Of Marriageable Age (50 page)

'How would you like to go to England? To your father?'

'To... Daddy?'

'Yes, dear. I've been contemplating your future and I've come to the conclusion that the best thing you can do is go to him. After all, he's the one you take after. He's the artist in the family, he'll know what to do... Wait, wait, what're you doing? Let me finish!'

Trixie had sprung forward and seemed about to strangle her mother, who fended her off expertly.

'Just listen, will you? Maybe, if you're good enough, he can get you into art school. I'm sending some of the paintings from your portfolio, the ones you did in school, they're not bad, really...'

Trixie was raining kisses on her mother with such violence Saroj thought she'd knock her from the chair. Lucy Quentin held up her hands and laughingly tried to push her daughter off; but Trixie was too much for her.

'Stop it, Trixie, d'you hear? Stop it, wait, I'm not finished! Wait, I said, there's more to it...'

Trixie looked up at Saroj as she drew away, her eyes bulging with disbelief, glistening with joy.

'Listen a minute before you kill me! All right, I'll let you go to art school, but under one condition: you'll have to go to a proper school for one more year and repeat your exams, those that need repeating. I want you to do your best, to work hard and be sensible and get some proper O Level certificates, including maths of course, so that if it doesn't work out at art school you can still do something else. After all, your father made a success of his art, maybe you can too. Goodness knows, he fought me like hell to get custody of you back then. Let him try his luck. I wash my hands of you. Anyway, I rang him up today and asked if you could come, it was an awful connection and I only got to speak five words but he said the most important thing — yes. So…'

She turned to Saroj. 'Saroj, you're leaving in three weeks, aren't you? D'you think there'll be a free berth, still? And what did you say the ship was called? I'll have to make a reservation tomorrow.'

T
RIXIE
and her mother left Georgetown only a week later. Lucy Quentin wanted to have a little holiday with her daughter before they were parted for who knew how long, so they went to Tobago for two weeks, where one of Trixie's uncles had a beach house. More importantly, Port of Spain was the port of embarkation for the Spanish ship Montserrat, due in Southampton three weeks following. When Lucy Quentin and Trixie left, Saroj moved in with Balwant Uncle till it was time for her own departure.

T
RIXIE WAS WAITING
for her and Deodat at Port of Spain's airport, Piarco, jumping up and down and waving from the visitor's terrace. Baba turned to Saroj crossly.

'What's that girl doing here?'

'Well, um, she's going to England too. On the same ship.'

'What!
How come? Why didn't you say anything?'

'I forgot, Baba.'

'Is she going with her mother?'

'Urn, no, actually, she's travelling alone; that is, with us!'

Baba stumbled in his shock. 'What! But nobody said anything! She can't just latch on to us! What's the meaning of this? That girl has been enough trouble already, and...'

'But, Baba, I invited her to share a cabin with me, I didn't want to be put in with a stranger, you see, so I suggested to her mother that we travel together and she thought it's a good idea. She would have told you but there wasn't time before they left the country; it was a last minute decision. I told her mother you wouldn't mind at all, that you'd be glad for me to have company. I expect Miss Quentin will talk to you about it before we leave.'

Baba threw Saroj a look of thunder but she remained gloriously unperturbed. The last two and a half weeks, the first time Baba and she had spent in any proximity since Ma's death, had shown her how much she'd grow up, how independent she was of his opinion, and how much she was ready to defy him openly. Not aggressively, not with drawn swords, but with impertinent composure, as now.

They retrieved their suitcases and entered Piarco's main hall, where a dread-locked man in a long shirt covered with brilliant red flowers played a gentle rippling melody on a steel drum, so soothing that Saroj's nervousness as to the waiting confrontation melted away.

Trixie and her mother approached them, smiling, transformed; the deep lines of stress that usually furrowed Lucy Quentin's face, her mask of permanent dissatisfaction, had vanished, and when she greeted Baba it was with a smile so serene it disarmed him completely.

