Читать книгу Secrets and Sins - Jaishree Misra - Страница 10

It was twenty past nine by the time Riva finally spotted the garish neon sign of Maroush glinting through the curtain of sleet that veiled everything in a thin grey. The normally colourful and welcoming shops of Arab Town had their doors closed against the wretched weather and the windscreen wipers on passing cars were going nineteen-to-the-dozen. Despite the rain, pedestrians were thronging Edgware Road as usual. Who were all these people out shopping and celebrating on a ghastly night like this, Riva wondered, elbowing her way past wet shopping bags and umbrellas. Despite her shortness of breath, she sped up again, imagining Ben’s irritation when she eventually stumbled into the restaurant. He had been in a bad mood for the last couple of days and only the other night he had complained, ‘You’re never ever on time, Riva. Well, not for me anyway. Deadlines for publishers, yes. Appointments with that agent of yours, of course. Lunches and meetings with friends, oh, it goes without saying. You’re on impeccable behaviour for all of them. But the simple matter of being on time for me seems completely out of the question.’ He hadn’t seemed angry when he had said it – merely sort of weary – and Riva had not argued, knowing that the remark had emerged from his present depressed view of the world. She sighed. It wasn’t easy for an ambitious man like Ben to find himself in the unlikely position of househusband.

She ducked under the awning with relief, her head and clothes momentarily lit pink by the flashing neon sign of the restaurant. She knew she must look a right old state, her hair wet and in clumps, her Ugg boots soaked through. She had hopped on a bus at Piccadilly and ended up trotting the half-mile distance from Marble Arch rather than hailing a cab, quite simply because there had not been one with its light on. But it would annoy Ben if she said that she had walked – he was quick to assume these days that her habitual frugalities were due to his being out of work. Every so often he took pains to remind her of the fat payout he had received from the bank when he had been made redundant. In Riva’s view this was quite unnecessary – she hadn’t been financially dependent on Ben for many years as her own account now received regular injections of royalty payments. But it was curious how even a man as liberated as Ben preferred to be seen as the breadwinner rather than an equal partner in the kind of joint endeavour they had always agreed their marriage would be.

Riva stamped her boots outside the entrance and tried to retie her mussed-up hair with a wooden clip. Of course she wasn’t going to confess to Ben that Aman and his film were the reason for her lateness. She had always hidden those little jaunts to the cinema from Ben, assuming that he would be jealous of the unlikely success of their old classmate, particularly as he was also her old flame. It was one of Riva’s more awkward memories when Ben had once spotted a cinema ticket to Feltham Cineworld in her purse, after she had told him she had been to see a Hollywood film starring George Clooney. He had had the good grace to laugh off her white lie, and even jested a little at the memory of Aman’s crush on Riva back at uni. But Riva had, of course, been mortified to have been caught red-handed with the ticket to Ishq in her purse, a feeling akin to the time her father had spotted seven Crunchie bar wrappers in her bin, bought using the change she had pinched from the bowl in the hallway.

Riva thought up her excuses now, rehearsing them as she stepped through the doors of the restaurant and spotted Ben sitting by one of the tables at the window, looking out at the rain. She slipped off her coat and handed it to the waiter before making her way across the crowded room towards him. Her heart melted at sight of his slumped shoulders: everything about him spelt out his depression.

‘Oh, Christ, sorry to be so late, love,’ she said, lightly kissing Ben’s cheek and sinking into the seat facing him. ‘How long have you been here?’

‘What excuse do we have today, huh?’ Ben asked, raising his left arm and waving his watch at her, his voice uncharacteristically peevish.

‘Oh, don’t ask! No cabs to be had for love nor money on a night like this. And the meeting at Gideon’s just dragged on and on. Antonia, the PR girl from the publisher’s was there too, and wanted to discuss the digital media campaign for the new book. You’ll never believe this but they’re talking about a seven-city tour across Europe, which, of course, would be lovely, except…’ Riva realised that Ben was no longer listening, his attention focused quite deliberately on the wine list.

