This cottaging business is developing into a kind of fixture in Ritwik’s life. Every evening, or almost every evening, he finds his way here unerringly, like an insect following a pheromone track. Sometimes he does a round at the Angel and Greyhound Meadow under Magdalen Bridge, but it is a less familiar dance, not of the thoroughly rehearsed St. Giles variety. Besides, St. Giles offers solid shelter from the frequent rains and wind. And an embarrassment of riches.
That, above all, is what he finds incredible — the sheer availability at practically all times, the accepted and understood fact that at certain types of places, at certain times, you can get what you want. It’s there for the taking; you just have to turn up and wait for it.
But there are good days and bad days. There are cold evenings of nearly frozen feet, the socks like a thick sheath of ice, spent waiting, waiting for footsteps which are few and far between, evenings when the cottaging population seems to have become almost extinct, or when the few available ones do not please at all. To wait is to experience time in its purest form; he understands how viscous, like treacle, it is in its unadulterated state. During these evenings, he paces around inside his cubicle, running to the hinge at the slightest sound. Some of these evenings seem to be jinxed — only the old, dirty-mac brigade seems to be out hunting.
Sometimes he sits on the toilet seat and thinks of how to carry on the essay from where he left off, still lying on his desk under the weight of a bottle of Quink. Sentences flit and hide, like a sudden green flapping and screeching of parrots overhead: It is the bright and battering sandal of representation that bruises Hopkins, not dark nights of the soul, not theological despair, not the fugitive presence/absence of God. How to hold and contain, how to speak God’s grandeur, and nature, His book’s, in fallen language, language ‘soiled with trade’, other than to burn, buckle and bend the old language to forge a new? This straining against linguistic representation is acted out as a personal drama of despair, but, paradoxically enough, the bruising of the poet releases his scent, like camomile or thyme crushed. . The rain beats out its peculiar music on the reinforced glass and concrete roof overhead. It lulls and comforts him. All he is waiting for is the sound of the right footsteps.
IV
The room is enormous and for one which contains such a lot of furniture — an ornate gilt mirror, chairs, a sofa, a divan, a grand piano with its legs resting on small saucers of water to prevent insects from climbing it and building their colonies inside, and books, books everywhere, in glass-fronted dark wood cupboards taking up two entire walls and a large section of the third — it seems unusually full of light. The curtains are not heavy and the two doors are wide open, one to the courtyard, one to the interior, which is also filled with diffuse light on this sunny day, so rare for monsoon. Miss Gilby has time to take in the room and its furnishings before Bimala arrives accompanied by her husband for her first meeting with her English tutor and companion. Miss Gilby tries to steady her hand around her teacup; she is surprised she is as nervous with anticipation as possibly Bimala is this morning.
She moves over to one of the bookcases; this appears to be the one that houses English books only. Complete works of Shakespeare. The collected poetry and prose of Milton. The works of Dr Johnson. There’s a lot of poetry: Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Browning, Tennyson. Beautiful octavo editions in brown leather with gold-tooled letters on the spine. She picks out one that says, laconically, ‘Lyrics’ only and starts leafing through it. Instantly she recognizes it as the volume of medieval English short poems so beloved of her and Violet, the very book from which they took turns to read aloud to each other on evenings spent in each other’s company only. A random poem catches her eye — ‘Now springes the spray,/All for love I am so seek/That slepen I ne may’ — then another: ‘He cam also stille/Ther his moder was,/As dew in Aprille/That falleth on the grass.’ She is so stabbed with nostalgia, with a kind of homesickness, that she puts the book back and carries on with the safer activity of reading only the titles on spines. Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas More, Locke. She moves to another cupboard. This contains only Bengali books. She has to bend slightly and crane her neck in order to read the writing on the spines. She can only manage to do this slowly in the beginning. Before she has had a chance to decipher some of the letters, as a little test of her fledgling literacy in the language, she notices an edition of Mrs. Beeton. Surely a mistake in shelving otherwise how could it have strayed here, among the Bengali books, she thinks, when she hears footsteps and the swish of fabric outside. Without hurrying, she moves to the sofa, sits and puts down her cup on the glass-covered table in front of her.
As husband and wife enter the room, Miss Gilby stands up. Mr Roy Chowdhury says, ‘No, no, Miss Gilby, please remain seated, there’s no need to stand.’
Bimala stands at his side, head down, the aanchol of her sari lifted up to the back of her head and over it, the rich magnetic blue of the cloth accentuating the deep vermilion parting in the middle. She looks as if she would prefer to be invisible or to hide behind her husband. Dark skinned, slightly built, arms with bangles — gold, coral, the mandatory white shell of the married woman — but nothing ostentatious, the sleeves of her simple blue blouse coming down to her elbows, a plain gold chain around her neck, small gold earrings. She refuses to look anywhere except at the coloured geometric designs on the tiled floor.
Miss Gilby takes in a deep breath — her heart is beating very fast — and says as clearly as she can manage, ‘How do you do Bimala. It is such a pleasure to meet you at last,’ every word separate, enunciated, crystalline.
Bimala keeps her head bowed. Her husband stands at her side and says something in Bengali, which Miss Gilby cannot quite follow. They advance into the room, she so draggingly that it seems she is willing the floor to open up and swallow her, and take their seats on the divan opposite.
Mr Roy Chowdhury addresses Miss Gilby: ‘She’s feeling very shy. She’s been so nervous about this meeting that she has stayed up nearly three nights in a row.’ He laughs affectionately. Bimala whispers something quickly to him. The body language leaves Miss Gilby in no doubt that she is aghast that her husband should reveal this to her English tutor. Which means, Miss Gilby rejoices in her heart, Bimala understands a lot more English than she had been led to believe.
‘What is there to be nervous about? I’m here to be your friend.’ Miss Gilby tries to make her voice as amiable as possible.
There is no verbal response from Bimala but she lifts up her face and looks at Miss Gilby. The large, doe-dark eyes take in the English lady, perhaps the first one she has ever seen at such close range. There is a hint of a smile in the corners of her mouth. She looks down almost immediately again.
Mr Roy Chowdhury and Miss Gilby exchange glances that are at once amused and protective, the sort of look parents and teachers exchange over a child struck dumb by shyness. He says, ‘I think she will speak but it might take time.’
Miss Gilby hastens to allay, ‘Don’t worry, this is just the first meeting. I’m sure she’ll open up with time, won’t you, Bimala?’ She turns her gaze on the young woman who still continues concentrating steadfastly on the patterns on the floor.