Of Marriageable Age

by Sharon Maas

  'Hello! Had a good sleep?'

  Saroj splashed her face again and replied, 'Mmm! Your dad's here, isn't he?'

  'Yes. I've told him all about you, he's taken a look at you sleeping, and is dying to meet you.'

  'But I'm not at all presentable! I wish I could have a shower, wash my hair, change into something else! He'll think I'm a real tramp if he sees me this way!'

  'No he won't. But you can have your shower if you want. Come on in.'

  Saroj followed Nat into the house, into a small central room with no furniture whatsoever, doors on each of the four walls. Nat opened one of the doors and Saroj found herself in a bathroom. Beneath a tap in the wall were two buckets full of water, metal dippers hung over their edges.

  'Here's soap, and a towel,' said Nat, pressing a block of Chandrika Ayurvedic soap into her hand before returning to the others.

  Saroj looked in despair at the buckets with their dippers. What I need, she thought, is a long soak in a tub of deep warm foamy fragrant water. But this is India, my new home. Cold water dipped from buckets will have to do. For now and evermore.

  Saroj emerged from the bathroom, her skin scrubbed clean and cool, and fragrant with the warm spiciness of Chandrika soap, her hair wet and coiled up into a knot on top of her head. She wore the shalwar kameez she had bought in Madras, slightly crumpled from the journey, but clean and fresh with a paisley pattern in shades of blue. Not quite the elegant young bride, she thought ruefully, crossing the floor of the central room to the open doorway where the men were still sitting and talking.

  She stopped in the doorway and three faces turned to look. Nat's dear familiar one, Henry's jovial bat-eared one… and David's.

  She had never seen a face quite like David's, never seen an older man she could even remotely describe as beautiful. But David was beautiful. Not so much his features, which were even and of an almost classic handsomeness. His skin was of a weathered texture, browned and leathered from years of harsh tropical sun. His face was framed with greying hair combed back, two stray locks falling forward in boyish defiance over the high forehead. His eyes were of a marbled grey, large and wide apart like Nat's, and they too were beautiful. But it was the expression in them and in that entire face that caught Saroj's attention and held it. She could not look away, not even to Nat, though she felt her lover's expectant gaze upon her.

  He is good, she thought. There is no other word to describe this man as simple, pure, goodness. Benevolence, integrity, kindness, beneficence, love — they were all encompassed in that goodness, gathered together into a radiance that literally seemed to glow from him, to stream from his eyes, to light up his smile. It was the goodness she felt in Nat's presence — but more, much more, the fulfilment and summit of that goodness, a goodness that was strength and compassion and that reached out to embrace her even before David had risen to his feet and come forward with outstretched hands to greet her.

  'Saroj! Welcome!'

  Shyly she took those hands; but David came closer, and his arms closed around her, and Saroj felt herself surrounded by that goodness and filled with it. She felt like crying, and closed her eyes.

  Saroj opened her eyes. In doing so her gaze fell automatically on a framed photograph on the wall behind David. She started, and stiffened. David, feeling her bewilderment, let go of her. She stepped aside and walked around him towards the photo, which was the portrait of a young Indian woman, gently smiling, her hair parted in the middle, a perfectly round tika in the middle of her forehead. There was no mistaking this portrait, for it was the very same one, albeit much larger, that was pasted into Balwant Uncle's family archives. There was no mistaking Ma.

  Saroj turned to face the room, her face lit up in radiant joy.

  'That's Ma!' she said to David, and glanced at the portrait again, turning eagerly to Ma. 'That's Ma, Nat! That's my mother, when she was younger.'

  She looked away from Nat, passing quickly over Henry's face and up to David's, eagerly awaiting his reaction to the miracle, that here, in his house, should be a photo of Ma.

  'This woman is your mother?' asked David.

  'Yes, of course... and how... oh, but of course! Your sister! Your sister was married to her brother, my Gopal Uncle. You all grew up together, didn’t you… you and Fiona and Gopal Uncle. I didn't realise that, I...’

  'What do you know about Fiona and Gopal?' David's voice was sharp, and brought her to a stop.

