‘That’s the Ochterlony Monument,’ Emily said, pointing out an elaborate column. ‘Sandy says Ochterlony was a brave Company soldier who defeated some fearsome Himalayan tribes – the Gurkhas or some such. Anyway, that’s why the British have control of the hills around Simla.’
‘George says that Simla is like being in Scotland,’ said Alice.
‘Has he been there?’ Emily asked.
Alice nodded. ‘He loved it for all the plant life and the bracing air – but it’s not the most comfortable of places. All the cottages are perched on mountainsides and it’s often foggy and cold and the social life seems to revolve around drinking.’
Emily patted her arm and laughed. ‘Thank goodness we are in civilised Calcutta then. I haven’t come all this way for Scottish weather.’
Her friend told Alice of the speculation in the fort about who the new Governor General might be now that the Whigs were back in power in London.
‘Sandy thinks it will be William Eden – Lord Auckland. He has a wager on it in the mess.’
While their husbands worked, the two friends spent much time together going to plays, music recitals and afternoon tea at the genteel houses in Chowringhee. They would accompany each other to the dressmakers and milliners, ordering up lightweight clothing for the hot season.
Alice would always insist that they detour up Chitpore Road and into Lal Bazaar to watch the artisans at work in their open stalls; potters squatting over their wheels, brassware-makers hammering out jugs and pots and blacksmiths forging curved blades and matchlocks, their assistants working primitive bellows of hide and bamboo. Emily disliked the din and smell of the place but Alice would stop and barter for brass trays and brightly painted fruit bowls to adorn her new home in Chowringhee.
She was mesmerised by the multicoloured piles of spices and the heaps of fresh fruit and vegetables, many of which she had never seen before. The bazaar reeked of a heady mix of frying oil, curry spices, drying animal skins, steaming cow dung and scented tobacco smoke.
George had explained early on that she wouldn’t be expected to do any of the housekeeping, which was left up to their bearer, cook and a host of other servants. Once she had agreed the menus for the day and handed over money, her household duties were done. Alice had grown used to a leisured existence at Tolland Park but it was still a novelty to find that in India all the chores – from housekeeper to emptying the privies – were done by male servants.
She began to take a sketch book out with her to record her impressions of this new and exciting land. She drew the people of the bazaar; the stallholders and merchants in their brightly coloured robes and turbans, and skinny holy men with matted beards dressed in nothing but a piece of homespun cloth. Alice sketched women in vivid pink, green and gold saris leaning over high balconies, chatting and observing the bustle below.
Once she witnessed a wedding procession; an elephant bedecked in rich cloth and carrying the bridegroom and his party, followed by men on horseback, dancers, musicians and supporters on foot bearing huge flat sunshades. Alice was so mesmerised by the noisy, joyous scene that she forgot to sketch any of it.
Sometimes she would persuade George to rise early and go to the Maidan as the morning mist lifted off the river and observe the bhistis – the water-carriers – at the city’s main reservoir, the Great Tank. In a few quick strokes of her pencil, Alice would depict the bhistis pushing through the turnstiles that kept out the roving cows and then sketch the men slinging their goat-skins into the tranquil water of the tank. She drew the watchman at his sentry box, ever vigilant to stop any bathing. Behind, emerging in the dawn, would be the increasingly familiar skyline of mansion rooftops, temples, church spires, mosques and government buildings that Alice was growing to love.
Back at their house in Russel Street, Alice would spend the morning sitting under a bamboo shade in the tree-lined garden and turn her sketches into watercolours. She had had a few lessons in painting at Tolland Park but had always preferred being outdoors riding or feeding her pets. Here, in the warmth of the eastern sun, she was surprised to find how content she was to sit for long hours painting in the garden or reading on the veranda.
One time, George returned to find her gazing out across the garden as dusk was falling amid a cacophony of birds.
‘Look,’ she whispered, ‘at that monkey feeding its young one. The mother swings through the branches with the baby clinging on underneath. Aren’t they delightful creatures?’
‘If you don’t mind them stealing food from the breakfast table or the soap from the washstand,’ George said with a wry look.
