(Un)arranged Marriage Read online

  ‘I know. That’s what makes me so angry all the time.’ I took hold of her hand and squeezed it.

  ‘Is that why you take so much time off school?’ Lisa squeezed back.

  ‘Yeah, in a way. I just get so pissed off, and I don’t see the point of getting on well at school if it’s all just a way of killing time before my parents mess up my life.’

  ‘It’s weird, I suppose,’ said Lisa, before kissing me on the cheek. ‘My dad and me watched this documentary about young Asian women who are forced into marriages and I always thought it was just the females that were pressured. I never realized that young men got it too.’

  ‘I suppose it’s done in a different way – like . . . oh, what’s the word.’

  ‘Subliminal.’

  I looked at Lisa and grinned. ‘Yeah, Little Miss Dictionary. Subliminal. I mean I don’t doubt that my old man would drag me to the temple if he had to. That’s just what he’s like. But my mum . . . I mean, she hardly ever speaks to me apart from to ask me how many chapatis I want – but as soon as anyone mentions marriage and I try to say “no”, the tears come out and she gets all hysterical.’

  ‘It must be so horrible.’

  ‘Yeah, it is. It’s also upsetting and it makes me angry to a point where I just want to fight the whole world. That’s when I go mad and do stupid things like go shoplifting or skive lessons to get drunk with Ady. I know it’s wrong, Lisa, but I can’t stop myself sometimes.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to pretend I like you doing those things. I think you are wrong about all that. But I do understand, Manny, I really do.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I lov . . .’

  ‘See, you nearly said the dreaded L-word again,’ she said referring to the number of times I’d nearly said it but, for some reason, held back. I don’t think it bothered her that much. She always told me that she knew how I felt, because the way I was with her showed it so she didn’t need to hear it – although I think she would have liked to. ‘Look,’ she continued, holding onto my thigh. ‘Can you come over and stay on Saturday night?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My parents asked you to dinner, as a present for you.’ She looked away and when she looked back at me she was smiling but red in the face too. ‘And they want to talk to us. Both of us.’

  I raised an eyebrow, wondering what she was talking about.

  ‘I don’t know what it’s about, but they said it’s quite important.’ She looked away again.

  ‘Dinner should be OK, but how am I going to get my old man to agree to my staying over?’

  ‘I don’t know. Can’t you tell him that you’ll be at Ady’s house?’

  ‘Oh yeah – the old racist is really gonna go for that.’

  ‘Please, Manny. It’s really important.’ She held onto my thigh hard, looking right into my eyes. I loved the way her eyes sparkled blue-green. It always made me want to kiss her.

  ‘I’ll do my best. Honest.’

  Lisa beamed at me and then kissed me and I spent the rest of the day thinking about her as I listened to my teachers droning on about Maths and Chemistry.

  In the end I told Ranjit that I had a really important football trial to go to and gave him the mobile number of the teacher who was taking me and four other lads to it. Ranjit spent three or four minutes talking to our new football coach, ‘Mr Menzies’, the night before we were due to go and ‘Mr Menzies’ told him that we would be away Friday and Saturday night and that he’d personally see to my safe return on the Sunday afternoon. The trials were being held all day Saturday and Sunday morning – first at High field Road in Coventry, then Villa Park in Birmingham and The Hawthorns in West Bromwich on the Sunday. ‘Mr Menzies’ was actually Ady putting on his Merryweather and Farquar accent and at one point, when Ranjit started to go on about how it was fine with him that I went because ‘footballers earn a lot of money nowadays, innit.’ I had to literally bite my own tongue to stop from laughing out loud. Ranjit even squared it with the old man and gave me twenty pounds to spend.

  ‘You can pay me back when you sign for Man Utd, innit?’ The look on his face when I went overboard with the acting and hugged him was almost complete shock. I just grinned and went to bed a happy man.

