The Jasmine Wife

by Jane Coverdale

“She died first, it was very quick and she knew nothing, but the gods were merciful and took him soon after.” She ran her fingers over the name on the headstone, as she had done many times before. “He could not have lived without her.” Her eyes darkened for a moment, remembering past sadness. “Then you became sick. I took you from the house and cared for you myself.”

  “I remember …”

  “Then the English lady came and took you away from me …” Her face crumpled suddenly as she relived the nightmare. “You were my child … my child! I had no one else. When I was nine years old, my parents sold me to a man old enough to be my grandfather … When he died, his relations said I must burn on the pyre with him …”

  The woman’s eyes opened wide with remembered terror, and Sara felt a sudden surge of pity for the terrified child Malika had once been. “Your mother found me hiding in her garden. She paid my relations to forget about me. For many months she kept me by her side, in case they came back.” She shuddered and bent down to clear the tomb of dead flowers and draped a fresh garland of marigolds over the stone. “I can never leave her, even when she is with her God.”

  “You’ve been here all this time … If only I’d known.”

  “I said I would work for food only, as long as I could stay.”

  Then her face suddenly brightened. “The other people went back to England and Monsieur Sabran brought this house. He knows I can never leave … Who would take care of the graves?”

  “But you can’t stay here forever … I can’t bear to think of you always being here alone …”

  “I am not alone … There is a man who does the garden but, as you can see—” she waved her thin arm at the overgrown shrubbery “—he is very lazy. When Monsieur Sabran is here the house is full of people. But he hasn’t been here for three months now, and he has written to say he’ll probably not return for a long time; he says he might sell this house … and I’ll have to work for new people …”

  Sara stared down at the graves, overcome with fear. The new people might not like them being there and get rid of them somehow. There was only one solution. She brightened at once. She would buy the house herself.

  “Where is Monsieur Sabran now?” she asked, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice.

  “I do not know. He might be in his house in Pondicherry, or he might be in the Hills; he has a house there too, but I do not know where.”

  “Did Monsieur Sabran have a little girl with him when he went away?”

  “Yes, an orphan baby. Sometimes he would look at her and say, “Make sure you feed her well, otherwise the English lady will say we are ill treating her.” Then he would laugh, but he did not seem very happy when he said it.”

  “I think I must have offended him more than I thought.”

  “What do you mean, Sarianna? What do you know of this baby?”

  “Nothing … We won’t talk about it now … I want to see the house; can we get in?”

  Malika led the way through the kitchen. A small pile of belongings folded neatly on the floor near the stove showed Malika’s sleeping place.

  “I can’t bear to think of you lying there; why don’t you take one of the bedrooms? There’s no one here to see you.”

  “I could not, Sarianna; it is not my place to do so.”

  “Please, for my sake …”

  Malika shook her head. “Your mother would see me. She is still here.”

  Sara shivered a little. She could indeed feel an unexplained presence, but she was too sensible to believe in ghosts, no matter how much she would have liked to commune with the past. The heavy atmosphere was merely painful memories, and secrets as yet uncovered.

  She followed Malika down the unlit passage into a spacious drawing room while she unlocked the doors leading onto the veranda, bringing in the dusty spiced air on a beam of morning light, and revealing the elegant proportions of the room.

  Everything was so familiar, and surely the worn leather sofa by the window was the same she’d sat on as a child to learn her English alphabet. Her mother was still there, a ghostly form, holding the book, her embroidery basket by her side, as she listened while Sara lisped out the letters. Surely the scent of Attar of Roses was still in the room. Malika was right after all.

  She groped her way up the staircase, almost overcome now with the pressure of more unshed tears and the rush of sensations coming to life. She clung to the banisters, dragging her feet up the stairs. She felt a gust of air pass close by, or did she imagine it? As a child she had run down those very stairs, eager to get outside to play with her dolls in the garden. She’d seemed to be always happy then, and the house had been full of people coming and going and life drifting on, unaware and unafraid.

  The nursery lay at the end of the hall.

  Inside the room, it was as though the children had left to play outside and would return at any moment. A child’s cot, the white paint peeling and showing the rust beneath, stood in the corner with its cage of iron netting designed to keep out snakes and insects, though nothing could keep out the disease that crept unseen through the mesh, and killed so silently.

  Malika opened a cupboard in the corner and dragged out a trunk, opening it with a key she wore around her waist. She reached in and pulled out a battered teddy and a doll dressed as a shepherdess.

  Sara remembered how she hadn’t been allowed to take any of her toys or books with her to England in case she would take disease with her too, and she relived the feeling of loss at leaving her favourites behind.

  “Why did these rooms stay the same? Surely Monsieur Sabran would find them not to his taste.”

  “He liked them; he thought that he would have children some day so he kept the rooms … But he will not have children with Maya … I know … I can see no children around her.”

  “Maya is Monsieur Sabran’s …” she hesitated, not knowing how to refer to the girl “… Monsieur Sabran’s wife?”

