At the start of the evening, the conversation had been stilted and a baffled George had been extra jovial, filling the awkward pauses with chatter about the botany of the Himalayas. Alice had the impression that John must have told Colin about their past entanglement for he had seemed just as embarrassed to talk to her as John had been.
But after a supper of tinned Scottish salmon that George had ordered specially for their guests, along with potatoes and peas from their garden, washed down with three bottles of claret, all the men had become relaxed and talkative.
‘ . . . and they’re very appreciative of your efforts, Mrs Gillveray.’
Alice was suddenly aware that Colin was talking to her. She had only been half listening.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘My efforts?’
‘For the sepoys’ daughters. The school at Subathu. I know some of the Gurkhas there.’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Alice said hastily. ‘But it’s really Miss Wallace who deserves the credit. I just sold a handful of paintings.’
‘Charming paintings,’ John said, taking her by surprise. Had he been listening in to her conversation as she had to his? ‘Your picture of the boys by the watering hole has pride of place on our wall – though I fear the rain that leaks through the ceiling might damage it.’
Alice smiled. ‘Well, I’m glad it’s covering up the damp marks.’
‘What do you intend to paint next, Mrs Gillveray?’ John asked.
‘I have yet to visit the monkey temple at the top of Jakko Hill,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard you get the best view of Simla from there.’
‘You do indeed.’ He nodded. ‘Especially at sunrise. The peaks of the Himalayas are clearest then – before the clouds cover them. I would recommend an early morning ride.’
He held her look, his eyes gleaming fiercely in the candlelight. Alice felt a slow thudding in her chest. Was he challenging her to meet him there? The atmosphere between them had shifted subtly during the evening; his initial frostiness to her had thawed. She had to remind herself that he had no reason to be curt with her, as it was she who was the wronged one. Yet Alice was grateful that he had made no mention of how they had once known each other.
Colin said, ‘I’m eager to see the mountains close up when we go on our trip.’
‘Trip?’ queried George.
‘We’re travelling up to Bushahir province in a few days,’ explained John, ‘as part of the cavalry’s mission to buy horses for the Company remount at Dehra Dun. Colin and I hope to do some hunting while we’re there.’
Alice felt a stab of disappointment. ‘How long will you be gone?’
‘Till we return to our regiments,’ said Colin, ‘at the end of the hot season.’
‘Well, I wish you both good luck,’ said George enviously. ‘I’ve always wanted to visit the high plateaux and see Himalayan goats in their natural habitat – see for myself how they extract the pashm from their coats. I’ve always promised Alice a shawl made of pashmina. If I was ten years younger, I’d be joining you like a shot.’
‘Your wife might have something to say about that,’ John said dryly.
George chuckled. ‘Alice would be there like a shot too if she wasn’t carrying—’ He stopped abruptly.
Alice flushed. He had been about to let slip that she was expecting their child. There was an awkward silence. She turned away from John’s keen look.
‘Lieutenant MacRae, you mentioned you would like to buy one of my paintings. Would you care to come back tomorrow and view them in daylight? I keep them in the summerhouse.’
‘I’d be delighted,’ said Colin.
‘And I could show you around the garden,’ said George, stifling a sudden yawn.
John stood up. ‘Thank you for a very pleasant evening. We must let you get to your bed.’
Alice led them onto the veranda; the trees were dripping after a fresh downpour but the clouds were clearing to reveal a star-studded sky.
‘That’s the Choor, the mountain we were measuring,’ John told them, pointing south. A solitary snow-tipped peak was emerging, a glittering outline in the starlight. ‘The name means the Bracelet of the Moon.’
‘How beautiful,’ gasped Alice.
He turned and a look passed between them. Was he too thinking of the moment nearly ten years ago when he had declared his love for her?
‘Aye, it was,’ he said, his voice sounding deep with regret.
Suddenly Alice didn’t want him to go. ‘I hope you will come and see us before you leave Simla,’ she said, holding out her hand.
