Of Marriageable Age (41 page)

Funny how, when you resolve to do something strong and essential, something you know you need to do, a feeling as weak as sentimentality tries to creep up behind your fixed resolve and take you unawares with memories and prods of conscience and things as frail as a mouth-watering memory of a samosa made with loving hands especially for you. Oh Ma… There was a lump in Saroj's throat. She wanted to weep, to call out. But no.

Ma turned the corner into Lamaha Street and disappeared from view. In a trice Saroj was across the road; the gate she left open but not clasped, to save time at her escape. The front door was locked, but she knew where Ganesh kept a key hidden in the yard, under a pile of unused flower-pots. It was in her hand, turning in the lock, then she took the stairs two at a time, all the way up to the second storey and through the door into her bedroom. She looked around, at what had been home for so many years, smelled for the last time the lemon-scented polish. It was dark, for Ma had closed the jalousies, but bars of sunlight infiltrated through the slats casting a ribbed pattern on the white sheet of the bed.

There were no suitcases in Saroj's room, and she didn't want to waste time searching for one. She slipped the pillow out of its case, opened the drawers of the dresser, and stuffed the pillow-case with some clothes, underwear, a few blouses, school uniform, shoes. There wasn't much she cared to take with her. The high-necked dresses Baba ordained, she would never wear again in all her life, nor the grey pleated skirts. Jeans and tie-dyed T-shirts: that was her future. Trixie would help.

The pillow-case filled and bulging, she hesitated, just for one second. Dare I? Yes! Yes! Without this, this one last defiant act, without a
statement,
her escape could not be final. She opened the door into her parents' bedroom. She knew where Ma kept her sewing things, in a corner of the wardrobe, in a round basket. She opened the wardrobe, enveloping herself in a cloud of scent so filled with Ma's presence she almost drew back. But only for a moment. Her hands found the basket, delved into them, and felt the metallic coldness of the thing she sought.

Scissors in hand, she stood before Ma's mirror and held up her plait. Before she could think a further thought crunched through it. There. It was gone. Ma’s pride and joy. After that it was easy. She cut it off as near to her head as possible, not measuring but just cutting, blindly, plunging the scissor blades into the black thicket Ma had tended for hours and hours of her life, letting it all fall to the floor around her. Tears stung her eyes but she paid no heed, grabbing now at the last handfuls of hair and ruthlessly snipping them off, throwing them to the floor in disgust, watching herself in the mirror through the stinging mist of threatening tears as she worked.

It was a lot of hair. And it lay there in a deep, dead pile of worthless silk. She threw the scissors onto the pile, opened Ma's top drawer where hairpins, clips, rubber bands, ribbons, jayal sticks, and other whatnots were neatly organised in little throat-drop tins. She selected a thick black stick of kohl and wrote across the mirror:
LIAR!

Leaving the drawer open and the kohl stick lying on the vanity, she picked up the pillow-case and ran down the stairs. The postman had come in her absence, for a thick blue airmail letter with strange bright stamps lay on the floor before the door. It wouldn't be for her; probably Baba's relatives from Bengal. Saroj opened the door, slipped out, locked it, replaced Ganesh's key, went out of the gate, and down the avenue to Lamaha Street. She looked at her watch. Ma would just be arriving at the hospital.

At the bus stop around the corner she stopped and looked at her watch again. It was lunchtime. Trixie would be joining her mother at one of the restaurants in town before afternoon school began. She'd have to wait. It might take some time before Trixie came home but it didn't matter. She'd just sit on the back steps (she should have gone to Ma's kitchen and taken some food; too late now) and enjoy her freedom. She had all the time in the world; the rest of her life, in fact.

'
C
HRIST
, Saroj, where's your hair? Dammit, what've you done? Your hair! You look terrible! Oh my
Gawd!'

Trixie was in a terrible panic and Saroj just stood there smiling as she ran up, turned her this way and that, grabbed what was left of her hair and finally, realising that it was true, it was all irrevocably gone, collapsed in a heap on the front stairs.

'Why'd you do it?' she said flatly.

'Because it's all over. I've finished with them. I've left home. I've done it, Trixie, I've left them. I want to stay here, with you. You said I could.'

