Of Marriageable Age (17 page)

'Did your father remarry?'

'Yeah. He married a rich white lady, and they live in a fancy house in London.'

Trixie's dad was a Trinidadian artist. Improvident, happy-go- lucky, non-political and real, real cool, said Trixie. When Lucy Quentin threw him out he went to England to recover and start a new life, without a penny. As it was just before Christmas he painted ten black Santa Clauses on thin cardboard, folded them into cards, wrote a witty Christmas message on them and stood on a street corner somewhere in London holding them out in a fan to the passers-by, wearing a red fur-lined coat himself. In five minutes the cards were all gone. So he went home and painted some more, and they were snapped up too, mostly by West Indians, but also by white Londoners who thought them original and exotic and ethnic. Because Trixie's dad was a gifted painter, and his black Santa Clauses were tiny works of art. That's how he met this rich white lady who at the time ran a small advertising agency. She took him off the streets and got those cards marketed and got him going as an 'ethnic illustrator'.

'Finally she married him and gave him two sons and they opened their own greeting card business, and since then he doesn't care a fig about me.'

'Of course he does.'

'He doesn't. He's got this white lady and two half-white sons, why should he care a fig about me?'

'Because you're his daughter.'

Saroj's experience of fathers was such that a father's indifference to a daughter was absolutely unthinkable. Impossible.

'Well, why doesn't he send for me then? This place is so utterly dead boring. I'd give anything to live in London. I keep begging him to let me come but he just says Mum won't let me, but if he really wanted to he'd fight her for me. I bet it's that white woman he's got.'

'Well, I don't know. Perhaps he thinks you're better off with your mother. And she hasn't got anyone but you. I think it's fair enough. And you must admit she's brilliant. I'd give anything for a mother like that.'

'Why? What's yours like?'

'Oh, you know... nothing special. Old-fashioned housewife type. She's very religious. Boring. But my dad's worse. Much worse. He's lethal.'

And then she told Trixie all about her family. About Ma and Baba, and about the Ghosh boy, and having to marry him. About the prison of her life.

'It's like living in a convent,' she complained. 'I've got to break out else I'll just go crazy, I tell you. And it's so unfair. All my half-brothers and my brother get to go to London to university, and me? No way. Why can't I go to London too? Just because I'm a bloody girl!'

'Well,' said Trixie, flashing her long white grin, 'we'll soon see about that. You came to just the right person. Saroj, why don't we just run away to London? I mean, not now, but later, like when we're sixteen? If we start planning for it now, then...'

Their eyes met then, and they grinned at each other, and both of them knew.

They knew; not in the sense of knowing this or that. Not that they could see into the future and sense what it held for them, or that they knew of Destiny's plan for them, or about Ganesh and Nat and London and the babies they would or wouldn't have, and all the rest of it. They simply knew. They recognised. They cognised.

As if some little spark in Trixie cognised some little spark in Saroj, and those two bright little sparks leaped in joy and bounced out at each other saying, Hi, here I am! Been missing you all my life. That's the way true friendships begin, those rare friendships as true as gold, that stand the knocks of time. Trixie yelped.

'Saroj: you and me in Carnaby Street, okay?'

They clapped and slapped their hands, hugged and laughed. A battle-cry was born.

11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SAVITRI

Madras, 1921

M
R
B
ALDWIN HAD BEEN
David's tutor for two years now. Fiona's governess, Miss Chadwick, had resigned to marry a civil-service chap, and in fact it was through this very man that the Lindsays were introduced to Mr Baldwin, who was immediately employed to replace Miss Chadwick. Mr Baldwin's father was also a civil servant, and Mr Baldwin had been born in Bombay. He had gone 'home' for schooling, of course, but as soon as he could he had come back to his real home, which was India, to seek a position as private tutor. The Lindsays were his first employers, and he was only twenty-one when he was given charge over Fiona, nine, and David, four. From the very start they loved him.

Mr Baldwin made learning a delight. No subject was so boring that Mr Baldwin could not bring to it the light of humour, and reflect it with a fascination that made them eager to learn. He was a small, wiry, energetic man, perpetually in motion. Children must learn with movement, was his devise. He had them climbing trees to count the leaves, and digging holes to bury stones. He took them for nature walks, talking first to David, on his level, and then to Fiona, on her level, explaining and discussing their discoveries. Mrs Lindsay, at first perplexed by these unorthodox methods, quickly saw the amazing results, and left well alone.

