by M A Bennett
Shafeen kissed her goodbye, then straightened up and hesitated. ‘Do you think he can hear you?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said gently. ‘I know he can.’
14
It was still boiling hot, so we had lunch in the shade on the veranda table where we had had tea the day before.
The Times newspaper from the morning of Aadhish’s collapse still lay on the table. It was as if no one had had the heart to take it away. I watched Prem, the serving guy, place the cutlery reverently around it, as if it were a holy text. Perhaps the English language in which it was printed, and the centuries-old masthead design of a lion and unicorn, held some sort of mystical power for him, as it did for his master. Shafeen, by contrast, grabbed the paper out of his way, tearing it slightly, and dumped it on the floor, making it easier for the guy to put down the platters from his tray. The food was club sandwiches and fruit salad, such as you might get in a West End hotel. There was nothing on the table that you could have identified as Indian. Shafeen’s dark eyes flicked over the platters. ‘Prem, are there any samosas?’
‘In the kitchen, yes, sahib.’
‘Could you bring them, please?’
‘Yes, sahib. At once.’ Prem stood to attention and saluted Shafeen, as if he were in the British Army. Once Prem had retreated, Shafeen rolled his eyes. ‘There’s another one. Stuck in the rigid ways of the Raj, just like Father.’
I asked, ‘Why is your dad like he is?’
‘How d’you mean?’
I nodded at the Times newspaper, where it had landed on the white decking of the veranda. ‘So … wedded to the idea of the English gentleman. I mean, when you think of his experiences in England … educated at STAGS, a guest at Longcross. I mean, think of how things were for you. You were practically the only person of colour there until Ty came along. Can you remember what the Medievals used to call you?’
‘I’m not likely to forget that,’ he said ruefully.
‘Well, imagine how much harder it must have been for your father. He was there in the sixties, for God’s sake. When Rollo and his Medievals took him to Longcross, he was shot, just like you were. We know that from the game book. So why is he so crazy about everything English?’
‘I don’t know, Greer.’ He sounded irritated. ‘I just don’t know.’
Prem brought the samosas, and I studied Shafeen as he helped himself, pointedly leaving aside all the Western food. Something had changed in him since the temple. It was hard to describe. Not an awakening to India or anything spiritual like that, but rather a … a hardening against all things British. Including, perhaps, me? Shafeen’s whole attitude was summed up in his reaction to the newspaper. Yesterday he’d given it a contemptuous flick with his finger. Today he’d torn it and dumped it on the floor.
He ate in silence and seemed disinclined to talk. But you know me by now – I can never leave anything alone. ‘Do you think it’s weird that your dad never mentioned the de Warlencourts to your mum in … how long have they been married?’
‘Twenty-one years,’ he said shortly.
‘And in all that time he never mentioned the family? Even though they were so involved in that … Tiger Club, which is just up the road?’
‘But they married well after my father knew Rollo. They met thirty years after that 1969 Justitium.’
I ploughed on. ‘But even when you went to STAGS? And then Longcross? And even when Henry fake-died? Not to mention his family name? Not to say, I knew the boy’s father once, you know …’
‘Stop interrogating me, Greer,’ he said testily. ‘I can’t explain it.’
I thought I could. I thought it was all to do with The Secret. I thought that whatever had happened at Longcross in 1969 was so bad that even to mention the de Warlencourt name was too painful for Aadhish. And yet that didn’t explain why he was so adamant that his son should go to STAGS and repeat the cycle over again. It was pretty confusing. But with Shafeen in what I now called ‘tiger mode’, I thought it best not to antagonise him.
I framed my next question carefully, as I really, really didn’t want to offend. ‘Did your dad … choose your mother?’
He drew his brows together in a look I knew well. ‘What do you mean?’
I thought this was a bit unfair. He knew what I meant. He just wanted me to say it. Once again, I got the feeling we were now on different sides. ‘Was the marriage … arranged?’
