A Sahib's Daughter (3 page)

Charles arrived on time dressed in navy trousers and a gray sweater and looking suddenly unfamiliar to her in daylight. He politely invited Prava to join them for lunch. She desisted, although pleased to be asked. Filled with misgivings, she told them to go and enjoy themselves. She took scant comfort in the knowledge she had instilled in Ramona that the worst thing that could happen to a girl was to become pregnant out of wedlock. She wanted a better life for her daughter than the single state she had suffered. No man had been willing to take her and her daughter on, not that she had ever sought one.

Ramona could scarcely dare to look at Charles now that she was confronted with the reality of him. She wore her old blue flowered dress and her new shoes. Her feet were aching from dancing the night before. She decided not to wear a cardigan, although there was a chill in the air because she didn’t have one that quite matched.

“I hope you don’t mind walking,” he said. He was staying at the Planters Club, a short distance from her home.

“Not at all,” said Ramona. “I walk all the time.”

She was as striking as he remembered. Pretty wasn’t the word for her. It felt good walking beside her. It had been more than six years since his breakup with Sarah. He’d been home once to visit his sister Pauline and had evaded her efforts at matchmaking. He didn’t know what he wanted, but it wasn’t the kind of woman he met in the drawing rooms of London: safe, predictable and much too domesticated for his wayward way of life. Not that he preferred to live alone. It was damned lonely on the tea estates but better alone than with the wrong woman.

Ramona was different. He recognized in her a quality he couldn’t quite define, something he had waited for all his life. Like arriving in India and falling in love with it. When he looked into her eyes last night, it confirmed what he’d suspected when he’d first spotted her across the room. Now she met his gaze, and there were no more questions, just the answers he’d always been waiting for.

Could she have a clue what he was thinking, he wondered, as they walked in the crisp sunshine? Did she have any idea what an unconventional chap he was? There was a chance she just wanted a lunch date, a pleasant Sunday outing. All he had to offer her was a lonely life in tea. She was a teacher and had her whole career ahead of her. But when she turned and faced him, her emotions transparent across her face, he knew with certainty he had to have her, that she was destined to be his wife and that somehow the fates had ordained that he come to this far-off country to find her.

Two weeks after the dance at the Gymkhana Club, Sandra Williams was in the middle of teaching a math class when the peon arrived with a message for her scribbled by the school secretary. A Mr. Geoffrey Peters had telephoned. He wanted to take her to see “From Here to Eternity,” showing that night at the Capital Theatre.

Chapter 2

India, England 1946

Charles disembarked from the
S.S. Adventurer
at the India Gate Dock in Bombay, little knowing that his status was about to change from Charles Clarke, Esq., of Hertfordshire, England, to that of a British Sahib with the power to issue orders, command respect and demand obedience from native Indians with no justification other than his white skin.

Around him, bewildered and sea-legged fellow passengers thronged the gangway, unsure whether to grab their hats, their belongings or the shaky handrail. People waiting on shore searched for loved ones, welcoming them with shrieks and embraces as they emerged. With apprehension, Charles scoured the melee of greeters, not knowing what to expect. At last, he spotted a placard with his name across it brandished by a man in a white chauffeur’s uniform. At the sight of Charles, he smiled and raised his hand in a salute.

“Salaam, Sahib! Welcome to India!”

He explained that he would drive Charles to a hotel for the night and return in the morning to take him to the station where he would board the train to Calcutta.

They waited for his luggage, in stifling heat, amid the inevitable pandemonium caused by the arrival of passenger ships to the port. Frenzied porters in red tunics and black turbans appeared with the luggage they had collected from the cabins and were following passengers to their vehicles outside. Charles was amazed to see his cabin trunk appear beside him as if by magic. The trunk contained, among other necessities, his dinner jacket, walking boots, khaki pants, malaria tablets and solar topee hat, items considered necessary by his sister Pauline for the lengthy sea journey and his first weeks in India. The rest of his belongings were being freighted to him by the East India Shipping Company.

Once outside the docks, he was conveyed in a dilapidated Ford Austin through busy streets that teemed with people, vehicles and creatures of every size, color and description: automobiles with horns barking, tongas drawn by mangy horses, bicycles with their bells tinkling and rickshaws hauled by lithe-bodied men shouting at people to get out of their way.

Lining the streets he saw shops packed with exotic merchandise: brightly colored garments, brass statues, terra cotta urns and ivory figurines. Food stalls displayed pyramids of spices, bulging gunny sacks of grain, and baskets of fruits and vegetables that overflowed onto the footpath. He passed boulevards flanked by white colonnaded buildings, elaborate red brick mansions and ornate temples in eastern architectural styles. Rising above, as far as the eye could see, were minarets, ramparts and gilt-edged copper domes defining the city’s skyline.