  Nat said, 'I was going to wait to tell you the whole story, Dad, but now it's out. I know all about Gopal and Fiona, that they're my parents. And can you believe it, Saroj is Gopal's sister's daughter. It's a long story, and…’

  But David's voice slashed through his words. 'How is she? Where is she?'

  'Well, she's dead. She died a few years ago, in a fire.'

  'Dead? Savitri, dead?' The pain written across David's face, the yawning hole that seemed to open in his eyes, stunned Saroj into silence. She knew then, and so did Nat: David loved Ma. Saroj's mother. Savitri, he had called her.

  David turned then to Nat and the look in his eyes was no longer pain but pity. 'Nat. My Nat. I should have told you. And now it's too late. I should have told you about Savitri. Your mother.'

  At the word Saroj froze. And so did Nat. His hand dropped hers. Henry looked away. The candle flame flickered. Even the shrill chorus of insects outside seemed silenced by the moment. They all stood poised on the rim of that silence.

  Then David spoke again. 'She was the cook's daughter…’

  70

  Chapter Seventy

  Nat and Saroj

  A Village in Madras State, 1971

  David spoke for two hours nonstop. Almost at once the horror of his revelation seemed to retreat from the room, and Savitri entered in its place: Savitri as she had been, the little girl he had loved becoming the woman he had worshipped. His voice smiled. It was warm and alive with the memories that seemed to flood his being, that poured out now in words. As a river held back by a dam of twigs, a dam held in place by a single vital twig, bearing the name of Savitri, and that vital twig now pulled, and the river bursting forward sweeping all in its wake.

  David's story transported his listeners back into the past and into another world, and his words were windows on the past, and the spirit of Savitri came alive and wrapped itself around them like the warm glow from a gentle flame.

  But Saroj was cold, and numb with something worse than dread.

  'But who am I really?' Nat cried as David ended his story. 'Am I Nataraj, or am I Paul?'

  He leaped to his feet and paced the room. 'Who am I? Which of the children was killed? Nataraj or Paul? Which one lived? Which one am I?' He stopped at Savitri's photo, buried his face in his hands in anguish, leaning against the wall.

  'You're . . .' Henry began, but David interrupted.

  'Paul died, Nat!' David cried. 'You're Nataraj. Of course you are!'

  'But how do you know? You can't! Only Mani knew, for sure!' Nat's voice was loud and agitated.

  'Nat, don't ask me how I know. I just know, that's all. I know you're my son!'

  'But that's what Gopal believes too! He's convinced of it, just like you, but one of you is wrong! What if you're wrong, Dad, and Gopal's right?'

  Nat's question hung unanswered in Saroj's heart. She found herself praying. A thin ray of hope was prying its way through the coldness inside her. Let him be Gopal's son after all. Oh, let him not be Savitri's! Let us not be brother and sister!

  Let Gopal be Nat's father. Let Gopal be Nat's father. The words were a mantra in Saroj's mind.

  Above her anguished prayer David and Nat fired words at each other, each fighting a battle for his life, not allowing Henry a word between the salvos.

  'Gopal talked himself into the idea that you're his son! After all, Savitri had seen the cremation papers with Nat’s name on them. One of the babies was dead, one was living, that much was certain. He convinced himself that the living one, the one I had claimed, was his son. He wanted to beli
eve that, Nat. He had to believe that! He didn't want his son to be dead! And now one of the boys had turned up — you! He wanted you! He wanted you desperately!'

  ‘But maybe I was his son. There’s no way you can tell. Maybe it’s you who wanted to believe.’

  'May I just . . .' interrupted Henry, raising a hand like a child in the class-room, but Nat barked him down.

  'Gopal's my father! He must be! I'm sorry, Dad, I love you more but I want Gopal to be my father! Can't you understand? Don't you see! Let him be my father! And Fiona: my mother! Where is she now?'

  'She's still at Fairwinds. I engaged a psychiatric nurse to live with her there and take care of her. I did consider sending her back to England, to a hospital, but I believe she's happier in Fairwinds, with her doll. Better off than in some English loony bin. I visit her now and again. She doesn't recognise me.'

  'She's my mother! I must go to her — maybe I can heal her! Maybe when she knows I'm alive...'

