branches.
‘Soon,’ said Priya, her face brighter now and her eyes wide with anticipation, ‘we must turn off to the right for Nagarcoil.’
They were no more than eight or nine miles from the sea now in either direction, south-east or south-west. At the fork they took the more westerly road, as Priya directed. India had already demonstrated in its invariable manner the nearness of the ocean which its people, apart from a few fishing communities, do not love. The sky was almost an English sky, no more than half of it blue, the rest scudding cloud, driven fast, though there was no wind at ground-level, and forming and re-forming in constantly-changing masses and temples and towers. The light had become a maritime light, moist and charged with melting colours, scintillating instead of glaring.
The road widened at the same time as it seemed to narrow, because lines of small houses had begun to frame it on either side. It acquired the texture of a street, and other and taller buildings sprang up behind the first, and became the beginnings of a town of more than a hundred thousand souls. A nondescript textile town, where among other things, they make hand-loomed towels of all kinds and sizes. A town with Jain associations, and Christian ones, too, of several persuasions; and in its way a pleasant place, more spacious than most of its kind, and with something of the air of a country market town, with energy and time to spare.
‘Now we are coming into Nagarcoil,’ said Priya.
The house lay off one of the quieter and narrower streets at the edge of the central shopping area. There was a space of beaten earth drawn back in an open square from the street, with a solitary tree at one front corner, and in its shade a patch of bleached grass. Each of the three closed sides of the square was a little, deep-eaved, whitewashed house one storey high and overhung by a red-tiled roof. They were as neat and clean as brand-new dolls’ houses, and not much larger. Purushottam’s ranch-like dwelling would have contained ten of them, and his compound at least fifty. And the children who came tumbling out of the house on the right, as soon as the Land- Rover turned into the yard, were as bright and spruce and petite as dolls. Little girls in minute cotton dresses, western style, little boys in cotton shorts and white shirts; all of them huge-eyed and smiling and excited, but perfectly silent, and all the girls wearing little crowns of flowers. The moment they had fully taken in the Land- Rover, and confirmed for themselves its veritable arrival, they shot back into the house as precipitately as they had frothed out of it, and the voices that had been mute outside were loosed in a torrent of shrill Tamil, spreading the news. Before the travellers had all climbed out and shaken off the dust of their journey, Priya’s parents appeared in the deep doorway at the head of the five shallow steps. They marshalled before them the three littlest girls, who held up at the full stretch of their short arms dewy garlands of lotus buds and roses and jasmine. With formidable solemnity they descended the steps, taking passionate care not to trip over their burdens, and advanced upon the visitors.
‘Good God!’ said Larry blankly, between consternation and delight. ‘What
‘You have never been garlanded before?’ she said innocently. ‘In my family we do things properly.’ And she went to meet the little girls, lifted the necklaces for them, and hoisted the first over Larry’s head, and the second over Dominic’s. But Purushottam, his face brighter than they had ever yet seen it, sat down on his heels to be on a level with the panting littlest, and let her hang her garland round his neck with her own hands. He had an unfair advantage, for he could talk to his hostess, who chattered back to him in high delight.
‘All the ones who go to school know English,’ Priya said reassuringly. ‘Come, I would like to introduce you to my parents.’
Mr Madhavan was probably in his late forties, no more; a short, square, muscular man with crisp hair just greying at the temples. His wife was plump and round, with a cheerful face that smiled even in repose. Their best festival wear was plain, practical cotton, whites for him and sensible wine-coloured sari for her, laundered many times but laundered superlatively. There was no wealth here, only a hard-won and shrewdly-planned living, and a great deal of good humour as oil for the machinery of making-do. There was a cheerful flurry of greetings, blessedly in English; and with ceremony which hardly seemed ceremonious because it was so exuberant in its warmth, the visitors were brought into the cool of the house.
‘Not all the children,’ Priya said, reading their minds, ‘are ours. Two of the littlest belong to my eldest married brother, and two to my married sister – they both live quite close – and one or two from the neighbours seem to have joined the party, too. You are a great event, you mustn’t grudge them gate-crashing.’
There was also a beautiful girl of about seventeen, a plain but engaging one of fifteen and two boys aged eleven and nine. They were so many and so colourful and the little ones so light and rapid in movement that it was like being surrounded by a cloud of butterflies.
How even the ones who belonged in the house ever found room there remained a mystery. So far as they saw, it consisted of only two rooms, though the kitchen was obviously elsewhere. The room into which they were brought was furnished very simply with a couple of cushioned benches which must also have done duty for beds, a large table and a few chairs, a chest of drawers against one wall, covered with an embroidered cloth and proudly presenting the parents’ wedding photograph, two or three other family pictures, a carved box, and a bowl in which flowers floated. A curtained doorway led through into a second and smaller room with two charpoys draped with bright covers, and a little table loaded with family ornaments and souvenirs. The bright calendar hanging on one wall showed a blue, effeminate, mischievous Krishna leading a timorous Radha through the grove. But on another wall there was an unexpected reproduction of a modern Christian nativity, romantic and sugary-sweet, complete with ox and ass. Purushottam studied it with dazed interest, and turned to look wide-eyed at Priya.
As for Priya herself, she was perfectly at her ease, composed, even a little amused, certainly proud of her poor, prolific, hospitable and gracious family. She helped her mother to settle the guests comfortably, relieved them of their garlands, and brought, before everything else, glasses of cold water. Then the women vanished to the sacred and invisible kitchen. They also herded the small children out into the yard to play, though until their curiosity waned they tended to creep back and stand in a little rainbow cluster in the doorway, frankly and greedily staring.
‘My daughter tells me,’ said Mr Madhavan, sitting down with his guests, ‘that you will go on to Cape Comorin. It is only about eight miles from here. But you are a South Indian yourself, Mr Narayanan, and doubtless you already know it.’ He was feeling his way towards a subject which must be mentioned, to set everything in clear order, but equally must not be allowed to cast too long a shadow upon this gathering. ‘You will understand, we were expecting Priya to bring her friend with her. All my girls were looking forward very much to her visit. Priya has told us already, by courtesy of our good friend, Mr Achmed, who has a shop close by, what has happened. It is a terrible tragedy, and we are deeply sorry. For her parents especially. Such a dreadful loss for them. Death is not an ending, of course, but it is a separation.’ It did not sound so far from the Swami’s: ‘To the born sure is death…’ But it caused Purushottam to cast a fleeting glance at the pretty, Christmas-card Bethlehem on the wall.
Mr Madhavan followed the look, and smiled understandingly. ‘Perhaps Priya did not explain us. We are Salvationists. Oh, yes, you will find we have quite a strong community here. Since my grandfather’s day our family has belonged to the Salvation Army. There is an excellent Army school here, all our children attend it.’
It seemed utterly fitting that the good friend Mr Achmed, who took the telephone messages for the family,
