Where Earth Meets Sky

by Annie Murray

  ‘Settle down, you little wild cat.’ She could only just hear him, sounding smug and powerful, through the thick wood. ‘You’re not coming out – not until I say so.’

  ‘You can’t keep me in here,’ Lily spat at the door. There was no lock so how did he think he was going to stop her getting out? ‘I’m not your chattel to push around. I’ll come out whenever I like!’

  ‘Oh, that’s what you think, my pretty little tiger. We’ll soon see to it that you don’t come out of there except with my express permission.’

  ‘I’m not staying here!’ With a supreme effort she quietened her tone, though the anger she felt with him, the filthy old sod, almost choked her. After her night with Sam, after all Sam meant to her and had made her feel, the thought of Ewan McBride and the way she had serviced him sickened her. Never again was she going to let any man treat her like that!

  ‘Ewan – you’re being a bit harsh.’ She spoke calmly, seductively. ‘I told you, I haven’t been with any other man. What man would there be, for goodness’ sake, when I never see anyone? Just come in here and we’ll talk about it. I’ll make you feel better.’

  ‘Don’t you come that one.’ He still had a firm hold on the door and she heard him shouting for Prithvi, whose voice Lily heard a moment later. Dr McBride issued some abrupt order to her in Hindustani and she was gone again.

  A quarter of an hour passed while Lily pleaded, struggling every now and then with the handle, and the doctor held the door fast. She heard a voice outside and thought, Surely Jane must be back from her walk now? But she realized it was Stephen.

  ‘Miss Waters has been taken ill,’ she heard the doctor say. There came a murmured reply from Stephen and that was all.

  Soon she heard another voice, male and native. There was a clink of tools being put down, then a drill. In a moment Lily realized, to her horror, what was happening.

  ‘No!’ she screamed through the door. ‘You can’t! You can’t just lock me in here! For God’s sake, this is too much, Ewan – let me out! Oh, please, let me out!’

  She was sobbing now as he held the door cruelly closed and she could hear bolts being screwed into the door, one top, one bottom, and finally the rasp of them as they were pushed home.

  ‘There!’ Ewan McBride called to her. ‘Now you’re mine all right, my Lily. And don’t you forget it!’

  And then the footsteps went away and it was all quiet.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Lily sank down on the edge of the bed, trying to take in what Ewan McBride had done.

  He couldn’t really mean it! She had known the doctor wanted to have her in his control but she had never dreamed he would go as far as this. Surely he’d let her stew for an hour or so and then come and let her out? She’d still be able to get to Sam this afternoon if she was patient. And if he didn’t come and release her, she’d find a way out, of course she would!

  At first she was full of hope, almost light-hearted and still not believing. She crept to the door and turned the handle.

  ‘Oh no you don’t, Lily, my love. Don’t think you’re going to get away with it.’

  She sprang back, heart pounding. Lord above, was he still out there, guarding her? The house was quiet and she had assumed he had gone away to begin on breakfast and work as on a normal day, when all the time he had been waiting, silently, outside her door. For the first time she felt a cold plunge of fear. Surely, sooner or later he’d have to go and attend to his patients?

  In stockinged feet she tiptoed to the window and looked out over the majestic grey hills bathed in early-morning sunshine. In the yard of the school below the children were doing their morning drill and she could hear the slap of their feet as they ran round and the gong beating time. Below the window was the steep drop. What if she really needed to get out, if the doctor kept her in here all afternoon? The mood he was in made her realize that she had no idea what he might do. What if she couldn’t see Sam? The thought was too terrible. No – she was going to find a way out.

  She thought about knotting the bed sheets. If she tied the sheets to the window frame, would she be able to climb down? But she knew the back of the house. There was nowhere to climb down to, only the drop many feet to the shrubbery surrounding the schoolyard. She prowled the room. What other way out was there? It did not take long to realize that there was only the door and the window. Other than that the room was completely sealed. Suddenly tired, chilly, she sat on the bed again. She’d find a way, she told herself. She was not going to let him defeat her! What she must do was wait until he must surely have to go away and get someone else to let her out. Prithvi would help her, of course she would. In the meantime she would wait quietly. A nap would pass the time. Lying down on the bed, weary from a night with so little sleep, she cuddled her pillow, longing for Sam.

