Losing Touch Page 5

  The man stares at Murad. ‘Under fifteen, is he?’

  ‘He’s fifteen now.’ Arjun tries not to make it a plea.

  ‘Well. Lucky, isn’t it? He can still get in as a child.’ The whiskers lift in a bright, red, British smile. He stamps the three tickets and pushes them across the counter.

  Arjun wants to say something to Murad. The boy can’t be allowed to get away with such rudeness. But as they walk through the gate they are presented with the polished miniature world of the English, frozen, improbably, in the 1930s. Huddles of villages, where thatched and stone cottages are crafted with authentic tiny bricks, while the gardens riot in minute gaudy displays. Models of bowler-hatted gents, brollies rolled, newspapers in hands, wait at the stations. A church’s stained-glass windows glow while an unseen choir sings drearily. Plaster cows bend endlessly towards grass in fields enclosed with white-painted matchstick fences. In an hour or so, it’ll be possible to crouch near a pub and hear the bartender calling, ‘What’s yours, sir?’ above a gentlemanly murmur of voices. And everywhere the steady susurration and clack of tiny wheels as the model trains pass under bridges, over viaducts, through tunnels.

  Sadiq stands with his hands clasped together, eyes huge, then follows Murad, who has lost the listless slump and is bent over a bridge, examining a red signal. The small light turns green. The train whistles and arrives. Already Murad is talking to Sadiq, pointing at the engine. The two boys jump up and run towards the next bridge to catch another glimpse of the trains. Well, the talk about behaviour will have to wait for now.

  Sadiq squeaks delightedly and Murad emits his strange cough-laugh as two trains simultaneously pull away in opposite directions. Murad bounces upright, followed by Sadiq and they hop across the stone bridge. Arjun watches his son move swiftly through the narrow path of a typical country village, ignoring the beautiful Tudor-detailed houses, the church spire, the groomed field with its polo players. The boys cross another bridge and vanish among the shrubs as they drop to watch some other train. Murad has his absorbed look, the one he has when he sinks into a book, his left hand resting on the chair arm, right forefinger and thumb rubbing the top corner of the next page, the story sinking him deeper. Arjun breathes in as he watches Sadiq who, from the back, might be a younger version of Murad. The oddest impression of Murad leading his younger self through this tiny world.

  A flick of colour announces Sadiq’s hat as he follows Murad past a village pond. They are talking intently about something. Strange. Murad, so inadequately dressed, looks more comfortable here than Arjun in his warm clothes and sensible shoes. Suddenly it comes to him: Murad doesn’t care what these people think of him. He cares about his studies, his music, his friends, the operation of these small trains. It’s probably Murad’s British education. Arjun is proud of his intellectual son, and a little wistful. It would be nice to feel you could just walk into any place like this one and enjoy the sights. Go here, go there, without thinking that others are watching and judging whether you were being too Indian.

  A young Indian girl in a blue and green shalwar khameez under a black jacket catches his eye. How sweetly she takes care of her younger sister. They pass over the bridge and the little one tugs her to stop to admire the boats. Arjun sees she’s wearing chappals over thin socks. Sandals in this weather? She must be Murad’s age. She looks a little like Pavitra when she was young: the slim figure, the long tapered fingers, the gentle expression.

  With a start, he realizes he hasn’t seen Pavi in over a week. They didn’t have their usual lunch last weekend since she was busy with her welfare work, bundling up bales of clothes to send to Africa. He’d dropped Sunila over to help and had a cup of tea while the women worked. They argued about some blue coat of Pavi’s that Pavi thought the Africans could use. It was a nice wool one, quite new-looking too. Surely an African wouldn’t need something so heavy? Sunila had been tight-lipped about it. But, after all, it was Pavi’s coat to give away. So generous. She gives away so much that he sometimes wonders if she is still trying to fill the hole left by Mum’s passing. She took a long time to recover from that.

  These days she’s much quieter. He puts it down to having kids and adjusting to the responsibilities of married life. Aren’t they all quieter, slower, less likely to laugh? Pavi was always one for laughing. So lively, so full of unexpected ideas.

