As Sweet as Honey (20 page)

One Saturday, when Simon asked her where she wanted to go, she said she was exhausted and wanted to stay put.

“I feel like we’ve opened all the presents at once, Simon, and now there’s all this debris, the boxes and the strings and ribbons and wrapping paper that needs to be put away.”

“There are still some boxes left.”

“Can’t we just hang on to them a bit longer, wait to open them?”

“London isn’t finite. No city is.”

“Let’s just stay in bed with the baby and eat toast.”

“Or let’s just let Oscar play a bit more in his bouncy seat.”

“Where did Asian women learn to lean their cheek on their hand? Is it inborn or learned?” asked Simon.

“Learned, obviously, but surely Western women do the same.”

“Not as often. They play with their hair.”

“Honestly, Simon, where do you get these stereotypes?”

“I think it must come from a natural and historical sense of contemplation.”

“Your prejudices?”

“Women and their cheeks and their hands.”

“There are all those paintings of women looking out of windows. The miniatures always show that. Queens or handmaidens, but sometimes I wonder if they aren’t just prostitutes displaying themselves?”

“Like in Amsterdam?”

“Simon, where
are
we going for the long weekend?”

“Amsterdam? To sample the wares?”

He played with her hair. “I was thinking of France.”

But the conversation was already being left behind, as they engaged themselves more seriously with hands and cheeks. Later, they lay next to one another, panting. It was usually at this point that Meterling went to sleep, even as Simon felt ready for another go. Now they held hands, idly stroking one another, waiting for Oscar to cry. Pibs did, but they ignored him, knowing there was food in the bowl, water in the dish.

“Do you think Pibs needs a companion cat?”

“Is that a way of asking if I want another baby?”

“No, I meant—that is, I really was thinking of Pibs. But do you want another baby?”

“Do you?”

“Well, yes. In a few years. Wait, you’re not pregnant, are you?”

Meterling laughed at his stricken face, and reassured him that she wasn’t. But she agreed that in a few years, they might think of another baby. They began to talk more seriously of where to go for the long weekend.

34

T
hey went south, getting an early start to beat the traffic, or at the very least, avoid gridlock. They drove toward Craywick, while Oscar squealed every time they passed sheep. They stopped once for lunch, admiring the countryside, exploring two churches, and ate cheese-and-pickle sandwiches at a local pub. By the time they reached their hotel toward dusk, they turned in, skipping dinner. They woke to the sunlight drifting into the room through the lace-covered curtains
and a racket of birdsong. It was chilly enough to light a fire, but instead, they wrapped themselves in quilts and ate breakfast on the terrace, slathering butter on hot toast, and drinking steaming cups of coffee.

“Let’s live here, Simon.”

“Okay,” he said, trying to feed Oscar mashed banana. He refused it. “Did you know birds macerate food for their young?”

“I mean it … one day. And yes, I thought everyone knew that.”

“Oh, really? Everyone?” he said, trying to feed her the banana and kiss her at the same time.

They explored the town on borrowed bicycles, visiting the pond that boasted enough ducks (that is, more than none) to cheer Oscar. Nearby, they stopped at a used-book store, which featured books cozily housed on wooden shelves, with the scent of lavender-honey tea permeating the air. Round tables held displays of local works and photographs from a time past. A vase of roses, anemones, and dahlias was next to the cash register, where a ginger cat was sleeping. The owner, Lucia, welcomed them, and offered them biscuits.

“I’m having my tea anyway.” She said this with a mysterious smile, murmuring something about Jaipur, about Udaipur. “And when I was a girl,” she continued, “I had a crush on Raj Kapoor. My name is Italian, but I grew up in France, and we watched all the Indian movies!”

So they had sat on faded upholstered chairs, drinking hot tea in big white cups, dunking biscuits like old friends. Lucia had owned the place for thirty years with her partner, she said, sounding almost surprised. Her smile was broad; this was what a successful woman looked like, thought Meterling, leaning
back against the crochet headrest. Later, humming “Aawara,” Lucia wrapped their purchases up in paper, while Meterling took a last look to see if by some strange coincidence she would find Neela Chandrashekar’s work. There was a selection of works by Indian and British-Indian authors, but most were the household names. As they said goodbye to Lucia, she reminded them to get an early start the next day.

“Where are we now, Simon?”

