“I see,” he said. “Well, thanks for the advance notice. I’d better finish this on the double and go and see how she is.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Ripperton, glancing briefly at her husband. They had talked about it over supper last night, discussing how best to break the news. The business about the sick mother was a downright lie. No telegram had been delivered for Mrs. Schofield that day, nor any letter. If it had, it would have arrived at the ADC’s office first, to be noted as received and sorted before being passed along with the rest of the day’s post and wires. Veronica Schofield had barely waited a day before packing her bags and leaving.
Heaven only knew what had gone on in their apartments behind closed doors, and Fiona had ventured to her husband that she wouldn’t be surprised if they hadn’t had some kind of terrible row and she had upped and left for good. Everybody in that part of the palace had heard the commotion, the crashing and banging and shouting. It was none of their business, Rip had reminded her, and she was not to go interfering. They would give George the plain facts of her departure, then leave the poor man alone. “That’s the thing, you see, George.” Fiona Ripperton girded herself with a good sip of her drink. “She’s gone.” The glass in Dr. Schofield’s hand halted midway to his mouth. Mrs. Ripperton gave him a rather pathetic smile. “Oh George, I’m so sorry.”
George Schofield sat in silence as though cast in bronze, a lifetime running through his head. The war had left a gaping chasm between him and his wife. Sophie had been just twelve years old when he left, a sweet girl, awkward and thin, uncomfortable in her own presence. He’d grown runner beans in his garden, and they’d had a cat named Pumpkin who liked to sleep in the vegetable patch. But then the war came, and by the time he got back, Sophie was seventeen. He had hardly recognized her, this lovely young woman who had come running through the door the moment she glimpsed him from behind the curtain where she had been waiting all day. She had greeted him with tears of joy. Sophie carried no resemblance to her mother at all, the wife who had become a burden to him, the years having worn him down to this pathetic shadow of a man, hell bent on keeping his family together, no matter the cost.
He sat and thought about his wife. There were times when he had wished her away, hoping that she might just pack up and leave one day, or, in darker moments, imagining her dead, seeing his figure mourning at her graveside, his daughter by his side. At least it would have been over then, this hell, the sinking feelings that filled him with dread as he neared the threshold of his own home, wherever that may be, like entering a vacuum where nothing could breathe. He would try to anticipate her mood, picking his way carefully through her neuroses. He didn’t mind so much for himself. It was his daughter he worried about. That was why they had come here, to force open his wife’s isolated existence into which she was pulling Sophie, sucking her down like a calf caught in quicksand. At least the beatings had stopped. Or that was what he had thought. It was the first time he had witnessed it first hand, the day he had broken the news about Sophie. Perhaps, had he not been so shocked, he would have acted more quickly to shield his daughter before his wife picked up the ashtray and hit her with it.
As a youngster, Sophie had never said a word about her mother’s behavior, not once, and even when he had questioned her about her bumps and bruises, she had said that she had fallen over or banged her head by accident and he had chosen to believe her and told her to be more careful, because he couldn’t bring himself to think that his wife was responsible for her injuries. All mothers disciplined their children. It was a necessary part of raising them. Whether he agreed with her methods seemed almost by the by, as he was not the one who was there to do it. Veronica should never have had children. She had never been able to cope with it. Even when Sophie was a baby, he had seen his wife staring down into the cot, looking on impassively while she cried, walking out of the room and closing the door on the wailing infant.
He had expected it to pass, the indifference, the complete absence of interest. It wasn’t unknown for a new mother to feel overwhelmed at first, yet nothing had lifted her blackened mood, and she made it clear to him that there would be no more children. It was just as well, he had thought, as the years wore on and his wife hardened further. Even then, he hadn’t realized the full extent of it, until one evening he came home to find his daughter hiding in the coat cupboard under the stairs. The sight of her had brought his heart to a stop, one side of her face coated with a thin veil of dried blood. Veronica had refused to speak to him. She wouldn’t even tell him what the hell had happened. Sophie was just seven years old at the time.
