Of Marriageable Age (59 page)

'I am a modern-minded man,' said Gopal firmly, 'but we have to find an interim solution.'

This Catholic home had been the interim solution. As for the time thereafter — Savitri would not think of it.

'I'll cross that bridge when I come to it,' she told herself again and again as the months sped by and her girth grew greater. Gopal's son Paul was born, and then Nataraj, and now she had arrived at that bridge. Involuntarily she glanced at the bed next to hers. It was empty — the girl had had her baby last week. It had been taken from her to be adopted and the girl had left the home that very day, weeping bitterly. Savitri's arms tightened protectively around her child.

F
IONA STOPPED
dead in her tracks. A man was in the room: he was standing quite still with his back turned towards her and looking down at Paul sleeping blissfully on the straw matting of the upstairs room. The man, hearing her stifled gasp of surprise, turned, and he must have been smiling even before he turned but it was not a smile of friendship. She began to back out of the doorway but then she remembered Paul and pressed herself against the wall, hoping to edge her way around and so pick up the baby.

'Good morning, Fiona,' said Mani and his smile grew wider. Fiona didn't answer.

'Well, aren't you glad to see me? I haven't been here for some time now; haven't you been missing me?'

Still she said nothing.

'Why are you pressing against the wall like that? Don't say you're scared of me? You know I wouldn't hurt you. I wouldn't even touch a piece of scum like you. You filthy piece of dirt. How could my brother even bear to touch you, a woman who has been taken by so many men before him, low-born men at that. You are nothing but a worthless lump of dirt.'

He began to cough and once started could not stop. The coughing racked his body, bending him forward. Finally he removed a dirty rag from the waist of his
dhoti
and spat into it, inspected the spittle, replaced the rag and continued his tirade.

'You are covered in filth from head to toe. But my brother, my own brother of a highborn family, has seen fit to make you a member of my family. Well, I will tell you one thing — neither you nor my brother belong to my family. I have no brother by the name of Gopal. I have no sister at all. Filth has been brought into the family to ruin our reputation. You have given birth to scum. You English, do you know what you are? A pack of dirty rats! We Indians hate you with every fibre of our being and will fight you with the last drop of our blood. If it were not for my handicap I would join Hitler's army myself — may he destroy every last one of you, men, women and children! May he swarm with his armies over your land and may every blade of English grass be his! But now... let us go downstairs and talk. I want to do business with you. Are you scared? Very well, I will go first, you follow behind me.'

He moved towards her and like a frightened rabbit she scuttled to the doorway. But yes, she wanted him away from Paul and so when he went down the stairs she followed him and closed the curtain over the door so that Paul was safe.

He walked into the kitchen, she behind him. 'Aren't you going to make me a cup of tea? Where's your hospitality?'

She moved over to the tea and filled the kettle with water from the clay vessel and lit the fire and placed the kettle on the stove while Mani watched her silently.

'Where is she?'

Fiona swung around, staring. 'Who?'

Mani sneered. 'You know who I mean. That whore whose name I will not mention.'

'I don't know.'

'Don't lie to me. Tell me where she is. Where is she hiding? Don't waste my time. I know she is hiding somewhere. I know Gopal is hiding her. Where? I have heard a rumour about her and I must confirm it. Where is that whore? You must tell me, now. If not…'

He drew a knife from the waistband of his
lungi.
It was a small knife, but it was sharp. He held the knife in his right hand, and raised his left. With his left thumb he pointed to the room at the top of the stairs, where Paul lay sleeping.

57

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

SAROJ

Yorkshire, 1971

T
RIXIE'S STEPMOTHER'S
brother lived with his family in Four Oaks, the family mansion in a village near Harrogate, where the bride's party would stay for the weekend, and where the reception was to be held. The groom's party was to be scattered in various quarters all around the area; it consisted of Ganesh's three brothers, their wives, some of their children, and Nat.

