Stephanie (6 page)

Tonight he came in early but spoke only a few words to Bonni before going to the bedroom. A sister, Kamala, had arrived that afternoon, and she was a woman Nari particularly disliked. When Bonni came into the bedroom and asked if he had eaten, if he was ill, he said no and he was not hungry, he just wanted to be left alone.

The night was a long one and he scarcely slept at all, turning and tossing, with semiwaking nightmares of men with shining shaven skulls creeping up the stairs with hammers to break his legs. Bonni moaned in her sleep every time he turned over. In the end, just when dawn was showing up the dust on the encrusted fanlight, and the sparrows were beginning to chirp and chatter, he fell into a deep slumber and was wakened by Bonni shaking his shoulder and telling him he would be late for work. He stumbled to his feet, rinsed his face in some lukewarm water, made a pretence of shaving, and then bent over the potatoes and radishes his wife had prepared for him. He was hardly able to force the food down, his knees weak with fear and his stomach churning. When Bonni asked him for money to pay the baker he snapped at her and dropped a few rupees on the table saying it was all he had. He was down to his last anna, he said. Then he drew on his jacket and went out into the early heat of the day, leaving behind him a discontented woman exchanging complaints and criticisms of him with her ill-favoured sister.

It was an hour's journey to the centre of the city from the suburb where he lived, and the train was more madly crowded than ever. Its sweating mass of humanity packed the carriages with scarcely room to move an elbow, and coming home he knew it would be worse, with travellers virtually fighting to get on the train at Churchgate Station. He walked to his office which was close by in a sidestreet off Vir Nariman Road near the High Court.

The morning went slowly. Mr Srivastava, one of the six partners in the law firm, and Nari's immediate boss, was not in the best of tempers, which was not surprising as Nari's typing yesterday had been full of mistakes, and also he had filed some letters under the wrong name. Mr Srivastava told him that if he did not improve he would be sacked. There was plenty of unemployment, he pointed out, among the lesser educated students of Bombay, and replacing one unsatisfactory worker would be the simplest thing in the world.

Nari took the rebukes meekly and apologised and said he would do better. But he did not dare to ask for an hour off. If his business with Shyam was not completed in time he would have to be late back and make up some story about an accident.

The last hour dragged by at last and he slipped out quickly for fear some other member of the staff should come with him; then he walked to the India Coffee House and stood behind a parked car and waited for Shyam Lal Shastri.

One o'clock. Ten past one. Twenty past one. At twenty-five past he saw Shyam strolling through the crowds, coolly, as if there was no hurry. Nari rushed up to him.

‘You are late! My God, you are late, man! What has kept you?'

Shyam was wearing a brilliant purple shirt and clean white trousers. He looked as if he did not have a care in the world. Nari grasped his arm and Shyam looked down at Nari's hand with contempt.

‘Let me loose or I will tell you nothing. There, that is better. Do you want to talk here, in this crowd?'

‘Wherever you please, so long as you tell me what I can do!'

Shyam looked around and sniffed. ‘Well, it makes no difference. We shall not be overheard. Are you a man or just a weakling? That is what I must know first.'

‘Tell me what you have come to tell me.'

‘I can give you the opportunity – through friends of mine I can give you the opportunity to break free of your shackles, to discharge your debts, to become a free man again. How would you like that?'

‘What do I have to do?'

Shyam laughed in his face, showing his gold teeth, the spittle at the corners of his mouth.

‘Almost nothing. You will have a pleasant trip to England, all expenses paid. Your debt will be cancelled here and you will receive a handsome bonus in England for your trouble. How does that appeal to you?'

Nari stumbled over the broken pavement, and a motor-bike, accelerating away, narrowly missed him.

England? This did not make sense. Where was the catch? He had always wanted to go to England.

‘You have cousins there,
bhai
?'

‘Yes. Two. But –'

‘So then you can visit them! What better? You will have to take several weeks off. If you wish to go you will leave perhaps at the end of the month. Tell me if you wish to go.'

Nari stopped. People were brushing around him, talking, arguing, shopping, begging.

‘I must carry something?'

Shyam laughed again. ‘Quite so. Good guess. But nothing big. Do you wish me to go further?'

