Of Marriageable Age (68 page)

'Queasy?'

Saroj nodded glumly. She glanced around at the other tables in the coffee-house; at the men sitting around them, dressed in lungis or long trousers, with slicked-back oily black hair, leaning over the tables on their elbows and digging into the mountains of rice with their fingers. They ate in a hurry. Their fingers twirled the rice into the
sambar
, rolled it into little brown balls and popped them into their mouths. Some of them seemed to be squabbling with each other. She and Nat ate nothing. They had filled up on bananas on the bus-ride to this stop.

'Why are they all shouting so?'

'They're not. They're just talking.'

'Oh. I see.' Saroj tried again to pour coffee into her mouth and this time she got it right. She swallowed the luke-warm brew with an audible gulp and said, 'I'm learning, Nat. I'm trying hard, and I will learn. Be patient.'

'I know.' She felt his knee pressing against hers under the table, a substitute for holding hands, which, Nat said, they should not do in public. 'I told you: you either love India or you hate it. You can even do both together. I've shown you the part it's easy to hate. The other part comes later.'

Nat and Saroj arrived at the town and descended into yet another swirling mass of madness, a strident dissonance of yelling rickshaw-wallahs and blaring klaxons. All she could do was cling to Nat's side, to close eyes and ears to the bedlam and focus on his calm presence, let him lead her through the fray. She found herself next to him in a rickshaw, careening through the thronged streets converging on the bus station. Nat held her hand. She squeezed it, and gathered strength, and looked at him. His eyes anchored her. She leaned into him.
I can! I will! For his sake, and for the sake of love! This is a test, and I will stand it!

The rickshaw-wallah drove them as if they were royalty. As they entered the village he pressed the klaxon and its steady honking drew the mothers from their huts and they stood on the roadside waving, and the children jumped up from their games, and the men turned their heads to look.

They arrived at David's home accompanied by a gaggle of half-naked boys and girls running beside the rickshaw and screaming,
'Daktah tamby, daktah tamby, daktah tamby!'

Nat was in high spirits, laughing with the children, leaning out of the rickshaw to clasp this hand or that, calling them by name. A little boy leaped onto the running board and Nat pulled him backwards and into his lap, pinched his cheek, and the boy threw his arms around Nat and spoke to him in that strange language Nat shared with all these people, and Nat answered in that same language, shutting her out.

A white man in a white lungi stood in an open gateway, under a wide wooden arch on which was written in English and in Tamil, Prasad Nagar. The man approached the rickshaw and lifted out the little boy and Nat fell into his arms. It must be his father, Saroj thought, but in the next moment Nat was on the ground beside him and helping her out and saying, 'Saroj, this is Henry. Henry, this is the big surprise I wrote you about. Where's Dad?' He offered Saroj a hand and ushered her towards another gate, opposite Henry's.

'David's in Town, Nat. He's with a patient in the hospital. He'll probably want to stay for the operation — I don't expect him back before tonight.'

Nat's face fell. He smiled at Saroj, touched her elbow, and signalled for her to walk down a sandy path between high trellis walls. Giant bougainvilleas grew up the lattice-work. Their branches snaked up through the trellis, forming a shady tunnel of luxurious foliage.

The children tried to follow, but Henry shooed them away resolutely and closed the gate on them, rather rudely, Saroj thought. But the children didn't seem to mind. They swarmed up the gate and sat on its upper bar, still grinning and calling, while the smallest pressed their little faces against the bars and peered inside the yard, watching as Henry, Nat and Saroj stopped at the edge of the verandah and Nat and Saroj removed their sandals. Nat turned on a tap and gestured for Saroj to wash her feet. The water was cool and soothing on her tired dusty feet, and she let it wash over them for longer than was necessary.

She was overwhelmed by Nat's welcome. He is at home, she thought — absorbed again into this community which is the soil that nourished him and made him what he is. I am outside it, a stranger. She heard Nat and Henry's easy banter as they waited for her to finish washing her feet: Nat telling Henry about their holiday in Ceylon, Henry's questions, Nat's answers. She heard without listening. She was listening to herself.

