The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q (32 page)

When the law confirmed my authority and made it illegal I’d been jubilant with smug, ‘I told you so’s’.

Since then, she’d been slightly more compliant. She never got used to using the hands-free – even though she, of all people, should know about the risk of electro smog – but she did allow me to answer the phone for her when we were in the car together. Usually she kept her phone in her handbag, either on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat, or on the back seat.

Today it lay in the console under the handbrake, between herself and Gran. When the happy little ringtone sounded we reached for it at the same time – me from the back seat, she from the driver’s seat. Her hand got there first; I was too far away, and restrained by the belt.

‘Mum, let me,’ I said, holding out my hand for it.

She ignored me. She flipped it open with one hand and put it to her ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Mum, I’ll take it. Give it here!’ I insisted. I unlocked my belt and slid to the edge of the back seat so as to be flush against the driver’s seat. With my left hand I grasped her wrist and tried to wrest the phone from her fingers. She gently pulled it away by leaning to the right, her ear glued to the handset. She listened for a few seconds, then said,

‘Yes, that’s me … listen, I’m on the road right now, could you call back in …’

‘MUM! WATCH OUT!’

Too late. Even as the words left my lips the car slammed into the vehicle in front and the world exploded in the deafening clank of metal crunching against metal, a grating clatter that went on forever.
Make it stop
, I cried into myself,
make it stop, make it stop
. The impact tossed me against the back seat like a lifeless rag doll and then it did stop, and the silence was more deafening than the noise that went before; the world had come to an end. My body felt broken into bits. I groaned and turned slightly to free a trapped arm. The fact that I could move, that I felt pain, reminded me that I was alive. Vaguely I registered a yelling voice as Mum’s. Then I passed out.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the roadside on a woollen blanket, covered with another blanket. A man in a green fluorescent jacket was bent over me. It was dark; lights flashing above me, somewhere a siren whining. People everywhere, milling around, aimlessly, it seemed to me; shrill voices. And pain. My body a single bundle of pain.

‘How are you?’ the paramedic asked. I ignored him as memory came rushing in.

‘Mum? Mum!’ I cried. I moved my legs, and all was pain. I didn’t care. I struggled to sit up. The paramedic put out a restraining hand.

‘Try to keep still, Miss. Your Mum’s all right. She’s fine.’

‘Where is she? I have to get to her. And … and Gran. Where’s Gran?’

‘Your Granny’s being looked after by the ambulance crew,’ said the paramedic. ‘She’s in good hands. Don’t worry, just keep quiet.’ But I had no intention of keeping quiet. Something in his voice told me that something was terribly, awfully wrong. Immediately my pain vanished. I scrambled into a sitting position, and attempted to rise. My knee buckled with an excruciating pain; I couldn’t help crying out, yet finished the action. The moment I was on my feet I limped off. There were people everywhere; onlookers behind a police barrier, policemen and women striding around in fluorescent jackets with notepads and walkie-talkies in their hands, and, outside a looming ambulance, a cluster of paramedics. That’s where I headed.

Mum was standing outside the ambulance, talking to one of the paramedics.

‘Mum!’ I cried and folded her into my arms. She was as stiff as a statue, her arms refusing to return the embrace.

‘Inky! Oh Inky! Thank God you’re all right! I … I had to leave you lying there because, because …’

I broke in.

‘Where’s Gran? How is she?’

Mum’s face crunched up. She raised a hand and pointed to the interior of the ambulance. I could see nothing beyond the backs of two paramedics.

‘In there. They’re still trying to save her. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Her head … her head crashed against the windscreen. I … I tried to help her, but, but …’

She held up her hands; they were both covered in blood. Her sleeves were bloody right up to the elbow, and beyond. Mum’s face filled with agony, and tears spilled from her eyes.

‘Inky … she might not make it! And it’s all my fault!’

R
ajan came with his bicycle
, and she wheeled hers out to meet him. They rode in silence to the Astor, and he helped her park hers in the crowded stand and lock it.

