Belonging

by Umi Sinha

  ‘Why did you stop writing to each other?’

  He sighed. ‘What does it matter now?’

  I wanted to say, If I’m never to see him again, I want to know everything, but I could see he was upset, so I said nothing.

  We sat in silence, gazing into the fire like an old married couple, and I had a sudden presentiment of us sitting there years from now, our heads filled with the husks of memories sucked dry, wondering what had happened to the future we once imagined lay before us.

  Henry

  23rd September 1882

  I have been putting off writing to Father because I could not think what to say: how to explain my sudden decision to marry, only a month after seeing him, a woman whose existence I had failed even to mention. However, I am now obliged to ask if he is able to make me a small allowance; supporting a household is proving more expensive than I had anticipated, even with the minimum staff: a bearer, cook, gardener and watchman and, of course, Rebecca’s ayah.

  Rebecca is still very wary of me. We sit on the verandah after dinner, she with her embroidery and I with my papers, pretending to be absorbed in our work, but her slightest movement, or even the rustle of her dress, distracts me and I lose the thread and have to start again. From what I have observed, her embroidery does not progress very fast either.

  So far we have not found much to say to each other, for referring to our past acquaintance raises the spectre of Roland, who has tactfully kept away.

  7th October 1882

  I received Father’s reply today and was surprised to find him wholly accepting of the situation. He offers his congratulations, and informs me that he forgot to tell me when I was there that I have some capital of my own: apparently the grandfather for whom I was named – Mother’s father – put some money into a trust for me after her death, to come to me on my twenty-fifth birthday. That at least makes things somewhat easier.

  Since he is due some leave, he has promised to visit us next month. I wonder what he will make of us.

  3rd November 1882

  All my fears about Father’s visit have proved unfounded. From the start he seems to have sensed Rebecca’s fragility and addresses her with a sensitivity and gentleness I have never seen in him. It puts me in mind me of Kishan Lal’s account of him tending the bibi in her last illness.

  Rebecca seems to like him too, for she behaves towards him like an affectionate daughter, pressing another serving on him at dinner and making sure his glass is full, and I can see that he likes it.

  After dinner we sit on the verandah and he reminisces about his youth. Last night he talked of the death of his parents and how he and James were brought up by a bachelor uncle; it seems to have been a lonely childhood. Rebecca sat and listened while she did her embroidery, which he made a point of admiring. I had never suspected him of having the slightest artistic inclination, but he told her that he has always admired creativity, and that it was my mother’s musical and artistic ability that first attracted him to her. To my surprise, Rebecca even talked about her own childhood: how her father adored her and made a fuss of her and called her his ‘little princess’ and told her that she looked just like her mother – ‘a real Irish colleen’ with dark curly hair and green eyes. It is like listening to a child telling a fairytale, and none of it seems to fit with the man I knew, who seemed completely indifferent to his daughter and gave her no care or protection at all.

  If Father has noticed that we have separate rooms or thinks our relations odd he has shown no sign of it.

  17th November 1882

  Father left yesterday, but his visit has made a great difference. I was concerned that our new ease would depart with him but last evening, when I got home, Rebecca was sitting on the verandah and smiled as though she was glad to see me. When I emerged after bathing and changing for dinner, she told the bearer he could go, and poured my sherry herself. Over dinner she asked me if anything interesting had happened in court today, and seemed interested in my answer. Later she asked if I had any objection to her making some cushions and place settings for the house. I told her that this is her home and she must do whatever she wishes to make it comfortable. Then I plucked up the courage to ask if she regrets her decision. She did not answer but simply smiled, a smile so enigmatic that I felt like a callow schoolboy faced with the Mona Lisa.

  Later we sat on the verandah, each apparently absorbed in our tasks, with the scent of night jasmine heavy in the air. We hardly spoke, but at bedtime, when she rose to go, she hesitated by the door and gave me a look I have often seen her give Roland: a playful smile with a widening of the eyes that seems to invite intimacy. She paused there a moment and, when I did nothing, smiled that smile again and withdrew. I sat, wondering if I should follow her, but then I remembered the thing Father used to say that so infuriated me – ‘Softly, softly, catchee monkey, Henry’ – and I stayed where I was.

  23rd November 1882

  The past week has been maddening. I don’t know how she does it, but Rebecca has a sort of magnetism that makes it impossible not to be aware of her. I have seen the effect she has when she enters a room: she does not even need to speak, simply to stand there, and every man’s head turns towards her, and every woman’s lips tighten.

  In the evenings, as we sit on the verandah, she sewing and I reading, I feel her presence so acutely that every nerve in my body is alive. I sometimes wonder if she is aware of the effect she is having.

