The Tea Planter’s Wife (19 page)

With the shutters open, Doctor Partridge lifted Hugh and
carried him to the light, then sat in Gwen’s window chair and examined the child’s mouth. He felt Hugh’s neck, which looked a little swollen, then he felt the pulse at his wrist. He took a deep breath and shook his head.

‘Let’s see if you can drink, shall we? Have you got a glass of water handy, Gwen?’

She passed him her own glass, and he sat Hugh up, then raised the glass to the child’s lips. The little boy put a hand to his swollen neck and took a sip, but choked and spat it out, then coughed for several minutes.

When he had finished, the doctor listened to his chest and then looked up at Gwen. ‘He has a rattle. Has he been coughing much?’

‘On and off.’

‘All right, back to bed with you.’

Gwen carried Hugh to her bed and covered him.

‘He must have absolute rest. Even if he seems to recover a bit, don’t allow him to move. His heart rate is fast, as is his breathing. If you put a couple of pillows behind him, it’ll help the breathing, and get as much moisture in the air as you can. Then we just have to wait and see.’

Gwen and Laurence exchanged worried looks.

‘So what is this condition?’ Gwen asked, trying to keep her voice level.

‘It’s the diphtheria.’

She covered her mouth in shock and saw Laurence stiffen.

‘I’m afraid the blue tinge to his skin predicted it. Several children in one of the local villages have recently contracted it too.’

‘But he was vaccinated,’ Laurence said as he twisted round to her. ‘Gwen?’

She squeezed her eyes shut and nodded.

The doctor shrugged. ‘Might have been a faulty batch.’

‘And the prognosis?’ Gwen asked in a shaking voice.

The doctor tilted his head. ‘Hard to say at this stage. I’m sorry. If he starts to show lesions on his skin, just keep them clean. Try
to get him to drink, if you can. And in his presence, you will all need to cover your mouths and noses with cotton masks. You’ll probably have one or two in the house, but I’ll have more sent down immediately.’

‘What if –’

There was a terrible silence in the room. Her voice had risen sharply and Laurence covered her hand with his own, holding it tightly, as if to stop her saying words that could not be erased.

‘Let’s not think of that just yet,’ he said in a gruff voice.

She knew by saying that he was hoping to stave off the inevitable and felt an explosion of heat in her head. ‘Just yet?’

‘I meant let’s wait and see; that’s all we can do.’

She wanted to give vent to her fear, but forced herself to remain calm.

In the days that followed, Verity and Gwen wiped the beads of sweat that kept forming on Hugh’s forehead, and tried to keep him cool. Naveena brought in a wet towel and hung it at the window, to moisten the air, she said. She also pinned a soaking wet sheet across the door. Then she arranged some small pieces of charcoal in a shallow bowl and poured a little hot water over them.

‘What is that for?’ Gwen asked.

‘Whole trouble is to keep the air clean, Lady.’

For the next two days his condition did not change, either for the worse or for the better. On the third day, his cough began to worsen; he struggled for breath and his colour was grey. As she watched flies batter themselves against the window then drop to the floor, Gwen felt unable to breathe. She ripped off her face mask and, fighting back her fear for Hugh, laid beside him with her cheek against his and held him close to her. Laurence buried himself in his study, from time to time appearing at the bedside to relieve Gwen of her vigil. She kept a fixed smile on her face for Laurence’s sake, but barely left the room.

Laurence would not allow her to stay in the room to eat what
little she could, saying there was no point her becoming sick too, and that she’d need her strength. While Gwen attempted to eat, Verity watched over Hugh, and with an anguished look offered to stay whenever Gwen came back in.

Naveena brought some sweet-smelling herbs to put in a bowl over a candle in an earthenware pot.

‘This will help, Lady,’ she said.

But the fragrance did not help. When she was alone with Hugh, Gwen sat at his bedside, closed her aching eyes and, twisting her hands in her lap, pleaded with God to allow her child to live.

‘I’ll do anything you ask,’ she said. ‘Anything. I’ll be a better wife, a better mother.’

She went to the window while Hugh slept and had no idea how long she watched the colours of the garden change during the course of the day, from pale leafy green in the morning to deep shadowy purple by night. She stared at the lake with tears in her eyes, and the boundary between the water and the treeline blurred. While her child’s condition deteriorated she listened to the household and, with a constantly heavy feeling in her chest, heard people going about things in the way they did. None of it seemed real. Not the liveliness of the mornings, nor the sleepiness of the afternoons. She asked Naveena to fetch some mending, Hugh’s preferably, but anything would do if it kept her hands occupied.

