“I could be an opera girl!”
“What’s an opera girl?” asked Sanjay.
“An ayah.”
“You have to be old to be an ayah.”
That was true. One of Mary Angel’s cousins had an ayah because her mother worked, and that cousin was much older than me.
“But you don’t have to be old to be an opera girl!”
We knew of an American family that wanted to hire opera girls from Madhupur; they would pay for room and board in exchange for looking after children. Grandmother wrinkled her nose at the idea, and said these girls, whom she called O-pairs, would have no rights, and on top, would pine away. She used the Tamil phrase for “pine away,” but in English it sounded awful, like living in a tree without company or food.
I complained loudly, but I did not go to England with Aunt Meterling, and she continued to have nightmares. She told me how those first months had been when I was older, but I imagined what she chose not to tell. Isn’t that who we are at heart, a species that tells and doesn’t tell, keeps the heart and brain hidden, complicating our lives for the drama, so we don’t have to face the night?
In the mornings, my aunt read the newspaper with utter concentration while Uncle Simon played with the baby. A woman aged a hundred and one had died. My aunt had lately grown fascinated with obituaries. The newspaper reported it with a caption under a photo of the woman celebrating her last birthday, her mouth beaming, a paper hat on her head, with balloons and cake nearby, and a column describing her life. Does the life ahead seem longer when you are elderly? Or does it merely seem a continuation of what you know? If one were to sit and examine each decade, count the measure of one’s life, maybe it would seem long. “Every day, you know,” said the centenarian-plus to the reporter, “I wake up surprised I made it another day.”
The woman had been married to the same man for sixty-seven years. She had seven children, beginning in 1909, nearly all of whom were still living, plus sixteen grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Meterling stared at the paper. Only a year ago, she, Meterling, was twenty-eight, pregnant and getting married. Now, she was a widow, wife, and mother. She looked out the window. There beyond the garden view was more of the English world, more dazzle, more drizzle, and black bare limbs trembling with raindrops. It was beautiful and it was England, and she, my aunt Meterling, was here. Despite the state of the world, despite the bombings near Underground stations, despite the unworldly ferocity of soccer fans, despite the fear of unexpected public violence—here was my aunt, in an England she still considered beautiful, new, and full of possibilities. But where were the sketch pads and easels, where was the travel that was to have lit her days, as Archer had promised her a year ago? They hadn’t known about Oscar, of course, they had merely planned around what they knew; but would she be as happy? I was convinced of my aunt’s ability for survival, provided she was looked after. As for the dreams of travel, they grew in me, like a seed sprouting in the stomach of a sage to turn into a tree as he meditates.
From the first, she liked the flat. She liked the cozy kitchen, with the clean-swept floor and a picture of a rooster on one of the walls. Because she had seen the photographs, she had not expected to be surprised, but she was, opening and closing the doors and looking out the windows, sitting on the plump gray couch the landlord had provided. It was semi-furnished, but she did not see any need for more furniture; freshly painted, it had an air of beginnings, new starts. It was so different from island homes, from her home. No dark, heavy colonial furniture or mirrorwork hangings, no twenty-five foot ceilings with metal fans, no wooden swing. It felt like the twentieth century, not the nineteenth. Spacious, bright, and, thankfully enough, she fit. Younger, she told me, she used to think of herself like Alice, who drank the bottle that made her arms and legs and head thrust out of the Wonderland house she was in.
She had seen so many illustrations of English homes, cottages with teapots and chintz, but the flat was streamlined, with a wall painted a light brown in the living room. Ceiling moldings from the Regency townhouse the flat was ensconced in remained to add character, as did the thick doors that led to the bedroom and to the garden. The kitchen opened onto the living room, and the bathroom, painted light blue, was off to one side. Because it was tucked under the main townhouse, it felt protected from the street it fronted. Cutting flowers from the fairy rosebush, which would brave on for another month, she could see people hurry past on their way to work. There was a bakery around the corner, and the sweet fragrance of buns and scones drifted delightfully, wending its way past an old plane tree whose mottled bark Meterling first mistook for disease.
