‘What? Er, hum, yes?’ said Bish, nonplussed. Then he added, glancing at a neighbouring table, that what he liked about Firpo’s was that you could see ‘the world and their wife’ here.
Lata reflected that her remark had clearly run off his back like duck’s water. And at the thought of that phrase, she began to smile.
Bishwanath Bhaduri, for his part, found Lata puzzling but attractive. At least she looked at him while she talked. Most Calcutta girls in his set spent half their time looking around to see who else was at Firpo’s.
Arun had decided that Bish would be a good possibility for Lata, and had told her that he was an ‘up-and-coming young fellow’.
Now Bish was telling Lata about his passage to England:
‘One feels discontented and searches about for one’s soul. . . . One feels homesick at Aden and buys one’s postcards at Port Said. . . . One does a certain sort of job and gets used to it. . . . Back in Calcutta one sometimes imagines that Chowringhee is Piccadilly. . . . Of course, sometimes when one is on tour, one misses one’s connections. . . . One stops at a railway station and finds nothing behind it—and spends the night with the coolies snoring on the platform. . . .’ He picked up the menu again. ‘I wonder whether I should have something sweet . . . one’s Bengali tooth, you know. . . .’
Lata began to wish that he were up-and-going.
Bish had begun to discuss some matter in his department in which he had acquitted himself particularly well.
‘. . . and of course, not that one wants to take personal credit for it, but the upshot of it all was that one secured the contract, and one has been handling the business ever since. Naturally’—and here he smiled smoothly at Lata—‘there was considerable disquiet among one’s competitors. They couldn’t imagine how one had swung it.’
‘Oh?’ said Lata, frowning as she tackled her peach melba. ‘Was there? Was the disquiet considerable?’
Bishwanath Bhaduri shot her a quick glance of—not dislike exactly but, well, disquiet.
Shireen wanted to dance at the 300 Club, but was overruled, and they all went to the Golden Slipper in Free School Street instead, where it was livelier if less exclusive. The bright young things sometimes believed in slumming it.
Bish, perhaps sensing that Lata had not taken to him, made an excuse and disappeared after dinner.
‘See you anon,’ were his parting words.
Billy Irani had been remarkably quiet throughout the evening, and he did not appear to want to dance at all—not even foxtrots and waltzes. Arun made Lata dance a waltz with him despite her protests that she did not know how to dance at all. ‘Nonsense,’ said Arun affectionately. ‘You do, you just don’t know it.’ He was right; she quickly got the hang of it, and enjoyed it too.
Shireen forced Billy on to his feet. Later, when the orchestra struck up an intimate number, Meenakshi requisitioned him. When they returned to the table Billy was blushing furiously.
‘Look at him blush,’ said Meenakshi delightedly. ‘I think he likes holding me close. He was pressing me so close to his broad chest with his strong, golf-playing arms that I could feel his heart thump.’
‘I was not,’ said Billy indignantly.
‘I wish you would,’ said Meenakshi with a sigh. ‘I nurture a secret lust for you, you know, Billy.’
Shireen laughed. Billy glared fiercely at Meenakshi and blushed even more furiously.
‘That’s enough nonsense,’ said Arun. ‘Don’t embarrass my friend—or my younger sister.’
‘Oh, I’m not embarrassed, Arun Bhai,’ said Lata, though she was amazed all right by the tenor of the conversation.
But what amazed Lata most of all was the tango. At about one thirty in the morning, by which time the two couples were fairly high, Meenakshi sent a note to the band leader, and five minutes later he struck up a tango. Since very few people knew how to tango, the couples on the floor stood around looking a little perplexed. But Meenakshi went straight up to a man dressed in a dinner jacket who was sitting with some friends at a table across the room—and enchanted him on to the floor. She did not know him but she recognized him as a wonderful dancer whom she had once seen in action before. His friends prodded him on as well. Everyone cleared the floor for them, and without even any initial discomfiture, they paced and twirled and froze together in swift, jerky, stylized movements with such erotic control and abandon that very soon the entire nightclub was cheering them on. Lata felt her own heart beating faster. She was fascinated by Meenakshi’s brazenness and dazzled by the play of light on the gold choker round her neck. Clearly Meenakshi was right; one couldn’t tango in a dowdy choli.