Every moment that Hugh slept was a relief and, when he did, Gwen stitched, the tiny needle weaving in and out, pulling the silk thread in a long line of minute stitches. Verity and Laurence tiptoed in and out, but no one spoke. The more Hugh slept, the better chance he stood.

Night was different and not shared with anyone, and then the silence was unbearable. When Hugh’s breathing became laboured, it broke her heart to hear his small body struggling so, but at least she knew he was still alive. When it seemed to stop,
she froze, and her heart only began to beat normally when the rasping breath started up again.

In the night, she was overwhelmed with memories of Hugh as a baby. Such a crying baby he had been. She refused to think that the worst might happen, or how she would be able to go on living without her darling boy.

She remembered him as a chubby toddler attempting his first wary steps, then later, how his thundering footsteps woke her in the morning. She thought of his first haircut, and the fuss he’d made at the sight of the scissors, so much so that Naveena had had to hold him down. She thought of the way he hated scrambled eggs for tea, but loved them boiled, with soldiers, in the morning. And his first words: Neena, Mumma and Dadda. Verity had so wanted him to say her name too, and had sat with him for ages, saying ‘Verity’ over and over. All Hugh had been able to manage was Witty.

All Gwen’s old anxieties flooded back. She remembered Savi Ravasinghe’s painting of Christina, and what the woman had said more than three years ago. Everybody falls in love with him in the end. Was that it? She thought back to the ball, and the way Savi had escorted her to her room. She thought of Fran being with a man like that and ached for her cousin. And, as she watched Hugh’s eyelids flicker in his sleep, her mind returned to the Sinhalese village where Liyoni lived. If this terrible illness could strike Hugh down, a child living in luxury, how vulnerable must her little girl be?

In the moments when she was neither awake nor asleep, she prayed for her daughter, as well as for Hugh, and entered an obscure luminal world. With her thoughts wheeling, she was torn between the village and her home. She thought of the lads washing elephants in the river and the simple way of life there, the women cooking over an open fire and men weaving on their primitive looms. Her own privileged life swam sharply into focus, now lacking even the most simple kind of peace.

Eventually one thought dominated her mind.

She had given up one child already. If Hugh’s illness was her punishment for sacrificing her daughter’s happiness for her own, the only way she would ever save Hugh would be by doing what was right. The truth in return for his life. It would be an exchange, a bargain with God, and even if it meant losing everything, she must confess or otherwise watch her son die.

For over a week everyone held their breath. Hugh was a much-loved member of the family, and even the houseboys and kitchen coolies walked around with long faces and spoke in hushed whispers. But once he had turned a corner and began to drink and sit up in bed, the household became a lighter place again, and the normal bang and rattle of daily life resumed.

As she watched over the child, unable to leave his side for long, Gwen’s relief was as consuming as her fear had been. Laurence clattered about with a grin on his face and eyes sparkling with happiness. There was laughter as he sat with his son doing jigsaws on the bed and reading his best books while Gwen arranged for all Hugh’s favourite foods to be made: a Victoria sponge, green macaroons, cardamom and mango ice cream – anything she could think of to tempt him, anything that might enable him to become once again the noisy, energetic child he had been.

Yet when he felt well enough to run around outside, she wanted to keep him with her.

‘We mustn’t smother the lad,’ Laurence said.

‘Is that what you think I’m doing?’

‘Let him run. It’ll do him good.’

‘It is quite cold today.’

‘Gwen. He’s a boy.’

So she relented and watched for half an hour as he ran after the dogs, but when Laurence had gone in, she tempted Hugh back inside with crayons and a new pad of drawing paper. While she was watching him, her determination not to allow a moment’s distraction grew. As long as she was watching Hugh, she was not
worrying about Liyoni. In her room, he scribbled nonsense pictures of Bobbins and Spew and little Ginger, who was still smaller than the other two. In fact, it was Ginger being under his bed that made him happiest of all.

But the sight of the little boy’s drawings made her feel ill at ease. Full moon had been and gone and the little girl’s latest drawing had not arrived. Though she could barely breathe with the relief of knowing that her son would live, each day that he improved, she began to hear a trace of her daughter’s voice as it breached the wall of noise in her head. The child’s whispers pulled her through open doorways, beckoned her along the gloomy hallway and up the polished stairs. She thought she saw the girl silhouetted in one of the landing windows, but then the light moved and she realized it had only been a shadow cast by clouds against the sun.

