Aruna drinks so much on the flight, on an almost empty stomach, that she vomits. And so she has to start drinking all over again, anaesthetizing her dry, burned mouth and heaving, hollow insides with the vodka, like medicine. She hasn’t taken her real medication, the mood stabilizers prescribed for her psychiatric condition, for months; she hadn’t had an episode since she’d been in London, and she’d decided that she didn’t need the pills, and didn’t like who she was on them; she felt herself smoothed into a featureless, fake surface, wood without the knots; the medication had bubble-wrapped her from the world, the sky seemed less blue, water seemed less wet, scents lost the power to evoke memory, and beauty lost the power to move her. If you take away my demons, you take away my angels too, she had thought; and decided the sacrifice was too much. I would rather die fighting on my feet than begging for mercy on my knees, she thought; I would rather die awake than half-conscious; I would rather be dead than half-alive.
It is early morning at their destination, and although it is just late evening back in London, almost everyone is now sleeping or trying to sleep, trying to adjust. Aruna snorts with laughter to herself; as though adjusting is so easy it can be achieved by a nap. She wonders how Jazz has adjusted during the last two years they have been apart; outwardly, he seems to have done pretty well. His latest book was prominently displayed in the airport bookshops; he mentioned that he has someone in his life. Perhaps he will simply greet her with the nostalgia of an old friend, and require nothing more from her than an apology for leaving the way she did. At least he doesn’t require an explanation, as he already knows why. It seems both miraculous and terrifying that she will see him in just a few hours; she wonders why she isn’t combing her hair or at least brushing her teeth. She realizes that she doesn’t care how she looks to him; she even wants to look unkempt and unappealing, as though her scruffy appearance will be enough to testify to her suffering. At least her suffering isn’t fake, unlike the rest of her; it is like a weight, a parasite she carries around with her; like a pregnancy.
Aruna puts her hand on her concave, barren belly. It’s telling that the first thing Jazz said about her marriage was accusing her of doing it just to breed. The reason they didn’t get engaged and married as soon as she returned to Singapore was because they couldn’t have children. They were both pursuing their careers, he with his writing, and she with her doctorate, and they stopped using contraception, agreeing to get engaged, to go public to their families as lovers rather than friends, as soon as a pregnancy was achieved. She’d been ambivalent about the prospect of having a baby – she’d never had a mother so she had no idea how to be one, but he wanted children and saw no reason to wait. She supposed he also wanted something to bind them closer together, something irreversible and incontrovertible, and after their years apart at college, she couldn’t blame him for that. But when no baby came she began to worry. Why couldn’t they? It was as though all the disastrous sex they’d suffered through in the early months of their dating was for nothing, as though they still weren’t doing it quite right. If she was honest, there remained something slightly odd for her when they made love, even though it was now enjoyable and she could climax easily; but she couldn’t say that to the fertility consultant, that she suspected her body was rebelling against making a baby because she had an odd, niggling feeling inside. Some months after her father’s death, just as she was getting over the worst of her depression, she finally missed a period, and passed a pregnancy test. That pregnancy lasted all of a few weeks, and then her body just evacuated the bundle of cells with slightly more menstrual bleeding than usual. The next pregnancy was longer, she miscarried at ten weeks, and was ill for days afterwards. After the third time, Jazz, concerned for her health, suggested they stop trying altogether for a while. And although she knew he was right, she couldn’t help feeling betrayed by him, by his willingness to give up. She began obsessing about the reasons for their infertility, about the anarchic chromosomes that seemed so determined not to zip together, to go forth and multiply, about her wicked body that kept flushing out his unformed children. Perhaps, in hindsight, it was good fortune that she hadn’t sustained a pregnancy, as they couldn’t have stayed together anyway. It should have been a clear sign that they hadn’t been made for each other after all. Who she had been made for, was as yet unclear.
A few months after their wedding, Aruna and Patrick had a Sunday lunch with Charlotte, her friend from college, and Charlotte’s partner Giovanni, in a kitsch gastro pub a few minutes’ stroll from the Bethnal Green flat, where the tables were littered with exotic beer bottles plugged with dripping candles, and the seats covered in shiny zebra and leopard print.
‘I can’t believe that this is the first time we’ve all managed to get together since your big day,’ said Charlotte to Patrick, fiddling uncertainly with her eel pie and mash, which was surrounded with a luminous green streak of mushy peas. ‘You and Aruna never seem to be free at the same time.’
‘Sunday is about the only day we can ever do,’ agreed Patrick, spearing his own pie with obvious relish. ‘I work all day during the week, and Aruna’s always working in the evening, or out. Even when she’s home, she’s out,’ he said, his tone halfway between being indulgent and annoyed.
