by Isobel Chace
“How is Gideon?” I asked quite grumpily. If it had not been for him I would have been in bed at a more reasonable time and I could have rounded up the panchayat by now and told them that I had his approval.
“Like a bear with a sore head, only it’s his leg.” Camilla lost the happy note in her voice for an instant. “I do hope that doctor set it properly!”
I hoped so, too. I dressed in a hurry, splashing cold water on my face to make sure I was properly awake. Then I gathered up my papers and put them into some sort of order.
“Is Gideon waiting for me now?” I asked.
Camilla’s expression of delight came back.
“Yes, he is. Now,” she said. I hurried across to the other house with Camilla close behind me. Just outside Gideon’s room I took a deep breath and straightened my hair. Then I knocked on the door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me, Suki. May I come in?”
He was in his dressing gown, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Good afternoon!” he greeted me wryly.
“D-did you want me?” I asked.
He swung around to look at me, noting the sleepy look that still showed in my eyes and the pile of papers I had hastily snatched up. And he smiled at Camilla over my shoulder.
“Shall I tell her?” he asked.
Camilla giggled. “She wouldn’t believe it if anyone else did!” she said happily.
Mystified, I tried to read their minds without any success.
“What is it?” I pleaded, half laughing myself.
Gideon balanced himself with some difficulty on his good leg.
“I’ve booked your passage to Delhi,” he told me. “While you’re there you can get all the supplies we need and incidentally, the things you’ll need for the dam.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was more a halt than a railway station, with the gleaming curves of the rails running through the two plain platforms that stretched out into the hot sunshine from the narrow strips of shade. Children played all along the lengths of slatted wood, apparently oblivious of the searing rays of the sun; their elders vied with one another for standing room in the shade, waving handmade fans before their faces, completely composed and self-contained even though their neighbor could hardly help treading on their toes.
I found a very small spot of shade for myself and took up as impregnable a position as I could manage.
“You are lucky!” Camilla said for the umpteenth time. “I wish I were going with you!”
“Why don’t you?” I asked gently.
She wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. “Gideon said no,” she answered bitterly.
I judged it wiser to say nothing in reply to that. Gideon probably had a very good reason for not allowing Camilla to go with me to Delhi.
“How many days will you be away?” she asked again.
“Oh, hardly any time at all. I want to get started on that dam as soon as I can.” My eyes caught hers and my own disappointment in her not coming was for the moment as vivid as hers. “I wish the train would come!” I said moodily.
Almost as if it were to order, the train came into sight, puffing and blowing in the distance, with a swarm of adolescent children running along beside it, almost as if they were willing it to come to a stop the moment it reached the long platform.
Camilla opened one of the doors and wrinkled up her nose at the stuffy atmosphere.
“You can’t travel in this!” she exclaimed.
I followed her into the train. “It isn’t too bad,” I comforted myself more than her. “And I shall get a seat. It looks even more crowded farther up.”
I pushed my suitcase up onto the rack and went back to the platform with Camilla.
“Where’s Joseph?” she asked, looking about her expectantly. She quite plainly was getting all ready to worry about me traveling on the train alone. “You have got that list of addresses that Gideon gave you, haven’t you?”
To oblige her I searched in my handbag and produced it triumphantly. Camilla glanced at it with warm approval.
“There! You can hardly go far wrong with those directions in your pocket. You’ve certainly sold Gideon that dam, haven’t you?”
“I hope so,” I agreed. I looked at the list myself, written in Gideon’s neat, careful hand, and my eyes filled with sudden tears and for the moment I didn’t want to go because Gideon wouldn’t be in Delhi. I tried to put him out of my mind—to think of anything else, but the picture of him as I had last seen him, trying to hide the fact that he was in pain and concerned because he was sending a woman on her own into a foreign city, persisted despite my best efforts. I turned my face away from Camilla because I could feel myself blushing and I knew it was not beyond her to discover the reason why.
“It’s terribly hot!” I murmured.
Camilla gave me a sympathetic grin. “Terribly!”
A peddler, selling copper and brass and a few silver bracelets, came hurrying over to us.
“The memsahibs would like to buy?” he whined.
Camilla brushed him away impatiently, but I was curious to see his goods. The silver in the bangles was not pure, but they were pretty and intricately designed. I asked how much they were, but I never heard the answer. The engine suddenly whistled with all its might and Joseph came running down the platform and practically threw me into the train.
“It’s leaving!” he shouted. “Good luck!”
I waved to them both, the tears stinging my eyes again. A multitude of hangers-on grasped the outside of the train so that I could hardly see the vanishing platforms. In a moment I could see nothing at all and settled a little unhappily into my seat, trying not to think about Gideon.
“Forgive me for interrupting you,” my neighbor said after a while. “There is someone in the corridor who is trying to attract your attention.”
