Anila's Journey (19 page)

I sat back against the trunk and drew everything I could remember of her wings in flight and at rest. I wrote down my colours, the flashes of black and gold and white in all the brown. I made ten sketches. But my best one was the quickest one, which showed the mother bird's round head bent back against her body, with just a little curve of owl cheek showing and her two long ears flattened into her head feathers.

Down along the water track three figures were moving away from the strange tank. One was thin, one was broad, one was fair. That much I could see, and that much told me who they were.

How had Carlen known to find the other two? Why had he rushed away as he did?

It was only a short walk back to the river and the boat, and I was sitting with my back against the tree trunk watching Hari and Benu play a silly game with the neem sticks I had brought back when the three men arrived. Mr Walker had a flushed face and a bite on his cheek that looked sore. Carlen did not look at any of us but went on board and started to unpack the tents.

“We did not mean to be gone so long,” Mr Walker said. “Did you find anything new to draw?”

Without saying anything I handed him the notebook. I watched his face as he took in exactly what it was I had done. He passed the drawings to Madan.

“Where did you do this work, Anila? How did you think of drawing the fish owl in this way, from above? These are intriguing pieces.”

I pointed at the neem tree in the distance.

“I climbed right to the top. I could see for miles. The nest was halfway up the tree and she came to feed them while I was there. It was the most wonderful thing I have ever seen, that pencha feeding her babies underneath me.”

Madan's eyes were full of measurements as I sang this story out like a child.

“And what else did you see?” he asked. “Did you see the sahib and myself?”

“I saw all three of you. I saw a big tank like the Lal Dighi tank with people moving around inside it. And I saw two big boats with soldiers in them on the river but they went right past. I saw frogs too, lots of them, and paddy birds eating them as if they were fruit.”

I could hear my own voice, as if I were reciting a rhyme. Perhaps it was that silly way of speech that was making me think like a child too, for I truly had to bite my tongue to stop myself saying that the only thing I had not seen from the top of the neem tree was my father.

I stood up then and moved away, with everyone's eyes on me. Carlen had my tent up so I went inside it and sat there, my knees up, my chest heaving. I felt like a fool. It was not my business what Mr Walker did when he left my company. I only wished he could help me find my father. It certainly was not his fault that he could not. Worst of all, Carlen had seen me behave like a spoilt child.

It was dark outside when I heard Mr Walker's polite cough outside the tent.

“Anila, will you come down the river path a little way with me?”

The little slice of moon was high in the sky and we could see quite well as we walked. I saw three figures wrapped up in the cabin. But Carlen had laid his bedding outside on the deck away from the others. I fancied that his light eyes followed us down the path, warning me not to tell tales on him.

“Anila, are you vexed with me?”

I shook my head. But he waited for a proper answer.

“No, Mr Walker. How could I be? You are always kind and thoughtful.”

“But something has upset you today, am I right?”

I could say something that was true, at least.

“I keep dreaming about my father. He shrinks and shrinks until he disappears.”

Mr Walker tut-tutted at that.

“Och, that is a hateful thing. But it means nothing, such a dream, you know, except that finding your father is your principal care and so it preys on your mind. Only the likes of our murdering old King Macbeth would have dreams that tell the future, not good people like you, Anila. And his dreams were only a story anyway.”

He stopped walking and faced me.

“I know you must think I deserted you today, and without a word, too. But I simply did not wish to put you in possession of uncomfortable knowledge.”

If he only knew.

“You know I have official business here, Anila. And you know I have my passion for the birds, to discover what I may of them. But since I came here I have discovered other things about India. I have found out that the Company, the English, whatever we call ourselves here, are committing an evil deed in Bengal and probably all over.”

The evil was all about salt.

“Everybody needs salt, Anila, birds, animals, humans. Especially in a hot country where we all sweat in the heat and lose our own salt. When salt leaves your body you must find more or you will die. Or at very least you will get sick, even if you have food and water. And it is the little ones who die first.”

The Company was making huge profits from making and selling salt, he said. Nobody else was allowed to do this, on pain of death, and the salt prices were high even in a famine year, when crops were poor.

“What you saw today was an outlaw salt depot. Madan's cousin maintains it. He collects and sells the salt that people manufacture further down the river. His price is fair, his risk is immense.”

“But all I saw was a tank in the ground!”

“Yes, for it's easy to disguise that way with vegetation, and the beauty of it is you would have to be an owl to know it was even there. Unless you were a tree-climbing species like a certain Anila Tandy, of course.”

I did not smile at that so he continued.

“Do you know that it was Carlen who first found out about this business? It was when he came to hire our boat that he heard the men talking. Until this trip I did not know that Carlen had any knowledge of Bangla but he does. Knowing my concerns, he instructed me as to what questions I should put to Madan. I have Madan's trust now, I am proud to say. He understands that I want to do something about the matter. He told me about the river salt trade and the men told me of the dangers they run. My intention now is to raise the question of the tax when I return to England.”

And Carlen, good and brave Carlen, had rushed away to warn his master that soldiers were passing by on the river. This Carlen who had read out my Bangla words as if they were monkey language.

“But I thought that Carlen… well, he mocks Madan and our religion, and I cannot think he cares about the welfare of poor people in Bengal.”

I was afraid to say more.

Mr Walker sighed.

“Carlen is a strange mixture of a man. He saved my life the year I came down to England as a troubled young man inclined to brawl, and he has been in and out of my life since then, as suits both of us. He often pretends to be what he is not but I cannot say why such is his way. He has many masks and some of them are unpleasant.”

Then he looked at me as sharply as he could in the darkness.

