Falling in Love Again Page 9

  As I lay awake in bed I heard the jackal’s ‘Pheau’, the cry of fear which it communicates to all the jungle when there is danger about, a leopard or a tiger. It was a weird howl, and between each note there was a kind of low gurgling. I switched off the light and peered through the closed window. I saw the jackal at the edge of the lawn. It sat almost vertically on its haunches, holding its head straight up to the sky, making the neighbourhood vibrate with the eerie violence of its cries. Then suddenly it started up and ran off into the trees.

  Before getting back into bed I made sure the window was shut. The bullfrog was singing again, ‘ing-ong, ing-ong’, in some foreign language. I wondered if Sushila was awake too, thinking about me. It must have been almost eleven o’clock. I thought of Miss Deeds with her leg hanging over the edge of the bed. I tossed restlessly and then sat up. I hadn’t slept for two nights but I was not sleepy. I got out of bed without turning on the light and slowly opening my door, crept down the passageway. I stopped at the door of Miss Deeds’s room. I stood there listening, but I heard only the ticking of the big clock that might have been in the room or somewhere in the passage. I put my hand on the doorknob, but the door was bolted. That settled the matter.

  I would definitely leave Shamli the next morning. Another day in the company of these people and I would be behaving like them. Perhaps I was already doing so! I remembered the tonga driver’s words: ‘Don’t stay too long in Shamli or you will never leave!’

  When the rain came, it was not with a preliminary patter or shower, but all at once, sweeping across the forest like a massive wall, and I could hear it in the trees long before it reached the house. Then it came crashing down on the corrugated roof, and the hailstones hit the windowpanes with a hard metallic sound so that I thought the glass would break. The sound of thunder was like the booming of big guns and the lightning kept playing over the garden. At every flash of lightning I sighted the swing under the tree, rocking and leaping in the air as though some invisible, agitated being was sitting on it. I wondered about Kiran. Was she sleeping through all this, blissfully unconcerned, or was she lying awake in bed, starting at every clash of thunder as I was? Or was she up and about, exulting in the storm? I half expected to see her come running through the trees, through the rain, to stand on the swing with her hair blowing wild in the wind, laughing at the thunder and the angry skies. Perhaps I did see her, perhaps she was there. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she were some forest nymph living in the hole of a tree, coming out sometimes to play in the garden.

  A crash, nearer and louder than any thunder so far, made me sit up in bed with a start. Perhaps lightning had struck the house. I turned on the switch but the light didn’t come on. A tree must have fallen across the line.

  I heard voices in the passage—the voices of several people. I stepped outside to find out what had happened, and started at the appearance of a ghostly apparition right in front of me. It was Mr Dayal standing on the threshold in an oversized pyjama suit, a candle in his hand.

  ‘I came to wake you,’ he said. ‘This storm. . .’

  He had the irritating habit of stating the obvious.

  ‘Yes, the storm,’ I said. ‘Why is everybody up?’

  ‘The back wall has collapsed and part of the roof has fallen in. We’d better spend the night in the lounge—it is the safest room. This is a very old building,’ he added apologetically.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I am coming.’

  The lounge was lit by two candles. One stood over the piano, the other on a small table near the couch. Miss Deeds was on the couch, Lin was at the piano-stool, looking as though he would start playing Stravinsky any moment, and Dayal was fussing about the room. Sushila was standing at a window, looking out at the stormy night. I went to the window and touched her but she didn’t look around or say anything. The lightning flashed and her dark eyes were pools of smouldering fire.

  ‘What time will you be leaving?’ she asked.

  ‘The tonga will come for me at seven.’

  ‘If I come,’ she said, ‘if I come with you, I will be at the station before the train leaves.’

  ‘How will you get there?’ I asked, and hope and excitement rushed over me again.

  ‘I will get there,’ she said. ‘I will get there before you. But if I am not there, then do not wait, do not come back for me. Go on your way. It will mean I do not want to come. Or I will be there.’

