In the second-class compartment that James was sharing with a Tibetan lama and a family from Meerut, he laid out his bedding roll on the top bunk, put his wash kit and frayed hand-towel on top and took out his Bible. The lama nodded to him and smiled, his fingers sliding over prayer beads, his burgundy and saffron robes falling to a pair of Adidas running shoes. The mother and grandmother of the Meerut family were organising dinner, opening aluminium tiffin carriers and instructing the others on where to sit and what to hold. Each carrier was a stack of three round tins that opened to reveal rice, chapattis and an array of curries. The mother offered food to the lama, who lifted a hand in refusal and blessing, and then to James, who thanked them but already had chai in a clay cup and a bag of samosas. He offered these in turn, but they too declined with much smiling and tilting of heads and exclamations at his Hindi. He thanked them, then turned his attention to his Bible. The Meerut father, however, was expansive and not deterred by James reading. Eager to practice his English, he asked after his good name and his citizenship. Normally James gave himself with full attention to these encounters, but found this time he struggled through the customary conversation about his work as a doctor in Kanpur, his childhood in India, whether he was married and how many issues he had. Naturally the man wanted to know where these fine daughters were being educated, and when James explained that he had just left them at Oaklands, the man from Meerut puffed his cheeks and blew out, spit trembling on his lips.
‘Oh, Doctor-sahib. You are very lucky to afford such a school for your children. And they are so lucky, likewise. Lucky, lucky, lucky,’ he murmured, wagging his head.
Lucky James nodded and dropped his gaze to the Bible. The Gospel of Luke, underlined verses: ‘I tell you the truth,’ Jesus said to them, ‘no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life.’
There was a chug from under the train, a hiss of steam and a jerk that threw them forward. The whistle blew, late passengers scuttled for doors and coolies followed with teetering trunks. For two minutes all was shouting and shoving and the smells of soot and bodies till the brakes wheezed, the whistle’s haunting cry rang again and the train pulled out of Dehra Dun. James looked up at the mountain. Its outline was hidden against the black sky so that the lights of Mussoorie lay scattered across it like a range of lower stars.
He knew that one shone for Hannah and Ruth. Closing his eyes, he pressed his hand over his mouth and gave his body to the rocking of the train.
THIRTY-THREE
He stood on the platform at Bareilly Station in 1937 and felt his hand sweating inside his mother’s. It was early March but already the sky was like a sheet of beaten tin, the air thick. They both wore wide-brimmed topis but it didn’t stop James squinting as he looked down the shimmering tracks. He was five and waiting for the Doon Express to take him back to Oaklands for his second year in boarding. This time last year, the whole thing had been an adventure and he’d nearly wet his shorts with excitement as he’d joined the Calcutta Herd on the train and waved a wild goodbye to his parents.
But now he knew where he was going.
The station was a churning sea of life. Women in limp saris clutched children and cloth bundles and bickered while their men folk went for tickets or cigarettes or a newspaper twist of peanuts. Thin, rangy coolies wove through the crowd with trunks and cases balanced on their turbans, as dogs trotted amongst them, sniffing, ravaging small piles of rubbish and spraying urine on pillars. Vendors moved up and down calling out in ceaseless sing-song tones. Paan, bidi, cigarette! The tobacconist – teeth and fingers stained red from beetle nut – had his wares arranged in a large tray suspended from his neck and the smell was a mingling of fresh green leaves, hot chilli and smoke. James watched the chai-walla push past with his gleaming samovar and a teetering stack of earthen cups on a cart. When he served the tea it was with a magician’s skill, first filling a cup from the copper tap, then adding a splash of milk and two spoons of sticky grey sugar, and finally mixing the lot by pouring the tea backwards and forwards between two cups, gradually drawing them further and further apart till the tea flowed in a rippling brown arc. Behind him came a water seller with a bloated goat skin slung across his back, its head gone, legs sticking out as if in shock. Hindu jal! Hindu jal! he cried, and stopped for a man squatting near James. The goat’s neck served as spout and the water poured in a clear stream down the drinker’s throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing, nothing spilling or touching his lips. Further down the platform another vendor with a goat skin was hawking Muslim jal. James’ Christian jal, boiled and cooled, was in the tin canteen at his hip.
