A House Called Askival

by Merryn Glover

  She appeared, Iqbal on her hip. They’d both been bathing and her long black hair dripped wet down her back and over her shoulders, plastering the thin cotton of her kameez to her skin. James tried not to look at the plump breasts with their nipples rising through the damp. He had been fourteen when Aziz proudly brought home this young wife, and her presence had become excruciating for the boy whose dreams both night and day were invaded by forbidden pleasures. The situation had only worsened when Iqbal was born and James could see her feeding him on the back lawn, a breast fleetingly exposed, swollen, wet nipple extended and glistening in the sun.

  And here she was now, skin luminous and fragrant, beautiful face already puckered with the question that would be unbearable to answer. Baby Iqbal bounced on her hip, lighting up at the sight of them, his grin revealing two dimples and a perfect tooth. He threw his arms out to Leota and she took him, pressing a deep kiss into his curly head and squeezing him tight against her.

  When Salima screamed and crumpled at their feet, James reached out to catch her, but in the moment his arms pressed around her body, he knew the depths of his error. Not meant to even touch a Muslim woman, far less embrace her, he was only adding shame to her torment. So he pulled back at once and let her fall, and watched miserably as Leota knelt and held her and cried with her, Iqbal between them, adding his infant wails to the terrible din.

  Then James ran. He fled to the dense cluster of pines at the side of the house, to the dark cool between the trunks where it smelled of resin and the ground was thick with needles. There he threw himself down and wept.

  FORTY-ONE

  Nearly forty years later, in the Kanpur hospital corridor, James turned from Gurpreet’s burnt body on the floor and ran again, a sour vomit rising inside him. As it erupted, dark spilled over his eyes and he heard the sounds of rushing feet and cries, like a flock of birds. Then hands were leading him, a chair, someone pressing his back forward, his head down. He felt the knobs of his knees, the floor spinning, his eyes pressing shut, an explosion of stars.

  Slowly, someone drew his back up straight.

  Strong hands, a glass of water.

  Go home. Rest today.

  He couldn’t reply.

  Opening his eyes, he saw the room swimming into place: the speed of things slowing down, the furniture returning, the floor flat. He wiped the back of a hand across his mouth: slime and cold sweat, the taste of sick. Someone extended a wad of toilet roll and he mopped at his damp face and the sticky corners of his lips. The wet wad was taken, a thud in a bin, and a mug of chai pressed into his hands. Whoever it was slipped out, and he sipped the tea, the sweet heat of it easing down his body, settling the visions and the shaking.

  He didn’t know how long he sat there, willing himself to get up, but failing to move. The tea was finished, the cup cold in his hand when there was a knock and the door opened.

  Ellen. Her face white.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said, but his voice was a croak.

  She sank to her knees in front of him, took the mug and clutched his hands in hers.

  ‘Oh, darling…’ Something caught in her throat and she looked away sharply, but not before he saw the tears.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he repeated, lifting a hand to touch her head.

  She started to cry. James lunged forward to embrace her, but his legs gave way. Instead of holding her, he fell onto her, knocking her backwards. They gasped and struggled, but he was like a marionette dropped and could not pull himself off. She pushed at the dead weight of him and rolled him to one side.

  ‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘So sorry.’

  She dragged her twisted leg out from underneath him and he slumped, cheek on the floor.

  ‘James,’ she said, gripping his shoulder. ‘I have to go tonight.’

  His eyes rolled up at her.

  ‘It’s Ruth. There’s been a death.’

  There came a sound from him.

  A bird cry, a shot, a cracking of bone.

  FORTY-TWO

  When the door crashed open at Askival, Ruth and Manveer knew that what had just begun was already over.

  She flinched. He held her closer.

  It was Mr Haskell with a torch that ran across the underwear and the ruin of Sita’s coat and the fallen hair. It ran up their bodies till it found their faces, Ruth’s squinting into the harsh beam, Manveer’s raw and strange with his butchered hair.

  Mr Haskell’s breath sucked in. ‘What have you done?’ He ran the light back down to the floor and over the long swathes of black hair, the empty turban, the patka. The beam fell across Ruth’s handbag with its spilled contents, the brush and make-up, the joints. The circle of light halted there, damning.

