The House of Hidden Mothers (22 page)

‘You do know that to be a surrogate, you have to have had two healthy children?' Dr Passi said slowly and loudly – but in English, Mala noted proudly.

She pointed to the photograph still in the doctor's hands by way of answer.

Dr Passi held Mala's gaze a little too long and then said briskly, ‘OK, I need to examine you,' and fired off an explanation in Hindi to Ram, who sat there nodding silently as she assured him they would just be next door.

Mala lay stiffly on the examination couch, watching anxiously as the doctor woman picked up thin latex gloves, flexing her fingers in preperation. Then she understood those fingers would be going inside her, tapping, pushing, probing. Would it feel as bad as being on the crowded bus to town? The last time Mala had undergone that journey, to buy some
barfi
for Pogle sahib's newborn grandson, she had been shocked by the level of violation. Not just above her clothing but under it, pincer fingers pinching her nipples, fingers so determined and angry they pushed up inside her, dragging her trouser material with them, sending hot darts of pain through her trembling legs. She had screamed out and looked around, at the circle of men around her. None of them would meet her eye, all knowing what was happening, all becoming the same man with many eyes and hands. The men further away just looked bored. Stupid woman, coming on this bus at this time, what does she expect? Then Mala realized that the only other women on the bus were elderly and seated, and understood why Seema would only go to town with her husband or by taxi, now she had the money. In the airless vice of strange shifting bodies, Mala had silently called out for Kali to come down, many-armed, black-toothed, enemy-slicing demoness. Now I know why she screams so wide and loud, now I could rip off a head with my bare hands, if only I could free them.

She did not tell Ram afterwards. Why give him an excuse to forbid her from going out again? When she mentioned it to Seema, saying maybe she should have gone to the police, Seema had laughed at her, spluttering cake crumbs over her second-best plates.

‘
Shabaash
, good idea, then they could have had a good feel as well, before slapping you around and sending you home. Solution simple: don't go on the bus any more.'

Later on, Mala had read about this happening in other places. Delhi was especially bad, according to Pogle sahib's discarded newspapers. They had called in lady policewomen to patrol the buses, to stop the ‘menace of Eve teasing'.
Lai!
Who was this Eve and what stupid
bakwaas
could call this shameful finger-rape ‘teasing'? Even so, she had been relieved when the bus they had boarded after they got off the train had been half-empty, and she sat close to Ram all the way to the clinic.

In the end Dr Passi did not even examine her properly. A phone call came, she took it in the one ungloved hand, left the room and never returned. Eventually a nurse came in and just told Mala to dress herself again. Mala briefly wondered if she should mention that the doctor hadn't done anything except put on one glove, but the moment passed and then there were more tests: weighing, measuring, doing
pashaab
in a bottle, two big injections where Mala watched, fascinated, as her own blood was drawn out of her, so red and thick, the colour of the uncut rubies in Pogle sahib's wife's wedding necklace. The nurse asked if Mala needed water, a biscuit – she was used to some women crying
hai-hai
and fainting away when the blood tests were done. Mala took the biscuit anyway, still munching as she got up to rejoin Ram. And then the paperwork, so much of it, form after form in small-small writing which the doctor woman explained quickly in Hindi only, this time – for speed, Mala assumed, she looked a very busy woman. But they knew it all anyway, Seema had talked them through all the rules several times. Yes, Ram agreed to this; no, they had no claim on the child once born; yes, Mala agreed she would stay at the clinic hostel for the whole pregnancy. When Ram understood what this meant, he halted proceedings, gripping the pen in his hand.

‘She will be here the whole time?'

Mala laid a gentle hand on his forearm, felt his sinews below, straining for release. Nodded
hah hah
as the lady doctor explained to him it was the only way to keep Mala well, with good food, vitamins, rest and relaxation, so the baby could be as healthy as possible, but of course he could visit any time on the weekends. All of this is paid for by the couple, understand?

