A Great And Terrible Beauty (2 page)

“What is it? What’s the matter?” I ask.

The men are suddenly gone. They’ve disappeared into the moving crowd, leaving only their footprints in the dust. “What did that man say to you?”

My mother’s voice is edged in steel. “It’s nothing. He was obviously deranged. The streets are not safe these days.” I have never heard my mother sound this way. So hard. So afraid. “Gemma, I think it’s best if I go to Mrs. Talbot’s alone.”

“But—but what about the cake?” It’s a ridiculous thing to say, but it’s my birthday and while I don’t want to spend it in Mrs. Talbot’s sitting room, I certainly don’t want to waste the day alone at home, all because some black-cloaked madman and his cohort have spooked my mother.

Mother pulls her shawl tightly about her shoulders. “We’ll have cake later. . . .”

“But you promised—”

“Yes, well, that was before . . .” She trails off.

“Before what?”

“Before you vexed me so! Really, Gemma, you are in no humor for a visit today. Sarita will see you back.”

“I’m in a fine humor,” I protest, sounding anything but.

“No, you are not!” Mother’s green eyes find mine. There is something there I’ve never seen before. A vast and terrifying anger that stops my breath. Quick as it comes on her, it’s gone and she is Mother again. “You’re overtired and need some rest. Tonight, we’ll celebrate and I’ll let you drink some champagne.”

I’ll let you drink some champagne.
It’s not a promise—it’s an excuse to get rid of me. There was a time when we did everything together, and now, we can’t even walk through the bazaar without sniping at each other. I am an embarrassment and a disappointment. A daughter she does not want to take anywhere, not London or even the home of an old crone who makes weak tea.

The train’s whistle shrieks again, making her jump.

“Here, I’ll let you wear my necklace, hmmm? Go on, wear it. I know you’ve always admired it.”

I stand, mute, allowing her to adorn me in a necklace I have indeed always wanted, but now it weighs me down, a shiny, hateful thing. A bribe. Mother gives another quick glance to the dusty marketplace before letting her green eyes settle on mine.

“There. You look . . . all grown up.” She presses her gloved hand to my cheek, holds it there as if to memorize it with her fingers. “I’ll see you at home.”

I don’t want anyone to notice the tears that are pooling in my eyes, so I try to think of the wickedest thing I can say and then it’s on my lips as I bolt from the marketplace.

“I don’t care if you come home at all.”

I’M
RUNNING
AWAY
THROUGH
THRONGS
OF
VENDORS
and beggar children and foul-smelling camels, narrowly missing two men carrying saris that hang from a piece of rope attached to two poles at either end. I dart off down a narrow side street, following the twisting, turning alleys till I have to stop and catch my breath. Hot tears spill down my cheeks. I let myself cry now that there is no one around to see me.

God save me from a woman’s tears, for I’ve no strength against them
. That’s what my father would say if he were here now. My father with his twinkling eyes and bushy mustache, his booming laugh when I please him and far-off gaze—as if I don’t exist—when I’ve been less than a lady. I can’t imagine he’ll be terribly happy when he hears how I’ve behaved. Saying nasty things and storming off isn’t the sort of behavior that’s likely to win a girl’s case for going to London. My stomach aches at the thought of it all. What was I thinking?

There’s nothing to do but swallow my pride, make my way back and apologize. If I can find my way back. Nothing looks at all familiar to me. Two old men sit cross-legged on the ground, smoking small, brown cigarettes. They watch me as I pass. I realize that I am alone in the city for the first time. No chaperone. No entourage. A lady unescorted. It’s very scandalous of me. My heart beats faster and I quicken my pace.

The air has grown very still. A storm isn’t far off. In the distance, I can hear frantic activity in the marketplace, last-minute bargains being struck before everything is closed down for the afternoon shower. I follow the sound and end up where I started. The old men smile at me, an English girl lost and alone on Bombay’s streets. I could ask them for directions back to the marketplace, though my Hindi isn’t nearly as good as Father’s and for all I know
Where is the marketplace
may come out as
I covet your neighbor’s fine cow.
Still, it’s worth a try.

“Pardon me,” I ask the elder man, the one with a white beard. “I seem to be lost. Could you tell me which way to the marketplace?”

