Belonging (7 page)

A woman has come to live in the bibighar. Father brought her home with him soon after Aunt Mina left. When I asked him who she was he told me she is someone he used to know a long time ago.

The bibighar is just an outhouse in the compound – one room with a small bathroom at the back. It used to be full of old furniture but before the woman came Father ordered Kishan Lal to get it cleared out and whitewashed, and had some rugs, a string bed, a low table and a lamp put in. There is a curtain at the door and window.

Kishan Lal says the woman arrived in a covered litter, which was carried right to the door, and he only caught a glimpse of her, but I heard him say to Allahyar, ‘Judging by her dress she’s a Muslim, but then that’s hardly a surprise.’ Then Allahyar got cross and told Kishan Lal he was the son of a raandi who plied her trade in the bazaar, and Kishan Lal called Allahyar a bhenchod, and Allahyar picked up the kitchen knife, so I stepped in and asked what raandi and bhenchod meant. I know they’re rude words because Ali told me, and I knew that would stop them fighting.

They both looked at me and Allahyar said, ‘Get out of here with your notebook, you little spy,’ and Kishan Lal told him not to speak to me like that and then he told me to keep out of other people’s business and that my notebook would get me into trouble one of these days. I said Mr. Mukherjee had told me to write it and then they both agreed you could never trust a Bengali and said I’d better not show him anything I’d written about them.

This afternoon I took my books into the compound to work. When Kishan Lal asked what I was doing I said it was cold in the house and I wanted to sit in the sun.

‘You’d better make sure your father doesn’t catch you hanging around her,’ he said. ‘He won’t like it.’

‘Why not?’ I asked, but he wouldn’t tell me.

The woman did not come out all afternoon. I saw the mali’s wife taking her a tray of food just before we had dinner, so she can’t be a servant. She doesn’t seem to have a name either. Kishan Lal and Allahyar always say ‘her’ if they have to speak of her. ‘Take
her
her dinner.’

I have heard the woman going to Father’s room at night. She plays an instrument that has a strange twangy sound, and sings. Sometimes they talk and sometimes they’re quiet. Once I heard her crying. I have decided not to listen any more.

I still spend most evenings and weekends at the Lines with Father, watching tent-pegging or wrestling. Mohan, Ali and I have started to wrestle too, but Ali is the strongest, even
though he is younger than Mohan and I. He says it’s because he’s a Pathan, but Mohan asked how it is that Dhubraj Ram can beat his father, then, and then they fought and Ali won and Mohan went off sulking. I told Ali about the woman. He said he had heard his father talking about it with the other men. The woman is Father’s bibi. A bibi is a bad woman who lives with a man when they aren’t married. He says lots of Englishmen used to keep bibis before the memsahibs came and that’s why the outhouse is called a ‘bibighar’, which means ‘bibi’s house’. I feel sorry for her. It can’t be nice living alone in that tiny room and no one speaking to her and never seeing anyone except Father.

The weather is hotter now and the bibi has started leaving her door open with just the curtain hanging and sometimes when there is a breeze I can see in a little bit. Yesterday I was practising playing ball against the side of her house when Kishan Lal came out and told me off. He said Father wouldn’t like me disturbing her. I said she hadn’t complained but he said he would tell Father if I didn’t come away at once. Everyone seems to be cross since she came.

This morning, after Mr. Mukherjee had gone, I went out with my Urdu poetry book and began to practise the poem I am supposed to learn by heart, marching round the compound. Mr. Mukherjee told me that walking helps when you are trying to learn poetry because you can stamp out the rhythm. I don’t really understand the poem, which makes it hard to remember. I kept forgetting the last two lines, and then a voice said them for me. It was a beautiful voice, like honey, and I turned round but she was behind the curtain.
‘Why don’t you come out?’ I said, and she opened the curtain and looked at me.

She is quite old, older even than Aunt Mina, and tall, with a pock-marked face and a long silver plait that reaches almost to her knees. She smiled at me and I smiled back. She asked me if I understood the poem and I said no and she said it was about the pain of love and I was too young to understand it. And then she asked me some questions and I told her about Mr. Mukherjee and my lessons and she said I sounded very clever, like my Father. I don’t know why no one likes her because I think she’s nice.

