“Not yet.” When he looked up, I saw purplish black circles under his eyes. “She’s still away with Appan, but don’t worry, Saraswati and I are full steam ahead, it won’t be long, I promise you that.”
“What frightens me now,” I said, “is I may have become too useful. They’re desperately short of staff.”
I blurted this out without thinking, my mind on the pregnancy test I would insist on tomorrow. When I saw the look of anguish in his eyes, I wanted to grab the useless woman I’d become by the shoulders and say, Don’t say those things to him! Don’t add to the misery of the one person in the world who really needs your support.
A long silence fell between us, Anto with his head resting in his hands.
“How is your work going?” I asked him. An inane question.
“Not bad,” he said. “I got my paper in.”
“Any news about the promotion?”
He looked up. “Didn’t get it.”
This was definitely my fault. Before my conviction, Dr. Sastry had said it was a certainty.
“Any point in saying I’m sorry?”
“No, there’s always another train.”
“You don’t need another train, you need another wife.”
He tried a grimacing smile. His dark hair flopped over his forehead. I pushed it back.
To fill another silence, I told him I’d helped with two deliveries in the prison hospital.
“Good for your confidence, but do you trust them?” he said.
“Yes . . . no . . . I don’t know. Dr. Zaheer is a good man, I don’t think he’ll twist it. I’ve asked him if these deliveries can be used for me to get my final certificate.”
“But you’re still not covered.”
“I am. I’ve insisted they put it in writing that I wasn’t the principal midwife. He’s told me he’ll write to the Royal College of Midwives and get them to rubber-stamp it.”
Anto didn’t look convinced, and neither was I entirely, but I knew I had to trust Zaheer or go mad with anxiety. Anto opened his mouth to say something else when the bell rang, heart-attack loud; keys were officiously rattled, guards shouted. Visiting hour was over.
“The best thing about being married,” he’d once told me, “is you don’t have to finish conversations on street corners.” Now we did, and when I tried to piece our words together later, they seemed fragile and slippery, and I wished in a way I’d told him about our possible baby, the promise of something new, because when he stood up, I saw I’d aged him. He looked stiff, and there was a sprinkling of gray hairs I hadn’t noticed before. He touched the side of my face very gently.
“I love you,” he said. “Don’t forget that ever.” I reminded myself to smile, feeling as empty as the sky.
- CHAPTER 60 -
He’d had enough, Anto decided, as he exited through the prison gates. Two days later, after a quick trip to Mangalath and some detective work with the servants, he arrived, shortly before lunch, at the Crown Hotel in Madras. His father was attending a conference there on the new constitution. At the gate, which was guarded by two uniformed lackeys, he stopped, confused: the hotel—dusky-pink walls, tiled courtyards, blossom-scented garden—was an unusually lavish choice for his normally frugal father.
He was shown to a room overlooking the garden, where he took a bath and dressed himself carefully and slowly for the showdown he knew must follow. At the front desk, the clerk, a smiling, obsequious fellow in a cherry-red uniform with braided shoulders, said Mr. Thekkeden, “a very great man,” was out every day, but he would almost certainly find his mother in the garden, where she usually sat in the afternoon.
When he saw his mother from a distance, his heart clenched. She was sitting under a mimosa tree on a green bench, a small and lonely-looking speck, so deep in thought she didn’t look up until he sat down beside her.
“What are you doing here?” She sprang to her feet when she saw him. “What’s wrong?”
“Amma,” he said, kneeling beside her and taking both of her hands in his, “I need to talk to you.”
“Are you sick?”
He’d hoped for a grace period to ease her into this: an exchange of pleasantries, a mental taking of her pulse, but she had led him immediately to the point of no return, and he told her fast, “Amma, we’ve been lying to you for months and months and months, and I can’t do it anymore. Kit’s not studying, she’s been in Viyyur prison for nearly six weeks now.”
