Page 81 of Six Days in Bombay

Her hand on my shoulder made me jump.

“I—I’m sorry.” She pulled her hand away. “I wondered if you might want to meet them someday. They have an aunt and an uncle but all their grandparents are gone. No cousins. It might be good to…”

Meet my half-siblings? Was that something I wanted to do? “Do they know about me?”

She walked back to the sofa and sat, her hands in a prayer pose, her fingers on her lips. “I told them when I found those things about you and your mother after Owen died.”

“How did they react?” I almost didn’t want to know. What if they hated me on principle? Someone with whom they had had to share their father’s affections. I’d been rejected by him. Could I stand to have another rejection in my life?

She sighed. “It took them some time. Alistair was angry. Lucy was confused. But that was seven years ago. I think it would be different now. You were an idea then. You’re real now.”

Had this been a wasted trip? I didn’t know yet. I hadn’t had the chance to throw my pain in my father’s face. Which had been the whole point of this journey, hadn’t it?

I realized I knew nothing about my father’s wife except her role in dividing our families. “What’s your name?”

She smiled for the first time. “It’s Marion, Sona. My name is Marion.”

“I’ll let you know, Marion.”

I walked out.

***

The Falstaff home was at the north end of Chelsea. I walked from there to St. James’s Park. I needed to think. What would be the harm in meeting a brother and sister who had been there all along? Would meeting them mean I’d forgiven my father, forgiven them for keeping him from me?

I wove my way through tourists eager to catch the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. I barely noticed where I was, so engrossed was I in my thoughts. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a certain curiosity about Alistair and Lucy. Had they inherited mannerisms from their father that I’d inherited too? Was it in our gestures? Was it in our speech? What about our differences? Our English, for one. Their accent would be different from mine. Our clothes? They would certainly be better turned out than me. Would that separate us, divide us so that we couldn’t be part of the same family?

I wound around Piccadilly Circus, watching the swirl of cars, trucks and double-decker buses, Wrigleys Gum, Schweppes Tonic Water, Ryman’s Insurance advertisements on their sides. A glowing Guinness Is Good For You sign loomed over the circle. Leaflets announcing the coronation of George VI and Elizabeth pressed up against the edges of the sidewalks, wrapped themselves around the streetlights. They littered the steps of the Statue of Eros.

Staying in London to meet my half-siblings would requirea few days at a hostel, which meant spending more money. I didn’t even know where Alistair and Lucy lived. Would meeting them mean a trip outside of London? Marion said she had a granddaughter. So that meant I had a niece? I’d always wanted an extended family, the kind Rebecca and Indira had. Could I handle coming out of the cocoon my mother and I had built for ourselves and allow more family into my life?

I wandered to Trafalgar Square. Two policemen escorted a drunken protester away from traffic. I knew I’d reached Covent Garden when I started seeing marquees for shows:The Tales of Hoffmann, Puccini’sTurandot. On impulse, I bought a ticket for the afternoon performance ofTristan Und Isolde. I didn’t have the right clothes nor the money to buy them. I’d never even been to an opera before, but I knew it was the kind of thing my mother or Mira or Amit would have wanted to see. Besides, it would take my mind off the endless merry-go-round of questions crowding my brain.

By the time I left the theater, I’d made up my mind.

I found the General Post Office and sent a telegraph to Dr. Stoddard via Edward.

It’s your turn, I wrote.

***

In St. James’s Park, the scorching heat had men fanning their hats in front of their faces and women waving their skirts around their knees. From my bench, I heard men and women around me complain about the record-breaking temperatures. “It’s barely June!” I smiled, wondering what they would make of Bombay temperatures—and the crushing humidity. Bees shopped hyacinths for the sweetest nectar. Bluebells crowded under the trees, giving off a fresh green scent. I let my head settle on the back of the bench, my face turned toward the sun, and listened to children imploring their parents for an ice lolly. “Mummy, I’m melting!”

I smelled Dr. Stoddard’s lavender-oakmoss-vanilla shavingcream as he approached my bench. My eyes still closed, I asked. “How did it go?”

“About as well as you would imagine. No, worse.”

I opened my eyes and squinted up at him.

Ralph Stoddard sat down heavily, leaning on his cane to steady himself. He looked as tired as I’d ever seen him. There were gray bags under his eyes. Liver spots on his forehead. Red splotches on his cheeks from the sun. His lean frame seemed to have no fat left on it at all. He rubbed his leg, the one he’d broken. “She said she’d often wondered what she’d say if I ever came back.” He turned his head to regard me. “She said what hurt her the most was that I’d married a black woman and had a black child.”

The doctor paused. He knew I’d been called Blackie-White just as his son had. And most Britishers would have referred to his Indian wife as black. It was another way of dividing people, separating those who belonged from those who didn’t.

“What did you say?”

“I bid her a good day.”

I blinked. “And?”

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