It was the landscape of a monstrous dream. The waves had become sheer cliffs rearing up in front of us and we rode up, up into that face and then plunged, sickeningly, down its other side, only to be faced with yet another and another of the seemingly endless walls of water. A deckhand, seeing me being thrown violently from side to side while hanging on to the brass rail that ran around the wall of the dining room, shouted at me, cursing, and I managed to get down the gangway and to our cabin, my clothes thoroughly soaked.
The storm was terrible but—as I am here to write about it—I survived! And, as you can see, I am now quite enjoying recounting the drama of it all to you. I never believed myself one for drama. Perhaps it is the freedom I feel that is loosening it within me.
Mrs. Cavendish is bullying me off to bed, so I shall obediently retire.
Yours,
Linny
I didn’t wish to describe to Shaker in too much detail what happened during that first storm. It was, if nothing else, rather indelicate, not the sort of topic one who is attempting to be a cultured young woman should think of transcribing on paper.
When I had finally stumbled downstairs during the storm, Faith was in her sling bed, a number of scarves and shawls tied around her middle and knotted into the ropes of the bed. She moaned steadily, a low, sonorous cry, and just as I was flung onto my own hammock she angled her neck over the side and vomited, a huge splashing puddle of reeking yellow. I secured myself in my bed, heart pounding as I heard muffled, weak cries all around me, my initial excitement at the wildness of the storm being replaced first by apprehension and then by growing panic.
During the next hours I questioned—for the first time—leaving Liverpool and the safety and security of life with Shaker. Breathing in the stink of tar and vomit and bodily expulsions, unable to hear anything but the crashing of waves and howling of the wind, I lost track of night and day. I was shaken about in the complete darkness, imagining with every bang and groan of the timbers that the icy water would surely burst through, filling my nose and mouth, drowning me as I lay lashed to my hammock. I lived in my old nightmare of cold water closing over me, of drowning in the Mersey, for what felt like days. Alternately I gasped for breath in the airless room or shivered, my clothes damp from my own sweat. I was convulsively sick, my stomach and bowels emptying where I lay. My voided body continued to heave until I tasted the metallic heat of blood on my lips, knowing the lining of my stomach was being torn away.
I longed for Whitefield Lane, for Jack Street, even for Back Phoebe Anne. I kept my eyes squeezed shut and waited to die; in fact, I believe that for indescribably bereft moments I wished for it. There has only been one other time in my life when I felt this close to death.
EVENTUALLY I BECAME AWARE that I had been asleep and was now rocking gently. I opened my eyes and saw that the door was open and secured by its hook to the wall. Dim light filtered into the disastrous, foul mess of our room. I heard Faith’s voice, pure and high as a child’s, and realized it was this that had woken me.
“Linny? Answer me. Linny?”
I twisted to look toward her hammock. I saw that Mrs. Cavendish’s bed was empty, stripped of its sheets and blankets. “Where is Mrs. Cavendish?” My voice was a hoarse croak, my throat raw from vomiting.
“She went on deck to wash her bedding. I don’t think I can move.”
I feebly plucked at the scarves and shawls that had stopped me from being pitched to the floor and tossed about in the slime like a pebble, then sat up, grimacing at the pulling of the soiled crust of my undergarments. I stood, shakily, my rib cage and abdomen feeling bruised from the endless contractions of my empty stomach. Helping untie Faith, I gave her a half-smile. “Aren’t we the pair, though? I think the only solution is a bucket of saltwater dashed over us.”
“Don’t joke, Linny. I’m too weak to even cry. I don’t think I’ll ever recover from this.”
“You will,” I told her.
“You’re awake, then, girls,” came Mrs. Cavendish’s booming voice from the doorway. “Come on, change all your clothing and get it and your bedding up on deck, and we’ll get this place cleaned up in no time. Now, that storm wasn’t as bad as some I’ve seen. Once our ship was hit astern, and the force of that water burst over the deck and right below, straight into my room. I can assure you I make a most becoming mermaid.” She gave a hearty laugh. “And I can also assure you that storm won’t be the last on this voyage.”
