by Helen Harris
‘Really? You invited me along in spirit, in other words?’
‘Well, yes. Did you think about me at all in the vac?’
‘Not at all,’ Ravi answered with mock gravity. With another shout of jubilant laughter, they grabbed each other and fell giggling across the carpet where they sat.
*
In those days, Sarah’s sum knowledge of India could have been catalogued something like this: Capital – Delhi (New Delhi), although whether or not there was also an Old Delhi she had no idea. It had once been ruled by Britain for a stuffy and easily mocked period called the Raj, during which there had been a Mutiny, sparked off by Hindu sepoys refusing to bite off the ends of cartridges because they believed they had been defiled by beef fat. In India, the cow was sacred. Sacred cows wandered amid the traffic of big cities and often caused dire traffic jams because if they lay down in a main road, no one dared to shift them. The climate was dreadful; the heat was horrendous and there were monsoons. The Prime Minister was Mrs Indira Gandhi, who had bizarrely black and white striped hair like Cruella de Vil in A Hundred and One Dalmatians. The population was enormous; millions, starving millions who conjured up the haggard faces on an Oxfam poster. They tried to stop people having so many children there, but it was no good; the idea that having lots of children ensured a comfortable old age was too deeply rooted in the poor people’s beliefs. Colouring the whole catalogue with the queasy taint of guilt was the message of the posters: poverty.
Of course, when Sarah first began to grow interested in Ravi Kaul, he seemed to have nothing to do with India. He was a foreigner, but it hardly mattered to her which country he came from. His skin alone made him exotic and probably she did not think about the rest of him at the beginning. When she came to know Ravi a little better, and his friends, the country they came from did not seem a real one either. It was a looking-glass country which sent bright, shimmering reflections across the English winter. The Indians were like humming-birds beside the dowdy pigeons who were their English contemporaries. It took Sarah years to realise that Ravi Kaul was not gloriously alone in the world, but part of a pattern no less pervasive than her own.
*
When he got back from eating with Sarah in the Shah Jehan that night, Ravi went round to Dev’s room and accused him of being a meddling old woman.
‘You couldn’t leave me alone, could you?’ he shouted. ‘You had to hang about in the front quad to spy on me!’
‘I was on my way to see you,’ protested Dev. ‘We haven’t seen each other for a while.’
Ravi was not seriously angry and Dev knew it. He was too pleased by the direction developments were taking to get seriously annoyed by his friends’ reactions. In fact, Dev shared his glee; when all was said and done, this was an exhilarating start to the term. But he pretended to be hurt.
‘If you’re intending to drop us all, now you’ve got other acquaintances on your mind—’
‘What nonsense!’ Ravi exclaimed, sitting down on Dev’s bed. ‘Why not just behave normally about things? What exactly is supposed to have happened, anyway?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Dev shrugged, ‘since you seem to want to keep us in the dark.’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Ravi, ‘do I have to keep you informed of my every move? At four pm I shall go out for tea. I intend to return by six-thirty. I will be at such and such college and on my way back, I will stop at the Co-op shop to buy a packet of ginger-nuts, price twenty-five pence!’
‘Some of your moves aren’t so innocent,’ Dev said mischievously.
‘Oh, make me some coffee, you idiot!’ Ravi answered.
Sunil joined them. He also was amused by the new turn of events and after his first mug of coffee, he asked Ravi flippantly if he was thinking of taking a leaf out of Ved Sharma’s book. Dev stiffened in alarm and Ravi, sprawled complacently across Dev’s bed, looked furious.
‘What exactly do you mean by that?’
‘Well, unless I’m much mistaken, young Sarah looks as though she’s here to stay, doesn’t she?’
‘I don’t see what Sarah Livingstone’s got to do with Ved Sharma, quite frankly,’ Ravi said bitterly. ‘If you can’t see the difference between an intelligent person like Sarah and that silly Penny, then you need your head examined.’
Sunil tittered significantly to Dev. ‘Oh naturally, utterly different,’ he agreed.
‘Well, can’t you see?’ Ravi exclaimed. ‘She is! That Penny had about as much brain as a soft-boiled egg.’