“He has not been disrespectful to you, I hope, Anila?”

For a long time, I could not think what to answer.

“Anila?”

“He does not seem to like me, so I find it difficult. That is all.”

“For that would be unpardonable and I would not pardon it. Do you understand me?”

I nodded. That was some knowledge to bank indeed. But I thought to myself that my gold mohurs were the best hope I had of making Carlen tell me what I needed to know.

OUR FIRST TRIP TO
Mr Hickey's house was made in a carriage, as there had to be space for Mr Bristol to accompany us. Besides, a palanquin could not travel all the way from Old Court House Street to Garden Reach
.

Mr Bristol was curious to inspect the arrangements for making the painting, I knew that. But it was also true that he never missed an opportunity to inspect other people's houses, their furniture and rugs, pictures and silver
.

Now, as we jogged along, he told us more about the other gentleman's portrait of his bibi, the beautiful one that had spurred him to have my mother's likeness painted by the same hand
.

“She cannot hold a candle to you, my dear Anna, though it cannot be denied that she is very fine and her champion is a noisy fellow around the city. Why, it would be criminal not to have your worth known similarly, no matter the cost to me.”

My mother shifted along the padded seat, a little closer to me, and sighed. She was wearing his choice of clothes that day, of course, but nobody could deny that he had a good eye for an outfit
.

Her sari was a very fine green China silk. Mr Bristol claimed it was the very green of the mulberry leaves that gave birth to silk itself. Underneath the sari she wore a jacket of peacock green, crafted by the lady from Kashi, and there was a matching jade insert in the circlet that bound her hair. Her fingernails and toenails were polished with a lustre coating. Round her neck was a string of tiny river pearls and her earrings were dainty leaf shapes of fine filigree silver
.

Of course Mr Bristol had not said a word about anything as lowly as feet but that morning my mother had sat patiently on our bed while I carefully traced a design of feathers on her soles with red alta paint
.

“They won't know any better about such things, but you and I do,” she'd said
.

Our ride was so long that Mr Bristol began to huff and puff that he had not hired a boat instead. But at last we found ourselves rattling past spacious houses, each one set down in a garden of great size
.

The carriage pulled up outside a white house, which had no gate, even though it lay quite close to the roadway. Instead of tall walls there were bushes that guarded a small lawn, bright green from the rains. The house had a verandah running round its upper storey. I thought how wonderful it would be if we had no gates and no durwan but a viewing place like that where I could watch the world pass by
.

Mr Hickey was on the entrance steps to greet us. Unlike us, he had not dressed up and his rough cloth trousers and canvas smock already had spatters of paint on them
.

“Welcome, everybody!” he said, and he shook Mr Bristol's hand. “Now, inside, please.”

We moved into the hall, which was not at all like Mr Bristol's dark hall. Light streamed though a round window of coloured glass. A stone staircase led out of the hall and at the foot of it stood a very small lady dressed in a dark blue English dress
.

She stepped forward and shook my mother's hand and then took mine. I could feel that her hand was delicate and dry, even in the summer heat. It seemed such a personal thing to do, to take a person's hand, but I found I did not mind. This lady, who must be Mr Hickey's daughter, was greeting us in the English manner. But I noticed that she merely bowed her head to Mr Bristol, who was already stretching his neck in every direction. He was quite shameless
.

“My dears, you will be stuck with me for some time while my father prepares his worst,” Miss Hickey said to my mother and me. Then she laughed, so that we might know she had made a joke
.

She was pale and she had her father's blue eyes. She wore her straight fine brown hair bundled up into loops on either side of her head, a style I had never seen. When she was not speaking or smiling her mouth had a slight twist that was not at all horrible. I wondered if this was a natural thing or something nervous in her. She was older than my mother, I thought, but I could not really guess what age she might be. I had never met an English lady before
.

“You must be Anila,” she said to me. “My goodness, it is a shocking thing to confess, but I have not met anybody of your age since I came to Calcutta and I do so miss my young cousins who have so many interesting things to say at all times. We must have a long chat together during the days when this important business is going on.”

Her eyes were dancing, as my father's used to. I decided I liked Miss Hickey for her kindly welcome and I smiled back at her. So did my mother, with her rare wide smile that I used think, when I was small, made the birds sing louder. She slipped her arm through mine as she did when we were alone
.

I realized then that my mother had been nervous about this meeting because she, too, had never before met an English lady. I think she had expected a different treatment
.

“This way, this way,” said Mr Hickey
.

He led us to the back of the hall where we stepped into a wide room that faced out onto an open porch. This had the same fat smooth columns that stood in the front of the house. In the distance we could see tall palms that followed the line of the road. Here the light was like water
.

In front of the columns, but still in the room, a low day bed had been positioned and spread with a fine rug. Mr Hickey told my mother to sit on it, and to stretch her legs out
.

When she was settled, he told her that he would be making an oil sketch that day
.

“Next time, there'll be something to hold,” he said. “An Indian thing. Not to worry, I'll choose it. And wear the same fine clothes, please. Of course, you know this.”

I could feel Mr Bristol's pride like a sun ray in the room. He had plumped himself down onto a battered wing chair and of course he had done this without noticing that Miss Hickey was still standing
.

Now Mr Hickey set up his canvas on a support with wooden legs so that he did not have to hold it at all. There was a small roughly made table alongside him, with brushes and pots and saucers laid out in no order at all
.

Miss Hickey motioned to me to help her draw up a broad stool from the open side of the room so that we might sit together on it
.

“My poor music stool,” she said. “It has an idle time of it here, I'm afraid. It has just seen off yet another poor harpsichord with the ague.”