by Mary Finn
“I understand, of course,” was her response. But if anything she looked more concerned and I did not think this was merely because her little daughter had begun to cry. “It was a great hope we had, that is all.”
She rose and lifted the baby out of her pen, making ready to nurse her. I had not heard that English women fed their babies so.
“My husband will be home shortly for dinner,” she said. “He attends the Company in the mornings, and in the evenings all persons are at liberty to come here for the treatment he offers. You must stay to eat with us and George himself will tell you about a separate matter.”
THE DOCTOR’S TALE
THROUGHOUT OUR DINNER I marvelled at how gentle the doctor and his wife were with their children. After a grace was offered, all three were free to talk and babble as they wished. There were no reprimands for their small failures in table manners. When little Georgiana in her highchair started to throw rice at her brothers her mother simply distracted her with a jelly sweet and asked the boys to wipe the grains up themselves. I saw no ayah for the baby, but the table servants were spoken to as if everything they did was a kindness and much appreciated.
They asked after Anoush and Mrs Herbert clapped her hands in delight when she heard of the outcome of Christmas Day.
“Such a brave and lovely girl,” she said. “And so obliging, whenever I see her. Oh, she must have a wedding gift from us, George.”
For my part, I did not tell them anything of my own story, or Carlen’s end, or even of the rescue of Manik, for the boys were too small to learn about such cruelty. But I told a little of our river adventures and Mr Walker’s quest for an unknown bird. I wished I had my notebooks with me to show them what I had been employed to do, my one true skill. But that thought brought another twinge of guilt with it.
The doctor stood up when we had finished.
“Come into my surgery room, Miss Tandy,” he said. “Not of course that you are anything other than the picture of good health, but the boys will not disturb us there.”
I followed him into his quarters, a small room to the back of the house. There were cabinets all round this room, their shelves crammed with labelled jars and pots and strange glass utensils in vegetable shapes. A brown delph bowl and pitcher stood on a table by the window. This looked onto a lawn where there was a latticework gazebo, pitched slightly askew. I thought suddenly of my little iron tea house and wondered if I might ever see it again.
I was offered a small armchair and the doctor himself went to sit behind a desk as large as a bed and piled high with ruled notebooks. He took from a drawer a pair of round spectacles and put them on. With these and the straight grey hair that he wore long, he was the very picture of a Persian wizard that I had imagined from the stories.
“I am very glad you received my message, Miss Tandy,” he said. “I was concerned how I might reach you when I found I needed to consult with you. You see – a situation has occurred.”
I was puzzled for Mrs Herbert had already told her husband that I would be travelling to Madras, that I could not be the children’s teacher. But I could see he had a method in telling his tale and in this he would not be hurried.
“I work for the Company and I also work for myself, hoping to do what good I may here and also to learn as much as I can of medical practices that exist outside Europe. You may have observed that I bring here many of the native herbs for trial.”
I nodded for I was listening properly, but I confess I was also beginning to calculate how long my journey back to the city would take. The impulse that had brought me here had now used up almost the day and I feared greatly that Mr Walker might be hurt by my neglect of his work. Clearly, there was no urgent matter here for me at Alipore.
It was while the Herberts waited in Madras for their sailing to Calcutta that the Company charged the doctor with his first case on their behalf, he told me.
“I was called to give an opinion in a case of amnesia.”
Was that a kind of fever? I had not heard of it.
“Amnesia is a loss of memory,” the doctor explained.
My heart turned over.
“Now let me be direct, Miss Tandy. When we made enquiries of Mrs Panossian about the possibility of employing you as a tutor to our children, naturally she gave us your name and a little of your history. Do not worry. I did not share any information with her but I had to ask myself if perhaps there might be a link between you and this patient. You see, he bears the same name, and it is not such a common one. If there were a connection, well then anything you could tell me about his background and circumstances might assist me. Especially now that you are leaving the city.”
He looked at me over his spectacles, enquiringly. But I was too shocked to speak. Outside in the garden the boys were shouting, running, but their clear high voices were fog in my ears. I felt as though I had been thrust down a deep well. I was cold.
The doctor clapped his hand to his forehead.
“Oh, Miss Tandy,” he said. “I have given offence. I should of course have told you that the patient’s condition is not a disease. He acquired it as the result of an accident. There is no cause for worry, should you be kin. He–”
“Doctor Herbert, you are talking about my father,” I interrupted at last. “Oh, please, he is not ill? Please don’t give me any bad news, not now, not when I travel to meet him only next week.”
But what could please ever do?
The doctor flushed a deep red. For a horribly long moment, he was the speechless one. He took out a piece of white linen from his waistcoat pocket and wiped his brow. Then he spoke, almost in stutters.
“But, my dear girl, Mrs Panossian, she told me, that is she told us, that your father was dead, she was assured of it, she said. I thought that this patient I had met might possibly be a brother of his, or a cousin, you know. The desire to travel to distant lands often runs in families. I would never have spoken so–”
“Is my father all right? Please, that is all that matters to me.”
He sighed.
