The Linnet Bird: A Novel

by Linda Holeman

  THE NEXT MORNING, March 15—the ides of March—was hazy and warm. Faith, Charles, Muriel Partridge, and I stood on the muddy riverbank, watching the trunks and boxes being loaded onto the long, flat barge that would carry the servants and supplies for the next three weeks. A makeshift tent toward the back of the barge would serve as a sleeping shelter for the servants and bargemen. Faith and Mrs. Partridge and I would ride on a smaller budgerow, a flat combination of houseboat and barge.

  Mrs. Partridge was a sour and affected woman. But she had been to Simla for the last two years, and although I found her bossy and unlikable, she had been helpful in advising us what we would need for the journey as well as during our stay. Her husband was as fussy and snobbish as she, as if his past position in the army—he’d retired the year before—entitled him to his pompous righteousness. We’d entertained them occasionally, and I’d taken an immediate dislike to both of them.

  We had three travel trunks apiece, with our clothing packed neatly between flannel and wax cloth. We shared a huge chest of bed linens and towels, two cases filled with cooking and kitchen utensils, and a large case containing my books and writing portfolios and Faith’s sketch pads. We had also organized a trunk of warmer clothing for the servants to wear in the thin mountain air. We had brought our own ayahs, our own dhobi, and two household sweepers to accompany us to Simla, and hired a cook and two coolies for the journey itself.

  “Looks like an awful amount of paraphernalia,” Charles said. “I can’t imagine conveying it uphill on those narrow mountain paths.”

  Mrs. Partridge sniffed. “This is only half the amount most women take.”

  “You will send a message back as soon as you can, saying you’ve arrived safely, won’t you?” Charles asked Faith. His blue eyes looked young and worried.

  “I said I would,” Faith said. “Please try not to fret over me. Everyone goes to the stations now; there’s really no danger.” I saw that her gloves were buttoned improperly, and her hair had lost all of its shine.

  We all looked at Mrs. Partridge, standing at the edge of the bank shouting at a small man sitting on one of the loaded trunks.

  “Off! Get off there! You mustn’t sit on our luggage!”

  The man ignored her, crossing his arms over his chest and looking the other way as Mrs. Partridge continued to bluster and rant.

  “Besides,” I said, “no one would dare bother us with Mrs. Partridge along.”

  Charles laughed boyishly, the smile leaving as his eyes settled on my bruised jaw. He said nothing more, but cupped Faith’s chin in his hand. I bent and fiddled with Neel’s leash, but watched discreetly while he kissed Faith a final time. Charles’s mouth was gentle on Faith’s, and after they’d kissed he lowered his face to the crook of her neck, as if breathing in her scent one last time before they were separated. I saw Faith’s arms tighten around Charles, and as they stood there, uncaring that they embraced in plain sight of anyone who might care to see, the love they felt for each other was clearly visible. I felt a brief stab of something like sorrow as I thought of how Somers and I had parted.

  He had stopped by my room before he left for the office early that morning. I was still in bed. He stood at the doorway, making a great show of buttoning his jacket.

  “Well,” he finally said. “Safe journey.”

  “I’m sure it will be.”

  “Right, then.”

  “Right,” I echoed, and he was gone.

  Standing on the slippery mud of the Hooghly now, listening to the cries of the sweating men loading barges all along the bank, I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, pushing away that last image of Somers. I would be away for five months—a month each way for traveling and three months at Simla. I was almost as excited by the prospect as I had been when we’d first arrived at the docks in Calcutta a year and a half ago. Now I would truly be discovering the India I longed to know more of.

