‘Mrs Iqbal… just five minutes of your time. Magid’s really very upset about all of this. He’s worried about Millat and so am I. Just five minutes, Mrs Iqbal, please.’
Alsana didn’t rise from her seat. She simply continued along the hem, keeping her eye on the black thread as it shuttled from one cog to the next and down into the PVC, pressing the pedal of the Singer furiously, as if kicking the flank of a horse she wished to ride into the sunset.
‘Well, you may as well let her in,’ said Samad wearily, emerging from the lounge, where Joyce’s persistence had disturbed his appreciation of The Antiques Roadshow. (Aside from The Equalizer, starring that great moral arbiter Edward Woodward, it was Samad’s favourite programme. He had spent fifteen long televisual years waiting for some cockney housewife to pull a trinket of Mangal Pande’s out of her handbag. Oh, Mrs Winterbottom, now this is very exciting. What we have here is the barrel of the musket belonging to.. . He sat with the phone under his right hand so that in the event of such a scenario he could phone the BBC and demand the said Winterbottom’s address and asking price. So far only Mutiny medals and a pocket watch belonging to Havelock, but still he watched.)
He peered down the hallway at the shadowy form of Joyce through the glass and scratched his testicles, sadly. Samad was in his television mode: garish V-neck, stomach swelling like a tight hot-water bottle beneath it, long moth-eaten dressing gown, and a pair of paisley boxer-shorts from which two stick legs, the legacy of his youth, protruded. In his television mode action escaped him. The box in the corner of the room (which he liked to think of as an antique of its kind, encased in wood and on four legs like some Victorian robot) sucked him in and sapped all energy.
‘Well, why don’t you do something, Mr Iqbal? Make her go away. Instead of standing there with your flabby gut and your tiny willy on display.’
Samad grunted and tucked the cause of all his troubles, two huge hairy balls and a defeated-looking limp prick, back into the inner lining of his shorts.
‘She won’t go away,’ he murmured. ‘And if she does, she will only return with reinforcements.’
‘But why? Hasn’t she caused enough trouble?’ said Alsana loudly, loud enough for Joyce. ‘She has her own family, no? Why does she not go and for a change mess them up? She has boys, four boys? How many boys does she want? How bloody many?’
Samad shrugged, went into the kitchen drawer and fished out the earphones that could be plugged into the television and thus short-circuit the outside world. He, like Marcus, had disengaged. Leave them, was his feeling. Leave them to their battles.
‘Oh thank you,’ said Alsana caustically, as her husband retreated to his Hugh Scully and his pots and guns. ‘Thank you, Samad Miah, for your oh so valuable contribution. This is what the men do. They make the mess, the century ends, and they leave the women to clear up the shit. Thank you, husband!’
She increased the speed of her sewing, dashing out the seam, progressing down the inner leg, while the Sphinx of the letterbox continued to ask unanswerable questions.
‘Mrs Iqbal… please can we talk? Is there any reason why we shouldn’t talk? Do we have to behave like children?’
Alsana began to sing.
‘Mrs Iqbal? Please. What can this possibly achieve?’
Alsana sang louder.
‘I must tell you,’ said Joyce, strident as ever, even through three panels of wood and double glazing, ‘I’m not here for my health. Whether you want me to be involved or not, I am, you see? I am.’
Involved. At least that was the right word, Alsana reflected, as she lifted her foot off the pedal, and let the wheel spin a few times alone before coming to a squeaky halt. Sometimes, here in England, especially at bus-stops and on the daytime soaps, you heard people say ‘We’re involved with each other,’ as if this were a most wonderful state to be in, as if one chose it and enjoyed it. Alsana never thought of it that way. Involved happened over a long period of time, pulling you in like quicksand. Involved is what befell the moon-faced Alsana Begum and the handsome Samad Miah one week after they’d been pushed into a Delhi breakfast room together and informed they were to marry. Involved was the result when Clara Bowden met Archie Jones at the bottom of some stairs. Involved swallowed up a girl called Ambrosia and a boy called Charlie (yes, Clara had told her that sorry tale) the second they kissed in the larder of a guest house. Involved is neither good, nor bad. It is just a consequence of living, a consequence of occupation and immigration, of empires and expansion, of living in each other’s pockets… one becomes involved and it is a long trek back to being uninvolved. And the woman was right, one didn’t do it for one’s health. Nothing this late in the century was done with health in mind. Alsana was no dummy when it came to the Modern Condition. She watched the talk shows, all day long she watched the talk shows – My wife slept with my brother, My mother won’t stay out of my boyfriend’s life – and the microphone holder, whether it be Tanned Man with White Teeth or Scary Married Couple, always asked the same damn silly question: But why do you feel the need… ? Wrong! Alsana had to explain it to them through the screen. You blockhead; they are not wanting this, they are not willing it – they are just involved, see? They walk IN and they get trapped between the revolving doors of those two v’s. Involved. The years pass, and the mess accumulates and here we are. Your brother’s sleeping with my ex-wife’s niece’s second cousin. Involved. Just a tired, inevitable fact. Something in the way Joyce said it, involved – wearied, slightly acid – suggested to Alsana that the word meant the same thing to her. An enormous web you spin to catch yourself.
‘OK, OK, lady, five minutes, only. I have three catsuits to do this morning come hell or high water.’
Alsana opened the door and Joyce walked into the hallway, and for a moment they surveyed their opposite number, guessing each other’s weight like nervous prize fighters prior to mounting the scales. They were definitely a match for each other. What Joyce lacked in chest, she made up in bottom. Where Alsana revealed a weakness in delicate features – a thin and pretty nose, light eyebrows – she compensated with the huge pudge of her arms, the dimples of maternal power. For, after all, she was the mother here. The mother of the boys in question. She held the trump card, should she be forced to play it.
‘Okey-dokey, then,’ said Alsana, squeezing through the narrow kitchen door, beckoning Joyce to follow.
‘Is it tea or is it coffee?’
‘Tea,’ said Joyce firmly. ‘Fruit if possible.’
‘Fruit not possible. Not even Earl Grey is possible. I come from the land of tea to this godawful country and then I can’t afford a proper cup of it. P.G. Tips is possible and nothing else.’
Joyce winced. ‘P.G. Tips, please, then.’
‘As you wish.’
The mug of tea plonked in front of Joyce a few minutes later was grey with a rim of scum and thousands of little microbes flitting through it, less micro than one would have hoped. Alsana gave Joyce a moment to consider it.
‘Just leave it for a while,’ she explained gaily. ‘My husband hit a water pipe when digging a trench for some onions. Our water is a little funny ever since. It may give you the running shits or it may not. But give it a minute and it clears. See?’ Alsana gave it an unconvincing stir, sending yet larger chunks of unidentified matter bubbling up to the surface. ‘You see? Fit for Shah Jahan himself!’