I returned the salutation. I came again to our gate but continued past it, walking the same route. The constable met me again and asked if I had lost anything.
Wearily, I said: ‘No, thank you. I am just taking a stroll before going to bed.’
‘It’s not too safe round here late at night, Miss.’
I agreed, and walked back to our gate with him. It appeared that I would have to go to bed, but my nerves were jangled and I felt that to scream would be a great relief.
At home I made myself some cocoa and at three o’clock I got into bed. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Barney laughing at me, until I could have shrieked at him to go away and never haunt me again.
I switched on the bedside lamp and took from the side table the studio portrait which he had given me just before leaving on his last journey back to barracks. I sat up in bed and for a long time examined the face portrayed. The lips smiled at me, but when I covered them up and looked at the eyes alone, they were cold and staring.
At five o’clock I got up. It was Sunday morning, and the church bells soon began to ring for the first service of the day. Mother heard me washing in the bathroom and called to ask if I was poorly. I said I was quite all right and was preparing to go to church. I heard her bed creak as, satisfied, she turned over to sleep again.
I had no intention of going to church, but it was the simplest explanation to save Mother getting up to see what she could do to help me. Garbed in slacks and woollen sweaters, I went out into the garden. Lighted only by the shaft of light from the front door, it was as bleak and shrivelled as my heart. I went inside, boiled some water and washed up the supper dishes for Mother, after which I laid the table for breakfast.
I had just refilled the sugar basin when, to my astonishment, the telephone bell rang. I answered it quickly, to avoid its waking the entire household.
‘I wish to speak to Miss Delaney,’ said Ajit.
‘Speaking,’ I said. ‘Hello.’
Ajit’s cool tone melted into a warm hello.
‘I am reminding you that you must be ready at ten o’clock,’ he said.
‘Oh, Lord!’ I ejaculated.
‘Is there trouble?’
‘No, no,’ I said. I had forgotten that I had promised to walk along the coast with him to a village inn which specialised in bacon and egg teas. He had taken great trouble to pick a Sunday when I would be free and when the tide would be high and at its wintry best. The thought of being bright and entertaining throughout the day was too much for me. I opened my mouth to make an excuse.
‘I hope I do not telephone too early. We Indians rise rather early.’
‘No, I was already up.’
‘Then we will meet at ten o’clock.’
It seemed unkind to disappoint him, so I said that I would be ready and would bring some sandwiches for lunch.
The happiness of his response when I said this could hardly be construed as enthusiasm for sandwiches, so I was glad I had not refused to go.
Ajit had not been at the club the night before. He was working very hard, trying to cram in as much experience and study as he could before going home. He had just finished an arduous round of visits to the factories of electrical instrument makers, and had determined to make this Sunday a holiday.
He met me at the corner of the road in which my home stood. I was early and shivering in the north wind which whined through the leafless trees. The sun peeped only intermittently through the clouds, and the deserted streets looked dismal. I turned up the collar of my leather windjammer.
Ajit was apologetic about my having to wait for him. He glanced at my face, which I knew looked drawn in spite of careful make-up.
‘Are you well?’ he asked. ‘We need not go if you do not wish it.’
I assured him, with a brisk smile, that I was quite well. He looked doubting, but the bus came and we boarded it.
The sea was a heaving mass of grey, except where far out the waves were hitting a sandbank and breaking into white spray. As we started along the top of the sea wall, only the slapping of the water against the base of it and the cries of gulls broke the silence. We walked steadily, the wind behind us, and gradually my body warmed with the exercise and the fresh air cleared my head.
In the coarse grass covering the sand at the back of the wall, I saw a rabbit peeping up at us and, laughingly, I pointed it out to Ajit.
He had been looking at me from time to time rather anxiously, but he was apparently satisfied when I laughed, because he laughed too. He told me about the squirrels that lived in the neem trees in the garden of his home in Delhi, and of the lizards that always made a home in the window curtains, no matter how frequently they were shaken out. I shivered at the idea of lizards in the house, but he said they were harmless creatures with yellow bodies and sparkling eyes, and they kept the room free from insects. He told me also about the mongoose that lived in the inner courtyard to guard it from snakes.
‘Snakes are sacred, are they not?’
‘Village people sometimes worship cobras as a manifestation of God – but it is the cow which is really sacred – she gives us milk, clarified butter and curd, and in return she must be fed and protected and on no account slaughtered.
‘It would be merciful to kill some of the cows which are sick and old,’ he added ruefully.
‘I read once that one of the Hindu Gods is a destroyer. Is that true?’
‘Yes, Shiva destroys – without thought or mercy,’ he said, bitterness in his voice.
I thought of the famines, the floods, the earthquakes, the riots of India. It was not surprising that they believed in a God who destroyed.
‘Well, who creates?’
‘Brahma creates. From the holocaust which Shiva makes, he recreates. So life is born anew and nothing is wasted.’
Nothing is wasted. From the devastation which emotions leave, does Brahma spin again the threads of life? I wondered. It was a new idea to me – a harsh idea – that destruction was a necessary preliminary to the creation of fresh life.
