Three Continents (31 page)

Shortly after this she came up for the first time at night, when Crishi was with me. As before, she sat on our bed and she and Crishi talked in a desultory way. They didn't have much to say to each other, and I wondered why she had come. But she didn't go away even when they had run completely out of conversation; and it began to dawn on me that she didn't mean to leave but to stay with us; and that was what she had been asking me. Into the silence that had fallen I said “Oh no.” “It'll be all right, sweetheart,” Crishi said. “Really it will.” He took me in his arms, but I knew that over my shoulder he was looking at her; they had already reached complete accord. It was she who got up from the bed and
turned off the light. We could hear Anna's TV going, and Anna laughing at it too loudly, making sure that we knew she was there. Michael was home too, reading in his room, into which Crishi had carried Robi; so we were all there, and the only one who was asleep was Robi. But although the rest of us were awake and aware, the next day nothing was said by anyone; no, not even by Crishi and me, although I was determined that before the next night I would speak to him and not let it happen again. I took Robi to the Bari Rani, and all that day I wandered around by myself, in various parks, walking and walking under the trees. I felt so hot—heated, burning, a sort of burning sensation inside me, under my skin, so that the rain and breezes passing over me were unable to cool me. The phrase “burning with shame” kept on coming into my mind. It got late and dark, but I wasn't tired and I didn't want to go home. When I did, only Michael was there. I went in his room, and I lay on the other side of his bed with my feet resting against his shoulder, while he went on turning the pages of his book. We didn't speak, but it was not our usual silence of communion. In fact, I felt him willing me not to speak—that is, not to speak of last night. All the time I was tensed away from him, and when the phone rang, I knew it had been in that direction that my senses were strained.

Crishi said “Where have you been? Come quick, we're waiting.” Michael and I took a taxi to the restaurant—and there they all were, a big family party, including the other household, the Bari Rani's, who had brought Robi with them. It was the Rawul's favorite Indian restaurant, done up in Edwardian Bombay style, with carved screens and tall palms in golden pots. Our party was in an alcove, at a round table with a pierced brass temple lamp throwing a dappled light over it. They had begun eating, and everyone had a round gold tray with many little gold dishes on it, of curries and condiments. There were already so many of them around the table that it seemed there couldn't be any more room; but they easily fitted in Michael and me, and we slipped into the places they made for us, mine beside Crishi. The girls were coaxing Robi to eat; he sat between Daisy and Priti and each was trying to insert some morsel into his mouth. Crishi
did the same for me—he tore off a piece of chapati and scooped some vegetable up in it and coaxed me the way they were doing with Robi; only Crishi was more successful, for I opened my lips to him much sooner; he was pleased and did it again and again, morsel after morsel, and I let him. It was a complete reconciliation between us—or rather, a complete reconciliation for me because it was I who had felt estranged, not he at all. Across from us, Renée sat beside the Rawul, and sometimes she smiled at us in a benevolent, maternal way to see Crishi feeding me; but mostly she was too busy eating, as was the Rawul—both of them Indian-style with their fingers, skillfully and with delicate greed scooping inside the golden bowls. The waiters in turbans and red cummerbunds hovered behind them, ready to refill the bowls. The Bari Rani, on the other side of the Rawul, warned him that he would get too fat, but when a waiter wasn't quick enough, she would herself gesture impatiently toward the Rawul's emptying tray. She also complained about some of the dishes, that there was not enough ginger or too much, and argued with the girls, and scolded Robi for not eating—how would he ever grow, she said and appealed around the table that wasn't he too small for his age, and with such a tall father? It was our usual sort of evening, and it ended in the usual way, with the two households going to their separate establishments. Crishi came to the upstairs flat, and although I had meant to talk to him about the night before, there was no opportunity for it; but I thought, If she comes up again, if she comes up now, I won't let her. But in fact she didn't, not that night nor for several nights after; and when she did come again, they both acted as though it were entirely natural and expected. By the third time, it had become for me if not natural then not as unnatural as that first time; that burning-with-shame sensation also subsided, for what shame could there be when everything was in the dark? During the day no one spoke of it, so it remained as secret as any sexual act, unmentioned rather than unmentionable.

