Father had been away for two years, so I was shy of the tall man with the dark tan who strode into our house and gathered me into his arms, hugging me so fiercely the brass buttons on his uniform dug into my chest. He had grown a mustache, and I wasn’t used to its bristly tickle. After Mother’s gentle caresses, the strength of his hug took away my breath. Father looked and looked as if he could not get enough of me. “Rosy,” he said, calling me by his pet name for me, “you’ve grown into a fine young woman.”
He began to stride about the house and garden. “You can’t know how I longed for this day,” he said. “At night I would put myself to sleep by imagining myself walking from room to room, through the drawing room with the shutters closed against the sun, through my study with my favorite books and the dining room set for our dinner, you and your mother there at the table, you telling me all the things you had done that day, and afterwards all of us in the garden with the hibiscus and oleander in blossom and the sound of the water falling from the fountain.” He smiled at us. “Even now, I have to touch everything to be sure it’s not my imagination.”
Father had brought us presents. He gave mother a ring set with an emerald just the color of her eyes, and for me he had a necklace of cleverly carved ivory beads. For Amina there was a silk scarf and for Ranjit a walking stick in bright wood, which he immediately began to use to prod the chota mali into working faster.
Mother and I could hardly let Father out of our sight. We went together to see a welcome-home parade of the Second Battalion of the Gurkha Rifles, which Father commanded. Father was regal in his uniform, with its rows of brightly colored ribbons, and the Indian havildars, who were noncommissioned officers, and sepoys, who were privates, looked suitably impressive in their starched blue uniforms and their bright blue and gold turbans. The whole town, English and Indian, turned out and cheered wildly.
Mother was better now that Father had returned, and there were few afternoons on the chaise. She began to plan parties to welcome Father and to go to parties given for the other officers who, like Father, were home from the war. Our house, where it seemed that we had been tiptoeing about forever, was now full of people laughing and chattering.
When there was no company and I could get Father to myself, I begged for stories of the war. Father’s battalion had fought the Turks, who were on the side of the Germans and against England. The battles had taken place in Mesopotamia, near the Tigris River. Father spun the globe that always sat on his desk and put his finger on the exact spot. “We were at the very place where the Garden of Eden was supposed to have been,” Father said, “but it was more hell than paradise.”
There was a lot he would not tell me about the war. His feelings seemed to close in on him as if he were slamming shut a book. All he said was, “Those Turks were devils with a bayonet.” The Gurkha soldiers in Father’s battalion came from Nepal, a country north of India high in the Himalayas. “You can’t find braver men,” Father said. “They crossed that river with the Turks firing away at them and never looked back. This country should be proud that its own people helped to protect the British Empire. Unfortunately, there were a few Indian men who fought not with us but with the Turks, against us.”
“Why did they do that?” I asked.
“They had some misguided idea of independence from England, after all England has done for them. And just see what it led to: the terrible tragedy in Amritsar.”
“What happened in Amritsar?” I asked, wanting to know his version, for Isha had whispered to me that in the city of Amritsar, thousands of Indians had gathered to celebrate a festival. The British army believed the Indian people were there not to celebrate but to demonstrate against British rule. The soldiers had been ordered to shoot, and hundreds of Indians had died.
Father said, “A brigadier general lost his head. I suppose he thought the gathering of Indians was a bunch of Bolsheviks. It was very nasty and best forgotten.” He would say no more.
The magic of Father’s return was soon over for him, and he began to look at our home in a different way. I could see he was trying not to be critical, that he was making an effort to be patient with Mother and me, but there were long sessions with Ranjit. He ordered dead trees cut and new ones planted. He examined the storeroom, which should have been locked at all times and its key with Mother, but Mother had often handed the key to cook or one of the other servants in need of supplies. Father found a great difference between what was on the list and the dwindling tins of marmalade and sardines and biscuits, all things especially precious because they had not been available from England during the war. “There has been carelessness,” Father said. Carelessness was something Father could not stand.
He conferred with Ranjit on every one of the servants, asking exactly what they did and what was paid to them. “Why do we have two sweepers?” he demanded. The sweepers are outcastes and are considered the lowest of the low among the Hindus. It was their job to sweep the house and garden paths and to empty the chamber pots. The Hindus in India have a caste system so that everyone knows what their standing is. Isha says first there are the priests, then the warriors and rulers, and then the merchants and farmers. After that are the laborers. The poor outcastes belong to no caste at all.
Ranjit said, “The sweeper, Jetha, who has been with us all these years, has a little trouble with the work. He is getting old. I hired a young sweeper to help him.”
