Daughters of India

by Jill McGivering

  The old magnolia tree rose behind them, splendid now with pink and white flowers. As they approached, a knot of men came into view, gathered under the tree, faces upturned. Isabel strained to see in the half-light. A ragged, sagging figure hung from a bough, twisting quietly on its binding as the men below reached for it. A bonfire guy, she thought, or a scarecrow. It wore Indian dress.

  Her father said: ‘Is he known?’

  The inspector shook his head. They were almost there. Two men gripped the legs, taking the weight between them. Another man slid out above, along the branch, and began to cut through the rope.

  Her father’s voice was grim. ‘Any idea when?’

  The inspector shrugged. ‘Poor fellow is quite cold, sahib.’

  Isabel gave a cry. She broke into a run. The men looked round as the rope snapped and the figure pitched forward, its clumsy fall broken by the men beneath. They staggered under their burden, pitched the corpse sideways onto the grass.

  The men drew back as Isabel propelled herself towards the body and threw her arms across it.

  ‘Rahul. Not Rahul.’

  The front of his shirt was hard with congealed blood. When she tried to grasp him, to pull him towards her, he slipped heavily to one side. His head slumped, his eyes staring and his hair matted.

  She wrapped her arms around his chest and tried to rock him. His body was stiff and unyielding. Where she touched it, blood flaked into dark specks on her fingers.

  Full-blown magnolia blooms were thick in the grass and the warm air was sickly with their sweetness. She closed her eyes. The scent of their childhood, of those endless, hot days when they climbed so high together, tried to see the future.

  ‘My brother.’ She bent over him, touched her hot, wet cheek to his cold one. ‘My poor, dear brother.’

  The wooden door was unlatched. Inside, the courtyard was empty. Isabel stood, breathing hard, looking round. Even the charpoy, there in the shade, was abandoned. She crossed to peer into the windows on the far side.

  ‘Gone.’

  Isabel started, stepped back from the window. A thin, elderly voice from the shadows. A shape there shifted and settled again.

  ‘Packed up and left. Children also.’ The old lady wheezed, coughed. ‘No sign of that husband of hers. He’ll be busy stitching, I suppose. Stitches away all night, some nights.’

  Isabel narrowed her eyes and strained to see in the gloom. The old lady sat on the floor against the wall, wrapped round in a shawl. Her eyes glinted in the half-light. Never again, she thought. Those long, delicate fingers will never stitch again.

  ‘Where was she going?’

  ‘How do I know?’ She shook her head. ‘That baby’s too weak to be going anywhere.’ A thought seemed to strike her and she peered out at Isabel. ‘Is she in trouble?’

  ‘I have news, that’s all.’ Isabel turned away, unable to look the old woman in the eye. ‘About Rahul, her husband.’ She hesitated, thinking about the body that now lay, wrapped in white cotton, in a corner of their garden. ‘My friend.’

  Out in the lane, the rickshaw-wallahs dozed in the shade of their rickshaws. They looked at her with suspicion as she described Sangeeta and the children, asked if they’d seen them.

  ‘Delhi railway station,’ said one at last. He looked her up and down. ‘I took them there myself, so early.’ He held out his hand as Isabel fished in her pocket for baksheesh.

  ‘Such tamasha is there.’ The next rickshaw-wallah chipped in. ‘So few trains, everyone is telling about it. Just people only, fighting each other like animals to get out of the city.’

  She ran back to where her tonga was waiting. As she climbed into the carriage, she wavered. She could simply go home. Go back to the smoking wreckage of the bungalow and to her poor father, waiting there. Leave Sangeeta and the children to fend for themselves.

  She closed her eyes and saw again the shadowy figure of Rahul in her bedroom. His eyes were filled with fear as he turned back to the open window to leave.

  She sat forward and called to the tonga-wallah. ‘Delhi railway station. Jaldee! Quick as you can.’

  He lifted his switch and urged his old horse into a ragged trot.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Asha

  They were crammed inside the carriage like animals, pressed tightly together in that small, airless space, adults and children, sweating against each other on all sides.

