by Ann Bennett
The rickshaw pulls up outside the gate and the rider, who himself looks fairly elderly, ambles round and helps the old woman down from the seat. She’s carrying a shoulder bag over one arm and a bunch of marigolds in the other. She makes her way slowly through the gate and towards Anna’s grave.
‘Shall we go and talk to her now?’ asks Sarah.
Her father shakes his head. ‘Give her a little while.’
They wait another ten minutes or so, then Sarah gets out of the taxi.
‘Are you coming, Dad?’
‘You go first and explain why we’re here. I’ll come along in a moment.’
Sarah goes through the gate into the churchyard. The sun beats down on her back. The old woman is kneeling in front of the grave, clipping the grass with what look like tailors shears.
‘Excuse me,’ Sarah says gently. The old woman looks up. Her face is heavily lined and she looks very frail, but when she sees Sarah approaching her eyes light up and she smiles. Sarah notices the red tikka mark on her forehead and a gold ring through one side of her nose.
‘Can I help you?’ she asks.
‘My name is Sarah Jennings. I believe that Anna Foster was my grandmother. I’ve come to Kandaipur with my father to see if we can find anything out about her. Did you know Anna?’
The old woman nods and gets to her feet slowly. She presses her hands together in a gesture of greeting.
‘Namaste,’ she says bowing her head. ‘I’m delighted to meet you. I never thought I would meet anyone related to her.’
‘How did you know Anna, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘She was my memsahib for two years,’ the old woman says.’ My name is Manju.’
‘Manju? Then you were her ayah when she first came to India. She wrote a lot about you in her diary.’
‘Did she? Come close to me, madam. I need to see your face.’
Sarah moves closer and the old woman peers into her eyes, searching them with her own.
‘Yes. I thought so. You have the look of her about you. Same dark hair. Same lovely eyes.’
‘Really? Is that really true?’
‘Yes. It is true. I thought that as soon as I saw you.’
‘Do you think you could tell me about Anna? How she died, perhaps?’
‘Of course. We should sit inside the church though. It is very hot out here.’
‘I’ll fetch my father.’
When Sarah’s father reaches the church door, Manju takes his hand and smiles into his eyes.
‘Anna’s son. At last,’ she says, her voice full of emotion.
Inside the church they sit on the front pew. Manju turns on a portable fan nearby and soon the air starts to cool down.
‘I have always tended her grave because I loved Mrs Foster. She was a beautiful, generous person and she was very kind to me,’ she begins.
‘I knew she was leaving for England to have a baby and I tried to stop her from going. She wouldn’t listen to me. She said Perry Sahib had forced her to go and she had no choice. When she came back though, months later, all alone, she was very sad. She told me that she had left her baby at an orphanage, but that she couldn’t bear to live without him. She had already decided to go back to England and fetch him. She said it didn’t matter anymore what her husband thought or said, or what Perry Sahib threatened, she was going to do it anyway. She told me that Perry Sahib had threatened her father with something, but that she’d had a cable on the ship to say that her father had died. This was one of the reasons she was so sad, but she said it meant that Perry Sahib’s threats meant nothing to her anymore. I was very worried for her, but I understood how she felt. She made plans and booked her seat on the train and her passage from Bombay.
‘The night she was due to leave, she was waiting in the front room for Foster Sahib to come home. She had not yet told him of her plans. I could tell that she was afraid to tell him. Her face was pale and she was restless, walking to and fro, unable to sit still. He didn’t come home until very late and I could see that he was drunk.
‘I heard some shouting from the living room and I went and stood by the open door so I could hear what was said. I was worried for Memsahib.
‘Foster Sahib was very angry. He said that the next day the General was coming to appoint a successor, and he wouldn’t stand a chance without a wife by his side. He begged her to stay, but when she refused, he went up close to her.
‘I was near enough to see real anger in his eyes. I watched her raise her face to his and she confessed to having had a baby when she was in England. He was silent for a few seconds. Then he exploded. He was shouting so loud. So much anger. I almost ran out from my hiding place to tell her to stop. Not to tell him anymore.
‘Then, when she told him that the baby wasn’t his, he gave an almighty roar and grabbed the poor girl by the throat.
‘His eyes were flaming as he pushed her backwards against the mantelpiece. I heard her head crack as she fell. She collapsed in front of the fireplace then, and he knelt down beside her, sobbing and crying, begging her to wake up, but she didn’t move. I didn’t dare approach him. Eventually Ali went to him, and took him to the bedroom and went for the doctor. The doctor came and examined memsahib and pronounced her dead.
‘I heard Foster Sahib speak to the doctor. He had calmed down by then. He told the doctor that memsahib had slipped and fallen as she rushed across the room and the doctor wrote it down in his book.