Riva lapsed into silence, glad to have been stopped in her tracks while lying so shamelessly to her husband. It really did make her feel quite hateful. Not that all of her utterances were lies exactly, as Riva had indeed had several conversations with both Gideon and Antonia in the course of the day, but it was certainly not true that she had been in a meeting with them this evening. It suddenly crossed Riva’s mind that Ben may have read something online about Aman Khan being in London to promote his new film. She flushed at the thought – it would not take much for him to put two and two together and guess that she had gone to see him at BAFTA. Nervously, she reached out for Ben’s glass of water and watched him over the rim as she sipped. His face looked more drawn than usual today, his grey-blue eyes bloodshot, and Riva wondered if he had spent all day staring at his computer screen. She sighed and sat back in her chair, feeling an inexplicable surge of sadness overcome her. Riva had always striven not to rub Ben’s nose in the success of her publishing career, conscious of the fact that Ben had been the one with real writing ambitions back in college. Of course, he had greeted Riva’s unexpected book deal with excitement and good grace at first, perhaps anticipating with typical confidence that his own chance would surely follow before long. He had even joked of how they might one day become the ‘golden couple in publishing’, both of them enjoying flourishing literary careers. But, as the years passed with submission after submission of his being turned down, Ben had not been able to help becoming just a tiny bit bitter. Riva had done her best to assist in whatever way she could, but she cringed when she recalled the weary look that would come over her publishers’ faces whenever a husband with writing ambitions was mentioned. The most brutal blow had come when Gideon, Riva’s own literary agent, had returned Ben’s manuscript with a terse and uncomplimentary letter of rejection. Ben had found it astonishing that the man had not even done him the courtesy of a phone call and angrily reminded Riva that it was her sizeable royalties that were keeping Gideon ensconced in his fancy Covent Garden offices. In Riva’s opinion this wasn’t true at all – Gideon had many other successful writers on his list – but Ben had not wanted to hear that, and accused her of taking sides with her agent. They had ended up rowing that day and Riva had subsequently stopped advocating on Ben’s behalf. Recently he had complained again about the stand she had taken, claiming to be writing much better material now that he no longer had his job at the bank distracting him from concentrating on the book, but Riva had held firm, quite sure that he should try his chances like all other aspiring writers did, rather than expecting favours merely because he was married to a published author.

‘What do you want to drink?’ Ben passed Riva the menu, interrupting her train of thought. ‘There’s a rather nice Bordeaux listed…’

‘You choose, Ben. Although I think I’ll have a mint tea first, to warm my poor icy fingers,’ Riva replied. Once, a chance remark like that would have had Ben promptly reaching out for her hands to massage warmth into them. But Riva rubbed her own palms together now, feeling saddened again by the distance that had crept into their marriage somewhere along the way. Where did these cold gusts fly in from, she wondered, blowing aside all life in a marriage and leaving only the carcass of something that was once so warm and loving?

Riva folded her pashmina and pushed it into her bag before running her fingers through her hair and sitting up in her chair. She was determined to enjoy her evening out with her husband and hoped – both for her sake and Ben’s – that she had managed to cover up her silly secret outing to BAFTA. It suddenly seemed so terribly sad to have snuck off to gawp at a film star she had once vaguely known – one who, in all likelihood, would probably look right through her if he saw her today! But it was even sadder, Riva thought, that she should have to hide such a thing from the man she was married to. It was daft and mean and Riva resolved she would never do such a thing ever again.

Ben, sitting across the table from Riva, scanned the extensive menu without seeing it. He had spent the past hour assiduously reading its contents in minute detail while waiting for Riva to turn up and knew exactly what he was going to order. What was preoccupying his mind was not Riva’s lateness. Nor was it anything to do with her carefully elaborate explanations of her whereabouts this evening. He and Riva never questioned each other about whom they had met in the course of the day; theirs simply wasn’t that kind of a watchful, possessive relationship. Tonight, however, Ben simply could not erase from his mind the conversation he had overheard between Riva and her dislikeable little sister, Kaaya, the previous night. It had left an acrid taste in his mouth and Ben wondered now if he ought to tell Riva about how hurt he was feeling. It would, of course, ruin their meal out and Ben knew that would only make him feel more wretched. It was true what they said about eavesdroppers never hearing good things about themselves – although he had not been eavesdropping, but had merely stumbled upon an accidentally overheard conversation. It must have been close to ten o’clock by the time he had come in from the pub. He had entered through the kitchen door and the sisters, sitting in the living room, had not heard him come in. He was just about to stroll into the hallway to say hello when he heard Kaaya’s loud voice ring out in her horrible brassy manner.

‘Admit it, you’re just too, too soft on Ben, Riva, constantly tiptoeing emotionally around him and thinking up various imaginative excuses for what is plainly typically selfish male behaviour.’

As Ben froze at the kitchen door, he had been relieved to hear Riva respond tetchily. ‘Look, it’s not as if he’s never worked, Kaaya. Don’t you go forgetting, honey, that Ben not only supported me for the time it took to complete my creative writing course at East Anglia, he bailed you out too with that loan for your PR diploma. Besides, he was a rock to us all when Papa died.’

But Kaaya – in Ben’s opinion, a self-seeking opportunist who mysteriously had every single man in her immediate circle seemingly wrapped around her little finger – was typically ungrateful. He could imagine her waving a dismissive manicured hand in the air as she spoke.

