by Ann Bennett
They drive along a shabby road of single-storey houses which leads towards the centre of town. The place has a run-down feel. The main street is crowded with ramshackle shops and businesses. People squat on pavements cooking over open flames and the smell of cooking and spices drifts on the air. The road surface is full of potholes and the traffic proceeds at a crawl, with much blasting of horns and ringing of bells.
They pass a covered market, its once grand pillars peeling and scabbed with age, its steps heavily stained with betel juice. Sarah realises with a jolt that this must be the bazaar where Anna first set eyes on Charles Perry.
The Maybelle hotel has seen better days. They draw up onto a shabby drive. The once grand building is in severe need of a lick of paint. The concrete pond in the centre of the drive is dry and filled with litter.
Inside the lobby it feels a little better. The reception area is painted white with coloured floor tiles. It is high ceilinged and airy, cooled by whirring overhead fans. The friendly young woman behind the desk assures them there are plenty of rooms available. They choose two adjoining rooms on the ground floor which open onto the garden. Bharat brings the luggage to the desk and stands beside it waiting. Sarah pays him generously. He hovers around until they have finished checking in.
‘Tomorrow I take you out to see sights of area?’ he asks eagerly. ‘Many beautiful places to see here in Kandaipur and surrounding environs,’ he smiles revealing betel-stained teeth, and moves his head from side to side as he speaks. ‘Kandaipur is very quiet just now. Not many tourists about. Good time to see sights.’
Sarah glances enquiringly at her father who shrugs and smiles, ‘Why not?’
Sarah clears her throat. ‘There are a few things we’re interested in seeing,’ she says. ‘Do you know the old British quarter, the cantonment?’
The driver raises his eyebrows. ‘Of course. I know that area but there is nothing interesting to see there at all. It is very shabby. Only old buildings, some of them derelict. Overgrown gardens.’
‘Never mind,’ says Sarah firmly. ‘We’d like to see it if you’ll take us there. We’re also interested in the British graveyard. Is there one in the town?’
‘Of course. There is one. Like old cantonment quarter, it is quite overgrown now, but if you’d like to see it I can take you there.’
‘Excellent. Could we start around ten tomorrow then?’
The driver looks puzzled. ‘You quite sure you don’t want to see other places? What about wood carving workshops? My brother owns one near here. Very interesting to see. Many cheap products to buy too.’
‘No thank you. At least not tomorrow anyway.’
‘What about temples? Markets? I can take you to a palace in the hills. Thirty miles from here. Very beautiful. Former palace of Maharajah. It is called summer palace.’
‘The summer palace? Well we’d love to see that. Perhaps the day after tomorrow?’
Bharat beams broadly, no doubt thinking how ridiculously easy it had been to secure their custom. Sarah doesn’t mind about that. They are only here for a short time. There is not time for endless haggling and seeking out the best deal.
Like the rest of the hotel the rooms are a little shabby and old-fashioned, with heavy oak furniture and floral curtains and bedspreads. There is no air conditioning here, only ceiling fans. The bathroom in Sarah’s room reminds her of the old one in Cedar Lodge, with a huge bathtub stained with rust, and an old-fashioned lavatory with a high metal tank and chain that clanks and gurgles when it’s pulled. But through patio doors she can see a beautiful lush garden, with palm trees, exotic shrubs and bright pink bougainvillea tumbling over the back wall.
That evening they eat in the hotel dining room. They are the only guests but they are tired after their long journey and Sarah doesn’t want to tire her father further by going out to eat. They are served by an elderly man dressed in a spotless white tunic. He has perfect manners and to their surprise, speaks good English and is able to explain the menu to them. But the food is disappointing; greasy mutton curry with plain rice and cold vegetables. The old waiter sets it before them with such pride though, they don’t have the heart to complain.
They go to bed early, but Sarah lies awake for a long time. She thinks about Matt. Then her mind turns to the diary, and how Anna had come to this very hotel for lunch with Charles Perry all those decades ago, and how if she is lucky, tomorrow she might see where Anna once lived.
The taxi crawls through the centre of town the next morning and out over the railway tracks and through some sparse suburbs, along a straight road where playing fields are laid out on one side and an army barracks on the other.
‘Britishers built those barracks for British Indian Army,’ said the driver, nodding in their direction. ‘Now they are used by Indian Army.’
They pass a parade ground where a platoon of young soldiers stand to attention, being inspected by an officer strutting with a cane under his arm. Sarah thinks of Donald. Perhaps this is the station where he once served. She wonders if he ever fulfilled his ambition to command the regiment.
The taxi takes a sharp turn left. ‘This is old British area. Like I said, very run down.’
‘Do you know Dalhousie Road?’ Sarah asks.
Bharat turns to her with a smile. ‘Of course, madam. This is Dalhousie Road.’
The road surface is potholed here too and they proceed very slowly. Sarah and her father stare out at the crumbling bungalows, surrounded by either bare earth or overgrown gardens. Some are empty, but others appear to be inhabited by several families. Washing hangs on the balconies, people cook on open fires on the porches and children play in the front gardens.
‘What a shame they haven’t been maintained,’ says her father.
