Of Marriageable Age (55 page)

'Oh, really? Very unusual for a lady. But all the same you must consider this marriage because it was your mother's wish. It is not safe for an unmarried female to live in a mixed society. And I am begging you now to hear this story before fixing your mind on an unmarried condition of life.'

'What story?'

'The story of my son, this boy your mother and I would like you to marry and why it is imperative that you fulfil her last dying request.'

'Listen, Gopal Uncle, I told you, I'm not interested. But if I do listen, do you promise to leave, and not to pester me again with this story, and not to try marrying me off?'

'Oh yes, I promise this in the certainty that once you hear the story you will be rushing to fulfil your mother's desire. Listen: your dear mother had a friend, a very dear friend. An English girl. The two of them were like this.' He held up two entwined fingers. 'They swore upon death to always help the other in need. This girl fell in love with an Indian boy — me! It was a very great love but had to be kept hidden because of the hostility of both our parents. Only your mother knew of the secret. Finally I was going to be forcibly married to an Indian girl of my parents' choosing, and the English girl was to be shipped to England. So in the throes of that very passionate love we eloped. But it seemed our love was crossed by Destiny because no children were born to us for several years. After many years a baby boy was born. Soon after that my beloved wife was unfortunately killed in a Partition incident. As I was struggling to make a living I could not keep my son Nataraj myself and so gave him to relatives to care for.

'Your mother at the time was married in a far-off country. She and I were always close, especially after I married her best friend. We have kept up a correspondence over the years. She has informed me of the birth of all her children and of their welfare, and she confided in me her sorrow at the fact that you refuse to be married.

'In her very last letter before her death she told me how much joy it would give her, to see our two families joined in marriage through you and Nataraj. Knowing this, Sarojini, knowing that it was her last deep desire on earth, how can you fail to comply? Are you not moved to tears?'

Saroj was silent. She had no words. She was thinking. Finally Saroj stood up, and finally she spoke.

'Very well, Gopal Uncle. You've had your say. And now please leave, like you promised.'

51

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

NAT

London, 1970

'
I
WISH
with all my heart that you would address me as Father!'

'I'm sorry, I'm truly sorry, but I just can't. You see, this is all so new to me. All my life I've called another man Father, and to me he is my father, and always will be.'

'But I am your very flesh and blood!' Tears gathered at the corner of Gopal's eyes and Nat turned away. All through the last hour Gopal had plastered him with a cloying, clinging glue he called love. If at first Nat had wished to return the favour, to love his father even as he himself was loved, to feel some vestige of a son's warmth for a long-absent father, now he only longed for a moment to himself. Yet there was still so much to know. He needed answers only Gopal could give.

They had moved on from the café to Nat's flat. Once they were there Gopal had prowled around the walls, inspecting Nat's radio, his record player, his records, his books, asking the cost of everything and exclaiming over the answer.

Gopal, Nat had already found out, had been only a month in London, and was due to return to India in two days. He had successfully completed his business, which was to persuade a lovely Indian actress that she would be just perfect for the leading role in his latest film, and to lure her away from a modelling career and living-in-sin with an English pop singer. As it turned out, her love affair had grown stale, and the modelling career had come to nothing.

'She is prepared to play the role for an exorbitant sum of money,' said Gopal. 'Beautiful women are so flighty! And now I have to speak with my bosses over there.'

He spoke the word 'bosses' with pique. His bosses were scoundrels, he declared, who refused to recognise his talent. Just because the one film he had directed was a flop he had not been given a second chance, and still they had him constantly at their beck and call, running around the place for them, promising great things but never fulfilling them. They pleaded language difficulties: Gopal's native tongue was Tamil, and though his English was excellent his Hindi and Marathi left much to be desired. There was a distinct prejudice against film directors with a Tamil native tongue.

