Under the Jeweled Sky (36 page)

Jag knew his aunt was close by, the scent of her, cinnamon and cloves, all around. He felt himself slide into sleep again, and thought of Sophie. If only he had not lost sight of her father. He should have said something to him. He should have introduced himself and said that he knew him from the palace. But then Dr. Schofield would have known. He would have put two and two together and realized that he was the boy that his daughter had been seeing secretly. And if he had said something, what did he expect to happen? Did he think the doctor would have greeted the news well? No. It would have been a mistake. He might even have turned on him and given him a thrashing.

He thought of Sophie and wondered where she was. Back in England, no doubt. Who in their right mind would have stayed? Dr. Schofield would have sent them home ahead of him. The British always did that when trouble loomed, sending their families away, cities and towns emptied of women and children. He had sent them to the safety of the countryside during the war Sophie had described to him, the bombs and the great fires that had swept through the cities, the ancient buildings engulfed in flames, towering walls collapsing into the street as though made of cardboard. She had told him of the village and of how different it was from villages in India, of a cottage called Ranmore, and how the church bells rang out and the way they sounded, calling the villagers to prayer. He knew everything about it.

A small breeze passed over him and he began to dream, imagining himself crossing the black water, flying over it like a bird, the vast sea meeting the earth, and him soaring, soaring, over England's green and pleasant land. On he flew, across the cities and out into the countryside, looking down over the hills and fields until he saw a church, bells pealing into the sky, and swooped down, circling, circling over the cottage. She was sitting in a chair, like the ones in the orange garden, and she was wearing a dress in the palace blue, like the tiles in the blue fountain. Down he went, diving through the thin air, landing near to her.
I
have
found
you
, he said, but he was a bird and his words came out as a song, high and sweet, and she looked at him and smiled.
It
is
me!
he sang, a pretty ditty that went
chirrup
chirrup
, and she watched him for a while.
It
is
me! It is me!
he said, hopping around as though the grass was burning his feet, but she was looking away now, far off into the distance. He sang to her again but she did not notice him. Instead, she got up and went inside.

• • •

“Jagaan.” Jag opened his eyes, his aunt's face peering down at him. “Jagaan. It is morning again.”

He sat up a little, propping his weight on his elbows. How many mornings? Two, he thought. He had counted two. Or perhaps he had been dreaming. He pulled himself up, his muscles heavy, and stood as though trying his legs, testing his balance. He flexed his shoulders, joints and sinews cracking, and loosened his neck.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Yes,” Jag said, nodding to himself. “Much better. I am sorry I have slept so long.”

“It is good for you. You needed it. You will eat something now?”

“Yes. I will.”

“Geeta is making
dosas
with curried vegetables.” She came to him and arranged his twisted shirt. “She makes the best
dosas
you have ever tasted. Thin and golden and crisp, and so light.” Jag smiled. “Komal made the vegetables. They are not as good as mine, but we will pretend.”

Jag laughed, his aunt slapping his hand playfully, telling him to shush. She laughed along with him for a while, then her face darkened. She took his hand between her palms, looking at it, stroking the back of it gently as she breathed softly to herself.

Jag didn't want her to cry. He had seen too much crying during those terrible bleak months when he had felt so alone, and the sound of it had been one of the hardest things to bear. His aunt put his hand to her lips. She kissed it and returned it to him. Only then did she look up.

“Jagaan,” she said.

“Yes, Aunty?”

“We will sit together this morning, just you and I.”

“Yes, Aunty. I would like that.”

“And we shall talk of all the things we have to talk about. You must have many questions to ask me.”

Jag looked at her. He had no questions. His mind was a blank, like it had been washed clean, as though the sleep had taken every thought in him and carried it away. His aunt noticed his vacant expression, a tiny shift in his eyes, almost imperceptible. Those eyes, she thought. They were unlike any that she had ever seen: deep green, like jewels.

• • •

Geeta and Komal served Jag's breakfast in silence, then slipped away to the kitchen where they could be heard faintly, talking softly, moving pots, sluicing water, pounding grains in the quern.

“This is the best food I have ever tasted,” Jag said.

“We are very lucky,” his aunt told him. “We are mostly traders in Kim Street. Deepak brings us vegetables and will never accept any payment. Your uncle makes shoes for him, for his family, and he never takes payment either. We look after each other, all the trade families. It is the way it has always been, but many have left now. Who knows who will come and take their places?”

“Where is my uncle?”

“I will come to that. You do not need to worry about him. He is safe.”

“Perhaps Navinder will become a tailor,” Jag said.

“That would suit Deepak very well indeed. He is worried that now he will have to start paying for his shirts. He is a generous man with his vegetables, but not so generous in matters of money.”

