Janette Turner Hospital Collected Stories (15 page)

It was difficult to carry five oranges without a container. Only two would fit in her handbag. She made a gesture of wry self- deprecation and handed three oranges back to the merchant. She smiled, as one human being to another, acknowledging the foibles of the species.

He turned his head away and spat forcefully on the ground between two of his wicker baskets. Her eyes widened in surprise and for a few seconds she remained motionless, staring at him. He spat again, this time close to her feet, and raised his right arm to cover his eyes. Warding off an evil presence.

She turned and walked on, under the shade of tamarind trees.

Stares. It was like a brushing of cobwebs, a sensation of being touched, molested, by something physically insubstantial yet malevolent. The whole world was staring. Young men, slimhipped, the age of her eldest grandson – and of Wendell – stood in groups and pointed. How odd to be watched so intently by such green and blooming youths. She tried to savour the experience, to roll its irony around in her mind, to inhale its bouquet. But it was not the kind of staring that made one feel desirable.

She stopped and looked defiantly at a whispering group. Directly into their eyes. She would shame them, she would appeal to basic decency. But they did not lower their eyes or give any sign of being disconcerted. Some of them laughed lewdly. Was it possible that an old woman could be deemed to have loose morals because her face was unveiled?

I suppose they would be scandalised, she thought, to know that I am a mother and a grandmother.

It was late in the afternoon – when her feet were aching, her eyes felt scratched with grit, and red dust clung to her like a fine shawl – that she saw Wendell in an alleyway between market stalls. He was engaged in some negotiation with a boy who might have been sixteen or seventeen. The boy's dark curls and face were so beautiful that in any other country Doris would have assumed he was a girl. Fascinated by the androgynous perfection, she stood watching and admiring, and it was several minutes before she realised the nature of the business transaction taking place. Too late. As she turned to go, Wendell sensed a presence and saw her.

She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness, of innocence of intention. Just an unlucky accident, she telegraphed silently. And in any case, it makes no difference to me. Who am I to make judgments?

She understood, nevertheless, that he had legitimate grounds for hating her at that moment.

She could feel a blush of sorrow on her cheeks. Wendell gave her a look of pure savagery and stormed off between the ragged awnings. And the Arab boy, his deal in ruins, spat in her direction. If I had agreed to Wendell's company? she wondered. She walked slowly back to the wharf, her feet dragging.

Always the same cargoes, she thought wearily, sitting on a crate near a bevy of small fishing boats and peeling one of her oranges. Port after port, the same baggage.

“Well?” Wendell demanded bitterly, materialising behind her. “Satisfied? Not just a food crank, but a pervert too. Who can blame my mother for giving up on me?”

“These oranges are delicious,” she said, offering one. “Better than anything we get at home. Just taste.”

“Hah. The ostrich strategy. My mother uses it all the time. Hide your head in the sand and the problem will go away. Pretend I'm out with girls and I'll turn out straight in the end.”

“Oh Wendell. We all manage as best we can. You, me, your mother. Why don't you sit down here and watch the fishermen with me?”

He scowled, but sat down on the dock and leaned against her crate. “I'm not telling you anything.”

“Of course not. There's no need.”

Without being aware of it, she began to knead the muscles in the back of his neck, thinking of Gillian and Geraldine. Whenever they came to her mind these days, they came first as fresh-faced little girls. She had to think them up through time to assemble their faces as they looked now, in the present.

“It started in high school,” Wendell began.

Capetown, Daar Es Salaam, Mauritius. She had seen diamonds, gold, cotton, bananas, ferried into the hold and out again. And sailors, she had discovered, really did have a woman in every port. Several women, in fact. Although not, it seemed, the captain, who sent postcards and presents from each stop to wife and children, and especially to the son he had lost in the maze of high technology. Until somewhere – was it Capetown? – when that red sports car drove onto the wharf as the anchors were raised. A young woman got out and waved madly. She had long blonde hair; she had a little boy in her arms. Both were neatly – even expensively – dressed; and such exotic accessories: smiles and tears and smudged mascara, and a fluttering sea-blue scarf as long as the wind.