‘I’ve got tickets for the balcony,’ he said, smiling at her, and led the way up the stairs at the front of the building. Rika felt guilty; Rajan was saving up for England; he didn’t earn much. Could he really afford this? And then she felt grateful. Obviously he thought he could; obviously, he thought her worth the expense; and a swelling of contentment made her take a deep, audible breath.

‘You OK?’ asked Rajan, as he gestured for her to sidle down the row of threadbare velvet seats.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, and she was. She had never been finer. This was just so – right. No fizz, no bubbles, just a deep sense of the perfection of the moment.

The film began and very soon Rika was swept up in the magic of Eliza Doolittle and her struggle to become a ‘
lie-dy’;
wasn’t she, Rika, just like Eliza, in a way? Looking at life from the sidelines, lost in a sense of unworthiness, deeply aware of being beneath value? But no longer. Somehow, all that had changed, practically overnight.

When Freddy sang ‘On the Street Where you Live’ Rajan reached over and took her hand, and held it firmly all the way through to the end, slowly stroking the back of it with his thumb. And it was just the way it was when her hands were in the earth; from those clasped hands came a solid sense of unity, of being an entity, strong and real and secure. Tears gathered in her eyes and she turned to look at him, and he must have felt her movement for he turned too and they gazed at each other in the dark. All she could see of him was the faint outline of his head and his eyes, bright and shining and overflowing with tenderness. Rajan changed hands so that now his right hand held hers; his left arm he stretched out behind her and laid on her shoulder. She leaned in towards him and laid her head on his shoulder and all was well with the world. Rika let out a sigh of deep contentment. At last, she was at home. All else would follow on from this moment.

‘How did you like the film?’ Rajan asked, as they unlocked their bicycles.

‘Wonderful! Magical!’ said Rika. ‘But I didn’t like the end. She should have married Freddy.’

‘Freddy was the nice one … they say the nice ones always get left behind. That women like bad men.’

‘Stupid women, maybe. That Henry Higgins isn’t going to change. Once a selfish bastard, always a selfish bastard. She’ll live to regret that choice. She should have married Freddy.’

T
hey cycled
home in silence and Rajan took her in his arms outside her gate.

‘It was a wonderful night,’ he said. ‘Thank you for coming with me.’ He held her close and kissed her forehead. She shuddered in contentment.

‘Oh Rajan,’ she sighed, because she had no words.

Weightless with bliss, she floated up the stairs and in through the front door. And into bedlam. Her mother was waiting for her; and so, it seemed, was the whole family – Granny and Daddy and Uncle Matt and Marion, eyes wide open in trepidation, and Norbert and Neville, enjoying the show.

Her mother, in vintage Ol’ Meanie style, flew at her the moment she walked in the door, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her into the middle of the gallery.

‘Who you think you gallivanting around with, eh? Who? Who?’ she screamed.

‘I – I just went to the pictures, with Rajan. He lives at Granma’s!’

‘The servant’s son? The gardener? Basmati’s son?’

‘Mummy, I …’

Rika couldn’t believe her ears. Why was Mummy so upset? Mummy did not look down on the poor. Mummy’s whole fight, her whole philosophy, her whole
raison d’être,
was that the underclass should have the same opportunities, the same rights, as the middle class in which they themselves were so solidly placed. Equality was Mummy’s watchword. Was it all hot air? Did equality come to a stop when it touched her own family?

‘Mummy, we’re
friends!
We’ve been good friends for years, and …’

‘… and what in the name of all that’s wrong with the world is
this!’

Mum dumped a cardboard box at Rika’s feet. Rika gasped, and sank to her knees. There in the box was her whole life, the secret life she’d hidden beneath the floorboards of the Cupola. Pale blue exercise books, some of them swollen from moisture and age, some still new and slim, all of them filled from front to back with Rika’s spidery, almost illegible writing. Her whole life was in those books. Her many attempted and later abandoned novels.

