The Wedding Drums

by Marilyn Rodwell

  Two best friends, trying to escape arranged marriages, follow two very different and perilous paths

  Copyright © Marilyn Rodwell 2019

  The right of Marilyn Rodwell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published by Goldcrest Books International Ltd

  www.goldcrestbooks.com

  publish@goldcrestbooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-911505-53-2

  eISBN: 978-1-911505-54-9

  Dedicated to my direct descendants – my children and grandchildren.

  Charmaine, James, Rebecca, Beatrix, Elowen, Jameson, Viola. Never forget where you came from. It is part of who you are. Always make peace with your past, so you understand how to move forward towards the future.

  To my mother, Clara Johnatty, whose direct ancestors gave me the inspiration to write the novel.

  I hope you all find something of value between the pages.

  MAP OF TRINIDAD

  MAP OF GRANVILLE

  GLOSSARY

  Baba – father, term of respect

  beti – girl child, daughter, term of endearment.

  Bhagavad gita – 700 verse Hindu scripture in Sanscrit

  bhajans – spiritual Indian songs

  bhajee/bhaji– a kind of spinach

  Bhojpuri – a Hindi dialect

  biagan – aubergine, melongine, egg plant

  bindi/bindiya – small red dot that married women wear on their forehead

  carailie/karailie – bitter fruit used as a vegetable

  champals – sandals

  chokha – cooked or raw seasoned vegetable dish (see page 415 for recipe)

  choli – tight bodice to be worn under a sari

  Coolie – derogaratory word for people of Indian descent

  Country bookie – a derogatory word for someone living in the countryside

  cujart – the state of being an outcast from the community

  dahee/dahi – curds, homemade yoghurt

  datwan – rough toothbrush made from a twig from the hibiscus bush or the soap vine

  dhal – made with yellow split peas

  dhal puri – a roti filled with seasoned dhal, for special occasions

  dharma - duty

  diablesse/la diablesse (pronounced, jabless - French Caribbean folklore) – an evil spirit, dressed as a beautiful woman, who comes out at night to allure unsuspecting men. But she has one foot hidden under her dress, which is a cow hoof.

  doolaha – bridegroom

  doolahin – bride

  haldi/hardi – bridal body art; turmeric

  jagabat – whore, promiscuous female

  jumbie – evil roaming souls of the dead

  kala pani – black water

  lotah – brass cup

  loyah – balls of flour for making roti

  mandap – the tent where a bride and groom sit where the Hindu marriage takes place

  mehendi – bridal body art

  Obeah – practicing a form of black magic

  ohrini – female head covering, veil

  panch – village elders

  peerha – a wooden bench or stool

  Ramayana – the story of Lord Rama rescuing his wife Sita from the demon king Ravana

  Sadhu – holy man

  sappat – rough footwear made with a thick wooden sole with inverted bicycle tyre rubber

  soucouyant – folklore woman who flies at night and sucks blood – mainly of drunken men

  saphee – dishcloth/tea towel

  saptapadi – the 7 steps of the wedding ceremony before legally becoming husband and wife

  sirbandhi – a piece of bridal hair jewellery

  Tackoori – Land owning caste

  Tackorine – belonging to the Tackoori caste

  talkarie – a dish of well seasoned fried vegetables, to accompany rice or roti (see page 317 for recipe)

  tawa – a flat iron used for making roti and other flatbreads

  tullom – round ball sweet made from grated coconut and molasses

  ONE

  Trinidad, West Indies. 1917

  Amina was so excited, she could barely wait till lunchtime to tell the headmaster that she would be returning to school in September. But by lunchtime, she had developed a terrible headache and went home, intending to return later. Her headache had become so bad that she didn’t return to school that day or the next. By the third day, she was suffering such terrible stomach pains and became so ill, that her eyes sank into dark circles and her skin looked the colour of an unripe banana.

