Belonging (25 page)

Gavin McLean is dead. Colonel Anderson summoned me today and told me that he was stabbed in the bazaar last night. He asked me if I had any idea how he might have been betrayed. Something in the way he asked suggested that he suspected it had something to do with me. I said no, and we went through the names of all the Indians and Gurkhas who work with us, but there was no obvious suspect.

When I got home I went to my study and discovered that the drawer in which I keep the duplicate copies of my reports
has been broken into. It must have taken considerable force and been done before my return, for I have not had occasion to open it since I got back.

I summoned all the servants and questioned them. At first they denied any knowledge, but eventually Afzal Khan admitted that some men had visited the house while I was out riding. I asked why he had not mentioned them to me. He said that Zainab has forbidden the servants to gossip about Memsahib’s visitors. Of course they must all know about Roland and, through their grapevine, so must the whole cantonment. There must also have been talk about our estrangement and the fact that Rebecca has not emerged from her room for the last three months, but remains locked away, taking all her meals there and seeing no one except Zainab.

I sent them away – all except Zainab – and demanded she tell me who these visitors were. It took the usual threats of taking Rebecca to England and leaving her behind to break her down, but I am past caring about decency. If Gavin is dead because of them, they have done more damage than anything I can do to either of them.

It turns out that Rebecca has not just been taking the prescribed laudanum, which the doctor monitors, but has been buying opium on the side. The men who came have been supplying her for some time, and it seems to me likely that at least one is in the pay of the Russians or Chinese and has used her as a way of getting into the house.

I went straight back to Colonel Anderson, told him what had happened, minimising Rebecca’s part in it, and offered my resignation, which he accepted. He advised me that I may be in danger myself and that it is perhaps time for me to return to England. In any case, he says the Great Game is nearly finished since we are now facing greater threats in
Europe from Germany’s growing military might. A meeting has been arranged next month to work out the terms of the alliance between us and Russia, and it looks as though we will now agree to leave Tibet to China. Colonel Anderson was kind enough to add that I should not blame myself, and that Gavin’s death may not have been connected with his work but have been an attempt at robbery, but of course neither of us believed it. Pathans never forgive a slight or a betrayal, and over the years both Gavin and I have lied and deceived to get information.

As I was leaving, Anderson stopped me and said, ‘I think you should know that your wife is planning a special birthday party for your fiftieth birthday and has invited Jane and me.’ Jane is his pregnant daughter, who is staying with him while her husband is away. ‘She said it was to be a surprise, but I suspect you have had enough surprises to last you for some time.’

There seems no choice now but to return to England, for I have nothing to keep me here. I have decided not to take Zainab with us. It may be cruel but I cannot forgive her part in this and Rebecca will better off without her. England will give her a fresh start. No one will know her history there and perhaps once away from her mother’s influence and from Roland there may even be a chance for us to reach some sort of understanding. Aunt Mina has replied, agreeing to take Lila, and I have arranged for her to go ahead of us as I do not wish her to witness the scenes that will no doubt ensue when I break the news to the two of them. Poor Lila – how I wish I had sent her out of this madhouse to England when she was born.

I shall be fifty in a couple of days and all I can think of is what a mess I have made of my life. I thought I was saving Rebecca, but Roland always understood her better than I did. And, if not for my poor judgement, Gavin would still be alive. There were so many things that I should have seen. I understand now the poetic justice in Oedipus putting out his eyes to punish himself for his metaphorical blindness. If it were not for Lila, who has brought so much joy to my life, I could wish that I had died with my mother in the bibighar.

It is dawn when I finish reading my father’s diaries and grandmother’s letters. My eyes are gritty from lack of sleep. Outside my window I hear a blackbird singing and the rooks cawing in the tops of the elms.

