Jubilee (11 page)

All the more comforting, then, that throughout Satish’s childhood Ranjeet had offered a welcome, no questions asked. At Ranjeet’s, Satish and Sima could lose themselves in the hurly-burly of the extended family, and there wasn’t all this endless explaining of things. Cousin Dinesh was there, Ranjeet’s son, four years older than Satish and ripe with wisdom. They’d smirk at each other knowingly as their parents traded news about the prodigious achievements of their boys.

‘Dinesh has been getting excellent marks in science,’ Uncle Ranjeet would confide, grabbing a handful of dhal biji, the crunchy spiced lentils he adored. ‘Biology, chemistry … he’s taking after his old man!’

‘Very good, very good,’ Satish’s dad would agree. ‘Satish’s teacher, too, is very pleased with him. He’s a real all-rounder, she says. You know, good at all sorts of things. You listen to him now, on the tabla. Are these children going to play for us?’

The kids would be rounded up and made to play songs for the adults, and Satish would try to look casual for Dinesh’s sake whilst trying really hard for his dad’s and be exhausted and relieved when they were finally allowed to escape outside.

While they threw a ball in Ranjeet’s garden, or lounged around on the grass, his cousin would tell tales of life at the boys’ grammar school. There wasn’t much Satish could do to compete with this; all the things he might say would be old hat, so mostly he just listened. Dinesh was going to be a doctor, he told Satish. A really good one, better than his dad. He’d work in London, not some rubbish local hospital. And he’d be a surgeon, too, or an anaesthetist. He lingered over the word, though whether from pleasure or the struggle to pronounce it correctly, Satish couldn’t tell.

Satish’s family went to Ranjeet’s for the fun stuff, too, the things that didn’t fit properly in Cherry Gardens. Best of all was the spring festival, Holi. They left Bourne Heath, dressed in their oldest clothes, the ones they could ruin with impunity, waving politely to their neighbours as they climbed in the car and headed for Bassetsbury.

When they arrived, they were made to eat lunch first and they did it in a hurry for once, distracted from their food, peeking out into the garden. There were buckets by the side of the shed, filled right to the top with coloured liquids – pink and green, orange and blue. A pile of water pistols waited next to them. Sima caught Satish’s eye, sniggering, and pointed at Uncle Ranjeet. From where they sat they could see boxes of bright powder on the patio and the domes of balloons, multi-coloured, jostling in a washing-up bowl outside the back door.

When Auntie Manju said the children could get down – release! They tried coaxing their uncle onto the lawn, and when he feigned resistance they grabbed him instead, hauling him by the arms, Dinesh pushing him from behind. In the garden, the world was turned upside down: kids against adults, the grown-ups losing. They scrambled to attack Ranjeet – a water balloon full in the face, an exploding splash of red. He held up his arms in useless defence, giggling, while the children did their worst. Splashes of yellow across Ranjeet’s clothes, purple soaking his hair, orange squirting at him from hastily filled water pistols.

Then the kids collided during the chase, or maybe it was Ranjeet dodging them too effectively, and suddenly nobody was safe. Dinesh rushed up to Satish, hands full of green powder, and smacked it onto his cheeks, then smeared it down his neck and T-shirt. Satish made a grab for one of the balloons but Sima got there first, raising it unsteadily and launching herself at her cousin.

Auntie Manju joined in, and Satish’s mum. When people were wet enough they were attacked with more coloured powder, which clumped on eyebrows and the tops of heads, silting into the folds of Manju’s sari. Satish’s dad stood, fastidious, at the edge of it all until they spotted him, Satish leading the charge, and went on the attack.

‘In the name of Lord Krishna!’ yelled Sima as they pelted him with pink and green and yellow. Satish’s mum took handfuls of purple and shook it over her husband’s head until he stood, caked in colour, coughing and laughing.

For high days and holidays and sociable weekends, Uncle Ranjeet played host. Satish got used to falling asleep on Dinesh’s floor, his quilt wrapped round him, lulled by the sound of adult talk from below. But one Saturday, a couple of months before the Jubilee, his cousin had news.

‘We’re coming to you next week. There’s going to be a National Front march down our street!’

Satish took this in. ‘A march?’

‘Yeah. Right down our street. Mum and Papa want us to come to you for the day.’

‘A proper march? And we can’t stay for it?’ The National Front was in the papers a lot. They wore braces and boots and shaved their heads. They waved Union Jacks. Nothing this exciting ever happened in Bourne Heath.