  ‘No!’ she said, with sudden realisation. ‘We didn’t—’

  He bent and picked them up. ‘You stupid little idiots.’

  ‘No, Mr Haskell,’ Manveer tried, ‘we didn’t smoke—’

  ‘Shut up!’ he spat. ‘What the hell are you doing? Have you got no idea—? No idea what’s happening around you? Don’t you give a shit about anybody else? What about your parents, Manveer? Yours, Ruth? The show?! You selfish, selfish, stupid fucking idiots!’

  As he raged at them, Ruth felt the sting of tears and Manveer’s hands tightening. At last, ramming the joints into his pocket, Mr Haskell barked at them to get moving and kicked open the door. They stumbled after him, Manveer grabbing his jacket, Ruth her bag and Sita’s coat. The kirpan lay forgotten on the mantelpiece and the kanga, fallen from Ruth’s pocket, lay beside the soiled kachha and the shorn kesh. Only the kara was with them, on her wrist.

  Mr Haskell strode ahead, his torch light bobbing along the ruts of the chakkar road, his breath jagged as they followed in silence, gripping each other’s hands. They passed the graveyard and old Morrison Church and an opening in the trees where they could see the ghost of the snows far to the north. When they got to the steep path dropping below the road, Mr Haskell did not look back at them or speak or offer any share of the light, but plunged straight down, his boots crashing and sending tiny stones skeetering down the khud. They slipped and staggered behind him, clinging to each other, erupting in small exclamations when they turned an ankle or stubbed a toe.

  ‘Mr Haskell!’ Ruth called, when they got to a bit that was treacherously narrow, and cut into a sheer slope. ‘Please slow down – we can’t – see—!’

  But he ignored her and strode on, even faster than before.

  Then there was a howl from Manveer as he tripped and knocked his knee against a boulder, all at once losing his balance, Ruth’s hand and his footing. And then he fell. Right over the side, crashing through the trees into the darkness.

  ‘Manveer!’ Ruth yelled.

  ‘What happened?’ Mr Haskell spun round and sent his beam back up the path to where Ruth was kneeling at the edge.

  ‘Manveer’s fallen!’ she yelled again. ‘Manveer! Manveer!’

  There was only silence.

  The sickle moon watched, stunned, a veil of cloud drawn over her mouth as the great trees swung and swayed in alarm. A hill barbet wailed and the night’s breath was cold.

  The khud below that stretch of path was so steep and overgrown that they could not navigate it, nor find Manveer in the desperate ray of the torch. Mr Haskell told Ruth to wait and keep calling while he ran for help.

  On her hands and knees on the path she called and cried and shook with fear. Tears stinging her eyes, she flung herself onto the God of her childhood.

  ‘Please, please, please God,’ she cried. ‘Save him. Let him be ok, let him live. I’m so sorry for everything I’ve done wrong, I’m so sorry, please don’t let this be your punishment. Not Manveer, God, not Manveer. He doesn’t deserve it. Punish ME, Lord, but not him! Please, God.’ And then it hit her: a revelation, a sudden understanding of what this moment was for. ‘Dear God, if you save Manveer, I will believe in you. I will live for you and love you and serve you with all of my heart for all of my life. If you are true,
if you are love, then answer my prayer.’

  When help came, it included Chaplain Park who joined the search, and Mrs Park, who led the shivering Ruth back to their house and put her straight to bed, where she fell in and out of sleep, the waking as bad as the nightmares.

  They did not find Manveer till the grey dawn. He was hanging in a tree, twisted, his head bloody from where it had hit a rock in the fall. A pair of the school sweepers climbed the steep slope, lifted him into a sling and lowered him to the group of staff gathered on the clearing below. Mr Haskell took Manveer’s body into his arms and sank to his knees, the boy stretched across him, a tangle of twigs and leaves caught in his hair.

  Ruth was at the breakfast table in Mrs Park’s pyjamas when Chaplain Park got back and broke the news. That day and night were a confusion of weeping and disbelief, of frantic talk and shocked silences, of hysteria and numbness. God vanished into the vortex, prayer and faith spinning after him, Ruth’s whole self teetering on the edge. The only thing she could cling to was the news that her mother was coming. It was like a life-boat, plunging towards her through the storm, and she survived only on the vision of that embrace.

