She returned to their home shortly afterwards and sat down heavily on her bedroll.

  Sarju returned a few moments later, banging the door open and entering the room with bluster. ‘You sleeping next to your husband tonight, Vottie?’ he slurred. ‘Don’t think this can be the case every night,’ he said, waving a hand at her separate bed. ‘You are my wife!’ His demeanour was calm, his voice soft and almost soothing. The sinister curl of his top lip was the only sign that he was angry.

  Vottie felt a wet fear slide from her chest to her bowels. Dread coiled itself around her heart and sat blinking its cold, yellow eyes. Past experiences had taught her that Sarju wouldn’t leave her alone for long. He wasn’t a man to be deprived of what he saw as his right.

  Facing the wall, Vottie removed her sari and put her nightshirt over her underskirt and blouse even though it was very warm and sticky inside the room. She could feel Sarju’s gaze on her.

  She felt her heart racing but continued to look away. ‘Everyone here seems nice. There’s even a lady with her son from our village. They’ve been here four years now.’ She could hear that her voice sounded high and nervous.

  ‘How long, Vottie? How long do you think you can keep playing these games with me, eh?’ Sarju was suddenly up against her, pressing his hands into her shoulders. He swung her around to face him but she turned her head away. Grabbing her face between his thumb and fingers, he forced her to look at him. ‘Look at your face. It is not even healed yet, and yet you forget that I can smash this face to pieces and no one will even know you are Vottie high-and-mighty.’

  Wrenching herself from his grip, Vottie tried to make a dash for the door but he pre-empted her, catching her before she could take a single step. In one swift motion, he flung her to the floor. Her arms and legs flailed wildly. He kicked her hard, once, twice, three times, in her back.

  ‘Please, Sarju, please don’t,’ she begged, curling up.

  He paced back and forth in front of her, while she lay slumped and immobilised, her eyes wide and her heart racing. Then he stepped back, looking at her, surveying the result of his actions. He traced his lips with the tip of his tongue, slowly, relishing the fear brimming in her eyes. Like a cat with a mouse, he wanted to drag this out for as long as he could.

  Vottie felt a warm stream of her own urine between her legs, and it quickly formed a puddle beneath her. Her bowels were turning to water too.

  Sarju sniffed and pulled a disgusted face. ‘Not so high and mighty now, hah?’ he smirked.

  Vottie began to plead again, a string of words that tumbled out of her mind rather than her mouth.

  Sarju leant down and roughly grabbed her forearms. Dragging her across the floor, he flung her on his bedroll. He lowered his body onto hers, pressing his face, taut and drawn in concentration, into hers. His eyes were excited, lit up.

  She shut her eyes. She had no fight left in her. As her body bucked up and down involuntarily, it was not her being assaulted on that bed, but a stranger in the gloomy, grey distance.

  At last Sarju rolled off her.

  Vottie couldn’t stop trembling. The pain in her back was beyond agony.

  She pulled herself up and leant over, then vomited on the floor. Slowly and painfully, avoiding the puddle of sick, she crawled onto her own bedroll. Lying on her back, she gulped in air and pressed her hands to her chest. Her mind was foggy. She shut her eyes tightly, willing herself to have some reaction to what had happened or to the agony that was coursing through her body, but nothing came. She turned on her side and curled up in a foetal position.

  Sarju, lying with his hands behind his head, watched her coolly, without comment.

  The next morning, as the first rays of light peeped through the small window of their room, Vottie tried to sit up and gasped as the pain shot through her body again.

  Sarju, watching her lazily from his bedroll, pointed at the vomit on the floor. ‘Clean up that mess. This place stinks.’

  In the distance, they could hear the clanging of a bell, calling the labourers to work. They should have been up and ready to go. The second bell would be rung in ten minutes’ time, and by then, all the workers had to be assembled in the yard for roll call.

  ‘Get ready. We have to go. No time to eat now,’ Sarju said impatiently.

  Vottie desperately wanted to clean herself, to get up, to be brave, but her body wouldn’t obey. She lay still, trying to quell the knife-like pains in her back.

