Daughters of India

by Jill McGivering

  ‘Where’s Gwen?’

  She shrugged. ‘Playing out.’

  ‘You’re Isabel, aren’t you? You’re not as pretty as my sister.’

  She raised her eyes and looked at him with cool confidence. ‘I’m an Indian princess.’

  ‘Liar.’ He sounded unsure. He turned on his heel and left.

  She turned her attention back to the book. The next page showed a tea plantation. Indian ladies with silver studs in their noses and brightly coloured saris, indigo and sunshine yellow, plucked leaves and threw them into the wicker baskets slung on their backs like babies. She traced the outline with her forefinger, imagining the textures, the close, fetid smell of the tea, the warmth.

  ‘You better put that down. I’ll tell.’ He was back.

  ‘Tell all you like. I don’t care.’

  He came closer and peered over her shoulder. He smelt of damp earth and sweat. When he reached out a hand to the book, his fingers were stained blue with ink. He turned a few pages and pointed to an illustration. It was a set of drawings of Indian snakes, ranged in size from small grass snakes to giant pythons.

  He pointed to one of the largest. ‘Bet you’ve never seen a snake like that.’

  ‘My mother killed one. In the bedroom. Beat it to death with her hairbrush.’

  His eyes widened. ‘Don’t believe you.’

  She shrugged, turned back to the book. ‘Suit yourself, Know-It-All.’

  ‘Know-It-All yourself.’

  She held the book away from him until he pulled a face and ran out of the room.

  At five o’clock, the three of them sat together round the tea table. Jonathan’s eyes ranged over Isabel, looking to find fault.

  The maid brought in a plate of thickly sliced buttered bread and a dish of blackcurrant jam and placed them on the cloth.

  ‘I’ll say grace.’ Jonathan watched while Gwen put her hands together and bowed her head. Isabel hesitated, then did the same. ‘For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.’ He turned to Isabel. ‘You didn’t say Amen.’

  ‘Did.’

  Gwen looked from one to the other.

  Jonathan helped himself to bread and took control of the jam dish.

  ‘You can have some.’ He spooned a dollop of jam onto his own plate, then another onto his sister’s. ‘Don’t let her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She shouldn’t be here.’

  Gwen blinked. ‘She’s my friend.’

  Jonathan glared. ‘I’m your brother.’

  ‘Keep your stupid jam.’ Isabel took a piece of bread and bit into it. ‘I don’t want it anyway.’

  The maid walked back into the room with a jug of water and they fell silent. Afterwards, when the maid brought slices of fruit cake, Jonathan switched round the plates so Isabel had the smallest piece.

  When they were finishing, Jonathan tapped a spoon on the edge of the glass to demand attention.

  ‘Notice is hereby given that Miss Isabel Winthorpe is sent to Coventry.’

  Isabel didn’t know where Coventry was. She licked her finger and gathered up cake crumbs.

  Jonathan looked at Gwen. ‘Cards, after?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘If it’s fine tomorrow, we could take a picnic up the fell. I’ll ask Cook to cut sandwiches.’

  Gwen considered Isabel. ‘So she can’t come?’

  Isabel felt herself flush. ‘I wouldn’t want to.’

  Jonathan made a pantomime of looking round. ‘Who can’t come? Who do you mean?’

  Gwen looked sideways at Isabel, giggled.

  ‘Is there someone else here? I can’t see anyone.’

  ‘Neither can I.’

  ‘You’re blind, then.’ Isabel hunched her shoulders. ‘Blind and stupid.’ Tears pricked hot. The bread in her hand blurred and swam.

  When the others finished eating and scraped back their chairs, Isabel stayed alone at the table. The door banged shut behind them. A moment later, their muffled voices drifted through the wall from the sitting room. A shriek of laughter from Gwen. The thud of a chair.

  Isabel counted to twenty, then followed. The others sat opposite each other at the felt-topped card table. Jonathan, his back to the door, slapped out two piles of cards. Their shoulders stiffened as she crept in but neither lifted their eyes to acknowledge her. She plucked the India book from its place in the bookcase, then retreated with it to the window seat, curled against the cold glass in the narrow hiding place behind the drawn curtain and touched the pages, one after another, in the semi-darkness.

