‘You two girls look after each other while I’m away, hear?’
At the gate he looked at Tamsyn, held both her hands in his.
‘You are my life. When I come back …’
But he did not finish the sentence; like Tamsyn, he did not believe in tempting providence.
‘I know,’ she said.
All her life and breath were in those two words. Esmé’s hand in hers, she watched as Grant walked across the tarmac to the waiting plane. As the darkness of the plane’s open doorway swallowed him. They waited, unspeaking, until the plane was in the air, heading away, growing small, then smaller still. They went back to the waiting taxi.
The hours passed. And the days. They heard nothing; with the telephone service as it was, they had to expect nothing else.
There were times when the solitude strangled her.
Then, out of the blue, a phone call. There was no telephone on the houseboat but there was a clubhouse building on the shore that had one and at ten o’clock one morning, five days after Grant had left, a boy came out in a canoe to tell them Drake sahib would be phoning in an hour.
Zip, zap, running around, finding Esmé, telling her to hurry up, telling herself to hurry up, looking for her boots, hauling them on, calling Aziz to have the shikara brought round, dragging on the heavy coat with the fur collar, clambering aboard …
‘Golly, I am glad Daddy is not phoning us every day.’ Esmé was quite put out by all the excitement.
Tamsyn ignored her. Hurry up, she told the boatman silently. Get moving.
After all the commotion, they were early. They sat in the deserted clubhouse office and twiddled their toes, waiting. I’ll bet that damn telephone line is down again, Tamsyn told herself, more aggravated by the minute. Grant, who needed it for his work, had often moaned about how hopeless the telephone system was.
It might have been waiting deliberately to put her in the wrong; exactly at the moment she was thinking they would never hear, the phone rang.
The line, for a miracle, was as clear as clear.
‘Tamsyn? It’s me. Grant. How are you, my darling?’
To hear his voice was like seeing the sun after days of rain.
‘We’re fine. Missing you, of course. And how are you? How’s the job going?’
‘It’s finished. Like I said, there was a derailment. A massive goods train came off, I suspect it was going too fast on a bend. It’s always happening; these drivers never learn to take care. It chewed up two hundred yards of track, on top of an embankment, of all places. The loco rolled; a miracle no one was killed, but sorting it all out was quite a problem. We had to relay the track before we could bring in a heavy crane to lift the wagons. Contents spilt all over. On a busy main line, too. We’ve got traffic backed up halfway to Pakistan.’ He laughed. ‘Delhi was not pleased, I promise you.’
He was exultant, talking so fast Tamsyn could take in only half of what he was saying.
‘When can we expect to see you?’
‘Can’t make it this evening, I’m afraid. But tomorrow at the latest.’
Tomorrow at the latest.
Bliss.
‘Do you want to speak to your daughter?’
‘Of course.’
Tamsyn held the phone out to Esmé.
‘Daddy, Aziz’s cat has had four kittens.’ The words burst out in the child’s excitement. ‘She hid them in the corner of the kitchen boat and won’t let anyone come near. But I’ve seen them. Daddy, their eyes are still shut. Daddy, I went fishing off the deck this morning and caught a carp. It was huge. Daddy …’
Tamsyn wandered off to the doorway and stared across the lake. She couldn’t see The Imperial Palace from there but it was sufficient to know it was there. There, as the future was there, bright and shining in the sun. Tomorrow at the latest. She was so full of love and joy that she could scarcely bear it. She could have danced right there in the entrance to the dignified building. Would have done it, too, had she not thought it might embarrass Esmé. Such a lovely, loveable girl.
The future burnt like a golden flame. Tomorrow at the latest.
Esmé was beckoning to her, holding out the phone.
‘Daddy wants to say goodbye.’
‘Is there really no chance of your getting back tonight?’
‘Afraid not. They’ll be wanting a full report and I shan’t want to work on that when I’m back.’
‘Why’s that? We can manage quite well without you, you know.’
She was smiling, close to tears; she was drowning in love. Manage quite well … Nothing could have been further from the truth than those teasing words.
