Stars Over the Southern Ocean

by J. H. Fletcher

On her nineteenth birthday Tamsyn Trevelyan, backpacking alone through India, arrived in Agra, a city on the Punjab plain some distance from Delhi.

  Agra was famous because it was where the Taj Mahal stood in its forty-acre complex on the banks of the Yamuna River, and the Taj Mahal was one of the most glorious buildings in the world.

  She spent the best part of a day wandering in a trance about the complex, bewitched by the majesty and beauty of the building, and by the time she was finished she was exhausted by the heat and the emotions that the Taj had aroused in her.

  She stayed overnight in a hostel outside the city. It was uncomfortable, as they all were, but also cheap, as they all were, and that was what mattered. There were other teens staying there—a Kiwi, a German girl, a French boy and a pushy Scot—and early the following morning they clubbed together to hire a taxi to take them to the fabulous city of Fatehpur Sikri.

  ‘What’s fabulous about it?’

  Angus, the pushy Scot, had a nature that always needed to check up on things; no one was ever going to pull a fast one on him. But Tamsyn had read up about it.

  ‘It’s twenty miles from Agra. It was built by Akbar, the Mughal emperor. He made it his capital for a time.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘It’s a dead city. Abandoned. All the buildings are intact but no one lives there. No water.’

  ‘Why build a city where there’s no water?’

  It certainly seemed a foolish thing to do.

  ‘Is it like the Taj?’

  She didn’t answer him. From the pictures she’d seen it was hard to imagine anywhere less like the Taj, but she didn’t want to say any more in case they talked it to death before they got there.

  They’d been warned by the hostel staff that Fatehpur Sikri was a hot place so they left early. It was just after eight when they arrived but it was already hot; by midday it would be like an oven.

  Early as it was, they still weren’t the first people there; Tamsyn saw what looked like a European man, dark-haired and tall, with a girl of about six or seven wearing a green and white cotton dress.

  They were heading away from her; she didn’t want company and was pleased. She sensed this was the sort of place you needed to see alone, to give the ghosts the chance to speak to the living. That was why the hostellers had agreed to go their separate ways, to soak up the atmosphere of the place and their reaction to it, and check out their opinions with each other afterwards.

  The unknown couple had disappeared, as had her companions. A distant calling of crows; otherwise the silence was absolute. Tamsyn walked around the courtyards and buildings devoid of life, and it was like visiting the stone canyons of the dead. Only ghosts lived there, and memories of blood and death, for she’d read that it was there that the invading Mughals had won a decisive victory over the Rajputs whose land it had previously been. The cries of slaughter echoed off the empty walls, and the drains in the deserted courtyards ran with remembered blood.

  It was interesting, in its macabre way, but she found she didn’t like it at all. She thought it was creepy.

  She remembered a poem they had read at school, by Shelley, about the futility of human endeavour. Look at my works, ye Mighty, and despair! That had been Shelley’s view of things and for the first time she understood exactly what he’d been saying. He’d been writing about Rameses, the Egyptian pharaoh, the most powerful king in his world. All his glory, his victories, his buildings … But when Shelley wrote the poem nothing remained of the pharaoh’s triumphs, the proud buildings erected to honour him, only the desert sands stretching away to an empty horizon. He had been telling his readers not to be fooled by a man’s glory, that in the scheme of things even the most powerful was not important at all.

  Tamsyn thought that was a cop-out. Every individual still had to make what they could of their life, without ever thinking they were smarter than they really were.

  That wasn’t always easy, as Angus, the irritating Scot, proceeded to demonstrate on their way back to Agra as he tried to link Akbar’s decision to build his capital on a site bereft of water with political decisions with which Angus personally disagreed in the second half of the twentieth century.

  Tamsyn, adept at shutting her ears, snoozed.

  The following day, as she left on the next stage of her journey around the Subcontinent, she headed through the blistering heat of the Punjab plain to Delhi’s Palam airport, where she was catching a plane north to Kashmir. The French boy had wanted her to cancel her trip to the mountains and go with him to Madras instead, but she wasn’t in the least in love with him and had said no.

