I was very worried on the way to Howrah. How will you know her? I kept asking Tridib — you don’t even know what she looks like now, you haven’t seen her since she was a little baby.
But Tridib wasn’t worried. I’ll recognise her somehow, he said, you wait and see.
But of course I did worry: I didn’t know they’d exchanged photographs. Secretly, I was sure it would be I who’d recognise her first. This was because I had developed a theory about her name. Her name had puzzled me at first: I’d wondered why she had been named after a month. Then I read somewhere that English buttercups flowered in May. The rest was easy: obviously she was called May because she looked like a buttercup. I was certain I would recognise her first: I was the only person there who knew what to look for.
We were waiting on the platform when the Frontier Mail steamed in. A huge crowd spilled out of it and swept down the platform. We waited for half an hour, but there was still no sign of her. Tridib was less sanguine now; he was beginning to bite his fingernails. I was close to tears.
It turned out exactly as I had expected: I saw her first. She was standing patiently beside a tea-stall with her suitcase between her legs. I was stunned: she did not look remotely like anything I had expected. She saw me staring at her and waved tentatively. Then my father saw her too and waved back.
She picked up her suitcase and came running up to us. Dropping it on the platform, she shook hands with my father, and then looked down at me, from what seemed like a great height, and ruffled my hair, smiling, so that her blue eyes shimmered like water in a breeze.
I was no longer disappointed: I did not mind that she didn’t look at all like a buttercup — to me she was exotic enough.
Straightening up, she looked over my head and stepped back. I knew she had seen Tridib, so I didn’t turn, for I wanted to watch her face when she greeted him. She did not recognise him at first — I could tell, because she smiled in a general, inclusive kind of way, as though she had understood he was with us and was smiling for the sake of politeness. Then her smile faded away and her eyes widened. Raising a hand, she pointed at him and said: You’re not, you’re not …
I slipped away to one side so I would have a better view of the two of them.
Tridib was nodding at her, shyly; I could tell he was trying to smile. I didn’t blame him: the moment seemed so unbearably poignant I was sure in his place I would not have been able to smile either.
I can still see what May did next as though it were a film running through my head in slow motion; I remember how the noise and bustle of that busy platform seemed to evaporate; I remember the face of a man standing behind the tea-stall, gaping, with his mouth wide open; I even remember my father’s eyes growing large with disbelief.
She stepped up to Tridib and kissed him on both cheeks.
A battery of whistles shrilled out from every corner of the platform; a chorus of voices shouted — Again! Again! Tridib’s spectacles misted over and he looked as though he would burst with embarrassment.
Oh, I’m so sorry, May said. She was blushing. It’s obviously not the right thing to do here.
No, no, Tridib stammered. Thank you very much …
What are you staring at? my father snapped, waving his hands at the people who had gathered around us. Then he picked up May’s suitcase and shepherded us out of the station.
On the way back to our house Tridib told us how long ago, in London, Mrs Price had called him into the house one morning when he was sitting out in the garden and told him to go into the drawing room and take a look at May. Puzzled, he had gone up to her cradle and looked in. When he saw her, his hair had stood on end and he’d almost wet his trousers. He had run out of the room screaming: she had turned into an insect, her face had gone all black and shiny and her mouth had grown into a long black snout, like a pig’s.
Later they had explained, laughing, that it was just a gas mask — a baby’s gas mask, to protect her in case the Germans dropped gas bombs. But they hadn’t been able to convince him until they took it off and showed him her face, soft, pink and quite unchanged.
I stole a glance at May and my heart warmed to her when I saw she was laughing.
But May didn’t remember Tridib’s story; she was too excited to listen properly.
She made a face at the stream of shoppers flowing past us and said: We’ve done enough for today — I think we can leave the rest of these damned souls to wallow in the mire of their complacency for the moment. Come on, I’ll show you a little place around the corner where you can have a cup of coffee.
Does that mean you’ll be breaking your fast too? I said.
I’m sorely tempted, she said. But I’ll try and hold out a little bit longer.
We rolled up posters and breasted the quick-flowing crowd. Eventually, we made our way into a small lane off Regent Street, and May led me into a sandwich bar that had trays of salad and shrimps and salami displayed behind a misty window. Inside, it smelt of bread and mayonnaise; it was only a small, narrow room with a counter at one end, but it looked larger than it was because the far wall was a huge mirror, with a thin, ledge-like table built into it. May found a couple of high stools and we carried them across the room to the ledge at the far end. Then I went back to the counter to choose a sandwich and get myself a cup of coffee, and when I came back May was looking into the mirror, laughing silently.
What’s happened? I said.
She shook her head: I was thinking of that silly story about me in a gas mask, when I was a baby.
She hadn’t heard Tridib telling it, but she’d laughed anyway — she remembered that — she’d laughed because she was light-hearted with relief. She had been frightened all day, on the train. In fact, she had been frightened ever since she arrived in Delhi. She couldn’t remember why; there wasn’t any real reason. But she remembered her fear, how she had shut herself into her hotel room — it was like that time when she was a little girl, and she’d found herself alone at the deep end of a swimming pool. She was frightened because she was alone, because she didn’t know what to do. A woman with a mangled hand had asked her for money one morning, and she’d stood there paralysed wondering what to do. All she could do was give her money, and that wasn’t doing anything at all; it was an act of helplessness. She wasn’t used to being helpless; she was used to doing things. She always had been.
She had thought it would be a good idea to go to Delhi and Agra first; it would let him, Tridib, know she hadn’t come to India in answer to his summons, as it were. But now she couldn’t bring herself to go to Agra. She locked herself into her room in her hotel in Delhi, and lay in bed wondering why she’d come. Of course, there wasn’t a reason, no good reason at all that she could think of, except curiosity — curiosity about what lay beyond West Hampstead, a curiosity that had come to be focused on this man whom she’d never met. But lying there, frightened, in that hotel bed, curiosity seemed like no reason at all for travelling five thousand miles. It didn’t seem like a reason for anything — what was curiosity, after all? She tried to think about why she’d been curious, tried really hard, but it eluded her — she didn’t know what it was any longer, it had vanished.
Instead, she found herself wondering about Tridib. She tried to think of him waiting for her at the station at Calcutta, but she had no idea what the station would be like. She thought of a crowded version of Paddington, in London, and she saw him waiting for her at the bookstall. She saw herself walking up to him, putting out a hand, saying very demurely, How-do-you-do. But he didn’t respond — he smiled at her thinly, looking her over with bright, piercing eyes. He looked exactly as he did in the picture he had sent her — intense, saturnine, more than a little mad. And then she was really frightened: she didn’t want to meet a man like that alone, in a strange country. That was when she sent my father a telegram asking him to meet her at the station.