‘The next day, they held her funeral at the church and I went along and watched from the edge of the graveyard as they lowered the coffin into the grave and people filed past and threw earth and flowers in. I couldn’t do that for her, but I’m the only one who has been back every day to look after her grave. I felt so sad for her baby, but I didn’t know where in England he was, and even if I had known, I couldn’t have done anything. I couldn’t write English in those days.
‘Foster Sahib told me to pack up memsahib’s things the next day and take them out to the back yard. He was going to burn them on a bonfire. I didn’t want to question him, but I wondered how he could do that and why he didn’t want to keep anything of hers. I thought that perhaps he didn’t want to be reminded of what he had done. I came across her sketch book and I couldn’t bear for him to burn that. She had put so much love into those drawings and she was so proud of them. I’m afraid I slipped it into her bag along with a photograph of her and took them back to my room and hid them amongst my saris.
‘He had no more use for an ayah and he asked me to leave the next day. I was a long way from my family, having travelled to Kandaipur for work from my home village when I was only fourteen. But I knew a girl who worked in another English family’s house who was leaving so I went to the memsahib and asked to work there. I worked for that lady until they left India in 1948. She was a very nice lady, but not the same as my lovely Anna memsahib.’
She smiles, ‘So that is my story. That is why Anna could not come back to England.’
Sarah glances at her father. He looks just as she feels. He is ashen-faced. They are both shaken, lost for words.
‘What a very sad story,’ says Sarah after a lengthy pause. ‘Do you know what happened to Donald? He died quite soon after that, didn’t he?’
‘I sometimes saw the kitchen boy who worked for Foster Sahib. He said that Sahib started drinking even more after she died. He often didn’t get up in time to go to his work at the military station. This went on for many months. Then he stopped working altogether and spent his days drinking at home. He never went out, and hardly ate anything either. One day Ali found him unconscious in his bed and he couldn’t wake him. There were empty whisky bottles by his bed and they think he had drunk himself to death. Choked on his vomit, one of his servants said, but I don’t think any of the British knew that. Of course they gave him a proper funeral and buried him in the grave right next to her. I wanted to tell somebody then about what he’d done. I was so angry, but I knew they wouldn’t believe me, so I kept quiet and kep
t on tending memsahib’s grave.’
‘What happened to the sketch book and the photograph?’ Sarah asks. ‘Do you still have them? We’ve never seen a photograph of Anna.’
‘Of course. I will show you if you come to my house. Would you like to go there now?’
‘If you’re sure you don’t mind. You must come with us in our taxi.’
The old woman smiles and inclines her head in agreement.
‘I will pay my rickshaw driver first. He is my very good friend.’
They go outside, blinking in the bright sunlight. Manju pays the rickshaw man and they help her into the front seat of the taxi. Bharat pulls off and she directs him in Hindi.
Her house is only a mile or so from the church. It’s on a road of cramped wooden dwellings, each with their own front porch and surrounded by a small plot of land.
‘It is here,’ she says, and they stop outside a one-storey house. It looks neater than the rest; the doors and windows are painted bright blue and there are pots of marigolds on the front porch.
‘I grow them here,’ she explains. ‘For her grave.’
They get out of the taxi and walk up the front path and up the steps into the house.
‘Do you live alone?’ asks Sarah.
‘No, no. My son lives with me. My husband passed away some years ago. My son is a waiter at a hotel. The Maybelle. You might have passed it.’
‘We’re actually staying there!’ says Sarah.
‘Really? He did mention that there were two English people staying. A lady and an older man, but I didn’t imagine for one moment who you might be. He takes pride in his English. I taught him when he was little.’
‘Does he serve in the dining room?’
‘That’s right. He is slowing down now. He is nearly seventy years old, but he still loves his work.’
‘His English is excellent and he’s a very good waiter,’ says Sarah. Manju smiles proudly.
‘Would you like some tea?’ she asks.
‘We don’t want to put you to any trouble.’
‘It is no trouble. No trouble at all. Please sit down.’
She waves towards some brightly coloured floor cushions in front of a low table and Sarah and her father sit down on them rather stiffly, unused to sitting on the floor.
Manju returns with a tray of cups and a large metal teapot. She pours chai into the cups. Up until now Sarah has only seen it sold by station vendors, poured thick and strong from huge metal kettles. When she holds the cup of tan-coloured liquid up to her nose it smells spicy. She takes a sip. It’s very sweet and tastes of vanilla and cardamom, but after a few sips she warms to the taste.
‘I will go and get the sketch book and photograph. Wait one moment.’
Manju disappears again through a beaded screen and returns moments later.
She hands the sketch book to Sarah’s father. Sarah moves closer to him. The book is quite thick and has a red cardboard cover with a white panel in which is written, Anna Baker. India, 1932.
William turns the pages slowly. The sketches are intricate and accurate, drawn with depth and great care. The first few are portraits of passengers on a liner, reclining in deckchairs, or strolling along the deck. Each face or posture seems to convey something about the character of the subject. Then there is a study of the Gateway of India from Apollo Bunder and on the next page a sketch of a grand colonial house with pillars on both stories.
