The Wheel of Surya

After Govind had departed for England, his degree photograph was placed on a ledge next to a faded bazaar portrait of the Sikh spiritual leader, Guru Nanak, and regularly draped with garlands of flowers. Each day, Jhoti, Marvinder and Jaspal sent up a little prayer to Guru Nanak, and asked God to protect their father and send him safely home again.

Govind didn’t write often. Anyway, Shireen was the only member of the family who could read, and that at a simple level because she had only attended school till she was nine years old. He wrote more fully to Harold Chadwick, and Harold would then bring Jhoti up to date with Govind’s progress.

Friends of the Chadwicks had found digs for Govind in a part of London called Whitechapel, the sahib told her. He had one room with a sink and a cooker in it and was learning to look after himself. He had started his courses at the university and was coping well, but hated the food.

‘He’ll have to learn to cook!’ joked Harold, trying to bring a smile to Jhoti’s sad face.

But it only bewildered Jhoti to imagine her husband grinding spices or kneading chapatti flour, and she became convinced that he would starve. She would stand silently while Harold read parts from her husband’s letters, waiting for something that she could understand, some sign that he missed her and his children; that he looked forward to coming home. But there was nothing like that in any of the letters. He wrote of things she knew nothing about and countries she had never heard of, such as Germany, France and Poland.

There’s talk of war in Europe,’ wrote Govind. The fascists often come marching round this area. They’re a tough bunch, I tell you. Behave like thugs half the time. I get off the streets when they’re around. Anyone that’s a Jew or a foreigner, they beat them up! You wouldn’t believe it!’

Harold frowned and looked worried at those words. ‘That doesn’t sound like the England I know,’ he murmured sadly. ‘They can’t have another war. It’s not possible,’ he wrung his hands with despair. ‘Yet fascism seems to be everywhere, and this man, Hitler . . . how is he to be dealt with?’

For a moment, he was lost in his own thoughts, then he turned back to Jhoti with a reassuring smile.

‘And you, Jhoti. What shall I tell Govind about you?’ he asked.

‘Tell him his son is well; he is beginning to walk and most of his milk teeth have come through. Marvinder is getting tall, and now she’s been put in charge of the buffaloes. She herds them out to the fields each morning, and brings them in for milking at dusk. Tell him that his parents are both in good health, as are his brothers and sisters.’

‘But you, Jhoti?’ said Harold, kindly. ‘What shall I tell him about you?’

‘I am well, too,’ answered Jhoti simply.

‘Is it wise to let your child mix with the servants?’ Miss Alcott was visiting Dora about the forthcoming church bazaar. They sat on the verandah sipping tea. She stared disapprovingly at Edith and Marvinder playing at house beneath the low branches of the temple tree.

‘Isn’t it time she was at a school?’

Dora repressed a sigh of annoyance, and said politely, ‘Harold and I decided that we would educate her ourselves for a little while longer. The world is such an unsettled place at the moment, we felt loath to part with her. I mean, England is out of the question now that there’s talk of war.’

‘There may not be a war. Chamberlain seems determined to find a compromise of some sorts,’ said Miss Alcott.

‘But India, too, is in so much turmoil,’ sighed Dora. ‘They want independence, and oh! I can understand it. We have no right to be here. But I’m worried. Only Gandhi’s stopping them from all-out rebellion.’ As she spoke, Dora frowned and her mind seemed to wander away from her guest. Then abruptly, she returned. ‘Anyway,’ she said firmly, ‘Edith’s too young for boarding school.’

‘I think you’re being far too sentimental,’ Miss Alcott stated frankly. Her position as sister and secretary to the Reverend Cyril Alcott, vicar of All Souls and her advanced middle age, obviously made her feel entitled to speak her mind when and where she pleased, especially to the lower orders, which included people such as Dora Chadwick, the young wife of a mere schoolmaster.

‘You don’t want your child getting too familiar with the natives. It can lead to problems later on. I’ve seen it happen. People must know their place in life, and if you don’t mind my saying, I believe it’s idealists like you, with a misguided desire to promote equality, who have helped to fuel these disgraceful aspirations among the Indians. Independence, my foot. How can they rule themselves, I mean look at them. The vast majority haven’t progressed since the invention of the wheel.’

