Anila's Journey (8 page)

“He's never attempted to ape the doorknocker before. You've appealed to his devil's side, Anila. Poor Chandra!”

He stood up and motioned me to take my bag and go ahead of him. Out on the street, there was our carriage, no buggy this one but a proper four-wheeled carriage with a roof, and a horse that looked like it knew how to run. Chandra fussed around us but Mr Walker sent him inside.

“I'll tell you about Mr Linnaeus in the carriage, Anila. Now let us get on our way to the Gardens before the high-born ladies start taking the air.”

THE FERRY BOAT FOR
the Gardens sat in the water like a slice of watermelon. It was painted a bright green, and front and back it rose up into carved points but its middle was snug and wide and held the seats. From my bedroom window in Garden Reach, I had often seen such boats crossing to the Botanical Gardens, full of ladies in bright outdoor clothes, and gentlemen, and, sometimes, their children. Well, this day I had joined them and some of those ladies wrapped up in warm shawls could not take their eyes off me, even though there was surely so much else to look at as we moved away from the ghat.

I was no longer a boy. I had draped my tunic more becomingly and now I wore my scarf in the usual way, loose round my head. Mr Walker got his share of hard stares too, though he did not appear to notice. I sat on a seat and looked over the edge at the little waves that lapped round the boat. The sun was throwing gold spangles at them and they danced. Under my feet the boat swayed like a cradle.

We passed behind the end of a ship that was chained fast in the water, like a watchdog in Garden Reach. It had many little windows cut into its great height and a bright pointed flag hanging out from its tail. Two sailors leaning over the wooden rail saw me stretching my neck back to look up and they waved down. I could feel the eyes of the other passengers on my back.

“This is my first time going across the river,” I told Mr Walker.

He smiled. In the bright light I could see he had freckles starting across his nose, the sun dots the English ladies feared as much as snakes.

“This boat is rather like a gondola from Venice,” he said. “A little showy, not like the craft I have in mind for my trip.”

He did not say “our” trip I noticed. But we had covered quite a few points about that business already. Mr Linnaeus, I discovered, was dead and so had nothing to do with us, not really. But he had invented a clever way to name animals and birds and plants so that everyone all over the world could understand which creature was intended, even though the world contained so many different languages. This man from the cold north of the world used a language that nobody on earth spoke any more and he used it to give every animal and plant a personal name and a family name.

“If you find a new creature you are allowed to choose its personal name, you make it sound a bit like Latin, and then it goes into the Book of Knowledge for all time.”

To my mind, that made Mr Linnaeus a Writer, for sure, but I said nothing. It would be a fine thing to have a beautiful bird named for you, as Mr Walker hoped to do for his sister, but what if you found a new jheel snake or biting bug?

He told me that there would be no women on his boat, only men. As well as himself there would be his manservant, who was English, his bearer and the boatmen.

“That would be a difficult situation for any female, in any country,” he said. “But I do know a couple of ladies who have such a passion for knowledge that they find themselves in constant conversation with awkwardness. They are definitely not ladies of the salon.”

I thought of Miss Hickey and her plain dresses and her books.

“I know ladies like that.”

“Well, if you do you will know that they tend to have other useful weapons against society, like money, or an old name. Your situation is a delicate one, Anila, as I understand it from everything you have told me. This river journey is only a short one for I shall be returning to England in the new year. I cannot guarantee that you will make any progress as a result of having made the trip with me. Indeed in many ways I think you might suffer because of it. Do you understand?”

He did not want me after all. I would be too much trouble. I clutched the straps of my bag until my fists felt hot, hard as stones.

“Mr Walker, I can take care of myself afterwards. The English ladies that you are talking about do not want me even now, and I have done nothing awkward yet. But I would love to travel up the river because of my mother and I would love do this work for you because I am able to do it. And then I would return to Calcutta and perhaps be a little braver. Perhaps I was too young before but you see all this time I have done nothing to find news of my father, though Miss Hickey did try at the beginning. When he left he promised to return and I know that only something serious could have prevented this.”

