Of Marriageable Age (60 page)

'You — you —'

'You're not what you used to be. Okay, you always had an acid tongue but there was always something basically — well, just basically good about you. That always shone through. And, yes, I did sort of hope for a while that you and Nat could get together because if I ever met a fellow with a heart of gold, then it's him, and that's what I wanted for you. But that wasn't the reason he was where he was on Saturday. He was there because he really is the
best man
I know; I wanted him for me, for us, Trixie and me, not for
you.
Remember, it was
our
day. We weren't thinking of you and Nat meeting. We weren't matchmaking. The world doesn't revolve around you, you know. Why can't you just, my God, just be
normal!
The way you used to be!'

'You've changed, too. I always trusted you. I always knew no matter what, you're on my side. Now for some reason you're on his side, and not only that, you call me names, and . . .'

'I'm still on your side. But that doesn't mean I can't tell you the truth about yourself, on the contrary. It'd do you good to see yourself the way others see you. Because you know what? Remember how you used to hate Baba?'

'I still do.'

'Yes. Exactly. Then you'd better start hating yourself. Because you're turning into a carbon copy of him. People run from you the way they used to run from him. Think about that. Seems you do have his genes after all!'

Saroj slammed down the receiver.

She opened her hands; the palms were wet with sweat. She wiped them on the sleeves of her blouse, crossing her arms and hugging herself because all of a sudden she felt cold — freezing, despite the July sun outside, casting long lazy late-afternoon rays into the sitting room. She shivered, raised her knees and hugged them, pushing herself back into the arms of James's fauteuil; perhaps she had caught a bug? She felt like going up to her room and snuggling into her bed, curling up under the eiderdown in a long, blissful sleep of oblivion. Not thinking about anything. Not thinking about
him.

He had telephoned every day, but she'd refused to speak to him. Once she'd answered the phone and it was
him,
and she'd quickly slammed down the receiver, just as she'd done with Ganesh. She couldn't talk to him. She couldn't trust her voice. She couldn't trust anything, or anyone, right now. Not Ganesh, not Trixie, not herself.

Since the wedding her mind had been in utter chaos. Gone, the orderly arrangement she had carefully given to her life: she was going to become a doctor. Making that decision had given her an invigorating sense of identity, a sense of purpose. She had a specific, concrete goal to move towards with unrelenting dedication, rigorously tailoring every other element in her life to attain it: channelled energy, no distractions. She had spent two years in the sixth form with one aim in mind: perfect A Level results. Three As. Nothing less. She had achieved that. She could, and would, achieve more. But now
this.

Since Saturday, since looking into the dark, deep, all-knowing, all-seeing pools of his eyes, she felt the solid structure of her life crumbling away as if built of sand and gravel. Frantically she struggled to keep each tiny pebble in place. And still it tottered.

It was a battle of wills; not anybody else's will against hers, but two wills battling within herself. One she was familiar with: the clearly defined one she had trained and cultivated and coaxed into a single direction. And this other, fuzzy, ill-defined, untrained, unfathomable, like a deep unknown sea swelling within her, threatening to upset the construction to which she was clinging for dear life.

And no-one understood.

'He loves you,' Trixie had said over the phone. 'He really does, Saroj. He told us. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. It's like a fairy tale. If you let this chance slip by… Look, you don't know anything about Nat. He's been in London for a long time but he's just now finished his studies and he's going back to India — for good! So you haven't got much time. He's even postponed his flight, for you. At least you could
talk
to him reasonably instead of biting his head off whenever he . . .'

'Does anybody ever think about
me
?' exclaimed Saroj. 'You're all going on about Nat, and how Nat feels, and what Nat wants. Nat, Nat, Nat. What about what
I
want? So what if he's in love with me? Why should it matter to me? And I'm certainly not even vaguely close to being in love with him.'

'You protest too much, Saroj. I smell a rat!'

'There's no room in my life for a man!' Saroj had said then, and repeated it over and over again like one of Ma's mantras. She said it now, aloud, to herself.

