MONEY TREE Page 5

  For a moment, and without telling the others, each of the three women with her newly opened eyes, felt a pang of shame for their poverty. As they drew closer, the sweet commingled smell of animals, spices, human waste and that special tang of the dung fires wafted at them. A unique combination that separated their village from any other. They would know where they were if they’d been brought here blindfolded. It swept them up in relief and gladness to be back in familiar territory. Shame vanished and all at once they were desperate for their own tiny homes and families.

  They thought it was too late to cause a great stir, that they would keep their story till the morning. But their arrival was soon spotted and news travelled like a scalded dog through the shantytown. Women dipped out of their doorways and greeted them with hands clasped together and soft calls of ‘namaste’. They wanted to know how it had gone. A few men eyed them cautiously as though wondering what they’d become and how they’d changed after such a trip. They noticed the dust up to the knees, like grey socks, and the tiredness in their gait.

  They knew tall Anila and were already wary of her. She was trouble. Hadn’t she walked out on her husband? Why did some women mind a beating so much? They saw Divya, thin and wiry, her bare arms lean but muscled, and her fine hands clutching the fold of her sari round her oval face. But all the men’s eyes began at and kept returning to the brown and cream figure of Leena. She had a temple dancer’s poise and grace, and her body was slim yet rounded. But it was the bright perfection of her almond eyes and lips like a split cherry that sent their blood racing. Men made fools of themselves to see Leena smile.

  Some curious children tagged along and a scrawny hound or two sniffed at their legs, turning them into a procession. Goats bleated as they were smacked out of the way and cows lay chewing in the hard shadows. Smoke from early evening cooking fires was already spilling into the street and charging the air. They walked past unmarked and barely delineated streets and alleys. No-one had addresses. Everyone knew everyone else and had a map of the village in their mind, with every hut occupied by a relative or friend or, occasionally, an enemy. The three smiled and returned the namastes.

  ‘Fine. Yes, we went to Delhi. Yes, we saw the bank.’

  Anila answered for them as she was escorted to her hut by her companions. In a rare moment of spite, she wished Dilip could have been here to see this. How amazed he’d have been! She would have shown him that it wasn’t his grand ideas that had come to fruition, but hers. And then the anxiety settled again like a heavy shawl, and her breathing quickened. Sometimes she wondered if she were being made a plaything of Shiva; being set high, just to be cast down even harder.

  ‘We are tired. We will talk at the pumps in the morning,’ said Divya from inside her blue hood.

  In fact Divya wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or not to be home. She missed her two sons of course, and was desperate to see them again. But a peculiar melancholy had taken hold of her. She’d forgotten about the fearful arrival in the city the first night. All she could see was red silk trimmed with gold, and bracelets of gold and silver. The bustle and commotion, and the vitality and excitement. A taste of a life more exotic. A life she might have led but for the vagaries of the gods. The same gods who’d crippled her husband. Divya always presented herself as hard headed and sensible. Maybe that was why her husband thought her so cold. But something in her had been touched by this grand trip, something had stirred and she was afraid either to let it loose or to bury it for good.

  Pretty Leena was bursting to tell to her friends. She grinned as she walked.

  ‘You shall see. Oh, you shall see!’ she called out.

  She thought of her husband, Chandan, and whether he would still be angry with her for setting out on such a wild notion, even though they’d had no other choice. Not since they’d lost their field. Leena knew she could charm him round – that was her greatest strength – but she would have liked him to see her as a sensible business woman as well as his fantasy girl. She conjured images of Chandan bathing her feet and worshipping her as the saviour of the family.

  Their weary legs felt the steady gradient as they pushed up the lane towards Anila’s home. They embraced outside Anila’s mud-coated brick hut with its wooden door and its two square window holes either side. They helped her shake the dust from her sari and flicked at the coating on her feet and ankles. They were reluctant now to break the bonds and the spell of travelling because the next steps were so terrifying. Their voices carried. The door opened and an old woman stood outlined in the back glow of an oil lamp within. She had a hand on the shoulder of a small girl who squirmed in anxiety and delight at seeing Anila. Her thumb was full in her mouth. Anila turned from her travel companions and bent down and was almost knocked over by her daughter’s lunge and tight embrace. She stood up, still holding her small smiling burden, and embraced the old woman.