It was a tiny chapel on the property of a local landowner, a friend of Trixie's stepmother's family, half an hour out of the village. There was no organ, but Elaine had arranged for recorded music, and when
'Here Comes the Bride'
rang out from behind a back pew all faces turned and smiled, because Trixie was going to be a beautiful bride in white. Nat, standing at the altar next to Ganesh, had an excellent view of the aisle, and gazed admiringly at Trixie as she walked up in the flowing white dress she and Saroj had chosen together two days earlier.

Trixie, true to character, had managed to combine seamlessly her romantic and her bohemian tendencies. A traditional white (in this case, off-white) wedding in a church, of course; this childhood dream must be fulfilled, no matter that Ganesh was, officially, a Hindu. She'd bought her dress in some antique market, and goodness knows what century it was; the filigree lace of its high-throated top, through which the deep mahogany of her flawless skin shone, had more than a few threads snapped by age. But its full satin skirt flowed down to her ankles, the wide skirt falling in loose folds and moving freely as she slowly walked forward to meet her groom, too fast for the sedate music, as if she could not wait. She carried a bouquet of white and yellow roses and wore white and yellow roses tucked into her hair, and she held her head up and looked straight ahead, grinning very inelegantly, as she walked, her eyes like living black diamonds, shining with the great love and joy that flowed from her heart to Ganesh, who was waiting for her at the altar, flanked by Nat.

Saroj wore lilac silk, a dress of utmost simplicity which only set off all the more her own natural beauty. Her hair she wore gathered on top of her head, seemingly held in place by white roses, and tumbling down in huge, loose, shiny black ringlets. She walked behind Trixie, trying to keep up and, not seeing her friend's face but feeling the static of her emotion, kept her own face lowered, to hide the little tears that were sure to escape. She had arrived on the early train that morning and had barely met the bride's party, including Lucy Quentin who had arrived the day before and had driven up in a rented car.

Her favourite brother, and her best friend. Saroj could not, for all her effort, wear the cool mantle of reason today, because of the love she bore these two, the goodwill she wished them, the hopes she had for their great happiness together, the depth of feeling, of hope, of great yearning that perhaps, somewhere, maybe here, there was such a thing as perfect, complete love, such a thing as wholeness and an undying bond.

Marriage was a sacrament, after all, whatever the framework in which it took place, whether Hindu or Christian, whether Indian or black or white or brown; here was its blessing, and that blessing would infuse the marriage and make it strong, strong enough to weather all storms. All this she yearned for, for the bride and for the groom, who were now standing face to face before the altar and the vicar whose blond hair curled down to his shoulders.

In this complete meltdown of reason Saroj looked up, her eyes moist with unshed tears and eloquent with the depth of her tenderness. She felt like a house of glass walls, transparent in all directions, filled with a sweetness and a purity that longed to sing and soar and almost weep for joy. She struggled to hold back the tears — too sentimental!

She stepped to the left, to Trixie’s side.

At this moment the vicar asked the bridal couple to step forward, which they did, and Saroj found herself face to face with Nat. Her eyes locked into his for the second time.

It might have been a moment of shock, but it was not. It was as if they had both known, long ago, had moved forward in their separate lives towards this meeting, as naturally as two rivers flow down different mountains to join in a common valley, to continue their course intermingled in one another, inseparable, for who can unjoin the drops of water so united? And as water does not leap for joy, or shout out in surprise, but continues serenely, calmly, in a much greater, fuller, wholeness, so also Saroj and Nat, at this meeting, simply knew with a deep, full calmness that they were one, and there was no other word to describe their oneness. And as the vicar spoke the words that would join Trixie to Ganesh, so also, silently, unacknowledged to the world and before God alone, Saroj and Nat met for just a moment in one perfect unity of souls.

S
AROJ FOUND
herself outside the chapel in a mélange of people talking and congratulating, with herself at the periphery of madness: Trixie's face always present, wreathed in smiles, Gopal grabbing her hand and pushing her into a group photo, Lucy Quentin wanting to say hello, and somewhere at the back of it all, Nat's soft eyes ever on her. Swirling emotions, and reason struggling to take command, reaching through the indefinable, precarious, vacillating waves of feeling that now, after the perfect calm of union, threatened to overcome and overthrow her.