I
T was at this time that Manton and Barbara came to London. I hadn't been aware that I had missed them or anyone from home, but when I saw them, I couldn't help it, I burst into tears—of joy, I guess. Barbara was embracing me in welcome; she was so soft and fragrant and familiar, I didn't want to let go of her. I clung to her, and she held me; but she was shocked. She said “But what's the matter, what happened?” for she was not used to me crying—I mean, I never did and if I had to, I made sure no one saw me. But now I couldn't help it. Barbara was the opposite of me—she cried at the drop of a hat, and she wasn't about to lose this opportunity; and Manton was considerably affected to see the two of us weeping away—he put his arms around both of us and also spilled a tear or two. That made me laugh, but they both remained sad and serious. Barbara kept on asking “But what's the matter? Are you ill? What's wrong?” However much I protested that I was fine, that I was well, that I was happy, they didn't believe me. Barbara even wanted to go with me to a doctor because she said I had lost so much weight. I wasn't aware that I had, and I also didn't like her suggestion that what was growing inside me was a sickness and not the flower of my happiness unfolding.

I spent as much time as I could with them. They had established themselves in a suite in one of the more famous London hotels—I thought it was very musty and uncomfortable
but they loved it. Barbara adored everything in London, now that she was here with Manton; in the past she had come as part of her mother's entourage and all they had ever done was sit around in their hotel, entertaining movie people and financiers and having interviews and photo sessions, so that they had been too tired to go out and just had room service sent in at midnight. But she and Manton did every kind of London thing, and as soon as I had left Robi at school, I joined them in some museum or shopping in Harrods, or getting Manton's shirts and shoes made. Sometimes I brought Robi with me—he was no trouble and they liked him, although Manton would look at him and ask me: “Whose is he?” I told him several times, but he never seemed to understand; maybe it was too complicated. They also found our household arrangements very complicated. Everyone wanted to do what was proper, so they came to visit us in the flat downstairs—I didn't tell them about upstairs but let them believe that Crishi and I stayed downstairs with the Rawul and Renée, which was strange to them but not as strange as the truth might have been. They joined us at the Indian restaurant and met the other household, but that evening wasn't a success. Manton and Barbara looked and felt very odd in the middle of our family. They didn't merge at all the way the rest of us did but sat there upright and uncomfortable on the brocade settees. Besides, neither of them could stand Indian food—it made them sick to their stomachs next day.

There were Barbara's feelings about Crishi that she had expressed to me before our marriage, and though she never spoke of him after it, I knew very well how she felt. So did he, and he never tried to charm or change her in any way, but simply accepted her antipathy, almost as though he were used to certain people disliking him and there was nothing he could or would do about it. I tried to be equally indifferent—but it was difficult for me never to speak with Barbara about him, when we spoke about everything else. If his name came up during our conversations—and it inevitably did since he was what he was to me, that is, the central fact of my life—Barbara wouldn't look at me and fell silent, afraid of what she might say, or remembering what she had said in
the past. But I was longing to tell her that I was entirely happy, especially when she started in again about me looking ill. I laughed when she said that and told her, “Just because I'm not fat like you.” All the same, I did look at myself more carefully in the mirror when I was alone in the flat upstairs. I couldn't make out any change—I had always been thin and with a tendency to shadows under my eyes, ever since I was fourteen; Michael and I both.

