Belonging (23 page)

Her story seems to explain much that has puzzled me about their relations. If it is true, then I have been party to a
terrible injustice. I have even threatened Zainab, in almost the same words as Ramsay did, that I would separate her forever from her daughter.

But is it really possible that Rebecca is ignorant that the woman is her mother? Zainab assures me that she is; that she herself, afraid of losing her daughter, agreed to do everything she could to make Rebecca forget.

‘I told her not to call me Mama and when she didn’t stop I would slap her, but still she persisted. One day when she kept on repeating it he shouted at me to pack my bags and go that evening, so I took her to the bathroom and I held her head under the water, and I told her I would stop only when she called me “ayah”. But she is stubborn, like him… she was choking and crying but she would not say it… she would not…’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘But I continued until she fainted. Afterwards she got a fever and was so ill I thought she would die. The doctor said it was a brain fever, and when she got better she no longer called me mother. And from that day she stopped caring for me, only for her father. But I do not blame her for it. It was he… that sewer… may he spend eternity burning in Jehannum.’

I have no idea what to make of this story. I do not trust her and yet she told it to me with such emotion that, despite myself, I could not help feeling moved. She has begged me to say nothing to Rebecca for fear of provoking another brain fever, for she says Rebecca has had several in her life. ‘At school, the other girls tormented her. They were so cruel that she became ill and had to be sent home. And you saw yourself how ill she was when that… that sewer Sutcliffe… abandoned her. I thought she was going to die then too.’

‘But I still don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Does she think I care about such things? That I would reject or abandon her? I
have never given her the slightest cause to think so!’ On the contrary, it has always been she who expressed a dislike of Indians and behaved badly towards them. And yet it all makes sense: her greater ease with men who, blinded by her beauty, ask no awkward questions; her tearful outbursts when other women question her about her people; her fear of the servants, for they are the quickest to spot pretence and affectation. It occurs to me for the first time that our servants may well know what I have been so blind to, which may explain why she has never been able to assert her authority over them, and why Zainab has had to run the house. I know they do not like her either – I have heard them call her a ‘churail’ – but they fear her. (Ironic that a churail is a witch, the ghost of a woman who has died in childbirth.)

It only occurred to me after our conversation that if the reason her mother gave for Rebecca’s actions is true – that she feared her babies might give away the fact that she has Indian blood – it must mean that she knows the truth. Is it possible that she can both know and not know? I have sometimes thought she seems almost like two different people; I still remember how loving she was in the early days of our marriage, and her kindness to Father.

I do not know if Zainab has told her of our conversation, but her chastened behaviour seems to suggest it – or at least suggests that she has been advised to act repentant – for I no longer trust her, trust either of them.

I spoke to the doctor today and he has advised me to wait for another month until the pregnancy is firmly established before withdrawing her laudanum. We have agreed that in the
interim she will need to be watched at all times. I have applied for an immediate leave of absence on compassionate grounds for, repulsive as the thought is, it seems to me the only way to ensure the survival of this child is for me to act as her jailer. As a double surety, I have told Zainab that if Rebecca loses this child I will hand them both over to the police and the doctor will give evidence against them.

I realised this morning that I cannot continue to ignore Rebecca. I shall have to make some attempt to get her to confide in me. Although I am angry and disgusted, I also pity her, for – like a snake – she cannot help her nature, which has been twisted by the deceit practised on her since her infancy.

This afternoon I invited her to come and sit on the verandah with me, for I could not bear to be alone with her in her darkened room. She came out and sat, her hands folded in her lap, with the same blank expression she wears when she is in the company of other women, and I suddenly saw that her composure is a mask, and that she is not relaxed at all but holding herself still with every muscle tensed, poised to ward off the attack she is always expecting.

‘It must be exhausting to be you,’ I said.

She looked at me. In the shadow of the verandah the disparity between her eyes was less marked and once again I marvelled at her beauty, but it no longer moves me. Nor am I any longer taken in by her promise of light and warmth, a promise I know from experience is hollow, as hollow as she is when the show is over and she sinks back into herself: an empty bucket being lowered into a cold, dark well.

She did not reply and I could tell she was going over my words suspiciously, weighing them to assess any threat they might hold.

‘I don’t want to torment you. I just want to understand,’ I said. ‘Tell me what you remember about your childhood. The truth.’

She looked down at her hands and began to talk, obediently, like a child doing what it is told. She told me about her childhood, the hill station where she grew up, all the usual stuff she has told Father and me over the years about how close she and her father were, how he doted on her and adored her. I must have made a movement of impatience because she glanced at me and added quickly, ‘But that was when I was little.’

‘Tell me about later.’

She hesitated and then said, ‘I had one friend there – the daughter of one of the women who worked on the tea estate. I called her Ungoo. We played together although Ayah didn’t like it – she said I would pick up “jungli” habits – but I used to sneak outside in the afternoon when she was sleeping and meet Ungoo at the edge of the garden.’

Her voice was dreamy. I wondered how much of what she was telling me was the truth and how much a fantasy.

‘Our games were quite innocent at first, but then, when we were about nine or ten, Ungoo started doing things that she said were secret – things that I mustn’t tell anybody. Things she said men did to women.’ She glanced at me as though expecting some reaction but I kept my face blank.

‘Go on.’

‘Then I would go back before Ayah woke and slip back into bed and pretend I’d been there all the time. And then one afternoon Ayah found us and saw what we were doing.
She was angry and she told Father and he sent me away to boarding school.’

‘Tell me about school.’