There was a hollow ache in his stomach and the smell of the puris sizzling in hot oil nearby made him feel sick. His father appeared, sweat appearing at the armpits of his shirt, grey trousers held firm by his thick belt. He smiled at James from under his topi and held out a stick of sugar cane.
‘There you are, son,’ he said. James took the cane with his free hand.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered, mouth dry as leaves.
There was a distant wail of horn and the platform heaved. Coolies without luggage leapt forward, mothers grabbed stray children and men barked orders. The train appeared, a great chugging beast spewing smoke and steam, horn shrieking as it slowed down in a hiss of brakes. Before it had even stopped, the coolies were upon it, like trappers with a wild animal, leaping up its flanks, gripping on bars and handles. Doors were flung open and at each compartment there was a colliding of bodies as people tried to get out and others in, some resorting to windows, others to scrambling over their neighbours. James felt his mother tug on his hand as she started striding down the platform.
‘Which bogey is it,?’ she called over her shoulder. Stanley was helping the coolie lift James’ trunk and bedding roll onto his head.
‘G!’ he shouted and came after them. The train did not stop for long, which was an absurdity since Bareilly was a big station and the same train would loiter for long, unexplained stretches in the middle of the night at empty platforms where there was nothing but sleeping beggars and flies crawling over a single bulb.
A rotund man with half-moon glasses jumped out of a third class compartment and waved. It was Bishop Lutz from Calcutta, who had drawn the short straw and was the designated chaperone for the Calcutta Herd, which included his three wild sons. Leota broke into a run and James’ legs pumped furiously to keep up, his hand almost slipping from hers. Several grinning faces appeared at the window as the Oaklands kids looked to see who was joining them. One boy was firing hard popcorn kernels at stray dogs, while another was calling to the cigarette walla. James recognised Raymond Clutterbuck with his red hair and mean laugh. Stanley arrived with the coolie trotting behind and James’ bed roll and tin trunk were passed through the door and added to the pile of luggage in the centre of the compartment. The train whistle blew in a long, sickening wail and James felt a flood of panic. He gripped his mother’s hand.
‘Goodbye JimBob,’ she said, with determined cheer and knocked playfully on the top of his topi. ‘Have fun.’
He bit his lip, but it was useless. His face was already crumpling, eyes spilling over. Stanley scowled at him from under his topi.
‘Time to get on, son,’ he said, voice a little gruff.
James shook his head wildly.
‘No… no… no,’ he gasped, tears running down his face now. ‘Please…?’ He saw his mother’s face change, just for an instant, like a curtain dropping and revealing a naked grief he should not have seen. But then the curtain snapped back and the vigorous cheer returned. She even laughed.
Stanley did not. His face was turning red. The whistle screamed again.
‘No son of mine cries like a baby. Now get on the train.’ And he yanked James from his mother’s side and half-pushed him into the compartment. There was a hiss of brakes, a great clanking and a jerk as the tra
in began to roll. James looked out through the blur of tears at his mother’s waving hand and fixed smile and at his father, one hand on a hip the other lifted, whether in blessing or banishment James never knew.
THIRTY-FOUR
In Shanti Niwas, Ruth opened the battered shoe box on the coffee table and untied the ribbon. The letter on top was the first she had sent home at the end of her first week in boarding. Aged six, she was not able to write much and the page was dominated by a drawing of a princess. Above it, in thick lead pencil, she had scrawled, ‘dir MomndaD hauUryu iAmf Yn’ Underneath the picture, the word ‘rUTh’ was almost obliterated by a storm of hug and kiss signs. The whole thing was rather smudged. On the outside, Miss Joshi had written, ‘Ruth is settling in very nicely.’
She put the letter down on the table and picked up the next one. Near her, in the kitchen area, Iqbal was humming as he chopped vegetables for pakoras. James had gone for his weekly Bible Study at Paul Verghese’s house, Firclump, and had refused an escort, despite his bent hobbling, now with two sticks.
A pale light filtered into the room from a sun beginning to emerge at the end of monsoon. It was like a delicate queen recovering from flu, appearing on her balcony, still wrapped in blankets of cloud, raising a limp hand and a smile for her subjects, but with little strength.
In the cool, Ruth crossed her legs on the sofa and tucked them under her shawl. The letters were much the same for the first few weeks: a large picture – usually princess, bride or fairy – a few illegible words and an occasional cover sentence from Miss Joshi, who had inspected the inside. ‘Ruth is getting better at dressing herself.’ ‘Ruth is learning to eat up all her food.’