Mala saw Ram doing complex calculations in his head: so now you're thinking how many meals you will have to find on your own, how many evenings you will have to sit and
gup-shup
with your boring mother, how many nights you will have to lie alone with nothing for company but your own twisting desire, just like I had to. Mala saw herself reclining on a soft bed, leafing through a filmi magazine and eating cake off a china plate, just like Seema's, balanced on her proudly pregnant belly. To be paid to rest and eat well, it would be her first-ever holiday – and in Delhi itself. Maybe she could even slip away to do some shopping, maybe they could give her some of the fee in advance? Wait until she met the couple, who knows what they would do for her? Mala held tightly on to her growing excitement, reining it in, whispering quietly to it like a skittery animal –
bas
, we are so close now, just wait. And aware, underneath the anticipation, of a bittersweet tang: if she had been treated this well during her own pregnancy, maybe her own baby would be sitting on her lap right now.

Ram signed the form, throwing the pen down afterwards and abruptly rising from his seat. Dr Passi held up her hand, motioning for him to wait. She told them she had some good news, that this was very unusual, but actually, she thought she had already found a suitable match for them. Of course, they would only sign a contract once Mala's tests had all come back normal, but as they had travelled all this way, why not meet the intended parents right now?

In the few minutes she left them alone to decide, Mala stroked Ram's head, whispering to him about all the things they could afford by the end of the year if it all went OK, coaxing him from the present of this cool, anonymous office to a time when they could buy and plan, not plod from day to day like oxen at a wheel. How strange to think it had been Ram whose idea this was, Ram who had had to whisper the same things to Mala all those weeks ago, and now it was his wife leading him by his clenched fist into the next room to meet their future.

Mala's first reaction was, she is older than I thought, too old for him. The red flames in her hair cover up the grey, and when she smiles I see worries around her eyes. But at least she smiles.

Neither of the men say much at all. Ram nods at different times, his eyes mostly on the floor, sometimes looking up at the blond man, trying to banish from his head the image of the meaty-muscled
gora
thrusting his seed into his wife. Oh, he knows it is all done with tubes and instruments, but still, he wishes he had not had to meet the man in person. A photo would have been fine. The women cannot stop looking at each other, two sides of the see-saw but perfectly balanced, knowing each has something the other wants very badly.

She is looking at me like Ram looks at livestock before he buys, Mala thinks. How she lingers on my face, my hips. Maybe I should walk over to her and open my mouth so she can count my teeth.

Shyama is struck by how unexpectedly beautiful this woman is: not just the achingly perfect bloom of youth she wears so blithely, but the wide intelligent eyes, the long proud nose winking with a tiny jewel, the full, almost sulky mouth. The colour of her – brown too dull a word for the dark-golden skin, and that hair, oiled and twisted into a thick plait, blue-black like a raven's wing, the hair of a well-behaved woman. Her English, though heavily accented, is surprisingly good. It's certainly no worse than Shyama's atrocious Hindi, which she attempts in greeting, making Mala cock her head first in polite anticipation and then let out a throaty laugh. Her husband digs her in the ribs, a swift possessive gesture which bothers Shyama, but she lets it go, joins in with Mala's giggling, encourages it with more badly pronounced pleasantries until the two women are locked in conspiratorial smiles and further stop-start chatter.

Toby, already feeling like a pale-skinned spare part, attempts an encouraging smile at Ram. He has to wait a while before Ram looks up from the floor, expecting suspicion, hostility, but instead seeing a keen curiosity in Toby's eyes, a man-to-man look that asks, how did we get here?

Ram looks over at his wife suddenly, hearing Shyama ask about their other children. Will they mind their mother spending so long away from them? Will they see her regularly? Mala answers smoothly in a mixture of Hindi and English, explaining that her mother-in-law and her friend Seema will both help Ram out, and that he will, of course, come every weekend if he can.

Toby takes his first good look at Mala, the economy of her hand movements at odds with the vitality of her presence. There is something ripening about her: the about-to-turn ear of wheat, the almost-bursting bud. She reminds him of late spring, when the land and shrubs seem to vibrate with suppressed sap, life waiting to be unleashed. She catches his eye and it pierces him somewhere deep. He looks away, embarrassed and slightly afraid.

