Ryman, Rebecca (2 page)

"Mama,
what's happened . . .?" A highly alarmed Estelle came running down the
portico steps followed by her yapping King Charles spaniel puppy. Catching
sight of Olivia she broke off, stared, then doubled up with loud laughter.
"Ooh, I
told
you
so, didn't I? I
fold
you
it was a fluke—Jasmine would never be able to take that hedge again! Well, that
should learn you, Miss Devil-May-Care, and oh
my,
you do look a
proper sight!" Holding her sides she hooted.

"That's
enough, Estelle!" her mother snapped. "I fail to see anything funny
in this deplorable exhibition! Now help your cousin up the stairs and see to
her bath, will you? Take out the iodine tincture, the bandages and cotton wool
and send to the pantry for some boiling water. I'll be up in a few
minutes." Clapping her hands together she briskly rattled off orders.
"Come on now all of you, back to your posts
juldee, juldee,
chop, chop.
Rehman, get the water boy to carry up four buckets from the hammam. You there,
stop staring like an ape and see Jasmine back to the stables. If she's hurt
that foreleg again it's your hide sahib will want, I promise you. Ayah, take
missy mem's clothes to the dhobi this instant for a boil wash."

Wasting
no more time, Lady Bridget hurried back to the kitchen. No doubt that wretched
Babulal had already stuffed his turban with whatever he could lay his hands on
for that disgustingly large brood of his. And if the level of port was further
reduced, Josh would be livid. It was his second to last bottle and the
replenishments ordered a year ago for Estelle's ball were not due for another
two weeks. Thankfully, Olivia's injuries were minor. They could wait a few more
minutes.

As
Sir Joshua often had occasion to remark, there was nothing ambiguous about his
wife's priorities in life.

"I
thought it was understood, Olivia, that riding out in the heat of the day was
inadvisable, and even more so without an escort?"

Scrubbed
back into pristine respectability, Olivia reclined on a chaise-longue in the
upstairs parlour. Her skin shone pink with the effort, her tall, coltish figure
encased again in a feminine calico, this time of apricot and olive green. The
offending knees were not only covered but also swabbed, medicated and bandaged.
On a cushioned towel behind her head, her heavy chestnut hair fanned out like a
mane, giving her even more the look of an unbridled filly. The soiled riding
habit had been dispatched to the dhobi house in the servants' quarters, the
mutilated cap had been joyously claimed by one of the gardeners and the groom
had confirmed that Jasmine's foreleg was in no way damaged. But that was by no
means the end of the matter. Lady Bridget was far from having had her say.

Olivia
sighed. "The heat doesn't bother me, I promise you, Aunt Bridget. And I do
know the station well enough by now not to need an escort."

"The
heat you are used to is not tropical heat, Olivia. Here, it can ruin delicate
white complexions and produce dreadful skin ailments." Even as she said
it, Lady Bridget faltered. Olivia's robust, glowing complexion might not be of
a hue suitable for Europeans but it looked anything but delicate. "More to
the point," she added quickly, "you could have met with an accident
elsewhere and been at the mercy of the natives."

From
the window seat where she was occupied with a water-colour still life of a
fruit bowl she regularly depleted, Estelle snorted. "Olivia has the best
seat Papa says he's ever seen on a woman. She only fell off because she was
being pigheaded."

Her
mother withered her with a glance. "I know Olivia rides well, but that is
irrelevant.
No
respectable
European woman here invites trouble by venturing forth on her own!"

"Well,
where she comes from they teach women to look after themselves," Estelle
retorted hotly. "They don't tie them down with their mama's apron
strings."

Before
the familiar argument could blossom further, Olivia hastily intervened. "I
only rode down to the embankment, Aunt Bridget, and I had no intentions of
staying away long."

"I
have never doubted your intentions, dear child," her aunt sighed,
"only your methods. In India it is unsafe to be on one's own if one is a
woman. A white woman here is an object of curiosity to the natives. They stare,
make impertinent remarks
and start entertaining ideas far beyond their station." She spoke with
studied patience, wondering how often she would have to repeat her warnings to
the headstrong girl.

Struggling
to sit up, Olivia balanced herself on an elbow. "The natives stared far
less than
I
would have if one of them had suddenly turned up in the
middle of Sacramento! In fact, the villagers were most kind. I was watching this
snake charmer with his cobras and they gave me a stool to sit on. They also
gave me some very sweet tea in a clay pot." She met her aunt's eyes
without flinching. "It was delicious."

It
was Lady Bridget who in fact flinched. Drinking tea in clay pots with filthy
peasants? Ye gods, what
would
the child think of doing next! She
simmered with slow anger; what a mess, what an appalling mess Sean had made of
Sarah's lovely child! Given the right upbringing in England, the girl could
have had the world at her feet. Lady Bridget's anger melted and instead she was
filled with pity. She rose to sit on the chaise-longue beside her niece and
took both her hands in hers.

"Our
life here must appear strange to you, my dear. I do understand that—especially
in view of your own . . . unconventional upbringing. But in the colonies we
must remain aloof, a little distant from the masses. Superior civilisations can
survive only in exclusivity—you do see my point, don't you, dear?"

It
was a variation on a theme Olivia had heard incessantly since she had arrived.
As always, it left her unconvinced. "From what little I've read, it would
seem that superiority is a relative term, it—"

"What
is true in theory is not always the reality, Olivia!"

