A great anger consumed Daniel. How could his son let him down so badly, besmirch the dream he had given his life to, all over some scheming woman? Then, from deep in his mind, an image rose of himself at Kannan’s age facing the wrath of Solomon Dorai. He had been haunted all his life by his father’s inability to understand him, how could he behave exactly the same way towards Kannan? Other doubts crept in. He thought of his decision to drop the caste suffix from his name and was distressed that when it really mattered caste was still important to him. And so Daniel struggled with himself, as he attempted to see things from Kannan’s point of view, tried to find a way out of his wrath. But the obduracy of the Dorais stood in the way of understanding. Although Daniel wrestled mightily with his nature it was unyielding and he gave up trying to fight it. He would not compromise. O Lord, he thought wearily, I am become my father.
69
Lily had a secret which she was quite sure she would take with her to her grave, and it was this: three years before she had married, she had fallen in love. The man she’d lost her heart to was a young Dutch creeper, a trainee manager on a tea plantation. He was briefly stationed on the estate where her father worked as head clerk and in that time Lily had absorbed as much as she could of him. From afar. Giddy with the excitement of a young girl who has never known a man, she would hide behind the luxuriant jackfruit tree in their garden, waiting for him to pass on his morning rounds. She would drink in the firm, clean-shaven jaw, the exotic eyes, the fine brown hair that flopped about his face, the peculiarly upright stance.
When he was transferred to another estate, she was not too upset for she hadn’t expected anything to come of her infatuation. And, to her delight, she discovered that the man with the sea-blue eyes continued to visit her in her dreams as she waited for her betrothed across the Palk Strait to fix a date for their wedding. Her love was pure and chaste. What surprised her was that it remained with her for ever. Marriage, children, all the daily business of living, misted over the memory of the young Dutchman, but on the day of her son’s revelation, it glowed in her mind again. Even though she was as alarmed as her husband by Kannan’s declaration and hoped that his romance would fade, her heart was on his side.
Confronting her husband would achieve nothing. She wasn’t even sure she was capable of it. But she wasn’t disheartened. These situations occurred from time to time in every family and all it took was time, and subtle persuasion, to sort things out. Also, while her husband possessed the legendary stubbornness of the Dorais, she was aware that he attempted, as best he could, to temper it with fair-mindedness and objectivity, especially where the family was concerned. He would come round, of that she was sure, in a while.
She worried more about Kannan. In his case, the explosive rage which every Dorai was capable of was augmented by the volatility and emotional imbalance of youth. She tried to explain to him that his father’s rejection of him was temporary, that peace would be made, that he should be patient. But Kannan would not listen. No amount of tears could budge him an inch. Knowing the effect his intransigence would have on Daniel, Lily grew frantic. She persuaded Ramdoss to write to everyone she could think of, pleading for employment for Kannan, when, as now seemed certain, he was exiled from Doraipuram. Of the replies they received, the most promising was a letter from Chris Cooke in distant Surrey that arrived just before the college reopened. A friend of his ran a tea company and was looking for managers to replace his young English Assistants who were going off to war. Kannan might be just what he wanted. Cooke had already written to his friend and was also enclosing a letter of introduction that Kannan might find useful.
70
When Kannan’s train reached Tambaram, he deposited his luggage in his room, washed and changed and went over to Helen’s house. She wasn’t in but her father was, already tipping back his second glass of rum in the warmth of the evening. ‘Have a drink, men, it’s good to see you back. Helen’ll be here soon.’ What wonderful people the Anglo-Indians were, he thought, grateful for the warmth of Leslie’s welcome. Generous, open and full of life, how could anyone not like them? Why couldn’t his father see them the way he did?
Helen returned in an hour or so. As he watched her walking up the road, a great happiness welled up within him, wiping away the misery of the past weeks. Helen’s face brightened when she saw Kannan. She had grown fond of him and his unquestioning adoration was good for her vanity. She was quite sure she didn’t love him, but that was all right because he was rich, and it always helped in a relationship if the less loving one was you. Cynthia had given her this last bit of advice.
