Playing Fields in Winter (17 page)

‘Talk about the pot calling the kettle–’ he said to Sarah. ‘How much have
you
had to drink?’

‘Only enough to dull my feelings,’ Sarah said, ‘only enough to drown my sorrows.’

Dev said he would come back to India around the world, via California and the Pacific.

Sunil looked pensive. ‘Maybe when I’ve done my doctorate I’ll get a fellowship in the States,’ he said. ‘Do you think Berkeley would be interesting? Or better, Harvard or Yale?’

For a moment Nanda, Dilip, Rajiv and Ravi looked at him enviously. But then Rajiv crowed, ‘Sold your soul, old boy! Sold your soul.’

And then, the next day, Ravi and Sarah caught a train to London. They walked to the railway station holding hands and sat side by side for the short journey, not saying much. Still, they could not believe that this was the end. Still, it seemed, they would take up again in the autumn – not there
maybe, but only somewhere else. Later on they would not be able to remember that departure; sometimes it is not the real events which remain, but the accompanying irrelevances which linger unwanted for years. It was a hot day and the caked train window was jammed shut. Ravi kicked off his sandals and put his feet up on the empty seat opposite them. Half-way to London, a ticket collector pulled open the door of their compartment and looked down at Ravi with distaste. He was lolling back with one arm around Sarah and simply held out the other to offer the man their tickets. ‘Feet off the seat, if you please,’ the man snapped. ‘We don’t do that in this country.’ The shock stopped either of them from expressing their rage and the ticket collector was gone with a vicious bang of the door before Sarah thought of exclaiming, ‘Bloody racist!’ and Ravi shrugged disdainfully, ‘Ignorant peasant.’

They had a month. As a concession to Sarah, Ravi was staying on in England for four extra weeks. There were ways in which he could easily explain this to his parents: waiting to hear his exam results, clearing up business matters and belongings, saying goodbye to friends. At some expense, they rented a rather unpleasant little room in South London, for it would have been intolerable to spend those last weeks at Sarah’s parents’ house. Her parents accepted this, perhaps dimly hoping that the dilemma might be resolved in favour of their daughter. The one dinner at the house in the white crescent which Ravi came to during that time was still an awful experience; he sat under what he felt to be their silent reproach and could barely chew his chicken. Mr Livingstone made one or two bluff male attempts to pretend that this was not the case, that of course Ravi was under no pressure at all, but his ham-handed questions – ‘Well, what will be your fondest memory of England, visually speaking?’ – only left worse silences in their wake. Mrs Livingstone said goodbye to him with large and what he imagined to be imploring eyes; at the door, she actually darted forward and gave him a little kiss, saying, ‘Now, you know you’ll always be welcome here.’ They were glad to go back to their gloomy room. ‘I’m sorry they were like that,’ Sarah said to him. ‘Honestly, if I’d known, I would never have gone.’

In different circumstances, they could have enjoyed playing house in their poky room. But the communal kitchen was unappetising and, in any case, they did not feel like creating a cosy domestic illusion. They had very little money, so they could not eat out every night, which would at least have given them the impression of extravagance, going out on a high note. They ended up bringing back take-away meals – neon-pink Chinese food and suspect kebabs – and eating them on the bed because there was no room on the table. There was no proper way to do their washing either. Although Ravi had suggested it, pride stopped Sarah from taking their laundry home to put it in her mother’s washing machine. Instead, they resorted to washing things in bits in the wash-basin and hanging them precariously around the room to dry. The bathroom at the end of the corridor was something of a joke; it was so nasty that they pretended to be frightened to use it. In fact they were frightened of being infected by the house’s gloom.

They only had a month, so they tried to enjoy it. During the day, they went to one of the parks or to an exhibition. Sometimes they met up with Sunil, who was also staying in London until the results came out, and the three of them talked idly for hours. They went to pubs and cheap cafés. Sarah could not help feeling it was a bit of a shame to be in London in the summer. She would have preferred to be at the cottage in Wales. But Ravi needed to be there to arrange his departure. Every day there was something connected with it which had to be done: luggage to be registered, final gifts and unobtainable medicines to be bought. A spate of imperious letters arrived from Lucknow requesting essential items which Ravi was to bring. They were addressed to the family with whom Sunil was staying, where every few days Ravi and Sarah went to collect them. Usually Ravi read them aloud, chuckling and raging, ‘Five badger shaving-brushes!
Badger?
What am I supposed to do? Organise a hunting safari?’, but one day, he did not read the letter and flung it aside in a rage.