'Oh, Mr Roy, I do apologise for loading Trixie onto you at the last minute, but Saroj told me it would be quite all right, you wouldn't mind in the least, and frankly, there was just no time before we left to ring you up and really we had no choice because all the flights were booked up till mid-September and there were still a few berths left on the
Montserrat,
so we were quite lucky. And I'm sure she won't be any trouble; Saroj is such a mature girl and Trixie eats out of her hand!'

Trixie and Saroj, arm in arm after their first exuberant greeting, exchanged wicked grins at these words. Trixie turned to Saroj and winked and Saroj had to smother her giggles. Baba's manners won precedence over his prejudices. He hedged and hummed and insisted everything was quite all right, that it was good for Saroj to have a friend in her cabin, and reassured Lucy Quentin completely as to Trixie's safety under his chaperonage.

Ma's death had cut Baba down several sizes. He was a ghost of his former self: for the first time, Saroj understood the cliché. Indeed, she felt that way herself; but with her, that ghost was already filling out with substance, new contours taking shape, new life stirring at the prospect of a new beginning. She had the advantage of youth. Her spirit could still sprint; and it had overtaken Baba's limping one. She almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.

They left the terminal and plunged into the multi-coloured fray of taxi- and bus-drivers, porters, tourists, vendors, shoe-cleaners, lottery-ticket sellers and limbo dancers or whatever those loud-mouthed, grinning men in carnival colours arguing and laughing among themselves in the middle of the road were.

They took two taxis to Port of Spain. Trixie was spending the night with her grandparents, Lucy Quentin with an old school friend, Baba and Saroj in a hotel. They'd be meeting again the next morning — on board the Montserrat. But before she left for the night Trixie grabbed Saroj, pulled her aside, and whispered fiercely into her ear:

'I've got the most terrible, terrible news, Saroj! I told you Dad doesn't want me, didn't I? Well, he doesn't!' Saroj looked at her in surprise and saw that she was close to tears.

'What? What d'you mean?'

But the cars were waiting and the parents were impatient and pulled the girls apart before Trixie could speak.

Trixie and Saroj shared a tiny, outside cabin on the same deck but on the opposite side of the ship from Baba, which was a good beginning. They squabbled as to who would sleep on which berth, inspected the tiny shower and toilet and poked their noses into a few of the cupboards, flung their luggage on to the berths and hurried up to the main deck to watch the ship leave port. Lucy Quentin had been near to tears when the loudspeaker had requested visitors to leave the ship and Trixie wanted to wave goodbye. They pushed their way through the passengers with the very same idea in mind and found a place at the railing, where Trixie peered anxiously at the crowd on the pier till at last in great relief she cried out, 'There she is!' and waved frantically, screaming, 'Mum, Mum!' into a wind that tore the words from her lips. Tears slid down her cheeks and she made no effort to restrain them.

Lucy Quentin, a tiny forlorn creature in a lilac trouser suit, waved back with one hand, dabbing her own cheeks with a handkerchief with the other. She looked so small, so helpless, her power nothing but a mirage, evanescent against the desert emptiness of farewell. All she was, now, was a mother with an aching heart.

'Who knows when I'll see her again? It may be
years!'
sobbed Trixie, as the ship's horn emitted a long-drawn-out, hollow, agonised blast and the gangway and the ropes were pulled in.

At this point Trixie was crying uncontrollably. 'Now I don't have anybody except you!' she wailed. Saroj turned to her and placed her hands on her shoulders.

'Okay, Trixie, stop blubbing and tell me for goodness' sake, what's this about your dad not wanting you? You're on the ship, aren't you? What more d'you want?'

'Oh Saroj, if only you knew! Dad sent a long telegraph a few days ago and he said they're putting me into a boarding school! That they just bought a house and they don't have a bedroom for me and it's a very good school in Yorkshire! Mummy says Yorkshire's miles away from London, up in the moors somewhere! And it's some snooty school Dad's wife used to go to and she says it's the best place for me to repeat O Levels, away from London where I might get too wild, and it's time for me to get serious and more disciplined, so they're sending me away! Oh Saroj, can you believe it? It's as if they're sending me to prison! Daddy doesn't want me, otherwise he wouldn't listen to that old bitch!'

'Oh, Trixie! And I was so looking forward to us being in London together! You and me in Carnaby Street! We might even have gone to the same school!'

