Anila's Journey (9 page)

“I have to tell you something,” he said. We stared at him, my father, always strong-voiced and funny, but now his words were trapped inside him like chickens in a cage, and his breathing was strange. He told us that he had to return to Ireland, that his father had died, that his mother and sisters needed him, the only man in the family. He said that as soon as it could be he would come back and bring us to Ireland on a ship, and then, no matter what anyone said, he would marry my mother. Ireland was different from India, it was different from England, even, you could do that there. Meanwhile she should have money
.

When the last of his words had escaped from my father's mouth my mother stood up and moved towards the steps of the ghat. She just stood there, for a long time, saying nothing, and I could not see her face because she was staring out over the water. A small boat was making its way out to a goods ship in the middle of the channel. Goats, five or six, no more, were standing in the space in front and behind the boatman. All of them were facing the ship except him but he steered perfectly, dipping and dropping his oars like wings
.

She turned and said to me. “Anila, go to the buggy driver and tell him to leave us now. We'll walk back, you and I, we know our way.”

My father stared at her miserably. I didn't move
.

“Go and do it!” she said, almost shouting at me
.

When I looked at my father to see if I should do this strange thing, me, a little girl give an order like that to a grown man, he just nodded and gave me some coins to give the man. I went over to the buggy, feeling very important and did as I was told
.

“We know our way,” I said to him. But when he had clipped the horse with his whip and trotted off over the stones I was sorry he was gone. I could still see the buggy swaying, getting tinier and tinier
.

I was really too young to realize why my mother was so angry. I had heard my father's words of course but I was not yet nine then so I didn't understand what he meant when he talked about us coming to his country. That is – I understood what he said. But what I didn't know then was that, as my mother saw it, he was describing a dream, an impossible dream. To me it sounded like a plan, like something he and I could draw together on a piece of paper and hand over to somebody in the Company to make real. Like a building
.

But my mother, still white, was furiously trying to pull the ruby ring from her finger. She was shaking and couldn't get a proper grip on it. Perhaps it was too tight even for her slender hand. Her knuckles were too clenched or her poor flesh was too swollen and the ring was trapped
.

“You'll take it back,” she said. “You'll take this blood gift back.”

I had never heard my mother sound like that, spitting words out, each one a snake thrown at my father. She would have scared demons away. She scared me
.

She was speaking in Bangla of course. But my father understood every word. I could see that
.

“Anna,” he said. “I can do nothing to prevent my leaving India at this time. I promise you that I will return. It is a solemn promise. I would swear to write to you if there was a point to that, but where would my letters go?” He stopped for breath, but he had found an idea as well
.

“This is what I'll do, Anna.”

He reached out to take my mother's hand. She slapped it away but he spoke his thought anyway
.

“I shall write to you in the care of Robert Sedge, Malati's soldier. He will bring you my letters and Anila can read them. You'll have money, you'll know how things stand.”

“And your daughter, how will she live as she grows up?” said my mother. “You think I can make a marriage for her? You think the English will take her? You think your sisters will do that much for you?”

He started to say something but she grabbed my hand, and pulled me away with her, away from my father, away from the river. I looked back and he was following us, slowly, but then he stopped. Next time I looked he was just standing there
.

We were walking fast but then she made us run, on and on over those stones until I cried out to her to stop because my side hurt. She was glad to stop. Her breaths were pushing in and out, hurting worse even than mine, I could see. She hunkered down and pulled the purple scarf over her face, not touching me, not looking to right or left. She sat there like a beggar, all alone
.

We had taken a turn from the ghat in our rush and now we were on the great street that ran alongside the river. In the middle of all the traffic there were some cows and while we took our heaving breaths I noticed one of them in particular, a lovely old cow with a brown stripe down her back. She was batting her calf into the centre of the road, keeping it safe, nosing it with her head, blowing on it with her breath
.

