Of Marriageable Age

by Sharon Maas

  'No!'

  All eyes turned to Savitri. The word was spoken sharply, authoritatively, and it was as if not Savitri herself spoke, but another being, strong and knowing.

  'It's not David's decision, it's mine. Don’t blame him. He didn’t force me. He asked me to come and I said yes, and I'm here, and I'll stay, if you'll have me, and if you'll hide me, for a while at least, until I can find some sort of work. There's no going back. Even if they come and take my body forcefully back to my home, marry me forcefully to this man, I have chosen David and I belong to him in my soul. I will wait for him, if you will help. I've left my home, I've abandoned my duty. For an Indian there is nothing worse but I have done it and there's no going back. Before tonight it was different. I was prepared to renounce David and marry the man my parents have chosen, like a dutiful daughter, and you are right, I would have had a good marriage because I would have given my heart into it, and I would have been a good and strong wife for my husband. But the moment I walked out of our gate with David, Mr Baldwin, that moment I became another. No longer Indian, and not yet English: there is no name for what I am, but I am myself, and I will wait for David. If you will help. And —'

  A burst of clapping interrupted her speech and Mrs Baldwin walked in, smiling at Savitri. June Baldwin was a big, physically strong woman, a head taller than her husband. She had changed out of the nightie she had been wearing and was dressed now in a long flowing house-dress with a faded floral pattern. She had wild curly hair, a sharp nose, a wide, generous mouth, and freckles, and crossed the room now in great strides. She joined the little group and moved over to stand behind Savitri, as if in support. She dominated the room.

  'Well spoken, well spoken!' she said, still clapping. She patted Savitri's shoulders then continued, 'I for one am fully on your side, Savitri! It's about time you women stood up against the ridiculous custom of arranged marriages! Show your mettle, girl, I'll be glad to help!'

  David's eyes lit up. 'You will? You'll help us?' He turned eagerly to his ex-tutor, seeking confirmation, but Mr Baldwin was looking at his wife, and she at him; a contest of wills was taking place, which Mrs Baldwin won hands down.

  'You'll stay,' she said to Savitri. 'We'll employ you. We need someone to help with the children; we've had a string of ayahs and they're all no good. I know you're good with children. I know a lot about you, Savitri, Henry has told me so much. He was so taken with you, you know, when he was your tutor. I said back then, he should have done more for you.' She glared accusingly at her husband, turned back to Savitri.

  'You'll have a room upstairs. It's not very big but you have the run of the house and the courtyard out in the back. You're welcome!'

  'June! Do you know what you're saying? The girl's a minor. If we're found out we could get charged with ... with kidnapping, or God knows what. Her family'll be furious…”

  'Oh, fiddledeedee. What do I care? We're English, aren't we? Who rules this country? We do. The law is on our side. They won't dare take us to court, and even if they do, what English judge would ever side against us? All we have to say is that the girl was being forced into a marriage she didn't want and came to us for refuge. And they needn't ever find out. We'll hide her.'

  'We shouldn't interfere.'

  'Oh yes we should. It's our duty to interfere! What do you expect the poor child to do? Run home with her tail between her legs and beg for forgiveness? They'll probably throw her out anyway… you know these Indians!'

  Savitri nodded in eager agreement. 'That's right, Mr Baldwin. What I have done is a terrible thing. I have brought great shame to my family. They will never accept me back, once they know I've run away. In their eyes I'm a fallen woman!'

  Mrs Baldwin smiled down at her and reached for her hand. It was now three against one, and Mrs Baldwin, standing behind the two young people like a mother hen with her wings spread over her chicks, glared at her husband, challenging him to disagree.

  He threw up his hands in capitulation.

  'Very well, then, Savitri. You can stay. But you, David!'

  His voice was like a whiplash and David, exulting in those first words, jumped to attention, the triumphant grin wiped off his face.

  'You're not welcome. You'd better get on home. Now. Immediately, before they miss you. I don't want your name mixed up in all this. Believe me, it's better if no-one knows you helped her escape. Go home and pretend you don't know a thing.'

  'But...'