They stumbled out of the nightclub at two thirty, and Arun shouted: ‘Let’s go—let’s go to Falta! The waterworks—a picnic—I’m hungry—kababs at Nizam’s.’
‘It’s getting rather late, Arun,’ said Billy. ‘Perhaps we should call it a night. I’ll drop Shireen and—’
‘No nonsense—I’m master of ceremonies,’ insisted Arun. ‘You get into my car. We’ll all go—no, into the back—I’ll sit with this pretty girl in the front—no, no, no, Saturday tomorrow—and we’ll all go now—at once—we’ll all go and have breakfast at the airport—airport picnic—all to the airport for breakfast—bloody car won’t start—oh, wrong key.’
Off zoomed the little car through the streets, with Arun at the shaky helm, Shireen sitting with him in front, and Billy squashed between the two other women at the back. Lata must have appeared very nervous, because Billy patted her hand kindly once. A little later, she noticed that Billy’s other hand was interlocked with Meenakshi’s. She was surprised, but—after the torrid tango—not suspicious; she assumed that that was how things were done when one went for a drive in this kind of society. But she hoped for the sake of their common safety that the same sort of thing was not going on in the front seat.
Although there was no broad and direct road to the airport, even the narrower streets of North Calcutta were deserted at this hour, and driving was not intrinsically difficult. Arun roared along, blowing his horn loudly from time to time. But suddenly a child rushed out from behind a cart straight into their path. Arun swerved wildly, narrowly missed hitting it, and came to a halt before a lamp post.
Luckily neither child nor car was damaged. The child disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.
Arun got out of the car in a black fury and started shouting into the night. There was a piece of smouldering rope hanging from the lamp post for people to light their biris with, and Arun started pulling it as if it were a bell-rope. ‘Get up—get up—all of you—all of you bastards—’ he shouted at the entire neighbourhood.
‘Arun—Arun—please don’t,’ said Meenakshi.
‘Bloody idiots—can’t control their children—at three in the bloody morning—’
A few destitute people, sleeping in their rags on the narrow pavement next to a pile of rubbish, stirred themselves.
‘Do shut up, Arun,’ said Billy Irani. ‘You’ll cause trouble.’
‘You trying to take charge, Billy?—No good—good fellow, but not much there—’ He turned his attention to the unseen enemy, the breeding, stupid masses. ‘Get up—you bastards—can’t you hear me?’ He followed this up with a few other Hindi swear words, since he could not speak Bengali.
Meenakshi knew that if she said anything, Arun would snap at her.
‘Arun Bhai,’ said Lata as calmly as she could. ‘I’m very sleepy, and Ma will be worried about us. Let’s go home now.’
‘Home? Yes, let’s go home.’ Arun, startled by this excellent suggestion, smiled at his brilliant sister.
Billy was about to suggest that he drive, then thought better of it.
When he and Shireen were dropped off near his car, he was in a thoughtful mood, though he said nothing except to wish everyone goodnight.
Mrs Rupa Mehra was sitting up late for them. She was so relieved to hear the car drive up that when they came in she could not at first speak.
&n
bsp; ‘Why are you up at this hour, Ma?’ said Meenakshi, yawning.
‘I will get no sleep tonight at all thanks to your selfishness,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Soon it will be time to get up.’
‘Ma, you know we always come back late when we go dancing,’ said Meenakshi. Arun had meanwhile gone into the bedroom, and Varun too, who had been woken up at two by his alarmed mother and forced to sit up with her, had seized the opportunity and slunk away to bed.
‘Yes, you can behave as irresponsibly as you like when you are gallivanting around by yourselves,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘But not when you have my daughter with you. Are you all right, darling?’ she asked Lata.
‘Yes, Ma, I had a good time,’ said Lata, yawning as well. She remembered the tango and began to smile.
Mrs Rupa Mehra looked doubtful. ‘You must tell me everything you did. What you ate, what you saw, whom you met, what you did.’
