Playing Fields in Winter (7 page)

‘Well, at tea on Thursday, when I said I’d asked you but you couldn’t come, he told me I should take you with a pinch of salt, that you gave a very suave impression but really it was all a big act.’ She giggled.

Ravi swore under his breath; then he threw back his head, struck his knee and started laughing. ‘And you really thought he could say that and still be a good friend of mine?’

‘Well, men are always trying to do each other down, aren’t they? Anyway, isn’t it obvious? He’s jealous of you.’

Ravi looked astonished. ‘Jealous? You think so?’

‘Yes,’ Sarah said, ‘I do.’ It annoyed her that, despite her intention to humble Ravi Kaul, he was coming out of this conversation better than she was. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t noticed. If you want my honest opinion, I think he’s a bit pathetic; he takes himself so seriously and he doesn’t realise that everyone’s making fun of him.’

Such mixed feelings met on Ravi’s face that for a moment his expression curdled.

‘If you must know,’ Sarah went on, ‘I really only invited him because I felt a bit sorry for him and I thought that if you were there, it would be a good sort of bridge.’

‘He’s a pompous arse,’ Ravi said. ‘Really, he’s ridiculous! Who does he think he’s fooling? “Take me with a pinch of salt”! I’m amazed you should think we were friends.’

‘Well, I thought you were both exiles in a foreign land. And he brought you along to Simon’s that time, didn’t he? I thought maybe you had taken him under your wing or something.’

They united in attacking a third party, as their attack on the university had united them before. The easy game of doing down poor Ali Suleiman, who had played a fool’s part in bringing them together, put an end to their hostility. Ravi dealt with his single twinge of guilt by thinking that Ali was a pretty low sort of character in any case.

When it was nearly lunchtime, he suggested that they walk to a country pub for lunch. On the way there they were still
self-conscious, aware of the quarrel they had just patched up. They were too obligingly amused by each other, too jovial, while at the back of both their minds there was still a score to settle. But the pub was busy, it was a favourite Sunday lunch-time outing and it took them a while to order drinks and food and to find a place to sit down. By the time all that was done and they were wedged beside each other on an antique wooden seat, they seemed to be like minds once more in a laughable universe.

Ravi said with amusement, ‘Ploughman’s Lunch!’ and lightly prodded his plate of symmetrically arranged cheese.

Sarah had a sudden insight then into what it was to be a foreigner in her own country. The sight of Ravi Kaul looking down laughing at that blandly mundane object made a lasting impression on her. Even as she giggled appreciatively, she began to see how time spent with Ravi Kaul would be time in a different country; England would not be familiar and hidebound any more, seen through Ravi’s eyes.

Out of keeping with her thoughts, her mouth said, ‘What would that be in India? A ploughman’s lunch?’ And when Ravi snorted sardonically and started to explain to her how meagre and frugal it would be, she tasted another aspect of the future – how enjoyably she would do penance for the historical legacy of guilt which Ravi had identified in her.

She ate his pickled onions, which he left, and was aware that, for some unknown reason, he found this little piece of flirtatious greed immensely pleasing.

‘Have some more,’ he said. ‘I’ll order you a whole plateful.’

‘Oh God, no! You’ll have to walk upwind of me all the way back.’

‘And, above all, not try to kiss you.’

‘Oh, were you planning to?’

‘Do you like sharp tastes then? I have a pickle sent to me from home which you must try if you do. It’s my mother’s speciality; one little bite and you can never forget it. I think she sent it to make sure I didn’t forget my home.’

‘Does she send you lots of stuff?’

‘No, no, only when someone comes. You can’t send things
like that through the post, you know. Your customs men don’t like these dirty, unhygienic foreign treats …’

‘They’re not
my
customs men. They wouldn’t like my treats any better if I tried to bring them back from abroad.’

‘That’s what you think. Anyway, they
are
your customs men. They are protecting the sterility of your sceptred isle. And Indian pickles in unlabelled jars are a threat which might pollute it. We have to hide them in our washing.’

‘Well, I dissociate myself from them.’

‘That’s fine by me, Sarah.’

‘Does she think you might forget your home, then? Or were you just joking?’

‘Well, four thousand miles is a long way, you know. I wouldn’t be the first to forget his way back.’

‘Do
you
think you might?’

