Of Marriageable Age

by Sharon Maas

  But he wouldn't. His mother, who had herself made one or two matches in her mind, laughed it off when David showed no interest. He was young, only seventeen! Let him take his time and make a good choice.

  In fact, David was longing to tell his mother that he had made a choice, and that it was irrevocable. But Savitri in her greater calm and wisdom held him back.

  'But, dear, the summer's halfway through! We've got to make it final so this betrothal of yours can be dissolved!'

  'There's time, David, there's still time. Please don't tell her yet.'

  'But why not? We need her support against Iyer and the sooner she's in our confidence the better.'

  But Savitri felt the first fraying of dreams as realities she couldn't bear to think of rolled relentlessly forward and all she could do was put off the day when all would unravel as she knew it must. For only she knew how ruthless tradition could be. It took no heed of feelings, of likes and dislikes, desires and needs, no heed even of love itself, not even of so great a love as hers for David, and there was no avoiding it, no excuse for dreaming once you knew what had to be, for dreams must crumble once reality entered. She knew it. David did not.

  'David, I'm scared!' She drew closer to him and he held her in his arms, tightly, to show her she was safe with him.

  'You've never been afraid, Sav; not of snakes or scorpions or deep water or high trees or anything. Don't be afraid now.'

  But Savitri shivered, and though it was hot still and the sun glared between the flames-of-the-forest she drew her sari down over her elbows and crossed her arms tightly and prayed for strength. Even David's arms around her could not renew her hope.

  The bubble of happiness grew closer around them as the season wore on, hot and sultry and sometimes angry, with the monsoon clouds hanging dark, heavy and low above the trees but never bursting, never bringing relief and release, the coolness and wetness of rain. The grass grew yellow and parched and the flowers thirsted and the tightness drew them in, closer to one another. If David felt the closeness he fought it with his dreams, building them higher; but Savitri knew.

  Two weeks before his ship was to leave for England David could stand it no longer. Without Savitri's permission, he told his mother.

  It spoke for David's innocence that he really, truly believed that his mother loved Savitri as a daughter, that she would rejoice to welcome her into the family, she who had always been a part of the family anyway, from the day of her birth, she who had won his mother's love and admiration through her own virtues and talents. For him, it was obvious, and because it was obvious to him he believed it was obvious to all.

  For Mrs Lindsay it was an abomination. No less. She had other plans for David.

  It was evening and the crows were fussing terribly overhead, cawing and slapping their wings on their way to roost. A middle-aged couple strolling down Atkinson Avenue heard Mrs Lindsay's voice as they passed by and stopped to listen, for here surely was an original titbit of gossip in the making, to pass on behind an upheld hand at the next cocktail party, and Mrs Lindsay with her Theosophist leanings was anyway too big for her boots . . .

  'Over my dead body! Over my dead body!' The words, screamed out into the gathering dusk, were clear, and the man and the woman looked at each other and raised their eyebrows and smiled.

  'That girl! That sly, cunning girl! After all I've done for her!' The man plucked nervously at the flab on his wife's arms, bidding her to move on, but the wife stood transfixed, peering between the hibiscus shrubs beyond the iron fence as if she could hear better with her eyes, but the garden was gloomy and anyway, the house, hidden as it was behind the giant bougainvilleas, could not be seen. But no other shouts came out to please her ears and anyway, the breeze was blowing in the wrong direction. The woman allowed herself to be gently pushed forward by her husband, past the wrought-iron gate behind which the turbaned Sikh in his khaki uniform sat on the wooden chair from which a lath was missing on the back rest; a vague chill passed through her body as she glanced at him. And no wonder, the way he leaned backwards tilted on two chair-legs, holding a half-smoked bidi in a parrot's claw of thumb and finger. His eyes were closed; it seemed he was asleep, but he wasn't. The woman could see the glinting slit which told her he was awake, his sly eyes watching them as they strolled past, unmoving, unfathomable, not sinking in respect as they met hers.

