Far Pavilions (56 page)

Ash leaned back against the pillows and stared out at the night sky, brooding with dismay on that word ‘brother’. Was that really how she thought of him? He supposed that she must. And if that was why she felt free to visit him, he ought not to complain. But he did not think of her as a sister – though honesty compelled him to admit that he had certainly treated her as one, both in his neglect for her feelings and his forgetfulness of her existence. Yet the last thing he wanted from her now was sisterly affection, even though he realized that as long as she thought of him as a brother they were comparatively safe, while should their relationship change to anything deeper, the dangers ahead were incalculable.

He lay awake for a long time, making plans and discarding them, but when at last he fell asleep, only one thing was still clear to him: the need for caution. He would have to be very careful – for Juli's sake more than his own, though he was well aware of the peril in which he would lie should anyone suspect that his feelings towards one of the brides whom he had been charged with conveying to their wedding were far from detached.

He had not needed Mulraj to point out to him how easy it would be for young Jhoti to die on the march – ostensibly from an accident – without any inquiry being made by the British authorities; and he knew that it would be equally easy for his own death to be arranged. There were so many ways in which a man could die in India, and provided he were to do so at some stage in the journey where the camp was conveniently out of reach of an English doctor or anyone else capable of giving a professional opinion on his corpse before heat, vultures and jackals had effectively disposed of it, his murderers would run no risk of being found out. Nor would his death be a lingering one, as for their own sakes they would kill him quickly. But it would be otherwise with Juli.

Ash remembered the tale of the cheetah that Nandu had burned alive because it had lost him a wager, and he shivered at the thought of what might be done to Juli. Whatever happened, she must not risk coming to his tent again. They would have to find some other way of meeting – for if she imagined for a moment that he would be content to see her only in the presence of her relations and her women in the durbar tent, she was very much mistaken. Nevertheless, they must be careful…

On that decision, Ash fell asleep. And waking in the cheerful sunlight of another idle, cloudless morning, straightway abandoned it. The dangers that had been so easy to visualize in the darkness seemed far less menacing by daylight, and by the time he was carried to the evening meeting in the durbar tent and saw her smile at him as she sketched the familiar gesture of greeting, he had forgotten his good resolutions and decided that she must come just once more, if only so that he could explain to her why she must never come again, which was something that he found too difficult to convey to her by oblique and roundabout methods.

Three hours later she was seated on the end of his camp bed while old Geeta crouched in the shadows among the guy-ropes outside and kept watch, trembling with anxiety and muttering prayers to a variety of gods. But Ash had not succeeded in making Juli see the rashness of her behaviour.

‘Are you afraid that Geeta will talk? I promise you she will not. And she is so deaf that we would have to talk much louder than this before she could hear what we were saying.’

‘That is not the point, and you know it!’ said Ash. ‘What matters is that you are here, and you should not be. What could you say if you were discovered?’

Anjuli laughed at him and said lightly that there was not the least danger of her being discovered there, but that even if she were, no great harm would result from it. ‘For has it not been agreed that you are now as our brother, having done us all great service in rescuing my sister and myself from the river, and injuring yourself in attempting to save our little brother from death? And should a sister not be permitted to visit a sick brother? Particularly when she comes after dark when strangers cannot gape at her, and is accompanied by an elderly and respectable widow.’

‘But I am not your brother,’ said Ash angrily. He would have liked to add that he had no wish to be, but as this did not seem to be an appropriate moment to say so, he said instead: ‘You are talking like a child! and if you were still one this would not matter, but the trouble is that you are not. You are a woman grown, and it is not fitting that you should come to my tent alone. You must know that.’

‘Surely,’ agreed Anjuli; and though he could not see her face for the darkness and the bourka that she still wore, he knew that she was smiling. ‘I am not entirely foolish. But if I am discovered here I can pretend to be. I shall say what I have just said to you, and though I shall be severely scolded and forbidden to come again, that is the worst that would happen.’