  Baby Rupa fell quiet. She was exhausted. She had screamed since the train was first shunted from the sidings into the station and they crawled out from their hiding places beneath the bench seats and shrank back and all manner of shoving, fighting people started to pour on board.

  ‘What to do?’ Sangeeta stopped jigging her daughter and settled her to sleep on her shoulder. The baby was hungry but there was nowhere to feed her. She’d suffocate in that crowd. The pressing tide had drawn Abhishek apart from them and into another corner.

  Pounding feet sounded along the platform and faces stuck in through the windows, tearing at the door handle, begging to be let in.

  ‘No room. Are you blind?’

  Knuckles grasped at the open sills and men inside, close to the door, banged on the fingers to drive them away.

  A whistle sounded. People braced themselves against door and walls. Bold young men on the platform jumped onto the outside of the door and clung there as the train started to move. Asha turned her face away. Anil might be there. Even now, as they stoked the engine and set off, he might spot her and all would be lost.

  The train shuddered as it gained speed. Gritty smoke, billowing down the sides of the train, blew into the carriage. The men by the window drew back a little, coughing and spluttering, and Asha, seizing her chance, pushed Sangeeta forward into the space. They found themselves rammed against a window, which was covered only by fat metal bars. They lifted Rupa, her eyes closed now, higher in Sangeeta’s arms so she could breathe the rushing outside air. Smoke from the engine blew past in sudden patches. Ragged figures along the track lifted their heads and stared. As the train gathered speed, their faces blurred and melted into the parched fields beyond.

  ‘We’ll find my home village,’ Asha said. ‘My baba was telling about it always.’

  She paused, remembering her baba’s stories, long ago when he was still well. They had relatives there, he said. Aunties and uncles and scores of cousins.

  ‘They will hide us.’ She tried to imagine village huts, set in fields. A mud crossroads with a chai stall. A village well where women gathered at dawn and dusk to draw water and exchange gossip. Water buffaloes and goats and peacocks.

  ‘I can teach there.’ She considered. ‘Or if there’s no school, I can start one.’

  Sangeeta didn’t answer. She faced out towards the passing world but her eyes were dead.

  ‘I’ll teach Rupa also.’ Asha reached to stroke the wispy black hair on the baby’s crown. ‘Better to live in the village than the slum. They’ll have a good life, your children.’

  Sangeeta’s eyes closed. She leant her head against the dirty surround of the window, with Rupa limp in sleep on her shoulder. Her face looked altered. Her skin was grey and lifeless. Already, Asha thought, Rahul’s death has tainted her. Outside, the day was heavy with haze and the gathering heat of the sun.

  Thoughts of her baba came to her as she stared sightlessly out at the streaming fields. The young Baba, who curled against her at night when she was still a girl and fell asleep even as she chattered to him, that Baba’s face was distant now. But she remembered his gentle voice and the scent of his skin, a mixture of bidi smoke and sun. Slowly she closed her eyes and let her head loll.

  Bang. Her forehead smashed forward against the bars. Shards of light made a falling tunnel of coloured streaks. She clawed at the air. She felt herself scream but the sound disappeared in the high-pitched shrieking all around. At her side, someone crashed against her, pinned her arm. She heaved, twisted, wrenched it free. Muscles in her shoulder tore.

  The world
tipped under her, then shuddered and became still. Shouts. Moans. A great scrambling and jostling of limbs, of bodies, as the passengers, pinned one on top of another, fought to get upright. Asha put her hand to her head. Her fingers came away hot and sticky with blood. Her shoulder ached. She looked round, dazed. She pressed back against the sloping sides of the train, struggling to get on her feet again.

  Rupa, shaken awake, bawled on her mother’s shoulder. Her face was red with fury. Sangeeta didn’t move. The crash had pitched her into the side of the window. Asha took hold of her shoulders and tried to prise her back.

  ‘Sangeeta.’

  She didn’t respond. She lay slumped forwards, heavy and silent. Her head was gashed along one side. Rupa seemed pinned between Sangeeta’s body and the side of the carriage. Asha prised her loose and took her in her arms.

