Anila's Journey by Mary Finn

into me. The words were cruel but I do not think she actually meant to be so. She was being plain. I guessed what she thought – that I had somehow returned to live again in the little house of long ago, with Malati and Hemavati. Mrs Panossian knew all about that part of my life and I wished she did not.
    I took a deep breath. I could not afford to have Mrs Pan as my enemy.
    â€œIt’s just a little place that Miss Hickey arranged for me. She wanted me to be safe until I became settled in a position. I would dearly love to have Anoush there for English Christmas Day, so that she can have a holiday too. And I have money left to me to buy some festival food in your store, Mrs Panossian.”
    I looked sideways. Anoush was approaching us, her face flushed.
    â€œOh, Auntie,” she said. “Just this once. Please?”
    Mrs Panossian looked from one of us to the other. Then the door opened and its bell pinged. Two bearers approached the counter with a long list and Anoush moved away to serve them.
    â€œYou are too close with your story, girl,” Mrs Panossian said to me. “You must tell me whereabouts in the city you are staying.”
    â€œIt’s in Garden Reach,” I said, looking straight at her. She would probably have sent a boy after me anyway, her curiosity was so roused. Mrs Panossian was not one to leave questions sticking in her head overnight like hairpins.
    â€œIt’s in a little garden tea house that Miss Hickey saw restored for me. I shall not be there for long at any rate. I hope to have news of my position tomorrow. But the day after that is the English Christmas Day.”
    Mrs Panossian raised her eyebrows at that, as well she might.
    I hardly knew why Christmas mattered so much to me. As the Reverend suspected, and Mrs Pan knew, I had not been baptized. My mother’s devotions still beat in me like a pulse and I truly loved the way our gods were close to us, with all their adventures and their moods. From them came the music and colours and excitements of our puja festivals in the misty season. Miss Hickey never made any difficulties for me. But she believed that I should go to church services with her nevertheless.
    â€œIt will help you, Anila,” she’d said. “People will assume you are one of us. For myself, I am only interested in the kindness suggested to us by religion, not in its show.”
    So I went, and they were dreary affairs, those services, with ladies and gentlemen pressed into their pews like sticks of cane in a box. The rector climbed into a little tower and talked to us about God’s mercy until our teeth hurt. The only service I liked was Christmas.
    â€œVery well then,” said Mrs Panossian at last. Her high voice had something in it I could not quite make out. It was hardly a smile because her face was still.
    â€œBut my Anoush must be back with us for the day after the holy feast.”
    Poor Anoush was still reaching up and pulling things out of drawers but I was sure she had heard the good news because she was smiling at the bearers as if they were not one but two Krishnas come to visit. Then Gabriel, the old shop boy, came through the door at the back of the shop with his brown coat bursting open after his lunch and Mrs Panossian told him to help Anoush with the big order. The doorbell pinged again. More customers.
    â€œYou run along now, Anila,” she said. “Tomorrow night you can come back for Anoush. I’ll tell her the news myself.”

STORIES AND TRINKETS
    MY FATHER DID NOT really care to spend time in our house down the lane. He wished he could afford better and he was unhappy about Malati and Hemavati in many ways. Most of all, I think, because they were so different from my mother, who would never have danced for strangers, whose voice was gentle, who was little more than a girl
.
    â€œThat hyena,” he called Hemavati. Poor Malati and her soldier, he thought them stupid
.
    But they bothered