"Perhaps,
but Papa says that an old civilisation such as this—"

"Your
father is an idealist." Lady Bridget's mouth crimped as if having said a
word not to be repeated in front of children. "And he has never been to
India. No matter how old, this is a pagan country. Its culture reeks of
superstition, of savage belief abhorrent to all true ..." She stopped.
Once again she was being drawn into an argument she considered futile and
irrelevant. Olivia had an annoying habit of using logic as a weapon; it was not
a habit Lady Bridget approved of in women. There was right and there was wrong,
and word juggling could not make them otherwise. She stood up to indicate the
termination of the debate. "Anyway, to return to the point, I would be
obliged if you would not ride out again on your own. That stable-boy is an
impudent, disreputable lout but at least he can keep pace with a horse and
return with a
message in case you have trouble with the natives."

Estelle
giggled. "If Olivia has trouble with the natives, I'd give my sympathies
to the natives! She'd just take out her derringer and shoot them dead straight
through the heart, wouldn't you, Coz?"

"Indeed!"
her mother exclaimed with cutting displeasure, and inwardly Olivia groaned; the
giddy girl was really the limit! "If your cousin does carry a weapon, Estelle,
perhaps it is because she is not aware that India isn't
quite
the Wild West
yet, nor by England's grace is it likely ever to be. In the meanwhile, I would
prefer you not to meddle in matters that in no way concern you." Sweeping
out of the room she slammed the door behind her.

Olivia
glared at her cousin. "I wish you would stop championing my causes with
such unnecessary fervor, Estelle! Your efforts always seem to end up making
even more trouble for me—and for yourself. Now she knows I have a derringer and
she's livid."

"Oh,
fiddlesticks! Mama bullies you the same as she does me, and I just don't think
we should stand for it." Her blue eyes, so much like her mother's, showed
no sign of repentance.

"She
doesn't bully either of us," Olivia said sharply. "She has her
principles like everyone else, that's all." That she considered some of
her aunt's principles absurd she had no intention of telling Estelle.

"Principles,
huh!"
Estelle
pouted and gazed thoughtfully at an orange. "It's all very well for you.
You'll
have to suffer
them only for a year;
I
have to put up with them for
life!"

"Only
if you choose to remain a spinster and, somehow, I can't really see
that
happening!"
She grinned.

Estelle
tossed her flaxen curls with an air of disdain and jabbed her paintbrush into a
pool of crimson lake. "I'll make sure it doesn't! When I'm eighteen, I
shall do exactly as I please, so there!"

"You
do pretty much as you please right now."

"Not
as much as Polly does.
Her
mother lets her use lip salve and kohl
and go to
burra
khanas
with
her beaux—and Polly's a whole six months younger than I am." The enormity
of the injustice depressed her. She pushed away her water-colour, picked up the
orange and started to peel it, scowling. "Uncle Sean never bullied you,
did he? Can you imagine Papa letting
me
carry a derringer and taking me
on a wagon train?"

"There
aren't any wagon trains in India," Olivia pointed out.

Estelle
dismissed the technicality with a wave. "If Uncle Sean
always treated
you as an adult, why can't they me? I'm not even allowed to
eat
what I
want to when I want to without Mama making a fuss." She glowered at the
orange segments, demolished them in a single mouthful and spat the pips out of
the window with deliberate defiance.

"But
you still manage to," Olivia remarked drily. "What you can't have at
table you bribe Babulal to give you later in the kitchen—and I've seen those
biscuit tins under your bed, remember?"

"Well,
I'm not going to let Mama starve my body to death like she tried to crush my
spirit, am I? I'll lay a wager Uncle Sean
never—"

"Our
circumstances were quite different, Estelle," Olivia said hastily, uneasy
in her cousin's persistent and misplaced admiration. Estelle was as lovable as
she was exasperating, but Olivia had no intention of being blamed for inciting
rebellion. "Now tell me," she changed the topic swiftly, "is
Uncle Josh absolutely certain the ship will reach here in time? There's no
chance of your dress being held up, is there?"

Forgetting
everything else, Estelle brightened. "Papa has
promised
he won't allow
anyone to let me down. Oh, Olivia . . .," in her sudden change of mood she
squealed, swept her puppy Clementine up in her arms and hugged it, ". . .
I'd die, just
die,
if
anything went wrong now. I'd never be able to look that silly Charlotte
Smithers in the face again, not after everything she's been saying to Jane
about my ensemble. Do you know what Jane actually had the gall to tell Mrs.
Cleghorne, who told Marie who told Polly? She said ..."

Olivia
closed her eyes and stopped listening, satisfied that with the floodgates once
again open her cousin's energies would all be expended on the most momentous
future day of her life— her eighteenth birthday next month and the
coming-of-age ball being planned for it. As the familiar torrents of gossip
flowed out of an excited Estelle, Olivia allowed them to wash over her
unnoticed, her monosyllabic responses all that Estelle desired.

A
year.

Twelve
months.

Three
hundred and sixty-five days—minus only sixty!

Against
the soothing murmur of Estelle's unheard chatter, Olivia's own familiar
torrents of thought flooded her mind. How would she ever survive these three
hundred and five remaining days of an exile that stretched ahead like a sterile
desert, dull and joyless? She should never have come, never have given in to
her
father's well-meaning persuasions, insisted that he take her with him, as he
had often done in the past. Glumly and for the thousandth time, Olivia decided
that her coming to India had perhaps been a mistake . . .