A House Called Askival (4 page)

SIX

‘Lai, lai, la-iiii
.' Iqbal's voice filled the open-plan living room at Shanti Niwas. James looked across from his post at the door as Iqbal threw open a tablecloth, smoothed it with his dimpled hands and set a jug of daisies in the middle.
‘La, la, la, la, la, la!'
Then he started folding sky-blue napkins into fan shapes. James had forbidden all that frippery at first, when Iqbal had found him, seven years before, clinging to grief and his bare table. But the man was wily. He had started with flowers here and there, dusting off some old vases from the back of a cupboard, and James could not argue. Even Ellen had been allowed flowers. But never had he imagined it would come to this.

He checked his watch again.

‘I'd better go find her,' he said, taking down his jacket from the rack in the corner.

‘Oh, really?' Iqbal asked, pausing his folding. ‘Then I'll come, too,
na
.'

‘No.' James held up a hand.

‘Ok,' his friend sighed and made an effort at an encouraging smile. ‘Take care now,
hah ji
?'

Outside the rain had started. James shook open his umbrella – black cotton with CONNOR painted in large white letters on the panels –
and shone his torch onto the wet path.

Once on the
chakkar
, he walked quickly, the rain drumming on the umbrella and flattening his trousers to his legs; it was colder than he'd expected and his jacket felt thin. Squinting down the dark twists of the road, he prayed for Ruth. It was all he had left, though even that was disappearing. In Bible Studies and meetings he rarely prayed aloud anymore and when he did, the words sounded hollow. Alone at the desk in his room, head sunk in his hands, he felt prayers crumble to ash like the burnt end of a mosquito coil.

There had been many times in his life when he had sensed God, felt the Presence like breath, known a quiet leading.

But not now.

Now it was like throwing himself into emptiness; falling, calling, wearing his voice hoarse, but hearing nothing. Even walking the mountain paths, where his spirit was most free, he found himself pleading in vain. There was birdsong and crickets and the sighing of wind through trees, but no God.

This absence had pushed him to Iqbal's side on Friday nights, when his friend touched his nose to the floor and poured song into the void and somehow filled it.

Approaching Morrison Church, where the road divides, James saw her: the small frame in jeans and jacket, hood over her head; the quick stride she'd inherited from Ellen; the hands rammed in pockets.

‘Ruth!' he called out. ‘Is that you?'

She stopped. Her face was hidden.

He moved into a wavering funnel of light under a lamp, and tilted back his umbrella.

‘It's Dad.' Rain blew on his face. ‘Came to find you.'

She didn't move.

‘I wasn't lost.' Her voice was low, rough, the dragging of stone on stone. She lifted her face and his stomach tightened. Her mother's fine bones and nose, the full mouth, yet all battened down and hard as steel. Not a flicker in those lovely eyes.

‘Ruthie,' he said, her name hurting his throat. He lifted a hand
towards her, knobbled and white and getting wet as it hung there. He reached further and touched her arm.

‘Good to see you, Piyari.'

She stepped closer, yanked her hands out of her pockets and slipped them round him.

‘You too,' she said and gave him a quick pat. He had just enough time to fumble his arm round her shoulders, accidentally pulling her hood off and bumping the umbrella spine against her forehead. His face brushed her hair, a tangle of curls smelling of exhaust fumes and cigarettes. She stepped back.

His hand ran over his mouth and fumbled across his chest.

‘Journey ok?'

‘Fine,' she said and pulled the hood back up. The rain spattered on it, droplets coursing down her shoulders. ‘You shouldn't have come out in this.'

‘I'm fine,' said James. ‘I was worried about you.'

‘Well don't be. I'm fine.'

‘Good then. We're all fine.
Chalo!
'

He held the umbrella out to offer her shelter but she ignored it and they moved off, silent except for the squish of her sneakers and the clump of his boots. The rain fell harder, pelting the trees, the umbrella, her back.

Rounding the bend above Shanti Niwas, James pointed at the house.

‘That's us,' he said. It shone like a lamp on the dark mountain, light spilling from its windows, blurring in the wet. As they neared the door, the sound of singing rose to them above the rain.