‘No problem for us,' Mala says carefully to Shyama, her head tilting from side to side in that maybe-yes,-maybe-no,-who-knows universal Indian punctuation, and then more quietly, ‘We like to help you.'

This simple sentence almost undoes Shyama, but she clears her throat and reminds herself there is much still to discuss. But they get through the remaining practicalities surprisingly swiftly, and agree that once Mala's tests confirm she is healthy, she will start undergoing hormone treatment straight away. It will take a month or so to prepare her body for implantation of the embryo, created by a donor egg from the clinic's bank and Toby's sperm.

‘So you are choosing gestational surrogacy, meaning there will be no genetic link between the surrogate and the baby, which is what most people prefer?' asks Dr Passi.

Shyama and Toby confirm this is indeed their choice. Toby's contribution, when needed, will be much quicker and more private, in a back room with some outdated magazines. Dr Passi shakes hands with all of them and smiles.

‘If all goes well, this young lady could be pregnant within the next two months!'

Later that evening, Shyama and Toby sat on their balcony with their celebratory cocktails, the night crickets competing with the distant car horns. Below them the small hotel swimming pool was as still as a mirror, its underwater lights bright and unblinking as lizards' eyes. Behind the glass doors leading to the pool, a wedding reception seemed to be in full swing.

‘Look – down there.' She nudged Toby.

Below them the bride and groom, garlanded with marigolds, were greeting their guests beside a chocolate fountain bubbling away like a mini Vesuvius.

Shyama thought back ruefully to her own extravagant nuptials over twenty years ago, held in a five-star hotel just off the A1. Her parents must have nearly bankrupted themselves to lay on an all-day affair for six hundred guests, most of whom Shyama didn't know and never saw again. She knew the drill, she was the only child and a daughter to boot, and even though she had threatened to call the whole thing off if anyone suggested giving Shiv any kind of dowry, the expectation that her parents would foot the entire bill could not be argued with or avoided. Shyama's anti-dowry stance could not be allowed to tip over into full-scale rebellion and possibly scare Shiv's parents into retreat. Furthermore, Prem and Sita had to invite everyone who had invited them to their kids' weddings over the last few decades, for fear of offence, and the same applied to Shiv's parents. That added up to an awful lot of people. But this kind of obligatory bulk invitation just made the day itself feel like a corporate team-building exercise with loud Bhangra dancing at the end. Shyama had worn a traditional red-and-gold sari bought in five minutes flat in Southall, a garment so heavily embroidered that it had left her covered in little red welts afterwards, as if a squadron of mosquitoes had enjoyed their own all-day buffet. She remembered actually feeling grateful that Shiv had waived any dowry gifts, proof that she had married a modern, compassionate man. Yet despite earning well himself, there had never been any offer to pay for one penny of the wedding. All this she found out later, which made the collapse of her marriage even more ironically pathetic.

The couple through the glass looked relaxed, easy with each other. Even their clothes reflected a new comfortable twist on tradition – her sophisticated
lengha
in pale gold, his designer-cut Nehru jacket. They were drinking champagne, for God's sake, not having to take sneaky swigs in a locked toilet with a bridesmaid on Auntie-alert outside. Shyama's wedding now seemed from a different era.

‘You didn't like Mala?' she murmured, taking an overenthusiastic sip of her passion-fruit-and-vodka cooler, feeling it burn as it went down.

‘No, she was … It's just that … Well, we didn't meet anyone else, so …' Toby hazarded, already knowing it was too late to change their minds.

‘Oh, you think we should have shopped around?' teased Shyama. ‘Gone for the friskiest filly with the childbearing hips?'

Toby reckoned Mala was frisky enough for all their needs, but he saw Shyama's point, understood their shared discomfort at the place they found themselves in, picking their brood mare of choice. Somehow making a quick decision based on human compatibility took some of the starkness away. As a dispassionate observer, but with his farming background, Toby would have chosen Mala too. The ones with the fighting spirit always came out top. Nice manners and a daft smile usually got you eaten first.

‘No, listen, she … they both seemed like decent people.'