Under the Jeweled Sky (31 page)

“I can't do it.” She rocked herself gently. “I can't.”

“Sophie!” Lotus put her arms around her and hugged her hard. “Please don't cry. Everything will be all right. I promise.” She felt Sophie nod and pull herself upright, wiping her sleeve across her face, breathing deeply and composing herself.

“If only,” she said.

Oh, how things fall apart.

I
love
you. I love you like nothing I could ever have imagined. I love you like the moon and the stars and the universe that holds them. I love you like the dawn mists that linger in the forests, like the first snowdrops in springtime, like the sweetness of honey on my lips. I love you with every grain of my body, my body that is now your body, my breath that is now your breath. You are my flesh and blood, my heart and soul, my love. I would give my life for you, my son, my child. I will love you until the day I die. I will stand before you and protect you with my sword and shield. No harm shall pass through me. I will be like a wall of fire. I will hold out my hand and take yours and nothing shall ever come between me and the love I have for you. I will think of you every day and wish you back to me. I will pray every moment that you will hear me calling you with my heart, for no one will ever love you like I do. No one.

• • •

Time stood still. So peaceful, a heavenly tranquility where everything fell away, leaving nothing but warmth and love, a love so divine that there was nothing else. Nothing in the whole world. He was sublime, his fragile beauty beyond anything that she could have foreseen, sleeping at her breast. She gazed at him, unable to take her eyes from him, playing with his tiny fingers, watching in awe as they closed around the tip of her own. So small, so vulnerable, like the first bloom of apple blossom, its petals soft as air. She leaned her face to the top of his head, her lips brushing the soft dark hair, taking in his intoxicating scent. She held him closely, so closely that they became one, and slid down into the white sheets, pulling them over her head, the two of them held in a soft cocoon, disappearing from the world.

A small knock came at the door. Sophie held fast under the sheets, hearing the door open, the light footsteps, the creak of the bed as she felt Pearl's figure sit beside her.

“It is time,” Pearl said. “Let me take him now.”

Sophie closed her eyes and held her baby to her. She felt the sheet lift away, light flooding in, air upon her skin. She curled around her child.

“Come on,” Pearl said softly. “Don't make it harder.”

Sophie felt her face streaming, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her breasts. She couldn't breathe, gagging on the air, unable to swallow, unable to live. Her eyes remained shut as she felt Pearl peel her arms from her son, her movements fast and firm. The baby stirred, small, awkward squalls as it detached from its mother. Sophie shrank into a tight ball, hugging herself closed. She pressed her hands to her face, to her ears, and felt herself dying, a talon reaching into her chest, ripping out her heart.

Forgive me, she wept, oh God, forgive me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Sophie sat in the garden, curled into a low planter's chair, breathing the clear air, staring out listlessly at the beautiful vista, the layers of hills that stretched effortlessly into the distance, the pleasant breeze shivering through the leaves of the tall trees, lawns sloping gently away. Here, high up in the blue mountains above the clouds, lay Ootacamund, Queen of Hill Stations, a Shangri-La where each day the sun rose and set, huge and red over the distant peaks, casting long shadows across hill and dale and fields where Jersey cows wandered, their mellow bells sounding distantly. It was heavenly, and strangely peculiar in its familiarity, as though a piece of Victorian England had been scooped up and rearranged in filmic perfection, with frivolous gardens and gothic archways, and tranquil boating lakes for lazy days and fishing. On the last leg of their journey, the car had strained along twisting lanes through sylvan glades, passing high wooden gates and pretty arbors with neat signs outside—
Lyndhurst, Glendale, Lushington Hall
—before slowing into the turning marked
Iona
. She had seen a chital yesterday from her bedroom window, delicate and shy as it disappeared with the lifting mist, tiny cloven hooves tripping into the silent forests that clung to the hillsides.

Sophie lay back, head against the cushions, and closed her eyes. For now, her tears were spent, her head aching from the agony of being awake for these last few hours. Amid the birdsong, she heard the rustling of skirts, the short puffs of a heavy-footed woman.

