Gravel Heart Read online

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  I was frequently at home alone with Auntie Asha and the children. If she needed me downstairs she called for me to amuse the children or to help in the kitchen. It pleased her when I asked questions about cooking. Unlike my mother, Auntie Asha was a painstaking cook, trying new recipes that she had read about or meals that they had eaten when they were out, and I sometimes stood in the kitchen watching and listening as she went about her work. My mother, on the other hand, hardly ever varied her menu, and cooked the same meals week after week, only changing her routine if there was a shortage. The sameness was sometimes wearying.

  Auntie Asha had her favourite subjects, which were mostly herself or the children. She talked to me about her youth, about the boarding school in Suffolk – the best time of her life – about her vacations in Dublin and Paris, and, when she was in the mood, about how in love Amir and she were in those days. She spoke about her father, who was no longer in the government and whom I had never met but had seen often on TV. She mentioned her brother Hakim whom I had never met either and whom I loathed with calm detachment. He is practically your step-father, she said, and I did my best not to react. She talked about Uncle Amir and my mother, approaching and retreating, hiding something, the stories varying as she circled events and narrated them in their best light. Oh once we almost got into trouble, she said, but she collected herself and said no more and I wondered what it was she was struggling with and whether it was to do with me. Sometimes she paused in what she was saying and looked at me wonderingly, and then I tried hard to look as harmless as possible and for a while I played the fool. I learnt to ask questions, not wanting to know too much, not caring if the same story was told again and again, flattering her when I was required to and slowly I gathered together tantalising fragments of a story that still did not come into focus.

  I did not think she always told me the truth, and was convinced from her tone at times that she was lying. I did not know if there was any reason to lie or if she was doing it out of habit. I thought she trusted me because I was obedient and spent so much time with the children, the royal infants as I thought of them, whose glittering futures in glamorous professions were already assured if their parents had anything to do with it.

  The last traces of the awe I once felt for Uncle Amir were gone, and I had learnt to beware his compulsion to dictate and control, and to escape the suffocating family life he required me to be part of. He probably knew he had lost me. It is impossible to disguise such treachery. I was now quite familiar and secure in London streets and did things with friends at the weekend, mostly playing a football game or going to central London for the afternoon or else West to nowhere in particular, or sitting tight in my room reading or listening to music. I was missing most of my classes and had exhausted my dutiful labour at the material and now only felt resentful and inadequate as I struggled to learn things I had no interest in. When I was scheduled for my most unbearable classes, I found a secluded corner in the college library and buried my head in novels. At some point I knew I was adrift and I understood that what I was doing would take me years to put right but I could not do anything about it. I hid this knowledge from everyone including myself. I ignored the pathetic teenager inside me who was sinking into paralysis. When Uncle Amir questioned me, I lied. I rarely attended classes and no longer completed assignments, and in the end the teachers stopped bothering me.

  One Sunday afternoon in March, a few months before the examinations were due to take place, when I had made myself completely wretched for weeks with my derelictions, when I was beginning to feel nauseous with anxiety and self-hatred, I decided to come clean. I did not really decide there and then, it took me several days of silent debate before I was able to speak out. It was a warm afternoon. Uncle Amir and I were sitting on the patio after lunch while Auntie Asha was on the lawn with the children, building a tent out of some old sheets.

  He turned in my direction at some point and I blurted out: ‘I can’t take the examinations. I don’t want to do Business Studies. It was a mistake. I have no ability for the work.’

  He looked at me in surprise and did not say anything for a moment. I was afraid I was going to burst into tears or something stupid like that. ‘Come inside,’ he said, getting to his feet. I followed him into his office and shut the door behind me. There was no need for the world to hear him abusing me. Uncle Amir examined me for a moment longer, frowning, as if he would be able to understand what I said better from my appearance. ‘What does this mean? You were doing well. What’s happened?’

  ‘I struggle constantly with these subjects. I have no interest in them and I don’t have the talent. I find the work so difficult to understand, so boring,’ I said, hearing the whine in my voice but feeling too miserable to suppress it. So boring, just like a child. ‘I don’t see how I can go on to study this sort of thing for the next three years. I don’t have the skills for it. What is the point of struggling for the next two months to pass examinations that will be of no use to me?’

  Uncle Amir stared at me as I spoke, a look of pained surprise on his face. He spoke to me, reasoned with me: don’t give up, unexpected things happen all the time, don’t think they don’t. He tried to cajole me into continuing, flattering my talents and my capacity for work, and then impatience overcame him and he exploded. ‘Don’t be such an idiot,’ he shouted. ‘Of course you’ll take the exams. Do you think life is easy? You don’t have the talent! What is all this talent rubbish? The only talent you need is hard work. We’ll talk about alternative careers later. For now you just stop this whimpering and get your arse in gear. You can’t give up after all this time, after all this expense, after all I’ve done to bring you here and to look after you.’ The room quivered with his indignation. His mouth was opening and closing as if he was gasping for air, as if his rage had taken him unawares. I could not prevent my lips from trembling. It was not from fear of pain but from the tension his rage provoked in me.

