She resolved to take matters into her own hands. (If you want something done, and all that.) Every Monday, her mother left in the motor for one of her memsahib teas, which lasted a good few hours. It was enough time to do something. Maddy had only ever occasionally accompanied Alice before, so it was hardly out of the ordinary for her to elect not to do so now. She waited for her to leave, then pinned her hat into place, asked Ahmed to hail her a rickshaw (for a small fee), and off she went.
The first outing, she didn’t go far, just a few minutes down the road to the water tank, which she’d pictured as a tiny affair hidden in the trees, but was as wide as a river with long sloping steps framing it, the sea just beyond, and shrines all around. Men (who did indeed have a tendency to disrobe), were having their hair shorn beside it, she presumed as part of their grieving ritual. (‘Yes, memsahib,’ said Ahmed later, ‘it is a way to make sacrifice.’) More were in the water itself, scattering their urns whilst hundreds of women and children watched from the stairs. For herself, she kept well back, sharply aware of not belonging there, unwilling to intrude, holding her breath at the other-worldliness before her, feeling, for the first time since she’d arrived back in October, the thrill of being in India.
Buoyed by the wonder of it, she planned to go further afield the following Monday, take a rickshaw to the tram, from there into town and the spice market.
It wasn’t a success.
She’d gone out alone all the time back in England. Aunt Edie had never been the kind to insist on a chaperone, and at college they’d all been left to it by their tutors (who were far more concerned with who was attending the next suffrage rally than whether social niceties were being observed). But the broiling, unfamiliar streets of Bombay were hardly the cobbled alleyways of Oxford; to her mortification, she didn’t get much further than the central tram stop. She hailed another rickshaw there, but after a minute of the driver weaving hectically through the camels, carts and motor horns, she gave into her nerves and told him she wouldn’t go all the way to the markets after all, she’d visit a nearby mosque instead. Flustered as she was, she felt horribly conspicuous as she stepped onto the heaving pavements outside the ornate domed building, too painfully conscious of her pale skin, blonde hair and cream dress. It got worse as she walked around the mosque’s gold-painted walls. She peered through the archways at the bald Jain monks praying within (very good, she thought, you’ve seen another something new), pushed on around the walled gardens – countless eyes on her as the women, who sat in the shade eating rice from betel leaves, scrutinised her like the interloper she was – and somehow lasted a half hour.
Her corset was soaked with her own anxious sweat by the time she returned home.
Ridiculous, she told herself.
She made it to those spice markets on her next trip. She had to draw a resolute breath before ducking through the low-beamed doorway into the cavernous warehouse, but duck in she did. She looked up from beneath the brim of her straw hat, eyes adjusting to the dim light, her ears to the intense noise: vendors shouting their prices, hundreds of locals haggling. The air was dense with trapped sunshine, a heady cocktail of paprika, saffron, turmeric and cardamom. A shirtless boy hared past, barrow full of sacks, and she stepped back clumsily, only just avoiding being mown down (not entirely less deathly, she wanted to tell Luke Devereaux), then, gathering herself, walked on, down the first pungent alleyway of stalls, full of bags brimming with chillies, feeling the heat catch at her throat, her lungs. Her eyes streamed, and she started to cough, fighting for air. The vendors laughed and, realising what she must look like, she tried to laugh too, but coughed more. One older man grinned and held out a chilli, gesturing for her to come forward. ‘It good,’ he said, ‘no fire, this one.’ She went, hesitantly, and took a small bite, fully expecting to lose the lining of her mouth. But, ‘It is good,’ she said, hearing her own relief. ‘Yes,’ she smiled, ‘good.’ Others called out to her, offering cinnamon, aniseed, all spice. She tried it all, thanking them, dhanyavaad, and found herself wandering on, further and further into the furore, stopping to buy a chittack of saffron for Edie, ginger for Cook.
She stayed longer than half an hour.
And this time she counted the days until her next adventure, to Elephanta Island in Bombay harbour: Gharapuri, Luke Devereaux’s book read, the city of caves. Catch a boat from the quay and leave the heat of the city behind as you enter into these dark, echoing chambers of stone deities. She wasn’t the only European this time; they filled the cool caves, commenting with cut-glass consonants on Shiva’s many carved faces, how different it all was to anything one had seen before. Maddy, lost in the beauty of the statues, the thought of the sculptors who’d stood where she stood, all those hundreds of years before, forgot they were there.
The next week, she went to the tomb, Haji Ali Dargah. Make sure to arrive at low tide, when a narrow causeway will appear, taking you to the dargah. She walked across the strip of rocky earth, rammed between jostling, sweaty hordes of other pilgrims, the sea all but touching the hem of her skirts. The white domes of the mosque sparkled, stark against the blue sky, the green palms surrounding it. Children ran up to her, some shyly eyeing her and then scampering away, others asking to touch her gown, her hair. She stooped, letting them, laughing at their astonishment, their excitement. The week following, she visited the huge outdoor laundries at Dhobi Ghat, staring herself, at the men, the dhobis, who worked without stopping in the sunshine, bent over the deep stone baths, scrubbing and slapping the mountains of linen: the vibrant garments of wealthy Indians, uniforms from the army, bedding from Bombay’s hotels and hospitals.
She ached to write to Luke Devereaux and tell him about all she was seeing. It’s helped, so much.
Thank you.
She had no address though. Her letters, her thanks, remained in her head.
He kept writing to her though. Every week or so, a new postcard arrived, making her catch her breath with delight. A long sandy beach in Pondicherry (I think one of my favourites in India. You haven’t lived, Miss Bright, until you’ve eaten a freshly baked pastry, watching the sunrise here), then, in early February, locals making flower garlands at a stall in Madras (If you were here, perhaps I’d have bought you one. Would you have liked that, I wonder? Why do I keep wondering such things?); later in the month came a majestic government house in Calcutta (Note the ubiquitous cows outside, reminding everyone who this country really belongs to); tigers in Bengal followed (How are you getting on with your tour?).
Della wrote as well, full of tales of elephant treks, feasts in kings’ palaces, their wives (plural) hidden behind screens, as did Richard (less effusively, always hopeful that Maddy was all right, getting along with Alice, full of apologies that the trip had been extended, it will be late March at least before we’re home), but it was the possibility of another card from Luke Devereaux on the post tray that made Maddy wake earlier each morning, dress hastily, then pick up her skirts and jog down the stairs, eager for the day when one would arrive telling her something of himself, why he was on these cross-country travels, and when, oh when, Bombay was going to be his next port of call.
February gave way to March, and the heat built by the day, towards the summer monsoon. Guy took her for another walk in the gardens, warned her off eating kulfi from a street vendor, and then for a trip to see some very sad-looking animals at the zoo.