“You can't eat money,” Jag said. “That is one of the things that I have learned. What use is money when there is no food to buy? His vegetables are far more valuable.”

“It is a good lesson,” his aunt said. “Your mother always swore that when she had a son, he would be properly educated. He would learn to read the great books and become a great man.”

“Yes,” Jag said. “My father talked about her often.”

“And did her wish come true?”

“Partly,” Jag said. “I was educated, as she wanted, but only time will tell if I live to honor her as she deserves.”

“So you can read the English?”

“Yes.” Jag smiled, a little proud of himself. “I can read the English.”

His aunt nodded in a small way. “Have you finished your breakfast?” His plate was empty, the thin platter wiped clean. She took it from him and went downstairs.

Jag flexed his back, sitting upright, hands on his folded knees, and belched. He was awake now, fully awake for the first time in days. It was a relief, to be out of that weary, transcended state. He would go out today maybe, ask his aunt about it first, but he needed to be outside, to feel something other than the cocoon of these four walls. Perhaps he had spent too long out in the open, living in it, sleeping under the sky. He would have to get used to being indoors again, to adjust to a new life, and he wondered if a day would come when all this felt like normality.

Mrs. Gupta returned from the kitchen, entering the room as though it were a tomb. Jag stood up at once, the veil of worry across his aunt's face sinking his stomach. She was holding something in her hands, an envelope, already open, her fingers turning it over.

“Jagaan,” she said. “There is something I have to tell you about. But first, I want you to sit down.”

He did as he was told, and his aunt sat near to him, straight-backed, the usually soft line of her figure unnaturally stiff. Jag settled himself as best he could, his eyes shifting constantly to her hand.

“Jagaan. A letter came for you a month ago,” she said. “We didn't understand what it was or why it had been sent here. We didn't know where you were. We never expected to see you.” She dropped her face in shame. “Your uncle opened it.” She held it out to him. “I am sorry.” Her head remained bowed as she felt the envelope taken from her.

Jag looked down and saw his name, the shape it formed when written in English. He did not recognize the writing. Lifting the flap, he opened the envelope, then stopped, mystified. Inside was a scrap of paper, folded small, like the notes he had once pressed into the gaps in the stone slabs beneath the huge marble urns in the Moghul gardens. His fingers reached in for it, tissue thin, tiny flecks of gold at its edges, and he saw his name again, the address of his aunt's house, the handwriting different from the envelope—different, and unmistakable. His heart caught in his chest. Sophie. She had remembered, and she had written to him. He felt overjoyed, swallowing hard, his hands trembling. He wanted to leap into the air and yell at the top of his voice. He wanted to crouch in a corner, curl into a ball, and weep, because he had missed her so badly. Carefully he unfolded the delicate paper, fearing that it might disintegrate if he even breathed too hard.

The state of her writing threw him into confusion, her hand unsteady, the once elegant curve of her tails scratched sharply into the paper, the dots and crosses fast and untidy.

My darling Jag,

You have a son. He was born on 23 May 1948 in St. Bride's mission in Cuttack, Orissa. They made me give him up. I don't know what to do except to send this. We have a son. Find him.

Sophie

Nothing moved. Not the air in the room or the dust motes that hung there. Not the sun in the sky or the earth below it. Jag felt his blood lie still, his heart stop beating, his skin shrink from his flesh, his whole being sucked from the room into a vast vacuum of stillness. His mouth went dry, his throat filled with stones. He began to shake, uncontrollably, as though thrown into a tub of ice water. His aunt put her arms around him, holding him tightly, feeling him rigid beneath his shirt, his rapid swallows, his juddering breaths.

“Be still,” she whispered to him. “You have nothing to be afraid of.”

Jag felt his head splitting open. The room began to sway. He pulled in deep breaths, hard and fast.
You
have
a
son
. He wrenched himself away from his aunt, standing up, flailing, two clay oil lamps knocked to the floor. His hands clasped his head, bending, straightening, striding to the window, his breathing suddenly heavy. He turned from the window and bent down, doubled over as though in pain, his face contorted, hand pressed to his mouth now, perhaps to stop himself screaming.

He stood up, feet unsteady. “I have to go,” he said, then began to pace up and down as if trapped, wanting to push the walls down and run. “I have to leave.”

His aunt got up and took hold of him, grasping his arms firmly.

“Jagaan! Look at me!”

He turned his face away. Sophie. His Sophie. She had borne a child,
his
child, and he had not even known about it. Now he realized why the gods had made the doctor disappear. He was not meant to follow the doctor. He had been destined to come here all along.

“Jagaan!” His aunt pulled at him hard. “
Listen
to me!”

“I can't stay,” he said.

