‘She missed you, darling, all that time you were away.’
‘She never visited,’ said Maddy. ‘Only once … ’
‘I’ve told you, she had her reasons.’
Maddy didn’t ask what those reasons had been. She’d done that enough over the years. Richard would never say, nor would Aunt Edie. It’s not my story to tell.
‘I can’t believe you’re all leaving me here,’ she said.
‘I’ll miss you,’ said Richard, ‘but honestly, you don’t want to come to Delhi. It will be chilly at this time of year, very dull.’
It’s absolutely ripping fun, Della wrote, several days later, days in which, with the city in a post-Christmas lull, Maddy hardly left the house, then only for evening drinks with her mother and Guy at everyone’s favourite watering hole, the Gymkhana Club, and, out of desperation, back at the club again for a sweltering morning tea of scones and stale cucumber sandwiches on the long, lower terrace with Alice and her fellow memsahibs. (So much moaning about one’s servants, the cost of flour, and the constant battle of keeping food safe from the red ants. ‘Table legs in water,’ said a wife from the army cantonment, Diana Aldyce, ‘it’s the only way. If I’ve told Cook once, I’ve told him a thousand times.’ If Maddy had heard it once … ) We’re staying at the Viceroy’s house, Della went on, which is essentially a palace. He throws the most marvellous drinks parties and dinners for us every night, with more brandy and gin than even Peter can drink. We’re leaving for Rajasthan tomorrow, first stop a hunting lodge in Ranthambore. There’s talk of a tiger safari. Tigers, Maddy.
Maddy wrote by return.
You’re very heartless, she said, but tell me more, anyway, so I can live vicariously.
She watched the silver post tray each morning for Della’s reply, or something from Aunt Edie, or one of her friends back in Oxford; anything to break the hot monotony of her days with her mother. The two of them echoed around the too-large villa, coming together only for meals, where – but for the occasional comment on the growing heat (Alice), ponderings as to what everyone must be doing in the north (Maddy) – they spoke very little. Unable to bear it, Maddy spent most of her time wherever Alice was not, moving from her room, to read on the veranda, play the piano in the drawing room, outside for yet another walk amongst the butterflies and peacocks in the garden. The nights were hardly better. Although the usual round of Bombay soirées, music recitals and dances picked up again, and she went along, if only to be doing something, they weren’t the same with everyone gone. Whenever she escaped for a cigarette at the Yacht Club, she missed Della more. Each time she took out her matches, she turned them slowly in her hand and thought of Luke Devereaux. Sometimes she considered taking his advice, using his guidebook to get out and explore – her yearning for England, the green parks, warm, buzzy cafés, Aunt Edie (even, in her lowest moments, Uncle Fitz), was only worsening – but she kept telling herself, I’ll go tomorrow. As the days rolled by though, pushing New Year further into the past, she didn’t go anywhere. The second week of January became the third, and gradually she started to doubt Luke Devereaux ever would come back to reclaim his guidebook. It was far easier, in the baking loneliness of the villa, to believe that he must have forgotten all about her.
It was on a rare cloudy Monday towards the end of the month that she drifted down to breakfast, went to check the post, then paused, seeing a sepia postcard on the pile of embossed envelopes. It was a picture of a dirt street, women in saris, rickshaws and a cluster of elephants. She picked it up, turned it over to check who it was from (she assumed either Della or her father in Rajasthan), then squealed in disbelief.
Hello from Secunderabad,
I find myself wondering if you’re putting my book to good use, Miss Bright. I hope so. I’m looking forward to a full report. Go down to the tank at the base of your hill if you haven’t found it yet. It has water from the Ganges in it, and the Hindis meet to scatter their loved ones’ ashes. Or, for something a little less deathly, try the spice markets.
Meanwhile, here’s a taste of somewhere else for you to discover one day.
Luke Devereaux
She held the card to her bodice, then tipped it away again, looking back down, just to make sure it was real.
It was.
It really, really was.
‘You look happy,’ said Alice, coming out of the drawing room.
‘I am,’ said Maddy, forgetting for a moment who she was talking to, too ecstatic for inhibitions. ‘I’m just about over the moon.’ She read the card once more, I’m looking forward to a full report, and, on an impulse, said, ‘Could I borrow the motor?’
Alice reached for the coffee. ‘What for?’
‘To explore.’
Alice filled her cup, then added milk, freshly squeezed from the kitchen cow. ‘Explore where?’
‘Bombay,’ said Maddy.
‘I realise that, Madeline, but where in Bombay?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Maddy, who’d remembered now who she was talking to, and that it wasn’t someone who invited confidences, least of all about Luke Devereaux’s book. ‘There’s so much I haven’t seen.’
‘You can’t go out alone,’ said Alice. ‘I could go with you … ’
‘Or Ahmed?’ said Maddy, too quickly.
Alice didn’t appear to notice her haste. In fact, she smiled. It was one of the truest Maddy had seen from her. It suited her, softening her delicate face.
Maddy almost smiled too.
But then, ‘How about Guy?’ Alice said.
Exploring with Guy was hardly what Maddy had had in mind. She suspected it wasn’t what Luke Devereaux had intended either. Alice was adamant though. She even suggested they invite Guy for dinner that night. ‘We can ask him then.’
‘It’s really not necessary,’ said Maddy. ‘No need to go to the trouble of dinner.’
They ate in the candlelit dining room, the windows ajar, balmy air wafting in.
Guy had come straight from the hospital, but had still changed into evening tails. He nodded along as Alice told him that Maddy was in need of a guide, listening in that gentle way of his. Maddy, examining him in the glow of the flickering candles, couldn’t deny that with his dark pomaded hair, fine-boned face and closely shaved jaw, he looked well; there’d be many besides Della who’d think him on the heavenly side. Not that she’d ever concede that to Della, who’d have a field day with the admission (if she ever returned from her ripping fun hunting tigers). Maddy didn’t really like to think about it. She wasn’t sure why she was. She jostled her shoulders, shaking the awkward musing away.
Guy smiled across at her. ‘Maddy,’ he said, ‘I wish you’d said something before. I’d love to show you around. We can go in the mornings, before it gets too hot.’
‘You’re so busy,’ said Maddy.
‘It will be my pleasure,’ he said. ‘There are some perks to being in charge. I’ll juggle things around.’
‘Really,’ Maddy insisted, ‘it’s too much to ask.’
He called twice-weekly from then on, pulling up in his open-topped motor, glass bottles of boiled water in the trunk, their itinerary for the morning ready-planned. He told her that, truly, she didn’t want to visit the nearby water tank, ‘I’m afraid the men can’t be relied on not to disrobe before wading in with the ashes,’ and took her to the most British of landmarks instead: the Victoria Gardens, Flora Fountain, the esplanade – all places she’d been to with her father, not one of which was referenced in Luke Devereaux’s book. Guy didn’t ask if there was anywhere else she wanted to visit. In fairness, he probably assumed that, having been back so short a time, she didn’t have many ideas. And he’d gone to such lengths to help her, she was loath to hurt his feelings by telling him how much he missed the mark with his excursions. So she went along with him, said how marvellous it was to be out and about, listened to his tales of the hospital, laughing in earnest when he told her about a snake who’d got into the operating theatre, how he’d had to finish an appendectomy, one eye on it curled up in the corner, and chatted in turn when he questioned her about her friends back in Oxford, whether she’d eaten at the Lyons Corner House on St Giles’ (absolutely), or gone to the moving pictures (once or twice; her Aunt Edie was an avid Calamity Anne fan). She didn’t not enjoy the mornings out. They just weren’t anything like what she’d hoped to do.