He is home, and I am a stranger. Look how they love him! He knows them, they know him, they are all a part of him. I will never fit in.
True, it was quiet here, at this house. It was just like home, like Ma's garden, that arch of towering bougainvilleas; pretty, and clean, not like Madras. This was yet another India. Nat's India. But still she was a stranger.
They won't want me here! He's only got eyes for this Henry. He's ignoring me. What shall I do? What am I doing here?

Then she moved aside and let Nat wash his feet, and there was Henry summoning her up the two steps to the verandah, unrolling a mat and bidding her sit down, asking her if she preferred tea or coffee, turning a key in the door and entering, Nat joining her, plonking himself down beside her on the mat; Nat, the same as ever, smiling across at her the way he had done in London, or in Ceylon, or in the plane, and, at least for the time being, all was well.

They drank tea and ate Milk Bikis on the verandah and Saroj listened to the two men chatting. Occasionally Nat or Henry looked at her and smiled and tried to draw her into the conversation, but Saroj was distracted. She looked around and liked what she saw. David's little house was shielded from the road and from curious eyes by the same towering bougainvilleas that lined the garden path between gate and house. Cascading clusters of brilliantly orange, vermilion and purple blossoms created a flowery refuge, luxuriously overflowing walls which contained smaller, more modest shrubs and gentler colours — the creamy yellow-fringed frangipani, pink oleander, the tender mauve of hibiscus. Saroj, sitting with her back to the house, imagined herself at home — home being the Waterloo Street garden halfway across the world, where the very same flowers had been coaxed into effulgence by Ma. The agitation that had taken possession of all her senses almost since the moment of entering the airport at Madras began to recede, as well as her doubts concerning Nat. She felt her body relax spontaneously, as if a load had dropped from her shoulders, as if it too registered a homecoming, recognised this refuge as a place of safety, understood the silent welcome of nature.

She sighed audibly and leaned back against the pristine, whitewashed wall
. I can make it, she thought. I can, and I will. Here I shall let down my roots. Here I shall flourish, and grow. Nat is at my side.
She reached for his hand, and felt his fingers close around hers. Her eyes grow heavy. She barely heard Nat's chuckle as her body slumped against his, she barely felt his hands as he touched her limbs and stretched them out on the mat.
I am home,
she thought, and it was her last thought before the sleep that had evaded her all night long in Madras finally caught up with and claimed her.

When she woke up it was dark. She heard voices: Nat's, Henry's, and a third, which she knew must be David's. David was back. Her future father-in-law. Hastily she sat up, instinctively ran her fingers through her hair, straightened her clothes. She felt musty, clogged from the dust of the long bus journey, and longed for a shower and a change of clothes, things she had been too tired to consider on their arrival hours ago. How many hours? She looked at her watch, holding it up to the dim light that shone through the window above her head. Eight o'clock. The men were inside. She wanted to join them, but a sudden, violent shyness lamed her. How would David welcome her? The beloved son had brought home his bride…

She remembered the tap where she had washed her feet. She got up and walked over to the steps leading down from the verandah, crouched down and reached in the darkness for the tap. She found it, turned it on, cupped her hands, felt the cool water filling them and splashed her face with it. Delicious. She rubbed her neck, her arms, might have taken off her blouse and washed her whole body but then the screen door to the house swung open with a creak and Nat emerged and crouched beside her.

'Hello! Had a good sleep?'

Saroj splashed her face again and replied, 'Mmm! Your dad's here, isn't he?'

'Yes. I've told him all about you, he's taken a look at you sleeping, and is dying to meet you.'

'But I'm not at all presentable! I wish I could have a shower, wash my hair, change into something else! He'll think I'm a real tramp if he sees me this way!'

'No he won't. But you can have your shower if you want. Come on in.'

Saroj followed Nat into the house, into a small central room with no furniture whatsoever, doors on each of the four walls. Nat opened one of the doors and Saroj found herself in a bathroom. Beneath a tap in the wall were two buckets full of water, metal dippers hung over their edges.

'Here's soap, and a towel,' said Nat, pressing a block of Chandrika Ayurvedic soap into her hand before returning to the others.

