There was nothing she could do but wait till he came home. But even then she must be cunning and show no sign of her intention to leave. She would ask about the jewels and find out where he’d hidden them, and somehow she would get them back.
Meanwhile she sipped a glass of brandy and water while she waited; it was something she rarely did, but the warm smooth fluid settled her stomach and her nerves.
Soon the drink did its work and she began to relax as she watched the play of golden light on the arbour of flowering vines that formed a type of tunnel leading from the front fence to the back garden.
There was a sudden flash of bright pink fabric crouching low, moving through the foliage. It was puzzling as all the garden staff had finished their work long ago and had left for the day.
Nagma, her new maid, would never wear such a bright colour. She was always shy and modest, being quite religious, and hurried around the house with her huge shy eyes downcast and her hair hidden by a sari shawl. Sara was overcome with sudden anxiety and called for Malika. “Who’s that in the garden? I think I saw someone.”
“It could be Mutu’s wife; she comes to visit him sometimes.”
But Malika left the room in a hurry, and Sara’s suspicions were aroused. Malika was not behaving in her usual way, and there was something furtive about her movements.
Sara followed her into the back garden and down the path, and there, waiting by the fountain where she’d often sung while she combed her lovely hair, was Lakshmi. Not the Lakshmi she remembered, proud and beautiful, but a tired and ragged girl with a pale unhealthy colour. Malika had handed her a bowl and the girl was eating like someone who hadn’t eaten for a while. At the sound of her footsteps they both turned around with guilty expressions. Lakshmi stood for a moment on the alert, then hurried away like a beaten animal, the bowl still in her hands.
All of Sara’s faint distrust of the girl evaporated. She was filled with pity. “Stay, please stay!” She smiled as kindly as she knew how to calm the girl, who stared back at her with wild feverish eyes.
Lakshmi halted and eyed her with suspicion, but at Sara’s kind tone she relaxed a little and gave a small blessing.
“Lakshmi, come, sit down and rest.” A strange tenderness overtook her, knowing that Lakshmi was broken and without hope. “Why have you come here to beg, my dear? Is there no food in your new house?”
The girl stared down at her feet, unwilling to speak, but looked up every now and then with haunted eyes.
Neither of them said anything, then, after a moment, Malika spoke up.
“Lakshmi has no job.”
“But I thought she had a good job, with friends of Mr Charles.”
Lakshmi looked at Malika, who also stared down at her feet.
“What is it? What is it you’re not telling me?”
There was an uneasy silence till Malika spoke again. “Lakshmi has run away.”
“You were not happy in your new place?”
Again, the women stared at each other, unwilling to speak.
“It is nothing.”
“If it’s nothing, why does she have to beg?”
Malika disguised her words by speaking Tamil, knowing that she spoke too fast to follow. Now Sara knew for certain there was something they were hiding from her.
“Malika, tell me.”
This time Lakshmi turned on her with something of her old fire in her eyes. “I would not sleep with Mr Charles’s friend!”
“What? Sleep with … who?”
“Mr George. He makes me sleep with him, like Mr Charles, but I hate him! He beats me!”
Sara stood, dazed. “Sleep with Mr Charles?”
“Do not listen, madam. Lakshmi is not well. Here …” Malika pushed some money into the girl’s palm. “Go!”
“No! Come inside and eat some more. I want to know everything.”
“I cannot.”
“Don’t you trust me, Lakshmi? Have I ever been unkind to you?”
The girl stared at her for a long moment, then she fell to her knees, sobbing as though her heart would break. “It is I who has been unkind, I who have been cruel. I did not want you to have a baby, so I gave you herbs to eat and make you sick. I was afraid if you had a baby Mr Charles would send me away.”
She grasped both of Sara’s hands in her own and kissed them over and over again. “Forgive me, madam … forgive me …”
There was something odd about the girl’s manner, as though she was losing her mind. Then she leapt to her feet, almost crazed now, her skin glistening with beads of sweat, her eyes staring. “Mr Charles send me away, he send me away.” She spoke as though she could not believe it. “He send me away. And he take Nagma instead! Nagma is not as pretty as me! She’s not as pretty as me!”
Then she turned and fled before Sara had a chance to realise she’d gone.
“Nagma!” Sara almost fell with the shock. Her voice came back to her, a faint echo of disbelief. “But she’s just a child!”
The summer house had always been his domain, and up till that moment she’d only ever been inside it for brief visits. He’d always discouraged her from invading what he called his ‘masculine retreat’, and she always respected his need for privacy while working.
Now a burning curiosity drove her to open the carved wooden door onto his private world. His divan bed, heaped high with embroidered cushions, lay against the wall next to a desk piled with papers. The room was strongly impregnated with the smell of musk incense, a fragrance he’d always claimed to hate. It clung to everything, cloying and overwhelming. She sat down on the bed to think. Then her eyes noticed a small, almost tattered book poking out from under the pillows. She opened it, at first flicking idly through the pages without really seeing. Then she realised what she was looking at, and the illustrations shocked her to the core. It wasn’t so much the lurid positions of the lovers; they were crudely drawn and almost too technical to be erotic. It was the thought of herself, in bed with him, and her revulsion at what he expected of her, and how he had selfishly tried to deny her pleasure for his own sake.