‘To you, perhaps,’ retorted Ash. ‘But what about me? Would anyone believe that I – or any man for that matter – can see no harm in entertaining a woman in the privacy of my tent and by night?’

‘But then you are not a man,’ said Anjuli sweetly.

‘I 'm not – What the devil do you mean?’ demanded Ash, justly incensed.

‘Only not in the way you meant,’ explained Anjuli soothingly. ‘Or not at present. My uncle himself has said that no woman could possibly consider herself endangered by the presence of an invalid who was trussed like a fowl in splints and bandages and incapable of moving freely.’

‘Thank you,’ observed Ash caustically.

‘But it is true. When you are well again it will be different. But at present you could hardly be suspected of doing any harm to my virtue, even if you wished to.’

Ash could think of no adequate retort, though he knew that it was not as simple as all that, and that even the kindly Kaka-ji would not take a lenient view of his niece's behaviour, or his own either. But the temptation to let Juli stay was too great, and he made no further attempt to send her away or discourage any further visits. She had not stayed very long that night, nor had she allowed him to dispense with the
dai
's treatment. She had sent the old lady in to knead and massage him while she herself waited outside in the moonlight, and the two had left together. But despite Geeta's ministrations, Ash had once again endured a wakeful night.

He was in no hurry to get the camp on the move again, but there were a great many disadvantages in letting it remain for too long in one place; not the least of them being the risk of depleting the surrounding countryside of food and fodder. He had no desire to risk a repetition of the situation that he had found on his arrival at Deenagunj, and he also knew that the presence of so large a number of men and animals encamped in one spot would be bound to foul the locality to an extent that would soon become painfully noticeable. Already the wind blowing in through his tent door had brought him warning of this. Yet as long as they stayed there, Juli would probably continue to visit him, while once they moved on it might not be too easy. For that reason alone he would have given anything to stay, but he could not bring himself to disregard his responsibilities to the camp, and on the following morning he discussed the matter with Mulraj and informed Gobind that he was now perfectly capable of travelling; not on horseback, possibly, but in one of the baggage carts or on an elephant.

Gobind had been dubious, but after some argument had given way on condition that Pelham-Sahib allowed himself to be carried in a
palkee
, and a sedan having been procured, orders had gone out that the camp would march next day.

The decision had been generally welcomed, though not by the younger bride, who only a few days ago had been complaining of the inaction, yet now that they would shortly be on the move again, was reminded by all the bustle and preparation of what awaited her at their journey's end. Thinking of it, she wept and wrung her hands and clung to her sister for comfort, wailing that she felt ill and that the very thought of having to travel in that hot, stuffy
ruth
again was more than she could bear.

There had been no meeting in the durbar tent that evening, and later the
dai
had arrived alone and overcome her timidity sufficiently to whisper that Anjuli-Bai sent her salaams and regretted that she would not be able to visit the Sahib that night, or on the next one either. But during the following week she came nightly, though her visits were brief and she did not come alone, but always with Geeta, who would treat Ash and then retire out of earshot to wait while her mistress and the Sahib talked together.

The old lady's hearing might be poor, but her eyesight was still excellent, and her fears made her an admirable watch-dog, for the smallest movement attracted her attention. Her nervous little cough signalled a warning if anyone came too near, and the two in the tent would fall silent. But no one interrupted them, and Ash's servants, who would not have allowed anyone else to approach unchallenged, were used to the sight of the
dai
and the lateness of her visits, and being aware of her timidity were not surprised that she had taken to bringing a companion with her. They saw the women arrive and leave again, and were not troubled.

The friendly sessions in the durbar tent were no longer an accepted part of each day, for after long hours spent in a closed
ruth
, Shushila was often too weary for company. The roads, where they existed, were little better than cart-tracks between villages, and where there were none the surface of the plain was almost preferable. On both, the dust lay thick and the hooves of the trotting bullocks stirred it up in choking clouds that forced their way between the closely drawn curtains of the
ruth
, covering everything within, clothing, cushions, hands, faces and hair, with a thin grey film of grit.

