Of Marriageable Age (47 page)

'Great! What I want to know is, who's your real father? D'you think she still loves him? It's a long time ago; nearly sixteen years. I mean, we know she has a lover now, when she goes secretly to the temple, but d'you think it's the same one? Has she had him all these years? My goodness, what a story, I can't wait to hear it.'

Saroj frowned. 'Well, she knows him well enough to ask him to donate blood; and he was willing enough to do so, so maybe…”

'Can you imagine it, your Ma getting romantic with someone? Whispering sweet nothings in his ear?' Trixie giggled and clasped her hands and mimed love-sickness, rolling her eyes and gazing at Saroj with a doting expression.

Saroj giggled too, but only for a moment. 'No, I can't imagine it. I still can't. It's just not like Ma. I can't imagine her being in love, and even less I can't imagine her doing that …”

'Maybe she was raped?'

'No. No way. Look, if she was raped, she wouldn't have known him to ask him to give blood, would she?'

'Well, maybe someone she knows raped her.'

'Ridiculous! Who on earth! Can you imagine, if somebody raped you and you got a child from that, going to him and asking him to donate blood? It's just not logical.'

'Well, you know what I mean. Someone she really liked but she was too shy and he kind of — well you know,
persuaded
her and she gave in and...”

'Trixie, that's your imagination running away with you again. You're crazy!'

'Well, anyway, I'm just dying to know who it is! Think she'll tell you?'

'She'll have to. I'll make her. Everything I want to know, she said.'

'When are you going to have this little talk?'

'Well, tomorrow might be a good day. Why not?'

'Anyway, d'you mind if I'm not home tonight?'

'Where're you going?'

'Out.'

'Trixie, why do you always have to be so damned
mysterious?
Why can't you just tell me straight out where you're going?'

'Okay then. To a barbecue. Up at Diamond Estate. But the main thing is…' and her eyes shone with excitement and she gripped Saroj's hand. 'The thing is, who d'you think's taking me?'

'How on earth would I know? I don't move in your exalted crowds.'

'Well then... Brace yourself... Saroj, it's Ganesh! While you were sick he called to ask after you and then we had a chat and it turned into a long conversation about four hours long and then he asked me out! Can you even believe it? I can't! To the Diamond barbecue! I've been dying to tell you all day and I thought maybe I wouldn't tell you because you might be mad, but oh Christ, I'm awful at keeping secrets and I don't want it to be a secret anyway, oh Saroj, I'm just
crazy
about him!'

M
A TELEPHONED LATER THAT EVENING
, when Trixie had left and Saroj was alone at home.

'I'm fine, Ma! Everybody's out and it's nice and quiet. I've started to study again.'

'Child, you're supposed to be recuperating!'

'Yes, but Ma, exams are in only a few weeks and I've lost a whole week of school. Are you coming tomorrow?'

'Yes, that's what I wanted to tell you. I got a letter this week, from a relative in India, whom I haven't heard from in years. I've been thinking about it all week and I've come to a decision. Dear, I'm going back to India. And... would you come with me? I'd like you to meet some special people there, and...'

'Go with you to India?
Now?'

'Well, not immediately, of course. After your exams. Why don't you take time off from school, and we could travel together? There's so much I want to tell you, and show you; we should have talked a long, long time ago and there's so much you should catch up with. And you are very young for your class, you know, so it wouldn't really matter if you repeat a year!'

'Ma! I want to go into the Lower Sixth and do A Levels and I don't want to lose a year! Maybe after A Levels!'

'In two years?'

There was such disappointment in Ma's voice Saroj wanted to reach out and comfort her. She was like a little child, and Saroj was denying her a heartfelt wish.

'Oh Ma, you've been away from India for so long it doesn't make much difference, does it, if you wait two more years? Look, I can come with you in the holidays and we’ll stay for two months. Surely that’s enough time?'

'Well, I suppose so. I wanted to stay longer, maybe a year, but maybe you could come back early.'

'Baba would let you go? He'd give you the money?'

'Let that be my problem. And you needn't come back here at all, you know. You could go to Richie and Ganesh in London. You could stay with them and do your A Levels there.'

'Ma! I could? Really?'

'Yes. That way you'd be a lot nearer to your goal, wouldn't you?'

'But then I can't win the Guyana Scholarship! Who'd finance my studies?'

