Sail Upon the Land

by Josa Young

  The baby was heavy as he slept against her sweaty breast. Damson bent her head to kiss the top of his damp head and plodded onwards leaning on a stick she’d found beside the path. Baby on the front rucksack on the back balanced her but she was sinking into the ground with every step after a mile or so. Acclimatising herself to India by travelling around in the cooler hilly parts of Gujarat was all very well but a pushchair would have helped. Hiking with a baby was not one of her better ideas. When she could finally take both baby and rucksack off she seemed to float above the ground. It was almost worth it for the sensation.

  The idea of travelling had begun to grow as soon as it became clear that Hari was an easy baby. Damson had become determined to cut loose from almost every aspect of the barren life she had built for herself at Fenning almost as soon as Leeta had erupted into her life.

  She resigned from the practice and put Swine Cottage on the market. With plenty of savings and a young and portable baby to look after, travelling seemed obvious while she decided what to do next. Leeta’s physical presence had brought back memories of India and what had happened there. Why not return, carrying the triumphant end-product of that long-ago disaster, and consign the whole sorry business to the past where it belonged? She examined herself closely to make sure this was a reasonable thing to do. Without anyone she trusted with her secrets to advise her, she had to give herself permission.

  If she was to go travelling with Hari, it was important to do so before he got mobile but after he had had his immunisations. She brushed up on how to keep him and herself safe, and gave him his antimalarial medication crushed up in his mashed banana. She would keep away from wet, mosquito-infested areas, and make for the airy hills as fast as she could. She bought a pop-up cradle with an integral mosquito net that had been impregnated with an effective insect repellant.

  She arrived in the relatively cool month of February, travelling between places she hadn’t visited before in easy stages while she built up her courage for the main event. She always booked herself into the Ladies’ Carriage on any train. With the rise in what was innocuously called ‘Eve teasing’ – known in the West as sexual assault – she’d read in the Times of India that Ladies’ Carriages, which should have been phased out years before, were more in demand than ever. There was a long official notice nailed to the inside of the carriage door detailing what constituted harassment and promising that Indian Railways exercised zero tolerance. Even singing could be an assault.

  When she’d gone back to Cambridge after Mellita was born, she’d taken the free self-defense classes for women undergraduates, determined never to be so vulnerable again. Tucked into the side pockets of her rucksack were two powerful chilli pepper sprays to deter both human and animal attacks. She imagined that she was too old to attract much attention as a woman this time but thought that being prepared did no harm.

  Hari had been a great hit on trains, creating an instant and healthy bond with both women and men. Toothless grandfathers in enormous red puggaris had stretched out lean hands to touch the top of his head. Young men smiled and women melted at the sight of his large grey eyes fringed with thick dark lashes. She fished him out of his carrying pouch, and dandled him on her knee as much as she could, so he could wave and gurgle at other babies as well.

  Damson noticed that many babies had large black spots painted on their faces like eighteenth-century court beauties and asked a friendly mother why. Instead of answering, she rummaged in her bag, bringing out a little pot of kohl. Dabbing her finger into it, she gestured for Damson to bring Hari closer to her. She made a nice round black mark on his golden cheek, saying: ‘He is very beautiful. You don’t want him to attract jealousy and the evil eye. I have made him ugly for you as a precaution.’

  It was clear when she first arrived that while the women approved of Hari they thought she looked awful. The less polite sniggered and pointed, covering their mouths with the ends of their saris. It was beginning to make her self-conscious and she questioned why she should still dress in such an ugly way.

  One incident in particular encouraged her at last to shed the sexless camouflage that was just a thoughtless habit now. Two women climbed into the same compartment, empty except for her and Hari, asleep on her lap. The older one appeared to be the younger woman’s chaperone, addressed as Auntie. They greeted Damson politely and peered with interest at Hari, asking how old he was and what was his good name?

  Damson said, ‘Hari. He’s nearly five months old.’