He had told Veronica that if he ever found their child in that state again, he would have her committed. He would have her locked up with the rest of the wailing harpies who filled the asylums, and if she thought it an idle threat, she was very much mistaken. It would take just one other doctor, he had told her, and he’d be able to get a second signature in a flash. Veronica had heeded the warning, or so George had thought, for he never saw Sophie’s blood on the floor again.
Fiona sipped from her gin and tonic and gave her husband a feeble smile. Dr. Schofield seemed to have drifted, his eyes fixed on the view across the courtyard, the pale stone wall split in two by shadow. All at once he put his glass to his lips and swallowed the whisky in one long, steady motion. He put it down on the table and tapped the side for a refill, his eyes set upon it. Mr. Ripperton fetched the bottle without a word and filled his friend’s glass generously, pouring another for himself to keep him company.
Nobody spoke. There was nothing to say.
1958
Ootacamund, “Queen of Hill Stations”
21
Mrs. Nayar’s hands flew to her face, an outward rush of joy spilling from her as she threw her arms around the unexpected visitor. “Miss Sophie!” She squeezed her hard before shouting into the house: “Salil! Miss Sophie is here! Salil!” Sophie felt the bag pulled from her hands, Mrs. Nayar grasping her arm and heaving her in through the door. “The doctor not here. He at the clinic. Come, we go now!” She tugged at Sophie’s sleeve. “He will be so pleased to see you. Where is husband?”
“It’s just me, I’m afraid,” Sophie said.
“Why you not call before?”
“I wanted to it to be a surprise.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Nayar laughed. “He will have big surprise!”
“How is Dad?”
“The doctor is very fine, miss. He is always talking about you and telling us that you marry burra sahib with big job in important matters. We are all so happy for you and wishing you would come soon. The doctor was very proud. He put big notice in all the newspapers, even in the Times of India! Dr. G. J. M. Schofield of Iona, Ootacamund, announces proudly the marriage of his daughter Miss Sophie to important mister so-and-so in London! He was making sure everyone will know that his daughter is doing so well in making the excellent marriage! We have visitor coming from far away to give you congratulations, but I tell him you no live here, you live Delhi!”
“Miss Sophie!” The cook thundered into the hallway, crashing in like a buffalo from the back of the house, his face split into a beaming smile.
“Salil!” Sophie reached out to squeeze his hand fondly. “It’s so nice to be back. Please,” she turned to Mrs. Nayar, “let’s not disturb the doctor. I’ll stay here and get settled and we shall surprise him when he gets back from the clinic.”
Mrs. Nayar looked disappointed for a moment, then exchanged words with Salil, a rapid fire of harsh dialect that Sophie had never quite managed to get to grips with. “OK,” she conceded. “I shall bring you some tea and Salil will make special supper for celebration.”
“You want me to make gunpowder chicken?”
“Oh goodness, no. I’m not sure my constitution is up to one of your famous baptisms of fire tonight,” Sophie said tactfully. Salil had an iron-plated palate and, if left to his own devices, would happily throw
in enough chilies to kill an elephant.
“Gunpowder chicken?” Mrs. Nayar tore into him, wagging her finger in his face. “You want to give Miss Sophie nightmares? You will not be making gunpowder anything. Make tea. Not masala chai. Proper English tea with boiled milk.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Nayar. I’ll take it in the doctor’s study.”
Pulling off her gloves, Sophie wandered into her father’s private room, dominated by the big mahogany desk set into the bay window overlooking the garden, its surface scattered with untidy papers beneath the usual clutter of medical odds and ends, a bone-handled patella hammer, the top half of a steel otoscope, a blue-rimmed enamel kidney bowl filled with rubber bands. The wedding photograph she had sent by airmail six months ago as summer broke over England sat among it all in a silver frame, the same frame that had once held a picture of her parents on their own wedding day, standing stiffly side by side outside a church vestibule.