  She turned up at his office once, back in Bombay, where he’d taken his first job as a junior accountant for Carstairs and Sons. He was scheduled to play in the Under 21 Squash Racquets Championship after work. He’d seen the notice: a recruiting coach would be visiting from the Maharashtra Squash Racquets Team. They had started to win tournaments against the British Squash Racquets Club. Certainly, the English won more often but, still, the idea that they could be beaten by the Maharashtrans…

  He’d repeatedly hauled back his wriggling focus to the columns of figures in the large black ledgers. Surely he’d qualified in enough tournaments? He went over each win, added each point, re-estimated his current ranking. Maybe nineteen was too young to be considered for such a respected team. Maybe there were others who’d accumulated more points. Maybe he just wasn’t good enough.

  As he arrived at the Maharashtra Club, he found Pavi, her face like Christmas morning.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I skipped out of school. Look, I’ve got something for you. Hurray for Team Arjun!’ She held out a sumptuous green and gold Maharashtra Team jumper.

  One hand lifted to touch the jumper. ‘Arré, Pavi. What if someone sees? Assuming, and all. I’m junior team, isn’t it? I’m not even picked.’ His language fell apart from its usual careful English and the last word came out as pick-ud.

  ‘They will pick you, bhai. I’ll keep this until after. Go and change, now. I’ll be right in the front, shouting my lungs out.’ And Pavitra tucked the jumper back into her bag and marched off to the outside stands reserved for the non-British. She was right. He’d won his match and a place on the Maharashtra Team, and he’d worn his new jumper home.

  So long ago. Arjun shrugs the past away and moves on to the next village. Perhaps he should have invited Pavitra along to Bekonscot. She’d have admired everything, s-o-o sweet, so clever, and thoroughly enjoyed a mug of tea at the café. But this is meant to be a bonding experience for himself and Murad, who is…

  On the other side of the lake, Murad is standing next to the signal box. Sadiq and two other small boys are peering through the window. The signalman comes out and beckons. The three youngsters bundle in, but Murad hesitates. The man beckons again and, hands stuffed in pockets, Murad slips in. The door closes. Arjun imagines the operations board, the lights, the levers, Murad taking it all in, silent at first. Before long, he’ll be asking about the gauge radii, the trains’ chassis, diesel versus steam engines, the classic ‘Blue Peter’ train and the construction of the Manor House Tunnel.

  Arjun stops at a village where ships are unloading their catch. It does look like one of the south-east coastal towns, like Ramsgate or Wells-next-the-Sea. The shops with green and white awnings, the small boats tied up by the dock, a few hikers precariously near the cliff edge, while the most convincing detail is the grey, cold weather. He realizes he knows England: these small towns with their dripping ice cream and nasty pink rock that the kids so love, the A40 and its roundabouts, the Underground, St James’s Park, the endless dark of winter only matched by the British capacity for complaining about it. He’s been here for fifteen years. It’s a shock to realize how the time has passed by. So, he is British in some way. How Jonti would laugh at him. Still Indian but British also, isn’t it?

  For a moment he wonders if Haseena and Nawal are enjoying their film. He is practising thinking about them together, his sisters-in-law, so that he doesn’t have to think about Haseena under the trees in Richmond Park, when he moved in too close. The shock in her face when she realized he was trying to kiss her. It was a mistake. She looked so lovely, sitting on the grass for their picnic
, her cream and silver sari spread around her. Sadiq had been off climbing some fallen tree. If she hadn’t shifted over to pass the chicken, if he hadn’t dithered over the drumstick or the breast, if she hadn’t smiled and offered him a paper plate. He’d made a fool of himself. He breathes out quickly. How could he have done something like that in public? What if someone had seen?

  At least she never told Sunila. Sometimes he wonders if Sunila knows. He shakes his head. Ridiculous to dwell on such nonsense. Maybe a brisk walk around the miniature lake.

  His feet are beginning to feel numb. Perhaps the boys would like a cup of tea, too. He slowly walks towards the signal box. He steps back off the narrow path to allow three excited small boys, a sullen teenage girl and two adults to pass. The adults take their time, not noticing Arjun. The woman finally notices him. ‘Come on, Clifford. You’re standing in front of someone.’

  Clifford glances behind, scratches a large pink ear. ‘Oops, sorry. No offence, mate.’ His wife hauls him away.