‘What do they want now?’ Sarah asked. She was beginning to resent these querulous, almost daily reminders that Ravi’s duty lay elsewhere. ‘What do they want now?’

Ravi dismissed the letter with a disgusted gesture. ‘It’s rubbish.’

‘Who is it from? What do they say?’

‘Oh, never mind.’

‘No, go on, tell me. We’ve got so much to get anyway.’

‘I said, never mind. It’s not about shopping.’

‘What is it about then? It’s from your father, isn’t it?’

‘Look Sarah, forget it, it’s of no interest.’

‘It’s of interest to
me.’

‘Well, you’re mistaken. It’s just a stupid crackpot idea he’s come up with, which isn’t worth explaining.’

‘I think it’s a bit much, when I’ve spent all this time traipsing around the shops with you getting things for them and then when I ask you one simple question, you won’t answer it.’

Ravi considered her flushed face across the room. For less than a second, he wondered what her reaction would have been if he had picked up his father’s letter from the floor and read out to her: ‘Upon your return, I propose that we have a discussion on certain pressing matters, of which you are well aware. I am sure that you have not forgotten Major Mehrotra’s charming and sweet-natured daughter …’ But of course he just shrugged and sighed and for the rest of that day, Sarah noticed, he seemed sullen and depressed.

Perhaps Ravi slightly resented that extra month he had given Sarah – for that was how he saw it. It was not that he was raring to go home; the letter had reminded him that, God knows, there would be problems enough for him to face there too. But he found it infuriating that, having extracted this month from him, Sarah was now spoiling so much of it by bickering and grumbling.

Imminent separation exaggerated everything, of course; this was the last week, the last weekend, the last chicken curry, the last sex. Walking through the streets of London, Ravi saw them very clearly because he was about to leave them for good. He supposed the same must go for Sarah too. He certainly saw her very acutely during those last few weeks, though whether that was just because she was behaving more noticeably, he could not tell. Of course, he was going to miss her a lot. Her lovable qualities were
highlighted,
as well as her cantankerous shrillness. But since they had to part, he told himself there was no point in dwelling on those. Did he ever question that necessity, ever wonder privately if perhaps he was wrong to be so adamant? Maybe, who knew, perhaps their crazy experiment could work after all? Of course, awake in the middle of the night, eaten up with regret and guilt, he tried to imagine it. Sarah was sitting up beside him, painstakingly memorising his face in the dark, and this proof of the scale of her love devastated him. He wanted to open his arms and take her, saying, ‘All right, come with me, let’s give it a try.’ But just as he began to open his eyelids, panic seized him and he thought, ‘My God, I’m out of my mind. What am I doing?’ and he forced his eyes to stay shut, pretended to be fast asleep, with a harsh expression on his face. Their parting was going to be hard enough, without his adding to the anguish.

She was looking forward to her trip already. Without the promise that in the autumn she would be going away – not just away to Ravi, but away from England as well – she would not have known how to face the future. What was there in England, for heaven’s sake, as exciting as Ravi Kaul? What was there in the tiny world of English job options that her friends were now entering, which could compare with the prospect of travelling four thousand miles to a different life altogether? She relied on her dream and she clung to Ravi because at any moment he might disappear.

She knew by then – had long known – that Ravi Kaul could get on fine without her. Sometimes she imagined herself injured, drowning in front of him, so that he would be forced to act and to show that he cared about her. But it was ridiculous after all to expect him to want her as much as she wanted him. Things were different in India and it would have been presumptuous to expect Ravi, who had grown up with a different set of rules, to convert to hers just like that. So she explained to herself what sometimes looked like indifference. And even if really, deep down, he had wished himself rid of her, her dream actually no longer needed reciprocation. It could sustain her love by itself.

