Into Exile by Joan Lingard

Author:Joan Lingard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141379340
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2017-06-10T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Lara’s dinner party was a success. Sadie and Kevin enjoyed the food, even though the curry burnt their throats and almost brought tears to their eyes. They had been determined to enjoy it. They drank several glasses of water.

‘You’ll get used to it in time,’ said Dr Menon.

He was jolly and full of fun. He and Lara laughed a lot. His wife was quieter and did not smile so much. Her face was pock-marked; she was not as pretty as Lara, but her sari was beautiful, flame-orange. Sadie sighed, and said she wished that she was Indian and could wear saris. That amused Lara. Alina, Dr Menon’s wife, just looked at Sadie with mild eyes. Krishna was quiet but agreeable, allowing Dr Menon and Lara to do most of the talking. He sat with his long thin fingers linked round his knee listening, nodding, contributing sometimes.

Back in their own room, drinking a cup of tea to slake their thirst before going to bed, Sadie talked over the evening happily. She speculated on Alina and Krishna, discussing every aspect of the evening.

‘You’d think Lara would have been better married to Dr Menon,’ she said. ‘They seem better suited.’

‘Who can tell?’ said Kevin. ‘Perhaps they need someone different. Like you and I.’

‘Are we different?’

‘In many ways.’

‘Oh, religion and all that –’

‘All that makes people different.’ He smiled. ‘Come on, let’s go to bed.’

Sadie went to bed and dreamt of herself floating around in saris of all colours of the rainbow. It was a happy dream until the drums started to bang and the flutes to play and then she awoke in a sweat.

‘It’s the curry that gave you indigestion,’ said Kevin.

‘But why do I keep dreaming about drums and Orange parades? And every time Father Mulcahy calls I’m sure to dream of them afterwards.’

Kevin shrugged. ‘We can’t get away from Ireland all that easily.’

‘If you didn’t put on the news every half-hour of the day we might forget it.’

‘How can we turn a deaf ear to what’s going on?’

Kevin listened avidly to the news broadcasts, Sadie tried to ignore them. She knew Kevin was apprehensive about his family: they lived in one of the most troublesome areas in Belfast, they were a large family and his father had brothers and sisters with large families, and it seemed only a matter of time until one of them stopped a bullet or was blown up by a bomb. Her family was safer for there was less trouble in the Protestant streets, but no one was really safe anywhere in the city. Every day a bomb exploded in a shop, pub, or an office building. It hung over their heads like a black cloud.

‘We would worry less if we were there,’ said Kevin.

‘You’re not suggesting we go back? We’ve been through all that.’

‘No, I’m not suggesting that.’

Letters from home were ripped open at once and quickly scanned for reports of disaster.

‘Brian Rafferty’s been arrested,’ said Kevin, looking up from a letter from Brede. Brian Rafferty lived in the same street and they had played together as boys.

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