A Sahib's Daughter

  She was sorry when it was time to take the train back to Belfast. Pauline made sure Justin was meeting her off the train.

  “And don’t be late,” she warned him on the telephone, unable to shake off her disapproval of him.

  “You are more than welcome to come back any time,” Sean said, giving her a hug. “We’re here for you any time you need us.”

  “I can’t thank you enough for everything,” said Samira, tearfully.

  “Remember to follow your heart,” said Pauline. “And don’t be pressured into doing anything you don’t want to do.”

  They waved her off and returned to their Bentley parked outside.

  “Something doesn’t add up,” Pauline said. “I don’t know what it is, but I can only hope things work out for her. I wouldn’t like to be in her shoes at this time.”

  Deep in thought, Samira sat in a deserted compartment as the train headed for Belfast. Her year of travelling around the United Kingdom and Europe had turned out very different from what she’d anticipated. She looked at her face reflected in the glass. It was pale and contorted. She felt ugly and ungainly in her maternity smock. Her coat didn’t quite close. It belonged to Irene, who said it wasn’t worth buying a new coat for her pregnancy.

  But she needed to focus. Justin wanted answers from her. She needed to think. He wanted her to live in Newcastle and become like his mother, the wife of a baker. He wanted her to leave home, to leave her familiar, happy life and to live in their house on Tullybrannigan Road. He wanted her to leave Ranikot and move to Tullybrannigan Road. He wanted to leave her and live in Ranikot. Her head was spinning, it was all so confusing. No, that wasn’t it. He wanted her to live in Simling while he lived with the baby in the house on Tullybrannigan Road. She felt a sharp pain in her belly. Oh, my god, what had she eaten? The pain was unbearable. She bent over and clasped her stomach till the pain subsided.

  Where was she? Justin wanted an answer from her. Or had it ever really been a question?

  She was okay. She was on a train. She was on a train to Ravi. No, not Ravi. He didn’t love her anymore because his father told him not to. Justin didn’t love her. No, she didn’t love Justin. That was it. Ravi didn’t love her, and she didn’t love Justin. The pain overcame her again. It was the baby! But she didn’t want a baby anymore. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t want to live on Tullybrannigan Road with her baby. And Justin didn’t want her. He wanted to be like Edward and for her to be like Irene. She didn’t fit in with his plans. Suddenly, the pain receded and she wondered if she’d been imagining it.

  Think, think, he wanted her to think, but it was too confusing. What was it Prava had always said? She struggled to remember. Not to think too hard about things. That it would all work out. She missed her grandmother. How could she think of leaving her? Where was her mother? It was too hard, and the pain was too sharp. What were all these people saying? She was vaguely aware of people around her as she doubled over in pain.

  The conductor saw that her ticket was for Belfast and told her they would be there in a few minutes. He helped her off the train, assisted by one of the passengers.

  “My fiancé is coming to pick me up,” said Samira. “He’ll take care of me.”

  There was no one on the platform, so he spoke to a guard at the station.

  “I have to get back on the train. If no one shows up, send for an ambulance.”

  “I’m fine. I am really. My baby isn’t due for another three weeks,” Samira said to him, embarrassed by all the attention. The pain had ebbed. She was between contractions.

  “Aye, well, let me tell you that this won’t be the first time your baby won’t be cooperating with your plans,” the guard said.

  Finally, Justin appeared, disheveled and looking at his watch.

  “Sorry, darling. I think the train was a little early.”

  “Well, your baby’s early and all,” said the guard, dryly. “You’d best be taking your missus to the hospital and quick smart. The baby’s coming any minute.”

  “Sammy, are you okay? Sweet Jesus! You’re in labor!” He was panic-stricken seeing Samira bent over in agony. “Let me get you in the car and take you to the nearest hospital.”

  Chapter 25

  Northern Ireland, 1979

  Justin fought his way through Belfast’s afternoon traffic to get to the Royal Victoria Hospital, where he had gone years ago with Lorraine and where he had been diagnosed as infertile.

