Of Marriageable Age

by Sharon Maas

  The staff was herded into the corridor, pushed backwards, all with their hands up. Captain Smiley edged himself to the front and pointed to the Red Cross brassards on their arms and shouting the words 'Hospital, doctor,' but he might as well have shouted 'walkies' at a mad dog tearing a rabbit to pieces.

  To David's horror Lieutenant Rogers, a friend of his, was bayoneted through the throat. Before his eyes his friends and colleagues fell bleeding to the ground as the Japanese, drunk with bloodlust, attacked again and again, indiscriminately plunging their bayonets into hearts, throats, heads.

  Then it was David's turn. He saw the raised bayonet and the teeth of the grinning Japanese behind it, he saw the blood-stained blade descend as in slow motion, aimed straight at his heart. He saw his end coming and spoke a prayer; he felt the blade enter and fell on to the heap of bleeding bodies.

  I am alive, he thought, and wondered how this could be so. And then he realised the pain was in his arm.

  How can that be, thought David, and then he remembered the metal cigarette case in his left shirt-pocket. It had saved his life, deflecting the bayonet at the very last moment. By now his attacker had gone on to the next victim; through half-closed eyes David watched the massacre, listened to the bloodthirsty shouts of the Japanese and the cries of the dying. One soldier was checking to see that all were dead, kicking the bodies to see if they moved and finishing them off with a quick thrust of a bayonet. So David kept still. He felt a searing agony as the bayonet entered his foot and bit his teeth together so as not to scream.

  He thought of Savitri. There is a way of going beyond pain, Savitri had said, and he tried to recall her method, but before he could do so he passed mercifully into unconsciousness.

  The next party of Japanese was less bloodthirsty. Finding David alive, they took him prisoner. He was a doctor, and of value, so they amputated his foot and carted him off to Changi, where he became prison doctor. He survived that hell. At the end of the war David, more dead than alive, returned to Madras to pick up the pieces of his life.

  The first piece of information he picked up was devastating: in London a bomb had destroyed the house where his parents lived with Marjorie. All three were dead. David wept for the people whose lives he had ruined — for had he not run away with Savitri his parents would have spent the war in Madras, and been safe. He would never have met Marjorie, that innocent, sweet girl with dreams of romance with a man who could never love her as she deserved.

  Savitri had disappeared off the face of the earth. David's enquiries revealed that almost all the women and children in her convoy had been killed, that her ship had been torpedoed, and had sunk. Desperately, he searched for news that she had been one of the lucky few to be rescued — but nobody had seen her. Surely she would have come back to Madras, to wait for him, if she were alive? And what about the child?

  Through his British contacts he found out that Henry and June had emigrated to Australia just a few months previously.

  Gopal. Where was Gopal? Gopal and Fiona? Nowhere to be found. It was as if everyone David had ever known in Madras had been wiped out. He went back to Fairwinds, just to remember.

  'Fiona!'

  The woman in the rocking chair glanced up and looked at him vaguely. 'Fiona, it's me!' he repeated, and ran up the steps to the verandah, expecting her to leap up and embrace him. But she remained seated, rocking back and forth in the ancient rattan rocking chair that had once been his mother's.

  'Fiona! Speak to me! What's the matter?' He stood before her now and saw that she clasped something to her breast, something wrapped in rags.

  'What's the matter, Fiona? Why won't you speak? It's me, David! I'm back!'

  Something seemed to click then and she looked up and their eyes met and David saw that hers were vacant.

  'David?' her voice was small and piping, almost like a child's.

  'David.' She tried to stand up but slipped. David stretched out a hand for her and she took it and he helped her to her feet. The dirty bundle she kept hugged tightly to her chest, never loosening her grip.

  'David,' she said for the third time. 'David. David. Have you met Paul? This is Paul. My baby.'

  She held out the bundle then and David tried to take it but she pulled it back, but David had seen enough. It was a doll, a grubby-faced doll.

  'Fiona,' he said gently. 'What has happened to you? Where's Gopal? Where's Savitri?'

