by Mary Finn
And how had he come to be here at all on that first afternoon when they met, he so far from his work and his lodgings with the Company?
Because only now, when I could see how great the distance was, did I understand what it had meant when she had given up her life as a daughter in this green place. Madan had made it clear that Annapurna was treasured here. Yet she had left it all behind to make a strange new life, and in just a short time that life included me.
I thought how brave she was and how much I missed her and I had to look away then from everybody and stare hard into the sky. But all that was up there were the kites, doing what they always did, drawing black lines over the sun.
THE PROPOSAL
MY MOTHER SAID SHE could not understand Mr Bristol’s new proposal at all, but I was thrilled to hear about it. After our palanquin trips, it was the first interesting thing to come our way in this house.
We were in our room when she told me about it. My mother was standing in front of the long mirror. I was sitting on the window ledge watching her. She was wearing a pale blue silk sari with chikan embroidery, just recently delivered by our lively little tailor from Kashi, and she had a new gold chain that I had not seen before. She was trying it different ways, round her neck, across her forehead, even dangling it over her nose like a bazaar monkey.
“Why does he want to have a picture made of me?” she asked me, over and over. “He can see me whenever he wants to. It was different with your father. He had a feeling about making a picture for himself even if he couldn’t actually do it…”
But then she would break off that particular thought. She would return to Mr Bristol and his reasons.
“He says this Mr Hickey is one of the very best painters who have come to Calcutta to paint all the famous English people. But I am not one of those. Why does he not paint Mr Bristol himself, then? He’s famous enough, or so he tells us.”
I laughed at that thought.
“Mr Bristol is plump and pink like a plucked chicken. No one would want to look at his picture, Ma!”
She glared at me.
“He is kind to you. Don’t you be unkind in return.”
“I know, Ma, I know. But you will make a beautiful portrait lady. He knows that.”
My mother was going to have her portrait painted by one of the best painters in our city. Why was she not excited? It was a better way, surely, to spend her time than filling hookahs or passing around paan or running round a table picking up billiard balls.
When I said that I got another angry look.
“Perhaps I don’t want to be stared at. Perhaps I think it is wrong for people I do not know to be looking at me when I am not there. English people, too. You could never know what they might be thinking. Besides, I know the real reason is that it is just a kind of competition. This Mr Hickey has already painted another Englishman’s Indian bibi and Mr Bristol wants my picture to outshine hers. They are so childish, men. They are worse than fighting cocks.”
But she settled the chain over her forehead and fixed her glossy hair to suit it. If it truly was a competition my mother knew she would have to play her part.
“He has promised me gold drop earrings, Anila, though what I would really like is just to run out on the street and buy a simple bangle with my own money. I wish I knew too whether all this jewellery will be yours one day or not. That’s not written into his famous contract, you know.”
I thought again of the beautiful crimson ring that my father had given her on that last day we were together. I would have cared to have that. I touched my peacock locket for luck. Inside it was a button, a small bone button that had come from one of my father’s shirts. I had found it in our house one day when my mother was ill. It was the only thing of his I had. The storybooks he had made were ruined long ago.
Days went by and it was getting to be high summer and very clammy. The bhistis who were charged with sprinkling water could not keep the dust from rising in the streets and we choked if we did not pull the shades over inside our palanquin. Going out was unpleasant. Everyone said the rains would be late.
I found another good book in Mr Bristol’s library, a book about a sailor left shipwrecked alone on an island. When she was with me in the evenings, and not doing duty with Mr Bristol and his friends, I read some of Mr Robinson Crusoe’s adventures to my mother. She felt he was lost for love more than anything else. Perhaps she was right. But I could find no fairy tales or romances on Mr Bristol’s shelves.
Then on the first day of Asarh the monsoon arrived with a black scowl that made everyone smile and the rains started, as heavy as any I had ever seen. They fell into our fountain like hammers beating on metal. But that was not all. Something else was making a thundering noise, and it was not in the sky but much closer to hand, at our gate. I was standing in the porch, dry as a baby bird, watching the rains because I could not go out, and I saw everything. The durwan opened the gate, which took him a long time, perhaps because of the damp in the lock, perhaps because he was slowed by the rain which could take your breath away with its force. When the gate finally creaked open, four bearers heaved a square plain palanquin through it and staggered over the wet stones up to the porch and set it down.
A bulky man pulled himself out of the palanquin. He was dressed all in grey-green cloth, in cutaway jacket and breeches, with a straw hat that he kept one hand to as he took large steps to reach the porch. The other hand held a packet. He did not run though, unlike the bearers who raced for the poor shelter of the pomegranate tree. Perhaps he could not run because he was quite elderly, or so he seemed to me. He had large English features, especially his nose, but eyes that were soft and sharp at the same time. They were blue. It was no trouble for me to discover this because they were fixed on me in a very direct way.
I was the first person to greet the famous painter Mr Hickey, therefore, though I did not know who he was. He handed me his damp hat.
“Child,” he said. “Pretty child. Is Mr Bristol at home? Not expecting me, but I’ve come anyway. Being in the area, and his my next undertaking.”
