by M. M. Kaye
Several brown-robed assistants wearing spotless white turbans of impressive size hurried forward to display the wares, uttering polite murmurs of greeting, and to the evident satisfaction of the aged proprietor—and the unconcealed amusement of Mir Khan—the pile of Sarah’s purchases soon grew to alarming proportions.
Hugo, losing interest, eventually wandered off through a curtain-hung doorway, and they heard his voice raised in greeting in the next room.
‘Blast! It’s that old Candera pest,’ grumbled Reggie Craddock, who was holding an assortment of finger-bowls while Fudge debated the respective merits of chenar leaves, kingfishers, lotuses and paisley patterns. ‘Can’t stand the woman. How Meril can stick it, beats me. Gossiping old bully!’
Lady Candera’s astringent tones could be heard uplifted in comment and criticism from the next room: ‘Well Hugo? Wasting your time and money as usual I see? Where’s your wife? Why people buy this rubbishy trash I cannot imagine. No taste. No discrimination. I’ve just been telling Ghulam Kadir he’s lucky that there are still so many tasteless tourists left in Srinagar. What are you doing here?’
‘Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery,’ said Hugo, ‘I am following your example and acquiring—reluctantly and by proxy, so to speak—a collection of this rubbishy trash.’
Lady Candera gave vent to a high, cackling laugh. ‘I like you, Hugo Creed. You are about the only person who has the gumption to stand up to me. But you malign me if you think I am buying this stuff. Heaven forbid! I am merely seeing that Meril’s deplorable taste does not lose her her job. The Resident wants about two dozen pieces of papier mâché work and similar local rubbish to send to some charity bazaar, and he has asked Meril to get it. The man must be entering his second childhood to entrust the selection to Meril who, if left to herself, is certain to be grossly cheated over the price and return laden with all the unsaleable hideosities in Srinagar. Major McKay has very kindly come to support me.’
‘Oh, God!’ muttered Reggie Craddock.
Meril Forbes’ voice was heard to say in trembling protest: ‘But Aunt Ena, you know it was your…’ ‘Hold your tongue, child!’ snapped Lady Candera sharply. ‘I will not stand being argued with. Now run along and look out some nice powder-bowls. I don’t like the last two that you have shown me. Major McKay can advise you.’
The dusty, heavily embroidered curtain swung back and Lady Candera entered, her lorgnette at the ready: ‘Ah Antonia,’ she observed to Fudge, ‘increasing your husband’s overdraft, I presume?’ She turned the lorgnettes upon Reggie Craddock, inspected him silently and added: ‘I see you have brought your faithful cavalier. Ah me, what it is to be young——! Though to be sure, in my youth, we missed a great many opportunities by observing a stricter regard for the conventions. You are about to drop one of those bowls, Major Craddock.’
Reggie Craddock scowled, and in an effort to retrieve the sliding bowl, dropped three more.
‘Why don’t you put them on the divan?’ asked Lady Candera. ‘So much more sensible. There you see, you have cracked that one and will have to buy it. However, I have no doubt you can use it as an ashtray. You are looking a little flushed, Antonia—or else you should use less rouge. If you modern women must use make-up, I do wish you would learn to apply it with a more sparing hand.’
Fudge said placidly: ‘Dear Lady Candera, how you do love to torment us. But this morning I am determined to disappoint you. I refuse to rise.’
‘You and Meril are two of a kind,’ observed Lady Candera, seating herself regally upon the divan: ‘No guts.’
Fudge smiled and said: ‘But we are all scared of Lady Candera. She knows everyone’s secrets and nothing is hid from her. Isn’t that so?’
‘I know yours, if that’s what you mean,’ snapped Lady Candera.
‘Aha!’ said Hugo. ‘I see that you belong to the “All is discovered!” school.’
‘And what is that, pray?’
‘Kipling put it very neatly once: “Write to any man that all is betrayed, and even the Pope himself would sleep uneasily.” In other words, if you whisper “All is discovered!” in a chap’s ear, nine citizens out of ten will immediately take the next boat for South America, on the off-chance of its being true.’
‘You mean, because there is no one who has nothing to hide?’ asked Mir Khan.