  His voice rose in desperation, echoing the panic in Saroj's heart. She looked up and met his eyes. Their hands reached for each other, calming each other. Perhaps, together, they could will it to be true. Make Nat Fiona's son, and not Savitri's. Make them cousins, not brother and sister.

  'Listen, the two of you, I can —' Henry began again, but again David interrupted.

  'It's possible, of course,' said David, and desperate doubt flooded his eyes. 'But no, you can't be, Nat. I've always…'

  'You're just like Gopal, Dad. You want it to be true and so you believe it's true. But don't you see, I can't be Savitri's son!'

  'But you are her son! I know it, I feel it! More than I feel you're my son, I feel you're hers! She speaks to me through you, you are her very image! You have her spirit! She has passed on all her gifts to you. The healing hands. The power! It is from her!'

  'You said it runs in our family. Well, it could have been passed on by Gopal, couldn't it? He's her brother; these things need not pass in a direct line. Thatha had the gift; why couldn't it lie dormant in Gopal, his grandson?'

  David shook his head. 'I feel it, I know it. She lives in you! Do you really believe you could be the son of Gopal and Fiona? Both spineless, colourless people? Don't you in the depths of your heart know that you are mine and hers?'

  David's voice was gentle as he continued. 'When Mani told me that Savitri had left India, that she was married, on the other side of the world, I knew I had lost. I didn't even ask where she was. He wouldn't have told me, anyway. Fiona may have known but she had lost most of her mind. I didn't even ask Gopal. I knew I had lost; there was no going back. Savitri thought I was dead. That is why she married... she is an Indian woman, with the strength and resilience of an Indian woman, and I knew she would make good of her life, whichever turn it took. I knew she had no choice but to remarry — as a widow, with all the scandal, she'd have had no chance here in India, for which Indian man would marry her? She had been lucky, to emigrate, to marry again. I couldn't interfere, much as I longed to. So I let her go. But when I found you, Nat, it was as if she had returned to me. It was as if she'd reached out to me, entered my life in your form. I know you're hers.'

  They were all silent then, and a bitterness, like gall, rose up in Saroj, because she, too, felt it. Savitri — Ma — lived in Nat. She had seen Ma in him from the very beginning. Their attraction, it seemed, was nothing more than the call of blood.

  'Are you two willing to listen to me now?' said Henry into the silence. 'I could have told you from the beginning if you'd listened. Nat is Nataraj. Without a doubt.'

  At last he had caught their attention. Saroj and Nat exchanged a last, agonised glance, then turned their eyes to him, waiting for what was to come, knowing it was their death-knell.

  Henry's voice was calm, patient. 'Savitri lived with us for two years after Nat's birth,' he said. 'She searched for him from our house. She fought the bureaucrats for him, but she also searched for him physically. She couldn't help it. She said there was one way she'd always recognise Nataraj, and that's the reason she always inspected little boys, took them in her arms, rolled back their collars, touched their necks. The mole behind your right ear, Nat. Savitri had it, and so do you. She told us. You are Nataraj, the boy she gave birth to. You have the mole.'

  Involuntarily Nat's hand flew to the spot behind his right ear. His eyes met Saroj's, and they both knew. And then Nat's eyes shifted away.

  Another long, eloquent silence. In that silence Saroj felt a shifting of worlds. Nat's world moving out of her grasp, and sinking into Ma's. Savitri's. Silently he slipped from her. He had found something big, a miracle, a marvel, greater than herself. She had lost him — to Savitri. To Ma.

  71

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Nat and Saroj

  A Village in Madras State, 1971

  ‘But, Dad, why did Gopal ignore me for all those years, and suddenly turn up in London with that stupid story of us marrying? And how did he find me in London?'

  Henry coughed ostentatiously. 'Seems it's my turn to take over the story,' he said. 'I have to make a confession. I ran into Gopal by accident in Madras, a few years ago. It was when you were in England, Nat. Let me see — it must have been a few months before you came home for the first time, the year of the great flood. I asked how Savitri was; June had kept in touch with her for the first few years, but you know how these things are — it all trickled out, and when June ran off with her pilot she took Savitri's address and that was the end of that. Gopal told me she was very ill. She had cancer.'

