The Girl from Cobb Street (27 page)

For a long while after he left, Daisy sat looking blankly through the window without seeing anything of the wilderness outside. Until Rudolf had bolted, she’d been enjoying the ride more than any other she’d taken. She was used to Anish talking to her as one friend to another, but it was rare for him to touch on the personal. Today had been different. She’d learned something of his past, and felt it helped her understand better the complex person she’d always suspected lay within. The day had been a very happy one until the accident. And the accident had upset her more than she realised. The worn girths were a bad oversight, but perhaps the problem was not that uncommon and ordinarily would not have led to disaster. It was the fact that she was an inexperienced rider and had no idea how to handle a terrified horse.

Nobody was to blame for the accident. How could they be? The cantonment was heavily guarded, and it was impossible that anyone could have gained entry and tampered with Rudolf’s saddle. Today had been bad luck. That had to be the case. And if today were bad luck, then so were all the other incidents that had dogged her since she’d come to India. The snake had ventured in from the garden to find a cool bathroom, the block of masonry had fallen but from a ruin that was already crumbling. The unknown trespasser that first night and later the locked door were as easily explained: she’d been badly affected by the unfamiliar heat and had woken up befuddled and unaware of where she was.

Yet her misgivings persisted, and she couldn’t share them. If she went to Gerald, he would think she’d run mad. He would say the sun had made her irrational, and accuse her of allowing her imagination too much licence. And he would be right. It was this house as much as anything, she decided, that encouraged false fancies and sent her mind spinning into the darkest of shadows. It felt an increasingly unhappy place to be, isolated, cut off even from what passed for life in the cantonment. She was without acquaintance here, without anyone to whom she could confide these pinpricks of worry, these small ripples of fear. And try as she might, she could not prevent herself hearing the small, nagging voice which whispered that her doubts were justified. She had joked to Anish that she was accident-prone but the accidents were becoming a little too frequent. And a little too dangerous. Previously she’d felt their threat and been scared enough, it was true. But today had been different. Today she had come within an inch of being killed. If that young officer had not finished his picnic early, if he’d not heard her calls for help and she’d not had the strength to hang on long enough for him to reach her … she would surely be dead.

But it was impossible to believe that someone was deliberately seeking her out, that she was somebody’s chosen target. Who would want to hurt her, and why? She was a nonentity, an unimportant stranger who knew nothing of local affairs and who knew nobody of any importance. Her bewilderment strengthened an already deep sense of solitude and amplified her disquiet. Even as she sat thinking, the tentacles of fear spread and multiplied in the deathly quiet of the house. She was alone, and thousands of miles from home. Very much alone. She was married but her husband showed her little interest. Anish was a kind companion, but his life lay elsewhere and his friendship would be fleeting. And Grayson, was he friend or foe? She couldn’t decide.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

G
erald had given up any pretence of dressing for the evening meal and considered a quick sluice of hands and face sufficient preparation for eating with his wife. He rarely had much to say and it was most often left to Daisy to fill the awkward quiet that hung over the dining table. Tonight he ate swiftly and in a silence so determined she did not even try to talk. In any case, what could she say? That she had come close to death today, and that his friend blamed himself for her terrifying experience. The accident was something she couldn’t tell Gerald. Something else. He might forbid her to ride again and she didn’t want another deceit to hover between them. She crossed her fingers that Anish would make no mention of it. She didn’t think he would, since he’d been mortified by what had happened.

To her watching eye, Gerald seemed more preoccupied than ever. In the brief conversations she’d had with him recently, he’d never spoken of the guns which had been stolen from the regiment and she wondered whether he was worrying over the lack of security at the camp. Had he been personally responsible for the firearms and was he now in trouble over their disappearance? He wouldn’t tell her even if he were, and the thought that they shared so little left a new emptiness in her heart.

