The Linnet Bird: A Novel (32 page)

“Oh, please, Mr. Waterton, could we leave the curtains open? I’d like to see Calcutta.”

He looked shocked at my request, shaking his head, frowning.

“Of course not, Linny,” Faith said. “I’d feel so unsafe, with all those prying eyes, and who knows what diseases might be hovering right outside, in the air. I just want to get to the Watertons’. And not only that,” she said, primly, then put one hand to the side of her mouth and whispered behind it. “We’d be staring right at those men. They’re nearly naked, Linny.”

I sighed, sitting upright on the splintered bench. We lurched as the men picked up the poles and started off at what felt like a trot. While trying to keep my balance, I listened to the bedlam outside the swaying curtains, wishing I could see what was going on just an arm’s length away.

“A Pathan, from Afghanistan,” I said to myself.

“Pardon me?” Faith inquired.

“Nothing important,” I told her. “I was just remembering something.”

Chapter Seventeen

W
HEN WE STEPPED OUT OF THE PALANQUIN,
I
SAW THAT WE
had come to one of the massive white Palladian villas I had seen from the ship. It was set back on a wide street, which I was later to learn was called Garden Reach. The entrance and portico of the house were transformed into a porte cochere, and this is where we stood now, under the roofed structure that protected us from the sun.

Faith squeezed my arm. “Isn’t this the most wonderful house, Linny?”

I was disappointed. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t a huge and elegant one-story home more extravagant than any I’d ever seen in Liverpool. I turned to see Mr. Waterton sullenly sorting through a pile of coins in his hand. He and one of the palanquin bearers were having a dispute. The man in the ragged dhoti was holding up five fingers, while Mr. Waterton shook his head and held up three. The bearer’s voice grew louder and louder, and eventually his companions joined in, creating a high-pitched clamor. Finally Mr. Waterton threw a number of rupees and annas to the ground and turned his back on the men scrabbling in the red dust.

I felt sickened at the sight. Only a year and a half ago it had been me on my knees in the dirty wet streets, collecting my pay.

“Mustn’t let them get the upper hand,” Mr. Waterton said, looking pleased with himself as he wiped his hands on a large checked handkerchief he pulled from inside his jacket. Then he removed his solar topee and thoroughly scrubbed his glistening forehead and scalp, ruffling what remained of his lank brown hair. “You ladies will get used to wearing one of these,” he said, holding out the pith helmet. “We have to protect our brains—they can actually be fried, become quite liquefied, you know. Infernal sun. Our skin isn’t thick enough; just not made for this country.”

The second palanquin arrived with our luggage, and by the time it was unloaded Mrs. Waterton had come out of the villa, holding a parasol and welcoming us with a kind smile to what she called our “English home away from home.” We went inside, and she gave us a dizzying tour of the whole house. My head spun; I was in India, but in the quick and cursory walk through the rooms the furnishings belied this. It was as if I had stepped into a superbly decorated English house. Except, of course, for the brown servants who hovered in every hallway, in the shadowy corners of every room, some waiting, expectant, other moving along the walls with lowered eyes. There was the sensation of being in a giant hive, a sense of humming, of activity and purpose. I could tell from the widened look of Faith’s eyes that she was finding it overpowering as well.

“My poor girls,” Mrs. Waterton finally said, stopping for breath. “You must be exhausted. And I’m sure the filth and noise of the docks was upsetting. I tend to forget,” she repeated. “I’ve been here too long.” She smiled again, and this time the smile was not as pleasant. “Far too long,” she said a second time. I would later learn that this tiresome repetition was her manner of speaking. “I’m sure you were frightened and intimidated today. But don’t worry. You will not have to witness more sights like the ones you saw. You are safe now and will remain so. Come, I’ll take you to your rooms. There you may wash and rest, and at dinner I’m sure you’ll feel more like yourselves. We have another young lady, newly married—Mrs. Liston—staying with us as well. She’s been accompanied to a dinner elsewhere; you’ll meet her at breakfast tomorrow. Now, off you go. I’ll send for you when dinner is served.”

Faith and I nodded in unison, and after Mrs. Waterton had left me in my room beside Faith’s, I stood with my back against the closed door and looked at the four-poster double bed set in the middle of the large open-raftered room, mosquito netting rolled up along the thin wooden frame that was supported over the top of the bed by the four posts. There was a cloth stretched across the top, like a canopy. I thought, briefly, of the beds I’d known—the tiny pallet on Back Phoebe Anne Street, the single mattress I’d once shared with two other girls on Jack Street, the flock mattress in Mrs. Smallpiece’s room on Whitefield Lane. I’d never even seen such a spacious, thick-mattressed bed in the finest hotel rooms I’d been taken to in Liverpool.

There was also a rosewood escritoire, a full-length pier glass, a small dressing table covered with bottles of lotions and perfumes, a washstand with a large bowl and pitcher, a deep wardrobe, a chest lined with drawers, and two padded chairs upholstered in flowered fabric. The open window was covered with screens of woven grass, rolled down from the ceiling, obliterating the view.

Overhead, a large rectangular frame of light wood covered with white cotton swung back and forth, stirring the still air. I realized, with a start, it was being operated by a boy sitting cross-legged in a corner, the string from the fan attached to his big toe. A small woman, all in white, squatted in another corner. I looked at the boy and the woman, opened my mouth, but didn’t know what to say.