  FOR THE FIRST FEW DAYS, when the riverbanks weren’t too covered in tall coarse grass as high as two men, I asked the agile bargemen to pole close to the bank so I could jump off and walk along briskly. Neel loved to frisk at my side, although I kept him on his lead after the first time he dashed into the bush after a rodent. I begged Faith to walk with me, but she wouldn’t, seeming content to sit on a small rattan chair tied to the barge and gaze at the river going by. I sensed her retreating further and further and was desperate to have her come back to me. She was my one true friend, and even though I’d kept my past life a secret from her, in an odd way it made me feel even closer to her. She had always believed in me, in who I was—or had become—and this complete trust gave me a sense of pride that I had never known. I couldn’t imagine my life without her; where once she had been an anchor for me, now I felt that it was me keeping her steady when she was in such obvious danger of drowning in some unseen darkness. I was determined that our time in the cool green of Simla would rouse her from this state of sorrow. Simla was sure to remind her of home, and then perhaps I would once more recognize the vibrant, funny girl I had met at the butterfly lecture, which now seemed such a long time ago.

  We had left the Hooghly and were traveling through the delta of the Ganges, a vast ragged swamp forest called the Sundarbans, which I learned from one of our bargemen meant beautiful forest. There was a different smell to the river now, something deeper and more earthy as we traveled north, and the breeze would occasionally carry the smell of a dung fire from an unseen village. I continued to walk along the riverbank when I could, but Mrs. Partridge noticed a bamboo pole with a bushy branch tied to it sticking out of the marshy ground I stepped through.

  “You! You!” Mrs. Partridge shrilled, pointing at the man working the pole at the front of the barge. He was the obvious leader, able to speak some English. He turned, and she redirected her finger at the bamboo. “What is that?” she demanded.

  The man glanced at it. “Oh, lady sahib, that is merely a sign.”

  “A sign of what?”

  “Others are telling us that on that spot a tiger has taken a man for his dinner,” he replied nonchalantly.

  “Stop the barge!” Mrs. Partridge roared.

  I smiled at Faith, rolling my eyes. From her chair she returned my smile with a tiny one.

  “I am sorry, lady sahib, we cannot be stopping. Barge behind will run into us. We must always move ahead.”

  “Mrs. Ingram!” Mrs. Partridge screamed, her small eyes wild. “Get back here immediately.” At her shrieking, a huge flock of tree bats that had been resting in a large jungle thorn near the bank flapped up in alarm and glided away.

  I picked up Neel and ran alongside the barge, easily leaping onto it. “Mrs. Partridge. That bamboo looked as if it has been there for months. I’m sure we were in no danger,” I said.

  “You’re not stepping off this barge again,” Mrs. Partridge said. “What have I been thinking? Of course, the Sundarbans are home of the royal Bengal tigers. I will not have you fall prey to some wild beast while you’re under my supervision.”

  “Your supervision?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Ingram,” Mrs. Partridge said, puffing out her bosom. “I am the senior lady on this journey and I have taken it upon myself to ensure that the voyage is a safe one. You young women, relatively new to India, may have difficulty accepting that behavior you employed while at home in England does not work here. Now there will be no more said about it. You will stay on the barge. And please, Mrs. Ingram, pull your solar topee further over your face; your nose is quite pink.”

  There seemed little recourse.

  We continued on the twisting, turning Ganges. I watched the wiry men gracefully poling hour after hour, seemingly tireless. Passing villages and meager towns, the river would briefly become a busy highway of barges and boats, always crammed with men and boys.

  When away from the population, we slid by small and humble rice fields, walled with mud to keep in the water necessary for the plants’ growth, and I watched women with their saris tucked about their hips
, ladling each tender plant with clumsy wooden scoops. There were larger cultivated fields, yellow with mustard, and always jute, growing high and wild. Here, the brown river was deserted and lonely under the glaring sun. I sometimes saw the pointed, blunt-nosed head of a mugger—a crocodile—poke up, watching our progress with filmed eyes. For much of the time the river’s still surface was broken only by bubbles from a hidden water creature or sudden groups of furiously paddling water beetles.

  Faith occasionally read, but didn’t bring out her sketchbooks. One afternoon, while Mrs. Partridge slept in the shade at the far end of the budgerow and Faith and I sat in our chairs, she turned to me.

  “When do you expect you will have a child, Linny? You and Somers have been married over a year now.”

  I reached down to rub Neel’s ears. “I don’t know.”