The first day there, she drew out from the suitcase her Ganesha, carefully wrapped by Grandmother in an old sari, and a small silver Lakshmi and infant Krishna. She had told Simon that she needed to travel with her faith, to set up her shrine and not lose her connection to Pi. There was a bookcase in the kitchen, and there, she arranged the small statues. Grandmother had also packed her a silver diya lamp, and had even rolled some cotton wicks for it. They had landed at Gatwick on October 6th. From the plane, looking out the window, she was surprised to see how green England was. The grass seemed springy, freshly cut, verdant like spring. Where was Keats’s season of mist and mellow fruitfulness? She longed to see the apple trees as much as she longed to see snow.
Through customs and the taxi ride, Meterling held Oscar, and leaned into Simon. He narrated what they were looking at, but the words flew past her. She looked at the view, seeing Austen, seeing Dickens, seeing Eliot. It was only when they had stopped in a store to purchase milk, butter, coffee, and other sundries, that she spoke.
“Oil, Simon—we need oil for the lamp.”
At the flat, lighting the oil lamp, bowing her head, her palms pressed together, she prayed like Grandmother would for good fortune in these new beginnings. Then she put a small pot of milk on the boil, let it nearly boil over, and prayed for an abundant new start to their new life, an overflow of fortune. Simon made coffee, and they used the now-sacred milk to lighten it. Meterling gave a few drops of the cooled milk to Oscar as well. Their new lives in their new flat had begun.
29
Those first weeks were filled with a kind of wonderment, as Meterling and Simon settled down together. They did not have much to unpack beyond clothes and books. Simon left for work around eight, and on her first solo trip outside, Meterling with Oscar in a Snugli walked to a flower market to purchase some blooms for the flat. A day at her disposal. The air was fresh with autumn, as people hurried by. She listened to the noise of the traffic, looked at the red buses go past, and bought a newspaper. She compulsively consulted the map Simon had drawn for her, but she got lost anyway. She had wandered off the perimeter, toward the arrow on the paper marked Chelsea, or was it Millbank? There was a pub on the opposite side of the road she was on, with doors spilling open onto the sidewalk. Looking both ways, crossing carefully, she walked toward it. A man sitting just inside the door looked asleep as she went toward the bar to ask for directions.
“C’mon, let’s go,” said the man at the door. Heaving himself off the chair, he walked outside. The bartender indicated she should follow him, so Meterling did. He looked like an old sailor with his grizzled chin and cropped gray hair, and he was silent. After depositing her on her street, he lumbered back for his pint. Krishna, Meterling thought, watching him go back—she had been rescued by Krishna.
Mrs. Vickers, a woman of few words, came on Wednesdays. Simon hired her to clean, because, he said, “we can afford it, and you’re not used to this,” which was true enough; when had she had to do anything out of need in terms of housework? In Madhupur, she cooked only because she wanted to, mended only when she felt the inclination. At home, there was a servant for each task; Grandmother looked harried only because she needed to organize, or maybe because there were so many underfoot. Plus there was Oscar to look after, also on her own; but Meterling felt a twinge of guilt. Still, it seemed to make Simon h
appier, and she would be kidding herself if she protested too much.
“I’ve lots of Indian and Pakistani clients I do business with,” Mrs. Vickers said curtly that first day, hanging up her coat and bag. Immediately, Meterling felt rebuked. Mrs. Vickers had a fat zippered Filofax full of clients. Although used to women cleaning around her, to lifting her feet for the broom, Meterling found that in London, she needed to leave the flat on Mrs. Vickers’s days. She found herself feeling embarrassed, wondering if Mrs. Vickers in her white skin resented working for “the Indians and Pakistanis,” whereas, she reflected, outside with Oscar, they had far more to resent. She tried to tidy up before Mrs. Vickers came: piling the laundry into baskets she had bought from an open-air market, tidying up the toys, washing the dishes. It was not enough, but Mrs. Vickers never said a word, and was brisk, nearly scientific in her cleaning, and what Meterling came to appreciate most was how the flat looked and smelled after Mrs. Vickers left: clean, smoothed out, renewed.
