The Linnet Bird: A Novel (33 page)

“My dears,” Mrs. Waterton exclaimed, looking from Faith to me and back to Faith—whose plate looked as untouched as mine, “you must be able to nourish yourself. You’re both far too thin from the journey. Come now, eat up, my dears. It won’t do to languish. Do you not agree, Mr. Waterton?”

Mr. Waterton looked up from his plate, his lips shiny with grease from the lamb. He snapped his fingers, and the
khitmutgar
stepped up and dabbed at his lips with a gleaming white napkin, poured him a second glass of port, then stepped back.

Mr. Waterton took a sip of the port. “Well, they will soon get used to the dining,” he said, finally answering his wife, although looking at Faith and me. “I expect Miss Smallpiece and Miss Vespry are looking forward to the social season.”

Faith answered. “Oh, yes, Mr. Waterton, ever so much.” Her voice was very quiet, almost hoarse, and I knew her to be completely fatigued.

“Of course.” Mrs. Waterton either didn’t notice or didn’t care that Faith’s voice carried no enthusiasm. “We’ll give you a few days to settle in, yes, two or three days to get your legs back, and have your appetite return, and get some proper rest. There’s no rush. My goodness, you girls have at least four full months of delightful entertaining ahead before the end of the seas—” Mrs. Waterton stopped. A large flake of whitewash fell into the gravy. “Well, let’s not think that far ahead. My goodness, I’m sure lovely young ladies such as yourselves will be kept far too busy!”

An awkward silence fell over the table, and Mrs. Waterton sharply called out “
Koi-hai
?” Another boy hurried in and took away our plates. “The dessert,” she said, and from a long table against the wall the
khitmutgar
brought a lacquered tray of bowls of creamy brown. “I had
custel brun
—I’m sorry, caramel custard—prepared in your honor,” she said. “You must have missed your pudding while on board. It’s what I always miss when forced to sail home or back again. My pudding.”

Faith and I attempted to swallow as much of the sweet, rich custard as we could. Mr. Waterton had waved his hand at the dessert, obviously not as fond of pudding as his wife. Now the server poured Mr. Waterton a cup of tea, and, I noticed, also put in sugar and stirred it for him. I wondered if he would hold the cup to Mr. Waterton’s lips, but Mr. Waterton did appear capable of this on his own.

I
FELL INTO A DEEP
and dreamless sleep almost immediately upon placing my head on the pillow and letting my body sink into the thick mattress that first night. When I opened my eyes to shafts of brilliant sunshine slicing through the window screens I was momentarily disoriented and sat up in alarm, but the woman in white—whom Mrs. Waterton had told me would be my ayah—appeared out of nowhere, pulling back the netting and handing me a glass of something milky and sweet that was very refreshing. I realized, after she had helped me with my dress and hair, that I was rested and excited to discover what the day would hold.

Faith looked better than she had the day before, although the shadows around her eyes were still dark when we met in the dining room. We were greeted by yet another groaning table. I was still full from the night before, and nibbled on a sweet bun and ate a plaintain, much to Mrs. Waterton’s disappointment. And, as promised, Faith and I met Mrs. Liston—and I immediately liked her. I guessed her age to be between Faith’s and mine. She had dark blond hair in thin ringlets and wide green eyes. She laughed with her mouth open. Unfortunately, her face had been badly marked by the vestiges of a long-ago bout with smallpox, but she appeared unaffected in all ways. She had been born in India, gone home for schooling as a small child, and then returned three years ago to live once again with her parents. She had seen her mother only three times in the twelve years she’d lived in England, and her father not at all, which was, she said, only natural.

“Natural?” I’d asked. “To see your mother three times in all those years?”

“You’re too new to know the ways of the English in India, Miss Smallpiece,” Mrs. Waterton interrupted. “As it happens, my own four children are living with relatives in Cambridge, having a proper education. I accompanied my youngest two years ago, when he turned five. I do try my best to get to England every third year, but the duration and unpredictability of the voyage are, of course, quite restricting.”

