Jani and the Greater Game (The Multiplicity Series Book 1) (2 page)

“There you are!” cried a familiar voice. “Seeking refuge behind the cover of the aspidistra! But you won’t mind if I intrude upon your privacy, Miss Chatterjee?”

She fixed a smile in place and looked up at the roly-poly figure of the irrepressible Mr Gollalli, at the same time setting her open book down on the cushion beside her to deter unwanted intimacy. “Not at all,” she smiled.

Mr Gollalli beamed – a great spread of ivory and gold in a rubicund face – and squeezed his bulk into the armchair opposite. As ever he carried his valise, which he placed at his feet with great care.

“You were not at dinner, Miss Chatterjee.”

“I elected to dine alone this evening, Mr Gollalli.”

“I was hoping to take up our little conversation where it was interrupted this morning,” he went on. He was a grossly overweight man whose huge face was forever dewed with beads of perspiration. He carried a pink bandana and mopped his brow and cheeks at regular intervals. “Though perhaps the occasion of dinner was not quite the appropriate time at which to demonstrate my...”

Jani smiled politely.

“Whereas,” he went on, “now is the perfect opportunity,” and so saying he leaned over the bulge of his stomach and snapped open the hasp of his valise.

Mr Gollalli had introduced himself at dinner on the first day of the voyage. He was, he informed her proudly, the managing director of Gollalli and Chandra – one of the premier film studios in Bombay. “Perhaps you are familiar with our films?”

Jani had admitted her ignorance, claiming that she had been too busy with her studies to attend the cinema. She had elected not to mention that she had heard of the studio, and that the type of film they made – horror and supernatural shockers – were not to her taste.

Whereupon Mr Gollalli had proceeded to recount to her, and everyone else present around the table, the plot of Gollalli and Chandra’s latest release.

“But as I was saying,” Mr Gollalli said now, “I was in London on a very special errand, and one which I could not entrust to any minion, oh, no! This trip required my especial attention, let me tell you. You see, I was visiting the capital in order to show my colleague in the business the latest developments made at our Dadar laboratories. Now, as a medical student, I would like your honest opinion.”

Jani took a sip of her cordial, trying not to exhibit her unease. “I have barely begun my very first term,” she said.

“But you informed me of your desire to go into surgery,” Gollalli said. “You must therefore have attended autopsies, no? Post-mortems?”

Jani’s smile became strained. “Not yet,” she murmured, wondering where all this might be leading.

Mr Gollalli pulled a fat ledger from his valise, and it appeared to take all his strength to lift the volume from the floor and lodge it, with a grunt, on his expansive lap.

“No matter,” he said breezily. “I would still be interested in your opinion of the fidelity of my... ah...
samples
.”

He opened the ledger, its cover like some great trapdoor, and flipped through what appeared to be a thousand transparent leaves with blood-red slivers compressed between them.

He beamed at Jani, a golden incisor catching the light of the chandelier, and proceeded to roll up the sleeve of his left arm. “Now, Miss Chatterjee, what do you think of this?”

Quickly he slipped what looked like a sliver of bacon from between the transparencies and slapped it on the bulging flesh of his exposed forearm.

Jani stared. Mr Gollalli’s left arm now appeared to sport a deep and bloody wound, stomach-turning in its realism. What was quite remarkable was the illusion of depth achieved by the artificial wound. Jani swore that she could make out the white gleam of the bone beneath.

“Remarkable,” she murmured.

Mr Gollalli beamed in delight. “I thought you would appreciate it!” he chortled. “I developed the process myself. It is all about utilising enamel paint on layered, micro-thin vinyl. But I have more...”

He whipped off the ersatz gash, slapped it back between the transparencies, and turned the pages until he came to another example of rendered flesh. “Now behold this one, Miss Chatterjee!”

He peeled off the vinyl wound and draped it across the underside of his forearm, and Jani gasped at the verisimilitude. It appeared for all the world as if a long gash on the man’s arm had been badly stitched and had become infected. The petroleum iridescence of gangrenous flesh glinted in the electric light.

