by Sharon Maas
'He's a pony,' Trixie said, 'and he doesn't like strangers so you have to be very careful, approach him slowly from in front, and…'
Saroj didn't bother to listen to Trixie's instructions, and she didn't need them. The horse, pony, whatever, was glad to be rescued. She just walked up to him and he came to meet her. She patted him on the neck, and he nuzzled her hand. She whispered into his ear and stroked his glossy black-and-white coat, and she had to wipe a grin from her face as, leading the docile Vitane, she approached Trixie, sitting helplessly on the sand, so Trixie wouldn't think she was laughing at her.
By this time Meenakshi and the boys were with her, Meenakshi fussing over the twisted ankle, the boys fussing over the kite, which was ruined. Sahadeva was crying.
'It's all right, Sahadeva, we'll make a new one,' Saroj said in passing, and to Trixie, 'He was quite easy to catch!' trying not to brag.
'Thanks, now if you could just give me a leg-up I can ride him back to the Pony Club,' Trixie said, grouchily. She was trying to get rid of her, Saroj knew.
But Meenakshi, thank God for grown-ups, said, 'Girl, you hurt bad, you should go and see a doctor!'
'Who's this?' said Trixie, nodding towards Meenaskshi. 'It's Meenakshi, the boys' nanny, and she's right.'
'But I've got to take care of Vitane!'
'Don't worry about him,' Saroj said, and patted him again. It felt good, crouching there at Trixie's side with the reins slung over her arm, casually, as if he were her, Saroj's, horse, and not Trixie's. 'The Pony Club isn't all that far; I'll walk him over. Look, he likes me. We've got to get you to a doctor though, maybe you've broken something!'
Trixie looked sulky. She tried to stand up again but it was no good; she yelled in pain.
'I'll telephone your mother. What's her number?'
'She's not at home.'
'Your father then. Is he at work?'
'My father's in London,' Trixie said quickly, 'so I wouldn't bother calling him, and I've no idea where my mother is right now. Just… just call a taxi and get me to the hospital, I'll be all right, really, and if you could walk Vitane to the Pony Club…'
'Shouldn't I come to hospital with you?'
'No, I'll be fine, really.'
They looked around for a telephone booth but of course there wasn't one; there never was when you needed one, and then Meenakshi pointed out that just across the road was the police headquarters, and she waddled off to seek help. And before long Meenakshi was back with two strapping policemen who lugged Trixie up as if she were a sack of potatoes and carried her off the beach to the street, where a police jeep was already waiting.
Saroj stood waiting till the jeep was out of sight. And when it was gone she sent Meenakshi off home with the little boys and the broken kite, and then she stood on the Sea Wall, which was just the right height to get her leg over Vitane's back. Then she kicked his sides like she thought you were supposed to, and clicked her tongue and said giddy-up, and she was off ! Riding! With her skirt all hoisted up around her knees... her very first taste of freedom. A tiny step, perhaps, one Trixie would think nothing of, nothing like plunging into a raging inferno to save somebody's life.
But for Saroj, it was a single tiny step. And she had taken it alone, with no-one's help, only Providence.
Later that evening, while Ma was still at the Purushottama Temple and Baba was still at the Maha Sabha, the telephone rang. It was Trixie.
'I just wanted to say sorry I was so bitchy and thank you for looking after Vitane.'
'Oh, no, that's fine, really, and how are you? How's your foot? Is it broken?'
'No, just sprained.'
After that it was as easy as anything. Trixie was all alone at home, lying, as she explained, on the sitting room couch with her bandaged foot up, reading Teen magazine, bored to tears and ready for a chat. Naturally gregarious, she didn't need much prodding to release the avalanche of conversation waiting inside her. It didn't even seem to matter that Saroj happened to be one of those Indian drips. It was as if they were already best friends.
Within the first five minutes she had promised to give Saroj riding lessons, to lend her Beatles records, and on hearing that she had no record-player, to make cassettes of her records which she would give her the next day at school, and on hearing that she didn't even have a cassette recorder promised to lend her her own.
