“Better accept it.”
I liked to sit in the kitchen, watching our Khansamah at work. He was big and important; he sensed my admiration and he found it irresistible. He gave me little tasters and folding his hands across his large stomach watched me intently while I sampled them. I wanted to please him and forced my features into an expression of ecstasy.
“Nobody make Tandoori chicken like Colonel Sahib’s Khansamah. Best Khansamah in India.
Here, Missee Su-Su, look! Ghostaba! ” He would thrust a meat ball made of finely ground lamb at me.
“You find good, eh? Now drink. Ah good?
Nimboo pani. “
I would drink the chilled juice of limes flavoured with rose syrup and listen to his chatter about his dishes and above all himself.
For ten years that was my life the first impressionable years so it was small wonder that these memories remained with me. There was one which was more vivid than any other.
I can recall it in detail. The sun was already hot although it was morning and the real heat of the day was to come. With my ayah I had passed through the narrow streets of the market, pausing at the trinket stall to admire its contents while my ayah had a word with the owner, past the rows of saris which were hanging on a rail, past the cavern-like interior in which strange-looking tarts were being cooked, avoiding the goats which blundered past, skirting the occasional cow, looking out for the quick brown bodies of young boys who insinuated themselves between the people, and being even more watchful for their quicker brown fingers. So we came through the market-place to the wider street, and there it happened.
There was a great deal of traffic on that morning. Here and there a loaded camel made its ponderous and disdainful way towards the bazaar; the bullock carts came lumbering in. Just as my ayah was remarking that it was time we made our way home, a boy of about four or five ran out in front of one of the bullock carts. I stared in horror as he was kicked aside just before the cart would have run over him.
We rushed out to pick him up. He was white and very shaken. We laid him on the side of the road. A crowd gathered and there was a great deal of talk but it was in a dialect I did not understand. Someone went off to get help.
Meanwhile the boy lay on the ground. I knelt beside him and some impulse made me lay my hand on his brow. It was strange but I felt something I am not sure what but a feeling of exultation, I think.
Simultaneously the boy’s face changed. It was almost as though for a moment he had ceased to feel pain. My ayah was watching me.
I said to him in English: “It will be all right. They will come soon.
They will make you better. “
But it was not my words which soothed him. It was the touch of my hands.
It was all over very quickly. They came to take him away. They lifted him gently and put him in a cart which was soon moving off. When I had taken my hand from his brow, the last I saw of the boy was his dark eyes looking at me and the lines of pain beginning to re-form on his face.
It was a strange feeling, for when I had touched him it was as though some power had passed from me.
My ayah and I continued our walk in silence. We did not refer to the incident, but I knew it was uppermost in both our minds.
That night when she tucked me into my bed she took my hands and kissed them reverently.
She said: “There is power in these hands, little Su-Su. It may be that you have the healing touch.”
I was excited.
“Do you mean that boy … this morning?” I asked.
“I saw,” she said.
“What did it mean?”
“It means that you have a gift. It is there in these beautiful little hands.”
“A gift? Do you mean to make people well?”
“To ease pain,” she said.
“I do not know. It is in higher hands than ours.”
Some evenings I went riding with my father. I had my own pony who was one of the delights of my life; and it was a very proud moment when, in my white shirt and riding skirt, I rode out by his side. The older I grew the closer we became. He was a little shy with very young children. I loved him dearly the more because he was a little remote. I was at an age when familiarity could breed contempt. I wanted a father to look up to and that was what I had.
He used to talk to me about the regiment and India and the task of the British. I would glow with pride in the regiment and the Empire and mostly in him. He talked to me about my mother and said she had never really liked India. She was constantly homesick, but bravely she had tried not to show it. He worried about me a motherless child whose father could not give her the attention he wished.
I told him I was well and happy, that Mrs. Fearnley was a good companion, that I was fond of her and loved my ayah.
He said: “You’re a good girl, Susanna.”
I told him about the incident with the boy in the road.
“It was so strange. Father. When I touched him I felt something pass from me, and he felt it too because when I laid my hand on his forehead he ceased to feel the pain. It was obvious that he did.”
My father smiled.
“Your good deed for the day,” he said.
“You don’t really believe there was something, do you?” I said.
“You were the good Samaritan. I hope he received proper attention. The hospitals here are less than adequate. If he has broken bones. God help him. It’s a matter of luck whether they will be reset as they should be.”
“You don’t think then that I have … a special touch … or something. Ayah does.”
“Ayah!” His smile was kindly but faintly contemptuous.
“What would a native know about such things?”
“Well, she said something about a healing touch. Really, Father, it was miraculous.”
“I dare say the boy thought it was pleasant to have an English lady kneeling beside him.”
I was silent. I could see it was no use talking to him, any more than it would have been to Mrs. Fearnley, of mystic matters. They were too practical, too civilized, they would say. But I could not dismiss the matter so lightly. I felt it was one of the most important things that had happened to me.
After my tenth birthday my father said to me during one of our rides:
“Susanna, you can’t go on like this. You have to be educated, you know.”
“Mrs. Fearnley says I am doing very well.”
“But, my dear, there must come a time when you will outgrow Mrs. Fearnley. She tells me you are already outclassing her and, moreover, she has decided to go home.”
“Oh! Does that mean you will have to find someone else to take her place?”
“Not exactly. There is only one place where English young ladies should be educated and that is England.”
I was silent, contemplating the enormity of what he was suggesting.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I must stay here, of course.”
“You mean I must go to England … alone?”
“My dear Susanna, it is what happens to all young people here. You have seen that. The time will soon come when it will be your turn. In fact, some would say you should have gone before.”
He then started to outline his plans. Mrs. Fearnley was being most accommodating. She had been a very good friend to us. She was making plans to return to England and when she went I should go with her. She would take me to my mother’s brother James and his wife Grace at the Humberston rectory, and that would be my home until I could rejoin him in India when I was seventeen or eighteen.
“But that is seven years away! A lifetime!”