by Rosie Thomas
She fumbled into a kneeling position beside him.
‘I am praying for our men in battle, of course, in Burma and wherever they are,’ he said, ‘but I am praying also for you and me and our future family, my dear. If the Almighty will just be good enough not to take that as a selfish supplication.’
Her heart squeezed with sympathy for him. Evan longed for a child as much as she did. He regularly reached out for her under the cover of darkness, embracing her without saying a word – as if to speak would be to open floodgates of embarrassment – but in spite of his inarticulacy she thought they understood each other a little better nowadays. She tried to reassure him. ‘I’m sure He won’t.’
In the silence that followed she even tried out a halting, unpractised version of a prayer herself. It was a very long time since she had tried to pray. Children’s voices rose from the enclosed yard under the windows where her mission pupils played and chased each other. She humbly prayed that Evan might relent and consent to their adopting Zahra. Once she had done that she ventured to say, ‘We could still have a family. There’s more than one way …’
There wasn’t even a beat of hesitation. ‘I don’t believe I could do it,’ he said. ‘Not take on someone else’s child and raise it as our own.’ There was a note of pure desolation in his voice.
Nerys knelt for a moment longer, then stiffly got to her feet. She patted Evan on the shoulder and he bent his head without speaking. His hair was now almost entirely grey.
Down in the schoolroom yard Zahra, aged two years and three months, came running to greet Nerys. Not one of the children there was plump but Zahra still had soft dimples in her pale-brown knees and elbows. She had two rows of perfect white teeth and her brown-gilt hair had grown long. ‘Ness, Ness,’ she called in delight.
By the end of July the 15,000 Japanese soldiers who had marched into India were struggling back towards Rangoon. Half of them were to die along the way, starved and exhausted and crippled by dysentery.
Then at the beginning of August, extraordinary news had filtered through to Srinagar.
A detachment of British prisoners of war had been found in the remote hills inside Burma. Following the fall of Singapore the men had originally been held at Changi prison, but then they had been moved northwards to labour on the roads that were being hastily constructed in the attempt to supply infantry advances over the border into India. These men, fortunate not to have been butchered by their retreating Japanese captors, had been discovered by an advancing unit of the Indian Infantry. When the soldiers stumbled upon them they were hiding in a makeshift camp on the outskirts of a hill village, uncertain of the progress of the Allied advance and starved almost to death. Captain Ralph Bowen was one of those men.
This was the news that Caroline brought to Myrtle and Archie’s bungalow on that hot afternoon.
‘Do you know for certain?’ Myrtle repeated.
‘No, but if it’s true, if it really is him, he might be here in a few weeks’ time. I’ll be able to look after him, won’t I? I’ll be a wife again, like you are to Archie.’
Archie rarely spoke of his own war experience, and he didn’t look directly at any of them now. But he said, from under the shade of the tree, ‘It won’t be easy for him, you know, getting back to Srinagar. His old life will seem to belong to another chap entirely. None of us can conceive of what he’s likely to have seen and suffered.’
He looked away at the fence and the treetops, then recovered himself. ‘He’s damned lucky, though. We’re all lucky. We’re going to win this war, quite soon now, and then there will be a life again. A new world.’
He pounded his clenched fist into the palm of the other hand and his hollow face brightened in anticipation. Nerys marvelled at Archie’s spirit in genuinely counting himself as fortunate, and in looking forward to a new world in which the British India the McMinns had known all their lives would almost certainly no longer exist.
‘Yes.’ Caroline nodded. Her hands were shaking.
It was Myrtle who voiced the question, but each of the women had it in their minds. ‘And what about Zahra?’
Caroline seemed to quiver with fear.