I leave the house and walk through the back garden to the fence, passing the bush where I used to bury the packed lunches Cook gave me before going up on to the Downs. I scramble up the hillside, my boots sliding on the muddy path. It takes me some time to find my childhood hideout. It is still there, only much smaller than I remember. I stoop and push my way through the scratchy gnarled twigs until I am safely inside, then I sit on the damp ground and howl, as I used to do when I first came here. I howl for Father, for the sadness of his belief that his love was not enough, for poor Uncle Gavin, for my grandmother and grandfather, for Aunt Mina, and even for Mother, but most of all for myself. And for the first time I feel it: the weight of the past bearing down on us, and see how, struggle as we might, we stand no chance of breaking our fetters, of making our own lives. And now I understand the real meaning of that saying,
He punishes the children and their children for the sins of the parents to the third and fourth generation.

It is mid-morning when, exhausted by my tears, I finally make my way back to the house. I wash my mud-streaked face and then sit down in front of the mirror. I look at my tangled hair and swollen eyes.

Two lines run through my head:

They are from ‘The House of Eld’ and I understand them now. We carry our parents inside us, their blood in our veins, their voices in our heads. And from Mother, who I thought had given me nothing, a ‘touch of the tar brush’: my own personal fetter. If people knew, would they spit at me and call me names? If not to my face, then behind my back? Is this the shame that Mother felt when the girls at school tormented her? I understand now why it was easier for her to deny the truth, but I also see that that denial magnified the shame and fuelled her moods, her depressions, her headaches, and the belief that people were always talking about her and mocking her.

A phrase comes to my mind –
there is a want of grit about them
– and I see Simon snatching my book away before reading out, in a mocking voice, that passage about half-castes to taunt Jagjit and me. Mother certainly wanted grit. And wasn’t there something about the mixing of races bringing out the worst features of both? Is that why Mother was like she was? Or was it just the effect of living for so many years fearing the contempt of others for something she could not help?

But why am I thinking like this? After all, no one need ever know the truth. What would be the point of telling them? And, as I think that, I catch my reflection in the mirror and
for a moment Mother is looking back at me, and her eyes are saying, ‘See, you are more like me than you know,’ and I feel the root tangling round my heart.

Up in the attic again, I hunt around among the shrouded shapes, raising clouds of dust. I found Aunt Mina’s desk fairly easily yesterday, covered with dustsheets, in a corner with the other furniture. But I have no idea where to look for the carpet bag. It is nearly two o’clock and I am faint with hunger before I find it, stuffed into a trunk with Father’s name stencilled on it in white paint. It must have been shipped to Aunt Mina from India, I suppose, after his death. Inside are some of his books and bronzes, including the statue of Shiva dancing the world into being in his ring of flames. Once again I see that dancing shadow, growing and shrinking on the wall behind Father’s desk, and taste again that metallic taste and feel Mother’s nails cutting into my shoulders as she smiled.

I throw a cloth over it and continue to excavate. In a corner of the trunk my fingers encounter something soft and furry, like stiff velvet or carpet pile, and a memory comes – wiping cobwebs off my fingers. As I pull the carpet bag out, a cloud of dust comes with it. I turn my head, trying not to breathe it in. Can this really be the bag into which my grandmother placed my father as a baby?

I release the brass catch and pull out a screwed-up bundle of yellowed cloth. I can see only the reverse, covered in a chaotic criss-cross of overlapping stitches in different colours, with knots and loose ends.

Back in my bedroom I open the tablecloth and lay it out on my bed. The deep border consists of a repeating Tree of Life pattern covered with fruit and flowers. Only, when I look closer, I see that what I initially took for bunches of fruit are
small fat hands and feet; the tulip-shaped flowers are really plump pink lips with protruding tongues; the daisy-shaped ones are eyeballs, caught in a net of red veins, and surrounded by long looping eyelashes.

I raise my eyes to the centre of the cloth, which would have been revealed when the serving dishes and platters were cleared away. In the centre, the motto ‘THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE’ is repeated four times to form a circle. A swagged garland of pear-shaped sacs hangs from it, each containing a mangled foetus.

The remaining space between that and the border is filled with what at first glance look like the temple carvings in a book that Simon once found in my great-grandfather’s study. It was inscribed:
For H. Partridge, with best wishes from A. Langdon, Christmas 1856.
After one glance I refused to look again; Jagjit took it from Simon’s hand and put it back on the shelf, coolly remarking that they were sacred carvings representing the uniting of the male and female principles.