  On the Friday night I went out as a foursome with Lisa, Sarah and Ady – and Ady dropped a bombshell by telling me that Sarah was pregnant and that he was looking forward to becoming a dad. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Ady as a father was like the biggest joke that he could ever play. I could see it all. The tiny Nike booties and baby baseball caps. The kid’s first words would probably be ‘Yo, man, where de honeyz at?’ In the end I just shook his hand and then gave him and Sarah a hug each. What else was I supposed to do? When we got thrown out of a nightclub queue because Ady tried to blag our way in for free by insisting to the bouncers that he was Will Smith’s cousin – complete with dodgy accent and all – we walked Sarah and Lisa back to Lisa’s house before I went to Ady’s with him and stayed over for the first time ever in our long friendship.

  On Saturday I went into town with the father-to-be; I told him that we should have a look in some of the baby clothing stores, but he just played with his baseball cap and told me that he was scared stiff about it all and hadn’t yet told his mum and dad. Only his brother knew and he was in no position to judge as a nineteen-year-old father of three. Later on, I bumped into Ekbal and his mates as I waited for the number 27 bus to Lisa’s. He ribbed me about my ‘trials’, which my brothers had been bragging about, and told me that I should stand up to my old man. I said that I would call him for a chat and got on the bus feeling more than a little nervous about what Lisa’s parents were going to talk to us about.

  Lisa’s mum let me in and kissed me on the cheek before telling me to help myself to a drink from the kitchen. Lisa was in there, standing by the fridge reading a postcard from her sister, Mel, who was travelling round Asia on a year off from uni. I kissed her hello and poured myself some orange juice from the fridge. She told me that dinner was going to be around seven, which meant that we had nearly two hours to kill.

  ‘So, what do you want to do?’ I asked, sitting down at the round kitchen table and glancing at the front page of the Guardian.

  ‘I think my mum wants to talk to you before dinner,’ replied Lisa.

  ‘Yeah, but about what exactly?’ Behind me Lisa’s dad, who I called Ben and not Mr Jenkins, walked in and ruffled my hair.

  ‘Hello, Manny,’ he said, grabbing a glass from the cupboard and filling it with tap water. He was wearing the same kind of straight black trousers and roll-neck top that I always saw him in, with round, wire-rimmed glasses and short, trendy, messy hair which was as blond as Lisa’s.

  ‘Hi, Ben. How’s it going?’

  ‘Fine. I want to have a quiet chat with my daughter if that’s all right.’

  ‘Cool with me,’ I replied.

  ‘And I think Amanda is waiting to have a similar chat with you in the study.’ He winked at me and walked out of the kitchen with Lisa following. I grabbed her hand and whispered, ‘What do they want to talk about?’

  She smiled and whispered back, ‘Sex.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a shock really, Mrs Jenk . . . Amanda.’ In the study about half an hour later, I was still digesting what Lisa’s mum had asked me. They knew about Ady and Sarah and, since Lisa and I were both now sixteen and had been going together a long time, they felt they needed to talk to us. Were we thinking of having sex in the near future? Were we already having sex and in that case were we using condoms? Did we realize that we had a responsibility to each other and to ourselves to make sure that we understood the physical and emotional aspects of having sex? I didn’t know how to react or what to say. I just got more and more embarrassed and hoped I was saying the right thing.

  And then she asked me if my parents had said anything yet. I tried to explain to her about the way I was brought up to view sex as something dirty and wrong. When I was younger my old man used to switch cha
nnels at the first sight of naked sin, even on those family shows where people sent in videos of their dads mooning out of car windows and stuff. My dad would swear in Punjabi and curse white people. One night we’d been watching some Asian drama about two teenagers in Bradford. My dad had been totally engrossed until one scene in which the couple were having sex in a disused warehouse. He had hit the roof. You see, it was bad enough when he saw white people having sex on TV, but then again, he’d say, what do you expect of them? But to see Asians doing the same, especially such a pretty young Asian actress, well, that was the limit.

  Amanda just gave me a hug and a kiss and told me that she was glad her daughter had such a sensitive and understanding boyfriend. Then she told me that Ben was taking her to a concert in Birmingham after dinner and that we had the house to ourselves . . .