  'Gopal? Savitri?' She paused, as if thinking. And then she shook her head, slowly, sadly. 'All gone,' she said. 'All gone. Gopal. Savitri. Nataraj. All gone. Mani has won. I am scum. Dirty scum. He has left me with Paul. Paul is all I have.'

  David took hold of her shoulders, shook her gently. 'Fiona, please, please talk to me, try to remember. Where is Gopal? Where is Savitri! Tell me! Who is here with you? Are you alone? Does Gopal live here too? Who looks after you?'

  Fiona shook her head again. 'No Gopal. No Savitri. No Nataraj. Only Paul is left. My dear Paul.' She looked down at the doll and smiled lovingly and crooned, and David knew he would get no sensible answers from her.

  He looked around. Fairwinds was overgrown, true, but this side of the verandah appeared clean and well-kept, the area before it had been freshly swept. Fiona's clothes were old, but clean, her hair was neat, she appeared to be well-fed. Somebody must live here with her, to take care of her. He went in search of that somebody. In the kitchen he found a woman, lying on a mat in the corner, sleeping. He woke her and she stood up, rubbing her eyes. A short exchange in Tamil, and he knew that Gopal had arranged for Fiona to live here and be cared for, but that he himself was, most probably, in Bombay. And that Mani was responsible for everything. For stealing Paul, and another baby, Fiona's nephew. Nataraj.

  David found Mani. Mani sneered for a while, coughed, and told David that Savitri was safely married on the other side of the world.

  'And what of her baby? She was pregnant when she left me. What became of her child?'

  He kept his voice low, calm, respectful. He needed information that only Mani could give. And though he trembled with rage inside, he maintained a façade of composed

  pleasantness. He needed Mani to talk.

  Mani, enjoying his power over David, sneered again and mocked while David begged. And when it became clear that David would do anything to find Nataraj a certain gleam entered Mani's eye and he said: 'What will you give me for Nataraj's address?'

  'I will give you money! A lakh of rupees!'

  'A lakh!' Mani laughed but his laughter turned into a violent cough that racked his body. When he came to himself he said, 'A lakh is a joke. Is your bastard son worth no more than a lakh to you?'

  'Five lakhs!'

  Mani shook his head. 'I need more than that. I need a fortune. I am sick and I need a doctor. I need money to pay for the best doctor money can buy. I will go to England, to America, in search of a doctor and for that I need money. Ten lakhs of rupees, in British pounds. I know that is nothing to you.'

  Mani wrote down an address for David. David fetched the little boy to Fairwinds.

  A week later Gopal turned up, out of the blue. He saw the child Nat and cried, 'But Nataraj is dead! Mani showed Savitri the cremation papers, before she left India! This is Paul, my son!'

  David shook his head. 'He was only making sure she'd never return to Madras. This is Nataraj, my son. It is your son who is dead. Paul.' But he said it with guilt. There was the note; the scribbled one Mother Immaculata had given him. Paul, it had said; and “Mother insane.” He had tried to argue with Mother Immaculate, but it wasn’t her fault of course. It was Mani’s. A mix-up. The child was his, and Savitri’s. He knew it.

  But Gopal looked at the creamy-coloured little boy and saw another truth. 'I know that this is my son. What a trick of fate! For I cannot keep him; at the moment I am without job, without wife, I have no-one to take care of him. But, David, you are rich. You can provide a good education for my boy. You keep him. I will let you have him. I will even let you call him Nataraj. But in
my heart I know he is Paul. My heart tells me the truth.'

  69

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Saroj

  Madras State, 1971

  'In South India you order coffee by the yard, not the cup!' Nat pointed to the man at the next table, who expertly whipped his coffee back and forth between two stainless steel mugs. The coffee was merely a long brown streak plunging from vessel to vessel, a steaming ribbon of liquid, trapping the cooler air into crests of froth before being flung out again and into free fall, caught and flung and caught again.

  A grinning youth in torn khaki shorts and a grubby singlet walked over with their own coffee, ready milked and sugared. Both stainless-steel mugs stood upside down in wider, shorter stainless steel vessels. Saroj looked into hers. There was no coffee in it. She looked up at Nat questioningly.