I set the hat down on a small table and did a namashkar for him, as my mother had trained me to do. But what startled me was his voice. He spoke in the same accent as my father though his way of talking was gruff.
“Sahib, I will find him. Please step into the hall.”
But Mr Bristol had already arrived though no servant had gone to fetch him. He must have been looking out of his window at the traffic that was braving the sudden rains.
“Mr Hickey. What an unexpected pleasure.” Then, to me, “Anila, run and tell your mother to join us in the salon. At once.”
Upstairs, my mother paced our room, furious.
“I am wearing rags,” she said, “and no jewels except this bangle. How does he expect me to present myself at once?”
She was wearing a kurta pyjama of dove-grey silk, with a white scarf that seemed to be made entirely of cobwebs, so fine was its lace.
“Ma, you look beautiful,” I said. “Come now, please.”
I didn’t believe this Mr Hickey would be impressed by fineries. His eyes were too clever for that.
She freed her braid from its fastening and let it hang, woven through with a white silk thread. Then she took a sweet-smelling bela flower from the bloom vase she kept on our bedside trunk, and clipped it into place just in front of her ear. She draped her scarf over her loosened hair, drawing its fine ends over her shoulders. Then she followed me down to the salon.
Mr Hickey stood up from the winged chair when she came in.
“Afternoon, my dear lady,” he said.
All at once there were so many busy eyes in that room! Mr Hickey’s did what they must. Mr Bristol’s kept count like a Company policeman. Mine were a spy’s.
What I saw was this.
Mr Hickey was looking at my mother just as any proper gentleman would, not at all like Mr Bristol’s usual friends with their furtive habits. He did not offer to kiss her hand – I was su
re he knew better. But he bowed to her.
“Be so good as to step towards the window,” he said to her. “How are you named, good lady?”
She smiled at him, a warm smile, such as Mr Bristol himself rarely received from her. I wondered if he noticed this, but sneaking a look at him, I could see that he was pleased with the event so far. He was hugging himself like a child offered sweet things.
“My name is Annapurna,” she said.
She stood in the window where the green light of the creeper and the grey of the clouds and rain threw soft dark shadows on her face. He asked her to turn this way and that, and, finally, to let down the scarf, “Hope you don’t terribly mind, dear. My work.”
There was his accent again. To hear my father’s tones unsettled me. I wondered if my mother had noticed those echoes too.
He asked me then to fetch the packet he had left in the hall, and when I brought it to him he took from it some pencils and sheets of paper. He motioned to my mother to stay as he had placed her, and then, while we all watched as if this were a puppet show, he made swift marks on his pages. I could not see what he was drawing and I thought it rude to move closer, but I was struck by the speed of his hand.
When he had finished his observations, Mr Hickey asked my mother to sit down, but she remained standing. Then he asked Mr Bristol if he might tour the downstairs apartments of the house. The two of them left us there for some moments. I did not dare move. I felt we were all under some kind of spell that I did not wish to break. Besides, he had taken his drawings with him.
They returned. Mr Bristol was looking a little cross, I thought. But he was the one who spoke.
“My dear Anna,” he said. “Mr Hickey feels that he will do a very fine portrait of you but the lighting in our house is not sufficient. At least it is not properly to the north, he says. He has a room set apart in his own house where he would like you to repair for sittings. Mr Hickey’s daughter has done the service of chaperone in this situation several times before without objection. So I think, though it is regrettable to put you to the trouble of travelling, that you will oblige us both by consenting to this arrangement. I have looked upon Mr Hickey’s first drawings and I am confident that we will all be happy with the outcome.”
My mother merely bowed her head, but I could only just prevent the huge smile I felt inside from reaching my face.
Mr Hickey bowed again, clicked his heels and left us with a rush of the short remarks that seemed to be his personal language.
“Good-day ladies,” he said. “Our next meeting, then. In Garden Reach. My pleasure, entirely.”
Before a word to forbid it could be uttered, I ran after him, as far as the porch. The bearers were just outside with the palanquin but Mr Hickey groaned when he saw that the monsoon had not obliged him by stopping. He put his hat on, hunched his shoulders although he was still safe inside and pushed his drawings further down into the packet he carried. He gave me a long look, sighed and removed one of the fine sheets.
“For you, then. The best of today’s work.”
He winked at me. “Conceal it,” he said.
Then he was gone again, into the rain, to face the struggle with the durwan and his locks that accompanied every exit from our house.
In my hand was what my father had been searching for, so long and so in vain. His Annapurna was there on the cream-coloured page, from the tip of her head to her slender waist, drawn in charcoal and a touch of red chalk, and all the beautiful lines that my father could never make, despite all his attempts. Mr Hickey had found her soul.
THE DOOR BETWEEN HOPE AND FEAR
THUNDERSTORMS AND TOWERS CRASHING down, galloping hooves and groans in graveyards. In storybooks these are the kinds of noises people hear when they get news that shakes their bones. For me, oars squeaking and straining in their locks will sound for ever like the oldest door in the world.
We two have come through the oldest door in the world, Anila, the door between hope and fear. So, little one, don’t look back. It’s closed behind us now.