As Satish had feared, the excitement of the day – Ranjeet’s downstairs window was smashed with a brick, his neighbour’s young daughter had stood at her gate, screaming at the marchers until her dad dragged her in – was experienced second-hand, and after the event. In Cherry Gardens, Satish’s mum laid on a feast for the family, showing off all the culinary skills she usually did not get a chance to demonstrate. Sima, playing in the garden, threw a ball awry and knocked the fan out of the kitchen window. She turned to her brother in horror, lower lip already wobbling, eyes wide. When their dad came out to yell at her, Satish stopped him.

‘Sorry, Papa, It was me. I just … I threw too hard.’ His dad hesitated, looked closely at Sima, and at Satish, then stretched out and cuffed his son. Satish closed his eyes against the blow, but when it came, it was more like a stroke. He opened his eyes to find his father still looking at him.

All the things he was to do later, the medical degree, the marriage, inviting his parents to live with him when things got tough, all that made him a good son, a dutiful one. This, though, was something different. The look his father had given Satish was the sort of look any son would want to see on his father’s face, a kind of deep and private pride. Once he’d seen that look, a boy might spend a lifetime trying to earn it once more.

Now Satish plays the good father himself, kissing his kids goodnight, fetching their sleeping bags from the car. When the children are in bed the adults eat, and afterwards they play Teen Pathi, shoring themselves up with enough chai to see them through the early hands. Sima plays cards like a demon, needs watching all the time. His father, equally competitive, is apt to distract his opponents with desultory talk of one sort or another before going in for the kill. Satish resigns himself to his losses, and hopes Maya will play sharp tonight. She smiles across at him from the other side of the table.

‘Into the pot!’ They’ve all brought supplies of bitty little five pence pieces; the coins chink into the bowl.

‘Dealer …’ Manik nods towards Maya who shuffles cleanly. She loves this bit. Satish hears the slide and click of the cards as they’re dealt out. Manik and Sima pick up theirs, have a quick look, and Sima glances at her husband.

‘So,’ says Ram. ‘Those roadworks at the Bassetsbury roundabout. Another four months, they think. How are you managing your journey each day, Manik?’

‘Oh, it’s stressful, of course, very time-consuming,’ Manik tells him. ‘And all the other routes, they’re just as bad now, with the overspill.’

‘Terrible,’ Ram agrees. ‘Neeta, are you betting?’

‘Blind,’ she replies, slinging another coin into the pot. ‘Manik?’

Manik looks round the table. Everyone does their best to be unreadable, apart from Sima, who grins and dips him a heavy wink. ‘I fold,’ he announces, pushing his hand away.

Then it’s Satish’s turn, blind too, another five pence in, and his dad’s commiserating with Sima about her own commuting problems.

‘The thing with teaching is, there can be no lateness, eh, Sima? I suppose you have to start everything so much earlier in the mornings?’ He lobs in his stake. He hasn’t looked at his cards yet.

‘Inevitably,’ she agrees. ‘It just takes – oh, hang on.’ She aims two coins at the bowl. ‘It just takes a bit more organisation. I haven’t been late yet.’

‘I fold,’ says Maya, after a peep at hers. Next to her, Satish’s mum looks unimpressed with her own hand.

‘Fold,’ she declares. ‘Ram, concentrate on the game!’

‘How are those reports coming on, Sima?’ says Ram.

‘Oh, the reports. Well, they’re coming on slowly, Papa. They always do. We’re using this computerised system now, this, um … comment bank, it’s called. It’s meant to make the process quicker, but you know these things – they never live up to the hype. Satish?’

Satish is looking at his cards. He has a pair, and a low one at that: two fives. ‘Folding,’ he says.

With just his father and sister left in the game, Satish knows things will turn a little more entertaining. Each has a talent for bluff and double-bluff, and both are hungry to win. He sits back to enjoy it. Sima looks at her cards once more. She purses her lips together, taps the table with her nail, lets out a sigh. This one’s a bluff, he reckons; she’s not really studying her cards in the way you do when you’re willing them to say something else, so she must be quite happy with them as they are.

His father hesitates, then slings in two coins; gulled, he’s upped the stakes. Sima tips four into the pot.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘Over to you, Papa.’

His dad smiles broadly, scoots his hand over to the pile next to him and counts out two five-pences. ‘Sima,’ he tells her. ‘Show me what you have.’