  Nat raised his upside-down mug and coffee plopped out into the lower, wider vessel. He poured coffee into the mug, lifted it half a yard above his tilted head, opened his mouth and poured. Saroj tried to do the same but missed and coffee rolled down the sides of her chin. She spluttered and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  'Why can't they just do things the normal way here?'

  'This is normal, dear! Didn't your mother raise you properly? One of the rules for drinking in public is never touch a vessel with your lips. You pour. That way the cups stay germ-free. Ingenious, isn't it?'

  'Yes, well. Considering that they're all washed in the same dirty water afterwards.' She glanced with distaste at the plastic basin where the boy was now busy washing the mugs, dipping them in and standing them on the counter to be reused.

  'Queasy?'

  Saroj nodded glumly. She glanced around at the other tables in the coffee-house; at the men sitting around them, dressed in lungis or long trousers, with slicked-back oily black hair, leaning over the tables on their elbows and digging into the mountains of rice with their fingers. They ate in a hurry. Their fingers twirled the rice into the sambar, rolled it into little brown balls and popped them into their mouths. Some of them seemed to be squabbling with each other. She and Nat ate nothing. They had filled up on bananas on the bus-ride to this stop.

  'Why are they all shouting so?'

  'They're not. They're just talking.'

  'Oh. I see.' Saroj tried again to pour coffee into her mouth and this time she got it right. She swallowed the luke-warm brew with an audible gulp and said, 'I'm learning, Nat. I'm trying hard, and I will learn. Be patient.'

  'I know.' She felt his knee pressing against hers under the table, a substitute for holding hands, which, Nat said, they should not do in public. 'I told you: you either love India or you hate it. You can even do both together. I've shown you the part it's easy to hate. The other part comes later.'

  Nat and Saroj arrived at the town and descended into yet another swirling mass of madness, a strident dissonance of yelling rickshaw-wallahs and blaring klaxons. All she could do was cling to Nat's side, to close eyes and ears to the bedlam and focus on his calm presence, let him lead her through the fray. She found herself next to him in a rickshaw, careening through the thronged streets converging on the bus station. Nat held her hand. She squeezed it, and gathered strength, and looked at him. His eyes anchored her. She leaned into him. I can! I will! For his sake, and for the sake of love! This is a test, and I will stand it!

  The rickshaw-wallah drove them as if they were royalty. As they entered the village he pressed the klaxon and its steady honking drew the mothers from their huts and they stood on the roadside waving, and the children jumped up from their games, and the men turned their heads to look.

  They arrived at David's home accompanied by a gaggle of half-naked boys and girls running beside the rickshaw and screaming, 'Daktah tamby, daktah tamby, daktah tamby!'

  Nat was in high spirits, laughing with the children, leaning out of the rickshaw to clasp this hand or that, calling them by name. A little boy leaped onto the running board and Nat pulled him backwards and into his lap, pinched his cheek, and the boy threw his arms around Nat and spoke to him in that strange language Nat shared with all these people, and Nat answered in that same language, shutting her out.

  A white man in a white lungi stood in an open gateway, under a wide wooden arch on which was written in English and in Tamil, Prasad Nagar. The man approached the rickshaw and lifted out the little boy and Nat fell into his arms. It must be his father, Saroj thought, but in the next moment Nat was on the ground beside him and helping her out and saying, 'Saroj, this is Henry. Henry, this is the big surprise I wrote you about. Where's Dad?' He offered Saroj a hand and ushered her towards another gate, opposite Henry's.

  'David's in Town, Nat. He's with a patient in the hospital. He'll probably want to stay for the operation — I don't expect him back before tonight.'

  Nat's face fell. He smiled at Saroj, touched her elbow, and signalled for her to walk down a sandy path between high trellis walls. Giant bougainvilleas grew up the lattice-work. Their branches snaked up through the trellis, forming a shady tunnel of luxurious foliage.

