Monsoon Summer (21 page)

“Push now,” said Subadra. “
Tulleh pennay,
nannayi
tullekkay
, push, girl. Push hard now. Soon the baby will come.”

The girl let out a guttural roar. Her legs started to tremble vio
lently. The fluff of the baby's head appeared in the birth canal and the forehead, nose, mouth, chin, and the rest of a perfect little boy shot out in a rush of blood, so fast we almost dropped him. He started bawling.

The mother had torn her perineum on delivery, and I was good at stitching. Matron Smythe had once told me I would always have a job in upholstery if I got fed up with nursing. I threaded the needle and quickly put in two or three stitches with the mother barely noticing.

She was covering her son in kisses, sobbing with relief. His life would save hers. I was crying too as her mother put a smear of soot on the baby's cheek to ward off the evil eye, and then the baby began to suckle.

* * *

Afterwards, I sat on the step, all emptied out with happiness. I'd done it! I'd done it! The thing I never thought I'd ever be able to do again. The air was like warm milk and there were a million stars out. Subadra, beaming, happy, sat beside me, her hennaed feet on the step. When a servant bought us a cup of chai and some coconutty sweets, we ate them ravenously.

Relief kept flooding through my body and I was too tired to censor myself, so I told Subadra, in the next twenty minutes, more than I had ever told anyone about the last time I had delivered a child, how I felt I'd made a mess of it, and how it had taken me a long time to get over it.

She listened to me so quietly that I wasn't sure she'd understood, but then, when she took a sip of tea and patted my arm gently, I realized she was just doing what she did so well in the delivery room: listening, taking things in, not trying to hustle things along.

“Your stitches were beautiful,” she said. “You are a very fine doctor. She didn't even know you were doing it.”

Subadra continued after a long pause, “I couldn't say this in
class, but I had a mother, only one month ago. She was too weak, she died. Nobody blamed me but I was not happy with myself.”

Her worn hands pleated the skirt of her sari as she talked. “Don't tell this to the others,” she said, and I promised I wouldn't.

I wasn't naive enough to feel that delivering this baby was the magic wand that would miraculously banish all fears. That redheaded girl lived with me and probably would all my life, but it did feel like a momentous night for me, and later that night, undressed for bed, longing to have someone to share it with, I wrote five pages to Daisy, telling her about Subadra and the Moonstone, knowing how pleased she would be. This was exactly the kind of collaboration she had dreamed of for a long, long time. While I was writing, a piece of paper fell from my lap to the floor. I picked it up and smoothed it out. It was Subadra's picture of what a woman looked like inside—a few random squiggles inside a child's body with pipe cleaner legs.

I'd planned to send it in a letter to Josie for a cheap laugh. I knew better now.

-
CHAPTER 28
-

H
e was packing to go north again when Amma appeared carrying two ironed shirts. She looked down at the bed littered with his things—khaki trousers, spirit lamp, steel tray, scissors, antiseptics, painkillers—and she said, “When are you going to stop running away?”

He sighed and kept on packing. “Amma,” he said, “I have three hours left in which to pack, go to Cochin, see Kit, and get the train.” His nerves were so shredded it was hard to keep his voice steady. He'd been so sure he'd get news about the research job at Kacheripady, the job that was made for him, but no letter had come.

Amma shook her head. “So why bother coming back here at all?”

“To pick up my clothes.”

“So, that's good.” She tried another tack. “She gives you ten minutes at lunchtime. Lucky for you.”

“Don't blame her, Ma.” He hated her sour expression. “It's not easy for her either, and she knows it's not for long.”

“I've been looking in the papers. They're still looking for people at Palluruthy; she could go with you, or you could talk to Dr. Kunju again. I can't believe there is nothing here.” She put her head in her hands and gave a strange bark of frustration.

“Ma, please.”

“If you wanted to leave her,” she said softly, “we would understand.”

“Leave her! What in God's name are you talking about?”

