Of Marriageable Age Read online

  Of Marriageable Age

  Sharon Maas

  Bookouture

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  1. Chapter One

  2. Chapter Two

  3. Chapter Three

  4. Chapter Four

  5. Chapter Five

  6. Chapter Six

  7. Chapter Seven

  8. Chapter Eight

  9. Chapter Nine

  10. Chapter Ten

  11. Chapter Eleven

  12. Chapter Twelve

  13. Chapter Thirteen

  14. Chapter Fourteen

  15. Chapter Fifteen

  16. Chapter Sixteen

  17. Chapter Seventeen

  18. Chapter Eighteen

  19. Chapter Nineteen

  20. Chapter Twenty

  21. Chapter Twenty-one

  22. Chapter Twenty-two

  23. Chapter Twenty-three

  24. Chapter Twenty-four

  25. Chapter Twenty-five

  26. Chapter Twenty-six

  27. Chapter Twenty-seven

  28. Chapter Twenty-eight

  29. Chapter Twenty-nine

  30. Chapter Thirty

  31. Chapter Thirty-one

  32. Chapter Thirty-two

  33. Chapter Thirty-three

  34. Chapter Thirty-four

  35. Chapter Thirty-five

  36. Chapter Thirty-six

  37. Chapter Thirty-seven

  38. Chapter Thirty-eight

  39. Chapter Thirty-nine

  40. Chapter Forty

  41. Chapter Forty-one

  42. Chapter Forty-two

  43. Chapter Forty-three

  44. Chapter Forty-four

  45. Chapter Forty-five

  46. Chapter Forty-six

  47. Chapter Forty-seven

  48. Chapter Forty-eight

  49. Chapter Forty-nine

  50. Chapter Fifty

  51. Chapter Fifty-one

  52. Chapter Fifty-two

  53. Chapter Fifty-three

  54. Chapter Fifty-four

  55. Chapter Fifty-five

  56. Chapter Fifty-six

  57. Chapter Fifty-seven

  58. Chapter Fifty-eight

  59. Chapter Fifty-nine

  60. Chapter Sixty

  61. Chapter Sixty-one

  62. Chapter Sixty-two

  63. Chapter Sixty-three

  64. Chapter Sixty-four

  65. Chapter Sixty-five

  66. Chapter Sixty-six

  67. Chapter Sixty-seven

  68. Chapter Sixty-eight

  69. Chapter Sixty-nine

  70. Chapter Seventy

  71. Chapter Seventy-one

  72. Chapter Seventy-two

  73. Chapter Seventy-three

  74. Chapter Seventy-four

  Epilogue

  Letter from Sharon

  Glossary

  Published by Bookouture.

  An imprint of StoryFire Ltd. 23 Sussex Road, Ickenham, UB10 8PN, United Kingdom

  www.bookouture.com

  Copyright © Sharon Maas 2000

  Sharon Maas has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Originally published by HarperCollins, 2000.

  ISBN: 978-1-909490-23-9

  Acknowledgments

  For the original print version, published by HarperCollins in 1999:

  My thanks to the following persons, each of whom helped in one way or another to bring this book to life:

  Pratima, who inspired it;

  Hilary Johnson, Sarah Molloy and Susan Watt who believed in it and brought it to birth;

  Katherine Prior, who helped with the history;

  Sridhar, my first reader and critic, whose encouragement was gold;

  Chris and Zarine, for putting me up, and for putting up with me;

  Jürgen, Miro and Saskia, my family, for the precious gift of time.

  For the Bookouture, revised version you now hold in your hands:

  Oliver Rhodes, who plucked this book from obscurity and brought it to life; Katie Fforde, Lesley Pearse, Audrey Howard and Barbara Erskine, my first readers and supporters; Dianne Reichart, who proof-read the revision with eyes as sharp as an eagle’s; Saskia Westmaas, for her cover ideas; Amanda Richards, for your beautiful photos.