  ‘We did it Mother. We went to the city and we saw the bank and we got the money. Everything will be better now.’ She said it like she believed it. She had to believe it. There was no going back.

  The old woman looked at her daughter and searched her face. She had always feared for her daughter, especially since her own husband had died and there was no longer the two of them to control her. There was a spirit in her that seemed to go begging for trouble. There was a look about Anila that her mother hadn’t seen for two years. Not since she’d told her she could no longer take her husband’s beatings. Even if it meant giving up her reputation and living the rest of her life as poor and excluded as a Dalit. The old woman’s face held a look of love and fear. Fear for what her daughter was getting into. Fear that she’d reached too far and that disappointment would follow as surely as tomorrow’s sunrise.

  NINE

  Next day Ted made an effort. He unearthed smarter duds from the reject pile in the spare room and dropped them at the corner laundry before heading into work. He picked them up that evening and found them steamed and pressed, but there had been no time to take out the waistband. Nor had he found time or inclination for a haircut. The best he could do was shower and shave, and comb his mop to almost civilised standards. As he posed in front of the wall mirror in the sitting room, he realised how long it had been since he’d dressed for anyone. Maybe if he’d gone to the trouble more often with Mary? It prompted yet another re-run of their last evening together. . .

  From deep in his favourite armchair, he’d been holding out his big arms seeking absolution, salvation. But this was no preacher in front of him.

  ‘We can work on this.’ Even he could hear the doubt in his voice.

  ‘We’ve tried,’ she replied.

  ‘Not enough.’

  ‘You can’t change, Ted. It’s how you are.’

  ‘You used to like who I was. What’s different? Come on, spit it out.’

  Mary stood in the doorway, hands on bony hips, inspecting him. Behind her, bags and boxes lay piled in the hall. None of the other rows had reached this point. A TV ball game droned in the background. It was drizzling outside and growing darker, but no one reached for the light switch.

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  She pushed her chin-length black hair behind her ears. He loved her ears.

  ‘I need to.’

  It had to be said. Had to be heard. He wasn’t going to let her off the hook.

  She folded her arms, always a bad sign in these last destructive months.

  ‘What’s over there?’

  So that’s where this was going.

  ‘It’s my desk.’

  ‘It’s your obsession. What’s on your desk?’

  ‘Oh, come on. You know what’s on it. Don’t blame the damn book.’

  ‘It’s been there how long? Eight years? Ten? You’ve been writing the Great American novel. . .’ She carved quote signs in the air. ‘. . .forever, Ted. And you’re never going to finish it, far less get it published! You’re either at the newsroom or you’re at your desk. You haven’t been with me in ten – Go
ddamn - years!’

  ‘If that’s all it takes, no problem. Look.’

  Ted shot his body out of the embrace of the chair and lumbered over to his desk. He grabbed one of the piles of manuscript and took it, pages fluttering, into the kitchen. He opened the door to the garbage bin. He stuffed the pages in. Called her bluff.

  ‘See! It’s done. It’s history. I’m all yours.’

  He pushed his hair back off his face, and wiped his brow which was already beading with sweat – the aircon in the ancient apartment block had broken for the third time that week. He gave her his best smile, his college boy smile, the smile she’d always found cute. Mary stood looking at him, eyebrows up, hands back on hips.

  ‘I used to be your obsession. But I know when I’m beat. We don’t go out, we don’t talk.’ Her voice hardened. ‘We don’t fuck.’ She let the word tarnish the air. ‘Besides…’

  ‘Besides what?’

  ‘Nothing. Doesn’t matter.’ She started to put her coat on.

  He strode over, put his great paws on her upper arms.

  ‘Tell me.’

  She sighed. ‘You’d better know. You’ll know soon enough.’