This was a blasphemy, particularly coming from her. No Thekkedens divorced. They knew marriage was hard work sometimes: that Josekutty drank too much, that Mathu, the family saint, neglected Amma for his work. But this was life, your karma. Accepting hurt was part of growing up.

“You do know that I'm properly married to her?” he said, thinking she might have imagined some counterfeit English arrangement, easily dissolved.

“You call it a proper marriage? A registry office, no relatives, no celebrations?” He saw in her face contempt, and also a kind of bitter enjoyment at finally being able to let fly.

“Look at yourself.” She snatched a mirror from his shaving kit. “Skinny, sad—it's horrible seeing you like this.” Their reflections shimmered and merged in the mirror—her huge brown eyes brimming with tears, his face all strain and bones.

“Work is all she wants to do,” Amma spat out. “And that place where she works—I don't think you know the first thing about it.”

“What are you talking about? I did some translations for them, for the charity, in Oxford.”

“Oh, Oxford!” She flapped the place away with her hand. “Here, I'm talking about. It has a very, very bad reputation. People are gossiping about it.”

“What people? What gossip?”

“I can't give you their names. What does that matter?”

This shrill, tale-telling voice was new to him, or perhaps it had always been there and before he'd had a wife, he'd never heard it, but it diminished her and saddened him.

“And you know,”—she shot a look at him—“there are already good government-trained midwives in Travancore. This charity is only interested in dirty, illiterate women full of disease.”

“That's quite an assumption, Amma, and I thought you were a liberal.” He made a great effort not to raise his voice. “All for progress, for new ways. Have I got that wrong?”

“Yes, you have.” She was shaking with pent-up rage. “Because the new progress you are talking about sounds very like the old progress to me: foreign women coming here to teach us about something so private. How dare they insult us like this? What do they know of our ways? Maybe I should go to England now and tell your Daisy Barker how to have her baby.”

He knew he should defend the Moonstone's aims, or at the very least Kit. But the moment passed: another plate spinning out of his hands, like his work, his life, his wife, the train that would shortly leave without him.

“There's another thing, Anto,” she said. There was something bunched and venomous in her face. “Something I wasn't going to tell you about her.”

“Go ahead, Ma,” he said wearily. She'd already complained about Kit's untidiness, her lateness, unseemly conversations with Mariamma. “What crime now?” He sat down heavily on the bed and stared at his shoes.

“We had a ladies' party while you were away. Mariamma and I thought it would be a good opportunity for her to meet our friends.” He knew this wasn't true: Mariamma had talked Amma into asking Kit.

“So, I asked Appan if the car could be sent for Kit,” Amma continued.

He looked at his watch. He was desperate to see Kit before he left.

“We said prayers, as we always do.” Amma was settling into this. “We laid out all the special food, nothing too spicy for her.”

“Ma, you don't have to do that, she loves our food.”

“Anyway, we waited, and waited, and waited. When she comes, she is one and a half hours late and as white as a sheet. There was blood on her sleeve.” Amma's mouth was strangely twisted. “Mariamma says, ‘She is delivering babies at the Home. She is not a report writer, she is not a social reformer. She pulls the babies out.'”
An expression of horror on her face. “This is the woman you have brought into our house.”

He waited several moments before looking up.

“Amma, listen to me: she is part of a charity, and she is a midwife too. Try and understand that this is not a job to be ashamed of in England. We should be proud of her.”

“Proud of her.” His mother's look was one of angry incredulity. “That is too much. The situation grows worse and worse.”

* * *

Driving back to Fort Cochin, he felt a dull anger settle inside him. He was angry with Amma for being so small-minded, angry at Kit for upsetting his mother, at Mariamma, who he suspected stirred things up, partly because she didn't have enough to do, and furiously disappointed at not hearing any more news about the possible job.

To shield himself from the piercing brightness of the day, he pulled the curtain in the back of the car and stewed in the darkness. He should have known no Thekkedens would happily accept a midwife as a daughter-in-law, not without a change of brain. However much they might give lip service to the new India and its shiny new ideas—the banishing of the caste system, better lives for women, including widows—privately they wanted things to stay as they always had been for this family: peaceful, privileged, content. Kit was an unexploded bomb in their midst, at least in Amma's mind. He'd brought Kit here, and now he would have to find ways of limiting the damage.

