The Linnet Bird: A Novel

by Linda Holeman

  Dear Shaker,

  Heartiest congratulations to you and Celina. I was truly delighted to learn of your betrothal. You didn’t mention the date of your forthcoming marriage. Is it to be soon?

  I returned from Simla much sooner than necessary; I am sure that the news of Faith’s tragic death is well known in Liverpool. It is a terrible thing, Shaker, and I am not sure that I will ever fully recover from the unbearable circumstances. I think of her every day and have spoken to her husband. He is constantly in my prayers, for he is a kind and good man who was completely devoted to Faith, and is now naturally numbed by grief.

  How fortunate that you are able to travel to London to spend a time of study with the most renowned Dr. Frederick Quin. I will be anxious to hear of the success of his planned homeopathy practice on King Street (do I not recall it was to open this very month?) and what you have learned. Please keep me informed.

  In spite of the pall of sadness that hovers over me—and I’m sure over Celina as well—because of Faith, I know that dear girl would want us to look for happiness within our own lives. You sound excited and pleased at the prospect of this new world of medicine, and Celina will be, indeed, a wonderful companion. And I, too, have been buoyed by my own small news. A child is expected, and in this I am very happy.

  My fondest wishes,

  Linny

  P.S. An infusion made from the leaves of the asagandh—known in English as the winter cherry—a small and modest shrub, is given to those suffering from unspecified fevers and anxiety.

  Somers and I never spoke of my pregnancy, although I sometimes saw him looking at my growing belly with a hint of alarm.

  I had Malti go to Nani Meera with a chit, asking her to help when my time came, and to arrange for her to come regularly to Chowringhee, although of course she went to the servants’ godown. It was there, in one of the small, clean rooms, that we visited and she touched me with warm, dry hands, telling me the pregnancy went well. I told her I had already given birth once, and she told me it would only make this birth easier.

  I was strangely peaceful as the months slowly passed. I sent notes of regret to the social invitations Somers and I received—although he often attended without me—using my pregnancy as an excuse, and instead spent my time sitting on the verandah. In the quick Calcutta twilight, waiting for the first breath of the evening breeze to stir the leaves, I listened to the whirring of the crickets and the frogs’ croaks, placing my hands on my abdomen and wondering if the baby was hearing the same sounds. With the heat less intense as we went into the cool season, I could hold a needle without it slipping, and learned to sew, with Malti’s help. I worked on clothing for the baby, making intricate minute stitches in tiny yoked shirts and vests and petticoats.

  I brushed Neel, who was ever at my side. We sat, Malti and Neel and I, and I rejoiced over the first tiny flutterings and stirrings, content to know the child Daoud and I had created was growing. I refused to imagine what would happen if the baby was too dark; if it had a shock of black hair and long black eyes. I held tightly to the memory of Daoud’s skin, no darker than Somers’s, of his strong white teeth, his capable hands, his body, hard and muscled. I knew that if the physical attributes of the child shouted my deceit, I would have to take the infant and disappear. Where, or how, I didn’t know, and I refused to let it haunt my thoughts.

  As the air grew cool I grew heavier, and I summoned my durzi to make comfortable clothes, flowing and unstructured.

  Somers hated them, telling me I was a disgusting sight, lolling about uncorseted in loose tea gowns. He forbade me to wear them. I continued to wear them when he wasn’t home.

  One morning shortly before the new year he watched me heave myself out of a deep armchair and try to stoop to pick up Neel. “We’re invited to celebrate 1833 with the McDougalls. I told them I’d come, but that you weren’t leaving the house these days. You’re frightfully large,” he chided. “You still have another, what—three months? Doctor Haverlock did say the end of March?”

  I studied the underside of Neel’s ear. “Yes. But of course, the baby will probably come sooner. He assured me it’s unusual to carry a child for the full term here in India, what with the extreme climate. And because I’m small, I probably appear larger than a tall woman—” I stopped myself. Somers was clever. I couldn’t appear to be making excuses.

