Page 2 of The Ship of Brides
‘Nothing to apologise for,’ said Mr Vaghela. ‘We mature citizens should be allowed to rest when we need to.’
‘Are you saying you want me to drive, Ram?’ Sanjay asked.
‘No, no, Mr Sanjay, sir. I would be reluctant to interrupt your scintillating discourse.’
The old man’s eyes met hers in the rear-view mirror. Still fogged and vulnerable from sleep, the old woman forced herself to smile in response to what she assumed was a deliberate wink.
They had, she calculated, been on the road for nearly three hours. Their trip to Gujarat, her and Jennifer’s last-minute incursion into the otherwise hermetically scheduled touring holiday, had started as an adventure (‘My friend from college – Sanjay – his parents have offered to put us up for a couple of nights, Gran! They’ve got the most amazing place, like a palace. It’s only a few hours away’) and ended in near disaster when the failure of their plane to meet its scheduled slot left them only a day in which to return to Bombay to catch their connecting flight home.
Already exhausted by the trip, she had despaired privately. She had found India a trial, an overwhelming bombardment of her senses even with the filters of air-conditioned buses and four-star hotels, and the thought of being stranded in Gujarat, even in the palatial confines of the Singhs’ home, filled her with horror. But then Mrs Singh had volunteered the use of their car and driver to ensure ‘the ladies’ made their flight home. Even though it was due to take off from an airport some four hundred miles away. ‘You don’t want to be hanging around at railway stations,’ she said, with a delicate gesture towards Jennifer’s bright blonde hair. ‘Not unaccompanied.’
‘I can drive them,’ Sanjay had protested. But his mother had murmured something about an insurance claim and a driving ban, and her son had agreed instead to accompany Mr Vaghela, to make sure they were not bothered when they stopped. That kind of thing. Once it had irritated her, the assumption that women travelling together could not be trusted to take care of themselves. Now she was grateful for such old-fashioned courtesy. She did not feel capable of negotiating her way alone through these alien landscapes, found herself anxious with her risk-taking granddaughter, for whom nothing seemed to hold any fear. She had wanted to caution her several times, but stopped herself, conscious that she sounded feeble and tremulous. The young are right to be fearless, she reminded herself. Remember yourself at that age.
‘Are you okay back there, madam?’
‘I’m fine thank you, Sanjay.’
‘Still a fair way to go, I’m afraid. It’s not an easy trip.’
‘It must be very arduous for those just sitting,’ muttered Mr Vaghela.
‘It’s very kind of you to take us.’
‘Jay! Look at that!’
She saw they had come off the fast road now and were travelling through a shanty town, studded with warehouses full of steel girders and timber. The road, flanked by a long wall created from sheets of metal haphazardly patchworked together, had become increasingly pockmarked and rutted so that scooters traced Sanskrit trails in the dust and even a vehicle built for breakneck speed could travel at no more than fifteen miles an hour. The black Lexus now crept onwards, its engine emitting a faint growl of impatience as it swerved periodically to avoid the potholes or the odd cow, ambling with apparent direction, as if answering some siren call.
The prompt for Jennifer’s exclamation had not been the cow (they had seen plenty of those) but a mountain of white ceramic sinks, their wastepipes emerging from them like severed umbilical cords. A short distance away sat a pile of mattresses and another of what looked like surgical tables.
‘From the ships,’ said Mr Vaghela, apropos apparently nothing.
‘Do you think we could stop soon?’ she asked. ‘Where are we?’
The driver placed a gnarled finger on the map beside him. ‘Alang.’
‘Not here.’ Sanjay frowned. ‘I don’t think this is a good place to stop.’
‘Let me see the map.’ Jennifer thrust herself forward between the two men. ‘There might be somewhere off the beaten track. Somewhere a bit more... exciting.’
‘Surely we are off the beaten track,’ said her grandmother, viewing the dusty street, the men squatting by the roadside. But no one seemed to hear her.
‘No...’ Sanjay was gazing around him. ‘I don’t think this is the kind of place...’
The old woman shifted in her seat. She was now desperate for a drink, and the chance to stretch her legs. She would also have appreciated a visit to the lavatory, but the short time they had spent in India had taught her that outside the bigger hotels this was often as much of an ordeal as a relief.
‘I tell you what,’ said Sanjay, ‘we’ll get a couple of bottles of cola and stop out of town somewhere to stretch our legs.’
‘Is this, like, a junkyard town?’ Jennifer squinted at a heap of refrigerators.
Sanjay waved at the driver to stop. ‘Stop there, Ram, at that shop. The one next to the temple. I’ll get some cold drinks.’
‘We’ll get some cold drinks,’ said Jennifer. The car pulled up. ‘You all right in the car, Gran?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. The two of them sprang out of the doors, a blast of hot air invading the artificial chill of the car, and went, laughing, into the sunbaked shop.
A short way along the road another group of men squatted on their haunches, drinking from tin mugs, occasionally clearing their throats with nonchalant relish. They eyed the car incuriously. She sat in the car, feeling suddenly conspicuous, listening to the tick of the engine as it idled. Outside, the heat shimmered off the earth.
Mr Vaghela turned in his seat. ‘Madam, may I enquire – what do you pay your driver?’ It was the third such question he’d asked her, every time Sanjay was absent from the car.
‘I don’t have one.’