‘I’m happy to share my breakfast biscuits with them.’ Alice smiled.
‘I bet you’ve been downright encouraging the pests.’ He chuckled, laying a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s the motherly instinct in you.’
Alice felt her insides flutter at the thought. She was in her twenty-sixth year – old to be starting motherhood – and wondered how soon she would fall pregnant. She knew George longed to be a father and she too wanted a child but nothing had happened yet. Still, there was more than enough to occupy her in Calcutta.
It was George who introduced her to Miss Cook, a lively middle-aged benefactor who ran the Ladies Society for Native Female Education and had helped set up a series of missionary schools in the town.
‘I find the Mohammedan girls particularly enthusiastic about learning,’ Miss Cook told her over afternoon tea. ‘They have a thirst for knowledge that must be encouraged.’
Alice asked to be shown around one of her schools. The eager, cheerful girls sitting at rough wooden tables in a sparse schoolroom reminded her of herself at a similar age. It was thanks to George encouraging her education, and the enthusiasm of her kind teacher, Miss Lambert, that she had been given entry to a whole new world of books and knowledge.
‘I’d like to help out too,’ Alice said in excitement.
‘I’d be so pleased if you would,’ said a delighted Miss Cook.
After that, with George’s blessing, Alice went twice a week to help out at a school near Chandpal Ghat, close to the river. She was under the supervision of Mrs Meadows, a jovial American missionary of middle-age who had a good rapport with the children. The widowed Mrs Meadows had been in Calcutta for twenty years. Alice read aloud to the girls and helped them learn English.
Emily was admiring. ‘It’s very worthy of you – and so brave.’
‘There’s nothing brave about it – it’s fun. Why don’t you come and help?’ Alice suggested.
‘Goodness me, Sandy wouldn’t hear of it.’ Emily laughed. ‘He’d worry about me going down to the docks. George is different. He’s more – well – friendly with the Indians, isn’t he?’
March came and the temperature rose. The city’s gardens bloomed with spring flowers and blossom. Soon the British community was a ferment of excitement about the arrival of the new Governor General. Emily came round bursting with the news.
‘It’s Lord Auckland, as Sandy predicted,’ Emily enthused, ‘and Sandy is to be on his staff. What do you think of that? My Sandy an aide-de-camp to the Governor General!’
Alice was pleased for her friend. ‘I hope you won’t be too grand to socialise with us lower ranks,’ she teased.
‘Of course not,’ Emily cried. ‘I’ll have you invited to all the best parties in town!’
On Lord Auckland’s arrival, there was a ball held in Government House in his honour. It was the most glittering occasion Alice had ever attended and she was grateful that her papa had insisted on dancing lessons when she had first gone to live with him. Dressed in a new silk gown of peacock blue, Alice rode beside George in a two-wheeled gig, joining the stream of carriages and doolies making along the Esplanade and across the Maidan. Torchbearers ran alongside. The Gillverays passed under one of the ceremonial gateways and alighted in front of the imposing Palladian mansion.
The ballroom shone with lamps suspended from the ceiling and resounded to the sound of chattering c
rowds. Everyone was dressed up in their finery. The Company officers in their scarlet tunics and highly polished boots competed enthusiastically to dance with the women, who were markedly fewer in number.
After two dances, George was out of breath and sweating under the heat of the lamps in the crowded room.
‘We can sit the next one out,’ said Alice. ‘Let’s go and find some refreshment.’
‘My dear, I don’t want you to miss out on a single quadrille,’ George said, mopping his brow.
‘Sandy will dance with you,’ said Emily, looking flushed. ‘I’d like to sit down for a bit too.’
‘Are you all right?’ Alice asked in concern.
She noticed a glance pass between the Aytons.
‘Perfectly fine,’ Emily assured her. ‘I just need a cool drink.’
Sandy Ayton stepped in gallantly and bowed at Alice. ‘Allow me to have the pleasure of the next dance.’
Alice took to the floor again with enthusiasm, while George went with Emily in search of a glass of punch.