“You must,” she told him. “You uncle has already gone. He took the advocate with him and the barber. They left two weeks ago.” Jag stared at her, his mouth opening mutely. “What did you
think?
” she said softly, reaching to his face. “Did you think we would leave a child of our family to the mercy of strangers?” She smiled at him, a painful smile filled with happiness and sorrow. “They have gone to claim him,” she said. She steadied him as he sank to his haunches, the breath knocked out of him. “It's all right,” she said softly. “They will bring your son home.”

The rains over, Delhi emerged renewed from the damp fog of winter's chill. The thick smell of wood smoke and dung fires lifted, the air now clear and blue and laced with the scent of hibiscus and frangipani where slumbering borders had miraculously sprung back into life. Sophie leaned back in her chair and lifted her face to the sun, its springtime warmth soothing against her skin. Her father had insisted upon moving her to the nursing home some weeks earlier, with its charming gardens and manicured lawns, neat paths cutting through them, wide enough to take small exercise on the supportive arm of a nurse, comfortable white wicker chairs set out here and there beneath the wide veranda.

“You are looking so much better, memsa'b.”

“Thank you, John.” Sophie smiled from behind her dark glasses, the two of them taking tea in the shade. The pleasant surroundings had come as a blessing after the starkness of the hospital, and her father had been quite right. She had still been suffering from the shock of it all, and just because her scars had begun to heal hadn't meant that she was well again.

She had known that it was gone from the moment she woke up from the second surgery, feeling the emptiness beneath a haze of morphine. It had all happened so fast, the onslaught of blood, the nurse's confusion, the way she had been rushed to the theater again. No one had said anything to her afterward, yet she knew. It had been written on their faces, a cloak of sympathy creased so deeply into every touch, every bravely born smile. It was over for her now, all choice removed, and she must come to terms with it, like she had with so many other things. Who knows what this life will deal to us? she thought. Perhaps her mother had been right, her sins so great that she would be made to atone for them for the rest of her days. And atone for them she had, in spades. Sophie moved a little in her chair, adjusting one of the cushions, smarting briefly from a sharp twinge in her abdomen, still tender.

They had taken good care of her here, but she would not be sorry to leave. It was as though part of her had expired, left for dead in a devastated drawing room on that terrible morning when the world fell in around her. The part of her that remained, the part that had survived this, felt strangely alive now, as though it too had woken from a winter slumber, like the flowers in the garden. Everything was different now. She wasn't afraid any more.

“I won't be coming back to the house,” she said.

“No, memsa'b.”

“But I think you probably knew that already.”

“Yes, memsa'b.”

“Have you received any news about Mr. Grainger?”

“No, memsa'b.”

“No word at all still?”

“Nothing, mem.”

No one had seen hide nor hair of Lucien. At least, that had been the official line, although it had been obvious that someone must have assisted him in his disappearance. The police had been too busy dealing with the matter laid out so unequivocally before them: Tony Hinchbrook, a smoking gun in his hand that he had attempted to turn upon himself before it was wrestled from him.

On her arrival at the hospital, the first priority had been to attend to Sophie's injuries, and by the time the details began to emerge—the terrible fight John had heard behind the barricaded door, the smashing of furniture, the way she had been screaming—Lucien was already gone.

The passenger lists showed that he had taken a flight to Karachi. Where he had gone from there, nobody knew. The police inspector had said that he had probably got on a ship, and they wouldn't have a hope of finding out which one, his file quickly closed and swept under the carpet. It was not police business, as far as he was concerned, a woman caught having relations with a guard and being beaten by her husband. She should count herself lucky. If he ever caught his wife with another man, he would have killed the fellow as well, and her too.

“There have been some rumors,” John said. “The cook from number eight heard them talking at one of the memsa'b's dinners. He said that he had heard that Mr. Grainger had gone to South America, to Argentina. He wanted to borrow some money, but I don't think they sent him any. One of the memsa'bs was very angry about it.”

“I see,” Sophie said. They would have sent him the money, of course. That was the way of it with that set, closing ranks, disposing of problems quietly and efficiently behind a diplomatic smokescreen. Tony Hinchbrook too had been removed, extracted from police custody by the powers-that-be at the British Consulate. They would clear up their own mess, they insisted, and the chief of police was only too happy to oblige, once his department's expenses had been disbursed, of course, his own pockets comfortably filled. Hinchbrook had been flown back to London, to be dealt with by the Home Secretary, his name quietly erased from the lips of all who remained in New Delhi. These things happened now and then, dreadful scandals that had to be cleaned up posthaste to minimize the embarrassment.

It was rare that a situation ever blew up in their faces like this. Usually they were containable, passed over as unpleasant gossip that could be overlooked provided nobody went about parading their sordid little peccadilloes. June Smythson carrying on with their bearer, for instance, or Jim Bevan's penchant for the company of young Indian men. One did whatever one had to, to bear a dystopian, transient life of foreign cities and unfamiliar customs, of rigid etiquette and high manners frozen in aspic. It was another world, a tiny microcosm of stagnant ideals and old-fashioned thinking. Sophie would not miss it, not for one second. It had been like living in a sealed jam jar: no air, no space, the view to the outside just an unreliable distortion of reality.