‘That’s about it,’ agreed Hugo. ‘In fact if someone hissed “All is discovered!” in my ear, you would be unable to see me for dust.’
‘That I can well believe!’ said Lady Candera tartly. She turned her back on Hugo, and raising her lorgnette surveyed Sarah at some length. ‘Ah, the rich Miss Parrish,’ she observed.
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Sarah.
‘What? Oh—But I thought all trippers who could afford to come out to India were rich.’
‘Not this one, I’m afraid,’ confessed Sarah with a laugh.
‘Well, it’s a good story, girl. Spread it,’ advised Lady Candera. ‘To be thought rich is the next best thing to being it. You will find it a great aid to popularity. You too are buying this rubbishy trash, I see.’
‘Yes,’ said Sarah, ‘I think it’s charming.’
‘Before the war it had certain merits,’ admitted Lady Candera. ‘But like everything else, its price has quadrupled and its quality deteriorated—thanks to our various allies, who paid fantastic prices without any discrimination whatsoever so that it soon ceased to be worthwhile to maintain a decent standard of workmanship. Any trash would sell.’
It was perhaps fortunate that at this point they should have been interrupted by the arrival of Helen Warrender, accompanied by Captain Mallory.
Charles, who had included Sarah casually in a general greeting, did not look in the least as if he had spent a sleepless and strenuous night. Or that the proprietary hand that Helen kept on his arm was in any way unwelcome. And Sarah, noting these things, felt unaccountably depressed and irritated. Mir Khan had left her side to discuss the rival merits of candlesticks and table-lamps with Meril Forbes and Major McKay in the next room, and as the others had fallen into a group about the divan where Lady Candera held court, she found herself temporarily alone.
There was a small archway on her left, half covered by a heavy fringed and embroidered curtain, and driven by that feeling of irritation she pushed the curtain aside and slipped through, to find herself in yet another showroom; dim, dusty and crowded with tables.
The walls here were hung with folds of brick-red cloth embroidered in geometrical designs in reds and browns and lavishly strewn with small pieces of looking-glass no bigger than a man’s thumbnail, while underfoot the floor was thick with Persian rugs. In the centre of the room and against the walls stood innumerable tables of carved and inlaid wood, piled high with articles in papier mâché, and yet more bowls and vases and boxes were stacked upon the floor in dusty pyramids upon the rugs. There appeared to be no exit from the room, other than through the archway Sarah had entered by, but on one side of it intricately carved shutters of painted wood guarded a window and a balcony that overlooked the river.
The shutters were closed, so that the only light in the small, dim room filtered through the interstices of the carving, and the atmosphere was both cold and stuffy. It smelt of dust and sandalwood and slow centuries … And of something else. Something that Sarah could not for the moment place.
She wandered about the room restlessly, picking up and examining various pieces of papier mâché and putting them down again without really seeing them, and listening with half an ear to the voices in the next room: Charles’s voice, Hugo’s, Helen’s and Lady Candera’s, which presently blurred together and grew fainter and faded to a mere murmur of sound. They have all gone somewhere else, thought Sarah.
The small, dusty, cluttered room was very quiet: quiet and cold and—and what? Sarah could give no reason for it, but all at once she found herself gripped by a feeling of panic that made her want to turn and run out of the room and after her companions. It was as if
on entering this place she had somehow stepped out of the ordinary everyday world, for there was something here that frightened her. Something …
Quite suddenly she realized what it was. The smell that had been in the dark deserted hall of the hut by the Gap. It was here too! Faint but distinct, in Ghulam Kadir’s showroom by the Fourth Bridge.
Sarah stood motionless: holding her breath and unable to move. There was no sound now from beyond the curtain, and even the noises from the river and the city beyond the carved wooden shutters seemed to sink into silence. Something rustled behind the drapery upon the walls, and the little mirrors winked and twinkled to the faint movement—a hundred sly, glinting eyes that watched Sarah and reflected her endlessly upon the dark, dusty hangings.
She did not hear footsteps upon the thick rugs, but the curtain that hung over the archway was jerked back and Charles stood on the threshold.
‘I’ve been sent to round you up—’ he began, and then the fear in her white face checked him, and he dropped the curtain quickly. Sarah’s voice was a croaking whisper: ‘The smell! The smell in the hut. It’s in this room…!’
