Lure of the Riptide

by Steve Turnbull

  Lure of the Riptide

  A Maliha Anderson Novella

  by

  Steve Turnbull

  Lure of the Riptide by Steve Turnbull.

  Copyright © 2016 Tau Press Ltd. All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978-1-910342-63-3

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the authors’ imaginations or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system without permission of the publisher. The moral right of the contributors to be identified as the authors of their work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

  Published by Tau Press Ltd.

  Cover by Jane Dixon-Smith (jdsmith-design.com).

  Ebook Design by Dave Higgins (davidjhiggins.wordpress.com).

  Contents

  i

  ii

  iii

  iv

  v

  vi

  vii

  viii

  ix

  x

  xi

  xii

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  To Ruchi Singh.

  Lure of the Riptide

  A MALIHA ANDERSON Novella

  i

  Maliha knew she should simply walk away.

  She glanced along the Pondicherry beach. The waves of the Indian Ocean rolled in on the ebbing tide without the slightest concern for the naked body they had deposited on the sand. A cluster of fishing boats bobbed in the distance, perhaps half a mile out, only silhouettes against the brightness of the early morning sun.

  She turned inland to see if anyone was watching. Beyond the breakwater, the early morning life of White Town would be moving to and fro along the roads she could not see. The French-looking seaside houses stretched along the front.

  But there was no one close to her. No one to see the woman’s body lying face down in the sand, her straight black hair a bedraggled halo and the darker tone of her skin marking her as a native, just as Maliha herself was: native but a stranger in the land of her parents.

  She considered the possibility of leaving the woman to the crabs and gulls, but it was no more than a passing thought.

  There was a straight gash in the skin, about an inch long, located halfway between the ribs and the rise of her buttocks. The sea had cleaned the deep wound and its edges were well-defined. It looked to be the work of a broad-bladed knife or perhaps a sabre. She moved closer.

  Her grandmother did not have to be present for Maliha to hear her bitter words. Will you dishonour your dead mother by tainting yourself?

  It was the last day of her mother’s funeral rites—the only day Maliha was able to take part, because she had arrived too late to carry out the rites herself. A distant female relative she only vaguely recognised had been given the duty, since Maliha’s Aunt Savitha was not permitted.

  For a year after performing the rituals a person could not be involved in a wedding, and Maliha’s cousin Renuka was due to be married in a few months. The family would not have cared if Maliha was tainted. She was only a half-breed and an excuse not to invite her would have been the perfect solution.

  Maliha moved around to the woman’s feet. Her skin was not bloated, so she had not been in the water very long. The soles of her feet were not heavily calloused, which meant she was not of the lowest castes. She was not completely devoid of adornment; there was a thin chain around her ankle. Maliha bent over awkwardly in her corset and layers of dress, leaning on her stick, to peer at the links.

  They looked as if they might be silver. It was not the finest work but good nonetheless. It was certainly not cheap.

  Maliha stood up straight and stretched her back, settling the corset back into position. Refusing to wear a sari was her rebellion against her grandmother. It did not amount to very much but after years at Roedean School, Maliha still felt more comfortable in the defensive shield of so many layers than the revealing looseness of Indian dress.

  Perhaps the girl had been killed for her dowry. Maliha could not see her face but her skin said she could not be much older than Maliha, if at all. If she was a bride with a decent dowry it would not be at all surprising. Women had no value beyond their bride price and their ability to produce healthy male heirs. Even the simplest logic could reveal the long-term unworkability of that viewpoint.

  With both of Maliha’s parents killed in the fire that consumed the house, and her father holding patent on a number of devices as well as being well paid by the British government, Maliha herself would be worth a considerable sum—sufficient fortune to be independent—as long as the legalities could be worked out. Grandmother was satisfied by this because it meant that Maliha should be easy enough to marry off. She wanted nothing more than to get such a headstrong, disobedient, crippled, and—worst of all—educated girl out of her life.

  There was the faint shadow of old bruises on her arms and legs. Her wrists bore the remains of old blisters and healed burn marks. Maliha suspected that if she could examine the woman’s scalp she would find more evidence of punishment.

  Settling her feet in the sand, Maliha used her walking stick to move the woman’s hair away from her face. As young as Maliha. Pretty.

  The question was what should be done.

  The remains of her father’s body were already on their way back to Scotland by the time Maliha had arrived. They had gone by sea since there was no hurry; his ashes were not going to rot during the journey. She would visit his memorial one day.

  But if she reported this body to the authorities, her grandmother would declare her to be tainted and unable to join the funeral rites. It was not that Maliha was particularly religious, as her years in England had put paid to that, but she did not want to give Grandmother the satisfaction of denying her a final chance to say goodbye.

  On the other hand, how could she deny this woman her proper end, preventing her spirit from being allowed to move on to its next life with the proper rituals of her own family, when Maliha wanted that choice herself?

