‘Would you like me to run down and get it for you, dear?’ Miss Reid asked.
‘No, don’t trouble yourself. I’ll go. I know exactly where it is.’
Indira turned and flew down the stairs before she could be stopped, leaving Miss Reid and me standing together in front of the dining-room doors.
I sat myself down in one of the gilt chairs along the corridor. ‘Miss Reid, please, I’ll wait here for her. I know you haven’t eaten yet, and it will be a long day tomorrow. I’ll be fine here, really.’
‘If you’re sure, dear,’ she said in agreement. ‘Knowing Indira, and the confusion she keeps her possessions in, it could be fifteen minutes before she’s back, and I have such a lot of packing to do after supper tonight.’
‘Really, don’t trouble yourself,’ I said, relieved I’d managed to convince her to go to the below-deck canteen where the staff took their meals. ‘I promise I won’t move until she returns.’
‘All right, dear, thank you. I’ll be back to collect you at ten o’clock.’
As I watched her walk down the staircase, I knew it had helped that she regarded me as the more trustworthy of the two of us. I’d rarely put a foot wrong in her presence. As I waited for Indira, I amused myself by watching the elegant guests entering the dining room. They spoke in their clipped British accents and I struggled to understand a lot of what they said. It struck me then that learning English in India might be very different to the reality of understanding and making myself understood on their shores.
Finally, as the last guests had passed me and entered the dining room some minutes before, and I was beginning to despair of Indira arriving before Grace – the prayer the English said before every mealtime – a vision in peach chiffon floated up the stairs towards me.
I blinked, hardly believing the change that had been wrought in my tomboyish friend. The dress fitted her tall, slim body perfectly and she’d managed to pile her hair on top of her head, securing it with pins and adding a peach rose to the side of it. She was ravishing, in fact, a younger version of her mother.
‘How do I look?’ she whispered nervously.
‘Beautiful. Come on!’ I stood up, heading towards the dining-room doors. We pushed them open, just as the Master of Ceremonies clapped his hands and said, ‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen, pray, silence for the Captain.’
Every head turned towards the Captain, who, as bad luck would have it, was seated in the centre of the room only a few yards from the huge doors where Indira and I were making our surreptitious entrance. All eyes moved towards us, and I stood like a rabbit caught in the headlights, my blush as bright as the vermilion adorning Indira’s lips.
The Captain adjusted his gaze to that of the other guests. ‘Ladies –’ he gestured to us – ‘kindly take your seats before I say Grace.’
‘Thank you.’ Totally unabashed, Indira walked towards the Captain’s table with her head held high, utterly regal in her bearing and showing no hint of embarrassment at being the centre of attention. For the first time I truly saw her as a princess. We took the two seats which had been left to us at the end of the table, but as I followed in her wake, my eyes fell on Prince Varun. And there was no doubt that he was gazing at her with a different expression in his eyes.
I continued to watch Indira that night, as the peach dress seemed to give her a whole new maturity, elegance and charm. Even her parents, who must have been shocked when their daughter walked in, were now looking on benignly.
Yet again, I thought, as I sat in my muslin dress feeling dowdy and uncomfortable, beauty had worked its magic on all who surveyed it. Far from being angry, everyone had embraced Indira. And once the band struck up, the Maharaja himself took his youngest daughter onto the dance floor. After that, Raj, her brother, followed, and finally, Prince Varun. When Miss Reid arrived at my side at ten o’clock and asked where Indira was, I gestured to the dance floor.
I watched Miss Reid’s eyes search her charge out.
‘Where?’
‘In the peach dress, dancing with Prince Varun.’
I watched her face as recognition dawned. A hand slowly went to her mouth in horror and she looked nervously in the direction of the Maharani. ‘I’ll almost certainly lose my position over this. Did you know about her plan?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But what could I do?’
‘What could either of us do?’ Miss Reid sighed heavily. ‘She is a princess.’