Jani’s stomach heaved. She put a hand to her lips and turned away.

“You see,” Mr Gollalli went on, oblivious, “it is the fidelity of these and other samples that make the films of Gollalli and Chandra so popular in India. I was hoping to impress my colleagues in Britain, and in this I have succeeded. Let me tell you that my order book is now full! Soon, my dear, all the Empire will be shrieking in horror at the realism of films supplied by my company, oh, yes!”

Jani was trying to think of a polite way to absent herself from his company when a shadow fell across the booth.

“Mr Gollalli! What on earth are you showing the girl?”

Mr Gollalli’s smile became ingratiating. “Why, Lady Eddington. What an unexpected pleasure! I was just displaying...”

“I can see very well what you are displaying, my man, and let me tell you that severed arteries and the like have no place in polite company, and are certainly not for the eyes of a girl of such refined sensibilities. Now, if you will excuse us, I have more important matters to discuss with my young friend. Janisha, if you would care to accompany me...”

Jani smiled at Mr Gollalli who, open-mouthed, watched her accompany Lady Eddington across the observation lounge. “Thank you for saving me,” she murmured.

“Think nothing of it, child,” said Lady Eddington. “Really, the audacity of the man!”

“I’m sure he’s well-meaning, Lady Eddington.”

“That is hardly the point. The man has no sense of decorum. Fancy his flagrant exhibition of those appalling
samples
, as he calls them – and to one of your tender years! Do you know, he had the poor taste to display his wares to the Captain on the very first day. I’m surprised he wasn’t made to walk the plank!”

Jani settled herself into an armchair across the lounge from Mr Gollalli. She smiled to herself. To be saved from Mr Gollalli’s excesses only to suffer those of the dowager... She wondered whether it was her age, her sex, or the colour of her skin which allowed people the presumption of superiority.

She recalled Sebastian’s father, Lord Consett, and his patronising attitude to her – and his poorly disguised horror at his son’s attachment to someone he referred to as ‘a subject of the Raj’...

“Do you know,” Lady Eddington said now as she settled her crinolines around her on the
chaise longue
, “I do envy the youth of today. The thought of it, a girl entering the medical profession! Such a thing was unheard of in my day.”

Jani smiled. “Society has changed, little by little,” she said. “And I must admit that it does help that my father is in a position of influence in the Indian government. Not that I am saying that this got me into Cambridge,” she added, hurriedly. “It was more that his influence on me, on my sensibilities, allowed me to think that there was nothing of which I might not be capable.”

Lady Eddington peered at Jani through a lorgnette. “You are, if you do not mind my saying, a most remarkable young woman. How refreshing it is to meet a gal with the strength to face the world on its own harsh and unremitting terms. You will go far, my child; of that I am sure.”

Jani was casting about for a suitably modest rejoinder when a burst of raucous laughter sounded and a dozen young subalterns barrelled into the lounge. They appeared to be applying the rules of Twickenham to the airship and, in lieu of a rugby ball, were tossing around the cockaded turban of a young servant boy who appeared behind them in the entrance and looked on helplessly.

Jani wanted more than anything to jump to her feet and remonstrate with the rowdies, but fear of their reaction kept her rooted to her seat. Undaunted, Lady Eddington rose to her considerable height, puffed out her chest, and with a murmured, “Excuse me,” to Jani propelled herself across the lounge.

“Just what in the name of decency do you think you young scallywags are playing at?” she bellowed, then admonished the leader of the ruck in lowered tones.

The effect was instantaneous. To a man, the subalterns stood to attention, saluted the dowager and proceeded, with metaphorical tails between their legs, to scurry to the bar – but not before returning the servant’s headgear with muttered apologies.

Lady Eddington returned, all but dusting her hands in a gesture of accomplishment. “Some might call such a display merely high spirits,” she said. “But I call it downright
rude
.”

Jani smiled. “You certainly put them in their place.”

