The Crow Eaters (25 page)

‘’Ello,’ Jerbanoo nodded briefly. ‘He eat up all and all of my cutlace,’ she repeated, and having made her point, retreated a step. The family squeezed through the constricted space and Mrs Allen led them wet and shivering, into the sitting room.

When they were all seated, Jerbanoo waved her arms, and altering her refrain somewhat wailed, ‘All and all of my cutlace he eat up.’

‘Oh, really?’ responded Sheila with bewildered and polite sympathy.

Fortunately Faredoon stepped in just then, and brought
order to the room with his handsome and pleasing presence.

The cutlets were relegated to the background until they sat down to dinner. Then it started again, a lavish, helpless spreading of hands, and, ‘He eat up all and all of my cutlace! All and all of them he eat up!’ until the dish, holding just enough cutlets to go round once, was presented. Jerbanoo sniffed pitifully at the sight.

‘Jolly tasty,’ said Mr Allen sampling a bite.

‘One by one, he finish all!’ accused Jerbanoo belligerently. She glowered at Freddy, patted her chest, and emitted a series of gratified belches.

Fortunately the remaining dishes were ample, and the curry-rice and shrimp stew were devoured with relish.

Jerbanoo’s satisfaction at having disgraced Freddy over the cutlets lasted no more than a day. Her demand to return to Lahore grew more insistent. She hated being penned in her room. The single window overlooked a grey, perpetually drizzling sky, a tiny back garden and the soot-grimed backs of buildings. She felt trapped and, like a caged tigress, she enacted tempestuous scenes.

One dull, foggy morning Mary once again heard the disquieting descent. She heard a few thumps, and abruptly they stopped. She rushed to the staircase to discover Jerbanoo sitting abjectly on the third step from the top. Before Mary could utter her usual ‘Up up!’ or ‘Back back!’, Jerbanoo swayed, and in a small, defeated voice, said, ‘I feel fainting.’

Mary relented. She helped her down and sat her on the chair by the fire. She propped up her legs and tucked her in a blanket.

For a solid hour Jerbanoo sat subdued and ruminative.

Mary relented further. She handed her a cup of tea and a few jam tarts. ‘You comfortable?’ she inquired, and Jerbanoo nodded gratefully.

Mary felt she had wronged the old lady. She felt guilty at having confined the poor soul to her cheerless room. Just when she concluded she had been too hard on the old dear and must allow her down every day, Jerbanoo called:

‘May-ree? What you cooking?’

‘You’re getting stewed beef and dumplings for supper,’ answered Mary cheerfully.

‘Dumplings!’ snorted Jerbanoo in a way that left no doubt of her opinion on dumplings. ‘Phhooo! We give our servant dumplings, he spit out!’

Mary’s face clouded. It grew set and thin-lipped. She recalled the swarm of wrongs she had almost forgotten; the mean antics and mischievous cross-examination Jerbanoo had subjected her to. Never again would she feel an ounce of pity for the old devil, she promised herself. As if to reinforce Mary’s decision, Jerbanoo reverted to all her old aggravating tricks until supper-time.

The next morning when Mary heard the thuds and rushed forth to see Jerbanoo languish on the steps, piping feebly, ‘I feel fainting,’ she galloped up. ‘Oh no, you don’t! You’re no more likely to faint than I am. Back! Back!’ she barked, hoisting Jerbanoo resolutely to her feet and depositing her in her room.

This was more than Jerbanoo could take. She brooded for three days and nights. She thought of staging a scene and toyed with the idea of jumping from her window.

Wilfully, consideredly, she plotted her last-ditch stand against the enemy.

Jerbanoo spent the next day in acute discomfort, valiantly controlling the major call of nature. By evening she was in such anguish that the mere thought of food nauseated her. When Putli called at her door to announce supper, she unexpectedly answered, ‘I think I will remain light tonight.’ Putli expressed concern at her unusual resolve, and Jerbanoo roared: ‘Can’t you ever leave me alone?’ At such fervour, Putli turned pale and fled headlong to the supper table.

