‘I’m going to England. My mother is very ill.’
‘Well, my thoughts will go with you for a safe journey. I hope one day you will understand my position.’
Eliza could not reply.
‘Come here, my dear.’
Eliza went to her and Laxmi wrapped her arms around her. Just when she thought she had done with crying, Eliza’s tears fell again.
The overnight journey to Delhi began in the afternoon. The train was almost unbearably hot and the carriage was full of local people. She feared the power of the British Raj over these men and women and did not want to be a part of it, and yet, by marrying Clifford, she would become one of them and would have to keep her mouth shut. More and more she’d become aware that the British should get out of India. Her only hope was that the Nationalist movement would gain control without too much bloodshed. Like many others she felt certain it would happen, because really, the way things were how could it not?
Her dress was already damp from sweat and she was forced to constantly wipe her forehead too. She took off her engagement ring because her fingers were at risk of swelling; that was what she told herself. It came to her that her only hope of enduring the tediously slow train and cramped conditions was to think of all the beautiful photographs she had taken. Nobody could take that away from her.
The images seemed to pop up out of nowhere, and as they filled her mind they kept on coming. First at the simple camp where she had stayed with Jay: the men wrapped in their early morning blankets, sitting cross-legged beside the small outdoor fire. The tiny ponds where boys tended their buffaloes. The lake at dawn and again at dusk. The faces of Rajput men and their camels. The jewel-like colours of the castle. The fairyland night-time illuminations. The way the light played on the water of the courtyard fountains. The parakeets and dragonflies. The concubines brushing their hair. The women with their upright posture, their dignity and their bright shiny clothes. The bazaars. The children. The huge liquid blue skies. The photographs of the royals and of Indi, who gazed out upon the world with eyes that seemed to know everything.
Then she thought of the rains she knew would be coming, and felt unhappy that she would not see the damson skies and thundering torrential monsoon. She had longed to be at Udaipore, the city of lakes surrounded by the Aravalli hills, and the hilltop fort from where they would have watched it all. She had never believed she would really leave India before the rains and yet here she was. Leaving. Her temples throbbing with pain, she couldn’t shut out the sound of the train wheels clattering on the track, so brittle that theclickety click, clickety click, clickety clickseemed to be coming from inside her own head. She clapped a palm over her mouth, fearful that the wail trapped inside her would wind its way out. This dark and empty time was taking Eliza from the man she loved and was forcing her to marry a man she did not. Over and over, her fading dreams were mocked by the sound of the wheels on the rails.The man she loved, clickety clack; marrying a man she did not, clickety clack.
Then her thoughts drifted to her mother lying alone in the hospital, facing death with no one who loved her. To have lived your entire life and be left with not one person by your side was a pitiful fate. However rotten a mother Anna had been, she deserved better. And though Eliza’s heart clamped as if a vice was squeezing it, she would do what she could for her. At last she would be a dutiful daughter, thankful that at least she had one final chance to make amends.
When she arrived in Delhi the weather was awful and a kind of hot clammy mist hung over the town. At the Imperial Hotel her room was small but comfortable. She opened the bathroom door to see a rolltop bath tub standing on a black and white tiled floor along with the usual washbasin, lavatory, and a huge looking-glass on one wall. She left the heavy bedroom curtains open so that she could see the sky while she lay on the bed, hoping to snatch some sleep before the next stage of her journey. And she didn’t know if that would be in a few days’ time or if it might be sooner. Tomorrow she hoped to have a chance to pick up copies of some of her prints from the printers to take back to England to show Anna and maybe interest a local paper. Now all she could think of was finding a way to refresh her exhausted mind a little and give her aching body a chance to recover from the headache she’d had since leaving Juraipore.
Although the fan in her room worked, it really was just shifting hot air about rather than introducing a much-needed cool breeze, so after a while she drew the curtains to block out the light and then, still stiff and tense from the journey, lay down on top of a pale blue satin bedspread. But she kept twisting about in the attempt to find a relaxing position and couldn’t stop thinking.
There would be little enough to look forward to, but it was only now, on the verge of leaving India, that she fully realized how much she had grown to think of it as home, just as she had as a child. At least when she came back to be with Clifford she would still be in India, for England could never touch her the way this wild, throbbing country did.
She slipped her engagement ring back on, then twisted it round so it looked like a wedding ring. The symbol of being taken. She couldn’t help feeling as if she were owned, and removed it again. She thought back to when she had raised the subject of women’s suffrage with Anna.
With a raised voice and a disgusted look her mother had been adamant. ‘Women do not need a vote,’ she’d said. ‘That’s what husbands are for. What do we know of politics?’
‘Mother, can we not inform ourselves, make our own choices?’
