Of Marriageable Age (6 page)

Savitri giggled at the thought and then she splashed him. ‘But I never want to grow up and get married! I don’t want to go away! I wish I could be with you forever! I don’t want anything to change!’

‘But if we get married, you and me, we can be together always and live here always and be happy!’

Savitri found that thought even more hilarious, and she splashed him again, and dived underwater.

‘Sillybilly!’ But David didn’t laugh. He grabbed her two wrists when she came up for air and held them firmly so that she faced him and grew still, but still she smiled and her eyes sparkled with mirth. David didn’t smile.

‘I mean it!’ he said. ‘Promise you’ll marry me!’

‘Oh David!’ She stopped smiling and looked past him, at the horizon, and her eyes turned hazy. She hadn’t yet learnt the word
naïve
and but she could sense its meaning. How could David possibly know, living as he did with the
Ingresi?
How could he
possibly
know what real life was about? When everything you could possibly want is at your fingertips, when all you have to do is close your eyes and wish it, and it’s yours, you inherit a sense of power that is completely illusory, for it is dependent on matters outside yourself. Savitri could not reason this out, yet still she understood it; and she felt sorry for David.

‘Go on, promise’

‘How can I promise it? It’s not for me to decide. I’m just a child.’

‘But when you grow up. And me too. Like in a storybook, and then we can live happily ever after.’

‘I’d like that, when I grow up!’

‘Then promise!’ His hands loosened on her wrists and slipped down to her hands.

‘But…’ Savitri thought of the stories David told her, of princes and princesses marrying even though it didn’t seem they would, and living happily ever after, and it seemed to her that her life too, all life, was like a story, and there could only be happiness in store, and she and David would be together for ever and ever. It seemed so real, especially with David holding her hands and the water lapping at her waist and the afternoon sun gentle on her wet shoulders. I didn’t seem wrong, at that moment, to make a promise for events beyond your control. Everything just felt
right;
for now and always. How could it be otherwise? She wanted to promise. She opened her lips to speak the words.

T
HAT WAS
how Mani found them. Standing in the water, facing each other, hand in hand, lost in their bubble of
rightness.

Iyer had sent Mani to find Savitri, because the go-between, the boy’s aunt, was waiting. Mani had searched the whole of Fairwinds for her, asking everyone he met if they'd seen her, and Singh had told Mani that they'd gone to the beach, and when Mani arrived there they were, standing in the water hand-in-hand, gazing into each others’ eyes. Mani yelled and yelled for Savitri, ever more furious, but it was a long time before she heard because the wind snapped his words away. Finally, though, she heard, and spun towards him, and came out of the ocean, blouse and skirt transparent in their wetness and clinging to her body. Mani bawled at her and boxed her ears, and then not even giving her the time to turn around and wave goodbye to David he grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and marched her all the way home, dripping wet as she was.

Mani was too stupid to realise he couldn't bring her home this way. He did, and in his fury prattled out the whole story in front of the boy's aunt instead of being polite and making an excuse for Savitri and waiting till the boy's aunt had left. So the boy's aunt saw her dripping wet like a drowned rat, and opened her eyes wide. On hearing that she'd been swimming with the
sahib
boy, and holding hands with him, she excused herself and hurried off, and they never heard from that particular boy's relatives again.

Mani told Iyer that David was going to spoil Savitri and make her unfit for marriage. Iyer forbade Savitri from playing with David. Savitri told David.

T
HAT NIGHT
she waited till all were asleep, wrapped in their sheets against the mosquitoes.
Thatha
, her grandfather, slept alone on the
tinnai
, the front verandah. The other men slept on the side verandah, and she and Amma, her mother, slept on the back verandah facing the garden because no-one slept inside in April, it was so hot, except the English, the
Ingresi.
As silently as a peacock's feather sweeping the sand she ran down the back drive to the manor house and round the back to David's window, which of course was wide open.

