Daughters of India

  Daughters of India

  JILL MCGIVERING

  For Alice and Emily

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Part Two

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  By Jill McGivering

  Copyright

  Prologue

  ‘You are a good girl, Asha, and a brave one.’ His voice fell to a whisper. ‘You have your part to play. An important part. I know you will make your baba proud. And make me proud also.’

  She couldn’t speak. She wanted to blurt out: already I have betrayed you and my baba both; I am serving that man, who condemned him to death. She stood, silent and ashamed.

  He nodded as if he understood everything, as if he saw not just through the thick door but right into her soul. Her body ached from straining to reach to the peephole. It was hot and airless in the corridor. There was so much she needed to say, to confess to him, but she couldn’t find the words.

  He said then: ‘Your madam. You are knowing who she is?’

  She blinked. ‘Isabel Madam. Her husband sentenced my …’ Her voice faltered.

  ‘Her husband made your baba a martyr. That is true. But she herself, you know her?’

  He lifted his hand. She couldn’t see but it seemed to her that he placed it flat against the wood of the door between them. She lifted her own and placed it too, flat against the worn wood on her own side, imagining that they could touch.

  He began to whisper to her.

  ‘Do you remember that day, long ago, when you were a little girl only and your baba brought you to my uncle’s house? Rahul was there, my good friend, and he told you about the Britishers’ house with the mango and jamun trees where you and he were children? They cast out your baba and sent him to the slum, accused him falsely of being a thief.’

  Of course she remembered. Her poor baba bore it all and never spoke of it.

  ‘That was your madam’s house. It was her people who destroyed your baba’s reputation. They set him on the long path that led him to a cell here and to death.’

  Her hand shook on the wood. ‘Her people?’

  He nodded. His eyes fixed on the peephole as if he could see her.

  ‘They are snakes, these people. Full of kind words but also of poison.’

  The wood swam. She felt a sudden wave of sickness and leant her cheek against it.

  He said: ‘Harden your heart against her.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘I will leave her. Amit-ji will protect me. I’ll clean pans and cook for him.’

  On the other side of the door, he let out a low sigh. ‘No, little sister. They are snakes but we are tigers. Be strong. Be fierce. And have faith. The day of the tiger is almost come.’

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Delhi, 1919

  The magnolia tree was too high. Its branches thinned and weakened and, now Isabel was near the top, they bowed where she placed a foot. She tilted her head and looked down through the falling shiver of leaves to the ground. The earth rose rushing towards her. Her stomach tightened and breath stuck in her throat.

  ‘Here.’ Rahul twisted back to her, stretched down a warm, safe hand.

  She couldn’t move. Her knuckles whitened as she grasped the trunk.

  ‘Look up only.’ Rahul climbed down to her, a shield against the dropping empty air.

  She gathered a bunch of thin branches in her hands like reins, steadied her breath and pulled herself higher.

  They emerged, at the top, into another world and sat, pressed together, breathing hard, trembling. Leaves stirred all around. Far below, the ground swam. The compound lay mapped out, the buildings shrivelled and unfamiliar. Fear and glory knotted into one as she lifted her eyes and looked out across India, across the world.

  Rahul pointed behind them, over the angled roof of the bungalow and far beyond.

  ‘That’s backwards.’ His voice was solemn. ‘Into the past.’

  When she screwed her eyes and stared, she saw past generations, the darkness of the ancients.

  He pointed forward then, over the garden’s boundary walls, out across the brown mud and lush vegetation of unclaimed land, of the jungle.

  ‘That’s forwards,’ he said. ‘Into the future.’

  That evening, the light in the servants’ shack was dim, pooled round the lamp, which was too weak to reach the corners. She kept close to Rahul as he sat, cross-legged, among his brothers and sisters on the dirt floor. Dark heads hunched forward over food. Daal, rice and subzi sat on leaves on the ground. They balled it deftly to eat and she felt her own clumsiness as daal ran down her wrist and onto her knees.

  The women whispered. The sweeper-wallah was in trouble. He was a shy man with a sad face. Isabel hardly knew him.

  ‘Where will he go?’ Mrs Chaudhary said. ‘His daughter’s just a baby.’

  Isabel looked round. There was chilli in the subzi and her lips smarted.

  The wooden door creaked open. The new houseboy, Abdul, wide-eyed.

  ‘Memsahib, at the door, calling Missy Isabel.’

  She held herself so still that her body shook. She wouldn’t go.

  ‘Miss Isabel.’ Mrs Chaudhary spoke to her in English now. The boys lifted their heads. ‘Please be going.’

  Isabel hesitated.

  Rahul said: ‘But her food, Mama.’

  Mrs Chaudhary shook her head, repeated. ‘Please, Miss Isabel. Please.’

  Isabel was summoned the following day.

  ‘Where were you?’

