The Peacock Spring

by Rumer Godden

  ‘Not … Mouse.’ Una shuddered.

  ‘Get on Mary-Jane then. She’s dead quiet. Come – I will help you. Come. Slowly. Gently. That’s a brave girl,’ Mrs Porter coaxed.

  In the dusk Edward came running down the steps to meet the car. ‘He couldn’t have heard already,’ said Alix, mystified, but the agitation was not for Una. ‘Where have you been? For God’s sake, Alix! Things are frantic. I telephoned but you were out. Out – and we have no Dino and you have the keys. Five of the Danish delegates have turned out to be women so I have had to ask as many of our Indian guests as I could get hold of to bring their wives.’ Then, as he saw Alix come round to Una’s door to help her out. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘Una’s had a fall,’ which was truer than the explanation given to Mrs Porter. A fall, yes, and a shameful fall.

  ‘A fall – God! How badly is she hurt?’

  ‘She’s not hurt, just a bit stunned and scratched.’

  ‘I will carry her in.’

  ‘I … can … walk,’ said Una.

  ‘She can, Edward.’ To him Alix was blessedly calm. ‘Here are the keys – let Aziz take out more stores: cigarettes and cigars; drink; chocolates. I will get Una to bed. She will be all right if she lies down.’

  ‘You are sure? She looks terribly white.’

  ‘If I’m not sure, I will get Doctor Gottlieb. How many more guests?’

  ‘At least fifteen … How can we … ?’

  ‘Don’t worry. There is plenty of food, but it’s nearly seven o’clock. You had better go and change. Tell Aziz and Christopher I will be with them in ten minutes. Come, Una.’

  ‘I can … go … by myself,’ said Una, ‘and I’m not stunned. I’m stiff, that’s all.’ Painfully she negotiated the steps. ‘You had better go yourself and see to things,’ she told Alix, but Alix followed her to her room.

  ‘I must look at your back.’

  At that Una flamed. ‘If you dare to touch me I shall telephone Mrs Porter. Go away. Leave me alone.’

  Edward was hovering in the hall. ‘Is she all right? Hell! Wouldn’t it happen now!’

  ‘She has had a fright – and I expect she will be stiff and sore in the morning. Now don’t fuss,’ said Alix. ‘Everything is in hand. Chinaberry has gone for extra plates, cutlery and glasses and I will see they are clean. Christopher is quite happy. Do as I told you – go and change.’

  ‘Alix.’ He caught her hand. ‘I want you to put on that white and gold dress. You will receive with me.’

  ‘But Edward … ‘

  ‘Do as I say. I won’t have you kept in the background any longer – and wear your ring.’

  ‘It … will be an open declaration.’

  ‘All the better,’ said Edward. ‘It’s only a matter of weeks before everybody knows.’

  ‘Your Indian friends won’t like it.’

  ‘Then they can go home,’ and Edward went to his room.

  ‘Telephone, Sahib.’

  ‘Not now, Ram. I am dressing.’

  ‘Is Porter Memsahib, Sahib. I tell her Sahib is dressing, but she say is urgent. She must speak.’

  ‘Hell!’ said Edward, and went to the telephone.

  ‘Edward? Edward, I want you to come straight over here – now!’

  ‘Now! My dear Gussie! In a few minutes I shall have something like seventy guests.’

  ‘I don’t care if you have three hundred.’

  ‘Can’t it keep till the morning?’

  ‘No. I must see you. You must come.’

  ‘I can give you five minutes, Gussie, no more,’ said Edward in the Porters’ embassy house.

  ‘Then I’ll be brief. You know Miss Lamont and Una were riding? So was I. When I drove up to the parade ground I found your syces – not in agitation, indignation, Edward.’

  ‘Well? I know Una had a fall. She said she was all right, but Alix – Miss Lamont – has put her to bed.’

  ‘But what did she do first?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Porter. ‘That is the trouble.’ She was concerned and distressed. ‘Miss Lamont said Una came off and was dragged. If Una had been dragged, she would have been dusty, her clothes torn, her arms grazed. She was clean.’

  ‘What do you think happened then?’

  ‘That is your duty to find out.’ Mrs Porter put her hand on his. ‘Edward, wake up. Una was – cowering. There was blood coming through her shirt.’

  Edward put Mrs Porter’s hand away and rose, looking at her with distaste. ‘You are trying to insinuate that Alix – Alix did something to Una? Alix, who is so devoted? I know Delhi is noted for backbiting, for intrigue and gossip, but I never imagined this – and I may as well tell you, Gussie – you are speaking of my future wife.’