SEVEN

He always sang when he worked, as if the song were an essential ingredient without which the meal would fail, as vital as yeast for the bread or flame for the pot. It was a spell stirred into the food, a prayer for the health and happiness of the diners, a blessing. But on this cold day in 1945, Aziz' voice was a little cracked and jerky. It was not easy to sing whilst butchering a goat.

They had set off from Askival the day before, with their army-surplus rucksacks and tin canteens. James and Stanley had guns in their packs, broken down and wrapped in sleeping bags, while Aziz' bag clattered with primus stove, cooking pots and tins of spice. They took the path straight down the north side of the hill below Askival, a precipitous track that zig-zagged down through rhododendrons and deodars to the Aglar river at the bottom. The forest was deeply quiet but for the crunch of their leather boots and the occasional cry of a barbet, and the three did not break the hush with speech.

When they came out of the trees into a clearing it was dusk and the late November air was chill. Ahead was a cluster of
chaans
, temporary huts for cattle and their keepers in the winter months. Made of rough stone and earth with thatched roofs, they rose from the ground like they had grown there, as much a part of the landscape as the rocks and the
scrub. Cracks of light glowed at the doorways and smoke rose in tendrils through the thatch. The people here were well known to the Connors as they were their
dudh-wallas
, the dairymen who delivered buffalo milk each day to Askival and the other houses a thousand feet up on the ridge. They lived constantly on the brink of ruin and were thus top priority in Stanley's agricultural programme. In Hindu classification, they were bottom. Untouchables. Or
Harijans
, as Gandhi had named them. The children of God.

At Stanley's call, the father of the house, Bim, cried out, pulled open the wooden door and drew them in. James was hit by the smells of dung and wet straw and a bitter smoke that stung his eyes. Half of the hut was for the cattle, with just a crumbling wall and a window dividing the space. A buffalo and a cow shuffled and chewed and snorted at the opening, liquid brown eyes surveying James as their hairy ears twitched and long streams of piss gushed onto the straw. Children jumped up and pulled him to the floor, one little boy scrambling into his lap as the others pressed to his sides, giggling and fishing through his pockets for loot. The firelight danced on their faces: chapped cheeks, runnels of snot coursing up and down with their sniffs, hair dry and matted as thorn bushes. None had shoes and the boy wore only a shirt.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, James took in the room. In the floor was an earthen hearth where damp pine twigs spat and hissed over a bed of burning coals. It was not enough to warm the hut, but only to infiltrate it with grey smoke that coiled like ghostly snakes across the thatch and walls. A blackened pot sat on the hearth and Bim's elderly mother lifted the lid to pour tea leaves into the boiling milk. She squatted beside it, an old shawl wrapped around her head, a bidi glowing in her fingers. Her laugh was a phlegmy cackle and revealed a black mouth with two teeth jutting out like tree stumps. Bim sat cross-legged on a straw mat talking with Stanley in a low voice, his gesturing hands throwing shadows on the wall behind. His other buffalo had just died, cutting his milk sales by half, and the hail storm last week had all but destroyed the crop. Aziz knelt on the other side of Stanley, listening with furrowed brow to the flow between Hindi, which he knew, and Garhwali, which he did not.
In the corner of the hut, Bim's wife sat on the only bed, paralysed from the waist down, rarely speaking, but always watching, her eyes wild and sad. In another corner there was a dented tin trunk, and behind the fire, some planks balanced on bricks that held a few pots and plates, some greasy milk-powder tins and a brass water jug. Clothes hung from a wire strung across the ceiling, and on the wall was a framed picture of the goddess Laxmi, daubed with rice and tikka powder and garlanded with marigolds that had withered to brown knots. Curvaceous and smiling in her pink sari with gold coins spilling from her palms, she was every bit the goddess of wealth.

Bim's mother poured the tea into three tin tumblers and passed them to the guests, bent double as she shuffled, her hands like claws. When the boy in James' lap asked for some, she cuffed him round the ears and the others laughed.

‘You can have some of mine,' James whispered in Hindi as he held the cup by its rim and blew across the top. The tea was too sweet and the milk burnt, but it warmed him and there was enough for all the children to take a noisy slurp.

