The Linnet Bird: A Novel (68 page)

“No reason for that. Symptoms are quite clear. We’ll just see when it should arrive. Date of last flow?”

I lowered my eyes again. “The beginning of July,” I lied in a whisper.

The old man studied a grimy calendar, flipping the pages ahead. “Right. Watch for signs in late March.” He stood, slowly straightened his back, and took a round silver watch out of his waistcoat pocket. He clicked open the cover and eyed the dial. “That should be it, then, Mrs. . . . sorry, what was it?”

“Ingram. Mrs. Somers Ingram.”

Dr. Haverlock’s face brightened, and he looked at me with interest for the first time since I’d entered the room. He brushed snuff off his sleeve. “Ah. Somers Ingram. Well, well, I expect he’ll be a happy fellow with this news, then, what?”

“Yes.” I gathered my gloves and reticule and walked to the door. Dr. Haverlock followed me.

“If you experience any major discomforts, let me know,” he said, his manner remarkably warmer now that Somers’s name had been mentioned. “Just rest as much as you can, no spicy foods, no upsets or hysterics, and in about seven and a half months it will all be over.” He smiled in a fatherly way, patting my shoulder. “Messy business, birthing, but a necessary evil, I’m afraid.”

I forced a smile. “Thank you so much, Dr. Haverlock.”

He reached in front of me and opened the office door. “One more thing, Mrs. Ingram. When your confinement begins, make sure you call for one of our women to help. Don’t trust an Indian midwife.”

“But of course, Dr. Haverlock,” I answered sweetly. My smile disappeared at the dull thud of the closing door.

W
HEN
I
TOLD
S
OMERS
that evening, a range of emotions crossed his face. Surprise, dismay, and then suspicion. “What do you mean, a child?”

“Have you forgotten, Somers? That night, with Neel’s leash, when you—”

He put up one hand. “All right, all right. Damn.”

“Damn? That’s your reaction to this?”

“I don’t want a child, Linny. It will add a complication to all of this. I said there would be no children.”

“You also said you’d never touch me in that way.”

He sat down, his legs stretched in front of him. “I’m not interested in being a father.”

I waited.

“Well,” he finally said. “We can’t do anything about it now. Perhaps it will settle you.”

I nodded. “Perhaps it will.”

September 18, 1832

My fondest wishes,
Linny

Somers and I never spoke of my pregnancy, although I sometimes saw him looking at my growing belly with a hint of alarm.

I had Malti go to Nani Meera with a chit, asking her to help when my time came, and to arrange for her to come regularly to Chowringhee, although of course she went to the servants’ godown. It was there, in one of the small, clean rooms, that we visited and she touched me with warm, dry hands, telling me the pregnancy went well. I told her I had already given birth once, and she told me it would only make this birth easier.

I was strangely peaceful as the months slowly passed. I sent notes of regret to the social invitations Somers and I received—although he often attended without me—using my pregnancy as an excuse, and instead spent my time sitting on the verandah. In the quick Calcutta twilight, waiting for the first breath of the evening breeze to stir the leaves, I listened to the whirring of the crickets and the frogs’ croaks, placing my hands on my abdomen and wondering if the baby was hearing the same sounds. With the heat less intense as we went into the cool season, I could hold a needle without it slipping, and learned to sew, with Malti’s help. I worked on clothing for the baby, making intricate minute stitches in tiny yoked shirts and vests and petticoats.

I brushed Neel, who was ever at my side. We sat, Malti and Neel and I, and I rejoiced over the first tiny flutterings and stirrings, content to know the child Daoud and I had created was growing. I refused to imagine what would happen if the baby was too dark; if it had a shock of black hair and long black eyes. I held tightly to the memory of Daoud’s skin, no darker than Somers’s, of his strong white teeth, his capable hands, his body, hard and muscled. I knew that if the physical attributes of the child shouted my deceit, I would have to take the infant and disappear. Where, or how, I didn’t know, and I refused to let it haunt my thoughts.

As the air grew cool I grew heavier, and I summoned my
durzi
to make comfortable clothes, flowing and unstructured.

Somers hated them, telling me I was a disgusting sight, lolling about uncorseted in loose tea gowns. He forbade me to wear them. I continued to wear them when he wasn’t home.

