma watch the younger girls striding through the arches made by the lead dancers, swirling their hips. Preethi let her eyes film over, and she heard the music and saw the dancers as if they were a murky dream. The colours were the blacks and greys and blues of denim, and what she wanted to see was the rainbow colours of fairies, washed through with rain. She turned away from the dance and walked outside again. She remembered Emma’s flawlessly made-up face at Christmas and how, when she talked to Simon, her small tongue poked through her teeth, so that the tip rested on her lower lip, and Preethi had to look away from the feeling of seeing something intimate.

Simon liked Emma, she thought. Preethi imagined them in congruence, floating in a balance of sex, a salsa of lovemaking. She imagined his too-large feet and dark-haired legs supporting a laughing Emma, her head thrown back, the tip of her childish tongue peeping through her
lips, and Preethi shuddered: in its truth, this tip became pornographic, dreadful, and she stood in the dark and watched them, Simon and Emma, watched their eyes meet. She smiled. She laughed at the ridiculousness of it. The music of the last dance ended, and people whooped and some laughed, and everyone clapped, outside and in. As she turned to walk out of the hall more side doors were thrust open, and she glimpsed Emma walking away with Gary, her boyfriend, his kind face leaning into hers, his hand placed loosely around her shoulders. Once, Simon held Preethi in the same way, his arm about her shoulders, no space between them, as if the curves of their sides had melted.

She walked toward Freddie. It was an impulse, but she walked to his side and said, “Hello, Freddie.”

“Hello.” He squinted down to her. He had not recognised her.

“It’s me, Preethi,” she said. And still, she thought, he does not know me. But he did.

“I was going to marry you,” he said, laughing.

“And I you,” she said. It wasn’t true, but no matter.

They moved out into the darkness, onto the grass. Others stood around, and a few had blankets on which men lay sideways and girls daintily tucked their legs under bottoms and giggled. Freddie indicated chairs in a pool of shadow.

“Well,” he said.

“Let’s not do that whole ‘so how many children do you have’ thing.”

“Why not? How many do you have?”

“Two. Boy and a girl. But they’re ancient now. All grown up.”

“Really? You don’t look old enough. I have a daughter—
she lives in Australia. It was an accident … well, not an accident. But something that happened at university. She’s nearly twenty-five,” he said.

“Gosh.”

“Yes.”

They looked around as laughter erupted from under the trees. It was finally night.

“So, what are you doing here?” They both spoke at once.

Laughing, Preethi said, “I’m married to Simon.” She pointed in the direction of the hall.

“I’m just my sister’s date. I’m visiting—Mum’s got Alzheimer’s, and …”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, and already she was imagining the life she would have had. “Where do you live, what do you do?”

“I’m a travel writer. I don’t really live anywhere—I just move from one place to the next.…”

“Gosh,” she said again.

“And you?”

“I’m a journalist,” she said, but she did not mention that it was on a local paper, trudging to magistrates’ courts and answering phone calls from anguished old ladies. Her children had been her life. Her children and Simon.

“Well! Look at us. Using words to earn our daily crust, just as we said we would.”

“Well, it’s hardly Dostoyevskian.”

They paused to look toward the noise of the party. The music began again.

“Are you dancing?”

“No, absolutely not,” she said, waving both hands at him. “Don’t ask, don’t drag me up. I won’t go.”

“No fear of that. I don’t dance either. So we’re a pair.”

And now a leisurely silence. He tapped his thigh in time to the music.

“I wish,” he said.

“What?”

“I wish they had let me visit you, you know, after.”

“After I tried to kill myself, you mean?” She glanced down at the thin, silvered scars on her wrists. Even in the shadow, she could see him blush. “Did you try to visit?”

“I wrote letters. I came to your house. They wouldn’t let me in. I begged Rohan.”

“Lovely Rohan,” she said.

“How is he? Still a doctor? I Googled him once, to see if he was a consultant or …”

“He’s in the States. He’s a heart surgeon. Has a son. But he and his wife have split up. I think he just works and sleeps. It’s sad, really—he should be happy, our Ro. What a family, eh?”

