The Linnet Bird: A Novel

by Linda Holeman

  Thank you again for writing, Shaker. I tried not to lose faith in hearing from you since I left Liverpool—close to a year now. Your letter makes me feel as if a door has just swung open again.

  Again, Shaker, my deepest condolences on the loss of your mother.

  Yours faithfully, as always,

  Linny

  P.S. For future correspondence, your postings will reach me directly if sent to Mrs. Somers Ingram, which is the name by which I am now addressed.

  THERE WERE PARTS of my life that I didn’t describe to Shaker. I didn’t tell him of my visits to the cemetery at St. John’s churchyard, for fear he would think me strangely morbid. It seemed that, for some of the Englishwomen, grave visiting was a compulsive pastime. The Glory Here Lies All Buried was written over the gate to the graveyard at St. John’s. I found a peacefulness there that brought me closer to the memories of my mother and little girl. There were many, oh, far too many little babies buried in these cemeteries: dead of cholera, dead of enteritis, dead of smallpox, dead of fever, dead of . . . the inexplicable, delicate, yet terrible grasp of India. But in spite of the sadness of all of this, again, I felt at peace there. After the rains started, and the stones had been washed clear of dust so that the lettering stood clear, and green sprouted from crevices in those very stones, it indeed felt a holy place.

  I also didn’t tell Shaker of other things I witnessed. One was a suttee. Although it was prohibited by a government sanction the year before I arrived, I chanced upon the smouldering remains of a pyre where a widow had lit herself and burned to death. Judging by the two small boys weeping there, at the pile of dark ash and grisly human remains, she had been a young woman. I looked at the boys, wondering whether they were old enough to understand that she had sacrificed herself not only for their father—her death ensuring his successful rebirth—but for them. With their mother gone to take her place at her husband’s heavenly feet, they would now be assured that the whole of the family property passed on to the male heirs. I wondered if the boys had any sisters, and, if so, what their fate would be.

  Another afternoon, as I stood in the shade between two temples, I watched a crowd of men dragging another man with his arms and legs bound tightly with strips of cloth to a clearing between the shrines. The man was forced to kneel and place his head on a large wooden block. Hearing “Chore, chore” murmured through the quickly gathering crowd, I knew him to be a thief.

  Next a mahout led a docile elephant, ceremoniously painted, bells jangling on his massive ankles, into the clearing. An uncharacteristic silence fell over the assembled people. At a word of command from the mahout, the huge wrinkled leg rose over the thief’s head. Slowly, almost delicately, with a slight tinkling from the bells, the massive foot descended, crushing the man’s skull into the stained wooden block. I couldn’t look away. The reverent silence continued as the elephant was led off and the crowd thinned. Immediately two Sudras hurried to drag away the body with only a pulpy mess attached to the neck. The remaining throng made a wide path around the Untouchables in their rags. The Sudras passed in front of me, hauling their gruesome cargo. I vomited neatly and quietly on the macadam, wiped my mouth with the edge of my skirt, and walked past the blood-covered block to the alley that would lead me back to the bazaar.

  There I bought a paper pack of pan and stood chewing the ground mixture of spices, leaves, and betel nuts, hoping to settle my stomach. As I ate I watched a withered blind man play a sitar with graceful movements. The music he created was unstructured and yet ethereal. When he was done he tilted his head to the sky and I saw tears streaming from his eyeless sockets as a wide smile creased his filthy face. I squatted beside him and pressed what was left of my pan into his hand. He took hold of my outstretched hand and gently ran his hoary fingers over my palm and wrist, whispering a toothless blessing, and I felt a shiver of repulsion and yet—and yet, I believe the other emotion I felt at that moment was envy. Yes. I was envious of this stinking, ancient musician. He wanted nothing more than his sitar and the warmth of this patch of sunlight. At this moment, he knew his place in his world and he accepted it.