  “Maya is a bad woman. She is beautiful and good, but she is still a bad woman.” Malika had the old-fashioned intolerance of a good Hindu woman. “I do not think they will ever be husband and wife. She says she will marry Monsieur Sabran when her husband dies but … I do not know what it is … something wrong … The gods will punish them for not obeying our laws …”

  They moved silently down the hall, almost tiptoeing in fear of awakening the dead, and, without needing to be told, Sara recognised the door to her mother’s bedroom.

  “You remember, Sarianna? Now it is Monsieur Sabran’s room.”

  Sara was torn between feeling that it was indiscreet to be in a strange man’s room, and a desire to know more about the owner of the house. A bedroom told so much about the occupant, and this one was no exception. The room was furnished with good heavy mahogany and, to her surprise, she saw it was full of books in both English and French. They were everywhere, lying stacked up on the bedside table and on the window ledges.

  The paintings above the bed and decorating the walls were modern, unlike anything she’d ever seen. They glowed with colour as bright as a hot summer’s day, almost blinding in their brilliance. She stood before them mesmerised, soaking in the warmth radiating from the canvas.

  In England, the walls of her home were decorated with dark portraits of past relations, dressed in sombre black and wearing forbidding expressions, layered with the dusty patina of age. She’d only recently read about Manet and the other Impressionist painters and how their new painting style had so horrified the French and English academies. She smiled to herself; it seemed that Ravi Sabran was not afraid of the modern but embraced it with enthusiasm. There before her were the luminous reminders of his French heritage: lovely scenes of French country life and the gay streets of Paris. The colours were vivid and restful at the same time, and oddly appropriate to their surroundings.

  She tore herself away to admire the view from the window and imagined how pleasant it must be to gaze out upon the tangle of coconut palms and frangipani and, further away still, a
distant view of the sea. Her hand rested upon a large armchair placed comfortably by the window and, as in the rest of the room, the table beside it was piled high with literature.

  She picked up one of the books, left open as he must have left it, and saw it was written by one of the scandalous French novelists. She dropped it as though it burned her fingers, remembering how she had been caught with one of the same writer’s books in boarding school. Her French teacher had left it lying around and, after reading a few pages, she’d been so tempted to learn more she had hidden it under her pillow to read after lights out, but, unfortunately, she had been caught, and the outrage that followed haunted her still.

  Even so, she was pleased. Here was the other side of the exotic, flamboyant and arrogant man she’d met only a few times. Now she suspected him of being an intellectual.

  Her brain was working fast, telling her she must live again in her old home. She ran a possessive hand over the coverlet on the bed and knew that she must have this room for herself, and sleep in the same bed her own mother had slept in. She felt only in that house could she ever regain her old happiness. Her mood lightened to a new feverish level, and she was all at once consumed with energy.

  “I’ll go to see him, I’ll go to see Monsieur Sabran and make him sell the house to me.”

  Malika stared at Sara, her brow forming into a frown, before she reverted to her old status of nurse and shook her finger at Sara as she had done when she was a small child. “It isn’t good for you to talk to such a man; he lives with a bad woman.”

  Sara laughed. Even if Ravi Sabran lived with fifty women, it wouldn’t be enough to stop her from doing her best to find him again and make him sell her his house. She must have it, and she would do anything to get it.

  Chapter 18

  It was almost dark when Sara returned to Charles. She had parted from Malika with an almost agonising reluctance, being overwhelmed with the fear that once she was out of sight she’d evaporate into thin air and all her new-found happiness with her.

  The house too had a stranglehold on her emotions. And, as she drove away, it seemed the vines surrounding the house had attached themselves to her, pulling tighter the further away she became, till finally snapping as she came to a standstill outside the little villa she only just existed in with Charles.

  Before entering the house she stood for a while on the path outside the front gate as she contemplated the strange mock Tudor structure and what waited for her within those walls. Once inside the sphere of her husband’s rule she knew she would fade as surely as the garden that surrounded the house. It was as though she left her true self at the doorstep and, after crossing the threshold, assumed a role that stripped her of her true character. She became as wooden as a puppet, speaking lines that did not belong to her, and smiling when she did not feel like smiling.

  This, surely, could not be her home.

  It took Sara some time to tell Charles about Malika and the house. At first it was excitement making it difficult for her to speak, but then she realised it was her unwillingness to share her treasure, knowing instinctively he would want to crush her dream of ever owning the house.

  She wasn’t afraid of him yet, even though at times she caught sight of what he might become if she did ever seriously displease him.

  When at last she did speak up, her voice didn’t sound as though it belonged to her. It was light and cheerful, as though the subject had to be broken to him gently. She was reminded of the voice her aunt had used when asking her husband for an increase in her dress allowance.

  “Charles … I have something important to tell you.”

  He didn’t look up from reading his mail; he spoke in an offhand way. “What is it, my dear?”

  “I found Malika … You remember … my old nurse … I told you about her … Malika! I found her! It’s truly amazing!” Her voice rose to an excited pitch, then fell to almost a whisper when she saw his mouth twist.

  “Your old nurse, are you sure? You know what tricksters these people are, and they do look somewhat alike.”

