Ryman, Rebecca

by Olivia

  "To be independent you have to earn your own living."

  "You mean give piano lessons and take in sewing and read aloud to rich invalids and that sort of thing?" She was appalled. "I'd die, just die if I had to do all that!"

  Olivia laughed. "Then how would you keep body and soul together in that wonderful state of independence—send your bills home to Papa? I don't call that being independent!"

  "There are other ways, you know." Estelle's round, baby face assumed an expression of superiority.

  "You mean marry John and let him foot your bills?" Olivia's eyes twinkled. "That isn't exactly independence in my book either."

  Estelle gave her cousin a look of pity. "I could ingratiate myself with a rich old gent and get him to keep me in the style to which I am accustomed." She patted her hair and put her nose up in the air.

  Olivia hooted. "Well, make sure he's rich enough to buy you all the chocolates you want so that you won't have to bribe the cook to steal them from the store-room!"

  At this reminder of her secret pact with Babulal, Estelle muttered a proscribed oath, flung a pillow in Olivia's direction and, grumbling under her breath, flounced out of the room.

  Jai Raventhorne did not surprise Olivia again until a whole week of leaden-footed days and nights full of tormented dreams had passed for Olivia. Sir Joshua recovered from his heat boils and resumed his hectic activity at the office, and Estelle's mood of rebelliousness kept getting steadily worse, with Estelle secure in the knowledge that since her father had little time to worry about domestic trivia it was only her mother she had to contend with, and that was done easily enough. And Olivia received her first letter from Greg. It was a warm, affectionate but thankfully unsentimental letter; the news it contained, however, worried her. There was a distant chance, he wrote, that her father would allow him to make an offer for the ranch. Greg had always wanted to become a homesteader himself, Olivia knew, but it came as a surprise that her father was thinking of selling out. Also, it hurt that he had not told her so himself. He had mentioned, of course, that he was considering buying land in Hawaii. Obviously, the two matters were connected, but what was making her father take such a drastic step? And in her absence? Anxiously, Olivia waited for another letter from her father that would perhaps explain everything, but in the meantime she felt depressed and again isolated from everything she held truly dear.

  It was in a remote flower market veined with narrow lanes and gullies that Jai Raventhorne suddenly materialised at Olivia's elbow when she was least expecting him. She was standing in front of an open stall laden with marigolds, admiring their perfection of form and dazzle of colour when she heard his voice behind her.

  "Do these flowers please you?"

  Olivia almost fainted with shock as her hand flew to her throat and her head whirled with sudden dizziness. "You should have been an Irishman," she gasped, spinning on her heel to face him. "There is much that you share with the leprechauns!"

  "I like to surprise you," he said, casually tucking a hand under her arm. "You look like a startled gazelle whose grazing has been rudely interrupted. And those eyes," he paused to stare into them, "I like to see them melt like molasses in the sun."

  She felt weak with happiness. "For someone who doesn't much care for surprises," she murmured, already delirious, "you take some quite unforgivable liberties."

  "But you will nevertheless forgive me?"

  "Yes," she breathed fervently, "oh yes . . ."

  The bazaar was a riot of colour and fragrances almost too overwhelming for the nostrils. Olivia's head swam even more as they walked leisurely among the tiered stalls heavy with zinnias, cocks-comb, heliotrope, phlox, larkspur, bunches of budding roses and the ubiquitous marigolds. They stopped before a stall that was vibrantly different from the others and Olivia gave a small cry. "Orchids?"

  "Yes. Wild orchids."

  The owner of the shop, a funny, shrivelled man with a skin like crushed brown paper, gave them a toothless smile and his eyes lit up. "Jai?" He peered closely, then half rose and caught both of Raventhorne's hands in his, shaking them vigorously. "Tumi keneke asa, mor lora?"

  Raventhorne smiled, replied in a language Olivia could not understand but could tell was not Hindustani, and pointed to a trailing vine with exquisite, waxy mauve-blue blossoms and rich green leaves. "Do you like these?" he asked her, reverting to English.

  "Yes, they're beautiful—what are they?"

