East of India
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Also by Erica Brown…
Copyright
East of India
Erica Brown
Chapter One
Benares, India, 1941
It was a week before leaving Benares School for Young Ladies that Nadine Burton came home expecting everything to be as it always was but found it had changed for ever.
As usual the air was humid and heavy with the scent of rotting vegetation, rich spices and bullock droppings, and the veranda running along the front of the house was cloaked in shadow.
The house was the same, but there was no Shanti, no loving ayah waiting to welcome her home. Ever since she could remember, her nurse had stood on the veranda waving a welcome, eyes sparkling, lips spread in a welcoming smile.
A small lizard ran across the floor in front of her, disappearing into a crack in the wall. This particular breed was common and harmless but today there was something ominous about the hollow sound of its scuttling in the shady house, and there was no response when she called Shanti’s name; just the scuttling of the lizard.
Uneasily, feeling slightly sick, she walked swiftly towards Shanti’s bedroom, the corridor so cool after the heat outside.
If her ayah had been sleeping the door would have been closed but today it was open. The room was bare except for her nurse’s iron-framed bed and a small yellow rug. The mattress was rolled up and placed against the bedhead.
Nadine saw no trace of her ayah’s silk saris, her sandals decorated with silver bells, her bangles, her unguents, or the heavy gold earrings with the fine chain which connected them to her nose ring.
A small earthquake erupted in her heart. There was no life in the room. No Shanti, though her scent still lingered on the air.
The soft rustle of a sari sounded behind her, accompanied by the hushed padding of sandals upon stone.
For a moment her spirits soared, then dipped again when she saw it was Myla, the housekeeper. Though her hair was black, a swathe of whiteness ran back from her temples which gave her a fierce look as if she was running into the wind.
‘She is gone,’ said Myla, matter-of-fact.
‘Gone where?’
‘Away from here. You do not need her any longer. You are a grown woman now. Your father let her go.’
Nadine felt as though the ground had given way beneath her. The whole world seemed so much darker, her life destroyed.
‘I shall kill myself if she doesn’t come back. I mean it. I shall kill myself!’
‘Foolish talk.’ Myla shook her head emphatically. ‘She would want you to live for ever.’
Nadine’s laughter was raw and brittle and tears stung her eyes. ‘Nobody lives for ever.’
‘Life is precious. That’s what your ayah always said.’
‘Where has she gone?’
‘Back to her place in the world,’ said Myla and hurried away, her calico skirt swirling as she went, her leather sandals slapping the hard floor.
Nadine sank down against the whitewashed walls until she was sitting on the floor, her legs folded beneath her, her feet bare and dusty. Shanti was gone and the world seemed a much lonelier place. So where was she? Nothing is ever totally unknown.
‘Nothing,’ she murmured, springing to her feet on legs that had been coltish and were now firmly feminine.
Those legs now ran through every room in the house as she searched for the woman who had brought her up from babyhood. She demanded of the house servants, the gardeners, the cooks and the grooms to tell her where she was.
‘Tell me. Tell me now!’
Nervously, they shook their heads, dark lashes flickering over velvet-brown eyes, their mouths firmly shut. Their jobs depended on them obeying orders.
The old house reverberated with the noise of slamming doors and running footsteps.
One door, dark mahogany and usually locked against the world, suddenly opened. Her father Roland Burton, a severe personage dressed in well-tailored clothes, a gold ring on one finger, appeared at his study door. He was wearing a pale cream suit, the knot of his old school tie hard as a pebble against his throat. The stark lightness of his suit was angelically white against the dark mustiness of the study behind him, a place lined with books, the curtains dark, the furniture leather-covered and unashamedly masculine.
‘Stop this noise. I am trying to work.’
His manner was curt, each of his words delivered like the thwack of stick against ball on the polo field.
‘Shanti! I can’t find her.’
Seldom did she find herself face to face with her father. She was his child, yet over the years they’d seldom spoken or even eaten together. Only in these last few weeks had she been invited to dinner when guests were expected. The rest of the time she’d dined in her room or with the servants, eating what they ate whilst sitting barefoot at the back door watching the sun go down.
‘Forget Shanti. You are now a woman and have no need for a nurse.’ There was no softness in his words, no sympathy or acknowledgement that there had been affection between the two women. ‘And no more dancing. Not Shanti’s style of dancing. You must be the prim young English lady and behave properly.’
‘Where is she? I want to see her,’ Nadine shouted.
He stiffened, his expression grim.
‘You have no need of a nurse. You are now a young lady. A young ENGLISH lady. In future you will behave as such and will forget everything Indian. The time has come for you to marry. An English gentleman requires an English wife, not one that acts like a native.’
He went back into his study, the door closing on him and the smell of musty books, tobacco and masculine cologne.
