Under the Jeweled Sky

by Alison McQueen

  • • •

  Sophie dropped a pebble into the lotus pool and watched as her undefined features disappeared in soft ripples across the water’s surface. Perhaps he was not coming after all. In that instant she felt unutterably sad, remembering the times they had shared in the beginning, thinking about how they used to talk of so many things. There was nothing in the whole world that she couldn’t tell him, and they had spent countless hours sharing their hopes and dreams for the future. It used to be one of their favorite games while they explored together like thieves in the night, stealing through the dimness, watching silently from behind long-forgotten panels set into the palace’s ancient history. They were invisible, silent as the spirits, moving like a whisper in the walls. In their hidden world of darkened corners, they would describe to each other the lives they would carve for themselves, the houses they would live in, the people they would know. With Jag she felt free. She would forget herself, the pair of them locked in conversation, fascinated by anything and everything the other had to say, the hours sliding past too quickly before one of them had to go, the day’s great discussion left unresolved, ready to pick up again the next time. They told each other everything, each time with another detail set further into stone, peering into their imaginary crystal balls and deciding what their futures would hold. But then the future came too quickly, and before they knew it, it was upon them in all its terrifying reality. So they stopped talking about the future. It wasn’t fun any more.

  Along with the future, there were other things they stopped talking about too. Their deepest secrets, once so light and free that they could be hung out in the midday sunshine like drying cottons, now sat tucked away deep inside. Sometimes Sophie didn’t know what to think, or how to feel, and would wander around in a daze while she tried to make sense of it all. There would be no point in trying to explain herself to Jag, no matter how she longed to. Their differences were far too great. How could he possibly understand what it would mean for her when all this finally came to an end? She couldn’t bear to think about it, fearful that she would never fit in anywhere else now that she had had a taste of this magical land. The prospect of going back to England was just too awful. She didn’t want to leave India. Moreover, she didn’t want to leave Jag.

  The lotus pool became still, ripples dispersed, the water’s surface a mirror once more. Sophie leaned forward to look at herself again and saw Jag’s reflection appear behind her. She turned and smiled up at him, and wished that her eyes were the same color as his, like tourmalines born from the rich red earth, handed down through generations, a legacy of his ancient tribe. Sometimes she could barely bring herself to look into them, such was their weight.

  “I thought you weren’t coming,” she said.

  “I had to help my father with something,” he lied. And there it was again. The strange awkwardness that settled so easily between them now. Jag sat at the pool’s edge, a little distance from her. “Are you looking forward to the celebrations?”

  “I suppose so,” she said. Her brow twitched and she returned her gaze to the lotus pond. “Do you think everything will feel different tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know. It feels different already.”

  “I expect I’ll get stuck with the Rippertons,” she said, throwing in another pebble. “I’ve never known a woman who goes on so much. It’s no wonder nobody else will ever sit with her. Will you be at the party too?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But separately from you, and away from the women.”

  Suddenly determined, Sophie turned to him. “Then we should meet later, just the two of us.” She stood up. “We’ll watch the fireworks together. It can be our own special memory of this day. I’ll sneak out. Nobody will notice with all the hullabaloo. They won’t even know I’m gone.”

  • • •

  “Well! Don’t we all look quite the picture?” Fiona Ripperton, resplendent in a billowing black silk gown pinned into submission with a heavy detail of jet beading, bumped Sophie conspicuously with a heavy hip and encouraged her to admire the spectacle. “Isn’t it wonderful to see everyone all dressed up?”

  Mrs. Ripperton squeezed Sophie’s arm affectionately and nodded toward a group of servants gathered in a corner, dancing with abandon to the orchestra. “It seems that some of our Indian friends are quite beside themselves with excitement! Rip says that they shouldn’t touch alcohol. It doesn’t suit them. Our bearer has been drunk as a lord since breakfast. Heaven only knows where he is now. Probably passed out behind a bush somewhere. They have a different constitution from us.” She patted her nonexistent waist lightly. “They just can’t handle drinkies. Ah!” Spotting a tray of champagne approaching, she waved enthusiastically at its bearer. “Excellent! Just what the good doctor ordered!” She took two and handed one to Sophie, discarding their empties. “Let me tell you, young lady, this will be the party of the century! It’s not every day that one is able to stand at the very altar of history and witness the birth of a new nation, so bottoms up!” She tucked into her glass and encouraged Sophie to do the same. “I expect you to enjoy every moment, and one day, when you’re a very old lady like me, you’ll be able to tell your grandchildren all about the time you danced the night away in a mahajara’s palace!” She swung her substantial hips a little to the music.

  The evening dragged on interminably. Nobody wanted to feel left out, and the rounds of speeches and announcements went on for what seemed like an age, with toasts proposed for this and for that and glasses raised one after the other. Sophie began to feel light-headed, unused to the champagne, swept along with the swelling crowds gathered in the durbar hall. The jubilant Indians seemed quite overcome, clasping each other in happiness, some chanting Jai Hind! Jai Hind! Long live India!, whereas the Britishers seemed all at once strangely uncomfortable, as though fearing that every brown face in the room might turn against them as the Union flag was lowered for the very last time. As the clock urged toward midnight, every wireless set that could be gathered was tuned in to All India Radio to listen to Nehru’s broadcast to the nation. Voices hushed, tinkling glasses were silenced, and Sophie slipped quietly away.