“He is ill, Miss Tandy, but at the same level of illness that he has borne with courage for some years, apparently. Your father? Well, of course you must know, but…”
As briefly as I could, I told him what I had not spoken of at dinner-time. Carlen’s revelations, Mr Walker’s discovery of my father’s plan that we should have our own little income, my own beliefs and fears ever since my father’s departure. The doctor was completely disarmed by my story, I could see that, but I was entirely impatient to know his. After Carlen, here was the last person to have met my father. And so recently!
He put up his hands, finally, to stop my questions.
“Miss Tandy, my wife always tells me that I wear seven-league boots to tramp over a story, and she will be confirmed in that, doubtless, this time. But I know that what I should tell you first is this. I have committed this patient, your father, to my care. And, since my care cannot be in Madras, Mr Tandy is, even now, travelling with an orderly serjeant to Calcutta. There was no passage for him on the ship we took ourselves. I expect him here at Providence House any day, you see.”
He went to the delph jug and poured water into a cup which he handed to me. My fingers brought it to my mouth but I hardly knew how this happened.
“We seem to take turns astonishing one another, my dear,” he said, gently. “Your prime question, whether your father be all right, is answered by my yes, my qualified yes. But now I will tell you the way of it all.”
“But why did they call you, a doctor, to see my father if he is not very ill? Why can he not stay in Madras? You say he is not any worse than Carlen’s letter told me?”
He nodded.
“Best I can tell, my dear,” he said. “Nonetheless, what the Company wanted me to do was to recommend that Patrick Tandy be incarcerated for life in a lunatic asylum. And, since no proper such place exists here yet, what they required was that he be returned to England, posthaste, to an institution called Bethlem, o
r Bedlam, as people call it. A most fearful place where medicine treats mad people as if they were monkeys.”
“No!”
My dream suddenly came to mind, that vision of my father shrinking to nothing. Perhaps some things were worse than death. Was this how it would end after all?
“You are right. He is not mad,” the doctor said, his voice steady, as sound as I could wish. “But you see, even the king himself is not protected from receiving cruel and improper treatment when such an infirmity is suspected. For the royal mind has suffered so in recent years. I take a special interest in such malady, you see.”
He tapped a pile of his books. I could read titles handwritten on the spines of some of them. Melancholia. Mania. But no Amnesia that I could see.
“I could clearly see that your father is a man of sensibility and honour. That he is respected, even venerated, by those he consorts with. That he can still work in a fashion far more useful than many in this city can and do. That he remains, in short, a person with a purpose who–”
“That is exactly what Carlen wrote in his letter,” I said, cutting him short.
Doctor Herbert looked puzzled. As well he might, for of course now I couldn’t remember exactly what were the details I had blurted out only minutes before.
“When Mr Walker’s man met my father in Madras he said that he made money painting pictures of ships.”
“Indeed so,” said the doctor. “I watched him at work. Look at this.”
He reached for one of his notebooks and turned the pages until he found a slip of drawing paper. He held it up so I could see a small sketch of a fishing boat pulled up on the shore, lying to one side.
I got out of the chair and took the drawing from him. I ran my fingers down the fine lines of the boat, and over the bold tiger eyes my father had made to stare from its bows. I wanted to touch the perfect little boat to my cheek. Oh, there was such joy in that simple slip of paper!
When I looked up again the doctor was watching me, as thoughtful-looking as if I were one of his patients.
“Another matter was this,” he said. “There was an unseemly urgency about the Company’s request, which made me certain that it was intended to benefit them at the expense of the patient. The person I was dealing with was bound for London himself and keen to oversee this proposed removal in person. A man called Crocker. He took a fury when I told him that I could not in conscience export the patient, your father, to Bedlam.”
Crocker! In the Gardens, so long ago it seemed now, Mr Walker had called this man an apocalypse. How right he had been.
The drawing paper slipped out of my hands and as I bent down to pick it up I heard frogs begin to croak outside, a sign that evening was approaching. I placed it on the desk and the doctor smiled at me but I was too stricken to respond. I was shivering. He came round his desk then, and took up my right hand into his two warm ones, pressing it firmly.
“Forgive my clumsiness, Miss Tandy. That name seems to mean something to you. But you mustn’t worry. This Crocker did not win his case, far from it. Not only is your father now my patient but his transport and his care are to be entirely at the Company’s expense. They had to accept this condition or lose my services.”
I could hear the clip-clop and crunch of a horse and carriage arriving at the front of the house. I started up, half in hope, half in terror, but Doctor Herbert spoke quickly.
“That will be my sister returning. It won’t happen in quite that way, Miss Tandy. There will be messengers from the Company, from the ship, all kinds of documents and visitations before your father is released here, take my word for it.”
“Doctor Herbert, it is so hard for me to believe that my father is coming to Calcutta, after all. This changes everything I was intending to do.”
He nodded.
“Of course. Though now you understand that I was ignorant of everything when I asked you to come here. I knew nothing of your travel plans, nor, most wonderfully, of your family situation. I merely thought there was a chance you might help me, as if with a puzzle.”
“But I can! More than ever. And you can help me!”
Miss Hickey would be shocked at my boldness. I took a breath. “I’m sorry. I have been a little afraid, you see, of what I might find.”