“Hypocrite!” she spat through clenched teeth. “Hypocrite!”
By the time Charles came home that night she had composed herself. There had been no wild crying with rage at her husband’s betrayal, only an icy calm and a new strength to face what was ahead of her. Now, all she wanted was to get away from him as soon as possible.
He came into the drawing room at his usual time, calling for Shakur as he did so. “Where are you, you lazy dog? Get me my drink.”
He was in a good mood and looking forward to telling Sara his daily news.
“Sara!”
“I’m here, Charles.”
“There you are … what’s the matter? Are you ill?”
“No, I’m not ill.”
“Then what are you doing, sitting there in the dark?”
“Is it dark? I hadn’t noticed.” She dragged herself to her feet. “Charles, I saw Lakshmi today.”
A vein on his forehead twitched, and he straightened his back as he always did when he was displeased about something. Then he swallowed hard and regained his self-control. “What did she want?”
Despite her attempts to appear composed, her voice shook when she spoke.
“How could you? To throw Lakshmi out when you grew tired of her, and then hand her over to another man, as though she’s nothing …”
His eyes opened wide in genuine surprise. “Is that what this is about? Is that all?” He seemed relieved, even summoning up a faint laugh.
“Listen, my dear, there are things you don’t know about men and certain women; it’s not for pure women like you to understand.”
“Pure?”
She felt a sudden urge to tell him how pure she really was, though, despite her fury at Ravi, she didn’t want him to suffer for it.
“Did you know she’s in love with you?”
“In love? Is that what you call it? Well, I knew the girl had a bit of a thing for me, I su
ppose. That was her trouble; she was too jealous. You noticed it yourself. Listen, what does it matter; you wanted to be rid of her, and George is a good fellow. She’d be as happy with him as with me. Happier! George’s not so damn bad-tempered …” He gave a faint echo of a laugh while he brushed his blond hair out of his eyes. “Listen, Sara, I’m sorry about this but all the men have a girl. I tried to get rid of her before you came, but she begged me to keep her. I know I shouldn’t have listened to her …”
“Then Nagma is somehow different in your eyes?”
For a moment he couldn’t answer, and the room fell quiet except for the sound of Mutu banging the pots and pans in the kitchen.
“No wonder the servants laugh at me behind my back. Well, they won’t be able to for much longer. I’m leaving you.”
At first he was puzzled, staring at her blankly and not realising she meant what she said, then, in a sudden rage, he rushed to the door and screamed down the hall, “Quiet! Or I’ll come and make you!”
Instantly there was a tense silence and, feeling better, he softened his tone. “You’re not serious, my dear, over some Indian girl? Why, if every woman left her husband over this, there wouldn’t be a married couple left in Madras. But of course I’ll get rid of her at once.”
“I was going to leave you anyway, Charles. Right from the beginning, our marriage has been a mistake. I don’t blame you, really … I blame myself the most. I want my dowry returned to me, at least what’s left of it, so I can support myself till we get a divorce …”
At first it seemed he might plead with her, then he chose anger instead.
“Don’t be a fool! You’re not leaving this house … Anyway,” he added, “your dowry belongs to me now.”
He’d played his trump card. Whenever he wanted to assert his authority over her, he could remind her of her dependence on him.
“My jewels then. Where are they?”
“They’re locked in my office safe, and there they’ll stay. But they’re not really your jewels, are they? It’s only because of my position here that you have them at all. They belong to me, as does everything else in this marriage. You can never leave me … ever! If you think I’ll stand by and let you humiliate me, you’re mistaken!”
Then he changed his tone, taking her hand in his to reason with her.
“Listen, can we talk about this later? I must go. I’m sorry, I really am. We’ll talk about this when I come back.”
It was useless to argue with him, she could see that, so she nodded a silent agreement. It was best he leave her, allowing her time to make her escape.
There was no alternative; she must go now, penniless or not.
The sound of his footsteps echoed on the stones running down the front path. The gate of the picket fence was closed with a furious bang, then all was silent.
She hadn’t moved since he’d left the room, being too drained of emotion to do anything except fix her eyes on the spot where he’d last stood.
The silence of the night was so deafening she felt she could hear her own blood pounding in her ears. At last she dragged herself to her room to retrieve her packed suitcase hidden under the bed.
After counting the money in her purse, she found that with strict economy there was just enough to last till her small monthly allowance arrived from the lawyers.
Then she told Malika of her plan, and the woman fell to her knees and wept with relief.
Later, when she was dressed in one of Malika’s plain cotton saris, Malika stood back to view the effect.
“I cannot bear to see you dressed this way … If someone should see you they will blame me for not looking after you.”
Sara laughed, but it was brief and bitter. “It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks any more. From now on I do as I like.”
She took a final sip of tea from the china tea service that had come with her from England as part of her dowry, for a moment feeling a faint pang of pain at having to leave behind all her precious belongings, especially to a man who was now a stranger to her, and for whom she now felt nothing but hatred.