The bibi and I are friends now. Every day after lessons I read my poetry or my Urdu homework to her and sometimes she helps me with it and sometimes she plays her dilruba and sings. Mir is her favourite poet and her favourite song is this one. I wrote it down and Mr. Mukherjee translated it into English for me.

I asked her why her songs are always so sad. She says ghazals are like that. The loved one is always unobtainable, the lover has no hope, the mistress is cruel – her eyebrows are as sharp as daggers; her eyes shoot arrows. Mr. Mukherjee says in England in the Middle Ages they had ‘courtly love’ and the lover was always tested, sometimes to death, to prove
his love, a bit like in
Ivanhoe
. It seems silly to me. She told me she used to be a singer and perform at mushairas. They are competitions where each singer takes it in turns to sing a couplet, and at the end of the night the one whose couplets are the cleverest is the winner. I asked if she ever won and she said she did. Then she told me that was how she met Father. He used to come and listen to her sing. Then she said, ‘That was a long time ago, when we were both young.’ She sounded sad. I wanted to ask more but I didn’t like to. I wonder if Father knew her before he knew Mother.

She lent me the book and that night Father picked it up off my bedside table and looked at the poem, which I had marked with a slip of paper. I thought he would ask me about it but he seemed to think Mr. Mukherjee had given it to me. When I asked him about the poem he told me it was written after parts of Delhi were razed to the ground and some of Mir’s relatives were killed. I asked him who did that and why. He sighed and said, ‘I wish I could answer that, Henry.’

Dear Mina,

We are back from the hills early because there has been some trouble with the sepoys. Arthur says it is nothing to worry about, but he insisted upon returning at once although he is still quite weak. He wished me to remain there until it gets cooler but I could not let him travel alone, although I have hardly seen him since we returned as he spends even more of his time at the Lines.

You cannot begin to imagine the heat, Mina! The sun blazes down from a white sky that hurts one’s eyes and the only time one can go out is in the very early morning. Except for my rides then, I am confined to the house. The dust is dreadful and almost chokes one, and the tattie blinds have to be soaked each morning to trap the dust and cool the breeze passing through them. They are kept drawn all day and we live in the dark like moles. Even when the sun goes down there is no relief, for the heat rises from the ground as from a frying pan, and the punkah has to be used all night. Sometimes the punkahwallah falls asleep and I wake soaked in perspiration and unable to breathe.

You cannot imagine the length of these nights as I toss and turn. There is a bird here called a kokil – a kind of cuckoo – that shrieks all night on a rising pitch until one longs to shriek oneself! The countryside is parched, the grass brown, and the trees are covered in a thick layer of dust. Everyone here is praying for the rains.

Give my best love to Mama and Papa. Arthur sends his best regards.

Cecily

Dear Mina,

Please do not mention this to Mama and Papa, but I understand now why Arthur has been spending so much time at the Lines. He explained to me yesterday that, since the annexation of Oudh (from where many of the troops originate) in January, there have been constant rumours that we are trying to destroy their caste and convert them to Christianity. There has been trouble in several regiments, though none in Arthur’s. He says we are in no danger as his men are very loyal and he has complete trust in them. He told me that Ram Buksh saved his life during the last war against the Sikhs by standing over him with his sword when he was wounded and holding off the enemy till help arrived.

I will write again as soon as there is news.

Cecily

Dear Mina,

This morning I decided to take my sketchpad and watercolours with me when I went for my ride, thinking I would paint the view for you. Yet, when I sat down and looked over the lush green landscape (for the rains have started and the parched dusty plains and hills have turned to jungle almost overnight), what came to my mind’s eye was the countryside at Home as it would be now, on one of those soft June mornings when everything seems to waver on the edge of solidity. The sky is a clear pale blue, the clouds small and soft, the flocks of starlings glow silver as they turn into the low sun, the trees and bushes quiver with every passing breeze, and the whole scene is constantly transformed by the passing shadows of the clouds. I could not, of course, achieve it, for what characterises it is
movement
, yet I think I captured something of its fragility and sweetness.