He shook his head at that, firmly.
“There is nothing to fear, I promise you. Now, Miss Tandy, you must come and stay with us, after your father arrives. I don’t speak of any duties. That is another matter. But your presence will be invaluable in attempting your father’s restoration to health. And if we cannot quite achieve that, at least we can all assist in his happy maintenance until another solution presents itself.”
All those unlovely words – restoration, maintenance, solution – were hitting my brain like the black keys that can make the harpsichord sound so sad. Suddenly I wanted to jump up and sing hallelujah. Perhaps the doctor believed he had found my father. But I saw it differently. My father was coming to me – and whatever was the mechanism in the universe that had made this happen, it did not matter a jot. All that it had required was keeping faith, as Mr Walker had said. A door must always be kept open.
If I had not stayed in Calcutta how ever might I have met the spiteful Crocker, or Carlen, or indeed the doctor, for that matter?
To give him credit, the doctor was beaming as he slid the little boat sketch across to me once again.
“So, Miss Tandy, your first step might be to ask your good friend Mr Walker to offer your ship’s passage to the next bidder. I understand that you have your paintings to finish in the meantime. I will, of course, have you informed immediately your father arrives in Calcutta.”
He stood then, came round his great desk and offered me his arm.
“Now, let me call the carriage for you. And we’ll both tell my dear Charlotte that I did not do so badly with my trample-all boots, shall we?”
ARDEA ANTIGONE
MY RIGHT HAND FELT as if it had been crushed underneath an enormous palanquin with seven fat ladies stretched out in it, each one decked in heavy gold jewellery. My poor wrist had forgotten how to turn itself. But in just four days I had finished all my drawings and paintings. They were Mr Walker’s now, to bring to London with all his other business.
“Anila, you will be famous in these circles whenever it may be that you come to London,” he said, smoothing each piece tenderly before he packed it in gauze paper and placed it between hard covers in one of his sea trunks. “You might become famous everywhere if only we can have a book made of these.”
He made me sign each one in the bottom left corner, and write in my neatest script underneath the signature all the names we had for the birds. So I copied these in Bangla, in English, and in Latin words whenever we could find the proper match in Mr Walker’s books.
As for the beautiful birds that my grandfather had shown me, Mr Walker had already discovered their name in his tattered copy of Mr Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae.
“Here we are: Ardea antigone, he calls your rosy-headed crane. But here in India it’s called the sarus. The Emperor Jehangir loved the bird, I’ve read that.”
I shook my head. I had never heard that name, nor had my grandfather mentioned it. I could not help feeling a little disappointed that Mr Walker’s sister had to depend on the honey-brown veena bird to carry her name instead of the tall beautiful dancing bird of the riverbank. But Mr Walker did not seem to share my feelings. Antigone was the name of a Greek princess from long ago, he told me.
“That particular Antigone was brave like yourself, Anila. She stood up to a tyrant and she’s remembered for ever for it. But your bird is named for a princess of Troy, I believe. The goddess Hera was jealous of this other Antigone and turned her into a crane.”
“Hera, like our boat?”
“The very one. Wife of Zeus, and together they made a great bundle of trouble. No, I am happy that our veena bird will have no such bad blood in her name. She will be an evelina, of the bittern family, a lively, happy deni
zen of the river, just as her namesake was. I hope she will, at any rate.”
He touched my wooden chair back for luck.
It had been worthwhile to be so busy with my pencils and brushes because I found I could not think of anything else while my hands were delivering birds, and all at such speed. Whenever I stopped drawing, however, I heard every noise on the street loud and close as a small mouse must hear everything sound from behind his wainscot. Every horse clipping by, every carriage, every footstep passing, carried a message for me from Alipore, I felt sure. But it was not until the evening before Mr Walker’s departure that it came.
We were sitting at the little table where I had had my first breakfast with Mr Walker, all those many weeks ago. On the table was my mother’s Durga. Hari had brought her from the garden house, only that afternoon.
“Hari’s report is that your little house is all grown over again with greenery,” said Mr Walker. “It seems the spiders and their colleagues have seized back their rule like the good river pirates they are. But he took the goddess away from the jungle.”
Poor Durga looked ever more like a plain clay cup. I decided I would paint over the faint traces of her many arms and her knowing smile. I picked her up and at that moment the doorbell clattered.
“At this hour?” Mr Walker said, almost to himself.
Chandra bustled in. For Mr Walker’s last day he had put on a white English shirt which he wore over his dhoti, kept in by a black waistcoat that was much too large for him. He carried a plate, only a tea plate, but sitting on it was a small white card. He put the plate on the table between us and stood there, breathing importantly. Mr Walker handed the card to me.
This is to inform Miss Anila Tandy that her father has arrived today at Providence House, Alipore.
Mr Walker let out a long breath, almost a whistle.
“I am very glad, Anila, so very glad to know this before I leave,” he said. He leant over and shook my right hand, as the English will do, and then he jumped up and shook Chandra’s hand too, for good measure. Above us Balor squawked with some emotion of his own. For my part, there were tears running down my face.
