Belonging

by Umi Sinha

  In the train on the way home we sat in the window-seats opposite each other. Jagjit’s arm rested along the windowsill between us as he gazed out at the Downs rushing past. His long brown fingers glowed like beaten copper in the light of the setting sun, and as I looked at them I remembered his finger touching mine and the tide washed through me again, carrying a surge of warmth into my face.

  ‘Golly, you’ve caught the sun, Lila,’ Simon said. I realised he’d been watching me watching Jagjit. ‘Your face is bright red. Your aunt is going to be hopping mad!’

  Henry

  6th July 1869

  Since the rains started I have not been able to sit outside. The bibi never enters the house in the daytime and she never invites me into her room. When I asked her why, she said Father would not like it. So now, when my lessons are over, I read in my room or visit the Lines, and Ali, Mohan and I go fishing.

  2nd August 1869

  I have been ill. Kishan Lal says I nearly died. The fever came on one evening after I had been down at the river all day with Ali and Mohan. We built a dam but the river washed it away so we had to do it all over again. When I got home Kishan Lal scolded me for not wearing a hat and for spending all my time with those good-for-nothing boys.

  By dusk I was shivering so hard my teeth rattled. Father was out and Kishan Lal sent the chowkidar to fetch the doctor. I don’t remember much after that except the shivering and the pain in my legs. When I woke up it was dark. There was a candle on the bedside table and someone was sponging my forehead with a cool cloth. It was the bibi. She told me the doctor had been and left some medicine, and that I was to stay in bed. She gave me the medicine and asked if I’d like her to read to me. I had started to drift off, when she stopped in the middle of a sentence. I opened my eyes and saw Father standing in the doorway, looking shocked. The bibi went out and then Kishan Lal came and said that he told her that sahib would be angry if she came in the house but she would not listen. Father said it was all right and sent him away and then asked me how I was feeling and what the doctor had said. He said if I wasn’t better by morning he would ask the doctor to send a nurse to look after me.

  My temperature had gone down but it came back in the night and I was hot and then shivering, and I dreamt I was in a bazaar searching for my mother and I kept pulling women’s face veils off and finding they had no faces, just more veils underneath, and I wanted it to stop but it just went on and on for hours and hours and hours. When I woke in the morning, the bibi was sponging me with cold water and Father was sitting on the other side of my bed holding my hand. He didn’t go to the Lines that day or the next, and he didn’t say anything more about a nurse.

  I was ill for nearly three weeks, but I’m better now. On my birthday Father did not stay in his room but sat with me and the bibi taught us a game with dice. It was the best birthday I’ve ever had, even though I was ill. And after the fever had gone and Father went back to the Lines, the bibi still sat with me and we played card games. I asked her how she knew so many games and she said that women in purdah have to pass the time somehow when they can’t go out. I think it must be horrible for her, living in that small room and never going anywhere, so I asked Father why she can’t live in the house with us. He said it is because she isn’t part of the family. I asked if she is a servant, then, but he said she isn’t that either. He told me that she used to be a famous singer but she can’t sing any more. I asked why she doesn’t live with her own family, and he said that they are all dead.

  5th August 1869

  Today Father told Kishan Lal to move the bibi’s things from her hut to the room Aunt Mina had. I could see he didn’t like it and later I heard him say to Allahyar that it isn’t right to have her in the house with me. But I don’t mind because now I can see her every day, and sometimes we sit on the back verandah and I read to her while she sews. Father spends less time at the Lines and more at home too. We are almost like a family. I like her much better than Aunt Mina.

  17th August 1869

  The bibi is sick. She always looks tired but now she holds her side as if it is hurting. The doctor has been to see her and today the chaplain came to see Father again and this time I didn’t need to eavesdrop because they were shouting so loudly that we could hear them in the dining room where I was having my lessons. Mr. Mukherjee tried to read more loudly but I could still hear. The chaplain was talking about the bibi and the bad example Father is setting by living openly in sin with a native. Father told him to mind his own business.

  24th September 1869

  I hate Father! After all he has said about not believing in sending children away, he is sending me to England to school. Even worse, I am to spend my holidays with Aunt Mina! He won’t tell me why. He just says he thinks it is time for me to get a proper education. I am going in four weeks’ time, with the wife of Captain Percival, who is going home to visit her sick mother.

  When he told me I ran to the bibi and begged her to tell him to let me stay, but she said he is right and that I should be with my own people. I said Father and she and Kishan Lal and Allahyar are my people. She said it is for my own good and that Father loves me very much, that he isn’t a man who speaks flowery words, but he feels things deeply, and one day I will understand how hard his life has been. I told her I don’t care how hard his life has been, or hers either. I said they were mean to send me away and that I hated them both. She tried to stroke my hair but I pushed her off. I do hate them both and I know I shall hate England too.

  Cecily

  1st January 1857

  Dear Mina,

  Happy New Year, though I do not know when you will receive this letter, for I am writing to you from somewhere in the jungles of northern India.

  Although I was dreading the thought of this march, I find myself enjoying it. We are travelling cross-country, so the officers, and we ladies who wish to, ride, while the rest are carried in palanquins. We rise at two each morning and cover fifteen miles before stopping to make camp for the day. Fortunately it is the coolest time of year, and often quite cold when we rise.

