A Watch of Nightingales

Chapter Four

FOUR Kokila Iqbal’s mother’s name was Sahila, but everyone she knew in Cambridge called her Sallie. When she met Mara at Euston Station in London, she bent and kissed her forehead. “Ah, you girls in dif‹culties,” she said, the pitch of her voice both sad and forgiving. She picked up Mara’s suitcase and led her away from the platform, through the crowded station and out onto the street. It was a Thursday evening, rush hour, and Mara thought the American phrase in her head, and somehow the repetition of those two syllables, rush hour, rush hour, kept her a›oat. They stood in a line for taxis, and then when Mara was bundled into one of those big black cars, with Sallie beside her, the noise of travel and city life was abruptly silenced. She listened for a moment to Sallie’s voice, directing the driver to King’s Cross Station, the sound of it like silk or a rich liquid poured from a dark bottle. Sallie settled back in her seat next to Mara. She was extraordinarily tall—her knees were bent and there was still no more room to push her feet forward. She seemed almost to ›oat above Mara’s head in the dizzy warmth of the taxi. Her perfume was strong, a shrill ›oral and so unlike the incense, cinnamon and sweat Kokila carried on her skin. Mara thought the word embalmed. “We’ll take the six o’clock train to Cambridge and then have something to eat at my house. The procedure is tomorrow morning. Very quick.” She snapped her ‹ngers. “Like that.” “All right,” Mara said. “Thank you, Mrs. Iqbal.” “You must call me Sallie. Not Mrs. Anything.” “Yes,” Mara said in a whisper so low she wasn’t sure she’d spoken at all. “I know you’re terribly frightened. That’s only one thing, though, isn’t it? The rest of it is all a tangle, a jumble. You can talk to me about it if you like. I hope you will.” 114 ÷ Mara nodded and stared out into the gray London evening. It looked like all the books, Dickens, Sherlock Holmes, and all the movies, billows of fog and gloom. Only the clothes were wrong, the wrong century, though she saw the occasional man or woman wearing a long coat, a duster, a ›ying scarf. No bonnets, though. If only she could see a bonnet, with ribbons, a bow tied under the chin. It was a strange thing to wish for, and yet not—to be out of her own time, far from her own circumstance. She closed her eyes and shook her head. She could not help herself, even though she knew she was being watched. “How’s school going, then?” Sallie said. “The ‹rst weeks of the term?” Mara heard the words from a long ways off. She opened her eyes and turned to look into Sallie’s face, lit by the glow from a small map light attached to the seat. Her skin was the same lovely color as Kokila’s, café au lait, but her eyes were bigger and not so tired-seeming. They were like eyes in a painting, in certain paintings, huge, dark, glossy, and they followed Mara’s eyes, while seeming not to move at all. Yet there was something ›at, impenetrable about her entire face, a two-dimensional quality. “It’s been interesting,” Mara said. “I haven’t been able to concentrate all that well. But . . .” She paused. “To live with all those girls. It’s strange. I have one brother at home and no sisters, and I go to a coed day school. I think I’m the experiment for them, not the other way around.” Sallie smiled. “It’s so normal for the English,” she said. Mara wasn’t sure what she meant. “The classes are good. There’s a lot of note-taking. But it seems the opposite of normal. There’s always a crisis, or a girl crying, or a girl angry at another girl.” “Wasn’t that true at your school in America?” “I guess so.” Mara thought for a minute. “But the boys sort of turn down the volume on it. Or blur the edges. Everything doesn’t seem to happen in capital letters.” “Dramatic?” “Yes.” “But there’s a certain freedom without the boys, yes? Power?” “It’s as if we’re always waiting for them to arrive.” 115 [18.221.15...