Anila's Journey (31 page)

I could hear the clip-clop and crunch of a horse and carriage arriving at the front of the house. I started up, half in hope, half in terror, but Doctor Herbert spoke quickly.

“That will be my sister returning. It won't happen in quite that way, Miss Tandy. There will be messengers from the Company, from the ship, all kinds of documents and visitations before your father is released here, take my word for it.”

“Doctor Herbert, it is so hard for me to believe that my father is coming to Calcutta, after all. This changes everything I was intending to do.”

He nodded.

“Of course. Though now you understand that I was ignorant of everything when I asked you to come here. I knew nothing of your travel plans, nor, most wonderfully, of your family situation. I merely thought there was a chance you might help me, as if with a puzzle.”

“But I can! More than ever. And you can help me!”

Miss Hickey would be shocked at my boldness. I took a breath. “I'm sorry. I have been a little afraid, you see, of what I might find.”

He shook his head at that, firmly.

“There is nothing to fear, I promise you. Now, Miss Tandy, you must come and stay with us, after your father arrives. I don't speak of any duties. That is another matter. But your presence will be invaluable in attempting your father's restoration to health. And if we cannot quite achieve that, at least we can all assist in his happy maintenance until another solution presents itself.”

All those unlovely words – restoration, maintenance, solution – were hitting my brain like the black keys that can make the harpsichord sound so sad. Suddenly I wanted to jump up and sing hallelujah. Perhaps the doctor believed he had found my father. But I saw it differently. My father was coming to me – and whatever was the mechanism in the universe that had made this happen, it did not matter a jot. All that it had required was keeping faith, as Mr Walker had said. A door must always be kept open.

If I had not stayed in Calcutta how ever might I have met the spiteful Crocker, or Carlen, or indeed the doctor, for that matter?

To give him credit, the doctor was beaming as he slid the little boat sketch across to me once again.

“So, Miss Tandy, your first step might be to ask your good friend Mr Walker to offer your ship's passage to the next bidder. I understand that you have your paintings to finish in the meantime. I will, of course, have you informed immediately your father arrives in Calcutta.”

He stood then, came round his great desk and offered me his arm.

“Now, let me call the carriage for you. And we'll both tell my dear Charlotte that I did not do so badly with my trample-all boots, shall we?”

MY RIGHT HAND FELT
as if it had been crushed underneath an enormous palanquin with seven fat ladies stretched out in it, each one decked in heavy gold jewellery. My poor wrist had forgotten how to turn itself. But in just four days I had finished all my drawings and paintings. They were Mr Walker's now, to bring to London with all his other business.

“Anila, you will be famous in these circles whenever it may be that you come to London,” he said, smoothing each piece tenderly before he packed it in gauze paper and placed it between hard covers in one of his sea trunks. “You might become famous everywhere if only we can have a book made of these.”

He made me sign each one in the bottom left corner, and write in my neatest script underneath the signature all the names we had for the birds. So I copied these in Bangla, in English, and in Latin words whenever we could find the proper match in Mr Walker's books.

As for the beautiful birds that my grandfather had shown me, Mr Walker had already discovered their name in his tattered copy of Mr Linnaeus's
Systema Naturae
.

“Here we are:
Ardea antigone
, he calls your rosy-headed crane. But here in India it's called the sarus. The Emperor Jehangir loved the bird, I've read that.”

I shook my head. I had never heard that name, nor had my grandfather mentioned it. I could not help feeling a little disappointed that Mr Walker's sister had to depend on the honey-brown veena bird to carry her name instead of the tall beautiful dancing bird of the riverbank. But Mr Walker did not seem to share my feelings. Antigone was the name of a Greek princess from long ago, he told me.

“That particular Antigone was brave like yourself, Anila. She stood up to a tyrant and she's remembered for ever for it. But your bird is named for a princess of Troy, I believe. The goddess Hera was jealous of this other Antigone and turned her into a crane.”

“Hera, like our boat?”

“The very one. Wife of Zeus, and together they made a great bundle of trouble. No, I am happy that our veena bird will have no such bad blood in her name. She will be an
evelina
, of the bittern family, a lively, happy denizen of the river, just as her namesake was. I hope she will, at any rate.”

He touched my wooden chair back for luck.

It had been worthwhile to be so busy with my pencils and brushes because I found I could not think of anything else while my hands were delivering birds, and all at such speed. Whenever I stopped drawing, however, I heard every noise on the street loud and close as a small mouse must hear everything sound from behind his wainscot. Every horse clipping by, every carriage, every footstep passing, carried a message for me from Alipore, I felt sure. But it was not until the evening before Mr Walker's departure that it came.

We were sitting at the little table where I had had my first breakfast with Mr Walker, all those many weeks ago. On the table was my mother's Durga. Hari had brought her from the garden house, only that afternoon.

“Hari's report is that your little house is all grown over again with greenery,” said Mr Walker. “It seems the spiders and their colleagues have seized back their rule like the good river pirates they are. But he took the goddess away from the jungle.”

Poor Durga looked ever more like a plain clay cup. I decided I would paint over the faint traces of her many arms and her knowing smile. I picked her up and at that moment the doorbell clattered.

“At this hour?” Mr Walker said, almost to himself.

Chandra bustled in. For Mr Walker's last day he had put on a white English shirt which he wore over his dhoti, kept in by a black waistcoat that was much too large for him. He carried a plate, only a tea plate, but sitting on it was a small white card. He put the plate on the table between us and stood there, breathing importantly. Mr Walker handed the card to me.

This is to inform Miss Anila Tandy that her father has arrived today at Providence House, Alipore
.

Mr Walker let out a long breath, almost a whistle.