  The woman shuddered involuntarily. These Indians. You couldn't trust them any more. Trouble was brewing. She longed for Devon. But whatever was going on in the Lindsay household?

  'Probably that girl, Fiona,' she said to her husband. 'Remember how she eloped with the cook's son? She's turned into quite a wild thing in London, so I heard, and they had to bring her back… she still hasn't caught a husband. There's that rumour, you know, that she's still carrying on with that servant fellow. She was seen… well, I suppose we'll know sooner or later. Those Lindsays were always a queer sort.'

  They strolled on arm in arm, smug in the knowledge that their world, at least, was quite the way it ought to be, with both sons married to heiresses.

  He had to find her.

  He waited till long past midnight, listening to the night sounds, the chirping of crickets and the song of the frogs and the plaintive cry of the brain-fever bird. He waited till the moon was hidden behind a long dark monsoon cloud and then he slipped out and sprinted through the garden towards the back drive. He ran barefoot with his shoes in his hand for silence and stealth, the way Savitri did, light and fleet. It was dark, pitch-dark. The servants' houses loomed before him, one of them Savitri's; but he did not know which, for he never came this far and in the blackness they all looked alike. But hadn't Savitri once said that theirs was the last house; that they lived slightly apart, because they were Brahmins, and that theirs was the house with banana trees in the backyard, and no papayas, for her father did not eat them?

  Then it must be this house. David tried the garden gate and it creaked slightly. Somewhere a dog barked, and then another, but it was not here in this yard. Iyer did not keep dogs.

  David tiptoed up the path towards the house but here was a new problem: all the family slept outside, on the verandah, their bodies covered with sheets from head to toe, and there was no knowing which body was hers.

  Despair clawed at his heart. It could not be! It could not end this way! Not such a love! A thing so perfect must survive, it must! Oh, dear God, let there be a way, oh let there be a way! Savitri! Savitri! Come, wake up, hurry! We have no time! He gave the cry of a brain-fever bird but he had never mastered the art as Savitri had. It was all hopeless.

  One of the sleeping bodies stirred, gently first, then rolled over and sleepily sat up. David crouched behind a bush and watched. There was still no moon and all he saw were shadows, but the dark form against the white of the wall was that of a female. Four women lived here: Savitri, her mother, and two sisters-in-law.

  The woman stood up and wrapped her cloth around her. She stepped down from the raised balcony and walked out some way into the garden. In the moment that she began to hunch up her clothes and squat down, David saw it was Savitri and whispered her name, for he did not want her to know he had been there, watching her attend to nature.

  She heard the whisper and stood to attention, letting her clothes drop, and he left his bush and came out to meet her.

  'David!' Her voice was too loud, too surprised, and he laid a finger on her lips and drew her away.

  'Something woke me up, David! I felt it in my sleep and it woke me up. Once I was awake I thought it was only nature calling but no, I know now: I heard my name in my sleep!'

  'Sssh!' was all he said, and led her out of the garden gate, far from the house, and then the words gushed out quickly, urgently:

  'Savitri, we have to leave! Tonight! We must run away together for I won't give you up. But tomorrow my mother is taking me to Bombay to stay with Aunt Sophie before my ship leaves. And you are to marry this man! She is releasing some money for an early marriage — so we
must leave now!'

  'Now! But ... David, I have nothing! The streets are deserted! Where shall we go to? What shall we do?'

  'I have packed a few things and some money and some papers. You need nothing, just come. I have a plan.'

  Savitri looked up at him. In the darkness of night his paleness seemed ghostly, and in his white shirt and white tennis slacks he appeared to her ephemeral, like some spirit from another world. His eyes seemed almost liquid with urgency, and his desperation was contagious. Savitri's senses were wide open and caught his insistence in all its pleading and all its wilfulness, and the tender framework of duty fell away, and she was all his.

  'I'll come!' she whispered. 'But I'll have to get some clothes…'

  She turned as if to return to the house, but David took hold of her arm.

  'Don't go. It's too dangerous! What if you wake someone up?'

