During the days, when he is safely out, she packs their belongings and cleans. Scrubbing floors and wiping walls and laundering all the drapes. Making it nice for the next family. Periodically, she walks out to the stable or sits on the veranda. But the cleaning is the most satisfying. The only time she and the colonel attempt to be in the same room together is for supper on the Friday he officially leaves his position. It is a special occasion that he has organized in advance. All day, Suria thumps in and out of the dining room and upstairs to Hannah, asking again and again about how to prepare Yorkshire puddings.
Hannah comes into the dining room as the colonel is opening a bottle of Whyte & MacKay. A glass waits empty on the sideboard. “Going away present, from the lads,” he says sheepishly. “Nice of them, isn’t it?”
“By the smell of you, I would have thought you’d already drank it.”
“Women,” he retorts. “Little police officers, all of you.”
Looking at his face Hannah feels suddenly queasy. Gripping the back of her dining chair, she leans over to tug her serviette from under her knife and drops it on her empty plate. “I’m not hungry.”
“You’ll sit down and you’ll eat with me tonight.”
She glares at him, which he seems to expect and even enjoy. The colonel points at her chair, taking his own seat. He begins carving the roast chicken, piling slabs of the meat onto his plate, then exchanges his plate for hers. Leaning forward over the table, he scoops a fat dollop of potatoes and two of the puck-shaped Yorkshire puddings onto the plate in front of her. Suria stands frozen by the sideboard, holding a boat of gravy. George walks over and grabs it from her, then pours it over everything.
“You’ll sit and you’ll eat,” he says again, jerking her chair out from the table. For she is still standing. “Pour memsahib a glass of port,” he tells Suria.
Hannah looks over at the ayah, who has already turned for the bottle. She closes her eyes and lowers herself into the chair.
“All of it,” he says.
The steamship to London is due to depart on November 10. For every supper prior, Hannah supplies Suria with an excuse for her absence. On several occasions, she is “out at a neighbor’s.” Fridays: attending the evening church service. Illness—which is in any case not far from the truth—covers several days at a stretch. There are also “women’s troubles” and the fact that she is asleep, sound asleep. Eva and Lucy, who call on Hannah during this period, receive one of the same excuses.
When Hannah runs out of excuses, she leaves Suria to come up with her own account of mem’s reclusive behavior. The colonel accepts it all, apparently, until the day that he doesn’t.
There is a note in his voice so unnatural that it draws Hannah from the guestroom to the top of the stairs.
“Don’t know, sahib.”
“You do know.”
“Mem not hungry. She say, you eat, please.”
“I am asking her to eat with me. And who am I?”
“Sahib, sir. Tuan, sir.”
“Who am I to her? Eh? What do you reckon?”
She hears Suria stumbling over a response. Then the unmistakable squelch of bone against bone, flesh against flesh. A heavy footfall. A loud grunt.
Hannah strains to hear what else may be happening below, though she cannot budge, as if the whole thing has unfolded within a bad dream and she is actually asleep.
That evening she goes to find Suria in her quarters with Anjuh. The ayah’s jaw has some stiffness and bruising that will probably worsen before mending. Unfortunately, two of the fingers of her left hand are in worse shape. Anjuh unwraps the bandage gently for Hannah to see. They look badly sprained. The little one, perhaps broken.
“How did this happen?” she asks.
Suria shakes her head.
“Tuan has done this to you,” says Hannah. He must have twisted them, hard, perhaps even stomped on her hand. Had she fallen from the initial blow? Hannah tries to remember the sequence of sounds. A coward, she was nothing but a coward, hiding out of sight and leaving Suria to face the colonel’s rage.
“I’m so sorry, Suria. So very sorry.” Hannah looks at the couple. “You won’t have to put up with us much longer.”
Suria says nothing, still shaking her head, as if she refuses to believe anything. Anjuh hovers anxiously beside her, holding the unspooled bandage in one hand and a bowl of noodles under the other arm. It must be excruciating for him to see his wife in this state.
