They stand at the top of the steps at the square ornamental tank and look over the heads of those below. A balding older man makes a path for Jill so she can have a better view. Davood stays at her side. A barge leaves the far shore. It’s festooned with lights, and seems overloaded with men. A garlanded, painted goddess reigns under a canopy. As it approaches men jostle on the steps to get closer. Some leap off, others extend hands to help them jump on or off.
‘What are they doing?’ Davood hears Jill ask the older man. The barge leaves the shore again.
‘You see Meenakshi, the Goddess? She is Shiva’s consort. She is waiting for Shiva to join her.’
‘When will he come?’
‘I don’t know, Madam. The priests will see to it.’ Jill thanks him.
Davood and Jill stay a while, then climb up the steps back into the bazaar.
‘Do all these men believe they might be Shiva’s consort?’
‘Hindu ritual, I not sure. The later it gets, safer you will be in hotel.’
‘I know what you want,’ she says. ‘Come on then.’ She entwines her fingers in his.
On their way Davood stoops where a young woman crouches behind her marigold and jasmine garlands spread on the pavement. He chooses jasmine and raises it over Jill’s head, settling it on her shoulders. He smiles his mischievous smile, hands together, does his little bow.
Davood is asleep when he hears his mother’s voice. ‘You’re late for work Davood, it’s eight o’clock.’
‘No more work, I go to Australia.’
People mass at Chennai airport. The spaces aren’t big enough to fit them all. They spill out the doors, and press to get back in. Davood stops himself from hanging on to Jill’s jacket, like he used to hang on to his mother’s skirt. Jill finds the end of a luggage queue, which reassures Davood and he slips back into feeling pleasurable excitement.
‘This country of yours could do with a few decent airports,’ Jill says. She looks drained in the 2am heat.
‘You’re right, very crowdie, less crowdie in Australia,’ he says.
‘Crowded, you noodle.’
‘You’re right, crowdie.’
Davood stands near the sink, tea-towel in hand. Jill’s outside in the sun with her coffee. He keeps taking glasses out of the rack. He barely wipes them and puts each glass away with a thud in the cupboard above the sink. The night before Jill had invited many friends to a drinks party. Davood is still a long way from finishing the clean-up. First he empties all the ashtrays into the bin as Jill has taught him. ‘Little Indian toy boy.’ Then all the plates are scraped into the bin, and these are now washed and stacked on the table. He has yet to stow them away in the dining room sideboard. Then it’s sweeping, mopping, vacuuming.
As he wields the mop he rehearses the conversation he overheard last night.
‘Did you cop the little Indian toy boy?’
‘Talk about cradle snatching.’
‘I guess Jill needed a final fling.’
Davood attacks the corners of the kitchen with the mop, nicking off some of the paint on the skirting board as the mop socket strikes with all the force of his arm.
He considers how hard he’s tried to earn his keep. Like this morning’s clean-up.
He remembers the first time Jill had called him ‘My little toy boy’, at the Tourist Delight Hotel. It had been, his thought was imprecise, but hot, a woman’s hand on his cock for the first time. He thrusts the mop into the bucket, causing soapsuds to cascade over the kitchen floor. He leaves the kitchen and slouches at the end of the balcony away from Jill. He says nothing to her, he knows her teasing too well. He wouldn’t have minded the party so much if only he’d had some friends of his own, but Jill and her friends were the only people he knew.
Davood visits the local college and inquires about courses. He decides on Introduction to Commerce, but is apprehensive that he might not be accepted because of his lack of English. The woman at Student Administration reassures him.
‘Your writing might not be as good as your spoken English, but you can get help, you’ll catch up,’ she says.
The application form for his student visa lies on the kitchen table for a few days for Jill to complete. He tries to discuss it with her several times, but she evades him, and he offers to pay rent from his earnings baby sitting and cleaning for her friends, after she makes up a bed for him in the room that used to belong to her son. Jill takes no notice of his offer. It’s as if she’s deaf. When one day he finds the form in the bin, he straightens his shoulders, and decides what he should do. He approaches some of Jill’s friends. Could they help him with his student visa? Their answers are evasive too and he sees they are embarrassed, not wanting to interfere in his and Jill’s business.
Davood’s on the look out for his taxi. Beside him, his black nylon bag is packed. All of its zippers that make it extensible are undone. Davood spent all his savings from the jobs he had done for Jill’s friends. He bought a new pair of elastic-sided boots. Beside his bag is a cardboard box, containing a red, blue and green tulip-shaped vase, Davood’s present for his mother. Davood plans to keep it with him in the cabin of the plane. Jill has given him a generous taxi fare, she has to be at the office, and can’t take him to the airport.
‘I’m not sorry I came to Australia, good experience,’ he says as they say goodbye.
‘Yeah, well, all good things have to come to an end,’ Jill says.
The vase is heavy in Davood’s arms as he stands beside his bag in the early morning light at Chennai airport. He watches tourists following their porters and luggage, hears the haggling with the porter over the tip after the luggage is deposited in the boot of the white Ambassador taxis. Davood longs to be back in the luxury of the plane’s cabin where a steward is always about to serve a drink and another meal. At the same time the mix of pollution, the scent of the frangipani growing incongruously close by and smoky oil from the food stalls catch in his nostrils. He’s home. He dares not spend any of his remaining money on a taxi or autorickshaw, and tries to concentrate on where the bus stop is.
The hotel compound in Chennai offers an interesting array of buildings, including the once magnificent Hostel for English and Anglo-Indian Ladies opened by the Collector in 1898, according to the dirty brass plaque to the right of the front door. The tourist lady has taken some photos of the early sun catching the building, reflected in the small lake where a blue flash above the water signals a kingfisher. The building now houses young Indian women who at this hour glide along in their saris or salwar kameez, leaving for work or study. It’s quiet in the compound with the traffic from Poonamallee High Road not yet at full pitch, the pollution kept at bay by the compound trees.
For the second time Davood talks to the tourist lady. He mops the corridors early before starting his kitchen duties, which take up most of his day. Occasionally he relieves at the front desk, the midnight to dawn shift. This is because of his fluent English. He still hopes to be promoted to office duties but vacancies are taken by young boys with commerce degrees. Davood’s catching up with study at night in a Diploma of Office Management. The night work and study tire him out but he thinks it’s worth it.
Yesterday the tourist lady asked him about the kingfisher and said, of course she knew his home town, Mamallapuram, she had just come from there.
‘Do you go back to visit, Davood?’
‘No Madam, not since mother died.’
Again Davood talks with the tourist lady. ‘Once I met a lady at Mamallapuram where I had my first hotel work. After I went with her to her