Faith erupted into sobs, and it took us a good ten minutes to help her compose herself enough to rise.
ON THE WEST COAST of Africa our ship was blown off course by another storm; this one sent us close to Brazil, and took us another three weeks to resume course. During this time I studied my Hindi and wrote in my journal and continued writing unposted letters to Shaker.
We had been at sea for three months. Now the food had lost any semblance of being enjoyable; the only meat left was preserved pork, tough and stringy and salty. All sense of order had left the dining room; food was thrown unceremoniously on the tables and whoever had the stomach for it that day reached out and grabbed. The water had turned the color of strong tea and tasted as bad as it looked and smelled. The heat grew intense, and we stripped off our woolen dresses and wore light muslin—until we approached the Cape of Good Hope, where the weather once again grew chilly. As we neared that imaginary line where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian, we saw ourselves in danger of being dashed against the shore when a sudden shift in the winds caught the billows in a dizzying rush. We stopped briefly at the Cape for new supplies and then were off into warmer waters. But we were soon caught in a seasonal hurricane. The ship lurched and pitched; this time, furniture was torn from its fastenings. Although I silently prayed for the ship to withstand this battering, my body did not betray me, and when at last a day and night had passed, I arose, dry-eyed and calm, shrugging my shoulders at Faith, although she would not smile.
We sat becalmed for two weeks in a still sea under a blazing sun, the sails limp, their rents and tatters now visible. No one had the energy for talk or cards, and the heat made the thought of dancing incomprehensible. The only sound was the teasing lick of the water against the ship’s side, and the answering creak of its timbers. The sea looked like a silver plate, untarnished, hard and immobile. The crew was surly, muttering as they repaired the canvas and frayed halyards, casting irritated glances at the passengers who stepped around them in an endless circle of the deck, hoping for even the whisper of cooling air.
And then finally, one morning I awoke to movement, and when I went up on deck, the sails were unfurling, reaching for the wind. The sea was smooth and yielding as the ship cut through it. I felt such a rise in my spirits that I smiled at the most taciturn of the deckhands, the one with bulging forearms and tattoos that shifted with the movement of his muscles. Only the day before he had eerily reminded me of Ram Munt. Now he bore no such resemblance.
It grew even more unbearably hot, and we moved our bedding up to the decks. The ladies slept on one side, the gentlemen on the other, and a sail was rigged between us for decency’s sake. That first night on deck I couldn’t sleep. Carefully stepping over Faith and the other women, I went to the railing. Standing in the dark, I watched the sea as it reflected the moon, creating a long, winding road of silver. And then the water began to glow with a strange brightness I could not describe, as I know no words for that kind of light. It was as if myriad tiny candles blazed just under the water, as if they floated there, beckoning. I watched, transfixed, until my eyes hurt from the intensity of staring. Was it some underwater creature? Or was it another sign, a sign that this was my true path?
During the day the Indian Ocean was filled with life: flying fish swept past us like narrow silver coins, and, as Faith had predicted, whales and porpoises raced alongside the ship. The sun was clean on my skin, burning deep, seeming to warm the very marrow in my bones, and I wondered if I had ever before been truly warm. As I stood on deck one day, closing my eyes
and turning my face toward the glorious burning disk overhead, I realized that I had not had my nightmare for many, many nights—perhaps weeks. It was as though this sun—infinitely stronger than anything possible in England—had burned that terror out of my brain, had eaten into it, destroying it, just as surely as the bold rats scurrying below deck had eaten holes in our clothes.
There was a sudden spray of warm water over the railing. It wet my face. I licked my lips, savoring the ancient, wild taste of the sea. As I did so I turned to the young couple who stood down the deck from me. They had married just before we set sail and were traveling first to Calcutta and then overland to Bombay, where the man had a position with the East India Company civil service. We’d exchanged pleasantries a number of times; now I imagined we would smile, sharing the humor of the unexpected shower we’d all received. But in the moment that I looked toward them, I saw that they were lost in each other, unaware of me. The young man lowered his face and slowly licked the salty water from the tiny hollow at the base of his new wife’s throat, and she put back her head and arched her neck. In that instant I felt shock, a deep thudding and sobering emotion. The girl’s slight movement and the look on her face brought me down from my moment of giddy hope. That soft and yielding expression, I realized, could only be desire. And I also realized I had never known or felt it, and for this I was filled with sorrow and grieved, suddenly losing all fascination with the sea. It now appeared nothing more than a wearying, endless distance of furrows.