  When I got to bed last night, it was impossible to sleep. I was in a torment of desire, imagining her pale smooth skin, those mesmerising eyes, the smell of her hair. I finally fell asleep, only to have the dream again. I woke to find myself clutching someone and shouting, as I often did as a child, but this time it was not Father’s strong arms holding me but a woman’s. She was kneeling beside my bed, her face close to mine; in the dark I could not make out her features, but I knew her by her perfume. Embarrassed, I tried to sit up, but she pressed me back again. ‘Close your eyes.’

  I closed them.

  She stroked my hair. ‘Just rest now.’

  I listened to her singing softly, and then I must have drifted off to sleep and when I woke in the morning she was gone.

  At breakfast, Rebecca was quiet, as she usually is in the mornings. I know she finds it hard to get up, not helped by the laudanum that she was prescribed to calm her nerves after her father’s death. She was so much her usual self that I started to wonder if perhaps I had dreamt her presence in my room. Had it been her? Or had I dreamt of some other woman – my mother perhaps? At last I said, ‘I hope I didn’t disturb your rest last night?’

  She smiled and asked if I often had bad dreams, so I told her something of my childhood nightmares, though not their cause, and she listened with such sympathy that I dared to say, ‘I hope you are feeling less unhappy now,’ and she gave that tantalising smile again.

  I have been thinking about it all day, trying to interpret it, and this afternoon Hussain had to ask me something three times before I heard him.

  27th November 1882

  I saw Roland at the Club today, where I was lunching with Farraday to discuss our next tour, and almost laughed in his face.

  Last night Rebecca and I consummated our marriage. I did not want to leave her this morning and all the time I was talking to Farraday I was thinking about her. I was so distracted that he began to rib me and said he could see that I needed a honeymoon. I told him I had used all my leave but he said he could manage with Hussain and gave me the week off. I went home to find her resting and climbed back into bed with her. In daylight it was even more delicious. I feel as though I could spend a lifetime doing nothing but making love to her and never tire of it.

  13th January 1883

  I wish I knew more about women, or had someone to advise me. All is well when we are alone – Rebecca is loving and tender and I am happier than I ever imagined it possible to be. All through the day I find myself anticipating coming home to her, to that first glimpse of her wide smile a
s she sees me, and the softness of her body as we embrace. Sitting across from her at the table, I wonder if the servants can see my impatience to get the meal over with so we can be alone. Later, as we sit on the verandah, I savour the anticipation, looking up from my papers to watch her slim fingers pulling the needle through the cloth, imagining how they will feel on my body later. Sometimes she meets my eyes and smiles, and I have to restrain myself from dragging her into the bedroom then and there. When we are alone she seems content; it is other people who are the cause of her unhappiness and sometimes I wish I could consign all the servants, Farraday, Hussain and the rest of the world to hell.

  For the first few months after our wedding, we refused all the usual invitations issued to newlyweds, pleading her recent bereavement and subsequent illness, but we cannot continue to do this indefinitely without causing offence. Last week Farraday invited us for dinner and it seemed unwise to refuse for several reasons. I have been aware that there has been some gossip about our marrying so soon after Rebecca’s father’s death, especially as Roland’s courtship of her was well known. Shortly after our marriage, I received an anonymous letter warning me that there was talk that Rebecca was carrying Roland’s child. As five months have now passed, it seemed wise for Rebecca to appear in public to scotch this rumour.

  At the dinner I could tell that everyone was curious, but the gentlemen were too polite to do more than congratulate me. Rebecca seems to have been less fortunate. When we joined the ladies after dinner, I noticed that her face was white and she was holding herself rigidly, just as she did when alone with me in those first days after our wedding. In the carriage on the way home I asked her what had happened. All she would say was that they had asked her questions designed to humiliate her. When I asked what kinds of questions she would not tell me, but I imagine they must have touched on the rumours I mentioned. When we got home she wept and wept and I could not comfort her. Eventually her ayah told me to go, and leave Rebecca to her.

  The two of them are much closer than I had thought, and when Rebecca has one of her headaches – they are sadly frequent and cause her great suffering – Zainab is the only person she can bear to have near her. When I think that her ayah has cared for her from birth it is not really so surprising, but except at these times Rebecca cannot bear to have the woman near her, and is so rude to her that yesterday I felt it necessary to intervene, only for the woman to take her side against me!

  10th March 1883

  Rebecca is pregnant. The doctor confirmed it yesterday. He has advised me that she will need to be weaned off the laudanum but not until the second trimester, in case it causes difficulties. I am due to go on a fortnight’s tour next week but Zainab assures me she will take every care of Rebecca in my absence.

  28th March 1883

  Poor Rebecca. I was recalled from my tour last week because she has had a miscarriage. It was all over by the time the doctor came. The child was a boy. Rebecca is extremely distressed and the doctor has once more raised her dose of laudanum, which he had been gradually decreasing as it had begun to give her nightmares and stomach trouble. I wondered if it could have had any connection with her miscarriage, but he thinks not, although he deems it better that she stop taking it before risking another pregnancy.

