A Sahib's Daughter (13 page)

He and Kala were the last to leave. There were many other exhibitors loading their vehicles, and they had to wait their turn. He tucked a red rose and a few strawberries away for his wife. She had likely spent the day alone waiting for his return. He knew Ramona wouldn’t mind. Back at the bungalow, he unloaded the truck, exhausted. It had been a long day, long, but possibly the best day of his life.

He took the short walk to the labor lines and walked up the path to his home under the banana trees. The house was lit and filled with people. Baffled, he walked in holding his rosettes, the red rose and the strawberries. Had they already heard about his success? For the second time that night, he saw things in a blur and didn’t fully understand. And for the second time that night, he heard news that he had been waiting a lifetime to hear. Usha ran up to him smiling joyfully. It had nothing to do with his rosettes, his red rose or his wads of cash. With eyes brimming over with tears, Usha broke the news to him that she was beyond her first trimester for the first time. She was with child!

Over the following months, Ravi, Samira and Mark fell into a routine that worked for all three of them. Mark acknowledged that the couple wanted a certain amount of alone time, which he was happy to accommodate as long as they included him in some of their activities. They played tennis as often as they could, though it was not tennis season and the courts were often water-logged. It seemed that it was always either too hot or too wet. There were only so many destinations to drive to on the motor bike. Samira refused to include Ravi’s bungalow as a viable destination, no matter how hard he tried to persuade her otherwise. It was not so much that she didn’t trust him, as much as she knew she could not to be relied on to resist him.

She finally accepted a dinner invitation to his house with Mark as chaperone. It was a hot, muggy night. Bright, yellow stars lit their way from the car to the verandah in the moth-infested air. There wasn’t much information about Ravi to be gleaned from his bungalow. It was furnished by the company, and he had few personal effects. There was a picture of his parents on the mantelpiece, a distinguished-looking couple looking sideways away from the camera in a typical studio pose. Samira noted that Ravi had inherited his father’s green eyes and his mother’s chiseled features. There were no books, as he was not a reader, but there were interesting pictures on the wall and brass sculptures on the mantelpiece.

Samira walked over to study them, commenting,

“My, what an interesting collection of statues!”

Ravi watched her quizzically and laughed to see her blush when she realized that it was a set of Kama Sutra figurines in various sexual poses, most of them requiring a high degree of gymnastic prowess.

“Ohhh!” she was embarrassed by her faux pas. “I didn’t realize what they were.”

“Sorry, baby, this is a bachelor pad.”

Mark had seen the figures many times and was memorizing the poses for future reference. He wondered whether Ravi and Samira had made love. It was obvious that Samira had never been here before. And there was nowhere else they could have possibly done it. Or was there? He was going back to college soon, and they would have plenty of opportunity to do whatever they liked. Not that he thought Samira would necessarily allow Ravi to have his way. She was too much of, well, not a prude, but she was too smart to be taken advantage of. One thing was clear. Ravi was smitten by her.

In some ways, he couldn’t wait to go back to college. At least there were plenty of young ladies there. His college mates always came back full of stories about their sexual adventures. He hated to admit that he was a virgin. There wasn’t a single girl remotely in his age group to be seen for miles.

Ravi’s bearer came in with their drinks, Kingfisher beer for the men and Ruby wine for Sammy. There were also peanuts and hot gram.

“Well, it’s nice to get away from the old folks once in a while,” said Mark.

“They’re probably enjoying the break from us as much as we are from them,” laughed Samira.

She and Mark had never done this before. It had always been the family that was invited out to dinner or went on trips. This was fun, something new and exciting and part of being an adult. She looked towards Ravi’s bedroom. If she took one of her bathroom investigations, would he direct her towards his room or the guest room? Well, she was going to find out.

“Ravi, where’s the bathroom?” she asked.

“Come this way.” He leapt up gallantly and showed her into one of the bedrooms off the drawing room. She could see at once that it was the guest bedroom.

“The bathroom’s through there,” he said. “I hope you’ll find everything you need.”

She walked in, bolted the door and looked around. There were pink towels on the towel rail and pink soaps, shampoo and bubble bath. As though he were expecting a woman guest! Were these for her or did he have a penchant for pink? She noted that everything was new and unopened. Should she say something? She walked out to rejoin the men.

“Nice bathroom,” she grinned.

“I tried to find everything you’d need,” said Ravi. “I hope I didn’t miss anything.”

So it had been for her. That was really nice of him. Or was it that he’d been hoping to…well, if he had he would have put it all in his bathroom. Right? What would she do if…or when…he tried to make love to her? She knew that it was only a matter of time. Did she want to? The answer was obvious. She did! But that didn’t mean she would. Even after all these months, she wasn’t altogether sure she trusted him.

Suddenly, the phone rang. The sound echoed through the sparsely furnished room. Ravi rushed to his desk and grabbed it.

“Yes, hello, Papa. How are you? I’m fine. How’s Mama? Good, good. I see. I don’t think so. No. Well, let me think about it. I’ll call you back soon. Love to Mama. Bye.”

