It was through her acquaintance with Miss Drummond, the principal of St Mary’s College – his mother had entertained her at the opening of new classrooms built by Khan’s Construction – that had led to Fatima gaining a scholarship to the prestigious girls’ school. He wondered if his mother had hoped all along that Fatima might become one of Lahore’s first women doctors; someone who could administer to women like her in the cloistered world of the zenana?
He found his mother and sisters sitting in the shade of the courtyard, the sounds of a fountain trickling and birds twittering in the mulberry tree, mingling with their voices.
He embraced his mother.
‘Come and drink sherbet with me,’ she said, patting the cushion beside her. ‘I can see from your face that Ghulam has not done as you asked. Your father will blame me for indulging him too much as a child – and maybe I did – but he has always been in a hurry to change the world.’
Rafi squatted down.
‘Don’t sit like a peasant,’ his sister Noor scolded, ‘you’re not in the jungle now.’ She was hugely pregnant and perspiring.
He flopped back on the cushions, winked at Fatima and helped himself to a fig from a dish of fruit in front of them. As usual Fatima was sitting upright and composed, letting the older women talk while she observed. Perhaps she was shy having him around, but she was always so self-contained that he never knew what she was thinking. Their mother speculated that Ghulam would be staying with his activist friends.
‘See if you can persuade him to stay with you, Rafi,’ she worried, ‘then at least we will know he is not in a police cell.’
‘Don’t fuss about Ghulam,’ Noor was dismissive. ‘He will come running back home when he next needs Father to get him out of a scrape. It is Fatima we should be worrying about. Has father told you?’
‘About Dr Fatima Khan?’ Rafi teased.
Fatima gave him a flicker of a smile.
‘Tch!’ Noor gave an impatient huff. ‘Don’t encourage her. She has had enough schooling. It is not natural for a woman to be a doctor; no man will want to marry her. Isn’t that right, Mother?’
‘That is probably right,’ their mother agreed.
‘Perhaps another doctor will?’ Rafi suggested.
Noor snapped, ‘It is not a joking matter. You must make her see sense. It is causing so many arguments in the family. It reflects badly on us all. They say to Father that he cannot control his own daughter.’
‘Who says?’ Rafi asked.
‘Your brothers and uncles – it is the talk all over Gawalmandi.’
Rafi laughed. ‘You are right; every shop I go into they are talking of nothing else.’
‘Mother!’ Noor cried, her eyes filling with furious tears. ‘Tell him not to make a fool of me!’
‘Rafi,’ his mother chided. She put a hand on her fraught daughter’s head. ‘Now, now, little nightingale, you will make your baby ill with all your shouting.’
‘Sorry,’ Rafi was quickly contrite, going over to pat his sister’s shoulder. ‘But I don’t share your fears about Fatima. It is a sign of civilised progress that women are training to be nurses and doctors. We need them in India where most men do not want their wives and daughters examined by male doctors. Think how much better the health of our women will be if those like Fatima can look after them. Look at you,’ he challenged, ‘she could deliver your baby for you.’
‘What is wrong with our midwives?’ Noor protested. ‘You were happy with them, weren’t you Mother?’
For a long moment their mother said nothing. She fingered the brocade on her sari. When she spoke, her voice was soft and full of regret.
‘I lost three babies between Amir and you. Your father would not allow a doctor into the zenana. That is all I will say on the matter.’
Her criticism of their father was so unexpected, that they just stared at her as she adjusted her sari and took a sip of iced sherbet.
‘Now, my son,’ she continued, fixing him with a determined look. ‘What I really want to talk to you about is Sultana Sarfraz, the banker’s daughter. She is very pretty and she is a cousin through your great uncle Jamal. Show your brother the photograph, Noor.’
Rafi rolled his eyes at Fatima, as the older women fussed over the picture. He looked at the posed studio photo of a solemn slim-faced young woman staring at the camera with large anxious eyes. She looked very young. His heart sank. He felt nothing for her. How could he, when the only woman he could think about was Sophie Telfer? His every waking moment was filled with thoughts of her; the way she smiled and pushed blonde hair out of her lively brown eyes, her quick walk, her throaty laugh, the way she moved in the saddle when she rode her black pony. He noticed how she always wore the dark opal he and Boz had bought her, and how often her slender fingers would stroke it. Try as he might, he could not rid his mind of the sight of Sophie rising from the roof of the forest bungalow, moonlight shining through her flimsy shift as she descended the steep steps. Had she been sleeping up there or just gone up for a breath of air? Just as well he had not known, or he would not have been able to resist rushing up there to lie beside her ...
Rafi felt consumed with guilt towards his friend Tam for such thoughts, yet he felt anger too at the cold way Tam increasingly treated Sophie. She had been so happy to see her husband when Tam and he had returned from the flooded plantation at Chickawatin, yet Tam had been cross with her for letting Bracknall leave before he got back, and reduced her to tears. ‘Really Sophie, you should have entertained him for me. He’ll think us quite rude.’
Rafi felt wretched to see Sophie upset, but he was in no position to help her; she was married to another. Even if she had been unmarried, in the strict code of the British in India which made outcasts of white women who married Indians, she would still be out of his reach.
‘Yes she is pretty,’ Rafi said, trying to summon up some enthusiasm for Sultana Sarfraz. There was too much wrangling in his family for him to add to their unhappiness. Perhaps marriage would be a good idea after all. It might cure him of tortured thoughts of Sophie and give him an outlet for his passion.
His mother gave a broad smile. ‘So you will be happy for us to arrange a meeting with the Sarfraz family?’
Rafi hesitated. He saw Noor’s expectant look and Fatima’s watchful one. He wondered if Fatima could read his thoughts?
‘Yes,’ Rafi forced a smile, ‘if it makes you happy Mother.’
Chapter 29
Shillong
The rain fell in sheets beyond Major Rankin’s veranda. The sky was as dark as night. From the safety of the sitting-room – doors flung open to catch the wind and the view – Tilly thought the storm magnificent.
‘I can’t stop thinking about the Logans living up at Belgooree,’ Tilly said, raising her voice against the claps of thunder.
‘Well it makes sense,’ said Ros, ‘if it belonged to the Oxford Estates, doesn’t it? They must have rented it for a while.’
‘But James must have known that, yet he kept it from me. Why would he do that? He doesn’t want me anywhere near the place.’
‘Isn’t his reluctance to let you go there more to do with his cousin Wesley? They don’t see eye to eye, do they?’
‘Well it just makes me want to visit there more than ever,’ Tilly was adamant. ‘What do you remember, Major Rankin, about 1907? Was there a big fuss about the fiftieth anniversary?’
‘There was a good deal of hot air about it, in my opinion. The Indian Army is loyal to the hilt – at least in my old regiment – but there was real concern in government that there would be unrest. The planters felt more vulnerable than most, I suppose.’
‘Why?’ Tilly asked.
‘Living upcountry – remote and isolated – but with large numbers of poor coolies on their doorstep.’
‘Would it have been any safer at Belgooree for the Logans than staying at the Oxford, do you think?’
‘Possibly,’ the major conceded. ‘Belgooree is a small estate and the Khassia
people are friendly. I remember when it was run by Belhaven – an old army man and a genial fellow before he hit the bottle – they never had labour problems as far as I know.’
‘That was my friend Clarrie’s father, Jock Belhaven,’ Tilly said.
‘Ah, his daughter Clarissa,’ Major Rankin smiled, ‘striking girl – dark good looks and rode well – mother was half Indian. I’m afraid people gave them the cold shoulder socially but on leave I used to go up to Belgooree for a spot of fishing.’
‘But in 1907,’ Tilly steered him back to what preoccupied her, ‘what was happening up there?’
‘Don’t know,’ the major shrugged. ‘Regiment was posted on the North West Frontier that summer. Ros and her mother were here at Shillong, but Ros was too young to recall those days, I imagine.’
‘I do remember children at school frightening each other with stories,’ Ros mused, ‘that natives were going sneak in at night and knife all the white children in their beds.’
‘Children can be little beasts,’ Tilly said. ‘But was there any trouble?’
‘Not that I remember. We were kept very sheltered from the outside world at the cantonment school.’
‘And Clarrie won’t be able to tell me anything,’ Tilly sighed, ‘because she was in England by then, that’s why the Logans were able to go there. I wonder what happened to the place after the Logans died and before Wesley and Clarrie got it back?’
‘Clarissa Belhaven, eh?’ the major chuckled. ‘Strong-willed girl – didn’t give two hoots to what people thought of her – scandalised the gossip-mongers by taking tea in the Pinewood Hotel with her pretty little sister.’
‘But Belgooree?’ Tilly prompted. ‘Did it stay empty all that time?’
The major frowned as he tried to remember. ‘I don’t remember hearing that anyone lived up there until the Robsons came back.’
‘Belgooree,’ Ros mused. ‘I do remember something about it.’
‘Yes?’ Tilly asked.
Ros waved a hand. ‘Oh, it was nothing really; just silly childish gossip.’
‘Go on, tell me.’
‘The children in the cantonment used to say there was an old tea bungalow in the hills that was haunted. Everyone who lived there died – but it was just silly tale-telling.’
‘There’s always a grain of truth in every tale,’ her father grunted. ‘Old Belhaven’s wife was killed there by a falling tree in the earthquake and then Belhaven drank himself to death.’
Tilly and Ros exchanged looks.
‘And then the Logans died,’ said Tilly.
They sat brooding in silence as the rain eased and a warm mist rose up from the lake and hid the hills.
***
Tilly went back to the library to read through the Shillong Gazettes of that long ago May. She knew that it must be pure chance that the Logans had died on that ominous anniversary date, but she couldn’t get the idea out of her head that there was some link.
The tenth had been Sophie’s sixth birthday too. Her cousin had remembered that she’d wanted a party but no one had come, yet they had been letting off fireworks beyond the garden fence and drums had been beating. Small Sophie had equated them with birthday celebrations especially for her; but in adulthood that had seemed unlikely. And the drums had got so loud they made me frightened, Sophie had recalled.
What if the bangs and drums had been something more sinister? Tilly wondered. Had the Logans really been in danger there?
Mama told me to go and play hide and seek, Sophie had said. It was one of her few vivid memories of her mother – maybe her last – she had confided in Tilly.
Porter, the retired policeman, was only too pleased to pull out the old newspapers again.
‘Knew there was something in it, didn’t I tell you?’
‘I don’t know that there is,’ Tilly cautioned, ‘I just want to get a better feel of what was going on at that time.’
‘I was talking to old Burke at the club about your interest in the Logans’ deaths.’
‘Burke?’
‘The superintendent at the time. He seemed a bit rattled. Wanted to know why you were poking your nose into other people’s tragedy after all this time.’
Tilly blushed.
‘Sounded to me,’ Porter said, pulling on his moustache, ‘like a man with something to hide.’
She asked him to carry it out to a table into the main section where people read in silence, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to hover and talk. Tilly immersed herself in the newspapers. Most of the articles were deadly dull; reports of cantonment life, a production of HMS Pinafore, a parade, prices fetched at a timber auction. The most exciting event appeared to be the spotting of a leopard lying on a tombstone in the cemetery.
What was she looking for? Proof that there was something untoward going on at Belgooree while the Logans were there? But from Sophie’s hazy memory, it sounded as if their final day together was routinely uneventful. A birthday with no party; a game of hide and seek. Tilly vowed that she would make a huge fuss of Jamie on every birthday.
A strange feeling settled on her. Jessie Logan, Sophie’s beautiful mother marooned at Belgooree with a dying husband, was soon to succumb to fever herself. But a woman who was playing hide and seek with her six year-old didn’t sound like someone in the grip of fever. Such doubt had plagued Sophie too.
Who was the doctor who had pronounced them dead? There was no mention of him in the report of their deaths. It is presumed that they died of enteric fever. So who presumed? A double death should surely have attracted more attention than it had. Tilly conjured up the distressing image of small Sophie, running off to hide and waiting for her mother to seek her but never coming. And the ayah running away with a kitten. She found that almost as odd as Jessie’s sudden fatal fever. Ayahs were usually devoted to their charges and Sophie remembered hers with an affection bordering on devotion. That was why she felt so betrayed by her ayah’s disappearance. Had the woman been terrified of catching the fever too? But why save a kitten and leave Sophie behind? It just didn’t make sense.
