Daughters of India

by Jill McGivering

  ‘No!’ Asha ran forward, grabbed at Anil’s hand.

  His fist flashed with the blade of his knife. He swung his arm and knocked her to the ground, turned again to Rahul. One arm pulled back Rahul’s neck.

  ‘Thought you’d trick me, did you? Save your Britisher friends?’

  He plunged the blade into Rahul’s chest. When he pulled it free, it drew sucking air. Blood bubbled in its wake.

  ‘Not just you,’ Anil said. ‘Your wife. Your children. Wherever they hide.’

  Asha jumped to her feet, hung on Anil’s arm. She sank her teeth into his wrist. He let out a cry, dropped Rahul and turned on her.

  ‘You too?’ He slapped her across the face. ‘You’ll pay for this.’

  She shrank against the ground, crawled backwards, her eyes on the knife.

  He spat, turned again to crouch over Rahul who lay writhing on the grass. Blood, fast-pumping now, soaked through his shirt and pooled on his chest. Anil stuck him again with the knife. His chest rose, sighed, sank. Rahul fell back and became still.

  Shouts from the house. The chowkidar, finally wakened, went running down the drive, his arms flailing. Figures staggered out onto the grass. A man, stooped with age, had his arm round a woman, guiding her out onto the lawn.

  Asha pressed herself low against the earth and crawled backwards into the darkness of the bushes.

  Anil knelt and wiped off his knife on Rahul’s wet shirt. He turned to his men. ‘String him up. Then get out.’

  Fresh noises from the house. Cries, a woman’s screams, the crash of breaking glass.

  Asha, deep inside a hollowed bush, peered through a latticework of branches.

  Anil turned. His eyes pierced the darkness, searching her out. She closed her eyes, held her breath. Her body trembled against dead, dry leaves. A memory flickered. The smell of rich earth and mildew and rotting foliage, the prick of dry bark against her skin as she hid from other children, taut with the fear of being found.

  When she opened her eyes again, Anil and his men were gone. Rahul’s body hung by the neck from the low branches of a tree, turning slowly. She forced herself to crawl out from the bushes in silence, climbed through the trees to throw herself over the wall and, when she reached the grassy verge on the far side, she started to run.

  The city was ablaze. The night sky shone an unearthly red and yellow. Sudden flashes of light from explosions, from collapsing, burning buildings, lit the dense smoke, which swam silently through the darkness.

  Asha ran at full tilt, her scarf flapping around her face, her feet chafing in her chappals. Her chest ached from panting.

  Sirens sounded across the Civil Lines, drowning out the cries of men and the screams and wails of women. She listened, through the chaos, for the sound of feet pounding behind her. Anil would come after her. He would kill her. She knew it. She ran for her life and for the lives of Rahul’s family, also.

  Police gathered on street corners. They had the pale, strained faces of men who had been roused from their beds at an ungodly hour and ordered to work. They set up roadblocks on the broad avenues and roundabouts, working with efficient weariness. She pulled her scarf low round her face and crept over verges, through hedges, to avoid them.

  Trucks, filled with standing soldiers, careered down otherwise deserted roads. The army was called out of its barracks. A curfew would follow. Her lungs burnt but she forced herself forward through the Civil Lines, then beyond them, gradually leaving behind the grand houses, set back from the avenues, the office buildings as imposing as palaces, the roundabouts with their tended lawns and stone fountains.

  Now the roads became narrower and the buildings meaner and there were fewer policemen. The roar of burning buildings retreated to a distant rumble and the air around her settled again to the natural heat of an August night, unsullied by ash and burning grit.

  At the entrance to the slum, she paused to rest, wiped off her face with her scarf and looked back. The sky above the Civil Lines was a dome of shifting red and yellow streaks. The moon and stars were blocked out by dirty smoke.

  The slum alleys were quiet. A dog jumped up and barked as she ran through. A drunk raised bleary eyes to watch her pass. She fell at last on the wooden door that led into the courtyard and pounded on it with her fists.

  ‘Sangeeta. Jaldee!’

  The wood was rough against her hands. It jumped and strained as she struck it. She wanted to claw it to pieces but already her hands were bruised. She pulled a chappal from her foot and banged the flat of its sole on the door, shouting more loudly.

