Homesick Read online

“I am just saying,” Shamini begins, but the other women stand behind Nandini.

  Dorothy draws a breath. “You know, Shamini—I have been here longer than most of you. Do you know, Hugo and I came in ’62? And when we got here, it was the black people who made us feel welcome. Look at me—I am almost white. And Hugo, he is white, after all. But our accents, our clothes—people turned away. Even at church. And who became our friends? The black people we met in our building. That child is a lost child …” but she cannot go on. She does not understand Shamini’s objections.

  Gertie and May come into the kitchen to wash their hands, followed by Kumar, Shamini’s cousin. He is holding Lolly by the hand.

  “Lolly, come here, darling,” Nandini says. Chitra strokes her head as she walks past. Her hair is short, like a boy’s, parted at the side with a diamante clip pushing it back behind her ear. A short yellow dress and tights, and strangely, as she approaches, she has to tug her hand away from the drunk cousin, and his hand trails down the dress behind her. All the women but Shamini look at him, and Dorothy clucks him away. Renee Chatterjee calls down the corridor, “They’re trying to get Rita to play the piano! The singing! I love the singing!”

  “Lolly,” Nandini says, “this is May. Take her now and go and play upstairs with the others, darling.”

  Lolly approaches May and shrugs at her. May follows, and the party of women laugh, following Renee’s voice into the corridor and to the sitting room, where already the chords are being played of the song about Surangini and the fish man. Nandini can hear Victor’s raised voice in the dining room, and the laughter that follows, and she smiles.

  •

  Preethi and Clare are drunk by eleven. But not too drunk, because Vita, Nil’s sister, has joined them and so has Jenny Basit, and they have shared the bottle of wine, giggled about boys, and talked about sex, and Clare has told them what a blow job is, and they have all agreed that it is something that they will never do, not for all the money in the world.

  “Imagine even holding one,” Preethi says, and they break into hysteria, but it is false. It is a party, and they are drunk. Clare has cigarettes and offers them around. Preethi and Jenny refuse, but Vita takes one, and they all stick their heads out of Preethi’s window to look up at the moon and continue talking. The party has slipped leisurely into the front garden, where men stand with drinks and cigarettes, and their smoke reaches Preethi and Jenny, Clare and Vita. They stay quiet to listen, because there is an urgency to the voices, and Preethi sees it is her father and a beautiful young man talking.

  “There are other ways,” her father says.

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Killing, beating, all of this—it is not the answer. Forgiveness—that is the answer,” Victor says.

  The young man throws his head back and laughs, then drinks down his drink. “Forgiveness? What has your forgiveness done for you? You think the way things are in Sri Lanka is down to the Sinhalese? The Tamils didn’t do so badly under the British, did they? Should we have forgiven after they left? Where would we be now? Still under Tamil rule, that is where, and no more Sri Lanka,” he says, clicking his fingers. “And you here—what will your forgiveness do for you here? The whites hate you!”

  Clare shouts down, “I don’t hate you, Victor! I love you!” and Preethi elbows her, and Vita chokes as she tries to smother her cigarette puffs so her uncles don’t see her.

  “You see?” Victor laughs, pointing up at the window. “It is nearly midnight. We don’t want to argue now, do we?” He puts his hand out to the young man and rests it on his shoulder. “Come, come. I will get you another drink. Come and sing,” he says.

  Preethi hates her father for this. She hates his appeasement and his gentility.

  “Oi,” she shouts down, after the men walk away, “leave my dad alone!” and the four of them laugh again.

  Chitra calls up, “Silly girls! Wherefore art thou, silly girls?”

  They giggle, and choke, and watch other people in the dark—Hugo kissing Dorothy’s hand as he leads her back into the house; Richard and Chitra easing their way down the hill, arm in arm. “Bye, Aunty!” Preethi shouts after them.

  “D’you think she does?” Clare says, and they all squeal at the thought of Chitra and Richard going home to bed.

  “ ’Course she does.”

  “What, blow jobs?”

  “Err, don’t,” Vita says.