  For all I felt that the strange shape of my life had brought me to a secure place—a lovely home in which I wanted for nothing materially, I couldn’t understand why I continued to feel, often, that I was not right within my skin. Was I to feel this way—this restless questioning—while dressed in fine gowns and knowing no hunger or fear for my life, as I had for all of my former years in Liverpool, both on Back Phoebe Anne and Paradise?

  What was this odd, empty ache that clung to me no matter how luxurious my life now proved to be?

  As I walked away from the old man, I berated myself heavily for my selfish thoughts.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I WORRIED MORE AND MORE ABOUT FAITH.

  She and Charles were forced to live in the rather run-down area for the uncovenanted civil servants that I had often passed through. Their home was at the furthest end of Chitapore Road, in a row of low, poorly constructed bungalows with weedy growth sprouting from wide cracks in the outer walls.

  The hot season was growing intolerable when I first visited Faith. The bungalow was small but neat, filled with evidence of Charles’s life in India, unlike the homes in Garden Reach and Alipur and Chowringhee I frequented. It was simple and unadorned in a pleasing way with its rattan furniture and small brass tables, the white walls bare except for a few woven hangings, and rush matting fragrant underfoot. In spite of what might be seen as a step down the social ladder, Faith appeared to be blissfully happy in this first flush of marriage with Charles, enjoying playing at house. There was no verandah, and the back of the house opened on to a courtyard. With no chance of any breeze, the house was utterly suffocating.

  She had the bare minimum of servants: a thin, rabbity girl of about twelve as her ayah, the girl’s younger brother as a general cleaner, and a very elderly man who seemed to shuffle about a great deal without really accomplishing anything. She shared a cook, a dhobi, and a durzi with three other bungalows.

  As time passed and debilitating heat descended over Calcutta, Faith’s answers to my chits, asking her to visit at my home during the day, or whether I might call on her, began to hold her regret and apology, citing a variety of reasons, from the heat to her feeling poorly to a problem with a servant. And so, after I hadn’t seen her for three weeks, I took it upon myself to visit her in spite of the afternoon sun.

  I was met at the door by the ayah, who ushered me into the tiny drawing room. She went to fetch Faith, and as I waited in the unbearably hot room, lightheaded with the lack of air, I couldn’t help but notice that white ants crawled within the matting on the floor, and there was a sour odor of unwashed linen. The flounce of the punkah showed a layer of dust. Dirty plates and cups sat on the small round teak dining table, visible through an open doorway. Finally Faith came to the drawing room. She was pale, her clothing rumpled, and her hair fell from its pins.

  “Hello, Linny,” she said. “I was trying to stay cool by just lying very still.” She glanced around. “Please forgive the state of my home. We haven’t been entertaining at all; it’s too hot.”

  “Of course, Faith. Who can deal effectively with anything in this scorching air?” I said, trying to put her at ease. We sat, and she had the ayah bring us some cold tea. With the tea the girl sullenly brought out a plate of biscuits and put it in front of us. She smelled strongly of the ghee she used to oil her hair. Faith didn’t even glance at the plate, but I noticed the biscuits had a mealy look to them.

  We attempted small talk, but Faith seemed somehow confused, giving the ayah instructions to give to the cook for dinner, and then changing them twice over. She ordered the cleaner to spend time on small and unimportant tasks while flies swarmed over the dirty dishes on the table. When I announced that I would be leaving within the half hour, she paced about the room, looking out the windows.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Faith?” I asked her. I saw that she w
ore no stays or petticoats, and her ecru dress hung limply, sweat-stained under the arms and down the back. I changed at least four times daily in this heat, but I had Malti to prepare cool baths for me and have fresh clothes waiting.

  She looked at me distractedly. “Yes. Yes, I just thought Charles might arrive home earlier than usual. I hoped so. I don’t like being here alone.”

  “You’re not alone. You have the servants and the other women in the courtyard. Do you not visit with them?”

  She looked away from the window. “I just meant . . . I hope he arrives before you leave.” She came closer. “It’s the servants. They’re always watching me, and I feel they don’t like me.”