‘Smitten,’ Dev commented with mock gravity, led on by Sunil who, plopping sugar into his second cup of coffee, commented, ‘Ah, it’s her brains you’re after, is it? More on the lines of scrambled egg?’
Ravi swore furiously at his friends in Hindi. ‘What are you two? My aunts? Why are you turning this whole thing into an issue anyway? What’s it got to do with you?’
‘We have your welfare at heart,’ Dev said sententiously.
‘Well, I’m fine,’ Ravi snapped. ‘Better than you’ll ever be.’
His friends chuckled and Ravi was so annoyed that he sat up. ‘For heaven’s sake!’ he cried. ‘What d’you think I’m about to do? Marry her?’
Long afterwards, he lay awake and tried to recall his evening with Sarah from behind the irritation which Dev and Sunil had superimposed on it. She was so lively and forthright, there was so much fun ahead of him. His friends’ concern just showed how conventional they still were at heart. They were decent fellows, of course, but when it came to certain things they just hadn’t shaken off their inherited prejudices. He looked forward to the next day and as he began to feel drowsy, thought ahead sleepily to the spring and summer, to the remainder of his two years in England. Sarah Livingstone gave them a whole new dimension. He only thought again very briefly about Sunil and Dev, almost pityingly. He would dare to live so much more than they would in England and, afterwards, his memories of his time abroad would be much richer.
*
It was nothing to do with the new paint (‘Grass-snake’s puke,’ Ravi repeated, giggling, when he saw it. ‘It smells of grass-snake’s puke’) but Sarah did begin to visit Ravi more often than he came to her. She preferred his room.
It was never cold there. Although the room was in one of the dampest seventeenth-century buildings, with the electric fire and a supplementary radiator on at full capacity, Ravi simulated another climate. He often kept the curtains drawn too, in the daytime, which excluded the city completely. His friends, who all spent a lot of time there, helped to create their own environment. From the regulation furnishings of a student room – utility desk, bookcase, single bed – they made something else: a refuge from the winter city, whose occupants braced themselves when they went back outside.
The room had its own smell also – sweet, weird and distinctive – which years later in other cities would still make Sarah breathe in with longing. She found it a bit cloying at first and suggested frankly to Ravi that he should open the window more often. But she grew to identify its constituents – a brand of cigarette, certain spices, a medicinal balm – and became fond of it, even trying to reproduce it with joss sticks in her own room. She liked Ravi’s room.
It was such a lively room, unlike her own which was frozen between his visits. There was usually music, high mournful music, and, several times a day, the radio news. People would eat there at inexplicable times, bringing in takeaways or pans of lentils. An Indian girl called Nanda who, for some reason, took against Sarah from the first day, cooked complicated meals in a kitchenette and laid them out painstakingly in Ravi’s room. Nanda was the only discordant note in the harmonious way of life, so far as Sarah was concerned. She flirted coyly with all the men in what Sarah considered a ridiculously old-fashioned way and giggled furiously when complimented on her cooking. She seemed to disapprove of Sarah no end. There were long, heated discussions about places and subjects of which Sarah had never heard. The language switched back and forth between English and Hindi. The first Hindi word
s which Sarah learnt were ‘Chai’ (tea) and ‘Chini’ (sugar). She used them to gain laughs.
At first, Ravi’s friends seemed uncertain how to react to Sarah, uncomfortable. It was as if they did not know how long she would be there and could not decide whether to include her in the conversation. Later though – when she had become, as Sunil jokingly put it to her, ‘a part of the fixtures and fittings’ – they seemed to absorb her into their company happily enough and to include her without reservation in what went on. She thought she blended in pretty well.
*
The next day, Ravi did walk round to Sarah’s college. This was not out of guilt because of the small lie that he had told her; but the previous day had left him with more misgivings than Sarah about their friendship, which he wanted to resolve by seeing her. He was certain that his behaviour could not be defined by his friends’ crude image of it; he was not just planning to have a good time with Sarah, not like that, not in the way Ved Sharma had with his silly Penny. In fact, he was disgusted by his friends’ failure to recognise that relations between him and Sarah could possibly take place on any other terms. For them, it seemed, such a liaison could only be an amalgam of unprincipled male lust and female immorality. He walked through the suburban streets fired by righteous indignation and arrived in the red front quadrangle of Sarah’s college in a state of fervent sincerity. Because his feelings for Sarah were not like that – not at all what Dev and Sunil imagined – they grew as he justified them. He nearly ran up the stairs to her room.
