‘One illness paved the way to another. The final one was pneumonia.’ His hand rested on hers, as she continued to hold his wrist. ‘The last time we met . . . I never meant to suggest the bomb wasn’t a terrible thing.’
‘No, of course you didn’t.’ She let go of his wrist and walked away a few steps before turning to face him again. ‘So you’re here to see me. Because your mother is dead.’
‘I’m here to see you. My mother . . . yes, it’s true. I wouldn’t have come if she’d been alive.’
She had imagined him coming for her, countless times these last few weeks, even though she believed it impossible. But never like this.
‘What’s the matter? Did her death disrupt your marriage plans? Have you rushed here in search of the first available woman to make your tea for you in the morning and massage your head with oil at night?’
‘I wouldn’t have to come all the way from Dilli to Mussoorie to find the first available woman.’
‘You’re impossibly vain,’ she said, turning away from him and walking towards the oak tree at the end of the garden.
‘Stay, please. Please. Stay.’
She stopped, her back still towards him, and waited for him to walk up to her.
‘I grew up believing in continuity, Hiroko.’ His voice was more sombre than she’d ever heard. ‘I grew up honouring it.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. The calligraphy trade would have been continuity for you. Not a life of playing chess with an Englishman.’
‘I have uncles and cousins who work for the English. It’s what we do during the day. It’s employment. And then we come home, and take off our shirts and trousers, replace them with kurta pyjama and become men of our moholla again. That’s our true world.’
‘I see. So I’ve never seen you in your true world?’
‘No, you haven’t.’ He lifted a hand into the space between them. ‘And I’ve never seen you in yours.’
‘Mine doesn’t exist any more.’
‘Neither does mine. I don’t only mean because of my mother. This Pakistan, it’s taking my friends, my sister, it’s taking the familiarity from the streets of Dilli. Thousands are leaving, thousands more will leave. What am I holding on to? Just kite-strings attached to air at either end.’
‘And so?’
‘I have to learn how to live in a new world. With new rules. As you have had to do. No, as you are doing. Perhaps it would be less lonely for both of us to have a companion. Some constancy is comforting during change.’
The wet grass had seeped up through her shoes. She was cold and irritated and there was too much in him she didn’t understand.
‘I could never live the life your sisters-in-law accept.’
That was her version of goodbye. But Sajjad saw in it an offer.
‘Yes,’ he said, smiling with a delight she couldn’t understand. ‘There are other options, of course. There’s New Delhi. Both a world apart from the Old City and just a few minutes away by bicycle. A great city must always present you with options, and Dilli-Delhi is the greatest of cities. I’ve been thinking of moving there, you know.’
‘Have you?’ She was very confused now.
‘Yes, I’m going to buy a house, just a small house. One of those modern ones. And I’m going to work with a law firm. I went there just a few days ago, to speak to a solicitor I know. I can start whenever I want.’ The solicitor, an Indian, had formerly worked at James’s law firm, and when he left to join another practice he told Sajjad to come and see him if he ever needed employment. Time we stopped letting the English take the credit for all the work we do, he said when Sajjad went to his office earlier in the week. You’re not actually qualified, but we’ll find a way to take care of that. You know more about the law than any of these fresh-faced boys with their newly inked law degrees. It’s a disgrace how James Burton has squandered your talents.
‘Congratulations, Sajjad.’ She found she was genuinely happy for him. ‘I’m pleased for you.’
‘There’s just one problem.’ He looked very grave. ‘Perhaps you can help me with this. Who will make my tea in the morning?’
‘Oh.’ She blinked at him. ‘I hate the tea in India.’
‘Ah.’ He had done what he could. In his heart, he hadn’t ever truly believed she would say yes. ‘Well. I wish you the very best.’ He extended his hand. She took it, and then neither of them let go.
They stood there for what seemed a very long time, fingers immobile in each other’s grip. Then she took a deep breath, as if preparing to submerge herself in an underwater world.
‘Come with me. I want to tell you something.’ Still holding on to his hand she led him to a bench in the middle of a covered pavilion on a slope near the Burton property. On most days the pavilion commanded a clear view of the Himalayas but today it just felt like the last stop before the edge of the world.
And there, for the first time since it happened, Hiroko talked about what had happened to her when the bomb fell.
The mist gave way to rain as she spoke – not a gentle rain that whispered of harvest and bounty but a harsh, hammering rain. It fell like sheets of liquid steel, pounding all the life out of the tiny creatures in its path. Monstrous watery shapes formed and disintegrated before Sajjad’s eyes as his tears splintered the rain. If he let go of Hiroko she would slip away in fluid form. Everything about her so precarious.
When she finished speaking, she was lying on the bench, her head in Sajjad’s lap while his hands ran lightly through her hair as though afraid it would fall out if he touched it too roughly.
‘So you see, I can’t in fairness agree to be anyone’s wife,’ she said, sitting up. ‘No one knows the long-term effects of this thing. They don’t know if it will affect my ability to have children. They don’t know that it won’t kill me in another five years.’
He leaned forward, so their foreheads were nearly touching.
‘I like being with you. I would like to go on being with you. I almost put that aside myself in fear of a possible tomorrow, but if these days teach us anything it’s that all we can do in preparation for tomorrow is nothing. So let’s talk about today.’
She smiled. Optimism. That was Sajjad’s gift. She opened her mouth and breathed it in.
‘Can I ask, have you ever kissed a woman?’
‘A gentleman doesn’t answer such questions.’
‘I just want to make sure you know how to do it. My decision may hinge on the matter.’
