Thursday's Child (27 page)

‘Arree-ee,' a little sigh went through the knot of people, and one or two women began to weep softly. Khan had been popular in the compound, and it was with sad faces that his fellow servants reluctantly turned and went back to their homes, the womenfolk keeping close to their men in fear of the nearness of death.

Bhim spotted Ayah amongst the crowd. ‘Get back to my wife,' he yelled at her furiously. Ayah fled.

Father and son walked slowly back into the house, both heavy with thought. They went through the kitchen, Ram Singh locking the back door, saw that Ayah had apparently moved Nulini from the storeroom, and walked along the veranda together.

Was Ram Singh remembering Khan's patient service through many months? Did he feel that he had driven the man to his death? Nobody knows. But the next day Ram Singh obtained from his clerk the name of Khan's father and of his village so that he could send news of the man's death – and with the letter he enclosed his wages for six months to come – the clerk showed to Ayah the note of the amount written in the housekeeping book.

And of what was Bhim thinking? His was a difficult position in which to be; and because he was a conscientious man he probably reproached himself bitterly for not taking more care of his wife; but that he was prepared to stand by her was made abundantly clear just as he and his father were passing Shushila's and Nulini's sleeping-room.

The silence of the house was broken by a muffled cry. ‘Give it to me,' panted Ayah's voice, as if she spoke with difficulty. There was a sound of scuffling and of laboured breath, as if two people were fighting.

‘What now?' exclaimed Ram Singh, and leaped towards the apartment with an agility surprising for a man of his years. He was, however, not quicker than Bhim, who tore apart the curtains of the doorway and stood for a second paralysed by what he saw.

‘Nulini!' he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, fearing to wake his little sister, who still slumbered on her cot at the far side of the room.

‘Ayah,' cried Ram Singh.

Locked together like wrestlers, Nulini and Ayah fought for possession of a small dagger. The younger woman held the weapon in her right hand and was attempting to drive it down upon herself, but Ayah had caught her wrist with one hand and forced it back, while she held the girl's body in a bony grip close to her own, so that Nulini could not strike without first killing or wounding the old nurse.

Bhim shot forward and snatched the dagger from his half-naked wife. Nulini wrenched herself away from Ayah and stood swaying unseeingly in the middle of the room, her hair loose down her back with a few withered flowers still tangled in it. Naked to the waist, she looked like the ill-used captive of some ancient Muslim conqueror.

‘She was about to stab herself,' panted Ayah quite unnecessarily, while she tucked her sari into the waistband of her petticoat and readjusted her spectacles which were hanging from one ear.

‘Hey, Ram!' exclaimed the harassed father, nodding his head helplessly from side to side.

Bhim tucked the dagger into the waist of his dhoti and then silently supported his fainting, unprotesting wife out on to the veranda. Ram Singh and Ayah followed him, while Shushila still slept on.

Nulini looked ghastly in the moonlight, blood oozing down her face from a scratch.

‘Father,' said Bhim urgently. ‘Let me deal with this matter. There will be no scandal, I promise you – if you can shut the mouth of Ayah.'

Ram Singh's anger had evaporated, and he looked old and sad. ‘Do what you will,' he said shortly, and turned on his heel, and with trembling steps sought the seclusion of his own room

Bhim picked up his wife and carried her to his room – a strange room to her, which she had hardly entered since her marriage. Impelled by curiosity, more than a desire to help, Ayah trailed along after her swiftly-moving young master.

Bhim sat down upon his cot, his wife upon his knee, took
his shawl from amongst the rumpled sheets and wrapped it round Nulini, who had maintained a dazed silence seeming hardly aware of what was happening to her. He rocked her back and forth as if she was a baby, whispering encouragement to her, while Ayah, uncertain what to do, fluttered nervously in the doorway.

‘Bring a glass of water, Ayah,' said Bhim.

She went and fetched the water from the kitchen, handing the glass to him with silent disapproval. She was full of indignation that Bhim thought it necessary that she should be instructed to keep her mouth shut. Keep her mouth shut, indeed – as if she was going to betray the honour of the family. It was Nulini who had done the betraying, and what the girl needed in Ayah's opinion was to be thrown out on the street, not nursed and soothed by her husband.

Bhim forced a little water through Nulini's lips. It ran partly down her face, but it brought her back to her senses, and she moved as if to jump off her husband's lap. Bhim held her firmly, however, continuing to rock her and whisper in her ear. She turned her face into his shoulder and suddenly great sobs shook her; she clenched one hand and beat a tattoo on Bhim's shoulder.

