The Peacock Spring

by Rumer Godden

  ‘How do I know you will be faithful?’ Una had teased Ravi.

  ‘How should I not be?’

  ‘Your Krishna had sixteen thousand wives.’

  ‘Principal ones only eight. You will be the only one. In any case,’ said Ravi, ‘I could not afford more.’

  ‘You cannot afford one,’ said Hem, but Ravi and Una would not acknowledge that.

  ‘When the danger time is past. Una will come back and we shall declare ourselves. Meanwhile I shall have won the Tagore. Sir Edward will have double reason to agree.’

  ‘Agree to what?’

  ‘That we should marry.’

  ‘Idiot boy. Englishmen don’t let their daughters marry at fifteen.’

  ‘Not if she is with baby?’

  ‘Besides,’ said Una, ‘I count myself as Indian now.’

  ‘Your father does not.’

  ‘I don’t want to be English any more.’

  ‘But you are.’

  ‘Ravi has an uncle in Kulu who has promised him some land,’ said Una. ‘Ravi says it is fertile there and we shall grow fruit.’ Una saw a cloud of cherry blossom below shining Himalayas. ‘We shall build ourselves a home there, a little hut like this.’

  ‘And how will you furnish this lover-nest?’ asked Hem.

  ‘We won’t. I tell you we shall be Indian: some rugs or mats; cushions; takia – much like what Ravi has now. We shall eat off thalis and katooris.’

  ‘No, we shall be more simple than that,’said Ravi. ‘We shall eat off banana leaves.’

  ‘Bananas don’t grow in Kulu.’

  Una ignored that. ‘Christopher is teaching me to cook Indian food. We shall have hens, a cow, be peasants.’

  ‘You are not peasants.’

  ‘N-no. I shall have to learn to type. Type Ravi’s poems.’

  ‘You can’t eat poems. On what will you live?’

  ‘On Ravi’s prize money.’ They were astonished that Hem should ask. ‘You see, you can eat poems,’ said Una, ‘and Ravi will write others. When I am twenty-one I shall have money from my mother.’

  ‘Six years is a long time to go hungry.’

  ‘You are very disagreeable,’ said Ravi.

  ‘And you are a pair of cuckoos in air.’

  ‘Not if you will help us,’ Una begged.

  ‘Help yourselves,’ said Hem, and left them.

  ‘Why is Hem so cross?’ asked Una.

  ‘He is afraid for you. Afraid of what your father and that whore might do to you – and afraid of handing you over to careless me. I am careless, Una.’ Ravi was serious for once. ‘You will always have to be the sensible one.’

  Una did not feel sensible. ‘Perhaps if Hem had helped us, we might not have been so childish,’ she was to say. It was childish, but then there is always a childish excitement in running away.

  Nine

  ‘Water melon. Water melon. Cool juice of water melon.’ The clanking train wheels below Una seemed to be saying that – had said it all through the night. Brought in by camel from the riverbeds, water melons were sold on every platform, their flesh palest green and coral red dripping with juice. Una’s mouth was parched, every bone in her body ached; her eyelids felt brittle and dry and her temples throbbed. It is fun to do things with Ravi – that had been her gospel. ‘Fun – until it becomes fact,’ Hem had said.

  To begin with, it had been fun. ‘After the wedding lunch I am to go to Bulbul’s,’ she had told Ravi when they made their plans. ‘They won’t need me any more.’

  ‘To be Miss Gooseberry?’

  ‘Yes. I am to spend the night with Bulbul.’

  ‘Have you told her?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Oh! You will pretend to go to Bulbul’s.’

  ‘Don’t forget. Chinaberry will take me.’

  ‘He will be winked – if you do as I tell you. First thing in the morning I shall take leave from Ganesh. “I have to attend to my maternal uncle’s funeral rites.”’ Ravi put on a solemn expression. ‘As I am the eldest living male relative, Ganesh cannot refuse me. How much money have you?’ Ravi asked Una.

  ‘About two hundred rupees. Edward gave them to me for spending on our tour, but I didn’t buy anything.’

  ‘Little thrift! And I have some hundred and fifty saved. We are rich. We can go anywhere.’

  ‘But where are we going?’

  ‘There is a train for Varanasi about six o’clock.’ Ravi’s eyes sparkled. ‘It is the day before Baisakhi, so there will be many pilgrims. We shall be pilgrims too. That will please my grandmother.’