'It is the actors who love me!' he declared. 'They respond to me as puppets to a puppeteer! They do whatever I bid them! Look at this girl in London! Only because of my influence she is returning! I know her so well!' He winked suggestively at Nat. 'She knows of my talent as a director. But what am I? Screenwriter and jack-of-all-trades. One day I will just walk out and what will they be left with? Nobody. There is no other talent in Bombay! I shall go back to novel-writing and then they will beg me to direct their films!'

'Where are you staying in London?' asked Nat, if only to change the subject.

'With the Rajkumars,' said Gopal, 'relatives of a friend. They live in Wallington which is so far away from you, my beloved son! It will make visiting you extremely difficult! And I have only the two days left, it would be most convenient if I —' he paused, as if giving Nat the chance to invite him.

'But I've only the one bed!' Nat protested weakly.

'No matter, no matter, I can sleep on floor, we Indians can sleep everywhere and in all circumstances, we are very hardy people! And look at your nice thick carpet! If you just give me one bed-sheet I can sleep most comfortably, please do not worry about me, I do not need that nice soft mattress…'

'No, in that case I'll sleep on the floor, you can take the bed.'

That little matter settled, they began a conversation that lasted well into the night. There was much Nat wanted to know, and Gopal was only too ready to talk, though, Nat suspected, information was well embellished. Gopal perched himself on a straight-backed chair, drew up his legs and crossed them. This, he proclaimed, was the best method of sitting.

'Westerners sit in such a method as to be highly disturbing to the digestive system,' Gopal explained, 'but worst of all is the system of defecation here. Do you sit on the toilet seats to defecate? You should not, you know. I myself always get up on the seat and squat like we do in India. I will show you. If you sit like this,' Gopal demonstrated a sitting position, 'the excreta cannot sufficiently pass through the digestive tract. The intestines are crushed. The result is constipation. But if you squat like this, your digestive system is in an excellent position. The knees are up, the anus is down, and excreta can pass through swiftly and emerge from the body with ease. The very power of gravity forces the faeces vertically downwards. The intestines are wonderfully loose and relaxed. And for sitting the half-lotus position is the best. I would actually prefer to sit on the floor but as you are not accustomed and as it would not be fitting for the elder to sit lower than the younger I am quite content with this chair.'

Having said that, Gopal resumed his half-lotus on the chair, and his speech.

'Your mother, even though she was born and bred in India, always maintained it was unladylike to sit in a half-lotus and refused to defecate in a squatting position. It was a subject of great dissention between the two of us. Fiona was extremely headstrong in such matters but also in matters of diet, and as a result she suffered greatly from constipation. She insisted on eating a non-veg diet which gave her stool a solid consistency and a dark pigment which could have been avoided by correct diet and correct position for defecation.'

Nat resolutely turned the subject back to his mother herself, away from her stool.

'Her name is Fiona Lindsay. So I suppose she's a relative of my father?'

'Of David, your adoptive father. I am your true father. Yes, Fiona was David's sister. I was of humble though high-born Brahmin Indian parentage. My father was a cook at the Lindsay estate and therefore we were treated as mere lowly servants by the parents. But Fiona and I loved each other from the time we were little children. We were forced to keep our love a secret but when we were of age we eloped. Scorned by our families, nevertheless our love was strong enough to overcome all obstacles. Apart from the subject of her nourishment we were a blissfully happy couple. Our relationship was pure bliss...'

'What happened to her? Where is she now?'

'I told you, she was killed in a tragic car accident.'

'But that’s not what you said. You said she was killed by Muslim marauders during the Partition disturbances.'

'Yes, yes, it is all quite true. It was a slaughter
and
a car accident. It was a burning car. It was the Muslims. I was left with the ruins of my love and with a little baby.'

'Whom you immediately placed in an orphanage.'

'What else could I do?' Gopal cried. 'I was in no position to care for you! My family would not take me in with a half-caste child and what do I know of the care of a small infant! So I placed you in an orphanage, meaning to retrieve you the moment I remarried.'

'Why didn't you?'