“Are you warm enough, dear?” Mrs. Ripperton deposited the small silver tray on the table, dropping herself on the smaller seat set beside Sophie's chair. She had only been gone a few minutes, to fetch the bottle of tincture and to see to the hullabaloo coming from the kitchen. It had turned out to be nothing, of course. A mouse nibbling at a flour sack in the storeroom or some such minor drama. They had almost gotten a conversation going too. Poor girl. She still looked as though she'd had the stuffing knocked out of her, a dull pallor clouding her complexion, her eyes red-rimmed and tired. What she must have been through. She was a wicked woman, that Veronica Schofield. Cared not one jot for her family and had returned every one of Fiona's letters unopened. She shouldn't have bothered with the wretched woman. Heaven only knew what Sophie and her father had suffered. No man should have to put up with a woman like that, with her endless histrionics and her vicious tongue. She wasn't even pretty, her face thin and sour like pressed limes. He should have got shot of her long ago, before she could ruin his life and their daughter's too while she was at it. Now look at the poor girl. Wrung out like a dishcloth. It was no wonder with a mother like that. If she were here, she would jolly well give her a piece of her mind that she wouldn't forget in a hurry.

“Here.” Mrs. Ripperton stirred a little tincture into a glass of water, dropping from the pipette four drops as prescribed by her father, plus two more because she thought Sophie looked like she needed it. “Drink this. Just a few sips.” She pressed it into Sophie's passive hand, rearranging the blanket around her. “I've asked Salil to make us a nice fish curry for lunch. Mr. Nayar caught two lovely plump ones from the lake this morning. You'll manage a little, won't you?” Sophie seemed not to hear, lifting the glass to her lips, drinking obediently. “That's better.” Mrs. Ripperton took the glass from her and placed it on the table. “The house martin chicks have made their first appearance,” she said brightly. “Darling little things came shuffling out of the eaves on to the electricity wire above the bathroom window this morning. You should see them! Tiny little wings aflutter, going
cheep
cheep
cheep!
” She sat back in her chair, pulling at a loose cushion. “Then off they go! Not very far, mind. There they are, clinging on to the nearest bush, bobbing around like they don't know what to do, calling for their mother!” She turned away, screwing up her face for a brief moment, silently damning herself for using the word
mother
, before soldiering on with her cheerful chatter. “It's a good thing your kitty has been shut in your father's room. It would have made a quick breakfast of the lot of them.”

Sophie smiled absently to herself and remembered Pumpkin, the fat tabby who had wandered into their Islington garden one day and decided to stay. She had hidden him, making a bed for him in the shed behind the rusty old lawn roller. She thought that no one had noticed and that she had got away with her secret pet, until one day she went to feed him and found a pair of saucers, one filled with milk, the other with a few scraps of boiled ham. She knew that it was her father. Her mother never went in the shed. He was a survivor, that cat, nonchalantly tossing his nine lives around, one of them left beneath the hooves of the rag and bone man's moth-eaten horse that had caught the end of his tail. He didn't care much for people either, quite happy to live in the shed, helping himself to mice and bitter voles, which he preferred to leave on the kitchen doorstep, much to her mother's horror. Sophie had thought Pumpkin her only friend. He had let her pick him up and carry him around and put old baby clothes and bonnets on him. He'd be dead by now, she thought, hoping that it had been a peaceful end in a nice vegetable patch somewhere.

Pumpkin had eventually tired of the house on Percy Street and had moved out one day while no one was looking. Sophie had searched for him everywhere, saving morsels of meat from her supper, putting them in the garden with a saucer filled with the top of the milk, to no avail. She had cried for him for a while, before her mother put a stop to it. Her father had wanted to get her a kitten, she had heard him say so, but her mother had told him that if he brought another living creature into this house, she would drown it. It was all right for him. He wasn't the one who would be expected to look after it. Voices had been raised, and her father said that she had never looked after anything in her whole life, and that the cat had bloody well looked after itself. And then they hadn't spoken for days, and Sophie's father had taken her to the pictures and they had eaten ice cream during the intermission.

Sophie sighed to herself and blinked at the distant view, her thoughts suddenly taken again. She could still feel him, his soft brown skin against hers, her aching breasts bound tightly with wide bandages to stop the milk that refused to be banished.
I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Oh God, forgive me
. She closed her eyes and inhaled the fresh green air of the hillsides, tinged with the scent of high alpine trees and flowing streams.

