A Sahib's Daughter

by Harkness, Nina

  In some ways, he couldn’t wait to go back to college. At least there were plenty of young ladies there. His college mates always came back full of stories about their sexual adventures. He hated to admit that he was a virgin. There wasn’t a single girl remotely in his age group to be seen for miles.

  Ravi’s bearer came in with their drinks, Kingfisher beer for the men and Ruby wine for Sammy. There were also peanuts and hot gram.

  “Well, it’s nice to get away from the old folks once in a while,” said Mark.

  “They’re probably enjoying the break from us as much as we are from them,” laughed Samira.

  She and Mark had never done this before. It had always been the family that was invited out to dinner or went on trips. This was fun, something new and exciting and part of being an adult. She looked towards Ravi’s bedroom. If she took one of her bathroom investigations, would he direct her towards his room or the guest room? Well, she was going to find out.

  “Ravi, where’s the bathroom?” she asked.

  “Come this way.” He leapt up gallantly and showed her into one of the bedrooms off the drawing room. She could see at once that it was the guest bedroom.

  “The bathroom’s through there,” he said. “I hope you’ll find everything you need.”

  She walked in, bolted the door and looked around. There were pink towels on the towel rail and pink soaps, shampoo and bubble bath. As though he were expecting a woman guest! Were these for her or did he have a penchant for pink? She noted that everything was new and unopened. Should she say something? She walked out to rejoin the men.

  “Nice bathroom,” she grinned.

  “I tried to find everything you’d need,” said Ravi. “I hope I didn’t miss anything.”

  So it had been for her. That was really nice of him. Or was it that he’d been hoping to…well, if he had he would have put it all in his bathroom. Right? What would she do if…or when…he tried to make love to her? She knew that it was only a matter of time. Did she want to? The answer was obvious. She did! But that didn’t mean she would. Even after all these months, she wasn’t altogether sure she trusted him.

  Suddenly, the phone rang. The sound echoed through the sparsely furnished room. Ravi rushed to his desk and grabbed it.

  “Yes, hello, Papa. How are you? I’m fine. How’s Mama? Good, good. I see. I don’t think so. No. Well, let me think about it. I’ll call you back soon. Love to Mama. Bye.”

  He replaced the receiver, somewhat flustered. It was obviously a trunk call from Delhi, which perhaps explained his brevity.

  “Sorry. That was my father. Family matters, nothing urgent. Let’s have dinner! I hope you’re hungry.”

  He went to the back of the house and ordered the bearer to serve dinner. Afterwards they played cards late into the night, then drove home and crept about the house and into their beds like mischievous children.

  Chapter 10

  Northern Ireland, 1943-1971

  Justin Laird grew up in Newcastle in County Down, one of the five counties of Northern Ireland. His father, Edward, owned a bakery shop on the promenade. Irene, his mother, helped run the shop in the mornings after Justin and his brother Adrian went to school. Edward started the ovens up early so that a fresh batch of soda and wheaten farls would be ready for his first customers at eight o’clock.

  By the time Irene arrived to help prepare the scones, potato bread and doughnuts, the smell of freshly baked farls was already wafting down the street. She was a stocky, full-bosomed woman who had married late in life. She was Edward’s second wife. His first wife had left him for a young jockey from Kilkenny, leaving him to rear the two boys, who were three and six. Irene’s family owned a farm in County Armagh. The oldest of seven, she assumed that she had been left “on the shelf” when she was still single at thirty-five. She worked as a hairdresser in Newry, in one of the side streets facing a parking lot in an unfashionable part of the dingy market town.

  Newry was close to the southern border, and its residents were well situated to participate in cross-border trade. Farmers sold their produce to the highest bidder, which would be largely determined by the value of the Irish punt against the British pound. People would buy their petrol, groceries and other necessities in either the North or the South, depending on which was cheaper at the time.