‘You don't care – you don't care – not about me – not about Khan.' Her voice rose. ‘Why did you drive him to his death? you and Father-in-law.' She wailed in mourning, and continued to reproach her patient husband in between sobs.

Bhim went a sickly grey. ‘You may go,' he said frigidly to Ayah, and very reluctantly Ayah went. She remembered that Ram Singh was hungry and trotted along to his room, calling quietly at the open door: ‘Sahib, Sahib.' There was no reply, so she entered, tentatively ready to retreat: ‘Sahib, shall I bring you something to eat?'

Ram Singh was sitting on his divan and staring into space, his shawl wrapped round his shoulders and head. He seemed at first hardly aware of his old questioner, but when she repeated the query, he said coldly without looking at her: ‘No.'

Ayah turned to go back to her bed, only to be brought
to a halt by Ram Singh's saying in the same frigid tone: ‘Woman, if you speak a word of this night's happenings to anyone, I will beat you to death – to death.'

Ayah shrank away. Small as Ram Singh was, he had a terrifying presence.

‘Ji, hun,' she said, ‘I shall say nothing.'

And she kept her promise for years, until time had made the events of little interest to any but the family.

Ram Singh's clerk drove his master and Shushila to the railway station to meet Mrs Singh. The clerk had silently shouldered a lot of extra work during the previous few days. It was he who directed the operation of recovering Khan's body and he who kept the police constables from wandering all over the house and making themselves a nuisance in the kitchen, while Ram Singh dealt courteously with the Police Inspector. The Inspector had come to make routine inquiries and was made so comfortable that he remained for the day, taking meals with Ram Singh. He was quite satisfied that in a house such as Ram Singh's nothing untoward could have occurred – the lip of the well was low and easily stumbled over in the darkness. He suggested that Ram Singh should have the wall built higher and keep the well covered at all times, and he was flattered when Ram Singh said that he welcomed such ingenious suggestions.

It was the clerk who arranged the funeral, buying a stretcher for the body, cloth in which to wind it and ghee and wood for the funeral pyre. He did not himself touch the body; some strange old women, like witches, came from the nearest village and wound the faithful lover and arranged him on the stretcher.

Khan did not lack mourners at his funeral. The servants went, and many of the people he knew in the village followed in straggling procession down to the burning ghat
where his body was consigned to the flames.

Bhim did his best to keep from Nulini the sounds of the disturbance caused by the police and the rescuers; but it was impossible, even with the windows shut, not to be able to follow the whole operation from the shouts outside. She lay on his bed, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, while he sat and chafed her limp hands. When a half-triumphant wail announced the bringing of the body out of the well, she was suddenly sick, retching helplessly on an empty stomach, while Bhim held her and Ayah ran to and fro with bowls and cloths. When the sickness eased, Bhim, who had not slept during the night while he sat with his tossing wife, went to his father and asked permission to send for a doctor.

Ram Singh refused flatly. He evidently feared what a doctor might be told of the night's happenings, and he assured Bhim that Nulini would get over her hysterics in a day or two. She ought to be grateful, he said, that she had such a forgiving husband.

In the early evening when the funeral procession had gone its noisy way under the window, Nulini became feverish, muttering and turning restlessly on the bed. Bhim sent Ayah to his mother's storeroom for blankets, and when they came he packed them over Nulini. In the absence of Cook Maharaj at the funeral, he himself went to the kitchen and cracked ice from the big block which was delivered daily, filled an ice bag and placed it on Nulini's forehead, but she writhed so much that it was hard to keep it there.

‘I wish Mother was here,' he said to Ayah.

‘She comes tomorrow,' said Ayah, pity for the boy making her gentle-voiced for once.

Shushila, on her way to the station with her father, knew nothing of Khan's death, her father himself having taken her over to her uncles' house immediately she had eaten her breakfast on the morning after the tragedy, on the excuse that sister Nulini was not very well and it would be dull for a little girl if she had no one with whom to play.

Shushila, therefore, gave her mother a tremendous welcome, complete with a garland which she had chosen
herself in the bazaar on the way to the station.

Thakkur sat with the clerk in the front of the returning car and, of course, asked where Khan was, and the clerk told him in an undertone of the accidental drowning, while Shushila babbled happily to Mrs Singh.

