The Perilous Life of Jade Yeo (7 page)

I went to see Ravi in the
Oriental
Literary Review
office to bid him goodbye. I found him standing
in the middle of the room, surrounded by packing cases. His curls
were in disarray and there was a great black ink-blot on his
shirtfront. He looked as flustered as I have ever seen him, but he
was very hospitable.

"Jade! This is an unexpected treat. Do sit
down."

He glanced at his chair, as a man lost in the
desert for many days might gaze at an unattainable oasis. It was
barricaded against us by pillars of reading material.

"I'm afraid the chair is out of reach," he
said, "but here is a pile of
New Statesman
s. Or there is a
stack of the
Athenaeum
. It looks reasonably
comfortable."

"Either will do," I said. "Are you moving,
Ravi?"

"The ORL is moving," said Ravi. "Kamal Masood
is taking over as editor and he's rented a larger set of offices in
Richmond. Rather out of the way, but with Kamal at the helm, I
don't think the ORL need worry about lapsing into obscurity. He's
even going to hire a secretary."

I made an impressed noise. "We are moving up
in the world. But what are you going to do if Kamal's taking your
job?"

"A friend's asked if I'd like to teach at the
School of Oriental Studies," said Ravi. "Nothing's been confirmed
yet, but they've pretty nearly made me an offer."

I was about to congratulate him—I knew it was
precisely what Ravi has been working towards—but he paused and gave
me the oddest look. At the time I thought he looked wistful, of all
things, but of course I see now that he must have been feeling
sorry for me.

"But I might not take it," he went on, as if
he had not stopped. He picked up a dictionary and dropped it in a
case. "I'm thinking of going home."

A cold hand wrapped around my heart.

"Going home?" I said.

Ravi didn't look at me.

"I'm thinking about it," he said.

"But your parents will make you get married,"
I said.

Ravi's parents are not quite as importunate
as mine because he is a man, but I knew they had accumulated a list
of likely candidates and that was one of the reasons he'd stayed in
London instead of going home.

"Would that be so bad?" said Ravi.

I must have looked exquisitely silly at this,
for Ravi looked up and laughed.

"I always meant to marry eventually," he
said. "I'm twenty-eight years old. At my age, my father had two
children. It might be time I started thinking about settling
down."

"I thought you said you wanted to choose a
wife without your family's interference," I said.

"I'm afraid my attempts to choose for myself
haven't been altogether successful," he said. He smiled at me. "But
that's all right. I've not had much practice. Some parental
assistance might be just what I need."

He lifted a case onto his desk and started
putting things in it.

"I suppose I feel I've had my fun," he said.
"I've been in England for such a long time. My grandmother's been
asking when I mean to come home for years now. Perhaps it's
time."

It wasn't a sad thing in itself, what he was
saying, but something in his voice made my heart go out to him. He
looked so tired.

"Ravi, you haven't been working yourself too
hard?" I said. "I know your brain takes up an awful lot of energy,
but you ought to consider the rest of yourself. It must be a
dreadful strain on your body, trying to keep pace with your
mind."

"I eat plenty of porridge and do my exercises
in the morning, as you told me to," said Ravi. "Don't worry, my—"
he coughed—"my friend. I'm simply rather tired of porridge, and
begin to want parotta."

I went up to him and held his face between my
hands, so I could look into it. I wasn't thinking about what I was
doing. I only wanted to be sure that Ravi was well.

"There, you are coughing," I said accusingly.
"Are you sure you're all right?"

"Quite all right," said Ravi. He touched my
hair gently, as if he were comforting an upset child.

He smelt of old books and soap. Perhaps
pregnancy has meddled with my intellects—perhaps having a baby
makes you soft-headed as well as soft-hearted. I already knew my
loving Ravi was a hopeless case and would have been even if I
hadn't destroyed any prospect of a decent marriage by my pursuit of
an artistic education. Even though it feels as if we are the same
kind of person, we are not, of course. I can't imagine the face my
mother would make if I brought Ravi home as a son-in-law, and I
expect the expression on Ravi's parents' faces would be just as
bad.

