January 1976
“They have become,” Mrs Arasu says and she delivers it like an accusation, “like a family!”
For it is true that Cyril Dragon now sits with Salmah and her son at every meal. And what Mrs Arasu means is: like the rest of us don’t exist. Because Cyril talks to Salmah and Salmah talks to Cyril and the boy leans his head on one hand and gapes and stirs his food clockwise anticlockwise up-and-down side-to-side and together they are a tableau vivant of the Modern Family.
If you try to talk to Cyril Dragon as you did before—about History or Religion or the Great Philosophers—he must always invite Salmah into the conversation.
“That is how couples are, what,” Mrs Arasu says. “That is why Catholic priests cannot marry. Yes or not?”
“Aiyah don’t worry lah,” says Gurmeet Gill. “It’s young love! New love! Just give them a couple of years, they’ll be tired of each other just like all the other married couples.”
“I only feel bad for the boy,” Mrs Arasu says. “So awkward for him! So embarrassing! To see his mother flirting and carrying on like that. Poor boy doesn’t know where to hide his handsome face.”
The adults turn to look at Reza just in time to see little Annabelle Foo slip him a folded note with a smirk. Reza takes it and without opening it—the sheer pleasure of this cruel triumph flaring his nostrils, his lip curling complacently—crumples it into a tiny ball which he flicks across the table right over the shoulder of his oblivious mother. Annabelle’s face flushes and puffs up with unwept tears. Pouting furiously she bows her head so low it almost touches the tabletop.
Mid-sentence, Salmah pauses and turns to her son.
“Reza,” she says, “what’s the matter? What for you kicking me?”
“I’m thirsty!” he says brightly.
“Thirsty? Drink your water then!”
“The water here tastes funny,” he says. “I don’t like it. I want orange squash.”
“Orange squash!” Salmah cries. “Do you see anybody else drinking orange squash?”
“Wait,” Cyril Dragon says. “It’s okay. It’s true Reza, actually we keep it for special occasions only, but … it is hard to suddenly come to a new place like this isn’t it? So many new rules and regulations. Too many. Most of the other children do not remember anything else. But you—I think it is okay if you want a bit of orange squash. We must do what we can to help you adjust. Am I right?”
Reza looks squarely at Cyril Dragon. He does not say yes or no. He does not smile or shrug or blink. He’s not going to do anything to make this easier.
Cyril Dragon looks all around him as though waking from a dream. Then his gaze steadies as though it has alighted upon a familiar face in a foreign land.
“Ah, Leo,” he says. “Do me a small favour, Leo. Would you please run to the kitchen and ask your mother for one small glass of orange squash?”
Leo does not move. He’s remembering where you are not wanted. Words spoken not by Reza but by Cyril Dragon. It’s not Reza who is betraying him and pushing him further and further out of the tent. Leo would get the orange squash if anyone else had asked but he won’t do it for Cyril. No more doing somersaults and handstands trying to be Cyril Dragon’s pet.
“Leo,” Cyril says. “Did you hear me?”
Leo scowls at his plate.
“Have you no respect for your elders, Leo? What is happening to you?”
What is happening to you? Leo wants to ask.
“I’m not asking for much, Leo. Just one small thing. I have … we have all of us done a lot for you and your mother. You can’t even go and get a glass of orange juice?”
Oh Cyril! How easy to judge him from this safe vantage point. How impossible for even a stranger predisposed to sympathy—let alone a reader—not to believe the worst of him in this moment. Go ahead and say it: in those words—done a lot for you and your mother—there is bullying, there is menace, there is even perhaps blackmail. There is the insistence of the privileged and powerful that the powerless be grateful to them for … for what? Their mercy? Their forbearance when they could destroy their inferiors at a whim? But if you had known Cyril you would understand that this was a moment of weakness. The unreasonable anger all adults feel when a child defies their authority had loosened his tongue. Cyril did not actually believe that Leo and Neela owed him eternal gratitude. He did not believe it—but in a way what does that matter? What Cyril believes and what Leo hears are two different things. And Leo has heard the threat. Leo is picturing himself and his mother living in a cardboard box under a bridge. And the picturing is pushing him to his feet.
Already he’s perched on the tips of his toes, he looks as though he might blow away in a breeze. He suffers regularly from dry skin but today his lips are so parched their silvery colour heightens his audience’s impression that they are looking at an apparition.
They are all so transfixed by Leo that nobody notices Neela enter the room until she is standing right behind Reza. With both hands she holds the glass carefully out as though what is in it is not orange squash but something disgusting and possibly dangerous. She keeps her eyes on the glass but her face is oh so dark and so still. As still and dark as the sea on a moonless night. Watch that black water because any minute now something will rise from it.
“You ordered orange squash?” Neela says above Reza’s head, and all who are familiar with Neela’s ways—which is to say everyone except Salmah and Reza—note the unprecedented word choice: ordered instead of asked for or wanted.
Reza turns around and smiles uncertainly up at Neela.
“Take,” she says without smiling back.
“Reza,” Salmah says. “Say thank you—”
But Neela has already turned on her heels and left. There Leo still stands as though waiting for further orders. There Reza sits with his orange squash clasped in both hands and not a sip tasted. Here Cyril Dragon smiles left right and around the room in a futile attempt to reassure and restore the lost ambience. But it is Neela who still fills the room. Her presence so sharp they find themselves putting their hands to their cheeks as though startled to sense the nearby sea: the way the ground begins to shift beneath the feet. The swell in the air. The cold salt smell of it.