‘I paid back Ben’s loan years ago, in case you’ve forgotten! Yeah, sure, he even helped Papa once financially. But Ben was a different man then. Not the grumpy old git he is now. People change and you’re mad to keep clinging to some lost notion of what he once was. Chuck him out, sis,’ she advised coolly, as though Ben were no more than a carton of something going slightly whiffy in the fridge. It had taken superhuman self-control to keep from striding into the living room to let the pair know he had overheard their conversation. But Ben had stopped himself. Not to save Kaaya the embarrassment but, quite simply, to hear Riva’s response. Surely, surely she would spring to his defence.

Instead, he had heard Riva laugh. Perhaps it had been with astonishment or wryness, rather than amusement – it was hard to tell without seeing the expression on her face. But Ben had been so incensed by the sound of Riva’s laughter at Kaaya’s suggestion of ‘chucking him out’ that he had turned on his heel and walked out of the house, leaving the kitchen door swinging open on its hinges for the two women to puzzle over later. He had subsequently stayed at the pub until closing time, getting more and more drunk and wallowing in sadness and self-pity, trying desperately to convince himself that Riva would surely have defended him after his departure.

The worst part of it all was that, at some level, Ben knew Kaaya was right – what was Riva doing with a man like him anyway? It wasn’t like it had been when they’d all been young and full of promise back in their university days. After all, any one of them – Riva, Susan, Joe, Aman – could have turned out successful back then. It was all a matter of luck and chance. Despite one’s best efforts, life had a totally arbitrary way of dishing out favours, Ben knew that now. The pity of it was that back at uni, it was he, Ben, who had seemed most likely to be going places, the only one in the gang to be hand-picked by a bank when the milk rounds had started in their final year. It would be no exaggeration to claim that he had once been the most popular student on campus, not just a top student but also an ace debater and captain of the cricket team. Would anyone even remember now that he had been the first among them all to have landed a job, one that everyone was so certain would lead to a glittering career as a banker?

Twelve years down the line, however, events had taken a direction that no one would have predicted back then: Riva was a successful, award-winning novelist; Joe a consultant psychiatrist at one of London’s biggest teaching hospitals; Susan, the special needs co-ordinator at a primary school praised for its innovative teaching methods; and, most gallingly, Aman Khan of all people was now a fucking film star, earning megabucks in Bollywood, gracing magazine covers and being worshipped by droves of women in the farthest corners of the world. To Ben, Aman Khan’s resounding success had been the biggest surprise of them all. Kaaya’s came a close second – vacuous, self-absorbed Kaaya who had done amazingly well for herself as a Hollywood film publicist. Who in their right mind would have ever imagined that brain-dead Kaaya would one day turn into a better have-it-all feminist than her much brighter and nicer sister? Whenever Ben reflected on life’s vagaries (something he had a lot more time for since the bank had laid him off two years ago), he could see it all quite clearly: Riva Walia, one-time president of Leeds University’s student union and founder of Bitten Apple, the campus feminist rag, had merely got unlucky and was now trapped in a lacklustre marriage that was like a drug habit, impossible to break. And there, in her swanky Holland Park apartment across town, was Kaaya Walia – once considered the pretty airhead sibling – having her cake and eating it (and by God, was she eating it) with an office overlooking Soho Square, a designer apartment in Holland Park, two flash sports cars in the double garage, a wealthy investment banker husband and, as if all that wasn’t enough, an endless string of admiring men on the side. Ben had seen them, hanging adoringly around Kaaya at the fancy parties she threw – a besotted young colleague here, a well-heeled client there, men went mad for her. As they would have done for Riva too, had she been a different sort of woman. Riva was equally, if not more, attractive than her sister, but was not given to the sultry come-ons that Kaaya was so adept at. Riva was hard-working, sweet-tempered and persevering but, when all was said and done, it was Kaaya who was materially more successful. How unfair was that?

It made Ben feel wretched to think how easily his golden prospects had gone dark and sour, and how he had dragged Riva down with him. It was incredible to think that he, Ben Owen, should be out of a job. Incredible but true. Perhaps Kaaya had been right last night: he was holding Riva back and she was too kind to admit it herself. He ought to do the right thing by her and leave. Vanish into the ether. Perhaps allow her to pick up with Aman Khan where they had last left off. Which had been at the end of that first year at university when he, Ben, had thought he was king of the world, simply because he had got the girl, while poor luckless Aman Khan had left uni with neither a girl or even a degree. And now, there was Aman Khan gracing posters overlooking Leicester Square, gloating at the tiny luckless mortals that passed beneath!