The Girl from Cobb Street (28 page)

‘Of course. I can see you’re still shaken up. You haven’t gone to the Infirmary.’

‘Not today, I’m afraid, though I was due to go. I feel bad about it. I haven’t been able to get a message to them.’

‘Can I help?’

‘Would you mind very much calling in on your way back to camp and letting them know why I haven’t put in an appearance?’

‘Consider it done. Dr Lane will understand, I’m sure. You’re a volunteer after all. I imagine the work is pretty tiring and you need to be on top form.’

He settled himself opposite her and stretched out his legs. She noticed his boots were so highly polished that she could see her reflection in them. ‘I understand you need something to keep you busy,’ he went on, ‘but what made you choose to work at the hospital?’

‘I don’t rightly know. It seemed a useful thing to do, particularly as they’re very short-staffed at the moment. I thought I could help. My mother was a nurse—perhaps that’s what gave me the idea.’

‘It must be satisfying to follow in her footsteps. Is she still nursing?’

Daisy’s face clouded a little. ‘She died when I was a few years old.’

‘I’m sorry. You never said. It seems we share the same family story.’

‘Not exactly. I had no family at all. I was brought up in an orphanage.’

That made him sit up. He leaned towards her, a frown creasing his forehead. ‘I had no idea. It couldn’t have been much fun.’

Her head had again begun its incessant throb but she tried to answer truthfully. ‘It wasn’t. I didn’t have the easiest of starts, it’s true, but like you I’ve managed to survive. My mother was a disgraced woman, too, as it happens. Not a widow but a woman without a husband. And the orphanage had clear rules about such things. Children were tolerated if they’d lost both their parents but if they’d never had them, they were treated miserably.’

‘It sounds an even less happy life than mine.’

‘I can’t really complain. I was lucky to be befriended by one of the patrons. Miss Maddox took me into her household and showed me a great deal of kindness. It was more than I deserved.’

‘You were her adopted daughter?’

She felt herself growing hot and not just from whatever poison she’d swallowed. It took her a while before she answered. ‘Nothing like that. I worked as her servant.’ It was an admission she had never made to anyone since leaving service. But she trusted Anish and now she had begun, she might as well tell the whole truth in all its harshness. ‘I started as a kitchen maid—that’s the lowliest of positions—but then I became a downstairs maid, and finally personal assistant to Miss Maddox herself.’

Anish’s eyebrows knit together. ‘I thought Gerald told me he met you in a shop.’

‘He did. Miss Maddox had to leave London and go to her sister, who was very sick. There was no room for me at the new house and I had to find another job. She was so good to me. She knew I couldn’t bear to go into service with anyone else, so she spoke to the owners of a department store that she knew—in the West End.’ There was still pride at the thought. ‘They took me on. In the restaurant to begin with, but then I was promoted to work in the perfumery. That’s where I met Gerald.’

Anish stood up and began to walk back and forth across the rush matting. It was clear he was thinking over what she’d said, and it was disturbing him. Eventually he stopped in front of her. ‘Does Gerald know? I mean about the orphanage, and being in service.’

‘No,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘We’ve never talked about our families and he thinks I’ve always worked at Bridges.’ It was an admission she didn’t like to make. If Gerald had falsified his background, was she really any better? Hers was a sin of omission but, like him, she had been trying to cover her tracks, pretend she was other than she really was.

‘I’m sure you don’t want my advice but if you were to ask me, I would say keep it that way. Never tell him. If you did, you’d gain very little and you might lose a lot. He can be extremely touchy.’

‘About servants?’

‘About where people come from. He likes to fit in. I think it’s been a struggle for him.’ That chimed with everything she suspected.

‘You notice a lot, Anish.’

‘It’s simply that I know him well. I watch him watching others and always trying not to make a mistake. He’s not at ease.’ Whereas you are, she thought.

There was a pause before he said, ‘You’ve had an eventful life. It must make coping with the army, with army wives, quite difficult.’

He was being kind, she knew, picking his words carefully.

‘A little. It’s rather like being dropped into the sea without a lifebelt. But so far I haven’t drowned.’

