by Sharon Maas
'Poor Fiona!' said Nat. 'I'd like to meet her one day.'
'You will,' said David. 'I only wish you could have met Savitri.'
Silence followed those words. A deep, eloquent silence. And then:
'I'm sorry, Dad. I really am. Things would have been so different! If only she'd waited! Waited till you came back from Changi!'
David shrugged. 'There's no such thing as "if only", Nat. That's the way she would have seen it. Everything happens for a purpose, she always said. She would have said it's all God's will.'
David laid a hand fondly on Nat's. They exchanged a look of such deep love and unity that a pang of jealousy gripped Saroj's heart.
'I should have told you about Savitri long ago, Nat. But I pushed her and the memory of her right to the back of my mind and held it there by a giant hand. I feared that even thinking of her, mentioning her name to you, conjuring up the past, would destroy me. I lost myself in my work — it was what she would have wanted, what we would have done together if things had taken a straight, direct path. What I built here, Nat, I built for her, in her memory. Prasad Nagar is a monument to her. It was my way of bringing her to life, but without the pain. She was my inspiration.'
'And mine, too. Even without knowing her.'
'She lives in you, Nat. Her hands are your hands — golden hands. She lives in you. She moves through you.'
Nat held up his hands, palms upward, and looked at them, nodding. In the candlelight he was beautiful, so beautiful and golden it was painful to behold.
Saroj listened to the two of them in a state of shock. They were speaking of her mother, but with every word they spoke they were stealing Ma from her, transforming her into this stranger, Savitri. David, Nat and Savitri — that would have been the proper ending for this story, the happy ending. And she, Saroj, would never have been born. If Ma had found out earlier that they were together she would have left Deodat. Saroj could not question that. Left Deodat, and returned to the man and the son she had really wanted, not even considered bearing Deodat's children.
Savitri should never even have made that trip to Georgetown, never have married Deodat, should have waited for her man, for David, and Nat! Should have believed! Kept the faith! That would have been the fairytale come true! Cinderella should have found her prince! I was a mistake, Saroj reflected. I should never have been born. I was a substitute, a surrogate, I and all of us Roy children. We are the anti-climax of Savitri's life!
The Savitri she knew, her Ma, was a lie, a make-believe, an actress playing a part, trying to forget her real life, the life that should have been. And Nat! He could be happy now. He had gained a mother, but she had lost hers, and a lover, a life.
72
Chapter Seventy-two
Saroj
A Village in Madras State, 1971
How can he sleep? How can he possibly sleep?
Saroj wanted to wake him up, shake him, slap him, scream at him. How can you sleep, you bastard, don't you see what this has done to us? How can you lie there and smile in your sleep, happy because you've found your darling mother, when you very well know that your finding a mother is the end of us?
She looked at Nat and her silent cry seemed to fill all space with anguish. My brother! He is my brother! My lover is my brother!
Nat slept on, sprawled next to her on the verandah. The only man she had ever loved, and he was her brother. We are Savitri's children! She threw herself down and buried her face in her pillow, smothering racking sobs, biting into the pillow-case. Last night she had wanted to discuss it, to go over all the implications, the horror of it all, to let the dreadful truth wash over them both and to wallow in it through the night, but David had called a halt to all that. It was late, he said, and there was work waiting for him in the morning. It was time to sleep and they had talked enough. Time in the morning to solve their problems.
Solve their problems! As if this problem could ever be solved! But Nat had quickly pulled himself together, tucked the horror of it all in some safe corner of his mind — Oh, how I hate this equanimity of mind which is the Indian disease! — made a bed for himself and for Saroj on the verandah mats, given her a sheet to cover herself with. They had lain down next to each other, she in his arms. He had been trembling as he held her but his embrace had been that of a brother. He had dried her tears and bid her sleep.
'I love you, Saroj,' had been his last words. 'No matter what, remember that. I truly love you. We will work this thing out. We'll go through it together.' He had kissed her cheek and then he had slept, like a baby, and left her to brood and cry into her pillow and bite the sheet and toss.