They had followed a trail and now stood in a meadow, wild with weed and bramble. Trees edged it in the distance. Some sheep grazed in the distance, too.

“Won’t the owner mind we’re on his land, Simon?”

“I think we’re okay to walk. Come, I’ll take Oscar.”

“It’s so peaceful.”

The sun was out, and unlike in town, it blazed bright. Meterling took off her shoes and socks to feel the cold, damp earth. It was packed tight, dormant.

“What do you see in the distance, Meti?”

“A house.”

“Your house.”

“My house?”

“Your house. Why wait any longer?”

“I don’t know. It holds so much story, you understand … past lives. Archer’s life, Susan’s—yours, too.”

“Only for the holidays, really. Shall we take a look? Dispel some ghosts?”

“Don’t joke, Simon. I feel as if I’ve received something I was not meant to have.”

They stood in the fields, her three fields. She wondered what the gardens looked like. Squeezing Simon’s hand, she wondered
if it was time after all to look. A slight wind stirred the grass around them. She would not plant rye, she reminded herself with a start.

They returned to the car to drive up the gravel road to the house. It really was a manor, run-down, with boarded-up windows. Large stone Ali Baba pots holding overgrown boxwood and autumn leaves and pine needles flanked the shallow steps to the door, whose knocker was an incongruous elephant’s head.

“Ganesha,” mused Simon, as he tried the key he drew from his pocket.

The old house had good bones, built in 1770, a classic Georgian with eccentric touches added in the 1900s. One such touch was the Corinthian columns that acted as decorative balconies over the second-storey windows; another was the cupola, added as an afterthought, with a widow’s walk that looked out over the fields.

Sheets had been thrown over most of the furniture, and the uncovered ones were hideously threadbare. Mice must nest amid the stuffing, thought Meterling, gingerly making her way through the rooms. A staircase, thick with dust, led upstairs, but Simon cautioned her against exploring it, citing safety. Nevertheless, giving him the baby, Meterling went up. Bedrooms and bathrooms and studies, each filled with a scent of damp and discard. The windows caught her attention, large ones that provided views of the fields, of the trees and sky. She could imagine us—that is, Sanjay, Rasi, and me—lounging about during country rainstorms, reading on the window seats, Pibs curled up against our feet.

The staircase felt solid as she descended, the wood thick with dust and grime.

“A place for dreaming, for dreams,” she said.

“I’m surprised no one’s squatting in it,” said Simon. “It’s been empty for years. There were tenants for a while, but not for a decade at least. Hard to believe, isn’t it? It’s like a mirage, really.”

“ ‘Squatting’?”

“Living illegally.”

“I wouldn’t blame them. This big old house needs people in it.”

“What do you think?”

“It would take an awful lot of work.”

“You could have a garden. You could invite Mina and the other kids to come stay over their holidays.”

“You’ve thought about it.”

“It’s here, and it’s yours. It’s the one thing immigrants never have, land and property. It’s what leads to all the feelings of inadequacy and trespass.”

“What about your job?”

“I could commute. I could even stay in London four days—”

“While I am a kind of house widow, your paramour in the country, hidden from view while you batch it up in the city?”

“Meterling!”

“I’m sorry.” She flushed. “I want to live with you, Simon, not in a big, drafty house that’s full of ghosts.”

“Of course we’ll live together. You can sell the house, get rid of it.”

“I wonder if we could exorcise the ghosts?”

“What?”

“If we do keep it, I mean, do you think we could get a priest to come and bless the house?”

“Why not? I knew an Indian family who bought a house and had a ceremony with a cow. A farmer lent them a cow.”

“The cow represents prosperity, so you need it at a house blessing. There are farmers around, it seems.”

“So what do you think? We could easily borrow a cow.”

“I don’t know. Simon, I think I see—”

But at that moment, Oscar began to cry lustily, and if Meterling were to confess to Simon that she was visited by Archer’s ghost, it would have to wait for another day.

Traffic caught them. What they had missed on their way in held them fiercely on their way back. Well, traffic—you may as well enjoy it, there is nothing to be done about it. Simon was one of those rare men who were unbothered by waiting, because, he said, it was out of their control. If one was going to be delayed, then so be it. Meterling was glad she had packed apples and cheese, and had tea in a thermos. They unfastened their seat belts and listened to the odd bursts of car horns.

Oscar began to fuss, and Meterling quickly got into the backseat to change him.