Aruna frowned at the criticism. ‘And God forbid that Patrick ever skip rugby on Saturdays,’ she added.
‘As though you wouldn’t be the first to complain if I got unfit and flabby,’ he replied, nudging her with his shoulder.
Giovanni, who had only tried a few mouthfuls of his pie, put down his fork and pushed it away. ‘Patrick, mate, do you hate us or something? I mean, really hate us? Why the hell did you tell us to order this? It’s possibly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten. And I eat Charlie’s cooking.’
‘Oh shut up, Gio,’ said Charlotte crossly, ‘I think it’s fine . . . or well, interesting, at least.’
‘It’s local,’ protested Patrick, ‘and traditional. Eel pie’s a famous dish in this part of town, you can’t get authentic ones anywhere else.’
‘Yeah, welcome to the haute cuisine of the East End,’ said Aruna. ‘I told you to order the venison sausages like me.’ She chewed on her sausages and parsnip chips with satisfaction.
‘But you can get sausages anywhere,’ started Patrick.
‘The trouble with you, mate,’ interrupts Giovanni, ‘is that with this likeable and enthusiastic thing you’ve got going on, you can get anyone to do anything. Even order sea sewage in a pie with radioactive peas. You’re just too persuasive.’
‘He must be,’ agreed Charlotte. ‘He managed to persuade Aruna to go down the aisle. The woman with the coldest feet in east London.’
Patrick smiled, and put his hand over Aruna’s, before pulling it across and kissing it affectionately. ‘You know what,’ he said, ‘she didn’t need that much persuading.’ He said it with pride.
Aruna smiled back, just a little uncertainly; it was true that he was persuasive, or rather that she was easily persuaded by him. He had just needed to ask. Stay for Breakfast, Stay Forever, and then some weeks later, Marry Me. She had pointed out to him that they had only known each other for a few months, and that he knew nothing about her, and he had replied that he could no longer imagine a world without her, that he knew everything about her he needed to know when he held her in his arms, and that he was looking forward to a lifetime of finding out the rest. So she had said, ‘Fine then,’ or ‘All right then,’ or something similarly cautious, and had let his enthusiasm wash over her and make everything happen. All she had to take care of was buying her dress, picking out a bouquet and doing her hair. The only real wobble had been during the actual ceremony, when Aruna’s voice starting literally wobbling as she said her vows. Just the usual watered-down civil ceremony vows, that didn’t even mention love; when she got to ‘to be your friend and care for you always,’ she couldn’t carry on, as she knew that before the state’s representative and all the persons there present, she was making outrageous promises that she wasn’t in a position to keep. Looking into Patrick’s serious, pleasant face, looking back at her with an absurd hope and trust she didn’t deserve, her voice broke down and she burst into tears. And Patrick, misunderstanding the reasons for her emotion, but knowing only his need to comfort her, pulled her into his arms and kissed her tenderly through her tears, holding her close until she calmed, so that people at the back who hadn’t been paying attention thought the ceremony was over and started to cheer and clap. After the moment passed, the official moved straight onto Patrick’s vows, which he said without taking his eyes from Aruna’s, and held firm by his steady gaze, she found that she could make it through the ceremony after all, through their first married kiss, and then through confetti, through a wedding breakfast with champagne and salmon and a three-tiered cake, through a first dance to Andy Williams’ ‘You’re Just Too Good To Be True (Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)’, chosen by Patrick, and finally through to their bridal suite at the riverside hotel, to which they disappeared in the middle of the party, prompting eyebrow-raising disapproval from Aruna’s in-laws and nudging from their friends, and from which they didn’t emerge for two days.
‘It was so sweet when you cried during the ceremony,’ said Charlotte to Aruna. ‘So romantic and emotional. I almost cried myself, especially with the kiss.’
‘I always thought it was a mad day to have picked,’ commented Giovanni, who was washing away the pie taste with his Belgian beer, and shamelessly hoovering up the leftover parsnip chips on Aruna’s plate. ‘Early March. Guaranteed crappy weather. Was there a reason you didn’t want to hang on for the spring?’
‘We picked that day because it was our six-month anniversary,’ explained Patrick, glancing complicitly at Aruna.
‘From your first date?’ asked Giovanni.
‘Sort of,’ said Patrick. ‘We were both at this bloody awful lecture in town, and you won’t believe it, but our eyes really did meet across a crowded room. Like something from a fairy tale. I think I knew right then that she’d be the one . . .’
‘It wasn’t really a date,’ interrupted Aruna, before explaining practically, ‘we didn’t have dinner or anything. Or even drinks. It was more like first shag than first date.’