  “Perhaps you could come out more,” I said. “I know it’s almost impossible in this heat, but it doesn’t do to stay shut up alone every day.”

  “I am not invited to the same events as you, Linny.”

  “But I often go out with Malti to individual pursuits. They have a small library at the Calcutta Club.”

  “Charles is not allowed to be a member.”

  “But I could bring you there as a guest.”

  Faith shook her head. “It’s all too wearying,” she said then, and when I left, twenty minutes later, she was distracted, fussing about the littered table and worrying that Charles’s dinner would not be prepared to his liking.

  ALTHOUGH THERE WERE aspects of my life in Calcutta that I chafed against, there was much that I loved. I did spend many happy hours at the library. Although the selection of English books was small, there were some lovely volumes. Mr. Penderel, the elderly man who supervised the library, came to know me. I think he was pleased to see anyone come through the doors, as there was never anyone else there when I arrived, every fourth or fifth day, to take out another two books. After a few months he began to put aside the books newly arrived by ship, letting me have first chance at them. The first time he saw me inspecting the binding of a particularly lovely book, he frowned.

  “I assure you, Mrs. Ingram, there are no mites in the binding. I check each one thoroughly before I put it on the shelves, and again when someone takes it out and returns it. I care greatly about preserving the books in this blasted climate.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t looking for mites, Mr. Penderel. I was looking at the detail. There’s a curious stitch just here”—I showed him the curved detail—“that I haven’t seen before.”

  “Well, now,” Mr. Penderel said, his eyes lighting. “Are you interested then, in the world of books for themselves?”

  “Oh yes,” I told him. “I’ve studied the manner in which books are created for—well, since I was very young. I’ve always enjoyed this pursuit.”

  Mr. Penderel hastened to bring out a variety of books then, and we spent a good half hour discussing the finishing and stamping. I found myself stimulated by that conversation more than any I’d had in a long time.

  I must say that between visits to the library, and seeing Faith when I could, combined with Somers’s frequent departure from our home for his own pleasures, I began to believe—those first months of my marriage—that I was as close to a quiet contentment as I might have ever been.

  July 18, 1831

  Dear Shaker,

  The end of June brought the red-hot loo—the winds from the west. The wind carries dust. This fine silty dust is impossible to escape; it is as insiduous as a smell, finding its way indoors around cracks and fissures. It lodges in my eyes, ears, nostrils, between my teeth. It seems my senses, too, are choked with dust. Even the servants appeared restless.

  At its most severe the force of the wind is such that flimsy buildings are torn from the ground and trees bent almost in half. It is said that it brings madness for the English; perhaps it does—a temporary madness, for the incessant moaning burns into the brain in a monotony in what I imagine might be similar to brain fever. When it stops, everyone stands very still, listening, for it is the quiet that now appears to carry a threat.

  With the end of the winds comes the first monsoons, which descend without warning. It’s as if the skies have opened and unceremoniously dumped buckets of warm water over the city. The streets run with muddy rivers, making walking almost impossible for me, with the heavy trailing skirts and layers of petticoats and crinolines I am forced to wear when I leave the house. The daily downpours of solid roaring walls of water last for a few hours, then stop suddenly, turned off as abruptly as they started. The hot, saturated air is difficult to breathe, and at times I feel as if I am trying to catch my breath through a soaked piece of gauze. After a short respite of surprising blue sky and the appearance of a floating, shimmering sun, new clouds sulkily gather, the blue turns an ominous slate gray and within moments the heavy beating melody of the monsoons returns with jubilant renewed force.

  Green mold, often as bright and glistening as emerald, grows up overnight and covers anything that is made of paper, cloth, or leather, even in the house! I learned what the mysterious stack of tin-lined boxes I found in one corner of an empty bedroom are for, and store my clothing in them. If no callers are expected, the servants cover all the furniture with sheets. I spend most of my time in the verandah off my bedroom.

