The Linnet Bird: A Novel

by Linda Holeman

  “You may continue. Yali is my assistant. And my daughter,” Nani Meera said with a smile. The woman returned the smile and set the tray on the teak chest and left. The quiet humming on the other side of the beads began again.

  “Please be assured, Linny, that I have heard every story, and I make no judgment.” She studied me. “Is it that you wish to be rid of the child growing under your heart?”

  My mouth opened, my hands flying to my stomach. “No.” I looked down, then back at the woman. “But it doesn’t show. It can’t. Not yet.”

  “Calm yourself. It is my life’s work; I see what others do not. So. The child is wanted?”

  “Yes.” Instinctively I trusted her. “But it is not my husband’s child.”

  “Can you be certain of this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your husband knows of the child?”

  “No. No, he mustn’t. Not yet.”

  “Then how may I help you?”

  “I want my husband to think the baby is his. It’s the only way.”

  “And the father of the child? Will he not present a problem?”

  I took a deep breath. “He is of . . . another world than mine. We will never be together again. My husband doesn’t have any knowledge of his existence.”

  “If your husband knows nothing of this other man, what is the difficulty? Why will he not assume the child is his?”

  I stared at the ivory monkeys on the cupboard door.

  “My husband doesn’t touch me. He turns to other men for his pleasure. Our marriage has never even been consummated.” Something about Nani Meera made the truth slide out much easier than I had thought would be possible.

  Nani Meera looked at my hair, at my face, then at my hands. I realized they were twisting in my lap. I held them still.

  “His lingam is powerless with you?”

  “Yes. Except . . .”

  She waited.

  “When he hurts me. When he beats me, only then does he want to take me in a brutal way, but he can never . . . achieve it.”

  She nodded, tapping her chin with her forefinger. “I believe I can help in one way. But the rest will be up to you.” She crossed to the high cupboard and opened the doors, then ran her finger down the rows of small drawers, each labeled with indecipherable markings. “There are many common herbs and sacred plants in India. Some can be used for either benefit or detriment.” She stopped at one drawer, pulled it out, and removed a long flat tin, and then took a white linen square from the top of the cupboard. She slid open the lid of the tin and put a large pinch of fine brown powder into the middle of the material.

  “What is that?”

  “This one is bhang, a mild aphrodisiac made from hemp, which also promotes endurance.” She opened another drawer and repeated the process. “Crushed seeds from the banyan tree, also an aphrodisiac. And one other.” As she added a third fine powder to the mixture, she said, “Only a minute quantity of the powdered leaves of the dhatura, for it is a powerful intoxicant with deep sedative powers, to be used with extreme care.” She gathered up the cloth, tied it in a small tight knot, and handed it to me.

  I stared at the tiny cloth bag.

  “You must make sure your husband consumes all of this at one time. I assume, as an Englishman, that he drinks alcohol?”

  I nodded.

  “Sprinkle the powder into his drink and stir it well. He won’t detect it, and the alcohol will intensify the effect. Shortly after he has finished it, you must do what you have to do to bring him to the level you have spoken of. He may act slightly confused, but he will not weary at his task, and may even perform successfully more than once.”

  I nodded.

  “You are in the very early stages of your pregnancy, are you not? Six to seven weeks?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must be careful not to exert yourself and bring it on early, as so often happens to British women. You can fool your husband by a month or slightly more, but if this little one makes a healthy arrival too much ahead of schedule, even the most unquestioning male brain may start to wonder.” She looked into my eyes. “One other question. You said the child’s father is of another world. Will there be the issue of color? For if he is an Indian, you must be prepared that the child may bear the appearance of—”

  “He is not an Indian,” I interrupted. I thought of Daoud’s black hair and dark eyes, but also of the paleness of his skin not exposed to the sun. I could only pray for the baby’s physical attributes not to be too revealing. I concentrated on the fortunate fact that Somers, too, possessed dark hair and eyes.

  “Good. How did you come to my home?” she asked.

  “Rickshaw. It was all I could find. My visit here must be a secret one.”