‘Do you believe in such Gods?’
‘No, these Gods are for simple people. I must seek the truths behind them.’ He glanced at me and saw that I was not bored, so he continued: ‘There is a part of an Indian’s life which is given to the study of religion. When his sons are grown up and he can rest from his work, he spends many hours of his day in contemplation and in the study of Sacred Books, such as the Gita and the Upanishads, and he prays for enlightenment. A few renounce their wealth and their families and become beggars, asking only for food from the householders and cotton cloth to cover their bodies.’
‘By ridding himself of worldly ties, he expects to give all his thoughts to God?’
‘The same idea exists in the Christian religion,’ he said, nodding his head in assent to my question. ‘It is, however, in one particular different. In Christianity blind faith is required. In Hinduism faith is not asked. A man must by earnest contemplation discover what he feels to be true, and in that only he must believe.’
‘It is a hard religion.’
‘On the contrary. It provides for every man. It asks only belief to the best of a man’s ability – no more.’
Mother and Father had brought up their daughters to go to church on Sundays and babble the Lord’s Prayer every night. They had also taught us the accepted rules of conduct in society. Good children, they said, did not lie or cheat. Good young women lay only with their husbands; they were not too vain; they did not gossip unkindly, and so on. I had often questioned these teachings, but it was clear that they contributed to the peace of the community, so I accepted them. But when the war came to our city with all its savagery of persistent air raids, when most of the boys with whom I had grown up were dead in an apparently futile war, my mind sought for a reason for all the suffering I saw – and found none. And subsequently had not found any.
I had dug amid rubble with nothing but a coal shovel and bare hands to free a mother and children from the cellar
of their ruined home, and had prayed at the same time that God would not let the tottering walls around me fall and crush me too. They had not fallen – but I had not then believed in God. With a crushed child in one’s arms it is hard to believe in any kind of Divine Mercy. My confused mind seemed symbolic of a whole world which faced the same issues.
Rather than continue a discussion which threatened to resurrect old worries, I suggested that we have lunch, and we sought shelter from the wind in a deep hollow ringed with rough grasses. It was a pleasant place, and the sun which had strengthened as we walked warmed us as we munched the sandwiches that I had brought. Afterwards we sat and smoked in silence.
Ajit took my hand and opened it. Very lightly he traced the lines upon it with his finger.
‘Your hand is full of good,’ he said finally.
‘I suppose I am really a fortunate woman,’ I said, ‘but I do not feel so.’
He puffed at his pipe, and looked again at the hand.
‘The early life is broken, full of small illnesses and disappointments – later on it greatly improves.’
‘Does it?’ I asked hopefully, leaning closer to him to have a better look.
He caught his breath as I moved nearer, but went on: ‘Yes, there is a husband – and three children.’ He broke off and then asked: ‘Have you been married? Forgive me for asking.’
It was my turn to catch my breath. ‘Not quite,’ I said, ‘I have been engaged twice and both my fiancés were killed.’
‘Forgive me,’ he repeated. ‘I should not have asked, although it is written in your hand.’ He closed the hand but kept it in his own firm grasp. His head was bent as he stared at our clasped hands; his hair was glossy, like the back of a cat.
He looked up, straight into my eyes: ‘Why are you so unhappy today?’ he asked.
Although I was totally unprepared for such a question, I tried to evade it lightly, as I said with forced gaiety: ‘Do I look unhappy? It must be old age creeping up on me.’
‘Age – you?’ he exclaimed. ‘No, some shock has come to you – and I wondered if I could be of comfort.’ He stroked my hand absentmindedly.
At his words, my mind was flooded with the pain and humiliation of yesterday. The quivering of my lips became a general trembling, which he felt in the hand he stroked.
‘Say to me,’ he said very gently.
‘I – er – it is rather a personal matter.’
‘Naturally it is personal – that much I realise. It is good when in trouble to speak to another of one’s personal matters – it makes better.’
His voice was full of sympathy and, after a hesitating start, the whole story poured from me in short, bitter sentences, and, just as he had said, it made me feel better.
Finally I said: ‘Unknowingly I hurt Angela, who loved me enough not to let me see the jealousy she must have felt.’
During the recital he had continued to hold my hand as he sat stiffly cross-legged, but as I finished he let go of it and lay down on his back and relit his pipe. The smoke rose in cloudlets, as he thought. Then he looked at me and grinned mischievously. Feeling very self-conscious at having confided in a stranger and a man, I smiled rather tremulously back at him.
‘You are lovely when you smile,’ he said, as if he had not heard the story at all.
The incongruity of the remark struck me and I laughed a little harshly.
‘That is not a good laugh,’ he said, raising himself on his elbow, so that he was quite close to me, and taking my hand again. ‘I have some advice to give you.’
‘Yes?’
‘Let me marry you. Let me show you what life and love can really be.’
I started up as if to run away, but he would not let go of my hand.
‘Don’t go away. Hear me to the end.’
