The Jasmine Wife: A sweeping epic historical romance novel for women

Her mood darkened as she was all of a sudden overcome with a sharp twinge of anxiety. “Who is this man I have married? Do I still love him?”

A beam of sunlight broke through the intertwined overhead branches and illuminated the scene before her.

It was a festival day, and armloads of brilliantly coloured flowers were being made into garlands for temple offerings. A young girl of almost mythical beauty, draped in a cyclamen pink sari, sat squatting in the bright dust by the side of the road, weaving garlands of marigold and tuberoses. As she worked she sang, her voice lilting and mysterious, seeming to intertwine with the movement of her deft fingers as she twisted the flowers into fragrant ropes.

Charles glanced at Sara and was overcome with the need to do something gallant. He called to stop the carriage, then he threw the girl a few rupees. She caught them deftly, then, choosing a garland of intensely perfumed white jasmine, she draped it around Sara’s neck. The girl raised her slender hands to her forehead in a joyous blessing. There was no sign in her eyes that she expected any other reward; the blessing was given freely, from the purity of her innocent heart. Charles felt it too and was moved to say, “She seems a decent little thing.”

Sara smiled, touched by his gesture. He cared for her after all, and everything would be all right.

Then, from the distance came the beating of drums, discordant and sinister, and the people hurried off the road to stare.

A procession was moving towards them, the mass transforming into men dancing as though in a trance, kicking up the yellow dust of the road, convulsing their bodies in wild almost obscene movements, their eyes wide and crazed.

They carried a bier shaded by curtains and decorated with marigolds, but when the breeze shifted and the drapery briefly parted, a corpse could be seen, frozen by rigor mortis into an almost demure sitting position, though with one shrivelled and blackened foot sticking straight out into the open air of the living.

As the procession moved closer the grotesque shrunken head could be seen, bound in a white turban hung with cheap paste rubies, jerking in time to the beat of the music and the dancing feet of his bearers, the mouth set in a grim smile, as though enjoying its final macabre journey to the funeral pyre.

Cynthia’s hand flew to her nose. Over her handkerchief her eyes showed an expression of deep horror, though Sara was struck by how quickly her own feelings of revulsion evaporated. There were no lingering feelings of sadness; the death was accepted as inevitable, and faced head-on as a natural part of life. She shuddered as she remembered the funeral of her aunt, the icy rain pouring into the muddy grave, and the despairing empty sound of the clods of earth as they fell onto the lid of the coffin.

At that moment Charles took her arm and held it close within his own. He smiled at her. “All right, are you? Not too horrible.”

“No … somehow it seems more preferable than a tightly sealed grave.”

He looked at her oddly. “Of course, but I don’t think it would be the thing for us English to follow the same course. A little undignified, don’t you think?”

She gave a small laugh, thinking he was joking, though when she examined his expression she could see he was deadly serious.

The respectable stone buildings of the town were almost left behind now, and the ramshackle small buildings and rich temples of the Indian population clung closer together, a mixture of homes and businesses, the alleyways now mere burrows, leading to a seductive mix of shops selling spices heaped high in multicoloured cones, to brothels where young girls sat on embroidered cushions in open windows, their childish forms burdened with cheap gold jewellery and bright cotton saris, their haunted eyes painted with wide black streaks of kohl in an attempt to make them more alluring to the passing trade.

Cynthia suddenly let out a shriek of horror as a holy man, almost naked except for his long matted hair hanging almost down to his feet, and smeared from head to toe in a grey ash, threw himself before the carriage to beg for alms. It was impossible not to notice his long limp penis, covered like the rest of his body with grey dust and half hidden with the cotton rag hanging from the man’s waist. It was the first man Sara had seen naked and she could barely drag her eyes away from the lower half of his body.

She gave Charles a hasty curious look, then turned away, uselessly rearranging the gloves on her lap to cover her fears. It seemed so strange that because of a ceremony performed in England over a year ago, she would now have to share this man’s bed and do whatever intimate things married people did together. She wondered how on earth she would be able to go through with it and wondered if he would insist she sleep with him in his bed that very night.

“Move on, Shakur, you fool! What do you think you’re playing at?”

It was obvious Charles was as embarrassed as she was and was hiding it with anger, though she couldn’t help thinking it would be better to laugh instead.

Shakur flicked the reins but the horses refused to budge, prolonging the discomfort of everyone.

“Forgive me, sir; this fellow wants money, then he will go away.”

Charles hurriedly threw the man a coin. “I’m sorry, ladies,” he mumbled, blushing.

The Sadu followed behind, torturing them once more with his nakedness, blessing them all fervently and often, as Lady Palmer tried to shoo him away while holding her other hand over her daughter’s eyes.

Sara now found it difficult not to laugh and was almost bent over, trying to suppress her giggles.

The shock from the sight of her first naked male body had receded almost indecently fast, and her interest was taken by fresh scenes of life as it swarmed around the barely moving carriage.

Small herds of cattle, their horns painted bright colours and interwoven with flowers, stood in caramel-coloured unhurried clumps in the middle of the road. The carriage was forced to stop as a newly born calf struggled into the world on the road before them.

The calf rose, still crumpled from the womb, the umbilical cord trailing in the dust as its mother gently nudged it to stand, a picture of placid maternal devotion in the commotion around them. Sara and Cynthia looked at each other in a rare moment of genuine connection. For both of them it was the first time they had witnessed birth.

