‘NSPCC?’ He’s thrown again.
‘The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. It’s a charity.’
‘Cruelty to children? What sort of cruelty to children?’ What he really means to ask is ‘Do you have cruelty to children here?’, the emphasis sharply on ‘here’. His dominant idea of cruelty to children revolves around child labour from where he comes — domestic servants, tea-shack boys, sometimes as little as six or seven, working sixteen-hour days for just two frugal meals and a hole to sleep in, beaten up mercilessly if they break a glass or spill tea.
‘Well. .’ she sighs, ‘where do I begin? Mostly domestic abuse, you know, people being violent to children, abusing them, physically or sexually, parental violence to children, battered children. .’
Her words get submerged under the loud pealing of the bells of Magdalen church tower. He has never heard it in this underground cellar bar before, or not consciously, but suddenly it is so loud it seems each ring is coursing through him. Funnily enough, there is no other sound, no bar hubbub, no hum of the other students, no music, just this extreme tolling, as though they are in the suspended moments of a film shot where background noise is eliminated to concentrate on the dialogue between the characters in focus.
‘. . telephone helpline for people to call in to report or seek information and advice, even a childline manned by specially trained counsellors. .’
Her words toll him back again. Sasha’s darts have formed a neat isosceles triangle around the bull’s eye but quite a distance from it and Martin has seized up with laughter at the sight. At the other end of the bar, Dave has just finished pulling a dark pint of Guinness and is now moving the glass in slow careful circles to make a shamrock on the foam with the last few drops from the tap.
Sarah continues, ‘We’re now campaigning for the total ban of smacking in schools. Corporal punishment has long gone, we hope, but even the residue, such as smacking pupils, or children at home, is unacceptable.’
Ritwik moves his left hand from the top of the table and the cold right one from around his pint glass and sits firmly on them: that will stop them from their sudden shaking. His voice is very steady when he asks, ‘Do parents not smack their children here occasionally?’
‘Well, there’s a big debate raging about it at the moment. Most parents seem to be of the view that a firm slap once in a while is no big deal. But we think that constitutes the fundamentals of abuse.’ Her words slip into slightly formal institutionalese; not quite jargon yet, but getting there.
‘You mean disciplining children counts as child abuse? Isn’t that a bit excessive?’
‘No, not at all. A child is a person with rights. Hitting her or him is an act of physical violence. It’s unacceptable. Besides, there are extreme cases of child abuse that is not sexual. You’ll be horrified to hear what some parents do to their children.’
No I won’t what do they do tell me tell me in graphic details tell me what they do.
‘These crimes never get reported because children are either inarticulate, accept this as the norm, are too scared to do anything, or just don’t know if or how anything can be done about it in the first place. It can be any or all of these factors working together.’
She notices something, just a small shift, something tinily riven, in the air between them, something so small as to be absent.
Almost.
She asks, ‘Are you OK?’
Yes, he is. Because he isn’t. Because he’s survived not being OK.
Bidisha Ghosh was the proudest mother in Jadavpur. Not only were her two boys fair, which drew appreciative comments from neighbours — Look at your boys, like two little sahibs — but they also went to an English-medium school, cementing further the comparison with sahib. But above all, they were known to be the two most perfectly disciplined boys around. Or, to shift the focus, Bidisha-di was the byword in Grange Road for good parenting. She ruled with an iron hand, like some furious goddess from the Hindu pantheon, quick to take offence and send down punishment. There was no woolliness about her, no indulgence; it was tough love, love like the grip of a vice. If it didn’t constrain and keep the boys within its jaws, they would grow up as spoilt, ill-educated trash like the loafers and chengras who hung out in street corners, whistled at the girls, smoked, drank and did no work. Vigilance, constant, unremitting vigilance: if she let her guard down for a split second, the boys would be ruined.
To this end, she had cultivated the persona of the ideal mother who was defined by her readiness to discipline and punish at the slightest hint of wayward behaviour. For what was love if it did not mould and reform? Love spoiled, punishment corrected. The heart could be of gold, but its appearance and expression had to be of tempered steel.
Everyone in the neighbourhood knew that the boys were being brought up in a household with four bums. Their uncles were the worst examples to any child: they hadn’t had the benefit of education; they were boneidle, sleeping in until lunchtime; they were unemployed freeloaders; they smoked and drank; Pratik had a gambling habit; it was suspected that Pratim was on brown sugar; they stole, lied, cheated, beat up their mother, sang Hindi film songs loudly and got into fights. Bidisha had had no choice in moving in here after they had to give up their flat in genteel Park Circus. She certainly didn’t have any power to contain her brothers’ behaviour and lifestyle, so she decided to concentrate on the children instead — if she couldn’t change their environment and make it wholesome for them, she could throw all her energy into making the boys impervious to such malign influences. She built a chinkless wall around Ritwik and Aritra to protect them from the fire all around. In the process, she shut out all the light and air as well.
Being a strict parent brought high marks from everyone who knew them. It was as though this whole act of bringing up the boys were being played out to a crowd of exacting judges and watchers whose every nod of approval, every pursed lip of criticism counted as plus or minus points. She was being watched and marked by this gallery, inside and outside; she had to perform well, win and walk off with the grand prize. So the more she ordered her boys in sharp, staccato bursts, the more this theatre audience approved, the more she barked and shouted, the more they were pleased. She was a hard mother, there was no pussyfooting and molly-coddling, no slipping up or cracks in the performance. She was lean, mean and streamlined; every inch of visible tenderness had been trimmed away like fat off meat. The only person left was the role itself.
Her ordinary tone of voice to the children was like whiplash. Get your books. Wake up. Go and have a bath all had the sharp report of a dead, dry twig breaking in silent forest floors. They were always orders, delivered with imperiousness and something approaching distaste, as if the boys had just been bought from a slave market; the spectators approved. And then there were threats articulated through clenched teeth and with rolling eyes: she managed to make ordinary situations a condition of cold, rib-stabbing menace. It’s nearly mid-day, I’ve been asking you to go and have a bath for the last hour, if you don’t go now, I’ll tear you to pieces. Her threats of violence got more and more baroque but they were the common currency of the Bengali household: I’ll batter your face with a shoe, I’ll lash you with the broomstick, or I’ll break every tooth in your face.