The Linnet Bird: A Novel (70 page)

He wouldn’t let me complete a sentence. “Did you not learn your lesson with the Snow woman?”

“Her name was Faith, as you well know.”

“Well, you seem to have forgotten that I do not allow you to associate with anyone unless they are of pure Norman or Saxon blood.”

“Do you think their color rubs off on the pages, Somers?”

His jaw clenched. “We’ve taken over this mess that is India, and we’re all working together—and that includes you, whether you like it or not—to make this land as proper a place as is possible. In spite of its tremendous downfall. We are the superiors. It’s our moral obligation.”

“But I do feel as if I’m helping in this way—creating booklets for English women new to India, to help them understand the culture. And help them adjust.”

“It’s not the booklets. It’s the company. As I’ve said, it’s out of the question.” He crossed to where I was standing.

I looked into his face, my pulse pounding with anger. “So. You expect me to share in this obligation, yet have no responsibility for it.”

“Say it any way you wish, Linny. The point is you’ll do those activities I see as fitting the wife of a
burra
sahib, not the wife of a lowly uncovenanted clerk. You won’t embarrass me again.”

“Why would you be embarrassed by what I create? Mr. Elliot said—”

“I’m quite aware of what he said.”

“You’ve spoken to him?” I looked at Somers’s sullen face. “Are you jealous, Somers? Jealous because I’m doing something worthwhile? Perhaps you just can’t stand the fact this work has given me something to do. And they respect me, did you know that? That’s it, isn’t it?”

He laughed. “Work? You call the worthless way you’ve spent your time there work?” His voice grew louder. “And I won’t listen to any more of this,” he said, and before I had a chance to move he hit me across the cheek with his open hand. At the sound of the damp smack, there was a small strangled cry. We both turned to the doorway to see David, his hands over his eyes.

“David. Darling, Mummy’s all right. Look,” I said, trying to smile as he uncovered his eyes.

He ran towards Somers, throwing his small arms around Somers’s legs. “Don’t hit Mama. You mustn’t. It’s bad to hit.”

I reached down and pulled him away, holding him against me, staring into Somers’s face as if to ask what he would do now.

He tugged at his cuffs. “Mama’s been very naughty, David,” he said. “She must be punished when she’s naughty.”

David struggled to break free of me. “Mama’s
not
naughty,” he said. “She’s not.” He turned to face Somers, his small body rigid, his lips set. There was no fear in his face; what I saw was anger.

“It’s too bad you haven’t been disciplined properly, either, David,” Somers said now, dull red staining his cheeks. “That is not a proper way to address your father.”

I held David tighter, trying to shield him from the blow I expected Somers to inflict on him. He hadn’t struck David yet, or touched him in any way. In fact, he went out of his way to avoid seeing the boy, or be near him. I felt it was only a matter of time, though, until something terrible might happen.

But now Somers simply strode past us. For the first time since I’d known him, he had the grace to look abashed. It had taken a small child to do this.

W
ITHIN A YEAR
I found something else to occupy my time, something that involved neither the wrong people nor the wrong area of Calcutta. I found my comfort in the substance derived from the
papaver somniferum
—the beautiful poppy.

I
N 1836, SHORTLY AFTER
David’s third birthday, I was pleased to hear that Meg and Arthur Liston had returned to Calcutta after their posting in Lucknow. I hadn’t had a chance to see her before an invitation for David arrived, asking him to the second birthday of Gwendolyn Liston, Meg and Arthur’s daughter.

Perhaps, I thought, we will resume our friendship; I remembered feeling that Meg had much the same outlook on life as I had back at the Watertons’ in those last days of 1830.

But I was shocked at the change in Meg. She was gaunt and sleepy looking. The pockmarks on her face appeared more visible than I remembered; perhaps it was the paleness of her complexion that emphasized the deep scars. I wasn’t even sure that she remembered me; after greeting me politely she told me she had asked Elizabeth Wilton for the names of the children in the vicinity, and Elizabeth had passed along David’s name. I was disappointed in her apparent confusion over who I was; she appeared vague about her time at the Watertons’ six years earlier. I was sure that if we had a chance to talk alone I would again find the irreverent, confident, and single-minded woman I remembered.

During the party, the children and their ayahs gathered under a large striped tent in the huge garden and were entertained by performing monkeys and talking birds. Later, after the cake, the children were given rides around the estate on a frisky little pony, the smallest girls and boys—including David—firmly ensconced in a ring saddle.

The mothers remained inside the shuttered drawing room, eating dainty petits fours and drinking lemonade. As I looked around the overdecorated room, I noticed a large hookah sitting amidst small potted palms and ferns on a round, marble-topped table. It had a brass jug and attached cup, with a long snakelike tube wound around it. The tube ended in an ivory mouthpiece. I ran my hands over the jug’s smooth round surface. It was warm.

