Anila's Journey (11 page)

Anoush and I were wearing our favourite saris, she in pink and I in my blue, sitting in a pew at the back of the church. We were squashed in with the English maidservants and some of the wives and daughters who were half-Indian like me. So Anoush and I were not the only ones to smother a giggle at the bosomy dresses that flounced down the centre aisle after the service.

Outside, in the shade of the wide yellow-stone porch there were groups of officers and soldiers, men in sober black suits and others in breeches and coats of every colour. But there was no Mr Walker. I surveyed every face.

I saw the reverend though, reaching dutifully for people's hands and petting children's heads. He was as hairy as ever, which was a disappointment, somehow. I did not want to catch his cold eye so I whispered to Anoush that we should squeeze through the crowd and slip away. As we left, the bells in the steeple began to peal and everyone seemed to shout louder. There were a few sympathetic eyes for Anoush and her limp and some greetings too, but she took a firm grip of my arm and marched us through the gates of the church.

“This way I can walk as well as any cavalry wife in a frock,” she said, squeezing me.

She steered me towards the grassy stretch in front of the Esplanade where we would take our picnic and watch the horsemen and the carriages, the children running with their kites and all the others who were celebrating their Christmas out of doors in the winter sunshine.

“Let's sit close to those people,” Anoush said.

If I was the one to spot birds, Anoush could spot people. She had picked out an English family party. Two ladies in dark wool dresses and a grey-haired man in a plain black suit had settled themselves on cushions round a rug. On the rug was a beautiful baby girl with fair curls, playing with a doll that was bigger than she was. Two boys were playing leapfrog close by, with one of the family's bearers helping the smaller boy clamber over his brother. Another bearer was unpacking food from a large tiffin box and putting it out onto china plates.

“I'd like to see who they are,” said Anoush. “I've never seen them before but they look like a comfortable family. If I can hear their name then I can tell Auntie about them and she can send them a card.”

“Anoush, you mustn't think of work today! It's your holiday.”

“Don't think for one moment that I will not remember that, Anila.” She smiled. “And I'll remember the river always. But it's good to look at people too.”

Earlier this morning Anoush had squealed with horror when I suggested we wash ourselves in the river, which ran clean and cool just beyond the fence. But when she saw that my feet were standing firm on sand and not on the back of some monster of the river, she bent some reeds over, sat down and dabbled her toes in. Then she leant over and scooped up water to splash her face and neck.

“It's got salt in it, like soup!”

She took so much pleasure out of that simple wash in the river water. I thought how my mother would have been proud of me.

Now I was thirsty.

We spread out our own picnic on top of my cloth bag. Rice with spices, Armenian bread, bananas, cake. A green coconut that we would have to break open somehow, for its juice, for I had forgotten my knife. Otherwise it was a long walk over to the Chowringhee tanks and the guards there might turn me away, for badness.

“Anoush, I'm going to see if I can find something to crack this open.”

The family near us had also begun to take their food but I had noticed they had only small tea knives. But a little way off, behind some trees, a new wall was going up, and surely I might find a sharp stone or stray piece of metal there.

That was where I was when I saw the beginnings of what happened.

I turned round, first because of the noise, the loud pounding of horses in the distance, galloping very fast, tearing up the earth as they moved. Two soldiers chasing each other, or chasing something else, and shouting, holding long sticks out by the sides of their horses.

Then I saw him. The smaller boy just stepped away from his family, the way a baby goat does, or a fawn. Nobody was watching him to make him stop. He had a funny, stout walk, almost a run, and he too was chasing something. He was heading straight into the path of the horses as if he did not hear the thunder of their hooves. And the riders were looking away, they must have been, because they did not rein in or change their course. They came on.

But Anoush had seen him. I heard her call. “Stop!” It must have hurt her throat and chest so very much if I could hear that cry so clearly where I was. But nothing stopped. Everything just continued, horribly, as if it was a dream. Why did nobody see him?

I dropped the silly coconut and hitched my sari up to run but I was too far away to be useful. That small boy was going to die, I could see that. I shouted too. That was when I saw Anoush push herself up from the ground with her stick. She couldn't run of course, but she dived forward onto the ground instead, she spread herself flat out and shot forward that long stick of hers so that it fell like a spear between the little boy's legs.

Down he came, flat on his face, only a few lengths of his little body away from the cruel hooves. I could see his mouth opening but there was no cry I could hear.

The father and the bearers were running now too but I was the first to reach the little boy. I picked him up and felt the harsh gasps and gulps as his chest rose and fell. He was a pretty one, fair-haired with curls, but his face was streaked with dirt and tears and his little white breeches were quite torn away in front. I handed him to his father who stood, rocking him, petting his face, kissing his head. The bearers looked grey and shaky. I glared at them. Why was everybody here so foolish?

Just beyond the trees the horses were pulled up now, with shouts, and then turned to trot back to us. The two soldiers jumped down and while one stood holding the reins, the other ran after me to where Anoush lay. Her legs were twisted to one side and she was breathing hard. He helped her very gently to her feet and then went to pick up her stick.

“Anoush, are you all right? Are you hurt?” I whispered, holding her.

She shook her head but she kept her hands folded over her chest and there were tears in her eyes. I lifted her hands away and there it was, her beautiful pink embroidered sari in shreds down her front and every part of her covered in earth and grime.

“It's not the sari, I promise you,” she said. She clasped the torn cloth again. “That doesn't matter. It's just that it was such a difficult thing to make my stick fly like that. It might not have worked.”

She began to tremble and I put my arms round her.

“Miss, you saved the little boy's life,” said the soldier standing with the horses. “We didn't see him until the very end, he was that low down and you can't see that patch from the saddle. And we were all wrapped up in our mountainy game – we saw nobody until you fell forward.”