  ‘You are going to marry Miss Lamont?’

  ‘As soon as her decree is made absolute.’

  ‘Miss Lamont – after Kate!’ It was Mrs Porter’s outspoken honesty. ‘Forgive me, Edward, I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘You certainly should not.’

  ‘I had forgotten there was Hal’s mother,’ but there was still genuine sorrow in Mrs Porter’s voice as she made a plea. ‘In that case, let me have Una to look after until she can go back to Cerne.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Edward was icy. ‘But Una is perfectly well looked after where she is. Goodnight.’

  When it was dark, Una crept out.

  She had not been able to face changing and now her shirt was stuck to her back; the welts were stiffening. Ram Chand had brought her a tray of food, but when he looked at her had clucked, taken it away and come back with a glass of hot sugared milk. I suppose I am in a state of shock, thought Una. Why else was she shivering on this warm night?

  ‘Baba, go to bed.’

  ‘Yes, Ram, I will,’ but Una had sat on in her chair, listening to the noise and voices until, with darkness, the guests left the garden and verandahs and went indoors; then she put the familiar dummy in her bed and stole out. From her verandah she could see, through lighted windows and doors, a crowd of people, hear the chatter and laughter, the clatter of knives and forks on plates. She had a glimpse of Alix, regal in a white dress brocaded with gold – as if the gold were stars for Alix triumphant. Una caught her breath in a sob. She smelled cigar smoke; two men came towards her, pacing the lawn, talking as they smoked; she shrank back behind a pillar.

  She had meant to go to the hut but found herself too shamed and sick at heart. When the men turned, pacing back, she made her painful way to the summer house, helping herself by the pillars of the pavilion and the fountain; its small sound seemed loud in the garden’s quietness. She sank down on the wooden chair and dropped her head on her arms on the table; the movement hurt so much that she gave a cry.

  It was only one cry but Ravi heard it. He had come out to set the deeva light by his tulsi bush. ‘I did not want to do it before with all those people in the garden.’ Arrested, straining to see in the dark, his eyes caught a pale shape in the summer house and, holding the deeva in his hand, shielding its flame with the other, he came swiftly across the lawn. ‘Una!’

  ‘Ssh! There are guests, men, still in the garden.’

  ‘I thought you were still at the party,’ Ravi whispered.

  She shook her head, no longer able to speak. Ravi, holding the tiny light, looked from her face to the rigid lines of her body, her clenched hands – she had clenched them in an effort not to cry out again. He took in the fact that she was still in riding clothes, that her hair was tumbled, and her shirt … Ravi held the light closer, put out a finger and touched the shirt. ‘What are those marks?’

  ‘I … think … they are blood.’

  ‘Did she do this?’ Ravi was stunned as Una nodded.

  ‘Where’s your father?’

  ‘At … the party. They all are.’

  ‘Is he blind?’

  ‘He didn’t … think to look.’

  ‘Didn’t think to look! She did this to you!’


  ‘Because I faced her. I tried to make her tell, but I couldn’t do it, Ravi. I failed you all. I went to her room and she …’ A sob was forced out.

  ‘Took you out and beat you up – I knew you had gone riding – beat you. How?

  ‘With … her whip. It had a … a lash.’

  ‘And no one has been to you … seen to you.’ Ravi gritted his teeth.

  ‘She tried. I wouldn’t let her. Now, they are all at the party. Ravi, you must help me,’ but Ravi shrank.

  ‘I might hurt you. I am not used …’

  ‘Please.’ But, ‘Go back to your room,’ said Ravi. ‘I will fetch Hem. He will know what to do.’

  ‘Hé Bhagwan!’ said Ravi when he saw Una’s back. ‘My God!’

  Hem had come, bringing with him a small bag. ‘So you are a real big doctor,’ Ravi would have teased him at any other time. They were in Una’s bathroom where she had bent over the basin while, with warm water and cotton wool, Hem had competently soaked away the blood-dried shirt and the welts were revealed in three angrily red and swelled stripes across Una’s back. ‘Hé Bhagwan! We’ll go to her room tonight, Hem and I, and thrash her!’ Though the party was noisy they spoke in whispers but even in a whisper Ravi was savage. ‘Thrash her!’

  ‘That would be wise,’ said Hem. ‘Put the police on your trail again and what good would it do Una?’

  ‘Police … ?’ Even in her dizziness and pain, Una had heard.

  ‘I have not told you but I have been in prison,’ Hem said quickly.