‘Hush!’ said Charles. He took a swift stride forward and gripped her wrist in a clasp that hurt. ‘Pull yourself together, Sarah!’ he ordered in an urgent whisper. ‘Quickly … That’s the girl.’
‘That smell…’ repeated Sarah.
‘Yes, I know. What the hell were you doing in here?’
‘I just came in to see——’
‘No. I mean here in this house?’
‘Fudge wanted to do some shopping.’
‘Are you——’ There was a very faint sound from beyond the curtained doorway and in almost the same moment, as swiftly and surprisingly as he had done once before, Charles caught her into his arms and kissed her, holding her hard and close so that she could neither move nor speak.
The curtain behind them swung aside and Major McKay stood in the archway, looking pink and startled. His already ruddy face gradually assumed the hue of a beetroot, and he gave a small dry cough of embarrassment and stood back as Sarah, released, brushed past him with flaming cheeks.
She ran across the big showroom and through a doorway into another room beyond. A twisting wooden staircase led up from it, and from somewhere overhead she could hear Reggie Craddock arguing with Fudge, and Helen Warrender’s high, affected laugh. Sarah stopped abruptly; daunted by the thought of Helen’s mocking eyes, Mir Khan’s clear, perceptive gaze, and Lady Candera’s deadly lorgnette all levelled at her flushed face and ruffled hair.
She wished she could remember what she had done with her bag. There was a small square of looking-glass in it, in addition to a powder-puff and a comb. Had she given it to Mir Khan to hold or was it on some table in the room behind her? As she hesitated, Charles walked quickly through the door. His face was perfectly blank and he looked at Sarah with a faint frown as though he had for the moment forgotten who she was.
‘I suppose,’ said Sarah in a low, furious voice, ‘that that was some more shock treatment? What am I supposed to forget this time?’
Charles’s frown deepened. He caught her elbow, and jerking her round began to propel her up the narrow stairway.
‘Don’t be a fool, Sarah,’ he advised brusquely. He paused for a moment at the turn of the stair to look swiftly upwards and behind him, and spoke in an undertone: ‘Someone was coming in, and as I had no way of telling who it was I had to establish an alibi damned quickly. I’ve probably put years on McKay’s life in the process; the poor chap was incoherent with apology. But that’s his look-out; and for all I knew it might have been——Well the fact of the matter is that I can’t afford to be discovered deep in private conversation with you just now, Sarah. Not unless I can provide a very obvious and innocent reason for it. So there was nothing for it but to provide the reason.’
‘I see,’ said Sarah.
‘I doubt it,’ said Charles with an edge to his voice. ‘This is an unhealthy house to visit just now, Sarah, and the sooner you’re out of it the better.’ He smiled down suddenly at her sober face. ‘All right, I apologize. It was abominable of me, and that’s the second time I’ve offended. If there is a third you’ll know I really mean it! And now if you think you could try and look less like a girl who has discovered a body in the basement and more like one who has recently been kissed in the conservatory, we’ll join the others. Think you can manage it?’
‘I’ll try,’ said Sarah meekly.
‘That’s the spirit,’ approved Charles, and followed her up the stairs to a large upper room where the remainder of Ghulam Kadir’s customers were admiring furniture and carved ornaments of polished walnut wood.
‘Oh, there you are,’ said Fudge from the window recess. ‘Where did you get to, Sarah? I told Charles to collect you in case you got lost among all these rooms and staircases. What do you think of these little walnut-wood tables? Aren’t they sweet? I really think I must get a set of them.’
Hugo groaned audibly as one of the assistants, a fat little brown-robed man with a face deeply pitted by the marks of smallpox, hurried to stack the nest of small, polished tables one within the other, and surround them by vast sheets of paper and copious loops of string. Another assistant, a stately gentleman whose grey beard had been dyed an impressive shade of scarlet, was engaged in performing a similar office for Meril Forbes’ purchases under the critical eye of Lady Candera, while a third assistant made out the bills.
Ghulam Kadir appeared in the doorway and gave a low-voiced order and the red-bearded assistant vanished through a curtained archway and reappeared with a large brass tray loaded with tiny cups of black coffee which Ghulam Kadir handed round with flowery compliments.
