Previous Chapters
Novel
Anna Sujatha Mathai

For I saw with mine own eyes
                         A celebrated Sybil at Cumae,
                          Hanging in a bottle,
           And when her acolyte said: “What do you wish, O Sybil?”
                         I wish” she responded “to die.”
 
                                             Epigraph to The Wasteland
  
                                             By T.S. Eliot
 
Chapter  Twenty-Four
 
The Sybil in the Bottle
 
 
 A month or so later, they  moved to a small, new cottage, and set about making their new home as beautiful as it could be. despite the fact that the only bathroom was outside, beyond the kitchen.  “Why on earth?” wailed Shueli.“Well, the orthodox Hindus here think of the bathroom as an unclean place. So it has to be outside the bprop them up.  Paul, who had learned carpentry in his Doon School days got a good log of teak from the timber store, and made a coffee table with a fine grain in it. He was getting a little extra money as ‘private practice’ which made things a lot easier. One day, a patient came from the coffee estate area outlying Kavipuram. He had a whole row of little bottles, filled with translucent honey. Each, he explained, was from a different flower. ”To thank you for setting my son’s leg right.” Shueli thought it was the loveliest gift ever. Honey of  different colours, ranging from pure gold to a burnt sienna, smelling of the abundant fruits and flowers of the region. Sometimes, patients from outlying villages brought live chickens, sacks of rice, all offered with devotion and thanks. One old man brought a string of shining gold bangles, and slipped them onto Shueli’s hand, one day when Paul wasn’t at home. “Little madam, please tell your husband to take special care of my boy. He has a wife and two little children. If his leg becomes useless, he cannot work. How will we manage?” Shueli was most touched. She placed the gold bangles (probably taken from his  wife or daughter-in-law) firmly back into the old man’s hand. “Please, don’t worry. It is my husband’s duty to look after all his patients. He will most certainly do his best for your son.”  The old man bowed his head, and wept.                                                                        

