‘You’re hardly alone in that,’ he soothed. ‘But Gerald—I hope he’s been a comfort?’
‘He … he has not been so badly affected as me. He never wanted to marry, you see.’ She felt scorched by her own confession.
‘I see.’ And the dawning comprehension on his face told her that he did.
He reached out for her hand and took it in a strong clasp. ‘I’ll make sure the prisoner who escaped is behind bars very shortly. And that’s a promise.’ It was the best he could do for her, she saw, the only compensation he could offer.
She gave a weak smile. ‘I’m sure you will.’
‘And in the meantime, keep drinking the goji berries. You’re still sleeping well?’
‘I seem to be. Rajiv makes me the drink every night.’
‘That’s good.’ He rose as Dr Lane poked his head around the door. ‘I’ll make sure I keep them coming.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
That evening, she sat in the unyielding cane chair, pretending to read. Gerald had left by the time she’d finally made it back to the bungalow and when they met again at dinner, he’d shown little interest in her earlier absence. The flimsy story she’d concocted around a lack of tongas to drive her from the bazaar seem to have satisfied him. But she wasn’t satisfied. The incident at the Infirmary was still puzzling her. She was mystified that she’d managed to collect two punctures in a short ride to the hospital, and mystified too, at Grayson’s appearance. It was providential that he’d turned up when he did. He’d come for Javinder, he said, and that was plausible enough but he must have been close by for some time. She knew she hadn’t heard a car arrive. And then just when she needed rescue, the very moment she’d fallen from her bicycle, he was there right on cue. It seemed to fit too well the pattern Gerald had been at pains to point out and it was making her wary.
From their first meeting, she’d been charmed by Grayson but had never completely rid herself of distrust. He was vague and evasive and refused to answer her questions directly. The memory of the riot and his battered and blood-stained figure sitting beside her on the hospital bench was still vivid, but no matter how many times she’d gone over the events of that day in her mind, she could not fathom what Grayson had been doing at the parade. She’d been at a distance from the action but it seemed to her that, with Javinder alongside, he’d plunged into the crowd trying to reach the protesters. A District Officer was responsible for administering law in the villages, she knew, but how could he be involved in keeping order in Jasirapur, if that indeed was what he’d been doing?
No, she didn’t completely trust him, and she should have been more reticent today. Instead she’d related the most painful experience of her life: the crumbling of a dream, the loss of a small being for whom she’d already felt unconditional love. Why on earth had she told him? He was young, he was a man, and one not even distantly related to her, yet she’d felt compelled to unburden herself. And he hadn’t disappointed. He had understood, understood even the things she couldn’t say.
Despite that, she kept away from the Infirmary the next day, and for several days following. It was stupid, she knew, but she needed time before she made the journey again. She sent a note to Dr Lane apologising for her absence and assuring him that by the end of the week she would be back at the hospital. In the meantime, she continued to ride out with Anish. She’d grown to love the landscape they travelled on their dawn rides and was always happy to lose herself in the sounds and smells of the Indian countryside. Two days after the contretemps at the Infirmary, Anish arrived at the house very early, but she was already dressed and waiting for him.
It was some time since they’d visited the river but today they intended to attempt a return. He considered her a strong enough rider now, but if she began to feel at all weary, he warned, she was to say and they would turn the horses and head for home. She walked out onto the veranda, impatient to be gone, and saw that Gerald, already in uniform and waiting for his transport, had advanced down the path a short way and was talking with Anish. The two of them had their heads close together in earnest conversation. Momentarily she glimpsed Gerald’s face as he raised it and, even from this distance, she could see the two deep lines raking his forehead. Beside him, Anish’s gestures suggested an increasing frustration. She waited quietly on the veranda, unwilling to interrupt what she thought must be official business, but the men saw her almost immediately and broke off mid-sentence.
‘How are you today?’ Anish greeted her.
‘Feeling fine, thank you.’
She tried not to mind that Gerald was ignoring her. A car had arrived at the end of the lane and her husband was already walking towards it, without bidding her even a brief goodbye. Anish glanced at his friend’s retreating back. ‘Gerald is happy for you to go riding.’