  During a period when goods were cheaper in the South, a customer walked into the salon where Irene worked from the parking lot across the street. He was badly in need of a haircut. He was at pains to explain that he was not normally a frequenter of these unisex salons, as though there was something illicit about them, but had a very important meeting to attend in Dundalk, for which he needed a haircut.

  Irene had appeared from the back of the salon and threw a cape over his shoulders. She was soon tut-tutting about the state of his hair. Edward, a well-built, clean-shaven business man, was not accustomed to feeling intimidated or to having his hair cut by a woman. He was unprepared for the feeling of helplessness he experienced in the hands of Irene. But yes, he trusted her judgment implicitly, he told her, enjoying the pleasant sensation of her gigantic assets pushing against his shoulder. He agreed that he wanted a style that was professional and distinguished. At that moment, there was nothing he wouldn’t have done just to gain her approval.

  So she snipped away, promising him that he would be pleased with the result. When she spun him around to look in the mirror, he was aghast to see that she had cut off his prized comb-over, and that he now looked like exactly what he was, a balding, middle-aged man, with no comforting lock of hair to conceal the naked patch on his head. Feeling exposed and vulnerable, he rushed out of the salon to his meeting in Dundalk, where he succeeded in closing the sale of his petrol station in Belfast.

  He discovered to his intense surprise that Irene had been right. People started to take him more seriously. There was no more of that giggling behind his back that he had tried so hard to ignore. Also, luck seemed to go his way. Not only did the sale of his petrol station in Belfast go smoothly, he was also successful in acquiring a small bakery shop in Newcastle for next to nothing. Every time anyone complimented him on his hair, he thought of Irene. He also found that he could not forget the sensation of her breasts pushing against his back. So it was perhaps not completely by chance the next time he was driving through Newry that he happened to stop at the Snip It and Set It salon. He told the receptionist that he needed a cut and asked for Irene.

  He had timed it for just before five o’clock, so he could invite her to join him for a drink after work. He took her to the very grand Manor Hotel where he ordered gin and tonics. They sat at a table by the window in the bar. With auburn hair and a freckled face, she was by no means an attractive woman, yet her ample proportions and flamboyant style of dress gave her a certain presence. She had a hearty laugh and launched into her second gin and tonic with gusto. Because it was going so well, he asked for a table in the dining room and bought her dinner.

  He didn’t have time to waste. He wanted someone who would keep house, care for his boys and keep him warm at night. Not only did she excite him sexually, something his thin, beautiful wife had failed to do, she didn’t seem to be in the least bit deterred by the fact that he had two young children who needed to be taken care of. She had no illusions as to her marriageability. But as the days passed, they developed a passion for each other that took them both by surprise. They went to her family’s farm where she introduced him around proudly, and it emerged that in addition to her other attributes, she also knew how to bake.

  Adrian was nearly seven years old and Justin still three when they first met Irene after the civil wedding ceremony in Downpatrick Town Hall. She gathered the boys into her arms and rustled up something for them to eat, her remedy for every situation in life. Adrian still remembered his mother and bristled at the thought of her having left on account of some insufficiency on his part. He grew sullen and insecure, never revealing his memories of his mother to anyone. Justin grew up obliviou
s to the fact that Irene was not his real mother. Adrian continued to maintain a certain distance from Irene, which she could never quite permeate, with the result that she lavished all her pent-up motherliness on Justin.

  They bought a large house perched on a cliff overlooking the sea in Newcastle, in the lea of the Mourne Mountains. It turned out that Irene had a penchant for grandeur, something that Edward was only too happy to indulge. The house was renovated to satisfy her newly established standards and filled with expensive antique furniture and paintings. Of course, Edward being the businessman that he was made sure that they never paid retail for anything. Consequently, they gave the impression of being much more affluent than they really were.

  Irene worked conscientiously at the bakery and at rearing the boys. It seemed that her blessings were never ending when the years passed, even when it emerged that she was unable to conceive.

  “You see, I already have a family,” she said to Edward. “I have my two sons, which were given to me by the Lord before I knew I could never have children of my own.”