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  March

  THAT FIRST NIGHT with Lisa really cemented our relationship and how much we loved each other. It wasn’t anything like I thought it would be, our first time. It wasn’t like all those scenes that you get shown by Hollywood. It was really slow and gentle and it made me realize how much she really meant to me. It sounds like something from a romance novel but there’s no other way to describe it. It was amazing. We stayed up all night and talked about it and what it meant to us. I told her how glad I was to be able to spend time with her, away from my problems. When I was with her it was as if they just disappeared for a few hours and I felt relaxed and almost happy. After that night I spent a few more nights with Lisa at her parents’ house, which meant that Ady got to use all of his various accents over the phone to Ranjit or his wife, Jas. The trouble was in getting back to the real world that I lived in. And there my problems just got worse.

  After Christmas in Year 11, everything went downhill faster than an Olympic skier. I was skiving all the time and spending my days with Ady. Lisa was working hard for her GCSEs and I only saw her on the evenings that she had free. She continued to try and get me to attend school even though she knew by then that it was too late for me to catch up on all the work that I had missed. A couple of times I got caught – once as I was about to get on the bus – and by March I was on my last chance at school. I wasn’t bothered by then anyway. I hadn’t really done any work for my exams and I think all the teachers had given up on me. Only Mr Cooke showed some interest, telling me that I should start working for re-sits the following year, along with an offer of private tuition if I wanted it. Lisa’s dad told me much the same thing.

  ‘You’ve always got an option, Manny,’ he said. That was how cool Ben was. I knew that I was messing up. He knew it. But he just kept on telling me that I could make up for my mistakes. The only thing was, at the time, I didn’t want to. My life was all about evenings spent with Lisa and her parents and sneaking out of my house to go out on the piss with Ady when he was around.

  At home I hadn’t really had a conversation with anyone since Christmas Day. I just got in and shut myself in my room, or I climbed out the back and went for walks up Evington Road to be on my own or to meet Ady. I was nearly at the end of five years of school, with no hope of doing well at my GCSEs and one skive away from being expelled, when Ady turned up one lunchtime. I was watching some of the other lads in my year playing football as I sat at the far end of the tennis courts having a fag.

  Ady came up behind me and slapped the back of my head. I jumped to my feet and span round, fists clenched.

  ‘Easy, rude bwoi. Wha’? You gonna beat up yuh only fren’?’ He laughed as I sat back down.

  ‘What you doin’ in here? Come to do your GCSEs, man?’ This time it was my turn to laugh.

  Ady laughed again as he lit up a spliff that he had brought with him. ‘Sack them exams, man. I got money to earn, mofo.’ His accent went all gangsta-rap style.

  ‘Well, how about sending some of that money my way?’ I took the spliff as he offered it to me, blowing the smoke up into the air.

  He squinted at me for a moment before replying. ‘What you need money for, man? Ain’t like you ever do shit anyway. Not unless I take your sad ass out.’

  ‘I been spending loads with Lisa, man – going to the cinema and stuff.’

  ‘What you an’ her still on, yeah? How long? Time you got yourself some fresh.’

  I laughed with him. I could never get angry at Ady because everything he said was always a joke; only he could get away with it, being my best mate and everything. ‘I don’t want fresh, you evil drug-pusher, You. And at least I know what a condom is, Daddy.’

  Ady winced and then ignored my jibe. ‘Hey, weed is not a drug y’know.’ This time the accent was broad, thick Jamaican. ‘I an’ I nah deal wi’ dem deh drugs an’ ting. Alcohol an’ cigarette, dem a drug. Weed is jus’ a likkle ’erb, mon.’

  ‘Yeah, ’course it ain’t a drug, and you’re Bob Marley.’

  Ady screwed up his face and then pulled out his pack of cigarettes. He still hadn’t told me what he was doing in school.

  ‘Well, why are you here?’

  ‘Nice welcome, man. I come to see you, bredren, innit.’ Now his voice was high-pitched and camp-sounding. It was something we did when we laughed at all the young Asian kids that talked as though they had grown up in Kingston, Jamaica, and not Rushey Mead.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Well, I thought you might wanna come and have a drink or something.’

  ‘I can’t, Ady. If I get caught one more time, I’m out. For good.’