“Anoush, you are wonderful,” I whispered.

“That she is, my dear, that she is,” said the father, who came up beside us. The mother and the other woman now had the little boy between them and they were hugging and kissing him, while the older boy held the baby.

“My younger son is deaf,” said the father. “We think he saw something he wanted and he went after it when we were all occupied. He never saw the horses and of course he couldn't hear them.”

The other soldier came back with Anoush's stick and handed it to her. He clicked his heels together so hard that the spurs on his boots jangled. Anoush flashed him a smile then, a shaky one. He was a very young soldier, so young that he looked as if he still had growing to do. He had black hair and such very pale skin that I guessed he had not been long in India.

“My dear, you must tell me your name,” said the father to Anoush. “We have so much – no, everything – to thank you for. You must come home with us straightaway, for I am a physician and can attend to any injuries. We will of course replace your damaged garment.”

Anoush made a little gesture as if to say, no, no trouble please, but I was not going to have that. My friend should have her due.

“Her name is Miss Anoush Galustaun and after Christmas is over you will be able to find her in Mrs Panossian's emporium off the Esplanade. That's the favourite store for the English in Calcutta, you'll discover very soon.”

The father looked at me in amazement.

“We are just lately arrived in the city, but you seem to have divined that. Please let me introduce our family. I am George Herbert. And this is my wife, Mrs Charlotte Herbert, and my sister Miss Sarah Herbert. My sons John and Christopher, whom we call Kit, and my infant daughter, Georgiana.”

His wife grasped Anoush's hands as if she would never let them go. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said. The little boy, Kit, kept his face buried in his aunt's neck but then he looked up at Anoush and smiled.

“I'm so glad I was here,” she said.

The two riders apologized again for their lack of care and made to get on their horses. I could see that the young soldier desperately wanted Anoush to look at him and acknowledge him but she was busy playing peep with little Kit. She turned though, as they trotted off, and gave him a little bow, with joined hands, a true namashkar, something I had never seen Anoush do before.

“I see the carriage coming now,” said the doctor. “Our driver, at least, knows his business. You must come and be attended to and then I will have you returned to your home.”

The women nodded and smiled and the aunt said something about having a dress that would fit Anoush. But Anoush looked at me, her eyes huge and urgent, and she gave a tiny shake of her head. I knew then that she wanted us to return to the garden house, to be on our own, to be quiet after this alarm.

“We live a long way distant, in Garden Reach,” I said. “But if you could take us to the Chandpal Ghat that would be a great kindness, for we might take a boat there.”

That then was how we finished our Christmas Day picnic on the green. We rode to the river in a carriage, a plain brown one, with two brown ponies pulling it, each of us with a child in our lap, except for poor Anoush who was still sore. Mrs Herbert passed a flask of lemonade around, filling the one cup, which went from child to adult and adult to child. No distinctions were made. That was the kind of good people they were.

ONE MORNING, AND
I cannot say how many days or even weeks she had lain there, my mother got up. She was thin as a twig and her hair hung like dry leaves, unbrushed and without any of its gloss. But even I could see that whatever Hemavati had meant when she talked of good signs, those signs were there that morning
.

“Anila!”

She called me to her – I was sweeping the floor and Hemavati and Malati were out – and she hugged me. I was then only as high as her chest but that morning I could feel that I had more weight than she had. She asked me to go to the tank for fresh water. She said that she wanted to wash at home with nobody looking at her
.

I ran down the lane to the tank with our biggest jug and dipped it in several times to make it brim over. My mother washed herself all over and her sari clung to her poor bones so that you could count them. Then she took some of Malati's soapnut for her hair and I ran again for more water
.

She came with me then, up the stairs to the roof, to dry out, and also, she told me, so she could breathe good air again. No matter that most of the smells were oven fires and mustard oils burning, and the fresh dung of animals and people. She said she could smell the river on the air and the fragrance of trees
.

“Now I must find work,” she said. “But what can I do?”

Before, my mother had earned a few annas in the week by preparing paan for the stallholders on the high road. But that was in addition to what my father gave her and now even if she chopped nuts and rolled leaves all day there would not be enough to live on. Perhaps she could sew more quilts, I thought
.

“Hemavati was kind,” I said to her. “She didn't steal, she gave us things instead.”

“And Malati?” my mother asked
.

“Oh, Malati says she is marrying before monsoon, but no one believes her,” I said. “But perhaps she will because she has gone away. We haven't seen her for quite a while.”

My mother smiled and shook her head. Her beautiful black hair lifted in the warm morning breeze and strands of it crossed her face. I drew them back and saw there were tears in her eyes
.

“At least I never said that,” she whispered. “Even if I do put sindur in my hair like a married woman.” Then she laughed until she began to cough
.

So I told her about the goats and the girls and Dinesh, about the potter and the palanquin maker's son. Before, when I had left the house, it was always in my mother's company. She did not want me running wild on the lane, she said. But Hemavati had told me that my mother feared in case other children would say nasty things, or reject me
.

“They won't do that if you're tough enough,” she'd said. “I had to learn that for myself when I was not much older than you and just as pretty, I can tell you. Besides everyone on this lane has something to hide. If you can find what it is, what each person's secret is, then you'll be the toughest of them all. They will fear to cross you.”

Hemavati made daily life sound so interesting, like the everlasting battles between gods and demons. It really was not like that at all. But I learned one thing. Although the girls' father was not so happy about the dancers in our house, Bashanti and Varsha themselves thought it must be wonderful to share a house with such exotic people. They envied me that, while I did not envy them their goatkeeping. Was that being tough?