  “Are you not anxious about it?”

  I thought about the English children—those who existed in spite of the adversity of first their birth and then the heat and disease. The ones who survived were often too pale, listless. They wore their little solar topees and were shrouded in layers of clothing as they went for their riding lessons, their polo lessons, as they learned to order their ayahs about. There were no English children beyond the age of six to be found in India, as Meg had first informed me shortly after our arrival in Calcutta. I thought about all those tiny graves in the churchyard at St. John’s. I thought about baby Frances, under the holly bush. I knew, by the choice I had made, that I would never know the feeling of a baby’s movement within me again.

  “Linny? Do you long for a baby?” Faith went on, when I didn’t answer immediately.

  “I suppose it is in the hands of Fate,” I finally said, and was thankful for the distraction of the sudden appearance of a village as we rounded a bend in the river.

  AT THE END of each day, when we stopped for the night and anchored the barges, the bargemen lined up in front of Mrs. Partridge, and she placed the agreed-upon number of rupees into each man’s calloused hand. The paid men would jump off the small barge and wade to the larger servants’ barge, where they would be given a wooden bowl of curry, some chapatis, and a plate heaped with fruit. If the night found us stopping in the country, the men would simply curl up on the open deck of the servants’ barge and sleep, keeping the mosquitoes at bay with smoking braziers. For our safety there were a few chowkidars who were posted to keep an eye on the little flotilla during the night hours. If we stopped near a town, some of the men would silently slip away after their meal. The next morning, although the right number of men in dhotis would be patiently standing in position at the sides of the budgerow, I eventually noticed that, except for the lead man, they were not always the same men who had so deftly maneuvered the long slender poles the day before.

  At the junction of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, our barges were directed onto the Yamuna. Eventually the sun played on the gilt domes and pointed spires and towers of the temples and mosques of Delhi as we floated by. I heard the sounds, muted by the distance, I knew so well from Calcutta—bells and chants and cries and laughter. The ghats that led down to the river held crowds, some sitting, some standing, and in the water others bathed or washed clothes. A child on his father’s shoulders waved at the budgerow; I waved back. The ivory of the buildings gave way to shades of yellow and orange in the lowering sun as the city disappeared from view.

  The river grew ever more quiet, eventually leading us to a tiny village, where the budgerow stopped. The village had carts and animals for hire, as well as men to carry us. We had been traveling on the water for three weeks and were finally ready for the last portion of the journey—this one on land.

  An hour later we stood on a narrow road that appeared to lead straight up into the hills, the servants loading the heavy trunks and cases onto hackeries pulled by lumbering bullocks.

  “Get yourself into one of the doolies,” Mrs. Partridge instructed. She climbed onto the straw-filled mattress of a one-person palanquin and firmly buttoned the curtains. Faith did the same. I got into my own dooli but pushed my curtains aside. I was immediately thrown backward as a boyee picked up each corner. The ride was mainly uphill, so it was impossible to sit up. I lay back, Neel beside me, his head resting on my bodice, and I watched the rough rock that formed a low wall alongside the path. Tiny red flowers and lichen grew out of the cracks, a sure sign of cooler temperatures.

  Near a dry nullah the boyees started a chanting song, their voices broken by their huffing intake of dusty air. As I listened, I realized, with a start, that it was about Mrs. Partridge. The song consisted mainly of comments on her spreading backside and voice like that of a hyena in heat. I wondered how much Hindi she understood.

  WE SPENT SIX days being conveyed mile after mile up the precarious mountain paths and six nights of camping in primitive tents or the simple dak bungalows constructed out of thatch along the way by earlier English visitors.

  I loved the nights, sitting outside our tents or thatched huts before a fire. The twilight descended in one fell swoop, and the birds quieted and the forests around us grew quiet. The smell of woodsmoke was sweet and drove away the mosquitoes. The simple food tasted more flavorful than any I’d eaten in the grand dining rooms in Calcutta. I slept, deep and refreshing sleeps, awakening in the morning with a vigor I didn’t know I could possess.

