My Daughter, My Mother by Annie Murray Page B

was glad to have a girl in the house, and Sooky quite liked his parents. Everything had felt strange and lonely, but that was to be expected. It was bearable. With other people around, the fact that she and Jaz already disliked each other could be disguised. But once they moved out into their own little terrace in Derby, two months before Priya was born, things had gone quickly downhill and there was no one else to hide behind.
    Sooky pushed the buggy along the path by the boating lake, relieved to see that Priya had fallen into a doze. She stopped, staring out over the water. There was a thin sheen of oil on the surface close to her. No one was out with a boat at the moment, and the only other person she could see was a man sitting up at the other end on a bench.
    They’d never had much to say to each other, she and Jaz. There was nothing in common. She found him arrogant, insecure and limited, driven solely by the desire to make money. What intimate life they had was cold. Their rare lovemaking – and that was no name for it – happening mechanically in the dark, with no words or kindness. Maybe it would get better, she’d thought. He didn’t hit her, he earned his money. She knew she could not say anything to anyone. No one would take her complaints seriously.
    Once Priya was born, it all changed. After the initial excitement of the birth, his attitude to her hardened. He became colder and insulting.
    ‘Where’s my food, you skinny bitch,’ he’d say, arriving home at night. When she gave it to him, sometimes he would hurl it back at her, the spices seeping into the carpet, staining it. He turned his back on her at night as if she was invisible, treating her as if everything about her disgusted him. All he wanted was Priya, in a cloying, overblown way, as if she was a new toy brought on Earth especially for him.
    At first Sooky had been pleased when he wanted to help, to change Priya and spend time with her. But her suspicions grew. One day, when Priya was about six months old, she had come into the room to find Jaz holding her, kissing her on the mouth, and not as anyone kisses an infant – his eyes closed, and she could tell by the movement of his mouth that he was pushing his tongue between Priya’s lips. The baby was squirming, starting to cry, struggling to breathe. Jaz didn’t realize she had been standing watching as long as she had. He laughed it off.
    He started taking Priya off into the bedroom, enraged if Sooky came in. Sooky felt like a servant, not a wife.
    ‘What are you doing in there with her?’ she asked.
    ‘Just having a lie down with my daughter! What d’you ****ing think I’m doing, you nagging bitch?’
    She couldn’t say – not then. Thinking about it now, she searched her soul to see if there was anything else she could have done. She knew girls in marriages where they were cruelly beaten, shrunk into silent shadows of the bright girls they had once been, who felt they had no choice but to keep quiet. They were married: this was how it was. If they left they would be turned out of the community in disgrace – outcast, penniless and treated as nobody. In comparison, she knew she was lucky.
    One Sunday afternoon when Jaz had taken Priya upstairs, telling her she’d better not disturb him, she crept up and listened at the door. There was no sound for a time, though she thought she could hear little movements inside. Then she heard a cry from Priya. Her stomach tightened with dread. Very quietly she opened the door.
    Priya was lying on a towel, completely naked, kicking her legs in the air at the freedom of it. Jaz was on all fours on the bed over her, his flies undone, a hand working at himself.
    Sooky closed the door very carefully, then opened it again, rattling the handle.
    Jaz jumped away from Priya, too shocked to be angry.
    ‘Sorry,’ she had whispered. ‘I just came up to get my cardigan. Oh,’ she pretended to be surprised, ‘she’s not asleep yet then?’
    ‘I was