Tikkipala (6 page)

‘Let me see your hands,' said the Raja. ‘Drop the iron and let me see.'

Smiling, relieved, Sangita threw down the iron where it sizzled and scalded into the grass. She held out her hands for the Raja to see. They were pink with heat and smudged with soot. But they were not burnt.

‘Now you must take me back as you promised,' she repeated.

‘I will think about it,' said the Raja.

‘But you said…but you promised…' As she started crying, she saw the watchmen coming across the garden.

‘Perhaps the iron was not so hot as I thought,' said the Raja. ‘And please do not enter here again without my permission. Also in future the gate keepers will have instructions to shut the gates on you.'

‘But my hands were not burnt, and you promised… why don't you believe me?' wept Sangita as the men took her arms, ready to lead her out.

‘Sita's feet were not burnt and her husband, Lord Rama, accepted that she was innocent but banished her all the same,' the Raja had said. ‘For the suspicion still remained and how can a king, or Raja, have a wife upon whom falls suspicion.'

Sangita stood waiting for the moment when Anwar should appear, riding on his pony with the saddle and bridle.

She waited on the lawn before the palace, as Anwar had instructed her. ‘Because I am going to come riding in, and you will be amazed how good I am at riding. And Mama, you are right, Ruby is not a good name for a white boy pony, so I am going to call him Witherite. What do you think?'

‘That's a funny name. What does it mean?'

‘It's a twin orthohombic crystal. Do you like it?'

Sangita smiled. ‘Not much, actually.'

‘What about ‘Magnesite' then?'

‘Oh, no,' said Sangita.

‘Dolomite?'

‘Mm.'

'Aragonite?'

‘That's better,' she said. ‘I'm sorry to be so fussy.'

‘I'm running out of names of white minerals,' said the little boy.

‘Do you have to call him after a mineral?'

‘I thought I would, because they're Papa's favourite things and the pony is my favourite.'

‘You don't think that ‘Hanuman' would be a good name?'

‘A monkey?' said Anwar, looking shocked.

‘He was a special monkey, though,' laughed Sangita. ‘Because he rescued Sita from Ravana.'

Anwar looked thoughtful, then said at last, ‘I've made up my mind and I'm going to call my pony, ‘Whitey.'

‘Oh, my goodness.' Sangita burst out laughing.

Hanuman had found and saved Seeta, but had never come to help Sangita. The worst day, out of all those terrible days, was the one when her father handed her a London newspaper and pointed to an announcement of an engagement. A dizziness came over Sangita's eyes at first, so that she could hardly read the words. It took her some long moments to understand that Paul was getting married in a church in London. A long time to take in fully the fact that no one was going to save her, and that she might as well die after all.

Her father pulled the paper away just in time, before a tear fell on it.

Her thoughts came back to the present, with the sound of the pony's feet on the gravel of the drive, then suddenly Anwar appeared, his face flushed with happiness, his little white stallion tossing his head and foaming at the mouth. Hari, the syce was leading him and trying to quieten the pony with the other hand, while Anwar, leaning forward to try to bat the man's hand away, shouted, ‘Leave go, Hari. I want my mother to see me riding on my own.'

‘You are only four years old, baby sahib. This is too young for only riding.'

‘Do as I say, Hari. Obey me this instant,' yelled the little Raja.

‘But the Raja sahib said…'

‘Leave go, leave go!'

Hari looked up anxiously to where the Raja was standing, looking proudly from the balcony. The Raja nodded and Hari let go.

For a moment it seemed as though the little boy might fall, for the pony, so suddenly released from the syce's tight grip, gave a series of little happy bucks. But Anwar held on, kept his balance and moments later had the pony under control, and cantering round the lawn.

‘Shabash, shabash,' cried the Raja from the balcony, clapping his hands. ‘This boy is a proper horseman and will be a great rider when he is big. You need not hold him anymore, Hari, for my boy knows how to control his horse.'

‘Mama, mama,' cried Anwar joyously, as he cantered by. ‘Isn't Whitey the best horse you have ever seen and aren't I riding well?'

