Of Marriageable Age (54 page)

'How should I know you? I don't have any relatives, none that I know of. Definitely we've never met!'

'Oh, of course we have! Have you forgotten your dear Gopal Uncle! I came to see you when you were a little boy and I brought you a nice gift, a fire engine. Surely you have not forgotten!'

'The fire engine…' Now that Nat
did
remember.

The fire engine had had a long life, treasured by the village boys but shunned by Nat for a reason he refused to acknowledge, and had quickly forgotten because of the fear it evoked. The fire engine had threatened such great loss that Nat had not so much as looked at it again. But like all things the mind rejects, and in rejecting nourishes, the fire engine had grown beyond proportion, looming in Nat's child-mind like an oversized bogeyman of fiery red steel. So when Gopal Uncle mentioned it now Nat at once knew what he meant.

'I remember the fire engine,' he said slowly, warily. 'But I don't remember you. Well, I suppose we should talk.'

He looked at his watch. He didn't want to invite the man, this Gopal Uncle, into his flat, into his life; not yet, but obviously they had to talk.

'Come along.'

Nat led Gopal Uncle to his neighbourhood café. He ordered two cups of tea and sandwiches. They took their seats at a corner table, facing each other, and Nat began.

'So, you are my uncle?'

'Yes, yes. I am your uncle and I am so very happy to meet you again at last! All these years I have been trying to find you and now finally my lifelong dream has come true!'

'But how come I never heard of you before now?'

Gopal Uncle frowned. 'That is because of your father, who is not wanting you to know anything of me and your true family, who all these years has fought to keep you in ignorance of your true ancestry and would not allow me to claim you as would have been proper. But now I am here to make you aware of the truth and tell you of my dear beloved brother and your beautiful mother, his wife, an English lady, and their tragic death by accident. Due to unforeseen circumstances their one and only child, the dear baby which was you, Nataraj, was put in an orphanage where, before I, your uncle, could claim you as my own adopted son, you were claimed by David, who would not allow me to . . .'

'Stop, stop! It's too much.'

Nat leaned forward and buried his forehead in his hands. Overwhelmed by the gush of information, he could not think, he could not follow the words. Gopal Uncle slurped his tea, bit into his sandwich and chewed vigorously, waiting for Nat to recover.

Nat's eyes were shrouded in pain; yet beyond that pain was a shrewdness, a clarity and a determination which Gopal in his romantic zeal missed.

'Oh, your dear parents! How beloved they both were to me! What a tragic story! Your mother was an Englishwoman, so beautiful, like Elizabeth Taylor. She would have become the greatest living actress had she lived, that is for certain, for she was beautiful beyond compare and so gifted! How she adored your father, my younger brother Natesan! What a passionate and doomed love was theirs, crossed by the wrath of relatives! They loved each other at first sight but neither her parents nor his would allow their union, and so they eloped to marry, and you are the first-born and only child of that love. They braved the scorn of their relatives and the disapproval of society to live their love — but they were doomed by Destiny which cruelly stepped in to claim their short lives. And as neither set of relatives would accept the half-caste child born of that union, you were given up for adoption! I would willingly have claimed you had I been in a position to do so, for I alone of my whole family stood at the side of my brother and supported him, for what does caste or class have to do with true love? But my circumstances at the time were unfortunate and so…'

Gopal, not noticing the keenness of Nat's unmoving gaze, carried on in this strain for some five minutes, pausing only for breath before plunging on with new revelations. Nat had a feeling of unreality, of being transported onto the set of an Indian film.

'How did my parents die?' Nat's interruption came as a whiplash through the middle of Gopal's story.

'What? Pardon? Oh, they died in the most tragic of circumstances. They were killed by Muslim marauders during the Partition disturbances! What a terrible slaughter! Luckily…'

'What did you say was my father's name?'

'I told you, didn't I? Didn't I just mention that? His name was Natesan.'

'And my mother's name?'

'Your mother's name was Fiona.'

Nat was silent, then. This was it. The revelation. The story of his past, the story his father had always denied him. And it was to come from the lips of this… this garrulous clown of a man. A deep sense of anti-climax overcame Nat. A sense of not-wanting-to-know. But he had to know. It was an imperative.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Tell me the truth. And for heaven’s sake, stop lying to me!’