  It was half past ten when she woke, cold and low with an insistent ache in her bladder. At least there was a chamber pot in the room, and she was able to relieve herself, but this did not help with the fact that she was now hungry and needed breakfast. The buoyancy of her mood earlier had completely gone and she sat hugging herself, feeling chilly and desperate. Did he want her to beg, was that it? Would he let her out if she went and pleaded pitifully? She hated the thought of having to grovel to him, but she was already humiliated by being locked up in here. She saw everything very starkly now. This was simply an extension of the humiliating way he had used her all along. And why had she let him? In exchange for pretty dresses and security and, if she was honest, for the sense of feminine power it had given her. She felt disgusted with herself. But that time was no more. All that mattered now was that she get out and be able to be with Sam for these precious hours before they were parted again, and Ewan McBride was not going to stop her!

  ‘Ewan – are you still there?’ She held her ear against the door, trying to sense his presence. There was no reply. Once again she tried the handle, straining vainly and with increasingly frantic impatience against the bolts, but the door was well and truly secured. There was no reply from outside.

  Lily felt a surge of hope. If he’d gone out on his rounds, surely she could get someone else in the house to let her out?

  ‘Help!’ she shouted. ‘Can someone help me? Prithvi, Prithvi – are you there? Mrs Das? Is there anyone there? Let me out, please!’

  She shouted until she was hoarse and then stopped to listen, but there was still no response. The doctor really had gone, she realized, and it sounded almost as if everyone else in the house had as well. Her shouting was completely in vain.

  ‘Oh, please, please . . .’ she finished in a whisper, sinking to her knees by the door. The tears came then, at being locked in and left here, so powerless. She curled up, rocking herself until the emotion had exhausted itself, then got up, draggingly, and went to the bed where she lay down again. She told herself to be calm. The morning was only half gone. It was hours before she was due to meet Sam and the doctor would come back at tiffin time, calmer and seeing sense. He would have to make sure she was fed at some time, and then, somehow, she would make sure she got out. She had to!

  Lying on the bed, she strained her ears to hear the sounds of the house. Distantly she heard doors open and close, but no one came near. There was no sound of Mrs Das sweeping, or Prithvi humming. They must have been told to keep away. She lay thinking longingly of Sam. The minutes dragged past with appalling slowness: eleven o’clock, twelve. The gun boomed across from Gun Hill signalling midday. Lily sat up, driven to an agony of impatience. Was Dr McBride intending to starve her to death? Surely someone would come now?

  But another half-hour passed, and nothing. She was very thirsty and there was nothing to drink except the remains of some water in her pitcher for washing. She hesitated to drink it. It might make her ill – but her health had been exceptionally good since she had been India. She poured water into the glass on the washstand and drank deeply, then used a little more of the water to have a wash. After this purposeful activity it was almost one
o’clock. All she could think of was that in two hours she must set out to go to the Fairfords’ house and meet Sam.

  At one o’clock she heard the bolts being drawn back and she leaped up from the bed, hoping desperately to see Prithvi, bringing tiffin for her, and she could beg her for help and everything would be all right. She could hurry down the road to Sam, even if too early.

  ‘Glad to see me, are you?’ the doctor said.

  His voice was low, full of a controlled triumph. He was carrying a tray on which there was a small pot of tea, a plate of bread and butter and a boiled egg with a white shell. Balancing it on one hand he closed the door, then put the tray down on the small table near the window. In that split second Lily thought of running for the door, getting it open again, but then he had turned to her and it was too late. He saw the direction of her glance.