  “Rather ironical that my baby should end up being born here,” he thought to himself.

  They rushed to the maternity ward, where the receptionist asked for Samira’s name and started to look through their files.

  “We’re not registered here,” Justin explained. “My wife started to have contractions on the train from Dublin. We don’t have time to get to our hospital in Downpatrick.”

  “Please wait a moment and we’ll have her admitted.”

  After a long wait, Samira was led into a cubicle and examined by a doctor. The contractions seemed to have subsided. He told her to get dressed and explained that her cervix was not sufficiently dilated for her to be admitted, especially as they didn’t have her records in this hospital.

  “What do you suggest we do?” asked Justin. “I can’t drive her all the way to Downpatrick in her condition.”

  “I would suggest you go home and let her rest,” said the doctor.

  “But we live in Newcastle. That’s just as far away!”

  “I’m really sorry, but we don’t have a bed for her. With all the cutbacks, we can barely accommodate our own patients. I imagine you won’t want to wait downstairs. Go to a friend’s house or to a hotel and come back when her contractions are fifteen minutes apart.”

  “When will that be?” Justin asked.

  “Hard to say, but my best guess is in three to five hours.”

  Justin racked his brain in panic for the best thing to do. It just didn’t make sense to check into a hotel. He had lost track of any friends or acquaintances he may have had in Belfast. The only people he could think of were Toby and Bernadette who lived not too far away. Surely, they wouldn’t mind letting Samira rest in their house for a few hours? There was an irony to the scenario that didn’t escape Justin, but he knew that Irene had told them about the baby.

  “Where are we going?” gasped Samira, in the throes of a contraction now that they had left the hospital.

  “I’m taking you to a friend’s house. They’ll take good care of you. They are my ex-in-laws.”

  She groaned, clutching her stomach, and he didn’t know whether it was because of the pain or because of where they were going. He found the house easily enough, thinking sardonically that it was only in moments of high drama that he seemed to come here. The first time was to ask for their daughter’s hand in marriage, the last time was when he knocked on their door to break the news of her sudden death. Now, it was on the occasion of a birth, the birth of his child with another woman.

  “Wait here, darling. I’ll make sure they’re here,” he said, parking the car in the street outside the house.

  Thankfully, they were home watching television. He explained the situation briefly, wondering if it was a huge mistake to have come here. But Bernadette was filled with compassion and insisted that he bring Samira in and, of course, they could stay as long as they needed. Samira was exhausted, worn out from the bouts of pain, the train journey, getting in and out of the car and the ordeal of the hospital.

  “The poor girl needs to rest,” Bernadette said. “Come this way, pet, and lie you down. Help her with her shoes, Justin. Now, you be sure and tell me if you need a cup of tea or anything.”

  Samira collapsed on the bed, and Justin went to ask Toby if he could use the telephone to call his parents.

  He told Edward what had happened. “So, I brought her to the McIlroys. Samira’s exhausted. I should never have let her travel alone, but I didn’t think the baby would come so early.”

  “Keep us informed, son. We’ll
be there as soon as the baby’s born. Ma sends her love.”

  Justin monitored the contractions, which thankfully, were now coming with some regularity.

  “First babies are usually late,” said Bernadette. “And they can take their time. She’s far better off here than in that miserable hospital. I’ve made you some tea and sandwiches. Now, make sure Samira eats something. She’s going to need her strength.”

  They went to bed shortly after ten. Justin said they would leave quietly and lock the door behind them when it was time for them to leave. He couldn’t thank them enough.

  “We’ll come and visit Samira in hospital,” Bernadette promised. “Be sure and tell her.”

  He must have dozed off in the bed beside Samira and was woken by her shaking him.

  “I think it’s time,” she said. “I can’t bear the pain any longer.”