The week Miss Joshi’s inspections ceased, however, the golden-haired heroine was crying. Her enormous tears flew to the far corners of the page and the writing beneath said, ‘i HAT it hir!!!!!!!!’ Miss Joshi had written on the outside, ‘Ruth is a delight in the dorm.’
Folding the letter, she remembered her first night in boarding. After James had gone and the bearer rang the dinner bell, the twenty Lower Dorm girls ran to the sinks and shoved their hands under sputtering blasts of cold water. Hannah helped Ruth, trying to get her to use soap, though Ruth could see that no-one else did. Sita was one of the quickest and shouted, ‘Last one’s a smelly pig!’ as she shot down the stairs at the front of the pack. Hannah and Ruth were the last and arrived to a howling of Smelly pigs! Smelly pigs! Oink, oink, ha, ha! till Miss Joshi appeared, swishing in her socks and chappals, and clapping her hands for silence.
After grace, they filed across the dinner hall to the servery where a row of bearers in white jackets and topis stood behind stainless-steel vats of food. Hannah gave a plastic tray to Ruth and meekly held out her own to the first bearer. Dinner that night was Meat and Potatoes, a greasy concoction of mutton bits floating in a soupish gravy with chunks of vegetable. That was slopped into the main compartment and a spade-full of mashed potato thwacked beside it. Then into one of the corner slots of the tray went some long-boiled cabbage and into another a wobbling slice of iridescent jelly.
‘Thora, thora!’ the girls cried. Just a little bit, just a little bit! Everything that hit the tray had to be eaten and the scraped dish inspected by Miss Joshi before it could be pushed into the washing-up hatch.
‘This is yummy, na?’ said Sita, shovelling forkfuls into her mouth.
Ruth rested her head on her hand and stared at the food.
‘Come on, Ruth,’ Hannah cajoled. ‘You have to eat it or you’ll get bawled out.’
Long after everyone else had gone upstairs, Ruth was still sitting at the table with Miss Joshi beside her. The dorm mother had gone beyond gentle encouragements: ‘Come on, sweetie,’ and lies: ‘It’s delicious,’ and threats: ‘You won’t get any Candy Cupboard on Sunday,’ to sharpening her final weapon: ‘I’ll have to write to Mummy and Daddy and tell them you’ve not been a very good little girl. They won’t be at all happy about that, now will they?’ Blackmail usually worked where all else failed, but so far it was just producing twin trails of tears down Ruth’s dirty face.
Iqbal poured oil into his kadai and turned on the gas, his eyes slipping to Ruth. He saw her smile over some of the early letters, and then go quiet. Some she held onto for a long time, before adding them to the growing pile on the table. As she read, she tugged on a curl of hair just above her right ear. He dropped balls of battered pakora into the hot oil and checked his dekchi of spiced chai. As he cooked he sang an Urdu ghazal by Faiz.
‘Why have you tattooed yourself with these wounds?’
His voice rose and swelled and dropped and trembled, his cheeks quivering, lips soft. Lifting the freshly cooked pakoras onto a plate, he poured some chai into a mug and carried them over to Ruth. She was lying down on the sofa, the shawl up over her mouth, tears dripping off the end of her nose.
Iqbal nudged some of the letters aside to make space for the mug and plate.
‘Lahore pakore,’ he said, ‘aur garam chai.’
Ruth didn’t move. Iqbal returned to the kitchen corner and sang on as he added more pakoras to the kadai.
‘When the night has passed,
A hundred new roads will blossom.
You must steady your heart,
For it has to break many, many times.’
He had nearly finished frying them all when Ruth sat up and spoke, her gaze fixed beyond the window.
‘Iqbal?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you seen these letters?’
‘Of course not. Your father is not showing me your private things.’
She was quiet for a while, then picked up the chai and sipped it.
‘I want you to read them,’ she said.
Iqbal poured his own chai and leaned back against the kitchen bench, looking at her. She turned to him, her face wobbly and blotched, eyes a bright wet green.
‘So you will know my story.’
‘Yes. Of course.’ He slurped his chai. ‘In exchange for one thing.’
‘What?’
‘You read the letters about your mother.’ He pointed to the box in the corner of the living room that she had not opened. ‘The ones sent to Doctor-ji after she is going home.’
