Shortly after, she’d been sent home to the convent. Her memory was that she’d gone alone, but surely not? She was ten years old. There must have been a companion. Why had her mother not come? Did she kiss her good-bye? These were the details that silted up your mind and made you feel like a liar to yourself and to other people. Frank was right about that, but now she still felt angry with him for butting in; yes, butting was the right word for it, into something so terrible, so final.
Twenty miles or so away from the station she found herself weeping uncontrollably. She shouldn’t have come, she knew it, she knew it. It took her a while to get back in control, to mop up the tears, to stifle the sobs by pretending she was having a coughing fit. And then she fell asleep, and when she woke, the woman opposite was tapping her on the arm. The train had reached the end of the line. She was back in Simla.
She stood for a moment in the spot where she’d stepped down from the train. She looked at the trees dusted with snow, at the thin horses covered in burlap sacks, waiting for passengers. The one place she would never forget.
Flakes of snow fell on her hair. She watched the Englishman, still gesticulating and instructing his wife, pull away in a taxi and drive up the hill.
In front of her, in the station forecourt, was a tonga driver, feet up and sipping chai. He rang a silver bell to get her attention.
“Are you waiting for your sahib?” he asked her.
“No,” she said, “I’m by myself. I’d like to go here,” she handed him the piece of paper, “and then on to the Cecil Hotel.”
Frowning, he looked at Mabel Waghorn’s map, his face green with cold.
“Cecil Hotel good,” he said. “This no good.” He handed the map back to her. “Lower Bazaar, no English pipples live there.”
“I don’t care,” she said. She lifted her own case into the carriage before he changed his mind. “That’s where I’m going. It’s in the street behind the Chinese shoe shop,” she added, but he had already picked up the reins and was touching the horse’s rump with his whip.
When they were halfway up, he turned to look at her and went into his tourist spiel.
“Monkeys.” He pointed toward some gray langurs shivering in a tree to the right of them. “Very big tiger and lion in the woods around here.”
She sat in the back, numb with cold. “Yes,” she said. “I know.”
“Tomorrow, I take you for very special ride at a nice price.” When he dropped his reins to give her a sincere look, the horse clip-clopped on, stolid and reliable. It had heard it all before.
“No, thank you.” She hardly recognized her own voice.
They were passing through a busy street, where she saw mostly English people walking in front of charming, half-timbered houses. On a billboard, there was an advertisement posted for The Fatal Nymph at the Gaiety that weekend. In the gaps between the houses, she saw snow, mountains, forests, rocks.
The horse was straining against his harness now, his breath like smoke as they climbed a long curving hill covered in frosted pine and spruce. They’d reached a cobbled square that looked like some sort of tourist lookout. Cold-looking European children were being led about on thin ponies by parents or nannies. On the narrowest point of the bluff was a large brass telescope.
“I speak good English.” The guide put his reins in one hand and lit a bidi with the other. “This side very nice east to the Bay of Bengal. That side,” he pointed with his cigarette, “Arabian Ocean. Very nice, too.”
She glanced down briefly, at the two rivers, forests, the mountains sprinkled with snow.
“I didn’t ask to come here,” she told him, frightened and angry. “Why did you bring me?”
“Nice, safe holiday place for memsahib,” he sulked.
“I’m not here for that.” She showed him the address again. “Take me where I asked to go.”
He shrugged and took her back down the steep road into the town again. From this angle the jumble of brightly painted houses and mock-Tudor dwellings clinging to the mountains looked precarious, as though one good breath of wind could blow them away. Down in the street, she could hear the murmurs of a few strollers walking around: a tall, well-dressed white woman in brown and white tweed with a fox fur around her neck, a few army officers, but she was surprised to see how quiet it was at midday.
They stopped at the next crossroads. A black cow with a brass bell around its neck was airily depositing dung on the street corner. Viva leaned out of the carriage so she could see the shop signs: Empire Stores; Tailor Ram’s; Military, Army, Civilian Uniforms; Himalaya Stores.