‘From fairy tale to hard-core porn,’ laughed Charlotte. ‘I’d let Patrick tell the story of how you met to your kids,’ she added to Aruna. ‘He makes it sound a lot more romantic.’
‘I’m not going to have any kids, Charlie, so it’s hardly an issue,’ said Aruna, sipping her own beer, as she picked up the menu to look at the desserts. Patrick gave her a surprised look, which she noticed but pretended not to. Her friends clearly saw it too, as an awkward silence hung briefly over the table.
‘So, what puddings are good here?’ asked Charlotte brightly, obviously changing the subject, and the conversation moved on.
‘So why don’t you want children, anyway?’ asked Patrick the following Saturday, still in his mud-spattered rugby kit, picking up her morning’s leavings: cereal bowl, coffee cup, juice glass, teacup and a plate littered with burnt edges of toast and smears of thick-cut marmalade. She didn’t reply, frowning at her laptop as she typed up notes from a book she was reading. He clattered the crockery into the dishwasher with enough noise to get her attention.
‘I said leave those, I’ll do them later,’ she said, and carried on working.
‘It is later, it’s four in the bloody afternoon,’ he said.
Aruna looked up, faintly amused. ‘Don’t be such a nag. You always come back from playing rugby tanked up and spoiling for a fight. It must be all the testosterone-fuelled high-fiving and head-butting you do.’
Patrick looked at her in disbelief, ‘Did you just accuse me of coming home tanked up? I’m not the one who thinks that ten a.m. is an appropriate time to start pouring whisky into coffee, and vodka into orange juice.’
‘I said don’t be such a nag. I’m still drinking on Singapore time, anyway, they’re eight hours ahead,’ she said with infuriating illogic. ‘I’m going outside to smoke.’ ‘Sometimes you act like you’re just on some sort of extended holiday over here,’ muttered Patrick, following her. ‘Like getting married and getting a job and having a home don’t mean anything to you at all. It’s as though you’ve got no intention of settling down; every time I introduce you to a colleague, I feel I should say, “This is my wife, but she’s just passing through . . .” ’ He sat with her on the steps that led to their small patch of garden, as she lit up.
‘Not everyone’s as keen as you are on settling down,’ commented Aruna. Sometimes he seemed so settled, so secure, that he was practically rooted to the spot. She supposed that it was his way of rebelling against his unstable childhood, during which his entire family had been dragged around the country and even abroad to Europe in pursuit of his father’s career. Patrick had bought the Bethnal Green flat in his twenties as soon as he was financially able, tying himself to a mortgage in a then unfashionable but affordable part of London, while his contemporaries were still sharing rented flats in Fulham and Clapham. He had worked doggedly through punishing hours to complete his medical training, while his friends dallied with more lucrative but less worthy careers in banking and media. And he had settled on her with such speed and determination that she was unsure whether or not it was flattering; he had made the decision knowing so little about her, it was possible that settling down might have been more important to him, than who he actually did it with. She glanced at him a bit cynically; he was exactly what he had always intended to be, solvent, respectable, conventional; a home-owner, a doctor, a husband. And she was now a home-owning doctor’s wife; his stability should have been catching – she couldn’t decide whether she was relieved or disappointed that, beyond appearance, it really wasn’t the case.
Patrick watched her smoke, and after a moment took the cigarette from her, and tried an experimental drag. ‘God, that’s disgusting,’ he said, flinging it down and crushing it underfoot. ‘How could you put something so horrible in your body?’
‘I’ve had more horrible things than that happen to my body,’ said Aruna, thinking of her miscarriages. Patrick, of course, didn’t know, and wondered if she was talking about something to do with sex.
‘And you’ll need to cut down altogether if we decide we’re going to have a baby,’ he added.
‘Oh Christ, here we go again,’ said Aruna, putting her hands over her ears, and burying her face on her knees. ‘Just shut up, Patrick, you’re being boring.’
‘So why? Tell me why you don’t want one. What married woman in her thirties doesn’t want a baby?’ he insisted.
‘Do you remember, when we met, you liked me because you said that I was different, because I knew what I wanted?’ said Aruna
‘What’s your point?’ said Patrick impatiently, clearly tired of her continual evasion of his question.
‘The point is that I’ve not changed. It’s just that the thing you liked about me then, you can’t stand about me now,’ she said.
‘I never said I couldn’t stand you. I love you, you know that. I love you so much I married you and want to have children with you some day. I just don’t get why you don’t,’ he said.
‘I never said I didn’t want children,’ said Aruna. ‘I wanted children once, I just don’t want them now.’ She got up to go back in the house, brushing the dust from her trousers. ‘I didn’t realize that it was part of the deal when we got married. We never even mentioned kids before last week, but now you’re beginning to behave like it’s the whole reason you married me in the first place.’