Doris glanced along the deck. The sailors were tossing boisterously suggestive jokes to the usual ship followers, but no one was returning the wave of the blonde woman with the child.

Surreptitiously, Doris studied the captain. He gazed at the spires of the city beyond the wharf, preoccupied; except, she observed, that the index finger of his right hand, which lay innocently on the railing, was raising and lowering itself in a rhythm that might be construed as a coded message of farewell.

Doris looked at the young woman on the wharf and back at the captain. His gaze did not shift from the spires in the middle distance. The woman waved on, undaunted. The captain's finger rose and fell.

“I think,” Doris said finally, “that you should wave back to her properly. Who's going to mind?”

The captain flinched. His eyes implied that she had committed a gross impropriety. Nevertheless, a few seconds later, sheepishly, he did wave to the girl on the dock. A laughing sobbing sound floated up to them, and the girl held her little boy high up in her arms as though to receive a benediction.

“I would like you to know,” the captain said awkwardly, as the wharf drifted from sight, “that I provide for the child.”

Much later, coming upon Doris alone in the lounge, he said suddenly: “She called him Sailor – isn't that crazy? He loves to watch the ships, she takes him down to the wharf every day.”

He opened his wallet and showed her a photograph, the kind taken in booths narrow as telephone boxes, with one slot for coins and another for finished photographs. The three heads were close together
–
the captain's, the pretty young woman's, and the little boy's.

“He's afraid of me,” the captain said sadly. “He cries when I hold him. Already.”

Bombay. When they left, Wendell was missing, but a sailor handed Doris a letter.

Dear Doris,

They have the right attitude here. Diet, meditation, healing, the spiritual needs, they know it's all organically related. Ideal for finishing my book. I'm leaving you my supply of rose hip tea. (It's in the closet over my bunk.) Keep working on the lotus position and don't think limits.

You can write to me care of the Bombay
ymca
if you want to, but I'm warning you, don't expect answers.

Love, Wendell

And then Cochin. “Jewel of the Arabian Sea,” as they were told by the boatman who guided them in between islands green as jade, past the Chinese fishing nets in their hundreds, dipping in and out of the water like the gossamer veils of sea courtesans. Snake boats, with long curled prows and bellies pregnant with copra, shuddered in the
Lord Dalhousie's
wake, the boatmen resting on their bamboo paddles as they waited for the turbulence to pass.

They glided past Mattancheri, past the fabulous mansions of maharajahs, past the fifteenth-century Jewish synagogue. Past Bolghatty Island where the old Dutch Palace grew mouldy in the monsoons, a dowager empress fallen into soft times. Frangipani trees and marauding jasmine, extravagantly perfumed, sprawled beyond the bounds of gardens long since run amok.

The
Lord Dalhousie
docked at the mainland to take on a cargo of cinnamon and sandalwood.

When the ship itself becomes fragrant, thought Doris, is it possible that life will be the same?

The streets of Cochin were daunting: wide as the tropics, and teeming with cars, buses, bicycles, rickshaws, buffalo carts, pedestrians, cows, pigs; the heat also a tyrannical swaggering presence. Doris realised she should not have come ashore without a hat. She bought a black umbrella – there were no other colours, only black – from a roadside stall. When she opened it for shade, she could see the arabesque of small holes across two membranes, a map of insect exploration.

Vendors beckoned her into their shops, offering cool drinks and exotic English.
Mem sahib is finding unique beauty as nowhere else, isn't it?
they asked.
Certainly she is wanting, she is buying, isn't it?
They courted her. Brasses and sandalwood carvings were brought on cushions, as tribute to a visiting monarch. Swathes of silk were unfurled. The wet heat and the incense that rose thickly from little brass holders made her feel faint. Faces began to merge with their wares, floating upwards. Of course, she thought drowsily. The Indian rope trick! Now she herself seemed to be drifting away from her chair, away from her own feet.

Perhaps she was dreaming. Or sleepwalking.