Since Archie and Myrtle’s return the question had been in abeyance, because the odd circumstances had developed their own rhythm and there had seemed no reason to intervene. Between them, they had become an extended family to the little girl. Caroline played with her or took her for walks, always with Farida to accompany them, yet for all the originally promising signs it seemed that she had never properly learnt to love her daughter. Her face was shadowed when she looked at her, her arms always stiff when she held her. It was the McMinns and Nerys who freely deluged Zahra with affection and pointed out her latest achievements to each other with open pride. Archie adored watching her running and playing, and he could spend hours chatting to her and telling her stories. But Myrtle had finally admitted to Nerys that she doubted she could care for another dependant as well as her crippled husband.
‘I’m afraid that I don’t do even that properly,’ she said. ‘How could I be a mother as well, when everything in my world is already dedicated to Archie?’
‘I know, I understand. Maybe Evan and I, in the end …’ There’s always hope, Nerys believed.
Nerys insisted that the two girls spent a good proportion of their time up in Kanihama, with the weavers’ families. It was important not to cut them off from their background and likely future, she believed. But it was easy for them to come often to Srinagar, especially during the golden Kashmir summer.
‘Caroline’s afraid to love her,’ Myrtle had said once, when she and Nerys were alone.
‘She had a breakdown after the birth. That’s what happened,’ Nerys had answered. ‘Zahra’s bound up with that, and it’s the illness coming back that Caroline’s afraid of.’
A sudden breath of wind tinkled the clay bells of a cheap temple ornament that Myrtle had hung from the veranda beam. The gardener appeared between his vegetable beds, his straw hat nodding in time with his movements as he lifted and lowered his watering-can.
Archie gestured towards the house with his pipe stem. ‘Shall I trundle inside and let you girls talk together?’
Caroline shook her head. ‘No, please. You know all about everything. Just tell me what I must do. I can’t let Ralph know about what I did with … what I did, especially now when he has been through so much and is coming home to be taken care of. I can’t, can I?’ Panic made her voice rise.
‘So, don’t say or do anything,’ Myrtle concluded.
Nerys tried to be reassuring. ‘We can all go on taking care of Zahra, just like we do now, always have done, as discreetly as need be. Kanihama’s far enough away, and in the city we’ve got the umbrella of the mission. She’s an orphan, one child among many others. No one has asked any questions about her, have they?’
Caroline numbly shook her head. It was a year and more since the afternoon in the Shalimar Garden.
‘It’s not going to be so difficult,’ Nerys said. She was making calculations. Zahra and Farida must spend more time secluded at Kanihama, but that would happen naturally as autumn and winter came round again. Maybe she could move back to the village herself. How might she explain that to Evan?
‘You’re right, I shouldn’t do anything. I want to see Ralph come back safely, I want to see if … if we can, you know, make a life together, somehow. Why not?’ Caroline faltered.
If only you could, Nerys thought. She tried to look on the positive side. Maybe Ralph would have softened in the three years that he had been away. Maybe having an exhausted and starved survivor to care for might give Caroline the backbone of confidence she needed. Maybe a solution to the Zahra problem would eventually present itself. Maybe Evan would indeed change his mind. ‘There’s no reason why not,’ she said.
Caroline bit the corner of her lip. ‘I need to find a way … to provide for her, don’t I? With money, I mean. To make sure that even if she hasn’t got a mother … that is, a
proper mother who can … So that some day she’ll at least have a dowry. She’d be able to marry then and have her own daughter.’ Caroline’s face crumpled and she began to cry.
Archie scratched the side of his jaw with the stem of his cold pipe, still enough of a British officer to feel uncomfortable at the sight of a woman’s tears. Caroline somehow collected herself. With a watery smile through her distress, she muttered, ‘Sorry. I’m stupid. Zahra’s better off than Farida and the others, for a start, isn’t she? There’s always the hope of a windfall. Or, I know, a legacy. My godmother, maybe.’
‘Exactly,’ Myrtle agreed.
Money was now a problem for all of them. Nerys had almost used up her inheritance from her grandparents, the mission outreach and school funds were minutely accounted for, and the McMinns were no longer comfortably off.