After the three from Askival had drunk their tea and refused the offer of a meal they rose to take their leave, with much bowing and joining of palms. James peeled the little boy's hands off his own and promised he'd be back, as Stanley pulled two packets of biscuits from his rucksack and gave them to Bim. The children crowed and jumped for them while Bim laughed, holding them high. James stepped out into the cold night, his insides twisting with helplessness.

They spent the night in the vacant
chaan
next to Bim's. One wall had collapsed and the thatch at that end sagged like a hammock, tufts of it spilt across the floor, where weeds had taken root. The wind blew through the hut and into their bones, smelling of dank earth and rotting thatch and making the old door rattle. As Stanley lit two small candle stumps and James swept aside the goat droppings with a twig broom, Aziz unpacked their meagre supper. Cold chapattis, a tin of luncheon meat, three small hard apples and a clutch of his home-made Graham crackers. It was an affront to him to serve such dismal fare, but Stanley
had insisted upon it. They would be spending the night at Bim's, he had explained, but, Number One: could not eat with the family as they didn't have enough for themselves, let alone guests, and Number Two: could not possibly sit in the hut next door cooking up their own hot meal as this would be adding insult to injury. Imagine those starving little kids smelling Aziz' curry while their tummies rumbled! Aziz suggested they cook enough for everyone, and Stanley said Yes, but on the second night, when they returned with the kill. It was customary after a hunt to share the meat with the villagers. So Aziz had been forced to accept these terms, but still cringed as he set out the food. His only comfort was the cloth he laid down first, which smelled nice and was printed with flowers.

James slept badly. His sleeping bag was thin and the floor of the hut hard and uneven. Despite crawling into the bag with all of his clothes on, he spent the night clenched with cold, his hands thrust between his thighs, feet like rocks, ears numb. But more than that was the fear. The last few hunting trips he had bungled things. Missed animals completely, or worse still, wounded them. He had seen the disgust in his father's eyes, the way his big hand curled into a fist and then scraped against his bristly chin. Stanley had grown up shooting things. He claimed he couldn't even remember his first rabbit, but their number was legion. And there had been fox and coyote and elk and even bears. His first deer was when he was eleven. James was fourteen and still hadn't shot anything bigger than a bird.

He was woken by his father's hand on his shoulder.

‘Come on, Jim-Bob,' he was saying. ‘Up now.'

It was utterly dark and cold. James' muscles ached and unfolding himself was like bending metal.

‘
Chai
babu,' said Aziz, appearing from the black with an enamel mug.

‘
Shukriya ji,'
he murmured, feeling the warmth seeping through his body.

Stanley had an open Bible on his knees. By torchlight he read aloud the allotted chapter for the morning – the story of Hagar fleeing into the desert with her son Ishmael. Aziz knelt beside him with hands
folded in his lap and brows knotted in concentration, bowing his head when Stanley prayed for the Almighty's providence for the day.

After devotions and cold chapattis with peanut butter, they packed their bags and prepared the guns. James pieced together his sleek .318 Westley Richards deer rifle, running his fingers over the polished wooden stock and feeling the power of the thing resting in his hands. His father had bought the gun for his birthday last month from Colonel Bunce who, at seventy, was scaling down his
shikar
exploits, and it was the finest thing James had ever owned. Stanley's gun was an old Remington. It had been passed down through his family for generations, gathering stories as thick and odorous as the grease that he now rubbed across it. Along with the usual tall tales about grizzlies and stampeding bison, there were the legends from the Civil War and the story of his great-grandmother using it to protect runaway slaves.

James didn't know how many of these stories his father believed, but he clearly relished the telling. These were the few times Stanley seemed to loosen up and laugh a little. There would be a spark in his eyes and a dimple would appear in one rough cheek, almost as a sign that here was the chink, the soft spot, the clasp to an inner man who so rarely escaped. And James would sit by, face shining, full of laughter and questions, longing for the moment, if the crack should widen, when he could leap inside.