Her brown eyes widened. “Is this a joke?”
“No.” Telling brought no relief, only the shock of it again.
“For what?”
“Manslaughter. A trumped-up charge, for the delivery of a baby that died.” No point in fudging it now. “The full details I can tell you later.”
“Oh my God! Don’t tell me the details!” Her face wrinkled with disgust. “I knew this would happen.”
He looked at her and shook his head. “If you could see your face now, you would know why we lie to you.”
She jerked as if he’d slapped her. “Who lies to me?” she almost shouted. “Who else knows?”
“It’s been in the papers.”
“What papers?”
“You didn’t see them, Appan’s orders, but I’m telling you now because you’re the one person who can really help me with Raffie. He’s having a horrible time.”
“I knew something was wrong,” she said angrily. “I tried to discuss it many times with Appan. I said, ‘I think his marriage is on the rocks.’ He said, ‘How many times must I repeat this: she’s away studying. They are a modern couple doing things the modern way,’ and now, nice to know everyone was laughing at me.”
“My marriage isn’t on the rocks,” he said, staring vacantly at the terraces of the perfectly manicured garden around him: the orange trees, the mimosa, the rioting bougainvillea, underneath which gardeners had placed, with the precision of artists, dollops of horse manure. “But I need your help.” He pushed a mimosa blossom with his foot.
She shielded her face against the sun and stared at him. “Isn’t Appan helping?”
“He can’t or won’t, and this is the point of no return for me, because I’m sick of protecting the family name at all costs.”
“Antokutty,” she cried, her eyes pleading. “Don’t say these things to me. It breaks my heart. I nearly died on the day they sent you away.”
“I’m not talking about us, Amma. I’m talking about my wife, my family.”
“When you were little, we spent every moment we could together. I’ve never loved another person as much.”
“I’m a grown-up, Ma. I spent a lot of time alone.”
“So what can I do now?”
“I need help with Raffie; he’s all over the place. I need money for a decent lawyer . . . Oh God, I hate this . . .”
“So give me time!” She put her hand on his arm. “I will think of something. I don’t want to lose you again.”
- CHAPTER 61 -
When Anto left, Amma went upstairs, locked the bedroom door, and in a moment of pure rage kicked Appan’s brown leather suitcase, a present from Hugo Bateman, as hard as she could. Appan had left for a three-day conference, pajamas and papers packed in a small holdall. He’d left this case behind for her to tidy. It will give her something to do, she could almost hear him thinking. She closed the shutter and, hugging herself tightly, paced about the room, crying and shouting.
This was the worst public disgrace the family had ever faced, and what hurt most was that everyone had known but her, as if she were too feebleminded, too conventional, too utterly and completely retarded to be told a thing.
Another source of humiliation was that, freed from family responsibilities and Mangalath, this unexpected holiday with Mathu had, after many years of drought, led to something surprising: they’d started to make love again.
I’m too old, she’d wa
nted to tell him, on that first night at the Willoughby in Bombay, and it’s too late. Nothing but embarrassment at first, but then, her legs softening, her breath quickening, she’d felt something like an ice flow melting inside her. “Don’t cry, silly woman,” Mathu had said fondly, when she was lying in his arms.
“I’m sorry,” she’d said. “I’m happy.”
Now she felt duped and stupid and sordid, and during the two sleepless nights that followed, her mind lunged back and forth between disgust at the girl, love for her son, loyalty to Appan, and ice-cold fury at him for making her so stupid, such a nothing in the general scheme of things.
On the third day she sat down on the bed and forced herself to be calm. The time for weeping and wailing had passed. She had made up her mind: she had a plan.
She pulled Appan’s suitcase onto the bed and, after forcing the lock with her manicure scissors, tore the clothes from it, flung them on the bed, and fumbled in the pocket of the silk lining for the envelope where she knew he kept his money. Her mood was so savagely vindictive that she was half hoping, as she went methodically through every scrap of paper, to find further evidence of wickedness—a failed business deal, a mistress she didn’t know about.
