Of Marriageable Age (29 page)

'You always told us not to fear pain! That pain is good!'

'There are good pains, and bad pains. Do you know why I keep a sword in the puja room? It's to remind myself of the meaning of pain; to remind myself that there is something in me stronger than all pain. That's what I mean by good pain. Good pain is pain that forces you to rise beyond it — then you are stronger than suffering.

But your kind of pain, Saroj, self-afflicted pain, is the opposite. Hate is like a tiny weed growing in the mind: pluck it out at the roots, as you would the weed! But what you did is nourish it with attention — and now it's grown into such a tangle you're caught within it — it's strangling you. You're a prisoner of your own hatred. Can't you see?'

'No, Ma, it's Baba who's imprisoned me! It's he who locked me up in my room and locks me up in the house and wants to lock me up in marriage! It's Baba who's trying to plan my life for me and make me do things I can't, I just can't do! Why won't he let me do what I want!'

And what is it that you want? That you
really
want?'

Saroj lowered her eyes. Ma laid an arm around her shoulder, drawing her closer, and said, 'Child: you must talk to me. Tell me what is in your heart. Don't worry about the Ghosh boy and don't worry about your father. I will take care of that. But you must trust me, and talk to me.'

Saroj swallowed. She took a deep breath. And then it all came rushing out.

'Ma, Ganesh is going to England to study and I would like to do that myself. I want to finish school. Get my A Levels and then go to university. I want to go to England like Ganesh. I want to study law and then come back and change all the laws, so girls like me aren't forced into marriage. I know it's impossible but that's what I
really
want.'

So. It was out. She'd put the impossible into words. Ma would be shocked and brush it away and tell her to forget it because girls did not need an education, only boys, and it was just her hard luck being born a girl. She'd tell Saroj to accept her destiny, for the
karma
of a girl was to marry and have children. These were the facts Saroj had grown up with and even to think of an alternative was ludicrous. She couldn't think of a single Roy girl who hadn't married after leaving school. Not one. Not even the clever ones who shone at school. Not even the ones with Christian names and the ones who wore trousers. Not even the ones who went to work in a bank or an insurance agency for a few months before their weddings. Not even Balwant's wife. Sooner or later they dropped their jobs to marry.

Every one of them had a husband before she was twenty. Every one of them had a baby before she was twenty-one. Marriage was their ordained lot in life and they all knew it and there was no exception. And why should Saroj, Deodat Roy's daughter, the strictest and most conservative Roy of the lot, be any different? But she had spoken the words. It was heresy, but she had spoken them.

Ma was so silent she pulled away to look into her face, which was as inscrutable as ever. You could never read Ma's thoughts. She stood up now and walked to one of the windows and pushed out the jalousie on its stick to let the moonlight into the room. She opened the second jalousie. Then she walked to the dresser and lit a candle and came back to sit on the side of the bed and took Saroj's hand. The flickering flame cast grotesque shadows on the wall; they looked like witches, Ma and Saroj, leaning in towards each other. Ma's hand was cool, her touch like silk. Saroj's hand lay limp in hers, and she stroked the back of it with light, feathery fingers.

And then Ma laughed. Not a loud laugh, for Ma was never loud. A round, happy, bell-like chuckle, and she turned to Saroj, and in the flickering candlelight her eyes were bright and expressive, the inscrutability gone, and Ma was like an open book, inviting Saroj to read its pages.

'That's what I wanted too,' Ma said.

Saroj hadn't heard right. 'What, Ma? What did you want?'

'I wanted to finish school and go to university. I wanted to be a doctor.'

'You wanted to be a doctor, Ma?
You?'

It was like hearing the moon say it wanted to be the sun. Saroj couldn't believe her ears. But Ma nodded. She had opened wide the book of her past, and shown Saroj a single page. Before she could close that page Saroj said hurriedly, 'What happened, Ma? Did you go to university?'

'No. My parents wouldn't let me. It wasn't the done thing. They forced me into marriage. I was seventeen. Old, for an Indian girl. Time to marry.' Reluctantly she spoke, eager to close the book, but one tiny crack was still open.

'And what happened then, Ma? Tell me!'

'My first husband died. And then I came here and married your father.'

Bang. It was over. The book banged shut and locked with a key. Ma seemed suddenly in a hurry.