  ‘Why please your grandmother?’

  ‘Because it is to her we shall be going. I am very favourite.’

  ‘But – will she accept us?’ To Una, grandmothers were even more likely to be shocked than parents. ‘If your father and mother …’

  ‘My grandmother,’ said Ravi, ‘is in the third stage.’

  ‘What third stage?’

  ‘Of life. We Hindus have, or could have, four stages in our lives. First, like me, as a student, when we go “out into the forest” as we call it, learning to fend for ourselves – nowadays it is more the city jungle. Next we should be “householders”.’

  ‘You will have to be that now, in Kulu, with our baby – and I suppose I shall too, only I haven’t really been a student yet. But at least,’ said Una, ‘I shan’t have to darn your socks; one doesn’t need socks in India.’

  ‘Kulu can be most cold – you will certainly darn my socks.’ Then Ravi said with reluctance, ‘I do not know that I am ready to be a householder.’

  ‘You will have to be. You have done it now,’ Hem would have said, but Una slipped her hand into Ravi’s. ‘We shall simply be us. Tell me about your grandmother’s third stage.’

  ‘The third stage is retirement – not in the way you mean, but in our way, a shedding of the world. She has no concern in it. That’s why,’ said Ravi, ‘she will not interfere with us.’

  As Ravi had planned, Una went in at Bulbul’s gate – ‘We’re not grand enough to have gatemen,’ – and hid behind the hedge until Chinaberry drove away; then, on tiptoe in case any of Bulbul’s household stirred, came out of the gate and walked swiftly round the corner to Ravi; she would have run but that might have drawn attention. Ravi was waiting in a taxi driven by a turbaned Sikh. The driver had been smiling. ‘Does he guess?’ asked Una, fearful.

  ‘How could he?’ But, all the same, Ravi stopped the taxi at a house in a quiet road. They pretended, as Una had done at Bulbul’s, to step inside the garden then, holding Una’s hand, Ravi led her stealthily past the rows of modest villa houses, their stucco shining yellow in the sun, windows shuttered against the heat, to one that had a small separate gate. ‘Hsst!’ said Ravi as he cautiously opened it. Ravi, thought Una, would have made a splendid actor.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘This is Hem’s annexe – where he lives.’

  ‘But Hem said he wouldn’t help us.’

  ‘I haven’t asked him but I have the key.’

  The annexe was a little building standing in a patch of sun-dried grass and separated from the house by a line of hibiscus bushes; the long stamens of the flowers in the circle of brilliant cup always looked to Una like tongues thrust out; let them be out, she thought and, defiantly, picked a flower; she brushed her cheek with it and it left a pollen stain. The annexe had its own front door. Ravi took out his key and opened it.

  So this was where Hem lived – in this shuttered coolness grateful after the heat; as Una’s eyes grew accustomed to the dim light she saw how neat and practical was the room; nothing could have been more different from Ravi’s poetically shabby hut. There was an iron hospital bed with a red blanket – Hem had probably bought them as discards; a wardrobe of cheap wood was built in – no clothes on a string for Hem; he was, Una guessed, as private as she. There was a filing cabinet, a wooden chair and a desk with notebooks and papers exactly placed; a typewriter. In the cupboard of the kitchen beyond she could see a s
ink, a small gas stove, a shelf of enamel plates and mugs, a saucepan, ‘and he uses that often to boil up specimens,’ said Ravi, shuddering. A shelf had been put up for medical books and, on the filing cabinet, a microscope was carefully protected by a cellophane cover. ‘Doctor Babbletosh lent him that – and gave Hem the typewriter.’ These told of Hem as a doctor, but there was no clue of Hem himself, no picture or photograph or ornament; no sign of food such as Ravi’s chillies and spices; no tulsi plant. ‘Doesn’t Hem have anything of his own?’ asked Una.

  Ravi laughed. ‘He wouldn’t know what to do with it. But I do – I do.’ Ravi picked Una up and laid her on the bed.

  ‘Not here.’ Una struggled. ‘Not on Hem’s bed.’

  ‘A new experience for it, I bet.’ Ravi’s face came closer to hers. His hands were undoing her dress, but Una still resisted.

  ‘No, Ravi.’

  ‘You have to strip anyhow.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’asked Ravi.

  ‘You said we wouldn’t because of the baby.’

  ‘I have unsaid.’