My mother was like that until today, I thought. Now I don't know what she is like. And because I was tired and sore and afraid that something terrible had happened, I began to cry. Without looking upwards, my mother reached out her arm and pulled me down beside her. She stroked my back until I stopped sobbing
.

“Oh, Anila, Anila,” she said, more to herself than to me. “What will happen to us?”

People passed by and paid us no attention. Why would they? All over the city people sat and squatted and turned away from the bustle. But my mother had never joined them until today. Here we were beside the river and just feet away from us carts and carriages thundered past, churning up the soft earth. Crows dropped down immediately to see if anything new and tasty was uprooted for them
.

We sat there for a long time. I began to think of the tiffin that my father had brought and wished we had eaten first, as we usually did, before he produced today's trinkets. My mother stood at last, and reached out her hand to pull me up. Only then I saw that something had happened to her stubborn finger. In our frantic dash or perhaps during our rest here, that finger must have shrunk thin again. The gold and crimson ring was no longer sitting proudly on her left hand. There was just an angry red and white mark in its place. I was afraid to ask her if she'd lost it
.

But the lovely purple scarf survived that day. I wore it for a long time, wrapped round my waist under my sari. When my mother saw it afterwards she wanted to shred it but my cries were so terrible she let it be. And for once, so did everyone else in our little house
.

MR WALKER INSISTED THAT
his carriage would take Anoush and me back to the garden house.

By now he knew most of my circumstances. That was my fault in the main, for once we had made our bargain I felt so easy with him that I wanted him to hear my story. But it was also his fault because he listened as well as a woman and did not interrupt. He agreed with me that Anoush deserved to be liberated for Christmas but he would prefer, he said, that we two should spend the night in his house, for it had many rooms. I told him that in that case Anoush would be compromised.

“Really? You are quite the alarming Mademoiselle Decorum, Anila.”

For a moment I thought I had offended him, but no, he seemed to be struggling to keep his mouth stern. That did not take him long.

“No, but to be so close to the riverside, so unprotected, I cannot like it. You will let me inspect this strange home before I relinquish you to it.”

It was almost dark when we drew up on the Esplanade. A fog had spread a smoky shawl over all the streets that led down to the river. The carriages that were about already had lanterns lit, front and back, white and red ones. They looked festive, but ghostly too, swaying in the gloom. I thought of the akash pradip, the friendly lights that people hang on bamboo poles to guide wayfarers during the misty months.

Mrs Panossian's shop was cosy inside, browner than ever. There was no sign of Anoush but Gabriel and his son Mesrop were still serving a couple of bearers. Gabriel raised his thumb to say “upstairs”. Mesrop stared at me with his large slow eyes. This boy, who was really a man, years older than I was, made me feel uneasy. I never knew what to say to him. But Anoush was kind to Mesrop, always. He was not allowed to write an order in the big ledger book but she would write down every item he called out to her – figs, sultanas, jams, wines, flower waters, patent medicines – and then read them back to him. She said he could remember each order for weeks.

Now his face blazed with pleasure. Anoush burst through the inner door, two cloth bags hanging from her arms. Loose on her head she wore a beautiful gold scarf that I had never seen before.

“I'm ready, Anila! Ready to go with lots to bring!”

She took my arm. “Let's go.”

“But Anoush, I was going to buy some…”

“No need. Mrs Pan has made up a food parcel for us. Here, take this bag. She wouldn't tell me what was in it but now I feel I would do just about anything for my dear old cousin.”

She reached for her stick which stood on its own in the great monsoon umbrella stand by the door. Mesrop rushed forward, something I had never seen that slow boy do, and he bowed good night to us as if we were Mrs Panossian's best Company customers.

Outside it was now completely dark. I led Anoush towards the Esplanade, a small walk for us. I had convinced Mr Walker it was the best arrangement. If Gabriel and Mesrop were to see us getting into the carriage outside the shop, Mrs Panossian would surely have the story in a moment.

