Belonging (8 page)

At fifteen, although I was not beautiful, as she was, I was starting to see something of Mother in the bones of my face, the set of my mouth. I began to dream of her, too. In the dreams I was back on the ship, leaning over the rail and watching the phosphorescence, when she swam up from the depths, one half of her face silvered by moonlight, the other in darkness. I recoiled and saw her do the same. Only when I woke did I realise that her movements had mirrored mine in every detail. I was her, and she was me.

I would wake gasping for breath and lie there in the moonlight, remembering how, when I was small, she was the princess in the fairytales Father read me: pale, beautiful and distant. I used to stand in the doorway to her room as she sat at the dressing table, at first hiding behind the doorframe; but then the fascination would draw me out to watch as the two women talked, the one facing the mirror pleading and sad, the one in the mirror harsh and cruel, spitting out her words. It was always the mirror face who saw me: her mouth twisted, her eyes darkened, one more than the other, as she spat out ‘
Jao
! Go!’ the way she did to the servants, even to Ayah, who was closest to her.

I could still make out the faint scar on my forehead just below the hairline, a reminder of the day I had followed her
rustling silk skirts from room to room, trying to catch her, thinking we were playing a game. I must have been three or four. I could hear her whimpering behind her bedroom door and when I pushed it open her voice rose to a scream:
‘Please God, don’t let her come in! Please God, keep her away from me! ’
The room was dark – her curtains were always drawn – but sunlight was streaming through a narrow gap and refracting through something in her raised hand. Dazzled, I blinked and did not see her throw it, only felt the blow and then the warm wet on my face and saw the red spattering on to the white Kashmiri rug, and the chunks of cut glass that lay scattered round my feet. Afterwards Ayah told me it had been an accident and that I shouldn’t tell Father or he would be angry with her.

I did not want to think about Mother, but it was becoming harder not to as my body began to change, outwardly and inwardly. Hair began to grow in places that had been smooth; my chest developed painful knobs of hardness, yet felt tender. I ached to be touched, and behind it all was a longing for something I could not name. It was no longer homesickness for my old life, for, although I still thought of Father, my memories of him had become fixed: pictures in an old album that had replaced the living images. The pain was no longer raw but distant, nostalgic. I missed it; in a strange way it had been comforting, keeping me connected to Father, and reminding me of who I was and where I had come from.

When I stood at my window now I still heard that rhythmic vibration – the soundless voice that seemed to be telling me something I had always known – but it was fainter now and I feared to lose it. At night I tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable, and in the day my mood swung between elation and tears. Aunt Mina noticed the changes too, which made it
worse. She began to concern herself with my hair and clothes, asking Mrs. Beauchamp for advice about the new fashions.

I tried on my new outfits in front of the mirror – flounced muslin dresses in
eau-de-nil, café-au-lait
and dusky pink, chosen to complement my complexion and lip colour – putting my hair up this way and that, while talking to myself in my practice grown-up voice. Then I would resume my pinafore dress and my silence and go downstairs, wearing the sulky expression I knew would provoke Aunt Mina. At breakfast I pretended not to hear when she said, ‘Good morning,’ and slumped in my chair. One morning she gave me a lecture about being ‘sulky, superior and uppish’, and back in my room I whispered all the bad words I could remember in both English and Hindustani. I promised myself that as soon as I was old enough to earn a living I would leave Aunt Mina’s house and never see her again.

I started spending more time with Mrs. Beauchamp, who was encouraging me to think about a career; it was important for a woman to be independent, she said, to have her own work, rather than being a parasite. She would have liked to take me with her to suffragette meetings but she knew Aunt Mina wouldn’t like it. Instead she lent me books to read, books like
The Story of an African Farm
and
The Yellow Wallpaper
, both of which disturbed me, although I don’t think I understood either of them then.

The boys came back at the beginning of July and Mrs. Beauchamp sent the dogcart to collect me after lunch, as she always did when they were home. Aunt Mina stopped me as I ran down the stairs. I waited impatiently as she fussed. ‘Don’t forget your hat, Lilian. You really must start thinking about your complexion.’ I thought of Mother again: the only interest she had ever shown in me was to insist that I
wear a hat when I was outside. She never went into the sun herself.

‘And you’re a bit old to be playing with those boys,’ Aunt Mina went on. ‘It was all right when you were younger but you’re not children any more. It’s time you made friends with some girls your own age. There’s no one suitable in the village, and I’ve been thinking it’s time you went away to school. It might rub off some of those corners. But you’d better go now, as Mrs. Beauchamp has so kindly sent the dogcart.’

