by Sharon Maas
They retrieved their suitcases and entered Piarco's main hall, where a dread-locked man in a long shirt covered with brilliant red flowers played a gentle rippling melody on a steel drum, so soothing that Saroj's nervousness as to the waiting confrontation melted away.
Trixie and her mother approached them, smiling, transformed; the deep lines of stress that usually furrowed Lucy Quentin's face, her mask of permanent dissatisfaction, had vanished, and when she greeted Baba it was with a smile so serene it disarmed him completely.
'Oh, Mr Roy, I do apologise for loading Trixie onto you at the last minute, but Saroj told me it would be quite all right, you wouldn't mind in the least, and frankly, there was just no time before we left to ring you up and really we had no choice because all the flights were booked up till mid-September and there were still a few berths left on the Montserrat, so we were quite lucky. And I'm sure she won't be any trouble; Saroj is such a mature girl and Trixie eats out of her hand!'
Trixie and Saroj, arm in arm after their first exuberant greeting, exchanged wicked grins at these words. Trixie turned to Saroj and winked and Saroj had to smother her giggles. Baba's manners won precedence over his prejudices. He hedged and hummed and insisted everything was quite all right, that it was good for Saroj to have a friend in her cabin, and reassured Lucy Quentin completely as to Trixie's safety under his chaperonage.
Ma's death had cut Baba down several sizes. He was a ghost of his former self: for the first time, Saroj understood the cliché. Indeed, she felt that way herself; but with her, that ghost was already filling out with substance, new contours taking shape, new life stirring at the prospect of a new beginning. She had the advantage of youth. Her spirit could still sprint; and it had overtaken Baba's limping one. She almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
They left the terminal and plunged into the multi-coloured fray of taxi- and bus-drivers, porters, tourists, vendors, shoe-cleaners, lottery-ticket sellers and limbo dancers or whatever those loud-mouthed, grinning men in carnival colours arguing and laughing among themselves in the middle of the road were.
They took two taxis to Port of Spain. Trixie was spending the night with her grandparents, Lucy Quentin with an old school friend, Baba and Saroj in a hotel. They'd be meeting again the next morning — on board the Montserrat. But before she left for the night Trixie grabbed Saroj, pulled her aside, and whispered fiercely into her ear:
'I've got the most terrible, terrible news, Saroj! I told you Dad doesn't want me, didn't I? Well, he doesn't!' Saroj looked at her in surprise and saw that she was close to tears.
'What? What d'you mean?'
But the cars were waiting and the parents were impatient and pulled the girls apart before Trixie could speak.
Trixie and Saroj shared a tiny, outside cabin on the same deck but on the opposite side of the ship from Baba, which was a good beginning. They squabbled as to who would sleep on which berth, inspected the tiny shower and toilet and poked their noses into a few of the cupboards, flung their luggage on to the berths and hurried up to the main deck to watch the ship leave port. Lucy Quentin had been near to tears when the loudspeaker had requested visitors to leave the ship and Trixie wanted to wave goodbye. They pushed their way through the passengers with the very same idea in mind and found a place at the railing, where Trixie peered anxiously at the crowd on the pier till at last in great relief she cried out, 'There she is!' and waved frantically, screaming, 'Mum, Mum!' into a wind that tore the words from her lips. Tears slid down her cheeks and she made no effort to restrain them.
Lucy Quentin, a tiny forlorn creature in a lilac trouser suit, waved back with one hand, dabbing her own cheeks with a handkerchief with the other. She looked so small, so helpless, her power nothing but a mirage, evanescent against the desert emptiness of farewell. All she was, now, was a mother with an aching heart.
'Who knows when I'll see her again? It may be years!' sobbed Trixie, as the ship's horn emitted a long-drawn-out, hollow, agonised blast and the gangway and the ropes were pulled in.
At this point Trixie was crying uncontrollably. 'Now I don't have anybody except you!' she wailed. Saroj turned to her and placed her hands on her shoulders.