She took a bundle of rupees from the envelope and put in her own pocket. Downstairs, she asked the swanky-looking desk clerk for train times to Cochin that day, wrote the times down carefully, and left a note for Appan on the bed.
“I’ve taken money from your briefcase. I’m going home to take care of the children. I know about Kit.”
Her rage frightened her, and she wondered, as she folded the note carefully, if she would ever be able to forgive him. All the kootchy-coo second-honeymoon stuff was a lie, and she, credulous fool, had lain there as panting and grateful as a starving dog.
She packed the brand-new suitcase she’d been so proud of and then, by force of long habit, folded his clothes and smoothed down the bedspread before closing the door. She was leaving. She was gone.
* * *
Calm yourself, woman, Kunjamma Thekkeden warned herself as she walked down the railway platform at nine fifty that morning. Her first trip alone on a train would take all her courage and all her strength. She fell asleep in the women’s carriage, with her face pressed against the window, and woke raging at Kit.
“You are a contaminant.” She was silently moving her lips as the streets of an unknown town sped by. Everyone knew that nurses had weak morals. Anto, thousands of miles from home, must have been a sitting duck. So fine, sleep with him, be immoral, but don’t come home with him, bringing nothing but trouble and distress.
She closed her eyes tightly. What torture to think of all their friends reading their newspapers, gossiping, and giggling about how the mighty Thekkedens had fallen, and in the most sordid and public way possible.
“Are you all right, madam?” the young woman next to her asked when she groaned out loud.
“Perfectly fine, thank you.” Amma peered through the window at a rubbish-strewn culvert. “Thank you,” she said again just to be clear.
“Perfectly fine.” Her words left an acid taste in her mouth. Was this what life was really like, lie upon lie, upon lie? She recalled how she’d walked towards Kit that first day, hand outstretched, smiling, exclaiming; and later, welcoming the unstable Glory into the fold; and sitting in the summerhouse, while the ancient lover soggied up his handkerchief. This suavity, this politeness—look where it had landed her now that the big cat had pounced.
By the time the train had come to its screeching halt, she felt a tremendous weariness creep over her. What Anto was asking of her was not as simple as a change of mind, but a change of beliefs she’d led her life by.
“Why must I do this?” she muttered to herself as, half-dead with tiredness, she pulled down her suitcase. Her plan now was to hail a taxi and go straight to Saraswati Nair’s office at the Mother Moonstone Home at Fort Cochin. “If your friends ever need legal advice,” Mrs. Nair had said months ago, handing her a business card, “you know where to find me.” Pushy, Amma had thought at the time, and disrespectful, when she had a first-class legal brain living under her own roof.
* * *
It was a surprise to see a stony-faced Anto standing on the platform waiting for her.
“Why are you here?” she said.
“Appan sent me,” he said. “The hotel manager told him what train you were on. He phoned my hospital. He’s horrified.”
A spurt of anger invigorated her. “He has no right to be horrified. He travels all the time.”
“He thought you’d left him. He’s in an awful state.”
“Anto,” she said, “I don’t care. I have no time to waste. What I want to do now is to go to the place where Kit works. I want to see everything.”
When they arrived at the Moonstone, she told him to pick her up in an hour. She needed to talk to Saraswati Nair on her own. A few moments later, she faced the lawyer in her office—a converted Nissen hut under the stump of a charred tree.
“I know about Kit,” she said, “I know about the prison, I know about my son. I’m saying this to save your breath, because I have my own questions now.”
“Take a seat please, Mrs. Thekkeden,” Saraswati said, when Amma’s fury had spent itself. “I have a client coming soon, but I am able to talk for”—she consulted her watch—“twenty minutes. Why are you here?”
“I’m here because my family have told me many lies.” It grieved her deeply to say this, but it was true now. “I don’t trust them anymore.”