  She gazed straight into the eyes that were already screwed up - a kid knowing it was about to get smacked. The truth guessed long ago.

  ‘There’s somebody waiting for me. Downstairs.’

  It was almost a relief. He dropped his hands, dropped his shoulders like he was going in for one of the tackles he was famous for at high school.

  ‘I knew it.’

  ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘Support? Loyalty?’

  She took a long look at him.

  ‘Ted, I used to find it attractive. What you did. Your journalism was a fine thing. But you could have been chief editor. Taken that job with CNN. Fox even. Made decent money. Moved out of this pit. But that wasn’t enough. The day you won that goddamn Pulitzer, you thought you were the next Updike. Journalism wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.’ She paused for breath. ‘Well, I found someone who does think I’m enough. We have fun!’

  Her voice softened. ‘I haven’t had fun in. . . oh shit, you know, Ted. I want a life.’

  Her bullets drove home, leaving him paralysed and bleeding in his comfortable chair. Hearing her last words long after she’d gone. Long after the night fell. Long after the ball game was over. It wasn’t even about losing Mary. Sitting in his dark room, lit intermittently by passing cars that swung their beams through his first floor window searching for a man of substance, and not finding one. Sitting, thinking that a man could do something about his anger or his laziness or his habit of getting drunk with the boys on a Friday night. But this wasn’t fair. What could a man do about his dreams?

  Ted’s sartorial efforts found favour with the patron of the eponymously named Giovanni’s Room, a tile-floored Italian where the pasta was home-made and the Chianti came in chipped stone pitchers. Every time he’d seen the macho, happily married owner, Ted wondered if he’d ever read Baldwin’s novel, far less identified with the gay barman.

  Ted had arrived early and described his date to Giovanni. Maybe he overdid it. Instead of Ted’s usual bare table for one, near the back, a table à deux was set up in the window. The rough wood top was camouflaged with fresh linen and crowned with a vase holding a single rose. Giovanni clearly hoped to draw in more customers when they saw the quality of the diners. Or at least half of them.

  As the restaurant filled, Ted pretended to be engrossed in his phone, wishing he could ditch the rose and praying she wouldn’t stand him up. When he saw the cab draw up he shot to his feet. Giovanni beat him to the restaurant door and glad-handed Erin Wishart into his parlour, only just refraining from kissing her hand. The awkward couple were shepherded to their table, Ted trying – and failing - to look nonchalant, as if Erin was simply one of a long line of top drawer dinner dates. In truth she was the first – of any sort - in months, and Ted could only hope this would turn out better than the night of the stalker from Accounts.

  There was no doubting her presence. He was aware of other diners checking her out. The soft brogue was an aural magnet. That and the poise that comes from wearing Armani. Or just knowing you can afford Armani. Erin Wishart displayed the firm arms and shoulders of a woman who worked out but managed to keep her feminine curves. Ted appreciated that. He was old school. Another point of departure with Mary who’d fought a permanent war against anything above size zero.

  ‘So what changed your mind?’ she was asking.

  Her question reminded Ted why they were here, and that his job probably depended on getting something juicy out of this.

  ‘A little guy with a big title. It was put to me that maybe I should be looking harder at this story.’

  ‘Sounds like we both know pressure.’

  ‘This came from the top. Possibly from a certain Martin Lanesborough, chair of our holding company, and –’

  ‘- one of our board directors. You noticed.’

  Ted tried to ignore the irony in her voice; tongue-lashed by the Queen of Scots.

  ‘The Tribune wants a bigger spread on this bank.’ He made quote marks in the air. ‘A clash of banking cultures post Crash’. Stan Coleman – my boss – even suggested I go to India. Thinks it’ll give the story zing. Can you believe it?’

  He waited for the shared laughter. It didn’t come.

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘We don’t do that sort of stuff nowadays. It’s why we invented the phone and the internet. Anyway, what am I going to get out of it other than heat rash and malaria?’

  ‘Zing? You’ll survive. I do it all the time. Seen one of these?’

