Of Marriageable Age

by Sharon Maas

  Trixie, true to character, had managed to combine seamlessly her romantic and her bohemian tendencies. A traditional white (in this case, off-white) wedding in a church, of course; this childhood dream must be fulfilled, no matter that Ganesh was, officially, a Hindu. She'd bought her dress in some antique market, and goodness knows what century it was; the filigree lace of its high-throated top, through which the deep mahogany of her flawless skin shone, had more than a few threads snapped by age. But its full satin skirt flowed down to her ankles, the wide skirt falling in loose folds and moving freely as she slowly walked forward to meet her groom, too fast for the sedate music, as if she could not wait. She carried a bouquet of white and yellow roses and wore white and yellow roses tucked into her hair, and she held her head up and looked straight ahead, grinning very inelegantly, as she walked, her eyes like living black diamonds, shining with the great love and joy that flowed from her heart to Ganesh, who was waiting for her at the altar, flanked by Nat.

  Saroj wore lilac silk, a dress of utmost simplicity which only set off all the more her own natural beauty. Her hair she wore gathered on top of her head, seemingly held in place by white roses, and tumbling down in huge, loose, shiny black ringlets. She walked behind Trixie, trying to keep up and, not seeing her friend's face but feeling the static of her emotion, kept her own face lowered, to hide the little tears that were sure to escape. She had arrived on the early train that morning and had barely met the bride's party, including Lucy Quentin who had arrived the day before and had driven up in a rented car.

  Her favourite brother, and her best friend. Saroj could not, for all her effort, wear the cool mantle of reason today, because of the love she bore these two, the goodwill she wished them, the hopes she had for their great happiness together, the depth of feeling, of hope, of great yearning that perhaps, somewhere, maybe here, there was such a thing as perfect, complete love, such a thing as wholeness and an undying bond.

  Marriage was a sacrament, after all, whatever the framework in which it took place, whether Hindu or Christian, whether Indian or black or white or brown; here was its blessing, and that blessing would infuse the marriage and make it strong, strong enough to weather all storms. All this she yearned for, for the bride and for the groom, who were now standing face to face before the altar and the vicar whose blond hair curled down to his shoulders.

  In this complete meltdown of reason Saroj looked up, her eyes moist with unshed tears and eloquent with the depth of her tenderness. She felt like a house of glass walls, transparent in all directions, filled with a sweetness and a purity that longed to sing and soar and almost weep for joy. She struggled to hold back the tears — too sentimental!

  She stepped to the left, to Trixie’s side.

  At this moment the vicar asked the bridal couple to step forward, which they did, and Saroj found herself face to face with Nat. Her eyes locked into his for the second time.

  It might have been a moment of shock, but it was not. It was as if they had both known, long ago, had moved forward in their separate lives towards this meeting, as naturally as two rivers flow down different mountains to join in a common valley, to continue their course intermingled in one another, inseparable, for who can unjoin the drops of water so united? And as water does not leap for joy, or shout out in surprise, but continues serenely, calmly, in a much greater, fuller, wholeness, so also Saroj and Nat, at this meeting, simply knew with a deep, full calmness that they were one, and there was no other word to describe their oneness. And as the vicar spoke the words that would join Trixie to Ganesh, so also, silently, unacknowledged to the world and before God alone, Saroj and Nat met for just a moment in one perfect unity of souls.

  Saroj found herself outside the chapel in a mélange of people talking and congratulating, with herself at the periphery of madness: Trixie's face always present, wreathed in smiles, Gopal grabbing her hand and pushing her into a group photo, Lucy Quentin wanting to say hello, and somewhere at the back of it all, Nat's soft eyes ever on her. Swirling emotions, and reason struggling to take command, reaching through the indefinable, precarious, vacillating waves of feeling that now, after the perfect calm of union, threatened to overcome and overthrow her.

  She found herself in the back seat of a car, next to strangers. The car gliding into the driveway of a luxurious garden, at the end of which other cars were already parked before a stately, ivy-covered mansion. People emerging from the cars and milling around on an emerald lawn. Ganesh and Trixie posing for another photograph before a towering red explosion of roses growing up a pergola. Standing next to Nat for another photo, not looking, pulled away, meeting people, shaking hands, smile frozen, thoughts frozen.

