The Other Side of the World (18 page)

T
he children worsen; Lucie sweats and cries while May lies on Charlotte's chest and doesn't move—she can't lift her head or talk or drink. Her arms are floppy and her skin is hot to the touch. They have both been sick before but Charlotte has never seen a child like this. Henry wrote the number of his hotel on the calendar and Charlotte phones it—when Lucie starts vomiting and May won't open her eyes. But when she speaks to the man at reception she is told that Henry has checked out. Where is he? she asks. He didn't say? There must be a message for me.

The child screams all night. Over and over the child screams. Which child? She can't tell anymore. How many times has it screamed and for how many nights? She has lost count; she is too tired and she is too angry, unaccountably angry. There is no justifiable cause—she is simply worn out, and the fatigue turns somehow to rage, a shivering tide of rage that moves quickly now through her blood. If only they would stop crying and let her sleep. She is angry and afraid at the same time. Something must have happened to him. Has something happened to him? If only they'd stop crying. No, she will not go to them. Not again, please no. Please.
Mummy
, they call. “Mummy's coming,” she calls back, and like a huge wave rising and crashing and rising, she drags her body from her bed towards the children's room, the crying growing louder as she moves through the dark, towards them. This goes on night after night after night. One day. Two days, three days, four. She feels her way along the wall. There is no moon. She does not think to turn on a light. It is so black she can't see her arm as it reaches
out in front of her. Where is the door? Further. This is the wall still. Now, here—the different wood of the door, the smooth glossy paint cold to the touch. Her hand slips down towards the low handle and she stands in the children's room, the crying coming closer now, and closer, and closer, until it is ringing down the tunnel of her ear, the child's hot wet face pressing against her cheek.

“Hush, hush. That's enough now. That's enough. It was just a dream. Just a dream.
Shhh, shhhhh
,” she tries again. “There is nothing here. It's a fever. You're safe now. You're safe.” But at the sound of her mother's voice, May screams louder. She thrashes about in Charlotte's arms so that Charlotte can no longer hold her and drops her back down on the bed, letting her writhe. She is too tired to walk back to her own room, too tired to stand, so she slumps down against the wall and leaves May to grow hoarse. Her head pounds. The screams run deep through her bones. What does the child want from her? What? “
Stop it!
” she screams back.
“Stop it! Will you just stop it!”
She stands up then, quickly, searches out May's shape on the bed, picks her up under her arms, and shakes her. “Will you just stop it now! Now, I said! Now!” Then she throws her back onto the pillow. She hears the air push out of May's lungs as her little body lands. Silence fills the room and Charlotte stumbles out, feeling her way back to the bedroom, the dark behind her trembling with tiny, stifled whimpers.

By morning Charlotte too has come down with a fever. She knows she has to get to the doctor, but when she calls she's told he is out on his rounds and won't be able to attend to them until the evening. She can't find the car keys so there is no option other than to walk the girls to the practice in the next suburb. She packs the pram and sets out, moving slowly, clutching the handles for balance, the ground rolling beneath her. Sweat beads on her forehead. The children cry. The inside of her mouth feels sticky and
sour. Nausea comes over her in waves. May's face turns red and splotchy and her clothes soak through with sweat. They have not gone more than ten yards when Charlotte turns and very slowly walks back to the house. She unlocks the door, pushes the pram inside, and lies down on the cold linoleum of the hallway.

Nicholas finds her there in the afternoon. He stops by to deliver biscuits and oranges for the children and when no one answers the door he tries the handle. He helps Charlotte into bed and puts the children in beside her, then he takes a flannel from the bathroom and wipes their faces. Later, Charlotte will remember him sponging her lips, the cool water running little by little into her mouth.

He leaves late in the night but returns the next day, the sun high, the bedroom full of slippery light. Charlotte has never been so glad of company. “Come in, come in,” she whispers, the children just waking. Charlotte's fever has broken and she's eaten a little. He helps her dress the girls and together they go out into the garden. It is good to be outside. The sun is warm and the air fresh-smelling. They each carry a child. May rests her heavy, sleepy head on Charlotte's shoulder and Lucie rides on Nicholas's back. He talks to comfort Charlotte, telling her how he has begun reading Ruskin again. And how he is trying, once more, to figure out a way to paint the webs of light that waver beneath the surface of the river. This odd hobby of his.

“You never said,” Charlotte exclaims. “Really?”

