3
Adrift
ELIZA ESDAILE
My name is Eliza Weatherhead Esdaile. For the last seven and a half years, my life has not been my own; it has been directed, and controlled, by a spirit—an evil thing, some might say. That I can speak at all is God’s miracle.
I am thirty-six years old and a widow. This would be a tragedy worthy of Mr. Dickens, except that it is real life; and no one would pay a penny every week to read what could be considered the ravings of a madwoman. Dickens it is not. And a madwoman I am not.
Let me begin again.
In 1847, when I was twenty-four years old, I was hired as a governess for three young children who accompanied their father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Davis Heath, to Calcutta in the Bengal. Mr. Heath was a prosperous and educated man of business, careful with his money and devoted to work and family. Mrs. Heath, however, was a woman of delicate disposition. She was dissatisfied with her husband’s decision to relocate the family to India; it occupied her mind constantly while we prepared for departure. During the long voyage outward, she became progressively more ill.
A seagoing vessel is no place for a lady of Mrs. Heath’s constitution. Her husband had the luxury of taking strolls on the deck. Children are resilient by their nature: they were soon accustomed to ship life and were adopted by the junior officers, who permitted them liberties that would have caused their mother to faint. Mrs. Heath, meanwhile, became more and more frail, rarely leaving her cabin and fretting constantly about what awaited them in India.
She never saw India. As the ship made its way across the Indian Ocean, she passed gently into the next world, unsure of where she was. The threads of her life unraveled, leaving the family incomplete. She was interred in Calcutta’s English Burial Ground.
A penny dreadful would contain a tawdry romance which would, of course, speed my elevation to the status of the second Mrs. Heath. Such was not the case, nor could I have wished it to be. I was below Mr. Heath’s station; I had no desire to bring humiliation upon him or his children. I remained as governess and was accorded proper respect in that capacity for the entire term of my employment. Young Master Heath—Bertram—left for Eton two years after we arrived in Calcutta; his older sister, Henrietta, was sent to live with an aunt in Cape Town, where she married shortly afterward. Only young Rose remained with her father and myself.
I realize, Reverend, that these small details of private life do not matter to you—and I pray you do not protest to the contrary!—because they speak little to the great matters which followed. But you must understand that they belong to that part of my life that is in sharp definition. It is like a warm parlor with a well-stocked fireplace and comfortable furnishings, when compared to a stone balcony exposed to an icy wind. For the last several years, I was made to stand out on that balcony, observing the parlor from without, my voice lost in the stiff breeze.
I should tell you more about Rose. I think that she was the key to this—for me, at least. With Mrs. Heath in eternal repose in Chowringhee, a place the children and I visited every Sunday until they left India, Mr. Heath found himself increasingly alone. Rose was always his favorite: Bertram was a fine young man of course, but only came out to India once during his time at Eton, and Henrietta had always been closer to her mother than her father, as young girls often are. But Rose was a darling little girl, clever and quick with her lessons. She was particularly talented with maths—had she been a boy, I am certain that Mr. Heath would have wanted her placed as a junior clerk at an early age.
Then, in the spring of 1851, five years after we had come to India, the unthinkable happened—poor little Rose, not quite eleven years old, was taken by the cholera.
Women are accustomed to the business of mourning, Reverend Davey. We who have lost our men to wars and our babes in childbed, who are caretakers for the old and sick—we know about Death: he is an old and uncomfortably familiar friend. Men have less understanding or experience. They believe that they and all of their seed will live forever. Women accept this fact, but men, faced with meaningless loss, are like rudderless ships and simply have no idea what to do.
Robert Davis Heath, gentleman and man of business, conducted himself with perfect dignity as his youngest child was brought down Burial Ground Road and laid to rest in the English Cemetery beside his wife. He escorted me back to the house, and after seeing that I was safely in the hands of the khansamah—
What? Of course. Every household in India has a khansamah. He is—well, the master butler, the head servant. The best khansamah is a kind, wise Indian gentleman of middle age, who knows his city well: who to hire, where to obtain anything his master might desire, how to arrange the thousand little things that keep a household running. He is usually somewhat venal—they all are; but any master who expects his khansamah to account for every rupee does not understand India very well. By turning a blind eye to a head servant who slightly blurs the distinction between his and his master’s funds, a gentleman can assure himself that this activity has strict bounds and will be carefully watched.