They didn't have to tell me Michael had changed; I could see that for myself. He made Manton and Barbara very uncomfortable whenever they met him. But this happened rarely, for Michael was always elsewhere—with the followers in the house in Earl's Court, at Babaji's house, in the Mayfair office, or on an overnight trip somewhere on the continent of Europe. He was completely involved in the work of the movement and had even less time for his father than before. But it turned out that, besides having a vacation in London with Barbara, Manton was here to speak to us on two matters of family concern. One of these he left it to Barbara to tell me, over a favorite occasion of hers—English afternoon tea in their hotel. Here she and I sat on seats that were covered in buttoned velvet but had straight backs to make you sit upright while the waiters filed past to serve you from their trays. Each alcove held a group of foreign guests, everyone on their best behavior, backs straight, conversation subdued, some of the women in formal little hats, everyone attentive to the waiters, who, though foreign themselves, kept to the strict routine of an English nursery tea. “Isn't it adorable,” Barbara said over her anchovy-paste sandwich; and then she told me that she was pregnant and that she and Manton were planning to be married. It was not a place to display strong emotion—the waiters came around with their silver teapots, demanding decision among India, China, and Earl Grey—and Barbara and I sat there, pressing each other's hands under the table. Her hand was as plump and warm as the rest of her; demure in her afternoon dress, she exuded a wholesome bliss. Manton joined us, and he too—my poor disinherited father, florid with self-indulgence—somehow appeared wholesome, perching on a little chair by the side of our table, attentive and gentlemanly to both of us, full of uxorious care. There
was an authority about him that the waiters recognized at once, making us a favored group. “Have you told her?” beamed Manton. Oh he was so proud—principally of himself, who was going to be a husband and father again, and of Barbara, and of me, the married daughter. It seemed as if we—that is, the Wishwells, now including soft, fair, pregnant Barbara—were in the process of reacquiring a status that had been slipping away from us.

Yes, Manton had changed. In his fifties, with Michael and me grown up, he had had to wait all this time before he could enter into the authority of his age, his status, and his own impressive physical presence. His head no longer turned automatically after every good-looking woman; even Renée, I was glad to see, did not affect him. In fact, he didn't care to be with her—or with any of the rest of the family. After the first courtesy call in the downstairs flat and the courtesy dinner in the Indian restaurant, Manton and Barbara didn't visit us again. I was the only link between what I was beginning to think of as two camps. But then Manton said he wanted to see and talk to Michael. I said “If you mean about Barbara's baby, I've told him.” I had, though with no reaction from Michael. But still Manton insisted and asked me to bring Michael to his London club. That wasn't easy: Michael disliked and never entered Manton's club in New York, of which the London one was the reciprocal and the prototype. But the hotel would have been just as bad, or any other place that Manton frequented; and the places Michael went would have been impossible for Manton, so there was really no place where they could both meet and be comfortable.

Manton was seated in his club armchair under some ancient portrait and was being served his drink by an ancient club waiter, whom he made a great thing of knowing by name. Comfortable and at ease in these surroundings, Manton was inclined to be expansive and was beginning to speak, as Grandfather had once spoken to us, about our family and ancestry. But Michael didn't let him get far: “What's all this about?” he interrupted him.

His question surprised me. I hadn't thought it had been about anything except that Manton wanted to be with us here in his club—which
was
like the New York one, only older
and smaller and shabbier, as though the people at home, in copying it, couldn't restrain themselves from outdoing it. But I was wrong and Michael was right: Manton did have something in particular he wanted to say to us—about the house on the Island; and Propinquity; and our money; and I guess everything we owned. In doing so, he set himself up as a bad example. He said how he had never cared about any of it; certainly when he was our age, he had never given it a thought; and here he had to say how he admired us and was proud of us—Michael had tensed up horribly and before long he said again: “What's all this about?”

But Manton was launched and couldn't be brought up short. “When I remember what I was at your age, all I can say to you is, never look to me as an example. Look instead to my father; your grandfather. Not that he was as totally one hundred percent perfect as he would have liked everyone to believe; he had his little fling here and there too, and more than a little, as we all know. But as they say,
de mortuis nihil nisi bonum
, nothing mean about our dear departed—yes if you please, Eric,” he said to the solicitous waiter, handing him his glass, “and two more tomato juices over there.” When Michael shook his head—“One more tomato juice, with nothing alas in it. . . . I want you to meet two wonderful young people, Eric; and you will never guess who they are: my own son and daughter, I'm proud to say, yes indeed, my own dear kids.”