were those whose destination was Hammersmith Hospital, and with whom Maeve tried to merge for most of the walk. They were a generally cheerful lot, clutching bunches of newly-bought flowers from strategically-placed flower-sellers, or brown paper bags full of whatever fruit they could obtain with their ration coupons.
This group pretended not to see the other group, with whom, for a while, they shared the same pavement and the same direction. Their eyes looked through them as though they were ghosts, and there was a certain smugness, when this first group branched off and poured through the gates of the hospital in time for visiting hours.
The second group pretended not to notice or care. Their faces were grimmer, their pace more reluctant. Hardly anyone spoke, but concentrated on coaxing their children along, or simply fixing their focus on the next main gateway, to which they finally came. And when they walked through, they kept their eyes lowered to the ground. They never looked up at the grim fortress towers of His Majesty’s Prison, Wormwood Scrubs.
Here, Maeve, Jaspal and Marvinder joined a sizeable straggle of mostly women and children, gathering outside the large oval gate, waiting for the exact moment when they would be admitted. No matter how awful the weather, the gate was never opened even thirty seconds earlier than ordained.
Unlike hospital visitors, they weren’t allowed to take in flowers or fruit or packages of food. Each was frisked at the gate; handbags were opened and searched. They were made to feel that by visiting a prisoner, the visitor too was somehow guilty.
After further hanging about, they were all finally ushered into a large room, supervised by blank-faced warders, where, waiting for them at a series of tables, were the prisoners, their eyes eagerly scanning the faces as they came in.
Marvinder saw her father.
He was thinner these days. Perhaps it was the way they cropped his hair very close to the head; it seemed to emphasise his gaunt face; it made his cheeks look more hollow. His skin was blanched as if deprived of sunlight.
Lately, he had become withdrawn. Marvinder wondered whether it was to do with the killing of Mahatma Gandhi. When they broke the news to him a couple of months back, he looked as if he were going to faint.
‘Was he a very important man, Pa?’ she had asked, when he had collapsed into his chair and thrust his head down on the table between his arms.
‘Who can forgive me?’ was all her father had been able to choke, as if he had been the assassin.
‘When he was a student your father admired Mahatma Gandhi; worshipped him like a saint,’ Jhoti had explained inside her daughter’s head. ‘He travelled miles to attend his gatherings, and then came back to the village with such stories. He would tell us that the British were going to leave, and that India would become independent; how this little, half-starved man, with only a piece of cloth round his middle, was standing up to the might of the British Empire. The whole village would gather round to listen. Your father was such an important person in those days. But now . . . who would have thought . . .’
Marvinder waved a timid greeting. Her father raised a hand in acknowledgement. He stood up, but looked past her. He looked past Maeve too. It was Jaspal on whom he feasted his eyes. His gaze seemed to plead for understanding and forgiveness. ‘Can’t we be friends?’
But Jaspal lowered his eyes with embarrassment. It had been easy to love his father when he thought he was a hero. When they had lived in India, in their little Punjabi village, Jaspal, who had never known his father, grew up looking at the proud, flower-draped photograph, which had been taken when Govind graduated from Amritsar University. His turbaned head, with sleek moustache and confident eyes, stared out with a faint look of surprise, as though marvelling that he, the son of a simple farmer, could rise to such heights.
Govind had come to England to study, encouraged by Harold Chadwick, his English teacher back in India. He enrolled at London University to do a degree in law. He was urged to be someone; do something for his newly-independent country. But all these plans had been interrupted by the war. He had joined up along with all his fellow students and fought in Europe and North Africa.
So where was that hero now? Where was the soldier-scholar, whose garlanded image Jaspal had grown up with and admired every day? Where was the Sikh warrior, who had gone into the British army to help fight against the Nazis? When the war ended, and Govind didn’t come home, they never for a moment disbelieved his letters, which told them first, that he had been wounded and was undergoing treatment, and then, that he was trying to earn enough money in Britain, so that he could return to India and set up a business.
Jaspal remembered how his mother, Jhoti, had fretted. ‘Why doesn’t he come home? We need him here. We need him as a father to protect his family. Doesn’t he know what is happening here?’
Surely Govind must have heard. The whole world knew that Britain had finally granted India the right to independence. But even before the British left, the troubles began. When part of India split away to become Pakistan, in the vast interchange of populations from one country to another, thousands were slaughtered. And in the Punjab, the Sikhs, who were neither Hindu nor Muslim, fought for their own identity – and some, for their own homeland too. How could Govind not know? Why did he not return to protect his family?
But what did Govind, their father, know of all this? It was ten years since he had left India, and it was as though he had never belonged there, never had a family there, no parents, brothers or sisters, no wife and two young children.
By the time he married Maeve O’Grady, he was another person altogether. He never talked about India to her; never told her about his other wife and children; and the more time went by, the less reason he saw to confess – especially after Beryl was born.
Then Jaspal and Marvinder turned up on his doorstep in England and, like a thrust of the wheel, his whole world revolved and his past life confronted him.
At first, Jaspal couldn’t believe this was his father. He had no beard, no turban. He wasn’t a scholar or a warrior, or anyone he could be proud of. Worst of all, Govind had betrayed them all; Jaspal, Marvinder and their mother, Jhoti.
Then they found out he was part of a criminal gang.
Bitterly, all Jaspal could hear was Mr O’Grady’s words ringing in his ears, ‘He’s nothing but a spiv; a black-marketeer; a petty crook.’
‘But he did save a man from the fire,’ Jaspal had pleaded. ‘The newspapers said he was a hero.’
‘Just as well,’ Mr O’Grady had snorted. ‘Otherwise he would have gone to the gallows for murder.’
For that heroic act, they hoped his other crimes would be overlooked, but it was not to be. The wheels of justice turned, and Govind was convicted for black-marketeering.
‘It’s good that Ma never knew what Pa did in England,’ Marvinder had whispered when their father was taken off to prison.
Govind held out his hands greedily, eager to clasp each one. Jaspal avoided his father’s gaze and pulled away from Govind’s grip as soon as he could. He flopped down in a chair, and turned it sideways on, looking deliberately bored.
Marvinder pulled her chair closer, but sat with lowered eyes. No matter what Govind had done, she couldn’t hate him, and she wished she had magic powers, so that she could free him from his prison. She often imagined how she would help him to escape and they would all run away back to India. Then they would find her mother, Jhoti, and everything
