A short story by Madhuri (full version)
I
Sussex, 1850
Although it was summer, the little church was chilly, with something of the stony cave about it. Eileen wore her new gown – a very fine check silk, where the tartan seemed almost part of the background colour – so that she could revel in the crisp softness of the fabric without calling too much attention to herself. The preacher would go on – everyone wanted their dinners. She sighed – but reminded herself to try to understand the story he was intoning; something about forgiveness. What had she to forgive anyone for?
Her eyes strayed about the pews. There were the Kendricks, plump Mrs and wiry Mr, with their row of sons. There were the neighbours, north, south, east and west; all done up in their Sunday best. There was her erstwhile governess, now gone to a nearby family, since Eileen had gone sixteen.
The Kendrick boys either sat straight and proper, or squirmed about restlessly, depending on their dispositions. Just now one of them turned his head sharply and stared straight at her, just for a moment. She shivered – it was the son she liked least… Gerald. He had a low forehead, orange-red hair, sparse and hanging. His skin was sallow – all his time in the open air did not colour it with more than a yellowish cast. His lips were long, and thin as earthworms. His chin, lifted in defence, was square but narrow, with a little cleft. The stubble of his beard was orange too.
She thought of what she knew of him. He was not tall, but he was well-made, if very slim – from back to front he seemed like a slip of paper. He was strong, though, and sinewy; his forearms had weight and mass under the red hairs. He was the third son of four, so he was never to be a landed farmer like his father. Could he become a lawyer, or a cleric? Impossible to imagine him as a man of God. And what kind of a soldier could such a person be? Not the right sort of soldier, she thought; no. Soldiers must be valorous, and he was only sly.
It was likely that he smirked because he knew he was ugly, she thought, and he wanted to pre-empt your hesitation, your politeness in his presence. Wanted to show that he was just as ill-favoured as it was thought that he was; and what of it? Here he was; and was here to stay. Of course there must have been pain behind this – the sudden gasping sobs of a child that knows it is not wanted, not trusted to grace its family, but only to disgrace it. But everyone was tired of making allowances.
For Gerald was unsavoury – his damp hands, his red-furred forearms, those carved-out, almost oriental cheeks – Eileen would certainly not want to be left alone with him – not for the liberties he might try to take – as far as as anyone knew, he had never importuned a female – but for his meanness. The way he would say something slighting, or cruel – but half-hid behind an offhand remark, or even a compliment – you had to think on it, later, to be sure of what he’d really said.
He did not like parties – stayed away from festivities in the neighbourhood. He said they bored him; though likely he was just misanthropic from the pain of being unlovely. What he did like was riding horses; and the squire had a stableful, so Gerald was never at a loss. The townsfolk, the hill-folk, saw him cantering along at any hour and in any weather, straight-spined, easy in the saddle. Sneering down at whomsoever might be passing.
She’d heard people talking. They said Gerald could have been an athlete, if only there were more meat on him; perhaps an administrator in the Colonies? For that was a way where he could quit their neighbourhood for a long long time. (Though pity the poor natives!) A planter? His father would need to put a stake on him, and he only a younger son. And did he have the gift for it? It did not seem as if he would. He just liked to ride and ride, out into the wilds, sometimes for days on end.
Two days later, Eileen was out riding her roan mare, Griselda. After a good canter across her father’s fields, she’d just entered a narrow lane between high hedges when she saw him – he stood in the centre of the way, so that she had to stop, or run him over. She felt a nervy tremble run through Griselda’s flesh.
“Good day, Neighbour,” said Gerald, with what Eileen felt was meaningless sarcasm. “Please dismount, then,” he continued. “I would show you something, over there behind that hedge. ‘Tis well worth seeing.”
Eileen did not want to dismount, nor yet to follow him to see any thing he wanted her to see; but she had been schooled in politeness and etiquette, and she did not know how to refuse; nor yet could she get by. She hesitated, but then dismounted and took up the reins as she led Griselda behind Gerald. He’d turned, and took them up the lane and then through a gap in the hedge. She knew there was an abandoned cottage nearby, down near the river; the old widow who’d lived there had died, and the place needed doing up before it was habitable. Was that where Gerald was headed? “What is it? What do you want to show to me?” she asked his back in its brown coat – but he pretended not to hear. They neared the cottage – Gerald nipped into it, and came out with a great coil of rope – Eileen turned as if to go briskly back the way she had come – but it was too late. He was upon her, and he was strong. He bound her fast, leaving her upon the ground trussed up like a Sunday capon; and then tied up Griselda, anchoring her to a tree near the cottage. Eileen knew all this, as her heart beat at a gallop; and then she knew no more.
Eileen also did not know the uproar that attended her disappearance. Many of the folk had thought Gerald might in truth prefer gentlemen; and others thought he must like beasts, or clergymen, or perhaps prostitutes in the distant city, if he sometimes went there. Nobody had ever seen him so much as flirt with a girl – yet a girl was gone, and so was Gerald. The men turned out and beat the bushes and shinned up trees, but all that was found was the mare Griselda, shivering and hungry, tied to an oak near the tumbledown cottage.
The vanished young lady was Eileen Letitia O’Sullivan Sanford – for her father had married an Irish girl, scandalously, so many years ago that the scandal had all died down now, as the marriage had proceeded uneventfully for so long. Seven children had issued from it; Eileen was the sixth, and much-thought-of by her father, for she was sweet and bouncy and sunny as the day is long. It was supposed she had not gone willingly; and in that the people had guessed right.
