A Sahib's Daughter (31 page)

Samira and Rachel couldn’t understand a word the farmer said and didn’t dare look at each other for fear of collapsing in giggles. He asked Samira a question, and she had absolutely no idea what he was saying. She looked at Justin helplessly, beseeching him to translate.

He showed them their rooms, and Samira did some quick, lateral thinking, “Can you recommend a restaurant for dinner?” she asked him.

“Aye, surely,” he said and proceeded to give Justin long, detailed directions in his unintelligible accent.

“I’m starving, Justin. Let’s go eat right away,” she said. “Oh, and let’s take our bags with us.”

“Really?” asked Justin in surprise. He’d only just hauled them in. She gave him a hard look.

“Yes, please. Really.”

Helpless with laughter, Rachel and Samira ran to the car.

“What’s going on?” said Justin, a little annoyed.

“Did you see the state of those rooms?”

“They were totally disgusting!”

“There’s no way on earth we’re staying there!”

“Now, you need to call him and tell him we’ve been called away on an emergency and therefore can’t stay on his farm,” Samira said.

“Me? Why me?” said Justin.

“Because you’re the only one who can understand him,” explained Rachel. “That probably means that you’re the only one among us he can understand.”

They visited Donegal, staying at an inn over a pub. The weather was abysmal, so they visited the pub the moment it opened. Rachel and Justin drank pint after pint and grew quite merry, joined by a group of golfers from Cork. Samira consoled herself with food, digging into lamb stew, apple pie and Black Forest gateau.

Justin’s accent altered with every town they visited. He was able to imitate the locals’ dialects and would talk just like they did till they arrived at the next town. He’d fill up the car with petrol and came back talking just like the people in the petrol station. Samira and Rachel killed themselves laughing at him.

They headed south to Sligo, where Samira was in raptures over Yeats’ countryside. They went to Lough Gill, and she read the words from “Cloths of Heaven” inscribed on a plaque in his memory:

“I have spread my dreams under your feet,

Tread softly for you tread on my dreams.”

At the Lake Isle of Innisfree, she recalled her favorite lines from the poem:

“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree
,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles maybe.”

“And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of morning to where the cricket sings;”

“I feel I understand Yeats so much better after seeing the sights that inspired him,” Samira sighed. “How I wish I were a poet! Is there any poetry written by pregnant women?”

All too soon, it was time to return to Newcastle and for Rachel to leave.

“Promise you’ll come and see us in India,” Samira begged, seeing her old friend off at Aldergrove Airport.

Then it was Christmas and after all the excitement of an Irish Christmas, January was a miserable month. Samira began to wonder why she was here and not at home being pampered by Charles, Ramona and Prava. She missed them all terribly.

“Let’s go back,” she urged Justin. “I can have the baby in Darjeeling at the Planters Hospital where I was born.”

There was also the question of money. They had not planned on staying beyond six months. Things had not turned out the way Samira imagined when she dreamed of her year of travel. Keeping house and becoming pregnant had not been part of the plan. They had to shelve their plans to travel to the Continent.

Since Justin was frequently at the shop with Edward or out with his mates, Samira was left largely to her own resources and made friends with a girl named Siobhan whom she met in the library. They would meet for coffee on Saturday mornings. Siobhan had a job in Belfast. She left Newcastle every morning at seven-thirty when it was still dark for the hour-and-a-half journey by Ulster Bus to her job at the insurance office in Progressive Square. She worked till five in the evening, arriving home in the dark at six-thirty to cook dinner for herself and her husband. It was a lot better in the summertime, she said, because it was bright in the mornings and evenings. She had no other option, as there were simply no jobs to be had in Newcastle. Her husband was a milkman and faced a lot of uncertainty with people buying milk in cartons in the supermarkets, rather than having it delivered to their doorsteps.

Samira was subdued, reflecting on Siobhan’s existence.

“How can this type of life be considered better than what our tea laborers have?” she asked Justin. “It’s true they work long hours in the heat, but is that really any worse than a humdrum existence in the cold and dark of an Irish winter?”