“Stop!” She’d seen the shoe shop with “Ta-Tung and Co. Chinese shoemakers” written on it. The window was crammed with brogues and beautiful riding boots, chukka boots, velvet slippers with little foxes sewn on their fronts. “Made to measure,” said a sign propped up by a pair of wooden trees. “Lasts forever.”
She got out her map again.
“You can put me down here,” she told the driver as she held out her money. “My friend lives in the street behind this shop.”
He muttered and shook his head as if she would shortly see the error of her ways.
She stood for a while in the street, trying to get her bearings. To the right of her was the smart European street, well swept, and with gay little tubs of flowers; below this and down a long flight of steep and winding stairs was the native quarter, a rabbit warren of small streets and tiny lamplit shops.
She walked down the first flight of stairs.
I’ve made a mistake, she thought, peering into a dingy hole in the wall where an old man sat staring out. Farther down, she passed a wretched-looking wool shop with sacks covering the bright skeins of wool to protect them from the snow. She looked at her map again, fumbling because her hands were cold.
Mabel Waghorn had been, she was almost sure of this, a schoolteacher, perhaps even a headmistress. The map must be wrong. The street was too shabby; it stank. Flustered, she sat down on the step and then she saw a house behind a row of ramshackle tin roofs, which might just be it.
Walking closer, she stopped in front of a two-storied tenement clinging to the side of the hill and stared at it. Surely not. The house had a fabulous view of the distant mountains, but its plastered façade had peeled off in chunks and its wrought-iron balconies bulged with buckets, clothes bags, bird cages, and old bits of discarded machinery.
She drew closer, still not believing, but there it was—“Number 12,” drawn in flaked green paint on a front door with a rusty grille set in, like a Carmelite’s cell. To the right of the grille was a brass bell with a rope pull, underneath it a sign written in Mabel Waghorn’s quavery writing: “I am on the first floor.” When she rang it, there was no answer.
On the second ring of the bell, a Chinese woman stepped out of a dim doorway next to her. Behind her, in the brownish yellow light, a man in a vest was staring out at her.
“I’m looking for this lady.” She held out her piece of paper. “Her name is Mrs. Waghorn.”
The woman ran into the house with the piece of paper. A few seconds later, she heard a broom being banged against the ceiling.
“She sleep very much,” said the woman, frowning.
“Wait,” she said, closing the door behind her.
Viva waited for about five minutes, stamping her feet; the afternoon had turned icily cold. The mountains, half hidden in skeins of mist, an eagle flying soundlessly above her head holding a scrap of bread in its beak, and in the perfect blankness of that moment she felt herself falling through time.
“Hello.” The old girl stepping out onto the veranda had a foggy expression in her eyes as though she’d just been woken from a deep sleep. She wore slippers without stockings, and when the breeze blew her tweed coat aside, Viva saw her nightdress. They looked at each other, Viva unwilling for a few seconds to believe that this frail-looking person was Mabel Waghorn. Somehow the larky surname had made her imagine a person with a tennis racket in her hand, a vigorous pair of
calves, and a good memory, who could tell her things she didn’t know.
“Good God!” The old woman had moved to the edge of the veranda and was looking down. When one of her slippers came off, Viva saw an ancient foot like a purple claw stuck between the iron bars of the railings.
“Good Lord!” They stared at each other for a while.
“No!” The old woman jutted her jaw forward and stared at her intently.
“No! No! No!” She had to shout to avoid the catastrophe. “My name is Viva—I’m her daughter.”
Viva saw Mrs. Waghorn’s rapid change of expression. She seemed to suddenly shut down. Maybe she felt cheated out of seeing an old friend again, or maybe just too old to deal with anything out of the ordinary.
She twisted her slipper around until it was free.
“I’m frightfully sorry,” she said, “but have I asked you to come?”
The hem of her coat blew up, revealing bird-thin legs and sensible bloomers. Viva shivered.
“I should have written,” Viva apologized. “You asked me ages ago.” And because the old girl was cupping a hand to her ear, she shouted, “Do you mind if I come up? It won’t take long; I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
Mrs. Waghorn was still staring at her, as if she’d seen a ghost.
“Come up then,” she said after a long pause. “I’ll send Hari down.”