Anoush was in a trance, completely silent as long as it took us to climb inside and settle ourselves on the cushioned seat. There was no sign of Mr Walker.

“Anila,” she whispered. “Did you pay for this with your precious money?”

She stroked the old velvet of the seat and then turned round to look through the little square window behind us. “Someone is coming,” she said.

Mr Walker opened the carriage door. A curl of fog had settled on his hair, covering it in shiny droplets. He made a little bow to Anoush.

“Anoush, this is Mr Edward Walker, my employer,” I said, trying my best not to sound grand, though I truly felt like Lakshmi, the goddess who brings gifts to the good. “Mr Walker, this is my friend Miss Anoush Galustaun. Anoush, Mr Walker is kindly driving us to Garden Reach.”

Mr Walker said he would sit up with the driver and not discommode us. I fancied he shot me a look when he said that, but quickly he stepped down and banged the door safe. The carriage buckled as we felt him clambering up to the seat on top. Then we were off, turning wide at the top of the Esplanade to trot down the road towards Chowringhee.

All of that long journey Anoush was quiet, but it was not a worry. She was full of wonder she said, at the speed a person could travel sitting down, while all the time the city unrolls itself by your side like a great carpet. She had never ridden in a carriage before.

“It's like flying,” she sighed once, almost to herself.

When we reached the white houses of the Reach, they glittered with their hundreds of chandeliers and sconces and lanterns as if a piece of starry night was laid across the earth. Our carriage had pulled up at the only dark space.

I led Anoush and Mr Walker round by the stables and down the garden, through the oleanders, to my little door. When we left the paving stones behind he held an arm out for Anoush to lean on, and he took her bag from her. I felt mean for thinking of myself then, but I did, just for a moment. I wanted to drop the two bags I was carrying and dance on the velvet doob grass.

The riverbank was full of noises but after two nights in the open I could recognize most of them. Water splashed and sucked at the sand, frogs blew air from their bellies, reeds rubbed together, water birds were loud and cross with each other like children. There were slithers and scrabbles in the undergrowth, shouts from the ships in the channel, owls calling in the gardens of the Reach. I could explain all of these to Anoush. But I hoped she did not fear bats.

“Allow me, Anila,” said Mr Walker.

He took the key from my hand, set it into the door and went inside, banging his feet down on the floor.

“Have you a candle?”

I had a candle lantern and a flint inside and he busied himself with making a light.

Anoush came up the steps just as the light took. My round room was suddenly dark gold and full of our moving shadows, with the night sky cut into lozenges round the top. I think we all gasped. The others because it was so beautiful, I think. I because of the clean charpoy bed that was newly in place alongside my string bed. And the two fine nets that now hung over both.

“Zakar! How kind he is.”

Or was. I felt sure that Zakar was gone.

“Anila, your house is bigger inside than it is outside – how can that be?” Anoush asked.

She sat down on the bed and drew its net round her. Then she peeked out again. Her scarf had fallen and her curls showed golden lights. Her smile was wonderful.

“Mr Walker, you must have hospitality with us,” she said.

She reached for the bag I carried and began to take items from it, unwrapping each so that we could see.

There was a small fruit cake, the English kind. “From last year, but Mrs P says they get better with age,” Anoush said. There was yellow almond paste and long sticks of dark cane. Small red and green apples. Wet buffalo cheese, wrapped in muslin. A coconut and a squash fruit. Dark flat bread that felt fresh and soft.

“This is our Armenian bread. And see, I have green walnut jam to spread on it. Mrs Seropin gave it to me today. I'm still disappointed. When I saw the walnuts on her table I was hoping she would spend the day baking me the pudding that has my name, Anoushapur. It's the most delicious thing in the world!”

Mr Walker took my clay oven outside to brew some tea. Then we had our little meal, we two sitting on the bed, Mr Walker on the steps with the door open, his long heron legs folded and leaning in over the threshold. The fog had lifted and the air was fresh.