  News spread in the village that week that children were dying, and because Amina’s parents could afford it, they paid for a doctor to visit the house, fearing for her life. Dr Boyle attended and suspected it was typhoid, the same disease that had killed the other children. He gave her parents strict instructions to be followed: no solid food, just rice water, and watered down boiled milk. Amina’s mother, Devinia, obeyed the doctor’s orders, but also worried about evil spirits and bad karma, so she called Pundit Lall to perform Hindu prayers. Then something seemed to work. A few days later, the day of her twelfth birthday, Amina begged for something to eat.

  ‘I feel better, Ma. Really I do. I’m so hungry.’

  Devinia was alarmed at this request and worried that it was too soon. ‘Don’t you want the necklace your father promised to make for you instead?’ she asked.

  ‘No, just food,’ Amina whispered hoarsely, with a pleading look in her eyes. Her mother felt pity, and thought a little mouthful of food could do no harm – not if it was kept a secret.

  Devinia eventually gave in. ‘I will bring you your favourites,’ she whispered, as she often did, so that the gods wouldn’t hear. Amina half-smiled, and Devinia smiled back, pleased to see her daughter happy. ‘I told your father the prayers were worth it,’ she said almost in triumph, as she left to prepare the food.

  It was difficult for Amina to be patient after two weeks of starvation, but she waited quietly on her bed, feeling hopeful about her ambition to become a teacher. She reminisced on their conversations. Her father hadn’t wholeheartedly approved, but he hadn’t disapproved either. He had made noises about it being a far-fetched idea for Indians to believe they could be anything important in the white people’s world. Most of her friends’ parents had already arranged marriages for them, or sent them out to work in the sugar plantations. But Amina’s mother was in favour of her daughter’s ambition, because she herself would have liked to have had such a wonderful opportunity.

  Amina picked up the blue book Mr Clifford had sent her, and opened it. It was her favourite, Silas Marner, and the familiarity seemed to calm her weakened nerves. She began to feel hopeful about her dream of studying and becoming a teacher, and dozed off until the aromas from the kitchen outside drifted up through her bedroom window. She woke to the smell of the starchy-sweet cassava frying in hot coconut oil which made her mouth water. Ravenous with hunger, she felt that every scrape of the metal spoon against the iron pot sounded soothing.

  When the food finally arrived, Amina bit into it like a starving dog. But when she tried to swallow, an excruciating pain clamped her chest, her eyes r
olled in her head and her whole body convulsed – and it all happened right in front of her mother, who observed frozen in horror.

  Time stood still as Amina’s body finally jerked and went limp and still. Screams reverberated through the wooden house, high off the ground on stilts, and flew out through its Victorian, lacy latticework, and up the sandy path, travelling on the hot, heavy air through the village of Granville. Gossip passed quickly from mouth to mouth down the gravel road and soft, grassy tracks, from thatched roofs and mud walls, up steps of wooden dwellings, through wide windows and open doorways, and over smooth-sanded floors . . . until the whole village believed that Amina Banderjee was yet another child to die from typhoid that same month. Heavy clouds opened in tropical rage, and the rain pounded like showers of gravel on the corrugated iron roof. Then it stopped as abruptly as it started.

  Screams from the house brought villagers running. But Amina had already begun a swift crossing towards a meteoric blizzard, and was being catapulted towards the sky and beyond.

  ‘Amina!’ her mother called. ‘Come back, come back!’

  But Amina was disappearing into the darkness, dizzy and light as a feather, distancing herself from illness and starvation.

  People gathered, huddled around her bed, all crying out, ‘Don’t cross the water! Come back! Don’t cross the river!’

  English words jumbled with Hindi screams resonated in her head, but Amina was in her own floating world, and she was heading towards a bright light, in a state of bliss.

  ‘Keep calling!’ someone yelled. ‘Let her hear your voice.’

