Thursday's Child (26 page)

Late one evening, a few days before his wife's return from Shahpur, Ram Singh came home from Simla. He found that his house had been kept in good order under Nulini's guidance and that Shushila was her usual bouncing self.

‘Papa,' she shouted joyfully, ‘Nulini has shown me how to play caron properly – I will beat you next time we play.'

Her father pulled her ears lovingly. ‘We will play tomorrow,' he promised.

When he sat down to eat, he remembered to praise the pickles that Nulini had made earlier in the year, and he told Bhim that his wife was learning to keep house very well. Bhim smiled absentmindedly at the compliment and asked about the result of his father's investigation into the land dispute at Simla.

They sat and chatted for some time after the meal was finished, relishing the legal intricacies of the dispute. Bhim
asked if he might examine Ram Singh's notes on the subject and the elder man agreed. He took out from his brief case a large, untidy file, which he handed to his son, after which he went away to take his bath, say his prayers and go to bed. He asked Khan to find his Gita for him, which the servant did, and then he dismissed him for the night.

The cooking fires in the servants' quarters flickered out, Khan turned restlessly on his cot outside his master's room, Shushila slept and the house was still for the night.

Hours later, Dr Singh awoke feeling ravenously hungry. He called Khan, but the man did not answer.

Ram Singh reluctantly got out of bed, gave his dhoti a characteristic hitch and again shouted for Khan. There was no reply. He wrapped a shawl round himself and went to the door of his room. Khan was not in his cot, so he went in search of Ayah, who slept at the door of his wife's room.

Ayah slept the light sleep of the old, and at the sound of his footfall she sat up and screamed, clutching her sari tightly round her.

‘Noisy one,' said Ram Singh petulantly. ‘I don't know where Khan has gone, and I'm hungry. Find me something to eat.'

‘Ji, hun,' said Ayah, delighted to be singled out for a special service, and she leaned over the edge of her cot and scrabbled beneath it with one gnarled hand, feeling for her spectacles.

‘Here,' said Ram Singh, lifting them off the window sill.

She hastily relieved him of their weight and with fumbling hands hooked them round her ears, after which, like a pair of pariah dogs, she and Ram Singh slunk silently along the inner veranda to the kitchen. The kitchen, however, was as barren of food as the desert itself. Nulini had locked up everything before Cook Maharaj had departed to the servants' quarters. Not so much as a humble rôti was to be seen.

Ram Singh looked dismally round him. Each cupboard exhibited a neat padlock on its door. Each cooking pot sat on its shelf emptily upside down. He turned and looked at the storeroom doors. The room in which most foodstuffs
were kept was locked up. The grain storeroom padlock, however, hung loosely down from its chain. He shivered – the kitchen was quite chilly.

‘Ayah.'

‘Ji.' She saw that Ram Singh was shivering. ‘Sahib, why do you come to the kitchen? I will bring food to you in your room.'

‘I don't know why I came,' said Ram Singh, like a cross, small boy. ‘The grain storeroom is open. See if there is any parched flour – that will do.'

‘Sahib,' protested Ayah, ‘that is only for beggars or for pilgrims.'

‘I am hungry – where does Maharaj keep the cashew nuts, I wonder,' growled Ram Singh, and Ayah scuttled across the kitchen while her master followed her with greater dignity.

Ayah pulled the heavy door open and peered into the dark store.

‘Sahib,' she shrieked suddenly, pushing her spectacles up the bridge of her nose. ‘Sahib.'

Ram Singh covered the kitchen in a couple of strides. ‘Hey, Ram,' he exclaimed in horror, and then shouted in a paroxysm of rage. ‘Come out!'

On a pile of sacks in a corner of the storeroom and just visible in the moonlight from the window, lay a man dressed only in a loincloth. Although apparently paralysed by fear, he had raised himself on his elbow and half lay over a woman, as if to protect her from view; but her bare legs were clearly visible, the sari pulled up from them, and the sharp, terrified gasps of her breath could be heard in the silence which followed Ram Singh's command.