‘Why did you marry me, then?’ asked Patrick, a bit peevishly.
‘Because you asked me,’ she replied simply, and went back to the garden door that led through to their lounge. She stood there for a moment, and then asked straightforwardly, ‘So are you going to stay there sulking, or come in?’
Sighing, Patrick got up, and followed her back into the flat. He went through to the bathroom, stripping off his muddy kit, and stepped into the shower. He was under the water when Aruna opened the bathroom door, letting in a draft that fluttered the curtain. She knew she owed him some sort of explanation, but instead just found herself making excuses. ‘I couldn’t be a mother right now. You know I couldn’t. I’ve got so many things taking up space in my head, I’m just so self-obsessed. I couldn’t do it.’
‘You shouldn’t make everything into such hard work,’ said Patrick as he turned towards her; she could see the warm rush of hope in his face, that she hadn’t yet closed off the whole discussion, that she cared enough to keep talking. He soaped himself with efficient circles working down his torso, and shook the water from his hair. ‘You over-think everything. You should just stop and relax and enjoy the moment, sometimes. Any moment. And frankly if a teenager who gets pregnant after a few too many tequila slammers in a club can be a mother, so can you.’
Aruna looked at him with some admiration, he always knew what he wanted, at least, and was never afraid to ask for it. He wasn’t even afraid of asking the big, scary questions, when he had no guarantee what the answer would be. Stay for Breakfast. Stay Forever. Marry Me. Have My Child. ‘I meant it when I said you’re always a bit more argumentative when you come back from rugby,’ she said. ‘Do you learned amateurs sit around a bottle of chardonnay afterwards like a load of housewives and complain about your marriages?’
‘Most of the guys complain that they’re not getting laid enough, that their wives or girlfriends are too tired, too busy, too stressed, too whatever,’ he shrugged. ‘They look at me suspiciously when I don’t join in the chorus.’
‘You don’t talk about personal things, then,’ asked Aruna, slightly relieved.
‘Sure I do. Just not sexual things; they’d only be jealous, and I don’t want them leching after you any more than they do already, imagining you on the kitchen table or the upstairs landing every time they see us at a work function.’
The kitchen table, the upstairs landing, the sofa, the armchair, the bath, against the wall, on the floor, on the garden bench, on the muddy lawn in the rain, in the park, in the cinema, in the restaurant, in the car, in a cab, in her shared faculty office, in a supplies closet at the hospital. Almost every time instigated by Aruna – she was amazed he couldn’t see that she had a problem. ‘What sort of personal things?’ asked Aruna warily.
‘Well, when I mentioned that you said you didn’t want to have a baby, Michael said that I should just knock you up when I was ready for one. Snip a condom or switch your pills, jab you in your sleep with a hormone to time your ovulation, shag you twelve hours later.’
‘How sweet,’ said Aruna. ‘Now there’s a healthy way to create the miracle of life. Deceive, cheat and secretly drug your loved ones. You blokes have all the answers, don’t you?’
‘Christ, Aruna,’ said Patrick, rinsing himself off. ‘You’re the one who’s like the bloke in this relationship; you drink too much, smoke too much, and leave the place a mess . . .’ He paused, but only to turn and rinse his back. ‘And you live on the sofa, you don’t want kids and you always want sex when I’m knackered.’
‘Well, at least I do still fuck you,’ she said matter-offactly. ‘How knackered are you now?’
Patrick looked at her, and started laughing. ‘Come here,’ he said. She didn’t move, but stayed exactly where she was, leaning against the doorframe with that half-smile playing around her lips, and so he got out of the shower, picked her up, and carried her back in with him under the water. He peeled off her soaking top, and began to kiss her passionately. ‘It wouldn’t kill you to let me in occasionally,’ he said, ‘in here,’ and brushed her temples gently with his thumbs. ‘I hate all our bickering.’ She slid off her trousers and underwear, and let him lift her up against the dripping tiled wall, so she could wrap her legs around him, binding herself to him like a weed, like a parasitic ivy, and take her agonizingly necessary fix of him. ‘Look at me, remember,’ said Patrick. And so Aruna did, her arms around his heroically solid neck, and she stared into his eyes, the colour of leaves and earth, and could imagine for a moment, quite clearly, the forests his ancestors might have come from. But it was just for a moment, as the intimacy was too much and she was forced to look away – she thought he saw too much when he looked back.
‘Sometimes I think you just married me for the sex,’ murmured Patrick, his mouth close to her ear, only half-joking. Sometimes Aruna thought he might be right. She craved sex addictively, but used it evasively, as a means to avoid intimacy. She was happy to let him inside her, just not inside her womb, or inside her head. She was too scared of the bodies and ghosts he might find there.