A Sahib's Daughter (22 page)

“Not even marry the woman you love!”

“It’s different for you. If I were to prick this little finger of yours,” he kissed it gently, “I know what I would find running through your veins, not blood but tea! You’ve known no other life. It’s different for me. I’m still trying to adjust to things here. And I like it well enough. But I can’t base my decision on the assumption that I’ll stay in tea forever.”

“You’ve been brainwashed,” she said, accusingly. “This doesn’t sound like you at all. I’d go the ends of the earth for you, Ravi. You know that.”

“Think about it,” he said. “Would you really be happy living among my Punjabi relatives? Would you, now? Can you see yourself wearing a sari and being one of the womenfolk?”

“No, I can’t,” she said, tossing her head. “And nor would I have to. Delhi is full of modern girls, who wear trousers and dresses and who have jobs and careers.”

“Try not to delude yourself,” he said. “You would not be happy in Delhi. Let me finish.” He held up his hand to stop her as she opened her mouth to speak. “Okay, we may be blissfully happy for a little while. What then? You would miss your own family, friends and way of life. You’d be miserable, and eventually you’d come to blame me.”

“So you’re marrying someone you don’t love? Are you leaving tea, too?”

“No, I’m not leaving tea. I haven’t made up my mind about that yet. Please try to understand how upsetting this has been for me. And I’m not getting married yet. I’m going away to get engaged – maybe.”

“Tell me this is not happening,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. Tell me I’m dreaming, Ravi. Everything you just said undermines my parents’ marriage and their entire lives together. They had far less in common than you and I have.”

“I’ve observed your parents,” he admitted. “And you’re right, they are happy. But they live in isolation on a lonely tea estate with no family to consider. Charles would never have been happy adapting to a Sikkimese lifestyle or Ramona to a British one. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but it involves sacrifice on both sides, sacrifice and a lot of compromise.”

All the beauty of the day was gone. Ravi had made up his mind. His protestations added up to one thing, something he would not admit. His relatives were opposed to his marrying an Anglo-Indian. They felt the stigma and did not want her offspring to be part of their family. The same thing that happened to Sandra Williams all those years ago was now happening to her. But in her case, she was being rejected by an Indian, not a British, Sahib!

She could now understand his long silences and prolonged absences. She was hurt that he hadn’t considered confiding in her or even consulting her until the entire matter was a fait accompli. She thought their relationship had been very special, and she personally would have overcome any obstacle to be with him. Obviously, her feelings were not reciprocated. He preferred to marry a complete stranger, rather than her. What was the point in arguing? She couldn’t make him love her.

So summoning up all her pride and dignity, she held out her hand and said,

“Well, it seems there’s nothing more to be said. I can see your mind is made up. Thank you for having the decency to come and tell me face-to-face. I know this hasn’t been easy for you, either.” Her voice broke.

“Good-bye, Ravi. Remember, I will always love you.”

“Please don’t,” he pleaded. “I am desperately sorry to have hurt you, and it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.” His eyes gazed down into hers.

“Please go,” she said. “I need to be left alone to think.”

He walked away with a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. He hadn’t expected to feel such a heel about the whole business. His father had been so persuasive and convincing.

“The days of mixed marriages are over, son,” he had said. “These are the seventies. Marriage is complicated enough as it is. We all have these flings, but in the end we marry women of our own kind and class. I can guarantee that you’ll be glad you did in the long run.”

So he’d broken the heart of the woman he loved and would now have to wonder for the rest of his life if he’d done the right thing. He walked disconsolately back to his bike, spun it around and headed for the plains and the loneliness of his Chota Bungalow nestled amid the tea.

Chapter 19

Darjeeling, 1978

After taking Samira and Prava home after tea at Glenarys, Justin drove to the Planters Club and checked in at the front desk. He was shown into his room by an ancient Nepalese bearer who had joined the establishment as a chokra more than fifty years ago. He had witnessed many changes in the club and in the town. One thing he was sure of, though, was that the Sahibs knew how to do things in style. It was not just that their tips were larger or that they were more polite, they had a respect for the order of things, which made serving them so much more satisfying.

Dali had been trained to wait at table, serving dishes from one side and removing them from the other, setting the table with mysterious implements that had to be arranged in the correct sequence and keeping the impression of being invisible so as not to intrude upon the Sahibs and Memsahibs. It was all a mystery to the uncouth lad from a village near Sonada, but he mastered the intricacies of serving at table, pouring drinks at the bar and carrying tea and breakfast trays to guests’ rooms with an air of total anonymity.

It upset his sense of propriety, therefore, when people swept aside the old niceties with no knowledge or respect for established conventions. New staff members were impossible to train, not understanding why they should do things a certain way when guests did not expect it of them. Dali would be confused and unsure. He was too old to adapt to change.

But this was a real Sahib today, and there weren’t many of them left. It would be a pleasure to serve him at dinner tonight. The older Indian Sahibs were also a pleasure to wait on. Some were even more British in their ways than the British themselves. It never once occurred to Dali that his opinions were disloyal in any way. He was Nepalese, though he had never once been to his country, and the club seldom had Nepalese guests, so everyone seemed foreign to him.