They crawled slowly past the gates of a huge temple where crowds had gathered to wait their turn to seek an audience with the Brahmin priests, ready to pay a rupee or two for a puja, a blessing, to further their chances of success in love or luck.

These men, the highest of all the castes, were mostly plump and well-kept like the spoilt concubines of rich men. They idled on the steps of the temple, gossiping and laughing, their bodies wrapped in robes of pure white cloth, their fat shiny necks ringed by garlands of marigolds.

Lines of the crippled and deformed had taken up their positions in front of the entrance to capture the pity of the crowd as they passed. Sara reeled back with a sickening lurch to her stomach at the sight of a deformity that surely could never have been created by nature alone. A young man, his legs and arms bent in a grotesque shape, sat patiently on a wooden trolley he propelled with a stick, his beautiful saint-like head being the only feature of his body not defiled.

“For God’s sake, give him some money,” Sara gasped. Charles, too, was moved by this special horror to hastily feel in his pocket and throw the coins blindly in the direction of the boy. Sara looked back to see the other less deformed pick up the coins to place them in the boy’s faded cotton sack he wore around his neck. Even amongst the desperate they recognised the dishonour of stealing from such an unfortunate being.

They followed the seafront now, and the high grey stone walls of Fort St George, topped with the English flag flying from the battlements loomed ahead, clinging to the water’s edge and protected on the south side by a wide muddy river. They passed through the outskirts of a settlement of dense streets and warehouses, built up against the fort walls and giving the area the look of an Arabian Souk. There was something vaguely familiar about the place, and Sara broke out in a gentle smile. The memory must have been a happy one.

The population had become more diverse, and Muslim families had set up businesses alongside Chinese, Hindus, Tamils and Parsees. Veiled women and Europeans squeezed up against each other in the narrow laneways and shopped and bartered loudly in foreign tongues.

Sara heard snatches of French and Spanish as they passed, and once, as two men stood aside to let the carriage pass, she heard softly but distinctly, “Cochons Anglais!” The words were uttered with such ferocity she blanched and looked back to see one of the men bow at her in an insulting, mocking way.

“That’s Blacktown!” Lady Palmer gave a haughty toss of her head. “And most appropriately named. We try to pretend this place doesn’t exist, though I suppose it’s a necessary evil. Catholics and Muslims and God knows what else!”

Sara thought it wise not to respond by keeping her face averted, and only turned when Lady Palmer poked her on the arm with the end of her parasol and pointed to a group of pretty painted houses facing the river.

“That very vulgar house with the bright green shutters belongs to the McKenzies, an Anglo-Indian family. We don’t socialise with them.” She placed extra emphasis on ‘them’.

Sara gave Lady Palmer an enquiring look, but the woman shuddered, raising her hand at once to dispel any further questions.

“When you see them, you’ll understand. The mother and daughter are very black. Even though the father was a Scot, dead now, mercifully, the mother is Indian, and as ugly as a gnome. You may see them in the street, but it is best to ignore them if they attempt to speak to you. The girl in particular is most annoyingly present in English society, despite all efforts to discourage her.”

Sara made a mental note to be sure not to snub them if she did somehow meet the marooned family in question, while her dislike of Lady Palmer rose to new heights.

Sara scanned the scene before her with fresh interest. Each house they passed might perhaps have been the home she’d lived in as a child, though none of them provoked even a hint of recognition. The house she remembered had a wide veranda with tall white columns and stood in a lush garden. None of the houses she passed were large enough, and gardens were almost non-existent in such a crowded place. It seemed an impossible task.

They’d come at last to the high stone walls of Fort St George and stopped at the southern-most entrance. A sentry saluted and raised the boom gate to allow them to pass.

“You’ll always be safe here, my dear.” Charles acknowledged the sentry with a haughty nod. “White town is for English Christians only, and no Indians are allowed to enter except for the tradesmen and, of course, our servants.”

Sara looked behind her at the busy streets and felt a strong pang of longing. It seemed they were leaving life itself behind, and entering a kind of well-preserved tomb, dedicated to a country thousands of miles away.

Inside the fort was a tidy world of chalk roads and white timber and stone houses of varying sizes, according to the social status of the people within, and bordered with prim English flowers and well-watered lawns. They passed a pretty white church surrounded by struggling rose bushes, and low wide windows open to the outside air, though hung with thick shutters capable of deflecting a typhoon. A middle-aged parson in a flat black straw hat, about to enter the church, stopped for a moment and waved.

Lady Palmer called to him, and Sara was amused to see how quick he was to respond to her summons. After the initial greetings, Sara was introduced.

“You’ll have a new face in church this Sunday, Mr Hobson. Mrs Fitzroy, Charles’s wife.”

The little man squinted up at her through horn-rimmed spectacles.

“Welcome to our little parish, Mrs Fitzroy,” he chirped. “I think you’ll find our activities will keep you as amused as if you were back in England. We have tea with the other wives every Wednesday at three, you will be very useful in taking the bible readings with the converts Thursdays at ten, and there’s the sewing group where we make articles to sell for charity, which I’m sure you’ll be able to attend …”

Sara nodded and smiled and, despite doing her best to listen to the man, she found herself unpleasantly reminded of the suffocating rituals that made up most of her life in England. It might not be so easy to escape the stuffy air of parsons after all.