She looked pointedly towards the road, along which a bullock cart laden with sugar cane creaked and laboured its way towards the town.

‘And if we did leave, you know what would happen? They’d be at each other’s throats. I mean they are already. There’s no love lost between Muslim and Hindu. There was trouble in the town just the other night, and Superintendent Lincoln had to go and sort it out.’

Dora said nothing and nodded in a polite if non-committal sort of way.

Miss Alcott heaved a weighty sigh and shifted herself in the cane chair, It was hot, and her flowery cotton dress was sticking to her skin. ‘Then of course there’s the Sikhs. If you ask me, I think they’re the worst of the lot. They’ll go for both their throats. If we leave India, they will all fall upon each other like hyenas and tear the place apart. It would be a tragedy, an absolute tragedy.’

She got up and straightened out her damp skirt. ‘If you’ll take my advice, I think you should consider sending Edith to somewhere like Auckland House School for Girls in Simla. It’s as good a place as you’ll get in this country. They have a kindergarten section. She would soon get used to being away from home. She needs proper friends; girls of her own kind, not servants’ children. And if you don’t mind my saying, I wish you would take more part in our affairs. You keep yourself too much to yourself. People notice, you know. Why don’t you come along to the Mothers’ Union or the Women’s Institute; the club is doing a Gilbert and Sullivan this autumn. You and Harold should get involved. I hear you’re a pianist. We’re going to need a pianist. Shall I tell Major Pocock? He’s producing it.’

‘I’m not sure,’ replied Dora, reluctantly. ‘I’ll think about it, and let him know myself.’

Miss Alcock shrugged. ‘Please yourself,’ she said through pursed lips.

She went over to her bicycle, which was leaning against the verandah steps, and put on her topee.

‘Hey you! Girl!’ She hailed Marvinder who turned automatically at the commanding voice. ‘Open the gate!’

Marvinder, who had Jaspal on her hip, began to hurry up the drive, but Edith overtook her calling out, ‘I’ll go!’

Frowning, Miss Alcott pedalled through on to the road. ‘Thank you, Edith,’ she said primly, ‘but I think you should have let the girl open the gate.’

‘Oh, but I like opening gates,’ cried Edith. ‘Come on, Marvi!’ she called. ‘Come and swing!’

‘She’s turning into a heathen, there’s no doubt about it, poor child,’ muttered Miss Alcott as she cycled away. ‘I must ask Cyril to intervene.’

It came from under the toy cupboard, the snake. Edith saw its eyes first of all, like bright beads, glinting in the dusty darkness. Then as it ventured further into the room, its head swayed from side to side, like a scout examining the lie of the land. Every now and then, its tongue flashed from its mouth like lightning.

The lizard on the wall froze, still as an ornament, and even the sunlight, falling in warm dappled patches across the carpet, seemed to cool.

Edith watched it from her rocking horse. She only paused for a moment with surprise, her mouth opening instinctively to exclaim, but shutting it again without a sound.

Ayah had got her ready for church. Like a passive doll, Edith had allowed herself to be dressed in her hated pink frock with the white smocking across the chest; had allowed her feet to be imprisoned in white socks, and the white, leather shoes with a fold-over strap which buttoned and pinched.

Now she sat on the rocking horse while old Shanta brushed her hair. It was one of the ayah’s favourite tasks. She loved trapping the long, golden tresses in the bristles and lifting it outwards, like a river, a river which then became a cataract, streaming down as she gradually released it from the brush.

When Edith briefly stopped rocking, Shanta was pleased. It gave her a chance to thrust the brush close to the scalp and pull through the tangles which had gathered in the night. But then Edith casually resumed her motion, her eyes never leaving the snake, as it edged its way along the fringe of the carpet, head reaching forwards, then that slight pause, while the rest of its body caught up in a swift S.

The playpen stood in the middle of the carpet. Jhoti had just bathed and changed the twins. They rolled around like little buddhas, chubby arms and legs flailing among the teddies and wooden bricks. Ralph saw it first; chortled with delight at the undulating patterns on its scaly back; reached out a hand through the wooden bars of the playpen, longing to grasp its writhing body.

Edith went on rocking. She didn’t say a word, though her eye was fixed on the snake.

