by Rosie Thomas
Myrtle said, ‘No. Nerys is a friend and you need more than one, my girl. Are you ready for a glass of water?’
‘I’d rather a whisky.’
‘I think you’ve had enough to drink.’
A jug and a pair of cut-crystal glasses stood on a tray. Nerys poured water and put the glass into Caroline’s hand. The girl sniffed dolefully and sipped at it with her head down.
‘Now then.’ Myrtle lit a cigarette. Nerys could hear the music from the ballroom. In the supper interlude, the band was attempting a piece of Debussy, which was less kind to the players’ shortcomings than the dance tunes.
‘I love him,’ Caroline repeated. This time there was a chip of defiance in her voice.
‘All right. If you insist. These things happen.’
Over the girl’s head, Myrtle caught Nerys’s eye. She pulled down the corners of her mouth to underline the seriousness of the situation, but then she countered the effect by winking. ‘But you are British, and married. There are ways to deal with affairs like this, and making a public scene is most emphatically not one of them. What were you thinking of? Do you think Ravi Singh is pleased by your discretion and decorum?’
‘I didn’t mean to make a scene.’
‘You succeeded, though.’ Myrtle’s tone remained frosty, but she took Caroline’s hand between hers and squeezed it. ‘Tell us what’s up, eh? We can work it out between the three of us, you know.’
‘I had a letter from … from my husband. The regiment has been granted a last-minute forty-eight-hour deployment leave, and he will be here tomorrow. I waited until Ravi asked me to dance, and he did that very properly after dancing first with Rosalind Dunphy and Jean Whittaker, so there was no reason for any of those old witches from the club to notice anything. Then I told him. I thought he would … he would …’
Two more tears dropped into the lap of Caroline’s gown.
‘You thought that at the very least he would be jealous, was that it? You dreamt that he might even insist you didn’t see your husband. Your gallant knight was going to sweep you over the pommel of his saddle and gallop off with you. But instead he bowed and changed the subject. Did he comment on the band, or the cold weather, or the war news? And so you screeched out your disappointment and desperation in front of everyone?’
‘It wasn’t like that. You don’t understand.’ Caroline had gone so pale that Nerys thought she was going to be sick.
Myrtle circled her with her arm now and drew the girl’s head down on to her shoulder. ‘I’m trying to understand,’ she said gently. ‘You think this is your only hope of love, your first and last and only hope, and you can’t let it go, even though you know somewhere inside you that Ravi Singh isn’t really what you want. But he’s handsome and virile, and he’s whispered to you all kinds of sweet and private things that no one’s ever said to you before, hasn’t he?’
Mute, Caroline nodded.
‘Of course he has. You’re very pretty, and you flatter him. But that’s all it is. Ravi will marry whoever his mother picks out for him. He’s the maharajah’s cousin. He has his place here in Kashmir, even though Srinagar is a troubled city. Whatever dream you may have, however much you may be prepared to give up for him, a divorced English woman doesn’t fit any part of that picture, darling. He’ll take a bride from a Dogra family just like his own, and you two will forget each other.’
‘No.’ Caroline’s head whipped up now. ‘Never.’
Myrtle squeezed her hand again. ‘I think there are two problems here, and you may be tangling them up.’
‘Are there? Am I?’ Now it was Caroline’s turn to be chilly. From her wide blue eyes and curled blonde hair, right down to the single strand of pearls around her pink neck, she seemed to Nerys to be the perfect English rose in India.
‘Yes. One is Ravi, and the crush you have on him. No, wait a minute, just hear what I’m going to say. The other is Ralph. If you can’t love your husband, you know, darling, if you can’t make it work between the two of you, perhaps you shouldn’t waste your young life in trying. Nothing’s going to be the same after this war as it was before, not even marriage and thinking of England. If you want to leave him, we’ll help you to do it. Won’t we, Nerys? But it’ll be to achieve your independence, not to look to Ravi Singh to prop you up.’
‘I can’t leave Ralph.’ Caroline snatched back her hand. ‘That can’t happen.’