Saroj looked in despair at the buckets with their dippers. What I need, she thought, is a long soak in a tub of deep warm foamy fragrant water. But this is India, my new home. Cold water dipped from buckets will have to do. For now and evermore.

Saroj emerged from the bathroom, her skin scrubbed clean and cool, and fragrant with the warm spiciness of Chandrika soap, her hair wet and coiled up into a knot on top of her head. She wore the
shalwar kameez
she had bought in Madras, slightly crumpled from the journey, but clean and fresh with a paisley pattern in shades of blue. Not quite the elegant young bride, she thought ruefully, crossing the floor of the central room to the open doorway where the men were still sitting and talking.

She stopped in the doorway and three faces turned to look. Nat's dear familiar one, Henry's jovial bat-eared one… and David's.

She had never seen a face quite like David's, never seen an older man she could even remotely describe as beautiful. But David was beautiful. Not so much his features, which were even and of an almost classic handsomeness. His skin was of a weathered texture, browned and leathered from years of harsh tropical sun. His face was framed with greying hair combed back, two stray locks falling forward in boyish defiance over the high forehead. His eyes were of a marbled grey, large and wide apart like Nat's, and they too were beautiful. But it was the expression in them and in that entire face that caught Saroj's attention and held it. She could not look away, not even to Nat, though she felt her lover's expectant gaze upon her.

He is good,
she thought. There is no other word to describe this man as simple, pure, goodness. Benevolence, integrity, kindness, beneficence, love — they were all encompassed in that goodness, gathered together into a radiance that literally seemed to glow from him, to stream from his eyes, to light up his smile. It was the goodness she felt in Nat's presence — but more, much more, the fulfilment and summit of that goodness, a goodness that was strength and compassion and that reached out to embrace her even before David had risen to his feet and come forward with outstretched hands to greet her.

'Saroj! Welcome!'

Shyly she took those hands; but David came closer, and his arms closed around her, and Saroj felt herself surrounded by that goodness and filled with it. She felt like crying, and closed her eyes.

Saroj opened her eyes. In doing so her gaze fell automatically on a framed photograph on the wall behind David. She started, and stiffened. David, feeling her bewilderment, let go of her. She stepped aside and walked around him towards the photo, which was the portrait of a young Indian woman, gently smiling, her hair parted in the middle, a perfectly round
tika
in the middle of her forehead. There was no mistaking this portrait, for it was the very same one, albeit much larger, that was pasted into Balwant Uncle's family archives. There was no mistaking Ma.

Saroj turned to face the room, her face lit up in radiant joy.

'That's Ma!' she said to David, and glanced at the portrait again, turning eagerly to Ma. 'That's Ma, Nat! That's my mother, when she was younger.'

She looked away from Nat, passing quickly over Henry's face and up to David's, eagerly awaiting his reaction to the miracle, that here, in his house, should be a photo of Ma.

'This woman is your mother?' asked David.

'Yes, of course... and how... oh, but of course! Your sister! Your sister was married to her brother, my Gopal Uncle. You all grew up together, didn’t you… you and Fiona and Gopal Uncle. I didn't realise that, I...’

'What do you know about Fiona and Gopal?' David's voice was sharp, and brought her to a stop.

Nat said, 'I was going to wait to tell you the whole story, Dad, but now it's out. I know all about Gopal and Fiona, that they're my parents. And can you believe it, Saroj is Gopal's sister's daughter. It's a long story, and…’

But David's voice slashed through his words. 'How is she? Where is she?'

'Well, she's dead. She died a few years ago, in a fire.'

'Dead? Savitri, dead?' The pain written across David's face, the yawning hole that seemed to open in his eyes, stunned Saroj into silence. She knew then, and so did Nat: David loved Ma. Saroj's mother.
Savitri,
he had called her.

David turned then to Nat and the look in his eyes was no longer pain but pity. 'Nat. My Nat. I should have told you. And now it's too late. I should have told you about Savitri. Your mother.'

At the word Saroj froze. And so did Nat. His hand dropped hers. Henry looked away. The candle flame flickered. Even the shrill chorus of insects outside seemed silenced by the moment. They all stood poised on the rim of that silence.