‘How’s your dad?’ Helen asked.
‘He’s well. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. Have a rum, men,’ she said, kissing her father.
Kannan settled for a small drink and they moved out on to the porch and sat down. Helen primly extended her hand and Kannan grasped it eagerly. In the two years and more that they had known each other, this was the only liberty she had permitted him. Kannan was telling her how much he loved her when she interrupted, ‘How did your visit go?’
‘Poorly,’ he said irritably. ‘I told my father that I was in love with you and wanted to marry you and he threw me out of the house.’
Helen jerked her hand away. A wave of anger and frustration swept over her. To think she had wasted her time on this insignificant fool. ‘You didn’t think I’d marry you, did you?’ she stormed. ‘Forget it, I don’t want to ever see you again.’
Kannan flared up as well. ‘Go and marry one of those stupid hockey players you used to hang around with before you met me then,’ he yelled, his liking for the community vanishing for the moment.
‘The least of them is better than you,’ she screamed back.
‘And to think I defied my father for someone as worthless as you,’ he shouted, but Helen had already disappeared into the house.
For a week, the pure flame of his anger kept him going. For generations, the Dorai men had looked upon their women as pliant creatures, who would do their every bidding, and it was only his overweening infatuation that had changed the way Kannan regarded Helen. Now he raved and ranted to anyone who would listen, usually Murthy, about how stupid he had been to come to the brink of ruining himself on account of a woman.
Once his rage had died down, he discovered to his dismay that he was as much in love with Helen as ever. She filled his every waking moment and denied him sleep. Hating himself for doing so, but powerless to stop himself, he began to hang around her house, and was sometimes rewarded with a glimpse of her, the confident swinging walk, the small breasts, the shapely calves, filling his sight, his senses, with delight and pain. She would always ignore him and on the two occasions he actually summoned up the nerve to knock at the door and ask for her, she locked herself in her room and refused to emerge until Leslie told him gently to leave.
Kannan found himself brooding over his father’s reaction. If he’d only taken the news differently, he thought angrily, none of this would have happened. Then Helen disappeared. When he inquired about her, Leslie told him that she had gone to visit relatives in the city, and that he had no idea when she intended to return. His days and nights grew even more oppressive. Now he didn’t even have the prospect of seeing her.
One evening as he was returning to college, he saw Cynthia walking towards him. He hadn’t seen her for days and was quick to accost her: ‘Cynthia, I must see Helen, you know . . .’
Something in his aspect must have touched her, because her expression softened and she said quite kindly, ‘Listen, men, forget Helen, she’s not for you, there’ll be other girls. Go make up with your daddy. It’s not worth it.’
He made no reply, but his disappointment showed plainly on his face. She made as if to say something, then shrugged and walked on. He was moving away when she called out to him, ‘Hey, men . . .’
He turned, hope freshening his face, but Cynthia had little that was new to offer: ‘You’re a smart chap, go back home, mak
e money, get married . . .’
‘But I want to, don’t you see? To Helen. Will you talk to her, Cynthia, tell her I’ll get a good job. We won’t need my father’s money, I’ll make sure she’ll live like a princess. I’m sorry I shouted at her, but I lost control of myself. You know, if she will only trust me, give me one chance, she’ll never regret it in this life or in all her lives to come.’
Cynthia looked slightly bemused.
‘Please, please, Cynthia, please tell me you’ll talk to her, you’re the only one she’ll listen to. Please tell her that I’ll do everything in my power to make her happy if she decides to stay with me.’
‘Was she ever yours, I wonder?’ Cynthia said.
‘I don’t know, but if she was mine, I’d make sure that she never regretted it.’
‘And how would you do that, men?’
‘I’ll get a big job. I have a letter of recommendation from a very important man, Mr Chris Cooke, a senior ICS officer. I’ll be better off than I ever could have been working for my father. Please tell her, Cynthia, I know you can do it . . .’