Hours had passed and she could not bear it. Dawn was near and it was a dawn she never wanted to know, because no matter how they twisted and turned the facts — Nat was her brother.
If she waited to say goodbye they would try to persuade her to stay. Out of politeness, they would bid her stay, to hear her side of Savitri's story, to marvel at what had become of Savitri, to mourn her death. This was not Saroj's place. Better to go now, at once, and easier for them all.
She had not unpacked the day before. It was easy to pull on her clothes and brush her hair in the dark, sling her bag across her shoulder, and walk off towards Town. There she woke a rickshaw-wallah sleeping in his rickshaw and got a ride to the bus-station. The first bus left at four. She did not bother to go into Madras. The airport lay on the bus route anyway, so she got off there, had her ticket changed, and waited for the next flight out.
London was deserted. Among its millions, the ones Saroj most loved were absent. Her need for friendship and for comfort, though, were greater than ever before in her life, greater even than in the time following Ma's death. She was a stranger in a strange land, homeless, abandoned. She wanted to go home, to Trixie and Ganesh and the streets she had known as a child.
Two weeks later she took a stand-by flight to Georgetown. Ganesh and Trixie were waiting for her. She fell into their arms and they held her close and wrapped her in their love, even before they had heard her story. Because her grief was written all over her face and poured out of her eyes and her brother and her friend knew and held her close.
Recovery would take an age, but here in the familiar streets of her childhood, in this cosy town where each face seemed to smile and welcome her home, recovery would come.
And at home there was someone else. Her father. Now that she had lost everything she would build on that. Now that she was completely orphaned, Balwant — for she no longer thought of him as uncle — would have to acknowledge her, at least secretly, without Aunt Kamla's knowledge. Maybe she could live with them, rebuild her life from that lovely breeze-swept house, a safe haven. Warm in the glow of a father's love. It was only a consolation prize, for sure — but it was a beginning.
There were questions, of course, that might never find answers. How could Ma, after having loved David, ever turn to another man? But Savitri — Ma — had believed David dead. There had been too much tragedy in her life; a completely new beginning had been vital. In leaving India Ma had shed her past — completely. Cast off the Savitri persona entirely. And: Ma was human. A man like Balwant must have been a ray of light in an otherwise bleak life in Deodat's shadow. These answers satisfied Saroj.
She moved in with Balwant Uncle, resting her hopes on him. But Balwant Uncle was a disappointment: curiously unresponsive to her overtures and hints. Why wouldn't he respond? Acknowledge her as a daughter? Balwant Uncle was as jovial as ever, but Saroj wanted more, so much more, more than he could ever give. How could Balwant Uncle ever stand in for Nat, fill the gap inside her?
She could not bring back the past, nor rewrite it. Living abroad had changed her, and as the weeks passed she felt raggedly out of place. Trixie's and Ganesh's happiness only reminded her of her own loss; and anyway, they would not be staying long. Trixie was a temporary celebrity here — a big fish in a small pond — but she missed the excitement of London, as did Ganesh, who was restless without the city and h
is job, and harboured plans for his own catering service. Should she, too, return to the uncaring Moloch, London? Start again there? She felt in limbo, neither here not there, and the one place she longed for was forbidden. But worse was to come.
After a month she knew for certain she was pregnant — with her brother's child.
73
Chapter Seventy-three
Saroj
Georgetown, 1971
Saroj sat in Dr Lachmansingh's waiting room, mentally wringing her hands, heart pounding. Trixie, sitting beside her, must have felt her agony for she reached out and clasped Saroj’s sweating hand and squeezed it. Saroj glanced at the contented faces and swelling bellies of the Indian women around her. Trixie was the odd woman out here, the only black. Even in their choice of doctor, Guyana’s women were racially divided.