As I was adding a final touch of violet to the undersides of the clouds, Ram Buksh, Arthur’s jemadar, came to tell me we should return soon, as the rainclouds were gathering. (Arthur thinks it unwise for me to ride alone now and says the syce would be no use if there was trouble, so Ram Buksh, who has been exercising Arthur’s Waler since he has been ill, rides with me.) He looked quite puzzled when he saw the painting and looked from it to the landscape, until I explained that I had intended to paint the scene before us but somehow ended by painting Home instead. And then I started crying like a fool, and ended up telling him about High Elms, about you and Mama and Papa and the Downs and our games, and he listened so patiently, as though he understood and sympathised with everything I said, though he could not
possibly have understood even half of it, even though he speaks some English, because life is so very different here.

We think we know all about India back Home, but the reality is beyond imagining. Everything is so extreme: the heat, the sun, the wild animals and the ever-present smell of death. It is all around us, and it is not uncommon to see the carcasses of cattle and even people lying by the roadside. Arthur says when the Agra famine occurred the streets and fields were full of bodies as people were dying too fast to be burnt, and many sold their children to the Missions for a rupee each, or gave them away to anyone who could feed them, to save them from starving. I have heard some of the ladies say that it is not so bad for natives when their children die, or they have to give them up to the Missions, for they do not care for them the way we do for ours, but I cannot see why this should be true. There is a village here that I sometimes ride to and it seems to me the children’s mothers care for them as much as English mothers do – perhaps more, as they do not have servants to look after their children as we do but have to do it themselves.

I cannot tell you how comforting it was to be able to talk to someone about Home. Arthur is always busy and last week we quarrelled and since then I have hardly seen him because he does not come home to sleep. I think he must be sleeping in the Lines with his men. I know you will disapprove of my mentioning our troubles, but I have no one else to talk to. Everyone here is so proper and constantly standing on their manners. Emily Tremayne seems nice, but her little girl Mabel is very sickly so she is always preoccupied, and in any case I could not talk to her about private matters.

Be kind to me, Mina, for I so look forward to letters from Home that I cannot bear it if you are cross with me.

Your loving Cecily

Dearest Mina,

I am glad to hear that Peter is excited about being sent to Palestine, although I know you will miss him sadly. But he always wanted to see the world and I can still picture him wriggling through the trees on his stomach, pretending to be Davy Crockett.

You will be glad to know Arthur and I made up our quarrel, and I am slowly coming to learn something of his past. His parents died when he was very young and he and James were brought up by an uncle, who was not really interested in them, so they spent most of their holidays at school and have never really known family life. I felt so sorry for him when I heard that. I told him about our family and how much I missed you all, and how little I had understood of what married life involved. We even laughed about it. I told him that I wished to be a good wife to him and that I would try, and he was so gentle and kind with me that I think that Mama and Mrs. Welling must be right, and that perhaps in time I shall even come to enjoy it.

And there is more good news! We have just learnt that Arthur’s regiment is being sent to Cawnpore, where James and Louisa are now, and that we will be leaving in November, when it is cooler, and travelling nine hundred miles overland. I am so excited at the thought of seeing them again and Arthur is happy that he and James will be together. Cawnpore is the biggest military station in India and many regiments are being transferred there because of the rumours that trouble is brewing in Oudh, but Arthur says there is no cause for worry as Cawnpore is under the command of General Wheeler, who is the finest soldier he could hope to serve under. The journey
will take about three months so we shall not be in Cawnpore till early in February.

Your excited Cecily

My dearest Mina,

I know you will despair of me, especially after my last letter, but I discovered something on Saturday that was a terrible shock, for I had really thought that Arthur and I were becoming closer. But I have found out that he has been keeping a bibi, a native mistress, for years.