They had been walking down the street and were now at the corner of a wide square, with policemen directing the traffic. The morning smog had cleared and the sun beat down out of a sky stretched pale by the heat.

‘Mark you, you are still quite uncommitted so far,' said Shyam. ‘You are free to say no to my friends. They will bear you no ill will. You can walk away right now – although at five this afternoon you will be expected to produce the necessary for Mr Mohamed, and you know the consequences if you do not.'

‘I wish to go further,' Nari said, speaking with a thick tongue.

‘Then come with me. It is only two streets away. Have you ever met Dr Kabir Arora?'

Nari shook his head.

‘I think you could still withdraw,' said Shyam, ‘ but then they wouldn't like it because they would think you might talk. And if they thought you had talked then you would be in the deepest trouble it is possible for any man to be in. Two broken legs would be nothing, my dear old chap.'

Nari stopped again.

‘What must I carry? Tell me. You are my friend – or have pretended to be.'

‘Just little packets. But let Dr Arora explain.'

‘
Swallow
them!' screamed Nari. ‘What are you asking me to do? It is not possible!'

‘It is not even difficult,' said Dr Arora. He was a short man with a white, opaque left eye and a chain of holy beads round his neck. ‘You will see. Many have done it. Few have failed. It is only a matter of practice.'

‘
Practice!
'

‘Yes. With grapes. We have two weeks before you need to go. We will start tomorrow.'

Nari glared wildly round the bare little room, seeking some escape. There were a few empty medicine bottles on the table, an open attaché case containing pillboxes, a consultancy couch with broken springs, a framed diploma. There was a heavy smell of jasmine in the air, and a holy garland hung round the neck of a small statue of a monkey god in a corner. How could this man, a Punjabi by his accent, be doing such work, have any religious beliefs at all – even of the most depraved kind?

‘I could not do it! And retain them in my stomach for more than twenty-four hours! Never!'

‘They will remain in your bowels, not your stomach,' Dr Arora said. ‘And about that you have no cause to worry. You will first take half a dozen pills. They are the pills used by astronauts to slow down the bowel motion. You will pass no motion for four days. It is quite simple, I assure you. It is quite foolproof. There is no need to worry.'

‘And if I say no! If I refuse! If I want no part of this!'

Arora exchanged glances with Shyam, then he shrugged. ‘ Your friend will have told you you have now gone too far to say no. Now you know too much, Naresh Prasad. You have become one of us.'

The windows were shut, the scent of the jasmine oversweet, like an anaesthetic.

Dr Arora shifted his stomach to a more comfortable position. His wall eye stared straight ahead. ‘This time tomorrow at one? We will be starting with a few grapes.'

Shyam put a heavy, now friendly arm round Nari's shoulders. ‘Think what you gain,
bhai.
Your debts discharged! Four weeks in England to visit your cousins! And a thousand pounds sterling in cash to spend or to bring home – am I right, Kabir? I am right – a thousand pounds sterling in cash to spend in England or to bring home! Many men would give their ears for such a chance!'

‘And if I am caught? Ten years in a British jail!'

‘You won't be caught! This is too clever a device.'

‘What am I swallowing? If one of the packets breaks open the contents will kill me!'

‘They don't break open,' said Dr Arora. ‘It has never been known to happen.'

Nari felt faint, he felt he wanted to die. The heat in here was intense, claustrophobic.

‘I do not know if I can do it. I do not think I can swallow –'

‘Tomorrow at one,' said Dr Arora. ‘ We will be starting with a few grapes.'

It was a sunny day towards the end of April when James Locke had the telephone call from his daughter. He never had an overcoat but wore a motoring cap and a muffler to protect himself from the chill wind. He was in a distant part of his garden looking at two specimens of the rhododendron Loderi Venus which he had grown from cuttings and which were almost ready to plant out in their permanent places. It was a good piece of land here, with a few tall beeches and pines and a nice woodsy acid soil of around pH 4–5. Not moist enough, but judicious spraying did the trick. About him were a number of his earlier plantings,
macabeanum
, which had flowered for the first time last year,
falconeri
, not too happy in spite of all its cosseting, a fine magnolia, Leonard Messel, in full bloom, another,
campbellii alba
, a big tree now but one for which he knew he would have to wait some years yet for the first bud.