  Her mother sat at her desk in the sitting room, one long-fingered hand stretched across an open writing case and the other clasping the gold chain around her neck, gathering it into folds and kneading it. The mid-morning sun was already strong. It reached through the French windows and made the moving necklace sparkle.

  ‘Ayah says you ate with the servants. Is that true?’

  Isabel’s round-toed sandals cut red half-moons in the wooden floor. She stood two, maybe three, steps from the fringe of
the rug. She could jump it in one bound if she had a run-up.

  ‘Well?’

  She shrugged. ‘I was hungry.’

  Her mother sighed. ‘It won’t do, you know.’ The gold links of the chain scraped together as she bunched, then rolled them between her fingers. ‘Your father and I have decided it’s time for you to go Home. There’s a small school that’s supposed to be awfully good, just like a family, really.’

  Outside, Cook Chaudhary hollered from the side of the house. Angry. The houseboy was for it.

  ‘Are you even listening?’

  She forced her eyes to meet her mother’s and nodded. A bicycle bell rang down by the gate and someone whistled. It wasn’t Rahul, she knew his whistle anywhere. A delivery boy, perhaps. From town. Her toes clenched in her sandals, bursting to run outside to see.

  ‘If it hadn’t been for the war, you should have gone long ago. It’s a big change but you’ll soon settle.’

  A thought struck her. The whispers last night. ‘Is the sweeper-wallah leaving?’

  Her mother looked surprised, then frowned. ‘Where did you hear that?’

  It was true, then. ‘Where will he go?’

  ‘I really don’t think—’ Her mother let her necklace fall. It bounced against her blouse, then swayed and settled. ‘He let us down very badly. That’s all.’ She turned back to her desk. ‘Your father’s quite right, Isabel. It’s time you went Home.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘She’s a plain girl.’

  Isabel lay stock-still and listened. The Misses Ellison stood in the shadows, just beyond the door. That was the voice of the elder Miss Ellison, a thin woman with a sharp nose. She wore black boots and a sweeping, high-necked dress, pinned with a polished black brooch. When they met an hour earlier, Isabel saw herself reflected in it, small, pale and wide-eyed.

  ‘She’ll get by.’ Her sister. A softer voice. The younger Miss Ellison had a fat bosom and powdered cheeks, doughy as buns. ‘They’re not without means, the Winthorpes.’

  A sniff. ‘The wife’s the one with money. One of the Hancock girls.’

  ‘The cloth people?’

  The door closed. Footsteps and fading voices across the landing. She stretched out her feet, wiggled her toes. The sheet was cold and damp. Miss Ellison had given her a glass of milk in the kitchen, then made her take off her travelling clothes, wash her face in a basin and put on her nightdress by the fire. The milk made a stone in her stomach. She shivered, wrapped her arms round her body and curled into a ball.

  ‘Are you plain?’ A girl’s voice, close by.

  She turned towards the sound, strained to see. Another bed. Rustling as someone sat up. She blinked, clearing spangles of light from her eyes, peering. ‘Probably.’

  The sitting shape of the girl emerged from the blackness. She had an abundance of fair hair. It fell in loose waves, making a cloud round her neck and shoulders. ‘I’m pretty,’ the girl said. ‘Everyone says so.’

  A pause as Isabel considered this. ‘That’s lucky.’

  ‘I expect it is.’ She rose and feet slapped across the wooden floor. ‘Well, shove up, can’t you?’

  The girl lifted back the corner of the blanket and sheet and climbed in beside her. She wrapped her arms round Isabel’s ribs, her compact body hard and warm. She smelt of camphor.

  ‘What cloth people?’

  Isabel shrugged. ‘My mother’s people, I suppose.’

  ‘Did you really come from India? Isn’t it awfully far?’

  She thought back to the sweltering train journey from Delhi to Bombay, the dull weeks on board ship, each a little cooler than the last, walking in endless procession round the worn planks of the deck with a party of other English girls, chaperoned by a hearty games mistress. When they disembarked at Southampton, the sky was dour with drizzle. Someone put a lid on the world, shut out the light, the sun, the air.

  ‘I shan’t stay long. I’m going back.’

  ‘I thought that too, at first. Ninety-three days till Christmas, did you count?’

  ‘Are your people in India too?’

  ‘Kettlewell. It’s in Yorkshire. We’ve got a farm and a beck runs right along the bottom of the garden. We had a governess but then my brother went off to school and I came here. I’m Gwendolyn but you can call me Gwen if you like.’ Her breath made a hot patch between Isabel’s shoulder blades. She put icy feet against the backs of Isabel’s ankles where they slowly thawed. ‘What’s India like?’

  When Isabel closed her eyes, the blackness swayed, rocked by the lingering motion of the ship. As it settled, pictures appeared.

  ‘Hot. The lawn goes white in the sun,’ she said. ‘Ayah looks after me, mostly. And Cook Chaudhary. He makes me mango pudding.’