‘I would like that,’ he answered. Stepping towards her, he took her hand and pressed it to his lips. ‘Goodnight, Mrs Gillveray.’
‘Goodnight,’ she answered, hoping her voice didn’t betray her hammering heart.
Alice lay in bed, sleepless. George was snoring loudly, unused to drinking so much claret. She was furious with herself for allowing tender memories of John to resurface. She was betraying her husband with every treacherous thought – the man whose baby she carried! Yet she could think of nothing else but John. She imagined him returning to Nairn’s house to join in the revelries, torturing herself with visions of him lying in the arms of some beautiful dancing girl. She had no claim on him and shouldn’t care what he did. How she despised herself!
John had come into her home and deliberately stirred up old feelings with his desirous glances. He was just the same flattering deceiver as of old. Alice tossed and sighed with frustration and anger. Then she thought how unfair she was being. He had merely answered a supper invitation and had made no attempt to see her until that night. She had read too much into his looks and words. It would be best if she never set eyes on him again.
In the pearly half-light of pre-dawn, Alice crept out of bed, dressed and went out. A sleepy-headed syce saddled up one of the ponies that Sandy had hired for the summer. George did not like her to ride in her delicate condition but she was tired of being treated like a porcelain doll. She missed her morning rides. She would go at walking pace. She needed the cool morning air to clear her head, which was fuzzy with lack of sleep.
Alice pretended the route she took up Jakko Hill was done on a whim but she knew deep down it wasn’t. She wanted to glimpse the mountains that were drawing John away from Simla; she wished to feel their pull too. Above all, she wanted him to be there.
The air was filled with the resinous scent of the long-needled deodars that overhung the twisting track. Early fires sent up vertical columns of smoke from the bungalows hidden among the trees. She wondered which one was Nairn’s. At the top of the hill there were no other early-morning riders and Alice felt a pang of disappointment. Yet the place was entrancing. Monkeys scampered around a weathered wooden temple with a steeply sloping roof. The trees were alive with the flapping and screeching of birds heralding the dawn. The noise masked the soft tread of hooves approaching so that Alice gasped in alarm as a rider pulled up beside her.
John smiled and her heart swelled. He had come! He didn’t seem at all surprised to find her there.
‘I hoped you’d be here,’ he said.
She smiled back, too emotional to speak.
He nodded and said, ‘The best view is from over there.’
She followed until he stopped his horse at a gap in the forest where trees had been recently felled. The sky was beginning to lighten to the east. As they watched, a rose-red dawn spread like fire behind a dark mass of indistinct ridges. Alice held her breath and waited, as if to breathe might break the spell of intimacy that bound them. Then she saw them: the mountain peaks. They emerged from the night as if waking from sleep, turning from pink to orange to gold and finally to a soft fluffy white.
Her mouth fell open in wonder. She had witnessed many splendid dawns from the lamp-room of the lighthouse but never one as magical as this. Alice felt tears of emotion sting her eyes.
‘Why did you never reply to my letters, Alice?’ John startled her with his question. It broke the spell at once.
/> ‘What letters?’ she demanded. ‘Don’t pretend now that you bothered to write.’
He looked at her sharply. ‘Indeed I did! I wrote many times.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she retorted. ‘I never received any. I waited for months. It was I who wrote to you but got no reply. You promised you would write to my father—’
‘I did,’ John said indignantly. ‘I asked for your hand in marriage. I sent gifts to your parents – clothes and books – I spent a small fortune on you all. That silk dress. But I suppose it wasn’t fancy enough once you were claimed by Colonel Fairchild.’
Alice gaped at him. ‘Silk dress?’
‘Aye, it was sky blue,’ said John, ‘to match your eyes.’
Alice looked at him, stunned.
‘When you never replied – not a word month after month,’ John said, ‘I went half out of my mind.’
