Miss Timmins' School for Girls
Page 21
I stiffened my spine and straightened my shoulders. I expected a roar. But after a moment’s silence, she said, “All right,” followed by a deep sigh.
I saw the top of her head first. Usually her thick white hair was plastered to her skull in a middle parting and tied in a tight small knot at the back. But today I saw the wispy strips of hair darting in all directions, as I had in my dream. I knew she was the key to the murder.
“Don’t forget to look into her room. See if she has any photos or anything,” the girls had bid me. I was poised straight outside the double doors for optimal viewing, but she opened one door a crack and came out, so I saw nothing inside the mystery room.
I had not laid eyes on her since her ignoble defeat in the gym. She was wearing a purple cotton housecoat, tied tightly with a bow just above her waist. The bottom of her sari petticoat peeped out from beneath it, an inch above her ankles. She wore flannel slippers. She looks like a lonely and confused woman, I thought, surprised. I felt I was looking at her for the first time. She must be at least sixty, I realized, though it had never entered my mind to guess her age before. We always looked at her in a slanting way to avoid her angry attention. When she was on night-study duty, no child even coughed.
In the veranda was a wooden table with a single high-backed chair facing the green metal door. I could see her sitting there on summer evenings, murdering our rote writing with her slashing red pencil. She sat down on the chair.
“Let me see your textbook, and I will mark out the important chapters,” she said. The fat Hindi text issued by the government of India’s Board of Education was packed with mind-curdling random essays such as “Nehru Chacha Ki Topi” (“Uncle Nehru’s Cap”) and the life and teachings of Buddha and Jesus Christ—as if we did not hear enough about him already. The book was devoid of meaning. Any stray bits of interest were stamped out by Raswani’s brutal teaching.
She leafed through the pages swiftly, trying to muster some concentration. I could see her mind was not on it. Her hands were shaking.
I was standing beside her, so her eyes were level with my green Rowson House belt. My mind was swirling in a panic. After she gave me the important chapters, I would have to leave. What should I do? What would Tara do? Or Shobha? Or the Prince, what would she do? But then, I thought, none of them would even have gotten this far. Only I can make it happen. I have to go solo, I thought. I felt goose pimples crawling up my back. Lights, music, action. I lurched and then slumped down and managed to be sitting in a huddle at her feet, my head resting on my knees. I was shaking like a leaf. The shiver had crawled up my spine and sent my teeth chattering.
She recoiled in horror. “Are you unwell?” she muttered in a hoarse whisper. Another teacher might have touched my shoulder, patted me. But not her. She must not have touched anyone since she was twenty-two.
“I feel giddy, Miss, not so good,” I mumbled with my head still down. I needed to summon tears when I looked up at her. Tears did not come easily to me. Even when my mother berated me—she hated me because I was my father’s favorite—I never cried.
“How can there be a murder here, in our school?” I said, finally looking up at her with what I deemed to be trusting eyes. I was still shaking, I knew she could see that. I felt the tension of the last few days winding up inside me and then radiating out. I knew how I was going to play it. Like my mother did in her endless games of bridge. I was going to finesse the queen. I was the best actress in the senior school; I always played the lead for Rowson House. I could see myself sitting at her feet on the stage, and the audience gasping in the dark behind me. It is all just a play, I thought, for what do I really care who killed that woman, the Prince?
“I came to tell you something,” I mumbled, looking down again. “I do not know who else I can trust but you.” There were teachers like Jacinta Mathews who were susceptible to flattery, and we all knew them. But I doubted if anyone had ever flattered Raswani the monster. No one dared to speak to her. We just ran or hid or prayed to be invisible when we saw her. That was what she seemed to want. “Get out of my sight, you wretched child,” she would scream, swollen veins popping out of her neck.
But I knew she was past screaming. And if she knew a part of the story, surely she would want to know another secret. And a little flattery could do no harm. That is what Shobha said. When in trouble, apply flattery.
“We saw the Prince on table-land that night, and then we saw Miss Nelson there. It was the three of us, Akhila, Ramona, and I. We have not told anyone yet. We are afraid. We do not know what to do,” I said, speaking slowly and tremulously. It was the truth. But Raswani was the last person we would have confided in. My hands were cold and clammy. I expected her to say, “And what were you doing out on table-land in the middle of the night?” She would pick me up by the collar of my blue-checked uniform and march me to prison, I thought, my heart thudding against my chest. I knew my cheeks were flushed.
But not a sound escaped her. She was quiet for too long. I glanced up at her. She was looking out into the distance. “He is testing me,” she said finally.
Then she looked down at me. Those mad eyes with the flaring white rim. In a soft voice that seemed to come from deep inside her—a voice we did not know she had—she said, “I will not ask what the three of you were doing out of school at night. I know you could be expelled for that. But it is not your fault. I know you, Nandita. You are a good girl. It is because of the wicked one. But the Lord took matters into his own hands.” She looked down at her gnarled hands.
“Tell me everything,” she said, “in detail. I do not care to know what you think. I just want to know everything you saw on table-land that night.”