  Sarju wrapped his dhoti around his waist and left.

  About half an hour later, there was a banging on the door. Vottie had just managed to sit up when Sirdar Parma walked in. Looking around, he covered his hand over his nose and mouth, suppressing the need to retch as the smell of vomit hit him. ‘Your husband says that you are not sick. What is the matter with you?’ he demanded, his voice muffled behind his hand.

  ‘I can’t get up,’ she said.

  ‘Get dressed. We can’t keep the wagon waiting for you,’ he added.

  ‘Help me, please. I can’t go on like this,’ Vottie said, so softly Parma wasn’t sure he’d heard her right.

  Vottie tried to get to her feet again but fell to her knees instead, still clutching her ribs.

  Parma looked at her, his expression softening slightly. ‘No work, no pay then, but you better be ready to work tomorrow,’

  ‘You get in the wagon’, he said to Sarju.

  Sarju began to say something but remained silent and left.

  Taking deep breaths, Vottie got herself up onto her feet. It helped to hold her ribs and take very shallow breaths, but she was still trembling so much that she had difficulty walking. She made her way to the washing area where she struggled to fill a bowl with water.

  A little girl was also collecting water, and watched her with interest. ‘Amma will help you,’ she said, and ran off.

  Vottie sank to the ground, unable to say upright any longer.

  A few moments later a woman with greying hair arrived, with the girl at her side. ‘Hold on to me,’ the older woman said as she helped Vottie back to her own room, which was closer to the washing area. She poured hot black tea into a tin mug and added three spoonfuls of sugar, then put it to one side to cool. The girl watched as her mother examined Vottie, tracing the bruises on her chest, then lifting her nightdress to examine her back. She frowned. ‘Your ribs are broken – two, maybe three of them. Your back is hurt too but I have something that will help with the swelling and the pain.’

  She handed Vottie the tea. ‘Sip it,’ she said, then turned her attention to the contents of a wooden box that was on the floor, selecting a range of bottles of various sizes and colours. Working quickly, she relieved Vottie of the tin cup and added a few spoonfuls of the contents of a dark brown bottle. ‘Drink this for the pain,’ she instructed, handing the cup back to Vottie. She then applied a strong-smelling ointment to the bruised area on Vottie’s back, and finally wrapped a cloth tightly across her ribs. ‘You should stay in bed until your ribs are healed,’ the woman said.

  Vottie nodded weakly, feeling the concoction start to do its work, numbing the pain. ‘Aap-ka naam kya hai?’ she asked.

  ‘Ponny,’ the woman replied.

  Slowly, pausing to allow Vottie to recover her breath every now and then, Ponny and her child helped Vottie back to her room. Quietly, they cleaned up the vomit and settled Vottie in her bed.

  ‘Dhanyavad, Ponny,’ Vottie managed to say before she slipped into a blessed, pain-free sleep.

  Several times during the course of the day, Ponny checked in on Vottie and brought her steaming bowls of rasso, a sour South Indian soup with ginger and garlic to aid healing. She helped Vottie sit up to eat, patiently spooning the healing broth into her mouth.

  That evening, Sarju was returning from the field as Ponny and her daughter stepped out of his and Vottie’s room.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘Making sure your wife lives,’ Ponny answered, her expression grim.

  Taken aback by the woman’s boldness, Sarju made no further comment and let the woman and child pass.

  After two days of bed rest and Ponny’s nursing, Vottie was able to walk again, albeit gingerly. With her ribs firmly bandaged with strips of old saris, she was able to get out of bed and prepare meals.

  Sirdar Parma wasn’t pleased. He came into the yard and confronted Sarju. ‘You did that to your wife. It’s no matter to me, that is between a husband and wife, but she must be able to work,’ Vottie heard him say.

  Sarju watched Parma walk off and he spat in the dust, cursing only after the sirdar was out of earshot.