Tilly sighed. She was not going to find anything in these old newspapers to shed any light after all this time. On the point of closing the folder, she flicked through the edition for the day before the Logans’ death.
Tilly let out a gasp at the sight of James’s name.
“Planters urged to be cautious: Mindful of the imminent anniversary of the Indian Mutiny, planters and businessmen are being urged to be vigilant. Touring the tea gardens, assistant manager at the Oxford Estates, Mr James Robson, warned his fellow tea planters to take extra precautions to keep their wives and families safe.
Visiting the Shillong area, Mr Robson said, ‘the advice is for British in the mofusil not to stay in isolated bungalows but to band together on the larger estates. Don’t put your wives and families at risk.”
So James had been in the area at the time of the Logans’ death, Tilly realised with shock. If he was going around warning the planters, he must surely have visited Belgooree too? But he had told her that he was only there later when summoned by the police.
She went and found Porter the librarian. ‘What’s the mofusil?’
‘It’s Anglo-Indian for the provinces; anywhere outside the safety of the town.’ He gave Tilly a curious look. ‘Have you uncovered something interesting?’
Tilly shook her head. She was not going to share her sudden suspicion of her husband’s behaviour. But her stomach fluttered with tension. James had been there – or at least near at hand – at the time of the Logans’ death. He must have had an inkling that by staying on at Belgooree alone and unguarded, they were in danger. Had he tried to persuade them to leave? If he had found them ill with fever, surely he would have organised their rescue? But he hadn’t; and they had died.
Tilly shivered with sudden cold in the dim library. What if something terrible had happened on the anniversary of the Mutiny? What if the Logans had not died of fever but had been attacked and killed? S
he had a sudden image of a tough young James doing all he could to cover up what had happened at Belgooree. What was it that James knew but was determined to keep from her and Sophie?
Chapter 30
Dalhousie Hill Station
It was a relief to get away from the plains and the claustrophobic forest bungalow. It held no enchantment for Sophie anymore; only ugly memories. White ants ate through their furniture, insects dropped into their food and the doors and windows swelled and would not close. As the rains turned the jungle to mosquito-ridden swamp and the house to a mildewed mess, Tam had suffered a further bout of debilitating fever.
He screamed in horror about Germans pouring into his trench and laughed hysterically that the trees were talking. Sophie had taken him back to Lahore to be seen by the civil surgeon.
‘When you are this susceptible to fever,’ he had told Tam, ‘only a few months back in Europe can cure you. You need to get it out of your system. Somewhere at high altitude where the air is bracing but dry – the Tyrol perhaps.’
‘Damn it,’ Tam had fulminated, ‘I’ve hardly been in India a year. I’m not due Home leave for a couple of years. It’s out of the question.’
‘Well, get yourself to the hills here then,’ the doctor had ordered.
So Tam had agreed to go with her to Dalhousie. Just before they left, a package had come from Tilly containing a photograph. Sophie had stared in shock at the weathered gravestone bearing the names and dates of her parents; they were buried in Shillong. She was glad to know but it left her more upset than she had imagined. Why Shillong? Tilly said she would try and find out more.
Up in Dalhousie, Sophie delighted in the cool air, misty mountains and the gurgling of fresh running water. They stayed in a cottage on a steep slope above the post office with views of distant snow-capped mountains where Tam had revived. At moments when she had nursed him, he had been almost tender with her again and she was filled with optimism that they could rekindle their former feelings. But his interest in making love to her had dwindled to nothing since the monsoons had brought on his illness. Each night Sophie lay anxious that they shared no intimacy, yet relieved that he did not touch her. The thought of sex brought back horrible bouts of anxiety over what she might have done with Bracknall.
THE PLANTER'S BRIDE: A story of intrigue and passion: sequel to THE TEA PLANTER'S DAUGHTER (India Tea Series Book 2) Page 27