  The days settled into a pattern. Jonathan and Gwen disappeared outside together for hours at a time and came back muddy, ruddy-faced and triumphant. Isabel trailed around the silent house. Sometimes she splashed in the beck at the bottom of the garden, piling stones to make a dam, or sat alone on the swing, watching her feet rise up against the dappled green and black of the fell and slowly fall again.

  In the house, she sought out new hiding places that allowed her to disappear. She lay in the thin gap between the back of Mr Whyte’s desk and the lip of the window sill or sat cross-legged under the writing bureau, concealed by its chair.

  With four days to go before Jonathan’s return to school and six before their departure for the Misses Ellison, Mrs Whyte took Jonathan and Gwen into Skipton to visit the outfitters there. The weather turned and soured.

  Long after they’d left, Isabel stood at the window and gazed out at the altered landscape. The fields smoked with low mist. The fell and the peaks above the valley disappeared in cloud. The cows shifted their feet and stamped and puffed steam.

  Finally, when she sensed that they might soon return, she took her book and crawled between the legs of the writing bureau. She drew the spindly chair into place behind her and pulled down its cushion to form a screen between her hiding place and the rest of the room. It was draughty against the skirting board. Balls of dust clung to her socks like burrs. She drew her knees up, rested the book on her tilted thighs and began to read.

  Doors slammed. Voices in the hall, first Gwen and her mother, then Jonathan chipping in with a short remark, a shuffling of coats and shoes. She looked at her watch. Another hour to lunch. They’d taken an early bus. The page in front of her showed the Indian jungle. It became fraught as she clenched the book, hunched her back more tightly against the wall and waited to be discovered.

  The door opened. The sound of footsteps shifted from wood to rug and back to wood as someone crossed the room. She strained low against the floor and looked through the fencing of wooden chair and table legs. Jonathan’s polished, laced shoes. He stood at the window, looking out towards the hidden fell as she had done. She closed her eyes. He would sense her here, she was sure. He would know. Her breath and heartbeat boomed in the room.

  A low scrape. He lifted the window by a few inches. Cold pressed in at once and the mild patter of drizzle. She strained to look. The feet turned and crept towards her. She was found then. She shrank against the wall and floor, bracing herself. The shoes stopped right in front of the bureau. She held her breath and closed her eyes. The shudder of a drawer opening, a rummage of papers, a vexed tut. The drawer closed and a second opened, then a third as he searched. He smelt of sweat and the woolly dampness of outdoors. His movements were stealthy. Whatever he wanted, it was a secret.

  A sigh. He closed the final drawer and returned to the window. She pressed forward to peer round the edge of the desk to watch. He had a cigarette in his hand, one of his mother’s, stolen from her case. A match scraped, bloomed into flame, and the cigarette swam with smoke. He bent over, one hand just above his knee as if he were playing leapfrog, the other holding the cigarette, and smoked in sharp puffs, blowing balls of smoke out through the raised window to disperse in the mist.

  As he smoked, his body softened. Its tension seemed to gather into wisps and float out of the house in the used smoke. She wondered what it felt like to smoke, how it tasted. It was oddly intimate
to observe him, unseen. Her own body relaxed with his.

  It happened in a second. Quick footsteps in the hall. The door flung open.

  ‘Jonathan!’ His mother. ‘What are you doing?’

  The window shut with a bang. Jonathan coughed, spluttered into his hand. Finally he said: ‘Just letting a fly out.’

  On her knee, the book tipped and slid. She grabbed to stop it falling to the floor.

  His mother crossed to the table, turning her back on him. ‘I shan’t join you for lunch. Cook’s sending a tray up. I’m going to rest in my room this afternoon. I know the weather’s a bore. You’ll just have to amuse yourselves indoors.’

  ‘Of course.’ All the time she spoke, Jonathan waved a discreet arm, dispersing the smoke.

  Mrs Whyte picked up her spectacles and book and turned back to him. ‘Another fly?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well, leave it, darling. Live and let live. Look after the girls, would you?’

