Tilly Sweetrick
India. The littlies fussed and fizzed at the prospect of seeing elephants and nabobs until I wanted to slap them. We should have been mourning the fact that we weren’t arriving in America. The steamer docked at a port and then a small ferry took us upstream to Calcutta. We chugged up the Hooghly, a wide, wide river with palm trees on its banks and glistening, brown-skinned men swimming from the ghats.
Calcutta wasn’t what I expected. It was beautiful and terrible with its Eden gardens, wide avenues, dilapidated mansions and piles of rotting figurines on the bank. The Butcher said they were effigies from puja ceremonies that the Hindus held, and he knew the names of their gods: Kali and Shiva. He made a remark about Kali being a teenage girl. As if that black-and-blue monster effigy with water washing through her was a girl. It made me shudder.
We crowded into gharries for the ride through the city. Somehow, I was stuck with all the Fintons. Or they were stuck with each other. You could see they were no happier about it than me. Eloise, Eunice and Eliza didn’t often seek each other’s company.
Charlie Byrne climbed up beside the driver and turned back to grin at us. ‘India,’ he said. ‘At last.’ He was a strange boy. He seemed to slip on a different skin from the moment we stepped off the ferry and onto the ghats, and his green eyes had grown brighter, like shiny glass.
‘Pooh, what’s so special about India,’ said Eunice. ‘I don’t know why we couldn’t do a season in Rangoon.’
‘You say the stupidest things, Eunice,’ said Eliza. ‘You know Mr Arthur won’t take us there.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why can’t we go there?’
‘Because of what happened when he was tiny, only as big as Daisy. Mr Arthur’s brother was murdered in Rangoon.’
‘No he wasn’t,’ interjected Lo. ‘He shot himself.’
Eliza’s face grew red and splotchy. ‘You weren’t there. Arthur was. Arthur says he was murdered. He saw Jimmy lying on the top of the stairs, dead.’
‘So he was murdered with his own gun and it was found under him, still clutched in his own hand?’ said Lo, pursing her lips. ‘Mrs Essie was there too. It didn’t stop her going back to Rangoon.’
‘Mrs Essie didn’t find the corpse,’ said Eliza. ‘If I found you dead and bleeding outside my room, I would never feel the same about that place again. I would never want to go back there. What is wrong with all you people? Can’t you see he’s only human? He’s a man and once he was a boy.’
Eliza could make all the excuses she liked for the Butcher. It didn’t matter what had happened to him when he was little. It was who he had become that mattered to us now.
Calcutta was white and grey – all the lovely grand buildings were streaked with stains from the monsoon. There were people in uniform everywhere, which was a good sign. I liked having soldiers in the audience.
We rode past the Victoria Memorial where white stone lay in great piles and brown men glistened with sweat, past bazaars where swarms of Indians bustled from one stall to the next, past beggars and tea-wallahs. Our hotel was an old building with rusting iron lacework that bled brown stains down the walls. As soon as we were through the lobby, Poesy was beside me. She came up the stairs with her arm linked through Ruby’s, as if she was Ruby’s new best friend. But Ruby’s face looked odd and twisted and her mouth sunken, as though she’d been sucking on sour limes.
We stood out on the balcony overlooking a narrow street teeming with natives. Poesy took a deep breath and made her usual sort of remark, about how the city smelt delicious – a sweetness of milky tea and spices. She always noticed the strangest things.
‘Look,’ she said, pointing, ‘Isn’t it lovely.’ A woman stood on an opposite rooftop hanging out coloured cloths, a line of saris floating in the breeze beside her.
‘That’s a bad sign,’ I said. ‘We must be right on the edge of Blacktown.’
‘Why must you spoil it, Tilly?’ said Poesy.
‘The Butcher should have found us lodgings closer to the theatre.’
I looked at the brilliantly coloured floating saris and then down at my day dress, looking tattier and greyer every day. It was awfully threadbare too, and I felt another surge of irritation with the Butcher. As soon as we were in our rooms, Thrupp made us take everything off, except our petticoats, to ‘reduce wear and tear’. So we sat about feeling like paupers.
At breakfast the next morning, Charlie Byrne had his Magician’s Annual propped open in his lap as he spooned egg into his mouth. He always had his nose in a book, or else his hands would be flitting like wings as he practised his tricks.
