The Glass Palace (30 page)

One day, Rajkumar said to her: ‘Everything we have we owe to you. If there's anything you should ever need, we would want to be the first to be asked.'

She smiled. ‘Anything?'

‘Yes, of course.'

She took a deep breath. ‘Well then, I am going to ask you to book me a passage, to Europe . . .'

As Uma's ship made its way westwards, a wake of letters and postcards came drifting back, to wash up at Dolly's door in Kemendine. From Colombo there was a picture of the sea at Mount Lavinia, with a note about how Uma had met a family friend on board her ship, a Mrs Kadambari Dutt—one of the famous Hatkhola Dutts of Calcutta, a cousin of Toru Dutt, the poetess and a relative of the distinguished Mr Romesh Dutt, the writer and scholar. Mrs Dutt was a good deal older than herself and had lived a while in England; she was very experienced and knowledgeable about things—the perfect person to have on board, a godsend really. They were enjoying themselves together.

From Aden there was a postcard with a picture of a narrow channel, flowing between two immense cliffs. Uma wrote that she'd been delighted to discover that this waterway—which formed the link between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea— was known in Arabic as the
Bab al-Mandab
, ‘the gateway of lamentation'. Could there possibly be a better-chosen name?

From Alexandria there was a picture of a fortress, with a few wry remarks about how much friendlier the Europeans on the ship had become once they were past the Suez Canal. She, Uma, had been taken aback, but Mrs Dutt had said that it was always like this: there was something about the air of the Mediterranean that seemed to turn even the most haughty colonialists into affable democrats.

From Marseilles, Uma sent her first long letter: she and her newfound friend, Mrs Dutt, had decided to spend a few days in that city. Mrs Dutt had changed into a European skirt before going ashore; she'd offered to lend Uma one, but Uma had felt awkward and had refused; she'd stepped off the ship in a sari. They hadn't gone far before Uma was mistaken—of all things!—for a Cambodian; dozens of people had gathered around her, asking if she was a dancer. It turned out that King Sisowath of Cambodia had recently visited the city, with a troupe of dancers from his palace. The dancers had enjoyed a great success; the whole city was mad for them; the great sculptor, Mr Rodin, had come down from Paris, just to draw their likenesses. Uma had almost wished that she did not have to disappoint everyone by explaining that she was an Indian, not Cambodian.

They'd had a wonderful time, the two of them, she and Mrs Dutt; they'd walked around town and gone sightseeing and even ventured into the countryside. It had been strange, heady, exhilarating—two women travelling alone, unmolested, drawing nothing more than the occasional curious stare. She'd asked herself why it was not possible to do the same at home— why women could not think of travelling like this in India, revelling in this sense of being at liberty. Yet it was troubling to think that this privilege—of being able to enjoy this sense of freedom, however momentary—had become possible only because of the circumstances of her marriage and because she now had the money to travel. She had talked of this at length with Kadambari—Mrs Dutt: Why should it not be possible for these freedoms to be universally available, for women everywhere? And Mrs Dutt had said that of course, this was one of the great benefits of British rule in India; that it had given women rights and protections that they'd never had before. At this, Uma had felt herself, for the first time, falling utterly out of sympathy with her new friend. She had known instinctively that this was a false argument, unfounded and illogical. How was it possible to imagine that one could grant freedom by imposing subjugation? That one could open a
cage by pushing it inside a bigger cage? How could any section of a people hope to achieve freedom where the entirety of a populace was held in subjection? She'd had a long argument with Mrs Dutt and in the end she had succeeded in persuading her friend that hers was the correct view. She'd felt this to be a great triumph—for of course Mrs Dutt was much older (and a good deal better educated) and until then it was always she who was telling her, Uma, how she ought to think of things.

Dolly was in bed when she read this letter. She was drinking a pungent concoction prescribed by a midwife and trying to rest. Some weeks earlier she had begun to suspect that she was pregnant and this intuition had been recently confirmed. As a result she'd been put on a regimen that required many different medicinal infusions and much rest. But rest was not always easy to come by in a household as busy and chaotic as her own. Even as she sat reading Uma's letter, there were frequent interruptions—with the cook and U Ba Kyaw and the master-bricklayers bursting in to ask for instructions. In between trying to guess what was to be prepared for dinner and how much money U Ba Kyaw would have to be advanced for his next visit home, she tried to think of Uma, revelling in the freedom of being able to walk out alone, in Europe. She understood intuitively why Uma took such pleasure in this, even though she herself would not have cared for it at all. Her mind seemed to have no room for anything but the crowded eventlessness of her everyday life. It struck her that she rarely gave any thought to such questions as freedom or liberty or any other such matters.

When she picked up a pen to write back to Uma, she could think of nothing to say; there was something incommunicable about the quotidian contentments of her life. She could try, for instance, to write about how her friend Daw Thi had stopped by last Wednesday and how they'd gone to look at the new furniture at Rowe and Co.; or else she could describe her last visit to the Kyaikasan racecourse and how Rajkumar had won almost one thousand rupees and had joked about buying a pony. But none of this seemed worth putting down
on paper—certainly not in response to such concerns as Uma had expressed. Or else she could write about her pregnancy, about Rajkumar's happiness, about how he'd immediately started to think of names (the child was to be a boy of course). But she was superstitious about these things: neither she nor Rajkumar was telling people yet and wouldn't do so until it was unavoidable. Nor did she want to write to Uma about this subject: it would be as though she were flaunting her domesticity in her friend's face; underscoring her childlessness.