  The bakery flourished as the boys grew up. Adrian went to university in Leeds where he studied engineering. He was considered to be the brains of the family. Justin was the clumsy one who lagged behind in class and who couldn’t be relied on to carry out the simplest chore. Anything he was asked to do, he did so badly Edward would say it was easier to just do it himself.

  “That fool son of mine can’t even mow the lawn,” he complained to Irene.

  But Justin was smart enough to know that if he did a job badly enough he would get out of ever having to do it again. So while Adrian proudly cut the grass in perfect stripes, Justin sat in the house and ate scones with Irene. While Adrian suffered in miserable digs in England, Justin stayed home, his meals cooked and his laundry done by his mother. When this became too cloying and restrictive even for him, he applied for a job in the Sirocco Plant in Belfast where he practiced the engineering Adrian was still studying. There he heard about how their air conditioning and drying machinery were shipped to many destinations across the world, including the tea plantations in India.

  He rented a red-brick, terraced house on the Holywood Road in Belfast, convenient to where he worked. He had been reared a Methodist, attending church every week. Like the majority of the population, however, he couldn’t identify with the bigotry that was rampant in the country. The sectarian violence was perpetuated by a surprisingly small percentage and festered only in certain neighborhoods. Unlike Adrian, he didn’t want to escape the troubles by simply crossing the water to the mainland. He felt a certain stigma against his countrymen any time he visited England. So when the opportunity arose at work to conduct inspections and supervise new installations in India, he jumped at it. He had been seeing a young lady, Lorraine McIlroy, who worked at the Harland and Wolff Shipyard, but did not feel a strong sense of commitment to her.

  She was tiny, delicate and soft-spoken. He had never seen her without her high heels, nail polish and lipstick, not even when they got together at weekends and visited the zoo or one of the stately homes near Belfast. She had shoulder-length auburn hair and never looked anything short of immaculate. They had great times together. She made him laugh and had unlimited energy. He thought of her as his little bird, colorful like a robin or a canary, with skinny legs, tiny feet and large, hazel eyes. She pecked at her food like a bird and spoke in high-pitched, reedy tones.

  “But what about us?” she said to him, with wide eyes when he broke the news that he was going to India.

  “Ach, I’ll be back before you know it,” he said. “It’s only for a few months. I’ll write to you every day.”

  He knew he couldn’t expect her to wait for him, but this was something he felt had to do. It was his opportunity to see the world, advance his career and escape the province.

  His mother was equally upset.

  “Why India?” she cried. “Go to France or Spain like everyone else!”

  “Ma, it’s business,” he said. “Not a vacation.”

  She was petrified at the thought of his travelling somewhere so alien and far away. And dirty! She hated anywhere or anything strange and foreign. Heaven knows what diseases he might catch. She couldn’t sleep from worry. But he was adamant. He took all the vaccinations they said he needed and had to apply for a passport. He had never been overseas.

  “Ma, I’ll need my birth certificate,” he said, over the phone. “I’ll pick it up this weekend.” There was silence on the line.

  “You there?” he said. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes, dear.” She spoke faintly. “Cheerio.”

  She was taking it badly. But surely she wouldn’t stand in his way? He took Lorraine home for the weekend with him, separate rooms, of course. Edward tried to tell Justin to come without her, saying there was something important they needed to discuss. But Justin wanted to compensate for leaving Lorraine for so long. He didn’t want to upset her further by not spending the weekend with her. They arrived in Newcastle in time for lunch on Saturday, a feast of chicken soup, pork chops with homemade apple sauce and mashed potatoes.

  Both Edward and Irene were subdued over lunch.

  “Everything okay?” Justin asked. Surely they were taking things too far. Adrian had left home right after his A Levels at eighteen and never come back apart from the occasional visit.

  “Your Da would like to talk to you after lunch,” said Irene. “You can sit in the dining room.”

