A House Called Askival (28 page)

FORTY-FIVE

James had often played with the baby Iqbal on the south veranda of Askival where the sun fell in slanting rectangles. When they returned to it over fifty years later, the house was quietly falling apart, a sheet of tin roof missing, windows long gone, walls crumbling. But on that late May day the sun was languid and soft, sweet with the sap of deodar and the warm fragrance of grass. Wild roses grew up the pillars and tangled with the broken guttering. Stands of purple cosmos filled the terraces, butterflies skittered. The two men sat in pools of light, sunshine warming their heads, and looked down to the spread of the bazaar and on to the gauzy blur of the plains. Crickets sang.

James did not need to tell the whole story – the truth at last – because Iqbal already knew it. In fact, Iqbal had told it to him the night before when James finally let him in. It was the night, three weeks after Ellen's death, when James had tried to cook Tuna Hash but ended on the sofa, sobbing.

Iqbal told the story just as Salima had told it to him: in quiet voice, with no one else around. Because she knew and had always known. Aziz feared guns and had never touched the Connors' weapons. Though he'd often accompanied them on their hunts, it was for the butchering and cooking, but never to shoot. And even if, in the terror of that night, he'd
dared to lift the rifle, he would not have known what to do with it, how to aim, what to push or pull. Most likely he would have shot himself. What's more, Salima knew he wasn't wearing his glasses. The spares, for which he had returned to Askival, were tucked inside his shawl back at Rampur House. She'd found them the next day. But more than all of that, Salima knew because of James: his face when he arrived with Leota, his hands clawing at his sweaty underarms, his running away.

But she never breathed a word to anyone but Iqbal and swore him to secrecy. It was the Connors' missionary friends in Pakistan who employed them, the Connors' pension that sent Iqbal to school, the Connors' good name that guaranteed them work, shelter and a future, and the Connors' story, therefore, that must be maintained.

The truth, she told Iqbal, was that his father was noble and brave and good. He had taken no life, but had given his own for the love of others.

James acknowledged this truth like a leper unwrapping bandages. It was a truth so deeply buried beneath the accretions of guilt and shame, and such a threat to the family mythology, that he'd never been able to expose it. He'd never told anyone. Not even Ellen. He had come close, in the time after his breakdown when he was recovering in a retreat house in Arizona. It was run by Catholic monks and the very idea of it would have made his flesh crawl a few years earlier, but Ellen had pleaded and James was so deep in despair he was past caring where they put him. He was given a spiritual director who quietly walked him to meals and prayers and out into the desert each day. The Brother asked nothing and James said nothing. Silence. After the mountains of India and the crush of its plains, this place was empty. He could see nothing in it, hear nothing, smell nothing. Slowly, he realised the Brother was talking; just a little bit, now and again. Not about James' breakdown, or his past, or his faith. He was simply pointing out a cactus coming into flower, the cry of a bird, the colours in the rock. Then one day it rained. James stood in it, the silver needles sloping down and impaling him, the smell of the dirt rising up; it was like a ladder of angels descending and ascending into heaven.

That night, as he lay his head against the communion rail, the Brother told James that, whatever he'd done, God had forgiven him.

All James could tell Ellen was that they were going back to India.

What began through the Brother in the desert, and was nearly destroyed at Ellen's death, found new life in Iqbal. The man had not come to accuse, to avenge or to demand reparation. He had come to fulfil his father's heart.

James did not say much to Iqbal that day, but enough to ask and receive the forgiveness that was needed. As they closed the gate on Askival and walked home, the trees around were alive with birds.

FORTY-SIX

It was the final rehearsal in Benson Hall, the day before they squeezed into their bus and drove down to Delhi. Mr Haskell told them to give it all they had, like it was the real thing, a full-on performance with a packed house.

But because they did not know this rehearsal was all they would have – because they still believed in happy endings – it became something of a farce. People forgot their lines, costumes fell off, ankle bells went skidding across the stage. There was giggling and hi-jinks and so much fun in the dressing room that the Wedding at Kanpur scene began completely without guests. At which point, Mr Haskell threw down his script.