‘Come out,' repeated Ram Singh, ice beginning to overlay the rage in his voice.

The man swung himself carefully off the sacks, still keeping his body between the woman and Ram Singh. The woman's legs vanished, as she drew them up under her sari.

‘Khan!' exclaimed Ram Singh.

The hill man hung his head and said nothing.

‘I will not have women brought into my house,' shouted his enraged master. ‘In a month you are to be married – and
yet you have to bring some beggar off the streets.' He stopped abruptly. His eyes had got used to the gloom of the storeroom, and he saw for the first time part of the sari which the woman was wearing. It was no beggar's sari. It was red – red silk.

‘Ramji,' he gasped and pointed at it.

Ayah looked where the finger pointed. ‘Arree,' she wailed at the top of her voice.

Ram Singh covered the distance between the door and his delinquent servant in a second, pushed the man aside and grabbed the trembling heap that was the woman. Roughly he pulled her off the sacking and by the power of his grip on her shoulder kept her from sinking to her knees.

‘Nulini,' he said in a horrified whisper.

She stood with her eyes cast down, her sari fallen to her waist. She was blouseless – the tiny scrap of red silk still lay on the sacking – and the large, exquisitely formed breasts were naked. In the soft hollow between the breasts lay the gold necklace that Ram Singh had himself given her at her wedding time. He lifted his free hand as if to snatch it off her, but something held him back and he flung her down on to the sacking, where she lay motionless.

Khan fell on to his knees. ‘Sahib,' he beseeched. ‘The fault is mine. The little lady is but a weak woman and I tempted her. She is unharmed, Sahib, quite unharmed, I swear it.'

He caught at Ram Singh's feet and kissed them; for the first time in his life Ram Singh kicked a servant, but Khan seemed hardly to feel it. He lay prostrate before his master, the muscular back awaiting further blows.

‘Sahibji,' he said. ‘Punish me as you will, but do not tell Bhim Sahib. Let your respected daughter go back to him – she is untouched. I swear it, I swear it. She is most innocent, Sahib – the fault is all mine.'

In speechless rage, Ram Singh bent and struck his defenceless servant again and again with his clenched fists, while Ayah moaned in the background.

‘The fault is mine,' said a calm voice behind them.

Ram Singh straightened up and turned round sharply. Bhim stood in the doorway. He had presumably been
wakened by Ayah's shriek and had followed the sound of voices echoing through the house. His hair was rumpled and his garments creased from sleep, but his step was firm and he held himself in a dignified manner as he crossed the storeroom to his wife, who lay still on the sacking, her face hidden and her shoulders heaving as she wept silently.

‘Nulini,' he said stiffly, ‘cover yourself and come with me.'

There was no reply. Khan raised himself to his knees and hid his face in his hands.

‘Nulini.'

Nulini shrank closer to the sacking.

‘Come, child,' said Bhim, his voice soft as if he were really coaxing a child, ‘I will not beat you.'

‘Don't bother with her,' said her father-in-law angrily. ‘Tomorrow she leaves this house. She can go back to her parents, if she dare face them, or she can join those whose profession she has already emulated.'

Bhim did not answer immediately. He put his arm round his wife and raised her to her feet. She stood passively, her eyes shadowed by their lashes, while he carefully draped the sari over her shuddering form and over her head, so that she was shielded from Ayah's fascinated gaze.

‘Father,' he said slowly, ‘Nulini has done wrong and I am sure she realises it. Yet I know that it is in part my fault. I have not always remembered my responsibilities to her.'

‘You have been a good husband,' said Ram Singh tartly as he arranged his shawl round himself. ‘Tomorrow she goes.'

Bhim drew himself up. ‘She is my wife. If she goes, I go.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' said Ram Singh.

‘Does not the scripture say that if a wife errs the husband must be punished for it?'