Jerbanoo switched off the lights and settled herself as comfortably as she could in the circumstances. She waited until she was quite sure the household was slumbering. At midnight she opened her door carefully, and looking to the right, and to the left, she tiptoed to the centre of the landing.
She spread a newspaper on the floor and squatted in the half-light of a dim bulb.

Having performed her feat, Jerbanoo escaped undetected to her bathroom. She washed herself from the brass jar she had brought with her from Lahore and fell into a dreamless sleep.

Jerbanoo awoke to a commotion of unusual activity on the wooden staircase. There was much movement: up and down, to and fro. She sat up. Her crime had been detected, she guessed correctly, by one of the students. She recognised the voice of the student who dwelt in the attic. He sounded hysterical. She identified more voices. Her face lit up with anticipation. She was like a child who has lit a fuse on a fire-cracker.

Then it came, a shrill voice: ‘Good heavens!’ followed by a siren-like wail.

More feet galloped to the landing from all levels of the house. And Jerbanoo realised it was not a solitary cracker she had ignited. It was an entire fireworks!

Mary shrieked an eerie and inarticulate string of words. She banged on Jerbanoo’s door. Jerbanoo ducked deep in the bed and covered herself up to her ears. Almost immediately she heard banging on Faredoon’s door. Mary shouted, quite distinctly this time, ‘Mr Junglewalla! Mr Junglewalla! I will not stand for this! Mr Junglewalla, open at once!’

The door must have opened. Mary could be heard exploding again. ‘Look at this mess! Look at it! The woman must be insane!’

Jerbanoo heard Mr Allen exclaim, ‘What the bloody hell’s going on here?’ and then, ‘Hey, what’s this!’

She heard Faredoon echo his exclamations and she shut out the senseless clamour by plugging her ears with the eider-down.

There was more banging on her door, more roaring and jabbering, and Jerbanoo emerged from her eiderdown to hear Mary scream, ‘This is the last straw! I will not have that – that demon in my house another minute! Get her out! Get her out!’

Finally the clamour eased. The fireworks display had spent itself.

Jerbanoo got out of bed, shuffled into her slippers, washed, and began at a leisurely pace to pack her suitcase. Since she had initiated the action, deliberately and in full command of her faculties, she was quite prepared for the consequences. She crooned tunelessly to herself as she emptied the cupboards. There was a triumphant little sneer on her face.

At midday Faredoon led Jerbanoo, disgraced and seemingly penitent, to a cab. Their departure was forlorn. No one waved goodbye. Mr Allen was not home and Mrs Allen had acknowledged Faredoon’s warm and apologetic farewell with an icy nod. Tight-lipped, she had averted her face at Jerbanoo’s passage.

Faredoon once more felt his life blighted by the ignominious appendage attached to him. After an initial rampage he maintained a resigned and bitter silence. He sat huddled in the cab in a storm of gloom. Next to him Putli stared ahead with a terrified expression. Jerbanoo was surprisingly subdued and acquiescent.

The cab deposited them at a hotel in Oxford Street. As if to bless the shift, late in the afternoon the sun peeped out and bestowed a prolonged and freakish spell of Indian Summer on London.

Jerbanoo’s spirits bucked up. She was delighted at the change of scene. She hung over the third floor balcony of their hotel room for hours on end, watching crowds in the glamorous hub of London’s shopping centre. Often she rode down the elevator and thrust her squat, tank-like way through the crowds in Regent Street, the Strand and Piccadilly. She jabbed her nose at shop windows, and her umbrella at people who did not have the telepathic foresight to move out of her way. She attracted a lot of attention. This was in the days when Londoners were still intrigued by the bit of sari that covered her head and showed below her coat. Attention to her was as dope to the addict. Her inherently robust confidence scaled new heights. She bullied shop assistants, scowled
bearishly on fellow loiterers and snubbed whoever ventured, out of kindness, to address her. She refused Putli’s invitations to go with them. ‘I am quite content to be on my own,’ she declared. ‘I can do without somebody’s don’t do this and don’t do that!’

Faredoon was content to leave her alone. He and Putli were once again enjoying their outings and encounters in London. Mr Allen had approached him, and things had been smoothed out between them.