Lady Eddington peered across at the subalterns who were now drinking in a nearby booth. She laid a frail hand on Jani’s arm. “Come, let us repair to my carriage. The tenor of the lounge has taken a turn for the worse.”

Jani finished her drink and followed Lady Eddington across the lounge to the elevators.

As they dropped to a lower deck, Jani said, “Did I hear you correctly, Lady Eddington? Did you say your ‘carriage’?”

“Your hearing is not at fault, child. Carriage is indeed what I said.”

The elevator bobbed to a halt and the doors parted to reveal a corridor. This one was neither carpeted, nor wallpapered, nor equipped with the ubiquitous potted palms, nor any other signifier of luxury. Jani followed the dowager along the corridor towards a pair of double doors, guarded by an armed officer.

“Good evening, Stubbs. I have a guest I wish to escort to my carriage, now there’s a good man.”

She passed the officer a half crown, and Stubbs saluted and stepped aside.

Jani followed Lady Eddington into a vast chamber and halted on the threshold. “But where are we?” she asked. She was reminded of an airship hangar, but one filled with railway rolling-stock.

“I think the technical name is the ‘garage’ or some such, but this way.”

They walked beside a length of railway track on which stood three Pullman carriages end-to-end. The overpowering stench of axle grease and engine oil filled the air. Jani could well believe that she was in some siding of Paddington Station, but for the wall to her left, the ribbed metal punctuated by a line of portholes.

Taking in the racing green livery of the carriages, picked out with gold filigree scrollwork, Jani realised that although she had lived a life of relative affluence, both in India and in England, there was an order of privilege above and beyond that to which she was accustomed.

“And this one is mine,” said Lady Eddington, pausing before the vertical steps of the central carriage. She climbed them with surprising spryness and Jani followed.

“But I never knew such things were possible,” Jani said once she was ensconced in the Pullman’s buttoned-velvet couch and Lady Eddington was preparing Assam tea.

“Anything is possible if one possesses three important attributes, child, and those are money, influence, and the confidence with which to carry off the desires of one’s heart. And do you know, I often think that the third might be the most important.”

Jani smiled to herself as she sipped her tea: only a truly rich person could make such a striking declaration.

“I like to travel in style
and
comfort,” Lady Eddington went on. “You see, my husband ran the Calcutta-Bombay Railway Company, and this carriage was a gift from the board when he retired. I have it transported almost everywhere I go these days, though the Americas are something of a trial – much of the railway gauge, you know, does not conform to Empire standards.”

Jani almost replied, “What hardship...” but stopped herself just in time.

“Of course, technically speaking we are breaking the rules by being down here. Safety regulations, don’t you know. What tosh! But Sergeant Stubbs and I have a little arrangement.”

Jani smiled and looked around the palatial carriage. “It must be wonderful to be able to take your home with you, as it were.”

“I suppose it is, at that,” the dowager said. “I am spending a week in the sub-continent, Janisha, visiting old friends for the last time. I am eighty-five next month – though I know that’s hard to believe – and one does not last for ever. I moved back to England five years ago after a lifetime in India. I have a little place in Mayfair, so as to be in the thick of things, you know.”

“Do you miss India?”

Lady Eddington gave a thin smile. “Of course I do, child! I was born in Delhi; the place is in my blood – but so, too, in an odd way, is England. The strange thing is that I miss India when I am in the Old Country, but when I’m in India I miss England. I suppose one is never satisfied, is one?”

“I know what you mean.” Jani blew on her tea, smiling. “I missed India and my father terribly for the first few years I was in England. But five years ago I returned, and yes, I did miss England then.” She almost went on to say that she felt torn between the two countries, being the product of both places, with an Indian father and an English mother, reared in India by a nanny, then packed off to boarding school in Chichester at the age of eight. She had felt like the proverbial fish out of water for many years in England – and then for three months, at the age of thirteen, had felt oddly out of place back in India. She had felt too English, too accustomed to the different ways of the Old Country.