Freddie shrugged. She had meant: you were in love, and you wanted to marry me—what a lucky escape.

“It was a selfish thing to do,” he said.

“Yes. You mean trying to kill myself?”

“Yes.”

“But we were all selfish—children are selfish. I didn’t know what else to do at the time. Are you asking for an explanation?”

“No. Not at all.” He paused. And then he looked into her eyes: “You couldn’t love me because I’m ugly. But I loved you
so
much.” It winded her.

“Did you? Can it have been love when we were so young?” From his eyes, she knew the answer.

“Shall I get another drink?” he asked.

“Why not?”

He got up and went in to the bar. She watched the dancers, the others sitting on the side at tables and standing around. Simon moved toward Emma now. Preethi saw him framed in the doorway. She sat backward into the darkness a little farther, so she could watch them undisturbed. He clinked his glass to Gary’s, looked down at Emma, and Preethi watched Emma carefully as she smiled up into Simon’s eyes. She could see Simon’s face fully: did his eyes acknowledge Emma the way that his eyes acknowledged her? They did not. Simon put his hand in his pocket, and Preethi wondered if he was stopping himself from reaching forward and touching Emma. He walked on. Preethi turned around, away from the doors, and looked into the dark, into the night. She stood, facing the trees, listening to the breeze and the snatches of conversation about her:

“… nah, he said he had to see his ma in hospital …”

“… get us one, Chris …”

“… but I think roses are always best for weddings, so I said to her …”

She felt a nudge at her elbow. “Did you dance?” It was the old lady.

“No. I watched. It looks exhausting.”

“Yes.
Exhausting
.” The woman looked around. “I’ve lost Anthony.”

“Tony?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Does he work for them?”

“Well, of
course
. What else do retired politicians do? Just a little consultation, you see? He tips them a wink here and there, and they get the contracts.”

Preethi smiled. “Is he very famous, your husband?”

“Oh, yes,” the lady said matter-of-factly. “He did single-handedly win a war, you know. Well, at least, that’s what
he tells
us
. I don’t know what’s true and what’s not. It’s all men’s work, boys’ games. We’re just here to shit out the next cannon fodder, love ’em till they’re thirteen, ship ’em off to boarding school, officer’s training, then the next bloody war. Feed ’em, wipe their arses, send ’em orff.” She paused to take another slurp of wine. She tilted into Preethi’s body, and Preethi felt her arm being taken, the unsteadiness of the other woman. “What are
we
for but to prop and hold and hope and fucking
save
’em?”

Preethi smiled, but she realised the undying truth of this: how she had done the same. Brought Simon’s children into the world, fed them from her body, and through the years obeyed the rhythms of the marital, familial dance. Women are ruled by the cycles of life, she thought, and whether we like it or not, we do it, we sarabande around and around our days, our months, our years. Men blast through our patterns sometimes, uprooting our even work with their sudden decisions and victories, and we steadily cast over the holes, knit them together with patience and silent bravery, obeying the patterns of our small routines. And the earth turns round and round, and we turn round with it. Preethi walked the woman into the hall and sat her next to Anthony. They remained together against a wall, their glasses being filled by every passing drunk with a wine bottle, and they looked steadfastly ahead, at the dancers, at the band.

When Preethi was twenty-one, she had asked Simon to meet her in Trafalgar Square one Saturday afternoon. He was just finishing his articles in a pompous law firm in the City, and she knew if she told him it was a march against nuclear weapons beforehand, he would not have come. She told him which lion to stand by, told him it was important that she had been specific, and when the first speakers
were in full throttle, he arrived, and she kissed him as if he had done a marvellous thing. In the event, they marched shoulder-to-shoulder, arms about each other. He had not resented the deceit. He had enjoyed the experience. His parents were Tories—there had never been a need for him to march against anything. Every political decision any government had made in his lifetime had been
for
him and people like him. Anthony, drunk in the corner, would have been a man with the power to detonate. She watched him now and marvelled at how small the world had become.