Mr Baldwin had long been aware of Savitri. He had first discovered her in January that year, hiding in the middle of a thick bougainvillea bush just behind the rose arbour, silently watching and listening while he taught Fiona long division and David the addition of single digits. He might not have noticed her at all if it had not been for the hairs on the back of his neck. They stood on end. Mr Baldwin knew he was being watched, and from behind. He let the children work for a while on their own simply to give himself the time to adjust to the situation and figure out how to react.

The feeling of being watched was insistent; he was quite certain of it. But there was nothing unpleasant about it. The watcher was not hostile. Mr Baldwin held his thoughts still for a while to see what would happen... and there! In the space between two thoughts he felt it; something soft and gentle, like the tendril of a honeysuckle vine, perhaps, reaching out, easing in, settling down comfortably right there between his thoughts, with a cosy warm stillness, like honey, seeping in through the spaces in his mind and filling him with sweet, benevolent warmth. Its source was the thick silence behind him, behind the lattice-work of the rose arbour.

Mr Baldwin moved so that he half-faced the lattice. He did not turn his face but strained to see out of the corner of his left eye, and when that told him nothing stretched out for David's exercise book. Pretending to correct the exercises David had just done, he managed to turn in the right direction and carefully peered over the edge of the book. The diamond holes between the criss-crossing slabs of green wood were black, for the bougainvillea was tall and thick. But in one of those dark diamonds something shone, something small and living, which Mr Baldwin knew to be an eye.

He looked at David then. 'What's the name of that little girl you like to play with? The girl who waits for you after lessons?'

'Savitri?' said David, looking up. Mr Baldwin's sharpened hearing noted a swift intake of breath from the depths of the bougainvillea.

'Yes, that's it. Did you know she's watching us?'

The moment he spoke the words Savitri took off. Like a frightened chipmunk she charged from the midst of the bush and would have disappeared into the foliage beyond had Mr Baldwin, anticipating her flight, not been faster, and had her skirt not caught on one of the branches blocking her path. But there he was, waiting for her as she emerged from behind the cascading orange blossoms, torn, scratched and dishevelled, a taut, tiny thing with arms so skinny he thought they'd snap as he closed his fists around them.

She did not struggle. Her nature was not to struggle against but to face up to adversity in all calmness. So she looked into his face with innocent capitulation and said only, 'Excuse me, Mr Baldwin. Please don't tell the madam.'

But that was far from Mr Baldwin's mind. He let go of the child, only to take her little hand in his and lead her around the latticework into the rose arbour where Fiona and David stared at her, Fiona in surprise, David in joy.

'Come on, sit down, sit down,' said Mr Baldwin, patting the bench beside him, and, her shyness put to flight by his very heartiness, she slipped onto the bench and looked up at him in expectant silence, her fingers interlocked on the table before her.

'Do you go to school, Savitri?' asked Mr Baldwin.

'Sometimes. When I don't have to help my father.' She said it matter-of-factly, without complaint.

'Do you like school?'

She nodded vigorously.

'Can you show me what you've learned?'

Savitri nodded again, drew David's book towards her and picked up his pencil. She bent over the exercise book and, the tip of her tongue licking over her bottom lip in concentration, wrote for several minutes, watched by Mr Baldwin and the two children.

When she was finished she pushed the book over to Mr Baldwin and he read, written in a small, disjointed, childish but nevertheless precise script:

I wonderd lonely as a cluod…

Mr Baldwin read the poem aloud and then he looked at Savitri and said. 'Who taught you to write this?'

'I learned it from David's book, sir. From David's poetry book. He lent it to me.'

'Do you know what a daffodil is?'

She nodded. 'It's a flower, a yellow flower.'

'Do you know what daffodils looks like? Have you seen a picture?'

'No, sir, but I think they must look like marigolds. Marigolds are yellow too, and gold, like little suns. So it's like a whole field of marigolds, and they're dancing in the sunshine. I closed my eyes and I saw them.'