  They were eating lunch in the kitchen. The dining room was reserved for Christmas dinner and sometimes not even that. It was too perfect to be eaten in. The cherry table gleamed, and the matching sideboard was laden with Irene’s collection of silver which she polished every fortnight.

  Lorraine and Irene went into the lounge to watch “Crossroads” on television.

  “What is it, Da?” asked Justin, genuinely worried now.

  “It’s about your birth certificate,” said Edward, uneasily.

  “What about it? Is it lost? It’s no big deal if it is, you know?”

  “No, it’s not lost. I have it here. There’s something we haven’t told you son.”

  “What? Am I adopted or something? Everyone says I look exactly like you.”

  “No, you’re not adopted…exactly. It’s that your Ma, well, she’s not really your mother. Now, she’s terrified of what you might do.”

  “What! You’re joking! How can she not be my mother?” Justin was shocked. “I mean, usually it’s the other way round.”

  “Your real mother walked out on you and Adrian when you were three years old. He was old enough to remember her.”

  “But he never said anything to me!” Justin said.

  “He said he started to a few times. But you didn’t seem to understand. And you were always so fond of Irene.”

  So Irene had showered him with love even though she wasn’t really his mother! And now she was afraid what effect the news might have on him.

  “Well, she’s still my mother. It doesn’t change anything as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

  “Is that so?” said his father, greatly relieved. “We just didn’t know how you might react.”

  Not normally demonstrative, the two men embraced, and Justin went to the lounge and put his arms around Irene.

  “Really, Ma, did you think I’d just go off you or something?”

  “I didn’t know what to think. We thought you’d be angry. Now I don’t know whether to laugh or cry! Bygorra!” She wept tears of relief.

  “Well, I’m a bit angry, so I am. You should a told me sooner.”

  Lorraine was puzzled, not knowing what was going on. Justin filled her in briefly and Edward said, “Well, I think I need a stiff drink after all that. What d’you say, Ma?”

  “For sure!” she agreed. “You have something, too, Lorraine.”

  Justin saw in the birth certificate later that his real mother’s name was Doreen McVeigh. He had no curiosity about her and no desire to l
ook for someone who had deserted him when he was only a baby.

  Chapter 11

  Northern Ireland 1971-1972

  Justin flew by B.O.A.C. from Heathrow to Bombay and then on a dilapidated India Airways Dakota to Bangalore in southern India. He visited a number of tea plantations in the Nilgiri Hills before flying to Calcutta and taking a train to the cotton mills outside the city to inspect their Sirocco equipment. Then he flew to Jorhat to make the necessary repairs and recommendations regarding the machinery in the plantations of Assam.

  There he encountered a fellow countryman, Tom Davidson, manager of Yong Tung Tea Estate. As there were no hotels, planters were required to provide board and lodging for visiting agents and engineers for a small fee remitted by the tea companies. Tom and Martha, his wife, were from Hillsborough and hadn’t been back in six years. Both were hungry for news of home. She instructed her cook to prepare shepherd’s pie and chips for their visitor.

  “Alas, I have no Smithwicks or Guinness to offer you,” Tom said, mournfully. “We’ll have to make do with the local brew.”

  “So, Justin,” he said later, puffing on his after-dinner cigarette in the fresh air of the verandah. “How do you like India? Bit of a change from Belfast, eh?”

  “It certainly is,” Justin agreed. “But I feel like a change is just what I need. Fact is I almost wish I didn’t have to go back. The lifestyle here suits a fellow like me.”

  “Interesting you should say that,” Tom said. “If you really mean it, I know there’s a position in a nearby garden waiting to be filled. It’s for assistant manager. With your experience, it shouldn’t be too long before you get your billet.”

  Justin was silent, deep in thought. Things were moving almost too quickly. But the thought of staying here, away from the trouble-stricken city and escaping the dismal Belfast winters, was appealing.

  “I have to admit I’m interested,” he said. “really interested. But how do I go about applying?”