‘Never. I mean … sometimes, obviously, I imagine it. I imagine staying here or going on to America and the idea seems quite fun. But after all, India’s where I belong, isn’t it? Would you ever leave England and go off for good and settle somewhere else?’

‘Oh, tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow? That’s what you
say.
But you’ve never tried it, have you? I bet you’d find you couldn’t, actually. You’d wake up one morning in Timbuctoo and find you missed something which you just couldn’t get there. And you’d have to go home to find it.’

‘Like pickle?’

‘As a symbol, pickle will do.’

‘Well, I think you’re wrong. There’s nothing English I would wake up craving for in Timbuctoo.’

‘Ah, that’s so easily said, Sarah. It’s nice to imagine you’re quite fancy-free. But what about afternoon tea or face flannels?’

‘Face flannels?’

‘Face flannels – that’s what you call them, isn’t it – have always struck me as being quintessentially English.’

‘I could manage perfectly well without face flannels.’

‘Well, if you’re so certain, then maybe you should try it out one day and see.’

‘I intend to.’

They grinned at each other across the pub table, flanked by contented Englishmen with beer mugs – taking each other on as a challenge, as a dare.

Ravi returned to his college and, to his slight annoyance, found Sunil Sircar in his room, lying on the bed with the radio on, waiting for him to come back.

‘The man himself! Where have you been?’ Sunil asked, scarcely glancing up from a book of Ravi’s which he was reading.

Although Ravi usually enjoyed the conviviality of Sunil’s and Dev’s long visits, for once he would have been glad to have his room to himself. He had been taken almost unawares by his liking for Sarah Livingstone and needed to work out where it left him.

‘To London to see the Queen!’ he snapped.

Sunil looked up from the book and asked, ‘What’s bitten you?’

Ravi took off his jacket and glared at Sunil. ‘Nothing,’ he said furiously. ‘Maybe I would just like to lie down on my bed, read a book and listen to the radio.’

Sunil gesticulated generously and rolled closer to the wall. ‘There’s room for two here.’

‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Ravi, ‘you’re the end!’

Sunil narrowed his eyes. ‘Has something happened?’

He pushed away Ravi’s jacket – which landed over his face – and burst into a loud, smug laugh.

‘Shut up!’ Ravi cried and told him to go away and leave him alone, which offended Sunil, privacy being a taste which Ravi Kaul had only very recently begun to develop.

Sarah locked her door and did not answer when Emily Williams knocked on it. She wanted to relive the pub and the walk again in her memory, so as to be certain of what she had felt: aghast excitement and fascination with the foreign profile beside her. Ravi Kaul must be the more
interesting
version of her life for which she had long hoped. Although she had boasted to him that she would leave
England without a backward glance, now she was frightened by the prospect of even looking out to sea.

It was almost, ridiculously, as if both of them knew and were terrified that already they had gone too far.

For the rest of that term, they continued to meet
tentatively
once or twice a week, quietly amazed to feel their interest growing to obsession.

Afterwards, it seemed to have been a time of caution, approaching each other with infinite care. Ravi sent notes and paid visits; Sarah still deliberated if she would be in or out. But things which they could not predict made all their caution ridiculous – the joy of their own contrast when they began to walk side by side, she so blonde and he so dark and different; the sound of the other’s voice infinitesimally mispronouncing their name and the dangerous, irresistible depths of a person inside whom was an unknown country.

In the last week of term, Sarah invited Ravi to a mince-pie party given by a girl called Joanna Richardson. As he walked out to her college in the dark, it occurred to Ravi that this would probably be the last time he and Sarah saw each other before the end of term and he could not help feeling a little relief, as well as wistfulness. It was all tremendous, but it was getting out of hand. He was fond of Sarah and Sarah was undoubtedly fond of him, but would it not perhaps be better to leave it at that? Student couples passed him in the dark, holding on to each other and laughing loudly to parade their happiness. Ravi imagined what it would be like to be fully part of the strolling street. No, it would be
small-minded
to back out now.

