by Umi Sinha
She shook her head. In daylight her eyes appear darker than they are because her pupils are so large, and her irises are not one shade but made up of many different colours – pale grey, different shades of blue and green, and even some flecks of gold and russet; and then that strange brown blotch in her greener eye. In the light, the difference between them is even more striking.
‘I was making him a picture,’ she said, and looked around for her embroidery. ‘It’s nearly finished.’
For a moment I was puzzled, until I realised she meant Roland. I caught the eye of her ayah and looked away, imagining what he would make of such a gift. ‘Try not to worry,’ I said gently. ‘You need to rest and get stronger. I shall do everything in my power to help you.’
The tears brimmed over.
‘You are very kind, but what can you do? We shall have to move from this house.’
‘Where will you go?’
She wiped her tears away.
‘I don’t know. She – ’ she glanced at her ayah ‘ – she says we can make napkins and tablecloths and… other things… and sell them door-to-door.’ Her voice faltered and she added with touch of pride, ‘People have always admired my embroidery.’
I tried to picture her knocking on doors like a beggar and being turned away, or being taken advantage of by men like Roland who would see her destitution as an opportunity. I thought of my mother, dirty and half-naked, her clothes in rags, being jeered at on that long march to the river, and of Father’s regret at being unable to save her. I could save Rebecca. It was in my power.
‘Why don’t you marry me?’ The words surprised me as much as they did her. She stared. ‘I mean it.’
She looked down at her twisting fingers.
‘Look, I know you don’t love me. I don’t expect anything from you. I know your affections are engaged… elsewhere… but I don’t think you can expect anything from that quarter. I would like to help you and this is the only way I can see to do it.’
She looked at me, seeming genuinely puzzled about my motives. It touched me, for in male company she has always appeared so confident of her allure.
I leant forward and took her hand. ‘I won’t press you now, but promise me you’ll think about it?’
She nodded, and once more her eyes brimmed with tears.
As soon as I was out of sight of her I wondered what had possessed me. Do I want her answer to be yes or no?
22nd July 1882
I did not expect an answer so soon, but when I got back from the Club last night – Roland was out at a mess dinner – the chowkidar told me a woman was waiting for me on the verandah. My heart began to jump, and as I approached the bungalow I broke into a sweat. It was her ayah.
‘You have a message from Miss Ramsay?’ I was astonished how steady my voice was.
‘She said to tell you that she agrees.’
A flood of adrenalin surged through me, whether excitement or panic I still can’t say.
She stood waiting for me to speak.
I said stupidly, ‘Do… do you think it’s the right thing? For her, I mean?’
She lowered her eyes. ‘It is not for me to say, sahib, but I know that you are a good man, a better man than Sutcliffe-sahib.’
‘Do you think she could ever care for me?’
She shrugged. ‘Husbands and wives learn to love each other. Or so they tell me.’ Her tone was ironic. I can see why Rebecca dislikes her.
Can she ever love me? Or am I repeating Father’s mistake by falling in love with someone who will never love me in return?
30th August 1882
Rebecca and I were married a fortnight ago, as soon as the banns were complete. John Moxton, who shares our quarters, stood in as my best man, but Roland did give me a good send-off. The night before the wedding, he, John and two other officers took me to the Club and got me royally drunk; then, when we were politely requested to take ourselves off, he dragged me round the opium dens in the bazaar, where we drank some vile home-made liquor and smoked a couple of hookahs. I have never smoked opium before but I think my nerves finally got the better of me. All I remember is a sudden expansion of time, as though I had lived for centuries – aeons even – watching civilisations rise and fall. Vast landscapes opened before me, populated with dizzying cliffs and vast deeps, all accompanied by a clarity of thought I have never experienced before. I sat absorbed in my imaginings, while around me people smoked and expectorated long streams of brown saliva into spittoons. Roland and the others sang along to the jangling music and the drums, while the houris danced, undulating their bare bellies in a way that made my head swim. I remember Roland egging one of them on to undo my trousers as he rode one of his fellow officers around the room, while the Pathans laughed.