‘Get out!' he yelled. ‘Leave!' Everyone froze. ‘I have worked myself to the
bone
on this show. For years.' His face was wild. ‘I didn't force anyone to join me.
You
wanted to be a part of this. And all along I said it would be hard work and I didn't want half-hearts or lazy-bones or fools. All or nothing!'

There was a terrible silence.

‘So go!' His voice was like a cry in the desert, his finger pointing to the door. ‘Go now if you will not give me your best.' No one moved or made a sound. There was a glitter in Mr Haskell's eyes as he spun on his heel and walked up the long aisle alone. At the door he turned.

‘I'm coming back in ten minutes. If you're still here, then you're promising to work your
butts
off.'

They were all there. And their butts did not disappoint. They worked like it was the real thing, and when they looked back they were glad of it, for in the end it was all they had.

Especially Ruth. She danced like her life depended on it; like it was her life. As she waited in the wings during the Feeding of the Five Thousand she felt a speeding of her heartbeat. The disciples were singing and passing chapattis around. Manveer was standing beside her, close enough that they nearly touched. Then Jesu was alone on the stage. He tore a last chapatti in his hands, lifted it to heaven and cried out, ‘This is my body.' It was Ruth's cue.

‘Break a leg,' Manveer whispered, his lips moving close to the sparkly scarf on her hair. She flashed him a smile and spun onto the stage. This was Maya Magdalen's most impressive scene: the exorcising of her demons. The cast had entered a lengthy discussion about what these demons might have been, as the original text is not specific, but Mr Haskell eventually settled on the Deadly Sins. Thus, the scene came to be called the Dance of the Seven Deadly Djinns, with the evil spirits represented by coloured scarves tucked into her waist.

Maya's first weapon of attack was Lust, the one by which she plied her trade and gained power over men. Mrs Banwarilal's original choreography was so potent, however, that a sweating Mr Haskell had been required to edit it. Jesu, of course, was unphased and whipped the offending red scarf from her waist the moment before she pinned him to the ground.

Maya spun into her Gluttony sequence, rolling her eyes and gnashing her teeth as if she would devour him on the spot. But just as she seized his chapatti, Jesu got her orange scarf and flung it to the corner of the stage. She surrendered the chapatti and he tore off a piece and offered it. She took, but did not eat.

It was Sloth next, though that was a little harder to dance. They'd tried a few approaches. In one, she had lain on the floor being bored and beautiful with Jesu trying to kick her into action. It made everyone
laugh and him look impotent. Then there was the idea of her with a water pot that she was refusing to carry to the well, but it just made her appear petulant and alluring, and him… well, impotent again, so they cut it. It provoked a heated debate about the nature of Sloth. Was it merely a ‘couldn't be bothered' Sunday afternoon feeling, and if so, was that such a sin? Or was it more? Dorcas raised the point about the sins of inaction. So, for Sloth, a stream of beggars, lepers and starving children passed across the stage as Maya pressed her hands over her mouth, her ears, and her eyes. Until Jesu yanked out the yellow scarf and she turned to see them.

Avarice was easy. She stole all the jewellery off the girls in the chorus line and gathered it into her blue scarf. Jesu hurled it into the wings where Kashi was supposed to catch it, but failed every time, occasioning a clattering of bangles and bells and a great deal of hissed swearing.

For Envy, Maya wound her green scarf around herself and then twisted and wrung it till finally it threatened to strangle her. Jesu removed it in the nick of time, stamping on its python head.

But was Maya Magdalen grateful? No indeed, she was furious. Seething. Like a wounded beast she roared her Wrath at Jesu, her feet pounding the stage, arms flailing. When he finally wrestled the black scarf from her hands, she spun helplessly to one side and stopped, crouching, with arms gripping herself. He let the scarf drop, stood panting and watching her, his bare chest a glistening sheen, eyes like burning coals. Then he offered his hand.

