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Message from M: Just to let you know, your family are on their way back home now. It was nice having them round. I think they liked my beef massomam too.
Me: I’m so jealous that they got to try your cooking before me!
M: Not long now until I’m cooking for the both of us! P.S. 71 days until we get married. I bet you thought I’d forgot!
Me: No, I knew you wouldn’t forget. Your maths is much better than mine. Then again, I’m words and your numbers.
***
IT’S CUSTOMARY FOR the bride’s family to pay a visit to the house of the groom ahead of the wedding, without the bride. It’s really just to check they’re not living in abject squalor. Kind of like a recce of sorts. I’m guessing it would be too forward if I was to rock up and critique the place myself, so my parents do it for me.
“Yes, the house be okay,” says mum, as she puts the kettle on for a de-brief. “Bigger than ours but still three bedrooms. The area be as English as where we live. I still don’t understand why they left Oldham.”
Oh, my mum. If she’s not digging to see if there’s a monster-in-law, she’s bitching about the neighbourhood.
“How is everyone? Did the daughter-in-law do all the cooking?” I ask.
“No, well she did lot of serving and things but they always do for show. His mum look quite hands on.”
Phew.
“I think he be quite nice,” mum declares. It’s so cute how she still can’t bring herself to say his name. “He even made curry. It was a bit dry but at least he tried.”
“Oh, that’s coz it’s not a Bengali curry. It’s from Indonesia or somewhere and it’s meant to be dry.”
Mum puts the kettle down and looks at me. “How you know what he make?” Then with a raised eyebrow, she says: “Oh ho, okay,” like she’s in on some naughty secret. “What else you talk about?”
This is dicey territory.
“Nothing much. He’s sent me some pictures of flats, though. He keeps saying that we’ll pick something together once we’re married but I’d rather it got sorted before I came.”
“Maybe he can’t afford rent by himself. You need to do it together,” says my modern-minded mum.
“I don’t think it’s that. He probably just wants to look together, so I feel involved.”
I’m in denial that M might have any financial constraints. In my mind he is a wealthy investment banker and that’s the story I’m sticking to.
“London rent be expensive. It might be hard for him to get something before you come. Maybe he be shy to ask you to share rent. You should ask him. Now it different to when I got married. Back then, man paid for everything. You had to be grateful. Now it be better. You get choice. And you got your own money. Money make world go round.”
Mum dunks her Rich-Tea biscuit into her black, piping hot tea. “Oh, and while we talk money, your uncle Tariq speak to them about how much money to gift you. I’ll tell you what they say.”
Oh, the dowry. It seems so irrelevant these days.
“Mum, I don’t really need to know what they want to give.”
“What you mean, you no need to know? It be about you! It be your money. You don’t want them to be stingy.”
“What’s the most they’re going to give, anyway? £5,000? £10,000? It’s hardly going to change my life. I have my own money.”
“Yes, but it not be about you having money. They have to give something. It has to be good. Otherwise it looks like you’ve gone for cheap.”
I forgot I was a cow in a cattle market.
“Mum... please, really, I’d rather not know. So many families argue because of the dowry. It breaks relationships. I don’t want to be one of them.”
“Who tell you people argue over money?”
“You do! You’re always telling me about other people’s business. I won’t be so petty. I understand why people used to give a dowry. It was a woman’s insurance policy when they didn’t work and came to the marriage with nothing. It doesn’t matter now. They’ll give what they give.”
Mum’s nose wrinkles. “You’ll go for anything will you? Hmmph! What will people think? We look desperate!”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to know.” I head upstairs away from the conversation.
I’m surprising myself by how un-shallow I’m being. However, I can’t claim credit for this very modern mindset. It was actually Sophia who, back in the day, told me how she refused to engage in any conversation about money exchanging before she married Adnan. The first time round, young and naïve, she went headlong into a conversation with her then fiancé. This built up resentment and was duly thrown back in her face when they were on the verge of splitting up. Her advice to me was, under no circumstances, get involved in such delicate debates. “Leave it to the grown-ups,” she said. “Let them argue amongst themselves but don’t let it tarnish your relationship with your man.”
Oh, how I long for her wise words now.
Having walked away from mum, I am now wondering what princely sum will be paid for my hand in marriage. Damn mum and her seed planting ways.
However, mum isn’t done. “Don’t go yet!” she shouts as I’m at the top of the stairs. “One more thing. His family no mention wedding shopping yet. Has he said anything to you?”
“No, not yet.”