A few seconds later, Hari, a handsome smiling boy in a Kashmiri tunic, creaked open the front door and beckoned her inside. He took her suitcase and led her down a corridor that reeked of old cats.
“Follow me, please,” he said in an echo of his mistress’s posh voice. “Mrs. Waghorn is upstairs in her study.”
The staircase they were ascending was lit with candles on wall sconces, like a medieval dungeon, she thought. When they reached the first landing she heard the yapping of a small dog, the scrape of a stick.
“Hari?” called a voice from behind the door. “Is that her? I’m in here.”
Hari gave Viva a mischievous, conspiratorial look as if to say, “You’re in for a treat. Go inside,” he said. “She is waiting for you.”
The room seemed so dark when she first walked in that she thought Mrs. Waghorn was a pile of clothes left on a chair. When her eyes adjusted, she saw the old lady sitting in front of a paraffin heater. At the end of her knee perched a tiny batlike dog with tragic eyes.
“Come in,” she said. “And sit down where I can see you.”
She pointed toward a sagging sofa piled high with papers at one end. The voice, though breathless, was authoritative.
They looked at each other for a few seconds.
Viva had made up her mind not to beat about the bush. “I’m Alexander and Felicity Holloway’s daughter. Do you remember me? You were kind enough to write to me ages ago about a trunk they left with you. I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to pick it up.”
She saw the same look of panic in the old girl’s eyes as she had earlier. Her hands plucked at the collar of her little dog as if he could save her.
“If you’re from the hospital, could you go?” she said. “I’m perfectly all right, you know. I told you that before.”
Oh dear, thought Viva, not sure whether she was relieved or sorry. Gaga, or close to it—she must proceed with caution.
“I’m not from the hospital. I promise. My name is Viva Holloway, and ages and ages ago you were kind enough to send one of the trunks that belonged to my parents to my boarding school in Wales. The other trunk you said you’d keep until I came back to India. This is the first time I’ve been back since then.”
“Now look here!” The old lady was glaring and pointing her finger. “I’m not leaving. I have a perfect legal right to be here.”
Her dog dropped to the floor and came to sit down beside Viva, its tail firmly clamped between its legs.
“We’ve upset Brandy.”
“He’s sweet.” Viva got down on her knees and patted him, hoping to calm things down. “Is he a Chihuahua?”
“Yes,” the old woman told her proudly. “Did you know they were bred in the Ming dynasty for catching the king’s mice? I’ve got tons of books on them somewhere if you’re interested.”
Viva felt a brief flash of hilarity. Maybe that’s what she’d end up doing here, reading up about Chihuahuas in Simla, for this did not look promising.
“Could you do something for me?” The old woman was staring at her intently. “We keep treats behind the cushion you’re sitting on; could you give him one? He was so good this morning and now I’ve made him cross.”
She pointed to a red cushion with an embroidered bird on it. When Viva drew it aside, she tried not to flinch. There was something disgusting there: a small paw that looked as if it might have belonged to a cat or a rabbit. It had patches of fur and a few filaments of raw flesh still attached to it.
“There’s a bone here,” she said, trying not to touch it.
“Yes, could you give it to me, please? A man at the market gives me these for nothing.”
Shuddering with revulsion, she handed the sweet-smelling paw—a rabbit, she was almost certain of it now—to Mrs. Waghorn, who dropped it between Brandy’s pinlike teeth. “They really are the kindest people in the world, you know. I do think we treat them badly.”
Viva gazed into her watery eyes. “I’m glad they treat you well,” she said.
Under different circumstances, she felt she would have enjoyed letting the old girl talk at length about her work as a teacher here, to have told her something in return about the home in Bombay, but at the moment it seemed beyond both of them.
“Are you cold?” Mrs. Waghorn’s pugnacious look was softening somewhat. “If you are, you can turn the wick up on the paraffin stove, or give it a good kick. Actually, you could do me a favor. The wick needs trimming, there’s a big pair of scissors near it.”
Viva knelt down on the floor, which felt gritty under her stockings. The little stove was guttering and popping, sending out acrid black fumes.