“We will have new people coming to the house soon?”

“Yes, John. I expect so.”

“We will all miss you very much.”

“Thank you, John. That is kind of you. Dr. George will be coming to tie up any loose ends. I have decided to go back with him to Ooty for a while. If you could have my things packed up by the weekend, I would very much appreciate it. All I want is my clothes and personal effects. The things from my dressing table and so forth. There won't be terribly much. Two trunks should do it, don't you think?”

“Yes, memsa'b.”

“If it runs to any more than that, then you'll have to cull some of it. I'll leave it to you to decide what stays and what goes, but I don't want to be bogged down with a lot of pointless clutter. It doesn't do.”

“Yes, memsa'b. What about Mr. Grainger's things?”

“Do whatever you like with them.”

“But won't he be wanting them?”

“I really don't know, John. And I'm not sure that I care either. I suppose you could ask Mrs. Hinchbrook if she knows where he would like them sent.” She slipped John a dry smile. “She seemed to know more about my husband's whereabouts than I ever did.”

“Yes,” John said. “And she is currently knowing the whereabouts of the husband at number eleven.”

Sophie regarded him closely for a moment. “I'm sorry about all this fuss, John. Heaven only knows how it looks to you, all these lies and tawdry behavior. You must think us all savages.”

“I don't think anything, memsa'b.”

“Of course you do.” She gave a resigned tut. “And you are very kind to keep those thoughts to yourself. I want to thank you for that and for all you have done for me.”

“You do not need to thank me, memsa'b.”

Sophie sighed to herself. “What a terrible mess.”

“Do not feel bad, memsa'b. It is not good for you.”

“No,” she said. “What's done is done. The future is what matters now. Not the past.”

“And you will have a good future, memsa'b.”

“Thank you, John. I do hope so.”

“There is no need for you to hope.” John smiled at her and pointed to the wide blue sky. “It is written.”

They sat and drank tea for a while, John helping himself to a biscuit. He would miss the memsahib, but he would not miss all the trouble, the fighting and arguing and the husband's bad temper and keeping him out with the car until four o'clock in the morning. Still, he liked working in the British houses. They paid much more than the Indians. He finished his biscuit and thought about taking another. Perhaps the next people would be better. They had been talking about it at the house, him, the cook, the gardener, and the maid. They would all say that they were being paid fifty rupees a month more than they were. The new people would be bound to match it without question, and Mrs. Grainger would not be around to enlighten them.

“So you are going to Ooty, mem?”

“Yes.”

“Very nice. Very…
picturesque
.” John nodded approvingly, as though he knew the place well, although he had never been. His family had come from the Punjab, part of the mass migration into Delhi that had taken place a decade before, and he had never left the city after that. “Very clean air,” he added.

“Do you know it?”

“Oh, no, memsa'b. But I have heard about it, from Dr. George.”

“You are to take good care of him when he arrives and make sure that he eats properly.”

“Yes, memsa'b. Dilip knows what he likes.”

“This has all been very upsetting for him.”

“It has been upsetting for everyone, mem. Bhavat Singh, one of the other guards, was most upset. He was very shocked about the whole thing. I think he was very good friends with the man who died.”

“With Jagaan Ramakrishnan?”

“Oh yes, mem. He saw to it himself that his things were sent back to his family and that he was paid the wages he was owed. Every month he was sending money to his family. I think they relied on it very much. Bhavat Singh went to a lot of trouble. He has a son of about the same age. Perhaps that is why he felt so sorry about it.”

Sophie felt her face tighten. “What?”

John put his cup down and looked at her cautiously. “Memsa'b?” All the color had drained from her face. “Are you all right, memsa'b?”

Sophie felt herself liquefy. Her hands started to tremble, her breathing suddenly difficult.

“Memsa'b?”

“The dead man.” She pressed a hand to her throat. “Are you telling me that he had a son?”

“Yes, mem.” John shifted awkwardly in his seat. He had said something bad, and he had no idea what it was. She looked like she had been struck by lightning.

“Who told you this?” she asked quietly.

“The other guard, Bhavat Singh.”

“And did he tell you how old the son is?”

“No, memsa'b.” John tried to think quickly. “But I can ask him.”

“Did he say where the boy was?”

“Amritsar,” John said. “He had been sending his wages there every month.”

Sophie folded in her seat, closing her eyes, murmuring
oh
my
God, oh my God
, over and over.

“Nurse!” John got up from the table and rushed inside. “Nurse! Come quickly!”