'But better still, just come over here. We can listen together then. What about after school tomorrow? Oh, hell, no, I've got this gammy foot and can't ride a bicycle. Guess what, I've got crutches! Mum'll have to pick me up in the car. But as soon as it's better you'll come home with me, okay?'
'Well, er, okay, but…'
'But what?'
'Well…' Saroj didn't know how to explain it. How to tell her that she wasn't allowed to go anywhere. Not to visit, except to relatives. Not shopping, not to the swimming pool, not to the cinema. Nowhere. That she couldn't ride a bicycle. That she was her father's prisoner, his captive, his possession. The porcelain doll he kept swaddled in cotton wool.
But then the real Saroj, the Saroj she longed to be, slammed her fist right through the porcelain facecrust of that doll.
'Yes! Yes, I'll come, but listen, I haven't got a bicycle so can I come home with you tomorrow, in the car? When your mum picks you up?'
They settled that matter there and then, and Saroj replaced the receiver with a feeling of jubilant, singing joy surging up within her. She danced away from the telephone with a wide grin splitting her face, and twirled slap-bang into Ganesh just coming home from cricket, and they both lay sprawled on the floor. Saroj laughed, and Ganesh, who never needed an excuse to do so, laughed too. She scrambled to her feet and pulled at Ganesh's sleeve.
'Ganesh, come quick, up in the tower. I've got news, you won't believe it!'
Trixie opened the back door of her mother's white Vauxhall and Saroj slipped in, feeling suddenly terribly shy. Suddenly scared. But then she was sliding back into the seat behind Trixie's mum and Trixie was in the passenger seat and they were driving off to a place where Baba could not find her.
'Mum, this is Saroj; Saroj, this is Mum,' Trixie said quickly. Trixie's mum was half-turned towards Saroj. She had a perfectly round two-inch Afro and her profile showed sharp features, a full mouth and high cheekbones. Her skin was an unblemished mahogany brown, and on the crest of the cheekbone nearest Saroj was a black split-pea of a mole, which together with the rest of that profile looked strangely, vaguely familiar.
Saroj slid forward in the seat to take her proffered hand and said, 'Pleased to meet you, Mrs Macintosh.'
Trixie's mum smiled and shook her head and Trixie let out one of her cascades of laughter.
'No, no, no, don't ever call her that or she'll bite your head off. She's not a Mrs and she's not a Macintosh. She's Lucy Quentin!'
And then Lucy Quentin smiled again and nodded this time, and Saroj almost died of shame and awe. Lucy Quentin!
Lucy Quentin was famous, so famous her face was in the papers all the time, Lucy Quentin this and Lucy Quentin that, Minister of Health, head of this commission and that advisory board, president of this association and chairwoman of that corporation. Lucy Quentin, quote, unquote, shake hands and curtsey.
And Saroj was Lucy Quentin's greatest fan. First thing she did whenever she got hold of the Chronicle was scan page one for any news of her. Had she given a speech? A press conference? Had words with the Minister of Education? Lucy Quentin was always crossing swords with men of consequence. She had a hundred axes to grind — but her sharpest, heaviest axe was the one raised on Baba's talon grip on his daughter's life. Lucy Quentin wanted to raise the minimum marriageable age for girls and abolish arranged marriages. She had plans to institute a commission where girls being forced into marriage by their parents could find legal assistance, or, after such a marriage had taken place, have it annulled. She envisioned a home these girls could flee to, secure from their fist-waving fathers. She wanted laws against the unlimited power of fathers
!
She outraged the entire adult Indian community with these unspeakable demands; but their daughters — and surely Saroj wasn't the only one — devoured her words in the privacy of their homes, made secret scrapbooks of Chronicle clippings, rooted for her in their hearts, cheered her on in their thoughts, and prayed for her success every time their parents called them to the family shrine for puja. And smiled demurely to themselves when their fathers ranted about Lucy Quentin's latest heresies.
It was none of her business, the Indian fathers said; first, she was an African and had no understanding of Indian ways. Second, she was Minister of Health and marriage wasn't her department. It jolly well was, Lucy Quentin replied. Forced marriage was bad for a fourteen-year-old's mental health.
