The Eye of the Horse. Jamila Gavin

end of an avenue, just where it ran down to the lake shore, was a stone plaque, now quite hidden by tangled creepers. He found it by accident, when a loose page from his book blew into the undergrowth, and he was forced to leave the grassy track to retrieve it. Earth had already crept halfway up the hard, grey granite, almost obliterating the letters carved deeply into its surface. But he had scraped away the soil to reveal words. They were in English. First were two names: ‘Ralph and Grace’. These were the English children, the Chadwicks’ children, who had drowned in the lake some years ago. Many would go nowhere near the place now, for there had been talk of their ghosts walking on the water and the sound of childish laughter on the island in the middle of the lake. Beneath the names, chiselled deep and in a fine hand, were the words of a poem, also in English but dedicated to Lord Shiva:

      I searched for your light

      Everywhere:

      And saw a dawn made from ten million million suns,

      A cosmic brightness for my wonder.

      O Destroyer of Darkness

      If you are light

      I need look no more.

      That evening he walked in the cool, fragrant gardens. Just as he passed the plaque, and repeated the now well-remembered words, the schoolteacher had a sudden feeling that he was not alone.

      Turning slowly, with a sharp chill running up his spine, he saw by the lake shore, some hundred metres away, the white horse. It was still bridled, and the garlands of flowers which hung round its neck looked as fresh as ever.

      But there was something else now. Crouched nearby, as though it were its keeper, squatted a child all naked and wild, with hair that fell around it in a matted, tangled mass. Whether it was a girl or a boy, he could not tell, or perhaps, after all, it wasn’t human. Perhaps it was some animal, a monkey or even a young hyena, for when it suddenly looked up at him, it seemed to catch his eye with a glittering stare, and even from that distance, the look was so savage that he shuddered.

      After a while, the horse moved on around the shore. The creature followed, sometimes on all fours, sometimes bounding about on two. The teacher watched them till they disappeared round a promontory. They did not reappear, although he waited until the sun had almost set.

      It was Thursday, 29 January 1948.

      ‘Well, my daughter Marvi, and what are you doing today?’

      Jhoti asked the same question almost every morning, just at the point of waking, before Marvinder had even opened her eyes.

      ‘I like Wednesdays, Ma,’ whispered Marvi into the cold, winter darkness. She could just see her breath puff upwards like a coil of ectoplasm, towards the still invisible ceiling. ‘We have our singing lessons with Mr Pentelow. He’s nice. He lets us choose our favourites.’

      ‘What is your favourite, Marvi, my dearest?’ sighed her mother. ‘Is it the song of spring which the farmers sing on their way to the fields? Is it the song about Krishna, stealing milk from the milkmaids? They were my favourites too.’

      ‘No, Ma. We don’t sing those songs here in England. We sing “The Ash Grove” and “Men of Harlech” and songs about Scotland. My favourite song is “Speed Bonnie Boat like a Bird on the Wing.” ’

      Marvinder began to sing it quietly, sliding down under the bedclothes, so that she wouldn’t waken Kathleen and Beryl.

      ‘You’re going to be a musician, aren’t you, Marvi?’ Her mother sounded proud. ‘A violinist like Mr Chadwick, aren’t you, my daughter, aren’t you, my precious?’

      ‘Dr Silbermann teaches me well, Ma. I wish you could hear me.’

      ‘Do you remember, how we sat on the verandah in Deri, and listened, while Jaspal suckled at my breast? Do you remember, Marvinder, my child? Every evening, before dinner, the Chadwicks made music?’

      ‘Yes, Ma,’ cried Marvinder, and the tears slid down her cheeks. How could she forget? The music rose through the scented air of a Punjab evening, lifting out of the boughs of the mission garden like spirit birds, soaring and dipping and disappearing on and on into space. Even though they now lived in England, how could she forget? Especially not now that her mother, Jhoti, had taken up residence in her brain.

      Marvinder had been dreaming about a horse. Sitting astride a white horse, she had been galloping . . . galloping . . . along twisting mountain trails; jumping gulleys and ditches and bubbling streams; ducking her head beneath the low branches of pine and spruce; then breaking out onto an open plain, where a silver horizon ran unimpeded from end to end; where the wind caught the horse’s tail and made it fan out behind it like a silver cataract; and her heart beat with the drumming of its hooves, as they sped along so fast, that any minute now, she felt they would leap up into the skies and gallop away among the stars.

      But the sounds which awoke her were slow and heavy. Marvinder heard the early morning clip clop of the milkman’s cart coming down to Whitworth Road, and the faint tinkle of bottles as he unloaded the quota destined for No. 30.

      She eased herself silently out of bed and sped, barefoot, down the freezing lino-covered stairs, to the front door. She opened it in time to see the milkman climbing the front steps with cheery face beaming out at her from beneath his peaked cap.

      ‘Hello, my little early bird,’ he whispered, as with practised silence, he set down the various groups of milk bottles in their proper places. ‘Looking for worms?’

      She grinned back, remembered how it was he who taught her the saying, ‘it’s the early bird that catches the worm’.

      Then, suddenly, his face became grave, and he bent forward confidentially. ‘There was news on the wireless this morning that’ll interest you,’ he murmured.

      ‘Oh?’ Marvinder was puzzled.

      ‘Mahatma Gandhi.’ The milkman said the name with reverence. ‘He’s been shot.’

      It was Friday, 30th January 1948.

      So, Marvinder in England heard the news before the clerk in India. The clerk didn’t hear till almost evening. He had been accounting all day, sitting in front of large dusty ledger books, with his specs balanced on his nose, pencil in hand, roaming up and down columns of figures, calculating, adding and subtracting and dividing, his brain revolving and clicking like the beads on an abacus.

      ‘What do you want?’ he demanded of the gangly youth who lingered somewhat insolently in the doorway.

      The clerk knew he was something of a laughingstock with his colleagues, who liked to tease him for being such a faithful disciple of the Mahatma – especially as he came to work wearing a coarse khadi dhoti, instead of refined white cotton trousers and shirts or even western-style suits. What’s more, he had insisted on removing the top of his desk from its frame, placing it on the floor and working cross-legged. ‘We Indians should do things the Indian way, not ape the Britishers,’ he had declared with an air of moral superiority. However, it irked him no end, to think that he was being smirked at behind his back, by the cocky young messengers who hung about the office.

      ‘You haven’t heard the news, then?’ asked the youth with mock concern.

      ‘What news?’ The clerk frowned. He straightened his back from his cross-legged position, and adjusted his spectacles which had slipped down his nose. As he did so, he was aware of the sound of women wailing in the background and agitated voices, rising and falling in repeating sequences of distress. Anxiously, he gathered up his dhoti and got to his feet.

      ‘It’s your beloved leader; the Father of the People . . . Bapu . . .’ The youth drawled out the words slowly and sarcastically, relishing the puzzled anxiety he could see beginning to furrow the clerk’s face.

      ‘Gandhiji? Gandhiji?’

      ‘He’s been shot!’

      ‘Is he dead?’

      ‘Oh yes.’ The youth tittered, then fled.