Her father's voice drifted into the garden.

“Hello, my darling,” he said softly. “And how is my beautiful girl today?”

Sophie nodded in a small way and tried to smile. He leaned over her and kissed her head. Mrs. Ripperton stood from her chair.

“Have a seat, George,” she said. “I'll ask Salil to fetch another and hurry along with lunch.”

Sophie pulled herself up, tucking her legs beneath the blanket, and watched Mrs. Ripperton cross the garden toward the house, calling for Salil. Fiona had been the very last person Sophie had expected to see when they arrived in June. Even her father had seemed taken aback to find that she had stayed on and waited for them, uninvited, yet there she had been, solid and dependable, as though she had known all along what was going on. Sophie had fallen to pieces upon sight of her, and they had hugged like there was no tomorrow. Over the days that followed, it had all come tumbling out, and Sophie had felt as though a great weight had been lifted from her.

Sophie looked at her father. He seemed to have aged so much in the last year, flecks of gray touching his temples, face etched with deep lines that cut into his brow, his cheeks redder than they used to be. She approved of the mustache. It gave him a certain air she rather liked, distinguished perhaps, even a little Hollywood, if Clark Gable had been fair. It had been the oddest thing at first when he had come to Cuttack to collect her, like seeing him anew, the eternally unchanged features of her father suddenly different. She looked at it again now and found herself smiling. Dr. Schofield smiled back at her, picked up her hand and kissed it, then relaxed into his chair.

“That's some view, isn't it?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I bet I could grow more runner beans than a man could eat in a garden like this.”

Salil crossed the lawn bearing a tray and approached them with a wide smile.

“Peg, sahib?” He set a glass down beside Dr. Schofield.

“Chota peg,” Dr. Schofield said, measuring small with his fingers. Salil shook his head.

“Memsa'b say burra peg.” He poured a generous inch or so before returning the bottle to his tray and setting a glass of lemonade beside Sophie. “Is freshly made, Miss Sophie,” he said. “Freshly made just for you.”

“Thank you,” Sophie said.

Her father took up his glass and helped himself to a splash from the soda siphon, then drank a little. Eyes on the heavenly view, he said, almost to himself, “I finally heard from your mother this morning.” Sophie nodded and sat back, turning her face to take in the same vista. She would not ask whether her mother had inquired after her. She never did. Never had. Dr. Schofield relaxed into his chair and took another sip. “She's agreed to give me a divorce.” He pulled a letter from his pocket. “Do you want to read it?”

“No,” Sophie said.

She looked at the envelope in his hand and thought about her own letter. It would never find its way, not among all the chaos, so many people dead, so many lost. Nobody would care about a scrap of paper, a thin flyleaf torn from an old book, scribbled upon so quickly in the face of her hopelessness. There had been photographs in the newspapers of the destruction wreaked upon Amritsar, the dead bodies lying out in the open, bloated and stiff, swarming with flies. She had had no idea, having not seen a newspaper or heard a radio for months. What hope would there be for a message sent into the midst of such desolation? She should never have written it, to end up who knows where, to bring trouble to the mission. She had not been in her right mind. Sophie knew what it was to have a mother and to lose her, to be abandoned, no matter if it were for the best as her father had said when he told her that her mother was gone. She could not do that to her child. She
must
not do that to him. May he never know that he was given up, that he was born by another woman and handed over like an unwanted gift. Let him find peace in his world and comfort in the love of whatever woman had come forward to take her place.

There was no going back now. She had given up her child, and she must reconcile herself with that and trust that he would be loved and well cared for. A good family would have taken him. Anybody would have seen that he was a rare prize, a perfect boy-child, with golden skin and dark hair, so very beautiful. He would always be a part of her, and so would Jag, her first love. Everybody had a first love, Fiona had said, and it was always the most precious, and because of what had happened, Sophie's first love would be more special than any other. She must learn to lock it away in her heart as every woman does and to treasure it.

Without taking her eyes from the view, Sophie reached out a hand. Her father took it silently and squeezed it hard. Sophie's tears rose again, spilling down her cheeks, the words flooding back to her, her heart turning over as she remembered what she had written, the last line burnt into her flesh.

We
have
a
son. Find him.