After a few dances, they were joined once more by their spouses. The ebullient Sandy introduced Alice and George to some of his fellow officers, young bachelors who were growing rowdy on champagne.
A tall captain with wavy blond hair and a handsome boyish face stepped forward and bowed with a click of his heels.
‘This is Captain Vernon Buckley,’ said Sandy. ‘Cavalry. But soon to join me as ADC to Lord Auckland.’
The captain smiled at Alice. ‘May I have the honour?’ he murmured.
She glanced at George, who smiled in encouragement, so she held out her hand and Buckley led her onto the dance floor.
He was an accomplished dancer, his timing perfect and his manner attentive. She learnt that he had been on campaign in Burma and Assam.
‘Savage country,’ Buckley pronounced, ‘but excellent hunting. The Company seems to think the land of value for growing opium or possibly tea. Not for me to judge. I just get on with soldiering.’
‘Being in Calcutta will be dull after all that action,’ Alice said dryly.
He gave her an assessing look. ‘I disagree. It would appear Calcutta is full of attractions.’
Alice blushed under his blue-eyed scrutiny. She knew he was being mischievous. ‘As a married woman I find there is plenty to do here.’
‘Quite so,’ he said, ‘and marriage would appear to suit you very well. Gillveray is a lucky man. If only I had arrived back from Burma a few months sooner and pressed my suit first. We would have made the most handsome couple in Calcutta.’
Alice was annoyed at his arrogance; the drink was obviously making him bold. ‘Now I know you are teasing me, Captain Buckley. I have no interest in boastful cavalrymen so you would have never been in contention.’
He laughed. ‘Touché!’ Before she could escape the dance floor, he seized her hand and pressed it to his lips. ‘Thank you, Mrs Gillveray. I look forward to becoming better acquainted.’
Alice snatched her hand away and hurried back to George.
CHAPTER 13
Nothing had prepared Alice for the stifling heat of May. The temperature soared, sucking the air from her lungs and bathing her in perpetual sweat. The sun scorched everything, turning the Maidan brown and causing the trees to wilt. It beat down relentlessly. The sky was ochre with dust and the white Georgian buildings dazzled so fiercely that she thought her eyes would burn just by looking at them.
George continued to ride out to the Company gardens. Sometimes Alice would go with him, hoping for relief among the myriad of trees. But even here in the shade, the air was soupy.
Alice was in awe of the servants, who went about their work without complaint, bearing the heat as just another chore. Like the other Europeans, she learnt to keep the house darkened during the day, shutting out the brutal daylight with wet matting hung from verandas and windows to cool any wisp of breeze. One of the servants was employed to circle the house spraying the matting to keep it moist. Wine bottles were kept chilled by wrapping them in wet cloths and suspending them in baskets between trees.
Alice sat in the gloom of the veranda, half comatose in a rattan chair, too sapped of energy to read or paint. It took all her energy to stir herself and sit at the table at mealtimes. For relief, she would ask the bearer to have a basin filled with ice for her to rub on her sweating body. By the time she had stripped off, the ice would have melted and the water begun to warm. But any brief relief was welcome.
‘Remember to order some frozen water from the ship, Tuscany,’ Emily had advised before she had departed for Simla with Sandy and Auckland’s entourage. ‘Sandy says the quality is far better than the dirty slush that comes from the ice pits at Chinsurah.’
George had confirmed that an enterprising American from Boston had begun shipping frozen water regularly from Massachusetts and was storing it in a specially built ice house near the river. Seeing how his young wife was suffering so badly from the hot weather, George spent a small fortune buying in ice to cool her down.
Alice missed Emily’s lively company. She still sometimes caught herself looking out for the Aytons’ chaprassy running over with a message inviting her to some social engagement. But in April, Lord Auckland and his administration had packed up and left for the cool of the hills – a trek that would take their ponderous caravan of officials and luggage over a month to get to Simla in the north-west Himalayas.
Before she had left, Emily had confided in Alice that she was expecting her first baby.
‘That’s wonderful!’ Alice had cried, overcome with emotion for her friend. They had hugged tearfully.