Without sail, Benu and Hari were rowing the big boat as best they could, just the two of them. It was heavy work but Madan had told them they didn’t have to take us far, just to the next stout tree on the bank side, for tying up.
“That’s what has to be done. Move the boat upriver so no one can tell that the sahib and I have started our journey from this place.”
He did not explain the need for secrecy but waited until we had begun to move. Then he tied a brown cloth wrap on his head and jumped off the boat and joined Mr Walker. It seemed they were going on a walk through the rice fields. Nobody else was wanted along with them, that was clear, not Carlen to carry, nor Anila to draw. I wondered what Mr Walker would do now if he were to meet his great unknown bird tiptoeing through the mud.
We had already seen a bittern in those quiet parts, away from the boats and the shouting on the river. Bittern was Mr Walker’s word, for I had never before seen this bird with a beak like a bayonet. Madan called it the veena bird, and its deep sad voice really did sound like the low notes a good player can pluck from his veena. But this bird was smaller than her kind, he said, and he had before never seen a veena bird with such short wings and a head that appeared to be dipped in honey. That had made Mr Walker very happy. He liked my sketches too.
“You have her sitting on her nest as if it were a throne. My Eveline would love this golden-feathered lady.”
Perhaps Mr Walker merely wanted to get away from the river for a while. For my part I loved the freedom I felt on the water, where the world changed by the moment and the people in it too.
Except for one. Silent as a cat, Carlen had come to stand beside me. I continued to stare outwards until my eyes ached to close but still I knew his gaze was only on me. He rested a knee against the gunwale and blew his breath towards me.
“So, here we are again, hinny.”
Hinny.
Mr Walker had raised his eyebrows when I asked him what that word meant, a night or so ago.
“Hinny, Anila? Where on earth did you hear that good old English word? You get a hinny when you cross a donkey mare and a horse, a mule if it’s the other way round. But most people say mule for either.”
Not Carlen the countryman of course. Now that I knew what he was calling me, I ignored him. But my heart raced. Benu and Hari were occupied up front and, in any case, Carlen was their senior. There was nobody else I might call on if he laid hands on me again. I felt the tip of my pencil and thought it was quite sharp enough to do damage to his fine face.
“You’re looking for your father, hinny? The dark horse? Or maybe I should say the pale horse, considering everything. I know where he is.”
There he was, with his sleek hair and his close-fitting clothes, moving now to stand beside me. He was so close I could smell the mint that he chewed every day, dried mint he kept in a neck bag just as poor Hari kept his precious betel. He held his arms behind his back as if there was something he was guarding from me. I had seen him a couple of times taking food in the cabin when nobody else did, rice and nuts that were already running low. Greedy guts. He was not fat, though, he was lean as a leopard.
Now I wanted to push him into the water. How dare this foul Englishman say he knew anything about my father when even the Company men claimed they had no knowledge of him?
“You’re lying. You couldn’t possibly know. You know nothing about him. He would never be around you. He’d know what you were like, a bully, a filthy bully.”
Carlen laughed.
“The kitten has a rough tongue too! But you see, my puss, I have a good memory for facts. I store the things I see as if they were hooks and ropes and shot powder. You never know when they’ll be needed. One green eye and one blue? Yes, I know where your sire is though I didn’t know that he was that the times I saw him. Let us say you’re not all donkey, Miss Tandy, no matter what’s on view in this pretty picture.”
“Don’t do that! Please be careful!”
/> He was holding my mother’s picture out over the river. If he had been nearer to Benu and Hari their oars would surely have splashed water onto the fine paper until it softened and the chalks ran. But they were up front and straining hard, the oars rasping in the oarlocks, and even my shout didn’t reach them.
“Please give it to me.”
He took the drawing back out of danger and I reached for it. He shook his head. The only consolation was that he was holding it carefully, not bending or twisting the paper, not pressing his thumb down on my mother’s innocent face. Then I saw where he was touching her. He knew I saw it too. He smiled his cat smile and caressed her as I turned my head, sickened. Then abruptly he spoke.
“I like ‘please’. It’s good manners. But that’s not enough for such news as I have, is it?”
“You can’t have news! It’s years since my father left the city and nobody has had any report of him. He would never stay away so long without a reason. So you could never have met him. You must have heard people talk of the way he looked, for everybody liked him, and you’re trying to threaten me with what you’ve heard.”
“I’ll say it once again, then. One green eye, the left, one blue eye, the right. Hair straight and thin. An Irish speech, rude as they come. But you know that, of course.”
I would not let him see what he had done to me. I would not. I stared hard at his neatly trimmed fingernails. They had huge crescent moons in their pits. Perhaps because of all the nuts he ate.
“So then, is the handsome hinny going to take a gamble on my news? And what about this precious picture of yours, what’s that worth in a boat with such dirty wet water everywhere around? Or why not bid for picture and story together, like a wild pledge at Newmarket? Depending on your assets of course. Mine are here.”
He tapped the side of his head, as if to show me where he kept his image of my father. Then he raised up the drawing of my mother again and fanned himself with it. He was smiling.