Mr Walker had made a sympathetic noise to that but he did not enquire further. That was all.

Now we came alongside the Gardens' landing beach and everybody stood up at the same time so that the boat started to tip over slightly. Some of the ladies squealed. They had to be lifted out by their gentlemen and placed onto the sand, where they smoothed down their big skirts and made silly faces. I jumped out, splashing my slippers in the water. It felt wonderful.

Mr Walker and I walked up the pebble path towards the thick planting of trees that faced the river. Parakeets and drongos dashed from one high branch to another, shouting in excitement. I saw a flash of blue that was so light and airy it seemed to come from a dream. I had never seen such a colour on a bird before, not even on a kingfisher.

“A flycatcher, surely,” Mr Walker said. “But not one I know.”

There was a bench beside the path and I sat down and took out my notebook and pencil. Mr Walker continued up the path and out of my sight. I think he wished to leave me to work in peace. Or perhaps he was curious about what I might choose to draw, left to myself.

The Gardens seemed to be one big bazaar for birds. There were rollers and hoopoes, different from the ones I knew. Two koels were having a singing competition, one pitching his notes higher than the other. I could see a woodpecker resting on a branch, fat and redbreasted, digesting his feed.

I saw the flycatcher again, a tiny perfect shape. I wrote “Malati's Radha sari” and “peacock eyes” beside my sketch. That would remind me how to bring the little bird's beautiful colour to the page.

As if to say I was on the right track, a peacock stepped out of the bushes near my bench, and spread his tail for me. Away behind him, another of his kind shrieked.

I loved the mad, sad sound of peacocks. My mother had hated it, though she liked to help me gather up their dropped tail feathers.

In our village there was a boy who was cruel to peacocks. He tore their feathers from them, even from the hens. He drowned one day and all the night that followed the peacocks screamed for joy
.

I started to draw some of the trees too. Many had strange shapes and colours and I had never seen them before, but there were plenty of common neems and acacias.

“Come this way, when you are ready, Anila.”

Mr Walker had come back and now stood in front of me, looking down at my open page filled with tree shapes and branches.

“Anila, you are a true artist,” he said, “and I am not. So – while you have been so engaged I have done an even more important task. I have arranged something for us to eat.”

He took my materials although they were not heavy and we set out. The plantation had swallowed up all the great-skirted ladies and their husbands, it seemed, for we met none of our fellow passengers.

Mr Walker told me that the Gardens were not very old.

“But in India all plants grow fast in the heat and the rains. If this were the king's gardens outside London you and I would still be taller than many a tree the same age as these. Look at that banyan.”

I stepped over to the tree. Like all banyans it had sent down shoots from its own body into the ground. But this was an odd one, for they were forming a perfect ring.

“This is a clever tree,” I said to Mr Walker.

Then I saw what he had arranged inside the circle and I had to laugh.

One of the garden boys had laid out some food for us, on a log, in among the pillars of the banyan. He stood there beaming at me, standing guard over some roti, palm fruit slices, shells with cordial in them, just a little of everything. There was a cloth spread for us to sit.

I told Mr Walker how the banyan tree got its name. I think he knew the old story already but he pretended not to, to give me the pleasure.

The first people in the world thought the banyan tree was no good because it had no fruit and no flowers. Even its wood would not burn well for fires. But a wise man said that the tree should be left to grow because the gods must have put it there for their own reasons. So the tree grew up without any name. It grew out, and then it grew down until it made more shade than any other tree in the world. Then the banians, the merchant sellers, came to set up their stalls underneath it. People called it the banyan tree and in every village where it decided to grow, it had the place of honour.

“Hoy! Walker!”