WE DREW INTO NOVEMBER; we had been at sea almost four months. Swallows swooped near the railings, indicating land nearby. Mrs. Cavendish likened these busy, twittering creatures to the dove with its olive branch. But she was right, and within another day villages were spotted along the coast. The water became noisy with dozens of tiny rocking boatloads of Indians. Bumboat men, Mrs. Cavendish called them, shouting to be heard over the cries of the villagers as they boasted of their merchandise, hoping to sell coconuts, bananas, or tamarinds. I hung over the railing, watching as the natives threw ropes with baskets attached over the ship’s side. Some of the crew called down to them in a strange tongue that I couldn’t identify, putting coins into the baskets. The baskets were lowered, and then came up again, filled with whatever the sailors had requested. I longed to try the strange-looking fruit, but Mrs. Cavendish, with a slight shake of her head, indicated that it would be beneath us to purchase anything in this way.
During the last few days, as we grew ever closer to our destination, excitement grew in me. At first I attributed it to the beauty of the water and sun, the flying fish sending little droplets of water onto the smooth sea, but then realized it was something else. I detected a difference in the atmosphere, and whether it was in the air itself or the degree of heat I couldn’t say. Perhaps the smells carried in the wind contributed to the unexplained breathlessness I experienced. My nose filled with the strange smells of an unfamiliar populace, the scents of unknown vegetation. I felt as heady as I had when twirled in my first quadrille.
WE STOPPED AT THE SANDHEADS, at the mouth of the Hooghly River, to wait for the tide to help push us into the river. This last leg of the journey, Mrs. Cavendish cautioned, was very hazardous. Traveling the sixty miles up the dimpled, belching brown water of the Hooghly as it cut through the green Bengal countryside had proved disastrous for many ships because of the dangerous sandbanks and suddenly shifting shoals. “Hundreds of lives lost on one sandbank alone, the treacherous quicksand of the James and Mary,” she went on, unmindful of Faith’s expression.
Faith had not done well on the journey. Like all of us, she had lost weight. There were new hollows under her eyes and the lines around her mouth had deepened. I had tried to do what I had been brought for—as a companion, to offer company and support—but Faith had grown sullen and uncommunicative. It seemed she had receded into herself while I felt myself growing stronger, more able. I felt as if I had even grown taller, although I knew that was impossible.
“Look, Faith, look there. Palm trees and banana as well, just like in your book,” I said, trying to cheer her with the vision of emerald lushness a few hours from Calcutta. There were waving fields of rice. Everywhere the color was so vibrant, so alive. England’s watercolor pastels paled in comparison. I gazed idly at a dog on the riverbank, noticing its pathetic protruding ribs and horribly scabbed flesh. It was busily tearing at something surrounded by bits of rotted blue cloth, and I realized that the dog’s prize was a human leg and foot at the same time as Faith. She emitted a high, strangled cry, running from the deck. As I made to follow her, Mrs. Cavendish laid her hand on my arm.
“Best let her be,” she advised. “India takes some hard. Some never get used to it. And others”—she puffed out her chest, reminding me of a pouter pigeon—“why, others simply do the best they can and are the better for it. Fourteen years—and just look at me. I’ve survived it all—fevers, heat, monsoons, birthing—two buried in India and three alive back home—heathen customs, snakebite, to say nothing of the things I’ve seen—stabbings in the market, executions of thugees, suttee. Although suttee was deemed forbidden last year. Not many like me, though.” She studied me. “You think you have what it takes?”
As I nodded, she shook her head. “Better start learning, then, Linny. Not even a parasol and, I must say, you’re quite unfashionably colored from the sun and wind.”