The journey to the port had been miserable with rain, and Eileen, tied to the saddle, was as frightened as she was angry. But the boy had gotten them there, and onto the ship too, saying they were married. Her he kept quiet with threats against her family – telling her that if she said a reckless word, or tried to escape, he would take revenge on her siblings, or her parents. And Eileen was only young, and credulous. She would need to grow up quickly, she felt this, but just now she was still quaking. She would have to gather herself, and see what she could do.
She lay in the bunk looking up at him. The ship rocked slightly, almost idly; they were weeks out, heading into the tropics, and it was hot as summer, the little cabin stuffy. Sweat lay between her breasts, on her belly.
He was a cold captor, was Gerald. He watched her – watched her – when she dressed; when she went on deck for air he followed, keeping her always in his gaze, even if he himself leant against the rail and had a smoke. His narrow eyes veered at her from their corners – and he had a certain stiffness about him, as of a man who watches out for his possessions in a crowd.
He repeated again and again that he would harm her family if she ever disobeyed him. So that was how he kept her near.
Now she watched his face; wondering how the geography of it formed his ugliness. If he had had a lovely spirit, would that same face glow? Would it become beautiful? It was difficult to imagine this. Had his mother loved him? She did not know.
The hairs of his beard started out from his pale skin as if alarmed – like tiny red transparent sea-weeds growing about on his skin. His eyes moved from side to side – or, if he looked at her, it was with the smirk of ownership. She guessed that he felt he’d finally gotten something over on his brothers, and was relishing this. On her back; at her cost.
At such a cost.
She thought he was not simply evil. He was hurt – wounded as if someone had cut his feet in half when he was young; or his heart. But she could not imagine him redeeming himself, no matter what mercy might be shown him. …But perhaps she could be wrong.
He traced a line around her breast now, with his dwarfish finger. “Mine – mine.” He actually said this. He nearly had horns, she thought – there at his boxy little temples. A squeamish shiver went through her.
If her father knew where she was, and what experience she now had had, he would kill Gerald, and surely be hung for it.
She shivered again.
The nest of hair was darker than that on his head, though still reddish. That infernal pest he harboured there stuck up like a finger, and had a rounded end, with a drop of dew on it, like a nose in winter. She would have liked to snortle at this thought, but held it back – he would demand to know what she was laughing at.
He had given her a bag of clothing – stolen from his cousins, who lived nearby him. The garments had been hastily gathered, and did not go with each other – but she’d had to make do. People looked at her – this young wife, so they supposed, of the odd-looking young man. Her clothes not quite the thing. They pitied her, she could tell; people tended to avoid Gerald, with his pointed elbows and his bent, gliding gait, his look of a passionate fugitive. As well they might.
He did not want her talking to any of the other women on the ship. She told him that that would seem strange; women always talked. Did he want to arouse suspicion?
Very well, he said, she could talk to them – but only if he was in earshot. She told him he knew nothing. He said that he would clout her. But he did not do it; not then.
She saw her chance when he was in the privy at the end of the ship – there were three of these shacks, at the stern, so that a long drop could be had, into the sea – for he tended to stay long in there. He’d told her to stay near, just by the rail, but she said that the whole area stank. He said it didn’t matter – that he wanted to be able to hear her tramping about in her laced-up boots, just nearby. She said it was a disgusting request. He threatened again to clout her, but did not – just pinched her shoulder, hard.
Mrs Belinda Graves Hepplethwaite, tall and imposing, with a pouter-pigeon bosom and straight dark hair done up in pinned coils at the sides of her head, was a friendly soul, the wife of a prosperous grocer, going out to meet her sister in India, for the lark of it really. Her sister was to have a confinement soon, and needed her; she was married to an officer, and had sent passage. Mrs Hepplethwaite had both begged her husband, and informed him diplomatically that she would go – and he had agreed finally. She was pleased to be on her way and was enjoying the trip tremendously. She had noticed the young lady, with her long dark glossy hair, her full breast and pert nose, her look of a Madonna on the half-shell, as Mrs Hepplethwaite commented to herself – and she had immediately sensed that something was wrong.
The purser was coming round with tea in a great urn on a trolley. A look passed between the two women (for Eileen had taken note of Mrs Hepplethwaite’s interest) and, each with her cup, they repaired behind a structure, a sort of covered vestibule where steps came up onto the deck. Quickly, Eileen told Mrs Hepplethwaite everything – for it was not much to tell. “He’s kidnapped me – passed me off as his wife – threatens to harm my family if I escape, or if I tell, or even if I disobey him!” And she told the name of her family, and where they lived.
“Yes – dear – I can see that it is bad for you,” said the kind lady, blenching at what the girl must be going through. “Don’t worry – I will think of something. Shall I confront him for you now?”
“No – no – don’t – for unless he is imprisoned directly he will punish me and then my family. Let us get the law into it, when we land, so that he might be kept from me altogether. Here, he might find some way to convince the captain of his innocence. He will say that I am in a temper against him, and saying anything that comes into my head. Also he can be violent, I am sure – he has a knife, and is very strong. He might do anything, against us, just this minute. Throw us over the side. Better wait till we have some help.”
“All right,” said the lady dubiously, though later she regretted listening to the girl in this last regard. “Quick – back to your place – he might be coming out.”
The ship by now was nearly at Bombay. For all the weeks of the voyage, Gerald had managed to prevent his captive’s fleeing in any port they’d paused at; now, Eileen knew, would come his great test – and her opportunity – for they would be disembarking here. Eileen, for her part, expected rescue; how could it be otherwise? She would signal someone on the quay, some authoritative-looking man in a uniform, and tell him, and in the confusion, Gerald would not see.