  ‘What’s mango pudding?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’ She turned her mind back to India. ‘My best friend’s called Rahul. And I’ve got a pony. Starlight. I go in for the children’s gymkhana. We got fifth last year.’

  ‘You can’t now though, can you?’

  ‘And there are monkeys. The babies hang upside down, clinging to their mother’s bellies. Their faces look wrinkled, like old men and—’

  ‘Fibber.’ The arms disentangled themselves and Gwen pulled away, slapped back to her own bed. The darkness settled into place between them. After a while, Gwen said: ‘We have cows, by the way. And sheep.’

  Isabel lay very still, feeling the chill creep back along her spine. Gwen breathed lightly, not yet asleep.

  ‘Is it always cold here?’

  ‘Cold?’ A snigger. ‘This isn’t cold. Wait till winter.’

  The Misses Ellison’s house stood on the edge of the moor and as the weather soured, the wind rampaged across the open expanse.

  In those first weeks of autumn, the heather splashed purple across the moorland and the stretches of bracken faded from green to brown. In the mornings, the younger Miss Ellison walked Isabel and Gwen across the moor to the village to do her daily shop. Isabel’s ears buzzed with cold.

  Miss Ellison walked briskly along the mud paths. Her laced boots made light prints in the mud. Isabel and Gwen, trailing behind, made a game of stretching their strides to match hers. The wind filled with drizzle and fired it into Isabel’s face. Her cheeks and fingers went numb and her nose ran, mingling with the rain.

  In the village, the girls waited at the back of one shop after another while Miss Ellison made purchases. The shop assistants wore white aprons and straw boaters and slapped pats of butter with wooden paddles and shovelled sugar and flour out of lidded bins into shining brass scales. When Miss Ellison paid, the money and bill shot upstairs inside a tube to a ringing bell, only to zoom down again a few minutes later, rattling with change.

  In the afternoons, they sat in the back room of the house with two stout girls with plaits, the daughters of the local doctor. The elder Miss Ellison taught reading, writing and sums. She slapped at their knuckles with a wooden ruler when she was displeased.

  The younger Miss Ellison had a globe and taught them about the Empire which stretched round the girth of the world like a red corset.

  ‘Now, girls, where is Africa?’ She turned the world and made them point.

  Isabel’s only interest was in India. She was proud of its size, a sprawling elephant of a country, very far from the tiny smudge of England.

  A letter came from her father on thin, crinkly paper. It smelt of sun and spice. He drew a funny-faced tiger with thick whiskers, dressed in britches and a self-portrait, a man sporting a topee, snoozing in a chair on the lawn. His tone was jolly. He told a story about Cook mistaking salt for sugar and how horrid the cake tasted.

  Isabel kept the letter under her mattress. At night, when Gwen slept, she hung out of bed, lifted the lip of the mattress and sniffed it until it lost the scent of India.

  Gwen said Isabel must be sent home to India in July, for the long summer holidays. They calculated the days and began to count them off.

  Then a letter came from Isabel’s
mother.

  Miss Ellison informs me that you and Gwen have become great friends, her mother wrote. We thought it would be great fun for you to stay with her family for the summer. I am sorry, darling, that I can’t be there myself but please be a good, polite girl and make me proud of you.

  That night, Gwen slapped across the bedroom floor and wrapped her thin arms around Isabel.

  ‘It’s too bad,’ she said. ‘Really.’

  The view from the window seat commanded the back of the house. Gwen was on the swing. Her ankles were crossed and her loose hair flew as she cut an arc through the air, time after time, in a steady rhythm.

  Isabel shifted her weight and stretched out her legs. She pulled the cushion from its place in the small of her back and sat on it, easing off her buttocks.

  At the end of the garden, beyond the dip that concealed the beck, lay a gently rising patchwork of fields. They were studded with cows and sheep and bounded by stubby lines of drystone wall, as if an artist had drawn the landscape in thick grey pencil before colouring it in.

  A thin draught pressed in from the edge of the window. She pulled her cardigan closer round her chest and turned the page of the volume spread open across her knees. She knew the next picture well. The majestic elephant with flapping ears. A curtained howdah, decorated with gold and silver, crashed through the jungle on its back. A mahout, barefoot and brown-skinned, rode on its head, legs tucked behind the vast spread ears.

  ‘Put that book down. It’s not yours.’

  She lifted her head. A staring boy in the doorway. He wore a blue short-sleeved shirt, serge shorts and sandals. His pale face was convulsed in a frown.

  ‘It’s not yours either. It’s Mr Whyte’s. Anyway, I asked him.’

  ‘It is mine. Practically. I’m his son and heir.’

  Jonathan, then. Home from boarding school. She turned her eyes back to the picture and felt him hesitate. He took a few steps further into the room and looked round.