  ‘Sangeeta. Wake up.’

  A sleepy male voice inside shouted: ‘Be quiet, can’t you?’

  A woman murmured.

  Asha began again to bang and shout. Finally, a hinge creaked and a screen door slapped shut. Footsteps. The door to the compound opened a fraction. A wary eye shone in the gap.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Asha. Rahul and Sangeeta’s friend. The schoolteacher.’ Words tumbled out. ‘Please, bhai, let me in. She’s in danger.’

  A pause, then the man opened the door. He was stout and unshaven, covered only by a lunghi. He scratched at his tousled hair.

  ‘Well, come in, if you must.’ He shrugged, let her pass. ‘Just be quiet, can’t you?’

  Sangeeta lay raised on one elbow on a charpoy. Baby Rupa curled against her, wrapped round with a cloth. The boy, Abhishek, lay sleeping on a mat on the floor. Sangeeta stared, blinked, as Asha rushed in.

  ‘What?’ Her face was strained as she tried to read Asha’s expression. She turned and looked at the empty space on the charpoy beside her. ‘Arrested again?’

  ‘Not arrested.’ Asha crouched low and took Sangeeta’s hand between her own. ‘He is gone, sister. I saw it with my own eyes. We must leave Delhi at once.’ She looked down at Rupa, deep in sleep against her mother’s warm side. ‘If Anil finds us, he will kill us all.’

  The rickshaw driver lay asleep across the back of his rickshaw, his dirty feet sticking out over the frame. He was angry when they woke him. His breath smelt of stale toddy and spices.

  ‘Double,’ Asha pleaded. ‘We’ll pay double the fare.’

  He hesitated, looked more closely at their small group. Rupa hung in a cotton sling across Sangeeta’s chest. Abhishek, sullen, shouldered a bundle of possessions.

  ‘No trouble.’ The rickshaw-wallah’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘I don’t want angry husbands coming to beat me.’

  Asha tutted. ‘Nothing like that, bhai. It’s our poor Mutter-ji only, back in the village. She’s so ill.’

  He stretched, scratched his stomach and finally, slowly, heaved down his legs and pulled himself out of the back. ‘Double? Get in, then.’

  Delhi railway station was shrouded in sleep. An untidy line of rickshaws ranged down one side of the stone steps, their drivers spread, snoring, across their vehicles.

  Inside, the main hall smelt of urine and the sour breath of empty stomachs. Through the lofty ticket hall and along the railway platforms, small groups huddled together. Some lay stretched on the ground, sleeping with heads on bags and clothes. Others sat upright, gazing out with glazed eyes, watching over sleeping children and bundles of belongings, wary of creeping thieves and dacoits. A hawker picked his way silently between the prone bodies, selling chai in clay cups from an urn slung across his shoulder.

  It was still some hours before the ticket office opened. Asha led Sangeeta and the boy to a far corner of the platform and they squatted there to wait. The stone floor was stained with dried splatters of betel juice and chewing tobacco. Already the first flush of dawn along the tracks turned the blackness of the sky to a fading grey.

  Sangeeta settled Abhishek to sleep, cradled Rupa against her breast, then turned to Asha. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘What happened to my husband?’

  Soon after Asha finished her story, commotion broke out on the forecourt. Desperate passengers crowded round, shouting with stale breath, pleading for tickets. Behind the bars of
the ticket window, a station-wallah batted his hands on the counter, palms down.

  ‘Go home,’ he shouted into the clamour. ‘No trains.’

  He wiped off his sweating face with a cloth. A man at the front of the queue pushed his hand through the bars and waved money at him, too much money.

  ‘No trains!’ The station-wallah sounded exasperated. ‘What to do?’

  Asha searched the faces crowded there. Anil would track them down. She knew him. He would find them.

  She ran out of the station building and round to the back of the offices. Two porters squatted there, smoking bidis. They looked up warily as she approached. One was an old man, his legs thin and bent from a lifetime of labour. The other was young. His face showed a picture of the old man’s past. His son, then.

  ‘Bhai, what’s happening?’ She pressed her palms together in namaste and bowed her head respectfully to the old man. ‘Please, ji, are you knowing?’

