She lit a cigarette, drew deeply and felt the warmth of the smoke in her lungs. A wedding procession, perhaps. Or another political rally.
It was late afternoon and the first shadows surged along the edge of the grass. Rupa ran out from the side of the bungalow and zigzagged across the lawn, wielding a stick. Her body was small and strong and her black hair, tied in a stout plait, bounced at her neck. She speared the bushes and set the leaves rustling.
Isabel lifted her pen and started to write the latest of many letters that could never be delivered.
My dearest Edward,
All the talk here is of politics. The elections are set for December, despite the bitterness between the Congress Party and the Muslim League. Sometimes I wonder how they’ll ever do business together once independence comes.
She broke off. Clouds of mosquitoes hovered under the trees. The ayah would come soon and call Rupa inside. Isabel looked down at her letter. She didn’t want to write about politics. The future held too much fear. She sat for a moment, her eyes on Rupa, crouched now by the flower bed, and the gnarled branches of the magnolia tree behind her.
The old magnolia struggles on. It makes me think, of course, of poor Rahul. I mention him often to Rupa, although it’s hard to know what she really understands. She accepts quite stoically that her parents are gone but still tells everyone that I am her mother.
She played all morning with Abdul’s grandchildren. I heard her shouting in Hindustani like a native, calling Abdul ‘Dada-ji’, just as the others do. A little later, she ran to me and spoke in flawless English. Already, she lives in two different worlds. Perhaps she will never belong entirely in either. But she gives me such hope, hope that this country’s future can be more than hatred and bloodshed and division.
She paused, imagining Edward there beside her, then added:
You will love her, Edward, I’m sure of it. And she you.
At the far end of the drive, bolts scraped and the gate swung open with a clatter. Isabel sat upright. A figure appeared, a man walking wearily towards the bungalow, as if he were at the end of a long journey. She craned forward. For a moment, in the hazy light, she saw Edward there, gaunt and stooped but alive, come at last to claim her. She blinked, her eyes tight on the figure as it grew nearer, then she sank back into her chair. It was only Abdul, returning from the bazaar, weighed down by bags. She drew on her cigarette, forced herself to breathe evenly again, then turned again to her letter.
Edward, I am the only one who knows you are still alive. I keep hope, even now, that you will come back. To think anything else would be impossible. If you were no longer in this world, I would know it. It would break me. But I feel you with me each morning when I wake. I feel you with me each evening when I settle to sleep. We are one, you and I.
She closed her eyes and, in that stillness, time seemed to twist and turn and lose all meaning. She was a child again, playing in this same garden with her Indian brother, Rahul. She was floating, arms outstretched, in the soft waters of Car Nicobar, knowing that Edward waited for her, there on the white-sand beach.
‘Mummy?’ Rupa stood at the bottom of the verandah steps. She lifted her weight onto the first step and hung on the wooden handrail. ‘Can I sit in the tree?’
‘Isn’t it time for your bath?’
Rupa twisted, swinging, waiting for Isabel to set down her pen.
They crossed the lawn together. Isabel looked down at the bobbing head, the set jaw. Her tiny, swaddled body had been so light, so frail once, as she lifted her away from the train. She thought of Asha’s eyes, calmly fixed on Isabel’s even as flame engulfed her, and took Rupa’s hand.
Once they reached the magnolia tree, Rupa pulled Isabel’s fingers into a stirrup and set her foot in it, heaving herself towards the lowest branch. She scrambled, pulled herself up, then sat astride it and kicked at the empty air.
‘I climbed to the top once,’ Isabel said. ‘Your father helped me.’
Rupa tipped back her head and stared into the uneven ladder of branches, stretching endlessly to the sky.
‘Rupa!’ The ayah’s voice, from the verandah.
Rupa stiffened. The ayah, seeing them, started out across the grass.
‘Time for bed.’ Isabel opened her arms as Rupa, frowning, swung her leg over the branch and slid down. She kissed the top of the girl’s head. ‘Don’t forget to clean your teeth and say your prayers.’
Isabel stood quietly under the old tree and watched Rupa trail back across the grass to the bungalow, a slight but determined figure at the ayah’s side.
Pray for this grand, beleagured country, she thought. In the stillness, the low beat of the drum and the boom of male voices came to her again, a little louder now in the darkening air. Pray for us all.
Acknowledgements
I was helped by a range of memoirs and personal accounts which give first-hand insights into daily life during the final stages of the British Raj. Charles Allen’s comprehensive oral history Plain Tales from the Raj is an invaluable guide. The British Library’s archive collection of unpublished papers from the period gave me further details of daily life in the Andamans, of conditions inside the Cellular Jail and of missionary work in the Nicobars. These include memoirs by L. V. Deane, Ernest Hart, P. W. Radice, Frances Stewart Robertson and Theo Stewart Robertson.
My thanks to Susie, Lesley and the rest of the wonderful team at Allison and Busby.
Thank you as always to my agent, Judith Murdoch, the best in the business.
And to my family for all their love and support.
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About the Author
JILL MCGIVERING is a BBC senior foreign correspondent and now South Asia Editor. She has won a SONY Academy Award and been shortlisted for the SONY Academy’s Journalist of the Year. Her debut novel, The Last Kestrel, was longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Based in London, she travels extensively for the BBC including assignments to Afghanistan, Pakistan and China.
By Jill McGivering
Daughters of India
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
12 Fitzroy Mews
London W1T 6DW
allisonandbusby.com
First published in 2017.
This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby Ltd in 2017.
Copyright © 2017 by JILL MCGIVERING
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–2187–0
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