“If he is too old for the work, let him go.”
A frown appeared on Ranjit’s forehead. “But, Sahib, Jetha has always been with us. He has a large family of children and grandchildren who depend on even his small wage.”
Father was firm. “It’s time they found work for themselves and took care of Jetha for a change.”
“Sahib, Jetha is a sweeper, as are all his family. The other Hindus will not hire them. They are considered unclean.”
“That’s Hindu nonsense and has nothing to do with me. Get rid of him.” In that way several of the servants departed and a few younger ones were hired on. Mother was admonished never to give the key to the stores to anyone but Ranjit, and more sardines and marmalade were ordered from England.
“It is a miracle that things were not worse,” Father said. “I give the credit to Ranjit. In spite of my not being here, he has managed very well. Without him the house would have fallen apart.”
When the house was put in order, it was my turn. Father called me into his study and plucked a book from the shelves, handed it to me, and asked me to read to him. The book was Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. It was a book I had read many times because it was all about King Arthur and Guinevere, but it was also about poor, sad Queen Victoria and the death of her husband, Prince Albert. At first I read slowly and enunciated carefully as Father always instructed me to, but then I came to these words:
“Break not, O woman’s-heart, but still endure;
Break not, for thou art Royal, but endure,
Remembering all the beauty of that star
Which shone so close beside Thee that ye made
One light together, but has past and leaves
The Crown a lonely splendor.”
I lost myself in the words and rushed on until Father stopped me.
“Just as I thought,” he said. “You are picking up a Hindi accent.” He appeared very cross.
“But, Father,” I said, “the Westons hired a governess from France just so their children could have a French accent.”
“Don’t be pert, Rosalind. That’s not the same thing at all. We must do something about that. You are spending too much time here with the servants and picking up their accent. Why aren’t you at the club with the other English children?”
Father must have known that Mother had not been well enough to take me to the club, and even if I could have gone on my own, I wouldn’t have. The leftover children— that is, the ones who had not been sent to England before the war—were so dull. Amy Weston, who was my age and went to school with me, stood there with this stupid smile until you noticed her dress and told her how pretty it was. Once, when I confided to her that I sometimes went to the bazaar, she looked at me as if I were very strange. She sat on the club’s porch sipping lemonade and hoping one of the young soldiers who were home on leave would notice her. I was relieved that Mother didn’t take me to the club and that instead I had Isha and the exciting world of the bazaar, but of course I didn’t tell Father that.
“I must have your mother organize a little get-together for you with some other girls your age. And what have you learned at school?” He quizzed me on my French and Latin and math and then gave a great sigh. “It’s a pity that you did not go to England for your schooling.” He was silent for a moment, and then he said, as if he were one person telling something to another person, and I was not there, “Ships have resumed sailing again to England. It’s not too late.”
Immediately I saw myself put in chains and slung into the hold of a ship. Of course I knew it would not be like that, but the thought of leaving India and Mother and Father and our home felt that way. Father saw the look on my face and hastily said, “Never mind. Now that I am home we’ll sort things out, but I don’t like the rumors I hear of you having been seen in the bazaar. That is totally unacceptable.”
I guessed that Father had spoken to Mother about me and even mentioned England, for Mother was very pale and took to her chaise. She had me come and read to her so that she might keep an eye on me, lest Father sneak me away while she wasn’t looking and ship me off to the dreaded England.
The next day Mother accompanied me to the club. There were always complicated preparations for these occasions. Even in the hot days of an Indian summer Mother had me put on long silk stockings, a garter belt, and a slip that clung to my body like a leech. The collar of my dress chafed my neck, and by the time I had dressed I was damp with perspiration. For once Mother seemed not to mind the heat, and in her flowered voile dress and her hat that bloomed a silk rose, she looked like a bouquet. Even her white gloves had tiny rosebuds on them. We motored to the club in our ancient Packard, which had survived the war. Ashok, our driver, kept his hand on the horn as he urged the auto through bicycles, oxcarts, horse tongas, stray cows, and the crowds of people that were everywhere. Because of the dust, the car windows were shut tightly and the inside of the car was hellishly hot. I felt the wetness under my armpits and on the back of my dress. Mother kept putting her hand over her eyes as Ashok barely missed running down the small children who walked alongside the car pounding on the windows and begging for coins.
When at last we were safe inside the club it seemed a little cooler with the green lawn, flowerbeds, and a sky blue pool with children swimming about sending up sprays of water, and everywhere vases of blooms for the day before the women had their flower show. The clubhouse was divided into a party room for dances, a large comfortable room for the men where they played billiards and had their own dining room hung with photographs of winning tennis and cricket teams and an imposing portrait of our king, George V, and a smaller, much less grand section for women with a bridge room and a small parlor with a tatty sofa and wicker chairs left over from a redo of the men’s section.