Sophie perched herself comfortably on the edge of the desk and looked out of the window, loosening the silk scarf tied around her neck, her free hand wandering to the old black and white cat that lay snoozing in her father’s chair. “Hello, Poocha,” she whispered. The cat half opened one lazy eye and curled into her fingers, purring.
Outside, the garden lay shrouded in the permanent mist that veiled the hilltops of the Nilgiris during the winter months, lending it a dreamlike quality, trees appearing and disappearing through the milky-white haze. Sophie had spent a great deal of time in that garden, recovering slowly under the protective bough of the jacaranda tree, heavy with lilac-blue blossoms, watching from the silvered teak planter’s chair as Salil tended to his kitchen garden while Mr. Nayar huffed and puffed up and down with the old rotary lawn mower. Salil had a gift for nurturing tender seedlings, and liked nothing better than to harvest a fine dish of freshly plucked vegetables for the supper table, setting it down amid grand claims of how it had all been growing quite happily while they had breakfasted that morning.
Poocha rolled on to his side and pushed his head into his paws, the pillow of the seat radiating warmth where his body had lain. Sophie left him in peace and went to the window, pulling back the lace curtain. The essence of her father filled the room, the musky scent of teak oil, the rich beeswax soaked thirstily into the wood-paneled walls, the sweet tang of the cigarettes he liked to smoke while fiddling with broken instruments he had no hope of ever repairing. It was as though Iona had absorbed some part of him, the part that he had needed to put down, to discard as no longer useful or necessary, and it weighed heavy in the fabric of the walls. The house had been built at the turn of the century by a one-time Scotsman who had gone on to a more permanent residence in St. Stephen’s cemetery some twenty years ago. A pretty two-story building of dove-gray stone and smooth timbers set amid a silver-blue grove of fragrant evergreens and eucalyptus trees, it had taken them in kindly, and had seemed gladdened to have its fires lit once more by a family in need of shelter. The moment she first set eyes upon it, Sophie had let out an unexpected sigh. All at once grand yet quaint, it was everything she might have wished for herself had she been looking for a house of her own. From beneath a green shingled roof, the four bedrooms faced east, Swiss gables overlooking the deep ravine of the sharply falling valley, its dense forests filled with chittering wildlife. To the west of the house, where fewer windows looked out, the forest rose again, revealing clearings in the hillside here and there to make way for the picturesque houses that clung prettily to the steep landscape amid the woods, taking in the best of the views. Her father had chosen well, and it had felt like a sanctuary. A place to heal.
A small knock came from the open door. Salil, bearing a wooden tray, entered quietly and set it down on the table beside the fireplace where a single thick log crackled softly in the grate.
“I make you nice vegetable and butter sandwich,” he said, taking the poker and pushing the glowing wood back in the grate before throwing in another log from the basket. “It is so very nice for us in seeing you.” He straightened himself and grinned at her. “We are saying always, ‘When is Miss Sophie coming?’ And now?” His head wobbled in satisfaction. “Now you are here.”
“Thank you, Salil. It is good to be back.”
“Please.” He indicated the tray, a small spray of pale primroses placed beside the teacup. “You tell me if you want something else.”
“This is lovely.” She sat beside the fire. “Really. I couldn’t wish for anything more.”
• • •
The warmth from the hearth curled irresistibly around Sophie’s travel-weary legs, wrapping her blissfully in its glow. She slipped off her shoes, giving in to temptation, and tucked her feet into the soft armchair, resting her head against the worn green leather, unable to resist the urge to close her eyes for a little while. It had been a long day.
The book slipped quietly from her fingers and fell silently into the pile of embroidered pillows scattered loosely around her, her face softened into sleep. For the first time in a long while, her rest was deep and untroubled, taking her far from the world in which she now lived, lifting her into the subtle realms of endlessness where all was well, all things revived. They were dancing, him whirling her around, her head thrown back and laughing. She had never felt so happy, so warm in his arms, lifted by the music, being swept along, the durbar hall empty but for them and the orchestra. She was weightless, her heart filled with love, gazing into his smiling face, his pale green eyes. She sighed in her sleep, wrapped in a warmth so delicious that it felt like heaven. Her father’s voice came into her dream. They were out walking, trekking the gladed pathways through the forest, sunlight dappling through the shivering leaves, spots of bright light carpeting the forest floor beneath their feet. Her legs were complaining, tired from the dancing, her muscles aching. “Why didn’t you call me?” he was saying. Her eyes opened.