  ‘But are you sure?’

  ‘Don’t stand near me now. Don’t speak to me unless you have to.’ She squeezed my fingers, then drew her hand away. I sauntered over to the next window, then back into the centre of the room. A gust of wind blew through a cracked windowpane and put out the candle near the couch.

  ‘Damn the wind,’ said Miss Deeds.

  The window in my room had burst open during the night and there were leaves and branches strewn about the floor. I sat down on the damp bed and smelt eucalyptus. The earth was red, as though the storm had bled it all night.

  After a little while I went into the veranda with my suitcase to wait for the tonga. It was then that I saw Kiran under the trees. Kiran’s long black pigtails were tied up in a red ribbon, and she looked fresh and clean like the rain and the red earth. She stood looking seriously at me.

  ‘Did you like the storm?’ she asked.

  ‘Some of the time,’ I said. ‘I’m going soon. Can I do anything for you?’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to the end of the world. I’m looking for Major Roberts, have you seen him anywhere?’

  ‘There is no Major Roberts,’ she said perceptively. ‘Can I come with you to the end of the world?’

  ‘What about your parents?’

  ‘Oh, we won’t take them.’

  ‘They might be annoyed if you go off on your own.’

  ‘I can stay on my own. I can go anywhere.’

  ‘Well, one day I’ll come back here and I’ll take you everywhere and no one will stop us. Now is there anything else I can do for you?’

  ‘I want some flowers, but I can’t reach them,’ she pointed to a hibiscus tree that grew against the wall. It meant climbing the wall to reach the flowers. Some of the red flowers had fallen during the night and were floating in a pool of water.

  ‘All right,’ I said and pulled myself up on the wall. I smiled down into Kiran’s serious, upturned face. ‘I’ll throw them to you and you can catch them.’

  I bent a branch, but the wood was young and green and I had to twist it several times before it snapped.

  ‘I hope nobody minds,’ I said, as I dropped the flowering branch to Kiran.

  ‘It’s nobody’s tree,’ she said.

  ‘Sure?’

  She nodded vigorously. ‘Sure, don’t worry.’

  I was working for her and she felt immensely capable of protecting me. Talking and being with Kiran, I felt a nostalgic longing for childhood—emotions that had been beautiful because they were never completely understood.

  ‘Who is your best friend?’ I said.

  ‘Daya Ram,’ she replied. ‘I told you so before.’

  She was certainly faithful to her friends.

  ‘And who is the second best?’

  She put her finger in her mouth to consider the question, and her head dropped sideways.

  ‘I’ll make you the second best,’ she said.

  I dropped the flowers over her head. ‘That is so kind of you. I’m proud to be your second best.’

  I heard the tonga bell, and from my perch on the wall saw the carriage coming down the driveway. ‘That’s for me,’ I said. ‘I must go now.’

  I jumped down the wall. And the sole of my shoe came off at last.

  ‘I knew that would happen,’ I said.

  ‘Who cares for shoes,’ said Kiran.

  ‘Who cares,’ I said.

  I walked back to the veranda and Kiran walked beside me, and stood in front of the hotel while I put my suitcase in the tonga.

 
‘You nearly stayed one day too late,’ said the tonga driver. ‘Half the hotel has come down and tonight the other half will come down.’

  I climbed into the back seat. Kiran stood on the path, gazing intently at me.

  ‘I’ll see you again,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll see you in Iceland or Japan,’ she said. ‘I’m going everywhere.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘maybe you will.’

  We smiled, knowing and understanding each other’s importance. In her bright eyes I saw something old and wise. The tonga driver cracked his whip, the wheels creaked, the carriage rattled down the path. We kept waving to each other. In Kiran’s hand was a spring of hibiscus. As she waved, the blossoms fell apart and danced a little in the breeze.

  Shamli station looked the same as it had the day before. The same train stood at the same platform and the same dogs prowled beside the fence. I waited on the platform till the bell clanged for the train to leave, but Sushila did not come.