‘I hated it there. The other girls were horrible to me. I didn’t know anything about books or fashion or famous people or any of the things they talked about and they made fun of me and called me names, said I was “country-born” and ignorant. They called me a witch because my eyes were different colours. And it got worse and worse. They accused me of doing things I hadn’t done – things like stealing their trinkets and putting nasty things in their beds. They even hid some of their things in my box so it looked as though I had stolen them. When they asked about my people and I said that my mother was Irish, they made fun of me. One of them said I was lying. Then they started singing every time I entered a room… they pretended they were just singing to themselves so the teachers wouldn’t know, but I knew it was meant for me.’

She sang in a soft breathy voice:

Her mouth twisted. I watched her, mesmerised. I find it hard to understand now how I could have been so caught in her spell that I did not perceive how mad she is.

‘It got worse and worse. They told dreadful lies…’ Tears gathered on her lower lashes and, unmoved, I watched them tremble there. ‘No one would sit next to me at table or in class. They stole my books and hid them or spilt ink on my homework so I got into trouble with the teachers. Then one day someone put broken glass in the face cream of the girl who teased me the most, and it scarred her face. They said that it was me, that someone had seen me with the jar, so the school sent me home. Ayah was angry with me. She didn’t believe me – she’s always been against me – but I was glad to be home with Daddy. I thought he would be pleased to see me, but he wasn’t, and he wouldn’t read me stories any more, or even come to my room to say goodnight. He said I was too old for all that and he was ashamed of me. And then I got ill.

‘When I was better I went looking for Ungoo… It was the monsoon and I went to the plantation where her mother worked and she was there, planting tea. I didn’t realise it was her at first – she was wearing one of those palm leaf shelters they use to keep the rain off – and then she stood up and she had a baby strapped to her back and… it was horrible! The baby had blue eyes!’ Her voice broke. ‘And then some months later another of the girls had a baby and someone complained to the company… so we came down to the plains and Daddy got a job with the steamboat company.’

The story fits more or less with what Zainab told me, and the tales I’ve heard about Ramsay, but she recited it so flatly that it seemed like a story she had heard or read rather than experienced. And yet I can see no reason for her to invent it. But there is still no admission that she knows, or suspects, the truth about her own birth. I am tempted to tell her, but it would do no good. She would simply add me to her list of persecutors.

When I told her that I have taken three months’ leave to take care of her, she smiled, but her eyes were those of a trapped animal.

Rebecca has been off the laudanum now for three weeks and is suffering dreadfully. Her skin has turned grey, she sweats and shivers and begs us to give her ‘just one drop’. It is pitiful to listen to, but the doctor insists we must not weaken, as if she is still taking it in her sixth month it could cause a premature birth. Zainab stays with her day and night. I believe she would give in, if she dared, for she cannot bear to watch Rebecca suffer. I am concerned about what will happen when I return to work for I have used almost all my long leave and will need to go back at the end of June.

Today I had a letter from Father to say that Kishan Lal has died. I have not seen either of them for more than a year. Father said he went peacefully.
‘I was at his bedside and he remembered you at the end and asked me to give his regards to chotta sahib. I shall feel his absence greatly; he was with me for more than thirty years.’

Father is eighty-four, too old to live alone without someone he trusts. I have asked him to come to us. He and Rebecca have always got on well, and he will be company for her when I go back to work and also another a pair of eyes for me. I cannot, of course, tell him the truth, but he knows she is highly strung. And he will be a match for her mother for, even at his age, he is a man who commands respect.

I am a father. Our daughter was born five days ago in the early hours of the morning – a small but healthy baby with a thatch of dark hair.

She was born in the hospital at Patna, as Rebecca developed a fever a few days before her birth and had to be rushed to hospital. The midwife brought her out to me, tightly wrapped in swaddling clothes. I took the stiff little bundle in my arms and looked into her face. Her delicate skin had a yellowish tinge and her eyes were closed; she looked self-contained and peaceful, like a tiny Buddha, perfect and complete in herself.

It should have been the happiest moment of my life but all I could feel was depression at the thought of the world she is being born into: a world in which the prejudices and judgements of others may distort and twist all that potential. I pictured Rebecca as an innocent baby and felt like weeping when I thought what life has done to her. For a moment I wanted to hand the child back, to refuse the responsibility for this precious, fragile life. I wonder if this is how my mother felt as she held me in her arms.

The midwife was watching me. ‘She takes after you,’ she said, in a meaningful tone, but when I smiled at her she looked away.

I went in to see Rebecca. She was lying with her face to the wall and would not look at me. The midwife tried to place the baby in her arms but she kept them clamped to her body. The doctor beckoned me outside. He was a young man recently come from England. He appeared uncomfortable and, like the midwife, avoided my eyes. ‘Your wife seems to be suffering from a delusion that the baby isn’t hers,’ he said. ‘It does
sometimes happen that women don’t take to motherhood. It may improve with time.’

‘Did something happen to upset her?’

He said reluctantly, ‘When we delivered the baby we noticed there was a large mark like a bruise on her lower back. The midwife said it was a sign that the child has Asian blood. I remembered reading about it in medical school – it’s called a Mongolian blue spot. I’m afraid your wife overheard the conversation and it disturbed her. We assumed…’ He hesitated.

‘Assumed…?’

‘That she would have known.’

I stared at him for a few moments before I realised they thought that I had deceived Rebecca about my origins. I wanted to punch him, but what would it have achieved?

When we got home I put the baby in Father’s arms and he looked down at her and smiled and said, ‘She has your mother’s eyes.’

One part of me was glad, another sorry that she should carry anything of our history. I would like to free her of it all – of that grinding weight that bears down on us and pushes our lives in directions we never dreamt of.