THIRTY-FIVE
The bus crept into Mussoorie in the grey dawn of Sunday morning. Nearly everyone was asleep, flopped against windows, bags, each other. They began waking on the rutted bumps of New Road, feeling stiff and cold but at once flushed with relief at the sight of the school. Ruth wiped her mouth with the back of a chapped hand, hoping Manveer hadn’t noticed her dribbling. He opened his eyes and smiled at her.
‘So!’ said Abishek, appearing from a seat further up, grinning, his hair sticking out in tufts. ‘The Virgin Veeru has just slept with a whole busload of girls.’
Sita hurled her book at him.
That night was Compulsory Chapel. It rolled round twice a semester and was deeply resented by most who weren’t Christians and an embarrassment to most who were. This was largely down to Mrs Cornfoot’s toe-curling solos, or Chaplain Park preaching for too long, or someone giving a testimony that reduced the teller to tears but half the students to sniggers. It was better when Mr Haskell led it, filling the hall with candles and music and his slides of India, but he was not in charge tonight. Indeed, he was barely speaking. He stood at the entrance to Benson Hall stone-faced, ticking off names on his clipboard.
The students arrived in clouds of scent and pheromones. The girls wore dresses with shoulder pads and floppy bows, or shalwar kameez in jewel colours, or smartly tailored trousers, high-waisted and narrow at the ankle. Most had handbags, glossy hair-dos and lashings of makeup, and they twittered as they sat in the foyer to change from running shoes (for the trudge up the hill from the dorms) into high heels. The boys that hovered around them like moths had metamorphosed from their usual grubby jeans to a crisp display of pressed shirts, gelled hair and clean teeth. Although officially begrudged, Compulsory Chapel provided unique opportunities fo
r mating rituals which were seized with enthusiasm.
As the flocks of hormone-charged teenagers settled into their seats and the first hymn struck up, Mr Haskell noted two names not ticked on his list.
Ruth and Manveer had met on the path up to Chapel and fell behind the others. He offered to carry her shoes. Dove grey with bows on top, their purchase had been the high point of Ruth’s previous furlough in the States. She had hardly believed she was allowed them, but Ellen had just nodded and smiled and let her take all the time in the world choosing. As Ruth paraded up and down the shop, she’d seen her mother’s gaze drifting to a pair of red kitten heels. She’d stroked the patent leather, but realising Ruth was watching, just laughed and put them back with a thump.
‘Will you look at those! Ridiculous!’
Ruth’s shoes were getting a bit tight and scuffed now and the rubber cap on one of the soles had fallen off so she made an uneven sound when she walked: clomp, click, clomp, click. But she knew there would be no new shoes till the next furlough – apart from Bata chappals and the frumpy things made by the mochi in the bazaar – so she treasured these. As did Manveer, it seemed, from the way he carried them. They walked slowly so as not to ruin the effects of intensive grooming.
Ruth had spent most of the day sleeping and fantasising about him. The danger he’d been in made him even more attractive to her, and in the afternoon she’d got up, thighs aching with desire, and gone to the toilet where she’d rubbed herself into a mouth-gaping spasm of pleasure. Flopped back against the wall, feeling the familiar rush of heat and guilt, she’d wiped her finger on a square of toilet paper and flushed.
After her shower – still dripping slightly under her frayed dressing gown – she’d stood before her open cupboard and agonised. Sita’s advice was not as expansive as usual and she was preoccupied with threading her moustache. So Ruth set off, rubber chappals flapping, down the concrete corridors, from room to room, begging, rummaging, trying things on, taking suggestions, rejecting suggestions till finally, minutes before the dinner bell, her outfit was complete: her own grey cotton twills (bought the same day as the shoes, and a tad short now) with a white frilled blouse (made by Farooqi Tailors in the bazaar to copy the latest Laura Ashley), a scarlet cardigan (knitted by Grandma Leota) and an elegant charcoal coat (borrowed from Sita, as were the nylons, though she had seemed a little reluctant about the loans, stressing that the coat was new, pure wool and very expensive.) Ruth styled her hair into a soft, curly halo and (in long-established defiance of parental ban) applied dramatic make-up: green eye shadow, thick black lashes and lips glossed to a hot cherry. The finishing touch to her deviant glamour were the new nails, matching the red and gold bangles that had been bought specially for the part of Maya.
A House Called Askival Page 22