  Erin dug into her purse and pulled out a slim black card. It said Concierge Key, American Airlines. Ted’s eyes widened.

  ‘My God. How many air miles?’

  ‘They don’t say. It’s invite only. But minimum seems to be 3 million.’

  ‘So, I’m a wuss. I’m willing to get under the skin of this story, but I need your help. I’m even ready, God help me, to go to Delhi or Kolkata or whatever they’re calling them now, if that’s what it takes. I need substance.’

  He sat back and waited. Her face showed a dashed hope, then a kind of resignation. They broke off and made a fast pass at the menu. Ted had forgotten when he’d last seen one. His habit was a pitcher of red and the steaming pasta special. Tonight, Ted broke with tradition, and ordered the veal and a bottle of Barolo. Giovanni smiled. Erin went for fish, broiled plain, no sauce and mineral water. During all this he could see her mind sizing things up. Then came resolution. She pushed back, clutching the table edges with both hands, about to address the board.

  ‘OK, Ted. Look, I had a bad night and a bad day for that matter. If you hadn’t called me I would have called you. I’m willing to do what I can - within reason.’

  ‘Why? What’s really behind this? I’m struggling with your democracy needs the People’s Bank thesis. And you’re too young to be having a midlife, Erin.’

  She nodded. She knew she had to give him more. But she wasn’t ready to talk about the deeper fears stirred up by her intimate knowledge of Stanstead and what José had told her. She played her first card.

  ‘Ever been to Scotland?’

  ‘Nope. Always meant to. Heard you’ve got neat golf courses. All those links.’

  ‘None in Drumchapel, I can assure you. It’s a high rise housing estate north west of Glasgow. They flattened the old central slums like the Gorbals and moved the people out to new tower blocks.’

  ‘I’ve heard of the Gorbals.’

  ‘Lovely red sandstone tenements. Once. For a population of ten per cent of the numbers in the ‘30’s. An ant hill of refugees and unemployed. No plumbing, no care. But plenty of heart. Rather than do them up, the council tore them down and built new slums outside the city - without shops, pubs, playgrounds or soul.’

  ‘Smart work.’

  ‘Blame Corbusier.’

  ‘This Drumchapel – i
t’s where you grew up? Slum kid, eh?’

  ‘Not exactly. More a riches to rags story. My folks had a nice wee house in a Glasgow suburb. Let’s just say things went off the rails. We ended up in a crumbling tower in the middle of nowhere. I was six when we moved.’

  ‘Culture shock?’

  She nodded. ‘Slums, gangs, drugs, the stink of urine in the lifts – when they worked.’ She shuddered. ‘The whole bit. I’ve put as much distance between me and that life as I possibly could.’

  ‘You’re living the American Dream. So what?’

  ‘I travel a lot in the Far East. Outside the five star hotels, down among the ordinary folk, it’s just Drumchapel or Castlemilk or Easterhouse. Only warmer. You don’t forget. Have you ever had to pawn something to buy food? Ever taken a pay day loan to pay the gas bill? Outfits like People’s Bank are needed. Otherwise the sharks will get you.’

  For the briefest of moments he caught a look on her face; yearning came closest to describing it. The first crack in the corporate veneer. He really needed to reset his compass on this lady and this situation. Bring him proof of time travel or God, and he’d believe it.

  ‘I thought People’s Bank were the sharks.’

  ‘That’s because you haven’t done your homework.’

  Ouch. ‘So this is banker’s guilt.’

  ‘Sarcasm runs off me. I’m not embarrassed to have a conscience. How about you?’

  The blue eyes bored into his. He emptied his glass and poured some more.

  ‘How about your colleagues. Get ‘em together and mount a boardroom coup or something.’

  ‘We never get the chance. I’m only here for a couple of weeks during quarterly meetings. And we never have downtime. To be honest, I’m not sure I trust any of the others. One of Warwick’s ways of controlling us is to keep each of us in the dark about what the others are doing. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be afraid of your boss?’