The Peacock Spring

by Rumer Godden

  She went along the verandah to Una’s room and knocked, something she would not have done before – a governess has the right to go into her charge’s room. Una’s stepmother knocked.

  ‘Lady-sahib?’ Monbad was there, gone in to turn down the bed.

  ‘Is the Miss-baba not back?’

  ‘No, Lady-sahib.’

  ‘Has she telephoned?’

  ‘No, Lady-sahib.’

  ‘She is late.’ Alix knew she would be thankful if Una were not there when Edward came back – how to defend herself in front of all-knowing Una? She thought she might ring Bulbul and ask her to keep Una another night, yet a latent feeling of worry woke in Alix. She looked round the room; Monbad was putting out Una’s night clothes and, She hasn’t taken her dressing gown and slippers, thought Alix, nor her hairbrush. She went into the bathroom. Una’s sponge bag was there, her bath powder, soap; only her toothbrush was missing. When Monbad had gone Alix opened the cupboard; she knew Una’s dresses, her clothes. Surely, with Bulbul and Som she would have changed for the evening? Yet all her dresses were there. In the dressing-table drawer, Alix found Una’s shoulder bag. She must have needed that – engagement diary; pencil; handkerchieves; the new ivory powder case Hal had given her as a parting present; dark glasses; everything was there – except a comb. A toothbrush and a comb. Travelling light. That phrase filled Alix’s mind. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she told herself. ‘Una is forgetful,’ but even if she had forgotten her bag she would surely have sent round for it – she had been at Bulbul’s all day – and then Alix saw one other thing was missing, the wallet that matched the bag. Una had taken a toothbrush, comb – and money.

  For a moment worry flared into panic, then, ‘Nonsense. Nonsense,’ Alix said and went to the telephone. ‘Bulbul? It’s Alix Gwithiam.’

  ‘Oh, hello.’ Bulbul’s clear happy voice came down the line. ‘I saw it in the papers. Congratulations.’ Something like amusement in the way Bulbul spoke lit Alix’s temper again. ‘Bulbul, why hasn’t Una come back? You know how Edward worries if she’s late – but you are both so damn casual.’

  ‘I am not damn casual as you call it.’ Bulbul had a temper too, ‘and how can Una be late when she isn’t here?’

  ‘Then where is she?’

  ‘Isn’t that for you to answer? I haven’t seen her or heard from her all this week.’

  ‘Not seen …’ The panic was real now but Alix swiftly covered it. ‘Oh, of course! I’m sorry, Bulbul, but with all this … newness – I don’t know whether I am on my head or my heels. Of course, Una is with Lady Srinevesan,’ but Bulbul was not mollified.

  ‘Then Lady Gwithiam had better ring Lady Srinevesan,’ she said and put the receiver down.

  As Alix turned from the telephone she saw something, small and blue, set down at the end of the verandah; as if mesmerized she walked towards it, then, ‘Monbad! Monbad!’ she cried. ‘How did this get here?’ It was Una’s case.

  In it were her clothes, tidily folded. ‘Hé Bhagwan!’ said Monbad. ‘Then something has happened to the Miss-baba!’

  Alix was waiting in the hall when Chinaberry drove Edward up. Edward came straight to her. ‘Alix, I was too harsh. The truth is you shattered me.’ He would have kissed her, but she held him off. ‘Tell Chinaberry not to go.’

  ‘Why, Alix!’ Edward looked as tired and strained as if he had gone through a battle, ‘As I have,’ said Edward, but Alix was white to her lips and, ‘Chinaberry,’ the words were thick, as if she could hardly speak as she asked in Hindi, ‘Where did you take Miss-baba Una after lunch yesterday?’

  ‘To Misra Memsahib’s, as she said.’

  ‘Alix …’

  ‘Wait, Edward. Chinaberry, did you see her go in?’

  ‘At the gate. She said not to drive in – Misra Memsahib might be sleeping. She would not let me carry her case, but it was small. I saw her go in at the gate.’

  ‘And drove away?’

  ‘To take you and the Sahib to Sultanpore. Those were my orders.’ Chinaberry was mystified. ‘Have I done wrong?’

  ‘No, no. Go and get your food now, but don’t put the car away. We may need it.’

  ‘Alix.’

  ‘Not here. In the drawing room,’ and there, distraught she faced him. ‘Edward, I shall have to shatter you still more. Una has gone.’