But none of that matters, because my
silliness with Hardie has put anything of the sort out of the
question. I knew that perfectly well. So I ought to have been
safe—quite safe.

"You have been a brick, Ravi," I said. "You
must look after yourself when you've gone home. And we will stay
friends, won't we? I'll write you, and you must write back, when
you're not too busy. Will you?"

"I haven't yet decided to go," said Ravi in a
low voice.

I can remember his face so clearly. I can see
it before me now, every line of it, and his beautiful eyes. I
didn't understand the look in them. It was almost as if he were
frightened of me.

I suppose he had good reason to be,
considering how I behaved!

"Jade," Ravi said, and I kissed him.

I can't think why I did it. I didn't go for
to do it. It just seemed to happen.

And he kissed me back, I know he did. I shall
remember every detail of it for the rest of my life—the stubble on
his chin, his hot breath on my cheek, the pressure of his hand on
the back of my head. Perhaps he kissed me back out of courtesy, or
curiosity, but Ravi ought to know better than that. Oh hear me,
here I am blaming the poor man when I was the one who pounced on
him like a ravening tiger.

He was the one who stopped it. He pulled back
and took my hands away from his face, and held my wrists.

All he said was: "That was not right,
Jade."

"I know," I said. "I am sorry."

It was dreadful: I was weeping. I grow hot
and cold all over when I think of it, it is so embarrassing.

Ravi was not angry, but stern and distant,
like a schoolmaster. He gave me his handkerchief and waited till
I'd wiped my eyes and blown my nose. When I was done he said, very
gently,

"I'm sorry to have put you in this position.
You're not to blame. But you've got other people to consider."

My heart stopped. I thought for a wild moment
that Hardie had written a poem about Caliban having a baby and it
had got out, and Ravi knew. But Ravi went on to say,

"Hardie can be difficult, I know, but he
means well. Are you happy with him?"

I wanted to explain how things were with
Hardie and Diana, but if I spoke at any length I knew I would start
crying again. I was in that foolish sort of mood that overtakes one
sometimes, in which one is profoundly impressed by the potential
for sorrow in all things. The world seemed unspeakably sad.

"I have no complaints," I said, gulping.

Ravi looked at me with a horrible compassion
in his eyes. I don't want him to pity me. I want him to like me. I
want him always to think of me as happy and careless and his
friend, not as a sopping clinging wreck who is idiotically in love
with him.

"It is hard," said Ravi. "I know. But perhaps
it's worth it. After all, what do we live for, if not for the
impractical and the beautiful? What is more beautiful and
impractical than unrequited love?"

Hardie might say that sort of thing and be
serious, but Ravi wasn't. He smiled at me, trying to share the
joke. I smiled back at him in a watery sort of way.

"It's all right," he said. "Really, it's all
right."

He took my hand and pressed it.

"Thank you," I said in a small voice. He
nodded, not looking up from our joined hands.

I remembered what I had come to tell him.

"I'm going away for a while, Ravi," I said.
"Aunt Iris insists that I visit her in the countryside, to keep her
company while my cousins are away. I'll be out of London for a few
months. Will you be gone by the time I return?"

"Do you think it'd be better if I was?" said
Ravi. Before I could reply, he smiled. "I'll wait. I meant to buy
us both tea at Fortnum's, remember? You owe me another go."

He was perfectly normal for the rest of my
visit. We talked as if nothing out of the ordinary had
happened.

I was too sodden and confused at the time to
understand what Ravi meant when he was going on about unrequited
love, but I've thought about it and I know what he was trying to
say now.

It was my stupidity in kissing him. He knows
how I care for him and he was trying to tell me that it was all
right, that he would think of me as his friend just as he's always
done. It ought to make no difference, because I already knew that
he didn't love me as anything but a friend. But somehow the thought
that he knows and is sorry for me makes me feel even more
wretched.

I am still glad I saw him. How I'll miss him
when he's gone. It's a jolly good thing I'm going away. I shall
have to get used to missing him all the rest of my life.