“I agree completely,” said Justin. “And it’s partly why I left this place and your father, too, I’m sure. But life isn’t perfect in tea by any means.”

Alarm bells started to jangle loudly in Samira’s mind.

“So, I take it you’re not enamored with the lifestyle here?” he continued, confirming her apprehension.

“Why do you ask?” she said, her eyes widening. “Are you considering leaving tea?”

“Not without consulting you first. But my father is getting old, and it’s a struggle running the shop. He would be happy to just hand it over to me, if I would agree. We would make a good living and have a lot more than most people. Certainly more than what I make in tea.”

Samira was silent. This was a scenario she had never contemplated. How would she feel about living in this country? She missed home terribly. But where was home? Her life in Ranikot was over. She was an adult about to be married and start her own life. Home would be with Justin wherever he might be, in his bungalow at Simling or here in Newcastle, though, she hoped, not in a house like the one they lived in now.

“I would need to give it some thought,” she confessed. “I’ve really never considered moving here permanently. I thought you loved it out there.”

“Ach, of course I do. But sooner or later, we all come back, well, most of us, at any rate. It was different for your father. His parents died a long time ago. He doesn’t have the family ties I have.”

“Yes, I understand. I’ll think it over at Aunt Pauline’s.”

She set a date for visiting her aunt in the middle of January.

Justin left the house on one of his interminable errands, and she realized that she’d forgotten to ask him to fetch coal from the shed. It was in the courtyard behind the kitchen, beside the original outhouse lavatory. If she didn’t fetch more coal, the fire would go out. It was a nightmare to re-light, so she picked up the scuttle and opened the back door. The wind blew with such force she could barely stand and had to fight her way across the courtyard. She gathered as much as she could safely carry and headed for the house. Suddenly, she lost her footing and landed heavily on her back, scattering the coal around her. She clasped her arms around her belly in alarm, feeling a jolt of pain. She wasn’t sure how long she lay there, gasping for breath with her head spinning. When would Justin be home, she wondered? He hadn’t even told her where he was going. She had hurt her ankle, which must have twisted in the fall. She crawled her way to the house, struggling to reach the door handle.

When he returned, Justin found her passed out on the kitchen floor, with the back door swinging in the wind.

“Sammy, are you okay?” He knelt beside her and felt her forehead.

To his intense relief, she opened her eyes. She was confused and disoriented.

“Where am I?”

“In the kitchen,” he said. “What happened, darling? How did you fall?”

She struggled to remember.

“I went to the coal shed. I slipped and fell. My ankle hurts. I must have twisted it.”

“This one?” he examined her foot. “It looks swollen. Does it hurt? What about…the baby?”

“I seem to be okay. It’s just my ankle that hurts.”

He guided her upstairs. “I’ll get a cold compress. Shall I call the doctor?”

“I’ll be fine when I warm up a little. I’m so cold.”

Dr. Gibbons examined her the next day and verified that the baby was okay, but she’d sprained her ankle and had to keep her weight off her foot. She hobbled around for two weeks, which was most inconvenient. She had to postpone her visit to Pauline, and it wasn’t till the end of February that she was finally ready to travel.

She hoped that their home would be warmer than hers. There was no central heating in the house, not that she’d ever had central heating, but she’d never known cold like this, not even in Darjeeling in winter. There the sun shone brightly all winter long, melting the early morning frost that glistened on the hillsides. In Newcastle, the sleet beat down on the streets and the gray sea churned. Samira waged an endless battle with the fire. The kitchen, bathroom and hallway were glacial, and the electric heater in the bedroom gave off meager warmth.

She was now on the last stretch to Dublin, whizzing past dilapidated houses adjacent to the railway track. Aunt Pauline was meeting her at the station, and they would drive the twelve miles to her home in Bray.

Sean and Pauline scanned the faces of the passengers arriving on the Belfast train. Samira was easy to identify because of her obviously pregnant condition, which momentarily shocked Pauline although she had known of her pregnancy. Samira recognized them from a faded photograph on her father’s desk. They approached each other and embraced somewhat awkwardly, strangers linked only by the blood that ran through their veins.