‘You are a champion, my son,' said Sangita and felt some silly tears well up in her eyes, because of pride and relief, because her child had not fallen.

During the days that followed, Anwar could not keep away from his pony. He would have slept and eaten in the stable if anyone had allowed it.

‘Your horse must get a little rest, baby sahib,' Hari said. ‘You must only ride him for two hours each day, or his legs will go lame.'

Anwar longed to go off on his own on the pony, but the Raja forbade that absolutely. ‘It is not that I don't think you are a good enough rider, my son, but because this is a dangerous place. There are bandits in the villages and wild animals in the jungles, so you must always take Hari with you where ever you go.'

‘But he is so slow,' complained Anwar. ‘I have to keep stopping for him to catch up with us. I want to gallop fast, and he keeps calling, ‘Come back, baby sahib. You are going too fast for me.'

‘That is right of him,' said the Raja. ‘As well as all the other dangers, the ground here is very uneven and your pony might put his leg in a hole and break it if you go galloping wildly over the countryside on your own.'

‘If I just walked slowly, but went on my own?' the child pleaded.

‘No,' said the father.

Anwar began working on his mother. ‘Look, Mama, you just stand there and don't follow me, and I'll ride right round the palace on my own, then come back to you.'

‘But your father will be angry. He said you must take Hari with you, always.'

‘Papa's not here. He's up on the hill side, getting stones.'

‘All the same, are you sure it's not dangerous?'

‘Of course it isn't,' scoffed Anwar. ‘Nothing can happen to me in the garden.'

In spite of his confidence, Sangita felt a touch of worry each time Anwar vanished from sight round the back of the palace and kept on worrying till he reappeared, beaming, on the other side.

‘He does not seem to need a brother, or a sister, in spite of what my husband said,' thought Sangita. ‘My husband was wrong when he said that Anwar was lonely and needed a sibling.' That was why the Raja had ordered Sangita, after two years of banishment, to return to the palace and take up the duties once again of being his wife and Anwar's mother. ‘I should have thought of this earlier,' he told Sangita's father, as he arranged for the return of his wife. ‘For now my son, Anwar, is four years old and so by the time your daughter produces another offspring for me, and a sibling for my son, the difference will be minimum five years, but this will have to be borne.'

Sangita's father drooped in gratitude because his daughter was being restored to respectability. ‘I thank you profusely for your graciousness and assure you that my daughter, who is still young and healthy, will undoubtedly produce the offspring you require.'

Even though he still could not bring himself to speak directly to his wife or even look at her, the Raja had sex with Sangita every night after she was returned to the palace of Bidwar. He did this with silent determination and Sangita felt that her body was hardly involved in the event at all. She felt like a field in which a farmer was sowing a crop and knew that when the results of her husband's efforts produced a baby, he would not acknowledge that she had any part in its production. Perhaps it was not sorrow at being parted from Daisy, but this kind of thinking that prevented her from conceiving. Or perhaps it was because of her revulsion for her husband's thrusting body. Once, bored because he went on toiling into her for so long, she fell into a doze in which she dreamt that the man making love to her was Daisy's brother, Paul. She smelled the sweetness of lavender. He whispered something gentle in her ear and she felt his breath stir her hair, as it had done when he shouted something to her in the car. She put her hands up to his face, about to caress it, but instead of the soft youngness of the gora's golden skin, she encountered the Raja's bristling moustache. She let out a little shriek, that was half shock and half disappointment but which the Raja, in his struggle to produce another son, did not notice.

Later on, for night after night, she lay stiff and still, praying that she did not sleep again, in case then she should really shout aloud another man's name. That would be the end of everything then. Her husband could not possibly keep her in his household. It would not matter how many red hot irons she held and was not burnt by, he would know where her heart really was. So night after night she tried to keep her mind off
Paul, while her husband serviced her like a bull rutting a cow in season. Any woman would have done the same for him and it was only chance that forced him to take her. It was only because, five years before, he had gone through the marriage ceremony with her and already had one child by her, that he was using her body for his purpose and not another woman's.