'Okay, Trixie, stop blubbing and tell me for goodness' sake, what's this about your dad not wanting you? You're on the ship, aren't you? What more d'you want?'
'Oh Saroj, if only you knew! Dad sent a long telegraph a few days ago and he said they're putting me into a boarding school! That they just bought a house and they don't have a bedroom for me and it's a very good school in Yorkshire! Mummy says Yorkshire's miles away from London, up in the moors somewhere! And it's some snooty school Dad's wife used to go to and she says it's the best place for me to repeat O Levels, away from London where I might get too wild, and it's time for me to get serious and more disciplined, so they're sending me away! Oh Saroj, can you believe it? It's as if they're sending me to prison! Daddy doesn't want me, otherwise he wouldn't listen to that old bitch!'
'Oh, Trixie! And I was so looking forward to us being in London together! You and me in Carnaby Street! We might even have gone to the same school!'
'Well, it's not going to be. And I tell you something, Saroj, if that school's too awful it's going to be me slitting my wrists next time! Who knows, I might jump into the ocean before we even get to England!'
Three weeks after embarkation they docked at Southampton. Saroj walked down the gangway, meekly following Baba, Trixie behind her. They no longer laughed. The passage to England had been a period of respite; they had lost themselves in the Montserrat's little world and now must leave its cosy familiarity. England loomed before them, not the England of their dreams but a new and unknown world, a threatening, hostile reality.
It was nearly midnight. They spent the rest of that night in a Southampton hotel, to rest before continuing to London, but neither of them slept a wink. They spent the night in speculation, winged on hopeful flights of fantasy they both knew to be vapour.
The train for London left shortly after nine. Baba met a Bengali couple just arrived on a ship from Bombay and immediately plunged into conversation with the husband. Trixie had bought a guidebook of London at a stationer's and was already lost in its pages. Saroj sat looking out of the window, watching the bustle on the platform, when her eyes caught his.
He was tall and lanky and the rich, creamy colour of coffee generously mixed with cream. His black hair was long and curled down to his neck, and one stray lock hung loose across his forehead; he had just raised a hand to brush it behind his ears. His eyes brushed hers, returned, locked. The hand raised so suddenly stiffened, remaining poised above his eyes as in a salute. Thus he stood there on the platform, immobile, just gazing, not even smiling.
He wore a kurta pyjama-suit like the ones Baba used to wear back home, but instead of white his was a pale ochre colour. Over the almost knee-length shirt he wore a dark brown cotton waistcoat which emphasised his slim waistline; he looked crumpled, shabby, as if he'd just rolled out of bed, or, more probably, off an intercontinental ship. The canvas straps of his rucksack pulled his shoulders back and bunched his shirt, while the strap of his woven, bulging shoulder-bag lay across his chest. The whistle blew, the train jerked, startling him back to life. He signalled, to say he was coming, and loped forward in a long leisurely stride, unhurried but nevertheless swift, moving with the loose, elegant, almost regal grace of an Afghan hound, forwards along the platform to the carriage door.
Saroj pressed her face to the glass but could not see if he'd made it. But no. There he was. As the train chugged slowly past him he shrugged and held up his hands in resignation. The train picked up speed. She opened the window and looked out, back at him. He trotted forward, grew smaller and smaller, bounded to a standstill, disappeared.
She could swear she had seen him before, somewhere.
45
Chapter Forty-five
Saroj
London, 1970
Saroj ripped the letter straight through the
middle and then into tiny fragments. Tears of rage pricked at her eyes, but she would not let them out. Instead, she paced her little attic room as far as the eaves would allow, picked up her pillow and smashed it into the wall — as if the pillow was to blame — and kicked at a table leg. She flung open the little window and threw the scraps of the letter out into the cold grey fog hanging over the roofs of Clapham. Then she sat down at the table that doubled as a desk to write a letter to Trixie.