  The system of marches is splendidly organised. We have every comfort, for all our furniture (including our bathtub!) is carried on the heads of coolies. There are two of everything, including the tents, so one set can go ahead of us and when we arrive our new home is waiting, complete with steaming tub, and we are able to dismount and bathe before lunch. It is all remarkably civilised, rather as I imagine the Romans travelled. In the afternoons we rest or walk in the countryside. I take my sketchbook and try to capture the picturesque ruined temples and tombs that one finds in the most remote places, sometimes half-buried in jungle, but they never look as charming in my pictures as they do in reality. I am enclosing a few, but you will have to imagine the screeching of the crickets and rustling grass as serpents slither away!

  I was dreading sharing a tent with Arthur, but I scarcely see him, he is so busy with his men. He rides alongside them when they are marching, which the other officers leave to their N.C.O.s, and goes hunting with them in the afternoons. In the evenings they have a wrestling match or a nautch. I never realised how many camp followers a regiment had until we crossed the first river and a raft full of native ladies was washed downstream and stranded on the opposite bank. A company of sepoys had to be sent to rescue them. Lt. Tremayne’s wife, Emily, tells me they are fallen women who are kept for the sepoys’ pleasure and then she gave me a sly look, which made me wonder if Arthur’s bibi is among them, for I do not think he would leave her behind. It is horrid to think everyone is talking behind our backs.

  Fortunately, perhaps because of rising so early and taking so much fresh air and exercise, I sleep very soundly, despite sometimes being woken by the howls of jackals or the weird cackling laugh of the hyaenas.

  One of the other lieutenants, Lt. Thomson, and his friends go pig-sticking whenever possible, so we often eat wild boar, and sometimes venison, for dinner. Several times Arthur has been tiger-shooting with his men, for t
he villagers seize the opportunity of Englishmen passing through to settle their quarrels with any man-eating or cattle-killing tigers in the area. I went out with them once, and kept watch in the machan, but I was relieved when nothing came, for I cannot help feeling it is we, and not the tigers, who are out of place in the jungle.

  Arthur’s jemadar, Ram Buksh, has had a nasty accident. They were tracking a wounded tiger when it charged him and he ran – you will hardly credit this but Arthur assures me it is true – straight into the arms of a bear! Arthur says he does not know who was more surprised, but they grappled with each other and went rolling down a slope. Fortunately the fall must have stunned the bear, and Ram Buksh managed to get away from it before it recovered. Arthur followed them and fired at it, but it ran off into the jungle. When they brought Ram Buksh into our tent, I thought at first he was dead. He had fainted and was covered in blood where the bear’s claws had raked him behind the shoulder.

  Arthur sent one of the sepoys to fetch Dr. Sheldon, and he himself cut off Ram Buksh’s shirt and cleaned up the wound so he could see how bad it was, while I tore up some towels to staunch the bleeding.

  You would have been proud of me, Mina – I did not faint or behave missishly. Fortunately when Dr. Sheldon arrived he said it was not serious. He disinfected and dressed the wound and advised that Ram Buksh not be moved until the bleeding had stopped, so Arthur cancelled the next day’s march. The servants erected another tent for us nearby and Dr. Sheldon said he would send one of those women to care for him but Arthur said he and I would do it with the help of his batman, as Ram Buksh and Durga Prasad had helped us so much when he was ill. I could see Dr. Sheldon was surprised. He looked at me as if expecting me to refuse, but it was the least I could do, Mina, after all the help they have given me. And truthfully I did not have much to do except to place wet cloths on his forehead when his temperature rose and give him his medicine, for Arthur’s batman took care of everything else.

  When Ram Buksh recovered consciousness he seemed so embarrassed at finding me sitting by his bed that I too felt quite shy, but by the next day we were all laughing together. I understand now why Arthur spends so much time with his men, for they are so much less stuffy than his fellow officers and their wives, who are always standing on their dignity.

  This journey has been so delightful that I shall be quite sad to leave India. I shall write from Cawnpore with details of my passage.

  Your loving Cecily

  Cawnpore, 4th February 1857

  My darling Mina,

  I received your presents and letters forwarded from Cuttack when we arrived but have been unable to write for weeping. I cannot believe that Mama has been dead since November and I did not know! It is too cruel to be so far away at such a time. How is poor Papa? I wish I had been there to say goodbye to Mama and to comfort him. Oh, Mina, how shall we manage without her? I never realised how much I depended on her gentle strength. I cannot imagine her gone, or how the house will be without her.

  Please give Papa my dearest love, and tell him I will be with you very soon.

  My dearest love to you both,

  Cecily

  Cawnpore, 11th February 1857

  Oh, Mina, you will hardly believe my news. I am expecting a child! I am amazed that I am able to write the words so calmly. I could scarcely believe it when Dr. Sheldon told me and I burst out crying. He laughed; he thought me so foolish not to have known it myself. ‘Do your mothers teach you nothing?’ he asked. He said he had suspected it for some time, when he noticed how much I was sleeping on the march, but felt it better to say nothing until we reached Cawnpore and were settled.