Once, as Sangita and Hari the syce stood waiting, five minutes passed with Anwar out of sight. Hari became restless and Sangita started to feel panic but the pair of them relaxed into smiles as the triumphant boy reappeared.

‘Where did you go? Why were you so long?'

‘I saw a wild pig and chased it right across the back garden,' cried the child.

‘You mustn't do things like that,' said Sangita, trying to sound severe, but really impressed. ‘You gave me such a fright.'

Sangita felt afraid again when, later, Anwar boasted to his father, ‘I nearly captured a wild boar. I leant right over and touched it with my whip and if I had a proper pig sticking lance I bet I could have killed it.'

The Raja looked angry. ‘How has the child encountered this pig? Where has he been riding?'

‘The creature came blundering into the garden, sir,' said Hari hastily.

The Raja's expression relaxed and he told his son, ‘I will have a little tent pegging lance made for you, and teach you how to use it so that when you are bigger you can go out on your own and kill wild boar.'

For the next week or so the Raja hardly went up the mountain at all, but stood on the edge of the lawn supervising his son capturing flat wooden pegs with a steel tipped lance. Gradually, as the days went by, Anwar progressed from stabbing one peg at a
slow trot, to gathering up two then three at increasing speeds, till on the tenth day the child came galloping back, lance held triumphant over his head, all four pegs firmly retained. ‘Now I am good enough to do proper pig sticking. Can I go tomorrow?'

‘No. You aren't old enough yet. But when you are bigger you will be a great pig sticker.'

‘I want to be one now.'

‘No.'

‘Why not?' wailed the child, petulantly flinging his lance to the ground. ‘You promised. You said you would teach me so that I could stick pigs.'

‘The pony is too spirited and you are too young,' said the Raja.

‘But I can ride Whitey easily. Look. I can do anything. He does everything I want.' Anwar gave a little demonstrative figure of eight at a canter. ‘See how well he changes legs.'

The Raja nodded. ‘I agree that the pony is turning out a great deal better than I had expected and that it is all due to your good horsemanship.' Then, ‘what is the matter, son?' When the child, instead of looking pleased at the compliment, looked grumpy instead.

‘Why won't you let me go after that pig?'

‘Alright,' said the Raja, after a moment's contemplation. ‘I will allow you to go out for a short while in the morning.' The boy's face brightened. The Raja added, ‘But only if you take Hari.'

‘How can I chase wild boar with Hari there, Papa. The pigs are not going to be waiting while he comes slowly running along beside me. I need to go on my own.'

‘This is out of the question,' said the Raja.

‘It is only in our garden. I won't go out of the garden.'

‘Anwar, our garden, as you call it, is two miles wide and consists mostly of scrub jungle. There might easily be wild tigers in there. Aren't you afraid of tigers?'

‘I'm not afraid of anything.'

‘It is still no.'

Next day Anwar refused to do any more tent pegging. ‘I want to stick pigs. I'm bored of this.' He became grumpy, refused to allow his ayah to bath him, stopped eating, screamed when he was told it was his bed time. He stopped riding his pony. Hari would bring Whitey out, ready saddled, and Anwar would run off, as though he had not noticed.

He turned away when the Raja talked to him and refused to answer. When the Raja praised him for his braveness or his cleverness, Anwar scowled instead of smiling. The only person he would smile at was his mother. He started sitting on her knee, as though he had become a toddler again. He would stroke her face, cup his hands around her chin. ‘I love you Mama, and I think you are beautiful.'

‘Come my boy, we will go to a little up the mountain and watch the sun setting,' said the Raja. And Sangita would feel happy inside when Anwar said, ‘I want to stay with my mother. I don't want to come with you.'

‘He is a spoiled brat, and needs to be whipped,' said the Raja angrily and went storming away on his own.

‘You will let me go and kill the pigs, won't you, Mama?' Anwar said as soon as his father was out of sight.

‘No, no, absolutely no. I will not have a moment's peace as long as you are away.'