  • • •

  Outside, the rain had stopped, and for a moment the clouds parted, casting a lamp-bright moon on the surface of the lotus pool. From beneath the wide leaves settled low to the ground, frogs sang to one another, insects humming through the heady evening jasmine, the nighttime alive.

  “Look.” Jag pointed up to the sky, to the tiny white clustered constellation overhead. Sophie followed the line of his outstretched arm.

  “The Seven Sisters,” she said.

  “No,” he replied. “They are the six sisters. The seventh, and wisest, married the star that sits there, in Ursa Major.” She stood close to him as he pointed to the heavens again. “Up there, beside the one that twinkles at the joint where the handle meets the saucepan. Look closely. There is another star there.” He waited as her eyes searched the darkness. “The story of that sister is traditionally told to couples on the day of their wedding.” Jag felt embarrassed suddenly, lowering his hand and turning away. He left the stars to the sky and sat by the lotus pool. “We should offer each other congratulations,” he said.

  “I should be congratulating you really,” replied Sophie. “It’s your country. I expect you’re glad that the British are finally out.”

  “It won’t matter when we are old.” He smiled at her. “I doubt anyone will remember or care any more.” Jag became quiet. “But nobody will ever do that to us again. India will be far too great a country, even for the mightiest of conquerors.”

  “In that case, I shall offer you an early apology on behalf of my King.” Sophie made a small, unsteady curtsey.

  “Apology accepted.” Jag took a bow.

  “Then let us shake hands and be friends.” She offered her hand to him formally.

  Jag took it, and in that moment, Sophie felt
something give way inside her, a shift from deep within. She looked down at his brown tapering fingers, seeing her own, pale and delicate in his hand, the two of them all at once reluctant to let go at this moment of transition. She heard her heart beating.

  “I will remember this moment all my life,” she said quietly.

  “So will I.”

  Together they sat, hand in hand, watching the mirror surface of the pool.

  “Jag?”

  “Yes?”

  She hesitated. “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  He looked at her hand in his, appearing to gather his thoughts.

  “No,” he said. “You are not pretty at all.” He glanced up at her. “You are beautiful.” His smile faded, and he looked away.

  At the stroke of midnight, a stream of fireworks flew up into the blackened sky, exploding into a vast cascade of brilliant, glittering shards, lighting up the water garden, the magical spectacle reflected in the lotus pool. Sitting at its edge, it was as though the fireworks were above them and below them all at once, suspended in space as the colors burst out and around them in a shower of stars. Sophie reached her hand to the pool and touched its surface with the tip of her finger, sending the fireworks scattering across the water. Without warning, her eyes brimmed with tears. She turned to Jag, overwhelmed, and kissed him.

  • • •

  She felt his arms around her, beneath her, above her, her body dissolving, her dress open. He glimpsed her alabaster skin and looked away, his throat tight. His eyes came upon her again, her body, a flash of moonlit shoulder, a Grecian pose almost, as she stood in her petticoat, her dress now a pool of silk on the cool marble slab. He stared at her, on fire, his love so overwhelming that he might swallow her whole, his shirt over his head and aside, his pajamas loosened and thrown. She stopped, silent, and saw his beauty, feeling his warmth, and oh, his lips upon hers. They kissed again, a kiss like no other. She could no longer tell where he began and she ended, the two of them molten, liquid. He felt his body on fire, the fire of life, the first fire ever known to mankind. She felt her heart give way, the world shifting from here to the ends of time, to the moon and stars and the universe that holds them. Jag watched her shiver in his arms, and then there was nothing but ecstasy.

  Above them, the stars had disappeared, shrouded beyond the veil of smoke thrown out from the fireworks that cloaked and bittered the night air.

  1957

  London

  6

  The tiny flat in Kendal Street held a permanent unpleasant stickiness in the air, both from the hand-laundered delicates that hung dripping from the line above the enamel tub in the bathroom and from the poorly ventilated kitchen, its bottom window painted shut. Sophie’s latchkey clattered on to the table as she pulled off her coat and hung it up. A hearty aroma filled the flat, reminding her sharply of her emptiness, having eaten nothing since the tea and toast she had forced down in the station cafeteria that morning.

  “Sophie? Is that you?”

  She called hello and made her way down the narrow hallway to the kitchen, where steam ran freely down the sash window, fogging the grim view of the red-brick building not more than ten yards behind theirs.

  “Where on earth have you been?” Margie dusted clouds of loose flour from her hands and pulled her apron over her head, throwing it aside, blind to the mess she had made as always. “Lucien turned up on the doorstep three hours ago and said you’d stood him up for lunch. He was mighty upset about it. Have you two had a tiff or something?”

  “Hardly.” Sophie slid the silk scarf from her neck and sat at the table.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Margie rinsed her hands under the tap, tinny music escaping from the transistor radio perched precariously on the shallow ledge above the sink.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why the long face?”