'Well, it's not going to be. And I tell you something, Saroj, if that school's too awful it's going to be me slitting my wrists next time! Who knows, I might jump into the ocean before we even get to England!'

T
HREE WEEKS
after embarkation they docked at Southampton. Saroj walked down the gangway, meekly following Baba, Trixie behind her. They no longer laughed. The passage to England had been a period of respite; they had lost themselves in the
Montserrat's
little world and now must leave its cosy familiarity. England loomed before them, not the England of their dreams but a new and unknown world, a threatening, hostile reality.

It was nearly midnight. They spent the rest of that night in a Southampton hotel, to rest before continuing to London, but neither of them slept a wink. They spent the night in speculation, winged on hopeful flights of fantasy they both knew to be vapour.

The train for London left shortly after nine. Baba met a Bengali couple just arrived on a ship from Bombay and immediately plunged into conversation with the husband. Trixie had bought a guidebook of London at a stationer's and was already lost in its pages. Saroj sat looking out of the window, watching the bustle on the platform, when her eyes caught his.

He was tall and lanky and the rich, creamy colour of coffee generously mixed with cream. His black hair was long and curled down to his neck, and one stray lock hung loose across his forehead; he had just raised a hand to brush it behind his ears. His eyes brushed hers, returned, locked. The hand raised so suddenly stiffened, remaining poised above his eyes as in a salute. Thus he stood there on the platform, immobile, just gazing, not even smiling.

He wore a
kurta
pyjama-suit like the ones Baba used to wear back home, but instead of white his was a pale ochre colour. Over the almost knee-length shirt he wore a dark brown cotton waistcoat which emphasised his slim waistline; he looked crumpled, shabby, as if he'd just rolled out of bed, or, more probably, off an intercontinental ship. The canvas straps of his rucksack pulled his shoulders back and bunched his shirt, while the strap of his woven, bulging shoulder-bag lay across his chest. The whistle blew, the train jerked, startling him back to life. He signalled, to say he was coming, and loped forward in a long leisurely stride, unhurried but nevertheless swift, moving with the loose, elegant, almost regal grace of an Afghan hound, forwards along the platform to the carriage door.

Saroj pressed her face to the glass but could not see if he'd made it. But no. There he was. As the train chugged slowly past him he shrugged and held up his hands in resignation. The train picked up speed. She opened the window and looked out, back at him. He trotted forward, grew smaller and smaller, bounded to a standstill, disappeared.

She could swear she had seen him before, somewhere.

45

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

SAROJ

London, 1970

S
AROJ RIPPED
the letter straight through the middle and then into tiny fragments. Tears of rage pricked at her eyes, but she would not let them out. Instead, she paced her little attic room as far as the eaves would allow, picked up her pillow and smashed it into the wall — as if the pillow was to blame — and kicked at a table leg. She flung open the little window and threw the scraps of the letter out into the cold grey fog hanging over the roofs of Clapham. Then she sat down at the table that doubled as a desk to write a letter to Trixie.

In the three months since arriving in England her life had changed completely. At last, she was free. The first pleasant surprise had been that she was not, as she thought had been planned, to live under the same roof as Baba. Her three half-brothers, James, Walter and Richie Roy, were less hospitable than Deodat had expected; their wives even less so, and not one of them was inclined to augment their family by two new members — three, including Ganesh, who had arrived two months earlier. Homes in London were not as large as in Georgetown, and nobody had rooms to spare. Upon their arrival Saroj and Baba had been crisply informed by Walter's wife that the three brothers had already distributed them among themselves. Ganesh lived with Richie, the dentist, Deodat reluctantly moved in with Walter, the lawyer, and Saroj with James, the pharmacist — and so what was left of Ma's family was torn apart.

Saroj was overjoyed, more so because between her and James' English wife Colleen there was a spontaneous, wordless understanding. Perhaps Colleen was disappointed that her own daughter, Angela, had no higher ambitions than a secretarial career; at any rate, Colleen's first mission — even before taking Saroj to 'see the sights' as James suggested — was to find an appropriate school for the newcomer.