The Linnet Bird: A Novel (35 page)
Read The Linnet Bird: A Novel Online
Authors: Linda Holeman
There was a canniness in Meg’s long face that worried me. “Tell me about yourself, Miss Linny Smallpiece,” she said now. “I think I would like to know where you have been, and what you have seen. You give the impression of one who knows much more than she cares to say, unlike most people, who say much about things they know little about.”
I was unable to think of a proper response. My palms were wet; I hid them in the folds of my watered silk tea gown.
“I’m sorry. Have I offended you?” Meg asked, finally. “My aunt and uncle and cousins—as well as my husband—are all used to my forthright outbursts. They not only tolerate my free thinking, but at times encourage it. And it so happens that I may forget myself in polite company.”
Polite company. Here was young Mrs. Liston, apologizing to me because she might be appearing common. It really was quite ironic, and I might have delighted in it were I not so uncomfortable.
“No, I’m not offended,” I said. “I’m just not . . . particularly at ease talking about myself.”
“Of course you aren’t. Most well-brought-up young ladies wouldn’t be. Please ignore me and my inappropriate familiarity. I do apologize.” She smiled.
“There’s no need to apologize.” I returned her smile, relaxing then and feeling a rush of gratitude for Meg Liston. By asking my forgiveness, and allowing me to grant it to her, she had endowed me with a feeling that was akin to benevolence.
Chapter Eighteen
A
ND SO WE BEGAN THE ROUNDS OF SOCIAL EVENTS IN EARNEST.
We attended dinner after dinner, and it felt as if every hostess gave the same dinner party. We would have a drink at precisely eight o’clock in the drawing room, where Faith and I and any of the other unmarried ladies from the ship—I refused to use the phrase
Fishing Fleet
—were introduced to bachelors. There was polite chitchat, which I found dreadfully tedious, as I had to keep my wits about me every moment. I despaired of telling the same brief, fabricated story of my past in England night after night, of smiling politely at the same small talk, and of feigning great interest in the stories of the men. A tiresome game that I had played so many times, in so many forms. When I felt I would scream if I had to stand one moment longer, my glass sticky in my glove, we were finally summoned to the dining room by the bearer. We filed to the room in a strict order of precedence, depending on the position of the husband within the civil service. The hierarchy was very much in play here in the candlelit glitter of these fancy dinners, in much the same way as it was with the servants.
At many of the grander dinners a servant waited behind every chair; every place had its array of cutlery and a champagne glass—complete with silver cover to keep insects from falling in—and finger bowls with a sweet-smelling flower floating in them. The seating was planned with the utmost care; the most senior gentleman sat to the right of the hostess, and the most senior lady to the right of the host. The Watertons appeared fairly high up on the seating scale, while Meg—who didn’t often join us, giving a variety of excuses, which I knew were fabricated to avoid the formal fuss and tedium—had a low spot at the table. But the very lowest were Faith and I, as we had no man to lift us in rank. We ate variations of the same English food: soup, followed by fish, joints, overcooked vegetables, then puddings and savories. And it appeared to me, that first week, like the table settings and the menus, that in appearance everyone looked similar—the gentlemen in their boiled white shirts and tails, the women in their feathers and long, wrinkled gloves and dresses of surprisingly similar styles, made, I assumed, by many of the same
durzis
who had a limited number of patterns.
There were a few times, I will admit, when my thoughts went back to standing at a high table in a crowded, noisy chophouse, eating a greasy pie with the other girls from Paradise. How the stories had flowed easily, the laughter loud and genuine, the camaraderie honest. I knew I had experienced one sort of freedom there that nobody in these rooms had ever known.
When the meal was over there were port and Madeira poured for the gentlemen, while the ladies gathered in the drawing room with cordials or ratafia, waiting for the men to finish their drinks and join them. Then there might be music played on a piano that always sounded out of tune. And eventually the senior lady stood, and this was an indication that we could all leave. Nobody, it appeared, would dare to depart until the senior lady of the evening had made her silent declaration.
As well as the formal dinners, we attended afternoon teas and more casual evenings of cards and dance salons at the other opulent homes of the affluent areas of Garden Reach and Chowringhee and Alipur.
I found it so difficult, the endless social chatter. The voice I had used since I began my work at the Lyceum—the cultured voice with the same inflection as Shaker and as Faith—came now with little concentration. But it was the energy that I needed to act as if interested, as well as putting on a combination of appearing demure and yet cheery, that exhausted me. I wasn’t either. Demure was difficult; cheerful, even more so. It’s not that I was bold or glum. I didn’t know what I was. I only know that nothing ever felt right in those overdecorated drawing rooms. I was always acting, a player on a stage. Except that the play never ended, not until I retired to my room at the Watertons’, and even then I wasn’t alone. There were always the servants—the
durzi
and the sweeper and the polisher and the tiny boy with his fly whisk—in and out, and the ayah and punkah wallah permanent fixtures.
