A House Called Askival (13 page)

The school is a Melting Pot of religion and culture!
Principal Withers always claimed.
No – a Fruit Salad!
advanced Chaplain Park.
We live closely together but keep our distinct identities!
Ruth pondered the images as she gnawed on her roll and decided that either way the outlook was grim. Fondue or fruit, you got eaten.

Or was Oaklands more a blend of the two? She imagined the fruit salad left out in the sun, everything oozing into everything else. Chunks
of banana going brown in the heat, orange segments sweating, mangoes slimy and soft.

The truth was, life in the dorm wasn't like any of that. None of the softness of ripe fruit or melting cheese, but something infinitely more feral. It was a jungle of wild, exotic plants. Beautiful, rare, strange. Some that stung, or shot out, or devoured you, others that intertwined and grew together in hopeless entanglements.

Some that did both.

Like Sita. She was Ruth's best friend and the first person she'd met when Dad dropped her off in Lower Dorm at age six. In Fruit Salad terms, she was Hindu, but as a plant, much harder to classify. She told jokes and fabulous stories. Terrifying stories. Her series on the Vampire Clown had left Ruth in the grip of horror for months. But you could forgive her that because if you were afraid at night she always welcomed you into her bed. And most of the time she shared the treasures of her Candy Cupboard. Her Dad was in the Indian Foreign Service and sent Foreign Candy. Ruth craved it and traded with Mom's peanut-butter fudge, but it wasn't as strong a currency as Reese's Pieces and M&Ms, and Sita drove hard bargains. There were times when she wouldn't let Ruth have anything at all because she was mad at Ruth because Ruth had spoken to Frankincense and Frankincense was being mean to Sita and Sita thought Ruth was supposed to be
her
best friend. At these times Sita unwrapped her Hersheys bar slowly, with maximum rustling, and ate it, even more slowly, in front of Ruth. If she was really mad, she'd share it with everyone else. Even Frankincense.

Thus for Ruth, the business of boarding school was survival, conducted in the extremes of intimacy and isolation, where she was never alone but dogged by loneliness, exposed to all but never revealed, surrounded but abandoned. The great casualty was trust. In others, and in love. By the ninth grade, even her trust in the family faith was beginning to falter, though at the time it felt more like gain than loss. Hannah had graduated and gone to her deeply conservative Christian college in the States, taking her restraining influence with her. Ruth missed her more than she would admit, but she relished the lack of
surveillance. The possibility of being her own person was appearing like a seductive light on the horizon. That person was starting to swear (when no staff were around), to smoke hash (in the graveyard and the back room of the Lhasa Cafè at Mullingar Hotel) and to join the trend of scornfully denouncing anything cheap and poor quality as ‘mission' (choosing to ignore the slight pang every time she said it).

That person, however, was still not allowed to attend school dances and the nights alone in the dorm were dull beyond bearing. On one of these she lay on her bed (pink polka dot sheets) blowing enormous gum bubbles and listening to the Devil's Music on Sita's tape player. The crashing of ACDC and KISS alternated with the soulful crooning of Air Supply and Bread and she sang along to them all with equal gum-snapping and gusto. She knew she should be doing homework, but it bored her and since she could never compete with Hannah's A Honour Roll precedent, she'd long since decided to wallow in the below-average depths. She pretended she didn't care. Just like she pretended she didn't care about the dismay in her father's eyes or the anxiety in her mother's. Indeed, if Pretending was on her report card, she would be getting straight As.

Through the wall she could hear Mrs Cornfoot bumping around in her apartment, the smell of her pickled onions seeping into the dorm like the tentacles of an invisible octopus. Ruth could tell from the sounds that Mrs Cornfoot was running a bath and knew from experience that this would take some time. She would not emerge, damp and warm as a steamed pudding, till 10.30, just to check all the girls were back from the dance. It was now only eight. Sita and some of the other girls were sneaking up to the graveyard to meet Ben Lacey and his cronies. There would be joints and beer. Maybe more.

