Page 34 of A Thousand Painted Hours

Give my love to Channan. Tell Gurdaya I eagerly await the next installment in her story.

Elsie

—17—

Once the bombing began, the Germans proved relentless. Night after night, we hurried down to the cellar, making do until the all clear, which was many hours later. No one could sleep. Our tempers grew short.

Every night, the sirens. The drone of planes, circling, circling, the anti-aircraft guns, and the threatening, nerve-racking whistle of a falling bomb. Explosions, two or three at a time, close in, and farther away. Most nights, the attacks lasted nearly until morning.

It was utterly exhausting.

Such a disruption was bound to take a toll on anyone’s health, but it starkly undermined Mother’s already fragile state. After two weeks of it, she was thin as a needle, unwilling to eat much of anything.

In the meantime, cooking and the procuring of rations fell to me. I’d never gone with Betty to various shops and had to learn, one by one, where she’d purchased fruit and meat and flour and tea, since rations could only be used at the shops where she’d registered. We spent a lean week or so before I managed to restore the rations for all of us, a week during which I brewed vegetable broths and milky bread puddings sweetened with pears that suddenly arrived from the country. Plums were ripe, too, and apples to give us some sweetness.

I spent one hot afternoon making apple butter from a bounty Nina shared from Greylake Cottage. The skill made me grateful again for the time I’d spent at Herewich at the end of the last war. I’d learned many useful skills that I’d not made much use of since, picking fruit, growingvegetables, preserving. I’d also learned to darn, and to wear my brother’s trousers, a style I’d kept after the war. Skirts were impractical in a world of so many chores, and I’d worn an overall in the studio for decades.

But no matter what I conjured up for her, sweet or thin or easy, Mother barely consumed enough to keep a kitten alive. She picked at everything, trying to pretend she was eating, but I wasn’t so easily dissuaded. One way or another, I’d find a way to pique her appetite.

Both of us enjoyed the curries and meats and gravies I’d grown up eating, and in anticipation of embargo and lack, I’d purchased spices in bulk a year before—cumin and coriander and curry leaves, cinnamon and nutmeg. To that end, I cooked rice and lentils to make khichdi, sending the aroma through the house. Peter was drawn by it when he came in from some errand, likely guzzling gin in some pub, even though it was barely noon.

“That smells marvelous,” he said, tossing a packet of mail on the table. His skin was dull and greasy.

Eyeing him, I shook my head. “Perhaps you should give your body a rest from alcohol, Peter. You’re looking a bit wan.”

“It’s the only thing getting me through.” He slumped at the table and lit a cigarette.

I coughed. “Please take that into the garden. It does my mother’s health no good.”

He mouthed the butt and flipped through the letters on the table, ignoring me. “A letter from the prince,” he said.

I didn’t bother to look at him. This was an old song, worn from many plays.

He exhaled long, the blue smoke filling the kitchen, canceling the fragrance of my dal.

“Peter,” I said sharply. “Please. I’m cooking. Leave me be.”

He tossed the letter at me, dangerously close to the open flame, and sauntered outside. I snatched the envelope, pinching the flame on the edge. Looking after Peter, I wondered for the thousandth time how I might have helped him avoid the bitterness that had so ruined him. I’dgone into the marriage with the best of intentions, but in the end, we’d done each other no favors.

Which paved the road to hell for both of us.

I opened Tanveer’s letter.

September 17, 1940

Talwarpur Palace

[In Urdu]

Dear Elsie,

Every day, the radio tells us of new bombings in London. We all worry constantly for your safety. Channan prays for you daily.

Instead of asking you to carry our fears, I will instead offer you a better view than the one you currently must endure. We are somewhat insulated from the war here, far away as we are, although many of the men in the village have volunteered to fight in Europe and elsewhere. I argued most virulently against their sacrifice, but colonialism has planted a twisted patriotism in too many hearts, and a young man wants only to prove himself in battle. It will be a grievous waste of our best, who will be needed to continue the fight for independence, but I can only do what is mine to do.

And once, I, too, was a young man, eager to raise my sword in battle—but in that case, I was fighting for the promise we were given, that if we traded our bodies on those battlefields, Britain would at last grant our freedom.

If I consider it for more than a moment, I am angry again, and that anger is better made a pointed tool. The importance of politics here on this home front remain foremost in my thoughts, for there is agreat deal of talk of Muslim homeland, and I fear the repercussions of that on Sikhs in the Punjab.