  The children tried to follow, but Henry shooed them away resolutely and closed the gate on them, rather rudely, Saroj thought. But the children didn't seem to mind. They swarmed up the gate and sat on its upper bar, still grinning and calling, while the smallest pressed their little faces against the bars and peered inside the yard, watching as Henry, Nat and Saroj stopped at the edge of the verandah and Nat and Saroj removed their sandals. Nat turned on a tap and gestured for Saroj to wash her feet. The water was cool and soothing on her tired dusty feet, and she let it wash over them for longer than was necessary.

  She was overwhelmed by Nat's welcome. He is at home, she thought — absorbed again into this community which is the soil that nourished him and made him what he is. I am outside it, a stranger. She heard Nat and Henry's easy banter as they waited for her to finish washing her feet: Nat telling Henry about their holiday in Ceylon, Henry's questions, Nat's answers. She heard without listening. She was listening to herself.

  He is home, and I am a stranger. Look how they love him! He knows them, they know him, they are all a part of him. I will never fit in. True, it was quiet here, at this house. It was just like home, like Ma's garden, that arch of towering bougainvilleas; pretty, and clean, not like Madras. This was yet another India. Nat's India. But still she was a stranger. They won't want me here! He's only got eyes for this Henry. He's ignoring me. What shall I do? What am I doing here?

  Then she moved aside and let Nat wash his feet, and there was Henry summoning her up the two steps to the verandah, unrolling a mat and bidding her sit down, asking her if she preferred tea or coffee, turning a key in the door and entering, Nat joining her, plonking himself down beside her on the mat; Nat, the same as ever, smiling across at her the way he had done in London, or in Ceylon, or in the plane, and, at least for the time being, all was well.

  They drank tea and ate Milk Bikis on the verandah and Saroj listened to the two men chatting. Occasionally Nat or Henry looked at her and smiled and tried to draw her into the conversation, but Saroj was distracted. She looked around and liked what she saw. David's little house was shielded from the road and from curious eyes by the same towering bougainvilleas that lined the garden path between gate and house. Cascading clusters of brilliantly orange, vermilion and purple blossoms created a flowery refuge, luxuriously overflowing walls which contained smaller, more modest shrubs and gentler colours — the creamy yellow-fringed frangipani, pink oleander, the tender mauve of hibiscus. Saroj, sitting with her back to the house, imagined herself at home — home being the Waterloo Street garden halfway across the world, where the very same flowers had been coaxed into effulgence by Ma. The agitation that had taken possession of all her senses almost since the moment of entering the airport at Madras began to recede, as well as her doubts concerning Nat. She felt her body relax spontaneously, as if a load had dropped from her shoulders, as if it too registered a homecoming, recognised this refuge as a
place of safety, understood the silent welcome of nature.

  She sighed audibly and leaned back against the pristine, whitewashed wall. I can make it, she thought. I can, and I will. Here I shall let down my roots. Here I shall flourish, and grow. Nat is at my side. She reached for his hand, and felt his fingers close around hers. Her eyes grow heavy. She barely heard Nat's chuckle as her body slumped against his, she barely felt his hands as he touched her limbs and stretched them out on the mat. I am home, she thought, and it was her last thought before the sleep that had evaded her all night long in Madras finally caught up with and claimed her.

  When she woke up it was dark. She heard voices: Nat's, Henry's, and a third, which she knew must be David's. David was back. Her future father-in-law. Hastily she sat up, instinctively ran her fingers through her hair, straightened her clothes. She felt musty, clogged from the dust of the long bus journey, and longed for a shower and a change of clothes, things she had been too tired to consider on their arrival hours ago. How many hours? She looked at her watch, holding it up to the dim light that shone through the window above her head. Eight o'clock. The men were inside. She wanted to join them, but a sudden, violent shyness lamed her. How would David welcome her? The beloved son had brought home his bride…

  She remembered the tap where she had washed her feet. She got up and walked over to the steps leading down from the verandah, crouched down and reached in the darkness for the tap. She found it, turned it on, cupped her hands, felt the cool water filling them and splashed her face with it. Delicious. She rubbed her neck, her arms, might have taken off her blouse and washed her whole body but then the screen door to the house swung open with a creak and Nat emerged and crouched beside her.