“Okay, maybe you ask. As we no sure how they want to do things. We can go shopping for your outfit to get ideas.”
On it goes to the list.
***
“IT WAS REALLY NICE seeing your family today. Especially your dad. Him and my dad are very similar. Both are pretty quiet but they came out of their shells together,” says M.
I decide to have that awkward conversation. Not the watch-based one, I’m still operating on the basis of he asks me no questions, I tell him no lies. This one is hopefully an easier conversation, though no less awkward.
“So, what do you want to do about our living arrangement? When I move down?” I ask.
“Well, I’ve sent you pictures of flats and I’ll keep looking, so hopefully we’ll sort something. If not before, then when you’re here. Would that be okay?”
It would be a little bit weird, living with his friend. “Erm... I think so but obviously it’d be better if we had our own space from the beginning. So I want to check...”
Gosh, this is a tricky one.
“Is there an issue with – not an issue... but would it be easier if we rented together?”
“To be honest with ya...”
Oh, here we go.
M continues: “It probably would be a bit easier if we could share – or you could contribute something to the rent. Because at the moment I’m paying half with my flatmate. If you couldn’t initially, don’t worry. We might just have to live a bit further out. Which is okay.”
Bless him. Money is an issue. Of course it is, he lives in London. I’m sheltered from all of it being at home rent-free.
As we say our goodbyes and I retire to bed, I can’t sleep. It’s just... the unknown. Where will I work? What will I do? I’ve not been out of work since I finished uni five years ago. Not only have I grown to like structure, I’ve gotten a taste for money, too. I’m not lavish in any sense but I’m independent. I don’t need to ask anyone for anything.
I’ve always thought of money to be a fleeting thing. It’s here today but might be gone tomorrow. There was a time in our lives when I think we were pretty comfortable as a family. Dad had started his own restaurant business. We got an extension at the front of the house and there was talk of a loft conversion. When I started high school, I was charged with having my own money. Every morning I’d wake up to find a row of coins waiting for me. All shiny and silver. There were 50 and 20 pence pieces and sometimes I’d even find a £2 coin. I never spent that one and put it in my money box.
Then the chatter about the loft conversion died down. Mum, who always had ideas above her station and just loved buying the full fat Greek style yoghurt from M&S, reigned in her dairy habit. She did her best to hide this seismic change. We’ve never been flash, we always shopped in the sale and spent within our means, so the transition wasn’t terrible. Though it did feel like just as we got used to something better, it was taken away.
Poor mum had had her whole life governed by the actions of others. The fate of her marriage was in the hands of her parents, who chose my dad. The fate of her fortune was in the hands of my dad, who set up a business I always thought was doing well and then for reasons I’ll never know, decided to retire early. Mum didn’t have a say in so many things in her own life. I guess that’s why she bosses the hell out of him at home. It’s her only grab for power.
One morning there wasn’t much tuck shop money. I spotted some copper coins within the 5p and 20p pieces. Then came the forms. Big sis, lucky her, always tasked with the household admin, gave me the forms to hand in to school that would let the teachers know that I’d be getting free dinners.
Even at such a young age, I knew of the stigma attached to benefits. All the free dinners kids ate together at lunchtime. Some of the cool kids, a.k.a. the school bullies, would call these children ‘gyppos’. They weren’t gypsies though, they were just kids who needed to have their dinner paid for. It wasn’t their fault.
The system didn’t help either. There was a different line at lunchtime for the kids that had free meals, segregated from the ones who parted with cold, hard cash. I hated joining that line. Julia knew I hated it, too. So she’d always stay and chat with me as long as she could, until we got to the lunch lady who’d separate us with a ticking off.
This whole mortifying experience shaped me in several ways. I didn’t ask for much at home. I learnt not to ask much of anyone, for that matter. I realised that in this life, if I want to live well, I really needed to make something for myself. It was so important. And I did. I make a good living. I save much more than I spend. I’ve only allowed myself the smallest of luxuries. While M rolls around in an Audi TT, I swapped my shitty Ford Fiesta for a slightly less shitty Ford Fiesta. I don’t own swathes of gold jewellery like my sisters did before marriage. Even when I dropped a few hundred pounds on my engagement sarees, I felt a mix of adrenaline and unfamiliarity. I’ve never spent so much. Certainly not on myself.
I didn’t really care for the loft conversion. I thought it was embarrassing. We were the only Asians in the street and the only ones that had a UPVC front porch. I hated having free dinners though. So I learnt then to never rely on a man because you never know how much, or how little, they can provide.