  “An open rickshaw is not wise in midday heat. I will have Yali summon a curtained palanquin.” She went through the beads and I heard low murmurs; she reappeared carrying a large glass of thin white liquid. “Coconut milk.”

  I sipped at the sweet drink. “Your daughter is very beautiful. Her eyes are unlike any I have seen.”

  “Yes. Her father was the English owner of a tea plantation outside Darjeeling,” she said.

  “He was your husband?”

  Nani Meera smiled. “No. Like you, Linny, I loved a man of a different world.” She sat down again, and I did, too, holding my glass with both hands. “I was ayah to his children, although I was already gaining the knowledge of a woman of medicine. His wife . . . she had fallen victim to the illness so many English women suffer in India—much like Faith. Over time I grew to be his . . . companion.”

  The sound of Yali’s baby in the next room made Nani Meera blink, and she looked at my glass of milk. “Drink. It will help settle your stomach.” Her hands were still in her lap. “I gave birth to Yali. On the plantation lived an English overseer and his Indian wife; shortly after Yali’s birth a son was born to the overseer, but the birth killed the mother. I took the child as Yali’s milk brother, and grew to love him as my own.” She smiled at me. “It was Charles, of course.”

  She looked toward the doorway at the jingling of bells. “Come,” she said, rising and extending her hand. “Your palanquin is here.”

  I set down my empty glass and took her hand in mine, holding it firmly. “Thank you, Nani Meera,” I said, letting go and opening my reticule. “Tell me what I owe you.” I tucked the cloth bag inside and took out a square of folded bills.

  But the woman shook her head. “It is my gift to you, for you are a friend of Charles. I wish you success with your husband,” she added, pulling aside the mat at the front door. “I am hopeful it will work.”

  “I hope so, too,” I said. “My future—and the future of my child—depends upon it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  AS I RODE BACK TO THE CLUB FROM NANI MEERA’S, THEN onward to my home with Malti, each jolt of the palanquin was a moment wasted. Time was my enemy. For all I knew, the next day Somers might announce that he was leaving for a few weeks, and my plan would then be useless. I had to act that very evening, after dinner.

  I entered the dining room as Somers set down his large glass dessert bowl, leaving only a trace of currant pudding clinging to its sides. I carried a tray with a glass three-quarters full. Somers pushed away from the table as I approached.

  “The khitmutgar prepared your brandy pawnee,” I told him, handing him the glass. At the crotch of his tight trousers I saw his outline, sitting like a stone. I knew what I’d have to do to bring it to life. I felt as if a similar stone were lodged in my throat, a stone of dread at what physical pain awaited me if Somers reacted the way I needed him to, a stone of terror that he wouldn’t.

  He took the glass, glancing at me. “You acting as servant, now?”

  I made a tsk of annoyance. “I passed him in the hall. I’m simply making an effort, Somers.”

  He took a generous swallow. “An effort at what? Playing the dutiful wife? You haven’t bothered before.”

  It would be simple, I
knew at that moment. He had been itching to beat me since my arrival from Simla. “You idiot,” I said, putting my hands on my hips as I spoke loudly, letting the Liverpool whore in me come out. “You’ll never give me a chance, will you? You’re nothing but an arrogant fool, berating me no matter how hard I try.”

  He drained his glass and banged it back onto the table. I saw his eyes brighten in the same way Neel’s did when I picked up his favorite ball. “You dare to sling names at me? You? Are you forgetting where you came from? What I did for you?” He brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen across his forehead, ran his fingers over his mustache. I saw that his hand trembled, ever so slightly. Could the drug work this quickly?

  “I’m tired of your bullying ways, Somers. Telling me where I can and can’t go. I can do whatever I want.” Here was my Paradise voice, coming so easily at my bidding.

  He narrowed his eyes, but not before I saw the dilating of his irises. Yes. It could. Now his hands were balled into fists.

  “Don’t you dare touch me,” I said, shaking my head at him, smirking. “Don’t you dare.”

