by Isobel Chace
I was awake again at half-past six. The gray light of first dawn was already being broken up by the yellow and orange streaks of the rising sun, a perfect background for the lovely old trees that shaded the settlement of bungalows and a few of the village buildings that were included in the research-station grounds. I hurried into my clothes and wandered outside to take a look around by myself, before anyone else was up.
The village people were already stirring. I was particularly interested in a small, one-storied mud house that was set against to the wall of the research-station’s kitchen garden. The wall, which faced its own small yard, was covered with handmade dung cakes drying in the sun. The woman of the house, bejeweled with bits of gold in her nose and around her ankles, was slapping at a few more cakes with her hands and smacking them onto the wall.
I nodded and smiled, muttering good morning inadequately.
The woman came over to where she could see me better and watched me with intense curiosity as I walked around the end of the wall so that I could see her house better. We stood in silence staring at one another.
Eventually she beckoned me over, putting out a wondering finger to touch my dress and the cheap costume beads that I wore around my neck. Then suddenly she smiled and giggled shyly as smiled back. Grasping my wrist, she led me into her tiny domain showing me the pots that she scoured with sand. Then she called her children, who had been playing naked in the yard, to go into the house and put on the ragged shorts which were all the clothes they had. Somehow the woman made me understand that she was in some way related to Lakshmi and that therefore she had heart all about me.
I was fascinated by the varied signs of the life they led in that courtyard. There were two small braziers in one corner, and a string bed standing on its side by the gate made me think that they slept outside if at all possible. The woman touched my sleeve and pointed to the door, and so, for the first time, I set foot in a completely Indian household.
There were only two small, windowless rooms inside. Most of the walls were of unpainted mud with garish pictures of the Hindu gods pinned up here and there. A few essential household effects, like a mortar and a couple of shallow pans mostly used for making chapattis, Indian unleavened bread, and some storage jars, completed her few possessions. I congratulated her on them eagerly, all the more so because I was wondering if I could live on so little.
We came out into the sunlight again and I saw Lakshmi standing in the yard waiting for me. My hostess said something to her and they both smiled at me.
“My sister is honored by your visit,” Lakshmi said softly.
“Your sister? She told me you were related,” I replied.
Lakshmi laughed. “She is older than I, and I am not yet married,” she told me simply.
I wondered briefly how the younger sister had managed to learn English and get an education.
“I have been admiring her home,” I said.
Lakshmi nodded. “It is poor, but she is very happy.”
We said our good-byes and strolled slowly back to the main bungalow.
“Did they send you to find me?” I asked Lakshmi anxiously. I glanced at my watch, but it had stopped. With irritation I shook it and it started to tick again.
“The Sahib is already up, but the others are still in their beds,” she answered calmly. “It was the Sahib who wished you to come to breakfast.”
Gideon was sitting on the verandah when I joined him. A pile of letters rested on his knee, and he was looking at them with a curious expression of displeasure.
“How did you sleep?” he asked me abruptly.
I stood, pointedly ignoring the question until he rose to his feet and offered me a chair at the table.
“Dr. Wait, where do you want me to begin?” I enquired coolly. “Do you want me to go straight out into the fields?”
He glared at the letter he had at last opened. After a few seconds his eyes met mine.
“Miss King, I have put you in charge of the wheat and maize results. What you do with your time is your own affair.”
What made me take him to task, I can’t imagine. I opened my mouth and to my dismay my question hung on the air. “Even if I come in at three in the morning?”
“I gather you didn’t sleep well, Miss King,” he retorted blandly.
“I happened to see the lights from the jeep, that’s all,” I muttered.
“Just happened, Miss King?”
Furious with myself for getting into such a position, I bit my lip and tried to look cool, calm and collected.
“I was turning over,” I said.
His amusement was very difficult to bear. “I see.”
“I ... I’m not used to the heat yet,” I added by way of explanation.
“No,” he agreed, half-laughing. “And it does such terrible things to one’s curiosity, doesn’t it?”
“I ... I suppose it’s a long way to Miss Burnett’s house. I’m not really interested,” I finished loftily.
Gideon grinned at me, thoroughly enjoying my confusion. “It takes about twenty minutes,” he told me confidentially. “But of course it’s very romantic driving home in the moonlight.”
“It must be!” I said sourly.
He leaned over the table until he was close enough to touch. “The trouble with you, Suki, is that you’re not half as prickly as you pretend to be. You’re jealous.”
“Nonsense!” I said sharply. “It isn’t true!”
“Some other time I may try to find out,” he teased me. “Right now I must read this mail.” He sat back and laughed at me. “It will be a very interesting experiment,” he drawled, “don’t you think?” With difficulty I remained seated.
“No, I don’t,” I said angrily. But Gideon wasn’t even listening. He was reading his beastly letters.
CHAPTER FIVE
Camilla decided to join me on an inspection of the fields. She couldn’t pretend an interest in either wheat or maize, but she was set on avoiding her brother for the rest of the morning.
