This Green and Pleasant Land Read online

  ‘It was a long time ago now, but I understand. Hers was cancer too … just not quite as sudden. It’s a horrid thing.’

  For a moment they both paused, united in their mutual and timeless grief.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said as he got into the car.

  He’d have to remind himself to be more gracious about Shelley.

  ‘Drive sensibly,’ she added with another one of her looks. ‘And careful of that pothole in Rayner’s Lane – it is a lot deeper than it looks.’

  Bilal started the engine and knew he’d have to go into town for Gaviscon. Shelley was right. Bilal had been quiet. If he were honest he was offended, on death’s behalf, at the way life seemed to march on, trampling on thoughts of his dead mother. The way it had only given him a mere few weeks to understand what was going on. That it was the end for her – no going back, no changing things. And now the minutiae of living in the face of mortality had triggered his ulcer. He waved at John Pankhurst, who was passing him in the opposite direction and slowed down, rolling down the window of his grey Fiat.

  ‘My turnips have only gone and got club root,’ he said, his mouth barely visible beneath his ever-growing grey moustache.

  ‘Ah, yes, my mum always used lime for that,’ replied Bilal.

  ‘That’s the one. Thanks, Bill,’ said Pankhurst as he drove off.

  His mum and her love for gardening … When he’d looked at her on the day of her funeral, he’d suddenly felt as if, in life, he had understood nothing at all. For six months now he’d been involved in a desperate attempt to forget the remnants of her death: grief, regret, too much Tupperware and her dying bequest.

  Build them a mosque.

  Of all the things in the world.

  Since her death he’d donated a lot of money to their local mosque in Birmingham. Wasn’t that almost the same thing? He’d even sponsored a child in Uganda. It was clear that his mum didn’t know what she’d been talking about. Babbel’s End was certainly not Africa. On a mission or not, Bilal wasn’t here to colonise anyone. It would be a dreadful business not to have moved on from that kind of thing. Taking over things, after all, was incredibly impolite. But his mother’s dying wish kept coming back to him after every cycle of his own reasoning, beginning again at the point of his guilt.

  Bilal focused on the road ahead, his hands gripping the steering wheel in case reality slipped away from him. He drove past the now quiet village green with its post office, Mr J’s Bookshop – owned by Jenny’s husband, James – and Babbel’s Bric-a-Brac, which sold everything from old maps and atlases to compositions of wax flowers in glass domes. He glanced at the Life Art gallery, which always struck him as ironic, given there was never much life in there. Rounding the corner past the eighteenth-century coaching inn, The Pig and the Ox, with its multi-coloured flower baskets hanging outside, he followed Coowood Lane (past Tom’s overgrown bush), and sped up as he met the A-road. It was the tall pine trees that lined the route, blocking the light and leading on to the wide road that made Babbel’s End feel like the type of place you discovered in the back of a magical cupboard: other-worldly but of the world, giving it an air of mystery. Though Babbel’s End was not waiting to be discovered. It had always been a proud introvert.

  It was a twenty-minute drive into Titchester. Under the fluorescent lights of the only Spar in town he loaded his basket with the necessary stomach medication, along with paracetemol and superglue for Haaris’s school project. Bilal picked up some sugar-free biscuits for Mariam and looked at them for a moment. In the grand scheme of things would it really matter if, for once, his wife decided to have normal, sugar-laden biscuits? An anxiety opened up in his chest, filtering into his stomach, as he thought about her ex-husband, Saif, who was suddenly so interested in being a proper father to Haaris. Bilal took a deep breath, took an Ativan out of his pocket and swallowed it without water. If the spirit that had lived inside his mum had disappeared, then who was to say that what existed on the outside couldn’t vanish too? Was the pain in his chest, the nausea, real? Was he sick? Or was it just a figment of his imagination? Each crisis seemed to balloon with every product that he scanned at the self-service checkout.

  Bilal got back into his car and sped home, weary of his own company. He opened the front door to see Mariam in black leggings and a white vest-top, walking down the stairs with her laptop.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, raising the bag and walking in, shoes clicking against the walnut flooring. ‘Had to go into town.’

  Mariam walked into the second living room and set her laptop on the table, taking a seat on their plush ivory sofa.

