The Trouble with Rose

I squeeze my eyes shut for a second, then stand up, picking up my bag and my coat. I feel exhausted, weary to the bone. Some people are just not cut out for love. This seems to be the consensus today. And I’m really not sure they’re wrong.

7

Not Romance

When Simon and I first met it wasn’t at all romantic. We met at the police station, that was the scene of our first meeting. Wait, I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying to yourself, Ah, another one of those times. But it wasn’t one of those times, because I wasn’t the one in handcuffs, Simon was. I was only there because my fellow philosophy students had decided to volunteer some time with underage kids in custody. I was the first one frisked and I was waiting for the others to finish their turn and join me. Into the waiting area came a constable, leading a man in handcuffs. You guessed it, it was Simon. The constable was trying to establish what to do with him, so there was a lot of waiting about. No one could figure out what to do with the man and everyone had a different point of view about it.

I was leaning against the wall, looking at the floor. There is no point looking a hardened criminal in the eye, even a dead sexy one, so I was determined not to look at him. Nicely fitted jeans, a shirt the colour of mushroom soup, those deep blue eyes and hair that fell onto his forehead. No, it would definitely be a mistake to look at him.

‘I’m completely innocent, I promise,’ he said.

I smiled politely. He gave me a charming smile, so I quickly looked away again.

‘I can see you don’t believe me. But you see, the thing is, I just happened to be at the wrong taco stall at the wrong time.’ He made a face. ‘It just goes to show.’

I looked up after ten seconds. I couldn’t help it, there was something about those eyes.

‘Goes to show what?’

He smiled again. ‘That just because a man makes the best fish tacos in London, it doesn’t mean he isn’t a crook. The man was handing me a bag of tacos, my mouth was watering, my heart was racing. I had been waiting for that bag all morning. No, wait, all my life. And then guess what happened?’

I couldn’t not ask. ‘What?’

‘A copper turns up out of nowhere. The fish taco man – Paolo – who I thought was my friend, I really did, handed me another bag. Free nachos, I thought. On the house, made in the house, this day can’t get any better. Though at the time, of course I didn’t know I was going to meet you.’

I gave him a crooked smile and, to save my life, I couldn’t stop myself from twirling my hair behind my ear and placing a foot jauntily behind me on the wall. What was the matter with me? I was going to end this day in a body bag at this rate.

‘But the bag wasn’t full of nachos. Nope. It was – you guessed it – a bag of coke.’

‘Coca cola?’ (I’m not proud of it, but I said it. So there it is.)

He stared at me. ‘Cocaine.’

‘That makes a lot more sense.’

‘That is the only reason I’m in here and Paolo isn’t. Anyway my lawyer is going to come and get me out any time. And then I can take you to dinner.’

I smiled.

‘I’m Simon, by the way.’

‘Rilla,’ I said reluctantly. He was a very charming drug dealer; he must be very good at his job. I really should be careful not to talk to him, or even look at him. Anyone whose arms look so sexy and muscly with folded-up shirtsleeves deserves to be behind bars, I thought sternly. We were standing in a bland corridor, with police officers walking to and fro and there was still no sign of my fellow students. I pretended to look at my mobile.

‘What are your three worst things in the world?’ Simon asked.

His hands in handcuffs, he was now leaning against the wall opposite to me. His hair fell all the way to his eyebrows and his eyes were deeply set.

I thought about it. ‘Vomit. Slug slime. People who smile all the time for no reason.’ I meant the last one to be pointed and cruel but he didn’t take it personally.

‘Mine are snot, religion, bigots and One Direction,’ he said.

‘That’s four things! Anyway … what’s wrong with One Direction?’

He stared at me with round eyes. ‘I knew you couldn’t be perfect. What is wrong with One Direction? Where would you like me to start? What is wrong with them is exactly the same as what is wrong with the world. For instance, have you ever looked at their—’

At that moment, the door opened and the constable basically dragged Simon through it. ‘I’ll wait for you,’ he called as he disappeared.