A fox set to watch over the henhouse? No, I think you do not understand. In India, servants think every white man is wealthy—for their condition is so mean that he seems so by comparison. Thus, when an opportunity to steal presents itself, they take it. Surely, they think, the master will not miss it. If it were just one servant, this would be nothing; but a well-turned-out household for one such as Mr. Heath had many—kitchen servants, maids, a team for his palky, a dirwan at his door—and a governess for his children.
In the weeks of Rose’s illness and during the preparations for her funeral, I had never given serious thought to my station in Mr. Heath’s household. Gobinda, his khansamah, had ever been kind to me, but after Mr. Heath shut himself up in his library—
Oh. I beg your pardon, Reverend. I was distracted from telling the story. And yes, it was many years ago—but the details remain very clear.
After we returned from sweet little Rose’s funeral, Mr. Heath shut himself up in his library without a word. He did not appear for tea, nor did he come to the conservatory as we had done in happier times to hear Rose play the little Pleyel piano he had imported from France at great expense. During her illness, we had gathered there without her—but not this night.
So there I sat in the conservatory with a book by my side, alone and listening to the rain: and it began to dawn on me that I was without any role or status in Mr. Heath’s household. Bertram and Henrietta were no longer present, and Rose slept with her mother.
As I sat alone, the most singular thing happened. I began to hear voices: not the ones from the street outside—the compound was far from the street in any case—but whispers, like the rustling of leaves in the breeze.
They spoke my name—and they told me that I was adrift and alone because of Rose’s death. I assumed it was the fears of my own imagination: what would become of me, thousands of miles from England, a governess with no children to care for? Where would I go and what would I do?
Then Gobinda came to me as I sat there in the dim candlelight. He had rarely entered the room while the family was there, unless some matter of business required Mr. Heath’s attention; but this evening he not only crossed the threshold but came to sit nearby.
I could not have been more relieved to see any person.
“Miss Weatherhead,” he told me. “I come to you because of my genuine affection for you.” He said it just like that: he prided himself on proper speech, like a gentleman’s gentleman. “I fear that there may be some changes ahead.”
“Changes?” I replied. I knew what he meant—had my own fears not represented it to me already?
“I have served in this house for many years,” Gobinda told me. “Before Heath Sahib I was khansamah to another gentleman who occupied this house, a Mr. Fergusson Sahib, who was from Scotland. Perhaps you know this worthy person?”
I can only assume that to a man from India, all of Britain must seem small, as if we all lived in the same country village. “No,” I answered. “I do not know Mr. Fergusson.”
“Miss Weatherhead,” Gobinda said. “Miss Weatherhead. It may be the best for you if you seek employment with another family. I know that the loss of the young girl pains you severely, we have a different view of such things here in India: these are merely passages, the comings and goings of immortal spirits. But quitting this household will be the best possible thing for you.”
“I daresay that is for Mr. Heath to decide,” I tartly replied; though he was being blunt, Gobinda was also being kind. I did not know how kind!
“I do not think—” he began, but was interrupted by some noise somewhere else in the house. He stood and offered me a polite bow, then quit the room. I arose to follow him: we made our way into the great hall and up the stairs toward the source of the disturbance, but halfway up he stopped and turned to me, placing his left hand in front of him, palm up—
Yes, I know what that means, but of course I did not know then. It quite frightened me that I was left standing on the stairs, unable to follow him: it was as if my shoes were rooted to the stone step, my hand clutching the railing and unable to let go.
Ten minutes later—the great hall’s clock had not yet chimed another quarter hour—he returned to where I was still standing. The expression on his face was grave and troubled. He made another gesture with his hand and I found myself suddenly free to move: I lurched forward in my former course, but Gobinda caught me by the shoulders.
“I will thank you to unhand me, sir,” I said, glancing around to see if there was anyone else nearby; if so, they kept themselves carefully out of sight.
“There is nothing for you upstairs,” Gobinda answered. “You must not go upstairs.”
“But, Mr. Heath—”
“Mr. Heath has died, Miss Weatherhead. By his own hand.”