Amita Murray - The Trouble with Rose

‘Don’t you see?’ my voice cracks. ‘I can’t do this. I’m – not ready.’

‘You want to postpone the wedding? Okay, okay, look, we can do that. We’ll do whatever you want. Whatever you need.’ He is scanning my face, trying to sound re-assuring, though I can see none of this is making sense to him, none of it is really sinking in.

I look at him wordlessly. How can I explain it to him? How can I find words for something that I can’t fully understand myself?

I mutely shake my head. ‘The thing is, Simon,’ I blurt out finally, ‘I can’t go through with it. None of this is working.’

‘I told you,’ says my mother, tears pouring down her cheeks.

Somehow I escape everyone. I think it is because I scream, ‘Leave me alone!’ and disappear down into the underground before anyone can stop me. I enter a train at random, staring down anyone who dares to look at me, standing there holding on for dear life, still in my silver wedding dress. After a few random stations have whizzed by, I get off. I run out of the tube station and I end up on a park bench, bent double, face in hands, taking gasping breaths.

I say I escaped everyone, but I didn’t, because Rose is here with me.

I sit up. ‘I made such a mess of it. I always make a mess of it. Rose, why can’t I get one thing right?’ The tears that have been threatening all morning now start to pour down my face.

She takes my hand. She sits quietly, just holding my hand. Sometimes I think it’s uncanny how she knows just what I need her to do. When you’ve grown up with someone, maybe you get so used to each other that you know what every movement means. Every gesture comes with its code, every mood, each slump of the shoulders, every turning away. My sister knows the code. She can sense it before I can.

The fit of crying passes after a while and I sit there, my nose red, sniffles catching in my throat.

‘I guess you knew I was going to break up with him?’ I say now. I don’t look at her. I don’t need to, I know the look on her face. She doesn’t respond.

I stare blankly around me, where life seems to be carrying on as normal. A swan sits regally on the edge of a duck pond, its mate doing laps in the water. A chunky peanut-butter Kit-Kat wrapper sits next to an overfull bin that is starting to smell of dead rat in the sunshine. The bench I am sitting on has been dedicated to Lady Cornelia North, who donated it to the council in 1986. Red buses line the park, parents with dark circles under their eyes determinedly push buggies, a jogger talks to herself as she fast-walks past. I shut my eyes tight.

‘I guess I knew,’ Rose says.

‘I’m hopeless.’ I place my face in my hands again. ‘I wreck everything.’

‘Why this though, Rilla? I thought Simon was the one.’

I jerk my head. ‘He barely knows me. He thinks I’m perfect. I’m the opposite of perfect. You know! It wouldn’t have worked. How could it ever have worked?’

‘ What if I make you the most beautiful garland in the world, Princess Multan, my phool , my Queen of Roses, Princess of Hearts? ’ Rose’s voice becomes rounder, louder. Like she’s talking in a theatre, her voice ricocheting off moonbeams.

I speak through my tears. ‘ Then perhaps I will marry you, Rup. Is that really your name? ’

Rose gently blots away my tears, then she bows ironically. ‘ Of course, my princess. It is I, Rup Singh. I was a prince once. A sorceress turned me into a commoner. I wait for the love of a true princess to change me back into the real me.’ Rose switches back to her normal voice. She speaks as if seeing this scene in her mind’s eye, from a long time ago. ‘And now you sit on the balcony waiting for the garland. You comb your beautiful black hair. Roses bloom in your cheeks. Your delicate hands cradle your heart. Your voice, like a nightingale’s, sings to your lover. To me.’

‘My lover with swarthy brown cheeks and coarse hands,’ I say. ‘But I love you anyway. And you come back with the most beautiful garland in the world, made of roses and marigolds, jasmine and hot-house zinnias. And in the centre, forming the heart pendant, a moth orchid. The most precious flower in the world for the most beautiful princess. You scurry up the trellis outside my window like a monkey. You give me the garland. I give you a kiss and promise to marry you.’

‘And I turn into a girl,’ Rose says.

We both laugh. My laugh has a catch in it, but it’s a laugh nonetheless.

‘I turn into a little brown nut of a girl,’ my sister says. ‘Ugly and scrawny, shifty and sly. Because the witch that transformed me did so not from a prince, but a princess. Now I am back. I am not Rup, but Rupa Singh.’

‘ Oh well ,’ I say softly, looking at her face now, shimmering in front of my eyes, ‘ I promised to marry you, so I will. ’

‘ You will take me for your partner? ’ Rose says. ‘ Even though I am a woman? ’

‘ No one is perfect ,’ I say.

We laugh. Laugh at this script that we know better than anything we’ve ever said. Because we’ve rehearsed it a thousand times, performed it a hundred. When I was seven, and Rose was nine.

‘Rose,’ I whisper. ‘Rose.’

We sit together, neither saying a word. I am scared to break the silence, scared that this moment will disappear.

‘I don’t think I know how,’ I finally say. The words well up. ‘Don’t you see? I don’t know how to make it work. I don’t know how to be with someone. I have never known.’ I look desperately in front of me, searching for something that isn’t there. Rose doesn’t say anything.

‘That is where I have to go back, isn’t it?’ I say it softly. ‘I have to go back to that. To Princess Multan and Rup Singh. To those living rooms in Tooting and Wembley and Harrow and Hampstead. That’s where I have to go.’

Rose doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. She knows as well as I that to make love work, you have to go back to where you learnt how to love.

Hold up two illustrations and spot the differences between them.

So I told you a story, the story of my wedding day. As I told you, it was almost the story of my wedding day. Actually, in all important details, it was the story.

But if you hold up the two pictures, one real, one almost-real, you’ll spot ten differences. Let’s go through the list.

One. I told you that the back room in which I was waiting, the one with the yoga mats and chairs, the back room of the main building of Bloomington House, an estate in Cambridgeshire, was white-washed. In actual fact, I think it was eggshell blue.

Two. I said that the name of the estate was Bloomington House, but in fact it is Bloomington Manor.

Three. Auntie PK, the feminist, was not wearing unrelieved beige. Thinking back, I can see in my mind’s eye that she had actually taken the trouble to wear an oxblood scarf. Auntie PK was either trying to make an effort – a bit of colour for a wedding – or making a statement.

‘You are Indian,’ I can imagine her saying, ‘yet getting married in a silver dress. Shouldn’t you be wearing red? What are you, white?’

Or, who knows, she could have been wearing it under threat from whichever auntie had knitted it for her.

Four. My mother’s hanky was not tucked into her sleeve today. She had pinned it to the green train or pallu of her sari for the occasion. She had made an effort, even if she had been certain the wedding would come to nothing, she would tell me later.

Five. There wasn’t a slump in my shoulders when I was facing Simon and my family. If I look carefully at the actual picture, the real one, not the almost-real one, my shoulders are riding up. It’s my defensive look, the one my mother is always quick to point out. ‘It isn’t attractive, Rilla, and no one will want to marry you.’