‘Yes, Ma. Tomorrow,’ said Lata with another yawn.
‘All right,’ conceded Mrs Rupa Mehra.
7.25
Lata woke up almost at noon the next day with a headache that did not improve when she had to give a recitation of the previous night’s events. Both Aparna and Mrs Rupa Mehra wanted to know about the tango. After she had absorbed the details of the dance, the scarily precocious Aparna wanted reassurance, for some reason, on one particular point:
‘So Mummy tangoed and everyone clapped?’
‘Yes, sweetheart.’
‘Daddy also?’
‘Oh yes. Daddy clapped too.’
‘Will you teach me to tango?’
‘I don’t know how to tango,’ said Lata. ‘But if I did, I would.’
‘Does Uncle Varun know how to tango?’
Lata tried to visualize Varun’s terror if Meenakshi had tried to prise him away from a table on to the dance floor. ‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘Where is Varun anyway?’ she asked her mother.
‘He went out,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra shortly. ‘Sajid and Jason turned up, and they disappeared.’
Lata had only met these two Shamshu friends once. Sajid had a cigarette that hung down, literally hung down, with no apparent means of support, from the left side of his lower lip. What he did for a living she did not know. Jason frowned toughly when speaking to her. He was an Anglo-Indian, and had been in the Calcutta police before he had been thrown out a few months earlier for sleeping with another Sub-Inspector’s wife. Varun knew both of them from St George’s. Arun shuddered to think that his own alma mater could have produced such seedy characters.
‘Isn’t Varun studying at all for the IAS?’ asked Lata. The other day Varun had been talking about sitting for the civil service exams later in the year.
‘No,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra with a sigh. ‘And there’s nothing I can do. He does not listen to his mother any more. When I say anything to him, he just agrees with me and then goes off with his friends an hour later.’
‘Perhaps he’s not cut out for the administrative service,’ suggested Lata.
But her mother would have none of that.
‘Studying is a good discipline,’ she said. ‘It needs application. Your father used to say that it does not matter what you study. As long as you study hard, it improves the mind.’
By that criterion, the late Raghubir Mehra should have been proud of his younger son. Varun, Sajid and Jason were at that moment standing in the two-rupee enclosure at the Tollygunge racetrack, cheek by jowl with what Arun would have considered the riff-raff of the solar system, studying with intense concentration the pukka or final version of the racing form for the afternoon’s six races. They were hoping that they would thereby improve, if not their mind, at least their economic situation.
Normally they would not have invested the six annas that it cost to buy a pukka racing form, and would—with the help of the handicap list and information about cancellations—have simply pencilled in changes on the provisional form that they had bought on Wednesday. But Sajid had lost it.
A thin, warm rain was falling all over Calcutta, and the Tollygunge racecourse was slushy. The discontented horses being walked around the paddock were being eyed keenly from all sides through the drizzle. The Tolly had gymkhana racing, not turf racing, unlike the Royal Calcutta Turf Club, whose monsoon season began more than a month later. This meant that professional jockeys were not compulsory, and there were plenty of gentleman-jockeys and even one or two ladies who rode in the races. Since the riders were sometimes quite heavy, the handicap on the horses too started at a heavier level.
‘Heart’s Story has 11 stones 6 pounds on her,’ said Jason glumly. ‘I would have bet on her, but—’
‘So what?’ said Sajid. ‘She’s used to Jock Mackay, and he can outride anyone on this track. He’ll use up a good part of that 11 stones odd, and that’s live weight, not lead pellets. It makes a difference.’
‘It makes no difference. Weight is weight,’ said Jason. His attention was caught by a strikingly attractive European woman of middle age, who was talking to Jock Mackay in low tones.
‘My God—that’s Mrs DiPiero!’ said Varun, in a voice half fascinated, half terrified. ‘She’s dangerous!’ he added with admiration.
Mrs DiPiero was a merry widow who usually did well at the races by gleaning tips from knowledgeable sources, in particular from Jock Mackay, who was reputed to be her lover. She often bet a few thousand rupees on a single race.
