Of Marriageable Age (15 page)

There was a line of ladies and children waiting for milk, and as always they all greeted him with big smiles and folded hands when he came, and tried to push him to the front of the line, because Nat brought them luck. They did this every day, but his father had told him he must never accept any special favours, so as always Nat smiled and joined the end of the line.

Usually, he liked fetching milk. He liked Kanairam and his wife and his cow. They kept the cow under a thatched roof outside their hut, and when it was milking time they tied the calf up to one of the posts holding up the roof and Kanairam squatted down beside the cow and pulled at her teats, squirting the warm foaming milk into an old battered bucket. His wife squatted near him with another bucket, out of which she ladled the milk into the containers the women held out; most of them bought just a few ounces, and Nat always liked to be last because he was the only one who bought a whole pint, which somehow shamed him. But his father said he must drink lots of milk so as to grow big and strong and learn well. Every evening his father made him a cup of steaming Horlicks, and every morning there was milk with sugar, although this morning he had had only half a cup of milk because he had given the other half to the dead baby's brother.

Today he was distracted. He hadn't wanted to get the milk, he hadn't wanted to leave his father with Gopal Uncle, and now he couldn't wait to return home. He raced through the village lane, not greeting anyone, but had to stop and pick up the lid that had fallen off the container because of the milk swirling around inside, and he couldn't put it back on because now it was covered with dirt, and he couldn't run any more because the milk would spill and he'd already spilled so much, which was very naughty. His father always said he must never, ever, waste food because it was an insult to the villagers.

His father and Gopal Uncle were still talking when he got back, and in a way that verified what Nat had felt, that something very horrid was going on. His father's eyes looked up and met his, and contained a deep hurt and a deep anguish he'd never seen in them before, and Gopal Uncle — no, he didn't want to call him Uncle any more, because how angry his eyes looked!

'Nat, go to the back verandah and do your homework, please. Gopal Uncle and I have to discuss some matters!' said his father, and more reluctantly than ever Nat fetched his satchel and half carried, half dragged it to the back verandah, which looked out on the paddy fields and scrubland that stretched out towards the sky, which was now bright and tinted with orange because the sun was preparing to go to rest. Over there, where the sun went down, Nat knew there were far-off countries, that land where his father had once lived for some time, and where he, Nat, would have to go one day to become a doctor.

Nat didn't want that day to come. He wanted to be a doctor, yes, but he never, ever wanted to leave his father. But it seemed you couldn't have one without the other. And now this uncle, this Gopal — Nat knew it was rude to call grown-ups by their first names, without Uncle or Aunt or Ma or Appa as a term of respect, but he didn't want to be polite to this uncle — had brought some new danger with him, a danger he couldn't understand, and it was simply not possible for Nat to do even a scrap of homework, even though Teacher would be cross, although he wouldn’t flog him as he did the other boys because he was the
sahib daktah's
son.

Nat listened. And though he couldn't understand what the men were saying, he knew that Gopal Uncle was a threat.

'I am his father and I have the right to bring him up the way I see fit!'

'What kind of a life he is living? The life of a peasant! If I had known you would do this to him I would never have allowed…'

'Allowed! Allowed! You're talking of
allowed!
Who are you to allow anything! If what you are saying is true why didn't you speak up two years ago!'

'I am telling you, Mani would not allow it! Only because of your money! You think you can buy a child and then the child belongs to you!'

'I did not buy him! I have every right to him and you know it!'

'Mani was a rogue and you believed every word he said but I alone know the truth, I and Fiona…'

'And now Mani is dead you think you can burst in just like that and take him to Madras!'

'And you want him raised as a peasant!'

'I want him to be a doctor, just like me. Isn't that the Indian way: that a boy should follow in the footsteps of his father? Isn't that what all this caste business is about?'

'You are very right, but there are other doctors for the kind of work you are doing. You belong in another world and you could offer Nat that world instead of this.'

'This happens to be my world, and the world Nat knows and loves.'

'But this is not your rightful place. You are an Englishman. You should be among your own people.'

'I'm an Indian. You seem to have forgotten.'

'Only on paper.'