'You shouldn't have done it. Not cut off your beautiful hair.'

'I had to. I'll explain once you let me in the house and fill up the hole in my belly, I'm famished, been waiting here since lunchtime.'

'Come on then.' Trixie took her school bag from the bicycle carrier and walked up the stairs, Saroj close on her heels. Before turning the key she looked at Saroj again and moaned, 'Christ, Saroj, I can't believe it, I mean I just can't believe you really did that. That hair! Your lovely, lovely hair. You look a mess, a disaster. Nobody'll ever look twice at you again.'

'And what do I care?' Saroj snarled, following her into the house. 'I'm sick and tired of being looked at. What's a lump of hair? Just hair, that's all. Hair. Fibres. My God, the way people make a fuss over a few feet of dead fibres. Look at me, Trixie, I'm here, I'm alive!'

Trixie plonked her satchel down on a dining room chair and snorted.

'That's what you say now. Anyway, no use crying over spilled milk, it's done and it's a shame but it won't come back. C'mon. What'd you like?' She led the way into the kitchen, opened the Kelvinator and poked her head in. 'Not much here. Bread and cheese. Shall I make you a Welsh rarebit? Oh, and there's some old soup. From Wednesday, I think. Callalou. Mabel made it.'

She took out a small pot, opened the lid and sniffed at it. 'Should be good still. Shall I warm it up?'

Saroj thought nostalgically of Ma's samosas, her
bhindi bharva,
stuffed okras, the exquisite scents wafting from her kitchen at all hours of the day, the fridge constantly brimming over with delicacies. Hard times for her palate lay ahead; but it was a price she was willing to pay.
Nothing comes cheap,
Ma always said.
The good things in life call for sacrifice. Give your all to get your all.

Okay, Ma, I'm ready.

'Don't bother. Just some bread and cheese.'

The bread was pre-sliced and stored in a plastic bag. Because the outer slice was hard Trixie removed it and placed the rest of the loaf on a breadboard. She took a lump of cheddar from the fridge. She cut off a slice of mould, threw that away and gave Saroj the rest. A plastic butter-dish followed. She took two Jus-ees from the fridge, plonked two glasses on the kitchen table and sat down beside Saroj before prising the lids off the drinks.

Digging away at the cork inside the Jus-ee crowns with a knife, Trixie forgot Saroj and her hair.

'Einstein,' she said. 'That's the last of my scientists. Let's see what's here.' She dug at the second crown and threw it away in disgust. 'Lord Byron. Shit. That's the third Lord Byron. I still need Jane Austen and Wordsworth. And I haven't got a single American president! Hey, doesn't your family make these drinks? Can't you get hold of the right crowns for me?'

Jus-ee drinks was running a 'Famous People of the World' competition: in all of its crowns there was a famous person in six different categories; you stuck them into a special album and the winner would get a lady's or a gent's Suzuki. That was the kind of thing Trixie got to do and Saroj, till now, couldn't. Ma usually didn't stock Jus-ee at home, even though they were manufactured by a Roy. Ma made all their drinks, except at birthdays and weddings. They might taste better than Jus-ee but weren't half as much fun. And you couldn't win anything.

'I'm going to start collecting from now on,' Saroj declared. 'You can give me that Byron. He's my first.'

And then she told Trixie her story.

Trixie shook her head in disbelief. 'You're the weirdest person I ever knew,' she said. 'You mean, you're leaving home just because your Ma had an affair and you discovered your Baba isn't your Baba? And all the time they were marrying you off you didn't run away? Now
that's
a good reason to leave — what happened about that Ghosh boy, by the way? — But your Ma having an affair? I think it's exciting! Romantic! So that's where she was when she was supposed to be at the temple! You know, I had a feeling back then, but I didn't say anything. Shows your Ma's got guts. If I were you I'd be
dying
to find out who's my real father. I wouldn't run away, I'd gang up with my Ma and get her talking. Who d'you think it is ?'

'I don't know and I couldn't care less. You just don't get the point. Ma 's always going on about purity and truth and she can't…'

'But she
did,
silly! You've got the proof, I just don't get why you're so uptight. This just goes to prove that she's not all different like you say, not the saint you were always making out she is, she's just, well, she's
normal
, she's like everyone else! Lots of married people have affairs. How many married men do you think raise kids from other men in all innocence? Hundreds — thousands, I bet!'