“I am very glad, Anila, so very glad to know this before I leave,” he said. He leant over and shook my right hand, as the English will do, and then he jumped up and shook Chandra's hand too, for good measure. Above us Balor squawked with some emotion of his own. For my part, there were tears running down my face.

“Oh, Mr Walker,” I said. But I could say nothing else. There were so many things I wanted to say to him and none that I could. I would have to write them later in a letter, a letter as thick as the one he now bore in his trunk with his promise to hand it to Miss Hickey in person.

There was no end to his kindness. For instance, he had insisted I keep the clothes he had bought for my voyage to Madras though I begged him to send them back.

“And upset Anoush, who helped me choose them?” he said. “Bad enough that I will lose your company going south, Anila.”

Anoush had done me proud. There were two new saris, a golden one and another in a shimmering colour that was between pink and purple. There were long tunics, one of green silk, one of blue cotton. There was an English gown, a beautiful blue like Dutch delph. Best of all she had known to order two pairs of men's breeches in soft white cord.

As well as bearing that expense, Mr Walker had declared that I could stay in his house under Chandra's care for as long as it might be. Balor would be doubly glad to have two slaves to serve him, he said.

But now the word had come that answered that invitation.

“You must sleep well tonight, Anila,” Mr Walker said after our supper. He had made me consent not to rise at the same hour as he must, before dawn, for, he said, he hated partings above all things. I was glad to agree.

“Tomorrow will such be a strange occasion, no matter how happy, so you must have a proper care for yourself. I will be thinking of you all the time I am rolling around the deck, trying to find my sea legs. You cannot imagine how keenly I will await your news in Madras. Good night, my dear.”

He made to leave the room, Chandra ahead of him with a night-light, having left one for me on the table. But at the door he stopped.

“You know,” he said, “I was thinking all along that when the time came that I must urge you most particularly to be guided by the doctor, for he seems a fine interpreter of maladies as well as a good man. But on reflection, no. I say now that you should listen to your own heart's prompts first of all, Anila, for they are what have brought you all this way.”

Hearrrt's prrrompts
. Then he was gone.

I sat up late in my little room, fingering the few precious items I would show my father. As well as Durga, I had Mr Hickey's drawing of my mother. There was my tiny peacock locket, his saddest gift, and there was my own bulbul drawing. That had been made after Papa had left us, but he had known the bulbul itself for it was a long-lived bird, fed in plenty by the people on our lane.

We had a jackdaw at home as bold as that fellow when I was your age, Anila. My sister Cecilia fed him best bits of bacon rashers when my mother wasn't around
.

These were all I had to nudge Papa's mind back to his life with us in Calcutta. I regretted now that I had left my mother's purple scarf for Jonaki. She was welcome to have it, but its beautiful bright colour might have been the very thing to best challenge my father's memory, as it had come from him.

Finally I laid out my mother's green silk sari. Though he had never seen it, I would wear it to meet him. I would tell him how his Annapurna had been painted in it and that people spoke of how lovely a sitter she was. Like a lady by Raphael, they said.

After that, there was only my own face he might stare at for clues. There was a little glass in a frame standing on the washstand in my room. I held it close and examined my each feature just as I thought he might need to do.

My watchful eyes stared back at me from the glass, brown like most people's, not the dark black zest of my mother's eyes. My mouth however was set well enough, like hers, and yet it had a determined line, like his. He could not miss that – how often had he remarked it himself? I combed my hair out and fingered it into the childish way he had always liked, in two braids down my back.

When I did sleep that last night in Mr Walker's house I dreamt of a boy on a horse. The horse was black, the boy was fair and he crouched low over the horse's neck, steering it faster and faster over a land flat as a chessboard, jumping over creeks and narrow tanks that stretched out as far ahead as the sky, with not a tree in sight. He did not show his face.

I HEARD PAPA BEFORE I
saw him. He was singing.

That sad sad song about the pearly girl! How he loved those kinds of songs and he would sing them all the louder if Malati or Hemavati were in the house so that he might drive them away even if only for a little while.

I rounded the back porch of the Herberts' house, which gave onto a lawn, the same lawn that was visible from the doctor's surgery. There was the open gazebo on the grass, its iron latticework painted white. A man sat at a sloping desk inside it, staring off into the trees at the end of the park, singing.

I could not remember the words that came next. But I could hum the melody and I did, making an equal music with his voice, loud enough for him to hear. He stopped singing, twisted round in his seat and stared at me where I stood, just outside his little station. A moon to his Jupiter.

He was thinner, darker in skin than I remembered, and his sweet fine hair was cut very short. In one terrible place it did not seem to grow at all. But I would have picked him out from a shipful of men, at any distance, even though I was not close enough yet to distinguish his eyes.

He leapt up and beamed at me.

“Who are you, beautiful girl in green, that you know my song which nobody else seems to know? Is this a dream and if I blink will that polite little boy appear in your place, bringing more instruments for me to draw? I hope not.”

He stood up and gently took my bag and set it down on the floor of the gazebo.

“Please take my seat and talk to me for a moment, for the day is long, you know. Tell me who you are.”

I bit my lip hard.

“My name is Anila. Anila Tandy.”

He looked confused, uneasy. Then, as if remembering his manners, he bowed his head in a way that called attention to the deep gouge above his temple. I forced my eyes to remain steady.

“I was going to sail to Madras to find you. But then you came back to Calcutta instead. Just like you promised.”

My voice shook a little on those last words. I wondered if I'd been too sudden, said too much. But his face cleared.

“This is Calcutta, that much I was told yesterday morning. I am to live here now. It seems a fine place. Perhaps the air is a little clammy. Madras is somewhere else again. Like the island with the houses clinging to the mountainside. They're all somewhere else but it's best to stay put in one place and put some memories down the way I've been doing.”