From the balcony outside his room, Justin admired the view. Below were the shops and restaurants on Chowrasta. He could see a blue-domed building between the trees in the direction of Prava’s house that she said was the residence of the governor of West Bengal. He wondered what she and Samira would be talking about. Samira seemed a trifle pensive, he thought to himself, but perhaps she was just apprehensive about her grandmother. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. In many ways, this was a relief after all the years he’d mourned and thought of Lorraine. Getting rid of the guilt had been the worst part. He’d felt responsible for her death. It was something he couldn’t shake off. And certainly her parents had done their share to make him feel responsible, too.

“Why weren’t you walking beside her if the river was that dangerous?”

“Why even take her to a place like that, we can’t understand.”

“We knew no good would come of this. We should never have allowed her to go to that heathen country.”

It went on and on, one family member after another expressing shock at his presumed negligence. Finally, the day of the memorial service came and went, and he flew back to India, relieved to get away from the intensity of it all. He could sense his own parents’ disappointment seeping out of them, first having been deprived of a grandchild, and now this. Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, he insisted on staying on in that god-forsaken country, instead of taking over the bakery as Edward had asked him to do.

“I just can’t think about it right now. Please allow me some time,” he had begged. He almost felt obliged to return and mourn for Lorraine in the place where they’d lived so happily together. He needed to regain his equilibrium, get his bearings.

The tragedy of losing her had weighed down on him for the longest time. He missed her body beside him in bed, her company at mealtimes, her presence beside him on social occasions where she had been the center of attention. He felt a nonentity without her. She was the more social of the pair, the one people had warmed to and wanted to invite to parties.

There was the matter of dealing with her possessions and her clothes. In his distraught state, he hadn’t thought to take anything home to her parents. Who would even fit into those dresses she loved? Martha took them away one day and sent them to an orphanage in Shillong. The poor in these parts had no use for such elegance. He discovered the typewriter they’d bought from the planter who was retiring and the pages she had spent afternoons typing. She had written children’s stories about India, dedicating them:

“To our unborn children, and to Justin, my love, who I know would have done anything to give me the children I yearned for.”

She’d put on a brave face about not being able to have children but the stories demonstrated that she’d wanted children above all else. He showed them to Tom. Martha reckoned they were good enough to be published, so he sent them to a publishing house in Belfast. One day out of the blue, a hard-bound volume arrived in the mail. The book of short stories was entitled
Tea Time Tales.
He had copies sent to Toby and Bernadette and instructed the publishing house to forward any royalties from the book to them.

He went through years of heartache, craving sympathy and human company. He devised ways to avoid being alone, which was not easy in tea. He worked long hours at the factory, supervising shift after shift until he went home and fell asleep from exhaustion. He played golf with anyone he could persuade to join him, and he often played alone. He exhausted Tom and Martha, arriving at their house unannounced for drinks and lingering for invitations to dinner.

Suddenly one day, he found he could feel nothing at all. He became numb and impassive, struggling to even remember her face. He wasn’t sure which was better, the heartache or the indifference. At least he knew he was alive when his heart ached. He craved solitude, becoming reclusive and taking long walks by himself. He grew a beard. His hair became wild and unkempt. He wanted to get away from everything familiar. Impulsively, he asked for a transfer out of Assam, which his manager gladly recommended to head office, unable to deal with the new, unapproachable Justin. He was long overdue a promotion, which they had postponed when his wife died, not wishing to burden him with added responsibilities. After six months, a position came up, and the company named him manager of the Simling Tea Estate in the Dooars.

He shaved off his beard, cut his hair and went to Calcutta to buy much-needed new clothes. His new life began in a place where nobody knew him and where there were no memories of Lorraine. Shortly afterwards, he met Samira and found himself coming alive again. He had thought he would never be interested in another woman. Samira was much younger, so earnest and innocent. But when she smiled her whole face lit up, and he found himself waiting for her smiles and wanting to be the one who made her smile. At long last, he felt that he had regained his equilibrium and could start living again. He missed being married for the companionship it brought. He craved a woman in his bed, more for the company and closeness than the sex. He yearned to have someone to come home to in the evenings and to whisper to deep into the night.

This trip to Darjeeling with Samira was another milestone in his process of recovery. It felt good to be involved in the lives of others, to travel someplace new and to look forward, rather than backward.

He decided to take a stroll through Chowrasta before dinner and went inside to unpack his overnight bag. He put on a jacket and tie, so he could go straight to the dining room after the walk. But when he stepped onto the balcony, it had started to drizzle. He abandoned the idea and went to the bar instead. He ordered himself a scotch and soda and watched teenage boys play billiards. They told him they were students at St. John’s, an all-boys boarding school up the hill and were having dinner with their parents who were in town for a few days.

Dinner was an interminable affair, with the old bearer, Dali, waiting on him and a number of other tables. He was served a mediocre meal in great style. The kitchens must have been some distance away judging by how much time it took for his food to get to him and how cold it had become. It didn’t help that the old man walked slowly and stiffly and kept forgetting the most basic items.