  But when Ellen arrived at Oaklands she was taken straight to Principal Withers’ office. He showed her the joints found beside Ruth’s bag and relayed Mr Haskell’s account of the sex and the smoking and how the teenagers had been so high they couldn’t walk straight. Which was why Manveer had fallen. And probably why he’d allowed his hair to be cut. Because the terrible, tragic irony, Principal Withers pointed out, was that Manveer had been an exemplary student and a devout Sikh who had never broken a school rule, nor had a girlfriend nor touched alcohol, tobacco or drugs in his life. Till Ruth. Principal Withers had been obliged to break this appalling news to Manveer’s parents and Ellen could only imagine, he was sure, how that had gone. Ruth, clearly, must be expelled.

  By the time Ellen arrived at the Park’s house, she was white and trembling. Ruth saw only rage, as she did not recognise the heartbreak beneath it, nor did she know James was lying spent and unspeaking in his bed in Kanpur. Ellen was struggling to speak herself but managed, in terse, short sentences with eyes averted, to inform Ruth of her expulsion and their departure that afternoon. When Ruth cried out and reached for her, Ellen turned away.

  Back in the dorm, as Ruth silently gathered her things, Ellen packed with brutal speed and none of her usual orderliness. Sheets were ripped off, blankets thrown in trunks, clothes, books and pens tossed in a jumble. Through it all, the pervading smell of mothballs rose from the trunks like a ghost. When Ellen tipped out a drawer of socks, a small paper bag tumbled with them. She ripped it open and five joints fell onto her palm. There was an awful quiet.

  ‘How could you?’ she hissed. ‘How could you… destroy that poor boy?’

  Ruth, who had not yet heard the official judgement, stared at her, not fathoming. Then the realisation dawned.

  ‘What? What did they say?!’ she cried. ‘Mom, we didn’t – I never—!’

  ‘Mr Haskell saw you.’

  ‘No, no, no – Mom!’ Ruth tumbled over herself trying to tell what had really happened, but her mother merely shook her head.

  ‘Believe me!’ Ruth screamed.

  ‘Believe you?’ Ellen said, her face twisted with scorn. ‘You disgust me.’ And she slapped her. Hard.

  Ruth fled to the bathroom. She tore off the false red nails and smashed her glass bangles against the sink, leaving cuts up both arms, blood on the ceramic, glass on the floor. Only the kara remained and she pressed it to her mouth as if needing it for breath. Looking up, she saw a face in the mirror so puffy and scratched and bruised she did not recognise it.

  Two coolies carried her things to a taxi on the New Road and she watched, motionless, as her entire life at Oaklands was reduced to three tin boxes, a backpack and a bed roll. In all her dreaming of exodus, she had never imagined exile, nor how her yearning for freedom might become banishment.

  She and Ellen sat at opposite ends of the back seat, a savage silence between them.

  The taxi left while everyone was still in class.

  No-one came to see Ruth.

  No-one said good-bye.

  FORTY-THREE

  When James left India in December 1947 he was surrounded by well-wishers, but sick at heart. He stood on the deck of The Highland Queen as a small host of missionary friends waved and called from the quay side at the Calcutta port. The sea breeze tugged at him and filled his nose with the smells of salt and diesel and the brackish, dead-green water that slapped against the bow of the ship, frothing with rubbish. Seagulls skated the air and shrieked, flapping to land on the ship’s rail then clawing up and down it and leaving their droppings like spits of contempt before taking off again. At his right, Leota was waving furiously and calling out, ‘G’bye all, g’bye! We’ll be back, we sure will! God bless you all! Bye!’ Her voice was caught by the wind and tossed aside like a rag, as if the spirits of the air already knew its futility. At James’ left, Stanley sat in his wheelchair and made no sound. His strong farmer’s body was ravaged and shrivelled and he had finally accepted the Mission’s demand that he return home.

  To James, “home” was an absurd word for America. His only memory of the place was a year in Iowa when he was ten and had been tossed between the doting attentions of relatives and the remorseless persecution of schoolmates. The latter had laughed at everything about him: his clothes, his accent, his ignorance of the American way, (his scorn for it!) and his ineptitude on the football field. And they had pushed and tripped and kicked and beaten him. It was far worse than anything that had happened in boarding and he’d told his parents he would never go back. But now he had to, and despite his mother’s avowals, he knew there was a finality about this trip. They were leaving India for good.

