Thursday’s Child. Helen Forrester
bringing water to Shahpur, but Government has much work to do – it cannot do it all at once.’ He grinned at me, and added: ‘The British did not expect to harvest much tax from the district round Shahpur, so they did not care about providing water for it.’
It was the first time I had heard him criticise the British régime in India. His usual attitude was to ignore the past and speak only of the future of his country. Other Indians sometimes said that the Germans or the French would have been worse taskmasters and would have made their struggle for freedom both longer and bloodier.
‘Don’t be too hard on my fellow countrymen,’ I said.
He thought he had hurt me and to comfort me he said immediately that India had much that was good to learn from England, and that India was indebted to many fine English administrators.
Chundabhai came back to the table. Sheila followed with two English friends of Ajit and Chundabhai, and the party became hilarious.
This was the first of many occasions that Ajit and I enjoyed together, sometimes with a group from the club, sometimes just the two of us. It was a peculiar relationship. Ajit never asked anything of me – he seemed just content to be with me; and I was grateful for his peaceful presence. Part of me cried out to be loved, but I could not imagine being loved by anyone but Barney – and Barney was dead.
Very occasionally Ajit came to our house for an hour or so on Sunday evening, when I was not on duty. Mother always made him stay to supper and he basked in the comfortable, domestic atmosphere. After one of these visits, as we walked down the path to the gate, he said to me rather wistfully: ‘You have a splendid home.’
‘I think you must have a nice one too,’ I said.
‘I have,’ he said absently, ‘but I cannot hope to provide for my wife what Father provided for Mother. Middle-class people in India do not have so much money in our days.’
‘It is the same in England,’ I said. ‘If Angela or I got married, we would probably start in a two-roomed flat.’
‘Would you?’ he asked eagerly.
‘Of course.’
He shook my hand and went through the gate. I leaned over it and watched him out of sight. I was troubled because I saw myself hurting yet another man by refusing his proposal.
But I flattered myself. No proposal came.
A year went by, a year full of contented work for me. I began to have friends all over the world. After our visitors had gone, they often wrote to members of the staff, inviting them to spend holidays in cities as far apart as Delhi and Santiago. The feeling that I could go to almost any large town in the world and find a friend there to make me welcome, gave me a confidence that I had not enjoyed before.
I met also many English people, who took an interest in the club’s activities, and I learned how hospitable they could be, rationed and servantless as they were. I sometimes accepted an invitation to tea myself, and Mother helped me to entertain in return. By this means the number of her acquaintances was enlarged, and she found new interests to replace the slackening demands made on her by her daughters.
It was after one of these tea parties, when we were washing up, that Mother said: ‘Are we going to have a marriage in the family, darling?’
My hands froze amongst the soapsuds of the washing-up water. Had she misunderstood Ajit’s and my relationship, and if she had, how could I explain its special quality?
‘I don’t know, Mummy,’ I said guardedly.
‘I think so, dear – Angela and Jamie.’
I sighed with relief. Mother knew nothing of James’s proposal to me; all she knew was that he used to pay equal attention to both her daughters, but recently he had taken Angela out alone on one or two occasions.
‘I hope you are right, Mother,’ I said, as I shook more soap flakes into the water.
Mother looked troubled.
‘I sometimes worry about Angela,’ she said. ‘I can never get close to her as I can to you – even when she was a small child she seemed remote and independent.’
‘Don’t worry, Mother. Angela is a very capable young woman and well able to take care of herself.’
Mother sighed.
‘I expect you are right, darling – it would be so nice if she married James – he’s so dependable.’
So Mother felt the same as I did about Angela. As far as her personal affairs were concerned, she was bafflingly unapproachable – and yet we both loved her. Whenever I thought of Angela I thought of kindness. We had shared our toys, lent each other clothes for special occasions, rarely quarrelled. When we were at Grammar School we had confided in each other about our boy friends and small triumphs and disappointments; but when I preceded her to University that closeness seemed to vanish, probably just because we saw less of each other.
What did I know of Angela, the grown-up, sophisticated Angela, who, now that the war was over, was beginning to publish modest papers on her work?
She was a shadowy figure who had rejoiced with me over my engagement to Jackie; held me tightly while I got over his death and had been glad when I became engaged to Barney – or had she been glad? She had seemed surprised, almost shocked at first.
As I carefully laid the plates on the draining-board for Mother to dry, I thought again of that terrible last year of the war and of the events that led up to my engagement to Barney.
The twins had lived down the road from us since they were small boys and we had often played together. Barney, James, Angela and me, and as we grew older we had occasionally paired off – my heart missed a beat – not Barney and Peggie, and James and Angela, but Barney and Angela, with James and me left to our own devices.
I dropped a cup and smashed it.
‘My love, I hope you are not upset about James and Angela,’ said Mother, helping me to pick up the bits.
‘Oh, no, Mummy,’ I said truthfully, ‘I am very pleased.’
I put the bits of broken china into the sink basket and apologised for my clumsiness.
Barney’s actual wooing of me, apart from odd kisses at children’s parties, had been short and sweet. It had been compressed into fourteen days’ leave during which we had become engaged, and one subsequent leave. In between there had been letters every two or three days – love letters.
I had been very flattered by the sudden special attention from a man who had stood high in my affection from childhood. His hot, almost desperate passion had awakened an equal passion in me, and the idea of spending the rest of my life with him made me glow with happiness.
Mechanically I emptied the teapot as I thought back to the days before Barney had volunteered for military service – and I was afraid. A fine sweat trickled down my back and I clutched the teapot firmly in case its fate should be the same as the broken teacup. I began to remember odd times when the four of us had gone out together, when we were all students – and I saw sudden little pictures of Barney hauling Angela up Scafell, Barney and Angela picking gooseberries in our garden and quarrelling at the same time, only to fall silent when I approached, Angela kissing someone good night under the laburnum – I had thought it was James she kissed, but it could have been Barney – Angela making a point of meeting the postman on her way out to work during the war and taking her letters from him.
I tried, as I scrubbed the kitchen sink, to remember Angela’s other men friends. There were one or two vague figures escorting her during her teens, but I realised with a growing feeling of nausea that, if I excepted a fellow scientist who had written a paper with her, I knew of no man with whom she had gone out alone either during or since the war, except Gaylord,