Outside the cottage, a small tree flamed with brilliant red hibiscus flowers, When she was lonely or sad, Shueli sat on the front steps, and the hibiscus flowers soothed her. Their friends, the Ananthans,Kumar and Prema, said it was a good omen. “Keep it blossoming.” The Ananthans,    and young Dr. Keshavan, who had just returned to India with a French wife, were the friends  with  whom they got together frequently. When Shueli spoke of the difficulties of the house, the outside bath room, the isolation, and the feeling of being “cut off from life”  Prema Ananthan had just laughed and said “What is this depression you have? Maybe you should see the psychiatrist.”
Shueli’s mother-in-law, who was visiting, admonished her, saying “A woman has to adjust.” Shueli loathed the word “adjust”. To her, all it meant was giving in, or giving up. And how is it, she brooded, only women are constantly exhorted to ‘adjust’? Men are not told to adjust. They were allowed to have dreams, and reach for them. Her mother-in-law said “Our girls always adjust. Just look at Shantha, whose father was Accountant General. Her husband had a flat over a garage in Calcutta, but look how she adjusted. She was perfectly happy.”
 More and more, Shueli was being forced to turn inwards for company. Kuri never seemed to have time. She poured out her heart’s deepest secrets to the little black cat, who had become a human presence in her life. Paul’s father had sent, by plane,  a rather neurotic little terrier dog, whose paws trembled wildly. “Maybe they thought he’d be a fit companion for me,” said Shueli, with some bitterness. She went alone for walks, with the trembling terrier as her only companion! There was a favourite spot where she would break her walk, along the hillside, overlooking a valley. Way down, a little white temple glimmered among the coconut palms. Sometimes, there would be no electricity in the evening. She would sit alone on the front steps, moonlight bathing her, the hibiscus tree, and the house, in its remote light.
It is much worse when the monsoon rains start. It keeps on raining for months, creating a curtain, a veil, a shroud, from which there seems to be no escape. My God! How it pours! Everything smells of fungus and decay, - the furniture, bags, shoes, books and papers, clothes, even the food. Sometimes she sees herself again in Edinburgh, with Joanne and Alistair and all the others. The piano is playing, there’s witty conversation and laughter. She’s crossing the bridge with Alistair, the time he takes her to the theatre. On the way he laughingly stops, and buys a bunch of violets from an old woman. Presenting it to her with a flourish. How it had thrilled her. Now, she thinks, I’m not even Lot’s wife, a pillar of salt, I’m a pillar of fungus, decaying, dying. It’s not just my shoes and clothes that smell rotten, even my skin is rotting…Snakes come out of their holes, in the heavy downpour, and slither away in the pools outside. She has somewhat lost her fear of them, though not her repulsion. The tiled roof leaks in various parts of the house. She, and Veroni, the maid who has come from Cochin, run and place buckets here and there. It rains for months and months, without cease. She is marooned, a prisoner, with a possible life sentence on her head. Some mornings she feels there’s not even any point getting out of bed… What for? Day will pass into evening, and evening into night, and the endless cycle will just go on and on. There are thick bars on all the windows. For safety, of course. You must be married to have security. Ammy talking. You must have bars to have security. The bars only heighten her sense of being imprisoned. Sometimes, when the sun comes out, and a radiant blue sky reveals itself, she watches an eagle soar in the sky. She clasps the bar, and shakes it, wishing she too, could achieve that grace, that freedom, that beauty. That arc of graceful beauty, as the bird’s wings beat against the wind, as it soars upwards, - why, why, can’t she?
Veroni, the maid, who is probably only in her late fifties, but looks wizened and old, because of her hard life, seems to be the one person who understands her moods. Veroni belongs to the fisher community that lives along the coast, near Ernakulam and Cochin. The family is poor and struggling,, so when the local Convent offers Veroni this job with Shueli and Paul, she gladly accepts. The family has struggled for generations, making a meagre and perilous living from the sea. She became a widow young, and knew starvation and ignominy, bringing up her two sons and daughters on her own. She tells Shueli that the Catholic priests would pass her husband’s grave without even the usual benediction, because she could not afford even the small coin demanded by them. Veroni’s face is  lined like a river-bed marked by many tiny rivulets.. Shueli knows that Veroni is one of the truest souls she will ever meet in her life. When Shueli is sad, she weeps with her. When she is happy and laughs, Veroni claps and does a joyous dance. When Shueli faces endless tests that seem to do her more harm than good, Veroni, a Catholic, prays: “Mother, give a child to Shuelimaa!” She lights candles for St. Anthony, for the Blessed Virgin, and other saints. But all the tests are inconclusive. Once, while being tested in the Local Hospital, the technicians find some essential instrument missing, and leave her there,  both legs strapped to the examining table, in a humiliating position. Oh, if only all of them would leave her alone, free of all these tests. In England, busy with her house-work, her job, her friends, neither she nor Kuri had given it much thought.. In this small backwater town, salt is rubbed into her wounds every day. At Jessie Saldanha’s house, the other day, Jessie’s old grandmother bursts into loud (quite unsolicited, thinks Shueli!) prayer for Shueli’s “womb to be blessed”!!
To make things worse, Paul’s family is putting a lot of pressure on them. Paul’s mother is keen that Shueli should undergo surgery. Both Paul and Shueli are warned by a woman specialist they meet: “Please, Dr. Kuruvilla, this is just experimental surgery. Your wife is perfectly healthy. Don’t make her undergo this risky operation which might ruin her health. There’s every chance of your having a child, as one tube is undamaged. And if not, why not consider adopting?” Paul is shaken, and seems hesitant. But the surgery is already fixed, and his mother seems adamant, saying “Why not just go ahead and try it?”
“It’s not her life, or her body” thinks Shueli bitterly. And, in fact it does go wrong. Six months later, Shueli has to have a second operation, removing the reconstructed tube, and an ovary.
Veroni’s concern is of a different order. Shueli trusts Veroni’s instinct. For instance, there is a Malayalam film playing in the local cinema hall  just then. It is based on a story by the famous Kerala writer, Shivashankara Pillai, and is titled “Shrimps.” Imagine that beautiful coastline, where  Veroni comes from, where the fishermen face death every day, just to earn a living, and the women pray and wait for their men who face danger on stormy seas. For these fisher folk, the Sea is a Goddess. If a wife is unchaste while her husband is at sea, so they believe, the sea will devour her husband. The heroine of the story had had a childhood love, but had been married off to someone else. When she is drawn back, inexorably, to her first love, her husband dies in a storm at sea. The lovers end their own lives on that very same seashore, where they had begun, so innocently, to love one another. Shueli has begun to wonder. Isn’t this just romantic idealisation?  Isn’t love just a word, something unreal you can never hold? Everything she had felt about love, has become distant. Love is just a mirage in the desert, something that vanishes as you try to grasp it. She has the sudden idea that Veroni would be the one person who could give a true answer in this matter. “Veroni, tomorrow I’m going to take you to a Malayalam cinema. You will understand the language, and also, it takes place on the coast, where your home is.”  Veroni is too excited for words. She has never, in her entire life, been to a cinema, though people have told her of such things. The next day she has on her starched white chatta and kachumuri, which she wears, even here in Kavipuram. She wipes tears from her eyes, saying softly, “Madhaave, Madhaave” (Mother Mary) as the lovers lie dead on the beach, the water lapping their bodies. She is, evidently, quite dazed by the experience of her first cinema, and that too, such a sad love story. Shueli puts her a question: “What do you think, Veroni? What do you feel about all this - – long lost love, and people dying like that?”  Veroni does not hesitate for a moment. She answers with great certainty: “That’s how it is. If you’re separated from the one you love, you will die.”  All Shueli’s doubts vanish. Love is not, after all, just a word, a foolish sentiment. It is real. It encompasses everything, your whole life. If you do not have it, you will search for it. She has read somewhere, that for each human, there is one ideal person, just right, somewhere in the world. Giselle, Dr. Keshavan’s French wife says she has heard that too. “Look at me. Keshu went right round the world, and there I was, just waiting for him!”
“But suppose you meet the right one, and don’t recognise him – or her. Just walk past him without noticing him? And what if you just miss him? He’s in the next room, round the corner, in the next city, - what about that?
“Well if you’re lucky, like me, you meet just the right person, even if he’s half-way across the world –“ laughs Giselle. Prema Ananthan says, with her usual air of utter contentment “Look at me. I had not even met Ananthan. Everything was arranged by our parents, and we met only once, before the marriage. But, so what? I couldn’t have got a kinder, better person…”
“Now don’t tell us it’s because you adjusted, please, Prema!”  They all laugh, and eat the tasty idlis and coffee Prema has made.       
                                                                      *****

