by Mary Finn
He told us that these were only sketches and that what he planned was a big – he made a shape in the air – painting in oils of my mother. These oils were not mustard cooking oils he told us, but oils that you mixed with earth or ground-up stones to make bright colours. He would show his painting of my mother to a gentlemen who knew about paintings. If he liked it they might show it in the Company Hall, along with paintings of English ladies, and soldiers on horses, and palaces from faraway parts of India, and even paintings of the Company’s fierce Indiamen ships with all their guns blazing.
I wondered how the painters made the ships stay still while they sketched them, and where they sat to make their drawings while the guns fired. Even ships that were moored at the ghats moved all the time, not like my good obedient mother who stayed absolutely still.
My father never made the oil painting or, if he did, he never showed it to us. But he saw that I liked to pick up his pencil and make shapes on his papers.
“Look at Anila,” he said to my mother. “She can draw a perfect leaf. She’s even put the sawteeth in.”
I never tried to draw my mother, or my father. I don’t know why. Perhaps I was afraid that it was not the tamarind but the paper and pencil that had the power to take a soul away. Perhaps I was afraid that I would fail, as my father did, so often that there were some afternoons he became so cross with my mother and me that he left us without his usual warm hug. Perhaps it was just that I could see my mother’s face every day around me, and that when I wanted to see my father I could close my eyes and there he was in my head, with his crooked smile and his dancing eyes.
What I wanted to draw was what I knew I would not remember unless I put its shape and colours down onto paper. I began with leaves and trees but my mother told me that, from the beginning, every one of my trees had a bird in it, and not just a pretended bird like her lovely purple quilt dove, but a bird that really belonged to that tree. Possibly that owl was the first, but then owls are quite easy to draw. Not their feathers though. If you want to have a proper owl on a page to remember it, then you must be able to show all the different shades of brown in one long wing feather, the light bands running across the feathers, the swell of its chest and the soft wisps round its legs.
My father could do this, only he didn’t draw birds. But when he drew a building, a real one or one that he was inventing, he made you see hundreds of shades in the stones. You could see sharpness and even softness, because my father’s buildings looked almost alive. If he showed glass it shone like eyes. Besides this, somewhere in every drawing there was a door that was not quite closed or a window flung open, even in the palaces, like an invitation to enter. You had to look. There would always be a way in.
So, that is the gift my father left me. Drawing. But somebody else painted my mother.
MR WALKER
I WENT UP THE STAIRS. The testimonial in my hands seemed to get lighter, as if it wished to take off and leave me with nothing to say for myself. I patted my bag, to feel the sturdy form of my work inside. But this Mr Walker would surely laugh at the crazy notion of employing me and never ask to see my drawings at all.
He was standing at the beginning of a long passageway. Doors led off this on both sides but only one of them stood open, and now he stepped back inside it.
“Come along in and tell me who you are and why you have been sent to me,” he said. He truly had an extraordinarily deep voice, but it was not unfriendly or frightening. It was almost musical. He rolled his rs.
I followed him into his room.
“Leave the door open for Mr Minch,” he said. “I hope he has the redeeming grace to bring two cups.”
Now I could see that the man talking to me was perhaps about thirty. Older, anyway, than my father the last time I saw him.
He was tall and thin, and though he seemed poised he was edgy too. He reminded me of a hunting dog, the still, clever kind who find things. Deep lines ran between his nose and his wide mouth and his forehead had four wavy furrows like the sea in a sea-picture. His sandy hair was bound into a pigtail, but everywhere there were bits escaping. At least it was not a wig. So many English gentlemen wore those hanks of dead hair on their heads.
He was standing on a rug in front of a desk piled with papers and books. A silver elephant sat on the tallest pile of documents, pressing them down. The room was quite in shade because drapes covered its one large window but I could make out shelves of dark wood. Their feet stood in troughs of water to protect them from insects. There were more books stuffed together on the shelves, but also, like creatures in a dream, there were birds.
Large and small birds were piled up on these shelves. The big ones stood on their own. The little ones perched on twigs inside small cages. All the birds were staring out with glassy eyes. They were dead birds, sad birds.
“Now,” he said, “you must tell me who you are, young lady, and what your business is with me.”
I had not yet spoken one word to this man but somehow I knew that he was not busy making judgement on me. Suddenly I wanted him to see me in a whole and proper way, the way Miss Hickey did.
“Sir, I have come because of the notice in The Gazette,” I said. “I can draw birds and animals and plants. I have a testimonial here, and also samples of my work.”
He let out a slow breath, almost like a whistle. But before he could speak there was a clatter outside and Mr Minch made his way into the room bearing a large tin platter. On it were two white china cups, a beautiful pale green teapot and cream-jug and a tiny silver bowl filled with dark sugar crystals.
“Thank you, Mr Minch. A proper wake-up for duty is needed, after all.”
“Can I get you something to eat, sir?”
Mr Minch seemed to have put himself back in good humour, I noticed. Perhaps the sentry would escape his tongue-lashing.
“No, thank you. My stomach has still to custom itself back to Calcutta after its visit to the south. Unless Miss…?”