In the early hours we staggered back to the cantonment, where we were challenged by a sentry. No one was able to remember the password, which, in any case, we were laughing too hard to be able to say, so eventually an officer who knew Roland was summoned to identify us and we were allowed to pass. The next thing I recall is being in bed, with Roland and his friends peering at me through the mosquito net, and throwing something at them. I discovered next morning it was a folder full of court papers that I had brought home to read.
That night I had a dream that has stayed with me vividly. I was alone in the middle of a vast desert that stretched to the horizon in every direction. Directly ahead of me stood a temple that must have been built by Titans, because its top was lost in the clouds. In the centre of the wall facing me was a great carved gate, several storeys high and built from black timber so weathered that it looked more like stone than wood. As I approached them, the great doors began to swing open and people swarmed out of nowhere to line up on either side. I joined them and waited.
From where I stood, to one side of the gate, I could hear a strange sound, like the timbers of some colossal ship creaking and groaning, and a low rumbling chant that seemed to spring from the earth itself. Then, through the open gates, a procession of men came, the tendons and muscles in their arms and chests straining as they hauled at thick ropes attached to a great wooden chariot. It was the height of a three-storey house and fantastically carved, with great ironbound wooden wheels. Sweat ran down their backs and legs, and, when one fell, the others stepped over him and went on. At the very top of the chariot, dressed in silk finery, was an idol: a simple log of wood painted black, with round, staring white eyes and a red blob for a mouth.
As the chariot passed in front of me the crowd thinned and I saw that men were pushing forward to lie down in the path of the great wheels, which crushed them like bugs. I could hear their bones crunching, hear their screams, and see the narrow streams of blood filming over as they trickled through the dust. Then I felt myself being propelled forward and, try as I might, I could not struggle free. Eager hands pushed me down and I saw the rim of the great wheel poised above me, heard the renewed chant of the crowd. I felt its weight descend on me and my ribs begin to collapse.
I woke, or dreamt I woke, to find a naked woman sitting on my chest, like a succubus, her long black hair falling into my face. Her skin glimmered in the moonlight and as I opened my mouth to scream her head darted down and her lips fastened on mine like a snake striking. Her tongue probed mine and I felt myself rising under her. Her sinuous body writhed above mine as we wrestled and panted, and it seemed to go on for hours in an endless cycle of lust and satiety, like one of those feverish dreams one cannot shake off. At last, drained and spent, I fell back exhausted and lost consciousness.
I woke with a pounding head and dry mouth and a very queasy stomach, to find the sun streaming in the window. As I dressed in a stupor, with the help of Roland’s batman, I tried to put the dream out of my mind but was filled with a sense of dreariness and foreboding. What had possessed me to offer for Rebecca, whom I hardly knew and who loved another man? The dream felt like a premonition, and as I imagined Rebecca walking towards me down the aisle I found myself picturing the serpent woman of my dream and I
shuddered, even while a febrile excitement filled me.
‘Cold feet?’ Roland asked cheerfully as I entered the dining room. He was eating eggs and bacon, the sight of which made my stomach turn.
‘Did you send a woman – one of those houris from the bazaar – to my room last night?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve been having opium dreams, my boy. Fun, aren’t they?’
In the small church I stood under the effigy of a naked, tortured Christ nailed to a cross, understanding how men must feel who flee on the eve of battle. I felt a surge of resentment against Roland; he should have been in my place, instead of sitting in a back pew, so easy and handsome in his bright uniform, with a shaft of sunlight striking gold from his hair.
Then the organ struck up and I turned to watch my bride walk towards me on John’s arm. In the shadowy light from the narrow arched windows she could have been anyone – virgin, houri, demoness – and I felt my heart sink with dread. Then she was beside me and I saw that her face was as white as mine felt, and she was trembling so hard that her bouquet of cream roses had shed a trail of petals across the grey stone floor. She looked up at me timidly and I smiled and took her hand, and, as I felt it quivering in mine, I knew that I had made the right decision and that she is the only woman I shall ever want to marry.