  'I know what you want. You'd like to hide here yourself a few days, wouldn't you? Be with your lady love? Over my dead body. No, you go. Look, it's nearly four already, and you've got to find a way of sneaking back in without being seen. It's high time...'

  There was no arguing with Mr Baldwin. David knew that from his boyhood; he knew that it was only thanks to Mrs Baldwin that he'd gained any leeway at all, and there was nothing more to be gained by arguing. He stood up reluctantly, and Savitri too stood up. He took both her hands in his, and they faced each other, loath to pull apart.

  'You'll hear from me!' he said. 'My ship leaves in two weeks, and I'll get in touch, I'll send you a message.'

  'No!' Mr Baldwin stepped between them and pulled them apart. 'What utter nonsense! Do you want to help her, or put her in acute danger? You're to stay away from her, lad, not even a note, d'you hear? I've promised to help her but I'm not going to get myself mixed up in your intrigues! If you want to marry in a few years it's your business, but for now you must keep away! I've taken her on as my responsibility and for you, that means hands off! This is a risky enough business to begin with, and we English have made enough enemies here in India, and we don't need our boys putting their hands on their girls! So go! I'm throwing you out!'

  And David let himself be thrown out, with nothing but a last wave for Savitri over Mr Baldwin's shoulder.

  David had wisely not told Mr Baldwin that he was due to leave for Bombay that very day, and that his train was scheduled to leave at five a.m. and that he would very definitely be missed, and his absence very definitely connected with Savitri's escape. When he returned home, Fairwinds was in uproar.

  News spreads quickly in Madras. Savitri's escape was the talk of Old Market Street by ten that morning, the gossip spreading from the Fairwinds servants' quarters and passed along in both directions till, at around ten, it reached the bazaar. When Murugan the rickshaw-wallah found his way back to the bazaar for his midday meal he heard about the missing bride who had run away with a young sahib. There was a reward of one hundred rupees for news of the girl's whereabouts. Murugan did his duty and collected the money.

  Mani's thugs came before dawn, six of them but it sounded more like sixteen, masked and brandishing hammers and axes. Their cries woke the whole street, but when they started to batter down the Baldwins' door with their hammers and axes the neighbours withdrew their heads from their windows and closed their shutters. The thugs stormed up the stairs, breaking down all the doors. June stood akimbo in the doorway to the children's room, prepared to let herself be slaughtered before they could enter: three of them pushed her aside, inspected the room and its occupants, stormed out again. They weren't after the children.

  They found Savitri in the little room at the top of the stairs. They dragged her, yelling and struggling, from her bed by her hair, half-carried, half-dragged her down the stairs to the road and into the waiting rickshaw.

  At the very same time that Mani’s thugs broke in, David and his mother were boarding a first-class carriage on the Bombay Express. As planned, David sailed back to London two weeks later.

  One month later Savitri was married to the station-master of Tiruchirappalli, a middle-sized township several hours by bus from Madras. R. S. Ayyar had been found by Savitri's elder brother, who worked in the same town. Ayyar was a widower with five children, the youngest a girl of thirteen years. His first wife had died only a month previously and he was in a hurry to remarry, and not too particular about his future wife's background, for, after all, she was only a second
wife. And so he did not know that Savitri was a fallen woman, sullied by the hands of an Englishman, one without caste. Which was, after all, the reason why Ramsurat Shankar had cancelled his own wedding to her. And since she married before the age of eighteen, Savitri was not eligible for the generous dowry granted her by the goodness of Mrs Lindsay.

  But R. S. Ayyar was not particular about a dowry, and such a man was hard to find. All in all, Savitri could be considered lucky, since she was able to keep the gold jewellery passed down to her by her mother.

  Not so lucky were Mrs Lindsay and her daughter Fiona. The Lindsay family had brought shame and scandal to the Iyer family, and, Mani proclaimed loudly, someone had to pay.