  Handing Somers that particular challenge was the key. I backed out of the doorway and ran down the hall to my bedroom, slamming the door and leaning against it. “Out,” I barked at the punkah wallah, and he ran through the verandah doors. Somers shoved viciously at the door, and the force knocked me down. He stood over me.

  “Think you can talk to me like that? Do you? You sweet little ungrateful bitch,” he murmured. He took off his jacket and lay it over the back of a chair. He took his gold ring from his hand, carefully placing it into his waistcoat pocket, and slowly rolled up his sleeves. Then he came toward me, picking up Neel’s long leather leash from my dressing table bench.

  I forced myself to cry out with a terrified wail. “No, Somers, don’t. Don’t hurt me,” I begged, as he wound the end of the leash around his hand. Then I threw myself facedown across the bed, and he kept coming, the leather strap lashing through the air. He was muttering, but I couldn’t make out his words. He brought the leash down across the back of my thighs, its sting deadened by my clothes. The more I cried and begged, the more violent became his blows. Finally he roughly threw me over, onto my back, and I saw that he already had his trousers unbuttoned. In the next instant he forced my knees open with his, shoving up my skirt and petticoats and ripping at my drawers. And then he gripped himself with a look that was a combination of surprise and triumph and lust, and in the next instant rammed himself inside me. I felt my flesh tearing. “Is this how you like it?” he asked, his hands pinning down my shoulders, looking into my face as his hips jerked. “This is what you’ve been wanting from the first time you laid eyes on me, isn’t it, whore?”

  He closed his eyes and raised his chin, rutting then with such urgency that I worried about the baby, but knew I mustn’t stop him. He went on and on, seemingly tirelessly, as Nani Meera had predicted, his arms eventually shaking with the effort of holding himself above me for so long. I closed my eyes, waiting for it to end, trying to go to the place inside my head that I had always found all those years in Liverpool. But I couldn’t reach it anymore. I couldn’t make myself float away, disappear from my body. I was no longer sheathed in that imperceptible internal armor that had kept me from going mad, that had allowed me to continue to live as I had to, first as a child and then as a young woman.

  Now I knew what this act could mean. I had been touched by its tenderness and shared joy, with Daoud, in such a sweet and splendid way that the bestiality of Somers’s act was, indeed, the most horrific of rapes. Not since my first time, with the man called Mr. Jacobs, had I felt so violated. It was as if Daoud’s lovemaking had made me clean again, had taken away all the unspeakable memories. What was happening to me now was unbearable. I bit my lips until I tasted blood, bearing Somers’s frenzied pounding for what felt like an eternity. At long last he tensed, and then, groaning, collapsed heavily on me, his body twitching and his breath harsh in my ear. Finally he lay still and his breathing grew soft and steady. And then I didn’t hear it at all.

  I tried to shift under him; he had grown heavier, and oddly limp, although I could still feel him, slighty stiff, inside me. What if he’s dead? What if Nani Meera put in too much of the dhatura, and I’ve killed him?

  “Somers,” I said, getting my hands under his chest and pushing. “Somers!” I pushed hard enough to roll him off me. He lay on his side. I slapped his face, hard, and at that he made a sound and his eyelids fluttered. “Get up,” I said, my voice low and cold. “Get up and get out of here.”

  “What?” he whispered, then opened his eyes. His pupils were huge and black, his face an unnatural shade of red. The leash was still wrapped around his hand.

  “I said to get out of my room. You’ve had your pleasure. Now leave.”

  He sat up, looking at my dress and petticoats bunched around my hips, my drawers torn and hanging off one leg. My hair was plastered against my cheeks.

  He eased himself off the bed, jerkily unwinding the leash and dropping it, forcing himself into his underdrawers, pulling up his trousers and buttoning them with shaking fingers. He tried to speak, licked his lips, and cleared his throat. “So you aren’t made of steel, after all,” he said. “I have actually managed to make you cry.”

  I put my hand to my face. It was wet; I tasted salt on my lips.

  “You shouldn’t anger me, Linny,” he said. “Perhaps eventually you’ll learn.”