  She left the room. Once the door closed, Jonathan exhaled a stream of smoky breath, ran a hand over his hair. A moment later, he too rushed out and Isabel found herself alone once again. She stretched out her legs and bounced them on the floor. Her numb buttocks slowly prickled back to life as she rubbed them. She turned the page on the jungle. An ancient Indian fort with red clay walls appeared and she dipped her head to read the text beneath. Cigarette smoke lingered in the room.

  A crack. A creaking floorboard, she thought. A wicker chair. The fort dated back to the seventeenth century. The Mughal era. She traced the word in her mind. A bubble drawing at the side of the page showed a grand Indian man in a red headdress. It was so neatly flush against his skull that it looked painted on. He was portrayed in profile with a pearl in his ear.

  A pop and roar. Burning. She stretched forward to look. The waste-paper basket by the window jumped yellow and orange with flame. She shoved the cushion and chair out of the way and scrambled out on hands and knees, abandoning the Mughals. The stray balls of paper in the metal basket were alight. The rising heat caught her full in the face, pressed her back. She looked wildly round the room for water. Nothing. The flame, jumping, reached for the hem of the curtain.

  ‘Fire!’ The hall was empty. She ran down the backstairs to the kitchen. Cook would know what to do. ‘Fire!’

  Jonathan stood beside Cook at the kitchen table. He picked at leftovers as Cook prepared lunch. ‘Don’t tell fibs.’ He scowled at her, went back to chewing a stray piece of ham.

  ‘In the sitting room.’ She turned to Cook. ‘The waste-paper basket.’

  Jonathan dropped the ham. For a moment, he looked stricken. He grabbed a basin from the shelf beside the stove and filled it with water. ‘Take this.’ He pushed it into her hands. She stood, dazed, then turned and rushed back upstairs. Her dress grew a dark, cold patch at her waist where the water slopped.

  The sitting room was transformed. The air swam with smoke. The waste-paper basket, now a red-hot cylinder, brimmed with fire. Above it, the curtain flapped. The material was singed and dotted with rising sparks. She threw the water at the fire, soaking her feet. A shot of sooty steam caught her in the face and blinded her. She twisted backwards.

  ‘Out of the way.’ Jonathan, shouldering her to one side. He hurled a bucket of water at the sodden remains. A splash, then a final exhausted pall of smoke. They stood back. A black mess of fire-chewed pulp and a charred waste-paper basket. The soft tissue at the back of her throat pulsated.

  Cook rushed in, carrying a tin tray of water. She hesitated on the rug, stared at the debris. Mrs Whyte pushed in from behind her.

  ‘What on earth …? In heaven’s name!’

  Jonathan drew himself up. ‘It’s all right, Mother.’

  His mother stood between them now, staring down in horror at the singed floor, the quietly smoking heap of water and ash. ‘What happened?’

  Jonathan rounded on Isabel. ‘Ask her.’ His eyes were cold. ‘I was in the kitchen. Isn’t that right, Cook?’

  Isabel stared. He knew, surely. He’d been the one smoking.

  Mrs Whyte raised her arm and pointed to the door. Her lips pressed into a tight line. ‘Go to your room, Isabel.’

  Isabel opened her mouth to speak.

  ‘At once.’

  As she left the room, the atmosphere in the room punctured and sank in her wake.

  ‘Dreadful girl.’ Mrs Whyte’s voice was a breathy whisper. ‘Never again.’

  Chapter Three

  Delhi, 1933

  Isabel didn’t want to attend the party. The cold season was well underway and the gossip, the jokes, the faces were already stale. Isabel had been out riding much of the day. Now she wanted to bathe in a hot tub, curl up with a supper tray in her room and finish her book.

  Her mother appeared in the sitting room late in the afternoon to find Isabel curled in a chair, reading, and plucked the book from her hands.

  ‘What’s this?’ The corners of her mother’s mouth turned down in distaste. ‘Politics?’

  Isabel took back her book.

  ‘It won’t give you any advantage in conversation. This isn’t London.’

  It wasn’t. She had finally been allowed to join her parents in Delhi after endless years of exile in England. Most recently, she stayed with her aunt in London where she was paraded at dinners and parties in the search for a husband. There were few eligible young men available. The Great War had depleted the stock.

  Her mother settled into her chair, picked up a magazine and rang for tea. Isabel turned her eyes back to her book.