They both looked at me.
“No thank you, sir,” I said.
Mr Minch put the platter on the desk and went out, closing the door behind him.
“Now, you could show me your drawing-room skills and pour, or I could play host and pour – which is it to be?”
He smiled, so I pointed a finger at him.
“You pour, sir. It’s a very pretty pot. I would hate to break it.”
“It’s a very ancient pot indeed. That’s well observed of you. It’s pure China porcelain, with a celadon glaze. My late aunt’s bequest to me. Mr Minch is under pain of death not to break it and certainly not to lend it to any of the other saints or scholars who work here. And above all never to a gentleman of the law, not even a judge.”
He poured tea into the cups and we sat down, he behind his desk, I on a leather stool in front of it. He shot me a glance.
“There’s a common bird in these parts that has just such a rare green in its feathers. I wonder if you know the one I mean.”
Well, but of course I did. If this was a test I could pass myself off reasonably.
“I don’t always know the English words for all birds,” I said. “But it’s a kind of duck. A small duck that we call the whistler.”
“Very good. But now, to first details. What is your name?”
I told him.
“And – I am estimating here – you have an English father and an Indian mother?”
I nodded. Then I shook my head.
“My father is Irish.”
Sing it loud, sing it proud, the princess Anila of Calcutta has not a drop of English blood!
“Is it either of those who have supplied this testimonial?”
He had the thick envelope in his hand but had not attempted to open it.
I almost laughed. What an idea!
“No, sir, of course not. It was written by Miss Helena Hickey on behalf of her father, the artist, Mr Thomas Hickey. I have been boarding with them for these few years past. I was an assistant to Mr Hickey. But indeed
it was my father who taught me how to draw.”
He looked at me with some respect, I thought.
“I understand that Mr Hickey is celebrated in Calcutta for his portraits,” he said. “But it is quite another skill that I am looking for, you understand.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “And I can show you my work that suits your requirements. I have it right here with me.”
He told me to take out my drawings while he read the testimonial. I turned away, and struggled to get the leather case out of my bag. I knew what Miss Hickey had written because she had shown me the two closely written pages yesterday and I had read them while she was out of the room. That had been extraordinary. There were my circumstances laid out as if they belonged to a character in a story. And then at the end:
Miss Anila Tandy has rare ability to extract from Nature nothing more and nothing less than what is given. She does not embellish or decorate on the page, she regcreates the diversity of creation and the beauty of line… In addition to her natural genius for draughtsmanship she is an honest and thoughtful young person and has an original cast of mind in two languages, English and Bengali. I would much have preferred that she should remain in our household. But we move to Madras and Miss Tandy prefers to remain in Calcutta.
“You are quite a paragon, it seems,” said Mr Walker. But he said it slowly and without any trace of mockery. “I must admit that I would give a lot to have met with the writer of this missive. Though I would naturally fear for her opinion of me.”
He reached across for my notebooks. He turned the pages, slowly, without looking up at me. Sometimes he turned back and looked over a particular one again. I wondered if I should explain the order I had made, and the names I had given the birds. But I knew that the drawings had to speak for themselves, and that they must speak louder than all Miss Hickey’s kind words.
Mr Walker got up and went over to a shelf by the wall. He took down one of his dead birds and brought it back to the desk. It was an oriole, a black-headed one, and its legs were nailed onto a small log. My notebook was open at a painted sketch of an oriole I had made last year, on a picnic with Miss Hickey and her friend Mrs Hadley. A storm had appeared like bad magic, with rains that soaked us through while we ran back to the carriage, laughing and spattered with mud. I had finished the oriole from memory back in the house. It was a good likeness.
“You have caught the curve of the bill perfectly,” he said. “And goodness, what sharp eyes they have!”
I did not point out to him that the poor bird on the desk had only brown buttons for eyes and that insects had gnawed its bill to dust.
He left the oriole back and returned to the desk with a little garden bulbul. It had only one leg; the other was supplied by a twig.
“Your bulbul has just the outraged look that I have observed in every one of these creatures,” he said. “Look at this fellow. He has it too. They remind me of farmers’ wives asked to give the parish a few eggs and cabbages at Christmas-time. But perhaps you have painted your one a little more of a red rump than he deserves.”
“But that was exactly why I chose that bulbul,” I said. “You see, I knew him.”
Anila, he’s back again, the little red bottom bird. Our own dancing bulbul!
“I liked him because he was much more garish than most. He lived down the lane where my mother and I had our house. He used to take baths in a dish of water we kept outside the door for him. That is one of my oldest drawings. I like it for all those reasons, but it is not as finished as one I would make now.”
He gave me a sentry’s look.
“Miss Tandy, your correspondent here has not sold you short, not by any means, but she has not explained how you acquired your affinity for nature and that I really look forward to hearing about you from yourself.”
He stood up. All at once he had so much energy that he crackled.
“But I must leave you now. I have an engagement. What I propose, if it is agreeable to you, is that you and I take a walk in the city Gardens tomorrow morning. Bring your paper and pens. Then we can discuss how we might proceed and whether this might be at all a proper arrangement. But certainly on the evidence of these pages I cannot imagine I will find your equal in all of Bengal.”