The next two hours are better forgotten. Three of us led a workshop in ‘Using Philosophy to Make Better Life Choices’ or some such bullshit. The youth offenders who had been bullied, coerced or bribed into being there mostly ignored us, sent an occasional paper aeroplane our way, munched endlessly on gum, and didn’t hesitate to laugh in our faces. One of them farted throughout the whole thing. Only it turned out that he hadn’t been farting, but had in fact done a crap in his pants. The smell was unbearable, especially since it had leaked through his clothes onto the chair he was sitting on. This led to our workshop coming to an early finish, but then the room had to be locked down – with all of us still in it – until the matter was cleared up. Those were two hours of my life I was never going to get back and no one could convince me that I had made a jot of difference in the lives of these damaged young people. Never again, I was telling myself, never again.

I walked out of the police station filled with rage and loathing for all young things. Someone peeled themselves off the wall outside and I screamed. It took me several moments to recognize him. Yes, beautiful as his eyes were, I had forgotten all about Simon. A body bag, for sure, I thought now. That is how this day is going to end.

How, then, we actually ended up with my legs wrapped around his hips against the toilet wall of an Ethiopian restaurant in Kentish Town later that night, I have no idea. Probably because when he saw me come out of the station, he handed me a tissue. I hadn’t realized I had tears in my eyes. Tears of rage because the young gentleman of the doing-a-shit-in-your-pants fame had, as we were about to leave the room, come up to me and written an X on my notebook. With excrement.

If Simon had been nice, given me a platitude about how though it was difficult to work with young offenders, it would change their lives, I probably would have walked away. But he said, ‘The little shits. The only thing we can hope for is that they’ll kill each other in prison.’

That really is the only way I can explain it.

There is something about Simon – there was something about Simon! Simon is no longer in my life – I have to get this straight in my head! There was something about him, something assured, something sure of its place that I have never had. For example when I walk into an unfamiliar room, with unfamiliar people in it, I scan it. Is there anyone there I know? Are there groups of people who all know each other who won’t want to talk to me? People who maybe have known each other for years, people who went to school together, who have common references? People who seem to know what to say and how to say it, people who can talk about anything or nothing and it makes sense to them. I wonder, will someone come up to me, an older woman probably, talk to me kindly and extra clearly because – given my brown skin – I’m probably a foreigner? And yet if there is a group of Indian people in the room, they will think I’m not Indian enough. These are the thoughts that go through my head when I enter a room.

But Simon, he’s probably thinking, what’s on the menu, is there anything more substantial than salmon and horseradish canapés? He could talk to people about anything really, but he didn’t seek people out either. He was comfortable in his own skin.

There are two kinds of people in the world. Room-scanners like me, and people like Simon, who never worry about things like that.

For a while, with Simon, it had started to seem like I could be more carefree too. Less troubled by my place in the world, by the rivulets in my past that refused to find a home. Less troubled, more assured, more able to navigate the world.

Yes, it had seemed like that for a short while.

8

Living a Lie. Oh, Sorry, I Mean Living a Life

As psychologist Alison Gopnik reminds us, in a child’s universe, parents are like stars – fixed and stable. But siblings are more like comets that sweep into our lives, lighting us up but sometimes scalding us.

Rilla’s notes

On Thursday, three days later, still desperate to get a sense of normality back into my life, I try going to university again. And this time, it isn’t as bad, maybe people do have short memories when it comes to scandal. I hold my normal office hours, I attend a seminar, and I even type up some notes. I am still getting missed calls from Simon every day, but I have switched off the notifications and so I only have to look at his name on my phone log briefly before I go to bed. Slowly, slowly, I can start to get my life back on track.

Late on Thursday afternoon, on the train back from university, I am hanging on for dear life. It is rush hour and the train is packed. People are standing in sweat-smelling distance, and I am trying to hold my breath. The people in my immediate vicinity must be acrobats because they all seem to perform complicated tasks while trying to stay upright on a moving train. A woman with a Chihuahua in her straw handbag is fanning herself with a receipt with one hand and feeding the miniature dog chicken wings with the other. A man with soft long curls and a borg-collar bomber jacket is reading Issue 97 of The Walking Dead. An attractive young man with red hair is teaching the woman next to him how to YOK2, which is apparently knitting jargon and not something to do with missiles. And an Indian man is having a phone conversation while also writing notes on his hand.