  The night after Mrs Lindsay returned from Bombay a group of masked thugs, very likely the same ones who had rescued Savitri from the Baldwins, entered Fairwinds through the servants' quarters. They stormed the house, battering down the kitchen door. They lifted the Admiral bodily from the bed and into his wheelchair where he watched helplessly, or rather, tried not to watch while they tied Mrs Lindsay and Fiona to the bedstead and each of the six men raped them. The women writhed and screamed, but their writhing only made it worse and their screaming excited the men all the more. They found glass bottles in the kitchen which they broke and used the gashed edges to cut the women's thighs and genitals, and left them bleeding on the floor. The little Christian live-in housemaid locked herself in the bathroom where she whimpered and quivered in fear, but she need not have feared, for she was not English, not the enemy.

  The police came but the investigation proved difficult. Mani was a prime suspect but he had spent that night at a political meeting where he had been seen by several friends who could all swear to his presence, providing a cast-iron alibi. All the servants were questioned but no-one had seen or heard a thing. The thugs were never identified.

  Aunt Sophie came to Fairwinds to take matters in hand. A week after her arrival Fiona disappeared. All efforts to find her failed.

  Mrs Lindsay announced she could not bear India a day longer, could not face her friends and acquaintances, could never live down the shame. And then there was David. He was the heir to a fortune, and too foolish, too emotional, to be left on his own. He must be taken in hand; a suitable alliance must be found, and in his guilt he would comply. She took a ship back to England, planning to buy a London house and settle there and then send for her husband. The Admiral, accompanied by Aunt Sophie, Joseph and Khan, followed after six months. Fairwinds was boarded up, deserted, the garden given back to nature.

  30

  Chapter Thirty

  Nat

  London, 1969

  Having made the commitment to return home, Nat had second thoughts. He wasn’t so sure he could actually keep the commitment. He envisaged himself walking through the village street, climbing into a rickshaw, buying oranges at a market stall, leaning over a patient to dress a wound in his father's surgery, and it all seemed impossible, the stuff of dreams; it had never happened, could never happen, not to him, not to Nat. He closed his eyes and tried to bring back that moment of truth soon after Henry's first visit when he had known, simply known, that he had to go back, that this, his London life, was the dream. That his life here was the surrogate and India the real. But that moment had flown, and Nat could no longer bring it to mind, and furthermore, he did not want to. Going back to India was to cross an abyss too deep, too dangerous for words; not even in his mind could he make that leap. The more he thought of India the more the fear grew.

  He thought of his father, and his father's hopes for him. Doctor had given his life to the service of the poor and there was no trace left in him of that grasping, hungry little worm called selfhood. Doctor's life began in service and ended in service, and should the lowliest ragged beggar drag himself dying to Doctor's door at midnight, then Doctor would be there for him, and either fight to ward off death or be with him till death arrived, whichever was more appropriate.

  In his youth, Nat would have jumped to his feet to stand by his father through the hours to fight or to wait for death, and those hours had not seemed difficult, nor wasted, nor diminishing. But thinking of it now filled Nat with something near panic; he could not! This was the life his father had chosen for himself but it was grossly unfair to expect his son to do the same. Such sacrifice of selfhood must come voluntarily, or not at all. Doctor apparently had no personal needs whatsoever. But Nat knew all too well his own needs, needs that demanded satisfaction without cease.

  But his commitment to return was binding and he could not back out. Keeping his given word was one of the sacred duties Doctor had upheld so well that Nat could no more go back on a promise than he could cut off his own hand.

  He needed a valid excuse not to go, but there was none. There had been no problem getting leave from work. Summer was a quiet time for catering with hardly any Indian weddings or other celebrations, so Bill Chatterji was closing his business anyway for two months and going to his maternal relations in Maharashtra, and Nat could not lie and tell Henry he couldn't get leave when he could.

  What he could do was work out some kind of a compromise that would satisfy everyone's wishes and not break any promises, and Nat spent the last weeks before his departure thinking out just such a compromise. He wrote a long letter to his old friend Govind Bannerji, explaining the situation. Sealed the envelope, addressed it, stamped and posted it. There! That done, Nat felt much, much better.

  By their last night in London, which he spent with the Baldwins, he was feeling quite satisfied with himself, and even looked forward to India. Seek and you will find, he thought. He could kill two birds with one stone: visit his father, and make the most of what India had to offer.