I did not tell you that the reason for the quarrel I mentioned back in June was that Arthur asked if I thought I should ever feel towards him as he does towards me, and I said I did not know. (This was before we had that talk and made up the quarrel.) He knew that I did not enjoy married life as he did, and I know it hurt him. I tried to tell him that perhaps if he spent more time with me and we grew to know each other better my feelings might change. But I could tell that he was not really listening and as soon as I had finished speaking he shouted for his batman to saddle Warrior and rode off into the rain. He did not come back until the next morning, soaked to the skin and shivering, and I was afraid he would be ill again but he refused to rest, changed his clothes and went straight out to the Lines. After that, until we made up, he spent several nights each week and most Sundays away from here and I had no idea where he went. I assumed he was sleeping in the Lines but now I know he was seeing his mistress all the time, and everyone knew about it except me!

I found out about it entirely by chance, for we were attending a farewell dinner before our departure for Cawnpore, and, after the ladies had withdrawn, I went to the powder room. As I entered it I heard two ladies talking – one of them Captain Melbourne’s wife Lucy, who gives herself airs because her husband is the stepson of a baronet. I overheard her say, ‘Poor little thing, I feel so sorry for her. He is so much older than she is and it’s evident to everyone that he hasn’t the slightest interest in her. Graham says he spends all his time at the Lines with his men and completely neglects her, and he’s always croaking about upsetting the natives and what they might do.’

They did not see me come in and I did not want to interrupt their conversation so I remained by the door.

‘Well, of course he has different tastes after twenty-five years in India,’ Lucy Melbourne went on. ‘It’s a surprise he married at all. Everyone knows he has had the same bibi for over twenty years and Graham says he still sees her. He saw him one morning last month coming out of her house. Such a plain creature, too, and quite old, and his wife is such a pretty little thing, but then of course these native women have all sorts of tricks – ’ And then she saw me in the glass and stopped talking. Both of them looked so embarrassed and left the powder room so hastily that I knew at once that they had been talking of Arthur and me.

You cannot imagine how humiliated I feel, Mina, knowing everyone has been gossiping and laughing about us. I could not face seeing them, so I sent a bearer to fetch the dogcart and to tell Arthur that I was not well and was returning home. He came out to meet me at once and insisted on accompanying me. On the way I could not hold back the tears. He asked me why I was crying, and when I would not answer he told the
syce to drive out to a tank in the countryside. We walked up and sat and looked out over the water and he said, ‘Would you like to tell me what has made you unhappy?’

I did not reply and he said he knew it was hard for me to be away from my home and family but that he thought we had been getting along better recently. When he said that, I felt such indignation that I burst out and asked why he had asked me to marry him when he already had a native mistress. He said that he was sorry he had not told me about her, but that when we married he had put her behind him and thought it best not to mention it because it would upset me needlessly. He had truly not intended to see her any more. It was only when he thought that I did not care for him, and never would, that he had gone back to her, but as soon as we made it up he told her that he would not visit her again.

I asked how long he has known her and he said he met her soon after he came out here – nearly twenty-five years, Mina! – and that she taught him almost everything he knows about India. I asked if they have children and he said no, and that if they had he would have married her for the children’s sake. And he sends her money every month because she has given him the best years of her life.

I could tell by the way he talked about her that he still cares for her and feels guilty for abandoning her, and I cannot stop thinking about it. They have lived together since before I was born, Mina, and she must know him better than I shall ever do! When I think of the things I have allowed him to do recently, and imagine him doing the same things with her, I feel I shall die of shame.

I was mortified and angry, and told him that he had had no right to propose to me, and that he had become engaged to me under false pretences. I could tell he was upset, but he
said that if I was really unhappy and wanted to go Home he would not prevent me, although it is too late to change our arrangements now. When we reach Cawnpore he will arrange my passage to England if I still wish to go.

Since then he has slept in his dressing room, and I lie awake all night unable to stop thinking about it. The worst thing is that over the past few weeks I have truly grown to love and trust him. I know you will say that it is my duty to forgive him, but I cannot stop imagining them together and I know that every time he touches me now I shall think of him touching her that way, and I cannot bear it. I have not yet decided what to do, but I do not think I can continue living with him.

Try not to think too harshly of me, Mina. I know in my place you would have acted differently, but I have never been as strong or good as you are.

Your Cecily