  Not forgetting all the wonderful people, friends and family, who have stood by me through the years, offering encouragement and support when I grew weary and discouraged:

  Ann Claypole, Brenda King, Helen Zettler, Angelika Frank and Ewa Kenyeres; Mara Clark and Pratima Nath-Willard; Rory Westmaas, Peta Westmaas, Chris Westmaas, Nigel Westmaas, Yuri Westmaas, Gary Westmaas, Nancy Westmaas, Tiffany Westmaas, Susan Conliffe; Mirri and Peter Halder; Gisela Oess-Langford, Renate Boy, Elke Neukum-Kraus, Rita Coughlan, Ulrike Mack; Monique Roffey, Shahrukh Hussain;

  Karin Streich and Giesla Heibel, my wonderful colleagues at GRN; Ulrike Boehm and The Ultimate Moose; Palle Jorgensen Mary Whipple, Judy Lind; Jamie Mason, Rob McCreery, Ray Wong, Jane Smith, Chris Stevenson, James Macdonald, Charles Alley and countless other AW writers; my support team in Guyana: Petamber Persaud, Salvador deCaires, Andrea deCaires, Vanda Radzig, Miro Westmaas, Jocelyn Dow, Zena Bone, Diane McTurk; Sibille and Peter Pritchard of Oveido; my Sussex-U MA Chalkmates: Sandy Tozer, Sian Thomas, Graham Hamilton, Mike Liardet, Dorothy Helme, Alison Gibb, Jacquey Piazet, Linda Baker; John G, Anda, Jo, Martina, Jeff, Mary Ann, Yamini and Richard of Toytown Germany; Guyana writers John Agard, Grace Nichols, Jan Shinebourne, Pauline Melville, Ian McDonald, Clem Seecharan; Catharina and Aliya Costanzo; my UK relatives and friends: Rod Westmaas, his amazing wife Juanita Cox-Westmaas, Gillian Westmaas Lee, Gloria Austin, Nico Kaczmarek, Chris and Zarine Pegler, Ron and Susan Sanders; Neelou Malakpour, who can’t wait for the movie; Marion Kowalski, the late Uschi Mühlhause and Trudel Elsässer, Eric and Anita Arnaut, Renate Köhler, Inge and Heinz Tröndle, Monika Wittiber, Janet Kramer, Ulrike Stegmüller, Thurid Müller-Elmau, Isolde Frederix and many many more friends of India. You all did your bit, however big or small.

  My husband Jürgen Münch.

  Last but not least, the most important one of all: my mother, Eileen Cox. May you make your century. Thank You.

  To Caterpillars everywhere

  And the Butterflies within them

  1

  Chapter One

  Nat

  Tamil Nadu, Madras State, 1947

  Paul was four when the sahib took him away from the place with all the children. It began like every other day. He awoke to the sound of banging on a big brass plate: that was Sister Maria, waking the children, while outside the crows cawed in great excitement as if they knew the day was special, flying off in a turbulence of flapping, clapping wings. He kneeled on his mat for his dawn prayer and then, stretching and yawning, he got up and went outside for a pee.

  Next to the tap by the well stood the buckets of waiting water, each with a metal cup hanging over the side. The children jostled forward chattering and laughing, and Paul was last, as usual. He ladled up a cup of water and threw it all over himself, one half down his front and the other over hi
s shoulder, so that his skin glistened and all the pores stood out like they did on a plucked chicken. He had his very own piece of soap, now the size of a one-rupee coin, with which he rubbed himself down till he was covered in bubbles, and then he sloshed off the suds with three cups of cold water. You had to bathe with only four cups of water, Sister Bernadette said, because water was precious and the well was almost empty and no-one knew if the east monsoon would come this year, and if it didn't, well, they'd have to stop bathing and washing, and then they'd have to stop drinking, and then they'd die. Paul prayed for the monsoon every day.