‘Nulini has fever,' Thakkur heard her say. ‘It is a pity because she has given me her badminton racket and was going to teach me how to play.'

‘Nulini ill?' exclaimed Mrs Singh, full of concern.

‘She is not well,' said Ram Singh, ‘I shall tell you more about it at home.'

‘When she is better, Bhim is going to take her to Simla for a holiday,' said Shushila. ‘I asked if I could go too – he says I can go next time – not this time.

‘He's going to learn to play badminton too, so that we can all play together,' she added. ‘Can I buy some shuttlecocks, Mummy?'

‘Of course, dear.'

Ram Singh asked how Mrs Singh's sister was progressing and Thakkur held his breath while Mrs Singh said calmly that she was now quite well and sent her namastes to her brother-in-law.

As soon as they arrived home, Ram Singh drew his wife into his study and shut the door behind them. ‘Before even giving her a glass of water,' remarked Ayah indignantly.

He must have told her about Khan and Nulini, because without even waiting to wash her feet and hands, she hurried to Shushila's room, while Ram Singh stumped up the stairs to his prayer room, looking like a small thundercloud.

‘Sahib and Ma ji must have disagreed,' thought Ayah, as she hurried after her mistress. ‘Nulini Bahu is in Chota Sahib's room,' she informed Mrs Singh, a little breathlessly.

‘Is she very sick?' Mrs Singh asked, as she changed direction and headed for Bhim's room, her sari end wafted out behind her in the breeze of her passing.

‘Temperature is down, Ma ji.'

They reached Bhim's room.

‘Wait here, Ayah,' said Mrs Singh, pointing to a spot out
of earshot, and disconsolately Ayah sat down on the stone floor and waited. Mrs Singh lifted the door curtain, and Ayah could see Bhim sitting at work at his desk, while Nulini lay quietly on his cot, which he had moved close to the desk. The boy rose, and the curtain dropped.

Nobody ever knew what passed between Mrs Singh and the young couple, but having nursed one daughter-in-law back to health, she silently nursed the other one, and about ten days later she saw Nulini and Bhim off to Simla.

Ram Singh did not speak to his elder son before he left. Apparently Bhim's quiet acceptance of his wife's infidelity was too much for the old man, and the thought that his first grandchild was likely to be a servant's bastard must have burned in him.

Both parents looked old and tired. The beautiful, big house which had been built to hold lots of grandchildren was silent and empty. Even Shushila, robbed of her playmate, was quieter and spent more time at her uncles' house playing with her cousins.

The warm, damp days of the monsoon went slowly by like monotonous drips from a tap, and the first cool breath of autumn rippled softly along the verandas.

‘Soon it will be Diwali,' shouted Shushila, ‘lovely, lovely Diwali.'

Thakkur was serving his master with lemon water when the sound of her cheerful shouting to Pratap echoed through the garden. He saw Ram Singh's moustache twitch as if the mouth beneath was trembling, and Mrs Singh cleared her throat nervously. He might well look dismal, thought Thakkur, with one son under a cloud at Shahpur and the other sent to Simla out of season as if he was also in disgrace. Thakkur did not know why Bhim should be in disgrace, but he had marked the unusual lack of communication between father and son and the departure to a hill station at the wrong time of year. What was the use of Diwali, Festival of Light, ruminated Thakkur, a time of family reunion, when there was no family to reunite?

He pottered off to the kitchen and when, later, he returned to clear away the glasses, Mrs Singh was saying rather diffidently: ‘Father, can we not have a
real family party here for Diwali?'

‘Who is there to ask?' asked Ram Singh sulkily, not having noticed Thakkur's approach.

‘You have sons,' said Mrs Singh reproachfully.

‘They have brought me nothing but sorrow and worry,' said Ram Singh, full of self-pity.

Thakkur mopped up imaginary spots of lemon from the side table; it always amused him how Mrs Singh managed her husband, and he did not wish to miss any more of the conversation than he had to. The couple were sitting on a sheet-covered mattress enjoying the mild late afternoon sun, and Mrs Singh moved closer to her husband. She patted his hand just as if she was a young wife, as Thakkur remarked later, and said: ‘Is it not our duty to guide our children lovingly and not to leave them to struggle alone in the world? This is surely our duty and should be our pleasure while we are here.'