Mother’s friends Mrs. Cartwright and Mrs. Weston, who were so critical of the way I wore my hair and went out in the sun, were there with another woman. The three of them were sitting in the parlor, their skirts trembling in the breezes from the electric fans, and sipping tall glasses of something iced. They waved mother over and I trailed along, unsure of what else to do.
“Well, stranger,” Mrs. Cartwright said to Mother, “how nice to see you. We’ve missed you, and of course Rosalind as well, although I suspect she has had more interesting things to do.” I was standing close to Mother and felt her stiffen, remembering how Mrs. Cartwright had reported seeing me at the bazaar.
Mrs. Weston said, “Your Rosalind is such an interesting child. I’m afraid my Amy is happy just to do the things ordinary girls are expected to do.”
The third woman, whom I hadn’t seen before, was listening to these comments with a secret smile on her face. She was the only woman in the club without a hat, and even more shocking, a quick glance at her ankles, which could be seen thrust out from an old-fashioned long skirt, told me she was bare legged. Now she said to Mother and to me, “Sit down, my dears, and let us order something cool for you. I want to hear more about this interesting child. The ordinary can get a bit boring.”
I immediately loved her, but Mrs. Weston flushed. I think she would have liked to make an angry reply, but she ignored the remark and instead said to me, “Rosalind, my dear, why don’t you go and find Amy.”
Amy, who went to my school, was sitting by the pool in the shade of an umbrella with another girl. I saw that my dressy clothes were all wrong for the hot afternoon, for the girls were both in their bathing suits with towels draped over their shoulders, and they wore large straw boaters with ribbons hanging down. Amy’s blond hair was curled in a becoming style that must have taken ages to do. The other girl was what people call plain; that is, she was everything you would expect and nothing surprising. The two of them were talking together, but their attention was on three young lieutenants sitting across the pool from them. When two of the lieutenants got up and disappeared into the men’s dressing room, Amy turned her attention to me and, indicating the other girl, said, “Sarah Harvey.” To Sarah she said, “Rosalind James,” making my name sound like something on a list of insects to be avoided. I settled onto an empty chair.
“You’re dressed for a tea party,” Sarah said. “Where is your bathing suit?”
Before I could answer, Amy said, “I was telling Sarah that now that the war is over, I’ll be going to England. I expect I’ll be presented at court.” She gave me a critical look. “I don’t suppose you want to go to England,” she said.
“No,” I said. “I don’t.”
To Sarah she said, “Rosalind wouldn’t want to leave her friends.” Amy made the word friends sound odious, and I guessed there was talk of my having been seen with Isha.
I couldn’t help myself. I said, “I think you have to be someone really important to be presented at court. Anyhow, you have to wear feathers in your hair, and I think that’s ridiculous.”
“No more ridiculous than putting red powder in your hair.”
So she did mean Isha.
“I don’t know what you two are talking about,” Sarah said, “but if I went, I’d have to stay with my grandparents, and they live off in the country and there’s nothing around them. It wouldn’t be like London, with so much to do. And it’s freezing in the winter.”
“I’ll have a fur coat,” Amy said. “And my uncle is important. He’s something in the government, and he has a lot to say about India. He wrote to my parents that all this talk about India breaking away from England and becoming independent was very dangerous. He said Indian people who belong to the Congress Party would be arrested if they aren’t careful.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, thinking of Isha’s husband, Aziz.
Amy said, “The Congress Party wants all us English to go home.”
“I thought you wanted to go back to England,” I said.
“That’s different. It’s not like I want the Indians to take over the country.” She gave me a withering look. “Anyone who knows anything would have nothing to do with Indians. They’re against England.”
Sarah said, “Mrs. Nelson has Indians to parties at her house all the time.”
“Who is Mrs. Nelson?” I asked.
“She’s the woman who’s sitting with our mothers.” Amy said. “Her husband is the head of a large jute company.”
I remember Father telling me once that jute that came from plant fibers was the way planters in this part of India made their living. We often saw boats on the river carrying bales of jute to be sold and turned into rope.
Amy said, “She’s a little strange, but everyone has to be nice to her because her husband practically owns the town. He’s really rich and they have a big house, but you’d never know it from the way Mrs. Nelson dresses. With her money she could get all her clothes from Paris.”
Sarah said, “You don’t see her here very often. She runs some kind of orphanage for Indian children.”