  "The blue Vanda. They grow wild up in the hills." He spoke again to the old man, who gleefully picked up an armful of the vines and started to tie them up in a length of jute sacking. "If you pack the roots with wet earth, then wrap them with the sacking around a branch in your garden, they will continue to grow and flower." He collected the bulky parcel and dug his hand into a pocket to pull out a fistful of coins, but the old man waved them away. Raventhorne cajoled him gently, pressing the coins into the man's hands. Finally, with a resigned shake of his head, the flower seller accepted. He glanced slyly at Olivia and made a remark at which Raventhorne laughed.

  "What did he say about me?" Olivia asked as they walked away. She was still dazed not only by Raventhorne's presence but also by the accidental glimpse into his life. There was no doubt that the flower seller knew him well.

  "He said you didn't look like a horse, like other European women he has seen."

  "Oh." She giggled. "What was the language you spoke to him?"

  "Assamese." It was said curtly, with reluctance.

  Olivia knew better than to question further. They slipped into an easy silence, strolling idly through gnarled lanes knotted with people. Occasionally, low palanquins would brush past carried by coolies with jogging, measured steps that seldom faltered. Standing cheek by jowl with some of the thatched huts were one or two fine residences with grilled windows and ornate wrought-iron balconies. Under a thatched roof a stern Brahmin in a sugar white dhoti rocked back and forth chanting and conducting a class of young students who sat cross-legged on bamboo mats and chanted in unison. Walking with his hands clasped behind his back, Raventhorne answered her neutral questions willingly, his speech clear cut and economical, his explanations patient and precise.

  "Calcutta might be a village but it is a village of palaces," Olivia remarked when they had passed by yet another lordly mansion, this one with a beautiful garden and cupolas on the roof. She felt a stab of apprehension. "Are these European homes?"

  "Europeans do not live next to Indians, or vice versa. These belong to zamindars, or Indian merchants who have flourished in the wash of British success."

  She threw him a sidelong glance. "Like you?"

  "I suppose so," he conceded with surprising ease. "I have no qualms about making money out of the British—on the contrary. It's the only justification I can see of their presence here."

  "But you have a home next to a European."

  "A work place, not a home. I need to entertain business associates from overseas and to have a place to put them up. I suffer European neighbours for purely practical reasons." Perhaps in view of her outburst the last time they had met, he answered her questions readily enough, even with affability. Having vowed never to overstep her bounds again but emboldened by his amiability, she asked one more question.

  "Then what to you is . . . home? Assam?" She had looked up the atlas to familiarise herself with its location north-east of Bengal toward the Himalayas.

  They had left behind the congestion of the bazaar to arrive near a large, rectangular water tank on the banks of which women washed utensils and clothes and men performed morning ablutions. Raventhorne stopped, surveyed the scene seemingly without attention and kicked a small stone down the steps that surrounded the tank.

  "They say home is where the heart is," he evaded.

  "And where is your heart?"

  He smiled. "At the moment, with you."

  "At other moments?"

  "Other moments." He turned the phrase under his breath as if tasting it. "There are no other moments
. It seems you have appropriated for yourself far more than wisdom tells me to give."

  The flicker of annoyance that crossed his eyes did not affect Olivia as, euphoric, she added another small gem to her treasure. Jai Raventhorne was becoming the nub around which her every moment, waking and sleeping, revolved; that she too had a place in his thoughts, in his heart, was a gift more blessed than any from heaven. And if her "appropriation" was causing him irritation—well, why should she be the only one to suffer?

  At the moment of parting where they had left their horses in the charge of a disreputable-looking urchin who grinned cheekily as he accepted his rather handsome reward, Raventhorne asked her, "Do you still wish to see me again?" He did not touch her.

  The traces of anxiety she sensed were to her balm for the soul. "Why do you ask me that each time we meet?" she countered, basking in the happiness nothing had marred this morning. "Do you truly believe me to be that fickle?"

  "If only you were fickle," he granted, thrusting his hands into his pockets as if to keep them well out of trouble, "I wouldn't have to make all these damnable decisions I'm having to now! It would settle the matter quite neatly."