I looked down at him and was astonished at the beauty which flooded his face; it was transfigured. There was love in it such as I had previously seen only upon the face of a new mother – no lust – just a glow of affection. I knew I was seeing something rare, and I sat down again, hardly knowing what I did but fascinated by a loveliness I did not know a man’s face could show.
‘I have loved you from the first day I saw you – you must know it.’
I did know it although I had not acknowledged it to myself. I nodded.
‘We would have to fight many difficulties together, as we are of different races – yet those difficulties could also make us cling together and know each other.’ His eyes were imploring. ‘I would love you so that sadness and weariness left your face, and contentment filled your life.’
‘You do not ask me if I love you.’
‘I do not ask your love now – only the chance to win it – and the privilege of giving you happiness.’
I felt curiously humble before him, very uncertain of myself, but the desire to run away had gone. It was as if unimagined treasures had been laid before me; and it seemed to me that I had done nothing to merit such a gift.
I tried to think clearly, to imagine what living with a man who was brown would be like. My mind refused to grasp anything, however, except that a delicate, brown finger was stroking my wrist and that a man of known integrity and ability was looking at me with adoration, and had just offered me all that he had and an entirely new life.
‘Ajit – I am not worth all the sacrifice it would mean.’
‘My Rani – my Queen, you are worth everything to me.’ He slipped his arm round me and drew me closer. Suddenly I turned my face to his shoulder and wept wearily. I wept the last tears I had for Barney, who had been such a scallywag in life and was so pitiful in death. And for the first time for years I desired to make someone else happy instead of hugging my own miseries to myself.
The Chinese say that the time to court the widow is immediately after the funeral, and there had certainly been a funeral the day before, a funeral during which love had been replaced by hate and then by pity – pity for Barney, pity for Angela, pity for myself.
He let me cry until the sobs became less. Then a brown hand turned my face to his. Very carefully he pushed back the loose hairs from my face which must have been ugly from crying. He bent his head and softly caressed my cheek with his nose. A butterfly kiss went across my lips, and I lay still, too tired to protest.
Infinitely patient, he courted me as if I was a girl bride who had never seen him before and was afraid of being alone with him. He did not attempt to kiss me as Barney had kissed me. Just light kisses, softly across my mouth, until I began to desire more. His breath was sweet in my nostrils, and my arms almost of their own accord went up and round his neck.
When he felt my whole body stir uneasily, he said: ‘Marry me?’
‘Yes,’ I said, and he released me slowly. He was beaming.
‘You will be the Lakshmi of my house,’ he said, ‘the Goddess and Giver of all Good Things.’
The winter sun grew sharply stronger, as the clouds rolled away. I smiled at him very shyly although my pulses were pounding. I had just accepted a very difficult set of ties and yet I felt released from bondage. I sat back on my heels and surveyed my future husband.
Because I was for the first time imagining him as a partner, it was as if I had never seen him before. He lay and puffed his pipe contentedly and hummed under his breath, as if nothing had happened, his eyes shadowed by their dark lids and enormous lashes. A patient man, I thought. Anyone else would have followed up the advantage which my acceptance had given him. Some inner perception must have warned him to go slowly – or was it an infinitely subtle skill in the making of love?
At the thought of his really making love to me, a hot flush rose to my face and I scrambled to my feet. He got up too. He was shivering, whether with cold or desire I did not know, but I arranged his scarf for him and made him button his raincoat to the top.
‘Hot tea and bacon and eggs,’ I said as I pulled on my woollen gloves.
‘These English women,’ he said. ‘So practical – and also so impractical,’
and he swung me towards him and kissed me hard until my body slackened against his. I pulled myself away hastily.
‘Bacon and eggs,’ I said firmly, and ran up the sea wall to the top. The wind hit me as it blew straight off the sea.
‘It’s really cold,’ I said as he joined me.
‘Let us then run.’
So, laughing, we ran along the sea wall to get warm. As I raced Ajit, the wind tearing at my hair and the waves roaring at my feet, some youth came back to me, and I was filled with young hope for the future.
CHAPTER NINE
There was a log fire in the parlour of the pub where we had out tea, and as we were the only customers, we afterwards sat hand in hand on an old wooden settle and watched the sparks fly up the chimney.
The landlady who served us looked upon us with disdain, but when she heard our voices, she confided audibly to her daughter behind the bar that: ‘She isn’t a common sort,’ and she unbent enough to ask Ajit if he was a student from India. She also asked me if I was a student. I said vaguely that I was a social worker, not wishing to invite further questioning. The landlady was nonplussed by my answer and said to her daughter, as she took our dirty dishes to the sink behind the counter, that: ‘It was a right rum combination – an Indian and a social aid worker.’
Both Ajit and I giggled when we heard this remark; but it reminded Ajit of another problem.
‘What will your father say about your marriage to me?’
I was secretly worried about my parents’ reaction to the marriage, although I did not want to communicate this worry to Ajit.
‘Father likes you very much,’ I said cautiously, ‘although he will be very upset at my going to live so far away as in India.’
‘We shall see – I do not wish that he should grieve.’ He let go of my hand, picked up the poker and poked at the fire, while his fine eyebrows knitted and a frown broke the smoothness of his forehead.
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