Ram Singh said nothing but did not withdraw his hand. She smiled impishly at him, and Thakkur found some more imaginary spots to mop up.

‘I have a story to tell you,' she said. ‘Before I tell you, however, you must promise me something.' Her voice had a gay inflection.

Ram Singh showed faint interest.

‘Yes. The promise I ask …' and she looked at him with her fine eyes in such a way that he had to smile at her. ‘The promise that I ask is that if I make you happier with my story, you will buy me a present, and if I make you unhappy you will not upbraid me.'

‘Humph,' said Ram Singh grumpily. ‘There might as well be one happy person in the house – I will buy you a wrist watch.'

‘Oh, how lovely,' breathed Mrs Singh.

Her husband bridled a little, rather enjoying the impression he had made. In fact, Mrs Singh looked so hugely satisfied at his offer that in the end he laughed.

‘Well,' said Mrs Singh, taking a big breath. ‘There was once a young man of great ability, whose father desired that he should enter the family silk business. The boy was unfortunately not very obedient and swore that he would
never be any use as a merchant; instead he wanted to be a lawyer. His father was furious and said that the young man would come to a bad end …'

Reluctantly Thakkur drifted unnoticed back to the kitchen. Ma ji had more courage than ten men. He would never, if he were a woman, be brave enough to tell the Burra Sahib that he himself had been an unfilial son of great strength of character, and that his sons had merely inherited their father's propensity for independent thought. Thakkur could remember being told, when he first came to the Singh household, about the fierce family row that had occurred when Singh Sahib had demanded further education so that he could become a lawyer. He had won his point, the second and third brothers had entered the silk trade, and the old father had lived to see all his sons flourishing.

Ma ji was a woman of strength, too. No wonder her sons demanded to go their own way. He hoped very much that Ma ji would prevail upon the Burra Sahib to bring the family together. Thakkur had served the family for so many years that he felt a part of it, and it distressed him very much to see the courtyard empty and the dining-room next to the kitchen barely used.

It was queer how Bhim Sahib had suddenly taken his wife away to Simla. He never would understand how they had suddenly become such a loving couple. They never seemed to bother much about each other before, although he had to admit that Miss Nulini was quick to serve her husband whenever he asked anything of her. Now it was just as if they were newly married and could not be enough in each other's company. Bhim Sahib had hardly left his wife throughout her illness, and even Cook Maharaj had noticed his solicitude for her when they set out on their journey. Ayah knew something, Thakkur was sure – she looked so secretive. Well, there was only one kind of secret women ever kept and that was when a new baby was expected, and they were always so cheerfully secretive about it, that it was never a secret for long. He grinned to himself as he thought he had reached the core of the mystery; no doubt the tailor would soon be called in to
stitch small garments.

But it was eleven months before the sewing machines whirred on the back veranda, so Thakkur never found out what caused Bhim Sahib's sudden interest in his wife.

Thakkur sat in the shade of the house and smoked a bili while Cook Maharaj prepared dinner – such a small dinner. The house was, indeed, far too empty. He wondered if Khan haunted it – and shivered at the thought. Strange how he fell down the well – as if he did not know where it was, after being so many months in the house. There were rumours about him. Chowkidar said that on the night of his death Burra Sahib had found the hill man stealing and had turned him out. Thakkur could not imagine Khan stealing – he would have trusted him with his life. He had been a very quiet man but in Thakkur's opinion he was no thief. Anyway, if he had stolen, no doubt in his next life he would be born a sweeper as punishment.

Thakkur watched Mrs Singh's wrist for several days. Would there be a suitable Diwali celebration? Would the boys be coming home? He had nearly given up hope, when one day Ayah told him that Burrah Sahib had bought Ma ji a fine, new watch, the best she had seen for a long time.

Thakkur was ironing a sari for Mrs Singh, and slowly he put down his charcoal-heated iron, looked up from his position on the floor of the kitchen and began to smile, his face nearly cracking with the unaccustomed effort. He gathered up the sari and made Ayah help him fold it, while the grin gradually expanded across his face. He picked the ironing cloth up off the floor, giving a peculiar snort as he did; then he suddenly threw back his head and laughed aloud, the cackles echoing round the kitchen and making Cook Maharaj and the little kitchen boy look up from their work in astonishment.

‘I don't see what there is to laugh at,' said Ayah testily. ‘Come to think of it,' she added sourly, ‘it's the first time I've seen you do anything but moan for years past.'