The Sandalwood Tree (7 page)

“Well, isn’t that a charmin’ picture.” Kaitlin rustled the chemise at her. “And still you must get dressed.”

“Yes, I know.” Adela slipped off her dressing gown and raised her arms.

“Ah, it’s not so bad as all that.” Kaitlin dropped the chemise over Adela’s head. “You’ll finish your puddin’ and come back up, and sure I’ll be waitin’.”

Adela smiled. “Kaitlin, dear, you are my joy.”

“And you are mine, love.” Kaitlin smoothed down the chemise, and Adela gave her an affectionate smile. Katie cupped Adela’s compact breast and planted a kiss on her lips. They had not heard the doorknob turn.

“Sssapphissst!” Mrs. Winfield stood in the half-open doorway, one hand on her cheek and the other at her throat.

Kaitlin screamed, and Adela instinctively crossed her arms over her breasts.

Mrs. Winfield’s face contorted into a mask of disgust. “Ssssapphissst!” It sounded like the strike of a match.

Kaitlin covered her face, and Mrs. Winfield pointed at her. “Vile creature! Get out!”

Kaitlin doubled over, hugging herself.

“I mean now! Leave this house immediately.”

“Mother—”

“Do not speak, Adela. I cannot bear to look at you.”

Kaitlin lurched out of the room, and Mrs. Winfield followed to shout abuse after her. Adela stumbled for the door, but her mother slammed it in her face and locked it.

That evening, the young gentleman dined with a pale set of parents who apologized repeatedly for their daughter being indisposed. He ate quickly and made a neat escape directly after pudding.

Dr. Winfield touched a napkin to his mustache. “Well, that was awkward.”

“Never mind him. What shall we do with her?”

Dr. Winfield rubbed his forehead. “I think the Fishing Fleet might be the thing.”

“India? But Alfred—”

“By God, she’s unnatural, woman.” He whipped the napkin off his lap and threw it on the table. “The best thing is to marry her off
as quickly as possible. We can’t let this … this aberration set in. British men outnumber British women in India at least five to one, and the Fishing Fleet is all normal women seeking husbands. Everything is organized to get as many as possible engaged. I say we put her in amongst them. She’ll meet plenty of dependable military bachelors.”

Mrs. Winfield looked at her lap and murmured, “She’ll meet women, too.”

“Damn it, what do you want to do? She’ll meet women no matter what. At least the Fishing Fleet will get her away from this damn maid and keep her busy with parties designed to throw her together with eligible men. The memsahibs are all respectable married women who will assume, like everyone else, that she’s there to find a British husband and they will oversee her every move. For heaven’s sake, that’s what the Fishing Fleet is
for
.” He leaned forward, disgust clouding his face. “Good God! Surely you’re not suggesting she would initiate a liaison with an
Indian
woman?”

“Well …” Mrs. Winfield looked up and when she saw her husband’s face she whispered, “No. No, of course not.” She dropped her eyes and stared at her own fingers, fidgeting in her lap. “Still, Alfred, to ship her off with the Fishing Fleet after only one season? It will look as if we didn’t even try.”

“Well, what do you want to do? Hire another maid for her to corrupt? She’s afflicted!” He looked at the ceiling as if appealing for help. “Who knows, perhaps the rigors of India will burn this … this defect out of her. In any case, she’ll be constantly chaperoned, and there’s nothing else for a young woman to do in India
but
marry a British man. I suspect she’ll end up with a military man who’s more interested in horses and battle drills than domestic bliss.”

“It’s a long voyage, but I should like to see her married.” Mrs. Winfield stared at her centerpiece of white roses. “A child might settle her.”

Dr. Winfield lit a cigar and his wife asked, “Are you going to smoke that in here?”

He puffed angrily. “I think we have more serious things to discuss than smoke in the drapes.”

“Yes.” She smoothed the cool white tablecloth with her palm. “We wouldn’t see much of her anymore if she married in India.”

“And does that disturb you terribly?”

She hesitated. She did not look at her husband and her voice, when it came, was small and sad. She said, “Not really.”

“That’s what I thought.” He took another angry puff. “I’ll make the arrangements.”

October 1855

Dearest Felicity
,

The most terrible, most wonderful thing has happened. Mother discovered Katie & me in a compromising position. Do you understand me? If not, I will be able to explain because they are sending me to India with the Fishing Fleet! I sail almost immediately
.

Poor Katie has been turned out, & I do not know where she has gone, but I’ve given Cook your address in Calcutta in case she returns. After a long hearty cry, I dried my face & wrote Katie a glowing letter of recommendation. I put a good amount of money in the envelope as well—my entire allowance—for I cannot bear the thought of her in want. I left it with Cook, who promises she will do her best to see Katie gets it. I don’t know what else I can do for her
.

It is all so sudden & so bittersweet—I find myself weeping for Katie, then suddenly smiling at the thought of joining you. Tears course down my face even whilst a smile plays around my mouth. I actually feel quite mad, when I feel anything other than shock
.

I will join you, after all
.

Your sister in joy
,

Adela

1947

L
ife is vertical in Simla. It perches on the sides of mountains, and getting up to the broad pedestrian street called the Mall means riding up a steep, pine-shaded road in a horse-drawn tonga, or being hauled up by three panting rickshaw-wallahs, two pulling and one pushing. The road to the Mall frightened Billy the first time we took it—it even scared me a little, climbing unsteadily on a dirt road full of hairpin turns—but after three months, India had seduced us and we simply sat back at a forty-five-degree angle while the horse panted and strained against the harness as it pulled us up the long, curving road.