  ‘Gone? What do you mean – gone?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ whispered Alix. ‘But she has – disappeared.’

  ‘Una?’

  ‘I hope … it is just that she has run away.’

  ‘Run away! You hope she has run away. Are you out of your senses?’

  ‘I mean … hope it is nothing worse.’

  ‘How could it be anything worse? Why should it be?’ and, ‘Run away. What preposterous absurdity! Why should she? We had just had that long and happy time together.’

  ‘Perhaps it was meant as – as a farewell.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I wish it were ridiculous – and don’t forget you went without me.’

  ‘You mean she is jealous?’

  ‘I wish I thought it was just that.’

  He swung round. ‘I thought you and she had come to terms.’

  ‘I’m afraid they were terms you would not have approved.’

  ‘But … she was with Bulbul. I will ring Bulbul.’

  ‘I have. She hasn’t seen or heard from Una for a week.’ Alix caught his arm. ‘Edward, be careful. There is more in this than we know, than even I know. Una hasn’t taken any of her things – not even clothes.’

  He passed his hand over his face as if to shut out a bad dream. His hair was on end. ‘She wouldn’t have run away. She must have been abducted.’

  ‘Then why did she pretend she had rung Bulbul and arranged to go there? And hoodwinked Chinaberry? It isn’t,’ said Alix slowly, ‘because she hated and despised me – and she had reason as – as I shall have to tell you, Edward. I believe …’ and Alix seemed to have a weight that bowed her down, ‘… Una has gone away with somebody. Come and look at her room,’ she said.

  Edward had stood on the embroidered rug and watched as Alix showed him the cupboard, the dressing table untouched; Una’s dressing gown and slippers; the books she had been reading. The tidiness was impeccable in the small white room. A letter from Hal was unopened on the desk, as were the notebooks. The ivory and sandalwood pieces were marshalled on the chessboard and, ‘I didn’t play one game with her,’ said Edward. Again his face had contorted. ‘Perhaps … perhaps I deserved this.’ Suddenly he bent: the sandalwood king, in his elephant’s howdah, wore a little cocked hat. It was lettered ‘Edward’ and sealed.

  ‘Of course – so I couldn’t open it,’ said Alix.

  When you open this, Una had written in a minuscule hand, I shall have gone. Please don’t try and find me, first because you can’t and secondly because I am not coming back – nor shall I want any of my things; as a matter of fact, I shall not be Una Gwithiam any more. That sounds as if I were becoming a nun – far far from it. I am with someone who has made me happier than I have ever dreamed of being – so please tell Alix this has nothing to do with her.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Alix, ‘and thank God it is this – nothing more terrible. I feared perhaps … perhaps …’ She had not been able to go on.

  For reasons of our own, Una had written, we shall stay hidden for two or three months, which is why, now, I cannot tell you his name, only that he is Indian and you will like him.

  ‘Like him!’

  When the right time comes you will know everything and I think you will be pleased.

  ‘Pleased!’ Edward almost choked.

  Meanwhile I am happy and well and looked after, so please trust me. You have your new life. Let me have mine. Love, Una.

  ‘Love – Una …’ Edward could only repeat the phrases as if they were branded into him. Savagely, he crumpled the note, then seemed to crumple too.

  ‘You swore to me,’ said Edward. ‘I swear. That’s
what you said.’ Anger had set in and he was icy with rage. ‘I can hear your voice now. “I swear to you it would be impossible for either of the girls to be alone with a young man for half an hour without my knowing.” That’s what you said.’

  ‘And what I believed.’ Alix’s chin had come up. ‘You must remember, Edward, I spent the nights with you.’

  ‘Nights! What could she possibly have done at night, where gone? With watchmen, sepoys at the gate?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Exactly. You don’t know. I trusted you.’

  ‘And I once asked you to take back your trust. Do you remember?’ Alix’s eyes, as her mother’s had been, were brimming, but in hers there was anger as well as grief. ‘I knew from the beginning Una was too much for me.’

  ‘Nonsense. Ridiculous, preposterous, absurd nonsense!’ Edward was striding up and down the drawing room. ‘Not Una! Hal, perhaps, but not Una. Besides, how could she, when we knew her every movement, every hour?’

  ‘Did we?’

  ‘Then we ought to have done.’ Alix’s head sank lower. Then she raised it. ‘We will find her, Edward. We will find her, if we have to turn the whole of India upside down.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. That would be like looking for one small ant in an ant heap the size of Everest!’