They turn their cards together. Sima’s lips remain pursed as she assesses their hands; hers is an eight, seven and six, different suits. Not bad, but definitely beatable – there’s been a little daring in her play, as usual. Her father pushes his into the centre of the table: a three, a ten and a king, all of clubs. She’s won the pot. Sima raises her eyebrows, crumples her face into pathos.

‘Oh, Papa! I was so distracted by that talk of reports and paperwork!’ she hams at him. ‘I nearly lost my concentration! How will I ever manage to count all this lovely money?’

They laugh, father and daughter eye to eye across the table. Manik wanders into the lounge to retrieve the remaining barfi and Maya slips into the kitchen. Satish watches his dad and sister laughing at each other, and is aware of his mother watching him watching them. It’s compelling, this family life. It can be onerous and fractious and sometimes plain dull, but here they are anyway, against all expectations. When Amin threw them out they escaped in the night, just them and what they could carry: a suitcase and £55. No one thought they would flourish, but they have done. They have flourished in open defiance of Idi Amin and the summer of ’77.

Neeta starts to gather in the cards, ready for her deal. As she’s tapping them down, Maya comes back, glass of water in hand.

‘Hey, I meant to ask,’ she says to Satish. ‘Did you ever talk to Colette about that photograph?’

Satish looks straight at her and shakes his head minimally, but she looks away and doesn’t catch it. His fingertips press into his thighs.

His dad asks: ‘What’s this? What’s going on?’

‘It’s nothing, just …’ He shakes it off with a shrug. ‘… domestic things. Boring. Stakes into the pot. Let’s play.’ Behind him, Satish hears a noise, and jumps: but it is just Manik.

‘It didn’t sound boring to me,’ says his dad. His mum says, more loudly than she needs to, ‘Right, come on Ram. Into the pot!’

Satish keeps his eyes down. His nails scratch at the fabric of his trousers. He hears the coins going in, sees his pile of cards grow – one, two, three – as his mum moves her quick hand around the table. When she’s finished he can hear the others appraising them, or guessing at them, the little sighs and tuts, the bluffs.

‘What did I miss?’ asks Manik.

‘Let’s start play,’ says Satish.

They are seated round the table, volatile, but settling now. Manik peeks at his cards, picks up two coins and rubs them against each other. If he puts them in the pot then Satish can bet, and Sima will, and they’ll be thrown into the game themselves; momentum will save him. Satish waits. Manik turns to Sima.

‘No really,’ he says. ‘What did I miss?’

‘Shush, now. You betting?’ But the coins stay in Manik’s hand.

‘Something about a photograph,’ says Ram. And now he’s looking at Satish, quizzical. Neeta sighs and her body jerks slightly with the kick she’s administering to his shin. Sima leans back in her chair, folds her arms and watches him, too.

‘It’s nothing,’ Satish tells them.

Maya glances between the family members. She looks at Satish and frowns. ‘Yes, it is. It’s that Jubilee photograph. Andrew Ford is doing another one.’

Satish could slap her, actually hit and hurt her; he has no idea why she can’t read the signs, why she won’t shut up. They are ranged against him, his father worst of all, craning forward now, ker-ching! in his widened eyes.

‘Andrew Ford is doing another photograph?’

‘Yes, Papa. But …’

His mother places her fingers on her cards. She pushes at them, rubbing them minutely to and fro in front of her.

‘It’s a thirty-years-on photograph,’ Maya tells him. ‘The
Sunday Times
wants to do a piece. Colette says Satish is important for it, and Andrew Ford’s very keen to have him there. He—’

‘
Sunday Times
!’ repeats his dad. This is starting to tip just a little out of control, with the emergence of his terrible, coercive paternal pride, so now is the time to make it very clear, totally clear that—

‘It won’t happen. I just can’t do it.’

‘Satish?’ says Maya.

‘But why?’ asks Ram.

‘I’m too busy. It’s just a PR exercise anyway.’ There’s a sound in the hall, and Maya’s up and out.

‘So it’s PR,’ his dad continues. ‘Who cares? For people to see you again, and to know what you’ve done since. A doctor – Central Children’s! – your lovely family. Do the photograph.’

Satish needs to flatten the curve of his rising anger. He presses his cards under his palm. In the hall, Maya is remonstrating with Asha (‘Get back to bed!’ ‘But Mehul’s keeping me awake. He’s being a pain.’)