  I yanked my skirt down and turned on my side. “I want Malti,” I said quietly. “Send Malti to me. I want a bath, to rid myself of your slime.”

  And then he left, and didn’t return until late the next day, his eyes red-rimmed and his clothing wrinkled. We didn’t speak for the next week.

  IN THE FIRST WEEK of September, I sat in the cracked leather chair in front of Dr. Haverlock’s desk. He was a rheumy-eyed old man, his jacket and tie spotted with grease. His high color suggested gout. He picked under his nails with a small scalpel. He had been one of the English enclave’s physicians for more than twenty years, Mrs. Waterton had told me when I confessed to her that I needed to visit a doctor.

  She had grasped my hands, her face beaming. “Is it . . . ?”

  “I believe so,” I said, with a confidential air.

  She looked so pleased, nodding her head. Actually, Mrs. Waterton was one of the only women who still often invited me to her home for an afternoon call. For all the grief I had caused her, I believe she had a soft spot for me now. “I was becoming quite worried about you. But this climate makes it hard for some. You must be very careful not to overdo in any way. I’d get right into bed and stay there for the duration, if I were you.”

  Now Dr. Haverlock leaned back in his well-worn chair, completely uninterested. “How can I help you?”

  “I’ve been feeling wretched every morning for quite a while, now,” I said, looking at my skirt and speaking in the most modest voice I could manage. “And sometimes I feel dreadfully lightheaded for no reason at all. Only this morning, when I smelled my husband’s bacon, I—”

  “Quite,” he said. “Child on the way, I expect.” He took a large pinch of snuff from a small lacquered box on his desk and inhaled it noisily, looking at me sternly. “Your first?”

  I nodded my head.

  “Any questions?”

  This time I shook my head. “But—you won’t have to . . . examine me, will you?” I asked, forcing a look of embarrassed fear onto my face.

  “No reason for that. Symptoms are quite clear. We’ll just see when it should arrive. Date of last flow?”

  I lowered my eyes again. “The beginning of July,” I lied in a whisper.

  The old man studied a grimy calendar, flipping the pages ahead. “Right. Watch for signs in late March.” He stood, slowly straightened his back, and took a round silver watch out of his waistcoat pocket. He clicked open the cover and eyed the dial. “That should be it, then, Mrs. . . . sorry, what was it?”

  “Ingram. M
rs. Somers Ingram.”

  Dr. Haverlock’s face brightened, and he looked at me with interest for the first time since I’d entered the room. He brushed snuff off his sleeve. “Ah. Somers Ingram. Well, well, I expect he’ll be a happy fellow with this news, then, what?”

  “Yes.” I gathered my gloves and reticule and walked to the door. Dr. Haverlock followed me.

  “If you experience any major discomforts, let me know,” he said, his manner remarkably warmer now that Somers’s name had been mentioned. “Just rest as much as you can, no spicy foods, no upsets or hysterics, and in about seven and a half months it will all be over.” He smiled in a fatherly way, patting my shoulder. “Messy business, birthing, but a necessary evil, I’m afraid.”

  I forced a smile. “Thank you so much, Dr. Haverlock.”

  He reached in front of me and opened the office door. “One more thing, Mrs. Ingram. When your confinement begins, make sure you call for one of our women to help. Don’t trust an Indian midwife.”

  “But of course, Dr. Haverlock,” I answered sweetly. My smile disappeared at the dull thud of the closing door.

  WHEN I TOLD SOMERS that evening, a range of emotions crossed his face. Surprise, dismay, and then suspicion. “What do you mean, a child?”

  “Have you forgotten, Somers? That night, with Neel’s leash, when you—”

  He put up one hand. “All right, all right. Damn.”

  “Damn? That’s your reaction to this?”

  “I don’t want a child, Linny. It will add a complication to all of this. I said there would be no children.”

  “You also said you’d never touch me in that way.”

  He sat down, his legs stretched in front of him. “I’m not interested in being a father.”

  I waited.

  “Well,” he finally said. “We can’t do anything about it now. Perhaps it will settle you.”

  I nodded. “Perhaps it will.”

  September 18, 1832