  “Oh, I’m just feeling a little under the weather.” Sophie looked up and managed a smile, shaking off the awfulness of the day. “What are you making?”

  “Meat and vegetable pie,” Margie said. “Got a bit of scrag end from the market. Mind you, there wasn’t much left of it by the time I got all the gristle off. Want to give me a hand with the spuds?”

  Sophie rolled up her sleeves. “Pass them over.”

  Margie spread a sheet of newspaper on the table and tumbled a small pile of potatoes upon it before seating herself and setting into one sharply with a knife, watching closely as Sophie picked up a muddy clod and inspected it.

  “All right,” Margie said, paring out a sprouting eye. “Let’s have it. What’s he gone and done this time?” Sophie didn’t bother to look up.

  “He’s asked me to marry him.”

  “What!” Margie sprang up from the table, hand snatching out to silence the radio, almost knocking it over. Sophie began to peel, her knife moving slowly, concentrating hard. If she got the peel off in one single unbroken coil, it would be a sign, she decided. An omen of some sort. Margie stared at her. “What did you say?”

  “I told him I’d think about it.”

  “Well, blow me down.” Margie shook her head incredulously. “That’s a bit of a bolt from the blue, isn’t it?”

  “I’m as surprised as anyone.”

  “When did he ask you?”

  “Sunday.”

  The peel dropped from the potato, the coil complete. Sophie picked up another and began again.

  “Sunday? Why on earth didn’t you say anything?”

  “Like what?”

  “Crikey, Sophie! I don’t know!”

  “I think it took four days to sink in.”

  “I wish you’d told me.” Margie sat down, cheeks high with color. “I can’t believe it. You’ve only known him since…” She thought for a while.

  “Five months.”

  “You’re not…”

  “No!” Sophie smiled. “Of course not.”

  Margie sat back and exhaled, the two of them allowing their thoughts to percolate for a while. They had met a handful of years earlier when Sophie first arrived in London, sent off by her father, who had insisted she should strike out and see something of the world rather than fussing over him and hiding from life in an untidy house perched amid the Nilgiri Hills in India’s far south. A blessed sanctuary it had been, for both of them, and she would have stayed quite happily. There was no lovelier place on earth. Sophie had turned twenty-four that year, just as the winter fogs were beginning to lift from the forest-bound peaks, and her father had become restless, closing himself off in his study where she could see him from the gardens, leaning back in the big leather chair behind his desk, hands poised against his chest, fingertips pressed together while he stared at the ceiling for hours. He had not discussed what was on his mind, but Sophie had sensed it from his manner, the way he seemed to be distancing himself from her. There had been no arguing with him, and part of her had known that the time had come for her to go. She had lived with him for five years, and now she had lived with Margie for four. It had not escaped Sophie’s notice, this habit she made of clinging on, as though afraid to let go.

  It had been such a wrench, her sense of loneliness at times so profound that there were days when it was almost too much to bear, rainy afternoons spent alone in the cinema, trying to appear easy in her own company. There was no lonelier place than a crowded city. You could die in your bed and no one would miss you. You might just as well be a ghost; but for your remains, there would be nothing to say that you had been here once, to live a life overlooked.

  Sophie had taken a room at Mrs. Stanton’s guest house off Queensway in Bayswater, a ladies-only establishment where the doors were locked tight shut at ten-thirty sharp and no male visitors were permitted one step further than the residents’ sitting room, and even then only for the briefest of stops, usually to collect or deposit a guest, some of whom had been there for years. The r
ooms were clean and functional and the women pleasant enough, although the older ones tended to keep to themselves, sharing tales of having had their lives turned upside down by the war. After doing their bit for king and country, they had then been expected to give up their jobs and return to the kitchen the moment their menfolk came home. For some, it was too much to ask, that they should rinse away any notions of liberation and go back to the old ways. Marriages had disintegrated, swelling the numbers of women who now lived by their own fates, whether by choice or through widowhood.

  It was at Mrs. Stanton’s that Sophie met Margie Stock, a rosy-faced Yorkshire girl, some years younger than her, fresh out of secretarial school. Margie taught Sophie the basic rudiments of Pitman’s shorthand and insisted that she really must take evening classes and obtain the required certificate, otherwise the best that she could hope for would be to end up in a windowless typing pool bashing away at a machine all day. It was a week before Sophie plucked up the courage to admit that that was exactly what she was doing. After a month or two, seeing as they got on so well, it was only natural that they should move on from Mrs. Stanton’s together, pooling their meager resources and splitting the rent on a little place to share.

  At weekends, Sophie and Margie would rummage around the bustling street market that sprung up on a Saturday, stallholders shouting Rock-hard salad tomatoes!, weighing goods in the flash of an eye, hurling brown paper bags, swung into knotted corners. Sophie liked to stroll through the market, wandering past the traders and sifting through displays of cheap homewares that would have been considered the very last word in sophistication in the country she had left behind. But the greengrocers’ stalls seemed bland. She would buy fruit: bananas, apples, perhaps a few oranges. That was roughly the extent of the choice, and there were days when she longed for ripe mango or fresh papaya.