Ryman, Rebecca

by Olivia

  If he had suddenly pulled the rug from under her feet, she could not have been more stunned. She stared at him, aghast, then very slowly, filled with pain.

  "I mean it, Olivia." For all the emotion he showed, they could have still been discussing topgallants. "Your aunt has made a wise choice for you. Birkhurst may be a prime idiot, but he is at heart a good man. He will be kind to you."

  She was wounded beyond measure. "How can you, you of all people, make a suggestion that is so grotesque, so monstrous...?" Her voice was low but impassioned. In her moment of panic her tongue loosened; she was hardly aware of what she said.

  "I can because I am a grotesque, monstrous man."

  Olivia flung herself out of her chair to confront him where he stood. "Don't throw that damned notoriety of yours into my face again like an ... an award for meritorious service! I am sick of hearing you crow about your evil self, sick of your self-denigrations. Your reputation, such as it is, is meaningless to me."

  "If it were," he replied, untouched by her indignation, "you would not want to keep our meetings secret from your family, or anyone else."

  Uncaring of anything but his growing distance from her, Olivia no longer heeded how much of herself she was giving away to him. "And what about that. . . that wonderful affinity?" she mocked. "I should marry Freddie in spite of that?"

  "Not in spite of it." He moved farther away. "Because of it. You will be safe with Freddie."

  "Safe from what?"

  "From me," he said mildly enough. "I will harm you, Olivia."

  By her side her hands clenched. "Why am I constantly being told that? Why do you talk to me in riddles?" Tears glittered in her eyes, unbidden.

  "There are riddles because you happen to stand where you do." He remained cold and unyielding, immune to her torment.

  "And where exactly might that be, pray?" A far corner of her brain warned her that she was losing dignity, stripping herself bare, debasing herself horribly, but she could not stop. Driven by some hideous compulsion, she continued to expose herself.

  "In my way."

  The gentleness with which he said the three words was more cruel than a hundred lashes; Olivia was shocked into silence. In my way!

  He straightened himself to pace with his hands clasped behind his back. "Yes, I tricked you into coming here this morning. I should not have. It was a mistake." His pace increased and his knuckles shone white with the grip of his hands. "But where you are concerned, Olivia, I seem to lack sane judgement. I become rash and fallible. I neither understand it nor like it. It still . . . disturbs me." He spoke in jerks as if unsure of himself, and his eyes were baffled.

  She had a violent urge to rip off his mask, to wrench off his insidious, cowardly armour, to force him to denude his soul just as he had forced her to bare hers. But, lacking courage, she kept her hands clasped too and her eyes lowered. "There are dark areas in your mind that I need to reach, Jai..." Her voice trembled as, for the first time, she spoke his name.

  "You cannot be part of those areas, Olivia."

  "Don't lock me out now, Jai, not now!" She was leaving nothing with which to cover her nakedness, but it didn't matter any more. He knew everything anyway. "Is it because of . . . Sujata?" She sickened at the depths to which she was sinking, but ravaged by his categorical rejection, she could no longer control herself.

  "Sujata?" Brief astonishment widened his eyes. "No, it is not because of Sujata. It is not because of anything that I can make you understand." Suddenly he banged his fist on the desk top with such force that an ink-well jumped and dark blue drops splattered a sheaf of papers. "Don't ask me any more questions, damn you! I cannot, will not give you the answers. Do you not see that simple fact?" His grey eyes turned ashen with rage. "Your inquisitiveness about me is like an . . . affliction. I find it obscene, do you hear me, obscene!"

  Between them silence fell. At the far end of the cabin the sound of his rapid, raspy breathing kept time with a handsome marine clock on the wall. The battlements of suspicion, of hostility, that separated them showed no signs of a breach. Olivia's face was pale, her eyes beset with the same deadness she felt within. With a small sigh she roused herself out of her stupor. "I have to go now."

  He swore again under his breath and walked back to her. "Christ!" he muttered softly. "Don't cry."

  She wasn't aware that she had cried. Quietly, she wiped her cheeks. "It is getting late. I must leave." She could not look at him.