But worst of all: her diary. The diary that sometimes had been the only friend she’d had through the years. She emptied her soul into that diary. It was completely, utterly secret. Not even Rajan had ever so much as glanced at a page. But Rajan was in there. In the newest editions over the past year, every encounter with Rajan, every discussion on matters of the soul, and the meaning of it all, and God, she had captured in words and written into her diary. The confessions she made to herself alone. Most of all, her newfound discovery that Rajan was the love of her life, added only this morning. Heat rushed to her cheeks as she remembered what she’d last written, just last night:

‘He is the other half of my soul. I feel myself swept up as if on wings of rapture, and he is there with me, at my side; our souls are joined in a bliss sublime, a bliss that passes all understanding.’

‘Who encouraged this? Ma, did you know about this?’

Mum turned to Granny with such venom Rika trembled. Granny, all this time, had been trying to get a word in, trying to intervene, but Mum’s wrath was like a wild writhing dragon, filling the room; all the others, Uncle Matt and the rest, stood around wringing their hands or furrowing their brows or enjoying the show according to their disposition. But Mum was beside herself with hysterics.

‘Mum, I …’ but Mum wasn’t listening.

‘Never again, you hear me, never again! You never go near that boy again! Never, never, never! I gave you far too much freedom; far too much! That boy! Never! Never! Never!’

‘I love him, Mummy, I do! Please!’ Rika, confused and despairing, began to blubber, to plead, to beg.

‘Dorothea, he’s a good boy. He’s a good steady student, works hard, and …’

That was Granny. At the same time, Uncle Matt was speaking:

‘I met him. A very fine young man, Dorothea. Rika’s in good hands and …’

But Mum wasn’t listening. She had worked herself into a blind rage by now: blind and deaf and spitting expletives. Rika had never, in all her life, seen her like this. It was as if a volcano that had lain dormant for centuries suddenly erupted, red hot lava spitting and pouring from its crater. Such was Mum’s wrath. Rika’s knees gave way and she sank to the floor in a hopeless helpless heap, sobbing Rajan’s name. Still Mum raged on.

‘Ruined my life! Ruined everything! Destroyed everything! Never again! And you!’ she swung around and pointed an accusing finger at Granny. ‘You! You knew! You knew everything and still you installed them in that house! You put them there! I could overlook that but now we have
this!
’

‘Dorothea! Snap out of it! Be sensible! You’re talking nonsense! Basmati was innocent and Rajan was little more than a baby!’

Granny managed to brave Mum’s wrath and took hold of her. She grabbed her waving arms and brought them down, shaking her, as if to banish the fury. And indeed, Mum stopped shouting and only seethed. She touched Rika’s head with her foot and said, in a commanding voice that brooked no disobedience:

‘You will never see him again. I forbid you from going to that house. And you will go to your room and stay there until tomorrow. Go on now. Go on!’

Rika sprang to her feet, the heat boiling over so that the words spouted red with rage.

‘Yes I know all about you! You’re just a horrible, bitter old woman blaming a tiny child for something that is all
your
doing. Rajan told me everything. I know the whole story. I know all about you and I can’t believe you’re still so full of poison for a thing that happened so long ago and I hate you, I hate you,
I hate you!’

She flew at her mother. Dorothea struggled against Rika’s wild fury, holding back her wrists as her fingers clawed at her face. Rika was younger, stronger, pulsing with a might she never knew she had, and wrestled Dorothea to the floor; but Daddy came from behind and, stronger yet, pulled her, still kicking and screaming, off her mother, while Uncle Matt helped Dorothea to her feet. Daddy wrapped his arms around Rika, clamping them to her body, but Rika’s eyes still clawed at Dorothea from afar.

Granny saw what was coming, and tried to prevent it by lurching at Dorothea. But she was too late. Dorothea swung back her right hand and with a mighty sweep, hit Rika across her cheek. Rika cried out in pain and anger, and Daddy swung her around, out of harm’s way. Uncle Matt pulled Dorothea away before she could attack again.

