‘That rich, warm smell after the rain,’ Isabel said. ‘Wet grass and leaves and earth.’
Sarah didn’t answer.
A sharp crack startled Isabel awake. The room was dark. Still fuggy with sleep, she reached a hand from the tangled folds of the mosquito net and peered at the clock. Twenty to two. Her heart pounded. She lay back on her pillow. Perhaps it was a dream. She closed her eyes and lay still, listening. Her body started to relax back into sleep.
A second crack. A gunshot. She sat up at once and swung her feet to the floor. The room swam a little, then settled. She pulled on slacks and a shirt.
The bungalow was silent with sleep as she crept down the passageway and found her boots. Her father was hard to rouse nowadays. She thought of Sarah’s handgun. Perhaps she should have one too.
The outside air was cool on her face. She stood in the shadow of the porch and looked. A dark shape moved near the bushes. A thwack sounded, followed by a cry, then a low moan. She crossed the path. The gravel crunched under her feet, loud in the stillness.
She passed the mango trees and emerged onto the lawn. A man was silhouetted there, dark against the grass, pointing a gun at the ground. She moved closer. The chowkidar, his old back crooked. He heard her and turned.
‘Please be fetching Burra Sahib, madam. Quick-quick.’
Isabel went closer. ‘What is it?’
Last time the chowkidar had opened fire at night, some years earlier, he’d killed a large monkey.
‘Some fellow is there.’ The chowkidar shook with excitement. ‘See!’
She had almost reached him. A figure lay curled on his side on the ground, half-concealed by the rhododendrons. ‘Is he shot?’
Another low moan. The chowkidar poked the man in the back with the barrel of his gun.
‘Dacoits. Three fellows. I saw them, creeping towards the house.’
She looked round. ‘And the others?’
‘Gone.’
She turned her attention back to the figure on the ground. It looked more boy than man. She ignored the chowkidar’s frown and bent down, put her hand on the ribcage. Every bone stood proud under the skin. A half-starved boy, then. His breathing was laboured.
She said in Hindustani: ‘Are you hurt?’
A groan reverberated through his chest.
She ran her hands gently over his body, feeling first his chest, his torso, his legs. Her fingers came away clean. She reached for his shoulder and pulled him gently towards her. He rolled onto his back in a sudden heavy movement, one arm trailing. His face gleamed, unnaturally pale, in the low light. Blackened streaks ran around his ear and down the side of his cheek. She leant in to look.
‘Abhishek?’ Rahul’s boy. ‘What are you doing here?’
He opened his eyes and stared up at her, afraid.
‘You clipped his ear.’ She spoke back over her shoulder to the chowkidar. ‘Lucky it wasn’t a few inches further in. You’d have killed him.’
The chowkidar shuffled uneasily. ‘Burrah Sahib. Please be telling.’
‘Nonsense.’ Isabel reached down to Abhishek, took his arm and pulled him to his feet. He rested against her shoulder. The chowkidar raised his gun and muttered.
‘Go back to the gatehouse now.’ Isabel nodded. ‘I’d keep this quiet, if I were you. This boy’s a friend of mine.’
An hour later, she sat on a chair in her bedroom, looking down at the boy. He was sleeping now, lying curled on her rug, covered with a blanket. His ear was cleaned, the skin stained purple with iodine. The glancing bullet had cut out a small piece but he seemed able to bear the pain and the bleeding had stopped.
She sat for a few moments, studying him. His skin was smooth, his eyelashes long and dark, twitching lightly as he dreamt. He looked still a child but his cheeks were sunken and his chin jutted.
She would make sure he ate well at breakfast, then deliver him safely home to Rahul. She locked the bedroom door before getting back into bed and slipped the key under her pillow.
Abhishek was silent and sullen. Twice, when the tonga slowed, he tried to jump out and run. Now, finally, he leant forward to the tonga-wallah and pointed down a side street along the edge of the slum. The tonga-wallah drew up his bony horse. Abhishek strained away from her as she twisted to climb out of the tonga, her hand grasping his wrist as she drew him behind her.