When I look closely at the couples on the tablecloth, I see that the male figures vary: some are fat, some thin, some dark-skinned, some light, some bearded, some turbaned. But the woman is always the same: she has black curly hair and odd eyes – one green and one blue. In some of the couplings she is small – child-sized – compared to the red-haired man with whom she is doing things that no child should be doing. In others she is a woman. One man appears again and again: tall, blond and blue-eyed, sometimes wearing, and sometimes holding in one hand, a blue and gold striped puggree, and flourishing a riding whip. Even Mother’s embroidery is not fine enough to make the man’s face recognisable but I recognise the hat, whose presence on the hall stand always told me that Uncle Roland was visiting.

I wonder which bit was in front of Father. And then I see it – the woman is kneeling before a tall man with white hair and bright blue eyes. He wears a uniform jacket with colonel’s epaulettes, but no trousers; a thin red line of puckered backstitch runs from the corner of his eye to his mouth.

Saliva spurts into my mouth. I remember Father’s frozen face as he raised his eyes from the tablecloth to Mother’s. Did he believe it? I can barely remember my grandfather, but I know he would never knowingly have betrayed Father. Did she make it up or did she take advantage of his confusion, his hope, that finally, finally, Cecily loved him as he wanted to be loved – as we all want to be loved? And, if so, did she do it out of pity, or for revenge, or because she was desperate to be loved herself?

I roll the cloth up and stuff it back into the bag. When I lift the bag off the bed I see that it has left a sprinkling of fine brown powder on my bedcover.

‘You didn’t have enough wood on it,’ Simon says.

It is afternoon. I am in the garden and he is looking over the fence from the path that runs along the bottom of the hill.

‘What are you doing here? I thought you were in London.’

‘Mother telegraphed me twice. Once to say that Jagjit was alive but you were upset. Then again this morning – she was worried when you didn’t come home last night. She showed me the letter. I’ve brought food.’

We stand watching the smouldering remains of the small bonfire. The flames have calmed me, burnt away the images, and now I feel cleansed standing in the open air. Today it is warm and muggy, with high silver-grey clouds drifting in a blue sky.

‘What were you burning anyway? Cloth?’ He pokes at the charred material with his stick, uncovering the blackened metal clasp of the carpet bag.

‘Just some old things I don’t need any more.’

He nods. ‘Want to walk?’

I join him on the path and we make our way up to the top of the dyke. My eyes and nose feel hot and swollen with weeping, but my mind is empty. I am cried out. I am also hungry, and realise I haven’t eaten for over twenty-four hours.

We sit down and Simon hands me a sandwich. ‘I’m sorry about Jagjit. But he does have reason to be bitter. Townshend appears to have had it in for the Indians from the beginning, accusing them of malingering and blaming them for all his failures, although their officers say they fought bravely. And now this business in Amritsar that his father mentions… They’re trying to hush it up; they’ve even blocked the post from Punjab to stop word getting out here.’

‘What happened? Do you know?’

‘Apparently there was some sort of political meeting to protest about the Rowlatt Act. Political meetings are banned and it looks like General Dyer panicked and opened fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians in an enclosed space from which there was no escape. Hundreds were killed, including women and children… They’re calling it a massacre and the nationalists are up in arms. It’s hardly surprising that Jagjit is angry.’

‘I still don’t understand why he signed up. Why either of you did…’

He grimaces. ‘The truth is that it was his idea… I wouldn’t have had the courage. I only did it because I thought we’d be together. I stupidly assumed if we signed up at the same time they’d put us in the same regiment, even the same company.
And when they refused him it was too late; they’d already accepted me for the Reserves. Maybe I could have changed my mind but I didn’t want him to think me a coward. It was stupid, but the strange thing is, horrible as it was, I miss it.’

‘What is it that you miss?’