‘No one wants to live in these old places,’ says Bharat. ‘Inconvenient, damp. People prefer modern. Only very poor people live here now. Some of them are squatters.’
They reach the turning circle at the end of the road and there in front of them is a bungalow much larger than the rest. It is double fronted and appears to have two wings at the back instead of one.
‘That must be it,’ her father says. ‘I recognise it from the description in the diary. Could you stop please, Bharat?’ there is suppressed excitement in his voice. ‘I’d just like to have a quick look.’
The two of them get out, and stare at the rotting front gate. There it is, under the layers of mould on the top rung of the gate, a carved sign saying, “Connaught Lodge”.
‘It is it,’ Dad says. They push back the fragile front gate and stare at the building before them. This one is boarded up and the garden so overgrown it is impossible to see where the lawn once might have been. There’s mould growing on the outside walls and on the broken roof tiles. Weeds sprout from the gutter and along the front of the veranda in the cracks between the tiles.
‘Be careful of snakes,’ shouts Bharat and Sarah exchanges an exasperated glance with her father.
They go up the rickety front steps onto the wooden veranda. Several of the floorboards are missing, others soft with rot.
‘This is where she used to sit,’ says Sarah almost in a whisper. She glances at her father who has tears in his eyes.
Sarah approaches the front door and peers through a crack between the boards.
There’s not much light, but she can just about see into a big open room. A couple of dilapidated chairs stand in the middle of the room, and under the window an equally shabby chaise longue. They are covered with black dust. On one wall is a fireplace piled up with soot.
‘Those must be her chairs,’ her father says. ‘Unless someone else had the place after them. It’s hard to know.’
They return to the car, filled with thoughts of Anna and how she had once sat on that very veranda staring out over the bare garden, eating her solitary breakfast, nursing her loneliness.
Sarah’s father leans forward and speaks to the driver.
‘Do you think there is anyone in Kandaipur who r
emembers when the British were here?’ he asks.
‘I don’t think so. I will ask around. It is a long time ago though. Not many people that old. Now where would you like to go next?’
‘Do you know an old Baptist church a little way out of town?’ Sarah asks. ‘It is disused. Derelict for a long time I think.’
He turns and smiles. ‘Of course. I know this place. I take you there now.’
They drive out through more dusty suburbs, past streets of one-storey houses built of corrugated iron or wood, some on stilts along a riverbank. People stop what they are doing to stare as they pass. Bharat is right, hardly any tourists come to this town.
Once out on the plain the car picks up speed. Sarah leans out of the window to feel the cool wind in her hair and to see the view of the great mountains in the distance.
The church is a few miles out of town, along a narrow side road, past a couple of small settlements. They almost miss it, it is so overgrown and all but hidden in a thicket of bamboo. Bharat pulls up in front of it and they get out.
Sarah crosses the road to get a better view. From this angle she can see that it is definitely the church in the painting that she first saw in Ezra Burroughs’ study. The white paint is now obscured with moss and mould, part of the tower has fallen in and all the windows are broken.
‘How sad that this place looks like this now,’ Sarah says.
‘Do you know why it closed down?’ her father asks Bharat.
‘I hear stories,’ he says. ‘Many stories about the bad Englishman who used to run it.’
‘What stories are those?’
‘People say that he wanted money for everything. He forced the poor villagers he converted and who attended church to pay him money each week. A lot of money. He employed bad men to collect it from them. That is why he was sent back to England. After that, no one wanted to go to this church anymore.’
‘A sort of protection racket,’ muses Sarah’s father. ‘No wonder the Baptists here had had enough of him!’
‘Perhaps she sat here to draw the church?’ Sarah suggests, noticing a low wall directly opposite.
‘Yes, probably,’ says her father coming to stand next to her. ‘You get a perfect view from over here.’
They sit for a while, remembering Anna, and although nothing is spoken aloud, the tears in her father’s eyes say it all. She takes his hand, kisses him on the cheek.
They drive back into town, through the centre and out to the other side to find the British graveyard. Bharat takes them straight to it. It’s behind another church, but this one appears to be maintained and functioning. The graveyard itself is overgrown and neglected, just as Bharat had said, like so many things the British left behind in this town.
They start wandering between the headstones. The sun is high in the sky now and Sarah feels her shirt sticking to her body.
‘Are you alright, Dad?’ she asks, noticing him mopping his brow.
‘I’m fine thanks. I’ve got my hat.’
‘You could always sit inside the church and I’ll look round. I’ll come and fetch you if I find anything.’
‘No, it’s alright. I want to look myself.’
Most of the graves are covered in creepers and moss. The grass between them is long. Sarah takes a stick and scrapes the moss from one of the gravestones. She reads the inscription out loud.
‘Here lies Bertha Morgan, beloved wife of Joseph and mother to Timothy and Margaret. Taken from us too young, 9th January 1926 aged 35.’
Next to Bertha are the graves of Timothy and Margaret aged seven and nine. Sarah notices that they both died within a year of their mother.
‘It’s heart-breaking,’ she whispers.
Many of the adults were young when they died too. Words like, “Taken from us suddenly by fever”, were all too frequent.