Slipping out was easy. Mrs Cornfoot was singing along to her praise tapes as she sloshed about in the tin tub and didn't hear the main door creak open and click shut. But what Ruth hadn't bargained on was the cleansing effect on the lady's soul. At the very moment the girl was disappearing up the shadowy path behind the building, her dorm mother was being moved to tears by The Bethel Trio's trembling
rendition of
What a Friend We Have in Jesus
. It convicted her about young Ruthie Connor. There was no doubt the little scallywag was way outta line and causing everyone no end a worry and what'll-we-do, but maybe what the poor girl needed was not punishment but a little plain old-fashioned love.

Mrs Cornfoot lumbered out of her bath, towelled down and donned her quilted robe. Humming, she put together a tray of two hot chocolates, some home-baked coconut cookies and a small vase of dog roses. To get out of her apartment she had to put the tray on the floor, open the door, pick up the tray, walk through, put it back on the floor, close the door and bend to pick up the tray again. It was no mean feat for an overweight woman with osteoporosis and asthma. The exercise had to be repeated at the door into Upper Dorm – down, up, open, down, up, through the door, down, up, close, down, up, on – so by the time she shuffled into Ruth's empty room with her rattling tray, she was sweating and a bit out of breath.

It was the end of plain old fashioned love.

Ruth was gated for the rest of the semester, denied pocket money and made to pick hardened chewing gum off the bottom of beds. Mrs Cornfoot sent a graphic report to the Connors and when Ellen's reply arrived – neatly carbon copied to her daughter – Ruth took the family photo by her bed and smashed it.

And so it was, that by the time she got to the twelfth grade and Manveer moved from his bit-part to the role of romantic hero (or tragic victim, as it transpired), the stage was well set for Ruth and her world to fall apart.

NINETEEN

For most of high school, Manveer had been serious and studious, a bit square, with heavy-rimmed glasses and plaid shirts tucked neatly into his corduroys. He hung out with a clutch of other Indian boys with similar academic focus and dress sense, and Ruth never had two words to say to them. But in the summer holidays before his senior year, he'd gone to Canada – where his parents had newly settled – and returned transformed. He wore contact lenses and Levi jeans and was impressively tall, an effect enhanced by replacing the boyish
patka
cloth on his head with a full turban. Though his voice had broken some years before it suddenly seemed darker and richer. Or perhaps Ruth was just listening for the first time.

Because Manveer had joined the choir. At Oaklands everyone had to take at least one year of an ‘aesthetics' subject and this invariably presented a challenge to those students – mainly boys – who did not feel aesthetically inclined. It was particularly acute for those boys – mainly Indian – who were marked out by their families for careers in business, computing or hotel management and for whom aesthetics seemed at best irrelevant and at worst, a threat to the Grade Point Average. Choir was considered the soft option and the least likely to dent the GPA.

Ruth was in it because she liked singing and had a crush on the teacher.
Like her, Mr Haskell had been born and brought up in India by missionary parents, attending Oaklands in the sixties. Tall and reedy, he had waist-length hair in a pony tail, always wore kurta pyjama and favoured sitting on the floor. When directing choir, he perched on the piano stool with one leg tucked under him like a guru, the other on the pedal.

In today's class, however, Ruth was finding it hard to sing. It was the first day of semester and she was tired from her journey from Kanpur and weighed down by the spirit of August. It was the same every year, returning to cold dorms shrouded in cloud and feeling the familiar sadness seeping into her like damp. To make matters worse, she had left home on bad terms. Dad had read aloud a letter from Principal Withers warning that any further deviances on her part would result in expulsion. Mom had sat beside him, hands folded in her lap, eyes searching Ruth for a sign of contrition. There was none. Not that she lacked it, but that it was so choked by the competing emotions of anger and hurt it couldn't find voice.

Nor could her singing that day, so she was glad when Mr Haskell's attention turned to the boys. Listening to the basses, he looked up from the piano in surprise.

‘Who's that?' he asked. There was embarrassed confusion in the back row.

‘Yeah, who farted?' hissed Abishek, a short plump boy with bright eyes. A titter of giggles and elbow nudging.

‘That big voice,' said Mr Haskell. ‘Somebody sounds amazing. Who is it?'

A rush of
not me, it was you, no way, yeah you, not me
from the basses till Dorcas Fishbacker settled it.

‘It's Manveer.'

‘No way, man!'

‘Yeah, you're right behind me. I can hear you clear as day. It's definitely Manveer, Mr Haskell.'