  ‘Hush, baby girl.’

  The child screamed.

  ‘Hush now.’

  The fields and tracks had disappeared from the window. Instead, she saw a broad expanse of sky, cut through by an arching tree branch. She lifted one hand from the baby to grasp the window bars and, steadying herself, turned to look back into the carriage.

  The metal shell had twisted. Everything hung at an angle. On the far side, passengers, old and young, scrambled in a misshapen heap, writhing and climbing on each other to get purchase, to find some way to stand again. An elderly hand protruded from the mess of bodies. It opened and closed uselessly. A young man, pulling himself up, trod on it as he scrambled through.

  She blinked, swallowed, tried to breathe. Somewhere deep in the fabric of the train, a deep metallic grinding sounded, as if the Earth’s plates shifted beneath them. Shouts swelled in her ears.

  ‘Open the door.’

  ‘Get out.’

  The metal frame of the door had buckled. It lay low to the ground. Men stood on the fallen and shouldered each other aside to take turns at heaving on the handle. The door was stuck fast.

  ‘Help us.’ A woman’s voice, in the far corner. ‘Someone. Please!’

  Women struggled to find children in the chaos, husbands to find wives. Broken limbs hung at odd angles. Faces ran with blood. The screams became more desperate.

  Asha twisted. One hand clasped Rupa against her neck. The other held fast to the window bar and clung to it as she pulled herself higher. Her eyes followed the line of the tree branch down to the trunk until the edge of fields and the roofs of shacks came into view. The wheels of the carriage along this side were raised clean off the track. The whole bogie had tipped onto one side.

  A guard ran past, his eyes wild with panic. His turban was splattered with dirt and the fingers of his white gloves were streaked with soot. Thick black smoke, peppered with burning ash, blew in his wake. Woodsmoke. Asha strained to listen through the chaos, the shouts. The low crackle of approaching fire.

  Her stomach contracted. She heaved at the metal bar in a frenzy. It didn’t even shudder in its frame. Flakes of paint cut into the flesh of her fingers.

  Finally, she pulled her hand away and sucked at the bleeding. She pressed Rupa’s wet face against her neck and stroked her fine downy hair, trying to comfort the child as she screamed.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Isabel

  The stationmaster was polite but firm.

  ‘One train only was leaving today, madam. Fifteen, twenty minutes ago.’ He shook his head. ‘Very bad business.’

  They were alone in the first-class waiting room. Overhead, the fan beat out a steady rhythm as it turned.

  ‘My friend is an Indian lady. She had a new baby with her. And her son. A boy about this height.’

  The stationmaster’s face was blank.

  ‘Did you see them?’

  He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. Muffled voices drifted in to them from the pressing, jostling crowd in the main concourse.

  ‘Please, madam.’ He shook his head. ‘We are having so few men. What to do?’

  Isabel took a deep breath. ‘Where was it heading?’

  ‘Down train, madam.’ He lifted a gloved hand and seemed about to say more when the telephone in the box on the wall started to ring. His face clouded as he listened.

  When he replaced the receiver, she said: ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing, madam. Nothing.’ He looked shaken as he opened the door to usher her out.

  Isabel hesitated. ‘Something’s happened to that train, hasn’t it?’

  He looked anguished. ‘Please, madam. I must—’

  ‘Where is it?’

  He shrugged, helpless. ‘Almost reaching first station. Madam, police are coming.’

  The tonga-wallah urged his horse to the next point along the line and set Isabel down outside the small station. She ran through the noisy concourse to the platform on the far side. Families sat amongst piles of battered bags and cases, tied round with string. Children bawled. Boys ran helter-skelter through the chaos, snatching and chasing.

  She was the only European in sight and many of the Indians, huddled there, drew back from her as she pressed through the crowd and made her way down the length of the platform to its end. She climbed down rough steps to the side of the track. A couple of ragged boys, picking at rubbish by the sleepers, lifted their heads and stared.

  She walked briskly along the grassy verge, which skirted the track. Her boots chafed her feet. A rat ran out of the undergrowth in front of her and disappeared with a flourish of tail into the ditch.