At the sight of Ralph’s hand, the creature halted. It lifted its narrow head, its tongue flickering with curiosity. Edith stopped rocking a second time. In the pause, Ayah took the comb and rapidly divided her hair with a parting and began plaiting with deft fingers.

The room, the lizard, the older sister stopped breathing. How long is a moment? Then somewhere in the universe, a god blinked and life started again. The snake moved on, sliding away towards the watery coolness of the bathroom beyond. Ralph withdrew his hand, disappointed, and Edith went on rocking.

Edith always accompanied her parents to church. They cycled the mile down the road, Edith riding in front of her father on the crossbar. He in his smart, light brown suit with topee on head, and Dora in some suitable, long-sleeved cotton frock, with one hand alternating between keeping her billowing skirts in check or hanging on to her white, panama hat.

Now that Jhoti helped Ayah to look after the twins, Marvinder was given charge of Jaspal for long periods of time. It was rare to see Marvinder without Jaspal growing out of her hip like a second torso. On Sundays, she too made her way to the church. It was by a different route, across the fields and through the mango groves. Today she went as usual, picking her way among the gravestones, round the back of the tall, grey walls of the stone church to the east door. Here, old Ram Singh crouched like a gnome, toothless and rheumatic that he was, and pumped air through the bellows into the organ, while Mr Austin, the organist, produced music which made the wooden floors vibrate.

Often, Marvinder folded her veil, put it on the ground and laid Jaspal on it so that she was free to have a go at pumping the organ. Ram Singh didn’t mind. It gave him a break to have a smoke. Just so long as she pumped evenly and didn’t jerk the bellows.

‘O God, our help in ages past,

Our hope of years to come,’

Marvinder sang along with the congregation. She knew the words without knowing the meaning, and she loved the shudder of the organ when Mr Austin used his feet and produced the loud, deep vibrating chords for the last verse.

When at last it was time for the sermon, Edith was always allowed to flee the tedium of sitting through the Reverend Alcott’s droning voice. Her leather shoes would echo with relief down the stone aisle as she hastened out in search of Marvinder. They would play hide and seek among the graves, sometimes their laughter reached the older members of the congregation who looked accusingly at Dora. Or the girls would simply wander about looking with awe at the kindly, stone faces of guardian angels, and trace their fingers over the inlaid words on the headstones.

That Sunday, the Sunday of 3 September 1939, Mr Austin was playing the hymn, ‘There is a green hill far away without a city wall’. When it ended, there was the usual pause, while people closed their hymn books and shuffled themselves into some kind of comfortable position for the sermon. Marvinder waited for Edith to come out, but she didn’t appear. Getting impatient, she left Jaspal lying on her veil near Ram Singh, and crept up to the organ loft. Noiselessly, she peered down through the balustrade at the congregation all splashed in different colours with reflections from the stained glass windows.

The vicar was speaking in a solemn voice, but somehow, today it seemed different. Everybody had their eyes on him, even Edith. No one fidgeted or dozed; no one’s eyes wandered around the church. Then suddenly, they all knelt down with bowed heads and clasped hands and began to pray. Someone hurried up into the organ loft and among anxious whispers, Mr Austin flicked through the hymn book looking for a change of hymn. Then when the vicar had stopped speaking, they all sang ‘Abide with me’, in a very slow, sad way.

Marvinder went back into the churchyard and waited. At last, the service was over, but when everyone emerged from the church, they came out silently. No one was talking. The vicar stood as usual at the door, shaking hands, but no one smiled.

Edith emerged holding her mother’s hand. She looked ill at ease. On seeing Marvinder she detached herself and ran over to her.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Marvinder. ‘Why is nobody talking?’

‘We are at war,’ said Edith. ‘The vicar told us. He got a telegram right in the middle of the service.’

That evening, Dora didn’t leave it to Jhoti and the ayah to put the children to bed. Dora was filled with a terrible dread. She wanted to clasp all her children round her. If she had only known of one sure, safe place in the world to escape to, she would have gathered them all up and run. As it was, she fought down her panic by helping to undress them, finding excuses to clasp them in her arms and smother them with kisses.