  She knew his restraint was deliberate, for she could almost feel the tightness with which he held himself back, but that too she acknowledged with tremors of excitement. It was enough that he desired her, that touching her gave him pleasure, that by forcibly denying himself he suffered a sense of loss, that merely by her presence she could provoke in him hungers duplicated within her own body. Even these minor triumphs Olivia was learning to cherish. Jai Raventhorne gave nothing of himself to anyone; at least he was giving her these.

  With radiant eyes she bridged the distance between them. "When . . .?" It was beyond her will-power not to ask that recurring question.

  He sighed. "Tomorrow."

  Tomorrow? Olivia was filled with rapture. He had never seen her two days running!

  Mirage or man, shadow or substance; whatever the game, it was insanely exhilarating. It was as if Jai Raventhorne was devising for her some competition for stakes that he was mischievously keeping secret from her for the present. That the stakes might turn out to be exorbitantly high Olivia never even considered. Whatever the cost she was willing to pay it.

  CHAPTER 8

  The game intensified.

  True to his word, Jai Raventhorne met Olivia again the following morning, and then every morning after that. For her each day dawned with the promise of an uncut diamond waiting to be faceted into perfection. She never knew when he was going to appear, but like a shadow he always did. His instincts regarding her whereabouts were unerring; he seemed to know everything she did, everyone she met, almost every thought fermenting in her mind. Whether in person or not, she was always within his focus. Many times she tried to outwit him by hiding herself in unfrequented corners of the city, in little-known alleys and gullies, but she never succeeded. Home is where the heart is, he had said; and like a homing pigeon he always found his way to her, defeating and delighting her in the same moment.

  Olivia began spending her nights in cursing the sun for not rising, and her days in counting the hours until dark. She lived only for those few speeding minutes of the lavender and saffron dawn when she would receive from him the elixir that would carry her through the rest of the hours when he was not with her. And until that magical instant when he actually did appear in her vision, not as a fantasy but as flesh and blood, Olivia died a thousand deaths of panic in case his unpredictability had finally taken him off elsewhere.

  Patiently, she learned to recognise all his many moods. Her sixth sense about him honed itself to pick up every nuance from his extraordinary eyes, from the imperceptible movements of his muscles, from the merest droop of his lips. She became accustomed to not understanding some of the things he said, to not questioning when she sensed a retreat. Sometimes, ridden by his invisible demons, he was harsh; she accepted these moods meekly because there were others when he was as soft as the underwing of a dove. His hunger for her, Olivia knew, was immense, but he kept it securely trapped. Even this she accepted with joy, for she knew that one day, some day, when he gave himself rein it would be showering rainbows. On those enchanted mornings when she had her ear next to his heartbeat, it was enough to iron out every aching crease of her own heart and set it singing. Intoxicated, she met him again and again with a reckless abandon in which there was no place for guilt. For two cents, she would proclaim her love from the terraces of Calcutta, and some day soon she would.

  Often, laughing within herself, she wondered why nobody noticed that when she walked her feet no longer touched the ground. Was it possible that such opalescent happiness as was hers could fill the world with so much light and still remain a secret? But, as it happened, the inner glow that radiated so fearlessly from her eyes now was by no means going unnoticed. Returning from church one Sunday when the girls had stayed behind with some of Estelle's friends, Lady Bridget remarked to her husband, "Isn't Olivia looking marvellously well these days, Josh? I do believe it is young Freddie's devotion that has effected the transformation. Don't you agree?"

  Disgruntled at having been dragged to church again, an exercise he disliked intensely, Sir Joshua snorted. "I'm inclined to give the credit to his therapeutic absence from station," he commented drily.

  "Don't be absurd, Josh! Olivia is extremely well disposed towards young Freddie. He's already written to her thrice from the plantation."

  "That might prove his ardency," he was quick to point out; "it hardly proves hers. I doubt if Olivia has troubled to write back."