  It was in the concourse of the airport, after she’d checked in, that she met Grant Drake and his daughter Esmé.

  She saw them without registering and it was only when the man approached her, smiling, and said they’d seen each other the previous day, that she realised they were the couple she had seen when she had first arrived at Fatehpur Sikri.

  ‘Only at a distance, but I’m reasonably certain it was you. Am I right?’

  She took a moment to reply. Yes, it was the man she’d seen at the abandoned city but only now was she able to see him properly. He was older than she was—in his thirties, she thought. He was around six feet tall, perhaps a little more, and strongly built, with a deeply tanned face, black hair, and eyes as green as the ocean. The lines in the corners of his eyes were white where the sun had not reached them. He was wearing a white shirt and faded blue trousers, and Tamsyn decided he wasn’t the sort of man any woman would forget in a hurry, with a body where she could detect the bones, strong and well shaped, beneath the skin.

  She smiled. ‘You’re right. I saw you there, too.’

  ‘What did you think of it?’

  She hesitated. ‘Not sure. I thought it was weird. Why build a city where there’s no water?’

  ‘Hubris? Or maybe there was water there once? But there isn’t any now. In some ways it’s the exact opposite of the Taj. The Taj soars. It shows us the majesty of the human spirit. Fatehpur Sikri is remarkable only for its vanity. It stands not for majesty but the ruin that awaits anyone too proud to know their own limitations.’

  His words rang true; Tamsyn found herself becoming fascinated by this man. The faint quiver in her stomach was unlike anything she had known before.

  ‘Where are you off to now?’

  A friend had told her about a land far in the north. A land of indescribable beauty, the friend had said, of snow-clad mountains and lakes as green as emerald, of gardens drenched with flowers, of veiled women and the silence that only the mountains can give. Tamsyn had liked the sound of that and made her plans accordingly.

  ‘Kashmir,’ she said.

  ‘My daughter and I are going there, too. We go up for two weeks every year at this time. Have you been there before?’

  ‘No. This is my first time in India.’

  ‘You are travelling alone?’

  That hadn’t been her intention but at the last moment Rosemary’s mum had fallen sick and she’d had to cancel her trip.

  ‘Yes,’ Tamsyn said.

  ‘Very courageous.’

  ‘Just how things worked out.’

  ‘You’ll love Kashmir. It’s very beautiful. A man called Amir Khusrau said “If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.” And he was right.’

  ‘I’ve been looking at the Taj Mahal,’ she said. ‘That’s very beautiful, too.’

  Oh God. She could have eaten her stupid words; everyone knew the Taj was one of the most beautiful buildings in the world; it hardly needed her approval. And of course she’d been looking at it: why else would she have been in Agra?

  Yet he did not seem to think she was stupid at all, and she was grateful.

  ‘You are fortunate to have seen it while you’re still young enough to appreciate it.’

  ‘You mean older people can’t?’

  ‘Not at all. But it’s good to have the chance to see it early in our lives because it g
ives us an idea of the potential of the human spirit. It makes us feel good to know that human beings are capable of creating such beauty.’

  So great to hear him say ‘us’ rather than ‘you’, sharing his feelings with her rather than talking down at her. Her stupid remark still embarrassed her but she didn’t feel threatened by him. She’d had her share of boyfriends, nothing serious, mostly about the same age as herself. Boys she could laugh with, and sometimes at, with no one taking themselves or each other in the least seriously. This man was different. For a start he was a lot older, another generation, almost, and there was a weight of experience about him that was new to her. Studying him again—hopefully not too obviously—she felt once again the quiver in her stomach, stronger now.

  He turned, beckoning to his daughter, and she came to join them.

  ‘My name is Grant Drake and this is my daughter Esmé.’

  It turned out that Esmé was seven, tall for her age and with her father’s build. She had light, olive-coloured skin and black hair, and might have passed as a child from the Mediterranean had it not been for her distinctive Indian eyes and the lilting accent that Tamsyn was charmed to hear carried a distant echo of what might have been Welsh.