She gave the cry of the brainfever bird. Savitri could imitate all the birds and the animals so well that no-one could tell the difference. She could give a perfect peacock's cry, she could chatter like a monkey or a chipmunk, and her brainfever bird's call was so true to life it was of no use, for David did not stir. She peered into the darkness behind his window; she could not enter because of the bars but she knew that David's bed was just beyond, so she reached in as far as she could and tugged at his mosquito net. David still did not stir, not even when she whispered his name as loud as she could, so she went in search of a long stick and found the very long one used for cutting down mangoes, with a little curved knife on the end, and with some effort managed to stick this through the bars — not using the knife end — in such a way that it ran along the wall, and she poked David in the small of his back.

'Ow!' he said, and sat up with a jump.

Savitri giggled and spoke his name, a little louder now, and when he realised it was her, he came to the window and they spoke through the bars.

'They're looking for a husband for me,' she said, 'and that's why I can't play with you any more.'

'But that's so silly,' said David. 'Because I'm going to marry you myself !'

'I know. But still they're looking for a husband.'

'How could you marry anyone but me? You won't, will you? You promised '

'But, David…’

How could she make him understand, whispering here in stolen moments of the night? How could he ever grasp what it was like, not to be an
Ingresi?
What is was like when all that you want does not fall into your lap?

‘You promised, so that's settled. And I won't marry anyone else but you. You know, don’t you?'

Savitri’s eyes were moist but David couldn’t see. And he couldn’t see when she nodded earnestly, just to humour him. But in her she knew, she felt, that life is not like a meal you cook adding the ingredients you want, one by one, and turning out delicious, because you have decided what goes in, and how much, and what stays out. True life is different; it is cruel and it is indifferent to your wants and even to your needs. Though she had not yet seen the full face of that cruelty, yet somehow she sensed it in every cell of her body; a sense passed down to her as was the colour of her eyes or the gentleness of her touch.

David, not knowing all this, reached through the bars and gently pulled her face so close the bars crushed her cheeks. Then he leaned forward and planted a kiss on her startled lips, and said, 'There. Now we're engaged to be married, and I'm going to give you an engagement ring as soon as I can, and they're not going to stop us playing together. Never. I promise, Savitri. I'll work things out. I'm the young master and I can do whatever I want.'

CHAPTER FOUR

NAT

A Village in Madras State, 1949

N
AT DREAMED
of a woman with a high hysterical voice, standing outside on the verandah, calling his father's name, screaming and beating on the door till her screams pierced the layers of sleep and frayed out the dream and it was all real. He sat up on his
sharpai,
rubbing his eyes because his father had switched on the light, and in the stark glare of the single bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling he saw that his father was hastily wrapping his
lungi
around his hips.

'I'm coming,' Doctor called out in Tamil to the woman outside. He reached up to the shelf for his medicine box, walked to the door, drew back the latch. Nat slipped down from his
sharpai,
wrapped his blanket around him and padded to the open doorway to watch through the mosquito screen. His father had switched on the verandah bulb. The woman held a bundle in her arms, under the
pallu
of her sari. It was a baby, Nat saw, because a little black foot peeped out through the folds of torn grubby cotton in which it was wrapped. His father was speaking in soothing words and trying to take the bundle from the woman, but she clasped it even closer to her body, not wanting to let go, and screaming at Doctor as if he was responsible for the child's condition which, Nat knew, was bad.

It was probably dead. When they brought their children in the middle of the night it was usually too late.

Outside the gate Nat could just make out the hulking shape of a bullock cart in the half-light, piled high with coconut-tree branches. The bullock stood with its head lowered, trying to sleep, whereas the driver had already stretched himself out on the cart and covered himself with a sheet, indifferent to the woman's plight. He'd sleep there till dawn, Nat knew, and then continue his journey to whichever village he was heading for, the bullock plodding along the dusty lanes, the driver crouching on the cart holding its tail between his toes and twisting it occasionally when the plodding got too slow.