‘I see I shall have to demonstrate.’
11
‘Where do you think they are?’ James asked, for the seventeenth time that day (Elizabeth was keeping count, and noting that the spaces between each repetition were getting increasingly narrow). He looked out of the window of the family room to see nothing but the evening approach.
‘Really what you want to know is, what are they doing?’ Elizabeth replied, curling herself on the sofa and picking up the book which she had been pretending to read ever since she and James had returned to the cottage and left Hiroko and Sajjad outside. ‘If what we used to do in all our private moments at a time in our life when we looked at each other in that way is anything to go by . . .’
‘For heaven’s sake, Elizabeth.’
‘It embarrasses you to remember it,’ she said flatly.
‘No, it doesn’t.’ He sat down on an armchair next to her. ‘I just don’t think it’s the same situation at all. He can’t possibly be thinking of marrying her.’
‘Why not? Because it’ll make things socially awkward for us to invite him to our farewell party in Delhi with the “smart set”? Or because Hiroko might think that the “our home is your home” offer continues to apply, and what if she should arrive with him in London and expect to be put up in our house? What will your mother say? What will the neighbours say?’ At James’s look of irritation (once, he would have laughed and thrown a cushion at her for the acuity of her response) she added, ‘His mother is dead. That changes everything. He wouldn’t have come here if he was going to offer anything less than marriage. That will give her two options – him or us. Which would you choose?’
‘You could at least try talking to her.’
‘She won’t listen,’ she said.
‘So you disapprove, too?’ He leaned forward, but only slightly.
‘It makes me nervous to be unable to imagine the life she’ll lead as Sajjad’s wife. We really know nothing about Delhi beyond our narrow circle.’
‘He’s a good man.’
‘Good men don’t necessarily mean good marriages.’
They looked at each other, and James came to sit beside her on the sofa.
‘New start when we get back to London?’
Across the room was a sealed envelope containing the letter Elizabeth had finally written to Cousin Wilhelm. In German it said:
Dear Willie,
You make New York sound so appealing. Yes! I will come there. But not with James. I am leaving him. Please, please say nothing of this to anyone. Even he doesn’t know yet. I will go back to England with him and settle him into his life there. And then I will come to New York and see if there’s anything of your cousin Ilse left to be salvaged from the lonely, bitter (but still well groomed, you’ll be glad to know) wreck that is Mrs Burton. Dearest, why didn’t I simply listen to you when you said it would kill me to be the Good Wife? I will write to you from London when my plans are more assured.
With love, I.
Elizabeth touched his cheek gently.
‘New start, James.’
James patted her hand and stood up quickly so that she wouldn’t see the tears coming to his eyes. In doing that, he ended any thoughts she had of tearing up the letter.
‘On the matter of London, I think we should leave sooner than we’d planned. I think we should leave as soon as possible.’
‘I thought we wanted one last Mussoorie season.’
‘I don’t know what’s going to happen in this country the day British rule ends.’ He started to pace. ‘They haven’t even settled the boundaries yet. Millions of people with no idea which country they’ll find themselves in less than a month from now. It’s madness waiting to happen. And Delhi . . . so many Muslims, so many Hindus. If the violence reaches there, it’ll be carnage.’
‘But James. How can we leave Hiroko in that? After all she’s already had to suffer?’
‘Well, you tell her not to marry him then.’
But it was already too late for that. If Kamran Ali in the cottage next door had gone out to his garage he would have seen that the MG in which he’d been giving Hiroko driving lessons was gone.
‘Where are we going?’ Sajjad had said, earlier in the day, getting into the passenger seat after he’d pushed the car far enough away from the cottages for Hiroko to turn on the engine without being heard. ‘And to repeat my question yet again, if he doesn’t mind you using his car why couldn’t you start it up in the garage?’
‘We’re going to get married,’ Hiroko replied, which successfully removed the other question from Sajjad’s mind. ‘What do we need? A mosque?’
‘We’ll have to have a civil ceremony,’ he said, since pulling her into his arms didn’t seem a wise option while she was so intent on pushing knobs and levers on the dashboard. ‘By Muslim law, I can’t marry out of my religion unless you’re a Jew or a Christian. You aren’t, are you?’
‘No.’ She finally found the switch she wanted and turned on the headlights. The more brightly coloured flowers were starting to splash colour in the mist, but it was still far from clear on the road ahead. ‘How does one become a Muslim?’
‘One repeats the Kalma – la ilaha ilallah Muhammadur rasool Allah – three times.’
‘Say that slower.’ As the car headed down the hill, speeding up, the flowers appeared increasingly blurred in their frenzy to burst out of the surrounding greyness.
‘Why?’
‘So I can repeat it three times.’
Sajjad was silent for a while. ‘Don’t you at least want to know what it means?’ he said at last.
‘No. I’m not saying it because I believe it. I’m saying it because I see no reason to make things more difficult for you with your family than is necessary.’
Again he was silent, and this time she began to worry.
‘Have I offended your beliefs?’
‘I’m just surprised by your practicality.’ He touched her arm. ‘And grateful for it.’
By the time they found a mosque she was a Muslim.
And by the time James had asked for the seventh time, ‘Where do you think they are?’ Hiroko was taking her husband’s hand and leading him into a secluded grove with springy turf squelching beneath their bare feet, a blanket over Sajjad’s shoulder. (Hiroko’s remarkable practicality had made her stop to procure it on the way from the mosque, though her reason for doing so had only just made itself known to Sajjad.)