The Peacock Spring

by Rumer Godden

  ‘Goodbye our afternoons,’ Ravi had said when Hal went. She had been a useful decoy, taking most of Alix’s attention, and it had become difficult, ‘and dangerous,’ said Hem, for Una in the day to slip away. ‘But we must keep our nights,’ said Una. ‘The poems are so important.’ Ravi was to try for the Tagore Prize. Una had persuaded him and, ‘It would be imbecile not to,’ said Ravi. Hem, for once, reluctantly agreed. ‘I suppose you are safe by now. But I wish,’ he said, worried, ‘you would tell Sir Edward of this work.’ Hem knew that almost every night Una and Ravi worked at the poems, Una in her guise of stillness and patience. ‘I wish you would tell.’

  ‘We shall,’ said Ravi. ‘Listen, I shall tell you how it will be. It will be in the hall called Vigyan Bhawan, when everyone is gathered there to hear the poets who have been chosen finalists for the Tagore Prize. We, the ten poets who will read, will be on the rostrum. Una and Sir Edward – you must prevail on him to come, Una – will be in front seats, of course. Then, when I am called, I shall announce’ – and Ravi became dramatic – ‘“I, Ravi Bhattacharya, write in Hindi and English both. I will read the Hindi but, since I am not well versed in pronouncing English, I call on my friend, Miss Una Gwithiam, to be so kind as to come and read with me,” – and you, to your father’s amazement, the amazement of everyone in the hall, will rise and ascend the platform. We shall sit as we are sitting now and read my poems turn and turn about, and your father will see without explanation.’

  ‘He will be astonished,’ said Una.

  ‘Indeed! And more! When I win the prize, he will be filled with admiration and we shall cast ourselves at his feet.’

  ‘Not in Vigyan Bhawan.’

  ‘It would be best. He can hardly refuse forgiveness when so many are there. Besides, he will be so proud that you, his daughter, know me.’

  ‘Ullu,’ said Hem.

  ‘And remember, it is not for long,’ said Ravi. ‘Only till the end of April – already we are in March. The poems for the Tagore have to be in by the fifteenth of April, which is Baisakhi – our new year,’ said Ravi, ‘when everything new will begin, including my fame.’

  ‘You have to write the poems first,’ Hem reminded him.

  ‘Almost they are written.’

  ‘And they have to get among the chosen ten.’

  ‘They will.’

  ‘Then still they have to win.’

  ‘They will.’

  ‘Una, you at least should have some sense.’

  ‘I think it is sense to believe in the poems,’ said Una, ‘and to believe in Ravi.’ The words were said in Una’s sensible clear schoolgirl voice, but Hem, looking at her eyes, saw the worship in them. Abruptly he got up. ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘This isn’t your writing.’

  Una, coming into her room, stopped abruptly. Alix was at her desk turning over her notebooks. ‘It isn’t your writing.’ Alix’s eyes were wide with alarm. ‘It isn’t, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s somebody else’s,’ said Una.

  ‘My God! What have you been doing?’ Alix was aghast.

  ‘And what are you doing, looking in my private books?’

  ‘It’s my business to look.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you look before?’ It was a good taunt. ‘That is what Edward will ask, isn’t it? It really has been simple of you, Alix, to believe all this time that I could have worked those problems by myself – all this time,’ said Una with an emphasis Alix could not miss. Alix sprang up, pushing back the desk chair so violently she overturned it.

  ‘I’m going to shake you like the little rat you are.’

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ said Una, though it took all her courage to stand still. Alix, she thought, is physically frightening. ‘Ram Chand and Monbad are just outside,’ she said. ‘I have only to call them.’ That had its effect; Alix picked up the chair and put it in its place though her fingers were shaking as Una remembered they had trembled that day on the verandah. She is trying to control herself, thought Una and, ‘Wouldn’t it be better if we made a pact?’ she asked.

  ‘A pact?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What sort of pact could be made between us two?’

  ‘That I won’t monitor you, if you don’t monitor me.’

  ‘What do you mean – “monitor”?’

  ‘Split on one another.’ Una was brief.

  ‘You are asking the impossible. I am your governess.’

  ‘Ostensibly. Do you think I don’t know about you and Edward, Mrs Tanson?’