As soon as he’d eaten his last mouthful, he got up from the table and went over to his desk. She’d kept her distance from it since the day she’d read Joseph Minns’ letter, fearing what she might find if she looked too hard. It was a fair assumption that somewhere in its contents was a demand for money. The pile of papers on the desk never seemed to decrease but it didn’t stop Gerald from a nightly sifting. Maybe he thought that by regularly moving them from top to bottom, side to side, they would miraculously disappear. Seemingly one debt had melted away, the debt he’d owed to the men who’d called at the house, so perhaps he was right.

She wished he’d confide in her and speak of his difficulties, but it was unlikely he ever would. For a short while their future had looked more promising. Gerald had seemed willing to put his frustrations aside and help make their life together bearable. But as the weeks had slipped by, he’d made less and less effort. She’d stopped expecting love from him or anything close to love; she’d been ready to settle for companionship and a husband who might one day, perhaps, share her bed. But she knew now that she would have neither. They were doomed to remain mere acquaintances, sharing a house but not a life. She was powerless to influence his feelings towards her, and she realised with a nasty surprise that she no longer cared to try. How could she have fallen out of love so quickly with a man who’d been for her the very pinnacle of all things wonderful? Perhaps that was why. She had given him almost god-like qualities, and then found him a fallible man. Her fall into reality had been sharp and painful.

She was the wife Gerald did not want. How ironic it was then that he shared a whole history with her, a history that neither could talk of. Both had started their lives in the same shabby corner of London, both had struggled to free themselves from the narrowness of that world, and both fought and overcome the most difficult of barriers to do so. Yet they were as much divided by their history as they were allied. He had parents who loved him, loved him enough to risk beggaring themselves so that their son could have the advantages they never had. She wondered what that must feel like. Gerald had turned his back on his family and made himself an orphan. She had not been given the choice.

Tonight she felt weary, weighed down by the marriage vows she’d made, and fatigued from a long ride and severe fright. She took her place in one of the wicker chairs and hardly noticed the broken canes prodding into her back and the cushion lumpy beneath her. Mechanically she began to turn the pages of her book, page after page, but nothing she saw made sense. Words jostled, sentences danced, moving black shapes formed and reformed without meaning. When Rajiv brought her the glass of goji juice, she took it listlessly. She really wouldn’t need this tonight. Despite the suffocating closeness, she would sleep easily and be ready for the Infirmary tomorrow. It was good to be going back, good to be losing herself in work.

She sensed Gerald had turned from the desk and was watching her. ‘You should drink the juice,’ he said. ‘We’ve a mountain of berries—your friend delivered another basket this morning—and tonight Rajiv has made the glass with sugar. You’ll like it.’

‘Why sugar?’

‘I asked him to. You look very tired and sugar will give you energy.’

She would need to feel a good deal livelier for the hospital tomorrow, she supposed, though that was something Gerald could not know. But it was a kind gesture on his part. She took a sip. It was very sweet and she wanted to leave the glass undrunk, but he was still watching her and she could not bear to quarrel tonight of all nights. She gulped down the drink, and then went to clean her teeth to get rid of the sticky residue which clung to her mouth. A brief goodnight between them, and she left Gerald still poring over his papers and slipped into bed. She was asleep before she had pulled the sheet over her knees.

She hardly knew that she’d woken. Her head didn’t feel her own and her eyes remained half-closed. There was a chainsaw slicing through part of her brain and a deep, dark throb in the back of her neck. She tried to open her eyes properly but her vision was badly clouded. For a moment she thought herself back in the cheerless dormitory of Eden House, but it was too bright and there were no snuffling children on either side. It was night, though. That at least she could make out; the intense light of a full moon was flooding the room and throwing shadows against the whitewashed walls. Not the orphanage then, but her Indian bedroom. Her mouth was parched and sore, and she was desperate for water. She must get up, get to the glass jug that sat atop the chest of drawers. She dragged herself into a sitting position, her head feeling as though it might explode at any moment.