“Shall we go on with our tour?” I asked him in a funny tight voice I scarcely recognized as my own.
“Gideon is different out here,” she complained. “He hasn’t time to talk or anything.”
“He was on holiday in England,” I reminded her.
“And Julie is part of his work, I suppose!” she retorted tartly. I had no answer to that! My own burning feeling of injustice was too much with me for that.
“Perhaps we won’t see very much of her,” I said hopefully, instead.
Camilla snorted sulkily. “Would you care to bet on that?”
I pretended I hadn’t heard her. I pulled my white overall out of my suitcase and put it on, thrusting my hands into the starched pockets and wriggling my shoulders to make it more comfortable.
“Good heavens,” said Camilla, “you look more like a doctor than an agriculturist.”
“A plant doctor,” I suggested with a grin.
She smiled back. “Something very impressive! I wish Gideon could see you now!”
“I don’t suppose he’ll be taken in by my exterior,” I said wearily. “He will be looking for results.”
Camilla gave me a worried look.
“But Gideon is always fair!” she exclaimed. “Unless Julie has put a spell on his judgment as well,” she added.
“He’s a grown man,” I said carelessly. “He wouldn’t let anyone interfere with his work.”
Camilla looked young and very tragic. “Other men have,” she said.
We went out through the laboratory. Gideon was standing by the window studying a stick of sugarcane. He was plainly surprised to see Camilla, but he said nothing, much to my relief, because Camilla was in a mood to argue.
“I suppose you know where your fields are?” he asked me. I shook my head. “I’m on the verge of finding out,” I replied cheerfully. “I thought I’d have a look around before I did anything else.”
He nodded. “I’ll point you in the right direction and let you
find your own way. Has Joe arranged any transportation for you?”
“Not that I know of.”
He made a quick gesture of disapproval and went to the door. “Joseph! Have you laid on a jeep for Miss King?”
Joseph appeared in the doorway, a piece of toast in one hand. “Look here,” he began, “I haven’t even finished breakfast yet!”
“The rest of us have,” Gideon informed him coldly. “Go and get a jeep ready now. And snap to it!”
I threw Joseph a quick look of sympathy. He might be slow getting up, but at least he hadn’t been out until three in the morning.
“And come straight back here,” Gideon ordered.
“Yes, sir!” said Joseph.
I grabbed my notebook and prepared to follow him. One glance at Camilla’s sulky face was enough to know that her sympathies were all with the young American.
“Come on,” I said hastily. “We have a lot to do.”
Her eyes flashed, but she said nothing.
“It isn’t fair!” she said under her breath as we walked to the garage. “What has Joseph done?”
One thing Joseph hadn’t done was to get our jeep ready. “Gosh, Suki,” he exclaimed, “I’m frightfully sorry. I forgot all about it.”
I surveyed the four flat tires and the generally depressed look of the dusty jeep.
“Can we walk?” I asked hopefully.
Camilla jumped into the jeep and pressed the starter. There was a soggy squeal, telling that the battery was flat too.
“Surely there must be some way of making it go?” she said.
“None at all,” said Gideon’s voice from the entrance. He walked forward and glanced at the forgotten jeep. “You’d better take Joseph’s while he goes to work on yours.”
“But—” the American began.
“But nothing!” Gideon said sharply. “It was your job to get the vehicle ready. Okay, so it’s you who has to do without transport today.”
“You’re not using yours,” Joe objected.
“That’s beside the point.” Gideon handed me a roughly drawn map of the village showing the fields in which I had an interest. “Think you can manage?” he asked with a smile.
I hesitated. I was very much aware of the atmosphere between Camilla and Joseph and the man who was giving all the orders, and yet he had reason, especially if Joseph really was in charge of keeping the vehicles on the road.
“Perhaps Joe could show me the way?” I suggested humbly. To my surprise he laughed.
“If you want him! But that jeep had better be ready for you tomorrow morning. Did you hear that, Joe?”
Joseph grinned sheepishly. “Right,” he said. “I heard.” Joseph drove straight through the village. I had tantalizing glimpses of dark little shops that lined the road. The oil merchant and his press, which was driven by a single bullock that trudged endlessly around and around the homemade mortar. Next door was a bazaar in miniature, a hundred different colors represented by saris, ribbons, shirts, turbans and a few odd lengths of material spread out across the narrow pavement in the dust. Beyond that was the tailor, working his sewing machine with one foot as he used his hands to guide the material under the needle and, beyond him, the village potter, squatting beside his wheel and making the few simple pots that the local housewives demanded.
Beyond the village were the fields—dry, dusty tracts of ground that grew little and were badly in need of water.
“This is your main wheat field,” Joseph said, nodding with his head toward the driest of all the fields. “Not much hope for that!”
“No,” I agreed. “Where’s the nearest water?”
Joseph made a face.
“There’s a stream over there. When the monsoons come the banks burst and wash everything away. In the hot weather it just forms tanks for the local buffaloes to wallow in. It’s not much help.”