In the three months since arriving in England her life had changed completely. At last, she was free. The first pleasant surprise had been that she was not, as she thought had been planned, to live under the same roof as Baba. Her three half-brothers, James, Walter and Richie Roy, were less hospitable than Deodat had expected; their wives even less so, and not one of them was inclined to augment their family by two new members — three, including Ganesh, who had arrived two months earlier. Homes in London were not as large as in Georgetown, and nobody had rooms to spare. Upon their arrival Saroj and Baba had been crisply informed by Walter's wife that the three brothers had already distributed them among themselves. Ganesh lived with Richie, the dentist, Deodat reluctantly moved in with Walter, the lawyer, and Saroj with James, the pharmacist — and so what was left of Ma's family was torn apart.
Saroj was overjoyed, more so because between her and James' English wife Colleen there was a spontaneous, wordless understanding. Perhaps Colleen was disappointed that her own daughter, Angela, had no higher ambitions than a secretarial career; at any rate, Colleen's first mission — even before taking Saroj to 'see the sights' as James suggested — was to find an appropriate school for the newcomer.
Saroj was accepted as a scholarship pupil by an excellent school, half an hour's bus ride from their home, and immediately applied herself to her studies, earning laurels from all her teachers, for a girl of such focused scholarly zeal was rare in these days of miniskirts and free love. That earnestness won her once again the accustomed reputation of prudishness among her peers, but Saroj did not mind. She had things to do, goals to achieve, and the sour-grapes griping of a few pimple-faced adolescents did not bother and could not influence her; the names they called her, Ice-Princess and Snow-Queen, fell away from her like water off a duck's back.
London had been strange, at first: the rows and rows of tall dark terraced houses, with no spaces between them, no grass between them and the streets: just forbidding stairs, doors, basement windows below your feet. The bathrooms — the two taps, cold and hot, with the cold too cold and the hot too hot. Colleen had shown her how to fill the sink with water, rub soap into a flannel, and rub her body with the cloth — what a dirty way of keeping clean! She missed her twice-daily shower. Here you had a bath two or three times a week, wallowing in your own waste, emerging from the bathwater coated with slime. And the food so bland! As bland as the sun, which shone weak, as if filtered, sapped of all strength and energy. But she had adapted. London was her Promised Land: here she would grow her wings.
And now this letter. A throwback to a bygone age when Baba had ruled supreme. Though the letter itself carried no power, as Baba had done, still the very impudence of such a suggestion, the utter gall of the writer to even think of making it, and, yes, the twinge of guilt it evoked in spite of Saroj's steeling over of her heart, heated her emotions to boiling point.
It had been a harmless looking blue air-letter lying on the hall table next to the telephone, addressed to Saroj, and with Indian stamps. Saroj, hoping for news from Trixie, picked it up, checked the name, turned it over to check the sender, and carried it upstairs. It was, she noticed, from one Gopal Iyer. The name meant nothing to her, nor the fact that it was from Madras. She slipped a finger into the corner slit, ripped open the three sides of the form and folded open the flimsy paper.
Gopal began by introducing himself as her dear deceased mother's eldest living brother, and offering his heartfelt condolences. Typed with a machine which lacked the letters e and m as well as the apex of the A and a raised letter d, and somewhat garbled grammar, it was not easy reading. But Saroj understood quite well. And even before she finished she was incensed. Those references to her mother's 'last dying wish'! Which had been, according to Gopal, to see Saroj well married.
‘...and now that she has passed on under such tragic circumstances it is our sacred duty, dear Sarojini, to fulfil this heartfelt desire in order that her poor soul may finally find rest having achieved this one last accomplishment. Your mother wrote to me on the very day she was to die; as if she was acting under Will of God that I may know of this her last dying wish and set about bringing it to completion after her passing over to the other side. For as she informs me you are a headstrong girl refusing the suggestions of your own father in this matter, your sister also having written me a letter informing me of your reluctance to form a suitable match. She gave me your address and suggested I write you and persuade you to change your mind.