Jhoti was going to and fro between the kitchen and the bathroom carrying big kettles of hot water for their baths. Suddenly, she gave a fearful shriek. They heard the crash of a kettle, and Jhoti ran out in terror. ‘Sāp, Memsahib! Sāp !’

‘Snake!’ Dora went white with horror. ‘Harold! Harold!’

Edith climbed on to the rocking horse. Her face was blank and cold as marble.

Jhoti had flung the kettle of near boiling water at the snake and helped to stun it, so when Harold and Arjun came rushing in, it didn’t take long to club it to death and fling its body outside into the dust.

Later when Dora examined it, to satisfy herself that it would no longer be of any danger, she suddenly felt remorse and foreboding. Why had they killed it? Why had they allowed mindless panic to destroy such a beautiful creature?

She wandered back into the nursery and checked each of her twins.

Then Dora went into the smaller annexe off the nursery, where Edith now slept. As she peered at her daughter through the mosquito net, she was shocked to find her lying awake. Edith stared at her unblinking. Her gaze was so fixed, so emotionless, that at first she thought she must be asleep, even though her eyes were open.

‘Edith?’ she whispered.

Edith stared at her a second or two longer, then without replying to her mother, rolled over and slept.

Jhoti stood in the darkness of the verandah and breathed deeply. The pungent smells of jasmine, lilies and lemons hung in the air. Marvinder crouched, dozing nearby, her head lolling against Jaspal, who was clasped in her arms. She clambered to her feet and came to her mother.

‘Ma?’ she whispered. ‘Was the snake dangerous?’

‘It was a cobra. Cobras can kill,’ answered Jhoti.

Marvinder shuddered and drew closer to her mother.

‘Shall we go home now, Ma?’ she asked.

‘In a moment,’ murmured Jhoti. She could see the light come on in the drawing room. Harold and Dora entered. His arm was round her shoulder as if to comfort her. Then he took out his violin, while Dora went to the piano. This was how they always ended their day, and Jhoti liked this last invisible link with them.

Each evening, she would squat outside on the verandah, with Jaspal suckling at her breast, and Marvinder playing hopscotch on the flagstones, and listen to Harold and Dora making music together. It was like a religious ritual, and Jhoti found it strangely comforting.

She watched their blurred shapes through the wire-meshed windows and listened to sounds she would never know were Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart. Even Marvinder, fidgeting around her mother, eventually became still, sometimes huddling into Jhoti to watch and listen, and sometimes even pretending that she was playing the violin too. She copied the way Harold held the instrument under his chin with his left hand, and drew the bow up and down with his right.

At last, Arjun would enter the room quietly and wait to be noticed. Then he would announce that their dinner was ready to be served. Wrapping her veil around Jaspal, and tugging Marvinder’s hand, Jhoti would at last go back home along the white road.

That night, as they walked back home, there was a long, low rumble coming from the road. Had it been in monsoon, they would have thought it was thunder. But it was September, and the rumble went on longer than any roll of thunder.

From that day on, often in the night, they would hear the rumbling sound, and it was a long time before anyone knew they were army trucks moving troops. Some to go to the ports to board ships for Europe, others to go to the border areas for fear of invasion.

For no one in her village did the fact that the world was at war mean anything. Nothing interrupted their routine. There were still the fields to tend and the buffaloes to milk. It would have been possible for no one to even know, except that one day a letter came from Govind.

‘As soon as war was declared, all the students went and joined up. I too have joined up and will be sent from England to meet up with a Punjab regiment in France. We are all very excited and keen to see action. You would be proud to see me in my uniform. Of course, it means I will not complete my university course until after the war.’

Jhoti and Marvinder listened in silence to Harold reading out the letter. When he had finished he said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, Jhoti. It looks as though you won’t be seeing your husband for quite a while yet.’

‘I knew papa would not come back,’ said Marvinder.

SEVEN

The Lake

Beyond the church, through a deeply shaded area of mango trees, crumbling slowly away under monsoon rain and relentless sun, invaded by the predatory embrace of weeds and vines and twisting roots of ivy, was the rajah’s palace. It was Marvinder who had first told Edith about it.

‘Doesn’t look much like a palace to me,’ Edith complained. She thought all palaces would be like the ones in her book of fairy tales; palaces with tall narrow turrets, marble domes and slanting roofs of gold with arrow slitted windows. But when they clambered through the tangle of vegetation and reached the vast sweep of grey stone verandah, she was impressed.

