Anila's Journey (29 page)

“Anila, what I forgot to tell you was that the day Mrs Herbert came here with her gifts she was asking about you, most especially. She wondered if you might care to live with them and teach their boys. They cannot find anyone to suit them in all Calcutta, they say, and you impressed them so much with the way you spoke.”

But I had been so bold that day. And they so kind. How strange it was.

Anoush giggled. “Of course you were wearing a sari that day, not your boy legs.”

Mrs Panossian looked stern. “They are a fine family and we have a very satisfactory order from them now. You would do well with the Herberts, my girl. Their house in Alipore is as fine as any in Garden Reach, I hear. But who knows what is round the corner for any of us? So I wish you well in your quest and please convey my respects to your dear Miss Hickey when you see her.”

She left us then, first running her finger down the counter to test it for dust. Anoush wrinkled her nose but said nothing. When the door had closed behind Mrs Pan she reached into one of the underneath drawers and drew out a white card.

“Mrs Dust-it-down doesn't know about this but I might have forgotten it without her talk of conveying respects.”

She slid the card across the counter.

“It's strange, but only yesterday Doctor Herbert came in by himself. He left this here for you, Anila. He said it was not at all to do with the position in his house but that it was important. Privy to yourself, he said.”

MR WALKER WAS EXCEEDINGLY LATE
returning to the house that night. When the moon rose Chandra tried to tempt me with hot water and soft towels, and a boiled chocolate drink for afterwards, for I looked wretched, he said, and should retire to bed.

“The sahib says this chocolate makes him sleep better than his whisky,” he said. “But he does not know I sometimes put sleepy leaf in it too, just a little.”

He laughed, a mouthful of broken teeth. But when I refused any of his kind offers he went off to his own room with a face on him like a toad in dry weather. Then it was just a sleepy Balor and I who waited for the master to return, the parrot swaying on the back of Mr Walker's easy chair, muttering his puja prayers.

Outside, the moon was turning herself into a baby once again. I didn't know where Mr Walker had stowed his telescope but even if it were on the table in front of me I think I would have feared to look at Jupiter again, in case his hopeful messenger moon would no longer be visible to me.

“Anila!”

There he stood in the doorway, and in the dim light coming from the hall behind him he looked like a boy, a very tall thin boy, with his hair undressed and his lace stock coming adrift round his neck.

“Goodness me, do you know the hour?”

I had not heard him come in.

“Oh, but Mr Walker, I had to wait up to hear about the passage you have found for me. And I wanted you to see this.”

He took the white card that Anoush had given me and examined the embossed print.

“But it's just a calling card,” he said. “‘George Herbert, physician, late of London, now of Providence House, Alipore, Calcutta.' Now who is that?”

He turned it over.

“‘For the attention of Miss Anila Tandy. Please call to our address at your earliest convenience. This matter is important.'”

I had told Mr Walker before about our Christmas Day adventure but perhaps he had forgotten.

“Anoush told me today that the Herberts wanted me to teach their boys, you remember the little one she saved from the horses? But she said that this message was about something else, something that the doctor was bothered about.”

He blinked a couple of times. He ran a hand through his hair, making the damage even worse. Then he sat down, being careful not to disturb Balor, who was now snoring.

“Anila,” he said, gently. “I can't think about that right now. I can answer your first question however. Today I booked passage for both of us on an Indiaman to leave in a seven-night. We have benefited from a few burials, it is true, to be able to have these accommodations so late. Our ship is called the
Dublin
, would you credit that? She'll stop at Madras, of course, for you, and then I'll travel afterwards to England.”

The
Dublin!
My first thought was that Durga must have truly forgiven me to send a boat with that name to bring me to my father. But why then was Mr Walker looking so glum?

He poured himself a whisky from his cutglass decanter and drank it half down.

“Well,” he said. He sighed.

And that was all.

“Mr Walker, is there something wrong? I'm sorry if you wanted to retire at once. I'll leave you be now. Are you hungry? I can fetch something for you.”