  A button was missing from the fly of his blue shorts. He'd shown one of the ladies in white—her name was Sister Bernadette and she was his favourite—that a button was gone and she had made him search for it but he couldn't find it, so she told him he'd have to go without because they had no more buttons. Two buttons were missing from his white shirt, too, but that didn't matter as much as his fly button. Most of the children had buttons missing from their clothes. Where did all the lost buttons go, Paul wondered sometimes. How come they always disappeared, never to be found? Once he asked Sister Bernadette where all the buttons from the children's shirts and dresses and shorts ended up, and Sister Bernadette had smiled and said, maybe Baby Jesus takes them to play with. 'But if Baby Jesus takes the buttons, then that's stealing,' Paul said, but Sister Bernadette only smiled and corrected herself. 'No, no, Paul, Baby Jesus doesn't steal, it's Baby Krishna who steals the buttons and takes them up to heaven so he and Baby Jesus can play with them.'

  Baby Jesus and Baby Krishna are very good friends, Sister Bernadette told Paul and all the children. Sister Bernadette knew lots of stories about Baby Krishna but she wasn't allowed to tell them, because Mother Immaculata said that Baby Krishna was naughty, he stole curd and butter, and Baby Jesus was good. That's why Sister Bernadette said it was Baby Krishna who stole the buttons, and why she wasn't allowed to tell the Baby Krishna stories. But she still did, sometimes, secretly.

  It was still dark and the air was still chilly with night, but the crows were flying past overhead and in the east the sky glowed pinkish-yellow. They all gathered in the central courtyard between the home and the school and they had to be quiet now, and kneel on the sand, which hurt Paul's knees, and put their hands together. Mother Immaculata, the big fat lady in white with a large wooden cross dangling on her bulging breast, who always frowned so much and whom Paul was afraid of, strode to the front of them all. They said their prayers in unison: 'Our father, who art in heaven…’

  After prayers they had breakfast sitting on mats on the school verandah, a crumbly white iddly with a spoonful of jaggary, and sweet tea with milk, and after that a lady in white took away the banana leaf plates and another lady walked around with a big bucket and a ladle pouring water over the children's hands to wash off the iddly and jaggary, and then it was time for lessons, sitting right there on the mats.

  This morning English was the first lesson and Teacher called on Paul, though all the children had stretched up their hands and waved them, all except two or three who didn't know their alphabet yet; but Paul knew his. 'A, B, C, D…' he began, and only once he hesitated, before M. He always mixed up M and N, but today he got it right and when he was finished all the children and Teacher clapped. After the first lesson came Hindi and then Tamil, and then the boys and girls went to the toilet; they had to walk in a straight line, each one holding on to the shoulders of the child in front, without running.

  The toilet was the field; you had to be careful because there were thorns but the soles of Paul's feet were quite hard and thorns didn't bother him much, unless they got in deep. Paul never cried when that happened, he just told Teacher and Teacher would pull out the thorn with the rusty tweezers she kept on the ledge above the window. Teacher was nice. If you had to do a poopie she gave you a cup of water to wash your bam-bam with, and a little spade to cover it with sand. You had to be careful not to step on the poopies of the other children. But the poopies were mostly hidden behind bushes and rocks.

  After the toilet there were more lessons and then there was lunch. The children sat on their mats and two ladies pushed a wagon with a huge cauldron on it between the rows, and each child got a dollop of rice on a banana leaf plate, and then a spoonful of sambar. Paul was always so hungry he ate up every single rice grain, wiping the plate with his forefinger so it was bright shiny green afterwards. After lunch the children lay down on their mats to sleep. The sun was high in the sky by now and the ground so hot it burned your soles, but the verandah was shaded by a palm leaf roof and though the breeze blowing through was also hot it made you nice and sleepy.

  Paul was just dozing off when he heard the throbbing of the motorbike as it turned into the courtyard with a splatter of gravel. He turned his face towards the sound and opened his eyes a slit.

  He saw at once that the rider was a sahib, even though he wore a white lungi like any other man. Sahibs always wore trousers, Paul knew. He was a sahib because though his face was brown like everyone else, it was a golden-reddish kind of brown, and his hair was also golden-brown, not black. Paul had never seen a real live sahib or a memsahib before, only pictures of them in his school books, so he pretended to sleep while squinting out beneath half-closed eyes, watching the sahib as he flung one leg over the motorcycle seat, jacked the bike up on its stand, and walked forward, looking around as if searching for someone. Paul saw that he was limping, and, strangest of all, he wore socks with his chappals. Paul had seen pictures of socks in his English reader — S is for Sock — but had never seen anyone actually wearing them before. These were grey and had a blue stripe.