  Devinia swallowed the lump in her throat, and leaned over the bed. ‘Come back, beti,’ she wept. ‘Come home to us! You can have anything you want. I promise. Take how much education you want. Please, beti, please – just come back!’ But Amina didn’t move. Devinia shook the girl’s body harder, but there was no reaction. In despair, the woman pulled the book from her daughter’s hand and flung it at the wall, cursing.

  ‘Damn book! Blasted headmaster! Damn the school!’

  Everyone stood shocked, wiping their eyes. Then another woman’s voice rang out, breaking the silence. ‘She should have been married already! I was nine years old when they married me.’

  Then chattering began. ‘No sense encouraging children to follow white people and their schooling. It’s how girl-children get wild and bring shame on us.’

  Heavy footsteps came from the doorway. It was Pundit Lall. ‘I came as soon as I heard,’ he said, staring at the emaciated figure under the white sheet.

  ‘My daughter is dead,’ Devinia sobbed, looking at him reproachfully.

  ‘We didn’t do puja for nothing,’ he said. ‘Prayers are never wasted. The girl is not dead. She will come back – maybe as a butterfly . . . pretty little thing she was.’

  Another shuffle came from the open door. Someone was shouting and pushing through. ‘Let me in!’ It was Sumati, Amina’s best friend. ‘No! Come back!’ she wailed. ‘I need you. If you go, I’m coming too!’ She stood over Amina’s bed, sobbing inconsolably.

  ‘Now, now!’ Pundit Lall said, pulling Sumati back by the shoulders. ‘What kind of talk is this? You? You are more likely to come back as a dung fly, good-looking as you are.’

  ‘She’s my best friend!’ Sumati screeched deliriously, batting his hand from her shoulder. ‘The doctor – she needs a doctor!’

  Amina’s mother collapsed on the floor amongst the sobs and screams that had filled the room. Etwar, Amina’s brother, stood staring at his older sister. Far, far away, Amina felt his presence and heat built up inside her as if she was already being engulfed by flames on a pyre. Sumati’s face was squeezed through the bars of her iron bed-frame, as she pleaded with her friend not to leave her. Grief-stricken voices stirred the stuffy air in the wood-panelled room like mud in a churn. And then as if it was night, darkness fell.

  Gradually people left, and, some remained and talked, moaning and wailing. But Sumati remained at Amina’s bedside, barely taking her eyes off her friend. She chatted nonstop as if the girls were strolling around the school playground on a normal day. Devinia sat grieving at the bottom of her daughter’s bed, and Etwar stood over his mother, soaking her shoulders with his tears. But not long before Sankar Banderjee returned home from work, like a miracle, the girl’s eyes flickered.

  TWO

  Amina appeared to have no memory of her birthday drama. She spent the day drifting in and out of sleep or consciousness. Dimly, she heard her father’s voice.

  ‘Pa, is that you?’ she mumbled. ‘Everything is so bright. Why am I lying outside in the sun?’

  ‘You are in your bedroom,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t see you, but I can hear you.’

  ‘Why can’t you see me?’ he asked, still struggling to understand what had happened to his daughter. ‘Open your eyes and look at me.’ He put his hand on her forehead.

  ‘Your hand is cold. Stay with me.’

  ‘I’m going nowhere.’ Tears filled his eyes.

  Amina’s father, Sankar Banderjee, was so shocked when he heard what had taken place at the house the day before that he did something he had never ever done. He left his jewellery shop in Point Fortin closed up and stayed at home. Amina found his presence around her bed both reassuring and comforting, between the tumbling in her brain and the rumblings in her insides. It brought some peace – that is, until she heard the doctor’s voice booming through the floorboards. It was Friday – the day a doctor visited the village.

  The stamping of feet up the wooden steps outside her window caused Amina to jerk out of her sleepy state. The door flew open and three adults poured in. Doctor Douglas Boyle appeared remarkably calm as he peered over the iron bars of her bed, half-smiling behind the red hair around his face. ‘So what has been occurring here, wee lass?’ His smile turned into a frown. ‘You don’t look at all well.’