Jerbanoo crossed streets with the effrontery and nonchalance of an armoured tank. She took the squealing of brakes and the breathless stares of motorists as her due. And she got away with it, until one afternoon a bus roared on unheeding of her small upturned palm signalling it to stop. It would have flattened her but for her high-pressured, last-minute dash. Her sari billowed like a sail from the rush of breeze generated by the nearness of the bus. She gasped for breath, and each gasp increased her fury.

A young constable, conspicuous in his blue uniform and helmet, stood among the pedestrians on the pavement. Jerbanoo spied him. She crossed back and beckoned the hapless bobby with a bullying finger.

‘Why you not take bus number! You only decoration?’ She roared so belligerently that the bobby, who had bent his stringy length to hear what the little old lady wished to convey, straightened like a man shot in the back.

‘Why you wear fancy uniform? Why you wear gold button and belt? For decoration?’

A motley group of Londoners with polite and noncommital countenances gathered around them.

The fresh-faced bobby stared down at Jerbanoo dumbly.

‘You want decoration on road?’ Jerbanoo inquired of the onlookers, ‘I bring flower-vase from my house – I bring little china statues.’ She turned to the bobby. ‘You not flower-vase, you not china statue. You policeman! Why for you not take bus number? Why? I nearly dead!’

Suddenly she gave the astonished bobby a shove. ‘Go catch
bus. Go. Go. I pull out driver’s tongue! I poke his eye! Go!’

An onlooker tittered politely. Taking his cue from him the bobby drew on his reserves of good-natured calm, put a dauntless arm round the tank, and humoured, ‘Sorry, Mum. I’ll catch that rotten driver!’ And he strolled away.

The onlookers melted into the evening rush. Wary of buses, Jerbanoo prepared to cross the road again. She was mollified by the use of the words ‘sorry’ and ‘Mum’. She was delighted by the bobby’s assurance, and though she was shrewd enough to know nothing was meant to come of it, his brave treatment of the episode tickled her vanity.

Back at the hotel, when she narrated the story of her brush with death, Faredoon was despondent. ‘Another golden opportunity gone,’ he reflected glumly.

THEIR hotel did not provide attached baths. This bothered Jerbanoo. There was one bathroom at the end of their corridor, and three tiny lavatories. Jerbanoo, who was used to bathing twice daily, was restricted by the long queues, the expense involved and by Faredoon’s injunctions to bathe only once every three days.

This alone would not have chafed Jerbanoo as much as the lavatory facilities. The tiny cubicles offered nothing but flush bowls and toilet paper. There were no taps and no water. Jerbanoo was used to washing herself thoroughly each time she evacuated. For a while she managed by carrying water in the brass jar she had brought with her from India. The arrangement was unsatisfactory. She grumbled, but she would have tolerated this foreign inconvenience had Faredoon not intervened.

Faredoon was acutely embarrassed to see his mother-in-law march up and down the corridor armed with the old fashioned water container. The jar looked like a handleless, pot-bellied kettle. It was carved all over and it had a long, artistically curved spout that Faredoon particularly despised. He felt that the combination of his mother-in-law and the kettle created a spectacle. He forbade her its use.

‘What will all the Englishmen in the hotel think of me? What will they think of that funny brass tea-pot? They will really wonder what you do with it! And I’m ashamed of the mess you make with all that water.’

Jerbanoo was stunned. She couldn’t believe her ears! ‘Have
you lost your self-respect? Don’t tell me you dry-clean yourself! Don’t tell me you have forced my daughter to dry-clean! Oh God! That I should live to see this dirty day!’

For all her protests, Faredoon refused to give an inch. Jerbanoo, seeing he was in one of his pig-headed moods, gave in. She would not take her brass pot to the toilet any more, she promised.

Jerbanoo was brought up to believe that cleanliness is Godliness, and she refused to fail her religion. The moment Faredoon and Putli left the hotel she scooted across the corridor with her jar. But she was dissatisfied. She felt cruelly cheated of her daily bath.

One truth about Jerbanoo must be made clear: she could not be riled without arousing a perilous hornet’s nest. And Faredoon, foolish despite his experience, had touched a most tender spot. The inconvenience that she had been prepared to tolerate suddenly became intolerable. She found the little toilet bowl increasingly thwarting to wash over – the restricting space in the bathing cubicle unbearably claustrophobic. She felt ill-tempered and dirty.