  Everyone smiled at his sweet sleeping face. The women got out the usual steel cups and tipped water straight down their throats without stopping to swallow. Damson had a large thermos of chilled boiled water for herself to which she’d added a pinch of salt and the juice of a nimbu or little green lemon. This enabled her to refuse their kind offers to share without feeling rude.

  When he awoke, Hari requested in his own way to sit up with her hands supporting him, and he looked about with a great deal of interest, crowing his pleasure and smiling at his audience. Damson pointed out of the window.

  ‘Look, Hari, in the trees. Can you see the monkey?’

  Hari was perfectly capable of responding to her suggestion, and his small behind wriggled on her knee as he swivelled round to look as she held him under the arms and bounced him gently.

  She glanced at the girl, wearing for an everyday journey a fuchsia silk sari trimmed with silver threads. Damson had heard somewhere that fuchsia pink was the ‘navy blue of India’ – it was simply normal to look so glorious. The train had no corridor, so the two women were her companions until they reached the next station an hour away. The girl’s cap-sleeved blouse or choli, also pink, had silver rosebuds embroidered all over it. Her firm tummy showed above where her sari was meticulously pleated into the petticoat and the rest of the vivid fabric was thrown over one shoulder.

  The girl’s auntie was dressed in dark green cotton with a geometric pattern in subtly glossy red silk woven into the selvedge. The older woman’s brown midriff emerged in two folds. Given the prevalence of ‘Eve teasing’ a chaperone was a vital necessity, just as this kind of protection had been needed in Europe in wilder, earlier times.

  Damson glanced down at herself. On her feet were ugly greying trainers. Her legs were hairy as she never bothered to shave them. She wore men’s army surplus shorts that were much too big for her and had to be held up with a belt. Over the top she was wearing a baggy T-shirt. Nowhere on her person was the slightest expression of herself as a woman. No colour, no shape, no fold in any fabric, no suggestion of female softness or style. For the first time since she had dumped her femininity in her room at the Vhilaki Guest House, she desired something different. How ridiculous she was, thinking she could make the whole thing go away by dressing like a man.

  She leaned towards the girl and said, ‘I love the colour of your sari. At what age do girls in India usually start wearing one?’

  ‘It varies,’ and the girl smiled and confided: ‘When I was fifteen, my mother was away, so I decided to try on one of her saris. I was so proud of myself when I had dressed up in it that I walked out into the town.’ She giggled, hiding her mouth behind her hand. ‘I thought people were staring at me because I looked so lovely and grown up. But the whole lot was trailing all down the street behind me. Now I always get Auntie to wrap my sari for me. She pulls the waistband really tight.’

  The girl went on, ‘Sorry if you think I am rude, but I always wanted to know. Why do European women dress like men? Or like bad women?’

  ‘Do you think I look like a man?’ Damson asked.

  ‘No, you don’t look like a man,’ she hastened to add. ‘But it is not pretty what you are wearing, and your hair does not look nice. Doesn’t your husband mind?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Damson glossed over the idea of a husband.

  ‘It’s practical, I suppose,’ she added, feeling ashamed as she remembered that even the women breaking stones to make roads wore saris, tucked up neatly out of their way, b
ut still beautifully folded and often coloured. And other women wore salwar kameez – trousers with a tunic – with a dupatta or scarf thrown effortlessly over the shoulder, controlled with fluid gestures of their hands.

  The conversation with the two women had resulted in the younger playing peek-a-boo with Hari, while Auntie wrapped a sari from their luggage around Damson, telling her how nice she looked in apricot. That was the beginning of a change which had been creeping towards her ever since Hari had been put into her arms. She began to experiment after that, buying some embroidered cotton salwar kameez.

  Her hair started to grow out which looked awful. Instead of going to a barber as she usually did and getting it neatly shorn, she gritted her teeth and let it grow. She squeezed lemon juice on to it, and gradually it grew fairer in the sunshine. Holding a baby on her hip made her sway from side to side in a rocking motion that soothed him.