‘Not this one, no. My father married very late – he could choose for himself. After all, he was nearly fifty.’
There it was again: that parallel with Rollo. The late marriage, the young wife, the one son and heir.
‘I believe he was meant for someone,’ Shafeen conceded, ‘when he was younger. My grandparents had found a wife for him – a young woman of good family.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know, but the match was never made. This was when he was my age, or a bit older.’
Just after he’d been to Longcross.
‘He met my mother much later. She’d been to the university; she had a job. He always told me, Don’t marry an idiot.’
‘Guess we’re not getting married then.’
That made him smile, and suddenly the old Shafeen was back. He put his elbows on the table, put his chin on his hands and studied me affectionately.
I was encouraged and, not willing to push my luck further, I changed the subject completely. ‘What shall we do this afternoon?’ I echoed my breakfast-time question. ‘Do you want to visit your father again?’
‘No.’
He didn’t explain – didn’t have to. As far as he was concerned, that wasn’t his father in the bed. ‘Tourist things then. Show me the sights.’
‘Yes, memsahib.’ He put his palms together in a namaste and bowed obediently. But the gesture wasn’t loaded. The antagonism had gone, and I knew a joke when I saw one.
‘You should really see the Palace of the Winds. It’s pretty interesting. It’s the big pink building we passed in the car – would you like that?’
‘Yes, great.’
‘I’ll give Hari a shout.’
As he pushed his chair back the legs caught on the newspaper. He looked down at The Times for a long moment and I thought he might trample it underfoot. But instead he picked it up and shook it out, remembering perhaps that it was precious to his father. He made to chuck the paper back on the table among the glasses and plates, but then checked himself as a headline caught his eye.
His expression made me go cold, despite the heat. ‘What?’
He turned the paper to face me. Above the main headline, which was something about the economy, there were a couple of smaller headlines. The one he pointed to read:
PEER DIES IN TRAGIC RIDING ACCIDENT
Story page 8
And there was a small picture of Rollo, looking very handsome and smiling his charming smile.
My heart thudded painfully.
‘Turn to page eight,’ I urged.
He flipped the pages with shaking hands. There, on page eight, was a much bigger picture of Rollo, at about the age Shafeen was now, in his full STAGS uniform of white cravat, black Tudor coat and deer-leather belt, all worn over the blood-red stockings. The caption made Shafeen catch his breath – Rollo de Warlencourt, pictured in 1969. But it was Rollo’s face that made me catch mine.
He looked exactly like Henry.
We huddled close to read together: Lord Rollo de Warlencourt, 13th Earl of Longcross, died on Boxing Day following a fall from his horse, it began. Then there was all this CV guff about his birth, his education at STAGS and his time in the army, Foreign Office and House of Lords. Then the last paragraph said:
Lord Longcross’s death comes just a year after the death by drowning of his only son and heir, Henry de Warlencourt, and on the day of the earl’s demise there was a serious fire at his ancestral seat, Longcross Hall in Northumberland. The late earl can indeed be said to have been the unlucky number thirteen of his line.
I exc
hanged a horrified look with Shafeen. ‘So your dad was reading this,’ I said.
He nodded.
‘It must have had a profound effect on him,’ I said slowly. ‘He left half his breakfast and went straight to the Tiger Club.’
‘Yes,’ Shafeen agreed, as if in a dream.
‘But why?’
In answer, he got up from his chair. ‘Let me call Hari,’ he said urgently, and hurried off.
I sat back in my chair, goosebumps forming on my skin.
There was no need for me to wonder where we were going that afternoon.
I knew.
We were going to the Tiger Club.
15
The Tiger Club was much bigger than I’d imagined.
I thought it would be a small, low building, like those clubhouses you see in films like White Mischief and A Passage to India. I’d expected a glorified golf club. But this was quite different to that – all pillared porticoes and frilled archways, splashing fountains and clipped green lawns. It was like a white palace.