  'Cancer!' Saroj stared at Henry.

  'Yes,' Henry continued. 'She had breast cancer and had decided not to have it operated. She felt her task in life was over. She hadn't told her family yet. She was quite reconciled to dying, Gopal said, and he was thinking of going over to visit her. They were always very close.'

  'She never told us,' Saroj murmured. Once again, Ma had failed her — this time, not in an outright lie, but in failing to tell the truth.

  'She wouldn't,' said Henry. 'Savitri always hated a fuss made about her own self. But I had an idea. I thought it was a good one. Her children were almost adult now; there could be no harm in it — what of reuniting her with David and Nat? What of bringing her to London for treatment? I knew David would pay for the treatment, even if the National Health wouldn't. Just knowing they were alive would make her want to live, I thought. So — well, to make a long story short, I went to London myself to check, to find out what specialists could and would treat her, before telling anyone else. I didn't want to raise hopes. But I did write to Savitri, telling her about Nat and David—Gopal had given me her address. I wanted to give her that one solace! That's when I met you in London, Nat, and brought you back by the scruff of your neck!'

  'That must have been the letter she got just before she died — the one with all the good news!' said Saroj.

  Henry nodded. 'She wrote to Gopal then, and to me. So excited! She told me she would come. She didn't want treatment, but she was coming to India, to see David again, and Nat. She begged me not to tell you, David. She wanted to surprise you.'

  David could only shake his head.

  'A while after that Gopal wrote to say she was dead — no details. He asked for Nat's address in London — I gave it to him. That was all. I haven't heard from him since then.'

  'He's been too busy since then.' Nat's voice was bitter.

  'You can't blame Gopal, Nat. He meant well. And he really does believe you're his son.'

  I wish it too, Saroj thought. I wish it with all my heart.

  Her mind wearily picked out the memories that corresponded to David's tale, and clicked them together. She felt sick. That was what the letter had been all about, the letter Ma received the day before her death, the letter she had wanted to share with Saroj, the reason she had wanted to rush off to London, and India. Henry had told her the truth, and she wanted to rush back to India, to her real, true life, to her past. She'd wanted Saroj to meet 'some people' — Nat, of course,
and David. A wonderful reunion.

  Except that Saroj did not fit in. Not at all. Saroj had nothing at all to do with Savitri's story, Savitri's life, Savitri's past, and as she listened she shrank back into the shadows, watched the two men who reached out for each other and drew closer together — without her, Saroj. Sharing a past. Rewriting history. Wishing away her existence. Nauseated, she watched Nat claim his past.

  'What luck, that someone else didn’t adopt me before you came!' said Nat. David shook his head. 'We have Mani to thank for that,' he said. 'He'd left that note, saying the child's mother was insane. That was his final trump — he didn’t want you to be adopted into a good home. He probably left a similar note with the other baby – or would have done, if it had lived. Finally, I think the notes just got mixed up. Paul's note ended up with you, and Paul died. I did have some doubt, at first. I remember when I went to him afterwards; I showed him the note, and wanted the truth from him: were you Fiona's baby, or Savitri's? He only smirked. “You'll never truly know, will you? Take it or leave it,” he said. He already had the money. He didn’t care which child had lived or died. And he wanted me to stay in that uncertainty. There was nothing I could do. And in the end it didn’t matter.'

  'The death certificate he showed Savitri was in Nataraj's name,' said Henry, 'but it would have been, wouldn't it? He had custody of Nataraj, and his birth certificate. It didn't matter which name went with the body. I suppose he wanted to cover his tracks, in case there ever was an inquiry into Nataraj's whereabouts.'

  'Evil — pure evil!' said Nat. 'But surely Fiona wasn't insane back then? I thought her illness developed much later?'

  David shook his head again. ‘No. Getting gang-raped as a young girl, a virgin, was the real trigger for her illness. There had been — incidents. Mani knew of it. Gopal loved her truly, and thought marriage and motherhood would help; he felt guilty, you see. And it did help. But losing Paul sent her over the edge. To tell you the truth, I did have my doubts. I took you to her after I brought you from the orphanage. I even told her you were Paul… but she was already too far gone. She only wanted her doll.’