Isabel asked the tonga-wallah to wait. She hadn’t been into the slum for years, not since the war broke out and riots became common.
She stood for a moment, looking round. Abhishek hung at her side. The dirt road was slick with splatters of slime, which shone in the morning light. Filthy water spilt out from a central gutter, swollen with rain. The air swam with the stink of human excrement and the sour-sweet smell of rotting flesh. She lifted her scarf to cover her nose and mouth.
A vegetable hawker sat on the side of the road behind a meagre display of undersized tomatoes and onions. He lifted his eyes as she pulled the boy past. The dark shapes of stacked bales of cloth appeared ahead and she quickened her pace.
‘Rahul? Are you there?’
It was a tiny space, barely wide enough to enter. The interior was eaten up by stacks of rolled cloth. She stood at the entrance and peered into the gloom. Towards the back of the cave, a figure stirred and rose.
‘Kon hai? Who is it?’ A moment later, Rahul emerged, blinking. ‘Isabel Madam?’ He seemed unable to believe his eyes for a moment, then his expression changed and he peered past her at the boy. ‘Abhishek?’ He seemed to take in the sight of his son’s red, swollen ear and frowned. ‘What happened?’
‘I’m sorry.’ She hesitated.
Rahul reached, took his son by the arm and pulled him into his stall, past a cramped working space where a length of cotton lay, interrupted in its flow, pinned by the needle of a battered sewing machine. She followed without a word through to the back and into a dark, narrow passageway, which led to a wooden gate in the wall. The courtyard beyond was cramped and gloomy. On the far side, two women sat with their backs to them, hunched forward on a low charpoy set against a shaded wall.
‘Sangeeta?’
Sangeeta turned at the sound of her husband’s voice, saw Isabel and scowled. She looked much older than the young woman who had swept the yard behind the mithai shop all those years ago and tended her sick mother-in-law. Her face was hard and prematurely lined. A baby, wrinkled and impossibly small, lay sleeping in her arms.
Isabel put out a hand, embarrassed. ‘Sangeeta. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. But your son—’
Her eyes sharpened as they moved to the boy. ‘Abhishek?’
The boy skirted his mother as he slunk into the yard and heaped himself against the far wall, wrapped his arms round bony knees.
Rahul picked up a broken stool from the corner, brushed it off with his sleeve and set it beside the charpoy. He gestured to her to sit.
‘I’ll send for chai.’ He seemed tense.
Isabel hesitated, wondering whether simply to go. The boy was delivered. Perhaps, after all, there was little more to say. She looked round the courtyard, reading it. A round stone wall, covered with a metal sheet, showed a communal well. On the far side, a row of metal pots stood along a rectangle of bricks, which were blackened with smoke from a cooking fire. They had their own space before. Now they shared with other households.
‘I won’t stay.’ She looked at Rahul, standing tense and expectant beside his wife and newborn. ‘Congratulations. Now you are doubly blessed.’
He shrugged. ‘A girl.’ Not, then, the second son he wanted. ‘Rupa. We are naming her after her grandmother.’
‘Rupa.’ She smiled. ‘That’s a beautiful name, Rahul. You must be very proud.’
The second woman sat hunched forward since Isabel entered the courtyard. Her scarf was raised, covering her head and held forward to conceal the side of her face. Now, as Isabel made to leave, the woman shifted and twisted to look. A sharp pair of eyes. Hard and unrepentant.
‘Asha?’
Isabel’s legs trembled. Her breath stuck in her throat and she found her hand at her mouth. The air in the yard shifted. Rahul frowned, looking from one woman to the other. The boy, curious, lifted his head and stared.
Rahul stepped forward. ‘Thank you for bringing home my son.’ He spoke softly to her, blocking her sight of the women. ‘I’m sorry if he is’ – he hesitated, groping for the right word in English, then turning to Hindi – ‘museebat.’ Troublesome.
He escorted her back to the tonga. As she was about to climb inside, she hesitated, turned to him.
‘Is that why?’ Of course, Rahul knew Asha. They had all lived together at the bungalow, all three of them, when Asha’s father was their sweeper. Isabel’s world shifted and found a different shape. The sight of Asha brought back a flash of memories. Of Jonathan, of her trial, of the long, dark nights in a prison cell where she sat alone and faced death.