  I do not know what to do.

  Your bewildered Cecily

  Lila

  A fortnight before the boys returned to school, I went over to the Beauchamps’ after lunch as usual. It was raining so I took a book – a novel by Maud Diver – that Aunt Mina had given me for my birthday. I hadn’t looked at it before because she usually gave me books by Mrs. Molesworth or Charlotte M. Yonge, featuring pious, dutiful heroines whom I could not see myself in, but, glancing into it while hunting through the bookshelf for something I hadn’t read, I found that it was set in India. I assumed she must have bought it in ignorance, since she always avoided any mention of India in my presence.

  That afternoon I sat in the window-seat reading, while Jagjit and Simon played Ludo nearby in the light from the window. I had read a few pages and then put the book down and was gazing out of the window at the garden. One of the things I like about England is how different things look from day to day: some days the air is so clear and dry that one can see for miles and every detail stands out sharply, while on others the landscape seems to shimmer in opalescent colours through shifting layers of gauzy mist. But that day, through the rain-spotted window, the garden looked like an Impressionist painting, the bushes and trees blending into a palette of smudgy green and brown brushstrokes.

  Behind me Simon said, ‘I say, Jagjit, listen to this!’ He began to read, in a put-on prissy voice, ‘It was after some talk of the natives themselves, and the girl’s confession that she had not yet conquered an instinctive distaste and dread with which they had inspired her from the first…’ I turned and made a grab for the book but he held it out of my reach, his pale grey eyes glittering up at me. ‘No, wait, it gets better: …that she broke a rather protracted silence with an abrupt request.’ He paused and assumed a simpering voice. ‘“Of course, I’m abysmally ignorant – you’ve discovered that already! But I want to know exactly what people mean by a half-caste; and why the word so often goes with a tone of contempt.” Laurence shrugged his shoulders…’ Simon threw his chest out and assumed a deep manly voice. ‘“Well – I suppose one has no business to be contemptuous,” he said. “But the half-caste out here falls between two stools, that’s the truth. He has the misfortune to be neither white nor brown; and he is generally perverse enough to pick the worst qualities of the two races, and mix them into a product peculiarly distasteful to both. The Anglo-Indian’s contempt of him is a mild affair compared to the scorn of the high-caste native, who regards him simply as a low-born, a creature without either the birthright of caste, or the prestige of Sahib-dom. Seems hard luck on the poor devils; but they really are a most unsatisfactory crew on the whole. Clever enough, some of ’em: but there’s a want of grit in their constitutions, physical and moral. It’s a bad business all round, the mixing of brown and white races in marriage.”’

  He lowered the book and grinned at us. ‘You two had better not get married, then.’

  ‘Don’t be an ass, Simon,’ Jagjit said. ‘I’ve never heard such drivel.’

  ‘Well, it’s Lila’s book. What do you think, Lila?’

  ‘Ignore him, Lila. He’s being childish,’ Jagjit said. There was an edge to his voice I had never heard before.

  Simon flushed and his voice went up, as it always did when he was angry. ‘Oh, buck up, Jug Ears! You’re saying that a “high-caste native” like you wouldn’t mind marrying a half-caste?’

  Jagjit looked at him in silence. Then he said calmly, ‘I’m a Sikh, not a Hindu. We don’t observe caste; and if I found the right girl I hope I would judge her for herself and not for her parentage.’

  ‘Just as well, since there’s such a mystery about Lila’s past.’

  Jagjit’s face changed but before he could say anything Simon stood up, dropped the book on to my lap and left the room. Jagjit turned to me.

  ‘I’m sorry. He can be very spiteful when he’s jealous.’

  But why should Simon be jealous of me, I wanted to ask, when he has everything – a family, a home of his own, friends…?

  ‘Lila – ’ He knelt up and put his hand on my shoulder, but sat back down as there was a knock at the door. The Beauchamps’ maid put her head round it.

  ‘Tea is served in the drawing room, Master Simon…’ Her voice trailed off as she realised he wasn’t in the room. She looked at us curiously.

  ‘We’
re just coming, Enid,’ Jagjit said. ‘I’ll tell Simon.’

  She smiled at him and withdrew.

  I stood up and Jagjit followed me to the door. ‘You are staying for tea?’

  I shook my head and started down the stairs.

  He touched my shoulder. ‘Lila, don’t go…’ But I did not want him to see me crying, and I did not turn round.

  That night, as I was reading in my room after supper, there was a loud banging at the front door. I looked at the clock on my mantelpiece. It was nine o’clock and getting dark, late for a caller. A few minutes after that there was a knock at my bedroom door and Ellen put her head round it. ‘It’s Master Jagjit… for you, miss.’

  Alarmed, I went down. Aunt Mina was waiting at the foot of the stairs. ‘That Indian boy wants to speak to you. I told him you had gone to bed but he insisted. I find his behaviour quite extraordinary.’

  I waited, making my face blank.

  She hesitated, then said reluctantly, ‘I suppose you’d better find out what he wants. Don’t be long. I shall wait here for you.’