‘Well,’ Cynthia said, looking dubious, ‘I’m not promising anything, but I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Thank you, thank you,’ he said fervently. ‘Tell her that all I want is to talk to her. Try and convince her that things will work out all right.’
Two weeks later, Cynthia proved as good as her word. One of his hockey team-mates banged on Kannan’s door early in the morning and said jovially, ‘Wake up, you good-for-nothing son-of-a-whore. Cynthia wants to talk to you.’ When Kannan opened the door, Philip said cheerfully, ‘Eleven o’clock at Nair’s,’ and sauntered off.
Cynthia was sitting with some friends, but as Kannan approached, they got up and left with friendly waves. A burst of laughter, and they were gone. Had they been laughing at him? Probably, but he didn’t care. Kannan ordered two glasses of tea with extra sugar, then turned eagerly to Cynthia. ‘Will she see me?’
‘Yes, I’ve persuaded her to see you, just the once . . .’
‘Cynthia, you’re amazing. You’ve worked a miracle. How can I ever thank you?’
‘By calming down and listening to me. I’ve got Helen to agree to talk to you, not accept you as her husband. Nothing might come of your meeting, so don’t get your hopes up.’ Their tea arrived, steaming hot in dirty-looking glasses. Cynthia looked at him, long and speculatively, then said more kindly, ‘You’re really in love with her, I can tell that much.’
‘I would stop at nothing to please her. I’d strip the sky of its clouds and make a bed for her to lie on.’
‘A poet,’ Cynthia said with a smile. ‘I believe you’d do all that and more. And Helen knows it. Probably knows too that you love her more than all the others.’
‘There have been others?’ Kannan said.
Cynthia’s face took on a wisdom beyond her years. Despite his overwrought state, Kannan had a flash of insight. He saw the pretty nineteen-year-old two decades from now, a stout lady in a shapeless dress, with at least a dozen children but with a heart big enough to accommodate a thousand more. She would put up with a demanding husband, cantankerous neighbours, the myriad annoyances of a lower-middle-class existence in a poor country, but she would also be the backbone of her locality – a fund of wisdom and patience and tolerance. Cynthia didn’t know it yet, but there was an unquenchable humanity within her that the world would crowd to.
‘There will always be others for beautiful girls like Helen. The only problem in a hypocritical society like ours is that men have fantasies about girls like us, but never respect us. Some of you lust after us from afar just because we wear skirts and pants and go to dances, others whisper to us under their breath, or brush past us on trains. And then there are our own boys, people like Philip and Sammy and your friend Lionel, who are the sort of people that Helen and I will end up marrying, even if they will never be rich or famous, because they love us for what we are, beyond the lust they feel for us, and because they aren’t hypocritical double-dealing Indian bastards.’ Having delivered herself of this, Cynthia sat back, her nostrils flaring with anger. Kannan was stunned by her outburst, not least because of the profanity he had heard. From a girl!
Cynthia smiled, a smile that was much too cynical for her age, and said, ‘Shocked? I’m sorry. You’re quite decent for an Indian. And don’t go thinking badly of me because of the bad words I use and because I said Helen and I have had other boys fall in love with us. We’re both of us good girls, and we can’t help it if boys keep asking us out. But we don’t do bad things, as you Indians think.’
‘Why do you keep calling us Indians? Aren’t you Indians too?’
‘No. We hate this country and we want to go home. To England or Ireland. My grandfather was Irish, and Helen’s was a British sergeant posted here.’
‘Have you ever met your grandfather?’ Kannan asked.
‘No. Yes,’ she said, flustered. ‘I mean, he’s dead.’
‘Have you ever been to Ireland?’
‘I’m going next month, as soon as I can get my passage booked,’ she said, then quickly changed the subject.
‘Do you love Helen very much?’ she asked.
‘I love her with every fibre of my being.’
‘Oh, yes!’ Cynthia laughed, and then she turned serious.
