by John Masters
Janaki exclaimed, ‘Margaret!’
‘Well?’
Janaki said, ‘No. Both my children are Max’s, though you are right, I was foolish to object to the question.’
‘What about that Anglo-Indian you mentioned, the one who was in love with him in ‘46 and married the railwayman? Did she have a baby?’
‘Victoria Taylor? She had no children. But--’
Margaret looked up sharply. ‘But what?’
Janaki went to the window and stared out. ‘Nothing. I think you ought to ...’
Margaret jumped to her feet, knocking over the whisky glass. ‘Sumitra!’ she gasped. ‘She’s going to have his baby! That’s what she meant when she said it wasn’t for herself alone, the night he tried to strangle her! That’s why she looked so pale in the mornings ... Oh, what a fool I’ve been, blind, blind idiot! Where is she?’ The whisky dripped loudly on to the tiled floor.
Janaki sighed. ‘Yes, Sumitra is pregnant. Her baby’s due early in September. It must be Rodney’s.’
‘Unless she was sleeping with other men at the same time,’ Margaret said viciously.
‘You know that’s not true.’
‘Where is she?’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘See her ... I don’t know ... This has gone on long enough. He talked about a child this morning. Something’s got to be done, and done now. I love him too much to see him fall to pieces before my eyes. Where is she?’
Again Janaki hesitated. Margaret got up. ‘I shall find out.’ Janaki said, ‘You will never find out.’
Margaret flared. ‘Perhaps not now - but the child’s going to be born. She’s not going to keep it locked in a cupboard for ever. If she doesn’t bring it up herself she’s not going to give it to just anyone. It’ll go to someone who knows and loves Rodney. I’ll find out, however long I have to work. This is Rodney’s baby!’
Janaki sat down. ‘You are implacable, Margaret. Don’t you understand? Sumitra said that Rodney must never know. She made me swear.’
‘In case he felt it his duty to marry her? She can say no, can’t she?’
Janaki said, ‘What should I do? What would Max do? ... It is Rodney’s baby. She’s in a flat, at 78 Reclamation Road, fourth floor. She sent for her old ayah from her home, who lives with her and does all the shopping and cooking. Sumitra never leaves the flat, and sees no one.’
Margaret said, ‘Thank you,’ and hurried out of the house.
Chapter 21
She paid off the taxi driver and stepped out into the rain. She had meant to stand outside the building for a time, while she had a look at it and rehearsed once more what she would say. But the slanting rain beat on her cheek and she ran across the sidewalk, into the hall, and straight up the stairs. There were only two apartments on each floor. At the fourth, panting heavily, she looked at the two doors and wondered which was Sumitra’s. One of those apartments would face the sea and the other the city. Sumitra would have the sea. She rang the right-hand bell.
No one answered. After waiting a full minute, she rang again, long and firmly. This time a cracked old voice from immediately behind the door said, ‘Kaun hai?’
She said, ‘Wood Memsahib. Give my salaams to the Rani Sahiba.’
‘There’s no Rani here.’
It was a new building, cheaply constructed. She could hear the old ayah plainly through the door. Sumitra must be within earshot. Raising her voice she said clearly, ‘Sumitra, this is Margaret Wood. I intend to see you if I have to stay here a week, or call the police.’
Ten seconds later the door swung suddenly open. Sumitra stood there. She said curtly, ‘Come in.’
She turned and walked ahead of Margaret into the apartment, and sat down on a comfortable sofa by the window. Just over seven months, Margaret had worked out. She was showing it more than most primigravidae at this stage, the bulge of pregnancy heavy under the sari. Her enormous eyes looked even bigger in the thin pallor of her face, and were further accentuated by the deep, dark circles under them. She wore a dark sari and a pearl necklace, and her hair hung to her shoulders, loosely gathered by a silver cord at the back of her head. She said, ‘Well, now you have seen for yourself ... Is he dead? Is that why you’ve come?’
Margaret said, ‘No. I forced Janaki to tell me. Don’t blame her.’
‘Are you going to tell him?’
‘That’s what I’ve come about.’