‘The Lord will provide,’ Nerys said. That was what Evan believed, and Ianto.
‘In the meantime I’m going to make some tea.’ Myrtle went off into the house, clapping her hands and calling out for the heavy-footed girl who helped in the kitchen. Myrtle and Nerys often laughed nowadays about her similarities to Diskit, all the way back in Leh.
The samovar and the tray of heavy Benares brass were familiar from the Garden of Eden, as were the delicate china cups and saucers with their pattern of pale blue harebells.
‘Thank you, darling girl,’ Archie said, and patted her hand when she passed him his cup. ‘I love tea-time.’
‘Could that possibly be because of its proximity to chota hour?’
There were no more cocktails, but Archie’s bottle of whisky made its regular evening appearance.
‘No, I don’t believe so. Tea has its own limpid charm.’
The McMinns still teased and joked, and Nerys was the only one who knew how hard for Myrtle the work of nursing him was, and how deeply she missed the vigorous man she had married. She looked at both of them now with the greatest affection.
After tea, Caroline said that she must make her way home to the married-quarters bungalow in case there was any more news. Nerys said that she would walk with her as far as the tonga stand. They left Myrtle at Archie’s side, her arms resting on his shoulders. The sinking sun cast a long, conjoined shadow on the ground, as if they were one person.
Caroline and Nerys went out of the back gate into the lane. The sky had cleared and a black cloud of flies rose from the neighbour’s dung-heap, and a beggar who had been squatting beside the fence gathered up his ragged dhoti and ran away ahead of them on legs as thin as a stork’s.
‘Will you be all right?’ Nerys asked. A bony old nag raised its head and the driver scrambled out of the back seat of the tonga where he had been dozing.
‘Of course I will. I should be happy. My husband’s coming home to me. Plenty of other women’s aren’t.’
Nerys stood back and the old carriage creaked away.
It was uncomfortable to remember their half-hope that Ralph Bowen might not return, as if more problems might be solved than posed by a man’s death.
Poor Ralph, she thought. As much poor him as poor Caroline: at least as much.
She began the walk back to the mission. It was a long way but she loved slipping through the streets and along the reedy paths that lined the waterways. The Srinagar smells of dung and fragrant cooking and smoke clung around her; shouts, a snatch of music and the clang of metal-beating gave way to the hooting of traffic as she ducked across a busy road and plunged into a maze of tiny streets that had become almost as familiar as the lanes in Wales. Close to home, she came from under a bridge and saw long lines of cloth hung to dry outside a dye works. Reflected strips of crimson and pink and saffron and violet wavered between green temple domes in the silver river water. The city was beautiful and impervious, and its conflicts made her small concerns seem even smaller. By the time she reached home she was calm, and as ready as Evan himself to accept whatever befell them all.
Caroline paid off the tonga man and unlatched the garden gate. It creaked and stuck on its hinges as it always did and she gave up the attempt to open it, squeezing through the narrow gap instead, as she usually ended up doing. Julia Dunkeley was gardening next door – Caroline could hear the snap of secateurs as the woman tended her struggling roses. Caroline ducked her head and hurried up the path, past a bed of thirsty marigolds, hoping that for once her neighbour wouldn’t poke her head over the fence.
It was hot inside the little box of a house. The new house-boy had forgotten to close the blinds before he left and the sun had been pouring in all afternoon. The early-evening light was still bright enough to show up the dust coating the bureau and dimming the glass of the framed wedding photograph. Caroline went quickly through to the bedroom. She undid the buttons of her sundress and let it drop at her feet. She stretched her neck in an attempt to ease the thumping pain in her head, then twisted her hair and pinned it up off the nape where the skin was damp and sweaty.
The bed was smooth and flat under a striped cotton cover. The bolster was in place, two pillows placed side by side on top of it, just as always. Caroline closed her eyes. In a few weeks, perhaps as little as two or three, Ralph’s head would rest on the left-hand pillow. One of his military-history books from the little row in the sitting-room bookcase would be waiting for him on the bamboo night-table.