Simon gave her a Barclay card, but Meterling insisted that she get her own to draw from the interest on Archer’s estate. This was easier than both had anticipated, since the transfer of money had occurred months before, and what was required was a new account created under her own name. The bank issued her a credit card, a set of checks, and a safe-deposit box. Together, she and Simon stored her wedding jewelry in the bank’s vault, under the kind of quiet courtesy exhibited by the bank employees for the wealthy. For she was wealthy, my aunt Meterling, an heiress who had married money, twice.
Simon had introduced her to the neighborhood, taking straight routes she could memorize. They walked to Waitrose, which was larger than any shop she’d ever imagined. How did the British make choices: single cream; double cream; full fat; less fat; goat milk; soybean milk; kefir? In Madhupur, the milkman brought fresh milk on his bicycle, warm from the cow, and she received it in a vessel from his jug to take inside to boil. There were so many lights in the store too, so that everything gleamed. It was such a white country.
But pockets of green were scattered everywhere. No matter what part of town they were in, it seemed, there were neat squares of garden full of fall growth. When the pace got to be too much, or she became overwhelmed by all the buildings and street signs and roads, she studied the tulips, which were putting on their final show before winter. Purplish-red shocks of leaves as well as dark-orange berries clung to the tree branches, which held a certain enchantment; Meterling had never witnessed an autumn before. She snapped pictures, which she sent to us. (“All she does is send pictures of trees and flowers,” complained Sanjay.)
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core.
Simon took her on the Underground, which thrilled her, because she had studied the station map back in Madhupur. So now she actually stopped at Oxford Circus and Paddington, Tottenham Court Road, minded the gap, held tight to husband and child. They sampled chum chums and other milk sweets somewhere near Fitzroy Street. She bought jars of mango pickle to accompany the ones Grandmother had made and packed for her. Meterling’s excitement was tremendous those first weeks—to see what she had read about, to experience what was in Dickens, in the Spectator, all the readings at school. Simon took them to his work, where he introduced his colleagues. They smiled, shook hands, fussed over the baby, and went back to work. She had not expected an editorial office to be messy, but it was, with lots of people moving in and out of cubicles and doors, holding bits of paper, while bookshelves bulged with manuscripts and books. Simon’s own office held a half-dozen coffee cups, stained and forgotten, breeding mold, as well as a neglected plant of some species—a palm? A jasmine? Giving the baby to Simon to hold, she cleaned up his office, threw out the plant, tidied his desk somewhat.
Had he wanted to talk of Archer, or did he hope that she would bring the topic up? To think they had made it to England so easily, so conveniently. Archer was buried in the countryside, but Meterling hadn’t asked to see his grave. Perhaps she still smarted from being so cruelly left out of the funeral plans. Simon winced, thinking back to how quickly he and Susan had acted, how thoughtlessly, how selfishly.
He showed her the food court at Harrods, the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the Tower of London, and the Sword of Mercy, with its tip cut off. They toured the British Museum, walked through Bloomsbury, and looked at Dickens’s house and the Old Curiosity Shop on Portsmouth Street. One day they took the ferry to Greenwich, and the tour guide on the trip pointed out the places around the docks where the pirates, the rogues, the rebels were hanged. Snippets she remembered that she hardly knew were stuck in her mind kept coming to her: “Shakespeare answered very badly because he hadn’t read his Bradley”; “Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton”; “Once more into the fray”—so much history, too much history.
“How will I learn it all?” she said later, on their return home.
“Learn what, Meti?”
“All this English.”