  Through the crowd, Nat smiling, looking her way. Those eyes! Waiters in white jackets walking around with tall glasses of champagne precariously balanced on small round trays. Trixie's dad, deep in conversation with Lucy Quentin, his wife Elaine buzzing around introducing everyone to everyone else. Hordes of Trixie's old schoolmates with their own partners, gathering in giggling, squealing groups like on the first day of term. Those eyes again. Gan's hippie friends in headbands and bell-bottoms and flowing Indian skirts. Everyone gay and frolicsome and even the sunshine sparkling with unusual brilliance and the sky's blue richer than ever before. White people, brown, black and yellow. A day etched in vivid light and colour but Saroj, she, sloshing through a murky, rain-drenched turmoil. And then again those eyes, through the crowd.

  Saroj fled unseen into the house, up the stairs and into the bathroom, locked the door. She plumped herself onto the toilet seat and buried her face in her hands. For a space of only a second, the space between two thoughts, in the first meeting of eyes, she had known perfect peace — the stillness at the centre of a cyclone. But once thrown out of that stillness she was helpless, pitched out of herself, like a leaf tossed about in a hurricane.

  She tried to get a grip on herself. But who was herself? Who was that person she had to get a grip on? Where did she begin, where did she end? Where was her substance, her identity? Was she thoughts, feelings, that moment of stillness, this storm, this upheaval, this wild churning of emotion, this giant hand of a no raising up and pushing it all away, but in vain?

  She hid in the bathroom for an hour. She heard voices calling her, someone knocked on the door, tried the handle, left. She waited. Calmed down. Then she stood up, splashed her face with cold water, looked at herself in the mirror as if there she could find herself; saw nothing but a frightened little girl. She ran down the stairs without meeting anyone, into the kitchen. Elaine was there.

  'Saroj! Trixie's been looking for you, where on earth . . .'

  'Elaine, tell her I've left, please. Tell her I feel sick, I'm going home.'

  'But wait, why? You can lie down upstairs, wait, Saroj, don't . . .'

  But Saroj was already out of the door, gathering her confusion like the folds of her long skirt, down the driveway at a running walk.

  Half-afraid they'd come to get her, she waited fretfully for the next train south, ears pricked for the slamming of car doors on the road outside, hands fitfully opening and snapping shut her purse. Somewhere, a little lonely voice cried out to be forcibly swept up and carried off — by Nat. But it was just one tiny pleading flute of a voice.

  Later, safely on her seat in the departing train, she relaxed enough to look down at herself and realise: she was still wearing her lilac maid-of-honour's dress. Her travelling clothes hung tidily in her room at Four Oaks, where only a few hours previously, untypically full of joyful expectancy, she had stepped out of them and into Trixie's once-in-a-lifetime fairy-tale wedding.

  58

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Saroj

  London, 1971

  'Saroj, you're a fool. I'm telling you for the last time: I didn't plan this. I didn't plan anything! I'd forgotten about Gopal and his plans to marry you to Nat — believe me, for once! And give the guy a chance, for goodness' sake! Nat isn't your common or garden drooling-eyed
fan. If you'd just for one minute lay down your arms you'd see.'

  'Gan, would you just stop interfering? Mind your own business for a change instead of sticking your nose into what doesn't concern you?'

  'Well, according to your theory, this does concern me. You're looking for a scapegoat to pin your confusion on and you've chosen me. Well, let me tell you something: I happen to know Nat a whole lot better than you do, and if you prefer to act the offended little Snow Queen it's your loss, not his. And I'll tell you something else, Saroj. Snow Queen's a compliment. What you're turning into is a common, or garden, bitch.'