  ‘Like I told you, doctor—’ Devinia began, but was interrupted.

  ‘Yes, I know what you told me,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t believe the stupidity!’

  Devinia shuddered a little, but remained silent.

  ‘I don’t know what gets into her sometimes,’ Sankar said.

  Both of Amina’s parents stared guiltily at their feet, while Dr Boyle strode heavily across the wooden floor of her bedroom and dumped his leather bag on the wooden blanket chest below the window. Amina’s eyes opened wide, and her heart began racing.

  ‘I trusted you to follow my instructions,’ Dr Boyle said, looking at both parents accusingly. ‘God have mercy on the child.’ She opened her eyes as wide as she could, thinking it would stop him, but he just turned and wiped his sweating face on the long sleeves of his white shirt, and continued. ‘Didn’t I say, not to give the lass anything solid? Nothing!’ Amina opened her mouth but could utter nothing. ‘The gut is possibly ulcerated and so thin now that any food could well perforate it! But what did ye do? And now you are going to lie to me about where you got the water you gave her. So I’ll not even ask. I hope you can at least understand that?’ Amina began to feel guilty for asking for food.

  ‘Yes, doctor,’ Devinia whispered. ‘But we are not lying.’

  ‘I thought this poor wee lass might be the one to pull through this. You don’t realise what you’ve done,’ he said.

  Devinia’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Do you know how many people are dying from this disease – caused by dirty water? The government’s put standpipes with clean running water in this village. Why don’t you use them? When will you ever learn?’

  ‘We don’t go down the spring no more for water, doctor,’ Sankar said, attempting to appease him. ‘It’s the truth.’ Amina felt slight relief that her father had spoken up. But Dr Boyle wasn’t done.

  ‘My job is to save lives,’ he ranted on, not appearing to hear. ‘What’s the point if you don’t do what I tell you? Wasting my time having to trek out in this bush! Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  Sankar nodde
d. ‘Yes, doctor, we understand. We Indian, but we understand many English words. We call she Amina, but you call she wee-Lass.’

  ‘Now listen – I will say this slow-ly. The child’s gut is too thin . . . to withstand . . . any . . . kind of pressure that food puts on it. Especially your kind of heavy roti-bread and spicy-hot food. I know all about it – I have seen it. I’m not sure what will happen now.’ He passed a forearm over his sweating brow.

  Devinia moved forward, wringing her hands. ‘I should never have given her that food. But it wasn’t spicy-hot. Just boiled and fried a little – just how she like it.’ Amina wanted to jump in and say what was in her head, but the doctor spoke again.

  ‘Fried?’ he asked. ‘You’re lucky you’re not preparing to bury her today.’

  Amina heard both her parents gasp together. Then her father straightened himself to his full height, and spoke in a low, clear tone.

  ‘By the hairs on the chin of the Maharaja of India and King George the Fifth, King of England,’ he began, ‘things will change from today. You hear about King George at war with Germany? Who knows what will become of your people. Nothing lasts forever. I have connections in Port of Spain. I know what is happening.’ He looked Dr Boyle in the eye. ‘Man to man,’ he said, ‘I swear this will not happen again.’ He wagged his finger. ‘I will stay home and make sure myself.’ He cast a cold stare at his wife. Amina did not miss it. She lifted her head to speak but it fell back on the pillow. Again, nothing came out.

  ‘Good,’ the doctor said. ‘All I can do now is give her something to make her sleep. The rest is up to you.’ He opened his bag and pulled out a glass syringe. Devinia brought in a bowl of water, a cloth, and a bar of soap for him. After the injection she took the bowl out.

  Sankar pulled some cash from his pocket and handed it to the doctor. ‘Listen, she is my only daughter. I will do anything to keep her safe. It was her mother. You know what these women are like, disobedient. You must know, you have a wife yourself. I will beat her tonight, I promise you that.’