“
Nets of silver and gold have we, said Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
. It's a rhyme I knew as a child. I've tried painting those bright lines for years, rather unsuccessfully, I'm afraid. It's hard to capture the constant movement in a still image. Here,” he says, “let me show you,” and the four of them walk slowly to the water.

They stand leaning over the edge of the jetty, Nicholas with
his arms outstretched on either side of the railing, Charlotte in her wide-brimmed hat, holding May, Lucie sitting on the wooden planks and clinging to the hem of her mother's dress. Their shadows waver on the tan-colored water. “There are jellyfish down there,” Nicholas says to the children. “Can you see them?” Lucie watches, tracking the throbbing movements until the creatures disappear, their purplish bodies vanishing in deep water. Small waves from passing boats lap gently at the pylons and at the shore.

Charlotte has the strange feeling she can tell him anything, anything at all, and he will understand. It frightens her, this feeling. It frightens her because it seems they do not even need to speak to understand. They can just stand here, watching the water, and it is as if they know everything, as if everything that has ever mattered is immediately understood.

He stays for dinner, a small feast of fried eggs and grilled cheese on toast, then he helps ready the children for bed. Once they are asleep he and Charlotte step out the back door, into the tall grass. Charlotte's eyes are slow to adjust, the moon thin and the yard dark. She smells the cool draft of late wattle flower, and other smells particular to night: damp eucalyptus leaves cold on the ground, left over wood smoke, ash, and the dirt like, earthy smell of the cold night itself, black and fine and a little sour. She pulls two old wicker chairs out from under the house and ­places them square on the grass, then she and Nicholas sit side by side, leaning their heads back against the chairs so they can better see the sky. Stars litter the dark. Charlotte's long white hands rest along the sides of the chair. They sit in silence, watching the night, and after a while Nicholas reaches out and touches the back of her wrist. Then he takes her hand in his, lifting it, pointing it with his own. “There, the Southern Cross. There, Saturn. Do you see the shape of the bow and arrow?” he asks. No, not
quite. Nicholas, still holding Charlotte's hand, traces it out. Then they sit quietly for a while. Charlotte watches for falling stars. She watches closely, her eyes open and watering in the cold. And then they come. Charlotte has never seen so many.

“Look!” she calls.

“And another!” Nicholas cries. The two of them are like children.

“You must make a wish,” she says. “Each time you see one.”

His hands shake as he unties the scarf she wears knotted at her throat. The colored cloth falls to the floor as he pulls her gently towards him, running his fingers up through the fine hair at the nape of her neck. He bends to kiss the length of her collarbone, then opens her dress while she seeks out his mouth with her fingers. They kiss for a long time. Later they make love in her bed, her feet hooked around his buttocks, her hands slipping on his damp back. She tastes sweat and musk on his mouth. His wide shoulders move above her face, wavelike, his head dipping towards hers. At the end she calls out to him while he makes a strange choking noise and drops his forehead on her shoulder. Their bodies tremble. She feels his stomach lifting and falling against hers, heavy and warm. They stay this way while he shrinks inside her, the slow suck of wet flesh coming away from wet flesh, then the cool leak and spread of semen against her inner thighs. She eases herself out from under him and rolls over; they lie beside one another then and she strokes his stomach—it reminds her of the belly of a dog, warm, the skin white-pink, tight but soft, the fine coating of hair. For some time they stay quite still, hands touching. Around them the room smells of old flowers, rotting and sweet, the green stems yellowing in the glass vase. White street
light seeps in through the gaps in the curtains. The umbrella tree scrapes back and forth on the iron roof. Birdcalls echo in the huge sky, the cluster of notes bouncing out and out and out until they vanish in distant air. There is the first hush of rain, then the jingling of a bell as a cat runs for shelter.

“You know I love you,” Nicholas says. “You know that.”

Charlotte is quiet. She strokes the back of his hand. After a while she says, “Yes,” although it is not clear whether this means yes, she knows, or yes, she loves him too.

“I want to be with you,” he says. Charlotte doesn't reply. “I'm sorry,” he says.

“What for?” asks Charlotte. There is a long pause. Nicholas looks away, leans down, and picks up his wallet from the floor. He takes out a scrap of paper and writes something on it.

