But it seemed as if her mother could not hear. All Eliza knew was that something had flown through the air and now she didn’t know what to do. She gazed at the stunned crowd in confusion. Why didn’t her mother answer her? She pulled Anna’s sleeve and saw that her mother’s knuckles were white as she gripped the railing.
Down below the crowd had now surged forward, and through the cloud of dust Eliza saw soldiers running towards the Viceroy from every direction. A terrible smell of burnt metal and something chemical made it hard to breathe. She coughed and then pulled at her mother’s sleeve again.
‘Mummy!’ Eliza shrieked.
But her mother was staring, white-faced, wide-eyed, completely frozen.
In a strange state of suspended animation, Anna seemed only aware that across the street the woman in green had fainted. Eliza saw her too but didn’t know why her mother kept pointing at the woman. All she knew was that a horrible feeling in her stomach was making her want to cry.
‘Daddy’s all right, isn’t he, Mummy?’
Finally, Anna noticed her. ‘I don’t know, darling.’
And though it seemed as if she only had eyes for the woman across the street, Anna had seen her husband stagger in his seat, then lurch forward. For a moment he had seemed to straighten up and even smile at Eliza, but then he had slumped forward again and this time remained motionless. The servant holding the state umbrella for the Viceroy had fallen sideways too, and was now hanging tangled in the ropes of thehowdah.
Eliza, meanwhile, only had one thought and that was for her father. He was all right. He had to be all right. Suddenly she knew what to do, and giving up on her mother she turned on her heels, ran down the stairs and out into the street, where she collided with a young Indian boy who seemed not much older than her. Unable to find the words, she stared at the boy in a state of disbelief. ‘My daddy,’ she whispered.
The boy took her hand. ‘Come away. There isn’t anything you can do.’
But Eliza had to see her father. She shook the boy off and pushed her way through the crowd. When she reached the front she froze. The elephant was so terrified it refused to kneel, and Eliza watched in utter dismay as another English officer positioned a ladder on a packing case from a nearby shop so that her father could be lifted down. After they had done it they laid him on the pavement. At first his body looked unmarked, though his face was translucent like ice, and his eyes were wide open in shock. Eliza tripped over her feet and almost fell as she ran to kneel by his side. She stared in horror, then flung her arms around him, her dress soaking up the blood now seeping from the one person in the world she loved above all others.
‘I’m afraid he didn’t stand a chance, poor bugger,’ someone was saying. ‘Screws, nails, gramophone needles, glass. It looks like that’s what the bastards used in the bomb. Something got him straight in the chest. Almost a fluke, I’d say. But if we have to tear Chandni Chowk to the ground we’ll get the so-called freedom group who did this.’
Eliza continued to wrap her arms around her father and with her mouth to his ear she whispered, ‘I love you, Daddy.’ And forever afterwards she would tell herself that he had heard.
Then, above the growing whispers of the crowd, the young boy gently spoke. ‘Please, Miss, let me help you up. He is gone.’
As Eliza glanced up at him, everything seemed to have become unreal.
Part One
‘Far away from us in dreams and in time, India belongs to the ancient Orient of our soul.’
– André Malraux,Anti-Memoirs, 1967
1
The princely state of Juraipore, Rajputana, in the Indian Empire
November 1930
For just a moment Eliza caught a glimpse of the façade of the castle. It shocked her, the way it shimmered – a mirage conjured from the desert haze, alien and a little frightening. The wind stuttered and then picked up again and, for a moment, she closed her eyes to shut out this trembling extension of the sand. No matter how far from home, and without the faintest idea of how things would work out, there could be no turning back, and she felt the fear in the pit of her stomach. At the age of twenty-nine this would be her biggest commission since setting up as a professional photographer, though it was still unclear to her why Clifford Salter had chosen her. However, he had explained that she might be better placed to photograph the women of the castle, as many were still nervous of outsiders, and especially men. And the Viceroy had particularly asked for a British photographer to guard against conflicted loyalties. She would be paid monthly, with a lump sum for successful completion.
She opened her eyes on air thick with the glitter of sand and dust, the castle hidden from view once more, and above her the seamless blue sky, merciless in its heat. The escort leading her towards the city twisted round to tell her to hurry. She bowed her head against the stinging and climbed back into his camel-pulled cart, clasping her camera bag to her chest. Above all else she must not allow sand to damage her precious cargo.
Closer to their destination she raised her eyes to see a fortress stretching across the mountain top, dreamlike. A hundred birds swooped across the lilac horizon, threads of pink cloud tracing delicate patterns high above them. Almost drugged by the heat, she struggled not to fall victim to the enchantment; she was here to work, after all. But if it wasn’t the wind calling up the distant past as she hunched up against it, it was her own more recent memories.
When Anna Fraser had contacted Clifford Salter, a wealthy godson of her husband’s, she had thought that with his connections he might find her daughter a position as a clerk in a solicitor’s office in Cirencester, or something of that kind. She had hoped it would prevent her daughter from trying to make her way as a photographer. After all, she would say, who wants a woman photographer? But someone did and that had been Clifford, who said she’d be ideal and would suit his purposes perfectly. Anna couldn’t object. He was the British Crown representative, after all, and answered only to the Rajputana Chief Political Officer or AGG, who exercised indirect rule over all twenty-two princely states. He, the Residents, and the minor political officers from the smaller states all belonged to the political department directly under the Viceroy.
So now Eliza faced a year inside a castle where she knew no one. Her commission was to photograph life in the princely state for a new archive to mark the seat of British Government finally moving from Calcutta to Delhi. The building of New Delhi had taken much longer than expected, and the war had delayed everything, but now the time had finally arrived.
She’d heard her mother’s warnings about the sufferings of the people and saw that outside the huge walls of the castle urchins played in the dust and dirt. She spotted a beggar woman sitting cross-legged near a sleeping cow and gazing ahead with empty eyes. Beside her bamboo scaffolding leaning against a high wall blew perilously, with two planks of wood coming loose right above a naked child squatting on the ground beneath.
‘Stop,’ she called out and, as the cart rumbled to a standstill, she leapt out, just as one of the planks began slipping from its tethers. With her heart pounding, she reached the child and pulled him from harm’s way. The wood fell to the ground and splintered into several pieces. The child ran off and the cart driver shrugged. Didn’t they care, she wondered, as they climbed the ramp.
A few minutes later the cart driver stood arguing with the guards outside the fortress. They were not obliging, even though he’d shown them the papers. Eliza looked up at the forbidding frontage, and the enormous gated entrance wide enough for an army to pass through; camels, horses, carriages too. She’d even heard that the ruler had several cars. Meanwhile the vehicle she had been travelling in had broken down, and continuing by camel cart meant Eliza was tired, thirsty and coated in dust. She could feel it in her sore eyes, and in her itching scalp. She couldn’t help scratching, though it only made things worse.
Eventually a woman appeared at the gates, a long wispy scarf covering her face and revealing only her dark eyes.