  Flies swarm through the open windows by the dozens, and an amazing assortment of flying, creeping, and whirring creatures seem born from the wet air itself. Last night at dinner I recognized silverfish, white ants, stink beetles, caterpillars, and centipedes all busily working their way over and around the table. It is difficult, of course, to eat. The fluttering over the food begins the moment it is uncovered, in spite of a horde of boys with their fly whisks. One of the servants stands behind me with a tablespoon, with which he scoops off the larger beetles and bugs that land on my shoulders and hair. Somers has taken to having most of his meals at the scrupulously clean and almost sealed Gentlemen’s Lounge at the Civil Service building.

  I could never admit this to anyone but you, Shaker, but I find many of the insects fascinating. Some of the moths are graceful and delicate, with wings of spun gold. I trapped a very formidable centipede, green and yellow striped and over ten inches long, and kept him in a huge glass jar for over a week. Every morning I dropped in leaves and watched with respectful awe as he munched through his meal. Even the flies, Shaker—the flies!—are not the common bluebottle of England. Many have bodies of deep burgundy or rich green.

  I have learned to swathe the bed in voluminous folds of very sheer muslin, and before climbing in every night, I pull back the sheets and perform a thorough examination to make sure I won’t be joining a sleepy scorpion. Then I check the heavy linen canopy over the top of the bed, assuring myself it is firmly in place. I was awakened most unpleasantly one night when a dung beetle the size of a walnut dropped onto my face from the rafters on the first and last time that I was careless in my nightly inspection. I have also discovered, with not a little dismay, that a bath sponge makes an ideal home for a scorpion.

  I take my dose of quinine—a horridly large spoonful—each morning, shuddering at the bitter taste. I have been warned that malaria strikes most often in the wet season. Somers fell prey to the disease his first year here (more than five years ago), and is subject to bouts of it.

  When he is ill he prefers I stay away, and is attended to by the servants. But I have heard his moans, his hoarse whispers of his bones being twisted by a huge and violent hand, and of the relentless kettle drum keeping up a beat in his head until he thinks he might go truly mad. Although he has spoken little of his parents to me, in his delirium he cries for his dead mother as if still a child. And in the next instant he shouts curses upon a cruel father, whose memory obviously haunts him.

  During his last attack he shivered so violently that he chipped one of his own teeth. Poor man!

  On that cheery note—!—I shall close, with the promise to write again, dear Shaker.

  Yours,

  Linny

  I carefully avoided writing more than a few lines about Somers, for what is there to say? I didn’t believe, at
the start, that he was a completely evil man, simply one who was totally self-absorbed. We continued to treat each other as disinterested though polite neighbors who shared the same house. Occasionally he spoke cruelly to me, hurling insults, but usually it only happened after he had drunk more than usual, or perhaps was disappointed in a rendezvous. And the following day he would apologize by way of a small gift—some trinket or bit of jewelry, something impersonal that he could send one of his coolies to Taylor’s Emporium to purchase. I saw, at these moments, that Somers did indeed understand that his behavior had been uncalled-for, and although a genuine smile or kind word would have meant more to me than another showy, useless novelty, it seemed to be the only way he knew to tell me he was sorry.

  At odd moments I would find him studying me, but he would always look away quickly, denying, when I asked him, that something was on his mind that he wished to speak of. I sensed a deep and underlying unhappiness in Somers, which he covered with his charm and bravado. Once I tried to ask him more about his childhood in London, about his mother and father, but he refused to speak of his past.

  It would appear that he didn’t wish to discuss any aspects of his life, not only past, but present as well. And likewise he wished to know nothing of how I spent my time. When I asked him about his work, he said it would be of little interest to me. When I tried to tell him of the books I was reading, and of my conversations with Mr. Penderel at the Club’s library, he appeared bored with my prattle. And so, on the odd evening when we found ourselves alone together—when we did not entertain or Somers did not go out on his mysterious assignations, or we did not find ourselves at yet another evening at the Calcutta Club or the home of another couple—we spoke of household and servant issues, of the plans for entertaining, and of social events we had been invited to. We spoke of no matters of the mind, or of the heart.