  Somehow, I was not disappointed. I had never really expected her to come. Unattainable, Sushila would always be more bewitching and beautiful than if she were mine.

  Shamli would always be there. And I could always come back, looking for Major Roberts.

  The Girl from Copenhagen

  his is not a love story but it is a story about love. You will know what I mean.

  When I was living and working in London I knew a Vietnamese girl called Phuong. She studied at the Polytechnic. During the summer vacations she joined a group of students—some of them English, most of them French, German, Indian and African—picking raspberries for a few pounds a week and drinking in some real English country air. Late one summer, on her return from a farm, she introduced me to Ulla, a sixteen-year-old Danish girl who had come over to England for a similar holiday.

  ‘Please look after Ulla for a few days,’ said Phuong. ‘She doesn’t know anyone in London.’

  ‘But I want to look after you,’ I protested. I had been infatuated with Phuong for some time, but though she was rather fond of me, she did not reciprocate my advances and it was possible that she had conceived of Ulla as a device to get rid of me for a little while.

  ‘This is Ulla,’ said Phuong, thrusting a blonde child into my arms. ‘Bye and don’t get up to any mischief!’

  Phuong disappeared, and I was left alone with Ulla at the entrance to the Charing Cross Underground Station. She grinned at me and I smiled back rather nervously. She had blue eyes and smooth, tanned skin. She was small for a Scandinavian girl, reaching only to my shoulders, and her figure was slim and boyish. She was carrying a small travel-bag. It gave me an excuse to do something.

  ‘We’d better leave your bag somewhere,’ I said taking it from her.

  And after depositing it in the left-luggage office, we were back on the pavement, grinning at each other.

  ‘Well, Ulla,’ I said, ‘how many days do you have in London?’

  ‘Only two. Then I go back to Copenhagen.’

  ‘Good. Well, what would you like to do?’

  ‘Eat. I’m hungry.’

  I wasn’t hungry but there’s nothing like a meal to help two strangers grow acquainted. We went to a small and not very expensive Indian restaurant off Fitzroy Square and burnt our tongues on an orange-coloured Hyderabad chicken curry. We had to cool off with a Tamil Koykotay before we could talk.

  ‘What do you do in Copenhagen?’ I asked.

  ‘I go to school. I’m joining the University next year.’

  ‘And your parents?’

  ‘They have a bookshop.’

  ‘Then you must have done a lot of reading.’

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t read much. I can’t sit in one place for long. I like swimming and tennis and going to the theatre.’

  ‘But you have to sit in a theatre.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s different.’

  ‘It’s not sitting that you mind but sitting and reading.’

  ‘Yes, you are right. But most Danish girls like reading—they read more books than English girls.’

  ‘You are probably right,’ I said.

  As I was out of a job just then and had time on my hands, we were able to feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square and while away the afternoon in a coffee bar before going on to a theatre. Ulla was wearing tight jeans and an abbreviated duffle coat and as she had brought little else with her, she wore this outfit to the theatre. It created quite a stir in the foyer but Ulla was completely unconscious of the stares she received. She enjoyed the play, laughed loudly in all the wrong places, and clapped her hands when no one else did.

  The lunch and the theatre had lightened my wallet and dinner consisted of baked beans on toast in a small snack bar. After picking up Ulla’s bag, I offered to take her back to Phuong’s place.

  ‘Why there?’ she said. ‘Phuong must have gone to bed.’

  ‘Yes, but aren’t you staying with her?’

  ‘Oh, no. She did not ask me.’

  ‘Then where are you staying? Where have you kept the rest of your things?’

  ‘Nowhere. This is all I brought with me,’ she said, indicating the travel bag.

  ‘Well, you can’t sleep on a park bench,’ I said. ‘Shall I get you a room in a hotel?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I have only the money to return to Copenhagen.’ She looked crestfallen for a few moments. Then she brightened and slipped her arm through mine. ‘I know, I’ll stay with you. Do you mind?’

