Library
Home / The Sky Beneath Us / Violet’s Journal

Violet’s Journal

S ATURDAY , 2 ND F EbrUARY , 1929

Perhaps if I write down all that has happened, it will seem more real. Because I’m struggling terribly to absorb it. I feel my throat constrict again as I choke back my tears and I struggle for breath. A part of me wishes for an end to my life. But I know I must force myself to go on, to keep myself and my baby alive. And so I breathe in and I breathe out and somehow – impossibly – my heart keeps beating.

As soon as we’d disembarked on the dusty makeshift airstrip at Kathmandu, I took leave of my new friends and bade them good luck with their mission, then hurried to find a rickshaw and gave the driver the address of the Namaste Guesthouse. Durbar Square was easy enough to find, with its temples and market stalls, but once the driver had deposited me and my case beside the vast stone lions guarding the entrance to the square it took me some time to pick my way through the crowds. People jostled and shoved on every side. Beggars tugged at my sleeve, and I knew they didn’t believe me when I shook my head and said I had no money. But it was true. My last few rupees had gone on the rickshaw. I’d gambled everything on getting here, on finding Callum.

After several wrong turns, I managed to ask a man selling incense if he knew where the guesthouse was, and he pointed to a distant corner of the square where the buildings crowded together to form a shabby terrace. Dragging my case behind me, I pushed my way through the throng. At last I saw the guesthouse sign, nailed to a wooden doorpost. I pushed aside the length of cloth that stood in for a proper door and stepped over the threshold.

It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the darkness after the glare in the square outside. It was stiflingly hot, despite the gloom, and a sickly stench made my stomach heave. I swallowed hard.

‘Hello?’ I called out, tentatively at first and then a little louder. ‘Is anybody here?’

A shrivelled woman appeared from the other side of a door and peered at me suspiciously.

‘Do you speak English?’ I asked.

She nodded, not returning my smile. ‘Little bit. You nurse?’

‘No, I’m not a nurse. I’ve come to see my fiancé. I believe he’s staying here. He’s with the British expedition. Mr Gillespie.’

Without a word, she jerked her head towards the stairs, then disappeared back from whence she’d come, and I heard the clatter of pots and pans, the sound of a kettle boiling.

I left my case where it was and climbed the rickety staircase to the first floor. The stench was stronger up there and I held my handkerchief to my face, waving away the flies that buzzed angrily about my head.

‘Callum?’ I called.

I knocked at the first door I came to but there was no reply. At the second one, a man shouted, ‘Who’s there?’

‘My name is Miss Mackenzie-Grant,’ I replied. ‘I’m looking for Callum Gillespie.’

The door opened a fraction, and I caught a glimpse of a dishevelled-looking character. ‘Last door on the right,’ he said, eyeing me with curiosity. ‘Have you brought medicine?’

I turned away, panic rising in my chest now, and heard his door slam shut again as I hurried to the end of the corridor.

Callum didn’t answer when I called his name. I pushed open the door to his room and gasped at the sight and the smell that awaited me. He lay in a tangle of dirty, bloodstained sheets, his face bathed in sweat. When I sank down on the floor next to him, his eyes were closed, and I could hear his lungs labour with every breath he struggled to take. I laid my hand against his brow and at the touch he opened his eyes, his gaze glassy and unfocused with the fever that raged within him. My foot nudged a tin pail beside the bed, and as its contents slopped over the rim I quickly realised it was the main source of the stench in the room.

He opened his mouth as if to try to speak, but no words came out. Hurriedly, I reached for a glass of water that sat on the bedside table and held it to his lips, supporting his head as he tried to drink.

‘Don’t talk,’ I said. ‘I’ll fetch the doctor.’

He reached for my hand and stopped me getting to my feet. ‘Vi,’ he whispered. ‘Come to say goodbye. I’m sorry ...’ His eyes closed again, and I wasn’t sure he knew I was really there.

‘Callum, listen to me,’ I said. I tried to keep my voice level and firm, so he wouldn’t hear the terror that threatened to overwhelm me. ‘You have to get well. I’m here now. I’ll take care of you. Everything will be all right. Try to drink a little more water, there you go.’