  'You — you —'

  'You're not what you used to be. Okay, you always had an acid tongue but there was always something basically — well, just basically good about you. That always shone through. And, yes, I did sort of hope for a while that you and Nat could get together because if I ever met a fellow with a heart of gold, then it's him, and that's what I wanted for you. But that wasn't the reason he was where he was on Saturday. He was there because he really is the best man I know; I wanted him for me, for us, Trixie and me, not for you. Remember, it was our day. We weren't thinking of you and Nat meeting. We weren't matchmaking. The world doesn't revolve around you, you know. Why can't you just, my God, just be normal! The way you used to be!'

  'You've changed, too. I always trusted you. I always knew no matter what, you're on my side. Now for some reason you're on his side, and not only that, you call me names, and . . .'

  'I'm still on your side. But that doesn't mean I can't tell you the truth about yourself, on the contrary. It'd do you good to see yourself the way others see you. Because you know what? Remember how you used to hate Baba?'

  'I still do.'

  'Yes. Exactly. Then you'd better start hating yourself. Because you're turning into a carbon copy of him. People run from you the way they used to run from him. Think about that. Seems you do have his genes after all!'

  Saroj slammed down the receiver.

  She opened her hands; the palms were wet with sweat. She wiped them on the sleeves of her blouse, crossing her arms and hugging herself because all of a sudden she felt cold — freezing, despite the July sun outside, casting long lazy late-afternoon rays into the sitting room. She shivered, raised her knees and hugged them, pushing herself back into the arms of James's fauteuil; perhaps she had caught a bug? She felt like going up to her room and snuggling into her bed, curling up under the eiderdown in a long, blissful sleep of oblivion. Not thinking about anything. Not thinking about him.

  He had telephoned every day, but she'd refused to speak to him. Once she'd answered the phone and it was him, and she'd quickly slammed down the receiver, just as she'd done with Ganesh. She couldn't talk to him. She couldn't trust her voice. She couldn't trust anything, or anyone, right now. Not Ganesh, not Trixie, not herself.

  Since the wedding her mind had been in utter chaos. Gone, the orderly arrangement she had carefully given to her life: she was going to become a doctor. Making that decision had given her an invigorating sense of identity, a sense of purpose. She had a specific, concrete goal to move towards with unrelenting dedication, rigorously tailoring every other element in her life to attain it: channelled energy, no distractions. She had spent two years in the sixth form with one aim in mind: perfect A Level results. Three As. Nothing less. She had achieved that. She could, and would, achieve more. But now this.

  Since Saturday, since looking into the dark, deep, all-knowing, all-seeing pools of his eyes, she felt the solid structure of her life crumbling away as if built of sand and gravel. Frantically she struggled to keep each tiny pebble in place. And still it tottered.

  It was a battle of wills; not anybody else's will against hers, but two wills battling within herself. One she was familiar with: the clearly defined one she had trained and cultivated and coaxed into a single direction. And this other, fuzzy, ill-defined, untrained, unfathomable, like a deep unknown sea swelling within her, threatening to upset the construction to which she was clinging for dear life.

  And no-one understood.

  'He loves you,' Trixie had said over the phone. 'He really does, Saroj. He told us. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. It's like a fairy tale. If you let this chance slip by… Look, you don't know anything about Nat. He's been in London for a long time but he's just now finished his studies and he's going back to India — for good! So you haven't got much time. He's even postponed his flight, for you. At least you could talk to him reasonably instead of biting his head off whenever he . . .'

  'Does anybody ever think about me?' exclaimed Saroj. 'You're all going on about Nat, and how Nat feels, and what Nat wants. Nat, Nat, Nat. What about what I want? So what if he's in love with me? Why should it matter to me? And I'm certainly not even vaguely close to being in love with him.'

  'You protest too much, Saroj. I smell a rat!'

  'There's no room in my life for a man!' Saroj had said then, and repeated it over and over again like one of Ma's mantras. She said it now, aloud, to herself.

  'Then make room, for goodness' sake!' Trixie had said in exasperation. She didn't know, couldn't know. Ganesh didn't know. And most of all, Nat couldn't know.

  The battle of wills continued all that week. Saroj fought it the only way she knew, by forcing her mind to deal reasonably, logically, methodically with the problem. As she saw it, there were three very forceful arguments against letting Nat into her life.