South of Goa, India, 1850
In a jungle far from the Bonny Isles, beside a wide, shallow river, an old lady and her old husband had started a hospital for wounded and unhappy elephants. The white soldiers, they had remarked, did not know how to use the beasts, nor how to speak with them, know what it was they needed; they hired mahouts for this of course, but still the misunderstandings and confusions communicated themselves to the sensitive creatures – for elephants are discerning, despite their size. And it must be noted that elephants do not like to be used; no more than you or I – so the very fact of their slavery was anathema to them. Inevitably there were casualties among the beasts – infected whipping-wounds, infected feet, depressions, melancholies. At times even a bullet-wound.
The old couple, whose children had all grown and moved away, brought their love and wisdom to the healing of and caring for these huge and noble citizens; dedicating a park-like territory to them, beside a wide and shallow river, deep in the southern jungle. There the two lived together in a bamboo house made tight and snug, with windows, and a verandah, and a special cooking-hut, detached from it, at the back. And in that peaceful place they took fish from the river, and fruits from the trees; and accepted gifts of rice from their dutiful sons who came calling at regular intervals.
Sometimes the forest people – that hidden, lithesome race who lived, quite minimally clothed, in the deeps of the unknown jungle – brought them honey in the comb, and eggs of certain birds, in exchange for cloth, or extra tools or housewares the couple had been given by their sons. And on these occasions the visitors would linger, and eat with the homesteaders; and have a smoke and a gossip – for the old couple spoke their tongue.
When it rained the pair were happy in their shelter; when it was sunny they enjoyed watching their immense patients frolic in the river, blowing water out their trunks; or lying in the shade resting, waiting for evening when their carers would come and stroke them and murmur compliments, tendernesses and blessings into their great waving capes of ears.
In the jungle, time has a different meaning. There are no clocks, no calendars; the day moves dwellingly towards evening, not in any rush. The elephants cared nothing for time either, but lived life by the seasons and the moon, and their own Masts, heats, oestrus. They were happy, and splashed and rolled and trumpeted; and when a female gave birth, all the elephants gathered round and helped her; and helped to tend and guide the baby when it was young.
And so they knew nothing of the news – that a young Englishman, a fugitive from justice, had escaped from a ship where he was about to be arrested by the authorities in the port; and stolen a horse, and, with a ferocious strength none would have thought him to possess, he had hit a young lady on the head and then dragged her unconscious body up before him onto the saddle, and taken flight.
She woke soon – her head hurt horribly, and she was afraid. She was bouncing up and down, skewing to the side, and she reached out and grabbed hold of the pommel. Her vision was clearing, and she looked about at what she could see. They must be out of the city – in a flat green countryside – she had heard on the ship that the monsoon would just be ending, and that everything would be leafy and green. Straight ahead was a woods.
He hid the two of them successfully for three days, spending one of them up in a capacious banyan tree with the knife held to her side while villagers tramped below, single file. She knew he had that knife – he’d shown it to her on the boat – but she had not seen a gun… at least that was something.
They were hungry – hungrier than either of them had ever been. One night he made a tiny fire in a thicket of trees, just near a narrow stream, and roasted five frogs on a stick. She forced hers down – it was horrible when the creatures had swelled and popped in the heat. He had not killed them before impaling them. She felt sick.
They’d had little sleep. He was scared, she knew – but she could feel his exultation as well. Finally he could live it out: himself against the world. A showdown he’d been waiting for.
He ate grubs he found under the rotting bark of a tree. She refused them. He said they were nutty, and not too dreadful at all. They drank from streams, and soon her stomach held a dull ache.
He paid a man with a dhow to take them down to the south – past Goa; to where the jungle came down to the shore, and strange, single mountains reared up here and there in the interior, jungle-clad. There were hill stations atop them, but he intended to avoid these. The little boat had left at night, as he’d asked, and stayed close to shore on the breeze all the way south. It took a few days as they were becalmed from time to time, then again the fresh air would move in and they would scud along. It was a peaceful ride really – just them and the boatman and the man’s wife, who cooked over a little brazier kept in sand in a bucket on the deck. They ate spicy lentil stew and rice, and there were fermented rice and coconut pancakes, made from batter poured onto an oiled griddle laid over the coals. She was ravenous, and the dosas were delicious – in spite of her fear.
Eileen had a chance to relax a little, and begin to feel the place she’d been brought to. It was entirely strange – and yet she felt a sort of listening in her, a harking to what messages it might have hiding beneath its everyday sun and water-sparkle and ill-dressed people and the shabby boat. Mysterious new intimations it was sending her… as if some heart beat underneath things, waiting for her to notice; and she could not really notice yet. She was too new.
And she was aware of the jungle, not so far away; that she knew Gerald was planning to settle in – the thick, wet, dangerous jungle. Where she would be hid away and never see her family again… But surely she would manage to escape? Gerald would make one slip in his vigilance, and she’d find the local Commissioner, and give herself up.
Ruined – so ruined – but alive.
Gerald kept a great pace through the thick woods. The horse had of course been left behind when they’d boarded the boat; staked in the woods, on the path the villagers took – somebody would find him. So they had no choice but to make their way on foot. The cloth-wrapped packet of dosas and fruit they had asked the woman to make for them was gone. Gerald, she soon learned, had woodsman skills; he told her he had been mentored by a groom when he was a child (though the man had taken payment in his own dark, wordless way, and this Gerald did not confide) and had learnt to survive in the wilds – to make a fire; a shelter; to bind up wounds, to make a bed of boughs of leaves – to forage English plants and mushrooms – not those of this new, strange land.
