In the Shadow of Crows Read Online Free

Grandfather, and yet I knew and loved his face that smiled with tenderness from behind framed glass on piano and wall. I often gazed into his kind, unblinking eyes, his silent, ready smile, and thought he looked a lot like me. He may have died too soon, the year before my birth, yet I knew where to find his gloves and braces, his goat-head inkwell and farmyard gaiters, his unused cut-throat razorblades still in their printed paper wrappings, his penknives, collar studs, draughts board - and his china shaving mug.
    â€œNow open the dresser drawer, darling,” she instructed. “And bring me the rosewood box.”
    I rattled the poker in the grate with no real purpose as she rummaged through old letters written on lilac paper, funerary ribbon, ration cards and a pressed posy of desiccated violets.
    â€œAh, here he is!” she beamed, studying her find with unguarded affection.
    She handed me an old photograph taken in Burma. The young man looking back had a sensual mouth and intelligent, gentle eyes.
    â€œHandsome, isn’t he?” I observed with interest.
    â€œOh, Theo was beautiful!” Grandmother agreed, her face and hands suddenly busy with memories. “So elegant. So witty. A voice like sweet, soft fudge before it sets. We girls all fell in love in a moment and would just sit looking at him, quite unembarrassed by our stares. You see, Theo was like a prince from a storybook, brought to life before us!” she enthused.
    Gazing into the finely formed features, now faded by time and Sussex damp, I knew that I too would have been sufficiently captivated for some surreptitious staring of my own.
    â€œUncle Oscar only let him come to London between the wars, because he was . . . well, more European than the others,” she revealed. “Very important in those days, I’m sorry to say. My father did not approve, of course. All the same, we girls once secretly saved our pocket money just to buy our lovely Theo a box of chocolates. Very bold back then, when we were forbidden to skip in the street, or swing on a gate, just in case we showed the hem of our long knickers!”
    I wanted to know what had become of this entrancing new relation.
    â€œDead,” she sighed, melting back into the faded chintz. “Long dead. Left rubber in Rangoon for confectionery in Putney - but didn’t survive the Luftwaffe .”
    I was intrigued. “Then who was he, Grandma?”
    She leaned close to me and laid a papery palm on my shoulder. “Why, Johnny Sparrow, Theo was the eldest of Oscar’s secret
    sons!”
    ***
    The stars were bright that night, bright enough for Bindra to pick her way down the hillside path. She struggled to cling to the low tree branches as she climbed from boulder to boulder, a bundle of unsold vegetables and kindling twigs tied across her back.
    â€œNo rice again,” she sighed to herself. “Just more carrots. More woody radishes. More chewy gundruk .” At least there were now only two mouths waiting to be fed.
    The previous summer, she had given her eldest daughter as a maid. Only eleven years old, she was now working as a houseservant to a wealthy poultry farmer, down in Kakariguri. It gave Bindra peace of mind to know that her beloved Jayashri was no longer hungry and had hot milk tea to drink every day.
    Her second, Jamini, had been taken away by a Christian “orphanage”. In exchange, the owners had paid Bindra enough to buy a bakhri goat and daal lentils to feed the remaining children for a full three months. The Christians had promised to teach Jamini to read and write, on the strict condition that she changed her name to Mary, wore a wooden cross around her neck, and slept with an American Bible beneath her pillow. It had seemed a small price for an education and the daily doling out of a millet gruel that had earned the school its local name of “St Porridge”.
    And yet, Bindra knew that if she allowed herself to stop and