But did she take it? Was she thankful yet for all he had cast out? No! Of course not. She recoiled from him, drew herself up to her full height and turned her back. One demon remained. The last demon, most deeply rooted, for it was the first. The first sin, indeed, even before the Fall. The one that caused the fall before the Fall. The fall to end all falls, to start all falls, to set the Fall rolling, one might say.

Maya's back was like stone, her neck long and hard, arms clenched as if chained, breast cold. How can Jesu break Pride? How remove her purple scarf, now she has pulled it over her face? He seems to have given up. He picks up a broom and sweeps. He carries a clay pot and pours
water into a blue plastic basin. Tying the scarf of Wrath around his waist, he kneels at Maya's feet, the basin at his side. She is still turned away, her face to the back wall. He sprinkles water on her ankles, her heels. Her head drops an inch. He lifts one foot; she trembles slightly, balancing on the other. He washes the foot, dries it with his scarf and sets it down. Her head is lower now, resting on her chest. He washes the other foot, this time with tears, and presses it into his hair. Her back is bent forward, her body shaking. Then he kisses her foot, and she falls. Free.

FORTY-SEVEN

In the days after Ruth and Iqbal swapped stories at Askival, she found herself sleeping long hours at night and falling into a doze through the day. It was a healing rest and she gave herself up to its deep work. In bed at night she read the letters sent to James on her mother's death, and with the familiar ache of loss, felt a swelling of love and pride.

Through the day, she stayed beside James and wondered how to begin. He slept even more than her and Ruth would watch him, fearing that this time he would not wake. She caught herself praying for time. For courage.

But Iqbal made her leave the house, sending her on small errands to Sisters Bazaar or the post box near Morrison Church. Just enough time to breathe and feel the sunshine and smell the quiet earth. It was late October and the rains were only a memory, the hillside lush and scrubbed clean, the blue skies clear as a bell.

‘A new day!' Iqbal would say each morning. Did he know it had been Ellen's line, especially on mornings when the day before had been difficult or the day to come? Like the days they left for boarding, or the morning of Hannah's wedding.

Hannah would be with them at the end of the week and Ruth felt both eagerness and anxiety. She had always been welcomed at her sister's house,
but the visits invariably caused mounting tension till Hannah was reduced to polite, strained sentences and Ruth to swearing. Then she would leave. They never got to the bottom of things; it was too far down.

On her errands, Ruth met people who asked after James and she found it in herself to be courteous, to answer and to listen. It was for him. He'd always had time to stop and be with people. It had annoyed her as a child, and she'd tugged on his legs and whined at him to keep going, but now that he could no longer do it himself, she felt she must. She was his embassy in the world and the knowledge of how poorly she had represented him brought shame.

It was the feeling that had dogged her since her teens, when her rebellion became wilful, rather than the mere product of personality or pain. She had tried to smother the shame with her sense of injustice, but it only deepened the wound, causing a kind of life-long internal bleeding. And now she was weary. There was no strength left for arguing half-truths or upholding well-worn defences. And strangely, letting them fall did not feel like defeat but a relieved surrender. She had drawn her battle lines in all the wrong places and misunderstood the enemy.

When she arrived home one day she saw Iqbal through the window, kneeling beside her father's bed, talking with him. He was holding James' hands and his face was intent and earnest, almost pleading. As Ruth walked in, he looked up, startled, and with a quick squeeze of James' hands, stood and started bustling with the shopping bags. James' gaze was on the forested ridges to the east, a rumpled blanket of fading greens beneath the wide sky. A great bird wheeled on the currents above Witches Hill and far off, a truck lumbered like a beetle on the Tehri road.