  ‘Why, Edward!’ Lady Srinevesan rose in surprise as Edward and Alix came into her drawing room. ‘Lady Gwithiam!’ If there were a shade of reserve in that they did not notice it and, ‘Thank God, you are alone,’ said Edward.

  ‘Yes, Dev is at the club. His eternal bridge.’ Lady Srinevesan’s quick eyes had taken in their consternation. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘Amina, may we ask you a few questions – alone?’

  ‘Of course, but first, let me get you a drink or some coffee. No, not a word,’as Edward would have waved that aside. ‘You both look like ghosts.’

  ‘Not coffee,’ said Alix. ‘They are expecting us back for dinner. Edward has had nothing to eat all day,’ – this lacerating day – ‘but a drink would be good,’ and, when it came, she and Edward sipped it gratefully.

  ‘Now?’ Lady Srinevesan, wearing one of her favourite silver saris, sat down to listen. ‘There is no one to overhear. The servants have gone. What is this about?’

  ‘About – Una,’ Edward could scarcely say her name.

  ‘Edward,’ Alix had pleaded, ‘wouldn’t it be better to do as she says? Trust her – leave her alone?’

  ‘Alone! She’s a child.’

  ‘I don’t think Una has ever been a child. I’m afraid of – damage.’

  ‘Good God! What worse damage could there be?’ asked Edward bitterly.

  ‘I don’t know but …’ Alix had not been able to find words. Then, ‘I haven’t been completely blind,’ she said. ‘I do know some of it. The trouble is, I believed Una. I didn’t think she would lie.’

  ‘Who taught her to lie?’

  ‘Both of us. Wasn’t it a lie that brought her and Hal here in the first place?’

  ‘Don’t fence with me, Alix. This disaster …’

  ‘It may not be disaster.’ Alix had regained her poise though her heart seemed to be fluttering in her throat and she was breathing as if in a physical battle. ‘Edward, just after Hal went, I discovered … I looked in Una’s mathematics book …’

  And now, ‘Amina,’ said Edward to Lady Srinevesan, ‘Amina, do you, can you, recall Una’s being especially friendly with some friend of yours, or of Sophia Mehta’s? We guess a young man and a mathematician.’

  ‘A mathematician? That sounds more like one of Dev’s friends, but they would hardly be young. Here the young are all artists, musicians, writers – of course, one of them may also do mathematics.’

  ‘But do you remember Una’s especially talking to one of them?’

  ‘The trouble with Una,’ said Lady Srinevesan, ‘was to make her talk at all. Usually at any affair or party she stayed in my shadow, or Sophia’s – but why?’

  Alix took up the story. ‘She told me that someone – she said it was a man – was helping her make a surprise for Edward. I guessed it was something to do with Indian literature, poetry – or history.’

  ‘Literature or history – then why the mathematics?’

  ‘That same someone had been helping Una with hers,’ said Alix.

  ‘Without your knowledge?’ Lady Srinevesan’s eyebrows were raised.

  ‘For a time.’ Alix flushed painfully. ‘Then, of course, I found out, but she said it was a secret, part of this surprise for Edward, and told me the man was a friend of yours, at least someone you knew, you and Mrs Mehta, so I thought she must have met him here.’

  Lady Srinevesan shook her head. ‘I am completely mystified. Poetry and mathematics seldom go together … music now, but Una isn’t anything of a musician. You are afraid,’ she asked, ‘that Una is involved with this young man?’

  ‘Deeply involved.’ Edward was too desperate to keep it back.

  ‘She must have been with him over and over again.’ Alix said it hopelessly.

  ‘Could it have been at Bulbul’s?’ But Lady Srinevesan answered her own question. ‘It couldn’t. Bulbul isn’t interested in that sort of thing. Una and Bulbul frivol, which I have never understood.’

  ‘She took refuge with Bulbul from me.’ But Alix did not say it.

  ‘Think, please think,’ urged Edward. Lady Srinevesan still shook her head; then a remembrance made her wrinkle her forehead. ‘Wait … there is what may be a tiny, tiny clue. Una did ask me about someone – a young poet – who used to come here and read, though quite long before her time. She asked Sophia Mehta too. His name was Ravi Bhattacharya.’

  ‘Ravi Bhattacharya. We don’t know anyone called that.’