* * *
Hours later, she was still sitting where she had last sat with Shanti, her eyes still heavy with tears and her nose running.
Though twilight lay heavy over the garden and the shadows were long, she kicked off her shoes, stepped onto the grass and began to move her body and arms in the way Shanti had taught her.
Tears streaming down her face, she danced until it was too dark to see, then went inside and to bed, fresh tears staining the pillow.
* * *
It was the following day before she found out what had happened.
A dim narrow corridor ran from the main one to the back of the school and the veranda where the caretaker kept his buckets and sweeping brush.
The corridor was empty. So many of the girls had been sent home at the outbreak of war in Europe. To Nadine it seemed all so far away in a country she’d never visited. War would
not come to India, surely? It was too distant and protected by its own army. Shanti would have reassured her that everything would be fine. Thinking of Shanti she began to dance, imagined music guiding her movements. In her mind Shanti was dancing with her.
None of her fellow students ever came here so she had not expected to be discovered, but today she was.
‘You’re dancing like a native! It’s disgraceful. Absolutely disgraceful. I intend reporting you to Miss Clark.’
The speaker was Cecilia Renfrew, the red-headed daughter of a senior civil servant. Nadine stopped dancing, placed her fists on her hips and faced the least popular girl in the school.
‘Cecilia Renfrew! Why do you have to spoil things for everyone?’
‘You shouldn’t be dancing like a native. It’s not seemly.’
The girl with the unruly red curls and a turned-up nose took a step backwards. Nadine concentrated all her anger on that nose. It was like a small snout, intruding pig-like into the secret world of her imagination.
‘Seemly? What would you know about seemly? Come to that, what would you know about anything? Anyway, I was just exercising, flexing my limbs to improve my poise. A well-educated young English lady should always move gracefully. Which is more than you’ll ever do! You have all the grace of an elephant. No. Less than an elephant. More like a water buffalo!’
Cecilia raised her least attractive feature that little bit higher, her oily chin blemished with faint traces of acne shiny in the noonday light. Most people sweated. India was like that. White-hot summer. Humid winters. How could anyone not sweat?
‘I’m going to tell Miss Clark. Now!’
Nadine paused in mid-pose. She didn’t care if she was reported. Shanti was gone and her world was shattered, but she would always dance. She owed it to her ayah.
In her mind she had been bending and weaving to the sound of a sitar in the vine-covered pergola at the far reaches of her father’s garden.
The imagined smell of roses, perfumes and spices was wiped out by the musty stink of mothballs and old tweed as Miss Clark, the headmistress, appeared.
Bulldog fashion, the headmistress’s bottom lip curled up over the top one. ‘I will tolerate half-heathens, I will even tolerate full-blooded natives as long as they are Christian, but I will brook no heathen decadence in this school!’ Her voice had a grinding quality as though she were mincing each word before spitting it out. She wasn’t finished yet.
‘Your father will know about this. Those dances are the devil’s work, Nadine Burton, and whoever taught you such things is the devil incarnate. A heathen practice.’
Hot tears burned at the back of Nadine’s eyes, but she willed herself not to cry.
‘Shanti is not a devil! She is – was – my ayah!’
Cecilia’s eyes glittered. ‘Well, I heard she was your mother and that she lives in Alexander Street. I heard she was your father’s floozy and that you are their bastard.’
‘Enough of that!’
Miss Clark delivered a hefty whack to Cecilia’s freckled cheek which instantly turned scarlet.
‘It’s true, miss. My mother heard from our housekeeper and my mother says that such as she make British men run round naked and…’
‘Quiet!’
The word hit them like a slammed door. Miss Clark was incapable of saying anything quietly.
For a moment Nadine’s wide-eyed amazement stayed with the girl who now preened with cruel satisfaction.
The address in Alexander Street echoed cold as a tolling bell in her mind and gave wings to her feet. Kicking off her shoes, she ran from the school corridor.
Miss Clark’s voice boomed after her. ‘You little heathen. Come back here!’
She ran all the way, uncaring that the first rain of the monsoon was bouncing off the ground and leaving deep puddles where garbage floated from the dumps and into the town.
Little more than an alley, Alexander Street was a place of ramshackle dwellings alongside tall houses ornately carved in centuries past but now showing signs of being infested with termites, the wood brittle with sawdust.
Nadine slowed her pace, her eyes seeking from right to left, as if Shanti was likely to pop out of a doorway. How stupid she had been to think she could find her without a specific address – not that Cecilia, the ginger-haired harpy with her superior airs and nose to suit, would have given her one! Not once she had realized how desperate Nadine was.
She searched with her eyes, darting to any woman who chose that moment to poke her head out of her dirt-floored house; a useless task.
A woman scouring an iron pot with dirt from the edge of what had been a drainage gutter and was now a muddy stream looked up.