‘I said give me your CV,’ he says, ‘and she was like, I already told them my qualifications. I said to her what have you done in your life? How can I recommend you? I can’t put my name to this. And she started crying, man. I was like, what are you, a bloody nautanki?’

And just as quick as that, I can’t breathe. I grope blindly, I clutch at people. ‘I want to stop the train,’ I gasp. ‘I have to stop the train.’

People around me are staring. They look like they are going to arm-wrestle me to the floor if I say this again. They will do anything not to have to stop the train. Someone creates a bit of room, drags me down to a sitting position, puts my head in between my legs – I have no idea if this is so I can get breath back in my body or to make sure I can’t reach the emergency lever. I fight them, flailing, punching, kicking, but nothing works because I am surrounded by a savannah of legs. Jean-clad ones, nude pantyhose, varicose veins, and then there is a face. It’s a little girl.

‘More,’ she says in her baby voice, and hands me a wad of gummy tissue with mushy banana in it. At the next stop, someone practically throws me off the train. I run all the way down the platform, all the way up the stairs, and I stand outside in Lewisham next to a florist. I bend over double and gasp for breath.

My father disappeared into his study to write a book on Indian street theatre or nautanki when I was eight years old, soon after Rose disappeared. Before then, as far as I know, he had no ambitions of writing a book. When I was little, he taught drama in a college and he used to tell me – Rose and me – all about nautanki.

Rose and me. Yes, I suppose it’s time to talk about that now. To talk about Rose and me. Though it is also the hardest thing I can think to do right now.

That’s how it was for the first seven years of my life. It was always Rose and me. Rose and me did this or that, Rose and me are going out, Rose and me got into a fight. Rose and me are hungry, thirsty, tired, back from school, too awake to go to bed.

It was difficult, maybe impossible, to talk about myself without also talking about Rose. And Rose – she hardly knew what it was to exist without me either.

Our night-time stories were not the same as other children’s. We knew about Pippi Longstocking, the Wishing-Chair and The Bobbsey Twins from school. But my father didn’t read these stories to us. He read us the notes he made about Indian street theatre, gathered from books written in the Sanskrit script that would take him weeks and months to decipher. We would sit on rugs, the two of us in our pyjamas, the kind that had a matching top and bottom, and the top had a collar. I can see us now, all I have to do is close my eyes.

Me in my purple pyjamas, with the moon and stars dotted all over them. Rose in her lemon yellow top and bottom, printed with a dancing Popeye.

We would sit holding one blanket around us, skinny beans crouching together for warmth, and we would share a cup of hot chocolate. Or at least, our mother told us it was hot chocolate, but looking back it was mostly milk with the tiniest pinch, a smidge of brown in it, hardly there.

‘That looks like me,’ Rose would say, staring into the steaming milk. ‘Make it like Rilla, Mummy, please, please, Mummy!’ And our mother would. She would add another pinch to the cup and the brown would swirl and aria till it mixed with the milk. We would sit under our blanket, drink our hot chocolate, and listen to Dad tell us about nautanki.

‘Melodrama – you have to have melodrama in a nautanki. Without it, there is nothing. When you cry, you cry like you will die of sadness. You cry so loud, aliens on another planet can hear you and their hearts melt. When you are angry, you are full of rage. So much rage that if you tried to, you could swallow the sky whole. There’s no point feeling unless you feel big, see? And the nagara – the kettledrum – heightens the drama. Only when it reaches fever pitch is there an explosion. Get it? Try it. Show me.’

I would laugh, a shrill, high-pitched, over-the-top, machine-gun kind of laugh. But Rose would cry. And when she cried, she didn’t scream or sniffle. Her face turned inwards, her eyes swam and silent tears poured down her face in two long streams.