‘I never doubted that.’ The love in his voice was an echo of her own. Her eyes closed, seeping tears. She could no longer imagine what her life would have been had she not met him. Had she not known … this.
‘Besides,’ he said, ‘I have plans for when I get back.’
‘Shall I need to dress up for them?’
‘Quite the reverse,’ he said.
Oh God. She wondered if he fully appreciated the effect he had on her, even from so far away.
‘I can’t imagine what you mean.’
‘Then I shall have to take the matter in hand, shall I not?’
‘Now there’s a phrase.’
Dying of love. She’d heard the expression; everybody had, but now it was different. Now she knew.
‘I must go,’ Grant said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘We’ll be here.’
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Love you so much.’
He’d hung up before she could reply. She said it aloud, anyway.
‘And I love you.’ Not caring who heard her say it.
Never in the history of the world had a truer word been spoken. She replaced the receiver and went out, Esmé’s hand in hers, to the shining day.
Something woke her. Since she’d been on the houseboat, Tamsyn’s sleep, like the rest of her life, had been close to perfection. Now something woke her, heart pounding. She lay, senses alert, but the night was still. As far as she could tell, there was not a breath of wind, not the murmur of a ripple from the sleeping lake, yet she was so awake she knew that for a while sleep would be hard to find. She got out of bed, put on her boots and the heavy coat. She pulled the coat tightly about her and went up on deck.
The air was like ice, the night clear and still. There was a gibbous moon. No scent of flowers in the winter night. The surface of the lake shining, the snow on the distant mountains a shimmer of silver light. She clutched the rail with both hands, eyes and ears alert. Nothing. Yet unease was in her, like a sickness. She went below and into her cabin. She lay in bed. She did not sleep. Twenty minutes later Esmé opened Tamsyn’s door. She did not come in but stood in the entrance, a waif in a shaft of moonlight shining through the uncurtained window.
Tamsyn sat up, all senses alert. ‘What is it?’
‘I can’t sleep.’
‘Go back to bed, sweetheart. Daddy will be here in the morning. You want to be bright and breezy for him, don’t you?’
Eventually she talked her into taking her doleful face back to bed but Tamsyn found that sleep continued to elude her. She lay in bed waiting for the dawn. A breeze had come up since she’d been on deck. She could hear the liquid murmur of the lake, the mountain country coming softly to life beyond the window.
Inch by inch, the morning came. A chorus of birds, at first barely audible, the volume increasing with the light. Distant voices of boatmen called to one another somewhere across the water.
Daddy will be here in the morning.
She had said it to comfort the child; now she said it to comfort herself.
She showered, brushed her teeth with boiled water, dressed and went into the dining room where Aziz’s older wife was laying the table for breakfast.
‘Coffee, mem?’
‘Thank you.’
She took the fragrant cup over to the stove and sat in an easy chair, feet stretched out towards the heat, and sip
ped the coffee while she listened to the beating of her uneasy heart.
The flight from Delhi was due in at ten forty-five. The taxi got them to the airport fifteen minutes early. There was a saying that watched pots never boil. In much the same way, Tamsyn thought, looking out for an aircraft seemed to guarantee that it would never arrive. Which proved untrue in this case because, only five minutes late, they watched the flight making its approach run across the lake. The plane landed, and the reverse thrust of the turbo-prop engines screamed and faded into silence as the Fokker drew to a stop in front of the terminal building.
Tamsyn and Esmé stood hand in hand as the plane’s door opened and the passengers began to disembark.
A dozen or so figures, dribbling one by one. A gap, then a few more. Then nothing. Grant had not been on the flight. They stared, waiting, willing him to appear, but he did not.
Heart pounding, breath short, terror …
Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. He’s missed the flight, that’s all it is. His work took him longer than he’d expected; no more to it than that. He’ll have left a message at the club. By the time we get back Aziz will have heard when Grant expects to get here.
A blow, nonetheless. They climbed disconsolately into the taxi and drove back. No irises now. A wail of Indian music came from a roadside hut.