I lay in bed that night, listening over and over to the details of Indira’s triumph, which had culminated in the dance with Prince Varun. He had apparently whispered at the end of it that she was turning into a beautiful young woman, just like her mother. And something inside me – no more than a tiny fissure – began to form at the foundations of my belief that Indira and I would be together always. She was growing up before my eyes, and one day, I thought, as I bit my lip hard to stop the tears, my friendship alone would not be enough for her. She would want the love of a man.
I awoke with a feeling of trepidation the next day, expecting repercussions from Indira’s performance the night before. But surprisingly, there were none. Instead, as everyone ran around the ship saying farewell to the friends they’d made on-board, all I heard was how stunning Indira had looked. It seemed that the duckling had turned into a swan and nobody seemed bothered by her disregard for society’s rules.
As Indira skipped around from cabin to cabin saying goodbye to her new friends, I took myself out on deck to watch the country I had heard so much about come into view.
Even though it was August, which I’d been told was one of the warmest months in England, I shivered under my thin cotton blouse. It was still early and a low mist hung over the port of Southampton. I inhaled the English air for the very first time and found it noticeable for its blandness. It smelt of nothing except clean, salty wind.
I tried to rouse myself from my dark mood by thinking I was within an hour or so of stepping onto the famous green and pleasant land that had inspired some of the world’s greatest writers to produce their finest works.
But I could not.
Perhaps, I comforted myself, I was simply exhausted from the emotional stress of last night, but I knew it ran deeper than that. Still unused to the new and strange feelings inside me that had arrived with the sound of the singing, I stood there as a shudder ran up my spine, my skin tingled and the fine hairs on my arms stood on end. I have learned since, of course, that the sensation was warning me of danger. But that day, as I still struggled to understand what it meant, I simply felt as if every one of my senses was on full alert.
The ship’s horn roared a final thunderous note as we docked, and the decks had a carnival-like gaiety about them. On the quay, I could see tiny figures waving Union Jack flags as they waited for the first glimpse of loved ones returned to them.
As everyone else disappeared back into their cabins to collect their belongings and make ready to disembark, the deck emptied and I found myself left in solitude. I shivered again, as much from my sense of aloneness and fear as from the chill. As I reached inside my pocket to find a handkerchief, a pair of warm, brown arms snaked around my waist from behind me.
‘What are you doing up here all by yourself? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ Indira hugged me tight, her sweet breath melting the ice that had been forming in my veins.
‘I was looking at England.’
She turned me around to face her and studied me. ‘You’ve been crying, Anni. Why?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I replied honestly.
A slim finger reached out to wipe a tear from my cheek. ‘Don’t cry, Anni, and please don’t be frightened. I’m here, remember?’ Indira put her arms around me and hugged me to her. ‘And I always will be.’
12
For the following two weeks, we were all installed in a beautiful Victorian house in Pont Street, Knightsbridge. Although it was the size of a rabbit hutch compared to the palace we were used to, it somehow didn’t matter, as there was s
o much to see and do outside. Contrary to Indira’s remonstrations about how much she hated England, she immediately commandeered the family chauffeur and was determined to show me the delights of London. We drove down The Mall to see Buckingham Palace and the Changing of the Guard. We visited the Tower of London, where Indira enjoyed regaling me with lurid details of how Henry VIII, King of England, had once chopped off the heads of two of his wives because he kept wanting to marry another one.
‘How silly that they’re only allowed to marry one woman at a time and have to kill them if they want someone else!’ She giggled. ‘You know Pa could have up to eight wives if he chose to.’
We went to Trafalgar Square and fed the pigeons bustling around Nelson’s column and took a riverboat along the River Thames. But in truth, Indira’s favourite place in London was only a few yards from our Pont Street home.
As she led me through its front doors, she informed me that we had just entered the most famous shop in the world.
‘I love Harrods; it sells everything, from new keys for a broken lock, to cheese, to clothes – even Indian elephants! And,’ she added as we journeyed up in the lift, ‘Ma has an account here, so anything you want, just say.’
