Homesick (26 page)

“You ask now,” Carl said.

“Are you happy?”

“Yes.” He paused. “No. I would like more grandpas and daddies.” Rohan wondered if the child had been primed.

“Did Mum tell you to say that?”

“No. My brain told me to say that.”

“OK. Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Yeurgh. Yuk. Bleugh.”

“Is that a yes, then?”

“NO!” the child took him by the ears and put his nose to Rohan’s nose and shouted.

“Ow, Carl, don’t!” Rohan’s phone vibrated in his pocket. “Hey, hang on,” and he took the child’s hands away from his face and held one in his hand as he pulled the phone out. “I bet this is your mum asking how you are.” He looked at the phone. It was Noah. Calling him. “Hello?” he said.

“Hi. How are you?”

“Noah, I’m in London.”

“I know.”

“Oh. OK. How are you?”

“Well. I’m in London, too.” Rohan’s heart. Stopped. Carl jogged him. “I’m hungry,” he said sighing against his father’s side.

“Wait …,” Rohan said, juggling his phone.

“Ro? Are you there?”

“Yeah. How? I mean, why? Why are you here?”

“Well, I have an uncle, and there’s a conference, but”—Rohan held his breath—“but mostly, it’s you,” Noah said. “I wanted to spend some time …” Carl jogged Rohan. He pressed the wrong button, and the line went dead. He pressed and pressed the keys. Squinted at the numbers, tried to call. The signal was gone.

“I’m hungry!” Carl shouted.

“Let’s go, then.”

“FOUR!” the speaker shouted, and the girl in front held up her card as Rohan and Carl got to their feet.

“Come on,” Rohan said, and he pulled Carl through
the people on their row, stepping over bags and feet. That voice—the way he spoke—it was … And as they got to the steps, he slowed. He reminded himself: to give things up was happiness. Noah’s voice was simply a test. Just like a bottle of beer in a crowded bar or a steak on a menu when he was away at a conference, say, and no one knew him. Noah’s voice was simply a choice not to choose, simply a question to say no to.

•

It was before they knew how to use Skype. So he did not see for himself how much Victor had diminished. When Rohan called them, it was often when Carl was with them, and Carl and he would talk their usual silences. Nandini would prompt and whisper and then, annoyingly, would say, “Speak to your father,” and put Victor on. He would always be out of breath—and Rohan didn’t guess how serious a case his father was.

“Have you seen your GP?” he would ask every so often.

“It’s my turn to go, son,” Victor would say. He had lost his brother in Sri Lanka a few months before his own death. A sister in Australia died a year before.

“Don’t be silly,” Rohan would say. His voice lilted in a customary Sri Lankan way, softening tones, teasing his father. “Just make an appointment, will you?” Then as an afterthought: “A little less conversation, a little more action, Dad.” He wasn’t sure if his father got the reference. He was getting old.

It was only when they talked about cricket that Victor became animated.
His
team, he had called them,
our
boys. He used their first names, their nicknames: Arjuna, Sanath, Aravinda, Mahela, and, of course, the special, the unforgettable,
Murali. All belonged to the unifying factor in Sri Lanka, piecing together the fractured society into a single beating heart: their team. And Victor was able to hold his head up, able to straighten his back, for he was Sri Lankan, and it was for him that these boys batted and bowled and dived and leapt, causing, in Victor and his friends’ minds, colonial edifices to crumble, rubbing away National Front logos daubed on their doors, making the world see beyond their brown skin to the proud, joyful people they were. Rohan knew that, to Victor, his team were world players, and Victor and his friends had made their way into that world first, like trusty old soldiers, clearing a path through the jungle territories for their princes, for their kings. They had paved the way for the team, testing the empire at its foundations. When Rohan talked to his father about his health, about his worries about his heart, Victor talked of his team, he talked of his boys, he talked of
Sri Lanka
.

There had been a road-rage incident: a man driving too fast down a country lane had yelled at Victor to get out of the way. That was all. Nandini said Victor had handled it well—he had waved the man through, smiled even. He hadn’t lost his cool, which had surprised Nandini. But when they got home, he had sat heavily onto the sofa and died.

“Nothing that a little bit of angioplasty couldn’t have solved,” Preethi had sobbed into the phone.

How ironic, Rohan had thought. Angioplasty is what I do. But he had cried with her.