The building rose like a huge mouldering wedding cake, supported on great, fluted stone pillars and rising tier upon tier, terrace upon terrace until finally it culminated in a flat roof, fifty, eighty, a hundred feet up, hemmed in by stone balustrades and fierce parapets.

Edith fell silent. She was overawed, even afraid. It was so wild, so defiant. If silk-turbanned rajahs and bejewelled queens had ever looked out of those blank windows, or stood on the roofs to watch the sun go down, all trace of them had been smothered. Wherever there was a chink, a crack, a space between pillar and roof, step and verandah, wall and ceiling, a plant, a tendril, a cluster of grasses had seeded itself; long trailing weeds and brilliant flowers, cascaded precipitously; saplings reached out like new-born foals on long dangly legs, with twigs and leaves sprouting and spreading out and out into unimpeded space.

By day, pigeons and sparrows and kites and crows flew in and out of the rooms and roofs; bees, hornets and wasps built their own vast palaces of honey which hung like huge nets from the alcoves. But by night, the palace became the domain of bats and owls, stray dogs and roaming hyenas. Snakes slithered out across the cool stone and a myriad of brilliant insects swarmed in and out of their hidden kingdoms.

At first, Edith hadn’t wanted to stay long. It frightened her, and she had turned haughtily, remarking that it wasn’t her idea of a palace. But that was years ago. Now she was older, nearly ten. She had been at boarding school for almost two years and had become hardened.

The absence from home was long. Six months without a break, without seeing her mother and father. She blamed the twins. If it hadn’t been for them, the war wouldn’t have broken out in Europe, then they would have all gone back to England; they would have lived together in a house and gone to day schools. But the day war broke out was the day the snake nearly bit Ralph, and somehow she linked the two events with her despatch to boarding school. The twins required so much attention and hard work. Edith thought of them as leeches, sucking away at their mother. Even now, although they were six years old, she never saw her mother without a twin draped round her legs, or clinging to her neck, making demands, ensuring that there was no time for Edith.

At first she cried every night in her school dorm and wrote letters to her parents begging them to take her home. She thought that she would die of homesickness; thought that the lump of pain would never stop choking her, but then one morning, she woke up. The pain was gone, but it was as if a stone had replaced her heart and she had simply stopped feeling.

It was the same when she came home for the holidays. They met her off the train, her mother and father, each with a twin in hand. She felt hatred and stiffened when they kissed her. How annoying, then, that the twins adored her. Ralph and Grace followed her round everywhere, and called her Edie! And because Jaspal called his elder sister, Didi, as is the custom, the twins also called Marvinder, Didi. They loved the two sounds being so close. ‘Edie and Didi!’ they chanted, until it drove Edith mad.

One day, Edith remembered the palace and she whispered to Marvinder, ‘Let’s run away and hide from the twins. Let’s go to the palace.’

Marvinder was a little troubled at leaving the twins. They had been put partially in her charge, while Jhoti helped Dora Chadwick prepare the house for a party that night, though Jhoti or Dora was always popping out to check that all was well.

‘Do you think we should?’ Marvinder asked. ‘We were supposed to keep an eye on the twins.’

‘We always have to look after the twins,’ wailed Edith. ‘I’m fed up. I want to play my own game. I want to go to the palace and play kings and queens. We can take dressing-up clothes. My mother has some lovely sarees and we can take cushions to sit on.’

‘How will we take it all there?’ asked Marvinder, getting swept away with the idea, despite herself.

‘We’ll take a bike. We’ll take Arjun’s bike. We’ll put the cushions and sarees in the front basket. I’ll cycle. I’ve ridden his bike before, and you can ride to the palace on the back seat.’

‘What palace?’ demanded Ralph, whose sharp ears caught the last part of Edith’s sentence.

‘Mind your own business,’ retorted Edith rudely.

‘Can we play whatever it is you’re playing?’ demanded Grace looking very interested.

‘Yes, you can play, if you can find your own dressing-up things,’ declared Edith, with a sudden cunning flash of inspiration.

‘Come on, Ralph, Edie says we can play too!” squealed Grace, tugging her twin into the bungalow.