But he coughed as I held the glass to his lips again and I recoiled in horror as flecks of blood spattered my hand. I panicked then, calling his name as he sank back against the sodden mattress, but he didn’t open his eyes and seemed to sink into unconsciousness. I heard a footstep on the floorboards behind me and turned to see the old woman from downstairs standing there. She set a basin of hot water and a strip of grey towel on the table. Her expression was frightened, wary but not unkind.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ I sobbed.

‘Is typhoid fever. He very ill boy.’

‘We must get a doctor,’ I said, scrambling to my feet. ‘Where are the other members of the expedition? Where is Colonel Fairburn?’

She shrugged. ‘Colonel he went away. The others, they move when fever comes. Only one man stay besides.’ She gestured to the closed door back down the hall. ‘But he ill too. Still sick but getting better now. I try to help.’ She gestured to the basin.

‘I’ll do it,’ I said. I dipped the towel in the water and wrung it out, using it to wash the blood from Callum’s chin. ‘Can you go and tell the doctor to come as quickly as possible?’

She disappeared down the hallway and I sent up several prayers for her to hurry. Whilst she was gone, I did my best to make Callum more comfortable, washing some of the sweat from his face and neck, opening the window to try to let in a breath of air and setting that ghastly bucket outside in the corridor in the hope that later I could find a suitable place to empty and clean it. I straightened the sheets a little, ignoring the stains, and knelt back down beside the bed to take his hands in mine.

‘Help’s coming, Callum,’ I said, trying to make myself believe it.

His eyelids flickered open then and his gaze was clearer. ‘Vi. It really is you. I thought I must be dreaming.’ He smiled faintly, then frowned. ‘You shouldn’t be here. It’s dangerous. Don’t catch the fever.’

‘I had to come. You see, I’ve discovered I simply can’t be without you. So we’re going to be together from now on.’ I thought if I said it firmly enough, with enough conviction, then it might just come true. His eyes closed again, but I kept talking, more urgently, trying to keep him with me. There was so much to say, so much to tell him.

‘There are three of us now, Callum. I’m carrying your baby.’ His eyes opened again, meeting mine, and I knew he’d understood.

‘We’ll make a home for ourselves somewhere out here,’ I continued. ‘We’ll raise our children in a beautiful place, free from all that snobbery back home, and they will grow up strong and happy and so very loved. We will walk into the mountains together and discover wonderful new plants. You’ll find them and I’ll paint them, and we’ll publish a book, which will make our fortune. Just imagine it, Callum. We’ll find lilies the colours of the sunrise and poppies the colour of sky.’

His breathing seemed to ease a little, becoming less laboured, so I kept on talking, watching as his face relaxed, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, holding his hand. His clear, hazel eyes never left mine and I thought he was listening. I lost track of what I was saying, I lost track of how much time had passed.

All I know is, I was still talking when the doctor appeared in the doorway. He stooped down and gave me his arm, helping me to stand. He stood by the side of the bed for a moment. And then he gently closed Callum’s eyes and drew the sheet up to cover his face before he led me from the room, my legs collapsing under me.

M ONDAY , 4 TH F EbrUARY , 1929

Yesterday feels like a dream now. Memories drift back, of smoke and brown water and a solitary marigold flower ... If I could, I would have lain on the funeral pyre alongside him and gone with Callum as his body was burned. But the baby I carry is all there is left of him. There is no choice but to live.

As the doctor led me from Callum’s bedside, he explained how urgent it was to arrange the cremation as quickly as possible. ‘You must also wash yourself very thoroughly in the hottest water possible, Miss. Typhoid spreads easily.’

In my numb state, it scarcely registered as the guesthouse owner led me to a downstairs room and brought a large bowl of scalding water and a sliver of soap with which I washed the droplets of blood and the last touch of Callum’s hand in mine from my skin. She brought my case to the room and took my dirty clothes away to wash them. I put on a clean dress and, as I fastened the buttons, I noticed the slight swelling of my belly. It was still scarcely perceptible at three months, but I rested my hand there, protecting our child, wondering how tiny it must be. I’d just watched a grown man die and yet this fragile scrap of life clung on within me.