He had a cordless telephone attached to his wheelchair and as soon as it buzzed he wiped his soiled hands and picked it up.

‘Daddy?'

‘Hello, poppet. Safely back, then?'

‘You know I am. Rang from Heathrow. Remember?'

‘Perfectly. I consider the last thirty miles of your journey the most hazardous.'

‘Ho-ho. Look, I could come home this weekend.'

‘What's stopping you?'

‘Only you, if you have anything on.'

‘Not a stitch. You know I'm a lonely old man.'

‘Oh, come off it. So you don't mind if I hazard my life on the Oxfordshire roads?'

‘Not in such a good cause.'

‘Brilliant. See you Sat'day. Lunch on Sat'day?'

‘I'll tell Mrs Aldershot.'

‘How is she, by the way?'

‘Very well. I see her approaching.'

‘Daddy, why don't you marry her?'

James Locke was thinking of the appropriate reply when his daughter rang off. He hung up the telephone and pressed the electric button to activate his chair. He met Mrs Aldershot where the path came out of the woodland and the herbacious borders began.

Locke was now nearly sixty-five, markedly handsome though becoming stout, with greying hair streaked with white, a slim aristocratic nose and lips, a man who looked more a cleric than a gardener, certainly far more the bookish epicure than the war hero he had once been. A limp, which thereafter had been his, grew worse and in the last four years he had been in a wheelchair, though perfectly capable of getting out of it, to take a bath, to go to bed, to tend his garden, to write his gardening articles, to sit at table. He was seldom ever quite out of pain, but the discomfort was minimised if he took pills and did not try to stand or walk too much.

Mary Aldershot was forty-five, his housekeeper, long divorced, still attractive, capable in all domestic things, strongly opinioned on a few. She had been with Locke almost since his wife left him. He called her Mary but she still called him Mr James. Stephanie would not have had the cheek to put such a suggestion to her father face to face, but over the telephone it was easier.

In fact James had asked Mrs Aldershot to marry him four years ago and she had refused.

‘Was that Miss Stephanie?' she asked. ‘I took up the phone until I heard you answer.'

‘She's coming for lunch on Saturday and staying the night. She may, I suppose, stay Sunday night too, but the chances are she'll drive back on Sunday evening, leaving here at some ungodly hour when all decent girls should be safely asleep.'

‘Duck,' said Mrs Aldershot. ‘She loves that, and Maker's had some lovely ones in last week.'

‘Be sure there's plenty on them.'

She patted his shoulder. ‘As if I would not. And smoked salmon. Cheese. Cheese and fruit – would that do to end? What about Sunday?'

‘We'll think it over. How long's lunch today?'

‘Twenty minutes.'

‘Caviar, I suppose.'

‘Wait and see.'

‘Be off then. If you ring your bell I'll be in one of the greenhouses.'

Janet Locke, a clever febrile artistic wayward young woman, had left her husband when Teresa was nine and Stephanie six. She had met Frederick Agassia, a rich young Brazilian, at a function in London and presently the attraction was too much for her and she very regretfully abandoned James and their two daughters and went away with Agassia to Rio. Five years later she was killed in a car crash, so James became a widower
de facto
as well as
de jure.
In those days he had been much more mobile; but the desertion had cut a deep ravine in his mind which he was careful not to show.

Of his daughters Teresa was the cheerful conformist, Stephanie the cheerful rebel. These days, of course, everyone had affairs at the drop of a hat, marriage being the non-U word, but Stephanie's overt liaison with this Errol Colton was a little too reminiscent for comfort of her mother's sudden upsurge of passion for Frederick Agassia.

True, that had seemed to last. He had reluctantly gone through with the divorce, and, so far as he knew to the contrary, Janet and Frederick had been living in unalloyed bliss when the bus driver coming towards her dozed off to sleep. So it could be that Stephanie, side-stepping her mother's early marriage, had found the love of her life at almost the first shot. James very much wanted to meet Errol. He knew, of course, that even if he disliked him on sight he would be unlikely to influence Stephanie – she being a girl who knew her own mind. Nor, God help him, would he ever attempt to.