  Suddenly, he touched her face. "I can't bear to see you cry." He made a gesture of defeat and let his fingers stray over her eyes to brush them with the tips. "I wish we had never met, Olivia . . ."

  "Yes," she whispered mindlessly, hollow of feeling but eyes welling again.

  Very gently, he took her wrists and pulled her to him. "My God, how vulnerable you really are!" His voice shook; for the first time there was anguish in his face.

  His breath carried the words and buried them in the abundance of her hair. She felt the warmth of his mouth against her scalp and shuddered. Eyes closed, body trembling against his, she pressed her lips into the column of his neck, his thick metal chain cutting into them with coldness, but the taste of his salty skin was incandescent. Against her temple he murmured something and it was like the hum of bees on a summer's day, a lullaby in some dream space between illusion and reality. She did not listen to the words.

  "I have no answers for you, my innocent victim . . ."

  Victim.

  Unnoticed, the word slipped through her fading consciousness like dew through the sun's vapour. His closeness, the heat from his body, the quivering fingers brushing her skin with feather strokes entranced her. Sour memory blew away like a troublesome cobweb; she was a bird who, having braved the storm, was now again safe in a nest she should never have left. An instant or an eternity passed, Olivia didn't know which; time petrified like a fossil. Then, still with gentleness, he unlocked her fingers from behind his neck and guided her arms down to her sides. All too fleetingly he cupped her face within his palms and skimmed his lips over hers.

  "Now you must go."

  Startled out of their trance, Olivia's eyes flew open. He withdrew from her, in body and in spirit. Before her gaze fixed on his face, he again became a cipher. In silence, he led her out of the cabin, up the companion-way and onto the deck. There was no expression in those maddening, mistlike eyes. Once more the seamed mouth was rigid and once more they stood on opposite sides of a chasm without a bridge between them. The instant or the eternity might never have been.

  "Bahadur will guide you back to your horse and see you safely home." Raventhorne's tone was flat. The sun behind his head shadowed his features so that she could not see them; she knew that even if she could they would not give her any more. "I will not see you again, Olivia."

  Before she could step onto the rope gangway, he had been swallowed up by the door. He had not touched her again, not even with his eyes.

  "Well, which do you think—caramel custard or trifle?" Brow furrowed in thought, Lady Bridget flicked another page of her recipe book.

  "Both," Estelle decided firmly. "Knowing Lady B's appetite you'll need to. She . . . ouch!" This to Olivia, who stood behind her with a pair of curling tongs. "That nearly singed my scalp!" Olivia mouthed an inaudible apology.

  "Yes, that's not a bad idea." Pleased, Lady Bridget shut her recipe book and stood up. "We'll have saddle of lamb—not that it's lamb, of course, it's that dreadful goat meat that smells high— if I can procure a leg of good Canterbury. And the Bengal Club keeps a reasonable Stilton, if one can get there fast enough after a ship docks..." Muttering to herself, she went out of the room.

  "Bother Lady B!" Estelle grumbled. "Why do we have to have them tonight!'" She had to repeat the question before Olivia answered.

  "Because they leave tomorrow. Anyway, what's so bothersome about having them tonight?"

  "I had other plans," Estelle said loftily.

  "Oh? What kind of plans?"

  "Just plans."
She waited for Olivia to shower her with questions, and when she didn't, added, "Charlotte wants to take me for a ride in their new carriage, if you must know."

  "Does the ride have anything to do with Clive Smithers, too?"

  Estelle tried to toss her head but, restrained by the tongs and the paper curlers, couldn't. "Perhaps."

  "Is that why the hoity-toity, much-hated Miss Smithers is suddenly your bosom companion?" Estelle maintained a haughty silence. "Well, you could ask your mother if you can be excused tonight."

  "Huh! You think she'll agree? Mama doesn't like Clive. Just because he plays the horses she thinks he's fast. She thinks I should sit and pine for John. God, how boring!"

  "And so you should, miss, if you are serious about him."

  "If he were serious about me he'd have taken me to London! He can't expect me to live for a whole year like a nun!"

  Olivia smiled. "Nuns don't go to parties and have their hair done up with tongs."

  This time Estelle did toss her head, sending two paper streamers flying to the floor. "Well, I'm going for that ride and Mama will never know. I'll slip out through the back door."