Nadine greeted her respectfully, hands together, a slight bow of her head. ‘I am looking for Shanti Bai. Do you know where she lives?’
The woman rested her pot against her side and pointed to the end of the street.
‘Follow this road. You will find her by the Ganges.’
She saw pity in the woman’s expression and heard it in her tone of voice.
Kicking splats of mud up and over her navy gymslip, she ran on. The rain was heavier now and soon her hair was plastered to her head. Moisture ran down her face, into her eyes, her mouth and dangled from the end of her nose. The feet of her black school stockings were soggy and spattered, the toes hanging like dead things on the end of her feet.
She ran out onto the top of the Burning Ghat in front of the mosque built by the Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb on a site that had once been a Hindu temple.
As the rain eased, the smell of smoke circulated more freely along with the more fetid odour of fermenting marigolds, carnations and other garlands: votive offerings floating on the river.
Nadine stopped to catch her breath, her eyes continuously searching the surge of humanity that was the ancient city of Benares: the sacred bulls, the naked holy men, and the flocks of crows circling above the corpses laid out for burning. Once each body was totally consumed by fire, the ashes would be scattered on the holy Ganges.
A ragged man brought out a pile of kindling from beneath a metal umbrella leaning against the wall of the temple. She watched as he set the logs beneath one particular pyre where the small feet of a graceful woman pointed out towards the water.
For a moment she couldn’t breathe and her body trembled. How was it possible to identify someone by looking at their feet? And yet, she knew it was Shanti. Hadn’t she seen those feet dancing many times?
She approached the ragged man.
‘Please. That lady. Who is she?’
When he looked up at her she saw that he had only one eye. The other was tightly closed as though it had fallen asleep and never reopened.
His mouth spread in a toothless grin.
‘She was a lady named Shanti Bai. A great devadasi in her youth. A nautch was good luck indeed when graced with her presence.’
A nautch was a party, a great celebration such as for a wedding or business success or for the entertainment of a great maharajah.
The bare feet were level with Nadine’s face. She stared at the soles, her heart beating like a drum. Taking a brave breath, she walked slowly along the length of the body until she was level with the head. Hot tears squeezed out of the corners of her eyes, running down her cheeks to disturb the dirt accumulated on her run here.
‘Did you know her?’ asked the ragged man.
She bit her bottom lip and nodded without taking her eyes off the slim figure lying so still on the pile of logs.
‘I would like to light the pyre,’ she said firmly.
He looked taken aback. ‘Are you a relative?’
She thought quickly and carefully. ‘Not really.’
The old man made a sound of acquiescence and reached for the burning log he had stuck in an adjacent brazier.
‘Then that is all right. She paid for things to be done in a professional manner. Someone who is not a relative must light the fire now that the world is finished with her. This
is only her body. Her soul is long gone.’
Nadine understood. Some people believed it unseemly for relatives to gather and mourn or to light the funeral pyre.
His calloused hand guided hers.
‘In there.’
She did as instructed and stood back as the flames began to lick up over the damp wood, the resin hissing and spitting as the logs cracked open.
The rain lessened. The crows wheeled and circled overhead, glutted on the smell and the feast of burning remains.
Nadine stood sentinel, needing to cry but unable to move. Her body was stiff and so was her face.
An old fakir, his joints knotted like tree trunks, joined them. They stood on either side of Nadine, watching as the flesh was burned from the bones.
A sudden thought occurred to her. ‘Quickly. Don’t let the crows have her.’ She took off her broad-brimmed hat and proceeded to fan the flames.
The two men exchanged looks of incomprehension.
‘You should not be so sad,’ said the fakir. ‘She chose of her own right to finish with this body.’
‘So I hear,’ said the ragged man, nodding sagely in an effort, so it seemed, to place his wisdom on a par with that of the holy man. ‘But no matter. She will soon be ash. She chose to leave this life and her wish has been fulfilled.’
Not sure whether she understood correctly, Nadine looked from one to the other. What did that mean?
The fakir noted her questioning frown.
‘She chose,’ he said, more slowly now so that she might better understand. ‘She took her life because she had no need of it any more.’
‘If a life becomes empty…’ added the ragged man.
A log crackled and tumbled. Morning turned into afternoon before the logs and their precious cargo became ash, and even then Nadine could not move. The truth was too terrible to bear. Her mother, distraught at being parted from her daughter, had killed herself.
The ragged man began to shovel the ash into the river where it mixed with the evening mist. Perhaps she was fooling herself, but she was sure that she had seen the mist dancing around the ashes, homage to a dead soul. Even Shanti’s scent seemed to hang in the air above the stink of decomposition and human occupation. She was gone; gone for ever, leaving Nadine feeling empty and uncaring of whatever happened next.
East of India Page 1