'Then
make
room, for goodness' sake!' Trixie had said in exasperation. She didn't know, couldn't know. Ganesh didn't know. And most of all, Nat couldn't know.

The battle of wills continued all that week. Saroj fought it the only way she knew, by forcing her mind to deal reasonably, logically, methodically with the problem. As she saw it, there were three very forceful arguments against letting Nat into her life.

The first and most weighty was her career. It was obvious to anyone with an open eye that romance did not mix well with science — and her work was science, pure and unadulterated. She wanted to keep it that way. Letting her mind grow fuzzy would put an abrupt end to that. There were people who could compartmentalise their minds, keep one area for work, another for love; but in doing so they diminished each compartment, and Saroj refused to subtract even a fraction of dedication from her work.

The second was the fact that Nat was her cousin. This little detail had revealed itself in the days following the wedding: that Nat was indeed the famous Nataraj of Gopal Uncle fame. Her cousin, Gopal's son. That explained why Gopal had so doggedly, and for years, pursued the match — pure self-interest. His motivation was not the fulfilment of Ma's dying wish — what had Ma really written? — but to get his own dear son married off.

The third argument carried the least factual but the most emotional weight. Saroj was very competent in dissecting her motivations, analysing and labelling them, and she could tell the difference. It was her own inner rebellion against what would be, once again, an arranged match. Ma had secretly plotted to bring it about, and so had Gopal. Saroj had not spent years of her life fighting Deodat's efforts to marry her off to a man of his choice, only to succumb to Ma's, and Gopal's, plot to do the same. Darned if she would. She would not be manipulated. It was a matter of her own personal integrity not to be maneuvered into such a match, and because this was a highly personal, less rational objection, all the more she had to fight to the last any personal feeling that might —
might!
— incline her towards Nat.

The only way to fight, Saroj had discovered, lay in anger. Anger was a fuel, a force strong enough to combat her inner upheaval and bring it under control. If she could maintain anger she would not succumb. Anger, fortified by logical, rational arguments.

Thus armed, Saroj set about restoring order to her tottering life. During the day she worked at her summer job in her half-brother James's shop and dispensary. She had done so every summer since coming to England, but this year was marked by a sudden and vigorous burst of energy and an inordinate interest in the substances James produced and sold, firing questions at him, taking notes, carrying on her own private research. She worked as if she were studying for an exam. Which, in a way, she was. After work she went to the library, returned laden with books she deemed relevant to her subject, and literally threw her mind into those books, facts, details, and data. Twice a week she played tennis with Colleen, and this week she played as if tennis was not a game, but a battle, to be fought with gritted teeth and dogged ruthlessness, slamming her balls over the net like bullets.

By the end of the week she knew she'd won the battle. Her mind was once again the familiar, orderly house she felt at home in, and the surging sea of feeling had receded, vanquished. She felt strong, and strangely elated, as if she had passed the most important examination of her life. Her resolve had been challenged, and had stood the test.

Saroj felt magnanimous. She wouldn't bear a grudge; she missed Trixie and Gan, and felt that in keeping a distance from them she was adding more weight than necessary to the subject of Nat. And, after all, she had taken flight from their wedding, and it was only right that she make the first conciliatory move. On Friday evening she dialled Trixie's number.

'Hi, it's me.'

'Yes?' Trixie's voice was guarded, cold. Saroj smiled indulgently to herself. Trixie had flung herself with typical abandon into a love story that didn't exist, and now she was offended because it didn't have the happy ending she'd dreamed out. She needed soothing, and a firm hand.

'Peace?' Saroj offered.

'I don't know. What peace?'

'Between us. I just remembered I haven't even congratulated you yet. This stupid business kind of got in the way. Look, can't we just forget it, get back to life?'

'Saroj, I still think . .

'Hush, Trix. Not one more word. I want to come and visit you tomorrow but only on the condition that you don't once mention you-know-who.'

'Well...'