  After a couple of weeks, she moved north, booking herself into the Vasa Hotel in Rikipur. Then it was just a matter of taking the little rack train up into the hills to Hunters’ Halt. When she booked her ticket, she’d found out that there was only the one day train these days, and you had to request a stop at Hunters’ Halt, otherwise the train just went straight on up to the old hill station of Girigarh. This chimed with the mysterious absence of the Vhilaki Guest House from the latest edition of the backpackers’ bible. She could find no trace of it anywhere on the web either, and when she had asked about it down in the town no one seemed to know what she was talking about.

  Damson wasn’t planning to stay up there anyway. She’d left her big rucksack firmly padlocked to a staple in the wall of her room at the Vasa Hotel. She had just a light rucksack with her, with her chilli spray, changes of clothes, nappies, food, ready-to-feed formula and her thermos, plus Hari’s little pop-up cradle strapped to the top. She carried an emergency medical kit with her as well at all times, containing medication as well as disposable latex gloves and sterile syringes. In the peace and privacy of the empty carriage, on the final leg of her journey back into the past, she could feel herself tensing again. She examined herself for pain and scars from her last visit to the Vhilaki Guest House, and then glanced at Hari. Because she had him, it should be possible to close the loop whatever she found there. She realised she didn’t have any expectations. The demands of looking after a baby anywhere, let alone in India, were all-consuming and elbowed out other emotions.

  Although it was already quite hot on the plain, even early in the morning, it grew cooler as they clanked slowly through the forest ever upwards, the sun dappling through the trees into the carriage. She’d popped up Hari’s little travel cradle and settled it on a plastic bag on the carriage floor, lifting him from his carrying pouch and laying him on the sheepskin inside that she used as a mattress.

  After her visit to the Vhilaki Guest House, she planned to settle into a villa she had rented near the beach in Goa for a proper holiday. There she would see if she could experiment with getting some new Western-style women’s clothes made up from sari fabrics. She craved colour. Maybe she would have her eyebrows and legs threaded. She sighed when she thought of the prettiness of sheer youth that she’d wasted with her stubborn concealment. Drifting and dreaming in this novel world of womanhood, she was brought back to the present by Hari grumbling.

  She rubbed antibacterial gel onto her hands and took out and opened a bottle of ready-made formula. She screwed a sterile disposable teat to the neck and then unzipped the mosquito net to lift Hari out, settling him into the crook of her left elbow to feed. Mothering Hari never failed to give her intense pleasure – a joy she’d believed would never be hers as she moved into her forties – even when he woke her several times in the early nights.

  He was not at all what she’d assumed babies were like. But then she was so completely his that he had nothing to complain about and enjoyed an excellent digestion. The trouble with being a GP is that she had experienced far too many sick, miserable babies, rather than healthy, happy ones.

  She reminded herself regularly that her daughter could change her mind months or even years down the track. Damson was irretrievably bound with hoops of steel to her grandchild so it made no difference when this happened. She told herself that this was Leeta’s absolute right although she trembled at the prospect.

  When she woke at four in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, she conjured all kinds of possibilities to test her own ability to bear them. She imagined that Leeta never had another child. That her glamorous arranged marriage didn’t work out or the ideal husband found out about her past. There was so much that could go wrong. You couldn’t just leave a living chunk of your life behind and move on all fresh and washed clean, could you? Not without damage.

  By giving her own infant away, Damson had hoped to eliminate that dark and dirty tumble in the straw from her mind and life. But it didn’t work like that. It clung about you like a smell and affected all that you did and were.

  She hoped Leeta was stronger than her. That leaving her baby with someone so closely related, even if relatively unknown, would work a magical charm on her psyche. That she might grieve without knowing it, but that the comfort would be there so that the existence of Hari did not distort her life. Damson had set up a password-protected image account online where she uploaded pictures of Hari that Leeta could access if she wanted. A small part of her didn’t want to share him, but the better Damson knew that she must and sent the login details to Leeta’s private email address.