  ‘What were you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘Hmm? Nothing,’ she replied, avoiding his gaze.

  He decided there was no use asking any further questions. ‘Got your sugar-free biscuits.’

  ‘Oh, thanks. I’d run out.’

  ‘I know.’

  He bent down and kissed her on the head.

  ‘How was the meeting?’ she asked.

  He gave her the details as she looked at him now and again, distracted by the laptop’s screen.

  ‘Are you working?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s why I’m sitting at my laptop.’

  ‘Haaris asleep?’

  He watched Mariam’s eyes flicker to the clock on her laptop screen. No, he’s sitting at the table with us, he imagined her thinking.

  ‘Right,’ replied Bilal to her absent words.

  Mariam’s eyebrows were knit in concentration as she must’ve been poring over her every word, ready to file her story about the village spring clean, or whatever her latest topic was for the West Plimpington Gazette. Bilal was no stranger to the feeling of discomfort, but it was only exacerbated when he watched his wife work. He took personal responsibility for Mariam moving from reporting local government corruption in Birmingham to writing notes on a badger cull in Babbel’s End, and other freelance jobs that weren’t challenging his wife’s intellect. Fulfilment – and the lack of it – for his family was just another thing on his conscience.

  After ten years of marriage, Mariam had changed very little. She was petite, her straight, silky hair was still short enough to not give her any pause to style it. He used to love running his fingers through it. It was all part and parcel of her no-nonsense demeanour, complemented by the perpetual crease in her brow. To some it might’ve looked severe but to Bilal it was inquisitive: ready to question rather than judge because of the sympathetic way her eyelids drooped. But then who could account for perception? In all three of Bilal’s prior relationships there weren’t many emotional conversations he was subjected to which weren’t followed by a trip to his local pharmacy. But his wife was the epitome of self-sufficiency, just like his mother had been. Except his mother would also sing in the kitchen, hear an old Bollywood song and make her son dance with her. Khala Rukhsana would look on and laugh at them, shaking her head, and then toddle off to the kitchen to make them all snacks, which she’d end up eating herself. Bilal was overcome with the kind of desperate fondness for his mum that one could only feel for someone they’d never see again. It was swiftly followed by an overwhelming feeling of his mediocrity as a son. His mother had been an extraordinary woman, trapped in an ordinary life. What Bilal hadn’t bargained for was the way in which his wife’s self-sufficiency had lately given way to his own feeling of redundancy. A feeling that had bubbled to the surface, along with her ex.

  He slapped his legs and got up, refusing to give in to paranoia. Mariam’s eyes continued to flicker over the laptop screen.

  ‘Tea?’ he asked.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  He cleared his throat. ‘It’s muggy out.’

  Mariam sighed and leaned back on the sofa. ‘Do you want to have a conversation?’

  He looked at her.

  ‘Because we can have one and get it over with so I can finish my piece, or you can wait until I’m done and then tell me whatever you’d like to tell me.’

  Bilal was just about to vent
ure into explaining these feelings – the inconsequence of it all – when the phone rang.

  ‘Hello?’ he said into the receiver.

  There was a lot of noise in the background. The uniquely loud Punjabi kind.

  ‘Hello?’ he repeated.

  ‘Haan! Beta!’

  He moved the phone away from his ear.

  ‘Beta?’

  ‘Yes, hello?’

  ‘Bilal, beta?’

  ‘Yes, this is he.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bilal.’

  More hubbub in the background.

  ‘Aho. Bilal, hega,’ shouted the lady on the phone, ostensibly, to another lady.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Auntie Shagufta.’

  Oh, God.

  ‘Ah, Auntie.’

  ‘You remember me then? Hmmm?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She was the one with the borderline blonde hair, not the one with the walking stick.

  ‘Of course, beta? You have forgotten how to speak Punjabi?’

  She laughed. So did Bilal, albeit nervously.

  ‘No, no, Auntie. Well, yes. It seems I have.’

  ‘Hain?’

  ‘Yes, Auntie, I’ve forgotten.’

  He looked around to see Mariam mouthing: ‘who is it?’

  He put his hand over the speaker. ‘Auntie Shagufta.’

  Mariam took a deep breath.