Indeed, the Harrods shop, or department store as she called it, was an Aladdin’s cave. Sometimes Indira would play a game with one of the stern-faced assistants by asking if they stocked parakeets or jacaranda trees.
‘Well, Madam, you’ll find the parakeets in the pet department and the trees in the gardening department. If they don’t stock what you desire, I’m sure Harrods can order one for you,’ the assistant would reply.
‘Oh, Indy, please don’t tease them!’ I begged her as she walked away giggling and I grappled with embarrassment.
She took me upstairs to the spectacular toy department, where the sales assistants greeted her like a long-lost friend.
‘When I was very small, I used to sneak out of our house and come here to place my orders for anything I wanted. I put them on Ma’s account, and she didn’t notice for ages.’ Indira laughed as she led me out back down the astonishing moving staircase she called an escalator.
‘You’re not buying anything there today?’
‘No, I think I’ve rather grown out of toys, don’t you? Let’s go to the womenswear department – I’ve never tried on a ready-made dress before. It’ll be fun!’
Having rallied a gaggle of assistants to bring her a collection of beautiful dresses, I followed Indira into the changing room so that she could try them on. After we’d been there for two hours, my patience began to wear thin.
‘Are you sure your mother won’t mind?’ I said as Indira twirled in yet another stunning creation and told the assistant to add it to her already enormous pile.
‘Not until she gets the account in a few weeks’ time.’ She grinned.
On our way down to the front entrance, we passed the books department and I paused longingly for a second. Indira noticed and, perhaps because she was feeling guilty for keeping me so long as she tried on her dresses, she suggested we go to take a look.
And it was here I found myself in a wonderland of my own.
In front of me, in the Harrods shop, were endless rows of the same books I’d coveted behind the glass doors of Cooch Behar Palace’s library. And they were freely available for me to pick off the shelves. I stood with copy after copy in my hands, caressing the gilt-embossed titles.
‘Choose anything you want, Anni,’ said Indira, as restless beside me here as I had been in the womenswear department.
For once, I didn’t protest, and chose three: Bleak House by Charles Dickens, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I hugged them to myself as we left Harrods, hardly believing that I owned them and would never have to give them back.
In the bedroom that Indira and I shared on the top floor of the house on Pont Street, I cleared a space on a shelf and proudly displayed my three books. I swore then and there that, one day, I would earn enough money to own as many books as I wished.
Even though I was filled with wonder at the new sights and sounds of England, my time in London heightened my sense of dependence on the Cooch Behar royal family. At the palace, my needs were small and I was just one of hundreds who were fed and cared for. But here in London, I became acutely aware of it. Even though Indira always had plenty of money and was generous to a fault, I didn’t like to ask her for anything. In the small prayer room which had been set up in one of the quieter rooms at the back of the house, I sat on my knees and offered puja to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, in the hope that one day I would find a way to be financially independent.
A few days later, our return visit to the Harrods shop took me and Indira, under the watchful eye of Miss Reid, to a very different department – that of school uniforms.
‘We have to wear a tie – like men!’ cried Indira as Miss Reid showed her how to fasten it around her neck. ‘Aargh!’ Indira put her hands to her throat, her eyes full of mock terror. ‘I feel as though I’m being strangled.’
There then followed a selection of blouses, smocks and jumpers that were so itchy it was as if a thousand fleas were jumping on my skin.
‘And these,’ said the sales assistant, ‘are for the girls to wear for games, such as netball and hockey.’ She held up a shapeless maroon tunic and large matching pants.
‘Netball? Hockey? I don’t wish to know how to play these games,’ said Indira haughtily.
‘I’m sure you’ll love them once you have tried them, dear,’ said Miss Reid, a fount of endless patience. ‘And you’re so good at outdoor pursuits. You’ll take to English ball games like a duck to water.’
‘I’m very sure I won’t,’ said Indira sulkily.
Miss Reid and I shared a look as she stomped into the changing rooms to try on the hideous tunic.