  ‘I call her my Mughal princess,’ Grant said.

  ‘Are you coming to Kashmir with us?’ Esmé asked.

  ‘It looks like it.’

  ‘That will be so nice. You must sit with us on the plane, isn’t it?’

  ‘If there’s a seat. And if your father has no objection.’ She turned to Grant. ‘You say I’ll love it but I really have no idea of the place. What can I expect when I get there?’

  ‘Beauty. Coolness. Mountains and emerald-coloured lakes. Flowers everywhere you look. Esmé and I could show you round, if you like.’

  She thought she’d like that very much but wasn’t willing to say so. Not yet. The attraction had been both powerful and immediate yet she told herself to be careful. She hardly knew this man and instant crushes had never been her scene; she’d seen too many of her friends come unstuck because of them.

  It would be good to have a guide who knew the place but she wasn’t a fool; Grant Drake might be nice but he was still a man and she knew that sometimes men expected something in return for favours given. Was this one of those times? She thought it might be. Next question: did she care if it was?

  Kashmir, that far country her friend had described, of snow-clad mountains and green lakes, of flower-filled gardens, of veiled women and silence? To see such a place with this man? To be with him? Favours received, favours given … Might it not be one adventure piled on top of another? Her first visit to places so far unexplored?

  If she accepted his offer, she knew very well how it might end up. Aussie traveller gives herself to stranger. Was she really thinking of taking such a huge step? A man she barely knew?

  She slammed the gate on the idea. No. Too soon. She would wait.

  ‘A kind offer,’ she said. ‘Let’s see how things work out.’

  Then she thought that, by dodging the issue for the moment, she could be sending him a signal that she might later change her mind. Oh God, she thought, why did everything have to be so complicated?

  ‘Of course.’ Grant was watching her. He didn’t seem in the least put out. ‘Whatever you want.’

  The tannoy boomed incomprehensibly.

  ‘Time to board,’ Grant said.

  CHAPTER 7

  Esmé took Tamsyn’s hand. ‘Come with me. We will board the plane together.’

  She was not in the least bit shy but chatted happily as they found their seats, demanding Tamsyn sit next to her on the flight, so Tamsyn ended up sitting between Esmé and Grant.

  Passengers were thrust back in their seats as the aircraft accelerated down the runway. It surged into the air, climbing swiftly, the rising foothills a map unrolling beneath them.

  Grant asked where she was staying.

  ‘In Srinagar. The Happy Neighbours hostel, it’s called, in the Ishbar Nishat district. Wherever that is.’

  ‘You should stay on a houseboat,’ Esmé told her. ‘That’s the best. On the lake.’

  ‘Are you staying in a houseboat?’

  ‘Oh yes. We stay in the same one every year. It’s run by Daddy’s friend Aziz. Aziz has lots of children and two wives.’

  ‘Two wives?’ Tamsyn said.

  ‘He can only afford two. Aziz is a Muslim so he’s allowed to have four but the snag is he has to treat them all the same. He doesn’t think it’s fair. Do you think it’s fair?’

  What Tamsyn thought was that it was a subject best left alone. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Oh look,’ Esmé said, pointing through the plane’s window. ‘See the mountains.’

  Tamsyn looked and saw they were flying over a vast landscape of snow-covered peaks, massed together and extending as far as she could see.

  ‘I’d like to take a photograph of that.’

  ‘Not allowed,’ Grant said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Militarised zone. A strategic area. Taking photographs isn’t allowed.’

  Tamsyn stared at him. ‘They’re just mountains. What’s strategic about a mountain?’

  ‘I suppose it depends where the mountain is,’ Grant said. ‘When they had partition, Nehru grabbed Kashmir for India but the people there are mostly Muslim so they think they should be part of Pakistan.’

  Tamsyn knew nothing about politics and cared less. What had politics to do with mountains and lakes?

  But Grant went on. ‘Nehru was a great man but he was wrong about Kashmir. There’ll be trouble down the track because of his vanity.’

  ‘But not today?’ she said.