  "That's wrong, Estelle. It wouldn't be right to deceive your ..." Olivia broke off and flushed; who was she to be giving pious advice?

  Through the silence that followed, Estelle fidgeted, then caught hold of Olivia's hand and stilled it. "Is anything the matter, Coz dear?"

  "The matter?"

  "Yes, matter! You've been going round all week like a duck lost in a thunderstorm. What is it? Those rides with Freddie?"

  Olivia bent down to replace the tongs on the stove. "No."

  "That letter then? From your friend Mrs. MacKendrick? It's made you homesick all over again, hasn't it?"

  "Yes."

  Estelle's attention span, fortunately, was brief; it seldom stayed away from her own problems for long. "When I leave home, I'm never going to be homesick. At least I won't have to go through all this bother for a silly little carriage ride!"

  As soon as Estelle's coiffeur was done, Munshi Babu arrived. At Olivia's request, Sir Joshua had arranged for one of the clerks in his office to give her tuition in Hindustani. He had now been coming for a week and for her he offered one more means of filling her empty days with diversion. For the rest, she threw herself into a frenzy of letter writing and books, reading whatever she could lay her hands on, from Charles Dickens's moving novels to the lives of Lord Clive and Warren Hastings, histories of Calcutta's commercial evolution and Tom Paine's incisive writings, with which she was already familiar.

  There were also those dreary morning rides with Freddie, which she had now accepted with resignation. Since she could not be on her own, Freddie's company was the next best thing. He was the least demanding man she had ever met, asking nothing of her but her presence. He even submitted to explorations of the bazaar in Kumartuli, where sculptors preparing for the Durga festival sat moulding hundreds of images for worship and for the ritual immersions in the Hooghly that marked the end of the ten-day celebration.

  Olivia's attempts at self-beguilement were only partially successful; the pinpoints of pain, of self-debasement and twisting humiliation, could be suppressed only fleetingly, not erased. Ugly furry little creatures scuttled about in the corners of her sleep, making the nights as intolerable as the days. If she hated Raventhorne for his callousness, she hated herself more for allowing him to visit it upon her with such impunity. But in the dark entrails of despair there still flickered sparks of hope in the remembrance of what had been left unsaid between them, of distant echoes of emotion, of silent flashes in those tormenting eyes. And there was that gossamer filament between them, Olivia knew, that could not be denied.

  Never to see Jai Raventhorne again was a living death to which he might have condemned her, but she could not—would not!—accept that as the finality.

  Among the dozen or so guests at the Templewoods' dinnerparty for the Birkhursts, Olivia was faintly surprised to see Mr. Kashinath Das. He had been present at Estelle's birthday ball with other eminent Indians, but Olivia had never seen him in any informal European gathering such as this. Short, wiry, with sideburns and bouncy movements, he looked odd in his stiff dinner-jacket and white boiled shirt. He assumed an affected speech and pretensions with an English briar pipe that were more amusing than offensive, but Olivia could not deny that there was something not quite wholesome about Mr. Kashinath Das. She wondered why he had been invited at all.

  "Everything tickety-boo with Sir Josh?"

  Freddie's sotto voce inquiry puzzled Olivia until, flushing, she recalled her abrupt departure on that first morning of their rides. Discreetly, Freddie had not mentioned the subject since. "Oh yes. It was only a minor matter on which he needed my opinion." Another lie! How many had she already told because of Jai Raventhorne? How many more?

  "Splendid. I haven't said anything to anyone. I felt you would not have wanted me to."

  On a sudden impulse, Olivia touched his hand. Yes, there was something very kind about Freddie Birkhurst. For all his inanities, he deserved far better than she could ever give.

  The touch of hands, the exchanged look of understanding, the warm smile—Lady Birkhurst's limpet gaze missed none of them. Wherever Olivia went, the needle-pointed perceptions of the baroness followed.

