Belonging Read online

  He trailed off as Mrs. Beauchamp caught his eye. She said quickly, ‘I think to the villagers every Indian is a prince. They think of Ranji, of course, who played for Sussex. You play cricket, don’t you, Jagjit?’

  ‘No, I don’t, Mrs. B., although I’ve been unable to convince the games master, who seems to think just because I’m an Indian I should be good at it. But Mr. Beauchamp, do you perhaps mean Azimullah Khan, who was – ’

  ‘Perhaps we should all take a turn in the garden,’ Mrs. Beauchamp said, cutting across him.

  There was a silence while Jagjit looked around the table, puzzled. Aunt Mina’s face looked as though someone had laid it on the ironing board and pressed it. ‘I’m sorry,’ Jagjit said. ‘Have I said something I shouldn’t?’

  ‘It is a lovely afternoon,’ Mrs. Beauchamp said into the silence.

  Once outside, the Beauchamps and Aunt Mina walked around the lawn while the three of us wandered over towards the orchards, where the buds on the apple trees were still tightly furled. April had been cold, and the day was chill and damp.

  ‘Did I do something wrong, Lila? I always get the feeling your aunt dislikes me, but I never know why.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s because you’re Indian,’ Simon said. ‘She was engaged to my Uncle Peter and he died, out in India. But that was a long time ago, so she shouldn’t still be upset.’

  I thought of Aunt Mina young, as she had been in the photograph, and wondered if I would remember Father when I was as old as she was. Part of me shrank at the thought of the long, lonely years she must have spent in that big empty house, brooding on the past, but I felt pleased at the thought that I would never forget him, as Aunt Mina had not forgotten Peter.

  I think, now, how sad it is that we lived in the same house for so many years, both locked into our pasts, unable to speak of the things that mattered most to us.

  A few days after that lunch, we cycled out to Shaves Wood. The following week would bring unseasonal blizzards and deep snowdrifts, but that day was sunny and seemed to hold the promise of spring. We sat under the green-gold canopy of unfurling leaves; the bluebells were just beginning to open around us, scenting the air with their delicate fragrance, as we ate our cucumber sandwiches and drank our lemonade.

  Because of the inclement weather I had not seen much of the boys that week and I felt shy and separate. I sat listening, trying to look interested, while they talked easily of school, and masters, and other boys. Jagjit made an effort to include me, as he always did, but I could tell it was making Simon impatient so I wandered off to collect some bluebells and wood anemones and wove them round with wild honeysuckle to make three crowns and some bracelets. I placed mine around my head and wrists and wandered back.

  As I approached the clearing where the boys were sitting I heard Simon say, ‘Why does she have to do everything with us? It’s so boring.’

  I stepped behind the trunk of a beech and waited for Jagjit’s reply.

  ‘Come on, Simon. She’s hasn’t got anyone else.’

  ‘Do you always have to be so dashed kind to every lame dog?’

  ‘Isn’t that why we’re friends? Have you forgotten what a bad time you were having at school before I intervened?’

  There was a silence, and I imagined Simon’s face flaming as he struggled for words. He stammered out, ‘I th-thought you l-liked coming home with me. You could always stay at the b-beastly school if you prefer.’

  I heard him stamp off.

  Jagjit sighed and stretched out on the rug in a patch of sunlight.

  I crept silently into the clearing but as I approached him he opened his eyes. His mouth pulled up, creasing his cheek. ‘You look like a peri – a fairy – in that crown. Are those wings you’re hiding behind your back?’

  I showed him the two other crowns.

  He smiled. ‘Is one of them for me?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Why don’t you put it on for me?’

  He reached up and lifted his turban off, preserving its stiff pleated shape, then untied the white handkerchief securing his topknot and shook his hair out. The long black rope of it uncoiled as far as his waist. He sat up and I knelt in front of him and placed it on his head.

  ‘You heard us, didn’t you?’ His eyes searched mine.

  I hesitated, then nodded.

  ‘I thought so. He didn’t mean it, you know. It’s just that he’s a bit nervy. He had a bad time at school when he first arrived. New boys do, especially those who’re young for their age, and it doesn’t help if you look like him. You get the wrong sort of attention from the older boys.’

  I wondered what he meant.

  ‘What are you thinking, Lila?’ He dipped his head until his eyes were so close to mine that they blurred into one giant Cyclops eye. ‘You notice everything, don’t you? What do you really think of us all? That we’re a lot of fools with our yak-yak-yakking?’

  I shook my head, but he’d already turned away. ‘I’d better go and find Simon or he’ll sulk for the rest of the day.’

  That evening, alone in my room, I tried to make myself speak aloud, but it was harder than I’d imagined. I had always thought that when I was ready I would open my mouth and speech would come, but it felt ugly, unnatural, as though there were two tongues in my mouth, tangling round each other. The words slid away as I fumbled for them, and the sounds that emerged were more like frogs than pearls. The thought of talking in public filled me with dread: I imagined the attention that would be focused on me, the fuss that would be made. And once I started there would be no turning back; I would have to speak to everyone, not just to Jagjit and Simon and the Beauchamps and Aunt Mina, but to Cook and the maids, and to people at church and in the village and to people I had not even met yet. And by now everyone was so used to my silence that no one ever asked what I thought, or left a gap in the conversation for me to fill. I should have to force my way in and I shrank from that. No, I was not ready. And then the blizzard came unexpectedly, bringing deep snow, and, by the time the path was passable again in May, the boys had gone back to school.

  A month later, the suffragettes held a huge demonstration in London and for weeks beforehand the Beauchamps’ house was full of women sewing banners and tabards in the W.S.P.U. colours of purple, white and green. I went over after lessons to help. I did not sew, but I could cut and shape and pin. It was fun and I was looking forward to accompanying Mrs. Beauchamp, but Aunt Mina refused to allow it. The papers were full of it the next day – they said it was the greatest demonstration ever held in Britain. I was deeply disappointed at not being able to go, and it made me resent Aunt Mina even more.

  Henry

  17th February 1869

  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.

  20th February 1869

  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.’

  28th February 1869

  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.

  7th April 1869

  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.

  14th May 1869

  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.

  My friendless heart’s a city reduced to ruin,

  The great world has shrunk to a patch of rubble.

  In this place, where love was martyred,

  What now survives but memories and regret?

  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.’

  Cecily

  28th May 1856

  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

  4th June 1856

  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

  25th June 1856

  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.