Pauline was small and slight with short, gray hair. She wore an unfashionably long tweed skirt, navy sweater and sensible shoes. Sean was tall and somewhat overweight, wearing faded corduroy pants and a loose sweatshirt with “Luck o’ the Irish” in green across the back. He took Samira’s bag and guided her toward their car.

“We thought we’d take you straight home, as you’ll be tired after the journey, I’m sure,” Pauline said. “We’ll bring you to Dublin another day. You’d like to see Dublin, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, yes. I want to see as much as possible while I’m here.”

“You’ll like Bray. It’s just a small seaside town, not very different from Newcastle. We’re so happy you’re here. I can’t wait to hear the latest about Charles. He was never a good correspondent.”

The air was warmer compared to the severity of the wind and sea in the North. They drove over roads that were narrow and pot-holed, passing quaint villages that were no more than clusters of white-walled, thatched cottages. It was like going back in time. The town of Bray had been built between the drumlins of the Sugar Loaf Mountain and the gentle sea that lapped against the walls of its promenade. Wooden boats draped with fishing nets lay on the pebbly shore. The bandstand was deserted and ice cream stalls with pictures of popsicles and cotton candy boarded up for the winter.

“It’s very different in the summertime,” said Pauline, “when tourists from Europe and America, as well as locals from Dublin, descend on the town. Such a shame you couldn’t come sooner.”

They turned up a laneway between two buildings on the High Street and drove into a gravel courtyard surrounded by brick walls smothered with ivy. They entered a large Georgian mansion, and Samira gasped at the magnificent hallway with its huge sweeping staircase.

“What a beautiful home!” she said, looking around in amazement. Ornate chandeliers hung from the ceilings, and sunlight streamed through the tall curved windows. Elegant Persian rugs, china ornaments and heavy furniture added to the air of opulence.

“We hope you’ll be comfortable,” said Pauline. “Let me show you your room. We put you on the second floor, so you won’t have too many stairs to climb. Our room is in the back, and this one is yours.” She opened the door leading into the bedroom decorated in cream and white.

“Thank you,” said Samira. “It’s lovely.”

“Would you like to freshen up and unpack before we have tea?”

“Yes, please. I’m such a mess.”

Pauline left her, and Samira went to look out of the window which overlooked the courtyard and a row of beeches that obscured the back of the buildings on the street. Staying in the center of town was a novel experience. It would be interesting to have a street and shops just a few steps away. What a surprise, too, to discover that Aunt Pauline lived in such a fabulous place. Charles had never talked about it, only the meager, terraced house in London he and Pauline grew up in. She wondered if he had any idea of the change in her circumstances.

She washed her face and ran a comb through her hair. The house was warm, as she’d hoped it would be. What a relief to be out of their rented house! She needed a break from Justin and his family. Well, it was natural to want to get away from each other occasionally. It would be good for their relationship. She changed her shoes, put on some lipstick and went downstairs to join Pauline and Sean for tea.

The next few weeks were a happy and memorable time for her. She learned about her father’s childhood and how, having had his heart broken by a woman named Sarah, he had decided to go to India. Pauline told her about her time working at the mental asylum and how Sean had arrived to pick her up from work in the Bentley. His limousine business, which started that very day, flourished, and there were now six branches, three of which he opened after moving to Bray to take care of his mother. It was during that time, after he left London, she said, that he realized he loved her and came back to her with a great, old ring. She, who’d been sitting in the house day after day, nursing a broken heart and not saying anything about it to him because they were supposedly only friends.

“What a lovely, romantic story,” said Samira. “How fortunate you are to have found such love.”

Pauline looked at her. “You say that as if you haven’t. And if not, then why are you engaged? And why isn’t Justin with you now?”

“Aunt Pauline, I think I am only just beginning to formulate certain things in my mind that I’m not sure I understand myself. Justin and I hadn’t known each other very long when he proposed to me. He came along and swept me off my feet at a time when I was rather vulnerable. I’d just broken up with someone else. It was very exciting and flattering, and it helped restore my bruised ego. But please don’t think I’m saying that I don’t love him. I really feel I do.”