30
At night, she woke up, her heart racing. Once again, out of nowhere, she had dreamed of Archer. Always in the dreams, she failed to save his life. How could she have saved it at the wedding? By refusing to dance? Avoiding a splashy wedding, so his aneurysm could explode in a quiet setting?
She didn’t know whether to tell Simon. She resolved to go to the library and learn about dreams. But she put it off, and decided if she had another nightmare, she would both tell Simon and go find an Indian doctor. Simon’s arm draped heavily across her body, and she welcomed its anchor. Sometimes she felt like she wanted to be pressed with his sleepy weight on top of her, so that he became a shield, a force field, warding off memory, warding off the flickering thought that somehow perhaps she had willed Archer’s death, that however unlikely, a part of her subconsciously protested their marriage. Surely, though, that was afterthought, after Simon, after all that happened.
How much could they bear to speak about Archer? How large was their guilt. How it crept, if left unchecked, into their lives almost constantly. What they had done was not unusual, after all. Cousins, brothers, even uncles married widowed relatives to keep the bloodlines, the inheritances, the name, and though the church for years decried unions of affinity, a 1921 act allowed the marriage of a deceased brother’s widow with her brother-in-law. Perhaps in feudal times such a marriage prevented the younger son from marrying well on his own, or going into the clergy; then there was also the pervasive idea that if a man and woman wed, they were united in blood, and all relatives became blood by default.
It was the scandal, the gossip that people loved. How merciless was she to wed so quickly, how tactless of him! How practical of her to want a father for a child, how foolish of him to squander his life! How deceitful of both to marry outside their own color and culture, to hurt both families in the bargain! How complicated, how unnecessary and undignified and selfish! It was the sheer selfishness of love that people minded, that refusal to think of the feelings of others for what—sex? This was what Grandmother feared, the censure of the neighbors and distant relatives, the outright stares of strangers. This was why she did not protest as heavily as she might have to keep them on Pi. In England, they could start a new life, she thought, finally coming to peace with the parting.
Yet she must have known the difficulties that were within Simon’s family. The gin company had a reputation, but in the end, maybe the tribulations of family had little effect on the business. Gin making had long been associated with notoriety, Simon told her, despite its beginnings as a medicinal tonic in Holland, condemned by Henry Fielding as poisonous and pernicious to the soul of England, causing the country to succumb to a perpetual state of drunkenness. They looked at the Hogarth prints of Gin Lane, where the drunken figures lolled about, mothers ready to kill their babies as a result of the spirit.
“No wonder you didn’t want to work for the company.”
“It’s lurid. Gin was responsible for thousands of deaths, abandonment,
the ruination of families. People paid wages in gin. Saved the extra step, my grandfather said. People used to line up just to nurse themselves from the spigot, and when they built the palaces, it became fashionable and aboveground to sip their drinks with their pinkies up.”
“Where’s the family palace now?”
“The family palace—that was the joke. Forster Gin Palace. It burned down during the Blitz. It was supposed to have been beautiful—it had a bas-relief of Greek maidens chased by satyrs and gods, and these ridiculously ornate mirrors, eight feet tall. My great-grandfather was shellshocked, and wouldn’t rebuild. So the company relied on its northern distilleries and the one on Pi.”
“Who’s running the company now?”
“An uncle of ours. Ruth-Sidney. Archer was to run it himself, but he refused. I didn’t want it, and neither did Susan. My father was never in the running. He likes the production part, not the sales meetings and negotiating with lawyers, the flying about. But they make a good team, Uncle Ruth-Sidney and Dad. It’s complicated—the whole damn company is riddled with complications.”
Simon looked so troubled that Meterling did not press for details.
Simon took Meterling to the site of the original factory in a town on the outskirts of London. The main factory was up north. The original factory had been torn down after a fire, replaced by a microdistillery responsible for artisanal blends sold mostly in private auctions.
“Where’ve you been, Simon boy?” asked a man whose ruddy complexion was accentuated by a squint and a grin.
“Larry—thought you’d be retired.”
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