  For all Olivia's evasive tactics, they met in the downstairs guest bedroom, where Lady Birkhurst had gone to freshen up before dinner and where Olivia was forced to be on hand at her aunt's command. Taking advantage of the momentary privacy, Lady Birkhurst came to the point immediately. "In my preoccupation with my own thoughts the other afternoon, Olivia, there is one possibility I appear to have overlooked." Warily, Olivia waited while the baroness settled herself in a chair, her fingers grouped primly in her lap in a fat, meaty ball of flesh. "Could it be that your vehement refusal of my proposition is due to your, ah, romantic involvement elsewhere?"

  It was not a question Olivia had been expecting and she was flustered. Since an immediate answer was impossible, she merely stood in awkward silence, biting nervously on a lip. In those few seconds of undeniable embarrassment, Lady Birkhurst drew her own conclusions.

  "I. . . see." The fleshy folds of her face drooped visibly. "In that case, my dear, you must forgive the presumptions of a silly, voluble woman. And you must, of course, cast our discussion out of your mind, unless," a sad little hope struggled vainly in her eyes, "that is not so and you still might reconsider."

  However awkward, it was an avenue of escape. Without thinking twice, Olivia took it. "It is I who must ask for your forgiveness, Lady Birkhurst. I should have myself clarified my ... situation." In yet another lie (what exactly was her "situation," and with whom?) Olivia might have felt shame were it not for her overriding sense of deliverance.

  Lady Birkhurst heaved herself out of the chair to lay a plump hand on Olivia's shoulder. "I do not need any clarifications, but if you do have any, I suggest that you make them to your aunt. She is unaware that her strenuous efforts in your direction promise to remain fruitless."

  Oddly enough, it was Freddie who sustained Olivia through the evening. He needed neither attention nor answers. It was so easy to pretend that he wasn't there at all. In return, Olivia sheltered him from her aunt's barrage of questions about lids and kerosene tins and termites. "Between you and me, Olivia," he confided glumly, "I couldn't care less if that damned kitchen house sank into the Bay of Bengal. Incidentally, where is Miss Templewood? I have not seen her all evening." His inquiry was one of relief rather than concern. Estelle's constant teasing made Freddie nervous.

  "She has a bad cold," Olivia explained, her eyes grim. "I believe she's sleeping it off." In fact, Estelle was not in her room, as Olivia had already ascertained. The stubborn girl had slunk out through the back door and was no doubt cavorting uncaringly somewhere with that Clive Smithers. She only hoped Estelle would have the good sense to return before her mother found her out and another almighty row descended.

  "Tom
orrow being our last morning here for a while, may I beg to be allowed to ride out with you again, Olivia?"

  Freddie looked so doleful that Olivia almost acquiesced. Then, because it was his last morning here she hardened her heart. He might wax unbearably sentimental again, perhaps expect an affectionate parting, even a kiss or two. She shuddered. "I think not, Freddie. I'm not sure I'll ride at all since I fear I might be catching Estelle's dreadful cold." She sniffled convincingly and pulled out a handkerchief.

  "Oh." He looked crestfallen but then rallied with a manful grin. "Well, so be it. Let it not be said we Ditchers don't bear our crosses with forbearance."

  "Ditchers?"

  "Yes, don't you know? We from Calcutta are called Ditchers. Because of that Maratha Ditch, you see."

  She didn't see but looked dutifully amused.

  "Madraswallahs are, of course, the Mulls," Freddie went on, encouraged by the smile, "and Bombaywallahs the Ducks."

  "Ducks? Why Ducks?"

  "Because of the Bombay duck, naturally! Except that it isn't a duck at all; it's a fish." He slapped his thigh and roared.

  Olivia laughed too. Poor Freddie was not to know, of course, that her amusement was not at his joke, which she didn't understand, but out of relief that she would not be seeing him again for several weeks.

  CHAPTER 7

  It was nothing more than idle curiosity that took Olivia riding out to the Maratha Ditch, which ran north and south to the east of the city. All in all it was a disappointment. Excavated a hundred years ago as a defence against a Maratha attack, it was never completed because the Marathas failed to launch their aggressions on Calcutta. Now it was a sorry, smelly sight, an insignificant trench filled with stagnant water. Crinkling her nose, Olivia turned towards the forest, a delight of freshness, where billowing bridal veils of mist still draped the trees and the shaggy carpets of grass were sequined with dew.