There was something about Rose’s eyes. They searched, they were always alert. She was always looking for things to go wrong, always on the lookout for trouble, something that could hurt her, and maybe me too. Yes, that’s true. She was always alert for anything that could hurt her or me. When she cried it was as if the world was coming to an end. It wasn’t the kind of melodrama that Dad was telling us about, but there was something about Rose’s tears. They broke your heart. Even our puppy was reduced to a pitiful moaning.

Gus-Gus. Yes, it is time to talk about Gus-Gus too.

When I turned seven, the same day that my sister Rose turned nine, Auntie Promilla’s Irish wolfhound Gus-Gus came to live with us and he was enormous. All he had to do was come and stand next to you – not lean on you or jump on you – but just stand next to you for you to fall over. Rose and I were in hysterics. He was easily, hands down, the best thing that had ever happened to us. I loved Gus-Gus. There was only one problem. He loved Rose more than he loved me. I was always giving him treats and throwing things for him to fetch. Smiling at him, singing, She’ll be wearing pink pyjamas when she comes (his favourite song), generally grovelling at his feet. But if Rose came into the room, quietly with hardly a whisper, as was her way, he would instantly drop what he was doing and go to her. Given the choice of going out for a run (his other favourite thing) with me or sitting under Rose’s feet, he would always choose the latter. In fact, I was sure that when we were playing he kept one ear pricked for the sound of Rose. If Rose was out and she was on her way back, even before she had come anywhere near our house, the other ear would prick up and his hair would coil tighter. He would start doing laps – front door, living room, dining room, kitchen, pantry, through the bathroom, back to the front door, living room, dining room, kitchen, pantry, and so on, until she entered the house. Rose often had that effect on people.

‘Rose hasn’t washed her hands,’ I would complain. ‘And she’s putting her hand in the liquorice allsorts.’

‘Wash your hands, Rose,’ my mother would say. But with that indulgent voice she saved for her first daughter.

‘She’s giving the dog a sweetie!’ I would cry.

My mother would walk up to Rose and take the allsorts from her hand. Then she would turn to me.

‘Have you seen how dirty your frock is? Go and change, right now! Stop bothering Rose. If you don’t have any manners, you can stop going to school and stay at home and clean the house!’

I would glare at Rose, pinch her as I passed by her on my way to the bedroom. I knew my mother was bluffing. Of course I knew! No one would keep their child at home and get them to clean the house instead of going to school. Yet what a thing to say to your child! To someone you were supposed to automatically love!

‘Take your shoes off before you go upstairs, how many times!’ my mother would shout.

This was before my mother started teaching adult education classes. That didn’t come till much later. If you looked at my mother in those days you would think that we were always late for something. We never did things quickly enough for her.

‘Hurry up, Rose! Come on, we’re getting late. Can you drag your feet any more than you are, Rilla, for god’s sake? Wash your hands! Clean your teeth! You’re late for bed! You’re so slow, what’s the matter with you girls?’

She was tired. Two demanding young girls with itchy feet must have been exhausting work. Add to that my father who was good at telling us stories but not at helping with our homework, cleaning our school uniforms, shopping for groceries, or any of those things that fell to my mother. I guess there were other reasons as well, but kids aren’t conscious of these things. On top of everything else, an enormous dog had arrived for her to look after. All because my father had wanted a horse for his play, for our play, all because he was a failed actor. And this brings us full circle to the nautanki, our foray into street theatre, Rose’s and mine.

But I’ll have to come back to that later. To say some things, you have to work up the words.

For many minutes, after practically being thrown off the train where I had a panic attack, I sit outside the train station in Lewisham. The florist who has been watching over me says now, ‘You have to take care in these lurching trains, luv!’

I have the impulse to grab his arm and say, ‘Do I look mad to you?’ Not in accusation, but as a real question.

A week ago my life seemed like it was more or less on track. It was true I needed to work harder at my MA, I needed to show more discipline and focus, but I was getting married, moving to a new flat, becoming an adult, putting the past behind me.