‘That must be Aunt Nora’s house,’ Sarah says. ‘We drove past one that looks like that the other day, didn’t we?’
‘Yes, I think we did,’ says her father.
There are many sketches of temples, Indian street scenes, grand British buildings in Kandaipur. There is also one of Anna’s bungalow. After that they come to a drawing of the derelict church.
‘It looked just the same then, didn’t it, Dad.’
‘Yes – except the trees weren’t so overgrown. And you were right. She did draw it from that low wall across the road.’
Then they come to a sketch of a shimmering lake surrounded by mountains, a couple of fishing boats on its smooth surface, followed by a drawing of an exotic palace, elaborately decorated and domed, its roofs glittering beneath a cloudless sky. ‘The summer palace! It’s just as she described it in her diary.’
Towards the end of the book are a couple more drawings of passengers on a boat, then some of a country house and gardens that appear very English.
‘Perhaps these are of her mother’s house? She was going to stay there for a couple of months before going to Cedar Lodge.’
There are two more drawings left in the book. The first is of another English house, drawn from the rear. At first Sarah doesn’t recognise it and wonders why Anna drew it from this angle instead of from the front, and then she realises what it is.
‘It’s Cedar Lodge, Dad. The back door and windows. And there’s the conservatory at the side. She must have drawn it from the room above the coach house.’
‘I think you’re right. How extraordinary.’
The final drawing in the sketch book takes their breath away. It’s of a new-born baby swaddled in a knitted shawl, its face soft and puckered, a tuft of dark hair on its forehead, its eyes closed in a deep sleep.
‘That’s you, Dad,’ says Sarah, a lump in her throat.
‘It must be. I don’t know what to say…’ he looks at Sarah with tears in his eyes.
‘You must take the book,’ says Manju.
‘Of course we couldn’t do that.’
‘It should be yours really.’
‘Well perhaps we could borrow it and make copies of the drawings? The book belongs to you, Manju.’
‘And here is the photo of Anna Memsahib,’ says Manju. ‘I believe it was taken on her wedding day.’ She hands them a photograph in a silver frame.
Sarah and her father stare at it in awe. The young woman who stares back at them is tall and slim. She’s dressed in a figure-hugging white lace dress. Her dark hair is swept back off her face and into a loosely plaited bun in the nape of her neck. Her features are delicate and aquiline, with high cheek bones and full lips. Her soft dark eyes look straight at the camera. There is a sort of desperation in her expression although she is smiling gently; she looks as if she’s making a plea to the camera, a deep and moving plea for help.
* * *
The next day, Bharat drives them out of town towards the mountains. They sit in the back of the taxi with the windows wide open and stare out at the rolling scenery. Occasionally they glance at each other and smile, but they don’t need to say much. As the taxi enters the foothills to the mountains and begins to climb, Sarah thinks about Matt. Something subtle changed inside her yesterday when she heard Anna’s tragic story and saw that photograph of her. A page seems to have been turned in her own personal history, a missing piece of her jigsaw finally put in place. Perhaps that is what she was subconsciously waiting for. Perhaps that was what was stopping her from accepting Matt’s love and the happiness a future with him would bring?
As the taxi crests the ridge and begins its descent down a narrow gorge she has made her decision. When she gets back to the hotel she will call him and tell him. The thought of speaking to him, of accepting his offer fills her with a warm glow. After a few miles, the mountains become gentler and the valley begins to open out. Sarah leans out of the window and sees ahead a vast shimmering lake, its crystal clear waters reflecting the craggy hills that surround it. As the road begins to skirt the edge of the lake she gets a glimpse of the outline of the palace at the far end. She catches her breath. As they get closer she can make out its Moorish domes and crenelated arches and spires; closer still she can see the detail of its elaborate masonry. She turns to her father with shining eyes and he takes her hand.
About the Author
Ann Bennett is the author of three books about the second world war in South East Asia, inspired by her father’s experience as a prisoner of the Japanese on the Thai-Burma railway. She has a Law degree and work
s full time as a lawyer but is fascinated by India and South East Asia. Since her early twenties she has spent as much time as possible travelling in the region. She is married with three sons and lives in Surrey.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks go to my friend and writing buddy Siobhan Daiko for her constant support and encouragement over the past seven years, and for all her help with the formatting and design of the Foundling’s Daughter; to Johnny Hudspith for his inspiring and patient editing; to Jane Dixon-Smith for the cover design; to Sally Leigh-Jones, Helen Judd, Mary Clunes, Liz Lloyd and Mandy Lyon-Brown for reading and commenting on early drafts; to Jane Addison for her painstaking proof-reading, and to everyone who’s supported me down the years by reading my books.
Other Books By Ann Bennett
Bamboo Heart
Bamboo Island
Bamboo Road