'You should try to get some sleep now, dear!' she said, and stroked Saroj's hair away from her face, leaned over and kissed her.

'Ma . . .'

Ma spoke hurriedly now, and in a whisper, conspiringly. This was just for the two of them and the words were the most beautiful in all the world.

'Listen, dear. I spoke to Miss Dewer. She says you have been very lazy this past year but you have a brilliant mind and if you work hard you can win the British Guiana Scholarship. If that's what you want I will help you. But you must trust me implicitly. You must stop worrying about the future, and simply trust. Come, sleep.'

Saroj slipped down into the bed as Ma pulled up the sheet to cover her. Ma kissed her again. She walked over to the dresser and blew out the candles and in the ghostly moonlight that filtered in through the open windows Saroj saw her glide over to the gallery door, an evanescent spirit forever out of reach. In the doorway she paused.

'I'm not going to lock you in, dear. That's all over now.' Then she was gone. But her words rang on in Saroj's mind.

The British Guiana Scholarship! Awarded each year to the boy and the girl with the best A Level results in the whole country! The very thought of winning it made her dizzy But then, why not? Indeed, why not? If even the strict and hard-to-please Miss Dewer believed in her, why shouldn't she believe in herself?

Saroj smiled herself to sleep. Ma was on her side. Anything, anything in the world could happen. Because Ma's words were well chosen and carried all the weight of truth, and truth, Ma said, was more weighty than the universe. As children they had believed that anything Ma said would automatically come to pass, simply because she had said it. And because they believed it, that was the way it had always been. Ma had been their private prophetess. By the mere fact of speaking she brought forth events. Saroj felt herself transported back into the safe predictable world of childhood.

M
A WAS STILL SWEEPING
the yard next morning when Ganesh poked his head around the door. Saroj had never been so happy to see his boyish grin and tousled head in all her life. He bounded to her side with the exuberance of a half-grown puppy, and by the time she could sit up in bed he was all over her. Ganesh was such a very physical boy; he liked to hug and kiss and squeeze and stroke, and that's what he did now. They laughed together and he brushed the hair out of Saroj's eyes.

'Well, at least you haven't forgotten how to laugh! And look what I brought for you!'

From behind his back he brought out a packet wrapped in birthday paper and tied with a bow, big and oblong, and when she took it in her hands, it rattled — the kind of present that was exciting because you couldn't guess what was inside.

'Oh Gan! But what is it?'

'Go on, open it! Your birthday isn't till next week but I grant you permission.'

She tore at the paper like a little girl. Inside it was a box, and inside the box was a radio-cassette recorder. She flung her arms around Ganesh.

'Oh, Gan! I can't believe it! I never dared own one of these before!'

'Well, if you dare to jump from the tower this is just small potatoes!'

'Gan, don't let's talk about that, okay?'

'But that's exactly what I'm here to talk about. I couldn't believe my ears when I came home and heard. I looked in on you but you were sleeping else I'd have come and given you a good telling off. Saroj! It's not that bad, is it?'

'If they marry me off to that boy it is.'

'Look, they're not going to. They postponed the wedding. Ma and Baba were up late last night and I joined them, and Ma and I pleaded and wheedled with Baba not to do it. Ma said a wife needs an education these days. I confirmed it. We persuaded him to postpone the wedding at least till you get your O Levels.'

'Okay, they can postpone it but it's still hanging over me and what use is it getting O Levels if I jump from the tower on my wedding day?'

'You won't. We won't let you.'

'All right, I won't kill myself, but I swear I'll run away.'

'That's a much more sensible idea. I'll even help you. But don't forget, you can't hide for ever. Baba can have you brought back. And where'll you be then?'

'I'm not going to marry any boy Baba chooses for me, Gan. It can't be right, I bet it isn't even legal. Trixie said I should get a lawyer; her mother will help. I'm going to fight, Gan, and I've been thinking. Listen, Gan, when you go to England I want you to send for me. Get me a plane ticket and let me come! Please!'

'Saroj, I'd love to and I will, but don't forget, you're not even fourteen yet! You'll need all sorts of papers and things and parental consent and don't think Baba's going to sign anything!'

'No, but maybe Ma will!'