The boy flushed and slapped his music over his face while the others slapped his back and whistled.

‘Veeru, yaar, you're it, you're it!!'

‘Get stuffed.'

‘
And
you farted,' said Abishek.

‘Well, well, well,' said Mr Haskell, folding his arms, a soft smile playing on his face. ‘
Man-veer
.' He breathed the name like it was a new idea.

Ruth looked from him to the boy, who couldn't help grinning through his embarrassment. His eyes met hers for a moment and she smiled back, noticing for the first time how long and thick his lashes were. Nice teeth, too. She turned again to the front as Mr Haskell was clapping his hands and calling for attention.

‘Ok, guys. Before we finish up I wanna tell you about a production I'm taking to Delhi for Activity Week. It's called
The Gospel of Jyoti
and it's the life of Jesus in an Indian setting.'

Ruth's ears pricked up. This sounded better than a sweaty hike or a tour of duty in an orphanage.

‘I've written it all myself,' he went on, ‘and like, man, I've been working on it for years – but now I think it's ready to roll. It's gonna have Indian music and dance and a really cool set and oh – you wouldn't believe –
everything!
'

The class grinned at him and nodded, eyes alight and Ruth felt her pulse quicken. Mr Haskell's enthusiasm was infectious, his productions always gaining an eager following, inspiring the shyest youths to lift their voices, the ugliest ducklings to spread wings. She hadn't joined one so far, reserving her acting skills for the pretence that was her life, but she knew Mr Haskell well. He was one of the advisors to her class, with Ruth and Sita in his group, and was legendary for his parties where they made cheese fondue and wore bed sheet togas, had campfires under the stars and played Murder in the Dark at the Haunted House.

And on Fridays, he helped Chaplain and Mrs Park run a Discipleship Group that met at 6am and drew a small gathering of yawning teenagers. Ruth liked to think she was immune to discipling but still went for the french toast and the opportunity to sit beside Mr Haskell and impress him with her harmonies. Also, deep down, it was harder to give up on the Christian tribe than she had thought, and even harder to contemplate them giving up on her. Mr Haskell and the Parks prayed for her – they
said as much – and the knowledge gave her a strange brew of feelings. She was sure there was more than pious concern in his eyes when they so frequently lingered on her, but any offerings of attention and care – however mixed the motives – were to be welcomed. At the same time, she was wary about the subtle pressure to surrender; to confess her waywardness and come back to the fold. So to hide her confusion, and just in case anyone thought she might be capitulating, behind his back she made fun of Mr Haskell's hand gestures and the breathless passion of his prayers.

That passion was now focused on his production and the hands were flying. Mr Das, the Indian Music Teacher, had helped with the score, he said, and Mrs Banwarilal, Indian Dance Teacher, would choreograph. (Good news for Ruth, who was one of her star pupils, a feat she only narrowly achieved in the face of her parents' opposition to the tight sari blouses, rippling hips and Hindu themes.) The art department would do backdrops and Mrs Park and her home-ec classes were helping with costumes.

‘All I need now is YOU!' he cried, throwing his arms wide. Ruth was sure he looked straight at her before swinging his gaze around the room. ‘It's gonna be hard work, so don't audition unless you're prepared to give it all you've got. But if you do, I can promise you an experience you will never forget.'

His eyes returned to her and she smiled back, her heart racing now. This was it. Her chance. Though the thought was barely conscious, she sensed an opening. If her parents would let her take part, if they would only come and see her dance – in a
Christian
show – it could change everything.

As they squeezed out of the doors at the end of class, Ruth noticed Mr Haskell stopping Manveer and talking earnestly, an arm around his shoulders. The boy smiled and flushed and muttered something in reply before walking down the corridor, the other boys banging him on the back and whistling.

‘O-ho, Veeru!! He wants you man, he wants you bad!'

‘Are you gonna be Jesus, man?'

‘No way, man, Jesus was blonde.'

‘But Indian setting, yaar.'

‘Hey, you could play Samson!'

‘Samson's in the old testament, you dickhead!'

‘Details, details, this is gonna be Bollywood Bible, shitface, anything goes.'

‘Shut up,' Manveer said and veered off into the Physics Lab.

Ruth watched him go.