I stood but he motioned me down again.

“Anila, I have discovered some other things that will disturb you.”

“My father?”

“No. Well, not in the way you mean.”

His face suddenly twisted with disgust. I said nothing but my blood was thumping. I felt like an animal brought to a butcher's stall, waiting for the cruel chop.

“Anila.”

His voice was very gentle.

“At the Company offices today, I discovered that your father left in place a firm arrangement for your mother to be paid from his savings. Every month she was to collect these monies from a clerk at the Writers' Building. It was a little stipend, not much, but enough probably to feed a woman and a child. But after a couple of weeks the entire amount was collected by a person who claimed she was Annapurna, your mother, wishing to return to her village and thus in need of the full security. She had a pretty little girl with her of the right years. The man remembered the child dancing round his desk for him.”

“But that is nonsense. My mother took no money. We had no money. And she was very sick, remember I told you? We never went to the Writers' Building then.”

Mr Walker nodded. His face looked carved and ferocious, like a stone idol from the top of a temple.

“And I remember too that you told me that a person called Malati vanished from the house when your mother became ill.”

There was a quick sour taste in my mouth. I put my fist to my teeth so I would not retch.

“Malati! But she had no child…”

Then I stopped. I thought of Bashanti and the proud way she wore the dancing anklets she made, with nutshells for bells, even after her father beat her for it. She envied me my house shared with such colourful people. Perhaps she had been eager to go with Malati, to pretend to be me, to take part in a game.

Little one, tell Malati why the poorest grey pigeon wears jewel colours round her neck. She might put your story into her dance
.

“Anila, the story does not end there. The reason I am so very late is that I have been to find your old friend Hemavati.”

Of all the things I expected him to say this was not one of them. But I had run out of gasps and gapes. I just waited for him to continue.

“Yes, and it was a merry dance in the gloaming, that,” he said. “Finding your old house was quite a discovery when all I had to guide me was your descriptions of an old temple filled with monkeys. Oh, and a palanquin maker. But that last was the clincher.”

“You found Hemavati?”

“She was not inclined to talk to me at first but eventually she could not be stopped. She knew nothing of this money arrangement, that was clear. She was full of tears then about her own hard judgement of your father, which she pressed on your mother at the time. She put it down to her own bad experiences with Englishmen. But from her I learnt more about Malati.”

On the chair back Balor opened his good eye, as if he had been following the story all along and was impatient now for the end of it.

“One day Malati's soldier, Robert Sedge, was brought to your house in the lane in shackles. He'd been caught supplying shot to a merchant in the bazaar. Anyway, before they stood him for court martial he also confessed to murdering his girl for some monies she had hidden from him. They searched your house for it but it was never found there or anywhere else, nor Malati either, if it was she that he meant. Hemavati never knew what kind of money it was they were talking about, or, she swore, she would have searched the city for you and your mother to tell you.”

And all the while we were behind the locked gates of the house with the fountain in Old Court House Street. I thought of the summer's day by the creek and how I had led Mr Bristol to my mother, even though I had not understood then the cards that were being played. For my sake she had consented to a life with Mr Bristol that disgusted her. All the good fortune that had come to me since that day had come about because she had accepted a cruel fate. Of course she would never wish to hear me talk of my father's return. She had believed completely that he had betrayed her, discarded her.

Mr Walker sighed again.

“I gave Hemavati your best regards and a bag of rupees. Poor thing, she did not appear well.”

“Poor Hemavati,” I agreed.

But deep inside, a tiny part of me, even though I did not intend to allow it, was thinking, “Poor Malati.” Her greed had made her do a terrible thing to us, to my mother who had always been kind to her, to me whom she petted whenever she cared to. And it had brought her nothing, only a terrible end.

I was so weary. I longed to be picked up like a child, although I was a child no longer, and carried to a soft bed where the badness in the world could not find me. I got up slowly and thanked Mr Walker and went to my bedroom.