“I had one of these in London.” She lifted the glass hood and sliced the top off a crusted black wick, and then turned the small handle. “They can be tricky. There you are.” When she lit it again, a circle of pink and yellow flames shone brightly. “That should do it.”
“Oh, thank you, darling.” Mrs. Waghorn’s eyes were watering. “Horrid smoke. How very kind. I’m sorry if I was rude to you earlier; they keep sending women from the club to get me, you see.”
Viva turned and faced her.
“Are you sure you don’t remember me?” she said. “I’m Felicity’s daughter. My father was Alexander Holloway; he was a railway engineer. I must have been about eight or nine when we first met. I remember you—I was a little bit scared of you because you were a headmistress.”
“Yes, indeed. You’re absolutely right. I was head for ages there.” Mention of the school seemed to perk the old lady up. “My husband, Arthur, and I ran the whole show: forty boarders, thirty day pupils, Indians and English. It was called Wildhern School. It was a wonderful place. That’s where I met Hari—” She broke off suddenly, folded her hands under her chin and looked at her long and hard. She scrunched up her eyes and thought again. “Do you know, I don’t think I do remember you. I’m so sorry. There were so many children.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Viva. “It’s my fault. It really is.”
The poor old thing looked so upset and Viva knew that if she didn’t keep a tight hold of herself she might start to cry again and that would be unbearable.
“You did try, you wrote. I should have come much earlier.”
“My memory’s bad,” mumbled the old woman, “but I do remember Felicity. A lovely woman. Can I tell you more about her when I’m not so tired?”
The little dog had started to dig behind one of the other cushions. It brought out a pink whalebone corset, various dusty kirby grips, and then a brassiere. Viva stuffed them back behind the cushion, glad that the old girl hadn’t seemed to notice.
&
nbsp; “I’m afraid I’ve tired you,” Viva said. “I could always come back tomorrow.”
The old woman glanced at her and then at a watch that she wore pinned to her dress. “No,” she said. “Stay and have tea; Hari will be here in a moment. Where’s Hari gone?”
She began to cough, a painful rattling sound. Viva looked around her, at the sagging heaps of old newspapers and dusty gramophone records, the crusted ashtrays. At least the paraffin fumes weren’t so strong now.
“Sorry, darling.” Mrs. Waghorn stopped spluttering. She wiped her mouth with a large spotted handkerchief and gave her a charming smile. “And this is such a treat. Such a pretty girl on a dull afternoon. Tell me, are you very keen on money?” She stopped and gazed at her so intently she might have been counting the pores on her face. “Now I look at you,” she said at last, “you don’t look as much like Felicity as I thought you did, more like your father.”
Viva almost stopped breathing, but then the door opened, Hari appeared with a laden tea tray and Mrs. Waghorn lost her train of thought. “Scrummy!” she said. “Put it down there.” She pointed toward the camel stool.
“I’ve just been telling this young person,” she explained to him, “that I taught you at Wildhern. I couldn’t exist without him now,” she said to Viva. “He’s one of nature’s gentlemen.”
Hari put the palms of his hands together and bowed his head toward Mrs. Waghorn.
“She is my teacher,” he told Viva. “The teacher of my life.”
“Oh, what a lovely tea you’ve brought us.” Mrs. Waghorn was looking excitedly at the jam sandwiches, two slices of fruit cake and a large, tarnished silver pot of tea and two bone-china cups. “And well done you,” she said, “for remembering the cake knife.”
“Sorry about this.” She poured tea with a shaky hand and handed the rattling cup to Viva. The milk had separated into globules of fat. “I loathe buffalo milk,” she said. “One simply yearns for a decent cup. Now tell me something,” she said when Hari had left the room and they were alone again. “Where do you stand on the Indian question? But can I tell you something first.” She put down her own cup and again held up her index finger for special emphasis. “You’ve met Hari now. You’ve seen what a fine person he is, good family and so forth. He was a very good student. One of our best ever, and the only proper employment he’s managed to get since he left school is as a driver or as a servant—you see, his family have no money.” Mrs. Waghorn’s eyes had filled with tears. “He assures me he does not mind, but I am deeply offended by that, are you?”
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