  ‘Jus’ throw a wobbly man. Tell ’em you’re sick.’

  ‘I can’t, man. I’ll get expelled. Not that it matters cos I’m gonna fail my exams, but the old man will go mad. School’s the only escape I’ve got, man. Anyway why are you so keen?’

  Ady looked at me and grinned cheesily. ‘Because it’s my birthday, bad bwoi.’

  I’d forgotten. I couldn’t believe it. The feeling that I got in the pit of my stomach was almost unbelievable. My best mate! My oldest and most trusted friend. And I had forgotten his birthday. Well, I mean after that, I had to go along with him for a drink. What else could I do?

  I waited until after lunch-time to skive off. After signing in with Sandhu I went along to my art lesson. It was easy enough to get out of because the teacher, Mrs Devonshire, was really dim. She spent more time worrying about her hair and her nails than watching what the students got up to. And she always wore the same perfume, which smelled more like air-freshener than anything else. I told her that I had a bad stomach and needed the loo. She didn’t even register what I said; it was that easy. The art department was round the back of the school and I had no trouble sneaking out and heading for the cover of some trees by the railings. Ady was waiting for me and we headed into Evington village.

  I think that we must have sat there in the village pub for ages. I didn’t really notice the time because Ady kept on buying us both double brandies with coke. We thought that we might get grief from the bar staff for being underage, but they didn’t even give us a second glance, even though I was still in my uniform – without the tie, of course. I mean, it must have been obvious that we weren’t old enough to be in there, but Ady must have spent thirty quid on drinks and nuts and things, and at the end of the day that was probably all the landlord and the brewery company cared about.

  We talked about Sarah being pregnant and the fact that she was five months gone and Ady still didn’t know what he was going to do. He told me that he felt a little bit trapped but that he wasn’t blaming anyone else but himself for feeling that way.

  ‘Man,’ he said wearily, holding the peak of his cap, ‘I should have seen what my brother is going through. I should have took the necessary steps an’ that – it’s just that when we were there and everything was cool and we was both up for it, I didn’t even think about no babies. I was just being a man.’

  ‘I dunno what to say to you, brother man. I always use a condom.’

  ‘Yeah, well you’ve got enough grief without getting some girl in trouble.’ He rai
sed his hands to the heavens and cried out ‘Hai Rabbah’, imitating my mother. Everyone in the pub turned to look but we just sat there laughing. After a while he went back to being serious. He scratched his forehead and then flicked his glass with a fingernail. ‘Some man I was being. If I was a real man, I would have took more care – or I’d have a job now, so that I could support my girl and my kid. Shit, Manny, it even hurts to say “kid”.’

  ‘So what you gonna do?’

  ‘What do you think? I ain’t letting society stereotype me like they do with other black men. I’m gonna get a job and take care of my kid.’

  By the time that I realized it was gone three o’clock, we were both hammered. I had to sneak back into school and get to my second lesson, History. It was with a supply teacher and I had planned to use the excuse that I had been in the toilets with my dodgy stomach. But I should have been there at three and I had to drag Ady out of the pub. I can’t remember which one of us decided that it would be funny to sneak Ady into school too, but by the time we got back in, through the art department, I felt really sick. My head was spinning and there was no feeling in my legs. We sneaked along the corridors and up the stairs to the Humanities area without being seen by anyone apart from the old bag that worked in the school library and she was so senile that an elephant wearing a dress could have got in without her saying anything.

  I walked into the classroom first and sat down, my head still spinning. I was going to be sick and I started thinking that by vomiting my story would stand up. You know, Be more believable. Ady walked in about a minute after me, sat down behind me and blew my story out of the sky. The other kids watched him and started laughing and giggling to each other. The supply teacher was quite pretty – young with dark hair – but she wasn’t having any of it.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked me, as I gulped down air.

  ‘I’m Manny, miss. I’m not feeling too well so I’ve been to see the school nurse. Only she wasn’t there.’

  To me, what I had just said sounded perfect. Only it didn’t sound perfect to everyone else. The other kids started laughing even more and I started to get confused. The teacher then turned to Ady, who just sat there and smiled at her.