Belonging (10 page)

I could smell it even before we saw land. That instantly recognisable, complex scent of India – a mingling of woodsmoke, perfume, dung and baking biscuits – came out to greet us as we approached Karachi, carrying the memories that I had locked away inside me, and suddenly I felt myself again. In England I had been someone else, a pallid imitation of a person.

At school we had been discouraged from talking about India. The other boys sneeringly referred to us as ‘koi hais’, and using Hindustani words to each other was regarded as showing off. Standing out in any way was frowned upon, but I am more like Father than I knew, and I had no desire to fit in. I hated the regimentation, the bullying, the fagging, the enforced team sports, the tasteless food and always being cold. My childhood dream of being confined in a suffocating dark place recurred frequently, and waking the whole dormitory with my screams did nothing for my reputation.

The holidays at Aunt Mina’s were a relief from school. She and I had almost nothing to say to one another, but I got on better with the boys from the village than I did with boys
at school, and enjoyed playing cricket on the village green and helping with getting in the hay. They accepted me as belonging to the village, but my hopes of learning anything about my mother were disappointed.

After school I had dreamed of going to Sandhurst or Addiscombe and following Father into the Indian Army, but I discovered that he had arranged for me to go to Haileybury to train for the Indian Civil Service. I was deeply disappointed. At school, almost the only activity I enjoyed was being a cadet, enacting battles from the Zulu wars and learning to form square. My pleading letters produced a brief response – our future in India was uncertain and Father felt that if I wished to make a career in India I would have a better future in the I.C.S.

At Haileybury my fluency in Hindustani gave me a head start, but that, together with my familiarity with native customs, raised the inevitable suspicion that there was ‘a touch of the tar brush’ about me. I do not say I was ostracised, but I am too proud to accept being tolerated, and the only real friend I made there was Gavin McLean, whose father was Scottish and mother Chinese. He is one of the cleverest people I have ever met, and is planning a career in the Indian Political Service. We have promised to keep in touch.

Apart from school essays and letters to Father, I have done little writing since I left India. I did not keep up my journal because there was nothing I wished to remember of my time in England. It was like being suspended in a limbo that I had to endure until real life started again. While I was there, I understood Father’s depressions for the first time; I felt as though I had lost everything that gave my life meaning. If I ever have children, I shall never send them away.

When I arrived yesterday, Kishan Lal came out to greet me. His hair is whiter and his stoop more pronounced, but his smile is as big as ever. He came forward and bent to touch my feet but I caught him by the shoulders. He straightened up and we looked at each other. His eyes were full of tears.

‘Sahib has become a man.’

My own eyes felt damp. ‘How is my father, Kishan Lal?’

‘The same as ever, God be thanked.’

The house, though different from the one I left, is a standard Army bungalow with its high ceilings and large central room divided into drawing and dining room. The furniture is unchanged and Father’s steamer chair is on the verandah in the same position it has always sat. For a moment I felt as though I had stepped back eleven years.

‘Where is he?’

‘We were not expecting you so early. Sahib has gone to the Lines. He said to send to him when you arrived. He wanted to come to Karachi to meet you but he said you told him no.’

‘I didn’t want him tiring himself unnecessarily. He must be, what… seventy now?’

Kishan Lal waggled his head. ‘Must be.’

I wondered how old he himself was but knew it was pointless to ask; he wouldn’t know. ‘He’ll be retiring soon.’ I tried to imagine it and failed. What would he do with himself? ‘And you, Kishan Lal? What will you do?’

Kishan Lal grinned. ‘Sahib will never retire. He is a lion among men. He can still wrestle with young men and win. And what would I do? No, I shall stay with Langdon-sahib till the end.’

‘He’s lucky to have you, Kishan Lal.’ I looked around me. ‘Where is Bibi? I brought her a present.’

Kishan Lal’s face fell. ‘Did Sahib not write it in a letter? Bibi died – must be nine, ten years ago now. The year after you went to England. You truly did not know?’

‘No. He never mentioned it.’