The man’s smile fades, replaced by a look of fear. He’s speaking to the other man in sharp bursts of a dialect I don’t understand. Faces peek from windows and doorways, straining to see what’s bringing the trouble. The old man stands, points to me, to the necklace. He doesn’t like it?
Something
about me has alarmed him. He shoos me away, goes inside and shuts the door in my face. It’s refreshing to know that it’s not just my mother and Sarita who find me intolerable.

The faces at the windows remain, watching me. There’s the first drop of rain. The wet seeps into my dress, a spreading stain. The sky could break open at any moment. I’ve got to get back. No telling what Mother will do if she ends up drenched and I’m the cause. Why did I act like such a petulant brat? She’ll never take me to London now. I’ll spend the rest of my days in an Austrian convent surrounded by women with mustaches, my eyes gone bad from making intricate lace designs for other girls’ trousseaus. I could curse my bad temper, but it won’t get me back.
Choose a direction, Gemma, any direction—just go.
I take the path to the right. The unfamiliar street leads to another and another, and just as I come around a curve, I see him coming. The boy from the marketplace.

Don’t panic, Gemma. Just move slowly away before he sees you.

I take two hurried steps back. My heel catches on a slippery stone, sending me sliding into the street. When I right myself, he’s staring at me with a look I cannot decipher. For a second, neither of us moves. We are as still as the air around us, which is either promising rain or threatening a storm.

A sudden fear takes root, spreads through me with cold speed, given wings by conversations I’ve overheard in my father’s study—tales over brandy and cigars about the fate of an unescorted woman, overpowered by bad men, her life ruined forever. But these are only bits of conversation. This is a real man coming toward me, closing the distance between us in powerful strides.

He means to catch me, but I won’t let him. Heart pounding, I pull up my skirts, ready to run. I try to take a step and my legs go shaky as a calf’s. The ground shimmers and pitches beneath me.

What is happening?

Move. Must move, but I can’t. A strange tingle starts in my fingers, travels up my arms, into my chest. My whole body trembles. A terrible pressure squeezes the breath from me, weighs me down to my knees. Panic blooms in my mouth like weeds. I want to scream. No words will come. No sound. He reaches me as I fall to the ground. Want to tell him to help me. Focus on his face, his full lips, perfect as a bow. His thick dark curls fall across his eyes, deep, brown, foot-long-lashes eyes. Alarmed eyes.

Help me.

The words stick fast inside me. I’m no longer afraid of losing my virtue; I know I must be dying. Try to get my mouth to tell him this but there is nothing but a choking sound in my throat. A strong smell of rose and spice overpowers me as the horizon slips away, my eyelids fluttering, fighting to stay awake. It’s his lips that part, move, speak.

His voice that says, “It’s happening.”

The pressure increases till I feel I will burst and then I’m under, a swirling tunnel of blinding color and light pulling me down like an undertow. I fall forever. Images race by. I’m falling past the ten-year-old me playing with Julia, the rag doll I lost on a picnic a year later; I’m six, letting Sarita wash my face for dinner. Time spins backward and I am three, two, a baby, and then something pale and foreign, a creature no bigger than a tadpole and just as fragile. The strong tide grabs me hard again, pulling me through a veil of blackness, till I see the twisting street in India again. I am a visitor, walking in a living dream, no sound except for the thumping of my heart, my breath going in and out, the swish of my own blood coursing through my veins. On the rooftops above me, the organ-grinder’s monkey scampers quickly, baring teeth. I try to speak but find I can’t. He hops onto another roof. A shop where dried herbs hang from the eaves and a small moon-and-eye symbol—the same as on my mother’s necklace—is affixed to the door. A woman comes quickly up the sloping street. A woman with red-gold hair, a blue dress, white gloves. My mother. What is my mother doing here? She should be at Mrs. Talbot’s house, drinking tea and discussing fabric.

My name floats from her lips.
Gemma. Gemma
. She’s come looking for me. The Indian man in the turban is just behind her. She doesn’t hear him. I call out to her, my mouth making no sound. With one hand, she pushes open the shop’s door and enters. I follow her in, the pounding of my heart growing louder and faster. She must know the man is behind her. She must hear his breath now. But she only looks forward.