It wasn't meant to be this way, Saroj protested, but there was no-one to hear except her own rebellious thoughts, every single one of which cried out with all its might against abortion. The voice of reason rose above them like a stern relentless father, forefinger raised: you must. There is no other way.
And behind them all: Nat. Never receding even for a moment, looming large like the backdrop to a battle scene, watching the whole mess with calm, benevolent eyes. For five long weeks Saroj had fought to dispel the thought of him, but he was not a thought, he was there, always, so much a part of her that to tear him from her life would be to destroy herself.
She had tried reason. He is your brother, she told herself. Of course you love him! You love him as a brother, the way you love Ganesh. That is why you were attracted to him; it was the call of your blood. You recognised him, because Ma is in him as she is in you, and all you did was make the mistake of seeing him as a lover, as a man, instead of as your brother. But behind it all, Nat smiled on.
She had considered reconciliation. She had left him too abruptly, she told herself. She should not have dashed off like that into the night. She should have given herself the chance to talk it out. Nat and David would have had clever and calming words to say and Nat and she would have grown into a new relationship.
And it was all no good. She loved him, but not as a brother. She knew the difference.
And she was going to have his child — her brother's child — if she did not stop this thing growing inside her.
'Miss Roy?' Trixie was shaking her arm and a nurse was calling and she woke from her reverie. The nurse smiled. 'The doctor is waiting, Miss Roy. Oh, and are you coming too?' This to Trixie, who had stood up and was close behind Saroj in the narrow passageway outside the waiting room.
'Yes, she's coming with me,' Saroj said firmly, and clasped Trixie's hand. They exchanged a look of amused complicity and entered the doctor’s consulting room, and took their seats behind the desk that filled half the space.
Dr Lachmansingh’s pleasure at seeing Saroj was obviously genuine.
'So, you're back! I thought you'd left the country for good — contributing to the brain drain. I hope you've changed your mind and come home to settle! Why anyone should want to live in that cold England I don't understand at all!'
Saroj smiled and agreed with him and the small talk sallied to and fro for several minutes before she took matters in hand and said outright: 'Dr Lachmansingh — I have a big problem.'
Immediately they were all sitting straight in their chairs and looking appropriately serious. Saroj decided not to beat about the bush. She simply blurted it out:
'I'm pregnant and I need an abortion because it's from my brother.'
Dr Lachmansingh's neatly bearded chin dropped in horror. 'From... from Ganesh?'
Saroj gave a wry chuckle. 'No, no. Not from Ganesh — I've not sunk that deep. It’s a long story.'
The roads in La Penitence were pot-holed and the houses grey and dilapidated: one-storey wooden cottages, the paint peeling off, the shutters broken, the gutters before them black and stinking, the grass verges unkempt and strewn with rubbish. They crawled through the area for a quarter of an hour before finding the house. It was tiny, little more than one room on stilts, but an attempt had been made to beautify it for green and red curtains hung at all the open windows. A group of limp, tattered, coloured flags attached to tall bamboo poles near the front palings signified that it was a Hindu home. The yard was a small square of dried mud and weeds, and the wreck of a rusty green Ford Prefect against the back palings had been claimed by a gigantic pumpkin plant pushing thick green tendrils through the gaping windows. The road outside was narrow and Trixie parked as near as she could to the gutter without falling in, so that they all had to exit through the opposite doors.
Saroj looked at the house and at the address on the piece of notepaper in her hand, torn from Dr Lachmansingh's pad.
She climbed the rickety staircase, raised the knocker and let it fall.
'Who dat?'
The voice was close by, almost at her elbow, and she swung around. A woman was looking out of the window not a yard away from her. She seemed aged and tired but the face was so familiar Saroj's heart missed a beat. When the woman saw Saroj she simply raised her eyebrows and said, 'Oh. I comin'.'
Her face disappeared, then the door opened.