He paused at the door.
“Ask Mr Minch for directions. He’s not as dour as he looks. And come early.”
MRS PANOSSIAN’S SHOP
“BUT ANILA, HOW CAN you think Mrs Pan will ever agree to your plan? It’s quite impossible. She will be so cross she won’t want to look at you again. Then you’ll never ever have any work here.”
It was dinner-time. The white city had closed its doors and shutters and gone back to sleep. There was nobody in Mrs Panossian’s huge shop room except myself and Anoush so she felt free to come out from behind her counter. She stood beside me, biting her lip.
She had heard my story of meeting Mr Walker, and the birds and Mr Minch and the green china teapot, and she was pleased for me. Then she’d tried on my ring. It fitted her slender third finger perfectly and she turned the arms and heart out as I did.
“Fancy man, where are you hiding?” she giggled when I told her what that meant.
“If it was from anybody but Miss Hickey I would give it to you, I promise.”
She laughed and squeezed my arm and put the ring back on my little finger.
Then I told her about my idea.
“Just for the English Christmas, Anoush, you must come and stay with me. My little garden house will hold two string beds, I know it will. We can have our own holiday with nobody beckoning and you need not have to clean up and mind children when you should be free. We could even walk abroad in the evenings like two ladies.”
“Like two ladies,” said Anoush slowly. Her dark eyes were huge as a baby’s.
We both knew that that was just my talk. Ladies did not walk abroad in the evenings on their own. But I had lived for years in a house that had no men in it and it seemed entirely possible to me that I should do that again. Poor Anoush had no idea that there might be such a world.
She was kin to Mrs Panossian, she called her Auntie, but there was no bedroom for Anoush above the shop. She lodged with a tea merchant’s family. Every morning she had to dress and feed their children, pick up her bedroll from the floor and put it away, and then make her way to the shop. She felt trapped, I knew that.
Why, even standing inside Panossian’s store was like being inside a giant coffee bean. There was the glorious smell, yes, from the coffee roasting oven. But more than that, everything that belonged inside the shop was dark brown: the shelves, the drawers, the thick overjackets or long pinafore aprons that the assistants had to wear over their clothes. Even the glass jars of preserves seemed stuffed with dark things: sugared plums, browned peaches, berries, juniper fruit. I thought of the bazaars in our city where fruits were huge and bright and tumbling over each other, ready to grow again where they fell. Was everything in Europe so very dull coloured, so small?
Yet Miss Hickey loved this shop. And coming here with her, after all, was how I came to know Anoush.
“Mrs Pan would never let me leave the Seropins. They pay her a little so I can get Vard, Liza and Mariam up and out in the morning and back to bed at night. And help Vard with his letters.”
“Oh, Anoush. That is such an injustice. For all that you do, you earn that money, not Mrs Pan.”
“But a free bed and free meals – and to get all this arranged for an unmarriageable orphan? That’s what Madame would say from the top of her high mountain of fruit and coffee beans. How I’d love to…”
Anoush stopped speaking and swiftly moved back behind the counter. She picked up a piece of madras cloth from underneath it and started rubbing down the wood.
“Well, my dear Anila. And are you buying something or did you come to call on me? I believe the Hickey household left Calcutta today, am I correct?”
Mrs Panossian’s voice had a high pitch, like a child’s. Somehow it was a little mena
cing to hear this sound coming from a body that was anything but a child’s. She had enormous bosoms and her face was pale and moon-shaped. Anoush said she was proud of her tiny feet but I thought they looked badly on her, as if a doll maker had run out of stuff at the end of his task. She always wore a bonnet with white streamers and a bow on its top and her dresses were black bombazine. Yet Mrs Pan never looked hot or bothered, never the smallest bit loolally. That was what Miss Hickey called English ladies who became strange in the heat and dust of India.
“Yes, Mrs Panossian. Miss Hickey left for Madras on the morning tide.”
“And you, Anila, where are you staying? Have you decided to be sensible and come and work here with your little friend? I can always use a hard worker and I pay a fair wage.”
She turned her head like an owl, to see what Anoush was doing, but clever Anoush was still polishing, her head facing towards the windows.
“You are very kind,” I said. “I think I shall have a position soon but it is not going to be for long.”
Before she could take another run at her questions I decided to be brave.
“Mrs Panossian – I have a place to stay just for now and what I wonder is, do you think Anoush could be free from her lodgings to spend Christmas Day there with me? Just one day and night? Or perhaps two?”
Anoush’s head was so low down it was practically polishing the counter on its own. Even the shop seemed to be holding its breath in the moment that followed my plea.
“A place of your own? And where would that be, child? For I could not send my own kin to a place that might compromise her, you know.”
Her small round eyes bore into me. The words were cruel but I do not think she actually meant to be so. She was being plain. I guessed what she thought – that I had somehow returned to live again in the little house of long ago, with Malati and Hemavati. Mrs Panossian knew all about that part of my life and I wished she did not.