The man pulls a dagger from inside his cloak, but still she doesn’t turn. I feel as if I’ll be sick. I want to stop her, pull her away. Every step forward is like pushing against the air, lifting my legs an agony of slow movement. The man stops, listening. His eyes widen.
He’s afraid
.

There’s something coiled, waiting in the shadows at the back of the shop. It’s as if the dark has begun to
move
. How can it be moving? But it is, with a cold, slithering sound that makes my skin crawl. A dark shape spreads out from its hiding spot. It grows till it reaches all around. The blackness in the center of the thing is swirling and the sound . . . the most ghastly cries and moans come from inside it. []

The man rushes forward, and the thing moves over him.
It devours him
. Now it looms over my mother and speaks to her in a slick hiss.

“Come to us, pretty one. We’ve been waiting . . .”

[]My scream implodes inside me. Mother looks back, sees the dagger lying there, grabs it. The thing howls in outrage. She’s going to fight it. She’s going to be all right. A single tear escapes down her cheek as she closes her desperate eyes, says my name soft as a prayer,
Gemma
. In one swift motion, she raises the dagger and plunges it into herself.

No!

A strong tide yanks me from the shop. I’m back on the streets of Bombay, as if I’d never been gone, screaming wildly while the young Indian man pins my flailing arms at my side.

“What did you see? Tell me!”

I kick and hit, twisting in his grip. Is there anyone around who can help me? What is happening?
Mother!
My mind fights for control, logic, reason, and finds it. My mother is having tea at Mrs. Talbot’s house. I’ll go there and prove it. She will be angry and send me home with Sarita and there’ll be no champagne later and no London but it won’t matter. She’ll be alive and well and cross and I’ll be ecstatic to be punished by her.

He’s still yelling at me. “Did you see my brother?”

“Let me go!” I kick at him with my legs, which have found their strength again. I’ve gotten him in the tenderest of places. He crumples to the ground and I take off blindly down the street and around the next corner, fear pushing me forward. A small crowd is gathering in front of a shop. A shop where dried herbs hang from the roof.

No. This is all some hideous dream. I will wake up in my own bed and hear Father’s loud, gravelly voice telling one of his long-winded jokes, Mother’s soft laughter filling in after.

My legs cramp and tighten, go wobbly as I reach the crowd and make my way through it. The organ-grinder’s tiny monkey scampers to the ground and tilts his head left and right, eyeing the body there with curiosity. The few people in front of me clear away. My mind takes it in by degrees. A shoe upturned, the heel broken. A hand splayed, fingers going stiff. Contents of a handbag strewn in the dirt. Bare neck peeking out from the bodice of a blue gown. Those famous green eyes open and unseeing. Mother’s mouth parted slightly, as if she had been trying to speak when she died.

Gemma.

A deep red pool of blood widens and flows beneath her lifeless body. It seeps into the dusty cracks in the earth, reminding me of the pictures I’ve seen of Kali, the dark goddess, who spills blood and crushes bone. Kali the destroyer. My patron saint. I close my eyes, willing it all to go away.

This is not happening. This is not happening. This is not happening.

But when I open my eyes, she’s still there, staring back at me, accusing.
I don’t care if you come home at all.
It was the last thing I’d said to her. Before I ran away. Before she came after me. Before I saw her die in a vision. A heavy numbness weighs down my arms and legs. I crumple to the ground, where my mother’s blood touches the hem of my best dress, forever staining it. And then the scream I’ve been holding back comes pouring out of me hard and fast as a night train just as the sky opens wide and a fierce rain pours down, drowning out every sound.

“VICTORIA!
THIS
IS
VICTORIA
STATION!”

A burly, blue-uniformed conductor moves through on his way to the back of our train, announcing that I’ve arrived in London at last. We’re slowing to a stop. Great billowing clouds of steam sail past the window, making everything outside seem like a dream.

In the seat across from me, my brother, Tom, is waking, straightening his black waistcoat, checking for anything that isn’t perfect. In the four years we’ve been apart, he has grown very tall and a little broader in the chest, but he’s still thin with a flop of fair hair that droops fashionably into his blue eyes and makes him seem younger than twenty. “Try not to look so dour, Gemma. It’s not as if you’re being sent to the stocks. Spence is a very good school with a reputation for turning out charming young ladies.”