In the silence that followed those words they heard the faint swish-swish of Ma's broom downstairs, a rhythm and pace that was comforting and inspiring at once, like the steady beat of the earth's inner heart as Ma set her little world in order.

23

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

SAVITRI

Madras, 1934

A
FTER
E
TON
D
AVID CAME HOME
. It was his final holiday before Oxford.

He had not forgotten the little butterfly girl fluttering through the Fairwinds garden. That was the way he held her in his memory: as a skinny ten-year-old tucking a long skirt into her waistband to scramble up a mango tree, her clothes dishevelled and her plaits unravelling, and he was as fond of her as ever. He had not forgotten her as he had not forgotten the peacock dancing and the hibiscus blooming. She was a part of the natural beauty, the unchanging tableau of his perfect childhood, a background he had left and outgrown, still a part of him, yet left behind.

He himself had grown into a tall, limber young man, whose hair, the colour of wheat-straw, refused to stay parted but fell unruly over his forehead, whose blue-grey eyes were flecked with russet gold, and whose generous smile had charmed and captivated many a flippant debutante.

He had woken late that first morning and the house was empty, except, of course, for the servants, the little maids scuttling out of his way as he entered the dining room. His mother had left a note — sorry to have missed him, gone to Adyar — and she'd be back for luncheon. His father was in his study.

David had one overwhelming desire: to bite once again into a juice-dripping mango or a slice of ripe golden papaya. So he entered the kitchen to see what Cooky could offer. He was eager for the old world to fall back into place, to ensure that nothing had changed. And of course it was all the same, the kitchen with its red-tiled floor and the baskets of fruit and vegetables hanging from the rafters, the little brass vessels containing spices on the shelves along the walls, the black-bottomed pots, the clay pitcher containing sweet ice-cold water, all the familiar smells and sounds. It was all the same, but in the corner sitting cross-legged on the floor on a straw mat, her hands rolling chapatti dough into soft little balls — he had requested chapattis for lunch today — her arms white with flour up to the elbows, there was Savitri.

He didn't recognise her at first glance, for her head was bent forward, over her work. And yet some sound must have escaped his lips, or else she sensed him standing there, speechless, for she looked up and gave a cry of delight and sprang to her feet, and ran to him.

The name
Savitri
was forever connected in his mind with wild, bare-footed skylarking; how could he simply detach it, and reconnect it with this… this…
woman!
In the seconds it took her to run to him he took in every change: gone, the flapping shawl and the fluttering skirts, the skittish leaps and bounds. She wore a sari, originally cobalt blue but faded to pastel. She wore it with the end crossed over her hips and tucked into her waistband for freedom of movement in the way of peasant women. It had one long rip across her thigh, torn where she'd caught it on a rose-bush, and rudimentarily repaired with white thread, not to hide the rip but to prevent it ripping further. It was of the cheapest cotton but she wore it as if it were of the finest, costliest silk; it covered her form only to reveal all the more its grace and sleekness, for soft and fluid it flowed into her curves and followed her every movement.

As she crossed the floor he saw her as if in slow motion, growing into herself before his eyes, into that name
Savitri,
and the love he had known for the little girl grew to fit the woman. The shock of knowing that it was, indeed,
her,
overwhelmed him, and his knees almost gave way. He clutched the door-jamb so as not to fall. She did not notice. Ignoring the horrified reprimand of her father she flung herself at him and her floury arms around him, and then his arms were around her too and he was lifting her up, and spinning her around; she was almost crying with joy.

'David, oh David!' she said. And he replied, 'Savitri! It's you!'

But his voice was muffled because of the lump in his throat.

She leaned into his hands on the small of her back and looked up at him in silence, and he down at her, and saw her face so eloquent with unveiled delight and so radiant with beauty and grace, his eyes misted over. Her own eyes were the same melting-chocolate brown but larger now than ever, wiser, calmer, the eyes of a woman: without guile, and without greed, simple and clear. Her lips smiled, but her eyes spoke and told him there had never been a time without loving, because loving was her very being. Her face was framed by thick, full hair pulled loosely back so that it waved gently around her face, and tied at the nape of her neck, where it was clasped by a bunch of purple and white flowers, and fell down her back to cover his hands in springy curls of black silk. He drew her to himself.