Once the doctor had tended to the man in the other room upstairs, declaring him out of danger, he joined the guesthouse owner and me in the kitchen. The cup of tea she’d made sat untouched before me and he pushed it gently towards me. ‘You must try to drink, Miss. You have had a terrible shock.’

I forced myself to take a sip. ‘How do I arrange the cremation?’ I asked, the tea easing my throat, which had closed up tight with my grief, speaking for the first time since leaving Callum’s side.

‘I will do it. As I said, it will need to happen as quickly as possible.’ He exchanged a few words with the guesthouse owner, then said, ‘I’ll arrange for them to come and take the body to Pashupatinath tonight. That way we avoid the daytime crowds on the ghats. Although your friend is not a Hindu, with typhoid cases the practicalities are the most important consideration. Certain arrangements can be made for non-believers ...’ He must have noticed my look of bewilderment because he paused and patted my hand. ‘I know it will be strange for you, but here we cremate our dead in the open air, beside the river. I’m sorry if it seems brutal. But it will be for the best. You don’t need to be there. I can oversee it.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I will go with him. He has no one else.’

‘Very well,’ said the doctor. ‘Then I will accompany you.’

They came and put Callum’s body on the back of a cart, using his filthy sheets as a shroud. ‘Wait,’ I said. I fetched the nut-brown shawl from my case and gently laid it over him. A wedding-ring pashmina, he’d called it. But now there would be no ring. Although it wrenched at my heart to let it go, it was all I had to wrap him in, and there was no choice but to give it back.

The streets were dark and deserted as we travelled to the river. I knew we were drawing near when I smelled the smoke. A few people still wandered along the ghats and here and there a pyre smouldered low with the remains of the day’s cremations, tended by men with sticks who pushed the ashes into the sluggish brown waters of the Bagmati River.

Two men carried the bamboo stretcher on which Callum’s body lay. The doctor and I followed silently, walking past the temple and the funeral pyres to the furthest end of the ghats. A skinny waif of a holy man with wild hair and his face painted in a vivid mask of white and orange appeared, saying something to the doctor, who waved him away. There would be no religious rites, no ceremony, for Callum.

I forced myself to watch as they laid him on the pile of wood and added chaff. But I have to confess, I looked away as they lit the pyre, unable to stand seeing the flames lick at the edges of the shawl that covered him. I couldn’t bear to watch, but I knew I needed to stay by his side even when the smoke choked me, making me retch.

At last, the fire burned low, leaving only embers.

I remembered the hazelnuts we’d put on the fire at the bothy on the eve of Samhain – was it only three months ago? – and thought how they had filled me with the certainty of our love and our future together. That was the only time I cried.

I sat there until the final ashes were pushed into the river. Dawn was just beginning to break, and the first birdsong floated on the faint breeze that dispelled the last of the smoke. I stood and wiped the grimy tear-stains from my face. Then I turned and took the doctor’s arm as he helped me walk away.

The first funeral party of the day, everyone carrying garlands of golden marigolds, was beginning to assemble before the temple. A flower fell to the ground at my feet, and I stooped to pick it up. Then I took it to the water’s edge and laid it in the stream, watching it slowly drift away. A solitary tribute to the man I’d loved.

When we returned to the guesthouse, the sun was rising, and the square was already filling with traders setting out their wares. To my surprise, we were met at the door of the Namaste Guesthouse not by the owner but by a well-dressed British couple. The woman stepped forward and clasped my hands in hers.

‘My dear,’ she said. ‘What an ordeal you’ve been through. I’m so sorry we didn’t know ... I’m Roberta Fairburn. And this is my husband, the Colonel. He came to fetch me from Sikkim, so we’ve only just arrived back in Kathmandu and heard the news. You poor, poor thing.’

We sat around the table in the dining room and the guesthouse owner brought bread and jam and tea. The man who’d been in the upstairs room was there too, well enough now to eat a little. He introduced himself as Harold Andrews, another member of the expedition, and he explained to the Fairburns all that had transpired. The others had left the guesthouse when illness struck, moving to another one in a different part of the city. Mr Andrews had stayed to try to tend to Callum, he told me, but then had fallen ill himself. I was immensely grateful to hear at least one of Callum’s comrades had stayed with him.