  ON THE MORNING of February 26, 1833, I waited until Somers had left for work before summoning Malti to fetch Nani Meera.

  “It is a good day for a birth,” Malti said, smiling. “As I arose this morning I saw a flock of satht-bai, the seven brothers. This is always a sign of a boy child.” She clasped her hands. “I will inform all of the servants, and have them do puja for you.”

  Dear Malti. She was my only ally, doing what I asked with unquestioning faithfulness. After she left I lay alone, frightened by the remembered intensity of the pain. When Nani Meera and Yali hurried in an hour later, I cried out in relief.

  Within moments Yali was massaging my temples with something cool and sharp smelling, while Nani Meera laid out cloths and a sharp knife and an assortment of herbs and oils. By early afternoon I pushed my son into Nani Meera’s waiting hands.

  “It is a healthy boy,” she said, deftly cutting the cord and holding up the glistening baby. “From the sound of him it appears he will be brave and headstrong, like his mother.”

  I raised my head and studied him anxiously, afraid of what I might see. But he simply looked like a newborn, skin reddish, his face screwed into a tight, angry scowl, wailing thinly as if complaining about the discomfort of his journey. And his hair was a wet slick of dark gold.

  Malti clapped her hands, laughing as the baby’s first cries turned to indignant howls as Yali rubbed him firmly with a warm, damp cloth. “Listen to his cry,” Malti said. “No one will argue with him.” She took the baby, loosely wrapped in soft flannel, from Yali, and when Nani Meera had finished helping me into a fresh nightdress and I was propped against the pillows, Malti put him in my arms.

  While Malti took away the soiled bedding and Yali packed the bag they had brought, Nani Meera pulled a chair to the side of the bed and stroked the baby’s damp head.

  “He has your fair hair,” she said. “Look, it already shines like Surya’s first bright rays.”

  I took her hand. “Thank you, Nani Meera,” I said. “You’ve given me—and him,” I added, touching my lips to the baby’s velvety forehead, “a chance at happiness.”

  Nani Meera squeezed my hand. “I have given you nothing, Linny. You create your own destiny.”

  Yali set a small packet on the table beside the bed. “Dissolve this in water and drink it tonight,” Nani Meera said. “You have no damage from the birth. Do not listen to the urging of the English memsahibs who will come to see you, puffed full of advice. They will tell you to remain in bed for a great while, but you will only become weak if you do. They will say the child should not be handled excessively, but this is also wrong. The baby has known only your body’s warmth and the beating of your heart. To so suddenly lose this comfort must be a great sorrow for even a tiny spirit. I know it is the way of your people, but perhaps it is the cause of the hesitancy of the English to respond to others, to back away as if burned when touched. Hold your son, Linny, hold him tight against you and rock him and sing to him and let him feel your love. This I did with my Yali, and with Charles, and, in return, they are unafraid to show their own love and feelings.”

  The baby stirred and turned his head toward my breast.

  “You have hired a wet nurse?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  Nani Meera smiled. “I suspected as much. All the more reason for the English ladies to whisper about you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Good. You must be strong with these magpies. Yali will instruct Malti to prepare a daily boiled drink containing cumin and the climbing asparagus; it will increase your milk flow,” she said. “And now you must do one more thing that requi
res strength.”

  I looked up at her.

  “You must help your husband believe it is his child. It may be difficult, when you look at this boy and think of his father.” She touched the baby’s head once more, and then laid her palm on my forehead. “May I say a blessing?”

  I nodded.

  “She is become the light of her house: a red flame in the bowl of a shining oil lamp. She has given birth to his son, whose lands are made lovely with flowers by the pattering rain.”

  My eyes were damp. I leaned into her warm hand.

  “It is an ancient saying—Ainkurunuru,” she said, keeping her hand on my forehead, and I felt heat and strength flowing from it through me. “Do you have a name for your son?”