  Once again, they got into the car and sped through the now deserted streets to the Royal Victoria Hospital. This time, the porters took one look at Samira and rushed her to the maternity ward in a wheelchair. She was whisked away by the nurses, and Justin waited wearily in the corridor thinking this night would never end. Samira had already said she didn’t want him at the birth. The idea was too new and radical to her way of thinking. She preferred the anonymity of the nurses to the thought of his witnessing her pain.

  Finally, just after six in the morning, he heard a long, heart-rending scream, and his stomach churned in fear. After what seemed like an endless interval, one of the nurses came out of the room and seemed surprised to see Justin.

  “Are you the father?” she asked him. “Please come in.”

  Through a fog, he entered the delivery room and saw Samira pale and exhausted in her hospital gown. He kissed her forehead.

  “Darling, are you okay? I was so worried.”

  “I’m fine. Just glad it’s over. It’s a girl, Justin. We have a daughter.”

  The midwife brought the baby, swaddled in a blue blanket and gave it to Samira with a slightly perplexed look.

  “Here’s your wee girl. She weighs seven pounds and four ounces,” she said.

  She walked out of the room leaving Justin and Samira with the sleeping baby. Samira held her in her arms, and saw her for the first time, a tiny, wrinkled baby with black hair and olive skin. She fretted and stirred and opened her eyes to look up at them. They were an unmistakable shade of green.

  Through her pain and exhaustion, Samira knew in an instant that this wasn’t Justin’s child. There was only one person in the world she knew with eyes that color. A night under the stars flooded into her memory, her first and only time with Ravi. She looked questioningly up at Justin and saw the bewilderment in his eyes, looking at the Indian child in her arms.

  “Sammy, we are both exhausted,” he said, dully. “This is not the time to talk. We both need to rest. I’ll be back later.”

  He walked out of the room without kissing her, his mind racing with thoughts that were almost too painful to contemplate. Could the baby he his? It was quite conceivable that it was. Maybe it was too soon to tell. The baby was only just born, after all. Another thought came to him, something he had pushed to the back of his mind in his eagerness to believe he could father a child, the indisputable diagnosis the doctors had made years ago. He found his car and made the drive back to Newcastle. Traffic was light going out of town, though the inbound lanes were already clogged with early commuters. This was meant to have been one of the happiest days of his life, he thought, tiredly. Instead, his mind was racing with doubts and possible explanations.

  As soon as he arrived home, he went upstairs to the frozen bedroom and flopped into bed, forgetting that he had neglected to inform his parents about the baby.

  The insistent ring of the telephone woke him just before eleven o’clock. All the events of earlier in the day came flooding back as he ran to answer the phone in the downstairs hallway. He knew it would be his mother.

  “We waited all night for you to call. The hospital wouldn’t tell us anything. We thought you’d be sleeping, but I couldn’t wait any longer.” Irene was reproachful.

  What was he supposed to say?

  “Samira had a daughter, but I don’t think it’s mine. We have a baby girl, but she doesn’t look like I expected her to look.”

  “She had a girl,” he said, finally. “She was born just after six o’clock in the morning. I’m sorry I didn’t call you. I was exhausted.”

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. He didn’t sound at all excited or overjoyed, as one would expect a new father to be. “Are you okay?”

  “Just tired,” he said. “It was a long day.”

  “Ach, of course it was. What time are you going to the hospital?” she asked. “Shall we go together?”

  “I’ll leave as soon as I’m showered and dressed. Why don’t we go separately? I might want to spend a little longer with Samira.”

  He needed time to reflect and didn’t want the enforced intimacy of the long drive to Belfast with his parents. He showered and shaved and, suddenly ravenous, made himself a sandwich. He remembered to call Charles and Ramona. It was a terrible line, but he was able to convey the fact that they had a granddaughter before the line went dead.

  He drove back to Belfast. In the maternity ward, the receptionist told him that Samira was no longer in a private room, something they had reserved at the hospital in Downpatrick. She was sitting up, pale and strangely different without her bump. The baby was in a transparent, plastic crib beside her. There were three other cubicles in the room. The smell of babies mingled with the hospital odor and the scent of the flowers beside each bed.