They’d left the palm trees of the shore behind, and now there were tall trees of many sorts, with here and there some hanging vines. Neither of them could identify the trees – they did not know that here were Curry, and Sal, and Peepul, and Neem; the weird grey-trunked massy trees with hanging appendages like stretched-out humans, or elephant-trunks joined back to the earth – they knew to be Banyan – for they had each seen them in storybooks.
The ground had changed from sand to packed earth; with grass wherever there was sunlight. Soon leaf-mould replaced grass, and there were roots and vines to trip over. They had to keep to the paths – the raw jungle would have been too difficult to navigate, with leaf-hid holes and snakes and other hidden hazards. Gerald kept his ears open, ready to pull her behind a tree should he hear a horse’s hooves. They did meet local people; India is a place in which it is difficult to be alone – but although the people stared, they did not try to apprehend the pair – far from it; they stepped off the path and murmured, “Sahib… Memsahib…” and then gave them odd looks as they went on by.
It was worrisome, she saw Gerald calculating to himself – surely word would get back to the officials – so they must hurry – he wanted to go far, far into the interior, to find a place where nobody would discover them.
The jungle was not quite as she had feared; it was not impenetrably viney, full of huge spiders, as she expected, from her reading, a jungle to be. There were grassy clearings, and trails, and flowers, and sometimes even little settlements of circular huts and a cleared field or two – but these Gerald skirted, pulling her along almost roughly. “Shhhh!” he’d say fiercely, “be quiet!”
She feared tigers, and cobras, and any other predators she could think of; but they saw only birds in wonderful colours, and monkeys high above who threw seed-pods at them and chattered with little sharp teeth, like humanoid cats. In the night, though, when they huddled together for warmth, with his greatcoat and her cloak thrown over them, the jungle was sparkling with eyes, and twitching and cracking with sounds. There were soft hoots and calls, and sometimes a scream. She’d start, and get closer to him, and then pull back – for his flesh did not seem to invite her, even though she could feel his hunger and his need. He denied these, she thought, and wilfully turned them to coldness and to force.
One night as they were bent over their tiny flame, hungry as always, Eileen ventured: “Oh dear Neighbour” (for she did not want to anger him), “This plan of yours, to take us to dwell in the fastnesses of the forest – do you not think it is a foolish hope then, rather than a true possibility? For are we not hungry, all the day and all the night too? Surely we shall starve there before so very much time has passed!” she added piteously.
“Hush, you prissy schoolgirl!” he came back sternly. “Think you the whole world is as mild as the Home Counties? You should be thanking me, for I have taken you from a life of sameness and stupidities, and brought you far, for an education! Look about us!” – and he cast his arm in a sweep – “so much to learn of noble Nature here! And the people we will encounter, with their peculiar customs! – it will broaden you! Soon I will find a gun –” he promised – “and then I will shoot game; and when I’ve built our house we can display the heads upon the wall!” And his lips thinned even more, and his chin lifted, and there was a bitter, triumphant glint in his eye for fortunes not yet won.
“But… I do not wish it!” she ventured. And he snapped, “Hush! Wait till you have a child or two – then you will be happy! You are just an infant still, stupid girl – but I am making a woman of you.”
She looked at him to see if he believed this – and she thought that perhaps he did not.
The great hindrance, it soon became clear, was to be their feet. They each wore laced-up boots with leather soles and built-up heels – and very soon these shoes seemed to melt a bit, and go clammy, and a fur of green mould appeared on the uppers. The long tramping brought out blisters – so they stopped, plucked leaves, put them over the sore places – replaced the boots, and went on.
Gerald fared worst. At one of these stops he lost his balance whilst standing on one leg to put the poultice on, and the bare foot came down hard on the ground. A sharp bit of branch pierced it. He pulled the splinter out, swearing. He knew that to disinfect the wound he should urinate on it; but this he was loathe to do with Eileen so near. He felt it made him too… exposed. So he spat on his hand instead and rubbed it on the puncture, and then put a large leaf over the place, and replaced his woollen sock – holey now in the heel right where the blister was – and then the boot. As they went on, the leaf soon slipped, and so the exercise had been useless.
Over the next day and a half the wound began to swell, and then to ache. At night, at their pitiful little campsite, where each thought, and thought, of foods they missed and craved so very much… shepherd’s pie, and a good wedge of cheese, and ale, and a sharp pippin apple, eaten from a nice small plate, and cored and sliced with a sharp knife – he examined his feet.
Eileen watched him. She was footsore, tireder than she’d ever been; hungrier too. She was indignant, and sad, and uneasy. She did not like this man, this boy – nobody she knew had ever liked him – and she missed her mother, her father, her brothers. And oh, how she missed her bed! – her carved wooden bed, with the feather mattress covered with an eiderdown; and then another puffy eiderdown over her. And two pillows, soft as soft…
She looked over at Gerald’s feet. They were narrow and long, very white, with a high arch – privileged feet, she thought, and yet pitiful too. They didn’t look like they could stand up to anything, really – not this big, harsh world. What had God been thinking, making him?
But who was she to question? She shook herself superstitiously, a bit undone by this inner argument, and abandoned it.