  I picked up the baby’s loosely curled fingers and kissed them. “David. His name will be David.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  SOMERS STOOD IN THE DOORWAY WITH HIS HANDS IN HIS pockets. “It went all right, then?”

  I nodded. “Come and see him,” I said. At this moment I felt such happiness that it extended even to Somers; I patted the bed beside me.

  He came to the bed but didn’t sit down.

  “Would you like to hold him?”

  He shook his head. “He looks fine, I suppose.”

  “He is fine. Small, because he came early, but healthy.”

  “Well,” he said. “It will be Somers, I suppose.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “His name will be Somers.” His voice was curiously flat.

  “I thought we’d call him David.”

  “David? Why David?”

  “I don’t know, really; I’ve always admired it as a name. It means beloved.” I stared at the baby as I spoke, hoping not to appear too determined. If Somers knew how important it was to me that this child be called David—my only connection with Daoud—he would fight me on it. And win.

  “I suppose so. David Somers Ingram, then,” he conceded.

  “Fine.”

  The baby made a face, yawned, and opened his eyes, squinting.

  “He’s got my hair, Somers, but his eyes . . . at the moment they’re dark blue, like so many newborns. But they’re murky.” I raised my own eyes and stared at Somers. “I have a feeling they’ll end up quite dark, like his father’s.”

  Somers stood. “I suppose they might. Well.” He kept looking at the baby, the same noncommittal expression on his face. I waited, my heart pounding, to see what he would say. “I may as well go on to the Club for dinner, if you’re fine here.”

  I smiled, nodding. He was thinking about his dinner, not whether the child in my arms looked unlike any other English child.

  LATER THAT EVENING, after I’d fed David, Malti let Neel in from the back garden. He ran to the bed, jumping on the end. He stopped, raising his nose in the air.

  “Hello, Neel,” I said. “Come and meet David.” I folded the light flannel back from the baby, who had fallen asleep as he’d nursed. Tail curiously stiff, Neel crept up beside me. His kind ocher eyes looked at me, then he sniffed at the blanket. Immediately, a low growl started in his throat, and his black lips twitched.

  I grabbed David, pressing him against me. He cried out, woken at the sudden movement, and Neel barked in short, angry bursts.

  Somers came to the door. “What the devil is all this caterwauling?” he shouted over the noise of the baby and of Neel. “Neel, stop it.”

  But the animal kept barking, his legs spread and rigid as he backed away from me.

  The words of the soldier in Simla came back to me with a heavy thud. Those dogs can detect nomad blood. They’ll tear a gypsy to pieces, given the chance. “Take him out, Somers. Take him away.” My voice was high with terror.

  “For God’s sake, Neel,” Somers roared, grabbing Neel by the scruff of his neck. “Settle down.” He carried him away, returning in a few minutes.

  “You’re looking awfully green,” he said. “Nothing to get that upset about. I suppose Neel doesn’t like playing second fiddle.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I tied him up out back and gave him a mutton bone. Give him a few days; he’ll be fine.”

  “No. Tomorrow I want you to give him to the Lelands. Ivy’s been wanting a dog for her Alexander. They’re leaving for a new posting in Barrackpur next week.”

  Somers blinked. “I thought you had an affection for him.”

  “I do. But I don’t want him to be near the baby. Of that I’m certain. I don’t trust him.”

  “You can do what you like with him,” Somers said, shrugging. “I’m off to bed.”

  An hour later I left David with Malti and slowly walked out to see Neel. I stroked him and held him, kissing his bony head. “You won’t be happy here anymore,” I whispered to him, crying into his fur, and he wagged his tail and licked my face.

  I stifled my sobs, sitting on the cool stones with him in my lap. I loved him and he me, and now I must lose him.

  February 1, 1834

  Dear Shaker and Celina,

  I trust you are settling into your married life with ease and joy. I thought of you over the holiday season, imagining your Christmas wedding.

  Your ongoing study of homeopathy sounds intriguing, Shaker, and I wish you continued success.

