to go to yet another doctor. He’d slump into the chair after carrying her mother upstairs to bed. “It’s the telling of it all that wearies us, Maisie. They look at you, these doctors, and you can see that not one of them is thinking any differently from the others, as if they’ve all read the same book. But you keep on going, trying to find the doctor who’s writing a new book, not just taking his knowledge out of the old ones.” Pramal, too, seemed tired of the telling.
“Usha was a headstrong girl, Miss Dobbs. We are a well-to-do but not a wealthy or aristocratic family such as you might find here, though the war allowed me to achieve some measure of, well, professional stature. My father was broadminded, and believed in the value of education for a woman. But perhaps that was the downfall for Usha—she did not want to be married, not at the time, and the fact that our mother was dead did not help matters; a young woman needs a mother to prepare her for womanhood, you see. Suitors were arranged, but she turned them away. My father did not insist and soon her chance was gone. She relished the thought of coming to Great Britain, and accepted the position knowing full well that she would leave her country, though I believe she expected to return. You see, she had plans.”
“What plans?”
“Usha wanted to found a school for girls. Not rich girls, but girls with promise who wouldn’t otherwise go to school, or who had had their education curtailed. She wanted to save money, and perhaps to find a sponsor, someone who would enthusiastically support her endeavors.”
Maisie rubbed her forehead. “Mr. Pramal, tell me what Usha was like. I want to know who she was, how people saw her.”
The man nodded, brought his hands together in front of his face, and then to his sides, grasping the chair as if for support.
“As child, clever and headstrong, questioning, and sometimes a bit of a know-it-all. She saw no division in people—no, that’s not true, she saw division, but she ignored it. She would touch a leper. She was very—I am not sure that I am explaining this well—she was very much a touching person. If she stopped to talk to a neighbor in the street, she would reach out—” Pramal moved as if to touch Maisie, to demonstrate his sister’s way of being, but drew back his hand.
“Do you mean like this?” Sandra spoke up and touched Billy on the arm. “How do you do, Mr. Beale? Isn’t it a lovely day?” She swept her hand around the room, as if the sun were shining through the ceiling.
Pramal nodded and smiled, his face at once alive as if the memory of Usha had become sharper. “Very much so. And there was no intention in her touch, except to . . . except to . . . except to connect with that person, like one electrical wire to another. And no matter how many times reprimanded by my aunts and cousins, by friends of my mother who had tried to guide her, she would just laugh and do things her way. Her spirit was quite without discipline.”
Maisie was still looking at Billy’s arm, at the place where Sandra had placed her hand and, for a glimpse in time, seemed like another person. A spirit without discipline.
“Do you have a photograph of your sister?” asked Maisie.
“Yes, here—I brought one for you.” Pramal reached into his pocket and brought out a brown-and-white photograph, a portrait of a woman with large almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones, and lips slightly parted, as if she were about to laugh, but managed to stop herself. Her hair seemed oiled, such was the reflection in the photograph, and though Maisie could only guess at the colors of the sari, she imagined deep magenta, a rosy peach, perhaps rimmed in gold, or silver. She touched the dark place on her forehead where Usha had marked her skin with a red bindi, and at once she felt pain between her own eyes. She handed the photograph to Billy.
“She was a beautiful girl, Mr. Pramal,” said Billy.
Pramal nodded, as Billy passed the photograph to Sandra, who frowned as she studied the image.
“What is it, Sandra?” asked Maisie.
“Nothing, Miss.” She shrugged, handing the photograph back to Maisie. “No, nothing—she just looked sort of familiar, that’s all. But then they all—no, it’s nothing.”