THE SHIP FINALLY STOPPED, midafternoon, just before the shallow waters of the docks at Chandpal Ghat. The date I had written on the final page of my voyage letter to Shaker that morning was November 18, 1830. As I looked toward the docks, all I could make out was movement, a swarming mass of humanity. The waters were filled with every kind of vessel—fishing boats, rafts, dhows, ferries, and lorchas—so crowded that they chafed at one another. I thought of the coasting brigs and cutters and schooners in the thick fog at the harbor at Liverpool, drawing comparisons to these small vessels, manned by near-naked brown-skinned men.
The outskirts of Calcutta surprised me. Facing the river were white Palladian villas, elegant and stately, owned, Mrs. Cavendish told me, by British merchants grown rich on the East India Company’s trade.
After I’d fetched Faith from the cabin, where she sat forlornly in her sling bed, and, remembering Mrs. Cavendish’s warning, taking my parasol, we climbed down a rough rope ladder into masoolas—small rocking boats that ferried passengers to shore. The boat pitched and yawed in the brown water, and we held tightly to its sides. Dirty water sloshed over our boots and drenched the hems of our dresses.
Faith had been told that we’d be met by Mr. Waterton, her father’s friend who had agreed to be our hosts for as long as we remained in Calcutta. I was actually glad for my frilled pale blue parasol as I sat between Faith and Mrs. Cavendish, watching the crowd swell on the pier as we crossed the short span of water. Voices rose in shouts, cries, and chants.
“Do you see your husband, Mrs. Cavendish?” I shouted into the woman’s ear, realizing it was a foolish question. How could anyone discern any one thing in such a throng? Everywhere brilliant colors swarmed; I had to close my eyes for a moment to sort out what I was seeing. Women’s saris of bright pinks and oranges and reds, carts heaped high with unfamiliar fruits and vegetables. Dark faces under white turbans. As we drew closer to the pier, I raised my head, breathing in scents that I couldn’t identify but was sure, from my reading, must be jasmine and sandalwood and the tang of cloves and ginger. But there was something else. Underneath it all lay a fetid, cloying odor, urine and dirt and decay, a deep smell of rot that I recognized from the seeping cellars, flooded each year, crowded with the most desperate of families in the meanest courts in Liverpool.
We were lifted on to the dock, and the mass of brilliance I had seen from the masoola now became real, and in detail that belied the dreamy beauty I had assumed from the distance. We stood in the dust and heat and babble of the tumultuous crowd, our boots soaked through, trying to say our good-byes to the passengers we had come to know so well over o
ur journey, shouting over the added noise of a tinny band playing to greet the ship. I found it difficult to stand on land after so many months on the rolling sea. My knees felt as if they were still dipping and balancing, and there was a listing in one side of my head. I felt a pressure on my ankle and looked down, thinking it was my body playing tricks on me as it adjusted to land under my feet. But it was a young woman—little more than a girl, really—kneeling at my feet, holding an emaciated naked infant with one arm while her other hand held up a dented tin bowl. Her mouth was moving, but in the terrific gabble surrounding us I couldn’t understand whether she was actually speaking or crying or praying. I had no Indian money yet, no rupees or annas in my reticule to give to her, and I smiled uncertainly, pointing at my reticule and shaking my head. But she appeared not to understand, her mouth growing wider. I saw now, with a shock of recognition, that the child’s head, which I assumed was covered in black hair, was actually swarming with flies. As the girl shifted the baby in her arm to pull at my skirt with a filthy hand, I saw the tiny scalp to be a mass of running sores. I swallowed, trying to step away from the tugging on my skirt, feeling a tiny ripping at my waist as the girl held tightly to the thin fabric of my frock. I saw that the handful of flowered muslin she gripped was now darkened with dirt, and I knew that the gauzy material on my back must also be growing dark as sweat dampened my torso.
As I continued to pull away, Faith, who stood beside me, looked down and saw the girl and what she held, and her legs gave out. I hooked my arm through hers to hold her up, struggling with my parasol and reticule, feeling, momentarily, a small flutter of panic as I once again looked down at the pathetic creature attached to my skirt. My stays were suddenly too tight, I was too hot, I found it difficult to breathe, and the multitude of strange odors now turned my stomach.
The Linnet Bird: A Novel Page 19