  David’s first birthday approaches. It is difficult to believe almost twelve months have passed since his birth. I find that the year has gone quickly, although the days go slowly.

  I hope it won’t be too long until you both know the joy of a child, as I have.

  My love to you both,

  Linny

  P.S. The gadahpurna is known by the English as hogweed. It flourishes at the beginning of the rains and is also known as “the rain born.” It is used for those suffering from snake poisoning, rat bite, and jaundice.

  The year had passed in a tolerable way. I was caught up in the physical and emotional demands of David, not letting Malti help me except in the most minor ways. I couldn’t get enough of my pretty baby, and had him sleep in my bed with me. I never let him out of my sight for that first whole year. He helped me forget my life with Somers, the suffocating presence of the English enclave, and enabled me to remember my time with Daoud.

  But as he passed his first, and then his second birthday, and was by then running about, less needy of my endless presence, I found loneliness yawned. There were longer and deeper times of restlessness, of despair, when David’s smile made me hunger so much for Daoud, for the time I had spent with him, for the feel of his arms around me, that I developed an odd, inexplicable pain under my ribs that never left.

  I was an outsider in my own home and an outsider in English India. I spent my time now, like the other women, shopping at the English shops, and taking quiet walks around the Maidan, pushing David in a pram with Malti in tow.

  That and palanquin rides to the homes of the other Company employee wives. They seemed to have forgotten about my “ordeal,” and there were always new wives from each year’s Fishing Fleet, wives who knew little about me except for my senior position, and that I was not overly sociable. But still, I found their judgmental outlook stifling. They were determined to reinforce the English traditions and rules much more strongly in India than they would have at home. Their narrow-mindedness, their unforgiving attitude, frightened me when I thought about my dark-eyed son. I dared not imagine the ramifications should anyone ever find out. I grew careful with them as I had become with Somers, cautious not to draw attention to myself, not to upset the fragile confines of their narrow world.

  Somers no longer found reason to beat me, although he still struck me occasionally, for the sheer pleasure of it. I realized, after thinking about it, that he was no longer interested in intense beatings because of the difference in me. The excitement had gone out of the game; he considered me broken. I remembered how Daoud, with a gentle hand, broke his horses’ wildness. And I knew that people can also be broken, although Somers’s tactics were on the opposite end of the spectrum from Daoud’s. I had grown
submissive through fear for the well-being of my son.

  And so I lived quietly, in near isolation, finding joy in David, but gradually realizing that I couldn’t go on indefinitely, living on the razor edge of my nerves.

  WHEN DAVID WAS CLOSE to three I heard, quite by chance, about a handful of women who got together regularly in a house on the other end of Garden Reach. They put together small booklets for the newly arrived English women in India. The booklets ranged in topic from basic Hindi to use with servants to recipes that incorporated Indian with English foods to dealing with minor ailments caused by the climate. I was welcomed into the group, possibly because I came with such enthusiasm, for here was something I was excited about and interested in—creating books. I began working on a booklet that dealt with the information I’d been collecting for the past few years—the healing properties of many of the indigenous plants. The pages were created on an ancient printing press, sent up from Madras when a new printing company opened there. A gentleman named Mr. Elliot—the husband of the woman who held the gathering in her home—ran the press for us. The last time I’d been at the Elliots’ I had showed several of the ladies what I remembered from the bookbindery in Liverpool so many years ago, and we’d worked on simple covers of floral cotton and drawings on white vellum. I had been experimenting on a piece of red silk, embroidering it with gold and colored threads to create a pleasing cover.

  Those afternoons were very precious to me. It was the first time in a long while that I looked forward to something and felt useful.

  I found myself humming one evening as I sat brushing my hair at my dressing table, thinking about the meeting the next afternoon. It was the beginning of the cool season, and as always at this time, spirits rose. I breathed in the fresh air from the open window, looking at myself in the mirror. I pinched my cheeks to put more color into them and thought about the richness of the red silk cover.