  ‘And Hem – wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘But I like it,’ and, as always, Ravi had his will. Ravi – ravishment. Is that where the word comes from? Of course not, thought Una, one is Hindi, the other from the French; but today Una was not ravished, she could not surrender herself – perhaps because it was Hem’s bed.

  Afterwards they dyed her hair in the sink: ‘Your skin is brown enough from swimming and sunbathing, but your hair … you must wear a wig,’ Ravi had said.

  ‘It’s too hot for a wig.’

  ‘Then we must dye you.’

  Ravi painted her eyebrows and lashes with the same dye; it stung her eyes and the tears made the dye run. ‘All the better,’ said Ravi. ‘As my bride you have just been parted from your mother. Your eyes are red with weeping. Now go and dry your hair in the sun.’

  ‘But I’m naked.’

  ‘Put on your bodice and skirt.’

  ‘What shall I wear?’ she had asked Ravi.

  ‘Have you a sari?’

  ‘I have the Rajasthani clothes Alix bought us for the Paralampur fancy dress.’

  ‘Rajasthani will be a little uncommon,’ Ravi had demurred, ‘but never mind. There will be pilgrims from all over. Go and get them,’ and, ‘Too clean,’ he had pronounced when she had brought the long full skirt, the bodice that stopped below her breasts, the orrhni – veil. ‘Give them to me and I will dirty them a little. You always wear chappals; they will do for your feet, but this jewellery looks too trick. Haven’t you any bangles?’

  ‘Hal has some silver ones.’

  ‘If they are not too good. It doesn’t matter if they shine; being a bride your jewellery might be new, and I will be a good husband and get you some earrings and beads. You must have a bundle and I will get a tin trunk for myself.’ It was a small yellow tin trunk, painted with roses; it made Una laugh.

  Now, as she put on the skirt and bodice – they looked used and crumpled – she remembered them at the Paralampur dance, stiff in their new brightness. It had been a hurtful idea to dress her and Hal alike. Una could still see the folds of Hal’s skirt swinging as she danced, the delicious plumpness under her bodice, the way her earrings and bangles had tinkled as she tossed her head and talked, excited because even the grown men, Vikram’s friends, had wanted to dance with her. Una had hardly danced at all, but spent most of the evening talking to the old rajah who had wept a little – because of the wine, perhaps – as he told her how the Singhs of Paralampur were descended from the sun – and now here was his staid little companion running away with the sun itself! She would not, though, let Ravi know she thought of him as this and, ‘You have ruined Hem’s towel,’ she said severely.

  ‘He will have another.’ Ravi threw it into a corner.

  ‘At least wash out the sink. Ravi, what have you moved from it?’

  ‘One of Hem’s horrors.’ It was the body of a squirrel in a jar of spirit; with it, on a slab of marble, were a dissecting knife and a small array of tools. ‘Ugh!’ said Ravi.

  ‘It isn’t “ugh”. Hem has to understand. He must have been dissecting,’ but Ravi only said “Ugh!” again and pushed the slab aside.

  ‘Come, let me plait your hair. It’s dry enough. Look, I have bought you such a pretty chotti,’ and he showed Una the black thread cord ending with silk tassels for tying her plait. But Una was still contrite. ‘We have spoiled Hem’s work, disturbed it.’

  They had disturbed more than that. When Hem came in that evening and opened the shutter on to his garden, he saw his disordered room.

  ‘We must clear up,’ Una had said.

  ‘We haven’t time. It is getting towards the rush hour; we may have to wait an hour or more for a bus or to pick up a phut-phut.’

  ‘But it isn’t fair to leave it …’

  ‘Hem will understand.’

  Hem understood only too well. Una’s small case stood on his desk where it had pushed aside his papers; it was not properly fastened, a strap of ribbon was hanging out and he opened the lid. The clothes Una had worn were carelessly stuffed inside; almost mechanically Hem took them out and folded them: a dress, a slip, a lacy pair of briefs and a brassiere, absurdly small, it seemed to Hem.

  ‘But … I must have some underclothes,’ Una had said.

  ‘You won’t need any,’ and, when she blinked, ‘What do you think those women wear under their skirts?’ teased Ravi.

  ‘Can I have a handkerchief?’

  ‘Poor people don’t. You hold your nostrils delicately with your finger and thumb and blow. You may bring a comb.’

  ‘And my purse?’

  ‘Certainly not. I will get you a small waist bag for tucking into your skirt – a batwa – it will hold a few rupee notes; the rest you will give to me.’