The wound had closed, sealed itself with a bit of green scab; but under the scab was a raised area of white, and around it red flesh rose up. It looked hot. He bathed the foot in a little stream, and then, wincing, tried to cauterise the area, using his knife heated in the flame, laid side-on over the place. Grimaced… but said nothing.
They were so famished now that they drooped, and their stomachs seemed to meet their backbones.
On the fifth day, light-headed with hunger, bellies full of water from the last stream they’d crossed, they were walking on a path through a deeply shaded stretch of woods.
Suddenly a little group of people stood before them, come from somewhere, silently.
They stopped – the people stopped – five of them: a child, a woman, a man, and an elder couple. The two groups stared at each other.
Gerald been limping badly; Eileen knew that the forest folk had seen this. The older man glanced at the foot, then back up at the two of them.
It was a strange moment. There was, somehow, a great silence in things. Time seemed to stretch out; stand still.
At first Eileen could not think how these innocent people might be able to help her. What would they know of the British, and the law? She would not even be able to converse with them, if indeed she had the chance.
But then something happened.
The older woman raised her eyes to Eileen’s, and it was as if a flicker of telepathy passed between them. The bush telegraph, only unspoken. The older woman, without saying a word, asked Eileen: Is this a bad man? Has he made a mess of things? Is he hurting you, making you unhappy? Would you like me to make things easier for you?
And Eileen, without saying a word; casting her eyes down and to the side, then looking up again, said, silently, Yes. He’s bad. He’s got me as a prisoner. Can you indeed do something?
And a look went then from the older woman to the older man.
That man stepped forward, pointing at Gerald’s foot. He said something they did not understand; but he seemed to be indicating that he could help, if Gerald and Eileen would go with them.
The people seemed to carry no arms save a staff each for the adults. They wore simple cloths around their loins, and each had a gourd for water, and a long lumpy bag made of woven leaves. The younger man wore an English-style shirt, much holed, with the sleeves cut off. The two women wore waistcoats of some coarse cloth, but they did not seem to care if these fell open and revealed a breast. Their hair was thick and dark, woven with vines, and hanging down their backs in a plait. They seemed harmless – though Gerald mouthed to her, “Cannibals!” for, she thought, he did not consider anyone to be harmless, really.
But his foot was clearly festering, and he did need help. He decided that they would go.
The next morning, while Gerald still slept, his foot propped on a log and bound up (the old man had quite boiled it in hot water, then applied the juice of a certain plant) – the old woman came and woke Eileen, who slept under her cloak at a little distance from Gerald.
She beckoned the girl, and Eileen, who had not been able to change clothes since the disembarkation – her borrowed bag had been left behind on the quay when they’d bolted – could smell her own awfulness as she got up and tried to arrange her hair, and put on her stiff woollen socks and the boots. They’d eaten well the night before – some gamey animal made into a soup, and a stringy mass of cooked vegetable, perhaps a root or tuber – and a hot flat bread made from millet – and Eileen had been offered a strong, medicinal-tasting tea, which she’d drunk gratefully, the bitterness of it welcome. Gerald had been given a quantity of fenny, the fermented coconut liquor that coast-dwellers drink. (Perhaps the people traded for it, or went on coconut-gathering expeditions.) It was strong stuff, and quite to his taste, Gerald had said; and now he was finally resting, dead to the world.
The old woman led Eileen away from the little gathering of dome-shaped huts, and they picked their way stealthily, entering the jungle on a different path than the one that Eileen and Gerald had walked the day before.
Eileen was exhilarated. To leave behind that pallid nightmare! That icksome, sticky, nasty piece of work! To never again have to submit to his rages, his threats! Never to have to look at the flush of coldness on his face, or see the waxy bloom on his skin! She nearly hopped along – her stomach, incidentally, feeling much better too – and knowing, simply knowing, that this old woman could be relied upon, and would save her.
It turned out to be a day’s travel to the place the old woman meant to take her. The path was barely discernible, but the native was sure in her step and direction. They paused several times to drink water and eat a bit of the provision the guide carried; and to look back… but nobody followed. And when the quick dusk of the tropics fell, they came out of the woods onto the bank of a broad, shallow river.
They stopped here for a moment, to drink in the sight – the last light had made a sheet of luminosity on the water, silver, with ripples here and there. The far bank showed a continuation of the woods, with a beach before it.
The sense of space and peace, and the fresh smell of the water, woke Eileen as if from a trance – and she stared at the beauty, the place seeming drenched in peace and benevolence. She took a deep breath and let it out… Ahhhh mmmmm… Her body felt as if the river flowed through it – cleansing, cooling, livening. Lifting her heart.
They turned left along the beach and went round a bend. And there, to her astonishment, was a house – but such a house! Built ramshackle and higgledypiggledy, yet with a kind of grace to its many parts tacked on to each other – a wing here, a turret there – of bamboo! An outer staircase, a verandah, and another verandah raised up beside an upper room. The roof was pitched and covered in palm-boughs lashed together thickly; the walls were of bamboo and sapling-trunks, but brought together cleverly so that the whole was stout, yet whimsical and lilting. It looked like a fairy dwelling, or like Robinson Crusoe lived there.
And then her eye moved to the river, and she saw the elephants… several resting, with every appearance of happiness, in the water; others disporting themselves with fountains coming out of their trunks; a few rolling and splashing. She spotted others in a grassy place beside the river and beyond the house. One was standing beside the dwelling, long trunk reached out to an open window; a brown hand could be seen patting the trunk, and a murmur just heard under the quiet voice of the river.