“Do you have a doctor in town?” she asks. “Someone who can help you heal? I think you should be using a splint, Suria. You know, so the fingers can heal as straight as possible.” She tries to demonstrate on her own hand.
They look at each other and mumble a few words in Malay. Perhaps they don’t understand.
Hannah says, “I want you to go home. Back to the lower town. There’s no point in you hanging on here for the last week or two, not when he’s being…so unkind. Anjuh, please, help her get to a doctor. Medicine. Don’t worry, I will make sure that you’re paid for the last weeks of your service.”
Anjuh and Suria look at each other again, exchanging a few more words in Malay. “No, mem,” Anjuh tells her. “We not make you alone.”
Wiping the tears away, more come in their place. And now she is embarrassing these poor people! “I’m so sorry,” Hannah repeats. “I’m sorry for everything that has happened. Sorry for what we have made you do.”
“Hush, mem.” Anjuh puts the bowl of noodles down and takes her by the arm.
Suria joins in, moving around the table to ladle a new bowl of soup. “Please, eat.”
She accepts a place at their table. Anjuh rewraps Suria’s hand with the old bandage and pulls a crate up for an extra chair. Then they all begin slurping broth and spooling noodles onto their spoons. The table is so small their heads almost touch when they lean over the bowls.
“Noodles is good for sadness,” Suria remarks.
She will need a lot of noodles, then. A river full. As Hannah eats, her insides warming, she considers her next steps. Just like Suria and Anjuh, she cannot stay on Ridge Road.
Fifty-Four
One of Lucy’s house girls opens the door.
“Good morning. Is Mrs. Peterborough available?” Hannah asks. It is nine o’clock in the morning. She would be surprised if Eva weren’t in. Available is another matter.
The maid ushers her inside with a bow. Has she been one of the doctor’s research subjects too? The girl returns before long and leads Hannah through to the back parlor. Eva is sitting in one of the armchairs with a pot of coffee and a newspaper on the table beside her. Seeing Hannah, she rises. “Hannah darling, how are you?”
“Oh…surviving, I suppose.”
“Good.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t receive you the other day.”
“Or the one after that.”
“No, well, I’ve been…” Broken is a word that comes to mind. Wallowing is another. “Eva, tell me what happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“How he was killed. Why he was killed. Tell me everything you know.”
Eva sits down, gesturing for Hannah to do the same and shooing away the remaining servant. “Hannah, I don’t really know.”
“I came to you, Eva, because I knew you would tell me the truth.”
“Sit down, then.”
Reluctantly, Hannah removes her satchel and takes a seat in the nearest armchair.
Eva glances at the satchel. “He was found with his throat slit. In one of the alleys in the lower town, quite near the river. It seems that no one saw or heard anything, or at least nobody has come forward. His body was found by some shrimpers heading toward the wharf. Apparently, they had some trouble finding an officer to report their discovery. Every available man was assisting with the transfer of the convicts.”
She swallo
ws with difficulty. So Darshan would have lain alone in the street. Died alone.
“My speculation,” continues Eva, tapping her chin with her forefinger, “is that those shrimpers were the ones who released the wretched genduk. They must have arrived at the station, found no officers about…and perhaps the girl pleaded with them. Promised them sexual favors. Or they simply took the opportunity to free one of their own.”
“She was locked in, wasn’t she?”
Eva shrugs. “Were there keys nearby? It wasn’t the most secure of situations.”
“I should have gone to his funeral,” Hannah murmurs. She had felt too guilty and too anguished to show her face.
“What, his Sikh funeral? Hannah, my goodness, that would have sealed your fate, socially. What with your breakdown…and then the rumors that were already—”
“Right,” snaps Hannah, “because now you’re at the epicenter of Who’s Who and What’s What.”