  ‘Your Khala Rukhsana has taken a very bad fall, beta. Very bad.’

  ‘Oh, gosh. Is she okay? What happened?’

  Auntie Shagufta cleared her throat. ‘Beta, we cannot look after her every day, na. Not like this. You must come and take her and keep her for a while.’

  Mariam walked up to Bilal, folding her arms and looking up at him with her signature scrutiny.

  A woman in the background spoke in Punjabi: ‘Tell him she cannot walk properly. She cannot move. She has very bad kismet.’

  ‘She has bad kismet,’ Auntie Shagufta related.

  Bilal wasn’t sure what his khala’s poor kismet had to do with him. Mariam took the phone. It was just as well; Mariam always seemed to have more answers than Bilal. Though probably because she often raised the questions.

  ‘Salam, Auntie. What happened? Oh, God. Poor thing. How is she?’

  Mariam slipped into speaking Punjabi far too easily for a woman who looked so un-Punjabi. Bilal felt proud of his wife. She was a woman of layers and she made him more interesting as a result of it.

  ‘Acha,’ she said. ‘Aho.’

  Mariam glanced at Bilal, still speaking in Punjabi. ‘She’d be so lonely here. We’re hardly home.’

  She made a face, as if she couldn’t think of a better excuse, and for a moment they were united in their desperation to keep Khala Rukhsana away. Bilal tried to assuage his annoyance. He was sure he loved his khala in a blood-is-important kind of way, but she’d ambled on the periphery of his childhood memories – a woman his mum had to take into account when making decisions rather than helping towards them.

  ‘Acha?’ said Mariam, still looking at Bilal. ‘But … hmm. Yes. No, it’s just that … right. Okay. I understand.’

  She put the phone down.

  ‘What happened?’ he said.

  ‘It’s as if we pushed Khala down the stairs ourselves.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘There was nothing for it,’ replied Mariam, folding her arms.

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘I know,’ Mariam said, getting back to her laptop. ‘We’ll have to manage somehow. She’ll probably end up staying a few weeks—’

  ‘Weeks!’

  Mariam looked him steadily in the eye. ‘Maybe this way you’ll stop feeling guilty about not actually looking after her—’

  ‘I look after her,’ interjected Bilal.

  ‘I don’t think a monthly stipend is what your mum had in mind.’

  Of course he’d asked Khala Rukhsana to come and stay with them after his mum’s funeral, but when she refused, he didn’t ask twice – that would be badgering, surely?

  ‘There were a lot of things my mum had in mind,’ he said.

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘A mosque,’ he said finally. ‘Can you imagine what the neighbours would say?’ he mumbled. ‘I drove five miles over the speed limit and Shelley’s been on to me like a hawk. True to her name.’

  Mariam paused. ‘As a social experiment it’d be pretty interesting, though.’

  ‘This is the problem with all religious people,’ said Bilal. ‘They’re so obsessive.’

  His mum’s request somehow felt preachy, manipulative, clinging on to him like burned plastic on skin. There should be a legal ban on deathbed requests. But then the memory of her singing and dancing came to him. There was no understanding some people.

  ‘You can’t say she didn’t have ambitions for you,’ replied Mariam. ‘The height of success for my mum was me marrying the man she told me to when I was eighteen. Now look at me, divorced and re-married to a man who can’t even speak Punjabi.’

  ‘Why can’t they all just speak English? They did choose to come here.’

  Mariam gave him a small smile and shook her head. ‘Tory.’

  ‘I’m just not quite myself in Punjabi,’ added Bilal.

  ‘Well, exactly.’ She looked at him pointedly. ‘Anyway, since my mum’s dead too, you needn’t worry about it.’

  Mariam’s bluntness still made Bilal flinch.

  ‘Spoken to your dad lately?’ he asked.

  ‘No. He’s too busy shagging his third wife, probably. I lose count. After every trip to Pakistan he brings back a new one.’

  ‘You know what I say?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ replied Mariam. ‘“At least he stuck around to watch you grow up.”’

  ‘It’s true.’

  Bilal sat down opposite her on the ivory egg chair. Maybe the perpetual crease in Mariam’s brow wasn’t her being inquisitive (or judgemental), maybe it was just a product of her childhood – her fatalistic mum and wayward dad, etching their life’s mistakes on her face.