How melodramatic! I expect I would stop
missing him when I was seventy. Oh dear, I can't wait till I am old
and past all unholy passions. When I am old I shall become an
itinerant poet and wear a straw hat and never worry about love
again.

Well, here we are. We arrived at eight in the
morning, me and the poor benighted worm who sleeps, chewing on its
tail, inside me. The woman who runs the establishment is a Mrs.
Crowther, a mouse-coloured lady with sharp eyes and a wobbly voice
shot through with vibrato, which makes her sound as if she is
always on the verge of tears.

She took my bag and led me to my room and
brought me breakfast here, and now I am writing at my desk by the
window, looking out at rolling green meadows.

Mrs. Crowther is a widow, but her assistants
are Misses mostly. They are all very nice: they knit and are
tremendously tactful. The food is British and hearty, and the
furnishings are soothing, if plain. Perhaps they thought patterns
might distress our minds further. Anyway there are plenty of
shelves in my room, and a lending library in the village, so I'll
have enough to keep myself busy with.

I will be all right here. Diana and Hardie
wanted to send me to his old nurse, who lives on a farm in Kent. I
had nightmarish visions of an apple-cheeked old lady, who would
feed me milk fresh from the cow and indulge me for her old charge's
sake, and call me "that poor young creature". Horrors!

I knew I should have to come up with a
plausible alternative if I were to avoid being drawn into the
spider's web. Thank goodness for Cousin Rose's friend's nerves, and
what a blessing that those nerves belong to an aristocrat. It was
through Aunt Iris's revelling in the girl's lineage that I heard
about Mrs. Crowther's private nursing home.

Mrs. Crowther takes in women with all sorts
of problems—wayward girls like me with inconvenient tadpoles,
ladies with unexplained persistent headaches, gentlewomen who see
dreadful creatures in the walls. She does it quietly, for lots of
rather well-known people, which made it easier for Diana and Hardie
to reconcile themselves to it. And she does it for money, which
makes me more comfortable.

After all perhaps I prefer business
transactions to things done for love. At least with the former, one
knows where one stands.

And now I shall read books and write only a
little and take long walks over the green grass and have gentle
unstimulating conversation with the knitting Misses. I shall sleep
for years every night and I shall eat all Mrs. Crowther's bowls of
porridge, and the worm will uncurl and grow fat and pop out arms
and legs and a nose and two eyes. And I shall not cry myself to
sleep, or write bad poetry about anyone anymore.

Poor worm! You have not got anybody else, so
I must try to be better company for you. I didn't have any foolish
passions when I was a girl, that is the problem. In fact I was a
remarkably cold fish and could not see why my friends were forever
swooning over some boy or other.

I am making up for lost time now, but never
mind—it will soon wear itself out. I must be sure to arrange an
unwise infatuation for the worm in its youth. It is absurd to be in
the mid-twenties and behaving like the Lady of Shalott.

I can't recall if Tennyson ever said how old
the Lady of Shalott was. I should be surprised if she was a day
over sixteen.

I have made a friend! Those of us who loved
not wisely but too well are quarantined from the decent women, so
there has not been much opportunity for conversation with the other
half. But I was struck down by a vile cold this past week, and have
only been able to creep out of my room today. I was too late for
lunch, but one of the Misses took pity on me and persuaded the cook
to whip something up for me.

I was gnawing doggedly on a potato, alone in
the dining room, when a girl came in and sat down across the table
from me. She asked if I wouldn't mind her horning in on my bread
rolls.

"Please do," I said.

I liked the look of her at once: she had
untidy brown hair, and bright dark eyes that darted as a bird's
eyes do, taking in everything about her. She looked like a nice
squirrel. "Are you sure you don't want a sardine?"

"No—the plainest possible bread. A crust
would be even better, in fact," she said, extracting one from a
roll. "I have been fed on milk and fat for days. Bread and water is
my idea of heaven. What is your name? I am Margery."

"My name is Jade," I said. I don't tell
people my real name, after the way everyone at university mangled
it. It's fortunate that my name can be translated into a name that
sounds sensible in English. Imagine if I had been named Swallow, or
Plum.