Playing Fields in Winter

by Helen Harris

  ‘Sarah,’ he said, and he sounded very tired, ‘you knew when you came here that it couldn’t be a long-term thing, didn’t you? We’d had it all out. You knew we wouldn’t be able to carry on here like we did in England, so it’s totally ridiculous of you to keep on insisting.’

  Sarah rounded on him. ‘I knew it wouldn’t be easy,’ she retorted. ‘I knew I would have to fight, but I didn’t know you wouldn’t make any effort at all. I didn’t know you were such a stick-in-the-mud!’

  The word aroused him; it was so quaintly incongruous in that dusty train, spat against the tired orange landscape. He knew then that Sarah would never free herself from the legacy of the playing fields, that she would judge every country she encountered by the rules of her own checker-board country. And he laughed. He did not mean to be callous – he laughed in recognition of his helplessness, as much as anything. It was as if Sarah had flourished a hockey stick at him and that was the girl he had first loved: Sarah Livingstone at her best. He would have liked to hug her, to show her what he felt, but his laugh had hurt her too much. She laid her forehead on the window ledge and quietly began to cry.

  Later, they did talk more affectionately. In the evening they unwrapped their picnic supper and made fun of Birendra’s mammoth scale of provisions. They were unusually polite to each other, offered each other the chapatis and the pickles; the confrontation in the corridor had shaken them profoundly. Afterwards they sat in silence, while opposite them the old man read aloud from his newspaper to a group of attentive passengers. They watched him and smiled. Everyone in their carriage was relaxed and cheery and eventually someone started to sing.

  Sarah sat looking out of the window at the huge, unbroken night. The dark was soft and total. She breathed in the sugary smell of bidis and shut her eyes. For a while she imagined that she was by herself on the train, travelling alone through a quite different adventure, and she admired herself for her courage. The country around her was weird and wonderful and with her eyes closed, she began to enjoy it independently of Ravi for the first time. She fell asleep in a benign trance, but woke soon afterwards when the train stopped at a small station. She woke several times during the night, once to see a long naked foot dangling down in front of her face from the bunk above. It was unexpectedly cold in the carriage and the last time she woke up, she was glad to see that the sky was paler because the wretched night was nearly over.

  *

  Maybe if she had not come down with a tummy bug the very day she arrived at Ravi’s home, everything might have worked out. Maybe if she had been more on the ball at the beginning, more receptive, she could have sensed what was going wrong and retrieved the failing situation. But as it was, Sarah’s introduction to the family was a write-off.

  She had begun to feel queasy on the train, but had put it down at first to the bad night and the motion. They arrived at Lucknow early in the morning. She told Ravi that she felt sick as they got their luggage together, but not surprisingly he must have thought she meant with nerves, because he answered her brusquely, ‘Don’t worry! I doubt if there’ll be anyone there to meet us.’

  Since he had not let his family know when they were coming, it seemed unreasonable to suppose that anyone could be there. But all the same he seemed to look around expectantly – or was it apprehensively? – as they got off the train and, in fact, between the train and the exit from the station they did run into two people whom he knew. Considering the size of Lucknow, that seemed extraordinary to Sarah, but Ravi and his two acquaintances appeared to take it for granted, exchanging enthusiastic but not astonished greetings and clapping one another on the back. The second one turned out to be a friend of the family, who had arrived by first class off the same train and was being met by a car. He offered to drive them home. Not terribly enthusiastically, Sarah thought, Ravi accepted, the man’s persuasion being hearty and forceful. He and Sarah sat together in the back of the car while the man himself climbed in beside the driver and turned round over the front seat so as to carry on talking to them on the way. He and Ravi had an animated conversation, mixing Hindi and English, but Sarah, sitting in the corner and fighting her rising nausea, did not take in a lot of what was said.

  It was a nice house, not a patch on his uncle’s but pretty all the same. That was her first impression. It stood in its own small garden in a street of similar cubic white bungalows. Judging by its style, it must have been quite modern, but already its white walls were splodgy and ageing.