                             Time present and time past
                             Are both perhaps present in time future,
                             And time future contained in time past…
                             Footfalls echo in the memory
                              Down the passage  which we did not take
                             Towards the door we never opened
                              Into  the rose-garden.
                                              Burnt Norton,  The Four Quartets                                                                                                                                  T.S. ELIOT
 
 
Chapter 25
The Door Never Opened  / Into the Rose Garden                                                          
 
 
The rain poured down without cease for months together. It was a shroud of rain and Shueli felt herself trapped and dead within it. Twenty-eight years old, she had got caught in a world with No Exit. She saw no way out. Paul, feeling guilt and anger at her sense of being cut off from life, stayed away. Only occasional rapprochements led to some good times. Laughter, love-making in the long afternoons, with only the hushing of the casuarina trees as a background, long evenings with friends, made life bearable. Shueli didn’t care for long card sessions, though friends assured her it would help to “kill time. Shocked, she would reply  “Time is all I’ve got!”
“At my back, I always hear/ Time’s winged Chariot hurrying near.”
The two operations she’d had, which had botched up her inner system, along with an overdose of hormones, did not help matters. She tried to express the empty feeling she had in a few lines: 
 
I wonder if Spring is only hormonal.
I am no longer … emotional.
I am a well-adjusted individual
Or try to be.
But Spring doesn’t come any more for me. 
 
They cut you open,
And tell you it will be alright.
You bleed and they are most kind,
And tell you the scars will heal
And they do..
But Spring never comes any more.
 