  ‘Ravi was an outstanding young poet – outstandingly handsome too, but I remember being surprised she knew his poems because none of them had been published – as far as I know. She knew one of them so well that she could say it by heart and recited it in a dreamy sort of way. When Sophia commented, she blushed.’

  ‘Una blushed.’

  ‘Yes, I thought it untypical.’

  ‘And you are sure she didn’t meet him here or at Sophia Mehta’s?’

  ‘Quite sure. He disappeared. It must be two years or more since we saw him. I was told he had gone underground, been concerned in some trouble with the Praja Swaraj – the People’s Freedom Party – but, and how could I have forgotten this?’ cried Lady Srinevesan, ‘I had meant to tell Una she would meet him. Ravi Bhattacharya has reappeared. In fact, he has entered for the Tagore Memorial Poetry Prize. The judging will be held at Vigyan Bhawan at the end of the month.’

  ‘Then he is probably here, in Delhi.’

  ‘He will be here on the thirtieth. All the finalists must read their poems, but he may be nothing to do with this. In fact, I don’t see how he could. How could they have met?’ asked Lady Srinevesan. ‘And remember, girls of Una’s age often get a fixation on a poem.’

  Now it was Edward who shook his head. ‘Una isn’t that sort of girl. Besides, if a poem particularly struck her she would have shown it to me.’

  ‘I can guess,’ Lady Srinevesan was cool, ‘that, lately, there were several things Una did not show.’

  Red mounted again in Alix’s cheeks. Desperately she defended herself. ‘It sounded so innocuous – a surprise for Edward.’

  ‘But there are surprises and surprises,’ said Lady Srinevesan.

  ‘Ram Chand.’

  ‘Huzoor?’

  ‘Ram, in this house you are our most trusted and confidential servant.’

  ‘That was Dino, Sahib.’ Ram was still unforgiving, but Edward was asking for mercy.

  ‘You know that Una Miss-baba has disappeared?’

  Ram Chand did not say that everybody knew it. He inclined his head.

  ‘Ram, have you ever seen, ever known, a young man, a Mr Ravi Bhattacharya come to the house?’

  ‘Ravi Bhattacharya?’ Startled astonishment made R
am jerk from head to foot.

  ‘Well? Speak, man.’

  ‘There is a Ravi,’ said Ram. ‘But …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘He is of the house, Sahib.’

  ‘Of the house?’

  ‘Yes, Sahib. Ravi Bhattacharya,’ said Ram Chand, ‘is Sahib’s second gardener.’

  They searched Ravi’s hut. ‘Wait till this gets about Delhi.’ Edward was grim.

  ‘It mustn’t get about Delhi. We shall find them,’ said Alix, ‘and it may not be this Ravi Bhattacharya.’ She could not believe it. ‘Under our very eyes – and with a servant.’

  ‘Ram,’ Edward had asked. ‘Did you, did any of you notice the Miss-baba as being – friendly with this young man?’

  Ram drew himself up. ‘None of us would so forget ourselves as to do such a thing.’

  ‘But was he one of you?’

  As soon as they searched the hut it was obvious he was not. There were the usual things of any servant’s room: the string bed, mat, clay oven, pots, pans, platters and bowls, clothes on a string, but Edward’s eyes went straight to the desk, and, ‘Ah!’ said Edward.

  ‘Yes, Ravi could read and write,’ Ganesh, for whom Edward had sent, spoke in Hindi. ‘I do not know why he was gardener … I thought …’

  ‘You thought?’

  ‘To myself,’ said Ganesh with dignity, ‘I thought he might be a college boy in trouble – but Ravi was older than that. He had many many books,’ but Edward had already lifted the desk lid. ‘Bowra! Day Lewis’s Poetic Image … Form and Style in Poetry, W. P. Ker … Some garden boy!’

  ‘Who is W. P. Ker?’ Alix was past pretending now.

  ‘One of our greatest professors of English – Oxford, Cardiff, London.’

  ‘Suppose they search your hut?’ Una had asked Ravi.

  ‘Why should they search my hut? No one had any reason to connect me with you,’ but Una was still uneasy.

  ‘Shouldn’t we hide the books?’

  ‘And make Ganesh suspicious at once? Hardly I should have taken books to go and cremate my uncle,’ and, ‘Ravi is coming back,’ said Ganesh with certainty. It seemed as if Ravi were; there were fruit and stores in the doolie, clothes on the line and in the chest.

  ‘But if he had taken Una he would not be coming back,’said Alix.