(Un)arranged Marriage Read online

  On the other side of Evington Road the streets all ran up towards London Road, which led you into Clarendon Park and, further south, to Stoneygate, two of Leicester’s posher areas. In fact, a lot of the houses in the posher areas, especially in Clarendon Park, were dead similar to the ones in Highfields, with the same narrow streets. The only difference was that Clarendon Park was much more middle class and had loads more white families living there which automatically gave it a better reputation in the eyes of some ignorant people.

  That was what I loved about living where I did. Evington Road was like a fence that I could sit on. Each day I could make a choice about whether I wanted to jump over to the Highfields side or the London Road side. It was wicked because some days Ady and me would be messing about in the narrow back streets of the ghetto, and the next we’d meet Ben, Penny and Parmy up the London Road to play football or cricket on the hockey pitch they had up there, or cross into Clarendon Park so that we could go shoplifting at the Spar.

  No-one turned up at the park, just like I’d said, so we decided to head into town. We’d given everyone about half an hour to turn up, standing in the gravel car park watching a gang of Asian youths sitting in their parents’ BMWs and Golfs, the doors open and sound systems blasting out a mixture of ragga, hip hop, RnB and bhangra. Standing by a red Cavalier SRI was a local dealer, Bucks, doing good business in five-and ten-pound weed deals. Ady and me both knew him quite well because he sold stuff outside our school – not just weed, but computer games and mobile phones too. As we headed out of the car park I nodded at him and told him that Harry was still a fat bastard when he asked. Bucks had gone to school with my brother and I think they still went out drinking every now and then. I told him that I’d give his regards to my brother and then we headed down into the city centre, past all the offices and shops that line London Road.

  We popped into a couple of record stores, not really staying for longer than a few minutes in each because we weren’t looking to buy anything. All we were doing was loafing, just wandering about aimlessly, seeing if anything was happening, something which loads of kids in Leicester seem to have turned into an art form. There were kids on skateboards rolling by, young girls with toddlers, groups of youths in baggy, no-ass jeans and baseball caps, all eyeing each other. A typical school holiday thing. Man, half of them loafed about during term time too, in and out of the arcades and the shopping centre. As we walked Ady told me about a girl at school, Sarah, who wanted to go out with him. I didn’t really know what to say about it, mainly because I didn’t have a girlfriend – and I didn’t really want one, either. I’d never even considered asking a girl out. In the end, just to shut him up, I told him that he should go out with her, which made him grin.

  ‘You’ll have to start calling me “the ladies’ don” if I do,’ he said, laughing at me.

  ‘You ain’t no don.’

  ‘Number one in de area, boss.’

  I laughed back and told him that his head was too big although, secretly, I was kinda jealous that some girl had shown an interest in him. I mean, that meant that I’d maybe have to get myself a girl too, just to even things up.

  We were wandering up into Silver Street which led into a pedestrianized square when I saw Lisa for the first time. Ady pulled on my sleeve and pointed at two blonde girls who were walking towards us on the opposite pavement.

  ‘That’s her, man!’ he said excitedly, pointing at the taller of the two. I was too busy looking at the other one. She was wicked. Long hair in ringlets, a deep tan and wearing three-quarter length black combats with a black vest top.

  ‘That’s Sarah.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked, not really paying attention to him.

  ‘Sarah, man. The girl from school.’

  ‘So who’s the girl with her?’ Man, I was in shock. I couldn’t stop looking at her. And as they both passed by, they smiled. I mean, it was obvious that we were just gawping at them.

  ‘Dunno, my yout’, but you check that smile she gave me? Man, I’m in there.’

  ‘They were smiling at me, bwoi. Not you.’

  ‘Yeah right,’ Ady laughed. ‘Because they really loved your Bollywood bad boy looks, innit?’

  We didn’t see them again that afternoon, but somehow I had gone from not being sure about wanting a girlfriend to wanting the girl with the ringlets in her hair in the space of about five minutes.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  August

  I FOUND MYSELF thinking of the girl with the ringlets in her hair more and more, and I started to do stupid things – like shoplifting anything that I could lay my hands on. Both of those things were my way of putting the troubles at home to the back of my mind. I couldn’t get Ringlets out of my mind and I just knew I had to see her again soon. In the end I almost engineered our next meeting.

