Belonging by Umi Sinha Read Free Book Online Page A

and Mrs. Hewitt sat down right next to the window and I could hear them talking about Father. Mrs. Hewitt was congratulating Aunt Mina on working wonders with him and said they had all been convinced he was going native because he sat on the verandah in his pyjamas and seemed to prefer arranging nautches and wrestling matches for his sepoys to mixing with his fellow Europeans.
    Then the gentlemen came in and the chaplain’s wife called for everyone to gather round the piano and a lady called Miss Pole was invited to sing. Miss Pole looked just like her name – she was very tall and thin, with a pointed nose – and she clasped her hands under her chin and began to sing in a reedy voice about someone who had falsely sworn a vow and broken it, and how his lover had pined away with grief and died blessing him. I could see that Father was trying not to laugh. Then they all begged Aunt Mina to sing and she said no and they said yes and in the end she agreed, as she obviously meant to all along. She went to the piano and Father stood to turn the pages for her.
    I was surprised when she started because she sang beautifully. The song was called ‘What Voice Is This?’ and it was about someone who had died and how her voice was carried on the evening breeze. It made me sad, but Fatherdidn’t seem to be listening. He was just staring at the floor and forgot to turn the page so the chaplain had to jump up and do it. And then she got to the end and her voice went high and sweet. She was singing: ‘The dead shall seem to live again, the dead shall seem to live again, to live again… to live again…’ and then Father turned and knocked the music off the stand and almost ran out of the room. Everyone looked surprised and Aunt Mina stopped. The chaplain picked up the music and she started again, and then Father came out of the front door on to the verandah and I had to duck back behind the bush.
    He stood still for a moment, breathing loudly and making a funny choking sort of noise, and then he plunged off the verandah and rushed straight past our carriage and down the road with the syce staring after him in amazement. He looked even more confused to see me come out of the flowerbed. ‘You wait here for Memsahib,’ I said, and followed Father, but by the time I got home he was already in his room. I came straight here to mine, which is next to his, and listened at the wall, but there was silence. Not long after, Aunt Mina came home in the trap. I heard her thanking the syce before she came into the house and went to her room.

Cecily
SS Madras, 10th October 1855
    Dearest Mina,
    You must have wondered what had become of me after such a long silence! I am penning this on the ship to India, for it was impossible to find the smallest opportunity to write when we were ashore. The steam-barge from Alexandria to Cairo was so crowded that all except the most elderly members of the party were without berths and had to forage for armchairs or a space on the floor. Shepheard’s Hotel, where we were supposed to stay, was already full of passengers coming from India, and even the older members could not obtain a bed. They slept upon couches in the public rooms, but some of us younger ones decided to pay a visit to the public baths, which are open all night.
    It was the most romantic evening; I wish you could have seen it, Mina. Men in burnooses carrying flaming torches escorted us through the streets, and in the bath-house women with huge arms pummelled us black and blue and then anointed us with oils and perfumes. Mrs. Weston, who accompanied us as a self-appointed chaperone, protested vigorously at having to disrobe in public but even she was nomatch for two brawny Turkish women who held her down and rubbed and scrubbed, laughing and making faces of disgust at one another. We were all quite mortified when they showed us the rolls of dirt that rubbed off us, though I was so sore for the next few days that I suspect it was not dirt at all but