Inwardly I wondered at the backbone of these women, that they conceded to this rigid rule of parting with their young children. It was, I was to understand later, only one of the sacrifices—although perhaps the greatest—that the British women in India suffered in order to support their husbands.

“Once you start to socialize, you’ll notice there are no older English children here. Mothers in India must face an inevitable separation,” Mrs. Liston said. “Children aren’t allowed to stay here beyond the age of five or six—they must be sent home for proper schooling. So the mother must decide if she will accompany her child or stay with her husband. Most choose the latter. I lived with an aunt and uncle and three male cousins all those years—and I’m afraid my parents were rather shocked at how I turned out when I finally returned. I wasn’t what they had hoped for, I’m afraid.” But she laughed as she spoke the last sentence, and her genuine laughter tempered the rather strange comment.

I smiled, glancing at Mrs. Waterton, but she wore a rather guarded expression, and was paying great attention to her rumble-tumble, as she called it. Scrambled eggs. Already I had noticed the obvious household jargon.

“Anyway, Mr. Liston and I have only been married for two months. He’s gone ahead to prepare our home in Lucknow, which is in the northeast, where he’s been appointed a district officer. And since Father retired from the East India civil service a month ago and he and Mother sailed for England, well, the Watertons have been generous enough to have me stay with them until Mr. Liston returns for me.”

“How did you meet your husband?” Faith asked. I was pleased to see she had regained some of the color in her cheeks and she had done her hair in a most charming way. Her rust-colored frock brought out the creaminess of her skin.

“Oh, we met through friends, shortly after I arrived, but there wasn’t much romance at first.”

Mrs. Waterton cleared her throat, but Mrs. Liston didn’t appear to notice.

“No, we were good friends for quite a while. We often went riding—chaperoned, of course,” she added, which I felt was for Mrs. Waterton’s benefit, “out into the country. We rode through miles of mustard fields or beans with wonderful scents. We’d pass peacocks strutting about, and ride into villages where the dogs would rush out, barking round the horses’ legs. The villagers were ever so polite and friendly, offering us refreshments, offering us a seat. He’s full of surprises, is my Mr. Liston, and while we were courting he introduced me to all manner of interesting and unexpected adventures, from visiting shrines in the countryside to pig sticking. I’d always known I didn’t enjoy many of the pastimes most young ladies enjoy—maybe it was my upbringing in the country with my cousins—and never fully expected to marry. Oh, come now, Mrs. Waterton,” she said, at the woman’s shocked intake of breath. “Don’t look so gloomy. You know it to be true.” She smiled back at me. “I play no instrument, my singing causes the birds to fly from the trees, and dancing with me is like lurching about with a drunken goose.”

I had to laugh with her.

“Cards have always remained a mystery to me,” she went on, “and I find musical evenings and flower arranging and spending hours poring over the goods displayed by the box wallahs so tedious.” She faced Mrs. Waterton again. “Now, please, Mrs. Waterton, humor me. Agree that it isn’t the end of the world that I have been unable to master the expected accomplishments.”

“Of course it’s not, dear,” Mrs. Waterton murmured, but it was obvious she disapproved of Mrs. Liston’s choices, and of her unabashed disclosure of these choices.

“And what of you girls? Are you quite prepared for the social activities which are absolutely endless during the cool season?” Mrs. Liston asked us, putting a large forkful of fried plaintain into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed with a gusto that I knew Mrs. Waterton disapproved of, and yet I found her enthusiasm quite pleasurable.