‘Do you ever read anything other than magic annuals?’ I asked.
‘ ’Course I do,’ he said.
‘Well, can you lend me something then? I’ve read my magazines so many times I’m utterly bored. Anything will do. Anything.’
So on a hot Bengal afternoon, while we lay about in our petticoats on our beds, I picked up Charlie’s book and began to flick through the pages.
‘Charlie’s lent me this,’ I said, waving the book at Poesy. I rather liked that it annoyed her, even if we were pretending we were friends again. She was helping Daisy tie her curls with rags so that they wouldn’t snarl while she took her afternoon nap. She pretended not to hear me but I knew her ears had pricked up. Miss Poesy thought Charlie was her special possession. She didn’t like to think of any other girl owning pieces of him.
I turned back to the book and I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand on end as I read. Mesmerism. It was a how-to book of mesmerism. I’d seen a magician do it once on stage in San Francisco. He’d made a man quack like a duck. ‘We should try this,’ I said. ‘Try a little experiment in mass hypnosis!’
‘What?’ asked Poesy.
I didn’t bother to answer. I just held the book up and pointed at the title. She took a step closer.
‘You shouldn’t even think about it. Mesmerism is dangerous. I saw Mrs Annie Besant do it in Melbourne and she said you could paralyse the brain with hypnosis. She says Indian magic men hypnotise everyone in their audiences to make them believe in their conjuring. But you have to know how to go about it properly. People can hurt themselves with their thoughts.’
‘I don’t believe any of the girls in this room have a single thought inside their airy heads,’ I said.
‘Don’t be flippant, Tilly. I’m serious,’ she said, pouting.
‘I’m serious too. A serious mesmerist.’
Half an hour later, while the littlest and most of the big girls lay sleeping, I opened the door to the connecting bedrooms and ten of us gathered in the middling girls’ bedroom. Ruby sat alone on a stool beside the window. Since Tempe and Clarissa had gone, she’d turned very moody. So now she sat gazing out over Calcutta, only half listening to me, as I read out the instructions for mass hypnosis.
We pushed some of the beds closer together and made everyone join in, even Ruby and Poesy, so there were four girls on each bed.
‘All right, then,’ I said. ‘I will be the mesmerist and I am going to hypnotise all of you. If it works, it will be as if you were having a nap. And if it doesn’t work, and you all fall asleep, then we still will be having a nap, so all will be well.’
They obediently closed their eyes and listened as I chanted, ‘Relax and listen to the sound of my voice. There is only my voice. Relax and listen to the soothing sound of my voice. There is only my voice.’
Iris giggled and I gave her an evil look so she shut her eyes again, though I was trying not to laugh myself.
‘You will do what I say. You want to do what I say. You cannot keep your eyes open. They are too heavy. They must stay closed and allow you to concentrate entirely on the sound of my voice. There is nothing else. Drowsy. Sleepy. My voice. Heavy. You are growing sleepy.’
I kept my voice monotonously low and soothing, describing how everyone’s limbs were growing leaden as I willed them to sleep. Actually, I think I might have made a very fine mesmerist. Instinctively, I understood how to hold an audience in my thrall. Poesy opened one eye and shut it again quickly when she realised I was looking straight at her. Without stopping my monotonous drone, I tiptoed over to her and gripped her chin in my hand. Her eyes flew open in alarm but I held them in my gaze, firm and steady. I pinched her chin so hard that tears sprang to her eyes. But she didn’t cry out. I had to admire her for that.
I tiptoed around the circle of girls, checking to see which ones were peeking and which were in thrall to my voice. Some of them seemed to be nodding off. Ruby sat upright with her eyes shut. There was something odd about her face. Her mouth was slack and her hands hung limply by her side. She looked like a sleepwalker. I realised I might have cracked it. I had mesmerised Ruby Kelly.
I focused all my attention on her. I felt a little shiver run up my spine. I’m not sure if it was fear or the thrill of success.
As the other girls slept on or opened their eyes to watch, I asked Ruby to raise one hand in the air. And she obeyed me. I focused all my attention on her now, the blue cloth-covered book in my hand. The first thing it described was autosuggestion, so I tried it. I didn’t mean any harm.
‘Now, when I say the word “duck”, I want you to say “quack”.’
When I said ‘duck’, Ruby obediently replied with a ‘quack’.
