Caryl Phillips - A Distant Shore

She continues to teach because there is nothing else for her to do. It is too late for a change of career, and there is no other profession that she can imagine herself pursuing. The truth is she lost the passion for teaching music at about the same rate that English schoolchildren appeared to lose the passion for learning. And the piano is not a popular instrument. Was it ever? In the remote hope that she might unearth a singular talent she takes private pupils, but she understands that she is little more than an unwelcome distraction for middle-class children whose parents are determined to provide them with socially acceptable skills. To most pupils she is no different from their ballet teacher or their tennis professional. But, mercifully, she has not lost her love for the music itself. After Brian left she thought about trying to compose. Her few university compositions were praised, and her senior lecturer had written her a note asking her to perhaps consider applying for a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London. But little did he know that her sail was already hoisted in the direction of Birmingham. These days she practises again, and she tries to tease notes into tuneful shapes. Sometimes she writes down her patterns, but she does not tell this to Mahmood. Occasionally she sees him in his shop wearing a personal stereo, a discordant, tinny whine leaking out from the badly padded headset. She is used to offering herself up to his boredom, but after her disastrous attempt to interest him in Chopin, she now refuses to expose her beloved music to his stone ears.

In the bathroom of the house she lays out towels, a robe, fresh soap and a toothbrush. To start with Mahmood would shuffle heavily into the bathroom and use her “gifts.” She tried not to allow uncharitable thoughts to enter her head, but she knew that Feroza could not care for him in this way. And back in his native country he could only have dreamed of such luxury. But he no longer bathes. He goes to the bathroom, but he sometimes forgets to shut the door properly and she hears the undignified thunder of urine cascading directly into the water and not against the side of the bowl. And then he flushes and blows his nose at the same time, so that it sounds as though a storm has broken loose in her house. Mahmood comes back and he has another go at her, but it is as though he is trying to knock her through the bed. In the beginning it gave her pleasure to spoil him a little, but these days, Mahmood no longer has time to be spoiled. The presents she buys, the silver pendant, the leather wallet, the address book, are no longer fingered and weighed and then finally held. He simply nods and sometimes he even forgets to take them with him. And so there are no more presents. When he finishes, Mahmood rolls out of bed and steps quickly into his clothes. For some reason he scrunches his white cotton underpants into a ball and pushes them into his trouser pocket. She looks at his smooth, unmarked back as he bends over to pull on his socks.

“Would you like a drink before you go? A cup of tea, or something stronger?”

He turns and looks at her. He smiles with his black eyes, but he says nothing. He is dressed now, and he stands and turns fully to face her. She lies entangled in the sheets and stares up at him, a fish trapped.

“No, thank you,” he says. “I have to go.”

She notices a slight shrug of his shoulders, and then she watches as he treads silently from the room. He steps into his shoes in the hallway, then she hears the door open and bang to and the letterbox clatter, for he always shuts the door with too much force. After a short period of reflection she struggles clear of the bed linen and pulls on a cotton robe. Then she goes into the sitting room and draws the curtains a little to admit some moonlight, before opening the piano lid as far as it will go.

The following morning she goes into the shop. This is part of her daily routine. A copy of the Daily Mail on the way to work. It is his habit to sell it to her in a brusque manner that she knows he has appropriated in order to disguise their affair. However, of late his manner seems to have corroded into indifference. She is trying to learn not to take everything so personally, but she imagines that such anxieties are an integral part of deceit. Today Feroza is sitting on the counter top and in her arms she holds a child. A new-born baby with a head of oily black hair that is already curling wildly into cowlicks and bushy tufts. Mahmood is playing with this child and he does not see her as she walks into the shop. He is showering love and affection upon this child. Her eyes meet those of Feroza, who stares at her with a cold, unblinking gaze. She notices a mocking sneer beginning to buckle Feroza’s lips, and then Mahmood turns and sees her. There is no warmth on his face, no glimmer of communal deceit in his eyes, nothing. He simply looks at her and then returns his gaze to the child. “Give her the paper,” he says without looking up. Feroza picks up the Daily Mail . She holds out her hand, and Feroza drops the paper on top of the counter for her to pick up. Feroza is no longer smiling, and the child is revelling in the attention of its father.

During the second period of sixth-form music the pupils stare at her as she stumbles over her words. There are long pauses. She gazes out of the window. Then she turns to face them and laughs. She is conscious of the fact that she is making a fool of herself in front of these children. She tries to convince them of the relative merits of Mozart over his contemporaries. In fact, over all artists of the period. Sacrifice. She rolls the word around on her tongue. Sacrifice. And arrogance. Here she stops. She is brought up quickly against this word. She feels faint and wonders whether she should stop talking and play a few notes on the piano. Demonstrate something for them. Sacrifice is not the problem. Her life with Brian involved surrendering her dignity. Sacrifice. She has known sacrifice all her life. Making chicken curry is sacrifice. Asking him if he has ever been in an English home is sacrifice. Listening to him talking about his years of misery in the restaurant trade in Leicester. Buying a Sunday paper and nattering idly about the weather while others come in and out and cast her baleful glances, now that is sacrifice. They can stare at her if it makes them happy, but she knows about sacrifice. But arrogance is something new. Mozart. Mahmood. Arrogant eyes. Nobody says anything. They simply stare at her. But she is not saying anything. And then she hears the bell and she knows that today she will not have to talk any more about Mozart or about sacrifice. She watches as the pupils scrape back their chairs and stand. They gather up their books and papers, and they look at her as they walk out. They look at her and she looks back at them and grins. They continue to look at her.

She waits, but there is no knocking at the door and no rattling of the letterbox. The lights are dimmed, the candles lit, and the faint odour of Rhogan Josh lingers in the air. She has bought an especially expensive bottle of wine in order to make an effort, even though she knows that Mahmood is not a wine person. The subtleties of the bottle will be lost on him, but nevertheless she has bought the wine. However, there is no knocking at the door. There is no rattling of the letterbox. For the past few days she has gone into the shop and collected her newspaper and he has looked in her direction, but done so without encouraging conversation. But why should he? The shop is generally full and it is not their way to draw attention to themselves. This morning she sat on the top deck of the number forty-two bus and looked down into the back gardens. A woman was throwing a dripping carpet over a thin line that was stretched between two sycamore trees. Behind the woman a wooden shed leaned shoulder to shoulder against an equally unstable garage, and the whole sorry picture was illuminated by a weak pale light which gave the impression that at any moment a storm might break. As the bus passed the park she saw the stone war memorial, and beneath the plaque somebody had spray-painted “Eat Shit” on the plinth. Again she reprimands herself for her behaviour. She had let herself down in front of her sixth-formers. It was shameful to display such a lack of control, but she knew that they would soon forget her slip-up. It was only one class, and next week she will put everything back on track. And then she smells burning. She hurries to the kitchen and turns down the light under the Rhogan Josh, and then she decides to uncork the wine.