Tamsyn had asked the shikara driver to wait so after she’d paid off the taxi it took no more than five minutes for them to get back to The Imperial Palace. As they approached, she saw Aziz waiting for them at the head of the ramp.
‘You see?’ she told Esmé. ‘He’ll have a message from Daddy.’
Esmé was first on the ramp, her laughter a peal of bells as she leapt from the swaying shikara and began running, running towards Aziz with Tamsyn coming fast behind, also laughing, also joyous for the good news she knew would be waiting, already in her mind scolding Grant lovingly for having missed the flight, already imagining the joyful reunion when he finally arrived.
And Esmé slowed. And stopped. And looked uncertainly over her shoulder at Tamsyn, while terror seized Tamsyn’s heart as she saw the tragic expression on Aziz’s face.
‘Aziz? What is it?’
She was barely able to utter the words, her world swaying because of what in that terrible instant she already knew. Cataclysm …
Coldness entered, and the will to confront the worst. To confront and overcome whatever Aziz had to tell her. Her will subdued the frantic leaping of her heart, clamped every portal of her body to protect her from the news that instinct said would be bad, the worst that it could be. The courage of ice came unsummoned to hold her still, hold her upright. Collapse would come later, weeping would come later, but for this moment, the moment of confrontation, the will to bear what must be borne overcame all else.
‘Tell me.’ Her voice, too, was sealed in ice.
‘Oh, memsahib …’
There was a distance holding her apart so that, when Aziz told her what had happened, he was speaking of a stranger in another country, someone she did not know. That, too, would pass, but for the moment it was needed to keep the pain at bay. Pain that would otherwise have been unbearable. Because courage had its limits, ice in time would melt. So Tamsyn Drake heard with dry eyes, dry heart, how on the return journey from the site where Grant and his team had been working, there had been another derailment, the locomotive travelling too fast on a tight bend and leaping the track, dragging the coach containing the maintenance team helter-skelter down the steep embankment in an explosion of steam and flying metal, of broken glass and broken men. Four dead: Grant and three of his crew.
‘When did it happen?’ Tamsyn’s lips were stiff in asking the question.
Sometime in the night, he did not know when, but Tamsyn remembered waking abruptly from sleep. The moon, nearly full, the bitter cold, the surface of the lake shining, the snow on the distant mountains. She had clutched the rail with both hands, feeling the bite of frost in the cold metal. Her eyes and ears had been alert, yet she had known nothing.
Now she knew.
Esmé, now, must be her first concern. The girl whose world was in ruins, clutching her, weeping and barely understanding the tragedy that had struck her.
She held her, kissing her tear-wet face, mouthing meaningless words in an effort to give comfort and peace where neither comfort nor peace was to be found, sensing that she was doing it mainly for Esmé but also for herself, that in trying to comfort the child she was seeking to ease the pain that for the moment she was able to hold at bay but that she knew would eventually overwhelm her.
Esmé was in a state of near-collapse. Holding her upright, arms tight about her, Tamsyn walked into the houseboat’s living room. The room that had given her such joy when she had first seen it now meant nothing, the heat from the pot-bellied stove meant nothing. The lake beyond the window, the mountains beyond the lake—also nothing. Because Grant was dead. Her love, her true love, was dead and nothing in the world could stand against that knowledge. Grant was alive in her heart, he was a part of her being as she knew he would always be, but the physical man was gone. Gone abruptly, from one instant to the next. The sparrow that had flown from the darkness into the hall of her life had flown out again, leaving her empty and alone, and the knowledge was not to be borne.
Aziz had followed her into the room.
‘How did you get the news?’
He told her there had been a message from Esmé’s grandparents in Kasauli. The authorities had contacted them because it seemed the sahib had named them as those to be advised in the event of trouble. It was a very great tragedy and they would already be on their way, Aziz said. He shook his head. ‘I fear it will mean trouble. Trouble for the memsahib.’
‘But what about the … casualties?’ Tamsyn asked. She found she was unable to say the dead.