  ‘I won’t pass the exams,’ I said carefully, to disguise the quivering of my lips. Uncle Amir stiffened, restraining himself. ‘I can’t study this material,’ I continued slowly. ‘I’ve been missing classes all term. I haven’t completed assignments for a long time. It’s pointless.’

  Uncle Amir looked at me without speaking for a moment, his face slowly swelling. Then when it seemed as if he would start shouting again, he took a deep breath and turned his back on me. They must train them to do that in diplomat school. After a few seconds he turned round and, in a calm hard-edged voice, said, ‘You impudent little shit, you will do as I say, and you will go back to class and revise every day and pass your exams or I will crack your head open. Who do you think you are? You must have inherited some idiot genes from your father. Go up to your room and get started on your revision now … go!’

  I went, of course, because the alternative was to leave the house and I had not thought what I would do if it came to that. I had hoped he would listen and get angry with me because that was his way and because I deserved it, and afterwards say to me, all right, let’s see how we can move on with this. For the next several days he did not speak to me at all except to ask me in a bark if I had attended classes, while Auntie Asha encouraged me with little lectures and admonitions. I did as I was told because I had no option. He was my guarantor and my financier and could have had me expelled from the country at will, so I went back to classes and did the assignments as best I could. Auntie Asha asked me questions about my college tasks and must have sent back good reports because after a while Uncle Amir offered me haughty words of encouragement: Keep it up, my boy.

  Auntie Asha said to me: ‘Your uncle is doing this as much for your mother as for you, you must remember that. It isn’t only yourself you have to think of.’ When she saw how well her encouragement was working and how dutifully I sat at my desk in those miserable weeks, some of her trust in me returned and she spoke more gently, took pity on me and even brought me a cup of tea now and then. I must have found the se
lf-abasement satisfying in some way because there were times when I offered additional gratuitous cringing when it was not even required. I said one day that I did not deserve this kindness that they were showing to me and Auntie Asha glowed with righteousness. ‘Well, I told you, it’s for your mother as well as for you,’ she said.

  I was sitting at the kitchen table, my notes and books in front of me, and Auntie Asha was putting pots and pans away and wiping down the kitchen surfaces while dinner was cooking. It was like an invitation and I could not resist. ‘But you don’t owe her anything,’ I said.

  I expected her to see through my probing ruse and change the subject, but after a long considering silence, she made a decision. She came over to the table and said, ‘Well, in a way, your uncle does owe her, I suppose. Do you remember, I told you about that time when we were almost in trouble, when we first got together?’

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I don’t think I told you that your uncle was detained for several days, did I?’

  ‘No! You mean detained in jail? I’ve never heard that,’ I said with overstated horror, although I really did not know that Uncle Amir had been detained. But this was the story coming, I thought.

  ‘Yes, in jail,’ Auntie Asha said. ‘Your mother helped him then when he was in trouble. Do you know why he was held? It was to do with us, the two of us. We had just met then, and my brother Hakim, your uncle Hakim, did not approve of us being together.’

  She paused there and looked at me in a teasingly tantalising way, as if she was considering withholding the rest of her story after all. I thought she was enjoying the telling of it, and, despite myself, I smiled. She smiled too, and then continued. ‘Well, it was worse than that. I mean it was worse than disapproving. It was a complete misunderstanding. Hakim just got it wrong. He got angry with Amir, very very very VERY angry, and you probably know what he’s like when he loses his temper. He …’ she paused for a moment as she looked for the right words but then she changed direction ‘… so he had Amir arrested. It was a mistake, Hakim just got it wrong. He thought our family had been insulted. He lost his temper and decided to be nasty, that’s all. But –’ she laughed, and waved her brother’s rage away with a sweep of her bangled arm ‘– when he saw your mother he fell in love with her, and your uncle Amir was released from jail and we are now living happily ever after. So that’s what he owes your mother.’

  The words sat in my mouth for a few minutes before I spoke, filling it up until I could not keep them in any more. ‘Did she have a choice?’ I asked, eyes lowered, trying to avoid a challenge.

  ‘What!’ said Auntie Asha sharply, retreating from the table, but then she spoke more calmly. ‘What did you mean by that?’

  The words had been sitting in my mouth for months, but I had not dared to let them out because the question seemed so wild. I had seen that man on television, the Minister of State for Something, with his shaved head and powerful stubborn neck, and when I thought back to that face I thought to myself: he forced her. Why not? A lot of wives and daughters had been forced to make themselves available to the powerful. I did not know about Uncle Amir’s detention then.