“That’s what I said!” Mrs. Nayar clucked from the hallway. “I said come, let us go to the clinic now, but she said not to worry the doctor!”
Dr. Schofield rushed in, coat half on, half off, one sleeve hanging untidily behind his back as he shrugged out of the tangle while Mrs. Nayar tugged at it. Sophie unfurled herself from the chair and pulled herself into a long stretch, smiling as she tried to stifle a satisfied yawn. She had been fast asleep and dreaming. She didn’t remember what about.
“Hello, Dad,” she said, wandering carelessly into his hug, closing her eyes as they squeezed together.
“When did you get here?” he asked, chin resting on the top of her head.
“Couple of hours ago, I think. Fell asleep.”
“You wash for dinner.” Mrs. Nayar bumped past them, breaking their embrace, and threw another log into the grate.
• • •
The pitch black of the night outside threw reflections of the fire on to the dining room windows, where the shutters had been left open, moths and night insects bouncing off the glass, desperately making for the light. The ceiling had been painted, Sophie noticed, the awful oppressive nicotine brown now an airy off-white color that brightened the room up no end. There was something else different too, although it took a moment for her to pinpoint what it was.
“Where’s the piano?”
“Chopped it up and used it for firewood.”
“No!” Sophie said.
“Yes, I did. And very satisfying it was too. Dreadful old thing. I got rid of all sorts after you’d gone. Not intentionally, of course. Just started doing a little sorting out one day, and the next thing I knew, half the house was standing out on the lawn.”
“Dad!”
“What? It’s just a lot of old junk when you think about it, all this stuff we drag about with us. I don’t even know where half of it comes from. It just wears you down after a while. There’s a lot to be said for having as little as possible. You can just up and away without giving it a second thought.”
“Suffering from wanderlust?”
“No fear,” he said. “Whatever for? I always wanted a little rural practice somewhere quaint; I just never imagined it would be in India. I’m quite happy to stay put, although I don’t mind getting on a train now and then when the fancy takes me. You really should have let me come up to Delhi to welcome you.”
“We wanted to get settled first. You know how it is.”
“I wouldn’t have minded a bit. It’s been a long time, and I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too,” she said. Oh, how she had missed him and longed to see him, but she was a wife now, and her first duty was to her husband, and there had always been something to get in the way whenever she had tried to make the arrangement. Lucien had finally declared that if it was that important to her, she should go on her own, for he was far too busy. She would not say anything to her father or tell him of her doubts.
Perhaps she and Lucien were not so well suited after all. She had come to realize that they had nothing in common, apart from the India connection. Or perhaps it was because they had come here that she was having such trouble with her adjustment to married life. It was not what she had hoped for. It felt artificial, as though she were spending most of each day pretending to be something or somebody that she was not. The persona she presented was an invention, and she wore it like a heavy overcoat drenched with guilt. Sophie looked at her father, and wondered how long it had been before he knew his marriage was a mistake.
“Must have taken you ages to get down from Delhi,” he said.
“Don’t be silly. I flew in.” Sophie helped herself to a little more of Salil’s home-made pickle. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until the lid came off the rice dish, releasing a delicious vapor of saffron and fried onions. “One of the perks,” she said, adopting a self-mocking air as she tapped the teaspoon sharply against the side of her plate. How nice it was to dine so casually, her shoes kicked off, her father resting an elbow on the table whenever he felt like it. “I got a lift on one of the regular runs from Delhi to Bombay, then picked up a flight into Coimbatore, which was a little hair-raising, to say the least. Pickle?”
Under the Jeweled Sky Page 20