  ‘What are you wearing this evening?’ Her mother leafed through the magazine. ‘What about the blue with the sequins?’ She lifted her eyes. ‘Please, Isabel. The Cawthornes matter.’

  Isabel closed the book.

  ‘You need to make more of yourself, darling.’ Her mother leant forward. Her eyes, as she looked Isabel over, were anxious. ‘Daphne says there may be good prospects. Bertie’s bringing two unmarried lieutenants.’

  ‘Poor things.’ Isabel smiled. ‘I bet the Broadside girls go. The lieutenants won’t stand a chance.’

  ‘The Broadside girls are very pretty.’ Her mother hesitated, choosing her words with care. ‘But you have lovely qualities, Isabel.’ She paused. ‘And a perfectly nice figure.’

  Isabel said quietly: ‘I’d much rather you went along without me.’

  ‘Oh, Isabel.’ Her mother frowned, turned her eyes for a moment to her magazine. She turned a page, then looked up again. ‘And this time, please don’t give away your age.’

  ‘Is it so dreadful to be twenty-two?’

  ‘It would be dreadful to turn twenty-three without an engagement.’

  Abdul brought in the tea tray. Her mother surveyed the sandwiches and scones and took control of the teapot. Yes, said Isabel, she would wear the blue.

  The Cawthornes lived in a grand bungalow on the outskirts of New Delhi. The driver, his turban scraping the roof of the car, turned in through grand gates. As they curved round to the left, the approach came into view, lit by two lines of candles, which flickered in low terracotta pots. The front door stood open, throwing a stream of light across the steps and onto the gravel beyond.

  They stepped out of the car. Isabel stood for a moment, breathing in the heavy fragrance of rotting vegetation, overripe flowers and recently watered grass. The strains of stringed instruments drifted through from the back of the house. On the far side, the jungle reached towards them with its thickly clotted darkness.

  The houseboy took their wraps and ushered them through the entrance hall and central passageway towards the back of the house where French windows opened first onto the verandah, then gave way to lawns and flower beds below.

  The main lawn was peppered with guests, standing in clusters, drinks in hand. The vivid colours of the ladies’ dresses and flashing jewels on milk-white throats shone against the sombre black and white of the gentlemen’s evening dress. Here and there, military uniforms flashed polished button
s. Flaming torches stood tall in the flower beds. Servants crept silently amongst the guests, carrying trays of drinks in white-gloved hands.

  A marquee on the far side of the lower lawn hinted at dinner. Across from it, a trio of Anglo-Indians sat together in front of the rhododendrons and tickled the night air with music. Isabel found herself smiling. She had no doubt that some of the conversation, some of the people, would bore her. But this, with all its cloying scents and old-fashioned conventions, was the India she loved and she was grateful to be home.

  ‘You’re here! How marvellous! Now the party can really begin!’

  It was Mrs Cawthorne’s standard greeting to everyone. She stepped forward to embrace Isabel’s mother. She was a plump woman, the daughter of an army major and wife of a colonel. Her own sons, both recently married, had secured commissions in Indian regiments. Isabel’s mother, who had seemed subdued in the car, now ignited and the two women fired off sparks of compliments and questions with easy graciousness.

  Isabel hung back, watching and listening. Most of her parents’ friends, who’d once seemed such a dynamic force in India, struck her now as old-fashioned. All their stories were of past exploits. All their talk was news of those who had retired to England. Their only response to India’s current politics was a sad shaking of heads and frowns of confused disappointment.

  She looked sideways at her father who stood patiently waiting as Mrs Cawthorne and his wife talked on. His eyes moved from one powdered face to the other but his thoughts strayed elsewhere, she could tell. His hair was thinning and his newly exposed forehead shone with sweat.

  A servant paused to offer round a tray of drinks and she took a gin tonic.

  She headed off alone towards the groups of younger people gathered on the far side of the lawn. Bertie and his army friends were horsing about, voices loud, faces ruddy. The Broadside girls, all attention, giggled at their sides.

  Isabel joined a group nearer her own age, made up of two young married couples, including one of her oldest friends, Sarah, and her new husband, Tom Winton, and Frank, an IAS officer whose wedding date was fixed for the end of his current tour. Sarah was grilling him for details about his plans, which he clearly struggled to supply.