‘I see.’ Myrtle chose to overlook the contradiction. ‘Well. I’m glad you’re so clear on that. But if your intention is to be a good wife in the official way, and to hold up your head in Srinagar or wherever Captain Bowen is posted, then you must be discreet. I won’t advise you not to have affairs – you’ve only got to look about you in this place to recognise that I would be wasting my breath with that – but please be careful who you choose. The unromantic truth about romance is that it’s flimsy. Don’t make it your sole support because it won’t bear your weight. As you are already discovering.’
What a wise woman you are, Myrtle McMinn, Nerys thought.
Myrtle’s strong face was filled with compassion now, but there was nothing sentimental about her. She was practical, and if Evan would consider her immoral then she was of the breed that had its own morality.
Caroline gnawed her lip. Then she forced a smile, without a glimmer of it reaching her sad eyes. ‘You’re kind. Both of you are. I appreciate it, honestly. I think I’ll go home now. When you say goodnight to Mrs Fanshawe, would you say that I felt unwell and slipped away so as not to distract her?’
Outside, a long line of guests’ cars stretched into the darkness. The Residency’s driveway was lined with flaming torches that sent smoke plumes coiling into the wind. Myrtle and Nerys put the now silent girl into a tonga, then went back into the house to say their formal goodbyes and to deliver Caroline’s message to Mrs Fanshawe.
The Resident’s wife graciously accepted their thanks for the evening. ‘How very good of you to look after Mrs Bowen. She’s such an interesting young woman, but I think she doesn’t find life easy.’
Nerys and Myrtle were helped into their evening coats by another liveried servant. There was a primrose-yellow Rolls-Royce purring at the steps; flanked by attendants and lesser members of his entourage, and lit by the lurid light of burning torches, the maharajah swept into his car and was driven away.
The two women sat back under the canopy of their tonga as the horse clopped away in the line of cars and other vehicles. They passed under an arch of trees, through the gates and out into the wide streets of the new town. The modern villas of prosperous Pandit and Muslim Kashmiris lay in their secluded gardens, the glow of yellow lanterns showing through autumnal branches. A watchman crouched beside each gate, and as they passed one, the slow beat of a terracotta drum held in the folds of a blanket briefly echoed the horse’s hoofs.
Myrtle spoke after a long silence. ‘You know, if I were married to Ralph Bowen I wouldn’t find life easy either.’
‘What exactly is so bad about him?’
‘He’s what Archie calls a three-letter man.’
Nerys had no idea what this meant. She thought that maybe Rainer Stamm could explain it to her.
The following night, the young wife of Captain Ralph Bowen quietly undressed in the bathroom of the small married-quarters bungalow on the rim of the barracks compound. It was separated from its two neighbours by a fence and a pair of identical dusty channels dignified by the name of flowerbeds. The bungalow walls were thin, and Caroline always felt that she had to move carefully so that her neighbours didn’t know exactly what she was doing every moment of the day and night.
She brushed her hair so that it lay prettily over her shoulders, and settled the silky ruffle of her honeymoon peignoir. It left exposed a swathe of her throat and chest, and the swell of flesh below. She knew now that she looked beautiful like this. Experience had taught her that much, at least. Her immediate resolve wavered for a moment, but she shut off every thought except those about Ralph, who
was lying in their bed on the other side of the door.
Caroline practised a smile at herself, and the mirror reflected a sickly smirk. Not nearly good enough. She pulled at the peignoir so it fell further open, shook back her hair and widened the smile. Then she walked through to her husband.
Ralph Bowen was reading a magazine, in which she caught a glimpse of a hunting picture with couples of hounds in front and a shires backdrop of fields and copses. It was a very old issue – it had been in their house for months. Ralph was wearing his stiff blue pyjamas with piped cuffs. She went slowly round to his side of the bed and stood where he couldn’t avoid seeing her.
The silence felt sticky, making her long to shake herself free of it. ‘I’m glad you’re not asleep,’ she said, in a low, teasing voice.