  When I did not reply, Auntie Asha said, ‘What did you say just now?’ Her voice crackled with the beginnings of outrage, and I took heed and did not speak. ‘Nobody forced her, do you understand? You can ask her yourself. How can you say such a thing about your mother? You have no respect. You don’t even know what you are talking about. How can you say such a thing? How can you even think such a thing? You are an enemy, you are a snake. And what does that make your uncle Amir? How dare you! How dare you!’ Auntie Asha said, her voice trembling with rage now. ‘You are a despicable, dirty insect. You are an ungrateful, filthy boy. How can you live in the man’s house and say such a thing? He has been like a father to you. How can you eat the food we put in front of you and think this?’

  Because I am feeble and shameless, and have taught myself to eat shit, I thought but did not say, could not say. Because I have been fed deference and defeat in my mother’s milk. Because my mother wanted this for me and she has seen enough sadness. Now I am here like a vagabond at your mercy.

  ‘Don’t you dare say a word about this to your uncle, do you understand?’ Auntie Asha said and then left the kitchen.

  I rose to my feet as well, collected the books that I now carried with me around the house as a sign of my intent to obey, and went upstairs to my room. I will write to my mother, I will demand to know, I told myself, but I knew I could not do that. The meaning of Auntie Asha’s rage must be that something bad happened, and it had something to do with my father leaving.

  I expected that when Auntie Asha reported what I had said and put whatever inflection she chose to on my words, Uncle Amir would come hurrying upstairs to rage at me, but no feet pounded up the stairs. When dinner was ready Eddie was sent up to call me, and I went down and ate without a word being addressed to me – no instructional lecture tonight – while Uncle Amir and Auntie Asha talked to their children. In the days that followed Uncle Amir did not speak to me at all, and did not even look my way. He spoke to Auntie Asha and the children in his normal way, as if I was not there.

  All my penitent studying amounted to little. I knew after each of my examinations that I had failed. I just could not work up the urgency and did not have the knowledge. I could only complete one answer and dabble at the other two in each of the papers, despite the genuine effort I had made in those last weeks. I decided to speak to my uncle, to negotiate my exit before Uncle Amir formulated a decree. I had been in England for two years by then, and I thought I knew enough to be able to fumble my own way around, but to stay on at all I needed Uncle Amir’s cooperation. So during the weekend after the results came out, when he was in his study doing paperwork, I knocked on his door.

  ‘I made a mistake with this course,’ I said. ‘It was my own fault, I should have spoken sooner, I should not have lied to you. I should’ve explained to you what I really wanted to study and persuaded you to support me. I am sorry that I have been unable to repay your generosity by turning out to be a successful student. I had thought that with application and perseverance I would be able to succeed even in a subject that I had little enthusiasm for, but I could not after all. I am sorry for all the trouble I have caused you.

  ‘I now want to study literature and I will re-enrol at the college to do that. I will have to re-enrol as a full-time student because otherwise I will not get a visa. I will then find unregistered work and support myself. But I will need to show financial means of looking after myself while studying. Will you agree to provide the guarantee? You will not need to give me any money. The alternative is for me to disappear but I don’t know if I will still be able to study after that. If you are unable to offer the guarantee, the best thing will be for me to go back.’

  Uncle Amir looked at me thoughtfully and did not say anything for a long while nor did I attempt to add to what I had already said. Then he nodded and said: ‘You have put your case simply and clearly. I have been wondering what you were going to come up with now that you have made such a mess of this opportunity. You are a stupid, ungrateful boy. It is a side of you I was unaware of before but which I have seen more and more of as you have been living with us. If I had known, I would not have wasted our money and brought you here to live with us. It would have saved us all a lot of stress and we would have been spared the pointless anxiety of trying to get you to study when you had no intention of doing so. In addition to that it appears there is something malicious and rotten in your spirit and that you are itching to cause mischief. Asha told me what you said to her about your mother. Nothing could be further from the truth. I will tell your mother about your ingratitude, both to her and to us. I think she had higher hopes of you.

  ‘I don’t know why you want to study literature. I don’t know where this idea came from. It’s a pointless subject, of no practical use to anybody. What will you do with it afterwards? It
will neither feed you nor teach you any skills nor allow you to make anything of your life, but that’s your business. I tried to help you but all I got back was vileness and ignorance. I have enquired at your college but they tell me they cannot give me any information about what went wrong. This country and its stupid rules! I expect you got mixed up with drug addicts and criminals, this city is full of them. Now you can join them and be a proper cheating unemployed immigrant. I tried to give you something more worthwhile than that. We tried to give you an opportunity and a home, but that was not good enough for you. You preferred to spend your time with those immigrant loafers. You are my sister’s son and I cannot give up my responsibility to you, but I want you out of my sight. In the meantime, I will arrange the financial guarantee, as you ask, but I will not support you. I don’t want you here any more. I would like you to make sure you move out into your own accommodation before we go away on vacation. Then after that you can go to hell. If you require anything else from me, write me a note.’