They decided to do something really lavish on their last evening. Otherwise, it had been an unremarkable day. They had packed, argued over the size and quantity of Ravi’s suitcases and remembered, in a panic-stricken rush, to reconfirm his flight. In the early afternoon, Sunil had turned up and sat slightly irritatingly with them as they finished packing, a wistful expression disguised as wry irony on his face. ‘Homeward bound,’ he murmured, shaking his head at the expanse of hand luggage and wide-open suitcases. Sarah did her best to turn her back on him, not in the mood for a facetious exchange, but Ravi – unaccountably smug – looked up from where he was squatting, rolling a gift cassette recorder inside a pair of jeans, and joked back, ‘You’re green with envy!’

Sunil jeered, ‘What rot!’ but his expression betrayed him and he stayed sitting there in silence, following the presents and souvenirs going into the suitcases like a hungry child watching someone else eat dinner. Sarah began to resent his presence, for he distracted Ravi who kept swapping joky repartee with him and reminiscing about their treatment at the hands of Delhi customs men. The last straw, she felt, was when Sunil produced a shoddily wrapped parcel from his shoulder bag and asked Ravi to take it to his brother in Delhi.

‘Honestly!’ Sarah wanted to exclaim, ‘hasn’t he got enough?’

But Ravi took it without a word and tenderly found a place for it near the top of his larger suitcase, to Sarah’s fury moving to a less favourable position four paperback books she had bought him as a leaving present. She did not even give Sunil a look. This afternoon of all times, she thought, surely she had a right to have Ravi to herself? But it seemed that Sunil might stay all evening. In the end, towards six o’clock, when already she saw their plan for a lavish evening shelved in favour of a threesome in an Indian restaurant, he tapped the spot where his watch would have been if he had been in the habit of wearing one, and announced with mock solemnity, ‘The hour draws nigh.’

Ravi stopped tidying and straightened up. ‘You’ve got to push off, then?’ he said, to Sarah’s indignation. Suddenly she
sensed that both of them had wanted to put off this
separation,
for different reasons, and that silently Ravi had been willing Sunil to stay there. She sensed it like a betrayal as they stood for a moment facing each other, looking deep into each other’s eyes. As if they were the parting lovers, she had to look away tactfully as they embraced and she cried breezily, ‘See you around, Sunil,’ when he turned to her and said, ‘Goodbye, Sarah.’

‘That’s right,’ Ravi added, as though the idea had only just occurred to him. ‘You two must keep each other company.’

And although Sarah had felt nothing but dislike for Sunil a minute earlier, merely to take revenge on Ravi she agreed flirtatiously: ‘Well now, Sunil, that’s an idea, isn’t it?’

They dressed up and went to a smart restaurant in the West End. Since they had no money to speak of, this felt more lavish than it was. Sarah wore her Indian dress and the little silver necklace which Ravi had brought back for her from India the summer before. Ravi combed his hair and put on a clean shirt. To begin with, they had to be artificially cheerful and pretend to have nothing but celebration on their minds. But quite soon they found they were genuinely cheerful because the evening was, whatever else, a welcome change. They came under the influence of their festive clothes and by the time they were sitting opposite each other in a little, dark red Italian restaurant, the scraping waiters and cockaded napkins were sufficient to make them quite jolly. And there was, of course, an additional reason to seem unconcerned, because it had always been part of their policy to scoff at solemnity.

They made a great business of choosing their dishes. ‘Because,’ Sarah said giggling, ‘we’ll remember what we had here for ages.’ And Ravi imperiously ordered quite an expensive bottle of wine.

They had already drunk two glasses each by the time their starters arrived. Ravi poured their third glasses and joked, ‘OK, come on, let’s drown our sorrows.’

Across the table, they held hands and fed each other forkfuls of avocado and fish paté. By the middle of the main course, they could talk about the next day and still be cheerful.

‘You know, you really transformed my whole time in England,’ Ravi said grandly as he rolled up his pasta with a flourish.

Sarah giggled. ‘Gee, thanks!’

Ravi smiled. ‘I’m serious. Before I met you, I was actually quite wretched here. I felt totally alone and ostracised in a cold, hostile environment.’

‘A “before and after” commercial,’ Sarah joked. ‘Depressed? Unloved? Miss Livingstone can change your life. Take her twice a day; once before breakfast and once last thing at night.’