  ‘No, but my landlady—’ I began, then stopped. It would have been a lie. My landlady, a generous, broad-minded soul, would not have minded in the least.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind.’

  When we reached my room in Swiss Cottage Ulla threw off her coat and opened the window wide. It was a warm summer’s night and the scent of honeysuckle came through the open window. She kicked her shoes off and walked about the room barefoot. Her toenails were painted a bright pink. She slipped out of her blouse and jeans and stood before the mirror in her lace pants. A lot of sunbathing had made her quite brown but her small breasts were white.

  She slipped into bed and said, ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  I crept in beside her and lay very still while she chattered on about the play and the friends she had made in the country. I switched off the bed-lamp and she fell silent. Then she said, ‘Well, I’m sleepy. Goodnight!’ And turning over, she immediately fell asleep.

  I lay awake beside her, conscious of the growing warmth of her body. She was breathing easily and quietly. Her long, golden hair touched my cheek. I kissed her gently on the lobe of the ear but she was fast asleep. So I counted eight hundred and sixty-two Scandinavian sheep and managed to fall asleep.

  Ulla woke fresh and frolicsome. The sun streamed in through the window and she stood naked in its warmth, performing calisthenics. I busied myself with the breakfast. Ulla ate three eggs and a lot of bacon and drank two cups of coffee. I couldn’t help admiring her appetite.

  ‘And what shall we do today?’ she asked, her blue eyes shining. They were the bright blue eyes of a Siamese kitten.

  ‘I’m supposed to visit the Employment Exchange,’ I said.

  ‘But that is bad. Can’t you go tomorrow—after I have left?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I like.’

  And she gave me a swift, unsettling kiss on the lips.

  We climbed Primrose Hill and watched boys flying kites. We lay in the sun and chewed blades of grass and then we visited the zoo where Ulla fed the monkeys. She consumed innumerable ices. We lunched at a small Greek restaurant and I forgot to phone Phuong and in the evening we walked all the way home through scruffy Camden Town, drank beer, ate a fine, greasy dinner of fish and chips and went to bed early—Ulla had to catch the boat-train the next morning.

  ‘It has been a good day,’ she said.

  ‘I’d like to do it again tomorrow.’

  ‘But I must go tomorrow.’

  ‘But you must go.’

  She turned h
er head on the pillow and looked wonderingly into my eyes, as though she were searching for something. I don’t know if she found what she was looking for but she smiled and kissed me softly on the lips.

  ‘Thanks for everything,’ she said.

  She was fresh and clean, like the earth after spring rain.

  I took her fingers and kissed them, one by one. I kissed her breasts, her throat, her forehead. And, making her close her eyes, I kissed her eyelids.

  We lay in each other’s arms for a long time, savouring the warmth and texture of each other’s bodies. Though we were both very young and inexperienced, we found ourselves imbued with a tender patience, as though there lay before us not just this one passing night but all the nights of a lifetime, all eternity.

  There was a great joy in our loving and afterwards we fell asleep in each other’s arms like two children who have been playing in the open all day.

  The sun woke me the next morning. I opened my eyes to see Ulla’s slim, bare leg dangling over the side of the bed. I smiled at her painted toes. Her hair pressed against my face and the sunshine fell on it making each hair a strand of burnished gold.

  The station and the train were crowded and we held hands and grinned at each other, too shy to kiss.

  ‘Give my love to Phuong,’ she said.

  ‘I will.’

  We made no promises—of writing, or of meeting again. Somehow our relationship seemed complete and whole, as though it had been destined to blossom for those two days. A courting and a marriage and a living together had been compressed, perfectly, into one summer night. . .

  I passed the day in a glow of happiness. I thought Ulla was still with me and it was only at night, when I put my hand out for hers, and did not find it, that I knew she had gone.

  But I kept the window open all through the summer and the scent of the honeysuckle was with me every night.

  Binya Passes By

  hile I was walking home one day, along the path through the pines, I heard a girl singing.