He sat down again and fixed her with a warm smile. ‘You’ve done amazingly well. And I can appreciate just how well. Like you, I’ve travelled a long way though I’ve chosen to forget the past.’

‘I wouldn’t want to do that.’ Her voice was firm. That would deny everything that had made you the person you were, she thought.

‘So do you think much about your early life?’

‘I didn’t. At least not until a few months ago. I think I was too busy just getting through each day.’

‘So what has changed for you?’

‘India maybe. I’ve thought far more about the past since I’ve been here.’

‘How strange that my country has stirred memories for you.’

He rose to leave and she got up from her chair, her legs still unsteady, and walked with him out onto the veranda.

‘Not so strange. It’s happened slowly.’ He looked at her questioningly and she tried to explain. ‘It must have been my visit to the temple that started it. I saw a necklace there, carved on a stone goddess. There was a pendant hanging from the necklace and I remembered seeing my mother wearing a brooch just like it in the only photograph I have of her. It made me think about her for the first time—I mean, really think about her.’

‘And did it make you think of your father too?’

‘I’m afraid not. To be honest, there’s little to think of. I don’t even know his name, and I’ve no idea how I’d begin to find out. I’m not even sure I’d want to.’

He nodded and took her hand in farewell. ‘Your instinct is telling you right, I’m sure. It’s better to leave the past undisturbed.’

She watched him walk down the veranda steps towards the tree where his horse was sheltering. He threw himself into the saddle and, shading her eyes, she followed rider and horse to the end of the path where they wheeled left onto the track that led to the main thoroughfare. A last wave and Anish was gone. She turned to walk back into the house, but almost on cue an engine spluttered into life nearby. Surprised by the sound, she retraced her steps onto the veranda and peered into the distance. That was odd. Except for vehicles commandeered from the regiment, she had never seen a car in the vicinity. The noise had come from the right and that was even odder. She’d thought the track petered out just beyond the bungalow and had never ventured along it, but it was certainly a car that she saw driving past the end of the garden, and it had come from that direction.

She squinted across the spread of dry grass, still broiling from the midday sun, and saw a metallic roof shooting sparks of light into the bushes that bordered the lane. It looked like an ICS car, like the car that Grayson Harte used in Jasirapur, but it couldn’t be. Or could it? Was Gerald right after all, and the man had some kind of obsession with her and was conniving these so-called accidents in order to see her, to be close to her, to act as her saviour? Had he come to commiserate over her illness but had seen Anish’s horse grazing in the garden and thought better of it? If so, he knew her drink had been tampered with, knew that the goji berries had been mixed with less benign fruit. She felt wretched in suspecting him of such a dreadful deed but what other explanation could there be for his presence in the middle of nowhere?

She went back into the house and fell into her chair once more. The visit had exhausted her and she felt stupidly weak. Leaning back, she fixed her eyes on the ceiling where flying insects had mustered into a small army, and tried to think her way through a miasma that was gathering pace. She hadn’t told Anish about the poisoned juice, and she couldn’t tell Gerald either. He was liable to accuse Grayson outright, and she didn’t want to see the man smeared, his career in India compromised before it had truly begun. Whatever he might have done, she couldn’t stop herself liking him. He’d shown her kindness on board ship when she needed kindness most. And shown her the same warm concern each time they’d met. It had led her to confide her most private sorrow. She hoped very much that her imaginings were wrong. After all she had no proof. She would say nothing to anyone but there was one thing she would do. She would refuse to drink any more goji juice.

As always around nine o’clock that night, Rajiv handed her the glass and she thanked him for it. But she didn’t drink. Instead she said to Gerald who was playing an irritable game of patience at the table, ‘I’m very tired. I think I’ll go to bed and have my juice there.’

He nodded absently and she slipped from the room unnoticed. Once in her bedroom, she raised the
tatty
very slightly and poured the liquid out of the window. It settled into a small pool on the veranda but then slowly disappeared down the cracks of the wooden planks. She felt immediate relief. She must do that every night.