A week later, we were motored down to Eastbourne in Sussex. Indira sat next to me in the back of the plush Rolls-Royce, staring out miserably at the leafy English countryside, which I thought very beautiful. Autumn had begun to make its appearance; the leaves were turning gold and the softness of the early-morning mists had a soporific effect on me. Miss Reid was accompanying us on the journey and sat in the front seat, chatting with the chauffeur. Eventually we arrived in front of an austere grey building, which reminded me, perhaps unfairly, of Dotheboys Hall, the school where the young Nicholas Nickleby secures an assistant master’s post in Charles Dickens’s story.
The chauffeur unloaded our trunks from the boot at the front of the car, while Indira refused to move from the inside of it. Miss Reid and I climbed out and surveyed the school.
‘Don’t be nervous, dear, I’m sure your time here will benefit you greatly. And,’ she added as an afterthought, lowering her voice, ‘Indira is without her maid for the first time. She will have to do for herself whilst she’s here. Remember, you may not be a princess, but you are a well-bred young lady in your own right, a cousin to a maharani no less. Don’t let her treat you like a servant, will you?’
‘I’m sure she won’t,’ I said loyally.
Miss Reid had no time to say more, for a petulant Indira had followed us out of the car at last and was now sitting cross-legged on the gravel drive.
‘Get up, dear!’ chided Miss Reid. ‘And start acting like the young woman you’ve been so desperate to become in the past few weeks.’
Indira didn’t move. She simply crossed her arms tighter as if to make her point more thoroughly and stared silently into the distance.
I walked around the side of the car and crouched down next to her. ‘Come on, Indy, the other girls might see you and think you’re a baby. Besides,’ I added, ‘it might be fun.’
‘I hate it,’ Indira growled, and I saw that her eyes were full of tears. ‘No one in my family cares that I’ve gone. Pa was too busy even to say goodbye. They just wanted to get rid of me.’
‘You know that isn’t true. They all adore you; and your father especially would want you to
make him proud. Listen,’ I whispered, thinking on my feet, ‘you have plenty of money, haven’t you?’
She nodded.
‘Right.’ I used the last weapon in my armoury. ‘Then if we don’t like it, we’ll simply run away and get on the first ship back to India. How about that?’
At this, she turned to me and her eyes lit up at the thought of such an adventure.
‘Yes,’ she said as she stood up finally and dusted the chalky whiteness of the gravel from her skirt. ‘Now that would make them sorry, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes. Ready?’ I asked her.
‘Ready.’
And, fingers grasped tightly in each other’s hands, we walked up the steps and into the school.
Miss Reid had already warned us that we would be objects of fascination to the other pupils. Indian girls were still very much a rare sight at an English boarding school. For the first week, we steeled ourselves against the stares and whispers our presence engendered, and the giggling we heard when we were served chicken instead of their beef in the dining room. As the girls cold-shouldered us, we clung together for support. Especially at night in the draughty dormitory of ten, when Indira would climb into my bed so we could give each other a hug of warmth and comfort.
‘I want to go home,’ she would cry as her tears fell onto my nightgown. ‘Please, Anni, let’s do as you said and run away.’
‘We will soon, I promise, but we have to stay long enough for your parents to realise that you really have given it a try.’
Indira wasn’t the only one who was miserable. I, too, found my new life terrifying. I loathed the chill of the English dawn, when my bones froze and my body covered itself in involuntary goosebumps which didn’t disappear until Indira’s warm body curled around me at night. The bland English food, which seemed to be cooked in leftover dishwater, with no spices added, made me feel sick. And even though I had thought that my command of the English language and my comprehension of it was good, I struggled to understand the staff and the girls, who spoke so quickly and pronounced even familiar words so differently. When they asked me a question, I would stand, speechless, only realising later what they had meant. The outdoor games with wooden sticks, conducted on wet, muddy fields, with a set of rules that were as confusing as they seemed ridiculous, were beyond me. I was never a ball player, so these were the hours in the day I dreaded most.
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