‘I shall have to leave then. This time no one will find me.’
‘And after you’ve had the baby? Are you going to bring her up yourself?’
‘I don’t know. Sometimes I feel that I shall die of misery, whether ... What’s it got to do with you?’
‘Everything. Answer me, please.’
Sumitra shot her a defiant look; but she needed to talk. Somewhere in the background, from the kitchenette, Margaret heard the breathing and shuffling of the old ayah. Sumitra had seen no other human being for five months.
Sumitra said, ‘It’s the old question, and there’s still no answer. I talked to you about it that day you came up to Chambalpur, but you didn’t understand then. What am I, a mother or a political leader? What kind of mother? It would be no problem for you. It would be none for me if ... if I hadn’t done what I did to Rodney. But even that would be no problem for you. You would have betrayed England for him, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Without a husband or a home I can’t be a mother. I can’t raise the child and give him--’
‘Her ... Rodney always says “her”.’
‘He knows already?’
‘No - just talking about babies.’
‘Him, her, I daren’t think that far ... I can’t give her a home, I can’t bring her up, if I am to travel round the country organising the women of India, as the Prime Minister wants me to. Without a husband I love, why should I stay in one place? I couldn’t do it for Dip. For Rodney, yes . . . but I finished that.’
Margaret waited till the other woman turned her head slightly to meet her eye. Then she said, ‘Come to Rodney. Show him yourself, and his child. I’ve lived with him for nearly five months and I know that nothing else can save him.’
Sumitra laughed rather unpleasantly. ‘Has he thrown you over, too? And you want to see him finish me off properly this time?’
Margaret said, ‘You still love him, don’t you? Don’t you? You owe me the truth ... Don’t you?’
Sumitra shouted, ‘Yes! ... But--’
‘Come to him then. He doesn’t know about the baby. But it means so much to him that he may ask you to marry him. If he does, you’ve got to say yes. On any terms. Even if you have to give up politics, and power, and independence, and just be a woman like the rest of us.’
Sumitra’s eyes darkened. ‘Would ... do you think he’ll speak to me?’
‘I don’t know. All I can do is put you in the same room, alone, with him. I know he won’t do you any physical harm. I know that that’ - she indicated the other’s generous belly - ‘will move him as nothing has been able to ever since you betrayed him.’
‘What are you doing this for? What’s the trick?’
‘I’ve told you once. I love him ... Come with me, now.’
‘Now? No, no. I look dreadful. Tomorrow, perhaps, when .. ‘
‘No. Now.’
She put out her hand and slowly pulled Sumitra to her feet. ‘All right,’ Sumitra said, and again, ‘all right ... Will you call a taxi? 11904.’ Margaret made the call and then watched as Sumitra slipped into a pair of low-heeled sandals, touched up her lipstick and applied a tika in the middle of her forehead. The woman moved with an ungainly heaviness, and her muscles were in poor condition. What else did she expect, shutting herself up here so long? There were exercises she must and could do, even if she refused to go out.
Margaret led the way carefully downstairs, and after a short wait in the hall the taxi came.
At the corner where they lived the driver turned with a look of as
tonished disgust. ‘Here?’
‘Yes, here. Number 27, on the right ... Wait here.’
The rain had paused and half a dozen women peered at them from doors and windows up the street. Three naked children stared up from the gutter. Sumitra whispered, ‘I’m trembling ... What shall I say?’
‘That’s up to you. You know what you want, don’t you?’
They climbed the narrow, creaking stair. Rodney’s door was shut and she tapped on it. ‘Rodney?’
His voice answered, ‘Yes.’
She heard Sumitra’s sharp intake of breath beside her. Through the door she called, ‘There’s a visitor for you.’ He might be lying naked on his bed. What did it matter? She opened the door and slowly Sumitra stepped forward. She could not see Rodney, and closed the door.
In her own room the dirty plates from breakfast cried out accusingly at her. She swept them up, hurried down to the filthy square of black gravel below, washed them, and ran back upstairs. She tidied up her bed, removed the tablecloth, and scrubbed the tiny table. Then she sat down.