“I'm afraid I'm returning to London,” he tells her, “to sort out some business.” His voice is solid, factual. “Nothing needs to happen here, but if you do go, if you do go back, I'll be there.” His voice softens. “Take it,” he says, passing her the piece of paper. “This is where you'll find me.”

“For how long?”

“I don't know yet.”

“And when?”

“Soon.”

A green silk nightdress hangs from a hook on the back of the bedroom door. Charlotte gets up, walks across the room, and slips it on. “I think you should go now,” she says.

When she makes the bed in the morning she finds money on the sheets. Silver and copper coins. They must have been in the pockets of his trousers. She rings once and he doesn't pick up. She rings twice and he doesn't pick up. She knocks on his door and he doesn't answer.

F
or days Henry wanders the city. Through Lodi Gardens and down towards Khan. There is the smell of frangipani after monsoon rain, of citrus flower and jasmine. It was a small home, this one—the little enclave of Anglo-India that he was hidden within as a boy. It was not the real India. That's what ­people said. But they said this about other parts of India too; they said it about New Delhi, with its wide, tree-lined streets and ­empty pavements—that was British India, they said. They said it about Calcutta. They are beginning to say the same thing about ­stretches of southern India, where the beaches are overrun by foreign tourists in bikinis. When Henry was a boy visiting Goa, he saw mongooses fighting cobras. Somehow between then and now even the behavior of the animals has changed. No one sees such things anymore. What is the real India? It is the poor India, the rural India. This is what people now talk of. But how narrow the idea of nationhood could become, how simple it could seem to those from elsewhere.

During the Raj it had been a common belief that Henry's forefather, Colonel James Skinner, was the reincarnation of Alexander the Great. But by the time Henry was a boy no such high regard remained. Of course every Indian had wanted to be an Anglo-Indian, if only to garner British privileges, but when the British left, all that changed. Those of his kind who stayed did so as his mother did, in ghettos, kept company by yellowing portraits of the Queen.

Around him an afternoon storm is gathering. Mountains of
clouds rise up behind the dense canopy of black plum and ­Indian beech. The sky darkens and the new green leaves glow in the yellow-gray light. A wind stirs and rain begins to fall, the drops slow and fat at first, then faster and closer together. Henry runs through the rain and takes shelter in a tomb. It is dark inside. Black sparrows circle in the dome of the roof, tiny darting things rising up and up to the very top of the curved, mottled ceiling, then swooping down again. Henry cranes his head to watch. Pigeons coo in the red stone alcoves as they look out over the wet trees. The tomb is peaceful—cool and quiet. It smells of dust and urine and birds. He feels like he could stay there for a long time. He feels this, although he knows that his time is up; he doesn't belong here anymore, and this sense of not belonging is made worse by the fact that he can well remember when he did—a sense of an original belonging. The belonging of a child who lives fully in whatever place he is. Now that he's come back and seen the place again and remembered, it seems as if everything that came after his early childhood was simple fabrication, history commanding him to become someone he wasn't meant to be, something so very different from what he was when he was born—first a British Indian, then an Englishman, now an Australian. What made him think he could reinvent himself so easily? But he hadn't the choice, he reminds himself, not always.

He walks back and forth, watching the way the world appears and disappears through the archways. He likes the darkness. He likes looking through the darkness of the tomb and out into the light of day. Something stirs inside him, a small memory. He has stood this way before. In the center of their house in Australia, with the doors open, looking straight through into the front garden and the back. There is the darkness of the house, the lightness of the trees and the lawn outside. The pines swaying in the
distance. The high clear sky. The sound of his children. These two places—inside him there are always two places.

The rain stops as quickly as it started. The trees look brighter, the air rinsed clean. All over the gardens, people begin to emerge from shelter. In the distance there is the sound of horns as taxis speed along Prithviraj Road carrying tourists to India Gate. He might have been happier, he thinks, if he had never left this place. His parents sent him to England so that he might benefit from new opportunities, and he moved his children from England to Australia for exactly the same reason. And although the benefits he experienced were no doubt many, to his own mind they seem vague, while the costs appear clear now, as he grows older and understands that he will always be an outsider, that he will always live in a place he is not from. For a long time he thought habit would counter this fact and custom would disguise it. He thought, in the beginning, that such things would not matter in the long run. But they did, they do, they always will.

Henry writes detailed letters to Charlotte telling her all this, explaining, but the letters are never sent. And he never gives them to her, because by the time he returns home she has gone.