  The sea boomed behind her, gulls screamed above, and the world continued. The world did not care that another woman had been robbed of her life.

  But Maliha cared, even if it was not in her best interests, and even though she knew she would receive no thanks for it. It never was, and she never did.

  *

  Maliha leaned on her walking stick and watched from the edge of the promenade as the two untouchables lifted the woman’s body onto a wooden cart and covered it with an old blanket. They proceeded to drag the cart laboriously up the beach. Its thin wheels cut into the sand.

  She had asked them to hold the body so she could examine the front of the girl’s torso. A longer cut in her stomach showed she had been run through with a sword.

  Once they had mounted the ramp to the boulevard Maliha led the way. The dead girl had most likely come from Black Town—that part of Pondicherry reserved for the wealthier Indians, across the ditch from the European colonials.

  The un-British architecture fascinated Maliha, as did the people themselves. Pondicherry had been acquired by the French East India Company as part of the effort to rival the British. Unfortunately, they were not only late to the party—all the best spoils had already gone to the British and Dutch—but they were also terrible businessmen. The French traders had gone to the wall long before their British equivalent had been disbanded. All efforts to revive the company failed.

  But they left behind a part of India that would be foreve
r France.

  Intermarriage had been common early on, and she doubted any of the putative Europeans living in these houses could claim pure ancestry. Now the segregation was more forceful but the French, while they may have failed to conquer the world, had a laissez faire attitude that infected the whole society.

  Maliha’s thigh ached. She had not intended to have such a long constitutional. She checked the pocket watch her father had given her as a gift when she was sent away to England. It kept better time than the decorative ones women were usually given. The morning was getting on and she needed to get to her grandmother’s house.

  Maliha spoke briefly to the men pushing the cart and told them to take the body to the temple and wait for a priest. It was the best she could do. She found a couple of small coins and placed them on the sea wall.

  Charity blesses the giver, said the memory of her mother.

  ii

  ‘You are late,’ snapped her grandmother from the top of the stairs. ‘What have you been doing? No, do not tell me, I do not want to know. Running about the city without a chaperone like a hussy. I forbid you to leave the house.’

  Maliha mounted the stairs steadily. ‘Don’t worry, Grandmother, you do not need to feel responsible for me. I will not be staying long.’

  In fact she had not been intending to leave Pondicherry. Every night through those long years she had dreamed of returning to her parents, but with them gone there was little to hold her here. Grandmother had made her decision for her.

  She reached the top. Grandmother was a small woman and even Maliha was taller by nearly a head. ‘You are my daughter’s daughter; you must be married off.’

  Only three weeks ago Maliha would have agreed that she had no choice, but now she had an option. ‘I’m sorry, Grandmother, I have a position to fill.’

  A look of horror filled the old woman’s face. ‘You have a job?’

  ‘An elderly lady is in need of company and offered me a place to stay.’ Maliha worded it carefully. It wasn’t a job, and she wouldn’t be paid. But most importantly she would not be hounded day and night, or presented to ugly sons of ugly parents with a view to marriage. Being half-white was not an advantage in the marriage market so the choices would comprise families with ailing businesses needing to be propped up by her dowry—not to mention what she might own outright when her father’s estate was settled.

  ‘When you say ‘lady’?’

  ‘She is of the British nobility, Grandmother.’ Maliha bowed her head slightly. ‘I must get changed.’

  *

  It was the first time she had worn a sari in years. It felt strange and, though it was quite modest, she was embarrassed by the amount of her skin it revealed. Her cousin Renuka helped; otherwise she would not have arrived on time in the courtyard where the ceremony was being held. Renuka had been full of questions about England but Maliha simply told her to hurry.

  The distant female relation was already following the priest’s instructions, the food was laid out—a lot of food—and the close family was sitting around and watching.

  It surprised Maliha again. If this had been a funeral in England, everyone would have been sitting ramrod straight in the pews of a church. Here, people relaxed. It was hard to expel the Britishness from her thoughts, and she was not entirely sure she wanted to. There was security in that discipline. It reminded her once more how out of touch she was with her home.

  When the time came, Maliha knelt awkwardly as the strain triggered shooting pains in her scarred thigh. She accepted the food gifts and offered them to others. The priest talked about her mother’s spirit and how it was now released from its past and could move on. He said her mother’s wisdom and piety would be sure to give her a good next life.

  Maliha was not required to speak, for which she was grateful. It was embarrassing enough being the centre of attention.

  The ceremony came to an end here. There was only one more thing: to give her mother’s ashes to the river. The Ganges was too far away, even by flyer, but they had the second best thing in Pondicherry: the Kaveri, the second holiest river in all India.

  The back gates were opened to reveal carts sufficient in number to carry all the guests. The priest went in the first with Maliha and the close family. The others followed.

  The roads constructed by the French for Black Town were in a grid, just as they were for White Town. The procession exited a side road and headed slowly south. It was past midday and the sun was high, but each cart had an awning that kept the passengers in the shade.