At the top, I paid the tonga driver and sat Billy in the red Flyer with Spike. As always, the Mall teemed with people, and the air smelled of pakoras, bobbing and browning in cauldrons of boiling coconut oil. Narrow stone steps branched down to the native quarter, a cramped warren of lamp-lit shacks and stalls, temples and mosques. Hawkers hawked and buyers haggled, and I adjusted my sunglasses. My Brownie camera swung by a leather strap around my neck, ready to do what no one had ever managed—to capture India. We blended into the moving crowd, the dust, the noise, the
polychromatic chaos, and it took me so far from my problems that I loved it. I
loved
it!

From the Mall, I could see Simla spread out below me—houses and market stalls set into the mountainsides—and above me, high on the ridge, the butter-colored spires of Christ Church poking into the heavens. I pulled the red wagon past the Krishna Bakers and a shoebox-sized tobacco stall called the Glory Palace, then turned up the steep road to the church. It was a long haul, and I arrived at the tall, arched church door, sweating and panting. Billy said, “Aw, nuts. Do we have to go to church?”

“Just for a minute, Peanut.” I pulled on the iron handle, but the door didn’t budge. A woman in an apricot sari lolled on the doorstep, playing with the bangles around her ankles. I bent down, smelling the coconut oil in her hair and asked, “Is it closed?”

“It is closing, madam.”

“All day?”

Head waggle. “Church is all day closing, madam. In two hours coming back.”

“Um, is it all day, or two hours?”

Head waggle with irritation. “All day closing, madam. Back in two hours.”

“Right.” I turned to Billy. “Cheer up, BoBo. Apparently we’re not going to church.” I nodded to the woman, and she fiddled with her toe ring.

I went around to the rectory, but that door was locked, too, so I rummaged in my purse for a pencil and wrote a note on the back of an old receipt from Masoorla’s import store.

Dear Reverend Locke
,

At your convenience, I would appreciate having a look at the church records from the mid-nineteenth century. Thank you
.

Evie Mitchell

I folded the note, slid it under the rectory door, and then I wheeled the wagon around and headed for the square stone library next to the church. That door was open, but the place was deserted; the planks squeaked under my feet, and the dusty stacks bulged with serious-looking old books. Billy said, “This is worse than church.”

“Let’s find you a book. I just need a few minutes.” I found a book with fanciful pictures of Moghul emperors, onion domes, and fierce armies with scimitars raised. Billy turned the pages with fainthearted interest while I located the history section. A thick volume titled
The Raj
looked promising, so I slid it off the shelf and leafed through, scanning for the word “sepoy.” I found it beneath a picture of a cocky young Indian in a plumed turban, tight white trousers, and a red military jacket studded with brass buttons. He held his English rifle like a trophy.

I turned the page to a grisly drawing of dead and dying Indians in a walled enclosure. Hundreds of bodies lay heaped along the base of the wall and some hung over the side of a well. Corpses lay in piles, their eyes still wide in terror, and women in blood-soaked saris held dead children. The caption read: “Massacre at Amritsar.”

The article on the facing page explained. In 1919, after thousands of Indians had assembled for a spring festival in Jallianwalla Bagh in Amritsar, British troops under Brigadier General Reginald Dyer marched on the park and opened fire. Political tensions had been simmering for weeks, but no one expected an attack on unarmed families. Dyer instructed his men to shoot into areas where the crowd was the thickest, and they continued to fire until all ammunition was exhausted—fourteen hundred rounds. An armored car blocked the only exit, and people tried to climb the walls, where they were easily cut down. Some jumped into a well to escape the bullets—one hundred twenty corpses were recovered from that well. Dyer left more than fifteen hundred dead and wounded. The youngest victim was a six-week-old baby.

Churchill later said, “The Indians were packed together so that
one bullet would drive through three or four bodies; the people ran madly this way and the other … and then was seen the most frightful of all spectacles, the strength of a civilization without its mercy.”

A court found Dyer guilty of massacre, but Parliament reversed the verdict and cleared his name. The House of Lords passed a motion commending him as “the Saviour of the Punjab.” The
Morning Post
established a sympathy fund for Dyer, and they received £26,000. The following year, Gandhi instituted his Quit India movement against the British, and thus began the end of the Raj.

I closed the book slowly, trying to absorb it, and jumped when Billy tugged on my arm. He said, “Spike is tired of that book.”

I fought for control of my voice as the image of someone gunning Billy down in a park came unbidden. I cupped his chin and said, “You bet, Peach. How about we explore the bazaar?”

“Sure!” He dashed out of the door and I left the book open on the table. Billy hopped into his red Flyer and shoved Spike between his legs. He said, “The bazaar beats the pants off that book.”

I walked along the Mall feeling battered, wanting to replace the images of death at Amritsar with life in Simla, but I could not help imagining the cold terror of seeing a tank roll up the street and train a machine gun on Billy and me. How
could
they? How could
anyone
?

Billy wanted to follow the sound of drums and trumpets, which led us to a wedding procession. He pointed excitedly at the dashing bridegroom astride a white horse, his turban flashing with bits of green glass. I was more taken by the bride, smiling bashfully on her palanquin behind transparent curtains. She wore a red wedding sari, and gold dripped from her ears, dangled from her nose, and encircled her neck, arms, and ankles. An intricate henna tattoo covered her hands, like gloves of orange lace, a scrollwork of flowers and butterflies that spoke of the complicated web between living things, the ups and downs between a man and a woman.