In fact, it was her very own words I wanted to say back to her: “Tell me everything, in detail,” I wanted to say to her. “I do not care to know what you think. I want to know every word you heard from your room that night.”
But I was at her mercy. If I could not be direct, I must be devious.
And so I told her. I told her how we saw the Prince leaning against the witch’s needle, and then how we saw Nelson sitting on the rocks with her head in her hands, and how she did not see us, and how we ran. I left out the other players. I left out the Apt, the boys, and our brush with Merch the night after. I did not want to muddy the waters.
“And then we hear that Prince was pushed over the edge from that very spot soon after. What are we to think, Miss?” I asked her in a frightened voice.
She shook her head and stared at the dripping trees. “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” she said finally. She sounded confused, not shocked.
Maybe she was there as well, I thought. Hadn’t I seen her in my vision? Maybe she had heard Nelson leave and had followed her up, so that Nelson followed Prince and Raswani followed Nelson. Like a chain of fish each eating the other on the geography sea chart.
She knew the secret. I was sure of it now, seeing her pale, scared face. She knows the secret, and it is big and terrible enough to kill. But she will take it to the grave with her unless I make her tell, today.
“We do not know what to do,” I said. “Should we go to the police now, or should we wait for Shobha’s father?” Everyone knew Shobha’s smooth, capable father. “Shobha says we should wait till he comes this afternoon, and then go to the police with him,” I said. Even Raswani must have known that it would be all out of the box once we told Shobha’s father.
Then she started to speak. She spoke in a low, even voice. In the distance I could hear the shrill voices and laughter of schoolgirls.
“That night,” she said, “I heard her taunting Miss Nelson. I prayed to the Lord, I prayed that I might take her sorrow away from her. Why should she suffer so much? Hadn’t she suffered enough? Hadn’t we all suffered enough? Exposing these young girls to her wicked ways. Flaunting herself.” A dash of her old anger crept into her voice again. “Now she is free of her. Now we are all f
ree of her.”
Maybe they murdered her together, Raswani and Nelson, I thought, wildly. They murdered her because she was a lesbian, a serpent in their beloved Timmins. Ideas began to twirl around in my head a mile a minute. Raswani could well have been wandering around on table-land that night. It was a haunted night, and perhaps we were all drawn up to table-land by some ghostly force, like the moon pulls the tides to it.
“She was a saint,” Raswani continued in a measured voice devoid of any emotion, as though she were not speaking to me but confessing to a judge and jury. “I prayed always to the Lord to let me be worthy of her, to let me be like her. It was she who made me turn to the Lord for mercy when I came to this blessed place. She would pray with me every night after dinner. But sometimes, when I prayed to the Almighty, it was her face in front of me. That was my only sin.
“But she was hiding a bigger sin. Hiding it in front of all our eyes. The child turned into a monster. A depraved, wicked monster. She became a burden to us all, carrying on with her wicked ways for all to see. She was like a boil upon the earth.”
Maybe they were having an affair. That’s it, I thought. That explained everything. Nelson and Prince were having an affair. That was the terrible secret between them. And Raswani heard about it that night. I wanted to run and tell the girls. My heart was banging up a storm.
I dared not breathe, I dared not gasp, I dared not make her stop.
Finally she stood up—slowly, using the table for support, as if she had aged ten years while she sat in front of me. She adjusted her housecoat, and, still holding my Hindi textbook in her hand, walked into her room and closed the door. I waited outside, growing more nervous by the minute. I wanted to leave, but I could not because she had my book. I heard her opening drawers and rummaging through her drawers.
When I heard her muttering “Into Thy hands I commend you” or something of that sort, I realized she was praying. I thought she had forgotten about me, and so I raised my voice and said, “Miss Raswani, can I please have my textbook back?”
She came out with the book in her hand and looked at me. Her eyes were dim, like those of very old women. It was the anger that kept her going all these years, I realized. Now that she is sad, the mad Saturn ring around her eyes will melt and she will die, I thought. This was the first time I felt compassion for an adult human being. I was fifteen.
“Show it to that silly child, your friend Akhila,” she said, handing me the book. “Tell her to revise her favorite chapter.”
She’s daft, I thought, because I knew Akhila did not have enough interest in Hindi to possibly have a favorite chapter.
I held the book tight to my chest and ran breathless to the steps. They were still there, the three of them, sitting in a tight formation on the hospital steps. Although it seemed a lifetime had passed, it was hardly half past nine in the morning, and I must have been gone less than half an hour.
“They were having an affair,” I announced triumphantly. “Nelson and Prince were having an affair. That was the fight. And that was the reason for the murder.”
“You mean the monster actually told you that?” asked Shobha, shocked.
“Well, not exactly. She said that Nelson was hiding a big sin in front of all our eyes. Those were her words. Raswani told me that her only sin was loving Nelson, of seeing her face instead of the Lord’s when she prayed. But Nelson, she said, was hiding a bigger sin.”
“She actually said all these things to you?” asked Shobha, giving me the quizzical eye.
“Nandita would not make such a thing up,” said Ramona, my stout defender, and Akhila nodded her head in agreement.
