‘Jindié.’
‘I know.’
We embraced each other, and I stroked her cheeks, but nothing more. We declared our love and I suggested we immediately get engaged to prevent our respective parents from thinking about other alternatives. She held me tight, kissed my eyes. We were surprised by our audacity and laughed about it at the time. Before we could continue the discussion, we heard Lailuma shouting our names as a warning. We walked away and joined her and the rest. Neither of us spoke till we reached the Pines Hotel. Then Zahid and I walked back another mile to my house and I told him. There was another member of our party that evening: Jamshed had arrived to stay with a cousin in Doongagali, but given his weak, cowardly and contemptible character, I’m trying to avoid mention of him as much as I can in this account. Plato despised him and I never told him about Jindié, though he probably found out, since it was hardly a secret anymore.
Three days before Jindié was due to leave she agreed to a tryst in the church. I knew where the key was kept, and in the past we had often used it as place to rendezvous. The days when a priest would come from Peshawar for Sunday prayers had ended in the Fifties. The building was in a state of disrepair and often leaked when the rain was heavy. Then Jindié decided that she did not want to meet there. When I asked why, she said it made her feel like a character in a Pearl S. Buck novel. I never let her forget that remark, but her rejection of the church meant a long trek with Lailuma, who was perfectly willing to walk behind us or in front at a suitable distance. She collected Jindié. I met them at the empty Government House. I had gone hunting once with the caretaker and now he let us in with a huge welcome. We walked out the back through its lush gardens and entered a path that led to Miran Jani, the highest mountain in Nathia. We found a beautiful meadow and sat on the grass while Lailuma opened a book and tried to ignore us for the next two hours. Jindié spoke first, and her voice was tremulous with emotion.
‘I’ve decided. I don’t want to get engaged to you.’
I seized her hand and kissed it. ‘Why? Why?’
‘It’s wrong for us to behave in such a traditional way. My mother says if we love each other we can do what we want. I could go to Leeds University and enrol in the Chinese department and we could see each other every weekend. And if we wanted to, we could get married. Or not? It’s for us to decide. Nobody else.’
I was in heaven. I put my head on her lap and after a while she began to stroke my hair. ‘It’s done,’ I said. ‘That’s what we’ll do. I’m glad you’ve told your mother. I’ll tell mine.’
‘No need to if you don’t want to,’ she replied. ‘Confucius said your mother was very beautiful and open-minded in some ways but also very traditional and conservative in others. She may not like her son marrying a Chinese cobbler’s daughter.’
I hugged her and kissed her head and hands and cheeks. ‘Jindié, my mother is traditional, but she married my father against her own father’s wishes. They were from the same family, but my father had become a Communist and…’
‘The whole of Lahore knows the story, Dara, but that doesn’t stop people behaving differently when their own children are involved in something of which they disapprove.’
We carried on talking all the way back. Lailuma told me she agreed with Jindié. No confessions in Lahore whatsoever. In Britain we could do as we wished. Later Plato and Zahid strongly agreed as well.
‘You know how headstrong your mother is,’ said Zahid. ‘Don’t say a word. I hope you haven’t kept a diary.’
‘I have, but it’s permanently locked and only I know where it’s kept.’
‘Don’t be foolish. She’ll have it opened and resealed or relocked. Don’t underestimate Punjabi mothers. They’re just as bad as Jewish ones.’
Zahid was also preparing to study abroad, but not till the following year.
Jindié and I would have six more weeks together in Lahore before my departure. When I returned to Lahore, everyone was talking about Tipu’s arrest and disappearance, and within a fortnight Zahid had been accused of betraying him. Now that I think back on those days, I can recall that it was Jamshed who conveyed the news to our household. He boasts of his infamies now, flaunts them shamelessly, but on that day his conscience was on parade. He referred to Zahid’s base character and how he must be punished. Jamshed was always a lowlife, and his brand of amorality became my supreme aversion.
At first I was devastated and then depressed, but after a few days I was in a rage with Zahid. Who could have guessed that such malignancy was lurking in that heart? Jindié and I would endlessly discuss this event. She was always more careful and warned me not to believe every statement that came from the police. Zahid, meanwhile, had disappeared to Karachi to stay with an uncle, which, as far as I was concerned, was extremely suspicious behaviour. Plato agreed with me, but then he trusted nobody.
‘Each of us has the capacity to dissimulate with such profundity that we can often surprise ourselves. Perhaps Zahid thought he was doing you a favour in getting Tipu out of the way. Didn’t you tell me that Tipu was stuck on Jindié?’
‘There was nothing in that, Plato, just my diseased brain.’
While all this was going on, my mother, as Zahid had predicted, had found my diary with the help of her maids, read it, and discussed it at length with my father, who, to his enormous credit, refused to even glance at it. She worked herself into a terrible state. I knew something was wrong the minute I got home that day. My mother was in a sulk, barely replied to my greeting and pretended she was reading a book. A few minutes later she burst into my room in an elemental rage and announced that she hated weak men who fell in love with women and grovelled at their feet.
I was astonished. ‘Then you must hate my father for falling in love with you. In fact now that you mention it, I wish he…’
Before I could complete my sentence she rushed forward and slapped my face. Then so much rubbish began to pour out that I decided there and then that if she ever mentioned the word Chinese or cobbler again I would walk out and seek refuge with Plato at Scotch Corner or flee to the house of a sympathetic aunt. It was almost as if she knew that or, what is more likely, had been warned by my father not to travel down that road, and so she suddenly changed her tack. All her life her feelings about childish trifles had been so violent that in more sane moments she admitted her weakness and reproached herself. Not that day. Now, trembling with rage, she shouted, ‘She’s the same age as you. She should be at least five or six years younger.’
I was so taken aback that I burst out of laughing, and then pointed out that some of the happiest couples in the family were roughly the same age, including two of her brothers and their wives, whereas Jindié was two years younger than me, not that it mattered in the least. In fact, I told my mother, one of our cousins had married his stepmother’s sister, who was ten years older than he was, and they, too, were blissfully happy.
In fact, I said, it was a matter of some regret to me that Jindié wasn’t a few years older since I preferred mature women. Unable to respond, she moved forward to assault me once again, but I stepped aside at the last minute and she fell on my bed instead. The next morning she radiated a surface calm, but was still seething. She was sometimes capable of manufacturing the most fantastic untruths, but also specialized in trivial fibs, and was usually caught out because of her inconsistencies. She could never remember what she had said to the same person some weeks previously. As I tucked into my scrambled eggs, I smiled at her to show there was no ill will on my part. She took this as a cue for hypocrisy and a malapropism, another feature of her dialect.