  Preethi hangs out the window still. “It’s a beautiful night,” she says. “On such a night as this, did fair Troilus … what is it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Preethi,” Clare says.

  Vita finishes her cigarette and throws the stub down onto the road. “D’you know what I want to do? I want to dance.”

  •

  “Singing, singing,” Gertie says.

  “I love it,” Renee Chatterjee replies. They have never met before, and although they would have a million things in common, neither of them has bothered to find out more about the other. It is too loud, and Gertie is out of sorts. She wants to tell someone: tell them how much May means to her, how wonderful a child she is, how they sit next to each other on the settee and sometimes the child’s hand will stroke her own, and the companionship of it means more than anything. The singing stops. Men gather around the piano, their hips thrust forward, elbows gathered to their sides, their hands awaiting the next clap. Nil brings Rita a drink, leaves it on the top of the piano. Kumar leans onto Rita’s shoulder, and Mr. Basit pulls him back, pushes him out of the inner circle.

  “I have to take the child back,” Gertie says to Renee. Renee follows her line of sight. Through the French windows beyond the piano, children can be seen running in and out of the bushes, playing hide-and-seek. Lolly and May hold hands, and Deirdre chases them. Although it is dark, she can see May’s face, wide with joy, suddenly just a normal child.

  “Why?” Renee asks.

  “Her mother wants her back. She hates her because she is black. But she wants her back.”

  “The mother is white?”

  “Yes, and the father was black. She expected the child to be like her.” Gertie wants to tell of the scars on the child’s back where the mother bleached her.

  “Does the child know?”

  “No. I don’t know how to tell her …” and her voice breaks. Renee takes her hand.

  “Then don’t tell her. Just take her.”

  Gertie stares, wide-eyed. “That would be a sin.”

  Mrs. Chatterjee pats her hand. “You enjoy each other for the last few days. She will remember you, you know that.”

  “Her mother hates her. And I have to take her back.”

  “Never mind, never mind. Life is hard for us all,” Renee says, and as they sit watching the singing, Renee taps Gertie’s hand in time, as Gertie dabs at her eyes with her dead husband’s white handkerchief.

  •

  The ghetto blaster is best in their parents’ bedroom, Rohan and Preethi decide. Clare is flirting shamelessly with Rohan, her arm around his neck as he leans down to the deck to put Michael Jackson on. As he presses down the PLAY button, “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” begins, and he twirls her into the room, first with her arm, then pulling her back into a crotch thrust by the waist. Clare is thrilled, and so is Vita, who has been in love with Rohan since she was born, she thinks. Nil sits on the bed, watching, and Preethi calls to Gehan and his friends. Clare goes back to the blaster and turns it up. The children have run in from the garden and are now outside the bedroom, looking in curiously. They watch as Rohan and Nil, Preethi, Vita, Jenny, and Clare all start to dance wildly, their arms in the air, their feet pounding double time to the beat. On the stairs, a late arrival: Mohan has run up the hill from the station in order to be with his family for the New Year. It is five to twelve.

  •

  Victor stops everything: “It is nearly midnight! Let’s count down! Ten! Nine! Eight!” Before he can continue, the noise from upstairs throbs the counts for him. “What is that?”
he says, but he knows it is his children.

  “Another song!” Kumar shouts, but as he shouts he falls over.

  “Three! Two! One!” Wesley says, and then, “Happy New Year!” and everyone shouts “Happy New Year!” to each other, and there are kisses all around Victor, but the music goes on upstairs, so that as the people kiss each other in his sitting room and their colours mix like a kaleidoscope into smoky patterns, he becomes angry. He remembers home, the New Year’s when he was a teenager, the faces he kissed there, the night heat and rain, and his mother’s orchids, their silhouettes in the moonlight. He remembers the smell of the warmth, of drying coconut and rice. But he remembers also his father’s stinging switch, his mother’s face turned away. He wants to get to Nandini, because he is all out of it: of the party, of the friends, of his children. Nowhere he can find home, but if he found Nandini, it would be there, in her, and he would be safe again. He looks for pinks, for mauves.