'I'm as much an Indian as you where it really counts, or even more so. You of all people should know that!'

'To us Indians you will always be an Englishman, a
sahib
, and you can't change that. You cannot change Indians and the way they think and you cannot change India. This is a big country and there is so much poverty. What you are doing is just a drop in the ocean. You cannot heal all the millions.'

'But I can do my part. I'm not trying to change anyone or anything. I'm just doing my part and teaching Nat to do the same. I'm showing him a way of life he'll one day thank me for!'

'Thank
you for! One day he will curse you for not opening up to him every opportunity a boy should have! If I had known I would never have let you… how much more you could have offered him! That is the only reason I did not speak up sooner, because I knew you could offer more — the West, a good education, but not
this!
If you had taken him to England, let him grow up there and be a doctor worthy of the name and with all the privileges he deserves I would not have interfered, but this…'

'Privileges! I remember a day when there was no talk of privileges but only of shame.'

'Times and circumstances change, you know that as well as I do. But the fact remains: he is born with privileges and he should take advantage of them. You, of all people! You're an Oxford man! Eton and Oxford! And Nat should have the same!'

'I want him to grow up with values and substance and not with glitter and so-called privileges. I don't care how prosperous you've become, Gopal. With me he'll have a better life, a life of quality. It is what his mother would have wanted.'

'Leave
her
out of this!'

'No, I won't! Now we've come to speak of her let's stay with her. Because this is all about her.'

Nat pressed his hands to his ears. He could not take it any more. It was too much for a boy to bear. No, not his mother!

Of course, he knew very well that every child had a mother, you couldn't be born otherwise, and he knew that some mothers died early and those children grew up without mothers, or with other ladies when their fathers remarried. But Nat also remembered clearly that place with all the children, and he knew all too well that his father was not really his father. Nat knew that his father had forgotten about that place with all the children, had forgotten that they weren't really father and son, because he always referred to Nat as 'my son'; and Nat didn't want to remind his father that it wasn't strictly speaking true. His father was his whole world.

But inside his heart Nat knew one little piece of that world was missing. He didn't often think about it, but today again, when Gopal Uncle had said, 'Your mother would be very proud of you!' it had come back, a stinging pain, a very sharp ache deep inside, as of something that ought to be, but wasn't.

Now, listening to his father and Gopal Uncle arguing, for that was what they were doing, shouting at each other and shouting about his mother, he knew that ache could only grow and all he could do was shut it all out, squeezing his palms to his ears so not even a whisper filtered through. His mother was already lost. Let her stay in that lost land!
But please, please, let me not lose my father, too!
He buried his head, with his hands still over his ears, between his knees, and stayed like that for a long, long time, so as not to hear the shouting.

When he cautiously took his hands away only silence met his ears. It was dark, and time for meals, which Pandu's wife sent over in the tiffin carrier, and which they took in a cold, hostile silence, and then it was time to sleep, and in the morning Gopal Uncle had already left, and it was as if that day had never been. Nat shut it out of his life, for Gopal Uncle never came back, and his father never mentioned that name again.

Nat gave the fire-engine to the village boys. They all shared it, each boy keeping it for one day and putting it back in its box for the night. But whenever it was Nat's turn he passed it on to the next boy. The fire engine was over ten years old before Ravana the monkey-king found it in somebody's hut and pulled it to pieces. Murugan, the village smith, tried to repair it but it was too badly damaged, and four of the wheels were lost

10

CHAPTER TEN

SAROJ

Georgetown, 1964

S
AROJ'S
thirteenth birthday fell on a Saturday, mid-September. The following Monday the new school year began.

In this new school year they — they being Miss Dewer and the rest of the Bishops' High School staff — leap-frogged her over one class. Saroj found herself sitting next to Trixie Macintosh.

She had noticed Trixie before, of course, when she'd been in her former class. You couldn't help noticing Trixie, the big, brown, gawky colt of a girl who seemed to cavort and caper constantly along the decks of Bishops' High, falling up the stairs and over her own ungainly legs. Trixie was always in the middle of every knot of giggling schoolgirls. She was funny and witty, with a contagious laugh that sprinkled mirth like confetti on all those in her orbit. Her laughter began as a deep chuckle down in her belly, and bubbled out in a rippling fountain that spiralled up into a pealing crescendo, sparkling like champagne. Even if you didn't get the joke you had to laugh.

