‘Memsahib,’ he said, ‘you are not liking my food?’
‘What?’ she said. ‘No.’
He stared. ‘No, you are not liking?’
‘No, I am liking, I am … ’
He dropped his gaze to the workbench (legs in bowls of water, not a red ant to be seen), jaw set.
‘Oh God,’ said Maddy, ‘truly, I just wanted to help. I love your food, especially that turkey curry at Christmas … ’
He closed his eyes.
She left.
The weekend wasn’t a complete disaster. There was one happy occurrence, care of Alice, strangely enough.
It was late on Sunday, just as the scalding sun was dipping towards dusk, bathing the villa’s lawn in ethereal light, and the sky behind the palms and dense jungle in a rush of red, purple and gold. Kites swarmed in flocks from the villa’s rooftop to the trees, their battering wings and the clack of the cicadas’ chorus mixing with the laughter of the gardener’s children playing chase with the peacocks on the grass. Maddy, who’d been watching the three children from the veranda, decided they could do with a distraction too. Fetching Alice’s oil paints from the drawing room, she sent them all in search of white stones, then sat with them on the lawn, covering the stones with colour: monkeys, polka dots, patterns of every description. (She hoped the peacocks were grateful.)
They’d worked their way through about half of the stones when Alice came down to see what they were all up to. She approached so quietly that Maddy didn’t realise she was there until she spoke.
‘I used to paint like this with you, Madeline,’ she said.
Maddy turned, meeting her eye. Alice was already dressed for dinner in a high-necked white gown, and had her arms folded as she bent, peering over Maddy’s shoulder.
‘We always used to do it,’ Alice went on, talking as much to herself, Maddy thought, as to her.
‘I remember,’ Maddy said, because she did. Unlike with the fireworks, the recollection of her hours cushioned on Alice’s lap, Alice’s chin on her head, her child’s hand guided by Alice’s slender fingers, was one she’d held on to. She’d even taken some of the stones they’d decorated together to England, struggling, the older she got, to reconcile the memory of that lap with the mother who never visited. ‘You painted orchids,’ she said. ‘You were rather good at it.’
Alice smiled one of her rare smiles. ‘Was I?’
Impulsively, Maddy held out her brush. ‘Why don’t you see if you still are?’
She didn’t expect Alice to agree. She was sure she’d demur, hold up her hands and refuse in the same way she’d turned Richard’s dance down at New Year.
But Alice reached out for the brush. She gathered up her lace skirts, knelt down on the coarse grass, and asked the youngest of the children to pick her a nice flat stone. ‘Yes, Suya, perfect.’ She ran her thumb over it, finding the smoothest surface, then dipped the brush in magenta, and proceeded to paint the most graceful, intricate flower. They all watched her, none of them speaking, the children’s breathing heavy with concentration. Darkness fell and the villa’s windows began to glow as the servants lit the oil lamps inside.
‘There,’ Alice said when, at last, she added the final detail and turned the stone, examining it in the dusky light. ‘Not too bad.’
‘Not too bad at all,’ said Maddy.
‘For you,’ Alice said, holding it out for her.
Maddy took it, touched and surprised in equal measure. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘You’re most welcome,’ said Alice, and for a second, just a second, she held Maddy’s eye, and the corners of hers creased in another smile.
‘Make one for me, Memsahib Alice,’ chorused the children. ‘For me, for me.’
‘No, no,’ said Alice, ‘it’s far too late,’ but she laughed. Actually laughed; a soft, rippling sound that surprised Maddy all over again, but which the children didn’t seem as taken aback to hear.
And even though Alice insisted that it was time for everyone to go inside, before the mosquitoes ate them, and was her usual quiet self again at dinner, Maddy placed the stone on her bedside table before she climbed into bed. She blew her candle out, and closed her eyes, thinking of her mother’s smile, her laugh.
Strange as both still felt, she was glad that she’d taken those paints into the garden.
The stone was the first thing she saw when she woke the next day. She reached out, touching her fingertips to the now dry paint and, replaying Alice’s laugh, briefly considered offering to accompany her on that morning’s memsahib tea. For the first time it occurred to her that her mother might not be as indifferent to her going as she always seemed. She dismissed the idea as quickly as it came. After the drawn-out weekend, and a fitful night fighting to get comfortable in her tangled sheets, she felt perilously close to madness as it was; several hours of good housekeeping with Diana Aldyce and the rest might just push her over the edge.
However, since another day in the steamy villa seemed just as certain a path to lunacy, she resolved to go into town, as soon as Alice left. She stood, crossing to her closet, and pulled out a lemon dress, laying it on the bed. She moved quickly, skin dampening in the already warm room, relieved to have a purpose. She couldn’t quite believe how much time she’d watched slip by these past days. Back in Oxford, she’d always had somewhere to be: college, out with her friends, for meetings at the school she’d been meant to work at, on the train to Paddington for the theatre, a rally … She wasn’t sure what had happened to that busy person. Maybe this sultry life was changing her. If she wasn’t careful, she’d become just another of those waiting for the sun to pass the yardarm so that her first gin might feel respectable.
‘Oh God,’ she said, her voice filling the airless room, ‘no.’
She reached for her bath sheet and decided that she’d spend the morning at a bazaar. There was one she’d been meaning to go to, not far from the terminus, as it happened. It was hardly the worthiest of pursuits, but would hopefully make the day pass more quickly than it otherwise might. Little wins.
She caught a tram to the Victoria terminus, pressed into a window seat for the creaking journey into the city. The vehicle was hot, stuffy with stale sweat, and grew even more so as they moved further into the centre, swapping the lapping sea, lush plants and birdsong of Malabar Hill for dusty roads, shanties and apartment blocks. More passengers climbed in, as many standing as sitting: women in saris carrying baskets of sweet-smelling fruits, laundry and vegetables; men in loose trousers and tunics, a couple in starched blazers, off to work in British offices. It was a relief when they at last reached the terminus. Maddy ran gratefully down the tram’s stairs, deliberately not looking in the direction of her father’s nearby office, not wanting to tempt fate into making anyone there spot her.
The sun-crisped streets surrounding the Gothic walls of the station were teeming. Camels and bullock carts vied for space on the dirt roads with rickshaws and automobiles, the dabbah-wallahs who rode bicycles laden with tiffin bags, delivering lunch to the sahibs. Coolies thronged at the station entrance, handcarts at the ready, joking and laughing by the statue of Queen Victoria, eyes alert for approaching carriages and motors packed with luggage. Beggars slumped beneath the scant shade of the mango trees; Maddy flinched at their bony limbs; a baby, swaddled in frayed sacking, trying to feed from its staring mother. Most had their eyes closed, heads on their chests, ignored, just as they were at the port, the gardens, every city street. One forgets they’re there, Diana Aldyce had remarked, back at a tea on the Gymkhana Club’s pristine terrace, when Maddy had first arrived and naively asked whether something couldn’t be done, much nicer that way. Alice had given Diana a level look which still made Maddy wonder how much she really liked Diana after all. Alice hadn’t pulled Diana up on her coldness though; no one had, all complicit in their silence. It made Maddy’s already hot skin burn. She reached for her purse, dropping coins onto the lap of the woman with the baby. The woman didn’t move, or nod her thanks, and Maddy didn’t blame her. In her place, looking at her British colouring and fine gown, she wouldn’t feel particularly grateful either.