  ‘You said “your trail,” not “my trail” to Ravi.’

  Hem did not answer, only said, ‘Hold tightly to the basin. I am putting on a spray. It will be cold and may sting.’

  It did. Una swayed so that Ravi had to hold her while Hem covered the stripes with gauze. ‘Now – see if you can find her nightclothes,’ he told Ravi.

  ‘Clean pyjamas … in the chest,’ Una was able to gasp. Hem was washing her face and hands and neck.

  Ravi brought only the pyjama top. ‘Never mind,’ said Hem and to Ravi, ‘Go outside.’ Then Hem undressed Una, taking off her shoes, drawing off the jodhpurs, her socks and underclothes; with careful gentleness he put her arms into the jacket, drew it round her and buttoned it with his skilled dark fingers then, lifting her, carried her to bed. The dummy he dumped in the wardrobe. Then he gave her a pill and a drink of water. ‘You will be more comfortable now, I think.’

  ‘Hem.’ Una caught his hand. ‘I tried to do it … for poor Dino … but she was too strong, Hem. I tried to make her tell.’

  ‘She will tell,’ said Hem, ‘because she will have to.’

  ‘Hem, thank you for …’ Una choked.

  ‘No more now,’ said Hem. ‘I will come again tomorrow night and give it another dressing – if Ravi thinks it safe. You will be very stiff and sore but let us hope there is no infection. Try not to disturb the pads; do not go to bathe; also, keep out of the sun.’ Gently he unloosed her clasp. ‘Now go to sleep.’

  He found Ravi outside on the verandah, waiting in the shadows. ‘I think she will sleep now. I have given a sedative,’ then, as Ravi moved, ‘Don’t go in, bhai. Let her sleep.’

  ‘Nini, baba, nini

  Makhan, roti, chini

  Khana, pina, hogaya

  Mera baba sogaya

  Nini, baba, nini.’1

  ‘Is that … one of your poems?’ whispered Una.

  ‘It is a lullaby, older than the hills. My ayah used to sing me to sleep with it every night.’

  ‘When you were a little boy?’ Hem’s pill was working and Una was growing sleepy. ‘When you were a little boy.’

  ‘Not even a boy – in my babyhood.’

  ‘ “Nini, baba, nini …” ’ It was as soft as the hum of a spinning wheel, drowsy as the rhythmical pattings – only the patting was by a young man’s hand, which perhaps was why Una did not quite fall asleep. Ravi was almost tranced by his own song when suddenly he stopped, raised his head to listen.

  Neither of them had noticed that the house had quietened, that the party must be over, the last guest gone. Two people – Alix and Edward by their voices – were coming down the verandah. Swift as a snake, Ravi slid under the bed and pressed himself against the wall. Una, suddenly wide awake, lay still, her eyes ostensibly closed, but watching the doorway under her lids.

  ‘I told you so. She’s asleep.’ Edward’s voice was loud and slurred.

  ‘We ought just to look—’

  ‘N-nonsense. C-come, cara.’ His arm drew Alix away. ‘Come to bed.’

  After they had gone Una broke into uncontrollable weeping. There were no more nursery words. ‘Una – not to cry. Not to cry.’ Ravi was lying on the bed beside her, kissing her. The tears, salt and warm on his lips, moved him to a passion of pity.

  ‘Do not cry. They are not worth it, let them go.’

  ‘Ravi. Ravi.’

  ‘You are so little I’m afraid to touch you.’

  ‘Touch me. Come closer.’

  ‘But … if I hurt your back.’

  ‘Let it hurt. Oh Ravi! Come close.’

  When Una woke she was sure it was a dream, but, turning her head, she smelled a faint scent on her pillow, Ravi’s coconut oil.

  Eight

  It was spring: the strange warm Indian spring when the imported English winter flowers had wilted and the tropical ones came into their own – hibiscus, oleander, poinsettia; a mauve creeper had flowered on the walls – Edward called it petrea – and the brilliant orange-fingered ‘golden-shower’ bignonia spread far across the porch, while the bougainvillaeas were like fountains; in every road, park, garden were flowering trees; the scarlet flowers of simul trees whose pods would swell and burst into cotton. ‘The flowers must be picked or the cotton blows everywhere,’ said Ravi. There were soft fuzzes on the rain trees; coral trees in bloom while the kadumbo was covered in honey-scented balls of yellow fluff. ‘You will see the kadumbo in paintings of Krishna playing his flute. I think,’ said Ravi, ‘he is playing his flute for us.’

