considered too pagan for this new world. She’d been christened Sarianna as an affectionate salute to the country of her birth and had known nothing else. When it was dropped in favour of Sara, “a respectable English name”, she had been too young to protest. She’d become Sara Archer, though somewhere in the back of her mind was a vague recollection of another name, a name she couldn’t remember.
It wasn’t Archer, she was certain of that, and her aunt had no intention of enlightening her.
The subject was dropped, and it was unwise to attempt to raise it again, but Sara could see she knew more than she was prepared to tell. She just wasn’t going to, and now that she’d died after her long illness the name had died with her.
The mystery of her parentage didn’t seem to matter compared to the enormity of her loss. As a child, numb with shock, she went through the motions of living; of attending boarding school; of strict rules and petty punishments; of eating lukewarm, tasteless food, and learning how to stifle any show of ill-bred passion.
It was hoped she had been well and truly immunised against the more fervent emotions, though they hadn’t been entirely successful.
Her small rebellions showed in the letters of complaint sometimes sent home to her aunt.
“Sara is at times sullen and unruly. She runs when she might walk and seems to have no interest in the feminine arts. She has also been found reading a book of a nature we find unsuitable for a girl of her years and written by a Frenchman no less! She has been duly reprimanded, and the book confiscated. Her most serious misdemeanour is of riding a horse bareback outside of the usual riding lessons. You know what irreparable damage that may do to a young girl. Perhaps even blight her chances of a respectable marriage. Need I say more …”
Sara Archer, a good plain name for a good plain girl, though with her unusual colouring and high cheekbones she should have been a beauty, but, after years of stodgy boarding school food, she was overweight and cursed with sallow, dull skin made worse by the long English winters.
Her aunt despaired of the girl’s appearance, using every remedy short of powder and rouge, though, even with the daily doses of castor oil and cream of tartar to whiten her complexion, her skin remained lacklustre and dull. Her hair though had always been admired. In a plait it was as thick as a man’s fist, and even her aunt admitted grudgingly the colour was lovely, despite being more red than brown, and too heavy to crimp successfully with curling irons.
Though the cold weather was her chief enemy to beauty, it seemed her nose was always pink and swollen, her eyes constantly watering and her body stiff and ungainly.
She felt she was almost always shivering, except for the few brief, warm luxurious moments spent in bed in the morning before hastily dressing in her icy room then rushing downstairs for breakfast, where she sat as close to the meagre fire as she could, her hands clutched around her teacup, desperately trying to warm her chilblained fingers.
Sometimes at night when she lay in bed rigid with cold, her life in India came back to her in strange little bursts of disconnected memory, flooding her with longing, and enveloping her with warmth.
In a candlelit room with dark wooden floors, she lay in a small white bed under a billowing tent of mosquito netting, while she listened, wide-eyed and sleepless, to the sounds of the night invading the room on a warm perfumed breeze.
Sometimes, she shivered at the sudden scream of a cornered animal, and the horror of the whimpering that came soon after, then an ominous lingering silence. Or, the most terrifying of all sounds, the haunting chant from a nearby temple, where the worshippers were known to practise the forbidden rites of the goddess Kali, who wore a belt of human skulls around her waist and brandished a bloody knife above a decapitated head.
She knew about Kali, all the children did, but, despite her terror, she relished the bloodthirsty image with a curious delight.
Then, a suspicious rustle in the bushes beneath her window: a bandit perhaps, come to rob the house, or a python, gliding its way across the terrace to eat one of the hens.
Though to chase away her fears, in the corner of the room came the peaceful breathing of a sleeping figure, ever present and comforting, her beloved ayah, Malika, and she would fall back to sleep at last.
Then, more happily with daylight, the screech of her pet peacock, who followed her everywhere. The feel of cool fabric on her warm face as she ran laughing through sheets of luminous silks as they hung floating from between two coconut palms; the sounds of laughter, and music; a band of musicians wearing brilliant blue turbans, the plaintive wail of a sitar, and food, always food, of every kind, aromatic and delicious, spread on a long table placed under a shady arbour, surrounded by people, their faces blurring into each other, but all of them, it seemed, were happy and caring. It felt too she was the centre of their care, and she felt safe and, most of all, loved.
A young sailor coiling a rope looked up and gave her a curious stare, bringing her back to the present. Sara straightened her spine and began to pace the deck again; the waiting had become almost unbearable. A trickle of perspiration ran from beneath her wide straw hat, down her throat and into the neck of her white muslin blouse. Her skin beneath her bodice was slippery with sweat, so she would have to keep her arms firmly pressed against her sides in fear of the dreaded stains under her armpits flooding into even wider crescents. She thought how much cooler she’d be if she hadn’t been wearing a corset, and it was tempting to throw it overboard as she had done with the huge cane bustle her aunt’s maid had packed with her luggage. It would have been more sensible to just have given the bustle away, but she’d thought as a symbol of her new freedom it deserved a much more dramatic send-off.
She’d thrown it overboard at dawn, and watched it hover for a long moment on the waves, refusing to sink, and taunting her for her mutinous behaviour, till it floated almost out of sight and sank at last.
The young sailor smiled at her now in an admiring way, then strode along the deck, his wide baggy pants flapping lightly in the breeze, his linen shirt open at the neck, and Sara thought how pleasant it would be to wear such clothes. Her own long legs were encased in cotton bloomers and hidden by the thinnest layer possible of petticoats. She gave a furious little kick of protest under her skirts, but she knew to throw away her petticoat as well would be a step too far.
She recalled her aunt’s constant refrain over the years beating into her brain like a mantra. “Whatever you do or wherever you are, do not let your standards drop for a moment. People will judge you by how you maintain your appearance. A slovenly exterior shows a slovenly will.”
Sara laughed to herself. She had already let her standards slip and was surprised by how little she cared. Clearly it was other people who seemed to mind.
The hated curling irons too were abandoned almost as soon as the ship had been out of view of the shore, and her hair had improved dramatically ever since, shining with a new life and colour now it was allowed to be as it was meant to be.
She reached up to smooth the heavy chignon held in a wide tortoiseshell comb and tucked a few loose strands under her hat. It was difficult to be neat in such weather, but she consoled herself with the thought that perhaps Charles wouldn’t notice … Men usually didn’t notice such things, but then, he was always so immaculate himself and he couldn’t abide untidiness in others.
Dear, dear Charles … Her face took on a faraway look as she cupped her face in her hands, her elbows on the rail. She hadn’t seen him for over a year, not since their hasty marriage on the day he’d left to return to India.
They had planned to have their honeymoon on board the ship, but when Sara’s aunt became gravely ill on the day of her marriage, Sara had no choice but to stay to nurse her till she died. But, even after her aunt being long buried, Charles wrote asking his bride to wait a little longer before joining him. His letters told of typhoons and outbreaks of hostilities amongst the natives, or cholera amongst his staff, then, finally, the need to wait till the end of the monsoon.
She’d decided she wouldn’t wait a moment longer, regardless of disease or bad weather, when at last, when more than a year had passed, Charles’s letter