It had been a longish drive from the city into the cooler hills, and Hari dropped us at the front steps of the club. ‘Stick around,’ said Shafeen, as if he were in a different kind of movie altogether. ‘We won’t be long.’
As we got out of the car I looked again at what Shafeen was wearing. He’d told me after lunch that we’d need to wear formal dress to be admitted to the club, so I’d put on one of the dresses that had, Longcross-style, found its way into my wardrobe. This one was a white linen tea dress, with a kind of spriggy pattern on it, and it wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Merchant Ivory movie.
Shafeen, however, had surprised me. When I’d met him at the car, he was wearing an outfit I’d never seen before. He had on a silk jacket with a faint shadow of a paisley pattern on it, with no collar and buttons down the front. The jacket – which was more of a coat and went down to his knees – was tied with a sash of the same material, with a soft gold fringe on the ends. He wore it over a pair of loose cream-coloured trousers. It was a coral-red colour, not designed to blend into the background. He looked, of course, absolutely gorgeous, and back at his home in Jaipur he’d fitted in just fine, looking absolutely right. Here, in front of the steps of the Tiger Club, he stood out like a tiger in the snow. It made me slightly uncomfortable to think that in my English tea dress I fitted in better than he did. I saw a few members come down the steps. They were wearing light trousers and blazers even in the heat, and both wore an identical tie of black and orange stripes. I recognised it. It was the one Shafeen had used to tie up his trousers the previous evening. Then, to eat dinner in his own house, he had dressed like the quintessential English gentleman. Here, at the Tiger Club, he’d gone full-on Indian prince. The club members reached the bottom of the steps. They glanced at me and nodded politely but stared, in that discreet British way, at Shafeen.
And then I knew that, of course, he’d done it on purpose.
As we walked up to the door I had a sudden qualm. ‘Do you think they’ll let you in?’ I remembered the cringeworthy moment at the STAGS Club in London when he’d been forced to put on the club tie. He obviously did own a club tie in this instance, but had pointedly left it at home.
His lips twisted in a humourless smile. ‘I’d like to see them try to stop me.’
But they didn’t try. Our entry into the club was as smooth as it could be. In fact, it was unexpectedly smooth.
There was a man wearing the club tie standing by the doorway. He was tall, standing ramrod straight, and sported an impressive gingery moustache. He stepped forward as we entered.
‘Mr Jadeja, isn’t it?’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Colonel Sebastian Moran, undersecretary of the Tiger Club. Might I enquire after your father?’
Shafeen, obviously a bit freaked by this, took the hand in a bit of a daze. ‘He is stable, thank you. We’re told his recovery is just a matter of time.’
I stole a glance at Shafeen. Had he been here before? How many times, if this guy recognised him so readily?
The colonel smiled. ‘I’m jolly glad to hear it. We were so distressed when he fell ill on these very premises. I assure you we acted as swiftly as we could.’
This was not what I’d expected at all. I’d expected Shafeen to be belittled, even cowed, in this environment. But this guy was really pushing the boat out, being mega polite and deferential. He even seemed a bit afraid. Then it clicked. He was probably worried about his precious club being sued.
Shafeen said, ‘Can you tell me a bit about what happened last Wednesday?’
The colonel pressed his hands together as if in prayer – a very English prayer, rather than a namaste. ‘I regret that I wasn’t here that day. But if you’ll allow me, I’ll fetch our club secretary. He’ll be able to furnish you with a little more detail. Always better to talk to the organ grinder rather than the monkey, what?’ By which I figured that he meant we ought to talk to his boss. He picked up a phone at his little desk, which I could swear was made of ivory, and made a whispered call.
While he was phoning I looked around. We were in a long sort of hallway that opened out right to the back of the building. Through a distant arch I could see palm trees swaying in the breeze and misty blue mountains beyond. The passageway reminded me of a school: there was a polished teak floor instead of carpet, and on the walls there were a whole load of framed photographs, like when you see all the year groups of classes gone by. When the colonel had replaced the receiver he marched back over to us. ‘Could I offer you some refreshment while you wait?’