Lila
The morning after receiving the letter I did not get up from my bed. I lay and stared at the ceiling and had no thoughts; my mind seemed to be filled with clouds or cotton wool. People came and went around me and I barely noticed them. That interlude, which lasted for several weeks, is a blur to me now. I can remember visits from a doctor, being spoon-fed soup by Mrs. Beauchamp, Aunt Mina sitting knitting in an armchair by the window and Simon trying to talk to me, but I can remember nothing of what was said. It was a comforting time – like being wrapped in a fleecy blanket that protected me from the sharp corners of the world – but gradually the world began to creep back in, despite all my attempts to block it out.
One morning I noticed that I was hungry, and, although I tried to ignore it, my body would not be denied. A couple of days later I realised that my back was aching from spending so long in bed. I got up and walked weakly to the mirror and saw Mother, pale and weak after days spent lying in a darkened room with one of her headaches. I wondered then if she had been grieving for something – why had I never thought about that before? I suppose because children do not think about their parents’ problems; they expect their parents to think about them. And Mother never had. Why had she never loved me? Surely it was natural for a mother to love her child? I used to tell myself that she wasn’t really my mother, but, looking in the mirror then, there was no question that I was my mother’s daughter.
‘I hear you’re feeling a bit better.’
Simon smiled at me and I smiled back weakly. He pulled a chair up to the bedside. ‘It’s hard coming back, I know. But I’m glad you did. It was lonely without you.’
I looked at him, surprised. It wasn’t like Simon to admit to his feelings. He had been invalided out of the Army in June after being wounded in the leg at Messines, an injury that had left him with a permanent limp. Since coming home he seemed to have turned in on himself, as many men who survived the trenches did. I had been working when he came home from hospital and had only been able to visit him briefly, but I could tell he was depressed.
He reached out and took my hand. ‘I’m sorry about Jagjit.’ He saw me flinch and his hand tightened on mine. ‘It’s the worst thing, not knowing, because you can’t start getting used to it, and I’ve learnt that you can get used to anything once you accept it. But you can’t accept what you don’t know.’
‘You miss him too.’
‘Yes.’
We sat in silence for a long time. Then he stood to go, still holding my hand in his. He smiled down at me. ‘I’m glad you’re back, Lila. I’ve missed you.’ He lifted my hand and kissed it before placing it back on the cover.
Somehow, during the time that I was absent, Aunt Mina and I got used to each other. Perhaps I had just become accustomed to seeing her sitting by the window, knitting or sewing quietly. I think she might even have read to me from time to time, though I couldn’t say what it was she read. At any rate, her being there seemed natural, so when I woke to find her sitting by my bedside I raised my head and said sleepily, ‘Hello, Aunt Mina.’
She asked me how I felt and, when I had given the usual answers, our eyes met and I saw her colour rise.
‘Lilian… Lila, I am so sorry… I know how hard it is – just to wait, not knowing, when someone you care for is in trouble.’
Her voice was shaking and I reached out and took her hand.
‘Your grandmother – my sister, Cecily – and her husband were out in India during the Mutiny. We knew they were at Cawnpore, but all the news we got was months out of date and often incorrect. I can still remember that feeling of waking each morning with a sense that something dreadful was hanging over one… the taste of fear that never went away…’
I looked into her cloudy brown eyes and wondered what she saw when she looked at the ceiling; whether all these years she too had been living in a cotton-filled world, not fully experiencing anything. How else had she managed to bear such a stifling, uneventful life?
She looked away from me. ‘I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t be talking about this now, when you’re feeling low.’
‘It’s all right. I’m interested. Go on.’