'Let that be my problem. And maybe I would stay too. In London, with you. Or in India. Who knows? But… listen, dear, your father's home, I just heard his car. I'll come round tomorrow around ten and we'll talk some more. All right?'

'All right. Goodbye, Ma. And . . . thanks.'

'I love you, Saroj. Never forget that.'

'I — I love you too, Ma.'

There. It was said. And it wasn't half as hard saying it as she'd thought it would be. And it was true.

I
N THE MIDDLE
of the night the telephone shrilled, jolting her awake. Insistent, demanding, it screamed for attention and through the grogginess of sleep her blood curdled. She grabbed her pillow and buried her head beneath it and when the telephone stopped screaming she removed the pillow and listened into the silence broken only by Lucy Quentin's voice floating over the walls, low and stunned yet so distinct, so filled with meaning that the very first word sliced sleep and night from Saroj's mind, and she listened with a pounding, knowing heart, knowing with that knowledge that comes not from without but from some deep forgotten instinct.

'Oh Christ… No… Oh hell. Oh Christ… Are you sure? Is the fire brigade… Christ, no… What'll I tell her? Oh Christ… Yes… In the morning. Shall I come… Can I help… I see… yes, you're right, quite right. I know, she's in no condition… It's better if I tell her myself, when she wakes up. Oh Christ. This is terrible, just terrible. Oh my God. Till tomorrow then... Yes… Yes… Yes… Mr Roy, what can I say…'

Lucy Quentin stood in front of the telephone, the receiver still in her hand, frozen stiff and staring at the wall. She didn't hear Saroj approach from behind.

S
AROJ
, still in a nightgown, cycled furiously through the silent dark streets to what had been the Roy home. Now it was nothing but fire, a mountain of fire leaping up into the black sky and licking it with furious tongues, pennants of vicious flames flying from the window holes. A roaring inferno so hot there was no approach. Six fire engines were parked in Waterloo Street, firemen and police officers pushed back the gathering crowd, while other firemen held hoses that sprayed the inferno with jets of water that sizzled into nothing.

Saroj fought through the crowd, crying aloud for Ma. She reached the front line and fell into Ganesh's arms. And then she fainted.

41

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

NAT

A Village in Madras State, 1969

T
HOUGH IT DID NOT RAIN AGAIN
that season it was days before the flood receded enough to make much of a difference, and even when the soaked earth was again visible life could not return to normal. Almost all the huts in the village had been destroyed so living conditions remained the same: all the women and children in the houses of Doctor and Henry, the men in the school house which, now that the branches had been removed and they could sleep on the concrete floor, was much more comfortable.

But the sun made a difference. Even on that first day, the day Nat brought Gauri Ma home, faces that had been drawn and weary broke out in smiles, children came out to play in the water, women brought out the moist clothing that had collected over days, even weeks, and hung them over the trees and bushes to dry, and tied the ends of their wet saris to the branches of trees so that they waved like long many-coloured banners in the sunlight.

Doctor found out that those whose homes were ruined or badly damaged could apply for government aid to build new huts, but the villagers themselves had no idea of where, and how, to do this, and most of them could neither read nor write enough to fill out the appropriate forms. The men and the village elders together with Doctor, Nat and Henry held a palaver in the schoolhouse, and Nat was charged with the task of overseeing the reconstruction formalities. And so he met each villager again, his friends of old, went with them to review the damage done and salvage anything to be salvaged, heard their lamentations, filled out the forms, and took them in groups to the appropriate official in Town, where a bored civil servant collected the forms and had each applicant sign with a thumb-print.

And since whatever aid was due was slow in coming, and since living together in such cooped up quarters, eventually brought out the worst in some of the villagers so that they turned to squabbling among themselves and dividing up into groups according to caste (Gauri Ma was allotted the back verandah of Henry's house, all to herself, so that she ended up with more room than any other single person in the village), Doctor lent them the money, interest free, until such time as the emergency aid funds might — if ever — arrive. And since Doctor was fully occupied with treating the sick it was again Nat who went to town to buy the bricks and the coconut fronds for the roofs and arranged for them to be brought out in bulk to the village on bullock carts. He also organised the reconstruction teams, and settled the heated disputes as to the order in which the huts were to be built.

But Nat was one of them; their own, their
tamby,
now (as they believed) a
daktah,
and, even though he was much younger than many of those under his authority, they accepted him because of his gentle and respectful and tactful tone coupled with no-nonsense efficiency that demanded, and received, compliance. They called him the
tamby daktah
, little brother doctor, an apt merging of respect with fondness.