 
Shueli found herself flirting outrageously at the parties they had or went to. There were moonlight picnics on the beach, with some of the young men playing haunting tunes on their guitars. Romance was in the air. The heady feeling of being young, sexy and alive possessed them. She never could stand drink, and the couple of drinks she had would go to her head, and she would dance too close to someone, or do something to shock the few friends they had. Giselle and Prema were overheard saying they pitied her. Since the only raison d’etre for a woman’s life here was having babies, and she had none, she was, indeed, to be pitied. On her solitary evening walks, with the dog whose paw trembled nervously, she sat on a rock gazing down at the valley as the mist rolled across it, the sun shining onto a white temple on the hillside. The beauty of the scene only heightened her sad sense of being alone.                                                         
       In her imagination she escaped to where there had been a Spring, where she had encountered someone who had touched her heart. Someone was playing a haunting piece by Beethoven on the piano in the Lounge at Edinburgh. The young man playing had a pale, ascetic face, dark eyes with dark eyebrows that met rather severely over them. His American friend, Joanne, sat listening, and would beckon to Shueli to come and join her. Shueli loved Joanne, who  seemed able to open up the world for you.. Shueli yearned to know, to reach out, to touch everything.  Joanne was doing an M.A. in Art History, and some of Shueli’s courses coincided with hers. She had such a scintillating presence, could set you laughing, or make the  world of Art completely real.  Shueli gathered that Joanne was rather preoccupied these days with a Scotsman, Alistair Stewart. He was studying Modern Languages, and Shueli found him distant and forbidding, though she was aware of his startling good looks. “Alistair’s translating Russian poetry into English” said Joanne. Both were brilliant, and Shueli would find herself staying rather late in the Lounge, so that when they came in after an evening out, she could join in their witty intellectual discussions about Art, Philosophy, Poetry. It made her feel completely alive just to be with them, though she felt rather tongue-tied in Alistair’s  stern and forbidding  presence. She loved Poetry, but knew little about Art, so thought it better to listen rather than blurt out some outrageous opinion of her own. She would listen breathlessly, not daring to intrude. They would talk excitedly and with passion about Kierkegaard, Rimbaud, Mallarme and Baudelaire, Dostoevski and Chekhov. They were so absorbed in each other, they hardly seemed to notice her presence. She felt like some of the hungry children in India,, who pressed their faces against glass windows, looking in at tables spread with delicious food, which they could never taste. Just now and then, they would include her in their lively friendship. “So. Shoo, Schmooey, what do you think?”  Joanne would ask, rolling her eyes comically,, concealing her brilliance with clowning. Shueli would give her opinion very hesitantly. If it were Joanne alone she could argue back, come out with the way she saw it., but Alistair rather overwhelmed her. He looks so severe and remote, though he is really very good looking, she thought. He might look through me, or just despise me if I say something trite and silly, and probably all wrong! She couldn’t understand why she found herself waiting up late in the Lounge, just hoping Joanne and Alistair would come in. But, after a few days or weeks,  - was she imagining it?  -  she began to feel he was addressing many of his remarks to her. Did she imagine it, too, that the lights in the Lounge were suddenly switched on, making the dull room bright?                                                                 
When she visited Paul at Hartlepools, she felt put off by the coarse banter between the Nurses and Doctors, and more than ever a stranger to Paul. He got on very well with the Nurses, with whom there was a good deal of laughter and joking, much of which Shuieli couldn’t understand. An Irish Nurse, Phyllis Docherty, was a ring-leader in some of the raucous jokes and tricks, not to mention the wild parties that enlivened life in the Hospital. Once, Docherty got Shueli to sit down in the Ward, and put her on laughing gas. Shueli spluttered and giggled and cried. Paul and Docherty seemed to enjoy the huge joke. Another time, Docherty passed Shueli a small, furry purse, saying “Oh, our Paully likes a bit o’ pussy, dusn’t he?” Shueli didn’t know what that meant, and it was only after much enquiry and guessing that she found out. Perhaps she was too naïve? She had begun to feel that she and Paul lived in very separate worlds. She cared for Paul, his liveliness, his intelligence and sense of fun, but here was an underground stream running through the relationship, which bewildered her, and left her feeling vaguely unhappy. She felt rather guilty about the sense of relief she experienced on getting back to Edinburgh and the Manor Club. Or was it just the thrill of being back with Joanne and Alistair, and the others. Back to her classes, her own life. Shouldn’t her life be with Paul? Yet , he had left her on her own, and she was cut off from Ammy. Papa and Gaya too. Separation can sometimes strengthen bonds. But if the bonds are not strong, it creates a chasm.
Ashvini Joshi had finished at Cambridge, and came for a week-end to see her She was full of Girton, and how she had worked as a waitress in a London restaurant. Needed to earn a bit extra. For my trip to Seville. Oh, those piles and piles of dirty dishes. But it was fun.”    Shueli told her how she had worked in the Christmas Deliveries at the Edinburgh Post Office. How she had to report at 4.30 a.m. on a bitter wintry morning. How thick the snow lay , and how the Scottish families would say “Och, it’s bitter weather Come away in, and have a cup of coffee. It’s no work for a wee lassie like you.” And how Klaus and some children had helped her push heavy parcels in sledges down icy slopes.! She’d earned £11 at the end of the week, and had been thrilled to give Paul a jacket for his Christmas present!