  •

  The dancing does not stop. They show off to each other. They dance, brothers and sisters together, they dance because they can. They are exhausted, but they push on, they push each other on, because they are new, they are the ones.

  •

  “What to do?” Siro says to Nandini. “She is determined to marry him, what to do?”

  “Good. Let her make a good marriage,” Nandini says. Wesley and Victor sit with them in the dining room. Many people have gone. Gertie and her brother sit on the opposite side of the table.

  “Good, good. These children will never go back,” Gertie says. “Let them make marriages here.”

  “But with white fellows?” her brother says.

  “Why not?” Gertie asks sharply. “You think once you give them all this, you can take them back there, take it all away?”

  “Why not?” Wesley asks. “They can get used to anything. They are not English. They are ours.”

  “What rubbish!” Nandini says, and Siro agrees with a nodding of her quiet head.

  “What is their mother tongue now?” the brother says.

  “What does it matter?” Victor says.

  “Language—it is important. What is their mother tongue?”

  “Ask me what is mine,” Victor says. “It is the same as theirs. We speak in the language we live in. It is not important.” He sees the yellow fire, as if it were dangerous, this man, dangerous.

  “What language do you dream in?” the brother asks.

  “Dream?” Wesley answers for Victor. “We live in our dreams. We do not need to dream.” They all laugh.

  The children come downstairs. Vita sits on Wesley’s knee. Preethi throws her arm around Victor.

  “What is your mother tongue?” the brother says to them both. Clare leans against the doorway. Preethi shrugs. Vita says, “Oh, my God, are you arguing about that stuff again?”

  “Do you want to know? I will show you,” Nandini says, and she elbows Siro, and the two of them together poke their tongues out, catching the tips with their fingers. Nandini crosses her eyes. Victor laughs, but he wants to cry.

  “We belong nowhere,” he says. “But if we belong anywhere, it is here. I have chosen here.” He stands. “We have chosen here. And that is it,” he says, flicking his wrist up as if tossing an imaginary cricket ball into the air. “We are here.”

  •

  When everyone is finally gone, and the children are asleep, he and Nandini go to bed. They talk of the brother, of Kumar and stupid Shamini. They gossip and laugh, but when the light is off, he turns onto his side and kisses Nandini on the forehead, on the nose, on the lips. He says, “I was homesick for you,” and she laughs and says, “Silly, you were drunk,” as she rolls over and tucks herself into him, pulling his arm around her, her husband, her husband.

  The Bottle of Whisky

  Allsorts!” Basit hears him shout, the young one in the cellar. They call him Allsorts, and it makes him angry, but they all have sweetie names. This makes Rita laugh, when he tells her their sweet names, as if they were not the bastard, nasty fellows he knows them to be. She says, “Sweet names, as if they were sweet on each other!” He loves Rita, loves her joy, the way she has taken him on, the way she wipes her hand across his forehead when he’s angry. The way she loves his boy, his grown-up son, Ali: taking him to work at the hotel, getting him a job so he’s safe away from the men he works with.

  It’s not real work, not the way Basit worked in Sri Lanka. Over there, he pushed along in his father’s tailoring business, machine-sewing sarongs with a pedal Singer. He drank and gambled. The black sheep. They sent him to England as soon as he had earned the fare. Off the boat he looked like everybody else, but now he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror of the club: grey shiny suit, sharp as broken glass; hair slicked back in a quiff; white shirt, thin black tie, jacket buttons done up; a cigarette dangling from his lips; and even though they’re inside, the thin sunglasses.

  “Allsorts!” the man calls from the cellar.

  “Yes, yes,” he says obsequiously, as if startled to hear it.

  “Come here, you wog,” the man says. It’s just what they say. “Wily oriental gentleman,” the boss said it meant. But to Basit, wogs are the black guys. It is short for “golliwog,” and though the black clubs are where he goes when he’s world-sore, unhappy, seeking out the friendships of his first days off the boat, he doesn’t want them confusing him with blacks. He’s not black. He’s a Sri Lankan, a Muslim, from Colombo, not the sticks, his parents from a good family … he said it at the tables once, and one of the big bosses said, “You’re nothing here, mate. You’re what we say, all right?” And the other one started laughing and said, “Here, your name’s Basit, right? What about we call him Allsorts?” And they all laughed, and he laughed with them, because he was grateful for the job.