  At that Alix’s head came up. ‘I am no longer Mrs Tanson. I am sorry to disappoint your spite, but my divorce is through. I am waiting for the decree to be made absolute.’

  ‘And Edward has already given you a ring,’ but Alix did not answer that. ‘Una, I appealed to you once,’ she said. ‘I appeal to you again.’ She looked down at the book. ‘You must tell me what you have been doing.’

  ‘As you can see, mathematics.’

  ‘With whom? I must know.’

  ‘You can’t know because I am not going to tell you.’ Then Una relented – ‘Or was it that I saw Alix was too frightened to accept the pact,’ she told Ravi afterwards, ‘and right to be frightened? If Edward had made that fuss over Hal she knew he would be worse over me,’ – but, ‘Don’t worry,’ said Una to Alix. ‘Presently, when it is time, I shall tell Edward all about this. You see, it is to be a surprise for him.’

  ‘A surprise for Edward!’ The relief was so palpable Una almost laughed. Then Alix drew back. ‘You’re not lying to me?’

  ‘I don’t tell lies,’ – ‘Only withhold truth,’ Una should have added – and the next moment, ‘Are you sure Edward would approve?’ asked Alix.

  ‘I know Edward,’ but Una felt a rap of conscience – or sense? Would, or could, Edward approve of the sham figure in her bed? Of her being, usually alone, with a young man in his room until the early hours of the morning? ‘It’s only while we make the surprise,’ she said.

  ‘We?’ Alix pounced.

  ‘I – with someone,’ and, before Alix could speak, ‘If it eases your mind,’ said Una, ‘the … the person is a friend of Lady Srinevesan’s and Mrs Mehta’s.’

  ‘Ah! You met there.’ Again the wave of relief. ‘I wondered how you could possibly …’ Una did not contradict her.

  ‘This is bad news.’ Hem was worried. ‘What if Madam Alix questions Lady Srinevesan?’ said Hem.

  ‘She can’t without exposing herself. Alix has the wit to see that.’

  ‘She has plenty of wits,’ said Ravi.

  ‘Up to a point,’ said Hem. ‘After that she is stupid, stupid enough to use force. Una, I find myself wishing you were afraid of Miss Lamont.’

  ‘She is strong,’ Una admitted.

  ‘Yes, she could put Sir Edward in her pocket,’ Ravi laughed.

  ‘Which is where he is,’ said Hem, ‘and that is not a laughing matter. It disturbs me.’

  ‘It needn’t,’ said Una. ‘She wouldn’t dare do anything to me.’

  ‘It still disturbs me. Ravi … Una. Tell Sir Edward now.’

  ‘I can’t tell,’ said Una. ‘I gave my promise and she and I have made a pact. Don’t worry, I can manage Alix,’ but, as she said it, Una remembered Mrs Porter’s ‘My dear, a girl of fifteen is no match for a woman of thirty-five.’

  ‘Edward, do you think I could go to the American International School? Go now?’

  Una had cornered him in his dressing room before dinner. ‘The International School?’ Edward bent to the looking glass to tie the bow of his tie. ‘It would hardly be worthwhile. On the first of May they close for the hot-weather vacation; besides, they only prepare you for college there; that’s not the same as A Levels or your work at Cerne.’

  So you think I have been doing the same work as at Cerne? Una was glad her face was out of the range of the looking glass so that Edward could not see the scorn with which she asked that silent question. ‘The British S
chool then?’ She asked that aloud.

  ‘But why, Una? I thought you and Alix had come to terms.’

  ‘We have.’ But … there was something Alix had said in their encounter. ‘While we are talking, Una, there is one thing – nothing to do with any pact – but a thing you are doing, deliberately – and I have had enough of it. You will start riding Mouse.’

  ‘My back still aches,’ said Una.

  Alix had laughed.

  ‘If you are – friends now, why?’ Edward was asking.

  ‘Without Hal, we are together too much. Please, Edward.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be worthwhile,’ he said again. ‘Besides, I have – plans. The conference is due to have a month’s recess and I thought I would take you away.’

  ‘Take me away! Not now!’ In her dismay Una said it, but Edward was too intent to hear.

  ‘Yes. I mean to show you something of India before the weather gets too hot.’