“Not for long, thankfully. I’ve convinced Charles to leave for Australia. That’s why I called on you earlier this week. To say goodbye.” Her expression softens. “To offer you my condolences, as well.”
Hannah sniffs. Somehow, losing Eva is a blow. As much as she’s come to dislike the woman, she likes her just as much. “What are you going to do in Australia? How soon are you leaving?”
“Tour, collect, write, conduct field research. What we do wherever we go.” Eva reaches for her hand in an uncharacteristic show of warmth. “Don’t look so devastated, Hannah. You’re leaving, too, aren’t you?” She looks down. “And despite, as you put it, being at the epicenter of Who’s Who, I don’t fancy living at Idlewyld if you won’t be visiting.”
Lucy enters the room with a discreet cough. “Hannah!” she chirps.
“Hello, Lucy.”
Lucy registers the presence of the beat-up satchel at Hannah’s feet with widening eyes and proceeds to interrogate her. How are you feeling? How are you sleeping? Eating? Are you coping, poor dear, with your diagnosis? Hannah is surprised there are no questions about her bowel functions.
At some point during the exchange, Eva excuses herself. “Come out to Idlewyld before we leave, darling. Please. I have something to give you.”
Hannah stands for many minutes, possibly, looking at Darshan’s bungalow from the street. She can’t manage to move any closer; neither can she force herself to turn and leave. What of his laugh, that great boom of a laugh—hadn’t she heard it, just now, around the corner?
“Madam,” a voice says.
“Yes.” Hannah wakes to find herself facing a Sikh woman, younger than herself, holding a child against her hip.
“What do you want with this house?” the woman asks. “Why are you standing here looking?”
Confused, Hannah says, “Do you live here now?”
“No.” The woman shakes her head. She has jet black hair and black eyes that do not look friendly. “More important: you do not live here.”
“Of course not,” Hannah says, thinking at the same time that she wouldn’t have minded living there, in the lower town. She likes the noises, the close quarters, the salty breeze from the water.
The child reaches out to her, a chubby hand, with pink fingers extended in a spiral. The motion shifts his weight, pulling him out of his mother’s grip. She draws her son firmly back into her arms.
“This might sound strange,” Hannah tells her, “but I am…I was a friend of Sergeant Singh’s. And I wondered…” She fumbles for a moment with her handkerchief against her nose. I wondered if I could tell you how much I miss him. “I wondered if I might be able to have his notebook? Where he wrote about the forest species he was documenting? If nobody else has use of it. If…I don’t know where it might be, you see, he usually carried it with him, but…and I don’t suppose you would know, either.”
The woman regards her silently. Her eyes have grown a little kinder.
“I suppose not,” Hannah continues. “Only, I thought he may have left it at home. Or it, it may have been put in his house when they, when they…” She cannot bring herself to talk about the task, though someone must have had it, of removing Darshan’s bloodied uniform. Emptying its pockets. Bathing his body clean. Preparing him for the funeral rites. What are Sikh funeral rites? He never spoke much of his faith, and, absurdly, she had not asked him about himself. Who did these things for him? she wants to ask the woman. What and whom did he love? He had never mentioned a wife, never a family. “He’s remarkably content,” says Hannah, of the child, “just sitting in your arms.”
“Still sleepy,” she answers. The woman turns and walks in the direction of the bungalow. “Wait here.”
Hannah follows her toward the side door, where the woman enters without knocking. Who is she, this young stern thing? Hannah doesn’t recognize her, and yet there are few Sikh women in the village. As she stands, waiting, she considers the matter. Could it be that she is a relation of Darshan’s, come from India? There is no reason to suppose this except for his death, and the fact the two share a faith.
Shortly the woman emerges from the side door, her son still clinging to her like a koala. She holds out Darshan’s square notebook with its leather tie. “This one?” she says. “Because there are ten more just like it.”