'Come on, Trix. I don't want this thing to come between us. You're my sister-in-law now and you're still the best friend I ever had and it's just all so silly.'

'It's not, it's...'

'Trix! Not one more word. Case closed. Tomorrow morning at ten, okay?'

'Yeah, well. Anyway. There's something here I've been dying to show you. And I miss you too. And so does Gan. Good, tomorrow at ten.'

Saroj replaced the receiver with a wide smile plastered across her face. She felt as if she'd traversed a mountain and arrived safely in the far valley; or swum an ocean, and reached the far shore.

59

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

SAROJ

London, 1971

G
ANESH AND
T
RIXIE
had reckoned without the grapevine, which does not limit itself to sisters-in-law, aunts, female cousins, or relatives in general, or even Indians in general; nor is gossip and the maintenance of propriety the exclusive domain of Indians. It was a retired English colonel who set the ball of outrage rolling. In the tiny Yorkshire hamlet of R, some busybody, possibly female but not necessarily, dropped a remark on the strange wedding that had taken place in the abandoned chapel on the property of Mr and Mrs P-B. The rumour had reached the indignant ears of Colonel C, who had written a scathing reader's letter to the local Tribune, making the scandalous facts known to the unsuspecting English public. The bride had been an African immigrant. The bridegroom had been an Indian immigrant, and to make matters worse, he was said to be a Hindu; the vicar had been a hippie — was he an authentic Christian vicar? The entire wedding party, consisting of various Africans, Indians and possibly a few English men and women, was rumoured to have been high on drugs and/or alcohol, and to have ended in a tremendous orgy in an unknown country house in the neighbourhood. Various Hindu chants were rumoured to have emerged from the chapel during the ceremony, and African drums had been heard echoing across the Yorkshire moors. The whole thing had been a mockery, a masquerade, a box in the ears of the Church of England, blasphemy, an insult to God and the entire Christian world.

A copy of this letter fell into the hands of the Indian community in Bradford, was photocopied, passed along, and arrived in London, where it was whispered and conjectured about. The Indians were curious; who on earth was this Hindu bridegroom marrying an African bride in a Christian church? Investigations were made; by whom and how never quite being clear, but the results at any rate were mostly accurate, confirming the wedding and spelling out names in full. The bridegroom's name was Ganesh Roy, brother of well-known lawyer Walter Roy, son of Deodat Roy, known to be living in West Norwood. There was a small write-up in the Indian community's newsletter, to which Deodat Roy was a subscriber. There he read the bitter news, and promptly had his second, and near fatal, heart attack.

Luckily he was not alone at the time. His daily helper had brought in his post; just a bill or two, and the newsletter. Deodat had read the letter in her presence, and conveniently had his heart attack while she was cleaning the sink, on the Saturday after the wedding.

W
HILE
D
EODAT WAS HAVING
his heart attack, Saroj was walking up the stairs to Trixie's studio. She tapped at the studio door.

'Come in, it's open!' Trixie called, and Saroj walked in.

It was like entering the bowels of a slowly turning kaleidoscope. A riot of colours leaped at her from all sides, intensified by the sunlight pouring in through the gable windows and the huge skylight; and a beaming Trixie, herself in a long wide robe of brilliant swirling colours, walked towards her with outstretched arms, like the empress of this psychedelic, sun-drenched realm.

Saroj rubbed her eyes and the first shock receded. She realised then what had happened: Trixie had turned around all her paintings. They circled the studio, a few on easels, most of them leaning against the sloping walls, but some of them framed and covering whichever walls were straight enough to take them. Vivid little worlds, each calling out to be approached and entered, while radiating into the space between them in a bright tangle, a brilliance so keen it hurt.

Almost in a trance, she walked up to the obvious centrepiece, an unframed painting still on its easel, in the middle of the room, the same painting she had not been allowed to view on her last visit here, now unveiled.

'Trixie. You did it!' was all she said, and stood before it transfixed, glancing up just to take in Ganesh coming towards her. She held out a hand for him and drew him to her, and they both stood there, gazing at Ma.