  As the station fell away behind her, the morning air settled, solid and still. For some time, the only sounds were the dewy swish of grass at her feet and her own laboured breathing as she hurried.

  There was a curve in the track ahead, bordered by trees. As she emerged from the copse, dark shapes rose. They were low and shimmered with smoke, which hung heavy in the sky. She quickened her pace. Noises reached for her. Screams and cries. She began to run.

  The engine had careered right off the track, gouging a thick brown scar down the embankment. It was engulfed in a dense cloud of black smoke, streaked with flashes of red where fire raged and spread. The driver and the stoker stood above, on the top of the embankment. Their faces were masks of shock. The flames threw red and yellow patterns across their skin.

  The engine had dragged the next few carriages off the rails. They were such a mess of mangled wood and metal that it was hard to tell where one section ended and the next began.

  The first carriage blazed. Its metal skeleton shone white-hot in the flames. Its doors had burst open and flapped now at odd angles, like broken limbs. Isabel looked away. If anyone were trapped inside, it was already too late for them.

  She climbed, panting, along the bank. Here and there, passengers, who had thrown themselves from the burning carriage or been dragged from it, lay on the grass. A man writhed, his arm torn open. White bone glistened in the sunlight, surrounded by shredded muscles. Beyond him, a severed foot had caught in a train wheel. Its skin was crepe paper, wrinkled and thin.

  A woman leant forward over her child, holding it in her arms and rocking it with a steady, calming motion. The child’s eyes were closed and its body still.

  A Sikh in railway uniform ran back and forth. Isabel crossed to him. His eyes were wild and his temples bubbled with sweat.

  ‘Sabotage.’ He grasped her arm. ‘Look.’ He lifted his leg. His trousers were stiff with blood.

  Isabel tried to lead him away from the burning wreckage. As he dragged himself after her, his face became confused.

  ‘So many of people. Poor people, only.’

  He seemed to teeter and lose his balance. A moment later, he sank abruptly to the ground and sat there, dazed.

  Isabel eased him onto his side in the grass and he lay, eyes open, staring sightlessly at a clump of weeds growing out of the bank.

  The air swarmed with soot and sparks. The fire was moving quickly. Already a second carriage blazed, shrouded in thick smoke. It was a third-class compartment with caged windows. White knu
ckles shone on the bars as hands within grasped and tugged.

  For a moment, Isabel stared, her hands at her face, unable to move. The dreadful wailing and crying reached a fresh pitch. She clambered down the bank towards the carriage and reached towards the window. As she seized the bars and tried to prise them free, to loosen them, unseen hands within grasped at her fingers. She pulled back. Her hands were slippery with the blood and sweat of those trapped inside. The flaking paint blistered with the heat of the encroaching fire. Desperate, screaming faces swam in the smoke.

  She stood back, looked hastily around, then picked up a stone, angled it between the bars, pressed against it with all her strength. It broke into two in a cloud of dust. Her hand flew along the bars as she slipped sideways, skinning the backs of her fingers. The metal seemed barely scratched.

  She shook her head and wiped off her eyes with the top of her sleeve.

  ‘Please God.’ She turned away from the imploring faces within. ‘What can I do?’

  The flames whipped through the carriage. The air was thick with the smell of scorching cloth and hair.

  She pulled away, scrambled round the carriage to the far side, angled upwards towards the sky. Here, people seemed even more densely pressed together. Hands waved through the barred windows, reaching for her. She ran her fingers round the frame of the window, searching for gaps, for anything to prise away. Nothing. The bars were heavy and solidly welded.

  ‘Isabel Madam!’ The voice, calling in English, penetrated the din. ‘Here!’

  Isabel craned forward and peered into the jumble of twisting bodies. Asha’s face, tilted, gazed up at her from the pit of hell. Sangeeta’s baby, impossibly small, screamed at her neck.

  ‘Where’s Sangeeta?’

  Asha nodded back at the darkness behind her. She lifted the baby and thrust it forward, scraping its small body out between the flaking paint of the metal bars.