The old couple had a long life behind them, and many adventures, some difficult, and they could speak the tongue of the conquerors, as well as several native tongues. And so, over a delicious meal of rice and fish and lentil stew, they talked – all four of them; and understood each other as plain as plain.
Alagi, the forest-dweller, the spry old aboriginal lady, recounted a dream that someone in the tribe had had… not so long ago (as Ranulpha translated). The dreamer saw an odd couple with pale skin and the man with hair like a fever, like shreds of dried mango – and the lady in distress; on her back a large spider had attached itself, with a vine made of the hide of some poor beast, wrapped round and round her… for that, it seemed, was the silk of that particular spider.
The lady screamed and cried, in the dream; and the people had to decide how to detach the spider, so that the lady could be saved. The gentleman, pale and with hair like fire, stood like a pole, saying nothing; but he let the spider feast through a hole in the girl’s side, and sometimes he chanted little mantras to it, when it looked like getting bored and loosening its grip. And then it clung some more.
Much debate had taken place about the meaning of the dream. It had been noted that the gentleman seemed spider-like himself – as if already emptied of his own substance too; a husk remaining, animated by a ghost of vengeance.
Waiting for his fate to catch him up.
And so it appeared that he was, by devouring the lady, being himself devoured; a sort of circle from him back to himself. The people pondered on this, saying that it is a way that things can go.
But nothing in the recent life of the village could explain the characters or even the message of the dream – so there was nobody to thank or warn or apologise to for its contents, as the people were wont to do if they had a dream about someone. And so they expected that it was the other type of night-vision… about something that will come to pass.
When the encounter on the forest path had occurred, the old woman had therefore recognised the visitors; as had all the little group – and she had then opened her vision wide to see and understand what was the matter. And later when her man had tended the wound of the young fire-haired sahib, she had watched… and she knew this: the man loved not his life; though he dreamt of power and respect, he had given up on true joys. And so he was turning towards his death, yet unfulfilled in himself: it was wilful turning, not of Nature but of man – he was in pain; and so he wished to die.
But he had vowed that Eileen would go with him. His secret desire was to show the families, back in England, that he was somebody to be reckoned with. So he would take her, and if it came to the confrontation, he would put her in the stream of the bullets before him; and then only he would take his dose. Or if, to save himself – for he would not go without a struggle – he had to flee quickly, deeper into the forest, and could not take her – he would slit her throat first, and leave her to be found. For he did have a knife.
All of this the Elder saw; and she knew that even if the girl was taken far away, the flame-head must be prevented from coming after… for he had made his vow.
Each day, many ships came into the port of Bombay. They came from Shanghai, Hong Kong, Burma, Siam. They came from Ceylon, Batavia, Singapore, Tamatavia, the Antipodes, the Cape of Good Hope, and… England. Today one landed from Bristol, and two middle-aged men got off, stern with purpose.
Two men, never friends before this terrible time – bonded now in urgency and in practicality – made their way with two guides and an interpreter, hired through families they knew in Bombay; in search of the fugitive and his hostage. They had no idea what infernal notion might be in Gerald’s mind – what he was aiming at; besides the possession of young Eileen Letitia – but they thought he would not have sought, in India, to conquer polite society. Such an idea was laughable, for the benighted lad had no gift of charm. Nor yet could he pass himself off as Eurasian, and hide in the neighbourhoods unofficially reserved for them – the railway clerks, the sub-school masters, the shipping clerks. Nor yet could he hide with full-blood natives, for he was too fair to permit of this. Could he have gone north, to the mountains? They thought not – for winters there are full of snow; and why court misery when you can be warm instead? They knew he was a woodsman – and felt he was likely to exercise that ability, as the only power he had. And so they did the only thing they could do: headed for forest, while talking to everyone they met, stating their mission, and asking for clues.
The natives they met, wanting to appear helpful, told them many a thing, and each thing contradicted the other; and the two thought they would go mad with the frustration of galloping down this road and then that one, to come up with nothing.
But then… a rumour had got about – they finally heard from a chai-wallah who plied his trade at an intersection of two well-travelled pathways between the inland plateau and the sea – about a sahib with hair like copper wire, or sunrise, or suchlike – and with him a sad girl with a pale, young face. And more people had seen them too, and came forward, with just a little rewarding – a coin here and there, a packet of tobacco – to tell of people remarkable for the lack of the usual British travelling accoutrements: bearers, luggage, picnic items, cook, and waggons to trundle it all upon.
And so the two men followed the clues, which got stronger once they had gained the South, past the Portuguese colony and into the mild, wild lands of flower, tree, and red earth, with seldom a road.
“Your son has embarrassed you,” remarked Montreal Sanford to his now-friend, Dennis Kendrick. “I am sorry that it came to this. I would not see you so discomposed, so cast in bad light by association. It is not your doing – your other sons are settled well. The Lord works in mysterious ways – so too the other fellow. But if I catch that young bastard,” he continued, a new steel in his voice, “I don’t mind telling you, he will feel the full power of my wrath – and he might not survive it.”
Dennis bowed his head. He understood the point. The girl was ruined – and a lovely girl too; Dennis had remarked her at church on Sundays, in her pretty coloured gowns. He had no daughters himself, but he knew the wisdom: once used, the value was no more – unless a fool could be found to marry her – as did sometimes happen. Or a kind man… and that was rarer still.
There are times in a person’s life that stand out forever in the memory – islands of beauty, of light and calm and goodness. These need not be long – it seems to be the way of things, that they are seldom overlong – but they heal and nourish and illuminate the heart all out of proportion to the time-length; and stay with us then to the end of our days… and perhaps beyond.