  'Shall I go… like this?' Savitri swept her hand downwards to show David what she was wearing, which was an old sari, crumpled from sleep, and above that the thin blanket she used at night to cover herself, which now lay doubled around her shoulders like a shawl.

  'It doesn't matter. No one will look at you.' David removed the blanket which was, in fact, no thicker than a heavy sheet, wrapped it around her slight torso and arranged it so that it covered most of her body, including her head, so that only her face showed, so sincere and trusting with the wide eyes turned silently to him that he would have taken her in his arms and held her to him, if there had been time. He took her hand and led her around the back of the servants' houses to that part of the back drive that was never used, the last few yards that led to the back gate. That was kept closed, and latched, and a heavy padlock hung from the latch, but David had made his preparations and took the key from his pocket.

  He fumbled for a few precious seconds until he found the key-hole, and turned the key. The padlock snapped open. David removed it and slipped it into his pocket. He tried to open the latch but it was rusty from lack of usage and stuck fast. David swore and bent over it to work it free. Savitri watched him. She looked over her shoulder once, imagining Mani appearing out of the darkness with a crowd of his cronies, waving sticks and yelling at her, and the terror was so great she closed her eyes and prayed, and calmness filled her. Only with strong pressure steadily applied did the latch finally give way, and sprang back with such suddenness that David almost lost his balance.

  In triumph he looked at her and beckoned her to follow. The gate creaked as he opened it and Savitri's heart missed a beat, for in the great silence that hung over Old Market Street at this time of night that creaking seemed as loud as a round of gunshot. But no-one seemed to have heard. A dog barked and another replied, but from a far distance, while the dogs of Old Market Street slept on as if in complicity with Savitri, and happy to be on the side of her who had always been on theirs.

  The street was deserted. They walked down its middle so as to avoid the cows sleeping on the roadside, the abandoned bullock carts, the occasional dray, its horse tied up to it and sleeping with drooping head.

  Once or twice a dog woke up and barked at them, but never for long because Savitri's mind bid them be quiet, and they obeyed, circling and settling again into their snug holes in the roadside dust.

  Savitri and David walked towards the bazaar. Savitri whispered, 'Where are we going, David?'

  He turned to her, looking down at the small shrouded figure hurrying along beside him, and smiled to her through the darkness, pressing her fingers reassuringly.

  'Let's not talk now,' he whispered back. 'I'm looking for a rickshaw, there ought to be one or two near the bazaar.'

  There was a cycle-rickshaw, but it was abandoned, its driver nowhere to be found. But with the very next one they were lucky, for the rickshaw-wallah slept inside it, covered from head to toe with a ragged blanket. David took hold of what appeared to be a shoulder and shook it. The man stirred but did not wake, so David shook again and called out, 'Wake up, wake up!' The rickshaw-wallah was awake then, sitting up and folding his blanket with the placid obedience of one whose work is never done, who has no right to rest.

  David and Savitri entered the rickshaw and settled into its seat, which was badly ripped with cotton stuffing hanging out of one long diagonal gash. David rattled off some directions and the rickshaw-wallah pushed the carriage onto the road and ran a short way with it before expertly catching hold of a bicycle pedal with a naked foot and leaping onto the bicycle and pedalling off. Their progress was swift for the street was empty and rickshaw-wallah was in a hurry to deliver his fare and perhaps catch a last hour of rest before the next day's toil began. David and Savitri bounced behind him on the seat, giggling in release as the potholes threw them together.

  I am his, now! thought Savitri, I can never go back! In his eyes she saw that all worry had vanished and given way to a rush of excitement: David's head was thrown back and he was looking at her and laughing. In her eyes David still saw the absolute trust with which she had cut all ties of duty and tradition in one strong moment of decisiveness. In a split second Savitri had leaped from a fixed course and into nothingness, with nothing but her complete trust in him to lean on. This realisation came suddenly to him, stifling his laughter. Something new, bigger, more solid began to grow within him, and that was responsibility. He had taken Savitri out of all the security she knew, and thus he was accountable for whatever happened to her. His eyes misted over and he laid his arm around her, drawing her near. He leaned over to her and said into her ear, 'Thank you for coming, Savitri, thank you for trusting me. It's all going to be all right.'

