Page 139 of A Thousand Painted Hours

Tell me what fills your days, what you observe. Have you been to Nainital? How are Tanveer and his wife? Do you see Gurdaya at all? Does she have children?

Do you miss me at all? Please write.

Love,

Mother

November 22, 1926

Talwarpur Palace

Dear Mother,

Of course I miss you. I was just so very, very angry with you for believing Peter’s version of events so easily over mine. You didn’t even ask which things might betrue, or if I had important reasons. You assumed. You took his part, and worried about your own financial situation rather than worrying about me.

But never mind that. I am very happy in India. I will not be returning to Peter, whether he lives in Kabul or Cairo or the heart of London itself. I have been painting more than I’ve painted in my life, and with Channan and Tanveer, I feel a sense of home and belonging that has escaped me since William died and we lost Herewich.

I am sorry to hear that you’ve been ill, and of course I worry. Will Garvey consider relocating to England for the sake of your health? I would think you miss the place, as much as you loved it.

My life is not a conventional one. I did try.

I hope this letter finds both you and Garvey much improved. Let me know where to write to you.

Love,

Elsie

—71—

When I think of that time now, the whole of that fall and winter and spring, it is contained in a globe of golden light, filled with happiness and laughter and making love, painting and building our strange little family, for it was not only Tanveer and me, but Channan, too. Her health improved and I taught her to watercolor. She taught me needlepoint, which I loathed. I worked on their portrait sometimes, and at others, I painted canvas after canvas of a new kind of landscape—sere and rich at once, the combination of shape and harshness and brilliant sky that spoke to me now in a new voice. Tanveer took me to Nainital, and we drove the streets we’d roamed as children. I saw my old house, and his, which the family still owned and rarely visited. We hiked the trail to our pond but found the waterfall had ceased and so it had gone stale, covered with algae.

Gingerly, and then with more vigor, we embraced the new life we’d found, surprisingly, after so much loss and strife. Both of us became more fully ourselves within our intimate connection. I painted. He wrote.

For as long as I live, those nights we slept side by side, entwined, dreaming together, will remain among the best moments of my life.

Gurdaya came to visit with her tumble of children, and stayed for three weeks. Tanveer and I attempted discretion, but in truth, we were so gilded we left pools of light wherever we stepped, and she soon guessed the truth. Once she understood Channan had given herblessing, she accepted it with her usual practicality. “I used to see you sneak into the forest,” she said.

But she did warn us to be careful, considering the unrest in the whole of the Punjab that winter. We saw it in the village, too, a fight over an irrigation ditch turning suddenly ugly, a man beaten to death. Accusations of favoritism over the gurdwara, too, and the maharaja’s interest in restoring it. He had to hold a durbar to air the complaints after the festival of Guru Nanak Gurpurab, when a Muslim group protested the apparent favoritism of the maharaja giving more attention to Sikh matters than to those of the Muslims or Hindus.

When a rumor surfaced that the maharaja had taken a British mistress, Channan held a festival for the village children, at which she and I worked side by side to dispel the gossip.

The rumbles were everywhere, and I did not leave the grounds of the palace without Tanveer. We insulated ourselves, our little family, in the crumbling old palace.

It was early in January that I realized I’d had no menses for nearly three months. I was certain it could not be a child, not after all these years. I was past thirty and had never been pregnant, not even to lose it.

But the evidence mounted. My breasts grew larger. My hips softened. Some afternoons, I slept for hours on end, lost in a narcotic, dreamless sleep. And then, my belly began to swell, ever so gently. Beneath the loose tunics I wore, it did not show, but I was sure Tanveer would notice sooner or later.

A disaster, which I had foolishly not considered how to plan for.

One night as I padded toward the bed, he stopped me and placed a hand over my belly. “Are you with child?”

I burst into tears. “I don’t know how to tell!”

He pulled me to him, and I fell on his shoulder, weeping as if the world would end. “I did not think it possible!” I cried. “It is such a terrible complication.”

“Terrible?” He laughed. “I can’t think of anything that could bring more joy.”

“But what of the villagers, the gossip? Won’t it be dangerous?”