  When I went in to see her she was deeply depressed, although her concern seemed to be less about the loss of the baby and more about what others will say of her. I do not understand why it causes her such distress, but assume that to women, whose whole life revolves around home and society, the opinion of others must matter more than to men, who can lose themselves in work or other interests. Yesterday, when she came out on to the verandah for the first time, I noticed she was working on a new embroidery – a pattern of trees with intertwined branches that appear to bear, in place of fruit, what look disturbingly like babies’ hands and feet.

  13th May 1883

  Last night we had dinner at the Hussains’; he has invited us several times and it seemed rude to keep deferring it. Rebecca was reluctant to accept, but I thought that being with Mrs. Hussain, who is an unusually intelligent and thoughtful woman, would put her at her ease. In the event I wish that I had left her at home, for from the moment we arrived it was clear she did not want to be there. The Hussains came out to greet us but when Hussain offered her his hand she looked startled and stepped back without taking it. I think we both put it down to shyness, but when his wife came forward and offered hers Rebecca barely touched it. I think I was not the only one who noticed that afterwards she kept rubbing her fingers with her handkerchief as though to cleanse them, although she had the grace to blush when Hussein asked if she wished to wash her hands.

  At dinner she did not say a word. When addressed by either Hussain or his wife, she looked at me as though they were speaking a language she did not understand. It was extremely awkward and I was unsure how to respond. I could hardly apologise for her behaviour, and yet her rudeness was hard to ignore. The conversation became so stilted that the Hussains eventually stopped trying to draw her out and addressed themselves exclusively to me.

  On the way home, she withdrew into a corner of the tonga and barely spoke. I was angry and told her that I was ashamed of her behaviour and that she had not only insulted the Hussains, but also exposed me to an embarrassing situation at work. At first she did nothing but cry, but when I demanded an explanation she asked in a tearful and accusing voice what I expected people to think about us if we insisted on dining with natives. I was angry enough to reply that I did not much care what people thought, to which she retorted that it was obvious that I did not care about her either. This was so absurd that I refused to dignify it with a reply and we did not speak for the rest of the journey home. I can hardly believe that just yesterday I thought myself the luckiest man alive.

  20th May 1883

  Rebecca has been unwell again. It started the day after the Hussains’ party, which she spent in bed, weeping. When I asked her what was wrong she said she always knew that I would be disappointed in her and would regret having married her. She was like a small child, sad at being punished. I took her in my arms and kissed her and told her I did not regret anything and that all married couples were bound to have some disagreements, but she would not be consoled. That night she developed a migraine, which lasted for five days, during which she lay in a darkened room with Zainab sitting beside her wiping her temples with cologne.

  Now that she is well, it is as though she has forgotten the event ever occurred. I would like to discuss it calmly but I am afraid of upsetting her again. The whole episode has left me with a feeling of unease.

  Lila

  Sussex Downs, May 1919

  Aunt Mina died a fortnight ago, just as the weather was getting warm. She caught the influenza in early February. It has carried off thousands, including many who survived the trenches. Some of our patients died of it just as they were getting back on their feet. In the end it was decided to discharge those who could be cared for at home in order to avoid it spreading to them.

  In late February the convalescent home in High Elms was finally closed altogether, but by then I had already moved to the Beauchamps’ to nurse Aunt Mina. I welcomed the opportunity to take care of her and, over the three months that I nursed her through influenza, pleurisy and finally pneumonia, we did grow to understand each other better.

  She died just before dawn as I sat beside her. Mrs. Beauchamp and I had taken it in turns to stay with her as she began to slip away. For two days she had been in a coma but just as the dawn chorus was starting she opened her eyes and smiled – the open smile of a young girl – and then she looked past me and said in a joyful tone, as though a long-awaited visitor had just entered the room, ‘Cecily!’ I turned my head but of course there was no one there, and when I turned back she had stopped breathing.

  I sat beside her in silence, holding her almost weightless hand in mine, and – as often happens after a peaceful death – I felt a lightness in the room, a feeling of
release. I got up and opened the window, as we used to do in the hospital; it’s an old custom, meant to let the soul out. I don’t know if I believe in a soul but it seemed the right thing to do. I pushed the sash right up and put my head out into the cool morning and listened to the birdsong, and when I pulled it back in the room felt empty.

  Last Saturday, on a beautiful spring morning, with the larks singing and the blackthorn and gorse blooming in patches of white and yellow on the Downs, we walked to the little Norman village church for the funeral. Mr. Beauchamp and Simon had come down from London for the weekend.

  I stood beside Simon as we sang Aunt Mina’s favourite hymn, ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past’, and it seems as though nothing much has changed in the world, for it could have been written about the last four years.

  The word commands our flesh to dust –

  Return, ye sons of men;

  All nations rose from earth at first,

  And turn to earth again.

  Time, like an ever-rolling stream,

  Bears all its sons away;

  They fly, forgotten, as a dream

  Dies at the opening day.