‘Is it because of her?’ she said now to Rahul. ‘Is that why you won’t let me help you?’
He hung his head, looked at the ground.
She thought again of Asha’s hard eyes. Last time she saw them, she was in prison. Then, too, they had been without mercy.
‘But why, Rahul?’ Her voice sounded weak and insubstantial. ‘We were such great friends. Weren’t we?’
He didn’t raise his eyes to look at her. ‘Of course, madam. You are very kind. It is difficult, only.’
Her voice caught in her throat. ‘Like brother and sister.’ She swallowed, gathered her breath. ‘I loved you like a brother, Rahul.’ She hesitated, tried again to speak. ‘Did it mean nothing?’
He didn’t answer. The crown of his head showed streaks of grey. We grew old, she thought, and we grew separately. How did that happen?
The tonga rattled back through the unmade road of the slum. Her stomach was tight. Her hand gripped the door and her knuckles whitened where they clutched at the handle.
In all this time, she had tried never to think of Asha, of where she might be, of what had become of her. Now, to be confronted by her again, so suddenly and without warning, felt like an assault. She and Sangeeta, sitting calmly side by side. Both women hated her, she knew it. She shook her head, wiped off her eyes with the end of her scarf. Rahul was lost to her. She saw that now. The past was dead.
The stalls and hawkers passed by the window in an unseen blur. She shook her head. I wanted to help him, that was all. She thought again of the new baby girl. Her tiny, puckered face. Her skin so clear it was almost translucent. Rupa. Named after the grandmother who had once welcomed Isabel into her home and fed her alongside her own children. This was another Rupa, born into a new and different world.
Isabel sat rigidly, her head held forward towards the back of the tonga-wallah’s head and the torn, bobbing ears of his old horse. The tonga led her home, out of the cramped Indian quarters to the broad, grand streets of the Civil Lines. She had no wish now to look back.
Chapter Forty-Three
Asha
‘What are you, a common thief now? You bring shame on this family.’
Sangeeta wanted to thrash the boy. If it hadn’t been for the baby in her lap, sleeping through it all, it would have been hard to stop her. Asha sat with her hand on her friend’s arm, keeping her in her seat.
‘Why did you go there? Have you no brains at all?’
The boy sat sullenly with his arms wrapped round bent legs, his head buried in his knees.
‘It’s your father’s fault. He’s too soft on you.’
The boy’s hands were locked together tightly and his bent head trembled.
‘Why did you go?’ Asha kept her own voice soft. ‘Who went with you?’
Sangeeta said sharply: ‘Maybe he went alone.’
Asha shook her head. ‘Sushil was there, wasn’t he?’
The boy looked up, startled, and her heart quickened.
‘Is he hurt?’
‘He got away.’ He sounded sorry for it, angry that he was the only one caught. ‘He and Ajay both.’
Her breathing steadied again. Not shot, then. Sushil needed a strong hand but he was not a bad boy. She would speak to him later.
‘But why did you go there?’ Sangeeta again. ‘Have you no pride? They already look down on us, these Britishers.’
Rahul, back again in the yard. His shoulders sagged. ‘I took him there. He saw how much they have.’
‘They didn’t believe me,’ Abhishek blurted out. ‘That I rode the horse. I wanted to show them. And Ajay said, when he saw the mango trees, why not take some?’
‘You think she’s a friend?’ Sangeeta turned now on her husband, stabbing the air with her finger. ‘Where was she when the Britishers sent you to jail?’
He shrugged. ‘She says she tried to help.’
Sangeeta spat into the dust. ‘Tried to help.’
Rahul crossed to his son. He gave him a cuff across the head, which knocked the boy sideways. He lay, stunned for a moment, sprawling in the dust.
Sangeeta got to her feet, the baby still sleeping in her arms, and crossed the yard towards their room. ‘Act like a man,’ she said from the doorway. ‘Give him a proper beating. One he’ll remember.’