Charles stared spellbound out the window. He had no idea what adventures awaited, but his excitement and anticipation were a welcome respite from the months of heartache he’d recently endured. Sarah had married someone else. After all their years together, she had left him for Howard Russell. Charles had been about to propose to her but somehow, the time was never right, and he couldn’t seem to summon up the words that would have bound her to him forever. While she was visiting her aunt in Surrey, he had even gone so far as to choose a ring, a sapphire with diamonds on either side. But she had returned to Hertfordshire a different woman, aloof and unapproachable. Finally, in her mother’s drawing room, white-faced and trembling, she told him it was all over between them and that she was marrying someone else.

“Please don’t be angry with me,” she pleaded. “You know I’ll miss you terribly.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t love him. She just had her future to consider. She couldn’t spend any more time waiting for him. And he had to admit it was true that they had made no promises to each other, except for what had been implied.

He later heard that Howard had a magnificent house in Hadley Wood. His father owned a printing company that would be passed down to him. It was already providing Sarah with the little luxuries that Charles couldn’t possible afford on his salary as an insurance adjuster.

Sarah had been his best friend, besides the woman he assumed would be his wife. What had prevented him from taking the next step? How could he contemplate a future without her? He was certain she was feeling the same heartache. It was impossible that she did not. He missed their sojourns into London, their Sundays spent at Hyde Park Corner, the museums and their favorite tea shop near Regent’s Park. He was lost without her. He felt confined in his tiny, terraced house in Friern Barnet which he shared with his sister, Pauline, and would walk disconsolately for hours in the hills surrounding Barnet or through dismal neighborhood streets.

He had light brown hair and eyes and, although tall and somewhat gangling, showed promise of becoming handsome as he matured, though he obviously wasn’t handsome enough for Sarah.

Pauline felt unable to reach out and help her heartbroken brother. If he would only open up and express his feelings, she knew he would feel better. But he didn’t know how to deal with his feeling of loss, and she just couldn’t find the words to alleviate his distress.

He commuted daily to his insurance office at Kings Cross, waiting on the platform for trains that ran with endless regularity, rather like the pattern of his own humdrum life. He realized suddenly that marriage to Sarah would entail a life time of commuting just like this, with the added responsibility of her welfare. Was that how he really wanted to spend his life? Was it perhaps the real reason for his hesitating to propose?

Flipping through the classifieds in the
Guardian
on the train home one evening, he’d seen the advertisement for a tea planter’s position in India. All that were required, it said, were patience, fortitude and the guts to withstand the difficult conditions there year after year. He felt a surging excitement as he read the words. India! He was fascinated by the idea of living in the colonies. He had always wanted to travel, explore and seek adventure…and here was the opportunity to do so, just when he most needed it!

He realized he had Pauline to consider. She shared the home they’d grown up in. Their mother died of pneumonia in 1936, ten years ago. After she died, their father took to going directly to the pub from his office in Highbury, returning home later and later, until one night he didn’t come home at all. He vanished from their lives, and they never heard from him again, though on one occasion years later, Pauline thought she had spotted him at Oxford Street Station, drunk and shouting obscenities to a group of women.

Pauline was twenty-seven and seemed unlikely ever to marry. She had taken care of Charles who was only fourteen when their mother died, giving up her dreams of college. She now worked as a nurse at the Friern Barnet Mental Asylum close to their house. It was a dismal institution in a walled compound behind metal gates. People grew accustomed to the sight of “escapees” strolling along High Street in their dressing gowns, harmless inmates who returned in time for tea and a token reprimand from asylum staff.

Pauline was committed to her job and never complained about its unreasonable demands on her time and her goodwill. She had met a man named Sean Bartholomew, who was Irish and a chauffeur for a Jewish family in Hendon. He would sometimes pick her up in the family’s shiny Rolls Royce, causing her to giggle and wonder what the neighbors were saying. There was a delicate balance to their friendship, which any hint of romance might have toppled. They were on easy terms that neither saw any reason to change.

On the day Sean left the family’s employment, he purchased a navy blue Bentley automobile in order to pursue his dream of starting his own chauffeuring company. Brimming with excitement, he inveigled his way through the asylum gates in the limousine and drove up to the front door just as Pauline was finishing her shift. He asked the startled receptionist to tell Pauline that he had come to pick her up and to please look out the front window. Pauline laughed with embarrassment when she saw Sean standing beside the splendid car and waving to her. The inmates and staff got wind of what was happening and shouted and waved to Sean from the windows. With delight, they watched as he opened the car door for a blushing Pauline and whisked her away through the gates.