Sarah was waiting for him. She had been waiting since she woke up at nine that morning and lay still in bed so as not to lose a wonderful dream in which she and Ravi were together on a train, travelling through a snowy, mountainous landscape. Ravi was pointing out the landmarks and explaining to her what they were. He kept telling Sarah that the country outside was India, even though she knew perfectly well that it couldn’t be. But because it was a dream, she believed him. ‘It’s not at all like you expected, is it?’ he kept saying. ‘I told you so.’ It felt so wonderful and momentous on that train, cold and spectacular as they swept through the beautiful scenery. In her dream, she hoped they never reached their destination.
The rest of the day was quite overshadowed by the dream and the excitement of Ravi. She met her tutor and arranged to work on ‘Charles Dickens and the novel as a social message’ that term. But she paid almost no attention to the term beginning about her; so far as she was concerned, this term would be Ravi’s.
When at last he arrived, she was playful, to hide her contentment and to pay him back for keeping her waiting all day.
He asked, ‘Well, how has your first day been? Have you got everything fixed up?’
Sarah adjusted his collar flirtatiously. ‘Everything.’
Ravi waved at a stack of library books, just brought in and still in a haphazard pile on Sarah’s coffee table. ‘You’ve got your work all mapped out?’
Sarah giggled. ‘Yes. Have a look.’
There was a volume of Dickens and two critical appraisals at the top of the pile, then A. K. Coomaraswamy’s Introduction to Indian Art, An Indian Summer by James Cameron and Indian Temples and Palaces by M. Edwardes.
Sarah burst out laughing at Ravi’s astounded face. ‘I’ve got my work all mapped out!’ she crowed.
But Ravi looked serious. ‘Why have you got all these?’ he asked sternly.
‘Goodness only knows,’ Sarah said sarcastically, ‘but I’ve developed this sudden interest in India. I can’t think why.’
‘But what about everything else you have to read? There’s nearly a week’s reading here.’
‘Oh Ravi, don’t be so priggish. Aren’t you pleased that I want to learn about India?’
‘Of course, of course I’m pleased. But you mustn’t let it interfere with your work. I mean, after all—’
‘After all, what? I don’t give a damn about Hard Times. This is much more interesting.’
‘Anyway,’ Ravi said abruptly, ‘these books are all wrong – not what you ought to read if you really want to learn about India. They’re comfy, pretty armchair books. If you want to learn something about India, then you must read some proper stuff. I’ll get you some decent books from the library.’
‘OK, fine,’ Sarah said a little sulkily, ‘but there’s no need to trample on my good intentions.’
Ravi fondled her hair. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
They sat on the carpet and looked at each other until they were almost overcome by their proximity. The winter afternoon was already growing dark. At such moments, the limitations of only having known each other for a few weeks were nearly too much to bear.
‘Shall we go out for a walk?’ Sarah suggested, driven by the excitement for which there was as yet no outlet.
‘All right,’ said Ravi, although he was content and also warm inside. He thought he understood that Sarah was afraid of intimacy growing in the dark.
They put on their coats and went out into the premature twilight. The wet air clung to their faces and their hair. The college garden was sodden.
‘In India,’ Sarah said, ‘what would the weather be like now?’
‘It depends which part,’ said Ravi. ‘It’s a big place, you know.’
‘Oh, don’t be so patronising,’ Sarah said. ‘I have realised that much! I mean in your part, of course. I’m not interested in the rest.’
‘In the North?’ Ravi said. ‘It’s the cool season right now; it would be about in the seventies during the day, but cooler at night. It’s winter there, too.’
Sarah gave a little laugh of astonishment. ‘Gosh, do you wish you were there?’ She wrapped her coat more tightly around her and shivered.
‘No,’ Ravi said, ‘I don’t.’ But thinking about it, almost involuntarily his teeth chattered.
They both laughed, then Ravi put his arm around Sarah and said sweetly, ‘There are reasons why I’d rather be here.’