Shueli had a letter from Manisha too: “Darling Shu, At last it’s all coming true. I’ve just got a scholarship to RADA. I’m so thrilled! Oh, and guess what? Mark has left his wife, and is getting a job in London, just to be near me. His wife is creating trouble, refusing  to release him. Mama and Dadajee are furious with me, and threatening to cut me off completely. I’m sure it will all work out. I’m so divinely happy to be starting at RADA.”  Not long after, Shueli read in the papers that Manisha had won a Prize at an International Film Festival. She played a part in a film about a group of travelling actors from England, who performed Shakespeare in small Indian towns. Manisha was now well on the road to success.
Tara wrote that she’d met a wonderfully chaotic person, with whom, for some strange reason,  feel I shall be very happy. I want to make a little corner where happiness can grow..”
                                                          *******
 
Drifting apart from Paul, and cut off from home,  Shueli clung to the time she could snatch with Joanne and Alistair. She needed Joanne’s comic brilliance, and the way it caught the light glinting from Alistair’s depth. Shueli loved to hear him read from some translation of Russian poetry he was working on. “I call you for the last time, ancient world…”  and he seemed to be talking directly to Shueli. Very often he seemed to be talking only to her, and her alone. He was often amused by her, as if she were an innocent child Once, when she remarked that Edinburgh “looked like Greece or Rome, with all its pillars and columns,” he started to laugh, saying “That’s what’s so endearing about Shueli, She sees things as a child would.” Shueli was embarrassed and hurt that he had laughed at her. He never laughed at Joanne, did he? His arguments with Joanne  often touched a strident note, and he would retreat into silence after that. He would play the piano, and every note would vibrate in Shueli’s consciousness, drifting across the silent streets and square below, the timeless notes of love and longing. He played a little Bach, or Mozart, or Beethoven. And also, very often, old Scottish songs.   They carried Shueli back in time to the College Principal’s drawing room, with all those subterranean flirtations, and someone singing ‘Danny Boy’ or ‘Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonny Doon.’ What an incongruous setting that had been for such songs! Her child’s state had barred her from understanding much of it then. Now, the essential note of hopeless love and longing, passion and betrayal seemed to cut right through into her inner being.
“Better loved ye cannae be…./ Will ye no come back again?”
“My false lover…/ Stole the rose / And oh, …He left the thorn with me.”
“As fair art thou, my bonny lass , / So deep in love am I:
And I will love thee still, my dear,/ Till all the seas gang dry….
And fare thee weel, my only Love! / And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my Love, / Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.”
Shueli knew she would remember these words, this music, till her dying day. It’s the small, incongruous things we hold on to, that add light to our darkest days. There were some warning bells, advising her to move away from this friendship, to bury herself in her study. But she was drawn more and more by Alistair’s dark magnetism. In their conversations, wasn’t he revealing herself to her, opening up the hidden magic in ordinary life? Could she possibly just walk away from it all?  Yet, she  did realise that she was beginning to be almost obsessed by him. She would wait for ages in her room, parting the curtain slightly, ostensibly just to watch the people in the Square below., but she would, breathlessly and guiltily, draw the curtain sharply when she saw Alistair’s dark head in the Square below. This was worse than anything she had experienced with Arif. She had been a child then, free to hope. For the first time she acknowledged to herself that she was trapped in a relationship that did not suit her. She wasn’t free any more. Yet she couldn’t just walk away from it, could she? It was what connected her to her family, her childhood, her country.                                                                                                Joanne said : “Shooey, would you like to come and see this new film, by this Swedish Director that everyone is talking about? Yes, - The Seventh Seal. Everyone’s  raving about Ingmar Bergman.”  Yes, of course, not for anything would Shueli miss that. Having always loved the theatre so much, Shueli found the thrill of the fine new films irresistible. As you settled back in your seat in the Cinema Hall, didn’t you enter into a whole new world, of people larger than life, a world of poetry and music?  