The House of Blue Mangoes Read Free Page B

there would be a dozen children clamouring for food. Charity would need to make haste. She had been doing this every morning for twenty years, but she still expected some disaster to strike and disrupt the smooth routine of the household. By now the vast kitchen had filled with sound and smell: rice was being pounded in the great stone quern in the corner, the deep bass thumps reverberating through the kitchen in sharp counterpoint to the ratcheting noise from the grindstone where spices and herbs were being ground. A sleepy child, a cousin’s son, wandered into the kitchen. Charity gave him a piece of cucumber to chew on and sent him off in search of his mother.
    Ten minutes later, Charity and Kamalambal took their first break in nearly two hours. The cows had been milked, the servants instructed, the morning meal organized, and they had an hour to themselves, possibly a little longer, before the next rush. The sun was not yet hot, and the two women relaxed on a broad earthen platform at the back of the house. Charity’s older daughter, Rachel, sat at her feet. Her mother’s practised fingers probed and massaged the girl’s scalp, preparatory to oiling her long, black hair.
    The girl would need to get married soon, Charity thought – nearly thirteen years old, and still unmarried. She herself had been five months short of her fourteenth birthday when she was married and she had been considered old. The times were changing, she understood that, but girls had to be married at the right age. What a pity her only brother Stephen had no sons. He had daughters, three of them. It would be perfect if Daniel and Aaron could each be betrothed to a sister. They could be married off as soon as a boy was found for Rachel, and the Dorais would have a month of weddings so grand the whole district would talk about it!
    From where the women sat, the ground sloped gently down to the mud wall that enclosed the courtyard of the house on three sides. The Big House was the largest in the village, and had been so ever since Solomon’s great-grandfather built it over a hundred years ago. Little of the original mud-and-thatch house now survived. Successive generations had enlarged the house according to their own needs and whims, and now it had over a dozen rooms, some of which were never used. When Charity had first arrived she had been appalled to find that the larger livestock shared their living space. Now a cattle shed sprouted from the western side. Until Vakeel Perumal had built his house two years ago, this was the only house on two levels in the village. Charity smiled as she recalled her husband’s grumbling about Vakeel Perumal’s ambition. For all his distinction and wealth, he could sometimes display an almost childlike sense of outrage and disappointment.
    The morning routine continued to unfurl at a measured pace in the backyard of the Big House. A servant girl was stripping a few glossy green leaves from the karuvapillai bush that grew next to a row of drumstick trees, their long green fruit swaying in the breeze like gypsy earrings. A rooster strutted along at the head of a small group of chickens, pausing every few moments to strop the earth and peer in its foolish squint-eyed way at any food it might have uncovered. The sound of the shotgun being fired carried back to them, but Charity was unperturbed. Solomon and Aaron, her younger son, were known to try and bag doves or other game birds when the fancy took them. She did feel a slight twinge of anxiety – the reports had sounded alarmingly close to the house. ‘Wonder what we’ll have to cook this evening,’ she laughed. Over by the well, another servant girl was drawing water, the squeak-squeak of the windlass clear and strong in the morning calm. A black goat with white points, which had ambled up, lowered its head and charged the girl. With a shriek, she let go of the rope and took off, the goat at her heels.
    ‘That shaniyan, I’ll cut his throat and put him in a