“But you still care for them?” Saraswati gave her a level look.
“I don’t know.” Amma took a sharp breath. “They have driven me to the point of madness.”
“I understand,” Saraswati said with a deep sigh. “But as a professional person and as a friend, I am in a dilemma: I’ve been told not to tell you anything.”
“No line has been crossed,” Kunjamma said. “I came to you knowing the truth.”
Saraswati snapped the elastic bands on a couple of folders and stared at Kunjamma.
“All right,” she said eventually. “But we’re going to do this my way because you seem to be on a warpath, and that won’t work.”
“Are you surprised? This girl has brought nothing but disgrace to our family.”
Saraswati snapped the folder shut. “So, I must stop you there. My time is precious, I won’t have it wasted. There’s too much to do.”
Amma pressed her lips together. “Start again.” She folded her hands in her lap, trained her eyes on Saraswati. “Sorry . . . please . . .”
“And to go any further,” Saraswati continued in the same colorless lawyer voice, “you need to understand some things. Put these on.” She handed Kunjamma a pair of galoshes. “Come outside.”
They stepped from the hut. “This way.”
Outside, a dazzling sun shone mercilessly on the charred beams, the smashed bricks, the soggy mattresses, and the broken fish tank that had once held the premature babies.
“The Moonstone is not at its best at the moment,” Saraswati conceded, as they skirted the stump of the neem tree, “but you must imagine it before they burned it down: a beautiful place full of hope.
“Maternity ward was there.” She pointed towards burned wire and a sodden sofa. “Reception there. There was the mango tree, but most of all—”she stopped and faced Kunjamma—“it was the people who made it. They were good people. Not just Kit, but the other midwife Maya, the nurses. They were gentle, kind. I’m saying kind,” Saraswati repeated, angrily. “It’s so underrated, particularly by very traditional people.”
“When I came here,” she continued, as they crunched over some broken floor tiles, “I was full of fear. I had fallen out with my family, who disliked my practicing law. My labor was hard, fourteen hours, but nothing but kindness from Kit. Everything very sweet and clean here. I
had a boy, and when she stitched me up afterwards, she was so gentle, I didn’t feel a thing.”
“She stitched you up!” Kunjamma’s hand flew to her mouth.
“If you make that face again, I’ll stop. She’s a midwife, that’s what they do when people bleed: you either take responsibility or you fail to, it’s very simple.” Saraswati glared.
“I’m sorry. Carry on . . . You’re right, that’s what they do.” Kunjamma made a visible effort to control herself. Her mind tripped back to the awful medical drawings she had seen in Kit’s wardrobe: bare women with their bottoms in the air; varicose veins of the vulva.
“So.” Saraswati took a shuddering breath. “My baby was born, over there actually.” She gestured towards a pile of broken glass and burned timber struts. “And then, a few weeks after that,”—her voice steadied and rose—“he died. It was a cot death. Had nothing to do with the hospital. No infection was there, no injury at all. But this was the single thing that started the witch hunt. They said I would be called as a witness, but I was never called, and this is why I will stay and fight for this place and your daughter-in-law with my last breath, and why your son and I are working around the clock to set her free.”
“I’m not a lawyer,” Amma said in a low voice. “My husband is.”
“Your boy has a good brain, he could probably pass his bar exams now, but he’s on his knees with exhaustion. We’ve been canvassing local women for their support. We have two hundred and sixty-five signatures already on our petition.”
Amma sat on a bench and put her head in her hands. “I’m sorry about your son,” she said quietly at last. “I had a miscarriage once; it would have been another boy.”
She looked down at the ground. That memory had been buried so successfully—the pain, the total desert of the days that followed—that she had never spoken about it to anyone ever again.
“Well, you’re lucky,” Saraswati said at last. “You have a live son, but you will lose him if you cannot accept his wife. He adores her, and he is in hell right now.”
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