For the next three evenings she did just that, trickling the liquid harmlessly down between the veranda’s boards. As a consequence she slept very badly in the closed room, unable to find even one cool spot amid the burning sheets. Whenever she fell into an uneasy doze, the noises of an Indian night—jackals, dogs, the harsh croaking of frogs—brought her back to full consciousness. But it was better to lie wearily awake, she thought, than pass the night in a poisoned coma.

She saw herself looking more haggard as each day passed, but Gerald seemed not to notice. Indeed he was hardly ever at home, seeming to spend more and more time at the cantonment. When he did stay for lunch or arrived back for the evening, he hardly spoke. It was almost too hot to speak, she thought. The temperature was still mounting, and by the end of each day the house glowered like a stoked furnace.

‘The monsoon will soon be here,’ he said one night. ‘You’ll feel a lot better when it comes—we all will.’ Perhaps, after all, he had noticed how ragged she looked. ‘The wives will soon be back too,’ he went on, ‘and you’ll have four months of fun ahead. Parties and dances galore. There’ll be horse shows, race weeks—gymkhanas too. Keep up the riding, and you’ll be ready for them.’

‘I’m finding it too warm to ride at the moment,’ she prevaricated, ‘even very early in the morning.’

She hadn’t gone out on Rudolf since the accident, though she’d resumed her work at the Infirmary. She supposed she could have sent a message to Anish saying she would like to ride, but something always held her back. She wouldn’t now be the proficient horsewoman he’d prophesied and the gymkhanas would have to be given a miss, she thought wryly. In fact she would have liked to give the entire social calendar a miss. Gerald’s promise of a butterfly existence filled her with misgivings. She hated the thought that very soon she would be surrounded by the women she’d met that night at the Club. She mustn’t forget, though, that Jocelyn would be returning with them. That, at least, was a comfort. The girl would be in Jasirapur for only a few weeks but Daisy was already looking forward to seeing her. For the first time in her life, she had friends. Anish and Jocelyn. She’d always pushed people away, wary they might discover the real Daisy, but Jocelyn had been irrepressible, and she was glad of it. When the girl returned, it would be cool. At last. Cool enough, she hoped, to cope better with the wives. Cool enough to brave even a Rosemary Laughton.

‘Like I said, the heat will break soon.’ Gerald pushed aside his plate, his meal half-eaten. It was almost too hot to swallow. ‘It doesn’t stop the locals from celebrating though. There’s a big festival happening on Friday. It’s called Teej, and it’s quite a spectacle. It’s a religious thing but still fun. Like a carnival really—huge crowds enjoying themselves.’

‘We should go.’ The festival sounded exciting and she spoke without thinking. But he didn’t immediately pour cold water on the notion as she’d expected.

‘It’s a good idea. We should go. You’d enjoy it.’

‘But can we go together?’

‘One of the troops will be on standby in case of any trouble. I can’t imagine there will be. But I’ll make sure I get time off, and rustle up some transport.’

His words surprised her, since earlier promises had come to nothing. There had been no second drive to the river, no willingness even to spend more than an hour in her company. Too little, too late came to mind, but she was grateful he was making even a small effort.

She woke the next morning to a room that was unusually dark. But when she snatched up her watch and brought it close to her face, she saw it was early morning despite the absence of bright light. She went to the window and lifted the blind. The sun had gone out, disappeared behind a mountain of grey cloud, and there was a stiff breeze whiffling through the long alfalfa grass. It was far from cool, though. If anything, the heat was more oppressive, spiralling itself downwards from a sky that seemed to sit just above her head.

She had barely taken a mouthful of the small breakfast left for her, when she heard a tap on the window. Then another tap. And another. Large, hard drops of water. It was rain! She ran out onto the veranda, hardly able to believe what she was seeing. But sure enough water was tumbling from the skies. She clambered down the wooden steps and dashed into the mass of grass, unmindful of what might be lying there, and pirouetted round and round in ever widening circles. She danced wildly on the spot, smiling and laughing and giving out small whoops, holding her face up to feel the full power of the rain drenching her skin. Then, as though a hand above had switched off a tap, the rain stopped and she was left dripping in the midst of a sodden garden. The skies began to clear almost instantly but in an atmosphere that was muggier than ever.