The railways would take care of that, Aziz told her. They had experience of such matters.
Indeed they had. The woman who had loved Grant Drake more than life knew that better than anyone.
So why were the grandparents coming?
She asked herself the question but already knew the answer. Because this was India and they were Indian. Because Grant Drake had been married to their daughter. Because Esmé was their grandchild. Because Tamsyn had no status, no rights. Their late son-in-law’s widow, yes, but that meant nothing; she was not Esmé’s mother. She was a nobody whose pain was unimportant, a foreigner whose wishes could be disregarded.
It was obvious; they were coming for Esmé. In losing Grant, she was losing Grant’s child.
It was not to be borne. It must be borne.
Desperation said to take the child. Take the child and vanish. But that was nonsense. Not only was it impossible, it was not right. She’d had her brief moment of glory; that was all she would have.
In the meantime, Esmé. She did everything she could to comfort her. She sat with her for hours; she held her close, stroking her hair back from her face, rocking her gently against her breast but saying little because words were meaningless. Esmé was young; in time the pain would pass. Tamsyn believed that, even though she did not believe it would ever pass for her. In terms of days and months, she and Grant had known each other for so short a time yet she had known him, and would continue to know him, all her life. How could anything else be possible? It was the miracle of love, that they should be separate as individuals yet would always be one being until the time beyond time.
In attempting to console Esmé she had succeeded in holding at bay the emotions that were waiting to overwhelm her but when, hours later, she was able to leave Esmé in her cabin, the barriers that had protected her finally broke.
She went into her cabin. She closed the door. She lay on the bed. The tears came. The tears, the sorrow, the longing for the man who had gone from her, the longing for his consoling arms, overwhelmed her. She wanted to die, to be reunited with her love, to end the unbearable heartache. Her clenched fists beat the bed while the tears flooded m
ore and more heavily, a torrent of sorrow without relief or ending.
It was light; then dark. Still the tears flowed. She must get up, for Esmé’s sake. She must; she could not. She could not move from the bed.
Images bedevilled her. Happiness in the Gulmarg snows. Fishing for trout in the bone-hard wilderness. Cooking their catch over a small fire. Exclaiming as the shikara carried them beneath the bridge to nowhere. The glory of the mountain snows under the moon’s cold light. Happiness.
Now there was a word. Happiness: a treacherous word, a siren song leading her to destruction.
And still the tears.
Esmé came: a child, yet mature for her age. A child who understood her sorrow. Who shared it. Now it was the child who sought to console the adult.
They spoke little but shared their tears and, at last, fell asleep on the damp bed in each other’s arms.
In the morning the grandparents arrived. Cold and full of purpose, wasting no time. They had come for the child and the child they would have.
‘I am deeply sorry for you,’ Esmé’s grandmother said. ‘Truly sorry. We are both grieving for you. But the child is Indian and of our blood. It is only right she should come with us.’
She spoke words of sympathy but her manner was implacable. Tamsyn saw she had come prepared for a fight. There was no fight. Dumb with grief, she stood and watched as the shikara carried them away. Esmé had not wanted to go, had wanted very much to stay, but it was no use. The grandmother swept her into the shikara and climbed aboard beside her. The grandfather followed. Esmé waved as the shikara headed for the shore where the taxi would be waiting to take them to the airport, to take Esmé out of Tamsyn’s life. Tamsyn raised her hand and kept it raised but it was no use. Soon the shikara had passed out of sight behind other houseboats.
She had not allowed herself to weep in front of her in-laws. She would not weep before the world, but when she went back to her cabin the tears once again ran down.
Again she felt too weak to move. But now the tears were no longer the desperate expression of outrage and despair they had been before. Violence had gone from her. Sorrow there was and would always be, the sense of loss as poignant as ever, but she thought no more of death. She had loved Grant Drake and loved him still—would love him forever, she believed—but in the physical sense he was gone from her, as his daughter was now gone from her.
Stars Over the Southern Ocean Page 8
