Free Playing Fields in Winter by Helen Harris Page B

marvelling at the uninhibited promptness with which Sarah did. Experimentally, he put his arm around her shoulders again and started to muddle her hair. She looked round at him and giggled.
    ‘Tell me what you did in Sheffield.’
    ‘Not a great deal. You know, it’s not much of a place.’
    ‘I’ve never been there. I don’t know the North of England.’
    ‘No? It’s not very far away; but I think it’s another country. The people I met seemed quite different from you snooty lot down here. They’re more friendly, I think. At least, some of them. But you know someone spat at me one night and called me “Paki”?’
    ‘No! Ravi, that’s terrible.’
    ‘I think it’s rather funny. “Paki”! I could hardly stop him and give him a little lecture about Partition. I don’t think he would have taken that very kindly. I must remember to tell Ali Suleiman that I’ve been promoted to be his honorary compatriot.’
    ‘Ugh, I think that’s horrible. How can you joke about it?’
    ‘Why are you getting so upset? You must know that kind of thing happens all the time.’
    ‘What was that you said – partition? What is that? Is it like apartheid?’
    In the shadow of the winter afternoon, the distance between them was suddenly vast. ‘You haven’t heard of Partition?’
    ‘I told you, I don’t know anything about India. You’ll have to teach me.’
    ‘This involved Britain as well, you know.’
    ‘Did it? Oh dear. Well, I’m afraid I’m terribly ignorant. Is there a good book I could read about it?’
    Was the most dangerous difference between them this – that Ravi knew about Sarah’s origins because they were laid out all around for him to see, but Sarah had no idea of what had given rise to Ravi? If so, Ravi was at an advantage from the beginning.
    ‘I’ll lend you one. If you really want to read about it.’
    ‘I do, I do. It’s awful how little I know.’
    ‘Awful,’ Ravi agreed teasingly, taking a strand of yellow hair and twisting it between his ringers. ‘But I’ll forgive you.’
    ‘That’s as well. Make me some more tea, then.’
    ‘Why was your vacation so dreadful? Didn’t you have a good time at home?’
    ‘Oh Ravi, you can’t imagine what Christmas at home is like. My parents invite all the most inane people whom they couldn’t bear to entertain all the rest of the year and they have these big boring parties where everyone circulates, repeating to one another what the last person has just said to them. Oh God! I only got through it by imagining what we’d make of it if you were there and having this satirical running commentary going in my head.’
    ‘Really? You invited me along in spirit, in other words?’
    ‘Well, yes. Did you think about me at all in the vac?’
    ‘Not at all,’ Ravi answered with mock gravity. With another shout of jubilant laughter, they grabbed each other and fell giggling across the carpet where they sat.
    *
    In those days, Sarah’s sum knowledge of India could have been catalogued something like this: Capital – Delhi (New Delhi), although whether or not there was also an Old Delhi she had no idea. It had once been ruled by Britain for a stuffy and easily mocked period called the Raj, during which there had been a Mutiny, sparked off by Hindu sepoys refusing to bite off the ends of cartridges because they believed they had been defiled by beef fat. In India, the cowwas sacred. Sacred cows wandered amid the traffic of big cities and often caused dire traffic jams because if they lay down in a main road, no one dared to shift them. The climate was dreadful; the heat was horrendous and there were monsoons. The Prime Minister was Mrs Indira Gandhi, who had bizarrely black and white striped hair like Cruella de Vil in A Hundred and One Dalmatians. The population was enormous; millions, starving millions who conjured up the haggard faces on an Oxfam poster. They tried to stop people having so many children there, but it was no good; the idea that