  'Will you tell me now where we're going?' She smiled up at him, snuggling against him. Having once thrown away conventions she didn't care; she felt light, and free, as if the whole world was open to her, and the whole world was good, and would embrace her.

  'It's to be a surprise,' David said, and grinned as she wrinkled her nose in puzzlement. 'Try and guess!'

  'I've no idea! How'm I supposed to know?'

  'Well, anyway. It's too late now, we're there!'

  He called out and the rickshaw-wallah pulled the brakes and the rickshaw jolted to a halt. David swung himself down to the ground. Savitri descended behind him. He paid the wallah, who nodded, turned his vehicle around, and creaked off into the night.

  David stood now at the door of a tall, narrow, pink-painted house, banging a huge iron knocker against it loud enough to awaken the whole street. Slowly, A light went on in an upper storey and a figure appeared in the window, but Savitri could not see the face because it was in shadow, the light behind it.

  But then whoever it was called out, 'What in heaven's name is going on out there? Have you gone mad, whoever you are?'

  'Oh, my goodness!' she cried. 'It's Mr Baldwin!'

  27

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Nat

  London, 1964-1969

  Nat was scheduled to return to India the summer following his first arrival in England. He didn’t go. The distance to his father was too wide to breach, wider that the physical space between them.

  His father lived in another world; going home would be going backwards instead of forwards. Besides: his father would want to know how his studies were going and… well, there was nothing good to say. He could always go next year; or at Christmas, when the climate would be more pleasant and the holiday shorter. He couldn't imagine the village, nor what he would do there, nor what he would say to the villagers. He had nothing in common with them, everything in common with his London friends.

  Besides: there was that invitation to join Alice and some friends for a holiday on the Costa Brava. In fact, he had already agreed to go. His hotel was booked, and all that was left was to write his father (if he left it much longer he'd have to cable) to say he wasn't coming. Which he did.

  He didn't go home at Christmas, either, nor the following summer. Another year passed, and still Nat did not return. In the meanwhile his lifestyle went through several chan
ges. Women still turned their heads when he passed, but not as much as before. His beauty had lost its bloom; or rather, it had gone through a metamorphosis. He was no longer Krishna with his gopis; now he aimed for the Wiseman-of-the East look. Nat had grown a beard, and his hair was now way past his shoulders. By wearing a turban all the time he emanated a certain exotic-oriental mystique, and to enhance this image he started to smoke; not ordinary cigarettes, no, it had to be the tiny Indian bidis he found in an Indian shop. But these were externals. The glow, the charisma, was gone.

  His mind refused to obey him, would not concentrate, his memory failed him. Nat thought it would be best just to break off his studies and do something else; get a job, be independent. He wasn't cut out to be a doctor, and anyway, he'd never go back to the village to join his father, so what was the point? The whole venture had been a waste of time. And money. Well, not quite; coming to England had been right; he'd needed these experiences, for they had shown him his true self, and now he could consider himself a man of the world, a cosmopolitan.

  But the goal and the idealism which had inspired the move was long dead. It had anyway not been his own idea, but his father's. Doctor had chosen his goals for him. Doctor had decided what he should be, and where, and the more Nat thought of his father's manipulation of his life the angrier he became, and resentment gnawed at him for the wasted years which had come to nothing.

  At the end of his third year he left university and found a job as a waiter in a small Indian restaurant. He made an excellent waiter, not merely polite and attentive but naturally friendly, with a charm that easily held the balance between amiability and respect, and the Indian customers loved to engage him in conversation, as Indians away from home tend to do, posing the usual questions as to where he came from, his name, his father's name, his father's profession, and so on. Since no-one had ever heard of the village Nat always said he came from 'near Madras', which sounded somehow more sophisticated.