  A flash of anger surged through her body. “That’s ridiculous, Charles, and you know it! Of course I’m sure. I’d know Malika anywhere. She was like a mother to me.”

  He put the mail to one side and stared up at her. “I wouldn’t say that too loud if I were you. It doesn’t sit right.”

  She confronted him now, but he backed away. “Why ever not? What do you mean?”

  He picked up a newspaper and went back to his reading, not really listening. She watched the top of his head for a while, even though it said he did not wish to be disturbed.

  “Charles, please … I’ve so much to tell you …”

  He looked up then, but still held onto his newspaper.

  “She’s still living at my parents’ house … My parents’ house! I found my parents’ house! Isn’t that an incredible coincidence? Isn’t it wonderful, Charles? I found out the name my father used when he first came to India; he called himself William Radcliffe!”

  Charles looked up, suddenly alarmed. “He changed his name?” Why would he do that?”

  “I told you he’d quarrelled with his family, for whatever reason I don’t know.” She gave up all pretence now and rose to her father’s defence.

  “A lot of people change their names; it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I hope you’re right. It wouldn’t do if the fellow was hiding something unsavoury. But, as you say, it’s unlikely. He was an Eton man, after all.”

  She almost laughed, thinking he was joking, but she soon realised he was deadly serious.

  “But the thing is,” she pushed on, even though his expression had changed to one of suspicion, “the house might be empty soon; we might be able to rent it, perhaps even buy it. Oh, Charles, it’s such a beautiful house and …”

  “Sara, please calm yourself … How can I understand you when you rattle on like that? Now, sit down and tell me your news quietly. How did you find the house, and what are you doing traipsing around the town by yourself? Shakur told me you refused to take Lakshmi with you.”

  “Well, I thought I should go to see Prema, so …”

  “Prema? You mean the Indian child; you went to see her?”

  “Yes I did but she wasn’t there”

  “I thought we agreed that you could never visit that man’s home.” As he stood his paper dropped to the floor unnoticed. “I know Sabran’s house well. One of the best in the old style, I’ll admit, but even if the house is available to rent, we can never have an Indian landlord, and especially a man who attacked me, and in front of everyone. I could have had him arrested. It’s unthinkable.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Charles! He didn’t hurt you, and it’s understandable as he was so upset. And does it matter if he’s Indian? Perhaps he’ll sell us the house and then he’ll leave Madras. You should be pleased about that if he bothers you so much.”

  Charles flexed the muscles in one his hands and paused while examining his nails. She was meant to wait before him, like a child about to be punished, and she felt her anger rise once more.

  He sighed loudly, as though his patience with her was exhausted, though determined to be patient still.

  “And what will we do for money? Have you thought of that? I think you imagine we have more money than we have.”

  “I have my pearls. You said yourself they would fetch a good price.”

  “I don’t think it’s very ladylike of you to mention your pearls. You wouldn’t have them at all if it wasn’t for the respect I command here. I refuse to discuss it any longer. God knows what condition the place is in after Indians have lived in it.”

  “The house has been well taken care of.” Sara struggled to keep control of her anger now. “If you only knew what the house means to me, how happy it would make me …” She faltered this time, tears of outrage almost spilling over. “My parents are buried at that house … Surely you can see …”

  “Yes, yes, of course I understand
.” He softened at once. “I could talk to the rector about having the graves moved into the churchyard, where you could visit them. It does seem barbaric they were buried in the grounds of the house at all, but then the rules were so very lax in those days.”

  “I want them to stay where they are, at peace. It seems wrong to move them.”

  He was impatient with her now, she could tell, and she knew also that he didn’t really understand at all. The realisation made her feel cold inside and very alone.

  “Charles?” Her voice couldn’t hide her iciness now.

  He sighed in response. “Yes, my dear?”

  “Is the mail service very poor, here in Madras, I mean?”

  “No, it’s a very good service; that’s something we’ve managed to teach the devils to do well.”

  “Then I can’t understand why I’ve heard nothing from Monsieur Sabran. I’ve written a number of times and I’ve never received an answer; that’s why I decided to visit the house without an invitation.”

  “Well, I did tell you not to expect too much from them; they aren’t like us.”

  “Not so different, surely … and Monsieur Sabran is an educated man …”

  He stopped her at once. “Perhaps, but nonetheless he has Indian blood and it makes all the difference.”

  “You sound like the perfect sahib, and a dreadful snob.”

  “Let me tell you something, Sara, that might help you to understand.”

  A moment of pure rage threatened to overtake her. To be patronized in such a way was unendurable. It took all her strength not to leave the house at once, but she managed to calm herself enough to speak, even though her voice trembled.

  “I don’t need help in understanding anything, Charles. In fact I think you should apologise to me at once.”

  He was quite taken aback, but he could see too how seriously he had upset her. “Please, my dear, forgive me; it’s just that I don’t want you to think too badly of me. I’m sorry, I really am, but now can I speak?”

  She nodded, but without any interest. His words were meaningless to her now.