The Village by the Sea (14 page)

The cook stood watching and growled, ‘Look at them. Is this what they come all the way here for? They can bathe at home, more comfortably. But they're mad, that's what they are – mad.'

But the next day, when the bread ran out, Mr de Silva had to get into the car and fetch more. He said to the cook, ‘Tell me all you need and I'll go and do your shopping in Alibagh today so you won't need to bother me again.'

Hearing this, Lila darted out from the kitchen, stood before him with her hands clasped before
her and her eyes cast down shyly, and asked what she had made up her mind to ask: ‘Sahib, can you take my mother to the hospital in Alibagh? If you are going in the car, may she and I go with you? She has been so ill and there is no doctor and no hospital here.'

Mr de Silva looked shocked and stammered a bit, not knowing what to say, but his wife came running down the veranda and stood listening to Lila. ‘Why didn't you tell me she was ill?' she asked. ‘I always bring some medicines with me – I might have been able to help.'

Lila looked at her with gratitude and explained, ‘She has been ill for so long – she has grown very thin and weak. I don't know what medicine to get for her. A doctor must see her. There is a hospital in Alibagh. I thought – I thought if you can take her there – and I'll work for you – then the money you pay me – uh – that can pay for the doctor and the medicine.'

‘Of course!' exploded Mr de Silva. ‘Of course we will pay for the medicine. Go and fetch your mother.'

That was a day of such excitement that Lila might have enjoyed it if it had not been for all the strain and worry that went with the excitement. She had hardly ever been to Alibagh before although it was only three kilometres away, and certainly never before sat in a motor car. Yet when she did so, she could only worry about her mother who lay stretched out on the back seat, moaning, with her head on Lila's lap, looking so pale and sick that Lila wondered if she would reach Alibagh alive. She was so occupied with holding her mother's head and keeping her covered with a sheet that she did not look out of the window at the road or the trees or the bullock carts and bus stops that they passed. Mr de Silva drove at great speed as if he too were afraid he might not get Lila's mother to the hospital in time, and in a short while they were driving up the wide, quiet road to the hospital.

Here Lila began to feel so helpless that she would not have known what to do if Mr de Silva had not been with her and helped her. ‘Wait here – I'll go and fetch a stretcher and a nurse and go and speak to a doctor,' he said through the back window and then marched off with the purposeful stride of a city man past the rows of patiently waiting villagers in the compound.

He made all the arrangements and in a little while two men in white came with a stretcher and rolled Lila's mother gently on to it and carried her in. Lila ran after them with a little bundle made up of a shawl, a towel, a comb and a metal tumbler. Then she ran up the steps and down the veranda after her, following her into a ward where the beds stood in a double row under the slowly revolving electric fans. The room was cool and darkened by the green paint on the window-panes. The stretcher bearers lifted her mother on to one of the beds and a nurse came hurrying forwards to make her comfortable.

‘Wait here – I'll speak to the doctor, then I'll take you home,' said Mr de Silva, and Lila nodded and sat down beside the bed, trembling with fear and nervousness.

‘Don't look so frightened,' smiled the nurse as she straightened the sheets and arranged things on a small table by the bed. ‘We will look after her – we have very good doctors – you needn't worry now.'

The doctor came and examined Lila's mother who had not opened her eyes or spoken but lay still and white under the sheet. Lila stood biting her lip and watching the doctor and trying to
understand what he said to Mr de Silva in English. At last he turned around and spoke to her in Marathi. ‘Leave her here with us. It will take a long time to cure her, she is so emaciated. We will have to get many tests done to begin with, to find out what is wrong. That will take some days. We will send you the report – or you can come and fetch it after a week. But don't worry – there is nothing wrong that we can't put right.'

Lila shook her head: she did not want to leave her mother. But Mr de Silva said, ‘You have your sisters at home – you must come. I will bring you back after a few days, I promise. Come along.'

She was not brave enough to argue with him, so she followed him to the car but wept all the way home.

That night when her father was leaving the hut, he stopped to stare at her while she tried to light a fire with some sticks, and growled, ‘Where's your mother gone?'

‘I took her to the hospital in Alibagh,' Lila whispered, still on her knees and not daring to look up.

There was a dangerous roaring sound as he swayed on his feet above her like a tree about to fall. His shadow on the wall was made huge as a giant's by the small flickering flames of the fire. ‘Why did you send her away without asking me?' he roared.

‘You were – you were asleep, Father,' Lila whispered.

There was another roar from him. ‘I will go to her,' he shouted. ‘Why did you take her away without telling me? I will go to Alibagh – I will find her. She can't be left alone, you stupid girl.'

‘The nurses and doctors will look after her, Father,' Lila cried, afraid he would go to the hospital and make a drunken scene.