And here was Saroj, now, sitting behind the great Lucy Quentin, on the way to her home to spend the afternoon with her daughter who, Saroj determined, was about to become her very best friend. In that moment she knew there really was a God.
Later on, when Lucy Quentin had dropped them off at their Bel Air Park home and driven off again to some important meeting, Trixie told Saroj her story. Trixie's mum's name was Quentin, not Macintosh, she told Saroj, because when she divorced Trixie's father she took back her maiden name and called herself Miss.
'Did your father remarry?'
'Yeah. He married a rich white lady, and they live in a fancy house in London.'
Trixie's dad was a Trinidadian artist. Improvident, happy-go- lucky, non-political and real, real cool, said Trixie. When Lucy Quentin threw him out he went to England to recover and start a new life, without a penny. As it was just before Christmas he painted ten black Santa Clauses on thin cardboard, folded them into cards, wrote a witty Christmas message on them and stood on a street corner somewhere in London holding them out in a fan to the passers-by, wearing a red fur-lined coat himself. In five minutes the cards were all gone. So he went home and painted some more, and they were snapped up too, mostly by West Indians, but also by white Londoners who thought them original and exotic and ethnic. Because Trixie's dad was a gifted painter, and his black Santa Clauses were tiny works of art. That's how he met this rich white lady who at the time ran a small advertising agency. She took him off the streets and got those cards marketed and got him going as an 'ethnic illustrator'.
'Finally she married him and gave him two sons and they opened their own greeting card business, and since then he doesn't care a fig about me.'
'Of course he does.'
'He doesn't. He's got this white lady and two half-white sons, why should he care a fig about me?'
'Because you're his daughter.'
Saroj's experience of fathers was such that a father's indifference to a daughter was absolutely unthinkable. Impossible.
'Well, why doesn't he send for me then? This place is so utterly dead boring. I'd give anything to live in London. I keep begging him to let me come but he just says Mum won't let me, but if he really wanted to he'd fight her for me. I bet it's that white woman he's got.'
'Well, I don't know. Perhaps he thinks you're better off with your mother. And she hasn't got anyone but you. I think it's fair enough. And you must admit she's brilliant. I'd give anything for a mother like that.'
'Why? What's yours like?'
'Oh, you know... nothing special. Old-fashioned housewife type. She's very religious. Boring. But my dad's worse. Much worse. He's lethal.'
And then she told Trixie all about her family. About Ma and Baba, and about the Ghosh boy, and having to marry him. About the prison of her life.
'It's like living in a convent,' she complained. 'I've got to break out else I'll just go crazy, I tell you. And it's so unfair. All my half-brothers and my brother get to go to London to university, and me? No way. Why can't I go to London too? Just because I'm a bloody girl!'
'Well,' said Trixie, flashing her long white grin, 'we'll soon see about that. You came to just the right person. Saroj, why don't we just run away to London? I mean, not now, but later, like when we're sixteen? If we start planning for it now, then...'
Their eyes met then, and they grinned at each other, and both of them knew.
They knew; not in the sense of knowing this or that. Not that they could see into the future and sense what it held for them, or that they knew of Destiny's plan for them, or about Ganesh and Nat and London and the babies they would or wouldn't have, and all the rest of it. They simply knew. They recognised. They cognised.
As if some little spark in Trixie cognised some little spark in Saroj, and those two bright little sparks leaped in joy and bounced out at each other saying, Hi, here I am! Been missing you all my life. That's the way true friendships begin, those rare friendships as true as gold, that stand the knocks of time. Trixie yelped.
'Saroj: you and me in Carnaby Street, okay?'
They clapped and slapped their hands, hugged and laughed. A battle-cry was born.
11
Chapter Eleven
Savitri
Madras, 1921
Mr Baldwin had been David's tutor for two years now. Fiona's governess, Miss Chadwick, had resigned to marry a civil-service chap, and in fact it was through this very man that the Lindsays were introduced to Mr Baldwin, who was immediately employed to replace Miss Chadwick. Mr Baldwin's father was also a civil servant, and Mr Baldwin had been born in Bombay. He had gone 'home' for schooling, of course, but as soon as he could he had come back to his real home, which was India, to seek a position as private tutor. The Lindsays were his first employers, and he was only twenty-one when he was given charge over Fiona, nine, and David, four. From the very start they loved him.