Gopal gave a little yelp and jerked his hand forward, upsetting his tea. The cup fell to the floor and broke, the tea sloshed all over the table, onto Gopal's lap and down to the floor. Nat rose to his feet and strode over to the counter. He returned with a waiter who cast curious glances at Gopal moaning and swaying in his chair, his face in his hands. The waiter mopped up the floor, changed the tablecloth and left them again. Gopal moaned louder and swayed forward, staring at Nat with eyes widened in alarm.

'You know the truth! David told you after all!'

Before Nat's eyes Gopal's façade of garrulous self-confidence began to crumble and disintegrate. Nat pushed his chair back, and himself back into the chair, to increase the distance between them. He had to bluff it out; he’d caught Gopal in a lie and now he might just get the truth.

‘Dad certainly didn’t tell me that my father’s name was Natesan and my mother’s name was Fiona,’ he said. That, at least, was the truth. Would Gopal take the bait?

Gopal stopped moaning, stopped swaying. He kept his face lowered, bent into hands that shielded his shame from Nat. He was silent. It was a heavy, brooding silence, a silence which overturned a world. The silence of capitulation. Gopal looked up. The hands moved away from his face, reached out towards Nat, and his arms spread out wide as if to encircle him. His mouth quivered with emotion, and tears gleamed in his eyes.

‘You are right! I have been lying to you. Your father was not Natesan. Natesan is my brother. Your father is…
I
am your father, Nat! And your name is not Nat; it is Paul!’

‘You are my father?’ asked Paul.

And Gopal closed his arms around Nat and wept as he spoke:

'Oh, my son, my son!. You are my beloved, long-lost son. I have spent years yearning for this moment when you would finally know me, when the truth would stand before us and at last I would hear you speak most precious word in all the world: father!'

50

CHAPTER FIFTY

SAROJ

London, 1970

Angie knocked twice, opened Saroj's door and stuck in her head.

'Some fellow at the door for you, Saroj. I've let him in.'

Passing her in the narrow upstairs hall Saroj snapped, 'Why didn't you say I was out?'

'You don't expect me to lie for you, do you?' replied Angie with a suave smile.

Saroj stomped downstairs. It was probably a suitor, braver than the others, one daring to be turned away at her door. This had happened quite a few times in the six months since she'd been at university.

In the almost three years since she'd been in England she had, much to her own chagrin, blossomed into a stunning young woman. The attention her looks attracted was unwelcome to her. She hated being stared at; the undisguised male admiration she involuntarily awakened disgusted her. She tried to play down her looks. She never wore make-up, and indeed she did not need it. Her skin had the colour and the gloss of deep pure honey; long almond eyes framed by sweeping black lashes, and wide, full lips below a small, straight nose completed a face of perfect symmetry.

Her hair had never grown back to its former length, but the years of Ma's care and nourishment had given it a fullness and a sheen, a natural healthy glow that would turn the knees of shampoo advertisers to jelly. Worn loose, it swung and bounced around her shoulders in a thick curtain of satin.

While she could not hide these features, she could disguise them by an expression of almost permanent disgruntlement. Those perfect lips never smiled, and eyes which by nature should have been soft and moistly eloquent snapped with hostility. Her hair she wore pulled back in a simple, severe pony-tail. She wore old jeans under oversized men's shirts. Thus armed, Saroj approached the world, admitting only a select few into the intimate circle of those who really knew her: Trixie and Ganesh at the core, Colleen, James and a few others forming satellites around them. At the rest of the world, more especially at the male half, she snapped and snarled, keeping it at bay.

Yet there were always a few intrepid young men prepared to brave that withering wrath by simply turning up at her door, smiling politely with a bouquet of flowers held out to her as a protective shield. This chap would be one of those. She opened the door, prepared to send him away.