To her relief the words came out of her mouth quite easily. Ralph turned a page. He had drunk two whiskies with soda after their dry little dinner, but he wasn’t intoxicated. That might be in her favour, Caroline reckoned, or it could equally go against her.
She had planned all this in advance, but it was harder to put everything into practice when he wouldn’t even glance at her. Even so, she slowly untied the belt of her robe, and eased her bare shoulders free. She held the fold of fabric close over her breasts, then gradually allowed it to fall. The air was cool on her back and buttocks. Soon the nights would be icy and everyone would need to carry their fire-pots.
The peignoir now lay in ripples at her feet. Caroline took a shallow breath and stood up straight and naked.
You are exquisite, the other one had breathed.
‘Ralph, look at me,’ she said.
He let the magazine fall and raised his eyes. He had long, colourless eyelashes, a red face and neck that shaded abruptly into pale skin just revealed by his pyjama coat. ‘What are you doing?’
Caroline turned full circle, she hoped voluptuously, letting him see the swell of her bottom, the jut of her hips and the smooth roundness of her belly. ‘You’re going off to war,’ she breathed, ‘and I am so proud of you. I want to be yours before you go.’
She swayed towards him, standing now at the mattress edge and looking down. Ralph’s eyes travelled over her body. At least he was no longer absorbed in his reading.
‘Won’t you make love to me?’ Caroline implored.
She pulled back the hairy blanket with its scent of mothballs, and a linen sheet from her trousseau that had been imperfectly laundered by their dhobi-wallah. She lay down in the narrow space between Ralph and the bed’s edge, moulding her body against his. At the same time her fingers worked at the buttons and then the sash of his pyjama trousers. Every inch of him was rigid, except for what counted. This lay in her cupped hand, flaccid.
She closed her eyes, concentrating. She brought her breasts up against his ribs and let her flesh radiate warmth into his. He lay still at first, but then very awkwardly and reluctantly, Ralph rotated towards her so they lay face to face. He kissed her on the lips, his moustache scraping against her mouth.
Encouraged by this response Caroline went on stroking, but nothing happened. She had expected as much, so instead of withdrawing she stretched voluptuously, measuring her full length against him. Then she raised herself on one elbow so she could look down at him. His fine, straw-coloured hair fell back, revealing his rounded and touchingly childish forehead. His eyes were wide open, the rims reddened by sun and whisky, concentrated with his familiar glare.
‘I love you,’ Caroline whispered.
Now they were on their way this wasn’t so difficult. Everything was going to be all right.
No man could resist you, the other had moaned in her arms. This is ecstasy itself.
She couldn’t isolate the memories any longer. She gave up the effort and with a shiver let the soft scenes gather in her head, folding like veils between Ralph and herself.
The first time had been the drive out into the country and the picnic. Ravi assured her that other people would be coming with them, but when he picked her up there had been only him in one of his polished cars, with a series of covered baskets stacked in the jump seat and himself full of dangerous teasing as he lifted her hand to his lips.
‘So, after all, there will just be the two of us, beautiful Caroline. Will you be safe with me, do you think?’
She was so happy that she hadn’t given a thought to her safety. Anyway, what did safe matter?
They had driven out into the countryside, along the dusty road towards the village of Pahalgam, through the slow-moving flocks of sheep and goats. It was a silvery afternoon in midsummer, and once out of the city they flew under the shade of willow and poplar trees, passing terraces of rice paddies where villagers worked doubled up under the shade of conical hats. It was lush and green out here, and when they stopped driving it was silent, except for the crickets whirring in the heat. There was a little pavilion enclosed beside an apple orchard, and Ravi had unlocked it and thrown open the doors. Inside there were cedar floors, greyed with disuse, cushioned divans and an old hookah on a low carved table.
‘What is this place?’ she had asked, trailing her finger through the dust.
He shrugged, unpacking baskets. ‘My family’s – just a summer place to come and enjoy the view. No one uses it, these days, as you can see.’
The view was of mountains, stands of dark conifers running up the ridges to meet steep brown slopes and peaks that rose in two-dimensional serrations against the pearly sky. Caroline already knew that, like all Kashmiris, Ravi loved and revered the mountains.
