A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle #1)(2)
Overhead, the clouds are thick and dark, giving warning that this is monsoon season, when floods of rain could fall from the sky in a matter of minutes. In the dusty bazaar the turbaned men chatter and squawk and bargain, lifting brightly colored silks toward us with brown, sunbaked hands. Everywhere there are carts lined with straw baskets offering every sort of ware and edible—thin, coppery vases; wooden boxes carved into intricate flower designs; and mangos ripening in the heat.
“How much farther to Mrs. Talbot’s new house? Couldn’t we please take a carriage?” I ask with what I hope is a noticeable annoyance.
“It’s a nice day for a walk. And I’ll thank you to keep a civil tone.”
My annoyance has indeed been noted.
Sarita, our long-suffering housekeeper, offers pomegranates in her leathery hand. “Memsahib, these are very nice. Perhaps we will take them to your father, yes?”
If I were a good daughter, I’d bring some to my father, watch his blue eyes twinkle as he slices open the rich, red fruit, then eats the tiny seeds with a silver spoon just like a proper British gentleman.
“He’ll only stain his white suit,” I grumble. My mother starts to say something to me, thinks better of it, sighs—as usual. We used to go everywhere together, my mother and I—visiting ancient temples, exploring local customs, watching Hindu festivals, staying up late to see the streets bloom with candlelight. Now, she barely takes me on social calls. It’s as if I’m a leper without a colony.
“He will stain his suit. He always does,” I mumble in my defense, though no one is paying me a bit of attention except for the organ-grinder and his monkey. They’re following my every step, hoping to amuse me for money. The high lace collar of my dress is soaked with perspiration. I long for the cool, lush green of England, which I’ve only read about in my grandmother’s letters. Letters filled with gossip about tea dances and balls and who has scandalized whom half a world away, while I am stranded in boring, dusty India watching an organ-grinder’s monkey do a juggling trick with dates, the same trick he’s been performing for a year.
“Look at the monkey, memsahib. How adorable he is!” Sarita says this as if I were still three and clinging to the bottoms of her sari skirts. No one seems to understand that I am fully sixteen and want, no, need to be in London, where I can be close to the museums and the balls and men who are older than six and younger than sixty.
“Sarita, that monkey is a trained thief who will be begging for your wages in a moment,” I say with a sigh. As if on cue, the furry urchin scrambles up and sits on my shoulder with his palm outstretched. “How would you like to end up in a birthday stew?” I tell him through clenched teeth. The monkey hisses. Mother grimaces at my ill manners and drops a coin in its owner’s cup. The monkey grins triumphantly and leaps across my head before running away.
A vendor holds out a carved mask with snarling teeth and elephant ears. Without a word, Mother places it over her face. “Find me if you can,” she says. It’s a game she’s played with me since I could walk—a bit of hide-and-seek meant to make me smile. A child’s game.
“I see only my mother,” I say, bored. “Same teeth. Same ears.”
Mother gives the mask back to the vendor. I’ve hit her vanity, her weak point.
“And I see that turning sixteen is not very becoming to my daughter,” she says.
“Yes, I am sixteen. Sixteen. An age at which most decent girls have been sent for schooling in London.” I give the word decent an extra push, hoping to appeal to some maternal sense of shame and propriety.
“This looks a bit on the green side, I think.” She’s peering intently at a mango. Her fruit inspection is all-consuming.
“No one tried to keep Tom imprisoned in Bombay,” I say, invoking my brother’s name as a last resort. “He’s had four whole years there! And now he’s starting at university.”
“It’s different for men.”
“It’s not fair. I’ll never have a season. I’ll end up a spinster with hundreds of cats who all drink milk from china bowls.” I’m whining. It’s unattractive, but I find I’m powerless to stop.
“I see,” Mother says, finally. “Would you like to be paraded around the ballrooms of London society like some prize horse there to have its breeding capabilities evaluated? Would you still think London was so charming when you were the subject of cruel gossip for the slightest infraction of the rules? London’s not as idyllic as your grandmother’s letters make it out to be.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen it.”
“Gemma . . .” Mother’s tone is all warning even as her smile is constant for the Indians. Mustn’t let them think we British ladies are so petty as to indulge in arguments on the streets. We only discuss the weather, and when the weather is bad, we pretend not to notice.
Sarita chuckles nervously. “How is it that memsahib is now a young lady? It seems only yesterday you were in the nursery. Oh, look, dates! Your favorite.” She breaks into a gap-toothed smile that makes every deeply etched wrinkle in her face come alive. It’s hot and I suddenly want to scream, to run away from everything and everyone I’ve ever known.
“Those dates are probably rotting on the inside. Just like India.”
“Gemma, that will be quite enough.” Mother fixes me with her glass-green eyes. Penetrating and wise, people call them. I have the same large, upturned green eyes. The Indians say they are unsettling, disturbing. Like being watched by a ghost. Sarita smiles down at her feet, keeps her hands busy adjusting her brown sari. I feel a tinge of guilt for saying such a nasty thing about her home. Our home, though I don’t really feel at home anywhere these days.