I could not blame Shobha for doubting me. It would never have happened, even yesterday. Raswani never talked to students. She shouted one-line commands, and we obeyed. Now she was a broken woman, and I was the strong one.
The news was shocking. But it was possible. After all, as Shobha said, they must be so frustrated here, these spinsters, never even seeing a man of their own kind except the pastor, and how they all blushed and flirted with Pastor Reese, though he had a wife and three young children. An affair between Nelson and the Prince was quite plausible, and entirely possible, we all agreed. That was why Nelson kept the Prince in school, in spite of all the scandals. That was the meaning of the accusation Shobha had heard with her ear pressed to Nelson’s bathroom wall. You bloody hypocrite, Prince had screamed on the night of her death. You bloody bitch. Keeping me here like your pet monkey. So saintly. Because the Prince was performing for the principal. Kept there to satisfy the devious principal’s unnatural desires. While letting Nelson appear to be the saint, the Prince the sinner. I, who had looked up to Miss Nelson all these years, changed my mind about her that day. I saw how she had wronged the Prince.
“No wonder she rubs her hands all the time like Lady Macbeth,” said Ramona.
Nineteen
MariOrPiriKuri
Miss Raswani disappeared the same day. When she did not come to dinner, the Willoughby ayah took her a meal tray, only to find her room clean and empty except for a pile of brown-paper-covered textbooks on the desk. We were told the next morning.
But by then, Nelson had already been taken into custody. Because of us.
That morning, after I left Raswani’s room we garnished the liaison between Nelson and Prince, on the hospital steps.
Nelson liked nymphets, said Shobha, and she should know, since she was reading Lolita with a torch under the blankets. That is what she kept in her purse, we agreed. Pictures of young girls, perhaps even of us. Maybe she took pictures of us through bathroom chinks. “Does anyone remember hearing a click while changing in Upper Willoughby?” asked Shobha with an excited shudder.
It must have begun while Prince was growing up with those ghastly saintly parents. They came to our school raising a storm of Christian dust, telling us stories with pictures painted on a felt board. They had an irritating pious air about them, and sang soulful duets. We had no idea they had a daughter until she came to teach abruptly in the middle of the winter term two months after their sudden deaths. There had been a memorial service in the church after they died, when we were in standard eight. I remember Miss Nelson sitting in her usual seat—up front, with the church choir—and blowing her red nose during the one minute of silence.
Nelson, who was supposed to have been their trusted family friend, had ravished their daughter. “Come sit on my lap, dear,” she must have said, reading to Prince from the Bible in the evenings. And who would suspect an aunt?
Our mothers had warned us about the uncles. No arms around shoulders, no sitting on laps, and if they pat you on the back too often, you just come and tell me. But even the most paranoid of mothers had never thought to warn us against an aunt.
Brilliant. Lesbian aunt ravishes young girl who turns into a lesbian herself. Lesbian aunt pretends to be a saint. After murdering her ravishee, she donates a plaque in the church to the poor parents and their wayward daughter. “Twisted, man, truly twisted,” said Akhila with glee.
“You have to admit Prince is the most interesting teacher in this place,” said Shobha.
“You mean she was,” I said, and felt a shiver down my spine. Actually, I had never liked Miss Prince. I found her self-absorbed and erratic. I blamed her for getting poor Apt involved in all this. I felt Prince had deliberately preyed on Apt because she was insecure and innocent. But now I felt sorry for Prince too.
“Remember the time she brought those balloons to the hockey pitch last term, on that hot day, and instead of playing hockey we filled the balloons with water, split into two teams, and had a water fight?” Prince had kept a stack of balloons beside her and thrown them at us randomly.
“She kept throwing balloons at me. I told her it wasn’t fair,” said Shobha. “And she said, ‘Come here, you little rascal,’ and pricked one of the balloons and emptied it out down my front.”
I was not a sports person myself. I kept a book with me and tried as often as possible to sit out and read. Miss Prince left me alone; I thought she did not notice. But on my last report card, she wrote in the comments section for sports, “Nandita finds it beneath her dignity to run.”
We realized how brave she had been. She had the courage to flout their God and their ways. She did not hide herself. This is what I am, she said, love me or leave me.
Even her bad moods, now, we felt we understood.
She was never one of the mean ones. We all knew the mean teachers, the mean ayahs, the mean prefects. She was just unpredictable and had outbursts of random cruelty.
We saw how she must have been buffeted. What with those holier-than-thou parents, and then a saintly aunt who starts pawing her. She had sobbed that night, our poor Prince, laying bare her soul to her evil lover, begging her to show some sign that she cared for her. And instead, Nelly had said, Let us pray. Our Lord will show you His mercy, my child, as He did to me.
It was from that day on that we began to love the Prince. Even after the story twisted and turned like a scooter rickshaw in a crowded bazaar in Kandivili, we kept on loving her. Even though she was a lesbian.
Or maybe also because she was a lesbian.
“It adds glamour,” I said.
“Why glamour? I think it adds intrigue,” Shobha said with a naughty smile.
“What happened that day during detention? Wasn’t it totally humiliating when she kept you standing for two hours?” I asked Shobha, wondering if she harbored a grudge, knowing I would have.