Two months passed without any further communication from Uma. As the days went by Dolly found herself less and less able to sleep. Shooting abdominal pains made her double over in bed at night. She moved into a room of her own, so as not to disturb Rajkumar. The midwife told her that everything was proceeding normally, but Dolly was not persuaded: she was increasingly sure that something had gone wrong. Then, late one night, the now-familiar pains changed suddenly into convulsions that shook the whole of her lower body. She realised that she was miscarrying and shouted for Rajkumar. He roused the household and sent people off in every direction—to fetch doctors, nurses, midwives. But it was too late and Rajkumar was alone with Dolly when the stillborn foetus was ejected from her body.

Dolly was still convalescing when Uma's next letter arrived. The letter bore a London address and opened with profuse apologies and an implied reproach. Uma wrote that she was saddened to think that they had allowed so many months to pass without an exchange of letters. She herself had been very busy in London, she said. Mrs Dutt had helped her find accommodation—as the paying guest of an elderly missionary lady who'd spent much of her life in India. The arrangement had worked out well and Uma had not lacked for company. Shortly after her arrival, people had begun to seek her out:
mainly former friends and colleagues of the Collector's, most of them English. Some of them had known her late husband at Cambridge, others had worked with him in India. They had all been very kind, showing her around the city, taking her to events of the sort the Collector had liked to attend— concerts, plays, lectures at the Royal Academy. After a while, Uma had begun to feel as though the Collector were with her again; she would hear his voice describing Drury Lane or Covent Garden, pointing to the notable features; telling her what was in good taste and what was not.

Fortunately, she'd also kept up her connection with her shipboard friend, Mrs Dutt. It turned out that Mrs Dutt knew every Indian living in London, or almost. Through her she'd met many interesting people, most notably a lady by the name of Madame Cama. A Parsee from Bombay, Madame Cama seemed, at first glance, more European than Indian—in clothes, manner and appearance. Yet she, Uma, had never known anyone who spoke more truthfully or forthrightly on matters concerning India. She'd been kind enough to introduce Uma into her circle. Uma had never met such people—so interesting and idealistic, men and women whose views and sentiments were so akin to her own. Through these people Uma had begun to understand that a woman like herself could contribute a great deal to India's struggle from overseas.

Lately Madame Cama had been urging her, Uma, to visit the United States. She had friends among the Irish in New York, many of whom, she said, were sympathetic to India's cause. She thought it important for Uma to meet these people and felt that she might like living in that city. Uma was thinking the matter over quite seriously. Of this she was certain at any rate: that she would not long remain in England. In London she was haunted by the notion that the whole city was conspiring to remind her of her late husband.

Exhausted by the effort of reading this letter, Dolly dropped it on her bedside table. Later that day, when Rajkumar came home, he saw it lying there and picked it up.

‘From Uma?'

‘Yes.'

‘What does she say?'

‘Read it.'

Rajkumar smoothed down the page and read the letter through, slowly, following Uma's cramped handwriting with his forefinger, asking for Dolly's help with such words as he could not follow. At the end, he folded the pages and put them back on Dolly's bedside table.

‘She's talking of going to New York.'

‘Yes.'

‘That's where Matthew is.'

‘Yes. I'd forgotten.'

‘You should send her his address. If she goes there, Matthew could help her settle in.'

‘That's true.'

‘And if you write to her you could also say that Saya John is worried about Matthew. He's been writing to Matthew to come home—but Matthew hasn't answered. Sayagyi can't understand why he won't come back. Perhaps Uma will be able to solve the puzzle.'

Dolly nodded. ‘All right,' she said. ‘It'll give me something to write about.' She spent a week composing a letter, writing out the paragraphs one at a time. She made no mention of her condition. Having said nothing about her pregnancy, it seemed out of place to refer to a miscarriage. She wrote mostly about Saya John and Rajkumar and posted the letter to Uma's London address.

By the time Dolly heard back, Uma had already crossed the Atlantic; she was in New York, and had been there several weeks already. Again, she was full of apologies for not having written earlier—there was so much to write about that she did not know where to start. New York had proved to be all that she had hoped—a kind of haven for someone like herself, except that the shelter it afforded consisted not of peace and quiet but the opposite. It was the kind of place where one could lose oneself in the press of people. She had decided to remain here for the time being: even on the way over, she had
known that this was a place that would be to her taste because so many of the other passengers were people who were tired of the ruthless hypocrisies of Europe, just as she was.

But she also had something important to report, on the very subject that Dolly had written to her about. She had met Matthew Martins soon after her arrival in America; he had come to see her, at the Ramakrishna Mission in Manhattan, where she was staying temporarily. He was not at all the person she had expected; his resemblance to his father was very slight. He was athletic in build and very good-looking, extremely urbane in manner. She had quickly discovered that he had a great passion for motor cars; it had been instructive to walk down the streets with him, for he would point here and there and announce, like a magician: ‘there goes a brand-new new 1908 Hutton'; or ‘there's a Beeston Humber' or ‘that's a Gaggenau . . .'