Amita Murray - The Trouble with Rose

This will be over soon. This will be over soon . What is the matter with this place? Why is it so hot in here? I fan myself with my hands but it makes no difference.

I look around me. Unlike the garden that is lit up with lanterns, and the hall for the wedding breakfast that is covered at my request in all sorts of roses – red, pink, Cabbage, yellow, white, Hot Cocoa, the lot – the back room in which I’m waiting is white-washed and uninspiring. There are rolled-up yoga mats at one end, chairs piled one on top of the other, a hatch in the wall with a view into the newly painted kitchen, a headless Spiderman on the counter, no doubt forgotten by a child. On the cork board, there are notices for yoga classes, an advert for the local florist, a dog walker whose ‘best friend has always been a dog’ since she was three, a request for clothes for the Salvation Army, a phone number to call if someone spots a missing person and another for people with gonorrhoea.

I stare at them and my breathing gets short and heavy. I look out of the window again. The flock of relatives is thinning but a few linger outside the barn. Come on, come on, come on , I whisper. I stare at them, willing them to go faster, and give me some space in which to think. And maybe to breathe.

My reflection stares back at me, the little bronze hoops in my ears and the band of dark pink and orange flowers pinned all around my head suddenly looking out of place, like they belong to someone else. My silver dress is fuzzy in the window. What made me choose silver? It is washing out my complexion, making me look pasty. My black hair is bundled up on top of my head but already coiled strands are making a getaway. There is a look in my eyes, a maniacal look. Do I always frown like this? I try to relax my forehead, but almost at once the brows knit back together. I rub hard at my forehead.

There is so little air in this room that I am finding it hard to breathe. I take gasping breaths. Finally, every last one of my relatives disappears into the barn, through the wisteria that hangs over the barn door like the tail of a bejewelled pony getting ready for dressage. It’s now or never. I struggle with the window latch. It is jammed shut, having recently been painted over with thick white paint. I push against the window, try to budge the latch. I take off my shoe and pound it, I claw at it with my fingers, rubbing my knuckles raw, but the window doesn’t budge. Not a smidge. I need a wedge, something that will slide under the window, splinter the new paint that has glued it shut. I look all around me. There’s nothing. Nothing! There is a knock at the door. A relative? My fiancé? A summons? I stare at the door then, heart pounding, I walk slowly to open it. Standing outside is a policeman.

‘You need to step this way, miss,’ he says.

I look frantically behind him towards the inner door of the barn. I am supposed to walk through it any moment now. I look at the police officer. His ginger hair has been hastily brushed and there are two croissant crumbs clinging to his enormous moustache. The man was clearly in the middle of his breakfast when he was sent out on this mission.

I take a deep breath and hold out my hands, keeping a wary eye on the barn door.

‘That’s okay, miss,’ the man says. ‘If you cooperate, there’s no need for handcuffs.’

The man is so relaxed his hands are lolling in his pockets. What is the matter with this man? He is smiling and bored at the same time. I am now starting to feel a little faint. Or maybe like I’m going to explode. I am going to burst out of this dress. The tiny buttons at the back are going to ping-ping-ping off me like bullets. I flap my hands to cool myself. I look desperately at the man.

‘Please, please, I—’

‘Now, miss, steady now—’

‘You don’t understand—’

‘Calm down, you need to calm down—’

This is when I scream. My scream rents the air and the man looks startled.

I’m good at screaming. When I was seven, a drama teacher spent a month with my sister and me, basically teaching us how to scream. There’s not a lot I remember about my education – through most of it I was busy trying to show everyone that I was unteachable, bunking lessons, running away from school, sitting morosely with my hands in my pockets and not saying a word when asked a question, getting into endless debates with teachers about the conformist nature of the school system – but I have learnt how to scream.

The man holds out his hands to me. ‘Now, now, miss, there’s no need to be like that about it.’ He still sees no need for restraints, not really. This is all in a day’s work for him. I feel a little affronted that I rank so low on his list of important criminals to track down.

I tear the gerberas off from my head, and the rest of my hair comes bundling down. I stamp on the flowers a few times and scream again. The inner door to the barn bangs open and a small horde of people come crashing through it. Behind them, I can hear a buzzing, like the busy hum of a beehive that can turn into thunder at any moment.

My parents, my fiancé and his parents all try to push into the back room, all at the same time, with my Auntie PK and Auntie Dharma.

My mother, Renu Kumar, first through the door, makes straight for me and grabs my shoulders. Her forehead is deeply furrowed, her pink lipstick indifferently applied and now a little smudged, her purple silk sari with its green border tucked in a little too high at her waist so that you can see her ankles.

‘What’s happening? Who is this man? What’s happening?’ She sounds a little frantic. She stares into my eyes.

Then Simon crashes into the room. His grey suit and tailored burgundy waistcoat with the blue paisley tie tucked in looks good on him but he has already managed to undo the top button of his shirt.

‘I saw a policeman walking up the driveway! What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing! Nothing at all. I—’

‘What are you doing here?’ Simon is staring at the policeman, looking completely confused.

‘Now, sir, there’s no need to panic. I just need to speak to Miss Kumar here, that’s all. At the police station, that is.’

‘You know you’re not supposed to see her!’ My fiancé’s mother waves a hand about, tries in vain to get Simon out of the room. She is wearing a steel-blue skirt, with a long coat and hat to match. She looks as neatly put together as always, but her cheeks are a little red and her pearl necklace slightly askew, giving her a jaunty Camilla Parker Bowles look. Marie Langton has obviously been hitting the gin a little early today.

‘What is all this about, Officer?’ my father Manoj Kumar intones, smoothing back his salt-and-pepper hair that has been styled to such perfection that parallel comb-streaks can still be seen in it. He pats the collar of his Indian sherwani coat – long, gold and white, and too tight for him – that the GIF has made him wear today. ‘Surely, there’s been a mistake. We can get it cleared up in a jiff.’

There’s something about uniforms and official people that makes my father use his posh English, the one from which all trace of an Indian accent has been wiped. His disinfected accent does have its uses in some situations. Not in this one though.

‘Miss,’ the officer says, totally ignoring him, ‘if you come with me quietly, there’s no need for a display.’ He’s looking significantly at me. The man actually wants me to go quietly, he doesn’t want to make a fuss and that’s not out of laziness, I can see that. He is trying to protect my feelings. If he doesn’t have to say what he’s arresting me for in front of my family and in-laws, he won’t.

Everyone is staring at me. There is a sea of unblinking eyes, all waiting for me to speak.