  ‘The thing is,’ he finally said, ‘I feel that Mum was right.’

  ‘About my dad being a no-hope philanderer?’

  ‘No. Well, that too unfortunately,’ he replied, as Mariam gave a small laugh. Bilal smiled. ‘But I mean, about life.’

  Mariam creased her brows again.

  ‘When we …’ he cleared his throat. ‘You know … die. What will we have left behind?’

  He thought of his dying mother on her bed, the deep-set wrinkles in her skin, the hazy blue around her pupils – he was becoming too familiar with this ache in his heart.

  ‘What did Mum leave behind?’

  Mariam looked at Bilal for a moment then down at her laptop again. ‘Khala Rukhsana, that’s what. If she’s coming then I’ll need to get the cleaner in to sort the room before I drive into town … Oh, since you’re going to Birmingham, we can stock up on halal meat. Saves me driving an hour for it. She does eat meat, doesn’t she? Does she prefer chicken or lamb? You should call her and arrange a time to collect her tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘When else?’ said Mariam. ‘That’s the problem with you – by the time you’ve thought things through and decided to actually do them, someone’s either over it, or dead.’

  He bristled.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You know what I mean.’

  He wasn’t entirely sure he did.

  That night Bilal went to bed and waited for his sleeping pills to kick in, so he didn’t hear Mariam come into the room. If he’d been awake he’d have felt her gently kiss his forehead, whispering ‘sorry’ in his ear. The way she so often did when she knew he couldn’t hear.

  BILAL DROVE THROUGH THE familiar urban streets of Selly Oak, Birmingham, past the park where he got into his first fist fight (he lost), behind Cherry Oak school where he tried to smoke a cigarette (he threw up), and saw there was now a Homebase in the place where he had his first kiss wi
th a girl (she threw up – on account of being drunk, not Bilal, or so he liked to tell himself). He glanced at a group of students walking into Frankie & Benny’s, people swimming in and out of Sainsbury’s, some girls and boys on the corner of Dartmouth Road, smoking, as several men in their jubbas walked past on their way to Jalalabad Mosque. The place was peppered with multi-culturalism – headscarves and skull caps, short skirts and African print dresses – Birmingham’s red brick walls and grey roads were graffitied with colour and recollections. Except no matter how much Bilal tried to tell himself that this was the place where memory should meet nostalgia, he couldn’t help but instead feel that it met a very familiar nausea.

  ‘Call Mariam,’ he said into his phone.

  ‘Hi,’ she answered. ‘Traffic?’

  ‘No, almost there.’

  ‘Ha, triple word score.’ There was a smile in her voice as she spoke to Haaris.

  ‘Playing Scrabble?’ he asked. ‘Got all the shopping done?’

  ‘Yep,’ she replied.

  Bilal stopped at the traffic lights, observing a woman in white trousers and a bright pink vest-top with large golden hoop earrings. The murky clouds and humidity seemed to press upon the people outside, damp patches on their clothes, sweat on their sullen brows. Bins were overflowing with empty Coke cans and rubbish, the streets littered with plastic bags and glass bottles. Though a new green patch with children on swings and a slide was a hopeful sight.

  ‘God, this place,’ he said to Mariam. ‘Do you ever miss it?’

  There was a pause. ‘Yes. Sometimes. No, gumbit is not a word.’

  ‘What? Yes, it is,’ exclaimed Haaris in the background.

  ‘Oh?’ said Bilal.

  ‘It’s where we grew up,’ Mariam replied. ‘See? I told you. It’s gambit.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Your wife thinks she can beat me just because I’m a kid,’ came Haaris’s voice.

  ‘Well,’ said Bilal. ‘Have fun.’

  ‘You too. Don’t forget the halal meat.’

  And without pausing, Mariam put the phone down.

  ‘Call Vaseem,’ said Bilal.

  ‘Bro! You here yet?’

  ‘Almost. Where are you?’ asked Bilal.

  ‘Something came up, isn’t it. Some panchod drove into the back of my car. Can’t make it today. Why d’you never visit? Anyway, take Auntie R and make her better, yeah. Oh, teri maa di …’