A Proper Education for Girls (6 page)

A
LMOST THE FIRST THING
L
ILIAN WAS TOLD AS SHE AND
her husband disembarked in Calcutta was that the heat of India did not agree with the complexions of European ladies.

“Be sure to always carry a parasol, my dear,” cautioned the cadaverous wife of a retired colonel who was due to return to England. “Especially as you are so very fair. And you can get Mitchum's Skin Food here too, sent out from London directly. It's invaluable. I myself have used it every day for years and you can see the advantages.”

Lilian had nodded, and smiled, and regarded the old lady's yellowed face with interest. She wondered what state of sepulchral dehydration it would have been in had the colonel's wife not used cosmetic unctions but had simply let nature take its course as she, Lilian, was obliged to do, her husband being against such vanities as skin food and certainly unlikely to countenance transporting pots of the stuff across the subcontinent simply to provide his wife with the luxury of greasing her face like an old boot every night. And as for the parasol, why, surely she would need both hands to hold her skirts up, to push aside foliage, or to fire Aunt Lambert's rifle at tigers or snakes?

“She'll not last long out here,” the colonel's wife had muttered to her companion, a thickset lady with the quivering dewlaps of a bloodhound. “The thin, pale sort never does. If the heat doesn't kill
her the mosquitoes or the water certainly will. And if not, I'll wager she goes home within the year.”

L
ILIAN HAD TRAVELED
to India with her new husband, the Reverend Selwyn Fraser, whose intention it was to devote himself to missionary work among the heathen Hindus. Although a number of these native people had already been converted to Christianity, it appeared that there were many millions of souls still to be saved. On the long journey from England to Calcutta, Selwyn had told Lilian much about the godless practices of the Hindus—how they worshipped numerous false gods for instance, chief among them a smiling, cross-legged fellow with four arms.

In fact, Lilian was already familiar with the beliefs of Hindus, as well as Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, and Moslems. Had she not shared a bedroom with a display case filled with ceremonial daggers, bowls, and slippers used in the practices of these various Eastern religions? Did not a statue of Shiva stand opposite her bedroom door on the third floor of the great house, beside a gilt-plated Buddha, a wastepaper basket in the shape of an elephant's foot and a
howdah
draped in colored silks?

Feeling that his wife's response lacked the appropriate degree of disgust, however, Selwyn Fraser sought to stoke her sensibilities into an inferno of outrage by providing her with more evidence of the ill-judged superstition of the natives—how they made offerings to a snaking-armed idol in the form of coins left in one of the statue's outstretched hands. As if this were not enough, their family lives too were built upon perversity, and their children married off even before they were old enough to understand the purpose of such a union. Why, until quite recently, widows would throw themselves onto the funeral pyres of their deceased husbands, the more reluctant of them being physically tossed onto the flames by the dead man's grieving relatives. Surely she must agree that under such conditions the true church, the Christian church, simply had to step in?

Secretly, Lilian suspected that, laid low with a violent seasickness almost as soon as the gangplank had been raised and plagued by itchy patches of redness in the folds of his skin, her husband was trying to convince himself that he had made the right decision.

They disembarked in Calcutta after a journey of three months, by which time Selwyn had developed a fretful cough and an irritable manner. Their plan was to stay in Calcutta for only a few days, while their luggage was unloaded. It made sense to travel overland using the
dak
(“That's the mail service, my dear,” explained the colonel's wife. “By far the most economical means of transport, and the
dak
bungalows are every ten miles and provide very reasonable accommodation.”), even though this meant that the journey to their eventual destination of Kushpur would take a number of weeks.

In the meantime, they were made the guests of a local magistrate who, like Selwyn, was from Edinburgh and who had offered his services as host to numerous missionaries from home. “Why, it's always a pleasure to meet young people off to spread the good Lord's Word,” he said. “And, of course, the more you fellows convert, the more we have on our side, eh? Anyway, you'll see the very best of the Company's India while you're here in Calcutta. We have no lack of diversions. Indeed, there's a dance tomorrow evening. I hope you'll both attend?” He rubbed his hands together in anticipation and bared his teeth in a smile. “And I shall be happy to show you both round the bazaar. There are many fine native craftsmen these days. They copy the European styles admirably. You'll not find such workmanship up country, I can assure you.”

Lilian said she would be delighted, though she knew Selwyn was not so sure. They had already passed through the bazaar on their way to reserve the
dak
, and he had found the sights and smells offensive to his senses. Unable even to breathe without retching into his handkerchief, he had been shocked by the gangs of babbling children who grasped at his legs and pulled at his clothes and held out their hands in supplication. Having shaken off the children, it was with considerable alarm that he realized his wife was attracting the attention of other undesirables. Beggars in the most repellent
states of physical incompleteness—some without arms or legs, some missing ears or noses, some blind with flies teeming about their milky eyeballs, some without eyeballs at all—had emerged from doorways and risen up eagerly from mats at the roadside to shout and gesticulate. Lilian had tossed them some coins, but Selwyn's Presbyterian sense of economy was appalled: he took Lilian's purse off her and dragged her into the twisting maze of streets.

They emerged at last to walk along the riverbank. “I shall never get used to it here,” he muttered. Even as he spoke his face had turned gray at the sight of a pair of charred feet projecting from a funeral pyre. The man tending the
ghat
poked at the corpse with a long stick, and Selwyn vomited as a leg was turned, its knee bending in the opposite direction to its natural articulation. He looked away … And yet, was not that the body of a man he could see, rotting in the water?

That evening after dinner, Lilian had asked the magistrate whether this was possible and was informed that sadly, yes, it most certainly was. “The corpses of people—men, women, and children—as well as dogs, cats, goats, and sundry other unfortunate animals find their way into the river,” said the magistrate between puffs on his cigar. “Usually the crocodiles eat them, but often they float, unmolested, in the water for days until they are finally dragged down, I presume by the weight of their own putrescence.”