The party was held in Joanna Richardson’s room after dinner, with records of Christmas carols and candlelight. Joanna was a large, clean-faced, kindly girl who seemed too motherly for an environment of spinsters. Her guests sat on the floor, their faces shining with the season as they laughingly recalled Christmases of their childhood. Joanna passed round trays of her sugary, white misshapen pies. Whether he wanted to or not, Ravi stood out like a ghost at their feast and inevitably drew Sarah out with him. Sitting in her room
beforehand, waiting for him to arrive, she had enjoyed the realisation that she was very much looking forward to it. She had also enjoyed arriving at the party with Ravi, her friends’ momentary and almost imperceptible confusion and their instant reassessment of both of them. Now she sat close to him and enjoyed the way his presence separated her from her companions. Ravi had not known the shape of a tangerine in his stocking on a peculiar morning, nor the annual bilious excess of sweet mincemeat. When Joanna Richardson asked him with painstaking politeness, ‘What festivals do you celebrate?’, Sarah enjoyed the collusion with which their feet impulsively nudged. Although she did not know which festivals Ravi celebrated either, they had already made fun of that politeness; they called it ‘Feed the Faint and Hungry Heathen’ and Sarah would never use it again. Ravi told Joanna one or two strange names and she exclaimed, ‘How interesting!’ Sarah smiled condescendingly at her and felt proud to have access to Ravi’s world. This must be the crossing-over time, she thought, feeling stranded in a heady vacuum; she had left England behind her already, but she had no idea of India. She watched Ravi’s laughing face in the candlelight as he listened to the distorted schoolboy versions of Christmas carols;
she
knew what he was laughing at, but the singers raising their glasses of mulled wine and roaring, ‘A
bar
of Sunlight Soap came down and they be
gan
to scrub,’ had no idea. She let her gaze feed on Ravi’s brown face and the twin pinpoints of light in his eyes. She saw in them such a potent, such a huge alternative to the faces of the roistering chorus that she was transfixed. Feeling her stare, Ravi turned and read in it such an extent of unuttered longing that he was shaken. Moved by affection, gratification and pity, he reached over and vigorously squeezed Sarah’s hand.

It was wonderfully cosy going back to her room together afterwards, drinking coffee and making fun of the mince-pie party. Sarah was elated because she imagined then that she had escaped at last. Ravi kissed her goodbye slowly and carefully and, walking back to his college, he whistled in the night.

And then there was Christmas, bloody Christmas, just as things were getting exciting. Sarah went home to a house about to be cheerily decorated with crêpe paper and tinsel, with a lighted tree in the living-room and holly around the frames of her father’s favourite photographs. Ravi went to stay with a friend’s cousin’s family in Sheffield into whose hermetically Indian home, despite many children, Christmas hardly permeated at all.

Sarah thought about Ravi every day. Ravi thought about Sarah less, not because he was any less interested at that stage, but because for him she was part of the university and the university did not extend as far as Sheffield. For Sarah, the university was that period of her life and she took it with her everywhere. Mr and Mrs Livingstone entertained a good deal at Christmas time and as Sarah had once gloomily predicted, they brought her into the conversation with, ‘You know Sarah’s up at Oxford now? Doesn’t it make one feel old?’ Sarah smiled and held out trays of canapés to
personalities
her father had photographed and did her best to convey the impression that away at university she led an exotic secret life. She imagined Ravi surveying her parents’ parties with amused scorn and she surveyed them with amused scorn in his place. In Sheffield, Ravi saw a different England. He had few reasons to venture out into what seemed to him a hostile Northern city. His friend’s cousin’s family wrapped him in the continuous round of their activities. Late one night, a shaven-headed boy spat at him as he walked home and jeered, ‘Paki!’ Ravi told this story afterwards in Oxford, laughing so as to obtain the maximum discomfort from his English audience. He lay on his bed and read. The vacation lasted six weeks.

The sight of each other on the first day of the next term put an end to their caution. A few hours after they arrived back in Oxford, Ravi set out on foot to Sarah’s college and Sarah got onto her bicycle to ride round to his. They met at the corner of two central streets and broke into a helpless grin at the ridiculous recognition of their happiness. Sarah looked just as Ravi liked to think of her – pink-cheeked with cold
and exercise, her fair hair ruffled by her bicycle ride. She was the picture of a jolly English girl on a hockey pitch who, by some freak of fortune, had landed in his path. And Ravi stood on the kerb as he had stayed all through the vacation in Sarah’s imagination – the foreigner who was going to transform her and her surroundings.