'Alas, my second wife refused also to take a half-caste child. She was pure Indian and wanted children of her own. However she was barren. Several years passed before she would accept the fact that she would not bear children of her own and was finally prepared to take you in. But by that time David had stepped in to gain custody of his dear sister's child and I legally handed him the reins of custody, thinking it would be in your best interest.'

Gopal beat his brow with his fists, and whined, 'Oh, what a fool I was! How I bitterly regret that move!'

Lucky for me, thought Nat.

'But why didn't you at least keep up the contact with me? I'm sure my father would have been happy to share me with you.'

'Oh, you do not know the true face of that David! He has treated me most cruelly. He refused to let me visit you all through your childhood, for he wanted to keep the truth of your parentage from you. He is a most dastardly villain.'

'Why? Why didn't he want me to know I was his sister's child? That makes him my uncle…'

But Gopal merely shook his head and muttered something about 'dark secrets'.

'But once I was an adult you could have traced me. You could have written to me. Why do you turn up now, of all times? Why have you left it so long?'

'Oh, my son, my son! What do you know of the feelings of a father? How I have yearned for you! Yes, I should have made contact with you earlier. But how to explain my great shame of having neglected my duty as a father! Of placing you in an orphanage! But now I have found you I will never let you go again. And I have come into your life with a great purpose. This has given me the courage to make myself known to you. It is time, my dear son, that you marry and settle down. And I have found the ideal girl for you.'

'
H
ELLO
, hello, hello! I have been waiting for you these past thirty minutes! I have brought somebody along!'

A grinning Gopal emerged from the anonymous crowds at Notting Hill Gate tube station, planting himself firmly in Nat's path. He gestured with palpable pride at a young man in his wake — a tall and lanky young man, Indian, with long black hair tied back in a pony-tail and a hippie bandana around his forehead, in polka-dot bell-bottom trousers and a washed-out T-shirt of indeterminable colour. The man smiled amiably and greeted Nat with a peace sign.

'Ganesh,' he said.

'Ganesh is my nephew, also long-lost. I met him first time this morning. My heart is overflowing with emotion at all these long-lost relatives I am having the pleasure of meeting in London! Today I decided to establish contact with the girl in question and also with her family and I met him. He has been abroad for several years and has just arrived day before yesterday. He is your cousin, the girl's brother!'

Ganesh rolled his eyes and Nat laughed. Their eyes locked, and Nat felt an instantaneous rapport with Ganesh. The three of them walked towards Nat's flat.

Nat turned to Ganesh. 'Don't tell me you're in on this conspiracy to marry me off !'

'But of course!' said Ganesh, laughing. 'Nothing could please me more than to see Saroj married off to a suitable boy. You look decent enough . . .' He pretended to inspect Nat, letting his eyes slide down the long, lean form walking beside him. 'But to meet Saroj's standards you'll have to have brains as well as looks. She is a studious girl. Quite brilliant.'

'Can't stand the type.'

'Oh, come on, give her a chance. If you don't marry her, who will? The poor girl'll never find a husband at this rate.'

'Thanks for the recommendation!' Nat yawned ostentatiously and kicked at an empty Marlboro pack lying on the pavement.

'No, but she's really lovely, understand? That's the thing. A brilliant girl, but lovely. Beautiful, in fact.'

'A fatal combination.'

'A most wonderful girl!' cried Gopal. 'I have never in all my life seen a girl of such spectacular facial qualities. If she came to Bombay with me I could make of her a film star. I know all about the film business. I have worked with the most beautiful actresses and never in all my life have I seen such beauty.'

Ignoring Gopal, Nat turned to Ganesh. 'Look, Ganesh, do me a favour,' he said, suddenly turning serious, 'and don't try to fix me up with her, okay? I've had enough of people trying to marry me off to their daughters, nieces, sisters, second-cousins, and friends-of-sisters. The moment I hear the words "she is of marriageable age" an alarm starts buzzing in my head. I told Gopal last night, and I meant it: I'm not in the marriage market. Definitely not. After my residency I'm going back to India, for good. There's no place in my life for a woman right now. And apart from that, this girl's my cousin, and...'