I looked at the deep cracks in the dry earth where the wheat was struggling to live.
“It might be,” I said.
Camilla didn’t want to walk across the baked field to have a look at this rather doubtful water supply.
“I’ll wait here with Joe,” she said prettily. “It’s too hot for all of us to drag around.”
I expected Joseph to say that he would come with me, but he didn’t. He gave Camilla a shy little smile and shrugged his shoulders.
“Whatever the ladies command of me!” he said with mock gallantry.
Somehow I didn’t have the heart to insist that he come with me. I pulled my hat farther over my eyes and went off alone. It was farther than I thought. The wheat straggled on for several acres, most of it looking little better than the average seeding grass. An intervals I took samples of the earth, sealing them into separate envelopes and marking them so that I would know where they came from. At intervals I pulled up one of the plants and examined the root carefully. Some of them were badly eaten by insects, a few suffered from root diseases, but the vast majority were dry and brittle from lack of water. I broke a couple of straws and looked at them gloomily. I was beginning to wonder if I had the necessary knowledge and experience to make a go of these crops.
When I reached the stream it was so sluggish that the water hardly moved at all. A few buffalo were immersed in their tanks, sharing the brown waters with one of the women from the village who was busy washing both herself and her family’s laundry. I waved to her and she waded to the bank to return my greeting more formally.
“Namaste,” she said.
I placed the palms of my hands together. “Namaste,” I replied.
I sat on the dusty bank and watched the woman as she went back to her work, banging the clothes against a large flat stone that effectually blocked up most of the trickling stream. After a while she laid the garments out in the sun to bleach and dry.
I bade her a tentative farewell and made my way back across the field. I could see Joseph and Camilla sitting side by side in the jeep, intent on their conversation. They were in no hurry for me to return, I thought dryly, and wondered why I should resent the young man’s interest in Gideon’s sister. It struck me forcibly that two years was a very long time and I had no security that Timothy would come home to me.
By the time I had come up to them they had got out of the jeep and walked the last few yards to meet me.
“This heat!” Camilla exclaimed. “Aren’t you completely exhausted?”
I smiled, a little amused. It would be a fine thing if I couldn’t complete a single day’s work, having come all this way!
“It’s certainly hot,” I agreed.
Joseph flapped his shirt against his chest and grinned at the two of us. “Where now?” he asked.
“The next field,” I retorted.
It was much the same story wherever we went. Neglect and drought vied with each other as the main cause of the poverty of the crops. On the whole I thought drought won. Even such water as there was was not reaching the plants, and here lay my first and most immediate problem. Gideon hadn’t said anything, but I thought that our funds were probably pretty tight. It was possible that the government helped a little, but the sort of irrigation scheme I had in mind was expensive even by European standards.
On our way home Joseph and I tried to rally the thoroughly bored Camilla.
“You can help me fix the other jeep after lunch,” Joseph offered, very much in the manner of a small boy offering to share one of his best toys.
“I shall be lying flat on my back trying to get cool,” Camilla retorted. She saw Joseph’s face fall and took pity on him. “Perhaps I’ll come along after I’ve had a long cold shower,” she compromised.
Joseph flushed. “You don’t have to,” he said awkwardly. He glanced at me and then suddenly began to laugh. “Suki, honey, your face hasn’t half caught the sun!”
He was right, of course. By the time we returned to the main bungalow it was already burning. One glance in the mirror was enough to tell me that by tomorrow I would be lucky if it wasn’t peeling. And at the
back of my mind I discovered that it wasn’t the thought of the inevitable pain that disturbed me most, it was that Gideon would see me at such a disadvantage. I didn’t want to care what Gideon thought. What Timothy thought, thousands of miles away in America, would surely always be much more important.
Gideon was out at lunchtime. We sat on the verandah and played with a vegetable curry and the inevitable buttermilk that makes up the Hindu diet. The food was good, but it was too hot to eat. I made my escape as soon as I could and took my samples to the laboratory to test the content of the soils while I had the place to myself. It was work that I enjoyed. I was at home in the laboratory; I felt confident and sure of myself, and the rest of the world was very far away.
It was almost dark by the time I finished. I heard the jeep come in and I listened for Gideon’s footsteps to come toward the laboratory, but they stopped at his bedroom. I was bitterly disappointed. I sat in the gloom and waited longer, but there were no further sounds, and after a while I began to see how silly I was.
With a sigh I began to put my things away, neatly coding my results in the appropriate files that I had already prepared. When finished, I walked through the house and paused for a second on the verandah. There were monkeys chattering in the trees, pulling at the leaves and chasing each other up and down the branches, jumping down on to the ground and up again, like so many bad-tempered children.
“Had a busy day?” Gideon asked from behind me.
I turned swiftly. Gideon’s hair was wet from a shower. It stood on end, gleaming in the last of the light.
“Yes,” I answered. “It is a depressing prospect without more water.”