  Arjun doesn’t move immediately. His right leg feels strange. Not here. Not in the middle of Bekonscot Village. He carefully transfers his weight to his left leg. He looks down. He is standing in the mud. There is nothing to lean on. Another large family comes rushing by. They don’t see him, a small Indian man standing in the shrubbery. They pass around the corner and he hears a child’s voice. ‘It’s a real army barracks, Mum.’

  Now he is trapped, a foreign addition to the landscaping. He imagines himself suddenly dwindling to miniature. What would his role be at Bekonscot? They could place him just outside the perimeter of the army barracks. Native prisoner caught escaping. A semicircle of soldiers aiming rifles at him.

  His shoes are dirtied. The thought of being covered in muck makes him shudder. He tries to move but his right leg won’t budge. He is no longer a visitor entitled to stroll around, buy tea at the café or browse through the postcards. He is something else: a nuisance, a loiterer, visibly out of place. Any official seeing him might assume that he’s up to no good. The thought of being seen as someone doing something even faintly unacceptable… He has struggled so hard to blend in and now he is a focal point. He shifts his weight, gingerly trying out his right leg. Please let the leg be all right. And, suddenly, it is. He is free to step back onto the path.

  Murad and Sadiq round the corner and stop in front of him.

  ‘Oh. There you are. I was just coming to find you.’ Arjun tries to speak normally over the dissipating embarrassment.

  ‘Uncle, look at your shoes! You won’t get any chocolate biscuits for tea.’ Sadiq’s round eyes. Murad’s snort.

  ‘Someone stood in front of me. Huge fellow. I had to step off the path to avoid being trampled on.’ It is meant to be funny: Arjun as a bewildered Buster Keaton figure, the others as the bumbling Keystone Cops. Jonti would have known how to make it into a joke. Arjun clears his throat.

  ‘So, Sadiq. Did you like the signal box? Did you run any of the trains?’

  ‘Only the signalman can perform operations,’ Murad says.

  ‘But we saw everything, didn’t we, Murad? And the man—’

  ‘—the signalman—’

  ‘Yes, him. He said we could come and work there.’ Sadiq beams. ‘I’m going to pass all my exams and then I can build a new track through a mountain. I’m going to make the mountain as well.’

  Arjun buys cream cakes for the boys. Sadiq has lemonade and Murad has tea. Murad takes huge bites of the cake, chewing and swallowing as though the cake is something shameful to be dealt with as efficiently as possible. Sadiq pokes out fingerfuls of cream as he continues to outline his plan for a mountain, a forest and a family of three-toed sloths that he’s been reading about. Arjun sips his tea, grateful for the warmth of the thick china mug. How to get Murad, his son with fifteen O-levels, to talk?

  ‘Ah, how are your studies going?’

  Murad, finishing his cake, makes a strange gulping noise.

  Arjun tries again. ‘Do you like any of your classes?’

  Shrug.

  A pattern of cracks in the white mug’s glazing leads the eye through a maze to blank whiteness. ‘Do they have woodwork?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’m doing woodwork next year, Uncle. I’m going to make Mum a cheeseboard.’

  ‘Very nice, Sadiq.’ Arjun tries to keep Murad talking. ‘Maths?’ He keeps his voice strictly neutral as he turns the mug. Another maze appears on the mug and just as abruptly stops.

  ‘I love maths. Do you love maths, Murad?’ Sadiq swings his legs and sucks at the lemonade.

  The next pause is a long one. Finally, Murad relents. ‘Maths. Chemistry. And biology. Biochemistry.’

  What on earth is biochemistry? It sounds dangerous.

  Murad studies his empty plate. ‘It’s the study of chemical processes in living organisms. It’s new. Our chemistry teacher, Mr Randall, told us about it. He’s one of the pioneers.’ Something softens in Murad’s face. ‘Two separate sciences, but they’re connected.’ He softly repeats the word. ‘Connected.’ An old Murad-habit of iteration, to hear again how the words sound.

  ‘Can you blow things up? I can’t wait to do chemistry. It’s called “stinks”.’

  ‘Sadiq. You should call it “chemistry”.’ Arjun tries for propriety.

  ‘And biology is called “bilge”.’ Sadiq yawns. ‘Can I go to the toilet?’

  Arjun takes Sadiq to the gents, offers to stay with him and is loftily waved away.