They walked out on to the playing fields. In the thick grey light, the painted lines of the boundaries and the goal mouths showed up like large primitive chalk drawings. Ravi and Sarah walked around the edge, where it was less muddy, making fun of the desolate stretch of ground which seemed so glorious to the boys who played on it. The goal-posts stood like the remains of an abandoned religious ritual. The netting sagged.
They walked, impervious to the desolation. As clearly as the ruled white lines in front of them, each saw and felt their joint future. With overwhelming certainty, each realised that he held the hand, encircled the waist, felt the breathing of his future lover. And for possibly the first time, each knew that the other must realise it now too, which made them quiet and taut with apprehension. If one of them – confronted with that picture – shied away, the other would be wounded. So they said very little, afraid of harming the picture, and out on the cold playing fields they walked round and round, mesmerised and terrified by the picture of their future happiness.
The cold brought them indoors again: Sarah coral-faced and sweating with emotion, despite the cold, Ravi so chilled he thought he could feel each individual bone turning to ice beneath his skin. They went carefully up to Sarah’s room, carrying with them the new realisation. She put on the light and the fire and drew the curtains on the view of the playing fields through the sombre trees, almost as if embarrassed by what they confirmed. Ravi stood in front of the fire and rubbed his hands.
‘Are you frozen?’ Sarah asked. ‘Shall I make some coffee?’
‘Do you find this temperature invigorating?’ Ravi asked. ‘You always look so pink and glowing in it.’
‘Pink?’ Sarah said. Half-jokingly, she looked at her face in the mirror.
‘It’s sweet,’ Ravi said. ‘I like it.’
He caught her as she made a face at herself and affectionately stroked her nose.
For a moment, they looked minutely at the effect of cold on their different faces. Holding the jolly English girl from the hockey pitch, Ravi
saw that the pink could be made to climb under her susceptible skin. Through nearly motionless lips, without a sound – so that if anything were later to go wrong, it could always be claimed that the words had never been spoken – Ravi’s mouth said, ‘I love you.’
And loud and irretrievable, Sarah answered, ‘Oh, Ravi, Ravi, so do I.’
And their fright swamped them. Terrified, they clung to each other and giggled in high-pitched shock. Then as normality returned, the girl who had grown up to stint and suppress her emotions broke away to make coffee and wondered, ‘Does he? Could he? Is this real?’ While the man who had become resigned to seeing his years of foreign freedom pass in sickly, studious loneliness, felt an elation which transcended words but said something like, ‘Oh, this is glorious, glorious!’
There was a knock as they drank their coffee and Emily Williams came in. They were so overwhelmed by their emotions that they appeared almost to welcome her.
Ravi had met Emily Williams already and was surprised that such a thinking girl as Sarah should have such a silly best friend. But he imagined that friendships between women here had flimsy foundations. Sarah and Emily were only friends because they happened to be at the same college at the same time and shared a taste for poking fun. He was slightly stiff in front of Emily.
Emily thought Ravi Kaul was wonderful. She had encouraged Sarah in the adventure from the moment she had first seen him across the quad. In fact, on meeting, she had found him a little disappointing; he was a bit stiff; he did not quite live up to her vision of a glamorous Oriental boy-friend. But she was determined that he should do so; when she and Sarah talked about him, she dwelt on his luscious black eyes and his incredible lashes and she never let on to Sarah that he did not. She said he was ‘gorgeous’ and ‘delectable’; well, for Sarah he might very well be. If she herself had decided on an Indian romance, she would personally have preferred someone a little more foreign and flamboyant, and also a little taller. But, despite her reservations (why was he so keen on Sarah anyway, what was he after?), she pushed her friend eagerly into the adventure. Although she would not have dared to get involved with an Indian herself, it flattered her that she was friendly with someone who would. Almost subconsciously, she was shocked, for Ravi and Sarah transcended a barrier still firmly planted in her brain. And anything shocking should be encouraged. She would never have expected it of Sarah Livingstone, actually; she had always thought her rather staid where emotional risks were concerned. But now that Sarah had surprised her, she wanted to reward her with encouragement. Also, Emily had made a fool of herself over men so often already; it would not upset her if Sarah were now to do the same. Naturally, she would comfort her when that happened. And she did not see how else it could end.