Trixie in the classroom was an experience. Sitting next to her seemed to Saroj the heights of bliss. Trixie would look at you and raise her eyebrows in a quizzical way that made you burst out laughing for no other reason than her expression. She would look up at a teacher when called to attention and wiggle her ears and say, quite seriously, 'My ears are all agog!'

And the way she walked: deliberately falling over her own flailing legs, or bumping into a lamppost or a wall or a closed door with a loud crash, and falling in a heap to the floor so that you rushed anxiously to her side to see if she was hurt, only to have her laugh up at you with that endless toothy grin that almost split her face in two.

And the stories she told, that would split your sides, and the comments on the teachers, and the caricatures she drew during lessons on the edges of her work, so accurate you could tell at a glance who she was depicting. She specialised in cartoons with witty captions, passing them on to the girl next to her who would pass it on to the next girl, till the whole class was a quivering mass of smothered giggles. Saroj would grow anxious when Trixie spent an entire maths lesson drawing such a cartoon, not listening to a single word the teacher said, all concentration, and far away from maths. Lackadaisical to a fault, she earned Saroj's admiration for precisely this fault.

It was the same survival instinct that inclined Saroj towards Ganesh's comic levity. She gravitated towards life's clowns like plants seek light; her own latent seriousness, the clay-footed realism that placed her squarely in the company of bores, terrified her. If she gazed at it too long it threatened to devour her. Ganesh brought relief. So did Trixie. They were cut of the same light wood. Up to now she had clung to Ganesh to save herself from drowning in the mire of her own distress, but Ganesh was no longer enough. Now that life had presented her with a new and seemingly insurmountable distress bearing the name of Ghosh, she needed new inspiration. To every poison, its antidote.

Trixie went one stage beyond Ganesh. Ganesh's clowning was basically passive. He made fun of life, but took good care not to get himself into trouble and never faced obstacles head-on. He wouldn't fight his marriage to the Narain girl, he'd simply swim around it. Gan would never raise tempers. Trixie specialised in doing just that. Walk along the long, silent verandah that linked the class rooms of Bishops' High School on any given day and chances were you'd find Trixie cooling her heels outside her class, carving her initials into the wooden railing, having been thrown out by the teacher in charge. There was something in her grin that caused a teacher's blood to boil. Her cheekiness raised storms of wrath, her complete lack of reverence for the subjects taught. In fact, everyone knew that Trixie, when she chose to be, could be brilliant, which was the reason she was in this selective school, and in the A form. It was the
teachers
that bored her to tears, the drone of their voices, their lack of inspiration. She was a rebel against the inherent humdrum of academia. She had no respect for learning. Dead knowledge, she called it.

Whereas Saroj was just the opposite. She was the quintessential Indian girl with her long-plaited hair and below-the-knee uniform. And in this class she was the New Girl, and the drip. Most Indian girls were drips. That's what they all thought, those African and Portuguese and Chinese and mixed-race girls. Indian girls were quiet and well behaved, chaste and studious. They were the teacher's pets and the prefects, perfect head-girl material. And Saroj fitted the mould perfectly.

But there was an outer and an inner Saroj. The outer Saroj was the Baba-trained, docile, obedient, soft-spoken, sweet-natured, aloof, dignified, paper-doll shell of an Indian girl who walked, moved, breathed, followed, spoke when she was spoken to, and did what she was told. Beneath that veneer was the real Saroj; the inner one. Beneath the smoke of what-people-thought-she-was, was the fire of the real, squirming, kicking, bull-headed, fighting-to-get-out me, the what-she-really-was. But nobody would have believed it, at least not before the thirteenth birthday that changed everything. The inner Saroj must live. The outer Saroj must die. That much was clear. But how? The inner Saroj, struggling for life, needed a hand to hold on to, and here within her grasp, less than an arm's length away, was the ideal model for the new character that would shape her destiny. Trixie. To be as free, as uninhibited, as that!