It seemed a strange thing to say. Her husband had most days stood on the veranda, only too pleased to wave her off.
‘I’m glad that something is making him happy.’ She sounded bitter even though she’d not meant to.
‘He has problems, Daisy, and they weigh heavily.’ She knew what they were, of course. Gerald was still in debt and still married to the wrong person. ‘So are you ready for our expedition?’
‘I’m looking forward to it.’
And she was. She felt much stronger now, strong enough to tackle the ride that had given her so much trouble. If she made it to the river in one piece, it would be a small triumph. But well within the hour they’d reached their destination. Without realising, her horsemanship had improved hugely over the weeks and today she’d ridden far more swiftly than she’d ever thought possible. For a while they continued parallel to the river, hearing it lap gently against the muddy banks, and watching from the corner of their eyes several black and white skimmer birds, flying low over the brown water, their bright bills open to scoop up an unwary fish. Anish pointed ahead to a cluster of trees which lay round several deep bends.
‘We’ll make for those. They should give us some shade.’
The sound of laughter came to them, weaving a joyful path through the air. Around the last bend, a party of men and girls were camped by the river’s edge. As Anish and Daisy passed, the group looked up and waved, their faces wide with smiles and their voices raised in fun. A blanket lay between them, plates of cold chicken and glasses of champagne spread across its surface. Two of the girls were lying full length on the grass, their heads in the laps of men dressed in the uniform of army officers. Daisy was astonished by the informality of the scene; she had witnessed nothing like it since coming to India. The girls, she noticed, were extremely pretty—beautifully made up and fashionably dressed. No wonder the men looked happy to be with them.
‘The fishing fleet has departed,’ Anish remarked laconically as they rode on.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s that time of the year. All the marriageable girls have gone back to England and when that happens, the rules relax. Plenty of picnics at dawn, dances in the moonlight, that kind of thing. Plenty of passion too!’
She ignored this tantalising strand to work out who the women might be. ‘I haven’t socialised much since I arrived, I know, but I’ve never seen those girls before.’
‘That’s hardly surprising. They keep a low profile in the cool season when everyone’s daughter or sister or cousin pays us a visit. But once the ladies have left, these girls come out to play.’
‘But who are they?’
‘They’re Eurasian. Not one thing or the other.’
‘And what does that mean?’
‘It means they move in a parallel world. They may live alongside the British but they don’t belong with them. And they don’t belong with Indians either. In fact, they’re despised for being casteless.’
She was shocked at the disdain in his voice. ‘But that’s so sad. They are very lovely.’
‘Lovely they may be, but a gentle warning. You shouldn’t mix with them. They’re considered your social inferior, and you ne
ed to keep a strict distance.’
He gave her a searching look, and she remembered the woman’s crass comment at the Club all those weeks ago. A swift glance back at the girls told her that the lightest of their skins was little darker than her own. Anish’s warning loomed unpleasantly but she felt an impulse to defend the carefree young women they’d ridden past.
‘If they are socially inferior, it doesn’t seem to be a problem for the young men.’
He shrugged. ‘The girls are young and good looking, as you say. And they’re fun. But what they aren’t are future wives, believe me. Marriage with Anglo-Indians is frowned upon and any man who marries one can never hope to become an officer in the Indian Army, or the British Army for that matter. And if he’s ICS, he’ll never rise to the top of that particular tree.’
Daisy digested this in silence. One more, she thought, to add to the list of barriers that people erected to keep themselves safe.
By now, they had reached the shelter of the trees. Anish helped her to dismount and together they found a spot on the almost bare ground, smooth enough to provide a comfortable resting place. Once Daisy had settled herself against a tree trunk, Anish stretched out his long form along the edge of the riverbank, his hand dipping lazily into the slow moving water. Rudolf and his comrade stood patiently beneath the trees a little way off and chewed at what was left of the grass. She looked across at them with affection.
‘It will be a dismal day when the cavalry no longer rides horses.’ Grayson’s words were in her mind but she spoke unthinkingly.
‘Who told you that?’