  He kissed her and presented the bouquet of roses he’d bought in the booth downstairs.

  “Did you sleep?” he asked, noting dark circles under her eyes.

  She hadn’t been able to sleep, despite her exhaustion, till the nurse insisted on her taking a sleeping pill.

  “You need all the rest you can get while you’re in here,” she said. “When you go home, the baby will keep you up night and day, and there’ll be no sleeping pills for you then.”

  “I did for a few hours,” Samira said, “till they woke me up to have lunch. After that, I fed and changed the baby. She only just fell asleep.”

  “I’m sorry you’re not in a private room.” He didn’t look at the baby asleep beside her.

  “I’ll be fine. I went to boarding school, remember?”

  “My folks will be here soon. I telephoned your parents, and they send their love. It wasn’t a clear line, unfortunately.”

  There was an awkward silence. Samira knew they would have to talk. After her drug- induced sleep, she had woken with a blurred recollection of seeing her baby for the first time and wondered if it had all been a dream, till she saw the nurse’s anxious face bending over her and the crib beside her bed.

  “May I have my baby, please,” she’d begged the nurse, too weak to lean over and lift her out herself. “And please draw the curtains round my bed.”

  She wanted to examine her daughter in private. The baby stirred and whimpered as she was passed to her, waving plump arms in the air. Her heart melted as she gazed at the perfection of her tiny face and body. She unraveled the blanket and kissed the little feet. Everything about her spelled Ravi. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that this was not Justin’s child, conceived the week before she took the trip to Darjeeling with Justin and two weeks before he proposed so suddenly.

  What was she going to do? She couldn’t stay here, that was certain. She would have to go home as soon as she and the baby were fit to travel. What was she going to tell Justin? How would he ever understand? Would he believe that she had not been unfaithful to him? Obviously, their relationship was over. He would not want her now. At least this solved the problem of whether or not she would stay on in Newcastle. How would she ever face Irene and Edward? What would they all think of her?

  Now, she faced Justin and realized that she needed to explain things to
him before his parents arrived and saw the baby.

  “We need to talk before your parents arrive,” she said to him, finally. “Please tell the nurse to ask them to wait till we’re ready.”

  He did as she asked, and they sat with the curtains around them, the baby asleep in the crib.

  “I think it’s fairly evident that this is not your child,” she said. “And it’s only fair to both of us that I explain exactly what happened.”

  He listened to her story, white-faced and deeply distressed to have his suspicions confirmed. It was an unfortunate sequence of events and hard to take in. She had been impetuous, but then so had he. They had both rushed into making life-changing decisions that they should have taken more time to consider, he with his usual impulsiveness, she on the rebound from Ravi. And while neither of them was willing to admit it at this point, their feelings for each other had dissipated. If the child had been Justin’s, she would have been compelled to leave home and live with him in Ireland. There was no doubt in her mind that he wanted to stay. But if they had been deeply in love, would he have turned a blind eye to the fact that this was not his daughter? Would he have been willing to rear another man’s child?

  “This is my problem,” concluded Samira. “And I’m the one who’s going to have to deal with the consequences. Your life here will continue as if you’d never known me. The baby and I will disappear as soon as we possibly can, and you will run the shop, just as you hoped. All you have to worry about now is how to tell your parents.”

  They would be devastated, Justin realized, probably even more than he was, their longing for a grandchild thwarted at the very last minute. It was just too cruel. This would bring all their hopes of ever having a grandchild to an end, the hope that had died and then been rekindled when Samira became pregnant with what they thought was his child. How could he explain all this to them in the hospital? There would be a scene, no doubt. Irene would never forgive Samira and would not immediately see reason.

  “I think I’d better go and explain everything to them elsewhere,” Justin said. “I can’t vouch for how Irene might react if I were to tell her here.”