“A pretty hubble-bubble, Meg,” I said, when she came over to me. I found myself using Hobson-Jobson more and more often now with the other women, even though I had told myself I wouldn’t slip into the nonsense language created by the English in India. “Does Mr. Liston smoke it?” I asked, picking up the mouthpiece.

She laughed. “No. It’s mine. The water makes it so much easier,” she said, touching the round container. “It cools the smoke by the time it reaches your mouth. Oh dear, here’s little Gwendolyn, and she’s torn her frock!”

She rushed to her daughter, who was sobbing loudly and holding up her torn gingham skirt. Left alone with the hookah, I tentatively put the molded ivory mouthpiece between my lips. It was smooth and carried a faint sweetness.

After Meg had comforted the distraught child and sent her back out with her ayah, she came back to me. The other women had broken into small groups, intent on their conversations. “Would you like to smoke it with me sometime?” she asked, smiling in a distracted manner.

“Oh, I don’t smoke,” I said. “I don’t even like the smell of Somers’s cheroots.”

“Foolish girl,” Meg said. “You don’t have to smoke tobacco in it.” She opened a small drawer under the table’s white marble surface and removed a wooden box. Made of mangowood, the box had a tiny hinged lid. Meg pressed the lid, and it sprang open. Inside lay six black balls, each the size of a large pea.

“What are they?” I touched one sticky sphere with the tip of my forefinger.

“It’s White Smoke. Opium. Quite harmless. You know—the ingredient in laudanum. And what would we do without our laudanum.” It wasn’t a question. “It saved me through three births.”

“Three?” I said, and then immediately clamped my lips together. Gwendolyn was Meg’s only child.

“Didn’t you rely heavily on it?”

I shook my head.

“Surely, when you had your little fellow . . .” She studied my face. “Nobody goes through childbirth without great quantities of it. Why would one?”

I made a noncommittal sound.

“Well, you simply must, the next time. You give some preparation of it to your boy, for his aches and pains, though. Godfrey’s Cordial, or Mother Bailey’s.”

“The herb teas that my ayah makes for him when his stomach is upset from too many treats seems to do the trick,” I told her.

Meg frowned. “He’s never suffered from boils, or prickly heat, or earache? What about fevers during the hot season?” Her voice was slow, insistent.

I shook my head, wondering why I suddenly felt guilty for having such a healthy child, and why she kept going on about it in a repetitious and tiresome way.

“I’ve always dosed Gwendolyn with it to settle her. You know, when she’s overexcited or won’t settle down at bedtime. Much healthier than gin, as some do. I find Godfrey’s works like a charm, just like it says on the bottle—‘A Pennyworth of Peace.’ She goes straight to sleep, and is dozy for ages, even after she wakes up. I’ll give you a bottle; I brought a small crate with me.”

I remembered Elsie’s baby, back on Paradise, dead from an overdose of Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup.

“David’s always been an easy child,” I said. “I realize I’ve been very fortunate.”

Meg touched the hookah. “Never mind, then. But listen—this isn’t medicine, but sport. Sometimes I have a few puffs in the afternoon when everyone is napping. It’s lovely and relaxing. Lots of my friends in Lucknow used it. We called it Dreamer’s Delight. Why don’t you come over one day next week and try it with me?”

“I’m not sure . . .”

“Come on, Linny. Aren’t you the memsahib who’s the recluse, stuck over there in that great big shut-up house? Wouldn’t you enjoy some fun?”

I looked at her heavy-lidded green eyes. I felt a strange pull from their unblinking stare.

“All right. Next week. But Meg,” I warned, “I’ll only try it one time. Just the once.”

As she slowly nodded, I saw that Meg was no longer the bold creature I remembered, given to wild flights of impulse and outspoken in her ideals.
Now she appeared as worn and listless as all the other women who had been too long under the Indian sun.

Chapter Thirty-Five

T
HE NEXT
T
UESDAY
I
SAT IN
M
EG
’
S DRAWING ROOM, LISTENING
to the
plunk, plunk, plunk
of the ruffled punkah overhead.
I shouldn’t have come
. But our house was even more stuffy and quiet than usual today. Somers was on a two-week hunt. David spent most of his time on the verandah with Malti these days. Today he had played with his small set of drums and tom-toms, and each whack of his little stick on the tightly stretched goatskin pounded painfully against my skull. Even the ticking of the clock on the mantel was unnaturally loud, and I had felt an overpowering urge to flee from what I saw now as a dark prison.