I looked first at my neighbor, a gentleman in a turban. His smile was charmingly decorated with a variety of gold-filled teeth and his fingers were bedecked with a number of rings. He smiled and nodded out to the corridor. Standing there, looking in at me and grinning all over his face, stood Joseph.
I stood up hastily and struggled with the door into the corridor. “What are you doing here?” I demanded when it at last gave way to the insistent pressure of my hand. “What have you done with Camilla?”
His grin grew broader.
“She stayed behind to look after Gideon, but we agreed that somebody had to go with you, so I was elected.”
“Does Gideon know?” I asked with grim foreboding.
“Good heavens, no! He’ll probably sack me when I get back!” Or me, I reflected bitterly. It would be far more likely to be me. He would never believe that I had never been a party to this mad, stupid idea! Never, never! For I had to admit that I could hardly believe it myself, that they would play such a stupid trick without my consent. And I didn’t want Joe with me. There was nothing for him to do in Delhi and I was more than capable of looking after myself.
“I don’t know where you’re going to sit,” I said coldly. “All the seats in my compartment are taken.”
He looked at me, astonishment slowly taking the place of his pleasure.
“Aren’t you pleased?” he demanded.
“No, I am not!” I snapped. “Gideon is going to be furious. What did you think you could gain by such idiotic behavior?”
He shrugged uncomfortably.
“It didn’t seem right to let you go on your own—and besides,” he went on dolefully, “I thought you’d want me to be with you.” And in a way I did, I supposed. I was glad that I had someone to help me find my way around. I suppose, too, I was glad to have Joseph’s company. He was my friend and in a way he reminded me of Timothy, and anyone who could do that was welcome at the moment. No, the only problem was Gideon’s fury. Our only hope was that he would have expended most of it on Camilla before we returned. But that was a forlorn hope, because his sense of justice would soon know that it had very little to do w
ith her—that Joseph and I were old enough to make our own decisions. And the truth was that this wasn’t very well managed at all! There would be gossip and I wouldn’t be able to prevent it. And Joseph would be away from his work for no reason at all, and that was unforgivable.
“Oh, yes,” I said tartly, “I shall love having you with me when I think of Gideon struggling to manage on his own with a broken leg! I shall love it still more when he sacks the two of us ... and we shall have deserved it!” I went back to my seat and sat down, uncomfortably aware that I hadn’t been particularly kind when all Joseph had been trying to do was make things easier for me.
He followed me into the compartment, frowning at my companions as if he were hoping to frighten them out of their seats.
“Surely you aren’t afraid of Gideon?” he asked me resentfully when nobody stirred.
“I respect him,” I said tightly. “Joseph, do go and find yourself a seat!”
He went, but I was no happier left alone. My neighbor tried to engage me in conversation, but somehow I didn’t have much to say. I was obsessed by my own emotions. Nothing that Gideon could ever say to me was worse than my own imaginings during the first half of that journey. How could Joseph have been so stupid?
I was still downright sulky when Joseph came to tell me that we could have lunch on the train.
“I thought there wasn’t a restaurant car?” I said, surprised.
“There isn’t exactly,” he admitted. “I bought some things from one of the station vendors at the last stop.”
I must say I was very glad that I hadn’t known about it. To have Joseph on the train at all was bad enough, but to lose him somewhere in India would have been too much altogether.
“There’s more room where I am,” Joseph persuaded me. “I’ll carry your things and then we can be together.”
It seemed churlish to refuse, so I spent the rest of the journey sitting beside him and chatting. On the whole it was very much better than being on my own, and as his compartment was air-conditioned while mine had not been, my temper began to improve and I started to enjoy myself. When we arrived at Delhi I was astonished at how quickly the journey had been made and the feeling of nervous excitement came back again with a rush.
“Suppose my figures are wrong!” I wailed to Joseph.
He grinned. “Well, suppose they are?”
I grabbed my suitcase and followed him down onto the platform.
“You’ll have to check them for me before we do any ordering,” I said.
His grin was positively triumphant. “Okay, I will,” he said.
If there be a paradise on earth,
‘Tis here! ‘Tis here! ‘Tis here!
Joseph found the famous Persian quotation on the walls of the Hall of Private Audience in the Red Fort, the room that had once held the famous Peacock Throne, in its more glamorous days, when the ceiling, too, had been of solid silver. He quoted the words softly, with a touch of magic, as though he had only just discovered their meaning. I gazed up at the flowing script that spelled out the original words and tried to remember that it was only because time was at a standstill that I was so confused.
Joseph took my hand and led me toward the Florentine panels, one of which depicted Orpheus playing for the birds.
“You are enjoying this, aren’t you?” he asked. “You would never have come here on your own, would you?”
“No,” I agreed, “probably not.”
“Then you would have missed one of the finest sights in the world!” he concluded enthusiastically.