The Seventh Seal catapulted them into a medieval world of superstition, fear, evil and innocence, shot through with an unearthly beauty. The knight who wandered through that world, had the fine features and ascetic quality which Shueli saw in the paintings of El Greco. And something ofAlistair. The knight never smiled. Alistair often did. Especially when he teased her, saying “Reely, Shu?” – in the Scots manner. Sometimes, Alistair would invite Joanne and Shueli for a drink in one of the old pubs off  Rose Street. He might stop, suddenly, seeing an old woman selling flowers, and buy a bunch of violets for Shueli, who loved the fragrance, the beauty of that moment, which she knew was perishable. All the more poignant, because it came to her by such fragile accident. Sitting in the pub, the talk turned to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Alistair recreated, in French, the entire beginning of that timeless story of a provincial doctor’s young wife. It would become harsh, bitter reality, which Shueli would return to in her imagination, years later. Then she, a provincial physician’s wife, in a small town on the West Coast of India, sat staring into space, wondering how she could endure her life. But for now, she was entranced. When summer came, with all its brilliance, its endless days, with sunshine spilling over into night, they would lie out in the green lawns, adjoining the Manor Club, which were covered with green daisies. After a day of reading, they would all go down to the Dean Village, to walk by the sea, and to some old pub. Yes, life was sweet. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive.
  Joanne was getting more than ever absorbed in her Fine Arts Degree. One evening, Alistair asked Shueli if she would give him a cup of coffee in her room. He looked unhappy, and as if he’d had “a wee drop too much.” The coffee, made with hot water from the tap, was terrible. Alistair emptied it into the basin. Wordlessly, Alistair took Shueli into his arms, and kissed her. For a while, they clung to one another, with all  the force of long unacknowledged love.                                       “We’re both lonely people” he said, putting his head on her lap.  Shueli felt so close to him, yet as if her whole being were rent in two. Realising her troubled state of mind, he said  “You don’t have to worry. Everything will be alright. The fairy tale has to have a happy ending…”
Shueli, uncomprehendingly, “Which fairy tale?”
“The one that goes ‘The prince and the princess lived happily ever after. After all,
you’re  married.” Alistair, with a wistful note.
He left soon after, leaving Shueli confused, and with the beginnings of a fever. Viruses often attack, not only when the body is weak, but also when the spirit is divided against itself. When Joanne came to visit her the next day, she was tossing in bed with the fever. She did not waste time beating about the bush. “I know that you and Alistair have this obsession with one another. It’s been torturing me. The way he’s moved away, so gradually, from me. I can’t stand it any more. I think I’m going to move out of here.” She wasn’t clowning any more. Nor was she being intellectual. Sadness lent her a dignity and gravity which Shueli had never guessed she could possess. Shueli wept, and said  “It’s just a fleeting thing, really. We can never be together. I’m leaving, after the exam. .Please don’t feel hurt.”  Another part of her felt a deep joy, a voice singing in her head “Alistair loves me.”
“Well,” said Joanne, reverting to comic, “Stair Shtair can just make up his confused mind. I’m leaving!”
The relationships between Alistair, Joanne and Shueli had changed. She still felt the pull towards him, , but his rather abrupt withdrawal and reserve, which she couldn’t fathom made her reserved too. What lay unspoken between them, which could so easily have taken over, changed the course of their lives, become a potent source of  action, remained unarticulated. Only the affection, the warmth of friendship remained. Joanne said: “Every parting is a taste of death.”  Yes, it was death to leave this place, where she had grown in  self-awareness, her consciousness had blossomed, a fierce spring flower that would withstand the winters ahead. She knew she would return again, and yet again, in reality or in imagination to this beautiful city of her youth.
“And I will come again, my love, /Tho’ ‘twere ten thousand mile.”
                                                           **********
These memories haunted Shueli in her dreary life in far away Kavipuram. Being so alone most of the time, her dream life dominated her real life. Her worst time lay just ahead, but she was unable to understand what lay beneath until many years later.
The world was covered in ice and snow, when Shueli, her young heart torn by the loss of love, travelled to Rotherham, where Paul was working now. She was reading an old Classic, Manon Lescaut, translated from the French, which seemed to echo all the pain and anguish of separation which she was feeling now. Love is always doomed in this world, she felt. Lovers  - always the outcastes from the world, which stoned them, rejected them, forced them to confess and recant.
                                                                *******