Nat had moreover won for himself the title of Bringer of Sunshine and Dispeller of Rain, for it was he whom they had seen that first morning, entering the gate bathed in a ray of sunshine with Gauri Ma in his arms, resplendent as a young god, and when they heard the story of how he had saved Gauri Ma from certain death (for surely she would not have been found for weeks, had Nat not appeared the way he had), how he had gone out in the night through the dark water world and found her in the impenetrable blackness, they slapped their cheeks in awe and marvelled at this miracle, and Nat was credited with being a true Son of God. And even Gauri Ma, for a few days at least, was accorded a respect she had not in her whole life received, (though this respect did not amount to letting her share their quarters, indeed, some of the women had at first objected to sleeping under the same roof as Gauri Ma, but Doctor said it was either she or them), for surely God held his hand over her, and had showered his Grace upon her, through the form of Nat.

Nat accepted their admiration, which sometimes amounted to adulation, with the appropriate humility, knowing it to be an obligation to bow his head and serve. And if he had a Golden Hand it was not his doing, he told them, but God's gift to be used in God's service.

The receding floods left a coating of filth on the earth which had to be cleared away before anything else could be done, for this filth contained night-soil, faeces, since the villagers had had no other choice but to relieve themselves into the water. The removal of night-soil could, of course, not be delegated to any but members of the night-soil-carrier caste, and so squabbling again broke out because the night-soil was all over and nobody wanted to walk on it, and the night-soil-carriers could not work fast enough to remove the filth. So Nat, fed up with the squabbling, joined the night-soil-carriers and helped them clear away the night-soil, the sight of which silenced the squabblers. And it was Nat again who helped dig a ditch deep enough to contain the night-soil polluted topsoil, and Nat who stood up to his knees in another ditch containing night-soil-polluted drainage water, and Nat who emerged from the ditch splattered with night-soil and stinking. And far from this lowering their estimation the villagers bowed before him because never, in all of history, had they seen anything like this, that the son of a
sahib
should enter a night-soil drain and pollute himself with night-soil, and surely this must be a sign of great holiness, because only a saint regards night-soil the same as gold, and is equally dispassionate to both, neither repulsed by the one nor attached to the other.

As soon as conditions permitted it the village was buzzing with activity, women carrying the pans of red mud that served as mortar in relays while the men built up the huts with baked red bricks so that the huts they now received were much more solid than the ones that had been destroyed — the difference in cost having been made up by Doctor — and when they were finished and the thatched roofs mounted they plastered the walls with cow-dung paste and whitewashed them, and the village was new and fresh and sparkling as never before.

All this work took several weeks; the day of his return to England loomed nearer. Nat would have delayed speaking up until the very end, but then the letter came; from the Bannerjis. Nat had completely forgotten about the Bannerjis, and his plan to visit them. He hadn’t even noticed they hadn’t replied to his letter; not till now.

The letter, the arrival of which had been delayed by the rains, welcomed him with open arms, as expected; but it also contained a proposal, a request:

Several years ago, there had been an air crash on a domestic Indian flight involving members of the Bannerji family as passengers, one of those members being Arun, the youngest son. As a result of this crash Arun (who had been only fourteen at the time, an impressionable age) had suffered an irreparable trauma and refused to enter another aeroplane. Since Arun was the next of the Bannerji sons to be sent to the West to complete his education, this trauma dictated that he should travel not by air but by sea. This in itself was no problem but, as the boy was only eighteen years old, and generally of a rather shy and sensitive temperament, the very thought of such a voyage all by himself was considerably upsetting to the entire family. And, since Nat himself would be returning to England around the same time, the Bannerji family implored him with all their combined prayers not to use his return plane ticket but to travel by sea, sharing Arun's cabin and generally acting as companion and guardian, all expenses paid. The Bannerji family did not think this alternative would be altogether unpleasant since a first class cabin had been booked for Arun on September 1
st
, in which there was an empty berth, and altogether they believed the trip would be quite enjoyable to both young men, who not only would have a pleasurable journey with all the amenities, delicious meals etcetera, of first class passengers, but would also have the opportunity of strengthening their acquaintance which of course could be maintained once both were settled in England. Nat's responsibility would end when the ship docked at Southampton, since Arun's elder sister and her husband would be meeting Arun and driving him to their home in Birmingham. Nat should kindly reply by telegram so that the appropriate arrangements could be made.