  I was with Ady and we’d been playing football on Victoria Park with some other lads from our school and my cousin Ekbal and his mates. When the game was over, I told Ady that we should go into town but he said he wanted to go home instead.

  I really didn’t want to go home. Not with the way things were with my family. After my revenge mission against Harry’s CDs and stuff, he’d punched me and I’d threatened him with a knife. Just to scare him – I was never gonna use it – but Harry acted like the big kid he is and told the old man, who beat me up. I couldn’t wait for the day that I would be old enough to leave home.

  Ady finished his cigarette and flicked the butt high into the air. ‘What we gonna do then?’ he asked as I kicked at some gravel.

  ‘Come on, Ady, let’s go into town.’

  ‘Man, we always go into town. Let’s do something else.’

  ‘Yeah, but we might bump into Sarah again. You’d be pissed off if I went into town on me own and saw her.’

  ‘Who you trying to kid, rude bwoi? You only hopin’ that she’ll have that other girl with her. Ringlets.’

  But I got my way. We walked into town along New Walk and on to King Street. I used to love some of the old buildings around there, the ones with their original shop fronts still intact. We stopped at a stationery shop and Ady got the look of a bad boy in his eye and decided he wanted to go in there. I walked across the road to look in the window of a small art gallery. There was a print in the window, a Matisse painting which I think is called ‘Blue Nude’. I’d seen it in a book about famous artists that I’d borrowed from Evington library once. I remember thinking that this print would be the first thing I’d buy when I finally left home.

  The door of the stationers’ suddenly flew open and Ady ran out, clutching pens in one hand and holding onto his cap with the other. His bag was bobbing like crazy on his back as he ran. I watched as the old shop assistant hobbled out after him, shouting for him to stop. He was already halfway down the street by the time she got through the door. I shook my head as I set off after him.

  ‘Was that worth the effort?’ I asked him after we had bought a McDonald’s and headed into town. We were only a minute’s walk from the scene of the crime and Ady was proudly eyeing his goods. He just grinned and showed me the Parker fountain pen that took pride of place amongst his little haul. I had to admit it was a pretty cool pen, worth a bomb.

  ‘I’m gonna sell it to Hital, man. He’s always telling me to nick him one,’ he said.

  ‘How much?’ I asked, realizing that if there was money involved, I might get a cut. We did that, Ady and me, shared the profits on most of the things we stole and sold at school. We had this deal about friendship first and everything else second. It seemed to work out pretty well too. Mostly.

  ‘Let’s see now. Twenty-two ninety-nine in the shop. Then there’s all the hassle of nicking it in the first place, plus the spare cartridges that I got as well. I think fifteen ‘pinds’ for the lot should cover it.’ Ady had put on a mock posh accent. ‘What say you, Mr Merryweather?’

  ‘Damn good business, what, Mr Farquar,’ I replied, using the silly names we’d made up after watching the Harry Enfield Show. />
  Ady eyed the pen again before speaking again, now in his normal voice. ‘Why Hital can’t buy one is what I don’t get. I mean the silly knob’s loaded. His old man drives that Lexus and they got that big house in Oadby.’

  ‘That,’ I replied, ‘is exactly why he’s rich and we ain’t. I mean, Hital’s got more money than anyone else at school but he’s tight with it. Has he ever let you have some of his drink? Crisps?’

  ‘Now that you mention it, nah, he never has.’

  ‘Exactly. Cause that’s one of the ways that the rich stay rich,’ I continued.

  Ady gave me a mocking look. ‘Oh yeah? Boy, ah sure’n hell as hope you ain’t a goin’ pinko on me now.’ This time the accent was John Wayne.

  ‘You know this street used to be called Cankwell and not Cank Street years ago?’ I said, changing the subject. I’d read about it in some local history booklet at school. ‘This bench we’re sittin’ on, it’s right above where the well actually was.’