The woman rose and wordlessly came to me, undoing the row of buttons on the back of my dress, still damp with sweat. I stood helplessly while she said one word to the boy, who took the string off his toe, parted the window screens, and slipped out. When she had pulled off my dress and bodice and corset and petticoats and I stood in my chemise, she took a sponge from the washstand, and dipping it into cool, rose-scented water, began to slowly, almost languorously, wash my face and neck and chest and arms. I’d never been touched like that by another woman—by anybody, not since the man I remembered only as Wednesday when I was a girl. The pale hair on my arms stood at the unexpected attention, and I felt a drowsiness steal over me in the warm, quiet room. Then she gently pushed me toward the bed, and I obediently lay down on it. She covered me with a thin sheet of muslin, let down the mosquito netting, spoke another word, and the boy returned.

I lay on the huge, magnificent bed, listening to the creak of the fan—which I remembered was called a
punkah
—and the woman’s soft humming.

None of the books I’d read on board had prepared me for this grandeur amid the squalor I’d seen on the dock. My head ached and I closed my eyes.

D
INNER WAS TOO LONG;
tedious. On the way to the dining room with Faith—following a male servant who had tapped quietly on my door—I took the opportunity to look more closely at the house. Although its decoration was English, there were also several things that showed we weren’t in England. The ceilings were not enclosed, but open rafters. There were punkahs in every room, and much of the flooring was not wood, but cool stone. I saw a small table whose legs had been made from the curling horns of some large animal, and vases of flowers such as I’d never seen sat on many surfaces. There were animal skins on the floors and animal trophies on the walls; I saw umbrellas in a stand that looked like—yes, it was—an elephant’s foot.

Faith and I entered the rather gloomy dining room with its profusion of heavy, dark furniture. The table was covered with a thick, white cloth, and ferns and vines had been laid across it. All the food for dinner was being placed on the table at one time by a tall, imposing man with a hennaed beard and a very high turban.

My heart sank as I surveyed what we were expected to eat: a shoulder of lamb, some type of fowl, sliced finely and swimming in a gluey gravy, a huge bowl of something mashed that vaguely resembled the texture, but not the color, of potatoes, three bowls of vegetables that I couldn’t identify, and thick slices of heavy dark bread. My stomach was bloated and uneasy from both the heat and the suddenness of being thrust off the ship and into this strange, contradictory environment, and the ache in my head had not been lessened by the time lying on the bed. Discreetly looking up when I heard a subtle noise, I saw that the entire ceiling was covered by a suspended white cloth. There was a curious movement visible through the thin material, as if something live was creeping about up there.

“Were you able to rest?” Mrs. Waterton asked.

Faith spoke, rubbing her forehead. “I found it difficult to lie still after so many months on the waves. It appears that I’m experiencing the same unease on land as I first did aboard ship.”

“How unpleasant for you,” Mrs. Waterton sympathized, patting Faith’s arm. “It may take you some time to regain your strength.” She looked at me. “You appear less exhausted, Miss Smallpiece.”

“Yes. I wasn’t as troubled by the journey as Miss Vespry,” I said, not knowing whether to be proud or ashamed of my evident hardiness.

“Well, I had a
burra khanah
—a grand feast—prepared to welcome you young ladies.” Mrs. Waterton beamed. Then she dropped her smile, and her voice dropped as well. “Although I must warn you that these poor ignorant people will never understand how to cook properly. It’s often a hodgepodge; no matter what lengths I go to to explain rudimentary recipes to the
bobajee,
his brain simply isn’t capable of comprehending. And yet he came with the highest recommendation. It’s a curse one must accept,” she finished, and I waited for one last phrase. I wasn’t disappointed. “A curse.” She sighed.

When we were seated, Mrs. Waterton nodded at the stately man. “Khit,” she said. “The soup.”

The man she called Khit—which I later understood to be an abbreviation of his job, the head server, or
khitmutgar
—stepped forward with a huge silver tureen and ladled out a thin soup that tasted of some nut. As soon as our spoons had emptied the bowls he removed them, and then proceeded to fill our plates with helpings from all the serving dishes. I saw that he cut Mr. Waterton’s lamb and fowl, and wondered if we were not to do even this simple thing for ourselves. But Mrs. Waterton picked up her knife and fork and proceeded to look after her own plate. I glanced at Faith, and then we also took up our cutlery. While we ate I heard the scratchings and scurryings of what sounded like large insects and small animals overhead in the white cloth; neither Mr. nor Mrs. Waterton seemed aware of it, and I realized the cloth was there to stop whatever moved through the open rafters from falling onto the table. They also paid no heed to the small flakes of whitewash from the frame of the punkah drifting onto the dinner table. As the punkah swayed, I wondered if the small boy in the dark corner of the room who pulled its rope was the same boy as the one from my room or a different one.

I did what I could with the obscene amount of food piled in front of me, not wanting to insult the Watertons, but I could barely make a difference before I had to set down my cutlery, unable to eat another bite. My stomach was in extreme distress after the very simple and small meals we’d eaten for the last few months.