* * *

The row with Amma had left no time to go back to Rose Street. Instead, they sat opposite each other in the railway's restaurant.

“Anto.” She looked pale and wary. “How long can you keep doing this?”

“Until I get a job here,” he said.

“I'm sure you'll hear soon. It's tailor-made for you,” she said. “How long will you be away this time?”

“Two more weeks, and then I'll come back and—” He was close to tears. “I'm sorry about this. It's just much harder than I thought.” He didn't have the heart to tell her how many applications he'd made.

“Everything is changing here,” she said. “It's not your fault.”

He was grateful to her for saying this, because this clammy feeling of guilt had taken root in his mind.

“I love you, and I have a wicked plan. Let's ask your uncle if we can rent the house in Rose Street as soon as you get back. It's perfect for us. You'll get work in Cochin eventually, I know you will, and we can be a proper old married couple together.”

“I like that idea,” he said, knowing Amma would hate it. “A lot. I love you too. This has been a sort of fugue you know, all of this, coming back and feeling, I don't know, like a stranger, and then knowing how much I'd missed. I'm so sorry.”

“I'm not sorry.” She drew close to him and whispered, “I'd like to kiss you, but don't worry, I won't.”

The other passengers were openly staring at them.

“So, how are things at the Moonstone now?” he asked in a neutral voice. She glanced at him and then at her cup.

“Good,” she said. “Actually, more than good. We've got ten more midwives coming next month, and . . . and . . . drum roll announcement.” She glanced at him quickly. “I helped deliver my first baby here. It felt like a big step.”

“So I hear.” He'd hoped to sound glad for her, but his voice was weary and flat.

“Who told you?” Her smile faded.

“Amma.”

“Amma! God! What does she know about it?” She moved away from him.

“Did you really think they wouldn't find out?”

“No,” she said, her voice tight, “I thought they would, which is why I wanted to be honest with them right from the start, remember?”

Kit heard him sigh. His glance traveled to the next table, where a plump man sat with his much younger wife and a clutch of long-lashed beautiful children. The family pored over a travel guide together.

“Poor Anto,” she said, “I don't know why I expected you to be pleased. Nothing is easy now.” They smiled unhappily at each other and in some treacherous corner of his heart he agreed with her.

“Not poor Anto,” he said. “Both of us have a lot in common—we're rather fond of you.”

She looked at him sharply. “That's not a good joke at a time like this.”

“I'm sorry.”

He watched the family leave, then looked at his watch. “I have ten more minutes, Kit, so I have to say this quickly.” He drew a deep breath. “I'm happy, really happy, the work is going well, but I worry about you all the time. If something goes wrong, the consequences could be terrible for you.”

“What consequences?” A bright look of accusation.

“Angry people, nationalists, those who think we should drop British charity now.”

“I can't do anything about them, Anto, because I don't meet them. The women I meet mostly smother me in kindness.”

“They will until something goes wrong.” A train screamed through the station, rattling their saucers.

“So how long are you going to keep working?” he said, when they could hear each other again. “The last time we spoke of it, you said a month or two.”

“I can't say exactly—as long as it takes to get things up and running. I'm loving it,” she finished helplessly.

Another train drew in and disappeared in a shrieking mass of
smoke. When he started to cough, she patted him on the back. He waved her hand away and kept on coughing until his eyes watered.

“How long?” he said when he'd stopped.

“I don't know!” She had to raise her voice against the babble of passengers swarming off the train. “Must I give you a date?”

“So, no children of our own?” He was suddenly furious again. “Is this your command also?”

“My command, Anto?” She looked shocked. “Don't be so bloody mean, you know that's not what I meant. I can do both.”

“You know best,” he said. “You're making all the rules now.” That was the last thing he said before his train shrieked off in a cloud of smoke.