That night Iqbal and Ruth made chapattis and channa for supper. Whenever Ruth looked across, James was watching her, completely still but for his eyes. They spread the food on the coffee table and sat on the sofa opposite his bed, bowing their heads for his prayer. It did not come and Ruth stole a glance. He looked asleep, hands folded in his lap, a soft rise and fall in his chest. Then his eyes suddenly flashed open, bright and steely as a hawk's, looking from her to Iqbal.

‘Who will pray?' his voice rattled. Though faint, it sounded to Ruth
like a prophet's cry. She blinked at him, then turned to Iqbal, who simply nudged her in the ribs and dropped his head.

‘For what we are about to receive,' she mumbled, ‘may the Lord make us truly thankful.'

Grandma Leota's prayer.

‘Amen!' exclaimed Iqbal as James gave a small grunt.

Iqbal offered each dish to James, who shook his head and lifted a crabbed hand in refusal. As the other two ate, they talked about the Oaklands Activity Week. The students were all away on their projects: a hike to the source of the Ganga, a team to Mother Theresa's in Kolkata, an art tour of Rajasthan. Iqbal's Indian music pupils were performing in Delhi, though he had made his apologies in order to stay with James.

‘Not as good as your
Gospel of Jyoti
,' he said, spooning dahi onto his plate, ‘but we have done our best.' Ruth stopped chewing. Slipped her gaze to James. Since their long-ago phone call on the day of Mrs Gandhi's cremation, the production had never been mentioned. He looked at her and tilted his head the tiniest bit. Letting out a soft, whistling breath, he dropped his gaze to the chapattis.

‘We sure were sorry to miss that show.'

She swallowed. ‘It was understandable.'

‘So sad it all went so wrong. A terrible time.'

The air pressed around her, pricking with the quietest of sounds: the faraway buzz of a motorbike, the hinges of a screen door, a distant child crying.

‘The show was nothing,' she mumbled. ‘You were going through much worse.'

‘And you, Ruthie. Much worse than we knew.' His voice was slow, infinitely gentle. ‘But we should have known.'

‘No, no. How could you? You weren't there.'

‘I know. I'm sorry.'

It caught her breath, held her. Then words came in stutters. ‘But I know you couldn't be, with all the riots – I don't – I do understand—'

‘No. Not then,' he said, and paused. ‘All the other times.'

He reached for the chapattis, his bony hands trembling, and Iqbal
quickly extended the plate. James took one, tore it in half and raised his eyes to Ruth.

‘In the end, when you needed us, little
Piyari
, we were not there. I'm sorry.'

She could not speak or move.

He offered half the chapatti to Iqbal and half to Ruth.

‘Take,' he said.

They held out their hands like beggars and he rested the pieces of chapatti in their palms. Iqbal lifted it to his forehead and then lowered it to his knees and gazed at it. Ruth was still.

‘Eat,' James said. ‘It is given for you.'

She understood. Keeping her eyes on the chapatti, she tore off a corner and ate it, slowly, the bread taking the longest time to soften and slip down, where it was a lump in her throat. She looked up at James and saw his eyes resting on her. It was the face she remembered from childhood. The searching intensity of his eyes, the looking right inside her but not fathoming; the knowing and the not knowing, the understanding and the questioning.

She moved around the table and knelt at the side of his bed. Tearing a fragment of chapatti, she laid it into his outstretched hands. He lifted them, shaking, and lowered his head till his cracked lips closed over the bread. With his face in his hands, he ate and she could see the effort as he swallowed. He reached for the cup of water on the table, spilling it over the rim. Iqbal leapt to help, but James turned it to him.

‘Take,' he said. ‘Drink.'

Iqbal knelt and sipped. James held out the shaking cup to Ruth and she drank, the water sloshing over the sides and down her chin. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve, took the cup and held it for him. He folded his hands over hers, which made the cup jerk and bump against his teeth. The water spilled over his lips, down his jaw and neck and onto his clothes. But he held it there till he had drunk and swallowed.

Her voice came in a whisper. ‘I'm sorry.'

Iqbal took the cup and left them, Ruth kneeling beside James, her arms flung across him, face buried in his side.