  Vottie herself also knew that without work, she would get no rations, and no wages either; then she would really be at Sarju’s mercy. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  The next day Vottie was ready when the oxcart arrived in the yard. The work in the tea factory was easy enough: they had to separate the tea leaves and then sort them into various sizes and lay them out on racks to dry. Vottie lowered herself to the ground and sat cross-legged, copying what the other women did with each batch of leaves. After a time, the pain in her back flared up again when she tried to change her position, so she ended up sitting in the same place for several hours.

  By the lunchtime break, she couldn’t stand up – the pain had returned with a vengeance. She coughed, and almost passed out in agony. Tasting something metallic in her mouth, she spat discreetly into her hand. There was blood.

  A sirdar, walking by at that moment, caught sight of the crimson phlegm, and barked, ‘You can’t work here like this!’ He called for the oxcart and told two women to help Vottie in.

  ‘Take her back to the barracks,’ he instructed the driver and get back quickly. In the wagon, Vottie let her tears fall freely. every jolt shook her body, releasing new waves of torment. the ride back was endless. The fields around her and the sounds of the wagon grounded her in the present.

  The driver, an African man, helped Vottie down from the wagon and allowed her to lean on him as they made their way to her door. He remained silent but there was sadness as he watched her take the last few steps to her door. Ponny’s daughter saw that Vottie had returned and went to get her mother straight away.

  Ponny examined Vottie. She left and came back with heated rags doused in a yellow liquid. ‘This will draw out the pain but you need to see a doctor,’ she said.

  In her sleep Vottie’s dream felt real. She was running for her life, her breath ragged, her chest heaving from exertion, her throat constricted as if being crushed under a boulder. With her hands held up in front of her face, she swiped at the plants that stood in her path, cutting deep furrows along her arms and legs. Ignoring the tide of blood, Vottie ran on, her bare feet being sliced open on the roots and debris left in the field, her bright red blood leaving a trail on the dusty earth.

  She turned to glance behind her, and there he was, his face sick with sin, eyes bulging, gaze fixed and steely, threatening. Sarju was moving quickly but he didn’t appear to be running; he seemed to be walking, casually strolling, even. In his right hand he clutched a long knife. It glimmered menacingly as it caught the light of the sun.

  Then she was falling, tumbling to the ground with flailing arms, her foot twisting in a protruding root. His face was above hers, partly obscured by the sun. ‘Thought you could get away, didn’t you?’ he jeered. With a single, swift motion, he grabbed the length of her hair, twisting it in his free hand, pinning her face against the ground.

  Her mouth full of earth, she spluttered and gagged and tried to push herself up. It was useless. She felt the energy seep out of her body into the ground below her.

  Releasing her just enough so that she could see his face again, he raised the knife above his head. This time it did not shine.

  Then it began to rain. Soft tea leaves landed on her. Sarju was gone. She heard a sound. Next to her, Sarju was lying in the earth, his eyes closed. Blood was spattered across his face in neat scarlet drops, almost beautiful in their arrangement.

  Vottie’s eye shot open and she sat up in her bed. The room was dimly lit. Her clothes were soaked and perspiration poured down her face. As her breathing slowed, she noticed a lamp glowing in the other corner of the room.

  Sarju was sitting on his bedroll, watching her.

  She looked around nervously. They were alone.

  He approached her slowly. ‘You have been asleep for days now, Vottie.’ He said it irritably, as if her unconscious state had been her choice. He inched closer and instinctively she pulled her feet towards herself, trying to find a way to place her body in a defensive position.

  He placed his hand on her raised knees. His eyes were now close to hers. The smell of daaru was on his breath. ‘Tomorrow you must go back to work. You have had enough rest. Maybe now you know how to be a good wife.’

  ‘I’m hurt, Sarju.’

  ‘The money for the doctor will come out of my wages. I’m not paying,’ he said.

  ‘Let me go, Sarju,’ she whispered. ‘Just let me leave. I don’t want to live like this. You can get a better wife, a good one.’

  Sarju laughed. ‘Who is going to pay me for this wife, then, and for all the cost of bringing you here and all your fancy ideas, Vottie?’ He stood up abruptly, making her flinch. ‘You are my wife and you will stay my wife,’ he said.