  ‘I know you.’ The old man narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re the schoolteacher, nah?’ He nodded, considering her. ‘My grandsons go to your school. Three good boys. Already they are reading so many of words. Writing also.’ He thought for a moment. His eyes were pale and rheumy. ‘What lives they will have, these boys. How the world changes.’

  ‘But the trains, ji, what about the trains?’

  ‘Some big problem is there.’ He shook himself, coming back to the present. ‘Go home, schoolteacher. No travel today. It’s not possible.’

  Asha took a deep breath. ‘But I must. My poor uncle is dying. I must reach him.’

  He scratched his stomach, dropped the stub of his bidi to join a host of others littering the ground and pulled himself to his feet. He beckoned her a little closer. His teeth were stained red with betel.

  ‘These freedom fighters, they’re on the rampage. Haven’t you heard? The whole night, they’re lighting fires. Burning houses and offices. Attacking the railway tracks also.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Already, early in the morning only, one goods train is derailed.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Two bogies are smashed. Driver is hurt, that’s what they are saying. Dead, even, who is knowing?’ He sucked his teeth, fixed her with his eye. ‘Such times we are living in.’

  Asha stooped to touch his gnarled feet and beg. ‘Please, ji. We must go. My sister is here with her tiny baby and her son. Help us.’ She reached into the folds of her kameez, pulled out a handful of money. ‘Please, ji.’

  He tutted, pushed away her hand. ‘Well, if it’s like that, schoolteacher—’ he broke off, looked around as if to be sure no one was listening. ‘There is some talk. One train may leave. But it’s not safe.’ He sighed, paused. ‘How would my grandsons be learning without a teacher, nah?’ He nodded, drew himself up, reaching a decision. ‘Go fetch your sister and her children. Carriages are there, out of sight, in the sidings.’ He jutted his chin. ‘I’ll take you. With so much of confusion today, you can creep inside maybe and hide yourselves.’

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Isabel

  She opened her eyes, dredged up from the bottom of a dream. Something had woken her. Not a noise. A sense of someone. Of someone else in her silent bedroom.

  Edward? She managed to raise her head, struggling against the weight of sleep. Of course not. She peered into the gloom. A figure. A man. There, against the pale rectangle of the window. The curtain lifted and billowed and twisted. The window, then. Open.

  The man moved towards her. His feet seemed to glide across the wooden floor. She blinked, stared. Her heart quickened. The dark, shadowed features of an Indian.

  ‘Who is it?’ She sat up. Her voice sounded in the stillness. Her mouth was parched. She looked round, alarmed, fully awake. Her nose pricked with an acrid smell. The soft flesh at the back of her throat stung. Smoke.

  ‘Isabel Madam.’ A familiar whisper. ‘Quick.’

  ‘Rahul?’ She saw him now. She pushed back the bedclothes, swung her legs to the floor.

  ‘Quick.’ His eyes were anguished. ‘Please.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ She reached out to touch his arm. He pushed her away at once. He twisted and looked over his shoulder towards the open window, his face full of fear.

  ‘What?’

  He seized her hand and kissed it. His lips were dry. ‘Little sister. May the gods bless you.’

  He turned, hurried back towards the window and, in a single fluid movement, was gone. She ran to look after him. The back of the garden was dark with shadow but flickers of movement caught her eye. Dark shapes shifted amongst the trees as if the trunks themselves swayed from side to side. She blinked.

  Light, stinging ash peppered the side of her face and she turned, narrowed her eyes. Pouches of smoke puffed black down the side of the bungalow. A muffled sound drifted through the heavy night air. The distant screams of horses in the stables. The crash of their hooves on splintering wood.

  She pulled on slacks and buttoned a shirt over her nightdress, pulled at her bedroom door. Dense smoke rushed at her from the passageway, acrid in her mouth and nose. As it eddied, the red glow of fire swam through it, a low rumble from the other end of the house. She stumbled across the passage to her father’s bedroom door and wrenched it open.

  ‘Get up!’ Her opening mouth filled with smoke. It pressed the words back into her throat.

  A figure stirred, murmured.

  ‘What is it?’ Her father, still in sleep.