Daddy manoeuvred Rika out of the drawing room and there in the stairwell managed to calm her. He led her into the Annex and to her room. Dorothea yelled after her:

‘One thing you can be sure of, you’ll never see
that boy
in your life again!’

By the time she and Daddy reached her room, Rika’s rebellion had broken. She broke into abject tears, and, convulsed with desperate sobs, sank on to the bed. Daddy sat down beside her, laid an arm around her, and tried to comfort her. After a while she was still.

Then they talked. For the first time in their lives, Rika and her father talked into the night, breaching subjects that were taboo, digging up the darkness between them and laying it all bare.

‘Is it true, Daddy, that …’

She stopped. She didn’t want to say the words, didn’t want to hurt Daddy; but she had to know.

‘That I am Freddy’s daughter, not yours?’

Daddy, for a moment, looked flummoxed, distraught even.

‘How did you – who told you?’ he asked.

‘Am I?’

His voice trembled as he spoke. He took her hand.

‘You are my daughter, Rika; I was your father long before you were born. But yes; Freddy is your biological father. That’s why we named you Frederika; in memory of him. You c-c-cannot imagine the horror she lived through – Freddy b-b-bleeding to death in her arms, so soon after his reappearance. It broke her. And then she discovered that she was pregnant. Of course I m-m-married her; and of course I loved you as my own. B-b-but your mother was never the same again. A festering bitterness stole into her heart and ate it up from the inside. She could not even turn to you for comfort, be a mother to you … it was too much. It was like a madness – an irrational, unfair madness, and the only way she could deal with it, I think, was to direct it at those two innocents; Basmati and Rajan. They were victims too, but she didn’t care: they became the lightning rods for her fury. She forced Basmati out of the house. They went back to the Pomeroon, but returned when Rajan won his scholarship and Ma found Basmati that job with your other grandparents.

‘All she had was her work, and she poured herself into that. You can’t even begin to understand her t-t-torment. She turned away from God, from family, from everything and everyone that might cause her hurt. She knew that to love means to open yourself up to p-p-pain; she had reached the zenith of that pain and so she could no longer love. Certainly not me. But not even her own child, her own children.

‘Yet I think, somewhere deep inside, she can, and does love you, Rika, but in her own way. Her rage is a symptom of that love. It will blow over. It must blow over. Perhaps this crisis is a good thing. It will force her to confront her illogical rejection of Basmati and Rajan. It makes no sense, I agree; but maybe it’s the only way she had of deal with that tragedy, to come to terms with Freddy’s death. She had to blame someone. She blamed God; but she also needed a target.’

‘Well, she
had
a target! What about the man who actually killed him? Rajan’s father? He was to blame, not Rajan or Basmati! What about
him?’

‘She was out of her mind with grief, Rika. In that state you don’t think logically. She needed someone to blame and hate and he was quickly caught and put behind bars. He wasn’t someone she
knew
. For her, they were all one: the three of them, the reason for Freddy’s death. She made no distinctions. It was a madness, a blindness. But, maybe, maybe it’s a good thing this all blew up. Maybe it will force her to face that blind spot. I hope and pray that she will find healing. Somehow. You must forgive her, Rika. You must. Understand and forgive.’

‘I’ll try,’ sniffled Rika. But one thing she knew: she would not give up Rajan.

L
ater that night
, when all was silent in the house, Rika crept out of her room. She made her way to the telephone and dialled her grandmother’s number. After a while, Basmati answered the phone.

‘Basmati!’ Rika whispered. ‘Sorry to wake you up, but can you get Rajan, please? It’s urgent – an emergency!’

It seemed to take an aeon until Rajan came to the phone. At first all she could do was cry, and then she managed to say,

‘Rajan – I need to see you. Tonight! The gate is locked. I need you to come. Come in the back and come to my room. You know the latticework just beneath it? You can climb up there. My window is open. I’m waiting for you. Please come, please!’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘I can’t talk now!’ whispered Rika. ‘I need to talk to you – I need to! In person! Now! Please, please come!’

‘OK,’ said Rajan. ‘I’m coming.’