She was listing leeward from the anarchy of the street of vendors, she was in a maze of back alleyways. A large bird, with draggled feathers that trailed in the gutter slime, was pecking at something rotten. The air was oppressive with the too sweet smell of organic matter decomposing. Doris slipped on something – cow dung – and stumbled against the bird. With a screech it turned and flared its muck-spattered tail into a whiplash of blues and greens. Peacock! Was this a benign dream or a nightmare? The bird's lapis breast heaved with outrage, it fixed Doris with its brilliant blue-black eyes.

She fled, running and stumbling back toward the safe chaos of traffic and vendors, her legs trembling. She needed to sit down. She found a tiny eating place, its two tables covered with dirty oilcloths. For atmosphere: a corona of flies. A waiter came and flicked a rag at the flies so that they dispersed momentarily. She ordered tea. She had learned the word in Bombay:
chai.

The tea was hot and very sweet and comforting, served in a glass tumbler patterned with circles of cloudy residue. Without feeling in any way disturbed by this, Doris studied the filth with tranquil fascination.

She felt drugged with peace.

Perhaps I am approaching enlightenment, she thought.

“Well!” A voice floated between the flies and the steam of hot tea and curled into her ears. “You
are
a find!” Some sort of vision, Doris thought. A visitation. It sat down opposite her. Its edges, mirage-like, wavered, but it had the appearance of an Edwardian Englishwoman. Hair coiled above an elegant aging face, lace bodice high at the neck, long sleeves, long skirt, parasol. Doris blinked several times, striving to keep her heavy eyes open.

“My dear,” the vision said with some concern, “you tourists never learn. You're succumbing to sleeping sickness.” The vision wagged an admonishing finger. “Only mad dogs and Englishmen, you know. Come on. I'll take you to my home.”

There seemed to be a journey in a rickshaw and then a comfortable wicker chair on a verandah rampant with ferns. An overhead fan was turning, pushing offerings of hot air at Doris.

“I'm Emma,” the vision said. “And I must say, you are a find. There's always someone of course, never a dearth of guests. Sailors, tourists, hippies, anthropologists, linguists, all kinds. But I can't even remember how long it's been since I talked to someone … well, of my own age and station, so to speak. I've just sent Agit down to the Queen's Bakery for some little English jam tarts so we can celebrate.”

“You
live
here?” Doris asked in drowsy amazement, expecting the dream to float off course before an answer reached her.

“For thirty-five years, my dear. Minus a little spell back in England right after Independence.”

Doris leaned forward, trying to concentrate. “But why?” she asked. Or tried to ask. She laced her fingers together to keep the dream from trickling away too quickly.

Emma raised her eyebrows in amusement. “Why not?” She stirred her tea reflectively, looking into the gentle whirlpool of its surface, examining reasons not looked at for a very long time. “We did go back in ‘47. Perhaps I would have stayed if it hadn't been for Teddy. Yes, I suppose I would have, though it's hard to imagine … cooking for church f
ê
tes, doing the altar flowers once a month, that sort of thing, I suppose.” She threw back her head and laughed heartily. “What I've been saved from!”

There was a long silence as they both sipped tea. One's dreams grow stranger with age, Doris thought. More colourful. She watched bright birds peck at berries in the courtyard.

“Yes, it was because of Teddy really …” Emma's voice seemed no louder than the soft humming of the mosquitoes which waited like a restive audience just beyond the lattice work. Lighted coils kept them at bay, coils that glowed like a row of tiny sentry fires around the edges of the verandah. “Teddy's our boy. Our only child. I don't understand why things turned out as they did. Julian was strict, I suppose, but I don't think more than other military fathers …”

What visions will come, Doris thought, when the ship is breathing cinnamon, when sandalwood seeps from its pores.

“Teddy had been away from us, of course,” Emma sighed. “In boarding schools. Well, we all did that in those days, sent them back to England. We believed it was for the best. But Teddy, well … after he was sent down from his school … I suppose the scandal … I suppose he wanted to leave it behind. Anyway, he ran away to sea. At least, that's how I like to think of it. A rather romantic thing to do, wasn't it?”

Whisper of spoon against cup; the tea stirred endlessly.