Miss Timmins' School for Girls (33 page)

“You can't stop me,” said Kushal. “I heard a scream, and I saw this whore”—he pointed in anger—“I saw her running down after the scream.”

All those years of being a good girl were wasted now and gone. I had been accused of being a whore and a murderess. I should have felt distraught, destroyed. But I felt as light as a feather.

Thirty-two

Silver Oak
Wind

M
y world
was turning cartwheels. It was straight when I was high and upside down when I
was not, and so it was always in the school that the world was most warped,
because I never went stoned to school.

But perhaps I could, I was thinking as I walked
into school the next morning in my one and only pair of blue jeans and Pin's
short saffron kurta. Pin must have come stoned to school. I'm sure I could do it
too. No one would ever know. Few people really looked beyond the blot, after
all.

The walk from Aeolia was windy, and I was running
my hands through my hair. I cast a different shadow in my wild blowing short
hair, I was thinking in a pleased manner when I ran into Miss Wilson outside the
staff room. There was a strange man in a frayed black suit sitting on the bench
outside the staff room. Miss Wilson raised her eyebrows and blushed brick red.
“Er, Miss Apte, can I see you in my office for a minute?” she said.

In her office, she stood on the carpet of
recalcitrant students, so that I was forced to stand beside her. She handed me
an envelope from the Satara District Court. I knew what it was already. I had
been expecting it ever since I heard that Nelson had a lawyer. It was a summons
to appear before the court as a witness for the defense.

I took the thick envelope and turned to go. But
Miss Wilson was not finished with me.

“Just a minute, Miss Apte, I've been meaning to
bring up a small matter for a few days now, and I suppose now is as good a time
as any. You see, the girls are not allowed to wear trousers,” she said quite
conversationally, now having composed her face and drawn the mantle of
leadership about her. “There was an incident when bell-bottom trousers were
confiscated from the senior dorm. It was last summer, before you came, of
course, just before the school fete.”

I had heard of how Miss Manson made the girls kneel
in front of her as she measured the distance from the ground to their hems. And
then made them stand up so she could measure the width of their hemlines. But I
had not heard of the pants episode.

“Actually, I think there is no harm in them being
allowed to wear trousers now,” said Miss Wilson. “Times have changed, and it
would keep their minds from the minidress. I do think it can be done, but now is
not the time. What do you think?” she asked, rubbing her pointy chin.

It would throw Miss Manson, the elastic watcher,
out of business is what I was thinking, but I nodded sagely and said, “No, not
the time. Perhaps next year.”

“Then it would be better for their morale, don't
you think, if you did not wear trousers? While you are inside the school, that
is, of course.”

I knew that Pin was the only woman in Timmins who
wore pants, but I presumed it was out of choice that no one else did. And truly,
it was hard to see Jacinta Mathews or Willy in divided legs.

I spun around to go, although she had said nothing
about the meeting being over. “There were trousers worn by a teacher last term,”
I muttered over my shoulder. “I do not see why I cannot wear them too.”

From the corner of my eye I saw her face redden
again, and in her eyes a spark of anger, the kind of anger that Pin must have
elicited. I did begin to feel that we were good for each other, the Prince and
I, a good cop and bad cop rolled into one, better equipped to solve the mystery
of her murder, which was a good thing, because I was sure that my life depended
on it.

To my relief, the staff room was empty when I
entered. In my cubby was the weekly letter from Baba.

My dear Charu,

I trust this letter finds
you in the best of health and happiness. We are both fine here.

Your Ayi is gaining her
strength. She drinks chicken soup every night. She is more relaxed, now that
she is at home, and her eyes are showing signs of comprehension. You should
not worry about her. I judge the prognosis to be good.

We are hiring a new maid
for your mother, since the last one was caught stealing some food items by
the jamadarni, who still comes to clean.

It is getting cold in the
evenings here in Indore. But the days are pleasant. Ayi and I take our walks
at 5 p.m. instead of 6. She walks for quite a stretch now.

Take care of yourself,
and do not worry about the home front.