‘There isn’t much to tell. We’d been getting her letters and then they stopped and we knew they were under siege by the rebels. We got occasional news of attacks repelled, of relief attempts – just as you have had – but no real news. What we read in the papers was weeks out of date. We knew people were dying but we had no way of knowing if Cecily and Arthur were among them.’ She swallowed. ‘My fiancé, Peter, was with the relief column. They got there too late. He… he’d been in love with Cecily before. I think he still was. After Cawnpore he wrote to me. I could tell he was – that he would never be able to forget what he’d seen. And then he caught the cholera. He died out there. Your grandfather wrote and told me…
‘I still wake sometimes with that sick feeling, and for a moment I’m back there, wondering and waiting… before I remember it’s all over.’ She fixed her brown eyes on mine. ‘What I am really trying to say is that I’m sorry about your friend. I know what it is to care for someone and never have the chance…’ She pressed her handkerchief to her lips with a trembling hand and stood up. ‘If it’s any comfort, this is the worst time. It doesn’t get any worse… even if one’s fears are realised.’
While I was considering the implications of this, she rose and left the room. Somehow I stopped resenting her after that, and from that day there was peace between us.
‘If Jagjit is still alive he must feel pretty bitter,’ Simon said. He had been given a desk job with the War Department in London – something to do with military transport – and only came home at weekends.
It was a cold rainy day in January 1919, and Simon and I were spending it in the old playroom, as we had done so many times in our childhood. I always felt in this room that Jagjit was close to me, hovering somewhere just out of my line of vision. Sometimes I felt his presence so strongly I would turn my head, trying to catch him.
The war had ended the previous November and all prisoners-of-war had been officially released, but Christmas came and went and still neither his father nor I had received news of Jagjit. Some of the returning British officers, after treatment in hospital for dysentery, malaria and beri beri, were sent to High Elms to convalesce. They had few complaints about their treatment in prison. They had been held in comfortable conditions, with sufficient food and exercise, and had grown friendly with their guards, playing cards with them and even being allowed out on excursions to nearby towns. Their main complaint was of boredom.
My heart lifted when I heard that Indian N.C.O.s had been held in the same camps, and I eagerly enquired
if anyone had encountered a Jemadar Jagjit Singh, until a captain who had been at Kut told me that the British and Indians did not mix. ‘The Turks treated us all the same to begin with, even serving our meals at the same tables. Our C.O. had to point out that in the British Army it isn’t done for British officers and Indian N.C.O.s to mess together. After that we didn’t see much of them. They kept themselves to themselves.’
It was a different story for the rank and file from Kut, already weak with starvation and many suffering from wounds, cholera and other illnesses. After their gruelling march through the desert, many dying on the way, they were held in camps where they spent twelve hours a day breaking rocks and laying railway lines with no protection from the burning sun. When the war ended, these camps were often abandoned by their guards, leaving prisoners, with no food or supplies, to make their own way hundreds of miles through the desert to the coast. Most died of thirst or hunger or were killed by the Marsh Arabs. The officers who visited the few survivors who had made it back were shocked by their condition and their stories. I thanked God that Jagjit was an N.C.O.
I looked at Simon. ‘“If ”? Have you given up hope?’
He wiped a thin hand wearily across his eyes. ‘There’s always hope, I suppose. They say they’re still finding stragglers from some of the more remote camps, but they’re all rank and file, not officers. It doesn’t look good, Lila. We may never know what happened to him.’
I thought I could bear anything except that – never to know, always to be wondering, imagining.
‘Father says Townshend gave his Indian troops a particularly hard time,’ he went on. ‘He blamed them for everything, and now it appears that when they ran short of food at Kut he made no allowance in the rations for the fact that Indians were vegetarians. Many of them starved or developed scurvy. Everyone is disgusted with him. We lost twenty-five thousand men trying to relieve him, and since the surrender he’s been living in luxury as a guest of the Pasha while his men have been dying in the camps. And Father says his only concern seems to be to negotiate a good war settlement for his Turkish friends. Wouldn’t you be bitter if you were Jagjit?’