I was still having lessons in the mornings and doing my prep in the evenings but it was the holidays now. In previous years when the boys were home we had spent all day together, playing Seven Tiles on the Downs, crossing back and forth across the Dyke in the cable car, or taking the train into Brighton and spending long days at the beach, where we swam or walked along the promenade to Hove or Rottingdean. Sometimes we went out with a local fisherman to fish for mackerel, or picnicked in the gardens of the Royal Pavilion, which was closed up and no longer used; people said the Queen disliked it because of its association with the disgraceful behaviour of the Prince Regent.

But Aunt Mina was right: it was different that summer. The boys were taller and the light had gone out of their faces, replaced by a brooding heaviness. At seventeen, Jagjit was well over six feet tall and he towered over Simon. His chest had broadened and the down on his face had grown into a patchy moustache and beard. His voice had deepened too, while Simon’s was finally beginning to break, which I could tell embarrassed him. I was shy and self-conscious around them and began to feel in the way, fearing that they had outgrown wanting to play with the silly dumb girl but were too polite to say so. Simon was impatient and snappy, while Jagjit put
himself out to be nice. It wasn’t so bad when we were outside with something to occupy us, but on rainy afternoons we were trapped together in Simon’s old playroom, where we passed the time playing Parcheesi and backgammon.

I began to dread these rainy days. All our old ease was gone and I found myself uncomfortably aware of Jagjit’s proximity. If our hands touched by mistake I snatched mine away and then blushed. I knew I seemed unfriendly, but I could not help myself, and knowing that Simon resented my being there made me even more self-conscious. It was excruciating, but I didn’t know how to extricate myself, so I started to take a book with me and spend much of my time on the window-seat, reading. Each time I told myself I wouldn’t go again, but when it came to it I found myself getting into the dogcart, hoping that this time it would be different, that we would fall back into our old ease with each other.

One hot Saturday in early August, we decided to go to Brighton beach with a picnic. Being in the open, among the crowds and the activity, helped to distract us. It was almost like old times. We swam, and then the boys went off to skim stones while I lay back and closed my eyes and listened to the sea. I have always loved the sound of the sea, ever since I stood at the bow of that ship letting the wake wash the inside of my head clean.

The waves were gentler, less continuous, on this fine, almost windless day, and I had to really focus to hear them behind the chatter of day-trippers, children’s voices and the cries of the gulls. The light breeze was delicious on my hot skin as I waited for a break in the pattern of sound and then began to concentrate. It started with a small rush from my right along the shingle, then a longer one from my left, then from the right again a surge, that built steadily to a rattling
roar and then diminished, ebbing away along the beach. For a moment or two there was silence; then it began again. It was like an orchestra with different instruments coming in, the sound building and dying away.

There was a crunching of pebbles and I opened my eyes to find Jagjit lowering himself beside me.

‘You look happy, Lila. What were you thinking about?’

I was surprised, not having known, until he named it, that happiness was what I was feeling. Without thinking, I parted my lips to answer, and saw his look of surprise and expectation. For a moment we held each other’s eyes, then thought came surging back, bringing consequences with it, and I closed my mouth. I saw the disappointment in his face, quickly masked.

I touched my ear and gestured at the sea, miming waves with my hand.

He smiled his lopsided smile, holding my eyes so long that I blushed. ‘Listening to the waves? Shall I join you?’

He stretched out beside me and closed his eyes. I closed mine too and tried to concentrate again, but all I could think of was his body beside mine in his navy and brown striped costume, his long brown limbs stretched out along the pebbles. Our hands were almost touching.

Silence. Then the small rush to my right. I imagined him hearing it too: the same flow and ebb through both of us. His little finger touched mine. The pressure seeming to deepen as the longer rush came from the left, a warm surge through my body, building to a crescendo as it rose into my throat and then ebbed away. The sun warmed me; the breeze stroked my skin, raising the hairs on my arms and legs. With each new sound a rush of warmth rose through my body, and I knew he was feeling it too. He turned his head and his eyes met mine,
unsmiling. We looked and kept looking, beyond politeness, beyond embarrassment. Then Simon’s shrill voice, calling his name, cut through the sound of the waves, the squawking seagulls and the chatter.

In the train on the way home we sat in the window-seats opposite each other. Jagjit’s arm rested along the windowsill between us as he gazed out at the Downs rushing past. His long brown fingers glowed like beaten copper in the light of the setting sun, and as I looked at them I remembered his finger touching mine and the tide washed through me again, carrying a surge of warmth into my face.