  ‘You don’t want to be running away, do you now, Lily, dear?’ He spoke sweetly, affording himself the pleasure of being kindly since he knew he had the upper hand. Making sure he was between the door and Lily, he came towards her until he was intimately close, looking down into her eyes, laying his hands heavily on her shoulders. Lily controlled herself so that she did not recoil. She knew that he was in a state beyond anything she had seen before and that it was vital for her to behave calmly. She’d do anything she could to get herself out of this situation and regain her freedom.

  ‘Why would you want to run away from me?’ He sounded genuinely wounded now. ‘I’ve done so much for you, my Lily. I’ve fed and clothed you, loved you, given you a good life. You’re my little Lily and I don’t understand why you’d want to go running after other men like Duncan McCluskie. What has Duncan to charm you?’

  ‘Nothing, Ewan.’ She looked up earnestly at him. That at least was true. She found Duncan McCluskie even more repellent than Ewan McBride. ‘You’ve made a mistake, really you have. I don’t know why you’ve let this idea grow in your mind when you know I’ve always been here when you’ve needed me. You mustn’t get so upset about things that are only your imagination and nothing else.’

  ‘You mean I’m yours – that I mean something to you?’ Suddenly he sounded pathetic.

  ‘Yes.’ She forced as much sweet sincerity into her voice as she could muster. ‘Of course you do. You’ve always been so kind and generous to me, dear, and I shall always be so grateful to you.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. ‘I’m your little Lily, aren’t I? No one else’s.’

  The doctor stared down at her in silence and she thought for a second she had won him over, but then his eyes narrowed.

  ‘You’re a wily young minx, aren’t you?’

  ‘Whatever d’you mean?’ she asked, in a tone of injured innocence.

  ‘Where . . . did . . . you . . . go?’ As he said each word he squeezed her shoulders painfully hard as if trying to wring the truth out of her. ‘You came in this morning with the look of a lover, Lily. I’m no fool – you can’t hide it from me. And I’m not going to let you out of here until I get the truth.’

  ‘You’re hurting me!’ Lily felt like crying but she wasn’t going to break down in front of him. ‘I’ve told you, I went for a walk, that’s all. The dawn was lovely, and . . .’

  ‘You little liar!’ He slapped her hard round the face, his own contorting with rage. Lily cried out. The sting of it was very sharp and she felt a jarring all along her jaw. ‘You stand there, lying to me grossly, wantonly, like that! I thought if I could get out of you a sweet word of truth and apology I might think about letting you out some time today. But I can see I was fooling myself. You won’t be going anywhere – not today, not ever, if you don’t learn to stop lying and tell me the truth!’

  Dr McBride gave her a contemptuous shove which sent Lily backwards so that she almost fell on to the bed, and he slammed out of the room. She heard the bolts being rammed furiously into place and his footsteps fading along the passage.

  Lily sank to her knees by the bed and buried her face in the covers. How was she ever going to get out of here to see Sam? Her whole being was full of urgency, the need to fly to him. It was now the only thing that mattered. And the doctor seemed to be almost unhinged with jealousy and suspicion. Would she even get out of here today? She buried her head in the covers and sobbed with rage and frustration.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  After her meal, Lily’s spirits recovered for a time. She felt more optimistic. Of course he couldn’t keep her here! As soon as his own tiffin was over he’d come and insist that she accompany him on one of their walks. At least then she would be out of the house.

  Desperate plans hatched in her mind. She would set off with McBride and somehow give him the slip as they passed through the bazaar. Or she would simply run away from him, straight to Zinnias and Sam!

  But as the minutes passed, the clock ticking loudly and ringing out the quarter hours, and there was no sound of footsteps out in the passage, once more she was full of desperation. Half past one, two o’clock. The school below on the hill went quiet. How the minutes dragged as she alternately sat and then paced the room, able to think only about Sam expecting her, looking out for her. Two-thirty came and went and when the time arrived when she should have been setting off she was in an agony of need. He would be waiting for her and think she had decided to let him down!

  For the first time she lost control of herself. Weeping, she hammered on the door, bruising her fists as she raged at it.