She was shaking from head to foot. A trickle of sweat ran between her bare shoulder-blades.
She turned away from the bed and ran out of the room.
In her underwear, she sat down at the bureau and lowered the lid. From a musty drawer she took a sheet of writing paper and rummaged in one of the wooden niches for a bottle of Quink ink and a fountain pen. Dear Ravi, she wrote.
She stopped and bit the end of the pen, then rushed on.
I’m sorry it has taken such a very long time to reply to your note. Maybe everything has changed for you since you wrote it. If so, please disregard this. Otherwise I should like to come and see you, as you suggested.
Sincerely, Caroline
She didn’t need to unfold the letter that he had written to her over a year ago because she knew it by heart, but she did take the thick sheet of heavy cream paper from its hiding place. Thoughtfully, she ran the tip of her index finger over the embossing. Ravi’s handwriting was black, fluent, with strong downstrokes.
He had written to ask her to come and visit him in private, saying that he missed her, and also that he believed they had certain matters to discuss. The last line of the brief note seemed to have been written with more speed, less calculation:
Please come, dearest girl. Ever yours, Ravi
What matters, precisely, did he want to discuss?
Sometimes, during the long months that had elapsed, Caroline had let herself believe that he did love her, and that the only obstacle keeping the two of them apart was her own determination. Most of the time, though, she had been able to hold the conviction that Ravi Singh was only interested in his own pleasures, and that he was a man to be feared.
The threat in this letter was so gossamer that it was hardly identifiable. But now that Ralph was coming back she had to find out what Ravi really intended, or else live in perpetual uncertainty.
There was another reason for wanting to see him. It was for Zahra’s sake. Somehow, if she could only find a way to do it, she intended to exploit the fact that Ravi Singh was so carelessly, thoughtlessly rich.
Caroline found an envelope for her note, sealed and addressed it. Then she went into the bedroom for the box of matches that stood beside the candlestick on her night-table. She struck a match and put the flame to one corner of Ravi’s letter. She held the curling paper until her fingers burnt, then dropped the last cream fragment into the tin wastepaper bin.
Sweat had dried on her skin and she felt cold.
Sitar music was playing as Caroline followed the soft-footed servant across a paved inner courtyard. At the centre of the enclosed space was a pool lined with turquoise and gold tiles, where plump fish caught
the shafts of sunlight. A trickle of water struck a cool note in the heat of the afternoon.
Ravi was reclining in a low chair in a vaulted room off the courtyard. The musician was seated cross-legged on some cushions in the corner, head bowed over his instrument. Ravi stood up as soon as the servant showed her in. ‘How beautiful you are looking.’ He kissed the back of her hand.
Caroline ran the palm of the other one over the full skirt of her summer dress. Ravi had grown plumper, she thought, with a soft pad of flesh under his jawline that lent a touch of corruption to his boyish profile.
Ravi nodded to the sitar player and gave a curt order to the servant. Both of them withdrew and Caroline looked around her with intentional coolness. She had often been alone with Ravi in other rooms of his house, but this one was new to her. There was a carved desk with a high-backed chair, almost throne-like in its grandeur. The green leather desk was piled with papers, locked boxes, soft felt pouches, printed documents. Opposite it was a recess where a divan stood, heaped with silk and embroidered cushions. Otherwise there was only the chair and a low table with a neat pile of leather-bound books. The windows were tall, narrow slits that barred the Kashmir rugs with shafts of gold. It seemed that Ravi wasn’t so much the lazy playboy any longer. This was the room of a busy man who was doing important business – or who wanted to give the impression that he was.
Caroline was disconcerted by the atmosphere of austere opulence. Already Ravi was getting the upper hand. She turned away from him for a second, pretending to look through one of the window slits to a view of the garden.