‘It was a dangerous place to live in those days,’ says her father.
They go from grave to grave peering at the epitaphs. Some of the graves have statues of angels or cherubs on top of them. Others are tall, decorated with elaborate stone crosses; others are inside full-sized crypts with metal doors.
They come to one with the statue of a lion standing on the top. The lion must have once been white but it is dark green with lichen and its once proud nose is broken. Sarah’s heart beats faster when she notices the engraving.
‘Dad, look!’ They peer at the headstone and read the name; ‘Charles Perry, devoted public servant to the British Crown and widower of Isobel.’ The date is 1955.
‘That’s your father, Dad,’ says Sarah, staring at the grave. ‘He must have stayed on after Independence.’
Her father sits down on a pile of stones and puts his head in his hands. Sarah goes to him and puts her arms around him. She can feel his body shake as he sobs silently.
‘It’s overwhelming,’ he says, his voice breaking. ‘It’s quite hard to take it all in.’
‘Do you want me to carry on by myself?’
He nods his head. ‘Just give me a moment.’
She leaves him and continues looking at the tombstones. There are no names she recognises from Anna’s diary. She wonders what became of Celia and Colonel Smethurst and the Napiers. Perhaps they went home to England after Independence.
At last she finds it and her heart soars. She knows instinctively it’s what she’s been searching for. It’s near the gate and she wonders how they can have walked past it without noticing it. It looks so different from the others.
This grave has no moss growing on it and someone has clipped the grass on top of it. The elegant but simple white marble stone is scrubbed clean and the gold letters have recently been painted. But most surprising of all, at the foot of the headstone is a bunch of fresh marigolds, arranged in a small glass vase.
The inscription on the gravestone is simple,
Anna Foster, Beloved wife of Donald, Lt Col.
Born Buckinghamshire 7th May 1904, died suddenly October 10th 1934.
Thirty-Three
Sarah
At the sight of the epitaph something catches in Sarah’s throat and tears spring to her eyes.
‘Dad, come here,’ she calls urgently. ‘It’s here. Anna’s grave. Come and look.’
He hurries to stand beside her. They hold hands and stare at the gleaming gold writing on the white marble.
‘I can’t believe it,’ he says in an awed whisper. ‘Look. She died in 1934. Only a few months after I was born.’
‘That must explain it then,’ Sarah says slowly.
‘Explain what?’
‘Why she didn’t come back. Connie told me that she promised to, but that she never came. Connie waited for her for weeks. She couldn’t understand it.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me that, Sarah?’
She turns to look into his eyes. She sees deep pain in them.
‘I’m sorry, Dad, I didn’t want to upset you, that’s all. But now there’s an explanation. She must have got ill and died quite soon after she got back to India. That’s why she didn’t come back to England.’
‘So … she said she’d come back. For her baby? For me?’
‘Yes. But she never made it.’
They’re both silent for a while, thinking about Anna, dying so young and so far from her beloved baby. Sarah’s father breaks the silence.
‘Look. Look at the next grave.’
The grave to the right of Anna’s is untended. The stone is green with mould from decades of monsoon rains. But despite that, Sarah can just make out the words carved into it.
Lt Col Donald Foster.
Born August 4th 1884, died November 10th 1936.
‘So he died quite soon after Anna. And he never got to command the regiment after all. Poor Donald.’
‘I wonder who looks after Anna’s grave? It seems to be the only one in the whole churchyard that’s cared for,’ Sarah says.
‘Perhaps someone can tell us. Shall we look inside the church? The vicar might be there.’
They wan
der in through the porch. How much like an English country church this is, thinks Sarah, only instead of the chill one normally gets on stepping in through a church door in England, here it is stiflingly hot and airless.
Inside is just like an English church with an altar, a pulpit, a covered font, rows of wooden pews. Sunlight streams in through the windows, lighting shafts of dust on the air.
Someone is sweeping the floor at the back of the church. It’s an old man, bent with age. He glances at them shyly.
Sarah approaches him. ‘Do you speak English?’
He shakes his head and looks as though he’s about to scuttle away.
‘I’ll go and ask Bharat if he can help,’ Sarah’s father says and is back within seconds with the taxi driver.
‘Could you ask this man if he knows who tends the grave beside the gate please? The one with flowers on it?’
A stream of Hindi conversation passes between the two men. Then Bharat passes the sweeper a fifty rupee note and turns to Sarah and her father.
‘He says an old woman comes. She comes every Wednesday and every Saturday. She is very, very old indeed but she never misses a day. He doesn’t know where she lives, but she comes in a rickshaw. If you want to see her, come tomorrow at nine o’ clock in the morning and wait for her by the gate. She is bound to turn up then. He says she speaks good English.’
* * *
In the morning Sarah and her father are back in front of the church, sitting in the taxi, waiting for the old woman to appear. They’d decided not to get out of the taxi in case she’s frightened away by their presence.
Sure enough at a couple of minutes after nine, a rickshaw appears at the end of the road from the other direction and approaches the church. As it gets closer Sarah can see that the passenger is an old woman. She wears a bright blue sari and her head is covered with a long pink scarf.