  The first and most weighty was her career. It was obvious to anyone with an open eye that romance did not mix well with science — and her work was science, pure and unadulterated. She wanted to keep it that way. Letting her mind grow fuzzy would put an abrupt end to that. There were people who could compartmentalise their minds, keep one area for work, another for love; but in doing so they diminished each compartment, and Saroj refused to subtract even a fraction of dedication from her work.

  The second was the fact that Nat was her cousin. This little detail had revealed itself in the days following the wedding: that Nat was indeed the famous Nataraj of Gopal Uncle fame. Her cousin, Gopal's son. That explained why Gopal had so doggedly, and for years, pursued the match — pure self-interest. His motivation was not the fulfilment of Ma's dying wish — what had Ma really written? — but to get his own dear son married off.

  The third argument carried the least factual but the most emotional weight. Saroj was very competent in dissecting her motivations, analysing and labelling them, and she could tell the difference. It was her own inner rebellion against what would be, once again, an arranged match. Ma had secretly plotted to bring it about, and so had Gopal. Saroj had not spent years of her life fighting Deodat's efforts to marry her off to a man of his choice, only to succumb to Ma's, and Gopal's, plot to do the same. Darned if she would. She would not be manipulated. It was a matter of her own personal integrity not to be maneuvered into such a match, and because this was a highly personal, less rational objection, all the more she had to fight to the last any personal feeling that might — might! — incline her towards Nat.

  The only way to fight, Saroj had discovered, lay in anger. Anger was a fuel, a force strong enough to combat her inner upheaval and bring it under control. If she could maintain anger she would not succumb. Anger, fortified by logical, rational arguments.

  Thus armed, Saroj set about restoring order to her tottering life. During the day she worked at her summer job in her half-brother James's shop and dispensary. She had done so every summer since coming to England, but this year was marked by a sudden and vigorous burst of energy and an inordinate interest in the substances James produced and sold, firing questions at him, taking notes, carrying on her own private research. She worked as if she were studying for an exam. Which, in a way, she was. After work she went to the library, returned laden with books she deemed relevant to her subject, and literally threw her mind into those books, facts, details, and data. Twice a week she played tennis with Colleen, and this week she played as if tennis was not a ga
me, but a battle, to be fought with gritted teeth and dogged ruthlessness, slamming her balls over the net like bullets.

  By the end of the week she knew she'd won the battle. Her mind was once again the familiar, orderly house she felt at home in, and the surging sea of feeling had receded, vanquished. She felt strong, and strangely elated, as if she had passed the most important examination of her life. Her resolve had been challenged, and had stood the test.

  Saroj felt magnanimous. She wouldn't bear a grudge; she missed Trixie and Gan, and felt that in keeping a distance from them she was adding more weight than necessary to the subject of Nat. And, after all, she had taken flight from their wedding, and it was only right that she make the first conciliatory move. On Friday evening she dialled Trixie's number.

  'Hi, it's me.'

  'Yes?' Trixie's voice was guarded, cold. Saroj smiled indulgently to herself. Trixie had flung herself with typical abandon into a love story that didn't exist, and now she was offended because it didn't have the happy ending she'd dreamed out. She needed soothing, and a firm hand.

  'Peace?' Saroj offered.

  'I don't know. What peace?'

  'Between us. I just remembered I haven't even congratulated you yet. This stupid business kind of got in the way. Look, can't we just forget it, get back to life?'

  'Saroj, I still think . .

  'Hush, Trix. Not one more word. I want to come and visit you tomorrow but only on the condition that you don't once mention you-know-who.'

  'Well...'

  'Come on, Trix. I don't want this thing to come between us. You're my sister-in-law now and you're still the best friend I ever had and it's just all so silly.'

  'It's not, it's...'

  'Trix! Not one more word. Case closed. Tomorrow morning at ten, okay?'

  'Yeah, well. Anyway. There's something here I've been dying to show you. And I miss you too. And so does Gan. Good, tomorrow at ten.'