Chapter 35
Madras at night was almost as busy as day, but nobody noticed two poor women, their faces hidden by their saris, in a shabby carriage pulled by a small thin pony. Sara thought of her beautiful Pansy, and how she had to leave her behind for the moment at least, but knew she would be well taken care of by the little boy who fed her every day, till she could take her back somehow. They passed rows of sleeping figures, women with small children wrapped up in their saris, old men as thin as sticks, more dead than alive, and ragged children curled together for protection against the terrors of the night. For once, Sara felt truly at one with this band of refugees and her heart wept for their plight, but she at least could pay to have a roof over her head.
Their room was at the back of the hotel, high above a busy courtyard, where she could sit on her latticed wooden balcony and look down on life below without being seen. A wide wooden bed hung with mosquito netting sat in the centre of the room, covered with a cheap but clean cotton mattress and a striped woven bedspread. Despite the simplicity of her surroundings, she felt at last she was at least being true to herself. No more would she have to endure the sight and touch of the man she knew now for certain she could never return to.
Though, knowing she should be making a plan for the future, she felt curiously unable to motivate herself to action. She spent many hours sitting on her balcony and listening to the sounds of strange, incoherent talking and singing rising up from the courtyard below, while turning her thoughts over and over in her head.
If she sold her aunt’s gold earrings which, thankfully, she’d been wearing when he had taken her jewel box, she might have enough money to keep herself and Malika for the few months till the Maharaja came home, providing she could find somewhere cheap enough to live. She was too proud to rely solely on the Maharaja. But where would she sell her small handful of valuables? Who would buy them? Somehow the problem seemed unsurmountable.
In this way the days passed, till one morning she could hardly find the strength to rise from her bed. The heat inside the room was unbearable and not being able to go outside in the heat of the day was beginning to play on her nerves. She stumbled wearily around the room all day or sat watching small naked children play in the muddy courtyard through the closed shutters. She knew she would have to make a move soon, but everything seemed so difficult. She was overcome with an almost constant nausea now, and everything she ate she almost instantly vomited up.
A day later Sara awoke too sick to leave her bed, only being able to watch, her eyes listless and vacant, as Malika boiled some tea on a small stove in the corner of the room.
“We must leave this place,” Malika said as she watched Sara swallow the tea she had prepared. “I have seen Mr Chandran and he asked me why I am here.”
“You didn’t tell him, did you?”
“I had to; he will not say anything. He promised to help.”
“No, he’ll tell Mr Charles …”
She sighed and fell back on the bed, weighed down by her problems. If only she didn’t feel so ill. If only she had the strength to make a decision.
Later in the evening she fell into a listless state and was only just aware of being carried outside into the night air. Someone placed her with great care into the back of a carriage, and in a brief moment of consciousness she caught sight of Chandran’s kind anxious face as he looked down at her.
“Do not worry, my dear Mrs Fitzroy, do not worry …”
When she woke much later she found herself in a wide cool room, the shutters thrown open to let in the night air and the sweet fragrance of frangipani and the salty tang of the nearby sea. The soft light of a candle burned on a small table by the bed, casting a warm comforting glow on the room. Even so, she let out a small groan of despair as she remembered the past, and with a sob rolled over to press her face into the pillow.
A figure was bending over the bed and whispering as she
held one of Sara’s hands. “Shh … you’re safe now … go back to sleep … The doctor has given you something.” She tried to raise herself but fell back on the pillow as Lucy’s voice came out of the mist. “You are in your mother’s house. Mr Chadran went to Monsieur Ravi and he told me to bring you here. Ravi will take care of you.”
“Not Ravi … I must not see him, I must not see him …”
Lucy took her hand again to soothe her. “Ravi is going away to France and he’s not coming back. He will be gone from India in a few days … so don’t worry any more.”
“Ravi is leaving Madras?” Sara could barely speak his name as for so long he’d become a faint memory to blush over and reproach herself with, though, later in the depth of her dream, she felt his firm hand around her waist when they had danced on the night of the ball in Pondicherry. Then, all at once, the music stopped. He bent to kiss her hand, then left her.
The sweet night fragrances washed over her. It was a room for dreaming and there she lay floating, in a state of suspended animation, wanting to move but not feeling strong enough to make such a small resolve.
She lay in a posture of hopeless fatigue, too tired to think, her head pressed into the pillows. What a relief it was to sink into oblivion, to sink deeper into the gentle blackness of night.
She felt a cool hand on her forehead and Malika’s voice. “Sleep now … Sarianna … sleep.”
Later, much later, when Lucy pulled open the shutters to let in the light, the morning was black with a monsoon storm, while gusts of cool wind blew into the room, laden with the smell of damp earth. It was a scent Sara loved and, still not fully awake, she smiled, for a while not realising where she was. When she could focus, she became aware of a painting on the wall opposite, of a vividly painted scene of a street in Paris, the trees fresh with blossom and the sky a happy blue.
The Jasmine Wife Page 30