She found herself in the back seat of a car, next to strangers. The car gliding into the driveway of a luxurious garden, at the end of which other cars were already parked before a stately, ivy-covered mansion. People emerging from the cars and milling around on an emerald lawn. Ganesh and Trixie posing for another photograph before a towering red explosion of roses growing up a pergola. Standing next to Nat for another photo, not looking, pulled away, meeting people, shaking hands, smile frozen, thoughts frozen.

Through the crowd, Nat smiling, looking her way. Those eyes! Waiters in white jackets walking around with tall glasses of champagne precariously balanced on small round trays. Trixie's dad, deep in conversation with Lucy Quentin, his wife Elaine buzzing around introducing everyone to everyone else. Hordes of Trixie's old schoolmates with their own partners, gathering in giggling, squealing groups like on the first day of term. Those eyes again. Gan's hippie friends in headbands and bell-bottoms and flowing Indian skirts. Everyone gay and frolicsome and even the sunshine sparkling with unusual brilliance and the sky's blue richer than ever before. White people, brown, black and yellow. A day etched in vivid light and colour but Saroj, she, sloshing through a murky, rain-drenched turmoil. And then again those eyes, through the crowd.

Saroj fled unseen into the house, up the stairs and into the bathroom, locked the door. She plumped herself onto the toilet seat and buried her face in her hands. For a space of only a second, the space between two thoughts, in the first meeting of eyes, she had known perfect peace — the stillness at the centre of a cyclone. But once thrown out of that stillness she was helpless, pitched out of herself, like a leaf tossed about in a hurricane.

She tried to get a grip on herself. But who was
herself?
Who was that person she had to get a grip on? Where did she begin, where did she end? Where was her substance, her identity? Was she thoughts, feelings, that moment of stillness, this storm, this upheaval, this wild churning of emotion, this giant hand of a
no
raising up and pushing it all away, but in vain?

She hid in the bathroom for an hour. She heard voices calling her, someone knocked on the door, tried the handle, left. She waited. Calmed down. Then she stood up, splashed her face with cold water, looked at herself in the mirror as if there she could find herself; saw nothing but a frightened little girl. She ran down the stairs without meeting anyone, into the kitchen. Elaine was there.

'Saroj! Trixie's been looking for you, where on earth . . .'

'Elaine, tell her I've left, please. Tell her I feel sick, I'm going home.'

'But wait, why? You can lie down upstairs, wait, Saroj, don't . . .'

But Saroj was already out of the door, gathering her confusion like the folds of her long skirt, down the driveway at a running walk.

Half-afraid they'd come to get her, she waited fretfully for the next train south, ears pricked for the slamming of car doors on the road outside, hands fitfully opening and snapping shut her purse. Somewhere, a little lonely voice cried out to be forcibly swept up and carried off — by Nat. But it was just one tiny pleading flute of a voice.

Later, safely on her seat in the departing train, she relaxed enough to look down at herself and realise: she was still wearing her lilac maid-of-honour's dress. Her travelling clothes hung tidily in her room at Four Oaks, where only a few hours previously, untypically full of joyful expectancy, she had stepped out of them and into Trixie's once-in-a-lifetime fairy-tale wedding.

58

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

SAROJ

London, 1971

'
S
AROJ
, you're a fool. I'm telling you for the last time: I didn't plan this. I didn't plan anything! I'd forgotten about Gopal and his plans to marry you to Nat — believe me, for once! And give the guy a chance, for goodness' sake! Nat isn't your common or garden drooling-eyed fan. If you'd just for one minute lay down your arms you'd see.'

'Gan, would you just stop interfering? Mind your own business for a change instead of sticking your nose into what doesn't concern you?'

'Well, according to your theory, this does concern me. You're looking for a scapegoat to pin your confusion on and you've chosen me. Well, let me tell you something: I happen to know Nat a whole lot better than you do, and if you prefer to act the offended little Snow Queen it's your loss, not his. And I'll tell you something else, Saroj. Snow Queen's a compliment. What you're turning into is a common, or garden, bitch.'