Shushila coughed and wept and complained ceaselessly of the dust and the jolting and the discomfort, so that by the day's end Anjuli was often exhausted, and there were times when she came near to losing her patience and giving her little sister a good shaking. The fact that she did not do so was due to the habit of years as much as to her affection and sympathy for Shushila, for Juli had learned very early to control her emotions and hold her tongue. And to shoulder, without complaint, burdens that many an adult would have found hard to bear.

She had been six years old when Ashok and Sita fled from Gulkote, and during the next few months her position in the palace had been unenviable. But there came a day when by chance she succeeded in quietening little Shushila, who was cutting a tooth and had been screaming for hours on end, after everyone else had failed to do so. Her success was probably due to the fact that she happened to pick up the child at a moment when it had howled itself into exhaustion and was ready to stop anyway. But the equally exhausted Zenana thought otherwise, and Janoo-Rani, who while doting on her sons took little or no interest in a mere daughter, said carelessly that in future Kairi-Bai could make herself useful by helping to look after her half-sister.

There can be little doubt that the
Nautch
-girl derived a certain malicious satisfaction from seeing the
Feringhi
-Rani's daughter dancing attendance upon her own offspring, but Kairi-Bai had enjoyed the sudden sense of responsibility. Her days were no longer empty or aimless, for this latest of Janoo's children was a sickly and fretful little creature and its attendants had been only too willing to let someone else do their work for them – even when that someone was only a six-year-old child. Kairi-Bai was kept fully occupied, and it was not surprising that as the years went by Shushila should have come to look on her less as an older sister than a combination of nurse, playfellow and slave.

Kairi had been all those things: but her reward was love. A selfish, clinging, demanding love, it is true; but love all the same, which was something she had never had before – the poor
Feringhi
-Rani having died too soon to be remembered; and though Ashok had been kind to her and Sita had given her affection and understanding, she knew that those two loved only each other while Shushila, on the other hand, not only loved her, but needed her. To be needed was an equally novel experience, and such a comforting one that she did not begrudge the long hours of servitude that the idleness of the child's servants thrust upon her.

Had Kairi been given a free hand, it is even possible that she might have succeeded in bringing up her baby sister to be a tolerably healthy and well-adjusted young woman. But she was far too young and inexperienced to be able to combat the pernicious influence of the Zenana women, whose anxiety to curry favour with Janoo-Rani led them to make much of little Shushila, and vie with each other to pet and spoil the child.

The
Nautch
-girl's own treatment of her daughter was governed entirely by her moods. As these were unpredictable, little Shushila could never be certain if she would be received with a caress or a slap, and as a result she developed a morbid sense of insecurity which was aggravated by the fact that she admired her mother even more than she feared her, and craving as she did for her affection, the careless caresses could not compensate for the misery of being rebuffed. It was this that bred in her a passionate attachment for anything that was safe and familiar: the privacy and protection of the Zenana walls, the faces and voices of all those who peopled her small world, and the unchanging routine of each day. She had no interest in anything that lay beyond the Women's Quarters or in the world outside the Palace of the Winds, and no desire to venture there.

Kairi, who had watched her grow up, was aware of this, and perceptive enough to divine the reason for it, though Shushila herself would never have been able to put it into words, even supposing she had recognized the forces that drove her, which she did not. She was not given to analysing her emotions, any more than the women who pandered to them and by doing so encouraged her to be hysterical and selfish. It was only Kairi-Bai, made wise by harsh experience, who came to realize that her little sister's headaches and the attacks of nervous hysteria that caused so much anxiety in the Zenana were largely imaginary and always self-induced; and that these, together with her fear of the unfamiliar and her high-handed treatment of servants and the humbler members of the Zenana who were incapable of retaliation, were a form of revenge for the lack of interest that her fascinating and imperious mother showed towards her.