The Colour of Love. Preethi Nair
it open.
‘Good to see you again, Nina. Well, this is it.’
The studio was a converted garage, bright and airy as it had a skylight. There was an enormous table in the centre of the room and a smaller one on the side which had a kettle, a toaster and a blow heater that were all attached to one adapter.
‘It’s safe,’ Gina said as she saw my eyes rest on that spot.
The walls were covered with pictures of Sydney Harbour in different sizes and forms.
‘Homesick?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think there’s anywhere more beautiful than that view.’
The floor was concrete grey, splattered with colours that had managed to jump off Sydney Harbour.
‘What do you paint?’
Where was I supposed to start? I couldn’t say I didn’t know so I said, ‘Birds.’
‘Any particular kind?’
‘Just the flying ones.’
She laughed and moved towards her easel, remarking that that was where the light fell best. ‘I’m leaving that here but if you’ve got your own and you want me to put it away then that’s fine.’
‘You mean I can really rent this studio from you?’ I asked.
‘If you want it, it’s yours. The only thing is can you give me cash instead of a cheque. Other than that, you can have it from Monday. That gives me time to pack up my stuff but if you want to drop your things by before then, just give me a call.’
When I got home there was complete chaos. The garments my mum had made were stuffed into black binliners and there were about twenty television sets on the landing. My dad was up a ladder, screaming at my mum, telling her to pass the sets to him quicker so he could put them in the attic. She was huffing and puffing and looking as though she was going to pass out.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘Inland Revenue man is outside. He’s been watching the house for the last two hours. Fukkus, Kavitha, fukkus.’
‘It’s focus, Dad, focus.’
‘Yes, I know this, this is what I am saying to her. Why you telling me, tell Kavitha, she is almost dropping the television. She doesn’t know what a big problem this is.’
I looked outside the window and to my horror saw Jean’s car. Jean was making his way towards our house.
‘Oh God,’ I muttered.
‘I know, I know, that’s what I thought. Help us, Bhagavan. Hurry up, hurry up, Kavitha,’ he shouted.
‘I’ll get rid of him, Dad,’ I said, running down the stairs.
As I opened the door, Jean was standing on the doorstep. I closed the door behind me and pulled him away from the house.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Nina, I had to see you, your phone is dead and you haven’t answered any of my letters.’
‘There’s nothing to say except it’s over.’
‘Can’t we at least talk about it?’
‘No, not here, not now.’
‘When, then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Come round to the flat.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Just go, Jean.’
‘I won’t let you go,’ he said, ‘not like this. I love you.’
‘OK, OK, I’ll call, please just leave.’
I went back into the house.
‘I’ve got rid of him, Dad.’
‘Thank Bhagavan.’
‘I told him he wasn’t within his rights to wait in his car and watch out for illegal activity as there was nothing illegal going on, and if he continued to wait in his car I would make an official complaint. I don’t think he’ll be coming back.’ The lies were getting bigger, and the frightening thing was they were getting easier to tell.
‘See, Kavitha, all those years to make Nina study “the love”, all worth it,’ he said coming down from his ladder. Then he hugged me.
Dad never hugged me. I could count the times he had on one hand. When I went to hold him he would do this ninety-degree rotation so I got the back of him and then he would walk out of my embrace. My mum never knew how to respond when I held her and would stand there like a statue, waiting for the hug to pass like it was some massive tidal-wave that would knock her over.
The next morning, I went to the bank. My dad took £300 a month from me as part of my wedding contribution. I always thought that if I married Jean this fund would cushion the blow slightly as he could keep the amount he had built up and console himself and my mother with a holiday or a new car. Mind you, they never went on holiday, but they would have had to go somewhere for a couple of weeks until the scandal died down. When my Uncle Amit’s daughter began living with Roy who was black, ‘the honchos’ had endless rounds of secret talks to confer so they could sort out the situation. Pressure was put on my Uncle Amit and his wife; they were bombarded with CVs of every single male specimen on the planet who could be a possible replacement. When this didn’t work, one of the honchos leaked the news to the wider community. I thought Uncle Amit and Auntie Asha would have to emigrate but they stood firm, attending family functions, ignoring the whispering and gossip and being shunned by certain members of the community; but they never managed to live it down. But Uncle Amit was different from my father, he didn’t need the approval of the community or that sense of belonging.
‘Parents taking modern approach, what can you expect?’ had been my dad’s first reaction to the news. Though in my dad’s case this wasn’t strictly true: he hadn’t had a modern approach but my sister had still left. I didn’t correct him. ‘This is not looking after the children. What will happen to this girl? He will leave her, she will have baby, nobody will want her. Parents will die, she will live alone, nobody wants her or baby.’
So a happy life, then. ‘He might not ever leave, Dad, they probably really love each other,’ I replied.
‘Two years I gives them. The love is not enough, Nina, you must understand this. Everyday living with someone is hard. See your mother and me, she knows me, I knows her. She is not thinking that she will one day wake up and find the Bra Pitt.’
‘Brad?’
‘Yah, yah, him. I knows I will not wake up and find the Cilla Black. This is life. Kavitha understands me, I understands her. We have the family, the culture, the traditions, the security. This is what is making the marriage. This is why I am working for you, I want you to have what I have with Kavitha.’
Thinking about him doing two jobs for me made me feel incredibly guilty for taking money from the bank to pay for the studio. It would only be for a month or two, just to sort my head out, just to get it out of my system. The man at the art shop was of no help to me as I stood looking at the rows and rows of brushes and paints, and the different types of paper and canvases. When I used to paint I painted in oils best, so I went over to the oils section only to be confronted by more tubes in different colours and sizes. I hesitated for a moment. Painting with oils was not going to be practical. My mum had a nose like a bloodhound and she would smell the linseed and turpentine on me. I walked over to the acrylic section and chose the paints that I needed, and bought a dozen primed, stretched canvases and brushes. I called Gina to see if the material could be delivered to the studio later that day. She told me to come by whenever I wanted.
When I arrived she was taking down her paintings and wrapping them in brown paper.
‘So have you been painting long, Nina?’
‘No.