  Working with the refugees in the Kurukshetra camp, Stanley had become host to a sinister cocktail of parasites, and despite long stretches in the Hillside Community Hospital, he was beaten. James now had to help Leota lift him from bed to chair and on and off the commode. This made him burn, to see his father’s slack flesh and the way the bones pressed against the skin as if about to tear it. The smells of his sweat and his sewer breath and his streaming diarrhoea brought a pall of shame.

  Yet his father had done nothing to deserve shame, James believed, or this suffering. As Bishop Lutz had said last night at their farewell service, Stanley was a giant of God, laid low in service and sacrifice, in his obedience to the Call and his taking up of the Cross.

  Whereas James… His hands tightened on the rail in front of him. The weeks after Aziz’ death had become increasingly unbearable for him. When he left Mussoorie he gave everything away – his guitar and books and binoculars, his hunting trophies and guns (which he had not touched since that September night), his collections of ferns and butterflies, even his beloved beetles. Leota had been shocked.

  ‘We can take the beetles with us,’ she’d said. ‘That’s the finest collection ever made up here.’

  ‘Be good for the school to have it,’ he muttered. He didn’t explain the desperate need for penance. For punishment, even. How else could you expunge guilt? He had wanted to send as many possessions as possible to Pakistan for Salima and baby Iqbal, but Leota had refused. With the ongoing troubles across the border there was little chance of the goods arriving, she’d argued, and anyway, the Connors were making regular payments to them through the Mission headquarters in Lahore.

  Payments. The word stung. How could you possibly, ever, pay for such a thing? For the first time in his life, he decided to study hard. He would get into medical school and after that, get whatever experience he needed to be of maximum use. Then he would return to India and lay down his life in atonement. He did not know if it would ever suffice, but of one thing he was certain: he would kill himself trying.

  FORTY-FOUR

  James was now sleeping on the camp cot in the living room, as he could no longer climb the stairs. Iqbal had carried hi
m up and down for a while, but he so often fell asleep at odd times through the day, that it became easier not to move him. He no longer stood or walked. Ruth and Iqbal raised him to sitting and eased him down, plumped pillows, changed his clothes and his bed pan. He ate little, despite Iqbal’s tireless array of mousses, juices, jellies and custards offered on small trays. Ruth sometimes held his glass and angled the straw to his cracked lips when his own arms were too slack.

  Every day she read to him, choosing volumes from the dusty shelves in his bedroom. In a book on Himalayan flora she found the tree from the Peace Garden at Oaklands: padam, a wild cherry that bloomed both spring and fall. She had seen it the other day, covered in flowers, a shout of joy in the face of winter. There were only a handful of novels – cheap airport paperbacks and a mildewed Kipling – and one collection of poems. Mountains: An Anthology of Silence. These captured her, hung in the air, brought new notes to her voice.

  What have these lonely mountains worth revealing?

  More glory and more grief than I can tell;

  The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling

  Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

  For his sake, she also read from the Bible. His old King James was almost indecipherable – so scored and scribbled by years of wrestling – but she chose it over the newer versions lying around. It was the language of his heart, but also of her childhood. Long-forgotten passages rose up like bees from a stirred hive, and they both stung and gave of their sweetness. While she almost choked at the stories of God’s people ploughing a bloody trail into the Promised Land, she was moved by the beauty of the Psalms. And though the lists of laws and sins and punishments galled her, the mingled decadence and despair of Ecclesiastes brought surprise. She’d never realised such a book was included in the Scriptures. It had not featured in childhood devotions. ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!’ the philosopher cried. It made her look further and deeper, and she took to reading on her own, in several versions and was troubled. The thorn-in-the-flesh prophets, the dancing for joy, the nightmares of kings, the songs of love. It was all there. All that was made and smeared, pure and profane, all who laboured and lost, who gave birth and took life, every place that blossomed or was burnt, every voice, every silence, every fall, every rise. All of it. And throughout it, from beginning to end, that wrathful, weeping, terrible, tender God.