Now, merely a few days later, the past seems to be chasing me. The faster I run, the harder it seems to run after me.

The thing is, I don’t want to go back to the past, I don’t even want to unravel it. I’m not pushing for answers that I don’t have the courage to face. All I’m asking for is a version of my life that makes sense, a narrative that people can agree on, or even one that I can agree with myself about. I want to find a few missing pieces of the jigsaw.

Yet, whether I resist or not, the memories are trying to claw their way back up through the canyon now, knocking at the door. And their Gollum neediness is starting to gnaw at my insides.

I thank the florist for his patience with me, I don’t ask him if he thinks I am mad. Instead, I pick up my bag and the water bottle handed to me by a stranger, and slowly through the streets of Lewisham, I start walking back towards my flat.

9

An Incoherent Narrative

The Sufi poet Rumi says it isn’t for us to run after love, but instead to look within, to see what is stopping us from loving. He says that our task in life is to find all the obstacles we place around us, the shields we build that keep us from love.

Rilla’s notes

‘A coherent narrative, Rilla,’ my supervisor said a month ago when she gave me the warning about my MA. ‘That is what you need, and that is what you don’t have yet, not after three whole years here.’ Professor Grundy sat behind her desk, looking thoughtfully at me, tapping her fingers. ‘The thing is, I do like you. You’re a good teaching assistant, the students respect you. They like your honest feedback about their work.’

She looked around her like she was searching for something more to say. We were sitting in her office, her walls covered with old invites for conferences, framed certificates, pictures of her receiving awards from important-looking people. On her desk there was a statue of Michel Foucault wearing a turtle-neck and a pair of seventies-style trousers, his head an egg, his lower lip cheeky but sensual, his hands crossed behind his back. She looked at him for many moments before she spoke again.

‘You don’t really like people, do you,’ she said finally.

I flinched. ‘That’s a little harsh.’

‘Oh, it’s not meant to be. I am the same way. To be a philosopher, you have to be a little removed.’

My breath caught in my throat. Not liking people was one thing, but being like Professor Grundy, that was too much. She once made a student wait for six months to hear if he had passed a re-sit of his dissertation. She had known all along that she would pass him; I later saw a dated confirmation of this. But she didn’t tell the student. She made him wait, she made him cry, she turned him into a shadow of his former self. And all because she didn’t like him. ‘He needs to learn respect,’ she said at the time.

And she thought I was like her. This made me die inside.

‘You are making no progress in your work.’ Professor Grundy was caressing Foucault, her thumb slowly stroking his egg-head back and forth.

‘I like this stuff,’ I muttered. ‘I want to make sense of it.’

‘Rilla. Are you going to complete your MA? Can you? Do you even want to?’ She sat back in her chair and looked at me.

I didn’t know what to say.

When I applied for an MA, with Tyra’s encouragement, I wanted to explore the connections between what a culture thinks about love and what it thinks about other things like life, work, and war. I had imagined finding a kernel that was at the heart of a culture, its most basic beliefs around which everything else was organized. I had thought at the time that it was a good, concrete idea, that it was something I could focus on and develop for three years. But recently the idea seems to have evaporated.

The more I read about what other people have said about love, all I can think about is how little I know about it myself. How there is a blankness in my brain where there should be an understanding of love.

Why do we form an attachment to another? Who attracts us? How do we form the bonds of love? And when love is lost, then what happens, how do we go on living?

After three years doing an MA, I am nowhere near answering these questions, and in fact I am further away than I was when I started writing my thesis.

Well, I say writing my thesis, but at the moment I am reading it more than I am writing it. I do a lot of reading and I make a lot of notes. But that’s what you are meant to do, isn’t it? You’re meant to read what everyone else has written on your subject before you can say what you want to say. If there’s nothing else I’ve learned from my father, surely I’ve learned the art and craft of methodical application. Having grown up in a family of artists and academics in Bombay, he should know how it’s done.