'And I think you read too much True Confessions behind your mother's back. I don't know how someone with your brains could read such absolute drivel and then believe it, and anyway, what counts for the rest of the world doesn't count for Indians, they're different, Ma is different, I tell you. Her doing a thing like that is like if… like if the sun began rising in the west and setting in the east! It's just unimaginable, and if she did do it, which is obvious, then everything she ever said and did is just one huge
lie!
She’s a hypocrite;
that’s
what bothers me. And apart from that she let me believe that monster is my father, that Deodat Roy!'

'You should at least give her a chance to explain everything! I mean, what if she's desperately in love with someone else? I once read a novel about a married lady — I was sobbing for days afterwards, so I think you should at least talk to your mother and find out what really happened, and keep her secret, because if your Baba ever finds out she had an affair he'll... Christ, I can't even imagine what he'll do! Think he'll throw her out, or what? Divorce her?'

In fact Saroj hadn't given even the slightest thought to Baba's reaction. For obvious reasons he didn't know Ma had been unfaithful and if he did find out, if he began to ask questions because of what Saroj had written on the mirror, there was no telling what he'd do to Ma. What if he killed her in his rage?

But no. Ma would be home long before Baba and she'd certainly remove the evidence, that message on the mirror. All Ma would have to tell him was that Saroj had cut off her hair and run away. Baba would believe it was because of the Ghosh boy. If Ma had any sense — and she must have sense if she'd managed to keep this love affair a secret for so long — she'd manage it. She was underhand enough. A sly, conniving bitch.

What if Dr Lachmansingh talked? He might consider it his duty, men among men, and so on. Well, that was Ma's own doing; she'd trusted Dr Lachmansingh with her secret so if he spilled the beans to Baba, then it wasn't Saroj's fault. And she, Saroj, certainly wouldn't be talking to Baba, and neither Trixie nor her mother would ever snitch. So Ma could keep her dirty little secret.

35

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

SAVITRI

Somewhere in Rural Madras State, 1938-1939

S
AVITRI'S SON
Ganesan was born on the day Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. An inauspicious sign? Many other things had happened in the year leading up to that birth.

R. S. Ayyar seemed, after Anand's death, stricken with genuine compunction, perhaps even remorse, perhaps only fear of bad karma. That was the last time he beat her. The rape stopped too, for the most part, but that was more or less involuntary. For his drinking increased, and when he came home drunk at night he could do little more than collapse on a heap on the mat.

A month after the 'incident' — as he chose to call it — Ayyar suggested that Savitri return to Madras for a while to visit her relatives. With mixed feelings, then, she wrote to Gopal in Bombay to come and get her. She longed to relive the good things of the past, but, of course, most of those were gone forever. David was gone, and Fairwinds. Mrs Lindsay too was gone; Appa had died two years ago, and all that remained of the people who had brought her joy was her brother Gopal and Amma.

Mani was now head of the Iyer household — what was left of it, which was only Amma, and she herself was ill and dying. Mani's illness, too, had worsened — often he coughed into the night. He did not earn much money since leaving the army — he was now a salesman in a shop for electrical appliances, in downtown Madras — and the home Savitri found waiting for her was in no way the place she remembered. They still lived on Old Market Street; but on the other side, and further down, near the bazaar, in the crowded, loud, dirtier section, and instead of a garden and a huge estate behind the house there was only a paved court with a well in the middle, which they shared with two squabbling families.

Mani was gone most of the day but when he was home she knew he hated her still, and she did not know why. Gopal took a week's holiday to be with her in Madras, and between them a new depth of understanding grew. Gopal now wore Western clothes — dark long trousers, and long-sleeved shirts with a chequered or striped pattern, which he combined with leather
chappals.
He was handsome in a film-star way, with a thin moustache and slicked back hair. He was still at odds with his family and lived with a cameraman friend from a Madrasi studio, but came daily to pick up his sister and take her out. With Savitri side-saddle behind him on a borrowed motor-scooter he cut a dashing figure, and the two of them turned heads wherever they went.