Head brimming with the gun smells of oiled wood and burnt powder, James pulled on his rucksack and followed Stanley out of the
chaan
, Aziz behind. Outside, the dark was just beginning to soften, but they still needed torches to see the narrow path. They walked in silence, the beam of James' torch playing over his father's heels, the cold air a cloak. The gun was heavy and awkward to carry, his fingers going numb on its icy metal. Slowly, things around began to take shape, a boulder here, a tree there, the hulk of his father's body ahead.

They moved from the path up a tiny goat trail to a patch of scrub where they pushed their rucksacks into the thicket and settled down, screened by the bushes, guns across their knees. Opposite was a rocky cliff, its contours and boulders becoming sharper with the growing light. They sat in silence, waiting and watching, James feeling the cold steal
over his body, the tiredness dragging on his eyes. Birds twittered and whistled and the shades of grey around began to blush with colour as if the birds were calling the day into being. Just when James thought he would never move again there was a skittering of small rocks on the cliff. He brought his gun up sharp and felt his father stiffen, though Stanley's rifle remained on his lap. A pair of
ghoral
appeared, moving with light ease, their grey-brown coats almost invisible against the rock, small hooves sure and quick. Then they stopped, as if sensing something, and the front goat turned her head, revealing the white fur at her throat. It was the perfect target.

James' shot rang loud and foreign in the hush of dawn, like a puncture in the sky. The goat fell, the other fled and Stanley roared.

‘YES!' he cried, leaping to his feet and shaking his gun in the air. ‘He's done it! Thank you GOD, he's done it!'

James felt a dam-burst of joy. He shakily lowered the rifle and looked up at his father, whose face was splitting open. Stanley hauled him to his feet and crushed him in an embrace that was clumsy and smelled of canvas and damp wool. It was the first time they had hugged since James first left for Oaklands, aged four.

At their side, Aziz was dancing. Hooting with glee, he was whirling on the spot, clapping and twisting his hands, and flashing all his pearly teeth in a rapturous grin. He too caught James in a great hug, though it couldn't be more different from Stanley's. Smelling of last night's smoke and the ever-present blend of coconut oil and spice, it felt as easy and warm as a blanket, for Aziz hugged him every day.

Stanley laughed and said they'd better find the beast before the flies did, and the three took up their packs and scrambled down to the base of the cliff. The
ghoral
was lying on the rocks beside a small stream, its legs stuck out at strange angles, its white throat gashed red. They decided to gut it back at Bim's, so Stanley tied the hooves together with vine and lifted it onto James' shoulders. It was a heavy and awkward yoke, but one he had longed to bear. On the steep walk up to the village, Aziz insisted on taking a turn and as James looked up and saw the body lying across his shoulders it reminded him of the picture in his children's Bible of
Jesus carrying the lost sheep.

Except the Good Shepherd's creature had just been saved.

Long before they reached Bim's village, the children spotted them and came pelting down the path, yelling. They jumped to touch the
ghoral
and flung their arms around James when they learned it was his, but their speed and their cries had another source. A leopard had killed Bim's last buffalo.

Back in the village, Stanley sat on the front step of the hut as Bim told him the story and wept. He had taken the buffalo up to a high field early that morning and left it to graze, but when he returned, it was dead, the leopard's mark clear on its throat. The man wiped the tears with the back of his hand and shook his head, his body slumped, voice a high-pitched, nasal lament.

In front of them, Aziz and James butchered the goat, a crowd of children gathering around, quarrelling over the scraps. The sounds of knives hacking through bone were punctuated by snatches of Aziz' song, which was little more than a sorrowful repeated phrase, like a wail of wind down a pipe. It cut into James, along with Bim's cries and the mingled smells of soil and blood and excrement and the sight of the goat's severed head at his side, with her glassy stare and poking tongue. He turned from her face and sunk his cold fingers into the warm wet of her belly and drew out the intestines. The boy who had sat in his lap seized them with a yelp and ran his hand down their slippery length shooting faeces at his sister. His grandmother scolded him and confiscated the entrails, adding them to a platter already loaded with the dark, glistening pieces of kidney, heart and liver. She would also keep the hooves, the skin, the head, the bladder and the bones. Everything was precious.