Five minutes. She heard the mumble of voices through the wall. It was hard to tell but most of it sounded like a woman’s. Ten minutes. She wondered that her eyes were dry, but they were, dry as dust and beginning to scratch so that she had to rub them with a damp handkerchief, then wash them carefully. Still they hurt.
After fifteen minutes she heard the squeak of Rodney’s door hinge and tensed in her chair. A man’s footsteps came along the passage, but these were fast steps, unlike Rodney’s slack near-shuffle. Through the open door she saw him pass. There was a cold set to his face and jaw, and pinched lines round his nose, and his lips were thin and tight locked. His footsteps receded quickly down the stairs. She hurried to his room.
Sumitra was sitting on the bed, head down. She looked up, her face hardening from its expression of utter misery to a cold stare. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘whatever it was you were trying to do, you did it.’
‘What happened?’
‘At first I don’t think he saw me. Only this.’ She put her hand on her belly. ‘He touched me. He felt it kicking. For a moment I thought everything was going to be all right. Then he realised it was I carrying it. He looked as if he would rip me open to take it away from me ... I asked him if he would marry me. He said no. I begged and pleaded and promised. He said no. At the end he said a marriage had to have love and he did not love me, and never could. He told me never to come near him again ... So you showed him his child, and proved that having me too is too much of a price to pay. That ought to be torture enough, for both of us!’
‘What are you going to do now? No, first tell me why you didn’t get rid of it.’
Sumitra said, ‘I have had two abortions in Europe. This was Rodney’s. I couldn’t.’
‘And now?’
‘I haven’t made up my ... Why are you tormenting me? Why do you bully me?’
‘This is Rodney’s. Are you going to bring her up yourself or let someone else adopt her?’
‘I can’t bring it up. Without him, I just can’t ... Three people have told me they’ll bring it up as their own.’
‘Who?’
Sumitra did not answer, sullenly looking out the window with pursed lips. Margaret said, ‘I can guess - Max and Janaki - your husband.’
Sumitra turned her head and said bitterly, ‘You do know us all well, don’t you? Yes, those two, and the other. What choice would you make if it were yours - to be the foster child of a general, a rajah, or a prime minister - a prime minister’s sister, to be exact.’ Margaret said, ‘Give her to me.’
Sumitra stared at her for a long, long time. She said, at last, ‘So that’s it.’
‘Of course it is!’ Margaret cried. ‘You must have known all the time. But I gave you every chance. I didn’t cheat. I thought Rodney would forgive you, and forget, when he saw that ... Now you know, and I know, that he can’t forget, and if he can’t, he’s right not to marry you.’
‘But you think that if you have my child he will marry you?’
Margaret said earnestly, ‘I don’t know, Sumitra. I only know that unless he has the child he will continue to sink into the earth, as you can see he has been sinking, and will soon die. But if you gave the child to him, what could he do? At best he would have to hire a nurse or housekeeper of some kind. At worst he might marry some slut. If you let me adopt her, though, I am responsible - and I shall never leave him.’
For five minutes Sumitra said nothing.
Margaret said, ‘It was not you alone who brought him to this state. I know that it was mainly himself. But it was you who finally stabbed him in the back. You owe him a new life.’
Sumitra burst out: ‘But I hate you! Yes, you! Knowing what you want with such utter finality. Untorn by the slightest doubt about anything. Totally in love with one man, troubled by not a thought, not a worry, never thinking, what shall I do? - only, how shall I do it?’
‘You want the child to be brought up in India, then? So that you can see her every time you meet Janaki, or Dip, every time you go to New Delhi? So that you can watch her growing under someone else’s love?’
‘Stop!’ Sumitra screamed. ‘You can have her, you ... you merciless demon. You cubless vixen. You can have her, but you’ve got to take her out of India within a month, and never bring her back. And Rodney.’
Margaret sighed. The trembling in her body ceased, the queasy fluttering in her belly calmed. She said, ‘Are you having regular prenatal inspections?’
‘No. No one has seen me. No one’s going to.’