  As the friend’s car stopped and hooted at the gate, a scruffy little girl ran out to open it and Sarah, fuzzily thinking that must be Asha or Shakuntala, gave her a groggy wave. Of course it was the servants’ child and anyone who had noticed her wave must have thought how very uncouth she was.

  Two older, smarter girls rushed out onto the verandah and clapped their hands. Behind them a shadowy figure, not emerging fully from inside the house, must have been Ravi’s mother.

  They got out of the car and the friend went forward first to say hello. Asha and Shakuntala, for that time it was them, came skipping down off the verandah to throw themselves on to their brother, but at the sight of Sarah checked themselves and greeted them both with restraint.

  ‘Hello,’ said Sarah, ‘I’m Sarah. How fantastic to meet you at last.’

  ‘How do you do?’ the two girls replied solemnly. They looked at Sarah with huge eyes.

  ‘Sarah’s quite worn out from the journey,’ Ravi said bossily. ‘Let’s come inside.’

  His mother welcomed them quietly. She took Ravi into her arms, nodded and smiled at Sarah and she was asking them softly what refreshments they would like after their journey, when there was a bellow from further inside the house and, at the end of the passage, Ravi’s father appeared. Mrs Kaul seemed to shrink even further, Sarah noticed, and her question trailed away into the general hubbub. She turned to go to the kitchen, but before she went, Sarah whispered to her urgently, ‘Please, I would really like to go to the bathroom.’

  She caught Mrs Kaul’s look of surprise and dismay just as Ravi’s father descended on them. He was not tall, but he was a heavy man. He came billowing down the passage, dressed in a loose white shirt worn outside his trousers, waving his arms about as he called to them. He had a fleshy face, whose handsome features had succumbed to fat. Had he been thirty years younger and maybe as many pounds lighter, he could have been the spitting image of his son Ravi.

  He greeted them both formally. He questioned them about the journey, about Delhi and asked after his brother and his brother’s wife. He wanted to know if their train had been late, how late. Then he told them to come into the living-room and sit down, and he despatched his wife bossily to the kitchen to organise some tea and snacks.

  Sarah could barely concentrate; her bowels seemed about to burst and she felt cold sweat break out over her as Mr Kaul beckoned her into the living-room and then, as she hesitated, cried, ‘Come on in, come on in!’ She managed a ghastly smile, ‘I’d like to go to the bathroom first, please.’ And she saw a look of shock and offence on his face too, before Ravi’s mother helped her – now grey-faced, all pretence gone – into the bathroom. Perhaps it was then, sitting on the Kauls’ lavatory with her bowels gripped by that excruciating pain, that Sarah finally admitted the likelihood of defeat.

  His family had been expecting her, that much was clear. A room had been prepared for her and she was happy to collapse into it. But as the worst of her distress lifted, she realised that of pleasure or intimacy or even inordinate interest, there was no sign at all.

  Her first three days were terrible. Ravi blamed it on the restaurant lunch they had eaten before catching the train, Sarah (privately) on Birendra’s picnic. But whatever the cause of her upset, it ruined her arrival. She only saw Ravi’s family on her painful way to or from the lavatory and, if one or other of them came in to see her, she was usually too wretchedly embarrassed to talk to them. Worst of all, on the second day his mother prepared her a special delicate dish of curds a
nd having eaten it with difficulty, out of politeness, she was immediately violently sick.

  By the time she was better, she felt the chance to make a good impression was long lost. The family saw her as what she was – a bothersome guest, who was too faint-hearted or finicky to fit in with their life – and they turned their backs on her. Afterwards, when she dared to look back on that awful period, Sarah wondered if her illness had not been the beginning of the dislike which the family showed her so sharply at the end.

  But, once she was better, her first fortnight was fine. Apart from expressing surprise that Sarah should choose to spend so long in a city which had comparatively few tourist attractions, Ravi’s parents were perfectly amicable to her. Most mornings, Mr Kaul would organise a little sightseeing excursion for her, although actually she would have been quite content just to sit around and get to know them. But Ravi’s father organised the whole household and everyone’s activities came under his scrutiny. At breakfast, which seemed to last in stages from about half-past six until nine o’clock, he would cross-question each member of the family as they came to table on how they intended to spend their day and then offer criticisms or amendments. Sarah was amazed that none of them objected.

