Beggar's Feast (38 page)

Her father had asked her that question at eight and nine, at ten, twenty, twenty-five, and now, at thirty. He had never kept an office anywhere but in the family compound and sometimes, when men would come to see him, strangers dressed either much better or much worse than he was, Xavier would call one of the children to stand beside him and meet this nice gentleman. Then he would tell the man that all was theirs, that he was theirs too, before asking the child,
Darling, who should pay?
The first few times, Rose and her brothers and sisters and cousins would race to his side when he called. But as the prize became more widely known and won—it was either a single sweet or the latest found peacock feather, and only after the purgatory of standing around while adults spoke and then answering a question from Daddy while the stranger never once looked at you—the older boys would not come from their cricket when their father called, nor would the younger boys abandon their chance to retrieve boundary balls and then heave their whole lives into the ball's flight back to the bowler. And when they realized there were no boys to race, the girls would not leave their games of netball and French cricket, either. And so eventually it was only Rose. She always went, not only because leaving netball and French cricket were no great trials for her, not only because going spared her sisters bottom slaps and her brothers thunderclaps and later because they were auditioning wedding bands and picking bouquets and fabric for going-away dresses and later holding crying babies and busy threatening their own children to eat or sleep: Yes to all of that, but Rose went most because she could not stand her Daddy calling and no one coming, his waiting in vain, and she loved to hear him tell that all belonged to her, that he did. And so, by twenty and well past twenty, her father had long since called for her and her alone. And while her sisters were called about boys, Rose was called and asked the question she'd been answering her whole remembered life.
He should pay, Daddy
.

Only this time Rose was not so certain, so ready. Joyful yes that her father had come home, but she was thirty. This morning, with her father at last come home and taking his tea in the birdsinging side-garden with the world again right and full, only now did Rose know that she needed more than a father. Her sisters' houses, her cousins', even her mother's squirrel cages: they teemed with life. And she had been sleeping on the same cot since she was ten. She had slept there also the night before, after watching this sudden new stranger smoking in the side-garden, shaking his old handsome head according to whatever principle also governed his wearing a worn-down suit her father would have long ago given to the cook's husband. Standing there like that. The poor fool.

“I shall give my answer tomorrow,” Rose said.

“Tomorrow?” her father gasped.

“I cannot go and come from my village in one day,” Sam warned.

“Then you shall stay,” said Rose.

On the fourteenth morning, Sam was already waiting for them in the side-garden. Xavier could tell what his oldest girl was doing, what she wanted. At least, by that morning, he was willing to admit to himself, if not to anyone else, what had been evident to the whole watching world on the prior mornings Sam had come, walking faster each time and by now in scuffed shoes that were daily spit-shined, an old suit daily stone-pressed, his hair combed into a crest and his creased face shaved clean of its salt. And each time Rose told him to stay until tomorrow and the next morning he would walk even faster, faster, faster, until the fourteenth dawn when Sam was already there among the birds lighting upon their pedestal, smiling at Rose who was smiling at him as she had never before smiled at anyone, not even, no, not even at her father when he called and she always came. But how many girls this fellow had smiled at, Xavier could not tell. How many rich men's daughters? And yet, Xavier could tell he was not smiling with extortionate plotting but with nervousness and bliss and idiocy, with the joy of a girl smiling at him, and in this alone was the fellow like a young suitor, a proper suitor, a hopeful groom for Xavier De Moraes's eldest daughter.

After lunch on that fourteenth day, father and daughter left the compound. Rose's mother had been on the other side of the house, feeding her dandos, the only ones in the world whose chatter did not stop when she came near these last thirteen morning-noonand-nights. Now, at last, on the fourteenth day, Vivimarie thought, as she followed the beehive of her husband's Austin driving out of the compound, he was doing something. Ask him to support action against Mrs. Bandaranaike, the trucks are running. Tell him to fly away when the action fails, the bags are packed. But it was two weeks before he'd do something for his daughter's good name, his wife's, his own! But because she was speaking neither to her husband nor to her eldest daughter at the time, Vivimarie De Moraes did not know that Xavier drove with Rose to the Grand Street Church in Negombo. At that midday hour the church was mostly praying widows and napping madmen. Kneeling together, father and daughter prayed opposing prayers and lit opposing candles until Xavier was noticed by a priest walking past their pew. Others soon came. Soon there was a crowd congratulating him on his blessed return and apologizing for Father Marcelline's not blessing the truck, which they would have been honoured to have blest if only asked, and meanwhile, just as she would when she was a girl and her father was caught to such talking, Rose followed the churchbirds wheeling between the great white rafters above them. She prayed that her father's heart would not harden, and she prayed about Sam Kandy, for Sam Kandy, that she was right about Sam Kandy: that he was what he seemed to be from the first she had seen him, standing alone in the side-garden that night her father had come home: that he was not even God's lonely man: that he was no one's: that he had been no one's for so long he would stay day after day only to hear her say
stay another day
. Rose had never known a man to step taller, faster, finer because she, not she and her father not she and her sisters but she, Rose, was standing there waiting for him. She was herself too old to wait any longer.