Your loving,

Baba

His letters were always terse and pointed. That is
how he must have taught himself to write in the navy.

He knew nothing of my new life as the Panchgani bad
girl. He thought I still lived in the back room of the school hospital. Now that
I judged the water to be around my neck, I thought perhaps I should tell him
that I was embedded in the notorious murder trial.

“I will get a lawyer. I will arrange for you to
stay for some time with my brother's niece and her husband in Poona,” he might
say.

But before that, I would have to tell him a very
long story, full of sharp turns and spins. I did not have the strength for it,
and neither did they. Let Ayi recover, for now at least.

I came upon Merch drinking coffee at the Irani Café
on my way back from school. The café was crowded with Irani boys from Green
Lawns swallowing in a manly manner, Adam's apples bobbing with gusto. Merch
sometimes gave them English lessons. Today he was sitting alone.

I waved my summons at him.

“Are you scared?” he asked after reading the entire
thing.

“Yes, and no. Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“Time and place,” I said. “I don't think Woggle can
control Kushal. I think he was outside my room again.” Yesterday, I had returned
to Aeolia in the afternoon straight from the chowki and, tired after all my
adventures and upheavals, slept straight through until midnight. When I awoke to
use the bathroom, I heard the sound of someone peeing in the bushes outside my
window.

“But why should Kushal have it in for you?”

I had figured that one out. “It's the
standard-issue Indian male syndrome. Mother and sisters on a pedestal on the one
hand, and loose women and prostitutes below the boot on the other. And me, a
good Marathi girl like his sisters, consorting with all of you wastrels and
worse. Too confusing for him.”

This case had stirred up Panchgani. Though a small
village, it had many disparate groups who lived in their own watertight worlds.
But this case had sliced through the town from top to bottom. Everyone was
involved: the white teachers, the brown teachers, the schoolgirls, the
schoolboys, the shopkeepers, the police, the malis, the marginals. Everyone was
in the pot. Everyone had an opinion. Some in batches, like the ayahs of Timmins
who thought it was witchcraft, others in groups of two to five. It was hard to
tell who all thought it was I, because some stared and others averted their
eyes. I did not really care to judge who thought what. Only Merch. Only Merch
knew my truth, and I wanted him to believe every word.

I wanted to convince him of my sense of imminent
danger.

But on that matter, he seemed strangely detached.
Scornful, even.

“Have you considered,” said Merch, lighting a
cigarette and taking a deep, post-coffee puff, “that it might have been the
girls who pushed Pin? Why should the girls be innocent? They were there that
night, and one has to wonder.”

“It was a mischief thing, you know, breaking
bounds,” I argued. It was not possible.

“But they could have pushed her over. There were
three of them, and only one of Pin. It might be relatively easy,” he said
looking gravely into the distance.

“But why should they?” I asked Merch. “Motive, one
must have a motive at least. You don't just get up and push a person over a
cliff for the sake of it. I doubt if they harbored any deep feelings for
her.”

“Schoolgirls are nasty creatures,” said Merch,
“little savages. Socialization is still primitive at that age. Like
Lord of the Flies
.”

“You think those rustlings outside my window are
them?”

“They could all be there tonight, and they could
surround you and have their way with you,” said Merch, raising one eyebrow in a
significant manner.

“Tonight, why tonight?” I asked.

“Didn't Nandita say it would be tonight?” he said
with a furrowed brow.

And then I saw the twinkle light up his eyes and a
slow sweet smile spread across his face, and I saw that
he
had been having his way with me.

The girls were hysterical and Merch was an
actor.

“This Panchgani is mad. The whole town. Why do all
these people have nothing better to do than follow each other around?”

“Exactly, my dear Watson,” said Merch. “They have
no drugs, no gambling, no bad habits. So they have a lot of time to plot and
kill and rape. Bad habits—bad habits are the only hope for Panchgani.”

“And to top it all there is the missing Hindi
teacher.”