Jerbanoo’s longing for the spacious, cemented bathing parapets of Lahore waxed into a phobia. She craved this one facility above all else. And one sunny morning (the spell of Indian Summer having continued) hanging from her balcony, she was struck by an idea. She wondered at herself for not having thought of it earlier.

The balcony was about eight feet long and five feet wide. It was walled in at both ends. The wrought iron railing in front was worked in an intricate design that provided enough privacy. In any case the windows in the building across the street appeared to be permanently shut. If peeping-toms ventured to peer at her through its dingy panes it was their lookout and their disgrace!

On a day when Faredoon and Putli were not expected until evening, Jerbanoo filled a small tub with water from the tap in their room and placed it on the balcony. She fetched her brass jar, stripped to the bare minimum, and squatting in her
mid-thigh drawers and home-spun bodice, proceeded to bathe to her heart’s content. Drainage was no problem. Since the balcony sloped away from the room, the water drained on to the street.

The room immediately beneath theirs must have remained unoccupied for some time. Because on the fifth day its new occupants protested.

Jerbanoo was splashing about happily when she heard a furious voice bellow: ‘Blimey! God, we’re being flooded!’

She was a bit startled at the proximity of the voice but did not realise it was directed at her. Suddenly her ears picked up the words ‘water’ and ‘balcony’ and she stopped her merry splashing to listen.

‘What the hell’s going on up there? Do you hear me? Stop it – whatever you’re doing!’

Jerbanoo realised someone wished to speak to her.

Quickly she draped a towel round her shoulders and peered over the balcony into the red, wet and choleric face of a bull-necked Englishman.

He seemed to have located the one small space immune from the waterfall and was leaning dangerously back from his balcony. If he was disconcerted by the brown, fuzz-haired face peering at him he did not show it. His middle-aged wife, wet and mouse-eyed, peeped up.

‘Where on earth is all this water coming from?’ he demanded.

Jerbanoo was a past-master at thinking on her feet. Assessing the explosive situation, she pointed a prophetic hand at the cloudless sky and thundered: ‘Rain! Rain!’

Having said her piece she retreated from the railing and set to clearing the balcony. She had the air of one who has dealt satisfactorily with a sticky problem. Jerbanoo was quite unprepared for the violent knock on her door a few minutes later. Still in her wet drawers and bodice she opened the door to the choleric Englishman. She recognised him at once and, all but slamming the door on him, restricted him to the threshold.

‘Come on, what’s going on up here? You washing clothes or something?’

Jerbanoo glowered. ‘You not poke your nose into me mister, I not poke my nose into you!’

A fair enough answer one would think, but the Englishman was not content.

‘Look! If this bloody nonsense doesn’t stop I’m going to complain to the management. What the hell are you up to, anyway?’

Jerbanoo was stung to the quick by his rudeness. ‘Get out! Get out! Fool!’ she shouted trying to squeeze him from the door. The man stood like a rock.

‘I’m getting a bobby to find out what’s going on up here,’ he threatened, and noticing the uncomprehending look on the fierce old lady’s face, explained viciously. ‘Bobby, you understand? Policeman! Policeman!’

Jerbanoo’s face registered understanding. It also registered scorn. ‘Go! Go!’ she said, pushing him contemptuously with both hands.

‘Look here, you damn witch. You’d better tell me what’s going on up here or I’ll get you locked up!’

Jerbanoo reconsidered. She decided to hit this despicable man with a white lie.

‘You want to know?’ she asked, and her voice despite its malice rang with authenticity. ‘I tell you! I wash my bottom. I no dry-clean like you dirty Englishmen. I wash my bottom!’

The Englishman’s purple face turned shockingly pale. He crumpled visibly, and Jerbanoo banged the door on him. He took his wife and fled the hotel within the hour – but not before he had lodged a violent protest with the management.

The management considered the problem in all its aspects and seriously approached Faredoon, who decided it was time he returned his charges to Lahore.

And so the Junglewallas returned to India in early March, a full month and a half ahead of schedule. They discovered that Tanya was again expecting.