  ‘Let me out! Someone come and get me out, please! Oh, please don’t leave me in here any more! Prithvi? Jane? Help me!’

  Still no one came. There was only silence from the house. Three o’clock. Sam would be waiting. She knew that kind of expectation he would be feeling, the way she felt every time she waited to see him. And she would not come. The next two hours passed in an agony as she thought of the Fairfords’ bungalow, imagining what was happening there and what Sam might be feeling and thinking of her. If only she could get a note delivered to him, but there was no one she could ask! Once more she wept helplessly.

  By the late afternoon, as the sunlight faded to coppery pink, she had sunk into a state of lassitude. She had eaten very little that day, she had only been able to relieve herself in the chamber pot, which badly needed emptying, and any hopes for the day had been dashed. She thought about all the violent things she would like to do to Dr McBride. Sam was leaving for Bombay to catch his ship in two days and she had already missed a precious afternoon with him, thanks to the doctor! All she could think of now was seeing Sam before he left.

  All night her thoughts span with anxiety. Surely the doctor would come to his senses and let her out in the morning? How was he explaining her absence to the rest of the household? But this was a worry. The title ‘doctor’ commanded such power! He could give them some trumped-up explanation for her absence and no one would even question it, possibly even Jane Brown. Lily felt panic rise in her. What if Dr McBride had really lost his senses and was planning to keep her here for as long as he liked, to play with her?

  The pink dawn brought a new sense of hope and balance. Of course he’d let her out! He came to her with a tray of breakfast, having neglected to give her dinner the night before. Scrambled eggs and toast and a banana fortified her, but he barely spoke, despite her pleas to him to forgive her and let her go, to tell her what he planned to do. Once more the door was closed and the bolts slammed into place.

  The day passed in an agony of uncertainty. Lily sat, half in a trance, or paced the room, losing all sense of time. When the doctor next came in, soon after four o’clock, she had a plan.

  ‘Ewan,’ she said, very gently as he put the tray of tea down. ‘I wonder if you would allow me to do something. As you know, the Fairfords, my employers in Ambala, are here in Mussoorie, but they’ll be leaving tomorrow. You’ve been so kind and generous in letting me spend some time with them but I wonder now if they won’t be thinking me awfully rude for just disappearing without a word. I wondered if I might just go out to see them, per
haps, to say goodbye? Their holiday is almost over and they’ll be going back. Might I, d’you think, just walk out along towards Gun Hill for a little while?’

  He eyed her, as if considering her proposal seriously, and then, as if to a small child, said, ‘We’ll see. Let’s just see how you behave yourself until then, shall we?’

  This gave her a chink of light, of hope, and she dared to ask, ‘I don’t suppose there has been any message for me, has there? A note, perhaps?’

  He poured her tea and handed her the cup. She saw that the soft skin under his eyes looked more puckered than usual with tiredness.

  ‘And who might that be from, Lily?’ He spoke with that teasing, ominous tone again and she could hear how suspicious he was.

  ‘From the Fairfords, of course,’ Lily said brightly. ‘Mrs Fairford has been very kind to me and she was expecting to see me yesterday afternoon. She’s the sort of person who might worry – she might even come to the house to enquire . . .’

  ‘No. Nothing has come for you,’ he said, going to the door.

  ‘Doctor – the chamber pot needs emptying, badly!’ she blurted.

  Silently and with distaste, he took it and brought it back empty. Then, abruptly, he left the room again.

  The rest of the day passed. At times, Lily grew severely agitated and then at others, simply flat and hopeless. She tried to sleep as much as possible, to pass the time so that she could avoid the agony of feelings that came upon her. Sam was leaving tomorrow. She had not seen him and he had evidently not attempted to contact her. Surely the doctor would have challenged her over it triumphantly if any note had arrived? She could hardly bear to imagine what Sam must think of her. That she had been playing with him and had deserted him? And why had he not come to see her? She racked her brains desperately for a way she could get out to see him tomorrow.