  Although the towns were segregated, there was no bar to either colour crossing into the other zone. The carts turned onto an ornate bridge that would not have looked out of place spanning the Seine. Gaslights topped pillars that grew from the carved dolphins in the stonework of its walls.

  What it bridged was far less savoury; the drainage ditch was also the main sewer, open to the sky. The stench was enough to make one retch, and the air misted with the density of flies. A high tide would help but it needed the monsoon to flush it clean each year.

  They entered White Town. It was not the skin tone that changed much—Maliha herself could almost pass for white—but the bone structure. More faces were European than not.

  They turned south again along a wide boulevard. They could have so easily have been in a port on the Mediterranean Sea. The carts now kept to the right of the road. Several steam-powered, self-propelled carriages puffed by. They were extremely popular in England and the South coast roads were filled with them of a weekend during the summer. They roared, hooted, and thundered up and down the narrow lanes, driven by gentlemen with more money than sense.

  The old queen had been dead these seven years, and under Edward VIII things had changed enormously. In what Maliha had seen of British-governed India and Ceylon, so far, those changes had yet to arrive; but here, in this little France, life was up-to-date.

  A dark green jacket caught her eye. Three French soldiers on the far side of the boulevard were talking animatedly. She stared. Were they hussars? No, half a dozen books on military uniforms sprang to mind and clarified her impressions. They were Chasseurs à cheval, ‘hunters’; they were the intelligence gatherers for the French army.

  Why would a detachment of such soldiers be in Pondicherry? There was certainly no threat of war between France and Britain. The Entente Cordiale was in place and most people seemed to appreciate the increased trade.

  On the other hand, why would they not be? This was as good a place to be as any; perhaps they were training. One of them, blond with a very impressive moustache, turned on his heel and stalked away from the other two. She heard one of them call his name. ‘Louis?’ An unfortunate choice, she thought. His family must long for the world before the Republic.

  ‘Maliha, can you not at least disguise your wanton behaviour?’ snapped her grandmother.

  ‘Why are there French soldiers here?’ she said.

  ‘Well, I am sure I do not know, nor do I have the slightest interest,’ said Grandmother. Maliha turned and directed her eyes demurely at the horse’s hooves clopping along the cobbles.

  There was one other thing that concerned Maliha: the Chasseurs’ weapon of choice was a sabre.

  iii

  The sun was at her back with her shadow stretched across the boulders and into the glasslike water. The tide was coming in. The distorted shapes of weed, sand, and fish twisted beneath the rippling surface.

  There was no sign now of her mother’s twice-burned remains that had been scattered to drift on the waves. Ashes burned once in the fire that had consumed the house, then the second time in the death rituals because you can’t miss out a step on the grounds that it’s already been done.

  And now she was gone, her spirit set free to be born once more. Maliha sighed. If only it were that easy.

  A few clouds floated dreamily across the porcelain blue of the sky. Seagulls hung and then dived. Others bobbed on the surface. If she closed her eyes she could imagine herself in Engl
and, but while she loved the green of it she had no reason to return.

  Her father had been a Glaswegian engineer but he had made his life out here where he met her mother. They had married against the wishes of both families. So, Maliha was born of rebels with their contrary blood flowing through her veins. Perhaps she would visit one day but, in truth, she would rather find somewhere to hide. She did not owe the world any favours.

  But there was the poor murdered girl, who deserved better than some anonymous funeral. The truth should be found out.

  What if a French officer met a young Indian girl and they fell in love? And somehow she was killed by his sword?

  Or, more likely, he seduced her, did what men do, then killed her and tossed her body into the sea in the hope she would never be found. Sadly, that was far more likely.

  ‘Maliha!’

  Maliha sighed and turned to her cousin. Although barely two years separated them, Maliha felt a hundred years older. She had already seen so much more than a woman of her age should, and read every book she could find—including many that no woman would ever be expected to read. Her grandmother would declare her spirit irrevocably unclean if she had even the slightest inkling of that truth. But knowledge was not tainted: only its uses.

  Grandmother had not even asked how Maliha had come to be so scarred and damaged in her thigh that she could not walk without a stick. She probably thought Maliha’s spirit was so unclean it was a natural result. Perhaps she was not that far wrong.

  ‘Maliha.’

  Renuka was suddenly beside her. Maliha had been so far into her own world she had not noticed her approach.

  ‘Have you heard? Arnithi Devanaya is dead—drowned!’

  ‘Who is Arnithi Devanaya?’

  ‘She married Srikanth Devanaya last year,’ said Renuka in a rush. ‘We were not invited, but the wedding was five days long.’

  Maliha stared back out to sea. The girl had a name. And she was a bride.

  ‘Is Srikanth a handsome fellow?’ she asked.

  She could almost feel Renuka’s shrug. ‘What does that matter? His family is very rich.’

  ‘What do they do?’