At Idlewyld, the two women embrace warmly. It has begun to sink in, how much they will miss each other’s company. That they may well never see each other again. Eva asks Hannah to come upstairs. The pleasant, lilting sound of syllables grows louder as they walk down the corridor.
“Let’s stop in on Charlotte,” Hannah suggests.
In the nursery, Charlotte Peterborough is reading aloud to a new servant, a temporary genduk. This Malay is grey-haired and stout. Her betel-stained mouth parts as she listens. The girl’s cheeks are bright red in the heat of the stuffy room.
“Say goodbye to Mrs. Inglis,” Eva directs her daughter.
Charlotte does so, and lets Hannah embrace her briefly.
“Be a good girl, then,” Hannah says, for no particular reason. She wonders how much Charlotte talks to her mother and father. What does she know about their lives? “Are you still collecting butterflies?” she asks her.
“It’s out of season,” Charlotte replies, taking her seat again at the table.
“Ah. So I suppose not.”
“Come,” Eva says, “I have something for you, Hannah.”
Further down the corridor, they enter her study. The room has been emptied except for the long mahogany desk. Eva moves around to unlock and then tug open a drawer. She removes an envelope, turning it over in her fingers, gathering her thoughts.
“I’ve treated you poorly, Hannah. And I’m very sorry that I can’t change that, I know. Whatever justifications I may have had, I…I was simply struggling. This may sound awfully silly to you. But it seemed to me that, when you chose Sergeant Singh, you chose against me.”
“What you do mean?” she objects. “I spent far more time here with you. I didn’t choose him, Eva.”
“Yes, you did,” she insists kindly. “Here.” She holds out the envelope. “Your commission.”
Hannah peeks inside. “This isn’t meant to be payment, is it? Eva, I didn’t accomplish anything on your behalf. I never made you a painting!”
“You made plenty, but then your bastard of a husband burned them all to ashes.”
Hannah draws out a bundle of British banknotes. Hundreds of hundred-pound notes. “I can’t accept this.”
“Of course you can.”
“I wanted to paint you something special.” A parasol flower, she cannot bring herself to add.
“Then say you will paint me something special. Because I’m not taking any of it back!” With her fingernail, Eva traces the grain in the wood of the desktop between them. She pushes at a char mark, a black wound in the wood. “Don’t waste your talent, Hannah. Take the money and spe
nd it on paint supplies. Then send me something. But we’ll correspond, won’t we?”
“Paint supplies! There must be at least—”
“You’re right, that’s far too much to spend on paint alone. Set yourself up with what you need. Keep going.”
Hannah feels a rush of gratitude. “Thank you. Very much.”
“Not at all,” she says coolly.
“Eva, I just want to say…I’m so glad to have known you. For what you’ve helped me see. So much. And I wish—I wish you happiness, wherever you go.”
Her mouth turns up. “If my theory is a good one, then I should be able to verify it from any location. After all, Mr. Darwin spent thirteen years peering at barnacles before he dared to present the idea of sexual selection. Charles and I can make up the fieldwork elsewhere. And when we do, I expect we’ll see all of this here in Kuala Kangsa as nothing more than a setback.”
Hannah flinches inwardly. Of course the fieldwork would continue; it is the reason the Peterboroughs came in the first place, and the reason they have to move on. Holding a packet of Eva’s money, she’s hardly in a position to object.
“I know you don’t approve,” says Eva, reading her face. “I appreciate your concern. I’ll take it into consideration,” she says, a little awkwardly. “He certainly won’t be doing any more photography.”
Someone is calling for memsahib, coming along the corridor. A head appears in the doorway; a houseboy asks a question about packing the kitchen crockery. He leaves with an answer but the women agree, Eva must get on with things.
“I’ll take a little walk out back, if you don’t mind,” says Hannah. “Before I head home.”
“A little walk.” Eva laughs. “I know you. Three hours later, she’ll have hiked to the highlands!”
The Parasol Flower Page 34