‘It was your mother's last wish that she should bring you to India to find a suitable match here and I am in agreement with her in this respect. I am the eldest living male on your mother's side of the family and I have a duty towards you. I have taken it upon myself to bring you into contact with a highly suitable young man of whom your dear mother highly approved. In fact this is the very boy she was hoping to see you married to which was the purpose of her proposed journey to India in your accompaniment. I must now humbly admit that this boy is my own son. So this boy I am thinking of is your own cousin. As your dear mother must have surely told you it is a tradition among Tamil families, and highly auspicious, when the son and daughter of brother and sister marry. And since your dear mother and I were very close, it is doubly auspicious!
‘Now, dear Sarojini, I know that you are a modern-minded girl and disapprove of arranged marriages. So do I in principle. I have always done so. But I have grown in the knowledge that this is indeed the better path. I have learned this through great misery, for I disobeyed my parents and married for love, and lived to regret the day. I married a very beautiful but rather modern English woman, a friend of your mother, who was also very modern-minded, and flighty as you might know, and tended to support me in this matter.’
(Ma? Flighty?)
‘The son of this union is a talented young man now living in London. He is studying to become a doctor. As he is half-English his complexion is wheatish, a most pleasing colour. Knowing that this match was your mother's last dying wish, surely you will be rushing to fulfil it as a dutiful daughter. Know that your beloved mother can never rest in peace if this burning desire is left unaccomplished! I rest assured that there will be no doubt in your own mind as to the necessity of such an action. Yet as your dear mother tells me you have been in the past highly rebellious as to your marriage, but I am sure now she has passed away you will surely change your mind as to this last dying wish. Thus I am waiting for your agreement as soon as possible so that I may proceed with the marriage arrangements.’
If only Trixie were here. She could have shared the letter, read it out loud. She'd have fumed and raged as Trixie nodded in understanding, and then Trixie would have made a farce of the letter, read it out dramatically, acted out the pathos, converted it back into the ludicrous piece of rubbish it was. With the whole matter back in perspective the two of them would have laughed till they cried. She'd have crumpled the letter into a ball and thrown it into the wastepaper basket and forgotten the whole thing. She missed Trixie more than she'd have thought possible.
The next day, another letter, this time from Trixie:
‘… You won't believe this, you just won't, I love it here!’
‘I'm in a dorm with four girls, one of them's my best friend, her name's Alison Greer and she's from Malaya! (But she's English. White I mean. I'm the only black girl here which feels funny and some of the girls are snooty about it but Alison's on my side so what do I care?) We're in Lincoln West House, our colour is light blue and we're the best in lacrosse, there's also a Lincoln East and
they're dark blue, there are eight houses but the two Lincolns are really the very best houses!! Alison and I are in a Spanish class together, just the two of us! And I'm already so good at Spanish, because of the Montserrat it's easy as pie! And I'm repeating O Levels in my bad subjects in December, because my French is a hundred per cent better and I'm certain to pass and even maths is okay.
‘But the most wonderful thing is this art teacher, her name is Mrs Graham and she's quite old, but she says I have a real gift, a very special gift, that's why they took me into this school in the first place. She said that I should take care of it and nourish it because people with gifts have a special mission, they're on the earth to bring joy and beauty into the lives of others and if I neglect it or use my gift in the wrong way I'll either lose it or I'll lose myself, one of the two.
‘She invited me into her study and we had tea and biscuits and a long long talk, when I left I was almost in tears. She says that if you have a gift and you don't nourish it to let it flower you're absolutely miserable and do stupid things and this has been my problem all my life. She says I have too little confidence, and that's because I don't see the gift I have as something miraculous, that I only see my own smallness and inadequacy and compare myself to others. She says my feeling small and inadequate doesn't matter, in fact it's good because art is something divine and great and the artist must always remain humble and grateful. Creativity is in my heart, not in my head, she says; the head must bow low and enter the heart, and not interfere. Now isn't that news?