Charles proffered his cigarette-case to Helen Warrender who looked at it and laughed. ‘Thank you, but I won’t deprive you of your last one.’ ‘Sorry,’ apologized Charles: ‘I didn’t realize I had only one left, but for you, Helen, I will even sacrifice my last cigarette!’
‘Dear Charles, I wish I could take you seriously! You know I never smoke anything but Sobranies, but after that I shall honour you by accepting your last gasper.’ She bent her head over Charles’s proffered lighter as the pockmarked assistant hurried up with a box of cigarettes, and Charles accepted one with a word of thanks and glanced at his watch: ‘I hate to hurry you, Helen, but it’s past one o’clock, and since we are supposed to be joining Johnnie and the Coply twins for lunch at Nedou’s Hotel at 1.15, we shall be a good half hour late even if we start now.’
Helen gave an affected little shriek of dismay and began to hunt through her bag. ‘What is it I owe you for, Ghulam Kadir? Oh yes—the powder-bowl and the tray and the eight table-mats. That’s seven rupees eight annas, and twelve rupees, and let me see—the mats were four each, weren’t they? I’m sure not to have brought enough money. Charles darling, your arithmetic’s better than mine, how much do I owe?’
‘Fifty-one rupees eight annas,’ said Charles promptly. ‘Here, I’ve got it, you can pay me back at lunch.’ He handed over a collection of crumpled notes while Helen said: ‘You are an angel, Charles! Don’t forget to remind me, will you?’ and Lady Candera remarked, ‘A nice morning’s work, Helen,’ in acidulated tones.
‘Shift ho, for all of us,’ said Hugo. ‘My stomach has been commenting on the lateness of the hour for some time past. What is the ghastly total, Fudge?… Heaven save me! Here you are, Ghulam Kadir, you old robber. Pity we didn’t arrive in a pantechnicon. Good God, Sarah! You don’t mean to say you’ve acquired all that? On second thoughts, I regret that we did not come in two pantechnicons.’
They went down the twisting staircase in single file, and when they reached the main papier mâché showroom, Ghulam Kadir, who had preceded them, produced a handful of small objects—little papier mâché containers made to hold a box of matches—and formally presented one to each of his customers.
‘Oh, thank you! they’re charming,’ exclaimed Sarah, examining her gift which bore a design of gold chena
r leaves and brown, furry chenar buds on a cream ground.
‘And now we really must go,’ said Fudge. ‘What are you looking for Sarah?’
‘My bag,’ said Sarah. ‘I left it somewhere down here and I haven’t paid my bill yet.’
‘Ah, Captain Mallory; your cue again, I think,’ observed Lady Candera with malice.
Sarah flushed angrily. ‘I must have put it down somewhere here.’
‘Anyone seen Sarah’s bag?’ demanded Hugo. ‘Anyone ever seen any woman who did not end up a shopping expedition by mislaying something? Is there a doctor—I mean a detective—in the house?’
Parcels were abandoned while the party hunted through the rooms. ‘Oh dear—I am sorry,’ apologized Sarah contritely. ‘It’s a white one. Not very big. I can’t think where——’
‘Is this it?’ inquired Hugo patiently, fishing up a white suede bag from between a carved sandalwood table and the end of the divan.
‘Bless you, Hugo!’ Sarah reached gratefully for her property and paid her bill, and the party once more collected its respective parcels and pieces and went down into the street where they were joined by Major McKay, who had been soothing his ruffled feelings with a quiet cigarette on the river steps.
Lady Candera, Meril and the Major, who were also apparently lunching at Nedou’s Hotel, were going as far as the First Bridge by shikara, and Charles, who had left his car on the other side of the river, accepted a lift for himself and Helen as far as the opposite bank. Sarah, Reggie Craddock and Mir Khan piled into the Creeds’ car, and were driven away through the maze of narrow and tortuous streets that twist and turn through Srinagar City.
16
It was almost two o’clock by the time Hugo’s car drew up outside Nedou’s Hotel and decanted its passengers.
‘You and Reggie will lunch with us, won’t you, Mir?’ asked Hugo, disentangling himself from a pile of paper parcels.