  "Oh, I'm sure she has, dear! I shall have to ask Estelle—and speaking of Estelle," she frowned and drummed a tattoo with her fingers on the carriage window, "I'm really at my wit's end with that girl. You will have to make a strong stand with her, very strong."

  Sir Joshua cursed under his breath. "God's blood, woman, don't you think I have enough to worry about? Manage as best you can but spare me these daily trials!" He knocked hard with his crop on the back of the coachman's seat as an instruction to go faster. "If she's frisky, then loosen the reins a little. It works with horses; there's no reason why it shouldn't with high-spirited fillies like Estelle."

  "Loosen the reins enough to allow her to be in this wretched pantomime?" Lady Bridget cried. "Are you out of your mind, Josh?"

  "Pantomime? What pantomime?"

  But by the time Lady Bridget had finished telling her husband what she already had several times before, he was no longer listening.

  A letter arrived for Olivia from Kinjal inviting her to Kirtinagar once again, this time for the Dassera celebrations. It was a tempting offer and Olivia was touched; she replied with equal warmth but made vague excuses for not accepting the invitation. To be away from Calcutta now, even for a day, for an hour, was to her intolerable; and Kinjal's well-meaning warnings would stand like a barrier between them. As for the dispute her uncle had engineered between Jai and the Maharaja, Olivia was no longer exercised by it. Raventhorne's shoulders were broad. God knew he was capable of resolving his own problems without her concern. Whatever burdens he had on his head had been there before she had come and no doubt would be there after she had gone. After she had gone . . .

  It was these four words that always brought Olivia's thoughts to a standstill and chilled her with apprehensions. Her future had become a cul-de-sac—unless Jai included her in his. Did he? She didn't know, he never said. Fiercely, she willed everything erased except for the present.

  "Calcutta cannot be that much of a village if I can continue to meet you with such impunity!" Olivia could not help but jubilate at the persisting success of her subterfuges.

  "Is it with impunity that you meet me?" Raventhorne asked.

  She knew that it was not to the risk of exposure that he referred, deliberately twisting her question. Olivia's eyes blazed defiance; she hated it when he slipped into ambiguities such as this. "Yes!"

  "Then you are less clever than I had thought!"
His frame of mind this morning was cussed, there was no doubt about that. He was restless, refusing to sit still; his fingers were fidgety as they clasped and unclasped the holster he sometimes wore when he had what he called "serious" business to transact later. Olivia wondered about the reason for his mood when he abruptly asked, "Your Freddie returns shortly. Will you be seeing him again?"

  "I can hardly avoid it." She spoke carefully, for the subject of poor Freddie Birkhurst was a prickly one with him. Secretly, however, Olivia was delighted that he should show signs of jealousy, an emotion so far removed from his usual confident self.

  "Do you plan to marry him?" He sat down and glowered at her.

  She was tempted to tease him but his humour was already so sour that she regretfully abandoned the thought. "No." She could not, however, resist exploiting her advantage to some extent. "Although it was you who recommended that I should. You said—"

  "I know what I said!" He sprang up again, flicked his Colt out of its holster and fired at a bel tree, bringing a plump green fruit crashing to the ground, its bright pink pulp spilling in all directions. "I was angry then."

  Olivia put her arms around her knees and rocked herself back and forth. "And you are angry again."

  "I am not angry!" he shouted, balling a fist and hitting it against the palm of his other hand. Then his arms dropped. "Yes, I am angry," he muttered savagely. "I am angry because for the first time in my life I find that I am avaricious. I cannot let go."

  She got up and went to him. "Then indulge your greed," she dared to suggest, running her hand over his shirt sleeve. "Do not let go!"

  He shook his head impatiently and moved away. "No, that must not be, cannot be." When he looked at her, his huge mother-of-pearl eyes were like distant moons covered in cloud. "You ask for the impossible!"

  "But I love you, Jai," Olivia breathed for the hundredth, the thousandth time, pleading tacitly for a response that would not come. For all his moments of tenderness, his exasperated admissions, his cautious kisses and caresses, his ill-concealed desire for her, he had never said that he loved her and now she hungered to hear the words.