The Colonel sat quietly, letting Andrews talk and allowing his wife to ask me how I’d come to be in Kathmandu. I didn’t mention the baby, of course. I just explained how Callum and I had met at the Edinburgh Botanics, that we’d worked together and become sweethearts, and that I’d wanted to be closer to him.

‘What a brave young woman you are,’ Mrs Fairburn said.

Then it was the Colonel’s turn to speak. ‘Don’t worry, young lady, we’ll make sure you get home safely. I’ll sort out a ticket for you. If Roberta were not going to come with us into the mountains, she could have accompanied you back. But perhaps we can find a suitable chaperone.’ He turned to his wife. ‘What do you think, my dear? Perhaps one of the ladies in Sikkim will be returning soon?’

I was touched by their kindness and their offers of help, but the thought of travelling back to Britain in the company of a colonial wife, with my condition steadily becoming more apparent, filled me with panic. This whole endeavour would have been a complete fiasco, and I would still inflict shame and inconvenience upon my family. I thought of Hetty, making her wedding plans. I pictured the outrage and disgust on the faces of my father and brother, my mother’s dismay, and knew I couldn’t return. I was overwhelmed by everything that had happened, but I forced myself to try to take a steady breath, struggling to think clearly.

‘Mrs Fairburn, if you are to be on the expedition, might it be possible for me to accompany you, do you think?’ It was a desperate idea, but it would buy me some time, let me find my feet in this strange new country and work out a proper plan for a future for me and my baby. I saw the doubt flicker in her face and she turned to appeal to her husband.

‘Colonel, I could be of use. I know how to prepare specimens for transporting them back to Britain. And I can make sketches and paintings of the plants you find. I can take Callum’s place.’

He raised his eyebrows, but I could see he was considering my proposition seriously. ‘Miss Mackenzie-Grant, I have no doubt you are an accomplished botanist, and we could certainly use your skills. But do you have any idea how challenging the expedition will be? We will be trekking for weeks on end, at high altitudes. Sleeping in tents, sometimes in extreme conditions. It will be tough.’

‘I believe I’m up to it, and if Mrs Fairburn can do it then surely I can too?’ I said. In spite of my condition , I thought but didn’t add. I was grasping at straws, trying to buy myself a bit more time to work out a plan. Accompanying the expedition would give me a few more months, at least, before my pregnancy became too evident and made it too challenging for me to continue. I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

The Colonel smiled and the sternness of his features softened. ‘But, my dear, my wife makes a habit of climbing hills. Even in India. She’s been in Sikkim for months now and has acclimatised herself to the demands of this part of the world. You don’t have that experience.’

‘No, but I am young and in good health, and the hard manual labour at the gardening school has made me strong. I grew up climbing Scottish mountains.’

He turned to his wife again. ‘What do you think, Roberta? Would you like Miss Mackenzie-Grant’s company on our expedition? It would be nice for you to have a female companion, I imagine. And we certainly could use her expertise with the plants.’

So it has been agreed. After a bit more persuasion from my side, assurances of my readiness to undergo the privations of the trek ahead, and an offer from Mr Andrews to carry my drawing things in his pack to lighten my own, I am to join Colonel Fairburn’s expedition.

I feel numb with a strange mixture of exhaustion, relief and trepidation ... These emotions are so overwhelming that there’s scarcely room for my grief. That will come later, I imagine. For now, I close my eyes to shut out the images of the past twenty-four hours that ambush me whenever I stop writing. When I do, I can see Callum’s smile, encouraging me. Even though his body is nothing but ashes scattered in a river, I know he’s still here with me. He will be with me forever.

I place my hand on my belly again. I’m doing it for you , I tell my baby. And for your father. He would be proud of us.

Comments

0 Comments
Best Newest

Contents
Settings
  • T
  • T
  • T
  • T
Font

Welcome to FullEpub

Create or log into your account to access terrific novels and protect your data

Don’t Have an account?
Click above to create an account.

lf you continue, you are agreeing to the
Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy.