‘Has Lahore been boring then?’
‘It’s a city and I’m a forester. I’m enjoying been in the jungle at last and having the excuse to ride every day.’
‘So where is the mighty Bracknall and the rest of the entourage?’
‘He’s taken over the canal bungalow and sent me down here.’
‘Sounds typical.’ Sophie rolled her eyes. ‘Trust him to choose the house with electric fans and an ice-box to keep his whisky sodas chilled.’
‘All I ask is a corner of the garden to pitch camp,’ Rafi grunted.
‘You’re welcome to the spare room,’ Sophie answered, ‘but you might be more comfortable outside.’
Rafi pushed his dark glasses onto his head. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he smiled.
She swallowed. ‘You too.’
A shout came from behind. ‘Rafi Khan, you old devil! Come to learn a bit of forestry at last?’
Tam took the steps in two swift leaps and clapped his friend on the back; they shook hands vigorously and laughed.
‘Rafi’s brought his gramophone; isn’t that great?’
‘As long as we don’t have to listen to all his awful Persian love songs that sound like cats being strangled.’
‘You’re a philistine, Telfer,’ Rafi grinned.
‘Go and make yourself decent,’ Tam told Sophie, ‘while the Khan and I have a stiff chota peg. It’s been a devil of a day.’
It was unusual for Tam to want a drink; perhaps his violent outburst had troubled him too? Sophie wondered.
By the time the sun had set, Rafi’s servant had pitched tents, the men had knocked back two large gin and limes and Hafiz was serving up a supper of spiced duck with orange followed by ginger pudding. A huge moon swung above the trees and flooded the veranda with light that made the kerosene lamp redundant. Rafi gave them news of Boz who had been sent off to Quetta.
‘You know that Bracknall can’t stand your guts when you get sent off to wild Pathan country,’ said Tam.
‘Poor Boz,’ Sophie said, ‘what did he do to deserve that?’
Rafi eyed her across the table, then shrugged. ‘Too Scots and lower middle class for Bracknall. He has his pet favourites. But don’t worry, he speaks highly of your husband. Likes Tam’s idea of expanding resin production.’
‘Does he?’ Tam looked pleased.
Tam and Rafi speculated about what plans Bracknall might have for them.
‘Rumour in Lahore is that Bracknall wants to push Martins off to the forest college in Dehra Dun. So there could soon be a promotion to Assistant Conservator for an ambitious man,’ Rafi joked.
‘Well I’d do a better job than old Martini. He’s the laziest man in the Indian Civil Service.’
‘Aren’t you ambitious Rafi?’ Sophie asked.
Rafi shook his head. ‘Not for myself but for India. I want to see our forests well managed – for the people who live in them as much as for those who need the timber.’
‘But,’ Tam interrupted, ‘it’s all about planting up trees that will grow quickly and give us a good return for the investment. We aren’t going to be here for ever.’
‘Some of us hope to be,’ Rafi smiled. ‘We need to build up our stocks with the next generation in mind, not just ours.’
‘Build up stocks yes,’ Tam said, ‘but there are huge untapped forests in the Himalayan foothills that are ripe for felling now. And there’s a market for the wood in India without having to ship it abroad – pit props and tea chests in Assam – railway sleepers and such like.’
‘I would give anything to travel those forests,’ Rafi mused, ‘get up above the snowline.’
‘Let’s do it,’ Tam declared. ‘We’re due some leave once the monsoon comes. I’ve been trying to get Sophie to go up to Dalhousie but she refuses to leave me alone down here in case I go mad in the heat.’
‘In case I go mad,’ Sophie snorted, ‘with all the endless tea and cards with the wives.’
‘We’ll organise a camping trip,’ Tam said. ‘You and me, Khan. Go exploring the mountains and survey the forests for Bracknall.’
‘Well I’m coming too,’ said Sophie.
‘It’ll be too risky for a lassie,’ Tam was dismissive.
‘Nonsense,’ Sophie replied, ‘I’ve camped in the Cairngorms with Auntie Amy. I can cope with a few foothills.’
‘You see what I have to put up with?’ Tam laughed. ‘Don’t marry a Scotswoman, Khan, they are far too stubborn. A good, biddable Mohammedan wife is what you want.’
Sophie dared to ask, ‘have your parents chosen a wife for you, Rafi?’
‘I hope they’ve given up trying,’ Rafi laughed. ‘No self-respecting Lahori girl wants to be dragged off to the jungle to live with a forester. I’m a hopeless case in their eyes.’
‘Oh, dear, poor you.’ Sophie hoped she didn’t show the ridiculous relief she felt at his answer. Then she was ashamed of such a thought; she was a married woman and besides, she didn’t want Rafi to be unhappy.
‘Enjoy your freedom while you can,’ Tam said, then added quickly, ‘of course I’m very happily married now.’
Rafi broke the awkward silence by going to fetch his gramophone. He put on a ragtime record but Tam said it was far too hot for dancing, so they worked through his five other records: Scottish songs, Mozart, Schubert, Roses in Picardy and a Sufi singer.
Sophie thought she had never heard anything more haunting than the yearning, soaring Persian song filling the air over the moonlit jungle garden. Even the birds seemed to hold their breath. When it had finished, no one moved.
‘That was beautiful,’ Sophie murmured, ‘thank you.’
‘I prefer a Scots song any day,’ Tam grunted and got up. ‘It’s late; we should let you get to your bed, Khan.’
Rafi stood up too. ‘Thanks for a very pleasant dinner.’
‘You’ll join us for chota hazri?’ Sophie invited him to breakfast.
‘Not sure there’ll be time for that,’ Tam intervened. ‘If Bracknall wants to see round the plantations, we’ll need to get a very early start. I’ve got the timber auction too. I’ll get Hafiz to send us off with something.’
Rafi said his goodnights and disappeared to his tent. Sophie could not bear the thought of another restless night in the stifling bedroom. Tam always refused to leave any doors open in case animals wandered in, and tonight she could not get the image of Tam’s violent attack on the unfortunate labourer out of her head. It sickened her. She had witnessed a flash of his temper when he’d punched Jimmy Scott at the Palais but nothing like his fury at the timber yard. Was that what Boz had tried to warn her about when, in Bombay, he’d told her of Tam’s wartime injuries?
When her husband had fallen asleep, she took a bedroll and sheet from the chest and climbed up to the flat roof. A few months ago there had still been brightly coloured Indian corn drying there, but now it was empty.
Sophie lay gazing at the night sky – it pulsated with stars – and felt a little relief in the wisp of night breeze. Why had they not being doing this all month? She sighed. If Tam had been on his own she knew he would have been sleeping outside; it irked her that things had to be different for the women.
Dreamily, she fingered the black opal, given by Rafi and Boz, which she always wore under her shift. Rolling onto her front, Sophie peered below. The moon had moved round but still shone a bright beam on the compound. The servants lay out on wooden charpoys, dogs snuffled; a night guard called out in the distance patrolling a plantation. On the other side of the garden, a body was stretched out on a mat beside Rafi’s tent, smoking. He was naked save for a pair of drawers. It must be his servant. Then the man sat up and Sophie gasped as she realised the bulky shoulders and hairy arms were Rafi’s.
He looked up at the house, his handsome face bathed in moonlight, while he finished his cigarette. She could not tell if he saw her staring down over the edge of the roof and did not want to move and draw his attention, but her heart began to pound so hard she thought he wou
ld hear it. He frowned, deep in thought.
After a long moment, he extinguished the cigarette between finger and thumb and lay back down, resting his head on cupped hands. Sophie stayed watching for a long time; hot with guilt that she found the sight of him so arousing. She had to fight off the desire to hurry down from the roof and stretch out beside him on the burnt grass and put her hands on his broad naked chest. It left her almost sick with wanting. Tam had never made her feel quite like that.
Sophie rolled away and buried her face in her hands. She was contemptible. She tried to remember what it had felt like to be head over heels in love with Tam in Edinburgh. It was less than a year ago but it felt like the feelings of someone else; some restless girl who had been longing for romance and adventure and was envious that her timid favourite cousin had been the one to suddenly get engaged and plan a future in a faraway land. Tam had caught her attention – he was handsome and a great dancer – and when he disappeared to France he became all the more alluring for being out of reach.
How shallow she was! Sophie mocked herself. She had made a play for Tam partly because she thought she was in love with him, but partly because he was her means of getting back to India. Now she realised how strong her yearning was to come back; if she felt at home anywhere it was here. These past months had not been easy – the worry over Tam’s illness, his swings in mood, the primitive bungalow and learning to be a wife – but she relished the freedom of their jungle life, the surroundings, the people.
She blushed with shame to think that there was one person in particular who made her feel so alive; he was lying feet away in the garden below. She had to admit that was one of the reasons why she had avoided trips to Lahore, in case she bumped into Rafi. Did he have feelings for her too? Sophie knew that when they had first met, Rafi disapproved of her, had thought her typical memsahib material. But now there was a certain look in his mesmerising eyes; she wondered if it was mutual attraction.
Sophie wiped her sweating face on the sheet. She couldn’t allow anything to happen. She had made promises to Tam for life; she must make the most of her marriage to him. Somehow, she would rekindle their romance – she sensed he had regrets too – and they would have a baby. She would bury her anxiety about being responsible for a child – it was nonsensical to be so averse to motherhood – and then they would be happy.
Sophie knew she would not be able to sleep lying within sight of Rafi’s prone figure. She got up, gathered her bedding and climbed down from the roof. Crawling under the netting of the marital bed, she lay stewing next to Tam until the dawn.
Chapter 27
Three days later the monsoon came. The newspapers had tracked its path north from Ceylon and Bombay; Hafiz had accurately predicted its arrival to within half a day. The hot wind strengthened, the clouds rolled in and Sophie heard the hissing of the first fat raindrops as they hit the hot earth.
She dashed outside and threw out her arms, shrieking a welcome. Steam rose around her. Then the sky flashed with light and thunder claps filled the air like gunfire. Hard rain came suddenly in bucketfuls.
‘Come inside lassie,’ Tam shouted from the veranda, ‘before you’re struck by lightning!’
‘I don’t care,’ Sophie laughed, turning her face upwards, ‘it’s wonderful!’
She ran around the garden, jumping in puddles and cartwheeling across the parched lawn. The earth drank and gurgled like a thirsty creature. The servants watched from under umbrellas, grinning and making comments about the mad memsahib. Rafi’s tent billowed and flapped.
Sophie turned to see the men staring at her; Tam, Rafi and Bracknall. Tam looked annoyed, Rafi amused and their boss had a strange, severe look that made her suddenly acutely self-conscious. She was soaked to the skin, hair stuck to her face and clothes drenched. Her dash into the rain seemed childish now, but a few minutes ago she had been seized with a heady madness. She could not have sat still a minute longer listening to Bracknall pontificate about being invited to stay at the Viceregal Lodge in Simla in return for allowing the Viceroy to hunt across Forest Service land in the Punjab jungle.
Tam had been eagerly trying to expound his ideas on irrigation.
‘Trenching should follow the contours of the slopes not be in straight lines along the cliff edge; that’s what’s led to flooding and erosion in the past. In Germany they–’
‘Good God, Telfer,’ Bracknall had silenced him, ‘we’re certainly not going to take advice from the Boche. And as for your plans for felling and grass cutting – they’ll have to wait – need to have them costed up first. The Forest Service doesn’t have a blank cheque, you know.’
They all knew, but didn’t say, that the chief conservator’s reluctance was more to do with leaving the jungle untamed for the viceregal hunt than the cost.
As Sophie’s giddiness subsided, the temperature dropped. She stood clutching her arms and shivering.
‘Go and get changed,’ Tam said, his look tense.
He had been in a foul mood with her for the past two days, since the timber merchants had boycotted his auction. Tam blamed Sophie for causing a scene at the depot and making him look a fool, but she refused to feel bad for trying to stop him beating the guard. The memory of it sickened her. Rafi had not improved Tam’s temper by pointing out that the boycott was in protest at Tam doing a deal with one particular merchant.
As Sophie pulled off her waterlogged shoes, she quipped, ‘Well at least I’ve saved the sweeper having to lug in bath water tonight.’
As she went, she overheard Tam muttering excuses about it being her first monsoon and the men laughing. Yet it wasn’t her first. A memory returned of peering through railings and watching children splashing in a huge pond while the rain pelted down, and wishing she could join in.
Sophie took her time, stripping off wet clothes and rubbing herself down. She lay on the bed wrapped in a towel enjoying the sudden coolness. Let them talk about work while she had a five minute catnap. The drumming of the rain and the rattling of the shutters made it feel snug indoors for the first time in weeks; the sound soporific.
***
When Sophie awoke, the rain was still hammering on the roof but the bedroom was in darkness. She sat up, feeling light-headed. She had not slept so deeply in ages. The damp towel felt clammy on her cool skin; she shivered as she discarded it and pulled on a dry blouse and skirt. The shoes she had worn running around in the mud stood in a puddle by the door, ruined.
Padding through the sitting-room, the house appeared deserted. The veranda was in darkness. Tam had planned to take their guests to view the nursery of shisham and mulberries in the far plantation, but surely they wouldn’t have gone out in such weather? Peering over the veranda, Sophie gasped at the sight of their waterlogged garden. The house was almost marooned. How had so much water fallen in such a short time?
‘They’ve gone over to Chickawatin.’ A voice startled her. A man rose from a chair in the shadows; Bracknall. ‘Sorry if I startled you, dear girl.’
‘Chickawatin?’ Sophie puzzled.
‘I thought it best that someone kept an eye on the canal and given your husband’s obsession with irrigation, he seemed just the man.’
Sophie didn’t like his sneering tone.
‘Isn’t that the job of the canal people in the public works department?’ she questioned.
‘The canal yes; but the plantation next to it is ours – or more specifically your husband’s. If it floods the seedlings will be ruined.’
Sophie hovered by the steps, feeling uneasy. If anything, the rain was increasing again and the light was nearly gone from a metal-grey sky. Rafi’s tent sagged under the weight of water, the grass where he’d slept the past three nights turned into a lake.
As if he guessed her thoughts, Bracknall said, ‘I sent Khan with Tam. Thought it would be awkward to have him hanging around here with your husband away. You know how servants talk.’
Sophie’s discomfort increased. ‘How long have they been gone?’
/>
‘You’ve been asleep over five hours. I doubt they’ll make it back tonight. Looks like the road is impassable now anyway.’
Abruptly he clapped his hands and a servant hurried out of the shadows that Sophie didn’t recognise. Tam’s boss rattled off orders in Urdu and the man dashed away towards the kitchen hut, splashing through water up to his knees.
‘Hafiz can get you a drink,’ said Sophie, crossing the veranda and calling out. ‘Hafiz!’
‘Your bearer has gone with Telfer and Khan.’ Bracknall gave a sweep of his hand. ‘Come and sit down Sophie – you don’t mind me calling you Sophie? – and have a drink with me. I’d like to discuss your husband’s future prospects.’
Sophie felt completely wrong-footed by his proprietorial air; it was her house not his. But then she realised that probably he had more claim to it than she or Tam; the bungalow belonged to the Punjab Forest Service and Bracknall was its chief.
His servant brought back pink gins and a tray of spicy pakora. Sophie began to relax after a few sips of the bitter cocktail. Bracknall talked easily of life in Lahore, his son at boarding school and his passion for polo and tennis.
‘It’s good to see you joining in the tennis with Tam – it’s invaluable to have a supportive wife.’
‘I enjoy playing,’ Sophie replied. ‘I don’t do it to please the Forest Service; neither does Tam.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t be so sure of that,’ Bracknall smiled. ‘Tam would do a great deal to get on in the Service. He’s keen and ambitious, which I applaud. Joining the Masons was another smart move; you have to impress the right people if you are going to make a career in India.’
‘Shouldn’t it be Tam’s knowledge of forestry and his ideas on innovation that should be judged, not whether he can hit a tennis ball?’
Bracknall leaned towards her in the gloom; it was hard to read his expression but his words held a warning.
‘Let me give you some advice. Don’t let your husband get too enthusiastic about new-fangled ideas. There’s nothing more irritating to us old hands than young pups coming out from England thinking they know all the answers and telling us how to run things.’
THE PLANTER'S BRIDE: A story of intrigue and passion: sequel to THE TEA PLANTER'S DAUGHTER (India Tea Series Book 2) Page 25
