Yes, said Munia. He rowed us to the camp when we came to Calcutta. His name's Azad Lascar.
Oh, is that so? Azad Lascar, is he?
Paulette smiled: she was halfway up the stepladder now, and as a further test of her disguise, she tilted her face upwards so that she was looking directly at Jodu, through the cover of her ghungta. He was hanging from the shrouds in an attitude she knew all too welclass="underline" exactly so had they played together in the tall trees of the Botanical Gardens across the river. She was aware of a twinge of envy: how she would have loved to be up there, hanging on the ropes with him; but instead, here she was, on the stepladder, swathed from head to toe, while he was free and at large in the open air – the worst of it was that it was she who had always been the better climber. Ushered along by the maistries, she stepped on deck and paused to look up again, defiantly, daring him to expose her – but he had no eyes except for her companion, who was giggling as she clung to Paulette's arm: See? Didn't I tell you? He's mad for me. I could make him dance on his head if I liked.
Why don't you? said Paulette tartly. He looks like he needs a lesson or two.
Munia giggled and glanced up again: Maybe I will.
Be careful, Munia, Paulette hissed. Everyone's watching.
And so they were: not just the lascars and mates and maistries, but also Captain Chillingworth, who was standing at the weather end of the quarter-deck, with his arms folded over his chest. As Paulette and Munia approached, the Captain's lips curled into an expression of disgust.
'I tell you, Doughty,' he declared, in the confident voice of a man who knows that his words will be understood only by the person for whom they are intended: 'The sight of these miserable creatures makes me long for the good old days, on the Guinea Coast. Look at these hags, treading five over five to Rotten Row.'
'Theek you are,' boomed the pilot, who was standing beside the wheelhouse. 'About as sorry a lot of pootlies as I ever did see.'
'This old crone here, for instance,' said the Captain, looking directly at Paulette's hooded face. 'A virgin-pullet if ever I saw one – often trod and never laid! What conceivable purpose is served by transporting her across the sea? What will she do there – a bag of bones that can neither bear a burden nor warm a bed?'
'Damned shame,' agreed Mr Doughty. 'Probably ridden with disease too. Shouldn't be surprised if she spreads it through the herd.'
'If you ask me, Doughty, it'd be a mercy to have her put down; at least she'd be spared the pains of the journey – why tow a frigate on fire?'
'Save on provisions too: I'll wager she eats like a luckerbaug. The scrawny ones always do.'
And, at this very moment, who should appear before Paulette but Zachary? And he too was looking directly into her ghungta, so that she could see his eyes fill with pity as they took in the bent shape of the ageless hag in front of him. 'A ship's no place for a woman,' she remembered him saying: how smug he had looked then, just as he did now, doling out his sympathy from on high; it was as if he'd forgotten that he owed his mate's berth to nothing more than the colour of his skin and a few misbegotten muscles. Paulette's fingers quivered in indignation, loosening her hold on her load. Suddenly the bundle slipped from her grasp and landed heavily on the deck, so close to Zachary's feet that he leant over instinctively to help her pick it up.
The gesture drew a shout from the quarter-deck. 'Leave her be, Reid!' Mr Doughty called out. 'You'll get no thanks for your bawhawdery.'
But the warning came too late: Zachary's hand was almost on the bundle when Paulette slapped it smartly away: her father's manuscript was concealed inside, along with two of her most beloved novels – and she could not take the risk of letting him feel the bindings through the cloth.
A look of injured surprise appeared on Zachary's face as he dropped his reprimanded hand. As for Paulette, her only thought was of escaping to the 'tween-deck. Picking up her bundle, she hurried over to the booby-hatch and took hold of the ladder.
Halfway down, she remembered her last visit to the dabusa: how quickly she had skipped down that ladder then – but now, with her sari wrapped around her calves, and her bundle on her head, it was another matter altogether. Nor was the 'tween-deck immediately recognizable as the same dabusa she'd been in before: its dark, unlit interior was now illuminated by several lamps and candles, and she saw, by their light, that dozens of mats had been laid out in concentric circles, covering most of the floor space. Strangely, the dabusa seemed to have shrunk in the meanwhile, and she discovered why when she glanced ahead: its forward end had been cut short by a new wooden bulwark.
There was a maistry inside, directing operations, and he pointed Munia and Paulette towards the newly made partition. The women's section's over there, he said, right next to the chokey.
You mean there's a chokey behind that wall? cried Munia, in fright. Then why have you put us right next to it?
Nothing to worry about, said the maistry. The entrance is on the other side. There's no way the qaidis can get at you. You'll be safe over there, and you won't have the men stepping all over you to get to the heads.
There was no arguing with this: as she was making her way to the women's enclosure, Paulette noticed a small air duct, in the chokey's bulwark; if she stood on tiptoe it was on a level with her eye. She could not resist peeking in as she went past, and having stolen one glimpse, she returned quickly for another: she saw that there were two men inside the chokey, as curious a pair as ever she had laid eyes on. One had a shaven head, a skeletal face, and looked as if he might be Nepali; the other had a sinister tattoo on his forehead and appeared to have been dragged in from the Calcutta waterfront. Stranger still, the darker one was weeping while the other one had an arm around his shoulder, as if in consolation: despite their chains and bindings, there was a tenderness in their attitudes that seemed scarcely conceivable in a couple of criminal transportees. After yet another stolen glance, she saw that the two men were now speaking to each other, and this further excited her curiosity: what could they be saying – and with such absorption as not to notice the commotion in the adjoining compartment? What language might they share, this skeletal Easterner and this tattooed criminal? Paulette moved her mat around, so that it was placed right beside the bulwark: when she put her ear to a seam in the wood, she found, to her astonishment, that she could not only hear what was being said, but understand it too – for, amazingly, the two convicts were conversing in English.
Moments after Zachary's hand had been slapped, Baboo Nob Kissin Pander appeared at his side. Although the gomusta was wearing his accustomed dhoti and kurta, his shape, Zachary noticed, had acquired a curious, matronly fullness, and when he swept his shoulder-length hair off his face, it was with the practised gesture of a stout dowager. The expression on his face was at once indulgent and admonitory as he wagged a finger in Zachary's face: 'Tch! Tch! Despite beehive activities you still cannot suspend your mischiefs?'