What she could suppress by day, became enormous at night. Liyoni’s voice grew loud, demanding her attention, haunting her dreams and feeling so real, she believed the child was actually in her room. When she woke, sweating and shaking, it was with a feeling of reprieve that there was no one there but Hugh, or Naveena coming in with her bed tea.

She insisted on fresh flowers being placed throughout the house: in the hall, in the dining room, the drawing room and all their bedrooms. The moment any flower seemed to droop, the whole bunch had to go, and fresh ones were arranged in their place. But no amount of flowers could lessen her anxiety. Gwen had made a bargain with God, but she had not kept her side of it and now lived in fear of the consequences.

After Hugh returned to sleep in the nursery, Laurence found her sitting at her small desk with her shoulders hunched, playing patience. He stood behind and stooped down to kiss the top of her head. She glanced up. For a moment their eyes met in the mirror but, afraid the tell-tale shine of hers would give her away, she turned her face so that his lips only brushed her hair.

‘I came to ask if you would like me to stay with you tonight?’ He glanced at the cards. ‘Or play a game with you?’

‘I would, but there’s no point neither of us getting any sleep.’

‘I thought you’d be sleeping, now Hugh’s so much better?’

‘I’ll be all right, Laurence. Please don’t fuss. I’ll be all right.’

‘Well, if you’re sure.’

She pressed her hands together to stop them shaking. ‘I am.’

She didn’t get into her bed when he had gone, but carried on playing cards. After an hour, she leant back in the chair, but the moment she closed her eyes and the feeling of relaxation began to spread, her eyes flew open again. She brushed all the cards to the ground.

‘Damn it. Leave me alone,’ she said aloud.

But the little girl would not leave.

Gwen walked around the room, picking up ornaments and putting them back down again. What if the child was ill? What if the child needed her?

Eventually, too tired to stay awake, she slept. And then the nightmares began. She was back at the Owl Tree, falling out of its branches, or riding in a bullock cart that never arrived at any destination. She woke and paced the room, then wrote a long letter to Fran telling her about Savi Ravasinghe. She put it in an envelope, addressed it, looked for a stamp and then ripped the whole thing into dozens of fragments and threw them at the wastepaper basket. After that she just stared out at the darkness of the lake.

The next day she couldn’t concentrate and lost the thread of things. Was this feeling that her world might be about to collapse around her God’s punishment? Maybe the drawing hadn’t arrived because Liyoni wasn’t well, she argued. Some trifling childhood ailment. Nothing serious. Or had she been taken? Children were sometimes taken. Or had Savi found out and was now looking for the right moment to speak up? Each day that she waited, biting her nails, unable to eat, and not knowing, the feeling of dread grew.

She was short-tempered with Laurence, Naveena wasn’t there when she needed her and Hugh avoided her, spending time with Verity instead.

She took out all her clothes from her wardrobe and laid them on the bed, intending to decide which might be updated, and which she no longer wore at all. She tried them on, one by one, but every time she looked in the mirror, nothing looked right. The clothes hung from her, and she decided to remove her wedding ring, for fear it would slip from her finger and be lost. As she tried on her hats, she began to cry. Naveena came into the room and found her sitting motionless on the floor, gulping at air and surrounded by hats: felt hats, feathered hats, beaded hats and sun hats. The woman held out a hand to her and Gwen took it, then stumbled to her feet. When she was standing, she leant against Naveena, and the woman held her tight.

‘I’ve lost weight. Nothing fits,’ she said through her sobs.

Naveena carried on holding her. ‘You’ve gone down a little, that is what.’

‘I feel so awful,’ she said when the tears stopped falling.

Naveena handed her a handkerchief to mop her face with. ‘Hugh is better. You do not need to worry.’

‘It isn’t Hugh. Well, it is Hugh, but it’s not just Hugh.’

Unable to say the words, she went to her desk and took out the little box, found the key and unlocked it. She held up the drawings to Naveena.

‘What if she is sick?’

Naveena patted her back. ‘I understand. You must not break your head. Put away. Next drawing will come. You call doctor for you, Lady.’

Gwen shook her head.

But later that day, when she prickled all over, feeling as if her skin had been peeled away, she couldn’t stand it any longer. Her deteriorating mental state, exacerbated by the lack of sleep, made her whole body ache. She jumped at the slightest sound, heard
things that weren’t there, felt unequal to the simplest task and found herself going round in circles, starting something, leaving it, then forgetting what it was she’d been doing in the first place. At the point where she felt she was losing her connection with everything she loved, she capitulated, knowing she would have to ask for help.