Page 90 of A Thousand Painted Hours

Life in London grew more bleak by the day as food grew scarce and rations were imposed. My mother had gone to America with a friend after my father’s death in 1915, and my brother was stationed in Africa. Tanveer was in France, and wrote letters sporadically, falsely cheerful. I returned the same, for how could I pour out my sorrows and despair to him, who lived in the muddy trenches?

I was cold and lonely and lost.

In desperation, I closed up the London house and took myself out to Herewich, carrying with me only a carpetbag with a few changes of clothing, a sketchbook, pencils, and a tin of watercolors. I took the train from London, staring out the window, heartsick, my stomach grumbling since I’d only been able to find a single potato to cook for breakfast.

In the village, I found a few supplies—a little tea, a loaf of bread freshly made of some imitation flour that smelled nutty, and a rasher of bacon. The proprietor, Mr. Herrick, offered his son and a wagon for a ride to the estate, and I accepted gratefully.

Despite my despair, it was impossible to avoid noticing that spring was in the air, smelling of fresh grass. Late daffodils and bluebells brightened the fields and forest floor. I took the first long breath I’d had in months, feeling it along my spine.

The house had been closed for nearly two years, since my brother had gone to Africa with the war. Eyeing it dubiously, Michael said, “Are ye certain?”

I glanced over my shoulder at the imposing building, the shuttered windows. In the beds alongside the door, tulips were springing up, the bright pink and yellow cheering against the stone. “Yes, thank you.”

I opened a few rooms, airing my bedroom, and dusting the small parlor that looked out to the garden. Unlike many of my friends, I was not hopeless in the kitchen, despite the years with servants—in my school days, I’d learned the basics from a cookery book, and could bake bread and make simple meals, enough to keep myself fed.

In the cellar were mealy apples and potatoes, and a great store of carrots that had been advantageously stored in sand. Some were withered beyond recognition, but many were still quite good. Using half the bacon, I made a stew of all the findings, my tongue craving the sweetness of the apples and carrots.

I still did not paint, and I did not write letters, not at first. I swept floors and dug through the clothing left behind to see what I might use. I discovered that my brother’s trousers fit me quite well, as did hisshirts. I made do with a pair of brogues by stuffing paper in the toe. In the evenings, I made my way through the library, losing myself in Jane Austen and Thackeray, alternating with essays and a great deal of Dickens. I sent TanveerRobinson CrusoeandDavid Copperfield.

Toward the end of the second week, I wandered out to the kitchen garden. To my surprise, things were sprouting, and while I had no idea how that was possible, I availed myself of the offerings of lettuce, radishes, and spring onions. We’d been exhorted to grow corn and potatoes to help the war effort, and the next morning I walked to the village and asked for seed.

“What sort of seed, Lady Turner? Flowers and the like?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind flowers, but no. I was thinking of potatoes, peas, carrots. The usual things.”

“Well, then, I can help you with that. You’ll be wanting some muscle to turn the soil after these fallow seasons. Shall I send Michael out to see you?”

“Yes,” I said. “That would be helpful.”

At the lending library, I borrowed a book on beginning gardening, much to the approval of the librarian, Mrs. Graves. “We have a garden club, if you like.” She passed me the book, which I tucked into my bag. “Meets the second Monday of the month in the church hall. I’m sure you’ll have questions.”

I’d come to Herewich to isolate and heal, forgetting that the village would be inordinately interested in my doings. There were no men about, or many young people. Michael suffered a club foot and could not fight, but all the rest of the boys and men had been conscripted. It loaned the landscape a ghostly feel. “Perhaps I will,” I said. “Thank you.”

My last stop was the post office, where I had a thin packet of forwarded letters. One from my mother, one from my brother, one from Nina, and one from Tanveer.

I hurried home.

April 2, 1917

[Location redacted]

[In Urdu]

Dear Elsie,

One small beauty: Living with us in the trenches are a great many cats. We welcome them for company and good cheer, and for their impressive rodent killing. They make life less terrible.

Of the rest, I hardly know what to say. I think too much here, life shaped by the opposing forces of boredom and horror.

For the space of many breaths I’ve held my pen above the paper, trying to think what to say, what I can possibly write about all this, and I cannot think of a way to express it to you that will not be a great sucking hole of darkness. I fight despair daily. How I will return to life at the end of this is a thought that plagues me. How I long for it! The ordinary pleasures of walking under trees, laughing with friends, reading a book that is not stained by mud. We all long to soak in hot baths, and that is what we do when on leave. We soak and sleep in dry beds.

Instead, I will live in memory here, times of happiness. I was thinking of the fete my father held for his birthday and to announce his marriage to his third wife. I was so angry with him for taking yet another wife, and then my mother told me she was relieved, that it made life so much easier for her.

What I was remembering was not my mother. I think of Chhoti Billi and that quiet shed that smelled of hay, and you, and those golden days of that summer. We were so free, so unencumbered by thepressures that would corral us into our proper lives. I truly never know if I am correct, Elsie, in the choices I have made. That I continue to make. I am only trying to do the right thing, thinking of you, and my own responsibilities.

I should not say what I feel, but it seems less and less likely I should survive this war, and so you should know that as long as I live, you are the flame that burns within my heart, the sunlight on my head, the hand I reach for in my mind, always, always, always. You will ever be my love, my life, and I know you feel it, too, that we met somewhere in the ether, beyond any of this, any reality that man knows, and there our souls live always, and perhaps they have forever.

Tanveer