  At Mr Kaul’s instigation, she trundled around Lucknow in a tricycle rickshaw, accompanied by a bad-tempered Ravi and either Asha or Shakuntala. She found the way the two girls doted on their elder brother frankly irritating. It was not as if his shortcomings were not patently obvious. But they plainly worshipped him and competed to accompany him on these outings. And it made him doubly difficult to challenge, being back in surroundings where his every judgement was greeted with admiration and respect. The girls were invariably polite and prim to her. Of course, she would far rather have gone out alone with Ravi, but everyone seemed to take it for granted that one or other of the girls must come with them and she did not want to cause further offence to the family. So they would set out, a sulky little party, and ‘do’ the Great Imambara or the Hussainnabad or the Residency. It annoyed Sarah especially that Ravi did not dream of trying to get round this imposition – bribing his little sister to hop off in town. He never suggested staying out for lunch in a restaurant or simply going off somewhere on their own. He yielded blandly to what Sarah saw as unspeakable tyranny.

  The family was like an irredeemable tangle of string from which it was impossible to extricate the strand which was Ravi. All day, from one room to the next, their activities coiled on, apparently involving everybody, and no one could have turned their back on them and shut the door. Nor, Sarah marvelled, did they seem to want to.

  In the evenings, Mr Kaul came back from his office and everyone took part in his homecoming. Dinner and the frequent after-dinner visitors required everyone’s presence and when Sarah, exasperated by this constant communal activity, wanted privacy, the only place to retreat to was the garden.

  She had thought there would be more room in the house. Although Ravi had said it was small, she had never imagined that she would actually be sleeping in Asha’s and Shakuntala’s bedroom. It made her feel doubly awkward and embarrassed in front of them. Not only did they obviously suspect her of designs on their precious big brother, but she had turned them out of their bedroom as well. For her convenience, they were sleeping on makeshift beds in a tiny laundry room. She tried hard to ingratiate herself with them by talking about English fashions and pop music, but without ever saying anything ungracious, they politely repelled her advances. Although they were only sixteen and fourteen, they made her feel clumsy and indelicate. Physically too, she began to feel that she was clumsy and indelicate: she was in the way, she was a nuisance, she was too gauche for their small house. One day, eagerly trying to help clear the table, she broke a beautiful painted bowl.

  ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry, Mrs Kaul!’

  ‘Ai-yai-yai,’ pronounced Mr Kaul. ‘Smashed to smithereens!’

  ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Listen, can I … may I get you another one? It was so pretty.’

  And Mr Kaul replied with a loud, mocking guffaw, ‘Indeed it was, Sarah. Indeed it was. But I’m afraid you cannot replace it, even if we were to let you. It was an antique object.’

  ‘Oh no, was it awfully valuable? Oh, God—’

  ‘No, of course it wasn’t, Sarah,’ Ravi broke in. ‘It was a present from someone who died.’

  ‘It was of sentimental value, Sarah. Do you understand that? It was of great sentimental value.’

  For the first fortnight, she told herself that the trouble was only a matter of novelty. On Asha’s and Shakuntala’s part, it was shyness and on his mother’s, it must be reserve. Mrs Kaul did not talk to Sarah very much, but then she did not say a great deal to anyone. She was clearly an important power in the household, but much less vocal than her husband. She asserted her will by means of pungent daylong silences and lingering sorrowful looks. If Sarah had drawn up a table of which members of the family represented the greatest threat to her ambitions, then little self-effacing Mrs Kaul would have come out way ahead of her big, blundering husband.