  And finally we approached Simla. We stopped at the bottom of the serrated foothill, breezes filtering down to us, and once the boyees had rested, began the climb up. I couldn’t stay in my dooli; I got out and walked. Trees with blooms of scarlet rhododendrons blazed, bright as fire, all across the hills. When we reached the edge of the town, on a mountain road sheltered by dark pine trees, I stared in fascination at the majesty of it.

  Seven thousand feet above sea level, the hill station’s houses had been built on a high, crescent-shaped ridge running along the base of Mount Jakko. They resembled English houses, some half-timbered cottages, and yet had an Indian flavor. Chattering monkeys scrambled along the tiled roofs, and mynahs and magpies called from the thick copses of trees clustered about. I could see the spires of a church and the covered stalls of an Indian bazaar. Mrs. Partridge knew exactly where to find our rented bungalow. Like many of the homes, it bore a strangely displaced English name—Constancia Cottage. Unlike the fussiness of our home in Chowringhee, it was small, built of lathe and plaster, with a thatched roof. Inside were three bedrooms, a dining room, and large sitting room. There was a fireplace there, the first one I had seen since leaving England. The kitchen, as usual, was a separate small building behind the house, close to the huts for the servants. I ran to each window, throwing open the wooden shutters. From the sitting room and the tiny front bedroom I looked up at the gigantic Himalayas, snowcapped and regal against a soft blue sky. The dining room and two larger back bedrooms looked down through sloping tree-covered hills to brown plains, and glinting like thin ocher ribbons in the far distance were the Sutlej and Ganges.

  “Isn’t this marvelous?”

  “Yes, yes it is,” Faith agreed, and spontaneously I grabbed her arms and tried to dance with her. But she stood, rigid, her eyes fixed on the view of the mountains. Mrs. Partridge gave me an annoyed look and limped into the largest back bedroom, closing the door firmly, and there was a heavy groan and the creak of a wooden bed. Faith moved, as if the pressure of my hands on her arms hurt her, and I let her go. She went to the other back bedroom and noiselessly closed the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  May 20, 1832

  Dear Shaker,

  How shall I describe Simla, Shaker? I have written at great length about it in my journal and I pray you will be able to see and hear and smell it as I try to explain this queerest of places to you by copying out sections I have put down—so that I will always remember it—and in this way try to show you the shape of my life now.

  Perhaps it is simplest to say the whole town is a curiously distorted vision of England, as if a wavering reflection in an Indian mi
rror. It is most definitely Chota Vilayat, little England of India, as it is often referred to here.

  But in spite of this familiarity in a place so utterly foreign, I love the beauty and freedom it affords. If I wake early enough, I rush to my bedroom window to watch the distant line of peaks of the Himalayas catch fire, one after another, as they are touched by the rising sun. During the day I roam the promenade, a wide center street known as the Mall, built on the one flat stretch of ground in the area. All along the Mall are scores of English shops and the bustling Indian bazaar. There is even a small bandstand, where once a week an enthusiastic, if slightly off-key, orchestra plods through its repertoire for anyone who gathers to listen.

  During the day, the Mall is filled with ponies and rickshaws waiting for hire. There are sidesaddles available should any of the memsahibs wish to go riding. The jhampanis pulling the rickshaws are to be pitied on the steep village streets, Shaker, and often it requires a joint effort of one or two pulling and another behind, pushing, to maneuver some of the more hefty women up the hills. Some women choose to ride in a dandy, a strong cloth strung between bamboo poles. It became apparent to me, after my first few days in Simla, that the ladies don’t change their habits when they leave the cities; they are determined not to exert themselves. I personally believe this inactivity is the cause of many of their ills, real and imagined.

  I have taken to renting a pony early every morning. There is a wide, pine-framed field called Annandale, where all manner of sports and picnics and fairs take place. Beyond the field are low hills, and it is here that I set out for my ride. When I return I often sit on one of the park benches positioned along the Mall, listening to the blackbirds and cuckoos and watching Simla’s population.