Mr Baldwin had looked at her intently for a long time, not saying anything, and she felt the spaces in his thought-body and knew he was not like other grown-up people. But after that she was careful not to be caught again.

M
R
B
ALDWIN
first discovered that Savitri could speak with animals on the day the king cobra came. David screamed when the cobra glided across their path through the swampy area in the back drive, and Mr Baldwin cried, 'Look out! Get back!' He looked around for a weapon, but there was none. The cobra reared his hooded head and shook his tongue, hissed, stared at them as if considering where to strike, and there were waves of venomous anger all around them, and waves of fear. But Savitri silently edged forward in front of David, pushing him gently back. She closed her eyes and bowed to the cobra, asking his forgiveness, for they had disturbed him in his kingdom. She faced the cobra and drew the waves of fear and anger into herself, dissolving them, and the cobra, seeing the danger was gone, slid on his way into the undergrowth.

When the cobra was gone Mr Baldwin laid a hand on Fiona's upper arm, which was cold from fear and shaking, and David's sunbrowned face looked pale with fright. Only Savitri was unperturbed. She looked up to meet Mr Baldwin's gaze.

'Child, you were very brave!' said the teacher. But she shook her head.

'No, sir, I wasn't brave. He's my friend. I've often seen him, he lives near the anthill and he doesn't hurt anybody. He's the King, here, you know.'

'Muthu must get one of the boys to kill him. You can help to find him.'

'No, no! You mustn't kill him!' Savitri cried. 'He won't hurt anybody, I promised him nobody would hurt him and then he won't hurt anybody and if I break my promise he'll be angry and then he will hurt somebody! Please, please Mr Baldwin, don't tell Mrs Lindsay! He's my friend and he trusts me! I'll talk to him and tell him not to come on this path again but please don't tell the mistress!'

'What do you mean, he's your
friend?
Do you go near him of your own accord?'

'But of course, Mr Baldwin. I talk to him and he talks to me.'

'How do you talk to him?'

'I bow down. Inside me I bow down and at the very bottom of myself I find the space where I can talk to him. We can be friends because we are both in that space.'

Mr Baldwin nodded. 'I see. And can you talk to other animals this way?'

'Oh yes, with all animals because all animals are in that space. And birds too.'

Mr Baldwin turned to David. 'Did you know that, David? That she can talk to animals?'

David nodded proudly. 'Oh yes, sir. I know. All the animals love her and come near. Even the little squirrels and the birds.'

Savitri wasn't sure if Mr Baldwin approved or not, and was a little anxious for the cobra, because killing the King would be very inauspicious and bring bad luck on the whole family — the Lindsay family, for killing him, and the Iyer family, for she, an Iyer, would have broken her promise to the King.

But Mr Baldwin only gave her that curious look and said nothing.

He had given her that curious look before — last week, when the Lindsays returned from Ooty and school had started again, this time without Fiona. Savitri had showed him the exercise book she had filled in the holidays. He had leafed through it, read the pages filled with writing, poems copied from David's book, and passages from the Bible. He had looked at her and said nothing. This was strange, for an Englishman. Usually they had so many words they left no spaces at all, which was why they were so difficult to know. But Mr Baldwin spoke Savitri's language. He knew about silence.

12

CHAPTER TWELVE

NAT

Madras, 1949

A
FEW DAYS
after the day that never was, Doctor said to Nat, 'Tomorrow we are going to Madras, Nat. I want you to meet someone.'

So that Friday afternoon the two of them mounted the Triumph and set off for Madras. It was a ride of over seven hours, but they broke it several times, stopping at wayside coffee shops where Nat had a Gold Spot and Milk Bikis and Doctor drank coffee and ate a whole bunch of apple-bananas, and they stopped for tiffin at a restaurant called Ashok Lodge where Nat ate two
puris
and Doctor ate an enormous paper
dosai
at least two feet long, crisp and folded over. Arriving in the city, Doctor wove his motorbike through an alarming medley of buses, motor-rickshaws, lorries, cars, all of which seemed to have no other goal in mind than to attack the two of them perched on their defenceless Triumph, charging into them and swerving away at the very last second with a deafening blare of the horn.