‘Come, sit here,’ he ordered. Open windows gave on to an enclosure of sun-dappled grass. Bright yellow butterflies twisted in the air. They were the only two people in the world once Ravi began kissing her. Because he always behaved as if there was infinite time to bestow attention on whatever he did, as if nothing mattered other than what engaged him at that very moment, there was no sense of urgency, let alone of negotiation. She had seen him behave in this way with his horse, rippling the palm of his hand over its flanks, or with elaborate dishes of food as he closed his eyes the better to concentrate on the nuances of spicing, or with the purchase of a jewel from a trader as a gift for his sister, or even in tasting a simple glass of lemonade on a hot afternoon. Now she was the recipient of this extravagant concentration.
He took fifteen minutes to unbutton the cuff of her blouse and roll up the linen sleeve, fold by fold, to expose the crook of her arm. It wasn’t the first time he had kissed her: there had been laughing embraces at dances and in gardens and behind the curtains of a shikara, but this was the first time he had placed her above everything else. By the time Ravi’s mouth moved from hers to the pulse in her throat, and then by infinitely slow downward progression to her breasts, she was melting. He didn’t have to ask her: she would have allowed him anything.
No. She would have begged.
With meticulous care, Ravi removed all her clothes. He placed her shoes side by side, as gently if they were made of spun sugar. The warm air drifted over her skin and the buzzing of the crickets filled her ears. He examined her limbs, the incurve of her waist, the matching inner concavities of her thighs and the spring of her toes. Then he raised his liquid dark eyes to hers. ‘You intoxicate me,’ he breathed.
Intoxicated also by her own beauty, at last, after a whole year of gathering dismay and loneliness, Caroline arched her back against the divan cushions. She noted dreamily the contrast of their skin, cream against caramel. Ravi removed his starched shirt and exposed his muscled chest. She lightly drew her fingers across it and touched the place over his heart. His teeth were very white as he smiled down at her, and then he knelt between her thighs.
When he came into her, with the first quick movement he had made, she gave an involuntary yelp of pain. He froze above her, and she saw that, for the first time in the six months since their meeting, Ravi Singh was surprised. He withdrew again and they both gazed down at a small smear of blood.
‘This is your first time?’
> Caroline nodded. It was a hideous thing for a wife of a year to have to admit, but it wasn’t her fault. She also felt a throb of triumph because it was to Ravi she had given her virginity, not her angry, bewilderingly critical and increasingly absent husband. Love surged through her like a river in flood. Ravi had saved her, and now they belonged to each other. The flower-dotted meadows and green terraces of the Vale had become their private kingdom, now and for ever.
She smiled up at him. ‘I’m happy,’ she whispered. ‘It won’t hurt any more.’
Nor did it.
Once he had collected himself, Ravi was even more tender with her. Afterwards she held him in her arms and kissed his eyelids. His black hair was sweat-damp, the lines of his profile had suddenly become familiar and minutely precious instead of merely beautiful.
He pulled his clothing together and helped her to dress, even down to the laces of her shoes. Then they sat back among the cushions and spread out their picnic of fresh Kashmiri fruits and thick yellow cream. Hungry, Caroline ate one-handed, laughing and spilling the food he placed in front of her because Ravi kept her other fingers laced in his.
‘Now. Won’t you tell me how this state of affairs has come about?’ he whispered, putting the dishes aside and playing with the buttons of her blouse.
Caroline blushed. ‘My husband is not very interested.’
Ravi raised one black eyebrow. ‘I cannot believe it. He is a soldier, a horseman, and also a man of the world. This does not seem quite right to me.’
‘I minded about it very much to begin with. I’d imagined – well, all the things girls do imagine and whisper about. My mother’s dead, I told you that, and my stepmother before the wedding only helped me with … practical matters. Our engagement was quite short. Once we were married, though, Ralph didn’t do what husbands are supposed to. Our honeymoon was only a week. Then he was away with the regiment, and then he had a bout of illness. When he recovered he went away again. A year seems to have gone,’ she added, in a bleak voice.