  Even if Leeta did change her mind, Damson knew that her own life was transformed. There was the faintest tinge of guilt that she and not his real mother should be having this joy, but there was nothing to be done about that. When he had finished his bottle, she lifted him up and sniffed his nappy. Nothing, just a little damp.

  Thirty-four

  Damson

  March 2009

  The rickety rack train with its angled wooden carriages slowed down. They must be approaching Hunters’ Halt by now. She strapped Hari back on to her chest and unpopped his cradle, attaching it to her rucksack and putting everything away. She stood up and pulled the window down, reaching for the door handle standing sideways to avoid squashing Hari.

  Hunters’ Halt was deserted, the ticket office shut up with a rusty padlock. It looked as if no one had used the station for years. She stepped down, trying to remember what it had been like last time. Caroline had been there of course, complaining as usual.

  She got her bearings and set off down the forest track that was the only visible path away from the station and led solely to the Vhilaki Guest House. Vegetation had narrowed it and she didn’t think a Jeep could get through easily now, there was certainly no trace of tyre tracks. She set off, swinging along the path over a thick carpet of fallen leaves with Hari lying against her breast. She could hear birds but little else, and stopped from time to time to rest, propping Hari on convenient perches like tree trunks and rocks to ease the weight. She was glad she was still fit.

  At the bottom of the path was the gate with the guardhouse beside it. When she had last been here, a guard armed with a lathi sat on the little verandah, drinking chai and smoking a bidi. But there was no one there now. She went on up the drive, seeing the Guest House off to one side looking dilapidated. It hadn’t been pristine when she was last there, but it now looked like an abandoned farm building with at least one broken window. It was quiet, and she began to feel uneasy, wondering what she had brought herself and her little boy into.

  Everything was very overgrown, and she realised that she had no sense there were any horses. She glanced over to the stable block. The big door was half open and she went over and pushed against it.

  Even the smell of the horses was gone. Sunlight fought its way through dirty, cobwebbed windows. She couldn’t remember exactly which stall Ronny had led her into. She wandered slowly between them. Nothing was left, not even straw on the floor or traces of the meagre feed rations which was all the skinny horses wer
e ever given. She didn’t want to be there and walked rapidly out through the door, leaving it open behind her.

  She turned left and went up the main drive towards the Hunting Lodge itself, an incongruous red brick Tudorbethan pile in the middle of the jungle. Ronny had told her that it was built by one of his great-grandfathers to entertain British and Indian grandees for a spot of shikar up in the hills, and maybe a few nautch girls, champagne and revelry, well away from the memsahibs. She remembered laughing at the time. An enormous peepal tree had heaved the bricks apart and one corner of the house was becoming detached.

  The front door was closed. Maybe it was less painful to find it deserted. What else had she expected, after all? It meant she would have to hang around for a few hours until the rack train slowly creaked down and stopped at her request around four o’clock. She and Hari could while away the time wandering in the woods, bird watching, eating a picnic and resting in the shade.

  Had everyone gone? There was no way of finding out what had happened up here, but she assumed it was too remote now to be viable. That no one like Ronny had emerged who wanted to live in shabby semi-feudal splendour in the middle of nowhere in the twenty-first century.

  She tried the door, turning the cast-iron ring with both hands and pushing. To her surprise it gave and she found herself in the baronial hall with chequerboard tiled floor across which drifted dried leaves.

  As she stood looking around in the dimness, she heard a very faint sound and tensed. Where had it come from?

  She ventured across the hall floor her arms wrapped around Hari’s warm little body and pushed open the door to one of the reception rooms. The sound became louder and she identified it as gasping breaths. She could also smell vomit.

  ‘Is anybody there?’

  She moved over to the window where heavy velvet curtains were open a crack, and pulled them back, looking round the room to see where the sounds came from. Whoever the sufferer was, they didn’t sound in a fit state to mount an attack.