  It had been a wonderful feeling of lightness for Una to walk out of her bedroom in Shiraz Road leaving everything behind; it was more wonderful to feel her body bare under the skirt, and the bodice, her midriff open to the sun, the only weight, Hal’s bangles sliding up and down her arms and the earrings Ravi put in her ears. What a blessing we had them pierced, thought Una. The veil protected her head and neck, she could hide in its folds, and it was comfortable to have her hair plaited back; she scarcely felt the chappals on her feet. Ravi’s trunk held some of his books and his poems – ‘I could not leave them behind,’ – and Una tied a toothbrush and comb in her bundle. ‘Could I have a cup? I don’t like station ones.’

  ‘You mustn’t fuss. At the station I will buy a surahi.’ Una had seen the long-necked pitchers, earthenware to keep the water cool. ‘You can drink from that.’

  ‘I should spill it.’

  ‘Wait. This will do.’ On the desk Hem had a small brass tumbler to hold his pens and pencils. Ravi emptied them out and they rolled across the desk, some on to the floor. ‘It is believable,’ said Ravi, ‘that you could carry a cup like that.’

  Their laughter seemed still to be in the room as Hem looked at the scattered pencils, his best pen on the floor. He saw the towel tossed in the corner, the black-stained sink, while the jar with the squirrel and his dissection slab were pushed out of the way. It gave a feeling of rejection, almost of insult. Then Hem’s gaze came to the disarranged bed, the dinted pillow; on the floor under the bed lay Una’s hibiscus flower.

  Hem picked it up but his usually steady hand was shaking. He carried the flower to the window and found he was weeping.

  ‘Don’t pick your way like that.’ Ravi said it hardly moving his lips.

  ‘The platform’s filthy,’ Una whispered back.

  ‘You are supposed to be accustomed. Don’t notice the filth. Walk.’ Walk – on spat-out betel-chewers’ stains, spat phlegm, banana skins, orange skins, peanut shells; goat dirt; runnels where people had urinated against the walls. Walk, avoiding circles where a family had camped and was cooking on a brazier, or where a mat or bedding had been laid down. Una was jostled by coolies in crims
on tunics shouting to make a way as they carried baggage on their heads; by humbler passengers carrying bedrolls, baskets, tin trunks like Ravi’s, or babies lolling on their hips, or wicker crates of hens on their heads. She dodged tea sellers, Coca-Cola sellers, wheeled stalls of hot spicy food, fruit sellers, and edged round barrow stalls selling newspapers, toys and, always, peacock-feather fans. The railway officials should have looked smart only that they left their brass buttons undone and the drill of their white uniform was dirty. ‘Here,’ said Ravi in Hindi, stopping at a carriage in which a bench was empty under a window where the corridor divided it from the cubicle compartment inside.

  ‘It is in the passageway,’ whispered Una. ‘Everyone will brush past us there.’

  ‘It’s the only empty space.’ Second class would have been more comfortable but Ravi had said, ‘If we are missed, in third class we shall be ants among ants.’ Now Una saw how true that was: the cubicle was crowded to bursting and, ‘Quick!’ said Ravi, hoisting her up the train’s high step. He put the bundle and his trunk beside her to keep his place. ‘I will go and buy water and some food.’

  As the train pulled out and Una saw the shanty slums along the track, huts contrived of sacking, palm leaves, old sheets of corrugated iron, straw or woven thatch, some standing on wet ground with glimpses of reeking gullies, stagnant water tanks, in the same city as spacious Shiraz Road, she remembered that the last time she had been on a train, on the way to Agra, she had felt shamed in her luxury with Edward in the air-conditioned coach, separated as carefully as if she were behind glass, as in fact she was. ‘Sensible people would be grateful to live in Shiraz Road, be able to travel in air conditioning,’ Hem had said when Una voiced her guilt.

  ‘Not Ravi, nor I. We should rather be with the “have-nots” than the “haves”.’

  ‘You say that on full bellies!’ Hem had been angry and Una thought she saw a glimpse of what he must have been as a student, a passionate hothead. Was it Hem, she wondered, who had led Ravi into what she had fathomed as his mysterious ‘trouble’? ‘What do you know of India?’ asked Hem. ‘You have seen Delhi, beautiful exhilarating Delhi,’ and he mocked, ‘city of fountains and flowers.’