  As he stood over her, she recoiled inside, unsure where the first blow would land. Instead, he went back to his bedroll and climbed in. After a few minutes, he put out the lamp.

  In the darkness she could hear his breathing becoming slower and deeper and then turn to snores. She lay back, wide awake. Defeated, she was done making plans. She was just grateful that Sarju had left her alone tonight.

  10

  Mount Edgecombe Sugar Estate, Natal

  July 1909

  On their first day of work, Ramsamy slept through the bell. The estate followed a policy of no work, no pay, and the little family needed food; the rations they’d been given when they arrived two nights before weren’t enough to last them for more than a few days.

  Chinmah shook her husband roughly. ‘Ramsamy, you must get up. They will whip you if they find you here.’

  He groaned and turned over.

  Chinmah shook him again, but Ramsamy grumbled, ‘Leave me, I’ll go later.’

  With Angel in one arm and a hoe in the other, Chinmah joined the assembled Indians who were lining up for roll call. When it came to Ramsamy’s name, Chinmah said, ‘I am sorry. My husband is sick.’

  Sirdar Kasim frowned at her. ‘What is wrong with him?’

  ‘He is …’ Chinmah did not know what to say. She stared at the angry sirdar, jiggling Angel on her hip.

  ‘Go and get him. Now.’

  ‘He won’t get up. He won’t listen to me,’ she said.

  There was a tittering among the Indians.

  ‘Come!’ Kasim ordered, and stormed ahead of her to their room. Banging open the door, he marched to the bed. ‘Moollamaari, get up!’ he shouted, kicking Ramsamy’s legs.

  A few groans were heard from beneath the blankets.

  The sirdar yanked the covers off, exposing Ramsamy’s almost naked body. ‘Yethava, get up or I’m going to whip you silly,’ he threatened.

  ‘Just listen to him and get up,’ Chinmah pleaded with her husband, pulling on an arm. He allowed her to help him get his turban and dhoti on while Angel sat on the floor, crying.

  The sirdar, making noises of disgust, marched off.

  As the little party set off, walking towards the sugar-cane fields, Chinmah kept pace with her husband, whose slow steps meant he quickly fell behind the others.

  Sirdar Kasim noticed this and turned back, drawing his horse alongside the couple. ‘Chut marike,’ he spat, flicking Ramsamy on the backside with his sjambok. ‘That’s your name because you are just as useless.’

  Ramsamy stumbled into the dirt while Kasim looked on. Chinmah helped him up and urged him to walk quicker, before the sirdar could strike him again.

  Ramsamy was instructed to weed and hoe between the rows of sugar cane but he chose to sit moodily on the ground instead. For refusing to work, he was flogged twice in one day, once in the field and then again in front of everyone next to the barracks.

  The master of Mount Edgecombe Sugar Estate, Andrew Wilkington, had not been on the plantation when the twenty new indentured Indians had arrived. His wife, Maria, was in the house but she didn’t get involved in the running of the plantation.

  The journey in the wagons from the port had taken far longer than expected, as a wheel had come off and had had to be repaired at the roadside. It had been dark when they arrived and it was difficult to make out even the path in front of them. The Indians were made up mostly of couples, some of whom had young children, who were tired and hungry and had been crying for the last few hours of the trip.

  Sirdar Kasim had quickly doled out the rations and led the group to the barracks. There had not been much land put aside for the workforce and the barracks on the sugar estate was smaller than most, with only a few coolie lines dotted about, close to the railway tracks. Kasim had pointed out the rooms for each family, and where they could wash and use the ablutions – the communal washing area and outdoor pit toilet were at the end of the row.

  Chinmah and Ramsamy’s room was just like the others – small and airless. It had a roughly made wooden shelf on which they found tin plates and pots that had been used by the previous occupants. There was also wood and a fire pit just outside the room.

  ‘Can you start the fire while I feed Angel?’ Chinmah had asked Ramsamy. He didn’t say anything in response, so Chinmah had gone inside and breastfed Angel. Once the baby was asleep, she’d settled her in her basket. It had a thin mattress but Chinmah had covered it with blankets, hoping there weren’t any lice or fleas.