‘Don't answer back, girl,' he shouted. ‘What do you know about anything? What makes you think you can manage things? You can't.' He kicked over an earthen waterpot in his rage so that it fell and broke with a crash, flooding the kitchen floor. This made him even angrier and he stamped on the pieces of clay, smashing them to bits while he shouted, ‘How could you leave her alone? What if she needs something? What if she asks for me? Did you think of that?' He picked up one of the pots on the shelf and hurled it on
the floor beside Lila who cowered. ‘Cook some food, quick – I will take it to her.'

‘It's late, Father,' said Lila, crying.

‘It's not late – don't answer back,' he shouted, sweeping off a whole row of tumblers from the shelf. ‘Make the food at once. I'm going to take it to her at Alibagh,' he roared and began to crash around the house, hurling things about, while Lila hastily began to roll out the
chapatis
and bake them, although tears ran from her eyes and blinded her.

There was so little in the house to cook but she made up a small bundle of food and gave it to her father who went storming down the path in the dark, cursing all of them as he went, waking up all the stray dogs of Thul and making them howl.

Suddenly Lila remembered something. Snatching up the lantern from its hook on the kitchen wall, she ran out to the log on the creek and called, ‘Father! If – if the Khanekar brothers come again to ask for money – what shall I do?'

She could not make out her father's face or expression in the dark but she could see him halt for a moment. Then he swayed, waved his arm about his head, and roared, ‘Do? Tell them to get off my land, that's what.'

‘Father,' she cried, in a trembling voice, ‘last time they killed Pinto because they said you owed them money for toddy –'

‘That's a lie! I owe no one money,' he roared, swaying about in the pandanus grove like a ghost. Then, in a slightly lowered voice, he called, ‘I will stop by their house and pay them. I will tell old Hira-
bai
to look after you girls till your brother comes back. Curse him, where is that rascal?' Muttering, he went crashing through the grove to the Khanekars' house.

Lila stood listening tensely for sounds of a quarrel, but there were none. Of course, she realized, at this time of night, the brothers would not be at home, they would be out drinking. Probably only old Hira-
bai
was at home and she was certainly not as bad as the men. So she went back to the hut, feeling sure her father would go straight on to the toddy shop for his customary drink.

He did not, however, come back the next day or the next. When Mr de Silva took Lila to visit her mother and collect the reports, she was frightened to find him sitting on the veranda outside her mother's
ward. He got to his feet when he saw them coming and stood in the doorway silently when Lila went in. As she passed him, she noticed that for once he did not smell of toddy. He looked so grey and old and bent that for the first time she felt sorry for him. Then she went in to see her mother and found her in bed but awake, washed and clean.

The nurse stopped and smiled at her. ‘See, she is still here, your mother – we haven't hidden her away. Doesn't she look better? She is taking her medicine and she is better already.'

Lila sat and held her mother's hand, smiling in relief. Her mother smiled back at her silently.

It was Mr de Silva who went to the doctor to collect the reports and explained them to Lila as they drove home. ‘She is suffering from anaemia. A very bad case of it, the doctor says. It is lucky we brought her here in time. They have done many tests – X-rays and blood tests and so on – and they found that she has a touch of TB too, just a slight one that they can cure with medicines. They are giving her injections and good food, and she will get well. Of course it will take time – they say you must leave her with them for some time. Your father has said he will stay and look after her. Is that all right?'

Lila, who sat awkwardly in the back, not used to the slippery seat or the swaying motion of the car, had to nod and agree. She could do nothing else although a thousand worries clouded her mind and darkened her face.

Mr de Silva seemed to be watching her in the little mirror that hung over the windscreen. ‘Don't worry so much,' he said kindly. ‘I have given your father a little money for his food since he wants to stay at the hospital. We are paying for the medicines – the hospital itself is free. You will be paid for the work you and your sisters do for us so you'll have something for running your own household.'

‘But – you will go away soon,' Lila mumbled.

‘Yes, we are going but a friend of ours is coming from Bombay to live at
Mon Repos
for a few months. He will be alone and he will need a servant to look after him because we are taking ours back with us. If you wash and sweep and cook for him, he will pay you a salary.'

‘For a few months?' Lila asked disbelievingly. No one had ever stayed that long at
Mon Repos
. ‘But the monsoon will come.'

‘Yes, he wants to spend the monsoon at Thul. He is doing a study of – well, you will find out. He is a strange fellow,' chuckled Mr de Silva, and
swerved sharply to avoid a bullock cart on the road. When the car went steadily forwards again, he said, ‘So stop worrying now – you will have work and you will earn money and your mother will be taken care of at the hospital: your father is there to see to that,' and he began to whistle cheerfully as if every problem had been solved. Lila was not quite so sure about that but she was glad not to have to say any more and to stare silently out of the window at the bare, baked fields as she wondered about the future. Ever since Hari had left, everything had become uncertain.