The bungalow rested in silence. She must have woken because she felt so ill. Either that, or Gerald was moving around in his bedroom unable to sleep, agitated perhaps by the worries of the day. She swung her legs out of the bed, and stopped—there was a noise after all. Was that furniture he was moving? She wondered what he could be doing at this hour and supposed she should find out. Her legs felt for the floor and she tried to stand. The room swam dizzily to one side, and then teetered to the other and her legs folded neatly beneath her. She literally could not stand. She lay sprawled on the rush matting, scrabbling against the bed frame, trying to get a purchase. What was happening to her? Somehow she managed to get to her knees and for what seemed an age, knelt there as though she were a penitent at prayer. Her vision was dreadfully distorted. Furniture loomed at her, then retreated, the sheet blurred into a white snowfall, then turned grey. She was sick, very sick. The drill which had been piercing the back of her head went into overdrive. That must have been the noise she’d heard. The noise was coming from inside her head! With a mighty effort, she grabbed at the mattress and hoisted herself half into bed. She lay there, eyes closed, drowning in a whirlpool of spin and confusion, sinking, sinking.

When she woke again, bright sunlight was streaming through the plaited blinds and into every crevice of the room, and the heat was lying like a raised blanket a few feet from her head. The house had again retreated into stillness except for the call of the hoopoe birds in the garden, their art deco plumage puffed with pleasure. Memory flooded back. She had tried to reach the water, tried to reach the door and then collapsed, her legs mere cushions of air, as insubstantial as though she’d been a straw doll. Cautiously she tried to sit up, clasping the iron bed frame as support, and feeling with her feet for her slippers. Somehow she managed to pull herself upright. Her entire body felt unwell, aching and shivering. She must be sickening for something. It couldn’t be anything she’d caught at the Infirmary since she’d not been there for nearly a week. Perhaps it was something she’d eaten. So far she had escaped the stomach problems she’d been promised but she ate only Rajiv’s food, and that had never made her sick before. Was it something she’d drunk? Perhaps the water had not been boiled sufficiently well.

Or … was it the goji juice? It had been so sweet she’d not been able to taste it properly. What if the berries had been overripe or not ripe enough? Or what if … no, she wouldn’t think it. But what if they’d been tampered with? The berries had come from Grayson and he’d been sending them ever since the day of the riot. She’d felt grateful for his concern but for the first time she begun to wonder just why he would send them. Rajiv must be able to buy berries from the market, so why had Grayson taken it on himself to deliver them personally to her door? In the past, they’d appeared to do her good, and they’d certainly never had such a dreadful effect. But what if last night, she’d drunk something other than pure goji juice, what if there had been something nestling among those innocent berries, something that was not goji but could easily lie hidden in their midst? Would Rajiv have noticed? Probably not. And there were plenty of poisonous substances that could go undetected, plenty growing in this very garden. Oleander seeds, for instance. She had been warned by Anish never to pick them, never even to touch them. If they were the culprit, it was unlikely they could have accidentally become mixed with harmless fruit. And that meant that last night someone had attempted to drug her, and succeeded in making her very sick. But who would do such a thing and why?

She stayed dozing in the chair for much of the morning, too unwell to go the Infirmary. Gerald had left a note to say he was not returning until evening, and a blank day stretched before her. She felt too ill to care. When Rajiv brought her lunch, she could only pick at it a while before returning limply to her chair. Her eyes had once more begun to close when she heard Anish’s voice at the door.

‘I thought I’d call to see how well you’re recovering.’ He meant from yesterday’s ride, of course.

‘I’m feeling a good deal better,’ she lied. ‘Just a little sore from bumps and bruises.’ She would say nothing of the night’s events. Anish was already suspicious of Grayson Harte and she had no wish to cause further trouble.

‘You’ll be glad to hear I’ve had Rudolf’s tack completely changed so whenever you feel fit enough to ride again, let me know.’

‘That’s kind of you—but if we could leave it for a few days?’