He put a hand on my arm. ‘Don’t be angry with him, sahib. He must have wished not to trouble you. He knew you were not happy there.’

I bit back the obvious reply while I thought of all the inquiries I had made after her health, the good wishes I had asked him to pass on. He had never replied to any of them.

‘How did she die?’

‘She had something – a growth – here.’ He touched his side. ‘The doctor said it could not be taken away.’

I thought back to the months before I left – the doctor’s visits, the way she used to catch her breath, the hand pressed to her side. ‘I remember. She must have been in pain. So they knew before I went. Did it take long?’

‘One year, maybe one and a half. The pain was very bad. The doctor gave her medicine but it wasn’t enough. She suffered greatly at the end. Your father sat with her all day, all night, sometimes reading to her, sometimes wiping her face. He even bathed her himself because he said the bai the doctor sent was not gentle enough.’

‘He must have been very lonely after she died.’

‘Yes, but he has his work with the regiment. It is good to have work.’

‘I suppose so. Look, don’t bother to send for him, Kishan Lal. I’ll walk over there. I could use the exercise after all those weeks on the ship. Have my bags put in my room, would you?’

‘Of course, sahib. And sahib…’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s good to have you back. It will make him young again. It will make us all young again.’

Father was standing on the parade ground talking to a group of native officers and sepoys as I approached. As soon as he saw me he came forward to embrace me, then gripped my shoulders and looked into my face. His white hair is as thick and his eyes as blue as ever and apart from a slight shake in his hands and a new wildness to his eyebrows he looks just the same.

‘You’ve grown up, Henry, and become very like your mother.’ He wrung my hand and stepped back. ‘Here are some old friends, come to greet you. They’ve been eagerly awaiting your arrival.’

Two sepoys in regimental uniform came forward and saluted me, then bent to touch my feet. I stepped back.

‘Sepoy Bedi and Sepoy Khan. Do you recognise them?’

‘Of course I do. Mohan. Ali.’

Then all the other sepoys, ones I remembered and ones I didn’t, were crowding round to greet me and welcome me home. But it is different from how it used to be. I am no longer a child they can tease. I am now a sahib and none of them, not even Ali and Mohan, would dare to pull my leg, or play a joke on me, or take me down a peg when I get too big for my boots.

As we walked back to the bungalow for lunch I understood for the first time how lonely Father’s life has been. He has always been a figure apart: respected and perhaps even loved by his men, but never able to confide, share his troubles or take off his officer’s mask. I wonder why he has never made friends with other British officers and whether that was always
so, or whether his separateness started after Mother died. I wonder if it will be the same for me.

Last night Father and I sat on the verandah and talked. Again I noticed how his hand shook as he raised his whisky to his lips. For the first time it struck me that he will die one day. The thought shocked me and made me realise how alone I shall be when he has gone.

We talked about ordinary things: he gave me the latest news of General Roberts’ march on Kandahar, which he feels is doomed to failure. ‘No one has ever been able to hold Afghanistan for long, and no one ever will.’ I gave him news of Aunt Mina and a brief resumé of my time in England and then we seemed to run out of subjects to talk about. I watched him swirl his whisky in his glass; it’s an old habit, one he uses when he has nothing to say. I have seen him do it a hundred times at the Club. I had a sudden urge to puncture his defensive shield.

‘Kishan Lal tells me the bibi died.’

He looked up. ‘Oh, yes. Do you remember her?’

‘Of course I remember her! She nursed me that time I had typhoid fever.’

‘So she did. Fancy you remembering that!’

‘Why didn’t you tell me she had died? I asked after her in every letter. I even enclosed some poems for her.’

‘Did you? I’m sorry, it must have slipped my mind.’ He rubbed a hand across his eyes.

Rage twisted through me. I remembered him telling me as a child that I surely must have known my mother’s name. Perhaps that too had ‘slipped his mind’.

‘Was she your bibi before you married my mother?’ I asked deliberately.

He drained his glass, picked up the small brass bell on the table beside him and rang for Kishan Lal.

