The Eye of the Horse. Jamila Gavin

Marvinder into a state of dark imaginings. On the way home from prison, she left Jaspal alone at the front of the bus and joined Maeve at the back. She wanted to talk to her about it. But Maeve wasn’t in the mood; she puffed on her cigarette, enveloping them both in a haze of blue smoke, and stared out of the dirt-streaked window. She looked shut away into her own thoughts and unwilling to be drawn out.

      For a while, they just sat there in silence, occasionally lurching up against each other as the bus bumped or turned a corner.

      Marvinder glanced up at her. She wanted to run a finger over that smooth, white skin, to know whether white skin felt the same as brown skin. Or was it cooler? More delicate? Would her brown finger bruise it in some way? Leave a mark or a smudge? She tried to slip her hand in Maeve’s, which rested, ungloved on her lap. Maeve looked down at her, surprised, her green eyes looking as lost as pebbles falling through water.

      ‘Maeve! Do you think my pa will make me marry?’ Marvinder asked timidly.

      Maeve drew her hand away and replaced her glove. ‘How should I know,’ she murmured vaguely. ‘I suppose you lot have your own customs. But I wouldn’t let no daughter of mine get married off while she’s still a child. It’s not right.’

      ‘What did you mean about not having started my monthlies?’ asked Marvinder.

      ‘Oh . . .’ Maeve looked embarrassed. ‘You’ll find out in due course. I expect me mum’ll tell you,’ and she turned her face away to look out of the window once more.

      That night, Marvinder tried to speak to Jhoti about it. But like dreams, Jhoti had her own timing, and could not be summoned up at will.

      ‘Is it as bad as all that?’ asked Dr Silbermann, her friend in the basement below.

      Marvinder went down with her violin almost every day after school. Down to a dim, dusty netherworld, smelling of glue and varnish. It was a planet made entirely of paper. Sheets of music, newspapers, clippings, and magazines covered every possible surface. They spread out, layer upon layer across the floor, or were piled into strange organic-like structures which always seemed about to topple over. There were books rising precariously in tall higgledy-piggledy towers, balanced along the mantelpiece like the distant skyline of some foreign city. The few bits of furniture that he owned – a bed, table, a chest of drawers, a couple of buried armchairs and his old grand piano, seemed only to be there to provide a surface for more books and music.

      If anyone came to call, he would sweep a pile of papers to the floor revealing a battered armchair with its stuffing hanging out. Here, in a flurry of dust, his visitor would sit down.

      Marvinder never saw him eat. His small gas cooker was always covered in tins of varnish and glue, and his sink never seemed free from jam jars stuffed with brushes, soaking in methylated spirits.

      Above the sink hung a row of glistening violins in all shades of yellows and reds and golden browns, drying, after they had been freshly varnished and restored by him. He called them his children, and Marvinder knew that they were all he had left to love, since his own children had perished in the Nazi concentration camps.

      But each day when she called, he would study her face, and know her mood and, today, he saw it was solemn and thoughtful. He looked kindly into her eyes and tweaked her chin. ‘So? Has Chicken Licken heard that the sky’s falling down?’ he chuckled.

      Marvinder laughed then nearly cried. She hastily took out her violin and began tuning it. When she had recovered herself a bit, she said, ‘Do you think I’ll be ready for my exam next summer?’

      But what she was really saying inside herself was, ‘My pa is thinking of taking me back to India to get me married. I don’t want to get married. Mrs O’Grady says he won’t make me. She said they’d all be against it. But if Pa says I must . . . I’ll have to . . .’

      ‘Of course you’ll be ready. Why, you’d be ready next month if it were necessary,’ Dr Silbermann replied reassuringly. ‘You’re not worrying about it, are you?’

      ‘No, not really!’

      ‘You’re getting on like a house on fire,’ smiled Dr Silbermann. ‘By the time you’ve played in the festival and given the Chadwicks a recital, you’ll be truly good and ready.’

       ‘I was married at your age,’ murmured Jhoti, from inside her daughter’s head. ‘We all have to in the end.’

       ‘Why?’ asked Marvinder silently.

       ‘Because you do. That’s what life is about.’ Her mother sighed. ‘It’s our duty.’

       ‘Were you happy?’

       ‘Happy? Ah . . .’ Her mother faded.

      Dr Silbermann sat down at the piano and began to play the introduction of ‘La Paloma’. The sun streamed through the low bay window, creating a cosmos of molecules, where millions of specks of dust floated like planets, and the old Doctor of Music himself seemed to disintegrate in the shafts of light.

      The notes from the piano rocked like a boat. Marvinder made her entry, her bow lightly bobbing across the strings, short and long, breathing out the phrases like a human voice singing.

      ‘I always think of the blue waters of the Mediterranean, when I hear this piece. I had never seen the sea before I went to Barcelona,’ Dr Silbermann said dreamily, as they came to the end.

      ‘Where’s Barcelona?’ asked Marvinder.

      ‘It’s in Spain, where the sun always shines. I went there once as a young man before the war. I gave a recital in a concert hall just off the main square. It was wonderful. We were so young and so hopeful. We thought music was the universal language. That all we had to do was play, and everyone would understand. We believed that music was the answer to all the ills of the world and that Barcelona was the most beautiful city in the universe. We were foolish. We thought that Beauty was Truth and Truth was Beauty.’ He sighed at the memory. ‘Perhaps one day, you’ll go to Spain.’

      ‘And give a recital?’ asked Marvinder.

      ‘Why not?’ Dr Silbermann smiled brightly. Then, as he turned back to the keyboard, he played a soft chord and murmured again, ‘Why not?’

      When, later on upstairs over tea, Marvinder talked about going to Spain to give a concert, Michael and Patrick roared with laughter, and Mr O’Grady frowned disapprovingly.

      ‘What’s so funny?’ Marvinder protested, blushing uncomfortably. ‘Dr Silbermann says I might. He should know.’

      ‘Dr Silbermann’s soft in the head. It’s the war what done it, and him losing all his family like that. Poor sod. I’m not blaming him, but you shouldn’t go getting any fancy ideas, my girl,’ said Mrs O’Grady.

      ‘I think you should stop her going down there,’ declared Mr O’Grady. ‘It’s bad for her.’

      ‘Yeah, Dad’s right,’ agreed Michael. ‘All this caterwauling she does. Where’s it going to get her?’

      Marvinder was outraged. The blood rushed angrily to her cheeks. Caterwauling? No one had ever referred to her violin-playing like that before.

      ‘Hey!’ Patrick teased her raucously. ‘No need to go to Spain and upset the bulls, Marvinder. You’d get an appreciative audience down in the churchyard with all them cats.’

      ‘Or how about the pub on a Saturday night? But none of that classical stuff, mind. You’d have to learn some Irish airs,’ yelled Michael gleefully. ‘I’ll teach you “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”,’ and he broke into the song with great panache.

      ‘Fancy playing in the pub, Marvi?’ yelled Patrick, slapping his brother on the back with the enjoyment of ganging up on Marvinder. ‘Play us some jigs we can dance to!’

      Marvinder got to her feet, with outraged tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘I hate you, Patrick O’Grady, and you