  ‘I couldn’t give a toss.’ Ady threw his burger wrapping to the floor. ‘Let’s go check out the Shires.’

  The Shires was the shopping centre in the middle of town. As with most afternoons there were gangs of young kids in there, wandering around taxing each other or bothering the security. I couldn’t work out why Ady liked the place so much but he did. We always ended up in there.

  ‘Man, we checkin’ out de honeyz, innit?’ Ady would say, putting on an accent that mimicked the way that lots of young Asian lads spoke in Leicester.

  We were in there for about half an hour, wandering in and out of the shops not really looking at anything, before I spotted Sarah coming out of a clothes shop. I looked behind her to see if her friend was with her, the girl with the ringlets, and there she was, right on cue, carrying two bags with the shop’s logo on them. I tapped Ady on the shoulder to get his attention. He was busy watching a couple of black girls walking in the opposite direction.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There they are.’ I nodded towards Sarah, who saw us and smiled. She said something to her friend, who shrugged her shoulders and then they started to walk towards us. Ady saw them and started to straighten the cap he was wearing and then pulled up his jeans.

  ‘Man, we is in here, bro’,’ he said in a stupid American accent. ‘Yes siree.’

  Sarah stopped in front of Ady and said ‘hello’, smiling at me when she’d finished. I must have gone a shade of red because Ady just started laughing and then Sarah joined in too. I looked at Sarah’s friend who seemed to have gone as red as me.

  ‘You’re Ady, aren’t you?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Yeah. But you know that already.’ Ady was on the attack – the ‘girls them Don’ in action.

  Sarah smiled at his reply and then turned to me. ‘So who are you?’

  I looked from her to Ady and then to Ringlets, who was even more gorgeous at close range. She had mad green eyes and her face was kind of catlike. This time she had on a pair of wicked Acupuncture trainers and grey combats, with a little white crop top, underneath which she obviously had nothing else on. Man, I thought I was gonna start stammering. ‘Manny,’ I managed to reply, But then my mouth just went numb and my brain died. I prayed that she wouldn’t ask me anything else for a while. Even the palms of my hands had started to sweat a little.

  ‘I think maybe we might buy you two young ladies a coffee or something,’ began Ady, winking at me. ‘After all, ain’t like we’re doing anything else this afternoon.’

  ‘What, so we’re like a stopgap?’ asked Sarah, her face clouding over. I gave Ady a death glare. I mean what a stupid thing to say.

  Ady picked up on it and started to backtrack. ‘Nah, nah. That’s not what I meant to say, Man. What I meant to say was . . .’

  Sarah looked at Ringlets and then straight at Ady. ‘Gotcha. You’re easy to wind up!’

  Both of them started laughing as Ady realized they had just blown his ‘Mr Cool’ out of the water like a torpedoed submarine. I grinned too, which made Ady scowl.

  ‘So where you taking us?’ asked Ringlets, speaking for the first time. I looked at Ady and then back at the girls, rubbing my hands against the back of my jeans whilst my heart went haywire.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  October

  BY THE TIME Year 9 began, Ady had started going out with Sarah and I had found out that ‘Ringlets’ was actually called Lisa, that she and Sarah were cousins and that she went to our school. I found it hard to believe that I had never noticed her before. Sarah had told Ady that she kept to herself for the first two years and that, although she didn’t look it, she was actually a bit of a swot. She had changed her hairstyle over the holidays and been to Turkey for a month which explained the suntan. Even so, I still couldn’t believe that she had escaped my attention, even if she was part of the other half of our year and we never had lessons together.

  I was really excited about starting Year 9, hoping that Ady could arrange for me to meet Lisa properly. Back in the summer when we had gone for coffee, we hadn’t said much to each other, apart from little bits about what class we were in and stuff like that. I had the impression that she didn’t like me but Ady told me that she was just like that. Kind of aloof. Every time I saw her in school I was tempted to go and say hello but she had ignored me so far and I was beginning to give up on ever being able to ask her out. Ady just laughed at me and kept on telling me to ask Lisa out. All you gotta do, he’d say, is just ask her out. That’s all. Only I couldn’t. On the one hand I was scared of making an idiot of myself by stuttering at the crucial moment. And then, what if she said no? I’d be well embarrassed.