‘Quick! Follow her!’ said Jason, though the direction of his intentions only became clear when she went to the bookies and he turned his attention from her figure to the chalk markings on the blackboards which the bookies were rapidly rubbing out and re-marking. She was placing her bets in such a low voice that they could not hear her. But the bookies’ notations told their own tale. They were changing their odds in the wake of her heavy betting. Heart’s Story had come down from 7-to-l to 6-to-l.
‘That’s it!’ said Sajid languorously. ‘I’m betting on that one.’
‘Don’t be too hasty,’ said Jason. ‘Obviously he’d praise his own horse.’
‘But not at the cost of her displeasure. He must know it’s undervalued at the odds.’
‘Mmm,’ intervened Varun. ‘One thing worries me.’
‘What?’ said Sajid and Jason simultaneously. Varun’s interventions were usually to the point in racing matters. He was a true but cautious addict.
‘It’s the rain. The heavily handicapped horses suffer the most when the ground is so wet. And 11 stones 6 pounds is about the heaviest handicap you can get. I think they penalized that mare because her rider held her back three weeks ago on the finishing straight.’
Sajid disagreed. His cigarette bobbed up and down as he spoke. ‘It’s a short race,’ he said. ‘Handicap doesn’t matter all that much in a short race. I’m going to bet on her anyway. You two can do as you please.’
‘What do you say, Varun?’ said Jason, undecided.
‘Yes. OK.’
They went to buy their tickets from the tote rather than the bookies, since a couple of two-rupee tickets each was all they could afford. Besides, the bookies’ odds on Heart’s Story had now come down to 5-to-1.
They returned to their enclosure and stared out at the rainy course in a state of uncontainable excitement.
It was a short race, only five furlongs of a mile. The starting point, on the other side of the course, was invisible because of the rain and the distance, especially from their lowly position, so far below the members’ enclosure. But the thundering sound of the horses’ hooves and their indistinct, swift movement through the blurred wall of rain had them shouting and screaming. Varun was almost foaming at the mouth with excitement and yelling: ‘Heart’s Story! Come on, Heart’s Story!’ at the top of his lungs. At the end all he could manage was:
‘Heart! Heart! Heart! Heart!’
He was grasping Sajid’s shoulder in an ecstasy of uncertainty.
The horses emerged round the bend for the final straight. Their colours and the colours
of their riders became more distinct—and it became clear that the green-and-red colours of Jock Mackay on the bay were to the fore, closely followed by Anne Hodge on Outrageous Fortune. She made a valiant effort to spur him on for a last effort. Exhausted by the churned earth around his ankles—his fetlocks perhaps—he gave up the struggle when it seemed certain that he would succeed: just twenty yards from the finishing line.
Heart’s Story had won by a length and a half.
There were groans of disappointment and screams of delight all around them. The three friends went wild with excitement. Their winnings swelled in their imaginations to vast proportions. They might have won as much as fifteen rupees each! A bottle of Scotch—why even think of Shamshu?—was only fourteen rupees.
Joy!
All they had to do now was to wait for the white cone to go up, and to collect their winnings.
A red cone went up with the white.
Despair.
There had been an objection. ‘Number seven has objected to Number two crossing,’ said someone nearby.
‘How can they tell in all that rain?’
‘Of course they can tell.’
‘He’d never do it to her. These are gentlemen.’
‘Anne Hodge wouldn’t lie about something like that.’
‘This Jock chap is very unscrupulous. He’ll do anything to win.’
‘These things can happen by mistake as well.’
‘By mistake!’
The suspense was unbearable. Three minutes passed. Varun was gasping with emotion and stress, and Sajid’s cigarette was quivering. Jason was trying to look tough and unconcerned, and failing dismally. When the red cone slowly went down, confirming the result of the race, they embraced each other as if they were long-lost brothers, and went off immediately to collect their earnings—and to place their bets on the next race.
‘Hello! Varun isn’t it?’ She pronounced it Vay-roon.
Varun swung around and stared at Patricia Cox, dressed elegantly in an airy white cotton dress and carrying a white umbrella which doubled as a parasol. She was not looking mousy at all, but rather cat-like in fact. She too had just won on Heart’s Story.