  The following morning Sheila drove them to Heathrow. They were flying via Colombo instead of via Bombay because, Henry said, changing planes at Bombay was always such chaos since you didn't only change planes, you changed airports and they'd have to take a bus from Bombay International to Bombay National, whereas Colombo airport was international, thus much easier for passengers in transit.

  They were well on their way to Colombo, cruising somewhere over the Middle East, about an hour after the Abu Dhabi stop, before Nat told Henry that he would not, after all, go to the village right away, but first spend a few weeks in Ceylon.

  'I need some time to myself, Henry. I feel utterly exhausted in body and mind. I've been going on full power for years and now I'm absolutely burned out. All I can do right now is just lie on the beach and, well, recover. Find myself again.'

  'That’s your freedom for you, lad. Saps a man's strength.'

  'Look, Henry, if you're going to be judgmental then we can stop this conversation right here and you just go on alone and don't bother explaining to Dad. But…'

  'Don't say a word more, Nat. I understand. When can I tell Doctor to expect you?'

  'Well . . .' Nat hesitated, for Henry did little to conceal his disapproval. Damn Henry. Why did he always have to lay a guilt trip on him, Nat?

  'Well?'

  'Henry, to be honest, I can't give you a fixed date. I thought after Ceylon I'd travel around a bit. See a bit of India, you know. When people ask me about the Taj Mahal it's a bit embarrassing to admit I've never seen the damn thing! I'd like to see Delhi, Kashmir, the Himalayas. Maybe Nepal. The usual. There's plenty of time. And then I plan to visit the Bannerjis in Bangalore. After that I’ll come to the village.'

  'I see. The usual tourist trail. I suppose you'll also take in a few gurus standing on their heads in caves and some fakirs sleeping on nail beds. Hope you've got your camera. Well, Nat, go ahead, you won't find me standing in your way. I'll tell your dad and pass your love on to him. Nat sends his love but he's up looking at the Taj Mahal; he'll drop in before he flies back to London.'

  Henry reached up and pressed the button for service and a pretty, chocolate-skinned stewardess at once appeared, bending over Nat to smile at Henry, showing teeth as white and flawless as pearls, which unaccounta
bly gave Nat a twinge of jealousy.

  'May I help you?' she asked Henry sweetly, and Nat, who hadn't been asked, smiled up at her and asked for a beer to accompany Henry's orange juice. Nat had an aisle seat which he found very pleasant, since it offered him a much better view of the stewardesses moving up and down with such elegant ease, despite the wraps of their saris, which emphasised the roundness of their hips and showed silky brown inches of bare skin between skirt and blouse. They brought back memories which alarmed him as much for the lump they brought to his throat as for their very vagueness. Bangalore girls; the loveliest in the world. Well, it wouldn’t be long before he’d see them again, in person. He hoped Govind would be there; but yes, by now he’d be back and a CEO in the family business. Govind would help him find those girls.

  Bangalore seemed as far away as the village — Bangalore, and the laughing, teasing yet discreet Bannerji sisters and the intangible fragrance that to Nat contained the essence of their womanhood, wafting around them as an invisible shield, protecting, upholding, the aura of their dignity, like the sheen on an untouched peach.

  Nat squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. He thought of Woman, as he'd once adored her, from afar, never knowing her. But thoughts of women, as he'd known them, kept interfering, lewd pictures: of lascivious, lustful, wanton, carnal, dissolute, lecherous, horny, beckoning… women. He nipped at his beer, closed his eyes, smiled, and gave himself up to the pictures. Sometimes he opened his eyes just a slit and watched the splendid smiling Ceylonese stewardesses swaying up and down the aisle and in his mind he stripped them and had them join the orgy. He wondered if he might get to know one or two of them when they landed at Colombo; if he got a chance he'd have a go. Surely after such a long flight they'd have a few days' break . . . a few days on the beach with a stewardess . . . he'd never had an Indian girl yet, nor, of course, a Ceylonese. It would be nice to penetrate that aura of purity. As long as Henry hovered in the wings he'd have to lie low, but once he'd gone on to Madras Nat would circle in for the kill . . . sunny beaches, sea and surf sang their siren song, and Nat knew he would have company, delicious company.