‘What I mean is, did my mother know about her?’

He laughed harshly. ‘I didn’t keep them both at the same time, if that’s what you mean. But yes, I knew Sabira – that was her name, by the way – before I met your mother. I was twenty when I came out to India. There were no Englishwomen here then; it wasn’t considered safe. In those days there was none of this fuss about going native; we were encouraged to blend into Indian society, to eat the food and appreciate the music and culture. The Company was here for business, not to build an empire, and we were healthy young men with normal appetites. It was a less prurient time; having a bibi was encouraged. They educated us in the ways of the country and the customs of the people we had to do business with, or the men we would command. Sabira was an intelligent and cultured girl, trained in singing and poetry and dance. I was lucky to have her. I never understood why she chose me – a green young subaltern – when she could have been the mistress of a nawab. She taught me to speak the court Urdu and almost everything I know about Indian history and culture. It was after ’57 when the Crown took over that everything changed. Englishwomen began to come out here with their husbands, and they wanted to turn India into suburban England. They and the missionaries and the religious zealots in the Army decided it was our God-given mission to “civilise” the natives by pushing our customs – and of course our religion – down their throats.’ The stream of words paused as he rang the bell again.

I was already regretting starting this conversation. As usual he had taken something personal and turned it into a
lecture. I steered it back to where I wanted to go. ‘Talking of memsahibs, how did my mother take the news of the bibi’s existence? Or did she not know?’

His scar tightened, and I watched the red thread pulling the corners of his eye and mouth together. ‘Naturally I gave Sabira up when I married your mother. She was a talented singer and in much demand among the aristocracy in Lucknow. After I married, she could have chosen another patron, but she chose not to.’

‘She loved you.’

‘Yes. God knows why.’

‘So how did she end up with you after all that time?’

‘I had kept in touch with her; I couldn’t just abandon her after so many years. My marriage to your mother wasn’t easy, but she wasn’t to blame. I was too old and ignorant about delicately brought-up girls to understand her needs. And then – long after she died, when you were about ten or eleven – Sabira became ill. She had no one to care for her; she’d given up everything for me. I had an obligation to her.’

‘So she was already ill when she came to live here?’

‘Yes. There was no cure. It was a tubercular tumour in her side. We tried everything – she had numerous operations. They kept draining the wound but it was horribly painful and it always came back.’

‘I’m sorry. I wish I had known. I was angry with her – with you both – when I left.’

He looked down into his empty glass. ‘It was the reason we sent you away. She didn’t want you to have to watch her die. And afterwards… it seemed better to let you complete your education.’

Kishan Lal arrived with another bottle and some fresh ice. He looked at Father’s expression and shook his head at me.

‘I’m sorry, Father. I shouldn’t have raised the subject, especially on my first day back. But the bibi – Sabira – was very kind to me. I wish you had told me.’

He looked at me for the first time, with those painfully blue eyes. ‘I’m sorry too, Henry. I haven’t been a very good father to you. When your mother died everyone told me I should send you to England, to your aunt, but I couldn’t bear to part with you. You were all I had.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It was selfish of me. You would have had a normal life there, instead of a lonely childhood here.’

‘I was happy here, Father. I’ve always considered India my home and always shall.’

He looked thoughtful. ‘We may not always be here, you know, Henry. Things are changing. Being here is no longer about ruling by force but about building a system of government that we can hand over. That’s the way I see it, anyway, although not everyone agrees. That’s why I wanted you to go to Haileybury. My brother James was there, you know.’

‘Yes, I do know. I read his name in the Roll of Honour.’

Our eyes met. He must have known he could not keep it from me forever. I still had questions, but we had talked enough about sad things for our first night together. I decided to make peace.

‘The truth is, Father, I wanted to go into the Army because I’ve always wanted to be just like you.’

He looked astonished. ‘God forbid, Henry. I wouldn’t wish my life – or character – on anyone. But I’m very glad that you’re home at last. I’ve missed you.’

It was some time before I could speak. ‘It’s good to be home, Father.’