‘She’s faking this,’ whispered Iris. But I knew I’d done something extraordinary and I was determined to prove it to Iris and all the others.
‘Now, Ruby, you are going to go back in time. I have the power to take you back, back, back to other times in your life. I want to take you back to when you were a little girl. Let’s say your seventh birthday. You are seven years old again, Ruby. It is your birthday today. What presents did you get?’
Ruby’s eyes rolled back beneath their lids. Her face twitched. For a moment she said nothing, and then she spoke in a different voice. A younger voice.
‘Oh, a doll. A pretty doll. Thank you, Mama. No, I don’t want to share it with Beryl. It’s my doll.’
Everyone snickered behind their hands. I grinned at the others, triumphant.
‘Now let’s take you forward again. Through the years, past all your birthdays. Don’t stop at any one event. We are taking you to last week. To Georgetown. You remember when you were in Georgetown, don’t you, Ruby? In Georgetown on the island of Penang?’
I saw Poesy’s hands flit at me as if to signal me to stop, but it was too late. Ruby was there, back at our last day on the island of Penang. Slowly, gently I prompted her through each hour of the evening. It seemed to be going swimmingly until she began to whimper.
‘And then, you walked down to the harbour,’ I said, keeping my voice smooth and steady, so as not to break the spell.
Ruby whimpered again. ‘He promised . . .’ She stopped and a fat tear rolled down her cheek from behind her closed eyes. ‘I only wanted to go home. He said he’d help me. That he’d help me for free. I didn’t know . . .’
Her voice grew more staccato, more urgent. She looked terrified and she lay back on the bed and started to writhe.
‘Tell me, tell us what is happening, Ruby,’ I said.
Poesy jumped up and stood behind Ruby, resting one hand on her shoulder. ‘We don’t need to know this,’ she hissed. Then she took Ruby’s face in her hands. ‘Wake up, Ruby.’
It had said in the book not to wake people suddenly. I tried to push Poesy away from Ruby. ‘Leave her. You’ll ruin it.’
But Ruby didn’t seem to hear either of us or even notice we were there. Her face grew clouded with confusion.
‘It’s all right, Ruby,’ I said, kneeling in front of her. ‘It’s all right. You’re safe.’
But Ruby wasn’t listening. She started pushing away some imaginary person and crying out, ‘Stop, please, stop. You’re hurting me.’ Her face turned a peculiar colour and she began to moan and cry.
‘Wake her, Tilly,’ shrilled Poesy. ‘You have to wake her.’
I didn’t need Poesy to tell me what to do. I could see things had turned sour. I snapped my fingers. ‘Ruby, I command you, wake.’ But Ruby kept writhing and her cries grew to screams. It was as if an evil spirit had possessed her.
I grabbed the book and riffled through the pages. ‘It says she should wake up when I say that.’
‘Keep saying it, then,’ said Poesy.
‘Wake up, Ruby. I command you, come back to the present.’ I was almost shouting but still she wasn’t listening. I even tried to shake her awake, but as soon as I laid hands on her, the screams grew ear-piercing.
‘She’s gone insane,’ said Iris.
‘What should we do?’ squeaked May.
The other girls stood in a huddle, as far from Ruby as they could. Some of them pressed their hands against their ears. They backed away and stood staring at Ruby as she fought off the invisible man while I kept searching for a solution in the pages of the blue book.
And then Poesy took charge. She had such cheek to talk to me like that. ‘Go and get Miss Thrupp, Tilly, quickly,’ she said. I was going to do that anyway but now it looked as if I couldn’t think for myself.
I dropped the book and ran from the room.
By the time I returned with Miss Thrupp, Ruby was sitting up, her head in her hands. Beryl and Pearl sat on either side of her rubbing her back. Something had shifted.
‘We could hear her cries all over the hotel,’ said Miss Thrupp. ‘What will the servants make of it? They’ll think you’re a pack of savages.’
What could she have been thinking, to not have come running until I fetched her myself?
‘It was only a game,’ I said, ‘but it went wrong.’
‘Indeed it did,’ said Miss Thrupp. ‘The games you girls play. Not girls at all. Savages . . .’ I heard her voice trailing off as she led Ruby from the room. Suddenly, I was shivering. I lay down on my bed and hugged myself. It hadn’t been a kids’ game. We were playing with the grown-ups now.