Once she disappeared, Abhishek scrambled to his feet and bolted for the street. Rahul let him go. He lowered himself onto the charpoy beside Asha, where his wife had just been sitting, and rubbed the heels of his hands into the sockets of his eyes.
‘She worries.’
‘She worries?’ Rahul shrugged. ‘Do you think I sleep? I earn barely enough to feed one person.’
‘He’s a good boy.’
‘He used to be. Now he makes so much of trouble. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I should beat him.’
They sat together in silence for a few minutes. Overhead, clouds were gathering, darkening the sky.
‘She is right about the Britisher.’ Asha spoke in a low voice. She didn’t want Sangeeta to hear. ‘Don’t see her again. It’s dangerous.’
‘Dangerous?’
She leant closer to him and whispered. ‘Some of our friends are impatient. They won’t wait while the British talk. What do they say? Just empty promises.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
She slid her eyes away from his. ‘Keep away from her. Don’t be a traitor to your own people.’
‘A traitor?’ He shook his head and let out a slow, sad sigh as if his chest were punctured. ‘We were friends once, when we were children. That’s all. She might be foolish but she tries to be kind.’ He paused. ‘Who would condemn me for that?’
Anil, she thought. He’d condemn you with a knife. You don’t know him. She got to her feet.
‘Make up with your wife, nah? And as for the other thing, there’s a meeting tonight. Make sure you come.’
He raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot with tiredness and his expression weary. ‘I need to work,’ he said.
‘You must.’ She paused, not certain if he understood how serious she was. ‘Show your loyalty.’
The usual meeting room, in the back of the chai stall, was barely big enough for the crowd that gathered that evening. Asha arrived early and sat with a small knot of women on stools ranged against one wall, a little apart from the main body of the room, watching as it steadily filled with men. The windows were striped with iron bars, coated in the remnants of flaking paint. It had rained all afternoon and the puddles and runnels in the alley outside slowly gave back their water to the hot steaming air. Inside, men came with bare arms and chests, groins wrapped round by lunghis, dirty feet pushed into chappals. The room swam with stale sweat, toddy fumes and the smoke of cheap bidis.
Asha didn’t look directly at the men as they poured in through the doorway, smoking and spitting and hollering, but she screened them with small, covert glances, scanning the faces for Anil.
Many of the men were known to her. Traders and labourers, hawkers and stallholders, dhaba- and dhobi-wallahs from the neighbourhood and beyond. Her cousin Ramesh came, his sons Kumar
and Sunil following. They were home now, their bodies still thin and weak. There was no work to be had, even at the lowest wages, and Ramesh was drinking. Their household, which had been for so long a place of women and children, was again furious with male snores and shouts and quick fists.
Still they came. When the room seemed almost bursting, the men jostling each other for space, the women drawing their stools into a tight, protective circle and shrinking into their corner, a gang of ten or twelve men, young and strong with ruddy faces and coarse voices, pushed their way in. Anil strode behind them. He surveyed the room coolly, as if noting for himself who was present. Asha slid her eyes down to her fingers as his glance strafed the room. Her face became hot.
Finally, Baba Satya’s men cleared a path through the crowd and led him, imposing in his orange guru’s robes, to a chair. He stood beside it, raised his hands and the room quietened as they waited for him to speak.
‘My friends.’ His voice resounded through the small space. ‘The Britishers have promised much. What have they delivered? Mr Churchill sent his man all the way from London to talk with us and he brought us nothing.’
A murmur of agreement.
‘We have listened enough. We have waited enough. Now we must take action.’
Men nodded, pushed forward.
A man at the back shouted: ‘Teach them a lesson.’
Another cheered.
Baba Satya raised his hands and commanded quiet.
‘A dharna,’ he said. ‘We will hold fresh protests, there at their gates. I myself will fast also. Every day as they go to and from their offices, to and from their meetings, they will see us and blush.’
A few murmurs in response. A dharna? Was that all?
Baba Satya seemed to sense the disappointment. ‘The Britishers in London hear everything. Our protest will anger them. Slowly, slowly, we will win this battle for freedom.’
Daughters of India Page 33