‘It does,' said his father coldly. He looked Nulini up and down as if she was something unclean. ‘Do with her as you will.' His anger boiled up uncontrollably. ‘Father a bastard if you wish.

‘And as for you,' he said, glaring at the supplicating Khan. ‘Get out of this house and out of this province. Never let me see your face again. Get out!'

There was a loud hammering on the kitchen door. The watchman, attracted by the sound of voices, shouted: ‘Kon heh? Kon heh?'

‘It is I,' bawled the exasperated Ram Singh. ‘Go away.'

‘Sahibji,' said the watchman obsequiously, and padded away.

‘Ayah, open the door and let this untouchable out,' said Ram Singh, his voice trembling.

Ayah had been watching the proceedings with rapt attention. ‘Miss Nulini has the key, Sahib,' she said.

Nulini did not move, so Bhim bent down and unhooked the key ring from the waist of her petticoat. He flung it at Ayah's feet, and, mumbling that the present generation was not fit to live, she picked up the keys and moved to the door.

Silently Khan rose to his feet. Ram Singh caught him a staggering blow across the face with the flat of his hand, and the man stumbled. He made no sign that he had felt the blow, but straightened himself and walked with head erect past his master. He did not even glance at Ayah as he glided lightly on his bare feet out of the door, his dhoti gleaming white in the moonlight and his sacred thread making a dark line across his chest.

Ayah shut and locked the door, and then hooked the key ring into her sari.

Ram Singh saw the last movement, and resented that Ayah had put herself in the place of a deposited member of the family.

‘Give me the keys,' he said, his moustache bristling. ‘Say no word to anybody of what has happened tonight or by Ram himself I will make you suffer.' He glared at Ayah, whose heart gave a little leap of fright as she handed him the keys.

Bhim put his arm round Nulini and began to propel her across the floor towards the inner veranda, when suddenly there was a sound of running feet and a heavy pounding on the door.

‘Sahib, Sahib,' yelled the panic-stricken voice of the watchman, ‘Sahib, come quickly.'

‘What is it? What is it?' shouted Ram Singh as he
fumbled for the key and put it into the lock.

‘Arree, Sahib, Khan has fallen down the well. I tried to save him but he slipped from my fingers.'

Ram Singh flung open the door and ran outside; from the servants' quarters Cook Maharaj was already racing for the well, while frightened, sleepy voices behind him asked if it was a Muslim raid or was there a thief in the compound?

Nulini moaned and then fainted. Bhim laid her back on to the sacking and said to Ayah: ‘Take care of her – good care.' He then ran out of the house towards the well.

In the light of the moon people ran about confusedly, shouting for a rope, for someone who could swim.

‘Maharaj! Pratap!' called Bhim. ‘Let me down with the water-skin – I can swim.' He snatched a torch from the gardener's hand.

‘My son,' cried Ram Singh, fear for his eldest boy obliterating every other feeling.

‘I shall be safe, Father,' said Bhim, and seized the flaccid water-skin. Maharaj and Pratap let it down slowly, muttering that they hoped the rope would stand the weight. Ayah, not being able to bear being left out of the excitement, had deserted Nulini who lay in a faint in the storeroom, and was now peering down the well.

There was no sound of splashing; only the creak of the wheel broke the tense silence.

Just above the water line Bhim yelled to those above to stop letting him down. He flashed the torch around the dank, green walls and across the still water. He could see nothing of Khan. He clung to the rope for another minute, swaying perilously, but nothing stirred, and he called to be pulled up.

‘Only a man who wanted to drown could have drowned so quickly,' he said to his father, as, aided by Pratap, he eased himself over the lip of the well. Cook Maharaj dropped the rope and assisted him to his feet while the rest of the servants and their families stood in stupefied silence.

‘It appears that Khan has drowned,' Ram Singh told them. ‘There is nothing that we can do tonight. In the morning we will get the body out and Pratap shall go and fetch the Thanedar from the police station. Chowkidar,
continue on your rounds and the rest of you go back to bed.'