  Despite all that, there were definitely things which Sarah enjoyed at the beginning. Her days were not all awkwardness and unhappiness. The gilharis which frisked outside her bedroom window in the mornings made up for a lot. The lizard scampering on her bedroom ceiling kept her company. And once, she slipped out of the house by herself for an adventure. Asha and Shakun had taken her a few days previously to a wonderful bazaar, for she had expressed enthusiasm for the pretty local embroidered muslin and, hearing her, Mr Kaul had promptly decided she must be taken out to buy some. The shop which Asha and Shakun had taken her to was comparatively big and grand and its display of embroidered muslins was magnificent. But on the way there, they had ridden down a street of smaller, more picturesque-looking shops and Sarah would have preferred to go into one of those. When she suggested this, however, Asha and Shakun tittered and when she persisted, they had dutifully insisted on taking her to the shop their father had named. ‘These shops,’ they assured her, ‘are cheap.’ So one afternoon when everyone was resting Sarah had sneaked out of the house, relishing her mischief, and gone off to the bazaar on her own.

  It was easy getting there: stopping a rickshaw and repeating the name of the bazaar twice, carefully, to the driver. Only he had whirled her off eagerly to quite the wrong bazaar and when she had tried to redirect him, repeating the right name angrily, he had just cycled faster and answered, ‘Yes Madam, yes, Madam.’

  So she had tried to go shopping there instead. There were little shops, with bales of cotton and muslin. But a crowd of children followed her into the first shop she entered and stood in the doorway watching her and chirruping. When she left the first shop in embarrassment they followed her into the next shop too and then into the one after that, growing in noise and numbers. They set upon her out in the street, when she decided the whole thing was getting just too unbearable, and screeched for money and beat at her with their hard little hands. In the end she had to break free and make a dash for the nearest rickshaw, although the children still came after her and one of them threw something.

  When she got back, luckily no one had noticed her absence; they were all still resting. But Ravi was aghast when she confided in him where she had been and made her promise never to do something like that again. Sarah was fed up and she sulked.

  The atmosphere in the house was often fraught with tension, but that did not seem to be just because of her. Nor did it seem in any apparent way to be due to their grandmother’s death. She was referred to once or twice, wistfully, but her departure did not seem to have left the cloud of mourning over the household which Ravi had depicted. It was more, Sarah thought – especially as time went on – due to the intolerable constraints which the family put on one another; expecting each member to be first and foremost a compliant part of the whole rather than an independent individual. Every time selfish interests clashed with the interest of the community, the community, like a bully, won. Sar
ah watched this for a fortnight. She thought it was dreadful.

  Ravi’s brother Ramesh, whom Sarah knew he would have relied upon for understanding and support, was away in Bombay. The rest of the family closed about Ravi like a fortress. It was impossible to get through to him. But what Sarah had not been prepared for was that as soon as he crossed the threshold, Ravi would become part of the fortress too.

  Sometimes she told herself that she was being unfair. She had known all along that his family would be the biggest obstacle. She tried to go along with their idiosyncrasies and their restrictions. She kept up the pretence that she and Ravi were strangers to each other’s bodies. But she could not keep it up indefinitely. She had not come to India to look at mosques, to sit genteelly on the verandah after dinner and discuss parliamentary democracy with Ravi’s father. She signalled to Ravi increasingly desperately that they had to break out of this frightful predicament. She said to him, in the garden, that she was going crazy. When would they go off somewhere together, like he had suggested to her in his last letter? But he had no money. He had to stay at home in case he heard from the social survey outfit in Delhi. Even though they were within sight of the house, Sarah wildly caught hold of his arm. She could not bear it, did he understand? She just could not bear it any more.

  It was to avoid scenes like that that Ravi agreed that they should at least go out for evening strolls together and these strolls were such a welcome release, walking alone in the cool of the evening beside the river, that for a while they relieved the worst of the tension.

  It was only in her third week that the trouble started. Apparently Ravi’s mother had complained to him that the neighbours were gossiping about Sarah’s prolonged presence in their house. (‘What do they think I am?’ she shouted at Ravi. ‘A leper?’) They were dropping round for tea and looking her up and down. And Ravi – pathetically susceptible to pressure, Sarah raged – admitted that his mother had a case.