‘Where do you plan to have the baby? What doctor is going to deliver you?’
‘In the flat. Or out in my beach hut at Pabal. No doctor. There is nothing wrong with me. I am a healthy Indian woman, and ayah will deliver me, as she delivered my mother of me. No one shall know who does not already know.’
‘You are not healthy, Sumitra. You’ve got to start the proper exercises at once ... Who does know?’
‘Max - I told him first. Janaki. Ayah. Dip. The Prime Minister and his sister. Now you and Rodney. That’s all.’
‘When is the baby due?’
‘I began my last period on December 24.’
Margaret had asked the question so many times that she had an obstetrical calendar in her head. She said, ‘About September 24, then. Just under three months from now. You look a little later than that. You must have antenatal examinations.’
‘I will not.’
‘Will you let me? I am not a doctor, but I have a lot of experience. There might be some simple defect which can be easily fixed now, by medicine or exercise or dieting, but could be fatal to you or the baby, or both, if we don’t do something about it.’
‘Oh, all right.’
‘I’ll bring what I need to your apartment tomorrow morning as soon as I come off work. Please have a urine specimen ready.’
‘How are you going to get it tested?’
‘It shall be mine,’ Margaret said. ‘When we get nearer the date I shall have to leave the hospital to look after you full time, and that will make a good excuse. I can pad myself out a bit.’ She laughed almost gaily. ‘But you must have a doctor. You really must. It’s not only your life and the baby’s, that depend on this, but Rodney’s.’
‘And yours?’
‘In a way.’
‘I don’t care. I will not have a doctor.’
‘Then I shall have to deliver you myself, with your ayah.’
‘Ayah can do it without you,’ Sumitra said rudely.
Margaret said calmly, ‘I am sure she can, if there are no complications. But I shall be there, and I shall warn the best obstetrician in Bombay to be ready, if I have to call on him in a hurry.’
‘I will not...’
‘You may not be conscious,’ Margaret said. ‘The taxi’s waiting.’ Two minutes later Margaret slowly climbed back up the stairs, threw herself on to her bed and burst into tears, her hands clutching and kneading at the wet pillow under h
er head.
Rodney’s voice, sharp and angry, brought her to her feet. ‘Where is she?’
‘Sumitra?’ she dabbed at her eyes. ‘She went back to her flat.’
‘She told me she’s living alone with her old ayah, and no one else is going to know about the baby. She can’t do that. Something might be wrong.’
Margaret said, ‘I’m going to look after her.’
‘You? ... And a good doctor.’
Margaret said nothing.
Rodney slammed down into a chair. ‘Then I suppose she’ll find foster parents for her. Probably Max and Janaki. I could become their night watchman. Or chauffeur. They wouldn’t have to pay me anything. I have a small pension.’
‘No, you couldn’t,’ Margaret cried. ‘They wouldn’t take you. They couldn’t! You must see that.’
Rodney stared at her, his face dark with congested fury. ‘You’re right. So I’ll never see her, touch her. She’ll never know I’m her father.’
Margaret said, ‘Sumitra is going to give her to me.’
Rodney’s brows came down. ‘You? My baby?’
Margaret said, ‘She doesn’t want to raise it herself - not without you. She realises that she can’t even have it brought up in India. The strain would be too much for her. So I am to have her, but I must take her out of India within a month, and never ...’
Rodney stood up. His hands were like powerful claws, slowly opening, outstretched in front of him. He took a pace towards her where she sat on the bed. His voice was almost casual. ‘She is my child,’ he said. He stood directly over her. ‘I could kill you now for trying to get her - but I won’t. You are needed, until she is born. But if you try to take her away from me then, I will kill you. Do you understand?’
Margaret put up her hand. He caught it, and she heard her bones cracking in his grip. She said, ‘The baby is yours, Rodney. She will always be yours. You will need a housekeeper, a nanny, won’t you? Are you going to change her nappies ten times a day, yourself?’
‘Yes!’
‘Are you going to pot her, and mix her bottle, and sit up all night with her while she’s teething?’