Alice felt sick. What if he was telling the truth? A terrible doubt clawed at her insides. Was it possible that someone much closer to home had betrayed her and not John? She closed her eyes in pain. All these years of blaming John – loving and hating him in equal measure – all the wasted years!
‘Thomasina,’ she hissed, ‘and Danny.’
‘Your brother?’ John asked, putting his hand on her arm.
Alice flinched and opened her eyes. ‘Thomasina had a new blue dress. She helped her mother run the post office – she must have taken it for herself, and all the other gifts.’
‘Why would she do such a thing?’
‘She hated me,’ said Alice bitterly. ‘Thomasina was always jealous over Danny. When I got all the attention after the rescue she hated me all the more. She turned Danny against me too.’ Alice felt winded by the betrayal. ‘I gave him a letter to post to you but he must have destroyed it.’
John’s anger turned to bafflement. ‘But why would Danny do that?’
‘Because he was frightened that you were special to me,’ Alice said in distress. ‘He didn’t want me going off with a soldier when there were far more rich pickings. I half suspected they read some of my post but not that they withheld any of it . . .’
She looked at John, nauseated by the thought of Thomasina and Danny’s scheming.
‘They did it for greed! They even made money by selling the story of my birth to the newspapers.’ Alice let out a howl of anger. ‘Greedy devils, the pair of them! Why did I never think they might have done such a thing?’ She doubled up in pain, unable to stem her tears of outrage.
The next minute John was out of his saddle and lifting her down from hers. He carried her to a patch of soft grass, spread out his jacket and pulled her close. She sobbed into his shoulder. He kissed her forehead tenderly.
‘So you do care for me?’ he asked.
‘So v-very much.’
‘And I for you, sweet Alice. Not a day goes by without me thinking of you – no matter how hard I try to put you from my mind.’
‘It’s the same for me,’ she cried. ‘If only I had known you still loved me the way I did you . . .’
He held her in his strong arms. She felt his heart drumming close to her cheek. How often she had longed to feel his arms around her again! But the moment was bittersweet. It had come too late.
‘I tried to see you,’ John said. ‘Before I left for India. But you seemed too far out of my reach by then.’
‘The Spanish coin,’ Alice gasped. ‘So it was from you?’
John nodded. Alice told him how she had only been given it years later by Josiah’s widow.
‘I still wear it,’ Alice admitted, ‘even though I know I shouldn’t. Not now I’m another man’s wife.’ Her words seemed to anger him.
‘You should be mine!’ John cried. ‘Not that old man’s.’
Alice pulled away. ‘I feel so guilty. George is a good man.’
‘You’re carrying his child, aren’t you?’
Alice’s eyes stung with fresh tears. She nodded, unable to speak. They looked at each other in misery, overwhelmed by the tragedy of their misunderstanding.
John let go his hold. He raised her to her feet and stood facing her.
‘I have never loved any woman as much as I love you, Alice,’ he said, his green eyes feverish. ‘Never! Yet I have to accept that you are Gillveray’s wife. I know he is a fine man but I cannot bear to see you with him. It’s like a sword in the guts. We can’t see each other again.’
Alice reached out and grabbed his hands. ‘I can’t bear not to,’ she whispered. ‘Please let me see you before you go!’
She saw the tension in his face as he struggled with his conscience. She was beyond all such scruples. She was about to lose him again. The pain at the thought of never seeing him was suffocating.
‘I love you, John. Don’t break my heart a second time!’
His eyes blazed. ‘Woman, you are carrying his child. If we can’t be together as man and wife, then it’s better to be parted. I would never be content just as your lover, so don’t ask it of me.’
‘I’m not—’
‘There is no future for us,’ John said harshly, ‘only heartache.’
He almost dragged her to her pony and lifted her roughly into the saddle. ‘Go, Alice,’ he rasped.
She gripped onto the reins, blinded by tears of anguish, and kicked the pony into a trot. It bumped and jarred her down the hillside, but she cared nothing for the pain. The agony in her heart was tenfold.
Alice was not sure how she got through the rest of the day. George chided her for her early-morning ride and ordered her to rest.
‘You look grey from the effort, my dearest. Please, never do that again without taking me with you.’
Later, she woke to hear voices in the garden below. George was being firm.
‘I’m afraid my wife has been overdoing things. Perhaps you could come back another time, Lieutenant?’
‘Of course,’ a Scottish voice answered.
Alice struggled out of bed and rushed to the window in panic. George was sending John away. Peering out she saw it was Colin retreating down the garden path. Her spirits plummeted. How guilty she felt at her yearning for John and yet if she had known the truth that he had always loved her and wanted to marry her she would never have accepted George’s proposal. She should be Mrs Sinclair not Gillveray.
But what could they do about it now? She was filled with resentment towards George, though none of it was his fault. How she cursed her selfish brother Danny and his heartless wife. Alice sank back on the bed in despair. She had to admit that John was right; it would only bring them further pain to see each other and not be able to be together.
Yet the next day Alice insisted on going out with her paint brushes and water-colouring paper hoping for a glimpse of John. George protested but she wouldn’t be stopped, so he insisted on going with her. She chose Annandale, thinking that the Scottish officers might be exercising their horses in the glade, but there was no sign of them.
It rained for the next four days, torrential downpours that kept most people indoors. Alice sat with a book opened but unread in her lap as Emily chattered about the Eden sisters and a garden party that was being postponed. Rain drummed overhead and drowned out the conversation while servants hurried around with bowls to catch drips from the leaky roof.
By the end of the week the skies cleared and warm sun returned. The garden was lush with flowers and new growth. The forests around Simla were dank and sweet smelling with ferns and pink lilies. The paths steamed as they dried and the residents resumed their carriage rides and picnics.
On Sunday, George and Alice joined the Aytons at church.
‘We’ve been starved of society,’ said Emily. ‘Church is the best place for picking up news.’
Sandy chuckled. ‘Tittle-tattle you mean.’
There was talk of building a grand church for the town but for the moment the British had to make do with occasional services in a thatched building along the ridge. It was inadequate for the numbers attempting to cram inside a
nd soon Alice was feeling faint and unwell. George took her back to Daisy Cottage.
When the Aytons returned for lunch, Alice couldn’t help asking, ‘Have the Scots officers left on their horse-buying trip yet?’
‘Yes,’ said Sandy, ‘they left as soon as the rain stopped. Quite a procession by all accounts. Enough pack horses and porters for a military campaign. You would think it was Auckland going on tour.’
‘That surprises me,’ said George. ‘They didn’t seem like the sort of gentlemen who bothered about home comforts when travelling.’
‘No, it wasn’t Sinclair and MacRae who took so much baggage,’ Emily joined in. ‘It was Captain Buckley.’
‘Buckley’s gone with them?’ Alice was astonished.
‘Major Raine has taken ill with pleurisy,’ Sandy explained, ‘so Buckley’s been put in charge of the expedition.’
Emily laughed. ‘Put himself in charge most likely so he can lord it over Sinclair and MacRae. You know what he’s like. Apparently they were all terrible rivals at Addiscombe. No doubt they’ll be trying to outdo each other shooting bears and leopards.’
‘No doubt,’ agreed Sandy.
‘I thought MacRae would come back for one of your paintings,’ said George, looking at Alice. ‘I’m sorry if I put him off – but you really weren’t well the day he called, were you?’
‘No.’ She blushed.
‘A pity they didn’t come to say farewell before they left,’ he added.
‘Oh, but they did,’ said Emily. ‘I quite forgot. You were out. At Annandale I think. I can’t remember which day.’
‘Why didn’t you say so?’ Alice exclaimed.
‘I’m sorry, it went right out of my head. They didn’t stay long. What was it they said, Sandy?’
‘I wasn’t here,’ Sandy reminded his wife. ‘But you told me that Sinclair left a message.’
In the Far Pashmina Mountains Page 20