Mrs. Nelson was forgotten when two of the three lieutenants came strolling out of the men’s dressing room and dove into the water with a huge splash. A few drops landed on us. When they emerged, Amy called to them, “You nearly drowned us!”
“Come on in and you can drown us!” one of the men answered. Giggling, Sarah and Amy threw off their hats and the towels they had draped around their shoulders, then climbed into the pool, careful not to get their hair wet.
Left to myself, I was about to wander back to Mother when the third lieutenant walked over. After asking if he might join me, he collapsed on a chair and stuck out his long legs. His uniform appeared to be a size too large, so I guessed he had lost weight. There was a yellow cast to his dark tan, and his brown hair had been clipped close to his head, giving him a skinned look. He couldn’t have been more than twenty.
“It looks like you and I have been deserted,” he said. “I’m Max Nelson, by the way.”
“I’m Rosalind James. Is Mrs. Nelson your mother?”
“Yes, and if we’re talking families, is your father Major James by any chance?”
“He is. Do you know him?”
“I was privileged to serve under him.”
“So you got to go to Mesopotamia. That must have been so interesting.”
“It was terrifying. Land of the ancient Assyrians, you know.”
“The poem about them always makes me shiver,” I said, and recited, “‘The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, / And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold.’”
“Good girl,” he said. “You know your Byron.”
“I always wondered what cohorts were.”
“A group of warriors. The Assyrians were a fierce lot, one war after another, chasing whole populations from their lands, building gorgeous palaces with their loot. One of their kings said, ‘I built a city with the labors of the peoples subdued by my hand.’ That makes me shiver. It was all very biblical: Nineveh and Babylon. But they had their own gods: Ishtar, Shamash, Anu, and Ea.”
“How do you know so much about Assyria? You must have been too busy fighting to do much reading.”
“I was studying history at Cambridge. As soon as I was old enough to enlist, I jumped in. I thought I’d make a little of my own history, but I never figured out what England was doing chasing the Turks around in the land of the Assyrians.”
“And will you go back to Cambridge?”
“Yes, at the end of summer. Dad would like me to stay here and take over the business, but I’m going back to King’s College with a little more knowledge of history than I had when I left.”
I told him, “I have two aunts in England, the Hartley sisters who live on Lord North Street. Isn’t that a wonderful name for a street? After you finish your studies, will you return to India?” I tried to hide the hope in my voice.
“Not to run the jute business.” He lowered his voice. “Mother says England should give India its freedom, and I agree. I am interested in the Congress Party and one of the party’s leaders, a man called Gandhi who is against violence, which is fine with me. I’ve had enough killing to last a lifetime.”
I was anxious to let him know that I had heard all about the Congress Party and Gandhi. I said, “The husband of my friend Isha, Aziz Mertha, has meetings at his parents’ house, and once Gandhi was actually there.”
Max looked at me with interest. “So you know about Aziz. If you don’t want him to get into trouble, you had better keep that information to yourself. Aziz takes a great risk, but Gandhi is an extraordinary man. I think he’s a great leader, and when I return to Cambridge I mean to write about him. He studied in England when he was a young man, but people there don’t really know how amazing he is. I’ve only heard him speak once, but I’ll never forget it. He says nonviolence must have its roots in love and in the end must lead to friendship with the enemy. What an attractive message that is to someone who has been fighting a war, and not only a war, but seen killings right here in India.”
“You mean what happened in Amritsar?”
“Yes, but Gandhi doesn’t want revenge for that. He wants justice.”
“If he ever comes here again, will you let me know so I can hear him speak too?”
Suddenly, Mrs. Cartwright was standing over us. “I think your Mother is ready to go home, Rosalind,” she said. “The heat is a little too much for her.”
I suspected it was boredom more than heat. I stood up, and so did Max. “Thank you for the history lesson,” I said, and held out my hand.
“I won’t forget your request,” he replied.
When we were a little way from him, Mrs. Cartwright said, “I wouldn’t have too much to do with that boy. A lot of his ideas are nonsense. He gets them from his mother. I can’t think what a woman in her position is doing with such radical opinions. Mr. Nelson should have a talk with her.”
“What is Mr. Nelson like?” I asked.
“He’s always traveling from one jute plantation to another. I don’t see that boy working hard enough to make the money his father has.”
“Perhaps Max isn’t interested in jute.”
“Of course, one mightn’t be interested in jute, but certainly one should be interested in money.”
On the way out, Mrs. Nelson smiled at me as if we shared a secret, and said, “One of these days you must come and visit the children at my orphanage.”