Doctor persuaded the woman to lay the child on the waist-high
sharpai
on the verandah and bent over, unwrapping the cloth and talking to the woman, who had quietened down considerably. He was asking her questions, speaking in that deep warm voice which never failed to work magic with the villagers. It was as if the healing process began with that warmth, which seeped through the cocoon of lethargy and hopelessness wrapped around them just like this child wrapped in rags, waking them to life. Or, as in the case of this panic-stricken woman, laying a balm on them like a hand on a terrified child, easing them into a calm that allowed questions to be asked and answered.

Since when did the child have the wound, how did it happen? Why did she not come sooner, what had she done till now? How far had she come, by what means of transportation, what did her husband do for a living, how many children did she have? The woman, though sobbing quietly, answered. She knew, as did Nat, for his father would not have spoken so much if he could have worked to save the child, that it was too late, the child was already dead and not even the
sahib daktah
could raise it.

The woman lived twenty miles to the east, Nat heard her say. Her husband was a day labourer in the stone quarry; they had five children of which this was the youngest and they had all gone to help the father at work and a big stone had fallen on the boy's foot, crushing it and leaving a glaring open wound. She had tried to heal it herself by coating it with fresh cow-dung but the wound got worse and yesterday a fever had broken out. She had heard, of course, of the
daktah sahib,
but it had not been possible to come earlier because of her work. Then yesterday she had set off on foot and walked most of the distance, accompanied by her second son who was six, carrying the sick boy, but when night fell and she had not yet arrived she had been afraid to walk by herself and the six-year-old boy was tired so she had given a bullock-cart driver her last
annas
to drive them and she had not eaten since breakfast the day before and the boy had still been alive when she left home but some time during the previous day he had been still. So still...

'There is nothing I can do. The child has passed away,' Nat heard his father say, and the woman broke into a loud anguished sobbing and began to cuff her forehead with her fists. Nat wanted to rush inside and hide under his blanket, but instead he stayed because his father would want him to be brave because you cannot hide from death; you can only reach down inside yourself to find the strength to help you face it. And it was their duty, his father's and his own, to stand by this woman in her hour of grief.

'Where is your boy?' his father asked the woman, and she pointed to the bullock cart.

'He is sleeping,' she answered.

'Bring him here. You can sleep on the verandah till the morning and I will send you back home on a bullock cart. Nat, bring the mats and blankets!'

Nat immediately opened the mosquito screen and hurried over to the corner of the verandah where they kept the rolled up mats for visitors. He brought two rolls and spread them on the concrete verandah and placed two folded blankets on them, and looked at his father expectantly, though he knew what would come next.

The woman had walked to the bullock cart and returned now with the sleeping boy in her arms, laying him on one of the mats. Nat's father covered him with a thin blanket. Nat saw that although the boy was the same age as him — six — he was nevertheless much smaller, frail and thin with spindly arms and legs that looked as if you could snap them like dry twigs. The woman sat down cross- legged beside him, the dead child once more pressed to her, under her sari, and sobbed quietly to herself; Nat thought she would not sleep that night. He looked at his father, who shook his head, meaning yes, and ran inside and opened the little fridge and removed the bowl of
iddlies.
He took out two, placed them on an aluminium plate, sprinkled some crukbly
jaggari
over them, and took it out to the woman, who looked at him with eyes that bled tears and took the plate silently, but did not eat.

'I will keep it for when the boy wakes up,' she said to Doctor, placing the plate on the ground beside her, but Doctor replied that the boy would get his own plate whenever he awoke, and that this plate was for the mother. She touched the palms of her hands together in thanks and began to eat, breaking off a piece of
iddly
with her fingers and placing it in her mouth, and since it was not polite to see a person eating Nat and his father left her to herself and re-entered the house, Nat in front of his father, whose hand lay comfortingly on his shoulder.