“Rose darling, there are so many suitable boys—” Xavier began, after they left the church and passed through the beggar's gauntlet to the car.

“No, Daddy, there are not so many boys waiting to marry a thirty-year-old girl.”

“You come from a good family, a known family, Rose darling. I will make inquiries—”

“Now you want to make inquiries? Why, so you can find me a fat Bharatha widower with a good name and a house full of small fellows, who has seen me with my sisters' children in the church square and been told by the parish widows what a good daughter I am and so wants the same for his children, the same for him?”

“When you were younger, you never once asked that we make inquiries about any boy. Your sisters did. You never asked.” He sighed. “Darling, also, you were never asked about, darling. I am sorry. I am sorry. But you never said anything and so many years have passed and all this time we have thought—”

“What, Daddy, that I would be happy for the rest of my life to get a sweet from you when I say the other fellow should pay?”

“Aiyo Rose, I have only come home.” He stopped the car beside a fruit stand whose seller, an old woman in ragged purple, smiled scattershot teeth in vain.

“This is not the time and this is certainly not the man! I have only come home!”

“I am very happy you have come home, Daddy, but you are not the man either.”

“This is murdering your poor mother!”

“But when I give her more grandchildren?”

“You think you can have children with this fellow! You want to make me a grandfather with someone else's grandfather! This is madness! He is my age! How can my sweetest smartest girl suddenly be so stupid? What do we know about this fellow? What if he is already married, if he has children older even than you? He is my age! We cannot know what he wants from you, from us, from me. I have more than just rivals in this country now, don't forget.”

“And you think some enemy has sent an old man to take away your only unmarried daughter? What kind of rivals are these? But you can find out about him, no?”

“Yes. Well, I don't know. Who's to say?”

“Will you try?”

“No, Rose, I won't. I am your father. You are my daughter. This is my family. No.”

“And yet you will try all for country, you will try all for church, for concrete, for everyone else in the compound. You will not try once, for me?”

“But what have I told you, for so many years, darling? I am yours! Everything here is yours! And you want to give all of it to an old man in an old suit who crashes good cars and won't pay? How in the name of God and our blessèd Saviour, after seeing this fellow for five minutes these last fourteen mornings, can you think you are ready to see him every morning noon and night for the rest of your life?”

“I am.”

“When just on the other side of a parapet wall down this road, you have everyone? There is nothing sadder than an unknown man, Rose. Believe it, I know. But the whole world is there for us, for you, and it always will be. We cannot know if this fellow will get in his car and go the moment I fix his fender, or if he will go in five years, with all your wedding gold, if he lives that long.”

“Do you think he's a rogue, Daddy?”

“I don't know what he is. What I know, Rose darling, is that now, again, you have all of us. Why would you take him over all of us? How could you?” her father asked, his voice at last failing.

“Yes, I have all of you,” Rose answered carefully. Knowing that if ever she was to be more than a daughter now would not be the time to cry in her father's arms. “And you have me. You have all always had me, and I have always had you, and I have been happy that way. I am happy that way.”

“Then why are we even talking such madness? Send the fellow off tomorrow morning. I will even pay for his cars. And then we can look into this properly for you. Patience pays.”

“No, Daddy. I have paid too much patience while all of you have learned what more there is. And I don't, I, I never have, and very soon I never will.”

“But aiyo why does it have to be with this fellow?”

“Will you make the inquiries if I tell you?”

“Yes.”

“You give me your word you will send someone to find out about him?”

“You have your father's word. Now tell me why it has to be this fellow.”

“I shall tell you tomorrow.”

After they returned to the compound, Xavier called trusted men to the car park. Minutes later, Vivimarie learned the instructions: get the fellow's driver drunk again, get the name of the man's village, go and make all necessary inquiries. That her husband was even considering this made Vivimarie fall martyr. Attended by aunts, sisters, parish allies, she didn't leave her bedroom for three days, where she meanwhile stormed heaven to know what she'd done to have a daughter treat her so, let alone a husband come home after so many years and marry off their eldest girl to an old man whose only known people were a drunk driver and two busted motorcars. A few mornings later, the inquirers returned and reported that no one in the man's village would speak, whether for or against him, that they would only point to the walauwa where he lived alone: no wife, no children in there. The next morning, the old fellow was invited to the verandah for tea. He was allowed to sit across from Rose in her best dress for twenty minutes while Xavier sat beside her, trying not to tear his newspaper in half, and just as she had done with all the other suitors for their other daughters, Vivimarie watched from the dining room with a pearl rosary wrapped through her fingers that was, this time, apparently, useless. And so when Rose and Sam sat together that morning, the rest of the shocked near world knew a courtship had begun. If not why, if not how, if not, really, even with whom.