  On the other hand I really couldn’t ask her out. I mean, what if she said yes. It meant getting involved in all the stuff that came with it, like phoning each other up every night. I couldn’t risk one of my brothers or my father picking up the phone. They’d murder me. Imagine. A girl. Calling me. On their phone. It must sound stupid, but that was the way it was for me. You see in my parents’ eyes it wasn’t right, all this girlfriend/boyfriend stuff. They were hyper-traditional about it. The only relationship you could have involved marriage, otherwise it was a slight on your family’s honour. You didn’t go out with the kind of loose women that the Western world tempted you with. White girls. Black girls. And especially not Asian girls because that was even worse. Some families, like Eky’s, had chilled out a bit over the whole issue, but not mine. In my house you had to just wait until they found someone for you to marry. After that you could do what you wanted. But not until then . . .

  As for inviting her back to my house. No way! I’d probably just about get away with a girl phoning me. But only if it didn’t happen more than once and even then only if I lied through my teeth about who she was and why she needed to talk to me about ‘that science project’ we were having to complete together. As part of a group, of course.

  If I ever brought a girl home I’d be dead meat. My mum would probably start acting out some melodrama like the ones that she watches on Asian satellite channels. My dad would hit the roof, hit me, and then hit the bottle. And as for my brothers – well I just didn’t want to think about it. They’d probably wolf-whistle and leer at her, make suggestive comments and ask me if I minded sharing. No joke. Once, when I was forced to go to the park with them, a group of young Asian college girls walked past us as we played with a football. Ranjit started whistling at them and Harry asked them all sorts of crude things in Punjabi before shouting ‘Chok deh Phutteh!’ at them. It’s the bhangra music equivalent to ‘raise the roof’ or ‘take it to the bridge’ or something. Only my brothers used it as a war-cry every time they saw their friends or when they wanted to harass some girls. That’s what I mean when I say that I never want to end up like them.

  Sometimes I used to dream that I was adopted. In the dream I would get home from school to find that my parents were waiting for me. My father would have a serious expression on his face, the one he wears when he thinks that he is being intellectual, like whe
n he watches the news. My mum would be hiding her face from me, muffled sobs coming from her mouth. It was always the same. For some reason I’d be wearing Michael Owen’s shirt, even though we aren’t allowed to wear sports gear to school, and the telly would be on, showing some talk show on kids who divorce their parents. In his hands, my dad would be holding a piece of paper, my birth certificate. He’d look me in the eye and then shake his head. ‘I do not know how to say this, Manjit,’ he’d say. ‘I am afraid that we are not your real parents.’ I would look at him and then look at my supposed mum and I would laugh, not cry and call them liars and tell them that I hated them. No, I’d just laugh and tell them that I already knew. And then from behind me, the living-room door would open and in would step my real dad. Only in every dream he’d change. He might have dreadlocks and be a ragga superstar, or he’d be the owner of Liverpool Football Club; or some multimillionaire who had been on amazing adventures around the world. Whatever took my fancy. Anything but my actual father. And then the dream would end and I’d wake up to the smell of Harry’s body odour, masked by cheap aftershave from Superdrug – own label.

  All that was just a dream. In reality, I was just Manny – who couldn’t ask a girl out, and whose best mate, Ady, did have a girlfriend.

  One lunchtime Ady persuaded me to come out with him to see Sarah. I wasn’t up for it, but Ady insisted and we set off on the bus. Sarah lived with her mum in a flat outside town. Her mum was at work so Maxine, Sarah’s older sister, let us in. Maxine was Sarah’s half-sister. Her father was black, whereas Sarah’s was white. She had a kid brother, too, Mikey, who was half-Spanish. I suppose it was quite a mix, her family, but it didn’t bother me. Our school was full of mixed-race kids and brothers and sisters who shared only a mum or dad in common. Or they were part of two families who had been thrown together. I thought it was brilliant, all that kind of stuff.