‘The whore.’
‘You said there was more. In your letter. What more, Mum?’
Anna shook her head and closed her eyes. When she didn’t open them again it seemed as if she had fallen asleep. It was dark now and getting colder, so Eliza found an extra blanket for her and then went downstairs.
Two days later Anna had not recovered enough to come downstairs. Eliza cared for her mother, fussing over her by day and, at night, leaving both their bedroom doors open in case Anna might need her. And then one night Eliza heard her call out. Eliza grabbed her dressing gown and quickly went through.
She turned on the bedside lamp in time to see Anna shaking her head. A slow, sad little shake.
‘I have a small post office account in Cheltenham. A trifling sum but it will be yours.’
‘Never mind that now, Mum.’
Eliza gulped back the lump in her throat as she watched Anna open her eyes, say something else, and then close them again. She carried on mumbling but it was impossible to follow her words. Eliza had an awful flashback to all the other times when she had been drinking. She took a deep breath. This was different. The room was terribly quiet but for Anna’s laboured breathing, and they remained mostly silent. But then Anna groaned, drew her brows together and flapped her hands.
‘Can I get you something, Mum?’
Anna smiled lopsidedly and when she spoke her voice was thin, more air than sound. Eliza tried to comfort her, but her mother just stared and then her eyes filled up.
‘I did something wrong.’
‘Please don’t upset yourself. What does it matter now –?’
‘It matters.’ She paused as the tears spilled over.
Not understanding, Eliza wasn’t too sure what to say.
Anna brushed the tears away and tapped her hand, but then began to cough and was unable to speak for another moment or two. When she did, her eyes were fierce and her face had changed. Eliza’s heart lost a beat as she saw a trace of Anna’s old anger, but it was over in moments and all that was left was her hollow eyes and paper-thin skin. It was becoming harder to remember her any other way.
Anna grasped her hand and was trying to smile, but her eyes were red and watery. ‘Please. It’s too late for me, but if you …’
There was a short silence as Eliza attempted to figure out what she meant.
Anna began to cough again and Eliza held a glass of water to her lips. After she had taken a sip she made a small sound, not quite a cry, more like the whimper of a frightened animal, and then spoke again. ‘You might put it right.’
‘I don’t understand?’
Anna took a breath, managed not to cough, and then spoke in an urgent, breathy voice. ‘I want you to find your sister.’
Eliza’s mouth literally fell open. Her sister? She didn’t have a sister. There had only been the two of them for as long as she could remember. Surely she wasn’t serious? She glanced at Anna, who had now fallen asleep and whose breath was very faint. Eliza watched for a few minutes and then crept downstairs.
Later Eliza brought down the bottle of perfumed oil to fragrance the room, but the smell of sickness hung in the air. And when her mother smelt the oil she began to weep, so Eliza took it out and put it in the shed where it could upset no one.
She tried to ask about the sister she’d mentioned, but Anna seemed to have forgotten all about it, and so all Eliza could do was watch her mother looking at her as if she did not know who she was. Then out of the blue she whispered, ‘Half-sister. Found her in the house once, dirty little thing.’ After that she was too far away to say more and, as Eliza sat holding her hand, she watched her mother’s life being erased.
Then, with no particular warning, and while Eliza was out of the room making a cup of tea, Anna’s heart stopped beating. She was just sixty. Eliza stifled a sob and held her hand. Then she half sang, half sobbed one of her favourite childhood songs to her dead mother. After that she wept like she had never wept before. It had all been too late and now there could be no going back.
31
India, July
Armed only with the little photograph she had found, Eliza returned to India. She had been away for just over two months, though it felt like a lifetime. The house had not belonged to Anna, so once the death had been registered and the sad little funeral was over, Eliza no longer had a reason to stay.
To begin with she checked into the Imperial in Delhi and tried to track down the photographic studio where the photo she’d found had been taken. Sadly it was long gone, and Eliza wondered if she’d ever discover whether her mother had simply been delirious or if she had been telling the truth about the half-sister. The one thing that almost convinced her was that the man in the picture had a look of her father, though not at all the way she remembered him.
After Calcutta and Delhi she travelled on to Juraipore, where Clifford met her at the station. She asked him about the explosion in Delhi and was told that Jay had recovered from his injuries. She was immensely grateful for the news and thanked him for his kindness. But the heat was shocking and, although already pink, he flushed scarlet and she felt a little bit sorry for him. She had promised to try to love him but knew instantaneously that she never could. Before he delivered her to Julian and Dottie, he also explained that Eliza’s prints and plates had not been lost in the explosion. Apart from one batch, they had already been sent back to him in Juraipore when the explosion happened. She breathed a huge sigh of relief, but when he kissed her she struggled to find a way to lock out all thoughts of further intimacy. With the smells of Rajputana rising unbidden in her nostrils, she managed better in shutting out her feelings of grief over Anna’s death. It was all she knew to do, and yet she couldn’t prevent a growing feeling of hopelessness.
The busy first couple of days at the doctor’s house were passed in a small cocktail gathering, a tea party, and an evening of bridge. After that, as it was so hot, they did not go out, and though Eliza gave the illusion of functioning well, for her it seemed as if the very foundations of her life were being slowly eroded. Before long she almost forgot the smell of English moisture in the air and gave herself up to the dry air of the desert.