Angioplasty is what he does. Through the skin he punctures, pushing his catheters in, the push against meat, the squeak, the sighs of machines like sighs of many people asleep in unison. The little balloon goes into the vessel, and
pump-pump
it goes, and the fatty cells are pushed like portly aunts through a corridor. He was renowned for his steady rate of success. He was renowned for the lives he saved.

Angioplasty is what he does.

•

“Ah! Hello! Hello!” a voice shouted across to them. Rohan and Carl looked around. Carl saw Wesley first and ran to him. He threw his arms around the man, and Wesley hugged him, pulling the child off his feet. Wesley wore pale, dapper jeans and the royal blue and gold Sri Lanka cricket shirt.

“Hello, Uncle!” Rohan said.

“Ro, my darling,” Wesley said, patting Rohan’s cheek, although Rohan was a head taller than he. “You have brought the boy to a great match. We are going to win!” he said to Carl.

Carl elbowed Rohan in the groin. “I told you,” he said as Rohan winced and turned away from him.

“How are you, how are you?”

“Fine, Uncle. How are you? How’s Nil and Ian? How’s Mo—how many kids now? And Vita?” and as he questioned, Wesley told him about Nil and Ian and their children, now in their teens, and Mohan’s two little girls, and Vita’s new job, and her worrying boyfriend, a flashy lawyer in the city.

“Come on, Dad,” Carl said.

“OK. Uncle, this one’s hungry. Maybe I can come and see you tomorrow?” He was sizing Wesley up, noticing the hunched-ness, the loose teeth at the front of his mouth. Heart disease was everywhere, in everyone, since Victor died.

“You know, I was thinking of your wedding just yesterday, Ro.”

“Yes?” He was aware that Carl was listening.

“What a
fine
day that was. It’s time,” Wesley said. “It’s time to find someone new.”

He had said
someone
. Rohan noticed the word—it felt like a message. Wesley reminded him so much of his father that as his uncle tiptoed up and smudged both of his cheeks with his lips, tears came to Rohan’s eyes and he was bowled over with love. He let go of Carl and pulled his uncle close into a bear hug, and below he felt Carl hug both of their legs. Wesley did not pull away but patted Rohan’s back gently until Rohan retracted with a sheepish smile. Wesley nodded, and Rohan and Carl strolled toward the burger van.

“What was your wedding like?” Carl asked.

“It was
fine
. What a
fine
day that was,” Rohan said. He wasn’t mimicking. It had been magnificent.

•

Mainly he had danced, with friends and uncles and his father and his sister and brother and the whole shebang—the whole lot of them he pulled into his embrace and thrust out again at arm’s length, laughing all the while. He drank champagne from the bottle and toasted his bride drunkenly as she sat quietly and smiled. Earlier she had been told to get out of their car as they were about to drive away, so that the video cameraman could retake her walk up the aisle on her uncle’s arm. He had come especially from Sri Lanka for the occasion—it would be a terrible thing for them to have missed it. Shamini had talked sharply to her daughter, and the immense compassion Rohan felt for Deirdre as he
waited silently, surrounded by the white flowers inside the car, was intense: he was struck by the smell of the bitterness of the leaves. They travelled to the reception silently, He wanted to reach over, to hold her hand, but the space between them in the car, a simple seat space, was too far, too wide.

Their wedding had been
fine
for him. He had never asked her how she had liked it. She told him when they were divorcing. She told him when it was too late.

Really, it had been too late before their parents had made the plan.

It wasn’t an “arranged” marriage. It was just that the parents decided and their children turned up. Deirdre had never had a boyfriend. She was protected, spoilt by her mother. And when he married her, he thought that it was perhaps because Deirdre was a simpleton: perhaps she was educationally challenged, he wondered when they were first alone in his flat. But she was a primary school teacher—how could she be educationally challenged? Then he realised: she was in awe of him. She had no words, nor had he for her. They had known each other for most of Deirdre’s life. In fact, when he was ten and she was eleven months, he had carried her to her mother when she fell over at a party. There was a picture triumphantly shown at the wedding. It was planned, their wedding, and too late to back out of when he woke up to it, and self-satisfied and clever as he was, he had thought he could ride it out, work through it, build a relationship from nothing. He had tried. But she was an indulged, simple creature, and he—he was too busy and too arrogant to try. Now all he felt was sorrow.

Carl said, “How are we doing?”

“Let’s see—Sanath is on 118, Sangakkara on 28. We’re doing great, Carl.”

“OK!” Carl shouted loudly.

“OK!” Rohan said. He was fiddling with his phone. No signal, no message.