‘What you need, Eliza, is a husband, not a vote. And, as I’ve said many times before, one cannot have a career and be a wife. Women cannot have everything.’
Eliza had given up after that. Nothing would convince her mother, and some time after that she’d literally bumped into Oliver in the bookshop. And marriage had become a way out.
After an hour of thinking about the past Eliza got up again, washed and then dressed in clean clothes. If she couldn’t rest, then she had to make a move.
The hotel ordered a driver and car for her and once outside she saw that the mist had lifted, which meant she just had time to see the new part of the city before the light faded. Her first stop would be to look at the architectural splendour of the new British centre of government. It had only been finished in February and this was her first chance to see it.
She hadn’t expected to arrive at an imposing gravel road leading in the distance to an extraordinary series of domes and towers, in red, pink, cream, and gleaming white. As the car moved on through the tall archway Eliza was impressed by huge lawns dotted with trees on either side of a grand central drive, known as the King’s Way, and a network of sparkling waterways that seemed to be following the route. The driver told her it was a mile and a quarter long, or maybe two miles, he wasn’t sure, but he knew it was lined with black lamp-posts right to the end. All the buildings at the end of the drive were glorious but, like something from the Italian Renaissance, it was the Viceroy’s palatial house that took Eliza’s breath away. Suffused with light, the stonework actually shone. With all this brand new splendour it seemed that the British believed they would rule India for years to come.
This was the end result of that triumphant march into Delhi in 1912, celebrating the transfer of the seat of British power, the terrible day the bomb had been thrown at the Viceroy and the day David Fraser had died. Eliza gazed at the glittering fountains as the falling sun turned the sky a deep rose and wished she could enjoy this new city more fully; but it was tinged with too much tragedy for her. Then, as darkness fell, she asked the driver to show her the avenues radiating out from this central point, avenues lined with spacious bungalows in extensive flower-filled gardens. After that, on their way back to her hotel, the velvety sky deepened to black and the city itself exploded into a glittering marvel of lights, a twinkling earth-bound reflection of the heavens.
The next afternoon, after visiting the printers and finding the place closed, she was just about to enter the Imperial when, guided by what she couldn’t tell, she twisted back. A fraction of a second later she heard a single burst of noise, as if thunder itself had been shot directly from a cannon. She gasped at the sight of a huge ball of smoke erupting from the lower window of the building on the other side of the street. The explosion didn’t seem to echo but was followed by the sound of glass breaking and then of bricks or masonry crashing to the ground. Horrified, she watched flames creeping along the wooden frames of the windows on the first floor. Within minutes the glass was gone, and now tongues of orange and yellow were reaching out and licking the air. Through the dust and billowing smoke she couldn’t see exactly what had been damaged, but it looked as if something had exploded inside the very building that held her photographic printers. Flames were tearing through the rest of the building, visible at all the windows on both floors. There was the sound of more windows shattering and a great whooshing sound, and then debris filled the air before raining down on the street below. Huge plumes of black smoke rose up into the sky, and the stalls around the building became powdered with ash, white smoke whisking between them.
She took a few steps towards the building, hoping no one had been hurt, or worse, but then she remembered the building had been locked up and nobody appeared to be lying on the ground dead or injured, at least not on her side of the street. Though she could hear coughing and spluttering, the only other sound was the crackle of the fire. A moment later a crowd of blackened ghoul-like creatures swarmed over to the Imperial side of the street; some with cuts on their arms and faces, clearly from flying glass. She watched for a moment to see if there were others who might need her help, but then heavy smoke stopped her. In the centre of the street it cleared and it was only then that she saw him, standing alone and covered in blue-grey dust. She ran forward, and as she did he saw her.
29
Jay gave her a weak smile. The next moment he crumpled right in front of her and fell to the ground. With her heart pulsing in her throat she ran across and knelt on the black gravel ground beside him, stroking his face and pleading with him to open his eyes. There was no response. She felt her chest tighten with fear as she spoke, repeatedly telling him that help would be coming and he was to hold on, that she was right beside him and she wouldn’t let anything happen to him.
An official from the hotel came out to try to encourage her back inside in case of flying masonry, or even worse, but she refused.
‘Help will be here soon,’ the hotel concierge said, but then stepped away from danger.
She and Jay were alone in the street, but she could hear that the crowd behind them on the steps of the Imperial had found their voices and were either crying from shock and relief that they were safe or excitedly telling their stories. She drowned out their noise by focusing on Jay.
He was still breathing, and she took comfort in that, and he didn’t appear to be cut anywhere. She wondered if something had hit him on the head? She didn’t take her gaze from his face, as she sat watching for the slightest sign of movement. She heard bells ringing and a man moving the crowd away at the side of the street, and then, as a doctor in a white coat appeared, Jay opened his eyes, seeming to regain consciousness.