  ‘Do you mean Alix and you and me – or you and me?’ Una had to say it though, ‘Jealous?’ Edward would probably say but, as if he were the old Edward of percipience, he went on, ‘I mean just the two of us, you and I. I thought we would go south, then up to Darjeeling and visit Hal, catch a glimpse of the snows – if we are lucky, Everest – and you can’t leave India without seeing Fatehpur Sikri and Agra and the Taj. Wouldn’t that be worth waiting for?’ asked Edward.

  ‘What will you do with Alix?’

  ‘Oh, Alix will be all right,’ and Edward hummed as he picked up the white lawn handkerchief Ram Chand had carefully folded for him.

  ‘You sound happy,’ said Una.

  ‘I am.’ Edward paused. ‘Do you know, Una, I don’t think I have been happier in my life.’

  It was still cool enough to have breakfast in the pavilion. ‘This is one of the garden’s enchanted spots,’ said Edward. It certainly was enchanting; bougainvillaea filtered light over the table and the sun reflections from the pool made patterns with flower shadows on the pillars. The fountain splashed in the pool where goldfish spread their fins; the garden smelled of roses and stocks, ‘though those are almost over,’ said Edward.

  Next to him Alix poured coffee, the gold-brown stone on her finger caught a flash of sun – Una was sure he would have liked to kiss that finger only she, Una, was opposite him. This difficult daughter, he was probably thinking – then she forgot him and Alix; her eyes were fixed dreamily on the lower garden and, in her mind, she was saying over a line from the poem she and Ravi had been working on last night. Her lips must have moved because Edward smiled at her across the table. ‘Una is saying her japa.’

  ‘What – is a japa?’ She was jerked into awareness.

  ‘A mystical phrase or holy word that is given you by your guru – your teacher.’

  My guru, thought Una and smiled. What a handsome young guru.

  ‘No one else must know your japa,’ said Edward. ‘You say it over and over again until you are detached, almost in a state of trance.’

  ‘Am I in a trance? Perhaps I am.’

  ‘It releases your spirit. Have you a japa?’ asked Edward.

  ‘You said no one else must know.’ Edward laughed and, ‘That turned the tables on you,’ said Alix.

  Peace. Laughter. Sun. Love. There were not many moments like this and Edward shut his eyes.

  ‘Sir Edward, may I speak with you, please?’

  Edward opened his eyes. ‘Mr Sen!’

  The Indian clerk, piloted by Aziz, had come to the garden pavilion. ‘I am interrupting, but—’

  ‘Not at all.’ Edward was courteous as ever. ‘Alix. Una. This is Mr Sen, in charge of our United Nations stores – in fact, acts as our quartermaster. He does all our buying and distributing. I expect he has come to make his monthly check. Sit down and have a cup of coffee, Sen.’

  ‘No, thank you, sir. It is just … I should like to speak with you.’

  ‘Well, speak.’ Edward was jovial.

  ‘Private-ly. It is a private matter.’ Mr Sen was not jovial. ‘Please to come, sir. It is better private.’

  Private or no, in half an hour it was all over the compound – even Una knew. ‘Twelve, thirteen bottles of whisky missing from the stores,’ whispered Ram Chand. ‘Dino is to go.’

  ‘Dino! It can’t be true.’

  ‘Is not true.’ Ram was more than sad, he was smouldering. ‘Baba,’ – he only called Una that when he was deeply moved – ‘it is not true.’

  ‘Here. Scotch whisky costs a hundred and fifty rupees a bottle, more than eleven pounds of your money,’ said Mr Sen. Edward had been through a bad half-hour. ‘Din Mahomed has been here more than twenty years,’ said Mr Sen, ‘and, in all that time, there has not been half a kilo of sugar or one cigar for which he has not accounted.’

  Dino stood in front of them. A small man, his brown face seemed to have turned ashen grey; the fierce upturned moustaches of which he was so proud worked as he swallowed; his eyes, brown and trusting as a dog’s, were fixed on Edward. Dino had always trusted; now he was afraid.

  ‘Have you ever taken whisky?’ Edward asked it straight.

  ‘Never, Sahib.’

  ‘Have you ever lent your keys to anyone? To Aziz? Karim? Christopher?’ It would have been easy for Dino to say that he had, but the answer came back, ‘Never, Sahib.’

  ‘Then who else, Dino, but you could have taken it?’