“I most certainly am,” Faith said, daintily cutting her sausage into tiny bites. “After the positively wretched months on that ship I am quite prepared to enjoy myself. I’m sorry to have to admit, Mrs. Liston, that I’m one of those young ladies who
do
enjoy dancing and cards and all the other pleasurable aspects of an active social life.” Her voice, no longer weary as it had been the evening before, now had an almost haughty air, which surprised me. I assumed she would like Mrs. Liston. In fact, the other woman’s straightforward speech and confidence reminded me of the Faith I had known in Liverpool. I realized then just how much Faith had changed during the voyage, but I knew that once she was rested properly she would regain her excitement of life and make me laugh with her outrageous statements and confidences. I made a pretense of spooning a strange-looking orange jam onto my bun, watching Faith from under my eyelashes.

“I do intend to enjoy myself,” Faith repeated.

“As you will, my dear,” Mrs. Waterton said, smiling again. “As you will.”

I witnessed, that first day, that Mrs. Waterton spoke sharply to her servants and constantly grumbled about them. She didn’t call them by name, instead calling them by the name of the job they performed. And yet she did seem to carry almost an underlying sense of affection for them—and they treated her with the utmost respect. In very short order I began to understand the hierarchy of these servants.

The household was run by the
khansana,
or head bearer. It quickly appeared to me that he kept a stern eye on all the other servants. Then there was the
khitmutgar,
the imposing figure waiting on us at the table. There were a number of servers under him. Next came the cook—the
biwarchi,
or, as Mrs. Waterton referred to him, the
bobajee.
He had an assortment of helpers, which Mrs. Waterton simply called the
bobajee
’s boys. Then there was the
chuprassi,
or messenger, in his fine red sash, whose job it was to stand at the door all day to open it to admit anyone who entered, and to accept all chits, or calling cards, that were delivered. There was the
dhobi,
in charge of washing and ironing the clothing and linen, the
bheesti
to carry water, the
mali
to look after the gardens, and the night watchman, the
chowkidar.
Mrs. Waterton shared a
durzi,
or tailor, with two other households. There was a huge cleaning staff, each with a specific job. The boy who carried the dishes from the dining room was not the boy who washed the dishes. Another polished the silver. The boy who swept the house was not the same boy who swept out the verandah. The boy who dusted could not touch the dishes, and so on. The youngest servants were the host of punkah pullers and the very small boys who forever hovered behind our chairs, waving horsetail whisks over our heads to discourage insects from alighting on us. The only female servants I saw were the ayahs—each woman in the house had a personal ayah to help her with bathing and dressing and brushing and styling her hair.

There appeared to be a litiny of rigid rules, which were overwhelming at first. Over and over I asked someone passing me in the hall, or on the verandah, or in the dining room, for something, only to be met with a blank look. At first I assumed it was because they couldn’t understand the few simple commands I learned, but then later realized I had simply asked the wrong person. As the majority of servants—apart from the
khitmutgar
and
chuprassi
—dressed in simple white dhotis, shirts, and turbans, their feet bare, I found it difficult to distinguish them. But within a few days I began to recognize faces, and height, and distinctive manners of walking.

By the end of our third day in Calcutta it occurred to me that there was nothing for any of us to do. Mr. Waterton—and it would seem, every Englishman who wasn’t in the army—was a civil servant for the East India Company. Mr. Waterton was a director of land records; he left after breakfast, returned for lunch, went back to work until dinner. The household ran itself—or rather, was run by the imposing
khansana.
From what I witnessed, Mrs. Waterton’s role was primarily to meet with her
bobajee
each morning and discuss the meals of the day. After this, she might inspect the rooms to see if they had been cleaned to her standards. There were the flowers—armloads of blossoms cut and laid in an enormous pile by the
mali,
with vases filled with water at the ready—that she might arrange. Sometimes she consulted with the
durzi
over what she wanted sewn up or repaired. Some days a box wallah came to the back door and spread out his wares, ranging from ribbons and cooking pans to fabric and teapots. Mrs. Waterton would pick what she wanted and hand the required rupees to one of the serving staff, who would in return hand it to the box wallah. She would write out any chits to communicate with or reply to chits left by neighbors. This was done between breakfast and lunch.