  ‘Not today and not tomorrow,’ he agreed. ‘But sometime down the track. Anyway, that’s the law and you’ll get into trouble if you break it.’

  Tamsyn thought it was a stupid law but she was a tourist and certainly had no intention of falling out with the authorities, so she buttoned her lip.

  Grant, watching her, smiled. He said: ‘You surely don’t have a problem with that?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course I don’t.’ But inside herself a small voice said:

  The idiocy of bureaucracy

  Drives all of us to drink.

  She wasn’t game to say it, though: she’d quite taken to this stranger, but a stranger he still was.

  She’d always had fun with rhyming couplets, wordplay of that sort. It was something that kept her amused, encapsulating impressions in the razored sharpness of words. She saw pages of advertisements in newspapers, or on street placards, and there the words were, formed without conscious effort.

  Of course it pays to advertise

  They wouldn’t do it otherwise.

  A trick of the brain; unimportant, but it amused her to do it. She turned her head and began to chat to Esmé.

  ‘Where do you go to school?’

  ‘The convent school in Kasauli,’ she said.

  Tamsyn had never heard of Kasauli.

  ‘Is Kasauli in Kashmir?’

  ‘In Himachal Pradesh,’ Esmé said.

  Tamsyn had never heard of Himachal Pradesh, either. ‘Do the nuns teach you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What subjects?’

  ‘English, French, science, maths, Hindi.’

  ‘What are your favourites?’

  ‘Maths and science. I want to be an engineer when I grow up, like Daddy. Trouble is, those are Sister Benedict’s subjects.’

  ‘Is she a bad teacher?’

  ‘She is a good teacher but she is very strict and smacks our hands with a ruler if we don’t behave ourselves.’

  ‘Do you get smacked?’

  Esmé giggled, eyes dancing. ‘All the time.’

  ‘Are you really so bad?’

  ‘I am very terrible,’ Esmé said.

  There was laughter in the air between them, a silken noose drawing them together.

  ‘When I was your age, the teachers thoug
ht I was terrible, too,’ Tamsyn said.

  ‘And were you?’

  Tamsyn leant down, whispering in Esmé’s ear, ‘Worse than you can imagine.’

  ‘I am thinking this is all one big story you are telling me,’ Esmé said. But she was secretly delighted, Tamsyn saw.

  The engine note changed, the plane’s nose tilted; soon they would be on the ground. Tamsyn turned to Grant.

  ‘I am sorry. I’ve rather ignored you.’

  ‘I was listening. It was delightful to watch the two of you chatting together. Just what she needs.’

  ‘She is a delightful girl.’

  ‘I think so, too,’ Grant said.

  They smiled at each other and that was a good feeling, too.

  The mountains were gone, the plane losing height rapidly now. Looking past Esmé’s neat head, Tamsyn glimpsed through the window a wide expanse of water, with lines of what she supposed must be houseboats. Small craft were moving on what Grant had told her was called Dal Lake, which was indeed green rather than blue, with a scattering of tree-clad islands. The lake vanished, replaced by a grassy meadow fringed by poplars. A succession of buildings sped past. A jolt. They were down.

  It was June, the heat on the plains unbearable, but here in the hills the air was fresh and clear and the first thing Tamsyn saw when they came out of the airport was a huge clump of turquoise-blue irises standing tall and welcoming at the side of the road.

  Grant and Esmé got into a taxi. ‘Enjoy your stay,’ Grant said.

  A friendly smile; a wave. They were gone.

  She had a sense of loss as she watched them drive away. Grant Drake: such a man. Esmé, his daughter: so pretty, so full of life.

  There had been no more suggestion of showing her around; he’d made the offer and she thought he was not a man to ask twice. If she’d wanted him as a guide, she’d have had to say so. And she had not.

  She breathed the scent of flowers, the freshness of the mountain air. A shimmer of white along the horizon hinted at snow-clad peaks, half-hidden in haze.

  A ramshackle bus, yellow as butter, was waiting outside the terminal building.

  She spoke to the driver. ‘You go to the city?’