Mr Baldwin made learning a delight. No subject was so boring that Mr Baldwin could not bring to it the light of humour, and reflect it with a fascination that made them eager to learn. He was a small, wiry, energetic man, perpetually in motion. Children must learn with movement, was his devise. He had them climbing trees to count the leaves, and digging holes to bury stones. He took them for nature walks, talking first to David, on his level, and then to Fiona, on her level, explaining and discussing their discoveries. Mrs Lindsay, at first perplexed by these unorthodox methods, quickly saw the amazing results, and left well alone.
Mr Baldwin had long been aware of Savitri. He had first discovered her in January that year, hiding in the middle of a thick bougainvillea bush just behind the rose arbour, silently watching and listening while he taught Fiona long division and David the addition of single digits. He might not have noticed her at all if it had not been for the hairs on the back of his neck. They stood on end. Mr Baldwin knew he was being watched, and from behind. He let the children work for a while on their own simply to give himself the time to adjust to the situation and figure out how to react.
The feeling of being watched was insistent; he was quite certain of it. But there was nothing unpleasant about it. The watcher was not hostile. Mr Baldwin held his thoughts still for a while to see what would happen... and there! In the space between two thoughts he felt it; something soft and gentle, like the tendril of a honeysuckle vine, perhaps, reaching out, easing in, settling down comfortably right there between his thoughts, with a cosy warm stillness, like honey, seeping in through the spaces in his mind and filling him with sweet, benevolent warmth. Its source was the thick silence behind him, behind the lattice-work of the rose arbour.
Mr Baldwin moved so that he half-faced the lattice. He did not turn his face but strained to see out of the corner of his left eye, and when that told him nothing stretched out for David's exercise book. Pretending to correct the exercises David had just done, he managed to turn in the right direction and carefully peered over the edge of the book. The diamond holes between the criss-crossing slabs of green wood were black, for the bougainvillea was tall and thick. But in one of those dark diamonds something shone, something small and living, which Mr Baldwin knew to be an eye.
He looked at David then. 'What's the name of that little girl you like to play with? The girl who w
aits for you after lessons?'
'Savitri?' said David, looking up. Mr Baldwin's sharpened hearing noted a swift intake of breath from the depths of the bougainvillea.
'Yes, that's it. Did you know she's watching us?'
The moment he spoke the words Savitri took off. Like a frightened chipmunk she charged from the midst of the bush and would have disappeared into the foliage beyond had Mr Baldwin, anticipating her flight, not been faster, and had her skirt not caught on one of the branches blocking her path. But there he was, waiting for her as she emerged from behind the cascading orange blossoms, torn, scratched and dishevelled, a taut, tiny thing with arms so skinny he thought they'd snap as he closed his fists around them.
She did not struggle. Her nature was not to struggle against but to face up to adversity in all calmness. So she looked into his face with innocent capitulation and said only, 'Excuse me, Mr Baldwin. Please don't tell the madam.'
But that was far from Mr Baldwin's mind. He let go of the child, only to take her little hand in his and lead her around the latticework into the rose arbour where Fiona and David stared at her, Fiona in surprise, David in joy.
'Come on, sit down, sit down,' said Mr Baldwin, patting the bench beside him, and, her shyness put to flight by his very heartiness, she slipped onto the bench and looked up at him in expectant silence, her fingers interlocked on the table before her.
'Do you go to school, Savitri?' asked Mr Baldwin.
'Sometimes. When I don't have to help my father.' She said it matter-of-factly, without complaint.
'Do you like school?'
She nodded vigorously.
'Can you show me what you've learned?'
Savitri nodded again, drew David's book towards her and picked up his pencil. She bent over the exercise book and, the tip of her tongue licking over her bottom lip in concentration, wrote for several minutes, watched by Mr Baldwin and the two children.