  Back at the table, he decides to risk a question. ‘Is this biochemistry offered at any university?’

  ‘Mr Randall says Cambridge.’ Murad says this in a way that indicates he understands Cambridge is some impossibly distant country where he will not go. ‘But there are others. Cardiff, Sussex, Leicester.’

  ‘Three A-levels. That’s the usual load, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ll have to take S-levels as well. It’s competitive.’ Murad’s voice is soft, as though he doesn’t want anyone to hear him talking about competing.

  The two years of brain-grinding drudgery required to take A-levels are bad enough. How will Murad handle scholarship exams?

  He clears his throat. ‘You want to take S-levels?’

  ‘Three A-levels and two S-levels.’

  Arjun coughs, sips his tea. ‘Murad, I have always said that you are a highly intelligent boy.’

  He ignores the lifting shoulder as Murad body-blocks the words.

  ‘I believe you can do this A-levels and S-levels.’ Arjun feels his language cracking apart under the strain. ‘Very hard work, but you can do it, isn’t it?’ He sounds like Sunila. He clears his throat. ‘What I am saying is that we are behind you all the way.’

  ‘Mr Randall runs a study group. After school. He’s coaching the S-level boys.’ Murad is breathless with imparting so much personal information. ‘He says he wants me to take S-level biology and chemistry. He says I can pass.’

  Arjun suppresses a smile of sheer pleasure at his son’s pride, at the acknowledgement of the teacher and the boy’s excitement over whatever this biochemistry may be.

  ‘Of course.’ Arjun empties his cup. ‘Of course you should take them. And of course you will pass.’

  ‘Hullo.’ Sadiq is back. ‘Can we have another cake, Uncle?’

  Arjun’s son. Going to university. ‘Go and choose the one you want.’ He lifts his chin at Murad. ‘You too, son.’ He hands over a pound note.

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’ Murad half-smiles.

  Arjun feels his chest grow with pride. A-levels and S-levels. Murad will be eighteen by the time he takes these exams. It’s all happening so quickly. He can report to Sunila that her silent son is going to an English university.

  He glances at his watch. There will be enough time to have fish and chips on the way to Haseena’s house. The boys come back and Murad gives Arjun the change. Murad tells Sadiq a joke and Sadiq hiccups with laughter. Arjun sits back, undoes the top button on his coat. It’s suddenly warmer.

 
They head back through the village, the boys wandering ahead. Arjun wonders if Murad sees a carthorse pulling a plough, a cricket game, a windmill with sails gently turning, Argue & Twist Solicitors, Ivan Huven – Baker, a young boy in a red shirt running away from a bull with a lowered head.

  They stop over the last narrow bridge as a steam train puffs underneath. Murad crouches as the train stops at the station. Arjun admires the way he straightens up in one effortless move, laughs at something Sadiq says and walks on towards the exit.

  The small train puffs more steam, emits a squeaky toot and trundles unevenly away across a field where four plastic ducks bob unconvincingly on a pond with a life-size leaf floating near the edge. Arjun waits while the last carriage finally disappears into a tunnel and turns to follow his son.

  ‌5

  ‌Inheriting the Gene Flaw

  January 1970

  ‘Put on something warmer. And not black. You’re too young to wear black. Pick a nice colour. Pink or something.’ Arjun watches his daughter stamp upstairs to change out of her black corduroys and black sweater. Tarani was never an easy child, but that’s nothing compared to how she is at thirteen. She hates the phrase ‘earliteen’. She hates anything he says to her.

  He calls up the stairs. ‘And don’t be long. We’re leaving in five minutes.’

  Sunila and Murad have gone to Pavi’s and he is to take Tarani with him to visit Haseena. The children have been fighting again. Murad, sixteen, mocks Tarani’s skinny, childish frame and the desperate way she counts the few hairs in her armpits. He wants to tell Murad, Let her be. But Murad has a new, fierce armour that repels everything that doesn’t immediately concern him. Obviously, good manners are no longer necessary.

  These days, Murad only has time for his bodybuilding. Arjun has heard the painful squeaking of springs behind Murad’s door and once saw the chest expander protruding from under the bed. Murad is making himself into a different person, one who will never have sand kicked in his face providing he actually makes it to a beach.