An Englishman in dark clothes was approaching the banyan tree. His face was red and hot-looking and when he came into the shade, he took off his hat to wipe his forehead. I saw that he wore a wig, a poor one with a pigtail that seemed to be made of donkey hair, it was so grey and coarse. It hung crookedly round his face, one side too far forward, the other too far back.

“Crocker! I would not have taken you for a botanical man,” said Mr Walker. His voice had no welcome in it, I thought, but he stood up.

“Oh, I have my secrets,” Crocker said. “Like any man.” His eyes passed over me, up and down, then slid over the boy and the remains of our food. He leant forward over my bag and scooped up some of the broken roti with his damp fingers. “Are you not going to introduce me?”

Mr Walker muttered our names so fast that all I noticed was that he said Crocker's name first. Jeremy Crocker. Then mine. That was what Miss Hickey would have done. That order meant that I was grownup, a lady.

Ladies have the advantage in introductions, Anila. Remember that. We have few enough fiddle-faddles that go in our favour
.

“Miss Tandy is the finest artist from nature that I have seen in Calcutta. I have been very impressed by her drawings this morning.”

“I'm sure you were, Walker, I'm sure you were,” Crocker said. “Miss Tandy, indeed. I wonder now, after all.”

He did not say what he wondered but he kept staring at me. His wet eyes made me think of leeches and I did not want them to look at me. I pulled my scarf over my forehead and looked down at my feet. But he had more to say.

“Well, that's one for the books, I daresay. The dedicated scholar finally falls for native charms, just like the rest of us…”

Mr Walker moved towards him, and, thin as he was, his fists were up like a fighting man's.

“Damn your filthy impudence, Crocker. You were ever a disgrace to the Company and to your country. Clear off from here, and make sure you do not journey back in our boat or I'll have the ferrymen pitch you out in mid-channel.”

Crocker moved away. When he reached the path he turned and offered me a small unpleasant bow. I looked away. I felt dirty. But straightaway I felt more sorry for Mr Walker than for myself. He was banging the poor banyan shoots so hard with his hand that it must surely bleed.

“That ditch-born weasel, that apocalypse,” he said at last, spitting out the words. “I apologize for his boorish behaviour, Anila. Crocker is known from here to Madras and beyond for it. He has been in charge of the Writers for many years and I pity the young men who have to humble themselves to such a character from the day they arrive in India. I'm sure he sends them down all manner of crooked paths.”

What did I remember, suddenly?

Yes, Anila, you're right, that
is
an ugly face I've drawn in the gutter spout. That's a real face too, and I'll you about its owner sometime when we're far far away from him
.

I also understood properly Chandra's cross words about what might be said about his master, having me turn up on his doorstep.

Our picnic was finished, now. Even the birds seemed to have hushed above us. Mr Walker paid the garden boy for what he had done and we started back towards the river. He was quiet until we saw the cheery shape of our boat ahead.

“Now, do you see what I mean?” he said at last. “But do you know, that encounter which has so angered me has also served to firm up my mind. I feel I would be a coward if I were to allow the attitude of Crocker and his kind to prevail. After all, I
do
know several here who are not narrow at all, nor inclined to be twisted. I would vow to promote any work you do for me among the scholars here, the ladies included. If you feel bold enough to serve as my draughtsman on the river trip, that position is yours, Anila.”

ONE PICNIC DAY WITH
my father was different
.

That day the trinkets were not in the box. My father took two folded-up leather pouches from inside his jacket. He didn't offer them to us to open, as was his usual way. He unwrapped them himself. Inside one was my mother's purple scarf, but instead of shaking it loose he folded back its layers as if he were peeling a fruit made of silk. At the heart was a ring, a ring for my mother, a gold ring with a dark crimson stone set into it. When he put it on her finger it sat there, a tiny cushion. Then he arranged the scarf round her neck while she looked up at him, huge eyed. My pouch on that day had gold too, a locket shaped and engraved to look like a peacock's tail
.

My father had tears in his eyes when he put the ring on my mother's finger and then fastened the locket round my neck
.