‘I know, isn’t it?’ Emily had smiled. ‘Sandy is happy as a lark.’
Alice had recently received a letter from Emily saying they had arrived safely in Simla and were settling into Daisy Cottage, which was to be their small, temporary home for the summer.
‘If only Emily were still here,’ she sighed to George. ‘I’ve no one to talk to. Even the parrot’s not speaking in this awful heat.’
When he suggested a carriage ride in the moonlight, a lacklustre Alice dismissed the idea.
‘It’s just as hot out there as in here,’ she complained. ‘And we women always have to wear so much ridiculous clothing. Why can’t we go bare-armed like Hindu ladies and just have a thin veil to cover us?’
Whatever George said seemed to irritate her. Alice hated the short-tempered, dissatisfied person she had become in a few short weeks but seemed helpless to throw off her new moodiness.
‘I wish I could have gone to Simla with Emily,’ she said. ‘Why do you have to work in such a furnace of a place?’
‘If that’s what you want,’ said George, ‘then I’ll arrange it. I’ll take some leave and we’ll go next month or perhaps July.’
‘Why can’t we go now?’
‘I have responsibilities—’
‘You don’t need to work,’ Alice protested. ‘We have enough money for you to do as you please – the fortune you acquired by marrying me!’
She saw George flinch but couldn’t stop her resentful words.
‘I’ll go myself if you can’t be bothered to take me. I can’t stand it here a minute longer. I hate this place!’ Alice put her face in her hands and burst into tears.
George was horrified. ‘My dearest, please don’t upset yourself,’ he said, rushing to put his arms around her.
She threw him off. ‘Don’t touch me – you just make the heat rash worse.’
For several days afterwards, George slept on the flat roof over the veranda. Unable to sleep, Alice tossed alone on their bed, tormented by prickly heat and dark thoughts. What had ever possessed her to marry George and leave Tolland Park for this hellish place? She craved the soft sunshine of Northumberland, the dewy mornings and cooling winds. She yearned for salty sea spray and cold rain that would bring relief to her burning, itching body. Alice thought she would go mad thinking about such things.
‘That Captain Buckley keeps asking about you
,’ Emily had said in the days following the ball. ‘Sandy has told him firmly to leave you alone – you’re a happily married wife.’
Happily married wife! Alice bit down on her hand to stop a scream of panic waking the household. She wished she wasn’t anybody’s wife.
George was so concerned at her plummeting spirits that he insisted on calling out one of the Company doctors, Major Jenkins.
‘It’s not in her nature to be so cross or have such black moods,’ Alice heard her husband confiding in the doctor.
A few weeks ago, Alice would have been embarrassed at George making such a fuss over her or being examined by a doctor, but she no longer cared. The major was elderly with a drinker’s bulbous red nose, and his hands shook badly as he prodded her with moist fingers. He asked questions about her eating and effluence while George looked on in concern.
‘Mrs Gillveray is suffering from melancholia brought on by the hot season,’ he announced. ‘I recommend a course of bloodletting to cleanse her body and revitalise her spirits. Leeches are the best remedy.’
‘Leeches?’ Alice was aghast. ‘I don’t want those horrible creatures anywhere near me.’
George ushered the major quickly from the bedchamber and onto the veranda. ‘Some refreshment before you go?’ George offered.
Alice lay in annoyance, listening to the major talking about horse riding and gulping down lukewarm hock.
A week later, worn down by George’s pleas to try the remedy, Alice submitted to the treatment of the bloodsucking leeches. She was left feeling nauseous and weaker and more dispirited than ever. She began to be plagued by thoughts of walking out into the hot night and never coming back.
Her sanity was saved by a visit from Miss Cook and her plump American missionary friend, Mrs Meadows. They brought a box of sweetmeats and clucked in concern at Alice’s listless state.
Plain-speaking Mrs Meadows surveyed her keenly. ‘Feeling sick all the time, are you?’
‘Yes,’ said Alice. ‘I can’t bear the smell of anything. Even the cooking from the kitchen makes me retch. I’ve lost the taste for everything except sweets.’
In the Far Pashmina Mountains Page 17