One morning shortly before the new year he watched me heave myself out of a deep armchair and try to stoop to pick up Neel. “We’re invited to celebrate 1833 with the McDougalls. I told them I’d come, but that you weren’t leaving the house these days. You’re frightfully large,” he chided. “You still have another, what—three months? Doctor Haverlock did say the end of March?”

I studied the underside of Neel’s ear. “Yes. But of course, the baby will probably come sooner. He assured me it’s unusual to carry a child for the full term here in India, what with the extreme climate. And because I’m small, I probably appear larger than a tall woman—” I stopped myself. Somers was clever. I couldn’t appear to be making excuses.

O
N THE MORNING
of February 26, 1833, I waited until Somers had left for work before summoning Malti to fetch Nani Meera.

“It is a good day for a birth,” Malti said, smiling. “As I arose this morning I saw a flock of
satht-bai,
the seven brothers. This is always a sign of a boy child.” She clasped her hands. “I will inform all of the servants, and have them do
puja
for you.”

Dear Malti. She was my only ally, doing what I asked with unquestioning faithfulness. After she left I lay alone, frightened by the remembered intensity of the pain. When Nani Meera and Yali hurried in an hour later, I cried out in relief.

Within moments Yali was massaging my temples with something cool and sharp smelling, while Nani Meera laid out cloths and a sharp knife and an assortment of herbs and oils. By early afternoon I pushed my son into Nani Meera’s waiting hands.

“It is a healthy boy,” she said, deftly cutting the cord and holding up the glistening baby. “From the sound of him it appears he will be brave and headstrong, like his mother.”

I raised my head and studied him anxiously, afraid of what I might see. But he simply looked like a newborn, skin reddish, his face screwed into a tight, angry scowl, wailing thinly as if complaining about the discomfort of his journey. And his hair was a wet slick of dark gold.

Malti clapped her hands, laughing as the baby’s first cries turned to indignant howls as Yali rubbed him firmly with a warm, damp cloth. “Listen to his cry,” Malti said. “No one will argue with him.” She took the baby, loosely wrapped in soft flannel, from Yali, and when Nani Meera had finished helping me into a fresh nightdress and I was propped against the pillows, Malti put him in my arms.

While Malti took away the soiled bedding and Yali packed the bag they had brought, Nani Meera pulled a chair to the side of the bed and stroked the baby’s damp head.

“He has your fair hair,” she said. “Look, it already shines like Surya’s first bright rays.”

I took her hand. “Thank you, Nani Meera,” I said. “You’ve given me—and him,” I added, touching my lips to the baby’s velvety forehead, “a chance at happiness.”

Nani Meera squeezed my hand. “I have given you nothing, Linny. You create your own destiny.”

Yali set a small packet on the table beside the bed. “Dissolve this in water and drink it tonight,” Nani Meera said. “You have no damage from the birth. Do not listen to the urging of the English memsahibs who will come to see you, puffed full of advice. They will tell you to remain in bed for a great while, but you will only become weak if you do. They will say the child should not be handled excessively, but this is also wrong. The baby has known only your body’s warmth and the beating of your heart. To so suddenly lose this comfort must be a great sorrow for even a tiny spirit. I know it is the way of your people, but perhaps it is the cause of the hesitancy of the English to respond to others, to back away as if burned when touched. Hold your son, Linny, hold him tight against you and rock him and sing to him and let him feel your love. This I did with my Yali, and with Charles, and, in return, they are unafraid to show their own love and feelings.”

The baby stirred and turned his head toward my breast.

“You have hired a wet nurse?”

I shook my head. “No.”

Nani Meera smiled. “I suspected as much. All the more reason for the English ladies to whisper about you.”

“I don’t care.”

“Good. You must be strong with these magpies. Yali will instruct Malti to prepare a daily boiled drink containing cumin and the climbing asparagus; it will increase your milk flow,” she said. “And now you must do one more thing that requires strength.”

I looked up at her.

“You must help your husband believe it is his child. It may be difficult, when you look at this boy and think of his father.” She touched the baby’s head once more, and then laid her palm on my forehead. “May I say a blessing?”

I nodded.

“She is become the light of her house: a red flame in the bowl of a shining oil lamp. She has given birth to his son, whose lands are made lovely with flowers by the pattering rain.”

My eyes were damp. I leaned into her warm hand.

“It is an ancient saying—Ainkurunuru,” she said, keeping her hand on my forehead, and I felt heat and strength flowing from it through me. “Do you have a name for your son?”