LITMIR.BIZ

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– a father who had got mixed up in black-marketeering and who was then sent to prison. She may have raged and grumbled and lashed out with her tongue, but she never complained. But kneeling in the darkness of the confessional, she had whispered to Father Macnally that she had prayed to the sweet Virgin not to send her any more children to look after – and especially, please – no more heathens.

      ‘Mum!’ Beryl wailed pathetically. She broke away from Kathleen’s arms and reached out for Maeve. ‘I want to see Dadda. Take me too!’

      Mrs O’Grady snatched up her grandchild and held her firmly, ‘You stay with your Gran and your Aunty Kathleen, there’s a duck. You can go next time.’

      ‘We’ll see you later, Beryl,’ Maeve cooed at her child, trying to soften her voice and her face, before following Jaspal and Marvinder downstairs and out of the front door.

      A sharp spring wind blew up Wandsworth High Road. It blew the scattered bus tickets into red, blue and yellow spirals and whirled them along the pavements. It made you hold on to your hat and clutch at your coat. It was the sort of wind which found its way into every crevice between neck and scarf, or wrist and glove. Even through the buttonholes. They bent their heads before it as they walked to the bus stop; and turned their backs on it, as they waited and waited for the red double-decker to come.

      They were grateful to the wind. At least it gave them an excuse not to talk. Instead, they buried their reddened chins into their scarves and collars and gazed wistfully down the road, as if their very concentration could will the bus to come quicker.

      And when it came, roaring to a stop in response to their outstretched hands, they always went clattering up the metal spiral steps onto the top deck. Maeve liked to smoke.

      Jaspal and Marvinder would rush for the seats up at the very front above the driver’s head. They enjoyed the clear open view, and the feeling of being on top of the world. They could lean right forward and press their brows up against the glass.

      But for all that, it was a gloomy journey which none of them relished. If only they could have got off at the river and spent the day in Battersea Park, or if, instead of changing buses at Hammersmith, they could have walked down to Shepherd’s Bush market and milled around the hustle and bustle of the stalls. Instead, they had to watch it all slide by and listen to the monotonous warnings of the conductor. ‘Hold very tight, please,’ as he tugged on the lower-deck bell string. ‘Ting, ting!’ It was one ting to stop and two tings to go.

      At last they reached Ducane Road. The vast open playing fields of Latymer School seemed to gather up the winds and hurl them into their faces.

      That final walk always seemed the longest. Maeve walked a little head, as if embarrassed by them, looking fixedly in front, never addressing any remarks to them, as if afraid people might think they were her children.

      Two groups of people walked the same pavement, but managed to create a meaningful distance between each other.

      There were those whose destination was Hammersmith Hospital, and with whom Maeve tried to merge for most of the walk. They were a generally cheerful lot, clutching bunches of newly-bought flowers from strategically-placed flower-sellers, or brown paper bags full of whatever fruit they could obtain with their ration coupons.

      This group pretended not to see the other group, with whom, for a while, they shared the same pavement and the same direction. Their eyes looked through them as though they were ghosts, and there was a certain smugness, when this first group branched off and poured through the gates of the hospital in time for visiting hours.

      The second group pretended not to notice or care. Their faces were grimmer, their pace more reluctant. Hardly anyone spoke, but concentrated on coaxing their children along, or simply fixing their focus on the next main gateway, to which they finally came. And when they walked through, they kept their eyes lowered to the ground. They never looked up at the grim fortress towers of His Majesty’s Prison, Wormwood Scrubs.

      Here, Maeve, Jaspal and Marvinder joined a sizeable straggle of mostly women and children, gathering outside the large oval gate, waiting for the exact moment when they would be admitted. No matter how awful the weather, the gate was never opened even thirty seconds earlier than ordained.

      Unlike hospital visitors, they weren’t allowed to take in flowers or fruit or packages of food. Each was frisked at the gate; handbags were opened and searched. They were made to feel that by visiting a prisoner, the visitor too was somehow guilty.

      After further hanging about, they were all finally ushered into a large room, supervised by blank-faced warders, where, waiting for them at a series of tables, were the prisoners, their eyes eagerly scanning the faces as they came in.

      Marvinder saw her father.

      He was thinner these days. Perhaps it was the way they cropped his hair very close to the head; it seemed to emphasise his gaunt face; it made his cheeks look more hollow. His skin was blanched as if deprived of sunlight.

      Lately, he had become withdrawn. Marvinder wondered whether it was to do with the killing of Mahatma Gandhi. When they broke the news to him a couple of months back, he looked as if he were going to faint.

      ‘Was he a very important man, Pa?’ she had asked, when he had collapsed into his chair and thrust his head down on the table between his arms.

      ‘Who can forgive me?’ was all her father had been able to choke, as if he had been the assassin.

       ‘When he was a student your father admired Mahatma Gandhi; worshipped him like a saint,’ Jhoti had explained inside her daughter’s head. ‘He travelled miles to attend his gatherings, and then came back to the village with such stories. He would tell us that the British were going to leave, and that India would become independent; how this little, half-starved man, with only a piece of cloth round his middle, was standing up to the might of the British Empire. The whole village would gather round to listen. Your father was such an important person in those days. But now . . . who would have thought . . .’

      Marvinder waved a timid greeting. Her father raised a hand in acknowledgement. He stood up, but looked past her. He looked past Maeve too. It was Jaspal on whom he feasted his eyes. His gaze seemed to plead for understanding and forgiveness. ‘Can’t we be friends?’

      But Jaspal lowered his eyes with embarrassment. It had been easy to love his father when he thought he was a hero. When they had lived in India, in their little Punjabi village, Jaspal, who had never known his father, grew up looking at the proud, flower-draped photograph, which had been taken when Govind graduated from Amritsar University. His turbaned head, with sleek moustache and confident eyes, stared out with a faint look of surprise, as though marvelling that he, the son of a simple farmer, could rise to such heights.

      Govind had come to England to study, encouraged by Harold Chadwick, his English teacher back in India. He enrolled at London University to do a degree in law. He was urged to be someone; do something for his newly-independent country. But all these plans had been interrupted by the war. He had joined up along with all his fellow students and fought in Europe and North Africa.

      So where was that hero now? Where was the soldier-scholar, whose garlanded image Jaspal had grown up with and admired every day? Where was the Sikh warrior, who had gone into the British army to help fight against the Nazis? When the war ended, and Govind didn’t come home, they never for a moment disbelieved his letters, which told them first, that he had been wounded and was undergoing treatment, and then, that he was trying to earn enough money in Britain, so that he could return to India and set up a business.

      Jaspal remembered how his mother, Jhoti, had fretted. ‘Why doesn’t he come home? We need him here. We need him as a father to protect his family. Doesn’t he know what is happening here?’

      Surely Govind must have heard. The whole world knew that Britain had finally granted India the right to independence. But even before the British left, the troubles began. When part of India split away to become Pakistan, in the vast interchange of populations from one country to another, thousands were slaughtered. And in the Punjab, the Sikhs, who were neither Hindu nor Muslim,

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