  ‘Quick. Get up! Fire.’

  He sat up, dazed. Isabel ran past him, flung back the curtains and levered open the French windows, which led to the garden.

  ‘This way.’

  Her father got unsteadily to his feet.

  ‘Get out,’ she said. ‘I’ll wake Mother.’

  A porcelain ewer stood on the chest of drawers in its matching bowl. Isabel doused her hair with water and poured the rest over one of her father’s cotton shirts, snatched from the back of a chair. She pushed past her father before he could stop her and ran back into the smoky hall, the wet shirt pressed against her face.

  As she moved further into the heart of the bungalow, the wood beneath her feet began to bubble and blister with heat. Ash, flying thickly through the air, burnt her forehead, her cheeks. She grasped the handle of her mother’s door and pulled away with a cry. Her palm throbbed where the skin had burnt. She bit her lip, wrapped the wet shirt around her hand and managed to force the door open.

  A wall of smoke and intense light hit her at once. Heat roared in her face. Flame jumped, red and yellow. The air pounded with the crack of fire and shattering of wood. Her mother’s young maid, a village girl, crashed against her, arms flailing. Her headscarf burnt on her head. Isabel pulled the wet shirt from her hand and threw it over the girl’s flaming hair and pulled her close, suffocating the sparks.

  The maid’s eyes shone wide with terror. ‘Madam is there.’

  Isabel flung herself across the room to the partitioned section where her mother slept. Her mother sat upright, her face full of fear. Isabel helped her out of bed and held her mother close against her side. Her bones seemed frail.

  Isabel fumbled with the window latch. Firmly locked. Her mother started to cough. Smoke surged round them. Isabel wiped off her stinging eyes against the top of her arm, then tightened her grip on her mother and groped in the darkness.

  A hairbrush. A water jug and glass. A chair. She reached down and her fingers closed on the low stool beside it. She swung it up, hurled it against the window. Her mother screamed. On the third blow, the glass shattered, showering them both in shards of flying glass. Isabel pressed herself out through the ragged hole, which tore at her shirt, her slacks. Her arms tightened around her mother as she guided her through. The outside air, cool and fresh, hit them at once.

  She and her father eased her mother onto the back lawn where she sat, coughing. Dirt mapped the wrinkles and contours of her face. Isabel sank beside her and held her tightly until her breathing calmed and gave way to low sobbing. Her mother’s ha
ir smelt of smoke. Her eyelashes were clogged with ash.

  Isabel lifted her head. The front of the bungalow was gutted. Flames poured out of windows and through collapsing walls. On all sides, funnels of smoke spread upwards, twisting like tornados in the spiralling draughts.

  She said to her father: ‘Is everyone out?’

  He nodded. As they watched, a section of roof collapsed in a Catherine’s wheel of sparks. The jagged lines of the remaining brickwork scrawled black lines against the night sky.

  Male voices shouted and a commotion of vehicles came tearing down the drive. She turned to look. The police had arrived and firemen too, with ladders and hoses. She sighed and turned her eyes back to the blaze. The red glow lit the night. She knew every inch of those rooms that were crashing into flames.

  ‘Thank God.’ Her father gazed in disbelief at the burning wreckage. ‘Thank God you woke up.’

  She blinked, remembering. Rahul had woken her. That was no dream. He blessed her and called her ‘little sister’. She shook her head, too dazed to understand, and gently stroked her mother’s gritty, smoky hair.

  Dawn broke over a steaming, smouldering building. The police and firemen had laboured through the night, pumping streams of water from fire engines and soaking every room. Now their faces were black with ash and soot, their eyes pouches of lost sleep.

  Isabel and her father stood on the dewy lawn amongst a jumble of salvaged possessions. A fireman had carried out drawers from her father’s study and they were sorting through files of official papers and notebooks, packing them into boxes.

  ‘Sahib?’ The inspector, a young chap, came striding from the front of the bungalow. ‘Please be coming.’

  The young man’s expression, a mixture of distress and embarrassment, prompted Isabel to follow too. He led them past the kitchen and the servants’ quarters, then across the lawns at the front of the bungalow where clouds of rhododendrons were backed by mango trees.