Shafeen looked at me. ‘Greer?’
‘Sure,’ I said, shrugging in a manner which I was pretty sure the colonel would deem unladylike. But he merely indicated the archway to the outside and said, ‘If you’d like to wait on the veranda, the secretary will be with you shortly.’
Once he’d gone, Shafeen turned to me. ‘What do you think?’
‘Well, the place is great, of course,’ I said. ‘But I’ve seen nothing that explains why your father rushed up here the minute he found out about Rollo’s death.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Unless he just came up here because this place has such a connection with the de Warlencourts. Maybe Rollo came here himself once?’
‘But if he hated Rollo,’ I argued, ‘and his obituary just brought back terrible memories of 1969, then why seek the family out?’
We wandered towards the daylight, but I couldn’t help looking at all the photos on the wall as I went. They were all in black and white, all in gilded frames, and they told a story of a world gone by.
They imprinted themselves on my mind like film stills – all snapshots of scenes lost in time, featuring actors wholly unfamiliar to me.
Except one.
One of the pictures replicated itself in a flash of memory.
I had seen it before.
‘Shafeen,’ I said, low-voiced and urgent, never moving my eyes from the picture. ‘Come here.’
He turned back and we looked at the picture together.
It was of a blond guy, with an impressive bristling moustache, wearing a white regimental uniform covered in medals. At his shoulder stood a turbaned boy, cooling the guy with an enormous feather fan.
‘Who is it?’ Shafeen asked.
‘Well, I don’t need to tell you the family name, do I?’ The resemblance was there for all to see.
‘No. I can see it’s a de Warlencourt. But who? It can’t be Rollo, unless he was a time traveller.’ He pointed to the frame. ‘It says 1935.’
‘That,’ I said, ‘is good old Monty de Warlencourt himself. That’s the exact same picture I saw in Louis’s bedroom in Honorius, d’you remember? The night that Cass threw up.’
He peered closer. ‘Colonel Monty to you. Look at the number of stripes on his shoulder.’
Another colonel. I looked into Monty’s eyes as he arrogantly stared down the lens. In common with all the de Warlencourt men, he seemed to have no doubt of his place in the world, no
r of his importance in it. His direct gaze gave me a sudden thought. ‘Do you think your dad had his attack when he saw this picture? It might have been a bit of a shock to see a reminder of Rollo staring at him. Monty was Rollo’s dad after all.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I mean, he’s not that much like Rollo.’
Shafeen was right. Colonel Monty had a certain resemblance to all of them – Rollo, Henry and Louis – in that strange way families have; the same genetic material, jumbled up to give a slightly different combination of features. But he was no more like Rollo than the rest.
‘And by that logic,’ said Shafeen, ‘if he was going to keel over in front of a picture, why come all the way up here to do it? Why not do it on our veranda at breakfast, when he saw an actual picture of Rollo in The Times?’
‘You’re right,’ I conceded, and we left Colonel Monty hanging and wandered out onto the veranda. It was lovely and airy out there, and there were comfortable chairs and tables set in the shade, but Shafeen seemed too edgy to sit. He did his tiger pacing thing while I stood and looked out at the view. I half expected to see a stripy form emerge from the undergrowth, his pace matching Shafeen’s, but the only wildlife to be seen flew high above the mountains. Strange birds wheeled and dipped on the thermals in their own hypnotic rhythm. They must have been massive, to be visible at this distance.
‘What are those big birds?’
Shafeen stopped pacing and stood by me to look. ‘Vultures.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ he said, squinting against the sun. ‘They’re scavengers. If they are circling like that it means something has killed something else far below. Somewhere the hunter’s found the hunted.’
‘Lovely,’ I said.
‘Yes. They feed on dead flesh,’ he said with a certain amount of relish. ‘Contrary to what Walt Disney would have us believe, they don’t hop around singing Beatles songs. They are not nice birds.’