He replaced the receiver, somewhat flustered. It was obviously a trunk call from Delhi, which perhaps explained his brevity.

“Sorry. That was my father. Family matters, nothing urgent. Let’s have dinner! I hope you’re hungry.”

He went to the back of the house and ordered the bearer to serve dinner. Afterwards they played cards late into the night, then drove home and crept about the house and into their beds like mischievous children.

Chapter 10

Northern Ireland, 1943-1971

Justin Laird grew up in Newcastle in County Down, one of the five counties of Northern Ireland. His father, Edward, owned a bakery shop on the promenade. Irene, his mother, helped run the shop in the mornings after Justin and his brother Adrian went to school. Edward started the ovens up early so that a fresh batch of soda and wheaten farls would be ready for his first customers at eight o’clock.

By the time Irene arrived to help prepare the scones, potato bread and doughnuts, the smell of freshly baked farls was already wafting down the street. She was a stocky, full-bosomed woman who had married late in life. She was Edward’s second wife. His first wife had left him for a young jockey from Kilkenny, leaving him to rear the two boys, who were three and six. Irene’s family owned a farm in County Armagh. The oldest of seven, she assumed that she had been left “on the shelf” when she was still single at thirty-five. She worked as a hairdresser in Newry, in one of the side streets facing a parking lot in an unfashionable part of the dingy market town.

Newry was close to the southern border, and its residents were well situated to participate in cross-border trade. Farmers sold their produce to the highest bidder, which would be largely determined by the value of the Irish punt against the British pound. People would buy their petrol, groceries and other necessities in either the North or the South, depending on which was cheaper at the time.

During a period when goods were cheaper in the South, a customer walked into the salon where Irene worked from the parking lot across the street. He was badly in need of a haircut. He was at pains to explain that he was not normally a frequenter of these unisex salons, as though there was something illicit about them, but had a very important meeting to attend in Dundalk, for which he needed a haircut.

Irene had appeared from the back of the salon and threw a cape over his shoulders. She was soon tut-tutting about the state of his hair. Edward, a well-built, clean-shaven business man, was not accustomed to feeling intimidated or to having his hair cut by a woman. He was unprepared for the feeling of helplessness he experienced in the hands of Irene. But yes, he trusted her judgment implicitly, he told her, enjoying the pleasant sensation of her gigantic assets pushing against his shoulder. He agreed that he wanted a style that was professional and distinguished. At that moment, there was nothing he wouldn’t have done just to gain her approval.

So she snipped away, promising him that he would be pleased with the result. When she spun him around to look in the mirror, he was aghast to see that she had cut off his prized comb-over, and that he now looked like exactly what he was, a balding, middle-aged man, with no comforting lock of hair to conceal the naked patch on his head. Feeling exposed and vulnerable, he rushed out of the salon to his meeting in Dundalk, where he succeeded in closing the sale of his petrol station in Belfast.

He discovered to his intense surprise that Irene had been right. People started to take him more seriously. There was no more of that giggling behind his back that he had tried so hard to ignore. Also, luck seemed to go his way. Not only did the sale of his petrol station in Belfast go smoothly, he was also successful in acquiring a small bakery shop in Newcastle for next to nothing. Every time anyone complimented him on his hair, he thought of Irene. He also found that he could not forget the sensation of her breasts pushing against his back. So it was perhaps not completely by chance the next time he was driving through Newry that he happened to stop at the Snip It and Set It salon. He told the receptionist that he needed a cut and asked for Irene.

He had timed it for just before five o’clock, so he could invite her to join him for a drink after work. He took her to the very grand Manor Hotel where he ordered gin and tonics. They sat at a table by the window in the bar. With auburn hair and a freckled face, she was by no means an attractive woman, yet her ample proportions and flamboyant style of dress gave her a certain presence. She had a hearty laugh and launched into her second gin and tonic with gusto. Because it was going so well, he asked for a table in the dining room and bought her dinner.

He didn’t have time to waste. He wanted someone who would keep house, care for his boys and keep him warm at night. Not only did she excite him sexually, something his thin, beautiful wife had failed to do, she didn’t seem to be in the least bit deterred by the fact that he had two young children who needed to be taken care of. She had no illusions as to her marriageability. But as the days passed, they developed a passion for each other that took them both by surprise. They went to her family’s farm where she introduced him around proudly, and it emerged that in addition to her other attributes, she also knew how to bake.

Adrian was nearly seven years old and Justin still three when they first met Irene after the civil wedding ceremony in Downpatrick Town Hall. She gathered the boys into her arms and rustled up something for them to eat, her remedy for every situation in life. Adrian still remembered his mother and bristled at the thought of her having left on account of some insufficiency on his part. He grew sullen and insecure, never revealing his memories of his mother to anyone. Justin grew up oblivious to the fact that Irene was not his real mother. Adrian continued to maintain a certain distance from Irene, which she could never quite permeate, with the result that she lavished all her pent-up motherliness on Justin.