Rotherham, in Yorkshire, not too far from Sheffield, a busy industrial town, was where Shueli had to join Paul, after her exams were over. They rented a part of a house, sharing the kitchen and living room, with a sprightly widow in her fifties. The red brick house stood on the edge of the moors, where they often went for long walks, and to get the bus into Sheffield (she had to change 3 times!), where Shueli got her first job as a Social Worker in a Hospital. Their landlady, Mrs. Maynard, was a fitness buff, She and her friend Sally were always off to Fitness classes, or cycling long distances on the moors. Paul sometimes joined them, and Mrs. Maynard would say, laughingly  “He’s luvly. If you don’t want him, just give him to me”  - which Shueli found rather odd for a woman in her fifties to say about a young man of twenty-seven! It took Shueli almost an hour to get to work, and with the change of buses, she was forced to leave by 7 a.m., when Paul was still in bed. By the time she got back in the evening, he was at work and often rang to say he was on Night Duty, and wouldn’t be back till the next evening. Shueli had made a friend at work, tall, blonde Cindy Alston, who welcomed her with friendly warmth to her circle, and often invited her home at weekends, which dispelled some of the loneliness Shueli felt. The Senior Physiotherapist in Paul’s Unit, a Miss Angela Carter, who lived with her parents, often invited Paul and Shueli over for a Sunday lunch, and was very kind to them. The kindness sometimes showed itself as possessiveness, especially of Paul. Miss Carter had lost her fiancee, who was in the R.A.F.., during the war.
Soon after Shueli had arrived, Paul introduced her to the Chief Nurse in his Unit.. “She’s terrific. You must meet her, - Audrey Bates – she’s just got back from the U.S., where she’s been working the past two years. She’s great fun. Just wait till you meet her.”              Yes, Audrey Bates looked as if  she had just stepped out of the pages of Vogue Magazine. Her short, shiny black hair, cut with a straight fringe across her forehead, looked like a Vidal Sassoon style. She was very tall and slim, and wore the stylish new clothes she’d  brought from the U.S. But despite the dazzling style, she seemed, under it all, just a simple Yorkshire girl. Shueli liked her, and was glad that Paul had a friend like that. She said so to Miss Carter, and was surprised when that lady pursed her lips tightly, arched her eyebrows, and said “You don’t know a thing, Shueli. Still waters run deep!” 
When Shueli told Paul, he just laughed, and said, “She’s just a jealous, spiteful creature. She can’t bear Audrey, because she’s young and smart, while she has lost all her chances!” Shueli felt pity for Miss Carter, whose hopes had been blighted so young, and who still hungered for attention and love. Shueli, hovering on the edges of an inexplicable feeling of being lost and very alone, tried to imagine the years that had led Miss Carter, who had probably been a striking young blonde during the War, into this narrow space. Her youth fading away, as she struggled with work, and the responsibilities of caring for her aging parents. But Shueli could not take seriously the possessiveness she demonstrated towards the much younger Paul. She did not know then that an aging woman  can cling to the hopes of youth, through someone much younger, and in her own mind, become young again. Most people do not see themselves as aging, or old, but as they were in their best years, young, dynamic,  alive.   It takes an effort of the will, a resignation, a loss of the fighting spirit,  to  see yourself as “old.” Miss Carter had not lost that spirit. Shueli admired her for it. Shueli thought of Graany, who had insisted she was old, when she was, perhaps, not much older than Miss Carter. When Shueli had told Graany she would like to get her a gold bordered kashava kavani to wear over her white blouse and kachumuri skirt, Graany had remonstrated that if she wore things like that at her age people would say: “Look at that one. Giddy and frivolous. Not a thought of her age. And she, a grandmother!” Ammy had told Shueli how much Graany had always loved colour and beauty. “Your Graany. She always loved pastel, delicate shades in chiffon for saris. She used to love flowers, and always liked beautiful people.” Ammy had said this with indulgent amusement. How strange that women in different countries reacted differently to age. Gaya had said “Well, it’s like women in the old days used to think it was right to jump on the funeral pyre when their husbands died.. Or have their hair cut off, their bangles broken, when they became widows. Everyone sees themselves as their society allows them to, or even forces them to.”                                                                                                                                                     Shueli had begun to wonder about herself. She had not yet been able to give shape to her unhappiness. Could not clearly acknowledge it to herself. Did not know how to deal with it. Maybe if she belonged to a different family or society, it would have been easier to break away from an unhappy situation. Now, she just kept telling herself everything would surely improve. Her work was interesting,, working with women, unmarried young girls; old people abandoned by their children; families in trouble of all sorts. Everything Shueli learned about other people opened her eyes inwards, forcing her to know herself better. And Shueli loved to hear the girls in the office speak in their broad Yorkshire dialect. “I pointed it out to ouver Margaret, I did. I said, any road, if you’re goin’  t’ave  t’baby, you’ll ‘ave t’ give up t’ living room carpet, I ses. Any road, y’can’t ‘ave it all, I ses.”
“Audrey’s getting married” said Paul rather casually, puffing at his pipe.