Below them the England fans were getting rowdy. A man in the middle with a tall white and red hat started to shout-sing: “Everywhere we go-o …” and the crowd answered:

“Everywhere we go-o …”

“People want to know-ow …,” the man sang.

“People want to know-ow …,”
the crowd answered.

“Where we come from …”

“Where we come from …”

They sang out, and as they sang, voices echoed back from across the ground. The man stood on his chair and shouted to all of them: “WE ARE THE ENGLAND!”

“WE ARE THE ENGLAND!”

“THE MIGHTY, MIGHTY ENGLAND!”

“
THE MIGHTY, MIGHTY ENGLAND!
” and on this line, Rohan joined in, standing up with others in the row.

Carl pulled at his shirt: “Sit down! Sit! That’s not us! That’s not us!” He was becoming upset. Rohan laughed down at him, and as the song waned, he clapped with the others around him. The family in front also clapped, the mother waving her Sri Lankan flag.

“It’s just a little fun, Carl,” Rohan said.

“But we support Sri Lanka,” he said, and he was near tears.

“But we’re for England, too, darling,” Rohan said. “We’re for both of them, mate. We’re for everyone.” He realised then—the child was
his
. Not his father’s, not Shamini’s, not Deirdre’s alone. Loving him wasn’t enough.
He had to take this child on. Take him and remould him, and try and straighten him out.

He put his arm around the boy. “Want to play questions again?”

“All right.”

“I’ll start, shall I?” The boy nodded. But at that moment Jayasuriya was out. A roar went up, and Carl jumped. “Oh, dear,” Rohan said. “It’s OK, son. There’s more batsmen where he came from.”

“I’ll ask questions. Can I come and live with you?”

“Yes. Of course. Do you want to?”

“No. Do you live in a house or a flat?”

“An apartment, we call it in New York.”

“Can we live in Sri Lanka? Papa told me about Sri Lanka.”

“No. I won’t ever live in Sri Lanka. But maybe when you’re grown, you can.”

“Will I ever have a brother?”

“I don’t know. Will Mum get married again, do you think?”

“She might marry Phil.”

“Who’s Phil?”

“Her boyfriend.” This made Rohan fill with warmth and gladness.

“Do you kiss boys or girls?”

Rohan looked at his son. He did not want to know what Carl had been told. He kissed Carl’s head. “At the moment, I kiss this boy.” This answer was accepted. Sangakkara hit two fours. Rohan stood to clap, and Carl stood, too.

The girls in front held up their Four cards. The younger one stooped and picked up a spare card and turned and handed it to Carl. He waved it in the air.

“We are the England!” the Barmy Army sang below
them. And Carl and Rohan joined in. When they sat down again, Carl said, “Can you teach me to dance?”

And Rohan said, “Yes.”

•

When he took Carl home, he said to Deirdre, “Carl has changed his name. He’s now called Karl with a K.”

They were ebullient. They had won. “Er … all right … Come on, Carly. Come inside,” she said, because he was leaning heavily on Rohan. Through the door, Rohan could see the warm apricot kitchen at the end of a dark corridor. Music was playing, and he could hear someone stirring something in a bowl.

“Is your Ammi here?”

“No,” she said shortly. “Would you like to come in? For a beer?” She was straining, but, he realised, she was embarrassed, and it wasn’t her fault.

He didn’t go in. He promised to return tomorrow. I have a date, he said. With my friend Noah. She didn’t look surprised. But before she closed the door, she smiled shyly, came out again, and put her arms about his neck and kissed his cheek. And he hugged her. He wanted to say—
Thank you for Carl
. It would have been crass, stupid. But she had held Carl within her. And Carl now walked in the world, with Rohan’s heart replicated, and Victor’s smile, and Deirdre’s furrowed brow, and Nandini’s small hands. He had Rohan’s heart, though, and when the child clutched at both their legs, Rohan put one arm down and scooted him up between them, and there he held a heart in his hands, his own heart.

I
t was nearly two years after her Hugo died that Dorothy began to think about her body’s decay. And she started to think about sex, too. He had been her only lover for forty years: in his twenties enthusiastic and overpowering, delighting in her body with whoops and slurps, and when they were married, languid and assured, king and queen of their little world. Only when she had had the children and they were tubby and harried did the sex become secondary to their lasting, kindly friendship, full of books and clever talk. When the children left, they resumed more vocally what had been furtive, in fits and starts, obeying the vagaries of the seasons, sometimes in October looking forward to the midsummer madness that always caught them unawares, finding them in bed in the middle of the day, tonguing each other frantically.