Dolly (12 page)

She did live. Slowly the fevers subsided and then ceased, her pain and discomfort eased, and she lay, limp and exhausted but out of danger, on a bed as cool as could be made for her, in a darkened corner.
Her rash was less red and raised, but the hideous spots crusted and when they fell off left ugly pockmarks which were deep and unlikely ever to disappear. Her beautiful eyes were dimmed and lost their wonderful colour and translucence and seemed to have receded deep into their sockets.

Weeks and then three months went by before she began to regain energy and a little weight, to laugh sometimes and clap her hands when the Indian women who had agonised over her clapped theirs.

We returned home exhausted and chastened, wondering what the future held for our once-perfect daughter, still perfect to us, still overwhelmingly loved, but nevertheless, sadly disfigured. In London we consulted a specialist in tropical diseases, who in turn passed us to a dermatologist, and thence to a plastic surgeon. None of them held out any hope that Viola’s scars would ever fade very much. It might be possible for her to have a skin graft when she was older but success was by no means certain and there were risks.

Weeks went by while all this was attended to and we settled back with some difficulty into our old life in England.

It was then that I started to search for some
particular files and in hunting, found both these and a white cardboard box. At first I did not recognise it and assumed it belonged to Catherine. I set it down on my work table, beside some drawings, but then forgot it until the following day, when I walked into my office early in the morning and as I saw it, remembered immediately where it had come from and what it held.

I saw Leonora again, in the semi-darkness outside Iyot House, thrusting the box into my hands and telling me, almost screaming at me to take it away. Well, my Viola might enjoy the Indian Princess doll, would recognise it as one of her friends and playmates from the country she still remembered vividly.I untied the loosely knotted string and lifted the lid. The rustle of the tissue paper brought goose flesh up on the back of my neck. It was not a sound I would ever again find pleasant and I pushed it aside quickly, not even liking the feel of it against my fingers.

The Indian Princess doll lay as I remembered her in the bottom of the coffin-like cardboard box. Her elaborate, richly embroidered and bejewelled clothes, her rings, earrings, bracelets and bangles and beads, her satin and lace and gold and silver braid and trim, were all as I had remembered them. There were just two things that were so very different.

Her thick long black hair had come away here and there, leaving ugly bald patches, and the fallen hair was lying in tufts at the bottom of the box.

And her face and hands, which were all that showed of her skin, were covered in deep and hideous pockmarks and scars. She was no longer a beauty, she was no longer about to be a bride, she was a pariah, a sufferer from a disfiguring disease which would mark her for life, someone from whom everyone turned away, their eyes downcast.