I resolved to take him back to Aeolia with me that
night. We would put off the lights and pretend to sleep and then we would steal
out and look around. Stealthily signaling to each other with torches, we would
trap young Kushal, or the girls, since Merch seemed to think it was them.

I decided to say nothing of my plans just yet. We
went to his room and made love, and then fell asleep.

It was dusk when I awoke, heavy with dope. I lay
looking at the sky go from gray to grayer in the frame of the window. It was
that emptiness again, that yellow-fog-rubbing-against-the-mind kind of evening.
Merch was sleeping, his lean, long body curled away from me, his springy hair
tangled over his eyes. He wore soft khadi pajamas and an old black T-shirt that
showed his concave stomach, the line of hair going down from his navel. I felt I
was playing blind man's bluff alone, groping around without anyone to touch.

Merch awoke and eventually shuffled to the kitchen.
I pretended to be asleep. He pulled the chain of the naked bulb above the stove,
and I heard the clinking of spoons. We had a somber cup of tea in the gloom, the
dim light from the kitchen casting looming shadows of the two of us crouching on
the bed. For the first time in my life, I felt a longing for Indore evenings.
Bright tubelights and dinner at eight, served with the purposeful clanking of
glass bangles.

“I want to go to Aeolia tonight,” I said.

“This must be connected to your supposed watcher,”
he said, passing me a neatly rolled joint. I took two deep puffs, and soon it
became crystal clear to me.

“Yes, I have to,” I said.

“Correct,” he said. “Be it man or beast.”

“Correct,” I said. “Be it Kushal or the girls.”

“Or the Hound of the Baskervilles,” he said.

Why did he need to convince me that this was a
childish and hysterical pursuit? Was he foolish enough to think there was no
danger at all in this world?

I was restless.

“Let's go, let's go,” I said when he smoked a
cigarette and pondered if he needed another cup of tea. I felt a sense of
urgency, when really and rationally there was none. I was pacing up and down the
room, Hindi notebooks in hand.

“Steady,” he said as he would to a horse. “We'll
have dal fry at Kaka's and we'll walk on to Aeolia. The time will be ripe
then.”

“Ripe, ripe for what?” My voice rose a register. I
knew I was sounding nervous, if not outright hysterical, but I could not stop
myself, this was how I felt. In the light of reason, Merch was right, of course.
There was no way of judging whether earlier was better than later.

I sat myself down on the mattress on the floor,
folded my legs under me, and lit a cigarette. Did he really want me to believe
that the girls were dangerous?

I could not remain seated. It was as if I were tied
to a string offstage. My knees refused to stay folded, they jerked themselves
up, and I began to pace again. The room felt like a pressure cooker. I walked
onto the balcony, finished my cigarette, and threw it, watched its burning arc
swing down the valley, and then went into the room determined to get him
out.

Merch was still in his white khadi pajamas. He took
me into his arms and nuzzled his head between my breasts. He ran his hand
through my hair and nibbled on my ear. I felt a flash of impatience. I saw
suddenly how easy it would be to slip and slide into a slothful life and then
dissolve into a little brown puddle.

He should be rushing up with me, with shining sword
in hand, ready to hold my hand and fend off all evil at short notice.

But no, not Merch.

He did not want to come with me. He would not come
with me. Why lead a horse to water when he is not going to drink? Everyone knows
that.

“Merch, just stay a goof for me, all right?” I
said. It was an impulsive thing, popped out before I had thought it through, but
as soon as I had said it, I knew what I was going to do.

“Ayi chi shappat,” he said with a bemused smile. “I
promise.”

I turned and left him, and did not look back to see
if his face registered shock, dismay, or surprise at my sudden exit. I had the
definite feeling that the night would go better without him. Perhaps, even, my
life. I loved him, how could I not love Merch my whole life? I would, I assured
myself as I walked to the bidi stand and bought a packet of Wills cigarettes. I
would surely love him my whole life. But not tonight. Tonight I hated him for
sending me out alone.

“I
'll
sound nervous
and intense and mysterious. Just give me five
minutes, before she can ask questions, and then come and call me and I can
pretend I did not want you all to know.”