‘I heard a rumour. I’m not sure where,’ she fudged.
‘India is a very old country and hardly changes. Horses have lasted longer here than almost anywhere and you can see why. Where roads are bad, horses will always be the best means of getting about. But you’re right about the army, things will be different. It will soon be goodbye to these beautiful creatures and welcome to armoured tanks.’
‘You’ll find that hard. You must have been riding most of your life.’
‘In fact, no. Before I joined the cavalry, I rode occasionally, but not very often. My mother hadn’t money for a pony and I could ride only if my cousins visited.’
‘Your cousins must have been rich enough to keep horses then.’ She sounded intrigued.
‘My mother’s family, my uncle, was very wealthy though my mother was not. She was a widow, you see. My father died fighting on the Somme.’ His expression had grown flint hard, all laughter fled.
‘I’m sorry, Anish, I had no idea.’
‘How could you?’
‘But your uncle—he must have been a great support to his sister.’
He didn’t speak for a long time, and when he did his tone was severely clipped, as though he was almost biting off his tongue. ‘Do you know how widows are treated here?’
She shook her head, but his voice told her it must be badly.
‘A woman has no status of her own and when her husband dies, she becomes nothing. Years ago a widow was required to throw herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. Now she dies a more lingering death. She is shunned by society and seen as a drain on her family. Even her shadow is considered bad luck.’
Daisy stared at him. ‘But that’s terrible. How can it be? Who says this should happen?’
Anish smiled thinly. ‘You have a very English perspective, Daisy. Who says? India says. Hindu scripture says. It suggests that widows should spend the rest of their lives without worldly possessions. And that suits their families well, for then they have sole ownership of the dead man’s assets and no responsibility for his widow.’
She could not bring herself to believe this was the truth. ‘If that’s so, how does a widow support herself? Can she work, can she remarry?’
‘Neither. No one will employ her and there is no remarriage. The only recourse for such women is to beg outside the temples. And that makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, being poor is their only reason for being alive. Their poverty becomes their whole world. They must sleep on the floor, eat only one meal a day, dress always in white and have their hair cut short. These things are punishments for losing a husband.’
‘How truly dreadful!’ Daisy felt anger spurt, then a huge sorrow as she realised the full implications of what he’d told her. In an uncertain voice, she asked, ‘And is that what happened to your mother?’
‘My mother found her own escape. You must not imagine she died in penury. Far from it. But did she die in disgrace? Yes.’
‘How is that possible?’
‘Parvati Rana was very beautiful and a beautiful woman can always name her price.’ He ignored Daisy’s gasp. ‘I can’t rail at her choices. They kept me fed and clothed. And they gave me a mother. My father’s family wanted to take me away, but she was tenacious and held fast to me. She made sure I was well educated and she used what influence she had to help me. I owe the fact that I’m a cavalry officer to one of her sponsors. He was married with his own family but I like to think that, in his way, he loved her. It was his money that made me who I am, so I can feel only gratitude to him. And, of course, to her.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she repeated, and she meant it from the depths of her heart.
‘There’s no call for sadness. The old life has passed and, with it, old sorrows. My mother died several years ago and she had me to mourn her.’
‘But your father …’
‘I know little of him. Only that he died early and deserved to.’ There was a new sourness in his voice. She said nothing, waiting for him to explain. At length he said, ‘He was wounded in France and taken to England to recuperate. Then he decided to fall in love with an Englishwoman. Or what he called love.’
‘And your parents’ marriage …?’
‘It was arranged, as most Indian marriages are. It may not have been a happy one. I’ve no idea. Perhaps when Karan Rana was sent abroad to fight, he felt he’d earned the right to break free. Once the war was over, he was going to leave his wife and his child. And he would have done it, too, except the Somme intervened.’
‘Did your mother tell you this?’
‘She would never speak of him. I read it in a letter he’d sent from England. I didn’t discover the truth until I was much older and no longer a child. For years I’d considered my father a hero, a great man who fought for his country and for the Empire. But then I found that letter, and realised he was in fact a little man, a man capable of deserting his wife and child for a prostitute.’