“Really?” Shueli was surprised “You never mentioned she was engaged, or anything like that. A bit sudden, isn’t it? Has she been keeping it a secret, or is it a whirlwind romance?”
“No.” Paul was still casual. “It seems this is someone she met while she was in the U.S. He’s a Surgeon in a Navy Hospital.”
“Oh, why didn’t Audrey tell us? That’s lovely news. When is the wedding?”
“This week-end. I’m taking some leave for it.”
Shueli said it was nice he could be a help to Audrey.
The next day, the atmosphere at Miss Carter’s was not good. “I hear that Audrey Bates is getting married all of a sudden.” Miss Carter’s lips were tightly pursed. When Paul went out to fetch something, she continued in the same acid tone: “I really can’t see why your husband has to take leave because that woman is getting married.” Miss  Carter’s mouth  formed an exaggerated circle. Her eyebrows arched themselves, to express her distaste.
“Why not?” Shueli was puzzled, and felt she should defend Paul. “She’s his friend. Shouldn’t he help her?”                                                                                                      “Oh well, I’m not even going to the wedding. Very strange, isn’t it – how she’s produced this husband  from nowhere, all of a sudden? I told you she was a deep one, didn’t I?”
“Well, I’m happy for her. Paul has a right to have a friend, and help her out, if she needs it.” Shueli felt she had dealt quite firmly with Miss Carter. She really couldn’t see what she was trying to say, or insinuate! “Maybe it’s just her loneliness that’s making her so unpleasant. I suddenly understand what “left on the shelf” means. Sad and painful. But she’ll get over it, poor woman,” said Shueli to Paul, who had already fallen asleep. Shueli heard some of the doctors’ wives talking the next day. “It seems Audrey already had this American boyfriend up her sleeve. She never mentioned it, though, which does seem a bit strange. Apparently she sent him a telegram to come at once. Nurse Jackson saw it, and it read: ‘Changed my mind. Let’s get married! Come at once!’ He must have been really smitten, and all. Any road, he’s getting here tomorrow. Isn’t she lucky, Audrey?”
  Shueli felt waves of home-sickness come over her at the wedding. As she and Paul sat in the old English church, her mind went back to her own wedding. She felt engulfed by an inexplicable feeling of sadness. Audrey’s husband was tall and well-built. A blonde American, of, possibly, German or Scandinavian heritage. He was certainly looking at Audrey with adoration, as Paul had looked at Shueli. But was the adoration of men merely proprietary, Shueli wondered. Was it just that they liked to be owners of beautiful creatures, whom they made little or no effort to understand, or care for? Wasn’t there a song which went: “Got myself a crying, talking, living doll..” Well, maybe Audrey would be lucky. Hadn’t he come running at her call? Now, as the service wound itself to a close, Shueli thought how beautiful was the ideal, - to cherish someone for a lifetime, and be cherished. Why did it seem so difficult in real life? As if the process of everyday living  blighted the fruit.  Now, with the organ’s  full -throated pounding, Audrey came down the aisle, exquisite in her white bridal attire, on the arm of her tall, handsome husband. Shueli, looking back on her own life, felt tears prick her eyes. Audrey came up to where they were sitting, just near the aisle, and stopped. Perhaps it was just for a fraction of a second. Perhaps it was a lifetime. She turned slightly towards them, and seemed to be staring right into their eyes. Or was it just Paul’s eyes?                                                                          Shueli said later, “How touching that she chose to stop and look at us.” Paul said not a word. Later, they received letters and pictures from Audrey, of her first baby. The pictures continued to come for quite a while. Shueli remarked “She’s a faithful  friend. Never seems to forget us.”


​

Poetry 
​~ Keith Moul

​The Little Galum Creek flows tawny
past the old Presbyterian Cemetery;
evangels roam and touch the stones;
the Word flows like blood from fingers;
the retinue waits primed at edge of rest
until Jesus shall call, and He will call.
 
Often my forefathers speak as I pass,
of glory awaited after suitable time,
but chanting song lyrics I do not know,
indicating that the burgeoning ground
lacks room for both saved and unsaved.
 
Are these jealousies of ancients interred?
Our congregation’s pantheon of ardor?
Strange night thought after the centuries
of righteousness that have gone in there.
 
Today, we follow an old-time crafting
of goodness, brightened by the hot sun;
true, we take Christ painlessly, granting
both His stated wish and our wishes in turn,
a happy partnership blessed in benefaction.
 
Perfect in kind is Galum’s gurgle; presence
so cool, its memory abides with me always.

​
Keith Moul’s poems and photos are published widely. In August, 2017, Aldrich Press released Not on Any Map, a collection of earlier poems. These poems are from a new work about prairie life through U.S. history, including regional trials, character, and attachment to the land. They may parallel in some ways Spoon River. They are collected now in Voices beneath the Winds, seeking a publisher.