D
URING THIS BEGINNING
of my time in India I felt as if I were waiting, waiting to actually
see
India. I wasn’t allowed anywhere without Mrs. Waterton and Faith, although Meg was allowed time on her own, with other married ladies such as herself. Our only expedition, apart from visits to the other homes, all similar to the Watertons’—on the long road that ran in a straight line from Government House to Chowringhee—was to the Maidan in the center of Calcutta. Of course the palanquin curtains were always firmly shut. I had peeked out the first time we went for an afternoon, and had seen, running in all directions off the good road, fetid alleys and torturous lanes, the twisting underbelly of Calcutta. I was severely reprimanded by Mrs. Waterton for my indiscretion, and from then on sat, like Faith, with my gloved hands in my lap until we arrived at the Maidan. The huge flat esplanade of greenery boasted small orange groves and pleasant graveled paths, and was bordered by an array of flowering trees. There were no Indians allowed in the Maidan except for ayahs with their small charges and those sweeping the meticulous path or picking any fallen leaves or flowers from beneath the trees. We sat on freshly painted benches and chatted in exactly the same way that ladies of society would gather and chat in a park in any part of England. Faith and I were assured that we should enjoy this weather, for it wouldn’t last much past the end of January. This brief cool season was free of the intense heat and debilitating humidity which, I was told, brought out an uncomfortable heat rash as well as hordes of flying and crawling, biting insects.
“It will be arriving all too soon,” Mrs. Waterton warned, her lips pursed. “All too soon. And then you’ll get a true taste of India.”
If I only could.
December 15, 1830
Dear Shaker,
India is an education; I am a tabula rasa, ready to be inscribed with all India has to write on me. No matter what the future, I know, with some deep animal instinct, that I am to be marked by this land.
I am amazed by the attitude and role of the English, although I have not been here long enough to have a completely informed opinion. But from what I have experienced in this first month I am feeling uncomfortable, being forced into a position of unnatural importance. Although I have been treated admirably by every white person I have met, there is an obvious underlying hostility toward the Indians. Toward
them,
Shaker—and it is their own land. The East India Company—casually referred to here as John Company—is like a huge and heavy master, forcing the people of India in directions they surely do not want to go. And yet it appears that perfectly ordinary British men and women, shortly upon settling here, don a voluminous imperial cloak as if it is their right—no, their duty.
I cannot imagine bearing this weight.
While Calcutta is, as they say, the “city of palaces,” I would call it a city of contrasts. Near to where Faith and I are staying, with Mr. and Mrs. Waterton on Garden Reach, is a world of squared white buildings of classical design, all thanks to the presence of this honorable John Company. But so near the fine shops and beautiful homes are rows of mud-thatched huts and the sight of a body burning on the river’s shore. Over the fragrance of jasmine hangs the stench of open drains and rotting corpses.
Shaker, you would not believe the things one sees. I made the discovery that the Watertons employ a servant who stands all day at the riverbank behind their home. He shoves corpses—some with vultures already at work—back into the river before they can pile up on the bank. The man looked frightened when I came upon him and his grisly job. The gamy scent of decaying flesh was in the air. He demonstrated that I was to cover my eyes and flee, as if he were somehow responsible for what I had seen, and would be punished. Poor man.
I wouldn’t think there is any source of medical help for the Indian people. I asked Mrs. Waterton, only the other day, why there are so many obviously sick and maimed people at every turn. Do they not have a medical service, I asked her. She laughed at me, Shaker, implying that I was a silly girl, at which I took affront, although I was careful to hide my anger from her as she is, after all, my hostess. Then she told me that these heathens have their own forms of hullabaloo that they consider healing, all noise and nonsense, she assured me. Of course, I’m sure there is more to their methods of treatment than Mrs. Waterton is aware of, but I knew it best not to suggest it. Then I asked if any of them were ever treated by the physicians and surgeons employed by the East India Company. At that she simply shook her head and said, in a very huffy manner, “Really!”
I suppose I had better watch my step.
There is a very interesting woman staying here as well. Her name is Meg Liston. I feel I am learning much from her.
You now have an address should you ever choose to correspond, Shaker.
I hope and pray that you are well.
Yours faithfully,
Linny
It was Meg who filled me with hope for my future in India, for she was full of opinions and questions. She told me she had already started writing a book on the shrines of India, as well as organized a collection of sketches she had made of local customs, both of which she planned to finish while traveling to villages in the Lucknow area. She argued openly with Mr. Waterton.
“It’s all very easy when you have no European rivals in India, Mr. Waterton,” she announced at the table one evening shortly before her husband was scheduled to arrive for her. “And after the defeat—perhaps I should say the crushing—of the Marathas in the Anglo-Maratha war just over twenty years ago, you have no Indian ones, either. The Company is responsible for ruling ever-larger parts of India, and yet you refuse to learn to communicate with her people effectively.”