‘The men, strangely. Their camaraderie… It was all so beastly and yet they were always cheerful: whistling, ribbing each other. And their gallows humour that somehow made light of even the worst moments. They have a gift for happiness. I envied them because they didn’t seem to have the expectation that life should be good to them. They’re not brought up, as we are, to feel that they need to stand out in some way, to be different, which is just another way of saying to be alone. They’re happy to be ordinary – just to be alive is enough, and in each other’s company. They don’t feel they have to change the world. And here I am, alive, and knowing I’m lucky to be, and yet life seems so empty, so flat… There’s absolutely nothing to look forward to, because what could possibly matter after that?’

He turns his head away, but not before I see that his eyes are brimming with tears. As mine fill in sympathy, I realise that I have lived with that feeling ever since Father died. Since then I have had no one, nothing of my own. Jagjit was the only person I trusted, the only one who seemed to care for me above everyone else, the only person with whom I felt I belonged.

I picture the empty years stretching ahead of us and I think of the people all over the world who have lost someone, and all the pain that has been, and is, and is to come, and it feels as though my heart is cracking and then I start to shake and I can’t stop. Simon turns to look at me and I try to hold myself together but I can’t.

‘Lila, what is it?’

I try to speak but my lips are quivering and strange blaring noises are issuing from my mouth. I turn away but he pulls me towards him and holds me tight against his chest, his arms hard around me. ‘It’s all right,’ he says. ‘It’s all right.’ He strokes my hair and talks to me and then there is nothing but the darkness and the shadowy god dancing and the whole world shaking and blood fountaining and I know it is the end, the Kali Yuga, and I am glad.

When I come to, I am lying in Simon’s lap. I look up at him, confused.

He smiles down at me. ‘Just rest. You’re all right now. It’s shock. I’ve seen it happen time and again.’

I sit up and he hands me his handkerchief. I feel drained. We sit looking out over the fields and church spires and small villages, a quiet landscape that gives no sign of the sadness and suffering that lies behind the façade of every house.

‘Why is life so bloody, Simon? What’s the point of it all?’

He shrugs. ‘You’re asking the wrong person. Jagjit was always the one with the answers. We used to talk all the time… about life and what it meant, especially when we were travelling in Europe. We’d lie awake the whole night sometimes, just talking. He seemed so wise; I really thought he knew everything.’

‘Why did you stop writing to each other?’

He hesitates. ‘He turned out not to be as understanding as I thought.’

I wait, sensing he is balanced on the edge of telling me something. His eyes shift away and back and I see he has made the decision. He says slowly, ‘You know the day we saw him off…?’

I nod, remembering him helping to take Jagjit’s cases down to his cabin and the awkward atmosphere when they came back.

He turns to look at me. ‘Did you ever know how jealous I was of you?’

‘But why? I thought I was in the way, a nuisance… because he was your friend and you wanted him to yourself.’

His eyes hold mine. ‘It was more than that, Lila.’

For a moment I don’t understand what he means and then I do. I stare as my mind goes back, reliving and reinterpreting all the times we spent together.

He smiles. ‘I loved him. Does that shock you?’

‘No. I didn’t… it never… How stupid of me!’ I remember Jagjit complaining that Simon never left him alone, about his possessiveness, and suddenly I’m worried for Simon. ‘Did he know?’

‘Not till that day.’ He smiles at my concerned expression. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t go down on my knees and declare my passion, but I might just as well have done for the reaction I got. He’d sat down at the table to write out his address in India for me. I was standing beside him and I wanted so much to touch him – more than I’ve wanted anything in my life – just to put my hand on his shoulder. It would have been a natural thing to do but I didn’t dare. I didn’t intend to say anything either, but when he stood up and handed the paper to me he said, “Now you’ll have Lila all to yourself,” and I realised that
he
was jealous. And I … I just blurted out, “It’s not
Lila
I’m in love with.” And he laughed and said, “Who, then?” and… my face must have told the story, because his changed…’ He pauses and swallows. ‘And I knew I’d made the most awful mistake. I mean, he was perfectly polite – that was what was so terrible – his sudden politeness, as though we
were strangers who’d just been introduced. He put a good face on it, but that was the last I heard from him.’