We walked past the marble stall of the emperor’s Grand Vizier, which stood in front of the throne dais, and went on into the private apartments and through into the Rang Mahal, or Painted Palace.
I was intrigued by the central marble basin through which ran a water channel passing right through the palace, its bottom carved in the shape of a lotus flower. It was known as the Canal of Paradise.
“Do I look so much in need of a bath?” I retorted lightly.
Joseph stood back to allow me to pass ahead of him into the royal bathrooms, the hammams, exquisite Mogul and therefore Moslem baths, similar in function to our Turkish baths, but for them an essential part of the preparation for solemn prayer. It was no surprise therefore that a short distance away stood the Pearl Mosque, designed by Aurangzeb, one of the Mogul rulers, for his personal use and for that of the royal ladies at his court. It was too ornate for my taste and I was glad when we escaped its sugary atmosphere into the gardens outside.
“There is something to be said for purdah,” Joseph went on. “I should like to take you away from the anxieties of working and keep you to myself.”
“Oh, would you?” I said haughtily. “Well, let me tell you the price would be too high!”
“I think I could change your mind,” he said abruptly. He pulled me close and tried to kiss me. At another time I might have suffered the kiss with better fortitude, but at that moment I was only conscious of the fact that I was hot and that I didn’t want to be touched.
“Please don’t, Joe,” I said gently.
“What? Change your mind?”
I shook my head.
“Please don’t kiss me. I don’t feel like it.”
His pride was hurt and I was sorry. To cover the awkward moment I bent over and picked a flower that was struggling for life despite the heat and put it in his buttonhole with a flourish. We exchanged slightly embarrassed laughs, both aware that we were not the right people in the right moment, despite the beauty all around us. Almost as if he had appeared to order one of the Sikh guides, in his white jodhpurs and tweed jacket, came over to us.
“Do you wish a guide?” he asked.
Joseph shook his head. “We have already seen all that we want to.”
“Perhaps those other people would like a guide,” I suggested as a small group came into the gardens. The guide looked over his shoulder, saluted smartly, and went off in their direction. Joe took a look and went quite white in the face.
“What’s she doing here?” he demanded between clenched teeth.
I took a closer look at the little group and was surprised to recognize Julie.
And at that moment she saw us.
“Why, look who’s here!” she exclaimed in her little girl voice. “They’re friends of Gideon’s! Well, not friends exactly, but they work with him!”
Her companions glanced at us without too much warmth.
“That fellow who runs the research station?” one of them asked.
Julie’s lips tightened angrily. “He’s very important in our locality!” she said sternly.
They grinned, humoring her. It was obvious that they didn’t think anything was important but their own interests.
“What are you doing in Delhi?” I asked her.
She turned to me immediately and smiled quite charmingly.
“I was so worried about Gideon that my parents thought it would be better for me to get away for a while. I’m staying here with friends.” She smiled again, quickly and impersonally. “And you?”
I explained about the dam we were building, trying hard not to get carried away by my own enthusiasm.
“I don’t really understand you at all!” she complained breathlessly. “I suppose it’s because all professional women are so terribly efficient and unfeeling! I mean we have so much more time to care about people, haven’t we? You have your job to consider first all the time, and having to compete with men in their own sphere. I’m so glad that I don’t have to bother with all that!”
I found that I resented the insinuation that I was unfeminine.
“Most women have jobs of some sort nowadays,” I said pacifically.
Her eyes glinted. “I’m afraid my father would never allow me to work,” she said with a tinkling laugh. “Don’t your people miss you when you are so far away?”
I shrugged my shoulders, refusing to answer.
“Dear, dear,” she said. “Poor Gideon! When I get back I shall
see that he has some fun! I can tell that he doesn’t get much with you and Joseph around. I don’t suppose you ever talk about anything else but your work and plant diseases.”
I bit my lip, almost sure that she was right. Poor Gideon probably could do with some light relief, but I didn’t think the Burnetts were the right ones to achieve this. It had already cost Gideon one broken leg.
One of the men with Julie pulled at her arm to attract her attention.
“Are we going to stand around here all day?” he asked her plaintively. “Surely you see enough of these two when you’re at home!”
Julie tossed her head so that her pale hair was lifted in the wind. It was a very pretty and well-rehearsed gesture.
“Hush, sweet! One has to be polite!” She giggled, maliciously aware that her remark had been hurtful.
The young man pulled her away, kissing her on the cheek as he did so. She bridled and giggled again, pleasantly embarrassed by his attention. I hope I didn’t look as disapproving as I felt.
“Good-bye, Miss Burnett,” I said formally. “We’re returning home tonight so I don’t expect we shall run into each other again in Delhi.”
She frowned. I think she was wondering if I would carry tales back to Gideon, but apparently she came to the conclusion that even if I did he wouldn’t believe me.