‘Golly, you’ve caught the sun, Lila,’ Simon said. I realised he’d been watching me watching Jagjit. ‘Your face is bright red. Your aunt is going to be hopping mad!’

Since the rains started I have not been able to sit outside. The bibi never enters the house in the daytime and she never invites me into her room. When I asked her why, she said Father would not like it. So now, when my lessons are over, I read in my room or visit the Lines, and Ali, Mohan and I go fishing.

I have been ill. Kishan Lal says I nearly died. The fever came on one evening after I had been down at the river all day with Ali and Mohan. We built a dam but the river washed it away so we had to do it all over again. When I got home Kishan Lal scolded me for not wearing a hat and for spending all my time with those good-for-nothing boys.

By dusk I was shivering so hard my teeth rattled. Father was out and Kishan Lal sent the chowkidar to fetch the doctor. I don’t remember much after that except the shivering and the pain in my legs. When I woke up it was dark. There was a candle on the bedside table and someone was sponging my forehead with a cool cloth. It was the bibi. She told me
the doctor had been and left some medicine, and that I was to stay in bed. She gave me the medicine and asked if I’d like her to read to me. I had started to drift off, when she stopped in the middle of a sentence. I opened my eyes and saw Father standing in the doorway, looking shocked. The bibi went out and then Kishan Lal came and said that he told her that sahib would be angry if she came in the house but she would not listen. Father said it was all right and sent him away and then asked me how I was feeling and what the doctor had said. He said if I wasn’t better by morning he would ask the doctor to send a nurse to look after me.

My temperature had gone down but it came back in the night and I was hot and then shivering, and I dreamt I was in a bazaar searching for my mother and I kept pulling women’s face veils off and finding they had no faces, just more veils underneath, and I wanted it to stop but it just went on and on for hours and hours and hours. When I woke in the morning, the bibi was sponging me with cold water and Father was sitting on the other side of my bed holding my hand. He didn’t go to the Lines that day or the next, and he didn’t say anything more about a nurse.

I was ill for nearly three weeks, but I’m better now. On my birthday Father did not stay in his room but sat with me and the bibi taught us a game with dice. It was the best birthday I’ve ever had, even though I was ill. And after the fever had gone and Father went back to the Lines, the bibi still sat with me and we played card games. I asked her how she knew so many games and she said that women in purdah have to pass the time somehow when they can’t go out. I think it must be horrible for her, living in that small room and never going anywhere, so I asked Father why she can’t live in the house with us. He said it is because she isn’t part of the family. I asked if
she is a servant, then, but he said she isn’t that either. He told me that she used to be a famous singer but she can’t sing any more. I asked why she doesn’t live with her own family, and he said that they are all dead.

Today Father told Kishan Lal to move the bibi’s things from her hut to the room Aunt Mina had. I could see he didn’t like it and later I heard him say to Allahyar that it isn’t right to have
her
in the house with me. But I don’t mind because now I can see her every day, and sometimes we sit on the back verandah and I read to her while she sews. Father spends less time at the Lines and more at home too. We are almost like a family. I like her much better than Aunt Mina.

The bibi is sick. She always looks tired but now she holds her side as if it is hurting. The doctor has been to see her and today the chaplain came to see Father again and this time I didn’t need to eavesdrop because they were shouting so loudly that we could hear them in the dining room where I was having my lessons. Mr. Mukherjee tried to read more loudly but I could still hear. The chaplain was talking about the bibi and the bad example Father is setting by living openly in sin with a native. Father told him to mind his own business.

I hate Father! After all he has said about not believing in sending children away, he is sending me to England to school.
Even worse, I am to spend my holidays with Aunt Mina! He won’t tell me why. He just says he thinks it is time for me to get a proper education. I am going in four weeks’ time, with the wife of Captain Percival, who is going home to visit her sick mother.

When he told me I ran to the bibi and begged her to tell him to let me stay, but she said he is right and that I should be with my own people. I said Father and she and Kishan Lal and Allahyar are my people. She said it is for my own good and that Father loves me very much, that he isn’t a man who speaks flowery words, but he feels things deeply, and one day I will understand how hard his life has been. I told her I don’t care how hard his life has been, or hers either. I said they were mean to send me away and that I hated them both. She tried to stroke my hair but I pushed her off. I do hate them both and I know I shall hate England too.