  Dino was silent though the moustaches worked, the forehead and his eyes seemed to swell and Mr Sen, sweating with embarrassment as he spoke, said, ‘Please ask yourself, Sir Edward, whom it is you have brought newly into this house and to whom you have given your keys.’

  Edward stared and a stain of anger came into his face. ‘You mean Miss Lamont. Dino, ask the Miss-sahib to come here at once.’

  ‘Alix, a dozen or more bottles of whisky are missing from the service stores. Do you know anything about them ?’

  ‘I? What could I know?’ asked Alix. ‘I give out your stores from your own cupboard. Dino has a list and, in front of me, takes what is needed from the other cupboard and I enter the things in the ledger.’

  ‘The cupboards are never left unlocked?’

  ‘Not by me,’ said Alix. ‘But … and I have to confess this, Edward, two bottles have been missing from yours.’ Dino gave a gasp; his skin grew greyer.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I thought I might have miscounted. One must be scrupulously fair, but I have been watching.’ She looked from Edward to Mr Sen, from him to Dino.

  ‘No bottles are missing from the stores of the Sahib,’ said Dino.

  ‘And a dozen and one from UN cupboard are gone.’ Mr Sen’s voice was high.

  ‘Am I supposed to have taken them?’ Alix asked. ‘Really, Mr Sen! What would I do with thirteen bottles of Scotch?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Edward, but Mr Sen was steady.

  ‘Dino has been here twenty years, Miss Lamont.’

  ‘With every opportunity for thieving. If you enquire, Mr Sen,’ Alix chose her words deliberately, ‘I think you will find Din Mahomed Mansur is a strangely rich man. I am sorry,’ said Alix, ‘but this is a conspiracy and I refuse to be your stool pigeon.’

  Fortunately for everyone it was a busy day; a Scandinavian delegation had arrived for consultation on the conference and Edward was ‘drowned in work’, as he complained that evening. His nerves had been rasped by Dino in the morning, even more at the office; ‘I work in a continual din: radios blaring in the street, children, scolding women, hawkers, car horns, even cats; it all comes up even to the third floor. Add telephones, quarrels, arguments, endless comings and goings – and now there is all this extra entertaining.’ As soon as he came in Edward had to dress and go to a reception at the President’s Mansion, then dinner at the High Commissioner’s. ‘I shall come straight home after dinner,’ he told Alix, but even then three of the Swedish delegates were staying in the house and needed to be entertained.

  Una had spent the day out of the way with Bulbul.
‘I cannot understand what you, a clever, serious girl, can see in Bulbul,’ Lady Srinevesan said often, but Bulbul was a relief from the effort and tenseness of Shiraz Road, especially now when Una was missing Hal. The house felt empty and, today, ominously quiet, perhaps because Alix was not singing as she worked. ‘I think everyone needs, now and then, to be silly,’ Una could have said and, too, she found Bulbul reassuring. She might be frivolous, empty-headed, but there was a binding love between her and her young husband and Som was serious and responsible enough to please even Lady Srinevesan.

  Alix had taken Una to the Misra house and, as she drove the Diplomat out of the porch, Una had seen Chinaberry spit on the ground behind them. She was suddenly nervous. ‘Alix, what will you do all today?’

  ‘Plenty,’ said Alix. ‘I must go and see my mother and don’t forget Edward has this huge dinner tomorrow; at least sixty men and Aziz is not used to taking command. I have to go to Connaught Place to pick up the petit fours and sweets that Christopher wants; go to the Cottage Industries and order extra flowers. Borrow long tablecloths and chafing dishes for the buffet, count the cutlery and crockery we hire, make sure it is clean.’

  ‘You will be alone in the house.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Una did not answer but suggested, ‘Why not see your mother, do the shopping, and come back and have lunch with Bulbul?’ It was on the tip of Una’s tongue to say, ‘Bulbul doesn’t mind you,’ but she bit it back. ‘Come to Bulbul’s.’

  Alix patted her knee. ‘Una, I can’t believe it but are you trying to protect me?’

  ‘Chinaberry spat,’ said Una.

  Alix was unmoved. ‘The servants hate me – naturally.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I get in the way of their graft – am wise to them.’ Then Alix turned her attention from the wheel for a second and looked into Una’s face. ‘It isn’t my fault, you know,’ said Alix, ‘that Dino has had to go.’