‘Perhaps she wasn’t what you thought her.’ Anish was making no allowance for the vagaries of love, she thought.
‘What else could she be?’ he returned angrily. ‘He was married with a small child and the woman must have known that. What else can you call it but prostitution? And to think that telegram almost destroyed me—the telegram to say that he’d died. Now I’m glad he did. If he’d survived the war, I would have killed him myself. He threw my mother into darkness. No one was there to help her. Not the country he’d fought and died for, not the family he’d left behind. No one.’
Daisy was shocked into silence. It was a dreadful story, and not just a story, for Anish was the living reminder of his mother’s fate. She wondered if this was the first time he’d told his history to another person, and thought that it might be. It made her feel a true friend. She wanted to cheer him, to show her support, her sympathy, but she was wading in deep waters.
At last she said, ‘If India gains her independence, do you think widows will be freed from such cruel expectations?’
‘Unlikely. The two things are quite separate. We have a caste system that won’t change easily. It’s embedded in hundreds of years of tradition and that makes it very strong, stronger even than the one that operates among the British.’
She looked confused, and in a lightened mood he said teasingly, ‘Haven’t you realised yet that you’re part of a caste system?’
‘I’ve never thought of military life in that way.�
�� But perhaps she should have. It might have made sense of the petty discriminations she’d witnessed over the past few weeks.
‘Our two peoples are more alike than you might think,’ he went on. ‘It’s why we don’t mock the British insistence on precedence. We understand hierarchy and ritual. Our rulers have always been accustomed to unquestioning obedience. The only difference is that our civilisation is far older than our overlords’. And far more complicated. Only the lowest caste, for instance, can be sweepers while a Brahmin, even if he’s a simple gardener, will throw away his food if your shadow so much as falls on it.’
‘It’s as well we don’t have a gardener then.’
He nodded. ‘It’s why you’ll find that most table servants are Moslems.’
‘But not Rajiv.’
‘No,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘not Rajiv. But come, we should go. The sun is beginning to climb.’ And he jumped smartly to his feet. ‘Let me adjust your saddle before we leave. I thought the stirrups looked a little loose.’
She got up with reluctance. The river was beautiful and sitting by its slow, flowing waters, she’d been filled with a deep sense of peace, despite the harrowing nature of Anish’s recital. But she followed him over to the horses and was soon in the saddle. She tugged on the reins and was delighted when Rudolf turned obediently to face in the right direction.
Anish smiled approval. ‘You see, we’ve made a horsewoman of you.’
He rode ahead, leaving her to follow in his wake. She hoped he knew where he was going, for they were not returning by the path they’d come by and there was no clear trail to see. They had turned inland from the riverbank and were riding through a forest of small bushes. Every so often, she lost sight of her companion, and a momentary panic would grip her. What if she were to be stranded in this place with no notion of how to get home? But then she would see Anish’s back hove into view and know that he was not too far distant.
They rode in this way for a good twenty minutes, and Daisy was sufficiently relaxed to allow Anish to pass out of sight without feeling concern. She was pushing her way beneath several low hanging trees, which grew in a cluster among a sea of bushes, when she saw something lying in her path. She tried to steer Rudolf around it but though in general compliant, this was an obstacle he’d taken in deep dislike. He snorted and shook his head. It was a large tree branch, she saw, twisted and gnarled, but the horse had decided it was a dangerous enemy and refused to move. She called ahead to Anish, but he did not hear. She dug her heels into the horse’s flank as she’d been shown, but Rudolf stayed obstinately where he was. She dug harder and suddenly the horse lurched ahead, toppling her forward onto his neck. She clutched at his mane, trying to regain an upright position, but the saddle was slipping in a most worrying fashion and she found her right foot slide out of the stirrup. The whole saddle had tipped sideways and she was hanging on to the reins, with one foot dangling loose and the other caught awkwardly in the second stirrup, which had risen far too high. Having thoroughly frightened himself, Rudolf sprang into a gallop, travelling faster than Daisy had ever known. She cried out in terror but horse and rider had veered violently to the right, causing Anish to fade from earshot.
The Girl from Cobb Street Page 19