Such was Eileen’s time at the river with the old couple and the elephants. Alagi, the aboriginal woman, went back to her tribe alone a day or two later, and Eileen stayed to laze and play among the huge beasts, to learn simple cooking from Ranulpha (and how she’d got that name was a tale in itself, from her fascinating past); to learn pachyderm medicine, and thus to sing to them, to soothe and pat them; and to be soothed in turn by their intelligent, lashy eyes and truthful gaze.
She bathed wearing almost nothing by and by, protected by the deep forest of Arjuna trees, and Gulmohar all blossoming red; and many another she did not know. The temperature was perfect, the shallow water where the sun hit it was warm. She grew brown and fit, and relished her meals and her bed – she slept in an upper room once belonging to the children, and hers was the verandah higher up. She woke to light-glint on the river and broad stripe of red low down in the heavens; she slept to frogs and crickets, and the odd bat zooming in one window and out another. A mosquito net protected her from insects while she slept, and ointments produced by Ranulpha discouraged biting things during the day. She heard tigers booming in the forest; but she was no longer afraid.
Her tired spirit melted within her – her smile grew wider – her flesh glowed. She felt as if the river was washing out of her the hateful past, the bad smell of him, the puddle he’d put in her that would fall plopping out again when she’d squat down to pee – for still he’d used her in the forest – though less often than aboard the ship. She began to imagine the river combing out every thread of him – separating the fibres from her flesh, taking him gone. Gone to wherever his place was – for it was not, could not be, with her.
She sensed that old Ranulpha had no censoriousness towards her, towards what had happened to her. A full life had brought wisdom – only the un-lived are quick to criticize the life of others. For what do we know, really? Here, in this mystery under the stars – this turning pebble, all blue and green and striped like agate.
Sometimes when the elephants trumpeted, bringing their great trunks up and sounding their woodwind, blaring, bleating cry – she howled too, roared and screamed her rage and her vituperation at what she’d been made to suffer. And she wanted the young man to die.
Yet later, lying on a cloth on the river beach, warm and drowsy, she’d forget all about him – could even thank him, then, if she remembered – for bringing her unwittingly here, to this.
And sometimes she feared he’d appear out of the jungle, right here, beside the house where the small trail came – and then again she almost wished for him some of the healing she was getting. If he could receive it, and leave off his mischief. She almost wished he’d lie in the water and rest his soul… but not, not, not while she was there.
But he never came.
II
Did Gerald die of his infected wound, or did the Natives dispatch him? They have a custom, you see, that on the extremely rare occasions when one of them has killed a man, the killer walks days to the office of the police, to give himself up to justice. And there is no record of one of the fellows doing that.
It was said, when the villagers were finally questioned, that he had gone into the forest in a fever, dragging his painful and swollen foot; he insisted, and people did not like to hold him – for he was a free man, and a sahib. (It was clear to them that he would never reach the Elephant River – and so they did not worry. They let the gods do whatever work they’d planned.)
Many weeks passed before Montreal Sanford and Dennis Kendrick, leaner, hungrier, and much edified, came at last to the banks of the Elephant River, and Montreal reclaimed his daughter.
What a meeting they had! What a joyous hullabaloo and wrapping-in-arms; and a feast after! To Mr Sanford’s astonishment, Eileen seemed neither chagrined, nor ashamed, nor cowed, nor lost, nor even traumatised – though she was angry, if she thought of Gerald – but this she endeavoured not any more to do. Instead, she let her eyes rest upon her father as if she’d never seen him before. She felt the start of tears straight from her heart, felt them trickle and then gush. She felt her new straightness and dignity, honed in the blaze of shame at first, and indignation, and come out clean. She smelt her home country on him, though this must have been imagination, for he was as full of curry spices now as she was. She wondered if her place was with her family; if she would go back to them, and be the unmarried daughter who stays home to look after her parents. And, the next moment, she knew that she would not… that that was not her place, her intended fate. She felt the freedom she had gained to do as she pleased all the day; and above all to learn from the great beasts who wallowed and stamped and regarded her with a vast heart and a seeing eye.
And so all Mr Sanford’s plans for reclamation, consolation, and then perhaps a future for her as that, dutiful, housebound daughter – or a bride of some much more downmarket suitor than he’d earlier hoped – vanished like the smoke of the little fire lit for morning tea and fermented rice pancakes. He could not sustain those maudlin emotions in the presence of his glowing, golden, radiantly joyous daughter – who showed him the ways of the elephants, and groomed them, and patted them and sang and laughed with them. She seemed hardly to blame Squire Kendrick, and included him too in her swims and rambles (with the men here, of course, she wore more clothes in the river, which hampered her motion but was of course seemly). She knew now that Gerald was past pursuing her – word had come earlier from Alagi – and she let his spirit go skywards, hoping for it a better future. She blew it from her hand, and watched it go. And she sat with Mr Kendrick when he got this news; watched the sorrow in him, well-deep; watched his regret and self-questioning: Could he have done better? He thought of searching for his son, whether the boy was crippled or dead; and people did not either encourage or dissuade him. This would have to be decided by him alone.
Her own deep vow had become: Let me live in India – among the elephants. Let me heal here, for I still have more of the violation to be rid of, and time and Nature will be helpful – as will Ranulpha and Golila, in their motherly wisdom. I need them now.
Let me, some day, later, marry a calm good man, and have adventures; but then let me come back here to see my friends, and take over the job here, when all is said and done.
…And so it happened.