'Sarojini,' she said. That was all. They faced each other in silence, neither moving. But Saroj could hear the pounding of her heart. Her hands were slippery with sweat and she wiped them on her hips. Nat and Trixie stood close behind her and they too were silent. The resemblance! Despite her age, despite the fatigue and dullness in the older woman's eyes and the lines around her mouth and the pockmarks on her cheek, Saroj stood face to face with herself.
'Well, don't just stan' dere. Come in. Come in.'
She turned and moved away to let them in, and then Saroj saw her hair, greasy with coconut oil, and endlessly long, down almost to her knees, plaited in a thick rope up to her waist and from that point loose, reddish, wiry, split-ended — but long. As if hearing Saroj's thoughts, the woman turned around and touched Saroj's own hair.
'I see you cut yuh hair,' she commented. 'You had such lovely hair. Like mine use to be. Mistress Dee she ain't gon' cut you hair, so you hair gon' be like my own. To honour me, she say.'
'I cut it myself,' Saroj told her then. 'I cut it, I cut it just after... I was in hospital,' Saroj almost whispered the last words as it dawned on her that the cutting of her hair symbolised the greatest folly of her life. She had cut her hair to punish the mother who was not, in fact, her mother.
'I saw you in hospital,' the woman said, in a pleasant, conversational tone. 'Come, chile, sit down, sit down. Look, take de Morris chair. Leh me bring some mo' chairs for your friends.'
She stepped back into the tiny room and lifted a chair from the little dining table and brought it to face the big Morris chair by the window in the gallery. She brought another chair which she placed to complete the circle, and Saroj and Trixie sat down. The woman stayed standing.
'I got another chair in de bedroom,' she laughed. 'I gon' get dat jus' now, but you-all don't want some lime juice? Coconut water? Or tea?'
'Lime juice, please!' Saroj whispered, and Trixie nodded.
The woman was speaking again. 'That was de last time I see yuh, in the hospital,' she said. 'When I come to give yuh some blood.'
'I saw you,' Saroj told her. 'I saw you looking down at me. I thought it was a dream, or a hallucination. I thought it was myself. You looked so much like me! Or, I look so much like you!'
'Yes, dear.' She had opened a small fridge and took out a jug of lime juice. She poured three glasses for her visitors, put them on a tray and came out to serve it.
'Dat's what Mistress Dee say. She say you look jus' like me. An' she give me photos, yuh know. She always bring photos. I got a whole album full ah photos. After Mr Roy send me away I start collecting photos.'
She sighed, and stopped speaking.
'You — you're Parvati, aren't you? My nanny?'
'You remember me?'
'Hardly at all, it's just a vague m
emory of being close to you, loving you; and then Baba sent you away... I was so angry with Baba. I hated him after that! Such a childish hatred, and yet it was so real.’
'He not really a bad man, yuh know. He buy dis house fuh me. So at least I had that. But he so shame! He shame because of what happen wid me.'
'What did happen, Parvati?'
'You don't know? Then I tell you.'
Savitri gave birth to two children, Indrani and Ganesh, and after that something happened. Savitri could read her husband's face like a book and guilt and shame were written all over it. She wished he would tell her, but that was too much to expect.
But finally he was forced to tell her: about the beautiful young Parvati, poor as a mouse, whose newly widowed mother, a year ago, had come to him begging for help.
'We in't got nuttin', Mr Roy. Nuttin',' wailed the woman, and Deodat rubbed his cheek and regarded her and her daughter. 'Who sent you to me? Why do you come to me of all people?'
'My poor dead husband always talk 'bout you. He is you second cousin twice remove. He say he used to play wid you when you was chirren.'
'What was your husband's name?'
'Ram Verasamy.'
Deodat thought back and remembered. These were distant relatives of his, then; Verasamy had moved to New Amsterdam and lost touch with him. Yes, he had heard of the death, but had not gone to the funeral. And yet, family duty dictated that he help. He brought mother and daughter to Georgetown, installed them in a rented house, found a cleaning job for the mother, made sure they had enough to eat and to clothe themselves — and fell in love with the beautiful daughter. Uncontrollably in love.