  Mother Immaculata bustled out towards the man, the ring of fat between her sari-blouse and skirt wobbling as she ran. Paul knew that sahibs shook hands when they met each other, but this sahib made a pranam to Mother Immaculata, laying the palms of his hands together like they did when they were praying. But Mother Immaculata didn't like that. She stretched out her hand and the man shook it. Paul watched carefully, because this was very unusual and very interesting. What was the man doing here? Sometimes — not very often — the children had visitors. Men and women came; Paul knew they were aunts and uncles of the children although he himself had no aunts and uncles. But never sahibs. Had the man come to choose a child?

  Paul’s heart beat faster. It hardly ever happened, that a child was chosen, and this time it couldn't be, because then a lady would be with the sahib. Once, just before Christmas, a man and a lady had come in a big black car. Mother Immaculata had told the children the day before that they were coming to choose a child to be their very own, because the lady had lost a child — which Paul thought very careless of her; he could imagine losing a button, but how could someone lose a child? — and that the lucky child would get to live with them, and call them Mummy and Daddy. So all the children had rushed at the visitors, screaming and jumping and waving at them, swarming around them, pulling at their clothes and calling out Namaste! Namaste! because all wanted to be chosen.

  Paul had prayed that he would be chosen, and in fact it had seemed he would be chosen, because the lady, who had sad eyes and wore a purple sari and lots of golden bangles, had stopped and looked at him and smiled. 'He has a lovely wheatish complexion,' Paul heard her say, in English. 'Is he from the north?' Paul had prayed with all his might and even began to hope, because he just knew the lady wanted him.

  But Mother Immaculata shook her head firmly. She took the lady by her elbow and led her away, her head leaning in towards the lady as she told her something awful about Paul which he wasn't supposed to know, something which made the lady nod in comprehension and choose another child, a very small one, one too young to go to school.

  Paul was one of the eldest children. When he was five he would go to the Good Shepherd, which was an awful place in Madras for big children who would never ever get chosen. Mother Immaculata said the children in the Good Shepherd were Jesus's own little lambs. But Paul didn't want to be
a lamb, because he was a boy. Oh dear Baby Jesus, please let the sahib choose me! Oh, please let him choose me, dear Baby Jesus! prayed Paul silently, and then he fell asleep. Baby Jesus had not answered his prayers the last time, and he wouldn't this time either.

  He woke up because someone was shaking his shoulders and calling, 'Paul! Paul!' Paul rubbed his eyes and looked up; it was Teacher, and she was smiling. Behind her stood the sahib and Mother Immaculata, and they were talking together and the man was watching him, Paul. Paul didn't dare hope; he knew Mother Immaculata would soon tell the sahib the awful secret about him and then the sahib would turn away in disgust. But no; now Mother Immaculata was stepping forward and holding out her hand to him, and when Paul didn't react right away she flapped her fingers upwards impatiently and said, 'Come, come, Paul, get up, get up!' So Paul scrambled to his feet. And stood there gazing up at the sahib towering over him, who had kind dark grey-blue eyes and a huge hand which he now placed on Paul's head; it felt like a nice cool hat, a cool white hat like the sahib in the pictures wore, but this sahib was hatless, as if he didn't mind the sun.

  They were speaking English; Paul could understand a little of it. Mother Immaculata called the man daktah, which surprised Paul, because he knew he wasn't sick, so why had the daktah come to see him? Or had he come to poke Paul with a needle in his arm, because daktahs did that sometimes? And why wasn't he wearing that tube hanging from his ears, like the other daktah who came? Paul hoped he wasn't a daktah, because then he'd go away again. He hoped he'd come to choose a child, and that the child would be him, Paul.

  The sahib was saying something Paul didn’t understand, and Mother Immaculata was praising Paul because of his light skin.

  'He's a clever boy,' Paul heard her say. 'A very clever boy.' And the sahib was nodding and looking down at him, pleased.