III
It was a great many years later. Eileen was an old lady now, with a pile of white hair atop her head, a companionable husband, and a reputation as a healer that had travelled far and wide. Not only that, but she’d become a painter of renown – capturing the light spread out on the river, the jungly far shores; and she was a portraitist too, celebrating Native, or Lady, or officer’s wife, or groups of children, with a special joy and compassion. (And she made portraits of the pachyderms too, of course – they each had names, and seemed to understand what she was about when she stood before her easel, wielding her watchful brush.) She had travelled the country from top to bottom, east to west – sat with sages, struggled up mountains, dined with Rajahs, and tramped with her husband to far places where birds sang in such melodic profusion that the couple subsided there and simply listened, for a day and a half, as if that was their honest labour. Her father had settled on Eileen a goodly sum, which had been invested well – and so, as she had promised herself, she now lived by the Elephant River, in a much-expanded house, where she continued Ranulpha’s work, and treated people too, if they sought her out. She was thinner than she had been as a girl, with attractive lines in her sun-brown face, and she was agile and quick in body and mind.
One day she welcomed visitors – Kitty O’Dwyer and her husband Kinnell, who had made the long tortuous journey from Ooty to seek help for pain Kinnell suffered as the result of an old war wound. He did not wish to become addicted to opium, and so they sought out Eileen. The healer asked permission to hold Kinnell’s hands in hers for a few moments – closed her eyes – and her face drew in, and yet lifted – as if she was scrutinising something in some inner world. At last she released the hands, nodded once, and said, “You did not want to go to war, did you, Mr O’Dwyer?”
He closed his eyes, flinching. “No,” he admitted in a low voice – as if his father, or the Queen, might hear.
“Stay with us a week,” said Eileen firmly. “I will give you some drops to put under your tongue, and an ointment to apply twice a day – after you’ve been for a swim. You will soon be fine. Before you go to bed tonight, apologise aloud to anyone you might have hurt, and then also to yourself, for doing what you did not wish to do. All will be well.” The other visitors nodded, for there were six people having tea that day – Eileen, her Brentwood, Kitty and Kinnell; and Alagi’s daughter Muthu, and Mrs Hepplethwaite’s Eurasian daughter Kadambini. For Mrs Hepplethwaite had stayed much longer than planned; gone Native, had a high old time, and borne Kadambini in Simla, where the girl had been educated and become an accomplished pianist. A beautiful girl, she’d married well – not everyone was as prejudiced as they were supposed to be.
Kitty had brought news, as well… and Eileen realised that indeed there had been an air of suppressed excitement about her friend whilst the consultation for the husband had proceeded. “Oh, Eileen,” exclaimed Kitty, “I have heard the strangest thing – I hope it does not distress you! After all this time… “
“And what might that be?” asked Eileen placidly.
“Well, word chanced to reach me… through a friend, who had it from her friend – the whole story. An old man died, far away in Bihar. And he made a confession on his deathbed. His name was Mr Thorley – or, that was the name he’d gone by for all these years. It means ‘thorn wood’, you see, and I think it had some meaning for him… He had only one foot, the other had been amputated below the knee. He dictated to his manservant while his wife and children were out of the room. He said that he wanted you to be notified of his death – you, and whatever members of his real family still survived. It was Gerald Kendrick, Eileen! Whom you’d told us about… everybody knows the tale. He had survived his time in the jungle, was taken in by a Hindu widow, whom he later married. His father found him while he was still recuperating, and they agreed between them that Gerald should stay on in India, as if he’d returned to England he would have been prosecuted for kidnapping. I heard the whole history, as dictated to the servant, whom he had taught to read and write.
“Gerald enrolled at University in Madras under the name Thorley, and became a botanist. He then spent part of the year teaching and part rambling the forests with his crutches and his servant, foraging and collecting specimens. He lived to be quite old. In any case, he requested that should it be possible, he would like to send you a message. I have brought it for you, Eileen! I told my friend, the one who told the story to me, that I was coming to see you and could bring it for you. And so the message was sent on to me… “
And she put her hand into a deep pocket of her travelling gown, and brought out an envelope, which she handed to Eileen with reverent care, true, but also a sense of Occasion.
Eileen took the envelope. Sat back in her chair. Closed her eyes.
“Do you want to be alone?” asked Kitty anxiously.
“I will just go out onto the balcony,” replied Eileen, and she stood and went to the open doors and stepped out onto a covered wooden porch on stilts, that looked over the river. There she sat on a chair, closed her eyes again. After a minute or so she opened them, slit the envelope with the nail on her thumb, and sat back to read the writing on the sheet of paper inside.
Dear Eileen,
I am sorry. If I had been able to love, I would not have collected you, like a plant. I would have let you grow in peace. I hear that you are well, and I am glad. Forgive me if you can, though if you cannot, I understand. I go now to my Maker. You were beautiful, and I could not bear it – I wanted to despoil that which I did not feel I could earn. Life has taught me that it is a great leveller; and I am levelled. I wish you only peace and happiness for all of your days.
Respectfully,
G. Kendrick
“Well,” said Eileen. “Well.” And she sat back again in her chair; she found she had been leaning forward. She looked out at the river, and back at the letter again. She folded it up and put it back in its envelope.
Then she went into the kitchen, where everyone sat, scarcely breathing.
“I think I’ll go check on the elephants,” she said.
May 2017, Hebden Bridge, and 2023, Luddendenfoot
Updated 11 June 2026 with new text version, updated 28 June with complete version – Featured image: Getty Images
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