  The man is stuck in the cellar. He’s trying to lift a box, looks like a tea chest.

  “What you want me to do?” he says. The man looks up; he’s no more than a boy, really. They call him Bullseye because he has a glass eye, an accident when he was doing his national service.

  “We’ve got to leg it. They’ll be coming soon,” Bullseye says, and he looks pale.

  “Who?” He doesn’t understand why they are here. It’s a small club, all locked up, but Bullseye has a key.

  “Look, boss said come over, get this box, and leg it, so that’s what we’re going to do, but you got to give me a hand, all right?”

  He can’t help himself, he nods his head from left to right, that up-and-down sideways agreement that was silent acquiescence at home. Bullseye starts to laugh, a little snot shooting from his nose. “You look like a fucking coolie when you do that,” he says, but he means it kindly. Basit moves in to help him, looks at the situation. The stairs down to the cellar are rickety, riddled with worm and shredding off in pl aces. The ch est is too big for two people to negotiate up the steps.

  “Let us empty it?” he says.

  “No, mate, boss says we leave it. Nothing to be disturbed. Secret stuff in there.”

  When he got off the boat, he had one suitcase, brown leather, which his father gave him. A khaki shirt, brown trousers, and one brown cotton jacket, all of which his father had made on the Singer machine. He headed the way others headed, on the train from Tilbury and then toward the East End. London yielded little. He followed a Muslim once but lost him in the narrow alleyways. His very first night he spent by the river on a bench. He had never felt so cold. But the sun coming up over the Thames was the shivering sunshine of his future: a paradox, the chilly sun, the whiteness, the clear air of it all. This was his home now, this illogical island. It was his, he decided that day, and when he stretched his creaking limbs and stood, he found he had grown, and the world so large, so enormous, new and shiny, was inviting.

  Bullseye is jammed on the stairs. He can’t move up because his hips are grinding backward against the rickety stair rail. He can’t move down, although his right leg has some traction.

  “If you’d helped,�
�� he says to Allsorts.

  Basit looks at the boy-man and tries not to laugh. His son, Ali, is about the same age, that indefinable age when boys start to become men, the age when they fall in love, are sent off to war. Ali is cleverer than this boy.

  “Wait, will you,” he says. He cocks his head, looks down into the cellar. “We must empty the crate.”

  “No. Boss says no,” Bullseye says.

  “What is your name?”

  “Why?”

  Basit shrugs. “I don’t like these names the boss gives us. What did your mother call you?”

  “Terence. Me sister calls me Terry.”

  He had never known a Terry. It sounded like the name of a woman. The friends he knew were Victors, Harrys, Eddies, Johns. His own name—not even Rita calls him by his own name: he is Basit to Rita, and to his friends.

  “Terry,” he says, trying the sound, disliking it. “Terry, you can move?”

  “No,” Bullseye says sullenly.

  “Ah.” He looks around for something to lever with. Only round-backed chairs, and now he focuses on the room, they too are old, worn. “Then,” he says, wringing out the word into many sounds, “we must empty the crate.”

  Bullseye says nothing. It is his fault, but Basit knows it will be blamed on him if there is no good outcome. So far, he has only had good outcomes. He has worked for these people for three years, and he covers his back, looks around, triple-guesses every situation. He will not step wrong: the big glittery world he lives in will not break, because he will not let it.

  “It is nailed down?” Bullseye says nothing. “Terry,” he says sharply, and he hears his father’s voice.

  “Yes,” Bullseye says. “I’ve got pins and needles.”

  “What is this?” Pins and needles: he thinks of his grandfather, pins in his mouth; his father, pins cushioning at his womanly chest, maybe entering his skin and he wouldn’t have noticed.

  Bullseye doesn’t reply. Basit walks down the stairs. He tries the box lid, and it is tight on. He tries to move it this way and that, to a sudden shout from Bullseye: “Oi! That hurts!”