“Simon, did you ever think this is the way it would be, back when you were twenty-one?”

“You mean nappies and traffic and you?”

“Oscar and traffic and me.”

“You do know ‘nappies’ is code for Oscar? In fact, maybe we should change his name. Nappies Forster. Or better, Diapers Forster—that’s a billionaire’s name for you. He could support us in style in our old age.”

Getting no reply from Meterling, Simon added, “It couldn’t have turned out better, for me, because I’m in this, all of it, Oscar and traffic and you.”

The cars began to move again. In the other lane, they saw a row of policemen sweep away the glass slowly from the scene of an accident. They reached London in three and a half hours.

35

S
ome days in town, Meterling and Oscar dropped in at Lyle & Assam’s Cafetiere. Mostly, they sold fine cigars, but a sign advertising Italian coffee led her in the first day, stroller and all. It didn’t smell like cigars inside, exactly, more of wood. Behind glass cases were the cigars, from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, everywhere but Cuba. Beautiful wooden boxes lined with more wood held the smokes, while the discarded boxes were scattered about. Ever since childhood, Meterling loved cigar boxes. Grandfather had a supply of them, and she would run her hand over the smooth wood and the fragile paper labels, imprinted with names like “Royale Jamaica” and “Arturo Fuente y Cia.” She used to store shells and treasures in them, later pencils. While Grandfather had a rare smoke, she’d sit by him, a pencil in her mouth, imitating him and keeping out of sight of Grandmother.

An Iranian man with a curious tilt of his head and a kind smile looked at her and Oscar from behind the counter.

“You have coffee?” she asked, hesitantly, thinking that maybe the sign was a code for something else. She had not yet got used to the advertisements for prostitutes in the friendly red telephone boxes. What did “coffee” stand for? Hashish? Arms?

It meant cappuccino, in a small porcelain cup, with cinnamon. Gratefully, she warmed her hands and throat, as the man came around to coo at Oscar. This was Assam, a thin man whose business partner was named Lyle. Lyle was American,
and was largely MIA, a silent partner, being an alpine skier whose father financed the store’s start with money from his dry goods stores in Peoria, Illinois. Assam ran the business, Lyle visited six times a year, and they were the best of friends.

They could not afford to call the place simply Assam’s, he said. “Half the people walking by already think the store is a front for arms traders,” he said as Meterling blushed.

“Not you? Come on, you’re Indian.”

Island, she corrected, thus beginning a lasting friendship, her first in London.

Lately, though, Assam had become more voluble in his speech, bemoaning the lack of clientele, speaking of closing the shop.

“This country eats you alive, Mrs. Forster. Sometimes I just want to get out.”

“But why?”

He didn’t reply, and she did not know what to say except cheerful things that rang false.

“Assam-ji, why don’t you come to dinner this weekend with the family?”

He smiled ruefully. “We’re going to visit my wife’s parents in Northumberland. But you must throw a party, Mrs. Forster. It is Diwali, after all, and it will lift your spirits. We like to entertain and eat, we Easterners, and if we don’t, we will wilt like flowers.”

She finished her coffee and paid, checking on Oscar and readying to leave the store.

“Don’t wilt like a flower, Mrs. Forster!”

36

S
he
would
give a dinner party. It would give her something to do. She left a message with the receptionist for Dr. Morgan to call her. A simple Diwali supper (for it was in four days), she decided, four at the table, for Dr. Morgan had a ring on her finger, not counting Oscar. When the doctor accepted her invitation, Meterling began to plan. She went over a dozen menus in her head, knowing she was overdoing it. Whenever this much overwrought thought went into cooking and planning, the meal was bound to come out unspectacularly. So, she switched to ironing the red cloth napkins from the Sarasti factory on Pi, and then the tablecloth. She polished the silver Simon’s mother had given them, and checked the glasses. Her mother-in-law had also given her candlesticks—what was she thinking? A supper for four? She had to invite Simon’s parents—why hadn’t he said anything?—and she would invite Susan, too. If Susan brought a date, that meant eight at dinner, not counting Oscar, who would be fed beforehand. Eight! Why not? Plus Assam and his family … but no, they were going out of town, to visit Niloo’s family. A party! Well, what had she been doing, after all, getting acclimated in this new land, but to throw a glittering dinner in appreciation? Semi-glittering. Casual, really. But it was Diwali, so semi-glittering it was.