  Ravi’s desk was deserted; the poems, as with Una’s mathematics, forgotten, but in the early hours Una had to steal back from the hut to the house, often only just before dawn, and each time it was harder to go. Am I like the girls in the Keats poem, ‘creeping thin with lust’? If so, she did not care; and I’m not thin; indeed, she thought her whole body was altering. ‘Id-eal-ly, if you were Indian, your silly little breasts should be soft and swelling as the pods on the simul trees,’ Ravi teased her.

  ‘They are getting bigger, I’m sure they are.’

  ‘Maybe, but you haven’t elephant hips. Now elephants are really very graceful.’

  ‘And I’m not?’

  ‘You! You are stick insect – trinakit.’ Then he grew serious. ‘If I love you too much, I shall kiss you away.’

  Hem, as he had promised, arrived for nightly dressings but after a week he ceased to come; the back was healing – And love with Ravi does not hurt me any more. Indeed, in these days Una had an easy laxness she had never felt before. Thoughts of Dino, thoughts of Alix, had receded into the background. There was nothing she could do about either. She had tried, tried all she knew, and been defeated, but there was something restful in being defeated; unlike her little doll, Una was content to be knocked down. One day, she knew, she would have to get up again but for the present all she wanted was to lie out in the garden, in the shade, as Hem had advised, and let the warm quiet hours slip by.

  ‘Una, the Maharani is on the telephone.’

  ‘Tell her I’m not well.’

  ‘Mrs Mehta wants to know if you would like to go to the Kuchipudi dance drama.’

  ‘It’s a lovely name, but no.’

  ‘Lady Srinevesan says she will call for you and take you to the Kabul exhibition.’

  ‘No thank you.’

  Bulbul, when – out of curiosity, thought Una – she arrived uninvited at the house, asked, ‘What has happened to you?’

  ‘I had a fall.
’

  ‘It wasn’t on your head, was it?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘You are different.’

  Everything was different. ‘Mrs Porter hasn’t rung. I was sure she would. Why hasn’t she?’ Alix was so timorous one might have thought it was she who had had the beating, not Una.

  ‘Need we tell her today?’ Alix had asked Edward that morning after the dinner. Must it be today?’

  ‘Do you want her to hear it from Bulbul Misra – or Lady Srinevesan, or Gussie Porter?’

  ‘Then let me tell her.’

  ‘It’s better from me,’ said Edward. ‘You can write to Hal but Una and I have always been close.’

  ‘I know.’ But, Alix had thought in terror, suppose … She felt her neck and hands cold while Edward beside her was debonair, cheerfully unaware. ‘Just plain happy and proud,’ he would have said, but perhaps he began to sense something, because he had bent forward and taken her hands. ‘What are you afraid of, cara? Una is not easy, I know, but once you are part of the family she will give you her loyalty – and no one is more loyal than Una,’ but when Una had come hobbling along the verandah, Alix had had to put the coffee pot down; her hand was visibly trembling. It trembled more when Una had let herself down into her chair with a grimace of pain. She was, as Hem had said she would be, so sore that when she moved the pain from the welts made her set her lips not to cry out; and there was another soreness: Ravi had been carried away – I carried him away. I, insignificant Una, whom Vikram treats as a child, I can give Ravi joy, and she had bestowed such a radiant smile on Alix that Alix was transfixed.

  ‘Una,’ said Edward. ‘We want to tell you ourselves before you hear it from anyone else – expect it’s all over Delhi even now. Alix and I are going to be married.’

  ‘Married!’ Una had known it, of course, but now it had come she felt a curious shock – and dismay. ‘No, Edward, no,’ she wanted to cry. ‘Don’t do it. Please, please don’t. There isn’t one person who loves you or even knows you – even Hal – who won’t be sad, and there are things that, if you knew – you will have to know them – will be tragedy for you. I can tell you …’ Then why don’t I tell you? Sitting there, Una knew with certainty she had power to stop this, to save Edward. Then why not? Alix’s eyes were fixed imploringly on her but it was not Alix that stopped her; as if she had been given new eyes, Una was seeing Alix as Edward saw her, not only as beauty but a cornucopia – the word seemed to suit Alix – of sweetness, warmth, comfort, things he had lacked perhaps all his life; strongest of all in him was desire and how can I, now, be the one to spoil that for Edward – after last night, thought Una? Perhaps, she thought, I’m the only person in Delhi who can understand this, and aloud she only said, ‘Could I have some coffee while you tell me about it?’