‘You adore her, Kannan, so you have elevated her to the position of a goddess, free from every blemish, but I’m her closest friend. I’ve known her since we were little girls playing in the alleys of a dingy government colony. The walls of our houses were so thin you could hear the neighbours fart. There is no privacy in places like that, Kannan, and when you’re best friends . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I want only the best for her. But I know her faults. I know when her breath smells bad, and she has said something stupid. I know her secrets. Things that you will probably never know. But this much I can tell you. Her deepest desire is not to end up in one of the colonies she grew up in. She would like, best of all, to live in England. Do you think you could manage that . . .’
Kannan stammered, ‘I . . . I . . . could . . . try . . .’
But Cynthia went on as though she hadn’t heard him. ‘Failing that, she would like to be married to a man who has status and money and a position in society. A nice house, a car, a job. You won’t like me saying this, but that is why she encouraged you, because of your father’s money and name. She’s not a bad girl, and it’s not a bad thing to want the things she wants, and she does like you a lot.’
‘I will make her happy,’ Kannan said, glad to be able to say something.
‘How?’ she asked. ‘If you marry Helen, your father will never take you back, you’re a college student with no money, no prospects. Nothing. Why should Helen accept you?’
‘I’ll work hard, get good marks. I’m sure I’ll get an excellent job because of Mr Chris Cooke’s recommendation.’
‘Why has he given you a recommendation, if your father’s so angry with you?’ Cynthia asked suspiciously.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Use it then. Study hard, get the best job in the world, and then maybe you’ll have a chance with Helen.’
‘I’ll do it, just wait and see. You don’t know about us Dorais,’ he said.
‘See you do. And now I suppose you’ll want to know when you can see her.’
‘Yes, yes, yes . . .’
‘Next week. But she will only see you when I’m around. And after this meeting, you are to communicate with her only through me . . .’
Kannan hardly heard her as, his eyes shining and his heart thundering in his ears, he fell to contemplating his meeting with the woman who had given him no rest.
‘Lucky Helen,’ Cynthia said softly to herself.
71
The interview that Chris Cooke had set up for Kannan with Major Stevenson, the General Manager of the Pulimed Tea Company, had gone very well indeed. He would start work at the end of the year on their estates, located high in the central Travancore hi
lls across the border. He would be the first Indian creeper the company had ever hired. On the train back to Tambaram, he thought how happy Helen would be. He could see just how they would be, in a very short time from now, splendid and certain of their place in the world. Then his mind flew back to the days in Doraipuram and the showdown with his father. If they hadn’t fought, he was sure appa would have been proud of him, making his mark in the white man’s world. And then it occurred to him that if his father had not rejected him, he would never have had this opportunity. And now there was nothing for Kannan to do but to strike out on his own, show his father what he was made of.
The train began to slow down as it approached the station, and his mood brightened. The future was opening up for him. For them.
BOOK III
PULIMED
72
The great German battleship Bismarck swirled rapidly down the storm drain, harried by her pursuers, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and HMSS King George V and Rodney. ‘Tishkwoo-tishkwoo,’ went the Bismarck’s guns, but the waves of American dive-bombers were unrelenting in their attack, and the British gunners in the ships that followed fired with deadly accuracy. It was clear that the Bismarck didn’t stand a chance. ‘Krea-aagh.’ The HMSS Victorious had just loosed off a torpedo. ‘Brrhoom.’ A direct hit. The principal architect of the Bismarck’s destruction, eight-year-old Andrew Fraser, pressed his second-in-command, Kannan Dorai, into service. ‘You take the Victorious, Mr Dorai. I want you to move her to that side, and go “Krea-aagh”.’
‘Can’t I make some other noise?’ Kannan asked.
‘No, you cannot,’ Andrew said firmly. ‘Krea-aagh is a torpedo noise, and you must make a torpedo noise because HMSS Victorious is firing torpedoes.’
The House of Blue Mangoes Page 34