Lilian saw her husband blanch. Like a magician beginning a conjuring trick, he produced from between his waistcoat buttons a voluminous red silk handkerchief, into which he buried his mouth and nose. The river was not fifty yards away from the sumptuous and civilized dining room in which they now sat. “What kind of a place is this that it can juxtapose rotting corpses and crocodiles with chandeliers and gold-plated picture frames?” he cried, oblivious to the startled looks of the magistrate's wife.

“My dear fellow.” The magistrate laughed. “You'll soon get used to it.”

But Lilian knew he wouldn't. She watched as Selwyn's face turned pale, as in his mind's eye he recalled the half-eaten face and
bloated naked body as it bobbed among the refuse. “Breathe deeply, Selwyn,” she whispered. He nodded. His breath gusted in and out in time with the gentle swishing of the
punkah
overhead.

T
HE FOLLOWING EVENING
there was, as promised, the ball. Lilian unfolded from her trunk the one dress she had brought that was suitable for such an occasion. Already, the damp heat of the journey had caused a greenish mildew to pepper the stiff silk fabric, though she did her best to remove the spores with rose water. Selwyn changed into another of his heavy black suits—he had brought a number of them with him, each identical. They were ideal garments to wear while visiting the sick and needy in the slums of Edinburgh or London, but in Calcutta they seemed to drink in the heat, the heavy fabric cleaving to his skin and weighing him down until he looked as though he were about to sink to his knees, in resignation rather than prayer. Lilian picked out a fresh collar for him. Ignoring his complaints that he had never liked dancing anyway, that surely such activity in this heat would be absurd and certainly ruinous to the health, and by the way, did she realize that the calamine lotion she had dabbed on his itchy back had stuck to his shirt, she forced him to accompany her to the ball.

There was such a shortage of ladies present that Lilian, despite her plain dress, was sought out for almost every dance. As the evening whirled away beneath her feet she scarcely noticed how warm the room was becoming—though she could see other ladies flagging. The ballroom was illuminated by a hundred candles, which added to the oppressive heat, while the damp screens of fragrant grass that covered the windows, and the
punkahs
that slowly swept back and forth overhead, did little to halt the constantly rising temperature.

Around the ballroom ladies slumped on chairs, their faces shining with perspiration, their curls unraveling in the heat to hang in limp bands against their blazing cheeks. Beside them, crimson-faced young men in tight military uniforms or woolen suits, their collars
and shirts dark with sweat, worked energetically at their partners' fans in a vain attempt to stir the stifling atmosphere into a breeze.

Lilian smiled to herself as she was waltzed across the floor by a young subaltern with a bristling blond mustache and yellow teeth.
How absurd we must look to the natives
, she thought. She gazed at the sweating, panting faces that spun around and around her in the candlelight as the Europeans leaped and pranced.
Anyone would think we are in Bath rather than Bengal
.

She said as much to her shaggy-lipped partner and instantly regretted her outspokenness. “My dear lady,” he said, looking surprised. “Would you have us wearing
pyjamas
and refusing to eat roast beef?” And he smiled his yellow smile and spun her around once again.

L
ILIAN WAS GLAD
to leave the city, despite its claims to civilization. Civilization, she thought, had never seemed so hot and uncomfortable. Now, as she was bounced along in the
dak
, the curtains rolled up to enable her to observe the passing countryside (though this also allowed in a fearsome heat, a choking cloud of dust and numerous buzzing insects), she reflected on her good fortune to be away from it all. And, more important, to be away from home—to be somewhere other than in the stultifying atmosphere of her father's house, surrounded by the clutter of his endless possessions. Admittedly, the conservatory with its wealth of botanical specimens had provided a satisfying diversion, but in the end she had felt as imprisoned and constrained as the very plants that she grew. And as she had finally quitted the great house, liberated, it seemed, by Selwyn Fraser's proposal of marriage, she had secretly prayed never to return. Now, only the thought of Alice, still at home in England, caused her any anxiety.

Over the following days, Lilian made some useful and, to her mind, necessary modifications to her way of life. As they traveled farther inland across the Indian plains, rather than use a parasol to keep the blistering sun off her pale skin, she adopted a pith helmet.
Instead of asking her husband to speak to the bearers, she struggled to learn the rudiments of their language so that she could converse with them herself. On their second night on the road, at her request, one of the bearers had shown her how to use the rifle. She practiced by blasting into pulp the pendulous fruit that hung from the mango trees at the roadside and was now proficient. She made sure that the rifle was well oiled and ready for use at all times.

They traveled only in the mornings. In the afternoons Selwyn slept, exhausted, in whatever
dak
bungalow they had reached. Lilian, however, was too restless to lie meekly at his side. With the rifle over her shoulder, her notebooks, paints, and brushes in her bag, and her easel and paper strapped to her back, she would wander off to explore the surrounding countryside. To facilitate this, beneath her skirts she took to wearing a pair of her husband's trousers, which enabled her to climb over fallen trees and scramble up rocks with ease and no loss of dignity.

“Really, my dear,” her husband said after a week of watching his wife disappear into the brush. “This is most irregular. What will the natives think to see a lady wandering about alone in the jungle?”

“Ram comes with me,” replied Lilian. “And these are the plains, not the jungle.”

Selwyn's flushed face turned a deeper shade of crimson, as it always did when she contradicted him. “Has your sense of propriety completely deserted you?” he cried. “Besides, there may be thieves, or wild animals, awaiting you if you stray too far. This fellow Ram you seem so fond of will be sure to run off and leave you to your fate. What if you fall and break your leg? Or get bitten by a snake?”