MR WALKER HAD ALREADY LEFT
when I rose the next morning.

“To order supplies for ship,” Chandra said. “For you, too. Lady clothes. Soap and basin for sickness.”

He made a pantomime of getting sick and rolled his eyes. Chandra did not approve of sea journeys, I could see that.

I knew I should begin my paintings. My river sketches were not enough for Mr Walker to bring to his beloved Royal Society. Unless she had a proper portrait, like a young lady going to her first ball, it seemed that the golden-headed bird would stand no chance of being presented at that place of scrutiny. I also wanted to do justice to my brave fish owl and the birds my grandfather had shown me in the water meadow. Mr Walker had not seen them and I had great hopes that they might be unknown birds.

But I could not get Doctor Herbert's scribbled words out of my mind. What might the matter concerning me be that had drawn a privy card from him?

I mixed as many browns as I could make, from pale honey to black molasses. They glistened on the palette like so many sugared sweets on a tray. Outside, the mali was cutting back the hibiscus, which had ended its blooming. I could hear the clip of his blades, and koels calling from gardens further down the street. But my mind kept turning on the thought that prosperous Alipore lay just beyond the maidan, much closer than Garden Reach. If I were clever about it I might get there and back before the afternoon was over.

I closed my paintbox and left my notebooks on the desk in the parlour room.

Chandra tut-tutted when I told him I was going to Mrs Panossian's shop.

“It's only a few streets away, it's perfectly safe, Chandra. Please tell Mr Walker, if he returns before me, that I will work late into the night to make up for this time I'm taking.”

By way of reply Chandra banged down the brass doorknocker that he was polishing. Of course that set Balor off inside, making a twin boom, and I had to run in case I would add my own laughter to the disturbance.

Mrs Panossian's shop was full of people, bearers and even some English servants, forming lines in front of the counter. Anoush was too occupied to manage more than a wave to me, and a quick smile.

Outside the shop a cart was being loaded with baskets and boxes that were lined up neatly on the freshly swept pavement. Mesrop was doing most of the work, shouldering his way through the passers-by. He offered no excuses but people made way for him as you would avoid a boulder on the move. I picked up a basket of herb sachets and went to stand by the horses so that he saw me.

“Mesrop, is this delivery going to Alipore? For I have a message from one of your customers to go there myself. The Herberts, do you know them? I could see that your packages to that family arrive safely.”

Mrs Pan would not have cared to hear
that
for she prided herself on the shop's reputation for delivery. But Mesrop stared hard at me and then peered back into the shop as if he might catch Anoush's eye.

“Anoush says it's permitted,” I said to him, desperately. “But you can see how busy she is.”

He reached out his huge hands then and just picked me up as if I were another piece of grocery. He placed me up beside the driver, a little Armenian man wearing a livery of brown and gold, the Panossian colours. Veena bird colours, I thought, with a dash of guilt.

The driver merely shrugged. Behind us two coolies jumped up and settled themselves on the different packets and baggages as best they could. The driver lifted his reins and within minutes we had joined the traffic on the road to Chowringhee.

It was mid-morning and packet boys and coolies with heavy loads ran alongside the carts and carriages, palkis and chairs, sometimes darting between them, at great peril, for all that the road was so wide. There were elephants abroad too, two together, slowing the traffic behind them, both carrying English ladies who squealed with excitement for every sway of the howdahs. I kept my head down when we passed the top of the street where Mr Walker's house lay. If Chandra were to see me!

Only when we had reached the area of Burial Ground Road did the delivery cart begin its work. We must have stopped five or six times for the coolies to drop down and carry one basket after another inside gates that were held open and then banged after them. At least those houses were visible. But when we arrived at last among the green lanes of Alipore, I began to wonder how I might know Doctor Herbert's house. Here every dwelling was important enough to have its own long avenue of palmyras to keep it out of sight, except for glimpses of whitewashed stone.