She saw at once that he was different. For a start, he was old, definitely not a student. And an Indian. Thickset and scruffy, with a striped polyester shirt crudely stuffed into a too-tight waistband hanging out over his bottom. He carried a cloth-wrapped, flat packet clasped to his chest. He had greasy combed-back hair and wide bushy sideburns, and a wiry curled moustache above a far too familiar, mincing smile. Clamping the packet under his arm, he stroked his moustache once with forefinger and thumb as if to press it into place before joining his hands in a
Namaste
and bowing his head slightly, the mincing smile never leaving his lips.

When Saroj did not return his
Namaste,
but simply stood there staring three steps up the staircase, the stranger opened his arms wide and said,

'Sarojini, my dear girl! I am your Gopal Uncle!'

The words made her start. She had all but forgotten Gopal in the eighteen months since his last letter. In the past year no more letters had come. She had assumed that he had given the battle up for lost. But here he was, standing in her hall in the flesh, nervously shifting from foot to foot.

From her vantage point on the stairs Saroj looked down on him and saw that rage, now, would be futile. She had never seen such a sorry heap of humanity. Judging from his letters she had expected another version of her father, a pompous ass, an arrogant dictator of a patriarch convinced of a power he did not possess. Saroj was well matched for such an opponent.

But this overgrown chipmunk of a fellow — she couldn't fight him. She couldn't crush him underfoot. She couldn't give him a whipping with her tongue and send him packing. All she could do was what she did.

'You'd better come in. We can talk in the sitting room,' she said, clattered down the remaining stairs and held the door open for him.

'Thank you, thank you, very kind,' said the man, and the look in his eyes seemed to say he really was deeply grateful; she really was excessively kind. Saroj felt absolutely out of her depth.

'I have brought you a gift from India,' said Gopal Uncle, and handed her the packet. Unfolding the cloth, Saroj saw that it was a little bag on which was written, in English and in an unknown script,
Taj Mahal Silk Emporium, Mount Road, Madras.

'Please, take it out,' said Gopal. 'I purchased this gift especially for you. It is an artificial silk sari, best quality, very stylish but not flashy. Indian ladies are liking this style very much these days.'

The shiny material in bubble-gum pink was neatly folded, and Saroj, unpleasant memories of unfolded saris and the trouble they brought at the back of her mind, left it that way. She thanked her uncle and laid the sari on the glass table.

She gestured to him to settle into James's armchair next to the television set, and hurried off to the kitchen for tea and buns. She needed to collect her thoughts.

She returned with a tray, which she set on the little glass table next to the armchair and, still hedging for time, poured him a cup of tea. In her absence Gopal had stood up to move around the room, and now stood with his back to her inspecting Colleen's collection of china cats on the mantelpiece.

'These ornaments are certainly very costly,' he began, holding one up and waving it at her.

'Yes, yes,' said Saroj, took the cat from him and set it firmly back in its place.

Intimidated by her gruffness, Gopal returned to the armchair and let himself sink into its protective lap. His hand reached out to fiddle with the knob on the television set but at the last moment he took control of himself and drew it back.

'I came to speak to you about your Mother's Last Letter,' he began. He emphasised the words, making them sound like Last Will and Testament. His voice was at once timid and brave. As if he himself, of his own volition, would never dare to bring up the subject again, but this Last Letter fired him with new courage.

'I know,' said Saroj, and tried to keep her voice soft and calm which, she had figured out, would be the best way to deal with a chipmunk. Soft, calm, but decisive. She sank down into the sofa opposite Gopal's chair and curled one long jeans-clad leg up under the other. Seeing this, Gopal immediately raised his two legs and crossed them into a half-lotus; the armchair offered ample room. He reached for a bun and bit into it, holding his left hand cupped beneath his chin to catch the crumbs. They nevertheless fell by the wayside and onto his shirt-front and, inevitably, the fauteuil.

'Gopal Uncle, I'm sorry to disappoint you but I have no intention of marrying whoever it is you have in mind. I came to London with definite goals: to finish school with good results, and to get a degree. And that's what I'm doing right now. I got my A Levels last year, the best results in my class, and it was hard work, and I won't throw them away for marriage. Right now I'm studying to become a doctor and I'll need all my energy and all my time for that. It will take years. I have no thought of marriage.'